Human_Being

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I soundly disagree. First, if you're going to triple-slot something with Common IOs, like damage into an attack, do not wait for 35s. Three 30s puts you past ED's sharp cut-off point. There is no reason to delay five more levels for an irrelevant extra benefit.

Second, the total difference between 25 IOs and green SOs, even in triplicate, is only a couple percentage points.

Compare:

three 25 IOs: +92.2% (after ED)
three 30 IOs: +95.7%
three 35 IOs: +96.5%

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The missing 4.3% is often noticeable in its absence.

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Nothing was changed on that page until I just edited it *after* your post. As I mentioned above, the Global designation should be correct since I changed the definition of Global to take into account the PvP exception. I removed the Proc designation from those two PvP Special IOs.

Please show where Numina's was listed as a global. I really want to know so that it can be corrected.

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It was listed as a global with the little globe icon on that page while I typed up my post this morning. It was listed for both Numina's and Miracle uniques. Now it is not. I don't know what the editing history of the page says, but it was there this morning; it's part of the reason I made the post.

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EDIT: Just checked the wiki - it calls the enhancement unique (only 1 may be slotted per build) but not a global.

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That just got removed from this page between the time my post went up and your edit did. They used to have the globe next to them and the Shield Wall/Gladiator's Armor uniques still do.

Oh, and there is a Tutorial you can do at the University (Steel Canyon heroside or Cap au Diable villainside) for Inventions at lv10+. I'd recommend doing that for a basic understanding of how IOs are put together.

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How much Influence should I save? Should I just start to save all my infl. now at a lvl 10? Should I save my infl. and not slot any powers with any origins? Is inlf going to be spent that quickly on IOs?

Are there certain IOs that will be specifically awesome for my tanker? I am a team player mostly, so what builds are recomended? (lvl 10 science tanker Inv/SS).

What lvl do I start on IOs?

What lvl do recipes become useful?

Thanks CoH community in advance!

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There's no given amount of money you need for Set IOs. Builds can vary from a few tens of millions to several billion in price. My advice on that score is to spend time familiarizing yourself with the Market and IOs being sold on it. Learn what's valuable and what's ignored. Figure out things you can buy, craft, and sell reliably for a profit.

If you do that, you can have a steady revenue stream of tens of millions per day that only takes a bit of maintenance each play-session. You spend the rest of your time playing and, despite the claims of those who desperately want people to pad their teams, you never have to 'farm' to get enough Inf for a desired build.


You can start on Basic IOs (the ones without a special name and with the TO icons) at anywhere from 32+. The enhancement percentage from IOs goes up with level and they become slightly better than even-level SOs at 35. At lv50 they provide 42.4% bonus each.

Set IOs I wouldn't mess with until 35 or so either, but that varies from build to build depending on what you want them to do. I'd recommend doing more research on how Set IOs operate because there are many rules and a confusing number of exceptions to those rules.

One thing that can help you get your head around IOs is Mids Hero Designer. It supports Set IOs and will show you the Enh % and the effect of cumulative Set Bonuses on your character. It also has a "Set Bonus Finder" function that will search for a particular type of bonus (it's under the right-most pull-down menu). Play around with Mids for a bit.


Up until then, you can pretty much go ahead and sell all your drops at the Market or at an NPC Store (whichever will give you a better price/time-for-sale).

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For Set Bonuses and Special IOs that work like Set Bonuses (called 'Globals'), you lose the Set Bonus if you exemplar *more than* 3 levels under the level of the IOs. Whether the power is activated or even available doesn't matter.

For Special IOs called 'Procs', the level of the Special IO doesn't matter -- you can be 30 levels under the level of the Proc and it will still work provided you still have access to the power and it is activated.

It's all there in that link.

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On Paragonwiki the Uniques from Gladiator's Armor and Shield Wall are listed as Globals and that their Resistance-to-all or Def-to-all bonus will disappear if you exemplar below -3 to their stamped-level.

All of the "PVP" IOs act like Purples and give whatever bonus they provide from 1-50. You gain the bonus from these IOs independant of either their stamped-level or access to the power they are slotted in. I can confirm this from having lv50 examples of both IOs.


Furthermore, I have a lv40 Numina's Convalescence Regen/Rec Unique slotted on my Brute in Health at lv18. This IO is again listed as a Global; ceasing to operate at -3 to the level stamped on the enh. I just went into Ouroboros and auto-exemplared myself down to 14 (1st mission tier). After waiting two minutes, the bonus from Numina's vanished from Combat Attributes.

I then autoexemplared myself to lv19 (2nd mission tier) and waited 120 seconds again. The Numina's bonus remained.

The Numina's Convalescence Unique operates independantly of the level stamped upon the enh, but the power it is slotted in must be available.

Bug this in-game.

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Also keep in mind the exemplar effects on enhancements. You lose the bonus if you go more then 3 levels below the enhancement, or if you lose access to the power. So for powers you take at higher levels you can slot higher level enhancements.


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But for Set Bonuses, you only lose the bonus if you go 3 below the enhancements' levels.

You retain set bonuses even if you loose access to the power due to exemplaring.

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I believe for regular Set Bonuses you lose the bonus if you are 3 levels below the Enh level OR you no longer have access to the power they are slotted in.

Figure out where the balance point is for you between Enhancement percentage and Set Bonus availability on a power-by-power basis. Depending on where it's going and what it gives, I'll slot anywhere between lv34 and lv41 Set Enh. Make use of Mids Hero Designer's slotting function where you can flip between two slotting schemes in a power to look at the actual effect on End-cost, recharge time, etc.

To have one thing follow another, you have to put $$ between them, and there should be no spaces between the commands and the dollar signs.

Example: command 1$$command 2

Also, you might try reversing the order of your commands, sometimes the systems reads them last to first.

EDIT: and you want the whole string in quotes: /macro something "command 1$$command 2"

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Thanks guys!

I will definitely be looking up that invention thing. I started reading through some of the patch notes but there is simply too many! lol.

Has there been any significant balance changes I should be aware of?

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You said you had a Fire/Fire Blaster. Blasters saw an overhaul about a year ago. They had their base Ranged damage increased and the Defiance inherent was replaced. Now rather than getting a bonus as HP drop, Blasters get self-buffs for continuing to attack (kind of like Brutes). They also can use their Tier 1 and 2 (first two attacks) powers even while mezzed. Basically it was a solid set of Buffs. That kind of reworking has characterized Castle & Cos tenure in the game; in solid contrast to the serial-nerfs you were familiar with.

Stalkers, Dominators, Blasters, and weapon-based Sets have all been dramatically improved since you've been gone, along with various and sundry little changes.


In short the game has gone from strength to strength while you have been away.

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Soft Cap: The point at which a large amount of Defense is about as good as it possibly can be, where you'll only get hit 5% of the time. It is 45% Defense, and each category (either melee/ranged/AoE for 'positional' defense, or Smashing/Lethal/Fire etc for 'typed' defense) must be capped separately to get all-round defense.

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The reason why it's called "Soft Cap" is because you can have higher defense - about 100% defense until 21 where the median max is about 200% and these values are the hard cap. The game will not let you put the values higher. - but it normally doesn't benefit you due to how defense and to-hit work UNLESS you regularly face purples-con NPCs.

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NPCs don't get +ToHit buffs until they are +6 to your level. Before then, 45% Def is all that will matter except in very odd circumstances (the enemy has Build Up or something).

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Does all salvage one way or another be used for inventions?
For example, can I sell unused salvage or dontae to SG b/c someone else can use?

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Currently, yes, since all salvage drops (excluding Vanguard, Event, and AE stuff) are Invention Salvage. Now if you have any Base Salvage, you'll need to convert that to Brainstorms (Conversion is done at an Invention table). Those can be used for Invention Salvage Rolls or sold at WW/BM.

Thnak you for the time...

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OR! You can sell Base Salvage on the Market for anywhere between a few thousand and tens of millions. Since Base Salvage doesn't drop any longer it is now a Collector's Item. You don't know how much Base Salvage will go for until you drop it on the market; it depends on how close a Collector is to completing a set.

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So I logged on to my ol' lvl 50 fire ice tank to find that his burn power has had its damage decreased. Did this power really need further balancing since the implementation of ED? It might have had several nerfs after that, I don't know for sure but it bummed me out to see the 3 dmg DoT on its own, fully slotted for dmg and 5-6 dmg DoT with buildup and fiery embrace. Might as well make burn heal the mobs 5 HP DoT for 10 seconds once they come in contact with it... C'mon devs, you're killing us here. You're really killing us.

Anyhow, the well scripted email I got regarding this when I sent a question/petition last night asked me to post on here so that maybe there would be a chance that a Dev would stumble on it and at least read it.

Cheers

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The last change to Burn was a buff (for Tanks) that shortened its recharge time. It hasn't had its damage nerfed any time since ED that I recall.

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Soon. Steiner has it mostly finished, so hopefully it will be out by the end of the weekend.

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Don't tease me, man.

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Generally [IOs are] better than SOs (though not by that much).

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I'm going to have to disagree with that, partially. (And here's where I overcommunicate.)

Generic IO's are not much better than SO's, this is true.

There are a couple levels of improvement that are possible from here on up:

The first is "Frankenslotting" with set IO's. A set IO will generally improve more than one thing (for instance an acc/dam improves both accuracy and damage.) Keeping with that example, it will give you a little more than half an acc and a little more than half a damage- about 2/3 of each. So if you slot three different acc/dam from three different sets, you get "two accuracy, two damage" in three slots, saving a slot. You can get about two "extra slots " into a power this way.

There are some cheap sets out there, because they have terrible set bonuses. Nobody really wants "1.5% debt reduction" or "1.65% sleep resistance." You can use these cheap sets to get improved performance for only a little bit more than the cost of SO's. One example of a cheap set.

The next step is where you can start spending big money. If you have a set that DOES give you good benefits- like Crushing Impact- the price tends to have two commas in it. That is a lot of money. However, if you hit someone and they had a Crushing Impact in their pocket, you can SELL it for a price with two commas in it.

As mentioned, those are not big bonuses- 5% recharge, 7% accuracy in that case- but if you slot it in Thunder Kick, Storm Kick, Eagle's Claw, and Boxing you have almost a full SO of extra accuracy, and half an SO of extra recharge, in all your powers.

There are increasingly higher levels of IO which are slightly better and much more expensive. One way of thinking of them is "an excuse for level 50's to keep playing and getting more powerful."

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Two things to keep in mind when planning a Set IO build:

Firstly, you can only benefit from five of the same Set Bonus. So if you have five 2.5% Recovery bonuses, a sixth will be ignored. However, a 1.5% Recovery bonus would stack on top of the 12.5% from the other bonuses since it is a "different" bonus.

Secondly, Set IOs only count towards a Set Total in a power if your combat level is within -3 of the level stamped on the enh. That is, if you slot all lv50s and you exemplar/malefactor at all (and thus go below lv47) you will lose all your Set Bonuses. If you slotted all lv41s, your Set Bonuses would be active down to 38. Et cetera.

If you're going to try to wrap your head around IOs, I recommend playing with Mids Hero Designer for a bit. It supports IOs, will show you cumulative totals for Set Bonuses, and has a Set Bonus Finder feature to allow you to look for particular bonuses you are interested in.

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I noticed these are considered Temp powers. So just how 'temp' are they?

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Like the Veteran Sands of Mu or Ghost Slaying Axe .

A "Temp Power" is something that isn't in your Primary, Secondary, Pools, or Inherent.

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It uses the best available option. A Rikti blast is Energy, Smashing, and Ranged. If you have 25% Smashing, 10% Range and 19% Energy you get to use the 25% Smashing.

Here's where I mention something that's complex, that you didn't ask about and that you may know anyway. Defense is "out of 50" in PvE. That is, critters have a 50% "Base To Hit" times some multiplier- an even-level archvillain has a 1.5 multiplier, while an even-level minion has a 1.0 multiplier.

Defense takes off the "Base To Hit". So 40% Defense means that a even-level minion has (50-40) * 1.0 = 10% chance to hit you. An even-level AV has (50-40) * 1.5 =15% chance to hit you.

The (Base To Hit - Defense) can never go below 5%.

There are a few exceptions which have higher Base To Hit, like Rikti Drones. You'll learn to hate them.

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All of the above is correct in reference to Defense. However, to becompletely accurate I have to mention that all Rikti energy blasts are actually Ranged/Energy, with no Smashing component. (Yeah, I know; that threw me too.) Again, if they did have a Smashing component then the above is how it works.

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Is there a process for retrieving the password for an account if the person no longer has access to the e-mail they signed up with?

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You probably need the CD key code from your original activation and the credit card you opened your PlayNC master account with. NC customer support will probably ask you for them for verification.

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Bidding on something that accidentally showed up on the market before it became part of the game? That's something else.

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Hardly. The Winter's Gift listings showed up on the Market before last-year's Winter Event and people put up "pre-order" bids for those too. They wanted to a) get a leap on anyone else who would be bidding during the event or b) chance getting a low-ball bid filled before the market stabilized to some expected higher price.

As was said before, it's likely pre-order.


There are other reasons to bid on out-of-game market listings as well. I personally have a 1 billion inf bid on Wolf Pelt Base Salvage. Even when Base Salvage was dropping, Wolf Pelts were never put in the game and none exist. I needed somewhere to stick 1 billion inf and keep it from clogging up my account .

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I've been playing a blaster since my first day so I'm new to defense and defense bonuses... Here's the question - let's say I have 20% melee positional defense and 10% SL typed defense, so does that equate to 30% SL defense at melee?

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Herein read the gospel of Saint Arcanaville of the Immaculate Deflection.

Yes, all of it. It will answer any question you might have about Defense and give you a solid understanding of the system.

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Would love to be able to tone down the look of Hasten.

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Because doing every Primary and Secondary powerset in the game plus some new animations is enough for BAB & Co to chew on already?

Salient Post from the Invention's laboratory thread on the subject.

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I haven't been on in a LOOOONG time. I've been a member since 6 months after CoH opened up. What the hell is AE, why is it so controversial? Is MA mission architect? And what is up with the ARC #960923490582409243984? I went to try a mission architect mission someone randomly invited me too last month, and CoH crashed. That was the last time I was on. I was on about 6 months before that.

Is there world going mad? It seems people are b*tching more than before. Before it was like, "blasters, defenders, etc. are NERFed! END OF THE WORLD COMING NEXT!" Now it's whatever this AE business is.

Really, please explain, I'm to limited on time to read through anymore threads.

Thank you

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AE = Architect Entertainment, the name of the Mission Architect (MA) company for the game backstory. They are one and the same.

The problem people have with it is that exploits have been found for MA in series. This has allowed people to powerlevel at unprecedented rates (1-50 in 5 hrs has been reported). The result is a whole bunch of people with high level characters they don't know how to play. Worse, new players are being lured into MA by exploiters to pad-out their teams and end up thinking Atlas Park and the AE building is literally all there is to the game. (No joke!)

If you were here for the "Winterlord Babies" of the first Winter Event, then try to imagine that but far, far worse. Horrible PuGs and more-skilled players being unwilling to team with anyone but known friends is what people are complaining about.