Chad Gulzow-Man

Well THAT badge title's a given for my Staff/Stone Brute, Year of the Monkey.

I believe that's @SS.; I just ran a trial with him earlier today. And you're right, it is a pretty great character.

Two grand in Paragon Points, or real money?

(I caught crap in another thread for spending $200 real moneys on inventory upgrades for both my accounts.)

Yeah, you could learn thing or two about foreshadowing, instead of just posting "TOTAL SPOILER. (wink!)" all the time.

I wasn't kidding when I said I was gonna buy ALL the storage upgrades that are on sale. I did. On both accounts.

They'll be back. I'm positive.

But I'm not "Golden Girl" positive, so I'll refrain from winking.

Except that you can be permanently banned from the game if caught buying or selling in-game items for real life money.

Losing $12.50 once is a lot cheaper than losing the near $1000 I've spent on my account over the last 8 years. Plus that money actually goes somewhere I want it to go (Paragon Studios), rather than funding Chinese gangs or prisons.

Energy Melee used to be the single target damage king, but was (and still is) very weak in AoE as a compensation for this fact. It tore down hard targets faster than anything else available, but was far slower at taking down large groups than any other melee set.

Many moons ago (I believe prior to Cryptic selling the game to NCSoft, though I could be wrong), someone got a wild hair up their patoot that Energy Melee was overpowered and seriously nerfed their heavy hitter, Energy Transfer, by significantly increasing the animation time from under 2 seconds to over 4 seconds (and thus lowering it's DPS by a drastic amount).

Now the set is full of long animating powers and only has a single AoE attack, whereas every other set has at LEAST two AoEs and faster-animating powers. It's other niche, the ability to stun enemies, only happens a low percentage of the time and at low magnitude (outside of the Stun power, which does pitiful damage), leaving it considered to be largely ignorable.

Somewhat ironically, I believe the nerf bumped Claws* to the top of the single target damage list; Claws is, of course, also very powerful in regards to AoEs. Just check the Brute boards for "CEBR" (Claws/Elec Brutes Rule) threads.
* This was back in the day of the original melee power sets, though... I do not know which is the single target damage king currently.

Number of AoE (Targetted AoE, PBAoE or Cone) Attacks in each melee set: (Ignoring procs in non-damage powers)
Battle Axe: 3 (Whirling Axe, Cleave, Pendulum)
Broad Sword: 3 (Slice, Whirling Sword, Head Splitter)
Claws: 3 (Spin, Eviscerate, Shockwave) -- also has 2 ranged attacks (Focus, Shockwave)
Dark Melee: 3 (Shadow Maul, Dark Consumption, Soul Drain)
Dual Blades: 3 (Typhoon's Edge, Sweeping Strike, One Thousand Cuts)
Electrical Melee: 4 (Jacobs Ladder, Thunder Strike, Chain Induction, Lightning Rod)
Energy Melee: 1 (Whirling Hands)
Fiery Melee: 2 (Breath of Fire, Fire Sword Circle)
Ice Melee: 2 (Frost, Frozen Aura)
Katana: 3 (Flashing Steel, The Lotus Drops, Golden Dragonfly)
Kinetic Melee: 2 (Repulsing Torrent, Burst)
Staff Fighting: 3 (Guarded Spin, Eye of the Storm, Innocuous Strikes)
Stone Melee: 2 (Fault, Tremor)
Street Justice: 2 (Sweeping Cross, Spinning Strike)
Super Strength: 1 (Foot Stomp) -- animates much faster and does more damage over double the area vs. Whirling Hands
Titan Weapons: 4 (Defensive Sweep, Titan Sweep, Whirling Smash, Arc of Destruction)
War Mace: 3 (Whirling Mace, Shatter, Crowd Control)



I was waiting long and hard for an Energy Melee revamp and a proliferation over to Scrappers, but I have to admit, Street Justice is everything I wanted Energy Melee to be and more. It fit the character concepts I wanted to build much better, to the point that I think I only have one character that still requires Energy Melee for concept at this point.

Not like it's been tested in the beta or anything yet. Hold your horses, O Quoter of Ioz.

I really, REALLY hate "playing the market." It is not fun for me in the least.

I usually dump every piece of salvage I get on there for 1 inf except for Rares, which I stockpile because I don't want to play the market. I dump common recipes on the market for 1 inf as well, even though they sell better directly to vendors, simply because they are thus cheaper to players who are still working on their crafting badges.

If there's something I want and can't get for under 20M on the market, then I'll buy it straight off with Reward Merits or Alignment Merits.

I bought the Hecatomb set today, and feel that the current sale price of $12.50 is only a little bit steep. (I'd prefer it capped at $10, or 800PP--side note: I also believe all the other enhancements are overpriced as well.) I'm not really regretting it, because that means I don't have to spend weeks on end grinding to get it in-game.

I've simply valued my time over my money in this case.

Nope, not a typo. Been saving my points for storage upgrades ever since Freedom went live.

Gotta side with D_K on this one.

I'll be honest; I purchased the SBO assuming that it will function approximately the same as the IO version, be that now or in the future. As long as it isn't measurably worse than the IO version, then I won't have any complaints.