Madadh

Laughed til I hurt myself and almost passed out.

Hmmmm


LTIHMAAPO just doesn't have the same ring as LOL or ROFL

I pretty much agree with this across the board, but did want to offer a comment that might be able to clarify some confusion.

Note in advance, I'm only speculating here, but the psychic weirdness rerigins might go like this....

All humans have psychic powers at pathetic levels, and when they harness them under normal circumstances write it off as a lucky guess, intuitive leave, or a creative spark of some sort.

Some mutant have as their mutant ability vastly stronger psychic talents, much akin to some mutants having super strength.

With much training, and practice, focus, and meditation it is possible for a normal human to hone their psychic abilities to the point where they are useful, reliable, and direct-able.

I know, it's a bit of mental gymnastics to get to the conclusion that everyone is psychic, albeit if only to a very minute degree, but it's not all that out there for the super-hero/comic book genre.

If it's in any way possible, and I don't think it is, it might be with one of the Power Analyzer temp powers. I'll try and remember to verify after the game comes back up.

Amen brother, preach it!

But, I thought you said you weren't writing an AT guide, but a role guide?
So will you be writing a role guide for every possible role?
Or writing a role guide for each AT with subsections for different roles easily played by that AT? Tanks, Brute, and Scraps will be only perhaps 3 different roles max, but Defs, Corrs, Doms, MMs, Trollers, and boy, oh, boy HEATs and VEATS will be a great big pain in the butt to do that way.

But, the responsibility to not faceplant at least will always stay the same.

You make some good arguments. Part of me is inclined to agree with you. But at the same time, I still agree with Dechs, too. How can I resolve this? Is it even possible?

I think so.

Overlapping responsibility.

It's the tank's (role) job to keep his team alive, via aggro control, and then other tricks.
It's the heal and buff oriented types (role) job to keep his team alive via defensive buffs and/or heals, then other tricks.
It's the defensive debuffer's (role) job to keep his team alive via debuffs, then other tricks.
It's the trollers job to keep his team alive via control, then other tricks.

It's the DPSers job to keep themselves alive, and kill stuff.
It's the offensive debuffers job to make stuff easier to kill, and keep themselves alive.

Many ATs and builds are built to have multiple roles in this game at least, but, if you build to do just one role, and it's a defensive one, then you've failed if you're the last one alive. This isn't just true for tanks (role), but for all the defensive in nature roles.

But, all the roles are either defensive, or offensive. If defensive, your job is to keep the team alive, which includes yourself, and thus stupid things like not getting out of AOE areas which will kill you, are you contributing to your failure in your role.

The offensive roles could consider the encounter a success, if all of the team is dead, except them, but all the baddies are dead.
Except, it could be said that their job is to kill things fast enough that the team isn't nearly wiped. In which case, if they are the last thing standing, it could be that they failed too, for not killing faster.

So, it could reasonably be argued that everyone failed if the team is wiped out to a single person. But, that may be true, but doesn't mean any one role in it didn't fail, just because they were a part of a larger failure.

I think part of the reason people never learn, isn't because of mollycoddling in the form of teaming with someone skilled, but mollycoddling in the form of always being able to say, "Yeah, sure we failed as a team, but it wasn't in any way my fault. It was HIM, or HER that did something stupid." You fail to get better when it's always other peoples fault. The really good players are the ones that can, when needed, save others from their own stupidity or mistakes on occasion.


I enjoy playing on a skilled team because we are all good enough to do just that. It allows us all a large margin of error if all the other 5, 6, or 7 players can save each other from their own mistakes. Therefore we can all hunker down, focus,and really steamroll the toughest content, or we can all cut up, waste time and focus on banter and side conversations, and not worry about being stupid and still have success (likely at a slower pace, though), because we can cover each other, and still have time to joke, have fun, and/or be stupid when the mood strikes.

Some people may not enjoy a less focused approach, but even if it's not your thing, the ability of a good player to share responsibility and thus cover others mistakes still is worthwhile, because I've not met a player yet that was so good they never made a mistake or never had a moment of mechanical/lag/software failure that caused them to not be able to do their job. If everyone only focuses is on themselves, and the "I'll do my role perfectly, and expect and rely on everyone else to do the same," no overlap of responsibility model of gameplay, one mapserve in a tough fight spells instant doom.

So, long story short (too late, I know), I agree with Butane's concept of personal responsibility totally, but don't think that in any way makes Dechs' stance on the tank role's responsibility in any way invalid.

Ah, sorry. I'll admit that I'd not read the guide yet, and was basing my comments on

a) Comment I'd seen of yours elsewhere, where as far as I could recall (and I'll admit that my memory is far from eidetic) that distinction wasn't specifically made.

and even more so

b) What others were posting in this thread.

If you made that distinction in the guide, then I totally retract my statement. In that case I agree with you totally. A tank's (the role) job is, completely, to keep his teammates alive via (mostly) holding aggro on himself and (less so) using any other tool or trick he can when simply holding aggro seems insufficient. In that case, the last man standing, if a tank (role) is a tank that failed. Maybe it was unavoidable, and maybe he did everything within hos power to prevent that failure, but it is still a failure.

Guess that will teach me to comment without fully reading everything in the future.
[Or more likely, it won't, but shame will probably prevent it for at least 20 minutes or so.]

That looks like a very interesting build, and very unconventional, but it looks like it could work. I'd be a bit concerned with almost none of your toggles have and end reduction in them, and I generally would urge the Chance for +End proc be added into Dark Regen, but it could be good depending on play style. I'd be curious to hear your feedback after you get to around 40ish.

If it works for you, it'd be a very inexpensive build compared to many others, too, which is another plus.

I see your point and don't disagree with it, but that doesn't change the bottom line that in most normal team circumstances*, the tanks job is to keep his teammates alive. If he lives and they all died, he then failed at that job. Perhaps he was doomed to failure, due to circumstances such as you describe, but regardless, it's still a failure.



*I say, 'most normal team circumstances' because while I agree with most of Dechs advice in general, I disagree that the tankers job is to keep his teammates alive "first, foremost, and in all circumstances" and that thus failure to do so is a failure on the part of the tanker. I believe that all ATs have a degree of flexibility in how to play them. You can use the Tanker AT to build some very durable melee DPS alts if you want, then your job is to kill stuff. But fairly or unfairly, most of the time people will expect the Tanker to take on the role Dechs has described, and in those cases, failure as he's defined it is exactly correct.

Other than the mindlessly part, that sounds a lot like playing a 'debuffer'. You got something against debuffers?

I have no idea, and wish I did, too.

I tried to see if Redtomax had it, and frankly, couldn't decipher the notation.

ie Under Typhoon's Edge it shows (among a ton of other details)
"ToHit -7% for 20s If Dual Blade Debuff Mode 2"
but nowhere did I see and explanation of what 'Debuff Mode 2' is.

Indeed. That would be a nice feature.

As an aside, on the graphics I have the pink names don't look a thing like the purple names, but they for sure look a lot more purple than he golden names do.

And I also agree about the potential utility of the system, but, if we are using it as a form of self decoration instead of it's intended use, I do think we are taking away some of the tools that a truly new player may have access to, or more accurately, making us 'even more likely that we might otherwise be' to ignore a request for help that used that particular medium.

And, I have no problem in general with using tools in ways other than how the devs intend, but it if is of little benefit to me, and may be to the detriment of someone else, than I'm a little less cool with it. And if the folks that are using it as a costume accessory just want coloured names, perhaps we should nudge the devs into tweaking the system so that those that want the colourization option get it without diluting whatever (albeit, perhaps very little) positive effect it may bring to new folks that are trying to use the tool as it was originally envisioned.

Just a thought that occurred to me and wanted to try and make others aware of it, too.

Gotta totally agree with this.

I'd further add that, if anyone ever feels tempted to say something on the order of, "If you're doing this differently than me, then you're doing it wrong," then you're most likely the one that's wrong. It may be safe to say, "If you're always out of end you're doing something wrong," or "If you constantly faceplant, you're doing something wrong," but this games character design is massively flexible, and if you think that there is only one right way to produce results, that's probably your failure on the creative thinking front, not the other person's failure.

To further illustrate, many people have said that if you have end issues, it's a hands down choice, Cardiac. If you have 'serious' end issues, I might agree, but for minor end issues, I've found Musculature's End Mod bonus often enough to cover a slight gap in end usage vs end production. YMMV.

Heck, if your mileage doesn't occasionally vary at least a little, you're doing it wrong.

Makes sense.

And,

A 30mm Beanbag is exactly the type of beanbag I'd want vs Superpowered baddies.