Graeve_Digger

Funny that you would consider this combo at this time. I asked about this as a stalker, but was warned against Electric, and told that Nin or WP was better (Nin is a positional D like shields)

I don't understand DR and Elusivity, which were reasons given why Elec was weak. Since I never PvPed much, I will probably take the advice :-)

Hi all, is there any documentation about these 2 PvP features beyond what Paragon Wiki has? (Which is pretty slim)

Thanks for any help!

Wow, that is quite a bit different than what I had thought, thanks for pointing out the faults with Elec. I was not aware that IOs in PvP did not give the set bonuses like they do in PvE.

I do have several PvE guys with WP, so I will go Nin. That will be interesting in PvP and PvE. I will probably go Dark Mastery as a primary, since I like what it has to offer. Back to the drawing board for my build :-p

Seems like a lot of people recommend Regen WP and Nin, but I am not sure why.

Nin is a Defense set, and thus it seems like a so so idea. It has a good heal and the tier 9 seems great.

WP has all around stuff, but the RttC is an offensive toggle, so the regen from it won't really help most of the time.

Regen is regen, and on a stalker it seems like getting burst damage will kill you outright

Electricity is a resist based set, so you can get it to 60% or so easily, but you can also get 20+ def with IO sets, and 55% with Shadow Meld. Now add in a self heal, recharge and an endurance/regen buff. That seems like a pretty strong combo, so why does this not work?

Is Hibernate a better option than Shadowmeld?

Which secondaries are good in PvP Resist? Defense?, Regen or Willpower?

I'm leaning towards Electricity, which can be combinded with IOs and Shadow Meld to softcap Defense, and gets a 20% recharge bonus.

I have just recently created a character that I planned on using in PvP. I read that the stealth pool is pretty handy for this, so I decided that I would try to get it into my build. I needed to drop 3 powers to get Phase Shift, but which?

I decided that the simplest option was Kick/Tough/Weave. Now my thinking was that I would lose quite a bit of defense for getting Phase shift, and Invisibility, but low and behold, Invisibility has a 7% defense buff. Despite the heavy weight of the Toggle, that could actually be useful and in combination with Phase Shift, a quick get out of jail free card. I think that Stealth (1.75%def) Invisibility and Phase Shift are quite a decent tradeoff when compared to kick/tough/Weave

I never see people use the Stealth Pool, so exactly what is the hitch, what am I missing?

High toggle cost, but decent recharge, and have fast activation, and the 7% doesn't supress in PvP or PvE (according to Red Tomax)

I just read the text block shown below here on the MM boards, and was wondering if it was accurate. What it says is that if you slot Acc/KB in a minion, and that minion uses a power that does not include KB in that attact, you do not get the Acc bonus. I find this revelation quite surprising. Does anybody know if this is really the case?


"If you go to your enhancement management screen and hover over battle drones, you will see knockback as one of the set categories allowed. If you then click the "show detailed info" button, you will see a drone's basic powers listed including laser burst. Click on that, and you see its info, which includes some energy damage but no knockback. That laser burst power itself also has a bunch of enhancement set categories that it accepts; unfortunately it just isn't displayed in the game, but as far as I'm aware knockback sets aren't on that list. This means that the drone pretends it doesn't have any enhancement from knockback sets when using laser burst.

Suppose you were level 50 and had the following enhancements slotted in battle drones:
- kinetic crash: accuracy/knockback (50)
- blood mandate: damage/endurance (50)
- nucleolus exposure (50)
- invention: endurance reduction (50)
- damage SO (50)

When a drone uses laser burst it will look at these enhancements to see what enhancement values it actually gets. The kinetic crash is from a knockback set and laser burst doesn't take those, so the attack won't receive those enhancement values. All pet attack powers should inherit pet damage sets so it will get the damage and endurance enhancement from the blood mandate. The nucleolus exposure, endurance common IO and damage SO are not part of invention sets and should be inherited by all the pet's powers that can use them, including laser burst."

Thanks for any feedback. IMO this is pretty critical for us new MMs to know.

Dual Blades
- One Thousand Cuts, the damage is nice, but the 3.3sec animation is LONG! I see it as more of a team power, but is it useful?


Dark Armor
- Oppressive Gloom, on a stalker is it worthwhile
- Is Shadow Meld in the parton pool useful? Dark Armor is resistance based, so in theory yes, but the 3 sec cast time and the 15 second duration seems to make is kinda limited to taking Alpha hits. Does the 15 seconds duration start at cast time, or after cast time?

Shadowmeld (3.3) - BU (1.17)- AS (3.0) combo leaves only enough time to take the alpha.

What about Hibernation as an alternative to Shadowmeld?

I was wondering how enhancements work when going on flashback missions. If I have a toon that has level 40-50 IOs, but then does a level 30 flashback mission, are the IOs still working for the powers that I have available, or are the enhancement bonuses negated?

Thanks for the help.

Quick speculation here, but I suspect that I16 will have a very short Open Beta, maybe even none.

As we all know, for all previous Issues, players could always (?) use the character creator to tinker around without the hassel of copying a character.

This time, the Character Creator is the biggest part of the update, and if it went to Open Beta, there is a good chance the test server would see a ton of traffic (crashing the server perhaps)

By doing this via closed testing only, the devs essentially remove this potential headache.

This is pure speculation, but it seems logical.

Just wondering how things will work wrt Going Rogue.

- I assume the other poster was right about having to be in Praetoria (sp) to switch sides.
- If a hero flip in Praetora, can they then return to Rogue Isles, but not Paragon City?
- If your in an SG, and you flip, do you stay in the SG, or do you get booted
- What about the economy? Villains switch to Hero, get their cheap IOs, then switch back. Or will the economies be melded together?

Going Rouge happens when you do something embarassing, like for example misspelling Rogue!

to be more clear, the clue was recieved when a player opened up an optional collection object.

The clue simply states something like, ''you sift through the junk and find nothing of interest, yet it seems oddly rewarding"

Clearly, by itself, the clue is useless, but it is meant to provide a heads up on what is coming in the next mission. In the next mission the player gets many many clues hinting that though they are doing mundane stuff, they experience great pleasure.

Is this kind of clue giving acceptable? Or does it just confuse players (like it seemed to do with the reviewer).

This is an example of difference of opinion. I see Origin as a story that tells the Origin of any character, while I see magic as a story that involves Magic. The fact that the two can be used together is more of a happenstance. They don't have 'Mutation' as a type of story, because that does not make any sense.

Origin is a tag in fact

One thing I wonder a bit about, is how to introduce story concepts via clues.

In my story, I use the addiciton angle. By that I mean that the character is becoming addicited as they continue into the arc. In mission 2, I introduce the idea of addiction to the player, and then in Mission 3, I place the idea of addiction right up front. At this time my arcs are realitively unplayed, which I can live with as I brush them up, but I had a reviewer take a look. Unfortunately, during the review of arc 2, the reviewer choose to ignore the clue of addicition, and said that all clues should be relevant to the story.

This got me to thinking, is this system capable of allowing this type of story element, or should I just be more forward about my clues, and deliver them in bold capitals?

The other possibility, is that the reviewer didn't catch on that this clue was meant to open up a new story element that would be introduced later in the Arc.

In I15 were were given the tool to tag our MArcs, but to me, there are too many option, and that means problems with interpretion. If you have things open to interpretation, I don't think this will be very helpful.

IMO, there are 3 very basic categories of arcs. Story, Challenge and Fighting arcs (farm arcs). I really think that they should consider those basic categories as a top level classification. If they wanted to include sub classifications, that is fine, but the way it is set up now, it really doesn't help the players that much.

Are there any other basic types of Arcs?

I understand that arcs can crossover categories, but I think that they can primarily be set as one of these three choices.

Thanks for the review PW, thorough as always. Thanks for the many suggestions. I will implement quite a few to make the story better.

Here are some comments that you can ponder.

Since this is a 2nd chapter, I carried the story as if it was 1 story, not 2.

I can understand why you don't think that investigating a Crey place that happens to be closing is all that interesting, but it is mentioned that there is nothing going on because everybody is going to AE to play the simulator. That is the hook or the motivation.

Why make custom Crey? Why not? It makes the mission more fun and challenging. That is basically the only reason I did that.

You seem to be very interested in the name of the company. I'm not sure why, because it doesn't matter to the story. Introducing a name for no reason other than to complicate things just didn't seem wise. I could add the company name in the description of the robots, that might be a good place to put it.

Nice catch on the PDA clue for mission 3. Clearly I mixed up who was the original owner of that PDA. OOps!

You wonder why the Stoage units talk? They don't talk, it is the character that is talking as they are breaking the storage units. Since you see the text as bubbles, they should appear in front of the character. Artistic license was used!

Your concern about the end drain is valid, but I got 1 starred because another previous player got knocked back repeatedly. You have to choose something appropriate, and let the players deal with the result and also accept the consequences.

Shockwave's groaning is to tell you that he is groggy form being captured. That is why the dialog is like that.

I can only hope that people play chapter 1 before chapter 2. If they do the reverse, I can't control that, so I had no intention of dealing with people that would do it this way. Authors are stuck with 5 missions to tell their tale and this one took 7.

Should I explain how an addicitve agent can be added to a holographich simulator? Heck, if somebody can make a holographic simulator, I'm sure it would be easy to add and addictive agent to it. I really didn't see a need to try to explain it. I'm no super villain ya know :-p

You don't like Clifford being the bad guy? I have good news...I have now stated to write an alternate ending, where Cliffords Boss, who gets a lot of mention in Arc 1 now, is the bad guy, but in a different manner.

For what it's worth, this whole story is my attempt to explain what happened when Issue 14 came out. If you recall, when I14 arrived, everybody disappeared into AE buildings, and the streets were left clear. I thought it was really wierd to see all the streets completely devoid of players. When the patch to remove the farming exploits was added, things came back to normal.

My version of history is that a techie at AE discovered that adding a chemical agent to the simulator would addict the users. This is why people disappeared. When the player tracks down Clifford, the AE goes back to normal, and the Heroes return to the streets.

I certainly understand your concern about focus, but I suspect that because I have left you confused about the story, you don't understand the importance of those 'simulations'.

For the record, I did not intend for you to think that Clifford was the bad guy. The errors that he put into the simulations where not the real problem, which is how you interpreted them. Those errors were just to give the beta tester reason to say "Hey! This simualtion isn't ready yet!" (which would buy time continue the investigation)

The real problem with the simulator was revealed in Mission 3. The real problem is that somebody was using the Simulator to addict the users.

To convey the idea of addicition I don't think that I can just rely on clues, rather I will have to tell them directly that this is what is happening.

Overall I will have to connect the dots more directly.

(In regards to your review of 'the Hero Simulator Chapter 1, The Beta Tester')

When I went through your review very carefully, it was quite evident that you didn't accept the role you were asked to play. This was the fatal flaw. Had you been able to accept that you were a Beta Tester for a Hero Simulator, I think you would have been able to follow the story.

Your suggestion of decoupling the Beta Testing and the Investigation would ultimately produce 2 separate and basic stories, neither which would be terribly interesting.

What I was shooting for was to make a more deep, and interesting story.

In the end, I have to understand that because in my attempt to tell a more in depth story, there will be people that just miss what I am presenting. They either get it, or they don't.

I am sorry that you didn't enjoy what I had created. My intention is for people to have fun, not to feel utterly bored. So I appologize for that. The good news is that with your help, hope that I can reduce the number of people that end up suffering the same fate as yourself.

Overall these are the changes I think will help
- add a comment indicating that this is not a simple story
- update the starting text to clarify the player’s role
- update text to clarify that the debriefings are done away from the game itself
- remove the Arachanos ambushes, which should simplify the story
- make spelling corrections

I hope that when you review chapter 2, you will have a better understanding of the story I was trying to tell (see my previous post). You should find that is a basic A to B to C type story since Chapter 1 was the set up to Chapter 2.

Thanks for your efforts PW. Having your eyes on my work, will really help. Especially with clarifying the things that you commented on.

Two things that I think that made things too difficult to figure out where the 'Debriefings', and your role in the story.

You were hired as a Beta Tester, that is important because, the character is working for Clifford as a Beta Tester, nothing more. You were not hired to do heroic stuff for Clifford, just to do Beta Testing. Think of this like a side job between all the real work.

Now, as a Beta Tester, you were expected to give debriefings after the mission to the 'Boss', who you never see because he is the boss of Clifford. Thus, I can only provide dialoge to indicate that this has occured. This obviously threw you off, so I need to tighten up that part.

Another thing that you didn't pick up on, and I should try to figure out how to indicate better, is that 'officially' your doing testing, so Clifford tells you what is 'officially' going on, while whispering to you what you should be expecting. This is done to indicate that Clifford does not trust people around him (like the boss and co-workers), but you are to trust him.

Here is what the story is trying to tell. When MA was released, back in the spring, everybody flocked to it, so the streets were empty, and everybody was at AE. Then as the farming expanded, the developers came in and made corrections to the game, and many people returned to fill the streets again. My story tries to explain these odd happenings.


Overall This is how I intended it to play out....

-You are signed on to work as a Beta Tester for AE, where Clifford is the Lead Tester
-You are asked to provide debriefings to Cliffords Boss after each mission

M1
You start a simulated mission, but Clifford indicates that something might be up. In the mission things are backwards, exiting your confused, but feel that playing along with Cliffords needs is ok for the moment.

M2
Similar to M1, the mission is completely wrong, more than the first, but Clifford indicated that this would happen. Your role at this point is to buy Clifford time. This is done by making long debriefs to the Boss (between the missions)

M3
The Boss is impatient with the way the testing is going, so he makes Clifford give you a specific mission which is popular with other testers, as indicated in the text. In the mission, which is as you noticed a parady of farming, your suppose to get the idea that this is way too fun, indicating an addiction is taking place.

M4
This mission is a fast wrapup, in the 'real world' that is too leave you wondering what just happened. You feel like it is unresolved, which is to encourage you to do Arc 2. You did catch this feeling, but because you missed the other elements (which I need to tighten up), you found it too confusing.

It looks like I need to clarify the story quite a bit, because I know that you examine all elements to critique them.

I tend to agree with people here, 4 stars is where it's at. Every arc will eventually find its way there, especially if it gets a lot of play.

Right now, I search the boards for arcs. If the people are willing to post, willing to include their arcs in their sigs, then I bet they tried to put a good arc together.

I also look for finished products, and not too difficult, so I tend to avoid AV arcs.

I really enjoyed the arc. This is a great example as to why they made the MA!

Now, since you would like some feedback, I do think that there are minor ways you can actually improve on your great work.

Mission 2, I found the map a bit big.
Mission 3, you don't get the clue from Jack when you free him, only as the exit clue. 99% of the people wont notice, but I happened for free him before I had completed the Fir Bolg.

I didn't really catch on as to why Arianna would go after Rianna without help, but I can guess that it was a revenge thing. Not a big problem.

Now, overall I think it would help to use mission complete popups to help fill in some blanks, or to get the player to feel what you want them to feel. IMO It tightens up the story, especially if the player missed something, or misread something.

A good example is after Mission 3, you could add 'You feel a need to return to see Rose'

BTW, I thought the writing was excellent!

5 Stars!

Just a few comments about the MA in general.

Is it just me or are there essentially 2 MAs. One is for Teaming and getting XP, the other is for Solo, playing story arcs?

Anyways, I would like to address the Solo/story arcs side. Since the costom critters are tougher than standard mobs, it became very evident that when I wanted to play story arcs, I really should take a character that can take a beating. Since the arc is unknown, you should be wise and prepare for a tough fight. Thus, I much prefer my scrapper or tanker to my blaster or defender. To me it just makes sense.

The other side of this is that I also wrote 2 arcs (see below), yet I recieved a low rating because one player ran into the knockback that some of my custom mobs had in my second arc. I can certainly sympathize with that guys problems, and I tried to change the custom mobs but I am unsure how effective that will be because I changed one status effect for another (Power to Electricity).

My point is that if your going to use custom mobs, there will be some players that will use toons that have a weakness to whatever your using. There is really no way to prevent this from happening.

In the end, what I guess I would like to say is that MA writers should be aware of this problem, but MA players should also bring toons that can handle a tougher playing environment. I suspect that I will only play MA story content with either a scrapper or tanker, because I want to follow the story and enjoy the content, I don't want to be taking trips to the hospital every few minutes.

Honestly, I felt quite bad about that person having trouble playing my arc, that is not what I intended. I want people to enjoy the story, not get miffed because of a game mechanic that is out of my control.

Not to rain on the parade here, but this may actually not be so bad. If the griefers are indescrimnate, it will allow more arcs to get seen. As long as they grief most good arcs, then we are ok.

I personally think that they should add rules like,
1) You Must complete the arc to rate it
2) category of the number of times played, vs number of times quit