Aura_Familia

Originally Posted by CactusBrawler

So how long do you think todays Downtime will be? :P

Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan

The simple answer there is: "You're on the designated RP server, in a designated RP area. Go away."

Originally Posted by Jophiel

Is there any real good reason to have rewards based off some sliding scale of "effort"? It seems as though it just dorks over some ATs/power sets and benefits others regardless of how many buttons you mash during the event. If someone on your league is leeching, the answer is to boot him off the league just like if someone is essentially doorsitting a task force.

As for the tables, my Earth/Storm controller was "affecting" tons of mobs in the BAF last night with AoE debuffs but not seriously hurting any of them in relation to the real AoE attacks and my rewards ranged from Uncommon to the Ten Thread Booby Prize.

Originally Posted by Obitus

The Judgement issue is only a symptom of the larger problem, which is that Blasters give up too much for their offense. If Blasters had more to hang their hat on than the dubious, "Team Artillery Specialist," tag, then the fact that everyone can pick up a crashless nuke wouldn't be a big deal. I don't see too many Controllers complaining about Destiny, for instance.

For what little it's worth, I don't even particularly care about Judgement except to the extent that it shines a big freaking spotlight on just how silly the huge and long-standing penalties for traditional nukes are and always have been. At the very least, I'd like to see those penalties revisited and reworked at some point, and not just because of Judgement.

As to whether or not people are giving the question of high-end balance a lot of thought -- my response is that they should, given the investment we're talking about here. It was valid to question which builds you'd concentrate on maximizing before Incarnates were even announced, because IOs alone could potentially represent massive investment and massive reward.

Blasters -- even before Incarnates -- are not particularly good at soloing or teaming. They're not even particularly good at delivering damage without support (because of the AI's tendency to scatter, because of obvious survivability issues). Are there outliers? Sure; a high-end, Rain-of-Arrows-spamming Archery Blaster is a sight to behold, but in terms of over-time AoE damage output it's merely competitive with an SS/Fire Brute.

On a personal level, the peculiar irony to me about the new Incarnate slots is that the one potentially meaningful advantage my Fire/Mental Blaster has over my Mind/Fire Dominator -- Drain Psyche's Regeneration buff -- is rendered moot by Rebirth Destiny even as Clarion Destiny potentially gives the Blaster full-time status protection. Those two things offset, with the Dom winning on the basis of Judgement and her innate, mag-6 controls. It's really not even a competition. The Blaster loses before she's laced up her cleats.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that Blasters should be turned into Doms, or even that Blasters deserve to be as good on a solo basis. But it does seem blindingly obvious to me that Blasters are the victims of an out-dated design paradigm that placed disproportionate emphasis on ranged damage potential. Doms and VEATs are, I would think, irrefutable evidence of that sea change in the development strategy. To a lesser extent, even newer (crashless) Blaster nukes are an implicit (or if you prefer, subconscious) mea culpa on the part of the Dev team. We're not likely to get sweeping AT-balance changes at this stage of the game, so the most relevant question here is, "What builds are you going to bother taking to the highest pinnacle?"

Some will undoubtedly choose Blasters. Most of those people, I contend, do it for sentimental reasons, though. If so, then that's fine, but it's also not relevant. And with that, I think I'm due for another break from this thread. I'm beginning to bore even myself with these ranting novellas.

Originally Posted by Obitus

And with all due respect, your entire post is unresponsive. Balance issues are not unimportant simply because teams generally don't discriminate. I'm sure most teams (including all of mine) are more interested in playing with fun people than they are in playing with spectacular builds.

Heck, I spend billions on my builds almost entirely because I want to maximize my chance to succeed even with terrible team support. Sometimes, making what should be a bad team good is the best part of this game, for me.

YMMV. None of the above has anything to do with the price of bananas, though. If you genuinely disagree that Blasters give up too much, mechanically, for their presumably overwhelming offense, then that's one thing. If you're handwaving any and all balance concerns on the basis that every AT can find a team, then there's no point in even posting in a balance discussion, placed in a forum that is purpose-built for mechanical questions.

Originally Posted by Obitus

You also know that the Reactive Interface -RES proc amounts to a 10% debuff, right?

There's no question that the new Incarnate stuff improves Blasters. Arguably, the new Incarnate stuff improves Blasters most of all -- but that's only because Blasters needed more. The question remains: if I'm to put in the effort to kit out a character with all the best that IOs and Incarnate content have to offer, then why should I start with a weaker baseline?

Only you can answer that question for yourself. If you enjoy your blaster, then more power to you. I know that I will never exclude Blasters from my teams; in fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen AT discrimination of any kind in seven years of playing CoH -- but for my own purposes, after having spent countless hours and countless billions and countless respec tokens optimizing my Blaster, I'll stick with my Dominator, thanks.

Originally Posted by Ruby

Just downloaded a big patch (313MB I think it was?) and was wondering if anyone knows what it's all about yet?

Originally Posted by PC_guy

i don't think you can do this though. because if you do it to just blasters, then you'd get an outcry from corrupters and defenders that theirs doesn't. I think the devs are in a situation were if they do do(heh) something like this, i'd be an all or nothing thing. which would ultimatley decrease the value of the buff for blasters in the first place.

in all likelyhood i'm more inclined to think that we'd see a nerf to force manipulators before a buff to blasters.

Originally Posted by RemusShepherd

I didn't say that I couldn't adapt, nor did I say I couldn't do it. I said it wasn't fun.

I don't go on speed TFs because I don't like them. I don't like the lab run either.

Originally Posted by Kinrad

Stupid question time:

Does that make you essentially a level 53 in the trials?

Originally Posted by Night_Watcher

I managed to get lucky on the very rare drop tables, but had to turn a whole lot of astral merits and shards into threads to craft most of it.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting a mez protection on a squishy

Originally Posted by Night_Watcher

So six days later, two of them being nearly all dedicated to maintenance, numerous trial runs, many failed and many won, and the result is this.

Now only to wait for the other 5 slots I guess XD

Originally Posted by IanTheM1

Huh...that's a very good point. I've never seen the 10 Thread reward table either.

I highly suspect then that there are only two levels of rewards: The 10 Threads or a Random Component Table.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I'm not saying the choices presented are what I'd have picked for each AT, but it doesn't change the fact that I'd have preferred AT-specific Incarnate powers. Not just judgement, either. This blurring of the ATs is decidedly not something I enjoy, lest we give up on having ATs in general. And I don't even have a problem with ATs sharing powers, just not entire powersets, which is what we'll likely end up with by the time this is over.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

Yeah, you guys should schedule your emergency downtimes!

Originally Posted by Paragon

Domination has always provided mez protection, to all types of mezzing. Stuns, holds, immobilizes, sleeps, knockback, knockdown, fear, repel; everything. You can also activate it while mezzed as a Break Free-like effect.

Did you notice that Dominators are a semi-requested AT now? They weren't always that way, even for the LRSF. I remember when people used to LOL at my Dominator back when CoV released; it usually got a pity spot on teams and Strike Forces.

Originally Posted by BackFire

Pyronic Judgement: and you thought Longbow Flamethrowers were pushing it with the "heroes don't kill" policy.

Originally Posted by EnigmaBlack

Without looking at the numbers I'd think on a sonic/rad you'd have -res covered already. I'd go for -Def or -ToHit. But that fire proc in the -Res just looks so good it's hard to pass up!

Originally Posted by Seldom

I've been on teams with judgement being thrown around, and you know what? We still would've done better in the damage department with a blaster. Judgement powers are very cool 'burst' abilities, but between the bursts things still need to be done, which is where powersets come in.

A team of 8 with a healing destiny power won't replace someone with a 6 second recharge heal. A team full of interface-flinging -regen won't match a -500% regen debuffing powerset. A team with a huge +defense power every 90 seconds can't cover the team as well as someone with constantly available everywhere, every time forcefields. A tank with a huge blast can't match the damage a blaster puts out.

In my experience, it just means that there's far less "wait, we need a 'X'!" And that's a welcome change. Yes, I know you never needed an empath, radiation emission character, stone tanker, etc- but now it makes the entry point for incarnates' teams to be far less formulaic. Characters enter the ring with all their normal strengths, and the team benefits from them. When The team comes into a situation the player usually couldn't cover, they now have an incarnate wildcard or two up their sleeve to play in the team's favor. I doubt most teams will disregard players on a wildcard basis.

Originally Posted by Mephe

Aura I love your incarnate mode option, it gets better every time I think about it. I dont know if the devs will ever do it, but it would add a bunch more i20 threads content to the mix with what seems little effort on thier part.

Incarnate mode:
level 45+ TFs only (ITF, Kahn, LGTF, STF, LRSF, COP, Cuda)
All mobs set to level 54.
All mobs drop threads instead of shards.
No temp powers.
New reward at the end is 1 astral merit instead of the alpha component (reward merits can still be selected instead).

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

I certainly hope not.

It would be incredibly unfair to force a difficulty increase on the old level 45+ TFs just because Incarnates can have all their shiny new powers in it.

If they did that, those level 45-49 characters that are trying to run those things to...you know....level, are going to find that suddenly what was merely challenging is now impossible.

Basically, if you increase the difficulty because of Incarnates, you will completely screw over anyone who is NOT an Incarnate.