Madam_Enigma

Widow and Bane canidates are all psychics. The focus of their psi abilities is channeled either into future sense (windows/fortunata) or inwardly to reinforce the brainwashing (Bane spiders). They are naturally psychics. Their not mutants, they didn't get their psi powers from magic or science. The psi powers don't stem from technology.

Or another way to put it is this. Is Superman a mutant, science, tech, magic, or natural hero? He's a Natural, because every member of his race has the same abilities. If he was the only one from his race that could have them, he might be a mutant. If he relied on tech to do what he does he'd be tech. But he does them innately. It took training to control his abilities, but he has them naturally.

The natural origin doesn't preclude having powers. It just means everything that you do is something you could do naturally. Winged flight might be a mutant power for a human, but if your an alien who's race has winged flight then it's natural for you.

I DID solo Recluse. Mind you, he was an elite boss. That is still pretty rough though. When I fought Recluse on a claw/sr scrapper during an Ouro arc he managed to take out EVERY single member of the freedom phelanx and vindicators during the fight. And that was with him as an elite boss. I'd say beating him when the sucker dropped 16 sig heroes during the fight is pretty impressive. More so since I had to run back after the initial confrontation to fight him again. He killed me during the first try.

Warning, I had tried a petless build on my mastermind. I had the vet attacks. I had the 3 personal attacks. I had patron pool attacks. And I was struggling with small groups of +0 enemies. I could handle one or two even level minions. Usually. Throw in an Lt and I was in trouble. If they were +1 to me, I was in trouble. I doubt I would have gotten the build to 50 leveling it as a petless MM.

I was trying the build for character story reasons. And it was painful.

EDIT: You realize that pets in defensive stance will still attack right?

Try replacing this with ninja henchmen fighting Knives of Artimis. First mission against them here is how it went with the enemy:

Genin #1 steps into a caltrop patch, then starts running down random hallways and back
Genin #2 steps into a caltrop patch and ALSO starts randomly running down hallways
Genin #3 runs into the caltrop patch, then keeps running out of it and back in
Jounin #1 sees the caltrops and starts riding the elevator up and down all day
Jounin #2 runs in (slow) circles within one caltrop patch
Oni stands in a caltrop patch going "Dur" and letting it kill him

NONE of them actually listen when I tell them to attack. Yeah, I won. But only due to bodyguard mode, and me having patron pool attacks (as well as vet attacks). And they would take turns who did each of those six actions. Every single fight they did that.

If it changed after the difficulty changes fine. But I've experienced missions set to the original default difficulty with +2 and +3 enemies while on an eight man team. Then adding in going to invincible difficulty, it could get insane. Especially when the idiot team leader did that in the hollows.

It might have been changed. Outside of a single ITF on a level 50 scrapper, I've not teamed since the difficulty scale changes. I do know that when set to -1/x4(or higher)for personal difficulty, enemies tend to be my level or +1 to me. Which can be important since I want more enemies, but the ability to defeat them.

Ok, now I want. I have a Burt Ward themed char I want to make now.

PS: Ten points of Geek Cred who can PM me with what I referenced.

No, that's Carp Melee, or maybe Mackerel Melee. I can't remember exactly which fluke they decided to use.

They do scale enemy level and spawn size by team size. Or at least they were as of 3 or 4 months ago. Unless they removed teams causing mission scaling when they changed the difficulty settings it should still be the same.

haven't gotten a chance to pvp since the changes. But before I know if a controller could keep stacking holds on me before the first wore off... suppression never kicked in.


Heh, pistol blaster using chem rounds do -damage as a secondary effect. Rather handy too.

Already there, when the enemy is convulsing after a blast for a few seconds? That's a Sleep effect.

This I could approve of. I know it's very annoying when Mu not only drain my endurance, but shut down my endurance recovery.

Exactly! If your playing a FPS you don't always use the same gun do you? No, because they all have different capabilities. Right now maybe you want to spray a ton of bullets. But that's not always the best tactic. Maybe you need to be able to deal a lot of damage with a few shots. Then you grab a shotgun instead of the machinegun. But maybe you need precision fire from a long distance. That's when you break out the sniper rifle. While for up close precision you use a pistol.

And even within one type of weapon, there can be a wide range of capabilities. Do you want a machine pistol which can fire sixty bullets within a few seconds? Each bullet might do little damage, and you'll burn through ammo fast. Maybe a glock then? Nice solid damage, nine to thirteen shots, and decent accuracy. But if you have a .45 magnum you've got still more stopping power. Only six shots, but each bullet is more likely to put the other guy down.

What type of bullet is loaded? Is it dum dums that cause high damage to unarmored foes? Or maybe armor piercing rounds which do less damage, but cut through armor like a hot knife through butter. Is it an energy weapon? If so, what type of energy? Laser weapons might be easily countered by a highly reflective surface. A plasma ejector on the other hand would melt through that same surface. Microwave blasts would bounce off tinfoil, but would be extremely dangerous in Kevlar.

For melee combat, there's just as much variety. A great sword might do a lot of damage, but their big cumbersome. You may not always have room to use it. Long swords are a good alternative, but tend to require large sweeping moments as well. Maybe a saber then? Their lighter and allow more dexterous attacks. But do less damage then a larger sword. What about knives? Great for close quarters combat. Their fast, can do some pretty good damage rapidly. But their reach stinks on ice. Still, if you can get close enough, your knife will seriously mess someone up while they can't effectivly fight with their great sword.

Do you want a saber, or rapier? Maybe a small sword instead? All three are good fencing weapons, but with slightly different capabilities. Do you want a single edged blade, or double edged blade? Basket hilt or cross hilt? Or maybe no cross-guard. Do you want a pummel which can be used offensively, or just for decoration? How long is the blade? Is it steel, iron, or bronze? Full tang or half tang? Or do you want it to be an energy sword? Each of these qualities will affect how the weapon handles and what it can do.

And that's just weapons. Then we have powers. Are you super strong? Or maybe you channel disruptive energy through your fists. Is your skin diamond hard? Or maybe your superhumanly agile and can dodge bullets. Or do you millimeter thick fields of super high gravity an inch in front of you. Each of those would act differently. While having the diamond hard skin would let you take less damage, you still get hit. Being hyper agile would let you avoid being hit, but anything that does connect is gonna hurt. The gravity field would nicely protect you against a wide range of attacks, but you'd be unable to attack back. If you have a velocity redirection field you'd be kept safe from guns, but melee and energy attacks would still be a threat. And gas attacks would affect you no matter what.

But Ultimo's game wouldn't take any of that into account.

By this definition... you could say that Focus and Shockwave are widgets. And erm... I'd almost consider the melee attacks in Spines to be widgets. I mean, they are so unlike the rest of the set. Damage aura? Check. Ranged aoe? check, sort of. Single target ranged? Check. Ranged imob? Check. The set only really has 3 melee attacks. And that's not many for a scrapper set. Even spine burst isn't exactly melee. It's got a 15 foot range after all.