dave_p
-
Posts
1148 -
Joined
-
So just to update, I opened up my Destiny slot Monday, and sure enough I had enough for my T3. Then last night (Tuesday), I opened up my Lore slot, and immediately T3 again. Still haven't played w/a T1 or T2 power (again, I could just choose not to slot my T3... but why, esp considering the level shifts?).
I was a bit surprised when I opened my T3 Lore slot that I didn't have enough threads or commons (tons of uncommons and 2 rares in inventory tho) to get a T1 of my next tree--I figured I'd have enough to start my 2nd climb to a rare to get my T4, at least not w/o breaking any uncommons or E-merits. Then again, I wasted 60 merits opening up the Cryo tree when I planned on going Pryo.
I am a bit worried about the lack of very rare drops--I have 2, but on another toon, and he doesn't even have a single thing opened yet. E-merits are definitely harder to come by (only 7 or 8 so far). I'm thinking, esp for the long term, that I should rotate in toons more often to get everyone their nightly E-merit(s) instead of grinding just 1 toon to get enough IXP to open something up. Which just means for all my incarnates, it's going to be weeks of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing... bam! T3s for all! It's a tiny bit frustrating. -
Quote:I figure the drop rates sould be like they are for shards (x5, supposedly for threads), so killing tons of minions won't get you very far anyway. I think the original estimates were 1 shard per 50 bosses vs. 1000 minions or so. 1 thread every 10 bosses, or 200 minions seems reasonable. You're still gonna get *far* better returns on A-merits & the random tables via trials, but non-trial progressions would be better than the current 2.7 year (or 10 months or whatever calculations you want to perform, it's still ridiculously long) rate via shards.Originally Posted by HelinCarnate
Would change that to just bosses as it is quite easy for most IOed out melee toons to farm 54s without bosses. -
Quote:I mostly agree w/you, but just as a nitpick, I usually (always?) lead w/BoF & Fireball before Inferno to get rid of those slivers of Lt healths. Sometimes Blaze on the boss too. Unless you're trying to solo-clear a spawn, and even then you can pull it off depending on your defenses (esp before the crash) and your secondary.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
LTs have slightly more HP than Inferno can deal, and bosses have substantially more. And an LT with a sliver of health is just as dangerous to me as a fully healed one because I have no endurance to kill it with.
But yeah, the advantages of Judgment are ridiculous. Here's another one: you can cast them around corners to avoid (almost) any return fire. Just hit 1 mob at the edge of a spawn, and it'll propagate to most of his friends (via jumping or a 40' radius) who won't be able to shoot back at you, and you'll have full end & mobility to run away if you choose. Yeah, you can sorta do that w/Blizzard (no end, no mobility) and RoA (4 sec animation) too, and not w/Void (favored by melee types who don't care about return fire) or Cryo (unless you use all of that 120' range). However, everyone has access to Ion & Pryo, and only Ice & Arch blasters can (sorta) pull off this trick w/their nukes. -
I actually expect a slight nerf to A-merits sooner than later. Currently, the thread gain from a typical successful BAF is like 4:1 from A-merits to actual thread drops. That makes actual thread drops kinda meaningless. An A-merit sink might be in the works, but I doubt we'll see anything prior to I21.
E-merits likely won't be touched. You can only get 2/day/toon, and since few ppl run Lambda, I'm really only getting 1/day/toon. Hard to grind those unless you're constantly swapping out 50s. -
How durable are the melee pets or other damage pets in general? I went for the Seer Seekers for my first Dest. slot, but am thinking of a melee damage dealer (Vicky, it sounds like) for my Kin. I've heard others say the non-invulnerable ones melt away pretty fast, esp on the trials. I assume they're pretty sturdy on regular +0 TFs?
-
The same ppl who want to run longer trials are the ones who are converting threads into IXP too. They are impatient, or just aren't thinking long term at all. If you're impatient (and I was a bit too; I mentioned elsewhere I don't exactly mind too much if we have to fight NS & Siege a couple of times) and wanted to be the first on your server w/all 4 T4s, I can see it, but otherwise, it makes zero sense not to speed run through all trials and stock up on A & E merits.
-
I'm sure we're going to migrate in the direction of threads instead of shards sooner or later as shards become less valuable (see Apex & Tin), but why not just immediately allow all 54 mobs to have a chance to drop threads?
Currently, a lot of the debates and (rather justified, IMO) complaints are about the new trials, how they have to be grinded on, and how it punishes solo play or even single teams. Regardless of your thoughts on those playstyles, whether they need, deserve, etc. the various Incarnate rewards, is there any reason why we can't have more mobs dropping threads?
Limit thread drops to 54s to keep the I20 thread "exclusivity" around for a bit longer. Again, as w/shards, I have faith that we'll have far more common ways to get thread drops in the future, but for right now, letting us progress towards our I20 powers by killing 54s would open up so many more options to the entire playerbase, from setting your missions/TFs to +4, street sweeping Cim & RWZ, etc. It would also grant us real incentives to play our Incarnates at +4 settings other than just for the lulz.
The only con to this would be the drop in the number of BAF & Lambda trial runs, which would hurt ppl needing IXP. Of course, this goes hand in hand w/my other suggestion of scrapping IXP altogether.
Or create some other mechanism, i.e. letting 54s grant IXP as well. Then again, if threads were more readily available, more ppl could just convert them to IXP w/o worrying about wasting those threads.
BTW, I think this would actually make I20 progressions slower, not faster, which may solve another potential dev headache (as in, did they really forsee so many ppl getting all 4 T4s within a week?). Currently, we're all forced to participate in league trials, which means there's a nice critical mass of players to make up those leagues. Those trials give us Astral & Emp merits, and of course the random drop table, which are the real sources of the fast progress. If you give us more options, those trials may slow down a bit, so fewer A & E merits, and likely slightly slower progress. Yes, the truly hardcore players will still grind out those trials, but you're not going to stop that kind of player behavior anyway. -
I just raised a similar point w/tanks on the tanker forum, but, I was also thinking SR & Shields scrappers w/Rebirth Radial Epiphany would be pretty sick. High def layered w/a massive heal & regen.
-
I haven't unlocked Destiny w/any of my tanks yet, but Rebirth, esp Radial Epihany + tanker HPs & other resists/defenses sound... well, a bit broken.
(Thanks to Dispari) Rebirth Radial Epiphany: 856.72 heal, +1600% regen first 10s, 600% next 20s, 400% next 30s, 200% last 60s (120s total), 60ft radius
So every 2 min, you get a massive heal and IH level regen for the 1st 10 sec, merely WP lvl for the next 20s, then still pretty good regen boosts for the next 90s before you hit yourself w/another massive heal, repeat. Oh, and affects all allies around you.
We've always talked about the importance of layered mitigation, and I'm guessing WP tanks might do better w/like Barrier, perma-Granites might want Ageless for the recharge, but man, I can't think of a better buff for a defensive based tank than Rebirth. Ice & Shields w/those kinds of heal/regen #s are going to be sick. Invul (similar for Stone & Ice too)? Rotate w/DP and you have a massive heal every 1 min or so, plus pretty the regen. The resist sets would love this too, though w/my Dark, I'd again favor Ageless for the rech & end/recovery.
So, anyone try it yet? Or other Destiny buffs? Thoughts? -
Totally agree with this. The worst is when working on something like the BAF badges, where you assign 1 team to NS, 1 team to Seige and 1 team to the ambushes. Guess who's getting all the IXP & drops during that phase?
I can see a concern over league-wide shared drops from zone events, like MS raids, but really, so what? You already get partial credit by one toon on a team spamming AoEs and doing minor damage on as many mobs as he can hit. Sharing kills among the league would actually cut down on that practice and encourage players to kill what's in front of them.
Edit: Oops, many ppl already cited the BAF team splits. Just goes to show how silly the current state of affairs is.
-
/Signed.
I think the same UI guy also did the "new" market UI. Both horrible designs. -
Make sure you hit each WST once w/each toon you want to Alpha up. Those Notices break apart for shards too. MSR is another great tip. A good run will get you like 2-3 shards and 600+ v-merits which convert to 6 G'rai Matter which basically will net you 8-9 shards over time (the 1 G'rai Matter a day conversion is stupid tho).
Again, talking past Alpha, I picked up Ageless Destiny for my Fire/Rad, T3, and I'm really unimpressed w/it. I'm sorta wishing I'd gone Barrier like everyone else. Reactive Interface is all sorts of awesome though, as I predicted above. Adding more proc damage to my spammed Fire Cages not to mention the debuffs they're doing now, all the while EF is up, and then following up w/a Pyronic nuke is kinda sick. Still haven't decided which Lore pet to take, still leaning towards the Seekers. -
Quote:Actually, I think the original design was fine. Blasters were glass cannons. I have zero problems w/being fragile dealers of copious amounts of damage. It's just that the other ATs have largely caught up on the damage dealing, and Judgment just makes it worse. If blasters were again *clearly* (yes, I know, some blasters can still outdamage all other ATs, but it's just not that big a margin any more, and not all blaster combos/builds can do this in any case) the damage kings of the game, I wouldn't mind the lack of any built-in defenses.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
It isn't damage that blasters need, it's survivability.
<snipped a lot of valid arguments as to why blasters are fragile>
In my opinion there's something intrinsically wrong with that from a design standpoint.
Having said that, everyone is outputting so much damage anyway, esp at 50, giving blasters yet more damage might break the game even more than it currently is. So maybe the more practical route is to give blasters a bit more innate survivability, though too much and the question will be flipped to, why scrappers? -
Quote:That's a really good point. My first trial attempt was a 9-person Lambda that failed at Marauder, and I got like 33% of Interface unlocked. Each of my successful, and full strength BAF runs were good for like 15%, at least for Judgment.Originally Posted by Supernumiphone
I pretty much agree. By the time I unlocked Destiny I'd already had a tier 3 ready to slot for some time. I wonder if maybe the devs didn't account for people forming full leagues rather than using the queue to PUG. Aside from ambushes the trials have a fixed number of mobs to defeat. The larger the league, the more people getting a piece of that pie. So everyone gets a smaller piece. On the BAF trial especially it seems glacial. I seem to be averaging a bit over 10% iXP on a full league, efficient run. That's almost 20 BAFs just to unlock both slots...per toon. Seriously?
-
Quote:You don't *need* a def capped Dark Armor tank either, but it sure as hell is fun to play. Same for throwing around Judgment nukes at Romans & Rikti.Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Yes, we can use our Incarnate powers elsewhere. But if you're not doing incarnate designed content, you don't need them.
-
Maybe he wants a natural based theme? I wouldn't mind a wall/storm of swords like effect for my sword-themed toons, even if it's stacking more lethal on.
-
Quote:Was that the first time for that toon, i.e. tied to a badge? I wasn't paying too much attention to when those random drops were happening, but the only time I observed one was on a badge. I also noticed that I stopped getting those random drops after I'd collected most of the badges (along w/the extra Astral drops).Originally Posted by rsclark
The only time I saw a component drop was for stopping all the escapees.
-
Here's how my last week went:
Tues: I20, patch. Run 1 failed Lambda to get the feel. Got 33% IXP for the run, couldn't get any action on the LFG system, logged.
Wed: Ugh, grinding. I think I'll read. Ooh, new Mythbusters!
Thu: Watched some TV. Did some chores. Couldn't bring myself to play.
Fri: Hmm... peak playing times for many. Did a MSR raid, then another failed Lambda (at 55% now). Still not excited about it.
Sat: Did other things involving RL, finally logged back on around 8PM, noticed a lot of ppl congregating in RWZ. Joined a league, starting farming BAFs. Hey, ppl know what they're doing now! And they have giant nukes to back them up. Did like 6 or so runs, all successes.
Sun: All day grinding. Did like 12-15 BAF runs in a row, then 8 Lambda runs. Again, all successes. MoBAF too. Pretty much everyone knows what's up now, or know enough to listen to the leaders. Amazing that just 5 days ago, the Marauder fight was kinda hard. Got T3 J & I slots for my main, much progress on other toons. Did laundry and other chores during the cut scenes & filling out league break times.
Mon: At work, thinking of how many more runs I can stomach tonight, but I'll be there barring injury.
Am I sick of the 2 trials? Yes. Does my greed for the newest shiny currently outweigh any boredom? Absolutely. Also, I do think ppl will get their 4 T4s and stop running them at this rate, so I wanna go through w/my 12 or so Incarnates while the getting is good, so to speak. So yeah, I'll keep grinding them until I'm utterly fed up w/them, and I have no one else to blame but myself. Meanwhile, I sincerely hope there'll be other ways to progress by I21, tho by then, I may well have all my T4s so the point will be moot (well, more 50s are upcoming, I guess). -
Quote:Thread drops pale in comparison to Astral Merits. You get an A-Merit for certain fixed tasks as well as badges, so those bonus A-Merits are one time only. I suspect the bonus component drops are for those badges also, but I haven't confirmed this. Even if they are completely random drops, they're rare enough that you're better off generating the random table at the end more often, i.e. faster trial times. Once you get all the badges out of the way, the absolute fastest way to earn your T4s will be to speed through each trial as fast as you can to earn the fixed # of A-Merits plus the random table at the end.Originally Posted by Stormfront_NA
The reason you may not want to skip content at all, is that for each kill you do get a chance to get a thread, and a random complexity component drop. Thus far I received common and rare component drops during the execution of either trial. Admittedly those drops are a rare event, but I usually get a component drop once every eight trials, which is pretty good in my book.
Just as an example, factoring out badge drops, a BAF should earn you 4 A-merits and likely around 4-5 thread drops, assuming you kill most things you face and you don't farm the N & S fight at the end for IXP. Those 4 A-Merits are now worth 16 threads. How many more mobs are you going to have to kill to get that many thread drops? Trust me, going forward, the hard core grinders will be doing the absolute minimum to get through each trial and rinsing & repeating often. -
I think diversification is the answer. My En/En blaster w/"Ion" in the name has to get Ionic, of course, but I'm trying to mix damage types. My Fire blaster will also get Ionic, my Ice & Arch will get Pyro, etc.
Likely Clarion for all blasters too. Not sure on Lore & Interface. -
Quote:Dammit, you beat me to it. Most of my blasters have RotP as parts of their attack chains. It's kinda annoying when your high def keeps you from dying quickly after a nuke crash though. I'll be sitting in the middle of mostly dead bosses yelling at them, "c'mon, hit me already!"Originally Posted by MaHaBone23
Try Rise of the Phoenix. Defeat is merely a way to shirk the nuke debuffs.Quote:
A defeated blaster's damage output is zero. 
-
Quote:It's that's truly the devs' intent, then it's a complete slap in the face of every player who solos or doesn't wanna run set I20 incarnate content (I'm not one of them, so please don't argue with me about the virtues of soloing MMOs--I just accept that lots of ppl do it, esp in CoX). I20 progression via shards vs threads is a complete and utter joke right now. Someone did the math showing that at a rate of 10 shards a day, it would take something like 2-3 years of steady play to open all 4 T4 slots. I opened 2 T3 slots in 1 day of grinding the two trials. Clearly different rates, indeed.Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
Shards are Incarnate progress points that can be earned from any content in the game outside of AE.
Threads are Incarnate progress points that can be earned from Incarnate Trial contents.
Having them as separate drops makes it possible to have clearly different rates of Incarnate progress in the different content types. -
Quote:I rarely use the learn2read counter, but you did read where I said...Originally Posted by Xenophage
...you are aware you can use threads to BUY incarnate XP right?
...right? In your defense, it was towards the end. Well, perils of putting a tl;dr at the beginning, I guess.Quote:Yes, you can buy IXP. Why? You'll open your slots quickly enough, and then IXP is irrelevant--why waste the threads that you'll use to, well, craft your T3 when said slots open?
I can sort of guess your rebuttal at that too, so please read my whole thing if you're planning on it. I'm not complaining that IXP gain is too slow. I'm saying it's too slow compared to other gains. And in the long run, like when IXP is worthless cuz we have all slots opened, it's wasteful to spend threads on IXP. My whole complaint is that the optimal progression, i.e. not wasting threads, is right now, 0 to T3 with very little in between. I can't possibly see how this is WAI. -
There are many problems w/the current LFG system which makes players not use it. For one thing, it's not transparent, so when forming a league outside the LFG system (and yeah, maybe ppl shouldn't do this, but we do), you can see inside the LFG queue to see who's available to fill out the league. So ppl congregate in zones like the RWZ to try to get slots on player-made leagues. Then, you can't invite ppl who are on LFG queue so they have to quit first. The LFG queue should be a tool to find ppl who want to run trials, not a system that creates leagues for itself, though it can do that too.
-
Quote:This is a very good point, but for future speed runs, I really wouldn't want it changed. Right now though, I secretly cheer a bit when we fail to kill Nightstar & Siege within the 10 sec since that gives us more mobs (ambushes) to kill. I never work against the common goal of getting both, but if it happens, I'm never upset.Originally Posted by Wicked_Wendy
I think part of the problem is the design of both trials and I seriously doubt anything we say here will change it.
You start a BAF and enter the facility. The entire inner courtyard is teaming with IDF troops and it looks like one heck of a battle but as soon as you defeat 40 of them the rest all disappear.