Memphis_Bill

Blasters: All get some form of control, and all get access to their first two primary blasts even when mezzed.

Controllers: Control. Really. So hit the mezzer(s) first. Plus, post-32 for most sets they have a pet to assist - either the pet will be hit with the mez, or the pet will be there to help fight. (For the one set that doesn't - mind - use the non-aggroing confuse on someone... like, say, the mezzer.)

Defenders: Wide variety - self protection, self buffs, enemy debuffs, and often a good bit of control.

Dominators: See controller.

Masterminds: Ooh. Scary. Mez the MM, get smacked by the henchmen. Mez the henchmen... who cares?

Yes, carry breakfrees. But these are hardly poor, helpless characters.

Previously, Temperature Protection was rather useless. It was quite skippable. Then the devs added in slow/recharge protection - to me it's much more important now, especially with Fire's relationship with Healing Flames (and to a lesser extent, Consume.)


I've been a fan of ROTP for quite some time, honestly - even if I don't need it all that often, the fact I can tank something "too tough" fo rme, then come back, damage it, knocke it away (and stun anything close) and keep going is *far* better than some sort of crash to me.

Most people ignore someone who goes on about "uphill in the snow both ways."

These aren't something to "brag" about. The game experience changed. Big. Freaking. Deal. Again, if you're looking so hard for something to brag about, head outside and do something significant. Volunteer somewhere for a year. Help build a house. Go be a mentor. Those are worth mentioning, not "I got to 50 in a video game without using patrol XP." Because, y'know what? They could shut the servers down right now, and old-50, no-patrol-xp-50, brand-new-50, PL'd-50, none of it will mean a damn thing - doesn't really now, honestly.

Put your pride in something worthy of it.

... wait...

je_saist saying "Nvidia's not THAT bad?"

*checks temperature, looks up warily for early flying pig warning, tosses a snowball into the Abyss, buys a lottery ticket*

(OK, yes, I know it's not a big deal "in context," but it's still funny to me.)

Not just that, but developing a better way to *create and release the devs own content* and releasing a (somewhat less powerful) way of doing so, with the supporting systems, to the community in response to their (our) own requests.

Maybe that's the lazy part - darn the devs not wanting to keep using Excel to create missions! Lazy, lazy, lazy!

/this, and

this.

Not true. Yeah, the timer's of no consequence if you're teamed or high damage. But - for instance, another that got a timer, the Shadowhunter mission - I was doing just fine on my Earth/FF. Slow, but fine - but I came within 30 seconds of *failing* that mission because of the timer that got added. No, there's no consequence to failing it - you don't need Shadowhunter for the accolade - other than having defeat snatched from the jaws of victory and the irritation that goes with that.

This is the only thing I really agree with. Though carnie illusionists aren't that difficult - it's fairly easy to tell when they can and can't be hit (are they translucent or not?) unless they're in a big group - in which case it would also be hard to see triangles, dots or whatnot with all the other effects going off.

Disagree. I want to be ready the second that phase drops - which means having that enemy targetable so I can attack/drop a debuff/whatever as soon as they come out.

True. I was thinking of "as drops." I use the AH 'porter constantly. Redside, especially, it makes paying rent more convenient - among other things.

*watches mobs miss me due to buffs/debuffs, hit like a wet noodle, flop around on ice patch, get held in volcanic gasses, attack each other due to confusion, sit there choking on cinders, etc.*

... I'm sorry, were you saying something about me dying as a squishy?

Incorrect.

I can (and have) used a theoretical mob type/mission to explain it in the past. If I said "Well, use map such-and-such, and populate it with these mobs, custom or otherwise, and you'll go from getting 2 XP each like you would normally to getting 200,000 each!" I'd be mentioning the exploit.

However, if I say "If you set up a situation where, for instance, a Hellion minion gave you 200,000 XP *each* instead of their normal XP, that's a bug. If you then created a map populated with just these and ran it over and over, getting to 50 in two runs," - which is not the exploit, of course, but an example - I'm explaining the sort of thing that would BE an exploit, and may be similar, without giving out the info on how to create or duplicate the exploit.

Um, no.

When do you play? I can always log an alt in there and spam a bit for you. (Though anyone answering is going to be rather disappointed.)

Neither one makes me "proud." If I were, I'd be telling you that when I got my first 50s:
- Debt started at 5
- There was no debt smoothing
- The debt cap was doubled - and yes, I hit the 1.1 million debt cap.
- There was a *bad* content gap from 38-40, worse if you got too much debt early on (and my first was a blaster,)
- There was no half-debt inside missions
- There was no defiance (1.0 or 2.0) or any other inherent for blasters. If I got held, I'd better hope I had breakfrees.
- We didn't have Inventions. We had SOs that needed replacing every few levels. There was no other option.
- Zookeeper needed - what was it, 100,000 monkeys, and other badges were much harder to get.

So, I had to work harder at getting that 50 and had more stacked against me than anyone now ever will.

I see you have a forum reg date of Nov. 2004. Why, if patrol XP makes you feel like you don't "earn" the character, should the current, XP-smoothed, debt-doesn't-matter not be bothering you? You should be petitioning for *that* to be reverted so we have to work through debt like we used to.

Also, your XP reference is wrong. If I play from (say) level 25-28 in a day (which is doable,) and I'm on full patrol XP, that is only affecting level 25-26 (assuming a start from just-hitting 25.) It doesn't affect level 26, 27, or 28. Also, if I'm playing that character daily or every other day, it's barely making a blip on the XP radar.

Last... well, I do have to say it. If your pride is based on (or insulted by) how hard it was to get levels in a video game, perhaps it's time to step away for a while. I'm proud of many things. My 20 level 50s are not on that list of things I'd brag about. (OK, my friends and I jokingly celebrate - "Yay, number 23!" and that's as far as it goes.) There are times I mention having 200+ characters - I normally do so to poke fun at someone complaining about having to juggle a whole ten or something. No pride involved there. It's a game. The only thing I can say I'm proud of in this game is getting some developer recognition for the work I was putting into on the initial AE guides, and that's more a "that felt good to be told" than "pride."

I'm not saying this as a putdown, but if this bothers you so much it really sounds like you need some perspective. Or at least to stop worrying about something so piddly as if you used any patrol XP or not.

Edit:
Especially if you're comparing it to this:
In WWII, carrier pilots flew without radar (most aircraft) in slowish, propeller driven aircraft over vast stretches of water to hit a target and try to make it back, navigating with charts and watches. Are you telling me that the *current* carrier pilots - including those who have seen combat in the last decade - suck by comparison because they have radar, navigational aids, reliable radio and faster aircraft that can carry and do more than the old SBDs, Corsairs, SB2Cs, F4f and F6Fs ever could?

In the 1700s, back when the colonies fought first in the French and Indian wars, then for independance, "rifles" were rare (I can't even think of if they existed at the time - as in a weapon with a rifled barrel.) They fought with muzzle-loading, slow weapons, had maps that weren't particularly reliable, no pre-made ammunition (pack the gunpowder, wadding, ball separately and pack it down yourself) - is the current military "not measuring up" to them because they have maps, GPS, assault rifles, grenades, tanks, uniforms, armor and the like?

I can tell you that the various veteran/pilot/etc associations don't think there's any difference. A soldier served his or her country, whether they fought on the front line for a decade dodging bullets every day or drove a truck loading cargo in a plane back in the states. No, there's not going to be a new set of "Arizona survivors," obviously, but if a pilot becomes an "ace" today he's welcomed right in along with the late Marion Carl, Boyington, Bong, etc.

Or, to answer your question directly - you go in, do your 400 pushups. You're then assigned to your unit, deployed, brought under fire, complete multiple missions, save lives, take others, get shot, serve for many years - yeah, 100 pushups make SUCH a difference. It's not like you'd get put in for the Medal of Honor, stand there in front of the President just to hear him say "I'd love to award this to you, son, but you only did 400 pushups, not 500."

Like I said, it sounds like you need some persepctive if you think that's at *all* an appropriate comparison.

Trick Arrow
Sonic
Force Field
Storm
Cold

None of these have a self heal. Three don't have any sort of heal (four if you don't look at Frostwork's +MaxHP as a "heal" - which IIRC it isn't. And I'd argue against Traps Triage beacon - a +regen - being counted as a "heal" as it doesn't actually heal you, just gives your own regen rate a boost.)

However, all of these have *other* ways of either self buffing or debuffing the enemy, making soloing safer. And controllers, rather obviously, can lock down enemy spawns.

Yeah, that's a *great* attitude to take to promote discussion. "They disagree, they hate everything!"

Bravo.

Look at your combat logs.

A Critical, IIRC, is counting as two "hits" of damage, even though it's one attack. Say you have 1000 HP. NPC's normal attack does 800, crit does 400 (just making numbers up.) From full health, that will kill you - because it's not seen as one "shot."

Similarly, an attack with multiple damage types (the Rikti sword lethal/energy combo, for instance) will count as two "shots" even though it's one attack, and will kill you if the totals are high enough.

No, the question is "How do they do on SOs?" And they do just fine.

For all your post above, all I can point out is that if some mathematical kill/time/xp/inf formula were all that mattered, everyone would be playing nothing but the highest-damage ATs. Probably not touching blasters, because they can be shut down by a mez.

If you look around, though, you see that's not the case.

You bring up the "worst AT" without defining "worst" as anything but - well, "worst," which is so vague you might as well talk about "that one AT, you know, the one with the powers and stuff."

And for all your wanting to dismiss "My Peacebringer is a great Peacebringer," you seem to ignore everything else that went with that. There's little variation in Peacebringers - a few power choices or forms. But as I said before, you *can't* just say "It's better/worse than *insert other AT here* at damage/survivability." (There are cases you can - hard control, obviously, is going to be the Controller/Dominator domain, team buffing the Defender, Corruptor and/or Mastermind - or controller. But with your "Defeat enemies and survive," you can't make the blanket statement.)

The Peacebringer is *not* a melee AT. If you look at its powers, you see quite a bit of range, some buffs (self and team, if you want to count Group Energy Flight in with the heal,) some resistance and some melee. Yes, its heavy hitters tend to be melee, and the Dwarf form is geared toward melee - but that's not the definition of the entire AT, any more than having some melee powers in a secondary makes Dominators or Blasters a "melee AT" (and the blasters would fall short in some of your definitions as well, lacking mez protection, any sort of built in defenses until APPs in most cases, etc.)

I'd argue the Warshade is more of a melee AT than the Peacebringer, as it has more powers that require (and reward) the player in melee range.

The Peacebringer is a hybrid AT. Again, no, it's not a blaster, no it's not a scrapper. It's not meant to be, so knocking it down for not being some other AT is silly.

Often enough, you'll hear a comparison of hero ATs and villain ATs, where hero ATs are listed as the specialists and villain ATs are more generalists. And where were Kheldians introduced? Right in between them - and quite honestly, that's exactly where they fit, leaning a bit more toward the redside "not one specialized role" philosophy.


Oh, and I do have to nitpick:
Yes, actually, it does. If my AOE hits (say) 5 enemies. One runs off, my followup hits and defeats 4, and someone else does the last bit of damage to the one that ran off - I get credit for it. Not full, but I do get a reward for it.

I know it's not precisely what you were aiming for, but that case is there, and common enough.

Flawed question, as PBs have only *one* primary and *one* secondary.

I can say my PB outperforms my controller. Someone else can say their controller can tear through a map faster than my PB. And we'd both be right - because there's no one "controller" set. I'd be talking about my Earth/FF (who nearly ran out of time on Shadowhunter's map at base settings,) or perhaps my Ill/Sonic (which, frankly, I hate playing,) they might be talking about their Fire/Rad or Fire/Kin.

The closest to "sets" a Kheld has are the choice to take one or both forms.

It's also flawed in that you're asking "Worst" - worst *what?* "Worst AT" isn't an answer, either. A PB is worse at control than a dedicated controller - but it's far better at blasting and tanking.

Generally, getting an "answer" to this is one of "Well, it's a worse blaster than a blaster." Well, no kidding. That's because it's not a blaster. "It's not as good as a dedicated tank." See blaster answer. Know what else? That tank's a pretty crappy blaster, too, but I don't see anyone coming down on tanks for that. So why do people insist on coming down on Peacebringers for not being something they aren't?

My Peacebringers are damn good Peacebringers, and that's all there is to that. What does that mean to me? I *do* have the flexibility to adapt to roles, to open up possibilities to handle situations that standard ATs don't have. Sure, tell me I'm not a tank - I never claimed to be - but I'll just grin and remember some pre-I13 PVP where I'd eat multiple ASes or hold off a team of 5-6 villains solo, unbuffed, for a good five minutes. Yes, on SOs. Defeated them? Obviously not, since they *were* getting buffed and healed - but I lasted far longer than they ever expected. Or remember self-PLing in Perez as soon as I got Nova. Or - since my first PB, created in issue 5, IIRC (mid-July 2005) - treating the entire trip to 50 as "round 2" and thoroughly trouncing the enemies that gave the "original" blaster such fits. On SOs.

Am I running through on 4/8? No. But I don't tend to do that on any of my characters, so I *don't care.* Am I soloing AVs and GMs like:

Note the IOs mentioned? Nope, obviously I'm not matching them. And I don't care. I'm not a Scrapper, I'm not a Tank. I'm a Peacebringer.

If not running +4//x8 makes an AT "the worst" to you, well, that's fine for you. Find something that does that. My pickup not topping 250MPH like a Veryon or carrying a semi's load of cargo doesn't make it the worst vehicle, either.