Ukase

I didn't even consider that. I still wouldn't use it for a situational power like fold space. It's already up every other mob, give or take a few seconds. I think some folks must be using it (Fold Space) more creatively than I am.

Recently, I'd leveled up an SS/Fire brute, and had a fair amount of fun playing it. It came in useful having Foot Stomp and Burn available in Moonfire, which I like to run the first two missions to go towards the Atlas Medallion. Figured I'd make another one, only make it a little different, avoiding leadership pool, and using Fold Space to bring the mobs in for the foot stomp with the FF recharge proc, and burn procced out right after. Hit level 49, and wouldn't have enough slots to do much with a ranged attack, so figured I'd just take taunt. I knew there was a D-Sync to slap in there. This is what I saw, lol. Only one for sale. Given the 20 different ones available via the RNG...sheesh...a 53 is gonna require more than a few runs, I'd say. Damned if I won't just slot a Perfect Zinger in it for 800k, though. I ain't spending that kind of loot for one enhancement, even if I can buy a ton of them.

So, perhaps I'm confused. Or lack in reading comprehension. You're stating that you would simply buy the enhancement at a price of over 4M, and sell it at a price of less than 4M. That's only profit when someone has made a mistake overbidding due to impatience, clumsy fingers, or insufficient knowledge of AH price glitchiness. To hear you say it - our fellow players (not to be confused with savvy ebil marketers) are confused or have clumsy fingers or insufficient knowledge more often than not. While this may be the case, I do not think this is in anyone's best interest, least of all, yours. Buying high and selling low...that's no way to make inf.

This path is paved with madness. But hey, it's not your fault people are foolish enough to overpay. (or have clumsy fingers and mash in an extra digit) I stay out of this niche for no other reason than I do not wish to pay for IOs from the market. I just sell my drops. Only with pvp recipes will I buy from the AH because the profit is worth the effort to me. My grandmother would tell me, "It's not how much money you make, but how much money you save. Every dollar you save multiplies to the bottom line." My 7 year old self wasn't too clear on what that last part meant, but if the first part takes root, the second part takes care of itself. Buy low, sell high, that's all good. Buy buy nothing and sell fair, that's even better.

I don't see it a lot, but give it a couple of minutes.

So, playing an MM and I am finding non-team inspirations to be far less useful than team inspirations. I thought to myself, "It might be nice to disable non-team inspirations"...but no such option exists. No idea what kind of hassle it would be, but if it's easy, why not offer it?

I love it when he slaps the minion, lol. On repeat, no less.

Well, I've marketed enough in real life already. Does that count?

I dunno, the best character builder I can think of would be a part-time job making donuts. Something about waking up at 2am, working half-asleep, that really helped me develop a work ethic. You tell your next boss you never missed a day of work AND your work day started at 2am, that says something.

My MM in question has reached 50, recently t-4'd barrier. T-3 in everything else. I alted out and played my ill/rad controller, and surprised to see I had named my Phantasm "Stupid". My phantasm keeps up with me, usually. Seems to be game to attack whether I tell it to or not. But...in one limited perspective, the phantom army and phantasm are really better pets. Sturdier, and once spawned, I can pretty much forget them...until 58 seconds and I need to spawn the PA again. It's like comparing apples to oranges, really. I use binds with all my characters. I'm just not going to use a ton of them with the MM. There really hasn't been a need so far. For me, it was more about seeing what the MM player is going through, so when I team with them, I have a better idea of what I can expect, and well, to see if I was missing out on anything fun. I am sad I didn't think to get Burnout for Gang War x 2. Might respec into that. Doubt it, Gang War just isn't that useful from what I can tell. (Beyond once every couple of minutes.) Still, props to you MM players. It's not as simple as it sounds, letting all the pets do the work. I can certainly see the lure of an all MM team, though. Never could before.

Depends on the character, but usually, my goal is to finish story arcs as fast as I can for the XP reward at the end, rather than fuss with making XP within the missions. To me, Stealth pool is usually a waste. I don't see it as a practical choice, as it doesn't help you kill mobs any faster than a character that doesn't choose the stealth pool. What's the point? To be invisible? As Loc points out, SS + Celerity: Stealth, and you've the same thing. Not like anyone is going to pass up Sprint. I guess some folks don't care for SS; to each their own. I find it much faster than flight, and usually faster than teleport, unless the zone or travel area is clear of buildings. Anecdotally, teleport in the central part of Grandville is every bit as annoying as Super Speed. Flight is just better in those situations, and there's a handy jet pack that doesn't cost any slots or powers. The only case I can see where I might choose stealth would be in pursuit of a place to stash an LotG - but flight has more utility than stealth, so may as well go that route, or Leadership. But, that's just my thinking on Stealth. I don't see it remotely useful with the use of Celerity Stealth being an option. Take that away, then I would find a way to fit stealth in most builds.

The truth is - "best" is always subjective. I know some folks who swear that enhancement boosters are a better value than converters, as far as selling them goes. Some folks swear running tfs, using the merits for recipes is the easiest way to go. But the math says that it may be easy, but they're paying more from a merit cost than they need to for that simplicity. In my opinion, as someone who has amassed a ton of inf: Play your character as you see fit. Craft all recipe drops when the salvage you need for them drops. If you've outleveled the recipes and that lower level salvage doesn't drop for you, then go ahead and by it, or if you're really frugal, you can just run an ouro arc in that level range until you get the salvage you want. Either way - craft every uncommon and rare and pvp and Very rare recipe you get. In some cases, you may want to actually use the crafted IO. In some cases, you don't or can't. So, you can convert it into one you can, or sell as is, or convert it into one that will sell for a better price. The latter is my approach. I have an afk farmer. It sits in the map with burn on auto. When the map is clear, I reset it - taking care to craft and convert before I run out of room. Then I stash the ones I want to keep and sell the others. I do the same thing on non-farm characters. Craft and convert - keep or sell. This has provided me with all the influence I could ever use, and then some. If I stopped farming and marketing, I could fund all 1000 slots worth of characters at buy it now prices. The bulk of this pile of influence was acquired by placing low bids for level 10 pvp recipes, crafting, and converting them to ones that sell better than others. I make, after all costs, including opportunity cost for converters which I "farm" by recycling my afk-farmers for emp-merits, about 3-5M per IO. Just depends on whether folks bid-creep, or just plunk down 10M or more because they can't be bothered. I have since stopped - except for a couple of days ago when I saw the price of Shield Walls had creeped up over 10M. Had to bring the price back down to 8m. Not that I mind folks paying that much, but it's clear there weren't many to be sold. So, figured I'd replenish some of the supply. So, what's better than the Wentworth's train? In some cases, the D-Sync (Hamidon Enhancement similar item) have some that sell for a very pretty penny. Literally 100's of millions of influence. But - they are a crap shoot on whether or not you get gold or trash, and the converters do not work on those enhancements. So, most folks take the merits, because most don't want an acc/mez or similar less useful item. Because of this, the folks who take the risk and choose the d-sync, if they get the good ones, they aren't shy about charging a ton. More power to 'em. They took the risk. But, in my opinion, there's nothing more lucrative than using reward merits to get converters and actually using the converters on your drops. It's faster to actually buy recipes and crafted IOs to convert, but you have to find the right bargains. But you can definitely get rich doing that.

At the risk of being confused for Snarky, I should probably remind everyone that the medicine pool is available to aid teammates with if you really wanted to do so. Talk about nostalgia...I used to actually get that on my blasters before I learned there were combat attributes and the different ATs had different Hitpoints and such.

Just anecdotally, when using Fold Space - I saw how the mobs line up - kind of the same way the zombies spawn, all in a row, each one slightly diagonally to the left or right depending on your perspective. They are in a perfect position for a cone attack - once you get in position at one end or the other. Additionally, as I'm confident you know, a range enhancement will increase the distance from which you can use your cone - and thus, the width of the cone extends but only to a point, to a limit defined in the power's detailed info tab. It's not worth it to slot a range in all cases, but anecdotally, on my claws scrapper, it seemed to be worth it.

So, on the one hand, I've no issue with any changes you've suggested. My only adjustment would be that the buff be only for teammates, not the caster, and here's why: Those with large pockets that can and do kit out their characters can already run most content at +4/8 with little or no real hassle, unless they choose to make things harder. Providing a buff or heal to a tank or brute, above and beyond their armor just gives someone like me even less reason to team up. As I said, I'm fine with it, but lately, there seems to be some pressure for folks to team up more often than not. By providing such a thing, it makes certain ATs even less reliant on support ATs. Now, it's possible I'm the only person thinking that way. Mama told me my way of seeing the world wasn't typical.

It is a struggle, sure.

Embrace the feeling when you prevail after a struggle! When you're still slotting up, and not kitted out, the game can be challenging, particularly at +3 & +4.

I have recently gotten to level 43 with the MM. At present, the death count remains at 3, and once I got a bit of recharge on Chrono-shift, things have been easy enough to up the diff to +2/6. My character can take more, but when I tried +2/8, the trio of thugs, particularly the arsonist would die more often than not. Sure, it's easy to resummon, but then I have to equip and upgrade, and well, I'd rather just do that once per mission and forget about it. Obviously, it takes a bit longer than +1, but I'm anxious to get this thing complete and then start another powerset. I'll get this to 50, no doubt. Incarnating will be annoying, simply because every t-4 effort is a bit of a grind. And that's kind of ridiculous in contrast to the way things were before shutdown. I've solo'd the entire way up to this point, except for an MSR at level 36, and the patron unlock in the mid-20's. (two defeats in that mess!) so, teaming with it is a bit intimidating. Even in BG mode, the pets are stupid. I put them on Follow/Defensive, but the Bruiser leads - he doesn't follow - once I initiate the fights. The rest seem to have their own minds about who to tackle, which is fine. They do respond to direct commands when given, so can't ask for much more than that. I did find it interesting when they say "I can't see nothing!". If only I could change the way they look. I would prefer to not hang out with "thugs" and make them look more like gangsters, or bikers, like the bruiser, rather than these scrawny dudes.

I once held a contest for my SG - each contestant was to be level 1, in Praetoria and see how many badges they could collect in ..I think it was 30 minutes. The prize was the build of their choice. The winner did their level best to really stick it to me. I made a ruling prior to the contest that I would not provide any boosters, as 1) I wasn't going to spend the time to boost all those IOs (prior to the speedier way to do them now), and if I just handed them over in a trade, it'd be too easy for the winner to just sell them. I also said no Hami-Os, as the market simply wouldn't allow me to produce those with any degree of certainty. I think there was only one level 53 Cyto at the time, and maybe a couple of level 50's. Not enough supply to produce what may have been requested. It gave me an idea, though. What if a player just didn't want to take the time to get all the enhancements required and was willing to just fork over a sum to cover what they thought it would cost them? These guys that think a build costs 1 billion - I promise you, there are NO builds that would cost a billion if I'm the one procuring the items. You'd have to be so damned impatient to spend that much. I mean, I can probably use "buy it NOW" prices for 99% of the builds and not go over 500M. I just can't see it. So, um, yeah. Anyone who thinks their build will cost 1 Billion - you pay me 750M, I'll get you that build you want - not including Hami-Os. I don't do enough hami raids to gather Cytos and Micros, and even if I did, I'd always take the merits. And, in all likelihood, I'll have it within an hour, unless I have to take a call or make time to eat a meal or something.

I keep a spreadsheet as well. Or, at least I did. I haven't opened it in a few months. Many players will keep surplus influence on the AH, on bids that presumably will never fill. Like, bidding 5M on a hero pack, when the going rate is 10m, and have never gone on sale and are not likely to do so. I do not do this. Why? Because then, that character is the one with access to the influence. You'd have to log it in, make sure the character has room to pull the inf out and then do with it whatever it is you wanted to do. I can concede to the argument that inf stored in this way is surplus; you are not likely to ever need it, so what's the big deal. Fair point, but for me, I want any of my alts to access any of my loot. I track a few things for each character - inf on hand, vet levels and emp merits. Recently, I took the time and just ensured that no character had any emp merits left, and all were emailed to one character who would be able to distribute the transcendent merits to new characters with as little fuss as possible. It's not nearly as many emp merits as I would like, I'll tell you that. I track vet levels to see how much time it would take to get the next set of free emps. Each character when their t-4s are done will email all influence over 1B to the global email, and to have room for the emailing of emps & transcendents, each account is capped at 90 emails at 999,999,999. I made a 4th account just to have a place to keep the emails. Recently, had to make a 5th. Like Ironblade, once an IO is in a build, it has zero value because it's not for sale. I also don't count the well over 1000 purples I have in my base, nor the thousands of winter packs I've yet to open. I also don't count the ...now less than 100 luck of the gambler 7.5% I have in base storage, the PVP IOs, nor all the ATOs that are in my email, nor the tens of thousands of converters, as none of those things are for sale. If I did count them - the price of purples would likely have to drop in order for me to get rid of them all. Same with ATOs, PvP IOs, Winter-Os. Nobody is likely to ask how much you have. The more you have, the more you'll likely either boast about it as if it mattered to anyone, or never bring it up because telling them you have far more than they ever could want doesn't really win friends or influence people. And yet - marketing is tedious for some and can often require a sacrifice of actual game play. Sometimes letting people know you've endured such things to gift them that winter set or 50M or whatever is the only satisfaction you'll get. Personalities are different and varied. Where some person would rather be hush-hush about donations, other folks would shout at the rooftops how generous they are. Other folks just depends on their mood. Now, I must hurry and sell my 19,000 Iron Will inspirations and steal @Yomo Kimyata's inf reserves!

Just picture me smacking my forehead, Homer Simpson style. I should also add a thank you to those who have taken the time to offer tips and advice. Thanks.

I will never use keybinds for this. It would make me have to rewrite binds for other powers and actions - and then I'd have to remember which binds did what. Binds, unless they are the same for every character you have, would render me incapable of doing anything. Again - when you switch from an MM to another alt - and play that for a stretch, and then re-visit your MM - how would you remember which key did what? Study a keybinds text file? Does that sound like something someone should have to do before playing a character? That just sounds pretty crazy to me. I ain't gonna do it. Props to those of you who can actually remember which key does what without having to review a text file. I'll use macros, thanks. I can at least right click on those if the label doesn't remind me.

A bind? That puts me in a bind. Using keybinds for this would be impractical at best, at least for me. There are only so many keys on the keyboard. How would anyone remember what each key was for? With the macro, there's at least some visual clue, presumably an abbreviation or acronym. I already have a bind for V,B,N, H, I, O, P, S, Z, T,M, N - which are the same for every character so I can keep them straight. Keybinds for all those pet options? I don't have enough keys. And I can't use the number pad because my right hand is on the mouse if it's not on the arrow keys moving the character about. As it stands now, I have the broad macros where I give the pets direction as a group. Telling one to go off and do X ...that opens up a lot of options, but requires way too many keys to have a different macro or keybind for each type of instruction. Surely this is the way of madness. Why would anyone be willing to entertain this level of control over a mindless henchman? More to the point, is it necessary? Or just optimal? I'd prefer to be optimal. No sense doing something half-assed. But, with the way I move a character, (arrow keys), I may be stuck in at a notch just above mediocrity.

I have no idea how you would discern any of the attacks of the henchmen. I can barely find them in the throes of battle, let alone determine what attacks they're doing. I guess I should be doing more research. But, if I designate a target for those three - don't I lose the bodyguard mode? They have to be in defensive & follow, right? Or, would I just lose the hitpoints of those specific 3 out of the BG mode equation?

That seems like a lot to me. I see so many folks get defeated and they laugh it off. Just like in real life, defeat is a message. What does the message say? It says you made one or more mistakes. What were they? Win, or learn. If you're not learning after each defeat - as in - how to avoid the next defeat, you're not going to improve. My goal isn't simply to get an MM to 50, it's to learn to play one well. And, if you're dying routinely, are you really playing it well? I would say no. But that's just my definition. I wouldn't hold anyone else to my crazy standard. I completely understand this is a game, and many couldn't care one iota about improving in this game, I believe a winning attitude in real life will spill over into the game, and vice-versa. Not saying my thoughts are normal, it's just what I think. It's kind of like throwing a game in professional sports. Only the really bad teams will do it, because the good teams have a winning culture. It would be unthinkable to go down without a fight for a winning team.