Gearsinger

To those saying the title was enough warning:

I opened the thread after seeing the title. I expected a fluff piece reminding us that there was a reveal coming, possibly an interview with a writer about the importance of a reveal or the difficulty of writing a mystery in the massively-multiplayer genre. I did not expect, "Yeah, States is gonna bite it, but it's okay 'cause you'll be totally sad."

There was a thread that blew up over the weekend. A lot of consternation was expressed because there was a spoiler in the title. Given the general attitude there that it was better to be cautious about such things, I thought marketing would read the community more accurately.

Added to that is marketing's predilection for cheeky obfuscation.

Obviously, I made the wrong choice in clicking the thread, but I don't think it was an entirely illogical one.

Sounds like you may be referring to the letters of the mysterious Letter Writer(Spoilers). In that case, you're looking for the Ouroboros Task Forces and Dean MacArthur/Jenny Adair.

Bad form revealing that on the forums before it even comes out. My Give-a-Darn was already cracked on this one. Now it's plain busted.

I was reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms and came across a relevant passage.

Dian Wei is Cao Cao's fearsome bodyguard. Cao Cao's enemies know that they'll never be able to defeat him with Dian Wei and his twin halberds protecting him, so they devise a plot to get Dian Wei drunk and steal his weapons.

I watched the UStream today, and Arbiter Hawk mentioned a few changes coming for Grav in I22.

1. Shorter animation and faster projectile speed for Propel.
2. New mechanic called Impact that will cause enemies under the effect of Gravity Distortion to take greater damage from Lift and Propel.
3. Upped the damage scale on Controller and Singularity lift, Dominator's already use the proper scale.

That list looks pretty good for controllers, but I don't think it addresses Dominator gravity issues. What do you think?

Thanks, guys!

My only 50 hero is a MA/SR scrapper. Something about the Mortal Kombat goofiness of the old Storm Kick animation makes me smile.

It's not a bad set now for looks, but I'd stick the old, longer animation on at least one build just for laughs if I had the option.

I'm personally amused that they released and AoE-heavy melee set with longish activation times at the same time as these new trials. I'm sure there will be a lot of frustrated newbie Incarnate titan weaponeers.

One of my first characters was Energy/Devices. I didn't stick with it. This was in the dark old ages before the difficulty slider. About 90% of the time, I was untouchable, while the other 10% I was a stain on the floor with very little I could do about it.

Caltrops and Energy Blast can be fun in a sadistic sort of way. Enemies craaaawl toward you over the caltrops, only to be knocked away by knockback and forced to start all over again.

I find that the combination of knockback, hover, and caltrops makes enemies pretty eager to head for the hills, so if you aren't quick to blast or immobilize them before they get out of range, it can be pretty irritating.

Now that we have a model for dogs, I think we need one scaled down to about 1/3 size and placed near Westin Phipps and maybe one near Peter Themari. Those two obviously need puppies to kick.

I would really like a "Bang!" gun emote. It would be super awesome if it could be modified to work with whatever AR, Beam Rifle, or Pistol skin the character selected for his costume.

I'm definitely not caring for the current development direction. There seems to be a severe disconnect between the players and the devs. We have long threads offering feedback on release decisions (endgame raids, no Stalker Titan Weapons, costume gender disparity) yet the community team seems to feign ignorance of community desires.

If the developers are so out of touch with the fanbase that they are surprised that we would want to solo Incarnate content, or play a TW Stalker, or make a tough female gunslinger, then we need to find a way to communicate. The feedback threads are apparently too late in the process to affect real change*, so how do we make our wishes known in a way that actually makes us feel part of the process.

The current trend of throwing everything at us to see what we'll pay for doesn't make me feel valued. It makes me feel pelted.




*Outside the powers team that is. Thanks Synapse!

Someone in the UStream mentioned that the tier nine for Darkness Control is so cool it needs its own reveal. In considering what I personally would consider cool and thematic, I came up with "Shadow Puppet."

Shadow Puppet would be sort of an enemy-targeted Soul Extraction. You would target a defeated enemy and raise a version of it with an appropriate spooky aura as your pet for a limited time. It would obviously need limits, although how cool would it be to raise a friendly AV Ghost Widow and turn her against the other patrons?

What are you hoping for in the tier nine?

I'm kinda looking forward to Death Shroud in Dark Assault. Of course, I intend to pair it with Plant, so melee should be pretty safe.

I'm sitting on a name for a Dark/Psi dominator, too. Wanna test now, please!

Auto-fire is control+click.

If Assassin's Strike outside of hide does become a more viable attack than AS from hide, it will be especially punitive for Dual Blades stalkers. A lot of my DB/EnA stalker's survivability at low levels comes from the Sweep combo. I'll definitely have to transfer (or recreate, if transfer is still broken) and test things hard when this hits Beta/Test.

How powerful would a low-damage pet with a Cloak-of-Fear-type power be? That might make for an interesting tier 9.

I don't play Elec because the -end aura's visual effects and the sleep patch's audio give me headaches.

I had a couple thoughts for a Psionic and a Toxic Judgement that I may as well put here. I find both unlikely, since the devs are twitchy about Toxic and Psi damage in large amounts.

For Psionic I'm thinking "Pillar of Thought": You place a psuedopet that looks like a vertical beam of colorable light. It's placed at the beginning of the animation and has a taunt aura that draws enemies towards it, so they're gathered about by the time your character finishes waving his/her arms about. It does three ticks of damage, with a toHit check for each tick so enemies defeated by the first tick don't count toward the target limit. The first tick does slightly less than minion-HP damage, the next more than that, and the third does high damage and causes the light beam to shatter outward into rays. The damage type is Psi, with the usual recharge slow, and the lingering mez would be a fear.

For toxic, an Acid Rain would be awesome. It would be your basic TAoE rain patch with toxic DoT, -defense and -resist. The lingering mez could be confuse, as foes caught in the rain panic and lash out at the nearest target.

Both fit in with the current trend of each Judgement having it's own quirks for use (TAoE, PBAoE, Chain, etc.) and I think they're pretty thematic for their damage types.