Roderick

The best use for tickets depends on how fast you can generate them. If you're one of those people who can reach the per-mission cap (1500) in 10 minutes, then a Gold Roll every 40-ish minutes can be very lucrative.

If you can't get tickets very fast, then buying rare salvage is probably the best way to use them. It's pretty much the only guaranteed income from tickets, and some rares are spiking pretty high right now.

Bronze rolls are an interesting beast. They can be a great source of income, but you have to be able to stockpile several tickets to be worth it. To put it in layman's terms:

This is the Bronze Roll pool:


These are in the back of the truck:


But they're mixed into this:


For 60-75 tickets, you get to take ONE shovelfull out of the back of the truck.

Most of the time, you're gonna get a pile of crap. Nobody really wants to buy it, but sometimes, there'll be someone who needs some manure, so they'll give you a bit of cash for it. And if you take enough scoops out, eventually, you'll pull out one of those gold nuggets.

As to why people suggest certain level ranges:
10-14 and 45-50 are the smallest pools, since they don't have all the mid-level recipes. Since there's fewer recipes in the pool, there's a larger chance of getting one of the good ones.
10-14 has the Karma -KB, the Steadfast Protection -KB and Def/Res and the Regenerative Tissue +Regen. Bonus points if you're level 10 and roll one of these.
45-50 Has Crushing Impact and Thunderstrike, which are uncommons, so they're easy to roll, but still fairly popular. There's also parts of several popular sets: Mako's Bite, Numina's Convalescence, etc.

35-39 is the smallest pool which includes Kinetic Combat (not to be confused with Kinetic Crash). Kinetic Combat gives a HUGE bonus to Smashing/Lethal defense, so it's quite popular. As a result, the prices on it can be fairly high at times.

30-34 is an interesting spot. Only a handful of recipes have a maximum level lower than 30, and (not counting purples) only two sets have a minimum level higher than 34 (and they're both snipes). As a result, almost anything that can be earned with a bronze roll can be found in this pool. However, compared to the other ranges, you've doubled the number of gold nuggets, and quadrupled (or more) the amount of manure.

For the Merits, you've already got the best advice you're going to get: Convert them to A-Merits and buy big-ticket Rare recipes (don't waste them on purples or PVP IOs, the return ranges from slightly better to WAY worse, and it takes longer to get anything at all). If the 20 million is too much for you to come up with, run Tips to get A-Merits the "normal" way, and get one or two of the good recipes, and use that money to convert the merits.

Any brute can farm. Not all brutes can farm well. If you insist on farming with this brute, you're going to have to accept that it's never going to be the best. Signpost's suggestion of making a different character for farming is probably the best suggestion you're going to get.

Some general comments about making a farmer, not specific to this character:
-A farming character's purpose is to slaughter enemies in mass amounts. There are a three ways to do this: 1: Hit enemies harder. 2: Hit more enemies at once. 3: Hit enemies more often. Ideally, you'll be doing all three at once.
-Because a farmer is destroying enemies as quickly as possible, they don't need the ability to stand in the middle of the group all day and laugh off the damage. Again, they need three things: 1: The ability to survive the alpha strike. 2: The ability to survive until all the enemies are defeated. 3: The ability to get back to full HP and End beforethe next group. (Note that there's no need to stay at full through the whole fight. Taking the alpha, using a self heal, defeating the spawn, then using the self heal again while moving to the next group is a perfectly acceptable option.)

You'll notice that the Stone/Stone brute is pretty much the antithesis of the farmer's goals. Thanks to Granite they do less damage per target, and attack less often, and because Stone Melee is primarily Single Target, they don't have the splash damage that kills minions and Lts "by accident" as you focus on the big targets. In addition, the Defense and Resist are far more than needed - though not by much, since it will take much longer to kill a group.

Two of the best brute farmers are Super Strength/Willpower and Super Strength/Fire. They are by no means the only options, but they are the most popular for a simple reason - they're good.

Super Strength is good for the same reason in both builds: It combines some strong single target attacks, good for quickly taking out bosses with Foot Stomp. With decent slotting, you'll be Stomping every 7-12 seconds, and combining enhancements, Rage and Fury, you'll wipe out all the minions and most of the Lts with two stomps, and while waiting for it to recharge, you'll finish off the Bosses with KO Blow or a 1-2 punch with other ST attacks.

Willpower comes with a mix of Resist, Defense and Regen. while farming with it, your HP will drop a lot, but should shoot right back up, thanks to Rise to the Challenge. Foot Stomp will knock down most of the enemies, slowing the incoming attacks and giving you more time to regenerate, and if you die, you have a self-rez. Make sure that you choose an enemy that deals smashing or lethal damage, and you can laugh off any hits that you take.

Fire comes with damage, decent resists, a self heal, and more damage. Hit Rage, if it's not already active, jump into a group, take the alpha, hit Healing Flames. By now your Fury is half full or more, so hit Fiery Embrace, Burn, Foot Stomp and Healing Flames again. If anything's still alive, a couple single target attacks to finish it and Healing Flames again. If your endurance gets low, use Consume to refill it. Pick something that does mostly Fire, and some Smashing/Lethal, and you can skip a couple uses of Healing Flames, if not completely ignore it. Harvey Maylor's demon map is perfect for these guys, as are many missions you can find in AE.

If you REALLY want to continue farming with the Stone/Stone - forget everything you know about those sets. Get out of Granite form. Only use it like other brutes use their godmodes - as a panic button. Pick a farm map that you want to work on, and focus on the shields that proctect from their damage types. Pick something that doesn't use holds or stuns. Get Combat Jumping and put a Karma: Knockback Protection in it. This will protect you from any Immobilizes and Knockback the enemies use. Skip Rooted (that's why we picked something with no mez). The +Regen is good, but the lack of mobility is NOT. Take Mu Mastery and pick up Electric Fences and Ball Lightning. Slot both as attacks. Pick up Tremor. Use Mud Pots, Fences, BL and Tremor as often as you can, while finishing off tougher enemies with your Mallets and Seismic Smash. Oh, and don't expect this to work well outside a farm. It won't.

It really depends on what you want to do with the character.

Tank: With one or two +Def powers from pools and a Steadfast Protection: Res/Def, you can be softcapped to all three positions. Your resistance values will be higher than the other two, and you'll have more hitpoints, so you will be nearly unkillable. Your damage will be lower than the other two, but Against All Odds will make it so that you have more damage than a tank with a different secondary. Adding Rage on top will make your damage even higher.

Scrapper: You'll have to work harder than a tank to softcap your defenses, and your Resists and HP will both be lower, so you'll feel the big hits a lot more than a tank will. You'll still be quite sturdy, especially if you do softcap your defenses. Your damage will be the highest of the three, and since damage buffs work off base damage, you will get the biggest +Dam buff from AAO of the three, though you won't have the option of taking Rage.

Brute: You have the same base defense and resist as the scrapper does. You have a higher resist cap than the scrapper, but neither of you are getting to the cap by yourself, so that's not a major consideration. Your HP are higher, so you're a little harder to kill than the scrapper, but not nearly as tough as the tank. Your base damage is lower than the tank's, but you have Fury, which pushes you up to scrapper levels of damage, before buffs start getting factored in. All buffs work off BASE damage though - including enhancements. The end result is that a brute gets way less benefit from +Damage buffs than a Scrapper will. On top of that, Scrappers have a higher modifier for damage buffs, so they get 25% more +Damage on Build Up and AAO than brutes do.
The Brute will still do huge piles of damage, but if you really start slotting for high-end performance, the scrapper will pull way ahead in damage, and the tank will do the same in survivability. The brute will remain the middle of the road for both.

If you want to know for sure, log into both test and live on a KM scrapper, and one by one, drag the powers into a chat channel, and click on the resulting links. In the info window that opens, make sure the PVP toggle is on, and both are set at the same level. Do NOT just right-click the power in your tray and choose "Info" - doing so will show the power modified by the enhancements slotted in it and your Alpha Enhancement.

If the numbers match on both, then nothing has changed.

You can also do it by typing the links into chat, but each of the four ATs uses different versions of the powers, to account for Scrapper crits, Stalker crits, Gauntlet, and Brute's mini-gauntlet, so you might get the wrong version if you don't include the right modifier, which will be included by default when you drag the powers to the chat window.

I'd guess that whoever started the rumor was comparing the powers in his tray between a well-slotted character on Live vs empty or SO-only powers on Test, instead of comparing the base powers.

That was the reason for why there's no Talsorian Hammer (now renamed Vanguard). Now, ignoring the fact that that description also makes the Vanguard Bow not work (flexible force field bow arms?), there could still be a Vanguard mace - after all, the Redding Rifle isn't made out of force fields.

More options for Mace would be great though - a few Roman-themed ones added to the badge that unlocks the Swords, Axes and Shields would be great, and I'm sure other things could be added. Mace is probably the set with the leats variation in it.

Kilts with Monster legs can't be done because of how the categories work. To have them, they'd have to add a "Monstrous Legs with Kilts/Shorts" category. Possible, but probably very low priority, if it's even on the list.

The Snake lower body won't happen. When shields were introduced, some gloves had horrible clipping issues. When someone asked if they could just remove the offending gloves for Shield users, BAB said that there was no tech to limit costume options based on power picks. What does this have to do with Snake bodies? Martial Arts, Kick (from the fighting pool), and Brawl (when using Claws, Thorns, or a Weapon/Shield combo) all require legs, as do a lot of other animations.

I'm gonna answer this without logging in, feel free to mock me publicly if I'm wrong.

If you're talking about those three NPCs together in that location, I don't believe they do. The person who took that screenshot probably moved them using a demo edit, or on the devs' internal server.

I particularly like the part where he blames Avatea for the choices.

"Mailman, why did you bring me McDonalds coupons this week? I wanted A&W!"

As Master-Blade said, you just need to keep an active account. It doesn't matter if you have billing info on file. As long as you don't receive the email saying that your account has been deactivated for "payment termination or failure", then you're all good.

Also, don't get banned. I'm pretty sure that even a 3-day will make you inelegible, because the requirement usually includes a line about having an "active account in good standing".

If anything, stunning enemies should make them easier to hit - enemies with defensive toggles will have their defenses suppressed while stunned, just like players do.

Older enemy groups generally have their defense and resist valuse in an autopower (usually just called [Resistance]), or in a click version of player toggles. In these cases, you should be no more or less likely to hit.

Show me how to Softcap a blaster (even if it's only to one defense type) and get it perma-hasten at the same time, using only SOs/common IOs and the Alpha slot, and I'll agree that it's a possibility.

With very little work, I think most people could come up with a multitude of things that can be done with set bonuses that can't (yet) be done with Incarnate Abilities. And I don't plan on worrying about that "yet" until we know a LOT more about the remainder of the Incarnate slots.

EDIT: Also, the Incarnate slot is useless for exemplaring or leveling up. Sets aren't.

I can't really comment on most of your post, but this link might be useful for one question: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hit_Points

Anything mag 0.75 or lower is Knockdown. Anything mag 1.0 or higher is Knockback. The transition is somewhere between, but it's too difficult to determine exactly where.

Most Knockdown has a mag 0.67. These attacks scale up to 0.75 when fighting -1 mobs, so they remain Knockdown unless the enemy is weak to KB.

The few KD attacks with a mag higher than 0.67 will scale up to something higher than 1.0 when used against -1 foes, and become Knockback.

Interesting. I never use the /friend system (I prefer global friends), so I didn't know it could be used that way. I'll have to remember that; it's easier than figuring out what the return from /getglobalname is telling you.

/getglobalname name

This will return the global name of the person who owns the name, or "@name is not online" if nobody owns it.

The latter result is not foolproof. On Victory, /getglobalname Roderick will return "@Roderick is not online.", but that name isn't free - my global is the same as the name of my main. Also, someone who's hidden may return the same result.

Sometimes, you'll get no result at all. Every time this has happened to me, the name has been in use. I assume it's a name that was taken and the account canceled before the global name system was added, meaning that the character has no global.

There is no way to check a name and get the "available"/"in use"/"not available" message from the Check Name button.

I have an Alpha-Unlocked scrapper that started a STF with two Shards and no Components or Alpha Enhancements to his name. At the end to the TF, the Notice and bonus merits popped with the badge, before the reward window appeared.

At the end of my STF this morning, the entire team mapserved just after completion. When we logged back in, everyone had been rolled back to a few minutes earlier, with no rewards at all for the TF.

I hadn't put the two together, but just before we mapserved, the team leader made and slotted his Rare Alpha. This may be another instance of the same bug.