Fulmens

I bought 12 rolls from Minotaur once. He warned me in advance, "I get terrible random rolls" and boy was he right. I don't believe I have a record of it, but It Can Be Worse.

Seebs said

... almost makes you wish we could stop there for a minute.

But we can't!

Berkshire never split their stock ever. Warren Buffet was growing the company 30% a year for a startling number of years. It started at $10 a share back in 1960-something. (The stock has only gone up about 30% since 2001, which may mean it's underpriced...)

And that's why people talk about him like he's a financial superhero. Cause he is.

*you have been hit by Assassin Strike for 5,075,000 inf!*

One share of stock

That may actually beat the Rad/Sonic defender for pizazz.

Rad/Sonics are good for everything.

There are a few sets that are "over the ED cap" by a lot - crushing impact, for instance, has Dam in every piece and is over the ED cap at level 30, with one of the triples not slotted.

There are a few sets that are UNDER the ED cap even at level 50, on crucial aspects. Mako's, if I remember, gets you only 92% damage by slotting all 6. [it has a 3% global damage boost, but still... kinda cheap.]

... For the rest of my post, "what Sailboat said".

I know you were trying to keep it short, and you could have talked more about EVERYTHING, but "time vs. money" is a good topic that maybe is worth putting more words into. A few unorganized thoughts below:

1) Figure out what's "a penny" to you. Like the "Take a penny, leave a penny" tray, this is the amount you don't worry about. If you have 10 million inf, "a penny" might be 1000 inf; if you have a billion, "a penny" might be half a million. Don't stress the pennies.

2) Money and time: most "price spikes" last 5 minutes or less. Let's call it 10 minutes. I consider there to be four categories of time: RIGHT NAO, 10 minutes, overnight, and "next Tuesday." RIGHT NAO is fine if we're talking about a penny or two. 10 minutes will get you past, as I said, most price spikes. Overnight will get you a decent price on a recipe that sells at 5+ per day [Crushing Impact at 50,for instance] or a rare salvage. Next Tuesday [meaning you let an entire weekend plus the monday bump go by] will get you some pretty rare stuff at a pretty good price. I'm kind of amazed at what sells on Friday night and Sunday night. So figure out what's expensive and how long you're going to wait, and bid accordingly.

*blinks* #95. Go us!

You know it would have to be a King Raccoon. And you'd have to kill 2000 on average to have a pelt that was a share of a Fortune 500 company. And only 1 in 500 of those would be a BRK-A share.

... not that I'd MIND getting a share of Google, say, but it's not the same.

I don't have any good answers. Here's some undirected musings:

"30-34"is a terrible place to roll. Rolling at 30-34 gives you access to the full spectrum of trash as well as the full spectrum of good stuff. But that's a LOT of trash, and the 25-29 trash is even more worthless than the 35-39 trash. On the other hand they added some really good recipes that show up in 25-29 that are in very low supply.

If you lock at level 30, there's a lot of competitors on supply, because any set that caps at 30 is going to show up at 30 even if a level 50 rolls it. Also, any bosses from zombie rising or rikti invasions have a tiny chance of dropping level 30 pool C's, so that adds to the pile. I personally wouldn't lock at 30.

30 and 35 are "better" in that they have healthier markets. More people buy there, more people sell there, stuff moves faster. 33 used to be a level that had disproportionate supply, so people looked there, so people rolled there, so you had a healthier market. I'm not sure it still is. (Also used to be popular for Siren's Call PVP.) 32 is an exemplar level- as you've mentioned- and I think it's starting to gain some popularity as a result, at least compared to 33.

If you're keeping "the good stuff" you're never going to get a lot of inf for what's left, no matter what level you roll at.

I'd pick 32 or 35, rolling in the 35-39 range [unless there are two or more things you want for a specific character that cap at 30.] But that's not a very strong recommendation.

Pretty much everyone working on Wall Street is trying to shorten the attention span of the investor. They make their money on commission.

"The market is a vehicle for transferring wealth from the active to the patient." I don't remember if that was Buffet quoting Graham, or Buffet being Buffet.

It applies in this game, too, only the "patient" sometimes have attention spans as short as five minutes. Long-term capital gains in this game would be "bought on Tuesday to sell on the weekend."

Look respectable! People might be coming by!

*Name: The Crazy 88s

*Currently Recruiting:Sure!

RP Level: Vestigal. We won't stop you.

PvP Level: Again, we won't stop you.

*Theme/Concept: Capitalists gone wild. We're dedicated to lowering prices at Wentworth's (and the Black Market) by taking influence out of the game and converting it into prestige. We plan on working our way up the "Top 100" list. (Last seen at #99.) Don't say marketeers never did anything for ya!

*Activity: People are around. Check TheMarket channel

Requirements for Membership: None. Promotion beyond the base level is contingent on turning large sums of inf into prestige. Promotion also carries virtually no additional benefits nor respect.

*Leadership: Foce Multiplier. I got drafted.

*In-Game Contact(s): @Boltcutter (or, as mentioned above, TheMarket global channel is full of 88s.)

*Out-of-Game Contact(s): You could try this thread, though we've gotten a bit off topic at the moment.

So yeah. We're marketeers. We're blowing money. We're aiming for #1 on the top 100 list. Our slogan: "Leaving invisible fingerprints all over your server." How ya doin?

... And we're in the top 100! #99 at the moment, with approx. 42.02 million prestige. Thanks, Granny Warbucks, for putting us over the top!

Mini-guide to blasters is in sig.

You're not going to have any significant Defense till the 40's. Your problem with Blasters starts in the 20's. If you won't enjoy the Blaster without the Defense, you won't really enjoy the Blaster. I recommend the following:

Play that build till level 8.
Go to Perez Park. Pick out a nice big group of whites. Target one near the back. Hit Build Up, Fireball, Fire Breath. Finish the survivors with your singletarget attacks.

Did you like it enough to put up with all that getting shot? If not, Blasters really aren't the character for you.

Minor build recommendations:

Delay Conserve Power till just before Inferno.
Take Bone Smasher earlier. I like the Bone Smasher/Energy Punch combo- fast activating and a CHUNK TON OF DAMAGE. Something like 60% more damage than headsplitter in the same elapsed time. (actually, I like the corresponding powers on an /Elec blaster, but the main difference is visuals.) If you're going to be that close to someone, you better hit them REALLY hard REALLY fast.

I don't like Rain of Fire (aka Rain of Aggro) because I want to put the enemy down in four seconds flat. Rain of Fire takes a long time to do its damage, and Blasters don't have a long time.

You're going to have to spend your first 40 levels without significant levels of Defense no matter what you pick. I'm going to give my rough guide to "what Defense means" here- I should have this where I can cut/paste it, but I don't.

__________________tangent commences_______________
25%: Half the attacks miss. You live twice as long on average. Below this level I don't really notice; your mileage may vary.

32.5%: 3/4 of attacks miss. So you live four times longer. This is about where an SO'd out SR scrapper lives. You can softcap for 60 seconds with a small purple. At this level I start to feel really tough.
40%: You live five times longer than an undefended blaster. At this level I feel like I have "mez protection" because a mez that doesn't land doesn't hurt me.

45%: Softcap. You live ten times longer than an undefended blaster, twice as long as the 40% blaster, and you laugh at danger and at death.

For people who are about to say "But without defense debuff resistance, you're going to die"... that's Scrapper thinking. That's thinking like a person who's in a fight which will last more than six seconds.

__________________tangent ends_______________

When I'm blasting (I consider it "full range" blasting- I use cones, I use melee attacks, I use what I have and what I have is attacks) I figure that, undefended, I have a half-life of four seconds in melee range. That means if I spend four seconds up close, I have a half chance of dying. I therefore strive to end fights REALLY FAST.

If you get good at no-Defense blasting, when you have Defense it feels like a luxury. You're calm, you're relaxed, you've got three to five times the half-life you are used to and you can just hang out and create havoc.

I recommend taking some time in the first 40 levels to learn to fight bare-a** and bluefaced like the Celts. It's a hard school but the lessons are invaluable.

Stalkers are as loved as ever they were.

(Actually, I had a good stalker on a TF last week. It took me a while to realize it, because the annoying enemies were just not... there.)

As far as the tank/brute thing, it's more dramatic. I know, Dz131, you admitted wrong, but I always like pointing out the resist-cap effect.

Let's say you have an INV tank and an INV brute, and nobody on the team is buffing S/L resist. (Not unheard of.) The tank, going with "push your strengths", has 90% S/L resist. The brute has 3/4 of this- let's make it a little more, because you can get to 90% S/L without finishing up slotting one of your powers on a tank- let's make it 78%.

Both get hit by a pair of 1000-point melee Lethal damage shots. Tank swipers or something. The brute takes 220 points from each of those, totalling 440. That's going to leave a visible mark.

The tank takes 100 points from each of those, totalling... 200.

The Brute CAN reach the resist softcap, but the Tank lives there.

If it's not what Finduilas et al said... I got nothin'.

No, no, not the government. The ivory tower liberal elites.

We have our first person to reach the rank of "Fiscal Saboteur."

Lucre the First QUALIFIED first but has not been on when I have, to get promoted.

By the way, that's 2 billion burnt. The next rank is 5 billion burnt. Who'll reach it first?

EDIT: 25.9 million prestige. Scaaaary.

EDIT 2: The bottom of the "top 100" is around 40-42 million prestige.

I will, for now, concede that flippers may be willing and able to change a "20M to 80M" gap to a "50M to 70M" gap. My experience suggests that it's usually the top end that gets trimmed, so you'd end up with a 35M to 50M gap. See "last week, Obliteration quads" or "last month, Celerity Stealth" for examples of this. But let's pretend that we've got your example, working the way you'd like to see it work.

Now I may be conflating arguments that different people have made. But buying something for 50 M and selling it for 70 M, destroying a total of 12 million , does MORE to reduce the inf supply, as a whole, than buying it once for either 20 M or 80 M does.

Instead of destroying 2 or 8 million, and moving 18 or 72 million around, we've destroyed 12 million and moved 58 million around- 46 to the original seller, and 12 million to the flipper. That's a 20% inf kill rate instead of a 10% inf kill rate.

If there were no flippers, and a horde of flippers moved in overnight, causing all items to be sold twice, inf would drain out of the world twice as fast. Prices would drop.

Have you seen this? If not, where's the flaw in my argument?