Ironblade

Yikes. I had a Lady Grey on Thursday that was exactly the opposite. Everybody followed the few instructions I gave and our 'tank' was a brute that knew the missions and maps at least as well as me, if not better. Super smooth.

Well, if you're willing to go hardcore.... On Everlasting, they do Hamidon raids at least twice per day (7PM EST and 10PM, sometimes also midnight). At each time, they actually do it twice and you can get 120 merits in about 15 minutes. The devs have said they're fine with this since it requires massive teamwork (we're talking 40+ people). The reward has diminishing returns for each extra raid on the same day so if you brought a different character to each raid, they could each get 120 merits. You could get two full ATO sets in under a week. A more efficient way is to use the merits to buy converters. Sell those and buy the items off the market and you'll come out slightly ahead. Even more efficient is to use the converters to convert trash IO's to useful ones. This takes more time and research but is REALLY big bucks. The way I get merits is that I do whatever task force is the 'weekly strike target' at least once each week. Each character can get a bonus of double merits once each week. The lowest task force starts at level EIGHT so I'm sure you have many characters that could do this. The weeklies for the coming week (starting at midnight UTC) are Manticore, Mortimer Kal and Admiral Sutter. The minimum levels to join are 30, 20 and 20 respectively. I enjoy the task forces and do them for the XP since I have over 52,000 merits.

Hold on a second. I think you might be misusing a term. A proc is very specific sub-category of IO's (Invention Origin enhancements). If you really meant IO's in general, then that's a different story. You really do need at least some IO's for a good performing build. Having said that, you can put together a good build, that makes the character DRAMATICALLY more effective, for maybe . . . . between 50 and 100 million for most characters. I wrote in another thread how I made a tank incredibly tough (with 350% regen rate) for around 20 million back on live. Could do it for maybe half that now.

The first sentence is flat-out false. I would agree that you do need procs in order to min-max your character to do the absolute best possible damage. But to "successfully deal damage"? That's total nonsense. And I think I understand 'late game' reasonably well. I just checked and I have 28 characters that are fully tier 4 incarnate. As for spending billions on a build.... is that even possible? It was common back on live, but everything is so much cheaper now. A full purple set is around 120 million for the GOOD sets. I've never seen a build that could have more than six purple sets. Add the ATO's and every useful unique and I honestly don't know that you can shoehorn more than ONE billion into a single build. I guess you could spend more if you're a 'buy it now' person, but that's on the person with no patience.

Um.... no opinion? They're all good. I've taken SR to level 50 on a tank and a scrapper, regen to 50 on a scrapper and sentinel and I've taken willpower to 50 on a tank. Personally, I like regen because I like having something to click (besides inspirations) in an emergency. Also, I'll say Erratic1 isn't wrong about bio. I never change the stance and it's a really good set too. You have the OPTION of some management with the stance, but I never do. It's like my dual pistols blaster can change ammo types but never does.

Well, I would definitely try a sentinel, then. I have a water/regen sentinel and regen is better on a sentinel than a scrapper since the sentinel version gets an absorption shield.

Not me. If I find or craft any extras, I hoard them.

Most task forces get advertised on the Looking For Group channel and often also a shard-specific channel. For example, Everlasting has a channel called Everlasting TFs. Indomitable has one also, but I don't recall the exact name. On any shard, I would say search for a global channel with the name of the shard in it and see what's there. There's a lot less organized supergroup activity since every who wants can simply make their own SG with a fully-equipped base. (The prestige cost for base items has been removed.)

Googly's editing and ban-hammer are fully IO'ed.

I observe the one factor that all these "odd" task forces had in common - you. 😛

I think it was supposed to be "extremely limited" since it's a free power. Believe me, if I had to use a power pick for it, I would never take it.

Those are definitely sound choices. I would say any AT that gets a defensive set secondary, so: sentinel, brute, scrapper, stalker would my top suggestions. After that, I would ask about your play style. Do you prefer ranged combat? Is maximum damage output your goal? In this game, you can easily solo with a defender; it's just slower.

Why is it important to level 'efficiently'? If you're having fun, just play the game and you'll level when you level. If you specifically want a level 50 (to generate influence, for example), just make a fire farmer. That's the most efficient way to get XP. Of course, playing the market is the most efficient way to get influence.

I don't know that I've ever actually used it. All my characters with Superspeed also have a stealth IO in one of the prestige sprint powers.

Some stealth effects stack and some don't. For example, Superspeed plus a stealth IO in a sprint power stack just fine and give full invisibility. Annoyingly (to me), Superspeed grants "stealth", which just makes you harder to see and is useless once you get within 15-20 feet of the enemy. It just reduces their perception range. Meanwhile, the pool power 'Stealth' grants full invisibility - you can walk right up to the enemy and bump into them and they won't notice you (unless they're a sniper, Rikti drone or someone else with enhanced perception). So, in the situation you described (being right next to the enemy), the stealth from Superspeed does nothing. All the stealth powers work that way (except the one called 'Stealth', which actually grants full invisibility).

Yeah, it's a strong combo. My bots/elec MM is named Sparkie McSparkface. 🙂

Do you have a can of tuna? I'll give you 1 million inf if you have a can of tuna!

Yep. That's the way to go. I actually bought an SG back on live (when it took prestige to build the base so a decent base was worth something).

Does Gmail provide aliases? My provider allows each email account to have up to 10 aliases that go to the same mailbox.

Don't forget Hamidon. Everlasting fights Hamidon multiple times per day and does it twice each time. Two back-to-back defeats will net you 120 merits in about 15 minutes. You would then need to switch to another character if you want the 120 again on the same day.

You beat me. I only have 51,000 reward merits.

You get the two-piece bonus twice, and the three-piece bonus twice. This is sometimes called frankenslotting and it can be very effective. Back on live, I built an invuln tank with over 350% regeneration from set bonuses. Since +regen is always the first bonus, and many of the sets are cheap, it was a very inexpensive build. It cost me under 30 million influence BACK ON LIVE. I had Brawl six-slotted with two pieces each from three different sets, as an example. I had the 12% bonus five times, 10% bonus five times, 8% bonus five times. I think you get the picture. No recharge buff, no defense buff but as much regen as a /regen scrapper, but on a tanks hit points. It was shockingly effective.

I think you mean really freaking EXPENSIVE. It's not hard if you have enough purple sets. When I built a dominator, I picked the powersets that would allow me to use the maximum number of purple sets that gave +recharge. If you start with that kind of ass-backwards planning, it's not so hard. 🙂 P.S. This was back on live, so it really WAS expensive.

Okay, then. Here's one guideline: no task force takes as long as Synapse unless you go to the Shadow Shard. Some of those, particularly Dr Quaterfeld, are VERY long. Dr Q is the 8-hour nightmare TF you hear people talk about. It used to be that long due to the massive amounts of traveling within the Shard and also back and forth between the Shard and Paragon City. Nowadays it's much easier since we have a lot of improved travel powers. An organized team, where all or most have bought the enhanced travel powers from the Pay2Win vendor, can do it under two hours. Sometimes when it's the weekly, I'll solo it for the merits in about 3 or 3-1/2 hours. Two notes: It takes that long because my girlfriend and I log in multiple accounts so it's set for 4-5 players and I run it alone. By "enhanced travel powers", I mean the stuff like Mission Teleporter, Team Transporter, Base Portal, Assemble the Team. Generally speaking, you don't need to know what to expect for a speedy TF. It means they know shortcuts and are going to use every method they can to make it as fast as possible. This may mean stealthing a mission while the team does whatever. At any rate, THEY have a plan and you don't need to do anything special. Just follow the crowd and hit stuff. When the devs assigned merit rewards to the task forces, they based it on median time to completion. Go to the wiki, look up the task forces, and multiply the merit reward by 3.5 to get an estimated completion time. Two more comments: 1) You mentioned incarnate trials. Most of the shards run these on a regular basis. I only know the schedule for Everlasting. I mostly play on Everlasting, although I have Ironblade at level 50 on every shard. 2) I run task forces on a regular basis. What shard are you on?

Fair enough. My biggest issue with the policy is that it should reflect inactivity on the account, not per character, as many others have suggested. Unfortunately, this specific issue can't be addressed without a major re-write of the underlying software. So yeah, as it stands, the policy has issues but I think it's better than nothing. On the bright side, it's clear that the devs know how contentious this policy is and are looking very closely at the issues. If there are any aspects that can be addressed without a Herculean effort, it will probably happen. They may even decide not to proceed with it. I don't think that's the best possible outcome but, considering the existing problems, I think taking no action would be within the range of acceptable decisions.