Malkyre

Our core group of 10 (which now comprises like 8 SGs) has never really been worried about "earning" the most for the SG. We've never incentivized prestige goals. Even with this latest SG we started a few months ago, we're already up to a sustainable base with everything but the last few porters, just on regular play.

Our general rule of thumb has always been "Play in SG mode, until you can't afford it. And if you can't afford it, ask one of us for some cash, and continue playing in SG mode." We try to spread the wealth as much as possible. The other day I got 4 mill from a mate because I'd started on sets at 35 and was running short. He'd made 60 mill on a respec recipe, so we all benefited. I turned around this week and gave 1 mill to another mate's lowbie alt. Share and share alike.

Our group has so many alts, with new ones rolled every week, that competing for prestige goals would be silly. Plus, we've got people that are in college or at jobs that can play during the day, people with kids who can't play more than a couple hours at night, and across that spectrum. Wouldn't be fair to make a competition on a completely unlevel playing field.

Title for the next thread: Rent; Does anyone care anymore?

Seen this many times before in S&I. The toggle concept has merit, as has been deliberated so tl;dr-ly by Umbral and Sam, and I wouldn't mind seeing it. The issue for me would be the trade-offs: losing 2 primary powers to toggles, or having a fancy ammo secondary that would then have to be balanced with every other set so people aren't firing ice Fireballs or fiery Power blasts. I'm afraid that would lead to the secondary being setup to work exclusively with DP, which doesn't sit with me either.

Which is why I'm still a proponent of having all our eggs in one basket. Just a primary, with the base Pistols, Dual Wield, and Empty Clips we've seen in Thugs. On top of that, the only pistol wielders in the game that have other kinds of pistol attacks are Malta Gunslingers. I've heard people say they don't want "gimmicky" bullets, but it looks to me to be the least amount of "making new stuff up" the Devs could do.

Using the first three powers as shown in the Thugs as a given, the rest of the set might fall something like (pulling mostly from the Malta entry):

4: Incendiary Round - ST Fire DoT
5: Aim - though a cooler name like "Dead Eye" would be fitting
6: Explosive Tip - TAoE S/L, KD
7: Cryo Round - ST minor damage, standard cold Hold, -rech, etc.
8: Tranquilizer Dart - ST, Toxic DoT (OR Sleep, meh), -Regen
9: Hail of Lead - PBAoE crashless nuke, as you fire an obscene amount of bullets in a circle about you.

That seems like the easiest route to take. Not saying I wouldn't mind something crazy and off the wall, just going on precedent

Edit: This has added allure, I think, because it would make the only set (unless I'm forgetting) that does so many damage types: Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Toxic.

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You guys rock - thank you. Lots to consider.

I've enjoyed AR but aren't M30 and Buckshot both knock back, not knock down? Knock back seems to be a great way to make enemies quickly in a PUG

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You can choose to let the KB hate make your decision or not. Buckshot and M30 do indeed KB, M30 more reliably. KB, despite the hate, is still an effective survival tool. You can mitigate the KB by following the suggestions Ipso gave. I am a long time player of sets like AR and Storm, so I've built up an immunity to the KB hate by using it as intelligently as I can without undermining my performance. YMMV.

If you want camera spin, running around the spawn like a madman lining up enemies like a thresher lines up wheat: AR/Mental

Cones: Buckshot, Flamethrower, Full Auto, Psychic Scream
TAoE: M30 Grenade (Ignite)
PBAoEs: Psychic Shockwave (World of Confusion, Drain Psyche)

() - Somewhat less than a damaging attack; utility

If you're looking for red side AoE diso/stun: Dark/Storm Corruptor

Dark Pit + Thunderclap.
Mag 2, 20 ft radius, 10 targets, recharge 60
Mag 2, 25 ft radius, 16 targets, recharge 45

Not to mention the massive other aoe potential of the combo, with freezing rain, tenebrous, nightfall, blackstar, etc, and the extra damage from Tornado and Lightning Storm. Pick up an aoe patron immob and you'll have stackable diso on top of stackable immob. Enemies won't know what hit em.

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I gotta ask, did anyone else see the third place winner and open up Technologic?

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That was one of my first thoughts, and probably why I liked it so much

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How about making 2 shirts available?

Shirt 1 would have 1st Place on the front with 3rd place on the back.

Shirt 2 would have 2nd Place on the front with 3rd place on the back.

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This, this, a million times this. The 1st and 2nd capture the flair and panache, the 3rd captures the scope. I would buy these in an SSL encrypted heartbeat

::loads propellant into the flamethrower::

God damn zombie posts.

/e chewcigar

I had a long winded post laid out explaining why I think the new guide count has dropped so dramatically, but the forum ate it.

So, rather than retype, here's the tl;dr version:

Inventions added massive complexity to the guide writing business. Everyone wants 'builds' now, more than they want descriptions of powers, synergies, tactics or how a set feels. The writing part has sort of gone by the way side in favor of pages and pages of Mid's builds. More and more the answer to "What about this set?" has become "Open up a character planner and see for yourself." So there have been fewer and fewer of the traditional guides that talked about how a set plays, rather than what the numbers are.

/oldmanrant

Any more, I only click on trays 3 and higher. The "ancillary power trays" if you will. By that, I mean: every character has a minimum of 4 trays open from day 1. The first three in the standard 1, 2, 3 stack, 1 on the bottom.

Number keys for that row. This is composed of mostly primary powers, attacks and often used utilities (Taunt, Heal).

Alt+numbers for the second row. Usually secondary powers, armors or controls, toggles, etc.

Third row is travel. All the teleports, sprint, rest and whatever travel power.

Fourth is to the left of that stack, in the middle bottom of the screen. This is for seldom use powers, like SD, Fortune, long recharge powers, temps, whatever. Miscellaneous.

Eventually, some of my 50's get up to 5 and 6, so I have continuous access to all my temp powers, vet powers, accolades, etc.

I bind f and h for travel, f for the main, h for the sub (based on Fly/Hover).

Bind g for really frequent use powers: enemy toggles like Snow Storm, AoEs like Burn, etc.

Bind y, u and i for spawnable pets or location aoes.

I used to use macros, but I got tired of them executing late, or failing altogether. Keybinds are much more solid.

Hitting keys has massively improved my response time and ability to deal with the game. If I had to click now, I'd die a little each time

Fun concept.

Seriously though, where were the Freaks? One Tank Smasher or Swiper should be able to outlast all of those.

And I'd agree that this isn't necessarily going to give you any kind of "roadmap" for anything in game. You're never just fighting bosses. You fight whole factions. Bosses from different factions may win against each other just because they have something the other doesn't. I'd imagine Snakes slaughtered everyone because they have fast lethal and lots of toxic. Not much toxic resist amongst the NPC factions.

If you were doing this for real to see who was king amongst the NPC factions, you'd have to pit whole spawns of roughly matched groups against each other, and have some sort of "weight class" based on level.

Longbow v Arachnos
RIP v PPD (but this is limited to low levels)
Outcasts v Hellions
Trolls v Igneous
CoT v Carnies
Rikti v Malta
Freaks v Council

etc.

Well done Sailboat. I really like that take.

In addition, for me it's often about being a protector. I think Supes said it: "Every hit I take is one they don't have to" indicating his fellow League members. It makes me angry when one of my teammates gets hurt or killed, because it means I'm not doing my job to the best of my ability (assuming they've not brought it on themselves by being stupid). It makes me want to try harder. I encourage myself to be hyper-aware, to know everything that's going on on the battlefield, where the threats are, and how to interpose myself between those threats and my team.

I'm a big brother and fiercely loyal friend in real life, not to mention being rather bear-like in stature, so that role of protector is what comes naturally to me, and makes me feel good. I can get that feeling to a lesser extent on Defenders, which is probably why they're my two most played classes.

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I am all over the 'change Ignite to a ranged ST DoT'. Ignite just doesn't do it for me any more, as much as I used to love it. If it had the (completely nonsensical) KB that Bonfire has, it would work better as area denial. But even then, I'd rather have the straight up damage in a fight. Plus it means you can leave my Buckshot the hell alone

/signed

(Though changing a power so radically has about a 0.02% chance of happening)

Gods, I would love this change. I spent 45 minutes last night logging in three servers worth of characters for the badge, and moving them to new Day Jobs while I was at it. I know I don't have to do it often, but it basically negated the play time I had. And after I logged I realized I had completely forgotten Champion So there's another server full to do tonight.

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The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.

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Actually, I mock them for their laziness and desire for the best rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.

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As well they should be. Reward without effort seems to be a common desire in games, for some reason. I'm not sure where the sense of entitlement comes from.

But I equally reject the stance that all things can be answered by more money, and that anyone not pursuing that goal is a fool who deserves to be gouged.

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The economy, as it is in real life, is borked.

The super rich will continue to mock the poor for their lack of vision and inability to manipulate.

The poor will continue to envy the rich their money, while being glad that they're not pretentious pricks.

Class warfare keeps on rolling.

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My friend runs a AR/Storm Corrutor

He skipped out on ... Flamethrower

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Not to derail: Aside from the long cast time, your friend is a crazy man for skipping Flamethrower, especially on a /Storm. /Storm is champ at positioning the enemy, and AR/ loves to have people in it's cones and AoEs. The two are made for each other. Flamethrower is a huge damage dealer, especially with the new front-loading.

Not a terrible idea there Sam, but at the same time, I love the massive AoE of AR. Yea the ST is a little anemic after the Ignite nerf, but there's really nothing better for AoE (some will argue Fire, but for me: 3+no crash mini nuke >>> 3+crash nuke).

I don't solo my blasters, so I prefer the AoE. But I could see the utility of a third, heavy ST non interruptible. I'd be willing to lose Beanbag for it

Ill/Storm troller, all the way.

I love my WS, but even at 50 he needs a team to really shine, not to mention there are a lot of sacrifices I had to make in terms of slots and power choices to fit everything in.

My Ill/Storm IS a team, and can control the whole battlefield. Not anywhere near Perma anything yet with her, but she is a blast to play even at 25.

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In response to Fulmens OP:

I have never once used the conversion. The ratio is ludicrous.

If we can't afford something, I wait till we've ground it out. Most of the membership (8 friends) doesn't carry more than 6 million inf on any given character. No one is a marketeer, we share and share alike from whatever we earn and whatever drops, just to make sure everyone can make their way. Even if they converted all of their ready cash into prestige, we'd never get more than 100K, maybe. 100K is not enough, when upgrading a small base to a medium base can take 500K without breaking a sweat.

Regardless, I would never ask them to sacrifice the much more valuable influence for prestige. The most I've ever had them do is buy some of the more expensive salvage pieces for crafting teleporters, if we don't already have them lying around. I've noticed with the newest SG that we're making about 300K a week with everyone playing their normal hours. That's equivalent to 150 mill, roughly 20 mill a person if you go by the conversion. I know for a fact that none of us make 20 mill in a week. 2 mill, maybe. None of us are marketeers, we just take the drops as they come.

As to whether there are interested parties who would like to supplement their base building by using the market to feed prestige: no one I play with. The market is a place to sell stuff you don't need, get stuff for IOs, and that's about it.

Hell, a couple of our guys still use SOs, though I'm slowly converting them to at least get generic IOs

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Is it just me, or does that show Reichsman being...like 50 feet tall? Pretty sure those are Longbow in the background.

Never knew he was a giant

To play: Tankers. Brutes are too squishy. Same reason I don't play Scrappers. Sure the damage is good, but most teams don't need damage. They need someone to initiate combat, take the alpha and hold aggro. The spawn will be dead 10 seconds after that.

The thing that turns me off most about Brutes is the lack of consistency. An oscillating bar of death is less desirable to me than solid defenses that I can have on all the time. But that's just my playstyle, always has been; defensive over offensive.

To team with: Either, as long as the player is marginally competent.

I've always gotten the impression that Ghost Widow is unlikely to leave Lord Recluse. Scirocco seems much more likely to switch sides than any of them. He's the most like Manticore, less a loyal drone and more a driven individual whose interests generally coincide with his particular faction, but isn't necessarily tied to the ideologies.

His patron arc gave me that impression.

After 3 weeks working a Cold/Ice up into the 30's...

I've decided I love Storm so much more

Storm/anything is my favorite, because Storm is the greatest set in existence. It has lots of AoE debuff and control, plus damage and the fun of sheer chaos. It's a toolbox with everything you'll ever need to protect a team. Or tank, whichever you prefer

Sad day Mid has done some incredible work.

Big shoes Steiner, glad to hear you're willing to take over

Best of luck to you both!