Schismatrix

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Huh, I didn't know she was a she.

Then again I don't go around asking everyone's gender.


I just assume ya'll are dudes.


JJ

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It's better that way for all of us.

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LMAO, that was great Unsub.

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Agreed.

Also, HBD 2 U, Grae Knight.

fixt for clarity

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Your friend forgot to add, "and are you single?"

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Let me add to that; "Are you straight?"

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Remember that he also posted:[ QUOTE ]
My friend might be my wife.

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...

So that could possibly be a disqualifying question.

On to the discussion of physical states...

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Technically, SHE wouldn't be humid, just experiencing humidity.

[/ QUOTE ] i suppose technically she would be moist (one of the most disliked words in the English language, inexplicably enough), or downright wet, assuming of course she's not some sort of mummy, lich or other dessicated animate cadaver. Which seems terribly unlikely.

i've said it many times before myself, just not on the boards: "Awww, that makes me feel all warm and squishy inside. No, wait, that's blood."

So humid only as an understatement of her state.

This entire thread is silly, though it has reminded me that i'd like to visit Hawaii some day. Also Europe, but that's less topical. (It's also less tropical. *rim shot*)
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[i]Wow, can't you feel the love in this thread? Especially in contrast to the other recent open letter threads.

i blame the Swedes.

Maybe she's in Nome...

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Glad you enjoyed the arc. If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them (I've been considering replacing the Russian troops with something a little less culturally specific, say Arachnos, partly to avoid offending anyone, partly to get away from the datedness of them, and partly because custom critters tend to chew up PCs with excessive ease). I used the same tactic of avoiding them where possible. My Scrapper didn't have that luxury, heh.

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i rather liked the Russian troops. Considering how antagonistic and aggressive the Russian government has been lately they're not illogical.

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Your experience was fairly similar to my own, it seems. I ran out of endurance a bit more often, from the sound of it, but that might easily be accounted for by differences in accuracy (ie luck).

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I made a mission on the MA (it's the first of what will be an arc). This mission pits the character against Mooks. They're a group that falls below L20. The mission objective is to defeat a boss. All aspects of the mission are set to minimum difficulty. The character is playing on Heroic.

It took my Defender (FF/EB) 3 and a half hours to do this mission. It took my Scrapper (Claws/Regen) 15 minutes.

The reason? The typical spawn was three minions (all yellow - for some reason the MA insists on never using white conn foes). The Defender would go in, constantly blast one with Force Bolt to keep him from attacking, then power bolt one of the others while soaking up the attacks of the third. The only toggle running was Hover. I could have run Dispersion Field, but I would run out of endurance in 3 or four attacks.

[/ QUOTE ] So, which is it? i can tell you for a fact that it took more than 3 attacks on average to defeat each enemy, and i went through 3 minion and 3 lt. before pausing a minute or two to rest before taking down the last 3 minions. Active mission time was probably less than 15 minutes. My fights against the trolls, who were almost all +1 to me, went about the same in terms of each enemy taking around a couple minutes to defeat. (Would've been less if they hadn't kept running from me.)



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Heck, I got nailed by Lord Dire with Cinders as I was trying to fly past him with PFF and DB running (incidentally, I was under the impression that defensive toggles don't drop when held, but as soon as Dire held me, I got hit by EVERYTHING - though the powers didn't detoggle, the effects were lost). I think he had about a 6% chance to hit me and he pulled it off!

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i thought that most holds were too low in mag to get through DB in one application unless custom EB holds are much higher mag than normal. Sleep, however, is not stopped by DB. Also, when mezzed all benefits from defensive toggles are lost except mez resistance and mez protection, so they give no +def or +res until the mez ends.

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However, I stand by my assertion that endurance issues are present. If you don't credit my examples, there's still the numerous threads discussing the issue that have appeared over the years. If there was no problem, there wouldn't be so many threads.

[/ QUOTE ] In an early post you insisted that your FF/EB Defender couldn't take out 3 minions without flatlining your endurance. That it took 3 hours just to fiinish that one mission. Then in your last post you said that you took out 6 minions and 3 lt. in about the same time frame that i did, which wasn't much more than 15 minutes. (Mind you it might've been closer to 20 since i was posting part of the time while several minions flailed at me ineffectually in the entrance.) Sorry, but it can't simultaneously take 15-ish minutes and 3 1/2 hours to solo a single mission. i could delete all my enhancements, but use inspirations, and it would still take me about 15 minutes. Adding just a few endurance reducers in my attacks made endurance a minor limitation, not the crippling problem you claim.

Still, good arc, well written.

So, cleared out Moss by flying over the EB's and taking out his group. Took out any enemies on the way to Moss, a mixed bag of factions.

Then on to the Russkies. Not much of a problem, but skipped most of them and went after objectives. (With DB, PFF and Hover i have 87.5% defense. First mission i went AFK to post and came back to see that some Mooks had been pounding away for a while without any effect. )

Now turning in tickets and inf to add a few more enhancers to Nomad Zero at 13.

So far so good, but for the final boss i think i'll use inspirations, because i think they'll be needed to solo an EB with a minimally slotted level 13 FF/EB.

Final edit: Skipped inspirations and brought Technaught along instead. After finally finding the big bad he dropped like stock in Chrysler. No inspirations needed. Overall a rather enjoyable romp.

Conclusion: Ultimo_'s arc was fairly quick and easy to run with a 12-13 FF/EB slotted only with a handful of DO's and no veteran powers or attacks. Other than having to pause 4 times to rest it was just a matter of moving ahead. Playing a FF/EB was more fun than i expected. i've played FF to 50 before, but never really used EB.

i'll continue playing Nomad Zero now and again, but will not claim the veteran attacks. However, i will start selling drops intelligently and using inspirations for AE missions.

[b]Anyway, the point is that at levels 12 to 13 i had no difficulty soloing Ultimo_'s AE arc on a FF/EB without running out of endurance more than once or twice a mission even with Dispersion Bubble running most of the time and using minimal slotting. Of course i dropped an accuracy, damage and endurance reducer in every attack and an endurance reducer in DB, but that's only common sense for soloing. If i'd made minimal use of the market to fund a full set of DO enhancements or used inspirations i probably wouldn't have needed to rest at all...

Righto, not using Mids' to set him up right now, but this is Nomad Zero on Justice:

Right now all enhancers are 15 DO's, basically minimal slotting.
Power, # of slots, enhance
PFF, 1, nothing
Force Bolt, 2, 1 acc
Dispersion Bubble, 1, 1 end

Power Bolt, 4, 1 acc, 1 end
Power Blast, 5, 1 acc, 1 end
Power Burst, 3, 1 acc, 1 end

Swift, 1, 1 flight
Hover, 1, 1 flight

Now starting "Techwar".
(Incidentally, very well written text so far.)

Edit 1: Took down 6 mooks while running Dispersion Bubble before i needed to rest.
Edit 2: Took down remaining 3 in a bit under 2 minutes, exited mission.

Edit 3: Onto the caves. So far taken down 3 Gardvords, 2 Buckshots and 1 gunner. All yellow or orange. Would be going faster, but chatter in globals distracting me.

Edit 4: Stupid Gardvords keep rabbiting after finding they can't close to melee. Tired of chasing them all over the caves. Dropped Dispersion Bubble so i can spam Force Bolt to slow them down.

Edit 5: Down to Supatroll Grond (doesn't look much like the Champions Grond) and his two Gunners. Everything else dropped like Paris Hilton's undies. Going back to finish them off. (Urge to pop insp hard to resist even with tray hidden.)

Edit 6: Grond of course ran like a little girl after getting knocked around a bit. Had to chase him all over to finish. Overall finding FF/EB a lot more fun than i expected.

Edit 7: Used the 110 tickets from running the arc so far to add 1 damage to each attack. So far enjoying the arc itself quite a bit. Things are moving at a good pace. i'd be going much faster if i hadn't crippled my funds by selling all drops to the stores. After this starting a new post. (Should be 13 by then.)

i wonder if the names Lord Mako and Cap'n Recluse are already taken on my servers of choice?
brb

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they have a dcuonline website now. Batman and superman and black lighting look amazing
DcuOnline

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It's the way it causes flourescent colors and many whites to glow that makes black lighting look amazing.

Black Lightning looks pretty good as well.

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Actually I wasn't referring to just Elkie, there were a few retards butchering the English language tonight in arena chat.

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That's why i generally don't say anything in arena chat: too much competition in the functionally illiterate and stupid category. My own linguistic failures just can't win against so much competition.

*sigh*

The sad thing is that my most consistent grammatical and spelling errors are due to personal affectations, not incompetence. Even when i try to be actively stupid i tend to forget and actually type some things coherently.

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'The problem is some people are so obsessed with disproving the whole "we need a healer or we'll die" theory, that they have actually gone one step further and tried to prove that healers are not just not needed, but are indeed useless.'

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QFT, really nothing more to say/post about it, you hit the nail right on the head with a sledge.

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Actually, a lot of people have been arguing that "healer" is an inaccurate and misleading term to describe support archetypes and powersets, which has nothing to do with needing heals. We do not in any way deny that healing is a useful capability, we just deny that it's the defining characteristic of support sets. Especially in light of the fact that multiple sets have no healing powers at all, but can provide just as much support as those that do. Is this really so impossible to understand?

i think think it's more of an absent-minded facepalm with that sledge than it is hitting a nail.

Regarding debuffing toggles:
Radiation Emission's and Storm Summoning's debuff toggles also draw aggro. Do you skip Snow Storm and Hurricane on Storm Summoners or also avoid taking Radiation Infection and Enervating Field on Rads, or do you just not play the sets?

Whether i'm playing a Rad, Dark or Storm user, having teammates kill the anchor of a toggle debuff is always a risk. However, the team is still better off than if the debuffs weren't used in the first place, and if the fight is taking long enough i simply pick another target when the powers recharge. If the fight is mostly over by then i save it for the next group. It really doesn't seem very difficult to me.

As for the main topic:
Stamina is nice, very nice, but i still say slotting attacks for end reduction is generally just as important.

Still working on getting Nomad Zero to 13. i only had time to play him a couple hours yesterday. Now, to keep it within some notion of average, or at least what i think should be close to Ultimo's Defender, i'm selling all my drops until i can buy DO's to the stores instead of selling them at WW like i usually do. If i went the normal WW route i'd probably have something near a million inf to outfit myself just by spending a couple minutes each hour putting common salvage on the market. i've also done nothing but solo regular contacts and content, but at 12 i will start using AE and playing a little more like a veteran. i am still not claiming any veteran powers at all, and will be posting my build once i hit 13 and try out the arc Ultimo___ posted. (#189400 "Techwar")

Like Ultimo's it's a "soloing build" that skips the team buffs and takes Hover. Otherwise it's what i would consider a good soloing build.

Edit: Hit 12, will post build and start running tests after i help Smurphy with an experiment of his.

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That's nice. DN is still gone and it is staying gone; when something creates more hassle for me than it does benefit, its outta here.

You'll have a legitimate complaint when I'm on teams or in here saying "Man, where is my ST debuff! I need to get me one of those!"... but I refuse to go pick it up.


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Darkest Night is an AOE by the way....

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Perhaps this explains all the aggro it draws, then. Either way, I'm still happiest without it.

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*facepalm*

Right, i'll be back later. Posts like that make my head hurt.

*shrug* Okay then. i don't necessarily agree, but since i'm not expecting to see any cottages popping up, and would benefit if it was done anyway, it's just Castle and Positron who would have to be convinced...

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Exactly! There is no "healer" in this game, and quite honestly the only people who use that term are demonstrating their own ignorance and general stupidity.

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Beyond tactless.

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That's CDN for you, and while he does tend to lack tact and wield the English language like a blunt instrument.. The premise of what he's saying is accurate.

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Pish-posh. He's totally off-base. Tell you what: you grab your healer, i'll grab my knockback resister, and we'll get some DoTers* to run an ITF. Yeah.
Maybe grab a speed booster** if there's still room.
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*Several Scrapper and Blaster attacks have damage over time in addition to the main damage. Obviously, even if it's a minor part of what they do, their main function is to provide DoTs.
**Controllers with Kinetics as their secondary might have other capabilities, but who cares?

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some how u out leasted the other VGs

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Strangely ironic typo.

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i know i loled.

Accelerated Reflexes i suspect would be considered more than a little overpowered for a pool power, 4th tier or not. It gives larger bonuses than the first two tiers of Fitness combined in one power plus a recharge bonus?

Not very likely to happen. Quickness is tier 6 for Scrappers (8 for Brutes) and it grants fewer bonuses in a secondary powerset.

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If you take the time to read my OP, you will find my argument does not require numbers. I'm talking about players that spam "lvl XX healer" in broadcast, and how there's not a consistent definition for the term 'healer.'

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So your arguments are so conclusive, you don't need actual proof to back them up?

To the OP, good work. Unfortunately, the healer haters will completely ignore anything you might have proven in favor of hyperbole and anecdotal "evidence". The hate runs deep here on the forums regardless of how popular the playstyle is in game.

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[rhetorical attack on poster's intellectual capabilities]

Right, now that i've responded in kind to the tone and objectivity of your post...
"Healer haters?" Um, what? If you mean the OP vindicates referring to Corruptors, Masterminds, Defenders and Controllers as "healers" then it seems that someone has debuffed your reading comprehension skills into the deep negatives. All the sets except Empathy provide the majority of their support through buffs and debuffs, and even Empathy is the same by the mid-game. That's not the same as saying that anyone objects to healing being used when appropriate.

For the record, objecting to the term "healer" has nothing to do with being opposed to the use of healing powers. It's more that calling support sets/AT's "healers" is the functional equivalent of calling Tankers "knockback resisters".

"lvl 37 mission team LF KB resisters!!!!!!! plz send tell thnx!!!!"

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I put significant slots into my "defenses," that is, PFF is triple slotted, Hover is triple slotted (for manueverablity).

I'll rebuild as suggested and see if it makes a difference, but I'm not optimistic.

Tomorrow, though. My eyes feel like pebbles, darn allergies...

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i have a few questions since Nomad Zero (FF/EB) on Justice will be hitting 12 fairly soon:
When you first posted about fighting mooks on a FF/EB you talked about them capping at 20, but your FF/EB is actually 12? Are you using other enemies to force the character and Mooks to be set to 20, or are they actually at your level of 12?

i need to know before i go past 12. Note that i will not be using your slotting. PFF at 50 is usually left at 1 slot on my alts. However, i have no high level alts on Justice and am just soloing as i level. When i hit 12 i may skip using DO's, but i have no idea why anyone with any intelligence would do that. Still, for purposes of testing i will clear out my inspiration tray before fighting the mooks. i'm interested to see how this goes.

Also, i will not be claiming any veteran rewards to make this fair.

Edit: Took a quick look at the ranged defense for Nomad Zero at level 5 with PFF unslotted: 78%. Soft cap is 45% against even cons. Whyinahell would you add more slots to that?!

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The point is that people who decline to address their END issues in some manner or another have lost their right to complain about it. They shouldnt be panhandling for blues.

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If I were to team with you, which I very rarely PuG, You wouldn't hear anything from me about needing Inspirations, unless I needed one to convert to an awaken, or something similar. Even then, I probably wouldn't ask for one. I'd just take my Stamina-less character to the hospital. I would probably get agrivated that you (the metephorical team in general, not you specifically) keeps killing the anchor for my debuffs.

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There is no sense getting upset about that; its the reason my Dark/dark Corr respec'ed out of Darkest night and why my three Dark/dark Defenders [yes, I know....] refused to pick it up.

1. Team makes a beeline for my anchor every time. There is no known cure for this syndrome.

2. DN draws a simply incredible amount of aggro.

*RESPEC*

Problem solved.

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1. i tend to team with experienced players, so they try to leave the anchor for last. On teams not familiar with toggle debuffs i explain what DN does and ask them to avoid the anchor until last. (Including sometimes setting up a bind to announce the anchor.) This works the majority of the time.

2. DN draws the enemies onto the Tar Patch i dropped at the corner and allows me to herd like a Tanker while taking very little to no damage. Post 32 dropping Fluffy into the middle of a group also reduces aggro from DN. On open maps i wait until a teammate has drawn initial aggro before using or...

2a. Open with Fearsome Stare and then DN on open maps. Both have about the same amount of tohit debuffing, stacking them puts the enemies near the tohit floor. (The fear adds a teeny bit of mitigation as well.)

i've been on teams where we cleared away most of a map in one sustained battle by using DN to draw more spawns to the tanker while the team is finishing off the first group. i've also seen the same approach using two tankers, but DN can do it also when properly slotted.

All of which also suggests a third point/question:
3. Radiation Emission's and Storm Summoning's anchored debuff toggles draw just about as much aggro. Do you also skip Snow Storm and Hurricane on Storm Summoners and also avoid taking Radiation Infection and Enervating Field on Rads, or do you just refuse to play the sets?


Whether i'm playing a Rad, Dark or Storm user, having teammates kill the anchor of a toggle debuff is always a risk. However, the team is still better off than if the debuffs weren't used in the first place, and if the fight is taking long enough i simply pick another target when the powers recharge. If the fight is mostly over by then i save it for the next group. It really doesn't seem very difficult to me.

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Considering I didn't take anything that helps my team (well, Dispersion Bubble, which I only use on teams because the end cost is currently prohibitive, and the defense provided is negigible), I don't consider this a character designed for teaming.

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...Dispersion Bubble's endurance cost is prohibitive? Wot?
Then again, at 50, still mostly slotted with SO's and without more than a couple minor set bonuses, my FF/Rad runs Dispersion Bubble, 3 Leadership toggles, Hover, buffs a full team and occasionally uses Force Bubble while firing off AoE blasts.

At 20 my FF/Rad would be running Dispersion because at that point it's not uncommon to be fighting mezzers and every bit of defense helps anyway. i just don't understand how you can run dry using nothing but 2 attacks and Hover. Are the attacks unslotted? Where the hell did you put all the slots if you don't run Dispersion and it's not a teaming build?


While not a fan of FF/Energy, i have to try this now and see for myself.
i will have results in a couple days if i remember to spend a bit every time i log on working on this alt. 20 should be fairly quick that way. Then i'll try smacking down Mooks.

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The imbalance is off-set by the common salvage going for much more now because it cannot be purchased via tickets.

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At 8 tickets for a roll to get common salvage of the category and level range of your choosing i hardly consider it impossible to purchase via tickets. That's even easier than the non-AE method of waiting for mobs to drop it. You don't even have to find mobs with the right level range and salvage category to get the types you want.

If anything, i find common salvage of the type i want easier to get with tickets.

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Before AE came out there were at least two warnings not to use it as farm grounds. They were ignored.
When AE came out the patch notes and tutorial said not to farm it. This was ignored.
The Devs went "If you can't be trusted not to throw the ball in the house you don't get any balls."

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to be fair most people didn't actually read any of that

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Yes but the information was there, it is their own fault if they couldn't be bothered to read it.

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My thought was more "how is ignoring warnings considered a vindication for doing something dumb?"

"Jimmy lost his hand in the wood chipper after repeatedly being told it was dangerous!"
"Well, to be fair, he ignored those warnings."
"Uh..."
"What?"