roleki

It's hilarious to me that there are numerous people in these forums who proudly identify themselves as market manipulators, and yet folks continue to lay the blame for the high cost of everything at the feet of the farmers... whose only involvement in this scheme is the delivery of more product for the marketeers to fiddle with. "If we only cut off the supply, everything will be cheaper!"

Also, getting Vanguard Merits, so you can buy helmets or whatever.

Fair enough, I suppose I'll have to find some way of proving that Resistance and Defense IOs are typically 2x to 5x the cost of shit IOs. It seems an impossible task, but I'm sure I put my mind to it, I can find some way of correlating demand for something to its general employment by a given population.

No, no, Poison is pretty awesome once you've got it all together... it's basically a primary amplifier; if your primary was kind of weak, Poison props it up a bit. If your primary is ridiculous as-is, it's ridiculous cubed with Poison. It's one of my favorite Controller secondaries, turns everything into a truck.

Seeing as it is fairly rare to run into a character that just dies all the time in the absence of constant support, it's not a stretch to suggest that a large percentage of players build with survivability as a priority. Is it most players? Maybe, maybe not? Maybe it's down to individual shards... about 75% of the time I hang out on Indom, the other 25% on Excelsior. Anecdotally, it seems the people that still hang out on Indom are salty dogs with scads of alts that are full-on BUILT; that could be because it's the "PvP" server, or it could be because with a lower population, there's less chance that you'll luck into a support character what can patch up the holes in your build? Maybe Indom is just where the Viltrumites hang out, leaving the other shards free to live like The Gibbles? In any case, it's actually pretty easy to see in-game who built for what... if you've been around a while, the team window is just so much shorthand for the underlying builds that you can practically predict what a person has slotted before you right-click them and check for certain. If you've got two blasters, one of which their green bar keeps slapping left, it's a safe bet that if you check their info - if there are any bonuses listed at all - the first line is going to be some variation of 5x Regen bonuses, 5x Recharge bonuses, 5x Large Improved Movement Speed bonuses, and so forth. If there aren't many stacked bonuses, then they're either rocking IOs or they've sold out on procs. Meanwhile, if the second blaster's bars haven't moved at all, they're either AFK, or the first line of their set bonuses will probably read something like 5x Large Increased Ranged/Energy/Negative Energy Def Bonus, 5x Small Increased Energy/Negative Energy/Ranged Def bonus and you can bet that somewhere in there they have Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor. Again, that's just been what I've observed while running around out there.

I'm a big fan of Speed of Sound; 99% of the time it makes no thematic sense whatsoever, but dang if it isn't convenient to run here and there but still be able to pop 200' in any direction on a moment's notice.

I'm never NOT going to yell Fire/Trick Arrow in one of these threads. With the exception of the nuke out of the primary, it is completely ranged, packs a full day's worth of debuffs, has an emergency mez protection button, and an additional nuke in the secondary that just happens to go off whenever FIRE hits it. Another interesting bird is Ice/Time... ACTUALLY completely ranged, massive ST damage, decent AoE damage, easily capable of hitting caps in nearly all positional defense numbers with better resistance than a lot of scrappers, and packing ST holds out the wazoo... I went Ice/Time/Psychic on mine so I could fart out 4x Mag 3 ST holds in a chain, and it is as ridiculous as it sounds. Ice/Cold is another sneaky-good combo, where the massive ST damage out of the primary intersects with the massive -Res out of the secondary to make you a hard-target melting (freezing?) machine. Add in Scourge and it's not even funny, stuff just falls over in front of you.

Anecdotally, my street-level characters are still picking up purples at random, but my farmers are getting the stinkeye from RNG. They SEEM to get a reprieve whenever a new issue/update drops, or if I take them out for a night on the town, but if they stay in the caves exclusively, then only the door-sitter has any hope of getting a purple. Not that I mind that much these days; I rarely slot purples anymore, so I am much happier when I get a Doctored Wounds, a Red Fortune, or a Titanium Coating than I am with a purple.

There's a slight chance that support characters aren't your thing.

Huge proponent of the test server, it answers a LOT of questions. That said... as a frequent /Stormer myself, I can see the appeal of a fire & forget ally survival buff that leaves you free to chuck out Tornadoes and whatnot, but /Storm is a bit of an endurance sapper even before you start adding toggles from pools. /Storm begs for a lot of slotting, so anything you add past the 'gravy' powers in your primary and secondary REALLY has to add something to the build AND be very efficient at doing it, else you're going to live waaaay on the left side of the blue bar and risk bottoming-out more often than you would probably like. According to City of Data, Spirit Ward as used by a Corruptor gives a burst of 117.8 absorb (unenhanced) for 10s, then blips of 23.6 absorb (unenhanced) for 20s, at a cost of 0.78 endurance per second. Say you add one slot to it, stick a Preventive Medicine Heal/Absorb/End into it and the Absorb Proc; that bumps the initial absorb up to ~149, and the pulses to ~30, at a cost of 0.57/s, or, 34.2 endurance a minute. Say you add the same two slots/enhancements to O2 Boost; that nets you ~197 HP heal at an endurance cost of ~10 per application. If you fired it off three times in a minute, that's nearly 600 heal for 30 endurance, plus some mez protection (Sleep/Stun for 60s) plus some debuff resistance (Endurance Recovery Debuff resistance, Perception Radius Debuff resistance, and sleep resistance for 60s) and a perception buff (+432.5 feet) uh, in case they're nearsighted or something. Now, if the plan is to use/enhance both O2 Boost AND Spirit Ward, that combo would go really far towards keeping an ally alive, but it seems like that would starve the build somewhere else that might have indirectly been more helpful in keeping everyone alive. ETA: My 666th post! Danzigawatt approves!

That begs the question, to where does that person abscond with these huge dumps?

It's old data, but this thread says 75% of /Traps controllers take Triage Beacon, and a little more than 84% of Corruptors do. I didn't get to Defenders/MM because I'm on mobile and I'm not into BDSM. ETA: Now that I am at a desktop, looks like 86.5% of Defenders and 90.09% of Masterminds took Triage Beacon as of 23 months ago or whatever. In any event, it looks like some people DO skip it outright, but there's also folks like me that take it, slot it for bonuses/effect, but only ever actually deploy it in rare circumstances because it's kind of drab.

This is where @UberGuy's City of Data v2.0 comes in handy; as it turns out, some ST Holds are better than others. Set ST Hold Acc Rech Arcanatime Def/Dmg Type Dmg 100% chance, Mag 3 20% chance, Mag 1 Darkness Dark Grasp 1.2 8 1.848 Ranged, NegEnergy 30.5856 22.35 11.175 Earth Fossilize 1.2 8 2.244 Ranged, Smashing 30.5856 22.35 16.763 Electric Tesla Cage 1.2 8 2.376 Ranged, Energy 30.5856 22.35 16.763 Fire Char 1.2 8 1.32 Ranged, Fire 33.644 (dot) 22.35 16.763 Gravity Gravity Distortion 1.2 8 1.98 Ranged, Smashing 33.644 (dot) 22.35 16.763 Ice Block of Ice 1.2 8 2.112 Ranged, Cold 30.5856 22.35 16.763 Illusion Blind 1.1 9 1.848 Untyped, Psionic 30.5856 18.625 13.969 Mind Dominate 1.2 8 1.32 Untyped, Psionic 30.5856 22.35 16.763 Plant Strangler 1.2 8 2.244 Ranged, Smashing 33.644 (dot) 22.35 11.175 As far as I know, resistance to a damage type doesn't affect the control that piggybacks with it, but a target's typed defense can result in more misses which would make it harder to stack Mag/duration. Also kind of interesting, the OP noted that their Elec/Storm has trouble holding 54s, and Electric Control's Tesla Cage has the longest arcanatime of any ST hold in the AT. If you haven't seen it mentioned before, Arcanatime is a calculated best-guess (to within 0.132s) of how long it actually takes to execute a power from start to finish, leaving you ready to fire the next attack. I'm not in a position to do any calculations (and, admittedly, my numbers would be wrong since actual math isn't my strong suit) but it's possible that in the bouillabaisse of a level 54's resists, defense, triangles, whether Venus is in Capricorn, etc that the extra fractions of fractions of seconds difference between Ice and Elec allows a lapse in Mag/duration against high level jerks.

In *most* cases, if you're planning to take down AVs, your best bet is Ill/x just because you handle Alpha and aggro with one click. That said, your Fire/Dark should be able to duo AVs just fine with a melee character chunking out damage in the foreground. Dark is tailor-made for narrowing the gap between a difficult target and the team trying to take it down... even the heal is a regen/tohit debuff! While I am a huge fan of Mind/Poison as a solo-type (by the time they figure out you're among them, they're either dead or 3/4 of the way there) I couldn't recommend it for duo-ing tough targets, only on account the heal is largely poop and half the atttacks/controls Mind uses aren't of much use vs an AV. But like everyone has already stated, almost anything can defeat (or contribute TO the defeat) of an AV. And while they aren't Controllers, you might want to consider an Ice/Cold or Ice/Time Corruptor. They chunk out the holds in spades and once the victim is halfway dead you swoop in dealing massive damage.

People who actually understand the PPM calculation would have to explain WHY, but if you park a 1PPM proc in a power with an 8s base recharge, you will go several lifetimes before you see that Build-Up/OSA sequence fire off. Lately I've been slotting OSA with a full set of Artillery to get the ranged def bonus, but back when I was enamored with the possibilities of procs, the one that seemed to pay off the most in OSA was the Annihilation -Res. Even the damage procs from the same category didn't seem to hit as often as that did.

You can certainly farm with a Sentinel (you can farm with anything, really!) but if you're looking to level up alts using a second account, a small investment in time to level a "proper" farmer will save you a LOT of time down the road. YMMV, but my preferred vehicle is a Rad/Fire Brute; short attack chain with damage toggles on both sides, damage amps on both sides, PBAoE bombs on both sides, periodic heals from both sides, and easy to soft-cap for Melee Def as well as Smashing/Lethal/Fire Damage Resistance. The heals and Def/Res points are very important, because A) being capped for Melee defense and the three most common damage types opens up a LOT of farming options, and B) having access to a steady stream of heals-on-demand means you can devote your entire inspiration tray to reds.... which brings me to why I prefer Brutes over Scrappers and Tanks... Scrappers have higher base damage and higher burst damage than a Brute but in a cave surrounded by dozens of angry jerks, that extra 15% of resistance is HUGE... time spent actively trying to survive is time NOT spent actively killing stuff and all the DPS in the world is of no use when you're making green numbers instead of orange. Besides, farming is about efficiency, and hitting a 900HP nerd for 1600 damage with a Scrapper makes that nerd just as dead as hitting it for 1200 with a Brute would... except the Brute only has to pause once - maybe - in a cave map to fire off a survival power, whereas the Scrapper will invariably be watching cooldown timers with a little anxiety in every mob. Tanks have more survivability built-in than a Brute does, but the survivability is a wash in a cave where only 5% of the attacks hit you and only 10% of that damage gets through; Tank AoEs are larger and hit more targets than a Brute, but as gauche as it is to paraphrase Star Wars in the same thread twice "The ability to hit more minions with an AoE pales in comparison with the ability to live at the Damage Cap and obliterate those minions in one shot, lieutenants in two, and any bosses that follow you to the next group die in the crossfire without your ever targeting them once." Too often people live in their spreadsheets and Pylon threads to accept the fact that you don't need MAX DAMAGE or parlor tricks in a cave, you need a metronomic damage engine that offers predictable performance from the first mob to the last. That can come from anywhere, but for my money, nothing does it better than a Rad/Fire Brute.

To paraphrase a famous princess... "Farming with a Sentinel? You have more time on your hands than I thought!"

If a name is already taken I get annoyed at myself for thinking such an obvious name would be available, then I roll up something even worse. That's how I end up with a VL30+ dude named Obscured Face Guy.

Not that I pay for enhancements, but ranged/support characters seem to use the cheapest components. Artillery and Thunderstrike are dirt cheap and before you know it, you're capped for ranged and nearing it for energy/neg energy. No need for billion dollar builds EVERYWHERE.

That ToHit is kind of crap though. Have it kick in a little sooner and last a little longer, and maybe it's a bonus worth talking about.

You can always recolor Rad if it's the color scheme that throws you off. Personally, I'm partial to Ill/Dark (every debuff you'd want and an extra pet) and Ill/Traps (stealth and distractions for you to lay out your crazy bombs), but Ill/TA, Ill/Time, and Ill/Cold are all good in their own right.

I usually slot it with the two procs I mentioned, and a KB/Acc from either set (gives the same movement speed bonus). I also slot a FF+Rech and a KB:KD in Tornado, and a third FF+Rech somewhere else, if the build allows, but NOT in Hurricane because I've never seen it trigger off that. In any event, 3x FF+Rech in an attack cycle seems to net perma 100% recharge in combat, or as close as you can count on given a random proc. Sorry for blathering, waiting at the mechanic's joint and am a bit on the bored side.

With the KB->KD and a FF+Recharge, Gale is really close to being a must-have T1 power. If Storm didn't require so much slotting, I bet Gale would be a decent Annihilation -Res mule as well.

I had to re-read the thread title and contents on account the first (and subsequent) replies weren't just the words "Time Bomb is the worst T9 in human history and those responsible for its conception, development, testing, and release should have their genitals exposed to 1000W microwave radiation for 9s (in deference to its cast time) followed by molten salt for 1000s (in a nod to its unenhanceable recharge)." As for best... whatever I would speculate in earnest to be the best T9 would suffer instant diminishment just by being placed in the same reply as a mention of Time Bomb, so I am inclined to say something like "Fulcrum Shift" not because I believe it to be the best T9 but because I believe it is an overrated T9 and could use a little defamation.

If it was just +Def/-End or +ToHit/-End, that would be correct, but it is +Def/+ToHit/-End. You're not going to find THAT in IO-nia. That said, -End is of limited benefit in Fortitude or Farsight; it used to be that you could slot Cytos in Radiation Infection (which does -Def/-ToHit and could absolutely use -End) but I *think* they fixed that exploit on Live.