Smurphy

It's not a deflationary cycle. The rate of Inf earned is the same. The amount you can hold is what changes.

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Imagine the real world and all bank accounts were limited to $10,000 and everyone used direct deposit.

People earn the same amount of money. Wages are the same. Salary is the same. When you are at $9,000 or so your choices are... do nothing and watch your money poof or go out and buy something and put it in your house.

People are going to buy something, anything, and put it in their house. More people buying stuff is increased demand. Increased demand is increased prices.

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Because the perceived value of the lower available amount of influence will increase. 500k with a 5 million cap has more tangible spending power than 500k with a 4 billion cap, and requires a bigger sacrifice.

This is why it's so critical to try to control inflation after/during a recession. More available currency devalues the currency.

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No. The opposite occurs.

If you don't spend your money now it is wasted. Everyone is out spending their money with an Inf cap. Increased spending is increased demand. Increased demand is higher prices.

Lower Inf cap means "Spend money now or lose it."

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A lower cap would increase the value of the influence in inventory. Demand would go down because fewer players would be willing to make the sacrifice necessary to sustain demand. If demand is down, supply constant, then price goes down.

I agree that your scenario would be the initial reaction to a reduced influence cap, but the market would eventually adjust, I think to the point where farmers would be willing to trade their inf cap for a single IO. This would increase supply, as the number of players farming inf would increase, causing a larger number of drops. I think prices would actually increase on non purple IO's, but purples would go down.

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I don't see how it is possible that no increase in supply and an increase in willingness to spend Inf (otherwise you reach the cap) will somehow cause Purple prices to decrease.

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Increasing the inf cap to 4b will raise prices in the long run. Decreasing the inf cap will drive prices down.

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That actually may not be the case. As the Inf cap goes down Inf is harder and harder to store and use as currency. Imagine a 500M or even a 100M Inf cap. Some items just won't be traded on the market. This cap would also lead to hoarding of items instead of the hoarding of Inf.

Items begin to be bartered for off market. Bartering off the market means less competition means inefficiency. Inefficiency tends to cause higher prices. People won't sell their expensive PvP IOs or some Purple IOs on the market when they could get more in trade for items off the market.

Imagine if the Inf cap was 500M. Picture yourself having one of those PvP IOs that recently sold for a 1 Billion. Let's pretend, arguendo, that 1 Billion is the widely accepted going rate of that IO. You wouldn't want to sell that on the market. You won't be able to get it's real value. You'd rather trade it for something like 10 Luck of the Gamblers (if LotGs were 100M) or something similar. Though the Inf cap could technically make market prices lower items won't be all that traded on the market.

Another case of economics working in an unintuitive manner.

Nethergoat
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I think the only reasonable response is to increase the inf cap to 4 billion.

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Yeah, and price cap everything!

then we'll have a totally awesome REAL black market!

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Or simply institute an Inf cap of 100M or 500M. Force bartering and a Black Market even more.

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I was making a point. If someone is willing to buy something for a bazillion units of currency, you can't blame the seller.

Price is CoH is totally dominated by demand, because the supply is unlimited, and the currency is unlimited. The only factor that IS limited is demand. When demand is high, supply is high, price is high.

Demand is generated solely by the buyer. The seller can attempt to influence demand via marketing, but in the end, only the buyer can generate demand.

If I try to sell a left handed smoke shifter, and nobody wants to buy one, it won't matter if I price it at .01 or 1.0. It won't sell. If someone wants to buy it, but the price I set forces them to give up a weeks food, they won't buy it. If I set a price that they are willing to pay, then it will sell. Thus, demand has determined price.

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No. It's both supply and demand. Demand is not the only factor. Let's look at some City of Heroes examples:

1) Costume recipes
Drop rate changes. Supply increasing dramatically. Prices decrease dramatically. Demand relatively unchanged.

2) Knockback IOs
Tickets are created that allow a huge surge in Supply. Prices decrease dramatically. Demand relatively unchanged.

3) PvP IOs
Supply is reduced drastically. Prices shoot up. Demand relatively unchanged.

Neglecting Supply in a world where Supply is usually so constant is an understandable mistake.

I'm always curious about the answer to these questions:

If you want purple recipes and you think purple prices are too high... How many Purple recipes have you ever found? How many are you trying to buy?

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Best farm or AOE brute for boss spawns would be SS/SA. IO'd out, they are unstoppable!

Best farm or AOE brute for LT's is either SS/SD or SS/FA. I've never seen a good SS/FA but I have a fully IO'd out SS/SD and he absolutely murders LT's!

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You could take your Fire Armor Brute against Fire Blast bosses. Then you'd be equally unstoppable, have more damage tools and not have the penalties of Granite.

Every little bit of Defense helps. If you can't find something better to take and have the endurance Weave can be very useful. I have Weave on several of my Corruptors who survive outrageous encounters.

Shocking. In my experience they'd ask "which do I want" or "what do these do". I've even had them take the power and simply not turn it on when we were together.

I don't understand your point. You are telling the kids to pick a certain powerset. Why can't you tell them not to take a certain power?

I've done all custom AVs with my 6 Thug/Storms but it wasn't worth the time doing it. They gave about 3-4x the experience of bosses and took 10x as long to kill. I didn't try out many of the AVs made by the devs. I have heard many of those are more efficient.

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/Traps is good because it does a little of everything. /FF would be tedious for a youngster to play, I think. 8 buffs every two minutes, could be boring.

Traps MM: Summon FFG, you're good to go. Run in, toe bomb, watch stuff die. It would be very similar to a brute.

Pain MM: run in after the /Traps guy, mash heal button.

I see MMs as ideal for both kids. You may have to summon for them.


Then have dad and mom play the cors (or cor and dom). Apply debuffs, heal when needed, focus fire to bring down the dangerous stuff. This should work, although I have no direct experience playing with kids.

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Trick Arrow might be a good option too. Probably should avoid storm and FF completely to avoid annoying misuse of Force Bubble, Repulsion Field, and Hurricane.

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You could simply not take those powers.

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Well, I know that Fallout can be effective, but I think you paint a somewhat rosy picture.

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I'm not painting an overly rosy picture. Fallout is useful when bad stuff happens. I also stated that I am happy to demonstrate how effective Fallout and Vengeance are at turning the tides.

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And in situations where the player dies surrounded by foes, it may be a place where you can't go. I was on a Lady Grey TF recently with my Earth/Rad, and several times I couldn't get close enough to the dead teammate to use Fallout because those bloody Rikti Drones saw through any stealth. (In fact, I got killed twice trying.) I can see where Phantom Army might help there, but in this case, there were just too many.


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There's simply no other way to say this: If you have Phantom Army, Vengeance, controls and the Rad Debuffs and you can't go somewhere you are playing it wrong. Vengeance and the Rad Debuffs should floor the to hit chance of any foe. Phantom Army's provide a distraction and controls make stuff stop shooting you.

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And, of course, Fallout is useless when solo. I still think it is very situational and do not recommend taking it when leveling up. But I do find it worth trying out at some point . . . it is an interesting power. I just couldn't fit it into my Illusion/Radiation controller.

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I agree. Not useful solo. Not useful until you have Vengeance and Mutation too.

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Frosticus isn't taking into account HP caps which is the primary reason Frostworks sucks. Consider that 1 Heal SO in frostworks HP caps half the ATs in the game (6 out of 12) and only for a +HP of 401.59 or 589.00 and this value can not be reapplied like a heal ever. Aid Other on the other hand, heals for 450.1 and can be reapplied every 9.06 seconds. Also Aid Other doesn't have it's effectiveness reduced by +HP buffs from IOs, Accolades, and powers on the target, which are overly common.

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I am taking into account Hit Point caps when I say Frostworks is an amazing buff. Additional Hit Points let's people take more hits in a fight. Taking more hits allows you to have more of a chance to eat that green inspiration, execute that key power, finish off that enemy, or do the other amazing thing you need.

I prefer Frostworks over any heal because Frostworks is preemptive. You use it before combat starts. A heal means you have to stop what you are doing and push something else. Frostworks is already working and you can shoot the bad guys or do other things without having to push a heal button.

Frostworks is one of those subtle powers that is hard to notice how game changing it is on a player. There aren't any green nor orange #s. Nothing goes flying anywhere. It doesn't say missed nor avoided. But people just live longer.

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A reactive heal is superior to it both numerically and in function especially since the rest of Cold set is based around -Recharge and +Def.

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No it is not. I'd rather START with 400 more Hit Points than wait for someone else to stop what they are doing, stop shooting, stop debuffing, stop whatever else and then add 400 HP after I've already taken damage.

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Frosticus isn't taking into account HP caps which is the primary reason Frostworks sucks. Consider that 1 Heal SO in frostworks HP caps half the ATs in the game (6 out of 12) and only for a +HP of 401.59 or 589.00 and this value can not be reapplied like a heal ever. Aid Other on the other hand, heals for 450.1 and can be reapplied every 9.06 seconds. Also Aid Other doesn't have it's effectiveness reduced by +HP buffs from IOs, Accolades, and powers on the target, which are overly common.

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I am taking into account Hit Point caps when I say Frostworks is an amazing buff. Additional Hit Points let's people take more hits in a fight. Taking more hits allows you to have more of a chance to eat that green inspiration, execute that key power, finish off that enemy, or do the other amazing thing you need.

I prefer Frostworks over any heal because Frostworks is preemptive. You use it before combat starts. A heal means you have to stop what you are doing and push something else. Frostworks is already working and you can shoot the bad guys or do other things without having to push a heal button.

Frostworks is one of those subtle powers that is hard to notice how game changing it is on a player. There aren't any green nor orange #s. Nothing goes flying anywhere. It doesn't say missed nor avoided. But people just live longer.

The concept is that the Frankenslotting build is so cheap that you just throw it away. You drop the other IOs right over on top of it.

An important thing to remember when slotting set IOs is that the set bonuses are NOT everything. The actual %s on the enhancements make a significant difference. The term "frankenslotting" comes from mixing and matching different IO sets to maximize enhancements %s while spending as little as possible. That might be a good place to start while you slowly build towards sets or parts of sets that give set bonuses you want AND excellent enhancement %s.

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Fallout is viewed as being the most skippable power in the Radiation set. A few deeply disturbed people love the idea of exploding dead teammates, and think the power is great. Fallout is very effective as both a damage power and a debuff. I have it on my Earth/Rad, and have kept it in his build as a bit of a novelty. The problem is that I rarely get to use it. It is, in my view, the single most "situational" power in the game. Why?

1. You have to have a teammate die.
2. You have to live (i.e. no team wipe).
3. You have to have your teammate willing to sit there and do nothing while you abuse his dead body. (Most good players I team with want to actually play the game, and not lay there dead.) Any surviving teammates need to know not to use their rez so that you can play with dead things. If you are quick and notice your teammate's death immediately, this may not be very long.
4. Fallout has a decent-sized radius but your teammate must have died fairly near the bad guys, or you have to have Recall Friend to 'port his decaying remains around . . . but the drop range on Recall friend is really short, so you either have to risk yourself to drop the body where it can do some good, or also have Hover or Fly to drop the body . . . all of which take time that your buddy is still not playing the game.
5. You should take Mutation so you can Rez your teammate after you use his corpse as a bomb. Not resurrecting your buddy after abusing his corpse would be impolite - unless you plan on teleporting his remains around with you to repeatedly use as a bomb.


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Fallout, Vengeance and Phantom Army essentially make a team unable to lose. Throw in the Rad debuffs and you will beat all the content in the game... bar none... when you are with teammates who occasionally know where their shoot buttons are located.

Let me say that again slower...

If you choose the powers: Fallout, Vengeance, Phantom Army, Radiant Infection, Lingering Radiation and Enervating Field you have won the game. You can't lose. I'm only only exaggerating in the sense that you and your teammates will need a minuscule amount of intelligence along with it. Simply logging in with those powers is not enough though it is close.

The power of the "Big 3" Rad debuffs is undeniable and I don't feel I need to elaborate on them. Lingering Radiation, Enervating Field and Radiant Infection have been turning Super Villains into trashcans since the dawn of CoH.

Vengeance, Fallout and Phantom Army push you over the hump where those 3 powers aren't enough. Let me go through the original post's reasons why Fallout is skippable to illustrate some of the reasons why these three powers simply win you the game.

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1. You have to have a teammate die.

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If no one dies you win. You aren't picking Vengeance and Fallout to win more. You aren't picking Vengeance and Fallout for the "normal" situations. You are taking these powers for when the **** hits the fan. The **** will hit the fan eventually. Turn up the difficulty more and/or buff enemies if no one ever dies. Eventually you will want a challenge. Eventually someone will die. Eventually you will encounter a situation where you need more power or more tools. Vengeance, Fallout and Phantom Army are those tools.

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2. You have to live (i.e. no team wipe).

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You are a controller. You shoot from range. You have a hold, a confuse, an AoE hold, an aoe placed fear generator and a guard pet. Most importantly you have a summonable trio of immortal taunt machines. Hold your phantom army back. Keep them in reserve until your team encounters danger. When players life totals start going down or you know they will go down drop Phantom Army to cover you. Use them as personal guards.

If you die first you are playing it wrong. Simple as that. Yes, I know I've died first many times. I was playing it wrong.

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3. You have to have your teammate willing to sit there and do nothing while you abuse his dead body. (Most good players I team with want to actually play the game, and not lay there dead.) Any surviving teammates need to know not to use their rez so that you can play with dead things. If you are quick and notice your teammate's death immediately, this may not be very long.

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Pay attention to your teammates. You should know when they are going to die. When you prepare for them to die by dropping your Phantom Army and positioning yourself in safety you should also look at the team list and identify what member of the team they are. If they are teammte #5 on the team list prepare to hit Shift-5. As soon as they die target them, shift-5, hit Vengeance, then hit Fallout. This process will surely take less than 10 seconds. This process should take less than 5 seconds. Your teammate, if of average or above average intelligence, will know to keep fighting to the bitter end and not run away like a coward. Most teammates will die near packs allowing maximum Fallout blastage. Worst case scenario you and your team are lathered with massive Defense, To Hit and Damage from Vengeance and your Fallout missed. Boo friggin hoo. Run up and pop a mutation. The current fight has now swung in your favor.

So let's go back and think about the fight...

1. You and your teammates were losing.
2. An immortal trio of taunt bots appears on your team.
3. A teammate died.
4. Vengeance, granting you and anyone nearby massive Defense, To Hit and Damage.
5. Fallout possibly did massive damage to the enemies and massively debuffed the enemies.
6. Your dead teammate is no longer dead.

Really... teamwipe? One of your teammates dying only makes the team stronger.

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4. Fallout has a decent-sized radius but your teammate must have died fairly near the bad guys, or you have to have Recall Friend to 'port his decaying remains around . . . but the drop range on Recall friend is really short, so you either have to risk yourself to drop the body where it can do some good, or also have Hover or Fly to drop the body . . . all of which take time that your buddy is still not playing the game.

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Like I said before your teammate died. He was being shot. Likely that means enemies are around him. Team Teleport is much faster than Recall Friend. If your teammate misses run over his body, click team teleport, click at the bad guys. You've got vengeance, and rad debuffs AND Phantom Army, you can survive it. Then Fallout. This process takes less than 10 seconds. Worst case scenario you just Vengeance and Mutate your teammate. Still plenty of firepower to shift the tide of battle.

I'd like to add that I'm not making any of this up. I am more than happy to demonstrate exactly how effective this method is at succeeding in City of Heroes. I have 4 Ill/Rad Controllers on 4 different servers. I have run countless Task Forces at insane difficulties accepting whoever that shows up who isn't a sissy. We've run enemies buffed, players debuffed challenge level 5 frequently with no sweat whatsoever.

If you don't believe me when I say that Vengeance, Fallout and Phantom Army make you and your team capable of succeeding against any challenge I can gladly demonstrate on Virtue, Justice, Victory and Freedom.

I can understand a difference in playstyles. I understand not taking it if you and your teammates never die. But, if you are on a team and cannot succeed on your Ill/Rad and don't have these powers .... 999 out of 1000 times if you had Fallout and Vengeance you could have succeeded.

Pictures and video of lots of Rad w/Fallout and Vengeance doing an ITF Enemies buffed, players debuffed, Invincible, no meleers

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I should add that this type of setup is probably best implemented after a Respec or as a level 50 build. Most of these powers require other powers or a leadup. Maneuvers and Tactics don't provide the big game changing swings like Vengeance does. Fallout really wants to pair with Mutation and Vengeance. It's probably best to level to 35 (or 26 on a Defender at Fallout) or even higher before taking the whole package. Before you can get a few working together you are probably better suited going another direction. However, once you can bring all those weapons to bear... well.. you just can't lose.

I consider Frostworks one of the best buffs in the game because it is unique. I slot +HP on virtually every build I use. The results are amazing and incredibly beneficial. Every little bit helps a significant amount.

Applying this buff to other players can drastically help them, regardless of archetype.

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You don't know what you're talking about. Mission farming was every bit as effective as AE farming, it's just that it was limited to certain builds and certain conditions - So a handful of people skewed the market and no one else could compete.

AE missions have leveled the playing field by allowing any random group of eight to effectively farm - This reality is reflected the lowering of prices on the market and the evening out of prices from one rare to another. Increased availability combined with the ability for everyone to farm at the a competitive capacity. No longer do we have 5% of the players farming for 90% of the loot and then using thier own concentration of wealth to skew the market prices out of reach of everyone else.

Now everyone can be a part of the economic process, with any character, but simplying joining an AE farm team - A far more simple and inclusive process than the prior system consisting of lone farmers, sometimes with bots, but always restricted to a handful of useful archetypes doing all the farming to pay for those who can't do it.

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I don't think this is very accurate. I think a good understanding would be to consider a "normal" toon outside of AE doing a speed of 1. A farming toon can essentially do a speed of 2 outside of AE. Inside AE now these normal toons can do 2. Inside AE farming toons can do 4. Mission farming is not as effective as AE.

The fastest mission farming I've ever seen... and I think I've seen nearly everything... takes about 10 hours from 1-50. Inside MA about 5. That's really fast and really REALLY fast but still twice the speed. MA doesn't change the ratio. Toons built to do it are still about twice as fast as toons NOT built to do it. I think your misconception is that because normal toons are going faster you are catching up. I think you have yet to comprehend how fast the top of the line can go in MA.

The field hasn't been leveled. You've just caught up to last year.

If they put on Force Field Bubble or drop the Force Field Generator that's enough. That's the same as turning on Willpower toggles.

Turn those on. Run at bad guys. Actually using the other powers is just bonus. Dropping/upgrading the pets is the complicated part.

Your kids might also be able to play Masterminds. Ideally you can explain how to summon and upgrade pets. You can tell them to play the MMs exactly like a brute. No orders needed. Charge in. The troops will protect you. They can add some basic buffs to he mix too with Force Fields or Traps. Give them attacks and let them lead the charge.

Brutes, especially willpower with no buttons to press, would be even easier.

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You a "farmer" that I already have on ignore making a post about "gold farmers" is ironic.

When you are part of the problem is is hard to see what the solution has always been, but then again - I've been saying it for months now.

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I'm a farmer? When did this happen?

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I always think of it like the scene in that one police movie where the two criminals call everyone a "Cop."

"He's a farmer. You can tell because he has a controller"
"She's a farmer. She's in Portal Corps."
"The lack of badges means he's a farmer."
"RPing in Pocket D. She's a farmer, and so's the cat on her shoulder."

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While searching for some cheap IO's Blueside I came across something that shocked me.



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LOL ROFL. OMG. He said cheep and... ROFL. BLUESIDE. LOLOLOLOLOLOL

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I don't get it. Can someone explain it to me please.

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Prices on some items on the Blueside Market are anything but cheap. What sells for 10 Inf Redside can cost 10,000 or more Blueside. This is due to a mixture of population, Inf on hand, drop rates based on Magic/Tech drops, and the like.

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Like...

Alchemical Silver
Red: 50-80k
Blue: 50-100k

Conspiratorial Evidence
Red:1-1.2M
Blue:500k-1M

Crushing Impact 50 Recipes
Red: 10k-2M
Blue: 100k-2M



Want me to keep going? Some prices are higher blue, some higher red, but it's pretty much the same.

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While searching for some cheap IO's Blueside I came across something that shocked me.



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LOL ROFL. OMG. He said cheep and... ROFL. BLUESIDE. LOLOLOLOLOLOL

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I don't get it. Can someone explain it to me please.