Fulmens

Myth tested and smashed.

In case anyone disbelieves you because "you don't have proof."

There was a guy early on named "City Man" or something similar. His goal was to defeat one [1] enemy and make a ton of money from there. He acheived it, but apparently even with the gained market slots [selling 50 items, then I think you get one for 1000, 3000, 5000, items] it was miserable and slow making money.

Game called on account of boredom.

And they're going to be snorting up common IO's like superdyne. Speed is of the essence. The ESSENCE! Gotta fill those slots now!

Alleged problem: Having to bid on multiple levels to try to get one item.

Suggested service: For a percentage of sale price, I will bid on a level range for a period of time.

Rikti speech pattern: inexplicable.

Let's say you're buying, I dunno, Swan's Ridiculous Heels: Chance for Inappropriate Comment. the IO goes 25-50. Level 50's are 20 million, level 40-49 are 5-10 million but sell much less frequently. So it would take as long to buy one of the 40-49 if you had bids on ALL of them as it would to buy a level 50.

This brings up the paradox that you "can't afford to get it cheaper." That is, you would need to put up nine bids at [say] 10 million each, tying up nine slots and ninety million inf, instead of overpaying by 10 million inf to get it in one slot, rapidly. If all you have is twenty million inf... the man wins and you lose.

If you're level 43 and you want something between 36 and 46, you're extradoomed because you can't even take the level 50 option.

What would you consider a fair rate (or commission) for, say, putting up a bid on an 8-level range for a week [or until filled]?

I'd be offering the use of my capital and slots, which I'm not using anyway.

Does 20% seem fair?

Mind4everburning [formerly KeepDistance] said that last 2XP, when he was doing the run to 1 billion inf, he expected the ridiculous salvage price spikes afterwards, but what he didn't expect was the salvage price crashes during.

There are steep mountains and huge valleys all weekend- I can guess as to when the times are, but if you set up your sell and buy orders beforehand, you don't really have to care when they happen.

Armylife: That was a roosterhead move on their part; sorry to hear it.

As far as trading, the best you can do is sell the item heroside (losing 10% of the value, unfortunately), find someone to trade influence for infamy and put in a bid villainside. I do this (10% fee, or 20% if I have to move the inf to another server) and Smurphy (@Smurphy, aka Jojo the Bunny) might be going back into the business.

I have references.

Backup Singer, [if EVERYTHING goes right] can Drain Psyche, nuke, and start getting endurance back immediately. It's a hideously complex and near-pointless trick, but I had a lot of fun with it.

That was Viva Las Vegas:Monochrome [everyone ended up with grey and black costumes.] And because VLV teams kill so very fast, I usually ended up doing Drain Psyche on one spawn, and BU/Aim/Nuke on the next one. Cause seriously, by the time I ran in, hit drain, bu and aim, the fight was mostly over.

EDIT for defensive notes: You have two really good AOE slows in /Mental. I know, I always dismiss cone/PBAOE combos, but in this case the benefits are HUGE. World of Confusion is hated second-hand: I never tried it, but Amazing Amazon [my wife] hates it to death. The singletarget stun in Sonic is nice. And the sleep is hyoooge. The few times I've soloed her*, I tend to go Howl, Psi Scream, Siren's.

* "Backup Singer". That's not a person who soloes. It's written right into the name.

For a Rad/Whatever, I'd do a few things.

1. Frankenslot. Put in five slots, get the benefit of six or seven, fast cheap and easy. Why wouldn't you?
2. "highly recommended" unique IO's. Every squishy I have has some form of knockback protection- Steadfast, Karma, Zephyr, in one case multiple slots of Kinetic Crash. Changes the game for me. I like slotting an Unbounded Leap: Stealth in either Sprint or one of the veteran sprints, but that's mostly for my Blasters.

So that will cost you, like, 20 million inf and a few hours.

If you want to spend a lot more and get more: I'd build for Recharge and get Hasten. AM/Hasten is a great combo. True permahasten is another 60% Recharge, I think, but "close enough for Fulmens" permahasten/perma-AM is around 30% Recharge and that's relatively easy to get. There's a lot of 5% bonuses [Doctored Wounds, Red Fortune being two cheap ones] and a lot of 6.25% bonuses [Positron's, Decimation, Stupefy] althought they're not exactly cheap.

Have fun!

To the OP:

Welcome to City of * !
This game doesn't work quite like other games. If healing can double "how survivable the team is", buffing can quintuple it. At the low levels, healing is "the answer" but, by level 22, buffing becomes much more valuable. [If you look at an Empathy Defender, they have a lot of healing powers at low levels, and a lot of buffing powers at higher levels. This is not an accident.]

Additionally, a "support character" is expected [by the l33t kids on the forums anyway] to contribute to both defense and offense. People who build "pure support" or "pure healing" or whatever tend to be... underemployed and unhappy.

For the specifics you asked about:

Kinetics is the least-defensive, most-offensive Defender primary [or Controller secondary if you prefer] there is. You can make enemies do 20% less damage, roughly... and you've got a big heal that sometimes goes off near the people who need it, when they need it, and hits. Those are your defensive tools. Of course, your team doesn't need as much defending because their big hitters are up much more often, they don't run out of endurance, and they are doing tremendously more damage when they hit.

I don't play controller primaries. Rumors have it that Fire is extra-damagey and Ice is extra-controlly but you'd have to ask someone who knows what they're talking about for more details.

/Psi for defenders is interesting- it's decent damage and it has a couple of very dramatic slows, one as a nice big cone. So you can get good protection out of your blasts. Psi damage is very effective on some otherwise tough badguys [people in power armor, for instance] but very ineffective on some other badguys [like robots.] If you're OK with flipping between "twice the damage of everyone else" and "half the damage of everyone else" then go for it.

My personal recommendation for a "support" character, if the field is open to anything, would be a Rad/Sonic Blast defender. There's a reason Jock Tamson's guide for it is called "Best at Everything."

I put something for sale for 1.9 billion instead of 190 thousand the other day. This was just AFTER I'd finished my "destroy a ton of influence" project, of course.

What's another 100 million between friends?

One other thing about Dark Astoria: You're wiping out SO MANY green/blue/whitecons that you can take a whole bunch of inspirations whenever you feel like it, and you'll refill in the next two minutes.

For getting salvage and whatnot, it doesn't matter what you beat down as long as it's green-con or better. There have been claims that "Barely grey" badguys will give you salvage and recipes but the conventional wisdom is that this is an urban legend. I blew up a couple hundred -3 minions once and didn't get anything for it, which doesn't DISPROVE it but does strongly suggest that it's false.

A lot of people are answering "how do I transfer inf to an alt?"

If you're trying to transfer actual, specific items... you need to use a friend or base storage. I think you can set up a trial account, start two copies of the game (one with each account), and move stuff that way. Disclaimer:I've never done that.

As mentioned, they're the best things in the game and you're competing in the market with 100,000 other accounts.

But "200 million apiece" is kind of an exaggeration... MOST of the purple sets are things like sleep, immobilize, etc. and they tend to go for 10-30 million each. Only the ones you really, really want are 200 million apiece and even then, I could get them for 160-180 [and craft, and sell for up to 250] when I was trying to burn inf in market fees.

Do you want the highest end gear because it's the highest end gear, or do you have some specific plan for it [PVP, solo archvillains, etc.] ?

If you spend enough on this game, you can afford to buy your spouse a celebratory dinner!

... or something.

Congrats!

[ QUOTE ]
It sure as hell sells, but I'm afraid though that people just immediately flip it and the net result is zero.


[/ QUOTE ]

... not really. There is a supply and demand issue. Yes, there's a lot of people invested in the status quo on Alchemical Silver, but if you look at (random guess) Runes, throw enough at the market and prices WILL go down. Do it seven times a week and they will be down "most of the time". Patience wins the race.

My approach back in the days of plenty was to pick a price (19K if I recall) and keep a 10 of each salvage in stock at that price, as best I could. Wouldn't stop anyone from blowing through my price point on purpose, but it would slow down accidental shortages.

Dark Astoria, once in a while, is a LOT OF FUN.

I don't know how efficient it was in terms of XP, drops, etc. but nothing beats it for Zombies Per Minute.

BOOOM ! FWOOOSH! Ah ha ha hah...

The 30-34 pool will probably give you the worst chance of getting it... you might get some of the really juicy stuff that starts at 30, but it's the lowest chance of getting a specific recipe.

I have felt that it sucked for five years now and I see no reason to change my opinion. I mean, "it's a pool power attack, it's OK if it sucks" only goes so far when it takes twice as long as Air Superiority to do 1.2 times the damage.

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, yes, I know that means I'm selling at a loss. I'm having too much fun littering the Market with gifts to be stopped by that little detail.


[/ QUOTE ]

I always tell people "I don't use the market to make money. I use it to make art."

I welcome the competition.

Personally, I'd save my belittling for people who locked down entire zones for several hours a day.

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and if you need something unusual like Taunt or Fear duration, you're better off making them yourself due to the simple fact that players rarely put those up for sale.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find it's worth checking. If there ARE any they're going to be dead cheap. If not, I go and build.

(Ed. to indicate that I mostly agree with the quoted bit.)

Uberguy: my alleged point was that "one year into the five-year lifespan of the game" may not be all that relevant to the discussion. It's not that far from talking about "the days before 50's had content" to talking about "the days of the Smoke Grenade bug".

Oh dear. I'm getting math-y.

Yuri said
[ QUOTE ]
EDIT: Running the Compare-O-Tron, with the same IO investment (L35 commons)... Dull Pain is up 2/3 of the time without Hasten running (40% HP boost, right?), defenses are 28% across all types but Psionic (11%), S/L is capped, E/N is at 30% (What? It's totally there for the End Drain Res), and all but Psi after that is 15% (pfft, recharge resistance!).


[/ QUOTE ]

Dull Pain, slotted for heals, is a 60% HP boost (and an 80%-of-base heal.) With SO's it's up 2/3 of the time.

The thing where I'd expect IO'd Invuln to be a gamebreaker is when you get capped Defense (10x mitigation vs. whatever damage types you get) on top of the severe S/L resist on top of a little bit of Regen (Very rough guess, you can get from the 180% of Health-alone to 260% with a minimal investment of slots) and an occasional heal... you're going to have your holes, and you're going to have your "Don't even bother." (I'm thinking tanks, admittedly.)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In terms of Survivability, which would be better? Will or Inv?

[/ QUOTE ]

For the 1 to 50 game, willpower without a doubt. However, at 50 and cranked to the gills on setIOs and PurpleIOs, I might have to give the nod to Inv.

[/ QUOTE ]

True, but if you dumped all that time/money into WILL, wouldnt it also be just as stroong?

[ QUOTE ]
I've now got Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "The Beast in Me", in my head.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is that song also on the Sopranos sound track?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it is on that soundtrack.

As far as "dumping into Willpower": I don't think so. Willpower is a lot of Regen, with a little bit of RES and DEF. The way INV gets its high-end performance is by capping DEF to most damage (S/L/F/C, with E/N maybe close) and by increasing the recharge of Dull Pain. This produces a very high-HP, very high-DEF target with high RES to the most common damage types and occasional really big heals.

Willpower has decent DEF to F/C/E/N/P, which might be cappable, and decent RES to S/L, with a lot of Regen. Its tier 9 is immune to recharge buffs. Regen has diminishing returns, unilke DEF or RES. Willpower's almost designed to be proof against IO'ing.