Yomo Kimyata

I've been working on ice builds that don't use ice swords. A little light on damage, but doable. I also have some sweet stone melee builds without hammers (until I just discovered there is a hammer free hammer animation available). Fire melee is a lost cause. Jury is out on Psionic Melee.

What if I told you that there was a piece of salvage that could let you convert by rarity? What if I told you there was one that would let you convert by category? And what if I told you there was one that lets you convert in set? Of course, all these things come from the same wonderful, magical animal that we know and love as the enhancement converter. At this point in our program I decided to try to answer the question that nobody is asking: how many licks does it take to can I make all of my IOs into Luck of the Gambler +rech and make a profit? To begin, I put in bids on level 25 uncommon recipes at 5 inf each, hoping to be able to pick up a hundred of them within a week. Why level 25? Well, I figured that was probably the sweet spot where the number of uncommon/rare defense IOs had the highest ratio when compared to the entire pool, and it was the lowest level so therefore the cheapest crafting cost. Why uncommon? Didn't want to pony up for the rare salvage. Now, I know that there probably aren't many/any recipes just sitting around for sale there, so I put in bids of 5 on blocks of ten in likely areas. I think it took a day or two to get filled, which was the first lesson: people continue to dump their stuff on the /AH for the sake of convenience. I also found a few recipes that converted directly into rares at that level, and I put those aside for other purposes. I bought all my salvage at vendor levels, so 250 inf each for two commons and 1000 for one uncommon. Tack on the crafting fee of 37,400 and my all-in cost basis of each IO was 38,905. To be honest, this number isn't really that important. But it adds up. Next, I wanted to develop a crafting strategy. I decided to eyeball it instead of actually crunching the numbers because I felt pretty confident that it was a good method that would minimize the number of converters used. The procedure was as follows: 1. Start with a level 25 uncommon IO. 2. Convert by rarity (so "uncommon") until either: a. I rolled an uncommon defense IO (Karma, Serendipity, Red Fortune); or b. I rolled an uncommon that was guaranteed to convert to a rare if converted by category. 3. If a. then convert by category ("defense") until Luck of the Gambler, then if necessary convert in set until the +recharge piece. End. 4. If b. then convert once by category to get a rare IO. 5. Convert by rarity ("rare") until rolling a rare defense IO (Kismet, Gift of the Ancients, Reactive Defenses, Luck of the Gambler). 6. If not LotG, convert by category ("defense") until Luck of the Gambler, then if necessary convert in set until the +rech. End. Honestly, I could have made a Monte Carlo process to simulate this, because the probabilities are relatively straightforward, but I'm a glutton for punishment. So I loaded up with 100 uncommon IOs and went to town. Much clicking ensued. At the end of the day, I ended with a data set that I will share with you here: But I anticipate that this graph may prove more informative: The mean was 40.3, median of 35.0, standard deviation of 26.0. You may draw your own conclusions from this. I have to go ice my clicking finger.

“Do you think this ‘A’ stands for ‘France’?!?”

Suicide express was a enormous time saver.

Howard the Duck

Sometimes on my "support" characters I'll make a solo build and a team build.

Today I learned that Stone Melee hammers have a "no hammer" visual option. My mind just went FREEM!

As you note, regen pairs very well with soft controls. But knockdown works on enemies in melee range and not those taking potshots at you from afar. Even though regen lives and dies by +recharge, I'd consider 6 slotting Numina's in Fast Healing to help out a bit with ranged defense.

I've definitely converted from a specific piece (let's say Celerity Run Speed) to something else, then back to a Celerity Run Speed in two conversions. The odds are long, but I've done a LOT of converting in my day. You can also convert by rarity and get the same category, e.g., convert a GotA run speed by rarity and get a Reactive Defenses D/E. But you cannot convert by rarity, or by category, and end up in the same set after one conversion (much less the same exact IO you started with). It's programmed so that isn't possible. If that happens, it's a colossal bug that I've never seen before. Might I suggest that maybe you thought you clicked the convert button, but it didn't take because of lag or whatever?

Well, it's about reward creep and power creep, to be honest. Every character I get to 35 first goes and joins Vanguard, kills ten Rikti (pro tip: the silos about a half mile directly in front of the entrance generally have well over ten Rikti monkeys hanging out), runs around and talks to everyone and gets the badge so that defeating Rikti gets me a little extra reward. I can understand not fighting Rikti at level 35 until you have the Vanguard badge, but I don't see the rationale in not fighting Rikti beforehand? Are you going to fight Council, who also don't drop Vanguard merits, instead? Or Crey, who also don't drop Vanguard merits? It's not like there are a limited number of rikti that any given character can spawn. that said, I have no idea what I can save up those vanguard merits for to spend on, so I guess I'm wasting my time even getting the Vanguard member badge, since it just means I have more of a currency I'm not going to spend anyway. Shrug.

Oh, I'm not saying this from a canon aspect. I'm saying give the Council equivalent powers to the Carnival, or whatever. Beef them up. Give them unresistable debuffs. That sort of thing.

Given the revamp that Crey got recently (which I personally find overly annoying, but tweves), can we please revamp high end council? My suggestion is to merge the powers of council and carnival of shadows.

I do, but except on Excelsior! they are all VEATs and HEATs and I don't think I've gotten any of them significantly past 20. To OP: I used to run a spreadsheet, but at this point, if someone wanted one of my names and snookered me out of it, power to them. Not very high on my list of concerns.

No thank you.

That's a fun strategic question, and of course it depends on who I'm playing, how developed a character they are, if I am playing on a team, and who I am fighting. If I'm on a team, I will always go for the hardest target, because I know that everything else will melt in AoE. If I'm on a lowbie, I try to assess my risk profile. If I'm fighting skulls and there are three minions, two lieutenants, and one boss, I'll go for the minions first. It will take me some time to put down the boss, and while I'm doing so I'm taking fire from the boss and three minions. So I take out the soft targets first because at this point in the game, they can hit me and do real damage, so by the time I'm chipping away at the boss, I'm only really worried about the boss's attacks. Shotgun LTs are always last, because they don't present a real danger, even if they are standing right next to you since they have no melee attacks. Debuffers have to go right away. Fighting scrub bot minions is the worst on some of my melee characters because there are a ton of them, they are ranged (and I'm not soft capped to range or energy usually), and their attacks debuff my melee defense so now I'm toast to the hard hitters. Anything that uses radiation debuffs (which I think are autohit?). Most of my characters create a targeting macro by level 40 or so (/macro T targetname [xxx]) and usually the only thing I use that for are sappers, cairns, quartzes (which I haven't been seeing much of lately), and mission specific targets if I'm trying to find them on a large outdoor map.

There's a lot of situations where there is a coin toss in terms of outcomes, and this is one. Once you hit AH, there is a 50-50 chance you will get the one you want. If you don't, then there is a 50-50 chance you will get the one you want on the next roll, and so on. I don't have any reason to believe the RNG is biased, but the odds are that you can expect to roll an AH ten times before getting the proc 1 in 1,024 times. And I've got to tell you it feels like that happens a hell of a lot more frequently than one out of a thousand times. And that, lads and lasses and huges, is a great example of observational bias!

So long as the damage first dynamic is in place, then every power that does not result in the max dps (or dpa, whatever your benchmark) needs to be upgraded to provide the same. I mean, it's criminal that Black Hole doesn't cause as much AoE damage as Burn.

I'll be honest, I use it on melee class ATs, so that damage resistance debuff isn't easily added via another easy source. But yeah, it is most useful on hard targets, but that is the nature of the overpowered beast that is CoH nowadays. Why debuff something when you can kill it with two attacks anyway?

Maybe I'm overvaluing it, but I think it's great. I stick an Achilles Heel and a lvl 53 Lysosome in there. On activation, for the next ten seconds everyone does roughly 30% more damage to the targets (the AH should proc at max percentage), then roughly 10% more damage for the next thirty seconds. 10% of the targets will only take roughly 10% more damage for the next forty seconds. 10% more damage may not sound like much, but since you are probably at ED levels on all your damaging attacks, this is essentially a mini Musculature post-ED boost for you and your entire team. I'm not sure if you can perma it on an APP, but you can certainly keep it active 1/2-3/4 of the time without breaking a sweat.

I found a sneaky one, with the rare in the two spot rather than at the end like normal:

I'm really enjoying this combination! I like it when I get to try a few new things (I have stayed away from Stone Melee because of the mallets, I've never tried a scrapper with Cross Punch before) and this is a pretty good synergy with lots of AoE and bouncy bouncy and stuns in the mix. Some thoughts and observations so far (just dinged 40 on the dingometer): * I'm not super fond of the 50 degree cones like cross punch. The 30 degree cones are easy enough to line up, but I rarely do it for the 50 degree ones, so I end up basically just hitting one enemy unless I remember to stick and move. The endurance drain is so miniscule from using boxing and kick as to be unnoticeable, but I'm using each of those for 2 pieces of Blistering Cold (and 2 in brawl) for the slow resistance. * I tend to forget that Radiation Therapy (like its Bio Armor counterpart DNA Siphon) already has an endurance component. That said, putting the Theft of Essence proc in there gives you a bit more breathing room. I chose not to go proc damage, but instead went with 5-slot Panacea and the Theft proc. * Hurl Boulder is meh, but I'm using it as a 3-piece mule for Scrapper's Strike. I could drop it but I'd need to find another place to park three pieces of SS. It's useful to pick off runners but not damaging enough to work into my chain. * Slotting those two to-hit procs in Beta Decay is a great idea. I'm monitoring my to-hit and in combat I've seen up to a +50% bonus, so it stacks. Beta Decay is auto-hit for non-damaging procs, so those two ding all the time. You may want to monitor your to hit with and without tactics, because you may not need it at all. I didn't put any damage procs in Beta Decay. * So many AoE attacks and so few procs to figure out where to place. I generally like to 6-slot Critical Strikes, but the only real place for that would be Tremor, and that's not a particularly interesting attack without procs. I tried the CS proc in Radiation Therapy for a while, and that is pretty much criticals on demand, but I figured I'd rather have the Theft of Essence proc there and I put the CS proc in Tremor. I'm most concerned with getting the proc to activate before Seismic. If you put the Avalanche proc in Ground Zero, that's pretty much on demand as well, so you get three attacks (Fault, Tremor, Ground Zero) that provide AoE Knockdown. I'm ashamed to say I haven't found a spot for the Overwhelming Force proc. * I didn't take any of the leadership pool, and I'm generally not having any endurance woes, since Radiation Therapy is up every 30-40 seconds and generally fills the blue bar. I'll report back at 50. Thanks for the inspiration @Nemu! Current plans:

*reserves Ukas1c-Fl3a*

That doesn't shock me. I do it that way because it is the fastest way for me to physically/virtually implement the process. A thought process was that the probability of your method getting desired results in three in-set conversions is (1/2)*(1/3)*(1/6) versus (1/ (2^3)). But I may be using some sort of reverse Monte Hall thought process. So both the mean and variance were identical? Good to know. EDIT: my math is bad in the probability. I'll leave it to someone else to correct me.