tidge

Have you played a /Kin before? There are a couple different ways to go with them... or at least, I always got bored with /Kinetics so I found a few other directions to go it.

This has always been my preferred slotting for the %BuildUp piece (on MMs). For my typical T1 slots, the +Damage ends up being somewhat significant, as I typically have at least on of the T1 slots dedicated to one of the other globals (so at least one-third of the six slots end up not directly enhancing any of the T1 henchmen attacks).

I think you are right. One big difference between now-and-then that is especially obvious at low levels is that there is no debt at low levels, and patrol XP makes debt practically irrelevant anyway.

As everything drops, and 98% of items on the market are fungible (directly through the market, or via other mechanism,s in-game), the HC market is highly resistant to such attempts. What you are describing is "flipping" which used to be a thing on Live, but won't work for most items because of the way the auction house bins items behind the scenes. There are primarily only two area where your "friend" can possibly effect the market, neither will make them any substantial amount of Inf: 1) Every so often, someone (probably a farmer) decides to buy up as much yellow salvage as they can... inflating the price to about 10K inf each. All salvage is seeded and fungible, but yellow is very widely used and has a slightly worse drop rate compared to how useful it is. However... it still drops, and it will be trivial for other players to make Inf off of your "friend". 2) It is possible to 'squeeze' the price of an item, such that almost everyone sells the item to you and buys the item from you. Because of alternate means of getting almost all items, and the vig, I don't see this as a particularly exciting or profitable compared to what others would make by just dumping stuff for your 'friend' to buy.

I really miss the option to disable XP and earn Inf, specifically because I would do this at low levels to get that at-launch feel. Sadly, this option made it too easy to earn ridiculous amounts of Influence with even less effort than it takes today... so I accept that I simply must disable XP.

I get ya both. I know I have a very different opinion about the Swarm Missiles (old v. new), and I think it is partially because I was trying some radically different things and partially because my builds and play style (for 3 tiers of bots) were (possibly) nearly perfectly aligned to slide into those changes.... so I saw no real reduction in performance in the latter case, and tremendous improvement in the previous, oddball choices case. It's not like I expect a lot of players to Ouro the first Montague arc with just one robot at x8. The only thing I couldn't (reliably) do any more after that round of robotic changes is solo Giant Monsters in Peregrine Island... but that is because I refuse to have a build with compromises for the purpose of keeping the GMs from running into each other. The Giant Monster ToHit Buffs has seriously crimped certain GM fights, noticeably Lusca, but that came later.

I knew I could get you two to make nice :)

I can only write for myself: I want to know why you insist on believe things that are actually not true. There are a handful of other posters, only a few of whom flood the suggestions forum, that post hard-to-believe comments... but FWIW, those users have demonstrated to the courtesy of explaining why(*) they post what they do. (*) For example: Some don't like to play above level 25. Some think the game was best at Issue 1. <- I disagree with these, but at least I know how to interpret their posts. In this case... the claim "level 49 powers cannot have 6 slots" is so specifically wrong, and was doubled down on, it had to come from somewhere.

Since this is the MM forum:...I don't think Robotics got nerfed when it was changed, minimally: Maintenance Drone is a godsend. Knockback was all but eliminated from henchmen attacks. Those two changes radically upped performance. One slot (KB->KD) was freed from each tier; Robots became less of a micro-management issue with the healing drone. Also at this time, the levels we could get the higher-tier powers was lowered. Who Will Die #1 went from 15 minutes on a MM to under 7 (like every other AT). I don't think the henchmen losing -regen or the change to Swarm Missiles was that big a deal. The biggest change I noticed was that I could no longer go AFK on a Giant Monster and find that the henches had defeated them without me pressing a single button. I already had 2 Rifle attacks in my build, and I'd "solved" all endurance issues (for the MM, for the Henchmen) so it isn't like I had to change my build or playstyle (except for that 'going AFK' option was off the table. My play in content with fewer henchmen improved.

On my full-kit build(*1), I didn't notice much of a performance reduction in Incarnate+3 content (so, 'even level'). Everything takes slightly longer, or the same. From my testing, the biggest performance change was against the level-less Giant Monsters. These will be harder solo; I don't expect multiboxers to have any issues, unless they are super lazy. (*1) Robotic/Traps MM, that I've basically tuned for "whatever" content. That is... it was built long ago to debuff enemies, keep aggro on the MM and to pour damage where needed. Put another way: I can change playstyle enough that this build works in a realtively wide variety of content. The other builds on teh same character are now "silly" ideas like having only one henchmen or no henchmen at all. I have other MMs I like less that have alternate builds for different content because they need them.

Based on the comments in another thread, I think what is happening is that the "player" is "playing MIDS" (or an old version of the character builder) that doesn't allow the level 49 power to get more than 3 slots added to it. I don't use MIDS, nor do I have it installed, so I can't tell if this is still the case. Needless to add: Even if MIDS has this behavior, there is no reason to not simply readjust the order of picked powers (in MIDS) to make the slotting work. Even taking all 5 epic powers and 6 slotting each of them should be possible. It is left as an exercise to the reader to come up with a realistic set of power choices that does that, and still requires more than 4 slots in the level 49 power. There should always be at least one power pick that can be delayed (for MIDS purposes) that has fewer than 5 slots.

I find this to be true about most set bonuses, even outside of this MM proposal. Global Recharge is the obvious "best choice"... even setting aside PPM formulae, that it becomes possible to effectively match Hasten should be recognized as enormous. Global Accuracy is probably next best, since it alleviates certain slotting pressures and is what makes facing elevated enemy levels possible. After this? It is varying degrees of "how much do I need?" (from set bonuses) +Recovery and +MaxEnd, %+End are always high priorities for me, because the blue bar is the player's economic wallet. Healing and HP are usually solid choices, but these need to be supported by 'just right' amounts of regeneration and scaling resistances, etc. I haven't really worried about typed resistances from set bonuses since Live. Some folks still talk about a "Psi Hole" in Invulnerability, and I find the math behind "that last 5% of Resistance cuts damage taken IN HALF" to be slightly disingenuous when tied to claims about overall survivability. having written the above... I don't agree with @Neiska overall premise about the downward trajectory of HC Fire Farming 'taking a hit" was purely a side effect of well-motivated changes to the way different attack types work. Titan Weapons... and Plant Control had well-motivated changes due to rather clear over-performance. Plant Control certainly made it near-impossible to design new control sets because of the original Seeds of Confusion being far too good for its level. Rune of Protection falls into an interesting category... it wasn't originally a very well-considered power, now it seems much more believable as a pool power The Robot changes. I'm not really a fan, but my build wasn't really effected. Playing only the T3 used to be terribly painful, not so much now. The Tanker changes were good... but the scale back was IMO poorly motivated. MMV.

I finished up the Dark Astoria Heather Townshend arc at +3x8 (so even level in Incarnate). Clear all with no Lore pets and no active use of Hybrid. M3: both took 17 minutes, but on Live I stopped 3 times to dump recipes! [I realized this was going to skew results, but I wanted that Purple recipe drop on Live :)] M4: both took 11 minutes, with the only noticeable difference being on Beta, one of the final creatures necessary to defeat flew away at light-speed and went farther than I have ever seen an enemy go in this mission... up the hill and past the next room. This probably cost 15-30 seconds.

I think it is more likely that some old MMs may be dusted off for some new content, but the currently planned MM changes on Beta are about as "hold steady" in terms of intent as could be (while still making some radical changes). There aren't any new MM sets, and the change to the T7 powers is not likely to inspire anyone to respec/reslot. I get the point about Group Fly, anecdotally my own testing with Group Fly on Beta makes the MM slightly more difficult to use than the same build on Live, for same content. This is pure anecdote: Group Fly can be somewhat clumsy to use now, but on Live I had a few more instances of "bad Group Fly behavior"(*1) than I typically experience on Live. (*1) Stuff like: Henchmen simply "stopping", henchmen getting "stuck", Henchmen feeling like they are 'close enough' but actually out of the fight. These things happen on Live of course and aren't being addressed as part of the planned update.