Fulmens

Blasters start out very, very easy to play.

At some point they get a lot tougher (25-35 depending who you ask.)

Details in my miniguide (internal links broken), in sig.

Adeon and Talionis:

I sort of agree that Vigilance is a nonpower (well, sometimes it helps, but I agree that those are unpredictable moments and rare ones. ) However, to replace Vigilance with a power that improves Defender performance, shouldn't you first prove that Defenders need a performance boost?

I'm going to take Aggrovac, the 6 million inf man, out to try a 0/x8 radio mission against CoT, at level 50.

No, it's not "SO's only", but I did this build for 6 million inf back in I9, over a weekend, so surely it can't be THAT overpowered?

EDIT 1:
Huh. Can't do it.

Lemme try Boltcutter- L50, SO only, BS/inv scrapper that I also haven't played for a year or two.

EDIT 2:
Nope! Died twice on the first spawn. Might have done better if I hadn't waited so long to hit Unstoppable.

EDIT 3: Managed it with Niefelherse, an Ice/Axe tanker. Admittedly, that's an Ice/Axe with a Numina and Regen unique, a Kismet +Acc, 200 bonus HP, +25% recharge, and a few other minor things in there. And some of those fights went long enough for Hibernate to be needed, used, and recharge.

EDIT 4: MAnaged it again with Orbital Bombardment, an IO'd out L44 Dark/En tank. It merely requires time.

Which characters do you run, SO's only, at +0/x8? I'm curious. All of them?

It can be smart. Depending on the set.

Most set bonuses are nearly worthless. The "sleep resistance", for example: it shortens the duration of sleep powers on you. However, the cap is 100% and that cuts the time slept by a factor of 2. (50% would cut the time by 1.5, to 2/3 of the original time.) So 2.2% sleep resistance is pretty worthless.

Some set bonuses are worthwhile in some cases- for instance, stone tanks like runspeed bonuses but very few other people do.

The "overall winner" set bonuses (useful to almost everyone) tend to be recharge, regeneration, HP, various types of Defense, and a couple that I'm surely overlooking.

However, there is another aspect to IO sets: a set IO that does two or more things is "better" than a generic IO, just from the standpoint of the percentages.

Let's consider a level 45 Accuracy and Damage combination, and very slightly oversimplify. An IO that does only one thing, at level 45, gives 40% benefit to that thing in most cases. an IO that does two things (Acc/Dam or Dam/Rech for instance) gives 25%/25%.
If you have one generic Accuracy IO and one generic Damage IO, you get 40% Acc and 40% Damage. If you have two Accuracy/Damage IO's from different sets, you get 50% Acc and 50% Damage.

So slotting a set helps often helps even if the set bonuses are no good. I don't remember Tempest in particular.

My understanding of the idea, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the recipe is of a vague level; when crafting it, you select the desired level and lock it in. So a "Kinetic Combat Acc/Dam recipe" could be turned into a level 35 Kinetic Combat Acc/Dam IO, or a level 30 Kinetic Combat Acc/Dam IO, or whatever, but once crafted it cannot be changed.

I don't see any problem with it. It would fix the "hollow market" problem, certainly. One possible tweak is to let the IO be crafted anywhere in its current range (see here) Celerity: Stealth, for instance, overlap all three ranges. Kin Combat overlaps the 10-25 and 25-40 ranges.

We are already close to having something like this, but much worse; almost everything generated is at max level. At one point I tried (and failed) to "corner the market" in something that was rare Pool A or Pool B, and found that there were about as many recipes generated at level 50 as at levels 35-49 COMBINED. Maybe more, I don't remember the details.

I'm interested but skeptical. And want to hear more.

Let's say that in this universe, I get a Kinetic Combat Acc/Dam, level 35. In a parallel universe where your idea was enabled, would I get a "Kinetic Combat Acc/Dam, midlevel"? Or would it be just an "Acc/Dam, Midlevel"?

Well, I'm a big fan of Fire Blasters with some sort of stealth. You can 2-shot big groups of minions (even con, +1 with either Build Up or Aim, +2 using both) and finish off the remainder with your significant single-target attacks.

Edit: You're squishy as heck if you do this. But it's ... exciting, for sure.

The way I think of it is this:

If you go from an SO'd out build to a frankenslotted build you generally get around 40% more performance. (that's an indefensible number, aka a guess.)

If you go from a 20 million inf frankenslotted build (or less) to a 500 million inf build full of shiny set bonuses, you get maybe 10% or 20% more performance.

If you go to a 5 billion inf build (I wish that was a rhetorical number) you might get some significant improvements.

I'm a guy with a few billion to throw around and I frankenslot almost everything I play. Once you've frankenslotted you'll notice a huge difference. I built *one* high-end character, capable of soloing weak AV's. I haven't even gotten the high-end character to 50, while my regular characters are thundering along like nobody's business. Obviously this advice is most useful if you're me, but you don't need to spend a chunk ton of money on most builds for it to work well. Frankenslotting will get you a little more recharge, a little more end reduction, and a little more accuracy than what you have now and you'll lose NOTHING. Also, for Energy blasters only, you can take all those slots you freed up and put these into them, for almost free.

... and if you walked into the middle of a knitting circle, they'd probably be talking abtruse stuff but they could set you up in an hour or two with something that a beginner can do.

Well if we're going back to the pre-IO world, Clouded, you can use Hover instead of Acrobatics with no loss of firepower.

Personally I did it with teammates, and by slotting a lot of END reduction (yes, in my attacks too.) In return I got one of the hardest to kill, biggest-PBAOE sets out there.

... but, hey, if you only want something that's as tough as Invuln you can run only some of those toggles.

It's a little harder v-side. I should check base salvage to see if anyone's keeping a market going in anything.

the whole PRICE is negligible. I mean, if you've gotten one piece of Rare Salvage and sold it for half a million, that funds a thousand buys at 500 inf.

[the tier 1 blast is...]

Wotta coincidence! Who could have seen that coming?

... yeah, you'll pretty much remember those guys when you run into 'em.

OK, time to do some math in public... I'm not going to be anywhere near optimal, I'm sure, but here are my numbers.

From the Luck Charmers episode, I have a note that I beat, over 10 minutes, 210 Zombies [and shamen] giving 21 Zombies Per Minute, or ZPM. (I was running a Fire/Elec blaster, I think. Maybe my Fire/Ice.) Exemping a 36 blaster to 24, I have the following raw data:

EDIT: I had patrol XP. This is now taken into account in the final step.

Even-con BP zombie: 726 XP
Even-con BP shaman: 3630 XP
Even-con spectral: 871 XP

Even-con Sky Raider captain: 2419 XP

ASSUMPTION 1: If 10 of my 210 "zombies or shamen" were shamen, I'd have the XP equivalent of 25 ZPM. I am assuming at least 5% shamen.

At level 36, it is 855K XP to level.

ASSUMPTION 2: I can reliably get that same 25 ZPM against +1 enemies (I was fighting -1 and -2's for the drops, at the time) and I can do it forever. Zombies are fire-weak and I was using AOEs extensively.

Therefore I would get (726*1.3) or about 940 XP per zombie. I have notes that say
You have defeated Dry Husk
You gain 984 experience and 230 influence.

I presume that is for +1s although, at one point, I saw +2s in that mission.

So it is 869 zombies to level, or 34.75 minutes.

(edit to add) Multiplying time by 1.5 (for "bonus XP has run out"), I get 52 minutes, or .867 hours.

Your theoretical time for level 36 is .94 hours.

Is this enough of a disproof or do you want me to mow down a good chunk of Dark Astoria with a timer going?

The ugly truth is, it's more cost-effective to wait till fifty and roll then, which produces max-level recipes, which sell for a lot more than "just under max". If you're not rolling in the 10-14 range, then rolling 35-39 is probably a lot better than 30-34. (I don't have statistics on any of this, partly because rolls are no longer EXACTLY even odds.) If you look at this page MOST of the stuff that is 10-30 or 15-30 is really bad. If you're not going to roll at 50, my guesses are that 33 or 35 are the best levels to roll at.

In a peripherally related point, I'm in the middle of an attempt to seed the market with under-fifty recipes, and so I'm willing to buy "whatever you roll" for 15 million inf per roll, any server either side. (I suspect the correct cash value is lower than that, but I haven't gotten any of the "Big 4" yet. Couple stealths, though, which sold in the high tens of millions. ) I'm @Boltcutter in game; send me a tell if you want a nonrandom return on your merits.