LordXenite

You mean The Darkness, cause I've been there and done that too...

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Yep, fired up Mass Effect yesterday.

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LOL!!

Are you also on the ME forums?? cause if you are, we should take this there

(QR)

To be honest, I'm currently taking a break from CoX as I've re-discovered MASS EFFECT (XB360/PC) and have found inFAMOUS (PS3) and PROTOTYPE (PS3/XB360/PC) to be enticing and then some.

Will I be back for Going Rogue? I honestly don't know, since by the time Going Rogue comes out, other games that will hopefully be more story/content oriented, may come out and be even more appealing to me.

As far as I'm concerned, if Going Rogue simply means you get to take a Blueside characters into the Redside and there are no consequences to the shift, I'd be very disappointed, and not very interested. What consequences will I consider as a worthy price to pay for switching sides... that remains to be seen and depends on what the Devs have in mind...

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...If you guys want an All-Kheldian SG to run with, we're on Infinity, and we're always looking for more.

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heh...maybe i can make another Ws there! *smiles* how can one get in contact with you?

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The SG is called Umbra Illuminati and any of its members can invite you. Just make a Kheldian on Infinity and look us up.

Speaking from some tanking experience with my Lv50 PB... you can tank most things short of EB/AV class enemies. However, do bring purples and break-free insps, and also, learn how to joust-tank.

Clearly, my experience was gained while tanking for All-Kheldian teams, which is a lot harder than tanking for mixed-AT teams (the normal team situation you'll find yourself in), but having no real Defender to grant your character any shields or any buffs, and having to rely on non-dedicated heal-other powers other PB's have to heal me, plus my own self-heals, sometimes was not enough...

Like most have said already, if you want a tank, make a tank, if you want a PB that tanks, go right ahead, PB's were made for tanking, in my opinion. Just max out your heals, make sure you can spam those foot-stomps and slot that chance-for-Psi-damage proc in your White Dwarf Antagonize and some Acc in it... and learn to joust, just in case you're required to tank anything heavier than Bosses.

Also, do not, under any circumstances, agree to tank an AE mission, unless you know perfectly well the types of enemies you'll be tanking!

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...as for the AE mishes if I build a mission with like 20 groups of 4 mobs designed for me to get xp and inf, and I play that mission a few times would that be considered an exploit? I don't want to get banned for doing something stupid.

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See, there's a slight problem with this line of thought (making missions to specifically enhance your rewards, or using one character to help the growth of another) and it depends a lot on not only your actions, but also on how the Devs perceive your story-arc and the missions in it.

Since this is a subscription based MMO, at its core, the general assumption is that whatever the Devs release into the game-world, be it content or tools, the idea is to enhance the games' appeal to the customer in order to keep you in the game for as long as possible.

Lets assume that you find a way to design a mission that would let you grow a character from Lv1 to Lv50 and then buy all the purple-sets and other IO's you want, so essentially that character would be, for all intents and purposes, finished. Now what? PvP in essence isn't what it used to be, and what would be the point of doing anything in the game if you're already at your peak?

Many people would just roll another character and be fine with that, but lets assume that eventually, you covered the full matrix of AT/power-set combinations available to both Red/Blue side. If all you care about is making efficient characters in the most efficient ways you can find, then essentially, you've "finished" the game. Your characters will eventually bore you and you inevitably will leave the game, at least until something new comes along like a CoX expansion. From the Devs' point of view, this isn't a good thing if when you leave you also cancel your subscription!!

The Devs of course are aware that some people enjoy the game only when their characters evolve in an accelerated rate, and acknowledge this by make changes to the game, but the core premise of keeping players in the game by making sure each characters levels up and grows according to a certain predetermined rate that the Devs first and foremost and most players are comfortable with, still remains.

So, in summation, from time to time the GMs may revise AE missions and remove those missions that they find offensive to the overall goal of keeping our characters from growing too fast as dictated by the Devs game-design. If any of your missions are removed, you may be able to appeal to a GM and defend your case and perhaps either return the mission (with or without modifications) to the AE, or at the very least return the lost AE publication slot that you may have lost when the mission was locked.

I think Positron has gone on record and explained AE concepts and policies about these issues, and searching the Forum about this would be quite useful. Just remember, with Great Power, comes great responsibility, and with unchallenged and undisciplined growth, comes great boredom, contempt and disregard!

In other words, what's wrong with growing your characters the normal way and having them work to get the funds they require? And if you're going to say that you simply want to get there as soon as possible, and you don't want to pay too much money for this if there's a better way, or that you're simply impatient, I understand... it's just that when players take these measures to grow their characters in excess to what the Devs see as the healthy rate, GM's will take counter-measures.

We have been warned.

Mmm hmm... :~)

I liked the part where he says: "The End"

Yes, you can make your own missions and play them. However, if I understand correctly, AE was not created so that people can research how to design and build a mission that would greatly increase their rewards while decreasing the effort/risk their characters have to endure to finish a mission and get the rewards. This behavior, again if I understand things correctly, is an exploit according to Paragon Studios/NCSoft NC.

I know, and that's why I usually go: Black Dwarf Mire -> Eclipse -> Sunless Mire -> Dark Nova -> Dark Nova Emanation -> Gravitic Emanation -> Gravity Well -> Shadow Blast -> Unchain Essence -> Dark Extraction -> Stygian Circle -> Black Dwarf and rinse repeat when required.

You know, after reading what you wrote here about Dark Nova, this may shed a light on your point of view:

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[u]Dark Nova[u]
I have a Nova build for Carceri, but it's barely socketed. I don't really feel the same appeal to the Nova as I do on my real ranged, area damage dealers. Hopping between a controlling blaster and a scranker is more fun to me than from a controlling blaster to a non-controlling blaster.

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From the quote above, I see that we view Dark Nova quite differently. I view it as an excellent platform to launch ranged attacks from while you seem to consider it a non-controlling blaster. I think the trick to using Nova, in either Kheldian AT, is to know when, and how to use it, and when not to. I thought that was what TriForming was all about, you know...?

I gotta say, not much of a guide for Warshades, but just like Talen said, his link is a rundown of his Human/Dwarf so while there's not much in there if you're looking for a 'guide', there's a solid Human/Dwarf build there at the very least.

Fitness is quite useful for a Warshade that relies a lot more on his Human-form than on his other forms, so Talen's quite justified there as well, even then Eclipse and Stygian Circle while perfectly capable of negating the need for Fitness, still require undefeated enemies around you, so Fitness may still be useful for getting through post-combat R&R periods.

Personally, that's not a build I'd want to try since I like being able to use all my forms, and seeing how Eclipse and Stygian Circle both replenish endurance, and how Stygian Circle alone can top my HP bar with only two or three enemies around, and my Dwarf recovers endurance nicely on his own, I doubt I'll ever want Fitness on my TriFormShade™ but for a Human/Dwarf, Talen seems to have a solid build.

You know, when I described your comments in this thread to my wife, her response was, and I quote: "what Warshade is he playing?".

With this comment that you've made:

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That's meaningless when you're self-capping your damage and ST Dpsing your way through bosses. I can't imagine how going Nova for the three seconds you'd get to do anything with it is a meaningful change except in that it forces you to then maneuver to a new location to leverage the damage.

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I must agree with her... are we even talking about the same class here?!

I monitor the Hold/Sleep/Immobilize protection attributes so I can always tell from the numbers if un-Dwarfing will leave me mezzed.

It works even better when you use keybinds to shift to Human and execute Sunless Mire at the same time, and once you throw Eclipse in... well, you know...

Awwww Relikk...

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nova offers... what, exactly?

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The most damage.

[/ QUOTE ]Not distributed in a significant enough way to give a damn, if you're playing on a Lv50 IO'ed Warshade build!

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I wouldn't've said anything if you gave your opinion like that.

From the point of view of a Lv50 Warshade with enough funds to completely purple-out anything they wish to, a Human-only build also works perfectly fine, so basically, I don't think one should judge the usefulness of Nova based on ones' personal experience in light of an advanced build.

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I can't think of any time I fight a single thing long enough to run out of both essences. Hm.

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Are you taking into account an SO'ed build trying to fight an EB or an enemy that is resistant to negative-energy and slows, Talen?

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And most exciting of all, you can shift roles from moment to moment

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And this is really what we need to revitalize the AT. Queueable detoggles, and drastically faster shapeshifts (I'm thinking 0.5s or less).

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Not that I'd mind faster shape-shifting, but queueable detoggles will ruin my current gameplay tactics for sure, and in my opinion, the Devs simply need to synchronize the gototray command with the powertoggleoff command so that if a detoggle command will not execute, neither will the gototray command. I think that queueable detoggles as a gameplay mechanism is too complex to add for the little benefit the game/community will have from it.

For myself, I'd rather see the Nova/Dwarf forms come into their own with more gameplay options added to them actually either passively or actively.

Perhaps a team-affecting regen/recover aura that is automatically emitted around White Dwarves... and a team-affecting damage-resist aura emitted around Black Dwarves.

I would also love to see Kheldian Power pools for example, a mixture of powers that both Kheldian ATs are allowed to get once they're Lv41 and these powers are executable with any of the forms. That would also make me very happy.

I'd speculate that slow resistance was given to Kheldians because of how active the AT requires its players to be. Kheldians lack constant performance in crowd control, damage dealing, not to mention not being able to debuff anything, unless they are in constant action, running around and activating their powers.

About running with an All-Kheldian Team... to be honest, those teams can be either very exciting and fun (when everyone works together) or can become catastrophes with repeated team-wipes.

I think Kheldians should buff themselves with a trio of stat boosts and not just one. Give lower values of course, but make it multiple values instead of just one stat that gets a large boost but in most situation doesn't mean much to the team.

I'd like to ask, is there any chance in the future that Lord Recluse and Statesman may re-unite to fight a greater evil that will threaten both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles? (i.e. a Dev-created story-arc, not something we do in the MA)

Hurrah! you've been saved brotha!!!!

Well, you won't catch me calling anything, "the most powerful AT ever" anyway... and, I also don't do crack.

ARRGH!!!! (and... we need an emoticon for :giggle

oooooooooooooh FPvP! <gets popcorn>

Good post Rachel btw... but I kinda thought that MMO's were built on this notion of in with the new and out with the old and then... ooooh, look, the old became new again... (Oro and 5th Column to bring an example or two?)