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Laevateinn

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  1. Laevateinn
    Listen to LFM broadcasts a little and you'll notice people tend to ask for specific roles rather than specific ATs. If the role requested is BuffDebuff they sometimes go on to specify the powerset they want as well.

    You see things like "ITF LF3M, damage would be nice" or "LGTF LF Kin" a lot. They probably won't care if you bring a defender, controller or corruptor as long as it has kinetics. "Mission team LF Defender" is less common. I doubt if any archetypes will fall out of favor the way people say they will.

    "Bring anything you like" is still the most common out there, even among the minmaxing top DPS crowd. (Narrow-minded people might have some trouble comprehending this fact, but an interest in character optimization doesn't automatically make one highly selective when it comes to team composition.)
  2. Laevateinn
    Presumably, there will be lots more people playing. There'll be a pretty well-established pattern of surge in player activity > surge in supply > prices fall > IO consumption increases > supply dries up > sudden spike in prices > gradual decline > return to normal.

    I'll hoard a few stacks of recipes to sell during shortages (there is nothing more fun than logging in to see "For Sale: 0" on anything you have stock of), but other than that, I have no extensive holiday plans.
  3. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Father Xmas View Post
    The one thing I don't understand about wanting perma-hasten nowadays is that Hasten combined with the recharge bonuses you need to get hasten into the perma range well reduce your attack recharge times to the point that if you don't have someone buffing your endurance recovery, you'll run out of endurance faster than a Gunstar after Death Blossom.
    This isn't true. I know, because I actually do have perma-hastened characters.
  4. Laevateinn
    Occasionally, I admit I do wish good names were easier to find. ("Good" meaning names that are stylish, descriptive, memorable, in English, and evocative of the superhero genre.)

    On the other hand, I've had a few cases where I got a much better name, concept and character because so many good names were taken, so I can't really complain about a lack of names.

    I wanted to make a rad/sonic defender for a long, long time, but had trouble coming up with a suitable concept and name. My original idea was some sort of post-apocalyptic punk rocker with radioactive powers, but I couldn't find anything good that fit the theme.

    One day I snagged a fantastic name, musing that it'd be great for a nightcrawler-style teleporting hero. The only problem was, it still didn't fit my rad/sonic in any way. Then I realized I could portray a rad/sonic as a superhero with time and space manipulation powers. AM = speed up time, LR = slow down time, EMP = time stop, RI = teleporting bullets out of the way, EF = funky time/space distortion effects, sonic blasts = energy bolts that cause damage by warping reality. I picked up SS and Teleport for flavor, which also let me get 32.5 ranged defense and ghosting capability, and gave her a new backstory about being a US astronaut on a joint NASA-Portal Corps mission that was disrupted by Axis America's invasion. I ended up enjoying the revamped character about 10 times more.

    The name in question? You won't believe it. Remember, this is on Virtue.

    Warpshadow.
  5. Laevateinn

    Bid Creep, People!

    POST-ACTION

    This is true, yes. I admit I end up doing it myself, then facepalming when what I thought was a conservative bid ends up filling immediately.

    At least, try bidding 10% and 50% of the apparent going rate first.
  6. Laevateinn
    I dreamt I was at the siege of Beijing by Eight-Nation Alliance troops during the Boxer Rebellion. There were Chinese guys in Ming Dynasty (for some reason) costumes with halberds charging international troops with rifles. I was sneaking about, observing the battle with Sprint toggled on, since I had a Celerity: Stealth slotted in it. I accidentally wandered too close to a man in a green shirt, who aggroed on me. He wasn't a soldier. He grabbed my arm, which suppressed my stealth, so I ran about for a bit (dragging him along) to try and lose him. This didn't work so I punched him in the face and made him pass out, then hid behind a pillar so my stealth would unsupress.

    Then I woke up.

    I need to play this game less.
  7. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ironblade View Post
    Are there that many people out there itching for the full set for the defense bonuses??
    Yes. BotZ is the only set that breaks the pattern of large positional defense bonuses being a 5- and 6-piece bonus. On my squishies it further fills the -KB role, saving me an extra slot. 150m is pretty cheap for anything that saves me 5 to 6 slots.

    Influence, merits and tickets aren't finite resources, you can always get more. But currently there's no way to get more than 91 slots per character, which is the final cap on how much power you can cram into it, so slot efficiency gets to write the price tags.
  8. Laevateinn
    Defense will be more effective if you can muster softcapped levels of it, but it'll be more pricey as well (if you're talking S/L defense, since F/C/E/N is generally cheap).

    You can build for both defense and HP. Here's my tank build, adopted from my brute that I'm in the process of rerolling. It's WP/SS, which has the advantage that it can fit more Kinetic Combats than your Axe build, but hopefully it'll give you some ideas. Note that it has around 20% HP from set bonuses as well.

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    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Heraclea View Post
    the sets that add major defense bonuses at less than 5 or 6 slots are often insanely overpriced for their level on the auction house.
    Considering how effective defense bonuses are, they're actually significantly underpriced for what they do.
  9. Laevateinn
    Got them. Thanks, all
  10. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Weatherby Goode View Post
    I was under the impression that Bought respecs, respec recipes, and this new respec were all the stackable kind?
    I've used respec recipes and they are definitely not the stackable kind.
  11. Laevateinn
    I'm looking for two level 10 Blessing of the Zephyr recipes and will pay 150m for each.

    This is on Guardian, blueside, but I have market bids up in case you are on another server.
  12. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Doomguide View Post
    How "Avoid" fits into this nomenclature I'm not sure.
    Avoid tells the AI to try and stay out of a certain area. You see this with most rain effects and some location-based powers.
  13. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Santorican View Post
    I've never really understood why people say they're selling a recipe/enhancement? Why not just post it up minus the pomp?
    To advertise the sale, which may be necessary if you're selling stuff with low transaction volumes or at odd levels.

    To sell things without going through the market, avoiding transaction fees and the risk of posting a listing fee.
  14. Laevateinn
    I don't believe in building purely for defense or for offense. A blaster is like a nuclear missile - it needs to reach the target without being shot down and carry enough megatons to vaporize the city there.

    There are a few problems with your original build. First, I strongly recommend Hover/Fly if it's not out of concept for you and if you can live with not having Acrobatics. It's much more convenient than kiting and you don't have to constantly reposition yourself, which drops your damage output.

    Second, the build really needs more megatons. I would think very carefully before dropping Fire Breath on a Fire/ character. It is half the reason Fire/ is considered a "good" AoE set and comprises a large chunk of your AoE damage output. The build doesn't have the recharge required to spam fireball either, and there are a lot of places where the slotting can be improved. Ironically, your Temp Invuln is mildly underslotted.

    If reaching 45% ranged defense requires unreasonable build sacrifices (my definition of "unreasonable" includes skipping half your AoE damage and having 26% recharge in your only AoE power) you can go with a more modest 32.5% ranged defense. This way you have much more room for flexibility in the build and can still eat a small purple inspiration to hit 45% defense in situations when you really need it.


    If you want to keep all your original power choices I'd go with something like this. Much better recharge in Fireball and FoN, 45% ranged defense, 48% S/L resistance and more regeneration. Global recharge is the same. No PvP IOs. This is exactly the same as your first build, only the slotting is changed.

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    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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    Here's what I recommend you go with. Note that this build is more expensive, since it uses decimations and an extra LotG and Positron's blast. You have Fire Breath, hover (I assume you're willing to drop Acrobatics, since you removed it from your second build), 33% ranged defense, 47% S/L resistance, and 65% global recharge, which isn't stratospheric but is decent for a non-purple build.

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  15. Laevateinn
    I wonder what you made your charts out of, because your purple build has 23% more global recharge (133.8% vs 110%), 10s less downtime on Hasten (15s vs 25s) and 9% higher hit chance against +4 enemies (93.6% vs 84.6%) compared to your "Mach 2" build, which does not have any significantly better defense, resistance, HP, or regen. It also does better single-target damage due to the purple damage procs.

    Is it worth the 3bn (approximately) in purples that it'll cost? If cost is at all a problem for you, no. Stick with the non-purple build. While purples have better set bonuses, the benefit isn't proportionate to the cost. Purples are most useful in extreme recharge builds that have multiple long-recharge powers or are reliant on making a key selfbuff permanent. If this is not one of your build goals then you don't get as much, relatively speaking, out of them (without Hasten your purple build only has around 63% global recharge, which is rather lackluster anyway). You could argue that on a Blaster you would get more mileage out of building for survivability (meaning +Defense).

    [edit] Mistakenly assumed a Ragnarok KD proc
  16. Laevateinn
    There aren't any ATs that stand head and shoulders over their counterparts in all respects, but certain combinations of powersets excel strongly in specialized areas. Fire/Kin controllers and Archery/MM blasters for AoE damage, Ill/Rad controllers for soloing single hard targets, assorted combos of SS/Shield/Fire for melees, etc.
  17. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rieze View Post
    2 KB protection IOs give 8pts. Acerobatics give 9pts. Every 2ndary with KB protection gives 10pts. Those sets never get knocked back. Acerobatics still get knocked back.
    The reason sets with 10 pts KB protection in their mez protection don't get knocked back is not due to the extra 1 point of -KB, but because their mez protection powers also grant 10,000% resistance to KB, which reduces incoming KB to basically nothing. I've seen Recluse knock around an /Elec tank with 24 pts -KB while all the towers were up, but he couldn't touch my Invuln who only has 10 pts -KB.
  18. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea View Post
    How can he have 0 xp and a tray full of powers. I call HAX!
    I only took the screenshot; I don't own the character in question. (If you were more observant you might have noticed that the character is a scrapper, but I have Fire Blast icons in my tray. )
  19. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DumpleBerry View Post
    Money that isn't earning is money wasted.
    Until fairly recently, I would have agreed with you. i14 changed all that, though. The introduction of PvP IOs showed that early bidders have a massive advantage - the first Gladiator's Armor unique sold for a little over 100m; it's now worth 2bn. If more ultra-rare IOs are ever introduced, I want to be prepared with ridiculous sums of money to ensure I can get my hands on them.

    My budget is booked up to the end of this year, but once 2010 rolls along I have plans to build up significant resources to guarantee that all my characters, present and future, will never lack for anything they could ever conceivably want.
  20. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by RagManX View Post
    Should make the "Billion inf with no XP" much easier to get.
    Someone has already got there, if this is to be believed:

    http://i513.photobucket.com/albums/t...3-09-51-09.jpg
  21. Laevateinn
    LotG 7.5 is good - it's around 100m for the recipe and costs 200 merits, working out to about 450k/merit.

    Blueside, Numina's is actually a pretty poor choice. It barely sells for 70m crafted and costs 250 merits. With a few exceptions, merit purchases in general are bad value for money - the market is cheaper.
  22. Laevateinn
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JohnnyKilowatt View Post
    Oddly enough I have never had someone complain about knockback while playing energy blast.
    Energy Blasts' knockback is usually a little overstated. It doesn't actually knock enemies that far and it knocks them away from the user, which is the direction all the cone attacks are going anyway.

    The KB powers that have the potential to be really troublesome tend to be PBAoE ones and badly-placed pseudopets (e.g. Bonfire).
  23. Laevateinn

    +Regen in toggles?

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade View Post
    What is the wording that lets you know a bonus counts as a "set bonus" (for example the Luck of the Gambler +Recharge) and therefore works all the time even if the toggle is turned off, compared to one that works like an "enhancement bonus" (such as you are saying the heal uniques) and only works when the toggle is active?
    Special effects that behave like a set bonus will show up under the set bonus listing in your character info, procs will not. (LotG 7.5, for example, shows up in your set bonus listing, but Numina's unique doesn't.) For a comprehensive list, see http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Table_of_Special_IOs
  24. Laevateinn
    Congrats!
  25. Laevateinn

    +Regen in toggles?

    POST-ACTION

    I no longer have a Willpower character to verify this with, but common build advice is that putting the +Regen uniques into RttC causes them to only fire when an enemy comes into range of the toggle, rather than when you turn on the toggle. Slot them elsewhere.