Fulmens

The original post did specify something about soloing. 3+ people on a team, I don't find endurance to be a problem, period.

Two things:

1) People in the Scrapper forums love "Extreme" builds to do extreme things. Rad/Sonic defenders, I think, can solo AV's but they don't talk about it as much. A lot of Controllers can solo AV's with nothing but SO's in their builds. Scrappers- it's a big deal for Scrappers because they either can't do it or they can JUST BARELY do it.

2) When you ask about "DPS" are you talking singletarget, group, burst or continuous? Inferno is tough to beat as far as DPS but it's only up every four or five groups, and it's got a wicked hangover.

Personally, my favorite damage machine is a Fire/Elec blaster. There are other, faster things out there but at one point when it was new to me I said "If there's something that goes faster... I don't need it." My personal best is 20-plus badguys in under 12 seconds. (I'd been considering getting rid of Inferno, but I ran into a situation where there were two spawns near each other. Build Up, Aim, turn to the left, Firebreath,Fireball, hop to the right, Inferno. Mwa ha hah!)

Blasters, if played incautiously, often die a lot. Sometimes they have enough firepower that they live anyway.

You're seeing two effects, most likely.

1) Low Level Scaling. At level 1 a scrapper can 1-shot a minion with Hack. I think that stops working at level 3. At level 8 a blaster can 1-shot a spawn with Frost Breath. That stops working at level 9 or 10. You aren't working with the "true" AT- to -AT ratios till 20 , and the AT-to-badguy ratio keeps changing till level 35. If you want to see this look even more impressive, roll up a Fire/Energy, getting Fireball at 2, Build Up at 4 or 6 and Fire Breath at 8. Now go to Perez.

2) Regen, specifically, gets "stamina at level 4". It's slightly better than actual stamina, and it lets you cruise through the lower levels. I don't think you are seeing massively more efficient Claws, I think you're seeing 33% more End Recovery. I could be wrong, and it could be the combination. But everyone else is going to be pretty much in the same place endwise by level 20-24. You're not so much BETTER as EARLIER.

Regen's strong, and I like Claws, but lemme know if that build seems as hideously overpowered at level 30.

Kitten said [ QUOTE ]
Regardless of AT and powerset, any player at any level ought to be able to run a mission from entrance to completion without stopping if they want to.


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That's a premise disguised as a conclusion.

... bill, you left out "We had passives that cost endurance to use!"
Well, you did; I wasn't playing SR.

I find the snipe useful for things like "Blaster has scrapperlock, needs to slow down and let the tank actually get in and take alpha." Yeah, I get hypnotized by the big orange numbers, sometimes.

One popular thing for Blasters to take is [something]/Aid Self. Also for certain builds */Tough/Weave (if you're stacking up various Defense types) has its virtues.

I recommend the Ethereal Shift temp power -five "Get out of death free" cards, renewable with small amounts of inf and planning, every time you're near a crafting station.

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Cimerora is primarily a vehicle for the Imperious Task Force (ITF).

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Which is why I find the actual zone underwhelming. I was disaponted when I decided to explore Cimerora only to realise how small it is, and the wall loses a lot of its grandeur once you know that there is nothing behind it.

It doesn't feel like a place. It feels like a film set.

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there were many theories that said that's exactly how we're meant to feel.

I still think it's all fake and set up by the 5th to distract us from their actual goals.(not REALLY, but kindof... heh)

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great theory. After all, you can't get there with a normal Ouroboros portal...

I worked on 100kV power supplies at one point. I tried to not get too close, though.

Today's object lesson on getting a team:

I sat on a Force Field defender in the mid-30s with "LFT" for something like 40 minutes once. Mostly I was checking to see how common the various types of Defenders were, but I was also checking this at the same time.

Then I sent about four tells to Blasters around my level saying, "Does your team have any need for a Force Field defender?" And I got a team in under 5 minutes.

People don't want to break the rhythm of the team to recruit. If you ask nicely, though, they may have room and desire for you.

The specifics of "how to be a good high level Empath"- I'm not a great Emp, but here are some things I've noticed.

"pure healing" stops being particularly useful around level 24 (my estimate.) At that point, scrappers and tanks are three to ten times tougher than blaster. So if the blaster is taking ANY damage, they're dying in ... like five seconds. Reflexes only go so far.

If you look at the powers in Empathy, the heals are all in the first 10-15 levels and everything after that is buffs. Which, applied to [e.g.] blasters, makes them tough enough that they live long enough to heal. Regen Aura is autohealing (about 30 sec to full health if I remember), Adrenaline Boost is ridiculous unkillability and recharge, and gives the ability to fire continuously even through nukes.

My /Elec experience is, again, with Force Fielders. . . Power Build Up at 41 made a huge difference. I could Short Circuit and drain a group, and it made the nuke [picked up at 38, slotted at 39] finally useful. Still often overlooked, but it could at least drop white-cons. Tesla Cage was a solid hold for the most annoying badguys- although, again, as a Force Fielder I had the spare time to fiddle around with stuff like that.

So basically you have to stop thinking of yourself as the star. If you're on an 8-person team and you deliver 25% of the functionality, you're still twice as good as average.

It's a good idea. I don't know if it even needs all the subtle tweaking that it's been getting. Out of END? You start to suck. Got END? You stop.

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According to MIDS, damage/end on an UNSLOTTED brute's Death Shroud is 8.34. NOTHING from Mace, SS, Stone or Axe primaries can match that. That means that from an endurance standpoint, if you have any one of those primaries, you are better off taking DS that any of the attacks from your main set. Of the rest of the primaries, Fire Melee is the only one who's tier 1 and 2 attacks do more D/E.

In terms of DPS, unslotted and un-debuffed auras do less than pretty much all single target and cone attacks, but more than the PBAoE's.

So basically, UNSLOTTED, they kill slower but at much less end drain then other attacks. This means if your toon has more problems with end than health, take the aura. If their green moves more than their blue, skip it.

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I don't remember there being a difference in damage per endurance between toggles and PBAOE attacks. . . but I did this math in issue 7/8. I could go look, I suppose.

I personally think that "you can take your stuff but not your inf" makes some sense. Someone told me once, "Border guards always take gold."

As far as giving away your inf or turning it into recipes and enhancements... that's what we call premeditation.

You've got the right basic ideas: Aim and, Build Up early, batches of AOE and big singletarget hitters.

I'd move Explosive Arrow up earlier, and have stamina at level 22. That may be a controversial choice, but I'd rather have damage powers and be short on endurance, than have endurance with nothing to use it on.

World of Confusion- my wife reports that this power sucks (fire/mental). I didn't take it myself (on a sonic/mental). It is pointblank AOE, which you said something about wanting to avoid.

Epic- I'm not sure what you're going for here. I would rather take almost any power from any epic than Body Armor. There's a very small difference between "Would have died without Body Armor" and "Would have died with Body Armor"- especially at that level, where badguys routinely hit you for 30-50% of your HP. I'm fairly new to Munitions but I would do it for the LRM or not at all. (The LRM _is_ a lot of fun.) You may hate pulling out the frankengun, which is valid.

Another note: You can do a lot of very cheap IO slotting at relatively low levels to save slots and get much better performance at near-SO prices. Check out Capt. Canadian's guide, which is better than my old creaky guide (in sig). Free recharge, free end reduction, cheap enhancements, everyone wins.

MarvelatMee said
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when I started to look up the salvage I almost puked on the screen when I saw pneumatic piston going for 50K and others that never got over 1K going for 100K. Man things have changed quickly.


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... and of course I still buy those things for 5K or less by just leaving my bids up overnight.

The set bonuses and the uniques are the other 25%.

If you're going from [say] 1 acc, 3 dam, 1 recharge in SO's, to 1 acc, 3 dam, 2 recharge, 1 end reduction with no set bonuses, you've added around 60 "generic percent" to every power. It takes a _lot_ of set bonuses to get you that much benefit.

The interesting thing [to me] is that you still had a dry spell around level 22-26.

Every time I think of doing something like this, I realize I've instinctively scrambled around getting a million inf by level 15 "in case I need it."

My theory is that blasters are REALLY EASY in the first 24 levels or so, and that they require a change in playstyle (definitely after level 30.) People overreact.

It _is_ tricky playing a blaster in the high levels- and the solo tricks aren't the same as the team tricks. But I think people get suckered in by the low levels, where you're almost as tough as everyone else and you do WAY more damage.

Also, when you're reading guides, some of those people got scarred badly by the pre-issue-6 world, where Scrappers were fifty times tougher than Blasters instead of, like, six or eight times tougher.

Blasting _is_ unforgiving in the upper levels. On the other hand, a Blaster does juuust about twice the damage of a Defender on the same team.

... you could make one of each. You have at least eight slots per server.

Kitten said:
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You are the only player I've talked to or heard mention this subject who has ever said that the low game is enjoyable on its own, much less more enjoyable than the higher levels.


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The very low game (1-10, say) is a lot of fun for me- maybe because I'm barely there for any length of time. The scaling of mobs and such means that these things work:

Level 1- you can 1-shot a guy in Outbreak with Hack.
Level 8- you can 1-shot ten guys in Kings Row with Frost Breath

You ding five times in your first hour of play. You're running through the streets hitting everything you see. It's very Calvin-esque.

There is still an awkward hitch around level 16-21 for me, but that's not really a big deal.

Death Shroud, if I remember the numbers, was roughly equivalent to having a PBAOE attack (whirling sword, or Spin from Claws, or whatever) on auto, going off every ten seconds, with no activation time.

This means if you actually do have a PBAOE attack, you're getting two for one.

And it means that you're burning endurance like having a PBAOE attack on auto...

I worked this math out while running a Spine/Dark. Two auras and Spine Burst. Kins are your friens.

Edited to add the short version: You can both buy and sell on the market.

here endeth the edit.
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There's also what I think of as the "pinball" effect. When you start playing pinball, 100K is a good score. Then at some point you start thinking a million is a good score, then 5 or 10 million.

The Market is like that. I started off picking up cheap salvage and selling it to the store for, like, 20K per run profit. Then I started picking up 10-stacks of common recipes for, like, 70K profit (you had to leave them overnight.) Then I started crafting generic IO's for 100K profit per. Then I started crafting cheap set IO's for 500K or a million profit per. Then I started crafting expensive set IO's for 5 or 10 million profit per.

... then I realized I didn't actually spend that much money and I backed off.

In theory if nobody does silver ticket rolls, volume will go down until they're worth something (as happened with uncommon salvage.) In practice it is very possible that the number of "let's see what happens if I do this" rolls, plus people playing real missions, will provide a surplus ANYWAY.

someone's probably crafting and listing them at 1.99 million... or 1.88... or whatever they think is going to get rounded up to 2 million. My guess is it's above 1.8 million because it's consistently going for 2, and if you do, for instance, 1.601 you're going to get someone bidding 1.75 or 1.8 eventually.

Someone told me once, "never list or bid an even number." Ego's Shadow, I think.

Year and a half ago, I IO'd out a character for 61,000 inf per slot. And I had inf leftover. (6 million inf, 93 slots. )

Selling back the SO's in respec got me 5.4 million, for reference.

Imaheroe said
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This is all well and good for you guys who have been playing for awhile, but for the new guy (or returning guy) AE was great because it broke the market and the strangle hold the REAL farmers had on it. Now that its not so easy for me to get tickets I have to resort to the market but I never had a bank roll to begin with. Needless to say my toons are not tricked out with IO sets and probably never will.


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You haven't learned the basics of the market. This is not the market's fault. This is not the marketeer's fault- we put together a lot of guides for you and you didn't read any of them.

I'm going to work on my "IO's on any budget" guide now.

Supernumiphone said
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It is a bit baffling that those who feel it's fine are often so vehemently opposed to changes that would help those of us who don't feel that it's fine. I can only guess it's a combination of them feeling they are more skilled and if I would just "lrn2ply" it would be fine, combined with a knee-jerk opposition to anything that doesn't benefit them directly.


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... so wait. I'm selfish because you want a buff? Huh?