Wobegone

I think this is good advice. Only thing I'd add is craft recipes that drop and frankenslot them as much as possible. You can always respec later and replace them with better IOs. Use your merits to convert useless IOs to something you can slot (or sell). Focus on Acc/Dam/End/Recharge in that order IMHO. Also, visit the Market subforum for some great advice on making money.

I gave this a lot of thought before responding. And I had a wall of text prepared to answer this. Instead, I leave you with a question. What are the unintended consequences of humans increasingly relying on AI rather than using their own creativity? As an aspiring writer, I understand the appeal of AI to 'fill the gaps' of a creative idea. I also have serious concerns about repercussions to human evolution, not to mention deep fakes and misinformation depending on the input of various AIs. Grok is a perfect example of the latter.

Are you just selling the recipes or are you crafting and converting them? Influence per hour is also highly variable. If you get a lucky streak with purples, you can greatly exceed 80 million per hour. If the RNG is unkind, you can go well below 80 million.

AI slop is a travesty. It allows mediocre people to simulate art and literature 'in the style of' famous artists and writers. It doesn't take talent. It barely takes imagination.

I'm no Yomo, but when I was active daily, I'd give out Performance Shifter and Miracle procs in Talos often. The main reasons for that was someone gifted me a bunch of common IOs when I first started after asking in Help how to make money when I first started. The advice I was given was visit the Market forums. It was a revelation when I did. Thank you Yomo. At the start of a play session: Collect my sales and yellow recipes I bid the night before. Put in bids for salvage. Play the game, either story arcs or TFs for merits. Collect salvage and craft IOs. Convert. Put IOs on market. Put in bids for Yellows. Log. At first it took me a while to do the marketing thing. But it wasn't long before I was spending only a few minutes before and after my play sessions. Aside: I'm mildly bummed the people I have on ignore still show up when quoted. I only have two active posters on ignore because they don't argue in good faith.

Yes, I agree, I qualified my comments. I'll reiterate. Pointless KB (using your words) is actually rare. When it does happen, I remove myself by either going solo (in TFs, I don't wanna punish the team by dropping altogether) or leaving the group if it's a mission team. Again, this is a minor issue.

I primarily play melee ATs, and it's not hard to imagine that most melee characters dislike KB, especially AoE KB. Of course I don't have any statistical proof of that. Speaking for myself, it's frustrating playing a melee AT when there's tons of KB going on. The difference for me personally, I don't really hate anything. If it's a mission team, I just leave the group after the first mission. If it's a TF, I go my own way and solo groups (which itself bothers some people something fierce). Fortunately, it's rare to find unrestrained AoE KB as most players who use it are cognizant of it and either slot KB/KD or hover directly above groups, which can help mitigate scatter. Ultimately, it's a minor issue. It doesn't happen often, and when it does, quietly removing yourself is the easiest and arguably best solution IMHO. Why start a fight when you can get a new team/TF in a matter of minutes.

I've been playing a lot of Baldur's Gate 3 lately, and Concentration is a neat idea for powers in CoH. Love the idea of ways to break concentration, but, this would be a monumental change to how powers work. Yea, I still kinda love it, regardless of difficulty of implementation.

Really looking forward to Badlands. Prey and Killer of Killers were terrific. Trachtenberg has done wonders for the franchise.

I never said it was, although I lean on the side of sympathetic toward a complaint if a TF is started and someone either forgot or didn't know to turn off Group Fly. I was responding to the bolded part. It's rare, but there are other legitimate complaints.

I have a difficult time imagining myself 'in good conscience' ignoring any legitimate complaint in a team setting. That isn't being excellent to each other.

Most blasters can achieve this if you sacrifice damage for survivability. Ice/X would probably be the safest I'd think.. Maybe Ice/Electric or Ice/Energy for some blapper goodness? It'd still be dangerous against mobs who mez. Even with soft capped defense., which is actually easy to do with Scorpion Shield and Winter IOs...but you sacrifice Resistance, Max Hps, Recharge, and Damage Procs.

I don't think this is true. At least for me, I don't feel forced to pick anything. Occasionally I have to make hard choices, but my design philosophy doesn't require Hasten or Tough/Weave, although they are on many characters. You seem like a seasoned veteran, so not sure what the problem is. Sometimes you have to make hard choices. That hasn't changed with this patch. As to the bolded part, this is new info for me. Where have we seen this? As far as I know, most new players are former players. For the few who have never played, I'm not sure they were turned off the game because of 'wrong powers and/or mismanaging them through ignorance'.

I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to respond to this in a constructive way and.....I can't. It's either gross exaggeration or you haven't slotted your attacks and are running a bunch of toggles. As per usual, you don't provide a build which would help us pinpoint exactly why you're having problems. With energy blast, even on a Defender, you should be pinballing them everywhere and if slotted properly (and actually taking at least 3 of the attacks) you should be doing plenty of damage. Solo, you shouldn't need Radiation Emission's toggles on even con enemies unless they're bosses. Energy Blast has terrific mitigation by itself.

I'd say anyone saying "play the market" is 100% playing the market. Anyone can play the market. There are numerous examples for making money on the Market forum. Buying IOs with Merits is certainly viable, but you'd get much more efficient results by using those Merits for converter roulette. And it doesn't take much time. It's never been easier in the City to make as much money as you want with a little time and effort. But I get it. For some, "playing the market" isn't fun. It's not very fun for me anymore either. Once I had enough to sustain me indefinitely, I stopped actively playing the market (although I still craft all non-common recipe drops, convert them, then put them and remaining salvage on the AH).