Ukase

What I've done is this: Give to random teammates 100m each if I see even one character's build that doesn't have an IO. Donate 50 to 100M to whomever gets the drop ship kill after an MSR. I tried to give a purple IO of choice to whomever got the kill shot on Hamidon, but I could never get the kill shot to display on my system log. I subsidized more than one man hunt 1 billion inf. I've given away entire sets of Winter-Os, purples - I even gave away an entire build for a fire/rad controller. Despite these charitable gifts, I have more inf than I did before I started giving it away. Just passed 80 billion yesterday. This is despite running the last 20 or so characters on 2xp no inf, and the last 10 or so, paying for all the amplifier buffs, tps, Summon pets, envenomed daggers, workbench, etc for all my characters.

I guess I need to raise my prices. Mine sell daily. I convert and probably sell 10 of them a day and seem to always get about 10% more than what I ask.

An email wipe would piss me off for sure. Mainly because that's where I stash half my inf. My characters each carry 1B, and I have my emails with 900M each. I would have them carry more, but if I did, I couldn't retrieve them with my characters. I don't trust the HC devs to not have a crazy sale and saddle me with a zillion winter packs or hero packs, and honestly, it's neat and tidy in the emails. It's convenient. It is something I would consider rage quitting over. I know it's easy to make, and I know I have more than I will likely ever need - but when the devs seeded the market with salvage, they lost something with me. I can't trust them, because I'll have no idea what they'll do with regards to the market. Worst case, I can take the micro's out of the 30 some odd characters that have them but I'm not really playing anymore. I should do that anyway. Doesn't really make sense to have 500-800m worth of IOs just sitting in a character I'll probably never play again. At this point, they just hold inf. As far as this nerfing of inf while exemped...*yawn*. Who cares? I doubt anyone who plays the market or even has a farmer cares two bits about this. I think it hurt the beginning player who needs more inf to kit out their non-farmer more than anyone else. Now - those who have not are going to be left with a couple of choices: make a farmer and / or learn the market. Or continue on and struggle a bit. Life goes on. Fortunately, I'm at a place where I don't have to do anything. I tallied up my inf and while I'm not close to 100 Billion yet, I'll probably be there in a couple of weeks if I would put in the effort - which I won't. I've been actually having fun playing the game with a "delete the toon if it gets defeated" theme, jacking up the diff every 10 levels. So far, at level 43, and have only had a couple of close calls.

This was amusing for the first +2 hellion. Now it's just annoying. Wake me when it's over.

That darn trial is still my favorite!

So, I have patiently read through ...14 pages! instead of continuing with my 36th rep of Tina Mac's Anti-matter arc. I see a small contingent thankful for the costumes and other additions. I see a LOT of fuss about this stop of double inf while exemped. For the farmers - you'll be fine. It's not like you weren't going to run the map again anyway. It's not like you need the influence immediately, and honestly - it's not that much influence. You make more from crafting a few of the recipes, converting them and selling than you do in the entire map. The time spent complaining, you could have already made millions in the market. For the non-farmers - you may see this is a slap towards someone else that gave you a glancing blow. It might sting a little, but knowing you weren't the target should be some solace. If I understand this issue correctly, the problem folks are having is they think their influence earning has been cut in half when exemped. It was never truly double influence while exemped. Was it close? I don't think so, but I have never paid attention to those numbers, knowing that an uncommon recipe was going to net me 3-7m, depending on the conversion rng. It really seems like much fuss over very little. I am far more upset about this General chat channel. I can no longer get angry at people telling me to hush up in Help or LFG chat when all I was doing was trying to be a part of my community that would occasionally discuss things that had little or nothing to do with teaming or helping answer questions. Who'm I gonna tell to shut up now?

I farm. I play "Non-farm" content regularly. I even lead the occasional hami raid with one tank or another. I also buy certain recipes at a given price, craft them, convert them and sell them for what I think is a reasonable price. Usually about 10% below what most people seem to be willing to spend based on the past 5 sales. I also subsidize costume contests and manhunts to the tune of billions, and Mothership raid drop ship kill shots. I also just give random teammates 100m when I'm in the mood to do so. I globally ignore those who beg for inf. Giving should be my idea. You are of the opinion that what I do, and others like me do impacts how you can outfit your characters. On one hand - I can understand that you may only play a few hours a week and may still be working on your first character and having trouble making influence. Have you ever tried to make influence? Have you ever read through the marketing section in this forum? I am hard pressed to understand how anyone can't fathom how to make influence in this game, and lots of it! I am more than happy to share what I know, how to make it fairly quickly and easily if you're inclined to learn. The help channel is FULL of people more than willing to share this information, as are these forums. My issue is that folks have given freely the information, but you (and others) seem to find it impacts you - but if you'd only taken the time, you'd have billions and billions just like so many others.

This isn't the proper forum section for me to share this, but simply send me a tell in game @ukase and I will type up a storm in an email for your reference. A child could make a billion inf in a week if they have the time and inclination. But it does take time! And, you will need to actually roll a character to get some explores if your current characters have already spent those reward merits.

Anecdotally, converting/flipping surpasses all. The only issues preventing folks from making billions is the start-up inf required. (or converters/merits which can be converted into adequate inf easily enough)

Ha! I'm glad you said it would never happen, because I love CJ/SS. All but three of my 30 something level 50's have CJ/SS/FIght/Leadership or CJ/SS/Fight/Sorcery. I do get hasten on all my characters as it's essentially required if you want dish out as much DPS as you can. Anyone that says it's not necessary isn't doing as much dps as they could. That's a fact. There is no way around that fact, either. I understand that there are people who do things differently than I would..and I suppose that's fine. But, me, I like hasten.

Personally - a toggle for the player to choose between secondary effects is pretty clever and creative! The topic of kb is so ...divisive, that the OP is getting mocked simply for bringing it up, because many of you think you have heard it all before. It's hard for me to realize - but the game is getting new players routinely and many others have NOT seen and heard it all before. That said, my opinion is that kb is simply damage mitigation. Some of you simply have no thoughts about the person behind the character that causes kb. You think they're knocking them down the hall to make your life more difficult. They're not. They may lack the recharge to use a single target attack, they may lack the experience to re-position themselves for better use of the attack. A host of reasons. It's no different than the controller or dominator who locks down the mob before they're in a nice tidy bunch for the AoE focused AT to dispatch them quickly. Some players are so bothered by the kb, they quit SGs, sever coalitions and go from global friends to global ignore. That's how sensitive this topic is for some of the less mature players! My challenge for all is to play a blaster that dished out kb to get a better understanding of what's going on behind the avatar. And those that play a character that dishes out KB, play an AoE focused scrapper (no inherent taunt for them) or Stalker...and see what those players go through when teaming with an inexperienced kb blaster/PB/Warshade.

My thoughts: yes please! My reasoning: Hasten/CJ/Fight/leadership/Sorcery When you're a blaster, aside from a break free, or end-game Clarion, there's no status protection, unless you get Rune of Protection from the Sorcery pool. But, if you get that - you're prevented from getting all of the others. This limitation is the only frustrating thing about playing a blaster for me.

As one of those ridiculous badge-hounds, (current count 1511, as many as I can get until the anniversary badges open up in May) there are a number of things I would like to see changed, added, taken away. We're all different - different life experiences, different expectations, just plain different. I completely understand that I take the game a bit more seriously than most. I'm not the most enthusiastic min-maxer I've come across. I belong to a group that actually do respecs for any task force just to eke out a faster time on a speed run. I personally hate doing respecs, so I try to build mine properly from beginning to end. Yet, we have these badges for debt. Nobody said, "Ukase, thou must have all the badges!" Yet, I found myself getting as many as I could. But the few badges I think are just plain stupid are the debt badges. Why should anyone be given a badge for poor performance? And make no mistake - when your character is defeated, you have performed poorly. There may very well be good reasons, but the fact is you got defeated because your character was in a situation that you, the player, couldn't manage successfully. Now that doesn't mean that you're not fun at parties or that God no longer loves you, it just means in that instance, you failed to play your character well. Why should that be rewarded? Only the original dev team can answer that. I suppose, I could look at it as a warning to not team with those players who have too many debt badges too soon. Only 100 badges and have all the debt badges - this is probably not an ideal candidate for an MoTF. So, I would love to see them just removed from the game. Balance between factions: Invader vs. TFC. This just doesn't make sense to me. If I can team up with certain folks that have a certain badge (Hero Slayer/Bloody Hands) on red side, I can take a low level character (presumably with stealth) and zip through all the mayhems for the exploration badges and get that accolade within 10 minutes or so. Yet, on blue side, TFC takes a whole lot more than that. Fortunately, there's Null the Gull to make the side switching virtually painless. Still, I think if a badge (for an accolade) is to mean something, they shouldn't be THAT easy. Of course, nobody's putting a gun to my head and telling me to do things the easy way...but I will almost always follow the path of least resistance. No, I won't get the tasty merits, but I'm already sitting on more inf than I know what to do with. Speaking of inf... There doesn't seem to be any badges for making money on the AH. As EASY as it is to make inf via the market, so many players don't understand how, or don't want to understand how, or just find it absolutely boring to deal with. They'd rather grind it out for inf via missions. That's fine. But, I think EVERYONE should get a badge for taking a set bonus recipe, crafting it, and converting it, if need be, and selling it on the AH for a badge. I know there are certain badges for selling a certain amount of products on AH, but I don't think they're specifically for IOs. People fuss about the expense of certain IOs...if there were a badge for selling 5 LotG 7.5% IOs, I suspect there'd be a drop in price, as all the crazy badge hounds would be selling them - and competition for the sale would drive the price down. Something to think about. It would certainly introduce the bare basics of how to craft/convert/sell a lot moreso than the tedious generic IO badges. But - let's keep in mind that those generic IOs routinely sell more cheaply than it costs to craft them, so that's a win. Personally, I'd like to see a badge for the accumulation of inf. You have acquired 100M, 1B, 10B 100B. (if only there was a place to keep it all...) I could go on, but I've already written too much.

If I understand it correctly - having an 8th tray would be useful, sure. But..honestly, the times of it being useful are so rare, that I don't think it's worth the time. I respec'd a level 50 and held all my enhancements from my build after (deleting the character as I wasn't going to play it ever again)..and why would anyone need more? There's a finite storage for a reason. The more each character can stash, the server has to keep track not only of each slot, but what's in it - and the fact that nothing is in it. We think - oh, it's just one tray..but for each character in each account..that's a LOT.

I thought #23259 was pretty good.

I think this is a great idea, and nice of you to offer the incentive. You may already plan on it - but I am positive, just like in the old days, there might be 10% of the user base that visits the forums occasionally. And maybe 10% of those would see this opportunity. Perhaps make it part of the MotD?

I can certainly understand the frustration. I've been on the paying and receiving end at least twice. I like Roderick's suggestion of a slider.

Just my hunch - but looking at the badge leaders who have 1525 (which include the anniversary badges I don't have) none of them have the nemesis event badge, so pretty sure it hasn't happened for whatever reason.

It boggles my mind what the devs were thinking when they had Dream Doctor give an iTrial as a mission. I also auto-completed it without a moment's thought. The Trial is easy enough to run, if you can find an adequate number of competent people to join - but that takes a lot of time I'd rather not spend. I'd also have to consult the guide on Paragon Wiki on which heroes to free, because it's never really clear from within the trial what the best choices are. Easier to auto-complete.

The only badge I know about that is unobtainable at present is the one for the Nemesis invasion. We simply haven't had one yet. Not sure why. The rest are obtainable because there's got to be at least half a dozen folks that have every badge. (discounting bug hunter)

In fairness, I have not taken any /SR character to 50. The last time I made one, on live, it didn't seem to have any resistance..but I'm a bit smarter and more creative with slotting now. That said...just looking at damage base...the Sentinel just doesn't have it at this time. Hopefully, this will change.

The ONLY advantage a well built sentinel has over a well built blaster is status protection. And, with rune of protection, and clarion - not even that. At lower levels, the blaster will outshine a sentinel easily, with wise use of inspirations for both. But - ultimately that comes down to power selection priorities, slotting and the skill of the player behind the character. Sentinels can farm - but they shouldn't. They just aren't as good at it as a brute. They don't dish out the damage a brute will. "Fire support" on a farm? Nonsense. A farmer's purpose is to defeat mobs quickly solo. Otherwise, you might as well just team up for task forces and make merits as well as full xp in lieu of nerfed XP in AE. A brute, even with the recent lowering of the damage cap, will outdamage a sentinel. Period. No exceptions. A sentinel is a good first character for a new player to level up, due to the safety of attacking at range and status protection. Even poor slotting and half-way decent power selection will give a fair amount of resistance or defense, depending on the power sets. An experienced player may enjoy a Sentinel more than playing a blaster for a number of reasons - but for dps, the blaster wins that battle hands down. Easily. Every time. No matter what the power sets are. I'm not saying a Sentinel doesn't have a place in this game. It does. I have three of them at level 50. I have multiple spines/fire brutes - one on each server to stash loot in my solo SGs on each server. (I rotate their play, based on server load, how many converters they have and other factors) Without question, my preference is to play a blaster. It's far easier for me to mash a button to blast than to run into melee and mash a button. Less traveling is always good. My heart goes out to melee that do the Apex TF and need to dodge the blue patches while trying to get their shots in. Ranged > melee, every day in every way. But that's my bias. If your blaster is dying it's because you lack the experience or patience to play it properly. And there's many ways to play it properly. Almost without exception, the few times my blasters get defeated is on MSRs before level 50 and occasionally during incarnate trials or Tin Mage. Bobcat has this one attack that seems to get me one out of three times. Other than that - it just doesn't happen. The mobs don't hit very often when you're soft-capped on defense with max hp. There are true fire farm builds, and there are hybrid farm builds. All of my farm builds are softcapped to fire defense AND s/l, with very close to 90% s/l resist. They do not struggle to survive in ANY content at +4/8. But - all of my builds are what I would consider kitted out. Some builds may be better, but not by much. They certainly work for me. So - the question is - which deals more damage? The blaster. Which is more survivable - the brute, simply because it has the same defense as the blaster - but much higher resist, and a higher damage cap. So, if you're on a team that gives buffs to damage, there's a great opportunity for both to shine - but the brute can shine more because of the higher damage cap. That's just my opinion - and opinions will vary.

I unslotted my alpha while having the guide smack my toon while resting, so I took more damage. A suggestion for others to consider.

I actually just t-4'd a fire/elec/mace today - aside from the Alpha..it's only t-3. Still need to do 2 more weeklies because I'm too cheap to use emp merits on Alpha slots. My build is very similar to this - except instead of red fortunes, I used Shield Walls to take advantage of the increased max health bonuses, and instead of Rectified Reticle, I used 3-slot Gaussian's for more HP. My net result is a little less defense with a capped HP. That said - while I'll always love fire primary - I wasn't a fan of the secondary. Thunderstrike is more of a mule power than anything else because of the lengthy animation. I've gotten accustomed to toggles like Frigid Protection and Cauterizing Aura. So much nicer than Force of Thunder, imo. There's a reason fire/fire is so popular. Because it truly is better, at least for my play-style.

You should get bored with your brute. Or any other AT you farm with. Why? Because it's not challenging at the hardest difficulty setting. That's why you should afk farm with your brute and goof off and play with your blaster. But that's just my opinion.