Heraclea
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Posts
2089 -
Joined
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It's not the only armor set with this problem. There's also Granite, and Ice is pretty bad.
Fire Armor can be, but with the right color costumes and particles set to minimum it's not intolerable.
If fashion is your forte, stick with WP, Inv, Regen, Shields, Reflexes. -
I eventually just learned to ignore the power names, myself. I seldom read combat logs, and that's the only place they show up. Any such capability, unlike power recoloring, would entirely mess up the feeds from add ons that tell you how you're doing by monitoring the combat log.
I started enjoying sets like Martial Arts, Katana, and Ninjutsu once I learned to ignore the artsy, pseudo-mystical, or unintelligible names of the sets and focused only on what they did. My ninja MM has a Middle Eastern background; AFAIAC he doesn't have ninjas but assassins. My martial arts characters just throw kicks. -
I put 8 points of KB protection on both my fire and my dark armor tankers. This seems to be more than enough to serve in that role.
For a scrapper, one may be enough. -
I'd start out with an assessment of your characters and their needs. Is it inf that you want, or specific bonuses or IOs to deal with issues like endurance? If the latter, see if your merits will get you there by themselves. IIRC, 365 merits will get you both a Miracle and a Performance Shifter, and those two alone can make many struggling characters much more fun to play.
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When I've wanted a character with overalls, I've always resorted to the Samurai chest details in a single color. I also use the same pieces as generic leather armor, and to make a sort of dirndl. I've only used it as part of a samurai costume maybe once.
This is a veteran reward, unobtainable for characters otherwise, so this may not work for everyone. -
They need to fix something about it. Because the behavior of stunned mobs doesn't help most tankers, a lot of stun isn't enough compensation for what's become the weakest tanker secondary. The only primary there's really any synergy with is Dark Armor. Stun is counterproductive for Willpower, doesn't help Fire, and for the rest of the primaries it's meh.
With its minimal AoE, the tradeoff used to be the fast activating, heavy hitting tier 8 and 9 single target attacks; degrade their performance, and the set has nothing else to go on. -
If you have strong opinions that others might take issue with, I'd suggest that you cheerfully disable it.
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In MA? Timed missions are mostly irrelevant. If you can't play through from start to finish in one setting, you can always revisit them. If you're called away to join another team while playing MA, the only way you can do that is by abandoning the arc anyways; and then again, you can revisit it if interested.
Those things are only problems in dev content. Use them if you want to. -
If this discussion interests you, go to the test server and play my fifteen minute masterpiece:
Welcome To the Future - #225892
and let 'em know what you think. -
Quote:Someone who had done the math on the scrapper forums said that the Perf. Shifter was always better on average than a level 50 generic IO in Stamina, and about broke even in Quick Recovery. Since this will be less than Stamina, and the Perf. Shifter proc can be slotted several times over, it seems an obvious candidate.Originally Posted by Coldmed
is that right herc?..a lvl 50 end mod i.o v.s. a lvl 50 ps + end , the + end will give better end?
cause i got one going into stamina now..and if thats true ill be all over getting a 2nd one -
Quote:The proc is already numerically better over time than a level 50 generic IO in Stamina itself. It would therefore surely be better in Physical Perfection as far as recovery goes.Originally Posted by Tank_Washington
Now, some tankers are going to put a high value on run speed bonuses. Not every primary will, of course; but even if you are slotting the power for health rather than recovery, it seems that this opens a path for non-Willpower tankers to get two of that proc. That's something I'd personally value above more regeneration. -
I find my Inv tankers are more versatile than my Shield tankers. If you want an "unstoppable machine" in PvE, I'd go that way.
Shield is a positional defense set with offense added. The offensive powers, a damage boost and a solid AoE attack, are lots of fun. And at level 50 it is quite adequately tough, though lacking a real panic button power. But it suffers from a problem common to defense sets --- when you exemp down, you lose access to powers, which means that you lose entire types or positions of defense you'd come to rely on. This is hard to adjust to. For fun, invite a reflex scrapper to a Positron run. You'll see what I mean. This will be partially ameliorated, but not eliminated, in i16.
Invuln remains my first choice of tanker when I want to exemp down to run lower level task forces. It does become somewhat stronger as it grows, but its performance is relatively consistent from level 15 to level 50. The things you are strongest against are consistent. The things you need to watch out for are consistent. Inv has several panic buttons; an early one (Dull Pain) and a late, optional one (Unstoppable).
I have never taken Unstoppable on a tanker. Inv has a relatively free build order; it is full of passives that can be postponed, allowing for slightly earlier Tough and Weave. Because it's positional defense, build order is more critical on Shields, and you generally want your defensive toggles as soon as they come into play. -
Quote:I did --- in fact, over the course of things, I have made two; the first one was pulled. I also made a Jerk Hacker arc, for that matter. I don't recommend that you play either of them; they probably aren't your cup of tea anyways, and knowing that I wrote them is unlikely to help you enjoy them.Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
Tertiary to this... you made a lesbian hellion arc? Seriously? I was making a joke about Hearts on Fire, which is written by a friend of mine, about a lesbian hellion.
Custom characters are in fact integral to the stories told in both of them, and they do have at least rudimentary plots - Lesbian Hellion Liberation at least featured a plot twist as well as satire, though Jerk Hackers! was mostly a surrealistic scenario.
I have played Hearts on Fire. I liked it. -
Quote:This is exactly why story writers need to send a clear, united, collective message that the custom critter XP nerf is not something we are willing to accept.Originally Posted by Hydrophidian
These XP scaling changes, if implemented as they currently stand, will, I believe, homogenize MA. There will be less creativity, not more. Less atmosphere in arcs, less novelty, less gameplay challenge. Fewer people will want to play arcs, so fewer people will want to make them. Fewer people making them will mean less people going to AE to play them. In short, a downward spiral. So, in the end, less story as well.
After all, we already control the means of production. -
Quote:I realize it's probably futile replying to any of your posts. But ---Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
There is so much in this game, so much interesting stuff, that the devs have failed to develop narratively, so much stuff that could be explored and explained, and it's not being touched by players because they're busy making lesbian hellions or clowns or whatever they think is 'interesting.'
The canon lore of the game is not extremely rich or fascinating, at least to me. It can be summed up pretty much as:
The Rikti are bad guys, out to conquer the world.
Nemesis and his army are bad guys, out to conquer the world.
Arachnos are bad guys, out to conquer the world....
I see a pattern developing here.
Second: the MA tools are limited because the game itself is limited. Even dev content missions, that are built with tools somewhat more sophisticated than MA missions, never have dialogue trees that affect their outcome. I would love to have that, to use it for storytelling. It isn't in the game to begin with.
What current content, MA and official, offers is combat, combat, and more combat. This is one reason why custom characters are "interesting". They offer one of the few ways the engine has to surprise the player, to create a puzzle by offering a tactical challenge. Before the farms took over, MA was initially filled with missions full of custom characters that were often overwhelmingly difficult, multiple custom archvillains in every spawn. People realized that such fun had its limits.
FWIW, the missions I made always used custom characters in the service of stories, or at least concept. My tastes and interests in storytelling probably differ strongly from yours or Venture's. I am more interested in surrealist comedy, social commentary, and evocation of settings than I am in exploring details of the history of the Circle of Thorns. If Statesman appears in my missions, he will be a buffoon. (And the canon invites treating him that way, IMO.) But even my "lesbian hellion" mission at least touched on CoT canon lore. And it is simply arrogant to elevate personal tastes into the way things "should" be done.
The real problem here is that penalizing custom critters in XP focuses on the wrong target. It is currently not possible to make a custom critter that's really a pushover. The most recent test patch seems to indicate that it's dawning on the devs that the real problem was in the way they designed certain of their mobs. Right now we can't make custom critters with the same flaws that led to exploits. You can try to powerlevel on maps full of custom bosses, sure; but expect to die quite a bit. -
I had already settled into a mindset that the Architect would end up catering chiefly to farmers or to niche markets. So most of my arcs were targeted at specific niches, and probably some of those include only myself. The old rule used to be that radios/newspapers were for team, contact arcs were for solo. In MA it's single mission is for team, multiple mission for solo.
The apparent plan to make MA playing even less rewarding, making rewarding material boring and creative material unrewarding, has pretty much killed my remaining interest. My only MA goal now is getting close to the ticket cap on my existing characters, since any i16 characters will not be earning them. I obviously won't be writing any more. -
Does it also accept endurance recovery as well as healing sets? If so, this would appear to be an ideal place to put a Performance Shifter proc, or maybe a second one. The proc would not apparently be affected by the fact that it's weaker than Stamina.
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This is easy. I have a whole Amazon Brigade of Hot Amazons from Ancient Rome who play Gladiator Games. Both heroes and villains share this as a background.
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She was taking out some magical trash to the dumpster behind Talos, and there was this Stunner Chief....
As you know, electricity and magic do not mix. Or rather, should not mix; they in fact mix all too easily.
The El Super Mexicano sign was installed temporarily as a distraction, by the cleanup people that had to be brought in. It served its purpose of drawing eyes away from the dull red stain..... -
My most recent stories have been made largely as showcases for the custom critters that were central to their plots. The ratings don't lie: single mission stories get played, multi-mission stories are not popular, and Very Long is box office poison. Up until this, the challenge has been to put enough interesting feature points in single missions to say that they do in fact have stories.
What burns me most about this was the fact that I bought extra story arc spaces, so I didn't have to cycle through my active roster and could experiment a bit more. Now I want my money back. I'm not going to bother publishing any more if this system goes live. I should have learned my lesson by now that MMOs will break your heart.
I will take down all my published stories when this threatens to go live. They will not be replaced; they take up too much space on my hard drive already. And frankly, I would encourage every story arc author who reads the forums to unpublish their arcs. This should be a communal effort. Let the old farms be all that remains. -
Quote:No, they don't have any powers that aren't supplied. Only concepts.Originally Posted by Venture
Custom mobs are "the same boring enemy groups", just wearing funny hats. They don't do anything you haven't seen before.
Personally, I wonder why we got an ancient Roman zone that didn't come stocked with fauns, satyrs, furies, and harpies. But now, if I seek to supply them, anyone who plays suffers an XP penalty versus mobs that are already harder than standard. -
This poses some difficulty for me.
My most recent arc is full of custom power selected characters, built for themes. I made sure my Furiæ had Confuse, and that my Medusæ had all of the earth control powers that encase their victims in stone. But since these are Standard Plus enemies, which typically pick only three powers per set to start with, they're going to be worth under 20% experience even if I wanted them to be harder rather than easier than the default.
It also breaks the standard powersets. Currently, a standard lieutenant with an Empathy secondary gets the single power, Heal Other. If I add a single power to that set, I cut the XP that character is worth by more than 500%.
The math here is simply wrong, and this change is too radical. I bought a full set of slots, and had plans for two more designs working --- another Latin language design, this one villainous and comic, involving Gauls and Druids; and something on a Wagnerian theme. These would require a lot of custom critters. Now that I am informed of this, they are on hold. If this goes live I doubt I will bother making these or any more. -
Also, FWIW, the Bone 2 cape makes a fairly adequate animal hide thrown over your shoulder with the appropriate colors.
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Part of the problem is that the sheer number of currencies in used in the game has expanded over the past few issues, without in-game tethers in the forms of vendors, that result in wide discrepancies in their usefulness.
The price of almost all invention set recipes is pegged to one in-game currency: reward merits. No matter how crazy the AH prices get, I know that by saving merits I will be able to buy what I need outright.
The price of rare and uncommon salvage is pegged to another in-game currency: architect tickets. I always know how many tickets I will need to get any rare or uncommon salvage I require.
But the only thing that's pegged to the value of inf is SOs and generic IO recipes. I know I can always buy a SO with inf, or a generic IO recipe from the table, using inf. As a result of these pegs, generic IO recipes typically sell for below their purchase value at the AH, and most SOs sell very much below their purchase value.
The value of inf needs also to be pegged against common salvage and set IO recipes by allowing their purchase at ingame stores for a fixed price of influence. It is axiomatic that common salvage prices at the AH are grossly excessive to an extent that should not be countenanced, by anybody. If a piece of level 10 common 10-25 invention salvage sells for 5000 inf on the auction house, and a level 10 player gets 10 inf per minion defeated, this means that the player is going to have to defeat 500 minions to afford it. And most low level arcane salvage goes for well above that price. Current prices encourage RMT and the sort of play the devs consider improper. -
Quote:Recipe prices, fortunately, are pegged at least one of the game currencies: merits. Run enough SFs, and you will eventually be able to acquire any non-purple set recipe, even if none are available on the market, or the ones at the market are selling for more inf than you can hope to acquire.Originally Posted by Cynical_Gamer
Salvage prices don't bug me since they're still available. I'm more concerned with the huge swathes of recipes that are simply unavailable redside (and often blueside) at any price.
I certainly would not object to having their value pegged to inf, or have a direct merit to inf conversion available.