Yomo Kimyata

But isn’t this whole thread about how thinking up a new name that isn’t taken is haaaaaard?

It's a fair question, and it's an easy answer. It's the same bid across the board. Also, even when bids were lower, I believe it was still the same person. People fall into habits and bid (or offer) with a distinctive handle. In this case, it's ending in "005". I do the same thing (although my handle is different) so when you look at the history, you can see if someone has outbid you or if you are still the highest outstanding bid.

Someone offered to buy my character name the other day. My response was “Thanks for the validation, but I can’t imagine there’s anything you have that I need.”

Well, the price has consistently risen over the last few weeks to 11 or 12mm, it seems to be frequently monitored, and it seems like the same player. Buy it at 11, spend 2 to craft, sell it for 17. 2mm and change in profit is too thin a margin for the capital at risk, in my opinion. Maybe someone is hoping to push prices higher, but in purple land the rate of supply seems much higher than the rate of demand.

Someone is accumulating a simply massive amount of purple recipes. Good job!

So... thanks in part to this thread I took a deeper look into this market. Now, since boosters come from merits or super packs, we should look at comparables for a value play. Since 5 converters would buy you either one booster or 15 converters, you might expect that boosters would trade for roughly 15x the amount that converters do. If they traded at 20x, then everyone would stop printing converters and start printing boosters, and if they traded at 10x no rational actor would convert merits to boosters when they would get a better haul from selling converters. And lo and behold, that's about right. You can probably sell oodles of boosters at 1mm, which translates to selling 15x oodles of converters at 66,666. I believe that the converter market is probably deeper and more liquid, but the basic math works out ok. But I realized that very few were actually listed for sale, and when I bid crept I got over 5mm with no success. That's madness! But just like yellow salvage, people aren't interested enough in the market to offer product at "market" levels. And that's fine. Why in the world would anyone pay 5mm for something they could buy with 5 merits? Why indeed? So a few days ago I put in bids for a few hundred boosters at 1.2mm, just to see how long it would take to fill. When I checked in a few hours later, I had bought them all, and I was feeling a little foolish for overpaying by almost 20%, but that part of the experiment was done. Then I put some of them up for offer at around 5mm, just to put some liquidity in the system. I was bemoaning my wasting of AH slots, because, again, why in the world would anyone pay 5mm for one of these? I just logged in to find this: And the only reason I noticed was that I was clicking each Get Inf button and after the first 5-10 it hung up because it wouldn't let me over the cap. So, yeah, I don't know why people do what they do, but ain't nobody getting this back!

My titan weapons/stone armor brute is still winding up.

It's been awhile, so I logged it on this afternoon and took it for a bit of a spin. I have to warn you though, I had mostly retired it once I unlocked incarnates since it felt too easy; I had been running +4/x8 since around lvl 40. But like I said, it's been awhile so I wanted to see what I had done already and play the time-honored game "What Was I Thinking?" First of all, my current build isn't the one I listed earlier in this thread. I've got Mu Mastery for two AoEs, and I realized I don't like them at all, so shifting over to Pyre or Leviathan is on my short list. What Was I Thinking? Well, I guess it was that I got two AoEs for two power slots. If I can work on a build that gets Fireball in there as well as Melt Armor, that's probably a good idea. Alpha: Musculature Boost. What Was I Thinking? That's probably the right tree, but I'm a little surprised I stopped so early. I will probably go with Core Paragon over Radial Paragon because I don't think I'll need any help endurance-wise. I do need to unlock the defense debuff parts though asap. Judgment: Ion Partial Radial. What Was I Thinking? For melee characters I prefer AoEs over cones or targets. I usually pass on Ion since it is so popular, but it seems to work very well thematically. That said, I really like Void nowadays for a little bit of damage mitigation, so I'll probably build into Radial Final. And there's always good old Mighty! Interface: Reactive Total Core. What Was I Thinking? Reactive is my go-to, but Degenerative for solo work is also good, especially when ST damage is relatively weak. I'll think about that, but I'll probably build out Reactive. Lore: none. What Was I Thinking? Lore is always last for me, and I rarely summon them. Follow your heart. Destiny: Ageless Total Core. What Was I Thinking? This is a head scratcher for me, since I'm not sure what my thought process was at the time. I can see getting +debuff resistance (since that is the real flaw in this build) but I'm down the wrong side of the tree. Also, I've never actually tried the +debuff resistance so I don't know how effective it is. Otherwise, Ageless is of practically no use to me; I have plenty of endurance and recharge. Barrier would be probably most useful against debuffers, since I've got generally good healing already. Hybrid: Support Total Radial. What Was I Thinking? Not sure, but I think I would probably give some sort of Assault a try instead.

Hey! I may be a big fan of capitalism, but you shouldn't call me that! 😃 🎩🧐

For good or for bad, part of the utility is what can they easily be converted into, which provides a bit of a feedback loop when looking at price. I mostly agree with your set assessments. Triage: buy the recipes to craft and convert. Regenerative Tissue: the proc isn't as useful as whoever is propping up its price seems to think. I've made some good profits hitting their bids. Harmonized Healing: see Triage. Miracle: convert into the proc. Slot the proc in Health if you really really need end help. Preventative Medicine: an overall great set, both in terms of slotting and in terms of selling. I sometimes slot the proc alone, and often 6-slot the set for things like Dull Pain. Doctored Wounds: I don't mess with this on the marketing side. Is 1.5% resistance worth 2.5% recharge on my regen characters? Maybe, but I generally go with 5-slot Panacea over 5-slot Doctored Wounds. Numina's: You know, I really want to make more of this set. But the proc is pretty low on my hierarchy for Health (panacea, miracle, numina's), and I rarely slot it. Good 6-slot bonuses if you want ranged D, but I generally just don't muck around with this at all. Then there is Panacea, and I usually 5-slot this in healing sets after I have 6-slotted Preventative Medicine in another set. I'm a sucker for recharge. And then again, there's frankenslotting.

I think that Cytos and Micros are expensive because they are *useful* to the high end crowd, and they are rare enough that people like me have their ears perk up and notice that they can be expensive. If you have a metric ton of inf, why not blow it on an incredibly tiny marginal increase in performance? Some powers seem literally to be made for Cytos. I don't have many Invulnerability alts, but the ones I do have absolutely have three lvl 53 Cytos in Invincibility.

Better. That's some walkin' around money. That's some lying down on a golden couch eatin' bon-bons money.

I quite enjoy mine, thematically, but it's not breaking any records in the synergy department.

I’m not surprised. Seeing that amount of influence on a lvl 50+ is giving me a facial tic. It’s like when someone posts a phone screenshot and their battery is at 2%.

Yeah…. “until”…..

Excellent point!

I did the unthinkable: I looked it up in the wiki. According to that source (which may not be correct): - it takes 39,149,119 xp to go from 1-50. - it takes 4,973,400 xp to go from 49-50. - every veteran level takes the same amount of xp as 49-50. So however long it takes you to run 1-50 (A in my example above), it should take you about 4.05x as long to run from 1 to vet level 24 (A+B), and about 7.10x as long to run to vet level 48 (A+B+C). You are very slightly better off running to vet level 24 than vet level 48, but it's so close that it's pretty much a wash. Math: the other white meat.

This is not a path I follow, but next time you do this @Ukase, try getting a rough split on times: A. from 1 to 50; B. from veteran level 1-24; and C. from veteran level 25-48. I suspect that you may get a better overall rate of emp merits per hour by running a new alt to vet level 24 (160 emp merits for A + B) rather than to run it to 48 (280 emp merits for A + B + C). But then again, I've been wrong before!

I have one of these early in the process, so haven't slotted ATOs yet, so lemme think about this. My guidelines: I usually slot for recharge, so I would plan on 6-slotting Superior Critical Strikes and 5- or 6-slotting Superior Scrapper's Strike. I'd want to put Critical Strikes in something that had a decent to good chance of proccing. The ATOs *could* go in DNA Siphon or Genetic Contamination in the secondary, but I'd never put it in DNA Siphon because that is too useful as a proc bomb. I generally feel that ATOs fit better in AoE powers. I need to look more into Lightning Rod before I give a final answer.

I soloed an Archery/Pain corruptor that was almost as sucky as my Sonic/AR defender.

I've been paying the workers in Faultline in influence for YEARS and see where that's gotten us?!?!

I don't know if it's efficient or not, but my Storm/Sonic defender alternates procced out Gale with Shockwave pretty much non-stop and it is a laugh riot. Hard on the blue bar though.

Spikes everywhere tell me spines something something.

There are also a bunch that require two rares.

Speaking of which, check out the link in my signature if you want a little start-up cash.