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Gob and I were mentioning the Shadow Shard TFs.

That still leaves two and two is some.

I can't say that I understand your stance here. The ability to deal ranged damage has certainly be proliferated to all ATs via Judgement powers, but it also seems like a new premium has been placed on ranged damage with mechanics like purple patchs in MoM and the Avatar of Hamidon's powerful debuffs in the UG.

Perma dom isn't possible at all on SOs/HOs. Domination, because it can't be slotted, only recharges faster via global recharge buffs like Hasten or set bonuses.

What about Marked for Death?

That sounds like another idea that I could get behind as well. I imagine it's quite doable with some of the things with seen with the sepia tones in Flashbacks and the effects found in First Ward's Shadowed Path.

No one is taking anything from you. I have no problem with those groups remaining in the game. However, we proved our mettle against conventional weapons time and time again. It's time for something new and interesting that amounts to more than guys with guns. But tell me, what objection do you have to more super powered threats being introduced? Is not the Incarnate system, intended to give us demigod-like powers, finally a appropriate place for this sort of threat?

However, you resolve your character's natural abilities with some very improbable situations, e.g. dodging bullets from a dozen gunmen armed with automatic weapons, is up to you. To the outside observing those natural abilities are going to appear very supernatural.

I have terrible timing (or maybe luck) with Hibernate. Usually just as I think I'll need it, I start the activation and get struck dead anyway.

The resistance shields aren't too terrible though if you have a good bit of defense as well, but they are usually beat out by better options.

I'm afraid that's a point we won't ever see eye to eye on. In fact, I feel one thing City of Heroes has done far too much is utilize paramilitary groups or goons with guns (Malta, Council, the 5th, Nemesis, Sky Raiders, a large portion of Praetoria). Rularuu are one of my favorite groups because they present an otherworldly threat. I also like the Outcasts, a group with legitimate super powers that I feel comes and goes too quickly. I was hoping that the Incarnates would lead us to more actual superpowered threats.

It's a good practice to do. As I play support ATs a great deal, I'm used to not only looking at mine but my teammates as well. Unfortunately, the default settings aren't very conducive to relaying important information. Numerical stacking goes a long way in cleaning up the clutter as does turning of notification for auto-powers.

A word of advice: attack your opponent's points not your opponent.

Would I have brought up the point of Archery and Martial Arts if it had slipped past my notice? As I said those concepts stand to err in favor of the players because it creates more enjoyable avenues of play. Of course, there's a double standard because we play the game for the experience of being a superhero, something which should entail facing off against super powered threats.

There's the difference between application and perception. Are we inherently weak? No. Does it seem that way? When a hero is laid low by a rock, yes. Could it be presented in a way which more clearly represents the Seers effects on the league? Certainly.

When someone walks into the TPN for the first time, how many are going to notice a new icon in the midst of a dozen and a half already existing on their buff bar? (I use numerical stacking, god help those who don't.) When the Seers appear we're suddenly weaker with a only metagame indicator telling us why. There needs to be a better indication of what is going on and it needn't even be a power effect on the players. A simple cutscene when the Seers first appear would suffice. I know in my first run I had no idea why I fell so quickly. It wasn't enough to sour the entire experience for me, but many people will simply walk away after that kind of defeat.

Because it does not produce success 100% of the time does not mean it fails to produce higher rates of success. Uberguy's experience and my own are both simply points of data. If the method produces success 80% of the time, compared to 50% success in eliminating the Seers, that is a higher rate of success which is what my experience suggests. (The failure in question was simply that, a singular failure using this method.) I cannot speak for the experience of every player, however. Only time will tell and the more successful method will gain widespread adoption. Currently, I see the method I described occurring more often.

Also please re-read my posts and you will see that I do not often speak in absolutes. Note that I have stated these things are "in my experience". My experience is not absolute empirical evidence nor have I suggest it to be.

That's quite a stretch. A better accusation would be that I want to take the path of least resistance to the rewards. I can at least cop to that to a degree. In the grander scheme, being defeated individually or as a leaque, is generally unenjoyable. Why would I not veer away from those things?

I thought it was also commented to be a significantly difficult fix, doubtfully worth the dev time.

As I said, this is in my experience which is probably about 20 TPNs total across my characters, a number probably a bit hiring than most. (I was working towards a pvp IO.) I too have encountered the situation where ignoring the Telepathists created problems as well. However, allow me to point out that buffs are very easy to acquire due to the Destiny slot and Barrier is a very common choice. Single target dps, however, is not something as easily acquired as the league leader saying "Oh, can I get a Barrier count?" (or Clarion in the case of UG) and a few people quickly switching a power.

It really doesn't come across very well in the trial at all. It requires metagame knowledge basically. Like I said, there's no indicator, aside from the mechanical one in the buff bar, of what's going on.

It's a complicated matter because the mechanics are part of how we perceive the story. Unfortunately, the current implementation isn't telling the story in a very good way. A bit of expositional text that's likely to get buried under the league leader's explanation just isn't cutting it. Powerful effects call for powerful visuals.

Also, see Shadow of the Colossus.

You have to deal with them far more frequently if you're trying to defeat the the Seers than in the 10-15 seconds it takes to run from building to building. If the people assigned to Seer duty are up to the task then the civilians really are little more than a nuisance. However, Seers, IIRC, convert a civilian every 15 seconds they're present. Even faltering for a few moments means converted civilians with no way to undo the process. If the individuals assigned to this duty begin to struggle with it the problem quickly escalates as they suffer from the debuffs and growing damage. If you're uncertain about league mates dps why not take the safer route? Why risk a humbling defeat when the Seers can simply be ignored for a better chance of success over all?

Also, unfortunately, yes we are limited to a certain number of high damage individuals. Unless you've custom built they league with friends and associates you may end up with a lots of debuffs and AoEs and very little single target damage. There's so much variance within ATs that simply recruiting a scrapper, for example, could give you a high single target DPSer like Street Justice or an AoE centric build like Fire/Shield. Again, a reason why leagues will tend toward the simpler, surer, and less embarrassing method of ignoring the Telepathists.

I don't like it because the damage from stones and molotov cocktails are doing damage comparable to the IDF weaponry while under the same debuff. To me, a thrown projectile and a high tech weapon shouldn't be near comparable. Of course, we do have things like Archery and Martial Arts stacking up against Beam Rifles and Titan Weapons, but those err on the side of making the players feel powerful, in other words, making our characters enjoyable.

From the producer's letter discussing Incarnate's:

Does the TPN make us feel powerful? Obviously, it does not for many people. Even after learning the mechanics of the fight, for a better rate of success, we avoid civilians. We are avoiding normal people with impromptu weapons because it has provided a higher rate of success than the following the developer's script and because it makes our characters feel inherently weak.

Arguably, the most powerful effect in the TPN is the Seers' debuff, but there is no visual or auditory indicator for it. There is only a bit of text under your health and endurance bars. That seems to go very much against the grain of making these epic trials visually impressive. Kryptonite, which people like bringing up for a genre comparison, at least had an ominous green/red glow.

It was recently recommended to me, and now I've tried and enjoyed it, to slot distortion field with several damage procs. It really does work quite nicely.

Quite mature there.

Here's a simple reasoning: outside you want high single target dps so that the league mates defeating Seers don't injure civilians. You also want high single target dps inside to take out technicians without drawing aggro back to the terminals. If you send people outdoors, they lose the benefits of the buffs the league has to offer and fall quickly because of the Pacification debuff. If you keep them indoors they can quickly take out technicians, help build public opinion, and be buffed to compensate for the Pacification debuff. There is no need to send people outdoors to deal with the Pacification debuff, because it is only an issue outdoors where it is paired with the thematically poor implementation of the civilians.

On Virtue, it has almost become standard practice for everyone to stay indoors because it is far easier. No one wants to go outside to be beaned to death with rocks and Moltov cocktails and there is no need to do so. It's an arguably poor mechanic and definitely a poorly written gimmick. I hope I've relayed this point clearly enough because I do not intended to respond to your posts until you demonstrate that you can debate the matter with some civility.

Easy there, killer. No need to get angry when someone points out your faulty logic. Maybe you should have noted earlier when I mentioned it, but in my experience trials have been more successful when people completely ignore the Telepathists. It's been far easier to build up public opinion with the whole trial in doors because the civilians deal so much damage. Heck, I even supported the notion that we could let the civilians do large amounts of damage, but that it should be psi damage (with some heal back) to represent the wounded morale.

I also feel that Pacification needs some sort of visual indicator that also indicates how many times it's stacked on you. Perhaps, maybe even a little cutscene the first time the Telepathists show up, demonstrating how our minds are wracked with pain, guilt, whatever.

You seem to think that I have an issue with the mechanics when, in fact, my issue is almost entirely with the very poor presentation.

There's also a badge for reducing Anti-Matter below 10% of his health on the first reactor. That doesn't mean it's a good idea or conducive to a successful trial.

Perhaps you should take it up with the original poster of the snarky comment (preferably in PM's rather than this thread) rather than rail against Sam's rejection of being included in a majority that may or may not represent him. The origin of the comment aside, I think Sam's position is rather apolitical and more philosophical. After all how many times do you see people speaking for the "majority" here on the boards about what should or shouldn't be in the game? It's more a point that those who claim to be representing a majority often are espousing their own beliefs under the banner of the "majority". See the feedback thread for the Coyote travel power for a prime example, in which, someone speaks for the alleged majority and how they fear the Coyote power will draw furries to this game.

Also, I doubt (and I may be wrong) Sam would align himself with any party in the United States as he does not reside here.

And the funny thing is that doing it wrong has worked out far better in nearly every trial I've run that ignored the Telepathist vs. trials that have tried to take them out.

I generally advocate taking and slotting the AoE hold on every build. In fact, I did take Paralyzing Blast while leveling. However, I found myself very rarely using it. I was a little unsure about cutting it from the build, but after a few runs without I can't say I miss it very much.

I'm not 100% sold on Time Stop and you make a good point regarding Tesla Cage's recharge. By the time I stack Temporal Selection, Time Stop, and Tesla Cage, I could have just as easily stacked 3 uses of Tesla Cage with only about a .5 second difference in cast times.

At the moment, there are three options available to me for that power pick: Time Stop, Paralyzing Blast, and Jolting Chain. Honestly, of the three, I'm favoring Jolting Chain the most. It gives a surprising amount of mitigation in my experience though I often see people recommend to drop it after the initial levels.

I know the Nemesis staff is one of the few things to break mag 8 knockback protection. There are a good amount of powers that break 4, for example Hurl and Claw Swipe for Warwolves, Nictus in general, and Hurl Boulder. Most recently, Penny Mayhem's Psionic Pulse just creeps over 4 points of knockback. It should be easy enough to slot a Karma into one of my defense powers to reach mag 12 protection. Just for my information, what other powers exceed mag 8 knockback?

I was pretty satisfied with the original build's endurance management. The most recent changes have added a small gain there. However, with the number of toggles I'm running (5, not counting CA which has no end cost) I think it's best to be a little cautious.

With Power Boosted Farsight I'm softcapped to all positions and all types. However, other than using the Primal APP, it didn't take any special effort to do so where as working toward ranged/smashing/lethal with another epic armor would require more particular slotting. I certainly have to wait a while to benefit from PB, but it's not much greater than the wait to pick an armor from an APP.

That's an interesting idea. I could still maintain pretty good endurance drain on the power with the added effects. I'm not crazy about the damage procs however and going without any endurance reduction makes it a pretty costly power to spam.

This is alleviated a bit by Farsight providing 14% tohit, 28% when I'm playing in level ranges with access to Power Boost.

I have 2-3 of the Boosters left from the vet rewards (or Paragon rewards, I suppose). Spending any money outside of my sub fee is off limits for me, and as soon as I hit tier 9 at the end of the month I plan to start snagging up those Celestial costume pieces or I would use a reward token to obtain more.

You want to fight people with superpowers? I'm sorry, but we've got Mrs. Jenkins from 4-C lined up to throw rocks at you. Oh, she's empowered by the Well or some nonsense. It'll be fun.