StrykerX

Short answer... anything that consistently shows a wide range in "last 5" prices. Just remember that these things can change rapidly... all it takes is one hoarder dumping their stock cheap or a quirk of the RNG increasing supply to dry up a niche, at least temporarily.

Can't help on specific items, because I've decided that marketeering takes too much time away from actually playing the game and that merits, tickets, and TF runs are a much more entertaining way to get rich.

Attack Vitals is a very useful combo. Blinding Feint -> Attack Vitals is fairly easy to pull off and is only a few DPS (fully enhanced) behind the top perma-Hasten chains. It should be your standard chain for general use unless you have a ton of global recharge, and it's good enough that you don't really need that recharge just to boost your attack chain (though if you need it for other reasons, might as well tighten up the attacks).

Sweep is also nice situationally. It boosts the damage on Typhoon's Edge, which is nice... though it does mean taking 1K Cuts. If you're tight on space it's easily skipped, and if you have tons of recharge just spam Typhoon's... it's actually one of the better PBAoEs.

Weaken and Empower are useful leveling up but pretty much worthless once you get AV.

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EVERYTHING removed from the MA is either exploitable or causes major problems.

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Except Prisoners... those have deliberately lowered rewards to compensate for their puny damage. Sure they're easy to kill, but they also give lousy XP. Never did figure out why they were pulled... I've certainly never heard of a Prisoner farm mission.

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Players were using that fact to exploit the MA by using the generators to kill spawns, thusly earning them XP without much effort.

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And apparently it was easier to just remove them than to make it so that the damage done by the generator reduces the XP you'd get, like how it works with Allies and Escorts who deal damage.

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Actually, damage done by exploding objects does reduce XP. It counts as damage from a non-team source, just like another player shooting your target. If the explosion kills an undamaged mob, the player gets nothing... no XP, no chance for drops, no tickets. Go head to the Hollows and blow up a pile of explosives near some Trolls and compare the XP from them to just killing Trolls of that level... you'll see a huge difference.

I suspect what people were doing was spawning bosses as guards and hitting the spawn with AoEs. The explosion won't kill a boss, but it will knock a chunk out of their health bar... you get only partial XP but it's a much faster kill so I guess that balances out. Especially if you just want tickets... as long as you do some damage you get a chance at a ticket.

Hmm... maybe that's why they yanked Prisoners. The XP is lousy but the ticket drops would still be normal since Prisoners do drop recipes and salvage at the normal rate (I think). I guess if all you care about is tickets they'd be a good choice. But then, if you're going to farm, why not farm something like Freakshow that gives bonus XP (and therefore bonus inf) instead? At 50 the inf from mobs is very significant, and any decent farmer can mow down Freaks (or most other standard mobs) all day long...

More options is better. The way I see it, farmers will always farm... but now they'll be able to do so without bothering non-farmers (no more fill requests! Yay!). More importantly, people looking for a challenge will be able to get it more easily. After all, most heavily IO'ed builds can handle almost any normal mission on any difficulty setting... and some can do so for an 8-man spawn. But a +4 level 8-man spawn? Even the multi-billion inf Scrapper and Brute builds should be able to find a challenge there...

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It's all about watching the buff/debuff bar for incoming hits and, like I said before, timing MoG or heals.

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What exactly does that mean? Do attacks with debuffs appear on the bar before they actually hit and do damage?

I don't think rank affects to-hit, only level. A +1 boss will be +3 to the pet and +1 to you, but will also gain an accuracy bonus for being a boss. Enemies don't get a to-hit bonus from level until +6, so you'd have to be fighting +4s to worry about that. Bosses do have higher accuracy though, so they have a higher final to-hit floor regardless of defense.

A +6 opponent only has a 5% to-hit bonus, so if you plan to fight a lot of +4s you may want your lowest tier pet to have 50% defense if possible. As long as you stick to +3s or less, even archvillains and heroes won't be gaining to-hit bonuses... though they will have as high as a 10% to-hit floor from rank and level accuracy bonuses.

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I am hoping for some serious Gun Fu ala Equilibrium.

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Here's an idea... for the secondary effect, have many of the attacks give a small, short-duration defense buff. The faster you shoot, the harder to hit you are...

I agree that some status effects could be hard to justify (like Holds), but I can see a Stun. Head Shot: You shoot your opponent in the head (or equivalent vital location), dealing high Lethal damage and Stunning them for a short time.

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If you must have /Devices as a secondary, then I'd suggest combining it with Ice (which has two holds) or Sonic (which has a disorient you can stack with Taser). Psy might be an option, too, since it also has a disorient, but I really wouldn't recommend Psy for your first Blaster--you have to be rather careful when deciding which enemy groups to fight, since certain ones have massive amounts of Psy resistance.

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Don't forget Archery, it has a disorient as well.

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If they let us solo TFs/Trials the smileys will go into overload!



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Let's not get crazy now!

Seriously, though, to the best of my knowledge we won't be changing minimum sizes of TF's/SF's. The minimum sizes stand as "warning labels" to newer players that these missions are more difficult/time consuming/whatever than other missions. It's a small, but important function.

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Would it be possible to add a warning that comes up if you try to start a TF / SF with below the minimum team size? Something like "Warning: This Task Force has been balanced for a team of at least X players. It may be very difficult or impossible to complete with your current team." That way the players are duly warned, and if they click yes anyway they know what they're getting into.

After all, it's not like people don't already get fillers to start out when doing a TF with a small group... as long as you include a strong warning there's no real reason to require a full sized team to start it. Some people really enjoy solo / duo / trio TF attempts... honestly it's one of the few real challenges to a fully IOed character. I personally don't run them below minimum size (I don't have any heavily IOed characters) but I'd like the option to try it some day without having to spam chat for fillers.

I look at it this way: odds are, the height / gender change tailor wouldn't exist at all if someone hadn't convinced the bean counters at NCSoft that the booster sales would pay for the development expenses.

That's the whole point to Super Boosters. They allow the devs to use resources that their bosses would not otherwise give them to produce things that would not otherwise be considered worth it to add. (Worth it in a business sense, I mean.)

Sad fact of life... bean counters run the company and they, not the devs, decide how many resources get devoted to things like costumes and emotes. Super Boosters let the devs get more resources to spend on those things because they will earn a return on the investment. Yes, having to pay 10 bucks for cool new fluff is annoying, but it's better than having a lot less cool new fluff at all.

Now the day they start offering anything truly game changing, like real powers or XP bonuses (looks at some Korean MMOs) that's completely different. That stuff needs to stay in free-to-play MMOs. But paying for fluff that we'd never be able to get at all otherwise is fine.

Stunning Shot is handy. You won't need it every spawn, but it's very handy for annoying Lts (like Stunner Freaks or those Malta officers with the 30+ second stun grenades). Plus you can get some good set bonuses, especially if you can afford Basilisk's Gaze.

Caltrops are useful to keep range, but if you fly they're less important. Still handy in tight quarters though.

One of the best things to pick up is Aid Self. It's a huge downtime reducer... you can end a fight down in the orange and be back near full health in a few seconds. It's also useful in combat, just break line of sight for a couple of seconds and fire it off.

You'll want high ranged defense, some +HP, and ideally some +damage. Archery's single target damage is decent but not fantastic, and it's Lethal so a lot of things resist it. Expect long fights, so you'll want good survivability... you'll probably need Aid Self or a high regen build in addition to defense.

The good news is you won't need massive recharge. Snap Shot -> Aimed Shot -> Snap Shot -> Blazing Arrow is a pretty easy chain to get, and it does almost as much DPS as Snap -> Aimed -> Blazing with a lot less recharge needed... leaving more room for defense an regen. Though if you slot purples you might as well get the extra 15 DPS or so from the tighter attack chain...

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celebrity +stealth

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I hear those two cancel out, or is it that paparazzi see right through celebrity stealth?

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The paparazzi day job badge gives a +perception auto power.

Damage auras generally end up being a significant percentage of total damage on melee characters. If you are going to stay in melee range a lot it's definitely worth getting Lightning Field. However, if you bounce in and out of melee it will be less effective since mobs won't be in it long.

Also, if you are going to go for endurance drain as mitigation you definitely want it. If you can drain a group dry, Lightning Field should reall help keep them there.

Honestly, any MMO with loot is going to end up having a few stupidly rare items. At least in CoX anyone, even casual players, can eventually get any item in the game. Play a 50 long enough and you will end up with enough inf to buy even the PvP 3% defense IO. It may take a long time, but it's possible. Compare that to many other MMOs where it's literally impossible for a non-hardcore player to ever get the top loot because doing so requires a lot of raiding for non-transferable items. Like in FFXI, where there is a boss that requires dozens of people on a 24 hour raid to defeat it. You can probably count the number of times it's been beaten on one hand. Or WoW's "grind raid dungeon A for months to get gear so you can grind dungeon B for months so you can get gear to grind dungeon C for months..." format. The worst I've seen was Earth and Beyond, where there were items that gave crafters a huge advantage by boosting item quality... and the items were hyper-rare random drops that had a drop rate of around one per year per server. Needless to say, they could not be bought at any price... the only one I ever heard of being sold went for a large chunk of real-world cash.

Compared to that nonsense, a billion inf for the game's rarest IO isn't that bad...

Ok, not really free... but here's how to get IOed out and end up with more inf than you started with.

I moved back blueside a while back and changed servers, so I had no high level heroes to support alts with. I did have a mid-20s alt with about 105 million inf thanks to selling a ton of level 35 damage IOs after last double XP weekend, but I wanted to try something new. So I made my current favorite Blaster, an Archery / Energy, and decided to see what a fairly decent IO build could do. I figured I'd use the rich alt to buy the IOs, and eventually earn the inf back on the new Blaster...

I was wrong. There was no "eventually" about it. My Blaster is now level 48 and fully IOed out (the last two levels' worth of IOs are crafted and sitting in storage). If anyone cares, the build is:

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

No ultra-expensive uniques or purples, but a good solid build. And the nice part? My rich alt is paid back and then some, and the Blaster has over 170 million inf saved up. That's a good midrange IO build purchased, plus almost 200 million extra inf earned, before level 50. What's the big secret?

Play the game.

Yep. No fancy marketeering, just play the game and be smart about buying and selling. I didn't flip anything or even buy anything to craft for sale, but I did craft my drops when doing so increased profits and I made sure to bid in advance to avoid "buy it now" markups. Some tips for anyone out there more interested in fighting bad guys (or good guys) than pouring over spreadsheets and sitting at the market all day:

1) Use an alt. If at all possible, use an alt to place long-term bids and sell low-turnover items. That way you aren't clogging up an active character's slots with transactions that will take days or weeks to go through. You'll need those slots open to dump short-term stuff like salvage and common IOs for a quick profit, and to buy quick-filling items. There are a lot of Pool A IOs that sell for around 2-5 million and don't cost a lot to craft, but they don't sell fast. On an active character I'd dump the recipe for a few hundred thousand overnight, but by using an alt I can craft them and get a few million in a few days to a week or so. (And yes, if you're so inclined you can always buy those recipes and craft them.) I solo a lot so I have a personal SG with just my alts to facilitate that sort of thing, but all you really need is someone you trust to help transfer items or access to SG base storage (or a 2nd account).

2) Try to earn merits. Tickets can be good (I got a few multi-million inf items with bronze rolls) but merits are gold. I ran two or three TFs and a bunch of story arcs and ended up with enough merits to buy a Numina's recovery unique, craft it, and sell it for 100 million. I could have done random rolls, but with only 280 or so merits I went with the guaranteed payoff instead. It worked out to something like 400k per merit, which is darn good in my book.

3) A rich alt is nice, but hardly necessary. Between tickets, crafting popular drops, and selling unused salvage you can earn plenty of inf to start buying IOs in the low 30s. A rich alt just lets you pre-bid and get them cheaper since you can let the bids sit longer.

4) Use MA, but don't live in it. Tickets are handy. Not only are bronze rolls a decent source of income, you can use them to keep yourself in DOs and SOs at pre-IO levels (or to buy common IO recipes if you go that route). However, real mission drops can be at least as profitable, and story arcs give merits. Especially the high level arcs... some of those give more merits than some TFs. They do take a while, but if you like to solo they're a good choice.

5) Pretty obvious, but it still bears mentioning: do not buy pre-crafted set IOs. Some commons can be had cheaper than crafting them yourself, but the sets are always marked up. I will never understand why people are willing to pay a premium of 2-3 million inf just to avoid buying salvage and crafting it themselves, but some do. Don't be one of those people... be one of the people getting rich off them instead.

And what do you do once you get to 50 and have a good bankroll plus decent IO slotting? If you're me, you start a new character and use the new 50 as the rich alt to help get him started. Or you can do the whole "earn a ton of inf and get purples" thing, but my altitis always flares up before that point...

tl;dr version: Yes, you really can afford a good build without farming with a 50 or playing the market. Honest.

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The lower level ones should be worth more but sometimes they aren't because people are stuck in bigger is better thinking on the levels.

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Depends on which Steadfast it is. If it's the KB resist, lower is better. If it's the 3% defense, that also is a resist enhancement so higher is better if you actually plan to use the power it's slotted in (lower is better if you're tossing it in Tough's default slot and never turning it on).

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I agree that maneuvers on a MM is pretty weak. Fully slotted it will give you just over 5% defense. I don't think it's worth it, and you've got better places to put slots.

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It's worth it on Thugs/Traps, because the Thugs will have high defense already. 5% more defense when you're already in the 35-40% range is a big help.

Looks good, though I personally would try to pick up Aid Other (perhaps instead of Empty Clips or Assault). Your only heal is Triage Beacon, which isn't really good for normal fights (it rocks for AVs though). Aid Other would be nice for keeping the pets topped off between fights, especially the Bruiser... if you're letting him tank then even softcapped he'll eventually get whittled down if you aren't careful.

I'm sure you can do well without a heal since you have lots of defense, but Aid Orther will be a nice downtime reducer.

Oops... forgot to reset default level in Mids after making my leveling build for my current Blaster.

Can you softcap melee on a Blaster? I went with S/L because it looked like there weren't enough Melee Defense sets to get anywhere near the cap. Ranged and Melee would be far better if it's possible.

(It'll be a long time before I could afford such a build, so plenty of time to experiment...)

I've really been enjoying getting back to Blasters, and I had an interesting idea for a new one. The idea was to make a Blapper built around maximum damage and softcapped Smashing / Lethal defense. I came up with this:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 50 Science Blaster
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Electricity Manipulation
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Ancillary Pool: Cold Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Flares

[*] (A) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage[*] (3) Decimation - Damage/Endurance[*] (3) Decimation - Damage/Recharge[*] (5) Decimation - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge[*] (5) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge[/list]Level 1: Electric Fence
[*] (A) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Recharge[*] (7) Enfeebled Operation - Endurance/Immobilize[*] (7) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Endurance[*] (9) Enfeebled Operation - Immobilize/Range[*] (9) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Immobilize/Recharge[*] (11) Enfeebled Operation - Accuracy/Immobilize[/list]Level 2: Fire Blast
[*] (A) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage[*] (11) Decimation - Damage/Endurance[*] (13) Decimation - Damage/Recharge[*] (13) Decimation - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge[*] (15) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge[/list]Level 4: Charged Brawl
[*] (A) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage[*] (15) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance[*] (17) Touch of Death - Damage/Recharge[*] (17) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance[*] (19) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance/Recharge[*] (19) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)[/list]Level 6: Fire Ball
[*] (A) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage[*] (25) Positron's Blast - Damage/Endurance[*] (27) Positron's Blast - Damage/Recharge[*] (27) Positron's Blast - Damage/Range[*] (29) Positron's Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance[/list]Level 8: Lightning Field
[*] (A) Obliteration - Damage[*] (29) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge[*] (31) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge[*] (31) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge[*] (31) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge[*] (46) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage[/list]Level 10: Havoc Punch
[*] (A) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage[*] (21) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance[*] (21) Touch of Death - Damage/Recharge[*] (23) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance[*] (23) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance/Recharge[*] (25) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)[/list]Level 12: Hurdle
[*] (A) Jumping IO[/list]Level 14: Health
[*] (A) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery[/list]Level 16: Build Up
[*] (A) Recharge Reduction IO[/list]Level 18: Blaze
[*] (A) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage[*] (33) Decimation - Damage/Endurance[*] (33) Decimation - Damage/Recharge[*] (33) Decimation - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge[*] (34) Decimation - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge[*] (50) Thunderstrike - Accuracy/Damage[/list]Level 20: Stamina
[*] (A) Endurance Modification IO[/list]Level 22: Combat Jumping
[*] (A) Defense Buff IO[/list]Level 24: Super Jump
[*] (A) Jumping IO[/list]Level 26: Kick
[*] (A) Accuracy IO[/list]Level 28: Thunder Strike
[*] (A) Obliteration - Damage[*] (34) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge[*] (34) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge[*] (36) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge[*] (36) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge[*] (36) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage[/list]Level 30: Tough
[*] (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%[*] (37) Reactive Armor - Resistance/Endurance[*] (37) Reactive Armor - Resistance[*] (37) Reactive Armor - Endurance[*] (39) Reactive Armor - Resistance/Endurance/Recharge[*] (43) Empty[/list]Level 32: Weave
[*] (A) Red Fortune - Defense[*] (39) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge[*] (39) Red Fortune - Endurance/Recharge[*] (40) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge[*] (40) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance[/list]Level 35: Power Sink
[*] (A) Recharge Reduction IO[/list]Level 38: Shocking Grasp
[*] (A) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage[*] (40) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance[*] (42) Touch of Death - Damage/Recharge[*] (42) Touch of Death - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance[*] (42) Touch of Death - Damage/Endurance/Recharge[*] (43) Touch of Death - Chance of Damage(Negative)[/list]Level 41: Snow Storm
[*] (A) Impeded Swiftness - Accuracy/Slow[*] (43) Impeded Swiftness - Damage/Slow[*] (46) Impeded Swiftness - Accuracy/Endurance[*] (48) Impeded Swiftness - Range/Slow[*] (48) Impeded Swiftness - Endurance/Recharge/Slow[*] (48) Impeded Swiftness - Chance of Damage(Smashing)[/list]Level 44: Frozen Armor
[*] (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance[*] (45) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge[*] (45) Red Fortune - Endurance/Recharge[*] (45) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge[*] (46) Red Fortune - Defense[/list]Level 47: Hoarfrost
[*] (A) Harmonized Healing - Heal/Recharge[*] (50) Miracle - Heal/Recharge[*] (50) Doctored Wounds - Heal/Recharge[/list]Level 49: Hibernate
[*] (A) Recharge Reduction IO[/list]------------
Level 1: Brawl
[*] (A) Empty[/list]Level 1: Sprint
[*] (A) Empty[/list]Level 2: Rest
[*] (A) Empty[/list]Level 1: Defiance

The empty slot in Tough is for a 3% defense PvP IO. Obviously it's an insanely expensive build, especially with the PvP IO, but I'm thinking that as long as I stayed away from pure psi based enemies it could be very damaging and might even live through the aggro it draws.

Anyone tried something like this?

(I know parts of the build are odd, but softcapping S/L defense is extremely hard to do so compromises had to be made.)

You'll be short of softcapped yourself. You're at around 26-27% Ranged and Melee defense, so you'd need a bit over 18% more to softcap the positionals. With Scorpion Shield you're just over 42% to Smashing and Lethal Defense and 39% to Energy... that's not softcapped but it's close enough that you should be fine. Switching Acid Mortar to a full set of Shield Breaker and slotting four Curtailed Speed in Caltrops would fully softcap you on Smashing and Lethal, but I'm not sure it's worth it. I would change the slotting on Acid Mortar though... it does minimal damage, so you want to enhance the recharge and (optionally) the defense debuff. And you want an Achilles' Heel proc in it.

Your pets will be pretty much softcapped to everything as long as they stay within your FFG range and the Enforcers stay with them. Just be sure to keep close enough to the Bruiser to get him in range of the defense buffs.

How about a psycho killer? Make a normal looking guy, give him an axe or big knife (Broadsword with a small sword chosen) and Willpower or Invulnerability, and some creepy dialog.

Of course demons are always good... perhaps one who does not use Fire or Dark powers just to be different.

Evil wizards are also always a fun choice. Especially stereotypical, over the top evil wizards in robes.

Some sort of alien.

A monster, such as a werewolf or vampire.

I'd settle for mobs actually needing enough endurance to pay for the attack. Right now it seems like mobs can use any attack, no matter how high the endurance cost, if they have even one point of endurance. Which means the only way to stop huge attacks like KO Blow is to reduce them to zero and also zero out their recovery.

At least if they had to pay full end for attacking they'd have to do what we do when mostly drained but still recovering: use small attacks as we get endurance, or wait several seconds to get enough back for a big one.

I'd go with option 3: buy another one and slot both.