In case anyone missed the memo - I16 Open Beta

Yes can be slotted for recharge; had 3 heal and 3 rech SOs on test. Believe it also takes Heal IOs and end reduction ().

Was interesting soloing 6 and 8 man diff settings with bosses while solo (same level). The heal was the only thing letting me continue on when multiple groups got aggro'd, and I still was using inspirs often. CoT is not the ideal mob to be judging survivability on for an elec/elec scrapper; the death mages can put the hurt on you in a hurry. IO sets will help, but I think the heal itself was a major boost.

I've already forgotten about most of you

Frankly, I'm amazed that the devs have put up with it for so long. Though a lot of things about the engine are rather clunky (for adjusting, etc.), it sounds like. I hope they're working on it, though, as well as more maps and map types... that'd help things a lot.

Here's the problem with farming and dealing with it. No matter what, there will people that try to min/max in an unintended way. It ticks me off how many missions in the late 40s are timed defeat alls... it gets tedious. And getting tells to pad, etc. was even more annoying.

Unlike the farming in AE, being able to pad out your own mission gets farming more "off the street." Sure, it's still going on, but it doesn't have as negative an impact on the game. And frankly, people farming Dev created missions is better than AE, as it let's the really good player created stuff stand out more.

And I wouldn't be too pessimistic: the devs do work on bugs and tweaking features. I do rather wonder if they're ever going to tweak some of the old TFs a bit... they really should. Same with some of the old story arcs, just to give them a bit more flavor. I think missions in Faultline, Croatoa, and Striga are just fine... most of the stuff showing its age and less "skill" (as in being a fun, memorable mission) are some (and only some) of the missions in the game originally.

I am somewhat hopeful that it will happen at some point, if nothing else than that they do have competition out there, and they're even doing things like adding new animations to old powersets. This is something I was once assured by other players that "they would never do," as they're too focused on making new shinies. New shinies are nice, but improving the base you have to work on is always a good idea, which is why I always wish to see additions to everything with expansions (new maps and tilesets, new animations, new powers, new missions, etc.). Probably too much to hope for with each one, I know, but I hope for most of them to be covered... I do wish I16 had some new content, but it's got a pretty good base. And it's hard to wish for more with all that customization... that's more options for everyone, not just "some" people like AE was.

I really wish they'd tweak a lot of the old TF's. The last missions of the TF's if nothing else; but more things like promoting named bosses to EB's or even AV's, adding more ambushes to the end fights, etc.

Take Augustine, the coming Merit Farming Awesomeness. The damn Archmages should have been promoted to AV's (or at least EB's) years ago.

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Currently listening to Evanescence's the Open Door

The original TFs need a Synapse lookover for their final missions... that final level and Babbage really make Synapse interesting.

It still has a lot of tediousness in its missions, like the other Phalanx TFs, but that at least makes it stand out. Posi's should probably use some of the layout from the Faultline dam (so they could use existing resources there) so you feel like you're actually saving a dam, not yet another lab, etc.

Really, the missions could be tweaked easily in the old ones... take out some of the hunts, trim out repetitive missions (I think even making some of the missions longer would be a better tradeoff), etc. Having a special map/encounter at the end would be a little bit of work, but you can't tell me players wouldn't appreciate it. It would also make a lot more sense with a lot of their gameplay tweaks lately: if we're supposed to be playing the whole game all the time, it should all be of similar quality.

Check out those newest changes to the XP for the Crazed and the Freaks. Looks like the devs put on their big boy boots to kick the farmers in the nuts this time.

Well, them and anyone else encountering Freaks in normal missions. And TFs. And MA missions.

I don't mind Freaks losing some xp, though cutting minions and lts (I think that's what it was) to .8 xp is quite harsh. They still have that Dull Pain and end draining, which makes them plenty annoying in the 20s-30s. Going back to one for those would have been better, even if they do have the ability to rez. Their bosses shouldn't be cut back at all, as they're plenty tough and hit hard... the xp bonus felt justified for them, for sure.

If it was an issue with Freaks in the 40s, they should have found a way to adjust those.

Ugh... I'm not the only one saying this, either. I don't mind things that are overpowered being nerfed, but this is silly... especially since Freaks have been this way a long time, correct? It would have made more sense a couple years ago, if anything.

Instead of cutting the XP bonus for freaks, why didn't they increase the bonus for everyone else? Afterall, farmers are still going to farm so, instead of getting 4mill inf per hour, they will only get 3.5mill. Silly, especially since all the farmers are doing custom villain groups anyway.