Yomo Kimyata

Well, you can (presumably) also have 9999 x25 merits in your Character Items inventory.

*Shouts down from a big pile of inf* I KNOW, RIGHT?

Oh, I just burn it to flaunt it. A potlatch, if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

This is also true for me, but I think that this answer begs the question of why the OP (or anyone) is looking to acquire merits. Is it simply to get the max number of merits? Definitely super packs. But super packs cost inf. Is it to get as many merits as you can and monetize them in terms or items or inf, either for building out your characters or hoarding? That's a tougher row to hoe, and if you are just trying to earn inf, I'd suggest other routes.

Someone took the name on Excelsior, so I went with Everlasting and went Spines/Radiation, because ions!

Sounds like a Spines/Energy scrapper to me.

Um, Jim Thorpe, clearly!

Can I give back your stuff?

To be fair, common salvage generally trades frequently enough that by the time you switched from one to another, the more recent trade history may make it look like an different trading history. But it is all in the same bucket.

I see a complete sea-change from Live with respect to the value of flippers, and in this case I'll define it rigidly as someone who buys all available supply at a given price and relists it, presumably at a higher price. On Live, things were rigidly defined, and not fungible. If you wanted to set a monopoly on level 10 Panacea E/R enhancements, that was pretty easy to do, even with the limited number of market slots and character slots. Nowadays, if you want to buy out an entire category and relist at a higher price, good luck, because the replacement cost of that inventory is astoundingly low. That said, there are absolutely times I buy 50-500 items (and I'm not even talking salvage) if I feel that I can turn it around at a higher price because, hey, I can.

I don't roll a lot of natural 1s, but I'm definitely getting 1-3 way more than 15% of the time...

It's always been that way for Overwhelming Force, ever since they introduced it.

If you look at the trading history, well, there is none. Not a single Strength of Will has traded since Homecoming launched. But what is interesting is that in theory you can get Strength of Will inspirations from chasing bounty in Siren's Call in PvP(lol). I have zero interest in that personally! Indeed, that was how I store(d) most of my influence. I went with Iron Wills since they are currently not in existence at all. I may put some bids in on Strength of Will for giggles to see if anyone actually is willing to farm for them, but it's not really high on my list of things to do. "Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"

one way to look at this as an optimization problem is: given a team size and difficulty setting, what results in the greatest rewards in the shortest time with the smallest probability of catastrophe. And, for what I’ve seen of the meta, HC’s managers have had such a ridiculous hard on for tankers that it is difficult to make the argument that you can optimize with a scrapper over a tank for 8 person teams for any common sets. “Ability to abuse”indeed. However, I play solo mostly at high levels, and even though this isn’t exactly rocket surgery at any level, I find that my optimization is always scrapper focused. I’m going to send Batman after the Joker, rather than have Superman throw him into the sun. I’ll play chess, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to win a tic-tac-toe tournament. So play what you will but homecoming made tanks into the tank mage class and that’s not going to change. That said, I’ll pit my solo 4/8 times as a scrapper over anyone else’s tank

For your example, ask yourself what sort of set bonuses were you looking for in the first build and how will they differ for the second. Off the top of my head, shifting from SR to Willpower means you lose a lot of defense and gain other forms of mitigation in terms of damage resistance and healing. I'd look at the set bonuses for your attacks and try to work in a lot more melee defense, for example.