SlimPickens

No I dont think so, this is just focused on the main ATs who have the beam rifle powerset, so bots MM would be excluded unfortunately. But feel free to roll up and bring any beam rifle wielding AT if you would like to participate.

corruptors are fully welcome as well- I must have just missed that AT in the original posting, ill edit it in- we had several corrs in the group last time, and the buffs and debuffs from def/corr sure makes the team run smoother. Anything that has a beam rifle is welcome. just to be clear, and there are no restrictions on builds or level, play what you like as long as the primary or secondary is beam rifle it will fit into the team.

Anything works with mental, because mental is a pretty incredible blaster secondary. Water being very ranged focused means youll have to close the distance and get in pbaoe range for the mental buffs like drain psyche and the psy shockwave or world of confusion to be effective. This means youll want to get typed def up to softcap for smashing/lethal/fire/cold/energy if possible... which is certainly able to be done, but is not cheap. Blaster builds like this cost upwards of a billion influence, but the end result is a blaster that has incredible AoE and can stand toe to toe with mobs of most damage types and rely on its massive regen from drain psyche to keep it upright if lucky hits get through. The water AoEs are all ranged, but that doesnt mean they arent effective from PBAoe distances, it just means you have to prepare to be in the thick of things to make it work.

Alright Beam Team, time to assemble for some more zap zap. Im hoping we can all get together on Saturday Aug 17 @ 3pm PST/6pm EST to run a strike force (Penelope Yin is weekly ST that week, so thats one option if not enough players are high lvl to do something more towards lvl 50) Sound off if you can make it and want a spot reserved. We had a great turnout last time and LFG was successful in getting a few more, so I have high hopes we can easily fill out the 8 and if we have more than that we can do a second TF so everyone gets a shot (pun intended) Anyone on my global send me a tell if you want in, and new people or anyone else interested can email in game or send tells to @SlimPickens See you then

I have teammates? Im usually too busy tabbing targets to notice.

I have never experienced this IMPocolypse. Sounds terrifying.

Personally i aim to get to vet lvl 100 for a nice round # (100 just seems so much better than 99) and then turn off xp for good and double my influ. On pure farm toons I honestly dont care about my vet lvls at all so turn off xp right after getting tier 4 on important incarnate powers. If its something i dont use or has no affect on my farming, I dont bother to tier 4 it at all. But aside from badges theres really no benefit to grinding vet lvls past 99 in any case. Well, exept for the HUGE epeen factor, of course.

I agree, I had originally thought that dark epic was the way to go for a more perma soul drain solution, but on a proc monster build, the sould drain buff to defender damage is far less impactful than I had thought it might be, because the base damage is low, and furthermore you arent slotting for damage and slotting instead for procs... so soul drain really doesnt have much to buff. I am currently 100% in the camp that power boost from soul offers far more to the /time build than the dark epic can add. power boost can make capping def for incarnate content at 59% softcap much easier to attain, make taking the temporal selection power so much more worthwhile by buffing that before cast too- a clarion/power boosted temp selection buff is really nasty. And PBU from the epic offering that is probably even more worthwhile. So yeah with an artificial damage build that works outside the enhancement system with procs, soul drain just doesnt do much besides a bit more +to hit and boosting the musculature enhanced damage, since damage isnt being buffed much by actual IO %s- which im actually considering if musculature is even worth it as well- maybe agility would be the better alpha for this set up. Still working out whats best for me, but with all the testing and insight offered by Bopper, youself, Redlynnes time/dp defender threads, its been a fun little experiment. edit: agility would mess up the PPm scaling wouldnt it? since its not a global but an ench bonus to rech... ah well guess musculature still makes the most sense then.

It took a hit from the nerf bat, so moderate is probably the current accurate damage description. It used to be high, and have a huge radius, but was pretty overtuned. moderate damage, 15 ft radius is the current profile.

I find it hard to believe so many apologists are arguing for the current rage situation as if its a good game mechanic and nothings worth fixing. Its not good, it wasnt good on live TBH, sitting doing nothing for 10 secs at a time is not good gameplay mechanics, so it was poorly thought out in the first place, and now its very bad because on top of the doing nothing, you are getting crapped on with -def. Intended? maybe, but well thought out and fun...NO. a guassian procced build up every 20 seconds is far superior to what double stacked rage gives on a highly resisted damage type set anyways, so the old justification for it being such a good buff no longer holds water. Its a decent buff, but its a horrible mechanic, and is simply not fun. I dont expect the devs to spend their free time fixing things like this, so I just enjoy not playing my SS characters nowdays and playing sets i think are much more fun, which is unfortunate since SS was such an iconic powerset and has some really cool animations and feel to it. But what im confused about is how many bad choice apologists are defending the set as being "fine", look you dont play it, you dont care, or you dont want it to be fun, I get it, but why come in here and defend something thats simply not fun for the great majority of people is beyond me.

Steam spray is probably the very best cone attack in the game from a damage standpoint. And /energy gives it the boosted range to be a really effective aoe, so i certainly wouldnt skip it especially when paired with the secondary that has a range buff built in for the taking to make the cone less troublesome to hit everything with.

I like the potential for aoe carnage this one has for sure. Im not sold on slotting dark consumption so heavily, its downtime is so high (90+ secs per cast) that Im not sure on adding too many procs to it as a pseudo damage aoe, I think its more of just a ladder to get to soul drain, and a situational "hey i could use a bit of end right now" buff to cast if needed. But those slots could probably fill out the other things you pointed out as important- more survivability, more rech etc. Without power boost to supe up the temporal selection, im not too sure Id bother with it either, I would prefer to go all in as a damage dealer, but then again, its a really nice buff, and even with just the default slot and no power boost it will come in handy im sure, and theres nothing else i can really think of to add from pools instead. I think i like the 6 slotted preventative med rather than the 5 slotted panacea Temporal mending as well- a little more rech, cheaper IOs, and argueably better overall set bonuses for what you are doing here, so that was a clever swap by you imo, costs one more slot, but I think it was worth it. Been meaning to try out the procced distortion field anyways- was originally considering it for my fire/time corr, but think this build can play guinea pig for me because if I like it, it may become an addition to both builds. thanks for the thought on this Bopper, cool stuff as always.

Yeah, I saw that this is the soul thread, but boppers build is so heavily proc based rather than set based I was just replying to his comment about what he chose to include and omit from his experience and using the damage focused soul build, and that maybe his version of the build would benefit from the dark pool instead rather than the soul version... even at the expense of power boost, which would change how he has to go about the utility powers. I like what you have done here too- I have a time/DP myself, and honestly my build was much more like your /dark version but Im trying out the procopolypse idea and just was spitballing a little. Sorry if i kind of derailed the /soul discussion, but I like where both build ideas are going.

I love what you did with that build, but also see the value in a leadership based build that relies only on the power of the clarion farsight and swaps the soul patron pool for the dark pool to have way higher uptime on the soul drain at the sacrifice of power boost of course. But with assault giving you 18.75% damage full time, and maneuvers giving you upwards of 6% def while under clarion your farsight numbers are still very high and you are living at the damage cap under saturated soul drain every 30 secs, and it removes the need to cast power boost, the only real priorities are clarion/farsight and soul drain aside from your damage rotation. It takes away the utility of temporal selection and grant invis plus the stealth option for missions, but for pure combat it might well be much higher damage overall because soul drain is up so much with the dark version. http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1583&c=766&a=1532&f=HEX&dc=78DA65544B4F135114BE339D525AA0505BE4D5D2078F6229A5C343656148B46854308D1A77A6196128134BDBD09248DC88094B4D74E3565D1875E1C207A23B7E804B3551F746A3607C2C5CD5D3F98E7492DEA4F9CEFDCE39F77CE7CEB99DBB926A7E72627D5A48EE6339AD54CAA4F4453DBFA0AFD8E7B4AC312F68B953FA722167948D423E34A7E51D4405FF47658EAE2E2E26CE1BCB7A865C467135A755E3FC7BFEB35A3EAB2F2452AB5A2E93364AE542AE245AD385422E31AB6B14505A328A2DE6FEB8915D2A1BF96C1376B9EAD665DAE78ABABEE099291AF38994B672992A95CAFACA5A270949D2EFAD4FF0AA28C26F134255841C60EC052A41C610506DB3E44C2A26D790641C07363E436CE373E03BAA2321C7266DCA26E7DA627C0D6C7E051CA7F36D88B5DBD688F32AA26D83D047F819E7ED7B40A70508DF20C7B7254CF4D00DDBCD4215616F97104B9C833947B81AE7141354C309AE2293BF09F544538596B011D302AFD2D2854ABE6EE0FE1E463FD01F004ED289ADACBA7503AA3A597D6704AABB597D37ABF573171FE8763CA867F3B0EADE5F88EDFDC9B8CB5F81B479112B793936741A3E27F9DAB9D376F64588EB60AE6318753F52BD2E6895BB1A6CA68610DF64681B9A0F513F3DDC4F0FF713665F382E9BB7184E02FB54F8FBF8AC83941BE0DCC049F6CD4063FF3274F56BE8BD3F0E7EF025F013690B42AF3D7803B983B7186F02A3DF101BFDCA13F905788D2062CE594544EE20768AB40CB09601EE233A8DF8D811EC631398DA980A8C8F01D7296C88E760E82F720EFC66FCC3D8813EE263D81FA67AC35C6FF829B8387FEF9117D88F6C32F23C8CF21C5CA76D02FA95C423681BDD914DDFE8559CA10AEE790A77EF73E025577B4EF237F72B7B2FB43AE034D1B13A2659C7A875CC781D3351C7CC5A1927349FA972FCBAD2CADECB179299E1ACBDEFCA771779793AA51174B85BE364E9141951FA6FB880CEDC6174BF63CD1B42DE8F1A2749B7A1C4CD5370D743E2B8E63D8B7DDF62C769F25456FDD85BB3672D76DA65F669DA172DF6258BFD30528B7F6FC9FD07164000B4 Just food for thought, I am not a math guy and dont really spend alot of time on test to put theorycraft into practice. But since this is a damage focused build it struck me that using the dark version of soul drain may well put this thing into scrapper levels.

Interesting, so probably a go big or go home power- either devote the 5 slots to it for full proc % or get diminished returns by not having enough proc opportunities over the 45 sec window to make it worthwhile. The ability to stack it does make it tempting though, I think after hearing your results ill at least give it a try and see if I like it, because it is good in combo with times juncture and rain of fire so mobs stay in it longer due to the slows.

Very appropriate to a question I had about using distortion field as a proc power, after reading this I think Ill pass on the idea, as the power is pretty skippable in my build, and the slots can be better used elsewhere. I love /time and think its such a fun set for multiple ATs, so thanks for the guide. Or not quite a guide if you wish.

I can confirm its at least 4 digits, because i have several characters with over 1000.

Finished the season and thought it was great. I didnt follow the comic so dont have any preconceived notion of how the plot needs to go according to the books, but thought the flow of the scripts and the actors did a pretty damn good job showing who their characters were and moving the story along. Im looking forward to season 2.

Thanks to everyone who made it out tonight- great showing. 11 people total rotated in and out. With at least 2 more who couldnt make it I think this could be a success for a regular event. We will plan on doing it again in 2 weeks probably on a weekend next time and probably for a TF run. Recluse got the best of us, so possibly a revenge run on him once we have enough 50s.

this. always right turns, first door on the right.

Is buying converters with merits the established best practice for maximizing merit spend? I suppose it is, because even the winter IOs at 100 a piece would only get you around 20 mil per merit while converters would be 30 mil for 100 merits. I ask because i have a bunch of winter IOs i need and merits to spend, but if just buying the converters and selling is more worthwhile I guess thats the way to go and buy the IOs from the market.

Das it. Gotta be able to get my binge on proper. I know how ill be spending multiple hours of this weekend.

Yeah this looks fantastic, I will be tuning in for sure.

What good would having all the farmers and the alts go running to redside do? They would all simply crowd up at the AE building and run their instanced farms, it would not in any way help solve the population issue for actual teaming the redside has. And taking away the Null swap alignment option would just make things worse, because then players would simply pick blue and literally NEVER go over to redside for weekly task forces etc, so you would lose out on the people who do swap weekly or a couple times a month to accomplish the weekly strike targets they prefer. I personally like to swap sides every so often and run mayhem missions and form strike force teams redside, but if Null wasnt an option, I would not be doing that at all either, so while I may not be a full time villain side player, you would lose out on a part time player who organizes full teams when hes there, and im sure im not the only one. So the question is, would you rather restrict this activity to "force" people to choose one side or the other, and risk losing out completely on the part timers who at least help bolster team building when they do come over? Because if it comes down to a pick one or the other, no matter what the incentives are, 90% of the playerbase has always picked blue.

We could also swap to a weekend day if that works better for everyone, but the weekends are usually filled with hami raids and Itrials etc so most people are pretty busy usually.