ripparubberlips

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awesome guide - i also went for the straight build rather than something that would help me get to a respec.

Only minor points i would add - not in disagreement but rather in addition. YMMV.

Spin is a really, really good power in a lot of situations, and, unlike slash, is still highly useful post 18. leaving out DP until 30 (you'll have reconstruction) and using spin instead of slash is another possible direction that - to me - gives this build a bit more of it's true identity, which is versatility. slash would have made the 1-18 trip easier, as you say, but my way of looking at it was not only did i have spin in a pinch, (even for non optimal usage of it), but reconstruction is valuable for 27 levels, vs. slash's 17 levels of effectiveness. at some point, likely lvl 40-41 or so, I'll likely respec at that point, and swap out reconstuction for slash - simply for the def debuff which may be helpful in the 40's.

Now that SO's are avail at lvl 22 for end recovery, getting stamina 5 slotted by 25 (as you've done) is still a MAJOR priority, (otherwise you can't slot Evisc very well) - but actually filling those slot's with lvl 25 SO's isn't all that important if QR has all SO's at 22. as long as stam has 30's in all of them by 28, you're fine. (at 48k per lvl 25 end recovery SO, even if you don't agree, you have to admit it's worth testing, eh?)

focus...i don't know, like you, i have follow up 3 slotted (mines two acc, 1 to-hit... meh), and with one acc it seems fine... but i guess that's taste.

seriously though, my points are only ideas, and in no way disagreements - this is truly a great template, especially with respect to some of the trickier slotting issues that come up with this build. Stars for you!

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but your general blanket statement of good-balanced groups not dying - i assume you've never done the outcast door missions. they're ludicrous.


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Yes I have. I've done them solo and I've done them in several groups as several different archetypes. I know what I'm talking about. This morning, I will be solo'ing the Electric Eel mission with my level 10 tanker and prove nimrod wrong. If you can work together and have a good balance of archetypes with people that know how to play their damn archetype, then you can succeed.

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try it with a group of 8.

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Would you care to shed a light on this gem of wisdom you posess? ... *snip* .... The few who are like me, who organzie groups find it takes a great deal of time, and it requires continual re-recruiting as players log out/quit.


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If you're in a group that's dying lots... someone's not playing nice with the others. An organized group with a balance of archetypes can take just about anything within their level range and then some. It just requires teamwork. Simple as that.

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while there are other less high-and-mighty ways to say it, i don't think the mobs in the zone itself are bad - other than the fact that you have to run through it to get to missions. i ran through it as "tactically" as i could, and i got wasted a few times by some bosses that even prepared, i had no chance against.

but your general blanket statement of good-balanced groups not dying - i assume you've never done the outcast door missions. they're ludicrous.

while obviously you'll just say my groups sucked - had nothing to do with the 5 +2 bosses in the room casting lvl 32 powers - chain-knockbacking me to smithereens, and the one attack i get off misses in a hurricane.

i'm level 10

sorry, not once between 1 + 10 did a single discipline insp drop. my attacks are slotted for acc. a group of 8 (2 def, 2 cont, 2 blaster, 2 scrapper) was wiped completely twice, not even mentioning (many) other deaths. get a tanker? we had one earlier, he kept dying so he logged out and we replaced with second def. i'm talking about "defeat all villians in base" + the eel fellow etc. While you want to pinpoint it on stupidity, if you'd been there you'd have been dead too.

it was literally tougher than respec final wave - only we each had 4 powers + training enhancements.

tried it, no thank you. won't be doing those ever again. lvl 35 rikti missions are trivial compared to this. respec was trivial compared to this. i don't mind the added powers so much as the fact that when you stick them on a +2 boss, put 5 of them in the room, it's not even remotely worth trying. controllers cant hold anything, tankers cant take the damage from the agro if they taunt, blasters end up firing one shot and dying, and us melee folks are either stunned + held in mud or on our backs. not even joking, two of my deaths occured after not even getting to TRY to use a power.

fyi since issue 2, Babbage can be found in Outbreak

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We'll also be tuning down Trolls and Outcasts even more - to make them like Skulls and Hellions (fewer powers, etc.).

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you just rendered my rant not worth typing.

Thanks SM!

Veg what is your point?

it's being changed - they why, how, shoulda's, coulda's etc. do not matter one bit.

personally, i think you're wrong. It's everyone's responsibility to test - as it's impossible for the folks at cryptic to check everything. And I know personally, i only went on test during the issue2 preview to play with capes + respec, I didn't go toying around w/ level 5 mobs. maybe if I and a number of other folks had, and pointed it out, it never woulda made it in live.

should this stuff have slipped through - no. were there a lot of complaints about it? i don't know. but - judging from the fact that they came out a LOT faster than i expected saying that it would be fixed, i assume it was not an intentional change. perhaps it was tried out, and accidently got left in, but i doubt it was intentional. look - the rikti chiefs were one-slicing people to death. are you saying that was intentional too? as soon as it was pointed out, they acknowledged it as an error and it was fixed. why would i sit around now and waste any thought on why it was like that in the first place, unless i were just a generally negative-minded trouble-making [censored]?

shut up

if you want to complain that issue two went live prematurely - hey i'd agree. but claiming that this is state's evil plan seems ridiculous.

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SOs really change the face of the game.

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err damage SO's specifically IMO, but - yes.

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I don't see it helping. because people will look around and go.... man those blasters STILL out level me.


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i hear that, i'm sure they will always be king. but i just think this sort of change opens up some options that currently arent there, and creates a way of getting serious xp without requiring a huge amount of mobs or tackling mobs i have trouble using my powers on - without nerfing the way many people play currently.

if this turns out to be forced grouping, yeah it will in the long run be a bad thing. i jut like the fact that it looks like some changes are coming that seem to make non-damage dealing specialist more useful, without really nerfing.

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opening up the game for all builds..... okayyyyyy. Tell that to a contoller or defender who already catch hell soloing. Now that minion is going to be all the harder to drop. Controller PA/Fire Imps just got borked.... So solo for them just hit the garbage can. Unless they do it against blues... or greens....

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i dont understand. yes, they can do exactly what they do now. if they want to solo blues and greens, they can. they should get similar xp to what they get now hunting whites.

plus the added benefit of they actually will have some ability to contribute in a fight against white minions while teamed, where, currently, they are situationaly useful at best.

not sure i understand the issue/problem.

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And now that I think about it how does this "fix" anything. What's to stop me from abandoning PI for now.... going back to bricks and beating down blues and greens enmasse?

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who would want to stop you from doing that?

the point is that it would create options for doing other things if you wanted to. you could team with others and actually contribute. if you want to. you can solo if you want to. the only thing that would be changing is the color of the mob, and... how does that hurt? i see it only helping.

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guess they need harder taskforces... that can be done without the wimp bat. And since when is someone trying to protect their investment in gameplay=troll.... you insulting the legitimate concerns of dedicated players... that's trolling.

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it's just that i'm not sure where the wimp bat is coming from. If xp is scaled - no one's losing anything - except the ability to take down large groups of white minions. it looks to me like the same amount of effort/teamwork/time etc. will now be spent taking on 3, vs. 15 - and for the same xp.

heph - i'm not calling you a troll, that was more because i read the entire thread before i posted + i think there's quite a bit of it in here. I do disagree with your take on this being a nerf - to me it's more of an "either you like it or you don't" and your post was both recent + relevant. to me, it seems like it's making a change so that there's now other powers besides damage that are relevant to gaining xp. I play a couple different builds, some min/max and some more obscure. I look at what this proposed change does - and to me it makes some of my more obscure builds actually beneficial to a team. is it a perfect solution - probably not. but - it DOES allow for mass herding/huge group killing - but a level or two down with scaled xp. no huge loss. your concern that these mobs are no longer white doesn't seem that big a price to pay for the upside. it would be cool to have some of the powers that actually require a successful hit to work actually matter. to have holds that only work on minions able to be used because the minions arent already dead. stuff like that.

i dunno, seems like the biggest fear here is that suddenly people can't kill 30 white minions in one shot is a bad thing - to me that's kind of been the problem. is 3 the best number at 40+? probably not. and i'm sure that's just an average. I doubt my emp defender will be able to handle the same three minions that most blaster/scrapper builds would be challenged by. odds are there will still be uber AT's and non uber. as long as ALL have a role, and aren't forced to group, i think it's a win. if some builds have to underhunt for the same gameplay they once had, and aren't being penalized from an xp perspective, i don't see why this would be a bad thing.

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That said, I truly did feel much more heroic being able to handle larger groups of even level minions as I leveled up. It's true that I will still have the ability to handle larger groups of lower leveled minions, this doesn't change, but I am not given massive incentive to do so. These minions will give me less and less experience the higher I get relative to them. Eventually, they will give no experience. From a role-play incentive, I'd be fine, but from a game-advancement perspective, this ability (to handle large groups of lower level villians) holds no value.

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i would imagine that tackling a large group of lower level minions would give roughly similar xp to a smaller group of even level minions, no? maybe a bit less? seems to make sense to me. Personally, i like this proposed change because, unless i'm reading it wrong, now, finally, i can get decent xp without having to engage giant groups. currently, that is really the only way to do it, and as a result, certain builds become far more suitable to do so. i don't want to see ANY class/build nerfed - but i do want to see other non-uber builds be able to contribute more to a group. this doesn't mean forced grouping, forced anything, but rather opening up the mainstream of the game to all builds. but that's just from my perspective - to me, the BEST thing about this game is the variety within AT's. It will, to me, be cool to group with four strangers and not see 3 targeting drones.

and like i said earlier - to me, taking down a huge group of mobs -1 is still pretty heroic - no?

it's not a nerf, you are getting the same xp.

maybe you don't like it, fine. but nothings getting nerfed.

to the 20 or 30 people out of thousands upon thousands that are going to quit because they have this ingrained feeling that if something is white they should be able to kill 100 of them - i don't think the developers really care, because i don't think the intent was to play the game that way.

if the rush comes from killing 20+ mobs go kill blues - scaled xp means its the same damn thing.

but for a lot of support AT's, non-min/max builds and people that (eek) like to group, to me, i don't see the problem.

i don't see ANYWHERE where the color coding scheme is supposed to only be relevant for the first 25 levels.

if, at level 39, you think taking on a group of 15 blue level 38 minions is unsuperhero-like, i guess i don't see it your way.

to me, what statesman is talking about (and yes, changes will be made to certain powers to offset the negatives of this i am sure) is going to extend the life of this game.

maybe not for a very small percentage of the trolls here, but no great loss.

i was disappointed the other night to do a TF with (i think) 6 blasters and a scrapper and found it was easier than any i've ever done. being able to run up to a group and with buildup, fireball and firebreath drop every white minion i didn't miss is not a game that will last. some changes NEED to be made, and the developers are not only showing they want to make the game better, they're actually explaining their thought process ahead of time. This is unheard of, and you people still cry and troll.

/boggle