Oliin

I think they like the knocking people around aspect of Gravity so that's somewhat unlikely. Maybe we could persuade them to change it to a knock-up effect instead of kb.

Pretty much this.

Normally I tend to put thematic badge titles on characters, but if there's ever not one or if I can eek out a slight reason for that badge title to be thematic for the character then it's the one I'm using.

Really? I had absolutely no problem with him on my energy/dev blaster. Now the fight with Hero 1 and the vanguard EB. Now that one kind of sucked. Both of them at once led to me dying ... twice I think it was.

A friend of mine always has problems with Trapdoor though.

Well Blade & Soul is developed by a Korean team I believe so I kind of doubt it's that.

Knockdown is great, but even with it enemies would inevitably close the gap with a player. Personally I'm a little lazy when soloing and I'd much rather move the enemy than I would move myself. Knockback lets me keep groups of enemies away from me and outside of melee range where (in general) the attacks do more damage to me. Plus you can do some fun things with knockback and the devices set that you just can't with knockdown. And as I said before there's a visceral satisfaction I get from knockback that I just don't get from knockdown.

Most people would probably slot a rech and an end reducer in those last two slots so if you wanted to put in a KB enhancer you'd have to drop one of those two things that you would otherwise have had in your power. It's one of the reasons I don't see a lot of people on the boards who advocate slotting ice blast powers for slow.

Of course it was a hypothetical. Most any suggestion we come up with and discuss on these boards are pretty much hypothetical. Can't I agree with or disagree with and offer suggestions to hypotheticals?

I've never been a big fan of this suggestion since it would generally mean that anyone who actually wanted to do knock-back would end up 'gimping' their powers in some way if they wanted to slot for the effect. Now if they wanted to do something like give energy blast users a swap-ammo type power that let them toggle on and off the KB without effecting their power slotting then I don't think I'd complain.

I'd personally imagine more would be happy than not. Personally I'd be pretty annoyed. Not only has knockback been a godsend for survivability on my squishy characters but personally I really enjoy it. There's something very satisfying to me about having an attack hit and seeing the enemy go flying back.

I'd actually really love it if every damage set had one attack that had a chance for knock-back or knock-up. I wouldn't ever really try to suggest that, but I know I'd enjoy it.

No, that's not compromise. That's me going out of my way to do things in a way that benefits a team which just continues on as they would if I wasn't there. Compromise is a two-way street.

An example of compromise would be if I didn't have hover and when asked not to I then didn't AoE spawns unless they were near walls or corners. And then the team went a little out of their way to fight near walls and corners so that I could still use my AoE somewhat effectively.

So I just finally got around to watching the first season on Netflix today and while on a whole the show is fantastic I really have to agree with this. Dr. Watson gets a bum deal on the show.

Unfortunately not all blasters will have build-up. My energy blaster is energy/dev and generally speaking unless I've taken a lot of red insps or am otherwise buffed from outside there will usually be lts and up alive after I fire off Nova. I don't know that I've ever actually taken out a boss with Nova.

I have nothing against what you've mostly said in this thread. My only point of contention with what you've been saying is that to me it looks like you're saying the blaster should always conform to the team's playstyle (or at least that was my takeaway from the two statements I originally quoted) and I think that the individuals in the team should try and meet each other halfway. That's pretty much it. Yea sure the blaster should try and work with the team, but conversely the team should also try and work with the blaster (or kheld or defender or corrupter or dominator or controller ... basically anyone with a lot of KB).

See, that's not compromise. For one I like flight and take it on the vast majority of my characters (100% of my male characters ... I hate that lumbering run). For another if I did take hover/fly just to AoE it'd just be me capitulating to the group that wasn't doing much of anything to meet me even partway.

Woo-hoo! I know what movie I'm seeing this weekend.

Considering I'm pretty much talking about AoE KB powers for the entire post ... um yes. I suppose I didn't specifically say AoE KB in that first sentence, but since that was the matter at hand people were discussing ... I kind of figured that was a given.

You forgot about nova, which also won't kill a spawn by itself in all cases. It also drops the poor energy blaster to only having three damage powers from their primary.

No, it's not, and I never said it was. If it seemed like I did then I either misspoke or just wasn't clear enough. It is however asking the energy blaster not to use 2 out of the 5 main attack powers in their blast set which may be the only easily usable attack powers they have if they're unfortunate enough to have /devices as their secondary. It's also missing the point.

The point is compromise. If the player wants to AoE blast and is willing to hold off until you're fighting near a wall or corner then what's so difficult about fighting near one when the opportunity arises?

No, you're not. If you ask them not to use AoE and they do it anyway repeatedly they're not really someone you'd want to play with (well give them a couple shots, they might be distracted or something).

If they were to ask if you could fight near walls where possible and you said no, then you kind of would be impacting their fun and doing so probably in much the same way that scattering the spawn would be to you.

Is there any good reason not to compromise? If you compromise you end up with 7 people having fun instead of just 6. What's so bad about that 7th person that they don't deserve to have as much fun as the other 6? Now if what that 7th person wants is so out of the way or aggravating that it ruins the fun for the other 6, like say ... using KB willy-nilly, then that's not really a compromise.


I don't know, personally this whole issue is why I hover-blast on my energy blaster (well that and I really like the flight pool). I get to use nearly all of my powers with minimal fuss for the melee folks.

New art is still new art unfortunately. Quick or not I'm not really sure how much it's 'worth'. Also are the preview pictures wrong because the stance the character's using in them is not the same stance my character's use with the Rocket Board in game.

Personally I figure it was about the same amount of 'work' to create the Magic Carpet as it was to create the Rocket Board. A lot of the mechanics for both existed previously and in both cases probably used mostly art and animation resources. If I'm right and it was largely the same amount of 'work' for the developers I'm not sure why it's deserving of a significantly reduced price-point. It'd certainly be nice if it was cheaper, but I don't really know why it specifically 'should' be (aside from 600 points being a little high for a travel power in general).

The big question for me is how much of the cost of these powers is bundled up in the new animation and art needed for them. If minus profit the art/animation is the primary expense for the power then I kind of doubt we'll see skins for them on the market any time soon, or at least not on the market with any significant discount. Personally I kind of think that's the case. Well for these travel powers at least.

Not to be too terribly snarky or anything, but isn't that what the people telling players with lots of KB powers not to use them are doing? Just saying, "don't do that," and offering nothing themselves?

Maybe ask the KB user to not use AoE KB powers unless they're above the group or they're knocking back into a wall or corner, and then where possible try and fight near walls and corners. You're both going out of your way to make the other's experience not suck. Sure it may not be quite as fun as just playing exactly the way you want with no regard to anything else, but at least you're not completely dragging down someone else's play-session.

Also, if you ask the KB user to do that and they make absolutely no effort and just AoE blast away, then they're just a dick who deserves to be one-starred and probably kicked from the team as soon as the mission's over. I mean, if someone else is being reasonable and the player refuses to meet them halfway then they're not really worth playing with or even worse they actively enjoy upsetting others.

Shouldn't the group also adapt to having a KB using player (could be blaster, defender, corrupter, dominator ... or whatever really) on their team? Or does that player just somehow not count?

So if I'm remembering correctly, when the Rocket Board was released for beta a significant portion of the feedback was people saying that they wanted other 'flavors' of the power. A magic carpet was one of the more requested flavors of the thing(brooms were another style that sticks out for me).

I'm not really sure that adding a player requested item to the store can really count as marketing suicide. It's possibly greedy, but at least it's the good kind of greedy where they hope to make money off of something people were asking for.

In spite of my little rant about range and IOs, I have a high-recharge build on my blaster that 5 slots a lot of attacks and has a dam/range HO in that 6th slot (I just wish I didn't HAVE to do it like that ... why can't some high-level IOs enhance range too?). I have my snipe solely to 5 slot sting of the manticore for 7.5% recharge. I don't ever really use the thing since I don't have build up and can't use it to one-shot many non-minions reliably and in normal combat I can out-dps it using my normal attacks. But hey, 7.5% recharge.

It actually used to give much better defense. Then with the GDN they not only nerfed its defensive value but took what was left and made half of it suppress when in combat (because /devices is not a defensive set). Waaay back in the day I believe I had something like mid-high 20% defense with CD and hover toggled on (might have been higher than that, it's been a while).

See, this actually kind of bugs me. Not what you said there, but the whole idea of slotting for range. I'd love to slot for range (I used to have all my ranged attacks 6 slotted with damage/range HOs ... it was glorious), but if I want to really utilize the IO system I can't because the IOs don't enhance it.

Far Strike and Salvo are the only two single-target ranged IO sets with any range enhancement to them at all. They're level 10-25 sets and I could get 12% range enhancement from Far Strike and 8.4% out of Salvo. The ranged AoE sets are much better as both of the affordable high-end IO sets have range enhancement to them and detonation actually does a pretty good job of enhancing range (almost 29% as a level 50 set almost 1.5 range SOs). They just don't really give you the option of slotting for range on your single target attacks in the IO system. I know, I know, frankenslot, but you can't really do that and slot thunderstrikes for much defense, so that knocks out one of the big (current) draws of the IO system.

Oddly enough though, sniper attack IOs have range in them ... because sniper attacks really need that longer range in there.

It should also be noted that while people will often lose interest in easy after a time they also will most of the time chose doing the 'easy sure-thing' over 'challenging with chance of defeat/failure'.

Not trying to direct this at anyone. It's just something to note really and doesn't just apply to online games but to most of life in general. The 'hardcore' or 'extreme' (or whatever) group that wants difficult/challenging is vanishingly small compared to the group that wants easy. And heck, even when you give those folks a challenge it's not always the type of challenge they want.

It's not so much the damage of time bomb that's the issue. It's that there's a 9 second cast time and then there's a significant wait on top of that before the mine actually explodes. It's just cumbersome since you end up waiting 20-some odd seconds before anything actually happens.

However my devices and traps characters should also be able to pull out that something for their current occasion and use it before the 'situation' gets utterly curb-stomped by the rest of my team while I'm still animating the power.

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but only a bit. The last time I effectively used time bomb or trip mine on a team was back before we had target caps. Inevitably when I try and use trip mine while on a team (in combat) I either get interrupted by some of the AoE flying around or by the time the mine's laid the enemies I was trying to target are either dead or the flow of battle has moved them out of my AoE.

I have actually recently started to occasionally use my gun drone. It's quite zippy now, but I still don't think it's remotely worth it's end cost.

Well to be fair the last one was a terribad 3D conversion. I'm guessing this time they actually filmed in 3D.

Personally I might complain about remakes and adaptations when I see them on the horizon, but in the end I most often go to see them out of curiosity if nothing else. The big problem with the majority of the book to film translation or just the straight- up remake is most often the end result is just a bad movie. Case in point being the Clash of the Titans remake or the adaptation Jumper. Neither one of those are what I would consider good. I could see how someone might consider them fun (though I didn't) but not good.

I will admit to possibly liking that movie a smidge more than is healthy. So many fun actors with such an off the wall campy script. It's kind of a shame it didn't do well enough in theaters to get the sequel off the ground since I would have loved to have had more films like it.

I'm guessing you probably know this, but in case you don't, both of of those are rather good non-horror Stephen King movies. I have to say though, I think you saw the better of those two. Sure he leans toward horror fairly decently, but good sized chunk of his work always seemed more more sci-fi or fantasy more than horror to me. As far as the good non-horror stuff from him out of the 80s may I suggest:

• The Running Man (sci-fi/action/Arnie flick)
• The Dead Zone (thriller)