Shred_Monkey

OK... so my 9 year old dinosaur of a PC that i run on the lowest possible settings just to avoid headaches from low framerates finially died. I've been looking forward for the moment for a while as I couldn't justify a new PC as long as the old was still did what was needed (gaming isn't really seen as needed to my wife).

So.. thanks in no small part to Father Xmas's guide and a few other posts in this forum I'm, I've learned a lot about what I had lost track of in the last 10 years in the computer hardware world and am ready to start putting a machine together.

The way I see it, since this is a gaming machine (don't tell my wife), step one is pick a graphics card then build the machine around that, looking for combo deals and packages that get me the best deal from there.

Here's my delima. I'd hate to shell out $1200+ for a machine (and software packages) and not be able to run ultra mode. I looked around and don't see any specific recommendations as to what card I need to run Ultra Mode. I realize since Ultra Mode doesn't exist yet, you guys will be guessing and not have experience to back it up.

However, your guesses will be infinately better then mine. So please...guess/recommend away. What whats the minimum card you think i'd need to reasonably be able to play all aspects of this game in ultra mode?

I go with level 35 as my target for IOs to help exemplar down. Below that you're generally pretty buff enough without bonuses anyway.

However, I disagree with your original premise. I have a toon that, has well over 1000 hours of play time on him. He's level 50. He's purpled and PVP'd to the gills. I run ITFs and Kahns and LGTFs and STFs as frequently as my real life allows. I just enjoy playing that toon. If I see a sister psyche starting, and I have the time... I have 6-8 toons I could throw at that TF... but one does it better and more ejoyably then the others, so that's who I bring. It's actually quite fun to forget about leveling and aquiring influence and to just say, "what's going on tonight?" and go be Shred Monkey with whoever is willing to throw me the first invite.

I think it's a plain and simple numbers thing. The dev's look at how many players play ATs. EPIC ATs are always at the bottom of that list... as expected, since they're unlockable. The Dev's see balance across ATs as one indication of game balance.... so they took a step to make that happen. There's no harm in it that I can see. Honestly, I'll probably take a look at VEATs now... which I haven't looked at much because I never got around to playing a villian to 50. No harm there. They've opened up more content to me.

This game has always been casual player friendly. What that term means can be debated forever with no resolution, but applied to a specific example like "should we open up epic ATs at 20"... you can run it through the filter of "is that a move that helps the casual player expirience more of joy this game can offer... the answer is quite simply yes.

For a while it wasn't unique, and people used multiple gaussian sets to help get to soft-capped defenses. And now that I think of it... that might have been only true in Mid's and not in the game itself. It's definatly unique now.

[QUOTE=Werner;2603559]Or just double-tap your attack.
QUOTE]


If you double tap, you have server delays between targets. You send an attack that doesn't go until it's queued, then it has to learn that it didn't fire because it's target is dead, and it aquires the nearest target. Tap again and that sends the next attack. That method results 2x delay between server and your machine between targets (send a single, get one back). However If you tab after fireing an attack, you'll aquire the new target during the animation of your your attack, and you can send the next attack at the new target immediately, with no delay at all in your attack chain. That delay can easily be .5-1.0 seconds (which, by the way, is why you should be queing your attacks as early as possible to begin with).

It may not sound like a big deal, but think of it as gaining 1 second per kill.. .and then add up how many kills you have per spawn... or over the course of mission...

I generally do as UberGuy said.. i continiously tap attacks... switching from one attack to the next when an attack animation starts... but i'm watching the hp meter of my target, when I can see the next attack will kill him, I tab (actually i use a numpad key that selects the next target). Then my next attack automatically goes to the next guy without delay. Sometimes I'm wrong and the previous target has a sliver of health left... but that's not a big deal... the point is I'm always hitting something.

I think our responses to the OP skipped a step here. The first answer should be "YES, Soft capped defenses on a resistance based toon are AWSOME."

Then we can start talking about disclaimers of rare and unusual situations where you might still be able to die.

Keep in mind, defense debuffs are frustrating because they turn you into a normal resistance based toon. You're not extra weak to defense debuffs... you're extra strong to everything else. Soft-capping a resistance toon *IS* how you try to stand toe to toe with +4x8 arachnos. Nothing else would have a prayer.

I actually did do some math this weekend on spines. (and then played a spines/elec to level 25... if you see Slag Monkey on Freedom... that's me).

My low level chain was:

Lunge>barb swipe>impale>barb swipe...

At level 30 I'll be able to slot and run:

Ripper>Lunge>impale>Lunge...


That's not an enourmous amount of damage but it takes very little recharge which makes it very competative with the chains from other sets at lower recharge levels.

Also, I have discovered something I hadn't anticpated in playing the spines/electric all weekend. Because of the long animations, I really use endurance very slowly. In fact at level 25 I can quite easily run my attack chain non-stop with both damage toggles, one resistance power, my status effect power and superjump turned on. I even dropped the endurance IO out of my toggles and was still OK on endurance. Energize helps a lot. I'm not sure how to best abuse this huge fuel of energy, but it gives me something to work with.

I'm looking into joining the PvP ranks. I spent a little bit of time just feeling out some of the PvP zones this week with my existing toons (and basically dieing repeatedly very quickly), and I think I know what I want to build for now. The question is where do I get good reliable PvP stats? Is Mid's accurate for PvP? Does it account for DR correctly? Does Jump Kick and Flurry actually outdamage most set attacks, or is that bogus? If Mid's is not correct, is there somewhere where the information is correct outside of the game?

Thanks.

I used to slot a full set of guassian's because I didn't want damage as it killed my fodder for soloing AV's. After I pumped up the build a bit with PvP IO's, I think I actually slotted 4 recharges (yes, over slotted) to get the power as close to permanent as I could. I've always been much more interested in sustaining soul drain's buff then I was in the damage it actually does.

It's a shame those guys only show up in 2-3 missions. What a waste of a good enemy.

Yeah.. hardcore is a crazy. Pulling singles, tactics, strategy, careful team makeup. You know... the stuff you have to do in some games just to get exp. Heck, in this game there's so little penelty for death, I usually die on purpose when I hit level 4 to get back to the trainer.

I applaud the hardcore teams for adding some of the "gaming" back to this game. I wish I had the play schedule to hook-up with one and join them regularly.

I ran a pylon just now. There were a few little glitches along the way so I think I could shave a bit off the time.. but this run was 6:42 (on a DB/SR). That's 223 DPS if my math is correct.

By chance does this knight's power diminish if he's to far away from Atlas Park?

5 years ago when this game lauched, it was highly reguarded as the most stable initial launch any MMO had ever had. There have been minor issues in the last 6 years, but it sounds like the issues the OP is having are more related to the way he's trying to install the game then the actual stability of the software itself.

I never bought a box for this game. I just paid fees online and downloaded the game from the official website. I've never had an issue. I've installed it on 3-4 computers now. If you just stick to default settings and say yes to questions that come up, I've never had any issues. The only trick I've ever run into was once when I tried to run it from a zipdrive. I had to skip the updater by adding a tag to the shortcut (which means I had to have the current version of the game on the zipdrive). I wasn't able to directly update to the zipdrive, I had to copy the game to the default drive to run the update and then move it back to the zipdrive. (I was using a psuedo public computer I didnt' want to permanetnly save something to).

I don't know if the OP is trying something out of the ordinary, or he's just having issues. In either case, once you get the game working, it is a very stable game.

I like the fact that min/max'ers are uncommon. We're uncommon enough that I still get "wow, i didn't know it was possible to do that" comments occasionally from teamates.

Furthermore, personally, the number 1 reason I've played this game exclusivally for so long is the fact that I can be uniquely exceptional by using off-line skill to min/max. In most other games, being *powerful* means you spent the most time online waiting for the gear you want. If you don't have more time then everyone else to devote to the game, then guess what? By the time you get that gear, you're not really exceptional anymore. This game however, clearly has huge payback for mathmatical/logical planning skills and doesn't require an enorumous timesink to place that offline planning into execution.

Granted, you can still play the "grind to greatness" game if you want by borrowing someone's build and farming AE tickets to buy what you want, but even then, you're only as good as the build you borrowed... since I never post my builds, and I tend to shy away from FoTM combos, I still get that sense of uniqueness everytime I play.

All that said, I still would never say anything bad about the people who seek that feeling of being exceptional by just role playing a person with fun superpowers. This game certainly has all the building blocks of a "sims" witih powers type game, too.

Interesting question. I'm sure the scrapper forum has the highest concentration of min/max'ers you're going to find since this is where they go to discuss their craft. I wish there was some good way to datamine the game to see how (un)common we really are.

Some scrapper sets don't get their mezz protection until level 16 so don't feel to bad about not picking it up right away when it became available. And in truth Circle of Thorns give almost everyone difficulties in the teens.