BellaStrega

You have two skill points and two APs, which you can spend on the second weapon.

If you get the initiate pack, you can get some blue weapons from the online store as soon as you reach the first mission hub as well, so it really only helps with the zombies on the road. Still, there is no reason not to do it.

After you choose your first weapon, exit the training area and re-enter, and then pick up a second weapon. You can have two weapons and use the active skills from both. One effect this has is you can use one builder followed by two finishers.

You can buy more clothing in London - someone gave very good instructions upthread. The bank is also right next to Pangea, and that's where you handle mail, storage, and auctions.

This is a pretty thorough crafting guide. You don't need to craft anything, but sometimes it's really nice to be able to make exactly what you need.

I believe that these were preorder bonuses, as I don't have those benefits either.

You can always branch out into other weapon trees.

What do you mean by screwed up her build? I didn't like my pistols/blood build so I went back and filled out the assault rifle tree instead, which has worked significantly better.

Also, some outdoor missions allow multiple people in the area to progress without being teamed. For example, last night I was in an underground chamber with two other people, and all three of us needed to take out a particular spirit thing. None of us were in a team, but we all completed the objective in a single fight.

I have a lot of practice at kiting while placing GTAoEs, but I find often that the click doesn't register, or it's too easy to mouse over a part of the UI and cause it to not register in an explicable fashion. Doing it that way sounds much better.

As far as outfits go: I'm aiming for the Pandemonist on my Dragon, at least at first. And since I am very close to done on it, the Assassin as well. I just need four more skills, and since I am at the point where the game is inundating me in APs, it shouldn't take long.

How do you turn ground-target AoEs into targeted AoEs?

That fight isn't really very hard, and I think it's more about where you are relative to the boss at particular times than anything else. I don't see what would make shotgun and elementalism less viable.

How about life-stealing assault rifle attacks? Does that fit your theme?

Yeah, that's one of the best missions.

My only problem with a lot of the investigation is that many things are implied or obfuscated and I tend to think very literally, and this leads to a lot of frustration while dealing with more obscure hints.

Now I am seriously questioning whether you've actually played the game or if you're just trying to be contrary. Or if, despite game experience, you really believe this.

I've personally had moments where I've done things that people would probably think are highly unlikely if not mathematically impossible, such as soloing an 8-person Malta spawn on my DM/DA scrapper after the rest of the team wiped, and this was before stacking armor and end drain resists were added, so /DA was fairly weak. Again, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, my Peacebringer rarely died to void hunters or quantum gunners, and this was in 2005, when they were new and both mobs were literal kryptonite to them. And this was when people were saying on the Kheldian forum that it was impossible to get through a mission without being killed, but players came up with strategies to survive and kill the kryptonite mobs first.

There was also that time I managed to rez myself with howling twilight.

I am not claiming to be uniquely awesome. If anything, I consider my performance with some ATs to be about average. I remember one night I could not defeat two Malta sappers on my DM/DA (again, pre-stacking, etc) no matter how hard I tried. The next day, in the same mission, with two Malta Sappers, I was able to stun and kill them both before they sapped me. Strategy was the same, my reflexes and perception were impaired the night before due to fatigue, due to playing too long, and due to sensory issues because of playing too long. I made a point of Malta hunting, something which was not actually all that difficult even with two sapper spawns and ridiculously long mezzing. I knew other people who simply refused to solo against Malta with characters who were better suited for it than mine was. Or at least people who would just die over and over again because they didn't know how to deal with the problems that Malta presented. Or, yes, because their characters lacked tools that would make the whole thing fairly easy.

But you're making decisions every moment when playing that impact your success or failure. These decisions can be based on any number of factors, and can dramatically impact how well you perform. You can tell the difference between a good and a mediocre Fire/Kin controller pretty easily, for example. Yes, it is a powerful build, but it requires keeping track of a lot of buttons, and if you lose track of some of them it can have a rather detrimental impact on your performance.

And that's because everyone does not do the same thing when they play. They do a lot of similar things, but some people have faster reaction time, perceive potential problems more quickly and thus before they become actual problems, are able to manage situations so they remain under control. Others do not. Everyone isn't performing on the same level if all else is equal.

That test can be found here.

And it tells me that Dragon fits me best.

And this was the most visually entertaining personality test I've ever taken.

Assault Rifle has the potential to be dangerously cheesy.

It has good AoE, but against single targets it can be really good. Leech is hax.

I think the Dragon version of the Rogue Agent mission as well as the conclusion of the Dawning of an Endless Night arc make it clear that the Dragons don't always plan for everything. I like how in the Rogue Agent mission, your handler goes from "We arranged all of this in advance, and it is going according to plan" to "everything has changed, we have to revise all of the models."

Speaking of, I also dig the whole premise behind the Dragon version of the rank 10 special assignment (London Underground). Not the most exciting mission, but amusing.

Two of my four characters are Dragons. One each of the other two.

Pistols and assault rifle also work like this (I have a character with both of those skills - although she's using AR/Blood at the moment - also, I wish the Chronicle would update more reliably). I honestly have not found the way firearms resources work to be a problem and I just got to the City of the Sun God. The problem I did run into with pistols was more that I couldn't make them work well with blood, which is why I switched to AR, and I'll be purchasing Elementalism next. The thing about firearms resource spenders is that most of them just spend "all of the resources" on your current target. So, every other shot can be a spender. And as Slaunyeh pointed out, AoE builds up resources on every target hit.

Now, I wonder what about the boss in the amusement park makes elementalism and shotgun combined so terrible? If I could beat him with my rather weak pistols/blood build at the time, I am not sure what would make him intolerable to fight.

Thank you.

Examples such as WoW's early years, City of Heroes' original design, Champions Online after the day one patch, Star Wars: The Old Republic as it exists now - in this case, you can make choices for some characters at 10th level that will lock those characters out of endgame raiding, or at least make them extremely subpar for that purpose, or force a specific spec that may not fit your intended role (tanking or healing instead of DPS being a common one).

You're arguing a theoretical position with little more than circumstantial data.

A marked rise in low end performance is not a bad thing. This doesn't mean that everyone can reach high end performance with little effort.

As I asked in PM, what does this mean?

Damn, it sounds like you have some profound weirdness going on. Sorry.

Coming back to this: I gave chaos magic a go and I have to say it really does seem pretty punchy and a lot of fun. At least it does in the starting area.

Yeah, that sounds way off. Hope the upgrade works.