Ukase

I'm just going to assume this falls under the heading "Typo"...unless the level cap is being boosted from 50 to 120. Fairly sure the upper limit is 20.

I applaud this effort. Your way WILL work for you. Maybe I'll learn something.

So, the key word here is consistency. I will have days when I "invest" a couple of billion, maybe 3 billion. And the returns are not huge, from a traditional ROI perspective. At least, not by my standards, because there is competition. Years ago, I foolishly/generously wrote a guide of sorts which still needs major editing, and shared it with folks in my SG, and few other folks through Discord. Some of the "students", if it's even them, have learned the lessons well. But, I think I have deeper pockets to squeeze them out, as they seem to stop competing when I get more aggressive. Then I realized, I have enough. I'll never be able to spend it all, if I keep earning reward merits and use them. I mean, if I just kept the merits and continued to make new alts and play them to 50+3 t-4, I suppose in 1000 characters, it's feasible to spend it all, but I doubt it. So, when I think about this, the desire to spend more than 30 minutes crafting/converting dissipates when I think about the opportunities to slap some Kronos GMs around instead. (and make more merits, lol) There are days when I make a billion+. But it's not every day because the traffic on the server isn't the same every day. Characters getting created and played, rather then just sitting in a day job aren't the same each day. There is ebb and flow. There are probably 5-10 invention enhancements that almost every player that doesn't specifically avoid invention enhancements will use - and I don't routinely deal in any of those. I don't sell Luck of the Gamblers, Perf Shifters or Miracles - except when I run out and need more for my base. When a character needs a miracle proc, I'll buy 10 cheap recipes and make 20 of them. I slot one, sell 9, and stash the rest in my base for the next 10 characters to grab. The sale of the 9 lets me recoup all the costs, so it's generally a small profit. Not even worth the time! But, for me, just like in real life, it's not how much money did you make, it's how much money did you save? In real life, I don't earn much. But, I do save almost 40% of my check by avoiding useless expenses. Meet friends at McAlisters Deli? Seriously? You want me to spend 10 bucks on a sandwich? Are you nuts? Come to my house, I'll feed you guys for less than that. Same thing in CoH. I avoid putting my inf in marketers' pockets, if I can. My niche used to be pvp IOs. Still is, to a degree. But my days of buying ALL the recipes I can for 25% of the current rate the crafted IO sells for are over. I'll put in a bid and craft and convert as need be to make my desired %. If my recipe bids are too low, and I only get 3-5 per day, instead of what used to be about 300 a day, I'm good with that now. More time to play. Heck, with the competition in the market place going on now, the "lesser" marketed IOs are selling for half of what they used to, effectively making all of us 2x as wealthy. The need to push for the collection of these funds is far, far less than it was when I started in 2019 or 2020, whenever HC opened its doors to all of us. Back then, dealing with the market was super fun and interesting. Now, it's more of a hobby, something I do when in the mood - not a need to fund my new alts. Now, I literally give away billions every week. I gave 23 billion away two weeks ago...meant to just give 20B, but I made some mistakes and forgot how many emails I'd sent. (said player uses the funds for costume competitions) I don't even miss it. And Yomo has even more than I do. Pretty sure there are players who make me and Yomo look like small time chumps, but they spend all their time marketing, no time playing. (or next to no time playing, at least, not in the clobber bad guys for xp type of playing)

Has to be a few years ago, but @Nemu had posted a build for a fire/time controller that shamelessly copied and played from level 1 to 50+3, t-4 in all, with a badge count of at least 1200. It could use a respec to allow for better endurance at exemplared levels, but it certainly does well.

For those curious, I have now accumulated 4 Hamidon Goos. Sadly, I goofed in using one during my routine craft & convert at the end of the character's play session. So, down to 3. Only 17 to go...

I think RelativeQuanta lays it out clearly. City of Data 2.0 is worth a look. The site even has the inherent Apprentice Charm that magic origin characters get! What will lay out the mobs fastest? Depends on the mobs in question. Almost every question in this game has the answer "Depends". What's better for +4/8 work, a brute or a tank? Depends. How do I stay behind my keyboard for 8 hours at a time, without ever getting up? Depends.

I don't think that's the case...I am obtuse, but I would have noticed my selected missions disappearing from my nav bar when I grabbed a badge. Or...maybe I just never had a mission selected because I was badging...really? Well, consider it feedback, still. I want what I selected to stay selected until I get there. Now if I leave the zone, that I get. But in the same zone..nah, that waypoint should remain.

I'm sure I've seen some folks complain about the constant barrage of new tips - this bit of feedback isn't that. As part of my adapting to the new patrol xp in lieu of regular xp for explorations, when I reach a zone for the first time for a given contact, when I enter, I pick the contact out so I have a waypoint to keep me on track. And, I grab the explores along the way. I suspect the new tip system is designed for me to open the tip and go to the next badge - and I would do just that - but the tips have me crossing the zone to get one, and then crossing back, instead of grabbing them in a systematic fashion in an efficient manner. So, I tend to just grab the ones on the way to the contact, and snag the others as I pass them doing the arc. But now, with the new tip system, whenever I get the tip: If I had a mission selected, it gets de-selected. If I had a contact selected, it gets de-selected. Now, it's a minor annoyance, and it's probably working as intended. So, my feedback is it's a minor annoyance. My suggestion is if you keep the current tip system as is, have the tip missions give us the close badge in the zone we don't yet have. No idea how one would code that, but that's my suggestion.

I know I'm in the minority, but to me - posi 1 is a solo effort. This way, you avoid the insane experiences. Granted, that puts me a few levels of xp behind everyone else. But, I catch up while you guys are trying to find 7 more people to do a Synapse. Even Posi 2 is fairly simple (and fast) to solo on most characters. I just use a summons to help with the dps on Dr. Vahz. It's crazy how the mobs near the bombs inside are always facing away from the bombs. Easy stealth clicks. When you're solo, there may be one or two npcs at the foot of the stairs. They never interfere with what's going on at the door to city hall. Now, the sad part is you have to beat your shadow self alone...but it's so funny to see the nem staff send the shadow flying and they literally never get an attack in. Even the tank's shadow, when I play a tank get tossed around from the nem staff. Probably not as fun as cracking jokes and such while teaming, but most pugs I'm on...those folks don't say much at all. Might as well be solo. I felt like I should add - it was hilarious to me when I solo'd Posi 1 on an illusion controller. I got to face my simulacrum... and I couldn't see him! I went into my character email to grab some of the inspirations the winter packs give, and only then could I see him.

So, I'm one of those folks who tends to read/hear what other folks like, tries it out and figure I'm in the minority more often than not. The ATs that I do not enjoy playing solo are, in no particular order: Dominator Tank Warshade/Peacebringer All controllers but illusion Primary MMs. That's not to say I can't, or you can't solo well with them, but for various reasons, I don't enjoy the experience. Tanks got a buff on HC to deal out a bit more damage. But, it's not enough to encourage me to tackle high bags of hitpoints in missions. The damage just isn't enough to suit ME. MMs and Dominators have pathetically low HP. They are terribly fragile. MM pets are also fairly fragile, at least the beasts and thugs I've played with. I don't see Demons or bots in my future because I don't want to look at them, let alone hear them. Dominators achieve domination more easily on teams. No idea why that is, but it is. Warshades/PBs - there isn't much I enjoy about playing these ATs teamed or solo, really. Interesting concepts, but they need a lot more slots to support the forms. Controllers are okay to play solo past level 24 or so - but you have to get there! And even then, pets aren't controllable, and some of them are just stupid. For me, the easiest AT to play solo is a sentinel. But, it's not the most fun or most rewarding to me. For my money, the SS/Fire brute is the most fun to play solo. In early levels, you have fury to aid in dishing out more damage than you'd expect from a lowby. You have high resist cap. If you can manage your endurance, you're darned hard to kill. And, when you get footstomp, man, for me it's just a hoot. Burn and Footstomp? with double rage? man...that's just too hard to pass up. And because you're solo, you don't have to sweat any KB, you don't have to worry about taunting, unless you just want to. A blaster is great fun, but you have to worry about status protection. A scrapper is kind of fun, but the damage that outdoes a brute's is overshadowed by the lack of a taunt aura around them. Those npcs are rightfully scared, but the way they run away annoys me. And the brute's base hitpoints are higher. For me, a scrapper is a crapper. Hardly worth making - but that is just me. I've seen some scrappers do serious dps. Like, next level amazing stuff. But, they're not for me. Corruptors are fantastic, solo or teamed. Still have to worry about status protection, but breakfrees are cheap. Defenders are as good as corruptors when solo, maybe even better because they get a damage buff of 30% when solo. Just kind of depends on how you slot which is going to be better. But, in summary, the SS/Fire brute is the way to go. All that said, if your desire is to solo AVs, the best combo I can think of is ill/rad controller, the AV/GM killer. It will take a while, but it's certainly doable. There are some AV's, like Clamor and Arakhn that are easily clobbered by just about any AT, but some are downright difficult. Marauder has a huge chunk of hitpoints, and Silver Mantis can be problematic for a lot of ATs. But, with perma-Phantom Army, you're in good shape no matter what you're facing. And with the rad secondary, you can really whittle them down.

I'm probably in the minority, but I've heard this song before. Play a widow, it'll be fantastic! It was not fantastic. Now, that may say more about me than the widow, but if it weren't for an sg event crawling on red side from 1 to 50, I'd have stopped at level 24. You have to respec. Why? Because you're level 24. But, I don't want to respec. I hate respecs. What are my other options? A respec. It's really a ridiculous thing to make a player do. At least with the HEATs, a respec isn't crammed down your throat. On one hand, it's an interesting thing, giving the player a couple of options, choose this path or this one. It's not a lot different from the epic/patron pool choices, but those decisions are made later in the characters career, and they aren't a focal part of the build, just well, I guess the ancillary word works. I totally get how some players see this as a fantastic feature. But, for me, not really liking the idea of stopping what I'm doing at 24 and doing a respec...not my idea of a good time. Still, I intend to revisit the widow, and I will make a fortunata at some point, but not sure this week is good timing. There's just not much the fort has to offer to me that seems interesting or fun at this point.

You may recall my telling you that I'd made an ice/dark corruptor...and then discovered I'd already had one buried in one of the many pages of alts. That one is currently level 40. I look at my older builds and think sometimes, "Pretty clever. How'd I forget that?" or, I think, "Sheesh. What was I thinking? That's crap!" So, since that older forgotten one is geared for defense, I figured I'd gear this one of up for resistance. Isn't that why we have so many character slots? Mids is a great tool, but sometimes a character that looks fantastic in mids doesn't play fantastic in game. And, I suppose, this is why I make the builds in the first place, to see if the build plays as good as the numbers suggest it does. There are a couple of things about the ice/dark that bug me, but if it didn't have that couple of things, it would probably be too "good" and someone from the powers section within the HC dev team would swing the nerf hammer. "Surely you see that if you're building your entire character around that one power, it must be brought in line, right?" Nope. I'm far too obtuse to see such things. Willfully blind. Say, that could be a name for an alt...but I digress. As far as health goes, the corruptor hp cap is 1606.35. I'm not sure reaching that cap is worth the squeeze. Or were you thinking about the strength/amount of the heals? I'd say something like "can't hurt", but in a fashion, it could, if you end up sacrificing other attributes like recharge. My next experiment is to visit brainstorm, and use that temp from p2w and analyze various bosses to see how twilight grasp and tar patch impact them, and then compare those values to something like envenomed dagger and the apprentice charm that magic origin characters get at level 1. The apprentice charm does -resist, and the dagger does -regen. If I find out those two in conjunction do what tar patch and twilight grasp do..well, it'll be sad. Fortunately TP and TG do more than just the one thing.

Yes, I did. Mainly because the -tohit is pretty much leaving me untouched. Figured I'd guard against the hits that do make it through. Because when something floors defense, anecdotally, it doesn't seem to matter if I have 60%, or 16%, it results in getting hit a lot. But that's just anecdotal evidence, meaningless.

The only "extra" you get from a faster TF is the opportunity to earn more merits doing something else. Depends on what's fun for you and what your goals are, I'd say. Now, in Ouro, completing most of those arcs in 30:00, 1:00 and 2:00 (2 hours, not 2 minutes) will get you a badge for each time limit met. But outside of Ouro - nope.

are really not so mysterious. I was talking in game with someone I consider a player with a true affinity for humor about the market. Like many folks, when we see an item that normally sells for 1.5-2.5M, and suddenly we're consistently able to get it for less than 1M...we ask ourselves...what's going on here? Also like many of us, we'll pay attention to when Yomo speaks on the market, cuz...well, he's smart. And generous and loaded with inf, but mainly because he seems to have a clear understanding, particularly when he uses 4Binf words like "Fungible". For weeks, I thought he was talking about Devouring Earth pets, so I set out to clobber as many as I could, hoping to get as rich as Yomo, but all I got was a badge. But I digress. The population on HC has picked up, particularly after the licensing agreement with NCSoft, and another bonus influx after page 7. I don't have the tools to see how many of that influx are still playing. But, one thing Yomo has said a number of times, "competition is good for the market". It's not that great for a certain marketer of mine, but even so, I have to remember that the cheaper IOs become, the further my stockpiles will take me. and the same is true for everyone who has stockpiles. So, don't sweat the lower prices. It just means you're richer now than you were before - and you didn't do anything to get that way. It's just the market forces at work.

So, this seemed like a good idea, but I'm a bit puzzled as to what you do with this information when you get it. Pop a yellow? Reduce the difficulty? Slot for more accuracy and/or more toHit? Some combination of all three? I tend to monitor defense and resist and will use inspirations if I get debuffed lower than my comfort level - but other than yellows, not really sure what can be done mid-mission with this data.

Nothing to add other than to say, don't feel bad. I know I've been destroyed by her on a number of different alts. And I build my characters for survivability more than I should because I solo more often than not. I can't rely on a heal or a tank's taunt. She's tough.

I can concur with Mr. G! Forgot about his stuff. I appreciate the reminder. I was looking for something to do with my new fire/dark corr, too!

So, I'm all about the lagniappe. Lagniappe is kind of like heading west and your 6pm is suddenly 5pm and you get an extra hour. A little extra through no extra effort on your part. Faultline, Striga, Croatoa and RWZ each offer us all some lagniappe reward merits. Do each of the arcs in those zones and you get a bonus 20 reward merits. I like the first two arcs in Faultline; they're short. Nothing overly complicated. The third isn't too bad either. Not a fan of the 4th one, simply because of the map locations. They're way in the back of Faultline. It's an area where if you're not going for a badge, or doing this arc, you're not likely to ever go back there. For me, the best mission of all these arcs is rescuing Yin's father. The spacing of the npcs is perfect for me. I can kill everything, or just rescue papa Yin and escort him back, as long as I have a break free to make sure I don't get held. Striga...well, Peeble's arc is lengthy, relatively, but I like the temp power. Worth it. Long Jack's arc is quick; but Tobias Hansen has a great arc for the vamp badge. If I'm not up for the commitment of a Moonfire, this is the arc I'll do. The Croatoa arcs are great - but they each seem to insist you defeat npcs in a specific area, and they are often not in that area. I have to teleport them into the neighborhood to complete the mission. Very annoying. Or maybe I just haven't figured out the obvious place they hang out. But, other then the defeat X missions, they're all fairly short. I love to prevent the fir bolg from exiting the portal. It's one of my favorites! My ranged characters fare much better than my melee, for sure. I also like Buck Salinger's final mission. Thankfully, it's timed. I'd probably like it better with a 5:00 timer instead of 15:00, but it's still interesting to me. And, there's a fair bit of lagniappe in RWZ; the Vanguard merits I get won't stand out as any kind of great loot, but it doesn't hurt. Some of the Renegade Vanguards in Guassian's arc...those do hurt. Still, the arcs are pretty good. I don't really like clobbering Rikti, or I'd like them more, but they're a welcome reprieve from Tina Mac and Maria Jenkins. But, I think the best arcs are the SSAs. They're all short and rewarding, if you don't repeat them too soon.

Somewhere, in this forum, or maybe it was on the Titan network site, I wrote, in some fashion that I was glad the game shut down. I was playing far too much. I was unemployed at the time, and I think I was sitting in front of the computer with a dorm fridge and a microwave within an over-stretched arm's reach. If it weren't for the call of nature, I might never have gotten up from the chair. The game shut down, and then suddenly I realize I'm big fat slob. So, I started to move around. A little bit at first, and then finally got in shape. And I've stayed fit. I don't know that I grasp everything the OP wrote. But, if I understood that they're saying too much of a good thing is bad for us, then I'm inclined to agree. The Ancient Greeks used to say, "all things in moderation". And, I think that's a fair statement. Not everyone can handle booze, or gambling. The level up sound probably creates some dopamine levels that are higher for some folks than others. So, no judgement here.

So...when I get one of these, I see the purple lettering. Why? I have been conditioned, in a sense, to expect those purple letters flashing across my screen to denote something "very rare". And I've done two story arcs today, and in the midst of each one, I've gotten a prismatic. I wasn't keeping track, but I think I get a prismatic at some point during every arc. So, shouldn't these be orange, and the monstrous aethers be yellow/uncommon? Just curious what the rest of you think.

I did run Binocolo's arc when I got the appropriate level and was awarded the 20 merits. So, I suppose the game really does recognize the red/blue correlating SSAs as the same arc. It just wasn't something I even thought about. Different zones and all that. The sad thing is it's probably something I figured out years ago and just forgot.

Interesting. There's just potential for one issue - the range of these powers. I know on a corruptor, it's 60 foot radius. Now, in real life, staying within 60 feet of each other sounds fairly simple. But if one or two falls out of that range, on really tough content, might that result in a cascading failure? I wonder how many of my sg folks would wander off relying on such tactics, pun intended. (Cuz there's always one or two that take a different path.)

That reminds me to copy the character with it and craft it on brainstorm to see what it looks like. It might look too much like a bud and cause some confusion.

I can't speak for all of them, but the mini-scrapyard I got only required 1 Prismatic and 2.5M