Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

I'm not gonna read through 18 pages, but only sort of fix I can figure is to change the plot slightly and replace the citizens with Power Division people instead who are starting to question what's going on. Make them all minion class, give them all random range and melee powers, keep them at either level 54 like how it is, or make them level 50 to empathize how 'powerful' you are to them. :3

To achieve the desired storytelling effect, without the need to have players be killed, is tricky.

I can see what they wanted to do. Get the notion of the populace being against us to be more than just a meter but I think the insta-death rocks, even when explained as being buffed with psionics, are just to jarring.

Perhaps instead of killing the players, the rocks lay on a 'only affecting self' that hits you briefly. Simulating the step back, having to think about the situation. As these rocks pelt harmlessly off you, the civi's don't care that they can't hurt you, they hate you...

Make the debuff stack, so the more rocks hit, the longer the only affecting self lasts.

We aren't plastered by a mere mortal chunking a pebble but are instead shaken by their emotional resonance.

It's like Spider-Man taking on the power cosmic and acting as the herald...

Only to be knocked right out by a group of lunchroom ladies throwing rolls. No amount of explaining how 'insert random psychic' is buffing them/debuffing you will make that sit right with the reader/player.


Spider-Man doesn't have to relearn how to be a Hero just because he absorbs the power cosmic. He may have to learn the new extent of his powers, but would bring years of experience to that process as well.

The in-game reason for us being choosen by The Well is because we've proven ourselves to be among the best of the best, the most elite in a city of Supers. The Well is seeking a champion, not a chump.

If 'I' was The Well... After seeing my perspective champions pwned by mortals with minerals I'd be looking elsewhere.

Fact is, most of us playing, long ago learned how to adjust our concepts in places and the lore in others, to make it fit. Sometimes it's as simple as disregarding the 'being talked down to' dialogue and inserting your own based on the concept.
Other times it gets a bit more tricky.

I'm perfectly capable of reasoning that my character isn't actually hurt by the rocks, but is instead tagged with a Teleportation chip that whisks me away to the nearest tele-pad, which happens to be the Hospital.
We can do this because we're used to it. All we're asking for here is a little help in not having to do it so often.

*disclaimer; I've never run an i-trial, so this is all conjecture on my part.

Just to get away from the debate a bit... I think that the TPN would make a good mid-level trial (25-35 range) for Praetorian characters (as suggested by another poster).

I was thinking that the Devs invested a lot of time into creating, what was supposed to be, a big world expansion but the content that's actually accessible in it is extremely limited. Making a few tweaks (NPC strength, drops, reward tables, etc) so that the TPN would be viable as a mid-level Praetorian trial would help to wash its hand of the Prometheus link (which Prometheus seems to want anyhow). It would allow the mechanics within it to come off better with the playerbase and also nestle in nicely with the established Praetorian themes.

I think part of it is they totally overestimated how much standard raiding style content would go over. The fact of the matter is, people playing this game like a good steamroll and disengaging their brain as part of their hobby. If they didn't, they wouldn't be playing this game.

IMO, they should have learned from the ITF and why it's the most popular TF.

Because:

1. It's inclusive, being both co-op and spanning a wide level range.
2. It's fairly easy now that IOs are prevalent.
3. It lets you crush greater numbers of individually weaker enemies. This is the key to why people tell me they feel more powerful on the ITF.

The Incarnate content could have learned from this. Instead of level shifting enemies to maintain challenge, they should have gone with volume when suitable. Of course, there's the excuse that it affects server performance. Well, perhaps they should have put some more resources into addressing that instead of funneling cash into designing civilians to throw rocks and developing an ever more contrived set of hoops and cheating mechanics to force 24-32 players at a time to jump through.


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There is room in this game for brain-intensive battles with overpowering enemies. It just may not be the best fit with early Incarnate stuff ; and it ultimately will probably be somewhat less popular than TFs/SFs as a whole.

But the Devs can't win; if they had come out with button-mashing stuff for the early Incarnate content, people would have been saying they were unimaginative and wondering why we can't have cool bosses like in that one other game

And they have already upgraded the servers several times. I don't know how many enemies the engine/lower-end systems can throw at us at once before it becomes screenshot city before too many people, but I'd like to see a mission where that was the point maybe that's the Reichsman mission?

But I still beleive most of it is presentation; one ploy they can get away with a few times is the Godzilla Threshold. The situation is so bad, they are throwing their failed, too-dangerous-to-use stuff at us.

And please: destructible instanced environments. I want to go to a facility like the BAF, say, "knock knock" and literally blow the wall down.

I think another downside is that some ATs frankly get the shaft in the incarnate trials and powers. The only reason my blaster can still do decent numbers of damage is becuase I have judgement. By some miracle I managed to get my snipe off in stage 1 of MoM on malaise, my snipe, with buildup and a few stacks of assault might as well have just ricocheted off him for the sorry amount of damage it did to him. When they first introduced the incarnate idea I thought it was going to help us shore up our character's weak points so that when the tougher things came we wouldn't have such glaring downsides to some sets, thats obviously not what has happened. I may be off in some places but I'm going to try and list my opinion about how ATs are faring post 50.

Tankers/Brutes: Pretty much required for any trial, they've done okay. Most of the incarnate powers either give them extra utility or let them build on their strengths.

Scrappers/Stalkers: Some have fared better than others, since most of the main bosses have massive AoE damage and the cannon fodder has gotten a big upgrade they can end up dead pretty fast if a lucky shot gets through all their DEF or they take a few hits before they can get a heal.

Controllers/Dominators: Their primary strength is sadly wiped out on trials mostly because the level shifts make their holds and status effects give out much faster or decrease the effects. Trial stage bosses are all but immune to them, controller pets end up getting chewed up fairly easily as well.

MasterMinds: Which segways into this, they're dependent on the well being of their pets. MMs can keep themselves alive fairly well by staying far from the battle but if their pets are constantly dying they aren't able to contribute as they spend time resummoning all their pets and rebuffing them.

Defenders/Corrupters: Both again are almost essential for a trial but again because of the level shifts and the trial bosses getting higher and higher stats you often need multiple stacks of similar buffs/debuffs to notice any difference. I once used an empathy defender to allow a blaster to solo lvl 50 AV Nemesis, it felt more epic than any trial fight so far and that same emp would be next to worthless in a trial because they could only buff 3 people out of 24/32 every 2 minutes since the devs added such high recharge times to their best powers. Corrupters have the same problem but they have the advantage of after dropping their buffs/debuffs they can switch to dishing out higher amounts of damage than a defender could.

Blasters: I'm going to have a longer opinion here because my trialer has been a blaster. Short version, I feel damn useless in any trial. The level shifts and their habit of pumping more and more HP and resistance into bosses has lowered my damage output to the point that it might as well be animating my energy blasts just bouncing off them. That's if I'm even alive, if I don't have a huge stack of +def on me, a few minions will tear me apart. If I'm unlucky enough to have a trial boss glance at me I explode. Pre-incarnate I was still made of paper but if I did what I was supposed to and stayed at a distance I was fine, even then if I ran at infernal to total focus him and managed to catch whirling axe I was still left alive with enough HP to jump back and lick my wounds, and I could handle it just fine if I got a few minions or an LT on me. On trials like MoM I am actually more damaging to the team being there than if they had just left my spot empty. Even if I jump out of a pink patch as soon it spawns on me I'll be left with under 25% hp. Just the load time into the second part the storm will already have eaten away a sizeable chunk of my health. If bosses continue to get more and more resistance and HP and I have no way to counteract it doing trials will become pointless to me. I'll end up being a leech who can shoot pretty lights.

Both kheldians: Dwarfs can be pretty decent tanks, human and nova forms suffer from being fairly fragile against all the new hulked out enemies.

Widows/Soldiers: Not much experience but from the trials I've seen they tend to also be unluckily fragile if they don't have a large amount of buffs on them.

Personally unless the new incarnate powers allow me to increase my damage output even more and maybe raise my resistance to damage to around scrapper levels (which sadly looks like not the case) There will be little incentive for a team to take me on a trial in the future if this is what they consider "learning to walk".

Scrappers already do Blaster damage. More, in fact, since they do just as much in melee AND ranged as a Blaster does ranged.