Lord Mayhem

^This, times ten.

We also must not forget to include the portal into Hell, the ceiling-mounted giant death ray, the holding pens/cages for the non-EU folks who wander in, the Orgasmatron, a stage for the dancing badgers (and mushrooms), and most heinous of all the bowls of potpourri!

I occasionally get crashes to desktop from clicking WW/BM NPCs, but very few lately. I've had terrible lag this last week, but double xp can probably be blamed for that.

Heaven forbid, I may have to start writing shorter posts. It's the apocalypse, I tell ya!

As for the word "swish", here the closest meanings would be "flash" or "flashy", usually when speaking about clothes, or cars, or some fashion accessory - I guess a combination of smart/shiny/impressive/cool/really-suits-you. I wasn't aware of the US meaning until I just Wikipedia'd it, and now I realise in future I'll have to be very conscious of the context I use the word "swish" in

Yeah I was aware of that. Sadly for me the new forums like to mark everything as read automatically at certain points. Everything prior to today, regardless of whether I've read it or not, has been marked as read. So sure, I can click the triangle and it will take me to the first post it thinks I haven't read, but rarely is that the post after the last post I actually read.

At this point I'm just really missing the old EU forums. They were faster for me, avatars always loaded (getting a lot of failed avatar image loads here), and they never marked things as read that I hadn't read.

There's a very good Steel Canyon instance map like that - I'd love to see it in MA. It is used on Ghost Widow's 3rd patron arc "Brainpower", on the mission to kidnap Dr Franks from a SERAPH Lab:

This screenshot shows the SERAPH lab's exterior, which you can enter - the building interior has a lot of rooms and corridors and even a lift/elevator transition - while this screenshot shows the actual exterior of the same building in the outdoor Steel Canyon city zone (just northeast of Wentworths) - note it has the frontage for the Exchange Bank of Paragon City.

In case any Dev does read this, last time I did that map I typed /whereami to get the map name and it is: V_OUTDOOR_STEELCANYON_SERAPH_LAB

And again, in case any Dev notices this post, I would also like to have the map from Captain Mako's 2nd patron arc "The Perfect Killing Machine" added to the MA. The mission's entry door is in Potter's Field in Sharkhead through one of the small crypt buildings - I only mention this because the entrance room for the instanced map is a perfect transition, as it shows the inside of said crypt and you drop down through a hole in the sarcophagus into a smooth caves map.

Again, the /whereami info for that map is: V_MOS_TO_SMOOTHCAVES_30_LAYOUT_08

As others have requested, I'd also love to see some Shadow Shard maps - especially featuring The Chantry, but also the map with the Nemesis base exterior+interior which is used in the fifth mission of Black Scorpion's 3rd patron arc "The Destiny Raids" and is also used in the 3rd mission of Dark Watcher's arc "The Horror of War".

Plus I'd also like to see the floating arcane islands used in the final mission against Scirocco from his second patron arc "The Hammer of the World", which is also used in the final mission of Mage-Killer Zuhkara's arc "The Circle's Plot" (with Lilitu and Blade Prince Tirses).

It would be really nice to have an instanced map of the interior lobby of the Golden Giza casino from St Martial, but the instance map would have to be created as it doesn't feature anywhere in the game (apart from as a lobby in the outdoor zone itself).

No, I use Google Chrome.

I must admit I find the volume/frequency of posts a bit daunting now. I don't think I can commit so much extra time to keeping up with what's posted on the sub-forum categories I used to monitor/participate in on the old EU forums. "General Discussion" and "Comics & Hero/Villain Culture" in particular are HUGE now, and they were busy enough for me on our old EU forums.

Plus I'm a bit fearful of running into spoilers for the US shows I watch on the "Comics & Hero/Villain Culture" forum - on the EU forums everyone was sensitive to UK/EU screening dates for US shows, but we can't expect that on a predominantly US forum.

On the bright side I suspect I'll appreciate the increased traffic on the various archetype, "Mission Architect" and "Base" forums. That will give me something to browse while "enjoying" my much slower zone-loading times in-game (which seem to get slower by the week...).

So I think I'm going back to mainly just lurking. The sheer size of the post-merge forums has put me off trying to fully participate. I'll have to be very selective about what I read/post now - and I may just stick to the Dev Digest (once they get that back up and running).

You can minimise redraw issues with Archery/Energy by going fully ranged and not taking the melee attacks (I did take TF, but I slotted it with a stun set so I could use it with Stunning Shot & Power Boost to stun bosses/EBs, if needed).

All of the self-buffs from Energy Manipulation can be used before you pull the bow out to attack anyone and they support Archery very well. Just make sure to use Aim last (i.e. after BU) as it draws the bow during its animation, so no time is wasted on redraw.

With RoA + Explosive Arrow + Fistful of Arrows you really don't need any more area attacks, and single target is very good too thanks to Blazing Arrow in particular (almost snipe-level damage), plus Aimed Shot and Snap Shot.

Lethal resists can be a pain sometimes, but I don't find myself noticing them as much as I did on my claw scrapper and axe brute, for some reason. Archery is very light on endurance too: I have stamina, but I don't recall end ever dropping below 80% unless I got sapped - so you won't need to go /MM for DP for the +recov.

It can be a very safe blaster too - I went Force Mastery, so I have PFF and FoN as panic buttons (the latter has let me tank EBs and briefly even some AVs before, unsupported), with Temp Invul backing up decent ranged def from IOs, with Aid Self for if anything gets through - but distance can add extra safety too with easily attained perma Boost Range - and you can even shoot Rain of Arrows from a safe place around a corner or behind cover.

I had a blast playing my Archery/Energy to L50 in I8, IO'd it in I11, purpled it up recently (built for +rchg, and ranged def), and now I play it simply for the enjoyment of watching whole spawns lie down defeated after BU+Aim+RoA every 25-30 seconds or so (such as the nicely lined up spawns on Cimerora's walls) and because attack chains using the bow have such a nice flow to them.

I totally agree with all that.

This last week my Mace/SR Brute hit L50, my Elec/Nin Stalker got to L46, and I recently started a Shield/SS Tanker (at L10). All of my previous characters with mez protection had a reliable toggle that was always on, but these 3 have clicky mez protection... and I absolutely hate it:

- it uses up time during my attack chain to activate (very annoying during Build Up), and wastes even more time if your other powerset is weapon-based as it forces redraw

- I usually queue-up my attack powers in combat (can be helpful when it's laggy), so I either have to monitor the clicky mez prot buff to leave room for it to renew, or it forces its way into my attack chain, or it gets delayed and the buff expires so I get mezzed

- when Global Recharge gets heavily debuffed (double-boss spawns of Fortunata Mistresses... uggh) the protection period often expires before the power recharges, which can leave me mezzed

- it "uses up" my Ctrl+Click auto-power, so if I have another clicky self buff like Hasten and/or want to use an attack on auto (e.g. like Boxing as a fury-building "filler" on a brute) I have to either manually monitor it or keybind auto-power switching to my movement keys (this really puts me off playing a BS/Shield scrapper as I had planned, as I wanted to have Parry and/or Hasten on auto)

- it usually takes up an extra slot in a build over what a mez protection toggle does (I tend to slot clicky mez prot with 2 Rchg IOs, and purely mez prot toggles with EndRdx in the base slot)

The only real advantage I have ever heard of for click mez protection (over a toggle) is that it can be stacked if you have lots of +rchg - supposedly it used to be handy for PvP (is that even still desirable with mez resist instead of mez prot in PvP?), but it's totally unnecessary for most/all PvE.

I'd love to see all clicky mez protection powers turned into toggles, because then I would certainly play /SR, /Shield and especially /Nin again. As it is now... I'm not so keen (I'm even thinking of dumping Shield/ for Invul/ or Ice/ on the Tanker).