Yomo Kimyata

@Ukase, one thing I want to say about email is that I've noticed that sometimes it goes screwy. I've never lost a money holding mail as far as I know. But even today, I logged onto a character on a shard I rarely use, and there were 5 emails, some well over a year old, that finally wound their way through the system and popped up. Personally, I trust email a lot less than the /AH.

To your question, I'd agree a controller (maybe dominator) since that will give you access to a lot of mez and such. I'll put some thought into what kind here in a bit. But to save you a lot of catalysts and expenses and trouble, remember you can buy attuned IOs directly in the AH and they come from the same pool as levelled ones. You can craft a lvl 25 Lotg 7.5% on one character, put it up for sale, buy it as an attuned on another character. You lose the 10% transaction fee, but that will almost certainly be less than the value of a catalyst. This guide may be helpful:

I think it's a cool idea, but I'm with @arcane on this one. I don't think HOs et al need to be made stronger. They are incredible in lots of builds.

I found a short video about that as well: Totally a really helpful YouTube video

I, for one, use the AA proc as is in every end game stun power. I think it's most useful in powers that aren't auto-stun because I *believe* that the proc roll is independent of the "stun" roll, so you can debuff your enemy even if they are not stunned. That said, I wholeheartedly support not just new stun sets, but new sets for all mez types (except knockback, which in my opinion has plenty of great options).

@Jimmy (I think) posted a while ago that common salvage (10k), uncommon salvage (100k), rare salvage (1mm), and Brainstorm Ideas (I don't remember the price) were seeded, originally at 10mm in quantity apiece. Also, we know that Hero Packs have been seeded at 10mm (both kinds), and it appears that when/if they change prices on Winter Packs they reseed with a refreshed quantity of 10mm. That's all that leaps to mind.

In Soviet Russia, blasters get blasted and die! I guess that happens everywhere else too, though.

You're not the boss of me. Wait, is that you honey? Nevermind.

Here's a brief video tutorial: totally informative video on how to log onto the forums

What I learned with my staff/regen brute (which was a very early character for me on HC) was it really helps to anticipate heals and sometimes pre-heal, if that makes any sense.

I certainly don't see anything wrong, and I always enjoy looking at how other people approach builds. My melee bio builds generally focus on melee defense and as much recharge as I can get. On the primary side, I generally like to split scrapper's strike 3-3 in two of my low level attacks, then fill them out with another slot or two. But that's just me -- it gets you a little more melee defense at the expense of something else. I also like to work in 5-piece Avalanche and Blistering Cold if I can. Generally I'll sacrifice a 5-slot purple set for that. On the secondary side (and again, this is just how I roll), I always 6-slot Ablative Carapace with Preventative Medicine just like you, but I also 6-slot Parasitic Aura with 5-piece Panacea and the Theft of Essence proc. DNA Siphon is the best power on the market as far as I'm concerned. It's a near-guaranteed proc bomb. Theft of Essence, like you have, is a must. That's usually where I put Fury of the Glad as well, but that's up to you. I wouldn't bother with slotting heal there unless you really want the bonuses. I find Inexhaustible to be fine with one slot, since if I'm in a crowd (and one always is!), you have a blue bar filler up every 30 seconds or so in DNA Siphon and every 90 seconds or so with Parasitic aura.

good to know:

They would all have wings and a helmet and some craptastic aura. +1 to the original idea though.

Here's some more anecdotal evidence: with two of the servers down, I'm noticing a lot more lag on the AH than usual. In particular, when I switch from one character to another and open /AH, I am getting the previous characters /AH. This has happened many times before in regular play, but today it has been three for three within a few minutes. (My workaround is to put a new item in the /AH, and that usually sets it to the current character). Another thing is when I click on an IO in inventory in order to send it to the /AH, there's a more noticeable delay. This also happens in regular play, but not often. It makes intuitive sense to me that more strain on the server might slow things down, but I'm a rudimentary programmer at best, so I'll listen to the experts out there.

Well, a very reasonable explanation could be that someone else happened to dump a bunch of rares at a lower price, and that was transacting because it wasn't your turn in the queue. It doesn't matter if your offer is lower than any bids until your offer is the *lowest* offer. Until then, you just need to wait your turn while the hamster wheel processes and it gets to you. I've been thinking of the /AH as a combination of theory and execution. The theory is how the queue system works, how it matches up buyers and sellers. It's a model. It's not very complex (but probably more complex than people think), but in a Platonic model, everything would transact instantly and exactly. Then there is the execution, which is going to deal with how it was programmed, and how often the batches are processed, and how many people are in the queue, or how hot it is where the server is located, or any of a number of other factors. So yes, it does take time to process trades, even if you are the lowest outstanding offer or the highest outstanding bid. But that's not always the sole reason for it. I'd like to do a writeup on how I see the queue system working, but there is what I think of as a fundamental problem that I don't want to highlight. It can be exploited, but it's fundamentally not a universal or profitable exploit. I've sent in bug reports before, and been told "working as intended" but I don't think that printing a guide on how to gum up the system is good for anyone.

This is a good point, and to me it demonstrates power creep since the game began. There’s nothing wrong with fire melee (except the swords and maybe fire breath, yuck!) and there’s nothing wrong regeneration (which I really enjoy as a set). But they are vanilla. There’s no knock back to proc for a FF +recharge. There’s no -def to proc for an Achilles heel. In comparison to other sets with more slotting options, they are less multifaceted. if, for example, they added a set that adds -res to melee damage, or a set that adds a damage proc to healing sets, then those new io sets would be instantly popular and some of the vanilla AT sets would be more popular as well.

Well, two things. First, to your point, there *is* certainly some processing lag going on. I just conducted two experiments (and I've done this before, but not all that recently): 1. I had 1,000 yellow uncommon salvage on an alt in 100 stacks of 10. I posted all of them at 1 (after making sure that there were a few thousand bids outstanding). It took me 1:09 to post them all, and the last one transacted at 3:01. Most of those trades went to a really low bid, and I'm guessing that it was between 100-150 total transactions (since the system considers a block of 10 one transaction, and I'm guessing that that cut down on the processing time. Regardless, 1,000 items took just over 3 minutes to transact and allocate when there were guaranteed counterparties. 2. I then bought 1,000 white common salvage, in 100 stacks of 10. To guarantee that I would buy them, I bid 10,000 inf (which is the seeded price, so I know it is a guaranteed transaction). It took me 0:23 to make my bids, and I bought the last one at 4:12. I am guessing that this was a slower transaction, because there were probably a lot of singles for sale rather than blocks of 10. We all know that the programming of the /AH is considered to be kludgy at best. Or so we are told! Second, keep in mind that I can really very easily imagine a scenario where in the 30 seconds it took for you to post then screenshot that you were not the lowest outstanding offer. Based on anecdotal evidence from these forums, most people looking to dump either post at 1 inf (guaranteed transaction if there is any bid at all) or 5 inf (which guarantees you will not transact at a price below your minimum posting fee. If someone had dumped a few hundred salvage at a lower price just before you posted at 6, you wouldn't even be first in the queue. There are plenty of other things that could screw things up as well. Well maybe not plenty, but a few. I've bought and sold a lot of items on the AH over the last few years. In my experience, any delay in transaction time in the /AH has been measured in seconds for me unless I am transacting large numbers of items, and then I've been chalking it up to processing time. my two inf

The only reason that I don't have one of those is that I cannot stand the elemental swords of Fire Melee and Ice Melee!

I strongly believe that any combination can succeed, depending on your definition of success. Some are markedly better than others, though. I took a few defenders to 50 that would have been unicorns according to the March 2020 data. The Sonic/AR defender was really the only complete dud of the bunch, and it still wasn't impossible to solo him to 50.

I'm going with nerp on this. Part of the game is allocation of scarce resources (in this case AT and power choices). I'm not giving up the intellectual thrill of solving a problem so that some jamoke can kill pixels 10% faster for an imaginary currency.

That is very kind of you, my friend, but I couldn't justify the cost to you and me in inconvenience just because I didn't want to spend a few million more of an imaginary currency that I already have too much of! I've solved my problem (and made a profit doing it, naturally!)

I'd probably start with something like this. Feel free to swap out sets for something less pricy:

I haven't been on beta, but it sounds like they will be in existing categories? So there will be three Running recipes: Quickfoot, Celerity, and Thrust? In that case, I wouldn't expect any real change in the converter method: buy uncommon recipes or IOs (Quickfoot), craft, convert once by category (Running), and you have a rare (Celerity or Thrust). Depending on how popular the new set is (looks pretty meh to me), maybe the price of Quickfoot goes up a touch? But it should still be a good way to play rare roulette.

Lord of Snarkness; Mistress of the Snark

DNA Siphon is way too good a power to one-slot (as is Parasitic Aura, but that's an order of magnitude less important in my eyes). I thought I had a Mids build lying around, but that must have been on an old computer. I'll put something together tonight.