Fulmens
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Posts
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Joined
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Let this be a moral lesson, kids: don't get locked into one server.
(I play on, in roughly chronological order of starting: infinity, pinnacle, victory, freedom with an intermediate moment where I created characters on all US servers, both sides, so I could run an inf transfer service.) -
Excellent! I'm about 25 recipes into my fiendish plan.
... I don't know if "sell 100 recipes" is really a fiendish plan, but we'll see how it goes. -
I haven't been able to work a way out, myself. I suppose the closest thing would be if you could raid stuff out of an SG base, sell it, rebuy it for less, and put it back.
And, y'know, if you do this, and someone wants to hit you, I'll hold you down for them. -
Also: Lovely singing voice, flowing hair.
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Outrageous items command outrageous prices.
*shrug* We will get very slightly more high end stuff than we used to get, assuming the old ways of getting the stuff are still out there. I mean, we got 0.05% more pool C's from whacking Bosses. It didn't change things much. 0.05% more PVP recipes from hero merits? Fine, whatever.
(also the market fee, so you don't have to sell EVERYTHING on the forums, is 10% total. 5% down.) -
It's very popular on these boards for people to go into Mid's and put together some sort of 10 billion inf, level 50 build that will pick its teeth with Lord Recluse and suggest that people should really be running THIS thing.
You don't need that build. I repeat, you don't need that build.
I have something in my mini-guide on Frankenslotting- basically, you can very cheaply squeeze a couple extra slots of enhancement out of any power.
While levelling up, make sure the important things get the basics. Any attack you use a lot should have at least 1 acc, 3 damage (but not more than 3, running SO's); any major defense should have 3 Defense or Damage Resist or Heal in it, as appropriate.
The reason for 3 is "enhancement diversification": when you get to about 93% enhancement on most powers, or 54% on defensive types, you'll hit a wall.
1 SO= 33%
2 SO's = 66%
3 SO's = 95%
4 SO's = 100%
... wait, what? 5% instead of 33%? Yup. That's ED.
For a few defensive things, that is 20%, 40%, 57%, 60% .
If you've got the basic functional slotting, with some endurance reduction and recharge reduction sprinkled in as desired, you'll be FINE. If you like to tune up your characters, you can become better, but that's your core functionality. -
Notes:
* The content in this game, aside from the ever popular shooting people, consists mostly of reading the flavor text. There are reasons WHY you're shooting people in the face, other than "Blue Steel needs ten Clockwork Ears. Why doesn't this Clockwork have two ears?"
* The game doesn't start at max level; it's all game. Things to do after you reach max level include "do all the content you missed", "obsess about making money", "obsess about collecting badges", "obsess about Super Group base design", "build your character into a cutting-edge death machine", "start another character", "build missions in Architect Entertainment", etc. I mostly build other characters, juggle pickup groups, and attempt to single-handedly rebalance the entire market.
I've seen some truly amazing supergroup bases, but I don't have anywhere near the patience to do that.
Hope you can fix the flickering. I'm not good at this stuff, but have you tried running in windowed mode? -
I think the OP has gotten it, but just to repeat:
Fame = big circles
Progress = small counters on the very top. -
Quote:I don't know other games, but this one probably doesn't work like that one. We have stupidly large amounts of money floating around, and many people "round up" to the nearest million. Or the nearest 10 million. Pardon the extended example.Originally Posted by icemanstryketh
Auction trader is Definitely NOT the AT I had in mind nor would ever. I have a very sour taste in my mouth when it comes to market manipulation due to World of Warcraft and its auction house antics. I'd rather steamroll things, for fun and profit.
I think I will try SS/WP. I cant thank you guys enough for you feedback and patience with my queries.
I'm going to give you an example of something that is going on in the game right now, as I write- well, I'll give you three examples at different scales.
Level 40 generic Damage IO [this would be even cheaper if memorized]: last 5 recipes 10,000 inf each; crafting 99,000 inf; ingredients 26,000 inf (highest of last 5 prices); Total cost (with an hour of patience to let the bids fill) about 135,000 inf. Last 5 crafted sold for 450,000 . Wentworth's 10% fee is 45K, so you make about 270K. Prices will of course go up and down, you can't take the snapshot and assume you can make exactly that much, but you should be able to sell for 300K and double your money.
"Ah", you might say, "But that's people who have like a hundred million and don't see the difference between 135K and 450K. And I don't want to make a hundred million by crafting five hundred items." Fine.
Miracle: Heal at level 40 (its maximum.) 25 million for the recipe. Around 1.5 million for the deific weapon, and a few thousand for everything else, ingredients. 104,000 to craft. Total cost: 26.7 million or so. Last 5 crafted selling for 45 million, minus 4.5 million wentfee, leaves 45 -4.5 -26.7 = 13.8 million profit.
"Well", you might say, "That's evil profiteering." There's nothing that stops anyone else from putting up a bid for a Level 40 miracle, four ingredients, and coming back the next day and saving themselves 13.8 million inf. Anyone in the game can do it.
"Fine", you might say, "but the REALLY SHINY STUFF costs hundreds of millions. Surely people have to be patient at THAT price range."
Apparently not. Armageddon Damage/Recharge, crafted, varies in the last 5 between 125 million and 250 million. The recipe varies between 150 and 200 million.
Some people have more money than patience. Some people have more patience than money. If you play the game in one of several relatively normal modes, you can make a whole lot of money without having to do anything extraordinary. Or you can put 10 minutes a day into the market and make billions on a level 17 character, like I did. (OK, probably half an hour a day in the early days.) -
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets
if you find a specific set [like Thunderstrike] which has ranged defense, it will have a link at the bottom that says:
"Sets that improve ranged Defense" which points to:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category...Ranged_Defense -
My guess would be Rad/Sonic. You toggle up enemies, you shoot enemies, everyone does a lot more damage... you don't have any powers that directly target teammates. If you do happen to help out your teammates, so much the better.
1-6 sewers (maybe 7 or 8 with a strong team)
7-10 struggle in the wilderness
10-15+ Positron pt. 1 and 2
16-20+ Synapse.
Your key powers are Accelerate Metabolism, Radiation Infection, Enervating Field, and if you have a shred of endurance left over, Shriek and Howl.
Edit: Rad/Sonic is a defender. -
I find the difference between solo and group blasters to be not so much build as playstyle.
Here are some vague ill-organized thoughts on primaries:
Some teammates find Energy Blast to have inconvenient knockback. If you have Electric primary you may synergize VERY well with other electric sets. Sonic increases team damage and has good emergency buttons but is short on individual AOE. Fire does a chunk ton of AOE in a hurry - you can drop minions by the 8-pack without even using Build Up or Aim. (general note: take all the Build Up and Aim type powers you can.)
Other than that, there's a Blaster mini-guide in my sig. -
I've not really needed more AOE, normally, than Fire Breath, Fire Ball, and one other (cone from elec epic or mind secondary) and even then I often find myself tabbing repeatedly to find a target for that third one. But it never hurts to have backup plans.
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Is "15% faster than Too Damn Slow" still too damn slow? Only you know the answer.
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Quote:Half the time it will take more than 2.5 seconds for a pulse to land.Originally Posted by Umbral
It pulses every 5 seconds and lasts for a baseline of 5.96 seconds. The only time you wouldn't get decent coverage is if you're missing a lot (which shouldn't really happen if you're using your toggles correctly), or you're fighting high level enemies without slotting up the hold at all. My calculations assume that you have it slotted enough for only a single stack on your enemies (either unslotted for +0-1s or slotted more heavily for fighting higher level foes). If you have it slotted more heavily than I assume, you'll actually manage substantially better uptime because you're going to be increasing your chances of affecting the target (not that they stack to increase mez).
My half-life in melee range on a Blaster or other undefended squishy is about four seconds.
I guess my point, if any, is that you can only survive using it if you don't need it. It's not one of the tools I've ever gotten much use out of. -
Huh, so that's why my attempt to sell GoTA
efense for 40 million didn't fly.
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Quote:The flip side of this is, I sold a Celerity Stealth for 120 M.
Yeah, I just got a freebird +stealth for 100k. I have a bunch of bids out on those still, I have a few characters who want one.
I listed a LOT of stuff high, like 70M, and almost none of it sold. On the other hand, it's not like I'm going to cry about losing the 5% listing fee. On the third hand? More than 5% of it did.
(Don't look at the third hand, you're not old enough!) -
To us!
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I'm pretty sure that the RPG company that wanted to do it was making their profit because they were getting paid in American dollars and manufacturing [paying their printers, etc.] in Canadian dollars. So when one Canadian dollar was $0.80US, they made like a 15% profit. When one Canadian dollar moved up to $1.00 US they went out of business.
I could be conflating several different stories there. -
Every time I've tried to quantify mez protection, It's gone like this:
1. Take a blatant guess.
2. Attempt to justify.
3. Throw up my hands and just put in a disclaimer. "Large but unquantified."
50% more survivable? 33%? 100%?
/e throws up hands.
The rad debuff calculation is good - I always forget that higher-rank critters have debuff resistance- but there are situations where the rad debuffs don't "work right". User error, early enemy mez, scrapper killing anchor while you're landing the debuffs, whatever. I don't know how you'd model that. The set does have some "oh ****" buttons built in, possibly for just that case, and in some cases you get very good synergy with the secondary [rad/psi lets you just CRASH enemy recharge, as long as you don't need to do it very often.]
Choking Cloud, to get very specific, has a problem. I couldn't find a cite for this, so I could be wrong, but I believe it's on a very long (5 or 10 second) pulse. So you could jump into a crowd and get NOTHING while they unload a ranged and melee alpha on you, and possibly a second round of critter-level brawl, before the cloud kicks in. -
Consider that extra damage (or -Resist) is never wasted according to the Umbral model; it pretty much always results in a shorter fight, so increased survivability. (I consider this an elegant way of valuing +damage, by the way.) I may have been on a team that did "too much damage" once or twice. . . there was a SG team with something like five Sonics and four Assaults that took out Dominatrix in well under a minute. But it is extremely unlikely that I will ever dismiss more damage as "not improving matters." This is in no way a strength of Force Fields.
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Umbral: You're correct and I'm wrong. I misread your Rad point.
... so how do you model a Rad debuff? Assume it hits, say, 80% of the spawn? Assume it's ineffective (misapplied , Rad stunned, whatever) in, say, 20% of the fights? Useful for,say, 80% of a given fight, and is that the first 80% or the last? +1s? +2s? Lot of potential approaches to the problem.
A few years back I was convinced that Rad could do everything the three big bubbles could, plus debuff incoming damage, buff outgoing damage, increase recharge and recovery, and juggle geese while whistling. Then I actually played it. Most of those things are true most of the time. The advantage FF has is situational. . . or rather, it is NOT situational. FF can provide ALL of its benefits damn near ALL of the time, providing excellent benefits when the situation goes to hell. (consider the effects of the 1/10 second Knives of Artemis sleep on both sets.)
Reliability has a significant but difficult-to-measure benefit. A slept or dead FF defender still provides about 25% defense to the whole team in the small bubbles, and an FF defender hit by any other mez effect [that I can think of] is perfectly functional.
On the other hand, a model needs some sort of measure of synergy or lack thereof, because support (unlike mitigation) is not something you do solo. Each teammate has a large chance of providing teamwide support, Defense-based or otherwise. I'd estimate only 20% or so of my recent teams had no Defense/acc-debuff support, and also had less than two near-capped Defense characters. The other 80% had (or would have) severely overkilled Defense on several or all characters, if I brought a Force Fielder. I've been playing mostly level 33-35 characters, Blasters, Tanks and Force Field defenders.
I don't need to be Beloved Defender of the Team - but FF only makes me happy around half the time I bring it. (most people don't notice the fights that WOULD have gone bad except for FF. I do... and people say things like "Very smooth team." That was me; you're welcome. ) My Rad/Sonic makes me happy EVERY time I bring it. -
"Mid's hero designer" is the phrase to google.
I see you're new here (or at least new to the forums.) I'm going to ask what a co-worker called "The question behind the question": Why are you planning on farming?
1) Is it because you want to beat up a whole lot of tough guys at once?
2) Is it because you want the shiniest stuff in the game?
3) Is it because you expect that you will need to farm to make a viable character?
To answer these questions:
1) nothing wrong with that. Go postal, have fun.
2) You're looking for "The Market" forum. There's a guy in there who made a billion inf in two weeks from nothing. Everything everyone says in that forum sounds like late-night infomercials but it's true. I made five billion inf on a level 17 character who never left Wentworths and I did it in half an hour a day! The exclamation points write themselves.
3) You can (I don't really recommend it, but you CAN) build a viable character with SO's only. You can run SO's the entire way to level 50, buying em whenever you can, and still end up with millions of inf left over at 50. I usually frankenslot and get very good results for less than 1% of the cost of a really high-end build. So you have to ask what you want money for and how much you want. I'm not going to say that everything after the first 200 million is just bling. I may PLAY like that's true (I have probably 50 significant characters, and only three have builds anywhere near that price range. One of those I don't even like that much) but I won't SAY it. -
Dual Pistol/rad corrs, as a pair, will actually be hideously powerful. The thing to realize is that debuffs and buffs in this game are TREMENDOUSLY powerful compared to most games.
Enervating Field, for instance, adds 22.5% [a little less for higher-con enemies] to the TOTAL damage EVERYONE does to the badguys in a reasonable radius around the enemy. Your buddy's Enervating Field will add another 22.5%.
Radiation Infection, if properly slotted once you get to level 22 or so, knocks their chance to hit down to about 1/5 what it was. Two radiation infections will knock the enemies down to the legal minimum against nearly anything you will fight in the game.
(There's a lot of complexity in the to-hit equation. As my high school physics teacher used to say, "I've only lied a little bit here." )
So while two emp/sonics are ridiculously good and you can do what Pyro Master mentioned [it's called a "Green Machine" build and it doesn't work in any other context than multiple empaths], the characters you have should be able to rip up damn near anything the game throws at you .
Go forth and shoot people. -
Quote:Actually the challenge of any model is to accurately represent the expected play experience. Your model does not accurately represent my play experience.
The challenge, then, if you disagree with that assumption, is to find a different reasonable assumption that better fulfills the needed role without being ridiculously complicated (which is one of the reasons why I went with only a single AT rather than generating an arbitrary roster), otherwise you're just partaking in pointless complaining.
Rad debuffs, to give an example you mentioned, have a HUGE effect on the fight. You don't have a good answer for how to model them (neither do I), therefore you model them by, in effect, assuming they have zero effect on the fight.
I don't have a good model, but I wasn't the one who claimed to be able to produce one. My criticism need not be constructive to be accurate and useful.