WumpusRat

I haven't made any characters with "multiple forms" yet or anything. Though I do have one that I COULD do something like that for. She's a bot/ff mastermind who pilots her bots remotely (she's a bit of a coward, and doesn't want to get punched in the face by some super-strong person intent on killing her, so she just controls all the bots from her little command center elsewhere), so the "main body" is just another robot, that I tried to make look as close to the tier-1/2 bots as I could. Same arms, legs, etc. It's just there to provide bubbles and buffs to the other bots, that deal all the damage. In theory I could have her create a singular bot (that would probably be much larger) that has a wider array of functions, and so could make it into a blaster, sentinel, or something else. Or a melee-version of the robot for a brute, tanker, or something else.

Redside definitely makes you feel (at least as far as what you're fighting within the missions) like you're getting to the point of making a real name for yourself among the powerful. You're going toe to toe with the Vindicators, the Freedom Phalanx, punching Big Named Heroes(tm) in the face regularly, etc, once you get into the 25+ range. Once you hit Nerva you'll get missions to go after individual named heroes like Aurora Borealis, Luminary, etc. On the hero side, you're generally just facing off against "Family boss mob with a name", "Carnie boss with a name", "Council Archon-of-the-week", etc, unless it's in a TF. It's only at 40+ that you really start fighting Big Names(tm) solo. Course, the downside is on redside a LOT of the contacts treat you like you're mud on the bottom of their shoe, rather than someone who could snap them in half. I actively try to avoid working with Hardcase because of that. And any time there's a mission where you get to punch him in the face, I'm all in. But then there's Dean. Everyone's favorite contact. Because D-Mac is awesome.

I was fiddling around with a "max sniper range" build the other day. On a psi/nrg blaster I could get a psionic snipe to reach out to around 400+ feet away. Further than max render distance. Though I'd often lose targeting beyond around 360ft or so. And stuff would still aggro me even from that range.

And of course neither of them dare say a word about old grandpa Newspaper, the one who points people towards them. They know what side their bread is buttered on, after all.

My personal favorite is introducing people who avoid Carnie missions (since few groups seem to actively pick missions with them) to just how fragile Carnies are to lethal damage.

I have a bunch of SGs that are just me (or just me and one or two other people), and a couple characters in larger groups. Generally when I start making characters, I'll end up with a "theme" that a lot of times kind of overlaps with other characters, so I'll lump them all into one SG. For instance, my aliens that are hunting Rikti are all members of a SG that is "Members of the Sanguine Dancer Crew". They have their own base (the ship) and such, and has around 15 characters in it. Another would be all my D&D/Pathfinder characters, who are part of "Greyhawk Adventurers", and likewise have their own base and such, and has around 30 characters. Plus a few more, but you get the idea. If they could turn the Vault into a mass shared storage facility for all your characters and divorce storage from SGs, that would be pretty cool. Would certainly make things more flexible. Though I'd probably still have several SGs of my own just for sorting all my characters into.

LotG isn't a proc, it's a permanent buff. Sudden Accel isn't a proc, it's a behavior change from knockback to knockdown instead. Not only that, but I actually mentioned KD procs in my post, which you snipped out in favor of cherry-picking that one half-sentence. And considering this thread is almost entirely about damage procs (which I was pointing out in my post), this seems like needless semantics on your part.

That sounds like it would be an interesting group for an AE arc. "The monsters that hunt the monsters." Basically some very, very black-ops group that even Malta is terrified of.

This is correct. If you have any patrol exp the debt comes out of that first. I THINK it was that way back on live, too. Though patrol exp built up more slowly. With the exploration badges granting patrol exp now, it's incredibly safe to faceplant. Just grab an exploration badge or two, and you're set.

"Don't heal me, my Defiance is at max right now!" Headbanging Blasters riding the redline of 10 hp.

I think part of the "problem" with procs is that when they first came out, there weren't all that many damage procs. There were a bunch of different types. Immob procs, stun procs, damage procs, etc. But since almost nobody bothers to actually USE the non-damage procs (other than the occasional use of Lockdown +2 mag or some knockdown procs), the procs that have been added have mostly been damage procs. And with more and more options to stack bonus %dmg onto powers, and the oddball way that the "proc per minute" thing functions (I put a proc into my enforcers on one of my thug MMs to test it, and the freaking thing went off 18 times in one minute), people found out they could just stack scads of global recharge and go wild with procmonkey builds. Seeing people argue that "the ideal" slotting for an attack power is like 2 hami's and 4 procs is kind of ridiculous, imo. I have a few characters have use procs. Mostly my trollers, to turn one power into a potential "thump" rather than grinding stuff down. But I can do it without procs, too. Just takes a few seconds longer. I think if they were going to "balance" procs they should just have them set for like "can only go off once every X" or something. That way procs are a nice bonus, but you don't RELY on them to do damage.

On the other hand, I absolutely LOATHE having to do that in other MMOs. The moment CoH created the exit mission button, every time I'd play another MMO that didn't have it I'd finish a dungeon and sit there at the end thinking "Man, now I have to slog all the way back to the exit to leave...plus there are going to be respawns in the way...ugh..." The instant-exit just feels more cinematic. After all, who wants to sit through ten minutes of watching the adventurers backtrack their way through the dungeon they've already cleared? "Hey, there's that pit we almost didn't see the hidden cover to." "Yeah, that would have been nasty." "Good thing we saw it." "So, anyone want to get a beer when we get back to town?" "Sure, sounds good." "...are we there yet?"

That actually reminds me, back near the end of live my bf at the time and I created a pair of characters named Bare Bear and Bear Bare, who had boots, gloves, bear ears, and a domino mask, with the chain wrapped waistband and shoulders, with everything else being "bare". Dark skin with the eden and bikini bits as close as possible to the skin color. It was silly fun. 🙂

I've barely done anything with the mapserver thing. I used it to finish off the incarnate unlocks on a couple of characters, got one from 49.5 to vet-1 with it, and out of curiosity hopped into it with a level-1 to see how far a single event would take me. Ended up getting to 16th with her. Beyond that, I've just killed a few of the mapserver monsters when they've popped on me when I'm wandering between missions or using the AH, but nothing much beyond that. Just "being 50" doesn't really matter to me if the character doesn't have a personality and a concept. I enjoy the leveling process and seeing how a character evolves, and how their personality evolves as I play them. Some I've started out with a particular idea and powersets, and after 30-40 levels thought "This isn't really working, I'll shelve this version and start a new one that better fits the concept and personality".

Oh, you sent a message? I never got it, sorry! Sometimes I go afk for a while while dealing with rl stuff. And if it's in in-game mail, mine's always packed full of recipes that I send back and forth between characters, so I never know if I've gotten something new. 🙂 I'm at work right now, so I won't be home 'til midnight pst. But if it's earlier in the day tomorrow (before 3:30pm which is around when I need to get ready to leave for work) then I could show up. Also, "she" btw not "he". 🙂

The thing is, if the team is moving so rapidly that they're insta-wiping spawns and sprinting to the next one, faraday cage isn't really needed. But when you hit things like AVs, or big pitched fights with lots of tough mobs (like the wall of cyclops and minotaurs in the third ITF mission, or the robot control box, etc) then having faraday cage can be quite nice. And of course everyone loves having it when you're fighting an AV or GM. I've seen tons of people praise having faraday cage present when fighting Romulus at the end of the ITF, and when someone else uses it I love having it there as well. The base recharge on FC is only 10s, so even minimal recharge in the power and some global recharge will get it down to 4-5 seconds. If groups are wiping spawns of mobs and getting to the next one in less than 4 seconds, then you're likely running on such a low difficulty that even the squishiest blaster isn't in any real danger. 🙂

It's been tried before, but the problem is that you're down three minions, meaning the bodyguard split becomes 40% for you and 20% for each minion, instead of 25% for you and 12.5% for each minion, meaning you and your minions take a good chunk more damage per hit. Not to mention that unless you're fighting purely purple-con mobs, the tier-1 minions DO churn out a pretty good chunk of damage. Also, mastermind attacks have such low scaling that your personal attacks won't really make up for having those three extra minions. Bear in mind that the number of targets on the field also contributes to your own survivability, as well as the survivability of your other minions. If it's just you, the two tier-2's and the one tier-3, there are only four targets for enemies to pick from. Which means more damage dumped onto the other minions, meaning they'll end up dying faster. If a tier-1 dies, you can toss another one out without a big loss to your damage output. If a tier-2 dies, it's a bigger loss. If your tier-3 dies, it's a substantial loss. Even more so if you've only got three minions on the field to start with. You'd have to play much more carefully, and at that point why not just take the difficulty down a notch and use all six minions? Additionally, when you start doing incarnate content, all your pets are level-shifted up to be equal to you, so skipping the tier-1's would greatly reduce both your survivability as well as your damage output. When you get all three of the incarnate level shifts going, all your pets are level 53.

According to probability chance, 31 attempts at a 10% chance would be about a 96%. So a 4% of it not happening. Rare, but possible. 28 attempts would be about a 94% chance, so 6% of it not happening. 10 attempts would be a 65% chance, so 35% of it not happening. And 4 would be a 34% chance, or 66% of it not happening. So while it's pretty slim odds of all of those (particularly the 31 and 28) not hitting, it's not unheard of. Not one in a million by any stretch. About one in twenty. Since I figure each character would have to calculate the odds individually, rather than all total.

If it's tied to the drop table as reward merits, didn't they change Adamastor so that it only gives merits like once every 18 hours or something? Just so you can't summon him every hour on the hour and get merits anymore? Which would mean you'd only have a chance at the recipe every 18 hours, too.

I was goofing around last night and had been thinking about a silly concept character I wanted to make for a while. Basically the "minor villain with delusions of granduer" sort. All her schemes are so terribly small scale that they're nothing more than minor annoyances to the powers that be, despite the fact that she herself is ridiculously powerful. Like she'd leave a mocking audio call to the some hero group telling them she was going to kidnap the Fautline dam (not the dam workers, the dam itself) and make it believable enough that they'd go check. And while they were out, she'd sneak into their base and replace all the lightbulbs with ones that were far too bright, and tilt a bunch of the paintings. Then leave a mocking note for them. I'd never come up with a name for her, though had been musing about things like Madame Catastrophe or something similar. But a song I was listening to last night mentioned champagne, and her name just came to me. Thankfully nobody had taken it yet. So the villainess Doom Perignon was born. 🙂

Yeah, the more I look at it, the more it seems like it was part of another picture and copy-pasted onto that one. It just looks so different to the rest of the art.

Generally when I create a character it's because I've come up with a concept I want to explore. Sometimes it's a powerset combo I haven't tried before, but most of the time it's an idea for an "archetype" that I want to play out. For the last year or so I've been making D&D/Pathfinder classes that wound up in Paragon, and have been putting together powersets that I think work for those classes. Some of them have been really easy (shield/axe tanker for the fighter, for instance, or beast mastery/nature mastermind for the druid) others have been really tough (the paladin in particular was hard to figure out since I needed a tanky weapon-based melee class that could heal, and I don't want to use aid other because of the dang tricorder). Another thing that I tried to do for the first 20 or so was to never replicate powersets. I still TRY to, but some of them have had a bit of overlap, as there are only so many weapon-based melee sets. So it's gotten me to explore some powersets that I'd never really thought much about before, and try out combos that have turned out to be really fun. Like ninja/empathy, or gravity/trick arrow.

Could be interesting. Though my work schedule is a bit wonky for most regular times. I work second shift (4pm - midnight) PST and my weekend is tues/weds, so that kind of puts me off track with most people. 🙂

Yeah, I've done the Ouro version of it too. I agree, it's very well done.

Somebody once told me That Malta's gonna roll me I ain't got no status protects She was looking kind of glum As the Sapper began to hum And zapped her straight into the bulkhead