Jade_Dragon

Altitis, my friend. Give in, we all have.

Maybe it's me, but I don't have trouble soloing anything in this game. I don't have any trouble levelling every two or three days on the majority of my characters, in the 20s and 30s. When I get up into the 40s, it's noticable, I can get 1/3 to 1/2 of a bar that represents 1/10 of my way to the next level. It can be kind of jarring to go from filling the bar 3 times in a session to seeing it only barely move.

You've just got to accept it. That's the way RPGs are, as you reach the higher levels you get less progress for more effort. That's how they pull you in, the levels come easily when you are developing your character and concept, and then once your character becomes complete and more balanced in its capabilities you have to work harder and harder to get any stronger. A large part of it is that you are nearing the limits of what the game system can handle, once you hit 95% of the time, and are missed 95% of the time and take only 5% of the damage when you are hit, there is little else the game can do to make you any better.

At least this game isn't like some, that make you gain 10 more levels and do raids for several months, repeatedly, in order to gain about 5% in some stat. And it really is unique that you can just create yet another character, even on a server you have another character on, up to 12 more times, and even more if you pay for some more slots.

I'll also add that maybe you aren't as balanced as you believe yourself to be. You speak about the defensive characteristics of your character being past the ED limits (and you have IOs at this level, which suggests to me that your effort required is more than just levelling) yet you don't seem to mention your offensive capability. At 32 you should have a very balanced Brute built more for damage, the levels at which you were concentrating on defense in order to survive building Fury should have passed in the 20s.

Maybe you should switch out some of those IOs for more damage and recharge, instead of trying to cap defense so early. Especially with the changes to Fury, you can't leverage defense for that max Fury any more.

'Nuther quick point, another advantage of altitis is that Patrol XP really smooths over the levelling curve and lessens the frustration of dying. It's still frustrating, of course, but at least as long as you have Patrol XP left you know your progress won't be slowed any. It's simple enough to just play a character until you have no more Patrol XP, and then switch to another that is still full up.

Putting it another way, you have two types of Defense, Typed, and Positional. Typed Defenses are Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Psionic and various other unique types. (Note there is no Toxic defense. There is only Toxic Resistance) Positional Defenses are Melee, Ranged, and AoE.

All attacks have at least two types, Type, and Position. A Melee attack (obviously) is protected against by Melee Defense, and an attack that does Smashing damage is protected against by Smashing Defense. If an attack does both Smashing and another type of damage (say, Smashing and Negative, for Shadow Maul) then it is Melee, Smashing AND Negative.

When you are hit by such an attack, the game totals your Defense against Melee, Smashing and Negative and chooses whichever is the HIGHEST. So if you have 20% Melee Defense, 10% Smashing Defense and 30% Negative Defense, you would have 30% defense against a Shadow Maul. You would have 20% Defense against, say, a Super Strength Haymaker.

Resistance works differently, there is no Position for Resistance, and the Type is applied separately for each type of the attack. So if you have 10% Smashing Resistance and 30% Negative Resistance the Smashing component of the Shadow Maul would be reduced by 10%, and the Negative by 30%.

The main reason for this is that if Defense protects you, you aren't hit at all. It couldn't make the Smashing hit and the Negative miss, for instance. So you get whatever gives you the greatest chance to avoid the attack. One good thing about this, though, is that if you have a weakness to something, but the attack has another component that you aren't weak to, it's not a weakness. For instance, even an Invulnerability meleer who has no Defense against Psionic can apply his Ranged Defense to a ranged Psionic attack. Likewise, Toxic attacks usually have some other damage type (such as Lethal) that you can apply your Defense to.

Also:

There are a number of factors going on here. It is quite complicated.

1) Hero and Villain SGs are seperate. Heroes cannot be in Villain SGs, and vice versa. While Vigilantes and Rogues can be in SGs, they are still limited to their "side", Vigilantes in Hero SGs and Rogues in Villain SGs. Since Preatorians have not chosen a side yet, it would be hard to decide whether they belong in Hero SGs or Villain SGs.

2) One of the primary purposes of bases is portals to the various zones of that side. Hero SGs do not and likely will not have access to Preatorian Zones. The same for Villain SGs. And a Praetorian who joined a Hero or Villain SG would not be able to enter the zones accessed by the portals that ARE in that SG base. So he would essentially have no portals he could use.

3) As mentioned, side switching causes you to lose access to your SG. If Loyalists were given access to Villain SGs and Resistance to Hero SGs, you would lose access to your SG every time you switched sides. As this is more common in Praetoria and easier than using the side switching system in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, it would be a much larger problem.

4) The devs have explicitly said that there will never be cross faction SGs. I take this to mean that at the very least, SGs will not be merged as the Markets were. Hero SGs and Villain SGs will remain separate, and their functionality will not overlap. (That is, you will never be able to put portals to Villain Zones in a Hero base)

5) Currently, Rogues cannot use Hero bases, and Vigilantes cannot use Villain bases, even as guests. It is assumed Praetorians would be treated as "guests" under the same rules, and thus would currently be excluded as well. It is possible that "guests" will be allowed in bases if they are "grey" alignments in the future, just as Heroes and Villains will hopefully be allowed into Praetoria in the future. However, that is not certain.

I personally feel that the least intrusive solution is to allow Preatorian SGs. These would only be available from 1 to 20, and after that you would "graduate" to a Hero or Villain SG depending on "where you went". The Praetorian SGs might coalition themselves with Hero or Villain SGs in order to facilitate the eventual transfer. In other words, the Praetorian SG could be a "branch" of the main SG. It would have its own base, though, as well as its own portals to Zones in Praetoria, not Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.

Taking the concept further, Rogues and Vigilantes might be allowed in such SGs. This might be seen as violating the "no cross faction" rule, but honestly, I believe that dev statement to mean the existing two SGs will not be combined into one overall. That is, Hero and Villain SGs will still exist, there will just be a third "Rogue" faction for SGs. This could be separate, or perhaps a Hero or Villain SG could make the choice to open itself up to neutrals. (Thus, for instance, a Hero SG could invite Heroes, Vigilantes, Rogues and Praetorians)

There will still be issues with where the portals will be allowed to go in a base, and whether certain members of an SG will be excluded from using some of them, but I think this can be overcome. It might be necessary for an SG that turns "neutral" (or that is created as neutral) to give up something. Such as, the ability to base raid, if this is re-implemented in the future, or the ability to enter and exit the base without resetting the selected missions from your side. In other words, a neutral base could be a Co-Op Zone, like Pocket D, with all the applicable effects on teaming.

You could even have SGs coalitioning together to access features that couldn't be implemented by one cross faction SG. Perhaps even sharing Prestige in some way. But all this is going to take work, and I don't expect it until I19 or even later.

Here's a pic I took of Genie Gold, with her new "light themed" powers. She's not really a genie or Arabian, but her powers come from an ancient magical artifact. It's kind of unclear whether her costume is really based on the powers of a genie, or if she's just unconsciously choosing a look to match that.

I believe that there are two limitations on Tip storage:

1) You cannot have more than three unrun Tips at any given time.

2) You cannot gain more Tips than the number of unfilled slots you have left.

Thus, increasing the number of stored Tips from 3 to 5 would not enable you to run a new Tip the next day without farming 20+ foes. The only way to store a Tip is to only run 4 for that day, and leave the remaining tip you have left for your next session. Or, run someone else's Tip.

If anyone has ever had a Tip mission drop after they've filled their 5 slots for the day, I'd like to hear about that. I'm not 100% sure, and would like to see evidence otherwise. However, in my experience I have only had Tips left over while I was teaming.

While I could certainly agree Force Bolt would be nice if it did some damage, that's the one thing I don't want it to do. Currently, Force Bolt is a 100% chance of very nice knockback. It is useful to me because when I WANT to use it, it is immediately available, and only available, as a tool for sending a foe flying. If I were using it as an attack, those foes would be sent flying a lot more often, which would cause problems for the team.

As it is, Power Push got a large damage boost for Dominators, and AFAIK, it still has the same chance of knockback. I have heard nothing about it, but I suspect it is a problem. As Energy Assault needed the damage, it's acceptable, but the other versions of Power Push remain the same. And that includes Force Bolt. (The only reason Force Bolt and Power Push are two different powers is because FF/Energy Defenders can get both. Their difference is negligible)

I've suggested making Detention Shield into a toggle, but according to the devs, that is impossible. A toggle must tick at regular intervals. The first tick would make the foe Untouchable, which means the second tick would immediately fail because it was unable to hit the target.

Personally, I would make it a huge Def bonus to the foe, while making the tick effect autohit, but that would allow other autohit powers to "get through" as well.

Repulsion Bomb is fine. Yes, it is a long animation, but it is hardly "the longest in the game". Propel is longer, and so is Total Focus. Although honestly I wouldn't object to it having the same animation as Neutron Bomb.

It is an attack that does MORE damage than Neutron Bomb, though, has a 100% chance of knockDOWN, and a fairly good chance of Stun. Which makes it a good attack to spam on your Tanker. His foes are flopping at his feet and stunned, but not knocked away from him, so he's not losing any defenses.

Finally, the problem with giving Force Bubble a debuff effect is that its primary effect forces all foes out of its radius, forcing them out of the debuff. And I personally wouldn't want it to have a defensive debuff effect anyway. It's my personal belief that what FF needs are either -Res debuffs, or +Dam buffs, on either the caster or the whole team. The Cottage Rule means new powers can't be made to grant those effects, but maybe they could be secondary effects of existing powers.

In short, Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb are fine. The ones that need work are Repulsion Field, Detention Shield, and Force Bubble. Some effects I'd like to see out of it are buffs, not debuffs, better Endurance management, and maybe a -regen on Detention Shield, so a foe doesn't come out of it better than when he went in. This is supposed to be a set about energy and force. I think those effects best fit the concept.

I've also thought that maybe it would be nice if Force Field had more CONTROL over knockback. Like perhaps the ability to reduce it to knockdown, when desired, or even to knock foes INTO a target. Implosion. I'm guessing that's as difficult to produce with the current game engine as a Untouchable toggle, though...

At level 20, when a Praetorian leaves the Praetorian zones, he is given the choice between Hero or Villain. He has no choice but to choose, and prior to 20 there is no inherent advantage to being a Praetorian.

Once you reach level 20, the side switching system kicks in, which allows you to choose between Hero, Villain, Vigilante, and Rogue. Heroes are limited to Paragon City and Villains to the Rogue Isles, but they are able to earn special Hero and Villain Merits and trade them in at a special lounge. Vigilantes and Rogues are able to move freely between the two cities, and team up with folks running missions there, although you can only run your own missions on "your side" when solo. (Vigilantes have Hero Contacts, and Rogues have Villain Contacts)

Each of the four alignment types get a special power. Hero and Villain powers raise their damage (Heroes' raises the damage of the whole team) and Vigilante and Rogue powers are sort of control powers for use against crowds of minions.

At the moment, only Praetorians are allowed into Praetoria, after you leave it at 20, you are not allowed to return. Prior to 20, only Praetorians are in Praetoria, only Heroes are in Paragon City, and only Villains are in the Rogue Isles. After 20 is when the "advantages", as it were, kick in. Presumably Praetoria will be opened up to Heroes and Villains (and Vigilantes and Rogues) but whether they won't be able to go there until after 20, and what other conditions might be we don't know.

Oh, and when you get a Hero to 20 you unlock Kheldians, and when you get a Villain to 20 you unlock Soldiers of Arachnos. You get nothing for getting a Praetorian to 20, unless you've never played the game before, at which time you gain the ability to create characters in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

It may be helpful to set up a keybind with the command "camdist x", where x is some value you find comfortable. I believe I use the value "camdist 14" and that helps me.

In fact, my character gets larger and gains wings when he goes into Domination. So my Domination macro not only changes his costume, it sets the camdist while it is at it. And the macro I use for when it wears of uses "camreset" to put it back.

I have asked for a command that would allow me to similarly effect the ANGLE of the camera, something like "camangle 80" for 80 degrees instead of 90 degrees. But so far, no luck. You can use the Insert and Delete buttons, or whatever you have set up for camera tilt, to change the angle manually. I typically zoom the camera way out and then tilt it downwards when I teleport, so I can clearly see where I am clicking at a greater range.

The only VEAT I've managed to sideswitch so far is Operative Rachel, who has gone Rogue. She's the evil counterpart of a Claws Scrapper in my SG on that server, so I'm not going to switch her, but I wanted to show her to the folks in my SG since she's a variation on the character they know.

The fun part about her is that she's not at all loyal to Arachnos, she's an AI from the 26th century, brought here by a hacker, who is my Bots/Traps MM. She's one of his robots. I wrote as her backstory that an Arachnos Widow stumbled onto this MM and was killed by him. Being a bit of a sadistic kind of villain, he implanted her dead body with mind control chips, and downloaded Rachel's AI into her. He then sent her back into Arachnos to sabotage it. She's totally loyal to her boss, and both will be staying as Rogues.

I have another Huntsman who is my vigilante hero gone undercover. I haven't gotten him to 20 yet (I rushed Rachel there so I could switch her the moment the game came out) but once I do I'm taking him to Hero, and then Vigilante. He will have a Longbow uniform he can use when going undercover in that organization, but he also has his own costume as well. He's really neither a hero nor a villain, he distrusts both.

That leaves Arachnophelia, who is my main VEAT, a Crab Spider. I'm working on going Rogue with her, but I will probably stop there. I have another lower level version of her on the same server as Rachel, though, so I may decide to go hero with her as a balance. I'll have Huntsman Raynard as the hero and Arachnophelia as the villain on one server, and Arachnophelia as the hero and Rachel as the villain on the other.

According to Paragon Wiki 75% of all damage dealt to a foe by Confused foes is simply not counted. You don't really "earn" the XP for the damage the Confused foe did, but his "share" is only 1/4 what it normally would be.

Thus, if you each do 50% of the damage, you get 80% of the XP. The foe is treated as if he had 5/8 of the hit points, and you do 4/8 while your Confused foe did 1/8. Likewise, if you only do 20% of the damage, and Confused foes do 80% of it, you will still get 50% of the XP. When divided by four, your Confused foes did the same damage you did, so you get an equal share of the XP.

The short version is, if you do anything more than 50% of the damage, your loss of XP is insignificant, compared to the savings in time taken to kill the foe. Your time taken on the fight was anywhere from one half to 3/4 of the time it would have taken you. Even if you do less than 50% of the damage, the savings in time taken means you are still earning more XP per second, as long as you're doing about 25% of the damage.

In fact, the graph on that Paragon wiki page suggests that the ideal amout of damage to do is between 20% and 50%. While you will be losing a good portion of the XP for a given mission, possibly running out of missions prematurely, you will blow through them so quickly you will level faster overall. (Probably most people would prefer the 40% to 70% range)

I don't really see Mental Manipulation as being all that well constructed a set. It was based on Dominator Psionic Assault, which was itself based on Psychic Blast, and still had an extraordinarily powerful Psychic Shockwave. The Blaster version is simply a pre-nerfed nerf of it. And the cone attack was removed from Psychic Blast, to allow room for Aim.

The truth is, the only non-Location ranged attacks in Blaster Secondaries are Taser, Shiver, Psychic Scream and Scare, and of course the Immobilizes. Shiver and Scare don't do any damage, and Taser's damage is only minor. And even the control powers like Frozen Aura and Lightning Clap are mostly PBAoE. The Secondary is primarily usable only in melee range, with Devices as the only real exception.

With that in mind, I don't see the problem. The attacks can be collected from Martial Arts, while the control powers could be cobbled together from Devices, Trick Arrow (changed to grenades or powders) and Ninjitsu. Not the buffs or debuffs, but control powers.

Alternately, if you want to go with Kinetic and call it chi energy, then maybe some of the lifting/throwing powers from Gravity would be a better fit than Kinetics' buffs and debuffs. Or Energy Aura's Repulse. (that gets back to Kinetic)