Yomo Kimyata

Hi all. I recently dipped my toe into the PB and WS waters. I generally like to level up my alts rather than PL them, and since I'm relatively unfamiliar with the play of HEATs I wanted to experience that first hand. Normally with a new blue alt, I put the difficulty on +1/x3 at start and adjust the x downward if needed. My question is: how do you deal with quantums before level 7? There seems to be at least one in every mission, and it is a death sentence each time. Even if you see it first, you get maybe two hits in and then you are bouncing in KD animation until you go to the hospital. At level 7, I can see putting a KB proc in one of your powers, but before that, is it just carrying a break free with you for every mission? Or am I missing something really simple and obvious. I don't mind eating floor at all, but the inevitability of it is starting to grate on me. Thanks for your attention!

You gave yourself two solutions! 1. Don’t run a full team. Try four. Try two! 2. Go for the challenging enemies. Play Red. Play Gold!

I'd like to thank my family, my friends, and everyone else who strikes fear in me for the inspiration. I went back and took mine out for a spin to reacquaint myself. Currently lvl 45 redside, running at +3/x5, bosses, EBs. As far as gameplay, it feels like it mostly plays like a ST scrapper. I don't have Water Spout or Fear Incarnate, but I do use all the other fear powers. Touch of Fear is a debuffer, Invoke Panic is crowd control, Intimidate is used mostly as a Taunt substitute. As far as the rest of the build goes, I definitely also took some different directions from my initial build. That's partly because I play it as a levelling build for the most part. I moved Tough and Weave way up in the rotation. I also slipped a KB IO in there somewhere, since I think I forgot one in my build. Based on my experience with Dark Armor, I think I over estimated my need for endurance. In actual play, I went Weapon Mastery for Physical Perfection (just a Perf Shifter proc) and added the Targeting Drone. Playing redside, I found myself debuffed a lot more than I expected, so wanted to up that to hit (and get a little to hit debuff res). I had completely forgotten what a mess it is getting ambushed by packs of +4 Arachnoid bosses, who debuff like crazy! I think I'll also have to put Hasten in there somewhere and get rid of Shadow Maul, which is now a completely useless power in my eyes. Thanks for putting it back on my radar screen! I'll get it to 50 sometime this summer and probably experiment with some incarnate slotting. I'll PM you, but I think I'm happy enough with the prize of having won this frightful contest -- no other rewards necessary!

I haven't done this in a while. Just bought 25 Villain Packs, got 21 imbuements and double insps, and 32 ATOs. Everything else is added to my piles of "other" in email, so there is definitely value there but I don't track merits and converters and catalysts, et al. (Anyone want 260 Build Snow Beasts? 😀) If the ATOs are trading 8-10mm, then that doesn't seem like enough profit to justify the effort, but let's see! EDIT: ok, ten hours later I’m on target for about 40% ROI. My strategy was to reroll ATOs to strong selling ones. Defender ATOs went like hot cakes at around 20mm a piece and I had a bunch of them. Curious to me since they were listed a LOT lower than that. Got lucky I guess!

Nerf it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

This is a perfect case of using the tools you have to get the results you want, and I love seeing it! Use your imagination and the customization tools to rationalize your powers, rather than ask developers to spend time and resources to make up something brand new just for you. I have a Time/Energy defender named Compound Interest. In my mind, and visually, his energy powers derive from throwing money at someone and using his time powers to cause it to multiply and knock people down. Pretty silly right? I would never waste the developers' attention and time and ask them to make a money set.

Something I think about when reading this sub forum is that this game kept running on a closed server for seven years with a very limited population. I’d be interested to hear from people who were advocating for change back then. The meta a year ago was massive influx of former players from Live. I feel like the current meta is mostly veteran players either A. Running certain team content for rewards, or B. Trying out lots and lots of alts. I would love for the meta to become lots of brand new players.

A really good QoL would be something that would let you limit your xp gain. Like “xp until lvl 14” or “Xp until just before lvl 15.” That way you don’t have to watch it closely. I’d be way down with that.

Owlbears. Very dangerous. You go first.

I like to give compliments easily and often, because, hey, who doesn’t like validation! My favorite compliments though are people who like my look, or my name, or my bio. My favorite compliment was from someone who sent me a tell saying, “I’ve been laughing at your SG name for ten minutes and had to say something.”

A simple idea might be to add a foe hp multiplier. So you could play something like +2/x5/*4. That would help keep minions from getting wiped instantly.

I’ve got a bunch of alts (75 < x < 100) and low leveling is probably my favorite part. At double xp blue side I’ll get them up to level 17 solo by: tutorial, initial contact missions to level 5, KR radios to the safeguard for the jet pack, hollows to Frostfire, Steel Canyon radios to the safeguard, finish Hollows (usually halt XP at 14 so I don’t outlevel missions) to unlock Cavern trial and Hollows merit bonus, Montegue arc for Midnighters to visit Argot in AP, more Steel radios to the 16-19 safeguard, go to AP and get the Lost Cure. That’s 17, then I tp to see an Angry Young Man in Faultline. Takes a few hours and it’s lots of fun for me. I enjoy low leveling because it’s fast and concrete. Every level provides utility and improves my play. And by the time I hit 17, my reward is to outfit him or her with IO sets. It’s very satisfying, so much so that even though I know lots of people hate low leveling, I can’t really wrap my head around why. But that’s ok!

I thought the title was really apt! The current meta for team play is Zerg at +4/x8. Once upon a time the meta was taunt and ambush. I’m not sure how or if the meta will change in the future.

100%. Any alt I start on blue side starts at +1/x1. If it cannot beat Frostfire solo as an EB unslotted at around level 12, I would write it off. But that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t think it will. I usually get to +2 around 20 and +3 in the low 30s, and x3 to x8 whenever it adds challenge and depending on AT and power. But I definitely prioritize + over x. To OP, I do not consciously think of rewards, just challenge and pleasure of the play. Well, unless I’m building out incarnate salvage.

I’d love to see more doppelgängers, especially doppelgängers with AV hp and res. That’s why I think Posi 1 is so enjoyable for me. Months ago I was on a Posi 1 with my rad/bio stalker and when we got to the doppelgängers, I suggested, “We should probably take out my clone first. He’ll one shot all of us.” Instead we charged and I got my clone down to about half health before he killed me and then killed four others. Good times!

Good well reasoned post, +1! I think that *most* play is either 8-person teams or solo. Personally, I mostly play solo for a number of reasons ( @Bionic_Fleagave a good breakdown in another post). I’d support making bosses tougher, but I really don’t want to see mez made more powerful just so people feel they want to be contributing more damage to a team. Because any changes made to mez will also affect solo players, and make their play markedly easier. It would be shrinking the size of the chessboard. Ex: my mind/poison controller has just about every power in his primary, and uses them all. Sleep is near useless if your team is going to wipe out every minion in one round of AoE; it’s incredible when you are able to use it solo to neuter x8 mobs to take out one at a time. Immobilize as well. Holding a boss with one application will certainly make a zerg team faster, but for solo play it would be like playing poker with hearts and diamonds wild. Yeah, it’s fun to get 5 aces, but not every hand, every play session. my two inf.

I hate power creep (not you @Powercreep), but I can see that Traps could use a little help, although not very much. The great powers are great, the ok powers are ok but not amazing, the useless powers are skippable. Are four great powers enough for a set? Dunno. The big four: Caltrops, Acid Mortar, FFG, Poison Trap. All great powers on their own and better together. I would not change anything about them. Not recharge, not strength, not placing or following. They are great, and I see no need to gild the lily. The ok four: Web Grenade, Triage Beacon, Seeker Drones, Trip Mine. They are all acceptable as is, but I would not detest very slight changes. WG shines with AV/EB/bosses, but I could see putting in another enhanceable IO set like slight ranged damage for proc use. Triage Beacon would benefit from an initial boost in healing, like maybe a med green insp worth. I think making it mobile is way overkill. Seeker Drones would be more useful if (and maybe you can, I don’t know!) you could instantly send them at a specific target like Trick Arrow. Trip mine is good and fun but skippable and little use on Zerg teams. The useless two: Time Bomb and Detonation. I’d welcome any changes, but for now I skip them. I’ve got five or six Traps alts, which makes it my most popular buff/rebuff set. Closely followed by Poison and Trick Arrow, which I am sure we will see addressed very very soon.

I’m getting a lot of questions like, “Are you still giving away FREEMoney?” This offer will remain indefinitely open until I announce otherwise on this thread. Or unless I am killed and eaten by something higher on the food chain than I am. And I should note that I am VERY high on the food chain. For anyone looking for a more specific timetable, let’s say until Labor Day? That’s probably the time when I am most likely to be stalked and eaten by a shark tiger.

You’ve mentioned your pre build strategy, and boy that seems like way more work than I’m willing to do. Do you email or are they all in the same SG so pick them out of bins? Also, do you PL to 50 or is it an evolving build? Just curious!

I’m about to throw you under the Busey.

Similar to @Lex Talions idea, my first thought was whatever character makes martinis. Thinking out of the box here, but if you want to play a controller, I’d play fire/FF. Thematically, fire and ice goes well. And if you want to keep aggro off her and shield her well, why not force field? Of course, I’m just desperate to figure out how to play an alt with FF and enjoy it.

They should offer double inf. 🤨

But, but, that's not how pie works! 😀👍

I would argue that you won the game. Why do you need additional rewards? To make your 99+ vet better?

I do all three of these (I used to do Munkilord's 4th and I may again). Specifically about #1, I suspect that there is a big difference between buying all the inventory at whatever price they are listed at and reposting higher, and putting in a lot of bids on the low end and then reposting them later at a market rate. Real world example from earlier today. I just levelled a few alts to 17, which is kind of my favorite level. That's when you add the Miracle, the Perf Shifter, the Kinetic Combats, and (wait for it) the Entropic Chaos. I love the EC set. I've been trying to make it a thing since before fetch was a thing. So I put in bids x10 on each of the pieces at 1,005,000. I know that eventually I will own all of them there. So I'll slot the ones I need and put the extras for sale at, say, 2mm. I also know that eventually I will sell all of them there. My profit is small, but based on how the AH works and because (and this is important) most people want to buy or sell right away rather than be patient, I feel very confident that it'll work out ok for me. Compare this to me saying, huh, there are 22 EC A/D offered. That's not a lot. Why don't I buy them all up and relist them at 5mm? You can certainly do that, but it is very unlikely that you will sell many or even any of them. This is because converters have made all IOs topologically equivalent. You can always buy the proc and convert it to an A/D. You can buy a Ruin and convert it. There is a level of uncertainty, but you cannot stop more supply from entering the market. There is no way to prohibit that. My first example I do every day in every item that I have interest in on the AH. I even buy Winter Packs at 20mm and resell them at 24,999,999. (not bloody many, I'll tell you). My second example was done on Live all the time, and to the HC team's credit, they put in measures to help prevent that from happening now. I wouldn't even try since there will always be undersellers. I cannot and will not apologize for buying things for 5 inf, then selling the exact same item for 3mm. I did exactly this with a bunch of attuned IOs that I put in a 5inf bid for 10 in order to get past the pricing bug. Months later, I find I bought them because at some point 5 inf was the best bid, and someone chose to sell their item at 5 inf.