Correcting Past Mistakes?

[lemming]

4 hours ago, BazookaTwo said:

What does changing origin get you, game wise? I thought origin was a largely flavor thing and had no advantages in game.

Just concept.  And yes, no actual advantage.

[Crysis]

Respecs to me are a HUGE time sink.  I do about one per character, even if I do start with a full, complete build.  There’s the leveling build pre-50, and then the post-50 build accounting for Incarnates.  Sometimes there’s a third for the 40-50 game but I usually just hold out for 50 not because I want to but because I realize a respec is going to take me almost an hour minimum of scarce playtime.

 

Thus when changes are made to the game, I typically just leave my mothballed stable of old toons out of play.  Sometimes, if the change is big enough to leave them totally gimped, I’ll pull them out and do the respec but they have to be -really- gimped to force that.  When they’ve reached retirement I’ve typically eeked out every single possible min/max model I can think of and typically am quite satisfied with them by that point.  For the few I’ve not been, I melt them down via a respec that strips out all their IO’s and I delete them…..or re-use their name to build a better alt.  But it’s unusual for me to do that post incarnates.  Almost any toon can be made highly effective after incarnates are obtained.

 

Respecs are just awkwardly hard for me for some reason.  Doing a bunch of ‘trial respecs’ via Mids and test server have become my playstyle now more now.  I have even skipped leveling builds and just powerfarm alts to 38 to avoid needing to do that since it takes less time to powerfarm an alt than it does to do the respec.

[High_Beam]

BLUF: By the time I have run a character to 50, they are generally exactly where I want them to be, have RESPEC'd several times in the process and now allow me to just be heroic with no fuss or muss; Sets, Slots, all good to go so the only thing is the Incarnate stuff.

 

I have a process built around weather or not its a play often, play occasionally or no longer play.  But also framed around several axioms:

 

- Build for overall play not specialized activity; no 10 Star Ultra ITF build or speed runs in the Pocket D Slalom.  Half the fun comes from being challenged (not tortured).

- No Purples.  I have nothing against them, you are more than welcome to use them but when I get them I sell them, period, without hesitation. I made the decision that I didn't need them in any build to be happy with my character and it has saved me so much pain (and money) and I am happy when I play.

- Don't play for the prize, play for the fun.  On Live I was an OCD Badge hunter, one of the top on Freedom at the time, but to do that I had to do un-fun things (grind, afk heal, etc).  I would have gone insane over the Prismatic Aether deal if I was still that person.  Sure badges are fun to earn, but you aren't going to see my blaster with all of the heal badges, I am over that crap Johnny.

 

So with that in mind no longer play have all of their IO's stripped and stored and an optimized RESEPC performed then they are shipped to Everlasting, or in some cases, outright deleted.  No-Play Keepers are generally due to having cool back story or whatever.

 

Play often are for lack of a better term (to me at least) perfect.  I don't need to mess with them unless something messes with them (good or bad).  Munitions Mistress was perfect until they changed Mercs for the better and I needed to respec to take advantage.  Taking the ToHit Debuff out of throw sand in Martial Combat was stupid (thematically and mechanically - sand in the eyes makes it harder to see, i.e. aim but you stun - inane?)  but as long as I don't respec Di Di, the proc from Cloud Senses still fires (at least for now).

 

The middle ground guys, they are the ones that are the alts that are moving up or the alts at 50 that I play when I want to play.  I have some that are exclusively for SG events only, others that are relegated to thematic runs (a villain working through all the villain content in flashback, or only doing magic-centric arcs in flashback).  There I will often find a "mistake" or realize something no longer works for me in how I want to play.

 

[Rishidian]

My thoughts?

 

How do you know it was a mistake?  Perhaps there was a theme you were trying to adhere to, or maybe that character required a particular play style.  

 

How do you know today's respec isn't a mistake that would mess up a concept you were working on?

 

Being that you are pulling this one off of the shelf, and are probably going to reshelf it after a short stint into The City, why bother investing time into it?  Play it as is and learn another gaming style.

 

If the build is THAT bad, then shelve it or nuke it from space: don't waste that much time, or brain cycles, on it.

[KC4800]

I keep playing it,warts and all. Only one character I retired after it got vet lvl 100. Respec'd to move all enhancements to base storage for alts. Planted him in Ouro to buy super inspirations for alts, he sometimes goes intertub swimming in the pool. He won the game.

[High_Beam]

1 hour ago, KC4800 said:

He won the game.

I like that thinking.

[tidge]

On 3/16/2023 at 1:52 PM, Lusiphur Malache said:

You've created your character and played, experimented, respeced and finally gotten it t4'd.  Put it on the shelf to start the next one.  Several weeks or months later you play again just to scrape the rust off and find that you must have been high or drunk when you slotted it, because you've learned so much or the game has just changed so much.

 

What do you do?

 

I don't consider Incarnates to be in the same category as respecs... I certainly have made the decision to grind towards a different T4, but usually if it is a character I've previously put any time into getting new T3s is not an issue, mileage varies on T4s. I tend to spend a lot of time leveling up characters, so I don't approach Incarnate powers as "covering a hole" in the build... except in the case of Cardiac for Endurance Reduction at high-end play, YMMV.

 

As for "mistakes"... I can only think of a couple of instances where I felt that I had totally misunderstood some power, gave it a fair amount of testing and ended up think of the original choice as a "mistake". More often fro me: a respec specifically to change power choices on an already 'finished' build is usually because:

• I've used unslotters to determine that some enhancement (usually a global, sometimes a %proc) is having no observable effect, and I can think of another power that could use the slot(s). Generally this personal behavior has meant that I downplay Regeneration (outside of the large HP ATs) and certain resistances.
• I've experimented with NOT using a power during regular play, and I've determined that the power can come out of the build. This is a major reason why I almost never plan to put Hasten in anything other than a Dominator, or something with 5-minute recharge powers.
• Very rarely the HC team has modified a power set such that a character needs a respec. The only times this happened (so far!) was for an Energy Melee character and also for a Robotics MM.

[Coyotedancer]

I hate doing respecs. 

 

I will if I *have* to... but I don't enjoy it. So unless it's something really broken, I let it be. Which is why I still have about 50 characters who have Stealth pool powers that no longer fit them. When the Powers That Be decided to completely change the powers in that one, mucking up almost every single one of my character's choices, I just said "to hell with that noise" and have never fixed them.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Coyotedancer

[Zect]

I revise my builds a fair bit. It's one of the great pleasures of the game - the actual combat is fairly lackluster, and I usually find it more fun to play mids (even if that activity is firmly grounded in my extensive amount of in-game combat experience).

 

Some people believe there is no such thing as a perfect build, or no single correct way to build, but that misses the point. Perfection cannot be attained, but chasing perfection is where the fun lies.

 

However, I have never had the experience of looking at an old build and thinking I must've been drunk when I made it. I can always retrace my line of thought, and see what my priorities and assumptions were when the old build was made, even if I now disagree with them or have since expanded my knowledge.

[Scarlet Shocker]

to be serious for a moment - it depends on the mistake. If it's dreadful, I delete the character, even if it's 50. I do that quite often for a number of reasons - especially now that it's easy to get to 50. It's no hardship to play the game I love and rebuild a character that I didn't get right last time. It is very easy to strip a wealthy char, store all the goodies, recreate and get them all back. There's almost no penalty.

 

I do spend time on respecs and (see one of my more recent posts in the Defender AT section) I rebuilt a character from scratch because I'd misunderstood the use of one power which totally borked the character. Fortunately the result was a significant improvement overall so it's a win.

 

to me, a character's value is in the emotional connection I have to it. That surpasses everything else. I develop a concept and if it works, then great, if it doesn't I rework it until it does. I abandon avatars if they fail to meet the concept but I almost never abandon concepts. That said, very occasionally I've created a toon, played to 50, enjoyed it and thought "this isn't fitting the concept for the character" so I have renamed it and kept it as a distinct entity.

 

 

[Doomguide2005]

On 3/16/2023 at 7:24 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

The lesson I take from this thread is NEVER SIX SLOT BRAWL!

😁

Of course every rule has its exception.

 

*Runs off to find @Linea Empath build with a 6-slotted Brawl*

[Linea]

55 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

*Runs off to find @Linea Empath build with a 6-slotted Brawl*

Lol. 

I probably have at least one build with it six slotted with winters for the SL Defense.  But that's definitely an exception since boxing is usually available instead.

I do have a few 4 slotted with I think it's Kinetic Combat? for the SL Defense.  But those are also exceptions, but not as rare as above.

[Nyghtmaire]

Alright - rather than a respec, just up and deleted a level 43 and melted for parts last night. Demon/Pain MM. Saved the costumes and bio though for rerolling into a more enjoyable pairing. Everything about it was a slog, no matter the level range or content. Disliked it so much I’m tempted to make the same character today just to delete it again. 
 

Never had this experience before. And I really like playing with builds. Almost as much as playing the game. But this time,…

 

[Nyghtmaire]

On 3/18/2023 at 7:14 PM, Zect said:

However, I have never had the experience of looking at an old build and thinking I must've been drunk when I made it.

Actually, this is usually a safe bet on this end. I call it “multi-tasking”.

[MrAxe]

I fix the toon. My ocd won't allow anything else.

[nihilii]

On 3/16/2023 at 6:52 PM, Lusiphur Malache said:

and find that you must have been high or drunk when you slotted it

The number of times I've found a character who clearly intended to slot something like a Numina unique and had a random Numina heal/end (in Health!) instead amazes me.

Sometimes it's characters I've played for dozens of hours, too, and never noticed the mistake.

[Scarlet Shocker]

On 3/29/2023 at 1:11 PM, nihilii said:

The number of times I've found a character who clearly intended to slot something like a Numina unique and had a random Numina heal/end (in Health!) instead amazes me.

Sometimes it's characters I've played for dozens of hours, too, and never noticed the mistake.

 

Then I'd suggest it's clearly not such a mistake 😄