Bright

I'm... not pleased.

I retweeted as requested the second time they did it Friday afternoon, within a minute or two of the tweet going up. Well before the five minute deadline...

I have them followed...
Direct messages are enabled on my account...

... And yet somehow I still managed not to get a code from them. <_<

How many characters have you fully incarnated?
By your standards? (ie: Across-the-board T4s in all slots) Only three, since I don't chase T4s specificly. Even though many more of my characters have more than enough salvage to have built the things, I often choose to keep their Hybrid and Lore at T3 no matter how many of the others are T4.

How many characters have you incarnated?
18 of my 28 level 50 characters are +3 and have *at least* T3s in all six of their Incarnate slots. Many have a few T4s.

Five more are +3 with at least all T3s in the pre-Hybrid slots, but don't (and likely WON'T-) have Hybrid unlocked any time soon. They're semi-active characters that I just didn't see a point in incarnating any farther.

Many of the characters in both the with-Hybrid and without- groups actually have multiple picks at the T3 or T4 level for various powers. (Having several Lores, Destinies, Alphas and Hybrids are all common for my crew-).

How many characters have you rolled with the intention of making them Full Incarnates?
I eventually plan to Incarnate all of my active characters. I have about two dozen sub-50s at this point, most of whom will end up Incarnates to some degree. I also have two 50s that I haven't started yet, since I haven't completed their final enhancement builds.

Do you have any characters that you, for whatever reason, are not going to make Incarnates?
Yes. I have three completely retired 50s that I have no plans to Incarnate. I don't play them, and don't see that situation changing any time soon... It's a far better use of my time to work on the ones I *do* play.

I also have a "perma Praetorian"... a tank named Song of Autumn... who'll never leave. She's 27 currently and in First Ward. Once I'm done there, I'll move on to Night Ward. Originally, I just made Autumn as sort-of a "helper toon" to run with other people's lowbie gold-side characters. I've never intended her to go Primal herself.

It'll be interesting to see what level she ends up. She may eventually make it to 50 just running other people's missions with them... or she may not, since no one seems very interested in starting in Praetoria these days (As you say, no DfBs there... <_<). I suspect that the devs are unlikely at this point to do much more with it zone-wise, so we're more or less on our own.

I just look at is as one of my more established people coming along to help out "the next generation", or to be a back-up for other heroes who aren't quite as experienced as they are. They don't use their full range of abilities because it's not their show. They're only in that issue as supporting cast... and they know it.

I posted this awhile back in a thread on the Liberty forum, and it pre-dates getting my new (and much, much larger-) monitor, but it'll cover the gist of it...

This is my "typical" UI, more or less. Kestrel has an extra third tray center-bottom to accommodate her ludicrous Lore pet collection... most only have two trays there... But otherwise this layout is what I've found works best for me on most characters.



With my current monitor, which is both larger and set to a higher resolution than this older one was, I have much more screen real-estate to work with, which has spread out my UI elements considerably. It's a definite improvement. I still have them set to 70% size and 15% opacity, but they're much less intrusive now.

ETA:
Here we go... This is what getting a new monitor did for my UI. XD



Like I said, much improved and much less intrusive, even though I kept the elements the same size under the control set-up.

I actually dusted off my never-used Twitter account to try for one this afternoon... Which I'll probably give to FlyingCodeMonkey, if I was quick enough to get in on it. (I like auras, but when we can only have one code? Yeah... His account gets dibs. Mine can wait.)

My opinion of Twitter itself is unchanged. I still think it's a silly waste of time... But at least our devs were kind enough to make their distribution plan much fairer for the dots.

I tend to build new characters in pairs, and often name them with a similar basic theme. (Pamina and Tamino being named after characters from the same opera, for instance, or Summer Moon and Winter Sky's seasonal references, or Shade in Shadow and Mist in Moonlight's three-part poetic names...)

My water blaster happened to come along at the same time as my human-form Peacebringer, and I decided to go for Egyptian names for them... My PB is Aken. The water blaster is Satis, named for the goddess of the Nile floods.

The only thing more annoying than Twitter is using it to hand out single-use codes for costume bits. <_<

I've been in an aggressive mood lately... so, Water/Energy blaster for me.

Given what passes for "water" to a Shard native, though, everyone's going to look at the color of her effects and assume she robbed some unsuspecting blood-bank.

A spikey Rularuu bird-thing named after the goddess of the Nile floods shall attend...But everyone's going to think "Euwh! Messy!" when they see her blasts. <_<

(What passes for "water" to a Shard native doesn't look much like good old H2O, after all. )

+1 to the unicorn horn...

(My Robot Unicorn Attack inspired brute will forever be incomplete without one. )

/em fireworks

Happy 4th!

I miss the foot-stomp animation, too... It was just so delightfully smashy.

As someone who has one of those pure-healer type Empaths (Karasu actually has three of her Rad attacks, FWIW. With one slot each.), I take some offense at having them completely discounted. I take mine on MSRs and iTrials, and in those situations I promise you there's no "sitting back and rocking the aura". Between healing, buffing and having to chase down crazy scrappers who like to mistake themselves for tanks to throw out veng and a rez, there's just not time to lolly-gag around like that. I'm typically busier than the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger just keeping everyone alive. Even if I had the best attacks in the game, I doubt I'd have a second to spare to use them with a typical league... So, yeah. 'Careful with the broad brush there, Bill. Just because some of us are specialists doesn't mean we're dead weight.

That aside, what I find fun echoes a lot of what others have already posted.

I love how much of the game is solo/duo-friendly.
I like small teams and huge leagues.
I like flying around the Shadow Shard just looking at things.
I enjoy throwing my favorite melee toon into the middle of a huge horde of goons and just laying waste to them...
... with extra points if they happen to have one of their friends jumping in there with them.
Fidddling with costumes is great fun.
Trying out new power-sets and combinations on a pile of alts is grand.
Being able to move faster than a slow jog is priceless (You have no IDEA how much I miss Sprint and Fly when I'm over in Aion-)
And the badgers and "usual suspects" on Liberty and Union make me grin just about every time I log on. (Our comminuty is also something I miss a lot in my "other MMO".)

What don't I like?

Regular 6-8 member teams,
Every single TF turning into a "speed run".
Having to grind out Magi endlessly to get Hybrid opned on about two dozen of my crew.
"Market PvP"
Not being able to cross Atlas on a lowbie without getting spammed by blind invites and DfBs begging for members. <_<

The Freak tank has always been one of my Halloween favorites, so I was glad to see him show up in the shop... and on sale even!

So, yeah...
Thanks for the new hat, guys.

And Tao Tiger's goofy new "disguise protocol".