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• Was it Heroes only, or did any Villains experience it?
  
  I only played heroes throughout the test. I experienced the zoning problem four times.
  
  
  
• Did you exit by clicking on the portal, or did you wait for the timeout to kick you from the zone?
  
  Each time I waited for the timer to run out.
  
  
  
• Did you just enter the first instance and stay there, enter the second and stay there, or enter the first and then transfer to the second?
  
  During the first Winter Lord spawn (when both heroes and villains entered the same map), I traveled across instances to defeat the Winter Lord again. Time ran out in the second instance. In the subsequent attempts, I experienced the zone bug from the first instance.
  
  
  
• There was a short period when entry to the second did not work at the white present. Did you try and enter the second zone during this period and fail?
  
  I did not experience this bug.

Particulary, I'm interested in hearing about the old Hami raids and why people feel the new Hami is gimicky. I never had the chance to experience one as I was farm from level 50 when the changes were instated. From my understanding the new Hami is a bit easier and more forgiving on the AT's that can participate.

But what was it like back then... when you had to walk up hill both ways in the snow for a Hami-O?

I would throw Dimension Shift out the door so fast that it would tear the fabric of all realities. The rest of grav is salvagable, though I would strip it of its mostly useless secondary effect (-runspeed, why?) and maybe buff the damage in exchange. Wormhole would also be moved to 12.

I would invoke the "Reverse Cottage Rule". I have Cottage. It summons a nice little cottage that is completely useless. One day I log in and Cottage now boosts my defense and resistance. I am pleased. Cottages be damned.

I know I've said it before, but I'm glad to see some others reiterate the sentiment. The phase state has to go. It's one of the worst mechanics in this game and to see it attached to an special event is disappointing. The are other options that I would consider, for example a storm that knocks players back. If you must keep the phase state then consider having him use the hibernate animation so that it is more obvious what is occurring.

That said I did see some positive changes. It seemed friendlier to small teams than in the first run. The change in difficulty coupled with the greater merit reward is very welcome. Also, I like seeing the Winterlord spawn tied to Frostling defeats. Winterlord hunts last year happened in low-level zones because it meant people could ignore the spawns, much to the chagrin of the natives of that zone. I'm sure hunts will still happen in low-level zones, but it's good to know that there will not be so many roaming spawns waiting for innocent by-standers.

After 4 runs at it this evening, here's my feedback:

First Run: The Run with GF and villians.
This was the only run in which we spawned two instances of Lord Winter's Realm. After defeating Lord Winter in the first instance many people were able to use the cave portal to travel to the second and defeat Lord Winter again, reaping additional awards.

Through some GM wizardry Ghost Falcon ensured that red and blueside defeated the Winter Lord in quick succession. This was the only instance that we created out of four that had heroes and villains in the same zone. There didn't seem to be any trouble from what I saw, but there was little time to test and I had no pets.

Second and Third Runs:
Nothing too eventful with these runs. I would estimate that we had at least one full team and a team of 4-5. The "resistance equalizing" seems to have made it easier for smaller teams. We didn't have nearly as much as trouble as we experienced in the first test.

Fourth Run: Did we break?
During the fourth run Lord Winter did not enter his phased state at 50% health (maybe it was 75%). He did summon the Guardian. I think we *might have* held him, preventing him from activating his phase state. Just a guess though. In any case, he didn't phase.

Speaking of phase, even though many of us knew how the Winter Lord works and broadcasted his phase states many players continued to attack him. These are players at least knowledgeable enough to access the test server. I forsee some frustration on the live servers.

I'll edit for more impressions later.

Took down another Lord Winter with the same bug returning to Steel. Loc 2318.3 3.6 1517.1
A third run spit me out at the following loc: 2624.8 -165.2 1671.1
Another run, location: 2383.9 8.7 1389.6

Is the ability to travel from Winter Lord Realm 1 to Realm 2 intended? It allowed many of us to enter the realm and fight a second Lord Winter, scoring the additional rewards for doing so.

Publicly, lawful good. Privately, chaotic evil.

Well, here we go. I won't necessarily try to disuade you from rolling a fire/kin, but I will encourage to explore all the different venues that control has to offer. Mostly, fire/kins are built for one thing and that thing is farming. So, to your questions...

1. Potentially a high contribution. You have a very potent heal, three nice buffs in Speedboost, Increase Density, and Fulcrum Shift, and the ability to refill your teams blue bars very quickly with Transference. A well played fire/kin can keep most of the team near their damage caps, offer mez protection for squishies, and help with endurance issues. Unfortunately, many farm builds will skip speedboost and ID because they are ally buffs and do nothing for the farmer.

2. Solo you will do quite well against large mobs of enemies if you face the right enemies and build for smashing/lethal defense.

3. Fire is an endurance heavy set, but Transference offers you a way to replenish your blue bar on demand. Some /kins will respec out of Stamina once they reach Transference. However, it requires you to pay closer attention to your endurance and stop burning things for a moment.

4. AoE damage is excellent for a controller. Your damage will come from two sources. Hotfeet, a PBAoE, damage toggle with a run slow and fear effect and your AoE immobilize. The immobilize is essentially for maintaing containment damage on hotfeet.

As to your final question, there isn't a simple answer. Are they the best at dealing AoE damage? Probably yes. Are they the best at locking down mobs? No. Are they best controller to have in an AV fight? Probably not. Can they solo GM's? Not that I have seen.

In my opinion, fire/kins tend to draw in a lot of newer players because they see them dealing epic amounts of damage or solo'ing mobs set for 8 players. However, they are also somewhat late blooming with one of the set defining powers coming at level 38 and often make use of IO sets to achieve an appropriate level of surviability for what they do. You may find the first 38 levels painful to work through and might not enjoy gathering the sets neccesary to soft cap your lethal/smashing defense. It depends on what you consider fun. For a lot of new fire/kins they hop into it not knowing that the payoff comes much later.

I once made a brute. His bio was: "Harvey Young, chairman of the slaughter, killed his wife and daughter." The idea came from some Swedish pop song. I couldn't tell you what they were saying, but that's what it sounded like.