cohRock

Should the NCSoft Launcher be using 17% of my CPU power, even when it's minimized in the tray? To be fair, I see it use from 10% to 17%, but weighted strongly toward the high end of that scale.

Excellent.

.. or maybe it was the patch before that; I don't remember for sure. Various weirdnesses can happen:

• certain power icons go invisible in power trays
• the power icons stay visible, but the circling effect on toggles disappears
• certain inspirations go invisible in inspiration tray
• colors for certain GUI items disappear
• some text gets garbled, as if some parts of characters are missing, and parts that shouldn't be filled in, are. This one is really weird, because only some of the text lines might be effected. For example, upon quitting, the window comes up with 3 choices. I've seen two of the choices be garbled, and one of them perfectly normal.
• floors can start looking like water, or walls disappear. The invisible walls essentially force a restart of game, because when you are in a room and can't tell where door is, you are essentially stuck.
• not sure, but I seem to crash more often once the GUI goes whacky

These effects don't happen at the same time. Usually its just one effect, but sometimes two of them are present at once. The /unloadgfx and /reloadgfx commands don't help. Sometimes, opening the Store will fix the GUI once the freeze period ends. The GUI is always fine when I start, but after 20 minutes or so the wonkiness might start. Sometimes the GUI behaves itself for an entire session.

None of my friends are seeing this, nor have experienced it. Has anyone else seen these effects? Do you know if there is a fix?

I have used the repair tool several times (sometimes consecutively), but it never seems to find a problem.

A long long time ago someone in game told me that having more endurance means you have more recovery too. His theory was that the time it takes to go from 0 endurance to max endurance is fixed, and implemented as a percentage of recovery per tick. I.e., if you gain 1% endurance per second, then it would take 100 seconds to go from 0 to your maximum of 100. But if your maximum was 105 or 110, it would still take 100 seconds to get to the max.

Another way to look at this is that gaining recovery is good (less total seconds), but gaining maximum endurance is even better. (I.e., more endurance gained per second, and higher endurance at the start of each fight.)

I've had no reason to doubt this theory, but I've also never had confirmation that it was true. Does anyone know for sure?

SR Tanks and Elude
=============
(SR tanks only; inapplicable to scrappers, brutes, and stalkers)

As the tier 9 power for SR tanks, Elude does not seem to be very useful. Tanks can already get past their defensive cap with just the toggles and passives. Additionally many builds just naturally add Combat Jumping, Maneuvers, Weave, and/or SteadfastProtection:Res/Def. Thus an SR tank might need a situational boost and not really have one.

While SR tanks were still unreleased from Beta, Arcanaville made a prediction -- within a year, SR tanks would get some form of healing. I hope she's right. Here's one idea for a new SR tier 9:

Eclipse
--------
1) Same "envelope" as Elude -- same recharge, duration, and endurance crash
2a) Within the envelope, acts as a slightly weaker Earth's Embrace (EE, Dull Pain with toxic resistance)
2b) 2/3 of values for EE's heal and HP boost, but its full toxic resistance
3) slottable with recharge, end reduction, healing, and resistance
4) 20% additional base recovery, not boostable with enhancements

If folk's want to keep Elude's run speed boost, I have no objection, but I'd be more than happy to trade it away for the extra recovery.

Darn. Just had to log in to the forums.

It was nice staying logged in for days, though.

Are you guys clicking the [Remember Me?] checkbox when you log in?

I started a free account on Saturday. I also bought the 99-cent VIP upgrade.

--> 99 cents, Saturday

On Sunday I spent $5 for 400 points to get the Martial Arts Booster (mainly for Ninja Run).

--> $5.99, Sunday

On Monday I spent $15 for 1320 points to get the Jump Pack, Mystic Fortune, Secondary Mutation, and Pocket D VIP pass.

--> $20.99, Monday

On Tuesday I spent $77 for the 6+1 month subscription special.

--> free account = $97

Well played, NCSoft. Well played!
--------

At the end of the subscription period, I intend to convert this account to Premium Status, and keeping my original account VIP. Before doing so, I'll likely spend another $20 for five character slots.

Could NCSoft be making as much money from the free accounts as the do the pre-existing subscriptions?

Wow, still logged in after 24 hours!

This early morning I spent $15 to buy 1320 more points. 1200 points showed up right away (400*3), but the bonus 120 points did not show up until i logged out, waited a few minutes, and logged back in.

That's when my token showed up as well. Note no plural! I had thought for each $5 spent, one received a token. But for $15 I only received one token. Is this correct? Does one need to purchase points in $5 quantities to get a token for each $5?

Is the VIP Starter Kit supposed to come with a Paragon Rewards token? I just activated mine on a 1-day old free account. The account did get a server transfer token and 400 Paragon Market points, but as of yet no Paragon Rewards token.

If it makes any difference, I had spent, while free to play, $5 extra dollars for 400 market points (to buy the Martial Arts pack with Ninja Run). That purchase did earn a rewards token, allowing the account to use chat and join supergroups.

Rereading the email NCSoft sent about the Black Friday sale, it does not specifically mention a token. I just assumed that the 1-month VIP status would earn one.
- - - - -

My plan is to remain VIP long enough to achieve Tier 4 of the Paragon Rewards tree, both thru monthly fee and buying stuff I miss, like Mystic Fortune and the Jump Pack. Except for the on-sale Martial Arts pack, I could not find any of the other "Booster Packs" in the market. Can you still get the sets of things, or must you buy a la carte?

Good answers.

Major Decoy failed to mention the complete Granite STaPYN combo:

* Granite, Rooted, and Mudpots

Even more regen, and nigh impossible for a group of +4 non-AV, non-psi foes to mez or defeat. Plus you're taunting and doing some damage.

Golly! I gotta nominate a combo for the best Stand There and Pick Your Nose powers. An Ice/Time controller can simultaneously run the Arctic Air and Time's Juncture toggles, tremendously nerfing all foes within 25 feet. Let's see:

Arctic Air
* confuse, -speed, -recharge
* 2 end reduction, 1 slow, 2 confuse, and Malaise' Illusion:chance for psi damage

Time's Juncture
* -damage, -speed, -toHit
* 2 end reduction, 1 -toHit, and 1 slow (perhaps superfluous)

Frozen in Time is level 34 currently and thru judicious slotting he doesn't even have an endurance problem running those toggles full mission. (And he doesn't pick his nose that often, really!)

Plus he has Farsight fully slotted, giving he and his teammates extra full-time defense and toHit. To top it all off, at level 44 he'll be taking World of Confusion from the Psionic Mastery epic pool, adding more confuse within an 8-ft radius, plus minor damage-over-time.

Any comment, or challengers to the best STaPYN powers?

I'm confused by this thread. The training room was up, or was 2 days ago when I logged on to find the characters had been replaced by a copy of Freedom.

I've been active on the test server for 5 years. In that time, I've made a number of native Test Server characters, built up an SG (The Petri Dish), did actual testing, and had fun. I knew that NCSoft reserved th right wipe the server of all characters at any time, but year after year you didn't. In fact, several years ago you wanted to run a special test, saved everyone's characters, SG's, etc, ran your test, and several days later restored the server back. So I felt fairly confident you'd have a good reason if you ever did need to permanently wipe it.

Logging on this evening, I saw that my characters were gone, replaced by the two underdeveloped guys I have on the Freedom server. Is this a temporary state, or has the test server gone "beta" in that everything can go away on a moment's notice, or with no notice at all?

<Posts, knowing that there will be at least 5 responses that I should not have wasted my time on the test server in the first place.>

Thanks for the reassurance. This evening we were successful, and my guy earned Task Force Commander.

We're going to try this again this evening. Sure would be nice to know if anyone has been able to complete the Manticore TF since i21.

Thanks, Dromio. You answered my question, even if it were awkwardly asked.

Metal Mettle is live on Infinity now. He's reached level 20. Since he is in active SG and almost always teams, he went with a build front-loaded with protection. All of my guys take Recall Friend at a relatively low level, so he sacrificed Smite to fit it in.

1) Shadow Punch
1) Focused Fighting
2) Focused Senses
4) Shadow Maul
6) Practiced Brawler
8) Leaping:Combat Jumping
10) Fighting:Boxing
12) Agile
14) Dodge
16) Evasion (includes taunt aura)
18) Siphon Life
20) Taunt

The Stamina and Health inherent powers have been 3-slotted. He also has 3 veteran attacks.

The remaining build is likely to be:

22) Fighting:Tough (delayed for SOs in Stamina)
24) Recall Friend
26) Quickness
28) Lucky
30) Soul Drain
32) Fighting:Weave
35) Dark Consumption
38) Midnight Grasp
41) Energy Mastery:Conserve Power
44) Energy Mastery:Physical Perfection
47) Hasten
49) Super Jump, Super Speed, or ?

What would you take at 49? Any other suggestions?