quixoteprog

I second the idea that the thing Rad offers over anything else are its debuffs. If you don't use those it seems like you would be better off taking another secondary. They are also the thing that makes it synergize with Illusions, mostly for PA. You cannot buff the decoys, or the decoy that Phantasm summons, but you can debuff the enemies; which helps you and all the others. Looks like the only things you took from Radiation is the heal, rez and AM. Aside from AM, which is pretty awesome I know, everything else could be gotten with most other secondaries. You might want to consider looking at those to see if they offer better alternatives for those three powers. You also seem to be pretty deep in the leadership pool, which will help in groups, but not as much as a the debuffs in solo play, I don't think. But if this guy is going to be mostly supporting groups it should be fine.

In the mission "Arrange your first Meeting" with Mr. G there is a dialog with the final sentence that says, "I believe it's just a matter of finding who who go after first with it." Should be, "I believe it's just a matter of finding who to go after first with it."

There are some pretty long mission descriptions and it would be nice to not have to read through the. But I would also like to have a lot of those long meandering descriptions of plot boiled down to just information that A) moves the plot forward, and B) defines the mission objectives. There are plenty that go on way too long.

@The Philotic Knight Sure, people can artificially gimp themselves to make things more challenging. But doing something like that seems like it could make the game more of an academic exercise. It is already an abstraction and imposing artificial constraints will dilute the verisimilitude. The whole idea of a ROLE playing game is to lose yourself in it to some extent. As an ad absurdam argument you could go the other way and says, if you are really concerned that things take too MUCH effort and the economy is too much of a burden then you can always move to the beta server, there nothing costs anything. Characters get regularly wiped, sure, but you can just remake them. Or, lobby to have a "permanent" beta server where everything is free and you can play maxed out from minute one. I would have no problem with the admins of this game providing something like that. I would never play on it. But if that is what you want then why even play the game? If you really want unlimited resources with no effort then just sit in a chair and imagine playing? I can assure you that if the live servers were to be changed to allow people to type /all_the_money in their chat window and have their influence set to 2 billion. And had a second Auction House /AH2 where any enhancement cost 5 inf. then this game would die. You could make all the arguments saying, "But you don't have to type the command! You can pay full price for everything in /ah! Mission Difficulty Slider!" you want but most people would do it, max out a dude, run through some endgame content, grow bored and quit. Probably go back to playing WoW.

I have seen this happen with other click powers on occassion. Never for 30 seconds. But I have had a power give me a warning that it was still recharging when I tried to click it as soon as it recharged. Can't recall right now exactly what those powers were but it has happened several times on several different powers.

All good points. You cannot buy badges or the accolade powers some provide. But what you CAN buy are expensive sets in the AH, that will allow you to up your power level to a point that trivializes the difficulty slider and Incarnate trials. There are people who can solo +4/8 missions. Meaning anything more than 2-3 people can steamroll any mission. The state of the economy has either a direct or indirect effect to everything else in the game. Again, not saying it needs to be exclusionary where only certain 3l33t t34mz can get the best stuff. It should be possible, however, to set up things so that they are hard to get, but given enough time and effort anyone can achieve anything. Even solo. But making things too easy renders them less meaningful.

In most such games one element that makes it compelling to play is the effort required to achieve certain milestones. It is a well researched psychological trait on all humans that we appreciate things more the more effort they took us to achieve. Essentially, if it is too easy to get everything then nothing means anything to anyone anymore. I'm not saying it needs to be like WoW where you will be locked out of the high end game unless you sign a 4 year contract with a guild that you will dedicate at least 70% of your life to playing. But this game is pretty easy now. If we want to draw in new players and keep them interested in playing their success needs to mean something.

If you are going to conclude the whole Rikti conflict (in the comic book sense, since nothing in comics ever really ends, it just "ends") then I would add at least one Rikti Archetype as an optional player class, like Arachnose soldiers. (I know pie in the sky, devs are people not slaves chained to desks coding for this free to play game.) Not that I see either happening. But if you want to throw out pipe dream content then dream big. Maybe make the Rikti, and their associated ATs be a third (4th? Is Praetorian a faction?) faction.

The classic Illusion/Rad will probably be the easiest to get perma PA with Accelerated Metabolizm. You also have some REALLY strong debuffs which work well with PA because you cannot buff them so debuffing the enemy is a way to get around that. The damage potential is so strong it was usually not even worth doing a debuff unless I was facing a boss.

What you seem to be arguing is that Secondary Mutation + running a TF then doing some work in the AH is better at making influence than clicking Inner Inspiration and typing "/ah". Well... sure? My argument, however, was that having Inner Insp. is better than SM because you get a constant source of insp. ONE of the things you can do with it are sell the big ones. If however you are rolling in cash because you spent 2 hours running a task force, buying converters, buying enhancements, converting them, listing them, then you can save up your inspirations and use them to kill stuff or survive. Holding on to the ones you can use and having a predictable boost. Just seems much better to me than a random power that may or may not be useful to your AT or for whatever you are doing at the time. I would suggest that if you are wanting to make money, though, then do farming. That is way more fun to me than grinding a TF to get merits. In the time it takes you to do a TF and all the converting and AH stuff you can make 20-30 million influence. Buy 2-3 hero/villain packs that will net you merits, converters and rare enhancements all of which you can use to scratch that "AH wheeler dealer" itch if you like. And no need to spam the LFG channel.

It doesn't do much damage, which is why I wonder at how unpopular it makes my guy. It seems like CF has a large area that it hits, and that may grab mobs from outside the limit of a melee types AoE radius. Not sure about others, but for me it is usually just a fall back on a solo habit. On my Grav/Storm CFR is the best way to set up containment on the entire group so that my other attacks, AoE or not, can do more damage. Usually, I don't have THAT much trouble with it since I can take the range attacks of 5 or so mobs. Even in groups as long as you wait until after the tank/Brute/Scrapper to runs in there and you see numbers start flying over everyone's head you usually don't have that much trouble. But you can get a little click happy on teams that are really rolling through a mish. Even with all that, to me, it does seem to grab aggro a lot more often than I would think, even on fully involved mob groups. All the melee guys are in there mixing it up and so I feel safe cutting lose with CF only to get hammered from I don't know where. Probably because the tanky sorts don't usually bother to taunt, since they usually just cut lose with a couple AoE powers, or have a damage aura that works plenty good. Only not if some froggy controller cuts loose.

I would skip the Secondary Mutation power in favor of Inner Inspiration. The ability to generate 3 inspirations every 25 minutes (IIRC) often big ones, which come up pretty often, that you can sell for 8-60k. Easy money if you don't have a rich sugar dady alt to fund your new guy. Much better than a random power you need to keep refreshing. Also, on a first time toon, you should do the tutorial, where you get two big inspirations. If you save them an sell in the AH you can make 20-50K once you are done. Funding those enhancements you don't think are worth it. Which, by the way, I kind of disagree with. At least that it is worthless. At level 7 a level 10 training enhancement will give about a 20% bonus. Just one. That means a power doing 10 point with two damage enhancements will do 14. Maybe the difference between 2 shotting something instead of 3 shots to kill it. And if you want to power through those levels below 20 without worrying about buying enhancements, all you need to do is make 3-5 runs of DFB with double XP on will get you to level 15-20 easily. And will give you 12% buff to Accuracy, Damage, Defense and Recovery. (One different buff for each run). Which will only last you a couple levels by that time, since they expire at level 22. But then you can do DIB, which I think gives similar buffs that last a few more levels.

Yeah, I was looking at the number on how holds work, but had not taken into account how procs/min scales down somewhat on an AoE. Still probably good because of multiple targets, but not as super good as I was thinking. The problem with slotting CC is it doesn't take Accuracy and I don't care so much for recharge on a toggle, while most of the combinations in the hold and controller sets are Acc/Hold, Acc/End/Hold/Rech. Only one or two have End/Hold, which is all I care about. So I am torn between slotting with 2 end red and then either 4 damage procs or 2 Lockdown and 2 WoTC to get the global damage bonus they offer. Does the global damage bonus add to the Imps? They are a large % of my damage ATM and so if not I would lean more heavily toward the procs.

I avoided the TP macro for months myself, but once I started using it I found it SUPER useful. Probably TOO useful. As much as I like it and as handy as it is. It IS an exploit and really should be fixed. As handy as it is, it makes an already easy game that is fast to level too much so. I would not, however, be opposed to adding some replacement powers. Something similar to the Wentworth's and Base TP Day Job powers that have a wider variety of location options. The biggest difference being they are not insta-cast and available at all levels. When things are too convenient they sap some of the compelling nature of certain activities. Getting the Ouro portal is only a minor hassle, but it gives you at least a tiny bit of a feeling of accomplishment to get it. Would be far greater if everyone actually HAD to complete a mission arc to get it. It either requires someone to make a base or join a super group that has a base with a TP zone. Or you at least need to talk to another player to get them to open a portal.

Yeah, and it is the first power. Consume in fire is the final one, so depending on how well Power Sink works, Mu would be the better option. Mu also has an AoE damage power, which is what this guy seems to be geared toward. I am considering slotting Choking Cloud with procs, at least maybe Basilisk's Gaze and Lockdown, but do the hold procs only go off on initial activation or with every "tick/pulse"? The people saying CC was skippable mainly complain that it is only a 1 mag hold. But if I add the +2 mag proc in it that goes off 3/min that might be pretty cool.

I never took Choking cloud on my Ill/Rad because I rarely entered melee range and it just seemed like a waste. But I took it on the Fire/Rad and it is working out REALLY well so far. If I open up with Flashfire to stun the mobs and then move it I take only minimal damage. I did not take it until after I got the imps so it might be different without them burning things down in addition to Hotfeet. His main problem is still endurance, which is in constant short supply. It is better now with the imps because he does not have to run the two toggles and kill everything himself. But he is running with bosses off and I don't know if he will ever be good at taking on EBs or AVs. His ST damage is just so, so meh. I made 35 this weekend and am working on taking Mu for his Patron pool. I thought about switching to Hero long enough to take Fire, since that would match both the theme as well as give him access to fire ball, and Consume. But have never taken one of the Villain pools so figured I'd check it out.

It seems like the WS/PB slot issue could be solved by just giving the Nova/Dwarf forms powers a couple extra slot. Each power comes with a single slot. When someone takes Dwarf form, for example, instead of each of the inherent powers that come with that getting a single slot, they each get 2, or 2 slots on one or two powers, whatever will make taking the form be more viable. This assumes that you need as many slots for a Kheld to begin with. Don't they already get pretty generous modifiers? Nova form gets a higher damage modifier than a blaster. That would seem to make up for a slot. Maybe not enough, but you could up the modifier for damage, in Nova, and maybe in Dwarf form too. To make it account for a slot worth of enhancement.

Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Overthinking things is kind of what I do, so I will admit to a bit of that. But this doesn't seem that way. Not completely. At the risk of proving you right, though, I will point out that the phrase "changing oil in a car" is not considered a recreational activity in my country. Is it something you consider "fun" in Ooozebecky-becky-becky-stan-stan? Or is that some sort of prison slang you picked up in "the joint"? 😉

To me, this makes no sense though. At least, not for someone who has a farmer. If you were morally opposed to farming or something then fine. But if you have one then you can PL your OWN guy. This game can run on a flip phone. Almost any PC not made out of bamboo and coconut shells can run two instances of it. A second account is allowed by the terms of service, withing reasonable limit. (You'll have to look up what those are.) Any time you spend farming all you need to do is put that farmer in a group with the toon you want to PL. You get the same amount of inf. from the farm run, more in fact since there is a group bonus, and you level a toon. And yet you would spend the inf. that you gain, in large part by farming, to pay someone else to level your guy so you don't have to do it? Obviously, you and anyone else is free to play or not play the game however you like. And I understand how the beginner content is kind of done to death and was not all that good from the start. I just don't understand the reasoning here.

That's explains it then I guess. I was just unaware and had never seen it mentioned before that all epic pool powers used the same modifier regardless of whether it matches the type of attack or not. That just seemed strange to me.

Something here confuses me. Probably because of my ignorance. It says Brute's melee and ranged modifiers are now .75. (ParagonWiki says ranged used to be .5. Is that wrong?) Then "Note that due to the above changes, Epic Pools should see no damage change at all.". But shouldn't ranged damage for butes increase if the modifier went up from .5 to .75? Were Brute Epic powers using the Melee Damage Modifier before? Even on ranged attacks?

Yeah, I was pretty confident that once I got Imps the combination of AM and all the debuffs would be pretty strong. All the other controllers I have run were kind of slow going in the mid-low range. I took Hot Feet but almost never run it. The problem is that running on normal difficulty +0/x1 most mission spawns are 3 minions or 1 min. 1 Lt. That just doesn't justify the cost to run it when it is just damaging 2-3 mobs. Not compared to using the endurance to do attacks. If I were in a group with someone tanking for me it might be worth it, but then I would probably want to hang back and attack at range. I have thought about running at -1/x2-3 and see if that makes it worthwhile. Has anyone tried that?

Yeah, Crushing Field is bad for this. It immobilizes and does damage. In a LARGE area. For some reason mobs HATE that. I learned pretty quick to at least wait until someone did a foot stomp before whipping that one out.

I personally don't care where they hang out, or if they use LFG. As has been said, people spam that for all kinds of groups. It is what it is for. But walking up to random people and asking for a favor is kind of annoying, if only because of how easy it would be to do for themselves what they are asking me, a total stranger, to do for them. I have not read the entire thread, and don't think people should be jerks about it. But I sympathize a certain amount with the complaints of people asking for AE farms. If it were a difficult task they needed help with that is a different matter altogether. I have had people send me a tell asking for help doing the mission to unlock their Alpha Slot. Something most people solo without much trouble, but it can be a challenge for certain archetypes. Whatever the case it is WAAAAY more time consuming than sitting in on my farm mission. But I'm happy to do THAT. My complain it not that people are awful for asking for help levelling, even in a game where it is so easy. If you need help learning how to get food that is one thing. Even when there is food lying all over the ground and growing on trees. I am happy to point to the tree and say, "there food!" But I don't want to chew it for you. Asking for an AE session is a bit like asking someone to baby bird you a GAME. It kind of crosses a line of, how easy do you want things to be?