Adeon Hawkwood

Unfortunately not. 2 even level SOs will give you 93% to hit chance against +2s (so almost capped) but not +3s. Weapon sets have a slightly better inherent accuracy so they will be hit capped against +2s with just 2 SOs.

I find the protector bots run a bit low unless you slot them with some endurance reduction but they don't need a lot of it.

Or give it to them anyway and rely on the players to be intelligent enough to not use it when they want their minions to attack.

For the Incarnate slots (both the alpha slot and the new ones you will get an option to upgrade the basic incarnate components (shards and threads) to rare/very rare components but doing so will have an Inf cost associated with it (for the new slots it totals 1 billion to get enough for a T4 boost).

However this is not the only way to get the new boosts. In fact I would even go as far as to say it is the least efficient way of getting the new boosts. The thing is that in order to get a T4 boost you need 1 billion Inf plus 2480 Incarnate Threads. If you do the incarnate trials (which are the best source of Threads) by the time you have done enough to buy the T4 boost you'll have enough Empyrean Merits to get it for no inf cost. The only people who are really likely to use it are people who don't do the trials and instead spend their time grinding shards to up-convert. As such I don't think it's going to have a major impact on the economy.

Ok, I see what you're getting at although I think my point still applies. Getting better stuff is a part of playing CoX but I don't see it as an investment. If I run a trial I am, at the end, more advanced than I was before (in incarnate XP, threads, incarnate components and the new merits) so I'm making progress. I really do not care about my progress or rate of progress relative to anyone else my interests are having fun playing and making progress as long as I'm doing both it's good.

I don't think I know you well enough to make that kind of judgment .

I just don't see that happening in this game. Rampant inflation I could potentially see (although I don't think we are seeing it at the moment) but I can't imagine inf deflating to the point that there is insufficient inf to use.

In order for inf to be useless as a currency you'd need to get to the point that there are more items for sale than Inf (i.e. all items are worth a fraction of 1 Inf). However since defeating an enemy awards several thousand inf at level 50 but has only a chance for a drop it's impossible for that to happen without major game changes. To be specific you'd need something to spend inf on that is more desirable than the items on the market and is able to use up as much inf as people can throw at it.

I don't say that IOs bring no noticeable benefit to teams but they bring much less benefit to teams than to a solo player. Buffs and debuffs play a part, for example when a Force Fielder is softcapping everyone it doesn't really matter if you're individually softcapped or not but even without lots of buffs a team working together is much greater than the sum of it's parts. I've run low level TFs from time to time and in most cases the team blows through content without needing support characters and despite the fact that at low levels most characters either lack IOs entirely or have the bonuses turned of due to exemplering. The place IOs do shine on teams is speed runs but that's largely because teammates are operating more independently (and even there IOs aren't required).

I agree with 1, sort of agree with 3 and disagree with 2. In the case of Trapdoor I believe any powerset combo should be able to solo him without IOs (although I'll admit it's hard for Tankers). Soloing him shows that you are able to adapt tactics and use the resources available to you (lava, temp powers and inspirations). For me it's a case of personal pride, I want to prove I can do it to myself although I can understand if others don't hold that view (and indeed if I see someone who needs help and I'm not busy I'll help them out).

As for the level shift, it's the most significant power boost you can bring to the trials (about 35%) so getting it before the Trials makes a lot of sense if possible. On the other hand if you're new to the Incarnate system when I20 goes live doing the trials without it actually makes a lot of sense. The trials effectively give components faster than the TFs so doing them to get to an Uncommon Alpha and then running the WST (and maybe one other TF) to upgrade to a rare makes sense to me.

As for IO'ing a character: why? Incarnate Trials are swimming in buffs and debuffs and the larger player count serves to minimize the effectiveness of IOs anyway. As such I'd say IO your character if you want to but if you don't then don't bother. Personally I enjoy IO'ing characters but if other people don't want to that is their business, IOs are not going to determine the success or failure of a trial.

My understanding is that the pet damage sets are considered "damage" so they don't work in non-damaging pet powers but I'll admit I could be wrong about that.

The question is what is value for money from the game? I play the game because I want to play the game. If I'm not playing much I cancel my subscription until I want to play again. Sometimes that means I end up paying for a month of game-time I don't use (in fact I specifically pay monthly rather than in longer periods since paying for a longer period practically guarantees I'll end up not using all of it).

But at the end of the day the important things to remember are that:
1. My entertainment dollars are there to entertain me and not the other way around
2. Paying sub time upfront means it's a sunk cost

If the only reason I'm playing the game is to "get my money's worth" then it's time to take a break. Taking a break costs me nothing, the money is already spent and I've got plenty of alternative free sources of entertainment (such as spending hours upon hours reading TVTropes or re-playing old computer games) I'm not going to spend my time playing CoX if I don't want to.

For now I wouldn't assume we're going to get anything more than the initial 10. I suspect if they prove popular enough the devs will look at adding more the trick will be creating content that is balanced for people who have the first 10 slots without locking out new characters (the old "gear reset" problem).

I think what he's concerned about is a situation where more inf is exiting the economy than entering it and the massive deflation causes a collapse.

I suspect I'm negative in that the inf I destroy by marketeering is probably more than I generate playing the game. Going with the simplification that when an item is sold the seller is responsible for sinking 5% of the cost and the buyer is responsible for 5% I'm currently destroying somewhere between 25 million and 75 million Inf a day from my share of the market fees and crafting fees. I'm pretty sure I don't generate anywhere near that much from actual defeats and vendoring.

You go most of the ones I can see, although you did miss buying common IO recipes.

I think it's positive but other than that I don't know.

I think it's mostly coming from defeats and vendoring level 50 common IO recipes. Every inf generated in the game is responsible for 10 inf worth of market sales.

I don't think you're crazy, but I do think you're worrying needlessly. The major inf sink in the game is the market and the nice thing about that is that it scales. If the quantity of inf in the game relative to the amount of stuff decreases market prices drop and the amount removed by the market decreases until equilibrium is achieved. Unless we start getting major static inf sinks that outweigh the market it shouldn't be a concern.

It's important to realize why this is. In the game mechanics -damage and +damage are the same effect. As such if -damage effects were allowed to be improved by enhancements they would benefit from your global +damage buff (i.e. powers like Fulcrum Shift would boost the effectiveness of your -damage powers). They could take the same route they did with resistance and simply tag the powers themselves to not accept buffs but it seems like a lot of work for no real change (since as you said if they allowed -damage enhancements they'd nerf -damage powers to compensate).

Recharge and defense debuffs do not only counteract IO heavy builds, they also counteract the most popular buff types. Buff sets like Force Field and Cold Domination are able to turn squishy characters into virtual gods, by adding more defense debuffs they reduce the ability of those sets to impact the general balance (same with Kinetics and recharge debuffs).

Take a look at the alpha slot, the Nerve tree is clearly the dev's answer to that. An SO'd build with one accuracy SO and a 45% nerve boost will be at 85% to hit against +3s. This is close enough that any other to hit buffs will push them over the edge and since all characters have access to to hit buffs it's simply a matter of building correctly. The damage difference between an SO'd character and an IO'd character isn't that much in a team environment anyway, it mostly only matters when doing crazy solo things such as soloing AVs.

Overall I've yet to see any indication that the newer content is designed to require IOs. In fact I would say the opposite, it's designed to reduce the benefit of IOs relative to basic powers.

I think it should be "is going to have been" in the past future perfect tense.

That was my first thought on seeing it as well. I figure they want to use the two new TFs as the WST shortly after they come out so leaving a gap for them to coincide with the I20 release makes sense.

Actually my understanding is that it won't (like Roderick said). The pet's powers are tagged ot accept specific enhancement "types". Set IOs are classed as a type corresponding to the base enhancement of the set. So a Damage/Accuracy IO in a Knockback set is considered a Knockback IO and not a Damage/Accuracy IO.

This is part of the reason that Hamidon Enhancements are so useful in pets, since they are classed as belonging to all appropriate "types" they apply to all powers that can use them while Set IOs only work in powers that can use the base type. Pet Damage sets are classed as "damage" so pet powers that don't deal damage won't benefit from the other aspects of the IOs either (such as endurance reduction).

Here's the thing, it doesn't even need to be marketeers. If the price cap for an item is less than the natural market price then the supply on the market will dry up and sales will go off market. It doesn't really matter if the people buying them are buying them for resale or their own use the supply will dry up either way.

Yes they do. The game has never been balanced around IOs and it should be perfectly possible to do incarnate content using SOs or common IOs.

That being said it's perfectly possible to do the inital arc with SOs. I've done the incarnate arc on 8 characters now and only 3 of them had full IO builds. Most of the others have a few set IOs (for example I tend to toss a KB protection IO on most characters) but are primarily using a mix of SOs and common IOs.

I don't see it as ruining ideas so much as making them unnecessary. In an ideal world there would be thousands of powersets each corresponding to a very specific theme. In practice development resources are limited. Power Customization means that players can make virtual powersets for different themes by taking an existing powerset and recoloring it. It is not necessary to make a Light Blast set when a recolored Energy Blast works just fine so development resources can be allocated to themes that aren't supported by power customization.

At this point I think any further response is pointless. Welcome to the forums.

You are correct that the only practical ways to reduce prices are to either increase the supply of items or decrease the supply of Inf. The problem is that the devs apparently feel that the relative supply of items is fine as is. Take a look at Alignment merits, the devs set it so that the cost of a purple recipe is 10 times the cost of a high end rare recipe (such as the LotG 7.5%).

I don't personally object to increasing the supply of high demand recipes such as purples but it doesn't seem like something the devs want to do.

To be honest, I'm not sure how much the devs really care about suggestions posted on the forums. It's fun to discuss possible future sets and argue about what powers they should have but at the end of the day it's something to do because you enjoy doing it, not because you actually expect the devs to implement it.

Two words: Power customization. With power customization Radiation no longer has to be radiation. The power types you listed: -res, -def, -recovery, heals are basically the powers in Radiation Emission. I fail to see how a cosmic set could enable concepts that a re-colored radiation emission could not.

You're missing the point. In CoX the different elements tend to have thematic similarities between different sets, for example Cold/Ice powers get a lot of slow effects. The general theme for Earth powers is mostly soft control (and -defense for Earth Control). A buff/debuff set focused on soft control is fine (in fact there are several that do that to some degree) the problem is that the two obvious soft control powers (a slow patch and a knock down patch) already exist in Earth Control. I think it could work but it's tricky.

Regarding the stun my experience is that they rarely actually manage to coordinate their stun powers anywhere near that well. Not to mention that the stun duration is very short.

As for the Heal/Defense combo. Yeah it's good but it's also balanced by the fact that Protector Bots have fewer attacks than the other T2 Minions (meaning less damage).

If you want to complain about something in Robotics being overpowered my recommendation would be the Assault Bot's incendiary Missiles.

It's not a bug. Phalanx Fighting provides a constant defense bonus even if no one is in range (3.75% for Brutes/Scrappers, 5% for Tankers). However, this bonus is un-enhanceable.