The_Cheeseman

Originally Posted by Primantiss

I think thisis largely because COH is the perfect "Part time" or "inbetweener" MMO. As it doesn't require an absurd amount of time commitment to get anything done.

Seems a fair amount of people play it on again/off again whenever they are burnt out on their primary MMOs, or when they don't have the time to commit to them, then migrate back when they can.

Originally Posted by Vel_Overload

Omega: Use: once per day

Free 800 Paragon points. So you can now get those powersets that VIPs should have gotten immediate access to instead of whatever ******** system they screwed us over with. We VIPs got the short end of the stick..

Originally Posted by Little_Whorn

Agreed. But it's not just crazy scrapper tricks that have become relatively easy. It's team stuff too, like incarnate trials. The only way the devs are creating challenge for high level toons anymore is by pitting us up against boss enemies and auto hit death patches. No difficult enemy groups or tricky rooms to conquer. Always just 1-3 bosses that either create difficulty through auto hit patches or heavy one-shot kill attacks designed to circumvent resistance and defense (ie. tyrant's hammer attack).

I know there are better ways to flesh out difficulty than that.

Originally Posted by JayboH

Is the OP talking about copying that set from CO? The one where it hurts enemies and heals players?

Also, let's not bend (ahem) to the fans of Avatar over everything. I wouldn't be against a wind set but come on, can you imagine the copyright infringements popping up everywhere? It happens enough as it is, but this would be begging for it.

...I've never seen a single episode simply because the fan behavior irks me, much like most anime due to otakus.

Originally Posted by Bright_Tempest

Personally, I steer away from Confuses (yes, I have them. But they're layered on as a 'secondary' control to large mobs to ensure my/team safety). The thought of quickly confusing a mob and loosing XP because they're shooting each other in the face is just totally unappealing to me.

Originally Posted by Helluva_Goon

@The_Cheeseman, you have a veryt decent build here. Nice defenses on Range and energy/negative damage as well. The build isn't that expensive and too, you have it perma-hasten. It looks like a solid build.

I didnt take any sleeper powers cause simply they are interupterable altho, I know they may provide a nice soft-control at those OH CRAP!!! moments.

My build I may have to redo all over again but I am not sure on what woill satisfy my needs to a complete build yet.

Thanks for sharing Cheeseman!

Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno

(Mods feel free to jump in if I get too far off topic.)

I'll first start off by saying I do not believe Magic is a balanced game at the tournament level. In my experience one deck usually dominates for a period of time, then sets rotate out in favor of the most newly printed cards and cycle repeats. I can only recall a few times where there was a diverse field of archetypes in an tournament settings of the past. I remember years by decks Rebels, U/G Madness, Psychatog, Tinker, Astral Slide, Affinity, Faeries, Caw-Blade, Delver. Nothing changes only the deck.

The deck to play.

New mechanics come they often breed new thing not previously done in the past. But Wizards fails to test how they cause non-interactivity, balance issues, or weaken the viablity of older cards. Examples like Storm, Infect, Hexproof, Equipment and Phyrexian mana are examples overpowered abilities that weaken contemporary strategies. Storm...its something players wish Wizards would just dis-invent. It creates non-interactive games where you play a bunch of spells ending with the card with the Storm mechanic...and then the opponent loses. Infect effectively cuts your opponent's starting life total in half where creatures with Infect deal damage in posion counters. Ten poison counters is lethal, a far cry from the poison counter effect from way back in the day dealing one poison counter at a time. Creatures with the Hexproof mechanic make creatures with Shroud mechanic obsolete. Equipment cards are far better than Auras. Phyrexian mana breaks the color pie allowing any deck no matter what color they use, to use cards with Phyrexian mana in their costs. The "best" deck is usually the deck that finds the most synergy with the newest mechanic than the rest of the decks in the field. You see this deck in multiples of the top 8's of tournament reports and they become copied and played by everyone else. This how it goes.

While Wizards does have the power to ban cards deemed too strong for the metagame in an effort to breed diversity, they have taken this act very often in recent memory across several formats not just Standard. You've also mentioned the Modern format. How many cards were banned after the first professional Modern format tournament, hmm? And those broken cards you are alluding to from Alpha were indeed strong, but here's the thing: They did not become broken until years later when the "modern" game developed. The faster, non-interactive games of Type 1/Vintage only developed when cards like Tolarian Academy, Yangmoth's Bargain, Goblin Welder, Oath of Druids, and Tendrils of Agony existed to break those cards you allude to. Cards that were printed years after the ones in Alpha were printed.

This is the part where design fails to breed diversity, and that why I don't believe balance truly exists in the game. But in fairness Wizards cannot truly fix older eternal formats with such large card pools to build from so I can only fault them for Standard, Modern, and Extended (a format that is practically dead).

This does prove however that new cards do make old ones better, not outdating them as you say, but overall Magic being balanced? I disagree. Diversity to me is the better sign of balance. Having options other than, "Play this deck" or "meta against it" don't breed healthy formats. But where does the game fall victim to power creep? Go back to 2008.

For those that do not know, Mythic Rares are rarer than Rares in booster packs. You are guaranteed a Rare in every pack, but Mythics only appear at ratio of 8:1 in booster packs. Many mythic rares are so strong that they defined tournament metagames. While not all Mythics are good or even playable, but some do break the game. They are far stronger than what is or what was legal to play in tournament format settings depending on the format.

Standard used to be and affordable format to play. There were only a few chase rares to get and the average price of a competetive deck for Standard was far less that what they cost today. Not that is game was ever cheap to play, a hundred or two would get you there, nowadays five hundred dollars...easy. A year or two ago, one deck was over a grand. This what Mythic Rares have done to the game. They've elevated the cost to play and inadvertingly raised the price of the normal rares, even commons can cost a dollar each and uncommons can cost over five. Inflation, inflation, inflation as far the eye can see...and it all began to happen when they started making Mythic Rares. Since Magic is a collectible game and thus it is subject to secondary markets...they are very expensive, which makes the packs more valuable. What Wizards did was find a way to generate more cash and inadvertingly inflate the secondary market that surrounds the game increasing the value of the better cards.

This is power creep.

An inability to break into a format and be sucessful due the constraints of money and a lack power in card availibility. I have a full time job, with the normal bills and payments we all face. I could not afford to play Standard if I wanted to. Cards in the Standard and even the Modern format eventually rotate out, reducing the value of most of the cards overtime. Why would I invest in a format where 90% of the cards I invest in lose value, unless the get reprinted (knowledge I wont have until later...) B) The immediate expense. I could just buy the cards I need, but then you are buying power and an advantage over those who cannot afford them or who aren't lucky enough to open them in their packs.

If they had not added a new rarity of cards. This would all be a mute point, then the money factor would not be strong. There wouldn't be such a disparity in power due to the cost/value of the more powerful cards.

The only comparison that I can make between Magic and CoH would be Mythic Rares in Magic and Incarnate Powers in CoH. Compared to CoH, design-wise some of Magic's Mythic Rares are creatures and spells that are at an Incarnate level-like strength. They do absurd things in a game. Give me a deck with the right Mythics against one without and I have a large advantage. It would be similar to running non-incarnate story arcs or missions with them, they just aren't as challenging.

(Example: Griselbrand compared to Yawgmoth's Bargain. Take a broken enchantment that net's you large amounts of card advantage at the cost of your own life points, then, make it a creature, give it wings, lifelink, a 7/7 power and toughness, and that Mythic rare status.)

I will stipulate not all Mythic Rares break the game, just the really good ones. (The one's you see one every tournament report, if you follow Magic)

The video specifically stated the Standard format, which is where I strongly disagree. I don't think there is a single format for Paper Magic (at least that I've played) where Magic is no affected by power creep. Magic's: Duel of the Planeswalkers online card game might have been the better choice to describe a game where power creep isn't a factor.

Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno

I'm sure you and I can go into a long discussion about modern Magic, it's game balance, interactivity, it's power creep (or lack of) but this isn't the place to do so per forum rules. I don't want to go off on a long rant about another game. But in terms of the subject of power creep, look at the current block of cards, then go back another block, and then another, and another, and what I see is steady increase in power as you move forward to today. Magic is too big to look at in terms of set to set, you have to look at it in terms of block to block or year to year.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison

Mind you, I've also seen a merfolk mill deck, which is also a form of control deck. It will take its time milling you to death, but there's nothing you can do in the meantime. These kind of things do exist, but they are far less common.

Originally Posted by JayboH

The moment the servers went up after the patch, I actually ran 6 in a row on Freedom as my favorite character Flint Eastwood, and the first one failed. I took one of my wife's characters and ran 5 about a week and a half later. They all succeeded. I was on several others that I didn't lead with a tanker of mine and we won all those too.

You just have one team in charge of knocking out Well Beams when they come up and just have everyone pounding on Tyrant when they are gone. Just wait in place when you get the warning about his lightning attack and move the instant they appear. It's really not that hard at all.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison

Totally disagree with this. I have been milled to death on turn two by Painter-Stone combo as well as Brain Freeze Storm. The Eldrazi Titan sounds like a great plan until you realize that Tormod's Crypt can be activated in response, or simple use of a Planar Void and this idea no longer works.

Also, the first Jace printed only costs 3, and is arguably the best for milling someone.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle

It's almost like some of us predicted this exact scenario months ago. At least now I know the devs have me on ignore so I can get right to posting all those saucy images I have lined up.

Originally Posted by mauk2

(sigh)

Ok, I see a lot of "OMG THIS IS TOO GUD" posted in here.

I don't see anybody running numbers.

How does bonfire slotted with this proc compare to a whole bunch of other dot powers?

Try, ice patch, rain of fire, and blizzard, for instance. How does it compare? Really?

Originally Posted by JayboH

That's really weird, because out of 11 full Magi trials, I've only been on one that failed, and that was due to a dc bug that affected quite a few of the people in the league.

Originally Posted by Madadh

Several things I think in this bear comment on.

1) As you say, you are on Freedom. iTrials are not as easily come by on some servers. I play a lot of Justice, which very often ranks just behind the big 2... And yet iTrials get really tough to find or recruit for at about 10PM my time. And by midnight, forget about it.

2) That said, I can get great progress done via the iTrials if I don't wait that late, and I don't even need to head anywhere. I just hop in the queue, and start running DA arcs, or SSAs, or tips, and after not too long, I'm suddenly in an iTrial. If the team was fun, I'll stick with them if they run another, if not, I'll excuse myself, hop back in the queue, and go back to something else for a while till the next iTrial launches.. I think a lot of people forget that you can use the queue and be running missions now. No need to tread water for 10-15 while recruiting happens. You can make DA arc progress while ya wait.

3) I still say a smart build, good IOing, and smart play trump incarnate powers. If you hate iTrials, don't do iTrials. Yes, they are a more efficient way to get incarnate powers than solo, but don't feel that it's that critical to get them that much faster. IOing out fully and carefully and that will bring a bigger increase in performance. There really is no NEED to do stuff you hate to get *any* rewards, but certainly not incarante rewards... So I disagree with the cheesehead. Er, cheeseguy... Capt Cheesy? There is NO way that it is 'worth the effort' to spend your playtime doing something you hate, as a hobby you do for fun..

The one exception might be the one ITrial that guarantees a rare/VR might be worth a tough out.. But not if you truly hate it. Really, if it's not just 'annoying' but truely hated, skip it and do the solo thing.

Originally Posted by RevolverMike

I would agree but when the Dev's try to add new exciting things to AT's that they couldnt do before the player base freaks out and cries against it for some odd reason. See Bio armor's -regen debuff for example.

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood

Personally I think they slowed down on slot releases for two reasons. First the initial release of four slots together meant that people farmed the hell out of them just on BAF and Lambda and then burned out. If they'd just released two slots with BAF/Lambda (possibly moving the level shift form Destiny to Interface so we got one shift then) and then released the othe two later as they built up the number trials I think it would have gone a lot smoother. Hybrid (and presumably Genesis, Mind and Vitae) uses a new type of iXP so rationing the slots out while they build up the number of trials with new iXP helps prevent burn-out.

My second reason is more speculative. I think they may be feeling their way into how they want to gate access to the higher tier slots. People complained a LOT about the switch from Shards to Threads to the point that the devs felt compelled to pretty much promise "No New Merits/Salvage". Now this is pure speculation on my part but I suspect that somewhere on Positron's hard drive is an old design document detailing the new Salvage and Merits that would be used for building Hybrid, Genesis, Mind and Vitae abilities. Given the push-back from the community they've obviously shelved that idea (assuming they did have it anyway) but that may well have made them more cautious about how they award the new slots. With Hybrid it's just a new form of iXP which means most people just farm the kills at the start of the trial to unlock the slot and then run older and easier content to make abilities. By releasing only one slot they can observe player behavior and then decide if they want to change things up a bit for the next slot (for example for Genesis they could make the requirement that you have to get the requisite iXP but also need a particular Trial Completion Badge to unlock the slot or change the trial to back-load the iXP).

Originally Posted by Hatred666

Some of the mill decks are no joke. The ones built around the plainswalker cards like Jace Beleren are almost unbeatable if built and played right.