Redlynne

"Today, $Character replaced Planet Earth with Folgers Crystals™! Let's see if RuluWade notices the difference?"



"RuluWade attempts to crush Planet Earth in a 'Test Your Strength' contest and fails to squish Hamidon! Film at 11!"



If you look *really* carefully, you can see Emperor Cole buffing RuluWade's fingernail in a (ultimately futile) attempt to convince RuluWade to NOT crush the Praetorian Storyline.







RuluWade really makes for a lousy Galactus, don't you think?

In my (not so) humble opinion ... any time you build this sort of "indecision" into a game over what is "best" among mutually exclusive options is the point at which you have achieved game balance.

Evidence gathered over the course of multiple years points *strongly* towards a conclusion that these lists are very much a waste of time.

Which simply tells you that keying the MM ATO to pets was an extraordinarily BAD IDEA™ from the get go.

Mr. Kaison ... we need to talk about the work you've been doing on Terra Volta ...

12 million INF as a budget can barely get you outfitted in SOs or straight common IOs ... let alone any Sets worth a pancake.

I read these because a friend of mine was a Star Wars nut/freak and he strongly recommended them. So I read them ... and wished I hadn't wasted my time on them. Grand Admiral Thrawn was a plot hole sitting on a throne, in my view. When my friend (who loved these books) asked the inevitable question of how I could think that, I used a very simple illustration for him.



Grand Admiral Thrawn (holding up a twisted piece of wire): "Admiral, do you know what this is?"

Admiral Clueless Sidekick (clueless but respectful): "No Grand Admiral. What is it?"

Grand Admiral Thrawn (gloating): "A Corellian paperclip. The Rebels are DOOMED™!"



After I made that joke, my friend could never talk about the Thrawn trilogy without remembering my take on the central feature of the Thrawn's "brilliance" and unavoidably cracking up.

I posted the answer to that back in February ... link.

It's actually 16.25% and it just rounds up the .25% into being .3% instead. More of a nuisance than a crisis.

Ninjas are susceptible to this sort of AI fault too, even though they have ranged attacks.

Pfft. Inky Aspect and Orbiting Death is plenty aggro magnet when solo to keep attention on yourself and not on the fluffies.

I think that what Joe's analysis of Photon Seekers concludes is that in order for them to deliver a sustained amount of damage comparable to the output of Extracted Essence, the base recharge time on Photon Seekers would need to be down around 20 seconds (or less!) so that they could become a second Incandescent Strike (of sorts). At 180 seconds of base recharge time, they barely add +1 Damage per Second(!) ... per Seeker ... per target hit ... under optimal (ie. no wasted damage) conditions. Compare that to Joe's minimum floor of *50 DPS* per Fluffy against a *single target* and the answers become clear as to which is superior over time.

+3 DPS ... vs ... +50 DPS ... against a single target. Hold on while I bust out my excel spreadsheets to tell me which one of these is doing more damage over time ...



I would argue that Photon Seekers needs to have the AoE radius of each seeker increased from 10 to 15 ft ... have the max targets increased from 10 to 16 ... have the recharge reduced from 180 seconds to 60 seconds ... leave all other parameters "as is" (including damage and endurance cost) and see how that plays.



An entirely different possibility would be something really bizarre, but potentially very interesting ... which would function more like a MIRV (as in, Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles).

You summon ONE Photon Seeker, instead of 3.

That ONE Photon Seeker "detonates" in a PBAoE onto its chosen target. The primary PBAoE deals NO DAMAGE ... but instead spawns a secondary Photon Seeker (re-use FX) for each Foe within the primary PBAoE Radius which shoots out from the point of detonation towards every Foe, as a projectile, within the primary PBAoE's radius.

The secondary Photon Seekers impact *their* targets within the primary PBAoE (ie. 1 per Foe) ... and detonate as secondary PBAoEs that do damage ... resulting in a much greater multiplier effect that better scales to tightly grouped Foes in large numbers.



Basically, you get a "big" primary (PB)AoE (of, say ... 16 ft) that does no damage, but which in turn spawns a bunch of secondary (PB)AoEs (of, say ... 8 ft each) which each(!) *DO* deal damage and which better scale to the number of targets being engaged. Still might not rival Extracted Essences for single target damage over time ... but depending on the number and positioning of Foes when deployed, could result in a rather undeniable BURST of damage which yields a competitive advantage in a way that Extracted Essence(s) could not match (or even hope to match) under the right circumstances.





And yes, before anyone asks ... I have suggested the "AoEs that spawn AoEs" idea for Photon Seekers before. Still waiting for Arbiter Hawk to make a head fake on that one.

Not without clicking the same key multiple times in a row, while waiting for the animations to finish.

This is more like being able to have a keybind/macro which will drop a form AND activate a toggle power, such as a (s/l) bubble resist or your Phase power all in one key click. Right now, I can't drop out of Nova or Dwarf form and "insta-cast" as part of the keybind on the first click my Quantum Flight power as a Phase/Get Out Of The Hospital Free card. Instead, I have to double tap the keybind (once to drop the form, once to engage the toggle for Quantum Flight). Apparently that sort of failure to parse correctly has been fixed on Beta.