Hyperstrike

Yep. Unlocked my alpha slot on my main yesterday.
Immediately bought a Gr'ai Matter in the RWZ.
Pulled the main-tank slot in an STF and had enough to build my Spiritual Boost. HEL-LO PERMAHASTEN!

Later in the evening, had a failed Apex (they just need a huge honkin' "Melee Need Not Apply" sign on it). Heck, we couldn't even kill the Hydra tentacles and wound up having to stand back and kill the pylons from range. Luckily we had enough damage output to do so.

Sucked it up and ran a back-to-back ITF/Khan. Wound up with enough fragments to craft my Spiritual Radial Boost. Gave me a nice little boost, as Health is currently the home of the Big Three Health Uniques.

Now my only problem is when I'm on teams that don't have a lot of mitigation or endurance supplementation. My recharge outstrips my EndRed on all my powers and it's entirely possible to button-mash myself dry through Three-Slotted Stamina, Physical Perfection, two PerfShifter procs and 60% EndRed on most powers.

Okay, if you three-slot both Frozen Armor and Glacial Armor with generic L50 defense IOs and take Weave doing the same, you wind up with roughly 35% S/L/E/N defense.

That's respectable. And you can easily soft-cap your S/L from there even if you never touch energy Absorption.

Reactive Armor will bump (in order) E/N then S/L by 1.25% (3 and then 4 slots). Fire/Cold defense (which you're short on) comes at 5 slots, but is a pittance at .625%).

If you take the fighting pool, you'll have three chances to slot for resistance. Hoarfrost, Permafrost, and Tough.

A better choice, if you can afford the slots, is to bump F/C with 3 or 5 slotted Aegis. 3 slots gives you 3.125% and the fifth slot would give you an additional 1.563%. Over three resists and 15 slots that's 14% (with three-slotted defenses as mentioned earlier, you would have a base 8.8 F/C defense (but huge resists) to work with for a total of 22.8%).

Now, on the attack side.

Smashing Haymaker, 4-slotted, gives an S/L defense boost of 1.875% and you can take it up to 5 times.

However, just up from there is Kinetic Combat. 4-slotted you get 3.75%. Now, you're more than half-way to the S/L cap already. Plus, with the boost provided by Energy Absorption (and with enough recharge reduction, this stacks like crazy), you'll spend most of your time at cap. But a little more as a buffer couldn't hurt. Being capped WITHOUT using EA is safer.

Touch of Death also provides a 1.875% defense to S/L, but that's with six slots. Wasteful.

6-Slotted Mako provides 1.875% E/N defense.

In any of your abilities that can use Slows (Chilling Embrace for example), Pacing of the Turtle 6-slotted provides 1.875% E/N.

Tempered Readiness provides half that at 6 slots.

Impeded Swiftness provides 1.25% S/L in 6 slots.

Curtail Speed provides 1.25% S/L in 4 slots.

For Taunt Sets.

Perfect Zinger 6-slotted provides 3.125% S/L

Mocking Beratement provides 2.5% S/L in 4 slots and 3.125% F/C on the 5th.

Each of the lower-level taunt sets also provide S/L protection in various (decreasing) amounts.


PBAoE's like Icicles.

Cleaving Blow 3-slotted. 1.25% E/N
Eradication 3-slotted. 3.125% E/N. 6-slotted. 1.563% F/C
Multi Strike 5-slotted. .983% F/C. 6-slotted .983% S/L
Scirocco 5-slotted. 1.563% F/C.
Obliteration 6-slotted 1.875% S/L.

In To-Hits, you get a RIDICULOUS amount of broad defensive improvement out of Gaussian 6-slotted. 1.25% S/L/E/N/F/C. It's twice that if you're doing positional defenses!

2-Slotted Rectified Reticle is good for 1.875% S/L

If you take Kick instead of Boxing, Force Feedback in the KB sets gives 1.563% F/C defense for 6 slots.

In defense sets:

Serendipity 5-slotted gives .625% F/C
6-slotted Red Fortune gives 1.25% E/N

In EndMod sets:

Performance Shifter 6-slotted gives you 1.563% F/C


In Heal sets:

Numina 6-slotted gives 1.875% E/N
Miracle 5-slotted gives .983% F/C and 6-slotted 1.875% Psi defense

Holds (Freezing Touch):

Neuronic Shutdown 6-slotted. 1.25% S/L
Basilisks's Gaze 2-slotted 2.5% E/N
Essence of Curare 6-slotted .983% E/N
Lockdown 5-slotted 1.25% F/C. 6-slotted 1.875% E/N




I could go on, but you can grab a copy of Mids Hero Designer and look at the sets yourself.


Now you won't pay purple prices for a lot of this stuff, but it's also NOT cheap either (a half-billion (to a billion depending on how impatient you are) inf build vs a 5 billion inf build).

Keep in mind that you also want to build for some damage and recharge is your friend. The faster EA comes up in higher levels, the better. You can drive your S/L defense to crazy levels with it slotted right.

Currently with my Ice/Ice tank, I can button-mash like nuts and EA is up enough that if I have 2 or more enemies in range I'm pretty much guaranteed a near-to-total recharge on my End bar while watching my defense fly into "isn't that overkill?" range.

Lemme guess, you told her Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious didn't you!

Oh well. Good luck then! While I'm out sending multiple AVs through the school of hard knocks on an indifferently slotted Defender, you can enjoy being capped out without the incarnate slots.

*Deletium* People have already commented about the original unlock method in i18 beta.

Honestly, I prefer to have to unlock it. Yeah, maybe it might pall after 50-60 times but hey.

At least TRY the arc before you decide you don't like it.

1: You're on playing your game at IP 192.168.1.1
2: Meanwhile, someone on IP 10.10.1.222 (someplace in Outer Spotsylvania) finally succeeds in brute-forcing your NCSoft account and logs into the PlayNC site.

Who's the legit user, and who's the thief? They don't know.
Lock the account and let the legitimate owner call in.

Technically she's Polish. Her parents are polish immigrants.

Sorry, but you're going to have to settle for a warm Schlitz and Lime Mad Dog.

As has been said in the past. "farming" is NOT the issue here.
If someone runs the same mission over and over and over (and over and over (oh, did I mention over and over?)) again, the devs have no problem with that.

None.

Zip.

Zero.

Zilch.

The problem comes from "abuse of exploits". The game is relatively vast, with thousands upon thousands of data points that can be combined in myriad ways. It's quite beyond the ability of any one person to track ALL of the possible permutations (though I'm sure Arcana would try, given the opportunity). As such, occasional fat-fingers in values, multipliers, etc happen. Or someone finds a particular permutation that gives statistically greater rewards for less risk. Hence the old Rikti Dolls, Mitos, All Boss/EB/AV, etc, etc.

Now looking for the best "bang for the buck" of your time is NATURAL. Hence the over-use of Demon/Freak/Battle Maiden farms of old.

But abusing the exploits goes WELL beyond this. Yes, with these other farms, it was easy to make gigantic level bumps in short order. But using some of the aforementioned (as well as the current) exploit, it's possible to level between 2 and 10x PER MISSION.

THEN there's a problem. And the devs have to deal with it. Have to. If they don't, eventually even the

I am saying that this should not be the top issue on the list. It's fascinating that we have all these people on the forums eagerly decrying their fellow players as 'cheaters' and 'exploiters' and they have their knickers in a bunch over farming, but we can't get them to show in equal numbers for trying to get the game improved or upgraded. WHY? Really. Why.

Yes and no. I don't notice YOUR level 50 beating up grey-con mobs for fun and profit in Atlas Park. People in this game (hell, anywhere) have a tendency to seek the most profitable return on their time. Yeah, the exploit farm takes that a bit far but hey.

Uhm. Bovine feces.




Uhm. Way to wring the worst possible explanation there. They don't want people leveling overnight, buying all the high-end ultra-rare equipment the next night, then leaving the game the night after that complaining that it's "too easy".

The game is SUPPOSED to be a time sink. Bypassing it with an AE exploit is NOT playing the game as intended. It has jack and squat to do with jealousy or whatever other BS you're trying to shovel.

As you have nothing but your own, obviously biased opinion on this subject, we'll file it where it'll do the most good.





And, even if you were right (which would have to be completely accidental), the argument still holds. We want the new player to experience the WHOLE game. Not just exploit-farm du jour.

Instead of generating salvage, recipes, enhancements, etc, the farm generates nothing but money and tickets. So you get a bunch of recies and a little salvage dumped into the market. As the market drains out the current supply, prices begin skyrocketing.

Links or it didn't happen.

You may have seen INF-destruction projects. But deleting purples is not the same thing.

If you use the market, technically it does affect you.
However, it doesn't really affect your ability to play the game.

Agreed.


Agreed.

Agreed...to a certain point. I'll play with anyone who isn't obviously an idiot.
After a few mishes, I'll know whether they are or not. And a simple death-fest isn't enough to classify one as an idiot.

I teamed this morning with a pair of newbs who were running +2 and getting Vahz missions *SHUDDER*. Lots of deaths, zombie puke everyplace, ambushes, resurrected zombies, but sub-10 no consequences, and it was a learning experience for them.

So claiming that the devs have been on "a three week vacation" was an accurate summary of the situation?

I call bovine feces.

What have I said thus far that's unreasonable?

Seriously.

Is it reasonable to simply stop the release of an Issue where the exploit is fixed just to roll out the patch on a backport, with the accompanying amount of time for testing before release?

I simply find the notion that it is laughable. At best.

Yeah, I saw it too. Ridiculously and obviously broken amounts of XP.

And boring as **** to boot.

All I can say is that i19 and the patch for it cannot come too soon.

Oh. Feel free to comment all you want. Just realize it's useless to rage on it endlessly. And that whinging about how they don't develop to YOUR personal schedule are just as asinine.

Way to twist "the devs don't patch to your schedule".

Sorry, telling you what I really feel about your childish crying would get me banned. Moreover, you're acting as if you're incapable of reason on this issue. Therefore I'm going to have to settle for cutting disdain and simple pictures to communicate my points to you.

But please, continue to rag on the issue.

Heck. I summed him up in a character.