Ukase

I will continue to use it because it is useful. The HC Wiki is pretty much a standard copy. Very little has been updated to reflect the newer data. And, when I go to update certain things in the HC wiki, I find that it's already been updated, aside from a few things that weren't. (so I edit them and update it) I get that it's a work in progress, but until that progress is complete, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using it. It's the same thing, practically. I see no harm in it.

Perhaps "auto-hit" isn't the right term. Doesn't seem to need to hit anything. Just seems like a noisy version of a sustain...but I guess all blaster sustain toggles make some sort of noise. Never really noticed it on Caustic Aura or Frigid Protection, but it's there. Oh well, thanks for answering the question. Just wanted to be sure I didn't need to only use it against Fire attacks or something.

So, I've just come from running this on Relentless. I was the last person to arrive, on a fire/rad corruptor. The team comp was...6 other corruptors and one tank. We tried to get the tank say "Scourge" with every attack, but that didn't quite pan out. If I ever do this again, I'll try to make some targeting macros ahead of time. Shimmerings, the Scientists in the first mission, Rifters, Brickernauts...the specific AVs, all pretty hard to find in a crowd. Just tabbing through took some time. I'll say this - Relentless is a poor name for it. Stupid is the word you were probably looking for. I say Stupid because inspirations were disabled. Now why would you do that, after beefing up the npcs? Oh well, saved me some button mashing - except, I had brought supers. Then, thinking supers are disabled, "Okay, I'll use AH and overpay to get some large Insps right now". Those damn things were disabled, too. Whatever. Stupid is my term for it. You allow incarnates, but you disable inspirations. That doesn't make sense to me. But, lately a lot of things in game don't make sense to me. My fault for not reading more carefully. Moving on. The first four missions are fairly simple. Nothing terribly complicated if you're not pursuing badges. The last ripple where you're fighting Lady Gray, Dark Shadow, etc - it was pretty dull once Incandescence goes down. I don't see the excitement here. You get taunted by Hero 1, which is super annoying, but I get it, nothing we haven't dealt with before. But they're all just a big bag of hit points. They don't seem to do anything special, nothing exciting, no clever dialogue that I could tell. It's just button mashing, and the only real strategy is to use barrier on rotation. A yawn fest. Except that one group teleport..right beneath Hero 1's size 14 boot. Nice. I'm still traumatized, lol. Oh, before Incan and Hero 1 (and the others if you chose to fight them) - there's Glacia and Infernia. Why these two are such push-overs escapes me. They really should be quite pissed, given how many times many of us deliberately let them die to progress the TF forward more quickly. I would have expected some dialogue on that, too. Still consistently talkative, so I guess there's that. On Ripple Surge, it's nice that it count towards Gremlin defeats. I would love it if the shimmering patch that's left on the ground were more clearly defined. On my system, anyway, it's very hard to tell where Ripple's feet clearly are. They could be on the patch, or they could be his feet. It could use some more distinction, that's all. As far as it being challenging, the content isn't. What's challenging is taking a bunch of speed runners and having them all stick together. That is what's challenging. It still only took about an hour, and only a few defeats across the board. About 20 defeats in all, I think. Maybe 30. More than I expected, given the group. That one group teleport..right beneath Hero 1's size 14 boot. Nice. I'm still traumatized, lol. What really puzzled me was the pay off. A hami raid can get me 4 emp merits. So can this. If I'm chasing emp merits...the hami raid is the least hassle. Of course, a number of Astrals dropped, quite a few, so maybe it's not that bad. Seems to me the reward merits should be a lot higher, when contrasting with other content. Also, the influence for killing these AVs..dunno, seems like it should be more, since they're all souped up. Nothing at all wrong with the story from what I could tell. A little long, but that's on the chosen difficulty setting.

Just my opinion, this temp should be an auto-hit.

On "Attack Types" -- I'm probably over-thinking it, but in the context of Mud Bath (seems to be a sustain toggle for a blaster), for "Attack Types" it says AoE defense, Fire defense. I am not understanding why it even says "Attack Types", let alone what Mud Bath has to do with AoE Defense or Fire Defense. Just to rule it out, I toggled it on and stood in melee with a few npcs, and no change in those attributes, or any others. Shall I just ignore this? Am I missing something?

Okay...There's a lot of information you need...and I don't want to overload you with too much at once. So, here's just a tiny glimpse of what 5 seconds with a spines/fire brute with burn on auto, and quills and Blazing Aura toggles on. The 8,544 XP and the 20,504 are for lieutenants, not minions. It's just the #125 map, I'm doing them for tickets, as I need a lot of rare enhancements. Some "ebil marketers" are playing with the rare salvage in some fashion, where they are now selling for 500-700k, depending on how quickly you want to buy it. My farmers have no need of xp, so may as well do a couple of runs for tickets and not let those marketers have my influence. I'd pay 500k, but if the bid doesn't go through by the next day, I'll just use tickets. I stash all the rares that do drop in my character's vault, so I can fit more common and uncommon salvage in my standard inventory. It's not always how much you make, but how much you save. I try to keep all the inf I earn and to buy as little as possible from the AH. There is a chap named @Yomo Kimyata who is quite the student of economic theory. He may have mastered it, I dunno. But, if you have two characters, one character can sell a level 50 IO, (invention set, the kinds that give bonus) and another character can buy that same enhancement, only attuned, for the same price. But you have to be careful! If the first character prices it too cheap, someone else will get it before you can. To learn how to make that crafted IO into an attuned IO (or vice-versa), read about that, here: As for your p2w XP buff, that stops working when you reach 50, yes. That's part of the reason you're poor now - you're trading XP for influence. Disable that, and you'll be making more inf, for sure. As far as what recipes are good, and which are not, there is MUCH to say on that! I have my beliefs, Yomo will have his, other players can and do differ on the value of certain "looted" recipes. I could cover that here, and probably should, but others have already laid out how to determine the value of these items. The sad part is - it's boring for many players. Tedious. Not hard, just tedious and somewhat time-consuming until you get used to it and develop a disciplined system for performing these rather mundane tasks. In these forums, some players cannot be bothered to determine how to get the most out of a "looted item". So, they sell them at 1 influence, and get whatever the highest bid for that item is at that point in time. Others sweat these details, taking copious notes as to what's being sold, when, how many others are being sold, and what the last 5 prices are and who knows what else they could be tracking. When buying items, our player base mostly doesn't treat in-game currency like currency. They will spend whatever it takes to get what they want RIGHT NOW. They can afford to do this because they've played the game a lot. The more you play, the more inf you make. Especially at 50. Once you hit 50, I recommend you keep playing until you've collected a large enough pile of influence to slot your next character how you want to, without waiting around. Maybe 50 million if you're just going to use commons, 300 million if you're going to use IOs that have set bonuses. The difference between a brute with set bonuses and a brute without them will vary from build to build. They are not all build the same! Some brutes can do what yours can do while not even controlling the character. They just sit in the center of an asteroid map with burn on auto. Then they play the game with another account, relying on the brute for funds to get the enhancements the character they're actively playing will need. You can do that, too - but you don't need to if you don't want to. There are many paths to take, many options! None of them are wrong. Some may be more optimal. Some may be more fun. Pick fun. Optimal is great, too. If they're the same path, fun and optimal, you win! If it's just fun, you still win. If it's optimal, you win, but it means less. Spend some time reading the Market sub-section in these forums. You can learn a lot. Oh, about "rolling in influence", consider all the "looted recipes" after a large map. Each Common recipe can be vendored (sold) to the npc in AE for anywhere from 80-120K influence. A large map will get you a million just in those. The right uncommon or rare recipes, you can sell quickly for 2M. (a pvp recipe is likely to sell for 1.5M to 2M. Craft it, and ...looking at the market now, it will sell for 5-8M, depending on what's going on in that niche when you list it. A red fortune recipe can go for a decent price, too. 1.1 to 2M for those as well, because they can be converted easily to an LotG for just a few converters. (once they're crafted, of course) Recognizing the value of these items will take exposure to the AH over time. I can't just say, keep and craft these, sell those. I craft ALL the yellow, (uncommon) and orange (rare) and purple (very rare) recipes I get. I will stash the purples in my base for use by my characters, and I will convert any and all enhancements I craft into some that sell fairly well, fairly quickly. I've done this since ...June of 2019, I think, and I've over 350Billion now at last count. It adds up pretty quickly, once you figure things out. The good news is, you don't need nearly that much to enjoy yourself. Any more than 2-3 billion, as long as you're playing a level 50 character once a week or so, you should be fine. And if you need more, you can play your brute more.

They could definitely improve how long things are on beta. As I understand it, they have a large number of volunteers that test things before they even get to Beta. And then, the rest of us have maybe a month to check things out. That's just not enough time for a number of us. Certainly not me, unless I forgo playing on the standard server. The Beta server has a great option to insta-level to 50, and slot your character however you choose, even randomly if that suits you. But, what about the levels in between? While you can choose to any level you want to be, which is quite excellent, it still takes time to assess how the new powerset plays on a blaster, versus a corruptor, versus a defender at roughly levels 10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45 and finally 50 and incarnated. Run a mission or two at this level. Take a note or two on how it compares to other powersets, other ATs with the same powerset in secondary or primary, etc. I could say more about why I'd like more time, but I think I've said enough. This last patch hit the servers so fast, I truly believe the time I spent on Beta was wasted. And what sucks is I felt that way before I went to Beta. I was convinced by someone in game I had a responsibility to test things out. But three weekends isn't nearly enough time. (I wasn't gonna spend time during the week, I'm afk most of the time mid-week. Weekends are about the only time I can give full focus of my attention.)

They right click on your avatar and check your global. Or, if they see something you wrote in chat that was funny, or mean, or intelligent or stupid, they might also check in a similar fashion. There's /getglobalname localName which will tell folks what your global is from your character's name.

With level 40 SOs...at level 43, they're going to be rather useless. The inf you spent there, well...it could have been spent on level 30 IOs of the same type, and even if you couldn't get ALL of them that you wanted, you'd not have to rebuy them again. There's a lot of ways to proceed from here. I can pull back the curtain later in this thread, (not this post) share some useful paths to take, I can just gift you a large sum of inf so you can buy Common IOs right now, and then, maybe work your way, one day, to the very useful IOs that give set bonuses - which may be more than you're willing to do, from what I can tell. You mention the cost of these things being ridiculous, and compared to some other enhancements, I suppose that is true, in a relative sense. But, consider the idea that when you slot a given "Set", it's like a free enhancement that you didn't have to buy, and if the set is attuned, it works as you level up, getting stronger each level, and it scales down if you exemplar. (unless you exemplar too far below the level in which the set would normally occur) There's no need to use those,(set bonus IOs) of course. But, if the right recipes drop, and all you have to do is craft them (later when you reach 50), you'd be rolling in influence at that time, why wouldn't you? At level 50 - other than inspirations or p2w buffs you might buy, you don't really have expenses. So, as you play, it adds up. Even solo, it adds up. On a team, the kills come quickly, the inf pours in. The last time I paid attention, a kill most ITF, I think I got about 20M inf. If the only thing that's stopping you from proceeding to 50 is the cost of the enhancements, you let me know, I'll drop some inf on you, if you like. Not so much to take your motivation away, but enough to buy all the Common IOs you might need.

@Diantane When HC brought Coh back, I didn't farm. The main reason I didn't farm was because I remembered on live that it just wasn't that much fun. I would find a large map, usually Freaks, a mission given out by Unai Kemen. With a boss or two in each group, and their tendency to self-rez, I would often get Tank Smasher (badge for beating 100 Freak bosses) in one map. It was interesting at first, particularly when I'd see the flash of purple letters flash across my screen. A purple recipe on live could sell for over 200M uncrafted, just as is. Sometimes as much as 280M. Expense in this flavor of CoH is relative. You may think they're expensive, and I think they're great up to level 30. After that, they are fairly without value. The reason I say this, is if you're level 30, and the SO is level 30, it will boost certain powers (depending what they are) 33% or 20%. But the common IO will boost it just a smidge more. So let me illustrate, if I can sort out how to showcase this. My character is level 25. In Hasten, I have just slotted these two SOs. Hasten, with nothing slotted has a stated recharge of 7:30. Two even-level SOs, as shown will reduce the recharge time to 4:30. I'm not going to get into the math, I'm still having my first cup of coffee. But, pictures, I can try to do. Cost of these enhancements at an NPC Quartermaster 27,900x2= 55,800 inf. Now, with two common IOs instead: I lose 4 seconds of recharge! Boo! The cost of these two will vary greatly. (As would the two Recharge SOs) Getting either from the market will be cheaper than at the vendor. But, from the crafting table: 99k inf for both. (Fun fact: I bought these two for this illustration from the AH for 20k each. You could pay as low as 1 inf or up to 50k, depending on what's going on. If you bid on them a few levels before you need them, you can get them MUCH cheaper! Patience wins in the Auction House. But what happens at level 26? If you want to know that - I cannot illustrate that, because my character is only level 25. And the servers are gonna close for maintenance, so no PL to 26 just to illustrate this. But if you go here: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancements#Relative_Enhancement_Values There's an extensive list that shows the values. It's a bit confusing if you've never read it before. At the top of the list, on the left column is the boost % of each enhancement. Remember the question? The question was what happens to the value of the two level 25 SOs when you get to level 26? Per this table, a -1 SO will only boost 30%. Obviously, this is less than the 32% of the even level IO. And the good news is you keep the 32% until YOU decide to put in a higher level common IO, at say level 40, or even 50. Click that link and you can see how much better a common IO is compared to an SO. Over time, you can get a lot more utility for your inf by using IOs. So, in conclusion, with SOs, yes, nice % boosts. But they are short lived. The advantages quickly fade as you're learning. Now, the common IOs, they can be expensive. This is why you look on the AH for these recipes! Craft them yourself, and you WILL save a LOT. Going into this is a bit beyond the scope for this thread, but I can if you want. But it's been covered far better in some of the guides.

Nobody loses in the market, unless they added an extra digit by mistake. One player puts something in the AH, eventually another chooses to buy it. Win/win.

lol, nope.

And got waxed, quickly, even with what I would consider wise use of inspirations (the lowly 1st tier insps from the vendor, as shown.) So, now that I've been through this, this is all my brute could do before defeat - with that map, those settings. So, to be as helpful as I can be, there is no bug that you're not aware of. But, there is something I remembered that you may not be aware of. In your first post, @Diantane, you mentioned buffing up your defense to 130%. You can take all the purples you want outside of AE, once you enter the map, even if there are still 50 seconds left, the buffs from inspirations are immediately removed. So, if that's how you got your buffs, they disappeared immediately. I will re-try with the purples within the map, and see how it goes. I was successful in clearing the map at -1/4, without being defeated, but it had a lot to do with the rng on inspiration drops. Without the use of the inspiration macros, it would have ended quite quickly. Even with them, there were a couple of instances where the inspirations wore off, and I didn't have any more purples to use, but with a robust (orange) and getting a timely health insp drop, I had just enough to get a couple more kills and a couple more insp drops. So, it can be done, but if you do what I think you did - gobble the insps before you entered, none of those purples did you any good. If you took them upon entry, monitor your fire resistance and your melee defense. (monitor fire defense at level 50) but for this purpose, take 4 purples immediately upon entry, with 4 in reserve. As new insps drop, like heals, damage, rugged, you can use those as the defense buffs drop. They drop quickly if you took them quickly. Wait a couple seconds between each one, so you have more reaction time to move around and combine insps. If you can afford it, it's quite worth it to buy the p2w Return to battle, just for the insp buffs when you use it. They'll likely carry you through to getting a full insp tray to get you through a few more groups. If you can start off with supers, or even large insps, they will do you even better.

About to pop in the same arc. Same settings, -1/4.

So. because I wanted to really see if I could give some feedback that would be more helpful, I've made a spines/fire brute, specifically to see how mine might fare, with just SOs. I haven't spent the usual inf on the temps that I might normally do (Teleports, plasmatic tasers, haven't even gone to p2w for sands of mu, which I may regret) Here's what I have slotted: Here are my combat stats (the ones I'm monitoring, anyway) So, level 7, with SOs. I wouldn't ordinarily get Temperature Protection on a fire brute or fire tank - unless I'm using it for a set mule, it's going to give more fire resistance than I would need. But, in the early levels, it can be worth getting. But it's not available to choose on a brute prior to level 7. So, with 2 SOs in Fire armor, 32.72% is all the resistance I have.

So, you're a level 7 brute. At this level, you don't have Quills, one of your AoE damage toggles. You don't have burn. The only AoE damage you have at this point is blazing aura. You might have lunge & barb, and perhaps Spine Burst and Healing Flames. And that's if you had neglected to take a travel power. There are AE maps that you can handle, but you'll not be wanting to tackle AoE-centric maps when you only have one AoE attack aside of a passive damage aura. SOs at level 7 are great, but you don't have enough slots to really do much of note. So, now you leave me wanting to make a spines/fire, get to level 7, use SOs and see what this map is like (as I've no idea). But my gut says, farming as a level 7 can be done, but it has to be the right map. No idea which it is, but there's one with just ONE elite boss per group to tackle, and it worked pretty well for my low level character. Try a search for low level farming. Generally, when you interact with the kiosk, in the mission description there will be information about what to expect, as well as what stats would be required.

Although I'd never want to date Mez's avatar, I can't think of anyone who I'd rather have on my team play a mind dom. I saw what his character could do in TPN, and went out and made one for myself. And deleted it after realizing that there are things Mez can do that I cannot. I say that to say this: Good team composition is great to have, but I'll take good players with less than optimal team composition over average players with great team composition. Every time. When you're only slightly better than mediocre like myself, ya need all the help you can get.

I swear I remember Matt (Positron) saying that the trays are stuck at 70, and any more would "break the game". But, it was a long time ago, and I could be misremembering. And yeah, repopulating the tray is annoying, but /cleartray is a great start for me. Good tip on taking the screenshot of the power tray before hand!

You should probably keep in mind that, sometimes, when you're dealing with a pick-up group, (folks you're not very familiar with), if the whole team agrees to leave, it's possible for someone to return and simply finish it without you. Ordinarily, the AV can be a pain point for most folks, but consider Katie Hannon TF. After the first mission, there's no more AVs.

Heh, someone dumped about 600 on the AH (as I could tell, anyway). The bid finally went through. I should have cancelled it!

None of my characters on any accounts are selling converters. I have the standing bid for 300k and that's it. Which is darn fishy. It's not like I need one converter, lol. I get mine from emp merits nowadays.

I did,(know those things) but I don't sell or buy converters typically. Well, I might sell some now, lol. Still, I placed a bid for grins for 300k, and it hasn't been processed. I find that odd.

For kicks and grins..I did this: It's still there! 515 converters in the AH...listed for more than 300k? I think this must be one of those extra zero errors, only instead of buying something with one too many zeroes, they've listed it with one too many zeros. I can't recall, but I think the highest I've ever seen a converter go for is maybe 110k, other than today. A couple of hours, in another thread, I noticed this: So, 11 more converters were put on sale for more than 300K? Something is fishy! And I'm phishing! What's going on here?!

Oh my. Someone's been paying a fortune for converters, or the display glitch is impacting them. 200K, nestled in amongst 100k, 101k...they were 70k most of yesterday. Only 504 left. Get 'em while they're hot. (I don't mean buy 'em. Sell 'em! That seems like a pretty good price for something so easily obtained. )

There was a time when I pugged routinely. I stumbled across a similar situation. Now, I avoid pugs if I can. So, I no longer see such things. When solo, the only KB that might irritate me comes from Fusionette. And candidly, if I do see it, it doesn't bother me any more than an AoE immob or hold that was cast too soon for maximum dps. In short, it doesn't bother me at all. Because I can't fuss at someone's KB any more than I can fuss at someone who uses their Judgement nuke a second before I use mine, or uses their stupid, stupid, stupid damned Fold Space just as I'm about to hit my own AoE. The very invention of Fold Space alone reveals the HC Devs hatred for me and my playstyle....wait. That just slipped out. I meant to repress that, honestly! If KB is the biggest problem we have, it's a good day. Now, how about upping that inf cap to 100 Billion already?