JamieB

The thing that gets me about DXP is that it actively works against doing all but the highest level TFs and such while in the level range, because you cap out way earlier than usual — it'd take, what, 2-3 mishes into Positron (starting at level 10) before you were level 15?

Spose we're going to see a ton of 35s wanting to run the ITF, though, and its plausible that Numina's, LG & Reichs will still get run a bit.

Crushing Impact isn't a bad placeholder for Hecatomb, if memory serves (and is a heck of a lot cheaper).

In all honesty you're probably best off running lots of level 50 TFs (ITF, Reichs, Lady Grey) —*that way you can ring up a fair few merits (and either stockpile for expensive recipes, or roll randoms), plus fighting level 50+ enemies means you're always in with a (sadly infinitesimal) purple drop chance.

Running Lady Grey's TF in particular is a public service to some extent, as completing it triggers a Rikti invasion which anyone can participate in (well, either heroside or villainside, anyway.)

Well, Ronnie did love his space weaponry...

Nah, Ozy's plot in Watchmen was dreamed up by Moore, but it has similarities to the old Outer Limits episode The Architects of Fear (which Moore acknowledges in the story —*it's playing in the background on the telly when Blonde-Dan and Blonde-Laurie visit Laurie's mum towards the end of the final issue).

Purple set recipe, I presume? There's price variance even within those - the less-used sets (eg Confuse, Stun) are a lot less expensive usually than the "Big 3" of Hecatomb (melee), Armageddon (pbaoe) and Apocalypse (ranged damage).

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President Reagan once said " The one way to truly unite this planet is for us to be invaded by beings from 'out there'(points up)"

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They should never have let him read Watchmen...

Bonne chance pour gagner votre 50, d'un anglais!

Sorry to hear it; afraid all I can suggest is that you contact support via petition in-game.

Afraid I'm posting from That London, where I reside; I have a deep and abiding love for the Irish solution to word filters, though

I've had the same problem (and have a live query with support on it), but I've seen a couple of posts about it on the US fora. I'm not going to paraphrase it for fear of misinformation.

US thread and solution here.

Yeah, been ages since I had a purple drop meself

I kinda like the masses of mobs though; IMO, the only thing better than beating on fascists is bearing on a feck-ton of fascists. I'm also grateful that the big room o' doom aside, the map's all caves, which nicely groups up all those pesky fascists for AoE goodness (and massively reduces the annoyance factor of KB). But I completely understand how peoples' mileage on that issue can vary...

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# Is it bad decorum to crack jokes about 'not crossing the streams' mid-fight..


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No, but you crack that joke while standing at a busy urinal at your own risk.

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that guy has more health than jesus

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He'd better not have a 72-hour activation time self-rez.

SF is still do-able, but you need some Shivans and anything else you can throw at him, really. But, yes, will be a bit less "aargh" without Reichsmann's regen, which brings me back to the bad old days when one needed at least 2 /rads on the team just to get AVs down to what is now standard AV regen rates...

Same thing happens with Council Hoverbots (Defiant, Citadel TF, last night), so I presume it applies to all "exploding" NPCs. Be interesting to run a Lady Grey SF and see if we get 10 x Haminuke....

BB: Have you run through the two Task Forces available at your level yet? That would be Numina's TF (35-40) and the Imperious TF (35-50). If you want to "level legitimately" (as you put it), you can always get sidekicked to a 50 on the latter (as 50-level teams are pretty frequent on the ITF, due to the chance for purple drops off the (hordes of) mobs at that level).

(In case you're a player who doesn't have solid chunks of time to throw at the game...) Numina's can be quite long (1.5-3 hours depending on team, whether they've run it before, etc) and the ITF can take anything from 35-ish minutes (speedrun) to 3+ hours (normal run and problems with the rather tough final AV). I'd say the average is 1h20-2 hours.

Also, once you ding 38, I believe you'll be in range for the Hydra trial, which is a pretty cool bit of content and doesn't take too long to complete with an experienced team; at 39, you'd be able to do the Eden trial (again not overlong to complete with an experienced team, and a unique bit of content).

On top of that, you can always run a 2nd respec trial (34-44) for either a respec or merits, plus a badge.

(On Defiant) I wouldn't say that the Hydra/Eden trials or Numina TF are that commonly run, but there's an ITF run practically every evening and you can usually find people up for the 2nd respec. @JamieB if you're Defiant-side, will be happy to help you out if I'm online.

Lord no, that'd be disastrous.

"OMW to mish!"

*5 minutes pass*

"Uh, when are you getting here?"

"Soon!™"

"a packing crate"

Snake? SNAAAKE!!!?!!

Aha, I think I can see the problem here.

Use your freespec and get Venom Grenade as soon as it becomes available. Its pretty much the best offensive power Soldiers have until the respec at 24, and makes taking down entire mobs (it has pretty good range and does damage in addition to its hefty 20% resistance debuff) a HELL of a lot easier, especially when followed with Heavy Burst. If you're having problems with deaths, take Wide Area Web Grenade too (you can always drop it at 24).

Soldiers are beastly AoE toons, with a fairly grim single target chain (Single Shot, Pummel & Burst are your only ST attacks). A highly effective Soldier attack chain for even-con groups (and above, tbh) is:

WAWG -> Venom Nade -> Frag Nade* -> Heavy Burst

For bosses, toss in either Pummel (risky, as your defense is Ranged rather than melee based at this stage - you can slot in IOs for Melee later; conversely, Pummel can be stacked for boss stuns pretty easily) or Single Shot and/or Burst.

(*Frag can be a liability without WAWG as it causes Knockback - which WAWG negates. KB is bad news for a toon with Targeted AoE and Cone attacks.)

If you've taken travel powers, get rid of them, you should be fine with just the safeguard travel powers up to level 24 (a lot of VEAT players eschew travel powers completely, taking Mental Training, Swift and *only* Combat Jumping, which is about as fast as unslotted Fly to get around).

(Note that the AoE aspect changes slightly if you choose to respec into a Bane Spider at 24; they have some neat single-target melee attacks and a savage toxic chain with VG - Poison Ray (and later the Mako epic pool). Crabs are just horrific AoE monsters - I specced into FIVE AoEs and two STs for fillers.)

Aha!

SPOILERS AHOY

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From the US fora:
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"Stalkers get Makos Temp so they can sneak past the lasers to activate fail saves which kill all the 5th column ambushes. NOTE: There are only 4 fail saves.

Brutes (and VEATs) get Ghost Widows Temp power that shuts off Reischmans debuff aura (purple swirly thing) OR protects from the debuff aura.

Dominators get Scirroccos Temp that is a hold for the 5th Column ambushes.

Corruptors get Scirroccos Temp that kills all the held 5th Column ambushes (both regular holds and Dominators version of Scirroccos Temp).

Masterminds get Black Scorpions Temp that allows to knock Reichsman out of Unbreakable mode OR prevent him from going to Unbreakable mode OR kill his regen while in Unbreakable mode."

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Possible bug note: What confused the hell out of me is that I got all four temp powers (a couple of which were duplicated), and was clicking all of them to see if any would drop into my power tray.

Try to get on teams (I know it isn't the easiest thing in the world at the moment). VEATs are *designed* for teaming, pretty much - s'why half your powers are team buffs. I couldn't imagine even trying to solo a soldier pre-24 (and would be pretty leery of doing so after 24, though I guess Banes could maybe manage).

Failing that, if you're hellbent on solo and have some Inf on hand or can transfer from other toons, I'd recommend slotting both Burst and Heavy Burst with the Achilles Heel: Chance for Res Debuff proc (available from level 10), and maybe even slotting Single Shot with it, too. It should help during boss fights as with 2 - 3 chances to land it per attack chain, most bosses you fight will be packing 10-second duration -20% resists pretty quickly.

It doesn't stack (so no -40% or better) but added to the -20% from Venom Grenade, you should find bosses considerably easier to take down.

My understanding, from what I can piece together from the US fora, is that MMs are supposed to get the 'anchor' power (as the heroes who deal finishing blows to the other 4 AVs do blueside) which stops Reichsmann legging it to the machine to regen —*but they're not getting it, or it doesn't work.

I'm pretty sure that only stalkers are able to get into the glowies room, which does *something* to help with the ambushes. Just being stealthed doesn't work; tried gojng through those lasers with my NW and — ouch.

Anyway, ran it in about 2:20 with a mixed bag team last night; Shivans, Vanguard Heavy and various other buffs (popped a spare Serafina, etc) got us through it, but I had to fire Elude after eating 4 blues over the course of the 25-minute-odd Reichsfight. Also, I swear he did a PSYCHO CRUSHAA at one point, but that might have been fatigue kicking in.

Ran the heroside version a few minutes later and clocked it in 1:20 —*might have been a lot longer but we had two tanks on the team, which seemed more than sufficient to keep RM busy while we dealt with t'other AVs.

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One thing I want to commend the devs/SF writer on for this one is the GET TO DA CHOPPA navbar thing in mish 1, which made me laugh very loud IRL.

You can stack 5 of the same IO sets, but not 'unique' IOs (eg Numina's Convalescence: Regen/Recovery), and not purple sets (which are all uniques — though you could feasibly have 5 different purple sets).

Example: if you were to slot Numina's Convalescence on, say, a /WP scrapper, you could have one set of 6 (incl. Reg/Rec) and 4 sets of 5. You'd get the full set bonus from the 6-slotted set and 4 of the '5 piece' bonuses.

Set bonuses work on how the bonus is listed (have a look at peoples' Personal Info for an example of the listing), and as such there are a couple of exceptions to the "five of the same" rule —*for example, you could have 5 x 7.5% recharge bonuses from sets, PLUS 5 x the 7.5% Global Rech/Defense piece from the Luck of the Gambler set, as they're respectively listed as "Huge Recharge Bonus" and "Luck of the Gambler: Recharge Bonus".

As mentioned upthread, have a play around with this in Mids; I'm pretty sure that works per the game for these issues (though the current build of Mids does not list the new PvP sets, which have extra bonuses that only apply in PvP zones in addition to their PvE bonuses).

And all for marginally less than a packet of cigs? SOLD!

Just as long as tea remains the Official Beverage of the Fora; I'm not having that Mountain Dew muck within a mile of me. 'Course, with a mod named "'Av a tea", my hopes remain high.