Why have Incarnate switch cooling times?

[MsSmart]

I understand the current mechanic if you are in a team and if anybody is fighting, you can't switch... this seems dumb too me

If you want to switch between say a destiny ageless to say barrier, you really can't do it inside the mission, but why? You already have the abilities, its like I am using my right hand pistol, so I can't switch to my left hand pistol until the fight is done, seems utterly dumb to me.

When I am by myself and not in a fight, there is no cool time timer to let me know, its ok, you can switch now.

 

But frankly, why the cooldown time? seems to me, stopping during a fight, maybe move away and switch to another incarnate power version should be allowed, its like getting away from the fight to reload your pistol or to draw a backup weapon.

 

This is only a query, trying to understand the why in a practical sense.

[Maagic]

probably a PVP exploit prevention or something

[Chance Jackson]

It's very frustrating as is what happens when you switch builds(the game treats it as if you have just used all your abilities)

[Andreah]

Because if it weren't like that, it would be possible to exploit it massively. Most good intentioned people wouldn't, but enough would that it's one of those nice things we can't have.

[srmalloy]

22 hours ago, MsSmart said:

You already have the abilities, its like I am using my right hand pistol, so I can't switch to my left hand pistol until the fight is done, seems utterly dumb to me.

Pop your Ageless, one second later switch to and pop your Clarion, then one second later switch to and pop your Barrier. Now you've got all the bonuses from both Ageless and Ciarion, with two minutes of Barrier running. 

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Pop your Ageless, one second later switch to and pop your Clarion, then one second later switch to and pop your Barrier. Now you've got all the bonuses from both Ageless and Ciarion, with two minutes of Barrier running. 

Additionally, and unlike all other powersets or pools, you can eventually craft and have access to every single incarnate ability...

Edited Thursday at 02:55 AM by biostem

[Major_Decoy]

They could treat it like switching builds: You have to wait one minute between switching builds and all of your powers need to fully recharge right after switching.

[tidge]

It would be ripe for explotation. It would be the same for fast-swapping builds without incarnates.

[Bob]

If you just used the ability, then it makes sense that if it is on cooldown, you either wouldn't be able to switch until it was off of cooldown, or the swapped ability would still retain the previous one.

 

As for in mission, while I cannot speak to what the devs had in mind, I do tend to think that if you could swap in the mission so easily, then you could retroactively trivialize a lot of content in the game.  Incarnates already overpower everything in the game as is, not sure it would be wise to allow us to stomp it into the ground even further without even a loss of time to compensate for it.  At the end of the day, all things get won in this game, it is just a matter of how much time it took.  So it stands to reason that the cost would be time for swapping incarnates.  Surprised they let us swap at all for free, tbh. 

[MsSmart]

19 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Pop your Ageless, one second later switch to and pop your Clarion, then one second later switch to and pop your Barrier. Now you've got all the bonuses from both Ageless and Ciarion, with two minutes of Barrier running. 

it will still have to wait for the cooldown if used, but if it has not been used and is available why n0t be able to switch to a different destiny that may be more useful to the team?

 

[golstat2003]

On 10/29/2025 at 9:04 AM, Andreah said:

Because if it weren't like that, it would be possible to exploit it massively. Most good intentioned people wouldn't, but enough would that it's one of those nice things we can't have.

 

It would pretty much make farming trivially easy. I and many others who farm regularly would have a field day if you could switch incarnates with no delay or cool down.

 

Actually it would also make a lot of iTrials trivial also.

[golstat2003]

5 hours ago, MsSmart said:

it will still have to wait for the cooldown if used, but if it has not been used and is available why n0t be able to switch to a different destiny that may be more useful to the team?

 

 

Yes you can do this now and it requires thought and planning. Lifting the cooldowns would pretty much mean there is no need for thought or planning.

 

People already complain about how overpowering incarnate abilities are. 

 

I would not want to see the nerfs the devs WOULD implement if they ever allowed this.

Edited 22 hours ago by golstat2003
typo

[srmalloy]

11 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

I would not want to see the nerfs the devs WOULD implement if they ever allowed this.

At a minimum, removing the 5-minute cooldown and the combat lockout would require making all incarnate powers for a given slot share a cooldown timer, the way the various self-rez powers do now. This wouldn't be sufficient for the Alpha and Interface slots, though, since those are always-on effects, and being able to swap between different boosts at will to tailor your slotting to the opponents you're facing would be way overpowered.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 10/29/2025 at 9:04 AM, Andreah said:

Because if it weren't like that, it would be possible to exploit it massively. Most good intentioned people wouldn't, but enough would that it's one of those nice things we can't have.

 

I agree.  The answer I have to the OPs question is:  you can't do that probably for the exact same reason that you want to do that -- it will make your character much more powerful and the PTB don't think that's a good idea.  And I agree with them as well.