Grey Pilgrim

Slightly stream of conscious, I suppose, since the feeling comes from multiple threads, but... what I said does make sense. I came back home yesterday and read all the Victory threads, and there was a lot of joking going on in almost all of them, which I hadn't been seeing for the past couple weeks. Which led me to (jokingly) wonder if I was the source of some angst on the Victory forums. The new Voo to blame, if you will.

Hence my joking post. There must be some truth to it, however, since my joke made no sense to anyone.

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I find Cloaking Device to be quite useful. I paired it with a Stealth IO, but you can use Smoke Grenade instead to be completely hidden and lay some Trip Mines. Though taking Smoke Grenade is a power pick, of course.

I also use Hover with my Arch/Dev, and Stunning Shot and Taser are nice since you can take a boss out of a fight and drop them in safety. I found this to be useful and almost needed to solo when I got my Arch/Dev into the late 30s and 40s. I could have made it without, perhaps, but it did make things easier, especially when paired with Stealth.

I personally like the Blaster snipes, as they can be a great opener. As they are, they can almost drop a minion when you target them (I put the Sting of the Manticore proc in mine, and when it hits, the minion dies), or put a hard hit on a lieutenant or boss... I think half of a lieutenant's health will get dropped. Anyway, such an attack can be useful when starting a fight, that's for sure.

Yeah, I feel like Barrage should be the Tier 2 now, with that change. I'm a bit torn about the recharge increase, until I remember that Barrage does worthwhile damage when you activate it now. It's more of a pain at lower levels, and I noticed the change when it happened, but it's a lot nicer when you look at it right, especially in later levels. More recharge works quite nicely with it, and even if you don't go for IO sets, it's not going to break your endurance bank to slot it with recharge rather than endurance reduction.

Anyway, I have to say that a long animation time should not be killing anyone, let alone a tanker. Anyone should know their limits and when to activate powers and when not. A Fire/Fire Tanker has plenty of 2-3 second powers to activate, and I never get killed because of firing one off instead of using an inspiration or Healing Flames. And if I let off Incinerate on a foe that is about to die, its my own silly choice, I should have used something else or moved on to another target.

I dunno if the numbers between the sets still put Energy Melee far enough in the lead with ST damage to warrant its lack of or AOE damage, I can't recall what's been said on it. I'd still say Whirling Hands isn't going to unbalance things if it was made a bit more worthwhile also.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. I go away for a few days and everyone starts cracking jokes. Do I make everyone upset or something? Am I the new Voo everyone will blame?

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yeah that was classic.

Me: "whats the last ticket above cap badge, 10,000?"
DC: "No you stupid Fleshy, it is 1,000."
Me: "oh crap, I hit that like 9,000 tickets ago"
DC: "Silly Human, prepare to be assimilated"


At least I think thats how it went...

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Man, I miss all the fun chat while playing. I mostly see teams forming and emo about one thing or another.

The new Renegade hat or whatever with the Magic pack might be better to use for a Mountie hat. Brim may be a little large, but it may work.

...

I Tanked Reichs with my Fire/Fire for about an hour when I did that TF... I had another tank that we'd split up the AVs with and such, but I could handle Reichs. He does have that one megahit that is rough on any tank, not just Fire/. That whole hour, I think he dropped me twice and the other tanker twice, other teammates got it if they got too close... our Scrapper was dropping constantly, poor guy. Anyway, I was considerably better off when Reichs got both us tanks, as I could pop up right away with Rise of the Phoenix.

Do you have any defense on your own? What were you at percentagewise with the two purples (type of purple makes a difference)? If you had a good amount of defense going, then you probably just had some bad luck... he barely ever laid that big hit on me during that hour, and it only dropped me those couple of times.

Having +def from you and your teammates, and -to hit on him helps a lot to avoid those big hits. After that, it's just a matter of having the patience to last while his health goes down slowly. Blech.

*added*

Oh, one other thing. If you ever have a bad experience with any character, post about what happened and ask what more you could do, if that's a common experience, etc. Occasionally you'll run into something there isn't much you can do about (and maybe never, just hedging your bets), but any tank setup should be able to tank most of the content in-game.

Reichs TF is definitely one you'll want a good team makeup for. Depending on your team makeup, you'll want more or less buffs/debuffs, a Tank, etc. With these big encounters like the STF and facing Reichs, it is kind of needed for the Tank to have some support. They're pretty much designed that way.

Saw somewhere else that they have to be a reputation kill. I'm assuming that Arena doesn't have PvP rep, and that's the change, then? Another change made due to farming, I'm sure.

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I love what KO blow does, I hate how it looks doing it.

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Hey, if we're really lucky, i16 will allow alternate animations for our powers.

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Knowing BaBs, we would have to be astronomically lucky.


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Ummmm, what does that mean, exactly? BAB does a lot of good work for animations, and a pretty thorough job. With Shields, he did a lot of extra animations that he didn't need to do. There are variations on attacks from the Super Strength set, different taunt animations, etc.

That doesn't mean I'm saying we will absolutely have different animations to choose from (as that's even higher degree of customization difficulty than weapon and some color changes), but ummmm, there seemed to be some negative feeling to BAB with that, which isn't warranted.

?

I thought PvP drops were just bugged right now... or were they bugged, then fixed to a lower rate than before?

Doh, bummer, NancY. Not much to say but hang in there. My Dad had cancer several years ago and it thankfully hasn't come back. Wish it was the same for you. Thoughts and prayers your way.

Scooter... not sure what we'll run tonight. Part of me wants to work on patron stuff, but I wouldn't mind running the Sister Arlia arc in Cimerora, either. Guess we'll see what people want to do.

*is seriously disturbed*

Hey all, figured I'd shout out that I'll be running the last mission in my Nemesis story arc tonight and then moving on to Tina Macintyre. Hopefully she'll be nice and give me her story arc, as she has not been forthcoming so far.

If anyone wants to tag in for lots of AV goodness at level 44-45, I'll be starting at about 7 PM Central/8 PM Eastern. I'll be running with my WP/DB Tanker, so we have that angle covered for the AVs.

Perhaps he meant solo instead? I know my Earth/Storm took forever to solo before 32. My Grav/Kin is okay on his own and has been from the start, but I got my Earth/Storm to 32 by teaming.

Never can tell with Johnny, but it's a possibility.

At any rate, the only ATs that are really smooth prior to SOs are Blasters, Scrappers, and Kheldians (to some extent... Nova form is pretty easy to run with for a good while). Even then, they open up a lot in the 20s and with SOs if you're slotting things right. Defenders, Controllers, and Tankers usually take a bit to really run as they will for most of the game. Some powerset exceptions to this, of course, but that's the way I've found it, mostly.

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Bah, well, typo. *sighs* That's what I get for not following my advice that I give students.

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Your advice to your students is to make sure of the gender of who they are talking about?

And how much detail do you give them to carry out that advice?

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As I said, it was a typo... my mistake was in not reading through what I wrote before sending it off. Not reading what they wrote is why students turn in papers with the word "assess" one "s" short at the end. And so on. Hehe.

Bah, well, typo. *sighs* That's what I get for not following my advice that I give students.

QR

Here are my two cents on it. My MA/Regen Scrapper that is at 50 fought a lot of Malta, and the Titans regularly landed a power that dropped my Regeneration to zero. Ummm, wut? Seems a tad ridiculous that this one power makes the Regeneration set not regenerate.

One extreme case, I suppose, but it is one thing that bothered me as a Regen Scrapper. With this buff, Regen Scrappers can keep doing what they're supposed to be good at, rather than have that be hampered. It's not like this buff is going to leave Regen overpowered... it's still going to be susceptible to alpha strikes and burst damage.

It might only be a QoL issue like Werner said, but it's a good idea, and merited by the set and game.

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I have a question about devices for Blasters and rather than start a new thread I thought I'd just ask here.

Can you throw a smoke bomb walk right up to a mob undetected (with cloaking device on) lay a time bomb and trip mine, then run away and watch the mob get pwnd? If so, do the time bomb and trip mine act as thier own attacker, or do they draw aggro to you? Just wondering if this is a viable strategy on devices.

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You need more than just Smoke Bomb. Cloaking Device, Stealth, or a Stealth IO would do the job. My Arch/Dev uses Cloaking Device and a Stealth IO, but it works fine with Smoke Bomb, or so I hear.

And Time Bomb and Trip Mine will most definitely draw attention to you. However, most of those affected won't be able to respond from dropping or being knocked back. It takes a bit to set up, but it is a safe way of dropping a nasty mob you're facing.

Yup, Mace is just awesome! Love knocking them up with Jawbreaker and then bringing them crashing down with Clobber.

Another great "wow" melee power is Golden Dragonfly from the Katana set... it's a small cone, so there are some times where you can crit on two foes at once and drop them at the same time when they're at full health or so. Made me blink when it happened the first time, and then say "Awesome!"

Up to you, I haven't used any of this enhancement personally, and don't have any endurance issues that I can't handle, but I know it can be nice to have as well. That being said, if you don't have much cash as it is, it probably would be best to sell it. I had 240 merits on my WP/DB Tanker recently, and I was about to use it on an Eradication damage proc when I realized I could get a LoTG +recharge, sell it, and IO the rest of the character out and probably have cash left over.

LoTG +recharge is nice to have on characters, of course, but it's more of a want compared to finishing off the rest of my IO build. In my book, anyway. Probably the same for you, I would say... it can be quite frustrating to not be able to afford to slot out your character completely with common IOs or SOs, let alone IO sets.

I have an SR Scrapper at 50 and a Nin Stalker that is now at 32. I have to say leveling up has been a lot smoother with the Stalker (though my Kat/SR was plenty good and fun, it didn't feel as good all around leveling up). Part of it is Hide and Assassin's Strike, I am sure, but it is nice, as Ryu said, to not be weak to AOE's for so long. It's nice to have a built-in heal, which my SR Scrapper had to get from Aid Self.

Pros and cons to both, but I rather wonder if the pros for Nin make it better. I'd rather have a heal power and some other aggro tricks than a bit more defense in this game.

Stop babying Toril! It's a hard, cruel world, and the sooner she learns it, the better! *snaps his old man suspenders for emphasis*

Indeed, good times.

Excellent, glad some more got their Task Force Commander. I just have one more Tanker to get it on, now, as I have it on three of my tanks now. I do have another Shield Tanker, but he's only going to be played when my wife plays, and she's not played beyond a free couple of weeks, heh. Supposedly she'll join me at some point, though.

We'll see if I have the willingness to get it on my other heroes after that... a few of them have done some of the needed TFs, but it's hard to fit in Posi and Synapse, that's for sure. They just take so long.

Well, that wasn't perfectly smooth. We had some weird bug where the first mission would not let us load up. It would go to the COH splasher screen (so not the screen loading the mission) and freeze when about 1/6 of the bar was filled up. Weird.

We reformed and it was okay after that, though we tried going in one person at a time, as someone in the team thought that had helped with another TF. Anyone know what to do about this bug or if it's known about?

And yay, Bladed Justice has Task Force Commander! He has 2.7k Health at level 44... not too shabby!