Having since found the patch notes, some more comments...
-Midnight Squad and Cimerora story arcs: Yeah!
-Multiple builds: I still wish there was a way to share enhancements between builds. I can imagine ways it could be done without being exploitable.
-Supergroup color changes: Nice. I've definately run into the "damage repair" problem on Alexis.
-New IO sets: Very nice. The options for PBAoE damage always seemed a bit lacking, and the new options for holds will be nice as well. The wiki has information on these. ("Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold"?!) Don't think
I've got anything that Accurate Defense Debuff and Accurate To-Hit Debuff would apply to, but I'm definately interested in the Accurate Healing sets
for Transfusion.
-APP/PPP changes: Have yet to get anyone to those levels (except the first power on Eri), so not sure. Other than thinking dropping something as useful as a
ranged hold from Electrical Mastery seems a bit dubious. I may not have played blasters to any signficant degree, but I've played controllers enough to
know how much it can help to keep one particular annoyance out of the way for a while...
-Kheldians: Looks like an across-the-board improvement, so yay them. It'll probably be a while before I get one though, lacking 50s.
-Focused Accuracy and it's ilk: Not that I have reason to care, since I'm not getting them, but people are acting like this is a PvE nerf. Is this
"same total bonus in PvE" wrong in some unexplained way?
-Dark melee changes: Eri will benefit from both of these.
And the big things...
-Day jobs: In the guide to guides, I found the link to the dev diary post on these. "This bonus will take 10 days of log out time to earn 2 hours worth of
this bonus. However, once you earn the Professor badge you only need to be logged out 8 days to earn the 2 hour benefit instead of 10."
.... If that's typical, I don't think I'll be trying very hard to get day job bonuses.
If the new costume pieces require certain badges though, I'll make an effort for that.
Still, some of the bonuses do look interesting, but I hope more information becomes available on what it takes to get what.
-Merits: Lots of doom and gloom to be had here, with the number of merit awarded based on average time required to complete a task. I think it's a bit of a
dubious assumption that merit awards will *continually* be adjusted downwards. They may not have enough data *now* to decide on some, but at some point they
ought to be able to decide upon a fair number and leave it there. And at that point, is it really wrong that people who are capable of doing better than the
average get more rewards?
(Various numbers can be found in this
post, though I'm a bit concerned that there's no number listed for Moonfire. I like that tf.)
Story arc rewards are only given to the owner of the arc. Not sure how good an idea this is. Is a group doing an arc for each person as good in merits/time as
everyone doing their arcs solo? Things seem like they go faster in teams, but I'm not sure it's that much faster. And in flashbacked arcs it should be
possible to award everyone, since with their pseudo-TF structure anyone there at the end must have been there at the beginning.
"Farming" has a pretty high focus on AoE, but with this arrangement I could see soloing flashback arcs a definite possibility for a larger variety of
characters. (Though a fire/kin can chew through a lot of those quickly too, with imps.) Look at, say, Croatoa. 23 merits for those 4 arcs. I could probably do
it fairly easily in an afternoon on Eri. This could translate to 3-5 million inf worth of progress towards a rare recipe by current market standards.
Doesn't seem bad at all.
2 for Eden? That seems a bit dubious.
Selling SOs and common IO recipes for merits seems pointless. They just aren't worth it. Some of the salvage is also yaright, but 30 merits for a
multi-million inf salvage might not be too unreasonable. I'm not clear as to whether these are selected randomly or not though.
Random recipe: I do not feel lucky, punk.
Karma -knockback is a *lot* cheaper than Steadfast Protection -knockback. I don't get it.
Trap of the Hunter Acc/End doesn't sound worth 125 merits. It's selling in the market for less than vendor cost most of the time... Miracle
end/rech/heal looks excessive too.
Still, even if some of the costs are kind of strange, this'll make a lot of high-powered IOs more available and provide more options for getting them,
which looks good to me overall.
-Morgan. Also, lolpvp. ^_-
-Midnight Squad and Cimerora story arcs: Yeah!
-Multiple builds: I still wish there was a way to share enhancements between builds. I can imagine ways it could be done without being exploitable.
-Supergroup color changes: Nice. I've definately run into the "damage repair" problem on Alexis.
-New IO sets: Very nice. The options for PBAoE damage always seemed a bit lacking, and the new options for holds will be nice as well. The wiki has information on these. ("Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold"?!) Don't think
I've got anything that Accurate Defense Debuff and Accurate To-Hit Debuff would apply to, but I'm definately interested in the Accurate Healing sets
for Transfusion.
-APP/PPP changes: Have yet to get anyone to those levels (except the first power on Eri), so not sure. Other than thinking dropping something as useful as a
ranged hold from Electrical Mastery seems a bit dubious. I may not have played blasters to any signficant degree, but I've played controllers enough to
know how much it can help to keep one particular annoyance out of the way for a while...
-Kheldians: Looks like an across-the-board improvement, so yay them. It'll probably be a while before I get one though, lacking 50s.
-Focused Accuracy and it's ilk: Not that I have reason to care, since I'm not getting them, but people are acting like this is a PvE nerf. Is this
"same total bonus in PvE" wrong in some unexplained way?
-Dark melee changes: Eri will benefit from both of these.
And the big things...
-Day jobs: In the guide to guides, I found the link to the dev diary post on these. "This bonus will take 10 days of log out time to earn 2 hours worth of
this bonus. However, once you earn the Professor badge you only need to be logged out 8 days to earn the 2 hour benefit instead of 10."
.... If that's typical, I don't think I'll be trying very hard to get day job bonuses.
If the new costume pieces require certain badges though, I'll make an effort for that.
Still, some of the bonuses do look interesting, but I hope more information becomes available on what it takes to get what.
-Merits: Lots of doom and gloom to be had here, with the number of merit awarded based on average time required to complete a task. I think it's a bit of a
dubious assumption that merit awards will *continually* be adjusted downwards. They may not have enough data *now* to decide on some, but at some point they
ought to be able to decide upon a fair number and leave it there. And at that point, is it really wrong that people who are capable of doing better than the
average get more rewards?
(Various numbers can be found in this
post, though I'm a bit concerned that there's no number listed for Moonfire. I like that tf.)
Story arc rewards are only given to the owner of the arc. Not sure how good an idea this is. Is a group doing an arc for each person as good in merits/time as
everyone doing their arcs solo? Things seem like they go faster in teams, but I'm not sure it's that much faster. And in flashbacked arcs it should be
possible to award everyone, since with their pseudo-TF structure anyone there at the end must have been there at the beginning.
"Farming" has a pretty high focus on AoE, but with this arrangement I could see soloing flashback arcs a definite possibility for a larger variety of
characters. (Though a fire/kin can chew through a lot of those quickly too, with imps.) Look at, say, Croatoa. 23 merits for those 4 arcs. I could probably do
it fairly easily in an afternoon on Eri. This could translate to 3-5 million inf worth of progress towards a rare recipe by current market standards.
Doesn't seem bad at all.
2 for Eden? That seems a bit dubious.
Selling SOs and common IO recipes for merits seems pointless. They just aren't worth it. Some of the salvage is also yaright, but 30 merits for a
multi-million inf salvage might not be too unreasonable. I'm not clear as to whether these are selected randomly or not though.
Random recipe: I do not feel lucky, punk.
Karma -knockback is a *lot* cheaper than Steadfast Protection -knockback. I don't get it.
Trap of the Hunter Acc/End doesn't sound worth 125 merits. It's selling in the market for less than vendor cost most of the time... Miracle
end/rech/heal looks excessive too.
Still, even if some of the costs are kind of strange, this'll make a lot of high-powered IOs more available and provide more options for getting them,
which looks good to me overall.
-Morgan. Also, lolpvp. ^_-