Daemodand

I'm staying away from beta so I'm not burned out and don't have that "been there done that" feeling on launch day.

The floating fortress is still a head-scrather, but well, okay. At the very least that's an interesting peek at the development process.

It's been suggested often, and I'll /SIGN it very time. I've parked my KM/EA Brute in favor of my KM/SR Brute. The KM/SR Brute looks much cooler, mostly due to the fact you can actually see him. You can see the KM animations with EA...kinda. Compared to SR you miss out on a lot of the subtleties of them, and that's a shame since those animations are just awesome.

You'd be nerfing yourself pretty badly skipping Energy Cloak. The entire reason to even roll Brute EA is for the combat stealth, and the set depends upon that combat stealth for a portion of its mitigation, so skipping EC and replacing it with something else that gives the same Defense will still leave you weaker.

They could probably make more money by offering a $10 permanent version. I imagine that would sell quite well.

It confuses me that someone, especially on a BRUTE of all things, would have any difficulty at all with Trapdoor, but different people are at different levels of skill both in game strategy/performance and builds.

Though to be fair, for 50 levels the game teaches you that there's no real need for movement, then this late-game stuff comes along with Trapdoor and blue patches and all the sudden you realize the game has been lying to you for 50 levels. This is probably what causes most people problems, until they realize what's happening.

And now today's random roll!

ROLL THE EIGHTH
Malaise's Illusions: Chance for Psionic Damage (Recipe). v9,995
Mako's Bite: Chance for lethal damage (Recipe). 9,005
Perfect Zinger: Rech/Acc (Recipe). v9,995
Decimation: Acc/End/Rech (Recipe). 900,005
Trap of the Hunter: Acc/Immob/Rech (Recipe).v9,995

THIS ROLL: 938,995
EIGHT ROLL TOTAL: 385,521,883
EIGHT ROLL AVERAGE: 48,190,235

COMMENTARY: My best roll is followed by my worst. 3 vendorables and a fourth that should have been vendored. One half-way decent recipe. Random is a harsh mistress! The good news is the next roll practically has to be higher than this. I'll tell you though, so far this method is looking like it's not panning out. One wouldn't have too difficult a time using the direct-buy-craft-sell method to beat 48 million per AM, heck, one could probably direct-buy-sell and beat that. Oh, well! Random is random!

Get into an active Super Group and run TFs with them. Odds of such behavior will drop quite a bit (though there are no guarantees).

And now, today's random roll!

ROLL THE SEVENTH:
Obliteration: Acc/Dam/Rech/End (Recipe). 56,099,104
Numina's Convalescence: +Recovery and +Regeneration (Recipe). 55,800,005
Touch of Death: Dam/End/Rech (Recipe). 1,350,005
Lockdown: Chance for +2 Mag Hold (Recipe). 95
Devastation: Acc/Dam/Rech (Recipe). 2,070,005

THIS ROLL: 115,319,214
7 ROLL TOTAL: 384,582,888
7 ROLL AVERAGE: 54,940,413

COMMENTARY: Best roll of the seven! Got a good upward correction and am now 12 million out from my target. Hoping this trend continues. I knew I should've vendored the Lockdown, but there were bids out and the last 5 were above 10k, so I gave it a shot...and lost. 1 inf comes back to bite me once again.

I had 7 Carbon Rods listed for 500 that sold overnight for 1.5 million. The salvage market is crazy these days.

It was a good run, but with 19% set bonuses for damage and a Musculature Alpha, Stalker Claws still disappoints me. So, Ms. Bush Ranger, one of my favorite characters, is getting put back in deep freeze due to insufficient capability. She's supposed to be dead anyway, so it kinda makes sense at any rate.

What precipitated this was in doing Villain Tip missions at 50, you end up fighting a lot of Crey. Stalker Claws is pretty miserable against Crey. You really have to see to believe how little damage is done by Buildup>Assassin's Claw on a Paragon Protector. It doesn't injure the Protector so much as tickle it. It loses only a tiny sliver of health, and that is discouraging.

Taking on entire spawns of those Tanks, the story isn't much better. Shockwave also just tickles them and over the course of a single spawn fight it feels like I cast Shockwave one or two dozen times.

And it really isn't just Crey. It's objects and any group that uses robots. It gets old throwing umpteen attacks to kill anything.

I guess Claws is just a poor fit for Stalkers. A DPS set on an Archetype that specializes in Burst. You can hit things other Claws Archetypes can't because you've got Buildup, but that's just about it.

I noticed the lack of damage leveling up, but I kept telling myself it would get better. It didn't. Being locked in eternal combat with Ms. Liberty was a living hell.

Is Claws the worst Stalker primary? IMHO, it is. If you enjoy it, bless you and have fun. It sure isn't for me.

*rolls Broadsword and crosses fingers*

What Stalker primary would you put on the bottom of the pile? Which do you think is the overall best Stalker primary?

A Responsible Stalker? Oh, my!

My Stalker's a Warden... >.> <.< >.>

It's not always about DPS. Placate can be the difference between dropping a Minion, Lt or Boss and not dropping them. Also, it gives +20% ToHit.

And who doesn't love Placate>Crowd Control?

So in those rare instances where DPS truly is king, ie, Archvillain fights and objects with tons of Hit Points (pylons), Placate might not be the best idea. But for dropping Minions, Lts and even most Bosses? Yeah, it helps. A lot.

Plus, it's a conceptual/iconic Bane ability. Personally, I'd never want to be without it.

Super Reflexes doesn't need set bonuses to softcap. My main is MA/SR and I'm softcapped with zero positional Defense set bonuses, and one Steadfast 3% Def IO. I have all that bonus room to do other things instead, and it's really paid off.

To softcap SR sans bonuses: 5 50 Def IOs in toggles (or equivalent from Defense sets); 2 50 Def IOs in passives; 2 50 Def IOs in Maneuvers; 2 50 Def IOs in Weave; 1 3% Def Steadfast in Tough, 1 50 Def IO in Combat Jumping. I don't recommend you put sets in the 2 slotted passives but you can mix and match the toggles for some sweet bonuses.

On my Body build I use: Red Fortune - all but Endurance/Recharge + level 50 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% Recharge for the toggles; for Weave and Maneuvers 3-slotted I use: Luck of the gambler Defense, Defense/Endurance, Defense/Recharge. Passives: 2 50 Defense IOs with a third slot in Agile for the +6% ToHit IO. This gives some really great bonuses, but you can mix and match depending on your build goals.

At the very least, you can think about exploiting SR's softcap friendliness with this strategy, the beauty of which is it lets you concentrate your set bonuses on areas other than Defense (such as bonuses that go great with Defense: Regeneration, +HPs, etc.)

The downside of the method is it does cost you a power pick or two. My MA/SR is travelless (uses Ninja Run) so it isn't a problem but again it depends on whether you'd prefer spending the power picks or the set bonus opportunities. I went with the power picks and it's now my favorite way to build any SR character. For a Stalker, hitting the softcap is even easier, which is good because you'll want to build for more than 45% Defense as Stalkers only get around 85% DDR.

The Buildup Proc in Focus Chi, which I had for the longest time, is just a waste. It contributes practically nothing. It lasts 5 seconds if it goes off, and in Focus Chi, it'll be going off once every 3-4 minutes. In other words, useless. A real waste of a slot IMHO (unless you really do want that set bonus, but I've showed you that you don't need that set bonus.)

P.S. On a Scrapper/Brute the 3% PvP Def IO will bring you to 48% Defense for insurance against ever dropping below 45%.

For AC I'd pick DC. Why? Because AC/DC ROCKS!

P.S. What does "AC" mean?

Interesting! I hate the market, but I use it anyway out of sheer self-interest (it's the best way to get many things I want). I suppose hard core market haters refuse to even touch it, though I imagine those are a small minority, but who knows, maybe they constitute at least 51% of the population?

I do use SOs in my builds still, despite my market use. Mostly just as fillers while waiting on common IOs to fill.

The market can be a great source of SOs. I snagged a level 19 SO for my then-level 17 Stalker. Those really low level SOs are pretty rare but they are out there. I think they can be purchased with Merits? Waste of Merits, if true.

Making money on the market with SOs is quite an idea. I'm not so sure the spreadsheet format will make progress easy to follow. Perhaps a summary can be posted in this thread, if not daily then weekly?

Good luck!

Yes, those numbers are almost two years old. Not up to date at all.

And we do have financial reports during the time post-Going Rogue that we first started having red/yellow server loads again, and those revenues are down substantially. Downscaled server architecture is one possible explanation, or higher concurrency despite lower population, or a combination of those or other factors.

But fear not. This game will celebrate its 12th anniversary.

And now, today's random roll!

ROLL THE SIXTH:
Positron's Blast: Dam/Acc/End (Recipe). 4,500,006
Edict of the Master: Damage (Recipe). PENDING
Touch of Death: Acc/Dam/End (Recipe). 180,005
Decimation: Acc/Dam/Rech (Recipe). 900,068
Obliteration: Chance for smashing damage (Recipe). 14,220,005

THIS ROLL: 19,800,084 PENDING
6 ROLL TOTAL: 269,263,674 PENDING
6 ROLL AVERAGE: 44,877,279 PENDING

COMMENTARY: A lot of mediocre recipes making for a pretty poor roll. I'm now 22 million out from my target. This method is looking pretty bad right now, but we'll see.