Sailboat

Presenting the Snownicorn!







I put some more photos in the set.

Hope your kitty is all right, Mousedroid.

Story time! My mom once spent two years as an innkeeper, and had a feral cat living under the inn. The cat was polydactylic -- she had six toes on her front paws. She was very skittish and impossible to catch.

One day she started to get very fat, and we knew she must be pregnant. She'd never been spayed, never been to a vet at all, never been captured. She had the litter of kittens...somewhere under the inn, we guess; never found out where she was keeping them. All my mom could do was put out extra food.

Eventually my mom's time as innkeeper came to an end, and the corporate interests that owned the place seemed unlikely to be interested in the welfare of one feral cat with a new litter. We were wondering about her fate.

I went to help my mom pack up her stuff and carry it to the rental truck. While we worked, the mama cat appeared and watched us. She was clearly still nursing the kittens at this point.

"Little cat, we're leaving," my mom said. "If you want to come with us, get your kittens now."

A few minutes later, mama cat reappeared -- holding a tiny kitten in her mouth. She marched over to one of the open cardboard boxes and set the kitten inside! She made three more trips, setting four mewling kittens in the box, and then stood still, tail thrashing in distaste, and permitted herself to be picked up for the first time ever!

I swear this story is true -- I was there and saw it myself.

The multi-toed kitty family lived with my mom for many years, and eventually became pettable. I house-sat for her one week in a very cold January, and in the middle of the night the shy kitties crept up to me and curled up against my warmth.

Back on-topic, I have some photos of yesterdays' snow in my area west of Washington, DC. We got 29.79 inches, breaking the all-time 2-day snowfall record by a solid 5 inches. Among other things, an emergency vehicle got stuck in our driveway (they were coming because, as in all good disaster movies, a woman went into labor!), a Bobcat snow-removal vehicle became trapped, and our association's snow blower burned out its motor.

Oh, and a tree fell.

This is some snow.

I apologize for making yet another Fire Tanker thread; I ran a few searches but wasn't finding anything that answered my question to my satisfaction.

I have been agonizing over a rebuild of my old-school Fire/Fire Tanker. At one point I planned a build without focusing on any defense. But after my recent experience in making a no-defense-to-speak-of Spines/Dark Scrapper who relies on resistance and heals, I decided that although that is fun in its own right (timing the heal), it's evident that a Tanker would benefit from less need to monitor the health bar, freeing up more time for situational awareness, so I am looking at a mid-range defense build (perhaps in the 25-35% range).

I am leaning toward using typed defense (because I can get some from my resistance toggles, using Reactive Armor, and it won't require all six slots in my attacks).

I need immobilization protection from either Burn or Combat Jumping. In the past I have used Burn, even just firing it off for the immob protection, and I am comfortable with using a click for that purpose (basically just setting it off when I find myself immobilized). Burn also will add a lot to my damage against AVs and monsters that do not run, which will help cut down on the length of pounding I will have to endure from them. But it will be a stretch to scrounge the slots to six-slot Burn (I think I can barely do it). I also love the way Burn looks. I understand that the fear and the 5-target cap limit its use against anything but a few kinds of enemies pretty sharply.

But Combat Jumping uses far fewer slots -- which helps -- and will give me a few more points of defense, which is nice (although I can get some typed defense from creative Burn slotting). I fly, and CJ might also make Flight more crisp-turning, I've heard, although never tried that combo.

My specific questions are:

Have you used Burn for AV-melting? It should still be handy for that, right?

Which way would you be inclined to lean?

Thanks!

I can't see Mids builds, but I personally went for Tough and Weave at the expense of an Epic pool.

It takes longer to solo stuff, but I enjoy being ridiculously tough to kill, while fighting huge clumps of enemies, and if "taking longer" means "doing something I enjoy longer" that's a sacrifice I'll make.

Also, other Tankers and other ATs of mine can do more damage than my Inv Tanker ever will, but not many characters can match a defensively-built Inv Tanker for ruggedness, and one of those (Stone Tanker) gives up even more offense. So, logically, I prefer to do my bulk killing with other characters and let the Tanker do what he does better than almost anyone else.

edit: I see in the OP that my question is answered; using Titan Network's link should be safe.

I see a lot of Scrappers on Guardian, and it seems like a lot of them team -- two nights ago I was on a six-Scrapper team (with a Defender leading and a Tanker or Controller rotating in the last spot).

At that time I was on my mid-level DM/SD Scrapper. But I've been playing my Spines/Dark a lot recently.

I see all kinds of mixes on Guardian. Just recently, off the top of my head, I can recall:

Spines/Elec
Elec/Fire
MA/SR
MA/WP
Kat/Elec
Kat/Dark
Dark/SD
Elec/WP
Spines/Inv
DB/Inv
and of course the ubiquitous Elec/SD


and so on. It seems pretty eclectic, actually.

Haven't run into that one myself.

can you try writing the entire item in a text editor or word processor, then highlighting the undeletable lines and forcibly pasting the newly-written item over them?

Here's your go-to guy for questions about farming.

Personally I feel like they need a new mitigation mechanic, not just yet another mix of defense, resistance, and regeneration.

I've proposed "ablative" armor, where the powers create pseudo-pet-like "bags of hit points" that enemies blast off you while your power recharges to refresh your armor. But the post in which I did so was years ago, and did not propose specific powers in detail.

Interesting.

So further testing tonight seems to indicate (based on "last hit chance" in the attribute monitor) the following breakdown:

Affected by Nemesis Vengeance:

Lunge
Impale
Ripper (melee cone)
Brawl
Sands of Mu (melee cone)
Blackwand
Ghost Slaying Axe

All are single-target except as noted.

NOT affected (normal chance to hit Veng'd Nemesis):

Spine Burst
Throw Spines
Quills
Death Shroud
Scrapper Epic Energy Torrent
Dark Regeneration -- important safety tip!

All are PBAoE, or Targeted AoE cones.

This seems likely to support the theory that Nem Veng does not provide AoE defense.

Also, you could use your second build as an additional respec, so to speak, although that doesn't let you move or re-use any enhancements in your main build. But in a pinch it is another chance to re-pick and re-slot your powers.

Tanker Tuesday is coming to Guardian in March. The third Tuesday in March, to be exact, 3/16. So Guardianites who want to bring out their tanks, new or old, for some tank-heavy teaming (and a fair amount of casual chatter!) please mark your calendars.

9:00 PM EST in Kings Row by IP Gate, as I recall.

And if you don't have a Tanker, you have enough time to make one, so no excuses! Be there or be squishy!

Shhhhh...be vewwy, vewwy quiet...We're hunting Mewwits.

/Fudd

I'll probably be around and will look in the channels for these events. Are you really starting a marathon at 8:30 PM? Ah, to be young again...

Handy tip: pick an alternate server that's on the other coast. When the West Coast servers go down, they often all go down at once. The East Coast is usually still up when that happens, and vice-versa.

After a long retooling (several months acquiring the IOs) I have been having a blast with my Spines/Dark Scrapper. However (and with the caveat that appearances can be deceiving) I think I’ve noticed some odd things.

Last night I was fighting Nemesis troops, and Spines/Dark being what it is, killing pretty indiscriminately. That means I kept bumping off multiple LTs and causing the Vengeance Buff to hit the survivors. (I know better than to do this on most characters, but the spines fly where they will, so to speak.) Once the enemies were buffed up, my to-hit plummeted; eventually I was at 10% or less (despite having 57% acc enhancement in most of my attacks and a global +45% bonus.) When that happened, I would miss and miss with my click attacks…but not my toggles. Quills and Death Shroud were ticking VERY reliably. It appeared as if they did not miss.

I glanced in the combat log, and I didn’t SEE any rolls to hit for Quills or Death Shroud, but I was pressed for time and I didn’t really thoroughly read through the log thoroughly.

Those powers aren’t supposed to be autohit, are they? RedTomax doesn’t indicate so

That says “accuracy 1,” and “entities autohit” is blank.

The slotting for my toggle damage auras is roughly similar to my PBAoE attacks, so 55-60% accuracy, plus 45% global acc from set bonuses. Why would the click attacks miss so much (as expected when at 10% to-hit) but Quills and Death Shroud seem to hit so much?

I suppose it COULD be an illusion, but it sure looked like about the same hit rate pulsing away that I’m used to seeing on other enemies.

Also, looking in the combat log, I was somewhat distracted to see that my Performance Shifter +endurance procs (I have 2 slotted) were giving me something like +11.13 end when they procced, not +10. I have a high base endurance due to set bonuses and accolades (at one point around 121, iirc…it might be a little higher now), but would that affect the proc? I expected a straightforward +10 end. I haven’t noticed different results on other characters who have the proc and the Atlas Medallion, for example; those show “You have granted <character> +10 endurance from your Performance Shifter…” text, if memory serves.