Canine

I have a slightly different approach to MI's.

1) Dark Servants are terminated with extreme prejudice. Immediately, if not sooner.
2) The Master Illusionist herself is next on the hit list. She does far more damage than the Phantasm can, and as soon as you take her out, any Illusionists she summoned go away, too.
3) the Phantasm is way down the bottom of the list, after any other mobs in the spawn, I've never found the Phantasm (or it's Decoy) to do enough damage to worry about. Seneschals, non-summoned Illusionists, Steel Strongmen and Fencers are all more dangerous than a Phantasm, IMO.

It all depends on personal tastes, preferences and what you're playing, though.

On my Katana/Regen, MoG is a major part of dealing with Dark Servants and Dark Ring Mistresses. Because Twilight Grasp is NE typed, MoG gives me enough time to take out a Dark Servant while Focused Accuracy and Build up make sure I hit it. Against DRM's, it's slightly different. Run in with Build up firing off, and then hit Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly, hopefully one of them will knock the DRM down, giving me time to hit MoG, which means that by the time she's back on her feet, she can't hit me with Twilight Grasp OR (and this is the important bit) Mask of Vitiation, which is also NE typed.

Without TG or Mask of Vitiation, DRM's are a walkover for a lethal damage typed scrapper, given the Carnies oh so pleasant weakness to lethal damage.

Please note, I'm not saying that my way is the only way or best way, it's just what works for me.

Dark/Stone scrankers are fun, but by god they are heavy on the endurance. They're also not as good against Carnies as a non-Granite stone tanker with a similar level of investment in the build IME/O.

(please note, neither my Stone/Fire nor Dark/Stone tankers have uber builds, they both have a few IO's here and there, usually to fill annoyances while they were levelling and that's about it : -KB and +recovery IO's for the Dark, +move speed for the Stone and Steadfast Res/Def for both)

The main difference being that while Dark Armour resists end drains, so does Stone Armour, but Stone also dodges most of the [Psychic Visage] End Drains if you've got Minerals running and well slotted.

Dark Armour can keep coming back from next to no health through generous application of Dark Regeneration. Stone has to do with Earths Embrace when it's recharged. Dark can also easily deal with coming back from zero health via Soul Transfer with just a recharge in the basic slot.

All that being said, I vastly prefer my Stone/Fire to my Dark/Stone against Carnies, because I've never been held on my Stone/Fire versus carnies due to high Psi defence, whereas I've been held pretty easily by a large spawn including two MI's who sprogged their Illusionist pets and then all hit Flash/Blind, which was enough to burn through my mez protection... Bye bye damage mitigation toggles, hello there floor, I wonder what you taste like today?

Oh I *could* convert merits/inf. I'm just running Tips/Morality missions at between 2-5 per day, depending on how long I'm online and how many I feel like running. Like I said, I'm up to 25 Hero Merits now, I've spent one on a random roll to test my luck and the rest are just what I've accrued since GR went live. I'm in no hurry

Hurrah! Insults!

This is a now slightly out of date (huge, 5mb) composite image of the stuff I was hoarding on my toons. (imageshack is playing up for me, so either I'm having connection issues, or imageshack is)

All of that stuff was MINE in so far as it dropped for me, and *I* decided not to sell it.

Yet that makes me greedy?

Seriously, insulting people is not a good way to get a pleasant reception pretty much anywhere.

:edit:

Oh, I know it's inefficient by a lot of standards. It suits me though <shrug>.

Just remember that I'm the idiot who inf capped two toons just from selling Generic IO's. Time and patience are my preferred routes to getting things <grin> (I've since inf capped about another three or so toons from generic sales, and god knows how many others jsut from selling off my accumulated purple recipes that I was just holding on to and was never going to use).

As to my aversion to paying out large lumps of inf for things? I think it's just a long ingrained habit from the several years playtime in game before I had huge lumps of inf at my disposal. Logically I know I could spend it, but something at the back of my brain screams 'NO!!!! Don't do it!! You might need it later!!!'

So far as I recall, you can get anything except a Hami-O from Alignment Merits.

Of course, it takes a pretty huge investment of time and effort (or inf and reward merits, or all 4) to get purples or PvP recipes from AMerits. The Gladiators Armour +def is 30 merits, I think (I could be wrong, as I haven't gotten close enough yet to worry about the price, I'm only up to about 25 or so ).

Depends on your priorities.

I've been slowly building up Hero Merits on my main scrapper since they were introduced, and I'm up to about 25 or so now. I don't need to convert them to inf or anything else because I'm not interested in a fully tweaked out build, and I sell any purple drops I get, so most of my 50's are inf capped just from that combined with time and patience.

I'm building up to 30 or so merits so that if I find an alt that I finally decide to properly IO, then should I decide I need a Panacea or Gladiators +def recipe, I can get it without spending absurd amounts of inf, all I'll be spending is my own time.

And yes, I probably could have had 30 merits easily a month or so ago if I'd bought them for reward merits and inf, but I like the feeling that I directly earned each and every one of them.

I like to be self-sufficient on things like that.

Different people play the game with a different emphasis

We now return you to your regularly scheduled market argument...

I hope not, given that I've had 'issues' with that tech a good few times.

Like on my Elec/Sonic controller who didn't get offered the badge for the Neutropolis zone event, even though I was throwing controls left right and centre, buffing the team and debuffing ghouls when I had any spare endurance.

Or my Bots/Traps who's failed to be offered the badge a couple of times on different zone events because apparently my pets and traps don't count as me doing anything...

Pulling ideas from nowhere other than my recent market recollections:

High demand I'd say Alchemical Silver

Medium, umm.... Nevermelting Ice or Silver maybe?

Low demand, Mathematic Proof.

They're all commons, and to my semi-amateur recollection, they might fit within your criteria.

Of course I could well be totally misreading the market, so I'd suggest getting more opinions before you decide to continue.

Yes, they did, I still find myself occasionally looking for it (old habits die very hard in my case).

I can't recall when they were removed though, and I don't think it was ever mentioned in a patch note.

Not a chance, those are not Vanguard blades, these are the Vanguard Dual Blades. You can also use the Vanguard Katana and Broadsword options in Dual Blades.

Nope, not a chance, because taunt auras don't take taunt sets.

IIRC, that rather daft decision dates back to a bug with the interactions between the chance to stun proc and taunt auras, with the proc firing on the individual with the taunt aura as well as opponents, thus in some cases making the tanker/scrapper/brute 'pre-stunned'.

Rather than fix the bug, they took a slightly cheesy short cut and removed taunt sets from taunt auras... Why yes, I am still mildly irritated by that decision, why do you ask?

And yes, I know the standard code rant applies, and I have no idea how complex it would be to fix the issue, and it may very well be completely unfixable, but just from a logical point of view, having a power you can slot for taunt but not put taunt sets in seems... odd.

Most likely?

Lots of those 2886 others for sale are listed at 1, you'll need to wait until yours is picked as the one to be sold.

Or, if I was in that situation, yank it off the markets and vendor it. low level rares have very rarely (no pun intended) been worth selling on the markets. There's not enough demand for the really low level rare recipe sets to trickle through into demand for rare salvage.

Depends on whether or not Castle's list of things to update got passed to someone before he left or not.

I hope it gets fixed, but I hope more that the lobotomised pet AI for 'ranged' pets gets fixed first.

Could be a biological reference too. (OK, the Cookie Cutter Shark's not really vampiric, but it's just too nice a piece of adaptation to pass up )

And now I'm aware of it. Cheers for that, I must have somehow missed it in all the furore at the time.

Yep, overenthusiastic use of the snippers. Mea Culpa.

The point stands though

Now there's something you'd never have read a year or so ago....

Not that I'm aware of.

A lot of people seemed to take the official 'We do not publicly comment on personnel matters' stance from NCSoft/Paragon and a lack of any comment from Brawler to mean that he was sacked, but that's entirely speculation on their part.

I'll miss having a dev who was willing to listen to arguments, post on these boards and in general show that they were human around the place.

It's scant consolation, but at least there'll be less opportunity for the 'ZOMG Castle you suxxorz for ruining teh peeveepeez!1!11!!' trolls to pop up and derail any thread he posted in.

I apologise in advance, this is going to sound incredibly picky.

Prices for standard enhancements (TO/DO/SO) have actually fallen since Issue 1.

When I started, in Issue 3, the Origin Stores only carried the 'Power Ten' (which was a stupid idea, but lets not go there), and if you wanted anything exotic like, oh, maybe an End Mod for Stamina, you had to have a contact from who you could buy it. At the inflated contact rate (another stupid idea, I've busted my gut helping these guys out and they're ripping me off?!?). Until you got to Brickstown or Founders and unlocked the appropriate origin stores there, then you were stuck with Power ten stores/contacts, so far as I recall.

I remember buying stuff for a friend because he hadn't done the magic contact in that level range and so couldn't buy a couple of different flavours of SO, I think I used Lars in Striga, so that indicates it was somewhere in the late 20's/very early 30's.

Now that all types of enhancement are available from stores, you don't have to pay the contact's extortion and so it ends up as being slightly cheaper over a toons career than it used to be. (I seem to remember there being some mention a while ago about equalising prices, so contacts may not be gouging you as much as they used to, but it's been a long while since I bought an enhancement from a contact; a longstanding habit held over from when I realised how much contacts were charging over the odds )

Like I said at the beginning, picky

Minor nitpick, but if you can, I'd edit that cover, it's 'Divided' not 'Devided'.

1) I am fully aware of how ED works.

2) That toon dates from Issue 3, specifically the day before the EU launch of the game (the servers were up and available a day in advance to anyone who tried it). That toon has lived through the Regen nerfs, the GDN *and* ED.

3) I *loathe* respeccing.

4) That build (slot allocations at least) comes to you courtesy of Issue 5.

5) 6 slots in Stamina/QR and Hasten was more or less standard procedure when I respecced into that build after I'd been Hami-tank on Union's first successful old style hami raid.

6) I've not seen any need to fiddle with it because I'm used to it and it works for me.

7) It's always worth a giggle to see the reaction it gets :P

8) it's also a demonstration that you don't need a pimped to the gills, fully optimised, defence capped Ubermonster of a toon to take on Lady Winter.


:edit:

Oh, and a minor nitpick, but you'll notice that it's not 6 slotted with End Mods, there are 5 End Mod SO's and a Performance Shifter proc in each :P

As a followup, I tried again to see if I just got lucky last time.

Same result, pretty much the same pattern, too.

For anyone interested, this is the hideously non-optimised build I have on my Katana/Regen :

(those who care about optimised builds may now start screaming in horror )

Katana/Regen/Body Scrapper, level 50. Uncommon Recharge/Heal Alpha enhancement slotted.

Hit Dull Pain, Hasten, Instant Healing then charged in. Kept Divine Avalanche mixed in with the attack chain, keeping one or two DA buffs stacked (and my DA's slotted as an attack, not a def buff). At one point, I noticed my defence down to about -40%, and my health took a hit, popped MoG, carried on hitting her.

She fell over before I did, which is all that matters for a scrapper...

No fancy pants strategy required for a /regen scrapper with Dull Pain, Instant Healing and MoG, IMO

Not to mention misguided, since Inertial Reduction is FAR more useful on the Advanced Run than Speed Boost is.

Now that's just a prime example of the Universal Maxim (TM, Pat. Pending) in action, to wit - 'People are Idiots'.

Also a prime candidate for a petition for griefing, but that's another matter.