New efforts!

[Auroxis]

On the general subject of incarnate powers and controllers, I uploaded this video and this video to demonstrate the power of Incarnate abilities back in the day.  The first is my Ill/Rad soloing a giant monster class Quarry.  The second is the same Ill/Rad using Ageless (partial core invocation) and one of the two tier 4 reactive procs (I forget which).  I shave a significant amount of time with Incarnate abilities.

Not just controllers, but those measly defenders as well. Lore really worked well with the buffs defenders could deploy, as seen in my video here. And while Destiny gave access to endless endurance with Ageless, it also gave access to excellent mez protection for classes without access to it, letting them do some incredible things as seen in this video.

[Shadowe]

If they've done that, I predict many donuts and cases of beer arriving at their domiciles... That would fully enable RPing again!

Give me this, and Codewalker you will have a friend for life.

*dreams of being able to RP in the City again*

Maybe two lives.

[Codewalker]

If memory serves, the reactive DoT was a granted power, which I think means its damage wouldn't be buffed by Musculature buffs (or at least shouldn't be).

It was not. The very first implementation of interface IIRC used granted powers, but that was quickly abandoned due to the problem of granted powers ignoring the purple patch. The version that was live for most of the time people had Interface used collective ignore stacking of an effect directly placed by a global boost proc instead.

The DoT was marked to ignore enhancements, however, so Musculature would not buff it. The DoT also stacked to 8 while the -Res stacked to 4.

Pets did indeed inherit Interface. Due to the way the stacking works, you'd either need pets or a fast attack chain to apply more than ~2 before the 8.3 second duration expired (remember it's not a 100% chance). I usually went Reactive Radial because the fire damage was the better part of the deal, and the -Res was just the icing.

[FloatingFatMan]

The next time someone tells you a failure mode is inconceivable, hand them this article, and ask them how many tombstones have to have "killed by lack of imagination" etched into them.

I hear ya there. Some of our software controls extremely heavy paper manufacturing and recycling machinery. Machinery that, if the safety fail, could at worst turn some unfortunate worker into paste, and at best, cost the company over 1000 Euro's an hour until its restarted (it takes 24 hours to restart these machines) .  It absolutely must not fail. Ever.  It has checks upon checks, multiple redundancies, backup controllers, and multiple levels of monitoring programs all working in tandem to make damn sure nothing goes wrong.

And even then, a real life person has to keep an eye on it.

[Azrael]

Not just controllers, but those measly defenders as well. Lore really worked well with the buffs defenders could deploy, as seen in my video here. And while Destiny gave access to endless endurance with Ageless, it also gave access to excellent mez protection for classes without access to it, letting them do some incredible things as seen in this video.

Hmm.  So...the failing of my Dark Dark Defender (other than it not being IO'd out...) could also have been addressed by Incarnate and going down the Destiny route with Ageless.  It would have given 'endless' end (which Dark Dark certainly consumed...even with plenty of End Reds in there...) and some 'excellent' mez protection when I was 'locking down' mobs?  I'd be ok locking down upto about orange level mobs.  Then a 'boss' would mezzo me...then they'd all pile on... :P

Bah.  Now I want to find out by playing. 


Re: Tanks.  Re: Incarnate.  Did people go Ageless to boost end or reactive to boost damage.  On my Energy Melee / Invul' tank...it was just lacking a bit more recharge to push Dull Pain around quicker...and lacking a bit more damage...but if I'd had more recharge then Dull Pain and Damage Boost would have ticked around quicker...  What incarnate did other folks use on their tanks?  Or brutes for that matter...

My res was high and my defence was capped with any mob near me.  And I could grind out a mob.  Just on rare occasions my hit points would grind down slowly over time and usually, Dull Pain would take care of it and boost me up again.  Other than Energy Transfer (mind you...I used to like that power...maybe that's where my hit points used to vanish...heh...heh...) I just felt other melee attacks could do with a bit more of a damage boost.  Whirling Hands used to be nice to take a bit of 'AoE' damage off the mobs HPs.  I took energy mastery.  So that took care of any end issues I had before...however I would have liked Conserve to tick around a bit faster than it did.  It was one power on my En/En Blaster or En/Invul tank that took ages to recharge.  I wish I had incarnated my tank.  It was diamond hard with defence cap to boost.

Hmm.  I wonder.  My first 'love' as an alt was my En/En/FoN  blaster.  I wonder if issue 24 would have made it more viable to play.  I'm wondering what 'mitigation' En/En would have got to self buff in issue 24...and what Incarnate people pick for blasters.  Recharge?  Damage?  End?  Barriers?  Pets?  The water blaster set was stand out awesome.  Rinse repeat nova with sublime recharge and the 'self buff' water corkscrew heal...

Hmm.  I'm getting withdrawal symptoms...

Azrael.

PS.

I usually went Reactive Radial because the fire damage was the better part of the deal, and the -Res was just the icing.

On all archetypes?

-Res.  Would that stack with the -Res (was it?) on Sonic powers?

I didn't incarnate much.  I was just exploring it for my main alts as the game faced closure.  I'd managed to Incarnate a Mace/Willpower a brute (or was it a tank...or scrapper?  I forget now...think it was a brute...), an elec Domi...a Shield/SS Brute...

[Vee]

Wow, i'd completely forgotten about the first iteration of reactive. Those couple weeks where my fire/rad corr was farming/av slaughtering with mostly just rain of fire were hilarious.

[LaughingAlex]

I found, in my observations of other players, that the Illusion set kicked the proverbial.  Invisibility.  3 pets ('Mad Alice', Phantom Army and Phantasm.)  Phantom Army would go in and tank the hell out of the mob.  I never managed to get one anywhere.  I rolled a couple and never got beyond the 'early' levels...  I should have P/L'd one up to Phantom Army level.  I always wondered how cool it must have been to press the 'button' on that power.

As for incarnate.  I loathed the departure from the traditional interface.  Not the idea of 'incarnate' powers per se.  I would have preferred just a natural extension of the 1st, 2nd, Epic interface.  And simple 'Hami' style Incarnate designed slots to fit...via solo able content instead of Legion infested 'Legion of Superheroes' style 'what is going on?' style quests.  Seemed all very random and dependent on a ton of other heroes to 'get you there.'  And the interface.  Loot obsessed grindfest and very unintuitive.

That aside.

I two alts that I was 'grinding' to Incarnate state tier 4 (plus '2' level thingie...)  *(I could not get my head around that.  Just extend the level cap to L60.

Shield/SS Brute.  @Laughing Alex.  Should I have chosen different to 'Cardiac?'  I did like Ion.

Elec/Elec/Elec Domi.  I'm not sure what I went for.  I ended up having the 'storm cloud' pets and 'barrier.' 

I did have an Invul/Energy Melee tank.  I really liked that.  Very high res' and as near as dammit to the defence cap with 1 mob?  Got me there and higher if mob around me.  I wonder if the game hadn't closed down I could have picked Reactive?  Ageless? 

Anybody with any thoughts on my former 3 alts?

Azrael.

Cardiac was best chosen if you didn't want to use ageless and was still dealing with an endurance issue.  I used Cardiac on my /time manipulators, often, due to very much prefering Clarion, the right path variant of which gave another power boost effect that was quite large, enough to let me boost the defense effects of Farsight.  Likewise my fortunata often used Cardiac, so I could use rebirth as my destiny power.

[LaughingAlex]

Wow, i'd completely forgotten about the first iteration of reactive. Those couple weeks where my fire/rad corr was farming/av slaughtering with mostly just rain of fire were hilarious.

I know right?  I saw that happen even after the fix though when I started using it on a mastermind, due to every pet attack being a separate attack it frequently led to massive DoT.

Edit: Reading above, I could see a very high damage archtype using the -res over the damage, such as a blaster, scrapper or brute.  Something that was just extremely high raw damage already, but it's still to me a tough call even then, since reactive's right path did such high raw damage.

[brothermutant]

Try a (whatever)/EN/Shark guy blapper sometime. I loved using the total focus+KO blow after popping AIM+BU. WRECKED almost anybody. And you can get the DEF up to around 25-30% pretty easy for melee range.

[Noyjitat]

Reactive was so freaking evil and fun in caltrops and rains before they finally decided to nerf it. Which even though we as players asked " uh... Is this supposed to be doing this?" For many many months they said it was "working as intended and they had no plans to nerf it". It was disappointing to say the least when they finally did.

[Twisted Toon]

You could have the best Intrusion detection, excellent firewalls, and the best cryptography and then end up circumvented because a security guard wasn't watching the front door and some guy drifted in behind someone else who thought he was a legitimate employee :/.

In the Security guard's defense (was in security for 7 years) company policy may limit what the guard can and can not do in that type of situation. Where I worked, each employee was supposed to scan his own badge to gain access through the door. However, if an employee (or five) "back drafted" with another employee, there wasn't much I could do about it except issue a verbal request that they scan their own badge to enter. Fortunately for the company, the people that tended to back draft were people that I knew worked for the company (most of them execs) the new employees always followed the swipe their own card rule.

[Arcana]

I found, in my observations of other players, that the Illusion set kicked the proverbial.  Invisibility.  3 pets ('Mad Alice', Phantom Army and Phantasm.)  Phantom Army would go in and tank the hell out of the mob.  I never managed to get one anywhere.  I rolled a couple and never got beyond the 'early' levels...  I should have P/L'd one up to Phantom Army level.  I always wondered how cool it must have been to press the 'button' on that power.

You never made it to ... eighteen?  That's kinda rough.

The glory days of Illusion were back in the pre-Issue 5 days before pet caps.  In those days, it was possibly to have overlapping sets of Phantom Army (averaging about six) plus (on average) three Phantasms, plus three Decoys, plus three Spectral Terrors.  The Fire/Kins could get as much as eighteen imps out there (along with a ludicrous amount of melee damage), but they could never quite fill the entire room like a full set of Illusion pets could.  And only three of the fifteen pets Illusion could spam out there were even killable.

Incidentally, everyone had their pet names for things, but the common short name for the Spectral Terror was usually "spooky"  as in "I dropped the PA on the first group and while shiny was banging on them I slapped spooky on the other group to lock them down."  Spooky was a highly under-rated pet.  And as I describe above, Illusion sort of had four (sets of) pets, not three, because the Phantasms themselves had pets - the Decoys.  Decoys were like the Phantasm's own phantom army, except they only got one and its decoy attacks were ranged like the Phantasm itself.  But like the PA, they were indestructible.

[Twisted Toon]

I found, in my observations of other players, that the Illusion set kicked the proverbial.  Invisibility.  3 pets ('Mad Alice', Phantom Army and Phantasm.)  Phantom Army would go in and tank the hell out of the mob.  I never managed to get one anywhere.  I rolled a couple and never got beyond the 'early' levels...  I should have P/L'd one up to Phantom Army level.  I always wondered how cool it must have been to press the 'button' on that power.

I managed to level (mostly solo) an Illusion/ Force Field up to 50, then incarnated him with the first four Incarnate abilities. It was slow going before containment (reached the mid thirties by that time). But, I had fun. If I'm not mistaken, didn't Phantom Army become available to pick at level 18? Don't have Mids in front of me at the moment. I think the next Illusion Controller I'll make will be an Illusion/Rad. I wasn't fond of not having heals and relying on my bubbles and Chaos, Mayhem, and Pandemonium (My Phantom Army) for defense.

[Angel Phoenix77]

Controllers.

I had a lot of respect for the archetype.  Though I did find them somewhat 'wearing' to play.

I managed to get an ice/rad controller up to L32.  But I thought the Jack pet was mediocre compared to fire imps.  Until somebody pointed out what I really needed was a blastoller.  I.e ice/ice blaster.  Which was simply awesome.  Elegant.  Swift.  Sound holds.  Efficient.

I tried gravity/kin and got that to L12.  Hard going.

Domibators.  Once I discovered these it was like having an offensive blapping controller.  Add in domination...?  Compelling.  Elec/elec with elec patron and I was hooked.  Plenty of lockdown, sleep, confuse, end drain...  ...with decent melee to slap the mobs around.

Masterminds.  These also had a controllers feel.  Beast mastery with pain was a sound set/s.  Loved bee-ing a mob to slow crawl then sending In the hawk, lions, dire wolf.  Dire wolf was a flat out awesome pet.  One of the best in the game and put fluffy, Jack and electric imps in the shade.  Though golem rocked...hard as nails and very aggressive.

I managed to get a dark/dark defender up to L38.  Hard going on endurance.  It would be fine until you got messed then the house of cards would collapse...and then I'd think a scrapper would have put this fight to bed years ago...

Azrael.

I had a few controllers, what AT was taxing on me was the blasters after having made every primary power I got way to worn out.
I love scrappers due to how self efficient they were.
Brutes how easy it was to play. They were sort of a super scrapper.

[Arcana]

Re: Tanks.  Re: Incarnate.  Did people go Ageless to boost end or reactive to boost damage.  On my Energy Melee / Invul' tank...it was just lacking a bit more recharge to push Dull Pain around quicker...and lacking a bit more damage...but if I'd had more recharge then Dull Pain and Damage Boost would have ticked around quicker...  What incarnate did other folks use on their tanks?  Or brutes for that matter...

I think tanks went every which way on Incarnate powers: there wasn't a favorite or universally well appreciated set of powers more than any other.  I had a granite tanker with Agility working on Ageless for example.  I also had a Fire tanker with Spiritual alpha working on barrier for that extra burst of defense.

Hmm.  I wonder.  My first 'love' as an alt was my En/En/FoN  blaster.  I wonder if issue 24 would have made it more viable to play.  I'm wondering what 'mitigation' En/En would have got to self buff in issue 24...and what Incarnate people pick for blasters.  Recharge?  Damage?  End?  Barriers?  Pets?

Viable?  Them's fightin' words.  My main was Energy/Energy, and I played as a balanced blaster, a blapper, a short-ranged blaster, a sniper (boost range), and in I23 I was running what I called a "Freem" build after the Freem mission where I discovered if you built for enough recharge and recovery Energy could pump out so much knock behind that stream of damage that things had a really hard time shooting back, like sometimes ever.

In Issue 24 Conserve Power was going to become an Energize clone, meaning it would drop to 60 second recharge (down from ten minutes) and gain regeneration and heal (it still reduced endurance costs, and now that effectively meant you could get perma-conserve power).  It was pretty sweet.  My I23 build was an extremely high recharge build designed to allow me to just shoot practically continuously (I called it a Freem build, after discovering I really liked the way energy played during the Freem mission with non-stop firing).  Needless to say, a high recharge build was going to really like Energize.

[Vee]

Reactive was so freaking evil and fun in caltrops and rains before they finally decided to nerf it. Which even though we as players asked " uh... Is this supposed to be doing this?" For many many months they said it was "working as intended and they had no plans to nerf it". It was disappointing to say the least when they finally did.

I get the feeling the 'working as intended' on that one was a spreadsheet answer and they eventually actually saw it in action.

[umber]

I managed to level (mostly solo) an Illusion/ Force Field up to 50

Well I'll be darned, had no idea that "Force Field" and "solo" could be used together in the same sentence  ;)

There were some powersets I only solo'd, some I only teamed with, most could see action either way.  Only had one Force Fielder in the harem but it happened to be Ill/FF as well, don't think I soloed with that alt even when completing the new costume slot missions!

[Waffles]

As a Warshade, I can safely say clarion was the greatest thing ever.

Though, for the dom, ageless was also pretty cray.

[Blackout]

Well I'll be darned, had no idea that "Force Field" and "solo" could be used together in the same sentence  ;)

There were some powersets I only solo'd, some I only teamed with, most could see action either way.  Only had one Force Fielder in the harem but it happened to be Ill/FF as well, don't think I soloed with that alt even when completing the new costume slot missions!

Eh, I dunno I can sort of see it, at least with a Mastermind. Throw up personal force field and have your minions focus fire whilst you tank perhaps? I dunno.
As for a controller? Not entirely sure, although I'd imagine force fields might synergize quite nicely with Illusions crowd control and minion producing abilities.

[Antovaras]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-airbus-a400m-idUSKBN0OP2AS20150609

Apparently, the A400M has an interesting engine control software system.  The system requires a set of engine calibration data to properly manage the each engine.  On three of the four engines, somehow the ground systems used to load this software wiped this information.  This means three of the four engines contained software that could not properly operate the engines.  This data is sufficiently critical that if the engine software fails to contain it or its corrupted, the software is designed to shut the engine off.  So when does the engine software first check to see if this data is present?

When the engines are running at 400 feet.

Not on the ground, not at start up, not during the checklist.  At altitude.

I'm sure the software designers had a really good reason for doing that.  And even after killing four people, a fundamental rule like avionics software must perform every integrity check it is ever going to perform first on the ground would be too difficult to implement, because reasons.

From the article:

"It is not unusual for engineers, facing finite resources, to focus on known risks and manage remote ones by putting extra checks in place, like the ones that appeared to fail the A400M."

Indeed.

"Nobody imagined a problem like this could happen to three engines," a person familiar with the 12-year-old project said."

They needed someone with a better imagination.  At some point, when someone said "if there's a problem with this system the engine will be safely shut down" I would have asked "what happens if the same problem happens to all four engines?"  And they would say "its inconceivable that the exact same problem could affect all four engines at the same time."  And apparently they'd be right, because it only happened to three.  Unfortunately the plane seems to need at least two.

The next time someone tells you a failure mode is inconceivable, hand them this article, and ask them how many tombstones have to have "killed by lack of imagination" etched into them.

Reuters' interpretation of what they have been told is incorrect, as are the quotes