Yomo Kimyata

Hermm... Let me give you some superfluous background. My main on Live was a BS/Inv scrapper and I loved loved loved him. Anything you could do with the game, I did with him. I recreated him here on HC and he was my main for a while until he stalled out in his high 40s. Because I just couldn't stand to play him anymore. BS is a perfectly serviceable primary. Unfortunately, it has aged badly. It was originally a hard hitter that was of a type that was resisted highly. And now that seems to be filled by a number of other alternatives. As an earlier poster noted, katana and war mace do much of the same thing, only marginally better and significantly better. My BS/Inv can still gather up groups of minions and hack them to pieces. He can still solo a lot of AVs. But he feels really underpowered. I am a huge fan of finding ways to make underpowered sets super, but I'm mostly failing with BS (although my BS/SD stalker has some promise). Let me put it this way. You know when you join a pick up group for a TF, and you feel like, yeah, all right, I'm really producing! I'm like the most valuable member of this squad! They would have a hard time replicating this performance without me!! My BS always feels like it's underperforming, like I'm holding up the group, like someone else needs to finish off the LT I'm beating on. Also, I really cannot stand the sound that broadsword makes anymore. War mace is super thunky. Broadsword sounds like you are banging a piece of rebar against a concrete wall. I wish you luck on your journey, and I hope you find enjoyment where I apparently cannot.

Sadly, minimum posting fee is 5 inf.

WM is great. I have a WM/WP brute in the mid 40s, and it's like shooting fish in a barrel. I also have a WM/DA scrapper in the mid 40s who takes a little more work since there are some end issues. And finally I have a SD/WM tank in the mid 20s who will probably be the most ridiculously fun of them all.

I totally agree. Mine is only in mid 20s, and it feels broken how powerful it seems.

I rolled a Cold/Ice defender that fit my concept, and it's doing just great. I think that you'll find that it's REALLY hard to make a bad decision in CoX. So what if you eke out a few extra bips of damage on one build versus another? I've literally got dozens (ok, maybe a dozen) of builds that make no sense. War Axe/SD as a brute (scrapper is apparently optimal)! A Mind/Poison controller! It's madness! And they all work. Except my broadsword/inv scrapper. Broadsword is just too sucky!

I'll be the first to admit that massive inf accumulation is meaningless. Then again, so is DPS in the pylon challenge thread. It's just one way to keep score in one aspect of the game, and I take a small amount of pride that I'm very good at that aspect of the game. I feel pretty confident that I could start a brand new alt and be able to start from zero and have him purpled and wintered out within 24-48 hours. Maybe even faster, in the time I could get him PLed to 50? Shrug. That and $4 gets me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I also think that if one understands the markets, there really is no such thing as a billion inf build, or even a 500mm inf build. Even now, when I want to buy one thing, I buy 5-10 of them, slot one, and sell the rest for a significant profit. I remember during Live, just before I left, I was in a SG (I want to say it was Liberty server? Whatever the #2 was in population) that got to the largest SG on the server simply from burning inf for prestige. Boy, people on the forums got so mad! But at least on Live, there was a use for inf. Here on HC, where the devs bend over backward to make sure that anyone can have anything they want for minimal effort, I'm really searching for things to do with my imaginary currency.

Depending on how much prep work you do, 5-15 minutes per marketing alt. For example, one of my alts that plays "rare roulette". I'll open /AH, collect all sales from last login. Collect 50 recipes, 150 pieces of salvage, 250 converters that I put bids on last time. Open the crafting table I bought from the P2W vendor for 10mm. Craft my 50. Convert my 50. List my 50. Put in my bids for 50 more recipes and 150 more pieces of salvage and 250 more converters. Playing rare roulette probably takes more time than working a specific niche.

Well, if you are really into it, you can make north of 1 bn an hour on the AH. You can't necessarily make 1bn in any given hour (from 2pm to 3pm EST). And you can't necessarily make 10bn in 10 given hours (2pm to midnight EST). If you were in a Run Lola Run situation, I'd farm for inf. But if you want to make real money with a lot of zeroes that means nothing--marketing is your niche.

What are the holes of a WP/staff tanker? It’s very survivable, but maybe a little lacking in the damage department. id consider a beam rifle / sonic corrupter.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm normally a terrible hoarder, both in games and in real life. Fungibility changed that completely for me in Homecoming. Once I got over my fears of anyone trying to corner the salvage market, I sell it when I can and I buy it when I need it or will need it soon(tm). Sometimes I'll buy a few thousand of salvage if I think someone's trying to make a run (I was very suspicious of whoever was buying tens of thousands of yellow salvage at 860), but in general I'll take my chances. In general, I like to store my things in the AH. Not necessarily in MY AH slots. I'll get other people to hold them for me until I want to buy them! STORE YOUR STORES IN THE STORE.

To do otherwise is simply gauche.

I think it's unlikely, but I'd like to amass 100 bn in inf by Labor Day.

I have four major markets and a bunch of minor ones. I consider myself in control of one of them: about 200-500 trade a day and I am buying or selling 95%+ of the trades. It’s kind of a pain, since I need 120 slots free to keep bids and offers up. The rest of them I’m content with skimming the cream of 50-250 sales a day. Controlling the supply of a market is trivial. If you named an IO, someone could probably provide 100 in an hour and 1000 in a day and 10000 in three days. At most. Finding buyers for that 100, or 1000, or 10000 is my personal bugaboo. I’m just trying to bask in my imaginary currency while I can. I realized that I have until Labor Day to accrue my riches.

I'm sticking with a heart. I'm comfortable with my emotions.

This is true, but my fading eyes mean that I try to craft things under my level +3. I find it harder to read the numbers when they are red.

If you want to play the market, which I encourage, then choosing something like boosters or converters to trade for inf makes sense. Trade it, then use the inf to buy the item you want on the AH. For ease and simplicity, you are not going to fail if you use merits to buy enhancements, particularly winter os or purples, that you plan to use for yourself. Both merits and inf are easy to come by, so there’s no point in stressing out if you didn’t get to your end point the cheapest way possible.

I don't think I ever played stalkers on Live, but I'm enjoying them a lot here. I've got a staff/bio in the mid 20s, a stj/sr in the teens and a bs/sd in the teens. The staff is definitely my favorite. I'm a little disappointed in the stj -- damage is really lackluster in comparison to the other two, but I think it will mature as it levels.

Hmm. I haven’t tested it, but have noticed a few occasions where I could not convert attuned at all. Like trying to convert a Cloud Senses to a Siphon Insight, IIRC, gives you a failed conversion message. They both exist at lvl 30, so you can convert a lvl 30 one, but you cannot convert an attuned one.

True dat!

Fair enough! Not the easiest or fastest route, but as long as you get where you want to go, that's good!

There are (at least) three things I've noticed and I try to use to my advantage when selling: 1. People like round numbers. 2. Buyers generally don't like to bid creep, and will usually only place 2-3 bids. 3. People tend to believe the last five, and assume that the next buy/sale will be in context of that. None of this is rocket science, just a type of behavioral economics, but it may lead you to some conclusions.

And climbing Mt. Everest means just taking one step at a time. A toddler could master that in a couple of minutes. It sounds like to me, according to you, that the OP is going to need to rely on some sort of PvP in order to be 'challenged'.

If you have more than 50,000 left, I'll pay you 70k a pop for 'em!

You're kidding me, right? This is 'challenging,' or 'arousing competitive interest, thought, or action' because it is possible, yet extremely difficult, with a lot of strategy and planning. You can't just zerg. You can easily do it by street sweeping, but that would be tedious.