Fulmens

My list of "solid mid-list sellers" has no overlap with yours. Huh.

Looking at what I actually wrote, I overedited into meaninglessness. It was not "twice the DPS of anything you could put on a level 49 character." It was meant to say something like "more than twice the DPS of an SO'd out character and a lot more than anything you could put on a level 49 character."

The actual character was a Katana/something scrapper, Regen I think. You have a fast-activating attack that can take a -resistance proc, you can double-stack Divine Avalanche and cap your defense, you have a tight attack chain, and purple procs produce a surprising amount of extra damage.

Exact quote from Werner (this was back before the forum reshuffle so it was hard to find):

Blasters: Fire/Ice (Ice actually keeps you alive while Fire lets you kill everyone in the room), Fire/Mental (three AOE's by ... level 10?), elec/energy or elec/elec (where you can actually drain enemies enough to matter). I might throw in Fire/Elec or Fire/Energy but that's not so much "synergy" as it is "ridiculous delightful damage".

Defenders: Rad/Sonic, Best At Everything, really is pretty close. You can have enough protection on a team; you can never have enough damage. Rad/Sonic gives you enough protection and a chunk ton of extra damage.

DrMike: I actually researched something [which may have been a corner case] and found that a multibillion, truly deeply purpled out, build was appallingly effective- maybe twice the DPS, on top of dramatically more survivability, as anything you could put on a level 49 character.

I did that research because I wanted to say "You get most of the benefit from the first 10 million". Annoyingly, that's not true. You get most of the benefit going from 500 million to 5 billion [or whatever the prices are these days.]

rsclark:

Fair enough; data is not the singular of anecdote and seven data points is not significant. I don't have any data, neither do you; but we agree that there are an awful lot of people playing their Fire/Kins. My interpretation is "It's stayed FOTM for the last 36 months because it's very effective, especially in the 44+ game." Yours is "They all suck but they don't know it."

One of these explanations seems a little simpler than the other to me. Occam's Raptor.

EDIT: I can't find the link. Occam's Raptor: "If you disagree with you I will disembowel you with my foot."

Silverado:

... so you're saying that when Fire/Fire tanks were overpowered they DIDN'T make up half the total players? Huh, not how I remember it.

There are, as you see, a wide variety of strategies. I do something like this:

Some IO's around 22 (usually frankenslotting pairs of Acc/Dam in each attack so I never lose accuracy) if it's convenient

Main "frankenslotting" around level 30-32
Go for set bonuses in the 40's, or whenever I'm both rich and bored on that character.

Other people have covered almost everything. I'm going to mention this again:

Damn, good thing I didn't get in on this because I woulda been WAY off. I was guessing you'd be at 30 million by the end of day 2.

It doesn't ALWAYS save your last bid. So if it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't, one of those behaviors is broken.

With three million, I'd go with a couple of popular yellow max-level IO's (the stereotypical ones being Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact and Doctored Wounds at level 50) which should make one to three million profit each, but I don't have any perspective on what the market is like if you're new to it. It may not be as obvious a starting place as I think. Three million becomes six becomes ten becomes fifteen, etc.

Doin' my own work:
GotA Defense, Decimation A/E/R, Pacing of the Turtle triple- all recipes, all level 35.

rsclark said

Salieri taught Beethoven, Lizst and Schubert, he musta known SOMETHING of what he was talking about.

Tongz said

... and as long as there's one more person who thinks they're worth that than LoTG generated, Ion's never going to get one.

FourSpeed: I wish they'd implement something so if someone quotes a person you've /ignored it looks something like this:

Ashtoreth: I couldn't figure out where I got "Lord" in your name... then I noticed your sig. Apologies for the braino.

And I JUST changed my sig to verbally savage someone completely different! Dammit.

My view on the builds you see on the forums:
It doesn't take any money or time to put a full set of Armageddon into Mid's.

How to make inf through play:

1) Do not play in a manner you dislike. If you don't like the L50 blaster, do not play the L50 blaster. If you don't want to spend some time learning to be an ebil marketeer, do not be an ebil marketeer. I stand by my quote in Nethergoat's sig: people throw money at you.

2) Assuming, for a moment, that you do not want to farm and you do not want to play a current 50 and you do not want to marketeer, does that put you Straight Outta Luck? It does not, surprisingly. I don't know Mission Architect farming- that is what the Goat is eating, more power to him- but if you want to accumulate merits, I know a little about that.

You get Merits for TF's (I don't remember when that came into the game- it replaces the random roll you used to get), you get them for finishing your own mission arcs, and you get them for a couple minor things (5 merits for all the location badges in a "core zone", for instance.) 20 merits = a random recipe at your level or max of set, 200-ish = a specific recipe at any level you like. Task Forces get you big handfuls of merits- often enough for two full recipes. (They also level you quite fast.)

Very roughly, you can get about a million inf per merit by rolling randoms at level 50 or by picking out specific high-value IO's (min-level Lucks of the Gambler 7.5%, or Miracle Recoveries, or whatever.) Maybe a little more at the moment, but that's my rough estimate. Rolling randoms at lower levels TENDS to make you less money.