Saikochoro

I'll put in the same disclaimer I put in for all my builds. I don't claim this is the best build for the given combo, but it works well for me. I didn't set this up in any particular order as far as when to choose the powers as you level. I did this more as a level 50 looking back, but as I level I generally pick powers as they become available. Also note, this build is not cheap. Expect it to be around 400-500m depending on how patient you are with bidding and if you use converters or not. Some notes on Bio - The name of the game for Bio is damage. Damage is the whole point of going bio in my opinion, therefore I build for damage. This means I want to be in offensive adaptation almost 100% of the time. I also want recharge. I also want procs. I want musculature alpha. I want assault hybrid. This also means I won't be chasing all the softcaps, even though bio makes it possible to do so. - I always build Bios mitigation the same way. S/L focus on resists, E/N focus on defense, F/C a mixture of both resist and defense, and then absorb/heal for overall. To this end I try to push s/l to the cap. As you can see I couldn't quite get there while still achieving my other goals, especially in offensive adaption. However, I was able to get a respectible 79.7% while in offensive. E/N is softcapped with t4 barrier. I chose barrier since the T4 always has 5% defense. I don't really need ageless or any other destiny, so I chose to use barrier. You could change some slotting around to achieve softcap without incarnates if you want. - Use ablative carapace proactively before each mob. It is up very often and can soak up alpha strikes easily. It also offers a nice regen bonus. Use parasitic aura similarly (although this power requires targets). It offers a nice absorb shield and good bonuses to regen and recovery. - I use DNA siphon mostly on the corpses of my fallen enemies. When used on corpses it gives a nice regen/recovery bonus. Alternatively, you can use it reactively as a heal or to recover endurance by hitting live enemies. - Be aware that you have no DDR and low E/N resistances. So energy heavy damage is your weakness. Whatever gets through the defenses will hurt. If enemies strip your defenses you WILL quickly notice how dangerous E/N is to you. Some notes on Savage: - Savage does great single target and AOE damage. Blood frenzy gives a nice boost to endurance discount and also to recharge for each stack. I don't think that this bonus is lost on bio as all sets like recharge. - Savage leap is all proc'd out for maximum fun and maximum damage. This is your opening salvo for each mob. - Rending Flurry has a nice bonus per blood frenzy stack. It is quite nice with 5 stacks, however that you will leave you exhausted and unable to regain blood frenzy stacks for a short time. Note the build up power will grant stacks. I personally don't often use the 5 stacks, but will rather hit rending flurry at 3 or 4 stacks so that I can keep building blood frenzy stacks. I like the constant recharge bonus. This is personal preference though. The build: Be sure to play around with the blood frenzy stacks to see how it affects recharge and fury to see how it affects your damage. I usually set fury to 80%. I have blood frenzy set to 3 stacks in the build, but have it toggled off so it is not affecting the totals below. Also be sure to play with dna siphon and parastic aura to see how it boosts your regen/recovery based on number of targets hit. Here are the totals with no blood frenzy and then with 3 stacks. Note I have barrier turned off so it doesn't screw with the totals. Ablative carapace is on in both snippets below as its bonus to regen is perma if you use it on cooldown. These are in offensive adaptation.

Dang you and @Coyotedancer. I have yet to make a broadsword character, but I have been thinking about it. Now my altitis is acting up again and my sites are fixed on broadsword now.

Oh I was only thinking of savage. All the powers in bio are pretty good. The only one I consistently skip is genetic contamination. Though I don’t always skip it. If I need to skip another it would likely be parasitic aura. I do like having parasitic aura though.

I don’t take shred, the taunt, or hemorrhage.

Yeah I love how visceral the animations are. I also love the speed of savage. Makes you feel like a berserker.

Savage gets my vote! I really enjoy savage, especially when combined with bio.

I actually just started a bio/claws tanker this week. So far I’ve been having fun. Im level 37 and it does good damage and is survivable enough so far. I went bio for damage and thus don’t want to neuter my damage by having low recharge and no Procs. So there isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room. My main worry is energy damage. I am softcapped, but my resistance for energy damage is very low and I have no DDR. So I have to make sure my clicks are available before I wade into energy heavy groups.

Definition of market manipulation is an absolutely fair question as I’m sure there are a ton of different definitions. Yes, you are correct that it is fear of actual monopolistic price setting rather than observed manipulation. Price setting may be a better term than market manipulation. I don’t see this happening because it basically can’t reliably happen because of how the market is set up. I think there is a grey area between market manipulation and “normal” market functions. Flipping is the best example to use here. I remember going into an example about flipping a while back using colt pythons as an example. I personally don’t really like the practice, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think it was a normal market practice. Regardless of my adverse opinions on flipping, I still consider it to be a normal and acceptable market practice. Flipping rewards patience and knowledge, but is not indicative of actual price setting power. What I fear is actually corning the market, starving the competition, and then setting an atrociously high price once you gain control. So instead of flipping for 50% more you are now selling those red fortunes for 15 or 20m because you CONTROL the price. This is more of what I’m getting at when I say market manipulation. Converters, seeding, and merits basically make this impossible currently. However, if one or all three of those are nerfed enough, this sort of manipulation becomes possible.

While I do like the double blind system since it gives an element of strategy to marketing, I am on board with more data being made available to help players.

I think one more point worth mentioning is that I think if you and other uber rich players really wanted to wreck the market you would have done so already. I think it takes a certain mentality that just usually doesn’t manifest overnight. That said, even if you did spend everything to do so, I still believe they way the market is set up it would be mitigated to an extent. Most uber rich players I know, whether they be marketers or farmers, are actually some of the most generous players I know. They are usually willing to help out players or fund competitions. Or at the very least they are content to lay on the beds of influence, in their mansions build of influence, wipe themselves with influence, and go swimming in their influence rather than use all of it to wreck everyone else’s fun.

I’m only going to share my opinion on some of your points. Locking converters by account and allowing merits to be traded. This is kind of a wash since merits are already able to be liquidated via converters/boosters etc. So there isn’t much point to this. All it would do is disrupt the market. Hero Pack and Winter pack seeding. Removing the seeding would serve to almost certainly increase the price on ATOs. Having it as a super rare drop or their current merit costs would most likely bring them up to about the same price of as purples with the superior versions being more. There is nothing wrong with the current prices of ATOs and their supply. There greater availability to the player see as a whole is a great thing about the market. Seeding allows this. Nerfing merit to converter ratio while also making converters a bone trade item would serve to nerf enhancement conversion. I’m sure this may be your intention in efforts to reign in the top earners. However, this would reduce supply and increase prices for everyone. Higher prices won’t do anything to mitigate the difference between have and have nots. Even worse, nerfing converters will actually enable greater and more drastic market manipulation. Converters allow everyone to be competitors and allow all goods in a certain buckets to be substitutes. Nerfing converters will simultaneously nerf completion and substitution thus enabling more effective market manipulation. Plus the devs have already expressed that they don’t want to do anything to hurt the converter process in the double xp nerf discussion earlier this year, thank goodness. Macroeconomic events I am more agnostic towards, but still overall lean toward being against. I am against any event that serves to increase prices or strangle competition. Temporary events that serve to reduce prices for a time I suppose are somewhat acceptable. The winter event can allow some people to make a killing, especially if they are patient. However, it also allows some people poorer players who couldn’t afford WOs the opportunity to get them at an lower price. It also floods the market with supply that may keep the price lower for a while, which honestly isn’t bad. If just as soon not have events at all though. A stable market that functions well with reasonable prices is a good market. I understand that these events can be fun, so i see an argument for it, however, a stable market is more important in my opinion. I am against lifting price caps. While we generally don’t get to the price cap on anything at the moment, this only opens the door to allow greater market manipulation. If conversion was nerfed AND price caps via seeding or merit cost increased or removed, then the super rich could easily drive up the prices to unreasonable levels. Overall, apart from some bugs, the market functions splendidly. It has very reasonable average prices across the board and no supply shortages because of converters. Players have multiple ways to make a steady earnings on the market with various time and effort commitments. Anything done to curb competition, substitution, and allow for greater market manipulation would only hurt the economy in my opinion. I agree with @Coyotedancerthat we need to be careful in any approach to reign in the “top hat and monocle crowd”. Reigning them in at the expense of the market as whole is not a good idea. If the devs are ever truly worried about atrociously rich players, then they should address those players instead of strangling the entire market. Edit: I realize I should probably also comment on stuff I agree with. That’s only fair. I need to be better about that. Inf sinks are a good thing. I’m down for influence sinks as long as they don’t really affect the poorer crowd. Things like expensive glory badges. Altruistic/philanthropic badges. Various status competitions that don’t have bearing on player progress or the market as a whole are all good starter ideas. I’m sure more ideas can be added as time goes on. Market slots - I can also get behind this one as it combats market manipulation. Sure, I like to buy my build all at once from level 2 or so just so it is there waiting for me. It allows be to put in my “patient” bids to make my guide overall cheaper and spend less time on the market. I’m willing to give this up though in the name of combating market manipulation. I think somewhere between 50-100 slots would still be reasonable. Perhaps a more targeted approach could be to limit the number of a single item you can bid at any given time. What if instead we limit concurrent bids on a single item be a couple stacks?

As it is now, yes, a player can earn a ludicrous amount of money in this game. There is no denying that. But the thing is, anyone can do that. And anyone can easily combat market manipulation because converters are plentiful. I know that some prominent marketers want converters nerfed in one way or another to lower influence accumulation. However, this would only make market manipulation MUCH easier. Converters are one the biggest things that combat manipulation. While I agree that a super rich player could possibly manipulate the market to some degree, converters actually make this very difficult in the long run. Converters make everything substitutes. So even if they did buy all the defensive recipes and IO and converters on the market and then relist at a higher prices, I could completely side step that attempt at market manipulation because of converters and merits. I could turn my converters into merits and buy a random cheap recipe and convert to the IO I want. I could do this to keep or to sell. The fact that everyone can do this even if the rich marketer does continually try to manipulate the price means that there could still be a supply of cheaper items that they are trying to manipulate. They may have some success with people that don’t convert, but converters honestly combat market manipulation instead of enable it. The manipulator would probably be successful in driving up the price of certain goods, but only to a certain extent. Say the goal was to corner the defense IO market. Say a red fortune is 2.5m on average and a LOTG is 6m on average. You may be able to drive up the price a few million for a time. Don’t get me wrong, that is quite a bit percentage wise. However, there is a point where people care less about saving time “buy now” and more about saving influence. If they realize that their lower patient bids aren’t being filled they will turn to converters. The manipulator also run the risk of other marketers seeing this manipulation and the higher price on defense IOs and converting hundreds or even thousands of defensive IOs and putting them on the market for slightly less to get the sales. Yes, the manipulator could buy these too, but this would only encourage other marketers to continue crafting and converting into the defensive IO market because they would continually be getting the sales. Eventually, given a big enough scale, the manipulator will run a significant enough loss that they won’t be able to keep up. High margins breed competition and competition erodes profits. Converters allow everyone to be a competitor. If converters were harder to come by, or worse, removed entirely, it would be not only possible, but fairly easy for a super rich player to manipulate the market by buying up everything in a certain part of the market and setting price. Converters make it impossible to have a true monopoly and price setting power. As long as converters can be bought with merits, true market manipulation can’t occur unless people just refuse to use merits to get converters and use converters to craft & convert. The only thing that I could see real price manipulation would be with salvage. But even that would be mitigated because you wouldn’t be able manipulate the price to go above the seeded value. Sure it would be annoying to have to pay the seeded value, but even those values aren’t astronomical. Converters, merit to converter ratio, item bucketing, and seeding salvage were great solutions to make drastic market manipulation basically impossible. The best way to prevent lasting and material market manipulation is for players to be educated on the market, converters and merits. This is another big reason there needs to be a tutorial because if players know they don’t need to obey the going price on an IO they won’t unless it is convenient for them to do so.

You may not enjoy the market, the invention system, or farming, but there are many that do. Each of those things are part of the game and thus playing those things in the game IS playing the game. People need to stop spreading around the idea some in game activities are not playing the game. Also, people need to stop spreading misinformation that you need to use a spreadsheet to effectively use the market. This is just absolutely false and bad information to people who have not used the market. The UI could use some improvements, yes, and there are some bugs. But the design of the market on HC is top notch and extremely pro player with the changes HC made. The only real systemic problem is lack of in game information about the market. That is why a tutorial is needed to instruct players on the basics. That is all they need to be able to effectively use the market. We should not remove the invention system or the market. People are already rewarded for doing what you consider to “playing the game.” Story content and task forces award merits that are very valuable and can be used to advance character builds in a number of ways. Your suggestion would not only remove aspects of the game that many enjoy, but would force people into playing only one way. This suggestion just sounds like more of the same people looking down on farming or marketing as lesser ways of playing the game. So, because you believe then to be lesser ways of playing the game, and don’t like it, it should just be removed? No, they shouldn’t. They are important aspects of the game. While the market may be the fastest way to gear up, it is not the only way. And you certainly don’t need to devote a lot of time or resources into using it effectively, if you decide to use it at all. As has been said repeatedly, you can fund extremely expensive builds fast with nothing more than a few minutes on the market at the end of a play session selling converters. Even if you don’t use the market at all to make money, it is still beneficial because you can purchase what you need from it. It makes sense that people willing to use all the tools available to them will have the most success. That’s said, it is a choice. However, if the market and invention system was removed player choice would simply be removed from the equation. Less options is never good.

Low prices are good for everyone. They may make less for selling a recipe, but they also have to pay less money for something else they buy. That and the amount they make off the market is worth more because it can go further. Converters make everything substitutes in a given category and thus allow people to turn an unwanted recipe into something valuable. This is a very positive thing for the economy and for players. Savage is fungible and is thus not junk. It is used in crafting, which is a staple in enhancement conversion. If people stop crafting en masse, then demand for salvage dries up. I never said, nerfing farming would raise prices. Farming is fundamentally different than converting. Funding increases the money supply. Crafting, converting, and selling reduces the money supply. Farming has benefit in supplying the market with needed salvage and recipes to help keep costs low due to having a good amount of supply. Converting helps keep the supply of desirable items high and prevents people from manipulating price. Converters are nothing but good for the market and the economy. People making a pittance is purely a choice. The barrier to entry to using the market and converters is extremely low. Anyone can do it starting from level 1 on a fresh account. That may be harsh, but it is true. The choice may be largely due to ignorance, which is why people have been pushing for a tutorial for market, converters, merits to spread the information in game. However, when people know about the tools and still refuse to use them, that is solely on them. People can skip crafting and converting and just sell converters or boosters and make enough to fund anything they want. Sure, it may be less than crafting and converting, but it also requires less time and effort. So it makes sense that it will make less. ATOs are not depressed in value. They sell usually for 7-10m, which is good value. Most of the time you will make a profit off of super packs even if a small one. If super packs were not seeded, then the price of ATOs would rise. That may suit your desire for higher prices, but it would be bad for pretty much everyone else. Higher prices are not a good thing.

Well I would venture to say most people do not support increasing of prices across the board. Low prices benefits everyone, especially new players. There is nothing positive to be gained from inflating prices, causing shortages, and harming the game economy through nerfing converters.

Nerfing converters will serve to increase prices across the board in the market and so I do not support this notion at all. There will always be a most efficient use of merits or other currencies. And yet, people still buy other things with merits. If you want things to become more expensive and less available, then needing converters would serve that goal. However, that would not be good for the health of the market. The devs have stated in the nerfing double xp influence thread a whole back that they don’t want to do something to harm the conversion process because it is so beneficial to the market and the economy. AE standard rewards should also not be nerfed. More than just farmers use it. The devs have already had a targeted nerf for influence inflation earlier this year. The devs do have a target painted on afk farming, but not on farming as a whole.

Thank you for clarifying that. That is pretty disappointing though. I wonder why they only get 50% damage crits.

Gotcha. I personally don’t boost my enhancements so that could be quit a bit of it. And I usually do put bids out in advance. Though I do end up buying and get now prices sometimes. All the more power to you. If you have the means, no need to not pay “buy now” prices 👍🏽

I’ll let the devs respond to your questions about various salvage. So I’m just quoting this part of your comment. Contrary to some people’s belief, the market IS part of the game. It’s is literally part of the game and is thus part of playing the game. It may not be how you prefer to spend time on the game and that is perfectly fine. However, it is part of playing the game. That said, effective use the market does not require in depth knowledge at all. Nor does it take even close to hundreds of hours on the market. I consider myself an extensive user of the market. I have used many different market methods and have bought/sold thousands of items on the market. I do not spend more than 1-3 hours per week on the market. I didn’t spend more than that even as a beginner, in fact, I spent less time because I focused just on selling converters. At least half of my market time is bidding on enhancements for my characters to use and not for some marketing scheme. For someone just looking to make some quick cash by dipping their toes into the market (i.e selling converters) doesn’t even need an hour per week to allocate to marketing. Effective use of the market can be as simple as selling converters on the market, which takes less than 5 minutes per session. I think it’s unfair to give people the impression that they need deep knowledge of the market and need to spend countless hours on it to be effective. That is just not true at all. The problem is lack of an in game tutorial on the market, converters, and merits. Once people are instructed on the BASIC principles they can proceed to use the market effectively and quickly. They honestly only need the basics. If they find that they enjoy it they can go further and deeper into the market by reading guides, but that is honestly not necessary.

The thing is, you don’t have to farm or make extensive use of the market to be competitive. Let’s play devils advocate, and say that to be able to be competitive in the mass majority of the game you have to have a 500m influence build. This is completely not true, but let’s say it is true. So, how can one get that 500m influence build? There are many ways. The fastest and cheapest methods do use the market, but not necessarily extensively. No market, no merits, no converters approach - this will be the slowest method because you are purely at the mercy of rng and are not making use of all the tools available to you. It’s possible, but it’s not reasonable to expect it to be as fast as other methods. No market, no converters approach - still going to be slow, but at least you can use merits to buy the exact recipes you want so you are no longer bound by rng. This will be faster, but definitely not cheaper. No market approach - using merits and converters will ease the cost burden because you can craft your drops and convert them into the IOs you want. So then you will likely only need to use the merits on ATOs, purples, pvp recipes. Still not the most efficient method, but don’t have to touch the market. Market approach - there are SO many ways to use the market to make gearing up cheaper and faster. You make influence by just selling your drops, or selling converters for inf, or craft & convert to sell, or niche marketing and beyond. Some of these methods require more knowledge and time than others. Some literally just take a few minutes to list things and grab the influence. Then you can use the funds to bid on various IOs. Even if you don’t use the market to make money and use it solely to just buy a recipe, IO, or even salvage that you need, it will still save time and money. You can get screaming deals if you are patient and you can also get them now if you want for more influence. The choice is purely up to the player. All of the methods are valid and doable, but they aren’t all equal. And why should they be? If a player isn’t willing to use the tools available to them even if only sparingly, then it makes sense that they will get what they want slower. That is working as intended. I’m not trying to be harsh. I want everyone to succeed. But people need to be willing to branch out a little. You can easily fund the most expensive of builds in a short time even if you only use the market for a few minutes each play session.

Im trying to figure out how you are getting out to 1b, let alone 1.6b for builds. I make heavy use of superior ATO, purples, LOTG, and pvp uniques and rarely go above 500m. Even when I throw in some winter sets before the sale, I wasn’t getting higher than 550m. Are you boosting all of your enhancements? This is not meant to be critical. I’m honestly just curious.

Some enhancements may be cheaper, I agree, and I’m not trying to deny that. However, as a whole the market would get more expensive. Converters make all goods within a given category and level range basically substitutes thus enabling basically limitless supply. Purples for purples, ATOs for ATOs, PvP for PvP, and basically all others. A level 31 yellow slow recipe can turn into the vaunted LoTG + rech. Or it could turn into the kinetic combat melee IO that you need to reach S/l softcap. Or it can be used to finish your set of thunder strike to get ranged softcap. It can get you basically whenever you need to go with enough converters even if those IOs recipes just aren’t dropping or if marketers decide to try to buy them all up in effort to manipulate the market. Without converters, it comes down to supply and demand. If for whatever reason a certain yellow recipe just hasn’t been dropping recently due to rng, but the demand for it has remained steady or even increased, then the price of the recipe will increase. When all goods are no longer substitutes for each other through converters the market will have items that aren’t top IOs like LOTG that will also go up in price depending on supply and demand. Even worse, the real marketers would actually be able to corner sections of the market and manipulate the market to a much greater degree. Converters temper marketers ability to carve out markets and manipulate price. Converters are the great equalizer of the market in that they prevent monopolies and price setting. Converters enable people to create supply when there would otherwise be none. It tempers the entire market as whole. So, yes, some recipes may become cheaper, but that is completely up to supply and demand. The market as a whole (not just LOTG) though would suffer due to things no longer being able to substitute for each other. I do still think there absolutely needs to be a tutorial on market/converters/merits though. That is a must have.

I actually didn’t know that placate was only 50% crit chance for the VEATS. Guess I need to look closer at my builds haha.

Getting rid of enhancement conversion will only drive prices up. The caps you put for the various types are already pretty much the average anyway. Even for purples. I don’t spend more than 14-15m for my purples. Though I do put my bids in in advance. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Taking converters out of the market would not fix anything. It would actually break the economy by drying up supply and driving up prices across the board. It is not unfair for people to make a lot on the market when they study it out and use it effectively. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I’m not even one of the people that makes anywhere near that much per week. Fair =/= everyone having the same amount of influence. Fair is deriving equitable benefit from similar actions. Absolutely anyone can make a lot of money off the market if they so choose. It is highly accessible in that it isn’t locked behind it optimized builds. People just need the information on how to use it. And the marketers are usually gushing that information out to anyone that will listen.

Absolutely nothing wrong with this method either. There are so many ways to use the market and they are all valid.