DestineeFable

It is annoying to pick up nAEbs though when you're running other content. Trying to form a TF team that has one player who can't figure out how to zone into the zone the TF is forming in when you're talking about a 30+ level TF? Then you spend time trying to coach the person in question how to get out of Atlas and make their way to the zone you're in only to have them quit because it's too hard. That's a little over the top even for PL babies.

My newest baby blaster is an nrg/elec. You will definitely want Stamina because this build can be an endy hog I've found. I like to take either Swift or Hurdle at level 10 and then take Health (or whichever movement power you didn't take at 10) at level 16. That gives me an additional "fun" power to take at levels 12 and 18 and breaks up the monotony of taking the two Stamina pre-req passives before Stamina itself at level 20.

Using melee successfully on a blaster as an attack is mainly a matter of getting the timing of the game down. Until you're comfortable with that, your strategy of using your melee mainly as a means of defense is where most blasters leave it. You may find as you gain experience that you start taking the pounding to them rather than wait for them to bring it to you. If you do that, then don't let anyone tell you you're doing the wrong thing (unless you faceplant every single time you try it); as a blaster, your job is to do damage, and as long as you do that without causing teamwipes no one has any right to complain about precisely how you do it.

Personally, I like to slot my attacks with 2acc, 3dam, and 1endred or 1 recharge until I start messing with set IOs. I tend to go into a lot of situations where I am facing things that con at +2, +3 or more to me, so that extra accuracy is very useful. If you start acquiring a taste for higher level foes, you might think about adopting a higher accuracy slotting scheme than just 1acc. Also, when it comes to Power Burst, I swap out the endred and the recharge in favor of 1 range enhancer. My main is an nrg/nrg and her Power Burst is slotted to almost match the base range of the main two blasts; it makes a nice utility tool for either close up fighting or a more ranged approach.

As for /elec, I took it mainly for melee powers on my little blaster because I've been around long enough to have leveled three blasters to 50 with one of those being a very successful blapper (blaster who is built to fight primarily in melee range), so I feel very comfortable with being able to handle using the melee attacks as attacks. I would skip lightning field; it looks pretty cool, but it's also an aggro magnet. It won't do enough damage to do more than tick off mobs. Since you're new and often solo, I would look at each power choice's potential to mitigate aggro. Anything that holds, sleeps, KBs, stuns, or immobilizes is usually a good choice although there are some powers out there that just aren't worth it (/ice's tier nine for example).

A final note: This build has the potential to create a LOT of KB. There are a lot of people who get irritated, sometimes rightly so, with KB because it can do all sorts of unintended annoying things in team play. I would suggest that while you are playing solo, you start paying attention to your KB. Start learning how far things fly, in what direction, etc., things will go when affected by the KB of your various powers. With a little practice, you can learn how to use the KB as a positioning tool rather than a disruptive scattering force that teams will squawk about. Barring that, get used to using Hover a lot when teaming so that you can direct most of your efforts downward which should turn your KB into knockdown. Another team strategy is to go solely single target and concentrate on killing what you shoot. Still a third, is to save the nrg AoE powers for later on in the fight when the mobs are very low on health. This way, when you unleash the KB, you will hopefully kill most of the mobs you hit rather then scattering them.

Yep there are now three things you have to look out for:

newbs - not so bad, you just have to be patient with them and hope they're willing to learn

n00bs - usually hopeless

nAEbs - also hopeless

Yep, VU2009 is almost always good to scare up a few players for things.

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Heh, I ended up quiting the team because that same person made everyone go get a Shivan to finish it. Then when a rad troller joined, exact line was " Yay!, now we have a chance." Don't get me wrong, I like rad as well, but it seems that rad or kin is the healorz for some vets.



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Ayup, I here ya. I've been on plenty of MoSTFs/STFs where we absolutely couldn't defeat Witchie (Ghost Widow) without a rad or a dark.

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Really. Sorry you feel I'm so sensitive, but it upsets me to no end that people are RPing other people's characters. Call me sensitive, call me stupid, call me childish. Whatever.


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I'll have a go from the other end. If I were ever lucky enough to get any of my PCs published (say in a PnP game making them NPCs), do I have any right to expect to be able to police how they will be used by the public at large? Aside from copyright law banning my characters from being used to make anyone else profit without my consent, those published characters are freely available to be used and abused by whoever buys them.

Don't you think the same sort of applies to the signature characters in MMOs? Yes, they are the dev's PCs, but they are also part of the IP and NPCs that we all interact with as part of the story everyday. If the devs wanted to keep them and their stories private, they should have held them back to stay personal property rather than public property and part of the game.

Honestly, I have to say this is a nice thing to see. I finally get to stress test my builds.

I do think that the TF/SF requirements ought to be included. If the devs are concerned about new players, add warning labels, make the ability unlockable, or make it a vet reward. Frankly, where we're in the process of adding one to the family, our ability to casually hook up with a TF/SF group and spend extended periods of uninterrupted time playing is coming to a close; however, my husband and I are easily good enough to duo most of the TFs in the game. This feature would allow that and allow us to take them at our new "family-life" pace which most random PuG teams won't be as accepting of.

As mentioned, we can work around it now, but frankly, I hate bothering people.

I honestly don't think that waiving the requirements for TF/SF team size would alter the landscape anymore than it will for any other activity. If the devs think otherwise, I suppose they can hold off and see how this affects things, but as with others who have chimed in already, my preference is to run TFs teamed, but sometimes, there are just things you want to do with them that the average TF team can't or won;t accommodate.

You mean I can clear off those darn Shard Maps finally?

Holding Out For A Hero

You can look at today's society where some are held accountable and asked to feel guilty over the actions of others who lived over a hundred years ago and we are led to believe that no matter what measures we take legally or otherwise those stains will never be washed away, and wonder this?

Nukes are nice. Generally, I wait just long enough for the tank (or acceptable tank-like substitute, can be me) to grab aggro in an acceptable manner before initiating nuke sequence on a blaster, but I nuke freely and as a lead with my /sonic defender. She doesn't necessarily kill most things, but she will stun the crap out of 'em, debuff 'em, and can quickly recharge herself before exiting the staggering mob.

Find out if your server has a global chat channel you can join. Players who know a little bit more about the game will tend to hang out on the global chat channels, and they'll have a better idea what a sonic res defender can add to a team than Random Joe-Broadcast. You might have an easier time picking up some teams that way although it's still no guarantee.

I'll be there tonight I think. I can fly and I have group fly if needed.

I'll be there with Doplar.

Like I said, I know what I'd want to try to crack this nut. I have a storm defender all IO'd out, too.

Well, we went in and cased the joint, and I think we have a plan of attack. Now we just need a team. Small detail, but not really as we have a particular set of requirements in mind when it comes to ATs ...

As to the Rains having fear components, I always though they did myself, but the in game info doesn't list it and I couldn't get that info from Red Tomax. Caltrops' in game info did list the fear effect which is why I mentioned it, and we checked Spec Terror because we immediately though of it as another pet with a fear component. It only has a very limited generic fear effect before it starts having an accuracy-based fear effect according to in game info. Caltrops' in game is always just a generic fear effect, no accuracy needed which may be why it would work.

Repel effects from things like Force Bubble are also pretty immediate and non-accuracy based. I imagine that Force Bubble and Kinetic repel would work much better than Hurricane repel because the ticks in Hurricane's repel are slow due to nerfage, but I was willing to try it.

I think the key is that you need something that hits immediately with no iniative check or else the Repairman will win.

Like I said, not doubting anyone, just chucking ideas out.

We had another one today. Ellis mentioned having some success with caltrops, and I've been wondering why that would be. If it isn't the damage ticks doing it, might it be the slows? Or the slows combined with the damage interrupts? Of course, lingering rad would slow ... so why would caltrops work? Wait, there's a fear component in caltrops added to the slow and tick damage with no target. Could that have something to do with it?

And I'm just brainstorming out loud. I'll do anything to avoid having to try this with my hurricane out to knock off repairmen.

With my storm/sonic, I used Siren's Song a lot with Thunder Clap when leveling up to help me solo. Sleep the mob with Siren's then run in to Thunder Clap. Go out and lay down Freezing Rain and your other toys and destroy to your heart's content. I found that to be an acceptable way to mitigate the alpha strike issue rather than taking the medicine pool. On teams, alpha is a non-issue. When I hit level 50, I primarily team and so I dropped both from my final build, but to level up, they were bread and butter.

Hmm, not saying I doubt anyone there just chucking out ideas, but since I don't run Master Saturday anymore due to it being more like work than fun, I'm relegated to the runs where we can scrape together enough SG-mates that want to give it a shot for the hay of it. We might try an exploratory run to test some things out and see if we can come up with some tricks, but since it takes an extraordinary act of whatever powers that be to get a number of us together and in the mood, I'm not holding my breath it'll happen anytime soon.

So, nothing in particular to deal with the insta-heal repairmen?

We were wondering - has anyone tried endy draining the towers? I've been on runs before where we've had them drained to nothing on endurance, but I can't for the life of me remember if they were still spawning repairmen or not because it wasn't important to those runs. I do know it's possible to drain them though.

Teik was wondering if they have a regen to floor; we know from Hami raids that if Hamidon floors our regen, it's hard for our own heals to do much good. His is admittedly out there ...

I'm wondering what the slotting on those rains was myself. I know for example that Rain of Fire needs accuracy slotting to make sure that it hits with its ticks. The power itself has high native accuray just for you to place it, but the ticks of damage are only as accurate as any other fire power you have. A lot of people miss that because they see so many little orange numbers flying around and notice the placing accuracy, so they tend to neglect slotting any accuracy in their Rains.

Force Bubble?

Oof, I wouldn't want to use that one on Repairmen simply because they'd go shooting way off in the distance. You'd want someone dedicated just to taking out Repairmen, and that would slow down the tower team, or you need someone who's really good with that repel effect. 90% of people aren't.

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Wow. You just encapsulated all of the reasons why the ITF is my least favorite task/strike force. (Although that being said, I haven't tried the Shard ones.)

1) Wide Range: Which means that just like regular missions and just like saucer raids, you get level 35s who feel entitled to have half the team be level 50s, because they feel entitled to be sidekicked. So recruiting for one, once you get the four level 35-45s, grinds to halt as you try to recruit more 50s.

2) Unique Enemies: Yes, but stupid ones. By level 35, I've gone toe to toe with demons, monsters, and renegade gods capable of threatening all life on earth with a stray thought. Now, I face the ultimate enemy: a primitive barbarian in scraps of leather, with a chunk of metal in each hand. The idea that Cimeroran Traitors are a level 35-50 villain group annoys the heck out of me. Sure, go ahead, invoke the supposed magic that they're using, that isn't referred to anywhere in-game. Go ahead, somehow convince me that Roman legionnaires were all trained to Batman-like levels of physical prowess. Uh, no.

3) Unlockable Costumes: Mean that if you play a character with that concept, you have to explain why you wore modern clothes from level 1-34. If they unlocked on an account-wide basis, I'd think this was the greatest reward ever. Having to be unlocked on a character by character basis, it's annoying.

4) Few Mezzers: But tons of mobs with AoE heals, and every lieutenant or above is immune to mez. Combine this with ...

5) Melee Centric: Did you know that Arachnos Soldiers are weak to melee? Cimerorans tear my Bane Spider character up, even on lowest difficulty settings. The stacking -def(all) from all those spammed Broadsword attacks makes Cimeroran Traitors just about the only enemies that threaten my bots/FF mastermind, too. Let me guess: you're a tank with a resistance-based primary?

6) Enemies that are "just right"? Are you including that one spawn of 8 overlapping elite bosses? Or the long path going up the hill that tends to drop three spawns on you at a time (regular spawn, patrol from in front, patrol from somehow behind) right at the moment that the team lags out? No other TF or SF has ever produced so many consecutive team wipes for me, not even mission 3 of the Positron TF.

7) Co-Op: Is over-done. Holiday co-op missions were an interesting change of pace. The RWZ was an interesting idea that has gone on too long, and officially exhausted all of my interest in co-op content. The ITF is, in my opinion, already over the line, and all the more so because in this game, "co-op" seems to always mean "villains get to be heroes."

8) Painless Maps: Except, of course, for the one map that lags everybody out just as they're coming into the middle of a swarm of overlapping ambushes. Or that cave where every 3rd spawn is a team-wiping Nictus crystal.

9) Very Little Travel: We villains are spoiled; we take this for granted.

10) Ample Reward: And deserves it, because it's a pain-in-the-neck TF.

11) Time: About right when it goes well, but time to completion is wildly variable, since your estimate of one hour doesn't include any of the time to line up the right mix of levels, doesn't include waiting for people to come back from any possible team wipes due to massive simultaneous elite boss fights or overlapping ambushes, and doesn't include however long the team spends standing around arguing about how we want to take down Romulus this time. I've had ITFs wrap up in less than an hour. I've had two of them give up at above the 3 hour mark, counting from when recruiting started.

Even though I almost entirely play villains, these days, I'd rather run Positron again (and again) than ever run the ITF even one more time. And much rather run the LGTF, which has much more interesting enemies than either of the above and uses a much more interesting variety of combat tactics, like the cumulative Four Horsemen fight and the mini-Hamidon raid.


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QFT

Let me add some more reasons why I'd rather eat broken glass than run this TF.

- Because so many people love this one to pieces, the odds of getting stuck on a team with at least one jerk who thinks they know everything including how to play your character better than you is extremely high.

- When they made this TF, someone apparently thought that slagging your way through mindless gobs of mobs = fun. I beg to differ. For me, slagging my way through mindless gobs of mobs = tedious and boring even when they give me xp.

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I could never RP on a voice chat. It would break any suspension of disbelief I may have. I've never managed to sit through a tabletop RP session without wanting to laugh, frankly.


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I discovered crochet. The need to concentrate on my stitchwork helps me maintain a poker face. It was absolutely vital during one campaign where I was essentially playing a double agent and pretending to be an ally to the rest of the PCs at the same time. You have no idea how hard it is to keep a straight face when you see the rest of the table getting perplexed over being thwarted by some juicy machinations you managed to set up without their being any wiser.

Syfy sounds like Syphilis. And I can only think that one day we'll all be asking ourselves: remember when Syfy used to be called Sci-Fi and actually showed that on the channel? You know, kind of like we all reminisce about the days when MTV actually had music videos on it.