Myrmydon

Originally Posted by CriticalKat

While I don't think its overly cool to just publicly berate people for being noobs and having screwed up builds, saying builds do not make the player to atleast some extent is ********. There is a reason why so many people choose very similar optimal builds. Because its been tried and tested and proven that certain powers are needed to make a build the best it can be. You can argue all day long that a tank not having its defense/resistance toggles doesn't make them suck as a player all you want, but a dead tank doesn't hold aggro which is their primary responsibility. A blaster with no stamina that never has any end isn't killing a damn thing half the time. An empathy without clear mind isn't fulfilling their purpose to the team either.

Now if a toon has the primary powers needed to do their job and then wants to get flurry and whirlwind and any other power that is deemed useless by most, more power to them.

Personally I am one who has gotten extremely tired of messed up builds on teams I form. I literally have to look at every build as I am making a team anymore because there is a good chance the people joining cannot fulfill their duties their build is typically expected to fulfill. There has always been issues with a newer player or an RP'r with a concept toon with less than optimal builds, but lately its been 10 times as bad. While people should have the right to build their toons the way they want, in my personal experience the majority with the messed up builds also play those toons messed up and seldom contribute much to the team. The cases of them being good players are far and in between. I mean I have seen a concept build of a scrapper with no travel power. Who cares, that doesn't prohit them from surviving and putting out DPS. In fact I seen a concept build of a blaster who didn't take any of the buildups, aims, etc. They were an RP'r. Ok so they put out less DPS, it was ok, they still faught their little heart out and contributed to the team and wasn't a burden. However those type of gimped builds with decent players behind them is not the norm. Usually its someone who doesn't do their fair share, is aggo'n half the map all the time, wandering off in to mobs themself when they can't hold their own. Or spending the entire mish begging people for inspirations because they are missing everything, have no endurance or can't survive because they don't have their defenses. Or yelling at the emp because they didn't get healed quick enough. etc etc.

There is a huge difference between an "intentional" concept build, and a noob who just doesn't know any better. I love noobs, if they are open to learning, which also doesn't seem to be the case lately either.

Originally Posted by Peterbilt

Are you sure he didn't say he wanted to have his *** kicked in melee? I want to see the chat log on that.

Originally Posted by Castle

As for Bill Willingham, I've been a fan of his since I read "The Elementals" way back when. Very good series that was ahead of its time, thematically.

Originally Posted by Bud

I kno i love my toons and i want my toons to stand out from the crowd...Dont you?

Originally Posted by je_saist

Aett Thorn has it correct. - Castle

Originally Posted by PHlRE

THE MONSTER MASH!!!

i remember having a halloween record with that song on it :P

Originally Posted by Acemace

There's a rumor the Rough Riders are looking for you Myr. Something about PL trades you never paid back from 05.

Originally Posted by GuessWhosBack

Better late than never I guess. I just dont get to read these forums as often as Id like. So if you are a better player, then perhaps a contest to prove it? Ie put your money where your mouth is.

Originally Posted by PHlRE

thinking of dipping back to the rusty Elec/Shield brutes set for 2XP

Originally Posted by PantherShade

FYI: I am stealing all your x2 XP while you are at work.

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

sojealousritenao.


They won't be beta testing GR for a while yet, so why bother giving out more info than they already have about it right now? It won't kill anyone to wait a couple more weeks.

Originally Posted by Dinah Might

F'in' forum police

Originally Posted by BlackAmaranth

Since I'm rarely the leader on Pingu Teams, and Ping has inscribed it in the by-laws of the SG that members have to do whatever possible to advertise my hilarity and lack of skills, it can assured that observers would be allowed, and probably actively recruited.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Right now I'm trying to figure out how the programmer who did that even knew (incorrectly) where to put the first line, if he didn't know where the second one was. I'm guessing that the actual problem was that the code did something like this:

Influence = 0
...
...
...
Influence = Reward->Influence;
...
...
...
GiveInfluence( Player, Influence );


and at some point down the road, someone else needed to add the first line and looked for where Influence was initialized and said: ah, its being initialized to zero; I'll do this:

Influence += Reward->Experience;

right below: this must be safe.

Which is one of those sorts of errors programmers get into. Programmer #1 said "lets be safe: initialize Influence to zero, and then later on set it to the correct value. The first line doesn't actually do anything, but that's ok." Programmer #2 says "oh look: he initialized it: he must have accumulator code after this or he wouldn't need to initialize it. I'll just insert an addition code in there and the downstream code will just accumulate on top." Without the init line, or something similar, the accumulator line in question would have been Unsafe At Any Speed to insert without a logical code reference point to place the insertion.

Unless it was a single programmer that wrote all of the lines, in which case I have to assume alcohol played a factor.

Originally Posted by pohsyb

I can't believe no one noticed this earlier!

Since everyone loved my last bug explanation:

Level capped experience being converted into influence was broken because of an off by one error. (49 is never >= to 50)

Exemplaring converting experience into influence was broken because the experience was being added to influence before influence was being set (note these lines were a lot further apart):
Influence += Reward->Experience;
Influence = Reward->Influence;
GiveInfluence( Player, Influence );

Originally Posted by Talon_Arsenal

Don't worry, Champion always has more. This is like an all-you-can-eat Dramafest server.

Originally Posted by Vicar

IMO plenty of people have demonstrated problems with the at. That however is my opinion.

Lackluster damage paired with survieability that is only slightly better than a brutes (while the damage does not even come remotely close) coupled with endurance issues and an outdated agro mechanic that with a agro cap at 17 means in my opinion that the tanker archtype is a dinosaur that is only still alive because brutes are not yet on hero side.

In short other than a rework of gauntlet to make being a tank unique (considering I have seen scrappers and brutes hold agro almost as well. If they can hold 60% of the mob thats all you need to hold if the av is part of that and they do far more damage) or some active adjustment of the agro cap for tanks so that if they can survive it (most likely with heavy buffs or massive io builds) they can tank it.

That however is my opinion, one of which several of my friends (who have all canceled Im the last one left) share.

Originally Posted by Pyromantic

I'm judging from the tone of the post that when you say defense, you aren't referring to "Defense", i.e. the particular layer of protection that reduces an enemy's chance to hit you, but rather a more general sense of survivability against various enemies. Here's how I would characterize the sets very briefly:

Dark: Potentially very powerful but a bit trickier to build and manage than some sets. It combines control, decent resists, a touch of defense and an extremely powerful heal.

Electric: Not overly impressive for survivability, it has some reasonable resistance and (now) a solid heal/regen power. Also has some interesting utility in endurance drain and recovery.

Fiery: Decent resists with a very strong heal power. It has a little utility and some nice damage options. Many feel that Shield is the better "damage for survivability" trade-off set.

Ice: A set that doesn't see enough play IMO. Based almost entirely around defense, once it gets going it is fully capable of soft-capping against most damage types with a decent number of enemies to power Energy Absorption, even without looking to pools or IOs. Also very strong for holding aggro.

Invulnerability: Extremely sturdy against smashing/lethal, but also capable of putting together some very good defense and decent resists to everything except psi. Really lacking in any offensive output unfortunately.

Shield: Like Fiery, this set provides more modest protection in exchange for increased damage. As a positional-defense based set it is very IO-friendly, and the offensive options are really noticeable.

Stone: Fairly modest protection until you reach Granite, which provides extraordinary survival numbers (both defense and resistance) in exchange for some pretty hefty debuffs to damage, recharge and mobility. If you're looking for a tank that takes a ridiculous beating you can't go wrong here.

Willpower: As you probably know, this set combines a mixture of resistance, defense and strong health/regen, as well as providing a little utility. Functioning around multiple layers of protection even more than other sets, Willpower has very few holes and is very adaptable. It is unfortunately quite weak at holding aggro and does nothing for your offense.

Don't forget to also consider secondaries as they can provide surprising amounts of damage mitigation. The most notable are probably Dark (for its debuffs and particularly the heal), Ice (for its control) and Stone (also for its control), but most of the sets provide a degree of mezzing and/or knockdown that can be leveraged to help keep you in fighting form.