Lakanna

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But where do you get massive quantities of minions SOLO redside? You have to go with missions, which means you might as well have a single target build.

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black scorpion----platform farm, or RWZ

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The Fab and Cimerora as well.

Rough start, but eventually, everyone got on the same page. We took out the yellows and blues, but in the end, we just didn't have enough controllers to hold the greens.

With more controllers, the raid would have been a success. Also, a little more prep in getting Eoes, they can be farmed in PI out on Monster island.

At any rate, it was a good try. Thanks to everyone who came out, and to ToL for leading it. I hope next time, we can take him down.

True enough. I tend to spend a lot of time on my 50 brute, and the goal I have for him is to finish his IO slotting, including purples. My own experience is coloring what I consider to be "rewards." I've had a lot of fun on him, playing with a good regular group, playing with PUGs, earning a few badges along the way.

The entitlement thing? if you haven't seen posts about it, feel free to ignore it.

This assumes that they're using both the AoE and single target, though. What happens if they just follow and "rock the aura," not using their single-target cred ability? Then, the whiner fails, because the healer post just isn't providing enough support, if I have the math right.

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I'd love one of each style EAT on each side, a branching one, and a form one.

Longbow and Nictus?

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Going Rogue with a Warshade would be pretty much equivalent to a Nictus. SoA are a little different, you would still have the Arachnos costume and powers. However, that's just slot 1 for the costume, you could just make your second slot into a Longbow costume and say you're a defector.

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I was always curious about this: what would happen if a Kheld fused with someone, willingly, of less-than-noble persuasion? It would still be a Peacebringer or Warshade, just an evil one?

Nictus attempt to dominate their hosts. The kheldian AT's are both more-or-less-equal partners, and yet the kheldian ATs seem to unerringly pick hosts who will become heros, never villains?

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I find myself direly amused by the idea that you get a powerboost-style buff that can only be sustained by attacking. Higher-tier attacks would sustain it longer.

It is a ridiculous idea, but it still amuses me.

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Absurd! And yeah, it makes me chuckle too. Especially since my favorite defender is kin/sonic. I buff a bit, and blast a lot to keep the -res debuffs going. Trying to picture a SB that sends the recipient bouncing through the CoT caves like a giant, spandex-clad pinball...

Stone tank: "Please, never, ever, SB me again!"

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you can't come to the market forums and say "cheaper". too many greedy people here for that and you'll just get flamed. trust me. (i agree with you though) everything is too high. i'll never spend those prices.

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I've been hinting at it for a while, but it's time for me to apologize to the marketers. After reading a LOT of responses, and thinking about what is said here, I have to agree with smurphy. The marketeers don't drive prices up, the dev-determined drop rates are simply too low. There's nothing that any player can do to consistently raise prices. As one "experiment" showed, a group of players, acting in concert, CAN bring prices down, temporarily, but ultimately, demand far outstrips supply.

The only way the high-priced stuff will come down in price is if the developers decide to make things more common. There are a number of ways they can do that, from increasing drop rates straight up, decreasing recipe costs, or even adding in a store that actually WOULD create an effective price cap: always available at this price, players may sell for lower on the market.

Of course, increasing the supply would drive prices down and help to stabilize them eventually, meaning that playing the market would no longer be several times faster than playing "normally" at making INF to earn those goodies. As it is now, though, you would be well served to read every guide on marketing that you can, follow that advice, and use the deliberately broken market system to your advantage.

I don't like the market. It's boring, not at all fun for me, and it happens to be the single most rewarding way, by far, to spent time in-game. Rewards FAR in excess of the usual ratio of rewards over time.

One thing I did want to ask: why is it that people who want to make systematic progress towards rewards are entitlement whiners, unless they happen to use the market to do it? And people who want the market to be the ONLY way to earn rewards in a linear fashion, eliminating all other ways of doing so, for all other players, aren't called on their sense of entitlement? Merits and tickets were put in by the same devs that gave us a market instead of a store. Not everyone will enjoy everything, but that doesn't make those who disargee with you wrong.

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Vigilance must be completely overhauled. Once vigilance is replaced by something else, that is perhaps quite a bit more fun than the certainly boring (and allegedly underperforming vigilance), we can then better assess if Defenders need any more fine tuning.

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Speak, Brother!

Really, I am aware of how much work would be involved in overhauling Vig... but I think it is the root of most Defender's issues. An inherant power that has as much impact on the Defender as Defiance does for a Blaster, or that Containment does on a Controller, would likely revolutionize Defenders.

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An inherent power that has as much effect on defenders as Containment has on controllers is likely to be just as broken as containment is for controllers. How does "easily-attainable doubling of all final buff and debuff numbers" sound?

Thanks for this Des. I have a 50 DM/DA brute with a rather strange build, but I could never quite decide how to build a scrapper with the same combination. I'll try it again, after re-reading this guide a few times.

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Defender damage is sub par overall. Once it is accepted you get used to it.

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Yep. Despite apologia, the fact remains that defenders hit like girls with muscular dystrophy. I know it's for balance. It's just one of those things that makes you sigh when you are reminded of it. Defenders are still an amazing AT, but just like scrappers aren't known for their debuffs, defenders aren't known for their damage dealing.

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I agree Defendes really do bring alot to the table. There is no shame in doing less damage then others.

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Please name one thing that the defender brings to the table that is not better brought by controllers?

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So that smiley is actually "smirk"? Huh.

What do controllers have that beats Sonic Blasts?

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What do controllers have that beats Sonic Blasts?

Im going to say nothing. Becuase really stacking -res is just absurd.

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Doubled damage through containment? It benefits the controller alone, but is still the equivalent of automatic, non-stacking -100% DR to anything that you can immobilize (PToD doesnt' protect from immobilize, do they?)

I'm actually irritated, my niche got too good this last weekend. I've been buying up Efficacy Adapter End mod/End redux for 750k recipes. I use AE tickets to get the salvage, and consistently sold 3-4 a day, red-side, for a listed 7.5 million.

I can't complain too much, though. Saturday, I had 7 up. All of them sold, for 13-18 million apiece. Now, someone else is in the niche and while it remains profitable, it's a fight that I'm not bothering with. Moved on to a few other things. My brute made about 200 million in the last 3 weeks just doing that for 10-20 minutes a day, and it was a nice little profit while it lasted.

Edited with real info-

level 15-19 has the least number of recipes in it on a gold roll. Since the +stealth uniques run from 15-50, your best bet is to roll on the 15-19 table to get one.

Gold Roll- Former Pool C

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Defender damage is justified when you compare it to blasters and scrappers in isolation.

When you compare it to Controller damage, even pre-EPP with containment, you start to really wonder why you bother. Why be Rad/Anything when you could be XX/Rad as a controller?

This is partly because of low damage blasters, it should be more corrupter level if anything. It is also because Defenders inherent is obscenely bad.

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Also, because Containment is obscenely good. See Signature.

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Inventions are great, but I think Im still here IN SPITE of the market, not because of it.

Theres plenty of things that feel like work in the real world to do, so doing more of it in game does not appeal to me as a well spent night of my off-work time.

That said, I do use the markets, and have been ebil in my days, but find spending time in game in the markets very dull compared with beating up mobs and clicking buttons.

If all I have to log on for is market transactions, I aint loggin on that day.

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My thoughts as well. I don't care about the market one way or another. I want the IOs. And currently, as the regulars here know, I'm still arguing that the reward rate for marketeering should be the default rate for earning advancement. Drop rates are too low, making the market a necessary evil until the devs decide to allow everyone who DOESN'T play the market an even break.

Most of the top-level sets are popular. Also take a look at unique enhancements that offer a bonus for a single enhancement slotted (KB protection, +END procs, and the ever-popular Miracle, Numina's, and Luck of the Gambler uniques are all expensive and volatile- perfect for a patient marketeer)

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Funny how it works out, isn't it? Not only are they improving the game for the "2%," but they're simultaneously nerfing it for the 98%.


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That's funny since the ONLY nerf I saw was fixing the outliers and exploits in MA.

Otherwise, I still don't see a PROBLEM for me as a farmer to gain the rewards at an exponentially faster rate. 8)

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The trick is, quit farming, start playing the market. Reward rate is potentially several times what the best farmer can make per hour.

Fixing exploits? All for it. Still not sure why they capped tickets per map, though. Seems that the ticket cap was set to keep people from farming. Or having any use at all for "large" size maps, since they go over the ticket cap, and even in a good story arc, people hate wasting effort.

I really doubt they were trying to lowball down to 24 million, but they could have started there getting ready to bid-creep when typo disaster struck. At any rate, congrats on your good luck.

I'm loving your mini-guides Fulmens. Great as usual, no obvious mistakes.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...0#Post13569780

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This is pretty complicated and difficult, but try to stay with me:

If they wanted a store, they wouldn't have made a market.

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Hmm. For 8 issues, we had stores and no market. Guess the devs are allowed to change their minds. Sometimes, no matter how great an idea seems, it needs reworked once its been out for a while. and sometimes, ideas need scrapped altogether. The market is neither. It should stay as it is, for the most part. But the reward structure of the REST of the game, should be brought in line with the market. Y'know, Positron was all about "reward per time spent" a while back, and the market breaks that. A store is the easiest way to restore some parity. (and the worst way, absolutely the worst way, is to limit marketeers even more than available slots already do. The devs should be trying to get MORE people playing on the market, not less.)

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There's nothing the devs can do about this unless they find a way to make other people care how they spend their money on the market - the best schemes get their money from people who are spending it willingly.

So that means that people find the market objectionable because it's the most efficient way to get shinies, and yet (for some people) it's the least liked. That's just tough cookies. I really don't have any pity for it.

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Actually, I've thought of a few ways the devs can address the inherent advantage of marketeering. First and easiest: put in a store that sells recipes. Uncommons 10 million per. Rares 20 million per. Ultra rare and PvP: 50 million per. The market would still be the cheapest way to get everything (after an adjustment period), but it would also effectively cap prices (without any way to work around it: the price caps would be set by the market as it adjusts.)

The market would still be volatile enough to make money. Prices would be significantly lower on the high-end stuff. Honestly, except for the ultra rares, and a very very few rares, the store would be more expensive than the market is right now.

The downside is, well, less time on the treadmill. But honestly, CoH has always been supportive of playing alts. As it stands, making enough to IO-out a character takes a lot of time, but it isn't necessarily time that people would get bored and leave if they didn't have IOs to work for. (An entirely different topic, I know, but the treadmill is NOT the only reason people stay, and CoH has always attracted players who play a lot of alts.) I would actually bet that a large number of people would be MORE willing to stay if they believed they could make a character, level them, and IO them out, all in a timeframe they considered reasonable. The next step is, for many, simply make another character, not leave the game.

Kinda sad when you put it that way. Rabid anti-market is about as useful a position as raid anti-farming: it takes a position against an EFFECT of game mechanics, while leaving the underlying cause untouched. You can't blame the market of the marketeers for the way things are: they're doing the best they can. The trouble is, the deck is loaded in favor of marketeering when you really set out to earn INF and IO out a character. It's faster and easier by a large margin than any other playstyle.

The reward rate of "casual" play is the main problem. It's far too low, especially for the things that are most in demand. LotG + recharge, miracle and Numina uniques, the really GOOD and especially useful IO's, were until recently gated to TF/SF only. Even now, they drop too rarely from bosses to bring supply anywhere near demand. When players feel they have to grind for long periods of time to get teh best stuff in the game, then posts of "this is too expensive" are going to happen. The devs are in a no-win situation that they created themselves. Allowing everyone a better chance at those recipes by increasing the drop rate significantly, will ultimately reduce the margins and adversely affect the enjoyment (and profits) of those that DO play the market and play it well. They can't make one group happy without making another group unhappy. I can't expect, though, that the devs will continue to make the marketeers happy while making the casual players feel like they have no choice but to do unfun, repetitive tasks to earn the rewards they want. (You know... "grind")

They can't leave the market as-is without making the game unfun for a large portion of the playerbase. They can't change it without upsetting the people who have come to enjoy the market minigame for its own sake.

As an introduction, it was perfect. Yes, people who have been playing blasters forever all have their own tricks, their own ways of doing things, and volumes of tips, but for a new blaster, you covered everything.

I especially liked the bit about he blaster sense. Yeah, I hear that voice quite a bit. "I'm gonna die unless I run away right now." usually, that's followed by a trip to the hospital and an "I knew that was gonna happen..."

DA isn't incredibly popular. I use mine for just about everything, actually. He can survive an awfu lot, but that's also after about a dozen respecs. It's taken me a long time to get him where I want him.

The good parts of DA are the heal, the solid mitigation against all damage types, and the self-rez with included 12-second mag +30+ stun. Cloak of Fear and Opressive Gloom are situational. I tried both, respecced out of them, and don't miss them at all. Cloak of Darkness is very much a useful power, allowing stealth to an AT that usually has no ability to do so.

The bad parts of DA are high END usage, no godmode Tier 9 for when things get hairy, a weakness to knockback, and no exceptionally high mitigation numbers.

DA can be very good. It takes a lot of practice to play it well, and even when played well, the nature of the set seems to be a lot closer to the jagged edge. When it works, it works well. hen it doesn't, well, we get a self rez.

Interesting post Fulmens. It's been a long time since I took my blaster to 50. I remember when I quit, just a bit after the ED mess, I gave away 40 million INF to MMO radio so they could host events on Infinity. Then I turned around and handed 80 million to my SG leader to help anyone who needed it. Playing my blaster through normal play, I had nothingbetter to do with INF than give it away.

Since you can honestly say (although you made qualifications) that you were "poor" once, did you ever feel that no matter how long you played, you would never be able to afford to outfit your character? That things were just too expensive and would be forever out of reach?

I'm not saying that IO's ARE out of reach, but many people PERCEIVE them to be. Which is why there are so many "stuff is too expensive" posts: normal gameplay is no longer rewarding enough to be able to afford the best enhancements in what people consider a reasonable amount of time. Remember, as you know, patience is everything. What people are saying when they say "stuff is too expensive" is "it takes too much time to earn these rewards."

That isn't a problem with the market, which is limited by other mechanics, both in-game and out. That is a reward rate problem, entirely int he hands of the developers. The market will respond to any change in reward rates by adjusting, but the developers have to set the reward rates. Currently, I believe that the reward rates on the most in-demand recipes are set far too low. Unless the developers adjust the rate to something that people are happy with (an impossible proposition) you will continue to see complaints about things being too expensive. Of course, if reward rates are upped so that everyone can have what they want... See "Costume recipes" for what happens when the devs decide to be nice to everyone instead of the select few market gurus.

Drop rates determine scarcity. Scarcity fuels the market, enabling low-risk, low-time invented, high-profit gameplay. In my opinion, logging a character in for a few minutes a day, flipping slots, and profiting immensely, should be acknowledged by the devs as "aberrant gameplay" and steps should be taken to ensure that it isn't orders of magnitude more rewarding than playing the game "normally."