GavinRuneblade

I suspect this is a big part of it. Even on my completely gimped defender (and I say that not as a dis to defenders but because only about half of his slots have anything in them) I was able to solo the entire alpha arc in under an hour. Another 3 hours of TFs and the alpha was slotted and good to go. As I said, over 10 hours into the trials and still nothing unlocked. I will have to break down astrals to make even a common as I don't have the actual components I need and only have enough threads from drops to craft 1.

I did consume 4 of my threads for exp, but when I saw the conversion rate was about as crappy as buying prestige I decided to skip that for now.

On the other hand, once notice of the week came out I was able to run those over and over and over and over with multiple characters in one day and get each many notices built up. As I have no interest in tie r4 of anything, I broke down all notices after the first and got to my tier 3 extraordinarily fast on all of my 50s. There's no real equivalent for the thread-side of things because even the empyrean merits don't become enough to craft 2-3 components from a single breakdown. If they were worth 60-120 threads it would be the equivalent of the notice breakdown into 6-12 shards. But they're not. And astral breakdowns are a joke. You need more astrals to craft 1 component than you do shards to craft 1 component (5 astral merits compared to 4 shards).

Edit: Please note that I'm not complaining about it taking too long, nor saying that I feel it should be sped up. Just saying that Alpha was much easier.

Can you post that long-form? I'm on a Mac and thus can't use mids.

Well, I can't help but imagine it being a little something like this from the Order of the Stick. I've actually been known to refer to the combination of creepers and roots as the punchline from that comic (won't spoil it for those who might not have bumped into it before).

So true. So very very true.

Actually, I'm guessing that doesn't work since in order to swap you can't attack or be attacked for 5 minutes. However if you summon at the beginning of a mission, then swap you haven't attacked yet, so that is a possibility, but it only works once so you only have a 4.5 minute window of overlap (estimated).

The other loophole I know of is swapping builds. That works for the mission teleporter and other similar powers but you can't do that during a mission.

Actually this is partly true and partly wrong. MOBS have a damage scale of their own, like each AT does. However, powers used by MOBS are not edited when the player version is. Which is why paragon protectors still use a version of Moment of Glory that players stopped using many years ago. It's not that they use different rules, they use older versions of powers.

So who knows what version of energy melee they are using? I got no clue.

I have the e≈act opposite experience.

I do have limited playtime but I logged 7 hours on one character last night. That character now has both master badges, a small stockpile of components (but not enough of teh specifically needed items to complete a single power once the slots are open unless I breakdown astrals) 32 threads 4 empyrean merits and 20-somthing high astral merits. She's at 88% BAF experience and 60-ish lamda experience.

The new stuff seems vastly harder. I solo'd the Alpha mission, bought a Grai matter, ran one ITF one Lady Gray and had my slot filled with a common. I'm at about 9 or 10 hours total after almost two weeks and the new ones aren't unlocked yet.

WAAAAAY harder.

Hell, in a month I got 12 characters to level shift on Alphas. In two weeks I have 1 character almost unlocked on judgment slot.

My first 3 Lamda trials I got 1 empyrean merit, 1 astral merit and 8 threads. total from all of them combined. I also got 1 shard, which I think was a bug but I'm not going to complain.


My last ITF I got 11 shards plus a component (equivalent of the astral merit).

I'm right with you on a lot of these. If you want to get a headache, track down the Arcannaville explanation of defense. I know it is amazing and awesome, but just way over my head.

Defense from all sources pretty much stacks. So for a character that has powers granting defense, they only need a small amount of set bonus to reach 45%. A blaster, though, will need almost the full amount from sets since they only have the pool powers (Weave, combat jump, maneuvers, and hover).

Also there are two kinds of bonus: Positional (AoE, Melee, Ranged) and Typed (Fire, Smashing, Lethal, Cold, Psi, etc). In general positional is harder to achieve and smashing/lethal (S/L) accounts for about 70% of all attacks in the game. So when people have a build that just can't make it 45% to all positions, instead going just s/l (equal to only melee or only ranged in difficulty) gets the most bang for the buck.

the scrappers have an awesome survivability spreadsheet. But I looked at it and got a headache so bad that I blacked out. when I awoke it was deleted from my harddrive and that part of my brain that is capable of finding it was replaced with a cybernetic implant that overrides my actions and directs me to you tube videos of my little pony if I try to find it again. But I understand that it is really good. If you can figure it out.

Defense is avoiding getting hit at all.

Resistance is reducing the damage a hit will cause.

Similar end result in terms of survivability, but massively different experience in play.

So lets say you have 500 hit points. And there are 5 enemies that are attacking you. Each hit will cause 100 damage and they attack every 5 seconds.

First off, 50% of all enemy attacks miss if you have no defense at all. So at a base, before any of your own stats come into play, you are looking at 250 damage every 5 seconds, and so you are dead in 10 seconds if you have no defense and no resistance.

Let's say you have 25% defense. Instead of 50% of attacks missing, 75% will. Now you're only taking 125 damage per 5 seconds and you'll last 20 seconds.

If you have 25% resistance those hits only land for 75 damage, not 100. But you still get hit 50% of the time. So you're taking 187 damage per 5 seconds. Better than nothing, but not as good as 25% defense.

Some people say 2 points of resistance=1 point of defense. that's total BS, but it is true defense mitigates more damage than resistance in general. There are subtle factors at play:

nearly every lethal attack in the game debuffs defense, so it can be taken away. Fight the romans to see this in action brutally. All mez powers (holds, sleeps, stuns) have to hit to mez you, so a resist-based character has no protection against them and a high defense character is nearly immune. When a defense character gets hit, they get hit for the full damage, sometimes resulting in an insta-kill. resitance-based characters usually have time to pop a heal of some kind. This comes up a lot with toxic and psi damage. Some attacks are not positional and still hit for a lot of damage. A pure defense build is in a lot of trouble against those.

So the ideal is layered protection blending both of them at once. This is one of the secrets to how many tankers are so awesomely survivable.

What's in issue 21? Incarnate content. Issue 22? Incarnate content. Issue 23? Incarnate content. Issue 24? Probably more incarnate content. Issue 25? Not sure, but I'm guessing more incarnate content. Issue 26? It's not that much of a stretch to guess more incarnate content.

Two or three YEARS from now, when they're done with the unlocks and all tiers of incarnate powers are had by most, maybe this will be a relevant question. But seriously, if you're worried about a hypothetical event two years or more away consider taking meds. Or stopping the meds you're on. One or the other ought to help.

Especially since the devs have spoken about solo ways to get incarnate credit.

Hell, if you're insane and lazy you can grind it all on shards from the wall in cimerora or rikti warzone borea missions. And you can do that right now.

#1 I'll call your bluff on that. They will see an insignificant drop at most. Even you will stop, then want the shinies and start up again.

#2 I didn't say it was the good solution, I said it was the easy solution.

explosive fires less than targetted aoe will. The best is impeded swiftness. Then the three targetted aoes (Purple, Posi, PvP) but putting the chance for knockdown in creepers is really not so useful so you're left with Posi and gladiator for top damage.

Then end/rech/slow are not a bad idea. I just know that the second Acc made a very noticeable difference in performance. I don't have a whole lot of acc from set bonuses.

Unless this has changed in the last two weeks it's never helped for me. I've been at the steel canyon Wents and had my mission teleport canceled by a teammate down in the University courtyard.

The easy solution is the same one that the big fantasy game implemented to their queue system a while back when premade's in PvP instances were a severe problem:
Ignore all existing groups, force the queue to be used.

Sure you could get a premade of 40 people and queue up for an event. And odds were a bit more than half of you would be in the same instance. Assuming you all hit the join button in a short enough period of time to be lined up in order.

The other thing is that it NEEDS to queue up beyond the cap for the instance before triggering and take the first people who agree to enter.

The other change I recommend would be to make the "join trial in progress" default, so those who don't want to need to unclick it. This will help backfll trials when people bail.