Biospark

Like others here have mentioned, Kinetics is FULL of team-oriented powers, so I am not sure how you reached the perception that it is "shallow" or "lacking" in tools for teaming.

My own take on Kinetics is that it is TOO BUSY on teams. Between using Speed Boost on Everyone, Increase Density on every Squishy (plus defense-based Melee toons), Tranfusion, Siphon Power, Transference and Fulcrum Shift, there was very little time left over for my Kin/Elec to use some of his own attacks.

However, if you were actually speaking of the "solo-ability" of Kinetics, that is a completely different subject. Could you elaborate your point some more ? Many people would be able to speak more specifically regarding your concerns in that way.

Your perspective is shared by many folks here, and I don't criticize that viewpoint, however...

Not all toons solo just as well as the next toon, but yet they can jump into a team and earn rewards at the SAME rate as the more "team-oriented" toons. This is not an issue if the vast majority of players spend the majority of their time "teaming". It IS a concern for players like myself that only team ocasionally, due to heavy personal demands and working odd hours. Due to this, I spend the majority of my play time "solo", with the exception being the Weekend, where I can "ocasionally" join up with guildmates.

I am not asking for any "special" hand-outs regarding Incarnates because I prefer team-oriented characters, but am not able to team 100% of the time. What I am repeatedly saying is that the shard rate (while solo) is waaaayyy too grindy, especially if you are not able to crank it up to X8. While, on the other hand, getting shards while teamed, especially on High-end TFs is way too easy. I don't have a real good suggestion for how to make it work better, but I think the daily shard "mission" idea has the best chance of helping people like me, WITHOUT making it ridiculously easy for players with "different" playstyles.

P.S. I liked that reference to "Monty-Haul" brings back memories. Of course, the last time I played PnP, there was no subscription fee. Hmmm, well unless you count the BYOB house rules :P

I think the "piles of shards" is going to be a reality if you team even occasionally.

Biospark is sitting with his Uncommon boost of choice and enough material to make a common boost after only one weekend of TF running (Kahn, STF(x2), ITF(1 or 2 times ??)). And I have no intention of wasting time and material making all eight uncommons and all four commons to fill out the tree. So anything else I get from now until the next release of boosts is "gravy" and will just sit there waiting.

Thats the equivalent of 44 shards (estimating, I took the component reward every TF)
with only THREE shards from doing my 5 tips each day (This includes the 1 shard from doing the "unlock" Arc).

Teaming 41 shards (8-10 hours work over 2 days)
Solo 3 shards (8-10 hours work over 5 days)

As I have said before, this "Ratio" may be intended, buuuuttt I don't like it.
***as a side-note, a daily shard run would have raised my solo amount up to 8, which is still a far cry from the teaming rewards, but it would have gotten me closer to my Common boost before jumping into my first TF this weekend at least***

AMEN !

Make it so Devs !

*Section highlighted for emphasis*

The system currently rewards Teaming too heavily, and Solo-ing too little.
This may be WAI but could stand for an adjustment in my opinion. By adding a daily shard "run" there would be a feeling of progress for players that only team occasionally (like on weekends) and spend the majority of their game time "solo". The major teaming benefit would always remain intact due to "speed-of-defeats", and the 4-shard reward at the end of the TF (if that is what you are doing). No solo-er will ever beat that (even though there are the rare combinations that can come close).

Yes, but what do you make ? What pieces do you keep in storage ?

Until we know more, its all just "junk in the trunk".... sorta speak

I am actually starting to see a completely different issue present itself. The one where I have "boatloads" of incarnate salvage just sitting on my Incarnate tab with nothing to do with it until they release more Incarnate slots. I suppose I could make all those other common and uncommon boosts. You know, the ones that I will probably not ever need because the Spiritual Radial boost is everything "in-a-can" that I want so far. Was finally able to run some TF this weekend with my guildmates and with 4 TF runs got my Common boost, then the Uncommon and have enough material left over for another common boost. If I need to wait a couple months before new recipes/slots, I will be "over-flowing" with "stuff" that has no "urgent" need to be used.

In regards to your point, however, I agree with others in that it's too early to predict what the effect on the players will be. Welcome to every other MMO expansion release ! Where all the high level folks are doing their high level thing, while every one in the middle or at the beginning needs to seek players of their own level to team with. If you find that you cannot get any of your level 50 friends to hang out with you, it may be time to suggest a "Lowbie Night" for your SG, which will offer a chance to lower level members to get what they need and still feel "connected" to the Veterans. Either that, or you can form a new super group in which you specifically recruit players of your level and time-zone. This has always worked for me in other MMOs.

I don't actually want to see shards dropping on lower level content, but I would like to see the solo shard rate looked at, or perhaps a Daily Shard Mission to help the more casual players.

What Blue_Fenix said. Mind-Psi dominator is simply more selfishly fun than the controller options.

Theoretically, a Mind Controller could leverage it's damage with greater safety and utility after getting into the 40+ game, but prior to the 40s, Mind control is more like a Psychic blaster with a weakened Defender set. A Dominator is more like a Blaster/Scrapper that doesn't need to baby-sit any teammates, just exert your will and destroy anything that you feel like at the moment. It's more of a "Playstyle" difference than anything else.

The real noticeable difference will probably come once we start seeing the rare and very rare bonuses.

However, what I have done on my Emp/Elec is take the Spiritual Boost into consideration with my build. Many of my recharge powers were re-adjusted to get recharge around 65-80% before the Alpha is taken into account. The second phase of my transformation has not been done yet and what I am still "build-planning" is moving slots around in order to trade generic Recharge for IO set bonuses.

For example: My I18 slotting on Hasten is 3 generic Recharge IOs, putting it at the ED-cap.

With my next respec, I will pull one of those slots off and keep 2 generic recharge IOs and move that slot to another power that is not 6-slotted and GAIN 1 more set bonus. Since Hasten doesnt take IO sets, this becomes an extra set bonus without any loss of recharge on Hasten. What is really funny, is that one of the powers that I gained from I19 is Vengeance, which coincidentally is getting a LoTG recharge IO and I could slide that extra Hasten slot there to boost the amount of Def I get from Vengeance AND get the 2-piece set bonus. Win-Win AFAIAC

So the biggest suggestion I could give is to look at where you have generic IOs, OR... where you are already AT the ED-cap and see what optional IO set-ups you can make.

Example: If you slotted a power heavy on recharge with an IO set, you could swap out which pieces you are using to increase Dmg, Acc, EndReduc, etc.... while lowering the Recharge down to 66-80% and the Alpha boost would bring it back to the cap. You would not gain any set bonuses this way, but you COULD gain improvements in the other aspects of a power. A good example of this in my build is Short Circuit. My I18 build has this power sitting around 73% Damage, 50% Acc, 88% EndMod, and 95% Recharge. I am re-evaluating my slotting to reduce the Recharge down, while boosting the Damage and EndMod up to the caps. The power is currently 6-slotted because of the many needs of the power.

Hopefully this all made sense.

Funny you mention this Amy, I am seriously toying with making an alternate version of Biospark on another server as an Electric/Empathy controller. Would be very interesting to see how that would compare.

You need to get a character to level 50. Seriously, it will solve many of your problems.

For example, Today I logged on Biospark and did my 5 tip missions set to +0/x2 cause I was not feeling like working too hard and got a purple recipe (Ragnarok iirc), sold it for 400million. This cannot happen with a character that is below level 50.

Also, you can run story arcs to get merits and purchase recipes that sell very well on the market and make some influence to bank-roll your characters. 200 merits = 100million influence. Think about it.
Edit: As mentioned by McNum, Hero Merits are another way to get "sellable" recipes, but I personally use Hero Merits for my own "hard-to-get" recipes, like Miracle, LotG, Steadfast etc...

Depends on how patient you are with the market.

If I am willing to work the market, I can get most of the Thunderstrike recipes for 250K or less(each). But if I am not feeling very patient (which is most times) I have spent upwards of 2.5 million per recipe. So... thats 4.5 million up to 45 million for three full sets of Thunderstrike.

Usually, I get all my salvage with AE tickets and buy the Thunderstrike IO recipes at whatever level I can get. It is often easier to get recipes at the max level, but check every level to see what is available before putting up bids.

IOs are the solution. For two reasons;

A) You can get End recovery in many set bonuses (Thunderstrike for example)
Three sets of this will give you 6% more endurance recovery. That's enough to cover the cost of Hover.

B) Slotting IOs will net you more enhancement than simple SOs. Again Thunderstrike is a great example. 6-slotted Thunderstrike will yield 2 SOs ACC, 3 SOs DMG, 2 SOs Recharge and 2 SOs EndReduc. Thats 9 SOs if you were counting, but with only 6 slots.

If you 6-slot each of your three single target attacks with Thunderstrike you will ALSO get;

6% Endurance Recovery
21% GLOBAL Accuracy
12% GLOBAL Movement speed increase AND...
11.25% Defense to Ranged, Energy, Negative

Both my Energy Blast characters are Hover style blasters with Range Defense as their Focus. Thunderstrike is THE set for that tactic.

One last note regarding your build which you can take to the bank. You are running too many toggles.
My FF/Energy Defender runs Dispersion/Hover/Tough/Weave and that is pushing the envelope a little.
I am considering switching to Leadership instead of Fighting when I get my Ancillary Toggle, but that is going to be even more difficult to manage endurance with. I am thinking that the final solution to my endurance troubles will come with the Alpha slot, which is most likely going to be the end-reduction one.

This is your problem, combined with not getting ED-capped damage in each of your attacks.

I always shoot for 2.0eps NET recovery in my Builds AND ED-capped damage in my attacks.

I am not sure how that would play Dr.Mike. It could potentially weaken the set's built in mitigation of "all mobs sapped" to become "one mob sapped and all the rest having some remaining endurance".

From my perspective, the most annoying thing about "sapping" is that you have to keep them there, and once they have even a sliver of endurance, they can take shots at you. Which is why I want to see their endurance STAY at zero longer. If we could get a -recovery attached to the drain for the standard debuff duration, that would make me very happy.

Example;
Charged Bolts would drain 7 endurance and debuff recovery for 6 seconds
Lightning Bolt would drain 10 endurance and debuff recovery for 10 seconds

Hehe, Ok Garent you got me.

I simply hate having to recast him during battle. I would glady take anything else than a pet. A Damage Aura, or a Tier 3 blast would be more my style. I spend so much time looking for "blinking" Icons, what is one more right ?

What are the chances they would ever make him a standard pet like the Dark Servant ?
That would make me happy...-er.

Let's not forget that when someone says "softcap" they don't generally mean "softcap to all types/positions". I have seen many people calling themselves "soft-capped" when, in fact, they are really only "soft-capped to smash/lethal". It may seem a minor point, but against some enemies your "soft-cap" can disappear darn fast.

Have you considered Dark/Archery ? I have played both a Defender and Corruptor version and the two sets synergize very well.
Tar Patch + Rain of Arrows + the kitchen sink = lots of defeated mobs. Archery has good single target damage, great AoE damage, and some utility if you take stunning shot and combine it with Dark Mastery (oppressive gloom).

As far as Electric Blast goes, here is my input;

Overall the set is a haphazard mix of Damage, AoE, and Control. But it's not very good at any of them. Let's talk about each one individually.

Single Target damage : You get only 2 single target blasts, a Snipe, and the Pet. Against alot of weaker enemies you will be fine. Summon the pet, use AoEs and Blasts till the spawn is done. Against Harder targets is where this set suffers. Both the Snipe and the Pet will lower your dps if you use them after the start of a battle, so I skip them in Boss/EB fights and use Sands of Mu as my third attack instead.

AoE Damage : On paper you would think that Ball Lightning + Short Circuit would be decent at AoE damage. Two reasons this is not the case. (One) Short Circuit has a huge casting time, and (Two) most Electric users WILL slot Short Circuit for Endurance Drain to get the most out of each use. Even with franken-slotting, you cannot get capped Damage AND Drain (not to mention recharge and Acc <--- both very important). Perhaps with the alpha slot (and/or other incarnate abilities) this Power will get some "love".

Control : Tesla Cage is an excellent power that truely helps in the solo department. It's only weakness being that it comes kinda late (level 28). It does minimal damage, and since both it and Short Circuit need to be re-applied during a large battle, this will lower your DPS even more. Endurance drain was meant to be the "Main" trick of electric and as mentioned above, Blasters really get the ability to make it work before level 40. Defenders, not so much. It really matures as a tactic after you get either Power Build Up (Power Mastery) or Powersink (Electric Mastery). It works on teams prior to the 40s, however, due to the fact that you are probably not being attacked "initially" so can jump next to the "Tank" and fire it off multiple times.

What does electic need ? Here are some possibilities (not meant to be taken as a whole)

Add damage to Tesla cage on par with Lightning Bolt

Shorten Short Circuit's casting time (since it got the drain amount nerfed way back then)
additionally, modify damage, recharge slightly (due to slotting needs being so many) or...
Increase the Drain amounts on Defenders (essentially treating it as a Debuff)

Change all powers to stop endurance recovery instead of just Tesla and Short Circuit

32 levels Scrapper and 18 Levels Blaster.