Seldom

Just my 2 cents on energy melee brutes.

My 'main' and favorite brute is EM/Dark, built for as many status effects as possible. (I call it my smashtroller.) The idea for its playstyle was to remove as much enemy fire as possible. (Just because I love smashing the helpless. <insert even laugh here.>)

This character by all outside indications should ride at low fury consistently, but this isn't the case. My average soloing at full clip is around 80% fury, easily. (This is even when I 'dumb him down' to +1x2, over his usual +1x6)

The trick to making EM/ work for brutes is to focus on using heavy hitters with the least waste, while constantly going back to the faster attacks as fury filler and finishers. The big damage attacks do far too much damage to be used on a minion at 10% health, they most often go to the lieut/boss, or smacking down undamaged minions. Using this style you can maintain full fury progress with ease, don't waste recharge/endurance doing a total focus on a nearly dead foe, and attack often enough that your enemies' attacks are just gravy fury-wise.

In a game with as many different power combinations as we have, I view the flavor of the month/moment thing to be something as a shortcut. All sets when they pair up have different chemistries. I really enjoy finding new and different pairings, seeing what their strengths and weaknesses are, making characters with new (to me) specialties. The whole FoTM things bugs me when it becomes a peer pressure thing. "You don't have a XX/YY? Dude, you have to make one!" "I've gotta make me a XX/YY, for 'Z' specific task!"

When this happens it comes off as a lack of creativity to me, a lack of appreciation for what a player can do with their set. Certain power combos may make some tasks easier, but they are just one means to an end. Other combos can do it in a new way. A bad player using an XX/YY will fudge stuff, end up making a mess. So when I'm playing and someone on the team say we need a /YY, XX/, or XX/YY, I'd rather look at the abilities of the team, and see what we can do with what we have.

On the other hand, if I make a new character with a cool combo I like, and find out it's one of the combos that is being pushed as 'Uber,' I shrug and do with it what I will. Look at the powers, see what its strengths/weaknesses are, and figure out what my play strategy will be accordingly.

I've said it before, i'll say it again- the nice thing about permadoms that people forget is not just the end refill, mez protection, and crazy control mag/duration: it's that all your powers are at your fingertips. Control powers can be crazy strong, but cycle slowly. (Especially the AoE variety.)

Crank up the recharge? They're all there for you.

Mass hypnosis? When somebody breaks it, 'tis a pain. Unless it's up every 11 seconds!
Terrify? Same!
Total domination? Every minute!
Mass confuse? Every minute!
Nevermind the fact that dominate can recharge in 2 seconds, confuse in 2.3, and mesmerize every 1.7 seconds. The limited ranged/AoE/Melee capabilities also become a lot more handy, as with so much recharge you can have ranged attack chains, melee like crazy, and spam AoE's. Oh, and for healing and recovery? Picture Drain Psyche up for all but .5 seconds. Yummm....

'Tis glorius.

The Ocho came to investigate complaints there was an italian plumber running around in overalls and a green hat vacuuming/screaming at two in the morning. This was the place.

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

It should also be noted mind/nrg probably the highest-powered control combo in the game. Mind control has huge amounts of control options, and /NRg has power boost to make them stronger with a good handful of stuns. Add in domination to boost duration/mag of all those, and you have a very safe dominator.

I 'bought' a token, transfered to the 'pool' server. I didn't have a chance to do missions or in-depth performance testing, but was able to access the character on the secondary sever. He logged from the Vanguard base to Grandville. I'm not sure if it was my graphics settings I'd been tinkering with, but I did find my frame rate was better than when I first tested Grandville under ultra mode. Note: there were very few (if any) other people on the server. Not sure if this was a server load, setting, or new server thing that caused this improvement.

But for what it's worth, I did tranfer/log into the server successfully.

Support/Support will by all signs never happen. Every archetype made has differing powersets, not two of the same, and the devs have said they want every archetype to be able to solo. Since they do not balance by pools/vet rewards, support/support would only have brawl/inherent temp power to deal damage on its own. Again, not happening unless the devs do a complete change in direction.

As has been pointed out, the AE was sold promising experience. Those hoping to reverse this position forget that MMO's are based around rewarding players participating in the game with character progression, and around here the primary means of such before 50 is XP.
Such a position also seems ideologically profoundly misguided: X feature is being misused: remove rewards wholesale for those abusing and those not abusing! It's a terrible precident, and one of the reasons I have a difficult time accepting the Dev changes that impacted story arcs. Penalizing non-offending customers is just bad business.

What I could get behind would be a better means of penalizing abuses. If a farmer presently gets their arc banned, they can make more. What would happen if those offenders lost access to the AE system for a month or two, and had their arcs unlisted?

As to 'unclogging the AE:' within the current system, those running AE missions would still find dross of arcs poorly written, and the chance for an author's arc to become a hit amidst the sea of other stories is pretty distant. The 'clogging' is as much a function of a system with limited search/display functionality that has been given thousands of arcs as it is the 'misuse' of the product. When you say 'clog' you refer to junk getting in the way of finding what you want. One man's trash is another's treasure. You may find your arcs wonderful, another may find them to be rubbish. Right now, the game engine puts you opinions head-to-head via the star system. A better system might better allow users to differentiate between what they do or do not want, and put less weight upon the popularity aspect of ratings.

I think I've figure out how to make pistols a viable melee set. Here's how it could work:

1. Pistol whip
You pull out your gun, and whack someone over the head with it
2. Dual Pistol whip
You hit them with both of your guns. Hey, they're metal. Metal is hard! it's bound to hurt them! Low chance of looking ridiculous.
3. Point blank shot
You shoot a foe at close range, dealing great damage. You can only use this at melee range, as your aim is just that bad.
4. Pistol whip frenzy
You swing your pistol around like crazy, with a chance to clonk enemies on the head. Carries a heavy chance of looking ridiculous.
5. Confront
You challenge a single foe. Notice, if you recently looked ridiculous, this will fail.
6. Unload clips
You unload all your rounds, but since your aim is bad, this must be used at melee range. 10% chance of shooting yourself in the foot (Heavy ridiculous debuff)
7. Rage
You get really angry..the more ridiculous you've looked, the more damage you do.
8. Shoot everything
You shoot everything. Warning, this can damage allies. 10% chance to shoot yourself in the face.
9. Dual pistol whip again and again
You choose a target and hit them again and again with both of your guns. 75% chance of looking ridiculous.

I know, it could be overpowered, but I think it's a necessary set for any hand to hand fighter.

The problem that comes up time and again is the lack of carrot and stick methodology.

You whack one thing, well...you whacked it because you didn't like it. What is it you would like to be happening? Reward that. The stick for bad stuff, but the carrot for rewarding those who are sticking to what you would like to happen.

The unfortunate thing is that when many exploits happened in the AE, there was little done to redirect, and focus on what was being done to reward correct usage. Add insult to injury, the anti-exploit fixes also impacted the correct usage of the AE, and allowed some pretty obvious farms to continue.

Okay, the farmer gets his arc banned, he makes/finds another. Meanwhile, when the fixes for farming/exploits/etc. hit the correct usage that needs a carrot, it's a necessary evil. The mixed messages and negative impact on both "good" and "bad" AE usage is enough to make people leave it alone.

At this point I'd hope the Devs took a more proactive role in guiding the AE, if they do indeed have a preferred usage of it, but not via banning/nerfing/etc, but by inserting better rewards into the "right" use of their product. This means better filtering that guides toward story stuff, better rewards for authors, and so on. Getting out the carrots.

there are two things about purples that need to be taken into account- first, they are an extremely difficult pool to access. As such, putting difficult to use recipes in it makes the 'useful' sets even rarer. As such, to retain value to new purple sets, they must work in as many characters as possible. The 'pricey' purple sets don't need their prices inflated much more.

Secondly, the incredibly high enhancement scales they offer makes them capable of multiple enhancement values. In fact, it makes it almost necessary. The issue of 'recharge intensive pets' was brought up. The current purple pet set gives over 90% recharge. A recharge pet set seems redundant after this. It does, however, give a clue as far as minimizing the other possible purple sets:

Heal~Accurate heal
Tohit debuff~accurate tohit debuff
defense debuff~accurate defense debuff

I agree with thaumator as far as the set bonuses go; putting new sets in that offer similar bonuses helps. Can't get the apocalypse set? get a secondary set you can use for the same bonuses. This helps especially when the player is on 'the rule of 5' cap. It actually help mitigate some of the inflationary prices as there's less of the "I need THAT IO and I'll pay anything for it!" mentality. Why? If your character can only use a certain 4 purple sets, and you want the best bonuses, those 4 will be your only options. add in enough sets, and that limitation is no longer as much an issue. And if the bonuses aren't stackable past 5, that 'limits' people from getting greedy and trying to purple out every power they have.

Jesse Ventura...? Wow, your career took a new turn.


If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

My hopes for purple sets:

Resist/defense: whether through primary, secondary, pool, patron, or ancillary powers, all characters of almost all builds can access one of these in some way. Trick of the sets: most purples enhance acc/ primary effect/ end/ recharge. That's 4 effects. Resistance/defense sets at most would need three: protection/endurance/recharge. This means the sets could have a couple more 'effect' IO's mixed in.

Suggestions:

• mez protection. Squishies get mez resistance all over, but nothing to stop mez. Obviously having melee class mez resists in an IO would be a no-no, but having enough to make squishies able to shrug off a single mez or a minion's stun would be handy. Also good for the melee people who try taking mez-happy foes' aggro late game, where mez is everywhere.
• Specialty resistance: KB/repel/Psy/slow/-defense/TP/etc. resistance.
• Psy defense: this would be defense against many mez powers for squishies, and a way to protect a bit from damage type that's pretty common, but many armor sets do not cover.

What would be interesting would be if rather than having 5 normal 'enhancement' IO's, with one 'effect' at the end, if the effects were spread out with the enhancement effects, so as to avoid the 'use just the effect' or use just the enhancement' thing that happens with others sets. (See the +recovery/+recharge/+KB resist/+defense IO's, or the sets where the enhancements go for multi-millions, but the 'chance for energy/smash/lethal/etc. things get little use.)

Healing:
Accuracy included, please. For the final 'effect' IO, an HP bonus similar to that which accolades provide would be cool, but not gamebreaking.

Endmod:
This can be used by some...I'm a bit ambivalent, as it could easily become a black sheep, but since powers like stamina are prevalent, and many patron/ancillary powers access them as well, it makes sense. Effect IO pie in the sky: global resistance to -recovery/-end attacks.

Fear:
Again, a black sheep, but since every archetype has some powerset that includes fear, I guess it makes sense. Effect IO request: or -tohit resistance.

Movement:
This would obviously be a small set, but a purple universal travel set seems doable. If it included a recharge IO, it would make sense- (speed and all) but would throw things off easily, as +recharge is everywhere anywise.


Sets I hope they do not use:
Taunt: few archetypes get to use this 'naturally,' two of them can use them in more than one power..and it's not widely used except for one of those. The effects are actually injurious to squishy classes. This could easily become a 'set mule,' or the dross of the purple sets.

Intangibility: These powers go down in utility with too much duration, outside select instances. They are also hard to find.


Stuff I could see, but am ambivalent about:
Knockback: Many characters have it available, but most powers that do this do it well enough as it is. Some would enjoy it, though.

-Defense/-tohit: for most of their occurrence in-game, these are not 'primary use' effects. (Most powers-number wise-that do them are attacks.) Making a full set of them would tempt people to detract from their ability to use their primary effect. They could be handy for frankenslotting, and if the effect IO were useful.

Slows:
These are rather specialized, and often a side effect, but I could see it.