Grey Pilgrim

Yeah, that's what it has made me think of as well. I know a lot of people like to hate on the Khelds, but the devs have made use of them in a few different storylines. They didn't have to make the PPD in the Apex TF be Kheldians, either, so I'm wondering if that was a purposeful choice, given all the War Walkers in that mission.

Anyway, I hope that is followed through somehow. It would be intriguing to see what happens.

Lorewise, it really is an issue, but cysts should be doable for most teams. If a cyst can pull your team up because you didn't see them and deal with them, many other bosses in the low levels will do the same. *shudders* Ruin Mages still give me the shakes sometimes. They are nasty if not handled well and fast.

A foot! Lucky, we got over two!

October snow is really the worst... I don't think anybody wants it then, even the most avid of skiers. Hope you get your power back soon, MP!

Or when you are solo against a boss, which can easily happen more than once a mission (if not every mob, on some low settings like x2)? I agree that the heal's end cost is high, but people with weaker heals could also easily argue how a higher heal would help them out. There are pros and cons to each type.

I was using Dark's heal on my Scrapper far before I got my endurance sorted out enough to leave Weave and/or Tough on with him. It saved my bacon more than once, and I would hate to see it changed.

Moreover, it's the game's most powerful heal. The numbers are clear for all to see, and manageable, even if you are only on SOs. You have to build with some thinking no matter what, and that requirement is no reason to lower the numbers on this fantastic power.

I can't think of any storyline reason for a void to appear with any Praetorian mobs, actually. Voids are mercenaries, and Cole wants nothing to do with anyone that is not under his control. He NEEDS to have control over everything to show Hami up. Resistance doesn't have any reason to check out what Voids have to offer, either. If anything, such collaboration could throw off potential other dimension support.

The devs even went to the trouble of not allowing any EAT to start in Praetoria. That alone signifies issues with putting voids with any Praetorian mobs. I do have an idea for an StJ/EA Brute to start in Praetoria that is really a Peacebringer in disguise, but I'm leaving the how of the Kheldian getting to Praetoria loose. Perhaps the human he was with came from the CoH dimension, etc.

I am somewhat curious about where War Walkers derive their powers. When they drop, they clearly make a Peacebringer power sound. But that's as likely to come from the devs cross-purposing sound use as it is from a real story reason.

Voo can deny it all he wants, but I see what you did there. Well done, good sir!

You stuck with Glee a lot longer than I did. That "second" first season didn't match up with what they did in the first half, and my wife and I gave up after that. The pilot is still one of the best pilots I've seen, though.

Anyway, anyone try out the new Trials yet? How do they stack up? I'd rather find out here than on the beta forums.

Yeah, I never noticed this issue in beta, as I was always soloing through there. I'm not sure why they haven't fixed the issue of talking to contacts at the same time when people are on the same team, as that is a major issue for teams there.

I like the storyline there, I just could do without that teaming issue.

What level are we aiming for? Want to make sure I'm at the right spot. Might try for Croatoa next week, as that's a pretty team friendly zone.

Simply saying you didn't think the devs would listen to players earlier, or do anything about it, and then they did. Which is a good thing. But your response was more "look out for the future, it could be bad!"

Not getting on your case, just saying look at it positively, since that seems to be your first inclination. I think Posi's post was more an encouragement to us to play other things (rather than a DOOM! post), but I don't think he's so foolish to think it's all on players to fix this. There are reasons why people play BAF and Lambda more than Keyes and UGT... and they are fixing some of those reasons with the proposed changes to Keyes.

Aww, shucks, I be a peacemaker. How Minnesotan and middle child of me.

As for calling anyone a pimple, eh, if being a little abrasive with your opinion makes a pimple, that's true of half the people on the forums. I know I can be grouchy at times, that's for sure. I was mostly reminding people to chill. /em Say Anything "You must chill!"

I'm leaving Hamster's comment where it lies.

The only one I don't like is the tier 9, where it just looks like your setting your weapon into the ground. A leaping smash of some sort would feel much better to me there, even if Katana has something similar.

The rest though... are pretty cool to me. If you haven't played it, it's harder to tell, but there is a nice ebb and flow to the attacks, and you really feel like an insane dervish with momentum going. All the AOE and KD only accentuates that. Fun stuff.

I think those are the only ones I could say that I absolutely don't like for Kheldians. I like the "glowie" sound of Peacebringer powers otherwise. I could see how it would sound off if your speakers are bad or something, though.

Warshades freak me out some time and make me think a Nictus or Quantum Gunner is around. And by freak out, I mean "makes me want to find the bugger to pound his face in."

NT, this situation is perfectly analagous to the auction house. Yes, you could do without it, but it would be perfectly tedious to access parts of game content (and what makes the game fun for many people) without it. They're making their trial system less fun and more clunky with the proposed changes.

And yes, this change will cause people to run the BAF and Lambda less, but for the sole reason that they won't get an emp out of it. There is nothing about those two trials that is so drastically weaker than the other trials that merits removing an emp reward. The other new ones that are more difficult have two emps to make up the difference.

Once we have a new tier of incarnate powers, the current set of Trials will probably need to have an exemping rule (though if the devs hadn't tossed out two new level bumps to us, I rather wonder how necessary this would be as well).

And restricting player choice for trials is a bad idea. We will only have five to choose from if the proposed changes go live, and they're removing two from the running. That is not good design. With alpha slots, they figured out a way to make all those work and be options. Heck, they even included lower TFs with shards and notices. They don't HAVE to limit things as they are choosing.

As for changing designers minds, don't assume too much. They talk to themselves plenty and have things they would like to do. Just because those things don't show up on live like we would appreciate doesn't meant the devs aren't thinking about them.

Also, developers do change their minds from player feedback, at least here for City of Heroes. I've seen it more than a few times with live situations (albeit slower than I would want most of the time), and it happens a LOT with betas. It's worth making an argument, at least here with City of Heroes. Doubt I would bother with WoW, though.

*added*

Flux, NT Flamer has been around Victory for a long while. I've teamed with him a fair amount in game. He's a bit more aggressive with these posts than I've seen him in game. He's rather tongue in cheek there. Even has a toon called Fake Masque!

What, SatHam be snarky? That like, never happens!

I do agree with him and his snark as well. The idea is a bad one, and I can only hope the hugely negative response (and reasoned, I might add) will change their minds.

*snerk* Like your signature, too. I also find it funny that they are nerfing having too many subsequent ambushes in an AE mission, when that seems to be the mantra for new dev content.

I realize those were being somewhat abused, but seriously... they added MARTy, they've nerfed most of the outliers in AE. Was this really needed? It's a fair amount of risk for reward with a lot of ambushes, unless they still have issues with making too weak of mobs worth high xp.

I don't really care as much or have the time for PvP or bases, but AE is in the same boat as them, and I like it more (being a storyteller myself). I was constantly thinking I needed to write some more arcs before mine became busted do their busted language filter. Why put in the time for a broken system?

I really do hate how the devs can toss out some great ideas and not follow through well. Heck, even the proposed BAF, Lambda, and emp costs for new incarnate powers things strikes me in the same light.

Just picking these out. Beta is the best time to be heard from the devs, and the most likely time for changes to occur. Once it goes Live, it's much more likely to be put on the back burner that AE and other things are on. Speak now, and even if it stays in, at least you acted when you had the best chance.

The BAF and Lambda changes make no sense, as is pointed out continuously. Emps are the safety net to bad luck with drops on Trials, so removing them from two of only five trials is asinine. If those two trials are not strong enough, make people exemp down, do not lower the rewards. I don't personally see the need to do so (I could once we get more powers), but that's the most of what they should do. Reworking the time length of UGT and Keyes is far better, etc., as well.

I didn't go with Energy as I already have THREE blasters with /Energy. Enough of that for now, heh. Fire is not that bad of a pairing, though. Hot Feet will slow them down when they start getting close to you, and it will hit stuff hard that gets in close... whatever is still standing after Disintegration, the ST attacks, and cones land, that is.

It works okay in practice and especially if you have a concept for your character. I also wouldn't say Beam is that bad for AOE, with a mid-recharging mini nuke and two cones, both of which are pretty decent. Not the best, but not bad, either.

Well, I don't have a Fire Blaster. I went with a Fire/Fire Dom, because I have so many Blasters already. But I do know what Blasters get (and I have most of those powers on my Dom, albeit in a weaker form), and Fire is going to be much stronger for AOE. For ST, though... I'm not sure. Beam is good enough there that I would be interested in a numbers analysis comparing the two.

My Fire/Fire Dom melts single targets pretty fast and well, but not as hard as Beam seemed to hit on test in the 20s and 40s. I also wonder if the debuffs Beam does will make AV killing easier and be more helpful on teams.

The two sets are pretty different, though, and that is probably what would affect things the most.

LOL to your first part. Running out of end scares me as well! End usage is pretty important for a Fiery Aura Tanker (and Brute and Scrapper, if you're wanting those to be more resilient), because of all the toggles that are worth getting and running. This is made worse when you run into Freaks in the early to mid game, and Malta, Carnies, and Praetorians in the late game. My defensive build is pretty rock solid for end usage, and Cardiac makes the Leadership toggle possible to run. Basically, Consume is there for when a Sapper gets lucky and hits me, or the same for some of the psi users in the end game. I like that a lot... I have a few other characters that need Consume or a similar power to keep on trucking, and that always makes me nervous (even if it is doable).

I'll never scoff at getting into the 30s or even the def cap if I can, but on a resist based set, the 20s really make an appreciable difference. Getting your resists even higher is a big change, too. Cardiac, even before I hit the rare levels and its +1 bonus, made a huge difference in my survivability when my resists to S/L went into the mid-70s, versus the high 60s.

As Hyperstrike's post kind of suggests, if you pursue too much defense with a build, you'll start to neglect other parts of your performance. Sometimes that trade-off is worth it, but not too much. I would be nervous about that build of Hyper's because of the end consumption. You want to be able to keep trucking, and there are many end draining powers in game, making the situation worse if you can't even normally keep up your endurance.

I know people have been able to get their S/L defense on Fiery Aura Tankers to the normal softcap (45%), but that requires some sacrifices... some of which I would debate if they were worth it. I don't think you can get ALL of your defenses to a high amount without considerable sacrifice, just as an FYI.

As to where you are comfortable, 32.5% is all well and good as you suggest (I like it for my Blasters with their ranged or S/L defense), it's not strictly needed for Fiery Aura. You already have pretty high resists, especially if you have Tough, so what does hit is going to be resisted pretty well. The defenses on my main build do make a significant difference, and adding Barrier or one defense inspiration makes it way tougher than anything you face. Unless it's one of those cheating things the developers do with "unresistable damage."

For defenses, I would say S/L or melee, and Psi are the most important things to defend against well. They're the majority of the damage you face or will do a real number on you if you are hit, so you want to dodge those. And getting to the 20s or a little higher with those will make a noticeable difference.

I've been meaning to make a "no concern for cost" build that ups the defense and recharge as far as I can go (making for a good balance there), but haven't had the time. It would require PvP sets, though, which are usually spendy.