Miladys_Knight

MA/Shields - MA is an End hog, Shields is low in mitigation. If you shore up shields by taking the fighting pool you will have difficult to over come (cheaply) endurance problems. The primary has a couple hard controls in it which gives you mitigation against 2 lieuts or 1 boss. Without serious IO set slotting you won't last long enough in a fight to deliver what is mostly single target damage.

BS/Shields - BS is an End hog, Shields is low in mitigation. If you shore up shields by taking the fighting pool you will have difficult to over come (cheaply) endurance problems. Parry provides decent mitigation to melee at the cost of your DPS. If you rely on Parry for a good chunk of your melee defense you can get away with a cheaper IO build on BS/Shields. You will still want to make sure that you soft cap your ranged defense (most defense debuffs are ranged) and as much AoE defense as you can get. If you miss your initial Parry you will find pavement in your future. Shields has no self heal, and no other HP recovery tool. True Grit increases your hit points and with it your base regen but it isn't enough with SO or generic IOs to allow you to surive. The resists that Shields has underneath the defense is paper thin and not worth slotting up. You are much better off using those slots for more hit points and defensive set bonuses. 3 AoEs in this combination allow you to dispense with minions fairly quickly reducing one of the problems that MA faces. BS also has 2 single target soft controls one KU the other KD that help as well.

Fire/Shields - Shields is low in mitigation. If you shore up shields by taking the fighting pool you will have difficult to over come (cheaply) endurance problems. This primary lacks the hard controls that MA has but makes up for it with more damage. 3 AoE attacks allow you to dispense with minions fairly quickly reducing one of the problems that MA faces. Without decent IO set slotting you won't last long enough in a fight to deliver your damage.

DM/Shields - The cadilac combination with shields. You can safely take the fighting pool since the primary has an end recovery tool. If Body Master is taken as the Epic, Conserve Power means that this combination suffers no End woes even when using the fighting pool. The primary also has a minor and uninterruptible heal (10-20% depending on slotting) which is more than enough in most situations to handle the burst damage that gets through Shields low mitigation. The hit debuff in the attacks allow you scrimp a bit on defense and the Primary packs a really nice single target wallop. Combining the damage buff in AAO with the Damage buff in Soul Drain makes this the most effective Shields power set combo. (Which is kind of sad since this is the least thematic of all the available combinations.)

You mean like the 10 seconds of -KB that's built into your Fire Cages and that is built into Ring of Fire? That's not enough KB control for you?

-10 more points.

Kin/Arch would be the way to go since your tier 9 attack will be ready each spawn. If you are AE farming Lieuts and programming your own farm you can easily avoid the mezzer problem.

The thing that will give you trouble is surviving the Alpha. None of the defender APPs have a defense based armor. You can avoid slotting AoE defense if you are programming your own farm but you'll need ranged defense (fairly easy to come by in sets available to Kin/Arch) and melee defense (not very easy to come by with sets available to Kin/Arch)

You can pretty much assure that your toggles won't drop if you pop Geas of the Kind ones right before the crash.

It's a play style choice more than anything. The OP said he solos alot or Duos with a Scrapper. Those are the situations where sleeps are excellent and Sirens can be the corner stone of your play style. On a team of 8 with AoEs flying around not so much though.

If you go the Sirens route another cone in Static Discharge may sit in your tray if you have Hasten or a decent amount of +rech. All the AoEs and Cones in Sonic/Mental take 2+ seconds to cast. Sirens has the longest recharge at base 20 seconds. With 4 cones at or under 8 seconds recharge your damage output will be limited by animation time rather than recharge.

My builds rarely feature powers used solely as set mules. If I have a power I want to be able to use it effectively not just have a power icon I removed from my tray.

That's one of the reasons I explored Sonic/Mental. Most of my other blasters are only comfortable with Fitness, Medicine, Speed, and alternate Travel power if Super Speed isn't the concept.

Drain Psyche freed me from the shackles of Fitness.

On the build that uses leaping, extra slotting in Combat Jumping meant that I didn't notice the absence of Hurdle.

Slotting Sirens with Call of the Sandman's set, including the heal proc, and the single target blasts with Entropic Chaos, including the heal proc, freed me from the shackles of Medicine which gave me many more options and flexibility on the character.

Sonic/Mental is limited by animation time rather than recharge so I was able to skip Hasten. That opened up a world of possibilities in my Sonic/Mental that I had never been able to explore before with my other blasters which is why I liked it. I also found Purple sets to be less valuable for this reason. With slower animation times I used less endurance and didn't need the extra recovery or recharge in Purples and I was able to get extra accuracy from other sources. I was able to try some odd slotting combinations that work out quite well and I ended up with a very unique blaster that still functions extremely well both solo and teamed and I didn't have to spend much inf to get it there.

Rikti Drones are weak to AoEs. RoA, Fistfull, and Explosive let you pop them like pop corn.

Well that's not always the case. One of my shielders builds has both GC and Manuvers. GC only provides it's benefit to teamates that are pretty much in melee with you. Manuvers has a 60 foot radius and provides that benefit to you, the melee folks near you, and all the squishies on the team.

Since AAO is a taunt aura much of Grant Cover is a wash when you are facing AoE using opponents. Your taunt will cause AoEs to center on you and splash on to the melee folks near you (remember not all toons that play in melee are armored). If you weren't a Scrapper with a taunt aura those AoEs would be centered somewhere else.

(In other words not taunting AoE splash onto your teammates is 100% mitigation for those teammates. Where as GC is only an extra 13%)

The real benefit to the melee teammates near you from running GC is that this is the only power in the game that conveys both it's defense debuff resistances and it -rech resistances to your teammates. Very few melee sets have defense debuff resistances and fewer still have -rech resistances and GC provides an outside source of both.

In my experience this is 100% false. My blapper main survives in places my shielder doesn't. I have Energy Torrent, Explosive Blast, and Power Thrust ALL 6 slotted with Kinetic Crash and I use them mainly for mitigation. Slotting those powers in this way does about 85% of the damage that ED capped damage slotting delivers, (95.1 damage as opposed to 112.1 for Explosive Blast) but I'm using those powers for their awesome mitigation, the extra damage is just gravy.

That blapper only runs about 7% defense to all positions and I typically do invincible ITFs with no deaths.

Well my main is an Energy/Energy/Force Blapper.... Most teams don't complain about dead mobs flying. If you stick to the "if it's flying, it's dying" moto you should be ok.

The biggest complaint my main faces is "YOU KILLED MY TARGET!" from scrapper locked melee teammates.

I have to echo the Oh oh SpaghettiOs post.

A little more info and a little more input for you.

First off is that with /Mental you don't need Stamina. You don't need the fitness pool at all actually. (You really don't!) Hitting 1 target with unslotted Drain Psyche gives you more endurance recovery than Stamina 3 slotted with level 50 End Mod IOs. The only problem, of course, is that DP has a recharge of 120 seconds and a duration of only 30 seconds.

3 Slotting Drain Psyche with level 50 Rech IOs takes it to up 30 seconds and down 30 seconds. With decent end red slotting in your powers (even cheap uncommon sets like Ruin provide this), 2 targets and DP is all you need to ride the Endurance Roller Coaster to success. If that's not enough for you slap a Miracle+ and Numina's +/+ in DP. You don't even need targets then, just pop DP, and you get the same recovery as unslotted stamina and that lasts for 120 seconds. 1 target gets you more recovery than you can use while its up and more than enough to carry you over the down time.

Mind Probe is fine, but not a have to have, you'll be better off using your primary for the stacking resistance debuffs and between Sirens, Shockwave, Subdual, and Screech very very few mobs will ever reach melee range.

One of the most fun AoE chains for Sonic/MM is the following and all you need to pull it off is enough extra global +rech to drop the recharge of Sirens to 7 seconds (Hasten is good enough if you ED cap the rech slotting of Sirens).

Aim for a corner or a wall. Shockwave (damages and knocks all the mobs back into the wall), Howl (cone damage and resistance debuff), Psi Scream (damage), Sirens (puts all the mobs to sleep).

By the time you complete that chain Shockwave is ready to go again. The fun part is the mobs don't get to do anything to you. Shockwave sends them flying and by the time they stand up and take a couple steps toward you, they will be in sleepy land. On the second iteration any thing you miss with Shockwave will still be sleeping and you can take a step to the left or right to miss it with the other cones or you can Screech or Subdue it to make sure it doesn't become a problem.

The other really really cool thing with this combo is Drain Psyche with Sirens. Sleeps are broken by anything that changes a Mobs hit points or it's position. (So damage, a heal, and Repel, KB, KD, or KU). Drain Psyche does none of these things to the mobs. You can stroll casually through the sleeping spawn looking for the perfect spot to maximize your targets for DP, suck them dry, and not wake them up.

Since you have Screech and Sirens you won't need Scare. Scare is a low duration soft control of dubious value. Screech is a hard control and has a longer duration than Scare. You can put the spawn to sleep with Sirens, Screech one of the mobs (which wakes it up and stuns it at the same time). If you moved into melee range while it was asleep long enough for it to switch to melee AI and then jump back out to range just before Screeching it won't do any damage to you since it will have a melee attack queued up, but it will wander drunkenly toward you at full speed. I always find that little attack sequence highly amusing.

You will want both Amplify and Concentration. The to hit bonuses are too good to pass up and the extra damage works well with the resistance debuffs from Sonic.

You won't need World of Confusion either. It's minion only, the confuse ticks every 4 seconds and ED capped WoC confuse only has a duration of 3 seconds. With all the tools you have, the chances of a minion getting into melee range to get confused is extremely slim, and confusing sleeping mobs does nothing to help you since it won't wake them up.

Sonic/Dev for excellent safety at slow speeds.
Sonic/Ice for safety that's nearly as good at much faster speeds (I particularly like this combination for stacking sleeps)
Sonic/Elec for Damage
Sonic/Energy for damage, boost range, and power boost.

Thanks for the info Castle.

It's not that flipping doesn't exist or isn't a problem Guffy. It's the possiblity that the proposed cure may be worse than the ailment. As far as we know there are no Devs with a background in economics, they have computer programmers, software engineers, and graphic artists in plenty but no economists.

For some of us it's almost as scary as trusting our real life economics on people that aren't economists but are rather, politicians that specialize in kissing hands and shaking babies.

No one would resell things on the market. All you have to do is purchase all the cheap price capped stuff up and delete it* and then list your freshly farmed drops for what ever exorbitant price you want.

* Instead of deleting, price capped non-fresh drop items would be traded by tells/spam broadcasts on the "real black market" that would form. That would be a flippers dream come true. Purchase any and all 250 inf resale capped items from the market then undersell the "freely sellable, fresh drops" by 10% and make a virtual killing.

It's clear to me that you don't play FF/ and haven't a clue what you are talking about. There are advanced techniques involved in using Force Bubble that have nothing to do with saving idiots and are quite valuable on teams. Teams of this type are also exactly when Vengance will be of no use to you. FFers that rely on Vengance are lazy and sloppy.

FF has all the tools needed to prevent/halt the defense cascade problem you pose. You can see when someone is taking damage through the shields. You can tell when defense debuffs are being applied by watching the player icon tray and you can halt the cascade by using Force Bolt, Repulsion Bomb, Force Bubble or a power from your secondary (or primary in the case of a controller) that that will allow the defense debuffs to expire.

Even on experienced teams there are times that you may need to save someone that got into a bad situation through no fault of their own (Adds, Ambushes, or "Horrors" actually playing non-farm AE content that you don't have every spawn point or mob power combination memorized on).

You like steam rolling teams? The best way to keep it moving is to keep everyone on their feet and doing their job. That is the defender's job on the team. On good teams, with good defenders, against tough mobs you can barely tell that a defender is there. It feels just like fighting a pack of easy mobs but the absence of a good defender in that situation is keenly felt.

You also forget that Hero side is much different from Villian side. Hero side ATs are very top heavy having great strengths counter balanced by greater weaknesses. The Defender AT is designed for teaming hero side to cover those weaknesses. Villian side is different. Villian ATs are more balanced and rely much less on buffs, debuffs or other team members.

Blue side a team functions best as a team. Red side is a bunch of players soloing together. While your attitude and play style may be a good fit Red side its a poor fit on Blue.

I'm going to have to go with Phil on this one and take his option "E".

I'd say "see ya around on CoX" but I honestly hope that I don't.

One last question for ya. I don't expect you to answer it and I won't be checking on this thread any more to look for a reply but for the sake of the other posters here.....

How good is your attitude, play style, and beloved Vengance on an MoSTF?

You get all the secondary effects in Psi/ (-rech) from Ice/ and Ice gives you slows (in my experience the slows were actually more valuable for PvE than the -rech) on top of it. Ice has a long animating and quick animating hold (the quick animating hold also recharges quickly) that can easily be stacked on a boss.

Psi has a long animating, long recharge, stun and a short animating, long recharge, sleep.

When Psi is resisted it's resisted big time. Ice doesn't have that problem.

Long and short of it is that the tiny bit of advantage that Psi/ has over Ice/ is range which a blapper doesn't get much use out of.

It's much easier to convert the new by a personal response. I have several text files that can be copied in full or part and personalized. Seems to get a better results.

Profit for me. I stockpiled goods prior to 2XP so the costs were all paid prior to 2XP and had been factored out. The crafting costs of the IOs I created after 2XP started and their listing fees I deducted from my revenue so it's all profit.

My wife's VEAT numbers are also all profit. She started 2XP with nothing and had a bit over 150,000,000 on that toon at the end of 2XP.

Also Guffy, to get back to this quote. Smurph is right. What you want to do to reduce/eliminate flipping is to eliminate the margin that the flipper operates in. More efficiency and a higher drop rate will do that.

Drop rates have been reduced by the devs (and in some cases such as Purples/costume recipes and Mission architect, by what content the players have chosen to pursue) since I9. If the devs want to eliminate flipping they should have increased drop rates rather than decrease them.

(There is all ready a thread concerning this in the market forums. Both Smurphy and I have posted there. These posts by me show the pertinent info and numbers concerning dev decrease of drop rates. You should be able to find more info from Smurphy and other players in this thread)

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

And Here

and they should create more market efficiencies rather than resisting the ideas that would create more efficiencies.

When the devs created the market in I9 they knew that there would be "Market PvP" (that was their words infact) and they posted that it was both intended and expected.

Getting back your idea though I want to bring up some things that you may not have considered the ramifications of.

Your idea is to limit flipping however it could stifle crafting as well. How do you handle the following situations?

1) A player receives a recipe as a drop and while playing they also receive, as drops, all the salvage they need to craft it. Crafting it results in a new product and all the pieces were received as drops so it counts as dropped and can be sold?

2) A player purchases a recipe and purchases all the salvage required to make it. Crafting it results in a new product and all the pieces were purchased so it counts as traded and can't be sold?

3) A player receives a recipe as a drop but not one or more pieces of salvage required to craft it and they buy those pieces (this could apply to the recipe as well if they received one or more pieces of the required salvage as drops). Crafting it results in a new product which category does it belong in?

4) What about enhancemnts purchased at stores? Can they be traded?

5) This brings up common recipes. These can be gotten as drops, purchased from the crafting tables, and memorized so that they aren't even required. How do you handle crafting of commons? I know for certain that common crafted enhancements were flipped during 2XP weekend. Memorizing commons allows the field crafter to produce common enhancements cheaper than someone that doesn't have them memorized can produce them. The field crafter can make enhancements for much less than it costs a non-field crafter to make them. The field crafter can offer them on the market for more than it cost to make them, but for less than it would cost someone who isn't interested in crafting to produce them. The field crafter makes a profit, the player uninterested in crafting gets a common IO cheaper than they could have produce it themselves (I've made over 1.5 billion influence since I9 on this alone and several hundred players have gotten enhancements cheaper than they could have made them for themselves. I would not have been able to help anyone in this way if I couldn't buy salvage to craft for sale commons and had to get all the salvage myself as drops with my field crafter). Crafting and field crafter is dev intended behavior otherwise there would be no market categories for crafted enhancements whether they be commons, uncommons, or rares and there would be no associated badges with field crafter nor the portable work bench.

6) Typos when purchasing. What do you do about the player that accidentally purchased 2 Enchanted Imperviums when they only wanted 1 (I've done that before, that market slider doesn't work properly you know). Should they be stuck with that second EI and unable to resell it, especially if another player needs it to craft their IO?

7) Respecing out of enhancement sets. How do you handle situations where powers are buffed or nerfed? A player respecs out of a nerfed power or drops a marginal power to pick up the buffed one. What about the IOs or HamiOs they slotted in that power? Unable to trade it if they bought it? Able to trade it even thought they bought it because of the respec? (If so you give the flipper the safety valve they need to get around your restriction(s) if not then you potentially harm many more non-flippers). If they can't trade it when they have no use for it what happens to the player that wants it but there aren't any?

8) Sales badges. There are badge hounds that are completely uninterested in the market but MUST have every badge in the game on every toon they have. The easiest way to get those badges is to buy items on the market cheaply and then relist them for one inf. Disallowing this will make getting the market badges not only tedious for the badgers but for those non-flippers that use the market more in the way that you wish to see.

You can drop fighting and still be very viable.

Pick up Hasten, Whirling (6 slot with Oblit) or Conserve if you feel you still need it, and pick up OWtS. With soft capped defenses you won't need the extra resists in combination with Aid Self.

With soft capped defenses you can discard Parry. You can pick up and 6 slot Slash with Sheild Breaker as a set mule/defense debuff tool or you can pick up Confront as a set mule and 6 slot it with Mocking Beratement or Perfect Zinger or you can pick up Super Speed. 3 Slot Super Speed with the Zephyr set for the defense bonuses and slot an Unbounded Leap +Stealth or Celerity +Stealth in the base slot in Sprint for PvE stealthing.

In tougher situations you'll still have OWtS to fall back on and it provides more Smash/Lethal resistance than Tough, costs much much less end to use, and provides resistance to exotic damage types that Tough doesn't. If you need OWtS more often than it's up (which is 1/3 of the time) you need to re-examine your playstyle/build.

Dropping the fighting pool also has the advantage of saving you another .33 end per second after ED capped end reduction and some combination of the the above mentioned power picks and sets with those you are all ready using provide more defense to each position, at no end cost, than ED capped Weave.

3 slotted Hasten plus Active Defense 3 slotted with Membranes allows you to double stack Active Defense a majority of the time (you can perma double stack it with other +rech bonuses) this has 2 benefits. The Membranes increase the defense debuff resistance provided by Active Defense. Double stacking it doubles this increased defense debuff resistance and also doubles the mez protection provided by double stacking Active Defense. This is a great help in fighting yellow mitos on a Hami raid and in mitigating the stun from fighting Romulus's Nictus friends in the ITF as a couple of prominent for instances.

More players also means more set IOs needed to fill slots. Unless they are fully IO'd out level 50's all new players and new toons will increase demand by the same amount (actually more since drop tables are weighted rather than balanced) they increase production.

Also @Smurph don't forget that more transaction slots would have at least a visible effect on availability. More slots means more total goods placed up for sales rather than deleted, stored, or forgotten.