Vanden

Hello again little white star on red and blue stripes.

If power pool customization ever comes, it would be great if the attacks from the pools had themes that matched the power themes we have for primary and secondary. For example, my Super Strength Tanker has and regularly uses Air Superiority, so a theme that matches the glowing arms and impact balls of light that SS uses would make it fit in. Other themes would naturally include Fire, Ice, Electricity, Energy, Negative Energy, and Stone, and the Martial Arts "whooses and stars" dealie and whirrs and glows of Kinetic Melee. And any other melee sets I missed.

Obviously none of the damage types or effects would change, the themes would just give the pool attacks' the same visual aesthetic as the powers we already have. I think there would need to be themes for Boxing, Kick, Air Superiority, Flurry, and Jump Kick.

Agreed. If I have a character I want to wear a trenchcoat, I just use the Baron jacket now. The Steampunk pack looks like it'll have a good option, too...

How would that be an improvement? Your options are still limited and your character has to fill a certain role, it's just done slightly differently.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a 100% resist cap if it's used creatively. Just having 100% to nearly all for 3 minutes when already low on health...yeah, that's pretty pointless.

Yeah, isn't it only the Euro players who got saddled with appendices to their names?

As I understand it, most chance for DoT powers will work as such: with an 80% chance, they have an 80% chance for each tick. The first time a tick fails to go off, the effect ends and any further ticks don't even have a chance to happen.

However, it looks to me that the Reactive DoT doesn't work that way. I've seen an enemy hit only once take a tick of damage, then when the next tick would happen, nothing occurs and the flame graphic vanishes. But then another tick occurs and the flame graphic reappears.

Does the Reactive DoT actually have a 100% chance to hit, with then a X% chance for the damage to actually occur, bypassing the normal DoT rule?

That seems insane.

All the Judgement powers have the same base damage, except one of the Pyronic ones which does reduced initial damage in exchange for a stronger DoT.

Screenshot of an enemy getting hit by multiple Ion jumps, taken seconds ago. As you can see, the Freak on the far right seems to have been hit by 5 seperate jumps.

I might not like the jump messages, but it sure makes it easy to show that bug happening.

I see it all the time, on any mob that's big enough to still have targets unhit after the first wave of jumps.

That was a different bug, where the damage from jumps was enhanceable. I'm talking about the bug where targets can be hit by multiple jumps for double or more damage.

Well the expanded Incarnate system has been Live for over a month now, and we've had plenty of time to see the powers in action and experience them for ourselves. With that experience, here are some trouble spots I've noticed with various powers:

Note: This is my feedback. Feel free to post your own if you feel so inclined.

Lore:

The most problematic slot, I already feedbacked all over Lore in this thread.

Judgement:

First, Ion. Ion is a major outlier in the Judgement slot because it does ridiculous damage against large groups due to a bug. I posited a creative solution to the problem in this thread. I also don't see why every time the lightning jumps it needs to say "ION JUDGEMENT JUMP" in big orange letters. I can see the lightning and hear the jumps, that's enough for me. Other AoEs don't make the secondary targets say, "ALSO AFFECTED BY THE ATTACK" over their heads. Plus, the jumps can't actually fail, but the damage can, so you'll see enemies that have that message over their head that don't get affected, which is really misleading.

Second, Cryonic. People rag on this power because it's a cone, but I've used it and frankly I think it's fine. One thing I like about this pool is the way the powers follow logical upgrade paths. The only weird thing is that Partial Core has a slow effect, but when you upgrade to Final Core that slow effect disappears. I'm not a big fan of upgrades causing you to lose effectiveness in some way, so I'd change Partial Core's special thing to be an increase in range and cone width like Partial Radial has. That would make the upgrade paths follow very logical and easy-to-understand routes, described in this diagram.

Cryonic also has a graphical bug where the gush of frost and ice continues to emanate from where your hand was even after your character has moved his hand back to the neutral position.

Third, Void. Void's varieties have an eclectic upgrade path, and it's hard to see the logic in them. For one, Final Radial's upgrade over the rare versions is just an increase in the target cap. Having that many targets (32 to be precise) in one place is pretty rare, making it only marginally useful and leaving you with little reason to upgrade to Very Rare if you decide to go Radial. Also, Partial Core and Partial Radial have knockback effects that aren't present in the Final versions. Like I said, I'm not a fan of losing effects when you upgrade, and high-mag knockback in a huge AoE is unlikely to be appreciated by many players beyond simple novelty. I would remove the knockback entirely and just have the Void pool follow the same logical upgrade path as described in the diagram above. That would mean adding a control effect, of course.

What control effect? I see two possibilites: either Confuse, which could be fine since Void can't be used at range like other Judgements, or something new I'll call Sleep over Time. Sleep over Time would be like Static Field; a sleep effect would constantly be reapplied to a target over a period of time, so even if awakened the target could fall asleep again. Unlike Static Field though, the targets couldn't avoid the effect by leaving or being knocked out of an area. Hold is already in use by two of the Judgements, so this would help Void be unique. The downside of Sleep over Time is that apparently the acronym would be a bad word?

Lastly, Pyronic. The only real weirdness is that Partial Core is not much of an upgrade over regular Core. Total Core has the advantage of having the potential to do much more damage if all the ticks happen, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to pick Partial Core. The ticks do more damage than Core, but not as much more as Total Core gets. I'd fix this by giving it the increased range upgrade.

Destiny:

Ageless and Clarion are both great. The only thing is that you can use Ageless with 0 end and Clarion while mezzed, which are awesome features that really should be mentioned in the descriptions!

Even with the rez effects, Radial Barrier is rather unpopular. One change I definitely think should happen is rezzed targets should also get the Barrier defense buffs, even if it's only the basic, first-level Barrier Invocation and not the longer-lasting versions. Another thing that would help would be to double the max number of rezzes that can happen with each version, though that would probably mean the healing and end recovery would have to be reduced. That'd be fine with me, as long as the players can fight again.

Finally, and this is kind of a pipe dream, but since we can use the mez-protection Destiny when mezzed and the endurance Destiny while endurance-less, could we possibly use the Barriers with rezzes to self rez? Effectively using one of the powers' finite rezzes-per-cast on ourselves. If it did this I'd still expect it to buff people around us, even if we only got the weak version because it rezzed us, like I said before.

Lastly, Rebirth. Radial Rebirth is great, no help needed there. Core Rebirth, though, is a stinker. The HP buffs are too small to help much, and +HP in general is only really useful to ATs with high HP caps. A number of ways to improve the branch have been put forth:

• Just increase the HP buff. This is kind of boring, but it'd work. Personally I'm not a fan of it, but that's because I came up with:
• Add -Resistance to healing. That would make any further healing to the target from other sources heal for more. This would stay in the healing theme, and make Core Rebirth more unique.
• Make the power double as a self-rez. Basically you'd be able to use the power while alive or dead. Ideally it would still buff your teammates even if used to rez. Might not be technically possible, I don't know. Obviously if this were done then Radial Barrier should probably not get the same treatment so they don't step on each other's toes.

Interface:

Interface seems pretty good all around, but I have a hard time seeing the value of the non-Reactive varieties with such low stacking caps. That might just be me.

They need to be customizable, though. I don't know why they all have to be orangey-yellow, and an option for no effects would be much appreciated, too.

I don't remember that and I've run both contacts' missions multiple times.

Those are the only ones available.

Why not do this in reverse, too? Frostfire's looking pretty bad despite showing up all the time these days. He could use an upgrade.

Something like this! Presenting: less-fugly Frostfire!

Much better than normal Frostfire.

Edit: Fine, here's old Frostfire under the same graphics settings as "new" Frostfire. The only improvement that makes is that his particle effects hide some of his hideousness.