Grey Pilgrim

Actually, I meant my character has shifted to the Resistance, and Mr. G knows this... how? The only witness to it was offed by me, Tub Ci, and Wu Yin. He has no way of knowing. "Mother" doesn't know either, as she's talking to me like I'm on her side. Yet Mr. G sits there and knows. It doesn't make sense.

All arcs should be open to anyone, and even for contacts in the Resistance base, there should be a way for Loyalists get in there. The ability to run any arc and find an RP route for doing so is a bonus to the game, and this going halfway just doesn't make sense. It's actually confusing for playing through the game, without even getting in to the roleplay reasons.

I agree with this entirely. The only time in my MA/Regen's career where he had issues was in the late 20s when things were damaging him faster than I could fire off one of my clicks. I added in Tough, and that was it for his rough spot. Now, with Weave and IOs, I don't even need Tough on a lot of the time. Regeneration is doing quite well as is.

No, I don't agree. Regeneration has a lot regeneration from other sources that is up all the time. Instant Healing is one of the many responses you can have to an extreme situation, adding a layer of response. Removing that for a slight boost all the time would be a weakening of the set, in my opinion. Being able to respond to a tough situation is part of the fun and one of the benefits of Regen, and why I prefer it over Willpower, actually.

All the revive sets in actual powersets should have a bonus attached to them to make them work well in combat. Fiery Aura's Rise of the Phoenix works well in this regard. Not sure what Revive should get... untouchable component? +defense with your surging recovery? massive -to hit to surrounding mobs as they see you recover spectacularly from your injuries? Something fun and useful with mobs about is all.

Not sure if Regen resistance or an adjusting of Regen debuffs in the game is more necessary. It's ridiculous that one blast from a Malta Titan lieutenant completely flatlines Regeneration, and even resisting that a good amount means the debuff is still ridiculous. That seems too high for everyone, but especially a powerset that is characterized in a major way by its regeneration.

Pretty much what I said earlier. Blasters can already do great (other than maybe some powers or sets that need tweaking, especially Devices). Any more would be ridiculous. At worst, some certain powersets elsewhere need reduction. At best, different ATs and different builds perform in a range of being okay, and it's not a big deal if some are doing better (like debating what primary is worst for a Scrapper, like they're all not sitting pretty).

Personally, I've thought that debuffs are out of whack in this game for awhile, and maybe some caps aren't where they should be. But I know Castle has acknowledged that def caps are staying where they are for everyone, even though it might have been smarter some time ago (I8 or so) to make them different for different ATs. I thought I remember him posting and saying that they were not going to institute decreasing returns to buffs and debuffs in PvE, as well. But I'm feeling uncertain of that now. At any rate, I'd say adjusting that would make a big difference (in a good way) to balance if done right.

I'm sure that the move would be unpopular with some, but it would make it better to stack other types of ATs on a team, increase the priority of melee ATs, etc. As it is, it's probably a little too easy to prioritize some ATs over others. Still, thinking along such lines makes me glad I don't have to be in Castle's shoes.

I'll wait and see to know if they need any of these added bits. The story of The Hobbit should certainly be able to be told in one movie, while still having good attention to the story, characters, and action. We don't particularly need more info on what the White Council is doing, or the backstory of the Ring, or whatever else they're going to shoehorn in.

And it really does seem like shoehorning to me, as all that stuff is really appendix fodder: which is what Tolkien ended up doing with it. It's just too secondary to the story, characters, and themes of The Hobbit. Maybe Peter Jackson and co. can make it work, but if so, let's hope it leans towards the added detail and scenes with Boromir in LOTR, and not walls of skulls falling or some other unneeded bit.

Removing Fitness and its power selection already seems iffy on good design to me (all of my characters are going to be able to do more than they can now, and sooner if they're still leveling). Removing the need to even have Stamina or slot for it seems even more iffy, as you do want to slot it to get the most benefit from it (some builds can avoid this, but most can't).

As it is, slotting, endurance, and health are big curbs to performance, and removing those makes a game that isn't too hard even easier, and probably is not for the best. Making Fitness an inherent gets around one of the lingering bad design issues in the game, so we hardly need to go further.

I call it bad design, but needing to recover is fairly common. Not sure how it is now, but my Mage in WoW made frequent use of the food and water he could craft, as did his friends that used magic and couldn't make their own. CoX is and was much faster paced than this.

? There are some mobs in a lot of those groups, but they're not necessarily known for it. I'd cite the CoT for -to hit much sooner than -def, for instance: the main ones that do it are those Earth Mage mobs in the 30s, and they're not always there. Tsoo... sword wielders, I guess, but most of them do Kin type powers and -to hit. Rikti? Not even sure who does that... maybe the occasional Magi, but I thought they were mostly Stalagmites and mez.

Defense debuff is more common early game with all the guns being toted about, but late game it's mostly there for certain enemy groups or mob types you encounter. My Fire/Fire Tank enjoys the defense he's picked up, so he always mezzes those Tarantula Queen LTs that debuff defense so much. Rest of Arachnos, not so much.

Defense debuff is a tactical consideration, to be sure, but many mobs do not do it, and you'll notice it when they can. Adjust accordingly. Doesn't mean that having some defense (whether your primary has it or not) will help. For WP, you have heals and Tough to fall back on that point as well, which is layered mitigation, and something you want on any character.

Saying they're smaller population-wise is the truth. Saying they're "small time" implies they're not as good, which is not true. If you didn't mean that, fair enough, but it was easy to read that implication in the words.

Every server has a different population and approach to things. Get to know the forum-going ones on the forums, and make sure to join your server's chat channels so you can get a better handle on what teams are forming, etc. For this OP go to the Champion forums to find those, or contact Cobalt Azurean in game, as he suggested. I'm on those channels myself, as my spillover characters from Victory are there and I do play there fairly often.

Blech, without breaking out yet another argument about the benefits of ranged over melee, suffice it to say that I know quite well what all the melee ATs can do for AOE, and that the Ranged types can do it sooner and over a bigger area. Dual Blade is great, don't get me wrong (I just wish the new difficulty settings had come in sooner, as I mostly leveled my Dual Blades Tanker through the old ones, and his AOEs felt like overkill when he soloed). Ranged ATs are generally able to affect a larger area, and better. As they should, they need to have something over Melee types.

Masque, I would agree that Stalkers had to have a little benefit from some PvP thinking in the past. But they still do offer a big difference in playstyle from Scrappers and Brutes, and I hope that capability is expanded on if they do make adjustments. I think I actually prefer Stalkers to those two from time to time, as I want a bit more thought than just going in and smashing.

The worst pets are those ones operated by "real" people. Fracking egotistic bastards knock me away from the perfect position or cone that I lined up, or the ranged types threw some "helpful" AOEs around and knocked the whole mob flying. I need some good commands to make them work right!

Eh, both ATs have the same shortcomings that the Cuda power makes up for. Unless you're Elec/ or /Shield, you don't have a huge amount of AOE as a Scrapper, and not every build or player is going to be able to leverage that too much. As it is, every AT gets a power there, and that's as it should be.

Any actual AT issues need to be solved at that level. Castle said he didn't have time before GR, but I assume he's got something in the works for Stalkers. I hope it's along the lines of the other Stalker changes: those were more creative than a simple damage boost or something like that. Not sure if the solution is magnifying the previous changes or giving more, but plenty of ideas are being bandied about in the Stalker forums.

Even then, I'd say the ATs are sitting pretty good. Each of them is pretty different and offers different fun, approaches, etc. Stalkers stand out the most, and even then, they're different than the other melee ATs and aren't so far out of the park that they're unplayable or not worth having.

Thanks for that (and everyone else's posts). I don't know how much the Gladiator proc goes for, but I would imagine it's quite a bit. Not sure if I would be able to afford it, unless it's in the >10 million range (I could spend more, but I try to minimize those bigger cost recipes in my builds if I can). So I don't know if I could aim for -res stacking with that.

Just as a reminder, if I'm going to use the Achilles -res proc, it will always be in a fast recharging, ST attack. So Gambler's Cut has it for my Nin Stalker and my Katana Scrapper, same for Pistols in my Dual Pistols Blaster (that's the Tier 1 attack, fyi). What I'm debating is if I should use it in cones that I do find useful in ST and in AOE situations, so Flashing Steel and Empty Clips... both are low enough on endurance and do good enough damage that I find them decent in both situations.

My Katana Scrapper used to have the -res proc in both Sting of the Wasp and Flashing Steel, and he had no issues getting the -res to show up on the hard target he was facing in the mob (as in getting it up early in the fight and keeping it there). He also had occasional benefits where others in the mob were debuffed as well. Now he only has it in Sting of the Wasp, and my Nin Stalker only has it in Gambler's Cut. I do notice that it takes longer to get applied sometimes, and isn't up as easily, hence me wondering if another proc is worth it.

My Dual Pistols Blaster is about to start slotting IOs in a few levels (he's almost 26 now), so I'm wondering if I should aim for an Achilles proc in Empty Clips to complement the Achilles -res in Pistols (and to stack on the -res in Piercing Rounds if I'm using standard ammo), or to shoot for a damage proc instead. Hmmm, pun intended? Anyway, I can see the benefit of jumping in, firing that, and then using Bullet Rain, which WILL have a damage proc. Seems like the Achilles might help there, and for my Scrapper and Stalker, but I'm not sure.

But I might be quibbling over not a whole lot.

*added*

I do team a lot and solo a lot on most of my characters, so... it's probably a wash. Was curious and wanted to bounce ideas around, though.

Yes, not sure why people have such a hard time with this. Random=random. Weird stuff happens all the time. In a metropolitan area of 4-5 million people, I'd run into people I knew at one time or another more often than I do now in a metropolitan area of maybe... 200k?

Purples drop at a very low rate, so you'll see even weirder things with this. I haven't had one drop in a couple weeks, but I've had about seven or eight in as many months. Before this "spree" I had two drop years ago (which bankrolled me for awhile), and I do play 47+ characters fairly often. This is why you get excited when you have one drop, as you have no clue when you'll get it next.

Extremely rare should be so. This isn't the St. Louis Slugger temp power we're talking about.

They don't really need Aim... it'd be ridiculous if they did.

And as it is, Lightning Rod and Shield Charge are already ridiculously good... part of me still wants to say too good, but they do have fairly high recharge. Don't be fooled, though, they are really strong.