TwilightPhoenix

Figures. Next time I run it I'll make sure to warn everyone. At least that stun can be shaken off much quicker and doesn't cause something like 2,000 points of damage.

Heh, ran it yesterday and used my BS/SR Scrapper as the team's tank. Worked out really well, though I died three times to Reichs because, as I learned the hard way, he can stun through Practiced Brawler. I got stunned like that about eight times, and the three deaths I had was when I couldn't stumble away fast enough before he smacked me again while my defenses were mez suppressed.

I need to find out how high that stun magnitude is...

What I've heard is that the Range debuff will hit, even if the Taunt doesn't land. Also, you can stack the range debuff, enough to where you can force a Blaster to fight in melee range or not at all until it starts to wear off.

Also, in the arena, you can Confront someone off an almost dead target so you can steal their kill and point.

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Thank you for volunteering to be the Veng bait.

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My Scrappers make very, very, very poor Vengeance bait, even without outside buffs. My Blaster or Corruptor without outside buffs, however...

Unless I'm misreading you, that's what someone asked me, not what I'm asking. I wasn't too surprised by the question since most Khelds I see never use anything outside of Nova form.

"Wait, you don't have to be a squid?"

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They're not good with the speed because they don't have any experience with moving so quickly. If you don't SB them against their will, however will they learn?

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Super Speed? Play too many Sonic games?

I have two catgirls, both done for concept reasons, and a ratgirl, made simply to be different from all the kitties and empaths during the Mac Open Beta. I rarely get comments about it unless I bring it up, usually when I'm on the rat and making a comment about the team's catgirl. The only I can remember was when one of my cats got recruited to a team the leader said they needed a "feline touch". If people want to stereotype me based on those three characters... well, that's their fault.

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Honestly, TwilightPhoenix, take one step backward and look at how stupid that sounds.

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It got your attention, did it not (along with everyone else's)? Then the words I chose did their job. Things that sound silly can be quiet effective at grabbing attention and generating discussion.


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You do know softcap is only 45% defense, and with that it only means that an even level minion has a 5% chance to hit you, anything above that they get better. So I wouldn't turn down any buffs.

My DB/SR scrappers sits at 58% defense in all positions, if I get lucky enough to get on a team with a bubble defender, I ask them to keep bubbles up on me, makes me have perma crashless Elude (also justifies me for not taking it either.)

I don't care if the power makes me have smelly line that make my toon look like it stinks, a well slotted FF/ Defender can softcap a whole team and not getting hit is better than any type of heal.

I have never been blessed enough on any of my toons to be on a team with 2 FFs I would want to try that one day.

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I know, I'm familiar with how defense works. Anything from 0 to +5 will have no ToHit Bonus against a player. LTs get a 1.15 accuracy modified, Bosses, EBs, and Snipers a 1.3 modifier, and GMs, AVs, and Monsters a 1.5 modifier. With no other buffs, that 1.5 modifier results in 7.5% ToHit chance for that critter against 45% or higher defenses, as opposed to 5%. And that value is floored there because, as I guess and may be wrong, the order the game figures hits (I think accuracy is calculated after defense is applied against ToHit, I'm horrid at reading algebraic formulas). There's only specific instances where more defense is helpful in the PvE game: defense debuffs (which SR can pretty much ignore with 95% resistance, every one else needs to be more wary) and ToHit buffs (Vanguard in general, Rularuu Eyes, Nemesis Vengeance, etc.) Outside of those, defenses higher than 45% does nothing but look pretty. Now, if you're running MA content where Build-up, Aim, Targeting Drone, etc. are frequent, more defense can be helpful. Though when a mob pops any sort of temporary To-Hit buff power, I generally back away until it wears off if they can hit me hard enough for it to matter.

More defense is, however, useful in PvP, at least to some degree. But this is because not only is there no softcap in PvP due to ToHit and Accuracy slotting, but also because DR will drop 45% defense to around 33%, at least on a Scrapper.

Additionally, the softcap is perma-crashless Elude, sans the movement speed and recovery. Elude grants 45% defense to all positions. My Scrapper skipped it as well. While as cool as jumping up to 90% defense is for three minutes, it's not helpful and between my slotting and Conserve Power, I have limitless endurance. The movement speed would be nice, but I'm not going to suffer a end/recovery crash for that.

If you don't trust my information, please feel free to check with the Scrapper forums. This page is also helpful and is where I double checked for looking up my mob To-Hit and Accuracy modifiers.

I've run teams before. I've kicked the good player who was causing problems before. Usually the team is grateful and performs better once the blimp-sized ego is gone. And that person usually isn't the only one providing the buffs and debuffs, since I try to recruit several defender/controllers as opposed to just one. I've never ran a team that wasn't successful before (not counting my noob days when I didn't know what I was doing), even when half of them were incompetent.

Huh, you know? Based on a few posts about buffing them harder if they ask for them not to, next time a Cold Dom buffs me when I ask them not to on purpose (which is usually never, only toon of mine right now that gets almost no benefit is my softcapped /SR Scrapper), I'm going to quit moving and start shouting something to the effect of "Help! The Cold Dom froze me in place! I can't move!"

Even if I get kicked, it'd be worth it.

Though speaking of kicking, if someone was giving people buffs on purpose they didn't ask for and I was the leader, I'd kick them. A team that's getting along and cooperating is worth much more than a malicious buffer, no matter how good they are.

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I think said poster was referring to Shadow Fall

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Yes. Shadow Fall doesn't bother me as much because it's not as obscuring as Cold Domination and not bad enough to prevent me from rolling a Dark if I was ever hit by the urge. Cold Dom however... yeesh. It looks fun, but I don't want to obliterate everyone's costumes. If the ice shields were less overbearing, I'd probably roll one up pretty quickly. I also have that same issue with Ice Armor and Stone Armor (mainly Granite). Firery Aura and Thermal get a free pass because I actually think their shields/armors look awesome.

Pseudo-QR... or more accurately a quick quote and reply...

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I think you're missing the point. If the team is softcapped for Defense, they will NEVER need a powers like Detention Field, Repulsion Field, Force Bolt, and Force Bubble.

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Not true. A number of custom critters have access to Build-Up, Aim, Targeting Drone, and other methods of giving significant to-hit buffs. Some also mad significant defense debuffs that can't be avoided, like Radiation toggles. In normal foes, you have a few mobs with higher to-hit values (such as Vanguard), loads of defense debuffs that can cascade that soft-capped defense (almost every enemy group, Romans in particular), auto-hit defense debuffs (Crey Radiologists, Scirroco, etc.), massive to-hit buffs (most notably stacked Vengeance Nemesis), non-positional attacks (Mind Control), non-typed attacks (not sure any exist outside of Hami and things that are supposed to hit you anyway, like burning building explosions), and, the rarest but biggest threat, auto-hit attacks (Rommy's Pet Mire Nictus). There's other threats to high defenses too, like Streak Breaker, but I doubt I can remember them all off the top of my head. In those instances, that's where Cold throws around its slows and end drains and FF knocks enemies on their back, stuns them, and keeps them at bay. Which method is better is a subject for debate that I don't feel like getting into.

As for the four specifically mentioned powers I quoted, the latter four are good for herding and controlling mob positioning and useful for keeping the not-softcapped FF Defender alive. They also have other, less seen uses such as covering someone using Rest, keeping foes away from the Terra Volta Reactor Core, keeping repair men away from Lord Recluse's towers, and things of that nature. Detention Field is the trickier power to use properly, but it's great for taking out support/annoying enemies from the fight, like Sky Raider Force Field Generators, Tsoo Sorcerers, and etc. Or taking out Nemesis LTs so they don't die first and buff the entire spawn. Or for dealing with foes that like murdering defense-based protection, like that auto-hit Nictus (and stopping the healing Nictus for that matter). Whether Detention Field lasts too long or not depends on both the team and the particular fight. Though, if you're steamrolling, you're not going to need most of your powers anyway regardless of what powerset you're playing.

I have this issue with cold and dark buffs, but I never ask for them to not be given to me. Though I tend to make a remark about how I think they're ugly, but want them anyway.

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Hopefully I16 will let us customize every little prop the characters use as well as colors, like the Targeting Drone, Aid Self tricorder, bana... err... spines, etc. Not expecting it, however, outside of the currently non-customizable weapon sets, such as, again, Spines.

[/ QUOTE ]The problem with making Spines customizable is that they have to make animations customizable first; the projectile spines can't be changed by the weapon customization we already have, since they're part of the animation. And I doubt we're getting any animation customization in I16, so the best you can hope for, I think, is red bananas.

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I'm aware of that, just hoping they'll take the step to customizing the few "weapon" powersets that can't be customized because of projectiles and the like, such as Spines, hammers in Stone Melee, fire swords, ice swords, etc.

Hopefully I16 will let us customize every little prop the characters use as well as colors, like the Targeting Drone, Aid Self tricorder, bana... err... spines, etc. Not expecting it, however, outside of the currently non-customizable weapon sets, such as, again, Spines.

Personally, I'd like to see a buff to Titan-Os and Hydra-Os so they're even worth touching, namely work like IOs so they can be used by 50s.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's an option to disable other people's customization on your screen if it looks like it'd be a problem. I.E, don't want pink fire on you? Turn off other player customization and it turns normal.

Of course, pure speculation on my part.

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And that's where the months of coding and testing come in. What? You think they just start cutting and pasting modules together like Binary LEGOs?

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No, of course not. Just sloppily throwing around code could result in an in-game player, it obviously would be pretty terrible if just Legoed together. However, they already do have the existing code to work from to copy what can be copied, modify what would need to be modified, and write in new code where needed. People write these kinds of things as little programs from scratch in a reasonable time frame all the time. In their spare time. By themselves. I doubt Mid and SuckerPunch were working on their planners 8 hours a day every weekday (assuming the standard work day at NCSoft is 8 hours). If the devs decided to do a planner, they'd take a few guys, sit them down, and tell them to make one and, unless they added a bunch of fancy features like letting you test drive your planned character in the MA or something like that, I'm certain they could hash out a planner quite quickly and it could be ran through the Test server for bug hunting and player input.

So if time isn't the issue, why haven't they done it? It could be opportunity cost. If I remember, one of the Devs, Positron or Castle I think, mentioned that their whole focus was recently on the MA. That's likely true for GR, enough that, according to Castle, if the Dominator changes weren't done now, they wouldn't be until I17 or later. And considering signs are pointing to GR being I16, that's very easily to believe. They may also choose not to create one because it may give the impression the game is about min/maxing, when it's not. Or perhaps they feel it would be underutilized? Or maybe they think Mid's is enough (though it's not when you're, like me, a Mac user without a way to run Windows). Unless a developer comes in and says why, we won't know. However, I doubt time on its own and, in particular, a major exclusion of other content would be the driving factors behind not doing one.

It's never the blind invites that bother me, it's the people who send a tell and then immediately invite without waiting for a response. This seems to be a growing trend, with most of those doing it asking if I want to do AE.

Another thing that bothers me, though is purely bad luck and not anyone else's fault, is that nobody ever sends me tells asking if they want me to team with them until I feel like standing around and chatting with friends instead of doing stuff.

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Players really do need to just play the game and stop worrying about how fast other people are leveling and stuff its petty.

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I'll quit worrying about how fast other people are leveling when they quit sending "will u pl me" tells to my 50s.

You can also get the 35 and higher enhancements from the Midnighters and Cimerora, no mission required. Two more reasons why having those contacts demand you do something for them to get a common goody is a bit silly. You can also buy SOs with merits and tickets, though that arguably requires missions, just not directly.

I don't think it'd takes months of testing. They could really let you do it fairly easily by mixing and matching pre-existing features. They could let you plan the build respec style, let you turn on and off your powers (or assume they're always on) via a power tray, let you get the enhancements you need vendor style, and let you view your stats through Real Numbers. In theory, all they'd need is an interface, a way to save the build, and a way to look it up in-game.

Of course, practice would be a bit more complicated than theory, but technically all the tools are already there, it's just the matter of combining them.

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Confront and Taunt are autohit in PvE, but the power pool taunts have always had a hit check in PvE.

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...doh, I always get all those Taunt powers mixed up, Taunt itself aside. Though, the fact saying things to someone can miss never made much sense.

"I'm sorry, that insult went completely over my head! Could you repeat it please?

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Give Provoke 1 extra slot and put an accuracy and a taunt in it (or leave it with the default and put an Acc/Taunt from a set in it)

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Provoke is an auto-hit in PvE and therefore doesn't need accuracy. The accuracy is only helpful for PvP. I have Provoke on my BS/SR and put the stun proc in it for kicks and giggles (and because it was stupid cheap). The Psi damage proc would have been better, but I didn't want to spend a few million on for fun item when I have more important things to get.