Yomo Kimyata

My criteria change over time. I really enjoy pulling out an old 50 and say to myself, "What the hell was I thinking back then?!?" I don't mind doing respecs so if something seems off I'll fix it as soon as I see something wrong. My first focus is always going to be endurance, and if I need more I'll move heaven and earth for it. It's funny you mention stamina, because I think I only have one character with 3-slotted stamina and that's a war mace//dark armor. I'm probably always overslotted with accuracy, because there are -to hit debuffs out there.

Is it privilege if anyone can do it?

I love Ice Melee on scrappers. Thanks to Ice Patch it adds an incredible amount of mitigation that lets you focus on doing damage. I really do not like the ice (or fire) sword animations, but with ice melee it's not a deal breaker to take Frozen Fists over Ice Sword, and a lot of people end up skipping Greater Ice Sword as well. I find that FF or Ice Sword, Frost, Freezing Touch, Frozen Aura are sufficient for attacks, although it is really nice to be able to get some additional offensive from your secondary/pool/epics. I've run Ice/Radiation, Ice/Bio, and Ice/Stone on scrappers to 50, and I'd rank them in that order. At 50 and well equipped, the first two are pretty godly.

Toot-toot mother-[AIR HORN BLOWS]

I neglected to mention something before. I realize that a lot of new people are joining/returning and starting a bunch of alts. This is normally wonderful and frankly the primary reason I play this game. However, one is probably best served by getting your first character to 50 first before engaging in altitis or else you will have the same funding problem on all your alts at the same time.

I like my vampires like I like my undercover cops: staked out

Great responses so far! Some things I would add: "Proc-friendly" can mean both "there are a lot of useful procs that can be slotted" or "this power will generally activate the proc each time you use it." "Useful" may be in the eye of the beholder. Different enhancements may have different proc rates, in terms of PPM. The standard is 3.5, but some are higher or lower. Any proc in an ATO or a Winter set that is made Superior with a Catalyst has a higher PPM. Powers that can affect more than one target can have a greater than 90% chance of activating. What?!? But the cap is 90%?!?. This is because if a proc does NOT activate on any particular target, there is a chance for it to activate on a subsequent target. For example, let's say you attack a single target with a power that has a 50% chance to hit and to proc. Half the time it will activate and half the time it will not. Now let's say you attack five targets that are in range with this power. For a proc that affects the target, like a damage proc, each target will have a 50% chance to take damage. But if the proc is something that affects you, like %chance for recharge, then the only way it will NOT activate is if it does not activate on all five targets. In this case, it would NOT activate 0.5 ^ 5 = 3.125% of the time, meaning that it WOULD activate 96.875% of the time. (Sadly, it does not have the chance to stack five times.) In general, I like to proc powers when I feel that there is a "good" chance for activation, or when I have a spare slot and nothing better to use it on. Sometimes you get a lottery pick proc activation!

And by "most people" I mean @tidge.

Not updating the thread, but I wanted this image to come up when I post it in other threads.

Try this:

Are YOU even a live person?

I did not see that coming.

Nono, fo-sho.

Other than being a bit of a pain in the butt for a few minutes, respecs are a great way to try out stuff and decide what works at that point in time. You will probably find that at later points in time, other things may work better. There are a lot of ways to get the ability to respec, so that should never be the bottleneck.

I have not done this. I will not do this. There are some things Yomo was not meant to know.

Gooners never say die.

You are correct, but again once anyone gets a character to 50, then that character can easily fund all subsequent characters with all kinds of goodies. The problem here is that they want to fund that initial character, whether that be with SOs or top of the line sets. And I think that most people who have been on HC for awhile will tell you it's extremely easy to play a character on SOs only, or even to only slot what your enemies drop. And that's solo. On teams, it's pretty trivial to level all the way to 50 without having a single enhancement slotted. You may laugh, but some people do that. I'm not saying that everyone has to suffer and play their first character out as a punishment build. What I am saying is that if one doesn't want to do that, one needs to find a way to fund the enhancements they want (and I say want, not need). Some of those ways take some work. It's a lot less work than leveling solo from 1 to 50 using only what drops. A lot less. Sometimes all you have to do is find someone to give you a wad of starting cash.

until Leap Day!

That's really all you need to know! I like staff a lot. When I came to HC, it was a new power set to me, and I jumped right in. I think that as designed, it was a really good piece of work with respect to balance. You get flexibility in the stances that help you with damage or safety or endurance, depending on your wants. You get, in my opinion, the best defensive offensive power available in the entire game in Guarded Spin (maybe Ice Patch). If you are playing with SOs, the damage is perhaps not as good as many other sets, but that was the tradeoff. I think that in the HC environment, where there is no reason to NOT be IO'd to the gills, and where safety is irrelevant when compared to the almighty DPS, and where the concepts of tradeoffs and balance have gone the way of the dodo, people are gonna harp and wonder why in the world doesn't this set have as much damage as Energy Melee? I think it's great and you can make some really incredibly strong builds. My wish list would be more weapon skins and maybe, maybe some alternative animations.

This economy is incredibly democratic. Cheap and easy converters plus a little knowledge gets you whatever you want. I mean that directly -- you can literally make whatever you want, although it's markedly easier to buy it with the proceeds from other things you make. But the fundamental issue, and this hasn't changed since Live, is that your very first character will almost certainly be a cash drain until it hits its 40s. Once you have a character at 50, and if you want to play it at 50, you will generate an incredible amount of inf by vendoring the enhancements and recipes that drop. Getting that first character past the scarcity challenge is awkward, but you, like everyone else, only have to do it once at most!

This is an insignificant problem, but on any new character your default difficulty is +0/x0. Would it be possible to change that default to x1? It gives me the heebie-jeebies to see it at x0, because it makes me feel that x0 is either supposed to be nothing or infinitely difficult. I've assumed that there is no difference between x0 and x1 in terms of difficulty. Thank you.

Don’t really have a main crafter, but I think my top was about 55k and a dozen or so north of 20k, for enhancements.

clearly you are a recent addition to our player base. Welcome! HC members have fought this battle dozens of times, and generally “give everyone everything “ has triumphed. Even if prestige were only a number, I believe that enough people would grief that their number was too low, through no fault of their own, mind you.

I would have thought the British English version would have had a “u” or two in there somewhere.