Adeon Hawkwood

I agree that from the player's point of view that would be better (at least for those players who use global channels anyway) the issue is how practical is it for the devs? Teams have always behaved weirdly with people who are out of zone:
1. You can't do a cross-faction invite unless everyone is in the same zone
2. People's AT does not show up on the team window until they are int he same zone
3. You can't rearrange league teams if people are split between zones

This suggests to me that there allowing trials to launch from multiple zones might not even be possible.

I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense. Unless you are planning to stop running trials at all (and thus not get any more threads ever except the groups of 10 from shards) you will continue to accrue threads and as such will be able to use those 7 for components.

Essentially at the end of each trial if you use as many threads as possible for components you will have somewhere between 1 and 19 threads left (since all components are a multiple of 20). Keeping those threads gives you extra components every few trials. Converting them to iXP seems like a waste when you get it in trials for free.

It applies to the set bonus name. In most cases this means bonuses only conflict if they are the same bonus type and bonus value but there a few exceptions to this, notably:
1. Global IOs (notably Luck of the Gambler recharge bonus IOs) have thie rown set bonus name and as such are counted separately from regular set bonuses.
2. Defense bonuses have a slightly weird naming convention, more info here:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...nt_Set_Bonuses

75%

The way they Dual Pistols Swap Ammo powers work is that all of the DP powers have a set of "proc" effects that have either a 0% or 100% chance fo activation depending on which ammo power is selected. The ammo powers do not change anything about the DP powers, the DP powers change themselves based on what buffs you have active.

So for example using pistols is used with Lethal Ammo the game implements the following effect:
43.79 Lethal damage
100% chance of 18.77 Lethal damage
Defense -0.07 for 8s
0% Chance of 18.77 Fire damage
0% Chance of 18.77 Cold damage
0% Chance of 18.77 Toxic damage

When you activate Fire Ammo it implements the following effects:
43.79 Lethal damage
0% chance of 18.77 Lethal damage
Defense -0.07 for 8s
100% Chance of 18.77 Fire damage
0% Chance of 18.77 Cold damage
0% Chance of 18.77 Toxic damage

Essentially the Swap Ammo powers themselves do absolutely nothing. Instead when a power is activated it sets it's proc chances based on the swap ammo setting. Such a system could be implemented to increase the duration of FF powers (as I mentioned above). However that doesn't change the fact that for various reasons I consider increasing the duration to be a bad idea.

Nope. There are a few that work reasonably well thematically (i.e. taking Pyronic and pretending it's a high explosive grenade) but you will still get redraw.

The problem is, I don't think this would work very well. First off additional powers wouldn't inherit the base power slotting and if you allowed them all to be slotted that would actually be a pretty substantial buff (since you could slot one power to use and use the base slot on the others for a global IO). Secondly you need to avoid the issue of "double dipping". A single power can be tagged to not stack with themselves but I don't know if the devs can make a power not stack with other powers but only when cast by the same character.

I think you might be able to do something toggle based where the power grants 15% defense for 240s and, if a toggle is active, grants a second "tic" of 15% defense for 240s after 240s but that would be a bit cludgy.

I'll also add, as I commented above that I think increasing the duration is the wrong option. Making it so that you have to be near them once every 4 minutes feels about right to me.

No, they used to go for 40million-60million but this was several years ago, (back before the AE). I remember acquiring a Ragnarok set for my Blaster at those prices.

I agree with this. Earlier in this thread I mentioned a certain other MMO increasing Buff durations to an hour. I would very much oppose such a change in this game.

The way I see it the small shields are (or should be) essentially balanced as if they were a toggle power with an extreme radius. They are a bonus you always get for having the character on your team and remaining reasonably close to them but if you spend to much time away you lose the benefit until you rejoin them. Using that logic extending the duration would break this balance but making them easier to use would not. 4 minutes seems a very sensible duration to me, it's long enough that the caster doesn't become a buff-bot but short enough that you can't have them door-sit.

The problem with this is two-fold. First off it would make them pretty much the only powers in the game to be balanced around animation time. The only other case I can recall of animation time being stated as a balance factor are the first two powers in Blaster primaries which have standardized animation times. Apart from that animation time is considered separately from damage/recharge/endurance.

Secondly you can (and generally do) buff people with shields in between combat which means they aren't using up casting time anyway. Few encounters last longer than 4 minutes.

So overall I don't consider the "casting time balance" argument to be valid.

Yes. More accurately I consider the shield sets to be balanced in team play while the small shields are up on anyone who is taking damage. If the small shields are not up then I feel that all three sets are under-performing compared to other sets. Now this is not unreasonable, after all I'm essentially saying that I feel skipping two key powers in the set under-performs.

What that means to me (combined with my points above) is that the sets are balanced around the idea of the buffs being up 100% of the time and that casting time isn't a concern. As such I feel making them easier to use isn't so much a buff to the set as a general quality of life improvement.

I see where you are coming from and if they were offensive buffs I would agree with you but these are defensive buffs. If a character doesn't get attacked then the presence or absence of a defensive buff is immaterial.

Damage in Leagues is not evenly distributed over all league members but instead disproportionately focused on a few (mostly melee characters). From a general damage taken point of view shielding the entire league is only marginally superior to shielding the small portion of characters who are actually taking damage.

How powerful are they now because it's possible to do that already. I mentioned it on the first page but balancing powers by making them inconvenient to use is a bad idea. If a power is designed to allow 100% uptime on an entire team then is should be balanced assuming that it's going to be up 100% of the time.

Now, a compromise solution would be to turn the shield buffs from ally targeted to an AoE that only affects Team Mates. I don't think that is necessary but I also think it would be an improvement over the current implementation.

That's a very interesting idea although I'm not sure if it would work. Previous powers that did something like this (notably Dual Blades and Dual Pistols) only varied the effects of the power, not the area.

If you have a complete live install you can copy it over, run the NCSoft Launcher and point to the copied directory, it should work.

It sounds like you are still using the old Launcher. For PCs you need ot use the NCSoft Launcher. The wiki has a fast install process with the new launcher:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Training_Room

They aren't having the effectiveness increased, they are simply being made easier to use. I'll also point out that any buffer with an AoE buff has it's effectiveness tripled when joining a leage. Why should people with shield powers be excluded?

I did exactly the same thing on my Tanker. I believe my exact words were "Memo to Self: Hit Elusive Mind BEFORE charging psionic AV".

The trials can be launched from any co-op zone. When selecting a zone people tend to (either consciously or unconsciously) consider three questions:

1. Is is co-op?
2. How convenient is it to get to?
3. Does it have inspiration vendors and somewhere to sell loot?
4. Are there any other problems with the zone?

Here's how the various co-op zones rank:

RWZ: Is Co-op, Easy to get to, Has both vendor types in close proximity.
Pocket D: Is Co-op, Very easy to get to, Has Inspiration Vendor but nowhere to sell.
Cimeroria: Is Co-op, rather inconvenient to get to (minimum of 2 zonings), Has both vendor types in close proximity.
Midnighter Club: Is Co-op, somewhat inconvenient to get to (entrances less convenient than RWZ), Has selling vendor but no Inspirations, appears to have a lower than normal population cap.
Preatoria: Is Co-op, rather inconvenient to get to (minimum of 2 zonings), Has both vendor types but they are dispersed.

So based on that analysis the RWZ is the best option. Pocket D comes in second (for most people the lack of a vendor is outweighed by ease of access). Cimeroria comes in third, it provides the same facilities as the RWZ but is harder to get to. Preatoria comes in fourth, its facilities are less convenient than either the RWZ or Cimeroria and it's harder to get to. The Midnighter Club comes in last due to zone cap issues.

No, the RWZ is for people who want to run the RWZ missions, Vanguard TFs and Mothership Raids. It's popular as a launching pad for Incarnate Raids because it's easy to get to, has all required facilities and is co-op but that does not make it a "raid zone".

Having everyone in the RWZ makes running a Mothership Raid harder since you need the Incarnate Raiders to clear out of one instance to make room.

The idea behind a dedicated Raid Launching Zone is to allow lots of people to gather for raids without causing problems for any non-raiders. All of the current options inconvenience some other portion of the playerbase (either TFers, MS Raiders or RPers).

I dodn't discount it, I just find that doesn't reliably cover the entire spawn which means I'm less concerned about having the maximum values.

I always just kinda assumed that whatever makes the Com Officers con (and reward) as LTs gets inherited by the portal minions.

I said I had my conspiracy theory hat on . In any case my point was more "Schrodinger's Rewards". We have no clue what value the devs will assign to Astral/Empyrean Merits when they provide other things to spend them on, as such they could conceivably be waiting to see how many people are accruing before they set prices.

Yes, that's pretty much what I said. The difference is that you seem to have an extremely negative view of the devs intent while I am taking the positive view.

In the past the devs have not shied away from implementing time gates on rewards where they deemed it necessary: the WST has a weekly cooldown, Merits Rewards have diminishing returns, Tips, Alignment Merits, Grai'Matter and even the new Empyrean Merits all have 18 hour cooldown. On the other side if the devs ever had any doubt that a certain portion of their playerbase will happily farm things until their eye bleed if the rewards are worth it the introduction of the AE should have cured them of that. As such the logical conclusion is the devs did not implement any additional gates on the trial earning rate because they do not believe it to be necessary. Now maybe I'm wrong and the devs did not intend this but honestly if they didn't then they will have demonstrated a fantastic ability to not learn anything on a par with sticking their fingers in their ears and say "la, la, la, la, I can't hear you".

Now, the other side of it (and this is where my Conspiracy Theory Hat comes in) is that in their current incarnation the Trials essentially produce nothing except "Experience". You get a small amount of inf and stuff but due to team sizes this is lower than running normal content, all of the major rewards from the trials (threads, components and merits) are bound to a single character and have only one use: incarnate progression. Eventually the new merits will be used to acquire other things but the rate at which they will do so has not been set.

Put this all together and what it says to me is that the devs do not care how fast people progress through the incarnate trials in terms of calendar days, they simply care about playtime. This isn't unreasonable, after all progression from level 1 to level 50 is not gated in terms of days simply in terms of how much time you spend playing. However there is a need to keep people interested after they have acquired the new slots and that is where the new merits come in. However rather than attempting to set fixed values for the new merits and adjust the rate they are awarded at to balance rewards the devs are planning to spend some time monitoring the practical rate at which players acquire them and use that data to set the values.

Now this is obviously all supposition but I think it's just as valid as your supposition of DOOOOOMMMM!!!!.