Grey Pilgrim

Ummm, no. Not at all. Nice little bait and switch with the arguments as well.

When people say that BotZ was slot efficient, they mean it took very few slots to get those bonuses. Overall, we only get so many slots, so if you can accomplish a goal for a power in fewer slots, you have more to place later and in other powers. That's what was great about BotZ (and still will be, after the change, just to a lesser extent). You can get a decent bonus for a defense build, with very little use of slots.

That is what people mean when they say it was slot efficient. It saves more slots to put in other powers and to make sure they are slotted well for damage, accuracy, etc., not to mention their set bonus goals for those powers.

And for all those sets you looked at, there are pros and cons to using them: you are giving up using other sets for those defense bonuses. Thunderstrike doesn't offer any recharge, regen, +hp, or health bonuses. If you slot Kinetic Combat, you had better slot it some more if you're going to use that power. KC hardly increases your accuracy, is short of the ED cap for damage by a fair amount, and could use more endurance reduc and recharge. The major drawback to Gaussian's is that you don't get that much recharge from the set, which you usually want in things like Build Up, etc.

In short, those sets do have balancing points, and their bonuses require more investment than BotZ does. That's the biggest reason for the change.

Good! Fire/Fire rawks!

Sorry I wasn't around for long. I enjoy the TT events, but they always start about halfway through my playtime on weeknights, so I only get an hour or so in. Not sure if I'll be able to make it next week or not, but hopefully.

Those late game AVs on all Tanker Teams are tough. I was on an all Tanker LGTF a few weeks ago, and the Honoree proved to be rather difficult: we had to break out a lot of pets to bring him down (he'd regen just enough while US was up that we couldn't drop him completely... until we got out enough pets, heh).

Though it probably would have been easier if everyone was in the 30+ range, too.

Heh, I was just overly optimistic in how long Tarikoss takes. For some reason, I was thinking 30 minutes was entirely reasonable... which is obviously really fast for a Tarikoss.

We did spend five minutes on Deathsurge, but that was plenty quick. I think I've mentioned before that the first Tarikoss run I was on was with a PUG... and it took us about 90 minutes to not be able to beat Bat'zul at the end (didn't have a full team, and some of my teammates were... not so good).

So yeah... 45 minutes is not so bad. The issue would be with what I was thinking, not what we did for time.

Hmmmm. Not so impressed by this.

Hmmmm, didn't see this earlier. I don't know that this is a fair characterization.

PvP before the I13 changes was pretty niche for CoX, and there was an overall decision to revamp it (so not just Castle's). Nor did all of his ideas for it get put into play: the post I saw on the subject showed he had more changes proposed, and rather wished those had been put in place as well.

At any rate, that setup is quite different from changing how defense caps work in PvE. Castle would not be able to make that decision on his own, and his language on it suggests that changing it is somewhat akin to the cottage rule: the devs don't like changing long-standing systems and how they work dramatically. Unless there is something so broken with the system that it needs a major revamp (like PvP).

That suggests to me that while he is not perfectly happy with the results of the same def cap for all, he is going to work under those limitations. BotZ as it existed did not work well under those limitations.

...

Dude, I think he was joking around in that post. My "annoyed" reply back was tongue in cheek as well. I was going to tell him that we all got his joke, but I guess not?

Anyway, Voo and for others interested, Sarrate started a discussion about revamping the respec system in the powers and archetypes forum. It's worth checking out. A lot of the issues stem from making it more user friendly and more helpful, but not exploitable by marketeers and storage hogs.

I'm keen on I17 too, Ryxx. I'd love a few more story arcs to play through, and the ability to send influence and recipe between my characters better. I keep wanting to do that now, and have to remind myself that I can't yet, heh.

That change will make it a lot easier for Grey Pilgrim to get his crafting badge. Now my characters can send him influence and recipes, and he'll craft it for him. He was able to do some of that before, but it was trickier when Grey Pilgrim doesn't have much cash from time to time.

I pointed this out in Castle's thread, but all the angst is probably a strong sign to the devs that this needed to be done. You would think this change was on par with the changes to Energy Melee or ED, the way people are talking.

I'm glad they're taking a look at the respec system, though. That's the biggest problem with this change is that it is hard do make little tweaks to your character or adjust to changes in the game. Even if the change doesn't come for awhile, it's better than nothing happening (which is what sounds like was the setup before this whole snafu).

I do hope it is added encouragement for the devs to look at things more in beta or when something is recent. Things sitting around for a long time then getting changed leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. I've heard a few too many sarcastic people saying that Dual Pistols will no doubt be buffed in a couple years when the devs bother to look at it again.

I am excited about GR and I19, but I kind of want them to get here so the devs can pay attention to other parts of the game. Castle's attention has been elsewhere noticeably for the past year or so, for instance (before that, a lot of the ATs and powersets were getting looks and tweaks).

From their phrasing, it sounds like any character will be able to do this. However, it won't be like levels 51-60. It'll be more like you are level 50 + however many incarnate levels you have.

Castle did post somewhere else in the past month or so that there would be some hard choices involved with the incarnate system. I don't know if that means you would have to be entirely hero or villain (as opposed to being a vigilante or a rogue), if those incarnate levels would take a lot of time to do, or what.

So most of that was speculation... we just don't know much at this point. We'll probably have a clearer picture once Going Rogue goes to Open Beta, more once we play through the first incarnate level with GR, but it probably won't be 100% revealed until we know everything about I19.

Haven't played much Street Fighter since the second game, but I was imagining energy punches or balls of light being thrown around, since that's kind of the look for a lot of the attacks in Street Fighter (also a lot of dashing around... thought they might have a slight Shield Charge look to some of them). They all feel pretty physical, too. The video shows a lot of hand-waving stuff that looks like Tai-Chi, followed by kinetics style effects, which were not as visceral as I was picturing.

Anyway, we didn't see too much, so I'll withhold judgment for now. Hard to appreciate it from one shaky cam video, heh.