What is your position on untyped damage in Incarnate content?

My position is that anything that has a functional strategy that anyone can implement to overcome it is fair game. You did not sculpt your vaunted survivability from the protean firmament. All the building blocks were given to you by the developers, quite deliberately, to enable certain scenarios under certain circumstances. And if the developers then quite deliberately choose to circumvent those building blocks to create other scenarios under other circumstances, that is their prerogative.

In certain special circumstances, the developer design states that your survival is dictated purely by your capacity to, at the appropriate cue, press the buttons that make the little man move around, because that is how they wanted it to be. In other, much more common circumstances, it is instead influenced by the time you spend carefully choosing and purchasing imaginary goods with imaginary money earned through imaginary toil, and that is also how they wanted it to be. I find both of these things acceptable.

I'm fine with the untyped/irresistible damage.

If I'm playing my blaster, I stock up on greens, try to make sure I know who's playing a character with heals, and maybe slot in a Rebirth.

If I'm playing my scrapper, I stock up on greens, try to make sure I know who's playing a character with heals, maybe slot in a Rebirth, and enjoy the fact that my protection still works just fine against all the other mobs in the trial.

In both cases, sometimes the character dies. As the biggest penalty involved is the effort of turning on toggles and running back from the hospital on the mission map, that doesn't really bother me, either.

I have no issues with it myself and it's actually a fun change of pace. The problem is that I have to rely on lots of random people to not mess up. If there's no solid leadership for things like Keyes and Hamidon, there's no point in doing them.

My position is that no damage should be untyped, but that there should be more types...

Have you ever played Mario kart on the N64, on the 150cc difficulty, to find that no matter how fast your lap times are, the opponents you race against will always find a way to catch up with you, even if that means they have blatantly been programmed to go faster than you could possibly ever drive just to stay close to you thus defining the game's difficulty? That's what Incarnate Trials remind me of.

The funny thing about this is that no matter how unfair the AVs unresistable/unavoidable damage may seem, they are still beatable. Some people have already expressed their feelings in that this game content is still too easy. Which doesn't surprise me, when everyone is using Incarnate powers.

I dislike the concept of untyped/unavoidable/unresistable damage for different reasons than most people who have posted here already. The OP pointed out his concerns over an equality issue that lies within the trials in relation to this whole damage debate, whilst some have said that the equality is a good thing because it supposedly makes the trials fairer, as was the intention of the devs.

But therein lies the problem. The problem with the damage when it comes to trials is that it succeeds but also fails to make everyone balanced. One hit kill +1hp moves is the biggest example of this because regardless of archetype, and thus their individual health, buffs per player, and any other values that defines each character as an individual, everyone gets hit by this silly attack that treats everyone the same. That isn't how it should be. Why should tankers (technically) lose more health than a defender? The One Hit Kill rule is a paradox when it comes to fairness, and as a result Incarnate Trials have succeeded in maintaining an illusion of fairness which if anyone were to stop and think about it, would realize that the whole purpose of Untyped Damage doesn't make sense. It's self defeating.

No matter what way you look at it, 1% of a tankers health has more value than 1% of a defenders health. To sum up OHKO's, they actually disadvantage certain players rather than make everything fair. A lot of you probably just don't know that. And by implementing this stupid rule in Trials, it therefore negates the true effectiveness of teamwork, Incarnate Powers as a whole and an individual players capability to participate in Trials. Yes, it is unfair that Blasters might not be able to take as much damage overall as a Tanker, but that's the whole point of this game. You choose one option whilst sacrificing the other, and Incarnate Trials have completely turned this game onto its head and messed this up all together.

What Roderick said. It's an AoE hold, and it's the only effect in the BAF that will apply a hold.

Edit: Here is its data from RedTomax. It's interesting, I wondered if it tailed off in magnitude like that. That should mean you can end it early by casting Clarion on the mezzed people, so that the peak of Clarion's benefit overlaps the mag 20 and mag 3 portions of the Sequestration effect.

Something to keep in mind that quite a few people are forgetting is the inherent danger present in tanks and brutes (the toughest ATs) that are non existent to the other ATs. This is where the vast disparity lies, and is probably the number one problem with untyped damage.

To start, I'm going to ignore Nova Fist for the most part. I sincerely consider it an idiot check, as it's near impossible to die to it unless you're overwhelmed by adds or you're asleep/get a stroke of really bad luck.

First, for this example, I'll be using my DM/Invuln Brute and my Sonic/Sonic Corruptor as two ends of the spectrum. My brute has been IOed out to the gills, can tank STF Recluse and all 8 AVs under her own power, and is basically one of the prime examples of "zomg never dies" characters. My Sonic/Sonic is softcapped and has enough recharge to spam a shriek/shout chain, and runs enough toggles to get 2.2 end per second.

Now, in all the trials, the more survivable of the two is, and always will be, the Corruptor. Even though my brute has siphon life, dull pain, HP cap, and is regularly at incarnate soft cap and with massive resists, she still experiences exponentially more attacks per second. This is not a problem in Lambda and BAF, as she can solo an entire Lambda wing without breaking a sweat, and only in BAF if she's tanking Siege and standing under a tower (untyped/auto hit scaling damage). In both of these trials, she's extremely tough, despite the fact that she's taking the brunt of the attacks. Meanwhile, my corruptor never gets attacked (probably weathers close to 20 attacks, including aoes, over the course of either trial including Lambda), still sits at soft cap, and is only ever in danger during the Nightstar pull or if I get bored and start attacking adds that get ignored. That being said, if/when she gets heat, I tend to have to mash inspirations or do something to not die, typically hovering out of range or running to something with a taunt aura. This is par the course for how the game has worked thus far, so no biggy.

With these examples set up, I want to move to Keyes. In Keyes, the attack divide is still roughly the same, with my brute likely getting attacked by everything on the map (obvious hyperbole) while my corruptor only ever takes the pulses. Normally, my brute is the Keyes tank, on top of clearing Warworks and various other things and dealing with the pulses. My Sonic corruptor, on the other hand, just tags along to a random tank/brute or just goes out and cheaps the Warworks off (Shoot them once, hover around a corner, watch then jump off the reactor, laugh), then just applies the power cells and moves on, never in danger. In this given trial, my corruptor lives MUCH, MUCH longer then my brute, short of the brute being baby sat by an empath. Even then, it's all dependent on the streak breaker.

See, this is what people keep forgetting: Tanks/Brutes are the ones that regularly throw themselves in danger to keep other people alive. When I'm sitting and tanking AM, I'm taking full on Rad debuffs, on top of fighting an AV that even at incarnate soft cap, has a disgustingly high chance to hit. Worse yet, I have to contend with his crippling cascade failure AND the pulse, which comes out to an unsatisfying experience. I've been hit for something like 3-4k damage (after debuffs) by AM through roughly 40-60% resists, which likewise destroyed my defense and forced me to demonic/pop purples. Even if I get hit with a piddling 1k damage hit by AM, if the pulse happens to trigger at the same time, I'm -hosed- without an empath that has cybernetic reflexes or sheer luck. Realize that I mention this while using the Ageless DDR buff, so I'm literally tanking AM through the use of three different timers (Unstoppable, Demonic, Ageless), greens/purples, AND Siphon Life. Meanwhile, my corruptor is skipping along in a field of rainbows and butterflies, putting in the absolute minimum effort and laughing at the very concept of the pulses. Heck, in a pinch, she can shoot AM to get his attention, fly over to someone in a taunt aura, then fly off and continue not caring. About the only reason I even bother firing rebirth is to help the poor schmuck who does have AM aggro, and even then something like half a tray of greens that I pass on is more then enough.

The above is probably the largest example of badly done untyped damage in the game. There's no stating that tanks/brutes are able to get away with being hurt more because if they're doing their job, they will simply be in danger more often. I'm absolutely certain that my brute will never die if I just outright ignored AM, but the design of the trial REQUIRES that someone babysit AM no matter the cost. So when I get the choice between "Actively letting the trial fail" and "Being suicidal" I consider that a bad design in general. It really isn't that I'm expecting to die, more that I know that I'll run out of timers are some point, and the pulse is gonna hit me for most of my life. The funny part is that the damage increase from the pulse (1% more HP lost for every 2% he misses) IS resistable, meaning that most tanks/brutes/scrappers will likely not even notice it until AM is at 50% or lower, while the squishies will notice it almost immediately.

The thing is, this is a pretty easy to solve problem that I'm more than certain the devs don't even acknowledge as a problem. Simply give AM a PBAoE bubble that makes everyone in it immune to the pulse ala the Nuclear Reactor shield (since he is presumably immune to his own reactors). This means the tank isn't unjustifiably punished for, y'know, doing his job, and people who fear the untyped damage can occasionally run in and shield themselves which would raise the comedy factor of Atomic Blast exponentially. It'd probably not take them that long, just drop in a recolored Force Bubble's graphics, and suddenly the popularity of Keyes will probably skyrocket along with the extra Emp.

tl;dr Untyped damage is fine when it's avoidable and utilized as a way of encouraging movement (Apex/Nova Fist/Towers), but not when it punishes you for doing your job. Tanks/Brutes are in more danger, so pulses are dramatically worse for them.