MechaCrash

In addition to the many obvious changes to the difficulty slider, one that may go unnoticed is that there is no longer an inf cost to fiddle with it.

The Super SK system is nice. I'll have to gather up some friends to help me throw down with Lord Recluse on my MM, and finish up that Praetorian arc on my Warshade.

Also, the tears of AE babies are a sweet, sweet nectar.

Yeah, that's why I was hoping you could get custom Granite. The problem is that (and keep in mind this is speculation) the system that lets you customize powers doesn't let you customize alternate NPC outfits. Which is what we're wearing.

Giving an attack order only takes your flunkies out of defensive mode if you're using the (awful) default macros. It's possible to issue an attack order and leave them in defensive.

If you do that, then what happens is they attack whatever target you told them to shoot, and Bodyguard does not work for the duration. Once they drop their target, they revert to "follow" and Bodyguard immediately kicks back in. So a handy way to make sure your goons are in the fight without losing Bodyguard is to have them shoot a minion or what have you, and by the time it goes down, presumably they will have drawn some attention and be taking fire -- and, as a result, shooting back. But if something hits you, bodyguard will still work on that damage.

BABs specifically said that Granite can't be customized. The reason is that it turns your model into that of an NPC, and you can't fiddle with those.

It's too bad, because I'd like for my stone tanker to stand out of the crowd during Rikti raids and whatnot, but it can't be done. At least, not yet.

On Champion, I only see one guy use the Architect chat. Once an hour, he'll give a two paragraph movie-trailer style spiel advertising one of his arcs. The number of lines spoken by other people can be counted on one hand.

You can buy a Raptor pack which lasts for two hours. It costs ten thousand influence. Unfortunately, you can only buy it in the Shadow Shard, and you need to be at least level 40 to get in. I'm pretty sure that the Raptor Pack granted by the Atlas Park mayhem/safeguard does not stack with the one you buy. You can have one or the other, but not both.

However, you should be able to run the Ouroborous arc that grants you the flight pack as many times as you need. But if this is your primary means of transportation, I can see how that would get tiresome.

Oops. When I said "mercs" in my previous post, I meant "soldiers." I keep doing that, don't know why...

Anyway, I'd stick both procs in your Soldiers because three goons blazing away means more chances to proc than two goons, especially because the only Soldier attack that doesn't carry a chance to activate the procs is the grenade used by your medic.

If you can't swing acc, acc/dam, 2dam, the procs in your soldiers, then I'd go 2 acc, 2 dam, 2 procs. ED would eat into the effectiveness of that last damage proc anyway, and Lady Grey should make up for any damage loss you'd get otherwise.

I will second moving the Achilles and Lady Grey to your Mercs. If you're using sets, then I'd go with an accuracy, an acc/dam dual aspect, two damages, and those two procs. Specifics are up to you.

Impeded Swiftness, however, is fine right where it is. You can move it into Freezing Rain if you want, but since it only has a chance to go off every ten seconds either way, it's your call where it goes.

Speaking of Achilles, important thing to note: don't buy more than one, because it won't stack at all. And I mean not even from other players: if anybody on the team has one, that'll do the trick.

Also I should thank you, because I hadn't actually looked at the numbers on the Commando for getting him nice and proccy -- I was about to suggest another Lady Grey, then I looked at the numbers...I think Slug, Buckshot, and M30 add up to more chances for that to go off than Burst and Full Auto.

If you mean stack as in "stack with other procs just like them," I don't think any of them do, so you can't have someone under the effects of two Dark Watchers or two Achilles.

If you had a power that could take all three procs, though, then each would have its own 20% chance to fire, independent of the others. So it's possible to have any number of them go off, or even none.

Take either Super Speed or stealth, and combine it with a stealth IO.

I don't expect Dwarf Mire to be changed as far as buffing goes. It used to be just like Sunless Mire, but it was changed to the current shorter recharge and shorter duration form for two reasons: one, Black Dwarf effectively had no AOE attacks with which to maintain aggro (White Dwarf had the Flare), and two, it put a severe dent in the ability of Warshades to double-mire. You can still do it, but if you try going Nova, you'll lose most of the Dwarf Mire's duration during the shapeshift animation.

We traded a second Soul Drain for a PBAOE Follow Up. I'd call that a good deal.

Super Speed used to give defense, way back in the day (I believe one of the betas; I'm quite confident it never went live like that). Unsurprisingly, super speeders left their travel power on all the time because it gave them an advantage in combat. Since it's a travel power and not a combat power, it was changed from defense to stealth.

One way I found to have adequate tanking to hold off the four spare AVs without being overkill was a Kheldian with Dwarf form. They can be in human or Nova and blasting Reichsman until he opens a Pokeball and lets one of his buddies at you, at which point the Kheld and dwarf up and tank away. The two psychic AVs make this rather tricky, though, so hopefully you've got a dark miasma user around to blunt that psi damage...

But I may just be biased because I like running Kahn with my Warshade.

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run a few AE arcs and you can pick them up cheap for tickets and save ur inf

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I second this option. Been doing it with all my new toons and have plenty of inf. to spare.

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You'd get a better return spending those tickets on level 25-40 common salvage, selling it at Wentworth's, and using the resulting cash to buy your SOs.

Also, in addition to all the places listed, you can also buy 40, 45, and 50 SOs in the Shadow Shard. Just talk to General Hammond, run his little introduction to the Shard, and he'll sell to you...but the best place to buy your SOs is the Rikti War Zone, just because there are no hoops to jump through before you can get on with your shopping.

Bronze rolls supposedly give the best bang for your buck, but you're very strongly at the mercy of the RNG. It looks to me like doing that mostly gets you garbage that won't sell, a few bits that people will pay pretty well for and make up for the garbage, and sometimes you strike gold (such as Regenerative Tissue unique).

If you want a more reliable return, I'd go for random common salvage in the 26-40 range. It doesn't matter what you get, there's going to be some demand, and it's only eight tickets.

I will also leave it to others to tell you what you need to slot, but I will say that the major reason permadom is seen as so necessary is because that was a major source of a dominator's damage, being a 75% damage boost. When I15 hits, this functionality is going away, but the Dominator's base damage is going up, with the net result being that Dominators hit harder outside domination than they did with it up before.

However, it can still be worthwhile to pursue, because Domination will still act like a Break Free, refill your endurance bar, and double the magnitude and extend the duration of your mezzes.

Vanguard has an awful lot of "Earth for Humans" billboards up. In the wake of the Rikti war, this was certainly understandable, but with the Kheldians on the scene to help us (well, Peacebringers and Warshades anyway, the Nictus are jerks), has anybody pointed out that this could be kind of uncomfortable for friendly aliens? Especially since the Rikti are having a factional split and some of them want to make peace? Or is the fact that some of them are engaging in peace talks a secret thing to make sure no supervillains crash the party?

Speaking of Rikti, the Rikti Magus states that they "mastered magical arts stolen from the Circle of Thorns." How does that work? I was under the impression from a different story line that magic is hereditary thing. You're a descendant of the right people or you can't do it, period. Does this mean that they're Rikti equivalents of descendants of Mu? Or does it mean they jacked Circle Thornblades and jammed them into themselves? If the latter, how do they keep the Oranbegans from taking over?

Doctor Vahzilok's Abominations, the stitched together corpses he starts using from 11-20, say that they're made up of fallen heroes. Likewise, the Greater Devoured of the Devouring Earth say that they're made up of the biomass of heroes. How do they get the raw materials? Isn't pulling you to a hospital before you die what the medical beacons are for?

Speaking of the medical beacons, why does Lord Recluse hand those things out to the Destined Ones? I understand the gameplay reason, but it's kind of hard to weed out the weak if the worst you can do is slow them down. And how many of the Arachnos grunts have them? I would imagine that the rank and file Wolf Spiders don't get them because they're expendable, but the higher ranking dudes like Banes and Fortunatas represent considerable investments of time, money, and hardware, so a bit of a safety net would be wise. Which in turn raises the question of why player SoAs have them, because apparently they're exactly the sort of disposable dude who's rammed through harsh and quick boot camp, given a gun, and told "okay, enforce the will of Arachnos."

In Scirocco's patron arc, he may as well have a giant neon sign saying "I have a crush on Ghost Widow." Does she know about it?

Right. The presence of a proc does not interfere with other procs. You could get one firing, or two firing, or all three -- each makes its own check and the results of other checks don't matter.

Ninja minions used to get a quiver on their back, but this was taken away when their upgrade was changed to "more shurikens" instead of a bow. I don't know if they replaced it with anything or not, though. There's always looking at the buff icons, I guess.

Those are probably the capes from the Magic Pack. You can find it in the NCSoft Store. It costs ten bucks. It gives you other costume bits, costume changing emotes, and the Magic Fortune power which grants random buffs to other players.

If you're willing to wait for the payoff, then a stone tanker and kinetics defender can wreck things quite nicely. Granite Armor makes a stone tanker pretty unkillable, but their ability to move and kill stuff goes right in the toilet. Kinetics defenders can turn anything into a wrecking machine, so that can easily offset Granite's downsides.

Of course, that's at level 32, when stone tankers get Granite Armor and kinetics defenders get Fulcrum Shift. Before that, it's pretty good, but it won't rock your socks off quite so much.

Villain side, pretty much any brute and a corruptor with kinetics has similar effects. You have to wait longer for the payoff, because corruptors don't get Speed Boost until 20 and Fulcrum Shift until 38, but oh man, what a payoff it is.

I try to read everything, including character descriptions. If you don't read that stuff, it's not much different from doing a paper/radio mission.

Twilight Grasp has a -regen on it, and Tar Patch doesn't have a -dmg on it. Also, Petrifying Gaze is a hold, not a fear. It doesn't stack with Fearsome Stare. Fearsome Stare does, however, have a to-hit debuff in it.

Protector Bots in passive don't bubble. I don't know if they heal, though.