Vanden

There's literally no way to add unlockable cosmetic content to the game without that being true for someone.

If Absorb Pain and Resurrect were to actually be combined, I'd probably change the name. Probably to Rescue; that way we can still call it "rez." Then the flavor text would say that you recklessly heal your ally in a hurry in an attempt to rescue them from being defeated, in such a way that it injures you. However, if the ally is already defeated, you have to be more careful, resulting in no damage to you but a longer recharge.

Like many players on Torchbearer, I've been using Warp Zone for a few years as a fast travel hub. However, whoever made it apparently doesn't play any more, so it's missing a bunch of beacon destinations, and a few other useful SG base amenities. So, while I was setting up a base to hold salvage and IOs, I built a replacement travel hub with the usual crafting tables and vendors and whatnot and all the missing destinations. Hit up TRAVEL-12429 if you need to get somewhere quick and Long Range Teleporter is letting you down.

Seriously? The first beta build had vet experience removed from AE, the second build restored that but removed Empyrean/Astral Merit conversion to reward merits. Vet levels give free Empyreans. Surely you must be able to hazard a guess at what they're getting at.

I would rather not wait a month to get a merit payout every 3 vet levels on a new 50.

I'm not using Thrust (Super Speed goes faster with a 50+5 IO) and I'm able to run clear through fences.

Bonding with a kheldian causes all the fingers on a human's hand to fuse together and leaves them unable to use weapons. This is canon

It's a distinction without a difference. It still makes it harder to get rewards to buy IOs by just playing whatever content you like. Making it possible to buy incarnate salvage with AE Tickets seems like a better idea to me.

I don't think it's going to continue to be a reliable way to get inf. Converters (the "standard" merit-to-inf go-between) are in much higher demand than super inspirations, and for players that don't want to use the market there's no way to just buy IOs or recipes directly from a vendor without the merit conversion.

That's exactly what this change is, and I sure ain't happy.

I hate it. Converting Empyreans and Astrals to Reward Merits makes it much easier to afford IOs for your character and alts once you reach 50, just by playing the game, thanks to the rewards from vet levels. Any lapsed players who left with significant Astral/Empyrean collections, expecting them to function as stored wealth for buying IOs, is going to return to find that a significant chunk of their wealth is effectively gone.

I know what the patch notes mean. Right now there's no reason to convert Empyreans or Astrals into anything until you need them, so if you want to use them for rewards it's better to leave them as they are because they have a higher effective cap that way.

Removing Empyrean/Astral -> Reward Merit conversions is going to have a big impact on any lapsed player with significant amounts of merits in storage. What's going to happen to a player that returns after a hiatus and finds that a big chunk of their stored wealth is effectively just gone?

No, no, no! This change is absolutely terrible. Converting those Empyrean Merits from vet levels to Reward Merits was the single best thing SCoRE did to help us fund our alts' builds. Without this feature, the ability for max-level characters to earn IOs and other rewards from just playing the game is drastically reduced. I assume this is an alternative to disabling vet levels in AE so farming Empyreans from vet levels doesn't affect the market, but this is a much worse option.

Did you manage to find out the name of the window that pops up in trials and zone events to show progress on the objectives?

I don't think it was ever actually changed. Like you, I remember it scattering enemies every which way originally. But the only way the power could have done that way back at launch would be using a pseudo-pet, and I don't know why the original powers devs would go to all that trouble to make the power worse. It doesn't make any sense.

OF gives 4 pts of KB protection, and that comes with other set bonuses, and enhancement to the power you're slotting it in rather than being just a slot tax.

You know, this makes sense, because I have to say, Explosive Blast does knockback away from the caster for every target, it doesn't send them in random directions. Everything that works for Energy Torrent works for Explosive Blast.

The live crew are the ones that added that trick.

Exactly as indestructible as they already are?

Player powers are going to be getting the same treatment in a later pass, this first one just targeted mob powers. Enemies with defense that isn't equally distributed across all damage types are quite rare, anyway. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head.

TVTropes got that info from post-shutdown dev AMAs, so it's pretty much accurate as far as we know. Ice Mistral was going to try to go straight, but is ultimately just too selfish and would end up going back to Arachnos. Scirocco would be replaced by Mu'Vorkan as a patron.

Stalkers don't get Energy Protection.

Being able to use it to heal living players is Rebirth’s extra effect. You take that away, you’re taking away what makes it Rebirth.

Every rez has its thing (every rez except Empathy, anyway). Thermal's rez is also a nuke, Dark's and Electric's rezzes are AoE rez and control, Rad's rez is a huge buff of the target, Pain's rez is a huge buff on the caster. Why do you think Nature and Empathy's rezzes shouldn't have something like those?