Incarnates Question

[drgantz]

Someone told me that your choice of powersets doesn't matter much, because after  you get Tier 4 in all Incarnate slots, you obliterate almost everything that you hit, and take very little damage.
Do you agree with this?  If this is true, are powerful IOs and ATOs not that important either?

[Bill Z Bubba]

No, I don't agree. It'd be an interesting experiment, though. Get fully T4ed, then crank up a second build with nothing but basic IOs. I suspect that there would a drastic change in performance for the worse. With around a 99.99% certainty.

[OmegaOne]

ATs, Enhancements and Powersets still matter, but the Incarnate Powers CAN help mitigate some of their weaknesses or "patch in the holes" to one degree or another.

[Black Zot]

1 hour ago, drgantz said:

Someone told me that your choice of powersets doesn't matter much, because after  you get Tier 4 in all Incarnate slots, you obliterate almost everything that you hit, and take very little damage.
Do you agree with this?  If this is true, are powerful IOs and ATOs not that important either?

 

Definitely disagree.  Incarnates can smooth out some issues, but ultimately they're more of a force-multiplier for your existing stuff than a build in and of themselves.  Hybrid, Judgement, and Lore all have far more downtime than uptime.  Destiny's full power is brief.  Alpha and Interface add oomph to your existing powers, and their effectiveness is directly tied to the power in question.

 

Also, if you exemp below 45 for any reason, your Incarnate powers outright shut down.

[Inco]

Strong IO builds make a huge difference when solo or in small teams.

 

Powerset selection is more of a wash; some are always going to be contributing, some will be superfluous in certain situations. Many can be too slow to really do their thing in teams that are steamrolling.

 

In full teams, and even more so in leagues, it can be really easy to feel like nothing (or very little) you do has any impact because incarnate powers are flying left and right, or someone with quicker animation times/more AoEs and a strong build that can happily solo at +4x8 obliterated a spawn before you even got to it. Or because everyone in your team is buffed to the high heavens by some highly effective support character(s). Or etc.

 

So I'd agree that the endgame group content certainly can feel that way, even though it isn't literally true. Whoever told you that could easily have been saying it flippantly.

[nihilii]

14 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

No, I don't agree. It'd be an interesting experiment, though. Get fully T4ed, then crank up a second build with nothing but basic IOs. I suspect that there would a drastic change in performance for the worse. With around a 99.99% certainty.

@Dr Causality had the fun idea some time back to try a +1/x8 MoITF with incarnates but only SO/HO slotting. Proved to be a decent challenge. I managed it on +0/x8 personally. SOs/HOs + Incarnates + insps roughly put you on par with IOs + no incarnates/insps, IMHO. There's definitely a stark difference and it's an intruiguing change of pace, to try to optimize a build with SOs and Incarnates.

Edited February 9, 2021 by nihilii