firespray

Does anyone understand how the lights are supposed to work? The way I understand it, killing the lights is supposed to give out a temporary level shift, so that you can get up to +9 like Tyrant is. I ran my third failed Magisterium trial tonight, but this was the first one where I was monitoring my level shift to see what it was doing. I had heard someone say the level shifts from the lights were team based, so I had 2 people on each team on light duty. They were doing a great job too. The lights would go down within just a couple of seconds of spawning. However I was almost never getting any level shifts from them dying. My level shift stayed pretty constant at +3 for the majority of the trial. Every once in a while (as in 4-5 times in the entire 20 minute fight) I saw it go up to +8 or +9 for a few seconds. The only pattern I could discern was that it seemed to go up most frequently when I had just come back from the hospital.

I don't know if it's a bug, or if there's just some mechanic to it that I'm missing. Anyone know more about them?

I can accept that the hybrid 'toggles' are not supposed to be constant-use, but why make them a toggle then? Why not just make them a click power. Seems pointlessly complicated to me.

I really enjoy melee characters. My Scrappers and Brutes have invariably been my favorite characters throughout the game, and that continues through the incarnate content. I have two characters that have maxed out their incarnate abilities (not including hybrid, since it just came out) and both are scrappers.

That being said, running incarnate content on melee characters is a huge pain in the ***. I'm not sure if the devs are doing it intentionally, or if they simply don't realize that it's happening, but a lot of the gimmicky fight mechanics in the incarnate content screw melee characters over heavily. And there are no similar mechanics targeted at ranged characters that I can think of. Some examples:

Apex TF: This is the one that started it off, with the blue auto-damage patches that for a large portion of the Battle Maiden fight make it extremely difficult for melee characters to actually get into melee so they can do damage.

Lambda Sector: This one isn't as bad, but Marauder's Nova Fist is still more detrimental to melee characters than ranged.

Keyes Island: Another trial that has the large colored patches of insta-death, forcing melee characters out of melee so they can't do damage.

TPN Campus: Maelstrom and his marked for death ability, which is avoided by, you guessed it, moving out of melee range, so melee characters can't do any damage.

Minds of Mayhem: Another trial with big auto-hit damage patches that make melee characters unable to do damage.

Magisterium Trial: Yet another trial that includes auto-hit damage patches forcing melee characters to leave melee range.

Are you seeing a pattern yet? I understand that the mechanic was originally introduced to make fights more 'dynamic' and less about just standing in one spot and hitting each other, but it doesn't really serve to do that very well. The enemies still mostly just stand in place. All it serves to do is make melee characters unable to do what their characters are built around doing. And its being horribly overused. The mechanic exists in too many trials, and the ones that it is in, it is used too frequently.

For future incarnate content, PLEASE abandon this mechanic. I'm sure the devs can find something else that makes the fights fun and interesting that isn't unfairly detrimental to melee characters.

Is there a way to get rid of the new temp power tray on the magisterium trial? I don't really want it there.

Give WM/EA a try. It's gone from being one of the crappiest combos out there to an extremely good one. Mine's still low level at the moment, but on paper, a purpled out WM/EA is on par with my purpled out fire/sr and my dark/shield.

I've played a lot of scrappers over the years. My favorites are my fire/sr and my dark/shield. Both of them kick a lot of ***, and take a lot of names. Both are a bit late blooming though, so I don't know if that will bother you.

My current project is a war mace/energy aura scrapper, partly in homage to Mr. Playskool's epic thread, and partly because both sets have gone from sucking to being quite good. He's only 16 at the moment, but I like him a lot already. He does great damage, has a solid single target attack chain, and decent mitigation with his shields and the stuns/knockup from war mace. His only issue is endurance usage, which many low-level toons have to deal with, and will cease to be an issue in a few more levels. I've also put together an idea for a high-end level 50 build, and found it to be very competitive in terms of survivability and DPS with my fire/sr and dark/shield. So WM/EA could be a good one to try as well.

I regularly use IOs, inspirations, accolades, and the buffs from DFB and DIB.

I occasionally use temp powers from missions, shivans, and warburg nukes.

I've almost never used any of the others.

I much prefer option 1. Penelope Yin looks like she's straining to take a dump in option 2.

Let's see, things I'd do that people would hate.

Bring back all the AE farms. Yep, all of them. I don't care if people want to farm. Some characters aren't fun during certain levels. If people want to skip those levels and get to the fun parts faster, let em.

State flat out that there will never be further work on PVP so that people can stop begging and wishing for changes. It simply isn't a large enough sub-community to be worth spending development time on (IMO).

Completely redo set bonuses from IOs. There would be considerably less defense and recharge, considerably more +damage, resistance boosts, and other boosts, so that people had the ability to build for more things, rather than just softcaps and perma-hasten. (Actually, some people would probably love this, but it's a big enough change that there would be plenty of haters too).

Change the code so if you were on a team, any knockback power would automatically become knockdown, with no option to change it back.

Cut the number of servers in half. Delete the 8 lowest-population servers. When characters had to be renamed, whoever had been subscribed longer got to keep it.

Get rid of separate alignments for rogues and vigilantes. There'd just be a single middle alignment.

That's all I can think of at the moment that would really cheese people off.

I wasn't aware you could unlock these in the store. I'll definitely be doing that.

I still think the suggestion is valid though. There's no good reason to make people who want to unlock them in game unlock capes before auras.