MaestroMavius

Also of note concerning DfB, which is short for Death from Below btw:

3 badges available for defeating the AV's in specific ways.

4 nice buffs available for completion. Buff to damage, accuracy, defense or recovery.
These buffs are global and last until level 22!

Needless to say, since the levels flow like candy inside the mini-trial, and it's dev sponsered PLing (they even dropped trainers at each interval!) a great deal of the player base now use it exclusively to level from 1-20's in 4 or 5 runs. Some even use it to go 1-50, as the xp never diminishes.

Runs take about 20-30 minutes. Less if you've got a good bit of damage/ aren't badging.

Edited: Reversed the names of the mini-trials. Thanks Shaman.

Might be due to his current dilema concerning if he'll continue to post builds at all, once purples are sold for $. *Shrugs*

As for your previous question: Snow Storm or Flash Freeze?

Personally, your method for using FF seems fine to me. If you can overlook it's many issues and still find use for it, all the better.
Keep in mind Snow Storm would be a thousand times more useful on teams though. As FF would just be a waste of animation time, with all the AoE's going off.

Wonder how many of the Dev's would keep a dog around if it barked nonstop all night long every night...

Repeated for emphasis.

DO NOT TAKE FLASH FREEZE!!!

*Caveat: Unless you plan on soloing slowly...

If I recall correctly, GG only plays that one toon and she looks the same on every server.

The Goat has returned!

Been running DA solo on a brute, +2x4.
One mission left on Doc's arc, I'm at 97% unlocked and 1 uncommon away from my tier 2.

As I have avoided Incarnate content 100% before now, I have no real basis for comparison on speed. I was just hoping I'd be able to get the first level shift before the end of the zones storyline.

That wouldn't really do anything though, other than make them pause at range to fire it off instead of closing straight to melee.

For the range only pets, it would work to keep them out of melee, but then again the dev's want you to have to manage them so...

My friend ended up using his signature summon when he faced down Wade.

He thought he'd picked Positron but had States instead.

Needless to say, after he swore, we realized it was like States was so ticked off, his ghost fought alongside us! Once we defeated the threat his spirit could finally move on. Was kind of fitting in way.

Quick it's Goat, grab a net! The market could use a good spanking you know...

Even badges give you a bit of influence...

I don't feel like posting another TMZ link...

Suffice it to say Bay now has Leo and April in his corner! Yeesh...

On a slightly related note:
OMG, who knew Takashi the nerd was the voice of Leonardo??!?

No worries, when we're passionate about something, that passion has a way of tilting our responses. Passion is rarely a bad thing though.

I was very eager to get the changes reverted when GR went live, expecting a fix any day for the first few weeks, so I could finally get back to my favorite at the time Bots/Storm. Alas the months turned into years and... Eventually I had to just move on and go forward with the notion that it won't be fixed because they don't want to. I'll be pleased as punch to have ZWill or Synapse come post that it's still in the pipeline though.

Difficulty doesn't appear to alter the drop rates for threads.

Why are you getting so worked up? I'm calmly stating my opinion on this matter, no need to call me a lemming.

But for the record:

Correct, it was Tokens, not points.

The intention, iirc, was to allow those that wanted Celestial NOA the option of getting enough Tokens to get the tier unlocked all at once, before the Celestial set was rotated out.

When they discovered they couldn't give Tokens up front, they opted to not remove Celestial for an extended period.

Okay...

You admit that MM's are overpowered as they currently are, yet refuse to see how much more OP they'd be with 100% control?

Call it a conspiracy theory if it makes you feel better, personally I call it following logic.
These are the facts;
A.) They know how to and can easily fix pet ai, yet don't. (As stated by you, I'm not sure it's easy.)
B.) They stopped acknowledging it as being 'bugged' when they 'rebalanced the ai with demons'.
C.) They continue to acknowledge and fix ai issues for everything except MM's.

That can only led me to one conclusion. MM Pets are WAI.

They aren't ignoring the fact that "Angry customers, because of bugs, don't stick around." That is the exact reason why they stopped calling it a bug. It no longer is bugged, it is now intended.

I'm just wanting confirmation that something is still considered bugged before going through all the issues yet again.
Feel free to view that however you want, feel free to completely ignore it, doesn't matter to me, I'm just wanting to be 100% up to date here.

Except we have, numerous times...

I'm all for opening discussions and getting the ball rolling.
I'm all for rehasing ideas and getting a workable solution.

I'm not eager to have a backlash from players if this builds momentum only to have nothing come of it.

Taking the overall picture into account;
MM's are released and pet ai is bugged from the start. This is acknowledged.
They try and try but are unable to properly fix the ai without messing up to many other areas, they don't stop trying, but communicate that it's now on the backburner.

Fast forward literal years with nothing being done to address the issue, while in the meantime IO's are released and subsequently balanced around said 'bug'.

They then decide to create Demons. They do so only to discover in testing that the ever present 'stick at range' bug really breaks their new shiny set. So they go about fixing it finally, after much rangling they are able to correct the ai.
However, this now creates a brand spanking new problem...

In the interim, MM's were balanced around the wonky ai. Upon testing the new build, with bug free pet ai, they were mortified to discover MM's to be way Overpowered with that level of control.

So they did the easiest thing they could, rather than reinstate the old bug, and invalidate a major selling point for GR, they created a new 'ai oddity' that would work with Demons but also simulate the previous one MM's had been balanced around.

Since that point, since Demons went live and we all started asking about it the ai, not one Dev has mentioned it.
I simply can't accept that it is still 'bugged' but is now rather a 'bug' that was turned into an intended handicap, therefor getting everyone worked up over a possible fix only serves to rile people up over nothing.
Feel free to prove me wrong. That after all is what I'm after, confirmation that the Dev's do still view it as bugged, yet haven't figured out how to solve it. Once they do that I'll be more than willing to discuss changes.

*Shrugs*

Not only is it justified, it's the only reason we're getting so much. Once I realized that simple concept I was more than fine with it.

As far as the Dev's are concerned, Pet ai is WAI...

Therefor spending time and mindpower coming up with solutions for something they don't think is broken is kinda fruitless.

The more and more pet ai threads I'm seeing, and I expect an increase now with BM out, the more and more vocal I'm going to get on asking the Dev's to either admit that pet ai is WAI with the wonkiness being an intended handicap, or once and for all admit that it's 'bugged'.

Until then though, I don't see the point in discussing mechanics that are working properly. That's just me though.

It would be a bit freaky if he only did it for true Praetorians.

I can actually see him going all out and having them not actually be turtles at all, but rather humanoid aliens with power armor that looks turtle like...
Hoping to grab a bit of the Iron Man love at the same time.
This gives him the chance to come up with all kinds of high tech gadgets for them to use, I'm seeing extending staffs and energy swords and ray guns that are shaped like Sai's...

I'm also holding back the vomit.

:/

I was thinking it was a new, not yet activated, contact. Possibly for the next SSA arc...

But yeah, more elaboration would be helpful.