Yomo Kimyata

This is completely pie in the sky and I don't expect anyone to spend even a second trying to make this happen, but: I would really benefit from some sort of in-game manager where I could leave myself notes and have reminder alarms pop-up in game. Like "Log in on Newby Noobface, Tuesday 9pm" Yes, one could certainly use management software or even a pad of paper and a clock to manage this. I'm just throwing out one of the wishiest things on my wish list.

Hmm, I was thinking Frostfire or Atta, but you might ding before the final mission in the arc.

First of all, blasters usually have more damage than scrappers, so that's a problem. Secondly, it's extremely unfair that tankers have such an easier time building for protection. Fix that. And why do they get inherent taunt and we don't?!? Thirdly, why is it so hard for scrappers to debuff their enemies? Defenders can easily keep a -25%+ damage resistance debuff up. I think an inherent across the board -25% resistance aura sounds about right, and maybe that's where you put the taunt aura? Fourth, how come dominators can routinely hold bosses and I'm lucky if I get my Blistering Cold proc to activate? My themes demand a hold power for my scrapper and maybe I don't have the PRIVILEGE of being high enough level to access patron pools, ok? This is nonsense.

Your mom is a Nemesis plot!* * unless she really is a Nemesis plot and if so I apologize profusely.

Selected for emphasis (the whole post is great!). It is difficult to stay slotted on your first character until your 30s or 40s so it’s not just you. I don’t know if that was intentional or not by original devs. you can market, you can ask for a seat at the salmagundi table, there are lots of ways to jump start that first one. But if you play any 50 at all, inf falls from the sky like molten magma.

I lump broadsword (slower, higher spot damage, one handed so you can pair with shield) and katana (slightly better dps, can’t pair with shield) together in terms of power. I’d describe them as solid sets that get the job done, but not particularly fancy. Parry/Divine Avalanche is what makes the set for me, and it is the melee defense that works. It’s stackable so it’s pretty easy to soft cap melee defense. The problem is that it cuts your overall dps, so I monitor my melee defense so that I’m not throwing another Parry in there when I’m already over 60% melee defense. I will slot a Lotg recharge, a hecatomb proc (you’ll want as high a ppm as you can get), and enough accuracy to ensure you will almost never miss with it. When looking at secondaries, I generally like resistance based or mixed use sets rather than defense based. My original main scrapper was BS/Inv, and some others I’ve taken to 50 are Bio, Radiation, and Dark Armor. Ninjitsu might be something I might look at since you can put less investment in melee defense, and the stealth defense power will give you stalker vibes when you give them the old ninja head splitter.

That's my huckleberry.

Well, I guess that's how it starts.

Almost all my rules on this are conditional. At this point, generally: I put all salvage on the /AH. I vendor all white recipes. I vendor all saleable enhancements (DOs, SOs) UNLESS I can slot them and I realize I can slot them. I craft all purple, PvP recipes and either sell on /AH or convert and list. At this point there is no point in saving it in base. I craft all yellow and orange recipes that do NOT require any rare salvage. I also try to remember to turn off those recipe drops when I hit 50 because the crafting cost increase from 49 to 50 is usurious. I vendor all yellow and orange recipes that DO require rare salvage UNLESS I can sell them on the /AH for over 100k. I only list things at a price I am willing to accept. If I list something that instantly sells, either than was my intention or I am surprised that I caught a good outstanding bid. I think the understanding of the /AH system and understanding how and why people bid and offer where they do is a very significant part of the inf I have accumulated over the years, and I don't really see a need to pass out my algorithms! This one's for free though: If I'm going to be buying or selling a significant number of an item (50 is my base), then I'm going to want to have a good idea of what the queue of aggregate bids and offers look like. This generally takes a few minutes and making some inf losing trades in return for getting more information. Also: Someone recently asked me how long I should leave something for sale before pulling it and relisting at a lower level. My system is basically price it low enough to not sell right away, but to expect it to sell by the next time you log in. If it's your main and you play daily, price it cheap so you open up space for tomorrow. If you are on once a month, take your best guess and if it hasn't sold a month later, pull it and relist. Try not to attach ego to it -- you are far better off eating a 5% listing fee and opening up that slot for immediate trades than you are digging in your heels and demanding they come to your price. Yes. I'm not particularly active, certainly not like I once was, but I'm always going to spend a few extra seconds if I don't want something instantly.

I highly doubt it was the same group, since the SG was formed late in the game with the sole purpose of getting to be the top SG on a top server in short order. Maybe it was Freedom? It was definitely not the "biggest" server since they had a top SG that would have taken too long to overcome. I had no idea of the connection with Kill Bill for the name of the supergroup -- I literally discovered that this morning. I just thought it was a play on Crazy 8s. Definitely a part of it, but I think it was more like we formed, and then were the top ranked SG within a few weeks, tops. Only witchcraft (or possibly knowledge of the mechanics of prestige) could explain someone's SG dropping in status!

This is not a connections thread (although I don’t mind that) but more of a marketing memory from Live and I’d love to hear your contributions. From what I remember, the Crazy 88s was a SG on Liberty I think (whatever the 2nd most populous server was) whose sole purpose was to buy as much prestige with inf as possible to be the top ranked SG on that server. I had one character (named Potlatch, who was some sort of fire controller). This was before converters, so my inf earning was almost exclusively on narrowing bid offer spreads, I.e. buying low and selling high. I wasn’t the top contributor, but I tried to keep in the top 5. I didn’t know anyone else in the SG since most of my presence was on Justice. I left the game not long after, but the vitriol from other SGs losing their rankings in the prestige list was astounding. We also had a nice base with a giant fire pit which was where I went to burn inf into prestige. Anyone else with memories?

I have this fantasy/fear/fervent hope that one day, all demand goes away instantly and whoever was the last person without a chair when the music stops gets stuck with tens of thousands of pieces of inventory that are worthless (especially since you cannot sell IOs to vendors). That would be cool.

For my purposes, Radiation Therapy (60 second base recharge) and DNA Siphon (90) are great for the proc, or for 3 slotting the set (for 15% accuracy bonus). Having Radiation Therapy up every 15-20 seconds and essentially an automatic proc activation is spectacular.

Jet packs have been mentioned. RWZ at 35 helps build up enough vanguard merits for the Curse Breaker I generally need for mender ramiel at 50.

I love theory crafting like this! I’m nowhere near Mids, but I’ve got some ideas that would really work more for my style than for “traditional” builds. I’ll look into that later. Some quick thoughts on your concept: Three teleport attacks, all with knock. You can chain all three but recharge will be long enough that you can’t continuously chain them. You’ll need some ST attacks for endgame stuff, but you don’t need to go nuts. Endurance recovery and healing will be very important. In your build, without seeing the numbers, I have a few thoughts. Defenses should be relatively easy to cap (although my thought craft now wouldn’t) and I’m guessing you are overbuilt on defense and underbuilt on endurance reduction. The six slot bonuses for Avalanche and Armageddon aren’t worth it in my eyes. I’d drop the quad Avalanche, the damage Armageddon (and I would boost the rest of the set to +5) and put a Force Feedback + recharge in each of them. You can reasonably expect them to proc each time. Active Defense should come earlier and I’d use two (or 1) +5 recharge reduction. Membrane won’t be very helpful there. Having double application of this power would be very helpful at end game since defense debuff resistance stacks.

This is why I'd ask you to refer them to this post as well. Telephone tag means that directions get lost, and let's be honest, I am not sitting here breathlessly for emails to come in so I can fulfill everyone's wishes instantly, and I intentionally set (extremely simple) guidelines because it is a process that I am going to control. My intention in setting an end date is exactly for this reason -- I'm not on very often nowadays *except* to give inf away, and it's kind of burdensome. Having people send me tells or five emails over an hour does not exactly fill me with the joy of giving; it fills me with the indignity of "why can you not follow a two-step set of directions?" That said, keep people informed, I very much enjoy helping others. My cutoff date doesn't mean I will stop giving away inf, but it definitely does mean I'm going to stop answering emails as my overwhelming priority on Homecoming.

im offline, so what’s the ruling? Does this mean that there are two dead times to deal with? Do they overlap? Are they consecutive? my process seems to have been accurate in my casual observations that n game play — but it may be too conservative a view if we are somehow getting a half second!

Here is my understanding (which I think is basically the same as yours). I have been told I am 100% correct, and I have been told I am a stupid poopoo head, so I'd love some official guidance as well: 1. You activate the power that contains the Critical Strike proc (I'm choosing Cleave from Battle Axe). Animation Time Before Effect (ATBE) elapses (in this case, 1.233 seconds), then the engine checks to see a. if you hit; and b. if the proc activates. If the proc activates, then there will be dead time while the remainder of the Arcanatime plays out (in this case, total time = 2.508 seconds - ATBE (1.233 seconds) = 1.275 seconds. 2. My understanding (more on this shortly) is that the 3.25 second timer begins when the proc activates. Since 1.275 seconds of dead time is going to occur regardless, the effective time left is 3.25 - 1.275 = 1.975 seconds where the increased critical strikes probability is in effect. 3. If a subsequent power's entire power Arcanatime is less than that remaining time (say Chop at 1.452 seconds) then that power will be clearly under the effect of the proc bonus. Subtract that entire A-time from the remaining time (1.975 - 1.452 = 0.523 seconds) to get your new remaining time. 4. If your remaining time is less than the entire A-time of a subsequent power, then see if it is greater than the ATBE of the subsequent power. So if I use Cleave, and follow it with Axe Cyclone, the A-Time of Axe Cyclone (1.98 seconds) is greater than the remaining time from the initial Cleave (1.975 seconds), so I can't get another power in there after Axe Cyclone. However, the activation time before effect for Axe Cyclone is 0.5 seconds, so you CAN attack Cleave, Chop, Axe Cyclone and if all attacks hit and the proc activates on Cleave, the enhanced critical rate would apply to both Chop and Axe Cyclone. Here is what I do not know. I don't know what that 0.5 second delay is all about. Does it increase the effective proc time to 3.75 seconds? I've never assumed so and just gone with the base 3.25 second duration. This shouldn't be too difficult to test, with a lot of data against a consistent target like a pylon. However it's not completely straightforward, since you have to hit, you have to have the proc activate, you have to see if there is a probabilistic difference in observed critical hits for subsequent hits. I'm no stranger to tedium, but this is not my brand of tedium, so I'll let someone with text editing experience work on this one. Happy hunting!

I haven’t been on to check, but a possibility is that they are fungible, or bucketed, just like salvage. If so, that would explain your description.

This was a good reminder for me, and this week I added a number of backgrounds for characters I just hadn't gotten around to yet. Thanks! This was my take!:

If it’s in an inherent, it can be considered “perma” since the odds of it being reactivated in the 120 seconds are very high and since it it inherent you don’t need to push a button. If it’s in a click power, the buff will only activate on click.

Exactly this. It’s why some players have issues with kinetic melee or dark melee because they forgo some damage for increased safety. Or why some players have issues with mind controllers because they forgo pets for other benefits. This game, like most of reality, is designed around trade offs and some players don’t want trade offs. Too bad for them, I say.

From a cursory inspection, I’d say that the influx of new players ( or the return of old players) seem to be comfortable with the /AH. I’m seeing a lot more supply of crafted enhancements for sale, prices coming down on a bunch of them, converters are in rarer supply and going up in price, and a lot more complaints about not being able to sell things as quickly or at such high prices. This could also be due to older players dumping supply to clean up. I’ve been guilty of that for two years now and my bases are still a mess!

Sometimes it’s a bugged last 5 display. Sometimes it’s a fat finger trade, where someone accidentally inputs an extra digit or otherwise bids extremely high. This does happen a lot, but probably isn’t a consistent or predictable answer to your question. What I have noticed for as long as I’ve been here is that specific recipes, usually the one for the particularly useful proc in the set, tend to go for relatively high prices. I’ve rationalized this as: some people really want to craft their own enhancements, even if there are more efficient/cheaper ways of obtaining the end product. Alternatively, some people really don’t understand the auction house and/ or converters. Or, and here’s the rub, they just don’t care and have plenty of an imaginary currency and are going to behave in irrational fashion because they can.

Let's make the entirely reasonable assumption that I'm not going to dig through the patch notes to figure this out on my own, ok? What is "gravity"?