Noxilicious

So I've been thinking, one of the big things about Peacebringers and Warshades is that they get better with more people around, right? Except, as it is, having another EAT on my team feels like a waste of a spot whenever I'm on my Peacebringer. The moments that I find myself thinking "wow, I am really glad I had that slow protection just now!" are few and far between.

The idea is that the buffs Kheldians get are based on the ATs around them, right? As in, Peacebringers "complemenz" the team, so they get a 20% damage boost for every defensive AT, a 10% resistance boost for every offensive AT and a 1 mez protection for controlly types. Now, since EATs are meant to be hybrid ATs of sorts, wouldn't it make sense that they buff those three aspects a little? Say, I'm on my Peacebringer and a Widow joins my team, I would get 10% damage, 5% resistance and 0.5 mez protection since they're a hybrid AT, boosting my own hybrid nature little. At the very least it'd be an actually tangible boost as opposed to one I don't even remember most of the time.

Any thoughts? Would you feel it'd improve Kheldians? Ruin them forever? Or think it's completely pointless?

You just need to buy a lot of red and purple inspirations. The summer event literally dumps you right next to an inspiration vendor immediately after you lose, if you don't burn through a million inspirations a minute under those conditions it's really kinda your own fault for fights taking forever.

On the topic of everyone having to know the ins and outs of a trial, generally only one in twelve to twentyfour have to know that stuff, which I don't think is too bad. At least, I never saw a league turn away someone for never having done a trial before, that'd just be silly.

Hell, I don't even think forming a trial without ever having done before is wronge either. Usually all you gotta say is "hey guys, I've never led this trial before, so if you have any advice feel free to chime in!" and more likely than not you'll have a veteran helping you out. It's when you say nothing that things start getting a mess.

And on a completely different note, know what my biggest issue with some trial leaders is? Giving what feels like hours-long lectures on a trial before even queueing the league. Thankfully I don't see that happening a lot anymore nowadays, but that was incredibly tiresome when the Keyes Trial first came out. This is not only an incredibly boring slog to the point you just wanna leave the keyboard and do something else, in case you do listen you'll get such an information overload you'll end up conflating a lot of information. Hey, the boss said something about having to pull Anti-Matter to the terminals, better do that right now on the first phase!

You'll usually find plenty of time to instruct people during the trial. As someone else has said, as a leader your words are more powerful than any of your powers, so you shouldn't be afraid of just not attacking for a couple seconds to tell people what's what. On a UG I have more than enough time to explain the AVs once the pre-AV kill counters show up, on a TPN I can get all the important information out of the way during the first phase after I tell people to use ST/not attack cameras, and the MoM trial even has convenient breaks after every phase!

Speaking of MoM, this is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know how much damage Mayhem deals in the last phase? A couple weeks back I led an MoM trial with a bit of a patch-works league that nontheless pretty much steamrolled the trial, only to have the majority of the league die within seconds in the last phase. Right now I'm not sure if she just has an absurdly powerful PBAoE she spams and we just didn't have a Barrier up or if there was something else I missed. We didn't struggle against the other AVs so I was hella surprised at such a quick defeat on the last phase.

Okay so, one of my buddies started playing this game after it went F2P, and he's now interested in spending some money on it to get some more goodies to play with.

So we're looking at the VIP Starter Kit and he asked me if you get to keep all the Going Rogue stuff like the alignment system and power sets if your sub runs out if you bought the VIP Starter Kit.

My question is, does he? While I'm pretty sure you'll get to keep the alignment system etc if your sub lapses after you buy the Starter Kit I don't exactly want him to spend money on something he thinks he'll get to keep forever and it turns out it'll only be for one month.

So after the I21 changes to travel powers I decided to take the opportunity to go and respec several of my toons. One of the common themes in my respecs was removing snipe powers from my ranged toons. While I'm sure that snipe power have many excellent applications in this game, to me they always felt really slow powers in an otherwise fast-paced MMO. Enemies often die before the power triggers, you often get get interrupted and waste the endurance, and as a combat opener you wanna use AoEs most of the time, so a single target power isn't the best opener, which is where an interruptible power would feel most at place. So in other words, I either never use snipe powers or I use them and end up wasting endurance for nothing.

So what does this have to do with Stalkers and their Assassin's Strikes? Well, to me AS always felt like a sort of melee-snipe. It's a slow, interruptible, single-target power that works best as an opener. That already makes me feel about them like I feel about snipes, but to make things 'worse' for me is that to effectively use AS, I'd have to wait for my Hide to go up before even approaching a mob, slowing the game down further. Like, if I approach a mob as my hide is going up, I'm gonna catch aggro, wasting both my Hide and AS as I get attacked. If I instead use my strongest non-AS attack, I can get a sure-fire critical in before I get hit.

I guess at this point I am pretty certain that AS isn't doing it for me, but where I don't feel strongly about skipping snipe powers in Blasting sets since blasting sets are more about AoE anyway, I wonder what the point of being a Stalker would be if I skip AS?

I mostly enjoy Stalkers, I even got one at 50+1. I especially like the guaranteed criticals that Hide and Placate off. I don't mind the lack of AoE. As contradictory as this sounds, it's not a matter of me disliking the AT as a whole, it's just that I cannot stand its signature power.

TL;DR: Are Stalkers without Assassin's Strike a viable choice, or should I stick with the power/just not bother with Stalkers if the power's not doing it for me?

I hear they nerfed accuracy

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Westley the guy who decided to piss on a departed user's memorial thread because said user was in the army?

If this hurts your immersion, can't you just go to Icon and the Facemaker like you do now? I don't see how me editing my costumes at a trainer will hurt your immersion when you're at a tailor doing the same.

Like I'd see where you're coming from if the devs did something ridiculous like say that Doctor Brainstorm destroyed all tailors but then suddenly all trainers got appearance-modifying powers, but as it is, your tailors are still there for you to use, so you can still use them?

I just fail to see the problem here.

I also think I'm seeing new pistols in pictures showing off the Celestial costume pieces, but I might be imagining things there.

Also note that crafting and "Set IOs" are completely optional. I've been playing for about three years now and never really bothered with Set IOs, only with DOs and SOs (AKA the buyable enhancements, not the craftable ones).

IO builds will produce higher numbers, but nobody in the game really cares whether you've got a completely tricked-out build or are just cruising with normal enhancements. You can even comfortably contribute to our endgame raids with just SOs.

IO sets are there for people who want that extra oomph out of their powers, but they are by no means necessary. There's no pressure to get into the crafting system right away, or ever if you just don't feel like it like me.

Note that they're absolutely tiny. Gob's picture makes it look fairly big because it's zoomed in on it, but in-game it's like, the size of your toon's hand.

That kinda broke the deal for me, but hey, I'm pretty sure there's people who're cool with or even like tiny Lore pets, so Robotic Drones ( and Polar Lights) are cool for those.

Try /releasepets, then resummon.

There's also a story arc in Grandville where you reroute Mynx' medi-porter to teleport her into a Crey facility once you beat her down. 'course she survived because Heroes get plot immunity, but still. Just another example of the medi-porter being rendered useless/detrimental in the game.

So yeah, it's pretty much just the story-gameplay-segregation others have mentioned. The mediporter will never fail us, but it will conveniently become useless to everyone else.