Dispari

Actually it takes 30 shards per slot for Interface or Judgement, and 45 shards per slot for Lore and Destiny. But I already had the "value of common/uncommon vs VR" discussion in another thread and showed about the worth of each level compared to its full strength. For Judgement I would tend to agree that uncommon is "enough" depending on exactly how much value you place into certain bonuses (I personally don't consider +8 max targets worth going to VR for). For the other slots I would not.

People keep throwing around words like "refuse" as if everyone who doesn't run a trial is some huge jerk. There are people with worse computers than me. And I already have to struggle to excessive degrees to even get my computer to tolerate a trial (and I still crash quite frequently). If I could do something other than a trial I would in a heartbeat, and never play them again. The sheer amount of stress and effort running the trials puts on my computer borders on unplayable. So I can guarantee there are people out there who can't even run these even if they wanted to. The wording you use dismisses these people as losers who don't deserve the new system.

Besides people who can't run the trials there are people who would rather solo, rather play with small groups of friends, rather run other content, live on a small server where people aren't really doing these trials, or simply don't enjoy the trials. You're basically insisting that numerous groups of people run content they simply don't enjoy or even have access to for one reason or another. Even if my computer ran the trials flawlessly, I wouldn't get enjoyment out of doing the same two tasks over and over for the 4-6 incarnates I have. And I'm privileged enough to call Virtue home, so finding a team there is no problem.

Obviously the best way to get the stuff is to run the trials, but that's completely the point. If you aren't in the group that can A) easily run the trials, and B) genuinely enjoys running them over and over again, you flat out lose and cannot access this new system in any reasonable time-frame with any reasonable amount of effort.

What exactly is unreasonable about expecting more than one specific mindset of players to be able to access the new system?

Uh I don't think casual players are trying to access this end-game content. Most casual players don't even have 50s. If what you're asking is why solo players or people who can't or don't want to run trials should have access to this system, it's because the devs already expressed multiple times that they're taking into consideration the solo player and the advancement methods available to them.

Are you sure about that last part? In all the testing and fiddling I did the Seeker would only ever Fort me. Not other players, not other pets (I even did this testing with an MM).

I do think Seers are the best support pet if that's what you want. None of the other pets give you a constant +DEF, and none of the other pets give you +DMG or +ToHit. Orbs give status protection if you're into that (but it's not consistent or reliable which is important for protection), and Menders have the best heal, but Seers just bring more to the table. That, and even after the support pet, the other pet that comes along can spam -rech and holds. So you get the most bang for your buck in support.

I do however think if you're confident you're capable of supporting pets with RES, DEF, heals, mezzes, debuffs, aggro management, or whatever, you should go a damage tree. The damage the core pets have far outweighs any +15% damage buff you may get. I did core WW on my widow and wouldn't trade them for anything (of course she doesn't need +DEF anyway).

And someone just said how you guys are dismissive.

What Arcanaville questioned was the comparison between running trials and running task forces. She was questioning the numbers behind how many shards you can get doing task forces compared to how many you get doing trials in the same amount of time, or the rate at which threads drop.

What cannot be questioned or dismissed is how long it would take a player to unlock things with just shards. And that is the amount that is completely ludicrous. Because I feel like you'll just ignore or dismiss it again if I don't, I'll give you the numbers again.

It takes 10,070 threads to get everything completed without components. This is something that a trial-spamming player can attain in less than a week. For the sake of simplicity I'll mostly leave influence out of this, but it should be noted that the 10,070 shards and iXP and conversions costs around four billion influence.

10,070 threads takes 2.7 years to convert into threads. It doesn't matter if you're getting the minimum required 10 shards per day, every day, or you're earning 50 of them per day (which is unrealistic for virtually all players). 10 shards per day means 10,070 / 10 = 1007 days which is 2.75 years. The 10:10 conversion rate is only once per day.

Now let's imagine you throw in a 10:5 supplement daily. You have to earn 20 shards a day to get 15 threads now. Besides increasing your inf cost, you double your shard requirements daily. Now, 10,070 / 15 = 1.8 years. It still takes around 2 years to actually complete the system which trial spammers can complete in under a week, without spending any inf (unlike you, who are up to around 5-6b inf required).

Let's just leap into total insanity here and assume you can somehow farm 50 shards per day. Converting those would be 10 at 10:10 and 40 at 10:5, for a total of 30 threads per day. 10,070 / 30 = 0.92. Or 11 months. With a completely unrealistic expectation that you would somehow spend the time to earn 50 shards per day for 11 months straight, and have the many billions it would take.

So there are your calculations. No matter which way you slice it you're looking at completely unrealistic expectations. Even at the base level you're looking at 2.7 years and billions of inf. Shortening the time involved (which would still take nearly at year even at "omgwtfbbq" levels of farming) only drastically increases the effort required.

10:10 conversion is 2,500,000 inf.

2,500,000 / 10 = 250,000 per thread

It also costs 2,500,000 inf per thread to convert it into iXP.

2,500,000 + 250,000 = 2,750,000 per shard

Ah, so we've boiled it down to "You technically don't need them so it's okay if they're completely unattainable."

The powers get better every level. Interface increases at a set rate every level. If you stop at uncommon you can't have decent proc rates on DoT or -DMG. Each one adds an extra +25% for something. Lore and Destiny grow significantly better every level (to answer your question, the difference between an uncommon and VR is a boss vs a boss + lt with passive extra damage). A Destiny at uncommon to VR is easily double the strength and value. Judgement is the only one where stopping at uncommon has arguable worth to me (even then I took mine to rare for the +radius).

I've gotten two VRs so far (one is slotted already). If you save up emp merits you can get a guaranteed VR every two weeks, along with whatever you get just randomly. And if you start getting tons of rares, you can just make a VR (it would cost 400m, but that's still significantly less than a solo player has to pay).

I guess we have different definitions of unrealistic, but I think solo content taking one thousand times longer is a little unrealistic. Even before considering people running trials don't have to spend any money, while solo players have to spend several billion. More money than one character can even hold.

Not everyone who doesn't want to do the trials is some sort of "hardcore soloist." If I had the option of not doing the trials, I would take that. I don't have fun constantly crashing or running with my settings turned down so that all I see are blurs. I'm only pushing myself through it for the rewards. Because this "not unreasonable" alternative you mention is, in fact, quite unreasonable.

I don't particularly like the Barracuda TF, so I didn't really run it to get Alpha stuff. I did an extra TF and used shards instead. It sounds to me like if you were in charge, you would insult people who don't want to run "team content" of Barracuda and give them completely absurd alternatives saying it's "not unreasonable."

VEATs are also 85%. It rarely comes up, but it's nice when it does.

So your "solution" to "Why do I have to run these trials?" is "No really, run the trials."

People who didn't want to run a Barracuda for Alpha had an alternative. If they didn't want to run that week's WST for a Notice, they wait a week for a different one. Alpha had alternatives. To suggest that the shard method for Judgement et al is any kind of alternative is laughable. Your answer to people who don't want to run a Barracuda is "Just run the Barracuda."

That's good because, just FYI, I already have 3 rares and one very rare. And that's from mostly crashing out of trials and missing a good quarter of reward windows and a ton of astrals. I haven't bought anything with emps yet, and I even took two days off.

What I earned in a few days represents over a year of work for a solo player earning shards and not doing the trials. Just my VR Interface by itself represents 8.1 months of grinding. Which I earned in a couple days. While making money rather than spending it.

Is "but you'd have to earn 10 shards a day for 2.7 years for something people spamming trials can get in less than a week" a good excuse?

You need over 10,000 shards and several billion (yes billion) inf to get everything with shards. It would take more than 2.7 years to convert that many shards.

You can however get VR in all four slots in less than one week and spend zero inf by doing the trials over and over.

The answer to the OP is yes. If you want a reasonable shot at actually obtaining the new incarnate stuff you have to grind the same two trials over and over again. Even if "grinding" means doing one a week, you will still finish years before the only alternate method.

Only having two tasks to obtain 100% of all the new stuff is a terrible decision and I don't intend to put more than one, maybe two characters through it. I'm already tired of the trials, especially since I have to run the game in intensely reduced settings so all I see are blurs, and I still crash.

It should, and they aren't that great about using heals (they're only like 140 HP anyway).