I have run 10 trials today, I never want to run them again. Am I alone?

HP caps of each AT is very important if we are to look at how Incarnate powers work long term. If this homogeneity continues then concept builds will matter a lot less.

Why play a stalker + incarnate powers when you could play a scrapper + incarnate powers? Other than Nin (which probably will be proliferated soon enough).

Concept builds worked fine in the 1-50 framework, but with the introduction of homogeneity of Incarnate powers I am not so sure.

What are softcapped blasters if not tank mages?

They can keep their more damage/damage + utility/even more damage + utility power sets and have defenses on par with ATs that spend a power set on it.

Because there's no such thing as an successful MMO using carrot-and-stick techniques to keep people subscribed and playing. can't say for sure Where Or When that idea came up.

But ah well, guess some people aren't willing to work for their rewards. No big...

Though some solo or small-team incarnate storylines that allow you to gain some rewards might not be a terrible idea. Though how do you make the risk worth the reward? I mean if it's incarnate content, it would have to be tough, and many of the same people who're against raiding also seem opposed to actual challenge in this game, so you'd still be disappointed >_>

Considering how concept-limiting Incarnate powers can be for some, I wouldn't be surprised if many people with concept builds are forced to either ignore the system, or start down the slippery slope of sacrificing concept for moar power.

You show me a Blaster who is softcapped to all types or all positions without being seriously gimped as a Blaster, and I'll concede your point. And then you're still forced into Clarion Destiny if you want mez protection and have fewer HP than a Scrapper.

Wait, whoa, hang on a sec! Exactly one week from I20 launch and you already have a tier 4 ability in Judgment?!

t4 judgment, t4 interface, t3 +t1 Destiny, and t3 Lore

The components didn't slow anyone down who really wanted it. The grind (as it is called) doesn't bother me either. It is much better than it was in the 8bit days of my child hood. It is fun, and if I could skip the cut scenes it would be even more fun.

I was going to start working on another Interface branch today, but Sons of Anarchy is on Netflix, and that caught me.

I had all my t4s on saturday but changed my mind on my lore slot so I had to get another very rare on sunday to finish it. Got lucky on reward windows.

There were other people that were finished in like 3 days though.

Yeah, I had t2 Lore crafted before I even unlocked the slot. Had my wisdom teeth removed the day after Launch, or I may would have had my t4s before Sunday, as is I had t4 interface on Sat, and t3 Judgment on Sunday.

I hate to admit it but if you guys (and others) reached Tier 4 on 2 or more of the new Incarnate slots in less than a week then there really is no grind to speak of.

Get lucky with the completion rewards tables and what grind there is vanishes into nothingness. My main (who oddly enough is behind my crab) is sitting on 3 uncommons (still unlocking lore) and I've got the t4 components for 2 of the trees i'm going down.

If you get lucky on your reward tables you can get it done very quickly.

My wife had her Judgement slot unlocked after just ONE trial, and she is one common component away from having it slotted, so one more will see that happen.

I've run maybe 8 or 9 total, and I have Judgement, Interface, and Lore unlocked. Judgement and Interface both have tier 2s and Lore is just a tier 1 (which I actually crafted before I unlocked it)

I'm not seeing this grind everyone keeps talking about. I had a blast killing some stuff and unlocked some nifty abilities. I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

What incredibly intentionally hateful drivel.

You folks have for pages and pages showed me THIS IS NOT HARD. You said its so easy, you don't even have to win - to win.

Now you tell me those of us who refuse to farm don't like HARD content? This content is meant to be NOT hard so it can be repeated and repeated. It takes less than 30 minutes - that's hard?

What intentional dismissal of those new and old players who do not like this style of game play. I my case I have been here since day ONE. This style has not existed since then. When you introduce it like I have never played an MMO with farming before and say try it - it is only a farm if you say it is - no sir it is a farm because you must repeatedly do the same mission over and over again.

The attitude I see from the players and your personal attacks on those who refuse to play in this manner is very disrespectful. You want to farm that is fine but in the words of a famous man don't pee on my head and tell me its raining.

The purpose of the new salvage type is not solely to prevent people from just buying them on day 1 (although it does help with that). It also serves to allow the progress rate from the trials to be balanced independently of the progress rate from other content.

Thanks, but I'd already decided to pass on running this content before I learned folks were hitting the Tier 4 ceiling in less than a week. These recent "I got my Tier 4 in less than a week" revelations make it very clear that there is no actual grind. I really want to say that's a good thing after all but... I think I may just take a break from the game after my Vanguard rewards post and resub later. I dunno. I guess this just isn't the endgame content I was hoping for - and knowing that folks now have their tier 4s on multiple I20 Incarnate slots in less than a week? I mean, where else do you go from here?

Sorry, I'm just really quite speechless (and just a little bit sad).

Err, no. 30/30 def/res is 72% damage mitigation vs base 50% tohit critters and 62.8% mitigation vs base 64% tohit critters. 47% defense is 90% mitigation vs base 50% critters and 73.4% mitigation vs base 64% critters.


This doesn't reflect my experience running the trials. Barriers uptimes make them excellent burst buffs and supplemental buffs, but the on-paper objection of them making buffers moot is not materializing. Even moreso debuffers: debuffs are still in demand and interface is not coming close to scratching the surface of what they can do.

Unless you're going for a master run, any trial leader trying to cherry pick a team of 16 or 24 is honestly just too inexperienced to know any better. The best teams I've seen have been balanced teams: some melee, some control, some buff/debuff. If you're kicking one defender to make space for one scrapper on a team of incarnates, in my opinion you're really just being a jerk or an idiot. What you need are 16 or 24 players that can hit a green button in sixty seconds - something that isn't a 100% thing apparently.

Barrier's cooldown is 2 minutes, not 90 seconds. At Tier 4 (Barrier Core Epiphany) you can get the duration up to 120 seconds -- basically permanent, with a tiny gap for the activation -- but the buff is really pretty weak for 90 of those seconds.

10 seconds of godmode (+90% DEF/RES), 20 seconds of very good protection (+32.5% DEF/RES), and then you're looking at 30 seconds at 7.5% RES/DEF, and the remaining 60 seconds at 5% DEF/RES.

Kelenar already handled this quote admirably (and with a fancy chart, no less!), but just to reiterate: layered mitigation isn't always better than one-dimensional mitigation just because its layered. 45% DEF (in non-Incarnate content) is 90% damage mitigation. 32.5% DEF/RES works out to 1 - ((1 - 0.65) * (1 - 0.325)) = 76%ish mitigation.

Granted, most people will have some DEF on which to stack Barrier, so you may well find that the latter, layered option is better in practice for a lot of teams. Then again, the higher-order DEF buff from the Force Fielder gives you better protection from ToHit buffs and DEF debuffs. In any case, as noted earlier, we're only talking about 32.5% RES/DEF for 20 seconds out of every 120.

I'm sure most people on the forum would agree that Force Field is an underwhelming powerset, or at least that it's too one-dimensional. That was pretty much the consensus even long before Incarnates were announced. Heck, it may have been the consensus even before Inventions came along and gave everyone the opportunity to add lots of DEF to their builds. But a single Barrier doesn't come close to replacing a fully matured FF build's contribution to team survivability. Stacked Barriers? Sure, I'll buy that.

Consider what the devs are trying to do here, though. For perhaps the first time in this game's long history, they're emphasizing multi-team content. It's important that people can at least make a good-faith attempt at these trials without spending hours trying to create the perfect mix of teams. Blurring the lines through Incarnate powers achieves that goal, and I think it does the job rather admirably.

As above with Barrier, you're gonna have hard time making the case that any singular instance of this-or-that Incarnate power replaces a given build or AT. Comparing Barrier with FF is probably the best example you could pick given that FF is such a one-trick pony, in fact. That said, the Incarnate abilities are designed so that if they're layered effectively, you can succeed -- even succeed with flying colors -- with any old collection of ATs/powersets.

I think that's a good thing, in a game that has traditionally shied away from starkly defined team roles (the holy trinity, if you will). Concept and uniqueness are double-edged swords, after all: the more mechanical uniqueness you enforce in the name of letting your players feel special, the less wiggle room you allow your players with respect to succeeding with whatever unique character concept they want to play.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Its basically a tie between people dismissing the concerns of the players not in favor of the current system or unable to fully participate in it, and the people claiming that content that other players are enjoying is intrinsicly poorly designed, bad for the game, and objectively counter to the fundamental principles of the game to this point.

The fact that you and others (on both sides) are characterizing this discussion as "hateful" only serves to prove the point that actual objective discussion about the end game system is elusive.

The only thing I will say about that is something I said in both I18 and I19 beta, and actually even farther back than that. If your sole objective is to argue with other players none of which have even the tiniest ability to change anything in the end game at all or vent at no one in particular, you can say whatever you want however you want. If, on the other hand, at least part of your motivation for expressing your opinion is to sway the opinions of objective observers including presumably the devs who actually make the end game, then the question is not what is "fair" but rather what presents your opinion in the best possibly way.

In a tie, the people advocating change lose. The last time I said this, a remarkable number of people objected saying that wasn't true. I don't know if they are still visiting this planet, but rest assured on Earth this is still true. I'm not saying I think its true or I think it should be true. It is true, period. The people who have no desire to see anything significantly change still have an obligation to act civilly, but there are no harsh consequences for them not doing so as long as they do not violate the EULA of the boards. The people who do desire to see something significantly change have the same obligation to act civilly, but the penalty for failing to do so is to risk the strong probability of being ignored, nullifying their advocacy. A rational person would take that fact into consideration when expressing their opinions publicly.

I get where you are coming from, but t4 wasn't the end for me, it was just the beginning. I got the ones that made the most since first, next I will move on to those that also compliment my concept. I will just go a bit slower with those.

I wanted the t4 because I wanted to do the rest of the content with those cool powers. I will not lie, I have been running radio missions for years. GR was when I actually started reading the text again, and found that it was good. So, now I am going through all that content as what my character was meant to be the avatar of storms. It is so cool to me to go through and do this amazing stuff. To each their own.

I guess how you look at it, and approach it is what makes or breaks it. If it is just a matter of collecting, I can see where it may be upsetting that it can be done so fast. If it is a mater of completing a concept, then it just adds to the character and the experience of the game.

I can only speak for myself, but I REALLY want several of the other trees in Judgment, and Interface. I will get them, but I feel comfortable doing the trials as fillers now, and not as the only content I want to run. I honestly can't wait to do the LGTF, STF, and ITF with these powers. The STF most of all, I (as a virtue player) love to imagine the looks on their faces as the wrath of an angry storm falls upon them.

On the note of stacked Destiny powers, as I pointed out before, a well-coordinated team could probably outdo certain Defender/Corruptor builds in certain areas, most notably raw damage mitigation from buffs. That said, this sort of thing has been true for a long time. A properly-built team can decimate every spawn with rolling semi-nukes without having any Blasters around, or charge into every spawn with no Tanks, or, hell, take out STF Ghost Widow with all melee. Or, yes, survive with no Defenders/Corruptors/Controllers/MMs buffing them. Hell, even before Incarnates came around, they could softcap themselves and then some, between Shield users, VEATs, and Maneuvers. The Incarnate system will probably make this more accessible than it was before, but I don't see this as a particularly new situation on anything except a team coordinated specifically to leverage it, and that goes double for every powerset that isn't Forcefield.

So they *planned* for people to grind the trials so hard that they got their rares in three days?

I was about to say they couldn't have thought that wouldn't happen... except that is probably exactly what happened. They didn't put a hard limit on the gathering of threads, thread components, Astral and Empyrian Merits, so people just kept going to get them.

Expect to see a large nerf at some point.