Jade_Dragon

There hasn't been any official word that they will do this, but it has been a common speculation. Most likely, what they CURRENTLY mean will continue to stand; Heroes will not be able to do "Villain" missions, and Villains will not be able to do "Hero" missions. Where Vigilantes and Rogues will stand in this, though, no one knows.

Since anyone can do either Hero or Villain missions in the AE, it's unlikely that restriction will be added. AE missions MAY effect your alignment standing, but that's not really known. I think it might be helpful, supposedly you can level 1-50 in the AE, being able to use it to switch sides might be helpful too. I doubt it will be quick, though, maybe a minor change with each mission.

And I (and many others) plan to do just that.

Remember you'll be able to create them in Preatoria, as well, so that's pretty much halfway there.

OMG...

I almost, almost want to create that now. Hopefully someone will.

The MM, of course, would have to be Bill Cosby himself.

I believe the explanation for this is that most melee defenses are built around lethal and smashing first, with additional protection on top of that. Thus for instance while Invulnerability is the most powerful Smash/Lethal protection, most other Defense sets can come close, while Fire is really going to be hands down the best protection against Fire, with very few coming that close. On the other side of the coin, most melee attacks do either pure Lethal/Smashing damage, or partially Lethal/Smashing and partially some other type. So far no Melee set will do, say, pure Fire damage and no other types. (Fire is really the closest to this, but Fire Sword and its variants are all Fire/Lethal, and Cremate is Fire/Smash. So Fire Melee is only like 60-75% Fire, while most other sets are about 50-50)

The devs are usually pretty good about giving both the strength and the weakness of players to critters as well, and so most critters have Smash/Lethal protection as their protection against melee. Since you can't really have Resistance again Melee attacks, like you can with Defense, that's kind of the way they got around it. Or so is my theory about how things work...

It would depend on the Blaster, but in general the Sorcerer would get the first shot. The Yellow Ink Man the second. The Green Ink Man I can deal with as long as he doesn't get into melee, so unless I have to melee him because of a severe Blapper build or I don't have a way to slow him I'll ignore him.

I'll add, though, that normally I wouldn't expect to encounter all three in the same spawn and if I did I'd be worried. Typically I see Yellow and Green Ink Men teamed with Ancestor Spirits, and in such cases it's the SPIRIT that gets the first shot. I want him dead before he gets into melee with me.

The Mort, because without him the Cadaver(s) are sitting ducks. I'm honestly not really sure if Eidolon's can direct Cadavers, but basically I would take out the Mort, retreat, and if the Eidolon follows me take him out. Then just wait for the Cadavers to return to the spawn point and pick them off one by one.

I very rarely target an Embalmed. If I can keep them from exploding until they're the last then I'll take them out. If they explode, though, I just let them, as long as I can keep backing out of range.

Oh, I see. You mean no self heal in the Secondary, so use one from the Primary. (I can dig it, I have a DM/Stone Brute I use to represent a shape changer with regeneration)

Still, at first I thought you misunderstood. It is STALKERS that get Reconstruction, not Scrappers.

And they get it in place of Rise to the Challenge.

This is not to say you may not prefer Reconstruction because it makes you more active. However, it's really just trading one "heal" for another, so I'm sure it's no stronger.

Honestly, while the stealth and "wonderful toys" are in concept, I don't know that the Assassin Strike is. And while Stalkers are a lot more Scrapper-like since they got their HP and damage raised, I still say that Batman frequently takes on large groups of baddies and beats them effortlessly, while is not really the Stalker concept. Bats more strikes from surprise, but then uses his full arsenal of attacks, instead of some special one hit KO technique.

Which is why I say it's the Ninjitsu that is more Batman than the Stalker. If Scrappers had Ninjitsu, (particularly if it had built-in stealth like Dark Armor) that would likely be close enough. MA/SR with Stealth, Intimidate and some Weapon Mastery attacks does play very much like a Ninjitsu Stalker.

You can have my lady Crab's backpack when you pry it from her cold, dead, robotic claws.

Personally, I always considered it as SoA were allowed to be either gender because of the same sort of uniqueness that made them feel they could be Destined Ones. Maybe they had powers to start with (thus why you can take Flying or similar powers) or the "conversion" effected them in an unexpected way. At any rate, I think their backstory is intended to be more complex than just the simple, average grunt that joins Recluse's army for the money and something to do.

So when Recluse divides up the babies, there's no rule that says he can't have one or two oddballs that seem to respond better to the other program. Or even that Fortunatas and Banes come to the program as adults, after their psychic talents have matured outside of the Arachnos system.

The basic is idea is that most powers can be doubled through Enhancements. You can get twice as much damage, healing, hold duration, flight speed, running speed, etc. This is double what the base of the power itself is, so if you have a weak power (like Brawl) even doubled it will still do less damage than a strong power. (like KO Blow)

Because defensive powers tend to get too strong if you just double them, instead they go up to 160% maximum. That's Defense, Resistance, ToHit Buffs and Debuffs. (Damage buffs and debuffs can't be slotted, but they'd probably go in this category too) It's not that you have only 60% of the overall Enhancement, it's that the maximum Enhancement is only +60% of the base. (Glad Arcanaville posted that, I didn't even think about that that was what the OP was thinking of)

Range is on the same schedule as defenses for whatever reason. Knockback and Interrupt actually are higher than 100%.

It might help to note that before Enhancement Diversification, the maximum was 300%, where it is now 200%. (Or 220% where it is now 160%) Most people ended up slotting damage for about 266%, since they still needed a slot for Accuracy. That was still quite extreme, and made very high level characters much more powerful than they are now. IO's have compensated for some of that, but a lot of the problem was that the devs felt that the gap between high level players and low level ones was too great. There was just not enough room at the highest levels to tweak power strengths without nerfing low levels.

I would say, just from the start, that it's because those are from the Pools. If you are going to the Pools to make your Kheldian a team support character, then maybe Kheldians were not intended to be team support characters.

It took me a while to figure it out, too. Kheldians are not team support, they are damage dealers. They are tank mages, they have range, and defense, but because the devs have been traditionally afraid of that, they only get the full benefit of "tank magery" when on a team. Even as a Dwarf, I am not SUPPORTING the team, I am PROTECTING the team.

Maybe to you that is a problem, but I think it's a strength, not a weakness. Once I figured that out, I didn't really care about some of the concerns that I had, like should I take Glowing Touch when I don't really want to be a healer? No, because I'm NOT a healer.

Now, maybe VEATs are designed better, they are tank mages, AND they have support powers that they can share with the team. But they can't really go to the extremes that a Kheldian can with Dwarf or Nova form. The devs didn't seem to fear tank mages so much when they designed the SoA, but Kheldians are doing more damage now both in and out of forms, and I really think my Nictus will find a place on the red side come Going Rogue.

As for the powers being "locked out", you'll notice you mentioned that Druid forms have "the exact same number of powers" but they're not THE SAME powers, are they? You attack with a bear claw in bear form, and with a bite in cat form, and your staff in human form. The problem is not that you lose some powers and gain others, it is that the INTERFACE is better designed, and it makes it look like some powers just changed into others. But you said yourself, they don't even do the same damage.

The way I have my macros set up, when I switch forms, the same four keys are the exact same four powers in each of my forms. When I am Human or Dwarf, keys 1 and 2 are melee attacks, and key 3 is my PBAoE. Key 4 is Heal. When I am Nova, keys 1 and 2 are my single target blasts, and keys 3 and 4 are my AoEs. I don't use ranged attacks in human form, so that helps. Any other powers I want to use in Human form I have a macro to drop me back to Human and fire them off, if I'm in a form. So no clicking on powers while in forms and pressing keys when Human, the same keys do essentially the same thing when I press them.

Is it inconvenient and an annoyance that the devs expect me to do this with macros instead of giving me a proper UI? Yeah, sure. And I'm really sorry you have problems with macros, but I really don't know what I can do that the game support couldn't do. But I don't look at it as losing powers to gain others, for the most part it is replacing powers with others. I replace melee attacks with blasts, I replace buffs and stealth with defenses or flying, and I replace one method of travelling around the map with another method of travelling around the map.

Exactly what I was going to say. The OP's suggestion was actually implemented years ago. (Crane Kick probably remained knockback because it was the one power in the Set with that effect, and that was before CAK was a viable replacement for it)

You also have to watch out for foes that are really lower level than you. With Exemplaring that shouldn't be much issue though.

As mentioned, except for the fact that you could only do it once every 30 seconds, yes, that's a cool workaround.

The main reason I posted, though, is I had to give kudos for your sig. I fell out of my chair laughing. And it's even funnier because in Korean chess there IS a piece that moves like that.

Well, then, maybe it is that you smell. Or maybe your henchmen are afraid to get within arm's reach because you're always slapping them into submission...