UberGuy

I also have Spiritual Core. I don't particularly have problems with incoming damage on my build. I do have problems sustaining a high-end Martial Arts attack chain combined with running the toggles that are what let me avoid serious problems with incoming damage. That combination is something I can manage on Regen Scrappers because they get QR. It's something I can only manage on my Regen Stalker because of Ageless Destiny.

To add to this, even when running down the relatively narrow paths that min/maxing tends to run along there is still a lot of wiggle room in builds. People make trade-offs in DPS vs mitigation, trade-offs in achieving high DPS via high recharge vs. high +damage vs high DPE... Heck, even the very notion of "high DPS" has different meanings depending on goals. Do you want to be a good TF/Trial participant? A good farmer? A good AV soloer? There's overlap in capability possible in that list, but differences in actual design targets elicit different build choices.

Different powersets achieve similar build goals differently. My DM/Regen Scrapper and Stone/FA Brute have similar levels of peak defense, but one is positional and one is damage typed, because the powerset slotting choices made each more optimal for one character. Dark Melee helps a character survive in radically different ways than Stone Melee, leading to different targeting priorities for different powers to achieve maximum effect.

In short, I really do find the claims that powersets are all interchangeable to be bunk, and I'm sorry, claiming it's "just an opinion" is simply a cop-out. That "optinion" happens to make a claim that's objectively examinable, and I don't think it holds out at all under such examination.

FWIW, that's much more complicated than what the ones I've been on do. We do pull the WW to the corner, but we basically pull it right to where the DE spawn, so we can blast them with AoEs while we fight the WW. We usually have just one Tanker or very sturdy Brute hold aggro, and everyone else beats on the AV and spams the copious temp powers we had ample opportunity to collect long before we got to the room for that fight. For the Lichen we tell people to watch for the 2-3 nearest fungus glowies and either take them out or call for help if they can't DPS them fast enough.

Sometimes that's too free form for PuGs, but usually it's fine.

CoF had the living bejesus nerfed out of it a long time ago. In my opinion, they overdid it by at least a factor of two, applying what, at the time, was half-jokingly considered Dev standard operating procedure - find three ways to nerf something and then apply them all.

I know that a strong fear aura is potentially extremely powerful, and it's entirely possible it was too good before they changed it, but they hammered its duration and accuracy and left the endurance cost what it used to be. Today, I consider IOs the only way to make the power worth using, and I think that's a sign of something that's too weak.

For what it's worth, I don't think you should feel too bad about wiping out most of the spawn and most of an at least +1 EB in a race with at least 11 other people - so at least 3-4 other folks at each other crystal spawn. I get your point totally, but it's nothing to be ashamed of.

I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater with the highlighted part. In order to eliminate something that, yes, makes our market inefficient, you would [edit: be willing to] eliminate the feature that is probably single-handedly responsible for the level of participation that the market here has. If you eliminated the ability to place standing bids, I am confident that market use would plummet, even with the elimination of the double-blind system. The loss of convenience would be far too great. This community is not market-centric, because the game is not loot-centric. I suspect strongly that if people had to fiddle with the market more as the loss of standing bids would require, great numbers of them simply would not fiddle with it at all.

I remember what participation was like on the Black Market in the latter days pre-GR, when it was still separate from WW. I have allergic reactions to suggestions that I perceive as making our current market look like the old BM did.

Er, not really. That's only true of the Alpha Slot. Everything after that is actually easier in that sense of crafting.

When I was working on the Alpha Slot for multiple characters, I actually had to create a spreadsheet of who had to run how many of what TF. But I don't do that for any other slot.

Here's how I keep track of what I need post-Alpha Slot.

1. Decide what power at what "rarity" level I want. (I realize this skips a lot of research or discovery, but it's not pertinent to the crafting aspect.)
2. Play an iTrial. If I succeed, I get a reward table for either Common, Uncommon, Rare or Very Rare rewards.
3. Pull up my Incarnate window and look at the Create tab.
4. Look at what components I need to craft my way to the power I want (determined in step 1), starting at the tier that matches the rarity of my reward and working down. In other words, if I got a Rare reward, check the Rare powers to see what rare salvage they need.
5. Pick the component from my window that matches that.

It can be slightly more complicated than this, since sometimes I might get rewards I no longer need. (Getting another Rare when I already had the ones I needed, for example.) But the main point was that I don't have to worry about what I run in order to determine what I get in order to craft. I can choose what to run based on which ones I think are more fun, more likely to succeed, or more efficient.

Yep. I only do it because I want to be challenged by it, not because it's particularly rewarding in the mechanical sense. And reinforcing the rest of Obitus' post, I mentioned some great examples of things that smack my BS/Invul hard at +4/x8.

That's what several people I play with reported also.

Seriously? You expect a lot of people to fork out real cash for stuff instead of using them as a goal to pursue in game?

"Yeah, let me spend money to achieve all my goals on this game so I no longer have any goals to chase ... Maybe I should go play that other game now."

And I say this as someone who has a lot of disposable income.

Good god, no. That's what makes the set amazing.

On the older trials, yeah. On the newer ones, that's getting worse on the main AVs. All the AVs in the UGT are 54+1. Maelstrom in the TPN trial is 54+2. The message here is pretty clear to me - get some level shifts in the other trials first, then run these.

I'm curious to see how steeply they continue that shifting trend, and whether they continue to offset it with Incarnate Shifts. (If they do, I expect them to create different types of shifts that only work in later trials so that we can't be higher level than the critters in the currently existing trials.)

I'm doing it solo. I don't have a lot of recharge in my build, so I'm usually doing Hack, Disembowel, Slice Headsplitter, repeat, but with Whirling Sword tossed in whenever it's up. I don't normally need to use Parry unless I'm being debuffed. Notably, I do also throw in Ionic Judgement as an openening attack on full spawns when it's recharged.

It's not that fast compared to some things, but it's not terrible by my standards.

And I don't have Pyre Mastery either. In fact, I don't have any epic pool powers picked in my current build.

When there's only one or two LTs and you have some +toHit, that works fine. When there are four or more of them, it doesn't work really at all. Even if you have enough +toHit to hit them, if there are any bosses left you're looking at intense pain, because they're not just benefitting from stacked toHit against you, but also stacked damage buffs.

That's not correct. Only players had 75% base toHit. The problem was that only even-level minions had 50% base toHit. If they were higher-rank than minion or higher level than even-level, they had +toHit bonuses. Critters over level and over minion rank had bonuses from both. This was changed in I7, not I4.

Edit: Scooped.

This can't be correct for some of the examples, at least. The Phantasm summoned by MIs stays even if the MI is defeated, and the Decoy Phantasm stays even if the summoning Phantasm is destroyed. The aforementioned FF Generator also is definitely not summoned at the player.

Also, follow the link I pasted in my OP, above. It shows the KoA summoning the Caltrops directly. They are not giving the player a power that summons it. (This would be somewhat obvious in the game - no matter the level of the foes, the thing summoned would be the level of the affected player, meaning low-level critters like Tsoo could cause the summoning of level 50 Caltrops.)

I was on a DB/Regen. The character has a Winter's Gift slow resist slotted, but believe me, that's never stopped me from hitting the move speed floor soloing at x8. The difference was immediately noticeable.

Edit: Besides, as I mentioned in my post, I compared the effect of a single patch (summoned by a solitary KoA) to the effect of many patches (those summoned by a full x8 spawn), and saw the same speed debuff number in my Combat Attributes display.

While I realize how that's a way you can take it, it's not how I meant it. I was honestly asking the question. I like to think it's a fair question, because frankly, even though the Avatar does warn consistently as far as I know, it's not clear what the correct response to all its warnings are. For example "The Avatar prepares to cripple the league..." doesn't really tell you what to do. (It looks like that attack - it's the one that screws our recovery - is a cone in front of the Avatar so I get behind it for that one too.)

I was definitely only asking about the Avatar, since that was the comments I was referring to. I get killed a lot by the WWs on pug UGTs, too.

I can't really make out the effects either. I always go by the warnings. When I've been on leagues of people I trust, I don't worry about the one a leaguemate can screw everyone with. When I'm on a PuG and see that warning, I do move away from the league for a bit, even if that means I have to stop fighting. I am not fond of having to do that, but I figure me not dead and able to jump back in the fight is more effective than me dead running back from the hospital, even via the telepad.

I've definitely noticed that on PuGs, or any situation where there was no one to hold his aggro. That turned me into a jumping bean on my melees.

Like I mention, there's not much else to be done about the confuse. It has immense mag and so basically requires multiple Clarions on league for a smooth run.

Full disclosure - everyone I've brought on the UGT has Clarion, meaning they can help both themselves and the rest of the league. On my squishy characters I have Clarion as my "main" or only Destiny, but on several of my melees I have it as a backup pick to what I consider their "main" Destiny. Yes, I run enough trials to have backup Destiny powers on multiple characters. I didn't do that specifically for UGT trials - I take many of my melee characters to Hamidon raids, and I was tired of being terrorized by blue mitos. It just happened to work out nicely for the UGT.

Like I said, I was asking the question. I wasn't drawing a conclusion before I asked it.