Blueeyed

Them3, you forgot the extreme utility of slotting Speed Boost for Run Speed. With 3 SOs of that, no player in their right mind would ask twice for the fabled SB Crack.

Circues' Enhancement Numbers (requires *.xls reader, I personally recommend OpenOffice.

It's not exactly... how do you say, userfriendly, but all the information is there.

Great fun working with Master Pingu, Pingu Kid, Wynter Phrost, Hanudair, TheSaint, Polexis, and Cpt. Redbeard for a Crystal Titan run. Very entertaining, particularly watching the herding occur, or watching Pingu tank.

Master Pingu
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Buy some yellows, ya big [censored]!!!

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Mighty, you forgot Geko, "Most Likely to not be accepting PM."

Just as some general Giant Monster notes : never sidekick up Blasters, Tankers, and Scrappers. They will keep doing the same amount of damage, and will be hit harder, making it more difficult for support classes to keep them alive. The same goes for buff/debuff focused Defenders and Controllers. Only heal-focused players should be made as high-level as possible - this will make their heals provide a larger portion of the scrapper/tanker/blasters health bar. If possible, exemplar down a tanker to as close to 32 as possible without going under, and sidekick healers to the highest level character around.

Lusca is fairly respondant to slows - Snow Storm, Shiver, and Siphon Speed can provide a very good cushion to an attacking team. All the times I've killed her cleanly, it's been when our team had a decent slow power.

Also of note, Lusca's tentacle smashs count as cone attacks, so it's generally a good idea to not have all your melee people line up on one side of them.
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3. The Devilfish badge. Doesn't (as I recall) count toward any accolades, but it's a [i[badge, and we all like badges, right? (Ooh, shiny.)

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Devilfish doesn't count for any accolades, and you may want to fix that UBB code.

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If you just want to relax and wander through on god mode, play a non-MMO game and get the cheat codes.

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Gee, and I thought the whole point of games was to have fun. Go find something real to be macho about.

We have nothing more to discuss. /ignore

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And here I was thinking something a bot could do would be boring as hell.

But, I guess that isn't a constant.

If you just want to relax and wander through on god mode, play a non-MMO game and get the cheat codes.

How do I put this, primal:

If any tactic which makes lower tier enemies dangerous other than a)extreme damage or b) summons is cheap, then you're free to have a damn boring game. I'd rather not have the developers fall to the level where that's the only way to continue the levels, if simply because my Defender has enough fun getting TKO'd by enemies as it is.

There are far too many better ways to make things hard then simply upping enemy damage. I'd rather have to deal with 'cheap tricks' than end up with an endless healbot channel.

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It's just the principle of the thing...those ATs either HAVE status protection or they don't.

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Tell that to my Force Fielder.
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The mere fact that the devs decided to give an enemy, and a Lt-level at that, the ability to just utterly negate ALL defenses, no matter the AT...it's staggering. It's damn near terrifying in its implications: could it be the beginning of a trend?

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*coughsapperscough*

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Since most squishes don't suffer as badly losing their toggles as melees

[/ QUOTE ]Eh, I really wouldn't say that. A regen scrapper or Energy Armor brute may suffer a bit from having their toggles drop, I don't think you can say a Dark Corruptor or Storm Defender is doing fine afterward.

But, yes, the issue is that squishies are going to be detoggled either way. Only now, we stay inoperable for much, much longer.

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This is better for everyone, how the hell is it worse for you if the meleers on your team are no longer getting toggle-dropped?

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Because a detoggled Brute, at worst, gets himself killed. A corruptor that's spending their day looking as drunk as Ted Kennnedy, on the other hand, tends to kill the whole team.

And, of course, is still detoggled.

Try playing a squishy for once, and you'll understand what I mean. My Stormer spends more time retoggling than he does blasting.

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Unless resistance inspirations work significantly different from resistance powers, yes, what _Castle_ has said is accurate.
I haven't tested the Controller versions of -resistance powers, however, so that's something to add to my todo list.

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Let me save you some time.
What _Castle_ said already explains this, but if you want in-game verification too (which never hurts...), Pennelope and I already tested this a while back.

I don't have access to the actual numbers we used at the moment, but if you want I could give them to you at a later time.

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Thanks a ton, Stargazer, and don't bother looking for numbers, I just wanted some independent confirmation. Guess this makes one type of debuff that isn't resistable.

I'm still sticking by my earlier statement, though; this is a really cheesy mechanic, particularly when you consider how long we've had this "resistance debuff resistance" - it's even worse when you consider how new "defense debuff resistance" is.

Kali and myself tested this out with resistance inspirations a while ago, and at least for them, we got numbers which suggested that Resistance debuffs from defenders weren't 'resistable' (yes, I'm going to put that into scare quotes whenever I say it; this is a really cheesy mechanic). Unless resistance inspirations work significantly different from resistance powers, yes, what _Castle_ has said is accurate.
I haven't tested the Controller versions of -resistance powers, however, so that's something to add to my todo list.

We did find that -recharge and -movement speed were resistable. And some evidence has shown that -def may be, although since Castle himself doesn't seem too certain about the defense debuff resistance mechanic, I'm not going to run on that one.

Most evidence suggests that Hitler was not a member of the Thule Society. Some, however, does suggest that one of his early speaking coaches, a man named Dietrich Eckart, was a constant and devout member. Interestingly, one of Hitler's writings was devoted to Eckart.

The Thule Society merged with a worker's rights party to become the DAP in 1919, turning into the NSDAP (more often known as Nazi) group in 1920. Given that Hitler wasn't really introduced to the DAP until later 1919, and at the behest of the German government (as a 'police spy'), it's hard to see him as the mastermind of some elaborate scheme to get rid of the Thule group - although, once he was in power, it's well documented that Hitler attempted to rid his image of any superstituous occult stuff.

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And two: ¿Why no mention about their feud with the Outcasts? Both gangs seem to hate each other for something more than simple territorial issues. Yet the origin of this hate has never been explained (at least to my knowledge)

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It's explained in a round about way in the game fiction. The Trolls work for the Family as part of the Superadine distribution ring. The Outcasts work for the Warriors as part of the magic artifacts black market. The Warriors and the Family encourage their subordinate gangs to fight each other in an effort to encroach on each others territory without risking their own men.

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It should also be noted that Outcasts see themselves as petty heroes, and some mission text states that they're enforcing laws to the extreme (one I remember jokes that they put someone in the hospital for jaywalking). They're obviously not going to be liking or be liked by a group of severe drug addicts.

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RI, EF, DN, tar patch, Hurricane, freezing rain,snow storm and all anchors and AOE powers don't miss still don't see what difficulties you are refering to since I have yet to see a brute take down a rad/dark/storm defender solo. Which brute attack do you know of that's auto hit.

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Freezing Rain can and does miss in PvP. Every area of effect power with a damage portion now has a chance to miss in PvP.

And anchors? Do you know exactly how problematic those are? 3 of them have cast times greater than four seconds - that's long enough for a half-decent energy melee brute to kill you.

So, yes, I've seen a lot of brutes killing rad/dark/storm Defenders. I've seen a lot anything kill defenders.

Already have. Killing yourself with Absorb Pain gives debt.

<- absorb pain addict

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Question about the estimated times. When ever I have done the first 3 Task forces it seems the time it takes to complete is almost double your estimate. How do we speed them up? What is the trick to completing them in 3-4 hours instead of 8 like it seems to be taking us?

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This is most noticable first the first couple TFs... but the trick is to stealth or partial stealth them. Clearing out each and every individual mission will take you forever and a bit. Not really worthwhile unless you're really desperate for XP. But, imo, there are better ways to get XP.

For example, Positron's TF has something around 14 missions. Only 6 of these require heavy mob clearing (used to be 5, but one of the CoT missions has escorts now). Some of them can be partially stealthed, others require only one or two spawns be killed. Synapse is nearly the same. Sister Psyche's even worse - clearing a single on of the outdoor missions can add an hour onto the general completion time.

Oh, and a couple notes :

- Manticore's Task Force is probably the single most stealthable one in the game. Only the first two missions need to be cleared compeletely. Mission 3 requires you only clear a named Crey Protector (notable because he says somthing along the lines of "Countess Crey has left the building"). Mission 5 is a click the glowy, and six requires you to kill ONLY the mob named "Security Cheif Manning" and his spawn. 8 is a quick mish where you only have to kill a couple guards, with no escort portion, and for the final mission, I STRONGLY suggest stealthing through to Hopkins. He's got a bad habit of spawning on top of staircases over the entrance to a room, and enemy spawns are pretty ugly with a habit of going pear-shaped with even the best groups.
- The escort Amy Johson mission of Katie Hannon seems to not actually require an escort. Clearing the room she's in completed the mission for me.
- Katie Hannon's Soul will now randomly select a party member to follow. She likes blasters, for some reason, go figure. A trick to get through this mission quickly is to free her, find who she's selected to follow, and use Fly or Group Fly to get her to the flight cap and to the exit. You can actually beat this mission and only kill one or two spawns by doing this.

Wow, I think the total dev posts for the defender boards just doubled over the last week. Not that I'm complaining.

I'll keep the current defender issues list somewhat organized for your ease.

Okay, at the risk of it just being my computer, I have to ask :
What the hell happened to this thread? It was well into the double digits last time I came by, and now it's down to two.

Even a redname post promising a site update about Longbow has disappeared! In fact, before this post, the 'last post' link pointed to a post by Cipher. No longer reachable.

The issue hurts you more in PvP. For example, using a 5% accuracy attack and a string of 50% accurate misses is probably going to be very painful.

From my understanding (<- sucks at math), there's major bonus from the streakbreaker around 50%. However, at 5% tohit, the chances of the streakbreaker kicking in are about nil.

EDIT: of course, the most advanced math I've done in a few years now is subnetting/wildcard masking, so it's quite possible I'm off by a large amount.

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Castle said specific the steak breaker only appied to Players. Pet can be considered just an extention of the player. Ergo, I'm pretty sure that 'critters' are pets.

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I can't find him referring to the Streak Breaker not applying to enemies. I can find him, however, stating that :
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I attacked a total of 38917 times.
I hit 29275 times.
I missed 9642 times.

That is a 75.22% overall to hit chance against an even level critter with no defense powers.

There is no "Accuracy Wrap Around" -- otherwise Blasters with Targetting Drone + Aim + Build Up would never, ever hit, which is not the case.

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The random number is calculated simply by the C stdlib rand().

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Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease change this. The ANSI RAND function is a very, very poor random number generator. Even with decent or better than decent choices for your seed values, you're still going to end up with predicatable results, and predictable patterns. Humans hate being able to guess 'random' events. It breaks the immersion. Seeing the output of a pure rand() function is actually painfully cyclical!

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You say it works for critters too, does that mean it works for enemies?

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I'm pretty sure critters is the dev word for enemies.

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And finally, the US is signatory to a treaty prohibiting the use of napalm or other flamethrower like weapons against human beings. The description on Longbow Flamethrower troops admits that they try not to fire those weapons in front of civilians or the media. Where did Longbow get the impression that they were exempt from the Geneva Conventions?

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This is a really common mistake. The Geneva Convention only warns against the use of Napalm and other incendiary devices when there's a high risk against civillian targets, as to :
Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects
...Protocol III on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons prohibits, in all circumstances, making the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects, the object of attack by any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat or a combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.

This makes incendiary weapons, when used against a target such as an officially sponsored member of a foreign country, slightly legal. After all, you've been kept in one piece by Arachnos personel, including gear, communications equipment, and objectives all given by high-ranking Arachnos operatives. Also notably, the US did not sign this protocol, only providing ratification. That's a whole seperate kettle of fish, though. It's not a great thing to be proud of, but it lets us get around a lot of technical limitations that other armies suffer from, particularly lighting-wise. We don't tend to use incendiaries as anything other than illumination, though - HE tends to do the trick much better, although without the psychological effect. Mostly we now use an airborne delayed ignition aluminum/oxidizer mix, which is a lot more efficient at taking down structures and personel without the same danger.

So, technically speaking, Longbow could use napalm (or, more likely, MK-77 mod 5, nobody's used napalm itself for military purposes in a long time). They certainly didn't sign the treaty themselves, many/most of them may have come from a country that didn't sign this treaty, and even if they did sign this treaty, there's certainly ways to argue that they're not intentionally targetting civilians.

Surprisingly, nearly all of the weapons involved in the Longbow operations are legal to purchase as a civilian, although generally there's a bunch of hoops to jump through. Most burst/auto weapons can be bought with the use of a Class III firearms liscense, which in our world takes about 6 months and $300 (not to mention a record clean enough for the bATFE to agree with). High explosives and weapons systems related to them are more difficult to get a liscense for, as you have to prove that you have adequate protection and storage capabilities, but are likewise possible.

It's also important to note that it seems that the formula caps and floors itself twice - once after the toHit and Defense is calculated, again after Accuracy modifiers are multiplied in. This is most noticable with powers like Dark Pit or which otherwise have large -accuracy.