Ukase

The primary with mental manipulation can make all the difference. Just my own style of play being referenced ice/mental isn't as synergistic as fire/mental. I played a dark/mental, and if I'm being real, they weren't that synergistic. When you get drain psyche off on a group of 4 or so, it's incredible. better than regen on a regen scrapper. (seems better. May or may not be numerically better - hit points have a lot to do with this, because the 75% regeneration of the buff is going to look at your HP to do the math. It's fairly easy to get Drain Psyche perma with liberal pursuit of global recharge. Here's the rub - or at least it was for me. A lot of my attacks on a blaster are ranged. Only a couple are melee. I can get in melee when they're up, and open with drain psyche. Because if I open with the nuke, I don't get much utility cuz most are dead, or tossed out of range until I get the kb -kd proc in there. (depends on the nuke, of course) Fire, in my opinon, with fire sword circle, and the other PBAoEs is a better, synergistic fit than ice or dark, or really most of the other powersets. Drain Psyche is also a recovery and regen debuff, so it's useful against AVs, too. But...honestly, it can be fun, but it's not as fun as something you don't have to time properly and think about like frigid protection or caustic aura. But that's just me. If my role is dps, trying to ensure I'm in the mob first to get the most out of DP...in this age of people using judgements and fold space...nah, I don't think it's a great set. Really good in the right hands in the right circumstances. But I just don't see myself as the right hands, and the right circumstances are not that common.

I've mentioned this before. As games go - other than Chess and Risk, this is really the only game I've ever played against/with other people (on a computer). That inexperience with other games - WoW, SWTO, Guild Wars, LotRO, etc - it can reveal itself when people use terms like "Quest" instead of "Mission". Or, "Dungeon". And my favorite, "enchantments", when they refer to enhancements. CoH can be as hard as you want to make it. But, in some circumstances, you can't make it super easy. The Labyrinth is a great example. I do not believe that it is possible to solo the Minotaur in the Labyrinth. You could probably try - with a league of players buffing you while you're solo, but that wouldn't really be solo. You could have the best made AT, and I just don't think it's going to happen. Not without some bug, like an apprentice charm doing some ungodly damage or locking the minotaur in place like a malevolent fog. If I want to make things hard on myself - I don't make the npcs more difficult. I make my character weaker. Occasionally, I might do both, but that's fairly uncommon. I did a "drop challenge" with a number of characters where I can't use the AH, I can't use a merit vendor, all I can slot is what drops. If I get some converters that drop, I can use those, but I can't exchange merits for boosters or catalysts or anything. And let me tell you - it's possible to get to 50 without being defeated, but it's really tedious. The only time I get excited is when an end mod enhancement or recipe drops. Those are more rare than very rares! The hardest part of CoH is not in the playing of the character. It's in the understanding of the terminology and the methods of outfitting your character, and understanding the non-combat parts of the game. The combat is super easy. You mash the buttons until they're dead or you're dead. It's the rest of it that makes the game interesting to me. I don't care about XP. I don't care about challenging encounters. I enjoy more of the management of the character and the resources. What to do with the salvage - stash/hoard vs sell/vendor. Craft/convert? Craft/Stash? Do I actually play this character to 50? Or table it until they change kinetic melee to be something worthwhile? Or just delete it? It's all the other things - not combat - that makes the game hard. Do I explain to people that mention global channels I should join that I have 4 accounts? That some accounts may or may not be afk-farming, and I'm actively playing on one? Do I join someone else's SG just because it seems to be the largest? And these guys can't ever seem to fill their teams, as large as they are? And your alts can't communicate with the SG unless they also join the SG? Which would make my own storage SG kind of useless and difficult to use? All that interplay between me and other players makes the game super hard for me. On one level, I really need these folks for GM kills and iTrials and some TFs. And on another level, they really slow things down with their wanting to kill everything. And that bunch of speeders always make me feel inadequate with their instant load times and ability to teleport through walls. (which was explained to me how to do this - but that's too much for my clumsy fingers) The people are the best and worst parts of the game. They make it super easy or super hard. As alluded to by Monty, playing is easy. Playing well or mastering it (which I really haven't, despite having all the badges) is very time-consuming and difficult, in my opinion. Nothing is so difficult that any one thing couldn't be done when properly explained. But by mastery, I refer to knowing when to use ouro to exit a map to make things more efficient, as opposed to hitting the exit button and seeing what the next objective is. Knowing to not use your TT because the next mission is a chat, not a mission door. Knowing not to use 7 lotg 7.5% because of the rule of 5. Knowing not to use 5 purple sets and your superior ATOs because of the same rule of 5. All of that stuff is a lot harder than button mashing and positioning of your character in a challenging fight.

There's a distinction between the two - at least in my head, if nowhere else. The alignment tip missions are where you're choosing which alignment you're heading towards. Hero, Vig, Rogue, Vill. The Morality is where you make the choice to trigger the change from one to the other. The game refers to the tip missions - in your contact/tip tab - as alignment missions. It refers to the Morality Mission, awarded after you complete 10 alignment missions from the rng, or your SG computer as a Morality mission. Although in our lazy American way of talking, the two can easily be used interchangeably and most will know what you mean, the distinction is in the game. Morality is the last one that awards 40 reward merits. Alignment missions are the ones you complete to get to the morality. For whatever reason, whether bug or WAI, the Morality counts as one of the 25 missions for the badge.

The morality missions also count towards the 25 for the new badge.

Interesting. Allow me to share an embarrassing moment. I was on a Numina with @blapperella a couple of days ago. For whatever reason, despite the team being level 50, they wanted to run it at +2. No big deal to me. Maybe they want to unlock some incarnates or whatever. But it was a speedy run. They clearly wrote in chat while doing a chat task in another zone - "Don't enter mission until I zone in, or the mission will bug low". (words to that effect, they were probably more clear) I read the words. But sure enough, when the mission posted, I entered. It was a speedy run is my only defense. And I really didn't save the team that much time with my ATT to the back room. I was ridiculed, mocked, fussed at for being illiterate and who knows what else. I thought it was a bit of a fuss over nothing - because who cares? It's a speedy run, and in speed runs, one doesn't wait around for everyone to enter zone. Still - it wasn't my speed run, and I should have heeded the request. For whatever reason, even though I read it - by the time the mission posted, I had forgotten it in those 90 seconds or so and didn't follow the instructions. So, that's on me. Days later, I'm still wondering why/how it happened. I can only conclude it was a combination of things. The scariest part is aging. Even though I'm in better physical shape now than I've ever been in my life. My dad died of a brain tumor. Maybe I have one? It would be a bit paranoid to get that checked out for something so innocuous. There are a lot of things that make new and/or new(returning) players do things that we might never think of. The chat window being closed. I remember about 3 years being on a baf with a guy who wouldn't pass the star to the league lead. On the surface, not that big of a deal. Not like we don't all know what to do in a BAF. But the league leader wanted that star back, and Siege was dead before we were able to get this guy to open his chat screen and see the messages before he finally passed the star. I know on retail - I would very often close my chat screen when solo, but never teamed. And I closed it because I was playing on a laptop and the screen was way smaller than what I have now. And I want to say I was playing 600X800, so everything was super big. Opening the chat screen just cluttered things up. So, as much as it amazes me, there are still people playing on machines as old as this game is. Why they don't upgrade...that's anyone's guess. Some folks feel like they can do the big computing on their phone, so a computer is now a luxury they needn't spend cash on. Silly casuals. I like the idea of a league/team leader being able to flash words across our screen if they can only do so a couple of times in a 30 second window or something like that. I dunno if such a feature would ever come to pass, though. I personally feel like any player that doesn't have their chat window up when teamed is simply an idiot. There's just no rational reason for it that I can think of. Maybe I'm the idiot, but I just don't grasp why anyone would do that. I do know that it's fairly easy for the chat windows to get messed up. On retail, I used to mess it up all the time. I don't know why it doesn't happen any more. Maybe my typing has gotten better. <shrug> I wish I had a solution, but I'm afraid the easiest solution for me is using stars and notes. I'll 2 star a player like this with a note like "non-responsive".

If you are one of those that has recently updated the HC wiki - thank you! Give yourself a pat on the back!

So...someone either cannot do math, or they want to spend 1M per rare salvage. Never mind. Don't let what just happened to my brain happen to yours. The more logical play at work here is to obscure the price of the last 5.

I would think now the labyrinth would be the go-to for such things, with the 25% xp buff.

Just anecdotally, if you have a fairly reliable group of friends that log in around the same time - you will earn more doing an ITF than you will clearing a farm. Now, if you're just relaxing, and inf isn't your purpose, it probably won't matter if you run it at +3 or +4 - the powers used are the same.

My reply to this is a bit off-topic, but...<shrug> Depends on what you mean by weak. Slow, I'll reluctantly grant you. Slow is not necessarily weak. A player can still proc their character to the gills with very high global recharge and still have a rough time getting from point A to point B. I would argue the biggest factor in speedy runs is being familiar with the content. When it would be faster to Ouro out of the mission, as opposed to exiting and then realizing you have to board transit for the next mission. The duration within the missions are rarely going to vary much if the team's intent is just the mission objectives. Except for efficiency expert badge, there are very few circumstances where speed is required in any fashion. I like speedy. I'm just not great at it. Tiki torches in Orenbegan maps, having to go through the sewers where the original devs deliberately make me have to zig from left to right and try not get caught on those door frames...that's so humbling trying to zip through those as fast as I can.

HA! That's why you gave most of us a thumbs down. We were too polite and didn't spell it out.

You're missing the same thing I missed for quite some time - so don't feel badly. It's what yomo mentions - crafting costs. As an example: Obliteration:Chance for Smashing Damage, a level 50 recipe. (I actually used this example in another thread in this sub-forum, somewhere) The crafting cost, as you see, not counting for salvage is 490,400 for a level 50 rare recipe. At level 41, the recipe would require the same pieces of salvage, but the crafting costs are much cheaper: I use level 41, simply because if I'm to craft and convert, this level range is better for me to get the IOs that I want. There are many players who would simply sell the level 50 recipe on the AH for whatever they can get, or vendor it, if the bids aren't that good. Then, they may purchase the same recipe, only at a lower level to save on the crafting costs. This is a small part of the reason why marketers make so much more inf than farmers. The farmers are generally level 50, taking advantage of all the slots and set bonuses a 50 can get, to be as efficient at clearing maps as they can. But the drops they get, as I've learned, cost a lot more to craft. If the inclination is to craft and convert recipe drops, you're better off simply forgoing that at level 50, vendor it or sell it on the AH, and either purchasing lower level recipes and crafting/converting those, or just let your lower level characters do this, while your farmer does their own thing, which is clear maps and pray for purple rain. As for turning off these recipes, I don't do that, because I've never been full of recipes before, as I manage all my inventory frequently. And uncommons, rares - they still have value. And disabling them doesn't cause more commons or very rares to drop in their place. So, it's a loss. A small loss, but still a loss. May as well keep getting them and vendoring/selling them on AH - but that's me. Not everyone has the inclination to process their inventory so often.

I am super curious about this. Way back in maybe 2019, I probably earned close to 8K Reward Merits either taking turns leading the raids in the Hive or taunting hami. And then I just got kind of weirded out by some of the strange commentary by other folks in the league, so just figured I'd stop attending. Back then, a lot of the decisions on who would lead the raids was discussed either in chat on the Excelsior Discord (not run by anyone official as far as I know.) I want to say it was @foxfyre who started the discord, or some other former Justice player. Not sure how I squeezed into the rotation, but I did. It's not clear to me who the cool kids are now, calling these shots. And I guess my one big question is - why are we clearing mitos when it's clearly proven it's not necessary? One part of me likes it, because I always get some shards for my characters, which save me from having to use threads. And while it only takes another 2 minutes - it's time enough where we could squeeze in another round instead of just 3. Back then, the story went that folks were concerned about a nerf bat for us, or a buff to Hami, so we should play it slow. Well, I dunno. Okie & the Goddess and Maiden have been zerging hami for months on end. So why not zerg in the hive, too? Just wondering the why, more than anything else.

I think, your feet first approach into the deep end is a proper one. Even though you may not know much now - your teammates will likely teach you a lot, just from your observation. Now, it could be an observation of what not to do, but either way, you should learn quite a bit. I don't know very much at all about marine, but water is a very good set for blasters and corruptors. Water has a lot of knockdown; as such, it present an opportunity, if you're inclined, to tackle harder foes. It is probably the most survivable of all the blast sets, with ice being a close 2nd. (although, skill levels vary, and it could be vice-versa for some) I would encourage you to consider your approach to this character. Are you going to play it like a blaster, and consider buffs/debuffs as a secondary thing? If so, you may not wish to heed all the advice about not skipping any of the marine secondary. Since you're going to be teamed, I would suggest considering the leadership pool once you have the endurance to sustain it. Any/all but the Victory Rush. (I have nothing against it, I just have never used it, and can't speak to the utility) With a theme team, I suspect the fight pool will be largely unnecessary. Things will likely die before you're in a threating situation. But it may be useful as a mule here and there. That's your call. I already know you're going to have hover or some form of flight. Undead people don't change! Play the rest by ear. Your endurance bar and hitpoints bar will tell you what you need to slot if you pay attention. The only thing I would encourage you to strongly consider is six-slotting dehydrate. 5 procs and 1 acc/dam Hami-O. It's great for procs! You can rely on the base heal and not enhance the heal part at all, or you can do half and half, whatever you like. I just used damage procs and the HO. It has a funky sound when executed, but it works quite well.

I confess, I've not played a mastermind very often. I've got a couple at level 50, and they sit idle because there's too much work in way of pet management for me to have any real fun. I guess something must have changed. It makes perfect sense to me to use endurance for each pet spawned.

The prompt to accept teleport will only display if the character is within a small range. I looked in City of Data for more specifics, but didn't find anything useful. Anecdotally , you kind of have to be under it.

This is one of the nicer reasons to use various damage procs.

One of the hardest lessons that I tend to need to relearn is my way of thinking very seldom aligns with how others think. It's not lost on me why everyone doesn't think the way I do. Probably for the best.

So, with ice blast comes the opportunity to proc some of the longer base recharge single target powers, like Freeze Ray. You could lose burnout in favor of another travel power, as "They" recently nerfed the recharge to once a day. possible Ukase build - Blaster (Ice Blast).mxd

So, just a thought on the ice blast hold, Freeze Ray. Freeze Ray doesn't require hold set slotting - you can slot with ranged, or even damage procs. It even does more base damage than ice blast, albeit in a fast DoT. It's a super fast animation, too. What's not to like? As for bitter freeze ray, on one build, I have it. On the other two I skip it, because the animation is too long for the damage it provides (and doesn't insta-snipe the way other sets Snipes do, so although it's situationally useful, I can do without it) I would consider ice/fire, with an eye towards melee & ranged defense. Alternatively - fire/atomic is super nice.

I should also add...if you want more detailed, specific advice, feel free to send a tell to @ukase If I'm on, and at the keyboard, I can generally answer questions. Be warned tho - I tend to over-explain, and as a result, will chat your damned head off. During the days, I am often tabbed out for work, so it's a hit/miss proposition. I encourage you to look for names like @Yomo Kimyata @Andreah @Troo @Bionic_Flea in this market sub-forum, and even in the guides section. These and other players are very sharp and provide great tips and tricks for mastering the market. And there's a lot more than just those 4, those are just the names that come to mind when I think of the market and helpful, sharp players.

For inactive, I like 44188.

Market advice for level 10? So much depends on your goals - and your tolerance for an activity many find tedious/dull/repetitive. A few opinions of mine, not necessarily shared by everyone, but probably shared by most: To make better than average inf in the market requires knowledge in how the AH works. Lowest list price goes to highest bid. But sometimes the highest bid is your list price +1 inf, so be careful. The more experience you have in looking at recipes and what they sell for, the ingredients required (salvage & inf to craft) and the substitute goods that may be bought instead, the better off you will be. Understand that sometimes, there's competition that limits your ability to sell an item for what the last 5 prices suggest they would sell for. Sometimes, those hundreds of bids you see are from players that no longer play, and they were super, super low noob traps, potentially never to be filled. And, sometimes the IOs you see for sale, it's possible that hundreds of those are priced much higher by players that don't play anymore, and they may never sell. (like a luck of the gambler 7.5% recharge used to sell for 7-8M routinely. No longer. It's possible many of those lotg we see in the AH for sale are from 2020, and priced to sell at 9.6m. We may never know. Now, for specific advice - which may or may not align with what others may suggest. I make no representation that my advice is any better than another marketers suggestions. But, I do think I know what I'm doing with my own influence. So, with a once a week play session - this gives you the opportunity to use time to your advantage. As you learn how much things sell for, you'll get an idea of how much you might ask for a given item. At level 10, your needs are not that great - but there's a lot of enhancements that are now available that would make your character more sturdy than if you didn't have them. I don't know how much inf you have now. Having at least some inf is fairly critical to getting more inf. Look in the AH for Single Origin enhancements that are not the same as your origin. Start at level 50, work your way down. Bid on the Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction - well, really all of them, say, 100 inf for each one. Every now and then, they will sell! And when you get them - you vendor them to the longbow store NPC, and if they are level 50 Single Origin enhancements, you should get well over 10K for them. You can do that for each level of enhancement, each category, each origin if you like. You will probably be able to grab 10-30 enhancements if you go through all of them, which should leave you with 100-300k, maybe more. When you are done with that - look for level 50 rare recipes. Find the ones with very few bids (preferably 0 bids) with a lot listed. Bid 10 inf. and bid creep (increment by 10, or 100 - whatever your comfort level) until you get to 1000. A level 50 rare recipe will vendor for 10K. The reason you're good with vendoring a level 50 recipe is because it would require rare salvage, which can cost 400-600K, depending on market demands at that time. (possibly cheaper, possibly more..on average 500k) All you're after here is starter inf. When you get about 500k, you can bid on something like Cleaving Blow, level 10s. Might cost you 30k to get one. Make sure you check the ingredients before bidding. You want 2 of the 4 in the set. 2 of them require rare salvage. You don't want those two. Don't buy more than 2 of them at first. You may have bad luck and you don't want you influence stored in the form of trashy recipes. You'll need some influence for the common and uncommon salvage. You'll also want to get the exploration badges of the zones you're playing in - Atlas, Kings Row, Mercy, Nova Praetoria...any or all of them. Even Echo:Atlas and Echo Galaxy if you've found your way to ouroboros yet. If you don't have a portal yet, and you don't see one around - pop into City Hall, and look for the gate to Recluse's Victory. You can enter there at level 1. Once you enter - you'll get an ouroboros portal that you can use once you leave Recluse's Victory. Then you can grab the explorations from those zones for reward merits, which you'll exchange for converters. You craft the Cleaving Blow level 10 recipes, and convert them into Eradications:chance for damage. Sell them for what you think you can make. Maybe list one for 600K and see if you get lucky and get 3-4M. You could also get suckered that way and only get 666K. We never know! But, even at 666k, given the recipe, salvage and crafting cost less then 100k, if you didn't lose more than 5 converters, you still made a little influence. Then you think about scale: how many of these can I sell in a week? (since you only play once a week) You will want to bid on converters, once you have a tiny stack of influence to spare. Bid low - like 56K, maybe 54K. They may never fill - but they might! A lot depends on if your teams are doing tfs and story arcs for merits, or doing pointless radios which reward nothing but useless temp powers and xp. If one of your friends is usually the leader, and doing THEIR story arcs - they get paid merits, while you don't. So, push for tfs, and if he starts a story arc - you start the same arc ,and collaboratively complete. Menu-Options, general Tab. Show below: Collaborating is annoying sometimes. Sometimes a contact will give different missions to you and your team leader. This tends to be true with Flux, and Stephanie Peebles in Striga Isle. Still, if there's good communication with the team, you can just redo yours and keep you on track. Whatever path you choose - reward merits (and Prismatic Aethers to a lesser degree) are solid ways to accumulate wealth in game. Whether you use the reward merits to get boosters and sell those, or get converters and sell them or use them - you should be okay. There's a TON I left out, because I don't know what you know and what you don't. But I think I gave you enough to at least get started. Others may chime in with more focused and clear advice.

I suppose I should be more transparent. I have always been behind the curve. An idea is developed by someone smarter than me, perhaps shares it, or tells a friend or two about it - and they share it. Sooner or later, things come out in the open, and usually, that's when I figure it out. And sometimes, I get it wrong. Afk farming, for example. I remember ...must be maybe 4 years ago, I was talking to @Bionic_Flea and I'd shared I had my heal on auto, not burn. I had the blazing aura. I was in no rush, as it was afk. The mobs were still dead upon my return. But I have to laugh at my former self when I realized how most everyone else was doing it, with burn on auto instead. At that time, I was not loaded, but had enough for the next alt or two. It was probably investing everything into the winter packs that really made me a ton of inf. (which still bears fruit, as I've yet to open them all from the very first year, let alone the next year. Was there a 3rd year? I don't remember. I do think I happened upon a niche in an area left mostly untouched, or if it were, it was not heavily touched, or demand was high. The ATO to Superior proved to make me quite a bit. About 8-10M per sale. Granted, there were catalysts I had to spend, and I was only getting a couple per day from my farmer - and my alts needed them too. And, back then, they were going for 4-5M, not the paltry 900-1M we might see now. Add to that...the big money makers were in Brute ATOs for the obvious reasons. Interesting that now - it's more often than not, the tanker ATOs that seem in higher demand. No doubt due to the AoE changes for tanks. I do try and be helpful, and I would love it when people would complain about not being able to get the enhancements they wanted. Because I would stop my mission, exit and do my best to fill that void quickly - and send them that item as a thank you for letting me know where we marketers dropped the ball. I used farming as a source for 95% of all my marketing. I felt like paying for recipes was ridiculous, if I could get them for free. Now, given the fact I've realized I could have saved almost 400K in crafting costs in most cases, I'm not so sure that was the right path. It was certainly easy enough, though. And I never once have paid for salvage for the farmer's marketing efforts. I have an assist character who sits outside on a different account for those times when the salvage marketers try their hand at driving the prices up. 100 pieces of each uncommon in the AH, and bids are refreshed as needed, should those times re-visit. Rare salvage is kept via brain storm idea. One character sells the lower levels, and passes the appropriate ones to the farmer if necessary. And then Brain Storm ideas are bid for again, to keep the inventory maxed. I continue to make probably a billion every 3-5 days with another niche which I'll keep to myself. I used to talk about it - but the competition is annoying to deal with. I keep overspending every couple of weeks to keep the profits on these so low, they have to be very stubborn with very deep pockets to keep up. And then when they leave, I make up for lost time. The best part is - the list price has remained the same for at least a year. The big hiccup I'm having seems to be in the supply side. There's too much of it. People are reading too many guides, and not padding my pockets! The IOs I used to get for 3-4M are now only getting me 2.5-3M. A few still maintain their price, but one in particular, the perf shifter+end, I had over 30 of them sitting, unsold at the same price I always have listed them at for the past few years. Suddenly, whomever else is in that space has decided they are worth less money. On one hand, it means my stacks of inf are now worth more, because it can go further. But on the other hand, it drops my income. It would be grieving, I think, if I were to use my resources and simply buy the ones that are dirt cheap and relist. The option is there, but it just seems like a jerk move. I don't think it's against any rules. And it's not like I wouldn't use those IOs eventually. But to buy all the recipes of all the end mod sets, buy all the end mod IOs, that would take up a lot of inventory. And I don't think it's fair to say I'd find a way to use them all. I just wish these folks would just let MY price be THE price, lol. Is that too much to ask? Apparently! In any event, that's where I'm at. Vendoring my recipes that I used to craft, convert and sell. It's a reduction in my income, but I make up for it with accumulating a lot more reward merits that sit in hero merits now instead of as converters. So, maybe the supply will drop a bit now that I'm no longer selling Oblits, Perf Shifters, Power Transfers, Unbreakable Guards, Preventative Medicines, Numinas and occasionaly, Sudden Accelerations, and Bombardments. (other than Unbreakable Guards, I'm referring to the uniques/procs in the sets) If I can't get 3M for it, it just isn't worth the time.

So...I did end up with mark & recall. I discovered I had everything anyway, except The Last Word history badge. I thought, "Self, you're a genius! A great use for this power is in the magi trial when Chimera teleports you while you're fighting a different AV for triple threat badge." And I was all set to use it - and it doesn't work in the trial. Funny. My passive accolades work. And I was pretty sure the click accolades worked too - but I never saw much utility out of them, so I can't be sure. In any event, that's a darn shame. It might have been good to avoid the crackle from Tyrant, too, although the recharge is too long to use it for both purposes. I don't wish to complain...but..why would the powers that be opt to disallow this to work in an iTrial?