ClawsandEffect

Actually, it's a pretty good backstory.

This is truth.

The easiest way to tell if there really IS no supply is to look at the dates of the last 5 sold. If all of the dates are the same day you are looking at it, it simply means that every one that has been listed has sold instantly. If you place a bid slightly higher than the apparent going rate, you will most likely end up with the very next one listed, which can take anywhere from a couple minutes to a few hours. (That's why I suggested placing your bids when you first log in and checking them the next day when you log in)

On the other hand, if the dates are all 2 or more days prior to when you are looking, then maybe there really IS a shortage of them.

Foot Stomp does use a different set than KO Blow. It is a PBAoE, while KO Blow is a melee attack. Obliteration is a good one for that, but it may be more than you want to spend (haven't looked lately). If Obliteration is more than you want to spend, Scirocco's Dervish and Multistrike are both cheaper options for it.

Also, something you will want to be cognizant of when you start slotting Set IOs. Since you don't have a lot of recharge slotted in your attacks currently, you may find that your endurance recovery is no longer up to the task of keeping your blue bar filled.

Adding more recharge has the obvious effect of speeding up how fast your attacks cycle. That means you will burn more endurance than you were before. It might not be an issue if the endurance reduction you gained in your attacks evens it out, but it's something to be aware of. You can slot a few other things to help with that too. Any set that gives a recovery bonus will help, as will a Numina's Convalescence +Regen/+Recovery.

Crushing Impact and Obliteration both have a 5% recharge bonus for slotting 5 of them, and there is a limit of 5 of any one set bonus. So just make sure you keep your total number of those two sets at 5 or less to make sure you aren't wasting set bonuses. (You may not care, but it annoys me when I realize I've slotted something I'm getting no benefit from) So, if you do go with Obliteration in Foot Stomp, make sure you slot 4 or fewer Crushing Impact sets.

Aegis would be a good set for your resistance powers, it gives you 3.13% to your Fire/Cold defense for 3 slots, so you should be able to gain quite a bit there. (Pretty cheap too, last I looked)

(All of the additional sets I listed are available at level 50)

We have had some lively debates, haven't we?

I have many characters whose origin is a little askew of the "normal" type for that origin.

My Magic origin scrapper is just a dude who happened to acquire a demonic soul-sucking sword (expressed as a Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper), without the sword, he's just a dude.

My Main character is Science origin, even though Tech would fit somewhat better. He's a cyborg, but he invented his cybernetics himself. He was forced to use those cybernetics when there was an "accident" at his lab that made his own limbs unusable. His powers came from his own skill as a scientist.

There are many more than that, those are just samples. The point is, if I were suddenly forced to have incantations and magic rituals involved with my BS/DA scrapper, I would be highly annoyed, because the sword is the source of all of his powers. He's not a magician.

Very unlikely.

Remember, Ghost Widow's very existence is tied into the continued existence of Arachnos.

If she joined a group whose goal is the elimination of Arachnos it would be akin to suicide.

Scirocco is much more likely to go good than Ghost Widow. He already has it in him, he just needs the curse broken and he can switch.

I'll help out with this project too.

I have a bunch of the pieces he'll need sitting on characters which I have no immediate use for, that I'd be willing to contribute.

I already have his global. It's the same as his forum handle.

Here's what I do that might work for you as well.

I never completely bankrupt any of my characters, for the exact same reason.

What I'll do is set an arbitrary minimum number that I want all my characters to have on them. Say, for sake of argument, that you want to leave your characters with at least 20 million influence at all times.

Go through and transfer anything they have above that number to the character you're building. That way you can consolidate your resources on that character, but if you decide you want to play a different one before you finish with it they still have money to work with themselves.

Edit: All level 50 enhancements may not be feasible, but all level 40 enhancements is very doable. I just worked out a Mids' build using level 40 enhancements, and it was pretty easy to get softcapped.

I'm guessing from context that you meant to say "don't" instead of "do"?

If so, you would be correct, but it works like this: You will ALWAYS gain in total enhancement when slotting a full set of something over SOs of the same level.

But, you will occasionally lose out in a specific aspect of enhancement. Example: Obliteration gives you 66.25% Accuracy, 96.30% Damage, and a whopping 89.93% recharge enhancement, but the cost of the damage and recharge enhancement being slightly higher is that the set only provides 18.55% end reduction. Still an overall advantage in total enhancement, but you lose some end reduction to gain more recharge.

(I'm pulling my percentages straight from Mids', so they should be accurate)

With Street Justice, if you want you can slot Initial Strike, Heavy Blow, Rib Cracker, and Shin Breaker all exactly identically. The problem is, if you do that, you are going to miss out defense from one position or another. Would slotting them identically in pairs be acceptable to you? Like say, slot Initial Strike and Heavy Blow the same, then slotting Rib Cracker and Shin Breaker the same, but use different sets for each pair. Would that work?


You don't have to leave any holes at all. But your specific requirements are probably going to leave a few holes here and there. I would say, if you HAVE to leave a hole for whatever reason, AoE is the safest one to leave.

Well, now you're asking a question that I can say more than "Well, generally, you want to do this" in answer to.

Obviously, the first thing you want to do is get your defense soft-capped to normal content. It's not difficult to do that with an SR when you add Invention Sets to the mix.

Next, you'd want to gain some more max HP. You'll probably add to your Max HP by accident when you're chasing other bonuses, so I wouldn't sweat about that too much just yet.

Getting more regen will help too, especially if your concept doesn't allow for Aid Self. Shoot for at least 200%. You might not get all the way to 200%, but it gives you something to aim for. Again, don't sweat it too much if you don't get it to 200%, anything above base value will help.

After that, add some recharge and you should be in good shape.

As far as IO Set building characters, SR is one of the most straight-forward sets to work with. I'm not going to get TOO specific on it, because once I start getting specific I come off as telling people how to build their character, and I'm trying to avoid that.

At the risk of telling you what to do, transfer any cash you don't have any immediate use for to the character you're trying to build. Saves hassle down the line when all the resources you're going to commit are already consolidated on one character.

There's another option.

Buying things with Reward Merits gets expensive in terms of how many you have to send to get stuff. But, you can cash in 50 reward Merits and 20 million cash for Alignment Merits. So, if you know you need 2 alignment merits for something, and you've already gotten one from somewhere, you can take some of those reward merits you've probably also got and add some cash to get what you need without spending 100's of millions on it or 240 Reward Merits.


You can build anything you like out of nothing but level 50 enhancements, but they may not be as efficient with set bonuses as a build that takes the bonuses into account first.

It's doable, but your character may not end up quite as strong as it could be otherwise. If you're okay with that, there's no problem. You know, you don't have to be at the absolute bleeding edge of performance to have a good build.


You don't have to swap characters at all if you don't want. You can do everything you need to do on that one character, just check the market when you log in with it and collect what you acquired, or maybe adjust some bids if it has been a long time since you placed them. It's somewhat more efficient to do it on several characters, but it is by no means required.

Well, now that I know what you're trying to build specifically, I can answer a couple of your earlier questions a little better.

You're in luck, that particular power set combination is easily buildable using nothing but level 50 enhancements. Mako's Bite, Obliteration, Scirocco's Dervish, and Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control all go up to level 50 and provide defense you want.


Actually, you'll frequently GAIN enhancement by using Set Inventions.

Mako's Bit gives you, at level 50: 66.25% Accuracy, 93.64% Damage, 66.25% End Reduction, and 66.25% Recharge. Or the equivalent of 9 SOs worth of enhancement across the entire power. You'll lose a tiny bit of damage, but you'll gain twice as much accuracy, end reduction, and recharge over SO slotting.

In contrast, 1 Acc/1End/1Rech/3Dam will give you 38% to Acc/End/Rech and 95% to Damage.

I'm just quoting this small piece so my post isn't huge, but I'm addressing Statesman's reasons for going in alone.

First, he lacked information about the nature of what Darrin Wade had planned. He really had no reason to believe that there was anything Wade could do to hurt him. He probably just figured that this was a lame attempt by another villain to bring him down that would end in failure because he's indestructible. Remember, this is a man who took a nuclear explosion to the face and walked away. If you could do that, wouldn't you be pretty confident in your ability to withstand just about anything this twerp could do?

Calling the rest of the Phalanx wouldn't have provided the information he needed, even if he had chosen to do so, because YOU were the only person that had the information needed. And he didn't know that you had that information, or where you were to ask about it.

Second, this was an intensely personal confrontation for him. He wanted to bring Wade in by himself because it was so intensely personal.

As calm and collected as he was, you can bet he was absolutely FURIOUS inside, and it's a credit to the man's self control that he didn't create some modern art with Wade's entrails.

Looking at it with those to points in mind, it makes perfect sense for him to go in alone and ignore any trap Wade might have prepared. His only mistake was not taking the threat seriously enough because he was so used to shrugging off the worst anyone could do to him.

Do you think Superman was cautious the first time he encountered kryptonite? Probably not that first time he did. But you can be sure he was cautious about it every time after that. Unfortunately, Statesman didn't have the opportunity to be cautious about that obelisk in the future.

I'll try to answer them as best I can for you Sam.

Yes, you can acquire all the stuff you need just by playing the game. It will take a long time to put together a complete build that way, but it is possible without ever touching the market.

You'll definitely want to run some tip missions to acquire Hero or Villain merits to buy some of the pricier/harder to find items directly. Nothing you'll be likely to use will cost you more than 2 Alignment merits. Otherwise it's just luck of the draw. There are a few pieces that you'll HAVE to buy directly via some means, because they almost never drop in regular content. Fortunately, the devs have made that a lot easier on us in recent years.

It's very possible to do, but depending on the goals of your build it may not be feasible for all of them. For example, if you're building for positional defense with a set like SR, Shield, or Ninjitsu, you can have a build that is all level 50 enhancements. If you're building for typed defense for a set like Willpower, Ice, or Invuln, you'll pretty much have to have a variety of levels involved. The reason for that is that positional defense bonuses are found in sets that go all the way to level 50 (Obliteration, Mako's Bite, Scirocco's Dervish), while a lot of the typed defense bonuses are found in sets that cap lower (Eradication, Kinetic Combat).

But, if it's really important to you to have all the numbers the same, you can build for typed defense using all level 30 sets, as all the pieces that give typed defense exist at that level.

Generally, the usefulness of the set bonuses or individual enhancement is what determines the price. Luck of the Gambler 7.5% Recharge IOs are expensive because of how useful they are by themselves. Same goes for the Numina's Convalescence and Miracle uniques. Kinetic Combats are expensive because of the bonus that 4 of them give you, and certain pieces are more expensive than others.

Asa general rule, orange colored IOs will be more expensive than yellow ones. Purples will be more expensive still, and the PvP IOs are insanely expensive (good thing they aren't necessary for a good build). A build that makes use of a lot of Kinetic Combats and Luck of the Gambler's will be more expensive than one that relies on Mako's Bite and Gift of the Ancients.

You can spend about 10 minutes in the market interface and get a good idea of what things will cost. The pieces that cost more tickets or merits will almost always have a higher market price as well.

This is a case of a little bit of research going a long way. I've absorbed a lot of information in my use of the Invention system, and I can tell when I build something in Mids' roughly how much it will cost me to do in-game. The best part of that is I didn't really have to try and learn it, I just ind of picked it up as I went along. I don't remember ever sitting down and saying "I'm going to learn about Inventions today"

People recommend to build for defense because defense is a useful addition to ANY build, and it's one of the easier things to acquire good amounts of. You don't necessarily have to with EVERY build, but they'll all benefit from at least moderate defense slotting. With blasters, for example, people often recommend slotting for ranged defense, because A) it's pretty easy to do, and B) even moderate amounts will help.

Generally, Recharge is the next most frequently recommended thing to slot for. For pretty much the same reasons. It's not difficult to do, and any amount you get is better than none.

Specific power sets have different priorities to slot for first. For example, with a Super Reflexes, your first goal would be to hit the soft-cap on positional defense (45%). That's because SR doesn't really have anything but defense to rely on. After that, Max HP, Recharge, and Regen are all useful.

Willpower, on the other hand, wants to get a decent amount of typed defense to stack with the defense that already exists in the set via Heightened Senses. After that, Max HP, Regen, and recharge are good additions.

Melee will ALWAYS benefit from defense, and I recommend putting as much in there as you can without compromising any other goals you have with that build. Like, don't slot for defense if it takes away from something else you could be slotting, but if there isn't anything else you could obtain that would be useful, you might as well.


A whole AT, not so much. But it is very possible to put together a template for typed defense versus positional or for recharge. You can essentially put together 2-3 templates that will work just about any character, depending on what type of defense (if any) the power set has, or how much that build benefits from recharge.

It has more to do with individual power sets than it does entire ATs. You wouldn't want to use the exact same IO sets on a SR that you'd use for an Invuln, and vice versa. It also has to do with what powers you have available. Example: a build designed for a MA/SR would not work as well on an Electric/Willpower. Electric has more AoE attacks than Martial Arts, and you'd want different set bonuses for the two. But you CAN get a general idea of what IOs you'd want to use with which power sets, and apply them as needed to individual characters.

It seems a lot more complicated than it really is. Once you start playing around with it, you'll start to notice that you're remembering things you put no effort into remembering from other builds.

If you have all the cash you'll need to purchase stuff from the market, not much work at all. What I do if I'm trying to put a character's build together, is I'll stop by the market at the beginning of a play session and place bids on the stuff I need. Then I just play like I normally would and either check the market before I log off, or check it the next time I log that character in. Checking it one time when you log in will probably be less hassle. You can see what you managed to acquire and place bids on stuff all at once.

If you want to avoid the market altogether, it will be quite a bit of effort, but if you spread it out some instead of feeling like you have to do it all at once, it goes a little smoother. Generally, if you want to do that, set priorities on what you want NOW, and what you can wait on. Usually I'll pick up things like the Numina's unique right away, because it will have a noticeable impact on its own, and I'll leave the full sets for later (especially if I need all 6 pieces). You can also acquire things with more than one character and just email them to the character that needs them. So if you have multiple characters sitting on a lot of Merits, you can buy what you need spread out amongst them, instead of feeling like each character has to earn all their IOs themselves.

I've always respected, and defended your desire to avoid using IOs. You can play the game however you like, and I was never one of the people that made a huge argument out of it. But, if you're serious about delving into fully IOed builds, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have about specific builds, as well as general knowledge questions like these.

Couple things.

1) you won't be using Nova in a DFB.

2) you better make sure you kill everything with that Nova, or you're going to have some VERY annoyed teammates.

Knocking things away from the team is not necessarily bad, but when you knock an entire group of things that far from the team it's usually not cool unless they don't get back up.

One of them also has characters in it that everyone in the WORLD recognizes, and CoH is still the better game.

Don't know how you'd manage that, seeing as how Parry doesn't unlock until level 8.

The rest of your points are valid though.

Oh yeah, Hi Khaun! Remember me from Pinnacle?

I'd go with Mace/Shield as well. It gets more high damaging attacks than broadsword, and gets an insanely high damage attack at level 8.

You're also discounting the fact that any minions in melee range of a Dark Armor will be stumbling around or quaking in fear.

Does removing 2/3rds of what you're fighting from the equation count as resistance? I mean, it does reduce the amount of damage yo take through powers found in the set.

If you're alone it's not a good idea unless you have some defense going. Good chance you'll die before you can fire your Nova.

If you want to try it, do it once without any outside help, and then do it again after popping 4 Lucks. You'll see what I mean.

Ummm, so he wouldn't murder Darrin Wade.

I'm sure he wanted to. I'm sure he considered it.

I'm also just as sure that he knows himself well enough to know when he needs to get away from a situation and clear his head so he DOESN'T pull Wade's trachea out through his rectum.

He flew off so he could have the time to really turn things over in his mind and cool off enough to not tear Darrin Wade limb from limb.

I'm not sure I could boast the same ability myself.

Someone does that to MY family and I'm as strong as Statesman?

Well, you'd hear this:

Longbow Commander: Eeeeew, we're gonna need a bucket.

Edit: And I do concur that Manticore was largely at fault here. Like, maybe Synapse would have been fast enough to get in there and save Alexis if he hadn't been so concerned about not admitting he screwed up?

Actually, Manticore's flaws are a direct result of his strengths as well.

With as rich, smart, and skilled at combat as he is, it would be more surprising if he were a nice guy on top of it. With the combination of strengths he exhibits, it would be a rare person indeed who wasn't a complete jerk. His entire life he's been told by his yes men (and society itself) that he is better than everyone else, and he's been believing it for a while now.

The end result is a rich, intelligent, skilled individual that also happens to be a borderline sociopath.

Manticore is proof that even good guys are susceptible to the corruption of power. It actually surprises me that he still IS a good guy. A personality like his would lead to supervillainy in just about anyone else.

Edit: The flaw that screwed everything up here is a massive case of overconfidence in his own abilities. He IS good at what he does, but he's not as good as he thinks he is.

Regen has regen debuff resistance in Fast Healing now.