Biowraith

I've applied with:

Screen Name : Biowraith
Team : Murderdoom

I'm not sure if my timezone is compatible though - I'm in the UK so currently on BST (GMT+1) and generally only online about 6pm to 11pm (maybe midnight) during the week (i.e. logging off just as it starts to get busy). I have teamed with Victory Forum folks in CoH though, so it's not totally outside the realms of possibility... but then again probably not so often as people'd actually remember me.

Anyhow, figured I'd give it a go, so the application is sent. If you think the timezone'd not work out then just reject it and I'll fully understand.

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03-26-2008 22:18:04 [Broadcast]Twixt: <color #010101>faraq lowlife slimeball farmer, check

03-26-2008 22:19:03 [Broadcast]Ka Faraq Gatri: <color #010101>Twixt!!!! How ya doing my delusional, maniac/depressive, half-wit, moronic, stooge. Been gone for about 3 days recovering the flu. Did you miss me snookem's?

03-26-2008 22:19:27 [Broadcast]Twixt: <color #010101>im ignorning your little slimeball lowlife farmer [censored], gl, miserable cheater pos



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This was not trolling, nor malicious? Was this also part of RPing Twixt?

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From what I can tell from that and the chatlog it came from, there's a group of players who display legitimate behaviour that is in no way breaching the game's rules but is frowned upon by Twixt as a follower of artificial social customs. So he tried to stop them by verbally abusing them. For Science.

My Bane is at 48 so far with no travel powers. I still have 1h36m on the Zero-G Pack, 1h41m on the Raptor Pack, and the full 1h30m on the Goldbricker pack. I've also got the Traveler's Jet Pack sitting at 30m, never used. I never bothered to pick up the Sky Raider one.

I only ever use them sparingly - either for a couple seconds to clear obstacles, or occasionally if the mission is particularly far away and nobody else on the team is dawdling I'll use them for the duration of the journey to the mission door (usually boosting them with the GvE jump pack). For inter-zone travel I've got Pocket D teleporter, Mission teleporter, and two day job market teleporters.

I'm pretty much never last to the mission - the folks with Fly usually aren't going much faster than me, and there's pretty much always *someone* who'll go afk for a minute between missions, get lost, go sell their excess loot, go to train, or otherwise get delayed (occasionally I make up the time loading into the mission - someone else got there first, but they took a while to load in so I'm actually ready before them).

Even on those occasions I am last it's usually only a difference of 10-20 seconds, well within tolerance levels considering how many people with proper travel powers get delayed by other factors.

My Ninja/TA probably amuses me the most, but I'd probably rate my Necro/Dark as my favourite - not far behind in amusement stakes but also feels a fair bit more powerful.

Although my Bots/FF is probably the most invincible, she's also really dull to play.

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so anyone have any idea whats holding back the science booster pack?
problems? bugs?
I thought it was going to go on sale the same time as I15.
think maybe this week it will be available? or is it going to take weeks?

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I've maybe missed an announcement somewhere, but I don't think they ever gave an estimate on when it'd be pushed to live. How long were the others in testing before they got released?


Personally, I'm dismayed at the lack of bubble helmets.

Favourites:
Tsoo - good amount of variety in their bosses while the sorcerors, although annoying, provide a small challenge / tactical element (it might just be "mez the sorceror first!", but that's still more than most groups involve, especially at that level).

Freakshow - I just love their whole theme and attidude. The mix of zany cheerful optimism and psychotic violence. They don't let anything get them down or discourage them and no idea is too stupid or insane for them to try out. There's been a few occasions where I secretly wished they'd actually succeed in whatever plan I was foiling (sportstaur for example). I do find their self-rez mildly annoying though, in that I'm frequently half way to the next spawn and one of the previous spawn gets back up - especially if it's a defeat all and I don't notice. Also they do start to get old due to how many people will run paper/AE missions to fight them exclusively and nothing else.

Crey pre-40 - I like the variety, both in appearance and powers, along with the whole sinister corporation thing going on.

Malta - I actually enjoy fighting these guys, despite their ridiculous stun grenades, endurance sapping, silly accuracy gunslingers, etc etc. I find them challenging rather than overpowering, necessitating some thought as to targeting priority, whether I'll need to pull, etc. That element of if you do it right it should go smoothly, but if you make a mistake or miss something you're screwed. Were it earlier in the game I'd probably shift them to the dislike group, but by 40+ you generally have the tools available to take them on, so long as you don't slip up. My one gripe is I wish the gun turrets the engineers summoned either a) gave xp or b) died when the engineer did, since as they stand they're just a bag of unrewarding hp to slog through.

The Lost - again, I enjoy their theme; their shambolic confused disorganisation coupled with quasi-religious nonsensical utterings.. yet underneath that they're moving with a distinct purpose. I think I enjoyed them more right at the beginning when I first started playing though, before I actually knew the whole story, when I wasn't really sure what their purpose was or who was influencing them - it made them that bit more sinister and worrying.


Dislike:
Longbow - boring in appearance and (wardens aside) powers, and then on top of that they start to get annoying to fight at high levels. Also see way too much of them, which amplifies the boring factor.

Ruin Mages - I don't have a problem with CoT in general, but these guys get too much mez/debuff for such low level enemies. At that level so many builds (and thus teams) just don't have the tools necessary to counter them, making them a major headache. Earthquake's probably the hair that breaks the camel's back for me - they fire it off early and unless you have two controllers (due to boss level mez protect + dispersion bubble) coordinating holds you probably won't mez them before they do.

Spectrals - specifically the Lts, who just bring too much in the way of -tohit coupled with their resists and decent damage (and self heal). Too much annoyance with nothing to make me feel it's worth it.

40+ Crey - Yawn. So yawnworthy I'd maybe not even think to bring them up, if it weren't for the fact that pre-40 they're actually quite varied and interesting.

Wolves of all varieties - resist most damage types, resist immobilise and slow, run around like bluebottles on crack, high burst damage, and kinda bland to boot. I dread the 40-50 defeat all wolves outdoor maps blueside.

My current MM has 5 trays open

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My build will likely forgo patron powers, so I'll have enough room for wolf spider armor (more resistance/mez protection) and CT:O.

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I find it utterly redundant on a Crab - at 50 it brings you from just over 14 mag mez protect (enough to block Romulus' rez-stun, and pretty much anything else PvE will throw at you) to just over 16. Especially since you get pretty reasonable base defense that stops most mezzes from even landing - it'll take a ridiculous amount of mez flying around to crack a Crab's protection. That leaves the 4.5% smash/lethal and 3% psi resist, which personally I find to be too low to use up a power and enhancement slots on (or rather, to pick that over the other options available) - ymmv.

I can maybe see it on a Bane, since they only get 4 mag protection otherwise. Even so, in 47 levels I've maybe been mezzed twice on my Bane without it.

Only other scenario I see it being worthwhile is if you're making a very specific IO build, either stacking up smash/lethal resist set bonuses, or using it as a mule for bonuses you can only get from the resist sets.



All that said, it only bothers me when I see it in a build that's skipped other *much* more useful powers like TT:M. But if the mainstays are covered and Wolf creeps in there, eh, I'll maybe struggle to understand why but I won't be shaking my head in dismay or anything.

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I have found that, provided you where in BG mode previously, this command will pull you out of BG mode while they attack the your target but once it dies you will snap right back into BG mode.

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I find it takes slightly more than just the target dying before they auto-revert to bodyguard (well, unless the target was the only enemy present). I'm not 100% sure on the specifics, but it seems they'll only go back to bodyguard by themselves if all aggro has gone, both aggro from your enemies and your pets.

i.e. you approach a spawn of 4 enemies, you are on defensive follow, you give an attack order on enemy 1 and the entire spawn gets aggroed. Enemy 1 dies, but 2-4 are still alive: your pets remain in "attack my target" stance even though they no longer have a player-issued target (they just defaulting to their usual AI targeting) and bodyguard remains broken. Only once 2-4 are dead, or you manage to break combat, do they go back to bodyguard by themselves.

If on the other hand you'd managed to pull enemy 1 on his own and 2-4 stayed unaggroed, the pets will revert to bodyguard as soon as he dies

You get a visual indicator of all this if you have your pet window in "advanced" mode - the commands icon will stay as the attack my target crosshair even after the target dies, and reverts to the follow arrow once the above conditions are met (I've tested and it's not just a visual bug, bodyguard really isn't in effect until that follow arrow returns).

I'd maybe take CT:O to start with for that reason, but I'd respec out of it later on; there's just too many good (read: better) powers to try and squeeze into a SoA build.

I'm always a little depressed when I see builds that have both CT:O and Wolf Spider Armor (especially if they also had the sense to take Crab Spider Armor Upgrade and Fortification), but no TT:M.

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There is no actual reason to believe he is "the world's best demon-hunter". Even he doesn't make that claim. He's just "a" demon hunter.

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His bio does indicate he's a veteran demon hunter and that surviving that long is a testament to his skill or luck. But yeah, there's no indication that he's the best in the world, or for that matter that a veteran demon hunter poses a threat our characters couldn't handle. All we have to go on is a threat that could easily be bluff or bluster. Even if it's not, "considerable amount of firepower" is just another day at the office for our characters; we face armies of super soldiers, robots, wizards, and monsters on a daily basis (and given how many demons we're likely to have defeated by the time we hit St Martial, including possibly a demon queen/she-devil, many of us fit the criteria for "veteran demon hunter" ourselves).

So yeah, for that encounter it'd be a lot less "what?!" if we actually had some evidence that he was more of a threat than all the other big bads we take down every day. I'd still want revenge on him later though

As described in the OP it'd be Natural. It's implied that anyone who spent that much time in the sun and doing all that shouting would also develop rad/sonic powers. It'd have to be kinda tongue-in-cheek if you go that route though, since in that version of the world pretty much all lifeguards would have superpowers (and indeed, becoming a lifeguard, or just lazing around on the beach all day, is now a reliable route to superpowers).

For non-Natural you'd kinda need to introduce another factor to the backstory, one which explains why he developed those powers while other lifeguards just stayed sunburnt, possibly hoarse, and distinctly lacking in superpowers. What that factor is determines whether it's Mutant or Science.

For Mutation you can have a mutation that was latent and is triggered (perhaps by all that solar radiation, or perhaps just by age) and now is always on, or you could have the mutation be that he's "solar powered" - it's always been "active" but it was only once he spent all that time lifeguarding that he soaked up enough sun to power up (and thus he needs to continue his excessive solar exposure to maintain his powers).

For Science you can have the character be exposed to something that changes him to either gain those powers directly, or that changes him so solar radiation now induces those powers (swallows a mouthful of a nearby toxic spill, weird cosmic rays, bitten by a radioactive shark, etc). Possibly it's the excessive levels of sun he's already been exposed to that interacts with this extra element to produce powers (where a less sun-exposed person would see no effect, or would die). Or possibly it's something that interacts with the solar radiation en-route, such that it's changed into something new and super-powering by the time it reaches him.

That's my interpretation anyway.

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I think the Titans always had those powers, they just didn't work properly before.

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Yeah, basically they only used certain powers at certain ranges. Their missile volleys only ever fired when they were at fairly long range, so besides ambushes on big open maps (or foolish attempts to snipe-pull without breaking line of sight, I suppose) you rarely ever saw them.

I assume this change was inherited from the adjustments to MM pet AI.

While it's not an official arc, the first thing I did with AE was make an arc devoted to getting revenge on Hardcase.

[shameless plug: ArcID 1366 - it was originally just going to be a single mission with lots of beating up Hardcase, but I decided to give it a smallish amount of plot leading up to that]

First of my alts that springs to mind would be:

Ninja Pirate : Pirate Ninja

The resist one is a "Unique", you can only slot it once per character.

I just go to whoever's closest, so I probably use Luminary the most due to her convenient location. Tbh I kinda resent having to visit a trainer; in MMOs in general, and particularly in a superhero one. It's not a huge deal or anything, but I dislike it.

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By and large I think the powersets transfer over just fine without changing the concepts/names. Detonator's the only problem imo - I guess you could change that to Time Bomb (not sure how other */Traps players'd feel about that, but Detonator ain't exactly up there).

Mercs: Pretty neutral concept - just because you're a mercenary doesn't mean you can't be discriminating about who you work for, what jobs you take on, etc. Not as heroic as the ones doing it for free, but still has a place blueside. We even have in-game precendent: Hero Corps, heroes who are "selling their super-powered services to those willing to foot the bill".

Ninjas: Also relatively neutral - their methods may offend those with particularly strong/rigid codes of honour (i.e. trickery, stealth, espionage vs a straight up head on approach), but as long as they're fighting evil they don't fall outside the range of heroes already out there. I don't think of Samurai as being inherently more heroic/good either - I was under the impression their code of honour was more about loyalty/obedience than good/evil, and given the time period they're from I'm sure they carried out just as atrocious acts under (or because of) that code as any Ninja did.

Robots: totally neutral. I can't see any problems with them at all. I'd also be against putting blue-and-red flashing lights on top and calling them PPD bots as this unnecessarily constrains the character's backstory/theme.

Thugs: I'm pretty sure there's plenty of reformed thugs/criminals already present in the myriad backstories out there, both in-game and out. And the reformed criminal is pretty much the theme of Going Rogue. A street gang turned to fighting for good may or may not scrub up and change their outfit (I'd think most wouldn't), but either way they'd probably stick to the methods/powers they know (i.e. guns) to do the job, and they'd be just as at home there as the AR blasters.

Necros: The perceived morality of Necromancy varies greatly by the setting, and the different cultures within the setting. There's a pretty wide spectrum of heroes out there with similarly wide degrees to which they're accepted by their colleagues and the general populace. Definitely the hardest sell of the five, but I think there's room in Paragon for the shunned and distrusted Necromancer who nonetheless works to protect the city and foil the true villains.


And Bodyguard mode is also fairly neutral to my view. You can look at it as the mastermind cruelly putting their minions in harms way to save their own hide, or you can look at it as noble self sacrifice on the part of those following the mastermind. Or just as an abstraction of you gotta fight through the rest of the X-Men before you can get a decent shot off at Professor X (which is easier to explicitely depict in a comic/film than it is in a game, hence the abstraction).

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Hero Dominators (sadists), Stalkers (assassins) and Corruptors (taking advantage of the weak) will also be thematically weird for Heroes.

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Eh, while there's some mental adjustment necessary, it's pretty minor:

Dominators "dominating" their opponents is thematically very similar to Controllers "overpowering" their opponents, just with an extra "limit break" aspect.

Stalkers - using stealth and surprise to take out guards before they can even react in a Batmanesque (or just covert/spec ops types in less superhero focused settings) style. Maybe not "honourable" to the some of the more uncompromising direct-assault-only personal codes, but still well within the range of hero types out there.

Corruptors are just pressing the advantage, to put it in more neutral terms.

For Masterminds, depends how you play them I guess, whether you throw them away to absorb alphas, or try to keep them alive like they're a player character. I agree Detonator with human pets doesn't fit though.

There's also the whole not-everyone-gets-to-choose-how-their-powers-manifest-but-heroic-vs-villainy-is-about-what-they-use-them-for bit.

Could maybe do to change the text for Assassin Strike to Stealth Strike and Scourge to read Critical, but otherwise they fit Heroes about as well as the Heroic ATs do, imo.

(edit to add: and even using the villainous slant on their inherents, is any of it really worse than a hero giving the villains a dose of lethal radiation, or web grenading them then dousing them with napalm?)

I don't think I could pick just one as the coolest or my favourite, so my choice on this thread is chosen mostly because I was pleasantly surprised it was still available so late in the game (and on Freedom no less): Pinchy, my Crab Spider.

Of the 5 you're considering, I'd say Detonator is the most skippable. It has entertainment value, and the damage isn't bad, but you can accomplish similar things with a Trip Mine or two without sacrificing a pet (and more frequently). I'd *maybe* say Seekers are skippable for a MM since one of their main uses is taking alphas and MMs are generally able to do that anyway.. but that -dam debuff is pretty nice too.

Also, while I know you've got Triage as one of the ones you're definitely taking, I'd say that one is somewhat redundant when you've also got Aid Other on top of the ProtBots' heals.

No clue about PvP.

Of those power choices make TT: Maneuvers your number one priority. I'd say it's the most important power from the Crab's secondary (with Crab Armor Upgrade + Fortification coming in second, for that invaluable mez protection).

After that I'd get Combat Training Defensive, then probably TT: Leadership and one of the pets (Spiderlings for continual lower dps, Call Reinforcements for a bigger dps boost for hard targets). Or skip TT:L and just get both pets, I dunno.

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What annoys me is that I trashed a level 40 common accuracy IO that was in there

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Just to check, you know that you don't need to trash the old enhancement separately? You can just drop the new one on top of the old one and it'll replace it. Normally not an issue, but it'd have saved you that accuracy IO in this scenario.


As for the bit about set IOs only enhancing powers of the same type, not 100% sure but I think that was specific to the recharge aspect - the recharge wasn't really meant to cascade down to pets' actual powers (hence a straight up normal Recharge enhancement would only affect the recharge of the pet summon, not its powers), but if it was a set IO then the recharge would buggily cascade down to attacks that would otherwise accept that set type. But stuff like accuracy which *is* intended to cascade to the pets' powers, that should enhance all the pets powers regardless of what kind of set it came from. I think. Maybe.

Also procs still work that way - a Lady Grey damage proc slotted in a pet will only have a chance to trigger on the pet's powers that are set to accept defense debuff sets (which is why it's great for Soldiers, but not so much for Commando).

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And Speed Boost isn't good for ANYONE on that multi-tiered cave map *shudders*.

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Except characters with Hover, they should cope just fine

(it's not so bad for people who're used to moving under speed either, at least no worse than usual.. but there's no easy way to tell in advance who those people are going to be)

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Well, when playing Madam Enigma I'm use to moving fast. I have a normal in-mission travel speed of around 34 mph, and a max travel speed of 73 mph with elude. So super speed I can handle. Speed boost in missions though, I'd rather not have to worry bout running into cave walls.

With Madam Enigma she really doens't get any significant benefit from SB. +Recover? Don't need it, only run out of endurance if elude crashes. +Recharge? Again don't need it. Claw/sr and I have all the attacks. +Speed? I really don't need that.

Oh other characters it depends. My dark/dark scrapper loves SB since it lets me stop worrying bout endurance. My ta/a is mildly annoyed by it but accepts the buff. Other characters? Not always wanted due to the +speed fouling up fine control. If I'm trying to leverage cone attacks, I don't need speedboost wrecking my ability to maneuver.

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Personally I love SB on all of my characters. Some get more mileage out of it than others, but they all benefit, whether it's to ease up endurance woes, bring back long recharge powers (e.g. nukes, non-persistent pets, etc), or just to fire their heaviest attacks more often in the chain.

My Kins pretty much always have at least one application of Siphon Speed in effect during a mission, with the aim to double stack it (occasionally triple stacked for short durations). So their in-mission speed tends to be between 55mph and just over 90mph. I've played them both quite a lot (one was my 2nd character in the game, while the other was my first 50 villain) so I'm used to maneuvering at those speeds (even for positioning for cones - the villain is a Dark/Kin Corruptor) and running other characters under SB almost feels slow to me when I've been playing the Kins recently.

I admit I do bump off the walls a bit when moving through the really narrow cave tunnels, but it doesn't annoy me and overall doesn't slow me down vs not being boosted (lose a bit of time when I hit the wall, make it back up when I move through the rest of it faster).

So yeah, for me personally, the benefits always outweigh the downsides. I'd have it on all my characters all the time if I could.

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And Speed Boost isn't good for ANYONE on that multi-tiered cave map *shudders*.

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Except characters with Hover, they should cope just fine

(it's not so bad for people who're used to moving under speed either, at least no worse than usual.. but there's no easy way to tell in advance who those people are going to be)