Bright

There's one more conditional you forgot to add...

- Does the pet have any melee attacks?

If yes, close to melee range.

If no, close to melee range anyway.

(Hey, if that ranged attack works well at 20' it must work EVEN BETTER if you're right up in that Warhulk's face, right? >_>)

I'm with McNum on Fly... That's just fun. ^_^

I also love pretty much the entire Dual Blade set, Burst from Kin Melee and almost everything my Peacebringer does.

I was trying to make a new toy for my ickle lowbie (Mighty level 16 now! XD) Corruptor... 'Hope that recipe doesn't get lost.

Doing a Lambda run yesterday afternoon.

I was on Palrah, my WP/DB tank, who has his Alpha level shift but was just beginning to work on the other Incarnate slots. 'Jumped into one of the outside goon spawns without much concern... It wasn't even a huge one... No warwalkers, nothing that looked all that dangerous... and *SMACK*. Knocked flat on his butt faster than I could say "Holy crap, those guys hit hard. o_0"

I'm just not used to getting owned like that with Pally, even when I throw him at higher-level enemies. Granted, he's a WP tank and so not completely indestructible... I usually have a very good feel for what he can handle and what he can't... but it's been a long time since he really felt at all "squishy" to me.

Yesterday, eating Praetorian pavement? My poor tank felt about as tough as a creampuff.

I can't speak for anyone else's preferences, but I've been having an absolute blast running the new trials with my favorite DB/WP Stalker.

I tend to play her as a sneaky scrapper on teams, and Lambda is very well suited for that. She also started out with a pretty high-end set build and a VR Alpha, which helped a lot early on. Getting Barrier slotted up also made for easier going.

Get thee to the Tier 4s, Xinner. Then you'll have the new toys, too... And the build you have backing them up will *still* be better than most.

Colored the right way, it's a VERY air-benderish power set... I went that direction with Shade, my own KM stalker.

(And, for what it's worth, having a KM stalker and a scrap both at 50 and a KM tank at 31, I much prefer it as a stalker or tank set. My scrap, Solace, is a little disappointing.)

I dunno, Geko. I've done a lot of these trials since they went live, with a very stabby, very active Stalker. She and her pets have held BAF doors, taken out 9CU spawns and IDF ambushes, chopped up AVs, stopped to throw Barrier and heals at people and the whole nine yards... and the vast majority of the time, I've gotten the Commons table when all was said and done. It took me several days and a ridiculous number of runs just to get the four Rare bits I needed for her tier 3s.

If what Kestrel has been doing in those trials is considered "low end" (and I'd call getting the Commons table the lowest of the bit rewards-), I'd say the scale of what consitutes "active participation" must be pretty ludicrous, if it exists.

Personally, I suspect it's all random. I've always had absolutely crap luck with random drops, and the rate of seeing anything other than commons come up is completely consistant with my RNG experiences elsewhere in the game.

I'm fond of Quicksilver Falcon, Shade in Shadow and Mister Bibbles.

I may eventually do a bit of Incarnate stuff with my "mostly-Human" PB, but he's not at the top of the list. I suspect a lot of us have Khelds like that... Characters in the "wold be nice, but not a priority" ranks.

I'm not interested in the tier 4s, either... But I was glad to get the tier 3s on all four of the new ones for Kestrel this evening. I actually really enjoy the new trials, and having both Incarnate level shifts for them is nice.

Now I get to turn around and do the same thing all over again with Palrah. o_0

I almost always pick Flight. Not because it's the safest or the easiest for navigation purposes, but because for me it's just flat-out FUN to fly. I like my crew getting around that way.

(The only two characters of mine who don't fly both have Super Jump, which is also quite a lot of fun. Go-Go super bouncy-Bane! XD)

Since most of my crew are not only members of the same SG, but also members of the same (very low population/very small area of origin) non-Primal species... and in several cases, are also members of the same few family groups... I just start out with the assumption that many of them knew each other and worked together long before starting their "careers" as player characters, and continue to do the same "off screen" now.

The entire group numbers about two dozen at this point, and would probably be a fairly frightening force if they all showed up together. Given their usual habits, though, an 'average' flight encountering trouble out on patrol would be no more than two or three, and there are a lot of established duos/trios among them.

Ty'ree and Ash (DB Tank and DB Scrap), for instance, are pretty close in age and grew up together. They've been best friends since before either of them fledged their first set of flight feathers. While you'll never actually see the two of them tag-teaming a GM or AV together in-game (They're both on the same account-), it's the kind of thing I can easily imagine them doing on a regular basis out-of-play. Likewise Winter Sky (KM Tank) and Summer Night (Elec Stalker), who are a couple, or Keiranen (Archery Blaster), Khaemon (Ax Tank), Khalanis (Dark Defender) and Ke'khali (DB Scrap) who are all siblings.

Some smaller groupings would be scarier than others, but I suspect any given roatation of eight would do well enough. They'd probably be very melee-heavy, the collective's only defenders being a Dark (Lan), a FF/Rad (Suzume) and a Trick Arrow (Zhen), and the closest thing to a controller being a lowbie Mind/Psi dom (Asa'Davi)... but none of them are push-overs. They'd make it a hell of a fight. XD

As for the NON-birdbrains? They'd be pretty scary, too.
A Night Widow, a Sonic Defender and a Rad Defender... Plus a Bane, an Ill/Kin controller, a claws stalker, a Warshade and a Ninja/FF Mastermind, if they side-kicked in the under-50's. They'd make a mess.