Digirium

No, because selfishness will increase and it's more likely players will cotton on to hording IO enhancements in base storage for their needs later because the recipes, components and converters are worth more than they get on the AH. What's available in AH will still be higher priced for the big kill - gatherers will get turned off.

What to say? Let's have a run: Frustration with the developers, if you're a farmer, for them implementing a change impacting their play style - those farmers could either think "Do I trust these developers any more? What further attacks will be made on my play style? Could stuff stop dropping in farms? And should I roll more accounts to run parallel farms to compensate?" More converting, clicking and stacking up of enhancements on the AH than before in compensation Economy dries up It's pretty boring waiting for stuff to sell on AH when the queue of buyers disappears. It was actually a very good thing that farmers used to tap in to large influence streams because they spread the wealth to everyone. Now that stream is halved, everyone else will feel the negative effect. Profiteers/marketeers and converter exploiter attempts to gather influence limited more than they were. On the face of it, players will make do and pretend "it's a good change" - the qualified economic experts will continue to post, enjoying the limelight for a moment. Really, the struggle for everyone has increased. I reckon there is a feeling of insecurity in the long term coming to everyone. Especially when discussions are held after the fact, instead of building consent.

View the set totals in Mids with the toggles turned on and off and you'll have your answer! For example, Tough is often used a place holder for globals like Steadfast Protection but is not toggled on. Weave would be toggled on because the defence is usually required -- aiming for 45% defence versus the damage type.

Seems to me taking away influence from exemplar or switching off experience to gain influence merely switches players from one exploit (infinity patrol experience) to other exploits (low bidding, huge mark up on IOs after converting). The world praises and looks up to capitalists so may be explains why nobody can see the problem?

No difference between "standard content" and AE on inf/min plus drops are identical. This is a solo farm character running +4(x8) the influence equals the bounties from the defeated NPCs, the drops add extra influence (enhancements, recipes and salvage) There is no predictability on what drops equates to in terms of influence, it's random - it could be less than the bounties it could be more. The last build was reaching toward 1 billion influence, in total -- it started before the patch and finished up after when it was more of a struggle to complete the remainder of the IOs required for the build. Instead of 20 hours farming, may be it is now 40 hours instead -- burnout is the more likely to happen consequence now. Without farming how long would it take to casually build up a character? A hundred hours, two? It would not surprise me. Before AE in live, farmers would pick a mission map and farm but never complete it, reset and go again. It's even easier now with flashback.

1M influence/minute since the double influence fuelled in error by patrol XP is now disabled. Note however, that rate is only possible on the extreme builds that have macros converting and consuming damage inspirations - YMMV for characters less setup/perfected to farm. My feeling about the change is still depression and I know many others are feeling it too - there is a disconnect opened between the aspiration to build characters and the ability to do what is required. A post above outlined how much it costs to outfit a character.

Exemplar/influence instead of XP ought to have remained the way it was, IMO. Instead, the real issue that may be ought to have been fixed was the non-consumption of patrol experience while in exemplar mode. Was it right that a character could log out for an hour to gain some patrol experience and then become locked in to infinite patrol experience without it being used up? No. The Homecoming developers have done a complete hack job on this and not solved it the correct way, IMO.

A broken patch for patrol experience under exemplar in AE -- the correct fix was to consume the patrol experience. Instead, in AE we get characters forced to accept experience even if they didn't want it or need it. The option to turn off experience and take influence in lieu always existed. If the effect is outside AE too then the patch is very broken.

Not so much any more. With the farming nerf, more farmers will cotton on to cutting out the middle-man i.e. buying the winter super packs themselves, converting them and adding a catalyst. There will be less incentive to flip winter enhancements like this as they won't sell. They won't have as much to throw at inflated cost enhancements as before. Nerf farms = nerf marketeers.

Despite what server status indicates, Reunion is actually running.

Server status indicates Reunion is still down.

I tried this as well a couple of weeks ago i.e. fire/fire/fire blaster -- as described, the mob flees all over the map and made it too unmanageable. It was fun for about an hour until mob fleeing made consistently quick map clearance unrealistic. Getting 75% fire resist and 45% fire defence was not a problem and the healing tick from cauterising aura was helpful. This is +4/8 with T3 incarnates, +1 level shift. It stood in the middle of the mob and survived without any intervention. I will eventually return to try farming with a different blaster primary/secondary combination i.e. */*/fire but not */fire/fire again -- perhaps fire/rad/fire because the level of generated recharge looks interesting. It may be viable for fire/fire/fire to not use either burn or hot feet to avoid the fleeing but for me it was either "burn or go home" and try another blaster combination for farming.

Looks like an OK starter build to acquire some inf and spend it on more enhancements and improve the build. Things you could look at to improve the build: Increase fire defence -- it's 16.6% on the current build. A goal is 45% plus. Try to figure out a build that only needs Fire Shield and Temperature Protection to reach 90% fire resistance i.e. drop Plasma Shield. Have an eye on the Winter event sets -- there are five sets each gives 5% fire defence (one set is 7.5%) and 6% fire resistance. Aegis set of five enhancements gives two fire defence additions (this is a resistance set i.e. (3.13 + 1.56) x 2) Aim to lower endurance rate of usage significantly. At the moment, your build is propped up a lot with Healing Flames, Consume, epic choices and health regeneration to keep alive -- due to the low fire defence. Endurance use is pretty high it looked like 2.25/s. While fighting the farm there is added stress to stay alive at the same time. Solving the defence issue solves the staying alive issue and provides freedom to make another epic choice (for example Pyre Mastery or Mu). It also allows other choices, like dropping one or other of leadership or fighting. For incarnate choices: Alpha - Musculature core paragon (overcomes ED by 45% more damage) Judgement - whatever you like (Ion or Pyronic perhaps?) Interface - Degenerative or Reactive perhaps? Diamagnetic might help at the moment with -ToHit to shore up fire defence a little Lore - Carnival Radial with untouchable Seneschal is pretty good (buffs ToHit and Damage) Destiny - Ageless is pretty much the go to pick here but Barrier might be helpful at the moment too Hybrid - Assault Core Embodiment (damage buff) Take a look at the farming guide - the macros for combining inspirations in to reds are pretty useful, quite often let a brute run at the 600% damage cap.

Standard rewards at AE include these drops: SO enhancements, salvage and recipes (which are L50 and can, if being lucky, include purples). Door sitters gain a variable amount of inf with double-experience turned on through selling those drops -- every little helps.

Has anyone tested with a spine/fire brute so far? (NB. Testing - please note what you have tested - while it's great to read you've tested successfully and that's good news, the important feedback is what you tested!)

I see farm brute still ahead, slightly, to farm tanker but not as massively as before -- this is due to fury. In either scenario, the edge case of how many red inspirations are available to consume during a farm can swing it one direction or another. A tanker is more viable to farm with than it used to be.

Taunt aura on brutes is currently broken, a fix is being tested but not deployed to live yet -- please see beta patch notes 29 January, 2020. The effect, as noted in the OP, is that NPCs run in and out of brute auras. Supposedly, there is a ritual that helps circumvent the brute's taunt aura defect and I've been following it - toggle auras off and on across session changes. It doesn't seem to help a lot, firing brute taunt seems to help. May be a rad/fire farm brute isn't being affected so much with the taunt aura bug?

My go to farm is a spines/fire brute -- the taunt bug on brutes at the moment prompted me to roll a fire/spines tanker and see what it's like to farm. Yes, more targets are hit with AoE attacks and it's nice seeing an extra amount of damage numbers floating up -- those numbers are smaller, however, so it's a trade-off. Comparison: farm tanker feels slightly slower than a farm brute but they're in the same ball-park. Plus point at the moment, until the taunt bug is eventually patched, is that NPCs in the farm are not running about everywhere for the farm tanker, so it feels a little more productive. YMMV on farm tanker vs brute.

Sane people know where to draw the line: in reality, probably looking at 100M may be 200M at the most for the casual player spending an hour or two. And that gets tedious after a while, playing the game with other people is much more fun and rewarding. If I set out to try to make a billion or more in one day two things would happen: I would never want to repeat it again falling very short of the billions being claimed and I'd end up on the psych ward at a hospital.

Moving the recharges around between Fiery Embrace and Hasten sounds like a good choice to me. Some farmers swear by the incarnate Alpha ability that boosts recharge so may be that's something else to think about? I have a Spines/FA AE farmer that used to have Consume and Healing Flames but no longer has either power. Like that Alpha recharge ability, some swear by the +100% recharge proc. I'd say: it's your build, decide how you'd like to make it - you've made a good start, try the options see how they make you feel and then experiment with other options until you end up with something you like.

Winter Sets two ways to get those IOs: reward merit vendor or the Winter Super Packs @ 25M. From those packs, sometimes you get two, sometimes you only get one and other times no IO. Those packs are the source of most of the 22M Winter IO's on the auction house. The other super pack that contains the ATOs is 10M and ATOs are 8M. I see cause and effect. And it ought to be no surprise Hami-Os are 60M they are hassle to obtain, some servers don't even bother raiding. I'd never make a build that uses one. AFK farming does not equate to billions of Inf - pretty much the opposite. May be I'm doing it all wrong but never seen a billion from farming (let alone billions) and that's not AFK that's actively running around the farm map, pressing buttons, getting on the auction house etc. I see a lot of activity on the auction house that is "buy low and sell high" i.e. buy a recipe for cheap, manufacture it, sell high. A smart player can work around this overhead and save themselves a lot of inf. I like Wenie's farm maps they're obviously brand new and quite hilarious.

Build seems functional i.e. fire resistance > 90% and fire defence more than enough at 52% even at 45% you hardly get hit on a +4x8. Burn could be better damage with the first five of the Armageddon set but keep the Fury of the Gladiator -20% resistance in the 6th slot. Fiery Embrace could just be two-slotted with recharge. Knockback protection isn't needed on fire farm maps. Endurance consumption looks on the heavy side, if all the toggles are running. There's no smash/lethal on the fire maps (2915 anyway) so Tough doesn't run, saving some endurance. You've got ranged pulls to keep on pulling the aggro in from walk by groups. It is possible to make a build without either Fighting or Leadership to get all the fire defence (I didn't see Steadfast Protection +3% defence). The Winter event sets provide a lot of fire defence you've already got a few of those sets including the big one in Fire Ball (+7.5% fire defence in total). Overall pretty good just questioning endurance consumption with all the toggles. And an obligatory "eye brow raised" at Consume filled with Mocking Beratement (for the 5th and 6th bonus of course), I've seen builds with two complete sets of those IOs so it could be worse! Without those it's still possible to reach 44-45% fire defence which is good enough and have between +140-150% haste in total (your build is +110% with some downtime on Hasten).

HeroDesigner v2.6.0.6 -- The view for powers and slots has changed from 3 to 6 columns compared to the previous version. The problem is that IO icons are getting very squeezed up unless the window is stretched horizontally and then the window takes up too much space horizontally. Is there a configuration option to use the 3 instead of 6 column view layout? If not, then please can we have that option?