Fitness is dead; long live Fitness.

This fitness change will nearly every toon I have. Have any announcements been made to confirm that any new slots will (or will not)be made available?

I think a bit part of this argument is about definitions, as is most often the case.

Here's what I think of when we say "min/max" or "maxed out" builds. Everything your character could have or you want them to have is given a weight, based on what you want the character to do. In this forum in particular, we usually give high weights to DPS and survival metrics. Whatever your build goal. you take all the stuff that helps you get there, and you order it, top down, in the order of how strongly it helps you approach your goals.

You can only fit so much of it in, thanks to limits on number of slots, number of powers, the rule of five, uniques and so forth. What doesn't fit gets truncated off the bottom of the list.

At the top of the list is stuff you must have, because it's so damn important to your build goals. At the bottom is stuff you're almost certain to skip, because it's just "nice to have". In the middle, just above the truncation point, is a bunch of stuff that has some meaningful benefit on your character, but you can't fit it all in. The benefits here are often sort of orthogonal. Maybe you can have more +rech or +regen, or more +def or more +recovery.

It's this middle stuff that I see this change affecting. In my opinion, if you've skipped something at the top of the list in order to keep something in the middle, your character is not really "maxed out". You've made a sub-optimal performance decision, possibly for arguably subjective reasons that don't directly impact your main performance goals. (I know that's usually why I do it.)

To me, the stuff in the middle can't be transformative. That's why it's in the middle. Yes, obviously, adding it back in at no cost is free increased performance. I can't accept in the general case that it's big performance. If it's that big, it shouldn't be that far down the list.

In my opinion, there are going to be three pools that will get new scrutiny: fighting, leadership, and concealment. There are a number of good points to be made for each and depending on your playstyle. All three pools will open new chances for defense slotting. A team where each member ran manuvers with a single slot of end redux and grant inviz would improve the defense across the board for the whole team by a significant factor.

I seriously doubt they are going to hand out more slots.. Because if I had more slots AND more powers.. muahahahahahahahahahaha

i am wondering if this is the begining of....origin attributes, kinda like other games have things like dwarves and elves....etc. Mutants have a baseline attributes of y, magic have a baseline attributes of z, etc

If you are a mutant, your baseline recovery (aka the new inherent stamina) will be y
if a natural, your baseline recovery will be y

Maybe 19 is just the begining. There is talk of new "systems".....maybe that is what 20 is about, a new attribute system of things like base accuracy, base jump, base run speed, base dexterity (defense), base contitution (resistance)

something like that, with the alpha slots, totatlly changes all the characters, especially if the existing IO system were expanded in, say issue 20?????? lol

this looks absolutely great! can't wait for this to start!!

I'll be honest, I haven't read every single post in this thread, but one of the major things that I'd like to point out is that CoH hasn't taken the same approach to character strength as the game I have spent most of my time in (WoW).

I typically spend about 1-3 months in CoH at any give time, and every time I play, it seems like characters are more powerful. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but the fact of the matter is that content has not gotten more difficult at the same pace.

Just as an example, at level 60 (WoW), the raids were hard...some were very hard. After the Burning Crusade came out (level 70), some of the level 60 raids could be run with 5 or less people. Compare that to the 40 that it used to take. Again, this isn't inherently bad because new content was released to bring greater challenges to the players.

With the Incarnate system, I would expect a series of missions / arcs / task forces / etc that will increase the difficulty by a substantial amount. At the same time, they almost have to render some of the current content obsolete or the progression system will be flawed. If the rewards are not increased, why would any min-maxer run hard content until they are completely decked out in the newest stuff? The argument can be made that rendering content obsolete is flawed, and I would agree, but it is very hard to provide character advancement without new / difficult content.

- Just a few thoughts!

Fair enough.

I can't even begin to understand the mindset of the person or persons you're describing. With the vast extremes that exist between those slotted with SOs that enjoy +1/x1 diff and those that have min/maxed and run at +4/x8, you'd think that everyone could find their happy place.

Power creep and the usual backlash from it are my only concern. Had this change occurred before IOs were introduced and if it weren't being put into play in the same issue as the first few incarnate powers, I wouldn't be having this discussion. I'd be saying nothing but "woot" and happily waiting for it to go live.

Wow this is a great change for the game. Basically three new powers. This can change good characters into great ones and great ones into uber ones. Everyone having stamina inherent all the time, etc. This will be great for tankers for so many reasons. Way too many ways this will be great to list.

So just to be clear; we will have 97 slots now, not 94. Correct ?

WOW