GavinRuneblade

Interesting. That will make it a bit confusing to get teleport beacons as there are now essentially two classes of explore badge: Teleport badges and accolade only badges.

Good to know and pretty much what I expected. Thanks for the update!

There is one and only one exception to this: Exemplaring. But it's not really relevant here. I really doubt that he's building a Posi-dedicated level 50 toon or somesuch.

What is the point of giving advice if you're just going to take it back for yourself? If you give me a can of soda I'd be a fool to expect you to drink it wouldn't I? So why should anyone expect you to follow advice you're giving away?

I try to only give advice that I don't want anymore.

Well I'm waiting on 99% of my new characters for Going Rogue since the bulk of that will be new pre-20 content. With i17 I'm only making one Demon Summoner to test the set.

But I play a lot in the 20s. I have 5 redside though 3 of them are now 27 and 28 so won't be in the 20s much longer, and only 2 (15 and 17) stand to enter the 20s before Going Rogue.

I don't really have a problem finding or creating a team in Cap or Shark. Lots of others at my level. Thing is most of them are kind of ignorant about IOs. They all just think "SOs until 50, then get uber IO build".

Sad.

What I've done is started not clearing the stragglers but instead just pulling htem to the next group. It's a touch more efficient but doesn't get all of them due to aggro caps some wander off back to their patch.

I'm with you there. I have a ton of characters and none of them "finished". heh. Glad to hear it worked out!

And I know what you mean on the endurance running low but not out. That's the effect the higher damage brings. You consume more but the fight endds faster so you're ok. My Fire/Shield brute is in that same situation.

This is accurate.

This is a conclusion not supported by anything anyone has said except for you.
The use of "robbing", "meaningful" and "frowned upon" are all loaded words that I don't think any of us would use, and I'm pretty sure none of us have used.

We have only mentioned how the current situation gives you options. Using options is tactics. Using a cookie cutter is not tactics. If the fear worked on every assassin strike, you'd have a cookie cutter. Well, mostly I mentioned it and other people agreed with me. Not the best definition of "we" I guess.

Anyway, many would not be opposed to that as it would also be significantly more powerful. May or may not be too powerful. I'm not sure. Might also be fun. But I have no preference either way. I can't speak to anyone else.

Right now I have a tactical tool that gives me lots of options which I enjoy. If it worked the way you want the options would be taken away and instead of thinking tactically you'd always know exactly what to do. That's a lot easier. Not as exciting, and not tactical, but definitely easier. And it is always fun to be more powerful so I am fairly sure that I'd enjoy that too.

I'd also like to know. I slot up as I level so I'm curious how you feel the difference is. And yes it's always good to know how affordable patience and careful selection can make a solid build.

There used to be an MMO which was really just some graphics slapped over a MUD, called Darklands. It looked a little like Ultima V, with 2D sprite graphics and a square grid. Pretty simple. One thing it had was a voting system for rulership of the different towns in the world and the rulers could make some laws. Worked out fine for a while. Then someone bought 15 accounts and got some friends each with 3 or 4. Most MMOs have pretty small populations. They voted themselves into office in every town. Made it "illegal" to roleplay in character. Sent violators off to jail, banished their characters from the game, etc.

You already see this same phenominon on the AE missions where anything that's not a farm gets voted off the top page of search results by people who have created farms.

If you create a system that gives a reward or a badge for a 5-starred mission, then what will happen is organized groups will repeatedly 5-star crap in order to get the reward. Then delete the crap and do it again and again and again to farm the reward.

Honestly, the easiest way to incentivise the proper use of AE is to remove all rewards whatsoever so the farms go back to regular missions and only the lolrpers use the AE. With no rewards and a tiny audience it will primarily be used for the purpose of storytelling using the same reward that is all poets have in the real world: Reputation among each other.

Now, that is the easiest way but not the best. Craigslist, Youtube etc work because of mass. There are enough users that the abusers tend to get drowned out. The abusers succeed enough for their own happiness, but the rest of us aren't harmed by less than 1% of the activity that they represent. In AE, it is clearly a significant %, though I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what.

In these circumstances the "best" (always a bit of a subjective term) way to handle it is usually manual moderation. There is no way to trust voting or user-generated flags to mark missions as farms, or cannon. the abusers have too many votes. But someone trackable has to go through and manually flag missions, this is a farm that is cannon, that is comedy, that is not cannon, etc. Someone else to monitor the flaggers to ensure that if an abuser gets a flagger on their side that flagger gets removed. Same thing as a mod for the forums or for the hotel reviews on Expedia/Orbitz, etc. Manual moderation by Dev-appointed staff.

Problem is the level of work is outrageous.

So what we need is a third solution. Votes are no good the abusers already have demonstrated reliably and over a decent period of time they have control over the votes in AE. Manual moderation is no good the Devs don't have time and certainly have more important jobs to do.

So we need a third solution. Until we have a third solution, no reward for popular missions should be given out or you are just making a rigged popularity contest only the abusers will win.

no, it is a tactical decision because it changes the structure of the resulting fight due to different starting conditions.

Option A: Enemy group -1 target, all others full capabilities.
Option B: Enemy group at full compliment, 2/3 of them reduced effectiveness for a short time, at least one big, dangerous one angry at you.

Both of these are surgical strikes. You're striking the leadership (say a castrated prefect) to remove as fast as possible the most dangerous enemy. Or you are striking the key support (surgeon) to remove as fast as possible the most dangerous enemy. The after effects will vary, but both actions are a surgical strike. Though oddly only the one where the boss survives is really an "assassination" per se. When you shoot a grunt it's a kill not really an assassination =)

And the definition of "most dangerous enemy" will vary from spawn to spawn even within the same mission.

Taking out the leadership is the most common real-world use of a surgical striker. That is also one of the things Stalkers do best in game. To me, taking down the bosses and taking down the squishies supports are identical in stalkerishness. Both are key targets that need to go down fast because they have a much bigger impact on the outcome of the fight than their numbers would suggest. Whether it is more important to get the Gunsliunger or the sapper, to get the Greater Devoured or the Deathbloom is a tactical decision and the fear effect is no where near strong enough for me to hit the gunslinger every time.

Sometimes I'll get the big guy, sometimes I'll get the support. It depends on the rest of the mob, how they are arranged, whether or not I think enough will get feared, am I teamed or solo, etc. And it will definitely not be the same every time.

Sure, my ideal is to hit the big guy, placate him then 1-shot the support before turning back on the big guy to finish him off. But 9 times out of 10 they are too far apart to pull off that particular move. I do love it when I get the best of both worlds though.

So what you're saying here is that you don't want a tactical decision. You want the devs to reward you for always killing the squishy and never give you an option to do otherwise. Right now you have two options and get rewarded for both in different ways.

Reward 1: insta kill
Reward 2: debuff

Which one best helps you take down the group will vary from group to group. Consider Carnies. They have no support targets. Without demoralize would you go after the illusionist first or the Ring Mistress? With demoralize it *might* be worth getting the mistress depending on the rest of the group and your personal ability to survive psionic attacks (my main stalker is dark/dark/dark so I fear no psions). I would get the illusionist myself because I hate their phase and AS can drop her in one go but even a crit from midnight grasp won't. If there's no illusionist but only those hammer-guys, I'll go for the Ring Mistress.

By contrast in the malta example above I'd try very hard to hit a gunslinger, placate and midnight grasp a sapper. If there was a lieut near the sapper that's good enough, don't need a boss, most malta have high resists and can survive an assassin strike if I don't build up first, but save it for the scrapping-action after. Gives me lots of options I don't have against the carnies who are all rather similar in their abilities.

Playing tactically means making decisions that change the outcome of the fight. It does NOT mean always taking out the same target in every fight.

It does that, but it also gives you options. Options = good for both solo and team play.

Looks like too many attacks. What is the chain?

right now I confuse->frost breath->(they are gathered by now)roots->jump in Frost Sword circle->jump out roots and then ST-down the stragglers with strangler, ice bolt and ice blast.

I have been quite impressed with the flytrap, he's actually quite decent for damage and as a meat shield. Also, he can take achilles heel which is extraordinarily handy, especially once you get down to the last few enemies. I've used those on my controller and I'm trying to get some villain side. Might have to burn merits on it.

On Carrion Creepers, that slotting is really not so good. One thing I know is that the pseudopet doens't apply all bonuses to all actions. You want teh HOs in there. The bonuses from that set will only apply to the immobilize power, not to the vines, the knockdowns, or any others. But an HO Acc/Damage applies to all of them. I think the creeper pet has two Immobilizes though so that's better than most, which is why I have trap of the hunter in mine. But I use them as a key damage source so for me, they really need the damage, the recharge, and procs.

Some good ideas in that build though! Got one that is less survivable and more aggressive?

In general I like damage first and survivability a distant second. As an example, this character had three debt badges before level 24 (possibly 21 I forget) and picked up the third held/mezzed badge by 27. I die, I rez, and I kill things. Fun with alot of procs is sort of how I aim for damage since many of my powers have a low initial damage value.

I don't care about permadom, I tend to forget that it even exists and I'll be running for 5 minutes with it available but not triggered and go, hey I need end POP. Or I save it for when I need to get out of mez and don't have a breakfree handy. I use domination about once or twice per mission regardless of how often it is up.

Is that blasphemy? I'm not sure. Might be.