Fulmens

My general experience is that the max-level IO IS at the highest price, even if rational people would expect otherwise. My reasoning is somewhat convoluted, but here's what I think is happening:

1) High prices are driven by the proverbial BUY IT NAO player.
2) About as many IO's are generated at max level as at all lower levels combined. (I once tried to corner the market on all levels of something. I think Mako's Bite: Dam/End. I still have, like, eighty of them for sale on some dusty character somewhere. Anyway, that was my conclusion from watching my bids fill.)
3) At anything but max level, there are likely to be either very few unfilled bids (small supply, tiny demand, any serious bid gets filled nearly immediately) or very few for sale (small supply, moderate demand, any plausible price gets paid nearly immediately.)
4) If you want to BUY IT NAO, you will end up buying it at max level because that's where there is enough supply and enough demand to "make a market",in the Wall Street meaning. Anywhere else you have too little interest- almost nobody finds it worthwhile to have bids and keep stock on, say, level 36 Numina: Heals because they come up about once a week, and someone's probably going to beat your "standard" price.

... getting back to the original question a little bit- taking a quick skim at it:

Goal is Melee/Lethal capped or close to it, with a single Divine Avalanche.

First thing: You NEED DA to have Defense built in. You would LIKE some damage, but that's a bonus really. So something like Acc/Dam (x2), Acc/Dam/End, Def/End, Def, Def would do ya. Cheap version is serendipity Def/End, two generic Defenses, and the melee from Smashing Haymaker and Focused Smite.

Weave: 5.6% to all. Steadfast: 3% to all. Slotted DA: 21% melee/lethal. So you're at 29.6% right there. Heightened Senses = 2.9 to 3.8% smash/lethal depending on slotting. Call it 3.4%, that gets you to 33% lethal, just under 30% melee. The rest is going to be expensive and/or build-warping, I fear. Going for lethal, things you can do without putting much distortion in your build:

Two 2-sets of Rectified Reticle (one in Build Up, one in an attack power) gets you 3.75%.
Two 4-sets of Reactive Armor gets you 2.5% .
one 4-set of Mocking Beratement gets you 2.5%.
That's 40.75%.
Two 4-sets of Smashing Haymaker, 3.75%, and one Multi-Strike at 1.88 gets you to 46%.

You're way short on Melee, but you've got more or less what you asked for.

...wait. Katana's Defense Debuff, not To Hit Buff. So only one Rectified Reticle.

You could run Maneuvers, I guess. Endurance is for weaklings- ask any Dark Armor scrapper.

It's always struck me as odd that the PPD gets _easier_ at higher levels. Balanced, I suppose, by Longbow.

I'm one of the few people on the boards who comes out and says "I don't really like Storm Defense." (it may be the default in game...) I tried to help a friend tune up her Storm Defender and ran a mission with her to see how the powers work in practice. Finding out that Lightning Storm knocks badguys back OUT OF ITS OWN RANGE was ... well, unexpected. There were a couple other negative surprises in there as well, where the in game performance didn't live up to the numbers.

OP: yes. It's pretty nasty. On the bright side, once they're hitting you 95% of the time it doesn't get any worse than that.

[I was getting slaughtered by DE dropping quartzes on a res-based toon earlier this week... ow.]

My feeling was not so much "Something to be corrected" as "something that, if we'd thought of it, we would have done differently." I have no source for that- it could be a PM from a dev, it could be a post from a dev, it could be the product of a fever raddled brain. I think that they tend to avoid fixing stuff that works. The code base is in C. It's fast, it's powerful, and there's a lot of things that can go severely wrong in a hurry if you start messing around with it.

... wow, I didn't even realize it summoned a pet. That's how new I am to it. Looks like, from Red Tomax, it's a 3% knockdown chance, 5 times a second. Also a serious -ToHit penalty, (and a -Defense penalty, for what that's worth) which is what I was planning on slotting up. And when they leave the patch, they leave the penalties.

A lot of people think it sucks. I haven't made up my mind yet.

I went fire/energy/elec, on the other hand, for the third fast AOE. "Overkill" is a phrase used by people with meaningful defenses.

I may not be the person to ask... most of my Blaster soloing is on things like Fire/Elec. (death is a 100% debuff. Attention spans are overrated.)

If you're planning on soloing a blaster with some sort of protection, Fire/Ice is pretty good. Shiver is a huge, self-stackable recharge-killer, so you can drop them to the recharge FLOOR and effectively live four times as long. You can also drag 'em to corners and let the Ice Patch keep them bouncing. And of course, Firebreath/Fireball will drop even con minions withOUT build up and aim. With BU or Aim, I think you can drop +1s and with both you can drop +2s. Yes, by the 10-pack.

Sonic/Elec or Sonic/Energy would also be good from a solo point of view. You can throw out Siren's Song and then beat individual badguys like they owe you money, repeat Siren's Song if it looks like anyone's going to wake up.

Fire/Mental has lots of -Recharge tools (although not -movement to go with it) and three AOE's. The body count can be quite spectacular. Fair warning: I have three or four high level fire blasters. I like fire a LOT.

For defenders: There's a reason the Rad/Sonic guide is called "Best at everything." Dark is a good primary but I like Rad even better.

For Stalkers: I have a couple that are pretty beastly. I put some money into an "AV soloing" nin/nin (so far I've only soloed Countess Crey, but this is before level 50. So no purples, and still some slots to go.) Stalkers are quite solid in this day and age- the days of them poking someone in the eye and running off are mostly behind them. Energy primary is also fun- higher damage, and you get to do two or three one-shots at the start of the fight. For secondaries ... I like the defense-based ones. My wife has a energy/regen that she plays like a blaster. I'm not as expert with Stalkers as Blasters or Defenders, though.

You might not need Tactics. Depends, I guess, on whether you're fighting +2s or +4s... like I said, haven't tried this myself.

For low levels, Blasters have always had the advantage in sheer firepower. Someone said once "Below level 12, everyone's a tank." It's true. Blasters look best in the early levels because they're not fighting +2 to +4s, they're not fighting enemies that take 80% of their HP in one shot, they're not running end-draining low-efficiency defensive toggles, basically they're kings of the battlefield.

Something important to realize on the Emp duo (and this may be where you have a second build for "normal" teaming) is that the optimum build is nontraditional. Instead of Swift/Hurdle, Health, Stamina you take Assault, Maneuvers,Hasten and (eventually) Tactics and you let the RA's handle your endurance needs. I imagine there will be slow patches until Adrenaline Boost- hasten will not be perma yet, so there may be times with no RA. On the other hand, +70% damage (Fort + 2xAssault) will speed things up in the DO levels quite some, I would think.

I haven't done this as an organized, dedicated pair yet. I should.

I am Jack's total lack of sympathy.

... wow. Happy tenth anniversary, Fight Club. Where was I? Oh yeah.

You were playing the martyr card. Doing something nobody asked of you, and whining about it.

On a villain.

You have eleven other slots on that server. Do something you enjoy.

So there's a shortage again. I'm buying random rolls again.

We meet up, I give you X (currently 10 M/ roll) and then you roll a bunch of recipes and give them to me. Your character must be level 30 to 40.

You get guaranteed inf instead of risking a streak of bad luck, I get more midlevel rolls into the game (and hopefully break even), we both win. By our own lights.

My frozen at 35 FF/Sonic is on Freedom. Where's your level-frozen character?

... or teach you how to do it yourself, if you don't trust the suspiciously helpful people on here. That will cost you 10% in Auction House fees, though, and there is a slight chance of expensive mistakes.

(I do help people transfer inf, free on same side/same server, and I have references if desired.)

I'm planning to resurrect my old inf-to-prestige conversion matching offer.

I have about a billion to give.

Any side, any server.

I think the pool A "hollowing out" is going to get better shortly after the ToT frenzy ends. The Pool C "hollowing out" is going to go on for quite some time. Err, "rare recipes pool" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Who's for some level-frozen characters running TFs?

I can usually find recipes for sale for 5 million and the crafted IO for sale for 15 million. (In many cases, the RECIPE ITSELF IS IN STOCK.)

There are people who don't want to craft. There are people with enough millions that the difference in price isn't significant. When I list something for 37 million and it sells for 55 million, I'm not taking advantage of anyone. What I'm tryin to say is, this is ethical and fair.

Patient people make money off impatient people, who then run an ITF and make the money back.

EDIT: I lost this post once, and when I reconstructed it I left out important sentences. Like "With patience, you can buy that recipe for 5 million inf, craft it, list it for somewhat under 15 million inf, and collect profit a couple days later. "