Scientist

[ QUOTE ]
With Snap, Aimed, Blazing and Fistful all slotted with 3 Damage SOs, and running Assault, it takes 10 seconds to defeat a +0 minion using Snap/Aimed/Snap/Blazing/Snap/Aimed/Snap, whereas it only takes 8 seconds to defeat the same minion using Aimed/Blazing/Aimed/Fistful.

[/ QUOTE ]

Where I usually find Snap Shot handy is to drop a foe who just has a sliver of life left. I'm usually on teams, and tend to tab around to different targets as my attacks are animating to see who is low on hit points and can be finished easily, returning to my original if I don't see any likely candidates. This avoids overkill by an unnecessarily slow/end intensive/high damage attack, and if I'm half way through A's hit points but can finish B with one shot and return to A it mitigates more damage faster.

But I tend to use "attack chains" less than many people, many CoX team fights are too dynamic for them to make sense to me. Against foes that will be standing awhile, resistant bosses, AVs, EBs, they start getting more important IMHO.

I have to say, despite the complaints I've seen about the lethel damage resistance and lack of Buildup, I've also found this to be a great combo, and I haven't even gotten up to Rain of Arrows yet.


I've definitely been able to survive situations my fire/energy blaster friend hasn't, and my Ice/Ice blaster struggled with (at least at low levels) because of the combat control abilities of Devices. And thats enhanced by the fact that because I don't need Stamina, I can have even more utility powers; the Stimulant I could work in has kept me alive by keeping my team defender from getting mezzed, since very few have self mez protection. Plus it tends to put you first in line for buffs and heals.

Not having to slot as much accuracy helps with the low level whiff-fest, helps at mid levels because you can use one DO Acc and 4-5 DO damages while you are slotting up, and helps at high levels because you can pack more recharge or End Red in by not needing the Acc slots. IMHO that substantially makes up for the "high lethal resists" of foes.

Its best if you have a tactical mindset, if you really just kind of want to run and shoot, this may not be the combo for you.

[ QUOTE ]
The most recent example of this was a cobbled together attempt to do the transcendence trial that I could tell was going to fail before it ever began. 5 blasters, 2 scrappers, and me (an empathy defender). I tried to express myself, but they went forward with it anyway.
[snip]
I've never participated in a TF or extended campaign that went WELL that didn't have a 1) solid tank, and 2) solid empath. Period. No exceptions. Sometimes they succeed lacking those elements - but they almost always struggle.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, I was just on a quickie Transdescence trial last night with my rad def, four blasters, one tank who was strangely reluctant to go into the fights first, a storm controller who either didn't have or didn't use O2, and a scrapper. No invis/recall (though someone did manage to at least get through the troll tunnels and recall us, so we didn't have to do that), so we fought it out. Admittedly, I think a lot of them were 50s like myself, autoexemped down of course, but frankly your Enhancements are pretty crippled exemping down that far so its not like they are real SOs at that point. The leader did bring and suggest bringing a lot of Awakens, but I always suggest that anyway on that mission, just because its SUCH a pain to get back there from a hospital. Did it in about 40 minutes, fair number of deaths but I think a lot of that was 50s not really caring; my debuffs don't work all that well against the critters in there because they run around so much, so I can't take much credit for our eventual success.

And one of the fastest and most fun Synapses I ever did had a SR scrapper as its only melee, otherwise blasters and controllers, none /Emp. Only thing that slowed us down was our End bars, until the /kin controller dinged and got SB.

I do like having a tank on a larger PUG, just because it makes starting the fights much more straightforward with people not used to working with each other, less standing around staring at each other. And I do agree with the need to evaluate what the team has and to try to fill gaps; I've been on def/con teams that screamed along, and other ones that could have really benefited by having a scrapper, say.

This is one of the trickier aspects recruiting-wise for a team leader, IMHO. If you need more damage, you can be fairly sure nabbing a scrapper or blaster will serve, its *really* unlikely someone has built one of those to not, well, put out damage. A tank is a bit riskier these days, its not always true someone has built them for team tanking, but at least you know roughly what to expect from a decent one.

A defender or controller, however, can strongly affect the team dynamic depending on their powerset, in particular the defender part of it, or in the case of the controller how much they've emphasized the control vs defender part. Do you need the baddies grouped, or scattered? If you have a bunch of energy blasters, and get a storm defender, everyone will be in heaven. Get a rad or dark, and frustration for everyone will ensue as anchors get blown everywhere. With a bunch of fire blasters, the reverse may be true, depending on the skill of the Storm. Got a mission with Rikti on catwalks everywhere? Maybe you want a bubble defender, so when people fall off they still have a chance.

Its unlikely you will get to cherrypick as a team leader, but at least be aware of how tactics may need to be reorganized. If I don't have time to check everyones powerset descriptions, I always try to look at the defender/controller ones, so I know whether to expect Clear Minds or Hurricanes.

Oh, and I never hesitate to send tells to people who aren't lft, so long as their search comment is at least vaguely friendly. As the OP suggested, I tell them what we have in mind, and sometimes even roughly who we have on the team already, and get probably a 70-80% hit rate from people not about to log off. Heck, even if you don't want to lead large teams, its usually pretty easy to coordinate a duo, and heroside especially there are a LOT of characters who can make much better speed with a complementary AT.

[ QUOTE ]
99% (Uncommon/Rare): The number you need for the 99% chance; to me that’s virtually guaranteed. In other words, even if you’re getting exceptionally unlucky, you should at least have one drop of the indicated type by the time you’ve defeated the number of foes in this entry.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just something to keep in mind. If there are 150,000 people playing this game (not sure of the subscription numbers, but its somewhere around there I think?), that means 1500 of them will fail to have a drop of type X during the time shown. If 1% (wild guess here) of the game population read and post to the forums, 15 people can legitimately post and say they've not gotten the number of drops they "should".

On the bright side, it starts getting *really* unlikely that they will fail to have roughly the right drops in *all* of the categories. Only 15 people in the whole game (1% of 1%) will fall this short in even two categories. They might just as well have a surplus of some things. And there is the CH system to balance out these inequities to some extent.

[ QUOTE ]
I assumed Radiation Infection, Enervating Field and Lingering Radiation would all be resisted in i9 ?

[/ QUOTE ]

According to Iakona (who seems to have some VERY good information on these things) regarding AV resistances, their "super special AV resistances" are against;

RunSpeed
RechargeTime
Endurance
ToHit
Defense
PerceptionRadius
Regeneration
Recovery

Note that +4 con mobs of *any* type, from minion to AV, resist 52% of every effect you inflict on them (damage, debuffs, etc.) on top of this.

Enervating Field should still work fine, as it doesn't fall into the list of things AVs resist, if I understand correctly. Mind you, one of those won't stop squishies from dying pretty fast to a +4 AV, nor tanks to Recluse himself, especially since its still subject to the general "higher con" downscaling of effect.

So Rad Infection and Lingering Radiations -recharge/-runspeed are highly resisted, and will barely be noticed. Lingering Radation has a -500% -regen debuff as well, unresisted right now but will be resisted with I9 (according to patch notes). This becomes -32.5% after resistances, which should still be noticable even if it doesn't floor regen any more.

[ QUOTE ]
BUT, I bet a team of 8 Rad Defenders would make this a joke.

Mako would be a chump with 8 Radiation Infections, 8 Enervating fields and 8 Lingering Radiations. Sure, there is some resistance there, but his Accuracy and AC are FLOORED. If you have a team with Core2 Duo systems, I bet 8 D3s would be real darkity-dark goodness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, but with eight fully tohitdebuff slotted Rad Infections, Mako still has a 53% chance to hit you. +4 con and 87% debuff resistance is brutal.

And assuming he has 60% defense, your chance with full defdebuff slotting to hit him is still floored. If his defense is only 45%, you would be at 32% to hit (assuming you have a couple of Accuracies slotted). Making it kind of hard to hit with 8 Lingering Radiations. If you did hit with all eight, you could debuff his recharge by ~40%. But I don't think his defense is only 45%.

On the success and failure of pulling front, I've seen speculation in the LRSF that the AVs have significantly longer perception ranges then aggro ranges.

Thus, even if you are "standing outside normal aggro range", they have seen you. Then, later, when the team pulls one of them, a buddy or two who saw someone on the team earlier can come to join them.

So it may be worth trying keeping everyone on the team very far from the end AVs, with only the snipe puller (ideally stealthed) going to the max range they can pull from.

Another possibility could be if the AVs are looking at each other when one is pulled, which seems to be a factor in the LRSF.

[ QUOTE ]
For reference, [snip various numbers].

[/ QUOTE ]

Great, that narrows it down further.

RI (controller) with three Enzymes is ~40% defense debuff. Assume two Earth powers on him at any time, unslotted at 25% each for another 50%. Total debuff is 90%, which is about 5.5% net after resistances (ouch).

Assume two controllers with 3-slotted tactics, 16% each, and one defender, ditto for 20%.

With two accuracies in Fossilize (with its 20% Acc bonus),

If Mako had 60% Defense, you would be hitting 68% of the time, which would be "reasonably consistently" I'd say.

Your AoE (-20% base accuracy) would be hitting 54%, which would be noticably different if you were watching for awhile and seeing every other one whiff.

For contrast, if you had 8 rad defenders with fully slotted RI going on him and 2 accuracies each, they would be hitting at the same floor of 8.3% that you would with no debuffs at all.

So, the easiest way to measure this is probably if a tank gets him separately from the other AVs, with whatever support he needs to actually survive it, then gets Fortitude (with known slotting) and starts hitting with Brawl, or something nice and fast. Then another Tactics gets toggled on near him every 30-40 hits, and he tracks hits with Herostats (or jots it down on paper or something). It should be enough to distinguish between 40% or 60% or 80% defenses on Mako without slowing the mission down a ton. Stick to tohit buffs for the test rather than debuffs, since they work directly against Defense and you don't have to worry about resistances.

[ QUOTE ]
My last group had 3x Tactics, 1x Earth Control, 1x Rad Emission, and 1x Empathy for Fortitude. I believe we also dropped 2x Shivans when Mako fired Elude. I wasn't having significant trouble hitting him, but I don't recall if I had Fort or not.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, thats a start. We'll ignore the Shivans, since tohit debuff is so strongly resisted. Earth Control and Rad Emission could have contributed 5-10% each after AV resistance (depending on powers and slotting, note this is 50-100% *each* before resistance), Tactics assume 20% each (triple slotted defender values), Fortitude assume 20% (unslotted Emp value is 19%, usually defense and recharge get slotted before tohit), assume double slotted Accuracy for you, and if "not having significant trouble hitting" = about a 50% hit rate,

Makos defense is *roughly* between 75%, if you didn't have Fortitude on you, and 95%, if you did.

Anyone else willing to test this for a bit before the real beatdown on Mako commences?

[ QUOTE ]
(For example: I had a random pickup team who just couldn't get past Mako, and we tried like hell. We went for yellows, lots of them, and stacked them and still couldn't hammer through his elude. We had two shivans around too. We just had insufficient to-hit boosts, def debuffing, no tactics nor vengeance. Prior to this, we were a beautiful team. We pulled off snipe-single-pulling, Aeon melted in about 30 seconds, etc.)

[/ QUOTE ]

It would be nice to start putting together info on what defenses Mako actually has, so we can provide better feedback to the devs on possible changes to him.

Any idea how many stacked yellows it took before you could start getting above the 8% or so tohit floor (assuming 2 accuracies in your attacks)? If he *only* had Elude, at 45%, one medium yellow should get you up to 22% chance to hit him, which should be noticably different from 8%. Two should get you to 53%. So I'm guessing he has something way better than Elude.

If anyone can get him alone, with a well enough supported Tank to just keep him in place, and start attacking with one character and stacking medium yellows and counting hits, we should be able to get a general idea of whats needed to hit him at something above the floor. Once you stack enough tohit to counter his defense, the "turn on" of hitting should be pretty apparent. That would serve two benefits;

1. Let people know what they want to put together for a team (need 2 Tactics + Vengeance, or 4 tactics, or 12 yellows, or whatever).

2. Possibly provide feedback to the devs on how likely or unlikely that requirement is.

[ QUOTE ]
Pretty sure Arcanaville is responsible for the testing of those numbers.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe thats correct; I'd also seen those values, which is why I was comparing a medium yellow (18.75%) to triple slotted defender Tactics (~20%).

And purples, which I know he tested (I think he used the demon spawning Infernal alter to get a statistically significant number of attacks in a short time) are actually;

DEF
S - 12.5%
M - 25%
L - 33%

[ QUOTE ]
I find this rather frightening. This just shows that virtually no casual player will ever be able to figure out how to use this system.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, there are two types of "casual players".

One, like me, doesn't get much play time but wants to maximize capabilities with the few characters they have. I'll be putting some time into studying this, and at worst I'll read guides written by people who put even more time in to look for ideas. I expect to get out of it what time I put into it; I'm sure others will be better optimizers, but I think I should be able to gain some significant benefits at least.

The other type, like a couple of my friends and, I suspect a lot of the people who aren't on these forums, actually may have more play time but aren't really interested in guides, or maximizing efficiency, or anything like that. They like to play for the concepts, the eye candy, teaming with others, soloing tough missions. . . They'll hear about or figure out a few inventions, put them in, and be happy. The game isn't so tough that they are going to suffer unduly because they aren't twinked out.

You are describing a "casual player" who is desparately unhappy if they aren't optimized, but *also* doesn't want to put any time into learning the system to do it. I haven't actually seen a lot of overlap between those two behaviors, other than from a few forum whiners (which I don't consider you, by the way, you bring up a very valid concern, this system is complex).

If IOs bring such great performance differences that in the average PvE mission someone is feeling completely overshadowed by another similar character, it would be a problem. The devs say they are trying to avoid that issue, hopefully they will succeed. From what I'm reading so far, I think performance in missions will continue to be dominated by (1) player skill and (2) character build (power choices, general slotting), over IO use.

[ QUOTE ]
No, it also takes something akin to Tactics, which is my big complaint. Without serious To Hit buffs (more than you can get by just popping a few yellows, you can't do enough damage to bring Mako down.

[/ QUOTE ]

Teams are managing with three Tactics running, it sounds like. One slotted Tactics is about equal to one medium yellow. A level 45 (minimum to get in) character has 20 Insp slots, IIRC. So with a little over half of those (12 slots), you can get four minutes of hitting Mako with the equivalent of triple Tactics. If the characters who aren't doing the damage carry a few spares and pass them to the blasters/scrappers, you can go up from there. Plus you can stretch this for another minute by getting Geas of the Kind ones Accolade (+100% Tohit, 60 seconds). And collecting medium insps should be pretty easy either in normal play at that level or by Kora fruit farming if you feel a need to do nothing but this TF.

It will require some coordination to make sure everyone uses the insps at the same time, but nothing like what the LRSF does or the new Hami raid. If people use them one at a time, and not all at the same time, the team will never accumulate enough damage to drop him.

Certainly if teams are spending 30-40 minutes fighting him, a trip by one or two members to a sg base to pull some insps out of storage won't slow things down.

And if you have sworn a Mighty Oath to never join a sg, you can make a solo one very cheaply (see the Oversight room) and put an insp bin in it.

[ QUOTE ]
And Scientist.... The Tower buffs have unlimited range. Trust me, players already used the tactic you're thinking of, and the Devs fixed that one right quick.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I wasn't thinking in terms of getting LR out of buff range of his towers, I know they buff him on the whole map now.

I was wondering about dropping Rad Infection on him (so his summoned bosses miss) and Enervating Field on a tower (so it goes down faster). If you get too far from the toggle debuffs, they shut down. I think its 200 yards, but I'm not positive.

Thanks for the diagram, Linea_Alba. What is the scale? In particular, about how far apart are the towers from each other, and from the boat?

[ QUOTE ]
[Mako Has PBU level Elude. You will need sufficient buffs and debuffs to bring this down to reasonable levels. We had 6 x Tactics, 2 x Rad, and 2 x Earth Controllers. That put us in the +120% to +180% Tohit range. He fell over like a limp noodle. However, a team with no -def and no +tohit will be very hard pressed to take him down. It may even be impossible without either buffs, debuffs, or controls. Considering AV resist, the +tohit buffs are highly preferable. Primarily Fortitude, Tactics, Buildup, Aim, Yellow Inspirations.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just to emphasise this point, 50% worth of defense debuff (i.e. a fully slotted Rad Infection) inflicts about 5% worth of actual defense reduction on Mako, because of the high AV resistances (taking into account the I9 resistance reductions, it would be worse on Live) and him being +4 con.

20% worth of tohit buff, attainable from slotted (defender) tactics or roughly one medium yellow inflicts 20% worth of defense reduction. Even a blaster taking Tactics and dropping a couple of slots in it will help more than two rad defenders using fully slotted Rad Infection for this particular fight, at least so far as hitting.

So as stated, don't count on having 6 rads on your team allowing you to hit Mako. I am respecing my 50 rad defender into Tactics for this TF (and to some extent the new Hami), since the defense debuffs that work on everything else against the game aren't so hot against AVs.

If you are short on people with Leadership powers on the team (Tactics, Vengeance, etc.) pull medium and large yellow insps from the sg base insp bin you have hopefully been stocking with spares in preparation for this. If you are playing regularly anywhere near 50, you should be able to accumulate those pretty fast in normal play, even if you aren't into Kora fruit farming.

Question about the buff towers and the boat (?) where you fight Recluse, whats the distances between the towers? And whats the distance from them to the boat?

I ask because I was contemplating a strategy with my rad of;

1. Dropping Rad Infection on Recluse himself, to keep his summoned bosses from finishing off the tank after Recluse almost 1-shots them. This gives time for the emp to heal the tank back up.

2. Dropping EF on a tower the team is working on, for the -resistance.

3. Guarding another tower thats been destroyed, so if repairmen show up I can AoE them; a defender AoE should be enough for that, whereas a blaster with higher damage should be more efficient attacking a new tower.

Obviously, to pull this off all these have to be within the 200 yard distance you can go before a toggle debuff shuts off.

[ QUOTE ]
2) The duration of Stimulant is very short, so short that it is of little value before a fight. I use it as a pre-battle buff rarely, and then only on the defender or controller.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, if you have a blaster who teams a lot, this is not a bad choice. On my archery/dev, I had a spare power pick fairly early and took Stimulant. I then use it on toggle debuff defenders/controllers (rad, dark, storm) who may be leading off a fight as they are getting in position to debuff. I want to give a couple of seconds for the melees in the group to get aggro, and the debuffs to get in place anyway, so the timing works out well to use Stimulant just before the fight when I'm not doing anything anyway.

It also doesn't need any extra slotting, so that saves slots for other core powers I'm using. I put one Interrupt Reduction in, just in case I need it in a fight.

If it wears off during the fight, usually enough baddies are down by then that its not a huge problem. But it makes the start of the fight much safer, since one mezz will shut down the toggle debuffs just as I'm in the process of grabbing aggro with an AoE, so it seems to improve my survivability a lot.

In addition to the fact that it gives the support character a strong reason to keep you alive. . .

[ QUOTE ]
I know Scirocco managed to hit me twice (one-shot code saved me the first time) through two stacked Large Lucks, with two Rad Infections on him, but that could be just bad luck. The lack of huge damage meant that we were whittling down on the AVs' HPs for a while.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a note on the AV defense debuff front for folks who haven't worked with Arcanaville's equations.

Your hit chance with two accuracies in a normal attack against a +4 AV is 65%.

With two fully slotted RIs (~ 100% defense debuff) this goes up to 75%. Thats right, you are getting about 1/10 the effect from defense debuffing between them being +4 and "normal" AV debuff resistances (this assumes the 87% resistance post I9, right now tohit and defense debuffs are doing even *less* to AVs on Live). So the normally impressive defense debuff from shivan attacks isn't going to do much either.

With that, you can see why an Elude type defense on Mako is protecting him so well against debuffs.

Tohit Buffs, OTOH, are much more efficient. Slotted Tactics on a defender, for +20% tohit, brings you from 65% back up to capped accuracy at 95%. Same with a medium yellow Insp. One Tactics won't necessarily penetrate Elude, but you can see how stacking those with Focused Accuracy, Vengeance, etc. can let some teams hit him pretty well without necessarily realizing why.

So one suggestion if you don't want to respec into Tactics but want to run this TF is stock plenty of medium and large yellow insps in your base bins, instead of deleting them for "more useful" ones. Then stop by and pick up 3-4 per damager on your team just before this mission, and synchronize their use.

Two medium Lucks should work well to protect you, as they will floor accuracy of anything that doesn't have inherent Accuracy or Tohit, but remember the tohit floor for a +4 AV is around 10%, so a decent number of hits will sneak through in a long fight.

Where I see Rad Infection being really useful in the AV fights is the ones with buddies fighting alongside them, Aeon and Recluse. The AVs will still be hitting just fine through tohit debuffs, but the bosses with them will be a LOT less likely to sneak a killing shot in before you or a healer can react after you are at 1 hit point from the AV hit.

Has anyone worked out yet roughly what Defense value Mako has with his perma-Elude? Does it seem to be the same as the unslotted Hero version (45%), or higher?

Trying to work out how I might respec my 50 rad/rad defender for the new Hami/STF, and its going to be *really* hard to squeeze in Tactics. Unfortunately, hitting a +4 AV with Elude going just can't be done with Defense Debuffs alone (which is probably intentional), and I'm wondering if its even worthwhile doing any defense debuff slotting of the /rad powers. It looks like it would make around a 1-1.5% difference on one of the base 37% debuffs in /rad (Irradiate, the snipe).

I've gotten to 19 so far, and no need for Stamina so far even running Targeting Drone (one End Reduction DO), sometimes I just leave Superspeed on in combat for maneuverability even, something I'd never consider on my rad defender WITH Stamina. And thats with a recharge DO in every attack, no End reducers (yet) and occassional use of Hasten. Its nice to have so many options for other useful pools and such, I even have Aid Other and Stimulant since I team almost exclusively, often with an earth/rad defender who will protect me a lot better if he doesn't get mezzed.

End might be more of an issue if I soloed more, or were on a low damage team, so take this with a grain of salt. But obviously I still have room for some End reduction slotting if need be.

Tip; if you have Inf from a sg or another rich character; take Natural origin and get the Damage SOs at lvl 16 or so from the new Faultline store. You will equal or surpass damage from other blasters till 22 even against lethal resistant foes, and look out Vahz, they are vulnerable to lethal, bwa hah hah.

[ QUOTE ]
Thing is she sucks and it annoyed the hell out of me. I know I know, it's stupid. It gets to not be fun when we team cause I was expecting too much from her. She had stopped playing for a month now....if only I could turn back time...

[/ QUOTE ]

I can imagine this, and variants of it being a showstopper for a lot of forum readers. Many of us read the forums to get finicky tactics, the best badge hunting/accolade options, the latest min-maxing tips. . .

Nothing will ruin her enjoyment of the game like "Oh, we have to talk to this contact, to get this mission, to get this badge, to get this accolade, which will also require hunting here by X level, but I think I can set it up in a mere two hours of farming greys via mission resets, in order to be L33t." With its variants "Don't take that power, take this one, with this slotting, in fact I'll plan your build out and tell you which buttons to press when.", and "I'm going to spend an hour infodumping you with everything about how the game works before you start, free with bonus rants about the nerfs you've never heard of." With the implication that you won't associate with her otherwise, and everyone will laugh at her behind her back, and by the way she is too dumb to understand these things. This Is Bad.

Point out how cool her powers look. Talk about how lonely the ruins of Boomtown feel. Jump in there and rescue that lady getting mugged, even if you have done it a thousand times already. Comment on the amusing NPC chatter. Show how to pull in game, don't describe it and go into the theory behind aggro. Ask *her* advice on *your* power picks and slotting, which is a good way to get a discussion of enhancements and other game numbers going. It won't kill you to put a slot or two somewhere she likes instead of where you had planned, the game isn't THAT tough.

See the game through the eyes of a newb again. You still managed to have fun before you knew all this stuff, or you wouldn't be here now.

Meanwhile, you pick up the missions and such that you know will be useful later (Spelunker, etc.), and both you guys run them. If you have to farm something, do it while she makes dinner, then she takes over while you wash dishes (or vice versa), then you both do something else. Keep the boring part behind the scenes.

Oh, and I'd be cautious about announcing to teams that "My companion here doesn't know how to play very well yet." Not exactly sending a supportive message there, and frankly your average wife or SO after duoing with you for a few days and getting even a few tactical tips will probably contribute more to the team then the average PUG member, so no need to make apologies.

And I'll be sure to let you know if any of this works for me. . .

An exploration badge, by the way, is a small round brass-looking inscribed disc, usually on the ground but sometimes on a building or something. If you get within 10' or so of it, you get a popup yellow message on your screen that you got a badge. Your "rewards" list in your chat tab will show which one you just got.

The map link another poster provided shows where they are in each zone, it can take some hunting (and if you have the camera way zoomed out, you can't see them as a warning, has to be fairly close in).

If you flew over the zones, you may have managed to uncover the map without ever getting close enough to trigger one. Though I'd be surprised if you have managed to get *no* explore badges accidently, some are in high traffic areas.

If you want to see what one looks like there is an easy one to find right on top of the Atlas globe.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
As it is now, Holding Hami only keeps him from spawning mitos, but he continues firing his attack.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you sure? Having never been on the taunter's team, and given that I lose Hami at the end of raids, I'm not sure, however I thought the Taunter's countdown timer for "Hami Held" was started when Hami stopped attacking. No?.

[/ QUOTE ]

That used to be the case, but awhile back (6 months maybe? Don't recall if it was an Issue or a Patch) Hami was revised so he still shoots. Now someone who doesn't lose sight of him has to watch the graphics to see if he is held. And the taunt team has to keep going through the raid. Which does add some element of risk, last raid I was on on Triumph Hami fired a dozen or so times on the Hold team at various points, which is a good way to lose hold lock because everyone gets knocked back and sometimes people die, forcing someone else to rez them and generally use time *not* holding but healing and such instead.

I agree that having a time increment a bit less than 24 hours would be nice so you could do it repeatably 2 nights in a row; my evening time tends to come in chunks a few days long a few times a year, so thats when I'd be doing this. And I'd hate to be watching that clock as raid #2 or 3 in a row was coming to a close and saying to myself "Boy, if I could only stall this by 10 minutes, I could get a HO, otherwise I won't." Even someone who doesn't consider themselves a griefer could be sorely tempted to stop attacking for a bit. . .

At worst, though, you could alternate between a HO and a recipe, so your time wouldnt be wasted.

[ QUOTE ]
No one's saying you should subscribe to all 4 or 5, or 145. Some have lots of people listening, others don't. Pick the one you like the best. That's what we all do.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can anyone estimate which ones of the now 7 badge channels mentioned in this thread have the most people listening? I have one more channel I can join, I have a couple of characters coming up on badge missions I'd like to announce so people can join me, and I'm usually playing early mornings so its hard to get an idea of "chatter level" on the channels.

I have to sympathize with the earlier poster asking if they could be consolidated, my main play is on Triumph, which has one badge channel, and I still only get a reply on it about half the time I ask about or mention something. Splitting it still more ways seems to defeat the purpose of the channel.

[ QUOTE ]
AoE Stealth Powers such as Steamy Mist and Shadow Fall, and Persistant AoEs such as Hot Feet, Mud Pots and Lingering Radiation should not be used either.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just a note here; Lingering Radiation is not a persistent AoE, its a click AoE, maybe you were thinking of Enervating Field? Although I realize its up to the Raid Leader, I would suggest using Lingering Radiation on mitos to speed things up. Its great unresistable -regen, the main thing rads get recruited for to fight AVs, and fighting mitos is a long string of AV fights.

From everything I've read, mito splitting is trigged below a damage point, so even if LR spills over onto another mito it should not cause splitting. It could, of course, draw aggro on you, so I'd suggest using this only if you have a powerful enough computer to be able to actually see the mitos and how far they are from each other.

Have to agree with Bobitron on several of his points. I first tried Death Shroud on Test, and ran into a group of 3 white minions with it with no enhancements (back before you copied across with Inf) at about lvl 10. I stood there making no attacks to see what would happen.

Two mobs dropped and one ran with a sliver of health. I still had about 1/3 of my hit points.

What that tells me is that with this slotted up I can jump into a decent sized group and focus on lts and bosses, and most of the minions will drop without me ever having to use an attack on them. This is a *big* End and time saver. I've been on teams of 4-5 where this power alone probably contributed 30% of the team damage. And its worth taking at low levels, even with the End drain, because its so efficient over time. I fought alongside a tank in the low teens in an 8-man Atta mission in the Hollows, and we kept each other alive; he didn't have the shields yet to survive the spawns for as long as it took for them to be defeated, and his damage output was too low to save him that way. But I could take the mobs down while his shields kept him alive and his taunting kept enough damage off me despite the Aura for me to survive. It was an interesting synergy, if either of us dropped the other followed fairly quickly.

I also agree that Dark Regen is the best scrapper heal in the game, because its most effective in those early stages of a fight while theres still lots of mobs around you. I think it was Arcanaville who did a really thorough analysis of damage mitigation of the different scrapper secondaries, and by even vaguely well timed use of this /DA has the best damage mitigation of any secondary. It makes it very possible to do a decent job tanking because you don't need a lot of support to withstand alphas. You just have to learn how to pack the enemies tightly, but you want to do that anyway for Death Shroud and Flashing Steel.

One other note if you are having End troubles with kat/DA. Flashing Steel is a 180 degree arc that uses about half the End of Lotus Drops, recharges in half the time and does the same damage. If you can maneuver to get the majority of the foes on one side of you by sidestepping, it is a more efficient way to take them down then Lotus Drops. I routinely get 2-3 baddies in it, and sometimes as many as 5 with team spawns.