Magess

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Here's what we'll do: Wet Ice will no longer accept Def Enhancements. We'll increase the base def somewhat. Def Enhancements that are currently slotted will continue to have an effect, but players won't be able to slot new Def Enhancements into it.

We're also adding resistance to Toxic in Permafrost to bring it into line with Invulnerability's Resist Elements.

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Have you looked at the data Circeus sent you?
Yes, it's good to not let people waste slots by not telling them about caps and worthless enhancements. Hurrah.

Have. You. Read. The. Numbers. Ice tanks are still vastly inferior. What are you doing about that? A slight enhancement to Wet Ice won't fix that. Returning Wet Ice to what it was before STILL WOULDN'T FIX THAT. If you brought every other kind of tanker down and left us alone, then you might have made it an even field.

What have you and Geko discussed about the Defense vs Resist problem? Everyone here knows they're unequal, except, apparently, for you guys.

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First - I didn't mean it to sound that the Accuracy reductions were the ONLY change forthcoming. It's just that these changes, while global, benefits the Defense builds more than others....

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But you understand how because it affects everyone this doesn't feel like a boost to Ice, right? Because now it's easier for everyone, oh and us too.

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One shotting by AV's. In a word, you are ALL correct. It's not a good thing for an Ice Tanker to be leveled by a single blow. So we're going back and changing the damage done by AV's so that it's no longer possible for a Tanker to be one shotted.

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Again, so now it's easier for ALL tankers. Rather than fixing what's wrong with ice, you're changing the gameplay for EVERYONE. We didn't ask for AVs to be easier. I don't want AVs to be trivial. I want Ice to be able to stand up to them. That's a different request, and decidedly not the approach you're taking. You keep lowering the bar so that Ice can pass muster. That's not the way I think you should be going. You should be raising our abilities, not making the game easier so we don't seem quite as useless.

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Yes, I hear the complaints about Permafrost. And I'm...thinking. I've read many suggestions - and gotten more than a few PM's about it. There's a lot of good ideas there. So I'm going to do some pondering there.

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Good. Sadly, not good enough though. Allow me a reenactment:

Ice Tanks: States, we need help!

Statesman: Well, we've dropped the accuracy of all foes so everyone gets hit less.

Ice Tanks: That's great, but WE need help.

Statesman: We've made two of your powers 90% less effective!

Ice Tanks: No, you misunderstand. We asked for HELP. Previously, we were subpar, inferior, low-grade, poor, second-rate, and substandard. How, exactly, does your "help" address that?

Circeus has said all that really needs to be said. You need a new drawing board. Your original ice tank concept was a failure. It wasn't much of a failure since some people play them, but overall, inferior. And now you're making it worse. So start over. If you don't like ice tanks, fine. Replace it with something else. Reconsider how it is that a thick sheet of ice on someone makes them DODGE better. Just start the whole damn thing over because you're clearly not interested in fixing what you've got.

So these are global changes? Because that's not what I believe we're asking for. Sure, it helps Ice Tanks. It also helps everyone else.

If it's not global, then it's still nice, but even if an AV hits you even less often than before, he still only needs to do it once.

Defense doesn't scale like resist. That seems to be the central problem. If you have defense, you can be one-shotted more easily than someone with resistance.

Also, Ice tanks have long complained that Permafrost is a useless power. Is there anything that could be put there which would help the defense and one-shotting problem?

What do other Ice tanks think about the idea of giving Ice an HP bonus. Either linked to the armors you've got running or just a boost in general. Higher HP means more likely to survive an AV or Monster, yes? If we're not ever going to get some smashing/lethal resistance, would an HP hike make up for the difference?

The sounds are definately... off. The problem is that I don't know what to suggest that would both sound right and yet not actually hurt our ears or bother us after hearing it for hours on end. My inclination is something a little more... melodic? But while I think we could listen to something more musical more often, I think it would also come across as not something which would hurt enemies.

Also, is this set more powerful than other blaster sets when starting off? It certainly seemed like minions were very easy to kill.

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The Back Alley Brawler is primarily associated with the group he used to lead, the Regulators. He worked with the Freedom Phalanx during the Rikti War but has been in semi-retirement for some time.

As I said in my previous post however, the Brawler will be the main character of a story-arc that will start in issue #7. A specific threat will force him to get more actively involved.

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It seems to me like there are a lot of heroes with sidekicks and subgroups and partners of their own. Can we maybe get a geneology tree or something? At the top are the Phalanx members, and then how each of them relate to their own groups of heroes. Because everyone's got a name and a badge and an affiliation of their own, and I can't seem to follow it all.

-Magess

Maybe you could take what you've learned and apply it to Boom and Faultline? I'd love to see new life in those places.

Can't wait to give the Hess TF a try.

Eric was... ...

I did not understand my atali'i. He would disappear from me for days, running into the jungle, sleeping in the Garden of the Gods. At first, I would cry for him and search. I would say that I needed my son to help me make the net. No one makes a fishing net alone. But he would not come back when I called.

Some days later, he would return, coming up the beach. Always something new. He would have been playing with lava and burned his arm. Or chasing a wild pig and been unlucky enough to catch him. I thought, then, that he was a bad son, leaving his mother alone... getting hurt when I could not help him.

But he always came back glowing. There was something in the island that filled him, taught him, loved him. I look back now and I think that Lanai and my little Eric shared agaga. Shared a soul.

He grew up quickly, and as he grew, roamed the island even more. I believe that he has seen every rock twice. And every time I saw him, he looked bigger, stronger. He could have been a chief's son. But it was not his strength that made me believe. It was his magic.

Imagine your son brings you a dead bird and says, “Mama, I need a cage. He'll wreck the house when he wakes up.”

I stared at him and wondered if I had let him down in letting him wander. But I saw. Even these old eyes still see. He spoke to the little body like a charmer, sweetly cooing at it to breathe. Just try, little one!

I will swear to you that the warm winds blew stronger, the waves tumbled harder, and Pele stretched her feet. And I watched my little boy revive the dead with his voice. Lanai had answered him.

And I think, when he lived out in the palms, he answered her.

The older my atali'i got, the stronger his body and agaga became. Towns across the island reported a jungle spirit who found lost tourists and missing children. And he would stop criminals with a word if he could, a hand if need be.

Mothers are proud when their sons take a bride. My Eric took an island; and loved its people as his own.

But he did not stay. When the aliens came, they did not come to the most remote place in the world. We were safe because we were insignificant. But my son did not believe that isolation would be enough. He saw the rikti on the news and decided that the island meant nothing if the world fell.

He asked Lanai for help. Stood on the black beach with handfuls of sand and sang to her in our language. The waves came to his feet. His knees. His waist.

She swallowed him up. My baby!

The wind blew west to east that day. And Pele spit fire in joy! And my Eric... your... Kona, moved over half the ocean to find himself washed on the warring mainland shore.