Mazey

You're not required to keep buying super packs until you get the entire costume.
You could budget $10, and then stop regardless of if you got the entire costume set or not, and then only buy more packs when you have another $10 available in your budget.

That way, the "worst case scenario" is spending $10 when you have it to spare anyway.

Also, because it costs over 200 merits to buy a LotG or Miracle, but if you convert them first, it only costs 100 merits (+40 million inf).

Damn right, there's no reason we should accept any business practice we don't like.

Did you know they charge money for food. How can they do that?!? Don't they know people need food to live?!? Just because it's profitable doesn't mean it's acceptable!

Interesting. Anyone know when that happened?

You have to pay the inf either way.

You can't unfortunately.

What you saw was a 1-1 conversion from astrals to shards.
A single astral merit is worth either 4 threads or 1 shard on any character. Threads themselves cannot be converted to shards at all.

As for which is best, that's down to personally preference. Shards are probably slower if you've got good access to trials though.

Not quite as catchy though...

Not quite, although Loyalists and Rogues can do Caldoun's mission, he's intended as a Villain contact.
The Loyalist repeatable missions in First Ward are given by Angela Hu and, although Rogues don't have a contact of their own, they're probably better off going to Vickers than Caldoun.

Yes.

" Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned. "

Topic A was the fact that, if the only way to test things was on the beta server, then premium players couldn't test.
Topic B was the fact that there are good reasons for only allowing VIPs on the beta server.
This had the guise of being relevant, as it was discussing premium access to the beta server, but was in fact not relevant as, no matter the reason, premium players still can't test things by accessing the beta server.

I swear, one of these days I'm going to write up a list of the things people most like to correct others on, but don't actually understand themselves.

At the top of the list:
Irony
Logical fallacies
Gambling

As far as I can tell, they're all uncommon and nothing bad.

You haven't got that set bonus anywhere but the two toggles. So adding the set to the passives too would work fine. Obviously the only issue becomes if the set bonuses are worth the slots to you.

Those are red herrings. They're completely irrelevant to the reason premium access to the beta server was brought up.

Premium players can't access the beta server.
Premium players can buy the Pocket D pack.

If the beta server is the only way to preview the e-motes, then premium players cannot preview and so their only option is to buy blind or do without. That's not particularly fair or reasonable.

Unfortunately, the minimum any set recipe costs is 50 merits. So, with around 90 slots to fill, you're looking at at least a 4500 merit cost to make a full build.

I not sure what you mean there, but the ITF, Kahn, LGTF and STF are all level 50 max, so level 50 enhancements will still work on all of those.

The worst I've seen is a loss of 10% damage to a power, traded off against a load of improved accuracy and recharge, but there's set bonuses that give plus damage, so get 3 3% damage bonuses into your sets and you've offset any loss to damage your powers might take.

Definitely, most of the time you'll want to do it that way. If you're going after positional defence, then you'll be mainly 6 slotting sets that give that. So you'll want to 6 slot those two powers with the same set that gives that defence bonus. You've slotted the powers the same way and gotten the bonus twice.

You're right, you really can.

Like I say, in my course we started right from the beginning with the basic axioms and everything else was built up from there. Nothing was used unless we'd already proved it from something more basic, and in turn that had to have been proven too. Nothing, except the basic axioms and definitions, was taken for granted.

As for your specific example, you might have a problem there. With /SR scrapper, what you'll want to slot are the Touch of Death sets, but those max at level 40. The only ones at level 50 that could work would be a PvP set, which would be much more costly and less effective. Would a build made entirely of level 40 enhancements be unusable for you? Edit: Actually, I got that wrong, the PvP set only gives the bonus in PvP, so that's no good.

On the other hand, I did manage to get a /SR to around 50% defence, in Mids, only using pool powers, SOs and the Nerve alpha incarnate power. So things might not be too bad after all.

Sounds like you should have taken a pure mathematics degree instead. In mine, at least, you essentially weren't allowed to use a theorem unless you understood why it worked.

Don't worry, I've built a few builds and haven't once farmed AE, and I pretty much gave up on farming tips after two or three gos.
If you've been playing a lot of story arcs, chances are you've already built a nice stock of merits, unless you've spent them. Either way, carry on playing story arcs and you'll get more. Generally the older arcs give more merits than the newer ones, and the only things that can't be bought with your standard merits are purples and PvP recipes, which aren't even needed anyway.

Each enhancement requires the recipe and the salvage that goes with it. Both are used up once the recipe is made.

Salvage comes from any enemy defeat. There are two types, magic and tech, and three rarities, common, uncommon and rare and three level groups, 4-25, 20-39 and 35+. All can drop all three rarities, but magic tend to come from magic enemies and tech tends to come from tech enemies. You can look at an enemy's info to see what type of salvage it can drop.

Recipes come from essentually three places. Defeating enemies, completing missions and spending merits. The types that come from defeating enemies are different to the mission completion ones, and the ones that "only" come from merits can occasionally randomly drop when defeating a boss rank or higher, but don't count on it.

Purple recipes can drop from any enemy that can drop level 50 recipes. But they're very rare.

Story arcs give merits, so you should never have to do content you're not already doing.

And, obviously, you can always use Wentworths/Black Market to buy both salvage and recipes from other players.

Yes, some sets cap lower than 50, so you wouldn't be able to pick those ones, and you'd lose any set bonuses if you exemplared below level 47. But it's quite possible to only use level 50 IOs

Pretty much the market prices. You can check the last 5 sales on any item on the market, you can also check merit costs before you buy a recipe too, those never vary.

Everyone builds for defence because it's the easiest part of IOs to make overpowered. Next would be recharge. Generally dominators build for recharge first to get perma-domination.

Thanks to the heal sets and the fact we have inherent fitness now, most endurance problems are solved by slotting the Miracle: +recovery and Numina's Convalescence: +regeneration/+recovery into health.

It depends on the AT. A blaster built for defence is pretty much a template. Melee ATs vary more due to the differences in their inherent defences. Defenders and controllers are very variable as the sets their powers can take vary quite a lot too.

If you have the build worked out beforehand, it's not much more work at all. If you're building from scratch, the hardest part will be getting the recipes, as common recipes are very easy to come by.

I'm the same.
The only character I ever deleted was a level 6 dark corruptor, so I could remake her as a dark blaster.

It wouldn't have to be balanced.
The hero who goes on a TF with 7 villains should be expecting to come out of it with a few betrayal bruises, equally for the villain who chooses to betray 7 heroes.

And it would hardly be forcing PvP, if you don't like that part, then just leave the mission early, or stand by and let yourself be defeated. It's not like you'd lose anything for losing, you'd still get the reward for the TF, just not for winning the PvP battle.
Yeah, some people would still complain, but they'll always be someone who complains about anything new that's added.

The 5 minutes is a recent buff, it's live but they haven't updated the descriptions yet, they also persist through death (although probably not for pets).
Obviously, the health and endurance ones are still instant.

Also inaccurate, as it suggests there is (and provides) only one definition of "irony", when there are in fact many.

Knowing when the Vernal Equinox is doesn't mean you understand the definition of Spring.

As to this bit.
If you play the hero side of the arc, then your hero is there to stop him. Now a vigilante might let him get away with it, but it's quite clear you're character isn't allowed to be a vigilante in the SSA.
And if you play the villain side, then Manticore actually gets defeated himself and Malaise hands himself over to the police, so Manticore doesn't have a chance then either.