Shred_Monkey

[ QUOTE ]
some crazy revolutionary comes to take the reigns? *think I used the right word >.>*

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe the word you're looking for is rAnz.

Some days my playtime is limited to my 2 year old's nap time. Last weekend he woke up, came out and saw daddy on the computer, so he walked over and watched the screen. I was swimming past a boat at the time and he said "swimming.. swimming... boat.. boat." Curious what he'd say I hopped on shore and attacked a badguy... when it fell over he said "pop ...it popped... fell down.. it fell down!." and then started laughing histarically (the way only a 2 year old can do). Followed by "again!... again daddy!" At his insistance we street swept in PI for 10-15 minutes laughing uncontrollably every time daddy made something "fall down." The Malta boss Titan "falling down" animation was an especially enjoyable moment.

Heh.. this is funny. I breifly think of leaving my home on the scrapper forum to ask about a blaster power... and what happens? I can't even find it.

I'm looking at the power in City of Data , and I'm wondering exactly how the boost works.

It says +78% to several effects. Am I correct in assuming it adds 78% of the base value to each power having that effect? So if I don't have, for example any runspeed powers running, it doesn't add anything to my inherent speed. But it boosts sprint.

Does it boost health and stamina at all?

Any interesting things you guys have discovered that I might be able to exploit with this power?

I've got fraps. I recorded some stuff I want to post (no editing, just post as they are). The files are huge so I need to convert them to a small format.

What's the best way to do this? I'd rather not spend any money. I've got windows XP. I read something in this forum about a utility in XP to that turns avi's into a smaller format. But I don't see anything anywhere. What am I looking for?

Thanks.

Anyone have information on what invention salvage converts to what base salvage? I'm planning to put an empowerment station in my base soon, and I wanna get as much use out of if as I can.

Great thread!

My 2 year old son has seen me playing just a few times (usually my play time doesn't coincide with him being awake).

The first time he came up and watched me I was going into a store to sell of some enhancements... He saw this and started laughing and saying "Opeh da doah... opeh da doah (open the door)"... over and over. I went in and out of that store 30 or 40 times before I finally had to stop.. (he would have done it and laughed forever I think).

This past weekend I was in ouroboros when he came up and started asking for me to find colors (we've done that a few times)... "red.. red?" Well, there's no red in ouroborus that I'm aware of, so I jumped of the side of the island. Boy did this make him happy! He asked me to do it "again? ..again!" over and over repeatedly each time he broke open in a huge belly laugh. We jumped off the island for 20 minutes or so having a great time.

I realize why this happens... temporary work arounds to get you past the "real" problem until it's fixed are standard practice in the manufacturing world where I work. And I'm glad we can help ourselves now instead of waiting on outside help to keep going. But I still gotta say it.

Are you serious? We're getting a command to get us out of a bug instead of fixing the bug? Come on people... that's like McDonalds putting a 3rd drive-thru window up where we can exchange the food they gave us for what we really ordered.

OK.. that's it.. . Keep up the good work Dev's.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I don't think damage resistance debuffs can be resisted, can they?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd refer back to Arcanaville's previous post as an answer.

[ QUOTE ]

...<snip> ... it wasn't well known that resistance debuffs are *resisted* by damage resistance.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]

My experience is with me debuffing NPC's and dealing damage. Nothing I've ever noticed resisted the achilles heel proc. It's always a 20% of "unresisted damage" boost.

Here's the trick. All damage resistance is typed. Which type is used debuff resistance? Lethal? Smashing? the highest of all types? I'm not sure I agree with Arcana on this one. I'll do some checking in game, but either there's something missing, or there's just no resistance to resistance debuffs.

I suspect the later.

[ QUOTE ]
Is the longbow anchored aoe -res sonic thing unresistable? It used to make my stone brute noticeably weaker, but I had fully slotted stone skin + granite + tough running, so I'd have thought my resistance to res debuffs would have been high. I'm fairly sure that I recently ran a mission with my elec brute, and the -res number worked out to some perfectly even number, which wouldn't really happen if I were resisting it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think damage resistance debuffs can be resisted, can they? Which is why, your damage mitigation takes such a big hit. If you're at 90% resistance, and you get debuffed by 20%, you're now at 70%... that's 3x more damage you're taking.

I started to reply about resistance but Arcana beat me to it and explained it better (she always does). So let me add that she's right. And welcome back from vacation Arcana!

My son (24 months) is just starting to learn to use phrases when he talks. One of his favorite is "Open the door"... (more like "opa da doh")... The other day he walked up to me while I was playing and he saw me enter a store with my toon. He pointed at the screen and said "opa da doh! opa da doh!" So I turned around and went back out... he loved it and said it again and again. I spun the view around backward so the door was visable everytime I came out of the door, then I told him to click the door (though practice with his games, he's got decent mouse control). He proceeded to go back and forth through that door for about 15 minutes laughing and saying "opa da doh! opa da doh!" having a blast.

Don't forget two of the best things kids learn from playing games with Daddy...

1. They have zero fear of computers.
2. Daddy pwns! (in the good way)

Let's emphisize by far and away the most important think in this guide. BREAK LINE OF SIGHT. The whole point of the pull is to move a badguy from where he's at to where you are. (thus the term "pull"). Just starting the battle with a long range attack does not equal pulling. You can pull with melee, just run up hit something and run back to the group and hide. You'll get the whole spawn, but that might be the intention... the point is to not fight them where they spawn at.

So... once again... IF you don't break line of sight... They will just attack you from where they are (or maybe walk a few steps to get in range). So hit them and then Go Hide!

That said, there's lots of handy techniques... some powers can be used from out of line of sight to begin with. The best of these, IMO is teleport foe... It has a huge range, and you can do an enormous amount of tricks with geometry. (Like against the psychic clockwork king... i like to port his minions up onto the nearby warwall ledge and kill t hem so I get him 1 on 1).

Also, most attacks agro at the end of the animation, not at the beginning. One very effective technique is to target a badguy, stand behind a box... queue up an attack (be in range so you get the "target blocked messege", then jump. The attack will activate in the air as soon as you get clear of the box, but you'll come down and land behind the box out of line of sight and the badguy will be agro'd. He can't hit you because he doesn't have line of sight, so it's impossible for him to attack you where he's at. (which would frequently alert his friends agro'ing the whole group).

If there's no way to use a box and jump... you can frequently achieve the same effect by straifing left to right very quickly back and forth using a corner that was "blocking your target" instead of a box... often you'll not be rooted in your attack until after you're back out of line-of-sight. This definatly works well with taunt, but other ranged powers work well too.

Also... adding to this topic there's some other advantages to pulling.

1. Breaking up the alpha attacks. One of the most overlooked is that usually the most dangerous moment of the fight is the very beginning. All targets start with thier biggest attack... and if they all have agro and range on you at the same time, you get hit with the biggest possible attack you can all at the same moment... this makes it impossible to heal or regen back the damage between attacks. However, if you pull... they won't all arrive at the same moment. This breaks up the alpha attacks into smaller parts that can be healed inbetween, or mitigated in other ways.

2. Grouping the badguys. Sometimes spawns are spread out too much. An I deal situation for AoE attacks, debuffs, and controls is to have all of the badguys in a very tight grouping so none of them is out of range. By pulling a spawn around a corner, they all come up to that corner and stop, basicly right on top of each other. This is very adventageous to those members of the team that use AoE type powers and generally it is very bad for the badguys.

Some people call this last technique herding, and a lot of people don't like herding because it takes "too long." Often they're right... you don't need to pull every fight... but if you're fighting things that are well above your level it definatly can be the difference between a team wipe and a successful mission.

Usually what happens in my experience is that people just charge in through missions until they finish or wipe... if they wipe, then it's time to pull (unless everyone quits). Personally, if everyone quits, I usally stay even if I'm by completely alone in an 8 man mission... because I know if I'm patient and careful, I can pull well enough to do those spawns solo. That's how effective pulling can be if done right.

I used to have serious altaholism. But now that I've found the glory of fury and the brutes that thrive on it....well... i still have altaholism, but all my recent alts are brutes.

I agree with solo being faster xp then groups. I'm mainly thinking of my scrapper. He'll get 2-3x more xp per kill solo then teams. As a damage dealer, he's killing things nearly as fast as on teams. There's no downtime between spawns waiting on people to regen, or waiting on the tank to decide to start.

But probably the biggest difference between solo xp and group xp comes from the lack of downtime between missions. Groups seem to waste a lot of time rebuilding the group, deciding what mission to do, or running through someone's mission who "forgot how old it was."

I think these issues are probably why the OP recommended running your own team... I assume that means you're saying you're always on a well run team.

That's pretty important.

[ QUOTE ]
You don't mention how playing in SG mode fits into your plan. Do you keep it on permanantly? Not at all? Turn it on and off.

In the mid- and higher levels, this can really cut down on your inf. Any advice on that, for people who wants to support the SG as much as possible?

[/ QUOTE ]

In some SG's i've been in in exchange for running in SG mode the SG high levels will just give you 50,000 influence. This is pocket change for a level 40 and it'll buy a level 12 all the DO's he needs. This is really good for the SG, too because having many level 1-25's running misisons in SG mode earns prestiege about as fast as anything else i've seen.


ALSO, to the OP. I skimmed the guide quickly, but I didn't see you mention anything about what to fight. If you fight minions, you'll earn less infl then xp. If you fight Lt's and Bosses you earn more infl then xp. This means if you fought only LT's for a full level, you'd probably level slower, but at the end of the level you'll have a lot more infl then if you fought minions (even if they're -1 or -2 Lts).

For this reason, I find street sweeping is often better influence then running missions solo, since missions are usually filled with minions and only a few bosses/Lts.

Also, my blasters find they're often rich because they're in debt a lot more then my other alts. You earn xp at 1/2 rate while in debt, but the influence is coming in just as fast.

edit. Ok.. i see after reading the rest of the posts, these points were all mentioned by other people before me.

I also agree. It seems cone attacks are generally weaker then single target due to thier being able to hit more then 1 target. But seriously, how often does dark maul hit more then 1 target? Evicerate is also "supposedly" a cone... which would give claws a 3rd attack that can hit more then 1, making up for some of it's weakness... But with the cone so small it makes evicerate one of the less impressive attacks in the set (especially with new claw animation timing).

[ QUOTE ]
My favorite moment in CoV (think I was around level 10 at the time):

25% Health, very low Endurance, high Fury, only a single Inspiration left (Defense), spawn of 3 minions in front of me. Rest is recharge and I'm about to hit it when I think screw it, I'm going in. Luckily the first guy dropped a Heal Inspiration. Not sure if I wouldn't made it without it. Fury makes you do dumb things.

[/ QUOTE ]

WOAH!!... hold on... you mean my brute has a rest button? huh... *bewildered look*

[ QUOTE ]
lol it's not nuclear science. Brutes are so popular simply because they're the strongest AT in the game. as in overpowered. just like every other 'popular' AT in the game. once they get balanced, it'll stop. City of Blasters was stopped, City of Scrappers was the next wave, then it got stopped. City of Tankers happened. Got stopped. Hard. Now we're currently in the City of Brutes stage. Guess what's comin'?

[/ QUOTE ]

no way... brutes aren't the most powerful AT. They have mediocore defense and an offense that requires them to risk thier life to use. The reason thier popular is because when you're playing a brute, you don't really mind death so much... because right before you die, you're having the greatest rush the game provides.

(notices this thread sounds frighteningly like something from a cyberpunk-ish Sci Fi story.... feel the rush of electronic addiction.)

[ QUOTE ]
Sadly, I have never gotten to the fury cap...and I'm level 27 :<

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you using brawl? Brawl is spectacular fury building goodness.

This is obvious, and even natural to do, but it deserves saying.

Your primay power is dropping guys on thier head and leaving them there for good. Do this, an you will live. Do this not, and you shall surely die. If you attack something you can't drop, they'll drop you. Seems obvious, but think about it.

Use your build to improve your ability to drop things... this means maximize that single shot damage so when you use a power, your target dies. If you're going to use an AE.. use it as a finishing move to finish off a group... don't leave them standing to fight back. If you're in a group, don't attack a boss that has no damage... attack the one that's hurt and finish him. Never fire the first shot unless it's going to kill your target.... even let the defender pull (it makes them feel important... seriously... the love to use thier snipes, so let them). Don't even slot powers that aren't 'kill shots' because you want to max out the kill shot powers ASAP... use the weaker shots for runners and almost dead guys... slot them later if you can spare then slots, but otherwise the original one is enough to pull or finish runners.

Find yourself in the thick of things and none of your kill shots are recharged? wait for them.... why blow your endurance on a weak attack that won't kill him, when you're next attack will can finish him from his current hp level. Can't finish a guy with 1 attack... wait for 2 to be active and send them as fast as possible... long animation first so the time between him getting hit by the first and 2nd shots is too short for him to complete his attack on you.

status effects are fun... and they're the difference between being uber and just being good... but as a blaster, you're not defined by your status effects, you're defined by your damage... use it.