Yomo Kimyata

I recently respecced one of my brutes to add Aid Self, and I’m looking at Injection instead of Aid Other as a prerequisite. I rarely/ever see this in posted builds. It looks like it could be useful for procs, Cloud Senses, the Slow smashing damage, maybe some other to hit debuffs. Does anyone use this power on enemies and if so how would you slot it? Assume up to 6 slots.

In practical terms, it makes selling harder. There is a penalty if you post too high and feel like you need to repost. BUYING IS EASY; SELLING IS HARD. Now why is the fee split up into two components? Because when you post an offer, you have almost no idea where it’s going to sell. It could be at your posting price. It could be 2bn. Having two fees asks for an initial deposit and makes it so it sums up to 10% of the sale. Why is it 10%? Influence sink. I wholeheartedly support this.

No. I will not support yet another initiative to make everything yet easier, even though that has been the clear trend through Live and Homecoming. Gaining inf is trivially easy. Buy your purple. If you can't get a purple recipe that is exactly the one you want to drop, along with the salvage and the 600,000 crafting fee, then press your I win button and have it automatically slotted, I'm sorry. I am all for making this a low-entry game that is extremely easy to excel at. We all want to feel validated. But you don't need purples to succeed so asking for the rate drop to be increased is ridiculous.

What distinguishes one from another? What tools do you need to defeat a GM solo that are over those needed to defeat an AV?

I ought to have sought him on Hot or Not in the year of two aught aught aught. I thought he was in a fraught squat, eating a kumquat. Sometimes I can be a real tw jerk.

I tend to use Nemesis as a benchmark.

My experience has been that if you want a mission team, you have to build it yourself. The team flag, in my opinion, is useless. Most people seem to speed level, but I've had a lot of success with advertising "Running Doc Delilah arc lvl 20" or "Steel Canyon missions lvl 12" on the Looking channel. Lots of the time, people will switch toons to fit the advertisement. It works a lot better than passively setting a flag and waiting for the invites to roll in. I just don't think there is the population to support that.

Did he have a stroke from a Nemesis clot? Then was he laid out on a Nemesis cot?

There is, of course, the old display bug to consider. But that aside: If you are trying to sell something, and it posts a trade higher than where you were offering, that simply means at the time someone bid that, someone else was offering it cheaper than where you were. Probably working as intended. You can either wait and hope, or you can bite the bullet and repost. If you are trying to buy something, and it posts a trade lower than where you were bidding, something is wrong. I have seen this happen a number of times, which may have been the display bug, but it leads me to believe that sometimes the bidding system doesn't work as intended.

Or of sorcerers.

Thanks for doing this. Some of my stable started to hit 50 over the past few weeks. What really would have been helpful for me would have been a specific description of each of the abilities available and some opinions on what kind of character they would work for. You did a bit of this, and admittedly lots of it are for aesthetics (like judgement), but it would have helped me a lot on my alphas. True, all that info is on Paragonwiki, but you DID say it was comprehensive! Maybe in a future update or a different guide. Thanks again!

I’ve got two staff brutes (/fire at 50 and /Regen at 40). I haven’t taken them for a spin (see what I did there?) recently, but I’ve found that hasten doesn’t really feel like it helps that much on a staffer attack chain. Am I misremembering, or is the hasten mainly for the secondary/pool powers?

Sure, I’ll validate you! Some people like to play chess against grandmasters, and some want to play checkers against toddlers. Sometimes both in the same day! I lean towards seeking challenges myself. At a certain point, there are no more real “rewards” from playing other than the enjoyment of the game itself.

I too would love to see a pro build for this. I’ve built mine organically, so probably am not using bio armor to anywhere near its greatest potential. That said, in mid-30s, I’m mostly soloing TFs, and the offensive output is impressive. I’ve never had an easier time with soloing AVs. Admittedly, they aren’t particularly difficult ones, but I’ve been impressed with the build so far.

If inf is no object, and there's no reason should ever lack it, I'd go with IOs starting at level 12. They aren't great, but they are better than nothing and they don't expire like TOs and DOs. I generally craft/buy generic IOs starting at level 12 and then work in attuned IO sets when I hit certain level milestones like 17. TOs and DOs are vendor fodder. I suggest selling them and using the proceeds towards your IOs.

As MunkiLord says, you may be better off buying whatever purples/ATOs/Winter Os are cheapest and holding them in storage until you figure out what you want. Any random purple plus 1mm worth of conversion rolls will probably not get you the exact purple you want, but it almost certainly will get you something that you can sell for a good price.

Then I am doing it wrong. I’m usually geared up to make first sales and first buys, hundreds at a time. If you are getting even one of the overbids, I’m doing something wrong or there is an error in the queue.

Case in point. When the display bug kicks in I buy and sell hundreds of them a day. One in 5-10 people pay 10mm+ due to the display bug. That one trick has sent many of my toons to college, graduate school, and Congress. Interesting note. Demand for what I consider to be a staple is pretty stable at 100-200 a day.

So today I hopped on my dark/dark defender who I haven’t played in a while. Low to mid 30s, not optimally slotted or IOed. I ran two solo missions and they were more difficult than usual. I chalked that up to WTF. I’m not above eating dirt, but I’m not fond of it. Then i realized my settings were at +4/x8. Im not a godly player by any means, but I get the OPs point even more so. When you can solo missions 4/8 on a defender in your 30s, albeit a good build, maybe we should consider more challenges. When you add level shifted incarnates and purple sets I can’t imagine how much easier it could be. I still don’t get how people think that going to 50, getting incarnate and fully setted, can go back via Ouroboros and meet any sort of challenge. I love fighting Atta, but I’m never going to go back and fight him when buffed. Let my Lore pets fight him. I will take her to Vanguard at lvl 35. Some Debuff magic will slap some sense into me.

Last 5 is a dirty, dirty liar. But I wouldn’t change a thing about it. When people say “X” is going for “Y” inf, it generally just means that’s where the last trade posted. It has some predictive value as to where the next trade will be, but not enough that anyone should say, wow the market has shifted. Believe me when I say that a major shift in a market is usually due to a single person screwing around. i generally price my items to sell by “next log in” so that varies from toon to toon. But I also generally avoid IOS priced <1-2mm. If there is a lot of flow in them, I’m happy to trade Crushing Impacts, you can easily double your money. But you really can’t sell hundreds or thousands of them in a day, I don’t think.

Well, since TFs major stumbling block are the AVs and GMs, I’d say that your major stumbling block would be -regen. The easy path is make the most damage heavy melee character you enjoy, then buy a few hundred envenomed daggers.

Because battle axe and war mace are so similar (they even both have a shovel for a weapon), you need to make a decision as to which one you want. If you are going thematic, that’s all you need. Choose whatever looks good. But if you want to eke out a smidgen of performance, war mace is slightly better. Smashing is better than lethal for the most part. And very rarely, the knock up on battle axe turns into knock back. It’s mostly when you are fighting lower level mobs, but sometimes at even or higher level. I’ve never seen knock back on war mace at even level.

Maybe you should set your missions on +4/x8 earlier?

It's something I never thought about before. Why do you want the walls to come down? What personally do you have to gain from that? Is it RP or play related? If it's significant and many/most players want it and it's easily and cheaply accomplished, then I have no objection.

I went back to mine and got into the mid/high 30s. The endurance drain is the big problem. Even with the Performance Shifter proc, Miracle proc, and Numina's proc, I was taking a knee after every other fight. At level 35 I took Energy Mastery/Superior Conditioning and stuck a performance shifter proc in there. It was not a game changer, but helped a lot. It's sexy and fun to take Shield Charge at 35, but this seems a smarter move to me. I'll take Shield Charge at 38 and Physical Perfection at 41. I think BA/SD will be great at 50 with a good build and IOs. I think that getting there without set bonuses or IO procs must be just awful. I'm at 36 and over the soft cap on melee defense and over 30% on ranged and AoE. Nothing hits me until I get in one of those DE situations where the spawn drops 3 Cairns and 1 Quartz. Then I drop in seconds.