Pherdnut

Nothing. Mother Main provides all.

Talked to somebody in gen-chat who bought 10 packs for 100 million each.

Then you're spending more than 20m. 100 merits is 22+ million worth of converters.

There are plenty of 50s that you can buy for less than the cost of making them. I don't craft for the most part.

Nothing wrong with 50s. Just get rare first. Much easier to hit defense or resist sets from there. I convert 10s, 50s, and attuned. 10s are probably easiest since there are so few sets per category but I prefer to avoid salting my own earth by dumping excess amounts of the same 2-4 pieces on the market. Attuned are nice for variety but also randomly acquiring useful stuff for pre-50 alts. In-set converting gets a bit weird though. Sometimes you can fall into lower level ranges while in-set converting and never go back up. I prefer stuff that reliably sells for 4 mill+. Usually at least triple my investment. No idea why people bother with farms but I'm grateful there aren't more converters out there.

I've always assumed it was supposed to be problematic. They're not depicting a utopia.

If you have an end problem after being 3-slotted on health and stamina, -global-recharge is the way to go in my experience. Especially if much of your drain is toggles.

2-3 slots in each of health and stamina + a few global -endurance set bonuses is all I've ever needed. The only ATs I don't play much of are Defenders and the hero-villain aligned ATs . I think most ATs are reasonable about end and that if there was never an END issue at any level, it would be pointless to even have END. But it's a needless PITA for MMs to struggle with their attacks for as long as they have to IMO. Too much for new players to trip on. End-game though, never had problems. If you have a super-thirsty build, I'd be happy to help you out with it.

Like compared to corruptors? Not sure what you mean. Defenders getting better support set stats makes a lot of sense. Do MMs actually cast support at a lower level?

Under 15? What are we comparing to? Melee and blaster primaries? Two of those aren't AoE. Aside from acid, the rest are 25-35. Not sure what oil slick is but it's at least 35.

Nobody should be struggling with END in any AT in the late game with reasonable equip, IMO. MMs can, however, be a PITA in the early to mid game if you refuse to slot -END. Some of the primaries' MM attacks in particular can be thirsty. But if you're not cycling whips repeatedly with a demons build, you're definitely playing sub-optimally, IMO. That's almost 30% worth of -res you're leaving on the table.

Team blockage and stupid-melee seem to have been fixed. Next thing I'd really-really like to see is the hybrids getting fixed. I've noticed that my upgrade 2 thugs lose a lot of costume pieces when re-zoning or simply rapidly moving to another part of a a zone. They seem to maintain all the bonuses. Recharge doing nothing for MM pets. The reasons that it doesn't is probably one of the most long-lived lamest unfixed bugs in the game.

I thought you could still layer well-damage-boosted caltrops to good effect with a lot of recharge but haven't tried recently.

Still not seeing a reason to take scorpion when positional soft cap is already in easy reach though. Why not get smash/lethal/energy resists from Mu on top of soft-capped MM and pets? But yeah, absolutely want to be tough as !@#$ and mez/CC resistant if I'm wandering into the middle of a pile of carnies to set off poison traps. Caltrops can be nasty with a group immob and high recharge.

This is an old thread but I beg to differ on Thugs/Kin being a weak set pairing for MMs. Enforcers with double-defense socketed, turns thugs into one of the toughest MM pet sets in the game regardless of what you get from your secondary. And that double-leadership aura is positional-defense-based so there's very little in the game that can ignore it. Kin is also one of 2 sets that can actually prevent knockback on your pets, along with a bunch of other mezzes, which makes clarion vs barrier more a choice about MM mez coverage vs massive res than the no-brainer over whether to allow your lvl 50+ incarnate-boosted pets to be undone by a humble ice patch. It's a very strong synergy. Then you get Fulcrum Shift and enemy mobs simply start melting. Kin can be a little demanding on an MM-player in terms of micro though. You really have to keep a tight leash to make sure your pets don't zip off and start aggroing things left and right before you even have a chance to react. Fortunately, the speed also means a lot less down-time when you use heel to do stuff like pull range-engaged thugs closer in for an enemy centered heal. You can also minimize risk of pets running off and aggroing new groups by switching to defensive stance (bodyguard mode) after picking targets when mob groups are almost finished. They'll finish their pre-selected target but will only retarget if something is attacking you. @Plainguy - Very helpful build. I didn't think it was possible to get positional def that high with just maneuvers. FYI, sadly Enforcer leadership auras only affect pets and not the MM and Mids erroneously shows +8.75 to all from an enforcer aura. IMO, something like this is the way to go until you get to destiny incarnates. High 30s + bodyguard with near-capped thugs is no joke. Then I think I might try switching to a resist-based defense for the MM to combine with Barrier. Much easier to beef up recharge time with a resist-focus for more regular gang war spamming and the thugs should be able to handle bodyguard even with heavy AoE if MM damage is getting reduced to 25-50% even when barrier is at its weakest. I managed to eke out a little bit more def with two defense enhancements slotted in Enforcers (makes a huge difference for the pet Def). Can probably get past 40% on the MM with +5s. Somebody feel free to improve on that. thug-kin-def-focus.mxd

* Full matte fix for the monochrome head option (it has a slight shine) * An earless option so animal ears don't double up with humanoid ears that you don't hide with hair * The Ouroboros set pieces * The wax-head dude outfits/heads from Night Ward - ESPECIALLY the heads and the bobby hat * Headset you see on a lot of forlorn * Serene's outfit * Right/left color options for hand auras * Heck, any/all of the mob pieces that are low-effort to add * Maybe tagged categories for pieces, making them easier to sort/filter * More RL backpacks. Particularly stuff a soldier or merc might wear * More cop stuff * More kid stuff * A LOT more clown stuff * Anything for MM pets, even if just colors

We have 1000 character slots. What is this "run out of things to spend on?"

Salvage prices are super-stable. Just sell it and buy back what you need when you need it.

Responding to first post - too big to quote. General Thoughts: * Heals are convenient, but a lot less necessary on super tanky or super-controlley secondaries. And there's pet/pool sources of heal. * Pet resists cap at 90%. That + bodyguard is pretty nuts. Defense is not always better than resistance. * Frontline aura powers sure, but where KB to KD is concerned it is not our responsibility to lose final-tier set bonuses on every KB power we have just so melee-AT-only guy doesn't have to learn how to play to what the group has like everybody else. I have plenty of melee toons. Don't play melee if you don't like having to make an adjustment to your usual scrapper-lock-routine occasionally. If you want to murder carnies fast, bring a ton of KB and tell the tank to shut up and watch the show for a change. Criteria I consider important: * MM defense - you either have lots of controls/debuffs and/or you have def/res buffs that actually hit the MM - Empathy is garbage for MMs for this reason. We can't hang back like defenders or controllers and you can't awesome-sauce/one-at-a-time buff your pets if you're dead. * Pet Defense - You either have stupid-powerful nerf/control powers or can cap/near-cap in most categories defense or resists. A little bit of both def/res is good but not as great as hitting 90 or 45. Heals only add to pet defense if they already have some decent nerf/control and/or defense in the mix. * Group status protection - One cure power that doesn't affect you (so you can't break free with it) is as useless as nothing at all. Single-target is slightly less useless. Otherwise I want a good group-cast or toggle option with good coverage to call it great. * Pet KB protection - Huge wins for Kinetic and Electric are that they are the only sets (I believe) that can actually negate AoE KB attacks like ice patch. Being able to run barrier in the end-game without the risk of having your entire team getting sidelined by a KB AoE power is a pretty nice option. * Time-efficient - Lots of trap/device placement powers and/or single-target abilities that aren't that powerful are all great examples of things that can eat a lot of focus and time that could have been applied elsewhere. Traps and Poison are weak here, IMO. Dark Miasma with its group resurrect and heal powers mixed with crazy powerful single-target debuffs is an extreme counter-example. * Nice-to-haves - some mix of group heals, decent damage powers, toggles or lengthy duration casts rather than short duration recasts for buffs, -DR, -regen Trick Arrow: 1. Yes, each arrow only does one thing for the most part but the cast and recharge time is crazy fast for most abilities. Miasma has it's crazy all-in-ones. TA is more rapid-fire whatever mix of stuff you want. It's a powerful nerf/control set with surprisingly large AoE for a lot of effects. 2. Oil slick is one of the most powerful and massive AoE attack/CC combos an MM can have. EMP is no joke either. 3. nerf-cc-nerf-cc-nerf-massive-fire-splosion-rinse/repeat is a deeply satisfying way to play this game. My bots/TA skipped the MM attacks on its last respec because they never got used. Force Field: It's a bit boring but one of the best options for pet defense if you're not running bots. The MM centered-aura means you're never going to be caught without your shield, unlike traps. Sonic: Have you ever run demons at 90% resists to most damage types? Stupid tanky and great offense with stacked -DR. Better offensively than FF but also a bit boring until you can get an epic/patron set with some decent controls on it. Kinetics: I think you under-rated. The speed buffs are no joke for strong melee pets. I grouped with a Ninja/Kin that reminded me of the ghost army from Lord of the Rings. They just melted mobs and were on the next group before the rest of us could do anything. Travel time to next target really makes a huge difference in overall engagement melee pet DPS, IMO. Fulcrum Shift is insane against large groups of mobs. The heal isn't terrible and like DM, there's lots of buff/debuff combos which is handy. It's also one of few secondaries that can protect your pets from KB. Pain Dom: Much, much, better set for MMs than empathy, IMO, per reasoning stated above in criteria about no buffs for the MM.

I smell the flowers. Explore. Pay a visit to the new zone whose only current function is costume contests. Sometimes fly up to check on the blimp. Or have one of my creepier characters just follow a random pedestrian on the map for a while. Or animation-macro the !@#$ out of my main's minions. Pretty damned amusing stuff. But I'm a UI developer. Forcing people to interact with your product in an artificial/needless way is just begging to lose interest. Some travel makes sense. It makes the world more real. But trekking across the first red-side map without a flight or jump travel power is a serious drag. It's always a design-mistake, IMO. Especially in a game as alt-worthy as this one always has been.

Meta is things about the larger thing. e.g. metadata is data that describes the data, like a property that describes the type or category of data that you're looking at. MMO players (possibly P&P RPG players originally) have somehow re-branded meta to mean popular build theory !@#$.

I think I'm going to have to be the counter-unpopular-opinion here and say that no, excessive travel always sucked, sucks, and will forever suck. When I'm in the mood to explore the environment, it's a joy, particularly in this lavishly detailed day/night-cycle one to do so. But when I want to get to the action for some leveling, I'm deeply grateful for all of the teleport and rapid travel options and don't even feel the need to macro that base teleport command. The devs chose wisely. CoH in its current state is a perfect balance, IMO. I also disagree with the OP. You don't have to cross zones as much red-side but the zones are massive and travel times feel a lot longer typically. The arcs are definitely a lot more fun by and large though.

Bah. My alts have praetorian twin alts, arch-nemesis alts, and random characters mentioned in other alts' bios alts. I have ironic alts, archetype-ironic alts, stupid pun alts, stupid pop-culture pun alts, cheesy-celebrity pun alts, and alt in-game-character alts. I do not have a problem; I have fun.

My beef with poison, which I don't hate, is that it has a lot of indirect powers and single-target powers that don't compare favorably enough to much more direct and multi-target buff/debuff/sometimes-combo-group-buff-debuff powers from sets like Dark Miasma.

Can our pets please just get unlimited AoE for the sphere centered on the PC that determines whether the power still works? It's a really fun pool power for MMs in the 40% of use cases where it doesn't fail. Which is to say, a tragically wasted pick as it is now.