Digirium

A lot of farms will be out of date now since Page 4. This means there is a new mechanic that has modified XP/Inf based on the completeness of the attack chain that critters use in the data stream. XP/Inf may only be 75% of what is used to be prior to Page 4. As said, search for "Fire Farm" but then go to the last page of the results and seek newer farms that have the attack chains fixed to give near to 100% XP/Inf reward. NB The XP booster fix does not affect the attack chain Inf/XP new reckoning that came with Page 4.

That may be true however I look at it the other way around. Make a farming build that can survive AFK, it will work no problem at all running active and without needed healing flames in the build freeing up slots for something else. The purpose of an active build is to complete ASAP having to use healing flames interrupts the attack chain. Admittedly, it is a small difference but percentages matter. There are probably active builds with healing flames that won't survive now.

No, not the damage type changes it is the aggro changes. I presume the OP is talking about a farm but it applies to any content. Using the example of a farm, the farming character used to enjoy no more than 17 critters attacking at a time. Other critters not involved in attacking the farmer but inside aggro range (meaning the critter had seen the farmer) would stand around with their arms folded doing nothing, waiting in a queue to attack the farmer. Page 4 changed that. Instead of doing nothing, critters in aggro but not in the set of 17 will make opportunistic ranged attacks. There is a lot more incoming damage now and existing farming builds will be defeated. The mitigation is to redesign the character build for increased hit-point or health regeneration. It is not enough to just have 90% resist and 45% defence. Good health regeneration is needed too (40+ hp/sec is a good ballpark to reach without accolades). One or two self-heal procs help but not more than this. For a farm with maximum influence proper attack chains are needed so secondary damage types may also need mitigation. For example, a fire farm. Critters with a full attack chain for maximum influence will be doing fire primary with lethal/smashing secondary. Some mitigation to the secondary damage type helps not to the same extent as mitigation for the primary damage.

EMs will have the same purpose as before - to create incarnate threads and incarnate components (common, uncommon, rare and very rare). No change there. EMs will remain very useful. I think it was unproductive to convert them to RMs. RMs were really easy to obtain, still are and will be even easier. I think it is also unproductive to convert threads to super inspirations for sale to the AH. Get them for your own needs only. Page 4 will disrupt AFK farming and builds will need changes to stop builds being overwhelmed by damage and defeated by critters. If you want purple IOs for builds then active farming is the way.

All that was broken in AE was XP and that has been fixed on the incoming page 4. XP rates were very broken for sidekicks with XP boosters. What does taking away conversions between Astral, Empyreans and Reward Merits really solve? That removal hurts ALL players. Yes, there are some offsets that are appreciated f.ex adding RMs to incarnate trials but that adaptation was minor. Also, I do not understand the obsession with T4 incarnate abilities and farming EMs in AE farms to obtain them. The +3 level shift is worthwhile obtaining however that be done with T3 abilities. I may not understand it but if that is what players want to do i.e. farming EMs then it is their time they can do it if they want. The only actual concern I have is real world money trading. If there exists farmers exchanging inf for currency that is a problem.

No, the window and contents do not scale for me either on Linux. The size of the fonts can be changed under Options -> Configuration in the Enhancements and View tab and that might help you make the text readable. What are the physical dimensions of your 4k monitor? I did notice something tho -- Mids seems to remember the x and y size of the window across close and open. If the window is stretched, the application closed and opened again, for a moment it re-scales the contents of the window then snaps the window back to smaller size, reverting the momentary re-scale on contents. If it was pinned down why the application did that, it might then allow re-scaling. Arch Linux 5.18.13-1 KDE Plasma 5.25.3 Wine Staging 7.13-1 Mids Reborn v3.2.17 BenQ PD3200U

I think that would be the wrong solution to get a TW an extra respec.

Not tested this yet. After the five respecs for levels 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 are used up how does a TW do a power respecification? For someone learning to PvP and how to construct builds via trial and error it is likely a lot of respecs will be used up. Ultimately, since TW is a "special case" I think I would like to see free and unlimited access to /respec. I do not see respecs available from the P2W vendor, the other source is AH. TWs could exhaust the AH supply which could be bad. The final use case for respec on TW is extracting all enhancements, dump them in an SG storage bin and re-use them in a different TW character. Free and unlimited /respec to remove another potential obstacle to getting in to PvP. This would only apply to TW characters. May be it was already thought about and put in place? Hence the comment about "not tested" yet. Consider that TWs will not have access to respec trials, patron arcs (they give a free respec), or soldiers of arachnos free respec if applicable (or may be SoA-TWs will get extra free respecs, I am uncertain). I guess TW could always re-roll to restart with a set amount of respecs but that would be a PITA.

Ignore me.

My normal farmer build didn't last long either. "Egghead" time with Mids. From further tests I did, AFK fire farming is still possible. It requires an extreme build with all the accolades, a heavy focus on health regeneration rate and self heal procs (x4). But... even with 400% health regeneration topped off with brute regen proc stacking (between 40-50 hp/sec) it is still a roll of dice f.ex if the majority of critters lobbing fire blasts all roll a hit simultaneously it may be touch and go or faceplant time despite a very strong build. I think it would be classified as "working at intended" by the developers (i.e. an AFK farming brute now has a non-zero percent chance of being defeated). I've been using America's Angel test map - Briggs I've tried too. Both have patrols. Briggs for some reason felt easier and more survivable. That was at +4x8, of course. Might circle back to Briggs to check that out again on the test server to be certain.

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/MARTy

Thanks for clarification. Btw, there are 960 threads during XP gain at veteran levels up to 11 (but not those divisible by three i.e. 3, 6 or 9 EMs are gained). 120 incarnate threads are gained per level.

I assume incarnate shards will not drop either since threads were already mentioned as removed drops. What happens to the XP that is denied? Either it is shared out to the team members or discarded. I assume discarded. Farmers that want their cake and eat it will go old school i.e. find a non-AE farm so still get rewards including vet levels, EMs, etc. Filling out incarnate XP to hybrid in an AE farm is not so great without shards, threads and EMs to actually fill in unlocked incarnate slots. It means farming regular content instead including those repeats that reward incarnate components without time constraint. The grind will still exist just "culturally" forced to other routes.

Yup, you're right - the ability to turn of XP and accept inf instead ought to be re-enabled. It's removal was a mistake and hurt casual players the most. It's intended target, farmers, shrugged their shoulders adapted and moved on getting smarter with how to use the AH in the process. Homecoming massively over-reached in their "April Fools Day" patch.

I am correct; it was a nerf that went too far -- patrol XP ought to have been consumed when a player was under exemplar, it had to be fixed. Disabling the option to receive influence instead of XP was not right. You and others keep rolling out irrelevant economics waffle again and again to dismiss this very obvious issue with what was nerfed. You take affront at the rejection of your patterned economic thinking that you keep repeating mindlessly, when you forget that this is a video game with a pretend market place and fail to acknowledge the real objectives behind the nerf were nothing to do with economics at all. Players that use AE to farm influence have been under attack for a very long time -- the increase to mob damage output in the AE didn't play out, so this was the answer.

Wow, it will never cease to amaze how people can conflate the issue with absurd arguments. With the change to how influence enters the game all the players have to play more, for longer than before to afford their builds. More influence entering the game while a player is playing to gain the influence for that build is longer now than it was before. This flies in the face of things like double XP boosters where the intention was to take half the play time compared to before. The players still end up with the same influence bill for their build but their play time required is that much longer now (casual and farmer both). Still we have the same people disregarding these simple facts and deploying high level pseudo-economic arguments that do not apply here, in a video game. They continually fail to acknowledge that the nerf was only right in one respect (patrol experience was not being consumed while in exemplar mode) and wrong in another (disabling XP for influence). How players gain their influence is rightly a subject of examination here. Those that play the game I've no issue with at all - it doesn't matter how, if you're casual or farming AE. I'd say farming AE was also casual play - nobody farms when they are not motivated to pay for a build. And there are casual players converted to AE farming all the time, for the same reason. But those that gain their influence not playing the game - by exploiting the efforts of those actually playing the game, not enough is being said against them. When players bring this up - we go around in the circular arguments again and it's a distraction: the dead cat hurled on the table. And we're running out of cats.

I'd say the same about your opinions. Only one of us is right though, that's me.

Jimmy. That was part of the justification for the influence nerf. That's a big thing because, you know, he's a dev and runs the game. Inflation is caused when players manipulate the market - we see it at the moment and all the time. A player decides the price is too low and manipulates it to be higher. They can do that in a game when they would not be able to in the real world because the rules are different. Other players join in and in the long-term sets a new higher price.

I reckon the tomatoes have more of chance to grow than of you being correct. Players are patterned in to behaviour and buy enhancements for the same price all the time - sellers will never sell below the established prices because they also follow a pattern. It takes great effort to break a pattern. This nerf was not that effort.

The normal rules of economics (if anyone in the real world really thinks they're normal or benefit everyone, not just a few) do not apply in a video game. That's been said so many times I wonder why it's not sinking in yet? Prices have remained the same on the game market so what Jimmy said was a bust - it was "make believe", that's all, to give a justification for the over-nerf of influence entering the game. That affected everyone, all the players but achieved nothing. And instead of market diversity for enhancements we see enhancements and recipes snatched up and converted in to the rare ones. That's due to enhancement converters being too easily available and exploited. And please don't tell me players are performing a "service" for others - it's really only for themselves. It would be helpful if everyone stopped thinking in a "market is centre" way.

I do both (farming and marketing, including flipping) and know just about what everything sells for. I really don't like the flipping part, to be honest. It means buying far too many enhancement converters and that part I don't think is right - enhancement converters ought to be account bound and not traded. That would mean players are limited to only the amount of converters that they earn through game play (purchasing with merits or drops if they are lucky). That would limit the players that setup niches. Do not underestimate the niche sellers either. One or two might start a niche but that extends to 10 players, then to 100 players and more as players "dog pile" in at the same price. I've not witnessed prices get any lower since the great nerf at the start of the month - they stayed the same.

Peerless Girl is obviously the pivot point for something that needed to be said. Your interventions are obvious for what they are and are not helpful.

I will make it very clear for you. Farmers do not and never have set the prices on the market. There are people that create niches to make profit for themselves - they are the actual exploiters. Farming is a response to those profiteers. People playing the game just because they need influence to buy those enhancements -- they fall in to the same category as farmers. Your bias against farmers extends to any player playing the game and your arguments and narratives undermine anyone and everyone playing the game. Fixing the patrol experience so it was used up when under exemplar would have been fine and not lead to any backlash. Removing the option to have influence instead of experience at the same time? It's a step that went too far and it affects everyone. Anyone saying they're fine with that are like "turkeys voting for and agreeing with Christmas/Thanksgiving". The amount of influence entering the game is not and never was the issue - saying that it is, is a blind. A blind to the real issue. The real issue was and still is marketeers manipulating the market, creating a niche, setting their prices high. Sure, that can be competed with but who has the time to take for that when all everyone wants to do is play the game, Entering in to market PvP for the hell of it against the niche may be fun for a short while but you can be certain that the profiteers will to profit is strong/obsessive. It was a sad day when influence instead of experience was removed as an option - it needs restored and I hope the devs are reading.

Err, I've been reading their posts - they're biased completely against farming, keep on repeating the same unhelpful false narratives.

What the? Your bias has been obvious for a long time. If farmers were farming a lot of influence from farms why would they also farm the auction house for influence as well? Attempting to take those two things together does not tie together within any sensible sense of reason. On the contrary, farmers tended to be "market neutral" and in fact supported the market selling recipes dropped during farms on the cheap - directly to the real negative drain on the game, the profiteering "doesn't play the game" marketeers providing a so-called "service" (for themselves, may be).