Daemodand

I remember when he wished to become a fish and did. That was awesome.

Probably because it's not a CoH book.

You spent a power pick on Propel on a Dom. I win.

I love my mommy!

I'll write the dissenting opinion:

SR is better vs things that like to stay at range (eg Praetorian Clockwork) and it avoids Recharge Slows in ways Willpower can't. And Quickness means your damage output is going to be better than Willpower, too. And the self damage from Energy Transfer is greatly overstated. I've run a Energy Melee Brute up to the high 40s and the self damage was never even a concern let alone a problem. Heck Stalkers spam that power with impunity, and look at their Hit Points.

Plus, SR's mitigation is consistent. Move away from the mobs with Willpower and it folds pretty quickly. No such limitation with SR.

Just thought I'd chime in with a few things SR offers over Willpower. People often just don't realize how much the set actually brings because it's so compact and efficient (just like the Golden Fox).

All that said, SR and WP are sister sets and both very good. SR just brings a lot of "intangibles" so people have a hard time realizing just how strong the set is, and often dismiss it too easily, especially when compared to the "sexy" sets like Shield and Willpower.

With SR I learned it's best to get as much Def from power picks as you can to softcap with. This leaves your set bonuses all available for other things, which is part of the beauty of SR as opposed to other sets. You can go the set bonus route for your Defense, but that's a very suboptimal approach. You get a much better deal leveraging SR's native Defense. Plus, Touch of Death has like 40% Accuracy. That's pretty pathetic. Doubly so if slotted in Kinetic which lacks in the ToHit department (even though Kinetic is my favorite melee set).

The optimal path for slotting it in Stamina would be to 4 slot Stamina and have from the Performance Shifter set EndMod, Chance, EndMod/Rech and EndMod/Accuracy. This will give you more Recovery than most other approaches if you're willing to 4 slot.

Brainstorming, I thought of one thing: redside you can go grind in the fab while you wait. Well, that's one. Hopefully you guys can think of more.

Even on Virtue and Freedom, it can take a good 15-20 minutes depending on time of day for the queue to give you a Trial. Much to my disappointment, you can't run solo newspapers/Tips while waiting. So what can you do in game while you wait?

For those of you who may not have seen the show at all or those who used to watch and gave up, Hulu is showing the season (and maybe series) finale. In it, things are changed a lot and the superhero quotient gets dialed up big time.

Be patient, give it the whole hour, and post what you think.

If you don't like the iTrails, there's no need to do them. Just generate lots of Shards on 8 man teams that mow through content and convert them. Part of the beauty of I20 is you get to do the content you like and still make Incarnate progress.

Remember, if you like to team but don't like the Incarnate Trials you can still go the Shard conversion path with a reasonable amount of speed (you'll be way ahead of soloists, that's for sure).

Just run any non-iTrial content, preferably on large teams for more Shards. Convert the Shards to Threads and you're on your way.

Advantage: no faceplanty Trials; varied content; do your favorite things

Disadvantage: it'll cost you Inf (hint to those without much Inf: you can get an average of 70 million for 1 Alignment Merit level 35-39 random roll; 100 million if you're willing to craft the recipes instead of selling them uncrafted). Probably will be a bit slower than the Trials, but not by much (1 Shard = 1 Thread; on teams bulldozing large spawns that can be a very nice drop rate).

No, not optimal, but you can run the content you like and still get Incarnated.

P.S. If you're nuts like me and soloing at least one of your characters through their iSlots...via con dios.

Get right next to them just long enough to click your attack, and so long as they don't break line of sight the Assassin's Strike will go off. Good PvP Stalkers can get their AS off on a bunny hopping target, even.

If you get interrupted, BFD. Just try again, it only takes a second. If there are a few people within 30 feet of you, you can out damage a Scrapper in single target.

But yeah, Stalkers aren't optimal, and are almost absent from the Trials, sadly. They really need a buff!

Yeah, for PuGs BAF is the Trial to run. Lambda is a waste of time by comparison. BAF gives you more rewards more reliably as far as PuGs.

I've heard you can advance your Alpha slot by making Alpha components with Threads. I've been all through the Incarnate menus in game and I can't find such an option. Is this possible, and if so how?

After a dozen Trials, I have yet to even see a reward table.

Maybe it gets better when you have 2 level shifts?