ClawsandEffect

I'll be a VIP as long as I can.

I DO, however, appreciate the fact that when money is tight I can unsubscribe for a while and still play the majority of the game for free. It's not that tight at the moment, but I can see situations arising where saving $30 a month (my account and my wife's) will be helpful.

I like the SSRs, and while I don't participate heavily in Incarnate content, I like that the option is there when I feel like running a trial.

The 400 (soon to be 550) PP a month is a nice addition as well, and the fact that I get a free rename every 2 months.

The VIP perks are enough to keep me subscribed, but I will probably bounce back and forth between VIP and Premium on occasion as my finances dictate.

There are a few powers I can think of that should be looked at for adjustment. No drastic changes, just powers that are behind the curve in regards to where the game is now.

First: Spines

Spines has 2 powers in it that need to be looked at: Barb Swipe and Impale. Both powers are incredibly slow for the damage they deal, and both powers are analogs of powers in Claws that have long since been changed. (Slash and Swipe)

Barb Swipe: Get rid of the flailing-wildly/slap fight animation and either make a new animation or use the Barrage animation. It would go a long way toward making the power worth taking and using. By speeding up the tier 1 power of the set, you give it potential to actually have a not-horrible single target attack chain.

Impale: Get rid of the baseball pitch animation and give it the same animation as Focus, or if that is too fast, consider simply speeding up the current animation (if possible). I couldn't even tell you how many times my target for Impale was killed by someone else between when I activated the power and when the power hits, just because it is so stinking slow.

I get that Spines has weak single target damage to make up for it's strong AoE. The problem there is Spines isn't so much better at AoE than other sets that it justifies it being so much worse at single target. Since the last time Spines was looked at, there have been several sets with comparable or superior AoE released that don't suffer so badly in the single target area, making Spines much less attractive. Most players who have a basic understanding of how the game works are unlikely to choose a set for AoE damage that has horrible single target damage when there are other options that don't force such a huge sacrifice (Claws, Electric Melee, Dual Blades). The easiest and most sensible fix is simply speeding up the two attacks that are causing the problem in the set, and just speeding up those two attacks is not going to catapult the set to the top of the single target damage charts.

The other power I'd like to see adjusted is Cloak of Fear in the Dark Armor set. It has the lowest base accuracy of any power in the game, and among the highest endurance costs. That just kills the power for a lot of people, since it is in a set that is so slot hungry to begin with and you need to heavily slot it before it's even worth toggling on. There are few powers in the game that require so much investment to be useful.

Either reduce the endurance cost or increase the accuracy. Both would be nice, but if one or the other of those things happened it would be much harder to choose between Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom. Currently, if you are short on slots, Oppressive Gloom is the choice 90% of the time.

If anyone else has any suggested tweaks or adjustment to powers, feel free to add them, and perhaps we can get this stickied so we have a list of powers in need of attention all in one place.

Soloing AVs will be very doable, but it will take quite a while due to the lower damage of tankers overall.

Soloing GMs isn't going to happen until you get a Lore pet. A tank by himself just can't put out enough damage to overcome a GM's regen. You should be able to tank one for quite a while though.

You'll be able to solo certain TFs. I wouldn't try soloing the STF for example, but most of the others should be doable. Kahn might be rough as well, Reichsman has a metric butt ton of HP, and he has a god mode power that he pops annoyingly often when he gets low on health.

For Incarnate stuff, he should be plenty solid. I would consider beefng up Energy defense a little more before you do (if you can), but he should do just fine as-is.

You're probably not going to be "ZOMG NOTHING CAN KILL ME!" with that build, but you'll be in good shape for the vast majority of the stuff the game will throw at you.

Glad I could help you make your toon awesome.

Sonic is my favorite blast set by far.

The way I see it, I'm not losing much damage by playing Sonic instead of Fire, especially on teams, and solo, few sets have as much utility to go along with good damage like Sonic.

When calculating a set's damage, it also pays to consider what that set brings to the table to keep you alive, because dead toons deal no damage. And Siren's Song is HUGE in that regard.

For the record, this combo is REALLY hard on the end bar at low levels. When you get your mez protection/recharge boost power, you'll find that you are now attacking so quickly that your recovery can't keep up with the end drain. That will probably get better once you get better slotting, but from what I've seen, the teen levels are about to suck for me.

I just thought of an answer to how a Regen stalker can be invisible .

There is an animal in the real world that both regenerates and blends into it's surroundings: Chameleons.

All Regen needs to make sense is a concept that somehow involves reptile DNA.

I play a stalker because some character ideas just don't work as scrappers or brutes. And I create characters, not collections of numbers represented by a group of polygons.

My most recent creation, a Street Justice/Ninjitsu/Weapons stalker, is intended to be a Batman-esque character. And that concept just doesn't work with scrappers, at least not for me. Once i get my defenses up I'll be able to play him like a scrapper, but when I'm soloing I want to have the ability to take out enemies one at a time with their buddies being none the wiser.

I'm thinking of the scene in Batman Begins on the shipping dock, where Batman takes out the entire group and no one ever gets a good look at him other than the guy he WANTS to see him. He's just a vague shadow accompanied by sudden and decisive violence.

THAT'S why I play a stalker.

I'm happy with it as-is too, which is why the only tweak I could think of to improve it is a really minor one.

I won't be heartbroken if this doesn't happen, but it'd be a nice addition that I don't think would unbalance anything.

A Mauser pistol would have been a good stand-in for the Malta pistols.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ma..._1895Mar15.jpg

Had an idea as I was looking over the powers for my new Street Justice/Ninjitsu stalker.

I don't know how you guys use your AS, but I tend to use it as follows:

Build Up->AS->Placate->Heavy hitting attack (usually the tier 9 if it's up).

As it is, using the powers in that order will cause you to either use your hard hitting attack at Combo level 2 (from AS), or waste your Placate crit on a combo builder. Or you'll have to use Placate before your AS to get that first combo level. It's not practical to try and fire Crushing Uppercut at level 3 with a Placate crit (It DOES crit after a Placate, right?)

What if either Build Up or Placate were also a combo builder? I'm leaning toward Build Up on this for thematic reasons, but I could see Placate too. Both is probably too much to ask.

It's a small change, but it would be a nice tweak to an already pretty good set.

Thoughts?

If Martial Arts existed as a blaster secondary I would SO roll a Sonic/MA blaster named Kicking and Screaming.