Sayaki

GC had SG base contact, AE, Arena, and a convenient step between KR and Perez. They just lacked sewer access, WW, and players

I'm gonna miss GC. It was where I went to write my MA arcs...

My thought exactly.
I wanted to be sure Triumph had people earning the Master badge before i21.
We aren't some chump server after all. We are Triumph!

There was a player that died AFTER though...
He was prolly disintegrating right as AM went down and no-one bothered healing anymore.
It may have been a closer thing than anyone realized....

But, to quote Tam, 'Pics or it didn't happen!'
So here you go.


Editing was done to circle the congratulatory badge awards, remove the tells I was receiving at the time, & to hide the name of the individual who died shortly AFTER the trial was completed.

I will be very interested to see your feedback when you get mids running. You are right, there is a lot of interesting information in your signature, some of which I am considering how best to apply.

Supermax, this depends on the character.

Many toons work better with +regen. However, when your defenses are nil and you have less than 1400 hp to begin with, odds are that you aren't going to survive enough hits for +regen to matter, no matter how high. With such characters, an extra 300 hp is one more hit you are going to survive. This is far better.

Hindenburg: Yes, I often do swap to hover during combat. I was merely thinking it was a slight limitation and thought I'd inquire there. Can you re-post the data link for the corrected build? The one I am seeing seems the same as before. Maybe I am not seeing where exactly you made the changes.

Local Man: Your build is awesome. High damage, swift kills. This character would be a machine of death and destruction in both a PvP and PvE environment. Two of the few real issues I have had with my ill/storm is that he does take his time with killing, and that he is nowhere near mobile enough to handle PvP combats need to dart in and out against opponents. Your defensive strengths are another interesting consideration that leaves my troller looking like a piece of tissue paper by comparison. I used to use ice mastery for exactly that reason, never much thinking on the damage power that it had at it's command. I might adapt this for a second build simply for the PvP environments I enjoy.

That said, there are some significant differences to the needs of the ill/storm vs. the ill/rad that you seem to have overlooked, as well as the needs of an AV soloing environment versus any class.

First, Storm is one of the most end heavy sets in the game, and unlike other sets it has no innate method of controlling it's end consumption. Thunderstorm starts with a base 31.2 end cost, tornado with 20.8. This combines with the PA and phantasm summons of 26 end to demand massive chunks of an end bar when summoning steadily. In my experience, when not summoning, a steady attack chain can maintain a constant endurance value with net endurance gains of 2.00 end/sec. This balances out the use of all the blasts, holds, etc that are used when fighting. 2.00 net end recovery can keep a summoning ill/storm active for about 120 seconds in a real combat environment. And then it's beat a hasty retreat or use blues/hibernate.

Even on my build, I have to be careful to use Hurricane and Snow storm only in situations where it can be justified by need. Snow storm is best for me to ground a flying foe, hurricane for controlling mob movement. (Very useful on escapees in BAF.) With your build, you seem to have gone just below that 2.00 net end gain that would maintain the ability to combat. I think that would be fine in most PvE environments, but not against an AV.

When AV soloing you are facing the inescapable fact that you will be fighting for several minutes against a single target. Often AFTER or while clearing a large mob around it. Your pets aren't going to single that AV out after all. At least not when there are other foes around. This says that you can not really afford to have your end at risk of running low during the fight, if you want to win. Perhaps, with SS off during combat, and some careful play changes this may not be a problem with your build though. I will have to give that some thought, and probably some time to try it.

The other consideration has to do with our definition of perma-PA, I think. Experience has shown me that the pets last exactly 60 seconds from the moment they first hit the field, which is at about 0.5 seconds into the activation time. They don't attack until the end of the casting time though. It seems to take them that long to aggro and attack. They appear to take taunting with their attacks immediately and can keep most foe attention that way. Unfortunately, that means the pets generally disappear 57 seconds after the power begins it's recharge. with perma being considered as a recharge less than 60 seconds, that is fine. It usually won't matter in a PvE or team environment because when you cast the power, the pets are going to instantly die anyway, if they are there.

Against an AV though, that is a full 3 seconds where your pets are gone and you can't re-summon them. You as the controller have the aggro. I doubt I need to say how many hits you will survive from the AV in that time frame.

With that in mind, I have to consider perma-PA a re-summon time less than or equal to 56.9 second recharge on that power. There is still the 3 second casting for PA, when you will still get hit once by that AV as it establishes it's target and attacks once, but that is far more survivable than a 6 second gap as your power finishes it's recharge and you re-summon. Against an AV, that will be death.

Even with 35% defenses, they will hit you twice in a span exceeding 3 seconds at least once during the combat, given the chance to. PA keeps the AV too distracted to do so in most cases. Decoy Phantasm can sometimes help stagger that. I don't believe your build can maintain this kind of defense in an AV soloing environment.

The only possible way around this I can think of at the moment is to use an Ageless Core Epiphany to bump the recharge up, and add the end recover (and full end bar) like clockwork every two minutes. But like when working with a hasten that is just barely at perma, it would be a pretty tight thing to maintain as a steady action, and it's that one more power activation interrupting the attack chain.

Overall though, I am thinking that from a PvP perspective, this build would be vastly superior and might work well to keep me alive (and victorious) against some of the */regen scrappers in the game.

I am aware of the flight speed cap on fly. They are there primarily for set bonus reasons atm. There are other reasons, but that is it's primary benifit at this moment.

Superior invis is currently in use as it caps stealth with only one power use. It also is supporting 12.5% global recharge with it's set.

Recall friend is there for one reason and one reason only. My best friend has slightly worse direction sense than Wrong-Way Corrigan. It comes up often when teaming and has become a staple on every build I play for that reason.

I've Acquired 5 Strength of Will insp, 1 lvl 10 Nucleolus Exposure (hami), along with a half dozen lvl 2-3 SO. The SO and the Strength of Wills were easy to acquire. That lvl 10 hami though...

Ran across a lvl 54 Natural origin Damage SO a week back, but it wasn't up for grabs.

Haven't recieved any word of people having such things from here yet. Still hoping. Tempted with those Iron Wills. Will consider it.

Truth!

New riddle is up as of Wednesday!


Congrats to @Dragons for being the only person to get the answer for 24 November's riddle.

That's more or less how I did it. What you dun generally notice are the invention tables or the personal salvage storage I have on that thing.

However, what I really liked making most in that room was the chandeliers. Those took effort to get right.

The entire room was done as a Christmas present. I made it special as I could. If you want to see it better, I do base tours on that place regularly, and have a slide show of it in my sig for this post.

-Saya

First off...

CONGRATULATIONS
to our three winners for the past week!


1st: @Mach
2nd @Dragons
3rd @Taryn