Adeon Hawkwood

Laevateinn is actually running a mutual fund although I don't think it's taking investments at this time.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=184314

Realistically making significant profits off of the market is not a simple matter. It can be done with minimal time investment for the actual buying and selling but you do need to spend time on some combination of research and crafting if you want to make more than pocket change.

Or even a just FAQ on understanding why the market works the way ti does and how to buy things at reasonable prices.

Equipping characters with full IO sets without using the market will take a long time (and a lot more patience than I have).

One thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of Uncommon recipes (the yellow ones) go for very little on the market (less than you'll spend on crafting them in many cases). There are a lot of very good sets in those groups so if you mostly stick to them you can just buy them on the market for very little and use architect tickets to get the salvage that you need. You won't be able to make a perma-hasten build with them but if you're careful you can make a pretty good build on the cheap.

Using Reward rolls to try and get specific rare recipes is pretty much useless. For the most part your better off making the rolls, selling the recipes and using the cash to buy what you actually wanted.

An alternative method that you might like given your preference for reliability over randomness is to take your AE tickets buy a variety of rare tier 3 salvage and list it on the market for a little under 1 million. It should sell overnight netting you almost 900K after the market takes it's cut. You won't get rich doing this but since most of the more useful rare recipes (i.e. the ones from damage sets) sell for between 1mil and 15mil so you can easily save up for the recipes that you want without having to worry about how much the RNG likes you.

Finally I will note that you don't need to be a capitalist guru to make inf on the market, you just need patience and a calculator.

Yes, a Rad/ Defender will have better debuffs than a /Rad controller. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Defender is better overall however. The difference between a Defender primary and a Controller secondary is not that huge at higher levels whereas Defender secondaries are rather weak while Controller Primaries are very stong.

In any case, you may want to check out Red Tomax:
http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/...ation_Emission
http://www.redtomax.com/data/powers/...ation_Emission

Yes... and no.

Basically each AT has it's own set of scaling values for everything. In general an AT will have better scaling values (relative to other ATs) for the effects in it's Primary than those in it's secondary.

So comparing the same set in Blasters and Defenders. The Blaster will do more damage because they have a higher damage scaling value. However, defenders have higher scaling values for buff/debuff meaning that the secondary effects of the powers are more powerful for the defender. For example in Energy Blast most of the attacks do knockback. The Energy/* Blaster will do more damage but less knockback than a */Energy Defender.

The place where this breaks down a bit is with powers that use either a pet or a pseudo pet. For the majority of these the devs did not adjust the scaling factors in situations where the same power is used by multiple ATs.

Pretty much although it's worth building a bit of Recovery/Recharge into your Solo build as well. You definetly want a -KB IO, but for your solo build the one in Blessing of the Zephyr might be more useful since the set has some defense bonuses so putting it in helps anyway. For Body Armor the Steadfast Protection +3% defense IO is always useful.

Similarly if you pay for your account on a monthly basis buying the Mac edition is better value than buying the Mac Booster Pack.

The collared capes come from Super Booster 2: Magic. For the shoulders I think you've talking about the Valkyrie costume from the Mac Pack.

I just have a TA/A defender at the moment.
When I16 comes out I plan to make a Traps/AR Defender as well (mostly because I love my AR/Dev Blaster). Story wise he's likely to end up as either my Blasters younger brother or my blaster in a different suit of armor .

Actually the animation bugs me even more now. The ice seems to form while I'm still drawing the arrow .

Very nice. I'm running about 26% on mine + another 6% or so if I remember to throw a smoke grenade. I could get it higher but I confess to sacrificing some slots in the name of what I want rather than what I need.

As with everything it's a trade off. I chose to increase Recovery, Recharge and Defense in place of Regeneration and Health. For a while I had several Devastations in my build for the Health and Regeneration but I ended up swapping them for Thunderstrikes since I decided I liked Recovery and defense more. That being said slotting single target attacks with three Devastations and 2 Entropic Chaos IOs would give a decent amount of Regen and Health. Similarly for my travel powers I prefer Blessing of the Zephyr for the defense bonuses.

I did want to increase the number of slots in Health but in the end I decided those slots were more useful elsewhere.

When it comes to set bonuses I think the best advice is pick a couple of different ones and focus on those. The benefits from each bonus are pretty small so you really want them to be nitcieable you need to stack different instances of the same bonus.

Positron's blast actually has Recovery not Regen by the way.

Grumble, stupid forum ate my post so here we go again.

First off most of your IOs are level 30 or 40, I'm assuming you intended those that could to be 50 . In general you've done a good job but I think you've gone a bit overboard with your Frankenslotting especially for your blasts. Slotting for damage and accuracy to the exclusion of all else is rarely the optimal solution. You don't need that much accuracy since archery has a high base accuracy and you have Tactics. Additionally I think you're overdoing it with the procs a bit, a build based on proc damage is workable (although personally I dislike it) but you want them in your Archery powers not your trick arrow powers so that you can spam them more.

For Fistful of Arrows and Rain of Arrows I recommend a 5-slot Positron (all except the Proc). It provides decent boosts to everything important and has a lovely collection of set bonuses (specifically Recovery, Accuracy and Recharge). Ragnarok is even better although the extra cost is not really worth it.

Personally I wouldn't bother with Ranged Shot. Sniper shots just aren't that useful to a defender since you normally open with your debuffs anyway. Consider putting in Ice Arrow to give you a hard mez to use against nasty minions/lieutenants. You could also put in Explosive Arrow for more AoE goodness.

Similar things go for your single target attacks except here I recommend 6-slotted Thunderstrikes for the defense bonus.

As Rush said lose the proc in Flash Arrow but stick in a different IO from the set, that recharge bonus is nice.

For glue arrow you can lose one of the recharge and it'll only cost you a couple of seconds recharge which is probably not critical. I also find that one snare IO is sufficient but YMMV.

For Acid Arrow Lysome Exposures make an affordable (about 6million each) way to save a slot or two. Membrane Exposures are also nice (for both Acid Arrow and Oil Slick) but tend to be a bit pricier.

I wouldn't bother with the Chance for Build up in Aim. It only activates 1 time in 20 which to my mind is pretty much worthless although again YMMV.

For Emp Arrow I recommend replacing the Accuracy IOs with Endoplasm Exposures (about 5mil each) and replace the other IOs with regular recharge IOs. The damage procs won't do enough to make it a damaging power, you want to slot it as you Emergency Stop button.

Ok, sleepy time now.
Adeon