docbuzzard

This isn't really correct. We did an all melee Apex back in Beta and finished it without any real trouble. About the only real adaptation we did to make it run smoothly was equip everyone with envenomed daggers since we lacked a regen debuffer. It certainly wasn't the fastest run I've been on, but we did succeed and it wasn't unreasonably long.

Yes, but it's with the horribly dumb rules changes. I suppose I could just be asking for a PVP rule change rollback.

Yeah, I will still end up with flight speed enhancements in use in lots of places purely due to hover. Though I guess I might as well look at something else in the flight slot itself.

Try a smiley if you want to make something not funny pass for funny.

Bah. If someone takes control of my character without me being able to stop it that is bad without there being any excuse.

You spent a post justifying your liking the ability to yank control away from other players. Now you're back pedaling.

I'm waiting for the "And I almost never have objections"

But don't worry, I will be sure to not burden your TFs with my presence. You can TP your puppets around to your heart's content.

Brutes are not well balanced for PvP. They never have been and given the dearth of interest in PvP from the devs and general playing community, they likely never will.

However, in PvE, which is where the balance of the game is derived, brutes and tankers do have a form of balance. Brutes do solid damage with a head of fury (which is very easy to maintain in PvE, especially with the recent changes). Tankers are appreciably more durable, but do less damage. That's just how balance works. Scrappers are less durable than both, and do a bit more damage than brutes.

Stalkers are the red haired stepchild(less durable than scrappers coupled with less damage), and are likely to remain out in the cold for the foreseeable future.

They do have one significant advantage, the endurance cost is a whole lot lower on TT:A and TT:L. Otherwise they are the same.

It should also be noted that SoAs get to use very nice modifiers on the leadership pool powers also. Their maneuvers defense numbers match those of defenders, while the assault numbers are as good as controllers. On my crab spider I run both the TT versions and pool versions of maneuvers and assault.

Back to the OP:

As others have said, the real beauty in SoAs is flexibility. You have a lot of options in where your build can go on either SoA class.

On the Soldier side, you can pretty much can mix portions of:
stalker
tanker
blaster
mastermind
All with team support properties which are very powerful.

On the Widow side you mix:
Blaster
Scrapper
Stalker (though this angle is a bit weak since the hide is lacking)
Dominator
again with fairly strong team support abilities

You do have to make some choices which are exclusionary in each build which doesn't allow complete mixing and matching of all class type abilities, but the flexibility surpasses that of every other AT (IMO at least).

The one thing which the SoAs do which is truly unique is offer a character with fairly high ranged damage, and very solid status protection. While the sonic, force field, and traps sets do also do this, they are a bit lacking in their status protection (sleep hole). Also SoAs have a higher damage scalar than defenders or corrupters.

It can easily be noted that the teams shown featured, respectively, 2 non buff/debuff classes for the Tin Mage, and 1 non buff/debuff class for the Apex.

I am curious what a FRAD team would do in this case. I suspect they might not be optimal for Apex since they are a bit positionally dependent. I can't really say though since I've never run on such a team.

But I know I have done an Apex in 39 minutes on a motley team, and even the all melee Apex team we ran during Beta didn't take all too long.

I prefer sets which help both on offense and defense. Kinetics, admittedly is weaker on the defensive part, but it has an excellent AOE heal, a damage debuff, and is hard to beat on offense.

Personally, I tend to prefer sets which debuff and buff. For example, I'd definitely take a cold over an emp.

If the iPad were only an ebook reader, the price comparison might have a point. However it is not, so the comparison isn't valid.

I will certainly admit the iPad isn't a full fledged computer in a lot of ways, but it is far more than just a reader.

I can't agree with that. While it is a good buff set, I think it lacks in the ability to provide its full spread to a whole team. I'd take kinetics over it simply because you can keep a whole team speed boosted and at the damage cap quite easily.

On a small team, though, empathy is pretty hard to beat.

A while back I bought a DVD collection of all three of the movies. The third isn't really any worse than the second one.

What is interesting is that for 2 and 3 Liam is replaced by Arnold Vosloo, the actor who did Imhotep in the Mummy.

It depends on what you intend to play. If you are playing old characters, that will be a function of level. One though I would recommend for any characters 35+ is to do the Midnighter arc so you can have Cimerora access.

For new characters, the content in Praetoria is very good, so I'd stick to that. The old fashioned early level progression is rather dated.

You will probably want to do some research in IOs in ParagonWiki as they are a very important aspect of the game these days. They aren't necessary, but the level of power potential they represent is huge.

There's been a lot of new stuff since you've been gone, and it would take a stupidly long post to list it all. Better to just dive in an find it.

And if the other driver was a child that could barely reach the peddles and didn't know how to drive? That's what we're talking about with game AIs after all. Unless the PCs in question are somehow unwilling to use their brains enough to out think a very mediocre AI, they have a colossal advantage. That has to be offset in some way. You might, for some odd reason, call it cheating, but it is standard in video games.

I've yet to see a gross misinterpretation pointed out. I believe I have only criticized the points you have made.

Honestly I don't even vaguely get your point here. Did you expect the TFs to be easy because the Alpha slot isn't the be-all-end-all?

And yet there's aren't any actual insults. Funny that.

As someone else said, that's a resolved bug. In any case, NPCs in the game always follow different rules from the PCs. We aren't two bit AIs which gives us a huge advantage. We can think and adapt. As such the NPCs have to be made challenging somehow. You call it 'cheating' but in a game where the devs define the rules, we don't arbitrate what cheating is.

That's your interpretation of how it should be. I would have to guess the Devs beg to differ. Personally I don't have any beef with the encounter. It is challenging, and keeps you on your toes. I do pity the people who are badge hounds in there, but people have even found solutions for that.

This is patently false. NPCs have a completely different set of rules in their construction, how their powers work, and how they interact with the game world. That has always been the case, and is a necessary requirement for making a stupid AI capable of providing any challenge without merely swarming the PCs with enemies. That is the case in pretty much every video game.

If you cannot demonstrate a mis-attribution of your position I'll call this claim bunk.

I've followed your complaints on these TFs and the incarnate arc since the beta, and it's been a consistent series of requests that the hard parts be made easy. You've stated again and again, that the new content is just too hard. Demonstrably it is not, as plenty of people are capable of doing the TFs and arc without trouble and without tuned builds. The game has introduced 'too hard' content before and it has been solved without it having to be nerfed on the developer end. Heck, the ITF's final fight was once deemed 'too hard' and people caterwauled about it. Nowadays people breeze right through that whole TF in no time.