[What does your "macro toolkit" for new characters look like?]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I've always used a controller to play.

 

You should use a domingator to play instead.

[Do the new reactions mean anything? (Now with shark, saxophone, thumbs left and right)]

3 hours ago, 0th Power said:

If the new reactions get taken away after the next page, then I'm revolting.

 

If it makes you feel any better, we already find you revolting.

[Battle Axe!]

5 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

There's only one correct answer

 

I don’t have my glasses with me; is that an axe or a mace?

[Do the new reactions mean anything? (Now with shark, saxophone, thumbs left and right)]

At this point in time, I'm using Domingator as "I agree" and Accordion as "Sad Trombone," and I look forward to finding more personal meaning in each of them.  

[Implement more measures to curve market manipulation.]

22 hours ago, TheZag said:

 

 

Someone could manipulate a low demand item for a short time and make almost no profit because the item was low demand to begin with.  Attempting to manipulate a high demand item takes hours of work every single day.  You have to login when you first wake up and buy all the new stock that the marketeers put up at fair prices then collect all of those from the AH and re-list them.  Then you have to repeat the process every 1-2 hours to ensure no product is listed under your price for very long.  And you have to hope nobody notices that you are trying to manipulate an item or they will keep converting to that enhancement to sell to you at your inflated price.  The end result is you end up with dozens of enhancements that you paid 6 million for and were attempting to sell for 8 million when nobody will pay more than 3 million.  You end up having to sell for 2 million just to offload 50 or more enhancements and take a loss of 4 million on each.  Trying to manipulate the market is a cool way to lose a lot of money quick.  And all of this is just for a single item.  Ramp that up to every enhancement in the game and you need a group of people with so much money that they dont mind losing billions of inf every day to cover the losses of their attempted market manipulation.

 

The amount of people that would have to be involved in a price manipulation conspiracy and nobody let the secret out would be insane.  So price manipulation becomes illogical and the logical explanation becomes devaluation of the currency through rampant printing of money (influence generation through regular gameplay and farming).  4 years ago when there was only a trillion inf in the economy,  all those enhancements for a build only cost 20 million.  Now,  when there is 300 quadrillion inf in the economy,  people are willing to spend more to 'get it now' and that same build costs 100 million.  This is still due to the players who are buying enhancements and not from the players who are placing enhancements for sale.

 

 

This is all true, but also keep in mind that "logical" does not necessarily mean "profit maximizing" or even "profitable".

 

 

[New Staff weapon customisation]

Domingator approves.

[new reactions?]

On 6/2/2023 at 10:02 AM, 0th Power said:

when did these get here???

 

 

Domingator approves.

 

[How to avoid dying 90% of the time]

Did somebody say "real money"?

[new reactions?]

You know, I'm starting to get a little tired of youngsters running across something for the first time and thinking they invented it. 

 

I've known Bulgaria since before you were born!  I used to watch Bulgar the Bulgarian on Saturday morning cartoons.  I knew the Sofia King when he was just a prince!

 

You kids get off my lawn!!!

[Blaster Week]

12 hours ago, tidge said:

I can't speak for using an Overwhelming Force %Knockdown piece in Hot Feet... I don't remember %damage pieces %proc-ing very often in it.

 

Should be a 12.82% chance per pulse per enemy.  I'm not sure how often Hot Feet pulses (I assume 10 seconds like most damage auras, but I really don't know), but I clearly see mobs getting knocked down, just not reliably.

[Blaster Week]

On 5/24/2023 at 12:26 PM, Nyghtmaire said:

I can map out 85% slow resist with this approach but have a path to 100. What is the functional difference between 85 and 100? Worth pushing it all the way? When it helps, ITS GREAT. But doesn’t seem to be something that comes up too often. 

 

In my experience (mostly melee), 85% is plenty but I wouldn't say no to 100%.  Keep in mind that debuff resistance stops that amount of the effect from any given foe.  100% means that you never get slowed.   That's cool.  But 85% means only 15% of the debuff gets through.  If you are fighting an Agony Mage and she hits you with Gravity Distortion, instead of -50% speed reduction it's now a 7.5% speed reduction for 12 seconds.  If you are fighting three Agony Mages, then it is possible that all three get a -7.5% debuff on you at the same time for a 22.5% reduction, but again that's only for 12 seconds and that is if all three hit you at exactly the same time.

 

The problem with debuff resistance is when you are fighting groups that toss out tons of a specific debuff.  Every KoA minion can throw Caltrops, it's a base 80% speed reduction for 45 seconds.  So if you are planning on fighting KoA all the time, definitely shoot for 100%.

 

This comes into play with Cimerorans and defense debuff as well (and those damned Scrub Bots) of course.

[Ask To Join]

4 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

"Ask To Join" - sends a tell to the character that says "Can I join you?" or perhaps some customizable message from Options. This would help to quickly respond to people forming teams and leagues.

 

No no no god no no.

 

I don't know about you OKman, but if you log on a character on some shards, there are some people who will *instantly* hound you to join whatever you are doing.  I don't want to have to hide because I am breathing and at or above a certain level.

 

[Numbers for "full"]

2 hours ago, Steel Dancer said:

You're keeping in mind that a bid stack of 10 where 5 have been filled would count as 1 in the bought AND 1 in the bidding, right?

 

39 minutes ago, lemming said:

I think this is what is causing the discrepancy.  I think if everything sold/bid went thru, you'd get 197 again adding sold + bought

 

This is exactly right.  A split stack will show up in both selling and sold as 1; or in both buying and bought as 1.

 

Total number of slots available top out at 200, and how to get there is listed in the wiki somewhere.

 

"Full" is based on the number of market slots you have on that character, not the highest number of potential slots.

 

[Implement more measures to curve market manipulation.]

13 hours ago, Rigged said:

You want to punish marketers, but you fail to realize that in this game, the marketers are the ones creating the supply. The converter is the tool they use for this. No, it is not farmers, it is not regular players like you, it is marketers who create the goods.

 

This whole post is good, but I highlight this for emphasis.  Anything not sold at a fixed price by a vendor was posted by a fellow player.  The bottleneck for many of the items you are looking for is supply.  I've watched over the years as many marketers, myself included, dropped out of the supply game for various reasons.  The bid-offer gap is huge and unless people want to provide supply either for profit or for some personal goal of doing good things for the market (whoever has been providing Perf Shifter procs for the past few years at essentially break even levels, I tip my hat to you), this is only going to get worse and worse until one day people just stop using the /AH entirely.  Death by ice.

 

[Implement more measures to curve market manipulation.]

23 hours ago, crimson72 said:

Here's how this could be addressed.  At any given time you can only have 10 items posted for sale, and additionally be bidding on 10 items, and can only purchase 50 items per 24hr period, and separately sell 50 items per 24hr period.  This would bottleneck access to the market through limitations that wouldn't discourage a player like me, but it would discourage rampant price manipulation.  People likely wouldn't put up low value items like white and yellow salvage, but others have already stated that the system gets involved in some cases to sell these.  Anyone trying to repost an item that's wildly above the market average for that item should either be denied, or have to pay a really high % posting fee, around 50%+.  It won't look like such a good idea if you're trying to sell an item for 5x more than the average while getting footed for a 50% tax on something that's going to sit for a long time and take up limited posting space.  Anyone caught using multi-boxing or multiple separate accounts to grossly circumvent the limitations should have all their accounts banned.  

 

Could you give me some examples of how markets are being manipulated right now?

[ConeAnn the Destroyer! - Night Widow]

1 hour ago, BitCook said:

/bind SHIFT+S "powexeclocation back:30 Combat Teleport"

This bind (I use a macro and usually make it 10 feet) is gold for cone heavy power sets.  Also keep in mind that range enhancement effects do not reduce proc chances.

 

And well done on this guide!

nice material, girl!

[Wanted to try out the new Axe set but i have no idea on a secondary]

Axe went from an afterthought to top three power set with one fell swoop of power creep leap.  Pair it with something that benefits from recharge and that provides endurance mitigation.  But frankly, it'll work with anything now, although it will take some skill and planning for BA/DA to shine, endurance-wise.

[I may have found the Unicorn! Ice/Dark Corruptor]

In my experience, a mixture of dark and cold/ice in just about any AT is pretty optimal.

[The experience of a returning player having to re-learn the ropes.]

11 hours ago, crimson72 said:

This is my personal opinion, but based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend a returning player on a fresh account try to play anything other than an AE farming build with their first character, because that's a really steep road, and you'd be relying on getting on solid teams in order to level up, which isn't guaranteed, but you'd probably have better luck than I did if you actually have IRL friends or family who play this. 

 

I don't agree with this overall statement, but I would suggest playing through more than once and playing a very survivable melee character first time through.  Any level 50 can easily solo a mission or two and generate several million in inf from drops in a few minutes, while a level 1 will probably have a difficult time completely self-funding through missions.

[Thor Sightings?]

Sometimes, I'll make a character and progress their costume as they progress in levels, usually every 10.  I did that with Thor Loser, and I have no regrets.

 

[(Don't Fear) the Respec: Respecs, Multiple Builds, and Unslotters]

3 hours ago, Herotu said:

I really struggle with this. I know the former is true, and I know that "sub-optimal" isn't supposed to mean "gimped". 

All due respect to those who have their builds planned out from level 1, but I really don’t have the attention span to

[AI shenanigans.]

1 hour ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

It was so close! It forgot to mention a Fire/Ice Tanker!

 

Would you say it was Sovera close?

[Incandescence: Do's and Don'ts]

1 hour ago, Oklahoman said:

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. What do you think?

 

Who are you again?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you post in General before.

[(Don't Fear) the Respec: Respecs, Multiple Builds, and Unslotters]

 

And there we go.  I'm not completely finished because I need to pick up some more enhancements to finish my slots, but that's good enough for this example.  Clearly, respeccing a level 50 will take longer.

 

Alternate builds:

 

Alternate, or Multiple Builds (click for wiki) enable you to have more than one build available for any given character.  It is like a respec insofar as you can not change your primary power set, secondary power set, or origin.  But you can have a second build available at level 10, and a possible third one at 50 after completing Mender Ramiel's story arc and unlocking your incarnate Alpha slot.

 

You may have noticed that when you talk to any trainer, one of your options under the "Train to a new level of power" selection is "Select or rename your active build" once you are level 10 or above.  If you select a new build that you have never accessed before, it will treat you as if you were a fresh level 1 that has never levelled up before.  Where this differs from the respec process, and this is a real pain in the butt, is that you have to run the levelling process separately for each level rather than doing the whole thing all at once.  The good part of that is that you can do it bit by bit and stop partway through if you want.  The bad part is that it is extremely tedious to do all at once, and you can't overslot late picks like you can in respec mode.

 

The other bad part is that even though you cannot change your core powers, it treats your alternate build as a completely different character, so you have to acquire new enhancements for the build.  Temporary powers, incarnate powers will be the same across all builds, but if you want a Performance Shifter +end proc in both/all of your builds, you need to buy one for each build.

 

Why would you want alternate builds instead of respecs?  Some thoughts (and I'm happy to add more):

- you have a solo build and a team build

- you have a build for exemplaring and a build for playing at 50

- you have an AoE based build and you have a single target build

- you have specialized powers for specific purposes, like speed runs of a TF

-etc.

 

Switching across builds:

 

The easy way to switch among builds is to do so at any trainer.  You can also use the command /select_build [1-3] where the number 1, 2, or 3 represents the build number (you can also rename these builds at the trainer to "solo" or "team", for example).  When you switch builds, however, there is a lockout period and a cool off period put into effect.  You can only switch your build every sixty seconds, much like the lockout time from switching costumes.  But the cool off period treats every one of your powers as if they had just been activated and must recharge.  This is no big deal for things like attacks, but longer recharge powers, like Mission Teleporters and such will take many minutes.  I presume the intention is to keep people from activating a long recharge power, switch builds, and re-activate the power.  Twevs, that's how it is and that's how it shall be.

 

Enhancement Unslotters:

 

For the sake of completion, I should mention unslotters, which are a type of special salvage.  If you want to move an enhancement slot around, or add a different power, you need to respec.  But if you want to simply put a different IO in a slot that already has an existing IO in it, you have a few choices.  You can drag the existing IO to the trash icon, which deletes it and leaves an empty slot for you to put a different IO in there.  You can drag the new IO over the existing IO and it will either try to merge the two IOs or it will delete the first IO and replace it with the second.  These two options are fine unless the item you are replacing is useful and/or valuable.  In that case, if you have unslotters in your inventory you can simply drag the existing IO into your enhancement inventory and it will empty the slot while saving the IO.

 

You can get unslotters from the /AH, you can buy them with merits at any merit vendor, or you can receive them in Super Packs.  I find them very useful, but I rarely use more than a dozen on any character during its lifetime.  If you open a lot of super packs, the unslotters are saved in your Character Items and you can access them from any character at any time, which is markedly easier than buying unslotters for every character that needs it whenever the need arises.

 

Thanks, enjoy, come again!  May all your builds have more cowbell!

 

 

 

[(Don't Fear) the Respec: Respecs, Multiple Builds, and Unslotters]

 

Finally, we get to click and drag!  I'm not exactly sure how the enhancements are grouped, but they are always grouped by set and in the order the set is listed in game, so if you have that kind of OCD you're set.  You can drag the enhancements either to where you want them slotted, into your inventory, or just leave them in Unassigned.  Back in the day, you used to get some reimbursement for SOs et al that were left unassigned and deleted, but now they just go away.

 

Best practices for me are to move everything out of Unassigned into inventory unless you really don't care if it is deleted.  I can vendor SOs or convert unneeded IOs, so I generally won't waste inf.

 

 

Confirm that you are finished and ...

 

 

All the powers you own now, even temps, are in your trays, and almost certainly not where you want them.  You could just drag them where you want them or right click to remove from tray, but best practices call for the command /cleartray and Bob's your uncle.

 

 

Open your powers and move what you want where you want it.  Again, I start with the far right because it scrolls down and I don't want to miss anything.