Samuel_Tow

This reminds me:

I keep hearing people talk about how there isn't one Well but many wells, how a Well dies if the people's bound to die off, how ours is Human and on and on, but... Where's any of this said? When I first heard it, I assumed it would be explained in Dark Astoria, since that kinda' sorta' deals with the Well in a roundabout way, but it isn't. Or it wasn't in my playthrough anyway. Not much about the Well is mentioned at all, other than "Mot will become a new Well!" which made my scratch my head. Does anyone know what that's all about?

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On the subject if Loyalists vs. Resistance - it's a mistake to be cynical about it. The story in Praetoria is intentionally vague, written so a to be subject to different interpretations by different people. I generally don't like open-ended stories, but here's it's not the story that's open-ended: That's pretty much firmly concluded. What's open-ended is the morality of it. We're given choices, we're given context, we opt which way to go. Even the Crusaders can be argued to be doing what's best for the people, even if they're really big ******** about it.

Not everyone will agree with everyone else's interpretation. Obviously. But just because you disagree with another person's interpretation of morality doesn't make that other person wrong for holding his belief. At the end of the day, that's exactly what it is - a belief.

What Lighthouse said was the I13 PvP changes weren't made for the current PvP participants, but rather they were made with the intent of getting more people to PvP who didn't before. As such, the changes weren't aimed at improving the status quo for the current fans, but rather at introducing new fans. Even at its heyday, PvP was a wasteland. Even when it was popular, there was nowhere near enough of a population to justify having four huge zones. They needed more people, so they tried to get more people.

I don't disagree that the changes failed, and spectacularly. I tried PvP before, just because I could take my build and know how to play. Post I13, I don't know what the hell is going on in PvP, what suppresses, what doesn't and how I should build. If I ever wanted to bother, I'd have to do so much homework that for something I don't even like, there's just no point.

Ah, I see. What are those catalysts? Salvage like the Converters, or? And where can I get them from? Are they just drops?

Ouro and the problem of a meddler with the time stream is actually a pretty good excuse for most new content. Generally speaking - and this is evident from this very thread - time passes as we level up. But what happens if I levelled past an event that changes in a later Issue, like the Galaxy City destruction? Well, someone messed with the timeline, my past is gone but I still remember it.

In other words, it's never explained

I actually had the salvage to make those, just from killing stuff. What stopped me was the recipes SAY they're going for a million or two, but for most there are only a handful listed, say 2 or 3, and you know what that means - those are the ones which are priced so ungodly expensive they aren't selling, which is why they're left behind. I tried bidding up to 8 million for the missing Mako's Bite and it didn't go, so I left a bid of 5 000 000 for around 45 minutes while I messed with the rest of the build and that didn't happen. At that point I pretty much ran out of patience, bid 10 000 000 and got the recipe.

The wrong recipe. Yay. Didn't make that back, lemme' tell ya. I got the correct recipe for around 2 000 000, though.

I pay a lot on the Market because I don't want to wait. Far as I'm concerned, it's worth the cost. It does run me pretty high and ensure I'll never have the truly desirable stuff, but I guess there are ways. Converters and Merits and the like.

No, that's actually me being stupid. I meant to use those, but the e-mails timed out the day before I hit 50, and I neglected to "refresh" them. I thought they were lost forever and was too ashamed to bring it up. If they bounced back to you and they aren't actually LOST, then I feel better about it.

Yeah, sorry about that. If I could have used those, I would have, but I just took too long to get around it. Accursed e-mail storage limits. Still, thank you for them even though I couldn't use them

Yes, it is. That's precisely what a tangential, busywork plot is - more actions for the protagonists to do without any real revelations or plot advancement behind it. If the Talons were not in the story at all and Mot had simply been powered up by all the recent deaths and carnage, nothing would have changed. Stopping the Talons (twice, as a point of fact) is as meaningless a plot device as getting told I'm going to be "paid" for working with most villain-side contacts - it's saying nothing. The story sets how powerful Mot is and it could have set his power level to where it is without resorting to what amounts to two, maybe three entire arcs in Dark Astoria.

It's the exact same plot that has Unai Kemen send me to three separate dimensions to look for something that's invariably in the third dimension. You can argue that his whole arc is looking for stuff so looking for stuff and not finding it is perfectly valid. And from a technical standpoint, it is. But it doesn't make for a good story. It makes for a story that's padded.

That's exactly what I feel about the Talons of Vengeance and the Knives of Vengeance - they're padding. There's no reason to have the Knives be separate from the Talons other than to have two separate missions to end them, which are really just two versions of essentially the same mission - find Keres, kill Keres, end Knives/Talons of Vengeance. You could just as well have had the last page of Hazen's diary held by a cabal of rogue Legacy Chain and tacked on a whole arc about finding it, finding a way to break their wards, finding a map of the building and finally raiding it. It's adding hours to the game, but adding really very little to the story.

Honestly, I can see the how the Primal Talons can be involved. They have their foot in the door in Cimerora, after all, and that's a legitimate part of the story. But I spent half my time in Dark Astoria dealing with the Talons and their cronies in the Knives, and it just left that much less time for Mot, whom the story should be about. Again, I would much rather have seen more of the Circle of Thorns, who really don't exist in this arc. I'd certainly rather have had new critters for them than the entirely pointless Knives of Vengeance. Like I said - the Talons I could see, with a reduced presence, but the Knives are just unnecessary, and it seems like some degree of work went into making them.

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Again, that doesn't make the story bad. Far from it. When my biggest complaint about a new story is that there isn't enough of it, I can't really think of any bigger praise.

*edit*
Also, if there's nothing to be gained from going at missions alone (since I'm seeing this offered to me for the second time) other than bragging rights, then I'm probably not going to bother a second time

It's a sign that the writers are FINALLY starting to try and fit new content in with old content without contradicting established canon for no reason. I was surprised that Dark Astoria also seems to be consistent with the SSAs, as well, since that ritual Wade mentions was always on my mind over there. I even spotted a few calls to Lughebu among the Banished Pantheon chatter, which pleases me greatly since it means Mot hasn't superseded the entire BP mythos and taken on the role of lead god. On the contrary, his ascension is the Pantheon's path back into the physical world, and I LOVE consistent storytelling!

*edit*
Does anyone know why Mot has a Hydralisk head atop his cemetery?

Or why it was called Moth Cemetery - with an H - for so long?

Posters have already listed those as pretty definitively dead, that's why I'm counting bodies. Some are just defeated, but some seem Statesman-level dead in storyline.

Yeah, but that's a Dark Astoria spoiler, which I was hoping to avoid.

Why does the Hamidon care about keeping people in check. Last I checked, Hamidon Pasalima was an environmental terrorist who wanted to see all people dead or devoured because he thought they were ruining the land. What does he get out of making an effective conspiracy when he seems like he could have simply wiped them all out?

No. What are you referring to?

"War is hell" is precisely the kind of thematic I really don't care much for. It's what eventually ruined Fillmetal Alchemist (the old anime) for me because they couldn't stop banging on about it to the point where I conceded that what they were showing me was unpleasant and stopped watching altogether. I know most of that content's old stuff (Barf and Lamb are I19, as I remember), but this really is the kind of unnecessarily dark content that just doesn't motivate me. To be honest, that body count is actually MORE depressing to me than all of Dark Astoria, believe it or not.

Fair enough. I can deal with a few of them getting killed if most of them survived since, really... A lot of those guys were cool enough to have more told about them. For a guy who had muscle instead of brains, Marauder was just cool, I love the interplay between spurned emo genius Anti-Mater and plagiarist Neuron and so on. I'd have liked to see more stories told about them, but that won't happen if they're dead.

The Talons are specifically said to have followed Dee Dee from Praetoria, though I agree that they're not a Praetorian-specific faction. They are, however, one of those questionable decisions that came out of Praetoria's concept gallery that I can really do without. And, honestly, they have no real sway over the plot as they have no real stake in the fate of Mot. They're just supernatural baddies who want to kill people. I know the story behind them (I do now, anyway), but... Why bring in the Talons and then the Knives and waste time with throwing in obstacles to pad out the story when you could have instead involved the Circle of Thorns who have a direct, immediate interest in the story? No, they're all gone. Instead, we have to deal with the Talons for what feels like 3/4 of the story. So far, I've run maybe 4 missions with the Tsoo, about as many against the Banished Pantheon, and the rest has been some combinations of Knives and Talons.

Mot's story is complicated enough to merit as much content as it's given, which is why it kills me that we spend so much of it essentially doing grunt work that's only tangentially related to Mot. It's the equivalent of Mass Effect 3's "galaxy readiness" screen where we're supposed to be fighting this big fight, but we just spend most of our time NOT fighting it and doing side quests. I wouldn't mind so much if it didn't feel like it's taking away from the main story, but really... The main story is about MoT, the Circle and the Banished Pantheon, and there's not enough of the first, none of the second and not really much of the third. I'd trade the Talos for the Circle, is what I'm saying.

Doesn't seem like it, really. I'm mid-way through the... Letter-writer's story arc, and Mot has already om-nom-nommed a bunch of important people, but it's pretty evident that some or all of those can be rescued. Be a pretty **** ending if they didn't, and most of Dark Astoria's story seems to be better than this. The story has also managed to so far deliver an actually hopeful narrative within an environment of hopelessness, because my character is not shown to be succumbing to all the horrors. On the contrary, she's shown as resisting them and doing the right thing, which pleases me greatly.

Playing that one mission against an army of enemies alone was... An experience. That kind of sucked, but I chose to go it alone. Not sure if I want to do it again, but I might. Maybe with a level shift, though.

Considering the issue of Incarnate to-hit vs. my defence set, "not dying" is really my chief performance goal. To be honest, this build seems to have managed to do that. I'm not exactly sure WHY the build does so well, but I really haven't had much difficulty with anything that doesn't throw a dozen bosses at me or, like on one memorable mission, something like 12 ambushes at me at the same time. It's almost like I'm back in Praetoria.

However, that's more a mission design thing than a character performance thing, since you can toss six Zeus Class Titans at my best character and I'd probably struggle. I'm sure the added defence helps, I'm just not sure if I'd have been dead meat without it.

As always, I'm looking less at what I did right this time and more at what I have to do right next time I have to take a SR character through Dark Astoria. The lesson I learned this time is that two Mako's Bite sets, two Multi-Strikes and that one Immobilize set that I can never remember the name of have a fairly decent return. It's easy enough to remember for level 50 sets, and may be easy to repeat.

Thank you for the offer, Nether To be honest, if I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't mess with a new Incarnate any time soon. I have a few I could take down the path, but I just don't want to mess with builds again. It's not fun in the slightest and I have a whole bunch of lowbies I should be playing, including the entirety of my F Squad. I'll do what I can for Kim until I run out of steam, then we'll see.

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Speaking of Kim, she's doing very well, actually. I started Kim on Dark Astoria when I posted the last build that I did, and I'm already looking at a Common Alpha Agility Boost. Yeah, a lot of that is because I got Component rolls on all story arcs, which I won't be able to do after the first run-through of the story, but it's still a nice catch. And the difficulty isn't too bad, as I mentioned. It's tough, but with this build, it doesn't feel like cheating.

And, for the record, I no longer feel like the Stalker AT enhancements are cheating. If the mission designers are going to throw ten ambushes at me at practically the same time, then I feel not a single bit of guilt about remaining hidden after an Assassin's Strike.

Sheepishly, I forgot to change it in the build, and consequently went with it in-game. Oops! Thought about respeccing, but figured the difference is so minor I'd rather hold off unless something else big had to be changed.

Too late... I got four pieces from Viking, then another piece was donated to me that was a double of what I already had. I converted this piece "in-set," and had to convert it twice, in fact, but I got the piece I wanted. The last piece I got for 25 million, I think - instant sale. Surprisingly, neither the Mako's stuff nor the Stalker stuff were the most expensive. What set me back something like 50-100 million were those god damn red fortunes. MAN those things are expensive for an Uncommon set!

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As for Dark Astoria itself... Well, so far the difficulty has not been bad at all, but I suspect the Knives of Vengeance are just easy. That, and the Stalker set is just plain cheating, along with my Recharge bonuses. It usually goes like Assassin's Strike -> Auto-Hide -> Sweep -> Placate -> Vengeful Slice and that takes out two or three people with essentially no return fire. Yikes! That, and everything is recharging a LOT faster with this build than it was before, so a lot of the time it's more like Assassin's Strike -> Auto-Hide -> Sweep -> Placate -> Assassin's Strike. Holy hell!

I'm not sure what to make of the defence issue so far. I barely get attacked at all, and they still miss fairly often, but I've been taken down in health a few times by just a few critters. It's not as bad as I feared (though that build has rather a lot more defence than what I had before), but I suspect I'm just being lucky so far.

Good to know. I can never keep those straight. That's why I like to have a few big things to keep track of, as opposed to a zillion little things. Yeah, it doesn't make for as much flexibility, but when it comes to performance, I'm really more after something that works than something wholly custom and amazing.

Let me try to salvage a bit of my sage pride Devouring Earth creatures in 45+ content have a higher base to-hit because their ranks are filled in from the Underground Trial critters, who have Incarnate to-hit. It's the same reason why those Resistence elites in Maria Jenkins' missions used to be HIDEOUSLY annoying, with the higher to-hit and constantly popping in and out of hide. Those seemed to have been fixed last I tried, however. They're still nasty, but they fight like regular 50 critters. As for the Devouring Earth, if you recall back in 2004, the only thing that spawned for them past 45 was Granites, the grey rock men. Granites today have the same old non-Incarnate to-hit because they're using the exact same critters as before. Everything else - trees, mushrooms and crystals - didn't exist, so it was ported from the Underground Trial directly. That may have been fixed, however, since they weren't punching through Kim's defences so readily when I fought them.

That said, I agree with Arcana and I'm grateful for it. That Incarnate to-hit is easily my biggest problem with Dark Astoria. I can live with the enemies being nasty or having sinister powers or even naturally spawning in greater numbers as has been my experience. But just unanimously slapping them with a higher to-hit seems unfair to me, and a complete reversal of the idea that content wouldn't be designed to specifically NEED Inventions to be survivable. Like you, I don't mind this in Trials. With the way buffs stack, I can live with any cheat the developers come up with to challenge 24 player characters in one place. However, if the basic design of Dark Astoria was to be the path for solo and small teams, then "super Reflexes need not apply" just seems like the wrong way to do it. SR has enough problems as it is, even if Bill Z Bubba has managed to do wonders with it. Having it lose 14% of its defences just seems... A but much.

In the realm of repeating mistakes of the past, I was there when the Large Breasts Trial was actually the last mission of the last story arc, and it had me doing the Jackie Chan head grabbing emote, because that's the exact same clearly admitted mistake they made with the Hollows back in I2. And the solution then was to simply move the Caverns of Transcendence Trial as a separate mission given by a separate contact unlocked at the end of Talshak the Mystic's arc. And even so, it still left the story headless, because I have NEVER run this Trial and I simply have no idea what the deal is with the Minions of Igneous. If they repeated that mistake of the past, I can see them repeating the mistakes regarding to-hit. I just hope those get addressed eventually.

I get that Dark Astoria needs to be harder. I'd just rather it were harder in the same way as Malta or the Rogue Vanguard or the Soldiers of Rularuu are harder, as opposed to just taking a bite out of my defence numbers. Suddenly having my powers worth less makes me feel less like everything's harder and more like I suck, all of a sudden.

Eh, it was a concept-driven decision, and Kim was already in her 30s by the time Dark Astoria was even a thing. I could have gone with Ninjutsu just the same, but I don't think the defence-related problem would have been that much better. But the heck of it is... Super Reflexes works. Not great, as I said before, but it works well enough for me to feel confident and play aggressively. The occasional cheap enemy like Overseers or Sentries are a pain, but by and large, it's not so bad. It was bad before the introduction of defence-debuff resistance, granted. Then every rifle-wielding dolt could strip me of my only source of protection, but even on just toggles, Kim is still running close to 90% Dance Dance Revolution, so it's manageable.

Hell, she's even awesome, I dare say. She's been handing the IDF their ***** pretty much since they started showing up and the only time she's ever had much real difficulty is in the SSAs where Soldiers of Rularuu Overseers were showing up spawn after spawn, and always +1 to the mission level. Sentries aren't a problem since those break like bottles with a single stab before they can set down those horrid Quartz Eminators. In fact, Kim is now 50 and has already completed Mender Ramiel's arc. Trapdoor went down like a sissy and the Honoree was a tough but easily manageable fight if I came prepared.

SR might not be the best, but it works. I'm afraid of it just not working all of a sudden when I set foot into DA. I already have the policeman with the arc that sends me there leaving me voice mails, and it has me worried, since I haven't actually made that build in question yet.

But I like Elude I like god modes in general, and much more so than the "mini-god-modes" of Shield Defence and Willpower. The crash is unfortunate, yes, but the power is undeniable, especially for a Stalker who won't be soft-capped without it. One of my hopes for Dark Astoria is actually Elude itself, since I'm pretty sure it'll be enough to bring me to the Incarnate soft cap easy.

And speaking of the Incarnate soft cap, by the way, I wouldn't at all mind a swap from a higher to-hit for critters to accuracy bonuses like what happened in regular gameplay. Not only are accuracy bonuses less punishing to defence in general, but they're also MORE punishing to capped defences since they alter the absolute floor of enemy final to-hit that you can achieve. Even if you bring their to-hit to its own 5% floor with defence, something like 30% accuracy enhancement will still bring that back up to 6.5%, and 30% is just a +1 boss in regular content, if I recall correctly.

I considered this, but here's the catch - the only reason I'm even messing with Sets to begin with is to get more defence, and slotting can't provide this. Most of the powers that are worth slotting for defence can be brought to ED's final bracket with even just SOs, and franken-slotting is good for getting enhancement on other aspects of a power than what I have "three-slotted" much more so than it's good for overslotting.

And besides, if we're talking about pure enhancement values, most of the Uncommon sets actually offer pretty dang good return if you use the whole set. Crushing Impact is really lovely about that even aside from its set bonuses. And for most characters, that's exactly what I'll probably do - stick to the Uncommons and just roll with it. Not for Kim and, by extension, not for my other SR characters... And I do have quite a few. Ugh...

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In other news, Kim has finally reached 50, unlocked her Alpha slot and I'm working on her build as we speak. I decided to drop Shuriken and use the slots elsewhere. I'll probably retain my toggles using four slots and use three Red Fortunes in there plus something else. We'll see. I want more recharge in elude, I want at least one jump enhancement in Combat Jumping and I'll probably rob one out of Hide. We'll see about that. The build isn't ready yet, but I'll present it as soon as I have something workable.

Defence-based sets are really the only place where I'm worried, to be honest, and Dark Astoria is the only reason I'm worried to begin with. Under normal circumstances, 30-35% defence is perfectly OK. It's not great, but it's enough to make me feel confident. Trouble is, Dark Astoria enemies have a higher base to-hit, and not just by a little. That, to me, is a disproportionate problem for defence-based sets since I've fought the Knives of Vengeance and the Banished Pantheon, and the DA Tsoo, and they don't ignore parts of my resistance or health or regeneration as far as I can tell. That's why I feel Crash - my SS/Inv Brute - didn't need much help while I feel Kim does.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. It just seems to me like Dark Astoria expects me to be packing defence-granting Inventions sets and so sets the accuracy of its critters accordingly. That's why I feel SR needs help. I'd be glad to be wrong, of course.

I know Truth be told, if I feel that was an option, I'd have stuck with Commons. However, the longer I do, the more I feel like the game is simply leaving me behind and expecting me to use Set Inventions. If you'll read the original post, that's essentially what it says. Hell, that's what the title says. If I could stick with Commons, I would. Hell, if I could use multi-aspect enhancements without the added set bonuses and set restrictions, I would. For SR, I'm just not convinced that's an option.

That said, I found that just using Uncommons worked just as well. The enhancement values worked out well enough when I tried it on Crash, and the bonuses weren't unwelcome. However, for Crash, there really wasn't anything specific that I wanted. She was just fine even without Sets, therefore anything she got was a benefit. With Kim, I feel like I need those defences, or I would never have even considered Mako's Bite. That, really, is what bothers me.

Yeah, the problems on my end, I admit. I've always been more of a player and less of a builder. Since the earliest days of playing RPG, both in terms of Diablo and Baldur's Gate, easily the LEAST fun part has always been opening up my inventory. I mean, I like the visual aspect of getting new stuff, but the act of trying to figure out if what I got is better than what I have, especially when item sets come into play and especially when items start offering a whole bag of bonuses... That I don't like.

I get that that's just how RPGs work, even down to D&D itself if your players were min-maxers. But I'll always prefer the game to the stats, and would actually prefer a game WITHOUT the stats if at all possible. I like to fight stuff, you know?

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None of that is to say I'm ungrateful - far from it. Thank you, everybody, for the advice. I'm already working on making this build, and I'm close enough to seeing how it would work.

Yeah, I knew there was something like that. Last time I worried about enhancement percentages, someone pointed this out about... I think it was either Crushing Impact or Multi-Strike, of of those. But that's just more stuff to bug me - it's that much less straightforward. I'm going with Mako's Bite one way or the other, though, so it's a moot point whether I'm happy with it or not.

I am serious. I really don't like a game of percent points, especially when they come in bundles. It's not the math that bothers me, it's that it's next to impossible to come to a conclusion using empirical methods. It's a few percent here, a few percent there, and it doesn't begin to get noticeable until it adds up.

SOs may have made for tougher choices, but at least everything I did with them, I felt, because SO bonuses come in large chunks. I can tell my powers are more accurate, I can tell they cost less, I can tell they hit harder. I guess I'll be seeing the proc from time to time, but other than that, it's percent points. Again, that's just me disliking the system as intended, and it's probably unreconcilable at this point. I'll make the best I can out of it, but it's always going to bug me. It's just how I'm built.

I considered just dropping a slot (probably the Proc, since that looks like it's the most expensive) and putting something else in there. However, Mids' says the defence bonus which is the entire point I'm even messing with Mako's Bite to begin with comes from having all six enhancements, so that doesn't look like it's an option. If it weren't for that defence buff, I'd stuff a Crushing Impact in there and walk away smiling.

Of course, it's always possible I'm wrong or I saw wrong or I interpreted wrong, so feel free to correct me.

That's just how those arguments usually go. "The game will be overrun with X" arguments, where X is something wholly outlandish, tend to boil down to a person really disliking something and not being tolerant of other people enjoying it.

Personally, though, I don't see a reason to mess with the straw man. If "rainbow big-boobed doggie girl" is what I wanted, then that's what I'll have, and I will be perfectly within the game's established canon, which has a dead big-boobied dead woman with a fireplace on her head. Once we acknowledge that our game has THAT, we've pretty much thrown moderation, reservation and "theme" out the window.

And I'm all the happier for it.

Clearly not a wide enough loop.

Nope. Neither "heroes" nor "villains" have any inherent genre, because they're concepts of the behaviour of intelligent creatures. What those intelligent creatures are does not matter. As you can plainly see from the game, City of Heroes takes its inspiration from much farther afield than just comic books. There's plenty of horror, science fiction, fantasy, spy thriller, anime and manga and so much more.

You don't have to agree with me, that's fine. We all have our tastes. When you try to bar me from having what I want while insisting that you should have what you want - especially when you're wrong about what the game is supposed to be about - is when I take issue.

You mean like how we had a flood of Neo clones when trenchcoats were released? Or how we had a flood of Green Arrow clones when Archery was released? Or how we had a flood of Drizzle clones when Dual Blades were released? Or how there's some loud person exaggerating about how one specific costume addition will produce a flood of one specific type of character that has so far consistently failed to happen? Because I heard the same tripe you're delivering now when the Animal Pack was released, and aside from Day 1 of it being on the market, I've not seen any great concentration of animal-head people.

Also, City of Heroes has a much broader theme than you seem willing to accept. Or have you forgotten the numerous werewolves, the demons, all the animal transformation powers and so forth? The worst thing you can do to a theme is to use it as a limiting factor. And yes, I would like to see a Tolkein-esque fantasy world that had access to firearms and space ships. Maybe not specifically in Lord of the Rings as that's based around an established franchise the game can't afford to backfill, but City of Heroes ISN'T based on a franchise which originated in books, movies or interpretative dance. The game was born with its mythos and it's the game that's the source of canon. If Doc Aeon wanted to have an alternate dimension of sentient anthropomorphic racoons invade Paragon City (and kill everybody), then that would be canon.

And for the record, it wouldn't be in the slightest out of place next to floating eyeballs that bite invading from another dimension, the occasional player's lack of tolerance notwithstanding.

So who says wolves in Paragon City can't possess both? War Wolves certainly don't seem to have any of those limitations.

Well, that just makes me more interested to see it, then.

Can it turn an Uncommon into a Unqie, a Rare or one of the other types I don't even know about? And are you suggesting I just keep buying Crushing Impacts - find a recipe that's cheap - and keep trying? What about in-set conversions?

Will consider it. Now that I can see its suppressed numbers, I'll be able to get a better idea.

It is, unfortunately. I use it very often, it costs a fair bit, and I'm not ideal for endurance.

All the time, if I can help it. It's great for mitigation, it's great for an extra free critical, and I love the power to bits. I'd stick in a third recharge reducer in there if I thought there was any point.

Good point, I will consider it. That might not be a bad idea at all.

Will do, that's not a bad compromise. I do want that bit of recharge I'm losing, but I think Quickness can cover that.

On the other hand, looking at your proposed build does concern me a little, just because I remember why I didn't like Mako's Bite in the first place - it has a grand total of 93% damage slotting, which doesn't add up to Common slotting of 99.08 or Crushing Impact slotting at 101.74. Between Crushing Impact as a possibility and Mako's Impact, I'm losing a good 8% damage slotting, which doesn't sit well with me. I don't suppose there's any way to get that defence bonus without that damage hit, is there?

Ugh... I'll try to stick those sets in my lower-damaging powers, pretty much like you've done, but... See, THIS is why I don't like Inventions. It's the whole package deal. Want defence? You have to use this set that you don't like. Want to use the set you do like? Tough, that doesn't have the bonuses you want. It's a constant compromise and I HATE that. Yeah, it's kind of like that with SOs and Commons, in the sense that I can't slot for everything, but at least each enhancement only does one thing, so there are no "consequences." Used to be this was "MMO-lite." It's a large part of why I started.

I'll have to think about this... I guess if that's what it takes to not die, but... Damn.

Thank you, this helps tremendously. Not being able to see suppressed numbers has always bugged me, and this will be very nice to have.

I tried it, but my math wasn't adding up. The number and size of the defence buffs didn't make sense to come out even, it looked like one type should be coming out much lower. Turns out I wasn't counting the defence in Web Grenade because I didn't know there was defence in Web Grenade... Honestly, some days I wish my defences could stay in my defensive powers like in the good old days, instead of coming from my attacks.

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Right, here's what I want to do:

I'm not going to be taking Shuriken, because I don't like what has to happen to my defensive toggles if I do. They cost more, they do less. A little less, but less just the same. I just honestly don't need the power, it was always a concept thing if I could manage it, and I don't think I can manage it. I don't want to leave it with just four slots anyway.

I'm probably not going to skimp on slots from Hide and Combat Jumping... Well, not from Combat Jumping, but maybe I'll skimp one from Hide. I want to add another recharge to Elude, just 'cuz. I'll see if I can't get it a set of some kind which will help with that, but if not, then just three recharges is fine.

Not sure where I'll get the Mako's Bite enhancements. Last time I needed those, someone just gave me a full set But those are gone now. Don't know if I can buy them with money, but I could try Leo's idea. Those will probably be the biggest problem, I think.

Other than that... Guess I should work on taking Kim to 50 already. Probably not gonna' bother with a respec. Might just use her second build and start over. Just so I have one that's not Inventions in case of... Fluffy bunnies, I don't know. Be nice to have one anyway.

Right, long as I can actually GET all that stuff, we should be good

I don't, but even if I did, it would require me to go through every set and either write down what it's giving me or remember what it's giving me, and I don't know where to look. For instance, Web Grenade is giving me defence? Huh. Still, I'll enable this just for ease of use. Thank you.

So, essentially what I'm seeing is two Mako's sets, two Sweeping Strike sets and one... Whatever's in Web Grenade, and those are giving me the combined 8% defence to everything? OK, I can see that now... I think. What this means is I don't want to lose any of those.

OK, counter-question - if I want to slot the Stalker AT-specific set in Assassin's Strike, what would I have to do to retain that defence buff, considering Assassin's Strike has a Mako's set in it now? And also, can we pinch a couple of enhancements from somewhere to put in Shuriken, or is that pointless? Alternately, suppose I gave up on Shuriken and returned to using Challenge, is there any place we can use those three extra slots better? Even if it's just a little better? I kind of want to keep at least one jump enhancement in Combat Jumping.

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Would you suggest dropping slots from those powers, or alternately replacing those defence enhancements with something else? If so, with what? As I said before, I kind of want to keep at least one Jump Height enhancement in Combat Jumping, so I can see swapping one of the three to Jump, but what about Hide? And isn't it useful to have a bit more AoE defence when Hidden and more defence in general so it's harder to break?

And what about Elude? I've been thinking of possibly adding another recharge in there. It'll shave off 40 seconds, I think. I'm also curious to know if your slots per toggle won't work, using more of Red Fortune.

Just thinking out loud

Do you think you can break that down for me? I can see the totals for defence, and they come up remarkably even for melee, range and AoE, but how did you manage that? I tried tracing set bonuses in Mids', but that won't tell me where they're from. I really am not comfortable with the Makos, but if the result is like what you're showing me, I might be convinced to try to get them. I'm sitting on 30-something converters, per chance those can help. I just need to know where the defences are coming from, because the result is actually pretty appealing to me.

Also: Why is Web Grenade 6-slotted and why is Combat Jumping 3-slotted for defence? I can't imagine that third slot is doing anything meaningful.