Yomo Kimyata

My rad/dark blaster is about 40 and is lots of fun. Not as punchy punchy (or as well defended) as my dark/atomic was, but my ranged damage feels *much* higher. I skipped neutrino bolt and electron haze from the primary (considering dropping neutron bomb) and skipped Death Shroud and Suck Maul from the secondary.

There are several possible reasons: -- IOs are bucketed in the AH by type, but not by level. So you may be buying a level 50 Cleaving Blow A/D (which would indeed cost 490,400 inf to craft from recipe, plus cost of salvage), but that could have been sold as a level 10 Cleaving Blow A/D (which costs a few thousand). So it did not necessarily cost more to make than it is being listed for. -- there are some other ways to make crafting costs cheaper, including memorization and day job powers. -- most likely it is because the seller wants to get rid of it and sells at a low enough price to sell instantly, and they are *hoping* to get a bigger payday. This is also because people are lazy/stupid (take your pick). -- other

There's a number. Some can be overcome; some cannot. Elemental swords -- out. Elemental breath powers -- out. There are a few characters where these are essential powers (Ice stalker, e.g.) so they go to rot. I have issues with most of the EATs. I dislike the non-human forms of the Khelds aesthetically. I made my first crab form Soldier and I am going to have to change body type, because I can't see a damn thing with all those arms.

On the demand side, your arguments are valid. Most (more than half, I'd estimate) builds have one of more slots for to-hit buffs, and the Gaussian proc is probably the best choice for a single slot in Build Up or Aim. The set bonuses are good to great all the way to 6-slots. It's a good set. On the supply side, it's just too easy to come by, so if any one tries to restrict the supply out there, they can (will?) be flooded by more entering the market. And people have mostly gotten used to the current price bands and without a macro event to change the dynamics, I would expect any manipulation to have only short-term, if any, effects on prices. I've often lamented the inevitable "death by ice" of the AH, since supply is essentially infinite, but demand is limited by new players and new alts. But now I'm trying to come up with ways to spark demand, and I have an idea or two that I'll probably implement shortly. It's a marketing job, and that is certainly not my strong suit. If anyone else has any ideas, I'm all ears.

Step 1: Each enhancement enhances one or more characteristics of a power. Get familiar with those characteristics. For your "standard" damage power, those will be damage, accuracy, endurance reduction, recharge, and maybe a lot more based on the power. Step 2: Each enhancement has an "origin", which is why everyone uses abbreviations like SO and DO. The basic enhancements are training origin/dual origin/single origin ("TO/DO/SO") that will enhance a single characteristic. I listed those in increasing order of enhancement power. You can buy these from vendors or get them as drops from defeating enemies. (NOTE: TOs may be obsolete at this point. To make things confusing, you can only use DOs or SOs if they match your character's origin type (natural, magic, science, etc.) Step 3: Most enhancements have a level attached (exception: attuned, which will come later). How powerful they are depends on your level in comparison to the enhancement. You can slot an enhancement that is up to +3 to your level (or down to -3). As you level, the enhancements will stay the same level, and thus become relatively weaker. Once they are -4 to your level, they stop providing any benefit in terms of power enhancement. Step 4: There is now an invention system. Recipes drop from defeating enemies (or you can get them elsewhere). You change them from recipes to enhancements with salvage, a crafting station, and a fee. There are two types of recipes: common inventions and invention sets. Common are like DO/SOs, insofar as they enhance a single characteristic. The amount of that enhancement depends on the level of the recipe. Here, you can slot something that is more than three levels beneath you, but the enhancement level you get will not change as you level. A level 15 damage common IO will provide the same (low) enhancement levels to your power as long as you slot it. Step 5: Invention sets are the bread and butter of most builds. Not only do most set IOs enhance more than one characteristic, but you get various bonuses if you slot two or more of the same set in the same power. In general, you can get up to 5 of the exact same bonus, but no more. These bonuses are really what makes the game so powerful at this stage. Also, many sets have "procs" or otherwise special effects that can really assist a power. There are lots of resources on this when you are ready for it. Step 6: You can attune most set IOs if they have a specific level. Attuning changes the shape from a hexagon to a circle, gets rid of the associated level, and now the relative power of the set IO will rise as your level rises (up to the limit of the set's max level.) Some enhancements *only* come in attuned form. There are plenty of exceptions to this, but I hope that gets you started.

If anything in the Gaussian set was trading at 4-5mm, get on that horse and ride it as long and as far as you can. I think of it as 1-2mm -- just about converter fodder.

Lvl 53 hamis in general are your most expensive enhancements. Also, don't forget you can boost many things for an extra 5mm+ per enhancement!

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!