srmalloy

AR/Em/Mun is a [u]lot[u] of fun on an ITF; you synergize extremely well with a Tanker -- they group the mobs up, and your AoEs flatten them. Boost Range, Build Up, Flamethrower, Full Auto, and all the minions are toasted and the lieutenants are either down or ready to with another hit. And LRM the way I have mine slotted -- three Dmg/Rng HOs, two Acc IOs, and a Rchg IO -- lets you 'reach out and touch someone' from an amazing distance.

[ QUOTE ]
As others have said already, I'd like to see customization in a few ways...

1.) Hue color changes
2.) Animation changes
3.) Emanation point changes


[/ QUOTE ]
Item 2 would have to be part of item 3; after all, what's the point of, say, assuming the pose for the Energy Blast's Snipe (legs braced, right arm extended and braced with left arm, sighting down arm) if the beam is going to come out of your chest (which in that pose isn't aligned with your target)? If the emanation point changes, the animation will almost certainly have to change as well. The reverse isn't true, though. So if it were to happen, I expect you'd have a choice of emanation points, then for each emanation point you'd have one or more animation options, the same way that you pick a costume part and then get one or more style options.

[ QUOTE ]
Yea I ment midnight grasp haha. I agree with the siphon life comment. Always a fun power to use to kill someone off.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have a Dark/Fire Brute that I created an emote bind that I use when I 'defeat' someone with Siphon Life -- the 'Victory' emote while saying "Fatality!". It's gotten a number of laughs.

[ QUOTE ]
Munitions.

Surveillance(on boss/AV) -> Boost Range -> Build Up -> LRM -> Full Auto -> FlameThrower = Ownage.

155.8 + 178.6 + 121.1 = 455.5
Modifers: +100% IOs +100% Buildup + 16% (-14%res boss only)
1366pts to everything in the group. 1440 to the boss.
Boss are diced by 60% in first 10seconds from you alone and minions and LTs.. well they were gone in the first 3 seconds tops.

Plus Purple Sleep IOs are cheap and Sleep Grenade is actually useful for aggo control.

[/ QUOTE ]
Range Boost -> Surveillance(on boss/AV) -> Boost Range -> Build Up -> LRM -> Full Auto -> FlameThrower = Ownage.

You can easily find yourself in a position where you're just out of range for Surveillance, but everything else could hit, and Range Boost lasts long enough to get it all off, plus some cleanup attacks.

[ QUOTE ]
He just shows up and grinds everyone to bits, with the exception of the ill troller who had the good sense to go invisible.

[/ QUOTE ]
There are Illusion Controllers who don't run Superior Invisibility 24/7 during missions unless actively leading an NPC out?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
A reason why hack solutions are generally the worst solutions.

EDIT : And that would only fix it for fire imps.

They would have to go through and do it for EVERY henchman that never spawns at level 50, as well.

[/ QUOTE ]
Don't apply debuffs; use the existing exemplar code. Masterminds always summon their henchmen at their level; when you get two tier-1 henchmen, they're ex'ed one level down, when you get three, they're ex'ed two levels down. Fire imps are always ex'ed down one level from the summoner.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, they would have to go through and do it for Every henchman and pet that never spawns at level fifty.

[/ QUOTE ]
That might not even work -- what happens if the toon exemplars? You create exemplars of exemplars? That sounds like one of those things that'd cause all sorts of unforseen problems.

[/ QUOTE ]
It's not "exemplar of exemplar", it's a single exemplar. You have your level 50 Fire/Kin Controller. They summon level-50 Fire Imps, who are automatically exemplared one level to 49. The Fire/Kin joins a team to do the Manticore Task Force, and is exemplared to level 35. During the TF, they summon level-35 Fire Imps, who are automatically exemplared one level to 34. The character always summons pets at their current effective level; the pet power automatically exemplars those pets when they're summoned.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
All of the old TFs (pre-Striga) would be vastly improved just by cutting out 1/2 to 2/3 of the missions.

[/ QUOTE ]
As would many of the older story arcs. As it is there's way too many Defeat Alls and huge maps of not terribly interesting or challenging enemies - I almost fell asleep during my latest run through the 'Deliver Outbreak' map in McIntyre's arc.

The newer hero side content is often excellent - Faultline, the Hollows, the Midnighters - but the old stuff needs reworked.

[/ QUOTE ]
However, for the past several issues, the predominant whine has been that there's no new content -- revamping all of the old storylines doesn't do anything for the people who complain that there's nothing for their 50s to do, so the devs have been spending their time in building new content. Now, with the release of the Mission Architect, assuming that the devs come up with a satisfactory (for them) solution to the problem of the MA being overrun by people who see the ability to build their own missions as the ideal way for them to get access to lots of high-value, low-threat opponents for cheap XP (i.e., farm fodder), they can offload some of the 'no new content complaints to the player community, freeing up some of their time to go back and bring blueside story arcs in line with the ones from redside contacts. I don't know that it's going to happen, but I think that they'll have the opportunity to do it.

[ QUOTE ]
A reason why hack solutions are generally the worst solutions.

EDIT : And that would only fix it for fire imps.

They would have to go through and do it for EVERY henchman that never spawns at level 50, as well.

[/ QUOTE ]
Don't apply debuffs; use the existing exemplar code. Masterminds always summon their henchmen at their level; when you get two tier-1 henchmen, they're ex'ed one level down, when you get three, they're ex'ed two levels down. Fire imps are always ex'ed down one level from the summoner.

[ QUOTE ]
Eh, that kind of setting doesn't really fit a crime-ridden hellhole infested with superpowered mercenaries, though. Anyone busting supervillains out of prison and letting them run free in their backyard can't be all that interested in order. The Rogue Isles seem to fit being anarchic, and Arachnos fits that.

[/ QUOTE ]
The rest of the Rogue Isles are Recluse's proving ground, where the purse-snatcher wannabe villains freed from the Zig are thrown to sink or swim on their own to prove their fitness in a Darwinian struggle. But Grandville should be the Potemkin Village set up to prove what a utopia Recluse's vision of the world will be. Beneath the surface, it's a stereotyped anarchy, where your ability to have your orders obeyed start and end with your ability to enforce them, and everyone is scrambling to reach the next tier above them while stomping on the feet of the people trying to climb up to their tier. But the facade is Order. The System is absolute, and everyone has their place within it -- but where your place is will be determined by the power you can amass.

[ QUOTE ]
srsmallboy,

In the case of Imps, you're trying to enhance a pet that is summoned at L49. It's not a question of the power being greyed out or your toon being exemped. Purples simply have no effect on players and pets that aren't 50 -- and Soulbound is /not/ modifying anything you have, it's modifying the your imps' brawl. That is, apparently, the design, and the devs have no way around this.

There's no question of set bonuses or RSKing here.

[/ QUOTE ]
That is not the way the purple IOs work; if they worked the way you described, a character who had spent the influence/infamy to six-slot a melee attack with Hecatomb, a ranged attack with Apocalypse, a damage aura with Armageddon, a ranged AoE attack with Ragnarok, a sleep attack with Fortunata Hypnosis, an Immobilize with Gravitational Anchor, and a Hold with Unbreakable Constraint would have all of those attacks become effectively unslotted and lose all set bonuses the moment they exemplared down below 50. Which is not how the 'very rare' recipes were presented. Two of the key selling points for the 'very rare' recipes were that the purple IOs had a bigger enhancement value, so they would provide a greater enhancement at all exemplar levels, and their set bonuses would stay in effect even if you exemplared more than three levels lower than the IO level.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I hope its a bug

[/ QUOTE ]

Given that it's being described as a clarification for how it works in the IO's description, I don't think I see how it could be a bug.

I agree it blows, but it looks like they're saying this is how it is.

[ QUOTE ]
I cant see why this enhancement set is so imbalancing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I seriously doubt its got anything to do with it being imbalancing. I suspect it's a collision in how purples only work for security level 50 characters and the critters not being level 50 characters.

[/ QUOTE ]
Which is odd, because I recall one of the distinctions that was made between the purple sets and regular sets was that if you exemped more than three levels below the set enhancements, you were supposed to lose the benefit of the set bonuses, while with purples, the set effects would be active regardless of what level you exemped to, as long as the power they were slotted in wasn't greyed out. So it seems to me that the only checks that should be done for purple enhancements are (at the time of slotting the IO) "Is the character level 50?" and (when determining set activity) "Is the power disabled?" -- if the character was able to slot the IO in the first place, and they can use the power it was slotted in, the IO should function. If the IO is slotted into a power that summons level 49 or 48 pets, it doesn't matter -- the IO was legitimately slotted by the character; it should function.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Crap is banned on the radio, according to the fcc. Same with any word that emulates it. Kinda super weak, but there you go. Blame the fcc.

The irony is that the term comparing usually a female person with a female dog is perfectly ok for radio.

[/ QUOTE ]

When "crap" is outlawed, only outlaws will say "crap."

[/ QUOTE ]
"Cµm Catapultae Proscriptae Erunt, Tum Soli Proscripti Catapultas Habebunt."

[ QUOTE ]
Is there someone we can PM about the possibilities unblocking certain terms? Just curious, the filter is blocking a fairly common Latin word and this is troublesome for writing in Latin.

[/ QUOTE ]
Let me guess... One of the words you'd use writing the Latin for "with a grain of salt"?

[ QUOTE ]
How Arachnos managed to miss being the serious, threatening, ironclad organisation and fell so far off the deep end into the uncanny valley I will never understand. The whole thing is a collision between the Combine Overworld and a space circus side show. Animal-inspired spacesuit-clad soldiers operate out of tall spires of shining metal, an evil overlord with metal spider legs reigns over an empire from his ivory tower cathedral where he deals with destiny and magic and and ghosts and robots and talking fish while ruling over the perfect slum and... And... Ugh! It's like the twilight zone of overblown evil and misery, where an actual STATE that at least tried to appear to be governed in such a way that it could work would have been so much more easily believable, and at the same time would not have turned off as many people with garbage and rickety shacks.

[/ QUOTE ]
I have to agree; the kind of sterile, soulless, "Alles in Ordnung" and "Ordnung muss sein" dictatorship characterized by the public face of the Empire of Palpatine or the Tetragrammaton Council (from the movie 'Equilibrium') is a much more powerful expression of evil. Recluse's lieutenants could still have their little internecine fights, as long as they kept them behind the scenes. Grandville would be spotless, with neat rows of identical soulless buildings where citizens dressed neatly in what might as well be uniforms proceed orderly to their mandated occupations, then go home and watch approved entcom before going to bed for the prescribed amount of sleep before getting up to do it all over again.

[ QUOTE ]
Prior to MA we were hunter-gatherers, now we are an agrarian society.

The next logical step is interplanetary space, therefore a Moon Base cannot be far off!

[/ QUOTE ]
The next logical step would have been the Industrial Revolution, but the devs long ago addressed that by eliminating XP rewards for the mobs who are summoned by CoT and Rikti portals, which eliminated the ability to set up assembly lines to deliver a continuous stream of minions to be defeated.

For AR, Range Boost extends the shorter cone AoEs -- Shotgun and Full Auto -- out to where they can cover full spawns without your having to stand in the armpit of the nearest mob to be sure you reach the farthest one. And what Range Boost does to Full Auto... standing in the bottom of the bowl during Rikti Mothership raids and spraying Full Auto across seven or eight mobs at the lip of the bowl... It may be a gimmick, but it's an extremely useful gimmick.

Hanging back to wait for the aggro to be collected before unloading when on teams is a good general rule, but most Blasters will learn when disregarding that is a viable tactic. For example, I discovered by experimentation with my AR/En/Mun Blaster that I could reliably take out white minions with Build up and Full Auto (and yellow minions that aren't particularly resistant to Lethal damage), and that doing so against a large group (like the Nemesis spawns in Peregrine Island) wouldn't be able to do more than about half my hit points while I was rooted there waving my BFG back and forth spraying lead. Given that experience, and familiarity with the relative damage output of different mobs, it lets me make the decision when I'm on a team whether it's more effective to let the Tankers/Scrappers collect the aggro or to pop Range boost, Build Up, and thin a spawn on the other side of the room. For example, with some villain groups, like Carnies, having the minions do their End-drain dance way over there instead of clustered around the Tankers and Scrappers reduces their annoyance factor significantly.

It's just my playstyle, but I picked Munitions because I'd built my AR/EM Blaster around trying to make "range is a Blaster's defense" true. I'm really fond of the sequence Range Boost, Build Up, LRM Rocket (the white minions go away), Snipe (one of the yellow lieutenants goes down), Slug (the other lieutenant goes down when he gets in range), proceed to next spawn. And it's entertaining to be able to stand up on the southeast tower at Point du Hoc while I'm waiting for the weekend Rikti mothership raids to start and take out the group of Rikti that spawn to the southeast .

I don't know yet if I'm going to be out looking at properties that morning (I'm looking to buy a house), but if not, I'm interested in pushing Pakfront, my L50 AR/En/Mun Blaster, through Posi; IIRC, that and Citadel are the two TFs she's missing to get TF Commander.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
We had ranged weapons added to every group in MA because hoverblasting mobs that couldn't hit back was aberrant play.
I'd call that sensible play.

[/ QUOTE ]

I call it "Welcome to five years ago." Ranged attacks were added to all developer-made NPCs shortly after the game went live, before I1, because many did not have them. Banished Pantheon Totems lacked ranged attacks until about I3, when they got their odd scatter attack. The range on enemy ranged attacks was increased several times, to the point where many enemies can shoot from out of Range Boosted Snipe range.

This has been the case for five years. You're a little too late to be surprised about this.

[/ QUOTE ]
Fixed that for you. "Range is a Blaster's defense." Yeah, right, and I've got some land to sell you; it's guaranteed to have water on at least one side.

[ QUOTE ]
Yes the Purple sets are broken and bonuses do not work below 47. Known Issue. Lady Grey Proc is also a known issue. If you hold on to your purple they should be fixing this shortly.

[/ QUOTE ]
Touch of Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Damage has been problematic since beta for IOs. I have a Scrapper on Test that crafted and slotted one in beta, and discovered that the name was appropriate -- it had a chance to do a negative amount of damage to your target, healing it. This was quickly 'fixed', although the fix went too far the other way, turning the enhancement into what I referred to as 'Touch of Lady Grey: Chance to One-Shot'; when it went off, it did a truly absurd amount of damage to your target, apparently based off a multiple of the target's base HP. In an attempt to see how silly it was, I took my Scrapper over to Crey's Folly, found Jurassik, tapped him with Air Superiority to get his attention, then hit him with Ablating Strike, which proc'ed right off for more than six million points of damage and raining little bits of Jurassik all over the place. It was fun while it lasted.

Or To victor: Spoils! It depends on how you want your subject/object relationship to work.

[ QUOTE ]
to OP: you're lucky. One the hunt and kill mishes he gave me involved taking out 65 Carnie

[/ QUOTE ]
If it weren't for the fact that I'd outleveled her and the arc was mostly lolmissions for my Ice/EM Tanker, the second-to-last mission that Janet Keller gave her, "Defeat 100 Crey", would have been a royal pain. Fortunately, it mostly consisted of "Jump into a large group of Crey, taunt them, apply Whirling Hands, let Icicles whittle them down" until I ran the total down. But some of the seemingly-interminable hunt missions can be tedious, particularly the ones you get before they give you their phone number. "Go to zone X and defeat 40 [group]." Run there, defeat, run back. "Go back to zone X and defeat 50 [group]." Run there, defeat, run back. "Go back to zone X and defeat 60 [group]. We're getting close now; I can feel it." Oh, yeah, feel this, you sadistic rectum; just tell me to go there and defeat the whole count at once, it will be faster.

[ QUOTE ]
Bah, keyboards are cheap, why bother "saving" one?

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh, really?
Or something not so over the top.

If all you want is a generic, lowest-common-denominator keyboard, you can find them for ten dollars or less; if you want one that isn't going to have keyswitches start wearing out after six months, or have good tactile response, or additional features like programmable keys, you're going to be paying more to have something that isn't a fungible accessory.

[ QUOTE ]
Accolades: with the exception of geas of the kind one, most are toys or trinkets (crey cryo gun comes to mind) Though go for any that offer end or hp boosts, every bit helps.

[/ QUOTE ]
It may be an anomaly -- I'll have to test it again tonight to be certain -- but the sequence of popping Vanguard Medal, Eye of the Magus, and Geas of the Kind Ones let me drop into the middle of the bowl on the Rikti mothership last night and stand there dealing out a hail of gunfire until well after U'kon G'rai had gone down and the immediate center of the bowl had been cleared without any visible drop of my HP bar. It's a particularly situational use, but as a sixty-second god mode, it put me in mind of the last part of the "Meet the Heavy" video from Team Fortress 2, where the heavy is standing there in the open with Sascha at full honk spraying lead all over the map and blowing opponents away left and right.