macskull

STF gives 38 merits, and RSF gives... still 25.

Nice. Real nice.

I'm not normally one to jump on the "villains got the shaft" bandwagon, but these numbers make it seem like they really did this time around. The only villain SF that had its reward increased is one which is difficult to access in the first place because of the ridiculous base computer requirement. Maybe it's just that the smaller villain population is better at running content than the hero population at large. Still, this a little bit ridiculous.

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I was really just speaking about the US as I have no idea what is happening with the Euro servers. I should have made that clear.

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The EU servers use the same markets as the US servers do, I believe.

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mission completion should award merits.story arcs need to award at least 20, all recipes need to be for sale for merits, 5-10 yellow , 10-15 orange, 15-20 purp. my opinion. haters will be ignored.

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Rational people are "haters" now? My head hurts. I agree prices should be lowered across the board, but not nearly as much as you suggest. They're not supposed to be instantly accessible to everyone, they're meant to be a time sink. I'm sorry, you can keep thinking your suggestions are good ideas, but you're just flat-out wrong.

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LRSF

25 merits (unchanged)

Character completed RSF on live, was copied over if that matters any.

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Well there's an idea...

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I don't believe this was a "lapse in service."

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And I don't believe you're in a position to effectively judge.

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I'm aware. Re-read my post, please.

CoH boards are still acting funky. CoV boards are fine.

I don't believe this was a "lapse in service."

Regarding Hami - you can have one Brute/Tank/Scrapper/whatever pulling the Rikti into Hami to act as bait, but we've done this with very good success:

- Kill yellows and greens
- Kill pylons
- Kill Hami
- Kill blues

Both pics work for me!

I'm re-posting this from the other tracking thread... Apologies if something from this post has already been checked, I've tried to update it but might have missed something.

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CONTENT TO WATCH:

I'm posting this list to give individuals or teams a database of content that likely had its reward adjusted. Most of these are story arcs that consist of several missions or give double-digit rewards, but some are task/strike forces.

* Positron Task Force - DONE (+9)
* Manticore Task Force
* Moonfire Task Force
* Hess Task Force
* Eden Trial

* Heart of the Hollows (Talshak the Mystic)
* Ring of Peebles (Stephanie Peebles) - DONE (+1)
* The Freaklympics (Collin Larson)
* Freakshow War (Neal Kendrick)
* The entire 40-45 band
* Upon the Psychic Plane (Harvey Maylor)
* Operation: World Wide Red (Crimson)
* A Hero's Hero (Maria Jenkins)
* The Nictus Alliance (Kheldian only)

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* Cap SF - DONE (+2)
* Mantis SF
* RSF
* Villain Hami raid

* The Cult of the Shaper (Diviner Maros)
* Psymon Sez (Psymon Omega) - DONE (-2)
* The Bane of the Heart (Westin Phipps)
* The Conference of Evil (Viridian) - DONE (+1)

---

* Lady Grey TF

* The Red and the Black (Gaussian)
* The Horror of War (Dark Watcher) - DONE (+2)

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Villain

Operative Renault Strike Force (Sharkhead)
Contact: Operative Renault
Merits: 22 (-3)

Credit for organization: @Southern

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Crud.

Here's my Scrapper, Nocturnal Stalker. I can provide more screenshots if needed, but I think that one should cover it... The hair is roughly shoulder-length, since the background makes it hard to tell.

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I thought this system was supposed to help me, the casual player, instead it favors the farmers.

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You mean casual players are finally starting to see that the system hurts them, not helps them? The same thing many of us pointed out during beta? Huh.

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It comes as no surprise, I was one of the people saying this would happen. Sarcasm at me is misdirected.

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No, it was generalized. While I think a majority of players realized the possible negatives of the system, a very vocal minority threw (and continues to throw despite it wrecking them) praise at it like crazy.

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I thought this system was supposed to help me, the casual player, instead it favors the farmers.

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You mean casual players are finally starting to see that the system hurts them, not helps them? The same thing many of us pointed out during beta? Huh.

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Speak for yourself on this. I know I would like to be able to IO alot easier. It wouldnt make me bored with them either. It would mean I can play my toons the way I used to prior to inventions. Currently I have put at least 50+ alts on hold because of IOs. Because the way merits work I am stuck farming on a single toon per server just to IO out the rest of the Alts. If the system was changed then each alt could get their stuff faster and I could play them or they could earn their own IOs instead of having me to have to transfer them to the alt or leave them in the base storage.

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If you're merit farming on a single toon, you're doing something wrong. Play your alts more. Contrary to what the popular opinion around here is, you don't need IOs to be good. I use commons on my characters until I can find the time to IO them as I want (note I said want not need). Trying to use "these toons don't have IOs so I can't play them!" is a pretty weak excuse. I'd like to be able to slot IOs easier as well... but when everyone is super, no one is super. People that complained about the market and reward drops are part of what brought the merit system upon us, and I'm sure even you'll admit its impact has been less than positive especially redside.

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If everything was made more available, it would take the maniacle marketeers that like to charge 100,000,000 for a single recipe , and the online inf traders.... and stop them dead in their tracks, thus liberating the casual gamer to "enjoy playing the game" again. I can see why my opinion would generate such ferver against my ideas. Its really all about takeing power away from the people that....truely are ruining the game.

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It's not the marketeers' fault that players are willing to pay 100 million for a single enhancement. You assume as though the sellers determine what everything gets listed at, and they do to an extent. I could list my Trap of the Hunter for 2 billion inf but no one would buy it. The buyer determines what prices the seller is able to list their item for, not the other way around. Regarding RMT spammers, they've always been around. The introduction of "loot" to the game greatly increased their presence. If you want them gone, the solution is not lower prices but the complete removal of the market and IOs from the game - because the people that are lazy and stupid now will still be lazy and stupid when everything is cheaper.

This argument about the "casual player" and "enjoying the game" doesn't work, unfortunately. The "casual player" doesn't care about IOing their toon with the best stuff available. As soon as they do, they're no longer a "casual player" and need to take steps to work toward their goal instead of expecting it to be handed to them. Last time I checked, IOs weren't a requirement to enjoy the game, either. SOs are perfectly adequate for anything a casual player would hope to do. Once you try to do something in which IOs are "required," you are no longer a casual player. Quit pretending to be a champion of the "casual player" and realize that the "casual players" that are constantly complaining about this-or-that being unfair really aren't all that casual. Your argument about "taking power from the people that are ruining the game" also falls flat on its face - everyone has the same amount of power provided they are willing to put in the same amount of effort. If you're unable to do so, that's one thing. If you're able but aren't willing then you have no right to complain.

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In fact, I'm getting really bored trying to come up with enough merits to outfit my toons for pvp. Some of the things I want for my toons, e.g., like a kismet +ACC, Level 33 Crushing Impacts for Siren's Call, are taking me a lot longer than buying them would take, there are simply none for sale at the market (I don't play any villains on Freedom, and I never will...I'm commenting about heroside).

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I've never had any problems finding what I wanted in the level ranges I wanted it. You mentioned Crushing Impacts - those are are all pool A (mob drop) recipes, meaning the merit system and marketeers have zero impact on them. Instead, blame the lack of people playing characters in those levels. If you really truly can't live without them, they're some of the cheapest recipes to purchase with merits.

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Positron as a TF stinks. It's boring, tedious, and annoying. I'll run it one time for badges and some merits. But I need to run it FOUR TIMES so I can almost afford a LoTG proc???? F that. I won't do it.

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Run some of the other dozen or so task forces in the game. They won't kill you, I promise! Use your merits on random rolls unless you really are paranoid of the RNG. You'll make more in the long run and you might even get the exact recipe you need without having to pay full merit cost for it.

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As a result, my characters are taking too long to get PvP-optimized. At the rate I'm going I won't have PvP-optimized toons for Siren's Call on my second builds until I receive my 60 month vet reward. And I do not want to 'break' my primary builds for Siren's Call: They have level 50 IOs and I want to keep it that way. I have two choices: play my toons as is and get ganked or avoid PvP entirely. The first option is frutstrating and the second option is boring: I do PvE FOR PvP, it's a means to an end.

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Protip: relying on IOs to PvP well means you're bad. If you think you're getting ganked because you don't have the best IOs, try this: player skill trumps build every single time with very rare exceptions. Especially with the new diminishing returns system in PvP, there's not much of a point in min-maxing an IO build anymore.

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The reward merit costs of all the IOs is too expensive, big time. I want to do some TFs and outfit my toons NOW. I don't want to do TFs until JUNE just to outfit ONE toon.

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You act as though the only way to get all the IOs for your toon is with merits. If you are patient (remember, lack of patience is the origin of 90% of the complaints about the market) you should be able to get almost all your IOs with inf. Exceptions might be some of the lower-level pool C and D recipes (but you can thank the merit system for that, which is funny because everyone praised it as the solution to the price problem when it was announced).

Hopefully this clears up some confusion about the merit system, IOs, and builds in general.

Well then... let's take a crack at this, shall we?

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everything that we can get in the game including hami's needs to be available thru the merit system. the items that are 50+ merits needs to be brought down to like 5 or 10.

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The stated reason Hami-Os and purples aren't available through the merit system is because they are supposed to be rare and hard to obtain. Positron was asked why they weren't available, and his reply basically stated "if we see a demand for them, we'll add them, but they'll cost an obscene amount of merits."

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If everything was made available more people would be able to trick out their characters in a resonable ammount of time and be more encouraged to make new characters -

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If everything was made more available people would quickly grow bored with their characters and move on. IOs are supposed to bring a depth to your character that the normal game doesn't - I know many, many people who shelved their 50s but dug them out again when IOs came out. It's not supposed to be easy and cheap to IO a character with all the best sets. Rare stuff is rare for a reason. If you want to get your character enhanced on the cheap, there are SOs. They've been around since the beginning and they're still perfectly viable.

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It would also reduce the cost of all the rare items on the market because these things would be more available IMHO.

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They're supposed to be expensive, because not everyone is supposed to have them. Asking for all the purples and things like that to be easily accessible to everyone is like asking for everyone to have a Ferrari. Would it be nice? Sure. Is it going to happen? Nope.

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I would like to see lvl 50's have the ability to get purped out..,. SOLO...

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You can. It isn't hard. Instead of complaining about the merit system and the market, make them work for you. Do a little research and spend a few minutes at the market each day, maybe run a TF, and you'll have enough inf and merits to work with. Trust me, I've done it.

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Having the rare stuff cost entirely too many merits and having the hard to find stuff cost entirely too many merits doesnt make it worth anyones time to hound for merits.

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Correct. It's still far more efficient to buy most things with inf rather than merits. Merits are good for the random rolls, which you can use to generate inf to buy what you want. Thinking you need to use merits to buy everything is a surefire way to be disappointed.

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Dont like farming Posi? Make it so we dont HAVE to. I would like to be able to run a few story arcs and have everything I need to purp out my 50.

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You don't have to farm Posi. I haven't run a Posi in ages. Instead I run story arcs and other task forces that offer much better merit rewards per time spent. You're in essence asking that you be given the best IOs in the game without putting any effort into it, which is stupid at the very least. If IOing and purpling a toon was supposed to be easy, it would be.

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I would also like to be able to shut off my inf, not just my xp, and earn triple prestige. I would also like the exchange rate for buying prestige to be uh...more economically viable.

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The triple prestige idea is a good one, but there's a reason the exchange rate for inf to prestige kinda sucks - as a level 50 you are able to generate inf so quickly just through kills that you could convert that into a lot of prestige. Besides, two or three mission completion bonuses (so, maybe 30 minutes of gameplay) should give enough prestige to pay your SG upkeep for a month. I get 344 prestige per completion at level 50, and my upkeep is 500.

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I hope this doesnt turn into a wall of txt and im not looking to get flamed. I would like to see these changes because i honestly think that they would fix alot of the problems with the availability of things on the market. a purple recipe shouldnt cost 100,000,000 inf. it should cost 10 merits max. and story arcs need to pay at least 50 merits. that would fix everything.

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See above - it wouldn't fix anything and would only cause more problems than it solves. If you want the best stuff for your character, you need to be willing to put in the effort required to get that stuff, not have it handed to you.

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everything that we can get in the game including hami's needs to be available thru the merit system. the items that are 50+ merits needs to be brought down to like 5 or 10.

If everything was made available more people would be able to trick out their characters in a resonable ammount of time and be more encouraged to make new characters -

It would also reduce the cost of all the rare items on the market because these things would be more available IMHO.

I would like to see lvl 50's have the ability to get purped out..,. SOLO...

Having the rare stuff cost entirely too many merits and having the hard to find stuff cost entirely too many merits doesnt make it worth anyones time to hound for merits.

Dont like farming Posi? Make it so we dont HAVE to. I would like to be able to run a few story arcs and have everything I need to purp out my 50.

I would also like to be able to shut off my inf, not just my xp, and earn triple prestige. I would also like the exchange rate for buying prestige to be uh...more economically viable.

i13 has brought a slew of trust issues especially for larger sg'sthat have more to protect. People are turning to solo sg's or small groups of tightly knit friends and are getting nowhere fast, even with the pricing and refunds i13 brought.

I hope this doesnt turn into a wall of txt and im not looking to get flamed. I would like to see these changes because i honestly think that they would fix alot of the problems with the availability of things on the market. a purple recipe shouldnt cost 100,000,000 inf. it should cost 10 merits max. and story arcs need to pay at least 50 merits. that would fix everything.

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This is a joke post, right? Please say it is?

It was before I13 as well, merits have only exacerbated the existing supply issues.

... Where are TT:M and Surveillance? And Venom Grenade?

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He is now a farmer. He changed his global to MASTER TIGER PAW. That list of tells up there is for real. he still thinks his db was the greatest in pvp. Though he says the new pvp ruined it.


The same day I saw him on I ran into I saw Zen_Shadow in rv who now plays a pffin blaster.



We actually have some more entertaining pvpersonalities on Justice that don't post on the forums, yet. I may get bored someday and post some chat logs and bios. So many good lulz.

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Don't tell anyone but Dream said he was making a DB/Regen Scrapper for PvP.

Oh and happy birthday Con

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As more and more people spend time farming influence/infamy to buy TF-pool recipes from the markets instead of wasting time with the flawed Merit System, we're beginning to see prices which used to be 7-figures max climb well into 8-figures. Pretty soon, as we're already starting to see, recipes with thousands bidding but none for sale.

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You're attributing rising costs to the wrong reason - prices are rising because people are using merits [/i]instead of[/i] inf to purchase things, or aren't spending their merits on the random rolls like they used to in the days of TF rewards. Because many people are no longer taking random rolls - incidentally this "I only want this one item" mentality ends up costing them money in the long run - the supply they brought to market has diminished, making competition (and therefore prices) over existing stock increase. This also partially explains the price spikes in purples and Hamidon Origin enhancements (which was predicted before I13's launch, by the way) - as people are using merits to buy the IOs they want, they are left with more inf to spend on the things you cannot buy with merits.

Happy birthday!

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I hate the merit system...there are fewer sfs on villains so we have to do the same ones over and over, gets boring and no recipe drops has destroyed the market...it is next to impossible to find recipes on the market these days, even if you can afford them, they just simply are not available. Makes it very discouraging for me

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It's not just the small number of SF's. It's the smaller number of merits rewarded for them as well. While I understand that they are all usually shorter than hero TFs, that isn't really something that a villain player had control over. If they're going to have disproportionate ways of earning merits, the cost of rewards should reflect that.

With every TF/Trial, you should at least earn enough merits to roll, and every 2-3 should net you enough for a recipe of your choice.

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People that say "the SFs don't give as many merits as the TFs" are forgetting something. I've run the numbers, and you can generate the same amount of merits in about the same amount of time regardless of whether you're a hero or a villain. You'll have to run a bit more content redside, but it should take about the same time. Here are my numbers. If you say "but most teams don't finish the content that quickly," then just extend the times to what you figure a normal team will finish in You'll still find that heroside and villainside offer about equal rewards for time spent.

Feedback on the merit system:

First, let us choose the level of random rolls. I'm not sure why this option isn't there in the first place, but it's only exacerbated an existing problem, especially redside. Want a Decimation recipe or a Touch of Death recipe from the TF or trial pool? Sure, you can get them, but only if you're willing to pay out the nose for a level 40 piece (one of the ToD triples is going for 20-30 million uncrafted redside right now). Your alternative is to bid less inf on a lower-level recipe, which might see one sale every few weeks to a month. Some of the ToD triples have "last 5" sales dating back to 2007. That doesn't seem to me like an indication of a healthy and active market.

Next, consider adjusting the price of a random trial pool roll. I'm not sure why trial rolls cost more than the task force roll (especially because they're worth on average less than a task force roll, and there are fewer recipes to choose from), but my biggest gripe is this: thirty merits is more than any of the respec trials give as a reward. Currently, the majority of task and strike forces give equal or greater merits than required for a TF pool reward roll. However none of the respec trials give enough merits for even one recipe. Combined with the higher initial cost of a random roll, this further disincentivizes players from choosing the trial pool roll option, leading to less supply making it to market.

Step 1: Get your level 45+ Kheld, or a nice friend's 45+ Kheld.
Step 2: Get a team together (or solo/duo if you feel you can take Nosferatu as an EB or AV).
Step 3: Start the "Nictus Insurrection" arc (level 40-45, the team leader needs to be a Kheld to start this).
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit! That arc, until it gets its merit numbers utterly destroyed in an upcoming "adjustment," is worth 29 merits for 25-35 minutes of work.

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Everyone here does realize that if you just have a little patience the running enemies will come back, right? Use the time to Rest or whatnot until they return. That's what I do. I'm not anxious to follow them to my imminent doom. I realize that I have more patience than most these days, but really, it doesn't take much.



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Sometimes. We pulled Rom down on the 3rd mission of the ITF, he headed straight for the computer... then turned around and ran right back up the stairs, dragging all the toggle debuffs with him. Even with the Tank spamming taunt, he refused to stay still and kept running amok, dragging back enemies.

Then there was the Mender Tesseract SF I soloed on my MM - Marchand is a real pushover of a hero, powers-wise, but he wouldn't stop running and I ended up chasing him all over the map, up and down the tower he spawns at the top of. Very frustrating because it took me about 20 minutes to kill.

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I would never tell an MM to take an alpha strike in a big group. More attacks follow you know. MM's have neither the health or shielding ability to take damage like a Brute can. I don't care what you do for soloing tactics but on big teams this gets MM's wiped. Again a Brute equipped with taunt holds more aggro than an MM. Even more so if you slot taunt on attacks and aoe aura's. "grabbing the alpha safely" is one fourth the job of a tank.

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My MM routinely wanders off on his own during the second and third respecs in order to get the map cleared faster. That's one MM taking alpha from an 8-man spawn of DE or Malta, often spawned on a higher difficulty level. Without team buffs. Bodyguard mode effectively gives you the resistances and HP of a Tanker, which is something a Brute can't do without either a very expensive IO build or external buffs.

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Again your tactic is cute for small groups of whites and yellows but its only feasible on SMALL groups. 6+ teams are generally out of your defense capability. I would have to see evidence via fraps or any other game recording program to see this in all its "glory". If not, im calling shenanigans.

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I'm not sure you've played Masterminds at all, to be making a comment like that. However, next time I run a respec, I'll be sure to remember to grab a recording of it.