Ukase

I've always done the Cavern of Transcendence trial set to -1/8, and bring a lot of phenomenal lucks. I think it took me 4 runs to get those igneous bosses.

True enough - but if it's your first time, determining that you exit through that door to the left of the entrance (as you're trying to leave) - and what way to go from there, it's helpful.

Well, I say go for the goal. A few tips: On Excelsior, some nights, if the raid leader is feeling spry, he'll run hami more than 4 times. Just depends on his mood, and if enough people stick around. 80 for the first run, 40 merits each additional run. No reason you can't expect 160 merits for the usual 3 runs x 3 days, 480 merits. If you really want to push the envelope, you can try for some raids on Torchbearer which run an hour earlier than Excelsior, where they do things (somehow) far more efficiently and quickly than Excelsior. Theoretically, you could get 960 merits in three days with just hami raids on those two servers. Some SSA arcs are better than others, as far as efficiency goes. If you have Reveal power from p2w, you can do the first SSA out of Skyway (Theoden) in less than 10 minutes, running at 1/0. Possibly less than 5 minutes if you really try and become familiar with it. Wavelength's SSA from Pandora's Box part 1 is also pretty quick; a little bit of travel between missions, but they're super easy. (Hero side assumption) Apex/Tin, as mentioned are a fairly fast 80 merits, 40 each. On the right team, this will take longer to form than to actually complete. I've been on solid teams that have done this in less than 15 minutes (each) without any true effort to speed through them. I've also been on teams that did Apex in 9 minutes, and Tin in 11 minutes and change. But those teammates of mine often make specific builds just to speed through for the fastest time possible. If you're really desperate - you can dual box one of the shard tfs, and simply have one alt email hero merits (50 reward merits at a time) to the alt that wants the 1500 merits. If it were me - honestly - I wouldn't do any of those things. I'd buy winter packs and hero packs and open them until I had the 1500 merits, and then I'd catalyze the ATOs/Winter-Os and sell them until I recouped my influence. The actual recouping might take a few days - superior ATOs at the going prices don't sell that fast. Make them cheaper and they still don't sell that fast. The smarter players realize that they can buy their own winter packs. But, there's still plenty of lazier players who can't be bothered.

I will also use them in any mission with an ally I can't buff/heal. For example, I'll use them in Provost Marchand's arc, as often the missions are a bit too difficult for the allies to survive without some help.

So much this. I have been bidding...well...nobody asked about that, but let's just say that while I like to farm every now and then, and I do see the merits in afk farming, except for those that do it just for the enjoyment, the rest should consider using the market. I think with the player base there's enough inf to go around. Thus far, anecdotally, I can tell you over 50 PvP procs sell in less than a given hour, at 10M or more...who needs a farm? All of us likely did at one point - cuz it takes a fair amount of inf to get those 50 recipes to convert into procs. Just keep at it - a second account will do wonders for your revenue stream - even if they just sit in there and do nothing. (or spam speed boost on auto if you need/want that.)

Short version: Can we please not have the detectives or any other contact be assigned as a waypoint upon entering a zone? Why: This happens to me routinely. I try to only have one mission at one time, so when I use mission tp I don't get carted to the wrong place. Invariably, when I don't use mission tp and get sent to a zone for a mission and use my sg base to get to that zone, instead of seeing the waypoint for the mission, I get the zone's detective. It's mostly me not paying attention - but I almost always proceed to the detective's location instead of the mission door.

I have that bookmarked, too. But, since they have a spot for suggestions, I'm suggesting that missions be more clear in their objectives so we don't have to tab out and check.

If you played CoH back in live - or even now - odds are, you're familiar with Paragon Wiki. I have it bookmarked, but as excellent of a source as it is, there's information that's incomplete for one reason or another. There are countless missions that will have one vague mission objective, "Check out Nemesis Base", for example. I zip through, click the glowie...no boss that I saw, so just clobber the goons in the last room...then, look on Paragon Wiki and there's no information there, either. It would be WONDERFUL is each mission would say "Defeat All" if the mission is a defeat all.

We've all most likely seen the default warning for the fees that are going to be charged when posting something for sale, but there doesn't seem to be a warning on bidding high inf amounts on a given item or items. Some of the better "ebil marketers" have posted such typos with extra trailing zeros and offered refunds, but most of the time, the folks that make these errors aren't reading the forums regularly enough to catch the offer, nor are they thinking of making a screenshot to verify they're the ones who overbid. In help channel, after I read a few folks who'd made these errors, I thought I'd come here and make the suggestion. I've overpaid on stuff...like paying 45million for something, when I thought I was bidding on a Micro Hami-O. I think the warning should pop up when you're offering more than 2x of the average of the last 5 sold. A warning of some kind. I once got 80Million for a scrapper ATO. I once got 120 Million for a Glad Armor 3% Def(all) I got 12 million for a perf shifter +endurance IO...(I don't feel bad about that - whomever did that was clearly trying to place a lowball bid!) I'm unclear if the 8M I got for a Preventative Medicine was a leading zero or just a generous/impatient bidder. There were only 10 or so for sale, so who knows.

As often as I do that on accident...lol. The thing is - the folks that need the inf aren't really using the market, are they? I know some guys just unload everything for 1 inf because they can't stand using it. I always figured the folks that sell stuff on the market are already loaded. Guess I'm wrong? I guess they can't all be "rich" with inf. I've often been tempted to buy up all the LotG recipes and IOs...and the red fortunes and reactive defenses - IOs and recipes. Wouldn't even resell them until the price was back at 7m for an lotg 7.5%. But I think there are dev forces at work in that instance driving the prices down for some reason. Don't want to kick that hornet's nest. I've often thought about buying all the recipes in the AH...and just selling them to the vendor. All kinds of whacky things I've thought of - but while the results might be interesting, I'd rather not fiddle with other peoples fun.

I have doled out over 1/2 a billion on MSR kill shots. I hosted a frostfire mission and offered inf for the kill shot ...but, I ended up getting the kill shot, with a Fireball AoE. Wasn't even aiming at him. The problem for me with MSRs - they are terribly repetitive and boring after you've done them for a while. I was going to give some inf away at hami raids - but most of those folks have refused the offer, they have plenty. And the system log rarely verified who got the kill shot. I'd have to take a third party's word for it - which made me a bit uneasy.

All the characters in my SG have at least 1 billion inf. It's a membership requirement. (they're all my alts)

Well, since I see several 50+3's in your signature, I strongly suspect that while you may not have vast sums, you have plenty.

Imagine you have Billions and billions that you know you'll never be able to spend. What are the ways you would choose to give it away?

Yes, I suppose it could be, it would depend on how they played out the nerf. An across the board -10% defense nerf would leave some of the non-IO folks at -10%. If they go at it and only nerf those with IO sets..then that's herding people away from the invention system. If they make the soft cap the hard cap for defense...then a lot of the end game content simply won't be possible for very many groups. It's a messy can of worms that needs to stay in a sealed container.

I used to farm because I thought it was fun. Seeing the purple lettering flash across the screen when I was struggling...that was pretty fun, got my endorphins fired up. Now that I'm what I would think is one of the richest players in the game at well over 100 billion, I'm at a point where if I keep farming, I'll have more and more stuff to craft and convert and sell. The amount of effort to craft, convert and sell is a fixed amount of effort for me. I'd craft and convert for 10 minutes in the morning, and 10 minutes in the evening - and let the rest, if any, carry to the next day. Now that the prices have dropped...my inf will go even further, so I see no reason to spend my time doing this. If the players want cheap LoTG, let some other sucker lose 2m inf every time they sell one, because it's obvious people were willing and able to pay 7-8m. Want to let it go for 5m, knock yourselves out. But I'm not playing that game. It's not enough to be worth the time. So, despite having 3 accounts and a very worthy spines/fire brute on each account - the only purpose they now serve is to occasionally help alts with Vamp Slayer, Werewolves, Freaks and Fakes for the accolades. So - my thoughts now - I don't really enjoy farming. It's repetitive, and boring. That's why I set the brute farmers up for afk farming. Two accounts could farm while my main account would actually play. Now, I just play with any one of the three accounts while the other two are logged off. Fact is, I've even been playing on Rebirth because there's no more challenge to this version of CoH. Fully stocked sg base, all the badges, the only thing I've not yet done is play every AT/Powerset combo. Working on that. On rebirth - it's almost exactly like live, so it's a lot more grindier. Nobody farms there because there's nobody to buy what you're selling.

I looked at the poll....none of the options represent my thoughts. Defenses are fine as they are.. my characters die plenty! ------ This isn't at all true for any of my alts, regardless of squish. Defenses are too low.. My characters die too much! --- This certainly isn't true for ANY of my characters. Not even my dominator which is the worst AT I've ever played. (some of you love 'em - I either build them wrong, or the playstyle just doesn't suit me. I'm glad you love 'em. They're good for holds with perma-dom, but damage is weak. Could've just been the one I made, though) Defenses are too high.. they should be nerfed ---- With only a few exceptions, most of my characters are at about 35-40% s/l defense OR 35-40% ranged or melee defense, depending on the character's AT. That's not too high, nor should they be nerfed. Defenses are too high.. enemy accuracy should be improved - I don't agree with this. Mobs are too easily killed/controlled/debuffed for defense to really matter --- I see this on some teams - but that is the whole point - to crush the npcs. But I also see the opposite. PUGs, or Pick-up groups (random folks who haven't likely teamed up together before) can be uber, or they can be stinky. There are some players who only use Common IOs, because they don't understand the invention system. Some aren't even aware that monitoring defense and other combat attributes is even a thing we can do! So, if you were to be king for a day, nerf our defense - then THOSE people who already don't have any defense to speak of ...they are really going to be hurting. Why can't we just leave well enough alone. If we really want to make this game harder - we stop allowing converters to be tradeable or sellable, and reduce the reward merit to converter ratio from 1:3 to 10:1. If I recall, 10-1 was how it was in live. 1 converter for 10 reward merits. That'll make you really think about flipping IOs for profit, that's for sure, especially since you'll have to do a lot more weekly tfs to get a lot fewer converters. Then - the uber builds won't be so easily gotten, and it would level the playing field for most. Of course, you do that, a lot of people would rage quit and play on another server, I suspect. So, again, leave well enough alone.

The one thing I would like is a genuine Nemesis focused Task Force. There are a couple of shadow shard tfs with Nemesis in them - but they are focused primarily on Rularuu. I'd even be okay with the Family and Nemesis either joining forces and then the TF ending in each trying to double cross the other. Or not. I also think it would be good for some AVs and Heroes to be walking around. If you're a hero in the AV's "Territory" - they literally shake you down for some exorbitant sum, like 10M inf, or they kill you. Or you fight them and get 10 million if you win. or some other random amount. If you're a villain in the hero's territory - you either run away when confronted, or if not - you literally go to a prison cell like they have in certain Council and CoT maps. Or pay a fine. Or beat the hero and rob them.

Anecdotally, I can tell you that windfalls work - but they work in ways I can't explain rationally. Relevant info: Spines/Fire Brute, Drecks map, running at +4/8. When the windfall expired, I'd stop. Windfall 1: 4 purples in 11 minutes, plus an ungodly amount of large insps I used macros to combine into large reds. 14 uncommon recipes, 2 rares, 6 shards Windfall 2: over 182 pieces of salvage in 30 minutes, with not so many insps, and more than a dozen shards. Only 3 uncommon recipes. Windfall 3: easily 3 dozen common IO recipes, a purple, and 7 rare salvage and 10 shards. I can''t recall my starting number of threads, so not really sure how many threads I got. I never bothered to check influence. I honestly wasn't aware it impacted inf. Or, if I was, I forgot. Just randomly working in my experience.

I have more than a couple fire farm brutes. In the wake of the changes to tanks, I made a fire/fire tank, too. The truth is - I've got a rad/SS tank, too. And a rad/stone tank. And an rad/electric. (see a pattern there?) I've also got an invuln/stone tank. And honestly - while my fire tank isn't suitable for taunting hami without some external buffs, (the others are) I'll take my fire/fire for 90% of the content over the other tanks every single time. Why? Because the damage is clearly superior, and the defense and resists are the same. I don't worry about slows. Winter-Os take care of that easily. All the talk of burn..pfff...Healing Flames! Every 6 seconds, a full bar of health! Take that, Invuln with your requiring 200% recharge for perma-dull pain. KB? My fire tank uses glad armorX2, Overwhelming force, not to mention Blessings of the Zephyr in Super Speed, and a steadfast protection KB to go along with the res/def(all). I'm not the least bit worried about kb for 90-95% of the game. In a pinch, I could take out my kismet accuracy and put in a karma KB. Hopefully, the HC devs will leave fire armor alone. As for blasters, I love my blasters. There's a reason why they're not "normalized" - and that's because we don't want fire primary to be identical in animation, damage, dps to ice primary. We need the powersets to be different. Choices are part of what made this game so compelling to play. I made a savage melee stalker a month or so ago. Seems an AWFUL LOT like claws to me. Same weaponry. I can't recall for certain, but a couple of identical, or very similar animations. I stopped playing it. I thought it would be ...more savage and less clawing. There's already enough similarities to suit me. Gotta say no.

I confess. I have no idea what it means in just about any context. When I see people use it, even though I'm the ignorant one, they just sound stupid, so I tend to ignore them.

In all candor, as surprising as it may seem to those who are familiar with me - I often imagine myself as the character using the attack. Just anecdotal - but I find it interesting that: Nemesis Staff misses more often than not when in melee compared to being at range. Missing a stationary target with a melee attack ...well, it happens...but I think it shouldn't. Hitting a box with a sword with no npcs around to distract you should be a given. And yet, I whiff from time to time. Different attacks have different base accuracy...and a lot of them just seem like they were plucked out of thin air. I'd love to know the "why" behind these chosen values. Incarnate Judgement - Pyronic has a greater chance to miss than Ionic. Huh? Why? Cuz fire's hotter than electricity? Is it hotter? Probably not. These are the kinds of thoughts that kept me out of the better schools. What really baffles me is why the folks at Cryptic didn't use endurance as the accuracy check. If you're rested - you're far more likely to hit what you aim for - but when you're tired, you're more likely to miss. And yet, the game mechanics don't care about this at all. Probably just as well. I wouldn't hit a thing until I got Agility to t-3, lol.

That's what I would do, too. In fact, that's exactly what I do - I play converter roulette until I get what I can use. I'd almost rather burn through 10 million of converters to not pay 7million for an IO. Almost.

It's a bit puzzling to me - mainly because I don't spend a lot of time checking in with the market. I used to sell the LotG for 7M, and get it, and sometimes more, rather routinely. Then...a few days after the 2xInf nerf, one or more folks thought it would be profitable to sell a zillion LotG 7.5% for as low as 4M. Needless to say, my stuff didn't move. Numina procs kept moving. Preventative Medicine Absorb procs were schizophrenic. One would sell for 8m (an extra zero?) and the last 5 would show 1.5m, or 2m.. or less...which makes very little sense to me, given the utility and demand for this IO. The KB to KD Sudden Acceleration was selling routinely for 4m, but again, one or more folks thought it would be fun to sell it for less than the crafting costs. Aegis and Unbreakable Guard would seemingly change in demand - one day, Aegis would sell for 4M or more, while the other would sell for 2-3M. Lately, Aegis has been dropping to 2M or so, and staying there. I guess part of that is explained by fewer future Fire Farmers opting to not farm - so they don't need that set bonus anymore. The new Power Transfer Chance to Heal had a lot of volatility when it came out - to be expected - but even now, I've had some sell for 7M, and others not move at 3M. The end mod for Perf Shifter continues to stun me - selling for 2-3m, while the power transfer end mod would sell for 800k-1.5m. Do people not want regen vs movement speed? I don't even use perf shifter's end mod anymore, opting for the regen bonus from power transfer when slotting two. Rather than go IO by IO, in summary: I can completely understand some folks wanting things to be cheaper. But unless rare salvage drops to 100k or so, it doesn't pay to craft a lot of the IOs that used to sell for 3-4 million like pancakes at IHOP on a Saturday morning. (and now I'm hungry!) I have a number of brutes that are afk farm characters that are logged off. Even at 75k for converter, I think it's now more lucrative to just not craft, except for very specific recipes - Resist, Defense and maybe Health. The rest, I think are just vendor material. I think the value of inf is at a point where now that I've made over 100 Billion, with IOs being so cheap now, I don't have to farm, nor do I have to do TFs unless I want a badge or something...there's nothing left to do other than try new sets/ATs. I've thought about buying every single IO in my "niches", and reselling for the old prices. I believe I have the resources to do that kind of thing, but it makes me feel cheap and dirty. In some ways, that feels like griefing to me. I don't necessarily want newer players to struggle to make their characters viable. I want them to have uber builds like mine. Why would I want to carry them through content? Until I see things change, I'm just going to alt a LOT.

Look, I get that 1500 merits is quite a bit for most people. But - costing merits is the same as costing inf. If I didn't spend the 1500 merits on these badges - what would I do with them? Buy converters, of course. Even at the low price of 75k each, they're still the best bang for the inf. So by charging us silly badgers 100 merits each - that's 300 converters * 75k, that's over 20M per badge I'm "sinking". For those that haven't been playing as long as I have - well, I waited a year to afford these badges. I could have sacrificed last May and gotten 7 of them, I think - but I wasn't even sure the game would be around in June at that time, so why invest it? Fun Fact - maybe - As far as I know, only a few people actually bought all those badges last May. So, if you haven't been playing for a year, don't feel like you're "behind". Most of us who have all the badges now had to wait until this May to get these.