Vardra

For an alternative look at the situation, let's consider what happens if we average across a larger number of activations.

There are a number of different procs with a 10% chance to activate - alas, none of them (that I can find with a three second search) are simple damage dealt procs; I'll pick two examples here, and you can apply similar logic to whatever your actual case is.

Consider first Entropic Chaos: Chance to Heal. That's a 10% chance to recover 5% of your (unenhanced, I think) health. So, on average, each one returns half a percent of health per power activation; for five of them, that'd be 2.5% healed over whatever the time of your attack sequence is. For a blaster, at level 50, you'd be looking at about 30 hit points per five powers.

Consider second, Pounding Slugfest: Disorient Bonus. That's a 10% chance for a mag 2 stun for 10 seconds. Let's assume that your powers are slow, and across those five powers you average two seconds of activation time per power. (Why? Because it makes the math easier.) So - against something that can be stunned by a mag two effect, how much of the time is this up? Well, at any given point in time, the target will be not stunned if (and only if) all five prior procs failed to fire. This would be the 59% chance listed above. So, once you get rolling, your target is stunned 41% of the time. Or, in other words, chance of target not being stunned is .9^N, where N is the average number of power activations you can fit into ten seconds. Yes, this may not be a whole number; the formula works regardless.

How does this change against a lieutenant or boss? Well, step one: if the stun doesn't stack with itself, you're suddenly out of luck, as your mag two won't do anything.

Note that it probably doesn't stack, in which case the remainder of this post is an exercise in excessive math and can be safely ignored.

If it does stack, though... well, you need a mag three (lts) or four (boss) effect. Which means you have to have had the proc go off at least two times out of the last five. So... we know the chance of no procs going off. What's the chance of exactly one proc going off?
Well, for five powers, this would be .1*.9*.9*.9*.9 + .9*.1*.9*.9*.9 + ... - aka, the chance that the first proc succeeds and all the others fail, plus the chance that the second proc succeeds and all the others fail, plus, etc.
Or, more generally, N*.1*.9^(N-1)
In this case, it'd be about 33%. So, 33% + 59% = 92% that one or zero procs activate, and 8% chance that two or more activate. Adjust N as needed for your powers, and you can figure out how often, on average, you'd have an at least double proc.

My (totally subjective) experience: Redside does seem to be worse. unloadgfx does seem to help, though it's hard to tell if that's real or a placebo effect. Turning texture settings to minimum (for both environment and characters) helps a lot - that one change alone makes me go from crashing every three zones or so to more like five to ten. Annoying. I like high quality textures, and my computer can handle them fine - but I'll take low res textures if that's the price for being able to actually play.

And the Rikti War Zone indoor area at the start is absolutely horrible. Lag everywhere as it tries to load everything on the fly.

Hm. This does sound interesting. It also has a chance to squash my current niche - bidding low on a wide range of levels where nothing is for sale, then turning around and putting the crafted result up for enough that it'll actually stay on the market for a day or two. Huge profit margin, low turnover, and would be completely killed by other folks being able to put in decent bids across even a large chunk of the level range.

You'll also need to work out what your price is if the bid *isn't* filled.

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The level range is like that for the same reason you face such a nasty boss in the first mission. Limited choices for a boss. Legacy Chain bosses in the low levels cover levels 5-9 (Or maybe 10?) and 10-14. There is nothing that covers from 5-14. Since I can't use a Lt. I had to choose one of those ranges, and keeping the top seemed like a better idea to me and some friends I checked with. (Yes, I can set the levels of the mission to 5-14 anyway, but then a level 5 will run into a level 10 final boss. This seemed like a very bad idea. )

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I believe that you actually can set a lieutenant or even a minion as a boss. The trick is to make a custom group that contains just that one enemy.
At least, this is what I think I recall from my own experimentation. I can't check right now, so it's entirely possible that I'm wrong.

I think there's also a "use random boss" option, which might fix the level range issue - especially if paired with a custom group that contains only the bosses you're willing to have show up.

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only DN has -tohit. the others are -acc

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Really? Huh. Looking it up on ParagonWiki, it does say -accuracy for gloom and dark obliteration - but the link at the bottom to see the actual numbers on cov.redtomax.com shows -toHit for all of them.

I wonder what the actual in game numbers display shows? I may have to test this at some point.

I have an energy melee / willpower brute; I took Mu powers at first because I liked the looks, but have recently (at level 47) switched to soul mastery. So, my experience is limited, and you should take the rest of this post with a grain of salt. Your mileage may vary. Etc.

For me, the end drain on mu powers was basically useless - with no other source of end drain, it simply didn't help, which left me with just damage. For you, with electric melee, the end drain may (if you're actually draining things dry) prove a more useful damage mitigator than the to-hit penalties from soul mastery.

Soul Mastery - For starters, I'm not defense capped. Nor do I expect I'll ever have enough inf lying around to become so. Thus, for me, the to-hit penalties on gloom, dark obliteration, and darkest night, provide a noticeable boost to survival. If you're defense capped (or plan on being so) then you're left with just the damage penalty applied by darkest night - and I wouldn't think that's strong enough to justify taking soul over mu.

Of course, the end drain on darkest night is fairly high - so I use it to cover my weaknesses rather than as a constant effect.
Namely, I use it as an alpha absorption mechanism: Open with darkest night on a minion. It provides its bonus for the alpha, the minion dies, and it hasn't cost me much endurance at all.
Darkest Night also makes a nice emergency survival buff - willpower has no heals, but with its regeneration, the sudden dropoff in damage darkest night provides is usually enough for me to recover from near death.

Bug: The code to down-level mobs that are above the mission's level range will only bring them down to the maximum level for the mission.

So, for example. Suppose I put a boss that's normally level 20+ into a mission that's set to 6-14. That boss will spawn at level fourteen. Always. Even if you're coming in on a level six character.

((Warning. Spoilers ahead.))
Hm. Not much info in the initial broadcast. But the lure of tangible reward is enough to set me on this path...

My contact is "Red Moron". Well, at least he's honest about it. Odd... He seems reasonably intelligent... Oh, wait, my mistake - that's "Moran," with an 'a'. Sad; I was hoping for truth in advertising.
Anyway, he wants me to complete a simulated trial of some sort. I've seen the AE work before - simulated it may be, but they've got virtual blood real enough to feed my magic, so it should be fun regardless.

Step one: Defeat Guro Kulog. Now that name sounds like it belongs to a moron. ...No, I don't believe in "political correctness" - why do you ask?

I find some crates. Unfortunately, some stinging nettles - a quick check of the power analyzer informs me that it's a three stack of "Stone Prison," keeps interrupting my concentration. Presumably from that earth-based fighter I just killed. Man, does this stuff ever go away? Ah, not until I find the second such warrior hiding at the far end of the room. I'm not used to people noticing me from quite that far off. Now, about those crates...

Odd bits of metal. How dull. Still, must be worth something if a whole pack of these fighters feels obliged to attempt to stop my perusal. I take the time to carefully critique their combat style before ripping their throats out and moving on. It seems only polite to let them know why they're dying.

I find Guro Kulog. I've arrived early for my funeral? No, he must be mistaking me for someone else. Amazingly, he actually has a little bit of talent; I am slightly out of breath by the time I put him down. Now then... there must be something else informative in this dump.

Hm. War mace with a spider motif? Meh. Boring. I hear movement further on, though - more people to kill. Yay! Ooh, and this one has the key to a secret door? Fun, fun. ((I get *two* clues saying I found a key and a secret door. Err, right then? Is that two doors? Two keys to one door? Honestly, I think one of these clues should just be removed.))

* * * * *

So! Onwards! A hologram of Moran shows up. Yammers something about what's coming. Alas, the simulation doesn't let me attack him, so I just keep going. He yells some parting poetry at me - something about hitting cats with lightning? I ignore it.

Guro Dahon! Just ahead! I hope this fight is interesting. What? Armor piercing round? My only weakness!
I jest - Dahon falls in no time flat. ((I'd make this boss goal complete after just killing the boss instead of the boss plus group - I had an enemy who was apparently supposed to be part of the spawn who was, in actual fact, hiding some distance off.))

And a rescue. How embarrassing - someone I have to leave standing? Oh, well; the simulation won't let me attack her so I suppose I'll play along. And hey, Arachnos! Clearly here to complain about someone copying their mace designs. I help them find the complaints department - a.k.a. the floor.

...And more arachnos, and yet more arachnos. Where are they coming from? They're like roaches, crawling into all the places I've cleared. Oh, well. Kill them all, ignore the threats of dire repercussions, and move on.

* * * * *

I ignore Moran again; I need no visions of the future to help me figure out the present. And my present objective: Destroy all in my path! Fun, right?

Dahon again? Didn't I kill you once already? ...That was just a flesh wound. I see. Well, I won't make the same mistake twice. You're going down!
...Arachnos will kill you? What do you think I'm doing, lady? Geez, no respect.

One last Guro. This one actually makes me work for my kill. Well... So really it's all his buddies - once I get him on his own, it's pretty smooth sailing.

More nattering from Moran. Wait. What was that about rebuilding Paragon City? I check the AE listing again - and there it is. This was supposed to be for heros. Oh, well. Not a bad workout, regardless, though I hope this doesn't ruin my chances at that reward...

* * * * *

((Fun arc. Well built, though with a few peculiarities I mentioned above. Text is all well written, and flows nicely, even if Vardra wasn't overly impressed.))

Running this again to take a look at the changes. This time with my brute, and on difficulty two. Should be interesting to see how the EB pans out for a melee type.

Mission one: The ambush triggers while I'm fighting a random battle earlier. Odd. The boss is at half health when I get to him - must've gotten attacked by a patrol or maybe a runner from that battle? I don't know. Very odd.

I still manage to find Striek first, but this time it's because Bartel was hiding - the actual placement of the two was appropriate.
Other than that, I like the mission much better this time around - it feels like there's more going on.
Exit text needs a spell check re: "hauls".

Hmph. Still can't solo that thing. Still trivial to kill with help - knockback for the win? Means it's probably tuned about right.
Exit dialog makes no sense, at least to me.
Why Astoria is explained! Yay!

Ahh, Legacy Chain just gets in the way. I play mostly red side, so I can totally agree with that. ;-)
...The Legacy Chain manages to win a battle, and then turns around and helps me against the boss. Astonishing. Not that I needed the assistance, of course.

Last mission goes pretty much the same.

So - definite improvement, but still some polishing that could be done. A few run on sentences, a few spots where the words don't flow quite right, but on the whole pretty solid now.

Worked fine for me.

I suppose I should check if they have by some strange miracle fixed the graphics-memory-related crash issue yet. I hate playing with textures turned all the way down, but it sure beats crashing every three zones or so.

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Oh crap, somebody just pointed out something I missed: Totems are level 25-30, not 20-29.

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Huh. So *that's* why that boss was a different color. I completely failed to notice. Well, ok, so that's probably because I was level 23, running on diff one, so it was just a +2 lieutenant.
Hm... Nope, only thing I can offer is to put in a /bug on the fact that high level mobs only scale down to a mission's max level, as opposed to its actual current level. (I.E. it'd work fine at any single level from 20 to 25 - but you run into problems when there's a range involved.)

I'd like to put in a vote *against* nasty non-required bosses.

Why?

Because we can't control exact spawn locations. Say that "non-required" boss spawns in a small corridor that you have to go through to get to the real objective. If you don't happen to have stealth, you're out of luck.
(Exception: if the boss doesn't appear until after the mission is complete, this is fine. Of course, that doesn't really work for rewarding the player for paying attention...)

Glowies or destructibles, on the other hand, would be entertaining. I'd put in a bit more of a hint, though, than just the mission send-off text - use the info for destructibles, or give the glowy a long activation time and an activation message that indicates it might be connected to an alarm...
If people aren't going to read, they won't read the second warning either. But if they just happened to zone out for a moment while reading the send off (or, worse, had to go do something else for a while before actually walking into the mission)...

Well, don't expect large heaps of logic - this has become a rather emotional issue and tends to go flame war anywhere it comes up. Here are the sides, as best I can tell:

Rabid AE farming fan: ZOMG! Don't tell me how to play! If I want to farm, I'll farm. If other people want to farm, they'll farm. AE changes nothing - I can farm without it - anyone can farm without it - so why complain about AE? I'll farm if I want to, and you can't stop me so nyeah!
(Alternatively, replace every instance of "farm" above with "PL" - shorthand for "power level", i.e. level at a pace beyond what can be achieved through normal play. Works just the same. Well, until you get the *really* rabid PL junkies who claim that power levelling *is* normal and everyone else is just an unoptimized snail.)

Rabid anti-AE activist: Aaugh! Why are there all these level 50 players running around who are totally clueless? How can someone be expected to learn the game when they get suckered into one AE farm mission and hit level 50? This is horrible! Doom! Death to AE, farming, and kheldians!


So, why would someone suggest removing the AE buildings from low level areas?
Because it's a good middle-of-the-road solution. Solution to what, you ask? Well, look here, for example. First few posts only - after a page or two it degenerates into the standard flame war.
Is this a perfect solution? No, of course not. But it addresses the issues that the anti-AE folks have brought up, and does so in a way that won't hurt anybody.

As for folks who PL themselves up and then shout "AE team forming, level XYZ+ only" - well, those would be hypocrites, yes. Roughly on par with the folks who, at level one, start an AE team and then demand that everyone else be 20+. They're also not the people on the forum posting that AE should be slightly less in your face from the moment you start playing - they're much more likely to be in the zomg don't tell me how to play camp.

Mission one:
Wow. A map where the battles are still in progress when I get to them. I've never seen that before.
I rescue a not-so-innocent victim. I want his hat! Alas, the costume gods have decreed it not to be.
The boss' name, while descriptive, feels a bit out of place. I think it's the "The". Maybe "Walking" instead, or some other slightly more descriptive term?
And, ouch, that ambush stings. Good thing I'm a resourceful little bat and can put them all to sleep. Good thing the ambush isn't required kill, too - pounding the boss down and hitting exit should be viable for most folks.

Mission two:
Mission entry message: "hear", not "here".
I rescue Officer Striek, and set him on fire. Ooh, he actually helps! Eat glue grenades, foolish enemies!
..And then I rescue Officer Bartel, who mentions that Striek is "somewhere further in". Oops. (For reference: Striek was at the very first intersection I came to; Bartel was at the raised area just before the last room.)
Clue from beating the boss should, I think, be two sentences. Just changing the comma into a period would make me happy.

Mission three:
I wonder if I can take this thing on my own? Owie. No, I can't. Oh, well; it's fine with the assistance provided. Well, and a few insps. Fortunately I had a break free on hand.
Debriefing: Why Astoria?

Mission four:
'Cause that's where the villain is heading, of course. I wonder how the contact knew that?
And why is Legacy Chain getting involved "it gets worse"?
Last sentence in the send off seems to flow a bit poorly. Perhaps replace "this stuff" with "the stuff", or chop off everything after that? Hm. Not sure.
Whoops, wrong button. Oh, well; sleeping tiki heads are amusing.
Avatar of Lughebu's initial text doesn't quite flow right, either. A bit of re-ordering might fix it - replace "soon" (at the start) with the end of the sentence, "once we combine...etc." Alternatively, just chop off that second bit I quoted and put in an exclamation mark.
Lots of glowies. Good thing they make noise and it's a small map; I find the last one without too much difficulty.

Mission five:
So now I have to stop a big ritual. Hm. There should've been more hints that this was coming up - I would've started dropping hints as early as the boss in mission two. Up 'till this point it looked like the main bad guy group was just looking at some small scale integration of new units, which they had successfully running. There wasn't any hint until the end of mission four that this was actually a grandiose plan to subvert the entirety of the energies in question.
Map entry: I'd replace "whatever" with "some" or even just "a".
More guys to rescue. They seem to have a bit of trouble following me, though; maybe they don't appreciate me setting them on fire? Oh, well. No big deal. Turns out the last boss isn't another EB, so I didn't need them anyway.
Hm. It occurs to me that someone might complain about the midnighter being there; I didn't feel it was out of place, but a simple mention might help. I mean, the contact does say he's calling in favors from all over the place - but it might be nice if he mentioned where. There are only two helpers in there, so it shouldn't cost much space or flow of text.


Overall impressions:
Nice, simple, good use of some unusual maps. Could use a bit more polish - especially more build-up to the last mission; it really felt like it came out of the blue. I mean, I was expecting to get sent in to shut down the villain doing all this, but the whole ritual angle was a surprise.

Final rating: 4.5 out of five. I think I'll round up, today.

Energy Melee. Sure, it's not bad for soloing, but the bigger the team gets, the less useful it becomes.

I won't list anything else, because that's the only one I've played enough to be familiar with.

Looks perfectly good to me. In fact, works quite well - you've even got a solid explanation for why you're back to level one - all your powers rely on tech devices that are now gone and you have to re-build your resources.

If I notice you in game I'll probably say hi; I've got at least a few characters that might be appropriate for some RP.

The really annoying part is that they've got code now that's supposed to scale higher level stuff down to the mission level. Unfortunately, it only scales to mission max level, so - where you should be getting level 39 elder vipers, you still get level 46s instead.

After writing the rest of this post, I remember: Isn't there a servant of Bat'zull boss in roughly that level range that kinda looks like one of the CoT's hordeling demons? That'd probably be a better choice than what I describe below.


It is possible to pick specific bosses from above the level range you want, and include them. However, this has some very serious issues: namely, they get scaled down only as far as the maximum level range for your mission. Which means they really only work if you limit the mission to one or two levels (i.e. 33-34, for example).

So, for example, if I make a mission with a level range of 11-33, include an elder cobra (snake boss, normally level 46-52), and walk in with a level 18 character... I see normal snakes at level 18 and 19, and one level 33 elder cobra.

It's also worth noting that, even when the level scaling works (I adjusted the above mission to stop at level 18 exactly), they're not kidding when they say some enemies won't scale right. Going in on difficulty one, so that elder cobra was now a level 18 lieutenant... and it walked up and cut off about 80% of my health in one hit. I managed to win anyway via munching insps and staying at range as much as possible (combined with the fact that it had relatively normal lieutenant level health)... but it was definitely somewhere in the boss to elite boss level of dangerousness.

If you can find a way to work around the first problem (maybe it scales right if you make your own custom group with just that mob in it? Maybe it scales right if you sacrifice a chicken on the next night of the full moon? I dunno.), and you take a boss that's only a few levels above the range in question, you should be good to go.

Thanks for the feedback - though I find it odd that you say you'd kick me for not having plasma shield, and then posit a revised build that still doesn't have plasma shield.

I guess I just haven't run into anything wielding particularly dangerous levels of fire/energy/negative damage; but if they're out there, then I'd agree plasma shield is worth having.

If knockback is going to be an issue, would a -knockback IO be an acceptable option in place of Acrobatics? I'm not going to burn three power slots on that; if I really have to have acrobatics, I'll drop fly and hover.

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Arcanatime

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...

...Gah. So all those fancy numbers we get in the game engine, all those built in calculations for damage per activation time... are all... wrong. That's truly evil.

Really, really, truly evil. And the sad part? It'd be trivial to fix. You just need to change what gets displayed to the user, after all, and computers are good at math.

I wonder what it says about me that this bothers me more than all the slow and clunky animations in EM?

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Just a minor nitpick on this point - once you account for server ticks not allowing you to start a new animation, Total Focus is the second best DPA in Energy Melee, and Bone Smasher slightly beats out Energy Punch.

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Huh. I was not aware of this - could you point me at somewhere with an explanation of this effect?

Take a look at this thread here. The arc number listed is probably wrong, but one of the later posts says it's been republished on live.

Relatively new player here, as well, but I've been enjoying my EM/WP brute; got her up to level 43 so far. However - the bigger the team gets, the worse she plays. Get five or more people on a team, and the combination of slow attacks and weak AoE means that I really don't feel like I'm contributing much.

On a small team, though - say, three or fewer - she's just grand fun; walk into a pile of enemies, pick them off one at a time, walk out with full health, endurance, and fury. Walk up to a boss or elite boss, stack up the random stun procs 'till it's staggering around, take it down. (Ok, so there are a few elite bosses that gave me trouble here and there. But that's what Strength of Will is for.)

Of course, "does well in very small teams / solo" is not a good niche to be in, but at least it's better than "doesn't do well at all".

My personal opinion is that ET is fine as is - it's an exceptionally strong attack, counterbalanced mostly by the long animation time. For me, the health cost is negligible, and I actually end up using ET to finish off targets (if said target is the last thing in a group) just because it's so cheap in terms of endurance. (Ok, it'd be nice if ET didn't cost me health if the target dies before the attack lands - but I don't care that much about the health cost, so this is a minor quibble.)

That's not to say the set doesn't need help, though. In particular, Barrage, Total Focus, and Whirling Hands could all use a little boost.

I'm not quite sure what I'd do about Barrage - it's the weakest attack in the set (in terms of damage per activation time); maybe if you bumped up the stun chance? I don't know. I skipped this power, and have never regretted doing so.

Total Focus is, oddly enough, the second weakest attack in the set, though this is possibly justified by its 100% chance of mag 3 stun. I used it as a heavy hitter at low levels when I didn't have a full attack chain; now I only use it if I want the stun, or if I have enough fury that it'll one shot a minion, and I'm considering respeccing to get rid of it entirely. Were I changing this power, I'd add a bit of AoE splash damage; perhaps something akin to Thunderstrike.

Whirling hands... could probably use a bit more damage, but the first thing I'd buff is its range. I've had it simply fail to hit enemies that I was busily trading melee hits with; even if this was just increased to a 10' AoE with no other changes, I'd be much happier with it. Alternatively, do two checks to see what's in range: one when the power is activated (for the standard "make melee powers actually usable on something that's running away" effect), and a second time when the activation actually finishes (so I don't completely wiff enemies that happen to have walked up during the last two and a half seconds).

8) Add a contact description.

Relative newbie here, and there are lots of powers in both sets that look shiny, so I'm looking for some advice on what to take (and when). I intend to primarily duo with a stalker, though I don't want to leave myself gimped for either solo or large group play. If you want to recommend specific IO sets, that's fine - but keep in mind that I can't afford to spend more than about 20 million inf on this (preferably much less), and, left to my own devices, will happily start frankenslotting at around level 22 and not worry too hard about the details.

Specific questions:
Am I gimping myself by not getting Plasma Shield? What about Power of the Pheonix? What about AoE attacks?
Are the leadership toggles actually worth using in a team of two, or would I be better off picking up something else?
Is there any particular patron pool that I should be aiming for (or should be avoiding)? What should I put in those last two power slots? (Not that I expect to be that high level any time soon, but I'll get there eventually...)

My current planned build:
1: shriek / warmth
2: scream
4: thermal shield
6: cauterize
8: shout
10: hover
12: swift
14: fly
16: health
18: siren's song
20: stamina
22: thaw
24: amplify
26: assault
28: forge
30: tactics
32: dreadful wail
35: heat exhaustion
38: melt armor
41: patron pool shield
44: patron pool hold
47: ???
49: ???