Nihilii

I think you get the rikti rifle from a mission given by the Ambassador rikti guy in Grandville.

I wish they'd just give us Force of Nature. Having the epic power based on Unstoppable being more useful than the actual T9 is annoying. To add insult to injury, they did the same thing with Power Surge later on when they introduced the elec epic.

I'd happily trade that extra minute of duration and mez protection if it meant the HP crash would be gone, although ultimately I'd rather see both T9s get the SoW treatment (lower resistances, 1/3 unenhanceable uptime, 50 end crash).

I find the OP interesting. The usual argument that went on since then, not so much. So, going to ignore everything save for the first post. Here's my "data" (very limited sample for trials, obviously - that said, I would argue the trials themselves should only get easier as people get more and more incarnate powers, albeit it might take longer to form teams).

In 13 trials :
2 rare
8 uncommon
4 commons
2 emp merits
55 astral merits
42 threads

Each trial took about half a hour, give or take, including the time needed to form or join a league.

In TFs, I average about 3.8 shards (2.8 + the common component breakdown) for half a hour - again, including the time needed to form or join a team.

In aggressive solo play on x8, it can vary a lot based on the AT. My SS/Fire/Soul brute is averaging 17.7 shards per hour, my ill/therm/psi controller 2.4 shards per hour... Assuming I'd play for a hour before getting bored. Such a scenario is unlikely, I like tabbing during loading times to read the interwebz and so on. I'd divide these rates by two, and that's being conservative. So, 8.85 shards per hour for the brute, my fastest character.

Now for me... And I stress that I'm only speaking for my very own personal situation before a horde of rabid fanboys throw their T4 judgement at me... It seems fairly obvious the iTrials are faster by far.

Even using the worst conversion rate (breaking down everything) for threads compared to the best conversion rate (10:10 every 20hours) for shards, I'm getting :

2 rare (= 20 threads each?) = 40 (?)
8 uncommon (= 9 threads each) = 72
4 commons (= 3 threads each?) = 12 (?)
2 emp merits (= 20 threads each) = 40
55 astral merits (= 4 threads each) = 220
42 threads

416 threads in 13 trials
= 32 threads in half a hour
= 64 threads per hour

Using my fastest earning method for shards (solo SS/Fire brute)

64/8.85 = 7.23

Comparing my absolute worst case scenario with iTrials to my absolute best case scenario with shards, I'm still going seven times faster doing the iTrials.

More realistically, assuming I use the components and run TFs without playing a specific character (still going to use a 10:10 shard/thread conversion).

2 rares = 680 threads
8 uncommons = 460 threads
4 commons = 80 threads
2 emp merits = 40 threads
55 astral merits = 220 threads
42 threads

1522 threads in 13 trials
= 117 threads in half a hour
= 234 threads per hour

234/7.6 (3.8 in half a hour) = 30.78

Going thirty times faster in iTrials in what, for me personally, is a reasonably accurate scenario (and I believe I'm still being nice to the shard side, as I'm actually going to save my emp merits for a very rare).

I haven't touched the market since I20 release, whereas I usually play it for ~800m a day. I suspect I'm not alone in that boat, and would be wary of drawing conclusions from market trends so close after an issue release that gives us new shiny powers and requires a fair amount of playing team-based, low drops content to get all of it.

Throw in another vote for making the classic UI actually classic. I still can't understand what happened there.

"Hey guys, we have this fine looking UI that's been working for years without a single complaint about it, let's break it."

Seriously, what?

At the very least, an official explanation for what seems to be such an unwarranted change would have been nice.

Did two trials yesterday. Didn't do any today. I'm fine.

I can understand your point of view (I think). While it is easy to say "play like you want, not like others want", maybe what you want is to play with your friends, and maybe all your friends want is to run the trials over and over, for example.

If you're not having fun, cancelling your sub for a bit doesn't seem like a bad idea to me ; some people might do ten or twenty trials a day right now, less than one week after release - I doubt they'll keep up that pace 3 months from now.

... or maybe they will, considering this is the only required "grind" for character progression (everything else can be trivialised, XP with powerleveling, IOs with market/farming). Who knows. Ok, if I keep going I'm going to start yet another rant or plea for the devs to add alternate paths, so let's stick to the point ; if you're not having fun, take a break, and come back whenever you feel the urge to play again.

Edit: woops, missed some posts while typing that. So, okay, your problem is that you can't progress without the iTrials. Devs pretty please, add thread drops to every +4 foe and common component choices to the TF rewards.

They were doing that at the same time, from what I saw no bites for over half a hour.

I care about SB, I like getting SB. More recharge always helps until the cap, more endurance can help against those end drains the praetorians like to do, more slow resist for slows, more unsuppressed movement for running quicker from mob to mob, after escapees, to the crates, and so on.

This isn't to say I'd expect a kin to SB everyone in a league, just that I like SB, always.

The powerset elitism is probably a Freedom thing. Regardless, I see a wide difference between preset max players Lambda/BAFs and queue teams - I mean, queues often end up with the minimum at the hours I play with, so that's half the players for the same tasks.

That said, I'm releveling my scrapper as a brute (really banging my head against the hp/res caps with invul on those trials) so I haven't PuGed since two days now. Here's hoping even queue teams will steamroll these things within a week - I don't like leading/waiting/asking around for an invite, and was looking forward to the queue system. Both trials seem pretty easy as is, once +3 it seems like 2-3 competent players on the team should be enough to win either trial, provided the rest of the league doesn't act completely silly.

I think you meant "so I18".

After a claim that the lava wasn't enough to outregen Trapdoor's health, I went and soloed him without landing a single blow on him, just killing the clones and positioning myself so he'd stay in lava as much as possible. It took 10 minutes, and sometimes he stayed out of lava and regenerated a fair bit, but in the end he fell.

I don't believe there exists a combo that can't solo Trapdoor at even level, because that basically means that combo wouldn't be able to defeat one even level minion at level 50.

A friend of mine who I know is running Windows 7 is reporting the same problem. He can still zoom in or out but has to scroll all the way, and just like you it works normally in the other situations you described.

This is just embarrassing to read, Redlynne. The whole thing, really.

ET really hurts your HP... Except on a WP. I'd go WP.

That said, EM/SR (much like any brute) isn't unplayable, if you want to try something new.

You guys are either the best players ever or I'm the worst ever - my PUGs fail more often than not.

(Or maybe you're calling preset teams PUGs... Which would be technically right I guess, but 16-24 players with specific ATs and powersets is a far cry from 8-12 melee heavy teams with 0-2 buff/debuff characters, most without a single incarnate power and some without the basic level shift or the alpha slot).

Took a stab at it, here's what I'd use:

3) Thou shalt not make wrongful use of your temp powers:
In a Lambda PUG, there is always at least one person, if not more, holding onto acids and grenades, regardless of how many times or how nicely you'll ask everyone to check if they have any.

"X does the same as Y" is more often than not a bad argument for not taking either option in this game. See superteams with buffs/debuffs stacking.

Oh ok, thanks!

Hmm... I haven't seen Siege heal in the iTrials, and I've done 4-5 BAFs already. What gives?

Why would you stand still and get killed when you see the crash icon blinking? In my book, that's user error, not powerset failure.

In that case you may as well pick Shield and have more resistance, HP and offensive capabilities.

Regardless, I see a very large difference between 60% and 100%+ defense during the iTrials, on Turnstile PUGs. Preformed teams or teams of friends might be a very different story, but considering these trials are pretty easy if you've got basic coordination, once you start picking and choosing you can almost toggle your secondary off.