dave_p

So, is this thing going on?

So after a week of the new interface, I've gotten somewhat used to it and am taking advantage of the few good features, like auto-finding the salvage for recipes, and as much as it's a crappy feature, using the persistent prices when I put up similar items up for sale. Horribly dangerous, but when selling multiple, small items, can save some time.

I've gotten used to the multiple annoyances too, like having to unclick the autocomplete button and disabling the annoying warning messages. Every. Freaking. Time. Yes, I'm playing through the pain. I'm sure this won't affect my decision whether to renew my sub in a couple of weeks one bit.

I'm in for this, time permitting. I'm almost at the 600 mark w/my main badger (small-time among hard-core badgers, I know), and I don't have a single PvP badge yet.

Well, by my definition, which I believe fits closer to the origins of the term, a def-capped blaster *is* a tankmage. They're still squishier than an SOed out tank, but if you can *comfortably* solo x8 missions and AV fights... well, I think you qualify even if you can't stand in front of a x8 spawn indefinitely (but more than long enough to kill 'em all). There's certainly large grey areas and much hair-splitting involved though.

Who's talking about balance? Did the OP specify SO builds only while I wasn't looking? I'm just saying certain things can be built up to tankmage status, and Crabs are perhaps the easiest to do so. In fact, if you want to remove IOs entirely, Crabs are maybe the only AT that can be termed a tankmage on SO strength only (again, mitigation, mez protection & AoE damage, straight out of the box).

Plant/Cold is fantastic. It's not even that late of a bloomer (get it?) since once you pick up seeds, you're immediately an asset to any team (not to mention your shields). Soloing takes a bit longer, but what controller set doesn't? I'll say that after 35 and Sleet, Seeds, Roots, Creepers, Sleet & your pet makes short work of x8 spawns all by your lonesome. Even before then, Seeds, Roots & Creepers are a potent combo, but Ice Storm from Cold will keep mobs grounded for Roots to take hold. Post 38 and Heat Loss, and you'll kiss end troubles forever.

Plant/Rad or Kin of course works well too, but I find Plant/Cold has some nice synergies (Ice Storm, esp, since many of your Plant powers don't work on fliers).

Dunno if High Beam is still around to update this, but for the 25-29 arc, I'd highly recommend one of the new I17 mission arcs.

Twisted Reflections is 4 actual missions (plus a few "speak to" missions), all of them skippable to the end, in two zones, but they auto-transport you to the 2nd zone, and can be breezed through in under 60 min, really under 30 unless you have travel powers off (and maybe even then).

The other arc, Into the Looking Glass is potentially even shorter, but there's an EB to deal with at the end, and he can be nasty if you play melee.

Anchor-debuffs are rough on a high DPS team... then you run into an AV and you're happy you have those toggles. (Or you get separated on a +4/x8 teams, but you decide you can take that spawn by yourself anyway.) Location-based debuffs w/long animations aren't much better. By the time I get around to Disruption Arrow (after OSA, Acid, etc), most things are dead. Just be happy things are dying fast w/o your full 100% participation; this means you're on a good team. BTW, EF is fast casting enough that I'll use it on high DPS teams (yes, everything would die w/o EF, but they die faster w/EF), but rarely RI. Until the team gets hit w/a fat -to hit debuff or that PP went MoG on you, and you'll be happy you have it again.

Teams like that, I like my Cold the best--buffs, shields & a fast casting/recharging debuff that does pretty much everything w/one application (Sleet: -res, -def, KD, slow, minor damage). Big targets get Benumb. I'll still take my Rad on AV fights, though I know the Rad vs. Cold is still hotly debated. Son's nice too, since the anchored debuff goes on a teammate, not a mob. Dark just kicks butt on many levels, but on those fast moving teams, I rarely bother w/Darkest Night. Tar Patch always though.

I thought the commonly accepted definition of a "tankmage" was a ranged damage class w/tank-like defenses (or a tank w/uber-ranged damage)? I mean, if all you want is a tough damage dealer, yeah, by definition most scrappers & brutes will fit. A def-capped blaster is absolutely a tankmage. So's a IO'ed out Fire/Kin. The difference w/a soldier is that you don't need to IO the hell out of it (at least not as much) to get high defenses (combination of actual defense, resistance & mez protection) and good AoE damage. And again, mez protection, which most of the other ranged classes lack. Granted, I'm looking more at the defensive side of things--your definition of "obscene" damage may vary a bit.

Seriously, capped ranged & AoE def (high 20s melee & most typed too), mez protection, 30-45% resistances nearly across the board and a gapless AoE attack chain. Yeah, that's IO'ed out, but still a bit (lots) better defensively than a comparably IO'ed out blaster, controller, dom, corr, whatever. How's that not a tank-mage? Oh, and I say this very lovingly, not as some rant for balance. I like my Crabs, just fine.

As for the range vs melee, Pilgrim touches on it, but I think a big disparity it's the effective AoE radii. Most melee cones & even PBAoEs aren't very big in effect (obvious exceptions exist like FS, SC, & LR). Ranged has Fireball, rains, various cones that can be extended, and did I mention Fireball? At the end of the day they will deal out a lot more total damage. Plus, even for ST damage, ranged doesn't waste time chasing crap down.

The 2 biggest things about the new posi are... well, the 2 biggest things about most TFs, and they're stealth & TP. The new posi doesn't have a single kill all in either part, so if you can stealth & tp to the end (or each objective), you're pretty much set, assuming you assmbled a decent enough team to cover whatever you might be missing.

If you have SS & a stealth IO, that's good enough to avoid the Stealth pool, but even if you have Assemble The Team, it's on a long timer, so I'd definitely recommend Recall Friend as a minimum. Certainly over Lingering Rad, which will only come in handy against Dr Vahz at the end, and it's not required.

Also, EF, pre-Stamina is rough. Again, you'll likely only *really* want it for the Dr Vahz fight. I think for the majority of the TF, you'd be better served w/Stamina & Recall Friend instead of LR & EF. Oh, and SS instead of CJ assuming you have the 60(?) mo badge, otherwise Hasten too (swap out Mutation). Anyway, that's what I'd switch from your initial build to be optimized for Posi runs.

Oh, I'd definitely leave in QS, because I've found far too many low level toons, or 50s that were specced out w/lvl 50 IOs, that suddenly lose their accuracy down at lvl 20. All Earth powers debuff def nicely, but QS is auto-hit and will pretty much ensure everything hits. I've found QS skippable on a high lvl team (I just spam Cages if others can't hit), but never on a low (cuz my own Cages don't always hit).

Some people have mentioned as a positive being able to click on a recipe, and then easily find each of the component salvage? I haven't figured out how this is done yet. Sure, you can expand the recipe and see a list of the salvage needed, but you could always sorta do that. Is there a way to actually auto-find those pieces on the market? Cuz that'd be a useful new feature.

As for the warnings for selling salvage you can use for things in your inventory... seeing as how all my toons have FC, I have practically all the memorization badges, which means pretty much every piece of salvage is used for *something* in my inventory, which includes memorized recipes. Similary for warnings for too high market fees. Who determines what's too high? 70K? 700K? I really don't think so.

Any applications developer worth his salt should know that warnings that pop up too often will be ignored (or just suppressed after 10 sec). A far better implementation of the two current warnings would be:

1) For the useful salvage, simply let us hover over the salvage in our inventory (or even on the market) and show us what they can be used for that's also in our inventory or memorized list. Easier way to determine if we want to sell/deleted a stack of Improvised Cybernetics.

2) Let us set our own bar as to when a market fee is "too high". I'd prolly set mine at 5M. So if I'm listing anything for 100M or higher, I'd damn well mean it.

Until then, both of those oh-so-useful warnings will remain off in my user interface, remaining useless.

You know, I was gonna say I've gotten a little bit used to the new interface, and while it's way slower than the old for doing most things, I could at least live with it. But no, crap's broken again. I can't "Get" anything now. Oh wait, the "Post" button is greyed out too. Ugh.

Another complaint: why is it when you try to "Find" an item, but you have your level filter set to something else, it can't automatically fix your level filter? So if I was previously looking for only lvl 32 (min 32, max 32, which is sometimes about the only way to find anything in the new interface), and then I want to look up a lvl 50 item I dropped in the market, it can't figure out, hey, let's reset the lvl filter to fit in the 50? Isn't that beyond obvious?

Having to unclick Autocomplete, the stupid warnings, seemingly far too often. I'm not sure if those options are toon-specific, but I could swear I already unclicked those for certain toons, but they're back up when I relog w/them later.

Oh, a stupid mistake that's 100% my fault, but wouldn't happen w/the old interface. So I "Find" a crafted IO to see what the last sales are (because the bottom interface never shows bidding/for sale figures, another bug!), and instead of typing in my prices for sale in the bottom window, I typed them in the top where the IO was "found". So I insta-bought instead of selling. Thanks. Again, my bad, but just another trap to avoid.

Like I said, I'm adjusting to the new system and all the quirks. I can get stuff done though it takes longer. I'd just be far, far happier if they gave us an option to load the old interface.

Adrenaline Boost + RA. Heat Loss w/11+ hit. Transference. No, or very short, crash post-Nuke. Sometimes, my toggles won't drop, sometimes they will (pretty much always w/Transference).

Or, like everyone else says, just pop a few blues in case you don't play w/an Emp, Cold or Kin.

Under the OP's system, my blaster becomes useless for 15-25 sec no matter what my team makeup or my insp tray look like. What toggles does your blaster have that are so worth keeping over being able to attack (again, after a sufficient buff or insp)? World of Confusion? Weave? If your def-capped or close to it, most of it comes from IO bonuses, not your toggles. And does it really take you 15-25 sec to turn on all of your *blaster* toggles? Really?

So the rumors were that someone at Citi miskeyed "billions" instead of "millions" which caused the panic selloff yesterday in the US stock market. I was having flashbacks of trying to sell a Pangean for 1.5B instead of 1.5M and eating a hefty market fee. Guess it wasn't the case (or just damage control by Citi).

Deny, deny, deny.