DR_Mechano

So I'm probably doing it in a way that isn't as efficient (buying up cheap uncommon level 35 recipes and making them which cost me roughly 80k per IO and then converting them into other things, the standard way people make money) but even a beginner like me has already seen several trends in the market. Namely that bar the usual stable big earners (LotG etc.) that big earners don't stay big earners for long. For example Unbreakable guard was in very limited supply on the AH and each went for a pretty decent chunk of change so made my money converting into that (if I didn't hit one of the stable money makers) with fast pace on sales. I log in the next day, check the price and all of a sudden there's 200+ of each in the market, obviously people cottoned on quickly and dumped into the market and thus my niche disappeared over night. I've also learned, much to my cost, that super packs are not worth the squeeze. While I was usually getting 2 ATOs per pack, ATOs apart from Brute and Tanker sell VERY slowly and because I bought the packs if I sell them for any less than the going rate it eats into my margins since I'd lose out on the listing fee. The only upside is that if I find a character needs an ATO set I can pull them from the market and convert but that's a 2.5 million inf loss on just buying them straight. Still it only took me 2 days to go from 0 inf back up to 110 million inf for about 10 minutes work, which isn't too bad.

done that, meant to bid 300,000 on a Recharge IO, accidentaly bid 3 mill on it instead...esh..someone was made very happy that day.

Question guys. I was told that unless you're going to perma hasten with Titan Weapons that it wasn't worth taking in a build, is this true?

Hmm a pretty sound build but also using a lot of IOs that are low level, I know Kinetic is a go to but I hate slotting it in an a power I'm actually going to use. I might take that build and make some tweaks to it, stripping back some defense for more offense but thank you for posting it 😄

Just finished my SS/Invuln brute build who, despite the 2 winter IO sets and both ATO sets, wasn't too bad to get going I'm looking for a new pet project and now I'm (slowly) learning how to play the market I was curious what a top of the line, no expenses spared, TWP/BIO build on a scrapper would look like. I've been tweaking in Mids I can usually hard cap s/l resistances but can't get my defenses anywhere near the 45% mark, is it possible with Bio armour to pull off, looking for some guidance.

There is one very minor exception, as I've relearned this week. the LGTF and Hamidon NEEDS people who can spam holds, now the AT itself doesn't matter but you're not defeating hamidon without stacking holds. So far that's pretty much the only content required that can't be done by just any old group as I found out when my no-CC heavy DPS group hit Hami in the LGTF.

TW/Bio is one of those set combos that is a massively late bloomer, apparently it really doesn't get going until in the 40s and even then it requires heavy IO investment to really shine. I tried TW/WP but I found the set so sluggish and didn't find the survival as good as say my SS/Invuln brute who had an easier time getting multiple types softcapped defense wise (S/L, F/C and melee) and much higher resists (50% across the board apart from Psi and toxic, capped S/L)

For single target DPS numbers, you want to the Pylon damage thread. That is the standard metric for damage at the very high end due to requiring both high damage AND decent survival. As for ATs, Stalkers are, by and large (ignoring the outlier that is elec/shield) single target DPS monsters (most will usually have an AoE attack removed and replaced with Assassin's Strike). With the right build, especially using the two ATO uniques. However single target DPS is good and all but you have to remember that unlike in WoW where dungeons and raids boil down to most a large, high health, single target with different phases, you also need people to mass clear the regular mobs. For those saying that a TW/Bio scrapper out does a stalker at everything, a Street Justice stalker is the highest single target DPS IIRC, outdoing TW/Bio scrapper thanks to those ATO uniques allowing it to burst consistently and near constantly along with the ability to control its crits via the 'three non-AS attacks = AS autocrit method. In the case of mass AoE something like an elec/shield scrapper (since IIRC both Shield Charge and Lightning rod on stalkers or scrappers can't crit so an elec/shield scrapper would have more AoE available) would have decent survivability and rock high AoE damage ( would say it actually outpreforms TW in that regard but loses to it in single target), able to nuke groups down also things like fire/fire blasters. However these things are pretty hard to test because mobs have different resistances, different typed attacks. What might work well against, say council, won't work as well against Carnival of Shadows. Essentially there are just too many true variables to really get a 'best' on AoE damage in my humble opinion.

Still going to keep throwing my hat in the ring for making rage crashless but non-stackable. I know people like being able to stack rage but having tried it the whole 'ring around the power when you can't use it' felt REALLY clunky. I much prefered the option that was first offered where Rage didn't stack but a second stack simply kept refreshing the buff.

I will also point out that most people don't tend to run the 'harder' Incarnate Trials. I often see a BAF recruiting but very rarely see people recruiting for the Diabloique iTrial which was, at time of sunset, suppose to be the hardest one out of the bunch since it takes place at the end of the Incarnate storyline (Praetoria is already dealt with by that point). In fact I rarely see people running the later iTrials.

I still think one of the best bets would be a poll to see which is prefered, no crash, no ability to stack, making it a simple set and forget, which is what I would much prefer, or this method where...it's can stack but it also still crashes. Hell I would even vote with single rage, no crash and Jab and Punch moved up to have better damage.

If it wasn't AE, we both know that it would just go back to the old Peregrine Isle freakshow/council farming maps. I make use of it purely to farm and PL other people for free (so I have some company on long maps) so I'm not exactly one to complain but... ...personally I feel that the amount of time and effort the Paragon Studios team put into the AE on live was a complete waste of time. While it was a great talking point on the back of a box it didn't really help because people wanting to create good story driven content are in the minority. They couldn't have the AE give no or very low rewards apart from the story since they knew that a very large chunk of the playerbase wouldn't even touch it in that case but at the same time by allowing standard rewards or even just AE tickets, they knew people would game and break the system in order to level up faster/farm faster. So it was either going to be a feature people played around with once, maybe twice, then ditched because why would I do something for no reward even if the story is good or simply accept that it was going to end up what it turned in to. Instead they tried to have their cake and eat it, nerfing things constantly, the more nerfs piled on, the less people played or made story arcs because they became less and less worth their time and each nerf constantly broke arcs meaning you had to go back in and fix them. Each time they bought in a nerf the farmers found a way around it and a new set of farming missions cropped up. They spent months and months of work for something that caused them no end of frustration and in the end became barely a feature and little more than a 'customize your own farming map'. It was time and effort that could have been spent on improving the game as a whole, instead they spent what felt like almost an entire year chasing their own tail until they very obviously just gave up (Dev's choice awards stopped, bugfixing stopped, balancing stopped, everything just stopped).

Attuning a purple recipe is a waste of a catalyst. Firstly, you still need to be level 50 to use it, since that is the minimum level of the set, secondary, as Twisted mentions, they already act like they're attuned. If you bought one pre-attuned...don't worry about it unless you're looking to boost it...but don't go out of your way to attune them yourself.

Well currently we do have at least two attacks that could represent speed melee, that being Flurry and its clones (I imagine a set version of it would be MUCH better than speed pool flurry) and the teleportation attack from Martial Combat for blasters (Which clearly has a Flash style speed blur when you use it). We technically COULD rework a few attacks from other pools with subtle changed animations. Crushing Impact but instead of the hunched build up, the character turns, runs for a second, vanishes in a speed blur completely and then suddenly reappears doing the uppercut animation. Any AoE could use the dimension shift costume change to look like it's speed clones fighting enemies all at once. Naturally Whirlwind would make a return. Just because a power already exists that has the same animation didn't stop Dark Melee AND Sands of Mu sharing an animation with Flurry. Just give them different names, Flurry of Blows etc.

Ah yes, sorry was thinking of the Justine Augustine Taskforce that has you help Faathim. That's the one that ends in an elite boss CoT squad.

Yeah I never understood why Twinshots initial arc wasn't 1-5 and not 5-9. The stuff they teach you is also covered in the tutorial. In fact the regular tutorials (especially the original contaminated/break out one, while it's as bland as cardboard, I feel it does more to teach than the much flashier Galaxy Crisis tutorial but it does so in a wall of text type fashion) actually goes through things like 'the colour of the enemies name denotes whether they're higher or lower level than you and each colour means X', it teaches you how to use inspirations, how to deal with contacts, how to level up. All the stuff the first 5-9 arc covers as you said. Personally I don't mind the dialogue specifically because I always took it as rookie heroes trying to impress and front in order to get into the big leagues. Dillo and Gyrm are fine. Flambeaux is basically there as the 'look we have an alignment system you can interact with later because she turns evil' and this is meant to be her 'start of darkness' so she's MEANT to be selfish and annoying since she represents the type of hero who goes into the hero business for all the wrong reasons. Meanwhile Twinshot is all the 'look how cool we are' to you when it's clear you outpower her by the end of the first arc, let alone the second or third, making her seem like she's using you in order to get better funding for the group. Looking at the villainside version it also makes assumptions about your character from the off. Like that you've never been to Paragon (I mean you just broke out of the Zig...which is in Paragon...and you were probably in there for being a superpowered threat...), that your character doesn't have 'extreme mutations'...when you could be a mutant dog person for all the arc writer knows. The way the arc is written, as mentioned, thrusts the 'thug with anger issues' onto your character much like the heroside thrusts its version of your character onto you. All this shows is that they're meant for people who skipped the tutorial...but still want an actual tutorial...they're clearly written like they should be done from level 1 and not from level 5. If you've done the tutorial you're already doubling up on the things you already knew

the Faathim the kind taskforce can also be solo'd with ease since it has no AVs in it, only an elite boss squad at the end. I think the out of the Shadowshard TFs only the one ends in an AV fight.

The arcs, to me, always felt like they're to be played through exactly once since, what people forget is, they're designed as a massively extended 5-20 tutorial to teach you the basics of the game like "here is how you get around to different zones" "here is how you train up" etc. The only reason I'd go through them more than once is if you REALLY wanted one of the badges as a title. Unfortunately I don't think you can flashback to the later arcs if you've not completed them in order meaning you HAVE to go through all three of them even if you only want the badge for the final arc. The funny thing is by the later arcs you pretty much outclass them and its no wonder you leave them behind for bigger and better things. The only one that actually progresses is Flambeaux who turns into a villain, the rest never graduate to larger threats. Though IIRC they DO turn up in the final story mission of Dark Astoria but then that's basically a 'gather ALL the heroes and villains into one big army' affair.

To be fair, Regen, on a tanker COULD be good but you'd have to seriously push it. Regen Brutes can get up to 200hp per second with a very large IO investment, Tankers could push that up to probably about 300-400hp per second with the same investment. To compare 300 hp per second is what Giant Monster regenerate health at. Of course Giant monsters also get decent resistances and a massive health pool to go along with their health regen. The investment to reach 400 hp per second would also mean that you couldn't build for much else and since regen is all healing with very few resistances it also means you can't do things like adding in defense and resistances without lowering the hp per second or use the major sets that help. By contrast, Willpower can build for regen with a bit of resist and defense OR it can build to cap it's Smashing/Lethal resistance and melee defense. I've seen a willpower brute build that went all in on the regen but I'm not sure how viable that is compared to the 'standard' build. This also applies to other sets like Elec/Fire/Dark which can, with the right build, softcap 2 resistances (for Elec its energy and S/L etc.) Of course the other problem is Regen has terrible alpha strike survivablity without MoG (which is a must have unlike every other sets tier 9 which is usually ignored).

I will point out that since my character is rather on the tall side, Shin breaker instead becomes 'nut stomp' when they're standing up.

By contrast I love Shin breaker in Street Justice for the exact reason that it's often a follow up to Crushing Uppercut which means the enemy is on the floor and it looks less like a whimpy stomp of someones feet and instead usually looks like a brutal head stomp.

Recently tried Kinetic Melee...and my god the sound effects get rather grating after a time. Any sets you guys would try but found the sound effects just put you off the set?

What was the cause of this bad blood. I know the HC devs feel that it was trialed some time back and people didn't enjoy it so they're not adding it but I'm kind of curious now.

Nope it looks that way on Vidiotmaps but it is indeed Cassiopeia. However the other statues we know nothing about unfortunately. We only know who a few statues are like, obviously, Galaxy Girl in Galaxy (now Echo version), M1 I think his name is named via the tank badge etc.

There is an 'always on' portion of them, Musculature gets a 10% damage buff at very rare or 7.5% damage buff at rare. Treat them more like build up/aim, if you have them on all the time, they're either be like Rage with its currently terrible crashes (-large end crash. -def AND -damage) or give much lower bonuses.