Doc_Scorpion

I suspect @nihilii's point is that there's an exploit here - the player at the controls of the GM can simply sit there and let the badge hunters collect their badges unmolested and without risk.

I didn't know that! Thanks!

Let's see... This is a proposal that will make a significant amount of power available to AT's that don't usually get that level of power. This will also make significant power available at a very low level. How the heck else is it supposed to be interpreted? Even if the intent isn't ulterior the effect of the change is still there. I'm a lot saddened that people don't actually take a few moments to actually think through the full range of effects that such a wrenching change will have on the game.

Which is completely irrelevant to the AT under discussion - which is an overamped brute/scrapper with a few defenderish powers tacked on very obviously as an afterthought. As you yourself say:

I'm trying to figure the problem it's trying to solve... Then we can figure out whether it's a fitting solution.

If you put DE in Boomtown, what happens to all the lower level missions in that zone? (Both hunts and doors.) It's fine to say the "city should be living", but it also has to accommodate low level noobs alongside the Incarnate veterans.

She's only lvl 15... I don't even have the slots for full sets yet! 🙂 🙂 (I should have been clear, this is a leveling build not an endgame build.) Either way, it sounds like I'm on the right track, thanks!

So it sounds like Tactics and Kismet: Accuracy synergize... and maybe Blaster's Wrath wasn't really needed (other than as an expensive way to Frankenslot)?

To some degree, yes. Characters sidekicked up are -1 to the mentor, which means mobs that con white to the mentor con yellow to the sidekick (and so on as you move up the color ladder). You can tune enemy levels via notoriety settings, but the mentor and sidekick will still have that 1 level difference. The other (original) reason for it, level locked zones & content, is mostly a non-issue nowadays... Unless I'm wrong, Ouroborous is the only remaining level locked zone and has the only level locked content. (Lvl 10 to enter, lvl 25 to run the content.)

I'm running a blaster with two pieces of the Blaster's Wrath ATO, which gives an Accuracy bonus. I'm also looking at picking up Tactics, which also gives an Accuracy bonus... How does Kismet: Accuracy (which gives a "to hit" bonus work into that? I can't quite wrap my head around the difference or which (Tactics or Kismet) is a best fit for the character. (I know Tactics is a team support power as well, I'm mostly looking at solo work.)

Precisely zero sensible reasons to pronounce it an absolute were given. If I missed any, I invite you to quote them and point them out. (In reality, you're absolutely correct - it's not absolute, it's subjective, and it's a preference.) My desire isn't for discussion - my desire is to determine if the dogma being presented ("a player wants crafted IOs over recipes") has any basis in fact. It's not a deep question at all. Either the dogma has sufficient factual basis to be treated as an absolute, or it does not. Nor do I have any ulterior motives beyond checking the spread of bad advice and preventing opinion and preferences from being presented as unassailable and unquestionable fact. Reviewing the discussion it appears that how this is creeping into being presented as fact is people are saying "crafted IO" when what they mean "is Attuned IO". The two things are not equivalent.

Truthfully, you're missing pretty much everything. You mostly compared and contrasted the various features of recipes and IO's (both have advantages and disadvantages). But you gave no reason why a player would WANT to buy a crafted IO rather than a recipe. Seriously? Workbenches can be had for free (at a base or university), salvage can easily be obtained via the AH (influence sink), and if you can afford the IO at the AH (influence sink)... How is the sink of the crafting cost a problem? As far as reasons to WANT a crafted IO over a recipe, they're pretty weak. Taking a quick look at the AH, some Attuned enhancements are much cheaper than a Catalyst + Crafted IO, others are much more expensive... So, yeah, if you search you can find a bargain on less desirable crafted IO's. It's not clear to me that it's a universal rule for all enhancements. Plus, it's not like buying and using a Catalyst is difficult or a significant investment of time. So far "a player should want a crafted IO over a recipe" sounds like an ungrounded assumption that everyone presumes is true, but nobody can provide actual reasons to support. The only actual reason I've seen to justify that preference is the availability of crafted IO's over recipes - and that's rooted in HC's culture, not game mechanics.

Quite the contrary, there has been zero discussion (or explanation) of why a player would want to buy a crafted IO rather than the recipe. It's simply been stated as a fact.

Now that I've gotten support types up into the 40's... I'm not so sure I agree. The majority of the time other folks on the team are IOed out or (worse yet) loaded with Incarnate powers, and I end up feeling like a ninth wheel. My rad/rad defender almost never gets his debuffs off (unless there's a particularly nasty AV), leaving him mostly acting as a low rent blaster. And not a particularly useful low rent blaster at that as the mobs are all but melted before my first blast is recharged. It's demoralizing and actively makes me not want to play those toons. We're facing two problems here on HC... The first is the lack of Incarnate content that was in the pipeline and stillborn when the game was shut down. The second is that HC (as compared to live) has a MUCH higher proportion of IOed out and Incarnate characters. You can't really directly compare the high level experience on Live to the same on HC.

They didn't make it an all incarnate zone because they didn't know the game was soon to be shut down and that we'd be stuck seven years later without incarnate content.

You must be new to the thread - because there's very little "back and forth", it's almost all endless running in the same circle. In the same vein, there's very little experience... it's almost all opinion. The latter is weak feedback. The former is all but useless after the third lap. (And we're up to ten or twelve laps in this version of the thread alone.)

I can see why "need a healer" could be a warning sign? But other AT's? I've called for 'em now and again because the team has a weakness, a hole that needs plugging. Or, sometimes when playing story missions I'm familiar with, I have a plan as to how I want to approach the coming mission.

Huh, TIL... Never occurred to me to do that, mostly because my f/f blaster almost exclusively teams and scattering enemies is rarely welcome. Might be handy for Belle, who is running solo much of the time. Ended up snagging Assault instead, with the stacked +DMG from her attacks it seemed to me that starting further up the curve might be handy. With Assault, I've managed to touch 40-50% +DMG a couple of times, and that's with DO level recharge. I suspect she's gonna be a monster in that respect once I get to SO's.

Good point. On the other hand, you want rare goods to retain their cachet as that's what keeps people striving for them. (And the money rolling in.) And on the gripping hand... when they introduce significant new combat ability, you want to minimize their effects on the overall game. Balance isn't easy.

There's no difference between "limited supply of goods compared to cash" and "oversupply of cash compared to goods". They both mean the same thing.

Quick question... Looking at Ice Storm, is that the equivalent of Rain of Fire? The latter never struck me as all that useful, and thus the former is potentially skippable. Also, Frigid Protection is.... Whoah! Very useful. (As in "how has this not been nerfed?" levels of useful.)

Before you accuse other people of not reading, you might give it a try yourself. You stated, and I quote, "I'm not sure I buy that it drove the popularity of farming up." I addressed that statement. No more, no less. If you don't believe that the accumulated pre-market wealth had no effect, I invite you to provide a foundation for that belief. Otherwise, we're back to the economic equivalent of believing 2+2=3. To repeat what I said above - that accumulated wealth set the bar. That bar had a social and psychological effect that lasted well beyond the point where the original accumulated wealth had been sunk from the economy. That's a critical point, and one often missed or misunderstood. In addition - the structure of the auction house enforces that bar and raises expectations by matching the lowest offer to the highest bid, and then displaying that high bid in the price history. The equivalent in the real world is an economic bubble (such as tulip bulbs or Beanie Babies). In such cases expectations and inertia drive demand and prices as much, if not more, as the laws of supply and demand. The result is self perpetuating positive feedback loop. That loop is difficult to break (in game) so long as farming provides a fountain of wealth that far outstrips the capability of sinks to remove it from the economy. The lack of such a bar also goes a long way towards explaining why prices haven't soared to such heights on HC. Also, due to the lack of inertia and expectations, the brakes built into the economy (merit conversion, enhancement conversion, seeded salvage) have a greater effect.

o.0 No offense, but how can you possibly believe that going from "no place to spend significant quantities of Inf" to "lots of really cool stuff to spend Inf on" would have no effect on the desirability of ways to acquire Inf? Economically speaking, that's the equivalent of believing 2+2=3. Which should lead to thinking about why, if all the "old" Inf (accumulated over a period of three years) was gone, did prices continue to rise? (Especially in a game with steadily declining population.) That can only happen if Inf continues to flow into the system, and does so at ever increasing rates.