Adeon Hawkwood

So I had a Crabmind on live. They can solo just fine. Even with basic enhancements they were solid soloers, adding IOs and Incarnate took them from decent to excellent. They play very well on teams due to their built in Leadership powers but since those also affect them they can solo just fine. I can't comment on their ability to solo AVs though since that was never really my thing. Regarding survivability they are pretty tough. Stacking Tactical Training: Maneuvers and Combat Training: Defensive and Fortification gives them pretty decent Defense and Resistance that you can build on with IOs (and pool powers). It's relatively straightforward to softcap ranged defense from there although softcapping all positionals is harder. They do have a self heal in the form of Serum although since it's a clone of Dull Pain the recharge is quite long. Getting the MaxHP boost from it permanent isn't that hard since a Crabmind needs perma-haste anyway if they want permanent pets. In my case though I supplemented Serum with the Rebirth Destiny power for extra healing (this was also nice since it healed my pets).

Right, because Electrical Blast doesn't contain a PBAoE power at all. Oh wait, it does. Short Circuit is an important part of Electrical Blast so advising people not to use it is rather counter-intuitive.

I haven't really been doing much flipping. I've mostly been buying yellow recipes and converting the enhancements into useful rares and selling those. My average profit on that is probably in the 3-4million range (more on a good roll, less on a poor roll).

I don't think so, but if you're just using the merits to get stuff to sell then you can sell the stuff and send the inf to an alt.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you have 22% To Hit then Zapp casts very quickly. This generally makes up for not having a traditional 3rd blast.

If you'd asked me a week ago I would have advised trading reward merits for enhancement converters and selling those on the market but the price on those has crashed so it might not be a good idea now. Enhancement Converters are three per merit and sell for 120K-150K each so you're getting about 360k-450k per merit. That's still a better ratio than rare salvage or most recipes but it's probably worth checking the prices on enhancement boosters or catalysts to see if those are better (sorry I don't really keep an eye on those prices).

This isn't actually something that we the players can control. The prices are fundamentally set by supply and demand. If you want to keep prices low then encourage the homecoming team to keep the supply of items high and avoid doing things that will increase inflation. The prices of things like purples on live was high because there were relatively few of them relative to the number of people who wanted them. There wasn't a shadowy cartel manipulating them. Well this one depends on everyone. If you want stuff on the market then list it. Even junk. Enhancement converters are super cheap so most of the current supply of enhancements are there because someone took the time to buy cheap recipes and then converted them into more valuable enhancements. This is why most of the desirable rare enhancements are selling for about 7-10million each, that's high enough that it's profitable for people to convert them but low enough that there aren't to many people getting into the action. EDIT: I'll add an example here. Early on I was converting PBAoE enhancements. I'd buy Cleaving Blow and Multi-Strike recipes convert them into Scirroco's Dervish and Obliterations and sell those. The thing is lots of people are doing that now so the profit has shrunk and I've moved on. But you'll notice that the prices of the enhancements have come down and the prices of the recipes I was buying have gone up both of which are good things for casual players. Also, don't forget flippers. Flipping tends to be good for keeping a supply of items on the market. It brings up the price floor and lowers the price ceiling but also helps to ensure that the market doesn't run out. Well I've seen plenty of people offering advice on converting merits into inf for the first part and flippers generally help with the second since they raise the price floor for an item so sellers get a better price. So overall it looks like we're two for three but the first one isn't really in our control. Finally I'll add that marketeers aren't actually evil. In general having people flipping, crafting and converting is good for the market. It helps to keep the prices at a more stable level than they would otherwise be and ensures a steady supply of items that might otherwise be subject to feast or famine. Now I'll admit we don't do this out of the goodness of our hearts we do it because we want top notch builds for our characters and this is the easiest way to get that but there isn't a shadowy cartel controlling the market. For one thing it would be impossible to actually control the price of an item over an extended period. Bump it up a bit in the short term, maybe, although that tends to be caused by a lack of marketeers more than anything else. Now if you'll excuse me I'm late for a meeting. Where are my top hat and monocle?

They are globals so they will work even if the power is not on. However they will stop working if you exemplar more than three levels below the level of the IO.

I agree. I went to Kings Row to find some lost for the Midnighters and the places I recall seeing them spawn before (the courtyard area in the west) were all full of skulls. I did find some down in the south though.

One thing to keep in mind is Enhancement Boosters. For example you could save a slot in Hasten by taking one of the recharges out and making the other two 50+5s, it only costs you about 1 second of recharge.

I thought the title was about Incarnate powers and came here to explain why Rebirth is nice for your Destiny power.

I think Lazarillo said it best in the thread about Mercs: Beasts will be fine for both solo and group play, it's just not as good as sets like Bots and Demons. It's probably worth picking one of the stronger secondaries to give some damage mitigation though.

Yep you've hit upon the slightly confusing fact that the collective name for Arachnos Widows and Arachnos Soldiers is Soldiers of Arachnos. Another useful link: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets#Soldiers_of_Arachnos

You have to take at least two powers from power pools no matter what. Due to the levels at which powers in your Primary and secondary unlock you can't take a power from them at every level. You have to take one pool power at or before level 24 and a second pool power at or before level 30. Also, you get a total of 24 powers at level 50. Your primary and secondary each have 9 while your Epic pool has 5, as mentioned above you can't actually take all 23 of these though since the Epic pool doesn't unlock until level 35 and you have to fit in two pool powers before then. Personally I always take at least a few pool powers on my characters. I take Combat Jumping because it makes it easier to move around missions and I take a travel power (generally Super Jumping because I like it). Most of my characters take at least some Leadership powers (although you might want to avoid that until you've gotten used to managing your endurance since they do use it up). Recall Friend I'll take if I've got a spare power slot but it's low priority. I've taken most of the other pools on one or two characters but the other pools are lower priority for the sort of builds I like.

My main is an AR/Dev blaster. I'll admit some groups are more of a pain in the ass than others but it's not that big of a deal. If you're looking for a perfectly optimized AV killer than it may not be the best option but for general play it's not that big an issue.

I disagree. I played a Demons/Thermal quite a bit back in the day and it was fine for soloing, on par with my Bots/Traps. Now Bots/Thermal is probably slightly weaker than either of those specific combos but it should be fine for soloing.

Just as a point, Incarnate Shards were earned from non-incarnate level 50 content back on live as well. Incarnet XP wasn't, but since actually unlocking the slots is pretty fast anyway that's not a major issue.

Assault Rifle definitely comes above Dual Pistols in terms of AoE (way above). Full Auto is a lot better than the Pistols T9 and combining Flamethrower and Buckshot will clear out most minions, plus you have M30 as a ranged AoE, Ignite is meh, you can skip that. Archery is generally regarded as the second best AoE set behind Fire and it is good although it leans a bit to much on Rain of Arrows for my liking. I think it's technically better than Assault Rifle for AoE but I prefer Assault Rifle because it's more AoE outside of the Tier 9.

This is an important public service announcement. Do not use catalysts to attune regular set IOs. If you need to make an ATE set Superior then you do need a catalyst but for regular IO sets it's much cheaper to just buy an attuned IO on the market. The sales listings for regular and arruned set IOs are linked so the prices are identical. If you get a regular set IO and use a catalyst on it then you are wasting your inf.

I play on Everlasting and I regularly see Posi 1 & 2 being run as well as Kings Row radio teams. The only reason there aren't that many teams below level 22 because there aren't that many characters below level 22. With the double XP booster getting to level 22 is pretty quick (I normally do one run of DFB and then run both Posi TFs which puts me at level 20-22 easily).

It's not that big a deal once you get to level 20 and get field operative. Other than that put 2 end mod enhancements in both Stamina and Field Operative, put both Miracle and Numina procs in Health and slot a endurance reduction enhancement in each attack and Targeting Drone. That's what I'm doing and I've got plenty of endurance even with running two leadership toggles plus targeting drone.

Attuned IOs essentially always function as an IO of your current level (including while sidekicking or exemplaring). This means three things. First they will always provide their set bonuses unless you exemplar more than 3 levels below the minimum level of the set. Secondly their enhancement value will be scaled based on the IO enhancement level scaling rather than the normal exemplar rules (this generally means that they give less enhancement value while exemplared but give more while sidekicking). Third you can't apply enhancement boosters to them. So they are nice while exemplaring since you get your set bonuses but you generally get less enhancement value as well and the lack of boosters means you don't have the option to boost their enhancement at level 50.

They do stack.

Who cares? Personally I would find grinding DFB to level 50 incredibly boring but if people want to that then let them, it's no skin off my nose.

one thing to keep in mind, most task forces and trials are done by PUGs, there aren't that many dedicated raiding Supergroups because team composition is so flexible. So if you wat teams your best bet is to watch the Looking for Group channel and possibly join any LFG global channels on your server.