Lakanna
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Remember what I said back on page 1 about the darwinian view, and people who say that if you don't have them, you don't deserve them?Originally Posted by Nethergoat
And that person is not the target audience of high end loot.
I have zero sympathy for some shmoe who looks at the absolute top tier rewards, ignores everything else and gives up before they start.
sadly, I can see this coming too. I'm slowly working my 2-account posi run down aiming for an hour. 132 merits across 2 characters is probably too good of a payout for what is currently about 2 and half hours and will get faster.Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
Unfortunately, I doubt the devs view this as you describe it here and in the rest of your post. I fully expect the next round of merit reward updates to absolutely hammer things like Posi's TF. The median completion time is going to be much lower after this issue, and I expect they will modify the reward accordingly.
I don't think the devs anticipted just how many people would avoid the market, even to their own detriment, when given the option to bypass it. Many people HATE the market for whatever reason.Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
True. But even though it was a nerf to supply it was still a sop to complainers- now they could grind for their shiny instead of buying it. The sorts who were complaining were unlikely to notice that it was taking them longer to get the goodies than if they'd just earned inf and bought them on the market.
Creating the appearance of making something more available while nerfing supply is some nice jiu jitsu!
I've stated several times that drop rates are too low. Specifically, I would like to see teams get a modifier for drops based on team size. nothing like "8-man team gets 8x the drops" mind you, but the XP modifier I suggested using gives an 8-man team 250% of the XP per kill, then splits that 8 ways. I don't think that's unreasonable. i have other ideas that ARE unreasonable, but those are pipe dreams, not something I would suggest seriously.Quote:Originally Posted by galadiman
This is meant with all due respect, and for everyone who might agree with this (The original poster's) point of view:
1. Please read and learn about "Supply and Demand."
2. Please be sure you understand #1.
3. Enjoy life just a little bit more now that you have completed #1. Forumites will do the same.
If anything, I think what you REALLY want is for the drop rate to be increased, if what you want is the prices to go down. Of course, that is also wrought with difficulties.
Have a great day.
Of course, they should just realize this when the game up until I9 allowed everyone to get SO's at a store for a fixed price. Maybe someone should go and inform each person individually of these things that they "should realize" without any outside source. Say, the people who don't read the forums? (IIRC, more than 90% of the playerbase does not come here.)Quote:Originally Posted by Ironblade
Well, they should realize that you can't have everything starting off. It's like walking past a Ferrari dealership and despairing you'll never be able to afford a car. -
Quote:solo, +0x1? Go deal with Carnies for a while. Especially when the end boss in a "defeat all" is a DRM, with an Illusionist in her group. Or try some Malta, where nearly every spawn has at least one critter that can throw a mez. Rikti have a ton of stuns that can make life miserable, and same problem as with carnies: their bosses, even downgraded to Lt's, often spawn with a second mezzer in the group.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
Yay! More over-the-top exaggeration! Please, for entertainment, explain how you cannot complete a solo heroic mission without using "a whole tray of breakfrees".
None of these will require a "full tray of breakfrees" but none can be handled without at least half a dozen. Melee types don't need to use inspirations as a crutch simply to solo, nor to be able to do their job in a team setting. They actually get to use inspirations to increase effectiveness, not to attain basic effectiveness. -
Sometimes, it seems that virtual team size is affecting the drop rates. Other times, it seems like it is not. We just don't know. We know that if it DOES affet recipe drops, it does so inconsistently. And salvage/inspiration drop rates appear to be within expected values for all team sizes, all difficultes. It's just the recipe drops, and especially the common/uncommon/rare Pool A's that are buggy, but weeks of testing and logging haven't yet given us any single denominator that will let us figure out what's causing them to be low.
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Quote:Fail reading comprehension. I CAN GET whatever I want. Honestly, I play enough that if I consolidated cash between characters, I could probably still afford to purple out another villain, and I have enough on-hand to work any hero into a dream build. What -I- can or can't do isn't my point. I don't believe that the market, or the game, is well-served by that "sticker shock" of people hitting the market for the first time. Anyone who looks, and says "I'll never be able to afford that," and ignores the market thereafter, is a person who COULD have been a participant, but was discouraged.Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
i think lakanna suffers from the same sickness that the OP has... it is the dreaded IWANTITNAO...
We know that the forums are a very small part of the playerbase. For every post like the OP, how many people do NOT come here and post, just walk away from the market? How many people WOULD be using it if they didn't think that it was pointless. Yes, educating people who come to the market forum is great, but it's also trying to empty the ocean with a paper cup. What is everyone who walked away from the market could be converted into regular buyers and sellers? And what would it take to make the average player, one who never visits the forums, WANT to use the market? -
Quote:And I would cheer the devs on with this. Good on them, make MORE recipes like this. Pure vanity items, that confer no in-game benefit, but advertise that you have INF to burn? Actually from my perspective a phenomenal idea. Also: Recipes that alter the way a power works. I think that most of the procs would have been great as ultra-rares, allowing people to make their powers do unusual things, but to be honest, most of the procs, except for damage, really aren't all the impressive.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
r/e ultra super rare GOLD SETS:
if the devs added a recipe that would, let's say, add a customizable glow to your costume, and they made it ultra super duper rare....it would be the most expensive thing in the game in spite of conferring zero performance benefit.
I'd love to see more expensive, nice, and "useless" items in the game. Weapon skin recipes, more temp power recipes (think empowerment buffs- I guarantee if they made a mag 4 mez protection temp power, it would get expensive in a hurry). Things that are either cosmetic or consumable. (This makes me wonder if they could create emote recipes? Temp Power - <xxxx> emote (recipe).)
This is a great idea Nethergoat! I'm all for it. -
Good question. I don't think that many people can run TF's and get enough drops to purple characters. Either you have amazing luck, or are far more patient than I. I really don't see how simply selling drops can net you the money to get everything you need to complete a "dream build." (Note- specifically qualified statement, so I don't have to hear "You don't NEED..." again.)
As I said, I farmed a lot with my brute, sold off most of the recipes and salvage that dropped for him, ran SF's, and ran regular content. The income was respectable, but wasn't enough to come anywhere close to completing the final planned build for him. I started with crafting recipes, buying the salvage and recipe for about 800k, then selling the crafted enhancement at 8 million per. Selling drops may make you money, and to be honest I got a lot of my build, the uncommon and rare stuff, by crafting it myself from my own drops and salvage. But that was nowhere near the INF I would need to pick up 5 LotG +recharge, a handful of pool C uniques, and 3 purple sets. SO I came here, and had much the same arguments, mainly with Nethergoat, about rarity, reward per time spent, and who really is and is not entitled to be able to make their characters better.
While I was here, I paid attention to every thread on making money. Goat's guides helped me to see that it was even easier than I had thought, and that making enough INF to get whatever I wanted was not only going to be faster using the market to achieve my goals, the market was literally several times faster and more effective than trying to earn that finished build any other way. So I did. I kicked myself out of the billionare characters the other day, when I placed bids for the remaining 7 purples I needed to complete my brute. Total cost for him was a little over 3 billion, although some sets I paid more to get at a lower level: none of his IOs except for the purples are above level 40. (one of the original ideas or this build: Ice Mistral SF's)
If I had NOT crafted recipes I bought, had not memorized the level 50 common recipes just to turn my junk salvage into profit, had not learned to use the market, I would still be working on my first purple set, and not a chance I would have everything else I wanted for it. The market isn't just "more efficient." It's an order of magnitude, at least, more efficient for earning the high-level rewards that IO's are supposed to be. Which I don't believe is a healthy state for a game. I also believe that it is not a good sign for a game when we see posts, month after month, of "things are too expensive." People are coming to the forums, signing up, and posting JUST on that issue. I'm certain that the prices ont he market don't earn any good word-of-mouth recommendations from people: "it's a great game, but only the really rich characters can afford the good stuff, and prices are outrageous. Don't bother with it."
And for those who think the devs should not pay attention to the market, that's as funny as saying the government should stay out of Medicare. The market is a part of the game, adn currently the ONLY part of the game that can ensure regular progress to IO's, which are often described as end-game content. It would be irresponsible of the devs to NOT keep a close eye on the market and how it is being used, especially by the small group that uses it so well that they can bypass all other game content except to PL a character to 50 and instantly purple it out. There are regular posters here who COULD do this easily. Rewards for using the market are out of line with rewards in the entire rest of the game. And I really don't think there is a way to change that that doesn't massively disrupt the market. So either the devs leave it alone with its broken reward rate, or they make changes that would benefit the playerbase as a whole (at least, those who want IO'd characters) and probably implode the market.
McFly: are you seriously saying that if they created a "gold" set,t hat offered no extra bonuses, but was 10 times as rare as purples, that they would go for as much on the market? it isn't the RARITY the most players care about, it's the EFFECT. Which is why I disagree in principle with the WoW mentality of making the best stuff ultra-rare in the first place, but that's an entire other post. -
Quote:Yeah. I tried that on my brute. farming, running missions, running TF's, etc etc etc. And then I started buying recipes, crafting them, and selling them. I went from under 100k to a hair over a billion in a month just doing that, not even playing.Originally Posted by SlyGuyMcFly
Wrong. You can get the IO sets you want by, and I know this may blow your mind, playing the game, then you take the drops you got by playing the damned game and sell them on the market. Then you use the money you made by playing the goddamned game and use it to buy the IO sets you want.
Not. A. Hard. Concept.
How long do you think that would take by doing what you describe? I figure that it took me less than 24 hours over the course of a month, just logging in, collecting my recipes, crafting, and reposting them, to make that billion. Meanwhile, i was playing the game on other characters, the richest of whom sits at around 200 million.
I stand by it: if you aren't using the market, you cannot make any serious progress in getting a character IO'd. Which makes it the only way to do things if your goals include that. And that's exactly how posters here want it.
I'm more than happy to go back and forth on this again, but it's best to agree to disagree. Goat hit it on the head a while back: I'm an idealist. I thinkt hat IO's SHOULD be customization options open to the vast majority of people, not rewards that only the very highest tier of players should be able to get. And I especially disagree that only those who spend time working the market are the only ones who can afford the top-end sets. It's a basic difference in thought, and I know that the devs do not share my perspective. But I dislike people trying to describe the market as something that benefits all players, or something that, if you aren't using it, you don't deserve the shinies. It's a great system for what it does, but what it does is NOT "make IO's accessible to most players." It's more "concentrate wealth, including INF and top-tier IO's, to those players most able to use the market effectively." THAT is what the market is good for.
Maybe that's how the devs want things. I guarantee that's how most market forum regulars want things. -
Quote:Writer's fiat. Superman doesn't get sent to the hospital several times in a single issue because he's chain-mezzed. Mainly because it's not a very heroic way to portray him, is it?Originally Posted by DarkGob
In fact, most of the time when faced with an enemy that had Kryptonite, Superman would either use some trick to get the Kryptonite away from the bad guy, or he'd leave and grab a lead suit, then come back and kick the snot out of the bad guy, all while smirking as the Kryptonite does nothing.
Tsoo, Carnies, and Malta are probably the worst because they not only mezz, but can stack multiple types of mezzes against a single target. Fighting a Dark Ring mistress solo on a squishie is masochism. Fighting one that happens to have an Illusionist in her group? Bring on the break frees, because if you don't, you're gonna get hospitalized. Repeatedly. Are we having FUN yet? -
Quote:I don't disagree on any specific thing you wrote here, but you're making a few assumptions that I do question.Originally Posted by UberGuy
While I certainly won't claim no one in here is about preserving the market as the way to do things, I think you're letting your emotional position cloud some rather logical reasoning about why the market is the best place for the devs to leave these things.
First, you need to define "realistic" in regards to buying IO sets. Absolutely no alternative method introduced by the devs has been what I would consider as "realistic" in terms of allowing characters to completely bypass the market. Instead, they function as pressure valves which allow enterprising players to pick and choose the best methods. For example, buy cheap, highly available items on the market, buy items with radically high market prices with merits, buy rare salvage with tickets, etc. However, using merits or tickets exclusively to try to outfit your characters, while likely faster than relying on random drops, is still a fairly epic process which the market would beat out.
Why would the devs want things to work that way?
Because random drop rates control the average injection of these "carrots" into the game system, and a trade mechanism is the only way for randomly distributed goods to find their way from people who get them to people who actually want them (assuming someone who gets a drop doesn't also want it).
Any system that truly bypasses this random distribution + market delivery channel mechanism on a per-player basis is, almost by definition, going to be more efficient at collecting these goods than the devs would find desirable. This is because if such bypass mechanisms allow each character to focus on obtaining exactly what they want without regard to the rest of the game system. It provides and excellent channel for min/maxing with reduced focus on benefit to the general community.
Remember, the devs are extremely likely to view the rate at which players in general can "IO out" their characters very similarly to how they view the speed with which people can reach level 50. It behooves them to limit it, and so they don't want it to be too fast or easy.
Beyond any dev concern for balancing these market alternatives, there is a player-based consideration. The balance between using the market and alternatives like merits presents a rather classic prisoner's dilemma. Market alternatives risk being good enough that players abandon the market to focus on them, even though having enough people involved in the market actually keeps everyone involved improving faster than the market alternative. But the market is unpleasant to risk-averse or just concept-opposed players, so that has to be balanced in the picture or these people will jump on the alternative bandwagon even when it is a meaningfully inferior option. This is a self-reinforcing spiral - people leave the market, it becomes less attractive, so more people leave, and so on.
So the devs don't want the market alternatives to be too good beyond a point, and the market users don't want them to be both inferior to the market and yet close enough that lots of people bail on the market.
So, you see, people who don't want market alternatives aren't always looking out for themselves in the sense of wanting to keep control. We recognize an open market as one of the most efficient mechanisms for redistributing goods to all players when those goods have an overall supply is managed by the devs for reasons that have little to do with the market itself.
1: The devs are regulating the reward rate. From what we've seen, the devs are regulating the rate of reward specifically on tickets and merits, but recipe drop rates haven't changed, with the exception of costume drops, since they were put into the game. I think purples especially have a drop rate that is far too low to begin with, but saying something like that int he market forum brings out the people SCREAMING about them being "ultra-rare." The devs seem to not care about the market prices of things.
2: A free, unregulated market helps everyone. Not entirely true. I know that price caps are a terrible, terrible idea, but an alternate source of recipes that can bring prices down, AND provide a straight-up INF sink, would serve everyone well, except those who make billions of INF by flipping market slots.
3: The market is intended to be as efficient as it is. I Seriously doubt the developers envisioned level 5 characters with hundreds of millions of INF just from playing the market. They seem to be all over the risk and reward ratio for normal gameplay, but marketeering is a niche that generates massive profits for zero risk. I think that's one of the definitions of "aberrant gameplay" that they take issue with if it were anything but the market. The only real way I can see to bring it back in line is to make it less profitable, which means increasing supply. Higher drop rates, or an alternate supply of recipes. Anything else will mean that the market will continue to be aberrant, high-reward, no-risk gameplay. And that's exactly how many people want it.
BTW: I agree completely that no other system so far has provided a reasonable way to achieve goals that include slotting set IO's. The market is really the only way to do it within any realistic timespan, which is what I really dislike. You MUST use the market if you want IO's, there is no other realistic way to do things. -
I wouldn't put mex protection into IO's. It would just widen the performance gap between IO'd out builds and others. I would (and have, before) suggest creating a new power pool that packs mez protections in, at the obvious cost of other powers in your build. I think the first 2 should be auto, and mag 1 protection to all mezzes: enough to shake off a single mez. The tier 3 and tier 4 could be toggles, and add mag 2 protection to mezzes, with all types represented between the toggles. If you take all 4 powers in the pool, and run the extra 2 toggles, you wind up with +4 protection against all mez. The cost in powers is high, and I bet it would become the second-most picked pool after fitness.
Mezzes in this game are ridiculous. They prevent you from doing anything at all, and nobody really likes being a statue. Break Frees are not a solution any more than carrying around a tray of blues was a solution when melee types had serious END problems just running their armors (remember when DA was unplayable without shuffling toggles?) -
Quote:Of course, you said it yourself in here: Market billionaires. Guess what happens when you come in with a suggestion to up the drop rates so that people who DON'T want to use the market get a reasonable way to achieve them? I can probably dig up the old post where I suggested upping team drop rates.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Anyone who comes here with an open mind gets all the information they need to earn billions. We actively recruit for Team Eeebil 24/7, the more market billionaires we help create the happier we are.
That's the opposite of 'preserving the status quo'.
There are some people who refuse to help themselves, which is nobodies 'fault' but their own.
Preserve the market, preserve the current way of having the market be the only realistic way to purple out a character, the only realistic way to earn enough INF to buy the IO sets you WANT. That's what I was talking about, same as always: the market is the best way to do things, and the market forum regulars want to keep it that way. no alternative options should be opened, and some posters go so far as to recommend repealing merits and tickets, because they bypass the market. -
Quote:I'm confused now. I WAS logging today. after 3 missions, including a bank job, I had a drop rate of a little over 3% for recipes. I got 6 running a single mayhem. I also picked up 9 enhancements in those same 3 missionsOriginally Posted by EarthWyrm
What I really want to know is what's different, in terms of RNG seeds or whatever, when people get really good runs. I had myself one, and only one, really good run (and the 18 recipes on 641 defeats isn't even that good - it's an overall 2.8% drop rate, which is about what it ought to be if things were working consistent with published drop rates), so it seems like there has to be something going on with how the RNG is seeded, what place you have in the virtual "team," or something that we simply don't have access to because we don't get to see the underlying architecture of how drops are assigned..
And then, nothing whatsoever for the next 3 missions. No recipe drops, no enhancements, nothing. This was -1x4, papers in Grandville. my instincts tell me that this is the RNG not being seeded right, and giving certain instances a greatly reduced drop rate, but only certain instances: reset the map, and you may get normal drops the next time.
Done for the moment, but I'll gather more data tonight and post it all at once. -
Quote:Yeah. i wasn't logging tonight, but in a bank mission and 3 papers, my brute picked up a dozen recipes and 4 rare salvage. All my other testing was done with my scrapper, but redside was amazingly good to me tonight for recipe drops.Originally Posted by danomal
QR
Lib. farm on my level 50 brute set to 8 +1 with bosses
641 defeated (left after recipes were full)
Mako's Bite Acc/end/rech
Undermined defenses defdebuff/rech/end
Thunderstrike Dam/rech
Blood Mandate Dam/end
Calibrated Accuracy Acc/dam
And 15 common recipes
339 'drops' total including three orange salvage (chronal skip, SIU, Rikti Alloy) -
I always cringe when I see a thread like this. To the OP: you came to the wrong place for this. The market forum is very Darwinian about purples: if you can't get them, you do not deserve them. It's also a fairly insular place: preserving the status quo means preserving the profit margins on the high-end stuff, which means that people who enjoy the market are (surprise) the ones most likely to be able to afford to purple out their characters.
That being said, seriously, play on the market. Craft, flip, just sell drops, whatever. you'll make far more money per unit of time playing the market than doing anything else in the game. The rewards for selling stuff are so ridiculously far above the rewards for doing anything else, that doing it even for a short time will give you more than enough INF to straight up buy whatever recipes or crafted IOs you want. It really is easy and mostly painless, you can even post bids and put stuff up, log out, and log in the next day to a big pile of INF. No risk, all reward. -
Quote:All my testing today came from papers and Borea missions, still a low drop rate, except when it wasn't.Originally Posted by UberGuy
I'm pretty sure testing was done in beta on regular Paper/Scanner missions.
I can break out a hardy character and try repeating one a few times tomorrow.
I had noticed the pairs popping up, and in my very last mission, I got a recipe the first spawn, and second spawn. I exited, reset the mission, and again got one first and second spawn. Resetting the mission again, got nothing the whole way through, but on 10 resets and running just a paper mission, I went from 7 to 11 common recipes. It didn't work ALL the time, but resetting that mission gave me a better average drop rate than running other missions straight through.
I didn't post before because I wasn't sure. I'm not entirely convinced it was a coincidence, but I can't reliably replicate it either. I eventually moved on, but if I find another map that drops a pair of recipes like that, I'll have to see if it can be REALLY broken. I'd love to see a map where the drop rate can be manipulated. At least that might get a response from the devs. -
Here's an interesting chain of thought.
When the demon ship map was bugged, it was using a static string of numbers, rather than a random one. That made it possible to manipulate it. At the time, SG-mode could drop base salvage, so by shifting in and out of SG mode, you could manipulate which numbers were rolled for what values.
The interesting part is that the same number string was used for salvage, inspirations, enhancements, recipe, and base salvage. Now, if what we're seeing is that salvage and inspirations are dropping normally, but enhancements and recipes are not, then I see 2 possibilities.
1: The drop rate for recipes was changed. Synapse has said that this isn't the case, and I imagine it wouldn't be very hard to check, although the fact that this bug appeared at the same time as drop rates in AE were tweaked means its not outside the realm of possibility. If the "reduced rewards" code is being called somewhere in the non-AE coding, it could lead to reductions in rewards. (don't custom critters now reward 75% base XP?)
2: The new difficulty slider is causing trouble with the way drops are assigned after they're rolled, giving some drops to non-existent teammates. This is why we need to check the drop rates of real teammates vs. virtual ones, and also test them on very low (+0/x1) difficulty settings.
I ran papers all morning on +0x1, and started noticing certain patterns. Recipe/enhancement drops almost always came in pairs for me: if I went a while without either, then got one, the very next spawn was likely to drop one as well. Often, this was the first 2 spawns of a map, although it did happen at other times. Nowhere near enough to call it a real pattern, but enough to make me take notice. I suggest that in addition to counting drops, watch for patterns of drops, especially patches where you get several recipes or enhancements in a short amount of time. I have no idea WHY this would happen, unless the RNG was well and truly broken, though.
My results for the morning. Difficulty was +0/x1 the whole way through
672 rewarding mobs defeated
13 bosses and elite bosses
45 lieutenants
605 minions
6 underlings (XP only)
3 rewarding mobs of unknown rank
Archon Belaggi (1)
Archon Leery (1)
Archon Romano (1)
0 pets and 6 greys
696 inf/debt rewards
1474404 inf
22283 prestige
24 vanguard merits
13 Pool A recipes (Mob Defeats) from 743 minion equivalents (1.75%)
2 uncommon and rare recipes
Hecatomb : Dam (Superior) (Recipe)
Undermined Defenses: Defense Debuff/Endurance Reduction (Recipe)
11 common recipes
1 Pool B recipes (Mission Complete)
Performance Shifter : End Mod/Rech/Acc (Recipe)
58 salvage from 714 minion equivalents (8.11%)
2 rare
6 uncommon
50 common
9 single origin enhancements
220 inspirations (1 tier 3, 68 tier 2, 151 tier 1, 0 special)
Also of note: 24 missions, 1 Pool B recipe? These were about 18 papers and 6 Borea missions. -
I suggest, if you're running tests, do a similar number of tests with x2, x4, and x8 difficulties. It seems to me that x2 approaches the pre-I16 drop rates, while x4 is a bit lower and x8 is significantly lower. Most of the runs in this thread were x6 or x8, and the only ones that came pretty close to the old drop rate were the cargo ship, set for x2 so it spawned only minions.
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Last week, I PM'd Synapse with a link to this thread. His reply was that they are going to be watching the drop rates closely, because their datamining was not showing the same results as what we're reporting in this thread, and that nothing in reward coding was changed. This is a bug, and not intended. Hopefully we'll hear something about it soon, and hopefully they specifically datamine drop rates for different virtual team sizes and different enemy rankings per team size. My own thoughts are that it's a combination of virtual teammates and a lowered reward rate for Lt's and bosses.
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Quote:Basically,yeah. Now that it's live, maybe they can get enough data from the live servers to confirm what we've been testing and saying for weeks now.Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
My thoughts? I love it all. Except for the recipe drops rates suddenly sucking.
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From 9/11. +0/x4, running papers in Grandville
652 defeats (56 bosses, 159 Lts, 436 minions - smallish sample)
Salvage drops: 75 (63 common, 12 uncommon)
Common Recipes: 17
Uncommon recipes: 1
Rare recipes: 1
From 9/13. -1/x8, papers and Borea mostly
1600 defeats (143 underlings, 1062 minions, 288 Lt's, 107 bosses)
Salvage drops: 128 (104 common, 20 uncommon, 4 rare)
Common recipes: 14
Uncommon recipes: 1
Rare recipes: 2
Looks like the idea they fixed it was premature, although I saw MUCH better drop rates with it set to +0/x4 than with -1/x8. -
Dark Regen's heal depends on the number of foes hit, yes. The heal itself is huge per mob: if you can hit 3 foes, unslotted for any healing, it will completely fill your green bar. The END is a static cost, with a base of right around 1/3rd of your base END, whether you hit one or 10 foes. The reason the Theft of Essence proc is nice ist hat when you fire DR, it checks against each foe in range to proc, so you could wind up getting back MORE end than you spent on it with a lucky roll.
The massive END cost, though, is one of the main reasons /DA has a reputation as an END hog. slot at least 2 END reductions in it before anything else. You can afford to miss a few in a big group, and the heal is good enough that you don't need to slot for healing, but that end drain is a killer.
Trying to get close to the DEF cap is a great idea as well. It will take a lot of planning and thought, but you can do very well with it. My brute sits around 28% melee defense, and the difference in survivability is huge. Just remember that /DA has no resistance to defense debuffs, so all that +DEF means nothing in some situations (vs. Romans, for example.)
I see a /sonic and a /therm, so you should be pretty safe in most situations, with your resistance being buffed. I'd still recommend a damage proc instead of the taunt in Death Shroud, or move the slot somewhere else. You should be doing plenty of damage to keep attention on you, and you DO still have taunt to pick up any enemies that try to get away from you. -
As a /DA, unless you know the other players will be adding resistance and defense buffs to you, you might not want to get too much aggro, especially without using a heavily IO'd build. /DA just isn't that survivable without massive investment or outside buffs. I'd recommend taking the taunt out of Death Shroud.
Dark Regeneration: The heal is amazing, even without any heal slotting. I'd go with 1-2 ACC and 2-3 END reductions. You really don't need to enhance the heal at all. This is one place, though, where a specific IO is very useful: the Theft of Essence proc can actually help take the bite out of DR's big END cost, especially if you regularly hit 10 enemies with it.
Hover, but no fly. No travel power at all, actually. Not hard to do anymore with the Grandville jetpack QM. I'd drop hurdle, though, and pick up Opressive Gloom, slotted with a single end redux, or a cheap stun double/triple. You don't need to run it often, but it's more utility (and really helps survivability) if things go wrong and you start to get overwhelmed. -
Recipe drops seem fixed in the 09-10 patch. Still testing, but after 4 paper missions, I'm still looking at right around 2% recipe drop rate.
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Quote:Not their job to monitor all aspects of the game? You have it wrong: the players don't completely set the market price: they control demand, but the dev-set drop rates control supply. Players will pay that because it's scarce and good, not just because it's good. And it is ENTIRELY the devs job to watch the game. You might as well say it isn't their job to police AE farms: after all, it's all player-created content, right?Originally Posted by DSorrow
I seriously doubt the devs actually think of market values when they implement new drops. The market values are, after all, set by the players. An item which many players think is valuable will cost loads regardless of what the devs think. They could've foreseen the end result by looking at the drop rates and current market behaviour, but I really, really don't think that is their job.
When something in the game is working well, the devs are under no obligation to make changes. I was merely wondering aloud if this was REALLY what they intended PvP IO's to be: a reward for marketeers who don't even care for PvP at all, in addition to a reward for the hardcore PvP players.
As for things costing loads regardless: costume recipes. Or look at the HUGE drop in recipe prices when AE went live. Supply is just as important as demand in setting a market value. -
I wonder, is this really what the devs wanted when they created PvP IO's? 1.5 billion market price, seriously? And I know that that really is what they sell for.
Marketeers get the PvP rewards without PvP. And the drop rates are still so low that many PvP players won't ever see them.