Expeditor

I seem to recall when the Endurance Modification sets were introduced they were bugged in that they only enhanced drain values, not gains/recovery buffs - I wouldn't imagine such a glitch would persist this long so I'm guessing I just didn't get the memo or something but does anyone know how this currently stands?

I confess, like many others, I thoroughly enjoyed levelling up my little Wolf Spider and refused to fully give up my trusty rifle even after going the way of the Bane. I know some who have gone 'pure' Wolf Spider, refusing even to take the Bane Armor upgrade, and others using the Bane branch just for a few utility powers such as the aforementioned armor and surveillance, but how about having an actual dedicated Huntsman branch for all those soldiers who don't want a fancy backpack or cloaking device?

I've drafted a possible set of branch powers below - comments and alternate power suggestions are welcome!

6 Battlecry
10% to-hit, 25% dam, 20% recharge click team buff - 30s duration, fixed 120s recharge?
An 'Accelerated Metabolism'-ish team buff as a replacement to Build Up or Aim - the fixed recharge seemed sensible to allow a reasonable recharge time for solo players whilst avoiding all-Huntsman teams achieving over-the-top stacking (a-la the aforementioned Accelerated Metabolism)
12 Precision Shot
Tier 3 Blast w/ chance to disorient
18 Smoke Grenade
26 Boost Range
32 Cover Fire
My initial thought for this was Full Auto but the damage is about the same as Omega Maneuver so I'm not sure if it would take away from the AoE specialism of Crabs to have that, so as an alternative we could perhaps have Cover Fire:
The same sort of damage as Heavy Burst but with a 60s recharge, 4s animation (not quite as bad as Full Auto's 6s) with a 6s 10% accuracy debuff.
"You provide cover fire for your allies, briefly reducing affected foes to-hit."


1 Huntsman Combat Training
Modified 'Foresight' - 5% def all, defence debuff res, mag 4 mezz protection
Wolf Spider Armor is much lighter than Crab and Bane Armor, allowing the Huntsman increased maneuverability in combat.
24 Huntsman Shield
Scorpion Shield clone - smash/lethal/energy def, toxic res
28 Surveillance
35 Web Cocoon
Fired from the rifle rather than a mace of course.

Less single-target damage potential than Banes, less AoE damage potential than Crabs but with more control/support tools than either.
Uses a different survivability mechanic to either, giving excellent survivability against the most common damage types whilst offering lower survivability to more exotic types and next to none against psi making tactical use of controls and range more important.

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And that's not including Flitz, who has been maintaining the Team GBH base as 'interim' leader for about a year now! I really should start recruiting.

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Hmm join the Club, the SNHS now has two members but Precip (my alt) is never leaving as she's been there since day 1.
So I have a huge fully stocket base with a bunch of TPs and about 3.5mil prestige. Coalitioned it with my personal SG, so no need for TPs etc in my main base.

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Good to hear the SNHS is still alive in some sense! And tell Precip that Synergi says 'hi'

My heroes and villains have their own respective SGs and it's certainly handy - easiest villain-side of course, as there are far fewer teleporters to get, although it probably helps that I spend more time that side!

A handy tip for when you are starting out is that you don't need a permanent work bench - just buy it, use it and sell it back as and when you need it.

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the two main goodies are Longbow and PPD so i think there should be two AT's, the layout should be like this:

PPD Cop to Hardsuit or Psi-Cop
Longbow Agent to Nullifer or Spec-Ops

But we should keep kheldians and put kheldian like AT's in villains like Void and Nictus

So theres 2 Soldier like and 2 space like AT's for both heroes and villains

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I want the PPD hardsuit! Last Halloween I went trick or treating on my mastermind *just* for that, then wore it constantly until it ran out - probably the only time mezzes actually bothered me on my mastermind because it meant I lost the hardsuit!

Considering how much I've enjoyed playing my two VEAT's I'd certainly be in favour of seeing something similar hero-side - some nice ideas here

Hi fiends and fiendettes, would there be any interest in running through a respec trial this evening at ~7pm?

I have a lvl 32 bane spider who would be leading this expedition.

If you're interested please sign up here.

Well Fleet and Nathalia are up to level 10 (blazing arrow ftw!) and Frostfire is but a single mission away. We can also now take on sidekicks if any newcomers want to join us next week

Is anyone else on tonight? As long as everyone is 5+ (everyone from last week would be of course) we could have a stroll through the Hollows and line up Frostfire for (hopefully) a bigger turnout next week.

Elsewise I have a new plant/emp controller if anyone who missed out last week wants a levelling partner to get up to 8ish for joining the rest of the gang next week?

I'll be around at 7:30 anyway - just global me on @prime.

It would be nice if, in the search results, team leaders were marked with a star same as they are in the team window, perhaps with another symbol to denote if the team is full or not. Perhaps when you right-click someone on a team who is not the leader it would give an option to /tell team leader as well.

Another improvement would be if the team leader could set a team status, much like the "looking for team" status available when you're not on a team, to say that they're looking for more people (or not) and what they're doing.

Having any luck Panda?

EDIT: There's three of us currently: Fleet (my good self), Nathalia and Broxx - we're just going to have a casual stroll about Atlas harassing Hellions if any late arrivals would care to join us

I have a kin/elec defender who works pretty well - elec has two 'true' AoE (as opposed to a cone) which work in melee range, which meshes well with kin for Transfusion and Transference.

Slotted for endurance drain Short Circuit can heavily neuter a group in two applications, and you can use Transference to more quickly neuter a single particularly dangerous opponent. Alongside the single target hold in elec and the slows and -damage available from kin you can make yourself pretty safe.

Give it a whirl

I'll be there on Wednesday - what powersets are we looking at by this point?

I was thinking of making a cold/ice but as Knightly mentioned, the shields are a little visually obtrusive. Storm could work instead (it gets Freezing Rain much earlier than Cold gets its equivalent, Sleet), or I might consider an archer instead - gaaagh, my altitis is playing up again!

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[EDIT] Wait, where's Aim?

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In the list - I missed it myself during editing, hence it not being in bold! It doesn't have any description because it's just a standard power, so it's just sitting there all alone all inconspicuous-like.

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I'd prefer a pure Martial Arts secondary (adjusted for Blaster needs to some degree, of course) rather than a bow-and-MA secondary, so it could be used with Assault Rifle for a Natutral toon as well. You know, like a Council Adjutant.

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Any thoughts on powers? Lowering the damage of Crane Kick and making the knockback guaranteed would make it a suitable first power - with Cobra Strike, Crippling Axe Kick and Eagles Claw we'd have a setup similar to Energy Manipulation in terms of melee attacks. For utility perhaps Caltrops, Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder (all from the Stalker Ninjitsu set) alongside Focus Chi/Build Up that leaves one spot free. Dragon's Tail (PBAoE attack with 75% chance for knockdown) would certainly be nice for AoE damage and defensive utility.

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I'm really liking the Pulse Rifle set though, except for the noticeable lack of a third, stronger single target blast. Granted, Elec Blast is the same, but it has Voltaic Sentinel instead.
Maybe swap out the Knockback beam for something? The main secondary effect of the set appears to be Disorient anyway.

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Yeah I was a little uncertain about the omission of a tier 3 blast - on the one hand having at least one means of mitigation besides disorient would be nice, but then that left the set with 2 trivial damage defensive abilities. I'd be more inclined to get rid of Precision Beam than Repulsion Beam, but that's more personal preference than anything. I like Praf's idea for a plasma blast with -regen as a nice meaty tier 3 like the Assault Bots get though.

Truth be told I didn't realise the radius for glue arrow and oil slick was so large - I had imagined something more around the 15' mark, like caltrops.

As for acid arrow, I had considered that but it's pushing into defender territory a little too much - there's no real precedence for hefty resist and defence debuff powers in a blaster secondary. Similarly a ranged hard control like ice arrow is more out of place than the various softer controls such as sleep and slow and the small number of melee attacks.

At the end of the day it's a (relatively - requires a little more tweaking than I initially anticipated!) quick and easy route to a matching secondary for archery. Most of the bow attacks would likely be used at the start of combat rather than in the middle and the martial arts attacks wouldn't require the bow to be drawn, so redraw issues should be minimal for non-matching primaries.

Of course I might be just as sated to see archery and trick arrow proliferated to corrupters - we shall see

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Earth should be TP so it will synergize with Stone/? Tanks and brutes.

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I could see that working as long as it was limited to teleporting onto surfaces, so you could have an animation of disappearing into the ground and then arising from the ground at the destination - I'd find it pretty hard to justify a chunk of rock just vanishing and then reappearing a couple of hundred yards away in mid-air... but then with that limitation over ordinary teleport it would presumably need some manner of compensation?

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I don't think they want to be letting blasters have Oil Slick...

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To be fair it's essentially a mix of Ice Patch (from Ice Manipulation) and Burn (from Fire Manipulation), except available later (lvl 38 compared to lvl 20 and 35 respectively) with a much longer recharge than either (180s compared to 35s and 25s respectively). Would it really be that scary a prospect in the hands of a blaster?

A few ideas, past and present, some more inspired than others. Comments and critiques always welcome Just thought I'd organise them into one thread instead of creating new ones every now and then.

Pulse Rifle (blast set)
Pulse Rifle Blast - tier 1 w/ disorient
Pulse Rifle Burst - tier 2 w/ disorient
Photon Grenade - ranged AoE w/ disorient
Aim
Photon Volley - snipe w/ disorient
Animation: Fires several pulses of energy at the target similar to the Radiation Blast snipe (Proton Volley)
Repulsion Beam - knockback w/ minor damage
Animation: a brief warmup followed by a short, wide energy pulse
Suppression Fire - short ranged, wide cone w/ disorient
Animation: Rapidly fires a number of shots in a wide arc over 2-3 seconds
Precision Beam - disorient w/ minor damage
Animation: holds the rifle higher (like a Council Marksman for example) and fires a fine beam of energy at the target
Pulse Rifle Overload - ranged AoE nuke w/ disorient
Animation: a short warmup followed by an extended, wide energy blast that explodes on impact (in a similar fashion to "Explosive Blast" from the Energy Blast set I would think)

Archery Blaster Secondary (any ideas for name?)
The only new animations would be for the Martial Arts attacks so that they could be used with the bow drawn.
Entangling arrow - immobilise w/ slow
Glue Arrow - AoE slow
Crane Kick - high damage w/ knockback (from Martial Arts)
Crippling Axe Kick - moderate damage w/ immobilise (from Martial Arts)
Build Up
Flash Arrow - AoE -perc/-acc
Cobra Strike - disorient w/ minor damage (from Martial Arts)
Poison Gas Arrow - AoE sleep
Oil Slick Arrow - AoE slow/knockdown (ignitable)

Newspaper Storyarcs
"What If" flashbacks - limited side-switching
New Epic/Patron pools for villains
Elemental Power Pools
Bone Armour
Mandatory Missions - the abolition thereof

Praetorian Recluse

With the global announcement for zone events it might just be worth sending out a broadcast in Grandville and sending out a few /tells to try to garner some interest at the time rather than hanging about waiting for it to turn up.

I've long maintained that if GMs were made to be worth the effort it would be easier to get teams together - as it is once they have the badge people tend to lose interest, and not everyone is interested in the badges to begin with. Good luck anyhow.

Nice job on the uniforms - I assume there would be some scope for personalisation, particularly on the head as shown with the tech/mask variations?

Depending on the sort of day/time you're looking at I'd certainly be interested - I did enjoy ye olde all-defender team of yore.

I'd be pretty flexible on powersets - I'm an alt-fiend of the highest order so I'd give near-anything a try

Hi folks n folkettes, who's up for a Strike Force? My lvl 26 Spider, Hakeswell, will be leading this expedition this evening at 8pm, attendance permitting.

It's lvl 25-30 (higher levels are auto-exemp'd) with at least 3 AV fights.

Who's with me?

Sounds like a blast - I'm sorry to have missed it but I was out of town sadly. I'll have to keep an eye out for future raids

Okay you've piqued my curiosity - why isn't broadcast used?

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What would be nice is to have the limited space for the regular bio as we have now, and then a much higher limit for an extended bio - so at the end of the regular one, there would be a "read more" link or something to open a separate window. That way if you found the short bio interesting then you can choose to read the full version or, if it didn't interest you, don't.

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That is a good idea, but I can't second it because I know if it was implemented a lot of people would just type "click the READ MORE button, because I can't fit what I wanted to say in here" in the usual bio space.

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Which I wouldn't find the least bit interesting and consequently wouldn't read

I agree the limit is useful - it would be very easy to get carried away. Equally sometimes I have more in mind for a character than I can express in the limited space.

What would be nice is to have the limited space for the regular bio as we have now, and then a much higher limit for an extended bio - so at the end of the regular one, there would be a "read more" link or something to open a separate window. That way if you found the short bio interesting then you can choose to read the full version or, if it didn't interest you, don't.

I've got a lvl 50 bots/traps mastermind that I'd be keen to try this whole raiding malarkey with - will see you there