Steel_Shaman
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:The All-Kheldian Keyes Trial.Originally Posted by Diggaroo
As am I! Protector sounds like its a nice place, doesn't it? x)
And thanks! Mind if I ask, though, which video you're referring to? I have three linked :S
No rush at all, I remember what college can be like. Wrestle a raptor in the morning on the way to class, dodge T-Rexes on the way home....Quote:Originally Posted by Bionut911
Just as a reference for you guys. I have about another five weeks of classes left, so finals are coming up.
I put up this thread now So i could get everything worked out and refined before i start diving into it, all the while preparing for my finals.
So it'll be a little while before I get the first couple issues actually finished.
Once i finish up sketches of your characters I'll send them via PM's to ensure they are accurately represented
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They do still do all that don't they? -
Quote:I did notice my damage was a bit lacking in the lower levels. I compensated by dropping my difficulty to -1 level. Once I got some decent slotting going in the attacks I was able to raise it back up with no problems.Originally Posted by Jibikao
The only problem is Spine starts out painfully weak... until 26 and then 32.
The new assassin strike should help more now. -
I'm getting excited about this project. And I also find myself wishing Starless Knight was on Protector. Digg, that vid in your signature is awesome.
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After reading the replies in this thread and running a DiB with an /Ice Stalker last night I can see I'm going to have to make one. So many alts that all need leveling...I suppose it's a good problem to have.
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Quote:Thanks. That's pretty much how I've always pictured him. Quiet, reserved, slow to anger, and fiercely protective of the regular citizens of Paragon.Originally Posted by Bionut911
I'm going to quote with @Display name, just to make this SO much easier for me
@Memphis Bill: Wow. Absolutely love it, all of it. It was a great read; just enough to leave me wanting more. I already have a really good sense of Voidbane, and Violet.
@Steel_Shaman: Great bio! I'm getting that whole "Knows the value of life" vibe from Starless Knight.
@THB:
I was kind of hoping you would go in that direction I still need an antagonist, Reqiuem is just to small scale for my scope of the plot. I could use someone to fill a "Brutal Overlord" role. interested? 
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Here's the long form of Starless Knight's bio. I've often wished the game would allow us just a little more room...
Warshade Name: Starless Knight
Human Name: Stephen Blythe
Kheldian Name: Event Horizon
Stephen Blythe was a college physics professor dying of cancer. Chemotherapy had been unsuccessful in halting the progress of the disease, leaving Blythe facing what would probably be the last few months of his life. He took a sabbatical from work and spent his time putting his life in order and trying to come to terms with his fate.
Late one night while gazing at the stars from his patio, Stephen saw what looked to be a shooting star. He smiled, as the last time he had been fortunate enough to see one was when he was a child. As he gazed at the purple and white light, he realized it was actually getting brighter. After a moment a tiny voice in the back of Stephen's mind told him it was getting entirely too bright....
Stephen's house was rocked by an explosion as something crashed into it. Heedless of any danger Stephen staggered over the remains of what was once his living room. He just had to see what it was. He was rather surprised to find not a stellar object or piece of a satellite, but a young man in a tattered black and purple costume. Even more startling was the fact the man was still alive.
The man looked over at Stephen, his eyes glowing with an eerie purple light. "I'm dying, but part of me can live on in you if you're willing. You will become something new, the illness I sense in you will be gone, and you will never be alone again." Swallowing hard, Stephen simply nodded. After all, what did he have to lose? The young man smiled and closed his eyes.
There was a moment of absolute silence, then a black and purple mass of energy rose from the man. It hovered in the air for a moment, and Stephen quite clearly heard a voice unlike any he had heard before say "thank you." Then Stephen's world shattered.
When the fire department responded to the report of an explosion a few minutes later, they found the house a complete shambles. Hovering in the air over it was a hero they didn't recognize. He was carrying what looked to be another hero in an identical costume. He smiled and nodded at the men, then vanished in a swirl of purple light.
The human Stephen Blythe and the Kheldian Event Horizon each faced death that night. After their merging they found a new lease on life, and they have not been idle. Since that time the combined entity known to the citizens of Paragon as Starless Knight has been an almost constant sight throughout the city.
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Edited to add a few image links:
Original Costume
Second Costume
Current Look -
Starless Knight's new look I did after coming back to the game a couple weeks ago:
Same costume, different angle so you can see the cape better:
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I guess the reason the SBE's bother me is that selling gear is a line I've never seen any other MMO cross. (There may be others out there that have, and I just don't know about them, but none of the ones I've ever tried out/looked into did.) There's a variety of reasons why this could be a bad move, but I admit that I may be overreacting with regard to CoH. I don't like it, but it may turn out to be OK after all, given this particular game's culture and history.
So for the moment I guess you could say I'm concerned. -
THB, I can understand where you're coming from. The one line I have never seen a F2P game cross was the selling of gear in their online store. It's always vanity items, xp boosters, premium content, classes, and the like. The fact Paragon is selling IO's (some of which have been demonstrably proven to be better than their in-game-obtainable counterparts) bothers me a great deal.
That being said, with this stance I feel you're only going to hurt the Kheld community. When I first started playing my Warshade I found the builds others had posted to be invaluable in learning the AT and designing a build that both worked for me and keyed on the AT's strengths. For the sake of helping newer Khelds to learn the ins and outs, I do hope you'll reconsider. -
Quote:I forgot about the buffs, thanks for pointing that out. But isn't DFB "Death from Below" and DIB is "Drowning In Blood"?Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
Also of note concerning DfB, which is short for Drowning in Blood btw:
3 badges available for defeating the AV's in specific ways.
4 nice buffs available for completion. Buff to damage, accuracy, defense or recovery.
These buffs are global and last until level 22!
Needless to say, since the levels flow like candy inside the mini-trial, and it's dev sponsered PLing (they even dropped trainers at each interval!) a great deal of the player base now use it exclusively to level from 1-20's in 4 or 5 runs. Some even use it to go 1-50, as the xp never diminishes.
Runs take about 20-30 minutes. Less if you've got a good bit of damage/ aren't badging. -
Quote:Basically yeah, DFB is the new "sewer run" of the old days, but with one big caveat: the mobs drop lowbie SO's. The XP is also crazy good, so some folks run it like mad rather than do missions. There's also some badges you can get from doing it. I found it entertaining, though I have no real desire to spam run it like some people do. You should give it a try when you get a chance.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
In game for about 60 seconds and I get an invite to a "DFB team"- is DFB the new Sewer team?
I won't be on for long so I politely decline and head for my contact.
The new waypoints are nice.
With regard to the DFB drops: Honestly at this point the Devs should just scrap the TO/DO system in my opinion. They've shown with DFB they don't really think SO's on sub-22 characters are overpowered, so just do it already. That's really the only axe I have to grind these days, which is saying something given my track record. (Hey at least I'm honest.) And that's the end of my minor threadjack, sorry I've been holding that in for a couple weeks now.
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Quote:I can see where it would be; I just couldn't see /Ice for this particular character concept.Originally Posted by Jibikao
I think Spine/Ice has great potential. That's a massive amount of -slow debuff.
As an update: I've gotten my new Spines/EA to 23. So far he's an absolute blast to play. I love what the Devs have done with Stalkers. -
Quote:I can understand that. The Devs have made it clear from the get-go they were approaching iTrial design a little differently than the rest of the game.Originally Posted by Mokalus
I suppose I should make it clear, when I was writing that, I was mostly thinking about incarnate trials, since we just came out of a 2XP weekend with a lot of fresh 50s. On my server at least, the results were somewhat less than impressive even on the easier trials. I'm not complaining about people wanting to get incarnate powers for their new 50s or whatever, I'm just saying that a lot of people underestimated just how much was needed to contribute.
One person bringing an under-performing character to a team of +3s is probably not going to make a noticable drop in overall performance, but the more of them you get, the more obvious things become. My point with regards to the original topic is that having tier 3 Destiny/Lore and not using them certainly isn't helping these situations. -
Quote:The thing is though, the performance threshold you're talking about is actually pretty low in this game. I can't speak to iTrials as I don't run them, but for the vast majority of encounters in this game being min-maxed with all the "right" power choices isn't really necessary. As long as someone's build isn't truly gimped (using only TO's at 50 for example) it really won't make much difference.Originally Posted by Mokalus
To an extent. I always build for theme, and even though I pretty much never write out backstories and bios I always like to have an idea of a character's history and personality. But at the same time, I would never go to the same extent you've listed:
I guess my main beef with this is that you are limiting yourself in group content. There's a certain...performance threshhold that needs to be achieved in order to succeed, and stopping yourself short just because you feel like it means that everyone else has to pick up the slack, there's no upside beyond satisfying your private RPing impulses.
My general rule is that solo or in a preformed group of like-minded friends, you're free to do whatever you want, but in endgame team content, especially PUGs, you should always be bringing your A game (at least, relative to the capabilities of the character you are wanting to work on at the time). I admit that this idea is actually a carryover from older (and much harder) MMOs that I used to play, but I think the spirit of the rule still stands. -
Quote:I get what you're saying, and this isn't the first time the conventions of an MMO have head-butted with the conventions of comic books in this game. Let's take a comic book character like Colossus of the X-Men. Super strong, and virtually indestructible. At first glance you might think he would be a Tanker in this game, but Tankers do not have the damage output to properly represent him, so a Brute would be better to represent how devastating he can be in a fight. But Brutes don't really have the degree of survivability to properly represent him either unless you do a high end build using IO's.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
To me, the definition of power is twofold.
Your ability to exert your will on your environment and your ability to resist the environment exerting itself on you.
It terms of super heroes, being tough enough to take whatever is thrown at you, and the ability to wreck their *****. But too much of one at the cost of too little of the other can be as bad as having neither. If you're a glass cannon dieing every spawn, I don't see how that can feel powerful. If you're a stone wall, slowly chipping away at an enemy, that doesn't feel powerful either.
That is why I think the majority of players stick to the middle and why ATs on the fringes are less popular and can't be designed by spreadsheet as easily as some people think.
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And that, I think, is where your argument starts losing steam. If I've understood correctly what you really want Tankers to be, then making them that would completely unbalance the game. If Tankers became these high powered combatants and still enjoyed the same survivability they have today, why would anyone in their right mind play any other melee AT? Then we'd have folks on these boards yelling for more Scrapper/Stalker/Brute improvements, which would then lead people to feel Tankers weren't as special any more, and the whole cycle would start up again.
That being said, I wouldn't be opposed to Tankers being given something like what Defenders got: a damage buff that scales downward the more people they have on a team. This would help them solo more effectively (because goodness knows if you do wind up having to solo on a Tanker it can be mighty dull at times) but they wouldn't be stepping all over the toes of the other melee AT's on a team. I just think that a straight up damage boost all the time would be a bad idea for balance reasons. -
Quote:The question is valid, I'm afraid.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
You damn hippies. If you hate America so much, move to another country!
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If the Brute AT really is what you want out of your game play why in the world are you fussing around on Tankers? Is it the small handful of sets Tankers get that Brutes don't? I've been trying to keep an open mind about your arguments Johnny, really I have, but you're starting to not make a lot of sense to me. -
Quote:Sounds awesome. Thanks for the advice.Originally Posted by Brennivin
EA is a lot of fun and, with the new changes, is also very very good.
Also, grabbing burnout and Ageless for six minutes of Overload is absolutely hilarious.
Now to start messing around in Mids.
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Quote:That was basically my problem, the options I was looking at all looked good on paper to me. I think I'll give EA a go. I like the "toolkit" it has and it also has the virtue of being totally new to me (I've never gotten around to making an EA on any AT).Originally Posted by Brennivin
Energy Aura, Nin, SR and WP are all good choices.
I have a Spines/Elec stalker and that's pretty fun, but probably less survivable than the other four options there. -
So I'm getting ready to roll up my second stalker. I love my DM/Nin to absolute pieces, and decided I wanted more Stalker love on my account.
I've settled on Spines as my primary. I've got a bio, name, and costume that all work perfectly for it. My only problem is I cannot decide on a secondary. With my concept any secondary but Ice will work, so that leaves me with the number crunching aspect of it.
What's a good secondary for Spines? Nin? EA? WP? (I'd like to avoid Regen, I just don't care for it, and as mentioned Ice is right out due to concept). -
Crab: Operative Thorn
Bane: Gravebane
Fortunata: Fortune's Widower
I don't have a Widow yet, but the fortunata's name could really serve for both using dual builds I suppose. -
Quote:This right here.Originally Posted by Redlynne
"STUPIDITY" should never be used for justification of Game Balance.
End of Line.
MM pets having horrible AI is not a feature, it is a bug. I laugh every time I see people try to defend the horrible coding we are stuck with by saying that it is the "balancing factor" of the AT.
Edit: More on topic, my "one thing" would be AI improvements. -
I went with Time since I had not yet tried that set out.
So far, Time seems to work very well with Beasts. The all melee nature of the pets synergizes perfectly with Time wanting to be in melee. -
I cancelled my account some time back because of how strongly I opposed the raid grind culture I felt was developing at the time. In my exit survey I said I would only come back if/when we got a non-trial Incarnate path (at that time the Devs had not actually confirmed it was ever coming).
Well when I saw that Issue 22 was live I put my money where my mouth is and came back to try it out. I have not regretted that decision. This is definitely a very well done Issue. -
Quote:This, combined with the legions of players that just HAVE to read my fortune while I'm posting auctions, is why I don't ever actually go to WW's/BM any more. I just use the /auctionhouse command.Originally Posted by _eeek_
This is why I've given up and shut the sound off completely. Just 1 minute in WW's with a demon summoner (provided I can GET into WW's with a demon summoner) is enough to make me want to choke the snot out of someone. This is not a heroic mindset to continue my adventures in saving the world!
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I like the sound of the Umbra Beat's howl. It seems spooky enough. I do agree that it does it a bit too much at times. But that bark has got to go. It doesn't fit the flavor description of the thing at all. In fact, the bark has caused me to dub mine "Death Lassie." What's that, Death Lassie? Little Timmy got eaten by Mot? Well go rescue him girl!
