Robotech_Master

Scientist has it. The other part of it is that a lot of attacks that are mainly other types, like energy or fire, also have a smashing or lethal component--and the highest defense that is applicable to the attack is the one that is applied against it. So if I have a 45% smashing/lethal and a 30% energy, I get 45%, not 30%, defense to energy smashing attacks. So by capping smashing and lethal defense, I'm actually capped against most of the attacks in the game of whatever type.

This means that I can do most of my tanking without having to lurch around in slow motion unable to see my costume design.

I was actually thinking of going with Agility, but that will only help me at 50, and I'm looking for exemplar ability.

Ooo. I'll run the numbers on that when I get home, but if that works, that would be a terrific, elegant solution to the problem.

But if I do that, I'll lose my capped Psi Defense, which I'd prefer not to do.

I can't speak to LoTG (though I only discovered today that the sale also means you can get the global recharge proc for 113 points. I bought 8!), but I can say that Kinetic Combat is an important component of any build where you're trying to max out Smashing and Lethal Defense.

(For instance, on my Energy Aura character, I slotted five single-target attack powers with Kinetic Combat + a Nucleolus Exposure Hami-O each. Boom, Smashing/Lethal Cap, or near it, down to level 17. Which means any attack that has a Smashing or Lethal component is only 5% likely to hit. Well, OK, probably not quite at the cap that far down, given that enhancement performance is scaled back when you exemp, but still pretty good. )

That's because Virtue TFs 2010 is going away at the end of the year in favor of the original title for the channel, which apparently became available again.

Join "Virtue TFs" instead.

I'm pretty sure I recall seeing extra damage proc on other enemies after the first. Generally, all multi-target attacks proc once per individual target.

What's lame is paying $6.25 for a critter that does nothing at all except for…well, look like a dog. I could see paying maybe $2.50. Maybe. For six bucks, I'd expect something more like a pet from Torchlight.

And there's a simple way to tell if you have any freespecs. You type /respec and if it goes into a respec screen, you've got one. (You can hit back to exit.) If it tells you to see Wolfe or Lupin, you don't. (But you will the next time they hand one out.)

If he claimed them all from e-mail, then every time he logs in he'll get a thing in the chat telling him how many he has left.

If you want to get badges out of it:

* when you get to the Vahzilok AV, you absolutely must not defeat any minions before you defeat the AV. MM pets should be set to passive (so they don't return fire against any minions that attack them), and nobody uses AoE attacks. Be sure and convey this to your teammates ahead of time. (And be prepared for at least one of them to completely ignore you. :P)

* The Lost AV, Prophet, is the other way around—you have to defeat all the minions before you defeat him to get his badge. Or, as I like to put it

1) Defeat all minions.
2) ...
3) Prophet!

* If you do DFB more than once on any given character (it's a great way to level up beginning characters, as well as the only way you can get them SOs before the twenties), take a different reward at the end each time—they don't stack.

The Treespec is one of the nastiest surprises in the game. It's worth noting that one of the great benefits of going Rogue (that is, doing Rogue tips and converting your villain to a Rogue) is that your character can go do the hero-side respec instead, which is boring but definitely safer.

Yes and no. The Behavioral Adjustment Facility and Lambda Complex trials are short, sweet, and drop-dead easy once you know what you're doing (and learning what you're doing doesn't take long at all). (In fact, the devs are finding, to their chagrin, that they might just be too easy, to the point that they toyed with removing Empyrean rewards from them until the players revolted—it's hard to get anyone to want to do any of the other trials, that are more challenging.)

Keyes is a bit harder, but they really nerfed it back with the update that just went in. Underground is a platinum-plated rhymes-with-witch—I've only managed to do it successfully once out of the four times I've tried it—but I expect they'll get around to making it easier at some point too. And the devs are cranking the rewards from those trials to try to get more people to do them.

It really makes a big difference to have an experienced leader who is good at communicating the objectives. The right leader can make the difference between winning and ignominious defeat.

If you change from red to blue side, or vice versa, you stay in your SG but you can't use the base until you go back to your original alignment again.

You're not going to be able to take your SG with you if you change to hero side. Your best bet is just to start a new hero SG and move your characters into it.

After reading this thread, I'm really tempted to make a character called the Ambush Nerd. But it's probably already taken everywhere by now, and would probably get taken for a reference to Ambush Bug and genericked anyway. :P

What part of "I don't have the kind of money it would take" don't you understand?

Not the same situation at all. The EATs players could get at level 20 weren't any better than the ones we previously got at level 50.

Players being able to buy the exact same enhancements I've spent ages earning wouldn't annoy me at all. I'd be happy that people could choose to either spend the money and forego spending the time, or spend the time and forego spending the money, to get the exact same results.

It's their being able to buy enhancements that are significantly better than the ones I spent all that time on that ticks me off. I don't have the kind of money it would take to go around slinging these attuned IOs into my characters—but there's no way I can substitute time for money to earn them the way I have the level-locked versions available from the game because they're only available for real money.

Well sure. But my guide is full of ways to get months that cost less than $15 per month.

There are some ways to snag VIP months for cheap, you know. (See link in my signature.) Use some of those, push back the decision, and get tokens at the same time.

And I thought that you get 1 token per paid month, no matter how you get that month. Any box set purchase ought to count, at least as far as the month you get from it goes.

Yeah, that's the problem I have, too.

I can sort of see it from both sides. On the one hand, they want to give people that little extra incentive to shell out their hard-earned real money. But the difference between that and making the people who shell out their hard-earned money for VIP accounts every month into second-class citizens is largely a matter of perspective.

I put a lot of time and effort into earning the Inf (or Astral Merits, or Reward Merits, or Alignment Merits) necessary to buy the recipes for the IOs I need. And given how many characters I have, that's a lot of time and effort. And I have to make tough decisions: do I want to buy the set at L30 and take a hit in effectiveness in return for keeping the bonuses across a wider level range?

To see someone able to shell out a few bucks and get something better than what my time and effort bought me, and avoid having to deal with the level range tradeoff, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not going to threaten to quit or anything over it, but it's annoying.

The devs have shown a willingness to make adjustments in the past—for example, they made accolade powers effective across all levels, when they used to work only at or above the level where they were obtained. If they similarly changed the way IOs work, in that we can keep the bonuses down to three levels lower than the IO set's minimum level—or hell, all the way down, like accolade powers—even if we bought level 50 versions, I'd be happy.

And the storebought versions would still have a bit of an advantage over the crafted ones, to justify paying for then, in that they can be bought at the minimum level and level up with the character, rather than having to wait until 50 (or 40, etc.) to get the most effective version of the crafted ones.