Oliin

I wonder if there's some sort of way to do an in combat/out of combat mechanic for the mines. Also I wonder if people would complain about something like that if it meant keeping the current version of the powers when used out of combat.

My guess is yes they would for some reason.

I'm well aware of that. I was simply pointing out another way to get to the 22% number with just targeting drone. Of course I was off since I didn't realize that mids panel rounded up, but still.

According to my copy of mids 3 level 50 IOs gets you right to 22% on the nose.

I certainly find myself worried that this is kind of considered the 'fix' for devices and that we're really not likely to see any other improvements to the set.

Nope, LRM was specifically excluded in the chat/interview. Possibly the first thing said after mentioning all snipes were getting the buff.

Conserve Power is becoming a version of Energize with less of an up-front heal but with more regen.

It's only one more slot than you'd like to get it with just TD itself and SOs, so there's at least that. 4 slotted TD will give enough to-hit by itself. You could also do the TD+tactics thing, that'll get you there readily as well.

Of course, as soon as you do that they'll end up announcing some sort of upcoming nuke changes.

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On second thought go ahead and respec out of your nuke.

It's an improvement for all ATs with snipes.

Of course snipes seriously needed an improvement so no problems there.

4 slots does it with SOs (22.06%). Alternately you get there just by slotting a single SO in TD and putting the kismet to-hit IO in cloaking device (field operative I suppose once this goes through).


Personally I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by the blaster specific changes nice though they are. The best changes here are simply the blast changes themselves and that applies to everyone who gets those powers. Of course that's just my gut reaction and experience might end up proving me wrong.

Is it weird that I was kind of hoping that one of the changes they were going to announce today was a fix to blaster's funky HP cap?

For the most part the power changed in the blaster secondaries is the level 20 power. The only exceptions being conserve power at 16 and chilling embrace which is at 10 I believe. So pre-20 there's just the same blast set changes for all.

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Not that I in any way dislike those blast changes in the slightest mind you.

Heck if I know. I certainly don't want to meet them, they'd probably be like the person who used to live across the hall from me who though The Princess Bride was a stupid movie. Almost zero sense of fun there I tell ya.

Yea seriously. For some reason I find the movie to be almost painfully boring. It's not that it doesn't have conflict or action in it, it's just that it has dull action and conflict. For me it's basically pretty and that's more or less it.

You can set the forum time settings to whatever you want through the User CP link on the top. Specifically from the 'edit options' page.

Oh no worries, there are actually several critics out there who really do seem to have a track record like you suggest. I just don't see it as an all critics thing.

Oh I know. I've played a lot of MMOs out there over the years. There's usually at least the chance that the enemy will get to you if you mess up kiting somehow though(small though the chance may be).

Mostly I'm just saying the addition of long range attacks to everyone was a design decision and I'm not sure it's one they're willing to revisit. I'd be rather happy if they did, especially since they don't seem to like giving ranged IO sets any range bonuses so it's far less likely to come up than in the past.

I don't really think that's exactly the case though. I think it'd be safer to say that critics also enjoy movies other than what the 'masses' like.

Last year is a bad example (lot of high-grossing horrible movies) but let's look at it any way. Out of the top 10 highest grossing films of the year (Harry Potter, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Twilight, Mission: Impossible, Kung Fu Panda 2, Fast Five, The Hangover part 2, The Smurfs, and Cars 2) four of them were well received critically (65 or higher on Metacritic/Rottentomatoes) and only The Smurfs had overall negative reviews. Everyone else had a mix of reviews that ended up being average. Currently Prometheus has generally positive reviews as does The Avengers, Men In Black 3, and Madagascar 3.

Critics a lot of the times seem to generally enjoy the movies that are popular, the issue is that a lot of them also really like movies that are challenging or dull or simply interesting from a film standpoint and those are usually not popular with the 'masses'.

Eh, I guess this is where taste in films comes in. I look at that list and I see a lot of really solid movies that have stood as good movies even over time. Sure not all of them are the movie that I would have picked for that year but they're usually good films.

Now if you want dull films; The Tree of Life, Manos, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, or Contraband. Those things are what I'd call dull.

That was Ebert. Or at least most famously it was Ebert. I'm not sure what that has to do with liking being bored though. Just looking through his 'Great Movies' list shows a large number of action and comedy films. Sure he likes his share of dull 'artsy' films (and I do too to be honest), but he also seems relatively fair towards 'mindless' action movies too.

He's been pretty fair towards film even though I disagree with him a lot of the times. I'll just ignore anything he says regarding video games since as you mentioned he obviously doesn't know much about them.

Obviously everyone's tastes differ (I personally liked The King's Speech well enough despite it's being Oscar bait), but you're saying you didn't like The Hurt Locker, No Country for Old Men, The Departed, The Return of the King, Gladiator, Braveheart, Unforgiven, or the Silence of the Lambs? Personally I'm not a fan of Gladiator or Unforgiven but I can see why they were up for the award at least.

Possibly you just aren't a huge drama person. They do seem to be up for the award fairly frequently.

Firstly, YAY! And on a day off for me to boot.

Secondly and in all good humor, did anyone else read this as something along the lines of, "Enough with all the blaster complaint threads already. We're fixing you, we're fixing you!"

I think you're possibly more looking at nominees than winners. Or at least I hope you don't think 80% of the winners were unengaging. I mean look at that list, there's a lot of good movies on that thing. There's a lot of 'Oscar Bait' on the list of nominees lately which is unfortunate. Of course just because it's blatant Oscar bait doesn't mean it's a bad movie either.

I seriously don't get some of the nominees though. I'm completely floored that The Tree of Life was up for best picture last time. It was a stunningly beautiful movie to be sure, and decently acted. Unfortunately the narrative was unfocused at best and was more an extremely loosely connected series of vignettes than anything else. Not what I would consider a good candidate for best picture.

Well see that's not a good movie either, if you're falling asleep to it then it's not engaging at all. On the other hand there's movies that are more like Schindler's List, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men. None of those movies are what I would consider fun by any stretch of the word but (to me) they manage the engaging part wonderfully and end up being bloody brilliant films. They're not movies I'm going to watch frequently though because they're not exactly fun films.