Dr_Ohm

I'm afraid this is pure theory-crafting, rather than personal experience. Take it as you will.

How about having one member of the team call targets? Everyone could target through them with single target attacks. The boss chappies (I forget the name) get dropped first, then the Painted Ones, then you can mop up.

Heh. Smurphy laid down a challenge similar to the one you propose a while ago, at a time when marketeer-haters were more prevalent and vocal than they seem to be now. If I recall correctly he actually promised to do the work himself, with his own funds, and all anyone had to do was give him a set of instructions of how to manipulate market prices and make a profit.

Did anyone ever actually take him up on that, market foum regulars? I don't recall that they did.

Oo, can I play too? I always enjoy reading these threads. When I started doing so I learned a fair bit about basic economics.

I think part of the problem anti-flippers have conceptually is that they imagine the market as static. There are 100 Alchemical Silvers on the market. The flipper comes along and buys 50 of them. Now there are 50 left. Reduced supply means the prices can go up, especially if the flipper relists half the supply at a higher price than they bought it. Evil flippers are raising prices.

The market is not static. It is a flow of stuff. Sometimes a trickle, sometimes a flood, depending on the time, the day, and a big dose of chance. There are 100 Alchemical Silvers. Check again in 20 seconds. Maybe now there are 50. Maybe 200. Maybe there are still 100, but they won't be the same salvage. Those are sold, and more have taken their place. As supply and demand vary, so does the price. It does this naturally, obeying simple, well understood economic principles. Since supply and demand can vary quite a bit, even moment to moment, so do prices.

It's important to remember this about flipping. If you want to make money, your buying price can't be too low, and your selling price can't be too high. You want fast slot turnover; bids sitting unfilled, or salvage sitting unsold won't earn anything. More than one flipper must compete, each one trying to bid just a little more, and sell for just a little less. These two things act to tamp down the extremes of the market, so the lower-end, wait-five-minutes price for salvage is raised, and the high-end, buy-it-nao! price comes down

Furthermore, regular supply is secured. You can always come to the market and get your Alchemical Silver for even less than the flipper is paying (by bidding a bit lower and waiting ten minutes instead), or you can buy-it-nao for the prices that will never hit absurd extremes based on unpredictable factors.

Of course, as a couple of folk have mentioned, this doesn't apply to most things in the market. There are far better ways to make money than flipping- flipping salvage is too much work for too little return, and most recipes have turnover that is too slow for attractive flipping.

No problems whatsoever soloing my Elec/Elec through Praetoria. Lots of nice layered mitigations, so I've usually got some sort of an answer to any given problem. The +recovery in Static Field and Conductive Aura really adds up. I did take Stamina at 20, but I feel no need to slot it past the default, since I've never run out of endurance without getting drained. We'll see what it's like when I have all my powers- I'm 26 now, and just grabbed Synaptic Overload.

It's a fun character to take on big teams too. Static Field works great, even with the AoE flying around. Bad guys still spend a lot of time asleep. For best effect, place it a little off center of the main clump, so it catches some of the bads on the edges, and avoids the bulk of AoEs. Jolting Chain is great for teams, and I use it whenever it's up, which is often. Not least because it's funny. Jolting Chain do: use it on big spawns of greys. Hilarious. Jolting Chain don't: use it too much on a Synapse TF. It was sad having to be all restrained with it to avoid inconveniencing the Tank.

If you have multiple level 50s your altitis can't be all that bad.

On my level 20 elec/elec Dom, everything close to me gets end drained by the time they stand up. Everything not that close is asleep. What did I need Domination for again? Other than Tesla Cage insta-holding bosses, mez protection and shiny full blue bar. Because those don't count.

To be fair, level 1-10 Longbow and Arachnos are more-or-less Hellions with different skins. I mean, the minions are even weaker, lacking the varied melee weapons your average thug packs. Maybe the lieuts are a mite tougher. Arachnos start getting tough in the teens with end-draining Mu and hold resistance, whereas Longbow only really take off at higher levels with Spec-Ops and sonic grenades.

My namesake, and first 50, is an Elec/Fire Brute, who is just full of AoE loveliness. My build is a haphazard mix of frankenslotting and whatever sets seemed shiny when I had some money to spend. I could solo +1/x8 Longbow, and they're tough for resistance based sets (oh, those lovely Sonic Grenades) before the recent buffs (note: a tough set of Wardens can put me on my back, which is what RotP is for). I've been putting off playing him with the GR changes to FA- it'll be my reward for focusing on doing one thing long enough to get my new Elec/Elec Dom through Praetoria (which I'm enjoying loads, but... oo, shiny!).

In short, I've always loved FA for what it is, and I don't see any major problems with it.

Apologies for asking, as I'm sure I ought to know the answer. Do procs affect the all targets, or merely the initial target?

My level 11 elec/elec Dom hasn't had any issues to speak of. Died a couple of times, but I felt those were more due to bad rolls than anything else. I'm hardly the best player in the world, and I only remembered reading this thread just now that I could have been using my Sands of Mu vet power, which would have made things slightly easier still. I haven't taken either immobilise either.

That said, I haven't encountered any of the mega-ambushes that are being described here. Perhaps I'll change my tune when I do.

Personally Neutral Good all the way. I see no inherent value in order or chaos, except the functions they serve and the results they create. I appreciate the need to have a structured society, but feel no compunction to obey rules that I feel will leave people worse off. I'm organised in some aspects, kind of messy in others. But I do believe the world would be a much better place if we all helped each other out, I believe in acting for the benefit of others even if it results in no personal gain, all that jazz.

My characters run the whole gamut, because I tend to like characters that are not me in some way. Escapism, you know? Dr. Ohm is Chaotic Evil- in response to his own suffering he's developed a warped philosophy based on spreading pain and destruction so others can be enlighened as he has. Nice guy. My hero main, Ms. Brightheart is Lawful Good. Very polite, very sweet, real classic hero type, if uncertain about the nature of her own powers (dark darkity dark!).

No problems here. Everything runs very happily together.

I was wondering is the number of defeats needed scaled to the number of people if the event area. I've done it with small numbers and bigger crowds.

Your tohit capped Twilight Grasp/Transfusion will only miss when someone on the team really needs the heal.

I was running my 50 elec/fire brute against Nemesis just last night. I think I was doing +0/x8. It was fun. Nemesis aren't as big a threat to you as some of the other groups at high level (Longbow... went badly).

My namesake is somewhat haphazardly slotted with set IOs (using the "oo I have inf, let's buy something shiny!") method of slotting. I imagine a focus on defense and the end recovery to run Hasten could do much better. Honestly, extra recharge is mostly for Healing Flames, as I have so many AoEs recharge for powers is not a huge issue (Lightning Rod, Thunderstrike, CI, Ball Lightning, Electric Fences, Blazing Aura, Burn, the Mu pet, heck, even Consume).

Edit: Stupid double post.

It's easy, really. The whole combat system is a big, pretty abstraction, well removed from what actually happens. Look at Super Reflexes characters. When an attack misses they get a little 'dodged' message. But what really happened is they leaped aside at the last minute, and did a backflip off a wall, and came up into some awesome attack move. The engine can't handle that, so we get an abstraction.

Hitpoints are an abstraction for most characters (possibly excepting Invincibility characters and other supernatually tough bruisers). In the game, your blaster takes a triple round of bullets, and loses some health. What actually happened was that those bullets came a little closer than was comfortable, chipping away some of your cover. Soon your luck may run out...

So what you see on the screen is thugs getting blasted with fire, shot and cut up by swords. What actually happened is the stuff in the comics, with clever disarming, non-lethal, disabling wounds, and forcing the bad guys to surrender before they really get hurt.

Unless you're playing red-side.

I have a Plant/Thorn Dom with insect wings. My powers frequently produce leaves and plant fragments, and it's amazingly cool to hover through those at the end of a fight and have all the leaves swirl around you as you move on. It's basically my aura.

I played through Indigo's big arc (which explains the origins of the Malta group, Emgro) with my Dark/Darkity/Dark Defender solo. Malta not so much a threat when they can't hit you.