Yomo Kimyata

I'm kind of back after a hiatus, and I enjoyed reading this post. I've got a baby scrapper with this combo and Violent Beauregard as a brute who I just took out for a spin (just dinged 35). I started this for pretty much the same reasons as you: endurance reduction from the primary matched with a high endurance cost secondary. I'm hardly an expert on Savage Melee but I have a bit of experience, and I know Dark Armor quite well. Here are some of my thoughts which probably have little to do with your current build. Primary: I'm still mixing up Savage Melee and Street Justice, and I don't LOVE either one of them. On my recent spin, I noticed that damage felt pretty lackluster, especially single target damage. I'm still working on maximizing the blood thirst mechanics, but usually I find myself trying to hit Rending Flurry before I get five stacks because I am not a fan of the lockout period, but I'm not micromanaging it. Hemorrhage can be controversial, but it's a great proc delivery vehicle, and I think I'm theorycrafting it late in the build with two lvl 53 Nucleoses and 3-4 damage procs, so only skipping Maiming Slash and Taunt. I'm very happy with Dark Armor as long as I can get enough defense bonuses, and by splitting Brute's Fury 3-3 and with 5 pieces of Blistering Cold and Avalanche, I'm at or about 45% smashing/lethal/melee defense (and 50% slow resist). Secondary: I never liked the defense powers from Dark Armor and Energy Aura since I don't want to be hidden, but defense is defense. Dark Regeneration is wonderful and up constantly, so I don't bother slotting it for healing since I'm generally getting plenty even with no heal slots, so I use it as an AoE attack/proc bomb. Oppressive Gloom is a cheap stun, and although on its own it only hits minions, at least it hits minions and you can also focus on the lts and bosses. It's also a great place for the Absolute Amazement proc, and I generally 5-slot it with pieces from that set (skipping Stun/Recharge). Cloak of Fear is fun when you can afford it; it's really expense endurance-wise and has terrible accuracy. I aim for end game 6 slots with 2x lvl 53 Endoplasms, 2x lvl 53 Enzymes, a +5 boosted Nightmare A/E, and an Unspeakable Terror proc. That last one can stack stun mag by 2, so when it triggers you will see bosses get a little dizzy. In this build I'm skipping Death Shroud and Soul Transfer. Epic: I'm wondering if I absolutely need Energy Pool for endurance and the answer is "probably". Regardless, it's cheap slot-wise to get Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection and just put the Perf Shifter proc in each of them as a base slot. Boy I wish Scrapper Energy pool was as friendly as the Brute/Tank pool. Pools: Combat Jumping from Leaping; Kick, Tough, Weave from Fighting; Hasten from Speed. I am also a big fan of Force of Will, where I take Mighty Leap, Weaken Resolve (which helps with hard single targets), and Unleash Potential (which I use to add significant defense to all and endurance recovery and is up almost 1/3 of the time).

One of the few characters that I can remember from Live was a Fire/Ice tank I named Invisible Fist who did nothing but farm Dark Astoria for arcane common salvage like Luck Charms. Good times.

Sure you can. The salvage still exists and you can sell it back for inf, maybe even (gnaws finger menacingly) for MORE than you paid for it!

Well that one's easy, zero! It's not like you can reverse entropy's arrow and get it back by uncrafting.

My point has always been that there is a range, and a lot of it is subjective. What is a rare salvage worth? Well you can sell it to the vendor at 5k, so it's worth 5k. Well, you can buy it from the seeded /AH at 1mm, so it's worth 1mm.

Hmm, well one way to approach this would be to say that on average a 10mm investment in a hero pack gets you 9.7146 merits according to @Bopper, so about 1mm still seems to hold pretty firm... Now, converting one merit to 1mm inf is going to be a lot more difficult...

I bolded the ones I have in every build. There are a few more I add to every build as well. To the best of my knowledge, there are two procs that benefit from being boosted, but only certain aspects of it. The Steadfast Protection Res/+def has (or is supposed to have) higher resistance levels at higher levels, and the LotG Def/+recharge has (or is supposed to have) higher defense levels at higher levels. The +def and +recharge respectively don't change. As a practical matter, I just use attuned for those -- I've never bothered boosting them.

I would always trust @AboveTheChemist but here is my tl;dr synopsis. When you convert something, either by rarity or category or in-set, the engine sets a list of potentials for where the conversion can end up. Even if it is an attuned IO, there is a hidden level associated that can get re-randomized, but I don't have all the details on that. In-set, this is easy. The engine makes a list of every IO in the set that is not the original IO and it randomly selects an IO from the list. By rarity and category, the engine begins by making a list of all potential sets that the IO can be converted to based on its level that is not the current set. Once that is selected, it randomly selects an IO from that new set. So you can (and will) randomize by rarity and get an IO from the same category, like AoE melee damage. Also, there are going to be some items that are unconvertable by category. Air Burst, for example, is the only AoE ranged damage IO from levels 10-19. You can't convert it by category, but you can convert it by rarity. If it is attuned and you cannot convert it, you know that its hidden level is under 20. Now, I believe that the hidden level gets reset if you convert it by category, but I don't have all the facts, Jack. As always, you can only convert an IO to the equivalent category. You will never get a PvP IO from a standard IO. It's always like to like.

There certainly is this, but the main issue for me is that once you get Mass Levitate, it is SO good and SO useful that my play tends to be entirely about that, and it becomes very one (well, two) dimensional.

To each their own. I don't see the point in storing rare salvage in base or on character at all, because there is always more coming in to the market. So when I notice one of my characters has a few rares, I'll post them on the /AH at a price that won't sell immediately, but probably will soon(tm). That said, I've got a handful of mules with a thousand+ in storage in case the grid goes down and the zombies take over, so I can always sell them to myself if need be. And if I need a lot of specific rares? Well, then I'm going to weigh price versus timeliness. I don't particularly want to pay the seeded cap (1mm), but I've done it (not bloody recently). I'll bid creep until I find a large enough block. But generally, I'll sell a single rare and note the highest outstanding bid. If I find that a reasonable level, I'll put in all my bids at a slightly higher price and check back later. You may be shocked to hear that it generally fills very quickly depending on how many you are looking to buy. Thirty? Very quickly. Three thousand? Well, then you run the real risk that someone else does the exact same thing and marginally outbids you.

Thanks for this. There still is mystery about the mechanics but this helps. I appreciate your effort.

These are roughly my numbers as well nowadays.

Thanks for pointing this out. I've been away from the game for a while and this was one of the spots I tried to maintain in order to make sure there was always supply (since I am a big supporter of respecs, even though most people seem to hate them). I've put some in the market and while I'm poking my head in will try to keep it going. For those of you who may be mad that I'm flipping, well, it's not like I'm making some huge profit on a high volume item. The way the /AH works and the way most people choose to deal with it is that if you own a "garbage" item, you throw it in to the highest bidder. The problem then is if you want to buy that "garbage" item right away, you are depending on someone else to post it at a price you find "reasonable."

Well, you can (presumably) also have 9999 x25 merits in your Character Items inventory.

*Shouts down from a big pile of inf* I KNOW, RIGHT?

Oh, I just burn it to flaunt it. A potlatch, if you will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

This is also true for me, but I think that this answer begs the question of why the OP (or anyone) is looking to acquire merits. Is it simply to get the max number of merits? Definitely super packs. But super packs cost inf. Is it to get as many merits as you can and monetize them in terms or items or inf, either for building out your characters or hoarding? That's a tougher row to hoe, and if you are just trying to earn inf, I'd suggest other routes.

Someone took the name on Excelsior, so I went with Everlasting and went Spines/Radiation, because ions!

Sounds like a Spines/Energy scrapper to me.

Um, Jim Thorpe, clearly!

Can I give back your stuff?

To be fair, common salvage generally trades frequently enough that by the time you switched from one to another, the more recent trade history may make it look like an different trading history. But it is all in the same bucket.

I see a complete sea-change from Live with respect to the value of flippers, and in this case I'll define it rigidly as someone who buys all available supply at a given price and relists it, presumably at a higher price. On Live, things were rigidly defined, and not fungible. If you wanted to set a monopoly on level 10 Panacea E/R enhancements, that was pretty easy to do, even with the limited number of market slots and character slots. Nowadays, if you want to buy out an entire category and relist at a higher price, good luck, because the replacement cost of that inventory is astoundingly low. That said, there are absolutely times I buy 50-500 items (and I'm not even talking salvage) if I feel that I can turn it around at a higher price because, hey, I can.

I don't roll a lot of natural 1s, but I'm definitely getting 1-3 way more than 15% of the time...