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Does anyone know what the Sentinel damage scales are? They weren't added to the damage scales table on the wiki. Also when I started playing sentinels, it felt like they did just a bit more damage. Then a patch came, and the damage dropped... and I can't shake the feeling that they were better matched to the DPS archetypes before that patch. It wasn't a huge change - they still couldn't touch blasters for sheer damage - just a little more like they were more like the DPS, instead of being there more to boost the team's damage than to do damage themselves.

Three other sources of merits are giant monsters, Dark Astoria dailies/repeatable missions, and hunting certain badges. 🙂 Each giant monster drops a few merits for each person on a team which got at least one hit on them. 🙂 There are repeatable/daily missions in Dark Astoria with special rewards. One of the options is merits: 2 the first time in 20 hours, and 1 per time after that. Not a lot, but for a single mission, not bad. 🙂 The badges are limited, but I'm certain the badges for getting every exploration badge in the zone - available for zones with 8 or more badges in them - drop some, and I think the badges for doing every story arc in a zone do, too. Not every zone seems to have those, but when they do, you get the merits for each story arc, and an extra bunch of merits for doing all the story arcs in that zone. 🙂

Ah... Kelly... I've soloed Matthew Habashy, Officer Fields, Sondra Costel, Aaron Thiery, Twinshot, David Wincott, and most of Flux even on squishies without going to the Hospital. I don't really need help until Frostfire at the end of Flux, and I've seen several Frostfire teams in Everlasting's LFG recently. I haven't really tried it with the folks in the basement of Atlas Park... Well, not an squishies. Worked okay on a Tanker. But I don't think I start needing teams much until Frostfire in the Hollows, or if I get over to the contacts in King's Row. Even the King's Row contacts are okay until they send you to Perez Park, but they tend to send you to Perez Park, and EVERYONE squishes like crazy in Perez Park, because the street mobs are designed for teams of at least three. I don't like soloing, honest, but recently I've been doing it when I start a toon, because I feel guilty asking for help when I know I can solo, and I really can all through Atlas Park, and halfway through the Hollows, too. Yes, DFB and farms are an alternative, but I've gotten pretty fond of Matthew Habashy, Aaron Thierry, and David Wincott. I actually like to solo them, because I don't feel like I can read the text without guilt for holding folks back. 🙂

With concern about game balance, may I suggest we look at what we have before claiming things need reworking. 🙂 There are three unmodifiable flight powers available through the P2W vendor: hoverboard, void skiff, and flying carpet. They always cost 1,000,000 inf, and are slightly slower than fly or superjump, but this isn't too bad, even when the zone is large. I often arrive last at the next door when running a Task Force if I use them, but I've usually only missed a battle or two. However, they wipe out other power use the same way Walk does, including any and all armor. This makes arriving, leaving, or passing through a hot location more than a little tricky. There are three unmodifiable running-and-jumping powers available through the P2W vendor: Beast Run, Ninja Run, and Athletic run. A few of my characters use them because they either haven't gotten a regular travel power, or because they use a P2W flying power instead of a travel power, but want to keep their armor on for this trip. They are distinctly slower than unmodifiable flight powers, never mind the pool powers; I tend to miss 2-4 battles using them. However, they do allow you to use most powers while using them, unlike the hoverboard, etc. There are two unmodifiable jump powers available from the P2W vendor, Jump Pack and Steam Jump. They are tricky to make work for travelling, due to shutting off together whichever is used, so you can't alternate for greater use time. Also, you can severely injure a character if you just keep jumping like with superjump, since they don't have a top to the arc. You just keep going up as long as you depress the space bar, where superjump, combat jump, and the jumps in the running-and-jumping powers all will top out and come down after a while, even if you're still pressing space. I'm not certain if I'd had to send anyone to the hospital because of this, but I know I've gotten some over half way to needing to on a single jump without a large building or tall cliff involved. There are a few buyable jet packs and one dayjob accolade jetpack that do allow power use. I believe they all are unmodifiable, and come with limited durations. The dayjob accolade does two hours at maximum charge. It's rechargeable by parking in one of the jobs you got it with, but it takes a few days of waiting there to charge, so you can't use it too often too long. The rest can be recharged or replaced immediately by paying enough inf. to the right vendor, but then you're out more inf. There are I don't know how many travel pool powers, some of which move fast while allowing you to wear armor, but provide no armor themselves, and a few of which do provide armor, but are much slower, and cannot be used with any faster power I've tried, though at least one can be sped up, but only part of the time. All of these can be slotted for improvement. When I asked for a broom or other vehicles, I expected them to have the same slight speed and significant power use limitations the current P2W flying powers do. I usually prefer travel pool because I can wear armor without worrying about how long it's on, but not always. I still think being able to buy a broom or a flying mount or two would be nice, and should maintain the current game balance, which I think works pretty well, actually. 🙂

It might be worth checking to see if some of the Cabal in Croatoa use broomsticks. 😉

I figure that we have three already. A few more that are likely to be more popular and are similar in how they work shouldn't be too bad? 🙂

Sounds like it needs an overhaul... one that takes quite a bit of work, unfortunately. {rueful look}

A single-seater (fighter) jet might fit better with what we have so far. It was just an idea that seemed worth sharing. 🙂

A discussion of wanting vehicles cropped up in game. On reflection, I understand that making cars and other things that have to stay on the ground might be difficult to execute. However, we do have three flying vehicle options through the P2W vendor. The hoverboard, void skiff, and flying carpet work fairly well, though you can leave your armor on while using them, which can make arriving at a hot location tricky. Still, may I respectfully suggest that a few more options would be welcome as well? Like maybe a broom, a Pegasus, and a dragon? And what else? 😄

Thanks. I understand needing to find time to fix it. That doesn't sound like the quickest project. I'm not quite clear how to install that menu. Is it likely the in-game menu will be expanded? 🙂 Slightly veering off-topic, you mention the Wiki. Is there any place to make observations and suggestions for it without joining it? I noticed something that deviates from it, but I don't notice such things often. 🙂

I just checked. Those commands do work, but I cannot find them on the popup menu. I found them eventually on the wiki emotes page, way down under Thematic Emotes: New Year's Pack. I was looking in the main list first, and they weren't there. Is there some way we could at least make them easier to find? 🙂

A group at the DJ show were trying to figure it out, and couldn't. It would really help if they were on the menu; I remember them being under Holiday, but that's now blank.

Next New Year, I hope the box of fireworks special emotes drops for two days over the time, not just one. This year, it started the day before New Year's. As folks in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom came in, they got boxes of fireworks to celebrate the New Year with. Then it stopped. As folks in Canada and United States came in, they didn't get fireworks. They could only celebrate the New Year with fireworks if they'd logged in a bit over a day to a few hours before the New year reached their time zone. This seems to be most of the people I've met on Homecoming, though I have met folks in every other place I mentioned too. We couldn't even use the fireworks emotes, because those are all missing. I lucked out because I come in every day anyway, and thought I'd better log in my favorite characters as soon as I knew the box was dropping. However, several North American friends who came in specifically to celebrate New Years could only watch my fireworks. They couldn't shoot off their own. I really want to see everyone able to celebrate their own New Year with fireworks in the future. 🙂

I've noticed a disappointment with my higher sentinels, scrapper, and stalkers with resistance-heavy armor, as opposed to defense-heavy armor. In early levels, they're nicely more armored than defenders, blasters, and such, which don't have armor sets, but not as heavily armored as brutes and tanks. However, as they near level 50, they lose this distinction as the defenders and blasters and such catch up with the help of armors they get in the Epic and Patron powers, although my defense-heavy sentinels seem able to maintain this distinction better. {pause} Would it unbalance the game too much if they had a higher resistance cap than the unarmored classes? Not as high as Tankers and Brutes, who have 90%, or even Arachnos Warriors, who have 85%, I think? But higher than the 75% everyone else has. 80% seems like a nice choice; it would make a pattern with the others. Even if not 80%, something in between, so they can - with the right build - remain a little tougher but not THAT tough right through the Incarnate content, like they already are at lower levels, and like my defense-heavy sentinels seem able to continue to be right into incarnate content even now. {Smile}

I've started trying to track who is active, in hopes I can start deleting inactive players. I know it will take time, but... I can try. 🙂

Is there some way to find out what accounts on a friends list have not been online in a certain amount of time, like a few months, or a year? This would help in culling the Global Friends list, which filled, and I don't know who to remove. 🙂

When I try to enter "The Fastest Farm in the West," I talk to the contact fine. But when I click on the column of green light, I get "MADoorInvalid". This didn't used to happen; I've enjoyed that mission several times. But it did it every time I tried to get in, both late Saturday and middle to latish Sunday, Hawai'i Standard Time. I could do other ones fine; just not that one.