Mister Mass
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Posts posted by Mister Mass
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On 3/21/2020 at 1:15 PM, Veelectric Boogaloo said:
My practice is to never bid so little that the person doesn't make more than they'd get vendoring it. I'm well aware they don't need the piddling amount, but principles. A correlate to that principle is i find it morally reprehensible to bid 1 inf, and I thus sell for 11, not to steal from players but only so the 1 inf bidders don't get it. after all what good are artificial principles in an artificial economy if you can't try to enforce them on others 😄
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I want to reward people who place items on the AH, making them readily available for purchase when needed. Bidding lower than the vendor rate (plus 10% market fee) is a disincentive to people placing items on the AH, since they would make more INF by vendoring the item instead. So I bid enough that the seller earns more for putting the item on the AH than they would make vendoring it. The slight increase in Cost Of Goods for my crafted items, & thus the slight decrease in the profitability of my end products, is negligible compared to encouraging a steady volume of raw goods available on the AH.
Feel free to join us in the crusade to make every transaction on the AH a profitable one for the seller. The more, the merrier! 🧐
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Lord Schweinzer is an unlockable contact added after the original game was sunset. He becomes unlocked once a character has defeated 25 signature heroes (like the ones that try to stop bank robberies in mayhem missions) & offers access to any mayhem map without having to run the requisite number of newspaper missions.
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Ah, Original Posi, I knew you well! Way back in the dark old days of Live, long before Merit Rewards made running TFs a remotely efficient use of gametime, some friends & I ran OPosi a lot, usually on Sundays. There were always SG/Coalitionmates that wanted to run it for the badge/accolade & lowbies who wanted to run it for XP, so we vets would organize an OPosi run. I typically used my level 50 Inv/SS tanker main because, even exemped, having well-slotted powers & a full tray of big inspirations made the job less of a chore. At my side in most of these runs was a Coalitionmate's Claws/Regen scrapper, & the 2 of us usually could drag any group of under-leveled & poorly-slotted lowbies to the end, as long as they were willing to stick it out & learn.
The acid test was usually the Rollister CoT mission. If a team couldn't handle the ambushes of CoT while escorting the NPC to the door, it was a good bet that the TF was going to end in failure. But if the team could get through the mission (even if only after rallying from a total or near total team wipe) then it was likely to complete the TF successfully. The lessons learned in that mission would serve the team well through the rest of the TF - & really, throughout their careers as heroes.
For my main, the Rollister mission was less of a challenge than trying to tank a full 8 member team spawn of Vazhilok. Taking the alpha of Toxic puke was no picnic, I can tell you sonny boy! I learned to value my 6-slotted Dull Pain, supplemented by a full inspiration tray - & whatever buffs/debuffs/controls that the team could provide as support. I want to thank all of those lowbie support teammates for their contributions in those runs. 👍
The day that will always live in my memory is the Sunday that we ended up running 3 OPosis back to back to back. Now that felt like an Ironman competition! But Mystic Titania & Mister Mass got the job done & lived to tell the tale. To the end of our days, we will remind one another of the time we ran 3 OPosis in a row. And these young whippersnappers will roll their eyes & say: "not that story again!" 😉
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On 3/17/2020 at 4:20 PM, Veelectric Boogaloo said:
weird, mids says so but i slot the attuned at 17 every toon. In game the attuned says minimum 17. Here's where it gets more weird - the end mod piece says minimum 7 in game. I've not tried slotting it at 7 as I pl my new toons to 17 (i run of level 49 meteor map) so idk if it's a typo or if it can actually be slotted then. in any event i take back my joking accusation of slackery and will assume people were going by mids 😄
r/e generator's question theft of essence still works in Dark regen but it's not the full refill it usually was under the old proc system. usually it'll at least pay back the cost of the power but not always. I had it in leveling but took it out once i had endurance dealt with through other means.
Heh. I was going to point out that you were wrong, since the Performance Shifter set's lowest level is 21, so the earliest once can be slotted is 3 levels lower than that at 18 - but I had an odd premonition & deleted my post before I submitted it. Thanks for confirming that the attuned version can be slotted earlier! 👍
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On 1/23/2020 at 1:21 PM, Ironblade said:
Yes. You don't get a map in Trials (Cavern of Transcendence, Eden, Sewer, etc).
Right. This has always been true. But WHY???? 🤨
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19 minutes ago, Ulysses Dare said:
There is indeed a cap on the number of side missions. It varies according to the level range of the bank mission (from two missions for AP to five missions for PI).
2 - AP, KR, & Skyway
3 - Steel & IP
4 - Talos & Bricks
5 - FF & PI
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1 hour ago, Pizzamurai said:
Short answer, yes.
Long answer, YEESSSSSSSSSSSS
^
This.
The Performance Shifter proc is the most efficient way to maintain your END. Every one of my characters gets one at level 18.
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I think the scrapper, between their damage & protection, is fine mechanically. But like Heraclea above, I wonder if they bring enough value to their teams beyond damage & their own survivability. As some people have pointed out, the scrapper is the most selfish of the ATs - as the (by design) most soloable of the ATs, they benefit from support, but add little of their own. Figuring out a way to allow scrappers to support the team without unbalancing their contribution would be a great goal. I'm not seeing an obvious solution to this, but I will be interested to see what others suggest.
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The wiki is helpful in this regard. The page I use most regularly is the contact by level page:
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Category:Contacts_By_Level
Once you get familiar with this, you can use it to see everything that is available to your character at any level. But if you miss anything essential, Ouroboros is your friend. Every story arc & badge mission is available through Ouro & your characters can flashback & experience what they missed on the first run.
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On 3/15/2020 at 10:43 AM, srmalloy said:
As I remember it, there were two contacts for every combination of level range and origin (which is only relevant to the extent of guiding what enemy groups you face in their missions; low-level Science contacts will pit you most often against the Vahzilok, for example) -- Hugo Redding and Dr. Trevor Seaborn in Steel Canyon both give out the mission series that includes the "Rescue the Mystic from the Circle of Thorns" mission that gives the Spelunker badge, for example, so you will only ever get one or the other as a contact, not both, to ensure that you don't get the same missions twice.
It is actually worse than that. At the 5-9 & 10-14 level bands, there are 3 contacts for each origin. At the 15-19 level band, there are 4. There are 6 at the 20-24 level band. It drops down to 2 (with only 1 for Natural origin) at the 25-29 & 30-34 level bands. It goes to 1 (with 1 additional for the Rikti) at the 35-39 & 40-44 level bands. In addition there are the Hollows, Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, & RWZ zone arc contacts, plus all of the newer content contacts.
For the origin contacts, you are not supposed to be able to get introductions to more than one origin contact at each level band. But this has become a bit glitchy. Occasionally my characters have received introductions to additional origin contacts through the Valentines Day mission contacts - & perhaps even through the Contact Finder. But if the completist goal is the get all of the blueside contacts in the game, & to fill their bars completely, this cannot be realistically done.
I would note that it would also be extremely redundant, as each origin contact in a level band has access to the same well of missions, so you would be running the same hunts & door missions (timed & untimed) repeatedly. It is also possible to glitch yourself out of the story arcs that the origin contacts offer, as I believe they are coded to be only be done (non-Ouro) once - & I have had instances where a character who had access to 2 origin contacts of the same origin ran every mission the contacts would offer, but neither would offer the story arc (presumably because they each "thought" that the other had done so.) My character missed out on running The Bonefire Plot from the 10-14 Natural contacts because of this glitch, & had to run the arc through Ouro to get the Skulls bandana souvenir.
It is certainly an achievable goal to get introductions to a contact of every origin in each level band & run all of their story arcs & missions, by turning off xp at the top of each level band. I do this regularly - although I no longer bother with the hunts, which feel like pointless filler to me.
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23 hours ago, RikOz said:
My Oranbega Exploration Policy is "Always take the passage on the left". Basically, it's any time there is a choice of direction to take, I always go left until that's no longer possible. Then I go back, if necessary (it's often not) and explore the corridors I missed.
What? You aren't using the Right Hand Rule? Heresy! 😲
Actually, I use your Left Hand Rule quite often as well. But it was a running joke in one of our PnP D&D campaigns, that we would always use the Right Hand Rule in dungeons - UNLESS we suspected drow were involved. Then we would use the Left Hand Rule - because drow are tricksy. 😉
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On 3/10/2020 at 4:29 AM, Ultimo said:
I did try adding "Great" in there, (Great Canadian Shield), but there's not enough spaces. Doesn't fit. Playing with the spaces doesn't work either, it automatically deletes any extras.
As I say, I'll just have to live in hope that someday they'll make it possible to get the name.
When I suggested playing the spaces, I meant removing some, or replacing them with hyphens or periods, since IIRC you can't have more than 1 space in a name. (Correct me if I'm wrong - I might be thinking of another game.) So try some variation on the following:
Great CanadianShield
Great-CanadianShield
I don't recall what the limit on the number of characters in a name. I think it was 20 at one point, but I thought maybe it had been increased? But the examples above clock in at 20, so they should be viable, if the limit is in fact 20.
If more than one space is okay, the following should work:
Real Canadian Shield
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Sir Myshkin, yeah, I am beginning to wonder if someone is buying the yellow salvage simply in order to destroy it. I have seen this happen on crafted common IOs (like mez IOs) that badgers craft for the badges, then list, but then almost never sell because the demand is simply to low to clear out the inventory. I actually did this once myself on Hold IOs because I was tired of seeing them every time I checked on an alt's sales. Buying the crap was easy, but deleting them all was painful. 😝
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On 3/6/2020 at 4:41 PM, Ironblade said:
I originally wanted to name him 'Hand to Hand Wombat' but that was too long. Even Hand2Hand Wombat was too long.
And he wasn't actually a wombat. He was lost in the wilderness as a child and RAISED by wombats - in the Pacific Northwest, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Now you made me all nostalgic for the superhero wombat character I played in a superhero funny animals Pnp Champions campaign - WombatBat. WombatBat was a wombat who wore a high-tech bat costume to fight crime, working out of the WombatBatcave, driving the WombatBatmobile, & wielding the WombatBatarang. His only weakness was daylight, because as a nocturnal creature, he was prone to narcolepsy during the day. Good times! 😎
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Original Canadian Shield
Real Canadian Shield
Codename Canadian Shield
Operative Canadian Shield
Canadian Shield I
Canadian Shield!
Some variation like the above, playing the spaces, should work.
I feel you. I never put the definite article "the" in the name because of the way that the comments from the public sound. And misspellings make me ill too. 🤢
Good luck to you, shield of the northern lands! 🙂
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11 hours ago, Nayeh said:
So I had an Overpowering Presence: Energy Font laying around and decided to try it out on Dimension Shift.
Result: Energy Font, although a very low proc-rate that seems to fire upon initial cast only (as in it does not seem to spawn on ticks or entry/exit), can spawn off of both players and enemy monsters. The neat thing about energy font is if you're standing outside of it he will rush inside and still dish damage to the enemies.
Overall, a pretty rad option for an ability that only accepts Controller ATO and Immobilize IOs. Overpowering Presence IO provides a generous Spawn and gives Recharge, about the only things worthwhile slotting.
I slot the OP: Energy Font in Wormhole since Wormhole stuns & the Energy Font has a chance to stun, so it is possible to stack stuns. Not game-breakingly effective, but a nice bonus.
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3 hours ago, Lines said:
Looks like it's getting worse - had a night of my own bids at 5k not buying and the last few sales have been at 50,000+.
Yeah, I always list my yellow salvage on the AH for next to nothing, & last night it sold for 35K+. This is amusing to me since previously yellow salvage was so useless that I begged my SGmates to stop putting it in the salvage bins in the base & just sell it. Nobody on the market forum was laying claim to being behind this - & let's face it, to the ebil marketeers this is just peanuts & not worth the effort. My totally unsubstantiated guess is that this started from a player who was used to using this trick on the market of some other game & figured it would be a worthwhile way to make money here, not knowing that there are way easier ways to earn way more money in this game now. Now there may be copycats jumping in to try the same trick, while players with real money just pay $50K & get on with their game, knowing their time isn't worth trying to purchase yellow salvage any cheaper. I'll be interested to see how long this particular market spike goes on - but it won't affect me in the slightest. /shrug
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Hah! Got it to work! Great tool xeaon! 😎
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My main dinged Apathetic yesterday, & all I could think about was I Couldn't Care Less. True story! 😉
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Ah, data! So many ways to parse it! 🙂
I was interested to see what ATs players tended to take to 50 (all numbers based on data excluding FA Brutes):
Controller 12.18% Arachnos Widow 10.80% Arachnos Soldier 10.43% Corruptor 10.25% Tanker 10.09% Defender 10.04% Blaster 8.67% Brute 8.17% Stalker 8.12% Scrapper 7.99% Dominator 7.76% Warshade 7.72% Peacebringer 7.33% Sentinel 7.09% Mastermind 4.67% So players who run Controllers are usually in for the long haul, along with those that play VEATs, Corruptors, Tankers, & Defenders. Interesting that support ATs are so well-represented here - but not surprising if you consider that players who opt to play support may be less inclined to be motivated by short term goals. But it appears that a lot of players that roll up a Mastermind quickly discover that the play style is not their cup of tea & don't complete the run to 50.
I was also interested in the Playing Time per Character for the Level 50s:
Brute 230.52 Tanker 229.73 Scrapper 174.42 Warshade 164.35 Peacebringer 151.12 Controller 139.67 Blaster 138.48 Sentinel 138.20 Mastermind 136.62 Arachnos Soldier 125.67 Defender 120.17 Dominator 118.29 Stalker 117.17 Arachnos Widow 113.34 Corruptor 111.50 Brutes at #1 is no surprise. Even excluding Fiery Aura Brutes, it is a good bet that a lot of Brute level 50 playing time is in farms. But let's face it - playing Brutes is just fun! Broot smash! 😎 On almost any TF/SF/Trial that I recruit or join, Brutes are well represented.
But Tankers as the clear #2 by a big margin is surprising. It would seem that a lot of player base is like me & has a Tanker main that they enjoy pulling out on a regular basis for the rough stuff. 👍 Or it could be that, before the recent Tanker damage increase, it just took Tankers that long to complete anything. 😛
Scrappers at #3? More proof that everyone wants to be a Scrapper I guess. 😉
Warshades & Peacebringers at #4 & #5 is unexpected, given their relatively low rates of completing the run to 50. It would appear that the few players who do like the HEATS enough to level them to 50 like them just fine thank you. 🙂 The same seems to be true of those who play Masterminds as well, who check in at #10 here, well above their dead last place on the level 50 list.
I am surprised that Corruptors bring up the rear here. As someone who played redside quite a bit on Live in the latter years when the Rogue Isles were a ghost town, & ran the iTrials regularly on multiple characters including my own Corruptor, I recall the AT being very well-represented at end game. It is odd to me that players who have leveled their Corruptors to 50 apparently aren't playing them as much as I would have thought. Hmmm. I wonder if the direct competition with Defenders (who have better buff/debuff values) & Blasters (who do MOAR DAMAGE!) leaves Corruptors feeling a bit wanting. 🤨
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Bring Statesman back from the dead? Big NO! Because: #1 - comic book death is already cheap enough, let's not cheapen it any more; & #2 - Statesman was a problematic character who is better off dead.
Death is cheap in comic books, & has only become cheaper in the past 50 years. There was a time when it wasn't so. When the Doom Patrol sacrificed themselves to save a small town from their enemies in the final issue of their title in the 60's, their sacrifice meant something & enshrined them as true heroes. When Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) died of cancer, it was a bittersweet reflection on facing the inevitability of the end, something we must all face. When Jean Grey opted to do down fighting as Marvel Girl in order to atone for the billions she had killed as Dark Phoenix & avert the possibility that she would ever go down that dark path again, that was stunning surprise. When Supergirl & The Flash (Barry Allen) died in the Crisis, it was a sobering statement about just how high the stakes had become.
But the success of the Dark Phoenix storyline & the Crisis on Infinite Earths led to a generation of writers going back to this well again & again, as if killing off characters was the only way to have an impact. And worse, many of these deaths were nothing more than publicity stunts. The Death of Superman drew attention from the mainstream media, but after a few short months, Superman was shown not be dead (just "mostly dead") & returned to his role as the centerpiece of the DC Universe - which no real comicbook reader ever truly doubted would be the result. And death after comicbook death was reversed. Only the pink-skinned Kree Mar-Vell has shown the good sense to just stay dead, having passed his legacy on to several other, perhaps more interesting, characters. For too many writers, death was a crutch, as it was seemingly the only tool they had in their arsenal to generate emotional impact. A lot of characters with undeveloped potential were sacrificed on the altar of drama for the sake of drama, & the superhero funeral quickly became a cliche.
And death after senseless death was followed by resurrection after incomprehensible resurrection. Do we really need to perpetuate that comicbook cycle here in the game as well? Especially with Statesman?
Statesman was always a problematic character in the game. He was presented as an iconic hero, although none of us had ever seen him do anything that merited that status in game. We were told he was just that awesome, but it was just hearsay to us. As players, we were just doing his dirty work or even rescuing him from his enemies. Statesman came across as pale imitation of Superman, just as Manticore came across as a weaksauce Batman with arrows instead of a utlity belt. And certainly the character was overexposed in game - we meet his dimensional & time-crossed duplicates again & again, which many comicbooks fans resent about Superman in the DC Universe. Writing for an iconic hero in the modern age is difficult, & too often States came across as a jerk, rather than a noble hero. And the lore undercut Statesman's supposed nobility, as we are told that he was a petty crook who stumbled into great power. The character was supposedly based off of one that Jack Emmert played in PnP, which may explain the tension - as the original character wasn't likely intended to be an iconic hero, but rather a somewhat cynical exploration of one. So forcing Statesman into the Superman mold may have always been a bad fit. And Jack using Statesman as his board avatar didn't help, given Jack's perceived tendency to dismiss player concerns as irrelevant in "his" game.
Anyway, I am happy to move on in the game & explore what the world is like in the post-Statesman world, as other characters step up to carry the load. I would be thrilled to see Ms. Liberty step out of the shadow of her grandfather & really be developed as a character. And as someone else posted earlier in this thread - if we need a more direct replacement of the iconic hero role in the game, a de-Riktified Hero One is a much better choice. He fits the Cape archetype better than Statesman, IMNSHO. 🙂
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I entered CoH with Issue 4, the first anniversary. So tailors had been in the game for a long time by then - & I still knew of players that would delete & reroll a character in order to get the costume right. I'm sure some just dreaded the potential debt trap that trying to run to northeast Steel Canyon to Icon could be. But I believe that most just figured they couldn't afford the tailor fees & that it was easier to reroll & design the "perfect" costume for free in the character generator instead. You have to remember that for many (maybe most) players, it was City of Deadbroke Bums for most of their time. 😉
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I'm surpised at how many posters above don't use the Panacea proc on every character. The fact that it procs dollops of END & HP whether or not your REC & REG are debuffed into negative territory is a literal lifesaver. Every character I have now gets this as their first IO as soon as they can slot it (level 7, right?). The fact that it is a PvP IO can make it pricey, so that may be why so many people don't consider it. But it is well worth the price. As a rule, I tend to make my new characters pay their own way & buy or earn their own IOs - but I always make an exception for the Panacea proc, as one of my "rich uncle" alts ponies up for the Panacea for the newbie.
But all characters get all 3 of the Panacea/Miracle/Numina's as soon as they can slot them. The END management they provide is worth it on almost any character. (I haven't played a Blaster on Homecoming with the new Sustain mechanic, so that might be an exception.)
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Right, the "refusing to level up in order to convince the contact you haven't outleveled the arc" ploy doesn't work. If you have the "flashing up arrow", which would put you beyond the contact's level range if you leveled up, the contact won't offer you any new missions - although, if you have already started a story arc with that contact & have the "open book" icon, then the contact will continue to offer you the next mission in the story arc until you are done. But in that case, you won't be able to start any new arcs with the other contacts of that level band. Praetorian contacts who have the Morality Mission as their 2nd arc will not offer that arc to you if you overleveled on their 1st arc.
Most contacts in the game follow the rule of 4 or 9 - that is that their natural level ranges top out at a level ending in 4 or 9. But the Praetorian contacts are exceptions to this & their level ranges top out at 10, 15, & 20. I discovered this by accident on an early Praetorian. I intended to lock xp at 9.9, but wasn't aware how big the xp bonus for completing an arc was, & ended up staring at the "flashing up arrow" after completing Doctor Arvin's arc. I cursed myself for being an idiot, but was surprised to discover that I could in fact continue to start & complete the rest of the Nova Praetoria contacts after leveling to 10. I locked at 10.9 & cruised through the rest of the arcs in the zone. Having access to that Level 10 power can be handy for some characters, so I now follow this is a conscious strategy on my new Praetorians.
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Almost right Slim. Instead of the Barracuda SF, in the blueside cape mission available at level 20.