ClawsandEffect

What difference does the level someone is make?

Are you expecting to see people looking for more and saying "Only Incarnate slotted characters"?

I don't know about you, but if they meet the minimum level requirement for the TF they are welcome on my team. I'm not going to refuse a spot to someone who wants to run it just because they aren't an Incarnate.

I will be sad indeed if that kind of elitism becomes common. Especially since it makes no difference at all on a level 20-25 TF if someone is an Incarnate or not.

Actually, I think the last time I ran it was before i17 even.

That said, I'm kind of looking forward to running a Kahn, just because it's been quite a while since I have.

I've never run a Barracuda, mostly because when people actually WANTED to run them, none of my villains were high enough to do it.

Of the 3 scrapper secondaries that actually have a taunt aura, all 3 of them benefit greatly from having enemies in melee range of them.

Willpower has Rise to the Challenge, which gives you a regen boost for each enemy in melee. Invulnerability has Invincibility, which gives you a defense boost for each enemy in melee. And Shield Defense gives you a damage boost for each enemy in melee.

Additionally, in the case of Willpower and Invulnerability, you WANT a lot of enemies around you, because you will survive longer with them there.

If those 3 powers did NOT taunt enemies, they would be less likely to remain within the powers' area of effect. If there was nothing keeping them near you, anything you are not actively attacking will wander off outside the range of your beneficial powers. Council and 5th Column are notorious for gathering in a circle just outside melee range and blasting away with their machine guns, and when they do that, if you have no taunt aura to draw them in, their presence isn't benefiting you at all. I can remember numerous times my WP scrappers have faceplanted because things were shooting me while never entering RttCs radius to give me a regen boost.

In short, the powers that include a taunt effect have it because it helps the power work like it's supposed to.

Yeah, Ice/Ice is pretty good. It's not as damaging as some other combos, but if you like Ice/Ice blasters you'll probably like an Ice/Ice dominator.

For the record, you can side-switch a blaster by running tips and going vigilante then villain, and voila! a villain blaster. So, not being able to start there does not mean a villainous blaster is impossible.

This.

If they intended for the WST to only be for Incarnates, the extra XP would not have been part of it, because extra XP is useless to a level 50 character.

Also, it's not double XP, it gives you between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of an entire level upon completion. A number of TFs will give you more than that just from running them.

Eh, it's still pretty casual friendly. The only way it will feel grindy is if you feel the need to get the new piece as soon as it's available, or if you feel the need to get each piece on multiple characters. If you're not concerned about how fast you get stuff the system is still casual friendly.

I'm a casual player pretty much by necessity these days, and I got the Rare slotted on one of my scrappers over about 4 hours of play time last week, mostly on the weekend.

Some kind of announcement in the game itself wouldn't hurt though.

This might sound a little snide, but it's how I look at it:

By taking the self rez, you are essentially admitting defeat before the fact. Instead of building and playing your character to NOT die, you are accepting that you will die, and no self-respecting scrapper admits the possibility that they might lose.

The only exceptions to that are Soul Transfer and Rise of the Phoenix. They have useful effects on top of reviving you. I've actually died on purpose with my DA scrapper because my team needed a few seconds to regroup, and my rez was the only AoE mez power I had.

Besides, in an era where you can make an Awaken out of any 3 inspirations, rez powers are basically just a waste of a power pick.

Also, if you build your character to be tough enough, you'll find that your rez is just sitting there in your tray, unused, and it makes more sense to take a power you WILL use in it's place.

Still doesn't make it mandatory.

If I don't want to do it, I don't have to. They aren't going to cancel my subscription or delete my characters if I don't do it. I'm not going to get banned for refusal to participate. The devs are not going to send someone to my house to put a gun to my head and force me to run them.

There are exactly TWO task forces currently in existence that require the Alpha slot in ANY form, and guess what? They aren't mandatory either.

You make it sound like I'm not even allowed to play the game unless I do these task forces, which isn't even close to true.

And you know what? Advancing your character isn't mandatory either. If I am happy with my level 50 the way they are, there is nothing anywhere that says I MUST take them any farther than that.

And these weekly TFs are mandatory exactly how again?

I'll be running a Kahn or two this week, because I happen to like that TF.

Next week, however, I'll be skipping the WTF, because I don't really like Lady Gray.

If these Task Forces were mandatory, like you're saying here, I wouldn't be allowed to skip one. But that is exactly what I intend to do.

The whole thing is optional, always was, and more than likely always will be. The only thing that makes anything "mandatory" is your own perspective that says it is. That's the point I've been trying to make in ALL my posts on the subject lately: The ONLY person forcing you to do anything is YOU.

Was just idle musing. For me, anything that makes it past level 10 is memorable enough that I'm going to remember what their powersets are.

The only people I can see this really being useful for is those who have HUNDREDS of characters, and haven't played some of them in 3 years.

Still not against it exactly, just not sure I see the usefulness of it.

On a character with a different secondary, yes. But when you're already rocking 600% regen, another 15% or so isn't going to make much difference.

Personally, I'd remove the Heal IOs altogether and use those slots somewhere else, like Moment of Glory. Physical Perfection isn't really worth slotting for heal.

I'd drop the 6th Armageddon out of Sweeping strike too, the set bonus for 6 of them isn't really worth it, and it makes the build 300 million more expensive. I'd pull the Damage/Endurance and put the slot in Weave for a LotG Def/End.

I knew those things before, but I left it alone because I didn't want the OP to think I was trying to micromanage how he's building his character.

They are content in the same way Borea's missions and whats-her-name in the Hollows missions are content. They don't have any kind of a story to them, and are essentially just the same two or 3 missions over and over.

Are you saying that you would be happy if the devs gave us a contact like Marcus who had no plotline to his missions and basically no point to even doing them, and told us that it was our "solo content"?

I wouldn't.

If we're going to get solo Incarnate content I'd much prefer they take their time with it and give us GOOD content, instead of just banging out a few crap missions to shut people up. And if the devs respond to your demands and ultimatums and give us solo content RIGHT NOW, that's exactly what you're going to get: A handful of crap missions that aren't even worth doing that you will have to repeat over and over and over to get anywhere with.

All I've been saying is that people should be a little more patient about solo Incarnate content and not jump to the immediate conclusion that "Don't have it now = never will have it"

I never once said "I like it, so STFU" like you're asserting. And in fact I have said several times that I would LIKE solo Incarnate content.

What I did NOT do was say that I was mad because the devs spent time and money on stuff for other people when then should have been spending it on stuff for me. That is basically saying that what YOU want is more deserving of developer attention what anyone else wants.

I also did not follow up in the same post by saying that I am going to continue arguing because I am offended by people saying that what THEY want is more important.

I did say I like how it worked now, I'll grant that. But not once did I ever say that what *I* want is more important than what anyone else wants, and then turn around and say that people saying that make me mad.

Being angry about something when you did the exact same thing in the same post is pure hypocrisy. That simple.

I haven't been being a hypocrite. If you can find a place where I came out and said that what *I* want is more important than what YOU want, please show me.

The only thing I really want is to play the damn game. I don't feel that I should be getting bent out of shape because the devs didn't add things that appeal to MY specific playstyle right this instant. And I don't feel that the sheer amount of rage over the lack of solo content in this particular issue is justified.

If you remember, Cimerora didn't have story arcs when it was first released. It had the ITF and Marcus Valerius's repeatable timed mishes, and that was pretty much it. The Daedalus and Sister Airlia arcs didn't appear until the next issue, and they got a second arc an issue or two later. There is precedent for releasing team content first and following up with solo content in later issues. The fact that it is happening again does not surprise me, and it shouldn't have surprised anyone else either.

If you don't believe me on that, look it up on the wiki. The ITF was introduced in Issue 12, and Daedalus and Sister Airlia were introduced as contacts in issue 13.

They also frequently coincide with free reactivation weekends, so they can hopefully entice back former players by letting them see what has changed since they left without having to pay for it.

Ablating Strike. Use 5 Hecatomb (skip the Damage/Endurance), and add an Achille's Heel Chance for -Res.