Sailboat

It's probably a commonly-used shorthand for "anthropomorhpic animal," but it bugs me to see it used this way. "Anthro" means "Man." We already have plenty of "man-parts."

Holy nail-on-the-head, Batman! Few things are as irksome as being deep in the middle of a respec and hearing the sound effect for a /tell go off. You're not just missing chat, you're now missing something personal directed at you. Is it important? Who knows?

I have grumblingly backed out of respecs several times to find out what a /tell boop was about. It's even worse if it turns out to be something inane, like an influence-begging stranger. Grrrr.

The way DB combos are in two tiers really seems to call out for a second build for low-level exemplaring. I plan to make one for mine. It won't cost a lot of influence because I won't be buying tons of sets, just frankenslotting low-level crud. Another advantage this plan offers is the ability to overslot the early powers (like six-slotting Hasten with DOs) in ways that would be a waste due to ED once you're using the more powerful enhancements. The upper-level powers that you'll never be able to use when exemplared can be pillaged for the slots to do this.

Yes, and just tell everyone it's a katana. If they argue with you, Headsplitter.

While I understand the sentiment, there are limits to how much control you can exert over teammates. If you jump in first to grab aggro and find that two Blasters shot before you reached the enemy, absorbing the alpha in return and dying, and three other teammates ran in different directions and are each now training separate crowds back to the team, far exceeding your aggro cap, you could well be the last one standing, but is it your fault?

That's some fast leveling.

Generally, writing up a little invitation and sending it out in several global channels succeeds for me. Occasionally, I don't get enough bites, especially when there's a new event out or something, but usually I do.

I go to the wiki, especially here, and look up what I need to know, then make a message like this:

"Forming Synapse Task Force, level 15+, starts in Skyway. Rewards 58 merits plus credit toward the accolade! Takes 2 to 2.5 hours, sometimes faster. Send a tell if interested!"

A few points of interest: the upper level range (Synapse is 15-20) doesn't really matter, as everyone will exemplar down. But you have to be 15 to play. The wiki doesn't list a time, as that's highly variable; I usually assume that it'll take an hour or so for every 30 merits it's worth, but you can eventually form your own opinion if you run them enough. Synapse can tend toward the long side, since you have fewer powers available; especially if you get inexperienced players. Lastly, ask for a tell. You don't want people replying in broadcast because you will be hopping channels to spam this invitation (and perhaps hopping zones and broadcasting it in the clear) and you'll miss people who broadcast a reply, especially if it takes them a minute to decide.

If that's not working, pull up the find players option and set it to look for players with their "looking for missions, looking for task forces, looking for all" marker set, and send the same message as a tell to them.

This works pretty well. Remember to reply with a thank you to people who send a tell, even if they're declining; they may well take you up on it next time, and it's polite to acknowledge their response to your spam, so don't burn any bridges.

Concur. I like them all, actually, and have a soft spot for SR...but when you say:

That just screams Shield.

+33%. That's quite...huge. But ya gotta follow EC immediately, as it expires very fast.

CS now has same animation time and damage as Crane Kick; they're essentially interchangeable in an attack chain. CAK now does the most damage in the set except for Eagle's Claw (although it's not miles ahead of CS and CK).

Note that Eagle's Claw doesn't just set up the big crit bonus; it still does good damage and has a higher crit chance of its own. The only complaint people have about it is the animation (time and/or how it looks). A lot of times now I find myself using EC to set up the crit bonus, only to find EC outright kills the target without needing the follow-up attack.

Roger that! Originally people tended to stay on one server just so friends could find each other. There was no global friends list to see your friends on another server.

With the advent of IOs and a cash economy, that tendency was actually reinforced...although the market itself was cross-server, and a toon on Guardian could buy an IO from a toon on Liberty, that IO was now stuck on Guardian and that money on Liberty unless/until put back into the market again. Therefore all my money, for example, piled up on Guardian...giving me strong incentive to make new toons there, where the money was.

Now that e-mail lets you send things across to your own account anywhere that habit can be freely broken -- I can earn money on my 50s on Guardian and e-mail it, or enhancements, to a young character anywhere. Coupled with global channels and the global friends list, this is the golden age of trying out new servers and meeting new people!

In the medieval re-enactment group I used to frequent (SCA) there's a story of one battlefield meeting where the King gave orders to simply "KILL THEM ALL," but one of his knights complained that you can't just say 'kill them all,' you need some kind of organized tactical plan. The King cogitated on this for a moment and announced his new stratagem: "OK, break through the center and KILL THEM ALL!" They proceeded to do just that.

Word. In fact, I got a tell from a random stranger last night, helped him or her out...found ourselves running together for a while...had a few laughs...wound up with a new entry on my friends list!

Comparing sets as similar as Katana and Broadsword is just splitting heads.

Hairs! I meant hairs.

You don't base your analysis of every power set on random PUG idiots misusing them, do you?

Just because they don't use the rest of the set doesn't mean it's a bad set, ya know.

Yeah, but that's not what he said. He said it was a "tight" build because he took Stamina. But since he was already getting more endurance than other people successfully used Dual Blades with, I was questioning why MAKE the build tight by forcing in Stamina. I mean, you can already function at full speed all the time with the weaker power, Stamina, and Willpower has a better one.

We've shared our conflicting opinions on these sets before, but I'd like to point to a few specifics in you assessment.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding, I've not yet been on an Apex TF, but isn't the complaint I've been seeing that the toxic damage patches are autohit? If so, positional won't help you there.

Aren't those attacks mostly psionic? Can't Invuln avoid facing them just as easily as positional sets do?

For the record, Rikti don't give me any trouble, although I can't say the same for multiple Carnie bosses.

Invulnerability has the third-best defense debuff resistance in the game, behind only SR (the king) and Shield (which is only significantly ahead if one uses the HO exploit). Some people don't want to use the exploit, in which case Inv is even closer to second place, depending on recharge slotting in Shield. Inv's DDR has been quite satisfactory in my experience as a Tanker; I have not tried it on a Scrapper yet.

Right, and there's a Vanguard door in Atlas Park. Ignore the doorman's asking to see you ID; it's a textual leftover from when the hazard zones were level-gated.

Welcome to the game, Malak. A surprising amount of things about a character can be changed or updated later; there are only four things that can't be changed, really. Those unchangeable things are Origin, Archetype, Primary Powerset, Secondary Powerset.