Adeon Hawkwood

I figure once more people have the slots unlocked the standard format will be to clear one or two groups on the path and then jump over the wall and clear the courtyard to get to 60.

At the moment people like to do a full clear for the IXP but as the need for that diminishes it'll be less of an issue.

The problem is that we only really have anecdotal evidence which tends to skew perceptions towards the very good and the very bad.

Short of the devs making a statement the only thing we could do is run a few trials with someone doing nothing at all. If they got the 10 threads option every time that would strongly suggest that the table is at least partly performance based.

I disagree. The level shifts make a HUGE difference, especially against level 54s (the Alpha one also makes level 50 content a lot easier).

In any case against level 54s:

The first shift increases the effectiveness of all of your powers by 35% (after applying all other buffs), increases your base chance to hit by 9% and decreases the effectiveness of attacks and debuffs used on you by about 8%.

The second shift increases the effectiveness of all of your powers by 23%, increases your base chance to hit by 8% and decreases the effectiveness of attacks and debuffs used on you by about 9%.

The third shift increases the effectiveness of all of your powers by 12.5%, increases your base chance to hit by 9% and decreases the effectiveness of attacks and debuffs used on you by about 9%.

Negligible? I would argue that the level shifts are the main reason to get the powers.

This was in the early days when people would get randomly dropped from the league while queuing. When that happened they were unable to rejoin with the LFG feature.

You're missing the most important bit thought. With the introduction of Incarnate Slots we can finally have a Gear Score system in CoH. No more ad hoc denying people teams based on looking at their info and eyeballing whether they have acceptable IO slotting and having to listen to them whine about the "game being balanced around SOs". With Incarnate slots we can calculate a gear score and prove to them that they are not worthy of joining our team.

How to calculate your CoX Gear Score (v1.0):
1. Add the value of the tier you have in each slot. Tier 1: 1 point, Tier 2: 2 points, Tier 3: 3 points, T4: 12 points (getting T4 is about 4 times the effort of getting T3 so it's worth 4 times as much, anything else is immaterial).
2. Add 3 points for every level shift you have (always include Incarnate Shifts, if you decide to grace a non-incarnate team with your presence it's important that they realize just how much better than them you are).
3. Multiply by 500 (this isn't strictly necessary but it allows CoX gear scores to be compared more accurately to gear scores in other MMOs, adding gear scores from different MMOs is acceptable for resolving ties)

Have fun and remember, your gear score is the sole arbiter of your value as a human being.

No, he definitely had all four of the new slots (you can see Interface on his Buff bar, Judgement and Destiny are recharging on his power bar and he's got a pet window with the Lore pets on it). The other player also had at least Interface.

But still very impressive.

Hey, there's a reason I have a T-Shirt with him on it .

True, I'm not planning to break mine down but the lack of commons is frustrating. I'll also add that even if you are upgrading, breaking down E. Merits seems like a poor choice. I'd save them for a Very Rare and use the uncommons/threads for a second very rare. At the very least it should save you a chunk of inf in crafting costs.

Sure it'll drop off in a few weeks but I doubt it'll be abandoned until the next tier of raids comes along (and by tier I mean raids that drop something other than Incarnate Threads).

Now at that point we probably will see the current raids get largely abandoned but that doesn't mean people who miss it now are locked out (or if it does I shall be very annoyed with the devs). The solution used in a certain other MMO is the idea of limited gear resets. When a new tier of raids comes out they make it easier to get gear equivalent to the previous tier. This allows new players to get geared up enough to participate without having to run through the old raids (which are semi-deserted).

Now the nature of the Incarnate system means that the devs have plenty of options here. The simple solution is when they release the Hybrid, Genesis, Stance and Vitae slots add new recipes for the current slots that use the Alpha slot components. in that way a new player can run level 50 TFs and the WST (which should be easy to find teams for) to "gear up" for the new raids.

It's faster but not as much faster as you are implying.

A very rare requires 4 rares each of which requires 4 uncommons and 100 threads. So the total is 16 uncommons and 20 E. Merits not 5 E. Merits. So yes you could get a Very Rare component in fewer runs by converting the E Merits to threads and getting Uncommon drops but it's not that large a savings especially when you factor in the need to get another two rares for the boost itself.

Unless you get a lucky very rare drop from the trial itself E. Merits seem like the sensible way to get them if you're limiting your trial runs to 2 a day (for people who aren't this obviously changes). I will admit that getting a rare component through a component purchase is probably more useful.

The problem with this is that upgrading commons requires a hung number of threads. So unless you run the trials 10 times a day it's faster to do rares with E-Merits.

Because they take ages to get to and it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of having lots of people in the same zone.

Wanna bet? I think there's a good chance we'll see enemies with level shifts of their own in the later trials (i.e. a 54(+2) AV for example).

MS Raid = Mothership Raid.

It's not incarnate content, it's an open zone event for characters of level 35 or up (ok, technically anyone can participate but you need to be 35+ for the full rewards). Basically a few teams get together can take down all of the pylons in the RWZ. This lowers the shields on the mothership which is full of level 54 Rikti. In addition to the normal rewards these Rikti give a Vanguard Merit to every member of every team that damages them. This is therefore the easiest way to get Vanguard Merits. A complete raid will generally 300-600 merits depending on how well the teams do.

You can always start a new character and make progress however you want. Even with the new shiny I see plenty of low and mid level teams on Virtue.

An interesting conundrum. In some ways I agree with you, I don't enjoy playing if I'm not making progress. However making progress isn't in and of itself sufficient for me, I need to have fun playing as well.

For me the incarnate trials are perfect. I don't really care about story, I just want to shoot bad guys in the face and the trials are excellent for that. The devs took what they had leart about designing fun encounters from the older content and applied it to the trials in what I consider to be an excellent manner. So for me they are fun to play many, many times and I make progress doing them.

However getting burned out on them is a concern. I tend to have a cyclical fondness for CoX, I play for a few months then take a break and do something else.

Honestly my advice to you would be to not play as many trials in the same day or if you are playing a lot switch characters about a bit to keep it interesting. I have a personal rule that I will not play a trial unless the character I'm playing will earn an E Merit from it. That forces me to switch my characters and, since I have 3 incarnates, sets a max limit of 6 trials a day (although I don't think I've actually done more than 4 in a day so far).

Locking the league isn't to stop the turnstile adding more members (because it does that anyway unless you're at the max) it's to stop the turnstile from scrambling the teams (which is frustrating if you're trying to balance ATs for team splits such as the Lambda third phase).

Fair point, although I'd think that a participation-based that isn't comparative would be hard to set up.

Minor amusing moment, I never made the connection between your forum name and in-game name until I saw that post. I really should pay more attention to people's signatures.

Precisely, it's why there's also the sarcastic comeback "and fools seldom differ".

The thing is by the time I get sufficient threads to do that conversion (taking into account that I'm having to spend threads on common components) I likely have enough E. Merits for a rare anyway.

It depends on what you're willing to sacrifice. If you go for the Spiritual Alpha you should be able to get it without sacrificing defense. If you want it without spiritual alpha then you probably need to either sacrifice some defense or take Fighting (which means you don't have rooms for attacks which hurts building aggro).

To answer your initial question definitely take Leadership to get Tactics.