Dispari

I could also see how not giving the inspirations could POSSIBLY be intended (although I see no reason for it), but I see no reason to not notify players that they've leveled up with an audiovisual ding.

You forgot that its new DPE is now infinity. Pretty overpowered if you ask me!

Best use of Self Destruct is to put it on auto. That way, not only do you get a hilarious surprise upon loading a character, but every hour or so you get an unignorable wakeup call that will usually come when you're in the middle of something.

Note that it doesn't work if you have no sense of humor.

Words to live by.

It's impossible for the old way of exemplaring to be sidekicking like we used to have. Because exemplaring is not sidekicking. All that was said was that we would be able to choose the old way of exemplaring.

An option exists to exemplar the old way. Which is to not get exp, but get double influence instead. This is the old exemplar. Just as advertised.

Actually, that's the beauty of the super-secret i17 double-closed beta. It's not an NDA but rather a MDA. It's a Minor Disclosure Agreement. I'm allowed to make exactly two posts discussing the details of i17. But since I had to explain that, I can't tell you about the new CTF maps now!

Galaxy City sounds great! How do I get there from Mercy so people don't killsteal me while I'm street-sweeping to 4 before I begin arcs?

I'm actually in the super-secret i17 double-closed beta and I can give you some details about what's coming in i17.

i17 will be preparing for the new Going Rogue setting, and as such will be introducing 5 new classes. One of them was hinted at in a previous interview, the Spy. Here are the new classes and a brief overview:

Spy: Assault/Defense. Similar to Stalkers, but have Assault as a primary so that they can fight at range or in melee. They have some elemental choices but also do martial arts and things. Their hybrid assault sets tend to have things like pistols and knives. They also have an assassin ability which is a backstab.

Soldier: Ranged/Defense. These are sort of like Blasters in a way. They're high damage dealers on the grayside, but also come with some self-defense options. One of their available sets is a rocket launcher which can critical hit.

Engineer: Summon/Ranged. Similar to MMs, but a lot of the engineer pets are stationary so you have to be careful how to use them. You do have some ranged attacks to fall back on but your primary use is making sure you have pets going. They can however build teleporters to make sure people can get in and out of combat easily.

Medic: Buff/Buff. Since the devs have noticed how popular "healers" are and how often people ask for them, they went for a pure support class that can make sure people get all the healing they need. As such grayside only has one support class, but it's very useful. They can do things like heal people and even make them invincible for a short time.

The other one they're working on is still in progress but they're thinking it'll be a tank-based class that has ranged attacks.

There are a lot more factors to AE farming than just the auto-SK. In fact, the auto-SK will be alleviating some of the problems with farming. Previously if you handled the SKing right, you could have people who were getting exp from +7 enemies. With the new auto-SK, the most they'll be able to get will be +5 enemies.

There are dozens of other factors too, like the ease of not having to travel anywhere and the ability to tailor groups to your specifications, instead of doing preset farms that may not be suited to your character(s). But the biggest draw and the one that's disappearing with i16 is the ability to make all-lieutenant and all-boss farms.

The combination of the one-rank removal and the SSK will probably see a lot of people returning to the normal game. I for one will probably cruise back to normal content since it'll be easier to form teams, and I can finally make use of my patrol exp again.

I'm not doing that exactly. More to the point, I want humans to be buffed up because they fall way, way behind VEATs. I don't expect them to be on-par with VEATs even before you consider the forms. But I do want them to be brought up a notch because they're so far behind in basically everything there is to be behind in.

Just giving them mez protection would probably be enough for me to consider playing one again.

No. The Nova and Dwarf forms are more self-contained states that are fairly well-balanced as far as I'm concerned. They have specific attributes and limited powers, and are pretty easy to balance because of that. They have attributes such as high damage or high resistance + mez protection that makes them well-rounded. I don't feel that the Nova or Dwarf forms particularly need a buff, but I also wouldn't say no to it either. I'm more concerned with human forms.

While the Nova form plays somewhat like a Blaster and Dwarf is more suited to Tank, the human form seems to be designed somewhat close to a Scrapper (with ranged attacks for flavor -- no worse than Fortunata or Crab), with the main failing being that they don't have any status protection.

They also pay far more for their armor powers, for no apparent reason. All of the VEATs, which also have status protection, pay half or less for full protection. Many of the VEATs also have meaningful passive powers. The biggest comparison is:

Fortification: +15% RES S/L, 25% RES F/C/E/N/T, +8.3 mag to hold/stun/sleep/immobilize, 0.21 end

Thermal Shield: +22.5% RES F/C, 0.26 end

Something seems really off there to me. HEAT toggles are designed for two protections at once, for a high cost of 0.26, while Crabs can get 3x the protection, plus status, for less cost. And it's not just crabs. As I mentioned, all of the VEATs can get all of their defensive protection for less endurance, and have status protection.

They also save heavily on slots, while HEATs are spending a ton of slots (and power picks) to outfit their human form since they need to worry about 5 or more defensive powers, not to mention still worry about outfitting the forms you mentioned, while VEATs can be done with defensive powers in about 2 or 3 powers in most cases. And generally speaking, one of those is usually passive.

And as far as the WS powers mentioned, I do feel PBs need more of a tweak than WSes. But both of them could use a small push since they're nowhere near as player or team friendly as VEATs. Khelds may be "respectable" or quite doable where they are, but they're not very popular and haven't been for a very long time. There are a lot of minor things that could be adjusted to make them a little more playable.

And this is off-topic, but as long as I'm on the subject, Dominator Build Up should be doing at least +80% (if not +100%, but that probably won't happen) considering they do the highest base damage on redside now, and exceed Tanks, Brutes, VEATs, and Stalkers who all get +80%. They also exceed HEATs who get +72%. They even slightly exceed Blasters in melee. BU for Dominators currently is a silly +68%. Their Aim should be +50% to match what Forts have, up from current +42.5%. And Fiery Embrace should be +100%. It seems their numbers are more in-line with their previous damage scales.

To be more specific, I'd say the extra mitigation will almost never benefit you in solo play because almost everything should be survivable with Scrapper level defenses. The extra damage however will always be useful.