Yomo Kimyata

I have a paucity of blasters on my squad, and none are anywhere near level 50. I have defenders, I have corruptors, but I've thus far failed to generate any love for the clan of the blaster. I need your help to accomplish this, and in order to give some proper incentive I will sponsor a contest. I request that you submit builds that you think I would like to play (things I like to follow), preferably in Mids form, but a description would be ok as well. I will select a build on or by May 4th, and I will give an award to the winner! Prize: EITHER I will PL you an identical blaster to 50 (any server) and fully equip the build (the @Bionic_Flea reward!) OR I will give you 1bn inf. Your choice. No Hami-Os greater than level 50 in the build (too expensive for me!) or of marginal use (no Microfilament in Prestige Sprint!). What I like: -- I want something I can play solo (not averse to teaming, but I need to be self-sufficient) at decent to hard difficulties regardless of enemy type. I normally start an alt at +1/x1 move up from there as early and often as I like. I plan on playing this at regular speed and organically. I don't know if I will play red/blue/gold side yet for this one. I don't mind eating floor at all, but I don't want a glass cannon build. Most of my builds can run at +4/x8 at 50 without incarnates, some better than others! I'd like to be able to solo all the TF Commander TFs or the equivalent (not necessarily at level, but before I hit 50). -- I *do* like close fighting, but maybe I need to expand my horizons. The vast majority of my current alts are melee based. -- The body type has to be female or huge. I just can't stand watching the male run. -- I like debuffs and I cannot lie. To hit, defense, res damage in particular. -- I do not want a build that only shines with incarnates, so plan a build without any. -- No fire melee or ice melee need apply. I cannot stand the elemental swords. This is an irrational distaste and yet a complete deal breaker. -- Most importantly, I need a valid theme or background that I can get behind. If you show me a Beam Rifle/Electricity Manipulation blaster for example, give me a story or a rationale behind it. I can come up with a name. I currently have two blasters that interest me, and if the winner is one of those builds, then I double the prize. Have at it, and happy hunting!

There's certainly some good stuff in this patch. My only major quibble is that now the first thing I have to do when I log on to every alt is to go to Null and disable the movement tray. On the plus side, now I use that opportunity to do all the other Null stuff I normally disregard, like turn off Mystic Fortune, etc.

Thanks @UberGuy. Now I have to make a tanker named Heap Change. Next question: when converting an IO by rarity, how does the algorithm work? Does it choose any (in rarity) (not in set) from a list? Does it select completely randomly and if the same set is chosen, re-roll? Does it choose a different set (in rarity) first and then select within set randomly? I hope to have another data project done soonish, but it would be nice to verify!

Seven per power.

Trick Arrow > Disruption Arrow The visual FX for this power has been changed to alleviate headaches being induced by the old VFX Due to the health implications of the old VFX, this is not an optional change Freedom Corps > Nullifier > Sonic Grenade The visual FX for this power has been changed to alleviate headaches being induced by the old VFX I don't want to cause headaches, and it is clear that this is not an optional change, but it is possible to make the new visuals a little more, well, visual? I fight a lot of Longbow, mainly because they are not Council, and you have to learn to nullify the Nullifiers. But currently the visuals are incredibly subtle. Would it be possible to keep the current floor based visuals, but maybe increase the brightness or contrast? Thanking you in advance.

Well, if you're volunteering, great, thanks! I don't have the code skills myself. I appreciate it!

You don't need to soft- or hard- cap any AT in order to solo content, except maybe AVs. In my opinion.

@Jimmy is there any GM who can answer questions about this?

Three heroes are captured by Scirocco’s troops and are tied up as the head Mu Guardian gloats. “I will grant you a choice! Death, or Endurance Drain!” ... (story unfolds) ... The third hero, horrified by the endurance drain endured by his compatriots says, “To Hell with this, I choose death!” ”Great!” says the Mu Guardian. “Death by Endurance Drain!”

It depends on what type of character I'm playing. If I'm familiar with the AT and one or both of the power sets, I'll play it organically to 50, then respec if needed. Some powers will go from 6 to 5 slots. And sometimes I'll keep respeccing if I'm trying to get the theme just right with power pools and/or epic pools. If I'm trying something new, or maybe I'm trying a challenge, I'll respec early and often. Like you say, respecs are easy and plentiful. So I may pick up a power like combat jumping at 4 just to mule the Shield Wall proc and respec out of it later when I have a different spot. I'll try out powers and if I don't like them and don't see a future for them, then out they go. So at least once. And I think a few of my 50s are at 5+ to get things just right.

Y'all should appoint GM Jude as the patron GM of lost causes...

I was hoping to use this a thread to ask GMs (if they can or will tell us) about some of the inner workings of how certain things really work. But I'm not sure who the right person to ask is, so I'll start by pinging the wise and powerful @Jimmy in the hopes that they can steer us in the right direction. And my first question is: in the AH, the first tie breaker is price, but how are trades allocated if there are identical bids or offers? If you put in block bids, some will partially fill and some will completely fill in no obvious order. If two characters are offering an item at the same price, how does the AH choose one over another? Inquiring minds want to know! And thanks!

I made a firefighter Battle axe/fire armor brute named Sergeant Tina. She doesn't cry for ANYONE!

Let me put it this way: if I had twice as much time to devote to the utterly pointless accumulation of inf, I would not be able to double my rate. Maybe a 50% increase? Something like rare roulette is profitable and entertaining in smallish doses, but is inefficient in bulk in terms of time spent and tedium endured. Yeah, one could put out 1,000 IOs a day that way (which would be good for a 2+bn profit), but I for one wouldn't want to!

I guess my comment should be amended. If someone wants to add some supplemental income to their game play, absolutely, there is room for everyone. I heartily recommend *every* player with the interest to bid on a block of 10 yellow recipes and salvage at the end of a session, and to play rare roulette when you come back on. I figure that's good for 20-30mm profit per session and diversified by nature. I also heartily recommend dabbling in areas that you find interesting, a few here and a few there. What there isn't much room for are more large scale operations, in my opinion. I have a handful of sustainable factories that are good for nice profit and large (>50 units/day, sometimes significantly more). I don't see any significant competition in those (and that was partly by design), but if it did come in then many shuvs and zuuls would know what it was like to be roasted in the Slor that day, I can tell you. But there are plenty of smaller markets that move units more slowly. And there always seems to be room in the LotG market. I'm active there, but I'm not going to go through the effort of locking down that market!

I feel like he's usually in the water room in the back on the top level, if I am remembering the right mission.

I have now sold about half my supply of WOs that I've picked up on the cheap, but have not dipped into the 1k packs I picked up. Although I think it is possible that prices on WOs go up from here, it's a sweet enough spot for me. Ironically, I've been buying winter packs in the secondary (not in huge numbers, but enough) for two reasons: 1. I started a second account and I wanted to seed the Character Items inventory with merits (for when I don't feel like buying converters in the AH) and 2. It may not be cost effective, but if I have an alt that needs a WO set, I'd rather just buy packs until I have the number of WOs that I need and convert them until I have exactly what I want. It saves me from emailing myself or spending the time buying it in the secondary market.

Thanks for this piece @Ukase, not just the snippet but the whole thing. You're right, it's just not a big enough market for *everyone* to be making this kind of scratch. And as I keep writing these guides, I realize that I'm kind of hoping that people take it and run with it because I love competition and I'm actually trying to foment more of it. And yet, that's not for everyone and I can see how that could easily be uncomfortable for people who just want to make inf. Farming may, in fact, be best for some. But I want more competition! So I can *crush* it!

Ok, I tried again, and he did show up. It is very easy to miss his body. My pro-tip is that since the mission is so dark, turn down your gamma in your graphics/audio options (I went to 50). It makes it much easier to find him.

Endurance will always be your enemy with this build, except maybe when you hit incarnates. I have a WM/DA scrapper who is great fun!

Luck, pricing, and timing, in that order. Every one of my dizzying sales was from a stack.

It *should* not matter. Block trades *should* partially execute based on price whether or not the full block size is achieved. I suspect you see that because people tend to buy salvage in large blocks rather than one or two at a time. I say *should* because the algorithm used to allocate trades is not transparent. I would have expected that the first tie breaker is price (which seems to be universally followed, despite the display bug apparently demonstrating otherwise). I would have thought the second tie breaker would have been some sort of time stamp, but it isn't purely time linear. At one point I thought it batched orders based on discrete time periods when it was inputted, but I've got plenty of evidence to the contrary. To the best of my knowledge, no dev has ever opened that black box to inspection.

Ha! I'll be honest, the only reason I was buying them was because I was looking to seed the Character Items on my second account with some merits for converters...

Well, yeah. You can come at it from the direction of "hey, I got a Quickfoot lvl 50 drop! I can craft that, convert to a Celerity, and either sell or convert more for quick profit!" And then there's "hey, why don't I sell this one and buy back one at a lower price level and save oer 250k?" and then "hey, why don't I buy ten, no, fifty of them!" and so on and then you are well past farming and in the black hole of the marketing zone. Even with people five boxing it, I don't see how farming (including drops) comes even close to the rates that active marketing does. In this thread, I'm trying to come from it from the direction of "hey, I like farming. How can I goose my returns with some quick marketing?" and to see if that goosing is easy or worthwhile or not. My jury is still out on that right now.