EmperorSteele

Richie has less resist against Psi and Toxic damage. Bring plenty of psi blasters, spines scrapers, and Mind Controllers. Grab a tank you can take some pain and you're good.

nnnnuuuuuuuuuuu i r t3h nerfed!!!!!!

... or i can pop a red to hit the damage cap. No biggie.

Actually, a lot of stalkers are throwing out a high-damage hold, and as soon as it hits, follow up with an attack. By the time you target them, a SECOND comes out of nowhere with an AS and you're done.

True, that's two stalkers working together (or stealing eachother's kills), but still, dying in two hits from unseen sources stops being fun after a while.

Yet another reminder for me to update the guide =)

Everything in the guide should still be valid, except for maybe some of the PvP changes. Nothing about Mind or Kin has been altered at all in the last few years. Some of the infor IS outdated though, I'll need to fix it.... Also, thanks to us getting new boards last month, the formating is mucked up, which may make it harder to read... i'm fixing that as I type this.

Regardless, welcome to the game! If you ever have any questiosn feel free to ask!

I say, use Mass Hypnosis, follow up with MC and Terrify. This means that if and when they launch their one allowed attack, it won't be aimed at you. But you wont lose much XP because they only get the one attack.

Mind you (heh), enemies only usually have a 50% chance to hit. so there's a good chance that they won't be hitting eachother all that much.

Also, since MC is on a hideously long recharge, you really CAN'T use it enough to lose a significant amount of XP from lost kills unless you take forever to solo a small group.

A few things:

Mesmerize: Sleep only lasts 4 seconds by default in PvP. So the sleep set is only good for the bonuses. Just an FYI. I would otherwise suggest slotting it as an attack.

You can either get rid of, or remove a few slots in, TK. In PvP, it only has a 10 second duration (or maybe its 15... i forget, but it's short and finite as opposed to in PvE). You can probably use one of those slots in Tactics to get a damage bonus, which seems to be what you're going for with your slotting.

In Stamina, as long as you're using a Performance Shifter proc, put in 2 more P.S. IOs so you can get some decent set bonuses.

Hurricane: Just use one full set of one of the sets you have in there: You might as well, since you're not stacking any bonuses. True, you get a better amount of -ToHit, but thanks to Diminishing Returns it probably won't help much. I'd also try to add some KB in there to help knock away your foes. KB, while any decent PvPer will have mitigation against it, is great against anyone or anything that doesn't have resist against it.

Try to fit freezing rain into your build. True, it won't slow anyone down... but if you cast it at your feet, it'll be another tool you can use to keep stalkers off your butt while you take care of other matters.

That's all that jumps out at me... looks fairly solid otherwise.

I always have a concept before delving into the creator. Only 2 concepts made sense as Tanks: A Stone/Stone that was supposed to be a rogue Troll, but my interest was sidelined by other things. Then I made an Invuln Tanker... i picked EM as the secondary, because I felt that SS was overdone paired with Invuln. However, even though I've leveled her to 50 and I'm IOing her out, I've found that it's not the best combo (I've got capped def, but one AoE later, half of my foes are wandering away and it's like getting hit with a huge debuff. BLARG!). Still, I like the character a lot =)

Well, looks like I won't be doing this... get nothing but teamwipes on heroic. Can't seem to keep anyone interested in doing all 6 missions if we can't even beat the 1st. Ah well, good luck to the other participants!

You know, I just crafted one the other day, but then it spat me into the respec screen with no warning! So I exited out, but now I can't find it anywhere =(

Otherwise i'd be tempted to sell it.

Also, if you feel like being a good Samaritan, how about rolling for some common and uncommon salvage? Won't get you as much inf/merit, but you can still make some decent cash (some commons are going for 100,000!) Of course, being a "good" Samaritan doesn't mean listing everything at "1". You can still demand a high price and, as long as demand outweighs supply, someone will buy your bid eventually.

You'll especially want to look for Ceramic Armor Plates and Mathmatic Proofs =)

Terrify prevents enemies from acting UNTIL they've been HIT.

So if you're on a team with blasters, it's useless because the foes will be able to get a full attack chain off by being hit every tenth of a second. Solo, they're locked down, but you don't get any containment damage from attacking them.

Yeah, but by level 50 I'll have moar slots =)

So wait, are you level capping the event at 31, then?

I'm in! Hopefully i can get to 50 fast enough...

I SUBMIT: Death Poll (as Deadpool. Kat/Regen scraper with as many gun-like temp powers as I can find!).

Hopefully he doesn't get generick-rolled.

Made.

Of.

Win!

...and possibly some cotton or polyester.

Maybe we should do the devs a favor and make the descriptions ourselves?

Of course, then almost every power except for Hibernate and Placate will be "this sucks don't use it" =P

Questions: Are we not allowed to use Vengeance or Fallout at ALL, or just not in a way where it seems to have been planned or could have been easily prevented?

Do we have to defeat-all on the missions, or just complete the objectives?

Also, about Smurphy's challenge: it seems right now, if a team BEATS Smurphys time, they get LESS than if they DON'T beat Smurphy's time. (50M vs 250M). There a typo there or something?

Research, invest, and craft.

For example, look through the "crafted enhancements" list and see what's going for a good price. Now, see if there's any recipes of those enhancements that are being sold on the cheap.

For example, say Synapse's Shock: Chance for recharge (I made that up), fully crafted, is selling for 50 million (the last 5 prices may show like 47 mil, 52 mil, 40 mil, etc.. just average it out). Now let's say the RECIPE is selling for only 10 million. Buy the recipe, the salvage, craft it, then sell the enhancement for 45 million. If it doesn't sell right away, keep it there for a bit. Once it sells, use your profit to buy more such recipes and increase your gains.

Of course, a 40 million inf disparity between recipe and enhancement is often very rare. But it's not too uncommon to see a 10 million inf difference.

Of course, if you cant find any recipes on the cheap, you'll have to do a few TFs then take your chances with the random number generator when you spend your merits.

***

You can also farm AE for tickets, then get whatever salvage is selling for obscenely high prices. This won't be AS fast, but it's sure-fire. People always need salvage (because they're too lazy to farm it), and if you decide to be a provider, you can net some decent profit. And WITH that profit, you can move onto bigger things (like what i mentioned above)

***

Another strategy is to take advantage of other people's impatience. Find recipes (not enhancements) where there's a lot for sale, no (or few) bids, that are selling for like 100 inf. Buy as many as you can for the low price, then SELL them to an NPC Vendor.

Along the same vein, if you're patient, you can bid low on something relatively popular, and once you get it (because there will always be someone who will sell something for a low price just to dump it or assure an "instant sale"), you can sell it for almost twice what you bought it for, IF you're patient. However, having only 20 mil in the pot, it'll be hard to do this on the most popular items. Also, it's not "quick".

I was wondering, do we have stas for Primaries or even combos played?

Like how many blasters are fire or ice or sonic? Or even Fire/fire or fire/ice or fire/em? Might be good to know.

To be fair, i WAS strawmanning a bit with the numbers. However, I DO honestly think SoC SHOULD affect less targets (like 10 or 12) and have it's acc brought down (UNLESS MCs is brought UP). Cut duration to 27-30 seconds, certainly not "half"... Maybe add a bit of danger by reducing the range so that the character has to be within normal agro range to use the power (so not quite half there, either). If a wider cone is needed, or heck, even making it a full, spherical AoE, that'd be okay to compensate for the lack of range. And yeah, recharge increase, but not by much. 90 seconds seems fair.

I don't know enough about grav to make any balance comments there, but I've seen enough people gripe about it.

TBH, I have absolutely NO problem with how Mind plays/functions... except when we start comparing numbers and functionality. Then it's like "hey waitaminute, not only do i not have my own bufable minion(s), I also have no steady AoE containment, little AoE damage, and what's this? A tier 5 is better than my tier 9? wtf!"

And yeah, ok, so there are quite a few T9s that people don't like... but that's because people don't like drawbacks. It's not that the T9s are functionally WORSE (unlike with SoC vs MC), but that there's a cost associated with using them that discourages using that and only that power. Some of the most powerful powers in the game cause you to "crash" and people hate it. Nukes, Unstoppable, just to name a few. However, they're more than willing to have their run speed, recharge, and damage floored to have half the survivability of other a power like Unstoppable, because most of that can be circumvented with a partner (and Granite is more than tough enough to withstand anything the game can throw at it anyway)... And Granite doesn't crash =) They're willing to do LESS damage with their nuke if it doesn't cause a crash (see rain of arrows) and they call it awesome.

But, I digress. Let's see what we have in store in I16 and GR.. I know the Devs like to tweak powers and only tell us the day the patch notes come out, so maybe it's not too much to hope that the Devs are aware of these disparities and are currently taking a look at them?

Here's the deal. We all know that Seeds of Confusion is slightly overpowered, especially in conjunction with Plant's other AoEs and compared to the only power like it anywhere else, Mass Confusion.

One might think that a nerf for SoC would be in order. Something drastic to make it barely a shadow of it's big cousin: Double the recharge, and halve the duration, range and # of targets (though widen the cone to compensate). And then lower its Accuracy, too (which, along with recharge, is the main balance-obliterating portion of SoC's numbers) Maybe even take this a step further and remove/reduce the damage component from Roots. This would definitely make people pause before saying that the set completely obliterates Mind Control (at least, when based on two similar powers)

But is this the only way? Certainly, people who love Plant love it for what it is, and wouldn't be too keen on the nerf bat coming down hard (or at all, even if they did admit it was OP... that's why they like it!). Also, how far down do you bring the numbers before you cross the apparently fine line between "overpowered" and "gimp"? Perhaps a Buff to Mind is the better answer.

For one, reduce the recharge and increase the accuracy on Total Dom and MC. That would balance out one of the main problems with Mind when compared to every other set, and give it a steady stream of containment*. MC in particular should affect an even larger # of targets (say 25) with an increased chance for Overpower criticals. That way, it would claim its place as a Tier 9 power when compared to Seeds.

*: If Plant gets a power that's better in almost every way than a T9 power, then Mind gets to have it's own distinct AoE advantage by having less down time on its hard controls. Fair's fair, especially considering Mind lacks steady containment that's present in almost every other Controller set, as well as the -constant- extra damage and agro mitigation from a pet.

I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that a tier 9 power should be better than a tier 5. The question is, how do we best accomplish this?

Or maybe do nothing. Let "Mind" continue to be undervalued (and underplayed), which only helps them shine more when you do find one. After all, the LAST thing I wanna see is Mind/Kin PL farmers clogging up PI and AE lobbies.

What do you guys think?

(Because we haven't had enough mind vs plant discussions this week =P)

Yeah, I'd say, make Inspire a single-target buff that recharges in 2 minutes... no, it's not "better", but it's mrore in-line with the devs's supposed balancing metric. See, EVERYTHING on her can directly benifit the caster. True, this is not without precident (TA for one, Rad is another iirc) but most defense sets DO have some (or even mostly) teammate-only buffs.

Perhaps Elimination should be XP-less... or it can cause agro. Reduce the recharge time and remove the auto-hit component (rather, give it a low chance to hit)... that might make it more balanced. You seem to think "Balance" consists of 9 T9-level powers, most of which have long recharges. I don't think too many players would appreciate that.

For Conversion, would this be a "confuse" effect or something new all together?

Overall, the set lacks a cohesive theme, short of "Oh btw i can warp reality". Each individual power IS pretty nice, but I don't see the Devs going for it =/

Ah well, it's nice to mentally invent things =)