Yomo Kimyata

Back to OP: you may not be aware of this but you can literally resummon your pets every five seconds. So if you aren’t using group fly to keep your personal experience at tip top, your team experience should be very similar in terms of what you are contributing

Personally, I don't think of Market PvP(lol) as buyer v. seller, but rather buyer v. buyer or seller v. seller. I think if you don't care then it's just plain P.

I think that market PvP is really interesting, partly because I always think I'm winning, and I'll bet many of my counterparties think the same thing...

Two reasons from my gameplay experience: 1. War Mace is endurance heavy, even well slotted. Also consider you can slot three AOE with FF +rech and that is a never ending cavalcade of joy that sucks your blue bar dry. 2. Ninjitsu’s endurance regain power kind of sucks. Yeah, it’s a lot better than nothing, but it’s a click that only affects you and can at realistically best give you 60% of your endurance back every 25-30 seconds. Unless I want to assign five extra slots to health and stamina, which I do not!

what was the biggest?

nods. All of it.

Here are some initial thoughts, and I'll try a build over the next week: I solo just about everything, so in general I want a ST rotation and an AoE rotation. For ST I'll go with some combo of Pulverize, Clobber, Shatter, and a snipe. For AoE I've got Whirling Mace, Shatter, Crowd Control. For WM I use Shatter as the holder for Critical Strikes proc to enhance crits for both ST and AoE. This also means I'll always lead out of "hide" with Shatter. I usually three slot generic defense toggles with a LotG proc and 2x lvl 53 cytos. Saves me slots I put elsewhere since the bonuses for defense sets are pretty weak and I'm better off using those slots elsewhere. I'm not really seeing the point in the T9. Yes, it doubles your DDR, but then again, I'm only going to need ANY DDR on a streak breaker. Even if the crash is manageable, I'd rather smash than manage. Thinking power pools of Leaping (CJ), Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave), and either 3 from Force of Will or 4 from Experimentation. I'm skipping Hasten because I find that 2-3 FF +rech keeps that +100 up most of the time. Endurance will be a bottleneck, and I will probably need to use an epic pool to address it. Psionic Mastery gives me endurance help and a snipe. Done.

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Ninjitsu is only for scrappers and stalkers, so this isn’t some great conspiracy! Stalkers get Ninja Blade instead of Katana, and the powers that be feel (rightfully imo) that Battle Axe, War Mace, and Titan Weapons would be too powerful for stalkers without significant rebalancing. Coincidentally I just started reinvestigating my WM/Nin who I took to 50 but didn’t love. I don’t have much experience with pure defense sets, but my hazy memory says that I remember him being significantly more fragile than I expected. That said it was an organic build in an unknown set to me so I’m sure I made errors. I’ll be back later on this one.

I am absolutely going to try to increase the graphical load on each of my characters.

When I turn 50, which I have done a bunch of times, I'm generally going to need about 20-25 catalysts. Usually I put in lowball bids for 30 or so a day or two before I hope to ding 50. but that said, so what if I go into the market and spend 25mm on catalysts? 25mm is a rounding error for me and I think for most experienced players. I've even clicked on the Character Items page to pull off catalysts from there, and we all know that's not worth our time!

Nuh uh!

I would have hoped that at this point, "Your mileage may vary" would be implied! When I am playing a level 50, it's probably solo and I'm probably playing at +4/x8 and maybe with a Windfall active. It doesn't take many missions before I am full or salvage or recipes or enhancements, and I generally only do inventory management when I get a flash telling me that I'm full of something or other. I cut off rare recipes because I don't choose to put in the effort to weed out the valuable ones. It's a higher return for me to get fifty common recipes that will net me 5mm inf than for me to get ten rares of which I will vendor 9 for 10k and spend 1mm on salvage and crafting for one LotG that happens to drop. Or better yet, if I feel like crafting on that character I'll buy fifty level 41 Red Fortunes and craft and convert them to LotG and make 100mm+ profit.

By the time I hit 50, there are very few rare recipes that are worth crafting or selling. Between the crafting cost and the rare salvage, you are already about 1mm inf in the hole. And rare recipes are only worth 10k to the vendor, so I just turn them off so I have more room for commons, PvP, and purples. It's a minor thing.

I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.

I think it also worthwhile mentioning that when I ding 50 I turn off uncommon recipes and often rare recipes as well at the P2W. The crafting cost is close to a half million inf for a level 50 recipe and if I’m going to craft on that alt I see no need to add a half million to my cost basis. I keep commons, pvps, and rares active.

Also, there are some uncommon IO sets that require a rare salvage to craft. Pretty sneaky, sis!

Be cautious with the Upgrade button if you are keeping your eye on your funds. It upgrades all of your SOs (and DOs and others) to +3 your level. There is a confirm button, but it is all or none. I tend to use it every level, but you don’t need to upgrade all your SOs every level and it’s a big inf sink. Id target every three levels or so, and if you shift over to IOs you won’t need to upgrade .

Guilty as charged. I tend to never use temp powers for the simple reason that unless I can easily reacquire them I don't want to depend on them. That said, there are plenty, especially from the P2W menu, that get work. I was gratified when the powers that be gave every new character a jetpack and athletic run, since that was always the first thing I do with the P2W vendor unless I'm specifically boycotting them. I also buy Mission Transporter, Team Transporter, Inner Inspiration, Return to Battle, Reveal, Portable Workbench. I'll eventually get Envenomed Daggers, and generally I'll keep an XP booster going, at least for the first 35 levels or so. I'll get Renewal of Light from the Candy Keeper -- it's only 8 days of rez but it's got a different timer than Return to Battle. Other than that, I'm pretty clean. I just started looking at Smoke Grenade (which you can get from Day Jobs as well as side missions in Mayhem/Safeguards). My biggest stumbling blocks in what I'd like to be able to do but often cannot is scrapper soloing some of the TF/SFs where I'm mucking around with a bunch of AVs and I'm just not very good at pulling them off one at a time yet. I hope to give this a whirl over the next few weeks.

If this is new to most of you, I'd suggest just playing it old school and not worrying too much about building out your characters to the nines. You are allowed to buy SOs (single origin) enhancements right away now, but that is expensive for brand new characters. However, if you just do the simplest thing as described in the title here (trade in your merits for converters and sell them on the /AH) you can easily keep yourself in SOs (update every few levels to stay sharp!) as you and your buddies relearn the game. You're not going to *need* anything expensive for a long long time.

For an intro to Dark Armor, I'd strongly suggest skipping Cloak of Fear, and Oppressive Gloom also won't do a lot for you (although it's pretty low cost). CoF in my opinion really needs a big investment in order to be worthwhile. OG will generally keep minions out of your hair, but then again a tank shouldn't be worried much about minions -- it requires a bit more stun in order to be useful against tougher opponents. Hasten is skippable with Battle Axe. I'll generally put a Force Feedback +rech in both Whirling Axe and Pendulum and when you are fighting large groups you will pretty consistently have +100 recharge up most of the time.

It’s almost like someone posted all the information they needed. A “guide”, if you will.