Yomo Kimyata

It wasn't even a Karma!

Like several others have mentioned, I am also guilty of this. Every build I have that has Tough (which is almost all of them) chooses Kick over Boxing because it is so much more satisfying. I will generally use Kick in my attack chain (because I generally pick it up in the 6-10 range) but by the time I can slot FF, I've usually moved past Kick as an attack. However, I DO actually slot it with FF for a couple of reasons: 1. I've got to slot it with something (one doesn't, but I do because that empty slot nags at me), the FF costs practically nothing as far as I'm concerned. 2. I periodically use Kick long after it has dropped out of my attack chain, because as mentioned, it is satisfying. Consider it role playing, as I'm frustrated that Nemesis? has vexed me for so long already. Generally, that happens near the end of a long fight. 3. When that proc dings, it's the proverbial cherry on top. Pure dopamine hit. Now, I also get that putting it into a Mids build is a pain in the butt. I've long been used to unclicking every FF+ rech that I have in a build, and I'm starting to come around to not putting it in my Mids builds out of courtesy to others.

So, I realize that you can just drag and drop IOs into other people's inventories, and I know it is a great way to facilitate giveaways. I can see it's even fun to stealth gift someone useful things, like LotG procs. Anyway, I was just in Pocket D crafting on one of my marketers, crafting table out. Someone walks up to me and starts dumping a half dozen so so uncommon IOs on me. Things like Cleaving Blow and Blood Mandate. I'm right in the middle of converting so it blocks up my enhancement trays. I run away from them, delete the IOs, and send a tell asking them to please not do that. They got (in my opinion) a little huffy and told me to convert them into something better and sell them. They were trying to do me a favor. I thanked them for the thought, but asked them to please not do that anymore, at least to me. Is this something that people do? My first reaction was that I was being trolled. My second reaction was that if you want to give people gifts, maybe convert them yourself? My third reaction was to shrug, be thankful that people want to be kind, and go back to my business.

I'm not going to waste your time with "You can do it with anything!" Some thoughts I have from my personal experience. 1. Start at the very beginning and play something in a style you like playing. You like melee? Choose a melee. You like ranged? Choose ranged. Choose a character body type you can stand to look at. I generally dislike "Male" so usually only use it when it really is necessary for my concept or if I don't have to look at his squingy run all the time. Spend a lot of time in the costume creator. A LOT of time. If there is a power that you don't like the animation of, check to see if there is an alternate animation in the costume creator or just don't take the power. The upshot is that you are going to be spending a lot of hours playing this, and if you find it tedious, there's no point in it. 2. SOs. Groovy! Ask yourself what your motivation is and does this apply to, say, no P2W powers as well? SO only builds are extremely overpowered at low levels, so you will level like a monster quickly, even solo. Feel free to raise your difficulty settings as you feel comfortable. I usually progress something like: +1/x1, +1/x3, +2/x3, +2/x5, +3/x5, +3/x8, +4/x8 if and only if I feel comfortable I can handle it and I'm having fun. SO only build will be a lot slower in that progression. I would play with bosses on but AVs off. Personally, I auto-upgrade my SOs every level so I'm always running at +3. That's expensive. You'll probably want to fund your character from one of your other alts. 3. Endurance is always going to be an issue now. I suggest against something like War Mace/Dark Armor because you can certainly make that work, but it will suck making it work and you're not in this business to do things that suck. Look for powers and slotting to cut your endurance needs. Slot +end red before that second +dam. 4. Although I think this is silly game design, supposedly the balance metric is designed around SOs. In that case, why not try something that is "traditionally" undertuned? You'll find that on SOs, a Sentinel (for example) will be much closer to Blaster (for example) play. Have fun storming the castle!

Yes, you do save yourself 2 converters a shot, but 120-150k inf an IO kind of gets lost in the shuffle. It adds up, sure, but it's still kind of a rounding error in my books.

It's been a long time since Live, but I think there have always been inconsistencies long before HC. @AboveTheChemistmentions Exploit Weakness, which drops from 10-50 and only 1 of the 4 recipes require a rare salvage. Cleaving Blow and Air Burst each have 2 of 4 of their recipes that require rares. There are many, many others, and there are many rare recipes that don't require rare salvage. I always assumed that was the developers' way of telling people to pay attention.

*nods in a supportive fashion*

Although my brilliant research in brain transplantation is unsurpassed and will probably make my name live beyond eternity, I agree that posting it here is useful. I'm always happy to share my thoughts, but by posting here you also get other people's thoughts, and now other readers get to see the dialogue as well. Knowledge is power!

Something like this makes the most sense to me. There will always be people who will have a fit unless things are backwards compatible forever.

Doesn't matter if you know them. They are either doing something, or they are doing nothing. Either way, unless you are Leandro running this show, it doesn't matter. They put their team together and are going to do what they are going to do going forward. They don't owe you or me or anyone an explanation or accountability. Again, my two inf.

My two inf on this, is that knowing this is useful, but please don't abuse the knowledge. You don't need to PM a volunteer DIRECTLY RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOU HAVE A SIGNIFICANT ISSUE! I volunteer on a lot of stuff and I don't give my direct information to just anyone, because I've learned that many many people spam me with requests that are very very important to them right now right now.

I helped out @Marine X with something, and he gave me a character sketch! Love it!

I think that most of it is because, as you say, it's an old set and it has no secondary effects (so no great proc opps). It's not overtuned. But I can't stand it for its animations. I detest elemental swords and I hate breath attacks. But that's just me.

I just duoed him as a +2 AV (me on Fire/Time controller, pick up on Thugs/Kin mastermind, thank you!). That guy is a right bastard.

This. This! A thousand times this!!! But /ah is pretty sweet too.

I'd like to reiterate this. I'm still not 100% of the process with attuned, so bear with me. The upshot is that there is an internal level that you cannot see beforehand, and that level reassigns on conversion. If you convert a lvl 15 Kismet +Acc by Defense a billion times, you will never ever get an LotG 7.5%, because LotG does not go down to lvl 15. But if you convert an attuned Kismet, you may get one on the very first try. But the odds are terrible. When I'm converting to make something, I always work off a level that minimizes the number of clicks I need to do. You can fish for Unbreakable Guards off lvl 30 Reactive Armors, but at that level you can get every Resist Damage IO in the book. There's better spots. I use almost exclusively attuned IOs in my builds, well, because I like the way they look. Playing rare roulette with attuned IOs is truly roulette, and you can end up with anything in the class! But the odds are terrible, so I only do it for experiments. What I do all the time though is buy cheap attuned IOs in the set I want and convert them into the attuned IOs I want if I think it's significantly cheaper and/or faster.

Well, yes and no, depending on supply and your timetable. If I need an attuned LotG 7.5% (or five) and they are currently selling at 8mm (as in you can expect to buy them there right away), that's one thing. Or I can put in a bid at, say, 7mm and hope I get filled in short order. Or I can buy one of the underappreciated ones in the set right now at 5mm, spend an average of 15 converters (worth 1mm), for a net cost of 6mm. Yes, you could roll that E/R a thousand times and not get what you are looking for, or you could roll it once. But on average (and in quantity, the averages work out pretty much as you would expect) you're better off, IMO. (Or I could do what I do and try to buy a bunch of underappreciated ones even lower, roll them all, keep what I need, sell the rest for a net profit. Buying at full retail prices is a sucker's game unless I know it's me selling on the other end.)

I was planning on making this one of the topics for my very last marketing guide. Yes, there are some very efficient paths, and there may be better paths that the ones I have mapped out. In your specific case (wanting any attuned BG), I would use level 10 Paralytic recipes, which are easy to come by and cheap to craft. Then one conversion by Hold (2 converter cost) will get you a rare, either a Neuronic Shutdown or a BG. The NS proc trades well, but any other rare from that set is probably best reconverted. I have one marketing character that does exactly this. Anyway, you now have a 50% chance of having an unattuned BG after one conversion, but you want an attuned one. You can either sell your unattuned on one character and buy at the same price as an attuned on another character and give up the 10% marketing vig. Or you can spring for a catalyst, which will be more expensive, but very much more convenient.

My useless, instant smart-ass answer is "use a large blue insp!" My slightly less useless, slightly less instant smart-ass answer is "use a large purple insp!" *Goes back to selling insps, waits to make a killing*

I was just asking someone what the emote was the ghouls did that I term, "I'm the greatest!" Will that be activated Tuesday?

I can find some good spots for all of them. Well, except maybe the End Mod ones.

I'm sorry, I didn't quite see that. There seems to be something caught in my monocle. *wipes away trillion inf bill* Ah, that's better. Hmm, hadn't considered that, thanks!

Ah yes, I was referring to WOs. Sorry to not explain the voices in my head who sometimes don't get expressed by my fingers.

I think that, like some people said, inspirations (especially purples) can be considered to be more powerful than either temps or incarnates. But it is truly no skin off my nose. I choose to use (or more generally not use) various powers or tools for my own inscrutable reasons. I do try to challenge myself, but for the most part it's irrelevant to me if your inscrutable decisions are different from mine. Heck, (and this may be blasphemy), I'd much rather try a pick up MoWhatever TF with a bunch of randoms and fail than plan out meticulously what the optimal path is and succeed in thirty seconds because we took every advantage we could find. I am a little concerned about the new difficulty levels. Not because they make things harder (which I'm all for!) but because our user base isn't as robust as it once was, and the "overdiversification" (my quotes) may make it more difficult to find teams to try things, particularly to try things you have never done before. My two inf.

The only thing that makes Winter Packs unique is that there is/was/has been a "sales" price. They are not fundamentally more or less useful on 3 January than they are on 4 January. As that goes away, do prices start to move higher? Then do people unpack or sell their packs to drive prices lower? There are all kinds of undergraduate economics theses that could be written about some pretty basic understandings of both traditional microeconomics and behavioral economics. I bought 2,000 packs. Hardly a huge number and hardly insignificant. I'll be honest, I'm mostly hoping someone tries to drive prices up on something so I can hit their unsustainable bids!