Organica

As long as you're logging into a character regularly, you can keep bids up indefinitely.

I don't think bids go away in 60 days just because you don't log in in any case, but on my active characters it doesn't really matter.

I'm going to be watching these threads more closely because I'm working on earning a few of these IOs myself. ^_^ I have 23 amerits on my night widow as of last night, on target to have 30 by Saturday, and I have 10 on one scrapper and 11 on another scrapper. I also have a 2 billion bid for one on the market. This is the first time I've worked hard at earning and saving up amerits to buy something like this, and if I can earn one or two to sell, so much the better. ^_^

Next you need to position yourself to crane kick them off of ledges, rooftops, cliffs and balconies as often as it possible.

This is not an option... it's an absolute necessity. If you're not going to do it, you might as well pick up Crippling Axe Kick and bypass Crane Kick altogether.

Just as long as you're aware that Mouse Police is not a mouse... Mouse is another catgirl.

Anyone familiar with the Jethro Tull song should be able to figure that out. ^_^

I ran a Sister tonight, and one guy on my team accidentally sold a Ragnarok recipe that he'd spent 300 million on. I think it hurt him a lot more than this hurt me.

For a brief time there were just a handful for sale, but it didn't cause a sudden run on them or anything. At the end I put up a stack of 10 for 101,000 each and they managed to sell before the numbers for sale went back up, lol. But I think they all sold for just over what I listed.

purples are unique so... once per character

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=125256

TopDoc's build is what I used to construct my Night Widow. I don't really calculate attack chains per se, but I know that this build is supposed to be capable of soloing AVs and pylons and I know that I can do tons of damage with my own Night Widow. I've had people ask, "Why didn't you take XXXX power" (think the actual question was regarding eviscerate) or "why no actual Night Widow attacks?" I didn't give them good answers because I didn't make those calculations and decisions -- TopDoc did. But I know TopDoc (sort of -- I've played in the Iron Eagles hardcore group on Justice that he's in, that he took a character to level 50 in w/o dying) so I know that he didn't take XXXX power for a good reason. If I can solo AVs, then what does XXXX power give me that I don't already have?

Anyway... I think his advice in this thread is what you're looking for. Specifically:

Here's a few slightly more creative names that I'm pleased with:

Quantum Butterfly, a grav/storm controller
Harlequin Romance, a Carnival of Shadows themed character
Rouge Spy, who got kicked out of a secret espionage organization for wearing too much makeup
Double Donkey Motel, a hired killer
Wilhelm Scream, a sonic blaster

Okay, so here's my story.

I logged on late last night with a plan to run my shield scrapper through 5 tip missions and a morality mission. But my friend immediately sends me a tell. "Want to join a Sister TF?" Hmmm... I have multiple characters who could use the WTF, I've only run it on said shield scrapper so far -- but all of my incarnate toons are on Virtue, and I know my friend has been playing on Justice.

But Mouse Police on Justice is 43. I want to hit 50 on her some day. So I say, "Sure!"

I haven't logged Mouse/Justice for over 100 days. First thing I do is check her build. She's stuffed with Oblits, Kinetic Combats, Reactive Armors, all the good stuff needed to push an Invul scrapper to the smashing/lethal softcap. A good build, or at least pretty good. But I noticed that Super Speed has 1 empty slot. Why is that?

That bugs me immediately. But my friends are waiting in IP, so I head there. But I can tell how much slower unslotted Super Speed is. It bugs me more.

Two missions later we're in Talos, and I take the time to stop off at Wentworth's. Surely I can afford a quick generic run IO? In fact, I notice I have over 500 million on me. This is a bit of a surprise -- I know I was working on this character last Fall, but it's not a character I market with. That's a nice chunk of change to have lying around on a character I don't even log into regularly.

I figure a 300,000 bid will get me my run IO immediately. I get my IO and I'm on my way, happy to be running faster.

Several missions later I'm running through Steel Canyon and at this point I've decided that I'd like to be able to stealth the last few missions. A stealth IO isn't something I'd normally pay buy it now prices for, but I stop at Wents again to try. Bids of up to 91 million net me nothing. My friends want to know where I'm at, they're in the next mission and I'm apparently wasting my time here, so I give up and move on. However, I've noticed that I only have about 200 million on me. Was I just confused earlier? Or... could I have possibly bought my run IO for 300 million? I mean, really? I know I'm tired and was in a hurry, but that's three extra zeros. Obviously I was just confused about having 500 million. Right?

I tried to scroll back to see how much I'd paid for my IO, but this was near the end of the TF so it had scrolled off the page. Anyway, we finished the TF, I got a nice WTF end-of-TF bonus of over 1.2 million experience which not only let me hit level 44 but put me nearly 3 1/2 bubbles into the level. My friends hit 30 and wanted to run Citadel, but it was after 11:30 PM so I said I had to get to sleep. They decided that was probably a good idea as well.

So this morning I log on quickly to do a little marketing before work, and it occurrs to me to check to see the last 5 sales on level 30 run IOs. I mean, they don't sell that fast, my purchase might still be showing, right? I was almost afraid to look because I was afraid I'd see exactly what I DID see, lol.

But it was money I didn't even know I had before logging in last night, so ah well! Easy come easy go! Guess that run IO is worth more to me than the Steath IO I wanted, lol.

Ooops

I have a story to go with this, but I'm late for work so I'll have to type it later today. ^_^

I still like Mouse Police. ^_^ But I like semi-stupid names too. Alting still amuses me. Whenever the team leader says someone else is alting, I can protest that no, I am!

I would never claim this is a good name, but last night I decided to see if the name "AE Baby" was available on Virtue. It was. ^_^ Not a good roleplay name I guess, but neither is Alting. I don't have a clue what to do with it, but it will amuse me greatly to level a character with that name up slowly doing regular content and never setting foot in AE.

OMG yes. Exit mission, see that next mission is a long ways away (Dark Astoria or Boomtown for example) -- MOVE AT LEAST 20 FEET AWAY FROM EVERYONE ELSE, then I use my Mission Transporter.

It's sheer laziness to use a canal system to irrigate your crops, when you could just haul the water yourself.

For some reason I was thinking the Enzymes added something else... it didn't click that the defense debuff worked out to 33% defense, plus endurance reduction.

In any case, right now I'm feeling like I bit off a bit more than I can chew... I used 3 respecs over the weekend to rework my scrapper and remove some valuable IOs that I wanted to keep (full third Oblit set, 5 pieces of Unbreakable Constraint). I had four pieces of the purple damage IOs needed and was able to bid on and purchase the other four pieces of the Hexacomb set and two more pieces of the Armageddon... I don't have any of the Enzymes purchased yet, or the Glad 3% IO, or the rest of the purples needed let alone the Panacea set (that's something I'm reserving until everything else is done -- for now I have five pieces of Numina in True Grit left over from my previous build).

This leaves me just shy of 40% melee defense, and just a bit over 40% for ranged and AoE. I feel "gimped". Except that I'm actually MUCH more powerful than I was previously, damage-wise. Not that I was bad off before, but I didn't have Fireball, and I had Jacob's Ladder in my build which I'm better off without.

I ran an ITF last night and died one when I tried to play tank at one point. Tanking only works when my AoEs are up, because I don't have to do it for more than two seconds, heh.

I have a 2billion bid up on the market for a Glad proc, and I'm also at 12 hero merits working my way to getting it that way... running 5 tip missions a night and buying 1 hero merit a night as well (on my night widow). I'm also trying to run 5 tips a day on my scrapper now, and buying a merit a day with her and with my scrapper Nina... but that's going to be hard to maintain, I only have a few hundred merits banked on each of these toons and running 10 tip missions a night leaves less time to earn more regular merits. (And I've been working overtime at work too, heh.)

I think once I've bought and slotted a couple of the Enzymes and 2-3 more purple pieces I'll be feeling very good about this toon. But even at this point, my em/sd scrapper is 100% more fun to play. I'm really looking forward to when this build is complete!

Yeah, I'm looking at the recipe price. 4 of last 5 were just over 500m when I looked, the other was 560m. The secret is you always get the best price from someone who wants it right now... but working out a "buy it nao" price offmarket for something like a purple IO might be difficult. The reason it works with the PvP IOs is because they're so extremely rare and you can't just buy one off the market instantly.

I'm in the market for one (and a bunch of other purples) but like Yomo I'd rather buy the recipe for about 500 million, probably a bit more, then craft it for maybe 10 million more.

Given that I can get it on the market for around 500 million or just over, what's the advantage to me to buying it off market for 650 million? Other than not having to wait overnight I guess.

Also, if you really like knockdown, getting Fireball and placing Ragnarok Chance for Knockdown in it will turn it into a nice AoE knockdown power... it's a 20% chance to knockdown (not knockback) so pretty much puts 20% of the enemies around you on their backs. ^_^ Fun proc, although I don't know if it's worth slotting if you're not using other pieces from the same set.

Surprised Dechs hasn't been here yet...

I like my Martial Arts scrappers an awful lot, I have four of them at level 50, and there's a certain appeal to the flow of one movement into another -- I can almost zone out while running one of them through a very tough mission set for 8 people.

The appeal to other sets is MOAR damage and killing stuff faster. While MA has very good single-target damage, my katana and broadsword scrappers can do more in a single hit than my MA scrappers can. And when it comes to AoE, there's no comparison. Fire sword circle on a group of enemies is immensely satisfying, and Lightning Rod is just a blast. I've been reworking my electric melee/shield defense scrapper over the weekend, I ran a whole bunch of missions solo and teleporting into a mob and having them all drop dead (Lightning Rod, Shield Charge, Fireball) -- well, MA can't touch that.

I'm not anti-stun or knockback though. On an MA scrapper your enemy spends a great deal of time NOT attacking you.

I am totally bumping this thread so that I can find it again faster. But that's because I'm reworking my Electric Melee/Shield Defense scrapper, and I'm also leveling up a Fire Melee/Shield Defense scrapper, and I'm going to borrow both of the "very expensive" builds here. Gives me something to work for.

I do have a question though, if anyone can answer it. Most people 5-slot purple damage sets, and I understand why. But typically I see everything but the damage IO as Fury did in these builds. But when I created my Night Widow based on TopDoc's expensive high-performance build (found in the SoA section under Night Widow guides), I followed TopDoc's reccomendations, where he would use the Damage IO from these sets (Hectacomb, Ragnarok, Armageddon, Apocalypse) and would instead omit the damage/recharge IO.

5 slotted without the damage IO = near max damage, but also near max recharge

5 slotted without damage/recharge IO = absolute max damage, a bit less recharge

Since I'm not really a numbers person, maybe one of the reasons this works for the Night Widow build is that all of the attacks are pretty fast/quick and having less recharge doesn't mess up your attack chain. But I've noticed that my widow puts up incredible damage, so I'm wondering how much of a difference those few percentage points really make?

Also, I've reworked these builds to include inherent fitness. For my three extra powers I picked up Manuevers, Tactics, and Grant Cover. Generally I like having Recall Friend on all of my characters -- the ability to stealth (superspeed + stealth IO) and port people is very useful for 8-man Task Forces, which is what I mostly do. But in this case the extra defense from Manuevers seemed too good to pass up. I like Grant Cover since it helps out the team a little, and Tactics is a nice power but really I had nothing else I wanted to take at that point. But I'm wondering if I should try and find a way to give more than one slot to Manuevers at least, or how I should slot that and Grant Cover -- just a Defense IO, or is there a better way to go about it?

Hess in 32 minutes is actually pretty slow... we routinely do it in under 30, our best is about 21 minutes I think.

We did ITF back to back to back to back just yesterday (well... I was on two of those, and another one run by someone else), all about 25-35 minutes each... sub 20 would be really flying. ^_^

MG's Dr. Q runs are usually about 3 hours, 3 and a half hours at most. That's not with all the contact babysitting and such, just a good team moving at a good clip.

Manti in 32 is a very good time too. I'm pretty sure we've matched that, but we've run speed Mantis a lot and I'm not sure we've ever been below 30 minutes.

I ran through the Sutter TF and had a blast on it. Lots of fun. ^_^