Paladin

Reminds me of the ending of a certain Dr. Who episode. Ick.

My favorite Task Force is Statesman's Task Force, followed closely by the revamped Positron task forces.

Favorite trial? They're all great, but The Underground is what I like to run whenever I can for the chance for rare/very rare. Mechanics-wise I've got to hand it to the Minds of Mayhem trial; you can burn through it quickly or take your time, and the action/dialogue comes at a pace you control. I like that.

Wishes? It looks like I'm getting my wish with the BEAUTIFUL knight costume pieces. Outside of that, I'd pay top Paragon Points for a fiery broadsword aura - something like Valkyrie's sword or Romulus' Nictus blade. I realize it's a niche request, though.

If this is what I think it is.. I'll have to find more power slots. Squee!

Magical Burst and Rune of Warding make it to primetime, maybe!

Thanks for joining. We managed to get Loves a Challenge on the fourth and final run for the night, so last evening was a great success.

For those who still need the badges or would like to help out, the final scheduled runs for this week will be tonight starting at 7pm PST.

Great runs tonight; everyone was up to par and running the trial beautifully. Outside of some strange AI bugs the runs were absolutely perfect. Congratulations to those who earned their Bunker Buster, Anti-Anti Matter and Avoids the Green Stuff badges. Anti-Matter's being a bit unpredictable and ignoring taunts, but we'll be sorting that out and earning the "Loves a Challenge" badge next run tomorrow night.

If you'd like to join, please come to Dark Astoria instance # 2 at 7pm PST. We'll be running about 4 trials total, depending on how long it takes to get prepared, until around 9 pm PST.

I'm glad to see the interest. We'll be focusing on Avoids the Green Stuff during the runs, grabbing Anti-Anti-Matter and Bunker Buster if anyone needs them during the first run. It's just simpler to focus on one thing during the Keyes finale. This is also a no drama run - If we fail, we'll just smack Keyes around then hop into the next attempt.

Tonight's events will be at Dark Astoria instance 2 at 7pm PST. We should have time for at least 4 runs. I hope to see a lot of you there.

I'd like to get some Master of Keyes Island Reactor runs in this week. The badge requirements aren't particularly complex, but they can be hard to obtain without deliberate communication and teamwork.

The runs will be held in Dark Astoria 2 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week from 7pm PST to 9pm PST, enough for about 4 runs. Usually it takes at least one run for a group to mesh, so it's good to plan for multiple attempts. The league is going to be kept small - between 12 and 16 people - so if you'd like to reserve a place then please post in this thread. Otherwise, please watch the channel "Speed Trials" for the announcements.

Level shifts and characters with healing powers can make this much easier, but it's not absolutely required - Trays of healing inspirations and situational awareness can make up for anything we might lack. But please have enough experience with the trial that you're comfortable running it.

It depends on the situation:

Cimerorans are perfect for single target damage. If you're looking for lore pets to provide healing, Cimerorans' radial branch is tied with Longbow for healing moves - there's one AoE heal, and one single target heal that will only be activated on the summoner.

Longbow T4 Core is great for team encounters because it does significant -regen. Using it that way you can become a force multiplier on large teams by debuffing the enemy's health recovery.

Storm T4 Radial has a hurricane that affects targets and a single target summoner heal, but is itself phased out and cannot be harmed by most attacks. As far as I know this is the only Lore pet that has affects mobs while phased. Useful if you're on a team that doesn't mind knockback and can use the -ToHit it provides.

The finale was very enjoyable! I'm glad to see all of the beautiful new resources in the game, from the Rularuu artifacts to the Moon Zone, and the floating ships. Freedom's been good to the playerbase in the form of so much new content so quickly.

I only played through the hero arc, but it was great to see Lanaruu acknowledging the character's help during the task force. It's little touches like that which add more than you'd think to the whole.

Did we ever establish what happened to those NPCs that were "vanished" by Rula-Wade? I had assumed they were just destroyed at the subatomic level, but the Arachnos patrons were vanished, too. Was there an explanation given villain-side for that, and for why the player and Lord Recluse were able to resist Rula-Wade's banishing? At the moment I'm just marking it as a player moment of badass.

My take is purely selfish. I'm someone who only plays one character, a Broadsword user, so I would pay double the price of a new power set for a rehash of the Broadsword animations. They're currently good for what they are as brute chops and slices - But seeing the changes for Katana so long ago, plus the Titan Weapon and Staff animations, makes me feel we could do better by adding a bit more "flash" to the powers without taking away any "oomph."

I'd also prefer an alternate generic "magical" blast animation for the Blast/Ranged sets rather than a brand new powerset. I can't count how many magic users I've encountered on Virtue who would be happy to swap the animation for their fire or ice sets for some more magical looking attacks. Even the Banished Pantheon's Sorrow mobs, who use Radiation, look a bit.. I don't know, "tech-ish." It's a bit jarring to see them using the same animations as, say, Crey, or Anti-Matter. Now that we have Magical Burst as a model magical PBAoE, and Rune of Warding/Purification for ranged damage we've got a nice foundation of ideas to add a few magical alternative animations.

The major plus side to alternative animations versus new powersets is that you don't have to reroll your favorite character(s) when something more suited to their concept rolls along.

I'd appreciate the opportunity to add a taunt aura into my Regen's Integration, like his brute counterpart has. I understand it would be a coding nightmare to make it an option instead of hard-baked into the power, but since we're dreaming..

The other thing that scrappers need that no other AT should be allowed to have is a glowing, fiery aura around their broadswords like Valkyrie has. I think I speak for all of us when I say that the AT will not be complete without that critical Scrapper-only costume piece.

Thanks for checking, Necrotech Master. I did take a look at my temporary powers tray listing and didn't find it there when I finished the flashback arc; whipped up a powexec_name bind just in case it wasn't showing, too. I'll do a final check once I get home on the off chance I made a typo, though.

The title says it all, really. I had finished Dark Astoria's new content on my main character and received, and subsequently used up Magical Burst, the excellent, beautiful temporary magical PBAoE. The power had both a 5 day, real time limit and a 10 power charge cap, so it was quickly worn out.

I love magical themed temporary powers, and usually flash-back the Rune of Warding arc to keep the power 'permanently.' I tried the same thing with Magical Burst, playing through the Ouroboros Dark Astoria finale, but finishing the content didn't award anything.

If it helps, I still have the other temporary power from the arc, Blessing of Tielekku active; the 5 days in-game duration is much more reasonable than the 5 days real-time duration for Magical Burst.

Just returned from seeing it in 3D - There were a few cringe worthy parts while getting used to the John Carter's acting style, as well as a few parts with Dejah that felt off. I'd chalk it up to inexperience directing live actors - the body language was just a little off, inflection on some lines needed a tiny bit of tweaking, etc. This only really came out in the quiet lulls between moving the plot along, so it wasn't too jarring.

With that out of the way I was very, very entertained. I love old serials, old sci-fi, "Humans are superior!" silliness, and it hit all of those beautifully. The visuals, costumes, and gadgets were stunning and looked like someone had made a full movie set in Asgard from Thor. And the story pieced everything together in a fun, entertaining, and engaging way.

I'm generally an easy to please movie-goer, but John Carter was just all around good, even excellent outside of the small, slow bits of relationship drama during the beginning of the film. I have no regrets paying the obscene cost to watch a 3D film in theaters for this one - I'll probably even see it again with a friend who hasn't seen it yet. It's close to my perfect movie with a touch of camp, drama, action, and a "save the world" plot; it's interesting and entertaining, and doesn't try to shoe-horn in the pretense of trying to challenge or send a message to the viewer.

I'm praying that the film will somehow surge in viewings. I'd love to see a sequel.

I'll be running trials or playing a new release for a console; I don't have any alts, and I'm not particularly interested in making any. Glad to hear the weekend's there for those with altitis, though!

Maybe someday soon the DXP will encompass Incarnate drops/rewards. A man can dream..