Sir Myshkin

The weird part about this, as I've been watching it this afternoon for a couple of hours, and the inventory (thus far) doesn't appear to be getting replenished, especially not compared to last night when there wasn't someone stack-bidding 25,555 INF (or so I can probably assume their bid stacks filled and they had nothing left pending by that point in the night). I'm going to poke back and check it again later this evening out of curiosity and see where it stands. I was still never able to fill any stack of 10K bid UC Salvage though, after 11 hours. Right now supply is 9,998,636. It was maybe ~200ish lower than that a couple of hours ago when I checked before now. If there's a massive spike (1,000+) from this point, we'll have a pretty good notion then, but if it just continues to dwindle, than we've moved past marketeering/flipping, into straight griefing by absorbing the inventory excessively. The downside at this point is that if we out bid and return it to market, the other stacked bids will just get filled anyway and we'll have done nothing but flush INF in the attempt. I think we're at a point where if it is forced manipulation than a GM would need to be involved, but by technicality the player isn't necessarily breaking any rules. It's been about a week, maybe they'll get bored, eh?

I was curious on this myself and messed around with buy rates late last night (within an hour of my last post). Started with a stack of 10k bid, and incrementally went up 1K until the bids started to fill, hit 18K before they finally started to fulfill, but then I strangely cascaded all the way down to me 12K bids (which had been sitting there for a good ten minutes). Wanted to see what I had to beat from a bid perspective, and where the listing was sitting. Unfortunately because of how awkwardly it just sort of "mass filled" everything (80 bids) within ten seconds of my last insert (waited about a minute between each posting), I didn't end up coming out of that with anything worthwhile beyond "server is super delayed on Uncommon processing." I highly doubt that someone dumped 80 UC salvage on the market at 3:00 AM and that I was the highest bidder consistently for a mere 10 stack from 10K to 18K, when prior to my post of the first 10K, the last highest bid submitted was 50K, which occurred within the time frame of what I'd been posting. Edit to add, since I hopped back on and dumped what salvage I ended up with, it all got picked up from what I presume is the same player bidding out at 25,555. Ironically I'll have made money even with the intent of lowballing my relistings at 10INF. Now I'm thinking about just intentionally buying up Brainstorms to dump UC salvage and let this player Venmo me INF via the Auction House :3

Two days, four simple bids at 10,000 inf went unfilled. Got fed up, started dropping 50k bids to get recipes crafted. Got me thinking about the math on all this because there is definitely some... uh, "investing" being done. Right now there's an overflow of common salvage beyond the seed volume of ~650k. Assuming that the majority of that overflow could be filled at 500 or less INF a piece, I could buy the whole lot at 322M, and if I relisted the entire lot at 5k a piece, I would net profit 2.7B INF (assuming I could actually find a way to store 650,000 pieces of common salvage). Considering Uncommon salvage has a wide swinging door of 1,000-10,000 of original average pricing, and is already below original seed volume, it stands to reason that someone could actually make an appreciable return if they bought enough and flipped it back, but the time investment would be pretty ridiculous compared to just going out and grabbing a few recipes, crafting them, converting them, and selling them. 195 starter slots, at 10,000 INF stack 10 bids, 19.5M to bid out, relist at 25,000 and loose 2,000 INF per piece listed, 8K profit per piece, net 15.6M on 1,950 pieces. And the time it takes to grab and return to the auction listing 195 slots?! I can't even. I share this sentiment with you. If I have the free-floating INF on any given character, whenever I hear about a player trying to build up the money, or talking about a specific IO they're trying to get, I'll pop onto the Auction House and grab the item and e-mail it to them with a little /tell giving them a heads up to check (so it can be a bit of a "surprise" finding it). What's the point of having billions of INF in this game and not sharing it, knowing that it could disappear tomorrow and I've had hoarded it for nothing.

Hopefully you colored your Sonic abilities red or blue 😉

Ice Armor/Stone Melee/Soul, Unstoppable Aggro Magnet with Soft Control. It may not be winning the damage race, but it puts things in lockdown pretty hard core, and is incredibly difficult to kill on just SO's alone. Give it Incarnates and Procs and you're looking at a raw monster. Side tangent: I have noticed that the changes to Gauntlet and how AoE Taunt (Punchvoke) is proliferated more effectively in application has made it possible for non-Ice Tankers to pull--or at least keep--aggro away me. I am actually somewhat disturbed by this fact as I took it as a bit of pride in being able to strip all aggro.

I would be happy to show you how wrong they are about Dark "Anything." One of the first toons I created coming back was a Rad/DA Scrapper. I haven't played him in a while in favor of more and more projects, but I pushed him into a few dozen Verteran levels before I started the next one. I have a running joke for him that he's often "not even in his final form" (come on, we all know that gag 😉 ), but it's true. He has capped resistance to most of his stats and 45% S/L/Melee Defense, Shadow Meld as a back up, a ton of Incarnates, and Dark Regen that I rarely, if ever, activate. Yeah, I said that: my primary heal I rarely use because of how effective Dark Armor is at mitigation. Oh, and I often don't run with Oppressive Gloom on just so I can take a hit from time to time. Dark Melee is also very strong from a Single Target perspective and utilizes its own heal in its primary attack chain, and has one of the best DPA attacks in the game (Smite). The thing that most folks get offput on with DM is its significant lack of AoE capacity, which is exactly what's on the testing server right now to correct by turning Dark Consumption (name changed now) into a more effective AoE, and widening out Shadow Maul's cone for more coverage. Dark Melee/Shield Defense is still one of the most significant "AV Killer" builds out there because it's strong out of the box, and is easy to fuel with Soul Drain. I have said it plenty of times in past, and I'll continue saying it now: Dark Armor is the most survivable Armor set in the game. Take that, Bio Armor! Edit: And also, this thread is dedicated to DM/SD and has over NINE pages off discussion. Let that sink in a bit.

For what it's worth, from an actual testing perspective, Your T1, 2, and 3 attacks are only a few DPS different(~10) from any attack chain that includes Concentrated Strike. With the ability to leverage damage procs, and adding in the Gaussian's +BU proc to Siphon, you'll do just fine, if not potentially (marginally) better overall. So from an empirically tested stand point: No, you don't need Concentrated Strike.

No, the double proc from Hybrid will not coincide with procs themselves; only the damage from the physical attacks will have an opportunity to double. Also, please keep in mind that once you have an (t3+) Alpha slotted into the build you will be level shifted +1 to all content in the game, nothing will ever truly be +4 to you any more, and even in Incarnate content you'll be able to build +3, further encroaching on that gap in content variance. Because of this you only (really) need to build for +3 long-term. If you exclude Incarnates from a build, then yes, +4 would be relevant. Not all abilities in all builds I posted are 100% in-line with +3, but the majority will be, and in some cases a power or two may be over or under compensated. Given that, the Elec/Dark/Psi build in particular is a bit light on Accuracy, and for that I'd actually probably suggest fulfilling the void with Vigor Radial, it'll provide Acc/End/Heal/Confuse enhancement, and taking one slot out of Howling Twilight and moving it over to Weave for a Kistmet +Acc puts the entire build pretty close in line for +3 at a minimum.

The Controller stopped in the vestibule, shocked at the decor on the walls: bloody hand prints and splatters of blood, all signaling that whatever created them was being dragged back into the connecting room. Deep in the center of the darkness beyond he could see it, the ring of a Circle of Thorns portal with a pulsing glow of magic around its circumference. He held a hand up and looked back at the team, "We must proceed with caution. Infernal will be in the next room and there's a summoning portal at the other end, we don't know what could come through." At the back of the hall stood a lone Scrapper, yawning and tapping the hilt of his blade. He hadn't said a word up to this point, through masses of Behemoth's and carnage and magic. He crooked his head and looked beyond, shrugged, and started walking in. The Tanker, perturbed at being a follower jumped through the doorway first, into the fog and darkness. "Stop!" shouted the Controller, but too late. The room lit from torches on either side, and the remainder of the team blindly rushed in with the Tank, too far into the room, too close to Infernal. The Praetorian turned from the alter at the summoning portal, it could almost be said he might've been smiling under that helm of his. The portal burst to life, a magical field filling the void within the ring to allow a horde of fifty Behemoth's to step forward. The Tanker, his bellowing taunt echoing through the chamber, grabbed the attention of the oncoming demons but could not withstand the burst of their fury and flame. The Tanker fell, and the team melted one by one. The Scrapper, in the center of it all now, stood nonchalant. Over his shoulder he looked back at the Controller enveloped in a vortex of force fields. The Controller dropped his personal field and sent out two bursts of energy that wrapped around the melee fighter, coating him in their protective flows before he turned and left the chamber, back to the vestibule. "Take care of this mess," he said, snapping his fingers just once as he walked away. At the echo of his fingers, a Force Bubble erupted out from his core and pushed into the room scooping up every single Behemoth and piling them mercilessly onto the Portal, suffocating Infernal in their mass. The Scrapper grinned at the pile and drew his Katana, tilted the blade delicately through the air before jumping into the mass of demons and fire. One by one the bodies of the fallen team mates flickered into the ether, out beyond the chamber walls, leaving him alone with his own personal carnage. Occasionally a blast or a singe seeped between the protective layers, but his body easily regenerated the meager onslaught while his blade sang with each dismembered Behemoth. Sitting with the collected team, awakens being passed around, the Controller stood at the entrance, his imps born of fire blockading the path, he made the team watch in awe as the Scrapper did what Scrappers do best. At the edge of his field, in anger and rage, Infernal continued to pound endlessly at the Force Bubble, more infuriated with the Controller than concerned with the Scrapper. When the last demon fell, the field was disengaged and the Scrapper then turned his blade into Infernal's back. The demon lord halted, shock written in his stance, he turned ever so slowly to face what had just struck him, a hint of confusion, maybe fear in his eyes that the Scrapper could have even possibly survived. The Scrapper tisked and waved a disappointed finger, "We're not done yet."

In that particular instance it's a bit more than just concern for containment, but space in the build and how much value Energy Torrent actually has. The torrent--when spiked with the FF+Rechf--hitting a spawn of 10 enemies is a near guaranteed Proc, so it's an opportunity to spike the entire build with +100% each time it successfully hits. With Fearsome Stare and Heart of Darkness being on such low cooldown (and even less with Torrent hitting), there's plenty of "control" present in the build, and honestly Fear supplants nearly everything in effectiveness. You could easily swap out for Living Shadows and the build would still work perfectly fine, using Torrent was just one very unique tool that pushed performance over the edge. As for pets, yes having the pets actively engaged in providing additional control does help, but in their own isolated scenarios. In several cases using Fearsome Stare is going to stack Fear with Umbra which is a nice plus, and at a 50/s duration, provides a pretty long lasting stick. Generally I don't look at the pets for their active control engagement since I can't control when/where they'll use their abilities beyond a ST scenario. As for Containment, in a proc-based build none of those bonus damage factors are going to care about Containment, so you can focus a bit less on containment. Of course we want to get every ounce of damage possible, and using something like Intuition or Musculature Alpha can help support that ideal, but for Controllers nearly any one given proc is going to do as much (or more) damage than a contained ability will. If I spam Heart of Darkness, it's not for that added Stun, it's probably for the +Proc opportunity to deal more damage. Between Umbra and Haunt, however, those two entities are going to do the bulk of your output anyway.

See my signature. Regrettably the Google submission method seems to be buggy and any time I edit it, something else disappears (currently missing a melee set, and it won't let me edit the form properly to add it back in). I've been (albeit slowly) looking for an alternative.

For a couple of those builds they have the Preventative Medicine set, and the Accuracy is a little subpar because of it. Honestly, there's not enough global accuracy happening to make that comfortable against +3/4's and Panacea set of 5 with an Acc IO would realistically be better if you are worried about it hitting consistently. The power will recycle pretty quickly though, and heals for a huge amount when it hits, and there's also Dark Servant casting its own Twilight which means you're probably a lot better off than it may seem. The combos with Dark/ and /Dark have been pretty popular, glad you're having fun with it!

I dunno, I'd almost rather wait until after it goes live to break it, that way there's no tacksies backsies 😛

Proc Monster builds are very forgiving to the idea of "being" or "not being" a proc build. The moment you start mixing and hunting set bonuses in the attacks, it takes away from the intent. Unless you were trying to get something that could exist at iCap while still having some potential extra output, Invuln takes care of itself pretty sufficiently if you just accept relying on its tools to do so. There's also the fact it can hit resist cap on S/L, so chasing S/L Def isn't really necessary in the first place, but is also something Invuln can end up padding on its own (and is just one more set bonus to pointless chase for "extra"). You saw yourself how there's a bit of a struggle in trying to piece all aspects together. The other key thing that makes this idea work is supplementing your recharge with global bonuses and Hasten to keep the tight nit attack chains/cycles that we give up by not slotting recharge enhancement. That has to be present, otherwise you're sitting on large gaps of time, incomplete chains, and a real struggle to deal with harder targets efficiently. Given that, if you mess with the slotting dynamic a bit... Ignore slotting order as I just pulled my Invuln template and tossed Katana into it and used the 8 floater slots to fulfill the S/L and Psi parts, you can end up with this: I found that build a bit unsettling from a proc standpoint, however, and corrected it to the following one. It does not hit 45% without at least 5 targets in radius, but it does support a decent base line without diving into additional sets, and all of the attacks are kept (relatively) "pure" for procs. Accuracy for the build is also settled at 5 targets for +4 under Invincibility.

Early proc testing was done for all the relevant support sets in this thread, and more specifically posted about Trick Arrow on this comment if you want an idea of what you can get away with (there's updated tid-bits with a current TA/A build on that first post). You should be able to apply most of the logic to a Nin/TA build. There's also a thread here where a player broke down Oil Slick's ignition cases if you're curious about what's under the hood of the effects (mostly a data-dump thread, but if you're curious it shows the under-the-hood Oil Slick ignition stuff, so relevant). Another thread that you might find relevant is one Redlynne posted a while back about Nin/Time, the "Nin" portion might be worth reading a bit as far as a bit of research in slotting up those pets more specifically to a proc build, and does some number crunching on the Ninja-side of "Archery."

Two (Three for Tankers) damage procs and a handful of status afflicting procs (disorient, recovery debuff, recharge debuff, +to-hit chance).

I'm not saying I was a player rolling in Influence, but I had my fair share of maxed out builds on Retail. Yes things felt like they were harder to come by at a certain point because it was costing a billion inf to buy chase IO's, but the Merit system was tweaked back then to make it so players could invest their time on playing content and earning merits that could be exchanged for those rewards more freely; that same system still exists now. The difference between Retail and Homecoming is the nature of how the "Free Market" was set up. Back on Retail everything was fairly self-moderated from a demand to cost perspective, and the Merit system was the Dev's answer to "fix" how ridiculous it truly had become. Given another year I suspect we'd have seen a much better balance of cost considering the Hero/Villain merit system (Tips) hadn't been out very long before sunset. We didn't have attuned builds either, but that just leans (I think) into extending the flexibility of allowing players to exemplar more freely to keep more people available in a wider range of content. We're also talking about a much more isolated pool of players. A few thousand versus 10-15 thousand across double the servers from back in the day. It was much more likely to run into a swarm of people with altitis that never fully IO'd any build at all, and were just playing the game. Winter ATO's and the secondary AT-O sets didn't exist on Retail either, but they're not the lynch pin. I still run into plenty of people that don't have IO builds, are playing content of all ranges, and are just enjoying the game for the game's sake. Heck I was just on an Imperious TF with two non-Incarnate 50's, and a slew of 40-48's with barely any IO investments in their builds (if any) just chugging along. It's the second one in the last few days that's been that way. If you want to scale the content, then use the content that's available to you to do so. Everyone looks at the Architect system as a farm tool without looking at its potential to design and develop unique, more difficult content for Incarnates. There is an author who put together a series of AE missions that I myself took a shot at with a T4 Incarnate solo, duo, and with a team, search for "801" and do the 801.1 mission with your Incarnate IO build, see how far you get. It's not hard for hard sake, it's increased difficulty without unnecessary scaling of the base game content. More bosses, Elite Bosses, more dynamic power sets/usage. I would advise not running in at +4/8 off the first swing.

If you're using Focused Burst in a primary chain, that's the sets worst ST attack. You'd get more mileage out of QS>SB>BB and be able to take better advantage of how Power Siphon's stacking sets up. Even if you happened to take Concentrated Strike, the T1/2/3 chain is comparable close to the same damage potential (within 10-20 DPS) depending on how misses stack up with CS.

The things you're referring to aren't hard choices that were made by the folks running the Homecoming servers, but by the original Devs before the game shut down. Things like the PPM changes, Fast Snipes, etc were on Beta before sunset occurred. Those alterations were just moved into active service after the bugs were kinked out and the best approach to move them forward was determined. The only real (major) change that has come out of Homecoming has been the changes to Tankers. Even the Sentinel AT was something in the back-log of Dev testing/files that was just "completed" and rolled out. The way the game is right now isn't (effectively) any different than the way it was when it shut down, most people have just forgotten that fact.

You definitely moved it in a good direction. First, I apologize as I have the flu, so I could've easily missed/messed something up with foggy brain, but I saw a few areas of opportunity to push your net resistances a bit further. You don't really want to bleed over the cap, it doesn't really benefit you in the grand scheme of things. Given that, I flipped a few sets from S/L bonuses to E/N, yes your Energy is ridiculously high, but your Negative has room for growth, so this is an acceptable trade. Bumped that up to ~86%. For set placement, don't be afraid of doing a 5-piece of a specific set if it gets you a solid global bonus that warrants the loss of a few points of damage from a proc. The Armageddon and Hecatomb, at 5, gives you 20% Global Rech, that's too good to pass up (imo), and depending on which ability you look at, the shift in value was a minor point loss, and a minor point gain. I traded Weave for Maneuvers, if you're on a team that's got good support and already running a bunch of Leadership toggles, it's a better choice to pitch-in with than Weave (which you'd never use). Also, are you comfortable not having an actual travel power? This is what I came up with: And then, shortly after I exported the code I realized Barrage was turned on, boosting your resistance based on the Might of the Tanker proc, and was like "Aw crap." Told you, foggy brain. So I shifted a few things again and took that out of the equation and got you close to 90% Cap on quite a few things without the proc being active, and that's this build: Edit: I wanted to add in, don't take these builds as the gospel of what you have to do, these are just tweaks I would personally make, and you can definitely continue forward with what you planned if those choices are more in line with what you want out of the build. At this stage it really is just a min/max approach. Have fun with what you're playing 🙂

I had a KM/SR Scrapper on Retail that I absolutely loved. The ability to get to 59% Defense for those trials is awesome, and you get complete freedom of your Incarnate abilities to fill whatever gap you want.

You guys really undervalued Energy Melee 😛 Edit: And to add towards the point of the thread, for what it's worth: Stone Melee, from a performance perspective. Does have some interesting tools at its disposal, but it's at the bottom of the damage supply, even Spines and Rad Melee topped out a bit better. If I ask myself "What Tanker combination would I never consider playing?" It'd be either SR/SM or WP/SM, they'd both be generic, banal, and slow. Stone Melee can kind of shore up some weakness in KD/KB, but that'll only carry so far.

Procs will work in the Tele-Nukes, but it'll apply as Bopper already mentioned (with a different formula). There's still a pretty good ratio of use there at least, and any extra damage is better than none. At the time I would've had a build made for Shield I wasn't fully considering the implications of how the pseudo-pet formula versus the power itself would potentially lead to conflict in proc expectations. I'm not even sure if [we] had fully determined that before I ran that test in earnest, I honestly don't remember being aware of the toggle-pet-proc "issue" at the time, just that I'd confirmed that the ability could proc, and didn't consider looking further into it (a mistake of over-simplification, looking back at it now). On the flip side, I recorded everything after a certain point, so I might actually have some data in a file I can reference some Shield Charges out of (not many, but something). It is rather strange knowing I have a video of something, and go to send it to someone without realizing I never uploaded it anywhere. Sitting on 30+GBs of test capture. Side ramble, sorry. The only thing I'm left with a question on is what kind of attack chain you were focused on. There's a bit of shortcomings in your recharge and accuracy (really only looks to be enough for ... +2), which of course if you're focused on teaming than you're fine, I'm sure you'll run into some friendlies to help boost you up a bit. Really the choices you make are coming down to personal play style. Between Rad Therapy, Ground Zero, and Whirling, you've already got three AoE's at your disposal, is Dark Obliteration necessary? I only mention this because Energy Punch is a better attack over Barrage, you'll get more filler mileage out of it at 1.056/s Animation ontop of having a better DPA. Barrage might be your optimal attack to slot for a set bonus chaser. You're also over slotting S/L resists by 6%. I'd say take stock of what your attack pattern is really adding up to and consider if you're sitting on too many AoE's that you can refocus some of your sets, move some slot choices around and possibly get a Kistmet +6% in there to help your accuracy on a global scale.

I'm a bit with Gulbasaur on the selection choice. I have a Storm/Energy Defender that may be a little mad, cuckoo, insane, off its rocker... You get the idea. The ability to run into a mob, control it, toss down -Res, -Def, and alternatively provide support (via inherent powers or pool powers like Leadership), creates a pretty wide dynamic. I've lead my share of teams with it at 50, and there's a fundamental rule going in with that build: "I'm not here to keep you alive, I'm here to speed up the transition of walking enemies to fallen enemies." That level of playstyle can be taxing on the player though, as you're constantly on your toes about staying alive one spawn to the next. A false movement, a miss-click, so many things can result in a dirt nap. For as battle-field driven as Storm can be, if it dies, you might be watching others fall too. Beyond that I think I'd agree with the consensus on Cold/Sonic or Cold/Beam. Personally find Beam Rifle more engaging and fun than Sonic, and the audio effects for Sonic have been known to frustrate some players (or so I hear, badum-pish, but apparently Beam also sounds like the last sparkle of fire coming off a dead sun as it whimpers out blasts, again so I hear).

Why not a Kin? Fulcrum on Auto-fire, stack up its defense as much as possible to keep it alive, toss Whirlwind on it with a KD converter and it can act as a little ball of chaos. Surely the damage cap would be more supplemental than an Roomba. Side note about Irradiated, with it being a drop-patch pseudo pet trigger, it does function a bit differently and isn't quite so "waltz" into a spawn and go, it could very easily drop itself in between spawns and leave you sitting without it for five seconds. The patch-dropping also changes its dynamic mix with procs and Containment too. If Melee follower is the choice, a Rad/Bio Armor might be interesting in Offensive. A little DoT damage, a little -Res, patch dropping Irradiated, and put Atom Smasher on auto. Curious how that would compare to a Fire option running around with Burn on auto. How much difference would a little random -Res have in the speed performance.