GavinRuneblade

Cape radio gets a bunch of us idiots together from time to time, nearly half have never PvPd before and have no idea what the difference in mechanics are. Pair up, hit the arena and have a blast. Wow Casual PVP. Still happens at least once a month. At least on Virtue.

I also consider myself a casual PvPr. I have no pvp builds, no pvp-only characters, no pvp-recipes. But I show up in the zones, I fight, I usually lose, and I have fun. Still trying to talk some equally incompetent friends into casual arena matches.

Could someone post this longform for those of us on Macs who can't use mids?

Thanks!

Have you taken a plants/ on that mission? Seeds of Confusion +Cyst + lots and lots of spawned nictus = non-stop hilarity. That and almost too much friendly fire to render properly.

I actually giggle evilly in real life every time I get to do this. And I don't care what happens on the rest of the TF. After two of those, I'm grinning through multiple team wipes and just happy to exist.

I've never actually been on a speed ITF (thus far the fastest ITF I've been on was 1 hour 14), but I suspect the warm fuzzy feeling would easily last for 20 minutes if it usually keeps me going for an hour. =)

I think the stories are the best part. Most of the TFs I've been on (nowhere near enough really) have been very interesting. Lady Grey actually gave me a real shock when we got to the climax. A year later I still take it out on HroDtoz every time I see that <censored><censored><censored><censored twice just to be safe><censored>.

But the actual AV fights are usually pretty boring. Just "tank and spank" over and over and over. Reichsman on villain side and the four horsemen from the Lady Grey are the closest to an exception I've found so far. I know that the key is the devs tried (and I believe succeeded admirably) to make all the TFs winnable by any team. But coming from a video game background, I like boss fights to have stages and need a specific strategy. Plus, some of them have so many hit points and so much regen that it's not hard to beat them, instead it is annoying and time consuming. When you have to break off and rest (two or three times), and it's totally safe to do so, that's not exciting. That's annoying.

When I get on a speed team and don't have time to read the missions and clues, I really feel like I've missed out. It's ok after the first time, but really the Devs can tell a good story and I wish more teams took the time to appreciate them.

I still need to get a Hess myself, I've heard good things about it. Looking forward to it when it finally happens.

I had them when I was that level. And I still have them at 50. Works out great. The best thing about level 30-35 IOs is that you can get them really easy at level 30 to 35 by cashing in tickets and merits. Funny thing that.

Then not only do you get to use them all the way to 50, but after 50, when you exemplar back down, you still get to use them.

You should try it.

I've used it, but it really only helps if you know ahead of time what you are putting into the power. Unlike Mids which helps you with the set bonuses etc.

As a result, all of mine are totally inefficient. For example, a regen with the fitness pool and more slots in Health than Fast Healing because Mids would have told me that was stupid, but Suckerpunch doesn't and I am.

Sort of. the problem is the pseudo pet uses multiple powers and if you use set IOs that modify some but not all of the powers, the bonuses only go to some of the powers, not all. track down the guide to the power (my search fu is more like "search *****" so I'm no help sorry) it has a good description of the current status.

Which is not an option for those of us on Macs.

*goes into the corner and cries thinking about how many screwed up "by hand" builds he has*

Just a quick comment on your sample build. Carrion Creepers are really worth investing in. They are, however, extremely weird. There is a guide somewhere to them, but the short version is that slotting one or two Acc/Dam Hami-O's is really worth the investment. I managed to scrounge the money for one so far and have noticed how the accuracy helps. I'd recommend pulling one slot off of haste and two from steaming mist to get it six slotted. I have a plant/storm controller and a plant/ice dominator and the controller has only recharge and end reduction while the Dom has the one hammi-o and it is almost a completely different power. Without the accuracy, sometimes I cast it, and the visuals appear on the floor but no vines appear to start doing damage until the second or third pulse. Now, that almost never happens.

Pulling the one IO out of haste looses you only about 14 seconds of downtime if I recall correctly from the last time I checked. I'm on a Mac so I can't tell for sure but I recall it was a small enough difference that on slot-starved builds I pretty much decided it wasn't worth the investment.

Ok, I fail at quick. =)

Parry can only save you from the melee squish. In Croatoa you have fire-chucking pumpkins, rock hurling deermen (with a PBAoE explode on a few of them), lightning bolts from teh witches, hopping archer midgets, and the ghosts that I think have no melee attacks at all. Parry is great in many places, but Croatoa is not one of them.

And as for the Rikti, they are more dangerous at range with the knockdown/stun on their blasters.

I rarely team because I don't know many people and am only in empty supergroups. When I do team it is a rare day that there are more than 4 of us unless I join a pug.

For example, I just today ran about 5 missions by myself. Got a Prophecy, and 3 recipes that require rare salvage. One was an exploit Weakness which needs a positronic matrix despite being uncommon. So that kind of tweaks the numbers. But still, I got touch of death and Analyze weakness, and only the 1 rare salvage. Was running at -1/x4 so a decent number of enemies. This is pretty normal from my experience. Except I don't normally luck out with something as useful as the touch of death =).

And the merit rolls, really can be ignored for these purposes. I have rolled a few but my "merit wealthiest" character has 286 of them and has never made a roll. Most of my characters have less than 60.

Now I'll disagree with these. I have met too many poeple who just don't understand how the market works. I meet people who have no idea the lowest sale goes to the highest buy price. Most I've met seem to assume it's just first-in first-out to the highest bidder over your listed price.

I try to explain why I can list for 5 and it sells for 10,000 but the one they listed for 300 will never move, and they say I'm the crazy one.

Really, except for selling drops every attempt I've made to follow the advice given on this forum has resulted in me losing a crapload of money. Even the simple, "Buy two sell one" advice has given me two bankrupt characters with a big list of non-selling IOs clogging their auction slots, one of them has 9 items posted for less than half the crafting and materials price unsold for over 4 months. I guess that advice only works if you buy things other people want. =)

Selling my drops I do ok. Trying to use the market to generate wealth has been a disaster. And I meet people who are worse at it than I am. Quite a lot of them.

The average player is really not good at math. Or common sense. Or being patient. All of these are required for earning wealth in the game. Especially that common sense one.

You may not think you're doing anything special, but the ability to bid low and wait IS special. Most of the players can't do that.

The ability to look through the market and understand the information is provides IS EXTREMELY special. I think that you have no idea how many people don't have a clue how the last 5 sold window works.

Please look at the number of threads by people who can't even find a group on Freedom and Virtue. A not insignificant portion of the playerbase thinks spamming "level 23 <insertshortformofAT> lfg" is the only way to get a group. I know people in active supergroups with populated friends lists can get a task force whenever they want. But try cobbling together a pug at off hours not using anyone you know. Now imagine you don't know any other way to get into one. How many will you do? And speed runs in a pug? Is that even an option? Yes a few pug members, but it still requires that experienced leader you mentioned. The average player can't be that person and probably doesn't know one either.

I can only do Pug TFs because if everyone on my friends list and all the members of all my supergroups were on at the same time, the three of us don't have many options. =) I've been on more ITFs than anything else, but I've never managed to find a group that can pull one off in under an hour. And I've been on 4 or 5 failures. Villain side I have never yet been on a successful respec at any level. More than 10 failures though.

Thank you for trying at least. I have the same issues with those sets myself.

OR they could have no single-IOs or procs, but instead two doubles, three triples and one quad. That would allow plenty of enhancement to go around. It'll never ever ever ever ever happen. But it would be cool.