Grey Pilgrim

It depends a lot more on playstyle, which I suppose is personal taste, sort of. I would agree that Nova is an okay place to put it if you form shift a lot. But in Tactics and other powers, it's kind of a waste. It only lasts for 5 seconds, so it's very hit or miss if it's going to work in a toggle.

As I said, putting it in a click guarantees it'll at least happen when you really want it to happen (when you're already building up, etc.). But still, playstyle. Up to you.

I don't know that having epic ATs that unlock is fail, but they could probably sell them a little better. Epic is a horrible adjective for them, as people think it means power, not storyline with that. Yes, it's silly to think the devs will break the game for you with an AT, but people do it just the same, heh.

Though as has been said, I think any new ATs will be open at the start, since they have the unlock thing covered. There is not certainty of what GR will bring in that regard, but I feel pretty confident that there will be a new AT with it that you get if you buy the expansion. Not sure it will be a "start at level 1" or start farther in, though. Who knows how it will play, though. Hopefully there will be multiple approaches you can take with it to satisfy as many as possible.

Ummm, what? Range doesn't matter? So blasters don't have superior damage capabilities to a Scrapper because they have so much ranged and AOE capability? Okay.

That statement if far too simplistic, and thank goodness this game is NOT that simple. Heck, it isn't even that simple for Scrappers, either: they have access to controls and debuffs that can help them survive long enough (or do damage more easily) for their DPS to do the trick.

Moloch, you do not need a ton of money to build an effective Kheldian. I'm not sure what builds you're looking at on the Kheld forums, but pretty much the standard that many cite are the builds in Plasma's guide... and he was talking BEFORE IOs. He has builds for you to make without them.

Kheldians can benefit a lot from IO'ss (as can any AT, though perhaps more than some), especially because of the many powers they need to put slots in. However, they can work without them. I only have a few powers IO'd out on my Peacebringer, and he's doing quite well at level 40. He'll be even more effective with more IO's, but that's not saying anything new for any AT.

Do not tell someone to learn to play, when you did not learn to read their post correctly.

Sam and co. are not complaining that they CANNOT fight bosses, they are stating that there are TOO MANY bosses spawning for what they have their settings at. You should be able to set your game so you can have more or less bosses, and have expectations that it will work consistently. With his example, it does not seem to be working correctly: before I16, I would not expect to get mostly bosses if I was running with one other person, no matter what our settings were. We WOULD encounter bosses, but not in just about every spawn. So to have the current system be set at "consider me as two heroes" and have bosses in almost every spawn IS working differently than it used to.

I don't think Sam's experience is unique, either. I was running the guest author AE missions the other day, and I was set at +2, considered as 2 heroes, and wanted to fight bosses while solo. Not every spawn was a boss with a minion, but I would have to say 80-90% of the spawns were bosses.

That can be nice for some people, but it can make the mission more tedious, and take something away from having a named boss at the end of the mission. As I said before, we should be able to set it so there are more or less bosses in a mission (and really, I wouldn't be surprised if the devs would be concerned about this, considering the reaction to boss farms in AE).

I have complained about the opposite issue in I16, interestingly enough. Since the latest issue, I have run 5-8 man teams through a Nemesis story arc, and had very rare boss spawns. Considering I was trying to get my Fake Nemesis badge, I noticed this problem, and found it quite irritating. Changing my settings didn't seem to affect this, either (+0 to +2, adding how many heroes I was worth, etc.). It didn't used to be very hard to get a lot of Fake Nemesis to spawn... I ran a tank through the exact same story arc a few months ago, and got the Fake Nemesis badge from doing the story arc (or nearly, I may have hunted a bit as well... no matter what, it was much easier than it has been for my current hero).

I don't know what this means, but it does seem like bosses are spawning differently than they did before. It bears looking at.

Oy, you can tell it's the end of the week: I tend to make silly errors when I'm this tired. I better make sure to triple check my posts for typos.

Went back and fixed it. Heh.

Well, the better focus of the jack of all trades quote is that your strength is being able to do just about anything. For Kheldians, you can do that for the course of a TF, story arc, mission, or even mid-battle. Which is advantageous. There are times my Tanker would like more damage (and ranged damage) over his survivability, and times my Blaster could use some more survivability. A Kheldian can fill all those voids and not feel the lack. You get to be things the specialist can not be.

It's not always for everyone, of course, but a little perspective on the jack of all trades thing helps, too.

Oh, and if you're in the mid-30s, you should keep going. Eclipse is going to give you some amazing resistances, and more slots will make your powers all the more strong... and the experience all the more fun. Up to you of course, but you get better the further you go as a Kheldian.