Adeon Hawkwood

Well first off not completing the arc doesn't mean your character will be put out to pasture, it simply means he won't be able to run all of the newer content. Now this brings me back to my original point. The Incarnate arc and the new Incarnate content is designed to have missions which require player interaction as opposed to simply being a numbers game and I don't see that changing. If you really hate content that is designed that way why are you doing it? There is plenty of other content that is simply a numbers game and I doubt the devs will stop adding to it (issues 17 and 19 included a total of 6 new arcs that don't qualify as end game content). Personally I love the player interaction content, the fun bits of Apex and Tin Mage are the BM and Director 11 fights, the rest is pretty much exactly what we've seen before.

Not every piece of content in the game is going to appeal to every person, so I tend to say pick the content that will appeal to you. If you don't enjoy Trapdoor you probably won't enjoy the rest of the incarnate content. If you don't enjoy the Incarnate content why are you doing it?

That applies to every piece of content in the game, the optimum team consists of 8 Fire/Radiation Controllers.

The second time I ran Apex we had (IIRC) 5 melee characters on the team, and it went fine (in fact my defender died the most, because for some reason I just could not dodge that night) and I know people have done it with all-melee teams. In many ways I think Apex represents a reversal of previous trends. Melee characters get slightly batter base damage since range is supposed to be defensive. The devs have, over the years removed most of the defensive benefits of range so Apex tweaks the balance back a little bit.

Eh, it's the internet if you complain about something someone else will feel a need to come in and say how easy it is.

Personally I don't find Trapdoor easy. I tend to favor ATs and powersets that have limited defenses and (frequently) poor single target damage (I love Assault Rifle) so I find most EBs to be very tricky and normally require inspirations and a few tries. He's definitely easier than some Elite Bosses (such as Nosferatu) but harder than others (such as Captain Castillo). On the other hand his difficulty is mostly related to player control as opposed to simple numbers game and that tends to level the playing field between different powersets.

This is part of the reason I like the mission so much. EBs like Nosferatu are annoying, I can beat them but it just becomes a case of stacking numbers. Trapdoor on the other hand does not require as much number stacking but does require me to apply some effort rather than standing there and pressing buttons and I like that.

Now this is why people complaining confuses me (and I mean that literally, I'm not trying to be insulting). The dev's intent with the incarnate content (based on this arc, and both the new TFs) seems to be to introduce content which requires effort from the player as opposed to being a simple numbers game, Trapdoor is simply the introduction to that. Now if you hate that sort of content that's fine, not everyone likes the same thing. But if you hate it why are you bashing your head against the wall doing it?

Ok that does clarify it a bit. Still, it's not so much a case of finding a controller to solo it for you as finding someone else to help. Confuse is one method of handling Trapdoor but it's scarcely the only method. Simply upping the number of characters in the mission from one to 2 makes a huge difference. All of your problem characters are Tankers or Scrappers, well any of them should be able to tank Trapdoor just fine and deal enough damage to overcome his base regeneration which means a second person can focus on hunting down the clones and for that any character will work just fine.

You're saying that you have some characters you feel are unable to solo the arc and your friends have some characters that are unable to solo the arc. Ok, we might disagree on whether that is the case or not but assume for a moment that you are correct and your characters are completely incapable of soloing it. That doesn't mean you're locked out of the content. You've helped your friends defeat the arc, surely they would be willing to help you in return? Just adding a second character makes Trapdoor trivial, one player stands there and pounds on him, the other runs around and kills the bifurcations. If the player doing the pounding is a tank you probably won't even need inspirations.

Complaining that you can't solo it and are unwilling to team to do so gets you some sympathy from me. Complaining that you you can't solo it, are unwilling to team to do so but are perfectly willing to help someone else do it doesn't. Heck, next time someone needs help with Trapdoor instead of your Ill/Emp why not take a character who needs the arc as well?

This is where inspirations come in. For high damage ATs the clones aren't a huge issue but low damage ATs (Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors and Tankers) should really chomp a few reds during the fight and try and lure him into the lava. The reds allow you to kill the clones in fewer attacks and the lava increases your damage.

The one case I can see having problems with the clones are MM primaries that have melee focused pets. The pets do not do a great job navigating the room to attack the clones. It's not a huge deal for ranged pets since they only need to get line of sight but I can see it being an issue for melee centric pets.

I do consider this to be a flaw in the design of the mission. I very much doubt that the devs intended this but at the same time I'm not sure if they can fix it. Ideally he should completely reset if everyone leaves the mission (I would say reset if you die but people with self rezzes would not like that) but I think the standard code rant probably applies to having that actually implemented.

So what? The lava is a means of increasing the damage he is taking, it's not supposed to reduce the number of clones he makes.

One person's challenge is another person's tedious, personally I enjoy the arc.

Now I do think the devs had left in the original option of unlocking the slot through one of the level 50 TFs. I think that would have eliminated 90% of the complaints.

So what, the devs should make Trapdoor's mission auto-completable and then everyone can spend 9 days becoming an incarnate by not doing the arc? What would be the point of that?

The whole purpose of the Incarnate content is to introduce new and challenging content for players who desire that sort of thing. The power boosts associated with it are, IMHO, completely incidental. The main purpose of having them is to limit the rate that people can advance through the new content (in order to give the devs at least some chance to keep up). If you enjoy challenging content then why would you skip the arc? And if you don't enjoy challenging content why bother doing the arc in the first place?

To put it another way, suppose before being allowed to participate in RP you were required to do an "RP-Unlock" arc which required you to RP as part of the arc. I don't particularly enjoy RP so I wouldn't bother to do the arc. I see Mender Ramiel's arc in the same light. It's a challenging arc that unlocks challenging content. If you don't enjoy challenging content then it's probably not worth doing. If you do enjoy doing challenging content, but only on a team, then find a team to do the arc with. Personally while I like challenging team content I actually prefer challenging solo content so I solo'd the arc.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I was REALLY hoping that the Incarnate content would focus on the Shadow Shard.

It's not actually an Ouro TF, it just appears in the list of available Flashback missions as a story arc (similar to what they did with the old Positron TF when the new one was released).

I don't remember you but I do remember your avatar

I would say Mender Ramiel's arc is actually pretty hard, but the mission I find hard is not the one I see people complaining about. Trapdoor is (for me at least) pretty simple, he's got one trick and while it is potentially problematic it's easy to counter, my only issue with him is that if you die he doesn't reset so you end up needing to reset the mission.

Honoree and Holtz on the other hand I do consider challenging, especially for low defense characters. Holtz in particular has several nasty debuffs which means if you have low defense he is very nasty (Curse of Weariness in particular is annoying). Honoree is a more generic fight but his high damage causes problems for squishy characters.

See for me this is the big clincher. I pretty much consider inspirations standard when fighting any EB. I know there are people who can solo them without it (and I have done it on occasion) but I am, for the most part, a very lazy player so if I'm facing an EB I just instinctively chomp down on inspirations before and during the fight. On a harder EB I might need to make a shopping trip to get specific inspirations but for the most part I tend to attempt it with whatever I have first.

I consider Inspiration usage to be an important part of solo play. Even soloing on x1 you get quite a few inspirations so I tend to use them up. If you crank the difficulty up (mostly once you hit x4 or above) using inspirations up so you have room for more of them becomes an important concern.

Maybe I'm unusual but for me soloing an EB without using inspirations is the exception and not the norm. I can do it in some cases but there's no benefit to doing so so why bother? I'd rather chomp down some inspirations and go to town.

My Tanker isn't level 50 yet but I have a really hard time believing a decently built Tanker cannot solo the arc. His damage is pretty low so a Tanker should be able to just chomp down on a bunch of reds and smack him and his birfurcations. I will admit that Granite Tankers might have trouble due to the need to move and the fact that the map is not teleport friendly but other than that.

No, Calvin Scott from Primal Earth. It's an old TF from a long time ago that was removed from the game but in I19 it was added back in as an Ouroborus flashback. I've no clue how long it takes but reading the mission list I would guess about 1 to 1.5 hours depending on whether you stealth based on TFs with similar mission structures. It's got two kill alls, 3 kill boss and a couple of hunt and fed ex missions.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Old_Ca...orce/Flashback

Well all characters can solo reasonably well. The true solo powerhouses are Scrappers, Brutes and Masterminds and all are generally welcome on teams although none of them are truly team focused (Masterminds are reasonably team focused). If you want a character that is more team focused and a decent soloer I would recommend either a Corruptor, a Dominator, some Tankers or (as Neo said) a VEAT.

Corruptors provide ranged damage and Bufs/Debuffs, in terms of soloing power the primary factor is your choice of secondary. Dark Miasma and Traps are probably the best soloers providing a nice mix of protection and damage boosters. Radiation Emission and Kinetics are probably next plus I've heard good things about Cold Domination although personally I can't stand it.

Dominators are Control and Damage. Most teams appreciate the ability to stun or hold an entire spawn so they are welcome there and the combination of control and damage helps them solo.

Tankers are (guess what!) Tanks. While they are technically low damage and high toughness certain Tankers can deal out a lot of damage. In particular Fiery Aura, Shield Defense and Super Strength are all generally regarded as high damage Tankers (although Super Strength matures rather late since it's only AoE attack comes at level 38).

I considered that but actually I don't think it would be a huge problem. People already doorsit to get XP at minimal risk. Unless the person doing the farming is hugely incompetent the risk for the lowbies might as well be zero anyway.

Those all sound reasonable although regarding the Critical Boost power, is that even practical to make? My understanding is that powers that can crit essentially have a "chance to damage" proc added to the power, so wouldn't this require adding a chance to crit function to every attack in the game?

The problem is this eliminates a lot of the incentive to use them. People don't want to have to keep going to the vendor anymore than they want to have to keep crafting temp powers. If "stocking up" costs extra you end up having to make buying trips more often which makes it less desireable to bother at all.

Spines and Thorny Assault are probably the closest we'll see.

From a practical and thematic point of view there are some potential issues with a pure Toxic powerset. Primarily there is no such thing as Toxic Defense so a pure toxic damage set would either be hugely powerful against targets with typed defense but no positional defense or would need it's powers to be given an "attack type" for a damage category they don't have "probably lethal". This isn't a compelte game breaker but I can also see the devs being wary of introducing a set with high (or exclusive) toxic damage. Even with Spines the toxic damage only accounts for about a third of it's damage.

Yeah, the problem is zoning effectively occurs in two parts. The first part is the server moving your character to the map (which includes creating a mission instance if required) and sending you any pertinent information (such as "there's a rikti raid going on") while the second part is your computer loading the zone for you. The sever doesn't really have any way to judge how long the second part takes since it's dependent on your hardware.

The only solution I can see would be that when you zone in you are phased (or otherwise invincible) until you move or attack but I'm sure if the devs implemented it someone would find a way to abuse it.

I think it goes without saying that I'm fine with the Apex door.

According to RedTomax Scorpion Shield is tagged as not being affected by buffs so Obscure Blade is correct (unless RedTomax is incorrect).

As a side note, I'm surprised that Scorpion Shield was implemented that way. The "not affected by buffs" tag is only required on powers that accept Resistance Enhancements. Power that have non-enhanceable resistance buffs (such as Deflection Shield) normally do benefit from external buffs. Since Scorpion Shield doesn't use resistance enhancements it was possible for the devs to let it use external buffs and simply tag the resistance bonuses to not use buffs or enhancements.

Some debuffs are (virtually) worthless against end game AVs. Including AV resistance and the purple patch they have about 93.7% resistance to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery. Now most of those types of debuffs are, virtually, worthless against AVs due to the resistance, the exception being -Regeneration which is, due to the extremely high magnitudes of the power, still very useful despite the resistance.

In addition there are some important holes in that resistance. Damage and Resistance debuffs are not specifically resisted by AVs beyond the normal resistance all enemies have for resistance debuffs, they are just subject to the purple patch. This means that they are "only" reduced to 48% efficiency against +4 AVs. However because of the way enhancements work 1% resistance debuff pre-purple patch is equivalent to approximately 1% damage buff (except for Brutes, to whom -res is more valuable). The use of -damage is more AV specific since it's usefulness depends in part on whether they have damage buffs.

Now to come back to your assertion that Traps and Force Field are the only useful secondaries end game. While +Defense is the most useful manner of mitigating the AVs attacks it is hardly the only useful power to use against AVs.

Traps is probably the most useful MM secondary against AVs since it combine -regen, -resistance and +defnese helping out against them both offensively and defensively but all of the other secondaries are useful in some form. The important thing to remember when it comes to AV fights is that the relative importance of powers can shift for particular sets.

For example Dark cannot rely on it's to hit debuffs to protect the team but it is still providing -damage, -resistance, -regen and healing. Trick Arrow provides lots of -resistance and some -damage. All of Thermal Radiation's powers are useful in an AV fight. I could go on but I think that's enough for now.

tl;dr version:
Traps is the most powerful MM secondary against AVs, but all of the others are useful. If you want to try and solo AVs Traps is probably the best option since it's very well rounded but for general group play all secondaries can contribute effectively against a +4 AV, the only difference is what buff/debuffs you'll find most useful from your teammates.

It's your own fault for dodging. Healing Arrow is a suppository, you dodged and I missed.