Yomo Kimyata

As a part of Project Unicorn, the worst of the worst was Drummer Boy (Sonic/AR). Now I know that none of us really have any idea what a unicorn is anymore and won't until the devs release updated information. But this combination was unknown back in March, and for good reason. Two underperforming sets with little or no synergy doth a craptastic combo make. But I got him to 50, and had two builds throughout the process, one for solo, one for team play. Yesterday I dusted him off and started thinking about how I would improve him. So I'm asking you, how would YOU build and play this combo? I'll give my thoughts and build below, but I almost always learn something new by looking at someone else's build thought process. My thoughts for this build are: - mostly solo work, but contribute on a team. - I don't have a ton of high level defenders, so the epic/patron pools are all interesting to me. I chose dark mastery but am not wed to it. - max out resists where I can and then focus on melee defense (since dark mastery is pretty in your face). - endurance help is needed, especially on team play. Disruption Field is a little piggy when it comes to endurance. - use the team shields mostly for set bonuses. My experience is that very few people on high level teams really need that res help. - I haven't even thought about incarnates yet. Here's what I'm working towards now: If this were your baby, how would you build him/her/they?

Don’t get hit.

I got completely sidetracked from this project. I figured the DEFCON Five needed a nemesis, a time traveler from a post-nuclear future, whose objective is to foment nuclear war. DEFCON Zer0 is a rad/bio brute and incredibly entertaining. He is the most villanous villain I have ever villained.

I use the term to refer to setting lowball bids on something that someone spent a lot of inf on, but is willing to sell for a ridiculously low amount of inf. I used them to pick off a few lvl 53 HOs; I bought a lot of WOs that way; it still fuels my ATO-traders. I should probably come up with a nicer term, but people willing to spend 10+mm on things really shouldn't offer them at prices lower than they are willing to accept...

I’ve already set noob traps and will set more after the event!

Well, it appears that prices have rebounded from their lows. It seems to me there are a few simple ways to profit: 1. Buy pack, open now, sell contents now. Seems profitable. 2. Buy pack, wait, sell pack after event is over. 3. Buy pack, wait, open and sell contents after event is over. As I said in another post, I’ve been creating synthetic Winter packs: 1.2 WOs and 50 converters. I’ve been replicating them for a well under 10mm a pop. I also bought a thousand packs to consider for the future. But I’m certainly not buying as much as some people! I will say, I’m using WOs a lot more than normal. For new alts under lvl 17-22, I’ve been using WOs until other set IOs come into play.

I'm looking forward to Parts II through XX.

Once you build up more of a stash, check this out: Until then, two simple options include: 1. Buy SOs ( which are available at every level now) and upgrade them every 3-5 levels with the Upgrade option; 2. Buy common IOs starting at level 15, upgrade at 25 and then again at 50. Then I’d prioritize accuracy, end reduction, damage, damage, recharge, damage in that order. Happy hunting!

I do have a claus/fire stalker, but I need to check to see if 50 yet.

Congrats! You gave them exactly the selling price they wanted!

I'm with you. I'd love to see the new stats, but I understand if they don't publish them. That said, don't make a Sonic/AR defender. I want to be the only one to complain about how godawful a combo it is.

Talk to the Devouring Earth: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission:Common_-_Save_the_lawyers_from_the_Devouring_Earth

Nonononono. Set IOs are bucketed, but common IOs are not.

Careful. The forum has a policy against dock pics.

Crafted common IOs are an odd duck. People who are crafting for badges generally will want to sell them for whatever they can get for them right away, which generally will be well below the crafting cost. People who want one right away and who don't want to bother buying the recipe themselves and crafting will want to buy them for wherever they are offered, which generally will be well above the crafting cost. So yeah, you can middle it and buy and relist. But in general, I'd say that it's not a ton of money since I don't think the buying volume is tremendously high. But I could be wrong, I often am!

I would argue that all of the mez IO sets except Hold and Knockback could use some more diversity and some useful procs.

I avoid General unless I really feel like humorous banter. There's just too much going on there. I often participate on Help, one way or another. The only issue there is sometimes people try to help when they don't understand the question and there is a lot of splaining. But I chalk that off to people trying to help. Some help topics are matters of opinion after all.

Dusting this off for the end of 2020. Come get your holiday cheer! Tell your friends! Tell your enemies!

My general rules when looking at brute versus tanker are: 1. What powers do I want first? Do I want the T9 power at lvl 32 or do I want it at lvl 38?; 2. Do I want to use ancillary pool powers early or late? I'm generally going to want the T8 and T9 offense powers for tanks at lvl 35 and lvl 38, so if I want those ancillary powers early I'll go brute rather than tanker.

Part VI: Closing thoughts and opinions - I think the AH should be for player-to-player transactions, not for dumping for fixed prices what people consider to be their trash. There are vendors almost everywhere, and they are happy to take your salvage, enhancements, recipes. As such, I'm going to revise my suggestion that the fixed price items from the P2W should be moved to the AH. Instead, I'm going to suggest that the devs create a command similar to /AH where you can access a vendor or the P2W vendor (or even the merit vendor) from any non-instanced location. Also, I'm going to suggest that somehow you make it possible to sell IOs to a vendor for a pittance if you *really* want to -- this would need some sort of bullet-proof "are you really sure* protection, because someone somewhere is going to sell a purple by accident and we will never hear the end of it. - I don't really see how adding more information on trading history really adds value to either a buyer or a seller. The trading log only records what the last buy price was -- this may have little relationship to where current bids or offers are. I really enjoy the uncertainty of knowing exactly where things are bid or offered, and frankly it's not very difficult to find out exactly where things are bid or offered. I reiterate, however, that the time stamp would be really useful. - I don't want HC to become the equivalent of going onto Test and insta-leveling and insta-equipping your character for free. That's a philosophical opinion of mine, and your opinion may differ. - I don't think you need to revolve the system around the "top hat and monocle crowd", but you do need to take them into account. There are a very large number of net consumers, and a small number of net suppliers. The suppliers may be few in number, but they do have an outsized impact on the player driven market. - There needs to be incentive to keep up both demand and supply for long-term vitality of the player-driven market. One way to keep demand high is to encourage new players to join and (more importantly) encourage current players to create and equip new alts. One way to keep supply high is to create a large scale influence sink so people will want to continue to make a profit. - I think that concerns about market manipulation are mostly (entirely?) unfounded, and trust me, I'm champing at the bit hoping someone tries to drive prices up significantly because I will make a lot of inf out of it. There are a lot of safeguards, some of which haven't even been mentioned yet. Not all caps are hard caps. Market PvP LOL is not prevalent, but I'd love to get some going! - I don't think it is a good idea to have devs set prices on items in general, and I always find it interesting to hear people say something is too expensive. That generally means they just don't have enough influence for it right now. I just ran two near-identical clear-all council paper missions at level 50, one at +0/x1 and one at +4/x8, and vendored every drop including IO recipes. They netted 701,930 and 1,911,878 inf respectively, and would be worth a few mm more if the yellow and orange recipes were crafted and converted. It might be difficult to self-fund a single character as it levels, but I find it unconvincing that prices as they stand right now are so high that making a million inf a mission on a 50 isn't enough to buy whatever you want in a relatively brisk fashion. You may not agree, and that's cool. Not everyone has a 50, but there is nothing prohibiting anyone from having one. - There are no gates. I hear you that people think it is not helpful to say anyone can do it, but there really are no gates other than education and effort. As @gameboy1234 demonstrated, you can make about 2-3mm in profit per IO once you figure things out. If you want to do 1 IO in a week or 1000 in a day, it's up to you and your tolerance for tedium. - There needs to be more education, and better distribution of that education, in order for the benefits of using the player-driven markets to be used by anyone with the need or desire. There are a lot of well-written guides on these forums (some of which were even written by me!), and everyone I know in the "top hat and monocle" clan is extremely open and friendly in sharing their knowledge. That said, if you don't know those guides are there, or you don't read them, or you don't understand them, or if you are just plain not on the forums, then they aren't helping you. In game resources would help a LOT. Happy hunting to all! May your fingers never get fat and accidentally bid too much for converters! Yomo

Some thoughts: -- there are very few skippable powers in either set. For Bio I *might* skip Genetic Contamination; for Staff I would skip Merc Blow, Taunt, and *maybe* Sky Splitter (I just don't like it). -- I play Bio very offensively, so get some defensive help by putting a LotG def/rech in Guarded Spin, and look for melee defense bonuses elsewhere. -- Staff has three powers that take the Force Feedback +rech. Try to find a way to work them in and you can cut back your slotting for Hasten or even drop it. -- For Ablative Carapace I usually 6-slot Preventative Medicine and for Parasitic Aura I usually 5- slot Panacea (and put in a 6th slot if I can fit it for the Taunt +proc). -- I treat DNA Siphon as a PBAoE nuke rather than a heal.

I only have a few broadsword characters, but they are very special to me. The broadsword/bio brute is working out *very* well.

Anyone could easily put in 1,000 bids at 5 inf each, or offer 1,000 items at 100mm each (although they would eat the posting fee). That doesn't have any effect on the transaction level.

Bio is great with everything, but I get extra oomph out of something that adds a little melee defense, like broadsword or staff fighting.

I very much appreciate your comments. I certainly didn't expect very many of my suggestions to be popular... One thing I'd like to ask, on a side bar, is about market manipulation. I see very little of it, but I'm wondering if you are seeing things I don't, or just if we have different definitions for it. For example, I would consider buying all of something, then relisting it 50% higher as market manipulation. Something like Red Fortune recipe prices being "higher than they should be for what they do" doesn't count as market manipulation, as they are almost certainly being converted to LotG for a profit. In that case, their value as ingredients trumps their usefulness as a set. The reason I ask this is that I feel that it's a real bugaboo to a lot of people, myself included, but I don't see very much of it, and when it does show up, supply and/or demand comes into play to rectify it rather quickly. I'm just checking to see if my assumption is correct that this is fear of manipulation talking rather than actual observation of manipulation.