EvilRyu

Anyone know of some good 5 mission arcs that are fun, well written and have decent ticket pay out without actually being a farm of some sort? When I mean decent ticket payout I mean more than 500 tickets in a single mission. Level range doesnt matter.

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I've gone through about 2 million tickets now so I have tried many different strategies to make inf. My recommendations are:

Characters level 1-49 = buy rare 45-50 Salvage.

Characters level 50 who generate 10k tickets a day or less = Buy 30-34 bronze rolls and craft into enhancements.

Characters level 50 who generate 20-30k tickets a day = Buy 30-34 bronze rolls and only sell ones worth 500k and up.

Characters level 50 who generate over 30k tickets a day = Buy 30-34 Gold Rolls and craft into enhancements.


bronze recipes 30-34 are worth the most, but when you start generating huge numbers of tickets, it's not worth your time to go through the rolling / crafting process. Further, when you start putting up 20 recipes every hour, you run out of space very fast.

For example: I earn 6000 tickets in 30 minutes. Rolling 84 bronze rolls and figuring out which 20 to keep then hoping I have slots available to put them on the market will take me another 15 minutes. In this time I could have earned enough for another 3500 tickets and had another gold roll by now.

[/ QUOTE ]Just how are you earning so many tickets without farming? I have gone thru tons of AE arcs but anything thats like non-farming always gives horrible ticket amounts.

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Sets like WP and SR also have several passive powers. Passive powers cost nothing, which lowers their endurance cost. WP has Quick Recovery, Fast Healing, and High Pain Tolerance, all of which contribute to its survivability without adding any endurance cost but provide substantially less than they would with an endurance cost. The same applies for SR with Agile, Dodge, Quickness and Lucky. To get better performance, you're going to need to use more endurance. To get better endurance efficiency, you're going to need to sacrifice some survivability. That's how it works. It's just seems worse for DA because it's pretty heavy on the "more survivability, less efficiency" side, even though a number of its powers (re: OG and all 3 res toggles) are actually more efficient than they have any right to be as individual powers.


[/ QUOTE ] Thats where I disagree, I dont see DA as being more survivable. For the end costs the set has then it should be just as survivable as granite and we all know its not. So next arguement please.
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I don't view it as a stupid design decision. I view it as an incorporated design decision to increase the benefit of specific IO slotting. Personally, I would have done it differently, but I would have done most of the VEAT design differently. I think they're all a bit overpowered, but that was Castle's prerogative.


[/ QUOTE ] I dont see the VEATs as overpowered. If anything banes can use a buff. But aside from that I think he did an ok job with them. It to me was a turning point in CoX. It was that you can create a support AT that isnt totally gimped on damage. I think because this was allowed to happen its why this finally bled over on to doms which got them the damage increase. Eventhough a fortunata doesnt control as well as a mind dom it sure as hell out damages them at least on live server. That to me was justification on doms getting their damage on issue 15.
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I've always accepted the lack of KB protection in DA and FA with a grain of salt, but you're expanding the discussion to a completely different place. Lacking KB protection hasn't made the set itself underpowered. It was actually unique among the defensive sets in having Terrorize protection until WP and SD were added. It wasn't really a spectacular benefit considering that there aren't any devs made enemies that use Terrorize (most likely because it's everyone else's weakness), but it was still present. DA was also the only set with significant psy resist for a long time until WP was added. It had a number of other weird and funky benefits that it still has (but are less special now) that no other set had until recently.


[/ QUOTE ] The hell you say on that one. Getting knocked around like a ping pong ball does effect performance and survival. You cant activate powers while on your [censored]. They simple wont activate till your up again and more often than not its already too late. I have been literally chain knocked back to death on those sets prior to IOs.

As for the benefits of psi protection, confuse and or fear the benefit just isnt there at least on heroside unless you pvp. If fear and confuse and psi were used alot more pre-40s then I could see it being "valueable". Also keep in mind since most sets now get some kind of psi protection in pvp zones the benefit this set once had just isnt there and should not be used as a balancing point for it over the other sets.
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Yes there is, and it's a simple reason too. DA has 7 toggles. FA has 3. Invinc has 3. Regen has 1. SD has 4. SR has 3. WP has 4.

Let me repeat that for you, in case you missed it. DA has 7 toggles. The next highest have 4.

Being able to run all 7 toggles for the same cost that every other set runs 3-4 would be absolutely stupid. If you really think that it would be balanced for DA to have the same cost for running twice as many toggles, then you're obviously less intelligent than I give you credit for, which is bad considering how little that already is.


[/ QUOTE ] Its not stupid to want the costs lowered considering those other sets still get more mitigation just counting the toggles and not the passives. I know all those sets get extras but again its still not fair. You act like this set plays like granite and you can never die or something, it simply doesnt.
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Wait? They don't have the option of running OG? Really? Since when? CoF is an option. Not a requirement. It's a bit more effective than OG if you've got the spare resources to run it, especially if you've also got some other Terrorize effects to stack up with it, but it costs more. Most people pick one of the two to run. Most people pick OG for good reason, but, if you can manage to build around the greater requirements for CoF, if can be quite potent.


[/ QUOTE ] Again as I said before, if the other sets can run all their mitigation toggles DA should be able to as well.

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Actually, considering the sets and cases that you mention, you're simply demonstrating how you don't actually get how Castle designs and balances the sets. You're assuming that IO sets are balanced and that all of the other sets are not. I challenge you to consider that IO sets are imbalanced and the rest of the sets are. Abandon any notions you've gotten from sets concerning how they behave with IOs. Remember that every function, not just personal survivability has to be factored in to balance. VEATs are squishier than Stalkers because they've got ranged damage and significantly greater utility. Shield Defense is considered mediocre without buffs or IOs because it is a defense based version of Fire (which would be equally good if resistance set bonuses were actually decent).

[/ QUOTE ] I look at sets like WP and SR and see that they are fine without IOs and extremely godly with IOs where as those other sets arent thats how I view it. I know the mindlink thing was an experiment but still all it does is push players to use IOs. If he didnt want it perma then it should have gotten the SoW treatment like other powers. Players are going to use IOs to get past the stupid design decisions they refuse to change. For me I couldnt stomach DA at all till we got IOs. I refuse to take the leaping pool or fly because its not fair if your concept for your toon requires super speed or teleport. I have always felt that its every melee toons right to have some form of knockback protection while the squishies should stay vulnerable to it. Think about it we are the first line of defense for them so why do we have to be put on the same level as squishies in that regard? It makes no sense. I will continue to use IOs for knockback protection. My other gripe is the endurance cost. Again I would never have been able to deal with it post stamina if I didnt have IOs. The drain is just too massive. Everyones excuse has been dont run all the toggles all the time, but my response has been if the other sets in the game can do it then why cant DA? There is no reason why DA cant run all of its damage mitigation/mez prevention toggles at the sametime. Thats why I feel the endurance costs need to be looked at. Lastly stalkers dont even get the advantage of death shroud but still have to deal with end hog of CoF even though it disrupts their stealth.

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I case you all havent noticed I am still pretty nerd raged about this nerf because it was completely unjustified.


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I don't disagree with your nerd rage in this case, although, I wouldn't necessarily call the lack of justification 'complete'. +rech is something that pushes coh's current combat processing into very worrisome areas. It's not like mapwide-taunt that can be capped or stacked mez that can be purple-triangled. The engine itself starts to sputter as increasingly more things want to be processed in decreasingly small windows of time.

Let me put it this way. In part of this game review the point is made that game quality is very strongly served by a 1:1 input-to-game-response ratio between the player and the game engine. If you increase the quantity of input (for example because players/ai have less recharge delay between actions) and the game's ability to respond is not increased, game quality suffers. For a game like coh where much of the game's ability to respond to input is locked in (and would get lots slower if the devs put in even half of the crazy stuff the playerbase keeps asking for), +rech is a variable threat to the overall quality of their work.

The devs may not handle the pr side of +rech nerfs all that well, but if they really care about getting the best quality into their game's experience, then it seems they have some reasonable justification to aim nerf guns at abusive input situations.

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Although an interesting and valid point, I suspect that this particular consideration had almost no impact on the decision by the devs.

It's true that in Castle's post he mentions the limitations of processing power to make the RIP set work as intended. This fix would entail checking which elements of a power are enhanceable by certain sets. It is my understanding reading the post, that if they could implement this change, LS would still not inherit recharge buffs as this was unintended behaviour. No where in the post was I given the impression that this unintended behaviour was related to processing power. The two thoughts, LS firing too fast, and changing the way enhancments effect powers to be CPU intensive seemed to be completely separate to me.

[/ QUOTE ]I still think its a crappy lie because if they are so worried about performance of the game then why do we still have uber lag on the ITF map? Why is it that grandville lags badly unless you have the latest and the greatest hardware? Literally I had to build a new system just so grandville was fully playable for me. So all that crap about performance is just garbage and I am not buying it. I am sticking by my first guess, they did it so masterminds could get kinetics.

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If that truly is Castle's position I would REALLY like him to post it. I fail to see how any stretch of the imagination could justify CoF as 'balanced' in it's current form. CoF is a staple of Dark Armor's performance yet becomes increasingly useless as you fight higher con mobs. It's bad enough you have to contend with increasing resistance to to hit debuffs, but trying to overcome it's horrendous accuracy and steep end costs makes it virtually impossible to overcome all it's problems with OUT IOs. Yes, you can currently overcome many of CoF issue with IOs, but as you pointed out, IOs are not/should not be the basis for balance.


[/ QUOTE ] I think thats going to be the hardest part. In the past the devs said they wont balance around IOs but the more recent powersets prove otherwise. Look at Night Widows, you need IOs or HOs just to have mind link up perma or to even come back faster. Bane Spiders are squishie as hell compared to my stalkers, my bane didnt get good until I got close to the softcap. Shields was pretty much garbage and many folks agreed with that. Its like because they know we going to IO that set it was intentionally made weaker. Thats just how it feels to me. We might have had a better chance pre-issue 9 to get DA fixed but now it seems hopeless.

So just how will we get Castle's attention to even come here to look at the arguement?

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I get where you are coming from, but I have to disagree. Reconstruction is a poor comparison as it's part of Regeneration, a set that has little mitigation beyond heals and regeneration. Dark Regeneration is a massive heal so it's expected it should have a massive cost. Never mind that players wishing to push the envelope can easily overcome the endurance costs of Dark Regeneration with IOs.


[/ QUOTE ] You cant use IOs as a reason to not get something looked at. Many folks dont even use IOs. If IOs were required then yeah this would be different. But the way this set plays IOs are required.
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In this area I mostly agree. CoF has excessively nerfed to function in a game environment that no longer exists today. IMHO, it should be adjusted for today's current game environment. I strongly recommend you PM Castle with regards to CoF. I have PM'd him numerous times, but since I suspect I am the only one who does so, it's not likely to ever reach any reasonable amount of attention.


I have posted on the subject before, but I feel both CoF and OG should be altered in some fashion so the actually compliment each other.


[/ QUOTE ] I pmed him recently on this too but he seems convinced its a balanced. My arguement was that the whole set is forcing you to choose between survival and damage when no other sets do this for scrappers because of endurance costs being stupidly high. I still think all the toggles in this set should be lower than all the other sets because you have to run so many. Make the total cost of all toggles except death shroud be equal to say all 4 of WP toggles, then it would be fair.

Ice/psi is what I would play, because it is able to handle the end issues the best. I dont like thorns because its just as fugly as spines. Fire/elec seems ok because you can slot an extra pet proc to help the imps. While earth is good I dont like the fire secondary at all.

Initially this toon was great to play because I was able to leverage the damage aura to save endurance but now I got all these toggles I dont think I can keep doing this and still attack and survive. Right now this toon is in the teens but I dont think stamina is going to be enough. I originally did this toon to see if the SS rage power would make death shroud work better as well as help CoF's accuracy penalty. I just dont think I will make it that far due to endurance issues. I got other dark armor toons but this by far has been the greatest end hog like ever. So far all attacks are slotted two accuracy IO and 2 reduce endurance cost IO. The toggles got 1 reduce endurance IO and death shroud has two reduce endurance IOs. Will the rage and/or hasten crashes make this toon unplayable in the end?

I was wondering should they change the description and damage rating for doms on the character creation screen. Now that we are high damage, I think our description should say something about that.

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There was mention about how the defender version of Lightning Storm was unchanged or not affected somehow by the Pets attacks no longer being affected by recharge enhancements change. Recharge enhancements will only reduce recharge time of casting the power. In regards to LS, there was mention that the only way to get LS to attack more often and be affected with Recharge enhancements is if it they are mixed IOs such as DMG/RECH or ACC/RECH.

I'm not sure if I caught that last part correctly or what the entire story is on this. Could someone who understands what I'm talking about please elaborate on this a bit more?


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It used to be that slotting set IOs with a recharge bonus into LS or having a recharge buff on you (hasten or speed boost for example) would increase the fire rate of LS (LS would also inherit any recharge set bonuses you had for 10 seconds). This is no longer the case.

The source of the confusion: In the initial change to make pets no longer inherit recharge the defender lightning storm was missed. The change to defender lightning storm did not happen until a couple months after i14 went live. But it is now in line with other pets.

The source of the conspiracy theories: When the change was originally announced it was explained that it was because pets inheriting recharge was causing some pets to not cycle their attacks properly. The problem with this explanation was that even pets with only one attack, Lightning Storm, gun turret, voltaic sentinel, fire imps, were hit as well. The initial assumption was that the change had to be global and all pets needed to be affected by the change. However, defender LS was not affected showing that the pets affected could be chosen on a case by case basis. This lead to requests that powers with only one attack such as LS being exempted from this change. At this point Castle jumped in to clarify that the change was not simply because of pet cycling but that the change was intended to target the single attack pets specifically (LS) because the inherited recharge was making them overpowered.

I hope that clears things up.

[/ QUOTE ]Basically they lied about the recharge issue. We all know they did this nerf so masterminds can get kinetics on the next go round of when they port sets. LS, VS, and Gun Drone were not overpowered in any way shape or form. This change to me was brutal to the point where I have shelved every stormy I have. I could have just as easily done them as cold instead since all the worth while powers are now gone and the set is gutted because of the nerfed LS. I case you all havent noticed I am still pretty nerd raged about this nerf because it was completely unjustified.

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I really like steak. I hate tofu, though.

The grocery store I buy my food at sells both.

Do you honestly think it's reasonable for me to bang on the manager's door and demand that, because I hate tofu, that any money that I spend on steak should be used to further enhance the store's stock and inventory of steak, and that it specifically not be spent on maintaining the store's tofu stock?

[/ QUOTE ]Dude that is a horrible example as it just doesnt work in the modern day and age. When you buy something from a store, say a game, or movie or even food. That stuff comes out of inventory and the cost of it is paid by the customer. So you buying steak doesnt help tofu in anyway. I would assume the samething goes with CoX.

There is a group called pets. Just check there.

I remember doing a mission on redside where you had to fight the radio. I was wondering what group he was in.

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I'd prob stick with single target sleep and mass hypnosis. I haven't made any other perma doms before but from what I see from other builds I think its the easiest and cheapest to build for perma (maybe Grav/NRG is).

I'm completely IO'd with as much recharge as I can gather with 138.75% global recharge without hasten (208.75% w/ Hasten). The sleeps are weak and most overpowering powers in the game, IMO.

We were preppin' to get ready to get a MoLRSF completed that night and leader found another Mind/Psi was perma to increase our chances of success but realized he didnt have mass hypnosis are single sleep. Team kinda looked down at him wonderin' what he was thinkin' but most people may think its a given.

Not sayin' you should care what other people think but not to pass them up thinkin' they are completely useless.

[/ QUOTE ]Sleeps are very important to this set. Its an extra form of mitigation and can pretty much shut the whole group down if you need it to. I think after these changes confuse has even less of a value than before. Prior to this you needed the extra damage to speed things up a bit. But with the new attacks the majority of your damage ends up being overkill so confuse damage + your already overkill damage means its just causing you to loose xp because said critter would have still died in same amount of attacks whether the confused critter helped or not. Personally I still get confuse but it doesnt get as much slots as all the other more important stuff like attacks.

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All I can say is prove it. I simply dont make invuls anymore because they cant take the same kind of beating a WP can overtime. Outside of Unstoppable invulnerability for scrappers sucks. WP was the smoothest ride to level 50 I have ever had with any toon. Invul not much so. Basically if it isnt smashing lethal you pretty much die or get overwhelmed. With IOs that could be different but WP with IOs is godly so it still comes out a head.

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(This is from the perspective of an IO'd build that concentrates on defense.)

My Invuln at 48 already has a base 35% def in all except Psi. By the time I finish the build I expect to have, with one enemy in range, around 40% in F/C/E/N and around 35% in S/L. My S/L resist is ~70% and my exotics are ~23%. The only thing I lack is a self heal; I decided early that non-Inspiration play was not a goal for this particular character and went with Hasten instead. (I plan on popping greens.)

If I ever obtained a PvP IO I could jump to ~38/43/43 defense.

With that much base defense (one mob in range) it means I am capping my defense at 3 or 4 mobs. Against S/L I am virtually unkillable against anything short of an AV, and have no issue tanking AE Dual Blade Lt. ambush missions where spawns can get as high as 20-30 level 52 Lt custom mobs. I am not yet Stamina efficient enough to go after big game; I simply haven't obtained the Numina and Miracle Uniques for that particular character.

I also cap out Hit Points with Dull Pain. It has a 4 second downtime which I can probably shore up. That jacks my regen rate. In a whole map full of custom Lts. tanking 20 52s at a time I needed to pop a green inspiration only twice when they got lucky with combos, and I certainly could have simply jumped out of the mob and hit Shockwave instead.

If my primary was Dark and I could use Siphon Life the build would probably be as tough as my /Shield, significantly better against S/L, slightly better against F/C/E/N due to higher health leading to better regen and Siphon heal, and significantly worse against Psi. That does leave Shields with much better damage, but it has that advantage over every secondary.

Plus I'm not sure we want to start saying secondaries are insufficient because they aren't as good as /Shield.

That also leaves my Invuln significantly better most of the time than my SR, with the Psi hole being matched by "untyped" damage. The much higher hit point total means Invul gets more bang out of regen and heals and survives alpha strikes from most mobs better. Also, against custom EBs my SR tends to get taken out by Build Up cycles if I am slow. My Invul has the resistance and higher health to suck those up; against S/L I don't even think I'd have to interrupt my attacks.

I used to be very down on Invuln, but seeing my high performance Invuln operate I am a believer. My SG mate had the same crappy experience with Invuln and was going to reroll until he saw me on that mission; he simply didn't build towards typed defense. If I dropped Hasten and went with Aid Self I would be significantly more survivable most of the time over my SR. I might have to watch out during the Dull Pain down times against exotic damage types.

Invuln *does* require a bit of thought because you do have to herd a bit to cap defense. It means against AVs you will want to keep some minions around, but to anyone used to doing that for /Shields AAO it really isn't a hardship.

[/ QUOTE ]But how soon can you do this? Almost near the end of the characters career, unlike WP where you get most of what you need for standard play by level 28. For extreme play you would have to wait for SoW. Even still if I took the same approach you did I would be just as unkillable with WP if not more unkillable (if this is even a word). The thing is why deal with piss poor performance for 40+ levels when WP is great from level 16 onward. To me invul for scrappers just hasnt been good enough since the defensive nerfs in issue 5. That minor buff we got a few months back was just fluff that doesnt really help. I pretty much never die of end drain unless its LGTF and never had issues were recharge was an issue as I take hasten on all my toons. Defense debuff resistance again is worthless unless its really high levels like SR. Till invul gets a real buff I wont be touching it again.

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My experiences with invulnerability and willpower are about equivalent, with no issues with either even before slotting set IOs. My invulnerability scrapper can dive into some things that my willpower scrapper gets quickly overwhelmed with. I can't disagree that Invulnerability gets a big boost from IO sets, but then so does willpower, and in the same area (typed defence). One stacks defence and resistance, the other stacks defence and regen. I'd happily play either one at any level of play.


[/ QUOTE ] All I can say is prove it. I simply dont make invuls anymore because they cant take the same kind of beating a WP can overtime. Outside of Unstoppable invulnerability for scrappers sucks. WP was the smoothest ride to level 50 I have ever had with any toon. Invul not much so. Basically if it isnt smashing lethal you pretty much die or get overwhelmed. With IOs that could be different but WP with IOs is godly so it still comes out a head.

WP is how invulnerablity used to play for scrappers. Now invulnerability is kind of meh. WP has everything you need to survive contained within the powersets where as invul you will need IOs and outside buffs to get the same level of survivability outside of unstoppable.

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I tried holding aggro on the ITF with my WP scrapper, and I got stomped. I had 26 defense to smashing lethal, about 500 regen, and the usual ~50 res to S/L. I got stomped HARD. Will this get better once I reach my goal of 46 def to S/L? Cause seriously, it sucked.

[/ QUOTE ]I am gonna say no because defense is pretty much worthless unless your are SR. You just dont get any meaningful defense debuff resistance with WP. Its better to focus on hitpoints/smash/lethal resistance/regen rate than it is to focus on defense. Only times I seen defense matter for non-SR is when you have stupidly high amounts like 80% to all positions then if they do debuff you down your still at or above the softcap. This is where I say having VEATs on your team is really great because they can get you there.

Get everything in elec, skip smoke bomb and blinding powder and try to softcap your toon in the 40s when you can to all positions. Thats pretty much it, and thats what I am doing with mine and he plays great.

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I have a question for someone with experience with the Willpower set. I have a lv 50 Dual Blades/Willpower scrapper. He is somewhat IO'ed, somewhat SO'ed. His regen rate is about 550%. I usually don't have much trouble in teams with him.

Yesterday, I tried the ITF with him for the first time. I died repeatedly against reds and purples. Is this typical for that powerset? I had much more trouble than I was expecting. We were unable to successfully complete and I think I want to run it again but I want to be prepared.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[/ QUOTE ]This TF is the main reason I have and use strength of will. There is pretty much nothing that power cant solve. For a scrapper I can see having a hard time on the final boss if they dont move the autohit nictus but against the regular critters you should be fine with just strenght of will. No need for tough or weave on a WP.

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Sorry, what? If you're asking if using Placate on a Smoke Bombed foe will still get you a crit, then yes.

[/ QUOTE ]Actually no. Smoke bomb has a tohit check and it would actually break the first placate. For some reason they havent coded it like AS, blinding powder and other such stealthy powers. I tested this a while back when they changed AS to not dehide you upon miss before I switched to my soft capped build.

What dom combo(s) do you plan on playing first once this finally goes live?

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Any advice on what you would take? I'm pairing it up with Mind, but the only thing that has me worried is the lack of a pet.

[/ QUOTE ]With the new uber damage we will be getting you wont need a pet or confuse. Only advice is to avoid carnies or gets tons of +tohit to fight them. Only use confuse for robots and taking down those vault doors.