Yomo Kimyata

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.

*marks up HOs 500%* Excellent.

This is one of the few suggestions I actually have no problems with! It doesn't make things easier, it serves as an inf sink as opposed to creating easier rewards, and (in my uneducated eyes) would in theory be easier to program than a lot of other ideas. A+.

Do they know about shrinkage?

I try a lot of stuff. Some of it I like better than others, and some of it I like better than others sometimes and not others. Usually I get on a kick based on an idea and run with it until something else pops up. The three tenets for a real winner for me are: it has to be interesting, it has to be challenging, it has to be fun. I can swing back and forth among these at times; sometimes you just want to walk onto a fire farm and burn stuff. Interesting: I like having to put some thought into it. Maybe that's a good backstory, or even a name. I *love* finding really crappy builds and making them into something that is ok, good, or even great. I don't find FotMs very interesting, but that's not because there is anything wrong with them but because I'm a real snob. Popular things are popular for a reason! Challenging: I prefer things that take at least a little bit of thought. I always like to punch above my own weight because I want to push myself, and frankly there is essentially zero penalty for failure. I don't feel bad about eating floor in a mission unless I know it's going to take me five minutes to get back there. Fun: Let's be honest, this is (I hope) why we are all here. Get your kicks however you want to get them, so long as you are not getting them at the expense of someone else.

This problem sounds mysterious and spooky.

This is a great thought experiment, thanks! I don't have this combination, but I would think it's a good one. +Recharge is always going to be your friend when you are trying to get Benumb/Sleet/Heat Loss up as much as possible. Personally, I'd work Hasten in, but I'm a real stan for that. I also try to work in -res everywhere I can and in a few places I can't. The FF +recharge proc, which I also love, doesn't stack I don't think? But you could conceivably keep it up all the time. It does, by the way, fit in Bullet Rain at least on my defenders it does. For Empty Clips and Bullet Rain, I think I would go with FF proc, Annihilation proc, 3x Superior Scourging Blast (3,4,5 on Empty Clips, 1,2,6 on Bullet Rain), Nucleolus. Hail of Bullets should pretty much auto-proc whatever is in there. I wouldn't put a FF in there, but would probably use a Fury of the Glad proc and 5x Superior Avalanche for the melee d. I think I'd 6-slot Superior Malice of the Corruptor in Piercing Rounds, especially if you are able to routinely get more than one target in the cone. That proc is 5ppm! I'd put it in an AoE if I could since it is going to trigger a fair amount. It shouldn't be too bad in Pistols/Dual Wield either.

I've been thinking about DSOs a fair amount, and I've been thinking about the future. Not just the I27:3 release future, but changes they may make after that. I see three realistic possible outcomes in the near-to-intermediate future: 1. Everything is exactly as stated in the patch notes for I27:3 and onwards. The DSOs will have a different drop distribution than HOs et al. DSOs of the same type as current HOs are stackable, and should have commensurate value (they will probably be cheaper than HO peers, but that's another issue). DSOs in new types will be very very uncommon, since the only way you get them is through the new Strike Force (red side!?!!). Some will be very useful for niche builds, but being able to build to a lvl 53 Damage/Endurance, for example, would require at least 4 DSOs. These will be very rare -- much rarer than the lvl 53 Cytos. 2. At some point, the new DSO types get added into the distribution pool of HO/Hydra-O/Crystal-Os. Maybe this will happen, maybe it won't. But it seems like a natural progression. In this case, the aforementioned lvl 53 D/Es will become more attainable, and there would be various other likely ramifications. 3. At some point, the devs cave and make HOs convertible by type or some other similar outcome. In case 1, there will be a number of new items of extreme rarity. I could see hitting inf cap on some of them, at least early on. In case 2, the new items will not be nearly so rare, and there would be more trade in the items. I see this as the most likely eventual outcome. In case 3, which I don't support personally, all HOs would change dramatically in value to come to more of a commodity-type "HO" value. In case of outcome 3, I bought a bunch of crappy HOs for under 1mm. Maybe I wasted a half billion or so (OH NO I WASTED A HALF BILLION!), but it's kind of a happiness hedge. So while I'm complaining about how easy kids have it nowadays, I should be able to make some nice profit, since I'm eyeballing the value of "an HO" at 5-10mm.

I love Nemesis? so much that I use that convention a fair amount.

My opinion is that if you want something on a character you should get it on that character. Everything else is just nepotism. BUT: how about making a mechanism so that we can *put* items on the Character Items menu (which are accessible by every character on the account) at a 10:1 tax. You can put up 10 LotG procs, one gets posted for any of your characters to pull off. You post 1000 merits and any one of your characters can pull off 100 merits. I'd even consider this for incarnate stuff.

What's the problem we're trying to solve? 1. People complain about knockback when I'm on teams. Ok, if that bothers you, use one of the tools available. Problem solved. 2. I'm not doing enough damage when I'm solo. Ok, if that bothers you, use build 2 or 3 and switch to a solo build when you are soloing. Problem solved. Am I missing something?

A buddy of mine wrote this article on why people are mean on the Internet. For best results, read it then log in anonymously and tell him how much it sucks! https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201901/posted-anonymous

What server are you on Snarky? *runs off to make Snarky Rex, Snarky?*

It may come as no surprise to you that this was my first thought as well. It's a good set, especially the proc, and I expect the pieces to trade 1-2mm except the proc 3-5mm. But it's not worthwhile my making hundreds of the proc, since 1. slow sets aren't in high use, imo, and 2. it's still going to be easy enough to get to an Ice Mistral if I want one. If I'm wrong on this, then feel free to taunt me! Or threat level me, whatever.

Oh it gets worse/better. I haven't figured out how to put lvl 53 HOs in Mids. And then there's the incarnate stuff.

Ok, I haven't finished this journey yet, but I'm far enough along to see where it's going. I learned a few things along the way, and I apologize if this is second nature to everyone else, but it wasn't for me. Electric Melee: I've never played this to 50 before, but it's really a much better set than I anticipated. Jacob's Ladder doesn't have much use to me, and neither does Confront, but everything else is in and gets used. Being able to slot Sleep sets on three powers means that you can slip a Call of the Sandman heal in there -- it's a significant heal when it triggers. Being able to slot End Mod means you can slip a few Power Transfer heals in there -- it's not nearly as significant but I guess it adds up. Neither of those made the cut for my "final" build but both did when leveling. The endurance steal from attacks is practically insignificant, but with Bio Armor you really shouldn't ever be wanting for endurance unless you are getting actively sapped. I see that Chain Induction doesn't pass on self buff procs (like Power Transfer) past the first target, which seems fair. I really don't like telenukes, but Lightning Rod fills a need for a AoE proc bomb ready every 30-40 seconds, so I moved the Fury of the Glad proc to there from DNA Siphon. Lightning Clap needs a Sudden Acceleration proc, and then 5 slotting with either Stupefy or Absolute Amazement. The AA proc should provide a fair amount of mitigation if you lead with Lightning Clap. ST damage chain is lacking, but man those flopping AoEs! Bio Armor: I probably have the most experience in this as in any of the armor sets. The thing that I'm doing a little differently is slotting up Environmental Modification more than I normally do. The rut I get in is normally focusing purely on positional defenses rather than typed. Low 40s for S&L and low 30s for everything else except psionic, seems more than tolerable. No endurance problems, and my Healing Received chat is lighting up green with all the bonuses I'm getting from various procs. I always 6-slot Ablative Carapace with Preventative Medicine and 5-slot Panacea in Parasitic Aura plus a Theft of Essence. DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura should both be blue bar fillers every 30 and 90 seconds respectively. I'm putting the Crit Strikes proc in the damage aura along with Overwhelming proc and Avalanche proc. Every pulse, there's about a 45% chance for one or both of those to proc, so lots of flopping even if you aren't doing anything at all. Epic: I went with Leviathan Mastery for Hibernate as an oh shit button. Water Spout seems like an extra tool to stick an Achilles Heel in, and it causes knock up so that's cool. Like any bio armor scrapper build, ranged debuffs are going to be a problem, but other than that this is a really fun effective ride. Now am I claiming that this is the best build ever? Yes, yes that is exactly what I'm claiming! There's an extra slot in there I haven't decided what to do with yet, and I'm still fine tuning some stuff. Love it.