Adeon Hawkwood

Generally, you don't need to worry about this one to much. Masterminds are the only pet heavy class and they have powers to keep their pets alive. Most other pets are reasonably disposable. If you have an AoE heal toss it out occasionally if there are lots of pets around but don't stress it if they die, they'll be back soon enough.

As an example I play a Crab Spider (probably the second most pet heavy class in the game) and I can tell you for sure I do not expect my Spiderbots to survive on most teams (especially the little Spiderlings). If they do it's great but the damage they contribute is significantly lower than the damage the team loses if a Defender (or other support character) is worrying about healing them instead of attacking themselves. So I don't worry if they die, I'll simply resummon them when the power recharges.

This is definitely something to keep in mind. I use Musculature on my Crab Spider and I deliberately designed his build so that he isn't quite ED capped for a number of powers. For example in several powers I used a Purple set without the Damage enhancement which gives about 92% damage (pre-ED). This increases the effective enhancement of the T4 Alpha from about 32% to about 37% (my total damage enhancement is still slightly lower than if I were ED capped, obviously but by more carefully optimizing for my alpha slot I can use my regular slots for other things).

I was, unfortunately, less able to do that on my MM since the different slotting methodology made it less useful to under-slot damage.

Based on the released Paragon Rewards Table Information the City Traveler Reward seems to have been removed. The spot it would logically occupy in the tree is filled by "Blazing Path Aura".

Hmmmm.... looking at that it's apparently incomplete. The demonlings get a breath attack each (which is listed) but the higher ranked demons get two powers, not one. The Ember Demon gets a Fireball and an AoE Heal. The Gargoyle gets a melee attack and a PBAoE attack. The Demon Prince gets a melee attack and a PBAoE Damage/Sleep power (which is more useful than is sounds).

To answer the OP. Yes it is an awesome power. It indirectly gives you 6 AoE attacks, some extra control and a bit more melee damage. The only downside is that you need to make sure your Demons and Demon Prince are slotted for endurance reduction (especially the Prince, he really needs 2 enhancements once he gets AE).

I deleted one a few weeks ago. I had a level 50 Earth/Storm Controller that I'd gotten to 50 but didn't really enjoy playing at 50. However I did like the character so I ended up deleting him so I could reroll him as an Earth/Fire Dominator.

So they know we want it it's just a matter of if/when/how to do it.

It depends a lot on the character and the specific mez you're talking about. I make extensive use of Immobilize powers (including AoE immobilizes) on a number of characters and have several other characters make use of other mez types. My AR/Dev Blaster used to have several stuns and a hold in his build for handling Lts and Bosses (I respecced out of them due to the changes in mission difficulty settings). Another example is my Demons/Thermal MM who gets a lot of usage from Char either holding a Lt or stacking with the Demon Prince to hold a boss.

Well, keep in mind the extra slots aren't really aimed at people who focus on getting incarnated level 50s. Sure, there will be some people who fill all 48 slots with level 50s but I think that the target audience for the extra slots are people who like to make lots of different characters but aren't to concerned with leveling them up.

I tend to think that's the best option. Part of the issue with Time Bomb is that it gives Traps (and Devices) two powers that are to similar for what they are (Trip Mine and Time Bomb). Changing Time Bomb to a high damage grenade style power helps differentiate it from Trip Mine a bit more.

For the thematic issue, I suggest calling it a Satchel Charge or Petard rather than a Grenade, a siege explosive seems to fit better with the rest of the set than an anti-personnel explosive (even if we will be using them as anti-personnel explosives).

On a more serious note determining a single numerical score for Incarnate abilities is tricky if you want it to actually reflect the advantages a slot brings. Using a 5-point system for each slot I would probably do 0/1/2/4/5 for Unlocked/T1/T2/T3/T4. This isn't a perfect system but the jump at T3 better accounts for the level shift, although it could be argued that those should be counted separately.

Now if the goal is to account for their progress in terms of how close are they to T4s in all slots that's somewhat trickier. The "cost" of a T4 is almost four times the cost of a T3 and a T3 is about twice the cost of a T2 so you end up with something like 0/1/2/4/16.

However at the end of the day what matters is having a system that works for you.

Ah, but that leads to another problem which is that it that the new content makes it to easy to get older rewards. Someone in this thread previously mentioned Aracanville's explanation as to the problem with awarding threads for non-iTrial content and the same basic principle applies here.

Let's assume that the goal is to have it take X runs of a "gear-appropriate" trial to achieve some level of advancement in the incarnate system and 5X runs of a "lower tier" trial to get the same advancement (this is roughly the relative scale given by the shards:thread conversion). Now if the new-slot trials used the same thread based rewards in order to achieve this balance they would need to provide 5 times the rewards of the old trials and the new slots would need to have 5 times the costs (i.e. you need 15 common components to make a tier 1 boost).

The problem then is that the newer trials become WAY to rewarding for the old slots. You could make an ability for each of A/J/I/L/D in the same number of trial runs as it takes to build an ability for just one of the new slots.

When the BAF/Lambda trials were released they provided an alternate method of acquiring Alpha slot abilities. However the cost in threads was the same as the cost for the new slots. If you could exchange threads for shards at a 1:1 ratio then getting an Alpha Slot ability through the trials would be trivial. Limiting the ability of threads to buy Alpha slot abilities means that level 50 TFs are still a time-competitive method of working on the Alpha slot.

Introducing new currencies allow the newer content to be the best option for gaining the new rewards without devaluing the older content as a means of getting older rewards. I'd prefer a "rolling currency" rather than introducing completely unique currencies just to make things easier to understand but I can live with unique currencies.

You're confusing "worth running in terms of fun" with "worth running in terms of rewards/time". I am confident that whatever trials will be released with the new slots will be fun to run. However, that doesn't really solve the rewards/time issue. The newer trials will almost certainly have worse rewards/time than BAF/Lambda due to the higher difficulty.

For example, lets assume that the next round of slots will have 2 more Incarnate Level Shifts in them. In that situation it's not unreasonable to assume that the trials for them will have enemies that are 54(+2) to compensate (i.e. you start the trials facing +3s and eventually improve to where you're fighting +1s). Now if the trials have the same rewards as BAF/Lambda everyone will opt to run those trials because fighting +1s is a lot easier than fighting +3s (and once you get the later shifts fighting -1s is easier than fighting +1s). People will naturally gravitate to the content that offers the best rewards/time, that's why ITF is run a lot more than STF and AE Fire Farms are run more than Developer's Choice Arcs. A progression system (which is what the Incarnate system is) needs to "encourage" players to move up the difficulty or the developers are wasting thier time with new content.

We're already seeing this somewhat with Keyes. People were clamoring for more trials and yet I would estimate that Keyes is being run maybe a third as much as Lambda/BAF. This is because while it is fun it takes longer and you can run Lambda + BAF in the same time frame. Some people run it for fun (or because they are desperate for E Merits) but most people are just running the old trials.

You Handist person.

True, however I would say that the lack of any ranged AoEs hurts Energy as a ranged-only set.

You know, I saw a villain with "Sinister" in their name yesterday and this is really unacceptable. As we all know, Sinister is derived from the Latin Sinistra meaning 'left'. As a left handed person I feel that allowing players to make "sinister" characters is really insulting and that Sinister should be added to the in-game profanity filter.

The equivalent of guilds are called Supergroups. However for teaming Global Channels fulfill the role that guilds tend to fill in other games. If you are looking for people to team with the best option is to find the global channels for your server and join those. Asking in the forum for your server should help you.

If you want info the wiki is an excellent resouce (note, use this link and do NOT use the wikia one):
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Main_Page

That's because the game banks are a figment of a deranged imagination.

I think you have to flashback to him to unlock the bonus one. However, skipping it will not stop you unlocking costumes through the normal methods (Facemaker and Halloween Salvage) and since an SoA can actually get more costume slots than they can use you may not want to bother.

Ah, I see what you're getting at now, sorry for the confusion. Still, I think that can be solved by simply choosing a suitable upgrade rate. The Shards -> Threads upgrade was done at 1:1 but threads have about 1/5th the "value" of shards to the effective upgrade rate was 5:1. It should be possible to set a similar (or worse) upgrade rate for Threads -> Incarnate Whatevers to allow an upgrade path that doesn't completely invalidate the currency switch. As you note it is easier to get threads than shards so it might be necessary to go higher than 5:1.

I'd still prefer at to depreciate Threads entirely upon release of a new currency and make a combined Shard/Thread currency just to help newer players/characters gear up.

I'll also add as a general note going from Shard -> Threads they made the exchange 1:1 and devalued the new currency, for the next step I'd prefer to keep the same currency value (20 Whatevers for a common etc.) and set the conversion at 5:1 (or higher) since if we keep this up the numbers start getting silly (you'd need to earn Incarnate Whatevers at 5x the rate of Threads which are already earned at 5x the rate of shards).

I cut your post to avoid inflating the thread but I did read it and I have to say I really do not understand your point.

I do not consider Keyes to be a new tier of trial, it is an addition to the existing tiers. It was always possible to get up to Lore and Destiny running just BAF/Lambda so all Keyes does is provide a bit more variety and potentially slightly faster advancement if you run all three together. The fact that it gives both types of iXP doesn't really matter, iXP is a minor part of getting the abilities slotted and apart from that all three trials offer the same rewards.

Yes, new Lore abilities were released at the same time as Keyes but those were an expansion of an existing slot rather than a new slot. The original Lore abilities are still perfectly valid and the new ones are about variety not power (other than the fact that they aren't perfectly balanced).

I think history disagrees with you there. When the J/I/L/D slots were released from what I could see the majority of people flocked to the trials to get the new abilities. They did not, instead, opt to spend their time running level 50 TFs ad nauseum and convert shards to threads despite that being available as an upgrade path.

I think implementing a similarly punitive upgrade path on the new slots would be sufficient friction to encourage running the next round of trials (the current one is about 5:1). Yes, some people will have sufficient stockpiled stuff to get a head start on the new slots but once that is gone the new trials will likely be much more lucrative since you would need to run 5 BAFs/Lambdas to get the rewards from one tier 2 trial. Now this does not necessarily solve the issue of people running the easier/shorter trials within the existing set and I think it would be nice to see the rewards for Keyes upped a little bit to encourage running it more.

In many ways I would have liked this. I would have implemented two reward types, call them Incarnate XP (iXP) and Extreme Incarnate XP (XiXP) because I suck at naming things. The idea would be that you have two resources you spend both for opening up new slots and building abilities. The reason for having two resources is to setup a rolling depreciation. The second resource (XiXP) would be awarded for completion of the highest tier activities and could be used on any Incarnate slot. The first resource would be awarded from any level 50 activity (so TFs and maybe general level 50 missions) but could only be used on older slots.

As new content/slots were released the resource needed to buy older slots and the resource awarded for older content is downgraded to match.

For example, using the current content level 50 TFs would award iXP which could be used to create Alpha abilities. The trials would award XiXP which could be sued for anything. In the future when the next tier of slots is released the current crop of trials are downgraded to only award iXP but iXP could then be used to make any of the first five slots. Additionally all XiXP stored on characters would be downgraded to iXP (note that this does not actually devalue the currency, it can still buy exactly what it could before, it is simply a solution to hoarding).

The other advantage of this is that it makes it much easier to balance rewards amongst differnet content types. Keyes is unpopular at the moment because it's longer than BAF/Lambda, one option would be to have it drop more XiXP than the other two to make it worth running in terms of rewards/time. Similarly things like the WST could provide a slower but easier path to get XiXP for people who don't like trials.

Now the path the devs actually took is what you might call a "flavor" path. It is more complicated than a simple "currency" style path but in turn provides a collection and sorting aspect which presumably appeals to some people. The other downside is that it makes it a LOT harder to depreciate and consolidating existing currencies when moving up the curve. It's possible but more complicated.

As others have noted when new trials are released if they want to have the new slots only accessible through the new currency we'll have three Incarnate currencies instead of two. Now it is still technically possible for them to, at that time, condense Threads and Shards into a single currency but doing so in a seamless manner is going to be hard. If I were doing it I'd standardize on shards and automatically convert all existing components. Threads would become shards at a 5:1 ratio and all components would be downgraded using a standard rule for both salvage and recipes. So if, for example, all Supercharged Capacitors become Dimensional Keystones all recipes needing a Supercharged Capacitor now need a Dimensional Keystone. At this point there is only one set of components for the first five slots and since recipes and salvage use the same conversion rules everybody maintains their current progress on all existing slots (well, ok, they potentially lose a partial shard due to the 5:1 conversion). The TFs would keep their current rewards and the current crop of trials would be changed to have a Shard-based component drop. There would also need to be some housekeeping stuff such as new conversions for Astrals/Empryeans and downgrade/sidegrade recipes for Shard based components.

This would also solve the "gearing up" issue. If no one is running the older trials then level 50 TFs are a viable method of getting level shifts and such for the newer trials.