Call Me Awesome

Good descriptions here and well laid out. This should be sticky'd.

In looking at pre-builts I would sort first for video card looking for an ATI 5770 or better or an Nvidia 260 or better... I'm not totally up on the Nvidia line but my understanding is that the 460? seems to be a good price/performance choice.

After the vid card I'd look to CPU, I'm a ways from current but I would tend to look at Intel i5 or i7 looking for a higher clock speed. I really don't know a lot about AMD CPU's... it's been a number of years since I built a machine with one. I imagine some of the other forum regulars could advise you here; I'm too far out of current to offer a worthwhile opinion.

RAM you'll want at least 4GB, but this is very cheap to upgrade if the rest of the hardware is up to snuff. DVD burner drives are a pretty mature technology nowadays, it's hard to get a really bad one so whatever comes with the machine is probably fine.

Hard drive - 500GB should be more than enough space for most people, look for a 7,200RPM model. I've had good luck with Western Digital over the years and bad luck with Seagate. Take that for what it's worth, but lately Seagate's quality control seems to have slipped.

Power supply - make sure you've enough power... at least 500 watts and preferably more. A name brand PSU is a good idea although the spec sheet on a prebuilt may not specify.

Motherboard - I've had good luck with Asus, Gigabyte and MSI; no name Mobos can be problematic. Don't buy anything from PC Chips, they're garbage.

Ibuypower and Cyberpower PC seem to have a good reputation for build quality at reasonable prices so I'd look there. Newegg has some configurations of each manufacturer or you can customize the machine buying direct, but you'd probably have a delay in shipping.

A cursory glance at Newegg found a few promising machines in the $800-$950 range.

I've soloed a couple of the easier AV's leveling up (Doc Vahz and Maestro) on my BS/Regen scrapper with standard enhancements... this was in issue 5 so DO/SO's were all I had to work with. I also soloed a couple of high level AV's with that same character, also on SO enhancements (Bobcat, one or two others). All of this was back in issue 5-6 so IO's weren't even thought of yet.

My Ill/Rad has soloed a few AV's as well, on SO's in the mid-30's and with a Perma-PA IO build at 50. I have a Rad/Sonic in the mid-30's and he's effective... I haven't played him much solo though so I can't comment on the AV handling ability. I'd think it would be tough since AV's resist debuffs heavily and a Rad/Sonic defender doesn't have much protection apart from the debuffs.

Here's my 2 cents on laptops from personal experience.

IBM - I've had 4 of them, 3 have died on me. They seemed to live 2-3 years then quit. One of them was sent in for repair (warranty) and came back functional but died about a year later. The last IBM I had was bought around 2004. The last one is still functional but was retired a number of years ago.

Sony - I've had two 17" Vaio units, both are still in use. One of them lost it's DVD drive and occasionally shows some strange behavior but it's still working 3 years later. The other has been relatively trouble free.

Asus - I currently have 3 of them, all are relatively inexpensive in the $400-$500 range; one is 2 years old and the other two are new in the last 6 months. All three are working perfectly and seem to offer considerable bang for the buck. The older one has been 100% reliable from day one (well, once I reformatted it to XP from Vista) as a Flash Video encoding machine working pretty constantly.

Sager - I've had two, one was purchased in 2003 and destroyed in a fire in '04 but trouble free for the time I had it. The other is a huge 17", 11lb monster that I bought as a video editor (and the machine I'm typing on right now) and it's been bulletproof. Fast, reliable, expensive and heavy and solid as a rock. I've had it for 3 years now, added two hard drives (it has 3 bays) and reformatted the OS a couple of times but it's a workhorse. Lugged around from show to show, banged up, broken the lid latch, cracked the case and it still works perfectly. Apparently you can't kill it with a hammer.

Dell - I've had two, one was bought in the late '90's and worked pretty well until it's retirement 4 years later. The other was bought in '04 and was one of the "inexpensive" units they sold at the time. To say it was a piece of junk is an understatement; constant crashes and file corruption, replaced the HD and reformatted to the same issues, replaced RAM to no avail and finally relegated it to a word processing machine until it finally died.

Alienware - I JUST bought a MX11 last month; it's a bit too early to tell about it's quality but a core i7 with a low level UM COH capable Nvidia card in a 4lb package that small seems promising. It has a few quirks with the software; when I get the chance I'll be formatting it to get rid of the garbage.

All my machines except for the new Alienware have been formatted and reinstalled; I've found that the garbage that OEM's put on the machines causes more problems than it's worth.

I haven't bought an OEM desktop since '92, the last was a Packard Bell so you'll understand why I preferred building my own after that

I can say from my experience leveling a few def based melee toons, 3 scrappers and a tank, that I start noticing my defense working at about 25% give or take; and really start to feel strong around 35% defense. Of course 40-45% is where you start feeling godly but my recollections are that much less than 20% and I start feeling "is this thing on?"

On my Fire/Rad I have Bonfire and use it as another source of AOE damage, it works fine for this as long as you keep the mobs immobilized with Fire Cages. Remember that Cages has a 12 second -KB in it, so as long as you keep reapplying them at least every 10 seconds the mobs won't go flying. Usually I hit Cages practically as they come up to ensure that a miss doesn't send my toys flying.

Obviously this applies to moderately tough groups... easy mobs tend to die too fast for Bonfire to be very useful.

Here's the 24" monitor I bought a few months ago on Newegg for $219. I bought it to replace a failed Samsung SyncMaster 204 and it's much superior.

Looking at the unit you've selected it ought to serve you well; the specs look good and I think it would be tough to go too far wrong with an Asus.

This is a no-brainer, Hack is by far the better attack. There's some logic to having Slash in the low levels as a filler but it will quickly become obsolete by the early 20's. By the time you've picked up Disembowel you'll never use Slash again and it's very marginal after you get into the mid-teens.

I've run two broadsword scrappers to 50, one BS/Regen in issue 5 and a BS/Shield in issue 14. If you do take Slash for some reason plan on respecing it out by the time you reach the mid-20's. Personally I see no reason in wasting a power pick on something that I'm going to toss when I get level 22 and SO's. I guarantee that there's something you'll get more use out of even as a lowbie.

Check out my guide for soft capping defense. An Invuln built to the soft cap is nearly as tough as a Granite tanker.