ClawsandEffect

In that case, go with the defense. I presume here that you are referring to a Willpower character, since that is the only set that will be reaching those numbers to typed defense (Invuln would too, but there would be less of a gap between S/L and exotic defense)

Even losing regen, you're still in better shape, because the defense will help mitigate burst damage, which is one of Willpower's weak points. It doesn't really matter if you're regenerating 100 HP per second if you're taking 2,500 damage in 4 seconds. So, the defense will serve you better.

And as already noted, 33% puts you one small purple away from being softcapped, and a softcapped WP character is a BEAST.

The reason Epic ATs can do that is because you are very limited on the powers you can choose. If you could create, say, a character using tanker Shield Defense and pair it with a Dominator Assault set it would be an entirely different story.

Fire Blast would be all kinds of sick if paired with something like SR or Ninjitsu. Especially Ninjitsu, since you can softcap it fairly easily and it has a good self heal.

The devs balanced Epic ATs around the idea of Ranged/Defense, and further balanced it by saying "You can only take this limited set of powers we have balanced to work well together without being overpowered." It would be a HUGE amount of work to balance every ranged attack set with every defensive set, so it's probably never going to be an option.

It's because Katana uses the Two-Handed combat stance, which incidentally, is the same stance Archery and Assault Rifle use.

Dual Blades, Claws and Spines use the Two Weapon stance.

Shield defense uses either the Shield stance if there is no weapon, or the Weapon+Shield stance. It would NOT be a trivial thing to change the stance a powerset uses, since you'd have to redo the entire set from the ground up.

Couple points:

A) The combat stance issue is the same reason powers like Air Superiority and Kick cause redraw. Those powers do not use any of the combat stances that weapon sets use, and they would have to make a bunch of different animations for each power in order to make it work.

B) Every two handed animation that is used with a shield is actually a different animation from the normal one. A normal animation would use the No Weapon combat stance, while the Shield animation would use the Shield Combat stance. If it weren't that way you would put your shield away every time you attacked.

Got most of this info from Back Alley Brawler when I inquired why Kick causes redraw a year or two ago. There are significant tech reasons why the two handed powersets cannot be used with a shield. They would likely have to recode all the relevant powersets from the ground up in order to allow it.

I don't suppose I'd have any major issue with it. However, I don't think you should be allowed to do it just anytime you want to. If you had to do something (not anything difficult mind you) in order to do it, it'd be somewhat fair.

Edit: Had a brainstorm while driving to work.

The devs have been looking for effective inf sinks, so make it a fixed price temp power available at the auction house. Set the price at something like 50 million per temp power, and each temp power will let you pull up to 10 enhancements. So, if you want to strip an entire character it will cost you upwards of 500 million, which is still cheaper than buying 5 respec recipes from the market, and isn't as much of a pain. (Anyone who has a character completely IOed out with stuff worth keeping should be able to afford it)

It wouldn't let you move slots around, but you could pull IOs you have slotted.

The devs get an effective inf sink, and the players get a way to move IOs off characters, everyone wins.

Try joining the global channels for whatever server you are on if you haven't already.

I play on Pinnacle, and I can usually generate interest in an ITF or other TF and get the team rolling in about 20 minutes, at just about any time of day. I just holler in the ghlobal channel and off we go.

I would definitely be in favor of this.

Stupid question here, but, you DID complete the arc and got the Alpha slot unlocked before you did that right?

Because you won't have any shards drop at all if you haven't completed it.

Yes, I'm quoting myself because I wanted to elaborate on this point.

The only feasible way to increase the number of enhancements we can keep when respeccing is to increase the number we can carry at a time. Now, with the devs' stance on people hoarding IOs (they don't want it happening), giving us more enhancement inventory would be completely counterproductive as far as their stated goals go. (Granted there may be differences in opinion within the offices, but I'm going on what we know of their official stance.)

Currently, we can have 132 characters before any extra character slots are factored in. That's 1,320 enhancements one player can sit on. We can have up to 396 characters maximum, that is 3,960 enhancements. If we are given the ability to hold, say, 60 enhancements per character (enough to pull the vast majority of the enhancements in a build, which is what seems to be the request), those numbers would increase to 7,920 and 23,760 respectively. That's a LOT of enhancements that could be hoarded.

Also, what would happen to the market when the marketeers realize that now they CAN corner the market on a particular IO? Currently, a marketeer can really only corner the market on a particular purple set or IO/Recipe. Most don't bother because it isn't practical for them to do so, due to limited ability to store the results, and the fact that it would limit their ability to do other things with the market.

There are people with enough cash that, if they were so inclined, they could buy up all of, or the majority of any particular thing they want to work with. At the moment, their ability to do that is limited by storage space. If their storage space were increased from 1,320 to 7,920 that would give them a lot more ability to sit on stuff without hindering their ability to actually work the market.

It probably wouldn't have a huge effect on the majority of the IOs on the market, because they are fairly easily obtained. But the things like purples and PvP IOs, which are harder to acquire, could jump in price dramatically as marketeers start placing bids for a lot of them at once, knowing they can store everything they buy that way. Sure, it would benefit the people selling them as prices go up, but it would be probable that you just sold it to the person or people trying to lock that market down.

Would it definitely happen? No, nothing is definite where things like this are concerned, but the possibility would definitely exist. With the devs' stance on hoarding, allowing this would completely undermine everything they have done to prevent it.

And if you don't think anyone would go out of their way to do that if they suddenly could without hurting their other profits, well you are either remarkably naive, or have a great deal more faith in your fellow humans than I do. A number of people in the market forums have already documented their attempts at raising the price of one set or another, letting them store more stuff would only make that easier to do. With practically unlimited storage space, a few like-minded marketeers could almost completely lock down purple sets and pretty much charge whatever they want for them. It's hard enough for your average player to afford stuff like that as it is, why make it harder?

People keep looking at the convenience factor of being able to pull more enhancements in a respec, while glossing over or outright ignoring the potentially disastrous side effects. What I mentioned here is just one of the possibilities.

No one is saying you can't keep it. It just requires more effort than a lot of people are willing to go through.

Personally, I don't ever bother with IOs until I'm absolutely certain I am keeping the character. And I have never changed any of their builds to the point that I need to pull out 20 IOs because I can't use them anymore.

You say you earned your IOs. Okay, I won't dispute that, I'm sure you did. But what is stopping you from earning them for the new character you want them on? That way you have IOs on the new character, and your old character is still just as powerful as they were before. It's a win/win.

Perhaps I misspoke on the greed comment, it's really more like stinginess, with a dose of laziness. A lot of people go to the effort of IOing out a character and then decide that they'd rather just use the same IOs on a new character rather than go to the effort of earning them again. Again, why would you strip the IOs from one character to use them on another, when you could just IO the second character with new ones and have TWO IOed characters? Upgrading with higher level IOs only gives you a fraction of a percent of additional effectiveness, is that 2.1% more end reduction really worth it?

Or is it a case of people wanting to play the newest flavor of the month and they don't want to go to the effort of IOing them out because they are going to play the next flavor of the month when it becomes popular?

Me? I don't play FOTM characters unless I actually have an interest in the sets, so I'm not going to ditch a character because something else came out that will do the same thing slightly better.

There is also the point that, as of right now, IOs are still optional. You don't need to use them, you want to use them. That may change in the future, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The only way to increase how many IOs we can remove from a character would be to increase the number of enhancements we can carry at a time. I don't think the devs will be too keen on the idea of allowing an individual character to carry upwards of 60 enhancements at once, because that would enable the hoarding mentality they have expressed concern over.

And once again you bring up color customization as something they said "no" on and later changed their minds, while ignoring the fact that they originally said no because they lacked the manpower to get it done, rather than because they didn't want us to have it. If they had the employees back then that they have now, it probably would have been done a long time ago.

Their stance on pulling more than 10 enhancements in a respec is similar to their stance on allowing a full respec of primary and secondary powersets. They didn't say no because they can't do it, they said no because it is something they do not want us to be able to do. If and when they change their stance on that it may change, but "We want this thing you keep outright telling us NO about"* isn't going to change their minds.

(* Is a rough approximation of what every post demanding this change is essentially saying, whether the poster realizes it or not)

Not really.

As far as pulling IOs out goes, the existence of IOs does not change the fact that enhancements are intended to be permanent.

Thus far, the devs have given no indication that they are ever going to reconsider their stance on that. And personally, I haven't ever changed a character so much that I NEEDED to pull more than 10 enhancements off of it.

Now, if you're deleting the character and want to keep the IOs, that's one thing. But if you're deleting the character anyway, what difference does it make if you burn through all of that character's respecs? Are you planning on playing the character again after you delete it?

I would be all for a revamp of how respeccing actually works, as far as being able to go in and make small changes without having to do everything all over again. But keeping only 10 enhancements probably isn't going to change, and I don't really think it should.

I see no reason other than greed why we should be able to keep everything from a character all at once.

It's only a video game, when the servers eventually shut down (probably not for a long while yet) we are all going to lose everything we worked on anyway, so why does it matter that you might lose a few things now?

Sure, you spent time on it, but if you enjoyed that time it was time well spent, regardless of whether you have anything to show for it later. I know people that spend 3-4 hours detailing their car every week, which would seem like wasted time to a lot of people, but they enjoyed doing it, so for them it was time well spent.

Nope, you can do it all solo. At least, what we have so far you can do solo, no idea about future stuff, but I imagine that will be soloable as well.

After running the arc you get the Alpha slot, and gain the ability to have Incarnate Shards drop for you. All of the pieces you need for Alpha slot enhancements can be created with 4 Incarnate Shards.

The only thing teaming does is speed up the process, because TFs will give you the pieces directly instead of having to create them with Shards. From what I have seen thus far, Shards drop with roughly the same frequency as rare salvage. And one of the pieces can be bought with 150 Vanguard merits.

Soloing Incarnate stuff is slower, but then, soloing most stuff in the game is slower. You won't level as fast solo as you will on a team, so it makes sense that you won't acquire Incarnate abilities as fast as on a team, but you CAN do it. I played normally, not faring anything at all, and after an hour I ended up with 3 Shards, so it's a pretty reasonable rate to earn them at.

Now, if you think that slower acquisition of pieces = grinding, then I don't know what to tell you. It is the endgame content a lot of people have been waiting for for years, of course it isn't going to be easy, why should it be? If you play your 50s regularly after running the arc, you will eventually get everything you need without really trying that hard, it just won't be as fast as running a few TFs.

Please explain how you're fighting that many enemies at once on the difficulty setting ATs are balanced around.

On the default setting, I very rarely see any mob composition other than 3 minions or 1 LT and 1-2 minions. And it is extremely rare for all of them to have a mez power. Usually, it will be one with a mez and two without, and there is almost no character in existence that cannot handle a threat like that.

Because your IOed to the gills Shield/Elec tank can solo at x8 does not mean every single character in the game should be able to.

If you increase your difficulty to where you are fighting mobs comprised of a boss, 2 LTs, and 4 minions, of course it's going to get harder. Isn't that the POINT of increasing difficulty? Or do you think it is intended to give you more rewards for the same effort?

If you're having trouble soloing your support AT, perhaps you should consider turning the difficulty down.

And I already know you're going to say: "If my melee character doesn't have to, why should my support character have to?"

Simple answer to that one: All ATs are not equal at doing all things, nor are they intended to be.

It is because it is actually to-hit and not accuracy as the IO's name leads you to believe. Accuracy adds a percentage to your to-hit, so if you have 33% accuracy slotted in a power with standard to-hit it is adding 33% to 75%. The Kismet adds a flat 6% to your base to-hit, so your to-hit becomes 81% instead of 75%. Now, when you have 33% accuracy slotted it is adding 33% to 81% instead of 75%.

Against even-con enemies the extra to-hit isn't particularly useful (unless you get debuffed), because adding 33% to 75% will get you to the max to-hit you can possibly have (95%). However, if you fight higher level enemies, your chance to hit will decrease as you get higher than your own level. Adding the Kismet 6% Accuracy will ensure that your to-hit remains as high as possible.

Adding the 4th LotG will add 9% accuracy, but you get more benefit from slotting the Kismet.

The to-hit does nothing in that power. HOs are designed so you can use one of them for many different powers. You could use the same HO in Tactics and in that case the defense enhancement would do nothing, but the end reduction and to-hit would function normally.

There is a trick Shield Defense characters use to get more defense debuff resistance (which is crucial for defense based characters, it prevents your defense from being debuffed away into nothing). Active Defense, their mez protection, also provides DDR. But...DDR is enhanced by enhancing defense, and Active Defense will not accept defense enhancements. However....if you slot Membrane HOs in it, which it will accept because of the recharge component, it will have the side effect of also enhancing the DDR of the power. It is unclear if this was intended, or if it is a bug. If it's a bug it may be changed, but for now it works wonderfully.

Ah.

Sounds like you're talking about Assemble The Team, which is a Vet Reward power. You have to actually claim it from your Veteran Badge list, which would explain why only a few of your characters have it. Judging by your join date, if you have not taken any long breaks, you should most definitely have it.

Check your badge list under Veteran, you should find a tab under 42 months that lets you claim the power on any of your characters.

The Mission TP power is from the Mac Pack, and will transport you directly to your mission, no matter what zone it is in.

I'd be willing to bet you are missing either Anti-Matter or Bobcat. They both pop up in missions where their defeat is not required to complete the mission, so it is entirely possible to get through the mission without ever knowing they are there.

Could also be Black Swan, the only mission I am aware of that has her in it, her defeat is not required to finish.

Nope. Never going to happen.

Your own observation of how powerful those combinations are is exactly WHY it will never happen. Quite simply because there are a lot of combinations in the game that would be STUPIDLY overpowered if they were allowed, and just as many that would be completely useless.

Think about the damage potential of, oh, Fire Control/Shield Defense for a second. On the flipside, think about how gimped a Stone Armor/Sonic Resonance character would be.

Good catch, I'd completely forgotten about that aspect of tanker attacks. With that in mind it is probably a misinterpretation of the information at hand, rather than incorrect information.