Mezmera

Yeah they'll get to the point that it's no longer than the MLTF or LRSF eventually. Heck I did a speedy with some berserkers last night in 20 minutes getting incan'd as soon as I load the map. The harder stuff it's making you learn to pay attention more to things while you're playing which will only improve the quality of the player eventually. The deaths are still going to come though. I was on my tank last night when a brickernaut started exploding, I texted in chat to move on the 8 count and got out of the way, then watched as like four teammates just kept mashing their buttons. That's why you move, it's fun watching players in scrapperlock learning to keep on their toes. Then when I'm on my dom it's fun to watch everyone scatter not knowing that I for certain have those guys confused. I do put that disclaimer in there that I can't always get them all confused in time if there's multiple so best practice is to at least brace yourself. You're right diverse teams really help on these and much more so on Relentless. A max stealth tper is priceless in this. I have Incan on most of the main characters I will use just to speed things up if I feel we should but right now I'm kind of letting people get the sights and sounds before we go shortcutting this new stuff.

The initial new things to do has people running all over the place trying to grab this badge and that. Then the Winter Event came out a week later so more badging. Once everyone gets their badges it'll be back to what normal play dictates someone's whims for the day. Aeon will get good runs while it's the weekly for sure. I'm really enjoying this fresh new content so for my part I've been trying to organize runs quite a bit, at least until @Oklahoman takes over. The variety in the difficulty levels is really well done. I like to PUG Vicious runs, sure they're a bit tougher than easy mode but much more rewarding and not much harder than running 54 Carnies. If I'm PUG'ing I'll at least have a look at the team dynamic by the time it is built to see if I need to hop to my Dom or Tank to get us through it safe. Relentless runs yes you'll want to be real coordinated and willing to devote that time. I was on a PUG easy run that took us 35 minutes to complete. Then there was a coordinated Relentless run where we even fought the special Vanguard fight that I got in on and it took us 52 minutes. Then most other Relentless runs that I've been organizing to introduce people to this will typically take 2-3 hours depending on the team composition and if they want to fight the special Vanguard. There's a variety of factors but PUG'ing a Vicious is just about right which would typically take about an hour once everyone has it down. They really knocked it out of the park with this one. The floor is still the same old floor and the variety of step up in difficulty selection really impacts your experience. This is so very well finely tuned and has me excited for what else they have cooking. I'm doing my part though to get people familiar.

Yes use it. It's equal to or better than a damage proc as @Sovera just illustrated as it allowed them to clear a map unnoticeably any different and maybe even marginally faster than having a damage proc slotted. Now team with 8 people and the -res you give to the team amplifies how much better these are than just another damage proc. I have this in my long recharging pbaoe Dark Consumption so that's almost sure fire plus I also have Achilles set to almost sure fire as well in Weaken Resolve. That's 47% -resistance I'm providing to myself and the team in spurts and this isn't even on a support character. Sure it scales by the levels of the AV but you're still getting about 2/3 of that -resistance on target.

It's definitely beneficial to have some balance on these advanced difficulty runs but they did a good job of not making it so lopsided to make it exclusionary to any one particular AT, even Sentinels, but I'm not sure about those aliens though... You'll likely see more filling of certain roles which most players have a different AT to bring to the table. I can tank or get my dom, or ST burst damage stalker or aoe machine blaster and I can even bring a support character. There's a better emphasis for balance which most teams can sort out once they have a grasp of what they need to shore up to undertake a run. It's on the lead to have a looksie at their team on Relentless and at least pause to coordinate some type of balance if at the very least your Destiny powers. This new SF is great, there's not an overabundance of mez characters, rather debuffs, so it's still enjoyable from that aspect but still quite hard with those debuffs. I like the direction and I hope with harder new stuff we get some other dynamic encounters, I'd love to see one where there's some harsh mezzing going on, I'm talking groups filled with a Ghost Widow like character at every turn that can mez those upity tanks.

It's the old version of the Lord Recluse Strike Force in oro reverted to what it was to start so that you have no access to IO bonuses and Incarnate powers and Statesman is now in charge. It was a pretty tough fight before, but the hardest part of that SF was if the tech in the first mission was in the 1st tower you had to walk him all the way to Crimson. We failed that one more if the tech got stuck than the rest of that SF so if that hasn't been "old schooled" as well then the rest is cake. You'll get a badge for completing it "Old School Badge" but it'll likely get not much play beyond that since it'll be hard for most to say goodbye to their builds.

Likely it'll be as popular as the other legacy oro content. It'll be a tad more popular for a run or two for some to get the badge and that's about it because of the sentiment of @Cancrusher here and a lot of other people I'd venture to guess since a big draw to the game is the technical specs provided to you through the IO system which you get no access to for the "Old School" strike force.

That's just probably the people that couldn't figure out how IO set bonuses work.

Well I'd assume the sample to be overwhelmingly that the played on Live from this poll on the forum. For starters the hold overs are real used to the old forum which this is an homage of. I'd bet you'll find more fresh players on the Discord since that would be the new thing introducing new players to the game. Yes the sample size would be small but it would be representative if you did one on the forum and on the discord to get a better feel of it. It's guesswork to ask people to speak for someone other than themselves.

I'm not sure this poll is looking for the right data. It should be a Yes or No "Did you play on Live" and then we gain the percentage based on the respondents. Unless we are assuming HC already knows that you played on Live and what you ate for breakfast so we are guessing what figure they have tallied up. If that's the case I guess $1 and that @GM Widower is wearing socks. What's the showcase prize?

In summation; Seer Robes soontm?

Sparkles make parties better!

Yes that's a common occurrence when I team with these berserkers as well. Part of the reason I play this is for the pretty character and her cool looking powers. I'll be damned if I will be turning down my graphics to stick figures, what am I a savage? They can tp me if they like with their incandescence, I'm pretty handy to have around when I catch up.

This is what they used to call foreplay, and RP, they have an official RP server for this kind of thing...

Plus what makes it the official record for this new one? Should it be that you're on Relentless and fighting every possible boss fight? If that's the case the record would probably end up being around over an hour. It's a vastly different strike force if you run it at lower settings which every one of these speed runs likely ran at. There's quite a step up in enemy difficulty and no warburg nukes, shivans, inspirations, etc. At least there's still some animation glitching possible, for now until santa takes away those presents. Oh and nerf Fire blastas!

Another technique I switched up with my character on this hard mode stuff is that I slotted out Mighty with the extra damage (love the animation) for Void with the -50% damage for all for 30s. Ion is nice but you have to coordinate like 3 of them to wash out any real aggro in these fights. That -50% damage debuff in a large area is quite a great debuff on this and is very useful in boss fights too.

My go to is Diamagnetic. As others are pointing out Degen and Reactive are pretty good but everyone runs them anyways so they stack fast. My builds will have lots of defense so the 100% -tohitt play well with defense builds even if I'm the only one stacking them. Plus it also does -regen, sure not as good as envenomed dagger but a side benefit of -regen is always welcome.

You forget Dark Consumption which is about the same as Power Sink but it also does pbaoe damage and procs very well. Dark Embrace has the best resist package of all the available dominator resist powers with S/L, Negative and Toxic resist. The Seer pet does fabulous damage, just learn when to use it and to keep it alive. Yes there's lots of great APP options for doms.

Just wanted to say that although I'm likely not to ever play the new and revamped powers this is so much icing on the cake that is the ASF. I am thoroughly impressed with what has been crafted and I'm really looking forward to what may be coming!

You didn't really need to devote anything before for them to be useful out of the box. If I slot Mesmerize it'll be 5 of the decimation set, if I don't usually on that build I will just have it slotted with a 50+5 Apoc dmg IO and will have tactics and Soul Drain powering my accuracy along with accuracy bonuses. The sleep component will last for as long as I want it to until teammates break it. With Mass Hypnosis if I take it I'll be planning on using it so usually it gets the purple set. If I took it with my last pick I'll usually be using TD, MC and Terrify and the Mass Hypnosis is a bonus aoe control, which I'll slot a 50+5 sleep/acc/rech purple. I was hardly missing with that low slotting to begin with. Yes the consensus it feels from the dev team is to give sleeps a bit more viability by having this in your bag of tricks to be able to help the team with those harsh debuff/buffs. Sleeps atm aren't a terribly reliable control on teams because of zerging play styles but giving them this kind of benefit will be a nice feature if they have more engagements that call for these kinds of tricks.

I use sleeps against AV's all the time, particularly Mesmerize. Here's a tip for you, in the Zoe and Rodney fight if you sleep Rodney he won't be taunting the team, that way you can focus on Zoe first. So long as the change doesn't make them all immune to sleep that's fine, a few already are which is cool. Your sleep powers should likely have a decent set with some accuracy in it anyways so it seems a minor inconvenience.

The enemies fly and have high perception. You can still stealth around but you better be careful you don't bump the wrong Boomer because they just might see you then they will call all of their flying buddies. Which also means ground location powers like bonfire will have less impact. These things WILL be in your face a great deal. Most of the crucial points you can't just sit there stealth confusing, you're team will need big contributions. Stealth control is good for the first strike to soften up surrounding groups before your team catches all of their aggro. The OP started this topic after they correctly assessed how harsh this is going to be if you're not varying your build because it doesn't matter if you want melee or not, melee is coming to you. It's viable to build in max stealth sure but you're going to need to chase those defense bonuses and powers, take shields available to you, contemplate leadership powers, use things like Barrier, and be ready to toss out all kinds of aoe control. If the purple AT isn't pushing out the control available to them I'd rather have a defender or corruptor teammate.

This is also speaking from the Dominator perspective where Domination makes control feel like actual control. Most control feels just about right on doms because they don't have a support set to fall back on so they need that aggressive style for survivability. I also do think Controller's could use something specific to help them in control for certain things. The recharge on these powers feel about right but on controllers the aoe hold doesn't net you the control a Perma-dom gets. For the subtle AT differences I think leave the aoe hold where they're at but allow controllers to get the benefit on this power of an additional mag hold proc so they can get some unique control of their own. That way they don't have to slot some gimmick +2 mag hold proc and can make use of damage procs just as well as doms. There should be subtle tuning between the AT's, I leave controllers to hash that out for yourselves.

Confuse powers are fine how they are. Raise the recharge on Seeds of Confusion so a t5 power doesn't seem like it outdoes a t9 power. If they don't want to raise the recharge to MC levels on Seeds then they may want to look into giving Mass Confusion some kind of accuracy and or self buff ability. Giving enemies Leadership powers will affect confusing well enough without breaking those powers. Giving enemies a Vengeance ability for each spawn will go a ways to give them a "break out" but not stacking like Nemesis does so that you can still take notice they've broke out and now need another application of control to get them back in order. For sleeps it seems they are just fine with that auto-hit ability. Yes it's a light control but being able to hit everything to turn off certain things when you need to will likely be a good ability to have handy. Looks like the dev team has a direction for sleeps, it seems good so far. AoE hold recharge is fine where it's at. You want to avoid power creep this is where you leave the recharge where its at and leverage the other powers in your control set. Or would you think its cool to just walk through maps mass spamming aoe hold and confuse powers at your leisure? These things are pretty well done on the new hard mode Aeon SF. My control feels very significant with this new stuff. Now yes I don't contend that each control set shouldn't get a look at to adjust some things here and there individually. There are some underperforming sets for sure, and one overperforming one for certain.

I have my settings in the middle somewhere, usually I turn them down for UG's. It's real noticeable though when you get those types of targets in your area with all kinds of fx on your screen. I'm pretty sure the Brickernauts and Rifters are coated in a purplish aura so at first fight those should be identifiable. Then once you've wailed on the Bricker to the point of low hp he forms a bright gold pillar, makes tons of noise and there's a visible count on his head. You'll want to look out for those guys. The Rifters suck you in and once they show their purplish pillar along with the big red lettering put on your screen in front of your face you'll want to pay attention to that warning to target and kill them quick, they're not nearly as bad as the other guys but they are annoying as well. It's new and a little different you'll get the hang of it eventually.

It's not to discourage any type of behavior specifically. It's to keep people on their toes. Don't you look both ways before crossing the road? Same premise here, you're solo so you should plainly see the guy you just whittled down to the point where he starts glowing gold and gives you a 10s countdown. It is advisable to get out of that area, it isn't discouraging any type of behavior except mindless smash. If someone throws a grenade into your living room making all kinds of noise and flashing with a countdown you might want to get out of there, heck even Superman will want to make sure it's not glowing green at least if he intends to try to eat that explosion.