Shadow Metal

I'm laughing reading these comments. I can't imagine the number of people on this page that were about to go down that got caught by a thrown heal that kept them on their feet, so that they didn't need to turn all their toggles back on, and gave credit to an inspiration they clicked too late. It's true. Most well built toons on an eight person team doing regular missions or a speed tf on +0 don't need me. I find it pretty boring to be on those teams. However, any time I'm doing something that's actually hard, those toons are not as invincible as they think they are. Empathy can carry a bad team. You won't get credit, and they'll write threads about how unneeded you are, but they're wrong. Especially the "no tank needed" teams. Most of the time they don't. But as soon as they get hit once or twice, they're face down in the dirt. Let's be honest. The vast majority of builds are: run to mob, push a chain of buttons, repeat. With the tankier builds, it's stand there and repeat. Empathy with super speed trying keep a group of mavericks that each require their own fresh mob and are barely keeping their feet is a harder challenge than anything else in the game. There is the argument that emps aren't doing much in the way of damage. Aside from lore and judgment, I cycle through two attacks, but only when the team is stable, and they're interrupted by healing aura that is auto cast every three seconds. But that's not taking into account all those teammates who would be out of endurance if not for your buffs, or the people who would have gone down if not for the saving heal, or the people who can't rez themselves, plus the time it takes to re-up toggles. All not attacking. Please don't take any of this as an insult, but if you think empathy isn't a good end game set, you've either never played it or played it poorly. I also guarantee you've stayed upright because you were being consistently healed while you were cycling through your chain, and never realized the EMP kept you alive. Trust me. You're not watching the EMP, but they're watching you...

The patch that released the recipes. Yes, a bunch were Scrapeyard before the patch, but even after the drop of Aether and Merits shouldn't effect Recipes. Also, actively hunting can get you quite a few GM fights per day, especially playing multiple toons. I'm now over 500 and still just one drop.

I've killed over 450 Giant Monsters since the patch was released and only picked up one mini pet recipe. Either I'm just really unlucky or there's something wrong with the drop rate.

Adamastor Adamastor now only drops Rewards Merits to the same character once every eighteen hours; Amount of merits earned remains the same as before. I was setting a timer and popping over to fight him earning six merits an hour for a few hours a day, the few days a week, I have available to do this. I guess now I'll just go make a fire farmer and make 30 million per run instead. The acceptable exploit.

I'm sure the xp and inf are better, but is there any other reward for defeating and Arch Villain as opposed to an Epic Boss?

Building a Regen brute and I'm seeing possibly outdated info on the cap being 2500% for brutes. I built it out on Mids with both SOs & IOs at it peaks out at 2080% That's with both Energy Mastery and Force of Will and slotting way past diminishing returns. So what am I missing? Where is my blind spot?