Sabreman

Did you know....

Regarding the basketball court bug above, one of the devs (I believe it was Positron), contacted the support team to report it as a bug, as he couldn't find the mission door either until the support team showed him where it was. He apparently felt like a right idiot, but praised the support teams professionalism.

Lusca and the Ghost ship were not in the game at release. They were added in (I think) issue 2.

manofmanychars is, unfortunately, still wrong on inherent powers. Keldians got theirs in I3, as he said, but scrappers got criticals even earlier.

Kinetics was originaly regarded as the red-headed step child of the defender primaries? The set hasn't really changed any, but people didn't realise that kinetics tended to contribute to a teams offence more than it's defence. Many teams with a kin\** on board just thought they were having a "good day", despite having a "gimped healer".

...that Regen originally wasn't able to regen until they got to level 28? Integration had no regen component, Fast healing was much less effective, so a regens only real defense for 28 levels was reconstruction. This was why Instant Healings massive healing capability as a toggle was regarded as reasonable, as it you had to go through 28 levels of getting your [censored] kicked first before you finally got some payback.

...Regen, SR and Ice Armour were quite popular, because they were the only defence sets to give mobile status protection. Nearly all Inv and stone tanks had Teleport so they could move around with status protection up. Fire tanks had hardly any status protection .

...in the first few months after release, blasters made up a huge proportion of the player base, as mobs had much lower hit points and range. This allowed blasters to wipe out entire spawns by throwing 2-3 AoEs while hovering out of range. Blasters would often refuse to join groups as the levelled faster and felt safer solo. This period of the game is occasionally referred to as "City of Blasters".

...scrappers didn't originally have criticals. They were added to give the scrapper the role of "boss killer" as scrappers had no real role in teams, and were usually passed over for the other classes.

...hitting a moving mob with a melee attack used to be a real pain, as the system did not queue attacks until the mob came in range, as it does now. Melee attacks just displayed "out of range" and refused to fire. Using a melee attack on a running mob therefore meant chasing after it, overtakking it, standing in its path and hoping to get the timing right so that your attack would fire as the mob ran past you, before it got out of range.

....the above used to cause scrappers and tankers to issue death threats to anyone who user fear powers or excessive knockback (fear originally made mobs turn and run).

SMASH!! Is definetely far too addictive. A little tale from last night, if you'll indulge me:

I've been teaming with my girlfriend (who's also enjoying her Stalker's stabbity goodness), and we're ripping through a mission filled with Wyvern at a furious pace. Due to the locations of the spawn and my life and endurance taps, there's barely a pause in the killing, but I'm down to about a quarter health as we round the corner and hit a boss, Lt and three minions.

My GF manages to say "Hold up a second, we'll need to..." before I spot my fury bar is at full, then roar and leap into the fray. The boss is halfway through his gloating spree when my fully-charged Shadow Maul explodes in his face. His health drops like a rock, and he runs through all his various phrases in under a second as I continue to beat him and drain his life. The little woman removes the Lt with a well timed stab, then goes to work on one of the minions bless her.

The boss drops just as a bloody patrol comes around the corner. They're bunched up, and Shadow Maul's recharged, so with health now on red, I let rip.

SMAAAAASH!!!

Three dead in the first attack, still on red health, life tap one, floor him with smite, punch out another with a one-two, turn to engage another with a roar....

...and there's no-one left.

After the red haze drops, I realise we've floored two groups, including a boss and Lt, starting on less than 25% health and endurance, in under 15 seconds.

I love my SMASH!