FourSpeed

I have Void and Diamagnetic on my SS/WP, and while I'm fine with Void,
I'll be swapping out Diamagnetic in favor of Reactive - Diamagnetic seems
woefully underperforming to me.


Regards,
4

Yep.

It's extremely annoying, and after a year, it leaves zero doubt in my mind
regarding the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the site maintainers...

At this point, I don't even log in any more unless I see a post I feel compelled
to respond to - and in that case, I store my text in the clipboard before hitting
Preview or Submit.

In short, it's pathetic. There's no other way to sugar-coat it anymore.


Regards,
4

The game is fine.

PvP has been dead for years for most practical intents and purposes.

Sure, there are still some active PvPer's, but I'd doubt it's even 1% of the population.

That said, if you enjoy PvP, and can find folks (Freedom, as noted, usually
has some in Siren's and RV), go for it.


Regards,
4

Gratz on L50!

I've enjoyed reading along during the adventure.


Cheers,
4

Unpossible...

SS/WP Brutes can solo well on an inexpensive build and easily
handle 0/2 against most PvE stuff, and typically 0/4 once you
have FootStomp.

With a higher investment, they can be nearly indestructible
against S/L mobs at *any* difficulty setting.


Regards,
4

Welcome.

As others mentioned, a couple key things to do early are explore AT's and Powersets.

Each AT is very distinct, and even within an AT, power choices can make two
of the same ATs feel and play differently. For instance, Fire Blasters play very
differently than Electric Blasters even though they're the same AT (Blaster).

Additionally, bear in mind that first and foremost, this is a PvE game. PvP wasn't
even IN the game until I-3/I-4 timeframe. You can't even enter PvP zones until
L15 (although I believe you can do arena PvP at any level iirc).

Finally, a couple important things to understand about PvP specifically:

* Only a very small minority of players even bother with it at all, so if, after
getting some game experience in, you decide you want to PvP, you'll probably
want to build those characters on Freedom server (most other servers have
little, if any, active PvP).

* Characters behave (powers-wise) very differently in PvP than they do in PvE.
Until you get a good sense for PvE, explaining those PvP effects will sound like
unintelligble gibberish. Many powers that are great in PvE are awful in PvP, and
some powers you'd never use in PvE are helpful to PvP - it's a completely new
learning curve.


So, to echo the others, start with PvE first, and find toons and powers you enjoy
playing with first.


Regards,
4

As a quick follow-up.

Now that my toon has reached L50, I did a number of runs solely to cap tix.

During the leveling process, an arc took 20 mins or so, but for just capping AE tickets,
I'm in the 10-15 min range (from zoning in to the first mission to clicking "Finish"
after the last mission). Each mission is definitely under two mins (in-mission).

Also, Ticket runs are a LOT easier and safer - not a single death yet doing that.


Regards,
4

<sigh>

At NO point did I say it *couldn't* be typed S/L... But, why would I assume it *IS*
typed S/L when the only info Arcanaville explicitly stated was that it was AoE, and
how would I know that an AoE attack with S/L couldn't also be subject to the same
exception as Fireball?

Essentially, that was the point of my "it would probably be a wash" statement.

In any case, all semantics aside, the issue might now distill down to this question:

Are there, in fact, more AoE/Cones *with* S/L than there are Ranged attacks *without* S/L?

I agree, that the only way to *know* that is to look at every single Ranged/AoE/Cone
attack in the game, and I'd love to have a link to a nicely summarized table of exactly
that information.

Unfortunately, the only information I've seen comes from looking at factions and
their attacks on P-Wiki, a slow, page-intensive, and occasionally inconsistent source.

However, based on my cursory search there, I can see that there are a LOT of
Ranged attacks without an S/L component.

Perhaps some industrious soul would care to review the other side of that question?

A sub-question would also be: On average, which attacks do more damage to the
player - Ranged, or AoE? That might also provide some insight about which gap
would be more dangerous (for instance, there are a lot of Ranged mez/status attacks,
but I'm not sure how AoE would compare in that regard either).


Regards,
4

So, I finished running mine through to L50 - Yay.

He goes from 0-50 in 12 hours... So, about as fast as a Prius...

I WANT my money back dammit!!...

It cost me 0 to make him and I only got paid ~375M to run him to L50... Oh, wait, nvm...

That said, it was the first toon I have ever PL'd from 0 to 50, so I thought I'd put
a post in here about my experiences as a Rookie PL'r.

TL;DR. It was a lot of fun, but you're running on a knife's edge the whole way, and
given the extreme efficiencies in the process, a lot of things can trip you up, or
greatly affect your performance.

Below, I cover a lot of things that I found or thought were pertinent during my
12 hour journey.

First of all, as mentioned before, this is a radicially different playstyle than normal
for me, and 12 hours is, at very least, a factor of 10 faster than I'd get an L50.

It still took me a bit more than double TopDoc's estimated time, and I can think of
several reasons why. I think 5-6 hours would be Plausible for somebody well versed
in the approach.

Why I was SO Slow

* I slotted absolutely bupkiss in the build - it's completely devoid of enhancements.
The procs and buffs would have sped things up, but I intentionally didn't put
anything in this first time.

* I ran at 0/8 w Bosses. Initially, because I was a bit leery, and then I forgot
about it till I was L42. I switched at that point until L45, but personally, I felt
I was dying too much, so I dropped it back again from L45-L50.
It's slower, but it felt safer as well... A willing tradeoff for me.

* Macros. Basically, they drove me nuts. I ended up not using them. By the time
I knew/remembered which one I needed, too late... Also, I use insps with the F1-F5
keys, and it was far easier for me using those whenever inspies dropped. The downside
was that I often wouldn't have any to combine either (more on that in a sec).

One bind/macro I did use was extremely helpful - it targeted the bosses and got
rid of pesky awaken inspirations (all tiers of them).

I've copied it here:
/bind B "inspdelete awaken$$inspdelete bounce_back$$inspdelete restoration$$
target_custom_near enemy alive Boss$$target_custom_next enemy alive Beta$$
target_custom_next enemy alive Alpha"

* Inspiration Usage. I loaded up before each mission, so I went in with capped
Dmg, Res, and Def along with a couple Acc's. I kept columns of Heals and Defs
in reserve, and dipped into them when needed. All other non-reserve inspies
got popped when they appeared (unless I got ahead of the curve, occasionally
and saved them for later). The downside to that, is that my damage was rarely
capped except at the beginning... 300-400% was pretty typical. Whenever reds
dropped, I used them right away, but I relied completely on those drops to raise
damage above normal Fury levels.

* Buffs - the only powerset buffs I had were Hasten and Energize when they
were up. Hasten, especially was noticeably helpful. I didn't level past L31, (until hitting
50) and I didn't do the SG Empowerment buff either. I'm certain those extra
powers would contribute noticeably.

* Death. On average, I'd estimate a death per arc. It was probably a death per
mission or so at +1/8, but safer for me at 0/8. Unsurprisingly, dying slows you down...

* Speed. It took me roughly 20 minutes or so to spin through all 5 missions in the arc.
I would run until all the bosses were defeated and leave any leftover Lt.s and minions
at that point. In terms of simply capping tickets, it would take ~2 mins.

Some folks (maybe most) simply run missions faster than I do. YMMV.


Expectations

Based on my experience through the arc, these are some things you can probably
expect to encounter.

* Pure Chaos - Once the ambushes are rolling, it is pure crazy. If you're not
doing something all the time, you're probably dead.

* Death. You ARE going to die. Probably often. Certainly, inattention, and/or
plain stupidity will get you killed - I proved both cases repeatedly

However, even if things are going well, you can still die. A couple times, I went
from full health & softcapped defense to dead in 2-3 seconds.

Maybe it was streakbreaker in those cases, but several times, animation times alone
were enough time to get killed before being able to pop some inspies.

Sands of Mu was a glaring culprit - I finally removed it in favor of Brawl.

Early on, I had trouble targeting bosses and so, I'd end up getting spiked.
The macro helped solve that for the most part. In some cases, I simply ran out of
inspies that would keep me alive (in one instance, zero purples dropped the entire
mission - Go Figure. RNG really busted my keester on that one)...

* Survival - It is important to realize you have minimal defense and resistance
at this level. Consequently, there are only two factors that will keep you alive.

First is inspirations - *ALWAYS* keep a very close eye on your Def. If it falls,
so will you. I kept reserves, just in case, and it helped me a lot. Learn to use
them earlier than you'd normally think (if you're one of those who, like me, rarely
uses them in the normal content). Even with softcapped def, you'll still get hit a
lot, and need greens as well. You really need to stay on top of this to make it.

Second is Kill speed. The reason folks want to be damage capped is to kill mobs
faster than they will kill you. You have game mechanics helping you here, in a
lowbie mission, but use any damage inspies you get or can create (if you use those
macros) as soon as you can to keep your dmg level high.

Conclusions

* First, and foremost, I had fun doing this. It was a completely new playstyle
for me. I'm pretty sure I don't need one on every server, but I enjoyed the change
of pace, and a quick (and rich) L50 in the bargain made it quite worthwhile to try.

* Unlike Fire Farms or normal content PL where you have an optimized build,
typically with full resistances, defenses, heals and buffs, here, you have very little
but lowbie game mechanics, inspirations, and your wits working for you.
Basically, when it's running good, it goes very quickly and smoothly, but there is
virtually no safety margin, so if it does go south, it does so very quickly, and there
is only one result. Dead.

If, as a player, that bothers you, this farming approach will seem too risky compared
to other approaches. Otherwise, the chaos can be pretty exhilarating, and you'll
end up with a shiny L50 toon with decent funds to equip him when you're done.


Anyway, Thanks to TopDoc for detailing this approach. I enjoyed it, and I hope
relating my experiences here can help other folks have some fun with it too.


Regards,
4

As others have mentioned, 25-35 is a fairly optimal spot. For a loose rule of thumb...

L25 Commons are slightly worse than an even SO (-1.3% worse)
L30 Commons are virtually identical to a +1 SO (-0.2% worse)
L35 Commons are virtually identical to a +2 SO (+0.04% better)
L40 Commons are slightly better than a +3 SO (+0.27 better)
based on P-Wiki information found here.

2> Basically, if you limit yourself to *only* crafted IO's, I'd expect it to cost 20-30M
over the entire career of your toon (TO/DO/SOs run about 18M). You'll pay (loosely)
double for them than you would if you crafted them yourself. If you only buy at L35,
you can probably do it for less (5-10M?) because you'll skip earlier, low-level buys.

3> In terms of time, that's directly related to how much you want to spend.
The '0' key is the "Buy it Nao" key, and if you put enough zeros on your bids, you'll
get them as fast as you'd buy at a store. Of course, if you did it that way, please
discard my answer to question #2

Far better is to plan ahead and put reasonable bids out before you need them.
Also, keep in mind you'll need many more IO's than you have transaction slots,
and unlike recipes and salvage, you cannot buy IO's in stacks.

So, I'd plan on a few days to get all the ones you need.


Regards,
4