Laevateinn
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:At least you have the decency to point out that this is merely your opinion rather than a fact. For some of us, tinkering with a loved character is fun, and a big part of playing the friggin' game.Originally Posted by Thirty_Seven
I think that making your character more powerful for power's sake or to be able to say that X AV got soloed, or I have 837% of X attribute is all about vanity. To me, playing the numbers game is so far removed from an escapist mentality as to be ridiculous. Planning builds, and crunching numbers takes you away from the fun of the game, IMO, that's why I spend so little time dealing with my enhancements, and why I don't sit around trying to build a team of 8 every time. I want to ESCAPE from life for a bit and actually friggin' play a game. NOT do mindless and repetitive amounts of math and jimmy-riggin' to get an extra .5% of something to be able to do something else an extra time so that some ridiculous activity is doable that I shouldn't really be doing in the first place!
And, no, purples are certainly not vanity. They have a practical use, therefore they are not vanity. You may argue they are not cost-effective (and even that is debatable), but claiming that anything that is not necessary is vanity is a false dichotomy. -
As one of the few trade/economics-focused players in the game, I really, really love the concept of personal stalls. It feels, much more personal and involved, and therefore, fun. The one thing that I thought was a really neat idea in all of Ragnarok Online was that crafted weapons bore the weaponsmith's name.
It wouldn't be practical, though. In addition to what the above posters have pointed out, there is very little that a trader/crafter can provide to customers in add-on value, which kind of makes personal stalls pointless. Our game world is small and easily transversed enough that there's no point in hauling goods to Cimerora to sell for profit. You don't need Level 400 Purple Recipe Crafting in order to craft Armageddons. There's really not much benefit for the player to offset all the additional hassle, when compared to WW which already automatically matches the highest bid to lowest price.
So, yeah. Unsigned. Even though I would like it otherwise. -
Purple sets aren't necessary and aren't always useful in a build, but as you can see, there is also a considerable amount of sour grapes among those who don't have them.
Purple sets have two main draws - the +10% recharge bonus and their proc, which does heavy damage or (usually) a desirable special effect.
They are good for extreme recharge builds and characters who benefit from recharge will get the most out of them, such as most Controllers, most BuffDebuff sets, Regen Scrappers, Archery Blasters, and any character with multiple slow-recharging AoEs or who need to make perma or stack critical self buffs, such as Shield scrappers and tanks.
They do not help purely defensive characters such as tauntbot tanks a lot, nor do they improve your survivability directly. -
-Heal affects the caster's healing power (not the target), so you should use it on the healing nictus. As mentioned, the autohit Mire one is also a good option.
The healing Nictus is the one on Rommie's right (your left) and the autohit nictus is directly behind him. -
Quote:Brilliant!Originally Posted by captain_photon
the version of windows for palmtop computers used to be called windows ce, until somebody at microsoft finally realized that everyone in the world had automatically taken to abbreviating it "wince".
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Quote:Making it a veteran reward would be rather silly, since paid game time or an Ebayed account are no guarantee of common sense, and veterans are all too capable of strangleworthy behavior, including groupthink, having a sense of entitlement, a refusal to do things any way other than the one they are most familiar with. All of which, to me, deserve pointing and laughing at more than merely being bad at playing a game. Let's have equal-opportunity mockery, please.Originally Posted by Wingtip
"Strangle Teammate" as a Veteran Award
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Cold is one of top BuffDebuff sets for the ITF. The +Def shields are useful on squishies when rushing the second mission, it has an AoE DefDebuff -Res power (Sleet) to counter the Romans' shout of command and you can refill endurance bars with Heat Loss. It is also the only Defender primary that packs -Special (in Benumb) to deal with the healing Nictus.
I wouldn't worry about your secondary so much. Sonic is very nice for the -Res and Ice has great damage and rains to stack with Sleet, but I'd go with whatever your concept prefers. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Mouse_Man
Seriously though, said it before... saying it again. We need Dinosaur Island. Accessed through the Midnighter's Club, a massive jurassic nightmare with roaming packs of Velociraptors and a GM T-rex. After all, the 5th Column would be there, fortifying their base of operations with Armored and weaponized Triceratops and Pterodactyls, so we have to go back in time to stop them right?
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Put a Miracle unique in Health. If you go this route I'd change your Health slotting to 3x Numina's, Miracle unique, Miracle: Heal, Regen Tissue unique so that you get another 2.5% recovery.
Also, if you decide to abandon softcapping AoE def I'd get rid of the Scirocco's and put 5 Crushing Impacts there for the recharge and HP, and take out the 5th slot in OwtS too. -
Quote:That sounds awfully vindictive, coming at the end of what would otherwise be a well-reasoned post.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That would be a deliberate shot across the bow of the efficiency police
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I don't know about farming, but Hot Feet really ought to be slotted for damage, if you are taking it. It's the best damage aura in the game with a massive 20ft radius.
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Storm:
- Heal
- Endurance drain resistance (useful vs clockwork)
- Freezing Rain comes earlier than Sleet
- Massive ToHitDebuff (safer for both of you, Cold's shields only help him)
- Lots of positioning tools to bunch up masses of enemies for DB cones
- More damage
Cold:- Defense shields (your slotted defense shields + his slotted SR toggles will softcap him without use of pool powers or set bonuses)
- +HP (harder to one-shot the SR)
- -Damage (even harder to one-shot the SR)
- -Rech (really really hard to one-shot the SR through all this)
- -Special (nice vs. certain enemies, e.g. ITF healer nictus)
- +End and +Recovery
- Slow resistance (in Arctic Fog)
If I really had to chose? Cold.
In practice? Whichever the support player prefers. The differences aren't all that critical. -
Quote:Not really. A character with 45% defense and 0% resistance mitigates 90% of all incoming damage. A character with 25% defense and 50% resistance mitigates only 75% of all incoming damage.Originally Posted by Heraclea
My unscientific impression is that mixed defenses are better than pure resistance or pure defense.
In practice, mixed defenses are stronger than pure resistance or pure defense due to the overabundance of defense set bonuses and +Def pool powers, which essentially turns them into pure defense plus resistances, regeneration and a heal. -
If you want to know what the market would be like without a listing fee, just look at EVE Online's economy, which allows you to change your bid/sales prices for either a nominal fee or no fee at all, I can't remember which. What happens is that you'll put up something for 100k, say, and ten seconds later someone else sees you're undercutting them and edits their price on the same item to 99,999.99. Another five seconds later someone else edits theirs to be 99,999.98. And so on and so forth. It's the only reason I don't consider their market completely superior to ours.
The listing fee mechanism rewards you for picking a good price and sticking to it. It forces players who cannot afford the listing fee to list at below the floor price of an item, generating lowball sales. It presents the choice of whether to relist an item that's not selling (time and market slot cost), or losing the listing fee and relisting at a price that's more likely to sell (influence cost). I think these are all good things, because they introduce risk and make market dynamics more interesting. There are far worse ways for the market to be distorted in any case. -
Optional EVE Online style market UI. Icons optional (disabled by default), graphs of mean, median and modal sales price and units sold over the past 90 days (exportable into excel), can be customized to ask for confirmation if you list/bid at a user-defined percentage above or below the average of the last 5 or a user-defined percentage of your wallet, favorites list for frequently-used items, built-in notepad and calculator. Comes with wallet that logs all your transactions.
Blueside market lore revamp. Wentworth's Fine Consignments is no more; instead, there is the Extranormal Bureau of Intelligence and Logistics, or EBIL, an FBSA-operated research center where heroes can trade favors, information and technology, or requisition resources from the city with government-awarded reward merits. Located beneath the city in its own zone, the facility is equipped with power-dampened research rooms but can also be accessed by remote using the new /ebil accolade power. -
Quote:Lies! I want to spam foot stomps and targetted AoEs on large teams against completely over mathed +4 spawns of every enemy group in the game.Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure
The problem's not with knockback, its with people getting angry because the whole team can't follow a predictable pattern of MOB annihilation; they want to just spam foot stomps and targeted AoEs on large teams against completely over mathed +1 and +2 spawns of the easiest enemy groups. Players that want that level of predictability should just solo or run exclusively with farm builds in their little communes.
I demand you retract your slander!
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Quote:I dunno. I'm scatterbrained and not very smart, so lying and cheating is tiring, too.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Only half of them. Lying and cheating are pretty easy. It's the stealing and killing that wears you out.
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Some of them also offer enhancement combinations that you can't find in any Set IOs, which make them valuable for niche purposes.
Membranes, for example (Tohit/Def/Rech). It's basically the best thing you can slot in Fortitude or Forge. Or Cytoplasms (Tohit/Def/End) in Invincibility. Or Enzymes (ToHitDebuff/DefDebuff/End) in Radiation Infection. Peroxisomes (Dam/Mez) are another, albeit much less useful. -
Sorry to hear about your market woes, Mod8. It happens to the best of us!
I'm flattered people think this is interesting. I did not keep extremely detailed notes and records (and I'm not qualified to do detailed statistical analysis or anything), but anyway:
Final Report
1. Income
In total, the fund went from 6,000,000 to 3,206,251,319 in 11 weeks, or an average income of 291,477,392 per week, or 41,639,627 per day.
One thing which I was only somewhat sure of before this fund started, but can now state with certainty, is that a top-end non-purple crafting niche is worth about 1bn/month.
How much time did I spend on this project in total? Out of curiosity I went and checked, and the total time spent on the character I used for this fund came to 20 hours, or around 15 minutes per day. (For comparison, Burn Rate - KeepDistance's attempt to hit 1bn in 30 days, back in Jan 2009 - clocked 143 hours, I think.)
2. Competition
How much competition was there? Not a whole lot. I was crafting the same recipe from start to end, and typically I was single-handedly responsible for about 10% to 25% of all stock on sale at any moment. Situations where I was consistently getting undercut were rare. If there was competition, there wasn't enough of it or it wasn't good enough to cause me notice.
3. Market Strategy
3a. 6m-100m
As I originally said, there were two parts to the plan. Plan 1 was to flip salvage and build up capital. For this I used 40-50 uncommons, which are chronically undersupplied (because they're not expensive enough to be worth listing) and in high demand (because the vast majority of recipes crafted are at maximum level). I used Thorn Tree Vine, Unquenchable Flame, Pneumatic Piston and Psionic Threat Report. For some reason Nevermelting Ice occasionally made good profit, too. I'd buy for 10k-15k and sell at 100k-200k, and just delete anything that failed to sell.
This was done in the final month of the AE era. Back then, there were regular shortages on most common and uncommon salvages. I used to think that i16 crashed salvage prices permanently, but they've rose abit since Halloween, and rare salvage (which was dirt-cheap last issue) is now prime flipping material. I don't think it would be impossible to repeat this performance - at worst it would be slower.
3b. 100m+
From here on crafting starts. As a crafter, I don't like to move from niche to niche - it's way too much hassle for me to put up with. I wanted to pick one good niche and stick with it, doing mass production (I like to craft and list in stacks of 10).
What did I craft? I don't intend to disclose this, for all the obvious and selfish reasons. I used to believe that one can more or less pick up any recipe, craft and make a reasonable profit. I now think, however, that there is a fairly limited pool of top end (i.e. ~1bn/month) recipes. I suppose if I have anything even resembling "inside knowledge", arrogant as it sounds, it would be this.
If you plot the supply-demand ratio of all recipes on a graph, on one end you would get everything with high supply but low demand: most mez, debuff, KB, and taunt sets, and nearly every recipe below its set's maximum level. These are obviously worthless for crafting since the supply swamps what little demand there is. On the other end you have things with high demand but low supply: some highly-desirable sets that do not go all the way to level 50 or are out of the popular merit/ticket roll ranges, Pool Cs such as Lv10 BotZ -KB and Luck of the Gambler specials, respec recipes and purples. The profit margin is high, but transactions are few. At the very extreme lie PvP IOs, where supply is inconsistent enough that you might make a huge profit by flipping or crafting one but nothing resembling a constant income.
In the middle lies the stuff with both high supply and demand, things like Crushing Impacts and Doctored Wounds and Thunderstrikes, which are popular and readily available. Somewhere around the 75th percentile lies the sweet spot for crafters: where supply is just low enough and demand just high enough that you can regularly sell for high profits and price gouging opportunities arise every time there is a supply shortage. What lies in this range is left as an exercise for the reader to figure out.
Maybe one day, when I finally bore of the market/invention systems (and thus CoH as a whole) I'll write a crafting guide.
4. Miscellaneous Notes
What else did I learn? Although I said I was doing this for fun, my original goal was actually practice for a for-profit scheme, but I've long since decided that it's not feasible. In this game, returns on investment are high enough that there's little benefit to raising capital through investors. And at a certain point, profit becomes linear that it's hard to give significant returns to a lot of investors. 3.2bn profit is impressive, but divided six ways, 500m is pocket change; the equivalent of 1k Merits, more or less, or slightly short of a single purple set. I wouldn't consider investment schemes feasible income for a marketeer, but nevertheless I had a lot of fun, because I love playing the market.
One thing which I first noticed during the August DXP, and again several times after, is that recipes tend to be easier to price gouge with than enhancements (partly because enhancements are much more hoardable, and speculators resist massive price increases by releasing hoarded stock). The irony is that there are lots of people in the game who want to save money, but not time, and assume the recipe will be cheaper, thinking they're getting a steal. (I admit I do this a lot, too.) I know most people just want to get their enhancements slotted, but it makes my industrious, worker's spirit sad to list a recipe for 45m and the crafted enhancement for 45m... and see the recipe sell for 60m and the enhancement go unsold.
One thing I noticed was that whenever I ran out of stock and left nothing for sale over a day or two, prices almost inevitably rose. Maybe I should stop being so efficient...
Finally, a random note. Pre-i16, my income redside was much better than it was blueside. Post-i16, it's reversed - I'm now making much more blueside than redside. It may simply be that my technique is less suited to the redside market, although I can't imagine why.
Have fun all
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Thanks for keeping the market stocked. Sometimes I have stuff to craft and can't be bothered to roll AE tickets, you know?
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No listing fees would remove the risk from marketeering, and no 10% sales fees would remove one of very few influence sinks in the game. I can't see how either of them would not be a huge downside.
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Quote:Having actually played both defense and resistance-based powersets, I can tell you that "defense is stronger" is an illusion created due to the overabundance of set bonuses and +Def pool powers that allow you to hit the defense softcap.Originally Posted by Ultimo_
In this regard, Defense is VASTLY superior to Resistance. By the time you get to higher level and you're into the realm of the Defense Soft Cap, you're more invulnerable than an invulnerable character.
If you are going to talk about softcapped defenses (especially on Scrappers), then to be fair you also need to consider resistance-based or hybrid powersets with high levels of defense from IO set bonuses, otherwise you're comparing IO builds to non-IO ones, and of course the former are going to be stronger.
Resistance powersets have their own advantages over defense powersets, including mitigation that does not instantly crumble at the first sight of ToHitBuffs, is not susceptible to bad luck and (with the exception of SR and certain high-end SD builds) will not vaporize in a hail of machinegun fire. Machineguns that every level 10 thug in the game carries. There's also the little-mentioned fact that resistance powersets tend to get heals while defense sets often don't.
A Defense-based character will not last longer than a resistance-based one vs STF Lord Recluse, because one of the towers grants him a massive ToHitBuff. This is a bad case to use as an example because in this fight inspiration use and ally buffs play a bigger role than your build anyway.
Finally, I would not draw any conclusions from the fact that your Scrapper/Defender seemed to be tougher than your Tanker. In a team setting, Tanks will take more damage because they constantly draw aggro through Gauntlet, and it is very possible for a well-built Scrapper (or other AT) to appear tougher than a Tank who actually has much better mitigation simply because fewer enemies are attacking them. -
Quote:He has enough global recharge (even without Hasten) that PB is already perma; with Hasten on it is nearly doublestacked. Slotting for EndRdx instead is a practical choice.Originally Posted by Redlynne
You have no recharge slotted in Practiced Brawler.
Are you SURE that's wise? -
I laughed at the tag: "the walkin dudes cometh"
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I know you only asked about how to make the character tougher, but I can't help but notice that you skipped Whirling Hands, your only other AoE.
Anyway, try this. It has around 9% more HP, another +40% regen, and much better endurance efficiency. You lose some movespeed bonuses and a little exotic resistances (because I took out the purple set). The defense buffer is also a little smaller (this build only has 46-47 to all) but I've never found going significantly over the softcap to be useful - YMMV.
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.601
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Sgt Invictus: Level 50 Technology Tanker
Primary Power Set: Shield Defense
Secondary Power Set: Energy Melee
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Energy Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(11), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(13), ResDam-I(13), ResDam-I(15), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(15)
Level 1: Barrage -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(7), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(9), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(9), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 2: Battle Agility -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(3), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(3), EndRdx-I(7)
Level 4: True Grit -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(5), Heal-I(5), ResDam-I(46), ResDam-I(46)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 8: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 10: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 12: Active Defense -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(50)
Level 16: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A), Numna-Heal(17), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(17), Mrcl-Rcvry+(19), Mrcl-Heal(19), RgnTis-Regen+(43)
Level 18: Kick -- FrcFbk-Rechg%(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(21), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(40)
Level 22: Taunt -- Zinger-Taunt(A), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg(23), Zinger-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(23), Zinger-Acc/Rchg(37), Zinger-Taunt/Rng(37), Zinger-Dam%(40)
Level 24: Tough -- TtmC'tng-ResDam(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(25), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(25), EndRdx-I(34)
Level 26: Shield Charge -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx(27), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(27), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(33), Sciroc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 28: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(29), Rec'dRet-ToHit(29), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(31)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 32: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(33), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 35: Energy Transfer -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(36), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 38: Total Focus -- C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(39), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Focused Accuracy -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(42), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(42), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Build%(43)
Level 44: Laser Beam Eyes -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/EndRdx(45), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(45), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45)
Level 47: Physical Perfection -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx(48), Numna-Heal/Rchg(48), P'Shift-End%(48), P'Shift-EndMod(50), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(50)
Level 49: Phalanx Fighting -- Ksmt-ToHit+(A)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet