Fulmens

Morality Merits sounds like something out of, like, 1984 or something. Or some McCarthyist parody.

"Citizen, remember, turning in UnAmComSymps isn't just good patriotism, it's good business! Morality Merits can get you a washing machine, a new refrigerator, or even a NEW CAR!"

My wife started on Blasters. I started on Scrappers, as you may recall.

Blazing Bolt takes out one even-con minion in approx. five seconds.

Fireball/Fire breath takes out an entire spawn of even-con minions in approx. five seconds.

I know, I'm "Stop having fun!"guy, but that's why I make the choice I make... and why every nonfire blaster I have makes me wish I was driving a fire blaster instead.

As far as "popular on teams": I was on three TFs today [ran two, participated in one that someone else ran].

Two were "whoever wants to come is welcome" and they did GREAT. The other one was all about carefully picking powersets and ... it was fast, which was their goal. There was an impressive and totally unnecessary player body count, though. I was a FORCE FIELDER, and people were dying.

People who pick their teammates' power sets very carefully probably don't play very well.

I can give you reasons why I don't like Devices and why I prefer anything else. But that's getting really close to being the "Stop having fun!"
guy.

Here's one:

FF will turn around 99% of the problem teams in the game, but it's very one-dimensional [as mentioned]- the team will have capped defense, and that's almost everything you offer.

Sonic is unlikely to turn around a problem team. What it does offer is "half the incoming damage" to pretty much every team (no problems with overlapping) and considerable offensive benefits.

Either way you've got a pretty relaxed lifestyle, as long as you refresh the bubbles every 3, 3.5 minutes.

I strongly recommend /sonic to go with whatever you choose.

Are you going for a "add to an already OK team" build or a "make a bad team go smoothly" build?

Total Freedom Now!

I will not be happy until my dream character, Pancancer Doom, can correctly be represented in game. 93 foot long crystal centipede armor, 32 segments, each segment marked with a glowing rune of my own devising [see 32 inclosed bitmaps], with a tier 9 attack that gives time-travelling pancreatic cancer to the recipient, three days before the attack lands, and a defense set based on rendering oxygen inert. "Choking" is not a valid substitute.

Don't forget the essentials!
1. Run around.
2. Hit people.

I've emailed inf to people on European servers.

You can always email 9999 inf as a test.

NEW PLAYER WARNING:

Many times people make assumptions when talking about slotting, and don't realize that they're making assumptions.

Common assumptions:
* The character in question is level 50
* The character in question is level 22+
* The player understands what Invention Enhancements do, thoroughly
* The player understands what SO's do, thoroughly
* The player understands Enhancement Diversification
* The player has a multi-billion-inf budget

...and others which do not occur to me.

Which of the previous assumptions are valid for you?

Rajana Isa said

OK, the way the "holy trinity" works vs. the way this game works depends on the size of the buffs, really.

NORMAL GAME: Tank's got a lot of hit points and some gear so they take slightly less damage. Healer and badguys play pong with the Tank's health bar. DPS tries to shoot badguys without getting squished.

I don't play NORMAL GAME so this may not be exactly accurate.

THIS GAME: Tank has slightly more HP and self-buffs to be 10 times tougher than an undefended character. [Defense = get hit less, Resistance = take less damage from what lands, Regeneration = self-heal back faster. Some combination of these ends up being "around a factor of 10" tougher. ] Any given Defender can probably make everyone else on the team 5 times tougher than an undefended character. Many characters have enough protection that, in combination with a given Defender, they can hit the Defense or Resistance caps.

The result of all of this is that you can have a Tank, with nobody helping them, that's 20 times tougher than "baseline". You can have a Force Field defender who makes the entire team 10 times tougher than baseline. You can have, with the right support, a Blaster who is literally 40 times tougher than they would be without support.

What I'm trying to say here is, the solution to tough content is often "add more defenders or controllers." Incidentally, there isn't much call for "healers" after the first 20-ish levels because an unbuffed squishie is either totally healthy or totally dead. I ran a Force Field defender who didn't have a heal, and recommended that other FF defenders not take one either. "Anyone who's got the bubbles on and still dies is incompetent. Having a heal just gives the incompetent guy an excuse to blame YOU."

Anyway, getting off topic...

2. There are two good ways to have/build a community in addition to Super Groups [which form coalitions at times.]

One way is "by hand." Join a couple crappy teams, and when you find someone on those teams who is good, add them to your Friends list, or Global Friends list. [gfriends are more personal and closer- as well as the length of the list being limited- so if someone rejects a global friend request, don't hold it against them.] If one of your new Global Friends is on, ask what they're doing and if they'd like some help with it. THEIR friends are probably also good. Eventually you build up a network. Often someone will invite you to an SG, if you're good.

The other way is to join Global Channels for your server. RF2009 on Freedom is an example of this- "Radio Freedom 2009", a replacement for the old Radio Freedom channel. I think. Anyway, global channels are a place for people to hang out, look for teams, find teammates, organize events, ask/answer questions, lie about ***** size, whatever. Not all channels are good or constructive. Much, I imagine, like not all guilds are good or constructive...

SHAVAM!

What does it stand for?

(... absolutely nothing, say it again! whooah!)

Dammit, now I've got war stuck in my hayyid.

It does not do to leave a live Dumpleberry out of your calculations, if you live near him.

Edit: I don't put ALL of it into prestige matching. Some of it goes to bribing people to make low level IO recipes. I even put some of it into a build once or twice. And I keep some around to trade from side to side at aggressive exchange rates.

See, if he doesn't try to EXPLAIN how the market is broken, he doesn't get taken to school.

Err, Havoc_X, I believe the main reason that other thread was closed was that we had someone making offers to commit violence In Real Life and their was dramatic nuking of all threads associated with them.

I'm not saying everyone on your side of the argument is dangerous and crazy, but we can't rule it out yet.

OK, advice on what is an appropriate bid/sale:

1) Anything less than X inf might as well be zero, so never bid less than X inf. For me X is 5908. For you it might be lower. Figure any set IO you are going to craft and resell should make you at least half a million profit. Any generic should make you at least 100,000 (if memorized). It takes about three salvage to make an IO. Do your math, pick a number, don't get dragged down in pettiness.

2) Midlevel common salvage: some of it is worth something, some of the time. There are some that are used MUCH more than others, and once in a while there's a shortage of something for whatever reason. Alchemical Silver is "Frequently valuable" [valuable = 50K or more) while "Often valuable" is... hmm, everything on this list in the common mid-tier except Improvised Cybernetics. Alch Silver is used in Accuracy and Defense generics, so it's very popular.

I consider 5-20K to be a reasonable price, and 100K+ to be an annoying price. A couple thousand of these a day go through Wentworth's, much less than that through the Black Market.

3) Uncommon salvage: These are unpopular to the point that they are often deleted, and they're low enough in volume that they're easy to manipulate, so they frequently go crazy in price. The "buy in 10 minutes" price is usually around 20K or less, and the "buy it RIGHT NOW" price is often 20K or less, but sometimes floats up to 200K.

4) High Level Common salvage: A ridiculous amount of this is generated every day, so it's almost never selling for more than your minimum bid. It's very common to see, like, 4000 for sale and no bids. (This can be an illusion, because sometimes people try to "corner the market", give up when they can't buy everything, and leave 1500 for sale at inflated prices. So of that 4000, only 300 or 400 may be at cheapo prices. So it goes.)

5) Recipes: This gets a little complex. Look at The Big Page, paying attention to the picture next to each recipe. That's the "supply" side. Yellow gunsights drop frequently from enemies, orange gunsights drop rarely from enemies, shields drop from mission complete, and those green things drop from merit or "AE Gold" rolls.

Yellow gunsights and shields are in very high supply. Level 50 recipes are in very high supply, and "max level" is usually in higher supply than all lower levels put together.

The "demand" side is a lot harder to figure out. Sets that give +Recharge or +Defense are currently trendy; previously trendy were sets that gave +Regen and... umm... I don't even remember. +Damage?

Very few people have any use for the following sets: Sleep, Immobilize, Hold, Pet, Sniper, Confuse, Fear, Knockback, Stun, Taunt, Defense Debuff, To Hit Buff/Debuff . That doesn't mean that they're bad sets, it means they are probably oversupplied relative to demand and therefore will be cheap.

Combining these things, Positron's Blast Acc/Dam/End (ranged AOE, recharge bonus, drops from merit rolls) should be expensive. And generally it is. If you want it at level 30-33 instead of 50, it's VERY inconvenient to get.

Last I looked at a sample of rolls, some of them "maxed" at 33 and some "maxed" at 35. So there may not be an optimal choice.

"maxed" in quotes because a lot of them max at 50, depressingly enough.

Here's what I was doing...

http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/...h/Workinit.jpg

http://i1009.photobucket.com/albums/...omfortable.jpg

Remember, you're only underdressed if you don't have the bubbles!

(for reference, a blaster with properly built Force Field support is literally ten times as hard to kill as one with no buffs. When people talk about buffs being better than heals, this is the example I always use. Actually playing Force Field defenders is kinda boring for most people. )