PBAtty

For scrappers, I have a katana/regen that was great for soloing as I leveled and even now at level 50.

It can still feel like a grind sometimes in the post level 32 range, no matter what you do...but you can certainly minimize that time based upon some of the very good suggestions in this thread. I rolled a new toon on double XP weekend that is up to level 48 already despite playing my main more often. Having come back to the game recently after being gone for awhile, I have noticed (at least on Freedom) though that all of the post-30 zones like Bricks, FF, PI, etc. have a LOT less people than they used to. I try to team up as much as possible with this new toon and it can be hard to find a team sometimes. Since AE, you've got a lot of power levelers that don't use the traditional routes to level. You've also got a bunch of people spending time on the incarnate stuff. I remember I used to be able to step out of the train station in Bricks or FF and always find a team within a couple of minutes. Now, I may go into one of those zones and there will be only a handful of people in the entire zone.

In addition to joining TFs, you also might have more luck joining up with a team in the 20s and exemping down....if your goal is to get to 50, then you probably won't mind having some of your later powers unavailable when exemping if you can get on big teams more often...and you'll find teams more easily in the 20s in Talos. If I'm having trouble finding teams, I'll switch to my main...but if I see a big team forming or in need of people, then I'll just send a tell and ask if they mind if I switch to an alt to join up with them. Pretty much everyone won't have a problem with that. That way, I take advantage of opportunities to get on full teams when they are around, but I'm not sitting around waiting for teams or having to grind through solo missions to pass the time. Also, if I end up on a really bad PUG, then I just excuse myself at the end of the current mission and go elsewhere. Don't think it's cool to bail on teammates mid-mission. But if it's a bad team that is team-wiping for whatever reason, then I'll move on to something else after that mission is over. It's amazing how much time can be wasted on just 1 mission with a few teamwipes...waiting for people to hosp, re-zone, re-group, etc. If the team is using bad tactics, you've got a squishy tank, or whatever it is...then that problem won't go away and you'll certainly be grinding with a team like that.

Since I returned to the game last month, I've been trying to upgrade the builds on a few of my old level 50 toons while simultaneously leveling a brand new toon to 50 with a good build including a few purple sets. It's taken a lot of work and finally purchased the last recipe I needed to respec my main toon and swap in the new sets: an Obliteration: Acc/Dam/Rech/End for 65 mil. It was all the influence I had left except enough to craft the recipe. I was all excited to finally have everything done to re-do the build on my main toon. Left WW, ran to the nearest store to dump my SOs and recipes from drops that weren't worth anything at WWs, got distracted for a second as I was quickly selling everything off and.....sold the Obliteration recipe that I just bought.....DOHHH, complete brainfart, lol. Guess it had to happen sooner or later....frankly, can't believe I made it through 15 months of gameplay without ever doing this before.

Well, it IS kind of counter-productive to have the copy tool down during beta testing. If you already have a bunch of toons on the test server, not a big deal. But for someone like me, I've never used the test server before and I'd like to beta test stuff but can't do it without making a brand new toon. I'd like to test out the enhancement boosters and unslotters and stuff like that but I'm not going to build up a new toon from scratch to do that. Obviously, they want as many people beta-testing as possible so you'd think they'd also want to ensure full access to the system as it's intended to be accessed, which means being able to copy your toons to the training server.

Unless the pricing changes, you'd be looking at approximately $2 per month (in the Paragon Market) to access the invention system so you could use your IOs. You'd need 27 reward tokens to unlock lifetime access to the invention system.

Re-working some builds on toons after returning to the game from a long lay-off and just want to make sure I'm understanding something correctly. On any particular type of attack, the highest defensive rating between the type and positional ratings will apply, correct? So if it's a lethal damage ranged attack and my lethal defense is 25% and my ranged defense is 15%, then I'll have a 25% defense to the attack.

I have a tank that has all significantly higher type defenses as opposed to positional defenses. So I should re-work set bonuses to drop any positional defense bonuses and maximize type defensive bonuses since my positional defenses aren't even applying, is that right?

Great! Thanks for the info! That's how I was reading the info I found on Paragon Wiki. But it's obviously a long road there and back for my defender as you noted, so I wanted to make sure I could respec when I get back as a hero and have access to those patron powers before I started down that road.

Just getting back into the game recently after being gone for awhile. Planning on dusting off some of my 50's. I'm wondering if I run tips and alignment missions and switch a lvl 50 hero to the red side, will I be able to do the arc to unlock patron powers and then run a respec to substitute patron powers in place of my ancillary powers even though I'm already at lvl 50?