Rigel_Kent

I've been playing through a lot of arcs lately, and one of the things I noticed was that some authors aren't taking advantage of the new (from April 28, 2010) %XP calculations for custom critters. Sure, their customs were giving good XP, but dayamn I hit the debt cap fast as a casual soloer.

So, maybe the MA community together can hash out a consensus as to how much % to shoot for on customs, under this new system?

100%, so that players get the highest rewards possible?

75%, the old Standard setting, which is high enough that most people won't notice the difference?

40%, which frees authors from having to take the overpowered blasts from melee sets?

My opinion is that authors should aim low. First, I believe it's a safe assumption that if a player loads up a non-farm story arc, it's more important to the player to be able to complete the arc and experience the whole story without too much frustration, and less important to get mad XP, inf and tickets. Second, the fix for allied entities eating up rewards is currently a vaporpatch, and there's no telling when it'll stop being a vaporpatch, so shooting for 100% seems to be a lost cause. Third, I think there's value in being able to transition a team between radios, newspapers, non-AE contacts, and AE, with a minimum of difficulty setting adjustments. Fourth, I know from experience that I suck and I have trouble soloing custom critters tougher than about 40% without turning the difficulty down. For these reasons, I personally aim for 40%.

What does everyone else think? Should I be advising people in reviews to tone down their customs regardless of the XP penalties? Or should I suck it up, stop being a casual soloer, and build tougher characters and team more?

Just for shiggles, I tried loading up lots of rocket booted custom critter patrols on outdoor maps with "vertical" aspect to them, to observe how much real flying goes on.

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Graveyard 01 (the Chimera map with the big "crater" in the middle) had patrols occasionally flying straight up and down the crater cliffs when needed, but that's all. No cross-crater flyovers, which was what I was hoping for. 18 max patrols.

City Map 01 (Industrial) (the one with multi tiered walkways that you see on Sister Psyche TF, Freakshow sonic devices) had more flying activity, even when I only had 18 patrols in. Upping it to 41 looked really neat. Not quite Croatoa Cabal, but getting there. Flying up to and down from walkways, and across to warehouse rooftops and pipes, too. 41 max patrols.

City Map 02 (Industrial) (one really tall building with walkways spiraling up it) lived up to my expectations, as verticality is this map's defining feature. A good amount of flying, but not that many patrols allowed, and the patrols seemed sparser than in City Map 01, and seemed to stick closer to the walls of the factory rather than City Map 01's rooftop-to-rooftop action. 23 max patrols.

Cimerora - Battle Map (first half of the final ITF mish). Nah, not much flying going on at all, except when the patrols want to go all the way up on top of the towers or the walls. Which, given the small number of patrols, isn't often. 11 max patrols.

Cimerora - Sybil Temple. Nah. The only flying I saw was hovering up and down the three steps in the center of the temple. 5 max patrols.

Thorn Tree 02. A lot of along-the-ground hovering, a tiny bit of dead treetop to dead treetop flight. Not much. 16 max patrols.

Grandville - The Fab. Fair amount of flight on the inside, but mostly just along the walls. 13 max patrols.

Cap Au Diable - Power Station. Not bad. Little bit of shipping crate to rooftop action. 21 max patrols.

Croatoa 07 (the mountainside one). Disappointing. Little bit of hilltop to hilltop hopping 20 feet away, but other than that, just along-the-ground stuff. 10 max patrols.

Little Round Top - Generic (Rikti War Zone). Like the graveyard map, just flight around the edges. 15 max patrols.

Boomtown - Construction. Bit of flying up to telephone wires and train tracks, not much. 11 max patrols.

Skyway City - Blockade. Lots of flying all over the map, but just straight up and down for the most part. 14 max patrols.

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I say City Map 01 (Industrial) is the winner here, thanks to the number of allowed patrols, and the evenness and nearness of aboveground surfaces (walkways, pipes, rooftops) that encourage patrols to fly horizontally far above the ground, Cabal style.

Any other nice outdoor maps I missed, wanna give em a try?

Dark Blast and Dark Manipulation for blasters.
Trick Arrowish secondary for blasters.
Martial Artsish secondary for blasters.
Dark Miasma for controllers.
Illusion Control for dominators.
Force Fields for corruptors.
Cold Domination for masterminds.

Forcefields

Balance Issues

• Personal Force Field grants damage resistance, but does not accept resist damage enhancements or invention sets.
• Deflection Shield grants toxic damage resistance, but does not accept resist damage enhancements or invention sets.

On my stormies, I use Thunder Clap to mez any leftover minions after Freezing Rain's done. Siren's Song would probably do the same for you, except LTs too.

You sure you don't have room for Siren's Song in your solo build? You won't need your three single target shields. Infrigidate, Snow Storm, Shout, Howl and Shockwave are nice but not essential. No need for Vengeance, Recall Friend, or most of Medicine pool, if you've got those.

I guess the question we should be answering is, whether you should skip Siren's Song, or whether you should skip some other power you're on the fence on? Which other power are you on the fence on?

I'm not sure about ambushes, but I do know that patrols on certain maps will switch between hovering and walking, depending where they're going. First noticed this on outdoor map "City Map 01" which has fire escapes and low rooftops. (See Mission #1 of the arc in my sig for an example with rocket booted custom critter patrols.)

Fair warning, I know absolutely nothing about the XP calculation formula, other than the fact that it's hardcapped at 100%, 40% if you're missing the mandatory overpowered blasts in melee sets. But reading your interpretation, something doesn't make sense from a programmer's standpoint.

Ooh, one more thing about O2 Boost I forgot to mention.

For most defenders, especially ones like Empathy and Force Fields, I recommend using the two builds, one for general teaming, one for soloing/tanking hybrid. (Or just soloing if you're a wuss.)

Never occurred to me to try the same for Storm, though, since it's only got one non-solo power, O2 Boost. But Provoke, Acro, another single target secondary, Stamina/end recovery (counter Vigilance), APP armor, or Fighting pool instead of O2 Boost and Vengeance on a second solo/tank build might have potential.

That way, no more excuses for not having O2 Boost on your teaming build.

Too bad Provoke doesn't have a range debuff like Taunt. Maybe we can talk Castle into adding it.

IIRC Jack Emmert's rationale, back in Issue 5, for halving the duration and doubling the recharge time of AoE mezzes, was that they set up the new Controller inherent, Containment, for extra damage.

Which didn't quite line up with reality, since AoE immobs (which most definitely do set up Containment) weren't changed, but cone fears and AoE confuses and Ice Slick (which don't) were.

I think Jack just hates crowd control. Any CO players able to confirm?

Here's how I read your post in my head.

You can also do a jousting Gale leapfrog over a straggler to blow him into the pack. I do this a lot since I'm often hopping in and out of melee as I switch between PBAoEs and ranged cones anyway.

In more general use, backwards jousting Gale (and range slotting Gale too, FWIW) helps make placement more precise. More range between you and two targets decreases the angle between those targets, so those targets will be knocked back in a more parallel fashion. Similarly, if you're a foot or two left or right of where you should have been, or the target steps out of line, more range reduces the resulting error.

It helps to be a right-brained spatial thinker with Gale.

O2 Boost buffing: IME healing is almost never necessary with a stormy, so I use it as a periodic buff, if I use it at all. I take the number of teammates I want to keep O2 Boosted (usually every squishy on the team), divide 60 seconds by that number to get an interval, then cast O2 Boost on the next teammate at about that interval. Blinking buff icons help me keep track. Takes a lot of concentration, so I typically only do this when exemplared to extreme low levels and don't have a lot of better powers to use, or if the incoming mez/enddrain is way out of hand. I should note that endurance usage is very much an issue with O2 Boost when used this way.

O2 Boost perception: You mentioned Night Widow blind, also remember stealthy critters such as spectrals.

Well, not always, but most arcs I've seen have them spawn at 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0% of a boss's health, doing a real number on soloability. Also, lolstalkers.

Two problems with endurance drain in PvE:

1) The AI has zero reaction time. The instant they get a tick of endurance, they will use it. If they're a boss, it's a big tick of endurance. Only stopping recovery completely will prevent this. Without recovery stoppage, endurance draining to zero is just a glorified slow, letting the AI attack once every 4 seconds.

2) The AI will flee if it cannot attack for 10 seconds. Slow movement, roots, stuns, and holds are needed to keep them from getting far. Or defeating them faster than 10 seconds, of course.

That said, one endmod slotted Lightning Field will keep an enemy up to +1 drained. 2% per 2 second tick gets boosted to 4% per 2 second tick, which is just enough to beat out recovery of 6.7% per 4 second tick. In addition, you'll have help from the targets, who will be able to spend some of their end every 4 seconds, so enemies above +1 will keep themselves drained as well.

It's a shame that the factual inaccuracies about defenders in your posts are distracting from your valid point about AE.

Level 12 force field defenders, with 3 DOs slotted, give 19.5% defense with the single targeted shields, and with 1 DO slotted, give 11% defense with Dispersion Bubble. Thus, two lowbie bubblers take the entire rest of the team to the defense softcap (45%) so long as they're within at least one big bubble. They're also at at least 30.5% defense personally, which isn't shabby. A couple of level 12 empaths with their 1-slotted Fortitude cannot touch that.

You are correct about bubblers being rare, though. Empathy benefits enormously in popularity from the inaccuracies so often repeated about other defenders.

Not to mention what Psi Tornado is doing to the enemy's recharge. Yowch. -37.5% for 10 seconds in a big frickin' 20' radius AoE, stackable with Scream? Yes please.

Kinda agree on Energy Melee. Come Going Rogue, Kinetic Melee stands a good chance of being what Illusion is to Mind and what Shields/WP are to Invuln: concept's too similar, stats are better, everyone plays it instead.

Though of course there's no guarantee Kinetic Melee won't be even worse than EM. <frownyfaces at blaster proliferated Psi Blast and all versions of Dual Pistols>

Don't hate Cauterize for being single-target.

(Hate it for requiring the single target be someone other than yourself.)

Add me to the list of people confused at trying to optimize a petless build (completely conflicting goals?), but I certainly won't kick one from a team if they've got good buff/debuff mojo. Honestly, most PuGs, I wish I had a teammate with Melt Armor up every spawn rather than moar fugly demons.

That said, do make sure you're in touch with your inner defender, because buff/debuffs will be key to both teaming and soloing.

Have you thought about rolling /storm instead of /thermal? Since you're already treading into 50% annoys team, 50% surprisingly good support territory. I rolled a whip/stormy last month, good times, plays like a kinky version of my storm defender, though needs more slotting to reach the broken, er I mean, really good, debuff values I'm used to.