Grouchybeast

@GM Kal is there any chance of getting this thread stickied, please? It's incredibly useful info that's all out-of-date on Paragonwiki.

They're given out as prizes for the official HC costume competitions. The next chance to win one is the Mutation competition on the 23rd May.

This, ^^^ Boosting is good in some very specific circumstances, like being able to get the benefit of 3-slotting a power like Hasten but using only 2 slots. Most of the time, though, the gains are eaten up by ED, or don't actually provide a benefit. If your chance to hit is always 95% already, there's no benefit in boosting Acc, for example. If you are truly never going to exemp down on the character, and the boost provides a genuine benefit, then it's a good idea. But I would always take the option of, say, having Attuned Thunderstrikes that will give me Ranged Def down to level 27 over a few percentage points of boosted damage or recharge here or there.

I assume that that price is there to function as a cap on IO prices in the AH, rather than an attempt to represent the relative value of Merits and Inf. No IO is going to trade for much over 100,000,000 Inf, because above that price it's cheaper to turn the inf into Merits and buy the recipe direct.

It would be a nice start if the ambushes would despawn when the target leaves the zone. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but at least it would get rid of them in a lot of cases.

If outlevelled contacts went into a separate, new tab, the whole tab could have a big warning at the top that completing arcs from these contacts will award Merits only, no XP, inf or drops.

If you look at it as the chance of a character making it to 50, MMs are actually worse than Peacebringers. According to the March stats, 7.3% of Peacebringers rolled make it to 50, compared to 4.6% of MMs.

In other words: roll a Mastermind. Then delete it at level 20, and try literally anything else. 😉

The dropdown 'Support' link takes you to your private support requests that only the GMs will be able to see. Us ordinary users can't see them, so you'll have to repeat the details here.

Very true, but I felt that we already have enough confusion happening here without adding even more confusing edge cases 😉

I think I might have identified the source of the confusion. IO Sets have two different types of bonuses. Enhancement buffs: the buff an enhancement gives to the power in which it is slotted. For example, a level 50 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam/Rech slotted into Blaze buffs the Accuracy, Damage and Recharge of Blaze by 21.2% each. A a level 30 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam/Rech in Blaze buffs the Accuracy, Damage and Recharge of Blaze by 17.4% each. Set bonuses: the extra bonuses that you get for slotting multiple parts of a set. This is a global buff, not specific to the power the set is slotted into. For example, slotting three pieces of Mako's Bite into a Melee power increases maximum health by 1.5%. Four pieces of Mako's Bite gives a 3% Damage buff that applies to all damage powers. Six pieces of Mako's Bite gives a Ranged Defense bonues of 3.75% that is added to the character's total Ranged defense and a 1.875% Energy and Negative Energy Defence Bonus that is added to the charcter's totals for Energy Defence and Negative Energy Defense. These second bonuses -- the set bonuses -- are the ones that will continue to work even if the power is greyed out. These are the ones that will stop working if a character exemplars more than three levels below the level of the IO, So, if a character has a full set of level 50 Mako's Bite slotted into Storm Kick (a power they took at level 2), and exemplars to level 46 or below, then all of the set bonuses will stop working. They will not longer get the 1.5% increase in max health, the 3% damage buff, etc. However, the Mako's Bite IOs will still provide the enhancement buffs to Storm Kick's Accuracy, Damage, etc. even if the set bonuses are not longer working. If they have a full set of level 35 Mako's Bite slotted, they can exemplar right down to level 32 and still keep all the set bonuses, However, they will lose all the set bonuses at level 31 or lower. If they have a full set of Attuned Mako's Bite slotted, they can exemplar down to level 27 and keep all the set bonuses, because the level range of Mako's Bite is 30-50. However, they will lose the set bonuses at level 26, ETA: If the character with the Attuned Mako's Bite took Storm Kick at level 40, instead, then the power Storm Kick will be greyed out when exemplaring to level 34 or below. At that point, the enhancement buffs are no longer relevant, because they don't have a power to buff. However, the set bonuses will still be applied to the character at level 34, even though Storm Kick is now greyed out. They will have access to the set bonuses unless they exemplar below level 27. The enhancement buffs are also affected by exemplaring, but in a different way. When a character is exemplared, the slotted set pieces will always buff the Accuracy, Damage etc of the power they're slotted into as long as the power is available. However, the size off the enhancement buff may be affected by enhancement exemplar scaling.

You need to read more than the Overview section at the top of the page. Scroll slightly further down to exemplaring effects on set bonuses. This is the relevant section: Set Bonuses are always on, even if the power in which the Set is slotted isn't activated, and even if that power is greyed out due to exemplaring! However, you do start to lose the bonuses if you exemplar more than three levels under the level of the IOs in the Set. Perhaps the GM was mistaken, Perhaps you misunderstood what they said. But Set IOs do work, and always have worked, exactly as @siolfir said.

This is wrong. The stat bonues (Acc, Dam Def etc) from both SOs and IOs may be reduced by exemplaring according to a formula that I'm not going to get into right now. Set bonuses will no longer be available when exemplared to more than 3 level below the level of the IO. For Attuned IO, that becomes more than three levels below the lowest possible level of the set, e.g. A set of attuned Thunderstrike will not give set bonuses when exemplared to level 26 or less, because Thunderstrike is a 30-50 set. This is wrong. Almost all Set bonuses stay active whether or not you have access to the power. There are a few exceptions, e.g. procs like Performance Shifter +End which have to be slotted in a working power in order to fire off. Otherwise, in general, Sets in greyed-out powes still give their bonuses. This is completely wrong. Set bonuses are only granted by pieces of a set slotted in the same power. This is not even how SOs work. SOs provide a fixed bonus that depends only on their level relative to the level of the character. This is the table for Schedule A SOs, straight from Paragonwiki. It applies no matter what level you are: –3 23.331 –2 26.664 –1 29.997 0 33.330 +1 34.997 +2 36.663 +3 38.330 An even-level Damage SO at level 25 gives a 33% bonus. An even-level Damage SO at 50 gives a 33% bonus. What is different between level 25 and level 50 is your character's Combat Level, which affects the base Damage etc of the powers that are then modified by the SOs. IOs do, indeed, give higher bonuses at higher levels. However, they do not scale linearly, so the higher level they are, the less benefit there is to replacing them. On a level 50 character who exemplars down to 22, a level 50 Damage Common IO (which has a 42.4% bonus) will give a bonus of 25.8% because of enhancement exemplar scaling. On a level 50 character who exemplars down to 22, an even-level Damage SO (which has a 33.33% bonus) will give a bonus of 20.74% because of scaling. A level 25 Damage Common IO slotted by a level 22 character will give a bonus of 32%. The benefit that exemplared characters experience is from the number of slots they have, not from higher enhancement values. A character that exemplars down in your example actually has LOWER individual enhancement values than the natively level 22 character. Now, on a level 50 character who exemplars down to 22, a level 25 Damage Common IO (which has a 32% bonus) will only give a bonus of 19.9% (which is still, of course, about the same as the exemplared even-level SO), which is definitely an argument for upgrading level 25 Common IOs at 45/50, if you plan to exemplar a lot. (Scaling with Set IOs is more complicated, as explained in the Paragonwiki link. For example, if you've slotted a level 25 Set IO triple (e.g. Acc/Dam/Rech) and kept it to 50, then the rules of enhancement exemplar scaling mean that if you exemp down from 50 to 25 then the Acc/Dam/Rech bonuses will all function at full strength (16%), because each individual bonus is less than 20% and so immune to scaling at level 22. So that single set IO would provide almost as much benefit when exemped to 22 as slotting one each of even-level Acc, Dam and Rech SOs. It's also, perhaps more surprisingly, slightly better when exemped than a level 50 Acc/Dam/Rech, which would be scaled down to 13.2% in each aspect. As I said, it;'s complicated. If you want to examplar a lot, Attuned Set IOs are better and less confusing. Slot Attuned Set IOs unless you really love maths.) And I'm saying that if your gold standard is SO performance, then you don't NEED to upgrade Common IOs at all past the mid levels, because the bonuses don't increase linearly, and the difference between a level 35 Common IO and a level 50 Common IO is not that great. And a level 40 Common IO will give you a better bonus than a +3 SO, and it will never go red. Incidentally, Set IO with multiple bonuses (e.g. Acc/Dam/Rech) outperform SOs even earlier, and there's even less need to replace them as you level. If you WANT to replace Common IOs every 5 levels purely because you don't like looking at enhancement numbers that are lower than your level, that's absolutely fine, of course. You do you. But it's bad advice to post in a thread specifically meant for someone who's never used IOs. If you would prefer to have lower enhancement values and keep replacing your SOs, rather than slot level 35 or 40 Common IOs and keep them to 50, simply because you don't like looking at lower level Common IOs, again, absolutely fine. But also again, not necessarily good general advice. Attuned and non-attuned set IOs cost exactly the same in the Auction House. On HC, all Set IOs of the same type (e.g. a Thunderstrike Acc/Dam) are placed in a single pool in the AH, whether they are Attuned or have a level. So if I list a level 37 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam for sale on the AH, and someone else bids for an Attuned Thunderstrike Acc/Dam, then the AH will sell my IO to them and automagically turn it into an Attuned IO. There are some pretty cheap sets that have good bonuses, and if you forget set bonuses and slot purely for the basic values ('frankenslotting') then you can choose the cheapest ones without worrying about set bonuses. It's entirely possible to slot a character with Attuned Set IOs as you level them, using the drops, merits etc you get while levelling. I do it all the time. Unless by non-Attuned you actually mean only Common IOs (i.e. the single-aspect, non-set IOs). They indeed can't be attuned. (@Unkk - I'm so sorry for derailing your thread, but I didn't want you to end up with a lot of confusing advice and bad information, and decide IO Sets were a waste of time. IO sets are great! Common IOs are great! Do the University tutorial!)

The point is that you don't need to replace a level 25 Common IO at any point. You might want to, to get a better value, but that level 25 will continue to provide approximately the same bonus (32%) as an even-levelled SO enhancement (33.33%) all the way to 50. A level 35 Common IO will give about the same bonus (36.7%) as a +3 level SO (38.33%), If you slot Common IOs at level 35, you will have, effectively, +3 SOs forever. On live, before the days of easy Attuned Set IOs for all, I used to slot all my characters with Set IOs in the 30-35 range, and never replaced them because I liked to have the bonuses available when I exemped. There's not much practical difference between the stat bonuses on a level 35 Set IO and a level 50 Set IO, and by level 35 the bonuses on Set IOs are much better than SOs. For example, if I slotted a Ranged damage power with a level 35 Ruin Acc/Dam and a level 35 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam, it will give me a total of 45.88% Damage bonus and 45.88% Acc bonus, which is better than slotting even +3 SOs, and will never expire. (Of course, since an Attuned Thunderstrike Acc/Dam from the AH now comes from exactly the same pool as a level 35 one, and so has exactly the same cost and availability, this is to some extent completely moot. But there can still be a benefit to crafting and slotting drops, if that's what you want to do.)

This is slightly confusingly worded, and I'm not 100% sure I know where you're talking about IOs versus SO/SO, but IOs will never expire. They'll keep providing exactly the same bonus as you level. A level 25 Damage Common Invention Origin enhancement will provide a 32% bonus to damage if a character slots it at level 22, and it will still provide exactly the same 32% bonus when the characters is level 50.

If this were to become a thing, it would be nice to add another tab, so that the options are active, out-levelled and inactive. I really wouldn't want to have to scroll through a massive list of old contacts offering me grey-conning one-off warehouse missions whenever I attempt to find a current contact.

Maybe this is the chance to promot some of the Vahzilok to Incarnate level. Like regular Vahzilok, but disturbingly stylish.

I mean, Rise of the Phoenix is a thing. "I exploded violently, injuring and stunning everyone around me. Ah, yes, I feel so much better, now!"

Well, it all sounds pretty good to me. Devs, you should do that ^^^

We're going to tame them and ride them like very large, very toothy ponies, of course. What else would be the point of putting dinosaurs in the game, if not to race them the length of Steel Canyon while yelling YEEEEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!

I'm lazy and I just have one macro for all annoying pest mobs, with everything chained together. As you're rarely fighting more than one enemy group at a time, it works fine.

David Wincott is the same, he'll talk to you without an introduction. I've levelled up a couple of new characters in The Hollows recently just for a change of pace.

It seems like it would be far easier and safer from a development point of view to add the missing arcs and missions to Ouro, rather than make fundamental changes to how the game works with regards to levels and contacts. I think the former has already been done, including taking a set of non-arc missions from a contact and packaging them up as an arc in Ouro.

The short skirts we do have already look pretty terrible when the character is moving. I have a female Street Justice tank that uses one of the knee-length skirts, and it looks awful when she does any kicks.

I started playing again in October, so I don't have any data from before then. But I searched my chatlogs and from October to the middle of February, I was bidding 1,111 inf for Uncommon salvage and buying it immediately. In the early few weeks I even cheapskated a few for 555. After Christmas a few higher bids up to 5,555 start to appear, but they're still mostly 1,111. From around the 15th of Feb onwards, I start always paying more -- 5,555 up to the beginning of March, and then by the middle of March it's 15,555 for either immediate purchase or being left as a 'buy it soon' bid. I haven't played much in April, so I only have a few bids logged, but from the middle of April they're up at 25,555. I don't do converter roulette, so I'm not buying tons of salvage at a time and I usually make the bids then come back in a day or a few days to collect them.