ClawsandEffect

No, I understand the point quite well.

Something was introduced to the game as a reward for doing something specific: The Incarnate Trials.

What people want is to get the same reward, while not doing the specific thing that the reward is for. And it was given to them, but at an extremely elevated cost. And there was much complaining about it.

It's no different than people wanting PvP IOs, but not wanting to PvP to get them. That was given to them as well, also at an extremely elevated cost. The complaining about that seems to have died down in the face of this new "outrage".

What the WST is, is a method of obtaining the reward earlier than we would otherwise have. I presume it is because the Rare and Very Rare Alpha slots were ready, but the intended method of obtaining them was not, so they gave us a way to get them early.

Now, you can call me a dev fanboy if you want for defending their design decision, but it's more of a case of me being realistic.

Unlike some of the people posting in this thread (and others), I am not laboring under the delusion that my $15/month gives me the right to dictate game design. That $15 gives me the privilege of playing the game, nothing more. The only decision that is mine to make regarding the game is whether or not I play it.

I am accepting of the fact that if I want something that is rewarded for a specific task, then I need to do that specific task. If the developers choose to give me an alternate method of obtaining that reward, fine, but I realize they are in no way obligated to do so. I also realize that I have no right whatsoever to demand that I be able to obtain that reward in a manner of MY choosing.

I have no more right to dictate how the developers design this game than I have to dictate how next year's Ford Focus is going to look. I can only choose to play or not play, much as I can choose to buy their car or not buy it. And the same is true of every player in the game. Your $15 is as valuable as my $15. No more, no less. If my $15 doesn't confer to me the right to dictate design decisions, neither does yours.

Another analogy would be a magazine subscription. Just because you subscribe to a magazine doesn't mean you get to tell them what to write about.

And as far as my earlier comment about blowing things out of proportion. A lot of people here are doing exactly that. A lot of people seem to think that any design decision they don't like is an attempt by the devs at destroying their way of life. Repeat after me: It's only a video game and I shouldn't take it so seriously.

So, YOU should get stronger, but your enemies should NOT get stronger?

That's like saying Superman beating up normal human muggers all the time makes for a good story.

The idea of an "end game" is that it is meant for those that have already done everything else. It's kind of intended for the people that are already as powerful as the game will allow them to get.

The fact that it's as accessible as it is is already an anomaly among MMOs. Most MMOs don't even let you get to the end game until you're already geared up and as tough as you will ever get. This end game doesn't even require gear to participate in.

Level shifts are not levels.

Evidence that this is true:

-When you are set to +0 while level shifted, enemies still spawn at level 50.
-A lower level character SKed to you is level 49, not level 50.
-You don't gain new slots or powers.

A level shift acts like you are SKed to a level 52 character, and is not a real level in and of itself.

So, what do you suggest? We get this stuff just for asking for it, and they crank out new stuff to do every week?

No matter HOW much stuff they give us to do, at some point it will ALL become repetitive. If the "end game" consisted of a couple task forces, and a few story arcs, and we didn't have to do much of anything to become Incarnates, people would be getting pissed about the fact that they blew through all of it in a couple months and didn't have anything left to do.

How long does it take for new content to lose it's mass appeal? Not very long in my experience. It is the "in" thing to do for a couple months, and then it becomes more of the same old same old just like everything else.

The people you say are being ignored are the percentage of the playerbase that just plain REFUSES to team, AT ALL , for ANY reason, EVER. I can't imagine the percentage of players that flat out refuse to ever team at all is all that big. Hell, I spend most of the time soloing myself, and even I team with people to do stuff occasionally.

You act like the devs are absolutely required to treat this game like a single player game, and give the people who refuse to play with other people just as much to do, and the means to acquire everything just as easily, as those who team.

It's a multiplayer game, and it is perfectly reasonable for the developers of it to focus on the multiplayer aspect of it, because that has been proven to be what the majority of their players want. I'd be willing to bet a LOT more people did the initial Incarnate stuff and ran the new TFs than ran the new story arcs. It only makes sens to focus on the part of the game the most people will utilize first, and catch up with the other stuff later.

Yes, I believe they should add stuff for soloers to do, but I also believe that the multiplayer stuff should come first, because that's the part of the game that draws the most people in. A new task force attracts a lot more attention than a new story arc. When i19 was released, Apex and Tin Mage drew attention, while most people I talked to didn't even realize there WERE new story arcs.

And here's some irony for you: A bunch of people that refuse to work with others banding together on the forums to shout down anyone who thinks they are blowing things out of proportion.

It was an exploit because it allowed you to complete missions, and entire story arcs in some cases, with absolutely ZERO risk of being defeated in any circumstances. That is no more fair than killing hordes of enemies that can't fight back, it just takes longer.

Okay, think about that situation from Trapdoor's perspective. If you were essentially immortal as long as you stayed within a confined area, and your enemy had to come to you, would you leave that area for ANY reason?

Can you honestly say Trapdoor's refusal to leave that room is not a completely rational decision for Trapdoor to make? He is virtually immortal while in that room, not leaving that room for any reason just makes sense.

Needs more E/N defense.

With only 8.9% resistance to it, you're going to want to get hit less with it.

I understand why the zones exist, even though I wasn't here for the heyday of people hunting in them. The point I was making is that when you compare the numbers of zones between CoH and CoV you have to take into account the fact that there are huge areas of CoH that sit completely empty 99% of the time.

And how many other people are in those zones when you are doing so? I'd be willing to bet the number is less than 5 for the Hollows, and closer to 0 in Perez.

Boomtown gets no love. The newer players I've run into lately don't even know there's a GM that spawns in there. I'm sure poor Babbage suffers from nearly terminal loneliness because no one even cares he's there anymore, same for Adamastor. I ran a Kahn a while back with a player who gushed about how cool the second mission was, because he'd never been in Boomtown before then, and he playing his third level 50 at the time.

CoH has more zones, but it kind of evens out because half of those zones sit completely unused the vast majority of the time, while CoV makes better use of it's available space.

Okay, when was the last time you were in Boomtown, Perez Park, Dark Astoria, Crey's Folly, Eden, the Hive, or the Shadow Shard for any reason OTHER than hunting some enemy group you need for a badge or aura mission?

Sure, you get sent to one of those zones for a mission occasionally, but those are random location missions that could appear in ANY zone, making their appearance in one of those zones pure coincidence. There is nothing to actually DO in any of those zones. No story arcs, no task force, no contacts, stores or anything else the rest of the zones have.

They are wide open areas that, as far as I can tell, have no legitimate reason to even exist. There are TFs in the Shadow Shard, but how often does anyone run them these days? There's the Hamidon raid in the Hive, but that is pretty rare nowadays as well, except for the 2 or 3 servers that raid it weekly.

Red side has fewer zones, that much is true. But at least red side actually USES the zones they have available, as opposed to blue side where you will frequently find yourself to be the only person in any of the aforementioned zones for hours at a time.

I actually made a new global friend the other day because I saw him in Boomtown, and it was the first time I'd seen another player in Boomtown in at LEAST 8 months.

I don't. I put the character on hold until I think of one, rather than settle for a name I may end up hating later on.

That, and scrappers don't get a hammer.

This....is incorrect. You can make Regen beastly if you build it right.

But, if you hate it that much, go ahead and delete it. I've been playing a Claws/Regen for 5 years now and it's still my main and favorite character, but maybe it's just not for you.

I can probably guess what you did wrong. You spent all your IO slotting chasing regen bonuses, thinking that you can just heal back any damage done to you without having to click a heal. Bad idea. Regen scrappers need recharge and defense. Every hit that doesn't land is one that doesn't need to be healed back.

Yes, you put too much emphasis on regen/hit points. Just in glancing over it, you seem to be well over the threshold of perma Dull Pain. If you have the +HP accolades, Dull Pain will cap your HP every time you use it, making all of those +HP bonuses completely redundant.

You already have plentyo of regen as well. My general rule is: Only slot for more regen when there is nothing else more useful you could gain from those slots. Chances are, you're going to end up with regen bonuses by accident while chasing other stuff, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

As far as defense/resists go:

Defense is a LOT easier to come by on a /Regen, since you only have Resilience and Tough providing resistance.

My personal preference is to slot /Regen for S/L defense instead of positional. Mostly because the vast majority of defense debuffs in teh game come from swords and machine guns, which are tagged lethal. Regen has no debuff resistance of any kind, so if you slot for melee defense it will disappear in a hurry. (It'll still disappear with S/L defense, but not quite as fast)

Exactly this.

If you hate getting agro so much, play a Ninjitsu stalker instead. That way you can use Placate or Smoke Bomb every time something even looks in your direction.

Scrappers have taunt auras because of overlap between AT roles. Scrappers can serve as light tanks if need be, and the sets that have taunt auras are better at it than the sets that do not.

If there wasn't meant to be overlap between AT roles, Controllers would not have Defender primaries as their secondaries. And yet they do. And scrappers have taunt auras. Deal with it.

But can you defeat every group with Shield Charge?

I get that DM/Shield is a powerful combo. I'm not trying to say it isn't.

My issue (and this holds true with ALL archetypes for me) is when players latch onto something and it becomes viewed as the BEST that AT can offer. Fire/Kin controllers, Stone tanks, Fire/Mental blasters, etc. all have gotten that treatment in the past.

It happens largely because people find something that a particular powerset combo is very good at, and sweep the things it isn't good at under the rug.

Yes, a DM/Shield will out-damage my BS/DA by a wide margin, but how well does it handle non-postional psi attacks, or insane to-hit buffs? From what I've seen, in the face of those two things, most DM/Shields will fold like a cheap card table.

Scrappers are the most well balanced AT as far as various powersets are concerned, and it's a disservice to the AT to imply that one powerset combo is the best and all the others suck in comparison.

I've had that build laying around for a while. I came up with it when someone wanted to know if you could softcap Willpower on a scrapper. I wasn't sure you could until I actually sat down and did it.

It's pretty much exactly what I plan on doing with my Claws/WP brute, which should end up pretty much identical, but more survivable due to the higher HP a brute will have.

Broadsword/Shield's damage levels will stay fairly consistent, while DM/Shield will have some highs and lows.

I'm still confused by why everyone holds DPS as being more important than anything else. 2 scrappers will both kill things effectively, does it really matter that one did it 3 seconds faster than the other?

I like optimizing my characters, but not to the point that I'm willing to rebuild it from scratch to gain 5 DPS.

My only real complaint with Shield Defense other than low level squishiness, is the fact that I don't like how a lot of powersets look with it.

DM/Shield in particular, is good at single target DPS, and not a whole lot else. Shield Charge doesn't really add enough AoE to raise DM's AoE from "mediocre" to "good" since it recharges so slow.

I suppose what I'm getting at is maybe you should play what you like and not worry so much about which one is "better", because "better" is a completely subjective term. What is better for one person's playstyle may not be better for another's.

But what if I'd rather use IOs to add things other than defense? Broadsword is more flexible in that regard than the other sets. I can use a lot of Mako's Bite and Scirocco's Dervish to softcap to Ranged and AoE, and use Parry for melee defense so I don't have to take things like Maneuvers in order to softcap.

I would still get melee defense up to 30% so I can softcap with one Parry, and that's a lot easier to do than getting 45% to all 3 positions without Parry.

My theory on Parry is: If I'm in melee with something, I can hit it with Parry and have melee defense. And if I'm NOT in melee with anything, why do I need melee defense in the first place?

So what do you do with an enemy group like Council or Nemesis that likes to stand back and shoot at you?

Since they are reluctant to move without prompting, you will end up fighting one at a time, and none of those powers that need enemies in melee range will be nearly as good as when there is a whole group clustered around you.

Part of the functionality of those powers is so that when you are on a team you can keep things in melee range of you to benefit from. An Invulnerability scrapper who is not softcapped would have a hell of a time keeping his defenses up if Invincibility did not taunt. If it didn't taunt, things would go rushing off to squash the fire blaster who just lit them on fire, taking your defense with them.

To put it simply: The powers available to scrappers that have taunt components have them for a valid reason. That reason is so the powers will actually work the way they are designed to.

But did they do it solo?

I know a lot of scrappers have done it on teams, but how many have soloed it?

There was only one that I know of, done by Iggy Kamakaze. Unless others have done it since then and I just didn't hear about it.