Eva Destruction

Having spent the last two double xp weekends killing Banished Pantheon until my eyeballs bled to get Popular, I am SOOOOO glad I will not have to do it again for Leader.

However, some of the new numbers seem a bit off. The FIRST epic damage taken badge is still at 25 mil....I have never gotten the 10 mil badge before 50, ever, on any character.

Dropping most of the defeat badges to a nice even 100 instead of the arbitrary 200s and 500s is a nice change. And THANK YOU THANK YOU for reevaluating Born in Battle...now if we could only get rid of the stupid debt badge requirement for High Pain Threshold...

Two problems:

1: As Mirai pointed out, critters with custom power selections are worth less xp than a critter set to "hard" or "extreme," despite possibly having more powers. From my experience, the "extreme" setting is generally only used by lazy arc creators who are more interested in creating "uber super-awesome" player-killers than well-balanced, or even challenging critters. Critters set to "extreme" are usually significantly more difficult than standard dev-created critters, even at 50. Authors who wish to create challenging but balanced critters select custom powers.

Personally, I would rather keep the current restrictions on custom power selections (Standard + whatever extras I choose) and have them award decent XP than be penalized for trying to create an interesting, thematically appropriate and suitably challenging critter by hand-picking its powers.

2: Even set to standard, custom critters are more difficult than standard critters below level 30 or so. So not only are the authors of lowbie-friendly content being penalized by being limited in what powersets they can select for their customs without making them overpowered for their level, now nobody will want to play arcs that contain customs because they give an XP penalty.

3: Being forced to have all three ranks in a custom group will penalize authors who are limited to a single rank due to file size or story limitations. I would suggest that the reward penalties should only apply to groups that contain NO MINIONS, so as to curb all-boss and all-LT farming while allowing all-minion or no-boss groups that some authors use.

There is the Leviathan cave, which has a watery look, but is rather annoying to navigate, as well as being mostly empty when you use it in MA. Some of the Cimeroran caves also have a room with water in it. There are also outdoor maps with water, such as the Grandville beach map, one of the "forest" maps, the St Martial map, and the Mercy Island docks map, but none of them have spawn points in the water.

For your customs, the closest you could get to "water" is giving them ice powers, which could be annoying if all the customs have them, due to stacking slows.

Dear contacts,

I am aware of the existence of hazard zones. I am aware that I have reached the minimum level to get into a new hazard zone. However, all the enemies in said zone are my level or higher, and the spawn sizes are designed for teams. Teams do not want to go to these zones; teams want to do missions. I am incapable of taking out these spawns by myself, and so must waste a mission drop on this introduction to the zone, just to get you to give me a real mission.

Furthermore, contact, two of my other contacts have already informed me of the existence of the Abandoned Sewers, the presence of the Rikti in said sewers, and that they want me to defeat them. The other two contacts want me to go to Eden. I said no to them, what makes you think I will say yes to you?

Please stop trying to make me go into hazard zones and give me a real mission.

Sincerely,
Not a Scrapper.

Yeah, stop listening to us and go play. You have a viable build there, lots of AoE damage for teams and good mitigation for soloing. You're probably going to end up tweaking your final build anyway, as you settle into your playstyle and discover what works best for you.

You'll be fine with just a Stealth IO, gameplay wise, and it'll make you see-through and stealthy-looking to go with your concept. The Superspeed suggestion was in case you wanted complete invisibility.

I'd still ditch Stun, and replace it with Hasten. Recharge is your friend. I don't know what level you are with this guy, but AR has some long recharge times.

Boost Range will be a few seconds away from perma with a single level 50 common IO. Of course if you're planning on exemping a lot, you'll lose the set bonuses that make it so.

With Beanbag, Total Focus, and the KB from M30 and Buckshot you should be able to solo just fine.

Stupefy in Total Focus? Really? All you really need the stun for is to stack with Beanbag to stun a boss quickly, after that you can get Beanbag stacking with itself, especially if you ditch Stun and pick up Hasten instead. Really, you want Hasten with AR anyway. You can slot TF with Mako's for a ranged def bonus.

I'd ditch Stealth as well and pick up Maneuvers, it gives better def that doesn't suppress when you attack, and doesn't slow you. If you want the invisibility drop Swift and get Superspeed instead, or swap out Superjump for Superspeed if you don't mind relying on the raptor pack for vertical movement.

And I'd really suggest trying to find some way to max out the damage on M30. If you're gonna use it, it should kill stuff. Shield Breaker in Surveillance will give you the same AoE def as Undermined Defense, only at 4 pieces, so you'll be saving two slots you can use in M30. You would lose some def debuff and recharge by using a lower-level set, but Surveillance isn't auto-hit so accuracy is good and I don't think it stacks with itself anyway.