GuyPerfect

The Incarnate Trials represent a narrow play style wedged into a broad player base. While they's nothing wrong with them as a mechanic (the pebble is a different matter entirely), they don't work well in practice because people don't always value things the way the Incarnate dev team does. What the devs think of when they think of Incarnate Trials are increasingly challenging tasks built on the ones that came before them. BAF and Lambda seem to be geared towards getting your Incarnate Shifts, and it seems to be like a stepladder going from Keyes (54) to Underground (54 +1) to TPN/MoM (54 +2). You can't even think about going after TPN if you don't have the power to take on Keyes, for instance, so it's a bit of progression with some storyline mixed in. You do lower trials, you become more powerful, you do higher trials, you get all strong and stuff. Everyone wins.

From that narrow, restricted point of view, the Incarnate Trials make a lot of sense.

The reason this doesn't work well in practice is because in the grand scheme of things, the percentage of players actually interested in a progressively difficult post-50 "endgame" is extremely low; perhaps just the bottom ten percent across all level 50 players (which themselves are the minority across all players). There's a couple reasons for this. First and foremost, Incarnate Abilities are for Incarnate Trials. Incarnate Trials are for Incarnate Abilities. They require each other, and the rest of the game doesn't. Sure, the Abilities are handy in upper-level missions, but we never needed them. Not even for Master of Lord Recluse's Strike Force done the real way (don't need no permadom). But if you want to get any real worth out of the Incarnate system, you'll be caught in a feedback loop that just tries to hold itself up by the bootstraps.

Secondly, the progressively difficult Incarnate Trials are... well, progressively difficult, and that's about as contrary to the concepts of "casual" and "accessible" as you can get. The devs have gone on record stating they want to make the Incarnate Trials accessible, but the fact remains that it says right there in their design specifications that they are specifically not meant to be accessible. This isn't a problem in and of itself, but it certainly plays a huge role in who is willing to participate in which Trials. At the end of the day, people want to have some fun and get some shinies to show for it. Trying to dig to China with their ears isn't as much of a fulfilling way to spend their time, so the more aggressive Trials aren't run as much.

Thirdly, something that can't be said enough: raids aren't fun when you have to do them multiple times. The Incarnate Trials are the only viable path to the Incarnate Abilities, and they quite simply are not fun. They're tedious, they're repetitive, and after the first time, they're really not all that interesting. It's not unlike grinding newspaper missions in Grandville from level 45 to 50. Defeat Anti-Matter and Guards. Kick the Warworks out of the BAF. Steal the Molecular Acids from the IDF. Over and over.

What do we do to fix Incarnates? One easy step: take the emphasis off of the Incarnate Trials. They should remain the most rewarding route to Incarnate Abilities according to their difficulty, but they should not be treated as the primary source of power. Let me repeat that so it sinks in: the Incarnate Trials should not be treated as the primary path to Incarnate Abilities. They should be regarded on equal footing with the upcoming Dark Astoria content, and additional non-Trial Incarnate content should come along in the future.

This can be done well, or it can be poorly. The correct way is for the non-Trial content to be a viable means for obtaining all varieties of Incarnate Ability, even the Very Rares. Simply making it possible isn't sufficient for making it viable: already it's "possible" to grind enough Shards solo to turn into Very Rare Thread Components, but that's only true on a technicality. The thing that the devs shouldn't even think of doing is making Dark Astoria and other related non-Trial Incarnate content so unrewarding that you may as well do Trials anyway.

Re: Echo: Galaxy City

This zone was implemented as a functional gateway to the Exploration Badges and History plaques. It was included in Ouroboros as a sort of catch-all time travel mechanism. Remember, the Pillar can send you back in time, be it missions, the Rogue Isles in the 1970s or just Galaxy City before it underwent some remodeling.


Re: Incarnate content sequence

I've always felt that things should be restricted in order a bit, since they do build off of one another. Something like this:

Apex: No restrictions
BAF and Lambda: No restrictions (see note below)
Tin Mage: Requires completion of Apex
Keyes: Requires completion of BAF, Lambda and Tin Mage
Underground: Requires completion of Keyes
TPN and MoM: Require completion of Underground

For BAF and Lambda, contextually, they would require completion of Tin Mage. However, since they're a functional path to Alpha abilities required for Apex and Tin Mage, doing them out of order would be more beneficial than otherwise. Don't want to force people to grind Shards first just to run Incarnate Trials

One of my characters acquired a BOSS_NAME mission in Peregrine. The door is one of the boats at the docks, the interior is a Council base, and it's populated with Minions of Igneous (which cap at like level 14).

We should come up with some lore for BOSS_NAME. He's like the MissingNo. of City of Heroes.

This is how it works:

* Dual Pistols, Demon Summoning, Kinetic Melee and Electric Control, which are not available by default to new accounts, were officially features of Going Rogue.
* Time Manipulation was officially a feature of Issue 21 and is available to all VIPs.
* Dark Control, Darkness Assault and Darkness Affinity are officially features of Issue 22 and will be available to all VIPs.
* Beam Rifle, Street Justice, Titan Weapons and Staff Fighting are officially features of the Paragon Market, and must be purchased even by VIPs.
* All Power Set Proliferations were features of their respective Issues and did not require purchase by anyone.

Now, I see where the OP is coming from, saying "Hey now, why are all the melee sets in the Paragon Market?" But it's important to remember that the melee classes have had it kind of sweet in the long run anyway; there are not only more melee/defensive sets than any other variety, but the melee Archetypes have received more "new" sets over the years.

Just in the time since I've been playing (Issue 6) up through Going Rogue, the following Power Sets were added (in chronological order):

* Thugs (not melee; Issue 7)
* Electric Melee (melee; Issue 7)
* Electric Armor (melee; Issue 7)
* Dual Blades (melee; Issue 11)
* Willpower (melee; Issue 11)
* Shield Defense (melee; Issue 13)
* Pain Domination (not melee; Issue 13)

A pattern... Anyone else see it? As far as new Power Sets go, there has been a disproportional favoring of the melee classes, and it seems that the Paragon Market is favoring them as well, albeit behind a cash curtain. They've already had their day in the sun, as far as I'm concerned.

For a while there, I was worried all new Power Sets were going to be Market-only, but they put those fears to rest with the Controller and Dominator Dark sets. I doubt we'll never see another VIP-free melee set, but for now I wouldn't go so far as to say that we need another VIP-free melee set.

Last I heard, procs were not working in this power. Was that fixed at some point?

All encounters versus the Praetorian Guard are meant to count towards Dimensional Warder. This is true in the Apex and Tin Mage Task Forces, and is meant to be true in the Incarnate Trials.

It's not working as intended, so feel free to submit a bug report. My guess is that it's a classic case of "Oops, I knew I forgot to do something!"

I ran the mission myself just now to take a look.

Here's Johnny before the fight, conning friendly:



And Hardcase appears to be Fiery Melee/Fiery Aura; no demons:



Johnny never moved, and I definitely couldn't attack him (nor did he attack me):



After the fight, things proceeded normally:



Since I don't have any reason to believe you're hallucinating, the only thing I can come up with is that some glitch may have caused Johnny to attack, and for whatever beanbrained reason in that mission, he's got Demon Summoning as his offensive powers.

In any case, he's not supposed to attack you at all, regardless of what kind of whip he may or may not have.

Johnny doesn't fight in that mission. He's a "hostage" that you "save" from Hardcase and crew.

Vorpal and Cryonic are both great cones. Cryonic has a chance to hold enemies, though. Might work for Controller.

The demons are Hardcase's, I believe.

Superman could only be defeated with a rock from his homeworld. These rocks are clearly Praetorian.

I think Kilik got lost on his way to Soul Calibur. Some of those moves are exactly his, including the upside-down foot sweep.

Pebble Radial Final Judgement

Ranged, Extreme WTF(Smashing), Recharge: Fast

And a community meme is born.

Remember that Degenerative is also up to a -14% Max HP debuff against anything weaker than an Arch-villain, and up to -600 HP for AV or tougher. Combined with the resistance debuffs in Venom Grenade, Degenerative can get quite potent in the upper tiers.

I happened to make a Toxic Bane this last week, and it turned out much better than anticipated, complete with full-spawn AoE melty goodness:

As promised, the Incarnte Toxicand:

The Masked Man is Claus.