Bionic_Flea

Lumi, I love you but, you are overstating the difficulty of making influence in the game. Like here, although to a lesser extent, all you had to do was play your 50s and sell your drops. Of course, we didn't have converters for most of the time on live and those allow you to spin gold from straw. But back then you could still vendor the straw and some straw still sold for a few million. When inventions came out, I had more than enough infamy to supply my characters with SOs. I then started slowly converting some old and most of my new alts to generic IOs. I didn't start with sets because of the costs, but because I had no real sense of sets and bonuses and so forth. And then I was introduced to a forefather of Mids (Lil Pips' Hero Builder, maybe) and was finally able to learn and think of builds as a whole. I made an IO set build for a dark/regen scrapper that I wanted to PvP with. It was terrible by today's standards but it was much better than either the SO or generic IO build. I then started rebuilding my namesake, Bionic Flea an Inv/SS tank, and started slotting set IOs on new characters as I leveled them. I found that many of the IOs that were terribly expensive were magnitudes cheaper as recipes and started buying stacks of 10 of whatever I wanted. Then slot one, save two, sell seven. If they were expensive, that meant that a lot of people wanted them for lots of builds. And indeed, people paid me much more than the offer price just to BUY-IT-NAO as the cool kids said. I was a billionaire within the year of my starting that buy/slot/store/sell strategy. It may have been only a few months but honestly it's all a blur. Same thing here. We all started at zero anew. It wasn't long (a few months maybe) until I had a billion, then several, and now I have somewhere between 30-50 billion. I stopped keeping track because I have more than enough. I also stopped aggressively marketing, although I do still craft/convert/sell my drops and occasionally craft or convert things I bought on /AH months ago. I know that many people have just as much and some have 100s or perhaps 1000s more than me. And yet I still meet players every day that tell me they can't afford to spend a few million to buy an IO. And that's just not people who started playing this week. It was the same in the live game. Anyone can and could make INF if they took a little time to learn and a minimum amount of effort to do it.

My take: You have entirely too much time. I disagree that you either had inf at the beginning or were locked out. One lucky drop could finance a entire character, as long as you didn't use purples and PvPIOs. Beyond that it was not hard to make decent inf either flipping (buy the same item for a little and sell for a mark-up), arbitrating (buying cheap junk and selling to vendors), or, my preferred method, buying recipes and salvage then selling the crafted item. You forgot the chapter on Gagora and all those other inf selling industries. I think you make several very good points. But you are making definitive statements of the devs' intentions. Are you making assumptions or do you have inside knowledge? If they thought that incarnates were a bridge between IO-based vs SO-based characters they were high. Yes, incarnates can provide anyone with great power, but it does nothing to close the gap -- the IO-based character started from a much higher base and went into the stratosphere where the SO-based builds couldn't go.

Clap, clap, stomp! or is it Stomp, stomp, clap?

Yes, Which gives us this lovely sentence: Resistance resists resistance reduction.

An excellent, succinct summation of the City of Heroes chat channels and forum. A+

Thanks. It is a lot of Recovery, but that's with Touch of the Beyond up. Then again, no reason for it not to be up, other than a miss or forgetfulness. I started leveling a Psi/Shield scrapper. But this Darkx3 should be my next project.

We already have AT specific defense hardcaps from 175 to 225. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Limits

And with this, you lost me. I hope the devs punish you by not implementing your multi-Null request. You will fly and like it!

I just finished theory crafting a Dark/Dark/Soul and went a slightly different direction. I decided to skip almost all of the cones and use teleport to fold critters to me for Aim+Soul Drain+Blackstar. I tossed in Burnout at the end to double that up, but I should be able to do that combo every 45 seconds or so without Burnout or the FF +Recharge Proc. The defense/resist numbers are a little lower than I like, but I think with the -tohit in everything, heal in Life Drain, and Regen from Touch of the Beyond I may have enough.

*Renames GM Impervium to GM Mover*

Other than Linea's higher level 801 AE arcs and the ASF on relentless, is your resistance scrapper really dying more than your defense scrapper? Or are both of them essentially immortal in 99% of the game?

Although I have skipped it in prior Psi Melee builds, having Boggle confuse some extra DPS or a Surgeon to heal you instead of your enemy has to be worth something as well.

Using Bopper's calculator, however well built it may be, does not account for human beings actually playing the game. Damage doesn't come in at the same rate all the time. People avoid damage many ways, not just by defense and resist from armors. However, I agree that 45% defense is better than 75% resist. But I never have just one or the other.

I haven't tried it, but how about Psi melee? Psy attacks laugh at Unstoppable and Shield gives you the added AoE Psi lacks.

Sweeping defense changes?

https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Select_build_(Slash_Command) /select_build # where # is your intended build, 1-3

Pssst . . . . https://forums.homecomingservers.com/search/?&type=core_members&joinedDate=any&group[17]=1&group[8]=1&group[7]=1&group[4]=1&group[11]=1&group[21]=1&group[22]=1&group[19]=1&group[20]=1 Wow! That's a lot more "retired" folks than I thought there would be. Here's the list without all the retirees. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/search/?&type=core_members&joinedDate=any&group[17]=1&group[8]=1&group[7]=1&group[4]=1&group[11]=1

Necro'ed by a Ghost.

I'd rather have a P2W vendor in RWZ base, but I guess I have no problem with Null being there. Isn't he a pan-dimensional being anyway? However, I don't think Null should be a base critter, pan dimensional or not. I feel that somethings should only exist in the larger world. Just like I wouldn't like Ms. Liberty and all the other Trainers and TF contacts to be base critters.

Well, yes. Everything has an opportunity cost of at least reasonable market value if sold. But when I get catalysts as drops and boosters in packs that I pay 10 mill for but get more then 10 mil out, in my head they are free.

Personally, I make a build in Mids before I even make a costume. (See MidsReborn.com) Using that as my base, I will start slotting attuned IOs (set IOs that have a floating level within the range of the set) as soon as I can, considering level and finances. I have some stuff stored in my base and I give new characters some starting cash to start buying. By the time I get to level 50 the only thing I need to do is swap in any purple sets that I may want for whatever set I used to level and use enhancement catalysts on my ATOs and WinterOs to make them Superior. And then work on incarnates and accolades. If you have a particular character you want build recommendations for, I suggest that you post that request in the appropriate AT sub forums and state your parameters -- cheap, money is no object, final, leveling, softcap, perma this or that, whatever you want.

I made a Mercs/Sonic which worked surprisingly well. The pets are much better behaved than they used to be and stayed inside the bubble most of the time. Sure, it's not as strong as a lot of other MM combos, let alone other ATs. But it performed well enough that I leveled him to 50 without much PLing and earned +3 incarnates.

I think Brute hits the sweet spot for those requirements. I'd recommend Mace/Shield or Rad as sturdy yet easy and both add extra damage. Mace can be customized to all sorts of looks and may not be as flashy as some of the new sets, but it also doesn't have gimmicks like combos or stack builders. Just bang people upside the head.

You can't have a monopoly when the supply literally just appears by magic.