UberGuy

This is what I do, too. I ran all my 50s at +2 before Incarnates, which meant, in practice, I had to be able to at least handle +3s, because they would show up in missions. Now that my 50s are +1 full-time, I bumped the slider to +4 (meaning I'm really fighting +3s). That was possible since I was already built to handle +3s at least around 1/2 the time, and my actual Incarnate powers ensured I could do it full time.

As an bonus, playing at the top of the level slider scale (+4) means I never have to worry about foes whose level varies within the mission, which actually tends to smooth my performance against any given critter faction.

I don't feel that way. I never inferred that "hypothetical 'Level 60' really meant +10 more functional combat levels. I mean, sure, it occurred to me that it might, back as far as that survey came out, but I never assumed that was for sure what it meant. And given that it actually occurred to me that they might mean +10 combat levels, there were specific reasons that I thought it might not.

One, already discussed in this thread was the way the phrase was written. But it was really that in combination with the knowledge that the devs had several times referred to the Invention System as "alternate progress". That made apparent to me that they were open to means of character progress not tied to numerical level. There are clearly tiers of power one can build with Inventions, but they are complex and branching. With the way they used the phrase "Level 60", I foresaw that they might do something like that with what we now know as the Incarnate System.

Thanks for this. I downloaded a local copy to play with and plugged in my single-target Ice Blast attacks for a Corruptor. It looks like Corruptors are probably just below the break-even point where Core is better if you have a better damage scale and Radial is better if you have worse. Corruptor Ice Bolt gets more added average damage from Core, but Ice Blast and Bitter Ice Blast both get more from Radial. Given my single-target attack chain is Bolt, Blast, Bolt,BIB,repeat, I gain quite a lot more damage per cycle from Radial on the two larger attacks than I lose on two casts of Ice Bolt, so Radial wins handily.

I also mucked around with the calculations to add in Synapse's proposed I24 PPM mechanics for Radial, just to see what it did. It caused Ice Bolt to be a bit worse with Radial and Ice Blast to be about the same between the two branches. Radial remained superior for BIB. (That's with 90+% recharge slotted in both Ice Blast and BIB.) Under those conditions, and given my attack chain, Core and Radial are almost equal in DPS contribution, with Core being slightly better.

I think that I expect Core to work better with Ice Storm, and I don't want to have to build a new Assault come I24, I'll probably just go the Core route now.

I might be wrong, but I took his post to mean that 16 was the default. We have examples of sphere powers with 255 target caps. I'm guessing that's straightforward to modify. Well, as straightforward as anything is to modify in a production system.

Last night I was on a 23-man league with three masterminds who were asked to dismiss pets during that fight. We won handily after about 8 minutes.

I am being guided by my sense of fair play here, but I don't think it's likely to cause much risk in doing so. Could it? Yes. If we have a league full of low DPS characters and MMs who can't add much, that's not smart. But I'll worry about crossing that bridge when I see it looming. I think there are fair odds the bug will be fixed before I need to worry about it.

He would benefit from them, as far as I know. He can't be healed because he has 100% resistance to heals. (I didn't know till I just looked that he has 100% resistance to Psi and Toxic damage, too.) Even if he had resistance to toHit modifers (which he doesn't), the buff from Tactics is irresistible.

LA, it really wasn't a stupid question. Hopefully you don't feel like anyone is ragging on you, because I really don't think anyone is. The argument above may have been triggered by your question, but that isn't a reflection on your knowledge or even the question itself.

In case I personally said anything that came across as a downer, in my initial response to you I may have come off as blunt, but it was only meant to be matter-of-fact.

This is text interactions meaning you missed how I would have said that sentence out loud and with what body language.

Hint. It was dripping in sarcasm.

You were never told what you said in your original post. That survey did not mention 10 level shifts.

I took that survey. Are you perhaps unfamiliar with the use of quotes (as in the typographical character, not the quote function of the forums) to indicate "so-called" or "by another name" designation? For example, calling a Kheldian in Dwarf from a "tank".

The very quote you posted has quotes used in this way, in the phrase "hypothetical 'Level 60'".

That does not and never did clearly indicate 10 level shifts. The offset of the phrase "Level 60" in quotes makes clear that it may be a kind of virtual progress, analogous to 10 additional levels, but not so identical with as to clearly indicate 10 additional combat levels. Any interpretation of it meaning 10 level shifts was an assumption on the part of the reader and nothing more.

Well, that's kind of interesting, because being dead should cause them to lose the buff no matter what.

Depending on where you were relative to the buff source and the rest of the league, sending your pets in may have caused them to lose the buff. It pulses like auto and toggle powers, so it changes dynamically as the order of targets changes. So as your distance from the source changes, you might lose the buffs because you're now not one of the 16 closest targets.

There was never any dev statement that we would get 10 level shifts. All that was said in this vein was a comparison between the Incarnate system and progressing to level 60. Some folks interpreted that rather literally when we got the +1 level shift with the Alpha Slot.

There are many undesirable things about letting us get such high level shifts. The most critical in my mind is the inability to use any version of the sidekick system with them. If that changes, then more shifts may be OK, but that then also undercuts some of the conceptual point behind the shifts to start with, so it seems possible that "Incarnate Sidekicking" will never come to pass.

Barring iSidekicking, I expect maybe one more level shift.

Only by serious dunderheads.

As Flea describes, they may be asked to dismiss their pets in the Tyrant fight (only), which I fully admit seriously limits what they bring to the table. However, that's just a work-around that will hopefully have a (very) limited lifespan.

I'm one of those people who exists in a persistent state of /hide from searches, because I don't like blind invites. Sometimes, I turn it off, because I am doing something that being searchable is useful for, such as targeting for a Hamidon raid sub-group. (At least before leagues were added, people liked to use Search to find your character by name.)

On occasion, I forget to turn /hide back on. And when I do, I am reminded of it because I still get blind invites. (Despite a search comment that says no blind invites. That's right, I am both hidden and have that in my search comments.)

So, anecdotes are anecdotal and all, but I don't see what you're seeing.

I'm pretty sure there's no relationship between negative level shifts and exemplar behavior. The Throw Quills power turns off access to Epic Pools as a direct effect of the power. Like most powers, Epic Pool powers have a short list of "disallowed modes" which let the devs turn them off, for things like Ouroboros challenge settings. Throw Quills uses this to disable them on targets it hits.

Agreed. I have been debuffed by six levels. This is very noticable when fighting portals, which are "only" level 54. When double debuffed this way it becomes very difficult to hit the portals, and when you hit, you do piddly damage, because they are now +7 to you. It becomes pointless to attack Black Swan, since she is +10 under the same conditions.

From my Ice/Dark Corruptor last night.

That's not the degradation I expect for my target being +4.

Note, the third damage entry above includes having activated Aim (which is probably the only reason I landed the shot), which for this character is a damage ratio increase of about 32%. Backing that out calculates that I would have dealt about 7% of my standard damage, which is pretty close to the expected 8% one deals to +7 targets.

Edit: I am focusing on the portals, because Black Swan herself has powers that could create the behavior above without involving level shifts. For example, after using Quills of Jocas, she gains use of Barrier. The Portals have no such benefit, and have no level shifts of their own.

Edit2: I looked, and "Throw Quills" doesn't apply any level debuffs. The implication is that Quills of Jocas is double stacking somehow.

Uh. That is not true of a single woman I know who saw that movie, either in real life or indirectly through things like CoH or just Facebook. And yes, I'm only counting the ones I know are actually women, thanks to things like Skype.

That you point out that you were on light duty suggests to me that you are not aware of the actual mechanics involved, which makes me wonder if you know whether or not your pets were shifted the way you think they were. (Note that I don't mean that as a dig. The mechanics are obscure. I'm just pointing out that the problem may not be what you think it is.)

Being near lights, being the person who takes one out, or anything of that sort has no bearing on whether you or any pet gets a level shift. They are given out by an entity that is not centered in the bowl, and presumably give them to the first closest 16 targets only.

When this behavior is fixed, Tyrant will be +0 to you nearly full time. He's still a potent AV, but he should not be significantly more deadly for your henchmen than most +0 AVs. Indeed, because the rules for the level penalty your henchment get in iTrials is different than in other content, it may be easier for non-trial AVs to destroy them in general.