Canine

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10.00pm GMT, second respec trial, level 34 to 42 (I think) come get a respec or a nice shiny SO, come get a badge, come get xp.

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It's 34-43, with autoexemp to 43.

3rd respec is 44-50.

OK. Looks like the whole 'Caleb not spawning' issue is fixed, on the US test server, at least.

So maybe it's time to start planning ahead to try and organise a Union Caleb Hunt in preparation for the patch going live?

First up, I'm now taking bets on how long it'll be before the patch goes live.

It would be sensible to wait until the patch is actually live before organising another date. At least IMO it would

Oh, and a quick and dirty method of getting Prize more or less up to speed is to get your toggles and attacks reslotted asap.

Toggles, since you'll have 6 slots in, you may as well slot 3 dam res, 3 end cost. Attacks 2 acc, 3 dam, and then either a recharge or and end cost. Or, if you've got Focused acc, then go 1 acc, 3 dam, and a mix/match of recharge/end cost.

Rule of thumb: If you've got more than 3 of the same type of SO in a power, then the 4th and later are being wasted.

No more Perma Hasten.

Get Dull Pain slotted 3 Heal 3 Recharge and be amazed at your new max HP

Other than that, ask in the Tanker board for help.

Oh dear god, not another one coming crawling back.... :P

Chaplain made on post in general a few weeks back, but not seem much, if anything of him since then. Vetis has posted saying he's coming back... Who's next? :P

A good few of the usual TS mob are still playing, plus a few new voices who've become part of the regular lot.

A word of advice though. Don't try to play Prize as you used to, not without a thorough respeccing. And remember, according to Statesman himself, the official role of an Inv/?? tank on a Carnie mission is to tank the Strongmen and let the rest of the team deal with the bosses/lieutenants... o_O I kid you not, that's how he tanked a Carnie mission as an Inv tank.

If you want Prize as your Global Handle though, make sure you log in as her first.

Later.

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Controllers are not made for damage

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<cough> Fire Imps </cough>



All the little psychos *do* is damage. No extra controlling, no debuffing, nope. All they do is hit things. A lot

That and draw aggro when you least want it

We're still around, Vetis.

A bit fragmented, since some are favouring CoV, some mid range CoH and I've been mostly messing around recently with Li and Heat.

But we're still around and about.

There will probably be some concerted grinding towards 50 going on with Heat over the next few weeks, so if/when you get your PC fixed, and feel like playing with some AV's, drop me a line. Oh, and let me know what your global is, as well.

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Because a ranged single-target Immob with -Recharge and -Fly is really poor, especially when it's easily stacked - right?

Just because it doesn't look like it's doing anything doesn't mean that it's not doing anything.

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Same goes for Web Grenade from /Traps. You might not think immediately that it'll be any good, but the -fly helps massively against Longbow Eagles, Wing ??? Wyverns, etc etc. And a -recharge debuff will always be useful against AV/Heroes.

In fact, Web Grenade is probably the single most spammed power on Toybox.

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Perhaps Pulse Rifle blast... but it's nice to do a little bit of damage now and then. Make's me feel a bit more "dangerous".

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With 5 laser/plasma-spewing robots and a creature dragged from the Netherworld to do your bidding, you need a Pulse Rifle to feel dangerous?

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Yep, I've got all 3 Rifle based attacks on Toybox, and they've saved my behind on multiple occasions when I've been ambushed and haven't had the time/space to summon and buff my pets.

Something I meant to post, but kept forgetting about.

The time delay between something being hit by a pet, and the damage being removed from the something.

It seems to take about half a second for the game to aplpy the damage and display the oh so friendly red numbers abot the target.

I wouldn't mind if it applied to all pets, but on my fire imps, the damage displays as soon as the target is struck.

So, Why are MM pets treated differently?

Controller pets can have multiple different attacks available to them, just like MM pets. The time delay doesn't care how many pets you've got out, it'll still happen with one Battle Drone just as much as with all 3 drones, both PB's, Mr. Stompy and an acid mortar.

Enquiring minds want to know

A point to bear in mind with TA is that unless you've got the Ninja Primary, then you're gonna be suffering the weapon draw animation a lot if you like to use your personal attacks at all...

But I've not had any direct experience of either, sorry.

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As a non TPer, I find that what works best for me is to retreat some distance with my bots, set them on Stay, and then charge forward through the portal as far as it takes for them to "respawn" next to me. At that point I set them to Follow Me as a group, and all is fine and dandy, with no micromanaging involved.

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I've done that, but the problem with it is there's aggro close by on the other side of the portal and it's only a short hop. If your minions don't follow you in that situation, you're most likely screwed. Especially in a team situation.

OK, so the rest of the team could probably manage, but if that's the case, why am I there at all?

I'm assuming this applies to all MM's, not just robotics, but anyway.

Oranbega maps. You get to a portal and go through, expecting your bots to follow you through the portal.

Unbeknown to you, your minions advanced pathfinding routines have realised that there is a route to your new position which dosen't involve going through a portal. instead it involves taking a long, meandering, scenic route through various tunnels that *you* don't know about because you've not been that way yet.

So, you go through the portal and unless you realise what's happening, in about 3 minutes time, either all your bots will flatline, or they'll come running to you, full pelt, with some nice new friends for you to play with

If this happens, and you have recall friend, then you need to spend 5 minutes regrouping your bots by putting htem all in stay mode, targeting one, starting RF, and then, while in mid TP, putting the target into follow mode. Otherwise, the idiot damn bot will run back to where you told him to stay through all the aforementioned aggro...

And Tp'ing 6 bots and a force field generator whilst constantly fiddling with action settings is micromanagement taken a little too far for me.

Was worknig my way toward the end of the World Wide Red arc last night on Heat Haze.

Rather stupidly, I managed to trigger the mission I was hoping not to start, ie the final Kronos Titan.

So, one shout for help on Coaalition and a few quick repsponses and we had an 8 man team that blitzed through the whole thing in less than half an hour.

So, thanks to the SNHS bods who responded, Sulphur who responded to the shout for a tank and the others who came along for the ride/xp/badge/excuse to nova every 2 minutes

I'd mention you by name if I had more than three surviving brain cells to rub together and could remember your names

Shame I managed to plant twice due to being aggroed on from halfway across the map by Hercules Class Titans who decided that the expiry date on their swarm missiles was almost up, and hence that they had to get rid of them in my direction...

And I only got a couple of debuffs on the the Kronos at the end. By the time I'd finished mopping up the Malta round the base, the Kronos had fallen over

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Also, the manual says giving the "attack my taget command" keeps them on your target or, the next target if you switch. When my target dies though i have to pull them back and re-command them or they go for a wander.

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What actually happens is that they revert to their current stance with no designated target. So if they're in passive and get told to attack your target, then they'll stop attacking and start following you once the target you gave them is dead.

If they're aggressive or defensive and near enough to an enemy mob, they'll start attacking it.

I change the bind I have set on Toybox for 'kill that thing over there' occasionally, depending on what I'm fighting. I've got two versions, one for 'ah what the hell, kill 'em all' which is /petcom_all attack aggressive and the other for 'OK, try not to annoy too many things, just kill that one thing over there' which is petcom_all attack passive.

Admittedly the latter only works if you've not applied the final upgrade to the PB's or Drones, or any upgrades at all to Stompy (from the PoV of a Robotics MM) since AoE's are just asking for aggro (and the dual Plasma Blast has a small AoE component tagged onto it, centred on the main target, not forgetting Flamethrower...)

Not sure if that waffle is waht you were talking about or not, but it may be related.

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So, you're advocating a change to the Ninja Primary from having ranged attacks to melee? Not sure if that's particularly safe since we're a squishy AT - the current archery attacks suit, as the ninja henches do use bows.

The Secondary set certainly couldn't be Martial Arts, as we have Buff/De-buff Secondaries and not damage-based ones.

Maybe some MA powers could be squeezed into the Patron Powers.

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Personally, I'm wondering why they didn't take the Shuriken, Exploding Shuriken and Caltrops powers from the Scrapper Weapon Mastery Pool and use them as the attacks in the Ninja/? MM set.

OK, maybe not caltrops since that comes through /traps, but something like Blinding Powder from the ?/nin Stalker set.

Would fit far more with Ninja minions IMO than the bow.

Last I heard, Deathsurge still wasn't giving the badge. I'd like to be wrong about it though.

Sorry, didn't notice this earlier. If you still need/want the badge, I'll give you a shout Thursday evening.

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Yep, I'm up for this too having just hit 47 (with Yellow) and pretty much having an AV in every mish. Oh, and any hints for dealing with Black Swan much appreciated, as she totally owned us last night resulting in the team disbanding after an evening of wiping the floor with all the previous AV's....

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Black Swan?

Step 1) Clear all other mobs on the map, she likes to run, just like Diabolique, and that draws aggro. Especially if you've tagged her with some Rad debuffs.

Step 2) Everyone pile on her at once and pummel the living wossname out of her.

Step 3) Hope you survive the nova.

Step 4) Exit completed mission.

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Hmmm... I don't want to scrap Assault... More damage is always better.

But I could scrap vengance, and take the +def and +dam and perhaps scrap Tacits as well.

Also, the builder reports serum to have a duration of 60 seconds. Not much indeed.

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MBar rolled a Mercs/FF Mastermind.

He took Serum.

He used it once.

Then he timed the recharge at something utterly ludicrous like 16 minutes (may be an exaggeration, I can't remember the exact figure)

Then he respecced out of Serum.

That's my experience of Serum. Not direct, since I'm not MBar , but that's the impression I've got of it.

YMMV

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I was wondering whether Invis might give them Hide status allowing them to critical on their first attack. If not it probably isn't that much use except:


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From what I recall, Hide and Invis are two similar, but different states, so just being invisible won't get you a crit on your opening strike as a Stalker/Ninja pet.

There's a dev post somewhere which clarifies this, but I frankly can't be bothered to look it up :P

:edit: OK, so I can be bothered :P

Here.

Only mentions stealth, but I'd say you're pretty safe in assuming that it covers invisibility as well.

If it were me, I'd drop Seeker drones.

I've seen quite enough of their AI in action with my Protector Bots and frankly they're not worth taking. (Caveat: I've not actually taken the power itself on Toybox, as I was massively put off by my experience via the bots, other peoples experience may vary )

You may want to take TP Foe instead, so that when you get trip mine, you can drop a Tm, and a poison trap, then..........

I don't think there is a best Mastermind.

There may be a best powerset for your playstyle. Robotics/Traps suits my slower style.

I don't think I'd like a melee pet type, although I've been thinking on and off about Ninja/FF...

FAR more important than the powersets you choose are the people you team with.

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- Trip Mine: needs slotting but happy with it. Don't need TP foe, just any kind of handy doorway or choke point

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I don't have TP Foe myself, I was merely comtemplating the application of the power to a couple of trip mines and a poison trap

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Had been wondering about Detonator: if you say it's no good, then fine, but had been thinking that it's more satisfying to blow up a dying drone than let it be defeated.

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The problem with that otherwise cunning plan is that there's an activation time on Detonator, so if you notice a bot is dying, then there's a good chance it'll die before you make it go Kablooie!

And given that I keep my bots at range if at all possible, then making a dying bot go up in flames is unlikely to hit multiple mobs.

With Melee type minions, I can see a point, but not for Mercenaries or Robotics.

Try it out, I'm just saying that from my POV and given the way I play the game, Detonator is somewhere between zero and naff all use

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but still ... i just wanted to brag about me getting to 40

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We'd never have guessed :P

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Recall Friend is supposedly of benefit to a /Traps MM as a number of the placeables can actually be teleported with the power. Not got the power yet myself though, so I'm not clear exactly which powers are useful with the power, although I suspect it's likely to be the ones that add a name and health bar on your "pets" window...

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To me, Recall Friend is essential to almost ANY mastermind, to fix things when one of your idiot pets gets stuck on a piece of scenery.

As to moving traps around, the only placeable iten that can be repositioned is the acid mortar. And since it only has a 60 second/10 shot lifespan, and recharges in less than 60 seconds with a single recharge SO, I don't bother. especially since if you need to reposition it, you're unlikely to be in a position to actually manage to reposition it due to the power activation time and iterrupt possibilities on Recall Friend.

TP Foe + Trip Mine/Poison Trap, however