Talen Lee

Rikti UXBs will toss ya around too.

There are also some instances of repel standing in for knockback. But they are quite rare.

Ice Armour has, from what I can see, the best combination of survivability tools and aggro-grabbing ones. You might hear some lauding about Stone, but its mobility issues contravene what I see as flexible tanking.

You do not need Challenge or Provoke at all. They're inessential powers when you already have a good, solid taunt in your secondary power pool and two taunt auras.

As far as secondaries go, I like /fire because it gives you Combustion early, which can grab a lot of aggro easily. On the other hand, it has slow animations (like Energy), so you might find that a pain. War Mace has a lot of extra mitigation in it, too, and some good AoEs, which could contribute to the job of grabbing aggro, and surviving it.

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And, the invisible spoiler text only works on the Heroes' board and not those viewing on the villain skin.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm following the dev's lead and telling the villains to suck it. I use the word anachronism because while the elements involved aren't bad, they're out of place.

Arc 4727 - Future Skulls
Level Range: 5-15

When I started doing these reviews I did so with the quiet understanding - at least to me - that I was going to be dealing with a lot of folk who needed or wanted promotion for their arc. I generally figured that arcs would have a small number of plays to their name and that I was going to be able to make a big impact by being amongst those few who offered a lot of distinct, usable criticism. Finding that some of these arcs have literally hundreds of plays while my own best arc has something in the district of fifty makes me wonder how much impact a lone review could have.

This got me thinking and I came to the conclusion that the main reason I write these reviews is to get an authors' attention, to try and make sure that the content being produced in the AE is up to my personal standards for play experience and writing, and then the author gets some promotion into the bargain. So... that asks the unfortunate tidbit: What about the crappy arcs? The author already has a large number of ratings and they're positive - my opinion is but one of many, and while I think it's more important than the others, the author can happily be inculcated from criticism by such experience.

Not a super-comforting point to me. The idea my opinion can be readily ignored, especially if I'm finding faults in something that is, effectively, critically acclaimed, bothers me.

This was on my mind as I clicked on Mirror Spirit.

The arc does a lot of good stuff with its formatting, right out of the gates. There's appropriate colours, there's italicisation and the title text hasn't been left to look exactly the same as everything else, leading to that odd 'What was I talking about?' effect where the title looks like the contact mumbling to themselves.

The arc also has a certain simple naivete to it, which I feel is germaine to the low level range of the arc. When you're in your 30s, you've probably seen a few human-skin bound books. At the 5-15 range? Chances are it's the first one you've seen, and that's not without its grossness. Or perhaps I'm just presuming.

I'm not certain that the character of the Skulls the author takes is the same as the character I see in them. My dealings with the Skulls in the game suggests to me that they're pretty small-time, and aside from the Bone Daddies, they're just normal punks and thugs without any real magical ability. They drop Tech salvage, which has always required me to reconsider the simple perception of them as magically-empowered ganglanders. Because of this, there's some discrepancy - the plot seems solid as I run it, but at the same time, I don't see it as appropriate for the Skulls. Good? Bad?

The basic premise of the plot is an apocalypse scenario, which I felt was interesting as a thing for a lowbie to avert. Normally when you save the whole world it's because you're an [censored]-kicking superdude. In this case, you just seem to be the only hero around... which is weird when you're getting your orders from another hero.

The problem of course - because you know there's going to be some nit I can pick - comes in the first mission where a number of elements are thrown together under Skull banners. The map is a hellion map, with fire and demonic symbols around. The Skulls, whenever I've faced them, have been in cold, stark warehouses. Then, a skull leader (a semi-established character, too) talks classically about the way the whole affair is going to play into their plans, and how you can't stand against their massive apocalyptic wave of hate and destruction. Does this sound like the Skulls to you? 'Cos it sure as heck didn't to me.

So the problem I have here is anachronism. The author views the Skulls (drug-crafting and distributing gun-and-hammer wielding gangland thieves pursuing a profit) as being more or less interchangeable with the Hellions (who are demon-worshipping magic-trinket-pilfering anarchists who engage in destruction for its own sake).

There are cool elements in this arc, cool tropes that I think any one of which could form the basis of a low-level, standard arc which explores an existing enemy group. The arc attempts to shoehorn a lot of them together, though, and none feel really satisfying. There's no exploration of the existing groups here, there's just the author using a convenient group to do what he wants to do and to heck with what the game tells us about the group.

There's also a question of scale. In this arc, you travel to the future, save the world from a massive apocalypse under a timer, receive guidance from Mirror Spirit herself (who is a full-blown, very powerful heroine who could kill every skull without blinking), talk about Salamanca as if you've been there before, and has the skulls thwarting Penelope Yin's powers - yes, Penelope Yin, the stated most powerful psychic on the planet. This creates the feeling - to me at least - that the whole arc isn't really a low level arc, it's just 'forced' to be so the author can use the Skulls - inappropriately, I think. It's almost a footnote at this point to point out that the final map is a hostage hunt across an outdoor Salamanca map full of guys that Mirror Spirit could obliterate by blinking at.

The whole arc has that unpleasant, bad-fanfiction feel of 'Hermione had changed a lot over the summer,' and felt very unsatisfying and inappropriate. There are good elements - I particularly like the second mission, feeling it quite an interesting thing to have added to a lowbie arc. But the rest of the arc is well-formatted, well-presented tosh. There's a twist - of sorts! - at the end, but it doesn't really matter at the point you find out. I'm sure there's a future arc (well, I really am - the author has said as much) that explains further and justifies, but that doesn't stop this arc from being bad.

So, this brings us on to the subject of the scores, no?

Rating: **
Tags: Solo Friendly, Save The World, Custom Characters

Yeah, I'm still trying to work out this power push malarkey, because the game numbers seem at odds with the comments people are giving.

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Singularity was changed mere months before the devs found out about the bug in psionic shockwave. Since that just got fixed recently, we might be seeing a patch to dimension shift some time in the next two issues...

[/ QUOTE ]PSW had its numbers changed. It got altered from an attack that did damage in an area to an attack that did damage in an area. This is not even on the same planet as turning Dimension Shift into a totally different power.

I wouldn't touch Kinetic Crash in a power I wanted to do anything except knockback. Good example being Bonfire.

The thing is, permadom is useful. It is no longer essential. Socketing for recharge, endurance reduction, recovery, smashing/lethal defence, or ranged defence, all seem useful avenues to me. My fire/fire is gunning for +HP and some bonus accuracy (because /fire lacks for a good Tohit buffer). Just for an example.

It's been like, two weeks. Wait for things to shake out.

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I'd rather D-Shift be some sort of AoE Knockup power or patch.

[/ QUOTE ]As long as you are comfortable acknowledging that no matter how much you like this idea it will not happen, then that's a perfectly fine mental mode to be in. If you want to talk about changing Gravity, then you had best move past this desire.

[/ QUOTE ]Care to explain why it's impossible?

[/ QUOTE ]The last time a power was changed from thing A to thing B was Singularity itself. That was a mere four years ago.

The last time a reorder happened was the War Mace shifts which was slightly after that point. So I think these two precedents indicate how hard-pressed the developers are to shift things like that.

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See title.

[/ QUOTE ]Stop socketing enhancements.

I used to forget to summon it all the time. I respecced it out. I didn't notice. We got Call To Arms, I respecced it back in. I haven't tried it under the new scheme, but I certainly don't see it as essential.

Dude, the 'solution' to Wormhole's KB is 'hit them with another, longer-recharging hold?'

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Stalkers have a playstyle that often encourages spacing

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Whoa. Uh.. no. Stalker = Scrapper with a badass alpha.

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I forgot to mention that that's more in the low levels, where end is at more of a premium. At higher levels, it honestly generallly doesn't matter--between crits, AS, SOs (or IOs), and Stamina, it's still all good.

[/ QUOTE ]I won't lie, one of my stalkers got through a staminaless 30 levels because I was always reading something when I was interested in playing him.

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Gald I have you permission Talen, thanks bro.

[/ QUOTE ]It's not permission, it's advice.

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People are invoking Joss Whedon to support a concept?

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Do not doubt the mighty powers of Joss Whedon!

Ensemble Caste powers Activate!

Form of Social Archetypes!

Shape of Dynamic Verbal Interplay!

[/ QUOTE ]Again!

And Again!

And Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again!

IS THIS GOOD WRITING YET?

People are invoking Joss Whedon to support a concept?

You seen how this guy levels. I won't get level 39 until the end of the Mayan Calendar.

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I'd rather D-Shift be some sort of AoE Knockup power or patch.

[/ QUOTE ]As long as you are comfortable acknowledging that no matter how much you like this idea it will not happen, then that's a perfectly fine mental mode to be in. If you want to talk about changing Gravity, then you had best move past this desire.

Given the way people whine I don't see why anyone else should have to justify not liking their arc, or justify their rating. The rating is a meaningless number anyway - no indicator of quality - which means there's no purpose to its existence but to give people something to whine about or crow about, depending on their flavour of stupidity.

I'm quite happy to tell an arc owner their arc sucks, but I don't think anyone should be forced to justify their rating. Welcome to natural selection in action.

I got Rain of Arrows!






... what do you mean I need to wait another two levels to socket it out? D:

I agree, there are. Seeing why you think what you think is useful.

Don't get me wrong, my mind/nrg has... *checks* 118% global recharge (when the hell did that happen?) so he's obviously got a different attack pattern to most. You have to remember, in mind, the fast-animating pair of Mesmerize/Dominate are going to come up pretty often, they do non-negligible damage (Dominate is a slightly worse version of Fire Blast from the old Fiery Assault), and they're fine attack filler. Dominate has the virtue of cutting through drone defence, too.

I'm still trying to work out all this fuss about Power Push. I know the power was great in PVP because of its huge mag.

Just going to ramble a bit based on what you just said. For all the times I've tried to make it work, telekinesis is a godawful power that I really don't like on dominators. Mass Hypnosis works fine at 5 feet or 50, and with Energy's lack of necessary AOE (it's not like you'd have to turn off Hot Feet as you close, for example), it's a great way to cut up an enemy spawn. You have two long-duration controls that care about opponents being attacked, and that makes the long animation on Total Focus less of a problem (after all, the guy's dying once it lands - you don't have to land two or three more attacks). And under the real numbers in game, for damage, Total Focus > Bone Smasher > Power Burst > Power Push. So sure, Power Push is better than it was, but I'd never ditch melee for it, and I wouldn't even bother with it if I was level 38 already.

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With Mind/Energy, I'd probably go all ranged though,

[/ QUOTE ]o.O

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