kendo

how are HOs different from IO set pieces? if you slot an heal/end HO, won't that reduce the endurance use of his heals, and not all his powers?

not so much that it is "busted" but that it could be improved. some of the main complaints / suggestions I have seen several times are:

- don't force you to select every power and every slot from level 1 up. solution - create something like the Mids interface where you see all your current powers and their slotting. then allow you to modify only those powers and slots you want to switch around. so if I want to respec only my level 41+ APP powers, I don't have to wade through everything to swap those out for a different APP. Personally, this one I would love to see as it is so time consuming to select all my powers, apply all the slotting, drag all the enhancements into the slots, triple check everything to make sure the slots and sets are correct, etc. when all I wanted to do was drop hover and fly and switch to combat jump and super jump.

- allow you to save more than 10 enhancements from your current build. this is probably the one you will see most often in any discussion about respecs but don't see it changing. the Devs have stated many times that we should be happy we can pull any enhancements out of build during a respec and have no intention of allowing more. but "never" sometimes has a way of changing

- allow you to change power sets. total wish list item there and one, personally, I hope they never do. but you will see this come up frequently in discussions about the respec process.

unfortunately, with the delay before exploding, it's not a very good "oh crap" power. if a big group is heading your way, they will frequently not be distracted by omega. it is definitely best used as an opener.

but some powers are just fun and, for me, this is one of those. I don't sit around and wait for it to recharge but if it's up and ready, I will usually fire it if a good sized group is available.

this mirrors my experience as well. I have a lot of fun with Omega when solo, almost never use it when on larger teams. it's similar to a lot of the powers for a "traps" character. teams just don't wait for longer timed powers to go off.

but solo, it's very nice for all the reasons other people have mentioned. I would add one other little trick for using it. with a little practice, you can drop a venom grenade on a group right before omega goes off. that can add quite a bit to the damage omega does and if you time it right, they have already wasted all their initial attacks on the omega drone before you start damaging them with venom and draw their attention.

it's been a blast to stealth in, throw out omega, hit them with venom and follow that up with an AOE blast or two and entire groups of +2 mobs are gone. and if anything does survive, below boss level, it is usually stunned and easy pickings.

you didn't mention what level you are and that could make a difference as you approach level 50. you need to be fighting level 47 or higher mobs to have a chance for a purple recipe to drop. so what I usually do is increase the number of mobs up until level 45 or 46, depending on the characters. then I flip that around and go with +1 or +2/x1 or x2 so that most of the mobs in the mission spawn at level 47.

as I gain levels, I start increasing the number of mobs again and bring down the +1 or +2 until, at level 50, I am at +0/x(whatever I can reasonably handle)

especially if you, or others on your team, have additional sources of - regen. it all adds up, like the leadership pool. one person with maneuvers is nice, but if you have 4 or 5 people with maneuvers, the while team is practically invincible.

did you change your graphic settings with the newer computer? if you increased the settings to take advantage of a lot more power, it may end up being a wash with something like a mother ship raid

and you don't have to worry about being out of domination at a strategic time. you may not always know when you are going to run into a nasty boss fight and want domination on.

this would be more of a consideration for mobs with high defense to certain types of attacks. the small amount of smashing damage in the cold attacks won't reduce your over-all damage output that much, still way better than using an attack that is all smashing/lethal. but it might cause you to miss a few more times than you would with an all cold attack

not necessarily picking on you Ravenwolf, but do any of you actually work with development and promotion of code into a production system? if you don't know exactly what is in the final version of the release, patch, promotion before you go live with it, you have way more problems than the timing of when those notes get posted to the forums.

I have no idea why they insist on waiting so long before posting the release notes but they should be available any time at or after the patch goes live

took all 3 also, first time I have ever taken more than 1 attack power for a MM but works very nicely for DS. mainly for the stacked -res for tougher mobs and help pull or draw agro.

the main reason this works, for me at least, is the inherent fitness pool. not only did taking multiple attacks keep you from "doing something more useful" it drained too much of your endurance unless you took stamina. most of my MM's ran without stamina, so using personal attacks just did not work.

but getting that as an inherent has now freed up the power picks to be able to select attacks and the energy to use them.

how much the Incarnate abilities help you will depend on your play style, especially on whether you like to exemp down to lower levels. the incarnate bonuses shut off below level 45 so you need to be careful to not count on those if you exemp a lot.

but in regards to your main question - there are several other posts on this topic and some of them have very good ideas and suggestions on how to make the best use of your 3 (or 4 if you took all 4 of the fitness powers on a character) additional powers on a respec.

pretty sure that you can have only 1 alpha power active at a time. you could make both a core and radial but would have to choose which one to use. the other would sit in the incarnate power "tray". though unlike regular power slot enhancements, you don't have to respec to switch out incarnates. I think there is a 5 minute wait between switching, and don't think you can switch while in a mission. but otherwise, you are free to swap out your Alpha power as often as you want.

if you are directing your comments to me, I am not whining. I am questioning the drop rate of shards outside of task force missions. and, for me, the trend definitely continues

I ran 5 more tip missions last night. now up to around 15 tip missions and probably 20 Vanguard missions. I had enough Vanguard merits drop to buy the incarnate piece through the vendor there but have not had a single shard drop from a defeated foe.

I was able to run an ITF last night and besides the reward piece at the end, I got 9 shards that dropped from foes during the missions.

so now up to 2 components and 10 shards that I haven't combined yet and everything has come from the original mender mission and the ITF. not 1 shard in several hours and a couple dozen solo missions. with those missions set on at least +1/x3

thanks for the reply StarKitten. I will just keep on testing the old RNG until it finally gives up and lets me have some shards

basically the exact same comments I got when suggesting we be given an option to buy shards with hero or villain merits. and I am really happy for all the people that have the time to be able to run TFs but not all of us can and I, for one, believe that the better a MMO can cater to different play styles (team, solo, SG, mass raids, etc) the better that MMO will do in the long run.

I like to do TFs and try to participate in some when I can but that is nowhere near as often as a lot of players. but I like new shiny things as much as they do and think there should be a reasonable way for all of us to do so. I have no problem with the solo route being slower than the teamed TF route but right now, it seems like just a tad bit too much slower

unless something changed, I believe you get back full purchase price for DOs and SOs that you sell via the respec interface. I will frequently use a respec on characters when they hit levels 32 or 37 to sell back all their older SOs at full price and then go buy new level 35 or 40 SOs. or wait until I am ready to move from SO slotting to IO slotting for several powers and sell off the SOs being replaced.

however, for crafted enhancements, then you only get back something like 1/2 the crafting cost and nothing for the expense of the salvage that went into the enhancement. this reflects the cost of building memorized enhancements. I think you used to get back the full (non-memorized) crafting cost but that changed several issues ago. guess people were completely outfitting characters with memorized IOs right before a respec was coming and then selling them for the full non-memorized price. at level 50, that would add up to a pretty fair amount of cash.

not as important now as I have a lot more spare cash on hand than I did in the "old" days before WW marketing. but it was a great way to upgrade to new SOs at a very marginal cost.

during beta testing, I think I saw some reports that they were dropping off of 47+ mobs, like purples. but as Roderick copied from the release notes, that says only 50+.

just to be safe, I have been running all missions at +1 to make sure that everything in the missions are 50+

as I understand it, you have a better chance to get shards during a task force because everyone on the team has a chance to get one every time anyone defeats a mob. totally different from how normal drops work, where 1 thing will drop on a mob defeat and it is randomly assigned to someone on the team.

as to why I am trying to get them outside of TFs - not everyone has unlimited blocks of time to play. due to various RL constraints, I can seldom commit to a 2 hour or so block of time without interruptions to run TFs. I may hop on for 20 -30 minutes and can run a couple of tip missions or a couple missions out of story arc. then I can come back an hour or two later, or the next day, and pick up where I left off.

I made this same suggestion in another thread and got slapped down. basically was told that the random drop rate was just fine and that if I wanted more shards, I just needed to join TFs

though I still stick by my suggestion. I really don't see where anything would be hurt by allowing you to exchange 1 hero/villain merit for a shard. maybe even trade in 2 or 3 for a basic component.

even running both tip missions and story arcs, you can still get only 3 merits every two days. that would still be way slower than those people that have the time to run multiple TFs. not to mention the opportunity cost of not being able to trade in those merits for other recipes you might want. but would at least be a reliable way to get what you needed for those of us that generally cannot participate in TFs due to play schedules, etc.

I saw that but I believe that information came from beta testing and a few things may have changed in the final promotion.

I am running one of my 50s at +1/x3 and the other at +1/x4, both with bosses active. most tip missions, I get at least 4 or 5 bosses. the Vanguard missions usually only have a couple in them. but decent numbers of Lts are sprinkled in as well.