Memphis_Bill

Specific statement vs blanket statement. See prior commentary. I have no argument with "Specific builds can outperform when built to it." But when a blanket statement is made as a rule, such as "X is better than Y," what that comes across as is "I can take any one of X as a direct replacement for Y and have it do a better job."

That, in and of itself, is not true. I don't want someone glancing through this, seeing this, and going "I dont' want to tank, I'll roll up a controller," play casually and wonder why they're going squish all the time, because it's "the wrong powersets minus a few billion INF market-value in IOs."

I'm also, quite honestly, not impressed with "With work and level 50/epics, I can replace XYZ." (For this discussion, that is. People that come up with the builds? Yeah, I appreciate what they've done, but I don't think it's realistic to use them to back a blanket statement or compare ATs. Most people arent' going to *have* those builds.) Do it at random levels within the game, and I'll give it more weight in the argument.

Perhaps it could have been worded better - "Doms will have a secondary that does damage, no matter what that secondary is" or "Doms are guaranteed by design to have a power from their secondary that adds damage on their own, from level one" is what I was saying. I'm referring to availability versus scale there.

And you're not guaranteed to have a /kin controller. Plus with the direct rebuttal - FS isn't a damage power, it's a buff/debuff - but I'll take the blame for that as, like I said, I could have worded that statement in a way to better reflect what I was saying.

Edit to add:

What this boils down to -

Frosty, there, is talking about end-game investment builds. When *I* am talking about it, I'm talking about the game others will be seeing - the 1-50 run. When I talk about doms, I'm going to talk about my Mind/Fire being able to decimate groups starting in the single digits. I'm going to talk about my 25-26 Plant/Thorn (leveled while doing this) who decided to take on Scrapyard's followers solo, kept them bottled up and ended up with something along the lines of a 100:1 kill ratio (having killed - well, hundreds of them.) Same group that'll chew up and spit out masterminds without flinching.

I don't *care* what an IO'd out build will do at 50, after all the content is gone. Show me what you can do with, for instance, that "godlike" Ill/whatever before he is, before PA can be perma, etc. and I'll be more impressed.

They don't phase, they just go invisible. If you have tactics, a build with +perception, or have hit some yellows, you'll still be able to see them (or see them sooner/longer.) Tsoo Ancestor Spirits are the same way.

Then quit making blanket statements. They're rarely 100% true. That goes to "Controllers can do everything better" as well as "Defenders are healers," "Stalkers only do hit and run," and the like.

I've been on the forum long enough to see others play your little game, too. You're going to want to get more and more specific until yes, you do have something that can - oh - let's go with solo a pylon as an example. I know Ill/Storm can, depending on build... as do *multiple* scrapper builds, by comparison. (Just browse through that forum.)

You DID notice this, yes? Here, let me bold the relevant bit - which even you are trying to rewrite to say "That's what I said," ignoring what you're being called on:

So if I "give you a challenge another AT can do," and *multiple* members of that AT can do it, while you create ONE Controller build... what does that prove? That *A* build can do what most of another AT can do. Not that *blanket group A* is better than everyone else. Or even equal to group B.

(This also goes, in a way, to "purpling out builds." I don't care what a purpled out build can do. I want to know what an SO build will do. That tells me about the powerset, not the IOs.)

And with one statement, you're wrong - again. All anyone has to do is a direct comparison of shared powers. They don't even have to finish creating the character, as you can compare from level 1 to level 50.

Buffs/debuffs? Controllers and MMs tend to share the same values - both of which will be lower than a Defender. (Not all sets are shared with Corruptors among these.)

Controls? Controllers will have the controls last longer at lower damage than a Dominator. Doms get higher base damage. And before you go into "And debuffing them/buffing yourself blah blah blah," that's an assumption you're making to try to support a blanket statement. Yes, a Controller gets containment damage, as well. A Dominator does have one thing you can be sure of that you can't say about a Controller - they will have MORE damage from their secondary, guaranteed. It's what their secondary DOES.

What gets me is you make this blanket pronouncement of "Controllers do everything better than everyone!" and then finally make the CYA statement: "Things like fire/rad, ill/rad, fire/kin, plant/kin, fire/storm, earth/storm, ill/cold and others are simply disturbingly powerful if built to the purpose."

Hmm. Looks like specific builds to me. I'm solidly unsurprised, however, that you can maintain that utter disconnect.

Now, if you'd said "Some controller builds can do incredible things," and left it at that, hey, no argument. Every pairing plays differently. The same is true of every AT. But that's a FAR cry from "Controllers can do everything better than everyone else."

Perhaps it's time for you to learn the difference between the paint sprayer used on your house and a 10/0 brush.

Not always! I think it was Kittenofchaos that used to hold (still holds?) Level 4 PVP events - no travel powers, no stalkers (for hide) or Khelds (travel powers,) everything else is fair game. No slot advantage by being level 5, either. The ones I was in were insanely fun.

Now, do you tend to find quite a few of the PVP SGs and hardcore PVPers there? Sure. Especially on test (or, I'd assume, Freedom.) But you can also get some nice, casual matches - and if you run across one of the solid PVPers, hey, tell 'em you want to learn.

Or just grab a friend and go to town. I've done that several times.

Massively multiplayer - you're ignoring the RP, of course. The genre is generally defined by a persistent world with multiple users on simultaneously (as opposed to, say, Diablo II in which there was a maximum of 8 people in any world, from the Rogue camp through the barbarian highlands.)

"Massively multiplayer" does not mean "work your way through Times Square crowds 24/7."

So you feel that people don't actually care about their names, about the way the individual servers are, about their SG names and the like? That nobody's going to say "They're merging servers, the game's dead and buried, they'll be gone in less than a year?" You haven't been paying attention in the least, have you.
Right. Because, after all, you know precisely how NC's databases are set up and how non trivial it would be to take care of all this... wait, your name isn't in red. So until you *can* prove that merging - say - Victory and Pinnacle (which would come up with more than 36 characters for me) would result in no lost characters, none displaced somewhere they don't belong, etc. you're as full of it as you want to say the list is.

If they deem it necessary, the population has dwindled to the point where the game is no longer able to sustain itself much less grow. And I can guarantee that the devs are aware of the opinions we have of consolidating servers and what they would do to our characters, and know full well they would lose *even more* income - not just from us leaving, but from the "They're closing it down, just look at Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, etc" history. There certainly wouldn't be a population INcrease.

Riiiiiiiight. You've completely ignored all the *facts* put out there. yeah. Obviously just doom mongering.

No, that says nothing. Congrats on your creative reading. They HAVE upgraded their servers multiple times since 2004. They haven't felt the need to consolidate for that reason, though - hmmm.... whose sails seem to be rather flaccid?

Sorry, your "counter" arguments don't counter much of anything. Going "oh, they just have to handwave this" doesn't fix or invalidate anything.

I can't help but think he's thinking of a very few builds. Note he says "Top end controller builds." Say, Fire/Kin, a preferred farmer against some specific enemies in specific maps. It is, in no way shape or form, a universal statement, any more than saying "Doms are this" by comparing on 2xperma-heavily-purpled dom.

Controllers and Doms are different. Hell, Controllers and Controllers are different. My Earth/FF plays differently from my Fire/Storm. You *cannot* say controllers play any one way. Doing so is like saying Defenders are "healers."

As far as the difference - what do YOU want? If you want to be able to do support and, really, direct the flow of a battle (or multiples?) Go controller. If you've played an Ice/Ice blaster and love the idea of control with damage, at range and in melee? Go Dom.

I'm on every server. And given the problems mentioned MANY times above that a server merge would likely encounter, in part or in whole, my "skipping town" wouldn't be to another server.

No, just people throwing up pseudo-logic about a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER blah blah blah strawman dictate it.
You not liking the arguments does not mean they're "smoke." And I do have better ammo - because if they DID do it, the game *would* be on its way out. And it'd be on its way out even faster, because - after losing SG bases, membership, etc. from it, after getting characters forcibly renamed, after loss of characters, they'd have an even greater loss of subscriptions than whatever would have forced them to consider it in the first place.

*sigh*

No, they did not warn they could go serverless.

They introduced server transfers, and of course made an announcement about it. They also, in a pretty standard CYA fashion, said (paraphrasing) "If anything happens in the future that would have made this moot, for example if we went to a serverless model, there would be no refunds."

That's it. That is not "We're talking about going serverless." That's not even "We might go serverless one day." That's "Once the transfer is done, it's done, no refunds for any reason if you decide you didn't want/need to, even if it's something we do on our side that makes you come to that decision." The whole point of the phrasing was "NO REFUNDS," not "Hey, we might go serverless," but that seems to be all some people want to remember.

It's like me saying "Hey, I'm one of those who hates heights, but loves to fly on an airplane" and hearing for the next three years "He said 'Hey, I'm an airplane!" You're missing some ... well, every very important bit of information.

It's far more than two powers. Little bit of game history -

Back a good ways, Phase Shift (pool power) used to be a straight toggle. You could turn it on and leave it on as long as you had the END. No, you couldn't attack, but you were perfectly safe. (I used it, for instance, to enter the Hive back in I3-I4 and run right into the middle of the Hamidon.)

That was changed so it would time out, END or no, in 30 (actually 27, given activation time) seconds.

Peacebringer Quantum Flight was the same way - turn it on, as long as you have END you're phased (and at capped flight speed.) That was also changed - twice. First time it gave an increasing END cost, so you would run out of END eventually (which people still worked out ways to stretch,) then it got the timer and "nophase" followup. (The last was added to every phase power.)

Hibernate is like QFly in a way. Puts you in a phased state (graphically different, yes, but the effect is the same, unlike just a "high def" power) and has a special effect. In Quantum Flight, it's the max flight speed. For Hibernate, it's ramped up recovery/regen.

There are two temp phase powers, as well - Hyper Phase, which you can get three times, lasts for 30 minutes, for doing a patrol in Warburg. It times out after 30 seconds. Then there's the Etherial Shift temp power, which is crafted and has five uses - and still shuts down after 30 seconds.

Now, PVP was brought up for this - as people would stealth, attack, and phase to avoid retaliation... and be able to just keep chaining phases. But the only thing PVP did was bring it *more into the spotlight.* The devs have made it clear in the past that they don't want you to be able to do something risk free. Chain-phasing, including with hibernate, would have been "risk free" (or low enough to be otherwise.) Heck, it was one of the reasons given for the very first phase change - "Phase tanking." It was, frankly, inevitable that hibernate would get that change.

You're arguing against a change that, honestly, was done years ago and has only trickled down to the other similar powers recently. It has been argued about, and the devs have made their stance clear. And I'm not just saying this from the standpoint of an ice tank, mind you, though I do have a couple. If anything, my Ice/Emp/Ice controller (who also has hibernate) would benefit from removing that *even more.*

I'm just giving you the reasons we're not going to see it happen. *shrug*

*points to my post*

It's not just AOEs. Pets (player spawned or other NPCs) also can attack them still during their rez. That's not an insignificant number of ways for them to get killed - fewer than direct player damage, yes, but it's not like they're completely invulnerable.

Some rezzes do have you invulnerable, others don't - while I'm not against the "we should be invulnerable" necessarily, I don't see it as an overbearing need. (And yes, I play squishies with rezzes as well as tanks/scrappers/brutes. )

o.O

It's still in the post, Sam.

Essentially - there are four things the devs consider that define your character - primary, secondary, AT and origin. These, we're told, they will not allow you to change. The first three make sense in power levels, ease of leveling one powerset vs another, etc. The fourth... not so much, but we know early on it was *vastly* more important. These four may be baked so deeply into the character creation system that it's not just dev wishes not to let them be changed, but that they literally *can't* without either a major rewrite or breaking many, many other things.

That aside, there is one other issue - If you could, say, reroll your MA/Regen into, oh, a level 1 BS/SR, what are you going to do with all the enancements? They're not cheap (in INF terms,) and aside from the fact you wouldn't be able to use them at all because of *level,* you likely couldn't use a chunk of them because they're different sets. Sure, you could use Melee Damage in the example above, but nothing that added to defense debuffs, nothing that had anything to do with stuns, almost nothing that had to do with /regen's HP and so forth.

And all we have to do is poke around the forums for a few seconds to see how people feel about their enhancements (and, at times, losing them.)

versus...

So... which is it? Full team or not? Yes, I know in the first message you said you "couldn't get a group of two others" (which I find very hard to believe) but you have to admit there's a disconnect between those two posts.

The reason I'm pointing this out? I did exactly what Westly's doing - we had someone here saying, on a sunday IIRC, that they couldn't get a team on Freedom redside. Now, I almost never play on Freedom - did last week because a friend has her main/badger there and wanted to run the new posi, and that was the first time in, well... months - but I hopped on and had a team running through several missions in minutes. When I pointed this out - with screenshot of the first team within five minutes of saying I'd do so - his argument went from "Those people left my team!" (unprovable) to "It's not a full team of 8 staying filled!"

So... are you saying "trio or higher" or "full 8" for a team to be "put together?" Or, to put it another way, what are you considering a team to be? Because if I'm saying "I have no problem getting on a team," and I'm talking about a PUG, no set definition, 3 or more people, and you're thinking "one of each main AT, plus fillers to keep us at 7 or 8," we're talking two totally different things.

Sorry. "No, no vet reward alterations for you! You'll take your gruel and like it, peasant!"

Better?

Also, pets can and will damage them.

Need /em kumbayah first.

Once the heroes hang up their capes... the next day, the servers come up for six hours and the villains run amok. (*bounces around going "amok amok amok.... " *)

See, I hear about these queues (pre-ordered, was in the headstart) and I ran into them once. Maybe twice.

Maybe it was somewhere other than Israphel and Lumiel, maybe it was the times, I don't know - but I have, quite literally, almost never seen a queue there for the six months I played there.

I might do that more if it didn't seem every time, to every other time, that I zone, the game decides I actually want to activate the alt tray powers. (This has been across OSes, keyboards, accounts and computers.) Nothing like being a tank, running into the first group, and turning off your shields at them. (This used to happen "every once in a while." For me, now, it's almost constant. Yes, /bugged. I've had friends commenting on it happening too.)

Well, I understand things like the anniversary badges - and like I said elsewhere, i'm generally getting sympathetic to the "make those global" for them.

Incorrect. You have the *chance* to, yes, but it's not a guarantee to see a Quantum, Void or Cyst. (Saying this as someone who runs several khelds.)