Incarnate choices (?) what were yours?

I have the Alpha common or uncommons on all three of my lvl 50 Defenders, as well as my Nightwidow. Eventually, I'll have them on my Trick Arrow defender and Peacebringer, as well, and I might even go for it with my Sonic. (They're all three 47 currently, so it'll be awhile.)

That said, due to the grind involved, I'm only purposefully going after the VRare for my two favorite toons... My blue-side and red-side mains. They're a tank (Palrah) and a very scrappery Stalker (Grey Kestrel). Suzume, the FF/Rad Defender that I tend to take on big multi-team raids, may well end up with the Rare or VRare at some point just because of the situations I play her in, but she's not a priority for it.

That's completely a result of the way the system is designed and my own play-style preferences. I hate PUGing and speed-run TFs. I prefer to duo or trio.... If I could get those R and VR boosts without having to endlessly PUG and shard-grind, I'd probably go for it with the majority of my toons... but as it is? Those things just aren't much fun for me, so I'm not willing to go through it with more than once or twice.

I think a lot of us are in that situation. We're only doing it (or doing it first-) on our special favorites, and not a lot of those are support types.

Widow - Musculature - 2 rares made
Plant/Earth/Fire Dom - Cardiac - 1 rare made
Elec/Invuln/Energy Brute - Spirital - 1 rare made
Energy/Energy/Force Blaster - Spiritual - 1 rare made
Necro/Dark/Soul MM - Spiritual - 1 rare made
DS/Pain/Cold MM - Spiritual - 1 rare made
DP/Dark/Dark Corr - Spiritual - 1 Uncommon made

I also have a Merc/Trap/Mace MM that should be going Spiritual later on, and a huntsman going Cardiac. I have three other level 50s who I haven't done incarnate on since I don't care much about them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Who says a scrapper isn't support? Last night on the global-channel run I ended up in there were not one, not two, but three shieldies floating around (2 scrap, one brute), along with some potent debuffs (rad, poison, sonic). Not much in the way of healing but we had one death and I'm not sure why -- the MM bit it after reichs was already long dead. I'm going to go with "DPS holding back so the guy who D/C'd could get back on."

But yeah -- what do you expect -- when the game has historically strongly rewarded largely solo play (kill as fast as you can, solo, for purples or speed TF for merits or...) you'll get a lot of characters good at that. That's in general the melee types -- not that others (doms, controllers) also can't do it, but the population is definately skewed to the melees.

I went with Cardiac on my Broad Sword/Invul/Body Mastery Scrapper, Knight of Iron-Star & Spiritual on my Kinetic Melee/Electric Armor/Body Mastery Stalker, Tesselia.

I logged on last night hoping to get the Notice of the Well shard for my "Untouchables" caste characters (e.g. Stalker) and even formed teams to better insure being able to use said Stalker. Unfortunately, every team I joined (or made) was Scrapper/Tank heavy, with a Blaster or 2 mixed in, so I'd invariably switch to a debuffer to make a smoother tf. Khan's not hard by any means, but a debuffer can make a difference on the last fight taking 5 minutes or 20 minutes.

So my Stalker still waits, NotW-less. Hopefully tonight...

I only have two Incarnates so far (both slotted with their rares now). One is my main, an Emp/Dark defender, and the other is my Ill/Storm controller.

The first Kahn team I got on with my empath last night was very debuff heavy. We had a /Storm contoller, a /Kin controller, a Dark/ defender, and a /Dark corruptor. The remainder of the team consisted of a tank, a scrapper, and a blaster. Reichsmann folded like one-ply, and then we mopped up the AVs we'd been ignoring (except the Countess, I believe--I think she had died to pets and spillover from the AoEs).

My two incarnates are a Katana/WP and DB/WP scrapper, both took musculature. I'm looking to turn them into damage machines!

My only Incarnate is my namesake tri-form Warshade. Actually wasn't able to get on a Khan team last night, which is too bad, since it's one of the TFs I've never done.

Oh, well. At least I'm already level shifted.

well, i have 3, rian frostdrake- ma/sr/body scrapper, he went cardiac, is at uncommon level. got on 2 stfs with no issues
seraph blue- emp/elec/elec defender, went spiritual, at very rare
finally violet tendencies, plant/thorn/scorpion dom, went spiritual, at uncommon. shes a rogue, so she got to put a rhododendron up LR's @##%

thats all my 50's, havent had time to do any coh this week, will likely get into it on the weekend, i'm not really feeling pressed to get past rare, the level shift is really the pot of gold, beyond that its just a small incremental bonus over ed on a shotgun blast of modifiers. will probably get it with rian for completions sake, and with sera, because playing an emp(though by no means amazing) tends to get you on teams

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood My plan for TFs is pretty much the same, kill them all and the devil take the hindmost.

the devil does like big hindmosts and he cannot lie, HUH!

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

so far i have all 18 or so of my 50s with alpha unlocked

approx 8-10 of them have at least a common boost or higher

and as to what brandx was saying about corrs being mezzed and all that, i agree 1000%, i dont mind playing ranged and such because it is high dmg and such, but i absolutely cannot fight certain enemy groups due mez (rikti im looking at you with all your damn sleep, hold, stun, and kb), the first thing i usually get as a squishy is -kb IOs, which eliminate the kb problems for the most part, but got do i hate fighting rikti on toons without mez protect, i normally have to take about a whole tray of breakfrees into the mish and i use up 3/4 of the tray by the time i finish, even on the lower diff settings

/end rant

Defender:
Cold/Psi: 50(+1) Cardiac
Controllers:
Fire/Rad: Unlocked, Will Be Cardiac
Ill/Rad: 50(+1) Spiritual
Tank:
SD/SS 50(+1) Cardiac
Mastermind:
Bots/Traps 50(+1) Spiritual
Corruptors:
Fire/Kin: Locked
Fire/Dark: 50(+1) Cardiac
Warshade:
Lulz its a Warshade: Uncommon Spiritual has notice waiting on it.
Brute:
SS/FA: Spiritual Uncommon, has notice
SS/SD: Cardiac uncommon has notice
Dominator:
Fire/Fire: Common Spiritual has notice.

All of my 50's (21 of them) have the Alpha Slot unlocked.
I've been running the WST's the most on my badge hunter (a scrapper).
My stone tank is Alpha'ed up to tier 3.
My earth/rad with perma-hasten / perma-AM is up to tier 2.

So yeah, 2 of my 3 slotted Incarnates are 'useful' on task forces.

I only have 2 main characters, and my hero just hit 49 tonight.

My villain is a Mind/Mind Dominator, and I focused on Accuracy and Holds. I'm a monster. Only thing stopping me from the final slot is time. Damn you weekly Well drop :P

I honestly think the reason you see so many scrappers and brutes hanging about is because no one will INVITE the scrappers and brutes! I am on for roughly 3 seconds without a team invite on an empath or rad troller. The scrappers and brutes don't get invited without a lot of work involved.

I get that thinking with the STF. It CAN be done with melee-intensive teams, but that's more of a crap-shoot, and I can see why PUG teams wouldn't want to chance it. I didn't even bother to bring out my melee toons for STF (with the exception of one now-demoralized tank). My own alts are about half damage and half support, along with 2 tanks (which would be support, but no one thinks of them that way for no reason I can fathom). So STF, I get the need for lots of support. But for Kahn? There is nothing tricky about Kahn! 1 def. debuffer and the rest can be damage, no prob. (Yes, I did it once without a def. debuffer a few months ago. We finished it, but it was a loooooong process to slowly whittle down Reichs. So "needed"? No. Good idea? Oh, yeah.).

But this isn't how the teams are being made up. They want support-heavy teams. Yes, a full team of trollers can steamroll anything. But so can a debuffer and 7 scrappers. But right now, all the scrappers are languishing, while the empaths (who would barely be needed with a scrapper-heavy team) are in high demand.

I seriously don't get it.

As to the original question, I've tried all the different alphas on one toon or another. Many of them have had to change their slotting though, as the only ones which I've found to really make any difference are Cardiac and Spiritual. Which does make sense, I in retrospect. If I look at my builds, am mostly using sets, which have more than enough damage and accuracy already in them. What I need to get the set to work best, is an extra recharge or end reducer. These tend to go into the 6th slot. Thus, the ones crying for more rech take Spiritual, and the ones where I see a lot of end reducers sprinkled about, take Cardiac. Have a fire blaster who took Cardiac for the range boost, but honestly, it doesn't feel like much difference at all. However, fire is pretty end heavy with the AoE's, so I'm fully satisfied with that choice.

At this point only my Fortunata is Incarnate and I don't see moving more 50's to Incarnate any time soon. Like many I prefer solo content.

I run my Fort as a Scrapper/Controller. So I took Nerve Branch oddly enough not because I need the Accuracy but because of all of the other benefits. 20 Def is huge. 30 Confuse is nuts. Aura of Confusion lasts a VERY long time for an AoE control (compare it to an AoE hold and remember Confuse hurts the mobs and doesn't draw agro) and Hold duration which I also use a lot.

One of the odd benefits is that I am REMOVING accuracy slots from powers to use the slots elsewhere giving me more Defense/Stamina/whatever.

I can sympathize with some of the people who don't want to form a TF as leader. There's a number of people out there rather opinionated about how a TF should be run ("why aren't we stealthing this?" "someone should run to Room X and port us", etc) and if you haven't done the TF before or haven't done it often, you might not want to be "in charge" and risk not knowing what you're doing. For a while, I was playing a defender and every time I did the Khan, I was told at the second mission "Stay here and wait for mission complete". I had no idea what that mission was even about because I only ever saw the inside of the little ruined building and the red zone out box. Now that I think about it, a lot of TFs are sort of like that in that the new guy just winds up along for the ride and doesn't really know what's going on until he's done it a few times.

I've personally gotten enough experience that I feel confident running the various task forces and am not particuarly concerend with the occassional malcontent. But enough Task Force Horror Stories start with "For one thing, the leader..." that I can sympatize with those who find it daunting and would rather join an existing one even if it means a long wait.

I only have two incarnates as my other, earlier, 50's are poorly enough built and enhanced that I've kind of set them aside rather than gone through the effort of "fixing" them. Those two incarnates, a tank and a controller, haven't had any trouble getting teams right off the bat but they're not scrappers or brutes so I guess they don't count

I only have two 50s - a BS/WP scrapper and a Mind/Fire dom. Obviously these are the only two I have to offer on any given TF or SF respectively.

I am slowly approaching 50 with a blaster and a controller, but I honestly don't know if I'm going to bother with the incarnate stuff for either of them.

The blaster is just a PPD cop who's good with a gun, so becoming an Incarnate doesn't really fit her concept. The Incarnate path could fit the concept of the controller, but it is proving to be more work than I thought to get the Alpha slot very rare boost.

I honestly can't see myself trying this on more than two characters. Not with nine more Incarnate slots to go on those first two.