Lord Mayhem

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Prefer the Heroes content Would post on the Tank forums BUT theyre empty :/

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I still see some new posts in there every day, so they're not that empty.

Tbh I'm probably the last person to give advice about tankers, but I think I'd probably approach a scranker build with closer to a scrapper (or scrapping stalker) mindset than a brute one - more of a focus on heavy-hitters than fast attacks (which brutes need to build Fury) - and stone melee suits that - it's not a set you pick if you want a buzzsaw build My reasoning is that with the tanker melee damage modifier being so low, and with no damage added by the inherent (like brutes/scrappers/stalkers get), big attacks will give the best return and you can probably skip slotting up small attacks like Stone Fists and Boxing (waste of end and not worth enhancing) and not worry about having a gap-less attack chain early on.

You probably won't need to worry about taking stuff like Air Sup for mitigation like my brutes/scrappers do either, because you'll be much tougher than them. If you take Stamina as well as QR you shouldn't have end issues either, so slot for capping damage and recharge (90%+) on every attack you do take, plus as much accuracy as you need to hit what you normally fight (I usually plan for 60%+ Acc), but don't worry about secondary effects or too much about endrdx. Hasten would be handy too, to bring those big attacks around faster.

Tough is possibly optional on a scranker and from my scrapper experiences with Willpower you shouldn't ever need Aid Self unless you want to PvP (probably not advisable as a scranker). Slotting IO damage procs could be handy (could even make the small attacks worthwhile if you can spare slots) to supplement your low damage output. Oh and take everything from Willpower, except possibly the self-rez (took it on my scrapper and have never needed it). And Hurl Boulder might be worth taking from Stone Melee now that it has had a sizeable reduction in animation time.

Basically you'll be trying to rip chunks out of enemies while you weather what they throw at you (which Willpower is good at - on a scrapper anyway). Of course I could be wrong, but that's how I'd approach a scranker from my perspective as a brute/scrapper/stalker player.

You'd probably have more luck asking here.

Though of course they might just "stone" you to death for not taking Taunt

EDIT - I'd have given you some advice, but as my advice would have started with the line "personally I'd make a Stone/WP Brute instead" it probably wouldn't have been what you're looking for

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I wish there will be Thermal Defenders in new issue.

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I think you'll get your wish next patch - Thermal and Fire Blast seems like a no-brainer for a thematic pair of powersets to proliferate to Defenders in the next issue - I can see that happening before Traps/Assault Rifle anyway (which would probably then follow in the next issue anyway).

Whatever, as long as I get Archery/TA for Corruptors sometime soon I don't mind what Defenders get

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I used to street-hunt quite a bit, but it's just not worth the long-term effort these days if you want your character to get anywhere, especially at higher levels.

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I still do on some characters when solo, mainly for a change or for badges/merits, but at higher levels I find it much MUCH faster xp (and for some odd reason better loot) than doing missions, because:

a) it saves you zoning time, especially when missions send you to other zones,
b) you cut out travel time between missions/contacts,
c) spawns tend to be bigger and closer together with more bosses (if you pick a good spot),
d) mission/arc completion bonus xp at high level tends to be so trivial compared to what you get from defeating enemies.

I still prefer missions most of the time though, because of the stories and the extra variety and tactics needed to deal with the EBs/AVs and scripted events they have (ambushes, mainly).

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and everyone will just assume you're a nut and do their best to ignore you

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Isn't that the way Stalkers are treated by other Villains anyway?

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Not anymore, no. Stalkers are valuable team members now. Yes, yes they are. Really. Truly. No, really really. Honestly they are. Really...

Seriously though, don't perpetuate the pre-I12 discrimination against stalkers - I'd like to see that turned around because they are pretty decent now - night and day difference from pre-I12 stalkers (but I'm actually enjoying playing mine again, so maybe I'm biased - but at least my stalkers can drop a solo/duo-sized spawn as fast as my brutes now, if not faster).

On all my recent TFs the minions/lieuts melt away so quickly and it's the bosses, but moreso the EBs/AVs, where damage is really needed - stalkers are built for that.

I have Aid Self (with 2 L50 IntRdx IOs and almost capped for heal/rchg) and Tough (capped for Res & EndRdx) on my EM/Elec and he feels just as solid as my Fire/Fire, who has Tough as well (slotted identically - with his heal also capped for heal/rchg). Actually the /Elec feels much tougher because he has Power Surge to fall back on, less resist holes, better protection and high energy & psi resist is more useful than high fire resist, while the /Fire has no godmode. My SS/Dark brute feels more solid than both, but he's not 50 yet so it may not be a valid comparison (plus Footstomp & Opp Gloom gives him better AE mitigation).

The only slight issue with Aid Self is that with my slotting it is prone to being interrupted if I'm being hit by more than 10 mobs, especially ones with damage-over-time attacks (though with careful timing I can usually get it to work), and Aid Self (like other interruptible powers) will never work if you're on a patch like Quicksand/Caltrops, or any Rain, or in a toggle debuff like RI/EF (mobs rarely use that, except for Positron, though a small proportion of Ice Thorn CoT use Snow Storm which also interrupts) - basically any continuous effect that ticks more than once per second. And none of those are that common, unless you're fighting Knives of Artemis or tons of CoT mages. But I always carry green insps for those moments where Aid Self will be unreliable.

Personally I'm more prone to brutelock (if that even exists) than scrapperlock. Playing my scrappers always seems quite relaxing, unhurried and therapeutic by comparison with my 4 brutes - probably because on a scrapper I don't have that fury bar decaying slowly for every second I'm not hitting (or being hit) - consequently I don't feel as pressured to keep charging into more trouble as soon as the last fight ends, so I'm a bit less reckless. And stalkerlock definitely doesn't exist - playing mine I feel so laidback I'm almost horizontal

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Did you spines/Regen not have MoG? Was he still stuck in the way of thinking that it was terribad and thus should not be specced into?

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I'm fairly certain he didn't have MoG - I don't recall seeing the animation for it at all - and when I'm firing BU+Aim+RoA I can spend at least 5 seconds just watching whats going on without paying much attention to my UI (I trigger BU & Aim from my mouse side-buttons, then Rain has that looooong animation and the pause at the end). As for why, I couldn't say - he certainly needed both MoG and Revive with his playstyle - and probably a team full of Emps in his back pocket too (even then they'd probably still have found a use for Vengeance).

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However, alike with all other 'normalisations', will this apply to MM pets also? Like AR changes didnt really passed on to Mercs.

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I very much doubt it, but I wish it would, then maybe Mercs & Ninjas would be as popular as - and not feel weaker than - Bots & Thugs.

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Here's a thought that ought to balance things out a little more...

We already have difficulty levels that scale various things... why not scale the debt with that? Y'know, leave it on heroic and suffer debt as it is now or bung it on invincible and have good old I3 flavour debt.

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Now that's a suggestion I can wholeheartedly embrace.

Now we just have to hope one of the Devs visits this forum, reads it and likes it

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I said nothing about debt sharing.

Not this time anyway and perhaps in that game the debt was too high.

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I know, but I wanted to give a proven example of how team-based differences for debt compared to solo can disincentivize teaming, just like the point Sir_Helm was making.

And from what I remember the debt in EQ2 was still fairly pitiful back then (they've removed xp debt completely now, iirc), but it was player perception of other people giving you debt or having an affect on your debt that was what affected the community's attitude to teaming. Players there weren't thinking "well I should team up, because if I do die it's less debt for me than if I die solo and I'm earning xp faster" - but they were thinking "teaming with these people is having an affect on the debt I get" and that leads to blame and people preferring to stay solo (so you're purely responsible for your own debt) or with friends (who are less likely to blame you for being defeated).

Ok in your example that is because players would get more debt for their own death because they were on a (larger) team, and in the EQ2 case it was because players would get debt if other teammates died, but in both cases there would be a perception that you were being punished for teaming and the potential for teammates blaming you for their debt bar increasing.

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when we get defeated and sent to the hospital or use awakens, then our powers are degraded slightly each time we lose so we don't damage as much or heal others as well, or perhaps we lose a random power each time.

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I've played under systems that weaken you after you die and they tend to cause other problems. If the weakening effects degrade with time then you'd just see players logging out their characters and not playing them again until the debuff had cleared - this could break up regular groups.

Also players that couldn't afford the serum and died a lot might get so weakened that their character couldn't perform effectively enough anymore to ever get clear of debuff - this is the kind of thing that will get players deleting characters or cancelling subscriptions, i.e. something the Devs would not want to implement.

Also the serum cost would have to be pretty high for most people to care about it - and then death would still be meaningless for those with tons of inf. Tbh that's why I suggested hitting players on inf-earning (with inf debt to pay off) rather than hitting them in their existing inf total. Think about farmers, for instance - they would easily have the inf kicking around to pay fines, but hitting them in the pocket on their future inf earning with a scaling penalty is going to hurt more and make them more careful.

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IThen when you hit level 50 it could be 10% inf bonus for each block of xp you "earn" while on L50 (they'd have to change the levelling display to let you earn xp while on level 50 - just never let you ding 51, obviously - but a defeat would completely empty your bar/blocks of xp down to the start of L50 again).

[/ QUOTE ]Completely against that solution, because if the devs show the mechanics for gaining blocks of xp above lvl 50, then the next step would be for people to actively push for the lvl limit to be raised to 60. I for one would jump ship quicker than a rat, if the lvl 50 limit was raised.

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Maybe, maybe not. I guess it could be displayed in a different way then. Taking that minor part out of context to make a personal point doesn't completely invalidate everything else I suggested, does it?

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I think debt should scale depending on the AT

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This could be a bad idea. I'm reminded of experience penalties for certain classes and races in EQ1, and how they marginalised those classes/races and disincentivized players from playing them.

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In some way a hero or villain side should care about whether or not a team mate dies be it out of roleplay or the fact that their leveling has slowed rather than the "I am alright Jack" attitudes some have with people eating dust around them.

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Agreed, but I think enforcing this by means of gameplay measures is a massive massive mistake. In fact I have proof of that theory failing in practice. In early EverQuest 2 when a team member died, their debt was shared amongst the entire team. The Dev team thought this would encourage teamwork, ensuring that teammates stayed together and protected each other. In beta with a close-knit community this worked pretty well.

What actually happened in release was that players who were prone to dying a lot (for whatever reason) started to become infamous so they started getting black-listed from groups. Also when some people decided they were quitting the game or deleting a character they would get a group together (often with themselves as leader) and die several times in quick succession to grief the group with debt.

Over time players became more and more reluctant to do PuGs outside of their comfort zone of people they knew they could count on not to die stupidly and penalise everyone. Eventually the Devs removed shared debt as they surmised it was counter-productive to teaming (and back then EQ2 was mainly about teaming, not soloing like I hear it is now) and was damaging the community.

So you can’t really force players to care about their teammates and I think that’s a good thing, because it’s one of the things I use to work out whether someone is a good team player. If it was enforced then you could never be sure.

Not to pick, but just a couple of things.

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*No Fast levelling past the lvls you've done a million times

[/ QUOTE ]IMO this would be a good point. My gaming experience (as said by many others) is about the journey, not the destination.

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Generally mine is too, but isn’t it a bit of a sweeping generalisation to apply this to everyone? Personally I have no issue at all with PvPers power-levelling through the PvE when all they care about is the PvP, even though I wouldn’t play like that - and I don’t see why others should care either, as long as those PvPers aren’t hassling people rudely with filler requests or otherwise ruining your gameplay directly.

Also I personally have played through a lot of the mission content on both sides 2, 3, 4, and often over a dozen times - if I wanted to skip past some of it to fresher content by grinding, street sweeping or by whatever means - and especially if I was playing an archtype/powersets I already knew well enough how to play - then why shouldn't I? (In fact I have, in some level ranges - especially the lower level content I know almost by rote).

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Without PUGs, no-one would ever have any friends, as this is how it all begins.

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Wow, you really like your sweeping generalisations Hardly any of my friends that I’ve played with in 10 years of MMOs have been made through PuGs - lots have been real-life friends, others have been friends of friends, some have been people I just got chatting to in a global channel or Wentworths/BM or because I liked their character bio (or they liked mine), and some have been members of guilds I’ve joined (thinking mainly of other MMOs here) who I grouped with after I became friends with them. Sure, I’ve made friends in PuGs, but that has hardly been the only way and not even the main way.

I do agree with you absolutely on a lot of your other points, but these two statements did stand out to me as a bit biased and “preachy”, even in context.

I guess they could always remove debt completely and instead add a scaling bonus for survival. Maybe a cumulative 1% inf & xp bonus for every full block of xp you've earned since your last defeat, capping at 100% (so basically 10 levels without a defeat would cap the bonus and you'd effectively be earning double the usual xp/inf til you are defeated), starting from level 10 - but as soon as you are defeated the entire bonus is completely wiped out.

Then when you hit level 50 it could be 10% inf bonus for each block of xp you "earn" while on L50 (they'd have to change the levelling display to let you earn xp while on level 50 - just never let you ding 51, obviously - but a defeat would completely empty your bar/blocks of xp down to the start of L50 again).

And the defeat would only wipe out your full "bonus" when you resurrected at the hospital. You could still have perks for being rezzed by another player or using a self-rez (like in my earlier post) - so for example if you were defeated and used a self-rez you wouldn't lose your bonus, but if you were defeated and used an awaken you'd lose 75% (i.e. three-quarters) of your built-up xp/inf bonus.

Although that would make us level even faster, especially combined with the complete absence of debt, and we already level too fast in some level ranges after xp-smoothing - maybe make the bonus inf-only without an xp component, then.

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Don't be affraid to wall off big rooms to create smaller areas. Maybe walling off the area with the TV's and read areas with another row of books might just do the trick.

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Yeah probably, but we don't have enough space that I can really go around walling off room area with the room editor (apart from the corners I did in the hero base TP rooms - not like I could have done much with the extra 25% of space).

Also for the bookcases to work as a partition I'd need to be floating stuff, which I'm not willing to do yet until I've seen the coming I13 changes, because it could either be a) a colossal waste of time, or b) rendered moot by I13, or c) corrupt the base in some way once I13 hits. And I can't really risk our bases being corrupted when my friend and I have so many purples and other things stashed away in there

I do know what I'd do in the villain base especially if time and floating stuff wasn't the issue. Hopefully I13 will make stacking things much faster and via a more intended/legal use of the editor.

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Yep, as would a car door

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As would the entire car, if you were huge bodyshape with maxed height slider

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If the shield is big enough, perhaps it would hide the whole Stalker, so
his or her targets would simply think a harmless floatinmg shield was approaching them?

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Or just paint a rectangular shield white with some garbage like "The end is nigh!" written on it, then wear it like a sandwich board or hold it up like a placard, and everyone will just assume you're a nut and do their best to ignore you

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Make debt huge, but have none incurred by an on-map resurrection or personal resurrection power, only if you go to the hospital.

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You just gave me an idea. Instead of adjusting xp debt upwards again how about getting infamy/influence debt as well as xp debt? It would give L50s more of a reason to avoid defeat, which xp debt obviously doesn’t.

As for rationale, think of it as you thanking/paying/owing the hospital for use of their medical teleporter and their care, or taking a hit to your "image" and your influence within the hero community for actually being defeated in the first place. I don’t know how much inf each death would cost you - that would be something for the Devs to set - but it should be high enough that it stings.

Then the different methods of being resurrected could mitigate some of that cost:

100% xp/inf cost - using the hospital (full cost, because it’s always available to everyone)
75% xp/inf cost - using an Awaken (easy to get)
50% xp/inf cost - using SG base reclaimator (makes them more attractive to PvE SGs)
25% xp/inf cost - being resurrected by another player using a power
0% xp/inf cost - using a self-rez power (Dark/Fire/WP/Regen)

I guess those crappy debt bonuses on set IOs could mitigate some of the inf cost too, like they do with xp debt, just for parity.

Yeah debt is utterly pointless now - I bet if it wasn't for the badges the Devs would have removed it entirely. The debt protection bonuses on certain set IOs bug me too - if they didn't exist those sets might have a useful bonus instead!

Defeat itself is barely a blip now that it's so easy to get awakens (from combining other insps) - I actually considered not taking the rez on my L50 Corruptor because of that, and it makes the sets with self-rezzes slightly less attractive (regen/WP/fire/dark) than they already were for having a self-rez (in fire & dark's cases instead of a "godmode" power). Defeat needs to have a penalty that players are keen to avoid - it encourages concentration and skill and disincentivizes stupidity

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I'm probably going to get lynched for this.... but.. Implement negative XP for defeat, and de-levelling!

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It wouldn't bother me - EverQuest had that, and it was generally much harder to survive there than it is here. Admittedly in EverQuest some of my friends delevelled so much on some of their characters that they basically gave up on them and never played them again - then there were the corpse runs... /shudder

You'll be taking Hasten anyway (I presume), so why not slot in SuperSpeed as your travel power, then when you hit 28 you can get Inertial Reduction to use in combination with it for those zones where SuperSpeed can be a liability? Though if you have the GvE Jump Pack then you could arguably skip IR and use the pack when you need to get over something SuperSpeed can't - or just respec once you get IR and dump SuperSpeed. That would be the most efficient use of power slots, and fast/flexible too.

I recommended SS+IR to my friend when he levelled his Fire/Kin to 50 (it was something I was going to do on my fire/kin back in I8, before I stopped playing him) and he found it an excellent way to get around (only a slotted-up teleport can outpace you) - you'd probably miss it when you play non /kins - my friend did for a while.

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Really must sort some of the old ones out but they're like old friends I can't just dump them

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I've always given my old PCs to my parents or my brother, but considering how little they know about computers ... lets just say, if my PCs were sentient then dumping them might have been kinder

Imagine a life slaved to YouTube, Amazon, Yahoo and Wikipedia with no games in sight except Spider Solitaire ... my poor old friends /cry

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I mean, do you know how hard it is to (pretend to) keep white things clean?

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Easier than black things? I've had both white and black TVs, PC boxes and cars and I know which seems to act as a magnet for dust and dirt - and it's not the white ones. Not that I let it stop me - everything colour coordinates well with black

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I think there are some silly regulations from the gaming commission that require competitions that are basically free draws to have come kind of qualifying question, so they ask stupidly easy ones to get around it.

It's not REALLY a competition folks, it's a free draw (not that that's a bad thing!).

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I thought they did it so that more people would be tempted to enter (because the answer is so obvious), thus increasing the revenue they get from the text messaging tarif for entering. But then I'm horribly cynical

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OMG, a bunch of naked heroes with Ice Cream, chocolate sprinkles or with thongs having a pina colada :S
Scaring

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...

Sounds like a normal day at the office to me.

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You work at Wildstorm Comics? I thought their heroes had to wear more clothes now that stuffy old DC has taken them over