Ukase

You've gotten a lot of information. Some of your questions would require several pages of information to cover them completely. Topics like the "best" way to use reward merits will have varying opinions, depending on your desired objective. As far as incarnate materials - again, opinions will vary on the best way to acquire and use these materials. There's a bit of a routine debate on whether you should use threads or shards for your alpha slot, the first incarnate objective. I won't go into that debate here - just a caveat that the rng will dictate a lot of your decisions, and the content you pursue will have some impact on the rng. So, the "best" answer for you specifically will differ, depending on what you enjoy doing. So many well-intentioned folks will say "This is best" or "NO! THIS is best", when sometimes, they're both wrong. What's best is often what's best for you - which may not be what's best for me. Or anyone else. You should be made aware that there's no wrong way or right way to pursue accomplishing most things in game. But, you should also recognize that a way that is not wrong may not be optimal. And even optimal may have different outcomes for different players. Pursue amusement/fun/interesting activities, whatever they may be for you. There is one item to add to your list that I didn't see mentioned yet: Pursue every badge in game. There are quite a few. 1581, give or take. Some folks pursue every badge on every character. They are few and far between though. Most that do pursue this lofty goal only do so with their favorite characters, as it's quite a bit of challenge to do this, and requires a lot of time. And, quite a bit of tedium for some of them, and a fair measure of frustration for more than a few, as they require knowledge & competence from more than just you - but from all who are teamed with you.

I'll have a different answer every time I'm asked, most likely. Nah, It'll always be the ice/ice/mace blaster. Always. There is no better character for me to play. A close second is fire/fire/mace. Third would be fire/rad corruptor. Melee? Fire/ice tank. But only if I had to play melee.

I have two different approaches, depending on the character's objectives. If I'm power leveling the character up, my usual approach, I'll use mids to paint how I'd like the character to be at 50...but when leveling a character through content, how it looks at level 20 is going to be different. Lacking in slots, the choices I make seem more important in the early levels than at 50, when I still think I could use another 3-5 slots to really flesh out the advantages of IOs, there's certainly enough to shore up the glaring things - like running out of endurance because I don't have any passive accolades yet. I can still use mids in the dynamic way, slotting by power & level and see the numbers, but at the lower levels, it can be rough to get an idea of where a character should be at level 15, whereas, at level 50, most of us have a good idea of what a tanks resists and defenses should be. So, I just use my anecdotal experience with the character to gauge how things should go. Running out of endurance? I aim to see what set bonuses are in reach to address this with the next two or three slots I'll get next level. Or what power I pick - I'll try to avoid selecting a toggle, as I'm already gasping for endurance. Did I have a rough go of things, health wise? Why? Biting off more than I could chew, or am I needing some more defense? Or more resistance? Or would I fare better just having more hitpoints? This is all subjective in a fashion. I can make the case that more defense might be more useful than more HP on a blaster, but on a tank, more Hitpoints might be a better route, due to more HP means more regen. So, no real tools other than my feeble mind, drawing on my experience. I've no idea how I'd fare if suddenly all the content were brand new, with NPCs I'd never heard of, but I think I would be able to adapt fairly quickly by scoping out the combat logs and and what seems to be happening to my character during the missions. Mids is a fantastic tool, no doubt. But for leveling a character, I rely more on me than any spreadsheet. And it's much faster that way, too. But, often times it does result in a mess requiring a respec at 50.

I also craft every uncommon, rare and purple. But I no longer hoard salvage, at least, not in my bases. (My farmers stash rare salvage in the /vault) It's essentially free, given how it drops from the rng, eventually. And, with Brain Storm Ideas from the packs. In fact, I sell more salvage than I buy from all those brain storms. But on a leveling character that is on the edge of the tier, it's just annoying that no sooner did I unload one tier of salvage, suddenly, there's a need for it. Not a big deal, just a minor annoyance.

So..just when I think I've done everything in game...clearly, I'm mistaken. I discovered after an alignment change a contact I don't recall. So, I did the arc and discovered three temps I'd not encountered before. Three different summons. Because I was a bit cramped for time, and tend to aim to complete things faster than slower, I'd opted to "cooperate" rather than butt heads with them. The result seems to have lent itself to granting me the favor of calling upon them one time in the future. Second Measure Colleague Network Since I only get one shot with each...I have two choices. Go to test and see how they hold up, or just let 'em rip and risk them being woefully useless. Or, too useful for the situation, like bringing out the HVAS for a simple AV like Arakhn or Clamor. Anyone have any comparisons - like better or worse than the Errant Knight, or the Wolf?

And I thank you for it!

Some days, you just can't win. I will never understand why a level 39 recipe takes salvage from the 41 to 50 tier. //end rant.

Just to shed some light here - you could do this...and in conjunction with your other prongs, a good move. But, timing is important. You wouldn't want to do it during a week when running the weekly would generate a decent amount of converters for the casual player. A marketer might require more, but would likely know the workaround with burning emp merits for the reward merits, or might just have enough winter packs to skim the merits out of those for converters until the population re-supplies the market. It's one thing to have the 50B to impact the market - but the time necessary to log all those characters in to over-bid for the new converters on the market - that's gonna be tedious. A damn lot of clicking. I'm guessing I would take 25 characters and have them all bid 105k per converter @200 bids of 10. That's 2k per character, 25 characters would be 50K worth of converters. Anecdotally, I can't recall ever seeing more than 40k-45k in the AH at once. Even so, that would only keep for a couple of days, I'd think. At the most. And at 105k, a lot of folks would be dumping them to get the extra loot, I think, not realizing your other two prongs. So, maybe I'd have to do that with 50 characters. That'd still leave 39.5B to play with, tho.

I'm of a mixed mind on this. I don't see these as "virtually unlimited", nor do I see them as an exploit. Clearly, these inspirations are bought - but then, there's a p2w vendor for all characters starting out. On the other hand, it's really just silly. Gobble all the inspirations necessary to make success all but guaranteed. But, as we read about the adventures for Elmyder, clearly it wasn't all but guaranteed. Sounds like it was a challenge, even with all that stuff grabbed out of the email.

The easiest path to specific HOs are the AH. Run whatever content you want to run - use the merits wisely, profit and just buy the HO you want. The random nature of these rewards is my biggest reason for taking the merits anyway. HOs are hit and miss. Only a few are worth the effort. But - that's just my opinion.

Not sure about every day, but more often than any of us think. Appreciate the heads up, tho!

Market prices to catch up? If I understand your question, historically, the prices of winter-Os that are superior when not impacted by the sale of the packs went for 23M to 35M, depending on market forces. Lat year, it took a good number of months for these prices to creep up due to so many folks getting in on the pack sales. Some folks decreased demand by buying them for themselves. A fair number of folks increased supply by trying to liquidate the packs they bought. I wouldn't expect prices to creep back up to "normal" until July or August. I say that, but it's pure speculation. I don't know how many packs were bought, nor am I super clear on how many were relisted - because I'm not clear on how many were bought. (circular logic error, perhaps) I suspect some folks that bought a large number of them, if they're still playing, may have bought 10,000 packs. Maybe they did that last year. Or, they could still have those packs from the last sale. No idea. Either way, market forces will keep the prices below "normal" for a while, I suspect. That's not to say you can't buy the packs at 25M and still make profit. Just not as much.

Nothing but the utmost respect and regard for Yomo - but I think it's always helpful to ask even stupid questions here, because there are a lot of people who lurk, but never post - for reasons of their own. If we all were to just send direct messages to the person we want to ask a question to, there'd be a lot less information available for everyone else.

It's a fair question, but the real question is - why isn't it cumulative?

you might try to reach out to @gem I've never seen the results, but hear Gem is tops with base building.

I can't wrap my head around this. I've never worked as a programmer, but I have programmed in grad school a bit. Nothing exotic, just some data structures and a few java projects. And what I find really tough to absorb is why the poor documentation (or lack of) that I've heard about in regards to CoH was allowed, and further, why code that was so bad was allowed to proceed in the first place. I can wrap my head around deadlines, and profit driven decisions. But decisions are generally made with the idea that the business will be an on-going concern forever. You have to think long term about these things. And clearly, either they didn't or newer languages and software engines now allow for a superior implementation. I'm not in the space enough to know either way. But what would be really strange is to get a pop-up when logging in - "All players remove all your items from the AH by Friday at midnight eastern time. Wentworth's is being bought out, and all the inventory must go, or be lost forever. Business will resume Monday 8AM Eastern" Or something like that. And what about players that didn't get the memo? I'm sure there would be other ways to implement such a solution, but it's all beyond me to ponder it more than just as a thought.

About the only temp I rely on is the Jet Pack so my super speeders can have a quick vertical when they need it. I do use envenomed dagger at times, but only a portion of the time. I do use the buff amplifiers from p2w for certain content. I used to buy all three, 8 hours at a time until they stopped working in incarnate trials. Still haven't gotten a refund for those..I should visit p2w to see if those can be revoked for a refund since we can't use them in iTrials anymore. And if not, well...it's not like I need the inf, but it is a crappy thing to do. Some folks don't have the pockets I do, but I digress. I'll use a summons when I need to against certain AVs. Some AVs I can handle without it. As far as incarnates, the only time I use them is before AV fights. They're really not necessary for anything else. Useful, sure. But I have my incarnates set to a key bind, which are generally the numbers on the top of my keyboard, below the function keys. They're not something I use in combat. I use them before combat, and there's not many battles that last more than two minutes. And in those cases, I'll go out of my way to use them. All that said, I've made characters who rely solely on drops for slotting. I was going hardcore - if defeated, delete it. But, one was too much fun to delete, so even though it failed that death part of the challenge, I did continue to play it and never once saw the p2w lady. So no temps. And I didn't do incarnates with it - but I also parked it and haven't returned to it, because I need to do a respec on it first. There's no question in my mind that you can play this game without p2w and be just fine. Heck, if you slot SOs, you're be great! They're a bit overpowered for sub level 20 content, in my opinion. As far as comparisons go - I fully recognize that folks that rely on p2w for end recovery - those are the folks that are at a disadvantage. If you need end recovery for your character...and I don't... But..in full disclosure, I've teamed with folks that have just SOs while every one else is fully IO'd. They seem to die more often. But - in my group, I could make the case that the folks that just use SOs are lesser players, with a lower level of knowledge about the game than the folks that are fully IO'd. So, it's tough to say if it's their builds, or their lack of knowledge/skills/ability that is the disadvantage.

My apologies. If I'd gotten here first, I certainly would have stated that the other folks are doing it wrong.

What you will find throughout these forums - and all over the world, really - is that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. You will see all manner of builds that well-intentioned people will share, but they've never done the math to determine if these "chance of XXXX " procs will fire routinely. Now some folks do the math and are willing to take the risk. I've seen some will go for it with the proc if the odds of it firing are greater than 50%. My threshold is higher. I want at least 90% chance of firing. This is snipped copy of the formulas at work per Bopper's spreadsheet. (do a search for his name, find one of his threads, and in his signature you can get the link for this spreadsheet. ) In the top left, you'll see Single Target. The values in there were added by me for some other proc, not the FF +100 recharge. That proc is the ONLY proc that has the low PPM of 2. These are the values for the FF proc slotted in Kick. Given the 2m is essentially nothing in this game, (Unless today is your first day playing) it can be worth slotting it if your global accuracy will let you hit your target.

Uh...support tab? In game? Where is this tab? Menu Options Support ...tab? Or is it in the forums somewhere? Nevermind, it's here in the forums. Good info - I'd never looked at it before.

I presume you mean Task Force Junkies public chat channel. Created by @STiTcH, arguably one of the more knowledgeable folks in game.

I noticed this a couple years ago. Worth the cost. And honestly, only very rarely has it been an issue. But, I'm one of those that monitors End Recovery and End Consumption while leveling and try to ensure I've got a suitable surplus. Try being the operative word.

I think one of the best things about "necro-posting" is a case like this. I had missed this post the first time around.

I know what we can do - if you folks want to list the item, I'll tell you what I think is a fair price for it. For example: Every Obliteration IO is worth 2-3M. Every Unbreakable Guard and Aegis are worth 2-4M Every purple is to be hoarded, never sold.

As someone who plays through content more often than not, as opposed to starting the game at 50, I often find the conversion dump annoying when the Attuned IOs cross the "level threshold" from a quick conversion into a longer one, burning more converters. Because of this, when actively playing the character, I'll just buy what I want...until I see the price being more than what I would list for. When I'm listing a 7.5% HP Unbreakable Guard for 3M, and now, when I want to buy one, the AH isn't letting any of them go for less than 5M. This is where the principle of the thing gets my dander up, so I'll just gather as many of the appropriate recipes as I can, anywhere from 20 to 50 of them, craft and convert as needed and list all but one just to slow down the greedy market competitors profits. I'm all for folks making a tidy sum for their trouble - but the margin on that is more than I want to pay, so I'm not gonna pay it. But when dealing with attuned, it takes some repetition to determine which IOs cross different levels. Or you can just look in the AH and see. It can be annoying to use a different character to re-purchase an attuned version. This is why I try to have my IOs ready, in a bin in my sg for my new characters, so they can just go in and grab them. But sometimes, Mids builds look great at 50, but in the teens and 20's, they are struggling for endurance or something, and you have to adapt. And that's when the AH can be a great convenience.