All About Incarnate (Alpha through Destiny)

At the risk of raising the dead, Dispari I sent you a link to a large sheaf of screenshots of the new Lore pet recipes from the Beta test.

Mmhmm, I'll get around to adding it sometime later. I appreciate it.

Quote:

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

Awesome guide.

Ugh, sorry, this is a very simple question that I'm just not quite grasping.

I've been away from the game for the past year. This stuff was just introduced before I left, and I'm having trouble diving into it; I'm just not grasping exactly what I need to do.

So, to begin with the Incarnate content, first of all, I must do the Mender Ramiel arc in Ouroboros. Is that correct? I have to do that on every 50, immediately, to begin gaining Incarnate experience and/or receive the TF-required rewards?

I may have begun this on a charater or two, it's sounding vaguely familiar, but if anyone could kind of give me the first couple of steps into the entire process, that would really help me. Thanks.

ETA: This thread may be more my speed, but I'd still appreciate any guidance or other suggested threads to read. Thanks.

Yes, that's right, Chris. That is unless you purchase an Alpha unlock via Astral merits in Ouroboros, but you need to do Incarnate Trials to get those merits so I'm guessing that's not really an option for you. Honestly, I find that to be a waste of merits anyway myself. So yes, unless you purchase an Alpha unlock, you have to do Mender Ramiel's arc in Ouro before Incarnates are unlocked for that character.

I think you already know this, but this arc only unlocks your Alpha slot. Judgement, Lore, Destiny, and Interface all have to be unlocked with iXP in trials.

I'm not sure what makes you think "many" powers ignore Spiritual's buff. Truth is very few do. Really it's just incarnate powers and a couple select powers (Domination, Mind Link). In fact I would go on to say Spiritual has the best secondary bonus of any of the Alphas: buffing healing. This is super amazing for things like dark sets and regen characters.

I have incarnate Alpha on around 8 characters. And of all of those, I have Spiritual on all but two. Yes, Judgement and Lore don't get reduced recharges, but I didn't take Alpha for those powers.

When looking at Alpha, consider what bonus would most benefit your character. Try not to look at individual powers (Judgement), but the character as a whole. I took Spiritual on my Masterminds to get their buffs and debuffs up more (it also buffs healing). It's great on click heavy sets like Dark Miasma and Traps. It's great on my Blaster who has a ton of clicks that are up more often now (BU, Aim, and AoEs) as well as giving her a more solid attack chain. Her PFF comes up more, her nuke is around more -- it feels much more useful than a simple damage bonus. I also have Spiritual on a Brute, which gives her more HP from Dull Pain (and makes it perma), as well as getting her AoEs up more. That's more useful than a damage bonus amidst saturated fury and BU.

I have two characters who can't really make any use of Spiritual though. My widow has a flawless attack chain and perma ML. There's no need for more recharge. And my Dominator has permadom and permahasten. I opted for Cardiac on her, letting me spam high end AoEs more, run Maneuvers with no end reduc slotted in it, and it even gives me bonus range. Those perks are much better for her, in my opinion, than bonus damage. Even if her Judgement attack is less than it could be. Because the range and end reduction make her much more powerful overall.

Consider also how often the bonuses you're getting will apply. If you're taking Musculature just so your Lore pets are better -- how often do you actually use them? Would you be better off getting a recharge bonus on most of your powers, or a damage bonus on your pets?

There are other factors as well; even with ignoring ED the effects of recharge are less the more you have. And damage bonuses may not add as much damage as you think they will after enhancements and other damage bonuses. Plus, if you're near a damage cap, damage bonuses won't do anything. You may also want to consider secondary effects like healing in Spiritual or range/RES in Cardiac.

Having said all that, I have Musculature on my main character, the night widow. I don't at all regret it. Her Void attack and Warworks pets are insanely powerful, and I enjoy the damage she does on her own. If you have the ability to do it, I'd say it's worthwhile. But consider that you may get more use out of other things. My widow would not benefit at all from recharge, endurance reduction, or accuracy. If that's true or nearly true of your character, Musculature may well be the way to go.

* You may notice I didn't mention Nerve anywhere. It's because Nerve sucks.

Quote:

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

That was... Thorough. Thanks.

I haven't yet had a character who I took Musculature on and kept it on. All the others I either wanted the extra endurance reduction (and sometimes +DR) of Cardiac or the extra Recharge and Heal from Spiritual.

While I would love Spiritual on more of my characters, many of them could not sustain a saturated attack chain with all their toggles, often due to sacrifices made in their build in other areas. For example, if you build for +defense set bonuses, you often sacrifice some of the endurance reduction slotting you might be able to achieve with other sets or with "frankenslotting". Taking Cardiac gave me the best of all those worlds - saturated (or nearly saturated) attack chains and high defense from set bonuses, and near-limitless endurance from the combination of set (or unique) bonuses and Cardiac's cost reductions.

On the characters who did not need Cardiac, I was often looking at builds which benefit from both more recharge and more heal slotting. Spiritual practically has "Good for Regeneration Characters" stamped on it, and an IO'd Regen Scrapper can have so much recovery available they should cause idle lightbulbs to turn on spontaneously as they pass nearby. I even took Spiritual on my Regen Stalker, who sadly doesn't have that bounty of recovery, and took Ageless Destiny to cover the difference. (Ageless + Spiritual is ... impressive levels of +recharge - but not something I was specifically aiming for.)

I like to try silly things like solo AVs or Rikti Pylons. Before the Alpha Slot, I was able to create characters with the DPS and theoretical survivability for this, but not the recovery. Musculature and Cardiac both improve your DPE (damage per endurance), but only Cardiac affects your EPS (endurance per second) burn rate. Because Cardiac moved my burn rate closer to my recovery rate, Cardiac gave most of my characters the ability to sustain extremely long (if not infinite) attack chain repetitions. Musculature would have made them DPS things down faster, but it did not move my DPS rate far enough further away from my foes' regen rate to decrease my time-to-victory enough to avoid running out of endurance first. So Cardiac was usually the better choice. (Cardiac sometimes had other pleasant side effects, like pushing my BS/Inv Scrapper to the Scrapper L/S damage cap, or giving all my Dark Miasma characters +20% on their blast range.)

Good points; I thinking I'm sticking with Spiritual, for this character at least.

Now... How do I get to that 4th tier? I have Spiritual Total Core Revamp unlocked and equipped... I'm not seeing what the next step is to get to Spiritual Core Paragon. I know I need to "purchase" other abilities, but I'm not sure where I start to do that.

You need a Favor of the Well, plus two tier 3 abilities crafted from the same "tree". A Favor of the Well takes two Notice of the Well and I think 32 shards to craft it, meaning you need a total of four Notice of the Well rewards to get from the Uncommon to Very Rare tiers. (One for each T3 crafted, and then two more for the Favor.) Since you can only get one Notice per character per Tuesday-Tuesday week, that takes four weeks total. (Three weeks at most for you, since you have one T3 crafted already.)

Alternatively, you can run Incarnate trials and use their different salvage scheme to craft the slots, but what "rarity tier" of reward you get is random, so its not deterministic how long it will take.

All assuming of course you don't go the route of paying cash + shards/threads or (in the case of iTrial components) paying Empyrian Merits for the components you need.

on the 12 toons or so that ive alpha'd, i say prolly half of them have cardiac and half of them have spiritual (i do have one with nerve because +def and +acc on powers is what he needed lol)

Great tips.

Is there information around anywhere about the other Lore pets? I unlocked that tonight and I'm trying to decide which I should go for. I'm a squishy blaster, so anything with buffs gets favored!

Speaking of them, I've been trying to think of a way to implement. Thing is, there's so many that it would be high on visual saturation to try and list all the recipes and powers, especially since the pets in general do mostly the same things with a few exceptions. I'm open to opinions on how to handle it.

Quote:

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

Thank you! Amazing guide and advice!

I've read the whole thread and below (re-posted) is exactly the 'concept' information I was looking for, any chance of adding it to the guide?

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Incarnate Threads: Create Common components. You need tons of them; the rest of the stuff will most likely drop from the trials for you.

Astrals: Break them down into threads.

Empyrians: Save them up until you have 8 or 30 to get rares or very rares (depending on your level of need).

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I'm not sure what makes you think "many" powers ignore Spiritual's buff. Truth is very few do. Really it's just incarnate powers and a couple select powers (Domination, Mind Link). In fact I would go on to say Spiritual has the best secondary bonus of any of the Alphas: buffing healing. This is super amazing for things like dark sets and regen characters.

I have incarnate Alpha on around 8 characters. And of all of those, I have Spiritual on all but two. Yes, Judgement and Lore don't get reduced recharges, but I didn't take Alpha for those powers.

When looking at Alpha, consider what bonus would most benefit your character. Try not to look at individual powers (Judgement), but the character as a whole. I took Spiritual on my Masterminds to get their buffs and debuffs up more (it also buffs healing). It's great on click heavy sets like Dark Miasma and Traps. It's great on my Blaster who has a ton of clicks that are up more often now (BU, Aim, and AoEs) as well as giving her a more solid attack chain. Her PFF comes up more, her nuke is around more -- it feels much more useful than a simple damage bonus. I also have Spiritual on a Brute, which gives her more HP from Dull Pain (and makes it perma), as well as getting her AoEs up more. That's more useful than a damage bonus amidst saturated fury and BU.

I have two characters who can't really make any use of Spiritual though. My widow has a flawless attack chain and perma ML. There's no need for more recharge. And my Dominator has permadom and permahasten. I opted for Cardiac on her, letting me spam high end AoEs more, run Maneuvers with no end reduc slotted in it, and it even gives me bonus range. Those perks are much better for her, in my opinion, than bonus damage. Even if her Judgement attack is less than it could be. Because the range and end reduction make her much more powerful overall.

Consider also how often the bonuses you're getting will apply. If you're taking Musculature just so your Lore pets are better -- how often do you actually use them? Would you be better off getting a recharge bonus on most of your powers, or a damage bonus on your pets?

There are other factors as well; even with ignoring ED the effects of recharge are less the more you have. And damage bonuses may not add as much damage as you think they will after enhancements and other damage bonuses. Plus, if you're near a damage cap, damage bonuses won't do anything. You may also want to consider secondary effects like healing in Spiritual or range/RES in Cardiac.

Having said all that, I have Musculature on my main character, the night widow. I don't at all regret it. Her Void attack and Warworks pets are insanely powerful, and I enjoy the damage she does on her own. If you have the ability to do it, I'd say it's worthwhile. But consider that you may get more use out of other things. My widow would not benefit at all from recharge, endurance reduction, or accuracy. If that's true or nearly true of your character, Musculature may well be the way to go.

* You may notice I didn't mention Nerve anywhere. It's because Nerve sucks.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I haven't yet had a character who I took Musculature on and kept it on. All the others I either wanted the extra endurance reduction (and sometimes +DR) of Cardiac or the extra Recharge and Heal from Spiritual.

While I would love Spiritual on more of my characters, many of them could not sustain a saturated attack chain with all their toggles, often due to sacrifices made in their build in other areas. For example, if you build for +defense set bonuses, you often sacrifice some of the endurance reduction slotting you might be able to achieve with other sets or with "frankenslotting". Taking Cardiac gave me the best of all those worlds - saturated (or nearly saturated) attack chains and high defense from set bonuses, and near-limitless endurance from the combination of set (or unique) bonuses and Cardiac's cost reductions.

On the characters who did not need Cardiac, I was often looking at builds which benefit from both more recharge and more heal slotting. Spiritual practically has "Good for Regeneration Characters" stamped on it, and an IO'd Regen Scrapper can have so much recovery available they should cause idle lightbulbs to turn on spontaneously as they pass nearby. I even took Spiritual on my Regen Stalker, who sadly doesn't have that bounty of recovery, and took Ageless Destiny to cover the difference. (Ageless + Spiritual is ... impressive levels of +recharge - but not something I was specifically aiming for.)

I like to try silly things like solo AVs or Rikti Pylons. Before the Alpha Slot, I was able to create characters with the DPS and theoretical survivability for this, but not the recovery. Musculature and Cardiac both improve your DPE (damage per endurance), but only Cardiac affects your EPS (endurance per second) burn rate. Because Cardiac moved my burn rate closer to my recovery rate, Cardiac gave most of my characters the ability to sustain extremely long (if not infinite) attack chain repetitions. Musculature would have made them DPS things down faster, but it did not move my DPS rate far enough further away from my foes' regen rate to decrease my time-to-victory enough to avoid running out of endurance first. So Cardiac was usually the better choice. (Cardiac sometimes had other pleasant side effects, like pushing my BS/Inv Scrapper to the Scrapper L/S damage cap, or giving all my Dark Miasma characters +20% on their blast range.)

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Been looking at the Lore pets and trying to figure out what is best to increase the resist/defense of my fire tank:

The "Storm" Lore pet has Hurricane and can't be killed? That seems better than the +5 defense the other pets offer, you think?

Here are my thoughts:

* Obviously update all the inaccurate information

* Add all the new stuff on beta

* Get rid of the ingredient section. It's a big eyesore and it takes a long time to put together, and it's really mind-numbing. It's information easily found in the game and visually it's a big mess in the guide.

* Condense the Lore section into summaries of the pet powers and what they do. Having screenshots and lists with all the numbers of all the pets takes up a lot of room and time.

I'd like some feedback.

Quote:

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

Hey there,

I've got a question about the "Phantoms" Lore pets. What do they look like? I've gotten several conflicting answers, hearing "COT Spectrals," "Like Ghost ship ghosts," and "Like Phantom Army pets" seemingly at random. Can someone verify? I'd copy over to the test server to buy them there, but the Test Server Transfer still seems deader than Nixon.

Thanks.

Later on,
Gate

Ahhh, thanks man. That's actually the answer I was hoping for, it's the closest match to concept for the character in question.

Later on,
Gate

Finally updated the OP some. Let me know if anything is inaccurate or missing. Or needs to be further explained.

Still MIA:
* Upgrade/sidegrade section
* New Lore pets (not sure what I want to do with this section yet)
* Vorpal
* Some of the Interface/Alpha numbers that just changed/are about to change
* The numbers for -END and -recov for Preemptive
* Some numbers for Incandescence

Quote:

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

Something I can't understand about Incandescence:

* Is the "safe zone" it creates where these buffs are in effect centered around the teleport destination spot? Or is it centered around you wherever you move?

* Is there any way to tell, visibly, where that safe zone ends?

I'm curious about the -max hp debuff. Is it applied before the damage? I don't really see the point in general PvE if you do 80 damage then -40 max hp, but if you did -40 max hp THEN 80 damage then you would have done 40 more damage. How is this for AVs? I assume it'd be more noticeable? Though once you damage them quite a bit, it would have no more benefit right? And lastly how does it compare to the -regen for AVs/PvE as well.