Incarnates - Alpha Slot

The way it worked in GR Beta was satisfactory. Those of us who wanted to solo our way into Incarnates had Shards to look at, and those will drop from ANY level 50+ enemy for a character who's unlocked the slot. Those who wanted a faster run of it could instead do TFs and get a guaranteed component, though which component you got depended on which task you did, as each dropped a different one.

If the Alpha slot is like it was in Beta (pun not intended), then I like how that worked. You had to work your way up, true, but an important component in each new boost was one of the old boosts, so you were never really starting from scratch when you were upgrading. And because these shards weren't tradable, the thing felt a lot like actual levelling, which in turn felt like a level cap raise, which in turn again felt like a good thing. Cheeky, in fact - raising the level cap without actually raising the level cap.

I hope this doesn't turn into some kind of elitist "You are not cool enough to have this!" kind of thing. With Shards being untradable (they ought to) and with Shards dropping from solo play (let's hope that doesn't change), the system certainly ran in precisely that direction. It's just... Gonna' take me a while to figure out which boost I want for what character, provided it doesn't take a year each.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My 50's all eagerly await. My namesake shall be my first!

Would going Spiritual for my alpha boost have an effect on Vet Powers or something like Domination? Are does the recharge reduction only count towards powers I can slot?

This is just one slot, the others are going to do different things--an incarnate attack, the pet based Lore incarnate ability and other things we don't even know about.

Then there's the level shift on top of it.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, if 10% of the whole system is a moderate boost. What's 20%? 30%? 50%?

How many times must the developers reconfirm that they are adding content rebalanced with Incarnate powers in mind IN I19 before people start wondering whether there will be content rebalanced with incarnate powers in mind?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

*edited for accuracy, or a complete lack thereof*


That said, while the ED limitations being imposed are kind of a bummer to me, I see why they did it. Is anyone out there able to pull some math-fu and tell us how the top tier Alpha Enhancment would effect powers with 3-SOs worth of enhancement in them already?

So just for example how much damage would Scrapper Smite do with 3 SOs plus the Musculature top tier damage enhancement? How much defense would Ninja Reflexes provide with 3 SOs for defense and the top tier defense one? You have to add in the standard enhanced values then the brute force enhancement from the alpha slot and then add in the little bit extra that get diminished. I don't want to attempt that.

This also kind of kills the argument that inherent Stamina gives you 3 extra powers you can't slot. This Alpha Slot update allows players to save a TON of slots if they wanted to use it like that.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of these new TFs have level 55 AVs/GMs which is why they stress that the Alpha Slot is important. I'm GUESSING that the level shift is the importance of the alpha slot that they are referring to. Fighting a 55 at 50 would probably be significantly more difficult than fighting a 54.

I'm really excited for some truly challenging content and not challenging in the sense that you need to do X,Y,Z before the enemy is vulnerable. I want stuff that turns into a truly epic knockdown, drag out, battle royale!

Unlocking the Incarnate system is done via a normal arc from Mender Ramiel - so it's not really going to be any harder than getting access to Cimerora - so if the rule is you cna only do the new TFs if you've unlocked your first Incarnate slot, then that's not going to be any different from the way the ITF is accessed.

What bothers me is if your unwilling or unable to run a few of the more difficult TF's is that you are going to need a grinder character to grind shard.

Trying to grind out purples with anything less than an aoe monster that can fast solo +1 x 8 is painful at its best.

I look at this 1st Incarnate level as the equivalent of defeating rats in a n00b zone. The Devs are getting our feet wet for the challenges ahead. If we cannot handle the task forces that many of us have already done ad infinitum in order to collect the components we need, how do we break out of that ennui?

I imagine that we are going to be faced with greater and greater challenges. As we near Incarnate Level 10, I expect that we can expect challenges rivaling those in ancient mythology. I would not be surprised if the Devs set up raids requiring several dozen player characters vs. a single Divinity-level NPC and His/Her Level 60 minions!