Multi-group content is not the way.

I agree...and it's a tactic I have used. FB draws a lot of aggro. Results in one dead hot chick. Even though I considder her very very non squishy for a troller.

However, this will be soon tested as I have changed my IO's to offer more range defense. Even though this is a good tactic...I feel I would bring more to a team as a non squishy.

I did a poll in my super huge super SG, and most people who do the trials are scrappers or tanks. We are a little blue heavy...which makes sense in many ways.

Most everyone chooses something survivable because it's a gauntlet style fornat. I think many people try to speed it, and unfortunately that only works with animate walls, but all rules go out the window when you have a team or league of of melee resist, because the conribution they offer is damage.

From my observation i'ts what you kill or help kill. Me force bubbling is awesome, but because there is little to no damage the equasion drops wont happen for me, healers, support classes in general.

so, my place on a team is control, which Ill do to allow the team to plow through, but at the end of the day, if I am not getting rewards for my contribution then their is litterally no reason to participate at all.

If what I do does not earn me something that I need to spend time doing so others reap rewards that I would love to have, Ill just end up feeling cheated while the other replace what I bring to the team because they have the DPS or HP to do it.

Which is sad because I never considdered COX a game of HP.

I know they are affected by knockback: in the early part of the escape phase if I'm stationed anywhere near a door on my energy blaster I stand right there and tab-target them before they even exit the doors, and start spamming torrent and explosive blast on them. The minions usually can't make it past the doors: the Lts sail right on by.

Knockback also tends to confuse the minions a bit if you hit them on the paths as they run by: they often get knocked off the road, run around randomly for a bit, then figure out where they are and head back to the road and back into their escape path. I've sometimes seen them run the wrong way for a couple of seconds before figuring it out and reversing back to their escape path.

If it's any consolation, I enjoy running with you.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I don't think it even takes KB to do that (run em off the road, that is). I consistently see them running in circles like idiots after hitting them with my fire blasts.

That might be an "afraid" temporarily overriding their preprogrammed path. Score one for fire. But I've also seen knockback throw a minion off the road, have them get up, turn in the opposite direction, and almost run out of sight, then stop, turn around, and then head back the way they were originally going. That's kinda odd.

I was the original complainer about Lambda once i20 went live. In fact, I complained so effectively it almost got me banned from the boards lol. And thats why I tank, I love to taunt.

Anyways, I have completed Lambda multiple times now. People are starting to get the new powers unlocked and know what they are doing. I believe 8 people could do a Lambda. There are 2 breaking points. The Sabotage raid, which is the make or break section of the whole Trial. Now it is easy to see where 4 hot team members who know what is up could work together to complete each side of this. Half the time a full 8 team never does it, some are in hospital, some soloing something, and some just lost on the map. Now doing enough damage to Marauder. Whew, that can be tough. But, I know enough about serious players and high end builds to know that a well rounded team with some hotshots could do this. a few good Blasters, Scrappers, Corruptors, with good buffs, (Fulcrum Shift would be nice, among others)

Not for the casual 8 team, and not for the easily deterred. But doable by 8, yes.

Yes, lucky to get an attack off...

>>>> AFTER <<<<<

...all the incarnate stuff comes into the picture.

Jeezus!

Get off the overpower issue, please! It's not what I'm talking about. It's a separate issue. I'm talking about Haves and Have Nots specifically. Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Yes, it is. Yes, I determine what it is that I am talking about. I am talking about Haves and Have Nots. Okay? Okay.

Example:

4 people team. Everyone contributes. But 3 of those 4 people then unlock the Incarnate powers. The 4th person now doesn't have anything to offer that the Incarnate powers aren't already providing. 4th person is now redundant.

I've seen this happen already.

The 4th person's option is to also unlock the Incarnate powers. Now that team of 4 will be overkill. But at least they're all on relatively equal footing and can leapfrog or whatever else to deal with the separate overpower issue.

You should know better than to do this.

No, that's not what I'm saying. If I had been saying that, I would've said it. I didn't because I'm not.

What I'm saying is: I have observed that there is a certain rate of speed any given player will be comfortable with. Regardless of where that comfort level is, reaching it by themselves is far more viable with the Incarnate powers. Obviously. Therefore, needing someone else to help facilitate that comfort level is less likely. Incarnate powers directly impact self sufficiency in a way that IOs and such have not.

And, again, I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm leaning towards liking it right now. Particularly because we're only talking about 50s. The 1-45 game is the same as it ever was.

But the point is: specific roles are diminished by the Incarnate powers. They give characters options they did not have before, things that were typically provided by other teammates. So people who think it's still all going to all be role-based should be aware of that.

No. No, they weren't. That might be the case with the people you run with, but that's not standard in the circles I typically interact with, which run the gamut from hardcore to 'still running on SOs' casual. It does happen, but not often. The Incarnate stuff is having a much greater and immediate impact than previous systems on this kinda thing.

I disagree.

First of all, the process of getting the Incarnate abilities is far, far, far simpler than plotting out and then equipping a high-end IO build. From what I'm seeing, that simplicity is making a difference on how common the Incarnate powers are becoming.

Secondly, the Incarnate powers have had much more of an impact on my own character's soloing speed than her IO build ever did. The same can be said for my friend's ubertank. Maybe this effect isn't as pronounced with damage dealers, characters who're already built to farm, etc. But those characters are already in the 'self sufficent' camp anyway. The Incarnate stuff is shifting many more characters into that camp, characters that previously couldn't reside there no matter how ubertastic their build was.

My IO builds just mostly amplify what my characters are. The Incarnate stuff expands on what they are. My Defender can now practically one-shot every third mob of critters, she no longer has to be all that concerned with mezzes, and her Lore pets can wreck mobs all on their own. It's a dramatic difference in play experience. With an IO build, she did the same thing she always did. She was just much better at it and tougher. Now she's doing things that used to be provided by others.

Actually, no. My own character didn't come into it. I was responding to Megajoule, trying to illustrate how several characters packing Diamagentic and everything else can effectively cancel out the need for a Rad. The entire premise was based on the assumption of need.

So, this tangent started with Megajoule's post and my whole initial point was: it's going to be less about individual ATs (Have Nots) and more about just overall character power (Haves). That's it. Therefore, I think unlocking this stuff should be as accessible as possible, because individual niches and roles are being diluted, and the people who've depended on those roles as their specific contribution are likely to be frustrated and disappointed as a result. I became conversational about my own misgivings, and that's what you apparently chose to latch onto.

And I think the Incarnate system has effectively cut ahead in that line for a very significant number of people. The day after i20 launched, I was already seeing "+3 level looking for raid" in broadcast. Many people who I know were very, very slow to warm to IOs are already throwing 3rd tier Judgments around and showing off their Lore pets. Only time will tell for sure, but I'm already getting the impression that the Incarnate stuff will be FAR more prevalent than multi-billion IO builds--or even cheap IO builds--ever were.

Which is part of why I'd like to see the devs facilitating as much buy-in on this system as possible.

That strikes me as good design, to be honest. I realise that some people are better at on-the-spot multitasking than I am and some just like the hectic chaos, but I can't imagine a development team wouldn't have spotted the potential mess that extending what was already terribly confusing as an 8-man and extending that over a potential four teams. Just the thought of sticking 24 players in the same place and throwing what would have to be an easy 100 enemies at them to compensate has the potential to kill me in real life.

Splitting leagues into smaller groups with their own objectives, therefore, would be a good approach. You still have a large-scale event with its own overall situation and dynamics, but you don't actually have to exist in a blender with everyone and everything else.

The ITF is actually a very good example of an effects soup. Most of it consists of tight quarters fighting tons of enemies with many people on your team. I have thus far never played an ITF in which I was in any way aware of what was happening around me or what was being done to me above and beyond my direct actions and the actions of what I currently have targeted. Most of the time, I'm not even aware of the position of my own mouse cursor.

I'm not sure how much this has to do with Fire in particular. For the longest time, enemy AI has been displaying odd behaviour when it comes to running away. I recall enemies running from my Masterminds for no easily discernable reason, and this is including perfectly untouched and otherwise terribly dangerous EBs. There are some weird logical elements to what causes enemies to run when under what circumstances, and just damage on its own can sometimes cause this.

My Fire Scrapper, for instance, always managed to cause enemies to scatter even without using Burn, and most of my Masterminds cause enemies to scatter through their sheer presence on the field.

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.

I agree that Melee characters are popular on the trials, it's not really that surprising since from what I've seen melee characters are the most popular ATs overall (except for Stalkers).

As to the second part stop and think about it for a second. You had 6 people from the Controller/Defender/Corruptor ATs. That's 25% of the league (assuming you were doing a BAF). There are 14 ATs in the game (if you include the EATs), Controllers, Defenders and Corruptors make up 21.4% of the possible ATs in the game so your point is actually that based on your league the proportions were closely matching the proportions of AT types .

Overall my experience is that the general proportion of different ATs in the leagues at the moment is reasonably balanced amongst the different AT "types". Some ATs are more heavily represented than others (in particular Hero ATs are more common than Villain ATs and Stalkers are very rare) but overall it seems to work out.

I suspected that, at first, trials would be dominated by melee types. That's what most people seem to favor, and I assumed they'd want to get their favorites set up first.

Now that the 'first wave' is ebbing, I'm guessing we'll soon see a greater mix of ATs as people start moving down their own rosters. It might already be happening, 'cuz I'm almost there myself, and I assume I'm a bit behind the curve in progress.

Just an educated guess, but I believe the paths they take are a series of waypoints right to the end. One reason they might double back and then correct themselves on their path is because the player may have made the NPC overshoot their intended waypoint. So they run back to that spot and then progress forward as normal.

I can only reply to what people say, not what they think they are saying in their own heads. Or I can conclude that the disparity between what they are saying and what they think they are saying is intractably equivocal.

Enemy AI seems to have a threshold for taking damage without being able to return fire: although its like an "afraid" I call it "frustration." If they get hit and they do not hit back, when the imbalance between the two exceeds a certain point some critters are designed to flee in response. You can see this in the default behavior of the AE critter's standard AI "brain." Make a critter with one attack, and spawn it. Attack it, and it attacks back. Now remove that attack and spawn it. Attack it, and after a couple of attacks it runs away.

I believe its possible the DoT from fire attacks acts like individual "attacks" as far as the AI is concerned: the AI sees "I'm damaged, I'm damaged, I'm damaged, I'm still getting damaged: I have to run away because I can't shoot back." Which may be why Fire is more effective at generating this response than most other attacks which just hit once.

Yup.

This is pretty much what a friend of mine was doing.

Apology accepted!

...I also forgot I run Hot Feet during this phase. *facepalm* That might just have a bit to do with it

I almost did it with 7. It was a turnstile PuG, far from balanced, and had at least two people who had never done the trial before. So yes, 8 could do it.

I did one with eight on Triumph last night. It was a pick up in Pocket D with a mastermind, a defender, two scrappers, two corruptors, a brute and a VEAT. We completed the sabotage phase fine, took out the portals (with the customary "who has acid and isn't using it" part where we have to farm a containment vessel) and then took out Marauder. It actually only took us about seven minutes to take down Marauder with eight from the moment we exited the building. I don't know how many people were double or triple shifted, but I did not see everyone with Lore pets out, and I was only single-shifted myself.

Honestly, it was an almost eerily problem-free run for the most part. I'd do Lambda with that team any time. And some admitted not having done it very often at that point: we were explaining as we went along.

I get what you are saying, but when I and the onther 2 controllers, the defender and the corr are the main people going to the hospital, and I know, cuz I see em, all there, it's just my thought process that the popularity of the other AT's is the resistance they have and their HP.

It's not that we are built wrong, we have just built for our AT, and I as a forcefielder have the luxery of expanding my defenses and my HP because of IO set bonuses, while others might not be able too as well.

I think the issue of one AT over another is that if a Tank or Scrapper gets the job done, they get a pet, an AOE, heavy debuffs and others neato stuff.

Now, if you have an Illusion/Rad, you get 2 pets, and debuffs. So if you think about it, if you want more bang for your buck it only makes more sense to take said tank and give them that Ill/Rads benefits. The tank now has the same abilities it always had and the survivability, but now it completely outshines the Ill/Rad in man ways.

I have been saying this from the beginning of it all so I can't really change anything.

How about taking the Ill/Rad and giving it the Tanker's benefits instead? With Destiny Buffs flying around everyone can be tough and have status protection.

The new slots do not invalidate any particular characters. They do decrease the differences between them but the powers are quite a bit weaker than true AT powers, especially in a team situation.

I think the important thing is to consider the benefits that the slots provide to the league as a whole rather than any single character. Let's take a look at the different slots:

Judgement: The "Blaster" slot. This slot gives everyone an extra damaging attack. It will increase the personal DPS of low damage classes proportionally more than high damage classes but what it does at the end of the day is give the league as a whole a static DPS boost irregardless of AT. However this DPS boost is really only noticeable against groups of enemies (i.e. Trash Mobs), in fights against single tough targets the value of the Judgement slot drops off sharply in order to avoid overshadowing the damage provided by dedicated ATs.

Lore: The "Mastermind" slot. This one, like Judgement, is primarily a static DPS boost for the league, the main difference being it's more about single target DPS than AoE DPS. As such it is more beneficial against AVs but is balanced by limited up-times, it can decrease the time needed to kill the AV but is not sufficient by itself to kill them. It also provides support pets but what do those actually do? They give their owner a 5% typed defense buff a few other small buffs and a small heal. Those bonuses are nice for soloing but don't make a huge benefit on a large team.

Interface: The "Debuffer" Slot. Now the important thing to realize here is that, unlike the other slots, this one does not stack between players. A reactive interface, for example, can provide up to a 10% resistance debuff but even if everyone has it you don't go above 10%. The net effect is that this provides a static debuff (again) but the total league-wide value of the debuffs against single targets is actually lower than what a dedicated debuffer can pump out. Compare the 10% resistance debuff from Reactive to the 30% debuff from Rad or the 60% regen debuff from diamagnetic to the 500% regen debuff that rad has.

Destiny: The "Buffer/Armor" Slot. This one is a little harder to quantify due to the variable nature of the buffs. However, the core purpose seems to be to even out the survivability of the team. Clarion in particular provides decent mez protection to everyone which makes the mez protection on melee characters less important. Barrier and Rebirth provide additional damage mitigation to everyone in the league, which will from a practical point of view benefit squishier characters more than tough characters. Ageless is the odd one out since it's an offensive boost rather than defensive, I suspect the idea of it is to try and narrow the gap between SO'd build and IO'd builds a bit more.

The net result however is that the basic benefits of the slot to the league as a whole are, essentially, static and AT independent. They also do not overshadow any of the ATs. The damage bonuses from Lore and Judgement help but there is still a need for good damage, especially against bosses. Interface provides some additional debuff but the total of a single debuff type from the entire league is weaker than a lot of single debuff powers. The Destiny provides a lot of extra damage mitigation but it's intermittent which means there is still a need for characters with continuous protection (either for themselves or for others).

Now, consider a theoretical situation of an incarnate team containing 24 Tankers. Would replacing one of those Tankers with a Radiation Emission character (regardless of AT) increase or decrease the power of the team?

Now the other side of the argument is that people will opt to play melee characters more out of, basically, a desire for personal glory. That is almost inevitable, if you take a look at any MMO that is designed around the "Tank, Healer, DPS trinity" you always see the same thing, there is a huge oversupply of DPSers, a moderate oversupply of Tanks and a shortage of Healers. I think the devs have recognized that and designed the incarnate system to handle it. A team of all one AT could clear the content but a mixed team will have an easier time.

Now there are two ATs that are getting somewhat marginalized: Blasters and Stalkers however I don't think that the Incarnate content is to blame for that, it's been an ongoing trend. Stalkers have always been the red-haired step-child of the ATs, they are supposed to be single target specialists but run into the problem that this is mostly an AoE based game and for the few times it isn't their single target advantage is not that much higher. Blasters are similarly supposed to be the ranged AoE specialists but suffer from the fact that they give up a lot of survivability for relatively little damage compared to the melee damage dealers.

Hmm. I think I can provide some supporting evidence of this with some of my recent play-time. I've found that when I engage with an EB with just my single target attacks with standard ammo, they tend to stay there and slug it out with me. If I switch to incendiary, or use Hail of Bullets, they tend to decide to run off for a while.

They're probably 'frustrated' (I think Castle or someone once referred to it as a 'griefed' state?) enough from not hitting me, so I figured the amount of damage might have been relevant.. But if ticks count for more, that definitely could explain it.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

This... I mean, this makes no sense.

Let's take your scenario and imagine that it's true. The fourth person is now redundant. Now, give the fourth person incarnate powers... who cares? The team was already fully complete and self-sufficient with the other three.

More realistically, though, I just don't think this can happen. I've been in a situation which is at least roughly comparable; level 20ish character with a smattering of common IOs and maybe two small set bonuses on a team of purpled-out 50s.

You know what? They could have cleared that content very close to just as fast without me. But only very close. Because I understood the implications of how powerful they were and adapted my play appropriately.

So the thing is... You might no longer have the specific effect you used to, but you can now have some other effect. There are two possibilities:

1. Everything dies before you can activate a single power. In this case, it doesn't matter whether you're also an Incarnate or not -- you can't act quickly enough to have any effect.
2. At least one thing is alive long enough for you to get off one power. You're contributing, and not fully redundant.

Uh.

This can't be right, because I've never gotten to Incarnate powers, but IO powers let me move several characters from "I really need a team to be functional" to "la la, killing lots of thugs, la la oops arrest."

I'm pretty sure all AI navigation in the game revolves around waypoints, though most NPCs set their own waypoints. You can see this if you ask a fast-running NPC to run down a steep slope. They'll keep running on air, dropping down, going up a bit more, walking on air and running back, over and over again. I interpret this as the NPC setting itself a waypoint down the slope a short distance away, but overshooting its own waypoint and then deciding to run back to it. I also interpret their problem with leaping over fences as them setting their next waypoint PAST the fence, rather than ON TOP of it, and so trying to run in a straight line, and occasionally doing very simplistic traversal approaches.

I remember reading up on machine navigation of unknown environments as a mathematical computation approach for my Applied Mathematics diploma defence, but that was a few years ago so I don't remember everything about it. I do remember that almost all know approaches can make for some quirky paths under specific circumstances.

It's possible that in this particular example, NPCs are following preset checkpoint waypoints, but waypoints aren't unique to them.

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.