Organica

News to me too.

Good news in fact.

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Cliche as it may be... the 2nd 500M is much easier then the first.

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So true. I've been trying to do serious marketing with about 9 or 10 different characters. So far I've managed to get most of them into the 200 to 400 million mark... but last weekend I offered to help someone on an infamy to influence transfer on Virtue. I had about 200 million infamy on my brute, and just about 380 million influence on my scrapper (with another 140 million on my troller on the other account.)

As it turned out, he wanted a pretty big transfer -- 380 million infamy to influence. I didn't charge anything, and when I was done I had a brute with almost 600 million infamy.

Since then my brute has been out-pacing my heroes, and is closing in on 1 billion fast. Could be the difference between the black market and Wentworths I suppose... but it just seems easier to make that second 500 million. I still don't think any of my heroes has more than 350 mil or so.

Mind you, my brute isn't IO'd out with purples or anything... I've been very tempted to spend some of that money, but I want to climb well above a billion before I start spending a little.

Even though I read the forums I'm not much of a numbers person, and it wasn't until recently that I really started paying more attention to what makes a good scrapper build and using MIDS to plan things out a bit, and trying to improve my level 50 characters (it helps that I'm an altaholic and until recently I just haven't played my level 50s much).

I noticed builds that reference how many extra hit points you can get from accolades, and I would think, "Those are hard to get, but I should work on it some evening," and then forget about it.

So last night I decided to do this. I looked up on Paragonwiki to see what accolades I wanted to go after first, and what I needed to complete them for my main.

Hmm. Task Force Commander looks good. I only need 1 task force to get it too. Of course, that's the Posi... so, not going to do that tonight, nope.

Ah, here we go. Freedom Phalanx Reserve, +10 to max health. That's the one I want! And it looks easy to get! I probably have most of these badges already... let's see, the Fake Nemesis one is probably the one I'm missing... no wait, I have that... I have Tank Buster and Gearsmasher, don't I? Yeah I do... but I thought I already HAD all of the history and exploration badges?

Hmm... no, there are a couple of history badges missing... what did I not get?

Anyway... as it turns out... all I needed to gain an extra 133 hit points was to go to Terra Volta and touch a plaque... Which I could have done... I don't know, a year ago?

(I actually gained 3 accolades I think last night just by finishing all of the exploration/history badges I hadn't done in Terra Volta and RWZ.)

I've been sole tank on my invul scrapper. As others have said, it's ridiculously easy with that set.

I have a 50 DM/EA. I kind of lucked into that combo since I didn't know when I started how well those two sets go together. I'm not sure I'd enjoy playing EA with another set actually.

I think it's Power Sink that requires you to be on the ground? I forget which power it was, but there was a reason I couldn't use hover in battle. (I took Air Sup anyway since I went with a buzzsaw build.)

Power Sink with enough recharge should keep your endurance bar full.

Also Lightning Field -- that's the AoE right? Attracts attention. I played my brute without a taunt but I never had problems keeping the attention of enemies for as long as they remained alive (which -- on a good reside team is 1-3 seconds ).

If I remember, I'll try and show up... with either Mouse Police (50 katana/regen) or Mouse Police (50 fire/SR).

I've farmed those overseers 3 times for the rularuu weapons. The last time I parked my 45 broadsword/regen scrapper, invited an axe tanker along, and did all the farming with Mouse Police, my 50 katana/regen with decent defense and hover/fly (separate account from my broadsword/regen, luckily -- she already had the badge of course). I farm them around the Chantry and they're mostly at least a level or 2 below me... still kind of a pain but I think I only died once or twice. Takes an hour or so, I guess.

Glad I helped someone else to the badge though, not every AT can get it as easily. ^_^

It's nice to add if you don't need the money and are already IO'd out to your satisfaction. Since that doesn't seem to be the case, sell it.

Congrats!

I got my first really nice purple tonight. Previously I had gotten maybe 2-3 way back when they first came out, which weren't the really good ones as I recall and which I sold for a little bit of money... and then within the last month I've gone back to playing my level 50s and hoping for a nice drop. In that time, I'd gotten one single purple, a stun... so not the biggest jackpot in the world.

Tonight I was playing my level 46 tank on Freedom, and I decided to just street sweep level 50s in PI for a bit before logging off... and lo and behold, I got an Apocalypse: Damage IO.

At first I was going to sell it. Oooh, look! The recipe alone sells for 200 mil! And then I started to think... what's 200 mil? I can make that in a couple of days, week at most. And then I thought... my 44 fire/fire blaster could use this. (Well... soon anyway.) And then I thought... heck, I got 200 mil on my blaster right now, I can even afford a second piece of the set....

So basically, I got a great drop and it made me poorer.

Melee in general, scrappers in particular. Out of 5 level 50s right now I have 2 scrappers, 1 tank, 1 brute, and 1 lone troller (but an illusion troller so... can tank) My next 5 highest characters (all 44-45, and ones I'd expect to get to 50 next) include another scrapper, another tank, 1 blaster, 1 defender, 1 MM. (bots/dark MM can tank... actually dark/arrow defender can probably tank too )

Lots of lowbie scrappers too. In fact I have at least 3 MA scrappers that are 25+. I like kicking stuff.

For whatever it's worth, not nearly as helpful as looking at a MIDS build but anyway sometimes pretty to look at, here are some of my highest level/favorite characters:

Mouse Police (Virtue) level 50 katana/regen scrapper. This is a very complete build, my most expensive (I have no characters outfitted with purples though)

Mouse Police (Victory) level 50 fire/SR scrapper. This build is nearly complete, but there are still some things I want to do with it. I started outfitting my tier 9 attack with Touch of Death but I've realized I don't need it, but not sure what I'm going to put there instead.

This is a soft-capped positional defense (melee/aoe/ranged) SR build. Still want to slot a numina's unique, miracle unique, and I don't know what else yet.

Those are the only two characters I've outfitted after planning things out in MIDS. The rest are not nearly so pretty ^_^ :

Huntress Midnight level 50 DM/EA brute. This is a "buzzsaw" build but not an especially well designed one. I have over 700 million influence on this character though (recently did an infamy to influence transfer to help someone out, and all of my influence wound up as infamy on this character), so at some point I'm actually going to take this build apart and do it right.

Jalia Dragonfire level 50 axe/fire armor tanker. My first 50. This is largely a prime example of "old school" slotting, and my only character with any hami-O's (from way back in 2004 I think).

Shinobu Valentine 50 illusion/radiation troller
Sailor Shinobu 46 invulnerability/energy melee tanker.
Serpentine Fire 44 fire/fire blaster.

Hope that helps. Most of my other characters who are 22 or higher are set with IOs. Usually if they're above 32, it'll mostly be level 35 IOs.

The Devs hate people who one-star a funny thread...

I gave this thread a few extra stars I found lying around. That one star looked lonely.

Well, some of these are expensive but:

Full set of Mako's Bite gets you 3.75% ranged defense. I have 3 sets slotted on my katana scrapper.

5 pieces of Scirocco's Dervish gives you 3.13% AoE defense. I have 2 sets of those.

Full set of Obliteration grants you 3.75% melee defense.

Full set of Touch of Death grants you the same.

3 pieces of Blessing of the Zephyr (universal travel) grants 3.13% ranged defense.

Full set of Numina's Convalescense grants 3.75% ranged defense. Because of the unique you can only slot one full set.

Five pieces of Miracle grants 1.88% AoE Defense. (This would be everything but the unique, usually -- although if you can pick it up of course it's worth slotting somewhere.)

3 pieces of Aegis (resist damage) grants 1.56% defense AoE. 5 pieces will add another 3.13% AoE defense.

Steadfast Protection +defense unique (resist) grants 3% defense across the board.

The Numina's unique, the universal travels, the steadfast unique are some of the most expensive things being discussed here. Touch of Death is expensive largely (I think) because it caps at 40 and so many people roll for level 50 IOs. None of this is especially cheap, but if you plan ahead and work at it you should be able to come up with something workable. Most of these are not difficult decisions -- six-slotting an attack is never a bad idea for a scrapper, six-slotting one of your heal powers with Numina's isn't a bad idea. Three slots in a travel power or two for Zephyr is an easy (if expensive) way to add some defense.

Slotting some attacks with Mako's, Touch of Death, Obliteration or Scirocco's is probably a good place to start, as far as adding defense. But I'd work something up in Mids so you have a plan before you really get going.

(Perma-Dull Pain, as suggested above, is also a really good place to start.)

A lot of people don't like tough/weave. For one thing, it takes 3 power selections to pick them up, and if you don't build in a lot more defense or a lot more resist somehow then it's not going to help much on a set like regen. I'm not really one of the experts around here, but I took that route for my regen scrappers... I just mentioned it because you seemed concerned about feeling squishy. I think, without a significant investment in IO bonuses, regen is just going to feel squishy, period.

But regen + good defense is a really nice combo. The more they miss you, the more chances you get to use your click heals.

I can understand wanting a lot of recharge to have your click powers available as often as possible... I just think, without any defense or resist, you can go down so fast that you don't have time to use them. Having a few purples handy in case of emergencies could be another solution though.

Yeah. I didn't take scorch, and I avoided BoF myself, I just don't like it for concept reasons. It's one of only two AoEs, but you can skip it. Also I skipped confront.

With good recharge you can make an attack chain out of fire sword/cremate/incinerate/greater fire sword on single targets, and then fire sword circle for your AoE. Those five powers plus build up are the best of the fire set I think.

I used elude while leveling up, but got rid of it when I started to build for soft capped defenses.

Using parry as often as possible can help. Each hit grants you some melee defense for a short time. My 50 katana/regen gets 15% melee defense per hit, and can double or triple stack it pretty easily (at times quadruple stacked for a 60% bonus, albeit for very short intervals).

I have tough and weave on my 45 broadsword/regen scrapper. Just generic IOs. It's an ok build, I do feel a bit squishy still but for now I'm alright.

My 50 katana/regen I've worked hard using set IO bonuses, manuevers, hover and weave to get as close to soft-capping my positional defenses as possible. That helps quite a bit, and with a purple or extra defense from a teammate I'm softcapped as long as Divine Avalanche is hitting.

My Fire/SR scrapper on Victory hit 50 last night. I worked out a build last week to soft cap my defenses -- I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I didn't even remember to include the Steadfast Res/Def unique -- but anyway I already have AoE and Ranged softcapped and as soon as I manage to get four melee attacks completely slotted with Touch of Death I'll have melee covered as well.

My main problem right now is that it's still an endurance hog, I haven't gotten to fixing that part of the build just yet. I can only afford to do so much at one time. But my build as planned should solve that problem to my satisfaction as well.

The team I was on last night had two high level tankers that, as far as I could tell, were well IO'd. One was a shield tanker with shield charge. Guess who took the alpha for every spawn? I did! Everyone else was just standing around looking dumb and waiting for someone to do something, so I took the lead. With Fort on my all defenses were softcapped, so it was quite easy.

Wow, they need a giant mek man in the game.

Seriously. We have 2 task forces with giant Council robots that do not move. When is one going to attack us?

Can I attempt to do your feat one better?

I was on Victory today with Mouse Police, and I ran around gathering the invasion badges. I got the bomb badge and the accolade in Founder's Falls, and I stayed with the team for the big fight. There weren't a lot of people there but we got a ton of heavies coming in, which was cool.

I hit level 49 on one of them



I talked to my buddy Infernal really quick, then ran back to hit a couple more rikti. I was prepared to blast one of them with my brand new Dark Blast power... but then they were gone.

So... I didn't get to use my new power to fight the rikti, but other than that, it was pretty cool.

It was 7 pm EST, they started at most a few minutes early I think?

Good luck guys!

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Scrappers aren't basically the same though, they had no such thing as a critical hit.

I think there were other changes but that's the big one.

Oh yeah: no travel supression in combat.

[/ QUOTE ]also, if i recall correctly, attacks didnt queue(my word that is a oddly spelled word) if you werent in range, you got the (target is not in range" and had to re-click it when you were closer, that made melee a pain in the butt. now i just set up crane/eagles claw, run in and meet the first opponent with the least polite of handshakes. runners used to be the leading cause of scrapper-pattern baldness.

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Speaking of runners, that was another fix -- you used to have to be ahead of a runner to be within melee range of it, based on how the computer kept track of npc mob positions and your position. That was really annoying.

Scrappers aren't basically the same though, they had no such thing as a critical hit.

I think there were other changes but that's the big one.

Oh yeah: no travel supression in combat.

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Final fight in drunken master [different language warning]

Even when you cant understand it, its just an awesome fight!! Jackie has full on scrapper lock here

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This! This is my favorite fight sequence ever, pretty much. This is the epitome of a scrapper who just won't go down or go away.

Oh yeah, one more thing: There was no Icon and no extra costume slots. Once you mad your costume, that was it. You could change the colors via the Super Group window, but that was another thing -- your super group colors and logo were fixed when the group was created and could never be changed. The SG I was first in picked black and hot pink for our colors, which made people laugh at first but later on the leader really regretted having done that.

Playing in Super Group mode meant you could change your costume colors. That was it. There were no bases and no prestige, no other reason to be in SG mode.

I still have some pictures of our SG all in black and pink.