Luminara

The problem is that the current system will force some people to wait years before they can participate in that end game. The problem is not that they can't participate tomorrow, or next week, or in three months, but that they may never be able to participate, or will only reach that point so far in the future, and after so much immeasurable and imperceptible progress, that they can't even conceive of reaching that end game, if it's even still available by the time they finish the grind.

The time required to reach the end game will vary wildly, dependent on numerous external factors, such as server population, population density at different times, whether or not other players are even interested in teaming up to run Incarnate content, random drops, but some players won't be able to get there in any reasonable period of time because their progress through the Incarnate system will be entirely or primarily dictated by totally random shard drops.

My perception is based on math, not desire, intention or perceived entitlement. Outside of teams, players will have only one option for progression through the Incarnate system, and thus eventual participation in the end game, that being shards. Shard-based progression at a rate of 10 per day will permit a player to slot tier 4 boosts in all of the next 4 Incarnate slots... 2.3 years from the day I20 goes live. Before you accuse anyone else of having skewed perception, think about that.

If you would like a demonstration of how unrelated to perception this really is, start a new character and turn off XP at level 1. For every 1000 minions, or 150 lieutenants, or 50 bosses, turn on XP for one defeat, then turn it off again and leave it off for the next 1000 minions, 150 lieutenants or 50 bosses. That's what shard-based progression in the Incarnate system will be as it stands now.

Has it occurred to you that people have a legitimate concern regarding "keeping up", doubly so in fact, because players have a tendency to run new content until they've gotten what they want out of it or grown bored with it, then abandon it until something else changes, resulting in fewer people interested in helping others progress through that content, and that people who are facing a wait time of 2+ years before they can complete the current content may find themselves several years behind in accessing content later, thus inescapably locked out for an indeterminate period of time, perhaps even incapable of accessing the end game at all before the game reaches end of life?

Please don't talk down to other players for not being satisfied with being told, "Just play, maybe if you get there before the game is shut down permanently, you might get to experience it". It's less likely that they're disgruntled because they're power-gaming psychos who care only about IWIN buttons and much more likely because they simply don't like the prospect of several Issues and years going by with no way for them to access anything therein, or having to grind constantly for months just to feel like they're beginning to progress beyond 50 (which is the whole point of the Incarnate system and end-game, progression).

You are correct, no-one is forcing anyone else to go through the Incarnate system. However, it was presented as a method of progressing beyond 50 for everyone. No-one had to twist your arm to entice you to level up your favorite characters, did they? You leveled them up because you enjoyed playing them. No-one is holding a gun to our heads and demanding that we access the post-50 progression "or else *click*", but we want to in the same way and for the same reasons, because it represents growth and expansion for our favorite characters, further reason and purpose for them and more "stuff" to do with them.

Potentially being locked out of the end game indefinitely because your server isn't high pop, or you play at the "wrong" times, or you aren't popular enough, or you got there "too late" and no-one wants to do the gate content, is also frustrating. Do try to be a little more understanding of those of us who aren't in "top 50" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) SGs or on Virtue/Freedom or playing between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m., we aren't demanding instant gratification, simply asking for something less arduous and restrictive than grinding on one character for the next couple of years just to hope we can get into an end-game TF/Trial/raid some day.

Darmok and Jilad at Tenagra.

Acid doesn't stack with itself. It will stack with Acid from another player or a pet.

You're right. I've been through Arcana's Defense guide, with those very same numbers included, at least a hundred times and somehow managed to not remember that.

Thank you.

They do. I tested it three-ish years ago.

...

Just finished testing it again, to be certain there haven't been any undocumented changes.

CoT Ice Thorn Caster (minion) and Behemoth Overlord (lieutenant).

Critter base hit chance: 50%.

Ranged Defense on Parthenia: 21.61%.

Flash Arrow debuff value: 9.00%.

Minion expected hit chance: [50.00 - 21.61] - 9.00 = 19.39%.

Minion actual hit chance: 19.39%.

Lieutenant expected hit chance without 10% resistance to -ToHit: ([50.00 - 21.61] - 9.00) * 1.1 = 21.329.

Lieutenant expected hit chance with 10% debuff resist: ([50.00 - 21.61] - [9.00 * 0.90]) * 1.1 = 22.319

Lieutenant actual hit chance: 22.31%.

Bosses have a 20% resistance to -ToHit. If necessary, I can test that again as well, but if lieutenant resistance to -ToHit wasn't altered in the last few years, I can't imagine why they'd change it for bosses.

The end-game will either require Incarnate abilities, or it won't. There is no third option. It can't require players to be familiar with the Incarnate system, or to have run past a contact related to the Incarnate system, or to have teamed with someone with Incarnate abilities, or anything else. It is binary, it either requires Incarnates to complete, or it has nothing to do with Incarnates beyond the story. Why you believe there's some mystical third possibility, I can't understand, because there isn't. I don't need a fax of Positron's notes to know that, nor should you. It is A or B, not A, B or C, not A+B or A/B or A squared minus the root of B. If you choose to believe that the developers are stupid enough to implement an end-game with no direct, incontrovertible ties to the end-game system they're building, your call.

I know more than you do, and I know the developers aren't stupid. I also know that people more intelligent or informed than I am have been in this thread and haven't contradicted my assertion on the end-game requiring Incarnate status and abilities, despite having had ample opportunity to correct me if I were on the wrong track. So I would say that I know enough.

Granted. But that isn't the case when we're talking about an end-game tied to the Incarnate system in Co*. You are not being given the opportunity to gain 4 or more level shifts, bonuses which sidestep ED, additional bonus effects for your powers and extra powers above and beyond what a standard level 50 character could obtain just so you could do a regular level 50 TF. Capping the Incarnate system with something so simple and easy that you don't use a single Incarnate ability, boost or level shift to complete it would be ludicrous. Something only a bad designer or complete idiot would do.

My "assumption" is based on knowledge of what's being tested now, observation of new things added previously and about to be added and deduction derived from an understanding of the basic idea of progression. Between the two of us, my "assumption" has more facts and reality behind it than anything you can even begin to postulate, and it's a far more logical conclusion than your apparent belief that the Incarnate system is completely separate and independent from the end-game. I know what we got in I19, I know what's coming in I20, I can logically determine what will be coming in I21 and following that path with even the slightest bit of foresight leads me to my very clearly stated conclusion, that the entire Incarnate system is a gate to the end-game content, not a bonus feature being released parallel with the end-game.

Until you actually know as much as or more than I do, you aren't in a position to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about, am making wild assumptions or have no foundation for my conclusions. That's just hypocritical bull dung. Shovel it on someone else.

I'm assuming that the developers aren't complete idiots. I'm assuming that they won't be stupid enough to make end-game content which can be completed by characters with none of the Incarnate abilities. I'm assuming that we aren't riding the Incarnate hype train just to get to the end of the line and discovering that not a single aspect of the Incarnate system will be necessary for that magical end-game content.

The final result of the Incarnate system has to be something greater than just another level 50 TF that players can blitz in 20 minutes with SO-slotted characters, or every Issue dedicated to the Incarnate system is a colossal waste of time for all parties involved. In order to do that, it has to require players to have and use Incarnate abilities.

My opinion is very much informed. My calculations and opinion are based on current information. If or when you have access to that information, you're welcome to compare your own calculations and conclusions to mine.

Gear dependency. The Incarnate system has to culminate in something which makes it worth the time to create, to play and to experience, and I fully expect that grand finale to be a TF, Trial or raid which requires all participating characters to have all of their Incarnate slots unlocked and filled with at least one common boost.

If that isn't the case, then the Incarnate system fails to meet its goal, which is to be a vehicle for continued progression for level 50 characters. Every slot has to have a purpose, every boost has to have a use, or the whole thing is moot. If the end game that they've designed doesn't require all, or at least most of our Incarnate abilities, then the whole thing will be a pointless waste of time with no real benefit for the game. If we get to the end game and discover that it could be beaten by characters with no Incarnate abilities, it's going to explode in the developers' faces. The words "epic **** storm" come to mind.

With the current beta info provided by Zombie Man, it will take 780 hours (32.5 days if the player logs in at exactly 20 hours every day, in concert with the conversion timer expiration), 390 shards and 472,500,000 inf* for a solo player to unlock all four new Incarnate slots and put a common boost in each one, using the 1:1 shard to thread conversion rate, which has a cost of 2.5 million and a 20 hour timer. That's at a shard generation rate of 10 per 20 hours. 10 shards every 20 hours doesn't seem like much, but that's for every alt to reach the minimum expected requirements for that "Ultimate Incarnate Trial". Being alts, most aren't likely to be highly efficient farming machines, so they're going to take longer, or require more time invested to get 10 per 20 hours.

Teaming up for the two new Trials will be faster, but it will also mean running the same two Trials 2-5 times to unlock each of the four new slots, per character, and another 2-5 times per common boost, per character. Given all of the cries over the years for new mission maps, new zones, zone revamps, TF redesigns, I can't honestly consider this a "better" option for many players. Faster, yes, but for anyone trying to attain Incarnate status for more than a very select few alts, potentially tedious and sufficiently so to prevent them from attempting to repeat it for more than a few alts, especially considering that it will take many more runs of these Trials for these players to "kit out" their mains. Historically, doing the same thing too many times has resulting in players being less delighted or willing to do it yet again (typically referred to as "burned out"), for practically any reason, which results in a lack of sufficient interested people for other players to use this gate to enter Incarnate territory in the future, for their mains or their alts.

The end result is restrictions on your options to play alts, either due to the enormous amount of time or inf* required, or lack of interest in doing one of those two Trials. It may also mean that any sub-50 alts you have, or will have in the future, could be locked out of upcoming content for an indefinite period as you struggle to unlock slots solo, gather enough interested parties to play through the necessary gates or even convince yourself that you can make it through a few dozen more runs through the BAF/Lambda.

When that gear-dependent finale goes live, any alts which don't meet the requirements will not be playable in that content. And for a lot of players, that means sacrificing alts now because they don't have the time to grind the shards or inf* for all of their favorite characters to keep from falling one or more Issues behind in content access, or the stomach to run one or two Trials a few hundred times.

Justice has a distinct purple flavor, with a hint of Soundgarden.

The dirigible in Infinity's Atlas Park will occasionally drop nuclear bombs on players (though there has never been any established correlation between the number of bad costumes assembled under the statue of Atlas and the frequency of nukes. that's just a rumor someone started to drum up more costume contests).

On Guardian, characters have an extra costume change emote, "Spontaneous Combustion". Unfortunately, the costume associated with it is entirely composed of pieces which were removed from the game over the years, so the characters just disappear.

You know all of those stories about alien abductions and probes "down there"? Yeah... Champion. *twitch*

Virtue has three more powersets available than the standard number available on every other server, but no-one knows what they are or how to unlock them yet.

Pinnacle's Hamidon is a cat. Mitos are hairballs. You don't want to know what the goo is.

If you play with 3D stereoscopic glasses on Liberty, pink Cadillacs randomly appear in office maps.

Outdoor zones on Freedom are 14.09% larger than identical zones on other servers.

On Protector, if no-one responds when there's a Fire Alarm in Steel Canyon, the entire zone starts to burn. The server randomly appoints one person to act as fire fighter every day. The last guy who got the job went bonkers... turned out that he hadn't slept for four days, then he was selected to be the fire fighter and couldn't go to bed for another day. Fifth day, he just started eating his own toes.

Triumph has cross-server PvP enabled. It's not connected to any other server, so everyone who tries to PvP ends up trapped in a void between servers, but it is enabled.

Victory is actually a refurbished coffee maker. In honor of that, the server occasionally does zone-wide Speed Boosts on everyone.

For EU server information, just watch any Monty Python skit. They all starred in one at some point.

Were we really meant to play alts for the last 6+ years? Were we really being encouraged to play multiple characters when the developers told us to do it, opened up 36 slots per server, did the whole Power Proliferation thing, etc.?

We've been told time and again, told, directly, by the developers, that playing multiple characters was always the intention, one of the core design philosophies behind the game and its continuation. The number shards required to advance along the Incarnate path beyond the second tier Alpha boost, and the rate at which they drop, is a complete reversal of policy that existed for over six years. Not a slight adjustment, not a minor change, a total 180 degree turn to the opposite direction.

Either we should be encouraged to continue to play our alts, in which case they made a mistake by grossly over-restricting the Incarnate system, or we shouldn't, in which case they're invalidating everything the game was based on, built around and has been for over six years, which is also a mistake. One or the other, and either way, they dropped the ball.

From what I've seen, the people complaining about how much of a grind it is are average, regular people who don't have every character built to farm at x6 or higher or who can't count on having 10 TF invitations waiting for them the instant they log in. The people who have little to look forward to for an unknown period of time, other than spending hundreds of hours grinding on each character just to get one slot unlocked and slotted with a higher end boost. The people who aren't blinded by the Incarnate system's shiny newness and can see that under the surface, it contradicts the 6+ year policy, the entire history of development of this game, of encouraging players to experience the game through as many ATs and powersets as they like.

It's not our fault that we're continuing to play the game the way we were told to play it, and getting nothing but frustrated, disillusioned and burned out fast. The complete lack of developer commentary or community participation lately hasn't improved the situation, either. The complaints are perfectly valid and justified. The players did what they were supposed to do, what they were told to do. The developers screwed up. They were the ones who designed and implemented an advancement system that punishes players for doing what they were told to do.

That sounds reasonable.

In a two week span, I collected just over 160 shards on my TA/Dark, playing for 1-3 hours per night. That's 11+ each night. With a defender. A TA defender. I can't imagine "real" farmers not achieving a higher drop rate, especially considering that I'm limited to 10 targets for two of my three AoE damage powers (Tenebrous Tentacles and Night Fall). I could hit 20/day if I just spent another 1-3 hours playing each night.

Which makes this proposal all the more worthwhile. If it can truly bring the solo path closer to a reasonable alternative, not necessarily on par with the teamed path, but even halfway to par would be leagues ahead of the existing option, then I'm absolutely in favor of it.

Going to throw out some commentary in "the other thread", so as to keep this one on track.

On the surface, without breaking it down to compare numerically to my expected shard generation rate on my main, my gut says that this would be slower, or at least not notably faster, than simply going with shard conversions.

It's a good beginning, but the rewards need to be more frequent. Despite the intention of Incarnates being "end game content", they're also continued progression for every level 50 character, whether those characters will ever actually be played in Incarnate content or not, and that's really the heart of the objections. Options for solo players to progress, good. Options for solo players to progress at a rate at which they'll only see any results several months later, not good, because it's too slow to retain interest or feel rewarding. If a teamed player can unlock new Incarnate slots at a rate of... three to five Incarnate TFs(?), which can be accomplished inside a week(?), then the solo option should offer the same results in a month. Similarly, if teamed players can generate sufficient Incarnate salvage to fill a slot in one week, solo players should be given suitable alternatives to fill a slot within three weeks.

Find a good balance on the frequency of those Vanguard Hammer missions, and you'll have a satisfactory solution for all involved. It's an excellent idea, though, and I'd very much like to see it go straight to the fast track for development, as long as the resulting pace of Incarnate progression was ultimately rewarding (by which i mean measurable, steady progress, no less than 2.25% per day/mission/whatever).

Yes and no. I don't say a tenth of the things I want to say, and I always feel that I've said ten times more than I should have. In my regular day to day life, I'm practically incapable of communication. I can't express myself with spoken words, person to person, face to face.

But in text, I can. I can select every word, put it exactly where I want it, proofread what I'm going to say so it actually says what I mean... text gives me a voice. A voice that I didn't have for almost three decades. And it's the only one that I have, or ever can have. I post because I need to. I need to express myself in some way, to communicate with the world outside of my mental prison. Being completely alone, cut off and incapable of saying anything to anyone is so horribly depressing, it's indescribable.

So yes, I'm okay with making several thousand posts on a forum. I have to, because it's the only way I can express myself, and I need to express myself, just as you do, as everyone does. And I want to post, to use my voice, because I spent so much of my life in silence, incapable of saying anything to anyone. It feels good to be able to speak, in any way, after so many years of being unable to do so. I'm still afraid, but I can manage and control the fear by managing and controlling what I say.

I am mentally ill, but I am still a human being, and human beings are social animals, we degenerate, emotionally and mentally, when we're incapable of socializing in any manner.

Which is moot because most of us use our global name as our forum name, so it wouldn't have been difficult for anyone to guess anyway, and doubly moot because less than half a dozen people from the forums has ever used it to connect with me in the game. Having my global name obviously visible hasn't resulted in an overwhelming surge of popularity, or even recognition. I added it to my .sig so people who didn't know my forum name was my global name would know, on the off chance that they might discover a sudden and overwhelming need to say something to me or ask a question. Primarily because I felt a responsibility as one of the more visible Trick Arrows supporters.

My Lumiverse. It started as an offhand comment when I was in a super group on Pinnacle. Someone said something about me being in my own Lumiverse. It appealed to my love for bad puns, so I took it and made it "real". It's as moot as my global name being in my .sig, because I have even fewer members in my channel than I've had forumites contact me via global name. It's a ghost town. Which is fine by me, it's my ghost town. My Lumiverse. I never expected it to become a hub of activity for the entire game, I added it for the same general reason I added the global name, in case people wanted to talk TA, or talk to me. There are a few inhabitants, nice people who I enjoy talking on the rare occasion when I don't feel like I'm ruining someone's life by interrupting whatever they were doing, but mostly, I just keep it around because I still enjoy the pun, and I keep it in my .sig because despite my bitterness about the complete lack of concern, or even awareness, that the current developer team seems to have for TA, I still maintain a futile hope that someday, it won't be the red-headed stepchild of "Buff" sets and some people will find the channel useful for discussing TA.

I also do these things in part as a means of sustaining self-sufficiency. I lost touch with my family a very long time ago, I have no friends, no significant other. I have a cat. My cat won't take care of me if I lose control of my mind again, go back into my mental prison, lose my job and end up homeless. I have no-one to rely upon but myself, and that, that one thing, scares me more than... even more than making eye contact. The thought of losing everything in this fight, of dying in some alley somewhere, starving, filthy, ragged... I can't accept that. I have to keep myself going. So I tread water, doing things like maintaining a job, going to the grocery store, trying to go to the bank regularly, and participating in online communication. In a very real sense, my life depends on my ability to do things like this, and that makes it worth the fear, the irony of a person with social anxiety disorder being a blabbermouth online and opening him/herself up to communication in a game.

Folks want something more to do than stand around waiting in line for a chance to speed run <insert * of the month content here>.

Folks want functional, more easily manipulated, less expensive bases so they can spend time personalizing something other than a costume, or engaging in combat with something other than AI so bad that it's becoming an Internet meme.

Folks want PvP that works and is fun, rather than PvP that exists merely for the sake of saying that the game includes PvP.

Folks want an MA that doesn't break things in their story arcs every week so they aren't forced to spend all of their gaming time fixing broken goals, replacing disallowed entities and rewriting missions, rather than playing or writing more arcs.

Folks want badges that aren't so easy to get that all they need is a pulse and $15, but not so tedious and pointless as the Ouroboros inanity. Something to give them a goal, something to invest some time in, something to work toward and feel a real sense of accomplishment when they get it.

Folks want ATs to actually be different enough to be noticeable, so there's a reason to play a defender instead of a corruptor, or a controller instead of a defender, or a corruptor instead of a controller, without having to dig through fifty pages of stats to see that there's a percentage difference which is all but unnoticeable for anything less than AV fights.

Folks want something to do other than farm, grind and slog through the same stuff day after day. What you call paradise, we call purgatory. There's nothing to do today but what we did yesterday, and what we did yesterday was the same thing we did a year ago, and the year before that, and what we'll do tomorrow, and every day in the foreseeable future.

Despite your portrayal of solo players as misanthropes, fanatics and rabid anti-social rabble rousers, we aren't. Some might be, but most of us just want something to do. Those of us who can't team, for whatever reason, are just as entitled to add our voices to the discussion as those of you who eat, sleep and breathe in teams. Demonizing us because we ask that the limited content we have be expanded, or that the limited Incarnate progression option we have be less harsh and unrewarding, or that the alternative content (bases, PvP, MA) be improved is neither fair nor warranted, nor very smart when you consider that even if you are the prom queen, the day will inevitably come when you log in and find yourself alone and bored, and wishing you had some new solo-friendly content to play.

You, the team player, have always had access to more content and options than we, solo players, have had because you can do all of the things we can plus all of the things we can't, and frankly, it's hypocritical for you to stand on that soap box and tell us to shut up and accept that we aren't getting much, if anything, in this Issue. I expect better than this from you.

I'm mentally ill. Social anxiety disorder. If I were dying of dehydration, I wouldn't be capable of asking for a sip of water, and if it were offered, I'd insist that I'm fine and struggle on without it until I dropped dead.

Flagging my character is as pro-active as I can be. It took everything in me just to do that, and my hands shook so violently that I might not have been able to accept an invitation if one had come my way that first night.

I still haven't played all of the TFs that exist now. By that, I don't mean "all of the TFs with a single character", I mean there are TFs that I've never had the opportunity to experience with any character. Same with Trials. I spent two weeks with my LFTF flag up on my main, logging in for at least two hours every night, and never got a single invitation to a WST.

So what the heck do I want? Content that I won't have to wait several months or years to play, or never get to play at all. Content that I can sit back and enjoy, read through, something that grabs me like A Twisted Reflection and Looking Through the Glass. Not more TFs that I may never get to play, and even if I do, won't be able to enjoy because my teammates are speeding through them, after having done them so many times that they're only interested in the reward, or Incarnate content from which I'm excluded because I don't happen to play on Freedom or Virtue, or play at prime time, or play popular powersets and FotM builds.

Yes, I understand that the new team assembly mechanics might help alleviate part of the problem, getting me into teams to run the new content sooner, but that new mechanic won't get me into a team which will let me take my time and read the clues and dialog, it won't get me into a team running older TFs like Quatermain... it won't even get me a team at all unless people are using it, and enough people are using it to actually get the TF/SF/Trial started, which is not guaranteed at 4 a.m.

I'd like some content, not someday content.

Traps has higher survivability potential, but for the full utility of the set, you're required to either use pull tactics or enter melee range, and you're reliant on several powers with high recharge times (90s).

TA has lower survivability potential, but greater mobility and utility, and most its powers recharge more quickly than roughly similar powers in Traps. TA powers also animate more quickly than Traps powers, with the exception of Caltrops (0.09s faster than any TA power).

I have a Rad/Traps approaching 30 and a Fire/TA approaching 40, and while I am rather obviously biased in TA's favor, objectively, I find Traps to be a relatively slow experience. TA powers animate more quickly, across the board, and the faster base recharge times on everything except OSA and EMP mean I can move at a more satisfying pace, stack effects more easily and am less reliant on massive quantities of global +Recharge to feel effective. Given that I can also alleviate much of the survivability discrepancy via IO set bonuses and pool powers, I'm more satisfied with TA, on the whole, than I am with Traps. I'm more prone to being mezzed and murdered as a Fire/TA, but I'm also less dependent on location or recharge times than I would be as a Fire/Traps.

Traps debuffs Regen significantly better than TA. Traps can debuff ToHit better than TA, if Seeker Drones is available, both Drones hit and the target or targets don't have significant -ToHit resistance (Flash Arrow can't be resisted*, Seeker Drones can). -Def, -Res, -Recharge and -Movement Speed are roughly equivalent, presuming similar total +Recharge applied to the applicable powers, with the caveat that Traps requires you to pull in order to achieve that similarity (that mobility thing i was talking about above).

Example: with 172.5% global +Recharge and three level 50 Recharge Reduction IOs, Disruption Arrow recharges in approximately 16s, whereas Acid Mortar with the same global +Recharge and slotting recharges in roughly 24s. You can stack two Disruptions, and a third for about 5s, with that much +Recharge, and you also have Acid Arrow on top of that. You can stack four Acid Mortars with the +Recharge and slotting, which gives you equivalent -Res, but it means staying in one general location for ~72s, versus 32s for TA.

Basically, it comes down to preferred style of play. TA allows you to take the fight to the enemy and debuff when and where you choose. Traps requires you to bring the enemies to the fight, where you've got your debuffs prepared and waiting, or wait for your debuffs to recharge and accept lower debuff numbers (by the time you could drop a second Acid Mortar, the TA has already unloaded both Disruption and Acid and has both recharged). I like to keep moving, so I don't play my Rad/Traps, or enjoy playing it, nearly as much as my Fire/TA, and IO set bonuses allow me to compensate for the reduced total survivability potential sufficiently for my needs/desires.

Will OSA change the entire game for you? No. The base recharge time is too long to use it as a reliable survivability tool, and the only survivability it actually offers anyway is the chance for KD. If that's what you were hoping or waiting for, it's probably best to start a Fire/Traps and see if you find that more satisfactory. It will dial up your AoE damage output to 11, in concert with Disruption, Acid, Fireball and RoF, but it won't turn the game around for that character, in regard to survivability.

IOs do help, as does slotting and using your TA powers. I'm building mine to reach ~28-30% Ranged Defense, 200% Regen and heal procs in Fire Blast, Blaze, PGA and (eventually) Mass Hypnosis, and in concert with Flash Arrow, Glue and PGA, and judicious use of Ice Arrow (i tend to ignore that power unless i'm really hard pressed) I'm satisfied with the results thus far and have no reason to expect any drastic reduction in efficiency in the last 10 levels (Malta might be a problem... but that's not unusual or unexpected).

*All enemies +1 or higher resist all debuffs, including debuffs flagged as "unresistable". All enemies of higher rank than Minion resist -ToHit by varying degrees, including -ToHit flagged as "unresistable". The AV "Resistance" power, however, does not resist powers flagged as "unresistable".

Every bug is critical. Unless you solo exclusively, every bug will be critical to you sooner or later, because you will be exposed to the effects of those bugs at some point in time. Bugs don't have to set the servers on fire or cause a worldwide brownout to be critical, they just have to negatively impact the experience of playing the game, and they do negatively impact everyone. If not directly, then indirectly as a result of teaming with someone who is directly affected by bugs which make their powers unusable or useless, missions which cannot be completed, AI issues, etc.

"I don't see the point" is short-sighted. It's like saying that you don't care if your neighbor's apartment is on fire. Your apartment might not be burning yet, but is it really wise to just sit there and ignore it, hope it's extinguished before it affects you? And when your apartment is engulfed in flames, would it bother you if no-one lifted a finger to help because they "didn't see the point"?

And should be dealt with promptly, not ignored for years, if ever fixed at all.

Okay, pet AI. You get your new Synapse TF and run it with your Heroic mastermind. And while you're trying to play that new content, your henchmen are disobeying or ignoring commands, spawning as uncontrolled entities, getting stuck in terrain, disco dancing on stairs six spawns behind you, running into melee flaming patches of death in melee range so they can use their 80' ranged attacks and doing any of the numerous other mind-numbingly stupid things they do because of the bugs in the pet AI. How much are you really going to enjoy that new content if you're incapable of actually participating in it because you're too busy trying to work around problems stemming from bugs?

If your house has a short in the electrical wiring, leaky plumbing or dry rot in the support beams, slapping a new coat of paint on it isn't going to prevent that faulty wiring from eventually shorting out and burning your house down, or your basement from flooding, or the floor from collapsing when the supports disintegrate. Yes, pet AI might break again six months down the road. That doesn't mean it should be ignored, it means it should be more thoroughly investigated and better fixes to the problems implemented. And yes, new bugs are going to be introduced. That also doesn't mean old bugs should be ignored, it means there needs to be a tighter focus on quality, rather than churning out content that players can't enjoy because the bugs are preventing them from playing it.