UberGuy

Interesting. I got something similar to this last week, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. Mine was definitely installed by an Adobe scripting attack, and it did redirect my google searches.

In my case, I was able to identify three separate rundll processes that were being installed as autorun registry entries. They were doing something pretty fancy whereby, once started, they appeared to inject themselves as part of every running process on the PC. They would then proceed to periodically update the registry with their autorun entries from every running process. I had trouble killing the processes from either Task Manager or SysInternals' Process Explorer, but for some reason I was able to kill them the "taskkill /F" command. Killing the trojan processes would cause every running process to eventually crash (forcing me to reboot), as losing the connection to the trojan after whatever injection they were performing apparently made the processes very unhappy.

Ultimately I was able to remove the files by using a SysInternals tool "movefiles", which you can use to tell Windows to delete files during startup. I'm looking back in my command-line history, and I had these bogus files.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.dll
C:\DOCUME~1\<LoggedInUser>\ntload.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\config\SYSTEM~1\ntload.dll

I set these for delete on boot, then killed the running trojan processes. I may not have had to do this last kill, but the list of files to remove on boot is stored in the Windows registry, and I wanted to make sure that the trojans would not wipe references to themselves from the list.

Once I did these steps, my problem was solved.

If you do not have "rundll" images in your task list containing the DLL names listed above, you probably have a different invader, and my info above may not be of any help. Unfortunately, the Task Manager does not show enough of the command-line to know. I would say look and see if you have three or more rundll's in your "Image Name" column in the "Processes" tab of Task Manager. If you do, you might have the same problem as I did. Hijack This should be able to show enough of the command line to make it clear(er).

We know some sets do better than others. So I took a setup that's known to be pretty capable, and is also heavily IOd at level 50, and I upped the stakes.

Dark/Psi Defender
+2/x4/Bosses/NoAVs

First, I felt I really had to clear the map. Such a small, narrow map with so many patrols set to x4 is just asking for something to come join the fun when you are trying to fight the main boss. As it was, even just trying to clear the patrols I still ended up in a fight with 3 spawns at once, each of which contained what appeared to be a Soldiers/Empathy LT and a boss with dual pistols. That fight was the hardest on my endurance bar, and at one point, Assault detoggled when Hasten expired.

Next, I went looking for mister catburglar. He was easy to find on a character with Tactics. When I switched on Tactics to keep him in sight I turned off Assault to keep my end expenditure the same.

I found him next to what appeared to be a 2nd spawn containing a boss and LT. Either that or the AE decided to make his a really nasty hard spawn. I managed to pull the boss, LT and two minions away, which is why I think they were actually separate. I defeated those down the street a bit and came back for the EB.

I dropped a Dark Servant, dropped Darkest Night on the EB, feared the rest, killed the empathy LT, and started in on the EB. He never hit me once.

Here are a few images.

Here he is almost dead.
Here I have just defeated him.
Here I realized I wasn't showing my difficulty settings. (I've also got a nice cascade defense failure going on.)

You can see this character has an almost ridiculous assortment of extra toys beyond passives and IOs at my disposal, none of which I used. None of a full tray of 20 tier 3 inspirations. No accolade clicks. No Shivans or WB nukes. I break those toys out when I want to solo an AV.

(By the way, if you think this Defender and the level 19 have awfully similar appearances... I made the Rad/Psi first and then decided I wanted a Dark/Psi instead, but I kept the original too.)

Was this slow compared to some other ATs out there? Well, honestly, it depends. I have some melee characters who would have had a horrid time with the multiple patrols piling in on them like that, plus the cascading defense failures. All my "slow" time was spend in clearing the map, not so much the EB itself.

Edit: Oh, by the way. I soloed this character to 45 before we had IOs.

Level 19 Rad/Psi Defender who hasn't trained up from level 18. No set bonuses. No Stamina (obviously). Unimpressive overall slotting.

He was an EB for me set to +0/x1/Bosses/No AVs.

Result? Victory (← That's a link to the image)

Here's my slotting.

I didn't know the guy would be invisible, so I stumbled across him and he basically one-shotted me. His focus deals 412 points of damage, and I have 403 HP. On my next pass, now though I was ready for his stealth, he still killed me again with Focus. 3rd try, I took him down.

I have vet attacks. I didn't use them. Yes, I used my inspiration tray. I used a total of four lucks (2 at a time), 4 reds (two at a time) and one blue. I'm level 19. I would have had to use inspirations on anything I've ever played taking on a foe like that at that level. I would have needed a different mix depending on AT, and I quite likely would have needed fewer on something like a Brute or Scrapper.

Yes, I know, Rad has debuffs and self buffs. The debuffs did help, but because I didn't have the sense to use yellow inspirations, any time he re-hid from me my toggles dropped. AccMet was no help to me because he killed the 1st time before I ever got to attack him with it running, and it never recharged before I defeated him.

I didn't really have a problem defeating him except for Focus, which I did find frustrating. Him having Focus wasn't a problem with my damage output.

At higher levels the EB will have more powers. So would my character, and much better slotting.

And what powers from Ninjitsu does he have?

This is known, and "mostly intended".

Originally, "damage typed" and positional defense bonuses were separate and distinct. This led to a great deal of dispersal of the bonuses for damage types among the various IO sets, and made it very hard to come up with meaningful bonus stacking across damage types.

This was changed so that the "main" typed bonuses always appeared in pairs (lethal+smashing, fire+cold, energy+negative). Psi defense has no partner, and there is no such thing as toxic typed defense.

At the same time, the following match-ups were added.

• Wherever a set granted a positional defense bonus it now also added a 1/2-sized damage typed defense bonus pair.
• Wherever a set granted a damage typed defense bonus it now also added a 1/2 sized positional defense bonus pair.

Those pair-ups look like this.

• Melee <-> Lethal+Smashing
• Ranged <-> Energy+Negative
• AoE <-> Fire+Cold

What you're seeing is that Aegis originally had both Fire or Cold and AoE defense. When the pairings described above came through, those ended up with self-reinforcing bonuses. The same thing happened in several other sets (as others have noted).

It's a song from a Discovery Channel advertisement.

It's being used as a soundtrack and screenplay choreography for movies of just about every video game you can think of. It... works really well.

There's explicitly no way to turn on two powers with one keystroke.

However, you can try to bind one power execution with pressing a key and another with releasing it. I don't find it works that reliably, because I click the key too fast and the server ends up only doing one of the things I wanted. Occasionally lag is also an issue. I swear that keystrokes get delivered out of order when you're suffering bad latency spikes.

Wow, what the heck.

No.

Feel free to retire your own 50s.

There are a great many things, but I think, for me, it comes down to two.

I really feel like my characters are uniquely mine. The combination of free-form backstory text, sooo many appearance combinations and the great variety in possible builds even within the same AT make it possible to feel they really are your creations. That sense of attachment leads to investment, both in terms of time and emotional attachment.

Most fundamentally for me, though, I love the combat engine. Yes, the AI is dumb. I really don't care. What matters is that combat is sufficiently random. I have to do things to react to the fact that no combat plays out exactly as planned or exactly like the last one. At the same time, though, I don't feel as though I'm completely at the mercy of the RNG. It's just random enough that my actions control the majority of my destiny, but I can't be certain they'll do exactly what I intended.

Finally, related to the above, the fights feel epic. Taking on lots of foes gives me great joy. Even if they could all be outflanked by a sack of potatoes, it still feels fun.

The answer isn't simple, unless you force it to be. Is "increased metabolism" only going to be manifest as +Regen percentages, or is it best expressed in HP/second? Can outright heals be considered? Does it have to be "on" at its max value all the time?

We should point out that +Regen is one of the smallest returns on investment in terms of how to make either Regen or WP characters tougher. You may not care about that if your goal is primarily concept driven. However, because both sets already regain HP so fast, +Regen bonuses add less additional benefit compared to the existing capabilities than, say, +Defense.

If your concept is that the character just has mad regenerative abilities that don't really spike or waver (but maybe do rise in combat), then WP is probably the better fit. If your concept is that they have somewhat mad regen that they can spike crazy higher on demand, then Regen sounds better.