Neogumbercules

Should have added in a part about the Mayor taking over the Freedom Phalanx and firing Statesman lol

"I nominate Ragman as an, undoubtedly, impartial supervisor. I would like to stake my reputation on him being a fair and honest Czar who would do nothing but think of the super wealt--I mean the casual player."

Sounds good to me! Lets just hope he doesn't turn out to be a commie or anything.

Satire over the "wah ebil marketeers" "wah common salvage is too expensive" "wah i need to be purpled out to solo council" people

Greetings, heroes of Paragon City. As many of you know, the recent explosion of capitalism in Paragon City, thanks to the hard work of Wentworth's Fine Consignments, has made available many products and services that were once but a dream in the eyes of the many. Once, subjected to the harsh reality of being forced to buy Enhancements from crazy mutant children or mad scientists, heroes now find themselves in the position to buy and sell goods directly! The days of completing some menial, sometimes life-threatening, task for a no-good back alley dealer to get your enhancements are gone!

With this advent of budding entrepreneurs and the ingenious craftsmen who build and sell powerful enhancements out of nothing more than some mundane, inanimate carbon rod, the strength of our Hero population has never been greater. A single Blaster taking on an entire armada of Council fascists was laughable just a mere few years ago. Now, it's an every day occurrence, thanks to the mastery of enhancement crafting! Our streets are undeniably safer than ever before.

However, there's something else out there on the streets, something new, something we all try to ignore. Just yesterday I met Madam Mystery. A struggling, unemployed mother of 3. She came to me and told me her story, how she struggles just to afford TOs, and how she has to fight -2 minions just to make ends meat. She can barely afford a multi-missile turret for her supergroup base...and even if she could...it would barely fit in what could more be described as a supergroup shack. Of course, with the greedy energy corporations driving up the cost of electricity, she couldn't afford to pay the energy build anyway.

When she can convince her sister or... some other family member to watch her children, she does her best to seek out and fight crime where she can, struggling to scavenge any usable scraps from whatever foe she manages to defeat. She has to be selective over who and where she fights, too, as if she were to contract any kind of illness she wouldn't be able to afford treatment because after she lost her full-time job as a grocery store bagger, her health insurance cut her from their plan. Her only hope when she or her family does get sick is to phone her second cousin, an Empathy defender, but of course, he lives hours away and more often than not, he's out on some mission with high-class heroes, to whom the struggles of Madam Mystery of beneath them.

See, Madam Mystery is a controller. A Gravity/Trick Arrow controller, who can't even afford to make more Oil Slick arrows because Big Oil keeps driving up oil costs to line their own pockets. Her enhancements are all red... and have been for some time. Some of them even fell out in the last battle she fought. Somehow, she finds the time to search for a team, but no one wants her. All the big rich heroes care about is taking along their emps and their kins so they can clear the mobs faster, make more money, earn more items, and sell it all on the market. Madam Mystery can't even afford the arrows to use half her powers, that's why the only ability she knows is Entangling Arrow and Poison Gas Arrow. No one cares about AoE sleeps... They get richer, and Madam Mystery gets hungrier.

When asked why she herself doesn't use the market, her simple response was she just doesn't understand it. She never got the high class education that the upper crust was privileged to. She can't even afford to leave Galaxy City, let alone take a course on Inventions in Steel Canyon. She sells everything she can find to the Vendors set up across the city, vendors who prey on people like Madam Mystery, giving them a mere fraction of what their items are worth.

*cue to picture of Madam Mystery helping up a small child, while gold clad, uncaring heroes soar overhead, unaware of the child's plight, towards the AE building*

Last week I met Super Joe. An Iraq War veteran who served his country as an Fiery Melee/Energy Aura reformed Brute. After growing up on the wrong side of the law, stealing, hurting, and terrorizing others for years, he changed his ways. He decided that in order to repay his debt to society, he would join the Marine Corps, as the people of Paragon spit on him when he tried to rescue cats out of trees. His convoy drove over a roadside IED. Super Joe was gravely injured, however, no other marines in the attack received any injuries. How could this happen? Super Joe told me "cuz I draw too much aggro and /EA sux without IOs."

Now Super Joe is dependent on a broken health care system, in a waiting line for super hero organ transplants that will never come... because the rich heroes that could be potential doners are soft-capped to melee/ranged/aoe and have good self-heals. It'll be years before Super Joe gets his Super Liver, if he doesn't succumb to Super Alcoholism first.

Madam Mystery is your sister, your aunt, your mother... Super Joe is your son, your brother, your uncle. Madam Mysteries and Super Joes are everywhere you look. They're on the street corner, panhandling for a influence handout. They are at the vendors, pawning away their potentially valuable goods, because the elite at Wentworth's locked them out. Their kind aren't welcome among the inner-circles of the rich Paragon heroes. Some even lowered themselves to trying to get day jobs at enhancement shops, just to get the measly bonus enhancement in the event they ever complete a mission.

Speaking of which, let's talk about the elite for a moment. They roar through the skies, with the 500 million influence builds they earned off the backs of the poor, controlling market prices, and selling simple items like Common Salvage for ridiculous prices. Common folk don't have any choice but to pay their prices, as the idea of going out there and actually trying to find their own Thorn Tree Vine is simply incomprehensible. They payout weeks worth of influence just for low level recipes so they can eek out almost useless additional bonuses. While Madam Mystery gains 0.125% debt protection, the elite cadre of Marketeers that sold her that recipe for tens of thousands of influence use her money to buy up the purple recipes for extraordinary prices. And we all know the prices are only that high because the greedy heroes don't want the so-called "lowbies" to have them.

So the rich get richer and the richer they get, the more they can drive up the prices. While they are out destroying the strongest super villians in the world just to SHOW OFF, who's going to take the cats out of trees? Who's going to help the police arrest common crooks? That's right. Madam Mystery and Super Joe. While the upper crust is off gallivanting around in alternate dimensions, the destitute and starving heroes who haven't forgotten their oath to protect the people of the city are in our communities, doing the dirty work that's below those elite who got where they are simply by manipulation and walking over the backs of the weak.

Big Oil doesn't care about you. Big super Insurance doesn't care about you. Big Super Pharma doesn't care about you! You're the hard working folk who get walked over. How could you possibly help yourselves when the odds are so stacked against you? You can't. That is why I, you're Mayor, Maraca Kabob, am proposing the Paragon City Welfare Institute. Let me explain to you what this program will do:

*Levy a 45% influence income tax on all Heroes who earn over 250,000 Influence a day.
*Add an additional 5% tax on all Wenthworth transactions to be paid into the PCWI
*Introduce an oversight committee on all Wenthworth transactions to approve all sales and business conducted. I will appoint an auctions "Czar" to head this committee.
*Common Salvage and recipes will be taken from the top 90% of earners and put into a "grab bag" for use by those making under 25,000 Influence per day.
*Force greedy Supergroup Base creditors to make loans to anyone who applies. The 45% tax mentioned in item 1 will be used to pay out for those who can't afford their Supergroup bases.
*institute a single-payer Super Health Care system to provide quality, government run health care to all super heroes, all currently registered super heroes will be required to apply for this health care system. In order to pay for this program, an additional 20% tax will be levied on non-super civilians making over $250,000 a year. I will appoint an experienced Empathy defender Czar to spear head this operation.

I believe that with this system, the Madam Mysteries of our fine city will finally be able to get the leg up they need. No longer will she be forced to sell her simple chemicals, Polycarbons, or IO recipes to the greedy vendors. And Super Joe won't have to wait in line to get his ...... well maybe he will. No longer will the elite few have absolute control over the market. No longer will they extort the poor for the items that they NEED in order to fight crime on our streets. No longer will they fly around in their corporate power armors, spending millions on frivolous vacations while the weak struggle to afford the upgrade to DOs.

Madam Mystery will finally get the Supergroup Base she deserves, and the Super Rich will be forced to give back the money they didn't earn, don't need and don't deserve.

I dreamed I was in some kind of PvP zone. I entered in the Arachnos base and summoned/equipped. I ventured out and in the center of the zone was this large... object with 4 spheres on it. I knew if I destroyed the spheres I would get... something. I started attacking. As the first sphere was close to destruction I heard 3 loud cracks of thunder in the sky. I looked up and here came Positron, Luminary, and one other signature Hero. Knowing I stood no chance, I led them back to the base and got them droned. I proceeded to attack the sphere but somehow Positron had lived! I led him back to the drone, then returned to the sphere and destroyed it.

Then the dream kind of ended and I started dreaming about something else.

Probably the first vivid dream I've had about this game...

Fire/Nin would be a scary thing.

did 4/8 on my Fire/Shield. 0/8 was too easy 4/8 I had to use inspirations from time to time. If Billz's chart is anything to go by, looks like I might be sticking to +2s. Looks like a good balance of inf/m plus kill rate (for drops).

Why you so stupid!!?? You not hungry for girl! You hungry for HOT POCKET!!

I don't really want to see any knowledgeable players complaining about not being able to afford things.

As a test, I wanted to see how easy it could be to make some easy money.

I made a new character.

I skipped the tutorial.

I killed some NPCs and sold the TOs that dropped.

Grand total: 300 inf

Flew to WW (I'm a PB) and filtered rare recipe 50-53. Bought the taunt recipe at that level rech/end or something like that for 300 inf.

Sold it for 10k to an NPC.

Searched around for other crap recipes no one wants. Had about 150k in a few minutes flat.

Got bored of running back and forth with only 1 recipe slot so I did Sunstorm until I was level 6. I have 4 storage recipe slots now and can bid like 7 items I think. Did some more of what I did before.

maybe 2 hours in (most of which spent leveling) and I'm sitting on 500k inf. Enough to buy my enhancements at least until SOs and that's assuming I don't make any more money.

Total time spent marketeering? Like 10 minutes.

Try to get yourself soft-capped, take the taunt from presence and aid self. Set your dudes (slotted with as many achielles as you can fit). Stand away and taunt, using aid-self as you need it. Bodyguard mode is probably a good idea.

Some fights might prove impossible, like Ms. Liberty. I beat her with my mercs/dark but she was -2 to me, and the fight still took FOREVER.

The limit of 10 enhancements per character is an outdated and obsolete design in the current game. I'd have to blow through several respecs just to strip a character. Sure I could sell the extras, but I don't think the game is going to give me the hundreds of millions of inf my build is worth.

The only real reason I think this restriction existed in the first place (and if anyone knows for sure, do tell) was that it was either an arbitrary design choice, or the original devs just didn't think it necessary as you could get any enhancement easily from any vendor before IOs and a respec would re-sell what you had for exactly what it was worth when you bought it, making it just a matter of going back to the store and spending a few minutes buying them back. With IOs I have dozens of set IO enhancements slotted, that if I wanted to take off, transfer, etc, the cost of getting them back would be astronomical.

For example, if I wanted to change all of my Red Fortune sets (I have 3 full sets) for 3 full sets of LotG I'd have to burn TWO respecs or trash the leftovers just to move enhancements around plus find a place to store the extras after I did slot them (and before I crafted or purchased the LotGs since all those extra Red Fortune's would be taking up my inventory.)

Anyway, I think the enhancement limit should be raised to at least 50.

I just started my first real attempt at a kheld. I played a WS for about 3 levels a long time ago before I just decided I didn't feel like putting up with figuring it all out.

With my new peacebringer my mindset after mulling over the power choices was to go HO, but I decided to take Nova at level 6. It gives me 4 good attacks, flight, some extra recovery and damage. Great for making leveling a lot easier. I plan to respec around level 22 or so (especially since I took the dull pain power instead of the shield by mistake).

We'll see how it goes, but so far the human form powers look really cool. It really comes down to how I plan on slotting everything. I'm not even gonna bother making a build on Mids as I have no idea how I'm gonna be playing this toon anyway. I'll just slot as I go (been playing a good long while. I'm sure I'll make something that works).

This'll basically be my off-play character when I get bored of massacreing 8 man spawns with my scrapper after 16 goes live.

The only market trick I used back when the market first came out was vendoring common salvage to get a couple of thousand. Then I would bid way low on level 25 common recipes (stun, confuse, range, crap like that) and resell them for 6-9 thousand a piece. Do that for a while and it gets me through the DO range.

Now I'm trying to learn more advanced techniques. I made close to a billion farming bosses in AE and doing bronze rolls, getting some lucky gold rolls, but while doing this I was also SPENDING a lot.

I currently have a soft-capped fire/shield scrapper that can survive just about ANYTHING and he's sitting on about 500 million...and wanting MOAR!! My plan is to do solo 8 man radios for fun and profit! Too bad purple prices are gonna go back to normal...probably.

I would take tough and then go for as much +recharge as you can get. Getting Energize close to 30 seconds as you can get it. Other than that, inspirations will get you through pretty much anything normal PvE can throw at you.

I'm happy we got another exotic damage dealer. Now we have fire, NE, and energy with a little bit of toxic.

I'm of the opinion that traps shouldn't have made it's way to defenders in it's current state.

You might want to consider traps. Never underestimate the value of mezz protection. Plus it's fun for screwing around with trip mines. I've killed signature EBs by pulling them into massive trip mine farms. Long set-up time but so worth it.

And totally destroys any AR vs Archery argument as yet another round or prolif comes and goes and yet another issue with no balance adjustments to AR (other than the minor tweaks a couple issues back).

My personal experience with Ignite was that in most cases it just took too long to set up and it was time I felt could be better spent just using my normal attacks. It was an amazing power when it didn't require lots of slots on my AR/Traps, but with the massive recharge nerf it got it became a shadow of it's former self.

Against immobile foes, the thorn tree, the ITF computer, AVs that don't flee, it's great. Solo it's good. On teams... just stick to your secondary powers and your regular AoEs will be more than enough.

Its animation time is WAY too long...in a set full of long animation times. To me, using it all the time reduced my fun.

Zoned a few times just doing a paper in grandville. Whether or not my pets stayed with me seemed pretty random, and whether or not they kept their buffs was equally as random.

Just from my personal experience, whenever I see a sonic or cold defender join the team full of scrappers and blasters with no shields taken, I die a little on the inside. I do so because I see the potential of a damage heavy team that can't die, if only that FF defender took the shields instead of the medicine pool or something....


Anyway I see you have the shields in that build up there.

Score!

The OP idea is a little extreme. I advocate removing AE from Atlas, Cap, Port Oakes, Kings Row and Mercy, that way new players will be able to explore the first serious chunk of the game on either side without being completly bulldozed by broadcast spam.

They would also be able to play the game with other new players that don't immediately run to wherever the AE activity happens to migrate.

And people who still want to go straight to AE can get a friend to help them get there, or just get there themselves.

I have a fire/shield at 50 and well IOd.

It's a monster. I can't die. I kill everything that moves. I can stand in a group of 52 bosses and eat a cup cake while they attempt to pound away on me. The tanks quit the last AE boss farm I was on because I was doing their job for them. I accidently hit 250 DPS solo'ing a pylon and I never even tried to build for ST DPS. Fire Sword Circle is amazing. It lacks ONLY a self-heal, but you could fit that in, too.

So my opinion is that it's the most powerful character I've ever built.