Minotaur

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*bids on Redname*

Ok I want to do a Dr. Q on Invincible. . .

One of two things will happen if this were to actually happen. I will either be banned immediately for thinking of such a horrible thing, or Mod 8 will ask Posi for a months vacation time so he will have enough time to complete the TF.

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Did an invinc Doc Q with a team of 41s, took us about 13 hours, we were a static SG team and we did it one evening a week for 4 weeks.

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EM is fine for a boss killer in PvE teams

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What kind of well-built PvE team is not capable killing bosses? I prefer having more AoE's, b/c it was faster timewise to get rid of +4 bosses.

There was no reason for me to get a strong ST such as EM/ over a decent AoE.

If you still don't get it, then don't try replying.

It's more of a difference between preference of yours and of mine.

Novella// I am, too, still a big fan of EM/. It's just that EM/ doesn't match with my preference when I'm building a PvE team.

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If you only ever play on well built 8 man teams, possibly true.

In the real world, I've PvEd 2 stalkers, 50 EM/WP and 48 ElM/EA, and the EM was pretty much as good in a team of 6, and better solo/small team.

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Easy trick to get initial funding - don't use the Large Inspirations you get from the breakout/outbreak, put them on the BM/WW instead.
At least an easy 50k usually (values vary wildly from time to time, sometimes it'll be 10-20k other times 150k or something - but always nice for a pennyless newb! ))

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What I do next if I'm on a new server (as I have vetpecs coming out of every orifice) is to spend that 50K on buying 10 lvl 50 SOs at WWs, respec and sell them, this gives me half a million so I can list anything sensible.

I also recall my lvl 9 in the early days of I9 who dropped a set of wings when they were new, shiny and rare and sold them for 37M.

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You also wind up running Rooted with Granite Armor for the healing so that slows you down even further.


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Only in very rare situations, and it's even rarer that you would want to move in that state rather than being camped in front of LR and his banes for example and effectively stationary. 99%+ of the time, you don't need the extra regen. Teleport also fixes a lot of these issues, if I need granite with rooted, I TP into mobs if a kin is not present.

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Not this lagfest again.

Boring. Been there. Done that. Too many times.

Just another recycling of old stuff put out there for the fanbois to fawn over.

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Just go to another zone then and avoid it, I have a load of toons I want the accolade on either because they have a psi hole in their defences or because I want to unlock the costume bits at low level.

Not quite what you meant, but the only one I rerolled was a kat/SR on Virtue, which I liked so much I rerolled it as a kat/SR on Victory

Otherwise I've not rerolled anything much above about level 10 and nothing at all above 20, which could be why I have 145 toons lying around on one account.

IIRC they're not, including the damage debuff in the rage crash.

This was prety bad, and the playstyle was as bad as the build.

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This is only true if you are going to be running Granite. A Stone/Ice tanker doesn't really need to run Granite except in extreme cases. Between Ice Patch, good defense and with, the right slotting, a fairly impressive regeneration rate a Stone/Ice tanker can handle most situations with ease. I currently have Ice Path 3 slotted with Recharge SOs and the power is up and ready in 17.74 seconds on a level 37 tanker without Hasten. That, IMO, is comfortably within the roughly 20 second duration. The secret is really in Ice Patch, it is the great equalizer. Most things that step on an Ice Patch wind up flopping like fish so it provides a huge amount of damage mitigation for the tanker and his teammates.


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But if you're not running granite, you're just a worse version of an ice/ice tank. Less protection, slow and unable to leave the ground if you want mez protection.

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"What do you mean you can buy DOs from shops" me 5 years ago, first toon at 20 and living on drops.



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um, I still level on drops 90% of the time. I don't buy any enhancements until 22 if I can avoid it.

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I do that first toon on a new server, but now I just get amother toon to leave a set of lvl 15 common IOs in the base for when I hit 12.

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Anyone else use an upper level alt with the rescuer badge to get lvl 11-21 Yin SOs for their new alts?

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Only once, my posi runner is a perma 17 blaster, who was the right origin to take damage Yin-Os, bought enough to fit her out with 17++s until I managed to replace them with 20s off the market.

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"What do you mean you can buy DOs from shops" me 5 years ago, first toon at 20 and living on drops.



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um, I still level on drops 90% of the time. I don't buy any enhancements until 22 if I can avoid it.

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I do that first toon on a new server, but now I just get amother toon to leave a set of lvl 15 common IOs in the base for when I hit 12.

OK, my perspective as a serial tanker.

Stone is toughest post 32, no ifs or buts, WP does not come close, but you might need to do something really stupid to prove that outside of the normal game experience (10 GMs etc).

Pre 32 with SOs only, stone is not the best by a long shot.

Secondary for a stoner, stone or ice are the best from a survivability point of view, but you don't actually need the extra survivability post 32 really, so I'd be inclined to go stone/fire with its extra AoE damage powers for aggro management. Stone/axe or stone/mace should also be in the frame as they don't depend on a single attack for most of their DPS, it's spread through the set, so the -recharge is not so bad. My two 50 stoners are my main (stone/axe) which is wonderful and a stone/DB which was built purely to look silly doing the animations in granite and I wouldn't particularly recommend.

Stone armor is nice in that it works well on a SO or cheap IO build, and as you don't need to run a lot of other toggles with granite, not too bad for end. Mine is not particularly expensively IOd and has capped S/L resists and soft capped defence so can mitigate ridiculous amounts of damage.

Swift with 3 SOs (which doesn't cost you a pick as said earlier, you'll want stamina anyway) and teleport (again, you'd probably want a travel power anyway) are the bread and butter of the stone tank. I find that between taunt and my epic fireball, pulling mobs off team mates is not an issue, mudpots is a fine taunt aura.

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A padded map is effectively equivalent to killing larger mobs in a hazard zone. More enemies, no teammates.

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Yes.

The rate is the same. The farmer just eliminates all his competition.

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If the devs wanted to kill this practice it would be very easy to do, basically you would see how many the map was set for, allocate the drop to one of the people it was set for and if they're not on the map, the drop disappears. The fact that they haven't indicates they're not worried about it.

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I actually hugged mine yesterday... the changes were deffinately noticeable.

Edit... it also seemed like his run speed was considerably faster than I remembered it being. Did [Mentall Training] get a stealth buff? Maybe I just forgot how fast he moved.

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Sure the buffs were noticeable, I no longer have a continuous attack chain ... better find some more recharge.

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What is this you speak of?

To me, as long as I can attack... I have an attack chain. Phooey on recharge and mindlessly using the same power order over and over again. Seems a bit too boring to me.

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I have gaps occasionally at the moment which didn't happen before the changes, particularly if slowed slightly, a bit more recharge will fix that.

Chapter and verse , it's actually a bit more complicated than the other reply says.

"What do you mean you can buy DOs from shops" me 5 years ago, first toon at 20 and living on drops.

"Hmm, RPD or TI, I'll take the one that doesn't cost end" me on my first two invuls, one tank still level 8, the other hit 50 51 months later.

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I actually hugged mine yesterday... the changes were deffinately noticeable.

Edit... it also seemed like his run speed was considerably faster than I remembered it being. Did [Mentall Training] get a stealth buff? Maybe I just forgot how fast he moved.

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Sure the buffs were noticeable, I no longer have a continuous attack chain ... better find some more recharge.

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Your attacks are the big end-drainers (especially once you've got at least some end red in the toggles) so it's key to get them way, way down in cost. That's hard to do if six-slotting them for the positional defense set bonuses -- so don't.

My secret to soft-capping on my MA/SR is to use powers I don't attack with to hit the soft cap (Touch of Death in Boxing for example, although Razzle Dazzle is also a good choice) and then frankenslot the heck out of the real attacks for endurance -- my attacks run about 82% end reduction on average. A little end red in the toggles (there's diminishing returns from slotting end red too heavily in the toggles) and just one of the endurance IOs (Numina or Miracle uniques, Performance Shifter proc) and I'm good for long fights.

It's pretty tricky though, slots are at a premium.

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I would fundamentally disagree with this as a strategy, particularly on a sword set rather than with MA.

MA has only one PBAoE attack and lots of single target attacks, a set of multistrikes give 91% end reduction and 2 small positional defence bonuses, so are as good/better than frankenslotting.

ToD/Makos have 62/66% end reduction. Because of the way end reduction works (1/1+x type calculation) there is not a huge difference between say (for ease of calculation) 66.666% and 83.333%. One makes the attack cost 3/5 or 60% of its base, the other 6/11 or 54.54%. So on a 10 end attack, this will save you a little over 0.5 end. TBH I'd rather use the slots on something constructive like getting some recovery bonuses in powers I actually use.

My kat/SR looks like this:

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|86917407F84AEFC268AA92A8759266CD8929DA0D050081416 1A8E80A2421FFC2688|
|A2ACAE1C167A03EA09455C505F68E448E80945797196D76BD 3C7A21AF10B5D1D020|
|5847CE4E7839FF29524F43199FC46A61F32C720738C651655 02321390390E99358A|
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|A6A6D8A90C25752634750EFA2C34F309F4456883A2E2A6397 134E723999238DE93F|
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|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

and seems to work pretty well although I haven't invested enough in recharge bonuses to get an attack chain to go into the pylon soloing business. If I wanted to optimise for AVs/pylons, I'd drop an AoE attack and use the slots to put LotGs everywhere.

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and was able to drop or lowball everything else (steadfast for 150K, ToD, Sciroccos and Mako's sets etc) over a period of weeks. That is what you can't now do.

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*looks at my level 30 archer that just got 2 4-piece sets of Mako for silly prices in the last week*

*looks at my level 30 fire tank that's almost done with her lvl 33 Scirocco + Oblit sets over the last 4 weeks*

*looks at same archer that just low-balled lots o' lvl 33 Positrons in the last 2 weeks*

*looks at a lvl 36 stone/ice tank that's had his ToDs for a few months now*

None of these characters had over 50 mil when they got this stuff. I'm not sure what conclusion one might draw from that, but it's certainly not the conclusion you drew.

Now my ice/kin that is now level 33 might feel your pain a little trying to get sets of Posi with a bankroll of 2 mil, but she got a crafting badge or 3, crafted, sold, then did some flipping and got the sets on pretty low bids, all in the last 2 months.

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What do you consider pretty low bids ? Nowadays a low bid for me is 100K-500K, it used to be 10-20K which was plenty for all the multistrikes at any sub 40 level I wanted for example, and red fortunes were not much more, 50K max. The rare sets were more than that, but a lot less than they are now.

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QR:

I'm also confused as to how you could be producing less then you're consuming. You're reaching 50, building with sets you want and have 50 mill to spare. What's the problem exactly?

I can see how you'd want to have hundreds of millions (to billions) of INF sitting about if you could have a room in your base wherein your INF amount translates into piles of coins that you can swim min Scrooge McDuck style....

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50 million ? wow thats one cheap build for a 50. If you are slotting level 50 ios the crafting costs alone will run you nearly that.

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Reading comprehension ftw.

I never ever slot level 50 IOs, they're all 25-42 other than maybe in powers I get after that. I like to be fully IOd for 15 levels as I don't play most of my 50s much.

I slot cheap IOs because that's what I can afford, I also keep a stock of salvage in my base on my main hero server meaning I never have to pay stupid prices to be able to craft when I want. I'd love to be able to use posi's, devastations, miracles and numinas all over the place, but usually end up with detonations, ruins, thunderstrikes and harmonised healings or frankenslotting.

I didn't say I spent 50M on the builds, I said I usually hit 50 with 50M in the bank, most of my builds are probably closer to 100M, but one of my best toons (softcapped kat/SR) was IOd on a total WWs expenditure of 6M. That was in the fairly early days of I9, and I spent levels 25-30 in DA dropping all the magic salvage (which was all that actually cost anything at that time) I needed. I also got a numinas unique off the back of a katie and was able to drop or lowball everything else (steadfast for 150K, ToD, Sciroccos and Mako's sets etc) over a period of weeks. That is what you can't now do.

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I consume more than I produce, so it still hits me in the wallet.

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I'm curious how that's possible.

Are you sure you don't consume more than you bother to sell? Because responsibility for that would fall squarely on your shoulders.

I play this game and I get 10s of millions of in worth of goods every couple of days of play, outside the AE and not especially farming. I do bother to craft what I get if it looks like that sells better (and it usually does).

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I never delete anything other than if I happen to fill up mid mission, and only vendor stuff where I'd get more than WWing it. I craft and sell most uncommon/rare IOs.

Bear in mind I spend most of my time playing heroside in the 30s and most of the uncommon IOs I drop are worth 3-500K crafted having cost maybe 100K to craft and often take a week to sell. There's only so many auction slots for those.

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Well, no offense..but if thats the case the only possible way you could be losing money would be if you have downright exorbitant spending habits.

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Actually no, most of my builds use way more uncommon sets than rares, and I either lowball (perf shifter/steadfast) or merit buy (Miracle/Numi) the expensive specials, I don't have a toon with a bundle of LotG 7.5s. Also I stated I don't go broke, I tend to hit 50 with about 50M spare. I think my most expensive build has 2 purples (I dropped one, sold it and bought the other 2 with the proceeds) cost me 200M (with half of it in one power) and just under 500 merits.

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I consume more than I produce, so it still hits me in the wallet.

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I'm curious how that's possible.

Are you sure you don't consume more than you bother to sell? Because responsibility for that would fall squarely on your shoulders.

I play this game and I get 10s of millions of in worth of goods every couple of days of play, outside the AE and not especially farming. I do bother to craft what I get if it looks like that sells better (and it usually does).

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I never delete anything other than if I happen to fill up mid mission, and only vendor stuff where I'd get more than WWing it. I craft and sell most uncommon/rare IOs.

Bear in mind I spend most of my time playing heroside in the 30s and most of the uncommon IOs I drop are worth 3-500K crafted having cost maybe 100K to craft and often take a week to sell. There's only so many auction slots for those.

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I've finally decided to concentrate on one thing long enough: Getting my 50 BS/SR to the softcap for everything. I've been working on buying what I hear are the better sets for it- Zephyr, Red Fortune, Mako's Bite and that- and I already have one set of Red Fortune, Gaussian's and the Steadfast unique.

Now, I've tried my half-built build, with 6 toggles not counting Sprint (I took Tough, Weave and Combat Jumping), and I find I run out of end relatively quickly against a boss. I wasn't really surprised, but I would like tips on how to hit that softcap without having to use half a dozen toggles.

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You can do it without weave but it's cheaper and easier if you do take it.

What I did was to lowball a performance shifter +end recipe which eventually turned up and buy a miracle unique with merits, this solved most of my problems along with a few recovery set bonuses. I actually 6 slot stamina with performance shifters for the positional defence bonus.

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No, I don't have to pay 3M now and I don't, but I do have to pay 250K instead of the 20K I used to have to pay to beat the flipper's price.

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Again, you ignore the fact that higher prices allow your sales to sell for higher prices, which, in turn, allows you to pay the higher prices without a net effect on your wallet.

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I consume more than I produce, so it still hits me in the wallet.

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I made a spreadsheet of what I dropped and I know what I got on average per merit on a sample of say 3000 merits, and I know I get more value from buying the single recipes.

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As any true statistical analyzer would tell you, this is anecdotal evidence and irrelevant to the equation.

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Now you reveal you know nothing about modern statistics, there are calculations involving sample size (which I didn't actually bother doing) which give you confidence bounds for your estimate of a given parameter.

Thus you might be able to say that given certain assumptions about the distribution of the values, if the sample size is 150 and the mean is 6M (you might need variance as well), then there's a 99% chance that the real mean lies between say 4.5M and 7.5M.

You can also do the reverse calculation to know what sample size you need to be n% confident of a particular result. these are used frequently in medical trials to get the sample size.

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No, I don't have to pay 3M now and I don't, but I do have to pay 250K instead of the 20K I used to have to pay to beat the flipper's price.

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The spreadsheet I used is out of date, because it was in the days of 4M pangean soils instead of the 1M they are now (both at buy it nao prices)

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So, evil flippers are responsible for one item changing price, but not another? Changes in sources, set bonuses, available powersets, and players learning more about IOs and the market aren't the reasons you can't find an enhancement for less than crafting cost, but flippers are?

I have a character filled with steadfast KB protection IOs that he can't move (old bids that got filled 2nd week of mission architect) because their value is about 1/5th what it was in i12. I have another that's made 400million in the past month doing nothing but crafting and selling doctored wounds IOs. There comes a point where the market changes, and whether or not it's a bad thing isn't solely determined by how much more you have to pay for a particular item.

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The cause of change in price of the recipes is made obvious by the history in some cases. I'm guessing completely, but would suggest the supply of pool A recipes hasn't vastly changed, the people rolling bronze has made up the slack of the drops not occurring. The number of recipes/crafted enhancements total hasn't changed much, just that there is not the mix, they're all crafted and the history on the recipes shows something like 234567, 250K, 234567, 300K, 234567 which to me suggests a flipper/crafter's involved. Bear in mind I'm not talking about level 50 recipes which have their own economy, but mid 30s which is the time I go for sets on my toons.

Rare salvage has reduced in price because people are seeing it as a good way of either converting tickets to cash, or choosing what they need to craft to avoid having to buy it on the market.

You clearly bid or priced too high on the steadfasts then, I flipped a few successfully a month or 6 weeks back, but MA will have reduced the price by increasing the supply from bronze rolls.

I can see that villain side, the VEATs will have heavily distorted the price of defence sets, but hero side, the only change has been shields which will have had an effect, but a more minor one, and it's not just the defence sets I'm noticing it on, you'd have thought that the new PBAoE sets would reduce demand for multistrikes, but their price has increased significantly even though they're still cheap.