Fulmens

I will say that the "are you sure you want to spend a squillion inf on fees?" button has come in really handy when I move ten salvage in and it tries to sell them for 30 million each.

Did you ever get your inf? Last I talked to you, you had liquidity problems because (like me) you stored most of it in the AH.

I think of IOs as, very roughly, a 3-tier system.

Tier 1: "generic" IO's. These go in any power (damage is damage is damage) and basically replace SO's, except they never go bad and at about level 35 give you better results than SO's.
Tier 2: Frankenslotting. This is using cheap sets to get "more slots" into a power- sort of like Hami-Os but not as good and not nearly as expensive. But you can do it at level 35 or lower. You can add basically 1 or 2 slots to every power doing this- 40% acc, 95% damage, 60% recharge and 40% end reduction is cheap and easy.
Cap'n Canadian's guide on the topic.

Tier 3: Building for set bonuses. This is where you slot, for instance, six powers with sets that give +Recharge and get the equivalent of an SO worth of recharge in every power. It can get complex, you can accidentally gimp yourself, it can get very expensive, but you can get impressive results.

Step 1: Learning the very basics. Take the Invention tutorial in Steel Canyon. Read everything. This will give you the vocabulary and let you build something.

Step 2: Slightly less basic. Take two different powers, use Captain Canadian's slotting to make them work better. This will familiarize you with Wentworth's, buying salvage and recipes, the difference between getting a recipe in a week for 50K and buying the crafted item NAO for 2 million, etc. It will also give you an idea of what sort of improvement you can expect, as you see your powers get faster, stronger, etc.

Step 3: Start grandiose plan for a 3-billion-inf build.

Infinity used to have a lot of reasonable and mature players. I don't play there much any more, but it probably still does.

To the OP:

As far as warden de dios's "Who said this? People on the forums" thing...

I'm a person on the forums. I usually try to label what I know vs. what I guess vs. what is internally consistent and seems plausible to me. I have no Dev Mind Analyzer. But if I come up with a theory that makes sense I'm not going to shut up because it hasn't been notarized by a dev.

A lot of those sets STILL seem like "bad fits" to me. Fire blast has essentially no self-defense built into it; seems like a bad fit for Defenders. Dark Blast is slow-firing DoT with [relatively] a lot of control in it; seems like a bad fit for Blasters. On the other hand, Fire Manipulation seems like a bad fit for Blasters to me and that's been there since day 1. Someone wrote a whole guide on why Dark Armor is a bad fit for Brutes (even though they have it now.)

Do the Devs agree with me? Is it in a box somewhere on a whiteboard labelled "Issue 19"? I don't know. I wouldn't port */Fire defenders, Dark/* blasters or */Ice brutes, if I was king, but I'm not.

hold, shiver, ice patch, hold, ice storm, WHERE'S MAH DAMAGE?

One thing they haven't fixed in the new system, while we're bringing up "gripes I thought I'd gotten over", is misnamed IO's: Acc/Dam/End recipe becoming Damage/Accuracy/Endurance crafted. (No, I don't remember which set. Scirocco, maybe?)

The only thing I can think is that they meant to bid on level 53 LoTGs to store inf...

... no, that doesn't work either, because they would have had to PULL stored inf to PLACE the bid...

I'm stumped.

Rad/Sonic defenders are, as Jock Tamson once said, "Best at Everything." You've got very good damage (not Blaster or Brute level, but probably up there with typical Scrappers), you make teams operate spectacularly well (Who wants 50% more total damage? Well, everyone's gonna get it!), you're a respectably safe soloer and the only downside I can think of is that you're a little weak on AOE damage.

My ice/ice experience (and I'm a VERY aggressive blaster, often surviving anyway) is that it's a little bit... TOO controllery. You've got so many good tools that if you used them all, you'd never get to the damaging attacks. I have lots of good things to say about fire/ice blasters, though. Shiver is roughly equivalent to 50% damage resistance; sadly, it comes with an 80' half-circle taunt aura. Fireball/firebreath drops even-con minions with NO EXTRA BUFFING. You have build up and aim, for those times you want to kill a boss in fifteen seconds. I took out about 20 guys once in under ten seconds; they startled me. (Build Up, Aim, fb/fb on group to left of door, inferno on group to right of door, look around in surprise that I'm still alive...)

Back to the original point:

they're never going to make significant +Res. Because someone, somewhere, will find a way to make a Dark Armor or Invuln tank that's near-cap on Res AND Def.

"But how is that different than Granite?" you say? Well, Granite doesn't have a minion stun. Granite doesn't have a ridiculous self-heal*. And Granite gives up mobility, recharge, and damage.

*OK, I'm really sorta talking about Dark Armor here.

As far as medium and higher oranges? Yeah, my Dark/Energy tank loves em.

I often will stock up on orange if, for instance, I am starting a difficult TF and I know there's going to be a defense-based buffer on the team. Because once in a while I want to hit three cheap insps and get +60% Resistance.

OP said

I agree that that the Gaussian probably got weighted relatively low. I agree that it doesn't LOOK like a good IO.

But something that I didn't see mentioned: People don't slot BU/Aim for their "main" functions. They slot for Recharge (which Gaussian is short on.) If I was going to slot three Gaussian's End/Rech would be one of them. If I was going to slot TWO Gaussian's it might still be one of them.

Father Xmas said

I think I've put in enough time with this UI to tell the difference between "It's new" and "I don't like it." I don't like it.

UI design has always been a weak point of mine, so I don't have any constructive advice of my own, but it needs help.

It is also throwing functional errors, as reported by others. (I _think_ I've seen a functional error in my own usage, but I'm not sure enough to report as bug.)

Hopefully it will be fixed right, and soon.

rsclark said

And of course, as the archetype, I can confiscate any Fulms that do not meet my exacting standards.

Bribery project, post 1: (all at 33, blueside, recipes unless otherwise specified)
Force Feedback Rech/End (under 1m)
Numina's Heal/Rech (just over 20m)
LoTG End/Rech (under 1M)
Scirocco's Dam/Acc/End, Scirocco's Lethal (just over 5M)
Lockdown [crafted] +2 Mag (just over 10M)
Decimation A/D/R[crafted] (just over 15M)

On the one hand, people may have gamed me in the past and I'd never know it. (If I was going to game me, I'd buy two cheap lousy recipes on the market and then roll.) On the other hand, I've bought two rolls, for 40 million, and people handed over a LoTG and a turkey. It doesn't hurt me to assume that most people are good, except financially, and I'm losing money on this anyway.

I'll buy your leftovers for 10 million each. That's probably STILL cheaper than buying randoms for 20.

One thing I've found: you can still use "ert" to search for "inert" if you turn off autocomplete.

I'm getting a lot of use out of the "find"/"find salvage" combo. And the ability to sort by level (so all the level 39 [things] are together)

But a lot of things that I used to do seem to be gone. (search within category is one of them.)

I try to put myself in the shoes of a thread starter before going "Ya know, 700 people have suggested this already. It sucks and you suck."

I'm having some trouble with this particular thread starter for some reason. They seem like a bit of a write-only device.

There has been an awful lot of snark near the top of this thread.

And just because WE have seen the thread a hundred times doesn't mean the OP has seen the thread a hundred times.

One major effect that hasn't been mentioned: There was a month or two where people could transfer characters between servers for free.

I know at least one person who picked up stakes and moved all their characters from Infinity to Freedom to get a larger population. I suspect a significant number of people moved to Freedom or Virtue to get the "mass of people" experience they wanted.

Since you don't have that option: what do you do? Here's my Very Standard Advice.

1) Find the appropriate global channels. I don't know what they are for your server, but they're out there. That's a good place to find a lot of experienced players at once.
2) Rebuild your Friends list. Tell yourself you're going to join five crappy PUGs. If you find any players that are any good,/friend or /gfriend them. Hopefully THEY will remember YOU favorably and you can catch 'em next time they are on, and see if their team is any better.
3) Build your own crappy PUGs. Think of it as auditioning people to be your friend.