Yomo Kimyata

For a scrapper, remember your resistance tops out at 75%. You're going to go way over that on Energy, and you don't need to put in a lot of effort to get smashing and lethal there (I'm looking at Mids and with just Tough and Charged Armor [and a few IOs like Shield Wall proc, etc.] 4-slotted with Unbreakable Guard I'm at 67.1%). Yes, higher than 75% will help your debuff resistance resistance, but that's a fringe case. So I find that focusing on positional defense is a good priority once you are satisfied with your resistances and heals.

Close. Very close.

Maybe he needed a bigger stake in the game?

Just imagine if tankers got AR -- the devs would make it 720 degree arc and range of 800 yards!

You can make a very effective Ice Melee without ice swords (except for stalkers). You cannot make a very effective Fire Melee without fire swords. You can make an effective Stone Melee without stone mallets (and there are also alternate animations without the mallet, yay!) You cannot make a very effective Psionic Melee without swords. Now, this is simply my opinion, and blah blah blah, but Psi Blade and Greater Psi Blade are really important in my eyes (not so much Psi Blade Sweep). On the plus side, you can play around with the coloring options and try to find as neutral a color as possible (I use Bright as the coloring option, and then choose a dark color).

Agree. I think they were designed as a parody, but I have zero doubt that if things in real life were more like Paragon that these billboards would be all over the place. I accept it as historical parody and I'm moving on.

Top. Men.

I can't wait until people start complaining about how enemy mobs now get this. Enemy mobs DO get this, right? Right?

It's auto-hit, but if you have damage procs in there, they do an accuracy check. Would the lyso's accuracy affect that? Me dunno.

I'm going to arbitrarily distinguish between cornering a market (which I would consider controlling a market and making a profit) and manipulating a market (which I'd consider changing the price points for a short- or even intermediate- term period of time, and profit is not a concern. It's really easy and low-cost to manipulate a market. Let's look at common salvage. If you want to set the minimum price of common salvage at 5,000 (half the seeded value and significantly higher than it trades now), that's easy. Take one of your lvl 50 characters and bid 5,000 on 200 sets of ten (assuming you have 200 market slots on that one character). That costs you 10mm inf, which is a trivial amount of money if you have a 50. Not a single inanimate carbon rod will trade for less than 5,000 inf for as long as your bids are still active. Now, the problem is that you are soon going to own 2,000 pieces of salvage, and good luck to you trying to sell it for more than 5,555 inf a piece (which is your break even point). Cornering a market is difficult and time intensive, and for most things impossible. Let's say I wanted to set the price of Trap of the Hunter procs at 10mm. First, I would have to buy up all those in the /AH for less than my target price. That's not hard. But now I have to defend the market and put in bids for what I want the minimum price to be. Now it's a question of supply and demand. The demand is limited to those who want to buy a TotH proc NAO. The supply is limited to those who get TotH proc recipes and craft them, to those with other TotH recipes and IOs and are willing to convert them into the proc, to those with other Immobilize recipes or IOs from level 20-50 and are willing to convert them to the set and then the proc, to those with other IO recipes or IOs, uncommon or rare, and are willing to convert them into the category, the set, and the piece, to those who are willing to swap merits for recipes, etc., etc. The supply is in theory unlimited, thank you converters and pooling. Now there are some things in the /AH that are harder to create than others (and some you can't create them at all), but for the most part, cornering a market requires putting in a lot of effort and making your profit margin so small (or negative!) that no other budding capitalist wants to make a profit or even wants to rain on your parade.

Doing what you enjoy is (to me) the paramount rule in this game. I enjoy leveling quickly (if I choose to do that on that character) and I enjoy *some* level of challenge. Every single alt I make starts out at +1/x1. Recently I started leveling a Stone/SS tank, and I put it at +2/x8 out of the box. Was that tedious in the beginning? Heck yeah. As you say, SS lacks AoE until Foot Stomp. But it was fun because I had to play strategically because I'd get several bosses in each mob at a time when three minions could take me out if I'm not careful. At early levels, x8 has you levelling 2-4 times in a single mission, so that's interesting as well! As far as raising your difficulty, on a melee character I'm generally at x3 in early teens, x5 in mid 20s, x8 by low 30s. That's going to have the biggest effect on how quickly you level. I usually try to avoid +4 until I'm at 50, since +5 mobs (half the time that's how they spawn, I believe) can be a pita unless you are slotted for accuracy. But if you enjoy being Andre the Giant against a large number of toddlers, have at it and run -1/x8! I can see how that could be fun. Do what you enjoy, no one is judging you except you!

Nope. You only get the reward the first time and your reward is based on where your character is at the time. I wait until I have my alpha open before running a WST.

I haven't run the numbers, but that would make sense from a balance perspective. Dark Melee, like Kinetic Melee, has an effect that adds to your defensive abilities. That added survivability comes at the expense of a bit of damage.

My takeaway from my KM/Ice scrapper was that there are three main powers in the primary that make things work: Burst keeps the -11.25% damage up (ideally) constantly, Concentrated Strike keeps your Power Siphon up, and Power Siphon keeps your everything up. Chilling Embrace is an incredibly underrated power. I think that Darkest Night on a melee toon is the closest thing we have to an "I WIN!" cheat button.

Try Willpower as a secondary. Invulnerability works too. Bio and Radiation Armor are incredible, but require some maintenance and investment to really shine. Willpower on SOs will get you through most stuff.

darn it, I was prepping up a run on Exploit Weakness in the /AH!

I like a lot of animations, but I’m going to focus on the ones I hate. ice sword and Fire sword. Hideous! I can play Ice Melee without swords but I can’t play Fire Melee. Some alternate animations would be welcomed. Psionic swords and stone mallets are customizable enough to be useable. anything with a flip built in. I get it; a longer animation is necessary to justify a more puissant power. But I cannot stand the flip on something like Ripper because it is completely extraneous to the power. At least the spinnny staff break dancing animations seem justified.

I made a concept build for a hover axe ninja scrapper. Since the new pendulum is a 7' radius sphere with a 7' range, all you need to do is hover seven feet over the nearest target. Since they bunch up underneath you that radius will hit everyone it can. Axe Cyclone and Cleave cover that range as well. so it works for safety and for bunching up mobs.

That said, the new battle axe is great for it.

Yes

Nah, I have to limit my Luminara tribute alts to once every year or two.

It's almost as if, I don't know, by "creeping" other AT powers higher, brute powers (which have gotten better in HC overall) have gotten relatively worse. If only they could "creep" the brute powers higher! Won't someone please think of the brutes!

Leave Britney alone!