TopDoc

According to my old Drop Listing & Analysis thread, I got about 1 purple per 1500 mobs. It was 13 purples for about 18,000 mobs. Given Nihilii's 6 purples in 19,000 mobs, you get around 1 per 2000 mobs if you average ours together.

Fulmens presented another option a couple posts up.

Smurphy, I don't see it happening. There are simply too many places where Inf is handled. It would be almost impossible to catch them all. The only thing it would do is make it easier to hold more than the Inf cap, or do transactions above the Inf cap. Currently there's only a single item trading that high, the PvP +3% Def IO, though granted a couple others are close. And the email system makes it easy to distribute Inf among alts or even hold it in emails. From a program manager's perspective, there isn't enough of a benefit to warrant spending the time, and the risk on top of that it too high.

Currently we'er working on the 10-14 range.

But there's no point to having massive amount of liquid cash just sitting around doing nothing.

Any of you big boys out there care to give your opinion of Filthy versus Obscenely rich? Smurphy? Bronx still around? And what about PvP Farmers. Anyone who got into purples early is probably rolling in it now. Mac?

These days, hitting 1 billion or even the Inf cap of 2 billion just seems old hat. You can do that with a single lucky PvP IO. So I was wondering, what total Inf value do people consider filthy rich, and what does it take to be obscenely rich? I'm talking across all characters, slotted IOs, outstanding bids, stuff in base storage, red and blue side, etc. I'm thinking 20 Billion Inf would be considered Filthy Rich, while 100 Billion would be Obscenely Rich. I'm guessing a lot of the farmers and Marketeers here are at least Filthy Rich, while a fairly small number are Obscenely Rich. At least that was my intent in suggesting those values. And of course this is a moving target, as market changes can significantly affect total worth if it is based on slotted IOs. But what do others think about my arbitrary dividing lines?

And more importantly, are you Filthy or Obscenely rich?

OK, a couple of basic comments...

Good thing you listed your goals. I see a lot of requests that just say "make my build better".

The goal of "team buffs" is met by taking all three of the Tactical Training powers. Assault on top of that is a bit END expensive. Personally I wouldn't bother. At most I'd add TT: Vengeance if you like doing the LRSF and stacking Vengeance.

Every IO you have is level 35. You'll have a hard time finding a lot of those redside. The supply just isn't there, or so I've heard. I assume you want those for exemplaring. If so, you'd be better off with 32-33 or 37-38 depending on what you plan on doing (TFs or Oro arcs). And the slightly lower Enhancement values will make hard things like AV soloing even harder.

If you have the Inf for LotGs and full BotZ sets, you can splurge and buy level 50 common IOs. They don't have set bonuses, so there's nothing to lose when you exemp.

You don't mention your budget. Are Purples and PvP IOs beyond it?

As Nihili mentioned, Hover is overslotted. You can drop a slot and hardly notice the difference. Or at least replace one of the common IOs with a Soaring Fly/End.

Remember that BotZ is being rebalanced, so you'll lose some of that Ranged and AoE Defense on Wednesday.

You've got a lot of slots in IW, and you don't get a very big benefit from them. Just a little extra Psi resistance and very little positional defense. You could probably find a better use for those. For example, another slot of Defense in Foresight will completely make up for the set bonuses from Reactive Armor.

I recommend you get the auto-Accolades. The extra HP will really help you survive, and the 10% END will come in very handy. Every little bit helps.

Combat Training: Defensive could use another slot or two of Defense.

Placate???

You could take Mind Link at 24, which would mean it would be available when exemping down to 19. Ever run the Cap SF?

Mask Presence gives Stealth which is only half full Invis. Add a Running or Jumping Stealth IO to Sprint to get full Invis.

In Lunge, replace the Crushing Impact: Acc/Dam with the Dam/End/Rech. You've got +30% ToHit from Follow Up, Mind Link, and TT: Leadership, plus 32% global Accuracy from set bonuses. You'll still hit stuff 95% of the time, except high level things with Defense bonuses.

Personally I would go for Hasten. Strike and Lunge are your heavy hitters, and Follow Up gives you some nice ToHit and Damage bonuses, so you want those cycling as often as possible.

As things stand, you'll probably have a hard time soloing AVs. Your damage is lower than it could be and your END use is a bit high. However any build that has a chance to solo AVs can rip through regular content easily. The only question is how high you want to set your Difficulty.

For some reason I can't import your build. I'm running Mids 1.601 with database version 1.69204 (11/Sep/2009). Looks like I need to update. I'll do that hopefully remember to take a look again at the build.

I gotta hand it to Azuria, this new M.A.G.I. vault has REALLY cut down on thefts.

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

Test is in Open Beta again. Anyone want to continue this? Mrs. TopDoc has a Tanker with around 1200 Merits, so I may be able to start adding some numbers.

The purple issue seems to have been cleared up, but the comments about player level not affecting things is wrong. Player level affects the level and probability of Enhancement drops. Take a level 1 char into a farm with a level 50 Fire/Kin. The Fire/Kin may get a couple level 50ish Enhancements for the entire run. The level 1 will fill up on level 1ish Enhancements fairly quickly.

Similarly, when fighting an AV, the reward is usually a level appropriate SO Enhancement.

Your suggestion 1) below is reasonable if the intent is to bring more people into PvP, but it has the unwanted (from the Devs) perspective of doubling the drop rate. An alternative that would keep the total rate the same would be to reduce the killer rate while increasing the killee rate. Of course the standard rule is that people will complain no matter what you do.

Suggestion 2) seems reasonable and many people have requested it before. I don't know why it hasn't been done. The problem really is switching to Merits which you can save up to roll at level 50.

Suggestion 3) depends on the intent. Perhaps you could add more detail. It seems the Devs are happy with the current earning rates. They did go and weight the drops a while ago, so the more desired things within a pool drop more often. It seems to favor things like attacks over controls for example. I started a thread to get some statistics by copying chars to the test server to roll a lot, but things died down then the test server went into Closed Beta.

If the intent of 3) is to make things like LotG: +7.5% and Healing uniques into Pool A uncommon drops, then the Devs aren't gonna go for that.

Regarding your original question, the answer as I stated long ago still applies. Minions reward 70% of their XP in Inf, Lts give 120%, and bosses give 200%. If you fight higher level mobs, or those with XP mods that increase their worth, then the Inf you get will increase proportionately. If you fight lower level mobs or those with reduced XP modifiers, you'll get correspondingly lower Inf. If you team, the XP gets a team bonus and then gets divided as usual, and you still get 70% or 120% or 200% of your share of the XP as Inf. Your examples indicate that the numbers above still apply, though apparently there's a problem at low levels.

Level 41
Minion: 731 XP * 0.7 Inf/XP = 511.7 Inf
Lt: 1948 XP * 1.2 Inf/XP = 2337.6 Inf

The numbers appear a bit off because you are shown rounded values for XP and Inf. The level 41 Minion XP is probably really worth 730.6 XP or so, which would make the Inf reward 511.4. Ditto for the Lt.

All of the XP numbers per level have changed a few times. When I first looked at this (before there were individual XP modifiers for most mobs, LONG ago), the table was still obviously hand modified. Then came the speeded leveling to 14 for a travel power, and later XP "smoothing", and increased boss rewards which taper off towards 50, and who knows what else.

Here's what you need to do in order to get a current snapshot of XP. Level up a char from 1 to 50. At every level, record XP needed. Then record XP received for killing a Minion, Lt., and Boss. Then exemp a level 50 char and defeat the exact same mob and record how much that is worth (Inf of course). Compare the level 50 Inf values, and that'll give you an idea if the mobs you were killing had any XP modifiers. Check the modifier against the spreadsheet maintained by Culex, she has a guide in the Players Guides forum on XP mods. For example, if the level 50 char normally gets 800 Inf for defeating a minion, but they only get 640 for defeating a Hellion Nerfgunner, then the Hellion Nerfgunner has a -20% XP modifier. Take those modifiers into account in the XP received on the char you're leveling, and find out how much a "normal" Minion, Lt, and Boss is worth at each level. Write it all up and post it on ParagonWiki. And it'll be obsolete as soon as the Devs tweak things again.

All that said, the M/L column in your second table is really the important one. The XP rewards per mobs are just as messed up as the XP table. But they're messed up proportionately. You can see a steady progression in the number of mobs needed to level, with a dip around level 14 that the Devs added to speed up getting a travel power. Notice that leveling from 40 on requires about 1790 minions per level. It used to be around 3333 before the XP "smoothing". It doesn't really matter how much XP you need or how much the mobs are worth, you just need to defeat about 1790 Minions from level 40 on to advance.

Based on my old drop analysis thread, the drop rate for purples is around 1 in 1500 mobs. The drop rate for PvP IOs is around 1 in 100. I had 5 on a new char when he hit 400 Rep, and that seems to match my rate on previous chars. These numbers could be off by a moderate amount as my sample sizes probably aren't big enough to be statistically significant. But I'd say Purples are 1 in between 1000 and 2000, while PvP IOs are 1 in between 50 and 200. As for Set IO distribution, check out the Rare Recipe Weight project. People have been rolling large numbers of merits on test and reporting the results. Leandro has gathered up the results, crunched the numbers, and posted them on ParagonWiki.

The billboards bring in real cash money to NCSoft, or at least that was the original plan. I doubt they would give that up (if there really is anything coming in) just to let players advertise stuff.

As to spending huge amounts of Inf on sinks that have no in-game benefit, sure there are some people who will do it. But people like me would just laugh at that and keep buying expensive IOs.

The drop rate when I tested it was around 1 per 1500 mobs, based on my old thread HERE.

This was from killing over 18k mobs in a total of around 13 hours of solo farming with a high end Fire/Psi Dominator before the PSW nerf. If someone claims to have killed 2 million mobs in a few days, LOL and then ask for details. It is theoretically possible, but certainly not realistic. They would definitely have to multi-box to do enough damage, and be actively playing for hour after hour, day after day. Automation would likely be required to deal with the massive number of junk recipe and salvage drops. They would get over 1000 purples, plus massive numbers of nice recipes and rare Salvage.

The only way I see it being possible is with a massive exploit, like access to "The I Win Button".

Last 5?

Mrs. TopDoc and I plan to be there, given that it's a fairly short drive away. It'll be nice to put some faces to names.

Did someone accidentally take down the LIVE servers today to install Issue 17? Because routine maintenance is on Thursdays, while new issues come out on Tuesdays.

I suggest you try it on the test server. City of Data info for Panacea, Theft of Essence, and Performance Shifter. They all have Caster listed as the target. Theft effects self, while Panacea and Performance Shifter affect the Target. I have heard that Performance Shifter works wrong, in that it gives END to the target when used in AoE attacks. That leads me to believe that Panacea won't work like you want it to.

It takes some extreme circumstances to want the healing uniques in Dull Pain rather than Health. As Ironblade mentioned, in Dull Pain they will only be active for 120 seconds. Of course that's how long Dull Pain lasts for, and you may be slotted well enough to make it perma. But that usually requires many slots in Dull Pain (often 5 Doctored Wounds for the extra Global Recharge Reduction set bonus), leaving you little room for the uniques. Health however usually has plenty of room for those uniques, since at best you'll be slotting it with 3 Healing Enhancements.

There's a reason almost everyone puts them in Health. That's usually the best spot.