PuceNonagon

You'll hear lot of AR/Dev hate, but not from me. I ignore the mines because they take too long to set up and since I rarely solo, the team has usually moved on by the time I'm ready to rock.

AR: Sure, the attacks are resisted in late-game, but you make up for that with versatility. With lots of S/L and fire and KB, you can find something that works in most situations. Big AoE opportunities with Full Auto, Flame Thrower, M30 and Ignite.

Dev: The trouble here is that there are several powers that are near-useless, but the ones that aren't absolutely kick ***. Cloaking Device is awesome! Caltrops is very handy. Targeting Drone is a boon. Gun Drone can be very useful in big fights.

And Munitions Mastery goes SO well, with Body Armor, Cryo, Sleep and LRM all being very useful power.

I love my 50 AR/Dec and I never feel out-blasted by any other type of blaster. In addition, since he has defense slotted up in Cloaking Device and Combat Jumping and resistances in Body Armor, he's an all-round hardy blaster. Also, since you can skip so much of the secondary, adding Tough and Weave is never out of the question.

There may be some sets that do more damage, but fun is not all about DPS.

Totally depends on the situation and the make-up of the team. If you are on an ITF and you have to defeat 300 Romans, you should ignore all the bosses and focus almost all your fire on minions. If you have a decent radiation defender who goops the bosses, then they are essentially neutered and you can keep them standing to anchor the debuffs. If you are on a team with huge AoE, target the boss and kill everything else with splash damage.

Each situation needs to be evaluated separately, in my opinion.

I only target through the tank if I'm on a ranged toon and I can't hit a specific target in the mob, like Romulus or a cyst. Otherwise, I'm worried about grabbing agro.

Many of my toons, my global, as well as my handle on the boards are characters I made in the PnP RPG Champions when I was a kid.

Puce Nonagon is the illegitimate offspring of Red Square and Orange Heptagon, a pair of two-dimensional entities that were once in love until Orange Heptagon fell in love with Hoberman's Sphere, a THREE-DIMENSIONAL object. Hoberman's Sphere and Red Square fought to the death, but because whenever entities fight the one with the most dimensions will always be victorious, Red Square died. But, before he died he was able to sire the most wondrous hero ever... Puce Nonagon!

Angst in my Pants... in my pants.

For me it all depends on what we're doing...

ITF: rad/elec defender
LGTF: DM/SR scrapper
5TF: AR/Dev blaster
STF: MA/WP scrapper (although often it depends on who has shivans already)
Badges: fire/stone tank
Villian SFs: DM/Inv brute
Farming: fire/kin troller
Mission Grinding: Whatever I'm leveling

I have a Fire/Stone/Pyre farming tank that melts mobs. He's not quite as fast as my best runs with my Fire/Kin, but he's not that far behind. Plus, he never dies. The AoE possibilities are sick and the single target damage with Seismic Smash is as good as you'll see on a tank. Tanks aren't the best farmers, but with a considered (possibly expensive) build, you can make one that will do the trick admirably.

Yes, I had it yesterday, and this morning, and a few weeks ago. What I have found is that if you just let it run, it'll eventually give you the <--Next--> button. Sometimes it will have to count to 25 or so before it hits, but it will connect eventually. I don't know what's wrong, but if you are patient, you can still play.

I'd slot him with accuracy and hold and go for bonuses for ranged defense on myself. Stay close to Singy and melee is taken care of. Cast into a AV mob, he's a great tank and can take just about any alpha easily.

I love Singularity.

I play occasionally on a Traps/AR superteam. Stacking three or four defense drones is godly and a bunch of acid mortars decimate mobs and bosses alike. Solo, it's not as fun, but surely doable.

A very strange thing happened last night.

A few days ago, I leveled a scrapper to 37, at which point, I slotted him with lvl 40 Science SOs purchased in RWZ. Then, I head off and ran an ITF (the next day, I think). After the ITF, I had a few SOs and I combined them with the 40s to make 40+s. I ended up with four 40+s and a pile of uncombined 40s.

Last night, I ran yet another ITF, and was doing the same thing, combining SOs after, and I noticed that all of the 40+s had turned into 39s! I bought a whole character's worth of 40s, how could I have a 39 in there!? I'll check it again tonight, but I'm pretty sure this is a bug.

...and if money isn't a problem, you can really slot to make it even better. In a toon with DEF-based defenses, you can often slot five GotA +run IOs. That, plus 3-slotted Hurdle, gives you a toon with just-slightly slower run than Super Speed and just-slightly lower jump than Super Jump. And if you're conscious about set bonuses, you can add even more.

I have a 40 SD/Mace tank and a 39 Elec/SD scrapper with this as the plan. So far, they are pretty damn fast and move so easily through missions.

Thanks for the thoughts. Some responses:

• I'm not married to any one element of the idea, especially the rewards. The 40/20 model brought up sounds cool. I just threw 50/20 out there, because I didn't want to get tied up in the minutiae.

• I'm someone who PvPs only a little, but would love to do more. Problem is that the people with whom I normally play do not have much interest in it, and part-time PvPing is not really an option, because -as I've learned- learning the proper PvP builds is whole different beast. There are few really good builds that excell at both PvP and PvE. This TF would get people who are interested in PvP, but not willing to make the full-time commitment to be really good at it, a chance to do it, get something out of it and meet players who PvP often.

• Put a 30-minute timer on the last mission and the TF will not be farmed heavily for merits or drops. Think blueside respec mishes. You don't see a lot of people farming the reactor for merits.

• I suppose team size is totally flexible. Two teams of three might work just fine. As long as they are the same size, it really doesn't matter.

• I see no reason to resist the get-the-glowie-and-run mentality in the early mishes. It should be about speed. Throw in a Defeat All, perhaps, to insure that one stealther isn't doing all the work. The faster team would be rewarded with a strategic advantage in the final battle. This might also even the score between a PuG PvE group in the final battle against experienced PvPers. Intuitively, the PvE group should move through the earlier missions much more quickly, thereby having time to set up the zone against superior PvP foes. A good PvE team may have a chance against a good PvP team then.

• If this TF is "PvP zone" meaning that the extra bonus to PvPIOs work on the TF, it'll increase their value slightly, I imagine, which might be countered by a slightly greater supply on the market.

Just my thoughts as the conversation has moved along...

I just thought of this. It may have been discussed before, but by search-fu is anemic. I'm sure someone with more in-game savvy than me can work out the finer details, but here's what I'm thinking:

-PvP TF would start in a high level PvP or Coop zone. There are two teams, one heroes and one villains, six to eight on a team (or less... I'm just throwing it out there). Maybe the contact would interface somewhat like an arena kiosk.

-Once the PvP TF starts, the two teams go off in separate directions with related missions. For example, villains could be setting bombs, heroes dismantling bombs, villains robbing banks, heroes protecting banks etc. (Here would be a cool opportunity to use the mirroring tech they put in the new Posi so heroes could fight mock-ups of the villians in their lead-up missions, and vice versa). They would bounce from zone to zone finishing missions and moving along. Missions should be in PvP zones, so there would be opportunities for teams to ambush their opponents at a common door or something. Perhaps good teams could have most of the team hauling through missions and one or two people working to slow the other team up. Perhaps there could be a slider like in Siren's Call and Recluse's Victory, except that it shows where the opposition is on their side of the TF.

-First missions would all lead to a final mission, where the first team there gets an advantage. Perhaps it is a battlezone with neutral turrets to be activated, buffbots to be turned on, or pillboxes like in RV, whatever. First team to arrive in the zone gets to set up before the other team gets there, giving them a strategic advantage.

-Last mission is PvP, heroes against villains in the zone. I don't know how deaths would be handled, maybe everyone gets three and they're out... or there is a rez suppression... or it's most kills by the time the timer dings. Whatever.

-Rewards should be good. Perhaps double the PvPIO drop rate on the TF. Maybe losing team gets 25 merits and the winning team gets 50. Whole thing should take no more than 90 minutes with 30 of them being in the last mish. Some badges are always nice.

What do you think? Maybe this might get people into PvP a little more, or at least have there be a little more back and forth between the populations.

I actually want WAY more prompts. I want to be prompted when some jerkwad wants to give me Speed Boost or Adrenaline Boost WITHOUT ASKING! I want to be prompted when some inconsiderate rad defender tries to accelerate my metabolism without even checking to see if I like my metabolism right where it is. Don't force field defenders realize how ugly those bubbles look on my toons!? I want to be prompted so I don't look all stupid covered in bubbles, or have my fire-based toons covered in a lame ice suit, or my ice characters surrounded by silly little spinning fire rocks. I want to be prompted when some dead teammate causes me to have a flashing light on my head! I don't want no flashing light on my head! And I want prompts to protect me from my own stupidity, like when I foolishly hit a self-heal or something; I want the game to prompt me and make sure that I really wanted to do that. You shouldn't be allowed to mess with your hit points without at least being warned.


We need moar prompts!

Dude plays off and on (mostly off lately). I first met him with he set up a Positron TF (the old one) and proceeded to go afk... for an hour. We considered just disbanding the whole thing, but then we would have lost everything, so we just continued on. He showed up during the mish before the last one, all apologies.

A day or two later, I see him on a sewer run. I make an offhand comment about how running through sewers is a sure way of contracting hepatitis. Suddenly, he just goes OFF. He starts raging at me. Calling me all sorts of names because his beloved brother is dying of hepatitis and I was an insensitive jerk for joking about it. I apologized profusely, but he wasn't having any.

A few months go by, and I haven't seen him, but I was honestly feeling a tiny bit bad about dredging up someone's pain with my offhand stabs at humor. Then, I see him on a TF and ask him in tells how goes things with his brother? He replies, "What brother?"
I say, "The brother with hepatitis."
"Oh, him. I haven't talked to him in years. He's okay. How do you know about that?"
I waited a long time before I said, "Nevermind."

I've seen him around every now and then and I know I'm not the only one who finds him supremely annoying. He's a prime example of how the anonymous nature of online communities brings out the torrid in all of us.

As a kin on a team, I play like SB is the most important thing I can do. Fulcrum shift is #2, and transference has its importance in especially long fights. When we are really rolling, I don't even cast my imps, usually. I rarely do anything but SB and FS. People keep saying how their toons are "busy" doing lots of things, and I have to wonder what you could be doing that is more game-changing than SB+FS? Sure, I could drop some Fire Cages for some minuscule DoT, or I could keep SB on the scrapper so his HUGE single damage attack comes back quicker. Most times, teamwide DPS is MUCH higher if I don't attack.

/unsigned

However, I wouldn't mind seeing all of the vet powers as craftable temporary powers, that way new players could still get all the goodies that vets have, but they would have to work to get them. Vets just get them all free at lvl 1. Seeing a Reveal power that costs a Positronic Matrix to craft for 10 uses is a handy influence sink and a real way of separating the vets from the new arrivals while still allowing serious new players to get some of the goodies that make the game fun for us vets.