Balanced

Well, "a lot of stuff" is not the most quantifiable threshold, so I won't argue the point. Still, my guess of 128 shard-equivalents is enough to constitute 32 common components, which represents a nontrivial amount of activity for many players.

Now me...well, my empath has an Uncommon boost and enough components and shards stockpiled to reach the 128 shard target, though it may prove more efficient to spend some of his stash of V-merits on G'rai Matters once we see exactly what's required. My controller has a Common boost and, I think, enough stuff to upgrade it to Uncommon. The requirements obviously don't faze me.

Good point about the level shift making it easier to accumulate additional shards.

The Common boost costs 3 common components, which is equivalent to 12 shards.

The Uncommon boost costs a Common boost, 2 common components, and an uncommon component. That's equivalent to 12 + 8 + 12 = 32 shards.

The cost of a Rare boost is unknown. I assume that it will include at least one Uncommon boost, plus other stuff. My guess would be that it will cost two Uncommon boosts, which would make its total equivalent cost 64 shards.

The Very Rare boost costs "Any 2 Rare", according to the official Going Rogue site, which Teeko linked above. If that's still accurate, and if my guess about Rares is anywhere near the mark, that gives us an equivalent cost in the vicinity of 128 shards.

Of course, stockpiling components as well as shards will help, but that's still a lot of stuff to make one Very Rare.

You don't have to do anything in particular--you can mix sets within a single power (in fact, that's often a good idea, even if you're minmaxing set bonuses), you can mix sets with common IOs, you can mix them with HOs...all sorts of options. Some of them will be more effective than others, but which ones depends at least in part on your character and your playstyle. That said, given your criteria, looking at sets below your level for some things will likely get you better results.

First, to clear up something about rarity: Rarity of a recipe does not always correspond to its price. Crushing Impacts, I believe, are relatively pricey (though the price is offset somewhat by the fact that you don't need any rare salvage to make them). Some rare recipes, on the other hand, are dirt cheap just because no one wants them.

Now, as to what you get out of a set--let's take your comparison of Focused Smite against your common IO standard. I put them into Mid's, and got these numbers:

Acc/End/3*damage
Acc--42.4%
Damage--99.08%
End--42.4%
Total enhancement in 5 slots: 183.88%

Focused Smite (using the four IOs with a damage component), plus a Smashing Haymaker Damage/End
Acc--43.43%
Damage--97.19%
End--47.06%
Recharge--43.43%
Total enhancement in 5 slots: 231.11 (Plus some particularly crappy set bonuses, because Smite is a lousy set for bonuses.)

You get slightly more accuracy and endurance reduction, a tiny bit less damage, and a whole bunch of extra recharge for the same slots this way. Even with the lousy set bonuses, you come out ahead frankenslotting with cheap, lower-level set IOs. (I haven't checked the prices on Focused Smite and Smashing Haymaker, but Smite ought to be very cheap--Haymaker may be a bit more, since it has at least one bonus that isn't terrible.)

Slotting with Crushing Impact instead (the 3 dual-aspects and the Acc/Dam/End), you get
Acc--47.7%
Damage--95.11%
End--47.7%
Recharge--26.5%
Total enhancement in 4 slots: 217.01%

You're still ahead, with one less slot. For a more concrete comparison, I slotted these combinations in Disembowel.

Acc/End/3*Dam
Acc: 112.14%
Damage: 244.11
End: 7.157
Recharge: 10s
(DPS 24.41, End/sec 0.716)

4 Crushing Impacts
Acc: 121.83%
Damage: 239.24
End: 6.9
Recharge: 7.9s
(DPS 30.28, End/sec 0.873)

So, in this example, spike damage goes down slightly (4.87 points), but DPS goes up by 5.87, at a slightly higher overall endurance burn. All with one less slot, and you get some bonus hit points and global accuracy out of the deal. If you keep the extra slot, you can get 4 of those 5 points of burst damage back, along with more recharge, more acc or endurance reduction, and a 5% global recharge bonus. (Crushing Impact is a really nice set.)

That's all looking at one power in isolation, of course--it doesn't necessarily mean much in-game, when it's part of an attack chain. It may help illustrate the point, however.

Also, what powersets are you looking at? Most of the melee powersets have at most 5 powers that would take Crushing Impacts, I believe, so you would need to look at other types as well.

Ooh--a new nuke that knocks the nuker up/back like the WSPDR generator explosions. I would use that even without any targets, just for the wheeeeeee. The only problem would be that a nuke doesn't recharge fast enough to use it as a travel power.

Actually nothing in what Stanfeld says specifically indicates children in harm's way.

"Do you know what it's like to know that if you make one wrong move your kid isn't going to have a father?"
This is concern that he (or some other officer) will be killed because they don't have a mediport link, leaving his child without a father.

"Or that your wife could die if some freak looks at her wrong...?"
This is concern for his wife's safety.

Both are entirely reasonable concerns, of course, and you would expect that if both parents are living in Paragon City, that the kid probably lives there, too. However, no children are in evidence in the city, except for a kid who sells Mutant enhancements and a teenage psychic. Maybe most parents have sent their children off to boarding schools or to live with relatives in safer locales.

Mostly, though, I was poking fun at the fact that we never see kids in the game.

No, ghastly abominations don't count.

What schools?

What children?

The only kids in the city are Penny and Penny. One is a reality-warping psychic and the other is a mutant with an army of other mutants she's boosted looking out for her. I agree that they should both have links to the mediport system (especially Yin, who's obviously more danger-prone), but doing so would not be such a huge matter that it would interfere with equipping the elderly and handicapped.


As to the arc--it's great...but the final mission drove me to an all-new level of hatred for Castillo. My main has to buff up substantially to fight an elite boss, and Castillo kept making me start over, the schmuck. (I have to admit that he's got style, though.)

The Titan was a good reminder of why mobs don't simply scale up and down seamlessly. At 50, Titans are not a big deal. Even an EB version wouldn't be especially scary for an EB. Exemped to 29, even with an extra 5 levels of powers, it was a serious threat.

You can use Titan Sentinel to export your existing build from the game to Mid's now. It's a little touchy about inherent Fitness slotting, I found, but works beautifully in general. It's saved me a lot of time and effort.

"LET...US...SHOW...YOU...OUR...WEDDING...PHOTO S"
<enemy commits hari-kari after first slide of a bunch of rocks in formalwear>

For what it's worth, my main is a defender who may be either male or female, depending on which twin is in charge. I don't make enough melee characters to really have a valid sample, but my other characters are a pretty even mix, I think.

I have a necro with Group Fly. I call his pets zombombs, and derive a certain amusement in watching them trail farther and farther behind, then abruptly go plummeting down on some unlucky soul's head.

It actually is possible keep them all close enough to fly, by the way, but it works more like a slow version of teleport--you set yourself to autofollow one of them, then give the whole lot goto commands targeted in the air in the direction you want to go. They fly a while, you follow, then you click again while they swarm around a spot in the air like a bunch of gnats. It's possibly the most inefficient way to travel in the game, short of Walk...and Walk looks better.

I thought Marcian was the cast of Glee, playing and posting as a sort of unholy musical hivemind.

I know quite well what the Alpha slot is and does--in fact, I'm using Cardiacs on my main like you are, and getting much the same result.

The examples I gave were actually based on things we have seen (via leaks) for other Incarnate slots. I've seen the in-game info for several Judgement powers, for example. Those are the ones we know the most about, and at the time, they were essentially nukes--GR site says it "Grants new upgradeable area of effect (AOE) powers." They are, of course, subject to change, but the fact that the devs have said the first ten slots are "designed" (though not necessarily implemented) suggests that at least the types of powers they will grant are fairly well established.

Now, that doesn't mean they can't include slots that provide general buffs--I just think that if they do, they will work differently from the Alpha slot. My personal and completely unfounded speculation on the Vitae slot is that it will alter base stats, AT multipliers, or both. That could provide many of the same advantages you're talking about, but in a different way, with different implications. It would be distinctive, and thereby more interesting than just another Alpha slot.

Yes, I can. It would be convenient, certainly, but not particularly interesting--it would be more of the same, when we could instead have semi-custom nukes, pets, universal procs, or any number of other things that would increase our effectiveness as much, but in different ways.

Like I said, I'm enjoying the current Incarnate stuff, and I like what the Alpha slot is doing for my characters. I definitely want variety, though.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Thanks to a few leaks, we've got a pretty good idea what the Judgement slot is going to be. We've also got hints about the Lore and Interface slots, I believe. Nothing official, of course, and nothing is certain until they go live, but we do have a few clues. If those clues are anything to go by, none of the other slots will offer the same type of benefits as the Alpha slot--which is a good thing, in my opinion. "Another Alpha slot" would be rather boring.

It does a couple of things unslotted--it opens a third build for you, and it unlocks the Apex and Tin Mage TFs. (Of course, I don't recommend actually attempting those TFs until you slot it, though if you're yawning, maybe fighting a bunch of effectively +8 enemies is what you need.)

But no, it does not buff your character until you put a buff in it. It enables you to enhance all your other powers, but you have to choose how to enhance them.

Personally, I like it. Even the common boost made playing my main more fun, and the uncommon is better still. I enjoyed Ramiel's arc, and I didn't find the process of acquiring components too tedious, even though I made most of them from shards.

You mean, they sound appealing until you actually think it through?

The Shadow Shard is not Faathim's reality, as I understand the matter. Faathim--and the other Aspects we have encountered, I believe--are analogs of Rularuu from various alternate worlds that the Ravager has subsumed and enslaved. The Shard is simply the place in which Rularuu was trapped when he was prevented from ravaging the Primal, not Faathim's home.

(I have a pet theory that the Shard actually is Rularuu, but the weirdness is thick enough here already.)

I haven't seen any encounters balanced that way--there's no qualitative difference between the different sizes of inspirations, after all. You just need more of the small ones to get the same effect. I've never needed more than a tray of the small ones for any single task, though it's certainly convenient to have bigger ones--fewer clicks, fewer restocks, and the option to pack a little more variety.

That said, there is a perfectly reliable way to stock up on medium inspirations--Kora fruit. Kora missions are repeatable, and one mission can provide a dozen or more medium inspirations. Some missions provide a variety (which can be converted to the type you want), and some offer a single type (allowing you to keep a more literal "farm" mission to restock that type more quickly).

I didn't have any trouble with him on emp/dark/psi, but I was hover-blasting and I immobilized* him pretty quickly, so he never got in melee with me long enough to do much. He hits pretty hard up close, I gather.

*Yes, in the lava, but I blasted the copies, too, just for good measure.

So, yes, he's a rogue. The full details of his movements aren't explained, so it's not clear how they ended up in a Rikti base, but I would reconstruct it something like this:

Holtz and an armored detachment of Crey personnel extracted the containment unit holding the Honoree in stasis from the Vanguard base. Something compromised the containment--transport damage, Crey tampering, or even it simply requiring the support of the base to keep it online--and the Rikti were able to sense the Honoree's presence. A Rikti strike force was sent to retrieve the containment unit, and managed to teleport it to their base before Holtz could stop them.

Holtz had some means of tracking the containment unit and located the base before the unit was destroyed. Holtz and the Crey infiltrate the base and find the debris where the Honoree broke out of the containment unit. The Crey forces stop to analyze the debris in hopes of finding another way to contain the Honoree once he's recaptured. Holtz presses the pursuit.

Holtz finds the Honoree, weakened by his original capture and containment, and is about to recapture him when Rikti portals open--the Rikti have detected the incursion and launched a major counterattack, but they find Holtz holding the Honoree hostage; in his weakened state, Holtz could kill him, and the Rikti are reluctant to risk it. A standoff ensues, and we walk into the middle of it.

The Curse sucks, I'll grant you that. If you don't have the counter, you're almost certainly better off retreating until it wears off; I think its recharge is much longer than its duration--at least, I've never been hit with it twice by the same foe, even if I wait it out.

When I ran the mission with my emp/dark on live, I foolishly forgot about it and didn't pick up the Cursebreaker before going to the mission. When it hit, I got stubborn and fought it out...but I was only fighting Holtz, and Recovery Aura was just enough to get me through it. Once Holtz went down, I waited for the Curse to wear off before tackling the Honoree.

On the other hand, it is a standard Vanguard mob power. We may hate it, but the devs didn't cook it up just to make this mission nastier.

Now, further consider that Dark Blast has Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall, cone DoTs that can reach across most of the populated part of the map under the mission buffs. My emp/dark herded up the echoes and melted them with the DoT. Unfortunately, full Incarnation does not appear to remove target caps, so I couldn't get them all at once.