Oedipus_Tex

The number in the second column, in this case "1703," defines the player object. By searching the rest of the demo file for this number, you can locate any actions or changes in animation taken by the player. In this case you'd be looking for the moment the player summons the army. Here is the code showing what happens when Solar Winter, object ID #1703 summons an Ice Slick:

The first number (0 in this case) tells the playback system how many milliseconds have passed since the last animation was processed. In the case of Ice Slick, the character animation (Chillblainshands.fx) happens at the same moment the initial effect is created, tinted, its origin and target location determined, so this number is zero. Note, however that this is the character animation that plays before the slick is actually summoned. The appearance of the pet happens on a line like this:

So, there's a bit of trivia for you. Ice Slick happens to have 1070 hit points. :P

But note that the location where the pet is positioned (the POS line) is exactly the same as the place the player targeted, so you could do a search for "POS 1008.71875 -11.453125 -2136.53125" to find the line where the slick was created if you were having trouble telling it from other casts of the power or didn't know the pet's name.

Anyway, this is the first part of the code you're interested in. The next part you need is the place where the pet disappears. We know the ID# of the pet (1824) so we can simply search on it. Here's what I found when I did:

(Note that in the above code, two enemies (ids 1895 and 1906) changed locations--what we're interested in is the activity of the Ice Slick, which is ID 1824.)

Now, the slick is dead. To find out how long it was alive, I need to add up all of the milliseconds that have passed since it was created (NOTE: in the case of perma Phantom Army you should actually use the casting animation, not the point of pet birth, as the start time). This sounds intimidating, but if you consider that milliseconds always appear as the first numbers in the column, it can be done by copy-pasting everything from creation to death of the pet into Word, selecting Convert > Text to Table (with a blank space as the table delimiter), then copy pasting the first column into Excel and getting a sum of the total. Divide the resulting number by 1000 to get the number of seconds. When I did this just now with Ice Slick I got 30318 milliseconds (30.318 seconds) from cradle to grave. The duration of Ice Slick is marketed as 30 seconds, but because the server ticks at a rate of about .132 per second, its likely there are some rounding errors in there due to the effects of Arcanatime.

I don't have the patience to do a test on Phantom Army at the moment, but that would be a start on how I'd investigate the numbers. Arcanaville has shown that the server times never change, so obtaining results from /demorecord, if replicated a few times, should be perfectly exact. If she happens by, maybe she can also explain why I came up .318 seconds over on the duration of Ice Slick, as I am far too lazy to think it through at the moment.

[EDIT: Duh. Part of the reason I got the resulting total I did was that even though the slick is "born" at a point in time the animation for it doesn't start until a few milliseconds in, and the animation stops almost exactly one tick of Arcanatime prior to the actual deletion of the slick. The slick is visible and active for about 30 seconds, with an intro and outro that extend its "actual" life, if only for about .3 seconds. These are hazards you'd have to avoid in the PA test.]

Hope that helps.

I didn't mean to imply that they are impossible. But they are a fair step harder than many enemy groups, and possibly one of the hardest in the game.

It happens that Malta are very easy for my Mind Controller (as long as I get the drop on them) but I would still call them a difficult group.

Anyway our wish has been granted. The Cathedral of Pain in I18 will, apparantly, feature the Ruularu heavily.

I have one of these actually. Not my favorite character but he can solo easy enemies well. On teams its more about Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shifting the team. I personally find the combo highly overrated outside of hardline farming though. If the characters name didn't happen to be "Swede of Light," implying a heavy dose of speed, he'd probably be a Fire/Rad.

I find it surprising that you aren't able to deal with Malta or Carnies more safely with an Ice (with any secondary) than Fire/Kin. I suppose your team could be killing enemies faster. IMO Fire can't touch Ice for overall control though. The moment Fire runs into enemies with hold and stun protection (read: force fields), thats all she wrote on the control front. And if your team is slaughtering hard enemies its less the Fire/ and more the /Kin bringing that extra damage in my experience. Running into melee with 3 suicidal crack babies who want nothing more than to pull other groups, drop dead, and leave all that aggro at your doorstep alone adds considerably to the risk. I could see the argument that Fire/ offers "enough" control for some general situations, but when you start getting into really hard stuff it would be my second to last choice to pair with /Kin (poor, poor Gravity )

In a way I think that's great too. I wish more of the TFs were populated by enemies you really needed a team to deal with. Rularuu are one of the few groups that can really bake you. Too bad the TF that features them is so painful.

I've thought about writing a "Dr Q Redux" AE mission that re-does the arc in a more palatable fashion.

If you actually try this you probably want to bring a Force Field character or something similar to protect the group. Rularuu make Malta look like bunny rabbits. I'm not sure what all their stats are but "Confusion protection" and "Invisibility detection" are definitely in the mix. There are also heavy mezzes and if I'm not going senile lots of -Defense. Maybe I have an inflated sense of how difficult they are because I mostly play Controllers, but it seems like I've seen more wipes from this enemy group than any other.

I know a lot of people skip the AoE holds but IMO they are quite handy. On an average team with the kind of Recharge a top line build brings they are up every 60 seconds, or approximately once every other group, assuming you are fighting enemies that are somewhat difficult.

An Ill/Rad without Flash and EM Pulse misses two seperate opportunities for AoE control. It's hard for me to say the defense is better when you are that far over the soft cap once your Lingering Rad and Spectral Terror are in place.

Capped defense is certainly never a detriment to a character, but I'm not sure its worth it when you have to drop good abilities to get it. The ability to use your actual powers well doesn't show up as a straight up measurement like +Defense does but IMO its at least as important to consider.

That said you are obviously a very good toon builder. If you have any thoughts on how to soft cap an Ice/Rad/Mind build while keeping high enough recharge for perma (or near) Indom Will I'd love to hear your input. I'm not convinced its possible, which is why I'm hoping someone can prove me wrong.

The thing is Earthquake does accept knockback sets, to the power's detriment except specifically for procs. It's just kind of weird that Earthquake would take it and Ice Slick would not. Not the end of the world, but arbitrary.