Eisenzahn

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POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS!!!





I recall reading in game that the Rikti Invasion hit Praetorian Earth first accidentally, but quickly retreated (whether due to a superior military response from the Praetorians, or quickly realising they'd hit the wrong place, I don't know). I'll have to look for where exactly, though. But since the Rikti were seeking revenge on the Nemesis Robot versions of the Freedom Phalanx, it makes sense that they'd get confused if they found Praetoria first. Anyway, I've always assumed that the Praetorians themselves found their way to our Earth by following the Rikti's trail, since the Praetorian's first contact (Issue 1) followed the Rikti Invasion (just before release) so closely.

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Hasten does nothing for WP? How so?

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WP only has two click powers. Resurgence, that the majority of player seem to skip anyway (and frankly, if you're dying often enough to need it more than every 300 seconds, you're doing something wrong), and Strength of Will, that ignores recharge buffs if I recall correctly. Its other powers are Toggles and Passives. And of the Toggles, only Rise to the Challenge gets shut off when you're mezzed, so it's the only one where recharge has even a tiny tactical impact.

It depends a tremendous amount on how Badges are handled. I'd love to see my main Villain Badger become my main Overall Badger, and she's close enough to the shallow end of the Evil Pool that I could see her jumping over into the Hot Tub of Heroism. But not if she couldn't jump back, and hold onto the greater portion of her badge earnings on both sides (obviously excluding things like most accolades).

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But how hard is it to cap resistance on a brute without granite?

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This. The only brute I have at 50 is my Elec Armor and the only resist he can cap is Energy... even with Power Surge.

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Really? You may want to re check your numbers. With no resistance slotted in Power Surge, and three Resistance SOs each in Charged Armor and Conductive Shield, I'm able to hit 90% resistance to Smashing, Lethal, Energy (obviously), Fire and Cold. Negative Energy is at 75.9, Toxic at 52.5, and Psi isn't increased by Power Surge.

My current actual Elec/Elec build manages to cap everything but Psi while using Power Surge, including Toxic... although I owe 15% total bonus Toxic Resistance to three of my four Purple sets, so that's really a bit out there. But that IS with only three slots in Power Surge, each with a Res/Recharge IO. Between that, and all my other recharge bonuses, I cap all but one resistance type and manage to have it available every 380 seconds, without Hasten. Or just a little over twice its uptime. The ultimate point being, my Brute is more consistent, but my SR with all positional defenses soft capped is still miles ahead in survival, because I was able to get him to that sort of Tier 9 Mitigation constantly, where my Brute had to spend 1.4 billion in IOs to scrape up 15% Toxic resistance and a few Negative Energy bonuses here and there. Soft Capped Defense definitely pulls ahead in practical use.

How do these powers actually animate? Do they use the same sort of guns as AR (aside from Body Armor, of course)?

Soul Mastery isn't universally considered inferior to Leviathan. In fact, for a SS/WP, Soul would have been my first suggestion, because /WP has Quick Recovery to help with the high cost of running Darkest Night. For SS/WP, Leviathan would have been my last suggestion, since hopping around to get cone positioning can interfere so much with your +Regen from RttC. Opening up with all those cones is just going to invite ranged retaliation when one of your strongest defenses is at its weakest. I really don't know what the people you were talking to were thinking.

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I'd like a water blast and water control set.

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Likewise. And Sea Monster MM with Watery Blasts, if only so I could finally use the name H2Overlord.

Just got back from it. It was pretty bad. Definitely felt like the sort of thing where they cranked out a lot of action figures and promotional material, and then remembered at the last minute to have a script written. I wish I hadn't paid to see it, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. Our money will only empower them to do this again... only next time to Magneto.

The only thing that I really wanted to do in my main arc, and wasn't able to figure out some other just as solid technique for, was have a specific Elite Boss spawn as an ambush. I very much agree with this suggestion.

As for the idea of flagging certain enemies to not appear... what I do is make a custom group with everyone from the regular group except the ones I want to exclude, and then change the group name only slightly. A period or a space, a lowercase L instead of an uppercase I, etc.

Should have added this several days ago, but I've been too busy on the test server to check the forums much. Copied from the original post somewhere on page 5 now...

So here's the idea behind the Virtue Architects channel. As soon as Issue 14 goes live, all channels are going to be swamped. Broadcast, Help, and most major server Globals are going to be hit hard. Virtue Architects is a place to direct that initial wave... and hopefully, once things quiet down, it will be a good community for those of us who get attached to this new toy long-term.

Things to do in Virtue Architects?

- Talk about your story ideas and get help plotting things out.

- Ask for advice on more system-oriented concerns, like getting different objectives to string together properly or making the most out of your limited per-arc memory space.

- Look for people to playtest your works in progress.

- Encourage people to play your published arcs, although moderation in this is key here. Spamming will not be tolerated.

- Find out what high quality arcs are out there that may not have yet risen to the top of the rankings. If you play a relatively unheard of arc that's fun, be sure to tell the group!

Obviously, given the cross-server nature of the Mission Architect feature, it's really not required that members be from Virtue Server. It's highly likely that Virtue players will be putting out more and higher quality story arcs on average than anyone else, and this channel welcomes anyone who plays mostly on other servers who would still like to tap into Virtue's creative community. Keeping it server-focused will really help in the planning stage though, since it's far easier to test someone's unpublished mission by meeting them and teaming up than it is to e-mail them a copy of the relevant files.

The rules, such as they are, are pretty straightforward. Stay on topic, avoid profanity, be respectful towards other posters, don't spam, and redirect any arguments that do arise to /tells if possible. Memberhsip is currently open to everyone, so give us a look it it sounds like fun to you!

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I think it was that they can change the name if there is a copyright problem, not just change the name.

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So If I copyright my SG name I can get the GM's to change it?

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you may have trouble copyrighting a name that was created inside a game system owned by someone else...

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What if I also "created" it with a leaky pen on an IHOP napkin, and bribed the waitress to countersign verification of a fabricated date before my subscription began?

Yes... yes... the plan is good. Now I just need to get the plutonium and 150 lbs. of industrial carpet shampoo... yesss...

Villain Patrons Pools allowing respecs, followed closely by Price Changes and removal of Raiding Restrictions for Base Construction.

That said... that's not much. What I'm mainly pleased with, I consider long overdue fixes to old problems more than New Features. Most of the other changes of the past year have left me pretty unimpressed, and several have made me actively unhappy. I maintain hope that the Mission Architect will make up for all of that, but that's a new year. If I had to rate 2008 overall I'd give it a 4 out of 10. There were some nice things, but it definitely fell short of expectations.

Wow! That's a whole lot of guide, and every bit of it worth reading! The very instant Archery and Trick Arrows get ported over to Corruptors, I'm rolling one. The combination of the Defender AT modifiers and inherent as well as my general preference for Redside Content are all that's standing in the way.

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I can't wait to see all of SGs that create a mission and force players to run it before they can be initiated into the SG.

I imagine a good portion of these will be the same ones that blind SG invite people in Atlas.

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I'd imagine just the opposite. Blind inviting people in Atlas represents the absolute lowest possible bid for recruitment. Actually creating a story arc and expecting recruits to go through it suggests a much greater level of commitment, whether the arc is designed to be painfully difficult (to weed out only sufficiently competent players), or some kind of roleplaying tie-in, or just an in-game tutorial for SG rules. Something like this... <NPC made to look and speak like the SG leader>: "Thanks for helping me defeat those Council Troops, Awesome Guy! I'm heading back to the Justice Lounge now, and if you'll come by later you can fill out some official membership paperwork and get access to our full set of Teleporters, Med Bay, storage for Salvage, Inspirations and Enhancements, and recreation facilities. We just ask that you maintain proper decorum in the official communication channel (OOC: SG and Coalition chat are In Character please), and wear your team badge around so people can see you're working with us (OOC: Please play in SG mode until level 25)", would be a bit more fun than the standard rundown of the rules.

Sooo... no invite for me, looks like. And my updater keeps crashing. Anyone who's managed to load the patch able to confirm the existence of any proliferated powersets (unlikely), new costume bits (hopefully), or other stuff that can be viewed from character creation without actually being in the beta?

Nice! Mission Architect is the first thing in a long while to get me as excited as the initial City of Villains launch. Now that I can take a direct hand in generating content, I'm hoping the disparity between Hero and Villain content will feel less overwhelming.

The New Contact bug is a welcome fix. Several of my characters have hit the Max Story Arcs Cap because of that issue, and going back to clear out arcs that are ten to twenty levels old is no fun at all.

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Yeah Ex, could you please let us know if there is anything new going on or if this is the same rewards and missions from the last couple years?

THANKS!

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We were not able to schedule in a live update to this event this year, so please plan accordingly with mains and alts to enjoy the event as you desire.

Regards,

Ex

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You're seriously kidding, yeah?

Well, looks like the whole reason I kept my account active for February instead of waiting until I14 released was a [censored] mistake. Thanks for nothing, hope you enjoy my $15.

That is the most excellent use of the base editor I think I've ever seen! It has inspired me to start construction on a Gorilla-like giant using mostly Arcane Blocks. Time to get out the graph paper and put together some plans...

Group Name - The Captain Mako Appreciation Society and Scrapbooking Club

Server - Virtue

Side - Villains

Approximate Size/Cost - Around 3.5 million, currently on the default plot, expanding greatly the moment I13 goes live.

Anything else peritnent - In game contact is @Eisenzahn. Base leader (and sole active member) is Lunaticia. I'll probably need a few days to get it back looking nice... I preemptively disassembled the darn thing down to just essential components, before they announced the automatic refund. Anyway, I'd need extra time to expand into the full new plot size even if I hadn't impatiently torn everything else down. At least now, it'll go quicker with the new stacking rules.

Hooray for Synapse!

You're assuming the role of my Brute's very favorite Hero to beat the crap out of. I hope that makes you feel welcome and comfortable :-D

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I thought that was "Phil the fixer"


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Was it? Oh no! Have I been offering creepily ambiguous and italicised favors to the wrong guy?

Are you the guy who fixed Chain Induction?!

I... I may owe you favors for that. Of the sort that shouldn't be spoken of openly. Call me. We'll negotiate something.

So, I wonder what badges or conditions you have to satisfy to unlock the Blue Steel shield, and if it will be available on both sides? I'd love to have a villain carrying around a shield they yanked right off of one of Paragon's most notorious heroes. Also, I wonder what the Rularuu shield will look like. As soon as open beta starts, I'm going to have to pester someone into letting me mooch a lowbie brute through the Technician Naylor story arc that unlocks those, since I think that's the only way to get Rularuu items that early.

Mostly though, I wonder how dangerous Blue Steel is going to be when my villains finally encounter him in game!