kendo

and this is exactly why now is the perfect time for them to make this change. if it would have been done as a stand alone change, then everything under the sun, real or imagined, would have been blamed on the market merge with so many changes affecting so many different aspects of the game, not really going to be possible to point to the market merge, in and of itself, being the reason for swings in market behavior.

you want to lock characters because random rolls with AE tickets or Merits gives you the recipes at your level or the maximum level of the recipe, whichever is lower. if you don't want any IO enhancements > lvl 31, so the bonuses are active down to lvl 28, then you need to lock your character at 31.

I like doing this also, and if you have a couple of spare slots to stick in there for Procs, you can even get a bit of damage at no endurance charge

actually, I find that Master Minds can fill in as the pseudo tanker red side as well as, or better than, brutes. several of mine have taunt powers from the power pool.

but back on topic I agree with the folks that say - it depends. it depends on what power sets you take (my ice tank may pick it up very late but holds agro pretty darn well with his other powers), it depends on whether you play with the same people most of the time (friends, SG, etc where play style may or may not need a taunting tank), it depends on your personal view of a tank and their role on a team.

personally, using the criteria above, almost all my tanks have taunt. but I don't slam others that don't take it. if I don't think they are pulling their weight in a group, I may not play with them but their choices are their choices. it is one of the main premises of the game and one of the reasons I have been enjoying it for several years.

first off, welcome back. many things have changed, so it may be almost a totally new experience for you. hope you enjoy it.

regarding your questions about super groups - the best suggestion I can give you would be to go to the server section of the forums here. each server has a pinned thread for SG information and there are always many postings by SGs in their server forum. you can check out the information they have posted to see if they might be a good home for you. many have web sites you can visit to get additional information about them as well as how to contact them to get an invite.

if you haven't already decided on what server, or servers, you will use, then you may want to look at the population at the time you normally play. when you log in, the last server you logged into is at the top of the list. after that, they are listed from least number of people on to most number of people on. usually Freedom and Virtue will be at the bottom of the list (as the busiest servers) but that can vary a bit if you play at off-hours. and some people like being on less populated servers - less lag, etc.

shameless plug if you decide to play on Freedom, Virtue or Justice, Hero or Villain side - check out the information for Repeat Offenders. one of the larger collections of Super Groups in the game and there is almost always several members on at any time. they have a wide array of super groups, some with specific themes for specific archetypes; others just wide open and generic for anyone to join in the fun

from what I have seen in Mids playing around with my new regen build, fitness really isn't necessary, as long as you take physical perfection in your 40s. with both quick recovery and PP 3 - slotted, my endurance use to endurance recovery numbers are better than just about any other scrapper I run.

also be careful you don't lump the comments about max regen into max health. it appears that the cap for max regen is high enough you don't have to worry about it for a regen. but max health is very easily reached. my original regen was built for max regen and max health and was way, way over the max health whenever dull pain was active. and that was without adding in even 1 of the accolades that gives + HP. my new build will pretty much cap HP with a couple of accolades and a few minor HP bonuses that are part of the sets that I am slotting mainly for other reasons besides + HP.

oh, and just as a side note to Umbral - my new build slots recharge IOs in IH, needed those extra slots elsewhere

thanks again for taking the time to explain things like this. much appreciated.

I hadn't thought about the whole picture quite that way, just seeing the nice bump from 200 to 375% in regen. but you are right, if your base regen is over 600% and you hit IH, does it make that much difference if you jump from 600 to 1400 or 600 to 1575? probably not, if you cannot handle what you are fighting with 1400 regen, you probably couldn't handle it with 1575, most likely laid out on the floor either way

thank you Umbral, that explains it perfectly. I don't usually flip around to the effects tab in mids, so all I was seeing was the unchanging 600%. that also explains why on the totals tab, which I do use a lot, the regen % jumped around 1000% instead of 600% when I toggled IH on and off in the build.

and I believe several of the builds you have posted to help people here use the 3 recharge instead of Doctored slotting. I understand the concept of diminishing returns but slotting IH with the Doctored set increases that 200 to around 375, per the effects tab that I just discovered

that seems to be a pretty substantial amount of regen to pass up. is there a cap to the amount of regen you can have? I have learned a lot from your posts explaining why going for +HP on a regen isn't worth it because of the easily reached cap. in fact, that's one of the reasons I am playing with new builds because I was one of the people building for lots of +HP, thinking it would help the regen amounts. but I wasn't aware of an over-all regen cap.

I had the two quad pieces listed, they would be my primary reason for rolling below level 35, but I hadn't considered the proc pieces from slugfest or impeded. that would raise the number of decent results in that grouping. now that's making me consider an idea thrown out by Trashcan. maybe the best odds would be to split the rolls between levels 15 -19 and 35 - 39.

moving up to level 15, instead of rolling 10 -14 only adds 12 recipes and those include the slugfest proc you mentioned and the stealth travel IOs. should give you pretty good odds on hitting a basilisk, eradication or one of these others. then roll some 35 - 39 to maximize the chances of getting the miracles, LotG, numinas, etc.

I would probably roll a bit heavier in one group or the other, depending on which items I needed more for personal use. like you mentioned, some things like the basilisk quad are not available, at any price, red side. so you either take your chances rolling one for yourself or just merit buy it specifically.

thanks for all the feedback everyone, good discussion and definitely picking up some nice tidbits of info

I do a lot of bronze 10 -14 rolls as I can always use stdfst and kismets. but stealth IOs at 15 would require gold rolls which gets pretty expensive. do you get enough stealths to make that worthwhile? again, you can't believe everything you read or hear, but most of the "numbers" I have seen put out show that you would make way more by rolling 50 bronze recipes at that level than 1 gold.

could either or you (or anyone else that advocates rolling in the 30 -34 range) explain why you prefer to roll in the the 30 - 34 range rather than rolling in the 35 - 39 range? I know that rolls now have some weighting to them, but for now, just looking at what's available in the two ranges in Wiki

- 30-34 contains 106 recipes
- 35-39 contains 77 recipes

of the 30 or so recipes that drop out of the running at level 35, I see only 2 or 3 that are really top tier - basilisk quad, eradication quad and possibly the shield breaker triple or the call to arms +def aura.

so wouldn't your over-all odds of getting some of the most sought after IOs like the miracle, lotg +rech, numinas +regen/+recv be higher rolling at 35 -39? or am I missing other winners in the under 35 recipes?

appreciate any insight or feedback that folks can provide. I haven't done any serious random rolling but starting to build up enough merits to give it a go and trying to figure out the best level to roll, both for things I could use and things I can sell for good returns

it certainly wouldn't have been the first time that something worked differently than the way everyone thought it did thinking outside the box when slotting IOs has led to some very interesting options and one of the main reasons I like reading through the forums and checking out the discussions around all the builds people post.

this one may not have panned out but was definitely worth looking at, thanks for throwing it out there Claws.

has anyone tested this during a mission, after the zoning stacking wears off? maybe I am thinking of something else, but I thought the zone stacking was a known bug that just hasn't been fixed yet.

I also thought that procs like this could not stack from multiple applications from the same source. if that's not correct, then it should stack however many times you can get it to go off in 2 minutes. I have never seen anyone comment that a proc was coded as being able to stack 2 or 3 times from the same source but no more than 2 or 3 times. have always seen it as Y/N thing, either it stacks from the same source or it doesn't.

if it can stack multiple times within a mission, definitely going to have to consider moving a kismet into DA. take that you little CoT ghosts

also depends on what level of Veteran's rewards you are up to. if you have the ability to take a travel power without the prereq, you can take hasten and fly. best of both worlds that way

and that's if there are even any for sale at any price. most of the time I check the market, there are zero for sale for the triple at any level. and I am not rich enough yet to post a 50+ million bid on multiple levels.

looking more and more like I will have to farm merits and buy them, at least for the triples.

however, without any clearly worded "statements of intent" from the developments, one would have to be psychic to come to your conclusions here. absent an official policy statement, one can really only go by what one sees and infer from that.

so let's look at the email system before and after the ability to send items.

before -
- no limit to # of emails - at least none that is apparent. I have some alts that have over 400 emails sitting in their inbox, almost all from gold spammers

- time limit on retention - also apparently no limit as some of those spammer messages go back to mid-2009. closer to 360 days than 30

after -
- email inbox limited to 20 after which you are prevented from sending yourself more

- time limit - apparently this has been changed to 30 days, though as you and others have pointed out, without any posted warning.

what I inferred from the above and what I think most non-psychic people would deduce from the above is

- there would still not be a time limit - nothing was ever stated about there being such a change and if emails from spammers can sit out there for at least 12 months, why shouldn't my emails to myself

- the change to # of emails that can remain in your inbox is stated and, at least to me, indicates the devs' intentions that you could, indeed, use the email system to store a limited number of items that way. if you choose to use it to store 20 items, then you couldn't transfer anything else. so your choice - it could be used for active, frequent transfers; an extra 20 item personal storage bin; or anything in between that suited your personal tastes. which, by the way, I thought was a great idea on their part but now obviously I don't think quite as highly of their implementation of this feature

this is a good idea, thanks. I was planning on using a lvl 50 because they could carry more back with them. but you're right, sending over a level 35 or so that is waiting to get his shiny toys would probably do better over-all. I could slot him up and then carry some back with him. wouldn't be able to carry quite as many back but wouldn't need to as he would also be slotting quite a few into his own powers.

I think you are thinking of merits, not AE tickets. one thing you cannot do with AE tickets is pick specific recipes. you can select to random roll bronze, silver or gold level recipes as well as what range level of recipes you want to roll against.

but the BIG caveat is that the recipe you receive will be your level or the maximum level of the recipe, whichever is higher. so if I am a level 48, I could choose to roll for level 35 - 39 bronze tickets. if I were to roll a kinetic combat IO, which has a maximum level of 35, I would get a level 35 recipe. but if a rolled an obliteration, which caps out at level 50, I would get a level 48 recipe.

depending on your plans, normally involving PvP or exemping down to lower levels, you may want recipes at a lower level than their maximum cap. I usually keep 1 character level locked at 32, so recipes I get are no higher than 32. that way I can exemp down to level 29 (for Oros flashback missions) or to PvP at a level 30 cap and still have full benefit from the IO bonuses.

in answer to the original question, no, you don't get any more AE tickets if you turn off xp. the only real benefit is to try to control the level of the recipes you get when turning in those tickets.

understood, but I don't need to bring anything with me from red side to blue side. just need a way to transport the goods back to the villain side. I have enough $$ on the blue side, if not IO's already sitting in storage, to give my villain turned hero 30 or 40 recipes + enhancements and send him on his way back to his villainous ways.

this. I prefer red side except for the next to impossible mission of getting IOs to create the builds I want. depending on the mechanics, I know that I will move 2 or 3 from red to blue to stock up on recipes and enhancements and then move back. with a level 50, I should be able to move around 45 - 50 IOs per trip.

good red side mission to run, what would you recommend on the blue side ?

what settings do you usually run at to get to those numbers? +0/+8? without bosses? while bosses have better drop rates, but can slow down overall kill rate, does it work better for purple farming to leave them out?

glad to hear you are still playing this guy a bit and really glad to hear that your experiment is working out pretty well. now you have me wanting to drag my lower level ar/dev out of mothballs and give it another try

if you don't mind, please post your final build with all the shiny new IOs. would make a great wish list for mine down the road.