Soul_Fane

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Seems to me like the solution would be to allow adjustments of the individual enemies levels, to a certain extent. Personally I want level 50 Succubus and Crey Agents but I can't have them.

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Nor can you have lvl 50 Hellions, and for the same reason. They'd be too easy.

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Succubus aren't exactly easy, nor are spectral demons, nerva spectral demons, vahzalok, yet they all fall off the radar at some point before 50. They're certainly harder than some of the laughable pretorean factions. The Crazed are basically glorified hellions.

I'd like a critical review of my arc. I played Portal Bandits and left some feedback.

Arc ID:174368
Arc Title: Embers of the Thorn
Author: @Soul Fane
Morality: Heroic
Number of Missions: 5
Level Range: 31-50
Description: A new faction of the Circle of Thorns is up to something that could disrupt the fabric of time. A young heroine has a personal stake in this matter, and she requests your aid in unraveling this potentially diabolical plot.

I played through your Portal Bandits arc.

I was on the fence about this one, and decided to give it 4 stars.

A few minor nitpiks that didn't really affect my rating: The electric armor Nagans were immune to my knockback, and additional mez protection is something that's usually not a good thing. The other thing was that Nikki was willpower and had heightened senses, and with her +perception, attacked me before I was ready. Again, these two things didn't really affect my rating, because they were used sparingly enough so they keep the player on their toes without overly frustrating them.

One thing about the intro: I didn't really get attached to the story. I like to have my character have a reason for being there, other than, "because I'm a hero." Because I can get the job done isn't good enough. Most heroes can get the job done, many are very capable. Just because the cannon does it all the time, isn't a justification to do it yourself. When this happens, I just feel like an outsider that's doing a job because someone asked me to.
Suggestion: Get me involved. Why select me? And if it's not possible, do something to make the character feel like they're part of the story, rather than just running the story.

What really prevented me from giving this arc a 5 star rating was the weak theme that gets dumped on you at the end. For the entire arc, you have no idea why they're stealing portal technology, no bits and pieces of reason along the way, just the big reveal at the end that gets dropped in your lap. The arc doesn't give any reasons as to why Obscura wants to distribute Portal technology to the masses, just that everyone should have them "just because". And you could say that Obscura is being a serious Robin Hood hypocrite by not sharing her FTL travel with the factions presented in this arc.

The dialogue was well written, the custom group was a fun and not a frustrating challenge, and the story feels like it could be really exceptional if it explored Obscura's reasoning more and really developed her backstory over the course of the arc.

Right now, it feels like Just a Bunch of Stuff Happened.

Sorry to see you go Transhade. It's been an absolute blast to fight by your side.

17% defense resistance is barely anything, and certainly won't protect your paltry ~15% defense to the energies.

Edit: sorry, read your post wrong.

Yes, Willpower has resists and defense, but regen has heals. Still regen is by it's nature more of a regen set than willpower, so it should have more regen resistance(capped resistance, in my opinion).

When I said willpower should have more (about 50% resistance to -regen) I meant more than it does now (25% I think), not more than regen.

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Agreed. A res to -regen is not asking for a lot in a */regen set. Even /wp has res to -regen in fast healing. Although res to -rech can be gotten from the winter's gift IO, that also would be a good add on to the set. Those buffs would not be game breaking so I don't see why it wouldn't be considered. So yeah. -regen res in fast healing (it would be better suited in an auto power) and -slow res in resilance sound good to me.

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The resistance to -regen that willpower has is laughable, simply because everything with -regen pretty much floors you. It is a rare occurance when my willpower gets only partially regen debuffed. I could be facing 10 enemies and be generating over 100hp/sec, and I get hit by a broken NPC power and bam! 0.00% - 0.00hp/sec shows up on my combat stats.

Player powers with -regen are rather overpowered as well (trapsoison trap is the worst offender, but not the only one), and my only guess is this is to counteract an AV's enormous regen resistance. Simple solution: tone all -regen down SIGNIFICANTLY, and remove AV -regen resistance.

Give regen capped regen resistance(similiar to SR's capped defense resistance) probably in fast healing, integration, and resiliance.

Give willpower more, say 50% regen resistance, divided into fast healing and high pain tolerance.

Hasten used to (before ED) require 6 +1 SO's to reach perma. So about +200% recharge.

95% from enhancement

20% from quickness

85% from set bonuses...

That being said, by the time you have that much global recharge, you don't really need hasten, and it really only benefits you with secondaries like regen, that have a lot of click powers.

Soul Fane has been slated for build re-evaluation, and is currently delegating all of her TF scranker responsibilities to Sun and Moon, so she will be there in her stead.

50 DB/willpower

Well, all we really need is one more DMer coming along, and rooting Ghost widow should be cake.

As Werner said, Divine Avalanche really plays a huge role in a Kat/Will's survivability. I made a previous DB/will with no real set bonuses, and the lack of smashing/lethal defense does make willpower feel really squishy at times.

Sun and Moon, my DB/Will that just hit 50 on Virtue, is totally tricked out with IO's. 4 Kinetic Combats in her single targets, with 2 franken slots to cover up the enhancement deficiencies, 4 Eradications in her PBAoE's for energy defense, HP boosts, and Endurance boosts. I use both the Attack Vitals and Sweep combos, and have 37.5% global recharge from LotG's and mocking beratement in confront, which leaves only a fraction of a gap in my Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals chain. Tough and Weave are almost a must in my opinion for Willpower.

Would I want a DB/SR? No... I'm done with SR. I've leveled up a Fire/SR along side my friend's MA/shield, and I just felt underwhelmed by my own survivability compared to his. SR is a cheap way to get softcapped defenses, and my bankroll can afford more than that. In the average situation (mostly smashing or lethal damage, not too many def debuffs) my willpower is a ton more survivable with resists, defense, and regeneration all working in tandom.

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"What do you mean you can buy DOs from shops" me 5 years ago, first toon at 20 and living on drops.

"Hmm, RPD or TI, I'll take the one that doesn't cost end" me on my first two invuls, one tank still level 8, the other hit 50 51 months later.

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I had a noob moment like this when I was playing my first regen.

"Hmm, I'm going to take dull pain instead of reconstruction, because it heals, and it gives an HP boost."

Also I didn't take integration, because back then, it didn't do anything except give you mez protection and cost a lot of end. "I don't need mez protection, I'm not getting mezzed that often." Good times...

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Soul Fane has the dubious honor of being my back up "tank" unless someone else has confront as well.

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Huh? I do? Oh great....

Oh, and for the Jedi look,

If you're into the lightsaber duels in episodes 4-6, go katana.

If you're into the lightsaber duels in episodes 1-3, go dual blades.


Dual blades has a lot more style, and is pretty over the top when it comes to animations. I really does look like you're wielding weightless energy blades.

Having made defense builds for SR(obviously a defense build) Invul and Will, I can share my insight.

SR's main weakness to me, is their lack of resistance. No matter how much defense you have, you're going to get hit, and it happens more often than you think. It really hurts when you don't have something else to take the edge off a really damaging attack.

SR's advantages are many though. It's a positional defense set, so it'll protect you from things like web grenades. It's relatively painless to softcap with IO's, and you'll have plenty of room for other set bonuses that float your boat (+regen, +dmg, +recharge). It has bonus recharge, AND a hefty amount of slow resist, which will usually keep you from having any problems since you'll dodge most slowing attacks anyhow. Def debuffs will not be a problem for an SR, due to its capped defense resistance(but you'll have to slot your passives and toggles completely).

Namely, SR's strength is also it's greatest weakness. It does defense, and does it well, but that's all it does.


On to willpower. Willpower is a good all around set that has a little bit of everything and can really shine in dire situations.

Willpower, in my opinion, has more disadvantages than SR. It's defense resistance is laughable(17% at 50) and while I agree that it's not a primarily defense set, pretty much all sets with some defense in them have gotten at least 25%. Edit: Poor Bane spiders get 0% defense resistance. Willpower also has no slow resistance, but this isn't as much of a disadvantage is it could be, because none of your defenses are reliant on recharge(Strength of Will isn't effected by +rech or slows). Willpower is also rather difficult to softcap in defense without making alot of sacrifices. Your single target melee attacks will likely be filled with kinetic combats, which don't give a good spread of enhancement(too much damage, not enough acc), but they give 3.75% smashing and lethal defense, and that's hard to pass up. Best bet with those is to go with 4KC's and the Crushing impact Acc/Dam/Rech, and the Mako Acc/End/Rech.

My current DB/will sits at ~38% to s/l/e/n and ~30% to f/c. How I would love to softcap, but it just isn't in the cards with my current budget. We'll see in the future.

The advantages of willpower are rather sizable though. Your resistances and +HP make a worlds difference when it comes to absorbing those big hits. Rise to the Challenge is an awesome survival tool, even more so if you go for a more defensive build. I've seen Infatum sit in the middle of an 8 man spawn of nemesis vengenced all to high hell, getting hit left and right, and his green bar never really moved. Willpower is very hands off, so all you have to worry about is Strength of Will, inspiration use, and killing things. I guess SR is kinda in the same boat, but with PB in auto, it's screwed up my rhythm more than a few times.

One other minor advantage. Willpower has fear protection. Most fear powers usually have no positional component, and thus pass right through any defense SR has. With AE content, some architects like to throw everything they can at the player, and fear will be one less thing you'll have to deal with.

Edited because I forgot about SoA spiders. Widows still get 25% defense resistance though.

For someone Neurotic like me, it was rather easy to figure out.

Dodged: Most natural sets, like SR, Heightened Senses from willpower, combat jumping, weave.

Avoided: As far as I've noticed, only used for purple inspirations.

Absorbed: I've only noticed MoG use this so far.

Deflected: This one is used for kinetic barriers and impenetrable armors. So energy aura, Ice, stone, any I'm missing...

One other thing deflected is used for is Set bonuses. So if you're SR is deflecting things now instead of dodging, it's because you're trying to soft cap with +def set bonuses.

While I would probably suggest bringing your most survivable one, since dieing a ton isn't fun no matter how you slice it, I was thinking your spines/fire might be useful for rooting ghost widow (Quills+Impale).

How many immobilizes are we going to have? Any DMers and Spines raze your hand.

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The trouble I have with this thread is he hasn't posted any more reviews yet.

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^QFT

QR

Barata, you should have been on the ITF I was on last night. We had people regularly still stomping baddies in the mission after the mission complete, we charged up the hill on the first mission instead of flying up the back, took down every ambush in the second, even if it didn't feel like coming to us, we searched it out and destroyed the heck out of it.

In the third mission, that team was the only one I've ever been on that charged straight up the canyon of lag, and one of the few teams that took Rommie and Requiem on the platform.

Oh yeah, and the entire TF was done on invincible.

Glorious...

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QR: here's a new thing I've noticed and am not too happy about:

Nowadays every time my /regen Scrapper zones, even from a mission etc. she does the Integration scream. This used to happen only when I toggled it on, and I could get around that by toggling in flight.

It really breaks my immersion for my Scrapper to be roleplaying a Gardvord every time she gets off the tram, just sayin'.

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That's Paragon City Transit for you.

Actually though, I've had some toggles play on zoning, but not ones like Tough or Integration, just ones like Invulnerability or Rise to the Challenge

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Usually for me it's always Heightened senses. Did a sister P TF last night, and exemped below that power, and it would do rise to the challenge. Since it's considered an offensive power *glares at whoever's responsible* it rooted me every time I zoned. Very annoying.

Something new:
Unyielding difficulty can spawn Bosses in the +1 spawn points for a solo character (The +2 spawns are too small for this). This might be the case for tenacious too.

All I have to say is, Awesome!

Arc Name: Embers of the Thorn
Arc ID: 174368
Keywords: Challenging, Magic, Custom Characters
Length: Long (4 missions)
Level Range: 31-54
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: Circle of Thorns, Custom Group
Description: A new faction of the Circle of Thorns is up to something that could disrupt the fabric of time. A young heroine has a personal stake in this matter, and she requests your aid in unraveling this potentially diabolical plot.
Major Changes: Critters rebalanced, and more flavorful without being overpowered. Lt. ally more durable while not stealing the spotlight. Better space management allowed for more descriptions and another clue that was missing before.

QR
That's true, but I still like the title of the thread. Just because you cannot zero star arcs anymore, doesn't mean that this thread's title indicates the worst of the worst. The one stars that deserve zero stars.

I'll be there at the 7pm Virtue ScrapSTF

Hopefully with Sun and Moon, my new DB/will scrapper (who just dinged 45!)

Well said Venture. You're a better person than I, that's for damn sure.

I would have chimed in, but my melee fortunata feels like such an outcast lately, that I haven't checked the SoA boards in forever. I thought it was all bane builds...

The highest DPA attacks are going to be your melee attacks. Yes, even swipe has better DPA than awesome powers like dominate. Dominate for me was better slotted as a hold, because it felt like I needed control to make up for my lack of defense resistance, and max HP(when compared to an SR scrapper).

I personally went for all the melee attacks, swipe, strike, lunge and follow up. My build is rather pricy, but not the priciest. All of my attacks are franken slotted with 4 makos and other stuff to get ~80% acc, 95% damage, 95% recharge, and whatever endurance reduction. I'm closing in on 70% global recharge, and still don't have a solid, no gaps, attack chain, but the DPS is unheard of with all the global damage buffs I'm packing.

You could probably have a solid attack chain with poison dart instead of swipe, since it has a longer animation, but less DPA. Most people will say it's worth it for the -regen, and a pretty darn awesome ranged attack.