Adeon Hawkwood

I think once the shiny wears off this tend will go away. In fact I think it's already starting to. I ran a Hess TF this morning and filled the team in about 10minutes solely through global channels and a single broadcast in Talos.

One thing to keep in mind though is that the merit/time rewards are higher. Both TFs take about an hour and award 40 merits. For comparison the "official" reward rate for the old TFs is 20 merits an hour (although obviously people who specialize in speed running can get quite a bit higher).

Personally I find it works best against Council (or custom groups with similar enemies). It's not so much about enemies who are weak to S/L damage but enemies with a lack of ranged mezzes and that deal mostly S/L damage (and if possile have lots of melee attacks). Caltrops (and possibly an AoE immobilize if you take one of the Patron Pools) allows you to keep enemies at range so you want to leverage that.

It's a combination of a couple of memes. Referring to MMO loot as "shiny things" is old and of indeterminate origin. He's combined this with the phrase "in your base, killing your dudes" from Starcraft.

Well bare in mind the lore states that some incarnates don't realize that they are connected to the well so you could potentially say that although you had to run Ramiel's arc to unlock it that was non-canon for your character and they've unconsciously tapped into the Well's power (or even ignore the canon entirely and simply say that they're gaining power through other means).

Sure, I know that. My point was that the current random drops feel very, very random. Doubling the reward rate (by doubling the chance of a random drop or doubling the quantity for static drops) and doubling the number required (for all levels of the system) would help level it out a bit (i.e. a bad streak is less likely but a good streak is less useful). The potential downside is that if the devs want to make content where the enemies have a higher random drop chance they can't boost it as much.

Definitely, AVs tend not to be as keen on running out of patches as other AVs but keeping the AV controlled and stationary is still useful for a lot of characters.

As with everything it's a trade-off. Ranged defense provides coverage against almost all single target ranged attacks but does nothing for melee attacks, aoe attacks or certain psionic attacks. S/L/E defense on the other hand will provide defense against any attack which deals partly S/L/E damage (and a few that don't) regardless of whether it's ranged, aoe or melee but you lose protection against single target ranged attacks that deal exclusively fire, cold or negative energy.

Now in terms of NPCs S/L/E does cover a large portion of the most common attack types used by NPCs. Council and Freakshow attacks will be almost all covered by these three defenses. Malta are a bit nastier, you'll still avoid a large portion of their damage attacks but you'll be vulnerable to several of their mezzes (although in the case of stun grenades ranged defense doesn't help either) defenses. Carnival you'll generally be tougher since while it provides nothing against their psionic attacks neither does ranged defense and it will cover the melee attacks from the lower rank troupe members. CoT you'll be a bit weaker, you get coverage against thier melee attacks but lose coverage to those ranged fire and negative blasts.

Actually there are both Defender and Corruptor builds there but in any case that's why I suggested using them as a starting point and not a final build. Everyone has their own opinions as to what should be in a build and their own budget so I find it's batter to make your own than try and use someone else's. There isn't really a perfect build so select the powers you want and then see what you can do with it. From a practical point of view there isn't a lot of difference between a Corruptor Build and a Defender build, you just need to reorder the powers and plan on building in a bit more defense from set bonuses for the Corruptor. To upload a build from mids go to the Import/Export menu and select the forum export function, this copies it to your clipboard and you can paste it into the post.

Others have commented but I'll give a little more detail. Rain of Fire (and similar powers such as Ignite, Caltrops, Freezing Rain etc.) causes enemies to be hit with an Avoid debuff. This causes a partial override of their AI so they prioritize getting out of the patch rather than fighting. Depending on the situation this can be good or bad, for a solo Blaster it is an excellent tool but on teams it can result in the group scattering which at the very least decreases the effectiveness of AoE powers (including Rain of Fire) and worst case can cause problems for other team members.

Personally unless the team is having trouble I don't object to a bit of chaos but there are players who do and in that situation you'll have to either refrain from using it or leave and find another team (or make your own) because when it comes down to it their team, their rules.

On the other hand certain other characters can make it so that the impact of the avoid effect is irrelevant and you should feel free to let loose no matter what team you're on. Controllers can lock down a spawn so even though they want to leave they can't. Other area debuffs (particularly from Trick Arrow, Dark Miasma, Storm Summoning and Earth Control) will slow and/or knock down enemies which also prevents them from leaving.

Actually you're looking at the PvP values for Kinetics. In PvE Transfusion has -0.5 regen or a tenth or that provided by Cold or Rad and a twentieth of that provided by Traps. It's a nice bonus but it doesn't drop their regen as much as the other sets.

Dark is somewhere in between. Howling Twilight provides the same -regen as Cold and Rad but unlike the others cannot be made permanent. On the other hand Twilight Grasp gives it a little extra -regen (equal to Transfusion) which is up permanently.

For up time Traps is technically the best since it has 40second duration 90second recharge but since it's an area debuff that has to be reapplied every 10seconds it can have worse uptime against certain AVs (Battle Maiden and the CoP boss come to mind) plus since trappers rarely want to stay in melee range of an AV for to long it requires more effort to apply.

Actually the bonus damage from Scourge is probably closer to 20% than 50%. Against minions you tend to Scourge when your attack would kill the enemy anyway. It is more useful against LTs and bosses though.

Yep, they now get a 30% damage buff while solo that decreases by 10% for each teammate you add up to 3 (so on a team of 4+ it's 0%, it doesn't go negative).

What this means is that solo Defenders and Corruptors do about the same base damage the differences being Corruptors get more benefit from other damage buffs and get scourge.

The new TFs automatically spawn as level 54 (so at +4). Not having an Alpha Slot Boost lowers you to 46 making them enemies +8 .