A tale of two tanks

I am working on two different tanks and just wondering about opinions on which one will be easier in the I only have access to cheap IO's phase

Invuln/Staff or Ice/Spines

?

I am working on two different tanks and just wondering about opinions on which one will be easier in the I only have access to cheap IO's phase

Invuln/Staff or Ice/Spines

?

Well, both should be quite capable.  The Invuln can be tougher with some investment... I'd guess you could softcap S/L defense for under 40 million if you're frugal.  The Ice/Spine will be unmatched at holding aggro which can be a two edged sword in the earlier game as it's easy to get in over your head.  You're probably in the same ballpark inf wise to boost your durability.

Personally I'm a fan of both primaries and I'm currently leveling an Ice/Spine myself.  I really don't see how you can go too far wrong with either tank; both of them will be capable of handling most anything the game can throw at them once they mature.

One thing I'd suggest to build a bankroll is to search for level 50 recipes that have a lot of supply and very little bids, place lowball bids on stacks of them (around 100-200 inf) and sell them to vendors for 10k inf.  I started my bankroll that way, filling my market slots with those lowball bids on stacks of 10 and then going on and playing the game.  Occasionally I'd do the /ah to open the interface and collect the recipes, then vendor them.  Once I was a few million ahead I started picking popular UNCOMMON IO's that had a large supply of recipes and required cheap salvage, buying stacks of the recipes at the lowest level available, crafting them and listing them on the market at about 10-20% under the average sale price.  Doing that I'd craft an IO for around 30k total investment and sell it for around 500,000.  Spend a few minutes crafting and listing a bunch of them and check on the progress a few hours later.  That typically brings in around 20-30 million per day, frequently a good bit more... I usually have ~100 IO's up for sale at a time and they sell in the 500k - 1 million range each, averaging around 600k.

Thanks for the great money tips! How do you know they are "popular" uncommons? those are the yellow name ones?

Popular uncommon IO’s are those with good bonuses and in popular categories.  Things like damage, defense and resistance tend to be popular, while confuse, debuff and the like are less popular.

Ranged damage applies to many different AT’s, the same with defense.  Even ignoring bonuses characters can use things like accuracy/damage/endurance combination IO’s and anyone with defense powers will appreciate defense/endurance io’s.

Oh, yes uncommon IO are yellow and don’t (outside of occasional yellow recipe in a rare set) use rare salvage.  Almost any common or uncommon salvage can be bought for under 1000 inf if you’re willing to let the bid sit for a half hour or so... and I haven’t found any that couldn’t be had for that in 24 hours.  There’s more to be made on some rare recipes but the costs are higher since rare salvage tends to stay in the 450,000+ range and many recipes themselves are fairly pricey.

Remember to buy and craft the lowest level recipes, crafting fees are based on level and the market will sell your level 10 is and give the buyer the level 30 he bid on.  You’ll pay around 5k to craft level 10 but a level 50 will cost the better part of 200k to create.