Flux_Vector

Alright, I've had some time to breathe a bit, and I want to explain some things.

First, I've never kicked someone from a pre-made league, or been part of a pre-made league that kicked someone out, solely for the reason of their having been added by the LFG tool as an outsider. I have been on pre-made leagues where people were kicked out or asked to leave (and the few who did, all did without complaint) if they weren't willing to run the trial in accord with the premade's strategy.

I actually thought the fact that we couldn't lock leagues from adding more people at the outset, was either a bug or something the developers didn't have time for, and were intending to fix or add later. I was actually shocked, like, pick my jaw up off the floor shocked, to see posters who are relative 'insiders' posting in a manner that strongly implies they know the developers' intentions and that those intentions for the system are that it not have that functionality.

And that's why I put the system at fault and call its design stupid. Because it is. It causes more problems than it solves. It makes the game less fun. And fails the 'five year old pointing out the problems with it' test from the Evil Overlord list with how little understanding of human nature and MMORPG gamer nature that it exhibits.

Okay, so I'm still a little shocked that this is intentional. It's blindingly obvious to me that this isn't pleasant for either the pre-made league or the pick-up player joining it, for the system to force them together. It makes both parties' experiences less fun - regardless of if the PUG player is kicked or not.

People are going to want to play with their friends. They're going to want to speak freely and discuss things unrelated to the game or that are personal, and not worry about who's listening. They might want to be able to say things that are politically incorrect or tell off-color jokes. They will have inside jokes and nicknames for each other. But someone outside being added to that is going to have a chilling effect on all of that camaraderie and socialization because the people will become self-conscious about it. Most people aren't going to want to kick outsiders by default or out of hand, and it's really unpleasant to. But the pre-made isn't given a choice to just not invite someone they don't know to their party. They're left with a choice of unwantedly teaming with someone they don't know and might not be comfortable around, or of "being mean" and kicking them. Someone they didn't want and wouldn't have given permission to if they had a choice, was giving out party invitations for them - the system.

I'm pretty sure most of the time the outsiders don't want to join either, if their joining is going to be intrusive. Just like I don't want someone busting in on my pre-made league, I don't want to bust in on someone else's where I'd be unwelcome. It's pretty awkward being an uninvited guest even if the people at the party don't toss you out. They've got inside jokes and nicknames and social conventions you aren't a part of, and you're liable to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome even if you're tolerated. It's less fun. Further, thanks to our quintuple (or sextuple) secret rewards system, you're going to have be looking over your shoulder to make sure nobody accuses you of 'cheating' by tagging or powerspamming to try and inflate your reward count, because even if you aren't, this pre-made group is going to just kick you first and ask questions never.

Nobody's best interest is being served by this design. Especially not the developers'. Putting their customers into 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situations like this - where it's less fun for everyone if you DO kick, and less fun for everyone if you DON'T kick - just plain makes the trials less fun.

I can't imagine that's the intent. And if it is, then bearing in mind this is a game they want people paying a monthly subscription for and bringing their friends into by positive word of mouth and so on... if it is, then it's stupid.

Who are only kicking people forced into the league against their wishes in the first place.

Because we made the effort to organize our friends into a group. If we're making it a democracy by saying the PUGger is equal to the leader, why don't we have the league vote instead?

Other MMOs that have 'random matchmaking teaming systems' have vote-kicking as a method.

In the end, all of the animosity could be solved if people weren't being foisted on teams who didn't want them. If that wasn't anticipated ahead of time it's a shocking oversight. If as several posters have implied it was intentionally designed this way, then it was stupid, and that decision is directly responsible for every kicked PUGger.

And I will not pull that punch or use another word for it, I'm calling it like I see it. And unlike some posters, I already don't have early-access secret pre-beta invitations or backroom channels to the developers, I have no fear of losing their good graces or concern for defending them and no motive to jump on grenades like this one for their sakes.

Your use of 'instanced' is semantics. Those zones aren't created specifically for one team or league to operate in, solo players can access them and do so.

And no, it's the developers' fault when players evolve otherwise new and possibly anti-social/deviant/dysfunctional responses to their intentional design decisions. It's part of the developers' jobs to anticipate how players will react to these things, and it's hardly unexpected that people are going to want to simply team with their friends.

As someone up-thread posted: It's not asshattery or selfish or anything else, to just want to play your friends.

You can't "lock" the hive because it isn't instanced.

The trials are instanced. There's no reason not to allow them to be lockable. I have no idea what hamidon raids (or for that matter, mothership raids) not being "lockable" has to do with the LFG tool not being lockable.

It the devs truly don't want us to be able to play with our friends and only our friends in the incarnate system, then it's their fault when we kick people out for being added against our will in a trial group we formed and organized ourselves ahead of time. It's not our fault that we're doing the best we can despite their, frankly, idiotic design decision here.

I had no idea that locked leagues weren't an intended feature. It flabbergasts me to think that any designer with two brain cells to rub together wouldn't realize people don't want to have teammates forced on them under any circumstances. Edit - we put up with it in non-instanced raids because we have to and we recognize everyone's right to be in public areas. Instanced areas by definition aren't public ones. We have an expectation of selectivity in who we play with in them.

Those leaders are probably insisting that everyone stays together because of the sextuple-secret probation 'activity system' for rewards. Sneaking off to attack other spawns may be a good way to get booted from the league for 'cheating' in the form of 'tagging' in this case - heading away to aoe another spawn is an early (and disproven, but still popular) 'exploit' of the rewards system. Because said rewards system is cloaked in secrecy, nobody really knows how it works, and so rumors like 'tagging' run rampant, and people are starting to move on to social punishments for behaviors that look like tagging, even though numerous characters have valid play strategies (like warshades) that do something similar to it.

People take rewards very seriously in MMORPGs.

I call the system "sextuple secret probation" because it doesn't tell us we're being measured, it doesn't tell us what we're being measured on, it doesn't tell us how we're doing at the time, it doesn't tell us how well we need to do, it doesn't tell us what we need to do, and we might not be told when or how it's changed.

It's created exactly this kind of uncertainty and hostile social atmosphere around the trials and leagues as described; I would in fact even be wary about attacking the shipments without permission or instructions to, because generally speaking 'kangaroo courts' where you have no chance of defending yourself from even a baseless accusation are going to be the rule rather than the exception.

Check out this thread in the dev corner for the detalis, and add your feedback on it.

I don't remember fold space. Did it make it out of beta?

And yeah, I remember telekinesis's old ability.

And again, I'm not saying that the devs won't change GEF. Just that they're a lot more likely to 'change' it than 'replace' it considering they've come out and said they will basically do everything possible not to replace powers, and the only recent example came (energize) with the lead powers dev at the time writing up a piece to justify how and why they did it.

You can get your hopes up if you want; I won't.

Being a leader probably has nothing to do with it.

However since the reward system measures 'participation' highly based on 'activity' (ie, number of buttons pressed per time period), widows being fast-attacking single target-oriented characters will make them appear to be very highly active to the system.

That system isn't supposed to improve your rewards other than qualifying you for a random roll in the first place... however, my widow has also gotten the best reward rate of any character played by myself or any of my personal friends who've shared their incarnate drop situations with me, with no attempts to intentionally manipulate the system. We could, of course, just both be lucky. And we probably are. In under 10 days I got my widow to 4 very rares... making me the only person in my immediate circle of close friends to have more than 2.

But I have a lot of suspicions about the quintuple-secret-probation system they've got running for trial rewards. Unless and until they make it highly transparent I'll probably stay suspicious of it.

Healing is the way to go for psi damage. You can't really get enough psi resist from IOs to make them worth the slots, especially because psi damage is not that scary. Your epic pool's a choice. I like soul mastery a lot for brutes, but if you want to go full out for damage, fire may be your cup of tea. But DM/fire has a plethora of damage already. DN's added survivability may be more what you need. Trust your instincts.

It's going to come down to your playstyle and what you're using the character for.

If you want to be a meatshield, a farmer, primarily solo, or don't care about variable offensive performance - go brute. Brutes have more aggro generation tools and slightly to significantly better survivability depending on how, if, and when you use resistance buffing (including orange insps and unstoppable). In high-fury situations (or if you don't care about always being in a high-fury situation or not), and in the absence of multiple fulcrum shifts, you will at least roughly match a scrapper's damage, all other factors being equal.

If you want to be a striker, team with a kin regularly, just plain team regularly, or have stable, predictable offensive output, go scrapper. Scrappers have lower caps on survivability and higher caps on damage, and don't have variable damage based on situation.

Basically I consider the two builds user's choice.

I think it's an unfortunate design choice, because it's disproportionately effective against defense-based characters with no alternate mitigation. Some characters rely entirely on being missed at a certain rate for survivability. The fact that some NPCs have close-to-autohitting powers - some of which actually debuff defense - is taking 'def busting' to a very unpleasant extreme.

Because the devs haven't actually removed and replaced a power from any set since issue 1 (IIRC, it was dark miasma's Chill of the Night, which several NPCs still get). It's a design move they have consistently resisted considering seriously. Changing it to inherent and replacing it in the set would go against that.

Adding useful buffs to it and keeping it is more likely to be their approach of choice.

In my experience patron pool powers are unilaterally not worth it for melee widows of either branch. The redraw they cause leaves them a small DPS increase at best (shatter armor), to a dps loss at worst (any attack that's not shatter armor). It's just not worth the redraw period; you can improve your damage about as much as shatter armor, and buff your teammates, with leadership pool assault instead.

The patron attacks are very useful to ranged fortunatas however, who haven't got redraw to contend with. Gloom is very nice single-target damage.

Crabs can take a patron AOE or immob if they don't want to draw their gun for WAWG or extra AOE attacks, and a lot of crabs like having the 6th pet from the patron pool too.

I don't know enough about banes to really comment.

As this is another thread and another point/argument, I'm not just comparing PBs to WSes, but to the 'game in general'

Particularly, I think more damage at bigger rech/end cost' is particularly attractive because in the context of IO'd endgame builds, longer recharge and higher end cost can readily be compensated for, whereas low base damage is rather harder to. And animation times can't be compensated for by players at all, which is where incandescent strike loses a bit of its shine.

Secondarily... I'm not assuming that warshades won't have their pets (and eclipse or stygian circle) toned down as opposed to PBs being brought up. Indeed there may be some combination of the two. I'd rather PBs be brought up, but history tells me the nerf bat swings faster and harder than the buff tennis racket. Or whatever sports equipment they use for buffing. As a result I wouldn't want to suggest a PB fix that couldn't at least be considered for porting to warshades, whose relatively powerful abilities are covering for them having what I consider to be the same underlying problem.

The status protection thing is really not my point on dwarf, though - I'm saying dwarf deserves modernized survivability (ie, debuff resistances or avoidance) and improved aggro control because it no longer has a very strong survivability or status protection (clarion) advantage over the other two forms - notably for PBs, essence boost and reform essence basically give you bonus hitpoints and a powerful selfheal without having to shoot your damage output and overall utility in the foot to get it.

I don't entirely think cosmic balance necessarily 'needs' to do anything solo. Keep in mind kheldians have .85 and .9 at mods for melee/ranged. These aren't 'ultra high' values, no, but they only slightly behind dominators - and dominators with only about 10% more at mod, have become one of the premiere DPS ATs in the game (and even without certain bugs and unusual behaviors helping them, they'd remain quite competitive with scrappers).

I think the reason peacebringers aren't getting very good damage in human form is related to their powers... and having the wrong design thereof. PBs basically have 3.5 tier 1 attacks (gleaming bolt, glinting eye, and gleaming blast is more tier 1.5 than tier 2), no tier 2 attacks at all, one tier 3 attack (radiant strike) and a tier 4 attack (incandescent strike) that's hampered by its long animation speed. Out of the 5 single-target attacks available, only one* - radiant strike - is especially good at base. (* - gleaming bolt can be procspammed into something decent, but you lack other highspeed attacks to chain it with to make a true 'buzzsaw' either)

And dominator assault sets are the closest thing in attack set design to khelds, mixing melee and ranged attacks into one set. They even get about the same number of single-target attacks (usually, 5 if we discount snipes for sucking), but the difference is dominators broadly get better attacks. They get total focus, bone smasher, and power burst. They get blaze and incinerate and fire blast. Seismic smash, and both mallets. Etcetera etcetera.

While making PBs directly do more damage when solo from a base cosmic balance value would naturally increase their dps a bit, I think it would be treating the symptom, not what appears to be the underlying problem. In fact warshades have this same problem - extracted essence just covers for it, and the way warshades are much stronger shape-shifters helps cover for it too. The attack stats themselves need looking at, IMO, and maybe even need to get the dominator fix treatment of receiving significantly higher basic damage with appropriately bigger recharge and end costs.

Mini-rage for buildup would help too, giving it the potential to be a two-pronged fix that incorporates that change - remember part of the point of the mini-rage idea is to help nova and dwarf, not just human, output.

I really doubt photon seekers will ever be made into real pets. They are designed like a pet-delivered AOE. Even though they take pet damage sets, they act like seeker drones that do damage, and seeker drones actually don't take pet damage sets. I think it's more fitting their actual operation to treat them like an attack, ask for ranged damage sets to be added to their acceptable set lists, and balance them accordingly. This by itself won't really bring PB damage up into warshade territory unless they get turned into something with stats close to those of hail of bullets, though. I mean, if they get made into real pets, that'd be awesome. I just think that also is breaking the cottage rule by fundamentally changing what the power does (ie, making the seekers stick around instead of self-destructing).

On dwarf form...

I agree that the 'point' of dwarf form should be to act as a meatshield for groups. I think that out of the standard options for this - tanker, brute, scrapper, or dwarf - dwarf comes out behind crab spider. Modern survivability requires much more than damage resistance and self-repair, it requires strong debuff resistance and/or attack avoidance to prevent debuff stacking. At -45% def, you are avoidance-floored, and I regularly see my own meatshield character without strong def debuff resist and only moderate avoidance (an SS/WP brute) hitting -100% or worse defense values ingame. I can't imagine dwarves do any better.

Since human form can cap off its resists from cosmic balance already, and warshades have eclipse anyway... I can understand why Castle thought dwarf form needed to be 'the' mez protection, but I said at the time and will say again: he was fixing the wrong problem the wrong way there. Clarion Destiny tramples that rationale anyway.

The presence of a taunt aura would be a tremendous help to dwarf forms even if it didn't do anything to improve survivability at all, simply because dwarves have limited attack chains and holding aggro is going to be a huge struggle for them in a modern, high-output team. Other meatshields mostly don't need to work very hard to keep aggro, in fact, most of them have a harder time not having aggro.

Sadly I think group energy flight won't be removed, that's too drastic of a move, but it could be made into a useful buff. I actually hope it doesn't stay 'flight' though, cause then a lot of characters who have to be on the ground - not near it, but on it - to use major powers, won't want it.

Very-rare Destiny buffs are perma. At rare and uncommon they have a 50% to 66% uptime depending on which power you choose.

I don't think incarnates help PBs nearly as much as they do other ATs. A house built on a shaky foundation is still prone to falling over under stress. This goes especially for human PBs, IMO, since I think the optimal PB build is human/nova. So, consider that a bit of caveat emptor. PBs are pretty, they can be fun, but you may end up with some buyer's remorse in the endgame.

I'm a little confused about your build's strategy. You're taking weave and slotting defense powers with common IOs, then skipping the opportunity to 6-slot attack powers to receive defense bonuses that would stack with weave and yield better overall build results. You've got 5 slots in buildup for a 5% recharge bonus you could have gotten for swapping one of your st melee attack sets for crushing impact, and you're slotting heavily for status resistance - even though it's a weak benefit and was mildly nerfed in i13 - but you say you are aiming for the incarnate endgame where the Clarion Destiny would make those IOs obsolete.

Essence boost, reform essence, and photon seekers are critically under-slotted. The first two are your best defensive powers, and you should aim to have essence boost up permanently. Light form is badly over-slotted. I would switch glinting eye for gleaming bolt: they have the same DPA, but loaded with procs gleaming bolt's quick cycle time makes it a viable ranged attack spamming option. I'd take glowing touch, especially if its improved range is here to stay. I'm not a fan of luminous detonation, the knockback isn't justified by sufficient damage. You can easily take slots away from quantum and thermal shield to help powers elsewhere, the damage types they defend against compose about 30% of the total damage encountered in the game -combined-, and your passive level 1 defense offers energy/negative resistance already.

I'd recommend taking superspeed. It is very tactically valuable for a human PB.