IanTheM1

I'm not all that interested in working towards Very Rares at the moment, but have gotten Very Rares quicker than Rares. Not to mention Rares are inherently more valuable since you need two to make a Very Rare in the first place.

So yes, a way to downgrade rarity, whether inside the drop table or via the Convert tab would be lovely.

Huh...that's a very good point. I've never seen the 10 Thread reward table either.

I highly suspect then that there are only two levels of rewards: The 10 Threads or a Random Component Table.

I'm pretty much more or less in agreement with the OP, but allow me to clarify with a rambly mess of text.

In my case, I'm still fairly displeased with both options given: Either I can enter the LFG queue and likely be placed on a too-small team with bad AT balance (also a higher chance of people not knowing what to do, considering the star will be randomly given to someone), or I can sit around and wait to get invited to a pre-made team, which is far more prone to bugginess, but more importantly has a higher wait to get stuff rolling, since you have to play zone tetris (why can the queue zap people together from anywhere in the game, but pre-made leagues have to be in the same zone?) and get the teams sorted out. On the other hand, good teams tend to stick together for multiple runs.

Bizarrely, I find myself asking why the LFG queue doesn't use an Arena-style interface.

I'm also a bit annoyed since I have so many threads and components of every type other than Rare, including Very Rares. I don't even care about Very Rare Incarnate powers in most cases, but I'm still waiting on at least two more Tier 3 powers. I wish there was a way to break components down into lesser components without dealing with the godawful Thread conversion costs.

Also my enthusiasm is a tad sapped due to finding Diviner + Invincible Seeker to be incredibly underwhelming. This is the one circumstance where I'm considering working towards Very Rare as a priority, as Augur + Invincible Seeker sounds a lot better.

There's a level 30ish mini-arc where the Council's robots gain sentience and try to take over. They're even their own villain group.

Though according to that page, they mention something about adding organic components to the robots, so I'm not sure if that entirely counts?

You definitely get more iXP if you're contributing. This has the unfortunate effect of Incarnate-shifted teammates sapping some iXP due to being able to kill things quicker than someone who isn't.

But I'm pretty sure the reward tables are largely if not totally random. Though bizarrely, I've had better luck getting Very Rares than Rares...which due to how the Incarnate powers work is actually a bad thing.

Gravitic Interface. /Rad already gets almost everything Interface could provide, with the exception of Reactive's damage proc and Gravitic's Secondary Effect Debuff. Later on down the line you also get Recovery Debuff, which is incredibly valuable if you or a league-mate can drain endurance. It looks like some things in the Trials are actually susceptible to it, but I'll admit it needs more testing.

I was planning on making a post at some point to counterbalance my venom towards Lambda Sector, but I guess I'll say it here:

If Admiral Sutter is indicative of the future of City of Heroes, than I am flipping excited. It has some writing flaws (not sure where the whole clone body thing came from, and the overall story lacks focus), but the gameplay and pure BEING A HERO-NESS of it is spot on excellent! The final mission is pure gold, and I love every part of it.

Mortimer Kal seems underwhelming by comparison, but has much better writing - it's fairly character-driven. It gets a little silly towards the end, but it's filled with solidly good missions and makes you feel nice and villainous. Plus it leaves you with more than just a shiny new temp power at the end, and I really want to see where they go with it...

Feedback: Holy cow is that excessively prohibitive. Now I know for sure I won't be even bothering with Lambda anymore, except maybe a few more inevitably failed runs to get the last of the XP for Destiny.

Considering you can get an Astral Merit from the BAF for more or less just defeating a single AV, there's a huge imbalance there.

It feels like it should be lowered to 5 Grenades, 5 Acids, 5 Cooperation Bonuses, or something similar.

Doubtful, but broken if true. I got the same number of Astral Merits twice in a row from the BAF, all in line with the objectives.

I just had two amazing runs of the BAF that were actually FUN and interesting, which is the complete opposite of my many, many failed Lambda runs.

Something I noticed though is that for each stage of the BAF, you (have a chance to?) get an Astral Merit, which directly converts to 4 Threads.

I have at no point gotten an Astral Merit for doing anything similar in Lambda.

Is this intended? Or is it supposed to be a strange balancing factor between the two raids?

The problem I ran into repeatedly was the queue sticking me in small teams, and with a heavy melee concentration but very few control/buff/debuff ATs.

I'm also not a fan of the "fail until you earn the tools to win" school of design, surprise surprise.

Also not quite clear how control evens the number of Defense countermeasures versus Resistance Debuffs.