GavinRuneblade

I lost the thread, but Arcannaville has stated that both per point of damage and per point of endurance a +2 boss is the most efficient source of experience. The thread seemed to back it up and is where I learned the joys of fighting super-low-level bosses with my low-damage characters.

The thread was trying to determine if endurance cased a functional limit in exp gain or if anyone was able to gain exp faster than Arcanna predicted based on her understanding of end.

The Shard missions (outside tfs) need to be turned into arcs. The Kora Fruit needs to be tweaked to be something worth going after. I think giving the shard the same kind of makeover as the hollows would be awesome.

Going Co-op is a little odd, but I'd enjoy it. The current cannon has Arachnos with only limited portal technology, part of Naylor's arc you have to help them get access. I can see a nice new arc unlocked by doing Naylor that mimics the way you access cimerora by letting you access teh shard via arachnos portals. Could be fun.

Just stepping in because statements like this encourage wrong thinking. The two large insps you get in the tutorial reliably sell for between 50k and 100k. Since the raptor pack is only 10k, and the recipe is only 40k, you have double to triple the funds required at level 1 on every character except for a VEAT with no need to have an alt email funds.

Not to mention the ability to pull common IO recipes off the market for 100 inf and sell them to a vendor for up to 100k inf. Since I'm talking about commons there is an infinite supply from the crafting tables so you're not doing anything to hurt availability.

@Postagulous
The envenomed dagger is near godlike with its -regen for fighting AVs and GMs. Just amazing. The Stun grenade is situationally useful enough that I make those.

The backup radio is fun. Not a shivan, but solid. Too bad it's so expensive to craft.

All said though, I really with the crafted jet pack had different graphics. Day job pack, raptor pack, crafted pack, and redside sky raider pack are all identical. Very lame.

Works the best is really subjective. But claws is a great set so you should be happy with it. /Nin is possibly the most popular secondary.

1. In general, Defense is ideal, positionals slightly better than typed. Not sure what you mean by Mystic unless you're talking about the Mu Patron set.
2. Health and Stamina are very helpful to every build, but almost never necessary. Take them if you can fit them in, they will make everything you do easier, reduce your downtime, and increase your survivability and your endurance will increase your damage output. Can't go wrong there. But if your build is tight you can simply put more end reduction in your attacks.
3. Combat Jumping plus Super Jump tends to be the fastest/most versatile. Fly is the easiest. If you go with Haste then Super Speed is only one pick away and on stalker builds that is helpful for saving power picks.

I will say that from reading a few posts (Silverado, Top_Doc, and Werner off the top of my head but I KNOW there are more) a person could be forgiven for thinking it was easy. When there are posts about how many AVs have been solod without temps or insps, and when someone solo's 9 AVs simultaneously, or Silverado taking out GMs and such with a blaster, you kind of gloss over the 30-minute plus length of each attempt, the number of failures it took to learn the strategy, etc. and just go "wow that's awesome, I have a ton of money I bet I could make one of those builds". It's a lot more than just the build. Those are darn skilled players too.

With way more patience than I have. =)

You can't trio Hamidon. Though if you're satisfied with the illusion, you could probably pull off taking down the version in the lady grey once they fix the current bugs.

The only reason it's "surprising" is that so few items get to over 1,000 bids. Usually 15 is considered a lot of bids =)

Even less work would be to leave the beaker rack as it is, and reintroduce the old art as a new item. This puts the burden of effort to fix existing bases on us, but it is less work for them, thus more likely to happen, and has essentially the same outcome.

Well, I think resist capping anything but energy is impossible short of using insps and the tier 9.

On defenses, I think you can cap one position and/or s/l but you gotta realize your starting from the same spot as a blaster or defender when going with defense. And, again, if it's for farming you don't need to cap, you just gotta be within one purple of cap, and you only need to pick one category then farm a mission that only does that type.

On elec/elec that means energy damage (for capped resist) and typically s/l or melee defense.

Ok, then you and I are 100% in agreement on definition. =) And I think the rest of my earlier post shows that.

I hope it does anyway.

Why a karma -kb instead of all three zephyrs?

Then I misinterpreted. The way you phrased it it sounds like you turned it up +1. Sorry.

I find there really is no standard. Some people love the challenge of +2/3/4 setting, some like -1/x3/4/5. Those two groups will have totally different slotting. Brutes rarely slot damage because they can cap on fury for free so why bother. There is no standard. People sometimes think there is, but there really isn't. What there are, are percentage chance to hit based on your level, the enemy's level, and your power and accuracy slotting. Against a +2 enemy if you want to maintain an 85% to hit or better, 1 acc is not enough. Standard for those who run at +2 difficulty is to run 50-60% slotted. On DOs that means up to 4 of them. And that is standard in the terms of the people who run that difficulty. Some like to do the Yin-Os from Faultline to save on slots. Standard for people who run at -1 is to skimp on accuracy in favor of endurance and recharge. that's also standard.

If giving you options and letting you pick is telling you how to play, then you have a truly unique and non-standard definition that doesn't fit with pretty much anyone else who speaks English.

Again and expanded:
1. turn down the difficulty for arachnos missions (and any others that are harder for your particular build and duo), turn it back up afterward.
2. slot more acc less damage
2a. version 1 use IOs
2b. version 2 using your existing 3 slots go 2 acc 1 dam instead of 1 acc 2 dam
2c. version 3 add 1 extra slot for accuracy
2d. pop yellows as needed
2e. use your second build to have a team build with leadership
2f. talk your partner into getting leadership =)
3. skip arachnos missions and fight other enemies (at your level I enjoyed Croatoa and Striga, but the Warshade specific story arc is very fun also)
4. Start a pug for arachnos missions and then leave again afterward
5. Work on pulls and controls (warshades have stuns, knockback, holds, immobilizes and every attack slows) to spread out the enemy and take them piecemeal.
6. On my regen I used to like to slow bosses and run them in circles around pillars and other obstacles while I healed up faster than they did. You can do the same while a key power recharges.

I'm sure there are more options too.

So buy the recipes and salvage. Or craft only what drops by sheer luck. No grinding necessary. What I do is I put everything that drops on the market for less than 100inf unless I know it is worth more than 1 million. When I shop, I click the "for sale" and only buy what is available right now. No marketing, no farming, no trading inf from character to character, No grinding and I only craft if I need to and feel like it. I'm with you on preferring to play. It really is a lot easier to do than I think you give it credit for. Hell, I find the market faster than selling to quartermasters because I can dump whole stacks at once. And it's always nice when a common salvage that vendors for 250, which I listed for 1 sells for 100k. =)

Actually this is a mix of correct and partly correct. So bosses did used to spawn, it was rarer but not never.

Also, downgraded bosses do not technically hit harder than lieuts, what happens is they tend to have better powers. So if both a lieut and a downgraded-boss hit you whit "hack" from the broadsword set it would deal the exact same damage. But the downgraded boss might also have disembowel which has a higher base damage than hack, and the lieut probably doesn't have it. Also, the boss probably has more powers so spends less time waiting on recharge before taking his next swing.

So you are right that it is more than just HP, but downgraded bosses don't have a higher damage modifier, they do (as you said) have better powers.

that said, on my squishiest characters I don't turn bosses off until 17-20 (depending on the character) and I turn them back on again as soon as possible because they are absolutely the most efficient way to level (measured in both damage dealt per exp gained and endurance spent per exp gained).

Actually, if you experiment with making missions in AE you can see exactly what's happening.

There is a mission setting called pacing. Which has values from flat, random, up, down, etc. In a "flat" mission every spawn is exactly the level of the mission. In a random, they vary from +1 to -1. In up, they start at -1 and build to +1 in the back.

Next, some mission components (guarded hostages, destructible objects, ambushes, fixed bosses, etc) have a secondary component for the spawn from easy-med-hard. When you get a +1 spawn from pacing combined with a hard setting, you get (usually but it varies) one or two extra mobs and the whole group at +1. Add to this that as a warshade you trigger quantums, voids and later on cysts so you can end up with three extras at +1.

Solo at 0/0 a flat-medium spawn will be two +0 minions or one lieut. Random it might also include three -1 minions, or two -1 minions and one -1 lieut or one +1 lieut. All those are considered "medium" for a solo 0/0 setting. Add one player and add either +1 level or 1-2 minion or 1 lieut to any of those.

A hard or +1 encounter starts with anything from above and adds 1 more minion, or ups the level. Or it might be a solo boss against a solo player at 0/0. A hard +1 due to pacing might even be a +1 boss. Add an extra player and that boss might have a minion or two with hard pacing and is more likely to be +1 than +0.

As far as I know the only change recently was they made the variety more common, not implemented it from scratch. My understanding was that it was always like this, just really rarely varied from "flat medium". But I've been known to be wrong, so I'm sure someone will point to patch notes or some such to clarify it.

But I assure you, they didn't forget to check it. They put a lot into this system and I assure you they know exactly how it works. And they do a ton of datamining to know the difference in performance between the top min-maxers and the rest of us.

Depends on level. At 50 yes. At level 1 they have only ~35% more hp and yet give the full exp. I love to take advantage of this and the new exemplaring exp with my very low damage characters, such as defenders and tanks. specifically a level 1 boss has 108 HP and a level 1 lieut has 73.

They also give over 100 prestige per kill even at level 1. Just sayin.

Ah but keep in mind rule #1 of exemplaring: Small bonuses are never reduced. So if you have a level 50 quad (mako), or a level 43 triple, you can go all the way down to level 21 from level 50 and keep the full enhancement %.

Also the reduction from exemplaring happens before ED kicks in. So if you want 90% or more damage on your attack while running a Posi, slot for over 200% damage at level 50.

I was seeing at least 20,000 bids most times while moving my canes. Not bids for 20k inf, I mean 20,000 bids showing. And it broke above 100,000 bids several times while I was selling mine last year.

That's where i've been leaning, but it's not really grabbing me. I'm trying to make the character fit into the praetorian police, so part of me thinks at least one powerset should involve guns. I was thinking maybe a DP/EM blaster, but I already have a sonic/em. I'm not stuck on the idea of a gun. And I'm not totally opposed to energy. Just thinking through options and can't think of anything else yet.

With i17 we can also abuse the day job shield and the temp power shield. Plus, the purchased shield from sirens call works when you can get it. All of those run out, but they can be used for flavor and on an "as needed" basis to give the feel.

Keep in mind this changes if you team. Having even just 5% does nothing by yourself, but it might be the difference between almost capped and softcapped after your team passes around buffs.

and having any defense kicks in if you use purples for tougher fights.

Nope, I gave at least three options. One included using only SOs. You have chosen to ignore that one, and deliberately misinterpret the other two.

In your first post you said that you "add +1 level to the primary mission holder". That means you turned the difficulty up above normal. I said, turn it back to normal if you can't handle the increase.

I also said choose a different enemy group to face, because some are harder than others. Lots of people avoid the circle of thorns, malta, and knives of artemis. They are a pain, much harder than their levels suggest, and there is no bonus reward for going after them, so many people skip them altogether. If you have an issue with arachnos, then just fight council, nemesis, freaks, lost, rikti, etc. There are a ton of options. At your level head to Striga or Croatoa and do the stories there, no arachnos great content, no changes to your build required.

I also said add one extra slot to your attacks, or change from 1 acc 2 dam to 2 acc 1 dam.

None of these are "learn to play" none of them are "IOs are needed".

If you don't want to craft, then buy them finished. The ones I recommended you should be able to get for very cheap, like 200k or less crafted. I bought a few attack IOs redside yesterday for 65k to 150k crafted.

Your experience is totally unrelated to the sidekick mechanics. Let me give you an example, let's say in some random sport Chicago always beats LA but always looses to NY. Meanwhile NY always looses to LA. If Chicago went around saying that NY was way too good and twinked and no fun and the league needed to change the rules to make it a fair contest, LA would be really confused. LA would tell them, try to change your strategy, your opening lineup goes right into NY's strengths, or whatever. NY is fine, we kick their *** all the time. And clearly it's not a "learn to play" issue because Chicago takes down LA, so they obviously know how to play. It's just this one matchup, for whatever reason, is harder for them.

It's not the sidekick mechanic. That's trying to pass the buck and dodge responsibility. Some enemies require different tactics and different builds than others. And some are just never going to be easy for a warshade. Zombies resist negative damage heavily, so do the circle of thorns. They will always be harder for you to kill. Widows have unusually high defense and an attack that debuffs your tohit. If you do not slot extra accuracy to compensate, you will miss more often. That is all there is to it. The same thing will happen at any level.

You can either adapt to the different enemies, or you can pick your fights. But blaming the devs for your build not working equally well against 100% of the enemies is silly.

That is also very much going to be a factor fo teh powersets and AT's as well as the boss in question. For instance, my BS/Regen can solo over 18 Crey tanks of various kinds including a large number of the power tank lieuts. I can, and have, had 10 of them attacking me and gotten up to make a cup of tea, then came back and killed them. On the other hand, one lone Roman Boss can get a pair of back to back crits and I'm down.

That's not because there is anything wrong with the difficulty, or he was too high level, it's because Regen as a powerset is very strong against slow ongoing damage and very weak against spike damage.

Similarly, I have an elec/elec brute who can handle rikti mobs of nearly any size and level. But many smashing/lethal enemies like nemesis and freaks tear her to pieces. She has 90% resistance to energy, but only ~30% to smashing/lethal. Again, not a problem with the difficulty, but simply the fact that some builds are better against some enemies.

that's why I asked you above, what AT, what Powerset, and what enemy. It makes a big difference.

Much more of a difference than +1 or +2 levels.

Also, I will point out that at low levels the difference between a boss and a lieutenant is a joke. I mean below level 10. A level 1 Boss has 108hp a level 1 Lieut has 73. The boss is worth 5 times the experience.

By level 20 the boss has 674hp and the lieut only has 359. The boss is still worth the same x5 exp but now he has nearly twice as many hit points. Way, way tougher than the lieut.

Low level, bosses are squishy pinatas full of candy and xp. Mid level they rapidly become dangerous.

You have two options.

#1 Turn your difficulty down to match your skill level and character build.

#2 Turn your build's power higher to match your difficulty level.

IO's are the best way to achieve #2. You can also add more accuracy SOs and fewer damage SOs. Or take slots from other powers and add them to your attacks. But I think you'll have more fun following my frankenslotting advice and it will save you inf also.

They are not required, they are simply more efficient and help you achieve #2 easier since you are not interested in #1.