Anaxagoras

Yeah, it was added in Issue 16 and was, if I remember correctly, the tech responsible for not allowing users not in the closed beta to view the character creation screens on Test.

Budget? Well, I don't really care that much honestly. I don't have very much in the way of liquid funds, but I don't have a problem taking a while to get what I want through merits and influence and (hopefully) lucky drops. Yeah, End Redux in Shockwave is a good idea, probably should have done that instead of the Range.

Thanks for the advice.

First off, here is my current build that has me mostly at the softcap (AoE defense is less than 1% from the cap when in combat)

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Vicious Kittie: Level 50 Natural Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Claws
Secondary Power Set: Super Reflexes
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Concealment
Ancillary Pool: Body Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Strike -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(3), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(5), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(13), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), T'Death-Dam%(21)
Level 1: Focused Fighting -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(7), DefBuff-I(13), EndRdx-I(15)
Level 2: Slash -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(3), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(5), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34), T'Death-Dam%(40)
Level 4: Agile -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(23), DefBuff-I(23)
Level 6: Swift -- Run-I(A), Run-I(39)
Level 8: Follow Up -- ToHit-I(A), ToHit-I(9), RechRdx-I(9), Acc-I(11)
Level 10: Practiced Brawler -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(11)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(33), Zephyr-ResKB(40)
Level 16: Health -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(17), Heal-I(17)
Level 18: Focus -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(19), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(25)
Level 22: Quickness -- Run-I(A), Run-I(25)
Level 24: Dodge -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(34), DefBuff-I(34)
Level 26: Eviscerate -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(27), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(37), Sciroc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), C'ngBlow-Acc/Dmg(46)
Level 28: Lucky -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(29), DefBuff-I(29)
Level 30: Focused Senses -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(31), DefBuff-I(43), EndRdx-I(48)
Level 32: Shockwave -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(33), AirB'st-Acc/Dmg(33), Posi-Dmg/Rng(40), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(43)
Level 35: Evasion -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(36), DefBuff-I(36), EndRdx-I(36)
Level 38: Elude -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(39), RechRdx-I(39)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(42), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Build%(50)
Level 44: Laser Beam Eyes -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(45), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(45), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(48), RechRdx-I(48)
Level 49: Stealth -- DefBuff-I(A), EndRdx-I(50), EndRdx-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Critical Hit
------------
Set Bonus Totals:
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Smashing)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Lethal)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Fire)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Cold)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Energy)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Negative)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Toxic)
* 7.5% DamageBuff(Psionic)
* 5% Defense(Smashing)
* 5% Defense(Lethal)
* 4.38% Defense(Fire)
* 4.38% Defense(Cold)
* 10.3% Defense(Energy)
* 10.3% Defense(Negative)
* 10% Defense(Melee)
* 13.1% Defense(Ranged)
* 8.75% Defense(AoE)
* 2% Enhancement(Knockback)
* 23% Enhancement(Accuracy)
* 2% Enhancement(Knockup)
* 13% FlySpeed
* 65.3 HP (4.87%) HitPoints
* 13% JumpHeight
* 13% JumpSpeed
* Knockback (Mag -4)
* Knockup (Mag -4)
* MezResist(Held) 5.5%
* MezResist(Immobilize) 5.5%
* 9% (0.15 End/sec) Recovery
* 10% (0.56 HP/sec) Regeneration
* 3.13% Resistance(Negative)
* 13% RunSpeed

My very first character I ever made, who is also my first 50 and by far the most played character on my account is my Energy/Energy blaster and namesake. He is the most fun character that I have played so far because I love knockback, I love that all my primary powers can do knockback. The secondary has a variety of possible paths, from blapper to utility powers focused and all work well with the primary. I, personally, have not found a more fun build and played right I have never felt more powerful than throwing a room full of enemies around at a whim.

Only problem with that is that my Scrapper who is slotted to be at the defense soft-cap against all damage types kinda gets the shaft since the entire point is not taking damage.

I am against this idea because of the possible exploitation. For example, playing a Tank; Stone armor is moderately weak at the lower levels (mix of defense and resist, slow, low protection values) while something like Willpower is pretty strong in the mid-game, I level Willpower to level 32 and suddenly I have Granite Armor. It's not that much of a problem with Blaster sets where there aren't some obvious disparities in the performance of powersets at different levels. It's a much bigger problem when you have powersets that get a sudden and large jump in power at a certain level when they were previously fairly weak.

I remember once when this was suggested before, and I designed a Brute Powerset with Moderate, High and Extreme damage melee attacks and 3 damage buff powers. It was totally insane and overpowered. And that was taking powers only at their standard teirs in their original powersets. And here it is.

Tier 1: Stone Fist (Moderate damage)
Tier 2: Stone Mallet (High damage)
Tier 3: Bonesmasher (High damage)
Tier 4: Build Up
Tier 5: Knockout Blow (Extreme damage)
Tier 6: Taunt
Tier 7: Seismic Smash (Extreme damage)
Tier 8: Soul Drain
Tier 9: Energy Transfer (Extreme damage)

Combine this with something like Fiery Embrace in the secondary, and since I can take it no matter what that's easy, and I have 3 +Dam powers on a character with 3 Extreme damage, and 2 High damage attacks. That's a little much. not even close to balanced.

I like Vigilance as it currently stands. I get good use out of it on my Empathy Defender. By slotting my heals, attacks and buffs for end discount I am able to completely skip Stamina and run Leadership toggles while hovering, attacking, healing and buffing and I'm rarely hurting for endurance. It's largely because of Vigilance when I'm on large teams and I'm getting a decent end discount at most times.

Simple fact is, that Empathy can benefit from the current vigilance greatly and I am built around the way it operates. I would definitely not appreciate having to revamp the entire build because my endurance discount was removed. However, other powersets like Force Field and Sonic specifically don't benefit much from the current Vigilance. The support powersets are too varied in their abilities to easily benefit equally from the same bonus. Sonic and Force Field don't need scaling mez protection since they get it in a power selection, Power Boost doesn't really help them out that much either, same as an endurance discount. All of those ideas would work vary well for other powersets though.

Point being, replacing Vigilance with something that still doesn't help all the powersets doesn't really address the problems with it.

Well, what if the second build is identical to the first. You crash out of Elude, switch to your other build which also has Elude, but a recharged version, and pop it again. There would be ways to exploit it and I'm pretty it's one of the reasons that the Devs made you have to go to a trainer to change builds in the first place.

Don't discount the usefulness of single target control powers in the higher levels. Being able to take out the Sappers or Operation Officers in Malta, the Illusionists in Carnies, the Stunner Freaks, the Immunes Surgeons, and Devouring Earth Lts. are just some enemies that it could benefit you greatly to start combat by removing them for a time or so that you can deal with them before they are a threat.

I actually don't mind the traveling in Indigo and Crimsons arcs except the parts before I can call them. I believe that it simply makes sense from the story perspective to make the hero run around. Heroes are reactive for the most part and you have to go where the threat is. Malta isn't going to but all their bases and plans in Peregrine Island and so you have to go where they are located. Some don't like that explanation, but I think it's at least part of the reason for why those arcs were written that way. Some people think it's *only* designed to be a time sink, but I like to think that some arcs are intended to give you the idea that there is a far reaching conspiracy stretching throughout the city. Many Nemesis arcs are also all over the place for similar reasons.

Just my 2 cents, but I like the arcs that make you travel to all the different zones and often don't even use my teleport shortcuts when doing them solo.

I also seem to remember a Dev post from a while back saying that it was a mistake to assume that just because new content was being worked on by people that bug fixes weren't being done, or even that the people working on new content could do bug fixes. There are different groups within the studio working on different things and there are always bug fixes and bug hunts going on even if the big red names aren't the ones doing it.

Bug fixes are grand, but it isn't either/or between new content and bug fixes.

I agree that respecs could (conceptually) be made much easier and more intuitive. If I could just go in and change a power out for a different one, or juggle slots around it would make the process much simpler and easier.

That being said there are some few things to consider. First is Mid's, which while not official and can't be an oficial fix for the issue does help smooth things out. Mid's has an in-game respec helper that stays on top of your window to show you how you leveled up that build. But again, not a great solution, but it is a nice work around.

Second, I'm not sure how easy it would be mechanically to design a system such as that. Right now it seems like they basically just hit the reset button on your character and let you go at it. It's not as simple as that, obviously, since you don't alternate power and slots. I don't think that the current system is bad enough to require a lot of time be spent on an overhaul when careful planning can get around most of the difficulties. I would dearly love a revamp, believe me, but not more than I want other things.

Most fun that I have had with a character is with my main, Energy/Energy Blaster. Knockback is just tons of fun and extremely useful and powerful when used correctly. Not to mention Power Thrust at level 50 against a level 1 Hellion sending him 100+ yards through the air and clearly three-story buildings from the ground is really funny.

Dark Melee/Willpower or Regeneration Scrapper or Tanker - Dark Melee has Dark Consumption, which is a PBAoE damage power that restores endurance and Willpower/Regen has Quick Recovery which combined with Fitness Stamina is a lot of recovery.

That's the best that I can think of off the top of my head. You could go with Dark Melee/Fiery Armor Scrapper/Tank for two PBAoE endurance recovery powers. Energy Drain/Power Sink alone are amazing endurance recovery powers since they are auto-hit. Tanks and Scrappers can get Conserver Power as an APP power. There are a lot of options, really.

He gets to 100% Smashing/Lethal resistance when he pops Unstoppable. If your team is heavy on those damage types with no -regen available, you'll have a very very hard time taking him down.

Welcome to the game!

Well, there are a couple of options that can meet those criteria that I can think of off the top of my head.

Archery/Mental Blaster - Total of 5 AoEs available to you, none of which are the sort of level 32 nukes that drain your endurance, fairly survivable solo when damage mitigation tools (stun, fear, Drain Psyche) are used properly, great on teams. Downside is that most things that do resist your damage type, resist it fairly strongly.

Fire/Mental Blaster - 5 AoEs not counting the nuke, more upfront damage than Archery, good single target damage as well, less mitigation tools for more damage. Downside is that Fire blast has no damage mitigation powers.

Fire/Fire - Pure damage machine, 7 AoEs available not counting nuke including 2 DoT auras, crazy amounts of damage very fast. Downside, very little mitigation outside of killing enemies before they kill you, can be hard to solo.

Spines/Dark Scrapper - 4 AoEs including 2 DoT auras, very survivable with lots of tools, pretty good damage. Downside, very end heavy Secondary, very steep endurance healing power.

Spines/Fire Scrapper - Same as above with more damage and less survivability, /Fire has an endurance recovery power which can be helpful and a self heal. Downside, /Fire is generally less survivable than other secondaries.

Those what come to mind off the top of my head. As to concept and origin, you can make any powersets compatible with any origin with the right backstory. Example, Archery/Mental Mutant: elevated mental capacities allow for slightly higher reflexes and accuracy (taken advantage of using the bow) and psychic powers to debilitate foe's minds.

Interesting logic there. If they vehemently disagree then you have a great idea, if they agree then you have a great idea. I like this, nothing anybody says can ever be stupid or worthless.

Well, maybe you had bad luck, they ducked at the wrong time, turned around because someone said something, maybe you glanced off a force field that they had on, maybe they tripped, maybe you tripped, maybe you remembered that you had to pick up your spare suit from the dry cleaners before they closed or all the other villains were going to laugh at your shabby costume at the annual Smash n' Grab ball.

There are a lot of ways to explain why there is always a 5% miss chance, but they really all boil down to luck. The best marksman in the world can still miss thanks to random chance and bad luck. It won't happen often, but it still can.

It's not a mob cheating version, it's more like a cage power that they inflict on themselves. Cage powers are handled differently than phase powers with the new phase-attacking rules.

Announcing a planned and much requested feature (Power Proliferation) is a far different thing than announcing that they are looking at certain powers in certain ways because they may or may not be performing outside of what the developers intend based on some impossible to adequately define "vision". What would the response have been if months ago when they started looking at fixing the problem of pets inheriting recharge, that they had announced it?

First, players would suddenly be made aware of the fact that this happened of which many of us were totally unaware (me, for example). Second, there would been exactly the same outcry of DOOM against any sort of change that there is right now, don't think that would change. Third, the Developers would have committed themselves to doing something about the situation rather than at some point down the line simply saying, "turns out there aren't any good solutions right now." That would be the worst scenario for a great deal of reasons but mainly because then players would feel secure in the existence of what the Devs have declared to be unintentional behavior. If then months later another problem comes along, and this problem wasn't immediately apparent as being related to the first, but that can also benefit from one of the "not worth it" fixes to the old problem, the players are going to freak even more. They'll claim that the Devs promised them that their exploit would remain unchanged and that they were lied to and deliberately mislead despite the Devs trying for honest disclosure.

The simple fact is that in such a world as MMOs everything is very mutable. The Developers cannot nail their foot to the floor and dedicate themselves to making a change or never making a change. Even if what you are asking for wouldn't do that de jure, it certainly would de facto. It would simply exacerbate the feelings of entitlement that the players have, that they should, for some reason that I cannot fathom, be allowed full disclosure of all potential changes that developers look at. Not only does this waste development time on unnecessary communications it sets a standard that the Developers are beholden to given courses of action.

In short (way too late), there are more guaranteed problems with this idea than there are positive possibilities.

ARISE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, me and my two friends play a trio of toons together all the time and we try to all have the same missions/arcs from the same contact if possible. Well, just last night we were doing the "World Wide Red" arc from Crimson. Out of a desire to not ruin the story for anyone: *SPOILER ALERT!!* . Anyways, we all completed the "Stop all Wildflower Agents" mission and, of course, simul-competed it. Now, we've been playing for a while and so we knew that there was going to be a very angry, very large Kronos Class Titan looking to turn us into some form of Hero puree.

Well, things were working out at first, announced in badge channel and broadcast for help with the monstrosity when, to our only slight surprise, a second Kronos Class Titan showed up also desiring to do us bodily harm.

All in all, it didn't go too badly once we had enough people. I unfortunately didn't have the presence of mind at the time to grab more screenshots of the exploits. However, I did find two things quite curious. First, since we completed the mission 3 times simultaneously, shouldn't we have had three Kronos Titans? It makes me wonder if the third one got lost on the way and started ravaging Talos Island or Atlas Park in a vain search for its intended targets. If anyone knows, is there a limiter to the number of Kronos Titans (or GMs in general) that can be spawned in a zone? Secondly, I think they need *SPOILER ALERT* (this is a different arc that I'm spoiling, so be forewarned) more brains in the Kronos Titan than they do, because as soon as I was no longer in melee with the beasts they didn't pursue me and they stopped using Footstomp, leaving the area around them free game. Also, they stopped using missiles because I gather the AI has a minimum range at which it uses them. So, the end result was each of them occasionally shooting a plasma blast at me, and that was it. I was kinda disappointed, I was looking forward to seeing how I fared against three (if the third had spawned) GMs at full throttle.

Anyway, just felt like sharing. Have a nice day.