Blue_Centurion

#1 needs to actually be addressed by the whole team. It has the capacity to spin completely out of control once the players realize what is going on.

#2 can be solved with simple infiltration. Since you know for a fact that the power is balanced, have the data in front of you, and start a few forum posts by Newbie72. Newbiw72 makes the case that X is better than Cannon of Justice, and post damage, DPS, end use, etc from the charts, stating "I have carefully researched how much my Blaster of Congruence does, and it is the same or better than Cannon of Justice." Since the data holds true, at least one geek supa playa should be won over, and with a little forum judo the entire argument will be taken down.

#3 you're pretty much done for here. You have the choice of spending a lot of time trying to solve an unused, and flavor adding portion of the game, or not. One possible solution is to solve the thing by throwing an extra bone to the people farming the stay at home stuff by way of an extra stay at home drop only available from this one unbalanced task. Simple add to the game, do not have to take the whole team, and will not affect gameplay.

This way you have employed all your team on the real problem, still unknown to players. You have a strategy for nerfing the agro on the fake problem, and you are being kind to those who are really enjoying something....strange but beautiful to them. Be sure to let the people farming this task know that you did this on purpose, because you realized your error. sometimes the easiest way to say you are sorry is to say you are sorry and give a gift. Especially if it is easy to do and does not affect the other 99.99% game balance.

This would give you an 80% chance to solve problem 1 before anyone realizes it is a problem. even if it does not solve it completely, it has to make it better when people do discover it, and your team has their work detailed, so fixing it in the next month's patch should be easier. Problem 2 can be handled with a few forum posts by one person (team leader?0 a couple times a day. Problem 3 is a simple add, borrowing from previous adds, taking virtually no time. So you solve all problems in one months time. You are ready for next month's three (four, five...?) problems.

GL. PS I am available for hire.

What is the best Tanker Primary to take to handle these Task Forces, in order of importance: Lambda, BAF, Tin Mage, Apex, Statesman, Recluse.

Pertinent questions, does it need a certain secondary, or will a certain secondary help it a lot.

Rules, almost none. I/O builds are encouraged, and if not posted directly, at least say something like "softcapped 45 to most" or "hardcapped res" or "max HP Build" Also, of course, Incarnate powers are allowed, encouraged, and should be mentioned if necessary to bring the Tank up to the TF requirements.

I am currently running a 50+3 Willpower/Super Strength, old Softcapped Def to 45% on all but Psi @35%. He runs Energy Mastery, Tier 4 Cardiac Core, Tier 2 Diagmagnetic, Tier 2 Void, Tier 3 Lore Seers, Tier 4 Barrier. He performs solidly in the trials. 2 weak points to be noted for him are pulling AVs in the BAF, have to eat oranges, hit SoW, have greens ready and run fast. The other point is fighting those little end drainers in the Sabotage missions of Lambda (and in the courtyard if sabotage goes poorly). Other than that he is rock solid, and a pleasure to tank with. I am pretty sure there are builds out there that can race past him Tanking.

So, who thinks what is best in the new world order, and why?

Okay, I am going to try to get to the heart of this. Why I think Unstoppable is broken. I want to thank everyone who has posted. Very interesting ideas, concepts, thoughts, and real gaming experience showing up here.

I think Unstoppable is broken because it will either A) Simply lead to death B) Lead to having to retoggle and scramble for cover for 17-30 seconds.

Now, this is not because I mind death on a character. My first 50 Brute, who ran Invul, regularly killed himself on the Grandville towers and had the 10 million death badge before level 44. An extra death in a mission was just a bonus towards that goal. Not sought after, but not unwelcome. I am unfazed by the death of a character, in and of itself.

Tanking however is different. My belief is you need pride to be a Tanker. When I am Tanking I want to run in and grab the Agro fast, taking everything that a mob can throw at me. I want to know where my team is heading, and be there before/with the 1st wave to do my job. I know my Knockout Blow is really not that impressive for damage, I know my Footstomp is mostly just for flooring the fools and getting agro on me. But if I can get all eyes on me, whatever team I am on can shred, shred fast, and keep moving. I take great pride in that. Not a seeker after DPS, not a Scranker, I Tank, and I believe I Tank well. Not perfect, but a very good team member and solid Tank.

The tier 9 from Willpower helps me Tank. It gives a good buff for a while, and here is what is so important i cannot stress it enough, it does not remove me from my job tanking. It does not pull me off the line for a single solitary second. Many times, I never even notice it dropped. the decision to pop it was 2 minutes ago when I charged a particularly bad spot. That problem was resolved between 30 seconds and 1:30 ago, and now we are on to other problems. No Hangover.

The tier 9 from Invulnerability floors me. It either gets me killed, or at best pulls be off the line to lick my self inflicted wounds for a very long time in combat. Then I gotta get back to where the team is, and get back into my job.

If you think about Scranker, Scrappers, Blasters search for DPS, consider this. I am after Tanking per second. What character build can I create that allows me the greatest Tanking per Second? Okay, so say you give Scrappers a power that boosts damage to Cap for 3 minutes. Then they either die or spend 30 seconds doing zero damage. Great right? Okay, now tell the scrapper the fight is 5 minutes to 10 minutes long. Recalculate. Wait, what? I die? That means my DPS goes to....swirl flush. Yep. Same with Tanking, you can push certain numbers to hardcap to help me Tanking for awhile, great. But if it causes me to take a giant step backward and literally go feel my lifeforce drain from my body, no thanks. Cause that will not help me tank. It will not allow me to be the dependable member of the team I feel I need to be.

This is why I think the tier 9 from Invulnerabilty is broken. Because it works completely against the TPS (Tanking per second) that is needed in a fast moving long fight modern strike force team. It is built for old, clunky, i2 teams. In i2 the boss fight at the end lasted less than 3 minutes. There was one boss. In i20 there are many times multiple AVs, the AVs take longer than 3 minutes to put down. The corridor fights are non stop rolling madness for 10 minutes at a time. Unstoppable is like the T-72, very solid for it's time. The T-72 gets shredded by modern armor. It cannot withstand what is happening on a modern battlefield. Sure, its still great against most infantry and light mechanized stuff. But you put it up against a modern Tank, and the crew will be lucky if they can figure out they need to leave the thing fast enough.

On the flip side of this I get massive lag on the crate hunt in the Lambda, basically mini rubber banding. Just keeping up with the team is tough, because I will walk into walls, etc. It is the worst on the crates, the tubes are not as bad, although it happens a little.

While going through my nightly trials grind last night. (So far one tier 4, one tier3, two tier 2s.) I heard the rumor that Notices of the Well are not being awarded for this week's WTF. I was surprised i had not seen it on this forum yesterday at all if that was true. also in the rumor mill uis that Thursday they will rest the WTF and reset everyone's flags that completed it w/o award. Any real data out there?

Wow, I cannot believe my Willpower's weak agro aura finally has a benefit lol. I get one warning (or if I scrapper lock - two ) and then I bounce over to help the Adds team for fifteen seconds or so and bounce back. I try to time my time in the AV area to drop Destiny Barrier for the anti-AV mob (now tier 4 for extra goodness!), and I always try to be available with no warnings for the last 10 health of both so I can add on damage where needed without worrying about having everyone held at the exact wrong time.

For about a year and a half I have had a problem. When I use base editor to place an item, for the choice boxes of what can be placed all I get are white boxes, no pictures. Luckily I had done a lot of base construction for my first year, now the stuff I want, and dont care to slam much in besides teleport base stuff. Still, it would be nice to have this working. Anybody know a fix?

This happened to me three times last week. (Whole zones disappearing.) I posted here about it. It was just like you said, all I could see was NPCs and doors. And i was falling. endlessly falling. If i tried to move anywhere but to the door I came out of, rubberbanding. (jet pack fixed falling) I was given advice here how to try to solve it by starting a diagnostic procedure. I really really hate diagnostic procedures. I reloaded the entire game. Twice. That took all night. That problem hasnt reappeared. But that could be luck, or fate, or Shivans busy elsewhere.

I have always loved Invulnerability powerset. My first 50 was an Invul Brute. However, we all know about Invulnerabilty's tier 9. The "We better win it all in the next 2:59" power. I have actually switched to Willpower as my most ran over the last 2 years, even though in general I still like Invulnerability conceptually better.

Now with my Willpower tank i can hit my tier 9 multiple times in the new trials. Heading on a get the tubes/crates run, pop it. Tanking Marauder, pop it. About to pull an AV in BAF, pop it. (Usually a little orange insp helps in these situations as well...) I have not run an Invulnerability in a very long time, but I can bet that those that do run them in the new content do not pop their tier 9 as casually as I pop mine. I know that if I had an Invulnerability I was taking thru this stuff the only time I could even see doing it is the last 25% of health on Marauder. No other time in any of the trials do I see a good cooldown/crash period in the entire run.

My hope is this will finally get the Devs to rewrite this power into something that is usedul. I personally do not find it useful in the old content. I stopped having it in my Inv builds, then I stopped running Invul because no tier 9 lol. I cannot see how the new content has made the Inv tier 9 more useful, if anything it looks like it might show how bad its problems are. My hope however may never become reality. Any thoughts?

I'm impressed Kitsune. We did it with 16 peeps 3 times and all were pretty easy, but it seemed like dropping below a critical threshold would have lost it. We got all 10 acid bombs on my team each time, and the team teleported to help the other 8 person team get all grenades. With that momentum we hit the last boss fight hard. And still, each time, it was real hard to drop his health bar, couple times in 2 diff runs I saw his health creep back up. Does he scale with team size? I am just finding it hard to see how a 9 person random team can compete with a 16 person team ( 3 diff team makeups, very similar fight ) for damage. I do believe you did it, I just do not understand.

I am actually trying to bring up a real issue. It is easy to misread/misunderstand the nature of the badges. If you have someone that believes they can get credit towards their badge by walking out with 2 of these things, you will encounter problems. I do understand the nature of the badges, and look forward to getting them in the future, with a solid team of 50+3s who know how to do it.

WOW. So I can just count on having a 0% chance to complete Lamda with any PUG group I join. Perfect. Thanks for the info, at least I know what I am in for.

I am researching the badges for the BAF and the Lambda, to get the Master of Badge. Not much information in the usual places. I have heard it rumored that at least one of these is literally a "Badge for Griefing" in that to get it you gotta grief a few teams trying the Strike Force.

Please post any info you have on these badges.

Please, fergodsakes, tell me the Devs did not actually set up a whole new PUG friendly interface, then put in rewards for knifing each other in the back.

I had no idea they built in rewards for griefing on this thing. NICE. Badges for hoarding the acid thingys I am guessing? Anyways, I know from your posts Mauk that you are a solid player. I feel better about my multiple failures knowing others (especially people I figure know what they are doing) are struggling as well. I am actually pretty happy with my 3 Lambda failures in one night. After all, I unlocked one power slot, and got 5% towards the next. 19 failures until that bad boy is unlocked lol.

But seriously, i cannot believe they put rewards in for working against the team. It's basically an open message to the players "Never PUG again." i was already looking to get with some known friends to form a good run. Maybe even gonna start organizing them myself if I have to. And I have seriously tried to not lead teams for the last 3 1/2 years. I want more info on the badges for griefing high end task forces you are talking about. Devs, it's like they smoke crack and come up with these "great ideas" they need to put in.....

Also thanks to everyone for the good advice like lots of purple and oranges, and staying with the team. Course, once the courtyard chaos starts to happen half the time the team ports away from you to the hospital.....

I am doing Yoga and hanging with my wife tonight, so no gaming except a quick minute on to convert shards to threads, but tomorrow I should be able to jump into another Lambda and check my power stats to see if the Cardiac Core is showing on them. Almost a pity if it is, was hoping it was a bug the Devs could fix and my Blue bar would be healthy again. What am I going to have to do, respec back into Conserve Power? i mean, at a certain point it seems to be getting stupid, I run a Will Tank, I have both End Rec powers at ED, i have Physical Perfection, and I have Procs that give End...... It seems kind of crazy that after all that I am still having HUGE end issues. I mean, seriously, my blue Bar never drops except from Rage Crash. I can understand having some End problems in the new content, its tougher, but for me to have multiple complete End crash scenarios in a few hours gaming, with this build, WOW. They really built Lambda to take all your powers away. I can deal with tough. I can deal with really hard. Nigh Impossible.....that is gonna take a day or two to wrap my head around. So I need a couple Mad buffers and a Kin to get my Softcap END generating Monster back up to where he has a little bit of End available in the thick of things. Just seems odd.