Miladys_Knight

Blasters aren't the only AT to have to deal with mez however blasters are FAR more affected by mez than any other AT. In my own personal stable of toons comparing hours logged in to time spent mezzed my blasters were affected 2 to 3 times longer than any of my other squishy characters and 10 times longer than any of my mez protected characters. This doesn't even factor in how much of the mez duration was eliminated due to defeat. That is just the amount of time the blaster was alive and mezzed.

The blaster is the squishy that puts out the most damage, therefore the blaster is also the squishy that is going to draw the most agro, and consequently the most mezzing attacks.

It isn't possible to play smarter if too many of the opponents you face have mezzing powers (and the amount of mez in this game has reached ridiculous levels). You can't kill them fast enough to prevent being mezzed and then, even though you can still use your tier 1 and 2 primary (provided of course that the mobs don't out range you which many of them do especially in the upper levels) and your tier 1 secondary (with the same caveat though these powers aren't close to standardized AND they typically have even less range than 80 feet) and once you are mezzed you kill them even slower.

Not all blaster primary or secondary power sets have a mezzing power and most of the powers blasters do have access to, that provide soft control mitigation, stop working once the blaster is mezzed, double jeopardy here.

I wonder how much of THAT influence is on accounts that are no longer active and may not be counted in the totals.

Still happens. In DA I frequently get mezzed and defiance is useless because they are firing at me from outside the range of my tier 1 and 2 primary and far outside the range of my tier 1 secondary power. If I've had a bad run with the RNG and I'm out of break frees I'm pretty much hosed.

Also the answer to the OP is that Castle wanted to make sure that, "the blaster was always in jeopardy." (his words). So mobs out range you especially in the upper levels.

We don't first call them entitled. We first try to get them to explain what the problem is and for those that are willing to listen we give them lots of help. There are guides at the top of the forum, we give advice, answer questions, and are generally helpful.

Those that really want to learn how to make influence on the market leave happy and frequently come back and tell us how they used those tips to go on and earn all the rewards they wanted to complete the build for their character, some even come back after that with photos of entering the billion influence club.

Those that come here looking for a fight and refuse to listen to reason, naturally put us on the defensive, there is only so much venomous bile that most people can stomach before they respond in kind.

Those that don't want to put forth the (quite minimal) effort required to earn rewards are the very definition of entitled and it is an apt title to give them.

Here you extrapolate from zero to infinity and you assign blame to the blameless.

We've done experiments along this line. Except in the cases of items that have too little availability, manipulation is difficult, if not impossible to sustain. Merging the markets increased global availability and further reduced the ability to manipulate. There is no doubt that manipulation occurs but it is not sustained nor is it a global phenomenon that occurs in every facet of the market. It is an infrequent occurrence that might affect one or 2 items for a short period of time.

Blaming the people that frequent this forum for manipulation is rather like blaming us for slavery. None of us were alive when it occurred. What exactly did you want us to do about it? Apologize from something we had no hand in? Accept guilt for an action we did not take? You frequent this forum. Should we blame you for the results of manipulation?

As opposed to taking the position that all the market is, is one gigantic problem, all the time since release? Really A_F?

Rarely in life is there something that has absolutely no problems. The few problems with the markets are minor and tools exist that let players work around them. A bit of education is usually all it takes to overcome them.

I suppose we could cut the whiners meat for them and spoon feed them while we are at it but I wouldn't want to enable someone's entitlement mentality.

I'm not the kind of person that gives a man a fish. I'm the kind of person that teaches a man how to fish so he can feed himself.

Facts are right, observable phenomena that replicate or reoccur are right, tested and proven theories are right (unless of course further testing proves they aren't).

Leaving out data that does not fit your theory is not right. Assuming that an outlier is the norm is not right. Jumping to conclusions on little to no data is not right. Conspiracy theories are rarely correct. It doesn't matter if the majority or the minority believes something. Facts are what make something right.

I assume that is yet another barb thrown my way. Yes I craft common IOs. Yes, I sell common IOs. Yes, I've made almost 4 billion in profit selling common IOs since I9. No, its not time consuming. I put in a bid for salvage before I log off for the day. The next day I collect all my salvage, drop my portable crafting table, craft common IOs, list them for more than it costs me to make them and less than it costs someone else to make them for themselves, I put more salvage bids in and go run a TF or missions, an hour or so later when I am done playing I come back to the market (or just use /auctionhouse) collect my profit and the next batch of salvage and repeat.

40ish IOs a day at an average profit of 55,000 per IO is all it takes to have hit 4 billion profit in the 5 years since I9, except I didn't craft commons every day and each IO brought in more than 55,000 profit.

What you call a scheme I call a service to those too lazy to memorize recipes for themselves. or those that think it takes too much time to craft, or those that don't want to be bothered traveling to a crafting table. On the days I craft common IOs it takes about 5 minutes total and now that I have /auctionhouse I can use all the time that is wasted while a team is forming or teammates are gathering, marketeering and no one the wiser for it.

I still craft and sell high ticket items. I just have one crafter dedicated to creating mid level common IOs. Any time I am consuming is time that I am logged off or time that I am playing the game. Best of both worlds for me. I look at that 4 extra billion, that you are sneering at, as gravy.

I'm not sure there is a middle tier and if there is it is probably Fire. The top tier performers have powers that allow you to either layer controls each spawn or allow you to defeat a spawn before your AoE controls expire. The bottom tier lack this.

Since primary powers that do not benefit from domination are essentially transparent in this respect it separates the primaries pretty distinctly into top tier and bottom tier performers with virtually no middle ground.

You are likely correct and I wouldn't be surprised if the devs neglected to check things going the other way. It seems pretty evident that the majority of control sets are balanced around controllers and then simply checked for outliers on doms.

To be entirely honest dominators are designed in a 2 tiered fashion when domination is up and when it is down. That's why so many people recommend perma-dom there is a magnitude of performance difference.

I take the opposite view point. Plant is the status quo for dominators it being the ONLY primary specifically designed for dominators. All other sets are ports of controller primaries or a primary that was designed with both controllers and dominators in mind. I just think that the devs mostly missed the mark when they were porting the early control sets.

Well I suppose I should add a caveat. A power that is not able to be applied to all 7 other teammates within a reasonable time frame should not be available for the buffer to use on themselves. That said, things like Bubbles, Sonic Shields, and Speed Boost, as examples, should be applicable to the defender while things like Adrenaline Boost and Fortitude should not.

One of the real problems with that is primarily buffing defenders have powers that do not benefit themselves at all, just teammates. While debuffing defenders can use ALL of their powers to benefit both themselves and their teams, a disparity that the devs don't seem willing to remedy.

I see no reason that buffing powers should not apply to the buffing defender as well. It makes no sense to me that a defender can't defend themselves. If we were talking real world here I would call them inept.

I don't buy the argument that it shouldn't apply to the defender because its too powerful. If it really is too powerful for the defender to have then most likely it's also too powerful for the team to have as well.

I see the "painting the tape" part happening all the time. I think that some of it may simply be that people aren't even looking at the other 4 filled bids in the history and are just looking at the top bid knowing that is the last transaction that completed.

I have frequently gone looking for a bit of common salvage and see this kind of history:

10,000
10,000
9,750
11,111
10,000

and this kind of availibility:

2671 for sale
5 bidding

I put in my bid and it insta fills and the history looks like this:

300
10,000
10,000
9,750
11,111

3 or 4 seconds later the history looks like this:

10,000
300
10,000
10,000
9,750

The only conclusion I can draw is that people either don't know what common salvage prices usually are or that they earn influence so fast in such high amounts that they don't really care what they are.

That to me is kinda like saying that a 900lb person that has lost 100lbs is improved. He still has a terrific obesity problem and the real difference is negligible.

Want to make dimension shift a power that works the way it should and won't grief your team? Give it a 30' PBAoE radius. The power only affects you and your teammates, it has a recharge of 1200 seconds and can be slotted for intangibility, recharge, and endurance reduction. When cast it lasts for 60 seconds and essentially gives the team the same ability that Carnie Illusionists have. The ability to fully attack but be unaffected by all in coming damage a portion of the time. 3.5 seconds of every 10 unenhanced and 7 seconds of every 10 at the ED cap for intangibility. (That would equate to 70% damage resistance for 60 seconds)

Which is still only a boost for a fraction of the powers and the small fraction of the player base that plays Grav. In my opinion that was quite a bit of dev time spent for very little result.

If I mismanaged my time at work in that way I'd be looking for another job.

This.... Also of note. I am approaching 4 billion in profit for sales of level 30-40 COMMON IOs since I9. That's just having one of my crafters buy salvage, create common IOs I have memorized with my portable crafting table, and listing them at salvage cost + my crafting cost + market fees + 10% for my own profit. A matter of a couple of minutes of my time a couple times a day. This is still less than what it would have cost someone who doesn't have any common recipes memorized to have gone to a University with the proper salvage and created it for themselves.

They rarely sell for my asking price, I usually get quite a bit more.

@MeanNVicious

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day but it is demonstrably wrong all the rest of the time.

A_F may have the occasional fact correct but he leaves out intermediate information, speculates without any basis for those speculations, leaves out data that does not support his position, infers that known outliers are actually common place and can be taken as the norm, and states his own personal theories as fact which coincidentally runs counter to information that many of us here in the market forum have tested empirically and/or scientifically.

A large majority of his spurious claims are counter to repeatedly observed market behavior and his thoughts on market place psychology also run quite counter to observable market trends.

As such his creditability here is quite low and he is no longer taken seriously by many of the regular posters in the market forums. Several regular posters have him on ignore simply to resist the temptation of responding to him. Others of us still read his postings for amusement value on the same level as watching Darwin Award videos on youtube.

I myself find him to be rather like these people:

The Flat Earth Society

Using satellite communication and the world wide web, which relies on the planet being spherical to function properly, to spread their misinformation

Highlighted for emphasis. It simply went from a power that screwed up your team 100% of the time to a power that screws up your team slightly less than 100% of the time.

My definition of a bad power is one where the team has to "do X in spite of power Y." Dimension shift is that power.

Psuedo pets now share your phase state.

This is a pretty big bite for blasters especially if you used phase shift and depended on your psuedo pets while phased. Ice/ blasters that herded things cast Ice Storm, blizzard, used a Cab and then phased to wait out the recovery crash are now screwed.

Devices users that would stand in their mine pile, pull and then phase are likewise screwed.

If you are playing a PB and you use Photon Seekers and Quantum Flight you experience the same hit.

If you are playing with a grav toon that likes to use DS and you are a ranged focused squishy you either go into melee where you are toast or stay at range to utilize your build and contribute nothing.

Um, actually if it narrows it down to Rad and Sonic then 8 Rad/Sonics Defenders would be best, correct?

As has been pointed out to you multiple times before, you don't need "loot" at all to play this game. All the freebie accounts are doing without just fine and judging from the Justice server where I spend most of my time there are a plethora of new freebies playing. Loot is entirely transparent to them and judging from the enjoyment I am seeing from them, not missed in the least, quite a bit like it was for me back in I8.

A bit of hyperbole there. Where would Batman be without the Batmobile? All the money he spent on his high tech gadgets? He'd be a pretty plain SJ/Invul scrapper.

Ironman would be absolutely nothing without his high tech toys.

Much of this is easily replicable with IO set bonuses.

I like more options. A excellent example for me is prices on Rare salvage. If they are at or above a certain level and stay that way then I use tickets to buy the salvage instead. Its actually a valid economic force. It prevents the market from being a monopoly much like in the real world. Think food prices are too high? Plant a garden.

Not really, the very above thing that you are complaining about is a safety valve for that kind of behavior. Certain things are more efficient in certain areas. Since you need components from all those activities you diversify your time or, if one of those activities is something you don't care to do you can go back to the market and avoid it. It just gives you more options.

Except that's what it always boils down to. The market is insanely easy to use and it takes no more time than it used to, to clean up at the end of a mission, running to each store to maximize inf from selling surplus SOs.

Preposterous. People who don't want to deal with the market simply don't. Anyone I sell something to OFFERED the amount of influence I received when I sold something, even if I only asked for 1 inf for it.

Also there are lots of reasons people list things for 1 inf. I do it with common salvage. I can use /auctionhouse between missions and list all of the common salvage I have for 1 inf. I don't have to take it to a store, I don't have to simply delete something that someone else might want to make room in my salvage bag, I usually (but not always) make more than I would selling it to a vendor, and it usually is all sold by the time I finish my next mission.

There are several comic book characters that are exceedingly wealthy (Bruce Wayne, Reed Richards [in a good year], Tony Stark, etc.) There is absolutely no reason wealth shouldn't be in the game and the market mini-game is an excellent tool to use for characters that have the "rich playboy" concept.

We've been told that the CoH loot system is time based. That's why story arcs and TFs have different numbers of merits awarded on their completion. I have absolutely no qualms with the players that spend their time earning their loot from the market instead of from running missions. If that floats their boat who am I to tell them they are doing it wrong and what's the chances they will listen anyway?

I have completely outfitted a toon without using the market. It took me almost 4 times as long to do it that way.

The CoH market is extremely easy to use. You can get good at it WAY faster than you can learn how to play a blaster well. The people that want IOs without expending any effort have an entitlement mentality I have no responsibility to them what so ever.

Do what ever work that comes natural to you to earn your rewards or do without. That's what it boils down to.