MTS

Whaaaaat?

I've found */Ice, and Energy/Ice for that matter, to be one of the most survivable blaster sets on SOs alone, and it gets even better with IOs (ranged def cap).

And I'm not just saying that because my main is Energy/Ice.

All the KB knocks them to range, Shiver keeps them there and seriously debuffs their recharge -- so they're ineffectively trying to run toward you. If any do make it into melee range, Ice Patch knocks them down and CE debuffs their damage (as well as what's left of their recharge).

Just pretend that Frozen Aura doesn't exist and you're golden.

And aside from that, and Arachnos trying to blow stuff up for no reason (well, because they're bad guys, obviously), Longbow was making trans-dimensional incursions into Praetoria, sending large groups armed with lethal weaponry.

No different than they do in the Rogue Isles, but still, all of this was long before the events of the Sutter or Apex TFs.

Of course trying to make GG see reason is like arguing with a brick wall, so good luck with that

Except for "weakened" Hami, as I learned on an all-defender static team that tried to do the LGTF.

We just didn't have the sustained damage output to beat the healing done by the greens mitos* or the survivability to keep the team up long enough to whittle them down**. We did dinally kill one blue mito before giving up, so it might have been doable, but we were running short on both time and EoEs.

But Hami cheats, and ignores half the mechanics in the game. Everything else was a cakewalk.

* A "greens first" strategy worked well on a recent troller/dominator LGTF we did and might have been better.

** An all-empath team would probably have a shot here. Capped regen is one buff that Hami can't simply ignore.

Oh, we're talking about AVs being tougher than player characters? My mistake, I thought we were talking about how the signature characters flaunt the overly restrictive AT rules of primary and secondary power sets (and some do, just not the Phalanx, and not a majority).

Well, to put things in perspective, AV-level Posi has:

50% Base To-Hit (Players get 75%)
20% Regeneration (Players get 25%)
Mag 4 Mez Protection (Players get mag 1), except to Taunt, Placate, Immobolize, and Sleep to which he only gets mag 3.
28,271 HP (Players get around 1,150 base on average)
800 Endurance. Cheater.
400% Damage Cap, not that it really matters since he doesn't get any enhancements or damage buffs. (Players get 400%, 500%, or 775% depending on AT)
Considerably higher damage modifiers than players, on the order of 15 times higher.
50 seconds of mag 50 mez protection out of every 75 seconds (purple triangles). Players get a varying amount of transient mez protection of varying duration, depending on how many break frees they carry and use.
20% Resistance to Smashing, Lethal, and Energy. That's a tiny bit higher than unslotted Charged Armor on a Blaster. Slotted, squishy players can get up to 30% or so.

*However*, as GG and BrandX noted, AVs are designed to be fought by many players at once, and driven by a relatively stupid AI. Even then he has some disadvantages. On the game's default difficulty, you will never fight AV Posi alone. You'll fight EB Posi, who has:

13% Regeneration (compared to player's 25%)
5,354 HP
Damage modifiers only around 8 times higher than a player.

Or maybe even Boss-level Posi, depending on the level range and what mission you're doing:

Same regen as an EB, 7m 40s from 1 to full, considerably less than players.
2,570 HP (slightly higher than Tanker base, reachable for EATs, Brutes, and Tankers)
Damage scale around 6-7 times higher than players. Keep in mind that this is before enhancements and buffs, so really it's only around 2-3 times higher.
Does NOT have Overcharge.

So, given that NPCs have some significant disadvantages like lower regen, 25% less to-hit than players, and AI that's dumb as a box of rocks. Most players can easily beat Boss Posi one-on-one without breaking a sweat, and many can solo EB Posi without much trouble.

Seems reasonably fair to me, when he's scaled for a one-on-one fight he's only as tough as his 20% resist - comparable to an epic pool shield. If you're facing the EB version, he has his "Godmode" power that gives him 60% Defense -- easily counterable with a few yellows.

Positron's kind of a bad example though.

The signature character looks like he's wearing armor, but doesn't actually have any armor powers. He gets rad emission and rad blast. His signature power is Overcharge, which really isn't any more interesting or powerful than Barrier.

Sure, when Matt Miller logs into the game he can grant himself all the powers he wants. He can also become 100' high and arbitrarily kick people from the server if he wants (though he'd have a lot of 'splainin to do to the execs).

He can also write in fiction and comic books that Positron the character has armor. Well, you know what, so can everyone else. In fact, my namesake hero is a tech blaster with power armor -- that's what it says in his bio and other material. Come to think of it, I'm actually a lot closer to that character concept than Positron because I'm at the ranged defense softcap thanks to set bonuses.

There's more than a couple cheating NPCs in the game to complain about, but the for the most part the Phalanx and ones with matching red names aren't among them.

How are you a bad person? Sure, you may be leveling an offline character, but it takes twice as much XP, and by extension time to do it, so you're not circumventing anything. It's the same amount of work either way.

I do a lot of static teams, and while with super-sidekicking it usually doesn't matter, it occasionally is an issue if someone misses a session due to RL and is too low-level to start a task force, co-complete tips with the team if we're planning to go vigilante/rogue, or do a patron arc together to unlock it for everyone (which requires that everyone be high enough to get the missions).

I know it'll never happen, but I would be very happy if not only did level pacts come back, but it became possible to join 5-8 characters to a single pact.

(2) was the reason I've always kind of avoided Striga -- I usually play teamed with friends and it used to be extremely team unfriendly due to all the arcs giving their missions in a somewhat random order.

It's a bit better now with the 'abandon mission' feature -- you can just keep abandoning until they give you the one that everybody else has. It's still annoying, though.

The RSS feeds for both dev digest and community digest are still broken.

They broke at the same time it changed to show the message previews; it seems the template or whatever got modified and now the RSS feeds return the HTML page rather than RSS format.

I'm not Golden Girl.

They're getting a martial arts class in the next expansion pack, maybe that's why they picked him.

They're also getting a new player race: giant pandas... Yeah...

So glad I don't play that anymore.

I'm sure they'll be happy to listen to our feedback, and consider it...

Ooh, that gives me an idea!

Increase the XP, shard, and purple recipe drop rate on quantum/voids by 400%.

Then every team will want one

(yes, I do realize just how horrendously broken that would be)

Kind of a moot point now, but there's some DE swarms right next to the Rikti monkeys in Crey's folly, and they're low enough level that not even a squishy should have trouble with them.

The monkeys are, of course, right down the road from the Freakshow, which happen to often appear in mixed spawns with the Crey you need for the level 30 costume slot unlock.

Eastern Crey's is by far the best zone for those; it's a one stop shop with everything you need for both missions.

Speaking of unenhanceable accuracy, does anyone else have nicknames for these temp powers?

My favorites:

Sands of Miss
Nem-miss-sis Staff

Right, but Energize still has the same endurance discount that Conserve Power did, so despite the name change and the heal it's not a complete break from it.

One thing I was thinking about as a possible power in the same vein as Dimension Shift would be a -10000% damage debuff. The only problem is that it would probably be too powerful against things like trials bosses that are immune to other mez effects.

Only one.

Huh? I've always thought the primal clocks were amazingly detailed.

Seriously, get up close and zoom in to one, then tell me they need a revamp.

Nemesis Jaegers are a lot more intricate then they look at first glance, too.

That would be a great scene.

All is about to be lost, the Big Bad has infected Positron's armor with a virus to immobilize him (so they think), captured the rest of the Phalanx, and put them in a Slow Countdown to Doom(TM) device that can only be aborted by destroying the Big Bad's secret moon base.

Big Bad: Ah, ha HA! My plan is about to come to fruition in only... 26 more minutes!
Positron: SURPRISE, PANCAKERS!

*mushroom cloud*