Mezmera

1000+ days eh? Maybe some fresh player will appreciate the passing of the mantle and will look to represent on a more frequent basis. When you see them on the streets you can say hey that was me and be proud.

They want to leave the game as it is and offer additional options above and beyond to account for the decked out IO'ed and fully incarnated characters running around. You know, what the live devs started to progress towards with the Going Rogue teaser before it got abruptly shut down. I'm all for the added content creation. We're getting new task forces while leaving the base difficulty as easy as usual and adding additional optional challenges on top. How is this a bad thing and why would you need to split up the community when all options plus more are still there and everyone is getting new stuff? This dev team does a real good job play testing this new harder content, they are very thorough. It's real neat quality stuff they are crafting, I'd suggest people give it a whirl at various levels, it'll certainly push you to get better on your characters.

I have two characters I do this with. My main being my dom; there's just so many ways you can go with a build with subtle changes of power picks and pool choices. I have a team build, a solo build and a best I can be hard mode build. My other is my tank; I have my nostalgia build with flight and laser eyes, then there's my damage build and last is the supreme tanking build which I never seem to switch off of. Mostly if you're looking to switch a build you're doing it to bring variety to the team which to me seems better to have variety in well built other characters. I can see wanting to do this with a select few favorite characters though.

I meant the proc will have a high frequency chance of firing. The Entomb I have slotted in an attack that's at 15s recharge so it is set to fire +75% of the time which Hasten and global recharge bonuses make this an even stronger occurrence. The tanker absorb I slotted into my TAoE since it's only a fire once at a time type of proc it's a decent one to put into an AoE and with 16 targets for a chance to fire off of its pretty reliable to fire as well. The Entomb is more consistent though since it doesn't need to rely on a bunch of targets. As far as Presence Pool I swapped Taunt for Provoke and had to drop a ST attack which didn't hurt my chain at all. It sucks to have to sacrifice a power pick for a dead power in the middle there but Unrelenting is just so strong for some builds. I get a 3600 heal over 30s plus lots of offensive goodies and its a rez if ever needed.

You can get high DDR on Shield tanks. Mine is at 90% without using Ageless, not too far off of SR. For a heal I went with Unrelenting and made sure to put the tanker and entomb absorb procs into high frequency firing attacks, I've got an extra 900+ first line hp I can count on and can 'heal' it back well enough when it gets chewed away.

You want something that can net high resists AND high defenses at least positionals and can attain high DDR so your defense doesn't get neutered. Preferably also something with a heal and good endurance recovery. I love my Shield tank for these because of what Grant Cover gives to the team, I just had to get creative and dip into the various pools for my heal and endurance. There's likely a lot of tank sets that could rock this well enough. It's more about having a good toolkit of powers and build then being proactive and quickly reactive when need be.

Hmm meet up with these heroes in some co-op zone incognito during happy hour and buy them some drinks then when they stumble into a pvp zone its easy pickins. Pretty solid plan.

Go home you're drunk!

Everyone has the choice of going to all three areas to start. Two of which have the far superior content. Yet the bland blueside is chosen by so many people. Kind of looks like people tend to more want to congregate to areas with higher populations and opportunities to level faster. Blueside has the DFB and a bunch of task forces other then that it's very hokey. Maybe we should write a story arc where Tyrant and Lord Recluse join forces to obliterate blueside so it forces people to all of this other unplayed content.

I concur with @Astralock if you want well written good content see Praetoria and the Rogue Isles. There is so. much. stuff.

I want a fresh Hard Mode task force in Praetoria that doesn't need to be super long along the lines of a combined Apex/Tin. It's such a shame those zones are going to waste and what better way to entice people over there than something like this. They'd need to get some of those zones oro accessible though.

Whatever gets you through the day. I'll leave you to your assumptions so we can get this a smidge back to topic.

He says it himself: Some groups have learned to obliterate these groups of minions without bringing along any dedicated healers. A better build would allow for someone to not have to spend time on the ground or watching their health bar and thus can do more pew pewing which in turn sounds much more fun.

Some people quit things because its too hard. Others power through and get better. All of that is perfectly fine. But lets call a spade a spade. Being down on content because its too hard for some and yet others can adapt is more reflective on the ones stuck in the mud. I'm glad there's other content @Excraft can enjoy where it doesn't feel so tedious getting hurt so much, I say bring me more minions!

Straight from the horses mouth.

Ah there it is! The bullies beat you up. Feeling "super" is knowing how capable these minions now are and being able to shrug them off without needing your healer. Maybe if you got a bit better and built your character wiser you'd find it less boring dieing so much...

Dang then the rest of the content must put you into a coma.

Well this is a player run game which after its return the novelty and nostalgia wore off long ago, you're not going to go picking up tons of new players like a new age game would. They don't have the resources to add oodles of content constantly like a studio would be capable of. But that they do have the ability and wherewithal to craft new content like what they are doing will help to sustain this. Heck most any returning players don't even know about the Aeon TF. The new harder content is much less mundane than a 10 minute LRSF which that last fight used to cause people to pause and wait for the team which is now what teams do on Relentless runs. The biggest problem is there's no unique or special rewards you can't gain by just running other much faster tfs, aside from the D-Sync and still you can get that from the minimum runs. It has been almost a year since the last update so when the novelty wore off the most glaring thing that stands out is the reward structure is lacking. There's little incentive for anyone to come out of their shell which is sad because this is quality stuff they're giving us.

Uh the Going Rogue expansion was supposed to be the addition of harder endgame things to do now that you had a crazy decked out incarnated character. Some people like 100's of alts and some like a good workout on their favorite characters. New content is new stuff everyone can enjoy no matter if you want to categorize it as "endgame" or not. If the game stayed stagnant where it was all you'll have is an eventual withering away of people tired of the same mundane content you can only run so much before you venture off to other activities. The vast majority of content is lower level not all too hard to accomplish plug and play entertainment. A lot of us have supported the game through Going Rogue which is yet a 3rd tutorial zone all in the hopes of getting some extra things to do at the end of your favorite characters life, all for one and one for all kinda jazz. To say that it's a "very small group" of people that wanted harder endgame content is insulting, we've just kept quiet while the rest get their 100th power selection they can run through the 1000th Council Radio.

Oh no worries. Between the long wait on a new update and finding other things to do I don't find myself on as much except on the weekend. It just takes a few people to get the ball rolling and taking over once it becomes more commonplace to want to do so. At first most itrials that were run were just a BAF now you have experienced leaders running all kinds of itrials.

Overall yeah this. The effort it takes to organize one of these should be recognized regardless if its an 8 player ready made team or something that takes 30 mins of broadcasting for. It's why Apex/Tin Mage is so well received, not a huge time commitment with great rewards so it's always easy to get a quick team built even if broadcasting solely through LFG.

This is what I did lots on Excelsior back in the first months this was active, less so lately due to some burnout/anticipation of new stuff. Don't go stereotyping people just because this might not have been your cup of tea originally and didn't notice people posting in LFG on Excelsior. When I was frequently making these teams if I was making specific Relentless runs to start I'd ask in a few highly populated chat channels first since I know most of those people have very capable characters to bring, usually I'll get 5 or so of us from these channels and then if its taking too long to organize I will open the floor to fill in the rest of the team from LFG which usually goes well enough. The players I get from LFG have either never run it or ran it only once and had a bad experience which I'll reassure them they have an experienced team this time. There's only been one time organizing one of these myself that we didn't complete it nor did I want to and that is due in part to the quality of player you're rolling the dice on getting from the LFG channel as opposed to mostly people you are familiar with. One Debbie Downer can ruin the whole mood of the team, even when the run is going well, just because they can't pay attention to chat and keep getting insta-killed by the explosion and for some reason wants to perpetuate some bad mojo for the rest of the team to enjoy. So it IS a double edged sword organizing most of the team strictly through LFG rather than specific chat channels, at least the Debbie Downers you'll get from the chat channels you will know and can give them snark if they try to ruin the mood of the rest of the team.

A poll here is an okay sampler but it'd be good to paste that poll elsewheres as well particularly where all of the kids hang out. It's funny, half of the comments here are, to quote the great Sgt. Murtaugh, "I'm too old for this sh*t", and all they like to do is solo. Like okay that's great this game has such vast resources that you never need to team or socialize beyond the forums but this game has some of the best teaming mechanics and that is the intent being a MMO and all which is what these Hard Mode task forces are designed to give more emphasis towards.

They are capable of reaching high resists except for psi per usual by taking all the powers in the set. In place of Unyielding you're getting access to some pretty decent elemental defenses which you can then build on. You can also build in some real nice melee defenses with all of those resist powers and 4 set Unbreakable Guards. You're also getting a nice heal and some endurance resistance. Built right Invuln is a stellar armor on Stalkers. You can build in high melee and elemental defenses, have a heal and some endurance resistance. I see this as good as EA on Stalkers but better because all of the extra high resistances Invuln is capable of at the expense of DDR and the endurance drain.

Agree on all of this. Energy Melee is nasty on everything including Stalkers just dedicate yourself to killing the biggest thing in the area. Electric Melee is nice too because you get one big ST attack that feels like its normally lacking on other ATs. Street Justice is great as well and was the top tier ST king until EM's revamp, which it still has a it better aoe potential. Invulnerability is my favorite armor on Stalkers and I'm not even an Invuln homer. There's just a lot of great all around building you can do with it on Stalkers. It's just so very tanky. I have a bunch of Stalkers and my favorite is my EM/Invuln. You can't go wrong with StJ or Elec melee though. As for armors there's also a few good ones, I like Ice for some unique stuff it can do and its pretty strong all around. You'll want an armor with a potential for high defenses so that you get better use out of scrapping through hidden status for crits and such. Stalkers are one of my favorite ATs and it's mostly how much it has transformed since the end of live to what it is now. I am a villain homer though.