Lobster

I DON'T SEE ICE ARMOR FOR SCRAPPERS.

It's not there!

...

Anyway.

• Soo... can MMs have that new Venomous Gas too please? I rarely bother with the MM version.
• /sonic for mms! Woot! TWO new mm secondaries. Win.
• I'm actually pretty happy with EA lately, so I'm really curious to see how these changes play out. At least they aren't taking the stealth (although I'm curious how that will play with the taunt aura).
• Trade Torrent for a hold with a damage component? YES PLEASE.
• KB added to Nightfall? Sure, why not. Don't care either way.

All this in I21? HOLY #%$$%#! I21 is looking for and more like an expansion level product. Awesome job guys.

So. Reactive used to tick for 5-6 ticks. Whatever, some number. Whatever your % of dot chance was, it would check EACH TICK, even if the previous one failed. So you would always have 5-6 chances to do damage.

Now, it appears to be functioning like the dots in fire blast - as soon as one check fails, the dot stops entirely.

WAI or yet another bug?

[edit: This charge appears to have come with the most recent patch to fix the aoes proccing on all targets every 10s.]

[edit2: OK, I could be wrong. It *may* just be the dot gfx that is vanishing, as I have seen the dot re-occur (bringing the gfx back) a couple times now.]

The couple "super" buffs I saw on the pets on test (AB, for example) seemed kinda lame in that they only go off once and don't last the duration of the pet (like the lesser buffs do). I can't seem to find my post from the beta boards with all the durations & recharges... but my general impression was that I would avoid all those support pets.

Might finally try that nin/ff I've been debating. I have a feeling it will still suck, but we shall see...

Anyone have a "final" price list for astral/emp merit vendors?

I went mace on my merc/storm... but the immob is probably more useful on a 100% ranged set. Still, you can get pretty close to capping S/L/E without too much work with scorp shield + mist + cj/hover. I think I sit at about 39.5 s/l & 32.5 energy. You can cap if you really want to, but this was just more of a side perk for me.

Be nice if Grant Invis got the aoe buff - it didn't, right?

Nice!

I think I'm only missing a Kheld. I should just suck it up and play the last 10 levels on my warshade but I have a really hard time getting into them.

Maybe someday Oni will get fixed. I mean, the devs did finally give us some tweaks for the trials at least.

Have you PM'd the "new" powers people? Black Scorpion maybe?

Sadly, I couldn't find anything in the Steampunk pack that fit with my only actual steampunk-ish themed character:

I've taken bots/dark & mercs/storm through the trial system (T2 judge, T3 all the rest). BAF is, as you said, easy.

Lambda just takes more work. For the turret phase, keep pets in BG & focus on your secondary. Sometimes they will show up and do damage or eat some damage for you or something friendly like that. I generally leave pets in BG the entire time for a Lambda. The entire time. Giving them an attack command frequently gets you killed as aggro adds up and your shared HP pool goes away.

It was a bit of a learning curve on the first one (bots/dark), but by the time I got to the second one, I rarely died on the Lamda. And by rarely, I mean that even on a 50+0 merc/storm, I usually finished the TF without dying once. Sometimes I would die 3-4 times, but even then I'd only hit the hospital once. Depends on the team makeup - and luck, depending on where pets get stuck in the map/break LOS/BG.

On pretty much every single run, people blitz the glowy phase. I was frequently the first one to each glowy. Pets do not cause unmanageable trains, no more than anyone else.

*It helps to get invis via SS+Stealth of some sort.
*Also, let someone else initiate the attacks on the glowies because you are FRAGILE.
*USE INSPS. They are not just there for looks. If you have to hosp, stock up on purple/oranges/greens/BFs and a couple wakies. If I do die, I am usually able to wakie->BF->RUN while the rest of the team has aggro.

Yes, MMs do have it harder on the Lamda than the other ats I have tried (I've taken everything through the trials except Stalkers & Khelds), but it's not unsurmountable. I do think it renders the pets *mostly* useless for damage - I use them basically for HP sacks (I do not buff them in the glowy phase) and would like to see something done about their survival BUT don't let that dissuade you from doing Lambdas.

I admit that I have yet to try it with melee pets (not that the ranged pets don't just rush in and suicide all the time too....), but I plan on doing that before too long. I'm just having a hard time finding one I like enough at the moment.

Forthcoming buff to buffs motivated me to finally finish out my Ill/cold/ice. Looks like I found my next trial alt .