Samuel_Tow

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I'd say it's more that Tyrant honestly thinks the world is better off under his boot, while Recluse is just a power-hungry, merciless SOB who doesn't care about people at all.

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I'd say both can work in a fictional context, but Recluse's "survival of the fittest" is... Well, a whole lot more boring. Everything is dirty, everything is trashed, everyone is a jerk, everything is corrupt and everything you do is evil. Snore! I'd like to see some variety, some order amid the chaos, some islands cleaner than others, some places that look like they could almost be good. No such luck. Even recluse's own residence is a dump, and even his own administration is a mess. I'm with Venture on this one - how the hell does a man who runs a country like he's running tribe manage to have a functioning organization on top of it?

I like how Paragon City has its shiny, gleaming towers in clean, beautiful neighbourhoods next to broken-down slums packed full of abandoned warehouses and run-down buildings, next to war-torn areas strewn with debris, monsters and dangers. There's variety there. The isles are just one big dump broken up into seven islands. I'm hoping Praetoria will retain the variety of City of Heroes by offering both run-down and orderly locations, even if this order is imposed by force. It'll be more interesting than another brown slum built over black soil and another grey town next to a landfill.

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I know a number of other hold/stun/fear type powers can stack the mag of mez, so it's sort of a pity that that isn't the case here, it's also why I'm not a fan of the power itself, anything that will be mezzed by it won't live long enough to be a problem, and anything I do need to mez is going to resist it anyway.

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Oppressive Gloom would be stupid overpowered if it could stack magnitudes, as it would stun a boss in four seconds and keep him permastunned, because it can triple-stack itself before even the first stun takes effect. It is kind of a bummer that it can't stun lieutenants, but at base accuracy (as opposed to 0.8, like most control) and almost no cost, it is a SERIOUS source of mitigation that would be... Well, a little out of place on a Scrapper.

Beyond that, though, understood. No slotting beyond a simple accuracy. No need for endurance reducers on an 0.08 eps power, no need for stun duration on a power that stuns for three times as long as it ticks and definitely no need for recharge on a power that recharges faster than I can comprehend it's down. No need for extra accuracy, either, as what I fight is even cons and plus one. Leaving it at that. I have a bunch of other things to slot, anyway

Short question: is there any point and what do they do when slotted?

I did a bit of digging thought Red Tomax's City of Data, but I'm still not sure how this power works, exactly. What seems to happen is that it ticks once every two seconds and, if it hits, damages me slightly and imposes a 7-second stun on the target. What, then, would be the point of stun DURATION enhancements? I mean the power already ticks three times as fast as the effect expires anyway, and I have it slotted for accuracy. What would be the point?

Or does it work differently? Do stun enhancements do something else, like up magnitude or something? I seriously doubt that, but it's my first time using the power, so who knows.

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Siphon Life has a base damage scale of 2.058. Smite has a base damage scale of 1.386. Siphon Life does 48.48% more damage than Smite does. However (and a big however), Siphon Life animates in 2.112 seconds, and Smite animates in 1.188 seconds. Siphon Life takes 77.77% longer to animate, demonstrating that it's actually worse for dealing damage over the long run.

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Damage over the long run wasn't really what I was interested in, however, as that's very hard to "see." Statistically speaking, and maybe if I'd specifically looked for it I would have seen it, Smite might be better. After all, people were making "buzzsaw" builds with nothing but Smite and Shadow Punch. DPS isn't something that makes me go "WOW!" though. Flicking my wrist and seeing a full-health enemy go down to a sliver of health with a power I'd regarded as crappy, however, leaves a lasting impression.

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Either way, the I13 improvements definitely made DM/* a much more entertaining set to play. Siphon Life is actually useful, and you don't have to wait 10 seconds for Midnight Grasp to actually kill something. The extension of melee range hasn't really changed Shadow Maul much for me, but that's mainly because I was already getting 5 targets every time I used it.

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The changes have helped SO MUCH, I will agree. I'm not a fan of DPS, as even if a set is effective overall, it's boring to watch. And that's exactly what Dark Melee used to be - an effective set that was, sadly, very boring to sit and pound on things with. Now, a flick of the wrist, a wave of the hand, a swing of the arm and STUFF DROPS DEAD! What more could a man ask for?

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Smite is weak? Wha...?

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It's not so much weak, as it's small attack. Moderate damage, if I remember correctly. It's fast-recharging, of course, which makes up for it, but what I noticed the most was how much harder the set hit up-front, at which Smite isn't actually that good. Syphon Life is, off memory, around 50% stronger.

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I've kind of thought it might be nice to be able to sidekick one more person, however what might be more feasable is to *average* three characters levels - exemplaring down to the middle for the highest, and up for the lowers.

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I've always wanted for a high-level character to sidekick AT LEAST two lower-level characters. Practically, this is because I've been in SK hell so, so many times when I'm sidekicking a friend of mine and then another friend logs on. Oh, my... We're all different levels, so a relogging shuffle starts as we try to find a workable combo, eventually depriving at least one person of the character he wants to play at the moment, or alternatively putting ourselves through the horrible missions in the Architect. If I get killed by vegetables one more time I'm going to punch somebody!

I also like as a conceptual thing. Yes, a hero with a sidekick is... Well, pretty much Batman and Robin, but there are other equally good applications of this. I remember someone once complaining about Ninja and how weak they were in the low levels, saying how you only have three squishy Genin and a Jounin to pick up the slack, which immediately put a smile on my face as I remembered the beginning arcs of Naruto

The point, though, is that a single mentor taking care of two or three newbies is actually a pretty common theme, at least to my experience, and is actually pretty interesting practically. I've often found that, with a very low-level sidekick, I end up having to essentially play for two, which can really weigh on some of my weaker characters. With three weak sidekicks boosting your spawns, that can become catastrophic, requiring a truly gifted mentor to pull off. Which is GOOD! All too often a mentor/sidekick duet will feel like a couple of peers linked only by a distance tether. I prefer when the mentor is TANGIBLY protecting and aiding the sidekick, which more sidekicks would really help facilitate.

In short, more sidekicks, please!

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Pigeonholing a powerset to an Origin by uncreative minds have given rise (in the past) to arguments how my Magic-Origin MasterMind could not possibly have Robotic Henchmen unless he somehow used dark magics to call forth said Robotic henchmen. When in my worldview he is actually just a very techsavvy magic being who uses his Dark magics to aid his homebuilt robotic army to effect world domination.

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On this note, I was actually considering making a Magic Robotics Masterming with a very simple explanation. She can create and control various kinds of golems and elementals, but it's all hard work. Controlling robots who can move themselves and only need to be directed is much, much less work as they only need to be controlled logically, not be physically moved limb by limb. So, robots for the most part, but powered by magic, hence magic.

I agree with invisible face and plead no contest. Make it so!

I can't really agree with invisible other body parts, but I CAN make a compromise I've always wanted to see: effects body parts. So, you don't have a physical 3D arm, but you have glowing effect in its place. Anyone who has ever played a Dark/Dark Scrapper will know how Cloak of Shadows' invisibility plus Soul Drain's glow makes you into this walking puff of yellow light. So why not replace body parts, or indeed entire body sections, with effects like these? I've been asking for glowing energy wings since wings were confirmed as being introduced into the game, and I STILL hope we see them at some point.

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Grandville would be spotless, with neat rows of identical soulless buildings where citizens dressed neatly in what might as well be uniforms proceed orderly to their mandated occupations, then go home and watch approved entcom before going to bed for the prescribed amount of sleep before getting up to do it all over again.

Pretty much a description of the most terrifying stronghold of evil I've seen in any MMO: Sanctus Seru back in EverQuest's Luclin expansion. The place made you feel like you'd get guardkilled if you stepped on the grass.
"Welcome to Sanctus, such a perfect town...."

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That's actually what I'm hoping going Rogue will be like. Much as the rest of the Praetorians may be [censored], Tyrant seems like a savvy leader with an deathchoke grip on his population and a keen understanding of order and obedience. "This looks like a perfect place." "Looks can be deceiving." I'm not really a fan of the barbarian wilderness that is the Rogue Isles and I really hope the expansion will give us a world where being a villain is actually more meaningful than being a bully and stomping over a broken world.

And even so, I'd STILL like to see a Rogue Isles island that was NOT a pig sty slum.

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I find Titans much more fun to fight now. Wasn't much of a challenge beating on a heavily armed robot flailing clumsily with its fists.

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No, but it was fun not being two-shotted and actually winning.

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Yeah well, you're soloing Malta on a Blaster, what do you expect?

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That it's be more like soloing Malta with a Scrapper? Or a Brute, or a Mastermind, or a Stalker or... Pretty much anything else. Blasters don't really have any intrinsic team powers, after all. Plus, they solo just about everything else just fine.

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I've been around the block, and Lighthouse was worse at his job than many of the volunteer moderators that other websites have. I think the only one that was worse in terms of ego, myopia and pride was probably Sidnacious over at the CTRL-ALT-DEL forums, and the only reason I say that is because Sidnacious was very clearly, literally, without hyperbole, an idiot, as in "Startlingly unintelligent".

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Lighthouse also had the burden of enforcing rules on a forum that wasn't used to respecting them. That's why Friggin Tazer got banned almost immediately after Lighthouse came on board. He wasn't ALL bad, but his violent disregard for getting moderated, and subsequently his sock puppet account, simply crossed the line. He wasn't alone. Many people were outraged that their threads were locked and deleted all of a sudden. I liked Cuppa as much as anybody, but the fact remains that a thread lock or deletion under her keep were exceedingly rare, almost to the point of being an absolute last resort. I can't say it had a very positive effect on the community. I mean sure, people LOVED her, but the place was a lot less friendly from person to person. Not that it's more friendly now, but at least nasty people get modded pretty fast. That's one thing I like about Mod8 - he takes his job seriously and hits these threads hard and fast.

Personally, I was a fan of SuperMod, as well. I never understood why people were so pissed off about him. I wish they'd kept him around longer, I liked his post-lock quips and his not showing up on the Community Digest was a good idea. A thread is usually locked for a reason. Bringing more attention to it runs counter to that. Then again, after Ex Libris filled up the entirety of the the Community Digest with nothing but posts on the various "councils" and uninteresting deep community bonding nonsense, I simply stopped reading that entirely. Haven't, in fact, read it for years. Plus, I'm significantly more disappointed in how she handled the /jranger and Suggestions thing. We asked for more moderation IN TIME to prevent problems from spiralling out of control. Instead, we got bans, deleted threads and a forum move so they don't HAVE to moderate as much. Suggestions is now no more friendly than it ever was, because more moderation didn't happen. Swing and miss.

By far the most, however, I miss the old people because they were cool to talk to and discuss things with, even if we disagreed radially. I don't want to insult anybody, but the community doesn't seem nearly as friendly these days, though it's getting there. I guess I just have to hope people will calm down a bit.

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There are some photos here.
http://www.wwe.com/superstars/raw/ha.../newrawphotos/
None of them are of the pic Torak used for his avatar, but that's most definately the guy in question.

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I'm afraid I have to disagree. I remember his avatar quite vividly, and I cannot say that this guy is the one in Torak's avatar at all. He has the beard, yes, though not really the hair, however his face is completely different from what I remember. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm more sure about this than I am when I state things as facts most of the time.

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I have never been under the influence. Ever.

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Was about to say the same. I've also managed to not post while angry for a few years, now.

I see you haven't quite managed to not post while dead, though you've done pretty well with it

And you chastise me when I reply with /ultimus...

I thought I was going to be so cool with this, but you guys have so much more interesting stories...

I had a friend in school, and she had a parrot in her house out of town. That parrot was apparently kept in the kitchen, and it had learned to imitate the sink pretty much perfectly. "Everything, including the kitchen sink."

I hadn't played Dark Melee in a long time. Not since I5 or thereabout. Still, I remembered it pretty vividly, remembered how weak it was and how much I struggled for damage. Oh, sure, the typically resistant enemies like Freakshow Tanks melted in the face of unresisted dark damage, but by and large the set was weak. Shadow Maul was good, but even Midnight Grasp wasn't all that impressive (that I could notice), Dark Punch and Smite were good but weak, and Syphon Life was a pathetic waste of endurance which neither healed me well nor did much of any damage. On the off chance I could get a good amount of enemies in range of Soul Drain, it was all good, but the cases where this was possible were exceedingly rare.

Cue four years later. I wanted to play my Dark/Dark Scrapper before I think I12, but all the Dark Melee changes made me wait, and then subsequently forget all about it. But I picked him back up yesterday and I was blown away. I mean literally. It felt like a great wind was blowing out of my screen like I was staring into a jet engine. I expected the set to be better, but the transformation was just... AMAZING!

Well, Smite and Dark Punch are still weak, but that's their goal in life, so it's understandable. But Shadow Maul is... A LOT better. Going from 5 to 7 feet cone length means that I'm routinely catching two-three people with it without even looking. Before I couldn't only ever catch two, and even then if one was giving the other a soft hug on the back. Now when I start swinging them fists, it's like "Woah!" Syphon Life also blew me away. I mean seriously. I'd switched this power's slotting from heal to damage some time before, desperately grasping for another damaging attack, and it had fallen flat. No longer so, as Syphon Life now deals almost as much damage as Shadow Maul AND for a fraction of the animation time. It still doesn't heal much, but eh. That's what Dark Regeneration is for.

I was really amazed at Midnight Grasp, however. No longer the asthmatic dotdotdot that never seemed to do anything, a grasp hurts SERIOUSLY BAD. Which is good. In fact, where before I had to essentially pummel everything to death with hit after hit after hit, now I can Grasp -> Syphon -> PunchPunchPunch and actually take a fairly seizable chunk out of bosses just from that. Yikes! Soul Drain also warms my heart. Gone are the days when I wouldn't use it time after time after time because I could catch "barely" three people with it. These days, I use it all the time, even on a single enemy, because it still gives a very serious buff. In fact, I don't sweat not hitting 15 people. The power is good in most situations. And with that serious damage boost that lasts, all the other attacks have gone up in damage, as well.

Touch of Fear and Dark Consumption haven't changed, but they were good enough even before.

I'm strikingly amazed at what has become of Dark Melee now. I'm going to have so much fun with this!

Knight, that's pretty much my impression of that Beta, of playing several Shield users and of pouring over the numbers. Even with the help of all the additions (and they were not insignificant), the set is still far on the low end, I suppose to balance its "team utility."

I kept saying it back then and kept being handwaved, and yet we're seeing it - Grant Cover is not an appropriate power for a Scrapper. Scrappers are going to skip it. Even if a few people specifically made Shield Scrapper to play melee Defenders, most people who picked Scrappers because they wanted to play Scrappers are either going to skip Grant Cover or leave it off for as late as possible.

To me, the whole thing feels like a set designed and implemented for Tankers, and then copied over with no regard that things which are not Tankers don't play like Tankers and that players who didn't pick Tankers might not want the same things. It's not an unworkable set, but then I got an Energy Aura Brute to 50, so my perception is coloured. I do agree that the power should "grant cover" to the user, as well, even if it's not on the same order of magnitude as the cover granted to team-mates.

See, this is the reason I'm against origin powersets. I looked at your ideas for the specific origins and immediately realised that they're pretty much miles apart from my own vision of what these origins represent.

Especially science. Your vision of it is a scientist, it seems, which aside from being at odds with the in-game definition of the origin, is actually nothing of the sort like what my own Science characters actually are. I have three, off the top of my head. One has been very heavily genetically modified and turned into the veritable super-soldier, one was born from a mother heavily mutated off Superadine (a Troll, to be clear) and one was disfigured into a fighting monster. That all three ended up fighting with swords is just a coincidence. Oh, and a soul inhabiting an artificially grown body (who also fights with swords, because I like them). Neither of them are scientists or would have much use of chemicals and concoctions.

Then there is technology. My actual "scientist" characters are all Technology, indulging in science to build and develop their suits of power armour, then using those to fight. It's actually been very disturbing to be that I had to implant 15 cyberhearts in my power armour scientist, and I'm glad I could move away from those and into the more generic Common Inventions. I do have a couple of robots and cyborgs, yes, but then I also have a man whose body is made up entirely of nanomachines, and I'm pretty close to having one who is never actually THERE, but instead uses a "hard light" hologram to project his presence while he remains safe in his hidden lab.

I'm not saying yours are inappropriate. Hell, they might actually fit some of my characters. But what origins cover is far, far, FAR too wide and loosely-defined to be constrained to one man's idea of what these origins should look and act like. By far the worst offender in this regard is Natural. Do we give Naturals a set that's about mental discipline, hard work, martial arts and street smarts? Or do we give them flight, laser beam eyes, super strength and super knitting? After all, Manticore may be Natural, but so is Sunstorm.

I don't think you can give one definition of what an origin should look and act like because there IS no one, single, universally-accepted definition. In fact, ideas of what they should represent are as varied as the people who hold them are many, and I have not seen any preference for one specific concept, or any dislike for one. That's why I've always been for generic powersets - they CAN fit everyone's idea.

Biggest problem is that... Well, what is an AR Blaster resistant to? Bullets? How would that work? Or an Archery Blaster. What would he be resistant to? And before you say "their secondary," what if their secondary is Devices? And Blasters are just one of the ATs with more obvious elements as powersets. Scrappers, for instance, get primarily weapon sets, and Controllers get non-element-specific sets like Illusion Control, Plant Control and and so on. And it's even worse when a set is of one "apparent" element but is, in terms of in-game systems, of an entirely different one. For instance, Radiation Blast is... Well, radiation. Except it isn't. It's typed energy, the same as Energy Blast. You'd think Earth Control would be... Well, earth. Except it's not. It's primarily smashing, when it does damage at all.

Then there's the other problem. Say you're a Fire/Energy Blaster. What are you resistant to? Fire or energy? Or maybe fire AND energy? What about the poor soul who picked Fire/Fire, then? How come he's only resistant to fire?

And then there's the question of exactly what each element should be resistant to. Would fire really be weak to ice? After all, when you're cold, you want to warm up, and what better to warm you up than fire? So you'd think fire would be EXTRA resistant to ice. But then wouldn't ice be resistant to fire, too? When you're too hot, you cool down, you'd think ice would have extra resistance to fire. But why not have it the other way around? Fire melts ice, so ice is vulnerable, and ice puts out fire, so fire is vulnerable. There really is no clear way to say. And that's with at least semi-realistic scenarios. Once you get into energy vs. negative energy or psi vs... Well, you get the idea.

It's like an old discussion that happened on the matter years ago, when someone suggested technologists should be weak to magic and magicians should be weak to technology, with the explanation that these effects were "unfamiliar" to them. Except, depending on the fiction you read and watch, there are many instances of magic being almost completely superior to technology and only susceptible to other magic. And then, like in Arcanum, technology is actually actively strong against magic because it dulls its effects, and an electrically-charged armour was all but complete protection against magic. Then there are people like Mage Hunter Zakhura, who's a magical character specifically specialized at killing other magic users. Hence, the "Mage Killer."

Of course, there is also the question of balance. In a perfect world, one disadvantage would suck as much as another. In our world, however, having a weakness to Ice is barely more than a non-issue, whereas having a weakness to, say, energy is pretty much crippling. Ice is almost non-existent in this game as a damage type. It's used, yes, but so infrequently as to be laughable, whereas things like fire, energy and, of course, smashing and lethal are practically everywhere.

Any system of advantages and disadvantages (which I'm not a fan of to begin with) needs to be balanced against what effect it would have in the actual game world, not just balancing effects against each other. And as the world isn't exactly static, I don't see this as a very strong form of balance.

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"very, very little resists psi damage with the exception of robots"

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Actually, Psi is very much resisted in the game. It's actually one of the most resisted damage types if memory serves, enemies that resist Psi really resist Psi.

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Psi isn't so much resisted OFTEN as it's resisted HARD, and things that resist it really, really suck. It's still not the same level as, say, Lethal, but it's pretty gimepd in certain situations, as noted before.

I have to make a note about Devices, however. Even though I freely admit it's better for soloing than it is for teaming, thanks to teams plain not waiting around for you to use your best powers, that doesn't actually make it a GOOD set. Yes, if used correctly and with the allowance of a LOT of extra time spent fiddling about, it's well workable, but it comes short in many, many situations, especially those that require high, concentrated damage. You can kind of fudge it, yes, but it still takes a lot more time to do than it should.

What's more, it's chock full of annoyingly weak powers. Cloaking Devices is... Kind of cool, I guess, but it would be a lot better if it weren't just negligibly better than Stealth from Concealment, and Smoke Grenade is almost completely worthless. Its to-hit debuff is meaningless and its primary use - a perception debuff - isn't worth the text it's written in. To a certain extent, Cloaking Device and Smoke Grenade allow you to become completely invisible so you could toe bomb without having to delve into a pool, but come on now! That's something which is easily replicable through Stealth and Super Speed, or Stealth and a simple stealth Invention thingy.

I will also agree with the others - do not underestimate slow. Just shiver on its own can almost bottom out enemy speed, which is BETTER than a patch immobilize. Shiver's massive, massive cone also covers a much larger area. Unfortunately, my one Ice/Ice Blaster is only level 33 or so, so I can't comment on the full usefulness of the set.

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I'd be more in favor of seeing Ignite changed. Ignite being made into a short range, 20-40ft, single target DoT would be very favorable to me personally.
Perhaps now that it's recharge has been corrected and it can't be spammed as it could be, some others might come around to this.
I've always thought it would be cool to simply light up a single target, throw on the melt armor like animation on them, and let them burn for a good bit. Take away the complication of the power and just let us use it as a nice single target, fire damaging attack.
If I was able to drag and drop down a wall of fire, or actually block most doorways it'd be different, but a 4 foot radius with a 3s animation, pfft...

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See, that's a good idea. This I like. As a general thing, I've never really been able to Ignite more than one person with it consistently, even with the help of a Controller to keep enemies pinned down. The radius on the power is just so small that enemies have to be standing literally next to each other for it to clip them, and while that's achievable, to my experience it is highly uncommon. And, realistically speaking, even IF a big bunch of enemies were somehow immobilized next to each other, I'd still rather do Full Auto + Flamethrower because those would STILL catch more people. Ignite, in my experience at least, has only ever been good for two things - hurting tough enemies and hurting Lethal-resistant enemies.

For this reason, I'd actually really like to see it turned into a souped-up version of Incinerate. Granted, at its current damage level of around 5.0 scale (by my calculations), it would be hideously overpowered, so it might need to be toned down or spaced out, but honestly, I would really love it if this power were made into a single-target heavy-hitter. Then I guess we could leave Buckshot alone, even if I don't like how it doesn't behave anything like a shotgun shell.

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Yeah, a lot of the people we used to hang with have left over the years. A lot have also been banned. I wonder, though, if anyone ever misses me

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We can't miss you if you won't go away

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Well, I have. For... A couple of days every few months...

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I have never seen it work Samuel. I think it is actually intended not to work to prevent speed ITFs by exemping down 4 50s pre missions and then having them unexmp during the missions.

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That's exactly how people used to fudge the CoV respec trial back in the day. So I guess they HAVE changed it to base off combat levels. Too bad.

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Who doesn't like COX?

[/ QUOTE ]Straight men?

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Really? Tell them all COX will be...ahem...uninstalled, then you'll see how much they want to keep them.

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I SO want to post a link to TVTropes' [censored] Dentata, yet I SO do not want to get modded. Again.

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Torak also had an avatar reminiscent of WarCraft III's Muradin and was a generally memorable and very pleasant character. I do wish he'd stuck around.

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I believe that avatar was Jim Duggan, who was a wrestler in the 80's and early 90's.

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It was? Didn't he say that was him? I remember he even changed it to a newer picture of the same guy at one point. Can't seem to find his old avatar, as his account page seems to have lost its pic. Think you can find a pick of this wrestler dude so we can compare memories?