Carnifax_NA

New Vegas bears little in common with Fallout 3 in terms of how alive the game-world feels and how much they give you to do. It's very, very like a number of the Black Isle games of yore story-wise (especially in the way it just sprawls out and throws myriads of weird little mini-quests at you).


Mechanically it's the same, but the story and setting are streets ahead of Fallout 3s curiously sterile efforts (Oblivion has the same issues, it's like being in a world of androids)


Which isn't surprising because quite a few people who worked at Black Isle on Planetscape, Fallout and Fallout 2 now work / run Obsidian (including the CEO).

I've had the same experience on Virtue with a Plant/Emp controller. It was especially Good Times during City of Dual Pistol Blasters last year.

She also gets a lot of complements on her cossie and background story running around Virtue which is nice.

I am looking forward to returning to EU side and playing with people in the same timezone as me though. I love Virtue PuGs and all but the fact it's the middle of the day over there when I play evenings here can grate occasionally (like being bossed around by a herd-happy Tank a few days ago, although mostly I just ignored them).

^This. Do it properly or don't bother NCSoft. Long term active accounts should get precedence here, regardless of the side they are on.

Just slapping EU on the front of everyones clashing name and calling it done is a poor, lazy solution.

If a US account is inactive or a Trial when this goes live and there is a clash then the active European name (ie the paying customer) should remain unchanged and the US one should have US prepended onto it.


And obviously anyone whose Global is changed should have the ability to change it to something else afterwards.

This board information is slightly out of date though, the fix to creepers a while back means Posi's Blast will also PROC as often as it.*


@Little_Whorn : I've no real idea of those two. I suspect the Vines are buffable (I accidentally gave one Adrenal Boost during the week) for the 15 seconds or so they live if you Fulc Shift when they're waving about but haven't tested it. I'll try it later with Fortitude to see if I can raise a Vines damage by Forting it.*


I'm not sure what rules the invisible spawning pseudopet follows though, I'd imagine it should inherit whatever damage buff you have on you when you cast Creepers but I've no idea if the things *it* then spawns (Vines and patches etc) would also get the damage buff.


I'll do some testing with a Vine and Fort and popping reds and then summoning the patch later to see if I can figure out if/how you can buff Creepers damage.

Nope, the term "British Isles" is a geographic one, not a political one. So the Falklands aren't included, but my own fair isle is, even though we (mostly) aren't British (except for the 6 counties up North which are British, unless you're talking about Rugby in which case they're considered Irish for some reason)

I'm confused about this. As far as I can tell Thorntrops has poor DPS. 2.78 damage per tick, 1 second ticks. So it takes it 45 seconds to *do 125 damage. A non-purple proc will add 1.4 DPS on average.



Spine Burst does have a horribly slow animation time but it's a pretty standard Domi PBAOE. Compared to Fling Thorns it is poor though but it will combine with Aim (and Sleet) to give you a bit more AOE spike damage.*


Personally I'd be aiming to take both. AOE really is king on teams towards the end game so it's worth taking both and adding to the AOE spam.

The bit in bold isn't quite true.

When Creepers got fixed so that things like Targetted AOE Damage IOs would affect the Vines it also meant the PROCs will fire for Vine attacks as well. As far as I can tell whomever fixed it basically allowed the Vine attacks to take Targetted AOE sets as well.

I've recently tested it myself (last week) and have confirmed that Posi's Blast will proc across the board, on Vine attacks as well as where one would expect going on "normal" IO rules with pets / pseudo-pets.

I've mine slotted with the Impeded Swiftness and Posi Blast. In a single casting vs a test bed of attackless +1x8 AE dummies I got a grand total of 78 PROC hits. 54 Posi Blast and 24 Impeded Swiftness.

I haven't tested with the other 3 PROCs however, I had to slot for Acc, Recharge and Damage instead (1 Acc/Dam HO, 2 Dam/Recharge IOs and a common Recharge IO along with the 2 procs)

1 A-merit is made by running 10 Alignment (Tip) missions and then doing the final Morality mission but not changing your alignment.

Tips are in a seperate tab in your Contacts. You then open the tip and decide what course of action to take (Hero or Vigilante for example).

They're called Alignment Merits, or A-Merits. You get them as a Hero or Villain for doing 10 morality missions and then reaffirming your alignment.

Info here

My wife. She hasn't logged into the laptop since she got the iPad at Xmas. She uses it to do all the things she used to do on the laptop, paying bills, printing photos wirelessly, browsing the web and reading email.

You still need a laptop mind, otherwise you're sorta out of luck the next time you want to do something like download your photos off your digital camera. But that's basically the only thing I can think of she'd now need to do on the laptop (maybe some spreadsheet thingies as well)

This. Earth gives you Defense based shields as well, but also gives you two excellent melee friendly attacks in Fissure and Seismic Smash.

You do lose Hibernate though which is an excellent mid-combat rest or panic button.

Yep, that's the best I've managed with it too, colouring dark flames as red and grey to get a sooty, dark, dark red effect.

So at least it doesn't blind me with bloom now with every puff.

Oooh, I didn't know this either. My Broadsword/Fire scrapper underwent a makeover last night.

Using the new Wisp Aura as a combat aura also gives an excellent look to Fire Shield now too.

I just wish there was a better look for Blazing Aura (the damage toggle). Still can't get that looking decent.

Did you try moving forward yourself and acting as a spotter for it? It's been a while but this seemed to be how it worked for me, if I moved forward a bit it could see what I could and shoot at them.

Aye, my Plant/Emp/Primal will rez and buff the poor unfortunate up once I've Vengied the entire team from their sorry hide.

The way I see it is if Mr Vengie-bait gets a taste of godmode for 90 seconds after they rez it encourages them to get themselves killed more often, hence more Vengie goodness for me.

"Whose a good boy getting themselves all deaded in order to buff the team? You are! Yes you are! You're the best boy/girl/fearsome-entity-from-beyond. Have a Power Boosted Fortitude and an Adrenaline Boost as a reward"

I'd go with Mutation and Fallout for levels 30 and 35. Not sure what to take at 49. Vengeance isn't opened up in that build as-is, otherwise I'd be going for that.

Agree with Hyperstrike on the APP as well. Stone works well with Fire because you can follow up Flashfire with Fissure and have a 50% chance of stunning any bosses in the bunch (and if that fails just Seismic Smash them).

Yes. If you want a PPP then you have to be in a position to talk to the Arbiter contact in Grandville and run story missions red side (so either be a Villain or a Rogue).

Cold Mastery looks to be your best best APP-wise, it's the only one with a Defense based shield as well as Hibernate and Hoarfrost (although with a MM I'm not sure how close to the HP cap you are already and if you'll get good milage from Hoarfrost).

Level 22 makes all the difference in the world for a few reasons.

1) Stygian Circle
2) SOs in your powers, including Dwarf Form which means he becomes much more survivable
3) That's the level I always do my Vet Respec and spend whatever slots I had in Human Form powers which I don't need on Dwarf Form instead (focusing on Dwarf Mire, the heal and the harder hitting melee starting out). Typically I end up shunting 5 slots from human form (from the blasts and shields which I usually drop in exchange for Super Speed and Shadow Cloak for high speed invisibilty) into Dwarf form.

I'm just 22 now in fact (on my second Warshade) and the only Human form powers I have slotted are Mire and the hard hitting Hold attack. Everything else has just the single slot in it.

Also remember that double-mire isn't as good as it used to be, Dwarf Mire only stick around 10 seconds now. So faffing around with Mire > Dwarf > Mire squid isn't as useful as it used to be. Double Mire is more useful in the nuke / mini-nuke chain IMO.

As Dechs says doing human mire (I always then follow with the hold on a choice Lieut), Dwarf Form and then miring and scrapping it out can work better.

It kinda depends on your playstyle. If you use Choking Cloud a lot (and Grav doesn't really need to to be honest, it works well from range) and find yourself in melee range Earth is great for Fissure, Seismic Smash and a Defense based armour (an ugly defense based armour), with Earths Embrace being ok in terms of making you a bit tougher.

Fire is always good if you just want more damage. Plus Consume can be handy for regaining End sporadically.

Psi is very useful for Rad, simply for the mez protection. Another useful thing is that Crushing Field followed by Psi Tornado will do containment damage but still knock into the air.

Primal doesn't really offer you a lot, Power Boost doesn't work with Rad that well and the rest of the set is pretty average.

Ice is a solid choice, Defense based armour to go with your -ToHit debuffs, Hibernate is always good as an emergency button, or for an in-fight rest (although your Rad toggles will be ineffective when Hibernated up) and Frost Breath and Ice Storm will give to a decent slab of AOE damage.

From the PPPs Mace is quite a strong choice, Def based shield, a blast which also adds more -resist and an AOE (which does sporadic knockback, which could be good or bad depending on how you play). Plus an extra occasional pet if you fancy it which might work with your character concept.

Leviathan gives you Spout, which would be interesting with Crushing Field, they'll be held in place but will still go flying up into the air. Plus the sporadic Stuns from it will stack with Wormhole. Hibernate is in there as well. Bile Spray is a pretty much standard cone, although one with a rarely resisted damage type in it.

So really depending on how you are built. If you're a ranged controller who doesn't like to be in close I'd probably go with Mace, especially if it gelled concept-wise. Ice and Leviathan would probably be my follow-on choices for "interesting powers", both with a panic button in Hibernate which can be very useful (although more so with Controllers who have more fire-and-forget mezzes, pets and debuffs, like Earth, Plant, Elec, Illusion, Cold and Storm where you can either confuse a load of enemies and/or drop a mez patch, debuff patch and/or pets on them and then ice up and they'll keep fighting. My Illusion/Storm/Ice got a LOT of use from Hibernate).

Fire, Psi and Earth (depending on how you like to play) also have things going for them too mind.

Well THAT was unexpected