Eva Destruction

This would require that the League leader know this, and that they care. It's just easier and more convenient to split up the teams, probably. Yet another reason for me to dislike the BAF.

I wonder though....how many League leaders put team 1 on reinforcement duty?

That was more directed at PoliceWoman, who has an arc with "Task Force" in the title. I did see quite a few though, in the early days, that weren't designed to be soloable at all. One that I didn't actually play included the RSF Ms Liberty, who not only doesn't scale down to an EB but has a buff that can only be removed by a temp power granted in the SF...no idea why she's included in AE. I'm sure we would have seen many more such "Task Forces" with the introduction of giant monsters if the novelty of AE hadn't worn off by then.

Considering how concept-limiting Incarnate powers can be for some, I wouldn't be surprised if many people with concept builds are forced to either ignore the system, or start down the slippery slope of sacrificing concept for moar power.

You show me a Blaster who is softcapped to all types or all positions without being seriously gimped as a Blaster, and I'll concede your point. And then you're still forced into Clarion Destiny if you want mez protection and have fewer HP than a Scrapper.

Nemesis himself could sort of count, since he's at best a brain in a jar and quite possibly is a robot by now. He can't destroy all humans though, because then there would be nobody for him to plot against.

I would love to have a purely robotic enemy faction. Sufficiently advanced AI exists in the CoH universe already. Make it so, devs!

What if some chick took your hot wife from you and is riding around in her body?

I'll never play anything with "Task Force" in the title.

There were quite a few people sticking around for Tin Mage when Apex was WST, so it couldn't hurt to ask.

Besides, the "must have shinies nao nao NAO" crowd is done with their Notices and is busy farming the crap out of the trials, so you won't be running Posi with them, and being a low-level TF there will probably be quite a few runners who want the XP.

There are people with t4s in all their new abilities already. I don't see how the raid path could be devalued any more than that.

A well-done challenge arc will pick and choose the enemies' powers to make them challenging, but not overly annoying or tedious. Simply giving them all the powers is poor design.

Only one PvP IO even comes close to making that kind of difference. That's two months, if you're running tips daily.

Ain't happening. For one, I don't have the slots, and there is still that pesky little annoyance called "concept" that sometimes comes up and smacks me upside the head. So it'll be either Assault to give myself new end problems or Vengeance so I can stick an LotG in there and put a Ribo in Deflection.

Then you're not being efficient about running your tips. If you're being equally inefficient about earning shards, it'll take more than two hours.

They are tradeable, which in and of itself makes them a bad analogy.

Sure they are but....wait....could it be....you can earn them in a reasonable time frame through MEANS OUTSIDE PVP?!!!?!!!11!!

So you earn 10 shards in half an hour now? I guess some people do, but those are the anomalously high earners. They're more comparable to people who do their daily tips in 15-20 minutes. So you'd need to earn 10 shards in 15-20 minutes. Go.

Deliberately comparing the LEAST efficient non-PvP method of earning PvP IOs to the MOST efficient non-trial method of earning Incarnate rewards does not prove anything.

I only have it as a prereq for Physical Perfection, and never used it at all until I dropped Assault for Maneuvers and lost a bit of end red in my toggles, and even then it's only against Arachnos, IDF and occasionally Malta.

Although if I go with Ageless, depending how it works out, I might not need Physical Perfection either....*starts wondering how bad the crash on OWTS is....*

I mostly solo, I do occasionally team but usually only in duos with my husband since he'll run on +4 with me. I'll do the occasional TF and marvel at how stupid easy it is, barring stuff like Apex and Tin Mage.

If they were designed simply for the content, then why do they work in other content? Rewarding them only for the content is an arbitrary decision that could easily be changed without affecting either the reward or the content, so your argument falls apart right there. The level shifts only applying to that content does make sense, since the game has always assumed you'd be fighting at least even-cons. The -1 setting is a concession to poor soloists. I don't begrudge them this concession, but since some purple farmers also ran on -1 for moar speed, I don't think any further concessions need to be made. As it is, running at +0 with the Alpha level shift is so stupid I'm never joining an end-game TF that isn't formed by me or someone who shares this opinion ever again.

No, we have to not ignore it, because it is one way in which Incarnate components are different from other rewards. If a hami raid needs more controllers but you want an HO for your Scrapper, you bring a controller and give the HO to your Scrapper. If a BAF needs more controllers but you want the rewards for your Scrapper you are SoL. The existence of the market means that you can earn tradeable rewards in any way you want. Non-tradeable rewards are inherently limiting in how they are earned, which is part of the reason it's so problematic that they are being limited even more.

If you look at A-merits as strictly a solo option, yes, although the occasional merit reward can supplement the daily tips and speed the process up some. If you look at the A-merits as "earning PvP IOs through some means other than PvP" then you can include team activities such as task forces, which would greatly speed up merit generation.

But there aren't, and haven't been for a long time, so your point is moot. Even if there were....let's say it takes you an hour a day to run your tips. The PvP IO drop rate is so low that I doubt you'd get the ones you need in a year of PvPing for an hour a day.

They are not intrinsically tied to that content.
Except that PvP IOs are tradeable. In the time it takes to earn one PvP IO you will probably earn enough inf to buy at least one more, and that's if you're stealthing your tips. If you're steamrolling them on x8 and marketing your drops, you can probably buy the rest of the set, since only a few uniques sell at the inf cap. And if you're also converting reward merits to A-merits, buying a PvP IO can take less than a month.

Which is, oddly, probably less time than it would take to get your IO through PvP, which is the "right way" to get it.

Because all the people playing 50s for Incarnate rewards are pumping insane amounts of inf into the system. Something has to pull it out. 250k inf per thread is more than reasonable. The 100-400 mil costs, on the other hand, are probably offputting enough that some people will just refuse to pay them, which kinda defeats the purpose of an inf sink.

I'm already getting bored of the trials and I have many 50s yet to do...If I get one T3 from anything I'll be happy, let alone multiples.

No, I'm not that kind of player. That's why I don't want to pick one that isn't useful, because putting that amount of effort into a power I'll rarely use is just a colossal waste of time to me.

In a team book, it's about the individual members coming together as part of the team. Do you really think anyone would care about the Justice League if it was all D-listers, with no character development beyond "these guys all fought this bad guy?"

When it's about ALL the teams, it's really not. It's about the event. That's what we're getting here. It's not about us anymore, it's about the Praetorian invasion and about Cole. If it was a comic book, that might work, because sometimes people want to read about the villain (albeit a more interesting one than Cole), but in an MMO that is so character-focused, not so much.

Which admittedly will sort itself out over time, as you will get fewer players who need such detailed instructions.

This is inherently problematic, since staying alive is part of melee's contribution. You keep yourself alive so other people don't have to, and by keeping yourself alive you're helping keep others alive.

I was doing it to avoid overkill and get in before the lag spike personally. It didn't seem to help, which leads me to conclude that either 1: it's mostly random and all this anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal and misleading, 2: other people's contributions were still counting for more, and/or 3: Shield Charge isn't counting due to some weirdness with pseudopets.

To my understanding this is server-side, and there is no excuse for it. It's like lag hill in the ITF; do we really need all those Romans standing around and patrolling the edges of the map, where most teams will never encounter them? Creating content your systems can't handle is a failure in design, period.