Why do we have to have an inspiration tray?

[Octogoat]

Lately I find that inspiration trays are useless. They get filled up with things I don't use or don't need. Why not replace the inspiration tray with an applaud button that grants a random beneficial buff to your teammates? When I was first starting out inspirations were useful but I quickly outgrew them as I got SOs. (I only use SOs because they help me kill Frostfire more quickly). I'm sure more people would team for an applaud button than a chance at random inspirations for selfbuffs.

[lemming]

I'm constantly using them in challenging content, but there are team inspirations if you want to "applaud" I suppose.

[Ukase]

When I'm zipping through content for mission objectives only, I don't need or use them. But - when I'm playing at +4/1 on a level 5, I use them all, and wish I had more. 
As for why my level 5 is playing at +4, it's a stupid idea I got from Yomo. Matthew Habashy's arc is great for it, because you really aren't fighting that many mobs. And when you call in the last mission, it's a nice chunk of XP. 

[Hopeling]

Inspirations are a fundamental game mechanic. Even when you don't need anything else, you can still combine them to make reds for more damage. But if you have no reason to use inspirations at all, that probably just means you can turn up the difficulty instead.

[Snarky]

sell all your insp drops and donate the funds to @Snarky  Where we are making tomorrow better!

[Forager]

Please tell me how you outgrew reds! I keep a lot of the others disabled on some characters to avoid the tray filling with trash, but how did you kick the red habit? 

[JKCarrier]

I'm genuinely glad for you that you don't ever need extra help in your missions. But some of us do.

[Erratic1]

7 hours ago, Octogoat said:

Lately I find that inspiration trays are useless. They get filled up with things I don't use or don't need. Why not replace the inspiration tray with an applaud button that grants a random beneficial buff to your teammates? When I was first starting out inspirations were useful but I quickly outgrew them as I got SOs. (I only use SOs because they help me kill Frostfire more quickly). I'm sure more people would team for an applaud button than a chance at random inspirations for selfbuffs.

 

It is a slow motion game of Tetris. Delete things you do not use or save them up until you get three-of-a-kind and then convert to something useful.

[Logansan]

I trend not to use inspirations much at all, only when they are really needed. Nothing to do with the mechanics of this game but I developed a pet hate from other games about needing to use consumables all the time. With early games it was just an annoyance, but later many games started to give you no real choice but to constancy use consumables and those consumables either required in-game currency or real money. Not to mention requiring microtransactions to buy the space needed to hold them.

 

With COH this was never the case, but I never got out of the habit of not spending consumables where possible.

[WumpusRat]

48 minutes ago, Logansan said:

I trend not to use inspirations much at all, only when they are really needed. Nothing to do with the mechanics of this game but I developed a pet hate from other games about needing to use consumables all the time. With early games it was just an annoyance, but later many games started to give you no real choice but to constancy use consumables and those consumables either required in-game currency or real money. Not to mention requiring microtransactions to buy the space needed to hold them.

 

With COH this was never the case, but I never got out of the habit of not spending consumables where possible.

I'm fairly similar. I rarely use them, and usually too late when I do.

I'll end up face-down looking at my tray of purples and greens and think "Hm, I should have used some of those, I guess. Oh well."

[MoonSheep]

unless roleplaying or playing to concept, not using inspirations is a materially significant self-inflicted injury to any alt 

 

i prefer a min/max playstyle with maximum output, i stock up before every mish with medium or large purple and reds

Edited 4 hours ago by MoonSheep

[tidge]

I've long thought the only way Inspirations "break the game" is when a high-level character exemplars down to PUG with low-level content. Obviously set bonuses from slotting helps, but I can run relatively poorly slotted high-level characters through something like a Synapse with relatively little issue. It's pretty easy for just about any AT to "take the alpha" after popping one (or more) Inspirations.

 

The Inspirations are a HUGE help solo, especially when leveling up. There are a handful of bosses/EBs/AVs that come up in story arcs (some low level, like Mr. G) where at at-level character will probably need one (or more) inspirations to finish a fight. The Kheldians get a couple of level 30ish arcs where a Council transformation of the map's final boss can be a dream-wrecker,

[Maelwys]

I "save" most of them for later; and chug the rest.

Typically Column #1 is a Red, a Yellow, an Ultimate and a Wakey.
Column #2 is Purples.
Column #3 is a mixture of Greens and Blues (typically only 1-2 blues).
Column #4 is Breakfrees. Although on a melee toon I only tend to keep one emergency Breakfree; and use this for extra Reds/Oranges.
Column #5 is left empty, so it's where my free-use skittles drop.
I basically have my movement and targeting keys bound to "inspexec_slot 5"; so that as more skittles drop I immediately chug them.

If I'm fighting an GM etc I'll just start manually combining them and/or open the AH or my global email to fill half my tray up with Reds.

[lyra]

you can deactivate inspiration drops via p2w vendor.i do that with small inspis around lvl30.