Musings: Incarnate Hybrid and Genesis

I'm fully aware that what I'm suggesting may already past halfway done in development, but after talking about it with people, I decided to post this on the forums for posterity. I've had my own ideas of how Incarnates can progress beyond the normal means of Lv50, most particularly the next two slots in line to be produced. Hybrid and Genesis.

Given that Alpha boosts act as additional/ED-resisting enhancements to your existing powers, Judgement gives you a great AoE attack, Lore gives you pet summoning, Destiny gives you a massive buff/heal and Interface gives all your attack procs, it may seem like there's not a lot left to expand on in terms of combat. And also seems like it's giving everybody the power to do what a lot of ATs specialised in pre-incarnate. After looking at the names Hybrid and Genesis so long, it finally clicked in my head. ATs, are the answer!

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What if Genesis was a single tree directly connected to your character archetype? Genesis Blaster, Genesis Brute..etc. But on the two branches, they improve and expand on the inherent core abilities of the Archetype itself! Genesis means roughly 'the beginning', and one of the first choices in creating a character was what archetype they would become. Therefore Genesis Incarnate would be to strengthen and expand what makes your AT different to the rest of them.

Genesis Blaster could have the Core branch that enhances the stacking damage buff that is gained from every attack, either by increasing the damage per attack or giving it other qualities like ToHit or -Res. The Radial branch could enhance the anti-mezz component of their inherent, maybe allowing more and more powers to be used while slept, stunned or held?

Granted, some ATs don't have two component for their inherent powers, like Brute's Fury, Scrapper's Critical Hit. But you could say the two branches for the brute could be broken down into Core:Increased Dam/New-buffs to Fury ratio or Radial:Boosted Fury production and retention. The Scrapper could be Core:Increased Critical Hit chance and Radial:'Special effect' per critical-hit.

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And what about Hybrid? Well if Genesis focuses on your character's own inherent abilities, then the only other thing you don't have is /other people's inherent powers/. Hybrid would have many trees each attributed to the existing ATs of the game, even the Epics, named something like Hybrid Blaster, Hybrid Brute...etc. It's here you can create abilities that mimic those of other archetypes, effectively becoming a hybrid AT (while still being your natural AT).

Back to Blaster again, the two components to their inherent is 'stacking damage buff per attack' and 'using powers while normally being unable to use powers'. Let's also say they exist as Core and Radial respectively. I could say that I really want my Defender to be able to deal more damage in a controlled way, so I go down the Core path which slowly grants me additional damage buffs increases per attack for every tier I reach. And like how the very-rares tend to be dipping a little into both sides of the tree, maybe once I reach V-R I'd be able to have maximum damage stacks per attack and also have my very first powers ignore mezzing too?

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Regardless of whether it would happen or not, how does this all sound to you? Does the idea of Archetype-affecting incarnate abilities enhancing and dual-typing characters sound like a good one? Do you think any sort of powers like this could work with any other name than Genesis and Hybrid?

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Home server: Victory
Characters on: Victory & Virtue
My first 50(0)! 18/11/11
@Oneirohero

Honestly, many of the AT inherent powers simply aren't worth spending an incarnate power on. You'd end up with basically everyone just taking the damage buffing inherents.

I could see people taking Fury/Defiance/Scourge/Critical Hit inherents as those provide direct increases in damage, Containment/Domination could be good for certain control heavy builds.

Many of the others would be very underwhelming to archetypes that aren't designed with them in mind and thus rarely used. Gauntlet and Vigilance for instance. (Hell Vigilance is mostly considered mediocre even on the AT is WAS made for.)

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They'd have to go through and rebalance all the various inherents to be more or less equally desirable for this to be even remotely a good idea, but if the admittedly significant effort to do so could be spared then I think this would be a good idea, not to mention good for the game as a whole since some ATs have completely worthless inherents.

Also, some of the inherents aren't as quick and simple to improve as you might think. Defiance, for example, is hardcoded into every single blaster attack power. The actual inherent does nothing, the damage buff and being usable while mezzed is directly coded into the powers. Likewise with the VEAT inherents, they just have an outright higher base regen/recovery and the inherent power does precisely nothing. Same again with tankers, scrappers, controllers, stalkers and corruptors. All of those effects would potentially need to be hardcoded into literally every single power in the game for your proposed hybrid idea to work. Which doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, just one that would require an immense amount of effort for comparatively little gain.

Amusing random idea: Genesis Dominator = reduced cooldown on domination, just to further annoy all those who were up in arms about their carefully paid for permadom builds back when they removed the +damage for it during the I13 revamp. Radial would of course increase either the bonus magnitude or the bonus duration.

And another: Genesis Controller = containment damage triggers on confused or feared enemies as well as everything else. Suddenly Mind and Illusion controllers become concentrated balls of murder.

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[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: STOP!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WAIT ONE SECOND!
[Admin] Emperor Marcus Cole: WHAT IS A SEAGULL DOING ON MY THRONE!?!?

INB4 Perma-Doms with Fury+Frenzy are the best gorram build in the game.

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The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)

Virtue Forever.