Shockwave007

On beta, you need one of kick/boxing for tough.

You need 2 powers for Weave or the new one. Same case with Concealment. Still two powers to pick up Phasing. That certainly put a damper on my respec plans.

Using LFG is the key here. Here is my experience because I actully was curious and tested this after a couple anomilies like above.

1) Phasing is definitely in place. In mixed groups, I've always seen what I'm my toon should see.
-Vigilante in rogue isles still sees Longbow reps.
-Rogue in Paragon still sees Arbiters.
-Villain who hooked up with heroes by using LFG still sees Arbiters.

2) If you actually group together, you all have to be in the same area to launch your group. So if you form a team of 8, then all 8 have to be in the area. This prevents mixed groups.

3) If you use the LFG menu, the queue will try to build groups of 8 from whoever is available. It WILL draw from both villain and hero sides if there are slots available.
-If a group of 7 queues up, and there is a solo villain queued, it will match them up together. (It could just as easily match the 7 group with a solo hero too.)
-If a group of 4 heroes and a group of 4 villains were in queue, it could match them up.

Most people form their group, then go. (I assume most people doing DFB or any other task force just don't know what the LFG menu is.) However, 8 individuals who aren't grouped together could all queue up via the LFG menu, and the system would be happy to make them into a group of 8 whether they are villains or heroes.

So if you are villain and want to DFB really bad, you could just queue up solo and hope a group enters the queue with 7 or less people so you can jump in a spot.

I know this is slight necromancy, but now that I24 has been released, assuming that this statement is no longer true? (Didn't see mention of AE updates recently.) Anyone heard different?

Isn't this why you get 2 builds?

I thought really hard about the epic pools for shields, and opted against them for thematic issues. I just didn't like how they fit from a characterizatoin. Slotting Miracle/Numina definately seems like a good point though. I'm wondering if it's worth scraping up a slot somewhere to slot both.

I don't really know if wail is nice. Every time I used it, I died. So I quite using it. So I did a respec to replace it with maneuvers. I'm hoping with no crash, I'll find it useful this time around.

I actually find Siren's song to be one of my most useful powers. It's great in solo. I can turn fights especially when someone accidently pulls a 2nd group of enemies into a fight, and it is 1/3 of my howl/shockwave/ss AoE attack chain when I need to do area damage. This doesn't have the -resist of single target chains, but it alternates sleep, knockdown, and sometimes knockdown, effectively locking down a group of enemies. I find this useful in both group and solo play.

Noted. Should it be the full 25% in both?

I'll probably lean towards holding onto it in this case. It's often hard to tell how much effect it's having, but I'll just trust it's helping.


Alright. I'll concentrate on the boosters mentioned above.

I think this will be one of the big changes when I do an I24 respec. Wish I'd thought about it when I added maneuvers into the build on the last respec. Benefits the team more on top of it.


I may not drop the power, but I may not 6 slot it, instead giving some of those slots to wail.

Yes, I have Overwhelming Force 6 slotted in Shockwave. Mids just added it today so you have to be on the latest build. That was actually part of the incentive for me to post this, since that's a new factor on a sonic/sonic build, and looking forward to the I24 changes we know about already and starting to figure out how to plan for it.

Some notes I've made while reviewing my build, although once again, not being an expert, I'm not sure if I'm off base on any of this.

Sonic Barrier - Due to having a level 40 set in there, and devoting 1 slot to psionic resistance, this looks like a prime candidate for enhancers. (I'm thinking 5 enhancers to give a +25% boost to the 23.2% resistance enhancement raising it to 29% and raising the total for that power into ED levels [43.5% pre-ED]. Perhaps only 4?)
Fly/Hover - These slots have been a constant source of frustration on figuring out exactly how much to devote to them. I'm likely going to take a slot away from Fly for one of the 5 I'll want for dreadful wail. The other issue on Hover...I'm using defensive pool stuff there. I'm thinking that probably would be better allocated to maneuvers?
Disruption Field - This is my other area enhancers might be a good idea. Not sure on how many.

Stamina - That third slot in stamina might need to go, which could mean enhancers for the first slot to make up for it?

Screech - I don't use this power a whole lot, so wondering if it's worth having slotted out. It's mostly a panic button if I need to keep someone off me, but to be honest, it isn't all that effective in that role, since most people I need to keep off me will resist it anyway.

Scream - I'd love to update from the basic defender set to the improved set via catalysts. However, I think the likelihood of me getting 6 catalysts is slim. (I heard it might be possible to get them on incarnate trials?) If I were to upgrade that, it would put me over 45% ranged defense, possibly letting me cut an enhancement elsewhere when I had it slotted specifically for ranged defense.

I'm actually thinking that the easiest way for it to work would be for the object to be doing nothing, until a team leader activates it. Once activated, it can work just like a mission teleporter, lasting for 1 minute, just as the team teleporter power works. I'm litterally thinking of it as being a team teleporter power attached to an object available to the supergroup. It has the disadvantage of having to be at the base to make use of it, but has the advantage that the whole group could access it.

The inspiration for it was basically making it an extension of the team teleport power, since the same graphic assets are in use both for that power and for bases, and it seems like a "logical step" in for in character. (The base is where your team transport is parked when not in use, so why not have a special option to use it from there.)

The second way to implement is that instead of having it spam the power like the team transport power, it's a clickable to transport to your current mission. No spamming code needed at all.

Being a free player my first month of play (and then going premium) I actually used /r a lot.

1) New players can't use /t.
2) New player can use /r to talk to the last person who sent a tell to them. So they can't initiate the tell conversation.
3) The /r command is only good for about a minute. If you wait longer than that to do a response, it "expires" and you can't send a response anymore until you receive another tell.

It was really confusing starting out, but I got used to it.

Yes, I realize the answer was likely in there. The broader point, is that balance is no longer needed, and I imagine this would be a very easy thing to fix. More low hanging fruit to improve bases.

The more complex fix would be to add more upgrade to build up to 100% recovery in med bays. The easy fix is just to tweak the numbers of the current stuff.

Code already exists for team transporters that aren't tied to bases. I see this as being simpler than that, as it's being tied to a static object. I see this as the number 1 item on the whole list that is both low hanging fruit, and is useful enough to make bases a more desired thing for supergroups.

Nope. Free players can't use any of this stuff.

WIthout an Invention license, you can't slot an IO. I had an auction license without an invention license, and could buy all the IO's I wanted. I just couldn't actually use them.

Without an Invention license you also can't pick up invention salvage.

You need to be at least premium of a certain level to obtain reward merits.

So being in a SG doesn't get around any of these things.