EarthWyrm

Agreed. I think that for the high-level content, the devs didn't so much make the game "more difficult" as they did "less easy".

For example, I used to grab the first mission of the "Television Invasion" arc through Ouroboros on my Brute just for chuckles. Freakshow and DE? Bwahahahahahaha! Set it to +whatever/x8 and plow through them.

Now? It's not the Super Stunners that bother me. Solo, they self-rez with so few HP that I laugh and throw one knockout blow to get full rewards for them again.

It's the freaking Quartz that get dropped by the newly-expanded level 50 DE lineup that are killers, though. Prior to I18, level 50 DE were Boulders, Granite, and Greater Devoured. The enemy group roster is now more consistent with what they are like at 40 or 45, with as many as 3 different DE "pets" per spawn, one of which provides a massive to-hit buff that completely negates multiple melee mitigation sets.

Is it "more difficult"? Not really. It's less easy, though, and perhaps more tedious. That's certainly not a mission I'd grab for fun any more, at least not with a defense-based brute (I don't think my dominator would notice, or care...). It's not something that suddenly requires IOs to be able to manage, since I've got those in spades and still made 2-3 trips to the hospital after I couldn't deal with a Quartz fast enough/caught a group with 2 Guardians in it and chose the wrong one to attack first/whatever. It's just a rebalancing of the enemy groups so that we can't quite trivialize the difficulty of the content in the way some of us had.

Just wandered in and did a roll on my troller after reading some of this thread. The 5 were a Numina ++, Oblit Proc, Impervium Armor: Resistance, Aegis triple, and something cruddy. By far the best roll I've gotten.

I've hit a couple of Numina's uniques now. No LotG or Miracle, but that's okay.

I don't like it with my 50s, because there's been such a glut of supply at max level that I've had multiple rolls where I couldn't possibly recoup my 20m investment if I "bought" the merit. If the LotG 7.5 remains the "peak" item in that pool, then I figure I have to be able to make more off any two sets of random rolls than I could make spending 2 HAMs buying and selling a LotG. That also has not consistently happened for my 50s.

I love it on my characters in their 30s. I figure my 50s will just save merits and buy specific things at specific levels for whoever needs 'em, unless the average price of max level recipes gets back up a little higher. All of which is subject to change as supply/prices stabilize.

Apparently so. I had 3 crafted Apocalypse in my email, a LotG 7.5, a LotG Defense, and a couple of other random things I'd sent myself after finishing a respec on my main. I've filed a petition and hope to hear something positive very soon.

A lot of non-premium pool C recipes are already way down. If it doesn't include text strings like "Numi," "Luck," "Oblit," or "Mira," a lot of Pool C's can be had crafted for 3-8 million. I was staring at crafted Posi procs yesterday that were selling for about what it would take to buy the salvage, and considering vendoring Scirocco procs because they just weren't worth the effort to craft and weren't worth the slots to put up raw.

I don't see purples changing a whole lot, though (other than in the general sense of, "If people don't have to pay as much for mid-range Pool C's, they'll have more to spend on purples"). By the time the new Praets get to the range where purples are slottable, they'll be generating purples. In the meantime, everyone who's been using 50s to grind tip missions to get HAM/VAMs has been (potentially) generating purples. If anything, I've been able to get a number of purples more cheaply than I could before the merge, so supply there seems fine.

It's quotes like this that make me miss the rep system.

Mud Pots, because it affects enemies, will get detoggled by stuns, holds (mag 2 protection from Acrobatics is not much), and sleeps (which you resist, so the duration is shorter, but if a sleep hits it's going to drop your Pots). Mud Pots are a bigger part of DPS than you might think.

I'm curious, since you seem intelligent and have thought through all the things you'll be missing out on without Rooted, why you asked for feedback. There's nothing wrong with concept builds, but if concept is always going to trump mechanics, nobody is ever going to be able to dissuade you. I have well over 1000 hours on stone armor characters, and would never consider not taking Rooted. I have it bound to the r-key and toggle it on and off when I need to move around, but it's incredibly important to survivability both solo and in teams.

Okay, okay - so I made an assumption based on context. Regdates aren't available in the "Reply" screen, at least in the version of Firefox I'm running. :P

And if you do lose your shirt, don't sweat it. I've spent (on purpose and otherwise) myself down to under 10m on my main before. You clearly have the knowledge to make it all back.

I sent the person I spoke to the cached page and she was able to confirm that the people who pre-ordered should still be getting the code and the mouse mat, they just haven't gotten enough codes to send out yet to everyone who bought (and aren't sure how many they will be getting).

Sounds like a typical communication breakdown. I'm sure it'll all work out for the best.

Apparently, the nice people staffing the 800 number customer service line are now telling callers that the codes for the enhancements do not exist, and if they were ever advertised on the Gamestop website, it was an error.

Quoted for extreme emphasis.

Whatever my tone in my earlier posts may have conveyed (I recognize that I sometimes come across as toolish), you really are doing something worthwhile here. I think that a lot of folks assume that the people with the early reg dates have some sort of mystical mojo that lets them/us make inf hand over fist. That's just not true. You're demonstrating that smart buying and selling can allow even low-level characters and new(er) players to get extremely wealthy.

Good on ya. =)

And I certainly could be wrong. I more often underestimate human behavior than overestimate it. Something about not wanting to be disappointed...

I think Fury's suggestion is probably the way to go. Post the final sale when you use screenies, not the initial listing. Anyone who's not math-phobic can still figure out what you listed it for, but it doesn't make the "easy-buy" price obvious to people who are just lazy and surfing for bargains.

If that were the case, wouldn't your steadfast have sold?

As long as you're happy with the realized price, that's really all that matters. I'm not criticizing you at all (sorry if it comes across that way). I've seen some really interesting examples of Market PvP in this niche over the last 7 months or so. One (or more) of the people who works it is really competitive and doesn't like having other people fiddling with their profit margins.

There's also a conversation to be had (and I think it's been had a few times) about "outing" niches. I dunno if this is the thread to have it in, though. I do suspect that you'd get angry PMs from people with no lives if you routinely outed "big" niches with screenies.

I think that's a difference in usage more than philosophy (the underlying philosophy would seem to be, "Buy low, sell high" for both of us), but I certainly see what you're saying. There's plenty of room for multiple approaches to getting rich.

Compared to buying for 30 and selling for 80+? It's good profit, but not as good as it was. And, like I said, I'm wary of these crashing hard if people take the attractive "5 random" option in large numbers once GR goes live, so don't want to be stuck with stock. I'm moving into premium Pool A and Pool B for a while.

I wouldn't think there's much real "flip" room on those, given what they had to buy them at. Maybe they could get 80 out of them and pull a 5m profit. More likely, they saw a competitor showing precise sell points and decided to market PvP you to minimize your profits and try to drive you away from selling that enhancement. Advertising a niche on the forums will often get that kind of reaction from others who have been working it.

Indeed. A very good rule.

Those Numi's used to be hugely profitable. There was a time, 2-3 months ago, that there was one recipe for sale and no crafted versions. I had 2 crafted ones in my tray. That was nice.

I think I probably built 3-4 billion in profits using mainly Numina's Heal/Recharge over the last 7 months on a single character. But it's gotten way too busy and the margin has, if not disappeared, then at least become relatively not worth the effort. (Is it sad when the prospect of buying for 50 and selling for 70 seems too small? It probably is. I'm so greedy and ebil.) With that particular recipe being one that will be generated in quantity by random HAM/VAM rolling, I'm letting it go for the time being.

I guess that qualifies as a BUY IT NAO! bid. I'm out.

Indeed. It's a bummer, but if that's the worst thing that happens to me all day, I'll be happy.

SS/EA is what mine is. It leveled well (all those years ago...), solos like a fiend, and is a good enough farmer (footstomp + dark oblit is not shabby) to keep me happy and well-fed. To be fair, I've also put tons of time and inf into his build, so he's soft-capped to all but psi/toxic and has over 70% global recharge in his current iteration (next iteration will take him over 80, I think, with an improved damage bonus from sets as well). You can soft-cap cheaper than the way I went, for sure.

Hugely fun character, all told.

There are those who will tell you that DM is about the best thing to pair it with. The to-hit debuffs from DM work nicely with your defenses.

I love my /EA brute. By far the most play hours of any character I've ever rolled in City.

I disagree. Archie is conducting a case study, not seeking to make a statement about how long it will take people in general to hit the inf cap. Validity is dependent on the conclusions that you want to draw. As long as the question is about Archie's journey and not players-in-general, oddball datapoints like this are just part of the ride.

This.

Which is to say, "No."

I've slotted it on several characters. Particularly those that don't have a ton of +def powers, it's a great place to drop in a Kismet: Accuracy, a LotG 7.5, or for many squishies a Karma: KB protection. Since it accepts universal travel and jumping sets it's also a fine place for a Winter's Gift unique or an Unbounded Leap +stealth (though I usually end up with the +stealth in sprint...). It's a great utility power, and when you're building some sets (like /EA) toward the soft cap, it's actually worth slotting for defense as well.

Just to strengthen your argument a bit more, Synapse is 58 merits, +2 for Babbage.