Adeon Hawkwood

You are correct that a lot of pseudo-pets were not changed when ported between ATs. Traps however is one of the exceptions. Caltrops, Triage Beacon and Poison Gas Trap were unchanged but Acid Mortar, Seeker Drones, Force Field Generator, Trip Mine and Time Bomb were all updated. Of course in the case of Trip Mine and Time bomb this actually involved making them quite a bit worse since Corruptors got the Blaster versions of those powers but you can't have everything.

FFG 10% def became 13.3% DEF
Acid is 20% -res/-def became 26.6% -res/-def
Seeker Drones 5% -to hit became 6.65% -ToHit and 20% -dmg became 26.6% -dmg

Of the ones they didn't change Caltrops and PGT didn't really surprise me, they are both powerful enough debuffs that increasing them would be a bit to good. As for Triage Beacon it seems to be that Regen buffs are simply not scaled between different ATs for whatever reason (or at least the ones in Empathy and Pain Domination don't change between ATs).

I've seen a similar thing in reverse with MM pets on the BAF trial. When doing the "Gotta Keep Em Separate" badge on my MM I was part of the group taking out the adds and I noticed that once the adds were down my pets would go charging off to attack one or other of the AVs despite the AVs being well out of normal aggro range for pets and my pets being on defensive. I eventually ended up putting them on passive and manually targeting them just to keep them stationary.

I choose to believe that people like that aren't actually incompetent but instead have simply not done it before and are afraid to admit it in case people mock them for it.

It's probably not true but I choose to believe it anyway.

I don't think this is a concern in team play but I think it is a potential issue in solo play. Even builds with a lot of AoE damage will struggle to build up DoT stacks as quickly as a fast activating pseudopet power will.

It's not a delay in them taking effect, it's more that they need to be used before you start taking damage if you want them to help.

Purple and Orange inspirations are effectively acting as a multiplier to your current hit points. The prevent some of the damage you would take (either by reducing the strength of the hit or the chance to hit) so that you can have more attacks aimed at you before running out of hit points. If you're already under heavy fire then most of the time you don't have sufficient remaining HP for the inspirations to help.

It's unlikely that we will get any information from the devs. However the smart money is on the next set of slots having a completely new salvage system including replacement of Astral/Empyrean Merits with something new. There will probably be a limited upgrade (similar to the Shards -> Threads upgrade) but I doubt we'll be able to use any existing stuff.

The reason for setting things up like this is to make the new content released with the slots (and balanced around the existing slots) the easiest way to progress rather than simply facerolling through the old content.

I disagree. When they die they serve as venge bait which is honestly more useful than them rocking the aura. So they are actually MORE useful dead.

NEED A DISPENSER HERE!

It's just level. The higher con colors for bosses/lts are there as a visual warning, they do not have any baring on purple patch.

Personally I'd amend that to "or strong buffs/debuffs on a long timer", often times buffing the recharge of another support AT will provide more benefit than buffing the recharge of a damage dealer.

But then we'd need a suppressor suppressor suppressor to shut down other people's suppressor suppressors. Where would it end?

As far as I know this is WAI. I think the idea is that if a small team is doing fine then it's unfair for other people to join late and get credit.

I think a a better option would be to have the LFG queue automatically add people to fill the trial (whether or not they had selected "join in progress") at any time during the first stage of the trial and then use the current rules during later stages.

Agreed. The problem is I'm not sure it's salvageable. People have got into the habit of running the trials in a certain way and even if the devs fix the problems network effect means that people will likely continue to run them that way (no one joins the queue because everyone is forming pre-forms, everyone forms pre-forms because no one is in the queue).

IMHO if the devs want to try and fix the tool (as opposed to abandoning it as a failed experiment) then in addition to fixing the various problems that make people not want to use it they need to bribe people to use it as intended (to help overcome inertia). The simple option there would be to make it so that the first time each day you run a trial and queue with a single team (as opposed to a league) you get an extra E. Merit (and maybe an extra Astral for each additional run). That provides a solid benefit to queuing solo or in small groups which in turn encourages people to queue that way.

As for general fixes I would like to see the following:
1. Weight the average time by ignoring anyone with a wait time less than say 10 seconds, this would eliminate the impact pre-formed leagues have on the displayed time.
2. Show the number of people in the queue (again, someone has to be in the queue at least 10 seconds for the number to update to stop it flying up and down as pre-formed leagues enter).
3. Increase the minimum trial size to half-way between the min and max for both trials unless a "league" is in the queue (this allows leagues to run at minimum strength if they want but means completely random teams will be larger than they are now).
4. Allow some control for leaders (at least a "willing to lead" checkbox) and prioritize leaders who selected it.
5. Condense teams when people join; don't break up existing teams but soloists and those in small teams should be added to any existing teams that are understrength rather than being made their own team.

The other suggestion I made back during the first sneak peek was that any group containing more than a single team should not be allowed to use the queue but instead have to trek out to Pretoria and manually enter through a contact there (but in exchange would not have people from the queue placed into the league). I think adding it now would be a bad idea since people have gotten used to it, but adding it initially would have further encouraged queuing in small teams to save time.

I think others covered the side of why this isn't something we particularly need, so my question for you is how would this actually work?

Dual Pistols is often cited as the example of a "turn knockback off" power but have you looked at how it works? Every power in the set has a proc that has either an "X%" or "0%" chance fo activating depending on ammo choice. Using that would require the devs to add a similar proc to every. single. power. with knockback in the game.

A theoretical alternative is to apply it as a -kb debuff, Power Boost used to provide a kb buff so I think it's possible but that has it's own problems. First off it takes a fraction of the kb magnitude away rather than a set amount and like most debuffs in the game it would have a maximum limit (I suspect -75% but that's a WAG) so even with that most kb powers will still be kb.

Good point. I'm not sure how to actually test it though.

Actually if you use the "Get All Influence" button it will let you withdraw items putting you over the cap, with the excess being lost. I have done this a few times.

This.

I want my Grenade Control/Swashbuckling Assault Dominator .

I like the house rule limiting you to one "Broken Rung" card a turn. I find it helps reign in the play style you get (similar to Munchkin actually) where everyone holds onto their "screw you" cards and tosses them at the last minute to stop someone winning resulting in the winner being the person who happens to score when everyone else has run out of cards.

It's a tradeoff though. Spending threads/astrals on iXP means you don't have them available to spend on components to actually make the abilities.

When the test patch comes out and makes it easier to get commons (both through the drops and downgrading uncommons) it will hopefully become easier to save threads for things like that but at the moment all of my threads/astrals are being used for commons and those are easily the limiting factor on my progression.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it stop providing any benefit to level 50s?