Winterminal

In short, what Captiosus said above in his longer post: if certain powers (incarnate or otherwise) are being requested on a regular basis, you're doing it wrong. At least when compared to the rest of the game's design.

To clarify, or to give a disclaimer:

• The UG trial can be done without copious amounts of Clarion and/or Tactics.
• It can even be done without chowing on Break Frees (or it's upper tier brethren).
• Just because a number of people are calling for specifics does not mean everyone is.

But this game has a history of allowing success for hodge-podge teams, and up until recently, those who called for specifics ATs, or discriminated against others, were generally looked down upon. Now, I cannot call anyone calling for extra Clarion/Tactics for an Underground Trial anything other than "logical."

I wholeheartedly agree that these Incarnate-level enemies should be more of a threat than just big sacks of HP with a hard-hitting Brawl attack. In fact, I would be disappointed if they were not. And if there needs to be a gimmick to accomplish that, do it! But...

Give us a way to overcome said gimmick from within the mission.

The BAF's turret system is lethal if you choose to fight outside "the spot" but we have the option to disable it. The Lambda Sector's portal spawns can quickly overwhelm the league, but we have the option to grab temp powers that will close those doors.

The 2 War Walkers in the Underground are tough, no doubt about it. But we get temp powers to take it down the first time, and the second one simply requires that you keep it isolated and stationary in order to manage the Regen Lichen spawns. Neither of those two instances requires anything special from anyone's build. Likewise, the bombs in the tunnels have a ridiculously large blast radius, but as long as we stick close to Desdemona, we're safe.

I hate that confuse for the same reason that I hate the pulse: because there is no way to get around it from within the mission.

Well-played Texas Justice, I lol'd. That is a great picture.

Can we all also appreciate that the topic is originally started by NECROtron? Not that he did the necro-ing, just a funny coincidence.

What I'm worried about is the "necessities" for unlocking the next round of slots. My Incarnate desires have never been more than one or two of the Incarnate powers per character (a couple don't even have anything past Alpha). None have any Lore nor Destiny powers, and only one actually has those unlocked. Based on the pattern, all of the current slots will have to be unlocked before one can access the later slots. If there are powers released in the next wave that conceptually apply to one of my characters, I could have to power through up to 4 slots worth of iXP just to access them.

That's where that "iXP Delegation" feature would have been smart to input. People would be able to choose which slots they unlocked and which they just wanted nothing to do with. Too late now though I guess...

I am not hoarding anything, mainly because I have no desire nor reason to play the trials any more (I only wanted about a third of the stuff they put behind Christy and Michael). If/when more powers and/or rewards are released, I'll worry about purchasing them when that time comes.

Found a bootdisk for Snow Leopard, updating today. Still a little annoyed considering, while running Leopard, I never encountered the problems posted by Snow Leopard users. In fact, Leopard ran the program surprisingly smoothly. But I have yet to actually try the program on Snow Leopard yet, so I could be worrying over nothing.

Still debating whether or not to just fork over the $30 for Lion and be "up-to-date" so to speak.

Soul Mastery for Blasters if pretty damn phenomenal, considering you end up with 4 cones total, 2 of which are immobilzations (which means you can even keep bosses at a distance). Of the 2 PPPs you listed, I would go with that.

Of the APPs, I am a big fan of Cold Mastery. Snow Storm keeps things from running away, Frozen Armor is a decent defensive toggle, and Hibernate is my favorite panic button in the game. Flame Mastery isn't bad either with Rise of the Phoenix.

All things considered, Soul Mastery probably meshes the best.

If I had to guess, Von_Krieger is doing his best to get a write-up posted asap. But that was a long UStream, so he probably has a lot to type...

I am a Mac user, and I also am still using Leopard. And considering this is the first notice we are getting, that really sucks!

Having said that, as long as I can still play the game until I get my hands on Snow Leopard or Lion, I won't take too much issue with this. I will simply request that announcements like this be made a little further in advance next time...

I have leveled a Peacebringer over 50 levels, but I've never made it past level 12. Put that in your pipe and smoke it...

I usually start a character with an imagined concept, that may or may not be available in the game, and I don't create the character unless I can get at least a close approximation of the concept. Because of that, very few of my characters get rerolled once they are created. Granted, a concept may not last until level 20 at which point I will delete it. But there have only been a couple times that I've rerolled a character, and it is usually because a more appropriate powerset came out shortly after said character's creation.

The one example I can think of is when I created an Ice/Storm Controller, and then 1 month (and 22 levels) later, Cold Domination was released for Controllers, and thus he was rerolled as Ice/Cold.

A maximum of 20 global emails can be in a mailbox at any one time, and they obviously all come with the 60-day depreciation period.

From what I am gathering, it sounds like people see the Confounding Spores as a gimmick, one that they have to prepare for before attempting the trial. So here's another question:

Would you rather have something that requires prior preparation in terms of what you bring along on the mission, or would you prefer something within the mission that requires strategic planning and/or coordination to conquer?

For example, the Counfounding Spores. What if within that final room, there were 4 or 5 "Spore Pods" (that would be emitting the Confounding Spores, and thus, the confusion) that would be glowing objectives, requiring a synchronized shutdown (click), every 30 seconds OR each time a quarter mark of the avatar's life is reached (for a total of 4 clicks: 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%). Or would you rather have them in their current incarnation, requiring you to bring along some measure of confusion protection?

I realize I may have been a little unclear, and (looking back at it) definitely too long-winded.

I do not believe any specific AT is required for either one of the aforementioned trials, or any trial for that matter. I am sorry if it came across that way. I was merely trying to use current and relative in-game examples as evidence.

I just want to know how different people define a "gimmick" and where one would draw the line between

• An obstacle that requires forethought and strategy to overcome (as opposed to just trying to steamroll it)

and

• An obstacle that is implemented for the sake of difficulty, but does not necessarily require much forethought nor strategy to overcome.

In my definition, the former would be pulling the Lichen-Infested Extinction War Walker to a corner to limit the number of Regeneration Lichens you have to manage. The latter would be the Avatar's Confounding Spores PBAoE.

The impetus for this post was a bugged run of the Underground Trial that I led last night, the details of which can be found here. In brief, the timer ran out during the final battle, but then continued to count positively, thus giving us enough time to complete the trial.

Up until yesterday's run, a useful tactic had been to pull the Avatar of Hamidon from the final room into the tunnels, which seemed to eliminate or at least severely decrease the Confusion effect. This made sense in accordance with The Underground Guide, which reads as though the confusion spores are tied to that final room rather than to the Avatar itself. However, the actual move "Discordant Spores" appears to be a very-large-range PBAoE around the Avatar itself. It is possible the recent patch fixed what was previously a bug.

In any case, the Avatar's confusion aura got me thinking: at what point does something go from a strategy-requiring obstacle to a mere gimmick for the sake of difficulty? The two examples that come to mind as "walking that fine line" are the Antimatter Pulse in the Keyes Island Trial, and the Confounding Spores of The Underground Trial. And as far as I'm concerned, they are part of two very different trials.

The Keyes Island Trial is fairly formulaic by design. Each of the three reactors requires you to grab temp powers and kite Anti-Matter around to the individual terminals in order to deactivate them. Yes, the manner in which you obtain the temp powers varies with each reactor, but way in which you take down each reactor is the same for all three. Then you fight Anti-Matter at the end. And all the while, you are dealing with a damage pulse every 30 seconds.

The Underground Trial, by contrast, is chock-full of variable strategy. Each of the War Walkers requires a slightly variable strategy to defeat (in addition to your classic debuff-and-attack strategy). Every stage is something new: the crystal trap, the long DoT-Spore-Infested tunnel with the bombs that require you to either stay way back or next to Desdemona, etc. And it all culminates in an large-scale showdown with a huge monster, which happens to have a mag-20, 600ft. radius Confuse PBAoE.

In my opinion, a gimmick is something that nigh-requires a certain type of power, inspiration, etc., to defeat. A league running the Keyes Island trial needs to be able to heal, whether that is through slotted up "Health," green inspirations, Rebirth Destiny powers, or simply healing powers from your primary and/or secondary. If you cannot out-regenerate that pulse every 30 seconds, much of the league will spend an equal amount of time both in hospital and in combat. A league running the Underground Trial needs to be able to get past that confusion at the end, whether that's through Clarion Destiny powers, Tactics and powers like it, or Break Free class inspirations. If you cannot, the league can end up spending a chunk of time harming their allies around them, or at the very least, not affecting the Avatar in any way.

Now, some would call that front-loading strategy. If you know ahead of time that a certain enemy will require a certain ability to defeat, it is only logical that you would bring that ability with you. I would like to read about how you justify one over the other.

As a final thought: The Underground Trial's strategy, with the exception of the final battle, is completely self-contained. That is to say, you do not need any specific ability to tackle 95% of the trial, which cannot be said for Keyes Island as the Pulse triggers every 30 seconds.

I have a very open mind about this, and while I have given my opinion (as any good discussion should start), it can always be swayed. I want to know where you draw the line and why.

From The Underground Guide on the main site:

I led an Underground Trial this evening, and we succeeded where we should have failed.

First, we decided to pull the Avatar out of the room, into the tunnels, to fight the Avatar without having to deal with the Confuse effect. However, the confusion followed us to the tunnels. This tactic had been most effective up until today's patch. I am curious to know if this was working as intended, and is now bugged, or if today's patch "fixed" that and it is now working as intended.

Now the other bug. Due to our assumption that we would not be dealing with the confuse, we did not do so well once we had the Avatar in the tunnel, and eventually, I watched with despair as the last few seconds of the "Time Until Defeat" clock ticked away. It had been a damn good run up until then. But then, the clock hit zero... And then the clock started to tick upward, in a positive direction. Everyone was still on map, nobody had "failed." So, we all committed suicide, loaded up on Break Frees in the hospital, took down the Avatar, and got our merits.

TL;DR version: The Underground Trial did not fail when the clock hit zero during the fight with the Avatar, and the mass Confuse followed the Avatar out of the final room. Is the latter working as intended?