Crysis

As an experiment, I have a few alts built entirely around Amplifiers and other P2W buffs. The only IO’s I’ve really slotted on them have been recharge and recovery procs. They’ve played out surprisingly well. Not quite at the level of a fully kitted top tier IO’d toon but between P2W buffs, powers and assists from summons plus normal SO’s and a handful of procs I’ve been able to hit softcap for primary defensive and great damage output. I don’t think this would be viable on a Troller or Dom but for everything else it’s a low budget way to trick out a toon. Just an experiment, but yet one more way to easy street.

I play a LOT of scrappers. But my DB/Energy Aura stalker scrapping it out with just north of Blaster level Health makes me constantly feel like I’m exploiting something. Dayyyyyyuuuuuuummmmmm!

I’ve been a “Blapper” since focusing on Blasters on Live. I play a lot of different melee characters and always found the up-close approach favorable. Homecoming Blappers are very much formidable. I think many people continue to play Blaster’s as ranged-only, and that’s fine if its how you wish to play. But between the Sustain powers and the easily-affordable max Defense builds from IO set bonuses, there’s no reason to fear Blapping any longer. Currently leveling a DP/Ninja that is almost Softcapped Defense for S/L/E and Melee, and well over softcap for all those while triggering Hail of Bullets due to the short duration boost to +DEF. Couple that with decent follow-up AOE’s from both primary/secondary and built in stealth to set it all up, and there’s little risk and high reward. I also have almost limitless END, 400% Regen and high recharge. It’s insane. Even more insane on teams. Still have that little hole for status effects, but incarnates will solve that permanently. Sentinels can do the same thing, much cheaper and much safer, but with far less damage output and thus it takes longer for them to kill the same stuff...largely the reason why Sent defensive capabilities are so high. It’s a trade off. But Blasters no longer NEED that trade off. It takes some build planning and some Influence to build them to max effectiveness, but it’s definitely worth it. Those who aren’t embracing it are missing out on Scrapper like survivability with extreme ranged AND melee damage output.

I’ve abandoned all /Tac Arrow builds. /Ninja is the new hotness.

Agreed, but I went with “Muzzle Velocity.” As much as you can with the build, try to focus a DP blaster on softcapping defense for S/L and close to soft cap for Melee defense. Time will help with this but you can also get there with others like /Martial or /Ninja. HoB will give you a few seconds of boosted DEF to help you trigger the payload in center of spawn, assuming you have a stealth power to get in close like that. I like /Ninja because of the stealth and nice melee sword attacks. /Time has a mini nuke in there as well. HoB followed by another mini nuke or AOE is a great spawn clearing combo.

Good luck, gonna be a bit of a slog. Back on Live I solo’d a Fire blaster 1-50 purely via street sweeping all the zones. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, mainly because street sweeping allowed me to “choose my targets” for easy XP, at least to a point. The issue was the lack of large numbers of available targets at certain level ranges. Please post progress!

Not wanting to necropost but I’m playing a new stalker and see this happen about once per play session. This is on a DB/Energy build. Animation starts, stab executes and...nothing. No hit, no miss, just aggro. And my END drains as if I attacked.

Hey there, I went dark side ONLY to fool Scorpie into thinking I was there to help him recover his armor, and once I liberated it, flew straight back here to share it with the good guys of Paragon City. No sense letting this kind of power be used solely by the bad guys, and Scorpion is now FURIOUS at me. Now all those Mace attacks.....yeah, busted.

Videos were widely distributed by a certain player showing the feature, and the release of some of these videos is partially what led us to HC becoming available to the masses. Unless it was faked video? Not that I would know since I wasn’t a player during those years....of course.

Well since you are on the Homecoming forums I would have thought the answer would be obvious. Yes, I was referring to Homecoming. I’m aware of the other servers and some of their various features, including the instant-50 capabilities. But that’s not relevant on Homecoming. ....yet

Actually, and being a bit controversial here, I don’t know why this game hasn’t yet instituted an “Insta-50” function in game, either via a P2W function or a true purchase/influence sink. This existed during the “forbidden years” of the game when it was hidden away. And it still exists on test server. Do that and you do away with need to grind it out via power leveling and/or using AE mostly for those purposes. I mean if we still had to pay for accounts and subscriptions I’d see the need/desire to slow down leveling. But since this is now free to play and you can have as many accounts as you want....why even bother with the pretense of “grinding” to make a 50? I mean it worked just fine for several years when the SCORE servers did it with a player population of invite-only and perhaps 1000 total players. Seems like that’s pretty good validation it could work just fine now as well and....no more need to PL, no need to watch chat spam for AE PL teams, no need to worry about AE PL “depriving” the content players of potential teammates (although I still think that’s a seriously flawed argument) etc. PL players get what they ultimately want....fast 50’s. PL haters get what they want....everyone who plays the game is playing the content, not the min/max method of leveling on god mode and/or only Zerg rushing mission objectives for faster XP per hour. Of course, this may still render lower level content less desirable than upper level content. But you could address this as an insta-10/20/30/40/50 model. I generally PL all my alts to level 32 already. I don’t really desire to go all the way to 50 and I can PL 1-32 in about 30 Mins. But if you’d give me a feature to insta-32 I’d take that in an instant. I just don’t enjoy the lower level content.

Soft capped defense is my primary way of avoiding mezz. Ranged DEF in particular since that generally allows me to adapt to a play style of staying at range and targeting my own attacks and debuffs on the mezzer. So it does double duty. Rune is ok but if not likely go all the way into the sorcery pool just for that. If you are wanting flight for travel as well however, then sorcery pool is a great choice.

The flaw in this assumption is that people who want/desire to be PL’d or to PL others would otherwise be jumping into ordinary missions via the LFT channels, PUGs or whatever else content grouping is happening. There’s no indication that the AE PL crowd would be here AT ALL or anywhere near as frequently if the PL mechanic was removed. Way back before AE even existed there were entire SG’s who did nothing other than crowd Portal Corps to run the various maps repeatedly to build up their ranks for PVP and base raids. And even today in AE I still see well known PVP’rs who are simply PL’ing up a variety of alts specifically/mostly to use in PVP leagues only. You might see them a few times in normal content teams/leagues to craft up an iPower or earn an accolade that gives their build an edge once acquired. But many people PL because they derive enjoyment from the game differently than you do. Disrupt that and you disrupt their enjoyment. You won’t be “forcing” anyone to enjoy the game the exact same way you do. They will just leave.

Not a fan of the overall watering down of Tactical Arrow. Have retired all my /TacArrow Blasters as a result. Just not the same, not even close.

A Fire/Rad/Dark or Fire/Rad/Fire is extremely easy to play, very easy/cheap to softcap defenses and extremely durable. It also comes with three nukes....well one big and two small....and an AOE immobilize to help you get max use out of them. Inferno+Ground Zero+Fire Sword Circle will outright destroy a +3/x8 spawn and a follow up from Fireball cleans up the Lt’s. Plenty of ST to take out the boss.

I may not be “doing it right,” but the answer for me still is to do both Marketeering -and- farming. AFK farming in particular. What slows me down for Marketeering is taking the “old fashioned” approach of buying cheap recipes, buying salvage for same, converting to rare then converting to something valuable and then listing it to sell. This takes time. Even if you just buy stacks of one kind of recipe. It’s several steps. So “in an hour” must include the effort needed to list the enhancement for sale. It can take several hours per week (or even an hour or so per day) to do it this way and amass your fortune. The faster approach is to buy ready-made enhancements (or Super/Winter packs) and skip the whole crafting part. You’ll make less money per 10 enhancements doing it this way, but if you’ve got the funds to buy several hundred at a pop, you can make a good return. Not as good as crafting yourself, but faster obviously. This is especially true if you can stock up on the handful of certain level cheaper enhancements that are “insta converts” into something far more valuable. But what I’ve found works best is letting a handful of AFK farmers just go do their thing -WHILE- I’m Marketeering. In an hours time, as long as I’m quick on the boring-af shopping/crafting/reselling click-o-rama and the equally boring-af enter map/exit map/reset map activities, I can easily clear 250MM per hour INVESTED. I won’t earn that much at the end of the hour as you have to wait for your enhancements to sell. But after a few sessions of doing this it’s usually place all my bids to purchase for the NEXT session and then start that next session by collecting all my proceeds from the LAST session. Then it starts to snowball and it goes faster (minus all the current sessions click-fest). Thing is, neither of these activities amounts to much enjoyment in playing the game. It’s just an alternative ‘grinding’ method for amassing wealth. So I tend to do it in spikes of activity. I won’t do it at all for weeks to months, slowly whittling down my funds by building up alts, etc. Then I’ll realize I have a couple of dozen alts to start playing and blow several billion outfitting them all. Then I’ll marketeer + AFK farm for awhile again, almost not playing the game at all during this time. Then repeat the cycle.

I have so many, many alts and an overwhelming number of them are PL’d to mid 20’s or so (it only takes 15-20 minutes or so to build them) and parked in my ‘library’ as ready-made alts, non-leveled, placeholder name and costume included. So you may have seen some of mine as I’ve pulled them out to finally give them real names, real costumes and an actual slotted build. I’m sure I’m not alone in doing this. I even color code my library and have several stock costumes saved up. All blue is Defender, all black a Stalker, all gray a Tank, etc. The names (eg; FireTank Temp) simply make it easy for me to identify them in the library.

Good lord that’s a helluva sturdy build for a Stalker.

I’m still sitting on well over a hundred unopened Winter Packs from last years’ sale. I flipped a bunch but then really slowed down my alt-creation-itis after the big AE XP nerfs last spring and so now just use the leftovers to outfit my own toons as needed. I doubt I’ll buy any this year. No longer Marketeering beyond conversions.

Perhaps. But I think knowing the Dev team we have now it would be much easier to boost Sent damage multiplier and shrink recharge. The aggro limit for Sents is almost as big of a detriment for DPS as is our lower damage levels. What I have found acceptable for certain Sentinel builds is the abundance of PbAOE damage powers, which augments a melee oriented AT. DP/SR/Ninja has a couple of good PbAOE powers as does Fire/Rad between Inferno and Ground Zero. Alpha spawn killers seems to be the Sents normal role with these two builds although neither can hold aggro worth a crap...not that they need to once said spawn has been leveled.

With HC’s Sustain powers for Blasters, and the ability to easily softcap most any blaster builds to Range, S/L, etc.....Blaster’s are survivable “enough” for almost any content. I’ve solo’d an ITF at +3/x8 and I know many others have done it at +4/x8 on a Blaster. So yes, a Sent is more like a gimped Scrapper with Ranged attacks. I’ve got a Fire/Time Corr, a Fire/Storm Corr, a Fire/Rad/Dark Sent, a DP/SR/Ninja Sent and a DP/Regen/Ninja Sent. Sentinels don’t rival almost any of my Corruptor builds. And they certainly don’t rival my Blasters or Scrappers for DPS. The Fire/Rad/Dark Sent is likely the most powerful of the bunch, quite capable of tanking and killing everything in the spawn. The Sentinel damage output is just unacceptably low in my opinion. I know the Devs have said as much as well, and also claimed that Sents may eventually rival Scrapper levels of damage. At that point, I’d literally consider them a Ranged Scrapper, and I’m betting if/when that ever happens, the base recharge of all attacks will be increased to offset the improvements in raw damage as well.

FWIW, I have almost a 100% success rate if I do the /buildsave before upgrading any ATO’s to Superior. And even when it doesn’t successfully load the Suprieor ATO’s, if I just keep clearing the errors as the box pops up, it will still populate all my powers/slots in the right order and MOST of my IO’s thereafter. Definitely has indigestion with something, but it mostly works.

From in-game, once logged into your character, type in (no quotes) "/buildsave" This puts the build of that current character into a folder called "Builds" that should be under your game directory>globalname>Builds. For me that's C:\COH\Crysis\Builds It's a flat text file called build.txt Now open up Mids. And use the File\Open command, point to that build.txt file and let Mids take care of rest. Counter-intuitively, don't use the Import function....just the File/Open function. It's -NOT- foolproof. Sometimes (and I'm not sure why), it will skip over certain enhancements. Superior ATO's seem to be particularly vulnerable. Some enh may show up empty as a result and you'll have to manually re-slot them. But I'd say it works 85% of the time with only slight re-slotting necessary. While I'm at it, I just exported my Thugs/Time build. I didn't take him into iTrials as I've got a lot of toons I prefer playing more than this one, so just retired him at 50. Cheap build, plenty sturdy (Ranged Def softcap), skipped all the primary attacks in favor of Epic Fireball. He won't win any min/max awards, but it's a very easy to play AT beyond the basic difficulty of just playing a MM. Feel free to borrow anything you want here. Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.1.25 https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Mutation Mastermind Primary Power Set: Thugs Secondary Power Set: Time Manipulation Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Flight Ancillary Pool: Heat Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Call Thugs -- BldMnd-Acc/Dmg(A), BldMnd-Dmg/EndRdx(3), BldMnd-Acc/EndRdx(5), BldMnd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(7), BldMnd-Acc(21), BldMnd-Dmg(21) Level 1: Time Crawl -- PcnoftheT-Acc/Slow(A), PcnoftheT-Acc/EndRdx(50) Level 2: Temporal Mending -- NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx(A), NmnCnv-EndRdx/Rchg(3), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(9), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(11), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(11), NmnCnv-Heal(23) Level 4: Time's Juncture -- DarWtcDsp-Rchg/EndRdx(A), DarWtcDsp-Slow%(5), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(15), DarWtcDsp-ToHitDeb/Rchg(23), EndRdx-I(31) Level 6: Equip Thugs -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 8: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(9) Level 10: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 12: Call Enforcer -- CaltoArm-Acc/Rchg(A), CaltoArm-Acc/Dmg(13), CaltoArm-Dmg/EndRdx(13), CaltoArm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), CaltoArm-+Def(Pets)(31), CaltoArm-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(43) Level 14: Maneuvers -- RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFrt-Def/Rchg(15), RedFrt-EndRdx/Rchg(33), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(33), RedFrt-Def(33), RedFrt-EndRdx(34) Level 16: Distortion Field -- Lck-Acc/Hold(A), Lck-Acc/Rchg(17), Lck-Rchg/Hold(17), Lck-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(39), Lck-%Hold(39), Lck-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(39) Level 18: Gang War -- ExpRnf-Acc/Rchg(A), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg(19), ExpRnf-Dmg/EndRdx(19), ExpRnf-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), ExpRnf-+Res(Pets)(25), ExpRnf-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(34) Level 20: Super Speed -- Clr-Stlth(A) Level 22: Time Stop -- Lck-Acc/Rchg(A), Lck-%Hold(46), Lck-Rchg/Hold(48), Lck-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(48), Lck-Acc/Hold(48), Lck-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(50) Level 24: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(43) Level 26: Call Bruiser -- BldMnd-Acc/Dmg(A), BldMnd-Dmg/EndRdx(27), BldMnd-Acc/EndRdx(27), BldMnd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), BldMnd-Acc(40), BldMnd-Dmg(40) Level 28: Farsight -- RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFrt-Def/Rchg(29), RedFrt-EndRdx/Rchg(29), RedFrt-Def(34), RedFrt-EndRdx(37), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(37) Level 30: Fly -- Flight-I(A) Level 32: Upgrade Equipment -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 35: Slowed Response -- ShlBrk-DefDeb(A), ShlBrk-Acc/DefDeb(36), ShlBrk-Acc/Rchg(36), ShlBrk-%Dam(36), ShlBrk-DefDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(37) Level 38: Chrono Shift -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(46) Level 41: Bonfire -- PstBls-Dmg/Rng(A), PstBls-Dam%(42), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(42), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(42), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(43), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(46) Level 44: Fire Ball -- PstBls-Dam%(A), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(45), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(45), PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(50) Level 47: Vengeance -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 49: Rise of the Phoenix -- RgnTss-Regen+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 1: Supremacy Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(7) Level 1: Punk Level 1: Arsonist Level 26: Bruiser Level 12: Enforcer ------------

Threads like this are amusing. The only logic against PL’ing versus playing all the way up to 50 is personal preference. And since it’s personal preference, since the game allows both models and everything in between as valid (and always has), you play your way and I’ll play mine. The argument of “I hate teaming with a PL’d 50 who doesn’t know how to play” is silly. First, rarely have I seen that happen and I play PUG’s all the time. I’ve seen “naturally leveled” players in their 40’s and up to 50 who are still running on SO’s, many of them red, who can’t hit anything and are otherwise fairly fragile relative to where they should be with decent slotting. Not everyone reads forums, has MIDS, or even understands the crafting/IO system. Bad players are bad players, and even they can contribute in a game where so many buffs are shared and the mechanics pretty much boils down to Tab+Click buttons. It’s not that hard, and not hard enough to be plagued with bad players who are that way JUST BECAUSE they were PL’d. And second, if you don’t like the way someone on the team is playing, either leave the team or kick them. Problem solved. And, proving my point, that’s also a personal preference.

It’s very easy to export your build from in-game these days, then pull it right into MIDS and do a forum export from there to here. I do it all the time.