Lakanna

The team is only as strong as the weakest member. As blasters, our strength in teams is not to wipe out the spawns with our alpha. We eliminate threats to the team. If the tanker has aggro, but 2 LT's have beelined for the defender, the 2 LT's are the big threat, and should be dealt with. Taking an extra second to pick the BEST target, rather than the nearest, can make all the difference in a battle. best is to eliminate things before they become a threat, second best is to eliminate a growing threat, and worst is to have a +3 boss in the face of the healer because we weren't paying attention.

Watch the battle. As solo blasters, we are forced to pay attention at all times to where we are, where the enemies are, and how fast they can reach us. This is an invaluable skill, and if you can do the same on a team, you can apply your damage where it will do the most good. Think about what you are about to do, and when it comes time to act, unload with everything you have.

The entire way that monster badges works goes counter to the purpose of awarding the badges. Monsters are supposed to be a significant challens that multiple heroes cooperate towards to defeat. The decision to make the badges a competitive rather than a cooperative effort has made each spawn a jealously-guarded thing. If I see a giant monster first, to be honest, I'm telling my SG before I announce it on a public channel, because if I tell the entire server, there's no reward for participation (except for Lusca), the reward is only to the team that does more damage than anyone else.

I'm not affected by the decision not to datamine the shard and Striga TF's, but it's still a bad decision. The Quartermain TF especially, is a massive time-consuming undertaking, and to decide that the rewards don't apply if someone did it before I5 is simply unfair to them. They put the time and effort into completing it, so they should get the badge for it. Someone already volunteered to do the datamining for free. I'll come out and help him do it. Reward the effort people put into it.

Good luck and best wishes to your brother. One of my best friends is doing her AIT now, and will probably be in Iraq by the end of the year.

You and I disagree about the feel and direction of the game. It happens, but I'm glad that you're back and talking to us again.

Burn damage was too high. A tanker primary shouldn't have a single attack that was slotted in prefernce to attacks in the secondaries. NOW, maybe, with the reduced damage and increased recharge, they can drop the unworkable fear effects from it, and let it be a good, but not godlike, power. Burn's effectiveness was the reason for all the bad ideas that have come from the DEV team regarding burn and fire tanks in general. I for one wish they had simply nerfed the damage long ago, and now that they have, I hope they completely remove the fear effect, or go back to allowing punchvoke/taunt to override fear.

The way it stands right now, burn is the next thing to be respecced out. My blaster already ditched Nova and Explosive Blast because the powers were so situational, they became essentially worthless. Hope that doesn't happen to burn too.

I like the set. Soloing, the powers are about where a blaster set should be, at least for the first 10 levels. Good damage, fast attacks, and a wonderful secondary effect.

It's that secondary effect that worries me. It's good. Very good. And we've seen what happens to "very good" powers and powersets. I'd say just cap the -res somewhere along the line, so that a person never takes more than, say, 200% of the original damage total. That's 10 or so stacked sonic debuffs, or 6-7 tar patches. The way it is now, stacking res debuffs can build up to some amazing damage numbers quickly.

I've found it to be useful, sometimes, on my sonic blaster. for my level 50, it never even went up. I actually saw, at one point, the hospital screen pop up when my health bar was green and my defiance bar was empty. THEN the damage caught up with me and I fell down. I've been reluctant to post anything about defiance because the lag issues on test make it difficult to actually test the power. I don't think that it will be a major, all-the-time boost, nor will it be something to actively try. This power seems more like "I'm taking you with me" than anything.

I think it would benefit both AT's if this were switched with scrapper criticals. Scrappers would be more able to use defiance, and we could always benefit from a more consistant chance for double damage.

I really wish I hadn't screwed up the time-zone I was working in. I only got there at the very end, but I asked him about CoV beta invites (if you're still reading the thread, States- great talk, from the little I saw of it)

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I still want to know what the heck the Vahzilok Mortificator was using on Statesman. Because I sure as heck haven't seen anything like it from them in-game.

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I'm still not entirely sure what game the new series is based on. It doesn't look or feel like CoH at all, other than a few character names.

After all this time, one would think that humans could learn to tolerate their own species, at least. For all their posturing about being superior to other humans, They make themselves LESS human than ever. A sad and deluded group, but still a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Steps will be taken to prevent them from causing more damage.

Villains follow different rules. Which is cheap, and IMHO makes the higher level powers kind of anticlimactic... OK, NOW I can use that power I've been seeing for the last 10 levels. Yay.

The part that bugs me is the "best of both worlds" mobs. They melee effectively, have good ranged attacks, and even get som eCC, along with a ton of HP. THEY should be the heros, they're much better at fighting than we are.

Wonderful post, Gaffer. And a good explanation of why you guys use the big updates. Thanks.

At least part of this is getting hit with Issue 2: SK/mentor pairs are going to be required to be teamed, no more having a l50 gain a ton of XP while a level 43 SK's the PL'ed toon and stays out of the group.

XP will have to be split 3 ways now, instead of 2. It's a start.

If you feel the need to PL a character, go for it. don't whine when you can't get your badges for low-level missions, don't whine that there's nothing to do at 50, and don't complain that the game is too easy. If you want to play the game, them PLAY, don't be a spectator as your character is levelled without any effort.

I don't know why anyone would pay $15 a month to watch someone else play the game for them. Unless they're selling the accounts, which I PRAY Cryptic will stop by simply dropping an email to EBay saying that it's prohibited.

TerraVoltaTour3 - Nervous Dreck -: .62 miles west of Coroman Manufacturing, along the wall in a ruined sector.

Yeah. I emailed him that one, along with Valorous, Top Dog, Mystic King, and Upgraded.

Soul Binder is still my favorite title