Queen Nefertiti

What he said. The +1 shift comes into play at all times, but the +2 or +3 level shift only comes into play for Incarnate content like Dark Astoria missions and Incarnate trials/TF's. It can be a nasty shock running at +3 and raising the difficulty to match, then forgetting to drop it down when you go into "normal" content 🙂

They are, but you can only send one at a time. Hero merits are useful for saving time and annoyance.

How do you multi box? I've always wondered.

The sad part about that statement is that this game isn't really pvp orientated. I get why people like it, but it was only ever added to try to attract interest from asian players who love their pvp. It didn't work sadly. I was in a conversation with someone at 1.15am UK time this morning who was asking about server transfers because he wanted more pvp and reunion was dead. All I could advise was to look around and see what servers were busy in their timezone, Reunion isn't known for being a hive of activity middle of the night mid week when the UK and Europe are all in bed. I couldn't say what servers were good for pvp though as it's never been something that interested me or anyone I know. I'm actually the opposite of your statement, I find pvp painful and only pve. all I could recommend was to look on this forum and ask questions of players who enjoy that sort of thing. I don't hold out much hope for a challenging pvp experience though. Good as it is, Homecoming has a fraction of the player base it had on live, plus only a small fraction of that number actually actively does pvp.

So tonight we did a mothership raid which went flawlessly. The raid leaders were organised and people had a blast, with only a handful of faceplants. Getting it going on the other hand was something of a nightmare due to the max 50 cap on number of players in the zone. We had a full league of 48 players but a number of them couldn't enter the zone as it was full. We tried to zone into RWZ 2 but it was still difficult. Eventually some people quit the league and those already in the zone were able to fill the spots. I don't know if it was done because of pressure on the servers, but it does seem a bit daft to limit the number of players to almost the number in a full league. Mother ship raids are always popular and fill up quickly. People zone in from far and wide looking for an invite. My personal feeling is that the cap needs to be raised to at least 75. Is that possible? Or is it something we will have to live with because it commits too many server resources needed elsewhere? I get that homecoming doesn't have the same kind of unlimited server space as live did, but with a limit cap this low it's going to cause problems.

Just out of curiosity, why don't you want to run contact missions? Some of the storylines are fun and interesting. Plus you get merits which buy some good stuff. If you want repeatable missions try Shadow Shards. It's mostly rescue missions and collect fruit, but the enemies are very different and quite challenging. I'd advise fly though. It's the only zone in the game where recall friend can actually be out of range.

I actually quite enjoy his arc. I suppose it's my love for really dark fiction. I don't like gore horror like saw or hostel or that ilk of movie but I do love american horror story and that kind of twisted nastiness. The first time I did it I was actually impressed they went that dark. Almost all the rest is of the "beat opposition to a pulp and steal their stuff" kind of mission. It's nice to see a bit of actual evil instead of just naughty people being a bit bad. However i can see how people would find his storyline unpleasant.

Transcendent merits, that was the one I was thinking of 🙂

As far as I can tell the only thing you can swap between alts is merits. You can convert 50 into (I think it's into Astral merits without looking but don't quote me) so it's not too painful. I'd like to be able to send the other stuff too but you can't.

Yeah the simple answer is that the more of a set you slot in one power the more of the bonuses you get. If you slot them into different powers you wouldn't get the full benefit.

Switch to vigilante. Then you can go both sides and complete arcs. Sadly there is no way round it, but you should be able to blast through to the mission objective really quickly, unless it's a defeat all mission in which case just go -1/1 and blast your way through. They will probably con grey or green at most. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to finish 5 arcs and leave it open for new stuff to arrive. You are going to have to do it at some point anyway as you will be stuck for incarnate arcs when you ding 50. It's been a very long time since I had to do this so I can't remember if it exemplars you down to the highest level for the arc like ouroboros does, or if it raises the enemy to the highest level available. or both. Either way, unless you did some truly weird stuff when you last did a respec, you should be fine.

Trials have no cooldown. I've done a few back to back and never had a problem. As for crafting, craft away and don't worry about supplies. You don't need shards at all. I believe that's a legacy from the original way of crafting incarnate components. Nowadays you need threads and empyrian merits. Up to vet level 12 you get 20 emp merits every third ding and 120 threads on the other dings. After vet 12 you just get the merits every three dings until level 99. By vet 12 you should have everything slotted to at least tier three, if not tier 4. The only hard part is deciding which power to take, but it is usually pretty obvious with your power sets. Lore is probably the hardest to pick. Some people are worried about best pet for DPS, others pick it for character reasons, others pick because they just like the look of a particular set. One thing to be aware of, there are multiple recipes for each thing. Scroll down to find stuff easy to make. The top ones need hard to get supplies, the lower down ones are easy to get.

It sounds like you have too many unfinished story arcs. Look through your contacts for anything with a little book icon and complete a few of those before you try to get some new ones.

I've only blocked one person so far and that was because I accidentally had my /bind go off in help rather than team. I had been talking to someone about incarnate slotting and forgot to click back into team. He took it as his right to send me a /tell and say quite rudely (in my opinion) not to spam the help channel with my battle cries. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen in help and to be honest you normally move on and ignore the odd weirdness. Not this guy, so I apologised and blocked him. I've seen no end of out of context comments on help because someone was answering a question and forgot to change channel. I'm not sure what past experiences made this guy think it was ok to go to the trouble of actually messaging me. Probably having a bad day 🙂

I play a demon mastermind with empathy and sometimes in a busy mission I spend so much time healing and buffing I don't have time to keep summoning my pets as they die. In certain instances I become an empath rather than a mm as it's more important to keep the team squishies alive. As for autoheal I find the noise incredibly annoying but it's too useful not to use.

If the team is steamrollering along and acting like a natural disaster then it's not a problem. I buff where I can and heal as required. I generally only shout out when we are about to go after a particularly difficult AV, otherwise I just go in close and buff the melee characters. If someone particularly wants fortitude or clear mind then I prioritize them, otherwise I just try to keep it even handed. I do agree that the old days of tanks taunting, blasters pulling, empaths healing have become blurred, and play styles from the old days aren't always required now, but low and mid range teams still benefit from recovery and regeneration aura. Once you get your endurance and health sorted late 30's early 40's it becomes less of a problem, but even a level 50 can be hit by a sapper and experience that "oh poop" moment 🙂

I don't know anything about WH40K but the missions are fun and the enemy designs are great

I work security in an office block and there are long periods of downtime. I can't generally team as I have to keep going afk at the most annoying times, but it keeps me awake and alert 😛

I do the opposite. I target team window with the mouse then use the number pad to fire the power. The weird thing about this iteration is the lack of interest in empathy. I've had teams almost wipe because despite my best efforts they scatter round the map and end up out of range. I've had a couple of arguments about the fact I can't heal through walls. Also telling a team to gather for buffs and they instantly run off into the nearest mob. Sorry scrapper/tank/blapper but if you aren't in the circle when I click the button you ain't getting auras 😛

I do find the help channel useful, and often stop what I'm doing to help out. Most of the time it's simple things like "I forget, how do I get to Striga again?". Something I needed help with when I first got back on. Other times its interesting to read when people get into the deep stuff like procs and bonuses. I just find it bizarre when people get snippy because they aren't getting the answers the want.

So the other day someone was asking on help channel about what to do now they had hit level 50, and a number of people (myself included) talked them through how to get the alpha slot unlocked by Mender Ramiel, how to open the Dark Astoria arcs, how to pick a power that compliments the build or play style or character concept etc. The usual things that people are unsure of. I asked the same questions myself when I dinged 50 and the community was extremely helpful. Anyway, this person started to get very aggressive about the whole thing. Demanding to know why he had to grind for threads and empyrion merits, how it was ridiculous how difficult it was to get all the slots unlocked, how they weren't going to farm the same mission over and over again, etc. This was totally out of left field and floored everybody. Yes, you can farm the story arcs for rewards if you want to, but it's not a requirement. I've done trials and TF's of all levels, not just the incarnate ones, and got threads and merits and all manner of goodies. I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't found it particularly difficult or grindy to tier 4 all the slots on my mastermind. Sometimes threads are rare, other times they drop like rain. He stopped paying attention to what he was being told and just became unpleasant and rude. It went downhill from that point. I can't for the life of me understand why this guy had such a problem. I understand incarnate stuff can be intimidating to start with, I've had to literally walk someone who was vet level 10 through slotting their alpha step by step, telling them what to click, where to click, which items to craft, and how to slot it once made. After that they were flying and suddenly had an uber incarnate. They hadn't done anything because they were too worried about making a mistake. Once I walked them through the process they realized it was quite simple after all and went from nothing in their slots to tier 3 in everything. This isn't the first time I've seen weird replies to people helping. Sometimes it's almost worth stopping the mission and grabbing popcorn to concentrate on the arguing going on. It's the only one that stuck in my mind, but anyone else seen a help thread crumble into chaos?

Depending on the server and the time of day you may just be calling to an empty room. Sadly we don't have thousands on at all times of day and night like we used to. Try to join an active supergroup (SG). A lot of times you can get a team or a couple of team mates from an SG shout out. But again, they might all be at work, school or in bed.

Some of my best sessions has been with PUG's (pick up groups). Everything from the banter to the costumes to the play style can be inspiring and fun. It can take a while to get used to the dynamic, but after a short while you gel and know what a particular person will do. It's not uncommon to get a team wipe early on, then you all start to work together and magic happens :)

There is also the option of logging out and logging back in again if you don't want have a mission to change to, or don't want to pick a mission from the radio/ newspaper. That will normally reset the mission you are currently in. Missions "set in stone" as soon as someone enters the door, so that is why you sometimes get team leaders telling people to come out if they are still searching for more to fill the team. If you go in when there are 4 team mates and then fill the team to 8, it won't scale up to accommodate the new team members. The team leader has to reset the mission by picking a new one then going back to the old one. I've been in many teams where the difficulty has been so easy or so hard a team decision has been made to reset and alter the difficulty. If everything is grey and green, or everything is purple and the whole team wipes before you leave the first room then changing the settings can help.

I've recently started my incarnate on my empathy mastermind and I'm loving every minute of it. I haven't even given any thought to min/maxing, I've picked abilities that match my existing power set and play style. I've got demon pets as I'm a demon mastermind, team buffs etc. I didnt pick with thoughts of what will make me awesome, I picked with thoughts of what will make me more of who my character is. I do find the level shift quite disconcerting when I'm on a non incarnate team, but I'm there to help and have fun. Incarnate fragments drop regularly and at some point I'll probably get bored and retire the character, just bringing her out for special occasions. I did the same on live before all this incarnates stuff came out. I had a stable of 50's that came out once every few months for a tf or a raid. At the moment I still face plant on plus 2 occasionally (usually because of Malta) and once I can run through plus 4 with my eyes closed I know its time to say goodbye. I think at some point we are going to see a situation where team leaders ask for incarnates only, or for non incarnates only. Maybe not too often, but it's an option for people who want to play a certain way.