DrGamma

Apprentice
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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer View Post
    Father's name: Mitsumoto Hagashi
    Her name: Yurika Hagashi
    And her sister (who is trying to flee/has fled the Whispering Hand) has the codename Swift Cut, doesn't she?
  2. How do you figure that would work for people below level 50 fighting the invasion? They get regular xp instead? While 50's get iXP, but less inf or something? Sounds nice, but I wonder if it's easy to implement...

    Then again, my understanding is that most people are grinding the trials for the rare/very rare/empyrean merits, not necessarily for iXP... Giving out iXP quicker without giving out more drops would just leave people with unfilled slots. As the drops work right now, I usually have enough components to build an uncommon or a couple commons by the time the slot unlocks, it would feel frustrating to go to all the trouble of unlocking a slot and getting nothing in there for a while (as it currently happens with the alpha slot). So, if they added the iXP, it would be nice if they added drops too.

    Not trying to shoot it down or anything, it's a nice idea, just bringing up a few points to think of.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Scientist View Post
    How reliably does the Battle Orb keep you from being mezzed? The aura looks like it just protects from Stun and Immob, and if its toggled on and off, not so helpful, and the Deploy Stimulant only lasts 5 sec from the description, unless I am missing something.
    Not reliably. Just the facts that it can only be out for 5 every 15 minutes and there's no way to make it recharge faster mean you're uncovered for two thirds of the time. Then stimulant is only up for 5 seconds, and it takes much longer to animate and recharge. It takes so long to animate (over 5 seconds), that it won't even replace the need for an emergency break free, even if it happens to be recharged when you need it. The aura only offers minimal protection to stun and immob (its stun protection is theoretically worse than the hold protection in acrobatics, and acro doesn't protect against hold all that well), even if it was kept on all the time (which it SHOULD be, dammit!)...

    That's why I went Clarion Destiny even with the Orb. But for 5 seconds after being healed by the Orb, I have some extra mez protection which might come in handy... someday... <.<
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Auroxis View Post
    They are referring to Debuff Resistance, as in, giving the allies and the caster resistance to Defense, Recovery, Endurance, Recharge, Movement Speed, Regen, Perception, and ToHit Debuffs.

    It is not adding a resistance debuff to your attacks.
    Oh, DUH! That's very good indeed for FF, I need to rethink that choice for my bubbler now... Thanks for the heads up, I was reading that epically wrong.
  5. As for my own rad/rad/dark, this is what I went for:

    Alpha - Musculature Radial Paragon: I just couldn't resist the overkill of improving upon everything I do, even if I'm mostly taking advantage of the ignore ED part of the buff. Now my AM gives out even more recovery (and running), my RI debuffs a bit more and I hit the damage cap with less foes inside Sould Drain.

    Interface - Reactive Radial Flawless: At first I thought about going core, out of rad/son envy I guess, but seeing how piddly the debuff was and how nice the DoT was, I quickly switched. I especially notice this melting things when I use my AoEs, of which I have quite a few to pick from in rad blast and dark mastery...

    Judgement - Void Radial Final Judgement: I'm often hovering just above melee range anyway for soul drain and irradiate, adding another AoE that doesn't even require me to pick a live target (and with how quick things die nowadays, that can take time!) is great. The fact that after I hit them hard the damage from the return fire against my poor defender HP is cut in half, or nearly so, only adds more win. It also meshes very well thematically with dark mastery. As a side note, seeing Judgement's damage buffed by both Alpha and Interface is very nice, but unrelated to the choice of judgement power.

    Destiny - Clarion Core Epiphany: Perma mez protection so my debuffs won't drop? Yes, please, right now! I did not think this would help much in teams (aside from how much keeping my AoE debuffs up more already helps), but it seems more uncommon than Rebirth or Barrier and I've noticed more than a few times how much smoother it is for some of the controllers near my door during the BAF escapees phase to just run to the door and PBAoE mez without fearing the damned confuse there... (This is the one slot I only have a rare for Dr.Gamma, all others got their very rare slotted).

    Lore - Warworks Radial Superior Ally: I was of the opinion the pets were pretty similar, so for once I picked the one I liked more for the character. Scientist summoning an invulnerable floating ball of buffing and a "female" curvy killer robot with dual blades looked orders of magnitude cooler than any of the other options (even if they're all "essences"). Besides, I wanted a melee-focused pet to slap AVs/EBs on the face when solo and hold their attention away from me, like my own pocket scrapper or an infinite amount of Alpha Wolves/Shivans/etc. Finding out that Vicky added even more debuffs to the mix was nice, but honestly, I already debuff quite well, and finding out that my invulnerable floating gizmo of +5% def also adds even more mez protection along with its heal is nice, too, but since I went Clarion, it isn't game changing in 99% of the situations, I guess. I considered going seers for the buffs, but I honestly have no trouble at all hitting stuff and I already buff my damage considerably, plus they're not all scrapperish melee and not half as cool as Vicky. I also considered going for the other options with more AoE, but I figured I got the AoE covered, what I want the occasional pet for is for harder targets.

    For my FF/Son/Psy, when/if I get him into more I20 stuff, I'm going for:

    Alpha - Cardiac Core Paragon: helps him everywhere
    Interface - Reactive Radial Flawless or maybe Diamagnetic Radial Flawless
    Judgement - Pyronic Core Final: moar AoE damage to plug that hole
    Destiny - Rebirth Radial Epiphany: all I need for more unkillability
    Lore - Clockwork Core Superior Ally: still on the +dmg, +AoE track and I'm sure I can keep both alive for their duration with bubbles + rebirth.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pyrthas View Post
    Process of elimination gives me Ageless, and hey, the debuff res on the right side of the tree partially fills a hole in FF anyway [...]
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Pyrthas View Post
    Sadly, you can't get both debuff res and recovery at once, but oh well. Like I said earlier, I'm pretty sure I'll go for the debuff res.
    Are you sure the debuff res part of Ageless ADDS the debuff to your/your team's attacks (that looks more like an Interface thing), or somehow debuffs enemies? (I think Destiny only affects allies, not enemies...)

    Or are there any hidden powers that do -res in ff/dark/dark that could be improved?

    Because I was under the strong impression that the +85% debuff res in Ageless only improves upon -res powers you already have, instead of adding a new effect somewhere (If my FF/Sonic goes incarnate, the ageless -res does look very appealing).

    But I could be wrong, anyone know for sure?

    If my impression is right, you might be better served by going for the end side of Ageless... Even if your end is already under control, +recharge usually means you're eating up end much faster...
  7. I always remap so WASD are moving and -turning- and Q and E are strafing. But I hardly ever use those keys.

    I hate having to use the mouse during the action, so I use the arrow keys to move around* and leave my left hand completely free to hit tab/esc to select or deselect targets and 1, 2 3, 4, 5 and 6, with or without alt, to activate lots of powers quickly. Left hand also has the thumb over space and x for vertical movement, turns auto run on and off or does straffing in the very rare times I need it in this game (usually I only move laterally if I'm looking for a glowie or something).

    I only ever use WASD if I have to move and use the mouse quickly, as in time-critical glowies/doors (very rare) or when I know I'll use some power that is in tray 3 (or 4... Or 5 nowadays with incarnate stuff!), like charging into a group and EMP Pulsing them (I hardly ever need EMP pulse, so it was relegated to tray 3... I can usually hit it with the mouse quick enough if I need it as a panic button).




    *Arrows to move makes total sense to me! I almost always remap other games, if possible, so the arrow keys are movement, unless something other than movement - like crazy key sequences for special moves like in fighting games - is complicated enough that it will require me to use my dominant, right hand. Then WASD is movement sans strafe... I've hate shooters for over a decade now, so I've always thought the way I use it was the default for movement, until I saw this thread!
  8. DrGamma

    Fixed Rewards?

    I only started playing with I20 on thursday. Over the weekend, I played a lot with my rad/rad defender on Freedom, always on full or nearly full teams.

    I didn't record every drop, but by the time I unlocked each slot, I usually had enough salvage to craft the uncommon for that slot and a little extra (I got rares immediatelly slotted in everything by converting all astral merits to threads and threads to common components - before we had the great downgrade option - and I did craft one rare with uncommons+threads+inf and 1 rare with empyrean merits). By the end of the weekend, I even had 1 very rare from a reward table stored. I also got rares from joining successful master runs for both trials.

    Then yesterday I did 1 BAF and 1 Lambda after the patch (both were regular runs), got 1 rare and 1 very rare and crafted his second and third very rare powers (now it's only destiny with just a rare). It's a very small sample of post-patch reward rolls, but it sure felt nice.

    My brother, who's been playing a ST-focused scrapper on Freedom in full teams since I20 launched, tells me he's had similar results.

    I only started playing I20 stuff with my crab, on Champion, on monday though. While it wasn't hard to find full teams for the BAF, people there seem to hate Lambda passionately and the three times I ran it, it was with very small teams:
    - 1st time we had 8, I led, we almost failed after doing everything pretty standard because Marauder reinforcements (yes, we closed all the doors, eventually) were very spread out instead of dying to AoE and kept messing us up. After we regrouped and let the reinforcements bunch up to die, we did pretty well.
    - 2nd time we had 7 (1 just filled for us then dropped) and it was a pretty standard run, except that we missed one of the acids in the warehouse (by seconds!) and had to get it outside.
    - 3rd time we had 9, and it was an amazing PUG, everybody knew exactly what to do and the run was perfect.

    So, in Champion, it was always small groups for Lambda. I got ixp faster in the small groups with my crab than in the larger groups with my defender in the same trial (and both are very AoE-centric and actually do similar damage after accounting for the alpha slot), and I did not notice any discrepancy in the reward tables. My Crab is getting lots of uncommons, just like my defender did. No one in our small teams mentioned getting the threads reward.

    With all the trials I've run for my defender and crab, before and after the patch, I only ever got the threads reward once, in a Lambda run with my defender, when I got pretty lost in the warehouse, was always behind the team and only helped with a couple boxes there. It still pissed me off, because I felt I participated a lot in all other stages of the trial.

    But that, and what other people who got the threads reward told me, got me thinking about a theory. I have no evidence and I don't feel like experimenting, but I'm -THINKING- one of the factors in the participation formula might be how much you stuck together to at least some of your teamates. It would work well against door sitters, too.

    I've heard of people whose trial went well, everything got done, but everyone was doing their own thing far from the others and several got threads.

    I know the one time I got threads was the time I spent a considerable amount of time away from every other person in the team (but I was moving around looking for the objectives and often hitting powers - usually to heal myself).

    So, I guess my question (to add more anedoctal evidence for or against my crackpot theory) to you guys who got threads is: did you spend most of the time with 2 or 3 teamates around you, or were you doing your own thing away from the team for a considerable amount of time (even if it was productive, unlike that one time I got lost)? If you were alone a lot, that could be it, and tell us what not to do. Or I could be totally wrong...
  9. The first time, we were doing pretty good even with the constant disconnects... Until the game cheated and disconnected/crashed half the league in one go (me included)!

    I guess that allowed us to clear up memory and stuff, so the second time was really smooth... Maybe for the next master runs, we should all close and restart the client or something. <.<

    The second time, we took him down well under 15 minutes, I think (at least my Lore pets were showing they still had a while to go before I could resummon).

    So, thanks a bunch. Both runs were fun, and with the second one I got my badge, and even enough stuff to craft my first very rare. Hope to team with you guys again.
  10. I'm logging in now to see if I can help with the MoBAF.
  11. It went down down. Even the server status page was showing it as down for about half an hour, I think (even though the server list still showed it as two yellow). You got lucky.
  12. It's back up, and my reward table is still there waiting for me, so it looks like the quick crash wasn't so bad, no rollbacks or anything.
  13. I know the leader got a rare reward table (I think it was only his second since I20 went live). I was down for only a common too.
  14. Put me down for the MoLambda, with my namesake Dr.Gamma (50+2 rad/rad defender)
  15. And it crashed at the exact moment we finished a Lambda run, too, so I bet there are at least a few players worried about what happens to their reward choice now.

    I sure hope it comes back up soon (as opposed to "on monday"...)
  16. Hey, at least one good thing about this is that bubblers and stuff like SoA maneuvers or even stacks of regular maneuvers or those tiny def stealth aura-type powers can actually help everybody nowadays. It was getting to the point where defense team buffs were useless most of the time because everybody was at or very close to the def soft cap.

    But I still would prefer the enemies were using something like an auto-hit AoE def debuff, instead of everybody having +to-hit. This way SR's great trick of DDR (shared in lesser amounts with other defense sets, but not with those who come by most of their defense using pools and set bonuses) would still give it some edge. It would still make outside buffs very useful in these team situations without making the defense sets feel so targeted.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus View Post
    I dare you to take a resistance or regen based scrapper - build for zero defense (that includes no katana/BS) and then take it on the ITF and see how much fun that is.
    Done it a few times with my Claws/Regen Scrapper and it was fun. I think I always got lucky with good PUGs, though, so that helped.

    I usually fall two or three times on average per run when I get careless, but promptly revive, MoG and keep kicking a**.

    She's not IOed for defense at all. I only hit 50 with her recently, but I purposefully decided to go with a non-def build just to learn/evaluate survival with only regen/heals, since most of my other characters are indeed built for defense. She does have CJ (cause it's CJ!) and Weave (was running out of good powers to pick), giving a puny 10% def (outside the few seconds of MoG godhood, of course) but I doubt that counts as building for defense...

    The main difference when playing her, though, is that I have to dedicate a lot of my attention to surviving and frequently use every trick I get (Reconstruction, DP, IH, MoG, AoE KB, ST KD...) to stay alive, while with other characters I can focus more on dealing damage instead and just take survival for granted. But she's very fun to play like that, when I'm in the mood.

    I also tanked the ITF with my /DA scrapper once and we did pretty good. It was my first ITF too, I think, so I didn't know about Romi's stunning rez and got dettogled and massacred once because of that, but otherwise, I don't really remember dying. Being /DA, though, she does have some defense, but once again I did not build for it, so she's far from the softcap. All her defenses are in the 20%-25% range I think...
  17. I'd go with Cardiac as well. It made a huge difference for my DA scrapper.
  18. Is Judgement affected by Fury? I thought it ignored all global +dam/+acc/-end and other bonuses, except for what you have in your Alpha (it also ignores Alpha's recharge).
  19. Duh, I can't believe I forgot Masterminds. Yeah, Bots rule (as do Traps), but with MMs I think quite a few combos can work. I think I saw, ages ago, a post about a /poison MM soloing GMs, but I can't remember the primary. Nowadays it will take a bit more micromanagement to keep the pets away from melee (if they start dying in melee, which won't always happen, I guess), but they're still good.

    I haven't really had much trouble finding teams for my Mercs/Dark MM (despite Mercs' bad rep) for incarnate stuff, but I haven't tried the new trials yet. Speeding with him makes me feel like a leecher since the pets die ASAP and I don't contribute much damage, but I can still help with the debuffs/heal/rez/controls even when it's not a good time for resummoning yet.

    An unrelated question: Is anyone else having trouble with the forums today? Mine are sloooow! When I clicked submit on my previous answer, there were only 3 answers to this thread, when I finally saw it, there were all the others already...
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sloshed View Post
    From what I've read you need very good defenses as well as some heavy -regen to keep on the GM to down it.
    You don't necessarily need high defenses if the GM never shoots at you, that's why ye ole Illusion/Rad controller was a staple of AV/GM soloing even before IOs were introduced. Rad has AM that helps you get Phantom Army perma and debuffs that increase it's damage, plus Lingering Radiation to put a huge dent in anything's regen. You only need to be able to survive aggro in the interval while recasting PA (and that can often be done with tactics instead of high defense or the like). Phantasm used to help more with damage (and his Decoy even helped with aggro sometimes) before the AI change that now makes him rush to melee often despite having no melee attacks. You yourself (as opposed to your pets) won't be doing as much damage as other controllers might, though, because I don't think Illusion controllers can get immob anywhere for containment (do GMs have the immob/sleep hole too? I'm not even sure), even if they go for patron powers, but an Ill/Rad would still be a solid choice, and I have -always- seen them be very welcome in teams (funny how KB haters don't complain about illusion's pets...)

    As for other controllers/dominators, I don't think you could go the route of letting your pet take all the beating, because not being indestructible they might not take it too well, and the tough ones who might do it (Say, Stoney with Thermal shields, heals, buffs and even debuffs) might not keep the GM aggro as tightly on them as PA does - but I never tried it, so this is pure speculation. And actually looking up how crazy good Thermal is to post this, I'm feeling like trying that out now! Cold is a great alternative to Rad in the debuffing (and even pet/ally buffing) department, even if it won't help with your PA recharge. I've seen people do crazy things with Cold domination (so I think it's funny when I see teams waiting for rads specifically... Even though my main character IS a Rad!) Not saying the other buff/debuff sets are not worth it, but I don't know enough about them in this particular context to discuss it.

    If you wanna go at them without counting on pets for your survival with a controller/dominator, you certainly could buff up your defenses with IOs and resistances with tough and epic shields (controllers even get mez protection that you can perma, and dominators get, of course, domination). But I personally wouldn't go for them in this case, instead I'd pick a corruptor (better damage) or defender (better debuffs, good damage solo nowadays) to outfit with all those extra defenses. Rad and cold continue to be great options for debuffing here, and for blasts the default is to go sonic (lots of -res stacking to buff up damage), fire on corrs (for straight up damage) or maybe ice (to slow enemies to a crawl and it has lots of quick-activating damage too, but less than fire). I'm moderately sure, though, that people can make other combinations work as well. Defenders and corruptors are always welcome in teams (more like hunted down and dragged into teams, actually, from what I've seen).

    High damage blasters (fire comes to mind) with Drain Psyche for the regen debuff have soloed GMs (I think Silverado did it, using inspirations to top up his defense - he couldn't make a build, then, with enough recharge, damage and everything else he needed AND soft capped defenses, so he settled for 1 small purple short of the softcap). Maybe a Psi Dom with Drain Psyche, now that their single target blasts got buffed, could do it too, but I really do not know if they'd have enough damage output.

    Maybe melee characters could do it too, I've certainly seen them trashing AVs and stuff solo, but I'm not sure even the best can get enough damage output to counter a GM's regen even with whatever weak debuffs they can get their hands on (including envenomed dagger). But maybe it's doable, once again I don't know. If you wanna go that route, I'd ask in the scrapper forums, they're good at this stuff.

    Regardless of AT and build, though, I'm pretty sure soloing GMs is gonna require a little (or more than a little) trial and error, some luck (so maybe more than one try even after you have the strategy for that monster down) and there may be some that will be stronger against your damage type or strategy and you might not beat at all.

    All of this is without considering incarnate abilites (don't think they've been around long enough for the GM hunters to tell us much about them yet).

    As a final note, search for Silverado's threads, he's one of the guys that posted about his AV/GM smacking with a bunch of different ATs, if I remember right.
  21. I always thought how well two or three of my characters would go together, but never thought of a full team before, so I liked the idea behind this thread. Then I just couldn't decide who I'd pick for the team! I think any combination of 8 of them would work, but I'd pick (in this order):

    1) Dr.Gamma (Rad/Rad/Dark Def): for the debuffs, AM, leadership and some AoE

    2) Mr.Volkano (Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker): MOAR AoE, HPs and a good self heal

    3) Vibror (FF/Son/Psy Def): to make the tank godly, the team very tough, tasty -res (AoE and ST) and an AoE KD

    4) Amanda Savoie (Crab): MOAR (crazy) AoE, MOAR buffs, pets, debuffs, tough gal

    5) Addler. (Ill/Kin/Earth Troller): for the pet Chaos. And capped damage for all. And a great AoE heal

    6) Shadowfists (Dark/SR/Body Stalker): Great ST Damage

    7) Andromeda Huntress (Spines/Dark/Body Scrapper): Damn I like AoE, and she's very tough too (with all these buffs and debuffs, she could certainly tank the psi baddies when needed)

    Last spot was the toughest to pick, very tough to decide between the Warshade for his versatile damage/toughness/control options, the blaster or the claws/regen for more damage (plus regen+FF is delicious!) or the MM for more debuffs, control, healing, mass rez and damage from the pets. In the end, the idea of lots of pets with all this extra defense and buffs (most of these characters picked from the leadership pool either before or after inherent stamina) was too good to pass up, so:

    8) Justicer (Dark/Mercs/Soul MM): debuffs, control, heal, rez, buffed-up pets, more psi resist.

    I'd really like to play in that team. Just the ammount of stacked assault (mostly unecessary most of the time with FS, but still good for lonely AVs and the like) and defense (looks like it's above the cap even versus Apex and Tin Mage Praetorians) makes me drool. The AoE would melt mobs. Lots of moderately tough people with self heals (and a couple of aggressive self rezzes) made much tougher with FF. Debuffs, controls, pets, heal, even a (likely unnecessary) rez power... Pity my Fire/Cold blaster and my DP/Sonic Corr aren't close to 50 yet to join that team, though.

    Hmmm... Maybe I should trade the spines/dark for the warshade after all... GAH... picking this team is hard! I'll just stop now and leave the scrapper there, telling myself it's for her anti-psi goodness!
  22. Before the advent of incarnate stuff, I played mostly solo and always loved knockback except on my squishies who depend on things being nicely bunched near anchors (such as my rad/rad defender). I adored KB on my En/Dev blaster, it made my Claws scrapper much more durable and Nova's KB was what saved my WS's behind many times when he met a void/quantum before having his hold or dwarf form. The only time it annoyed me a bit was when PA and Phantasm decided to knock EVERYONE away JUST before my FS! But that was rare and my controller was often walking around damage-capped, even solo.

    (And I assume KD doesn't count in this discussion, 'cause EVERYONE loves KD, right? It was pure joy for my /Axe Tanker, for instance.)

    Anyway, then I started teaming more to get shards and components and stuff and, not having teamed much before (especially not large teams with strangers), I subconciously started behaving like I believed two of the most widespread prejudices I had heard of before: that KB sucks in large teams and that Stalkers don't bring as much as other ATs. My En/Dev Blaster and my DM/SR Stalker where my last 50s to get something slotted in their alpha, I only did it this week. Both prejudices, of course, proved false...

    My stalker, as I kinda guessed, was very tough fighting large mobs of Cimerorans (seeing my DDR working for its pay was great, he only died once in two runs, in a speed run, because the RNG was evil while he was surrounded alone by a large mob of bosses) and I did contribute pretty decent damage even in a steamrolling team, even though it took me a bit to figure out how (picking my AS or auto-crit targets faster but still properly and only ASing very tough baddies, plus abusing Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu - which actually made a mini AoE chain with enough global recharge, accuracy and +to hit).

    What surprised me most, though, was my blaster. At first I was being very careful with my KB AoEs, mostly picking single targets to maul and send flying... But as I kept using the AoEs now and then, I noticed they did not disrupt the team as much as I thought they would, and didn't even disrupt my following AoEs. I don't know if Cims have some KB resistance, if my hovering above the battle (for survival really, not as an anti-KB thing) helped a lot, or if the controller(s) were keeping the baddies glued to the floor... What it looked like to me, though, is that there were so many Cims on top of our melee guys all the time, and more running towards them all the time, that despite the amount I knocked away, there were always enough for the meleers to smash or cut, and always enough for my following AoEs. Things were dying VERY fast in that run, and I wasn't even the only source of KB (we also had illusion pets and a PB). It was a ton of fun, and an education about the non-evils of KB!

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SlaveDawg View Post
    Then on the flip side, an example of when I dislike it is when I play my Spines/Inv Scrapper because I am almost all AoE damage and if you knock them away I suffer in two ways. One, I lose a lot of DPS because now the mobs are spread all over the place and my attacks miss most of the mobs, and two I lose a lot defense and survivability because no one is in my Invulnerability power to help boost my Defense.
    With my Spines/Dark, external KB never messed up my damage... because she always runs ahead and shoots first! By the time the rest of the team caught up to me, I had grabbed a ton of aggro by mauling the baddies with Throw Spines from afar and Spine Burst in their midst. Only by the time SB did damage were the baddies being scattered by KB from the team, but since they were around me when I activated the power, it still worked out, and there were usually still a few left around me to pull out a needed heal. Then I'd hunt a clump of two or three survivors (hopefully including a boss or two) to rip with Ripper and move on to the next mob, hardly ever even needing to do any cleaning up with my ST attacks (even though it's always a joy impaling the back of some runner from a distance), unless there was an AV involved.

    Even her heal, that requires having people around, was hardly ever messed up by KB... After a couple LGTFs and one ITF that she tanked, I think she only died once due to me hitting her heal just after everyone who surrounded her had been blown away by KB and someone hit me from afar with a pretty hard ranged attack. She also died to Hami and once before I figured out about Rommy's stunning rez, but that had nothing to do with KB...

    So... Long story short... I now enjoy KB both solo AND in teams, whether I'm the one doing it, or the one meleeing people that are being thrown on their backs.
  23. I'm not really sure about the worst... I never had the guts to play the lower burst damage/lethal stalker sets (or maybe I just got lucky). But from your description and how it looks on paper against the wrong enemies, claws does seem to be way down there. I'm curious though: don't DB and NS share that problem, to a smaller degree maybe? Both are all lethal damage with faster attacks that don't seem to hit so hard (compared to, say, BS).

    For the best ones though, for ST damage (with a side dish of extra survivabilty) I'd say DM is at the top. MA does more damage on paper and kicks a**, coming a close second, but the mobs who resist dark noticeably are much rarer (though they do tend to resist it a lot) than those who resist smashing, and that's still not as bad as lethal. In the old days, people were crazy about EnM stalkers and they looked good playing them, but for whatever reason I hardly ever see them discussed nowadays... I never got around to playing one, but I wonder what happened to the set's rep.

    Now, if we're talking AoE, ElM is hailed as the best set for Stalkers (better than spines): nice damage type, nice tricks and, thanks to AS's burst ST damage, it doesn't loose so much in the ST department as badly as it does for other ATs. My Electric stalker is still in his pre-DO baby steps, though, so I'm going by third party accounts and how it looks on paper.
  24. That's weird... Doc Delilah is a 20-24 contact and Vahz do spawn at the right level in her arc. http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Doc_Delilah

    I can't open the game right now to check, so maybe I'm crazy here, but I was pretty sure I did her arc and Agent G's with a couple of my Praetorians a while back, by clicking on Temblor to introduce me to her... Thinking hard, I believe the one thing we are doing different is that I completed Keith's arc before doing anything else, as soon as I got to Talos. Maybe you need to do that one (sort of a "gain our trust, being from another universe" thing)? I never saw anyone mentioning you had to, though, so maybe my mind is playing some trick on me...
  25. Never!

    I mean... Why would you? Especially since you mentioned slots are not a problem (with all the servers we got, plus extra slots, and more servers coming over, I don't get this problem of too few slots - that would be a whole lot of characters! - unless you are adamant about playing only with the same crowd in the same server), what do you gain by deleting? By NOT deleting, you keep the result of whatever time you invested in the character (and not just levels and loot, but also the story and costumes and all that), even if you decide not to play it much anymore.

    Personally, I never created a character I haven't liked. Even the ones that are sitting at level 12 for some 3 years I still like, I just like the other ones even better. There may be characters I might have enjoyed more if I had used a different, previously non-existant powerset, or some optimal combination of powersets I did not think of at the time, or a less silly name... but I still enjoy playing them all. And, now that I'm actually teaming in TFs and the WST to get incarnate stuff, it seems my team mates enjoy me playing any of my characters, too.

    Plus, like you said, powersets can and do improve now and then. Look what happened to Fire Armor... The second character I created was a Fire/Fire tanker who sat as a lowbie for years... Then they fixed FA and bam!, his journey to 50 was a blast, and quick, and now he's probably my favorite melee character (maybe tied with my Spines/DA Scrapper, but does spines really count as melee?).

    Sorry if the answer was the opposite of what you asked... :-/