Fulmens

For the basics of IO's, useful for spending a few million on a character, my old, creaky guide in sig is still pretty good. For solid gold bathtubs and whatnot, there are a few levels of increased performance I don't really touch on. Purples, for instance, didn't exist at the time.

For detailed work, Mid's is used by a lot of people. I do most of my work from this page.

Oh dear. One of THESE threads. I do appreciate the detailed explanation and analysis.

Some fun facts:
The difference between 40% Defense and 45% Defense, is, most of the time, 45% Defense means you live through twice as much abuse.
40% means you live through twice as much as 30%.

So that's why capped Defense is such a big deal; you go from "a bit more than twice as much abuse" to "around ten times as much."

My experience (130+ levels of force field defender, as well as quite a lot of blasters, scrappers, and miscellaneous others) is that making the group-as-a-whole five times tougher means that you, plus one other Tank/Defender/Controller, make the group very safe from nearly everything.

Ten times tougher means that you may not need the other Tank/Defender/Controller- defensively.

Now for every T/D/C you remove from the team, you can add someone whose main job is damage (many Defenders and Controllers, of course, throw solid damage. But nothing, in my experience, beats a Blaster on "I can't die" mode.) And enough damage is mitigation all by itself. Five second fights are indeed frequent and enjoyable.

But getting back to the question of mitigation:
10x mitigation means, mostly, that natural regen rate takes care of incoming damage.When I was running Force Fields and I started getting pounded (everyone ELSE had capped defense...) people were happy to donate green and purple insps to me. They had quite a surplus built up.

Maximum acheivable mitigation is on the order of 300 times "unprotected level." Not 300%, 300 times. Or 30,000 %. That's a tank with capped Defense, 90% Resist to all incoming damage, and around three times the HP of a squishie (say, an Invuln with Dull Pain up.)

I find that 20x mitigation is more than enough for just about everything in the game. Even at 10x, you really are only fighting "the guys that break the rules". That may be psi-based attacks, it may be Gunslingers or Drones or Devouring Earth with Quartz out. It may be exotic damage types. But really, there is such a thing as defensive overkill.

To give the equivalent of 10x mitigation with healing, you'd have to be able to heal [say the tank, for simplicity] for ten times their HP, every fight.

Discuss.

OK! Buying 30-34s at level 30 from @Flame's Vengeance. Let's see what I get...
Commanding Presence Acc/Dam/End
Decimation Acc/End/Rech
Gaussian's Endred/Rech
Ghost Widow's Acc/Hold/Rech
Posi, chance for energy
Posi, Acc/Dam/End
Stupefy, chance for KB

Only two were vendor trash... although most of the rest are a bit under what I paid for them. The experiment continues.

Fiberoptic said:
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Careful and slow does not explain having something listed for weeks and seeing it sell for less than I was asking. This happen 2 times for the same item.

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Are you saying that you offered to buy something for price X, and it sold for less than X after you put the bid up?

Or are you saying that you offered to sell something for price X, and a different one sold for less than X after you put the item up?

Or are you saying that you offered to sell something for price X, and YOUR ITEM sold for less than price X?

A moment of clarification: "Sweating and slaving" is what people do, for instance, working construction in India.
What we do is pretendy fun games. I don't enjoy exactly the same pretendy fun games you do, but that doesn't guarantee that you are a "Slightly sad" person for playing them.

I do hope you enjoy your generic IO's, and in fact your entire play experience. I certainly enjoy mine.

We love to hear ourselves talk! Ask us anything! I remember discovering that the tram has two different doors- the one you come out (on the side) and the one you go into (in the middle). No matter what newb trick you think you've discovered, chances are one of us beat you to it.

I'm going to limit myself to two pieces of unsolicited advice:

1. The "standard model" fights don't happen in this game. One of ANY character should be a match for three even-con minions. Debuffs and buffs are far more powerful than healing. You don't "need a tank" or "need a healer"- grab any five players and unless you get some perfect storm of mismatches, you should be fine.
2. Pool powers and prereqs. If you want Flight (or superspeed or whatever) you can get that at 14, but you need another power from the pool (Flying, or Speed, or whatever they're called. I don't even remember.) You can pick the first two powers off the bat, you need one of the first two to get the third, and you need two of the first three to get the fourth.
2a. Stamina. This is a pool power -the last pool power- in Fitness. Chances are you will like having it a lot because it brings your endurance back much faster. The earliest you can get it is level 20; the latest I would recommend is level 24. The traditional path is either Swift or Hurdle (dealer's choice- I like Swift) followed by Health (you get HP back around 50% faster) followed by Stamina. MANY people build for "Stamina by level 20" but I often find that there are a couple of powers in the teens I want even more than Stamina, so it gets pushed back to 22 or occasionally 24. Experienced, skilled players can do without Stamina sometimes, but I don't recommend that. I certainly don't play without it.

In this game you have, for instance, a "victory community" and an "infinity community". The "freedom community" is much reviled, and I think some of the consequences of freedom being as it is are a matter of population scaling- just like New York doesn't have that small-town feel where you know your neighbors, neither does Freedom.

I don't know if people would have shard (or server) loyalties and I don't know if they'd develop communities the same way. I believe humans are community builders by nature. Guilds started in online FPS's where life was supposed to be nasty brutish and short, the war of each against all... people developed friendships and groups despite all attempts to make a hostile environment.

But I don't think you'd get the SAME sort of communities if a "server" was just where people decided to get together tonight.

Be interesting to see.

Every 5 levels you get about 2.5 times the XP, so you earn about 2.5 times as much inf "straight up". As well as getting about 2.5 times the shinies that can be converted to inf.

Every 5 levels your cost of SO's goes up by about 30%. (number of slots goes up, cost of SO's goes up.)
They're both exponential but they're not even remotely matched. So you went from utterly starved for cash to totally rolling in it, in the good old days.

Those are PVP recipes... I'd never thought about how to PVP farm but it seems kinda obvious now.

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I don't necessarily agree that it was straight up broken before there was a market. Before the first tweak to drops and inf you made enough money selling drops and such to the proper stores to refresh your DO's and SO's all the way to 50.

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You remember it your way, I remember it mine.

I clearly remember ...

... hitting level 23 and buying some level 25 DO's, because I had to slot something and that was what I could afford when the old ones went red. All my Accuracies were SO's, but only about 1/3 of my Damage was.
... people not buying TO's or DO's so they could afford their SO's. Level 21 and not a thing slotted except with drops.
... people farming Mary MacComber for the SO drops.
... personally hunting those few Family that hung out in Steel by the IP gate, because level 20's dropped 1/3 DO's (level 19s dropped like 1/100 or something) and I needed the money.
... Being really excited when I found out that I could combine three SO's already in the power to make an SO++, because that meant I could get by with delaying 1/3 of my purchases to level 28.
... going to a new server, and building a "sugar momma" toon who got on teams with high-level characters, and asking them for DO's or TO's they would otherwise delete. Yeah, I had a Force Fielder that went with strangers for tips. I'm not proud. I had an SG to feed.
... making enough inf for my 45 and 50 SO's during level 41. Not "40 and 41", even. I was making ten times as much as I needed.

First I was in EndMod Club, and we did NOT TALK about EndMod Club.
Then I was in the Luck Charmer conspiracy, and we actually didn't talk about the Luck Charmer conspiracy until afterwards.

This new conspiracy, man, I want in. When I was your age, we shot Kennedy. Not John, Robert. No, not John-John. PRESIDENT John... oh I give up.

So if a lieutenant-only map is harder, but gives less, than a boss-only map... would ya do it?

I'm thinking that Nemesis all-lieuts would be tougher than all-bosses.

On the original topic, I'm thinking that mixed bosses might be harder. The proverbial Rularuu Mix is pretty ugly.

Are you taking applications for custom groups of badguys?

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Hi, I've played this game off and on for years, so I understand the mechanics. I've spent the last week since returning learning the ins and outs of the IO system as best as possible.


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If you left before IO's (maybe you just never played around with the system) there have been a few changes in mechanics since then. Defiance 2.0 for one thing.

Of the four choices I'd go fire/mental, but you have to understand that I've got high level fire/elec, fire/energy and fire/ice blasters...

I wouldn't use it if provided, but maybe other people would. I see no active evil within this idea.

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Thanks for all the info, and even the rather hot comments some people posted. I know I may be the wrong kind of player or playing this game the wrong way, but when a character concept comes your way and sticks in your head, and a game can give that character life, wouldnt you try and give it the strongest go you can?

I have, and I've hit walls higher than I could scale. But at least I learned quite a bit:

I've realized why Energy has shorter-ranged attacks. If paired with Energy secondary, it makes for a thematic and synergistic blapperish attack style (provided you have the mobility to do so). This of course goes against my idea of the blaster being a ranged character.

...then again, maybe the concept of the blaster isnt just range, of which I need to learn still.

I am open, however, to just pushing the concept off the cliff myself and just play the game as its supposed to be played. I guess in my old gamer times, old habits die very hard and old standards that I play by are archaic and broken by today.

Anyway, couple of questions:

1. I've noticed some blapper videos have people short-jumping into and out of melee range to do melee attacks sprinkled with some ranged. How do they manage this?

2. I've noticed that AR/Devices is both thematic and work well together. Noticed Ignite working well with Caltrops. Is this a good prim/sec to work with as a ranged character who can solo?

3. If anything else, I'd like some more suggestions on a prim/sec for an all-ranged (or at least, non-melee) blaster.

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There are two separate "Sticking points", I think, as far as your playstyle. They are different things.

First is "concept over optimization." If you really, really want to play a guy who looks armored, flies and hoves, and blasts people with big white beams that do knockback. that's what you want to do. Playing ,I dunno, a fire/electric melee type is NOT WHAT YOU WANT.

I will help try to make your concept work as well as it can.

The second point is your (possibly abandoned) tendency to delete imperfections. I couldn't tell if your "old habits" and "old standards" referred to that or not. To give an unrelated example, there are people who play some games "if you lose a fight, you're dead forever"- even if the game does not have that rule, they play by it. They've tightened the rules for what they can and cannot do beyond what the game system gives them. I've done that- Master of Magic where you're not allowed to "try a fight" and redo from saved games if you teamwipe, to give an example from the early 90's. Generally if I'm going to tighten the rules, it's after I try the game once or twice under "Standard" rules.

So I've got limited sympathy for things like "delete on first failure" and other rules.

Here is my advice on how to build and play your ranged, hovering, Iron Chica.

ONE: Money. Tony Stark has money. Genius inventors are often genius businessmen. Making money at Wents is totally in character, in my head. And it's so easy. So easy.

We will assume that we can garner any inf we need.

So, your Energy Blast and Energy Support powers, and pool powers, to get you to level 22. The game does have an "awkward teen" aspect to it- until you have Stamina you're getting more and more powers, which use more and more endurance, and you don't have ways to increase your endurance usage.

Looking through the grab-bag:

ENERGY BLAST- Power Blast and Power Bolt are your bread and butter. Those are core attacks and you need both of them. Power Burst is also very good, although as has been mentioned it has a 40' range instead of 80'. These three singletarget attacks, which you get early, are a good trio to have and use.

Energy Torrent is a very good power IF USED RIGHT. When people are complaining about your knockback, this is probably what they mean. It does good damage in a hurry, "BUT". BUT it knocks everyone away from you. BUT it uses a lot of endurance (you have to hit three people to break even, knocking most of them back and causing fussing and whining.)

Aim is not to be overlooked. I will have a whole section on Aim and Build Up soon.

I'm not a Power Push fan personally- if I throw three normal attacks ONE of them will knock the guy back anyway- so we can put that in the "probably not needed" category.

Sniper Burst is a judgement call. I like it for the huge range, but not for the huge, interruptible startup time. (If you move, you're cancelling the power and wasting the endurance.) I'd say "pick it up if you have room and time."

Energy Manipulation: Power Thrust is mandatory. Even if you never plan to be within fifteen feet of an enemy, you literally are required to take this power.

I would recommend either Energy Punch or Bone Smasher, normally, because if someone DOES get in reach they need to be taken down in a hurry. Bone Smasher will do that. It's considerably more damage in considerably less time than Power Burst. If you don't want it don't take it.

Build Up. Build up build up build up. Take it use it love it. Aim is +65% damage, Build Up is +100% damage. That means that you can nearly double your damage output with either one of these for ten seconds at a time. "ten seconds" works out to "about three guys." If you have some need to do crazy damage immediately, and in the later game you WILL have this need, you can use them both together.

So the build looks something like this, so far:
L1 Power Bolt and Power Thrust
L2 Power Blast
L3 (slots into both your blasts)
L4 Build Up
L5 (more slots into both your blasts)
L6 Power Burst
L7 (slots into Power Burst)
L8 Energy Torrent or Sniper Blast
L9 (slots into the L8 power)

NOTE: At this point we've 3-slotted four attacks. You might want to put 4 slots into each of your basic attacks and go short on Energy Torrent. That's a personal choice. Enhancements should be "two accuracy, one or more damage". Anyway, you're going to slot your attacks for quite a while on the odd levels. .

L10 first pool power! Hover. Keep their greasy peasant hands off your shiny metal.
L12 Aim. Also, go buy a full set of double-origin enhancements. Enjoy not missing, enjoy doing more damage.
L14 Flight. NOTE: flight eats your endurance a lot more than Hover does.
L16: Do not succumb to the temptation of "Conserve Power"- it won't be up very often and it delays Stamina. Which you really, really want. Take Swift from the Fitness pool.
L17: Extra slot (recharge) in Aim and Build Up. You should have 4-5 slots in each attack power by now. Your 5th slot could be "End reduction."
L18: Health from the Fitness pool.
L19: Extra slots in Aim and BU.
L20: STAMINA. This is kinda game changing.
L21: Two more slots in stamina.
L22: Full set of SO's. Also kinda game changing. Whichever one of Sniper Blast or Energy Torrent you didn't take? Take now.

That's a good place to end the build advice.

Play advice: Carry inspirations. Use Rest when appropriate. Don't start shooting someone you can't finish. Have fun.

Is this more like what you wanted when you started the thread?

Time for me to show my age.

BAB- 80's skullbusting?
Who do you love?

For Sister Psyche, I think it's gotta be something with more of a retro sound. She was born in 1930 or something...
Faded Flowers.

Something I'm just throwing out there because SOMEONE should have it for theme music... Tsunami Bomb, "The Enemy Within."

People hate "erodes over time" stuff a lot. They're going to say things like "It's like a tax for breathing." and "This is what I get for still playing the game".

I still remember Ego's Shadow hating base rent [back when it was much larger and based on plot size, not actual functional items] with the fire of a thousand firetanks.

OK... I don't know the prices, I don't know the weighting. I'm buying rolls for 6 million each, and we'll see how it goes.

Just like last time: we meet at the merit vendor, you have to be between 32 and 40, you roll on the 35-39 table, I pay you no matter what you get. Hero or villainside. Let's do science!

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I am trying to grasp (as it relates to the markets) is whether there is any difference between the following actions:
1) (no longer available) memorize and respec to create new inf
2) defeat enemies and get inf
3) defeat enemies and get drops or tickets to turn into drops and then vendor them


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You can't choose to do 2, or to do 3. All you can do is defeat enemies. Some % of the time you get just inf, some % of the time you get "vendor trash", and some % of the time you get "something worth selling at Wents."

If you do something like 1), you throw off the KeepDistance ratio (inf to stuff) and supply goes down and prices go up.

Remember that 2XP weekend where people found a way to loop through Welcome to Vanguard? That created inf, and empty slots, but no stuff and people bought out Wentworth's to the bare shelves. There was a shortage of Ruin Dam/Rech recipes, if I recall... they bought EVERYTHING.

One variation on the KeepDistance ratio is that not all stuff is created equal. If you're playing high-level content with a 50, you only generate stuff at level 50. If you do nothing but, I dunno, the Freakspec, you only generate stuff at level 45-ish. And if you play more hours on a 50 than on the way to 50, you'll create as much "50 stuff" as "pre-50 stuff"- probably more.

I know I'm a little late to this thread...

I don't want proof you're a girl. I want proof that you can PLAY.

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Post Deleted by Moderator_08

[/ QUOTE ] Now now now wait. Hey.

*Facepalm* I'd forgotten the memorized/respec trick.

Keepdistance's line is hard to argue with:
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All that matters is the ratio of items to inf. On the creation side, that ratio is fixed

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... I keep thinking there's a flaw in there somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.

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Here is the reasoning behind the choices as I have seen them played.

1. Stone/ SS Tank
Great aggro control and the ability to handle multiple groups at once with little problem.

2. Willpower/ Dual Blades Tank
Good aggro control and the ability to handle AV's very easily. (Thanks to Falca for this build)

3. Empathy/ Archery Defender
Empathy for the awesome heals and buffs, Archery for the AoE's and inherent accuracy bonus.

4. Fire/ Kinetic Controller
Kinetic, as stated before, it's an I Win button. Fire for being the best control + Damage option.

5. Archery/ Mental Blaster
Arc/ Mind = AoE Beast + inherent accuracy bonus and recharge reduction.

6. Spines/ Fire Scrapper
Melee AoE Beast, What the Arc/ Mind does for range, the Spines/ Fire does for melee.

7. Fire/ Energy Blaster
The classic blapper build. Good at filling holes in other parts of the group and providing great damage.

8. Radiation/ Radiation Defender
Rad/ rad is another I Win button. with all of the buffs and debuffs it's the cap stone to the team.

As I said I have run with this team several times and we just walk through any thing. Statesman's TF was a cake walk.
I haven't had a lot of experience making a red side team.

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My sig for a while was "What this team needs is more blasters."

Having as I do 130-something levels of force field defenders, I can confidently state that there is such a thing as overkill on defense. Once you have that, all you need is more offense.

So I'm going to take this somewhat seriously and assume you want a REALLY POWERFUL team.

Ideally you want one of two teams. Either you spend 2-4 seconds throwing down debuffs before every fight, or you go straight to massive violence. I like the massive violence. With enough firepower, pretty much the only thing that lasts ten seconds is a boss or higher, so you want some sonics on there so the -res keeps going up the longer something lives.

If you're going to spend 2-4 seconds on debuffs, you want a chunk ton of things like Rad and Dark on the team. You're probably not going to beat TopDoc's Fire/Rad superteam with the group teleport, but I'm not the expert on the toggle team.

If you're starting with damage, you want something like this:
FF/Sonic (extremely high defense, full team, plus -Res for enemies)
Kin/* (Faster AOEs, faster everything, more damage, etc.)
Someone to go up front- I suggest a Dark Armor tank for FF'd indestructibility, maybe Dark/Axe or Dark/SS
Two Fire blasters- Fire/En + Fire/Mental
Three Sonic blasters, secondary of choice (Mental?)

Every group starts out with two fireballs, two fire breaths, and three or four Howls backed up by single-target sonic blasts. Given that one FB/FB drops even-con minions, this combo (depending on how the -Res timing goes) will drop all minions and probably lieuts. If it's a tough group you might want to wait for the tank to make contact and take the alpha. Five seconds in, Blazes and more singletarget attacks go off and I conservatively estimate that bosses and any tough lieuts will last another five seconds at most.

By this time the tank should be looking for the next group.

It is possible that an enemy group will last only five seconds; fortunately the fireball/firebreath combo is on about a six second recharge timer.

No matter what the team is, everyone should be running a lot of the Leadership pool. It works.

FourSpeed said
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These raise the value of influence. I'm not seeing a problem here except, possibly in
terms of fine-tuning and balance - something I'd expect the devs to evaluate periodically.


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... I've been attempting to think about this and I think we are creating influence considerably faster than we're burning it.

I started a spinoff thread about it.

I was pondering [sic] the inf system we have. Pardon me while I do my thinking in public.

Obviously the inf system we started with was broken- before the market, level 50's had far more inf than they could spend. The only sinks were tailors and SO's... from level 42 to 43 I think I got enough inf for my level 45 and level 50 SO's.

The IO system was created -boom, a money sink. And boom, an excuse for people to make money... there had been 3 trillion inf created in I1-I8, mostly by accident.

So 10% of every item price (or 20% if it was flipped) was destroyed. So every newly created infium [singular of inf] in the system was spent ten times before it got destroyed in market fees.

There were other inf sinks- crafting, and buying common recipes from the table- and sources- selling common recipes to the vendor. Selling salvage is basically a nonsource, because you get such tiny amounts for it.

The "Selling common recipes" turned out to be a hugely greater source of inf than "buying common recipes" was a sink. I'd guess 100 times greater.

"Crafting" is not much of a sink, it turns out. I think it works out to something like 5 million inf per full level 50.

So we have a chunk ton of inf SOURCES and very few inf SINKS, and small ones. If you spend 1 hour playing the high-level game and create (conservatively) 2 million inf, that "equates" to 20 million inf being spent at Wentworth's. Or it will build four level 50 set recipes, or eight level 50 generics, or about twenty level 39 set recipes.

Creating new, shinier and rarer IO's (Purples, for instance) doesn't help much- people work harder to create them, in the process creating the inf to buy them. Which inf gets spent, inflationarily, ten times...

Creating tickets has a lot of potential. You get rid of the generic recipe supply... what is that, about 1/3 of your inf supply right there? And you let people decide to go for the shiny stuff instead of the oversupplied stuff. Thus creating shortages of salvage, thus increasing prices, thus encouraging flipping [and its double-the-fee benefit to society]. Unfortunately flipping a 50K uncommon doesn't make much of a dent when you use it to craft a 5 million inf recipe.

Anyway, I think the amount of inf in the game is growing fast- and I see no reason why under the current rules it would stop growing or even slow down much.

It is much less obvious to me that this is a true problem. As long as everyone's buying and selling the same stuff, does it matter if we tack a zero onto the end of every price? Not much. It may make a difference, though, to the ignorant and the new; the people who haven't grasped the simple-to-us principles of buying and selling. I find it inelegant to have ever-increasing prices; that doesn't mean that the prices themselves are a problem.

So my questions:
1) Do you think that we have, truly, inflation? Most of the "middle class valuables" (Detonation Acc/Dam, to pull an example out of the air) are about the same price they were a month after issue 9 hit. Those may be priced at "round up to a nickel" levels, however. Recently I've seen people rounding up to the nearest 100K for common IO's, and lots of them.

2) Do you think that inflation [should it exist] is a problem?

3) What tools are there for fighting inflation of this sort?

My answers are 1) Yes, and 2) Maybe.

I have a few ideas for 3).

a) Increase the Wentworth's fee to 12.5% . Money only lasts through 8 "spendings" instead of 10, cutting the effective supply by 25%. I think.
b) Add new services and/or new fees. A guaranteed inf transfer for 12%, for instance, or a influence-to-infamy (and vice versa) transfer for 15% or 20%. There are individuals offering this service now, but a feature of the game would be used by more people, and be more convenient.

c) This one I'm not sure about... but a graduated Wentworth's fee would be an interesting idea. 8% for small transactions, 12% over 1 million, 16% over 10 million and 20% over 100 million. It would have the advantage that it would destroy the inf where it existed, rather than hitting "the casual player [sic]" .

d) This one is kinda wacky... 10 million, or 100 million inf = NCSoft donating $1 to a real charity. If someone dumps 20 billion into that at 100-million-to-1, that's $200. If a trillion [there are trillions out there] gets dumped, that's $10,000 which seems like a financial hit that NCSoft could take. I know, I'm spending other people's money with a fine and generous hand.

Ideas? Opinions?