Ukase

So, maybe 5 years ago or so, I made a Fire/plant blaster. For whatever reason, I sat this guy in day job after day job. Still doesn't have them all, because it's so far back in my pages of blasters. I have a ton of his IOs and ATOs all in the trays, waiting for me to play the character and level it. Here is a post where someone took a poll of what the more popular primary and secondary were for a blaster. I found it interesting that plant was at 0%. That's not to say nobody ever plays them. I'm sure someone does. But they're not popular. As the blaster I made is level 11, I'm curious as to why they didn't get one vote. Granted, the math doesn't support them - although I haven't done the math on Plant, and have never played a plant secondary blaster yet, other than the aforementioned one. What are the pitfalls? Should I just trash this character, or keep giving it day jobs until the secondary gets some fine-tuning in the future? Any prevailing wisdom besides just recommending fire, ice, devices or time secondary?

So, there's pure damage, and there's optimal damage with a balance of survivability and DPS. @loc, who is fairly sharp had an ice/fire blaster build specifically for the 4*LGTF. In that build were some crazy things that I just simply would never do outside of that specific challenge. I know one player who skipped Frigid Protection in their ice secondary because they were always teaming, and fully expected to rely on team buffs to satisfy the endurance requirements. There's no "wrong" or "right" way to play or build a character. But murder machine...so much depends on the content and context of what you're going to be doing. I solo often enough where Assault tends to get the nod over Tactics. (from leadership pool) I also ensure I don't need buffs from teammates. They're nice to get, but if I'm out of position to get them, it's no big deal. I should make a solo build and a team build, and tried it once, but it was tough trying to relearn the character with slower recharge because of certain tradeoffs. So, I suggest making use of Brainstorm, see how you like a build you see before you spend the loot to make it.

So, in an attempt to do some marketing on a grander scale, without having to buy rare salvage, I set about trying to farm with a level 50 fire tank, but the mission would exemp to 24, so that I'd get the 1st tier salvage (10-24) because recipes are cheaper to craft at that level. Now, it can certainly be done. But, because the build just isn't rounded out as well as it is at 50, the killing speed is nowhere near as fast or as efficient. I thought about doing tickets, but because the ticket cap for a map is so low, that is really inefficient. And just going for drops, I'd get the drops I'd want, but the time it takes to get them all, I'd spend my time farming, and not marketing. If I enjoyed farming more, I'd just do it at 50, and not worry so much about marketing. But I much prefer the market to farming. So, there it is. So, yeah, I'm sure someone does farm at low levels, but I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze.

This should be a lesson to me to not be afraid to ask questions when I'm a new player. But back then, I was so ignorant, I didn't even know what I didn't know.

Good eye for detail on the wiki. Yeah, I always have a Celerity: stealth in most of my characters that aren't stalkers or other inherently stealthy types. That would explain why he didn't say anything.

So, I should have probably asked this question years ago. But I never did. As I monitor the help channel, people ask what's the quickest patron, or easiest. BS is usually the reply. And some will add on to auto-complete the kill all. Me, I normally auto-complete the "Assault Malta Base" mission because I never asked the following question. The wiki mentions the Zeus class titan and and the gunslinger as part of the objectives. When on 0/1 difficulty, it's simple to find the Zeus. But there are multiple gunslingers. Is there a trick to knowing which one? I should add, normally I look for the gunslinger that gives dialogue. But this morning, none of them did, only the Zeus. There's like 23-25 goons in the kill all, vs 6 or so gunslingers, and the pesky sappers with them. Seems like a wash to me, when the gunslinger isn't talking. Unless there's some trick?

Back when Cosmic Council was thriving, I had set out to try and find a truly efficient way to get all the badges as organically as possible. It was really just overwhelming. Perhaps Voltor, one of our more accomplished badge folks has a system he could share. There's so many badges...one thing is clear to me, there's a zillion different ways to get them. I like to grab explores as I level up and fill the patrol xp up. The problem is patrol xp per badge seems to be a lower percentage of xp required as you level up, so you can run out of zones to fill the patrol xp up if you play every day. I do think if you have a group, starting in outbreak would be ...inefficient, and here's why: Because Shivans are a defeat npc category, and because Contaminated give the Isolator badge, and because Breakout has that exploration badge, you can get all three of those in Pilgrim's Ouro introduction arc. Disclaimer: It's been over a couple of years since I've done this. I could have forgotten some crucial detail. Mea Culpa. Either way, a group like that would be fun, and I'm sure if you weren't sure about certain methods or tips and tricks on how to get certain badges, you'd learn!

The problem I've encountered is most npcs, even with 0 endurance still attack. And draining end doesn't give you any xp. Drain the Health, then you're doing something. It's probably interesting the first few times, but after that, you realize it's faster and more efficient to just defeat them.

If I'm remembering clearly, it's not the DOT that Blarf does that gets you, it's the -hp he does. Eventually, even a regen character's hp will drop low enough and you die.

Edit: The menu is available, by using /popmenu freebiesmenu Then there's an option to make a macro for it to appear. But for those who don't know that, they'll be unlikely to sort it out and use it.

So, I could swear I saw something about the Freebie menu in orange a few days ago, but if I did see it, I forgot what it said. And, if it was something else, then I'm doing the right thing is asking about the Freebie Menu on Brainstorm. I've used it before, and just went on and didn't see it - although it did look different from the last time I looked.

It's been ages since I've looked at AB's stats. But, I have a clear memory of being on god mode with this buff. I think if the recharge rate is reduced, it might be worth a look at the actual buff numbers, and downgrading them a tiny bit. Overall, I like the suggestions. Because right now, Nature Affinity is so great, it's my go to secondary now, with cold being a close 2nd, on my corruptors.

In my opinion, that would be a suitable inf sink. Pay X and unlock this badge on all your characters without having to log them in.

As one of them, I completely agree.

I have to agree. My tendency is to put annoying folks on ignore. And the next time someone's on my ignore list, I remove everyone else that's on it. So, other than this one character, who I'm thinking got banned for racial slurs, there's nobody else on it. As far as raid leaders and such...I just make notes, mostly good. The bad ones, well, I've only rarely run into truly bad leaders.

While that may be true, at the lower levels, my characters don't seem to have enough global recharge to make burn pop up fast enough to suit me. In other words, it's just slow. So, I figure I'll just change my expectations, and just be more patient on bids. Eventually, I'll get what I need.

Aye. I was always curious where you came up with your 1rm=1m inf. And now I see your reference point. But, I think I completely misunderstood what you were trying to imply. I million inf, on average can get you 1 reward merit, not the other way around. The more I play, the more I understand the perspective of those who just can't be bothered with the AH. There's plenty of inf around, and it's easy to get. It's much easier for me to just bid a little more to get the salvage I want than to play brainstorm roulette. But, like many of you, when I see all those reward merits pile up from winter packs I still haven't finished opening from a couple or three years ago, I restock converters on the characters that use them with the merits. But after that, when the price of that salvage I need is higher than 700k, I'm often tempted to burn through some reward merits just to get those salvage. But it seems like just selling converters or boosters would be quicker, easier, and just as lucrative. It may be I need to adopt a different method of play. I'm seriously thinking about a fire tank running AE at level 20, just for the salvage. It may be worth a try.

So, time for me to confess. You and The Trouble aren't the only two. From all the winter packs I had, I spent literally over an hour claiming my brain storm ideas and burned through all of them. I stashed the ones I use frequently (by tier) and dumped the remaining (Tiers I don't craft in generally). I even took a farmer for a few ticket runs...but damn, that's tedious. I'm such a dork sometimes. If I just afk farmed, I'd make passive inf without even sweating the price of salvage for market income. But market profit margins are kind of worth it - when the rare salvage is what I deem reasonable. And by reasonable, I mean for sale at the price I'm willing to pay to buy it. For me, that point is 500K. Not one inf more. I even burned through about 500 reward merits which only gave me 100 pieces of salvage in the specific tier and origin I was looking for. Most of you who've read my early posts from a few years ago know the niche I am mostly in. And there's a specific IO set that uses the exact same recipe for all 6 IOs in the set. So, those get used up a lot more often than any other. Like 6x as much as the others I would need, roughly. So, despite having brain storm idea bids in, they're not coming in fast enough. And, I recall @Yomo Kimyata suggesting that a reward merit was worth roughly 1M inf. So, clearly, I've gone off the deep end to keep my inf out of the greedy marketers pockets! For me, merits are generally only for converters, but converters are super cheap now, compared to the price they were a few years ago. So, maybe the reward merit isn't worth a full million now. I know I can use about 15 converters to turn 50K inf recipe + salvage and crafting cost and net about 2.5M with it. I don't know that I can make 1M inf with 3 converters. Maybe I could if I were super lucky. Maybe I'm missing something. Probably brain cells. Yeah, definitely missing those. What's a Reward Merit worth to you folks?

For most folks, the incentive to team up is simply more xp, and maybe a few jokes. And possibly a nice story to tell here when things go awry or fairly well. But for some of us - we want merits. I just joined a pug, the team lead sent a tell politely asking, so I agreed. It was fairly normal, although why a level 2 is hanging out in Night Ward...well, that's not my business. But after a team wipe...well, that's another rant, I guess. Anyways, where's my merits for helping this person complete their story arc? I don't get any. So...why would I risk out-leveling my own arcs to help someone else get through their stuff? Not to mention, I'm likely going to end up repeating the same content with my own character. Shouldn't there be something for each player? The XP isn't sufficient motivation. Maybe I need an attitude adjustment. But it would be nice if, instead of a lump sum at the end of each arc, the merits were divided by the missions and awarded separately for each mission.

Many, by now are aware of a multitude of ways to get rare salvage. Farm or just play for it - the drops do come eventually. But if it's a specific rare you need...that may take some time. AE allows the use of 540 AE tickets for a specific rare salvage of your choice. It seems easy enough, but the ticket cap in AE prevents this from being anything but tedious, as you have to restart each mission within a couple of minutes if your farm character is fairly quick at dispatching the mobs. Spend a reward merit - the servers are still down, so I can't be specific, but the merit vendor does let you exchange reward merits for random rare salvage. I just can't recall if it's 1 reward merit or an even more heinous 5 reward merits. EDIT: Per the HC Wiki, it is indeed 5 reward merits. No thanks. But the option is there. Brain Storm Ideas: 20 per random rare. You can buy these, the current price on the AH is 25k each. I've gotten them as cheap as 15k before. But with the current demand, either real or artificially ramped up by some market manipulators, they're selling now for 25k easily enough. These can also be acquired through Winter and Super Packs. Thanks to Bopper sharing Faultline's data, we know they average 19.7 BS ideas per pack. And, since Hero/Villain packs are only 10M, it's probably the best path to take, if you've the mindset for picking through all the packs and monetizing each goodie you get. But - this is frankly what I've been doing. It's not like I won't eventually use the ATOs in these packs. Eventually. I mean, sooner or later I'll either convert some of the lesser used ones like the Sentinels, but eventually. Sure. The dilemma for me is the endless seconds wasted between clicks. But, when the player or players that are driving up the cost of rare salvage to 800k or so, it helps me get a nicer return on each pack. And, the easiest thing is to just bid your fair price, whatever that is for you - and just wait. I'm doing that too. Lots of bids in at 420K for rares in the tier I like to craft in. So, the point of this post isn't to boast, but to ask - is there something I'm missing? I have an SG for my lowbies; they stash rare salvage in it when they don't need it. These items are sometimes useful, but it's the marketing characters that really go through them. Some days, I think I'll need an SG to hold just one tiers worth of salvage to do the crafting I need to do on certain days. What's your method for getting around the higher prices of the rare salvage? Remember - it's not like I don't have it. But every inf I save in my "manufacturing" adds up. When enough add up, it's one less item I need to sell to make the same amount of inf. Or, cheaper prices on the AH.

Do you not see the wonderful way I made my point? My own incompetence in the forums is proven by each rebuttal to every post I make. 🤣

This is painful to read, but sadly, it's probably true. Thankfully, most of the folks in this game are above average. At least, the ones I know. Even most of the folks I disagree with a lot are fairly competent at what they do. We all rise to our own level of incompetence. I've reached mine on the forums, that's for sure.

I have never encountered any kind of animosity for being competent at making my own influence via marketing. I've gotten far more animosity for daring to talk about farming, or even worse, afk-farming. The player that unleashed on you is displaying their frustration at their own ignorance. Think nothing of it. Now that you have your own stacks of inf, I encourage you to make a second account and make a farmer to PL yourself so you don't have to deal with miscreants like this. But - seriously - congratulations to you for reading the various guides, and figuring stuff out and making stacks of inf for your own alts. There are some marketers who, while not genuinely evil, they do manipulate the market in the short term. As an example, I give you the driven up prices of uncommon and rare salvage. Over the weekend, it seemed to get bad enough for players to pay a full 1M for rare salvage - which is essentially capped at 1M because the devs originally placed 10M rare salvage on the market at 1M to keep the "ebil" marketers from going too far. I'm not sure who first made the typo in "ebil", as we know it's supposed to be "evil", but it's a bit of a meme now. There are also other players who may have missed the price point, and suddenly find the dozens of a specific IO they've listed aren't selling for the price they thought they should. So, they buy them all at the cheaper price and re-list them at the point they think they should cost. Generally, other marketers see this, and simply make more to sell for the cheaper price, leaving the would-be evil marketer with even more inventory that's not going to sell anytime soon. So, there is a small case for marketers to be deemed evil. And it's felt rather strongly by those who don't market and don't farm, and for whatever reason don't seem inclined to learn about either one. They play the game, and they grind through. I kind of envy them. But then I make a challenge character and quickly stop envying them the struggle. I like being able to get the teleporters and workbench from the START vendor. It makes things more enjoyable for me. I also like giving away inf to those who are too busy or just not inclined to market. I really don't want more people marketing. I am sometimes mildly annoyed at Yomo for giving away the secrets. But, then I remember I've got to thank him. Due to the competition of more marketers, my inf goes even further now than it did two years ago, making my purchase power even stronger.

For me the best part was unlocking incarnates quickly. It was the primary reason for doing it, beyond the nifty green color my costume would get changed to for a short time.

Nobody's perfect, least of all me. If they don't know, they don't know. I agree. Fair enough. But that doesn't make them right. Telling a player to turn off an aoe stealth when it impacts their survivability, that's not good form. Especially when they don't know. They might think they know, but they don't. Which is classic noobery in my book. But we know a few things already, based on our collective experience playing this game. It would be interesting to get a team of 8 stalkers with Hide on to see if the mobs spawn at the same rate as 8 scrappers without stealth. (or some other AT composition). And, while that's interesting to think about, it could be that with 48 players on a league, the spawns may be X, but with 2 leagues of 48, the spawns may still be X, instead of 2X. So, you're right. Nobody knows with 100% certainty - at least, nobody that's chimed in yet.