Luminara

Can't log in to check the in-game description, but the text in Mids' states: "You spray a concentrated torrent of water toward your target that causes High Cold and Smashing damage as well as reducing your target's movement speed. If you have 2 or less Tidal Power, you will gain a stack of Tidal Power. If you have 3 Tidal Power and you activate this power, it will have an enhanced effect causing Water Jet to cast slightly faster and immediately reset the recharge of Water Jet. Water Jet's enhanced effect can be used once every 15 seconds."

My standard approach is to scream incoherently for several minutes. It doesn't help, but your experience may be better than mine.

The Ouroboros portal is right on the tram platform in Echo: Atlas Park, if memory serves.

No description, but in Mids', right-click the relevant power to lock it, then toggle Combo Level 3 while watching the Info panel. It'll display damage, endurance cost, animation time changes, etc. when the combo is active. The Effects panel shows other effects, like the mag 3 stun becoming present in Geyser.

The Mechanics. Also, Mike. Presuming the attacks are coded in the same way as Staff Melee, there should be no requirement beyond having activated the necessary combo level, and no additional restrictions. Again, that's based on the presumption that they recycled the combo code into multiple sets (which was historically their approach, and makes sense from a design perspective). Bear in mind, though, my experience with combos is limited to Staff Melee, which only has two attacks offering different effects when combo level 3 is achieved, and animation times at or above 2 seconds (i include Arcanatime in all of my attack chain calculations) for all but the tier 1 attack (which i don't have), so I can't assemble a sub-5s attack chain to test for you. I can say with absolute certainty that there's no unmentioned, invisible 10s cooldown timer on Staff Melee combos, as I frequently activate CL3 at the 5.3s mark and have never run into a timer or restriction.

Yes. Oil Slick Oil and Oil Slick Target. Oil Slick Target is flagged immune to all effects and has mega-capped Resistance (9999%) to every damage type except Fire and Energy. As @parabola said, Oil Slick Fire, the burn patch, isn't summoned until and unless Oil Slick Target is defeated. Oil Slick Fire is the pseudo-pet with the targeted AoE attack. Since the pseudo-pet doesn't exist until Oil Slick Target is defeated, it can't defeat Oil Slick Target via procs.

Every set IO is potentially worth whatever the highest selling IO of comparable level range happens to be at any given moment. Ignoring the existence of that potential revenue is certainly a choice individual players can make, but it's not something which can be dismissed in an examination of income sources and their relation to any given activity. It's relevant to the overall community, even if it isn't for some players.

Dig up the pre-change recipe sales data. It's going to be scattered among posts, but shouldn't be difficult to collate if you're serious about knowing what the difference is (check the market sub-forum). Take the average value of each rarity tier (uncommon, rare, very rare, etc.) in a recipe category (ranged damage, universal travel, accurate tohit debuff, etc.), multiply it by the average drop rate, then multiply the result by the average number of drops per run shown in @AboveTheChemist's data dump. That will give you an estimated income value of any recipe rarity in a category before the change. Then do the same math with current sales prices to determine the current income value of the same recipes. Compare the pre-change total to the post-change total and you have your answer. It won't be as precise as actual records of each recipe's sale price over the last six months, but it will be accurate enough. It's worth noting, though, that crafted enhancements contribute an order of magnitude more income value in the above data, so it may be better to do the math for crafted enhancements, rather than raw recipes.

That's what I expect as well. Every farmer will have his/her own approach to farming, but that approach will be a routine, and as such, have a generally non-variable run time which should generate an estimable income rate in the same way, so the math will be applicable across the board. Then let's set the average time at 1 hour. Time spent collecting booty after the run is still time spent. 11 minutes and 17 seconds of extra run time per hour to achieve pre-change daily income. Breaking that down further, on a 5 map run, each map required 8 minutes and 12 seconds average time to complete. A single extra map would be sufficient to accomplish the same goal, leaving a few minutes afterward to manage sales. So we now know that "double inf" was functionally ~20% extra inf, and that the additional time required to make up the difference is comparatively minimal, ~11 minutes of additional time per hour spent farming.

The first conclusion we can reach is that the misconception of "double inf*" has been proven to be just that, misconception. Worst case, according to your data, is a ~25% income differential, presuming atrocious drop luck, whereas luckier farmers are experiencing only ~11% less raw income than before the change. ~20% average might sting, but it's a very long way from 50%, and considering the rate of gain, not the catastrophic situation that has been portrayed by some. The second conclusion I can draw is that 3 extra runs would've placed you at the same income you could've gained before the change. I expect a similar situation for all farming approaches, so the time invested is a relevant factor. If you happen to have an average run time for your tests, that would let us know approximately how much extra time farmers have had to invest to compensate for the change. As an example, if your average run time were 30 minutes, then that would equate to an additional 5 minutes and 37.5 seconds of farming every day in order to match your previous income. If your runs were as long as 60 minutes, an additional 11 minutes and 17 seconds daily would make up the difference. Et cetera. The third conclusion is that there's some headroom for some farmers. The ones who vendor or sell everything for minimum price, never craft, etc., can recoup some of the lost 20%. Even using your methodology, @AboveTheChemist, there could be some additional income to be garnered. Crafting every set IO recipe and dedicating even one merit to potentially enhance the value could net a sizable income increase. But that's minutia, and I certainly don't expect you to replicate this test with a new methodology. You've done enough to give us some serious discussion points, and your work is greatly appreciated. ❤️ That's either a heart, or an upside-down bloody scrotum, whichever you like more, and it's all yours. 🙂

Try Grant Invisibility instead of Stealth. Both TA and Archery have fast animation times. None of them are over 2 seconds, most are 1.3 seconds or less. So despite the lack of toggles in either set, they still lead to heavy endurance usage, and with limited slotting availability (due to SOs being used instead of IOs) in conjunction with pool toggles, you're going to need all of the endurance you can scrounge. Cutting out one 0.33/s toggle, Stealth, will help enormously. Grant Invisibility has a high up-front endurance cost, but you can easily recover that on the way to the mission, or the next spawn, and with a duration of 2 minutes, you won't need to worry about burning excess endurance during a fight, or a sudden lapse of mitigation. The +Def is identical, in strength and functionality (half is lost when you engage foes (which does not include using Flash Arrow, that's flagged as a no aggro power and doesn't break Stealth/Invis)), but the perception reduction is almost twice as strong as Stealth, so even if you do land in the middle of a spawn, you won't have delayed aggro as you're high-tailing it out of there (which occurs with all forms of Stealth (pool, IO, Cloaking Device, Superspeed, etc)). With Flash Arrow and Maneuvers from both of you, plus CJ and Grant Invis/Stealth, you'll both be sitting at ~38.5% hit reduction to every type and position (presuming all powers are slotted with 3 SOs for -ToHit or +Def). Some of that, in the Defense portion, will be reduced when you're fighting lieutenants, bosses and +X critters (the more +s, the lower your final Defense value), but double-stacked PGA will definitely take the sting out of anything that does hit you. I don't recommend focusing on the control aspects of TA. You can play the control aspects up, but based on my own experiences (past and present), I suspect you'll realize that you don't need to double Ice Arrow every boss and EMP Arrow every spawn. The double Sleeps from PGA will neuter every spawn, from that point, soft controls (Glue and OSA, and random KB from Explosive) tend to be enough. Especially if you're rolling with a pile of -ToHit and +Def. I ran my TA/A in Issue 5 with a fraction of that projected Defense total, hit checks on Flash Arrow, pernicious bugs in OSA, PGA working entirely differently (one hit check on cast, no persistent patch with a pulsing Sleep or -Dam), and double (or more) the current animation times, and I dumped Ice Arrow on a respec, and almost never used EMP Arrow, when I was in the mid-30s. Today's TA is much more effective, and PGA itself is more mitigation than the entire set had at release, and still better than it had even after several bug fixes and changes to animation times. The change made to PGA, in and of itself, is more vitalizing to the set as a whole, than anything else that was done with any other power in it (except resolving the failure to ignite OSA... that was the most important fix. ever. in any set). With two at your disposal, and the -ToHit and +Def totals you'll be sporting, very little below EB rank will be a threat (robots... damn robots don't like naps...). Even the critters you can't put to Sleep, like robots, aren't going to be hitting you hard after you've debuffed their damage by ~47%, if they hit you at all. Rather than repeat your Force Fields experience, use only enough mitigation (double Flash Arrow, double PGA and one Glue) to open, then debuff their resistance and arrest them until they can't walk upright. It will be much faster, and not unreasonably unsafe. Especially when you acquire OSA (drop Glue from the opening volley, it won't be necessary once OSA is available), and again when you obtain RoA. And remember that Acid has a melee PBAoE radius, 8', so they'll be more effective used on different targets (stack them on bosses, otherwise, spread the pain). Also, Disruption has a 10 target limit, so choose your difficulty setting appropriately.

Double PGA will Sleep bosses. Double EMP Arrow will hold... God. And everyone nearby. Don't try to stack OSA. Double Knockdown will turn into Knockback, and the frequency of OSA's pulses makes that a distinct possibility. Double Glue Arrow won't be necessary unless you're fighting Crey tanks, Warwolves or other critters with significant +Movement. Double Flash Arrow slotted for maximal -ToHit, stacked with double Maneuvers slotted for maximal +Def, brings your mitigation up to ~30.5%. For a natural travel power approach, I recommend slotting Hurdle with 3 Jump SOs. You'll be hopping along at ~49 mph (at level 50). Take Combat Jumping for maneuverability, and a bit more +Def, but don't slot it for +Jump. It only increases height, not speed, and the higher you leap, the slower you actually travel (when using Hurdle as a travel power). Sprint adds nothing to jumping speed, either, and only a minute amount to height (0.5' at level 50). That's the fastest method of movement without taking an actual travel power, using Ninja/Beast Run, or using a temp travel power. When you're more accustomed to bouncing around, you can practice without CJ, if using it violates your definition of Natural. But you really need it if you haven't played like that before. Without CJ, you're incapable of altering your direction until you touch a horizontal surface (even a tiny one, like trim on a building), and you'll find yourself barreling into spawns. Play it safe until you're comfortable with Hurdle. You can try Sprint, but even with +3 SOs, 3 in both Sprint and Swift, you'll be limited to ~45.5 mph. It's an inefficient use of slots, and working with SOs, those 4 extra slots would be better spent elsewhere. Take and use Fistful of Arrows and Explosive Arrow. You're going to take Rain of Arrows, and TA is an AoE set, so make the most of your AoE potential. Put at least 1 Range enhancement in Fistful. 2 would be preferable. The greater the range, the wider the mouth of the cone, and the further you are from being stabbed in the face. With both of you pumping out AoE from Fistful and Explosive, you'll tear things apart quickly, and waiting for RoA won't feel nearly as rough. Skip Stunning Shot. Both of you. It doesn't stack with Ice Arrow (stuns vs holds), and you won't need more control than you have with PGA, Ice, Emp and soft controls like Explosive's chance for KB, Glue's Avoid and OSA's KD. If you have specific questions, ask. I played travel power-less TAs on the original servers for 7 years. And I'm playing more travel power-less characters, and TAs, here.

Before anything, speak to the P2W vendor, revoke the Throwing Knives origin attack and take either Apprentice Charm or Taser Dart. Both of you. If you don't, you'll have to use Blazing Arrow to ignite OSA. That would deprive both of you of your best single-target attacks, and as TA/A characters, that's not a luxury you can afford, even for concept.

What if it meant buttering oneself? Mmm... buttered heroine...

LV-426.

A reward for repetitive clicking, so some people can try to obtain a sense of self-validation by "impressing" others, and other people can flaunt what they have and say, "I have this and you don't, so I'm better than you are." No.

Some of what he's doing isn't as taxing as it appears, if we take his physiology into account. That tank might weigh a few dozen tons, but it weighs a tenth as much to him because he's a heavy-worlder. Still needs more than sheer muscle to lift it, but not as much muscle as a human would require. His pew-pew eye lasers aren't really drawing power from him, they're refocusing incoming IR via a mechanism similar to the tapetum lucidum in various species of animals. But, you're right. Even if that tank "only" weighs a few tons for him, comparatively, it's still too heavy to lift. There has to be something enabling his special abilities. It can't be photosynthesis and complex hydrocarbon chains (sugars and starches). So where does that extra oomph come from, and what does he do with the sunshine his body accumulates? In many species of animals, small clusters of magnetic particles are embedded in specific cellular structures (the human nose, for example). Seemingly unrelated, there are elements which react with sunlight in various ways (photoelectric effect is relevant to this discussion). If we reach a little and assume that kryptonite is a yet-to-be-discovered radioactive element, we can also assume that various "colors" of kryptonite are, in fact, isotopes. One of those isotopes, blue kryptonite, is depicted as providing Superman with significant benefits (makes him stronger, for example). Putting those together, what if Superman's extraordinary capabilities were the result of blue kryptonite particles in his musculature and nervous system, reacting with sunlight, massively enhancing his native strength (resulting from his heavy-worlder anatomy) and granting him other, more peculiar abilities, such as partial gravitic inversion (flight)? Of course, that still doesn't solve the power storage problem. Nor can I hypothesize a reasonable, scientifically acceptable means of such. This is where the comics depart from reality completely... unless kryptonite also has the capability to store energy like elements used in batteries (cadmium, lithium, etc.), but if that were the case, it would be incredibly unstable, prone to explosive release and couldn't exist in nature in more than trace amounts (and those fist-sized pieces depicted in the comics would blow up, Tsar Bomba style, on exposure to sunlight). It also doesn't explain how Superman can be unharmed by radioactive decay, a process which we know to be hazardous, in all forms, to everything. If anyone had nodules of radioactive material in their bodies, they'd be tumors with legs, presuming they lived for more than a few weeks after birth. That's the real conundrum. If we can resolve the energy storage issue, we can explain Superman. I can't. Everything else, I can see being workable within the laws of physics, but not the energy storage. Or, not the energy storage without every form of cancer imaginable, and a tendency to explode.

The concept is still scientifically feasible, in theory. Evolution has produced some remarkably bizarre results, such as the platypus. Presuming Krypton was a heavy gravity world orbiting a aging star, therefore several billion years further along the evolutionary chain than our planet, and in conditions significantly more hostile than any known environment here, it wouldn't be unlikely for any existing life to have adapted to those conditions in a way which would appear to be extraordinary on an Earth-like planet with lower gravity and more favorable conditions. Food, for instance, would be more difficult to acquire, as it would either have evolved better protection or would struggle in the harsh environment. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility, then, for animals to evolve a mechanism for harvesting energy directly from the most abundant source, the sun. The age of the star also suggests that any intelligent life on that planet would have had, at a minimum, several tens of millions of years of further evolution and technological progress than we can lay claim to in the scant few million years our species has experienced. What natural selection might fail to accomplish, science could, given that time frame. Take our current DNA splicing and cloning abilities as an example. Right now, we can give one species the abilities of other species, such as bioluminescence, or producing spider silk, by manipulating DNA. We could, in fact, give an animal the ability to photosynthesize, today, but we can't make that animal's photosynthetic process actually provide any sustenance because we haven't finished unraveling the entire process in plants, or translated it to the anatomies of higher life forms. But in a few decades... Krypton would've had millions of years, so it's plausible that Kryptonians could have done that long ago, and on a world beset by high gravity and poor sunlight from a dying star, it would make sense to do so in order to aid the dominant species in survival, and even provide a level of comfort previously unobtainable. So between some fiddling with Kryptonian DNA in a bygone era, and having been born on a heavy gravity planet, Superman's ability to utilize sunlight makes sense, from a scientific perspective. His heavy-world origin would imply a denser cellular structure, thus accounting for his near invulnerability, and on a world with Earth-normal gravity, his strength would seem significantly greater than ours. Retinal coating could be reflective in the IR spectrum, giving him heat vision, and specially adapted cones and rods could allow him to see in the X-ray spectrum (many animals can see into the UV and IR spectrums, neither of which we can accomplish without technology). As his DNA would've been adapted to poor sunlight, a brighter star, such as Sol, would provide significantly more energy for his body. One could hypothesize that this energy would be used at a cellular level, for repair and growth, and stored in much the same way our bodies store excess energy in the form of fat. Flying... that one isn't scientifically explicable. Neither is super breath. Or super speed. Or super knitting. Or super baking. Or super mind wiping with a kiss. Those aren't abilities which would develop from evolving on a high gravity planet, or a planet orbiting an aging star, and they can't be gifted by DNA manipulation. They defy the laws of physics, and unless Krypton was inside a black hole, it was still subject to those laws. But his strength, invulnerability, use of solar energy, even pew-pew eye lasers and seeing womens' no-no bits through their clothes, those can be explained, and are within the constraints of the laws of physics. If anything, they're less of a stretch than time travel or white holes, both of which are scientifically proven and accepted possibilities.

Jump speed.

No, he can't. Some of the photons are reflected. If they weren't, he'd be a blank space. Not invisible, but a spot of absolute blackness, like Vantablack. As we can see his rather colorful undies and bright blue eyes, that isn't the case. So his ability to absorb visible light is limited. Some, but not all, or even most. He also can't absorb infrared radiation,, and more likely reflects it, else he'd be a walking polar vortex, leaving a trail of frozen corpses in his wake. And he's unharmed by combustion, of any kind, further indicating an inability to absorb IR. UV, he might absorb completely. But not x-rays, as evidenced by his ability to see in that band of the EM spectrum (he couldn't see and absorb x-rays, it would be one or the other). He likely absorbs gamma radiation far more efficiently than humans, but lacks any ability to convert it to useful energy, given the portrayals of him being weakened by nuclear weapons (The Dark Knight Returns) and over-absorption of solar radiation (All-Star Superman, most probably cause of death would be too much gamma and UV, not photons). And radio waves... everywhere he went, every radio, television and cell phone would lose signal if his physiology reacted differently to them than ours does. That doesn't occur in any comic, cartoon or film, so we can assume he's "radio wave normal". Just over half of the solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet is IR, so we've already cut Superman's conversion rate by that much (45-48%, in fact). And as he can't absorb all visible light, his conversion rate would drop further, making him only slightly more efficient than current prototype photovoltaic cells (which can convert 47% of visible light to electricity). He also can't "charge up" in moonlight, which is merely reflected sunlight, so he either has a minimum amount of solar radiation necessary to enable conversion, or he's more reliant on UV than photons (nearly all of the solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth is IR, visible and UV), of which there's almost none in moonlight.

No travel powers for most (almost all) of my characters. That includes Ninja/Beast Run. Rewarded temp travel powers are hoarded for "emergency" usage (such as acquiring the one badge that cannot be obtained (Top Dog) without a travel power (or a taxi)).

Something I feel necessary to append to this sentence - if calculating with higher market values, not only is the income percentage from drops higher, but the value of inf* per unit is lower. What that means is F is worth more now than it would be using old market values. So, the farmer may be accumulating inf* at a slower rate, but that inf* has more buying power. It's worth more now. Therefore, that value should be calculated as well, as it's highly relevant to the question of how much of the percentage of income it represents. But I'm watching Pretty Woman right now, so my math co-processor is off. Someone else can figure it out.

Eh. How it's supposed to work isn't necessarily how it actually works. You might get that Brass for 10 inf*, but spend 500 on the Alchemical Silver. Or vice versa. Pooling the salvage doesn't control player behavior, it merely ensures that something is available. The price on that something is primarily driven by players. Seeding ensures that there's always supply, pooling ensures that the supply is larger and keeps marketeers from cornering the market, but ultimately, prices are dictated by players, both buyers and sellers. So prices, even on common salvage, fluctuate frequently. As such, it would be best to factor individually.

Because that's how the NoXP setting worked. It was never double inf*, it was XP = inf*. When the setting was activated, all XP was turned into inf*, so you received your normal inf* from the source, plus the inf* which would've been XP. In some cases, that might've resulted in more than 2x inf*, in other (most) cases, less than 2x. At old market values, C and E would represent higher percentages of income, and the percentage coming from F would be lower. So although it might be worthwhile to investigate the difference using old market data, it wouldn't present the best possible case for farmers, and it wouldn't really be reflective of the actual contribution of F. The percentage of income represented by F is always in flux, always changing, because the values of C and E are always changing. As @Coyotedancer pointed out, C and E have different values at different times of the day, and week, and trying to nail anything down to a fixed number would be far more taxing than is necessary for this. All we're looking for is a general estimate of what F could be contributing to income in relation to what the other income sources are contributing, meaning, how much is bonus inf* really worth in the overall picture. A rough percentage calculated using current market values will do for that.

Inf* (A) + enhancement drops (B) + salvage drops (C) + common IO recipe drops (D) + set IO recipe drops (E) + XP (F) Empty salvage, recipe and enhancement inventories before beginning. Screenshot of XP and inf* before and after run. Enhancement and common IO recipe drops should be calculated at vendor value. Salvage drops should be calculated at average market value. Each type of salvage should be checked individually, as opposed to simply counting the number of each category of rarity and assuming that all salvage in a category has the same value, to ensure an accurate appraisal. Note that converters are categorized as salvage. Set recipe drops should be calculated at average market value, and should include recipes the subject would keep rather than sell (a penny saved is a penny earned) A+B+C+D+E, then A+B+C+D+E+F, compare the two totals to determine the percentage difference. At least ten runs should be conducted. A hundred would even out the variability of drops more effectively, but a very (very) rough estimate can be obtained with ten.