f13.net

Played til dawn. Got my cape and a new costume. Ran a few side missions. Got the halloween badge.

My main is 22 and I'm thinking of respeccing at 22. He's an ice/ice blaster with fly and medicine side pools. I'm keeping fly probably since it is so useful for a blaster, but am thinking of swapping medicine for something that'll give me more longevity. Some kind of defense secondary I'm thinking. Any suggestions?

Gotta wait 'til 24.  You can't get into Terra Volta until then.

meant to say 24. Just was typing in a hurry. :)

Concealment pool.

You can attack while stealthed - and this ability helps reduce your overall aggro.  And of course there is phase shift...

You should fully slot stealth - for Defense.  I found the base defense from stealth, even on my scrapper - helped.  If you slotted this with more Defense DO /SO ... that would certainly help.

My en/en blaster on Virtue is lvl 32 and pretty much has everything he needs right now. Besides the powers in the primary and secondary sets he has:

Flight
Hover & Fly: Hover provides defense while fly allows me to get around areas with a lot of vertical changes like Faultline and Boomtown.

Fitness
Swift, Health, and Stamina: I only have Swift and Health just because I wanted to get Stamina. Its becoming the "must-have" power for a lot of heros. Right now I have it 6 slotted with SO endurance recovery enhancements. I can't really run out of endurance anymore. Interesting note: Stamina doesn't increase the amount of endurance you regain per tick. It does shorten the time between ticks though. Swift and Health are just single slotted right now, although I may start to slot Health up when I have some extra slots.

Speed
Hasten: I've got it 5-slotted with SO recharge reduction enhancements which means I'm coming close to perma-hasten. Real helpful when going against tough bosses because I can rapidly fire off knockback attacks at them.
SuperSpeed: I used to just have fly but it even felt slow. Now I pretty much use superspeed everywhere to travel and use fly when there's something I can't jump over.

Concealment
Stealth: Another defensive power, very helpful when superspeeding through high lvl areas. I keep it on permantently when fighting in missions. I offset the speed decrease by having both Swift and Sprint slotted with an SO. Stealth is also needed for Nova-bombing groups of bad guys.

Mine:

Fighting:
Boxing, with Dodge and Weave to come later.

Leaping:
Combat Jumping
Super Jump

Speed:
Hasten
SuperSpeed

Concealment:
Stealth

Notable is the absence of the Fitness pool for the everpresent Stamina.  Of course as a /regen I have QR 6-slotted, currently with DOs.  If that no longer cuts it, even after SOs come up, I intend to slot Dark Consumption with Acc/End Rec/End Rec/Recharge/Recharge/Recharge and take my end by goddamned force.  And if THAT fails I will actually take the bizzarre step of putting one End Reduction in each attack.   Anything to avoid having to take Swift (stupid since I have SS) and Hurdle (stupid with CJ and SJ) or Health (just stupid).

Thats what I love about the game...so many ways to skin a villainous cat.  At any rate, I think Cryptic needs to realize that QR and / or Stamina are now considered mandatory, and they need to ask themselves if thats what they wanted.

Agreed.  Hasten and Stamina in particular, while I don't want to admit it, need the nerf bat.  Everybody's got 'em because they're basically essential.

Nerfing them would be a bad idea, then. People get used to a certain pace of gameplay. The mudflation cycle continues.

I thought the upcoming baddies they had in mind had a variety of stamina sucking powers to address this.  AoE bombs that drain stamina, quitters that drain stamina when they die...

I think End just needs to recover faster across the board.  People should not have to take a fucking superpower just to stop from getting too winded to throw a punch in the middle of a fight.  And they certainly shouldn't have to climb to the top of an otherwise so-so power set.

And having baddies that drain more end just makes it worse.

The biggest ones would be Malta sappers.  They do suck, but thankfully Unstoppable keeps them from stunning me, so instead I get to stand there like a dumbass because I have no END to attack them.  And it's a shock when you first get hit by one, you go from full to empty in one shot when they get a successful hit in.  The lesson there is to kill them quick.

Carnival of Shadows also drain some END when they die, but since I always have Unstoppable up my endurance regeneration is through the roof, so I don't really notice it.  For other people, yeah, I can see it being a pain in the ass.  No, the big scary thing with the CoS are the illusionist bosses.  They're controllers, and none of your resistances mean jack against illusions.  Be prepared to pop a lot of heals.

And of course, there's a lot more baddies with psionic attacks later on, but truthfully they almost become a blessing compared to the carnival and the malta sappers.  The hell they put you through really does give you perspective.

The game turns much, much harder post 40.

I hope so.  I hate to say this but I will be trying EQ2 for awhile when it comes out since it has been sooo long since I have had any tough fights.

The missions while neat just aren't tough enough.  Street fighting gets better since you can select baddies much higher level than you in packs.  But this is not enough for me.

At 37 now (Ice controller / empathy) will be 38 by end of the week.  Not sure I will make it to 40 by the time EQ2 comes out.  Sooner or later though I will go 40+ based on your comment (besides never seen the Rikti crash site).

Personally I think the issue is that base recharge and stamina regen is too slow.

If I were Cryptic I'd knock Hasten back by a third (to just under 50%), and then give everyone that third permanently and for free at character creation.

I'd do something similar with stamina, take six slotted stamina, knock it back by a third and give everyone that to start with. You have to do it so that six slotted stamina still totals the same regen level though, there are any number of toggle based primaries/secondaries that just can't function without six slotted stamina. Either that or they need to revisit all the costs and recharge times (so turning a toggle off is more practical in a mission) for toggles before they do anything to stamina.

Also, wb Riggswolfe.

I don't think Cryptic will change stamina and hasten from what they are now. It'd be nice if it weren't such a huge transition from pre-stamina to post-stamina in gameplay. However, these decisions have been made and I just don't see them changing at this point.

I can still run myself out of endurance in short order even with six slotted +3lvl SOs in stamina. BS is a real endurance hog. I'm seriously considering endrdx for my sixth slots in my sword attacks, if I ever get around to finishing them off.

UNS-pumped END is amazing, but just a few minutes ago I managed to about drain my blue bar when going nutso on Carnies with AoE attacks. They've got low hit points and are markedly vulnerable to lethal attacks. Diving into a large group then unloading builtup whirling sword and slice had me from full END to about 1/5. And that's with UNS, stamina and some kinetics buffs running.

Malta are a bit different matter. Sappers are the bane of regen scrappers and blasters in general. They're annoying to invul, but UNS pretty much puts them in their place. MoG will, too, though you still have to tread carefully with reduced hit points. Their ranged attack won't immediatly drain END under UNS, but the melee drain sure will and will prevent recovery for some seconds. Resists remain, however, and a quick blue pez and a HS will settle their hash right now. SR scrappers typically respond with, "They have drains? Go on!" The real problem with sappers is when there's two or three in a group...

Then there's the Knives of Artemis with mountains of caltrops, sleepy darts, assorted sword attacks (I want one of their swords!), and invisibility. It's a different world post-40.