BitCook

I have tried to play Blasters over the years and never liked them. They are boring to me usually. Do a rotation and move on. If the rotation isn't enough DPS you lose. Corruptors and Defenders, to me, are a more fun playstyle. If your def isn't good enough... you have tricks. If your DPS isn't good enough... you have tricks. If it is, rotate and move on. Blasters do more damage, no doubt about it. But that's mostly all they do. Yes, they are now survivable... but meh... just doesn't cut it for me. I like interesting applications of powers and the ability to shift the battle for a team. It seems to me to be easier to do this with a support set. With that all said, it sometimes is discouraging to be on a team where there are some really good blasters because you are just not needed 🙂

If this were a business I'd totally agree! But... it's not. Yes, buy low, sell high. But do you really need to sell over the going rate for stuff? Or buy up all the lower priced things and then sell them at a higher than market rate? No. This is a community, and treating people as friends rather than marks or customers should be a goal. Make money on the market. Don't do shenanigans just to make a little more inf. That's my theory. I know everyone doesn't share it, but it's how I like to play.

In most cases there are 1-2 enhancements that are high value in a set. Like say, defense sets. There's always the rech/end enhancement that seems to be cheaper while the def or def/end one is way more expensive. At long as the price difference is over a million which is the average price to convert to exactly what you need in a set, then you're better off converting. Procs are usually the same. Hold damage procs especially so! But yeah, it's a great way to save inf if you care about doing so!

I would say it is just for the fact that you are working to get to 50 for an amount of time and to have no real payoff at the end is a shame. I get what you are saying, I just think it's sad that it's the case. No problem. I do market stuff and most of my toons have close to 2bil inf on them. However, I don't do shenanigans. I'm happy to pay market price. I'm happy to list at just under market price. Making inf is so easy I don't need to cheat or gouge anyone. As long as you list at values you're happy to sell at and I'm fine with buying at market price, then the system is working just fine 🙂

Yeah, I would agree with that. But, I would say that there are enough people who do, that the general market price is dictated by this conversion cost. At least that's my opinion... which, I'm not an economist and only looked at it enough to kind of verify what I thought was happening. Fully admit that it's not a hard line, but more of a loose correlation that I think regulates prices for the whole market. That's a shame. It's fun to let loose with all of your powers now and again. Although I would agree that the best TEAM experience is from say 30 to 44. Take incarnates out and the game has a much better team dynamic because people still have needs that they can't easily cover up. Oh, yeah. I like using merits to buy Winter sets for when I need them. The rest I use for converters... but I don't sell them. I use them to craft yellows that I get from playing, convert to rares and sell them. For say 5 converters, I usually can make a 2+ million profit for very little work. I just make things I have the salvage too and don't really spend much time marketing. I bought a couple sets over the past month and didn't pay more than 8mil a piece, but then again, I am patient... so I might be getting deals by just waiting a bit with bids in the system. Fully admit that I don't keep very close tabs on it.

It's not true for everything, but it certainly is for Purple drops. I do think that a lot of people look for alternatives when things become too expensive. It's not a coincidence that purples sell for around 20 million. Consider 60k to 70k per converter, 100 merits for each purple. 300 converters for 100 merits and... 300 * 60k = 18,000,000 or 300 * 70k = 21,000,000. That's pretty spot on. Fluxuate a little for convenience and yeah... I think those two are tied to merits pretty tightly. For Oranges, I think the cost of Rare salvage AND the cost of converters probably has more to do with their price point than anything else... you can buy a yellow for cheap (10-20k). Then convert it to your category with a 1/26 chance to get the category you want (1.5mil average cost). Inside of there, you usually have a 1/6 chance of getting the enhancement you want at 3 converters per chance (1m average cost) = 2.5mil average cost on Oranges just from a merit conversion price... which again, isn't far off what we see in the market. I doubt too many people are doing this, mostly because 2mil is nothing to most characters, most like people convert to rare, which is a far lower cost, then maybe bounce it a few times to get a more expensive version. However, I still think there is correlation there although I'm not going to go any further to prove it out 🙂 Now for the things out of Super Packs, they have their own market caps. Yes, I can spend 100 merits to get a ATO. But... 10million is the cost of the pack and you get 1.2 ATOs per pack. So around 8 million becomes the cap that people will pay before trundling off to open the packs as opposed to using anything else to get them. (consider you have to spend an average of 1m in converters to get to the ATO set you want as well.) Winter sets are more expensive because the cost of the pack is more expensive although it will never really go much beyond 18-21mil for extended periods of time since you can just get them with Merits instead at that point. Which... 1.2 Winter sets per pack... 25 million = 20.1mil. Again pretty close in value to the cost of converters. So is it solely based the cost of a converter? No... probably not a hard number, but I think it's still pretty closely tied to merits/purple for nearly everything. Edit: Included the 1m it costs to convert ATOs to the set you wanted. Which is a factor in the cost.

Of course the counter argument to this is that you can play and have fun with SOs too 🙂 For which you don't need to do really anything other than play. But, again, I don't really care, lower the prices, leave them alone, it doesn't really matter. Making inf is trivial and doesn't take away time from game play really.

When did making INF become hard? Anyone who wants to be a have can do a quick search on the forums and figure out how to make inf. It's really not that hard. If you put ANY effort into it, you can make a billion a week with fairly minimal time commitments. That's not even trying to "play" the market. Just buy things, make them, sell them at market price. No shennanigans. No trying to influence price. The second part, is that people having boat loads of inf has VERY little impact on anyone's ability to play the game. The market is really set by the conversion of merits to inf. That's the cap and it will never really change all that much. So things have a natural limit to them that regardless on Mr. Moneybags desire, will pretty much stay constant. People may change the price on a thing for a day, but rarely more than that. With that said, I don't care if Winter Packs go on sale or not. As I said, you can make more inf than you will ever need for a character in a week or two of simple buy and sell things. I don't market that much, just enough to outfit the character I am playing on, then I stop. If you don't want to buy things, get merits, buy things. Really, stuff is not that hard to get. Play the game in the way you enjoy and move on. Don't worry about what other people have or don't have.

Bad pugs are just progress to debt badges and opportunity to RP 🙂 I was on a 50+ defeat Posi I and had a ball. To be honest, steamroller teams are rarely fun. I'd rather have a challege and people who can laugh at what's happening.

Basically any set that has a reasonable amount of survivability is a good solo set. That means things that provide a substantial amount of defense and or healing. If it includes -res on a short cool down it will be even better. Additional sources of plus damage are good. Additional soft controls are good. Different people put different values on sets. I'm still not 100% sold on TA but I can see the argument for it. When you are building for solo play you need to have answers for a lot of different threats. You also have to decide the type of content you want to play. Some solo tunes are very good at AV and monster killing, some are great for plowing through massed mobs. At the end of the day it has to be something that you enjoy. Even if it's not the most optimal setting you can likely make it work. IOs an incarnates cover up a lot of flaws.

Time, Rad, Dark, EA, ForceField, Nature, Traps and Storm will all give you a decent solo experience. TA, Cold, Pain can be done, but may not be optimal. Poison, Sonic, Empathy, Thermal can be rough. /Fire, Elec, Ice, Water, Rad, DP, and Dark all have decent blast sets that are complimentary to a lot of primaries. Some combinations that I have enjoyed: Dark/Fire, Time/Rad, Rad/NRG, Rad/Ice, Time/Ice, Poison/Dark, Nature/Sonic, Cold/Fire. Basically, you can't really go wrong if you get a set that has some kind of defensive power in it, some way to buff/debuff and you'll have a decent solo experience.

Here is one I have. It's pretty solid, but there is room for improvement. This Villain build was built using Mids Reborn 3.4.7 https://github.com/LoadedCamel/MidsReborn Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Technology Corruptor Primary Power Set: Seismic Blast Secondary Power Set: Dark Miasma Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Speed Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Shatter (A) Superior Scourging Blast - Damage/RechargeTime (3) Superior Scourging Blast - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime (3) Superior Scourging Blast - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 1: Tar Patch (A) Recharge Reduction IO (5) Recharge Reduction IO Level 2: Rock Shards Hamidon Origin:Nucleolus Exposure Level 4: Twilight Grasp (A) Theft of Essence - Chance for +Endurance (15) Panacea - Heal (15) Panacea - Heal/Endurance (17) Panacea - Endurance/Recharge (17) Panacea - Heal/Recharge (19) Panacea - Heal/Endurance/Recharge Level 6: Entomb (A) Superior Scourging Blast - RechargeTime/PBAoE +End (19) Superior Scourging Blast - Accuracy/Damage (21) Superior Scourging Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (21) Apocalypse - Chance of Damage(Negative) (23) Apocalypse - Damage (23) Touch of Lady Grey - Chance for Negative Damage Level 8: Seismic Force (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up Level 10: Darkest Night (A) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Endurance (25) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff (25) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Recharge (27) Dark Watcher's Despair - To Hit Debuff/Recharge/Endurance Level 12: Upthrust (A) Touch of Lady Grey - Chance for Negative Damage (27) Achilles' Heel - Chance for Res Debuff (29) Bombardment - Chance for Fire Damage (29) Shield Breaker - Chance for Lethal Damage (31) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy) (31) Force Feedback - Chance for +Recharge Level 14: Howling Twilight (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 16: Shadow Fall (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (31) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (33) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance (33) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (33) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance Level 18: Tombstone (A) Sting of the Manticore - Chance of Damage(Toxic) (34) Sting of the Manticore - Accuracy/Damage (34) Sting of the Manticore - Damage/Endurance (34) Sting of the Manticore - Damage/Interrupt/Recharge (36) Sting of the Manticore - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (36) Decimation - Chance of Build Up Level 20: Fearsome Stare (A) Glimpse of the Abyss - Chance of Damage(Psionic) (36) Glimpse of the Abyss - Accuracy/Fear/Recharge (37) Glimpse of the Abyss - Endurance/Fear (37) Glimpse of the Abyss - Accuracy/Endurance (37) Glimpse of the Abyss - Fear/Range Level 22: Stalagmite (A) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Recharge/Chance for Negative Energy Damage (39) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge (39) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Accuracy/Damage (39) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Damage/Recharge (40) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (40) Superior Malice of the Corruptor - Damage/Endurance/Recharge Level 24: Kick (A) Empty Level 26: Meteor (A) Artillery - Accuracy/Damage (40) Artillery - Damage/Endurance (42) Artillery - Damage/Recharge (42) Artillery - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (42) Artillery - Accuracy/Recharge/Range (43) Artillery - Endurance/Recharge/Range Level 28: Tough (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) (43) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% Level 30: Dark Servant (A) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage (43) Cloud Senses - ToHit Debuff/Endurance/Recharge (45) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/ToHitDebuff (45) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge (45) Cloud Senses - Accuracy/Recharge (50) Cloud Senses - ToHit Debuff Level 32: Weave (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (46) Red Fortune - Defense (46) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance Level 35: Maneuvers (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (46) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance Level 38: Tactics Hamidon Origin:Cytoskeleton Exposure Level 41: Charged Armor (A) Unbreakable Guard - +Max HP (48) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance/RechargeTime (48) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance (50) Unbreakable Guard - Resistance/Endurance Level 44: Combat Jumping (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed Level 47: Hasten (A) Recharge Reduction IO (50) Recharge Reduction IO Level 49: Vengeance (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed Level 1: Scourge Level 1: Brawl | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1641;724;1448;HEX;| |78DA7594494F535114C7FF6F6228438132535A4066B05013772E0CA0894A1322C66| |DD3D047791168D396443E805FC08D1BBF8089E346893BE39828D1A84B0722A30B87| |851A5DD5C33BEFD88B849BB4EF77CFF9DF73CF3D77885D9CA85C7D31791C9A7F7C3| |E91CBC5C7D3D9EC52269FCEFACED933738BE9F9746AD900B552FA85FE79E367138B| |293B1999B69DDC8233131FA3C1F9D6A27B6C6976363291C85E88C79C446E2181AAA| |9747A3E72D249CDE59DC594DFED4DDA89A49DCDCD39994AE967C8E9733BD319DB4E| |B69CC838339162D8D8523C4613D9D9E5664AA7937E9F06E94F83B4820EF49840D48| |48E5E813E8647DA5E2DE1107DA3E53005D6299CA6482C0D2B70079741B75CF06155| |F7A0842AD36EA2120FC812D88563BB9532F090421850C218A8636D353A0C7774358| |20C3568170831D421CCB041D9586A3616064C4FD2CD508F7E8128A7D58861012FD1| |4D0A53AA84A1BDBCC69EC7642D573C4639EEB3A7197705EE31B46285618BC255148| |B54B02A64A2562944508A15941A85A48E215C62F1138A50A56655259BF094AC7EC5| |63FAD1A07983EB193A5023F0C3F0E027C336A557AB16AD166F79EA4EBC147825F09| |AE110DE085C25A003F38C4204942D340358D33CC947866EBC13782FF08161879268| |500F4003EE707ABDB82D705DE006431F6E0ADC62D0E9D6352961A853A086CF14BE4| |55D630B0CCB1B6A320CC012281128651844198341E1DBD40BD18623862769D2DC7D| |7BBEFB5117D28E1DDDF50C628B61181B02DB029B0C51AC3398345358BDA661D9D2C| |3A816F031D492B64BCDAAABA8F5240192F4A8921E1CE59B372290A785F4AB47BB1F| |7F786D23F82DE09D9DA89C9D468A3BA49EC92199BA8B3C1175C6889CD6A8403D494| |6D5CD1A95C1A74CD792144F2168426D05D748FB3A79807DCA541F2EB26B6CFFE2DB| |FBA289FEEB01F66FBE7DAF6527AFDCC479CEB504A735F7027CDFAFBDA27B92CBBAF| |726FEE2C767EDBF57B870860CA3AAE12F2EF9DB65| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

I'm going to ignore the debate on if there is merit to killing an AV, because I find it fun, challenging and enjoyable to make builds that can. Yes, there are always going to be better things, but so what? Controllers have been in a strange place ever since the purple patch came in and it's only gotten worse with the power proliferation that's happened over the years. Sure, most good DPS characters can manage it. However, I don't need to be the best, but I still see AV killing as at least a badge of a reasonably competent build. With that said, the one I didn't think would do it seems to be rather good at it. Dark/Poison. I didn't think the toon would have enough survivability to manage it, but they did and I've gone through most of the Maria Jenkin's arc with them at this point.

Ironically, things get far easier at 50. You get incarnate access and can boost your abilities significantly, which translates down to 45. But I have found that if you like the toon at 40-45, you love them at 50.

I have taken it to 50 twice as well. What I was aiming to do, is make the set a little more functional to play. The radius seems like a no brainer. There are other sets with equally as good a buffs that have a significantly higher radius. So I don't think this is a balance issue. What the set lacks, is any sort of additional defensive mitigation. For a set that's supposed to live in melee, right off the bat there's a dichotomy. Giving the set a resistance power would help with that. Alkaloid seems like the right power and would actually make you think about taking it. That is, assuming that it worked on yourself and had some sort of +res(all) component added into it.

I would agree except... it's also a set that wants to be melee based with nearly zero mitigation powers. I do think it needs a little bump of something to help it play in Melee range. ...and I meant Alkaloid, not antidote. Stupid user 🙂

I have tried to like and play Poison over and over and every time, the set seems underwhelming and janky to play. With no heal, no defense or resist based powers in the set it's also perhaps the most squishy of the support sets. I'd love to see one or perhaps two changes that I think would keep it's unique position in Support sets, while addressing some of it's many shortcomings. (1) Change the Radius of the debuffs. The mechanic of a ST debuff with a splash radius is cool, but the radius is so painfully small that in practice, it's close to a ST power. Contrast that to Time or Dark which have similar debuffs and 25ft radius, Rad has a 15ft radius. 8ft is practically single target in a lot of content. I get that eventually you will get Venomous Gas, which is a PBAoE debuff... but again, it's only 15ft. For the ST debuffs, give them either a 20 or 25ft radius on the splash. That would let you swap targets in a chaotic fight and have a reasonable chance to either covering all the foes, or getting the double coverage you need. I would love to see the Venomous Gas increase to 25ft like the other PBAoE debuffs, but that might be too much given the -RES in it. (2) Make Alkaloid affect the caster, add a RES all component to it. I'm not sure what the value would be, but giving it a +RES (all) or +RES (some) on the order of 10-15% or so would go a long way to giving the set a decent survival mechanic. Additionally, it would be a fairly unique one giving a support set a status resist for self. I really want to like poison, but each time I play it, it becomes a relatively frustrating experience and one that I can usually alleviate by playing other sets which have similar debuffs and some survivability tools as well. Edit: Stupid OP referenced the wrong power. Alkaloid, not antidote 🙂

I am slowly working on a guide for Time/Rad that I'll put up at some point with builds.

It is. We just ran a +4 Lady Grey and I had to laugh as one of the teammates said, "this is the first time I've ever seen a Defender Tank before" You can drive into a pile of 54s with fairly little issue. Release a bunch of AOE hell for the mobs and move on to the next. The AT set is pretty flexible in that you can customize for very good ST or AOE (with decent ST). The AOE build has a nearly seemless AOE rotation. It works for me, I get the appeal of cold, but Time is just so good since it does a lot of things well.

I have a Time/Rad that's very good. They can do just about anything. High Defenses? Check. High Damage? Check. Can solo AVs before incarnates? Check. Make teams really durable? Check. It's one of my favorite characters.

I leveled a Poison/Dark character from 1-50. While it wasn't one of my strongest solo characters, I certainly didn't have the kinds of issues you are talking about. Yes, some enemies were harder than others. But I certainly wasn't having issues with 0/0 missions at all, even with bosses. I think EBs were usually kind of rough and required inspirations. I would agree that Poison needs a little help to match other support sets in terms of survivability, but it's still a pretty potent set at what it does. Now for damage, I relied heavily on Procs, which might have pushed my DPS higher than yours and thus "solved" the endurance issue. Edit: The more I think about it, it's probably a DPS/Damage issue. If you aren't doing decent damage, then you're going to struggle trying to kill things before the END runs dry. Are you biased to AOE damage? Or do you have a decent ST chain?

Consider hard mode, there is a substantial benefit for doing so. Why? Because it will take you longer and the Devs (rightly in my opinion) are trying to let you choose how to play but still attempting to balance the rewards given in inf/hour or merits/hour. Thus, part of my idea is in return for doing the content slower (no mass nukes, etc) you get a bump to the rewards to make up for it. So why ask for it? There are a fair number of us that feel that incarnates blur the lines between ATs. When everyone has access to capped resists and large AOE nukes, it make a lot of character concepts far less valuable or needed. This is way to give them back some prominence without having to make the game harder for everyone else.

It would be nice to see on normal content as well. Also, I may not want content set to 8 heroes. Giving options on the difficulty can only be good. People can completely ignore it if they don't want it.

I would want no change into normal gameplay. Just leave it as is. Lots of people like it. However, to sort of encourage people who want to play with more challenge, or a closer vision to the original ATs, then giving them a small bonus would be appropriate since they would likely be slower at content than level shifted incarnates. In my OP, I suggested some bonus inf and perhaps even merits for giving up all incarnates. The idea is not to mess with the game that certainly plenty of people like, but give people like me that want a place for controllers, tankers, etc in 45+ content to have options to play that way and the ability to easily recruit people to play with that setting. Basically, the idea is: If content right now gives X inf a minute, then playtest to see how much slower teams are without incarnates and give them a bonus to make up the gap back to X inf a minute, or a little less.

I can. But right now, if I want to team, it's very hard to find the like minded people when asking in LFG. That would be like asking why HC put in hard mode when you could just unslot all your IOs and make it very hard? Because it was a way for them to increase difficulty without impacting everyone. This is a similar concept. It's just another option, and one that a fair number of people would like. It doesn't impact people who love their Incarnate power and I'm sure plenty of people will choose to play that way. But this is just another hard mode that undoes some of the problems for certain types of ATs that get trivialized by incarnates. Give a small reward for doing content harder, just like the Hard mode they included already, and it just gives another mode for people to play. Edit: So to directly answer the question, it's just a matter of convenience. Like Hard mode is for people that want extreme challenge.