JuliusSeizure

I feel the same way, aside from your dislike for the gimmicks, which is why I am hoping we can get some good suggestions through this thread. I feel the biggest hindrance in the two newest trials is the lack of level shifts. Where as for the Underground Trial, it seems to be both the lack of level shifts and a lack of Clarion...

I'm not sure what you are observing there, but my point was that recharge is the only aspect from Alpha that has no affect. The heal, stun, and any other such value in a Spiritual Alpha slot will properly augment those abilities in other powers (Judgement, Lore, Destiny).

Nothing I have said denies people the option to run whatever they want whenever fits best. But if you are level 42 and you want the best XP possible, you are going to run a defeat all ITF, not a Katie Hannon TF. What we have right now is the inverse of that, where the best rewards/time are lumped into the lowest tier Incarnate trials which are getting repeatedly spammed.

You seem to be very sensitive to any issue that involves tiers or haves and have-nots. I am not sure how what I wrote is elitism. I was merely using that phrase to prove a point. I certainly don't think that what the developers proposed was the best solution, nor do I hope that it is immediately implemented.

There is currently very little reason for people veer from spamming BAF and Lambda should their primary goal be to gain Incarnate powers. Once you have trivialized older content by gaining levels, it should not grant the same rewards/time that it did when you first attempted it; that's a fundamental law in any RPG/MMORPG/video game. Notice that I said it should not grant the same rewards, not that it should grant no rewards what so ever.


It's not just about level shifts-- it's also about the powers themselves and how they can contribute. I would list the current situation as:

• Tier 1 Incarnate: BAF/Lambda/Nerfed Keyes
• Tier 2 Incarnate: Original Keyes/Underground
• Tier 3 Incarnate: TPN/MoM

I 100% agree with everything here. In particular, the developers have created a set that lags in -Regeneration, a debuff that is the single most important tool against AVs and GMs. Why make a single target debuff specialist that is less potent against AVs and GMs than any other set with a -500% or -1000% regenration skill (Radiation, Dark, Cold, Traps, Thermal, and even Time at -250%)?

A single target specialist whose specialization ends at the Boss class of enemy is just horrendous game design...

Isn't hard gating the inability of a level 1 to join a level 10-14 TF, or a level 15-19 TF, or a level 50 RSF?

Indeed... Because PvP has any bearing on what has been a PvE balance discussion. You just won so hard dude.

So hard.

I suspect you will be surprised...

It is the only exception, and is done for balance reasons. Spiritual would be overpowered with every Icnarante ability if the recharge functioned. Go ahead and see how much the regeneration on Rebirth is boosted though. That's a pretty sweet combo right there.

That's splitting hairs. Do you know how much the purple patch penalizes a player against anything greater than +4? Against a+5 or +6 enemy, anything except for a buff class might as well not even be there.

They both do the same initial damage.

My advice is to use the Core if you have an Alpha that buffs damage. More damage being multiplied by a damage buff is solid synergy. The Radial path is superior for everything else because of the defense buff, particularly if you have a range boost from your Alpha slot which synergizes with the higher target cap potential.

I don't think anything that I have posted in this thread is about creating an UBER-leet divide. My only expectation is that trials should function better than they currently are. Team content 1-50 was hard gated behind level requirements for Task Forces and Trials. So is each tier of content 1-50 only meant for the uber-leet? If so then I guess my expectations have ben shaped by, oh I don't know, the entire darn game then.

Proper gating whether hard or soft is required for there to be a proper difficulty progression in these trials.

It's funny that you brought this up. While walking about town I thought that the best solution would be to implement SKing and LKing like it used to be. League and Team leaders could pair a level 50 with a level 53, thus bringing them up to level 52 for harder incarnate trials.

I agree that it would be nice for low level characters to contribute more harder icnarnate trials, but while level shifts are paramount, you also need all of the potential granted by the skills themselves. Having an entire league Super SK/LK up to 52 just because a lone level 53 is on the trial won't work all that well.

Dark can stack more -resistance, and more -damage against a single target. These are supposed to be strengths for Poison. Then there is -ToHit, which Dark combined with its pet can nearly triple the values that poison grants against a single target, but ALSO does this against an entire spawn. Stop and think about that for a minute...

Dark also has a superior Rez.

Dark also has superior -Regeneration (and guess what's most important against hard single targets in this game??).

Dark also has utterly superior Heals.

Dark also has Stealth, and grants Defense and Resistance.



Meanwhile, Poison has Poison Trap and -Special. That's about all it does better than Dark.

It was clear, and I merely used 1-50 as an analogy for 50-53+ that we have so far in the Incarnate trials. These Incarnate powers and level shifts really are just a proxy for regular powers and levels. We even have our own iXP that applies to these abilities. I don't see how hard gating is fine for 1-50, but needs to stop for levels 50+ and something as simple as effective soft gating is anathema to gameplay.

Your thoughts about smaller servers are spot on and should really be addressed by a comprehensive cross server Team Up Teleporter. I personally would much rather log in and have access to the entire CoH population than be relegated to Freedom, which already has a large population.

That makes no sense. Levels 1-50 are already fragmented by hard gating on trials (level requirements) and level ranges for enemies.

Should a fresh level 50 character be able to go fight Cole or the Hamidon without a hitch once the trials progress to that point? That would trivialize everything-- story, power progression, rewards, and the complete end game.

I used to feel the same way, and then I started to pay attention to the overall combat potential of each respective league that either failed or succeeded.

Almost universally, successful trials had higher level incarnate shifted characters while failed trials has a glut of level 50s. This reveals several aspects that are key to success. First, the majority of your league needs to be able to properly contribute damage against scaled enemies. Second, the newer trials rely on proper use of of your powers, and not having Judgement, Lore, or Destiny on a great many players severely hinders the league. Third, higher level characters have more experience with the Incarnate trials and generally (but not always) listen better and coordinate with each other becuase of their increased experience with the game mechanics.

This makes sense. It would probably be smoother to have Alpha grant +1, then either Judgement or Interface grant a +1, and finally to have either Destiny or Lore grant the last +1. The current progression is indeed kind of whack and creates a lot of players that have put in scores of hours and could still be level 50 or 51.

I think my server is probably one of those that is most prone to grindy repetition, but I also think that there is a very fundamental flaw in the current design.

PS-- If anyone has a further recommendation for other servers that have reliable nightly attempts on the four upper tier trials, I would love some leads.

All of these Incarnate powers and level shifts really are just a proxy for the traditional advancement that has already taken place in this game. Even a casual player will know that as a level 10 they are required to put some time into developing their powers to reach level 25 for a Striga task force, or that they will eventually have to hit level 50 in order to run a RSF or STF. How is this any different? The difference is that before there was some stringent gating of rewards and the ability to join higher level content (actual levels) where as now there is a nebulous proxy that has no bearing on an gating (Incarnate shifts) but is still just as important.

I don't think that the upper tier Incarnate trials are extremely difficult, that is unless you have a sizable percentage of the league under the intended power curve for the trial. The current gating mechanisms rely solely on incentivizing the higher tiers with greater rewards. I can't see how that is going to succeed at all in the grand scheme of things-- especially since people in this community have complained about both adding new currency and removing rewards from lower tier trials once a power plateau is reached.

An upward progression in difficulty is all but required for these trials to function properly. The irony is that the harder trials already are friendly even for more casual players, assuming that they have put the time into achieving a bare minimum of tier 3 in Lore, Destiny, and Alpha. Even if all they had was tier 1 in Judgement and Interface, these upper tier trials would have a proper risk versus reward ratio for a moderately competent league.

But there is no proper reward ratio. There is no reason for people to run harder trials on the incentive side of the proposition for further Incarnate advancement. And even if the developers were to make Dark Astoria have a proper rate of incarnate development like you advocated, effectively granting another path for characters to diversify their time, these trials would still face the same issues. (PS-- I agree with everything you wrote about a solo/small team path.)

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.

I agree that repetitive running of trials is not enjoyable. But more door content that emulates what we have already done from 1-50 isn't the answer. Not that you were advocating such, but there is no way that what you are proposing to take place in Dark Astoria isn't going to involve some kind of serious repetition in order to get a tier 4 Incarnate power. I do agree that it will be nice to bounce between the two, but if my only option is BAF/SLAM/Dark Astoria, that just isn't going to cut it.

I might just do that if some of my names are free. There are so few TPN and MOMs now on Freedom...

Yes, you will have to buy the whole Master Mind set if you let your VIP subscription slide unless that one month unlocks Masterminds though the

This will do nothing for you. It won't unlock archetypes, or give any perks, and you already have the game downloaded.

You receive account tokens that you spend to upgrade your premium status. At a certain point, Mastermind and Controller archetypes are unlocked along with a plethora of other perks. You receive 1 token per month subscribed or 1 token per 15 dollars spent on the game.

Check this thread out for a lot of your questions: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=271724

My general play style is to be as aggressive as possible when HOB is up. I will jump in and immediately use Poison Gas Trap while simultaneously debuffing foes with Venemous Gas, which is then followed by Bullet Rain->Hail of Bullets->Bullet Rain. Not much survives this except for bosses on Incarnate level content. Any stragglers either get debuffed by Weaken/Envenom or hit with my single target attack chain (Dual->Executioner->Dual->Piercing).

If you play difficult content, I would highly recommend taking Soul Transfer on a Corruptor. It takes a little while, but you begin to realize that your character is the ultimate conundrum for the foes: Either I kill you, or you kill me and then I use a mag 30 stun and and then kill you. I find this skill much more enjoyable on a squishy than on a Tank or Brute.

It's sad, but because of the terrible AoE radius and rather long animation on Envenom and Weaken I have found very little use for these skills outside of AV fights. I get much more return by using Poison Trap as an alpha opener followed by an AoE barrage.

I generally use fire rounds, but have found that chemical rounds combined with the rest of the set's -damage and -resistance debuffs provide some potent synergy as they augment each other and stack to very high levels.

• Antidote is trash.

• Alkaloid is worse than trash, and I would drop it if I could.

• Nerotoxic Breath would be fun, if it weren't for the fact that the set opperates best in melee range and has absolutely no synergy with the rest of the set because of its narrow cone.

• Elixer of Life is good, but YAWN... let's just clone Mutation! Wouldn't that be great?!

• Venemous Gas absoultely needs a debuff duration longer than .5 seconds on a set that forces a squishy AT into melee range to be most effective. It detoggles constantly. See: Hurrican as a skill done right.

• Paralytic Poison is a long recharge, short duration mag3 hold with no secondary effects. At least Dark Miasma can skip it because it has so many other awesome powers. Poison? Not so much...

But just to add-- Posion Trap:Awesome!!!!!!

There is an initial 8 second mag3 hold upon exploding. It then creates a cloud that pulses a chance for a 4 second mag3 hold and -endurance for 30 seconds while also pulsing -100% recovery for the full 30 seconds (I believe). Procs will check once upon casting and two more times at 10 and 20 seconds respectively. I think the final 30 second mark is not included, but can't test it right now because the blasted training dummies have disappeared in RWZ. They seem to be gone every time I want to use them for testing.



This skill can do a LOT of damage and an insane amount of control when socketed with procs. The best Proc slotting that I can think of is:

• 1x [level 50 +++++ Unbreakable Constraint Rech/Hold]

• 1x [level 50 +++++ Unbreakable Constraint Acc/Hold/Rech]

• 1x [Unbreakable Constraint %Chance for Smashing]

• 1x [Armageddon %Chance for Fire]

• 1x [Fury of the Gladiator %Chance for -Resist]

• 1x [Lockdown %Chance for Mag 2 Hold]

I currently use 5x Unbreakable Constraint with the proc and Lockdown %Chance for Mag 2 Hold. It works great, but I am debating weather to sacrifice 10% global recharge and superior hold/recharge/acc numbers to use the above slotting instead.

The average amount of damage that Poison Trap would do against an AV or GM with my socketing above would be 250 points if the procs tic 3 times per cast (1,10,20 seconds) and 318 if they tic 4 times per cast (1, 10, 20, 30 seconds). It also checks to apply a -resistance debuff 3-4 times over the course of its duration. Considering that you spend just one second animating this thing, it basically counts as a 200+ DPA attack against AVs. It can also decimate spawns with the Lockdown proc and all of the damage it does.

Poison Trap is, unfortunately, the only skill in Poison that is truly spectacular. Envenom and Weaken are good, but they just don't function all that well in an AoE-centric game. Venemous Gas is nice on paper, but falls short in actual game play where it's anemic debuff values ruin the risk-versus-reward ratio. Everything else in the set is average (Elixer of Life, Neurotoxic Breath) or significantly below average (Alkaloid, Antidote, Paralytic Poison).