Rodion

I'm not quite sure I understand what's required to get some of the tier four powers. But some of them require the very rare components. And those very rare components require hundreds of threads and 30 Empyrean merits to construct.

Which means to make the four T4 powers you need 120 Empyrean merits plus many hundreds of threads plus billions of influence, plus all the T1-T3 powers and all the things required to make them.

Maybe you can get these things in other ways. But on the face of it, it looks like you need to do these two trials hundreds of times to get the top level stuff.

That sounds pretty grindy to me.

The lack of contrast with the team names prompted me to write a bug within seconds of seeing it. Green on green text is illegible for pretty much anyone over 30. This really needs to be fixed.

As someone who used to play Empaths a lot, the idea that you can keep Clear Mind on an entire team is too tedious to even contemplate. The duration of Clear Mind is only 90 seconds. As such it's only useful as a remedy than a preventive measure. It costs 5 end, and takes 3 seconds or so to cast and recharge. No one can spend a quarter of their time and energy doing that. At times I have endeavored to keep one other person buffed with Clear Mind at all times, and that person was always another empath -- someone who would heal or buff me as needed.

Which is kind of the point: I don't see the OP offering to keep the rest of the team buffed with Increase Density (which gives damage resistance and protection against immobilize, knockback, hold and stun, the latter of which is probably more common than sleeps in melee situations). He's just interested in being able to waltz in, kill everything without any effort and move on to the next spawn. I wonder if the OP even has Increase Density in his build, unless it's a mule for Steadfast Protection: Res/+Def. I've seen a fair number of /Kins who don't even have Speed Boost.

Anyway, the OP's real underlying complaint is that he can't solo +4/x8 because he keeps getting mezzed. An empath won't help in that case.

On a practical note: I have a Mind/Kin with Indomitable Will down to a 92 second recharge (down for 2 seconds). The worst thing is remembering to use it. I get mezzed so infrequently that it's not the first thing on my mind, and I always forget about activating it until I'm mezzed. And then it's useless. If it were made so you could activate when mezzed it would be great.

I have a similar problem with my perma-dom, but I only forget to hit that when I'm distracted -- typically when out of combat. But the villain Frenzy power is just fabulous for instant-on Domination.

Putting a time limit on posted items would basically make certain items completely disappear. I often post things like Enfeebled Operation for because I buy them occasionally, and want them to be readily available when I do (that set has excellent S/L defense bonuses). If enough people do this there'll always be a supply of items that aren't in high demand but have a definite use.

Anyway, what difference does it make how many useless items are posted on the market? It's not like they're taking up extra space on the display floor, or rotting and stinking up the joint.

If the database were overloaded and having a terrible time with the volume of junk that would be one thing. But I see no evidence of that at all -- response time is completely acceptable for me.

You're dead right, so to speak.

I don't die very often, but when I do it's almost always because I didn't use inspirations when I should have.

Once you hit 50 you should be able to survive just about anything for 30 seconds on inspirations alone.

Survival in this game is pretty easy if: a) you recognize situations that will cause you problems before those problems occur, b) you use inspirations before you take damage, and c) you leave before you get killed and nothing you can do will help your team mates (i.e., they're already dead or helping them will just get both of you killed).

That's why I almost always delete rez insps as soon as they drop. They're just taking up space that I could otherwise use for something else. Between being able to combine insps and the rez team mate day job power there's very little reason to carry them.

The main exceptions are when I'm teaming with someone who is constantly getting themselves killed, or when I'm on a mission where it's highly likely that you'll get killed. I'm looking at you, Apex -- though once I got used to Apex I don't die much, unless I'm trying to help other characters -- healing or rezzing them, usually.

Splitting your attention among attacking Battle Maiden, avoiding swords and champions, jumping out of the falling blue death AND keeping team mates alive is pretty tricky, in part because everyone is so spread out and tanks/brutes can't maintain aggro when everyone is so dispersed.

I take fly on most of my ranged characters and Super Leap on most of my melee characters. Most of those have the jet pack from the bank mission, or one of the other sources. Sometimes flying is, well, the only way to fly...

The jet pack is slower than the Flight power, so I wouldn't want it as my sole means of transportation.

I bid 275 and 1200 so that the seller gets the same net profit they'd get if they sold at a vendor -- paying them the 10% fee from the market .

To be fair, though, there is an opportunity cost for slots. The value of that cost depends on what the seller would be doing with the slot otherwise. For most non-marketeers the slots are empty once you've got all the stuff you need for that character (mature 50s, for example).

To really make it worth people's while to list salvage you should probably be paying double what the vendors are paying.

Of course, all that is meaningless when supply is crazily high, like it is with most level 50 common salvage. I've seen 20,000 Kinetic Weapons for sale; there's no need to pay anything extra for them.

I've beaten Trapdoor solo with nearly all of my characters, including many controllers and defenders. A few times when I knew it would be too tedious at +0, I ran it at -1 difficulty. If you're having a hard time, I'd recommend doing the same.

The last time I did it I had accidentally left my difficulty at +1, and it was royal pain: I was playing a brute and none of the gimmicks worked (he would NOT stay in the lava and I didn't want to get in there with him, though now I wonder if I could have). Eventually the Envenomed Dagger helped me know him down fast enough.

If you're working on crafting badges you're going to produce far more enhancements than you'll ever be able to sell at a profit, especially the mez ones (hold, confuse, etc.).

When you have a choice, always make the ones that are in demand. For example, either accuracy or to-hit buff can be crafted for that line of badges. Almost no one uses to-hit buff, so you will never sell them for what it costs to craft them. Craft accuracy instead.

Take your time getting the badges. If you're crafting stuff people buy, and you're producing more than you can sell, you're probably also paying a lot for salvage. Make lower bids on salvage, which will slow your production down, costing you less up front, and giving you more time to sell your production.

Realize that people who memorized the recipes can undercut your prices. Find the crafting costs for the memorized versions and set your sell price accordingly. If you're lucky you'll sell to someone who's overbidding and make a profit. If you're unlucky you'll take a small loss. But on average you'll probably break even, and if you're going for the badge that's the best you can hope for.

I tried saving IOs in our base, but it's really just a waste of space for anything but the most useful ones: accuracy, damage, recharge, end reduction, etc. You can always get mez and slow enhancements on the market for peanuts, so there's no point in keeping them. You will almost always sell them at a loss, so if you don't have the slots just bite the bullet and delete them. The lost inf and salvage are the cost of getting the badge.

What's worse is when a /Devices blaster teams and tries to force that approach on a tanker and a scrapper. If you like teaming you'll rarely have the time to do that kind of setup.

I tried a /Devices and it was just too tedious. If you want "gadgets" you might go with a corruptor and Trick Arrow or Traps. Those provide massive debuffs that make mobs melt, and though they do take time to fire off, it happens during combat so it doesn't feel so tedious.

If you're planning on using IOs the defense debuffs from Rad may not be all that great for you. Most of the sets you'll want to slot will have +acc, and while it isn't quite the same as a defense debuff, missing isn't usually a problem for most IOed characters, even against 54s.

I've got a Rad/Kin corruptor and a Fire/Dark corruptor and the Rad/Kin's damage still feels anemic compared to the Fire.

But in the end, you should play what seems fun to you, not necessarily what gives you the biggest numbers.

The most recent time I ran the ITF with my level 50+1 Fire/Fire tanker I did so at +2. The character is soft-capped for S/L defense. My hit points never went down and the only time I used Healing Flames was when I pressed the key by accident. Scrappers on the team got defeated but I never did.

However, I'm not bragging about this: other times I have run the ITF at the same difficulty and got defeated once or twice.

The difference was team support and proper tactics. On the most recent run there was a Cold defender that kept me buffed -- I had 80% defense most of the time between the cold shields and Maneuvers. There were also a couple of debuffers on the team that attacked the spawn just after I went in. That coordination -- basically me not getting too far ahead of the team -- was what kept completely unscathed while taking the bulk of the aggro.

The thing about a soft-capped Fire tanker is that you can take the alpha from the Romans fairly successfully, especially if you use a purple inspiration before leaping in. But you can't get too far ahead of the team, and over the long haul your team is what will keep you alive as your defense is debuffed.

But that's pretty much true of any kind of tanker, if you run off alone and don't use proper tactics. Today we ran a Kahn TF at +0 and the stone tanker on our team ran off by himself and got defeated by Council. Council, for gosh sake!

If you can run missions against Romans solo at +2/x8 your Fire tanker is as tough as you can expect it to be. Admittedly you'll have a harder time of it than my Fire/Fire tanker because you won't have quite as many AoEs to quickly take out all the minions with their -def attacks. But if you can do that successfully, you'll be able to tank the ITF with a decent team behind you without ever taking a scratch.

Defense-based characters get defense debuff resistance because they don't have damage resistance. You don't need DDR because you already have damage resistance. But remember, all that DDR comes to naught when the enemies have high accuracy. Try running a shield tanker against Devouring Earth when a Quartz is out to see what I mean.

Pretty much all power sets have some weakness. The devs just aren't going to change that basic equation.

The analysis is even simpler than this.

Logging in, monkeying with 18 or 20 stacks of stupid salvage, and logging out would probably take two to five minutes. Multiple by 30 characters and you have just spent 60 to 150 minutes.

How long could someone stand wasting an hour to two and a half hours a day doing something so totally boring, for so little actual profit? Two days? Three days?

Especially considering that they could make billions in the same amount of time flipping items of real value?

There might be people who try to force high prices on common items just for the hell of it. But they won't do it for long, because it's just too insanely boring, and there are so many trivial ways of circumventing their "block."

Common items sell for 200K a pop not because someone is trying to block the market, but because someone doesn't want to wait five minutes, or a day, or spend five or 10 minutes in AE to get dozens of pieces of low- and mid-level salvage.

Using Stone Cages on top of Ice Slick is okay when the mobs are stunned/held/totally debuffed, especially if the cages are slotted for damage and not immobilization. But, you're right, if they're fighting back it kind of defeats the purpose of Ice Slick.

I used to whine about other team members and their power choices. I've since come to just accept it and work with it. All the powers are in the game for a legitimate reason, even if they're sometimes used incorrectly. Usually asking someone using Gale to use it to knock the mobs into a corner or against a wall is sufficient.

I've got a grav/FF, though, and I have to admit it that it's the most painful character to play that I've had. It's tedious because you have to buff the team all the time, and Wormhole is just plain badly designed. It's a great concept, but the implementation is about 95% wrong. It's stuck at level 43 and I predict hitting level 50 in 2025 unless they fix Gravity before then.

The most impatient I've ever been was on a small team run by a /Dev blaster who insisted on using two or three mines on every spawn. Bo-o-o-oring...

We did one today in 46 minutes, and another in 59.

But the OP does have a legitimate gripe: his team got hit with two zone events. Depending on when they happen to fire off, that could prevent the necessary mobs from spawning for up to 15-20 minutes each. That's not reasonable. It seems like a major design flaw in zone events (or Numina, but since the TF precedes the zone events it should have been accounted for in the zone event design).

Probably the best solution would be to replace the zone hunts with one or two door missions that accomplish the same thing.

I've never had a problem with kill stealing during Numina, and only once have I had a Numina delayed by a Rikti invasion. I guess that's the up side of playing on a server with a smaller population.

Actually, the new launcher has a feature that lets you create a desktop shortcut that skips all the button clicking in the NCSoft launcher.

Click the CITY OF HEROES line in the NCSoft launcher and a small menu button appears on the right. Click that and a menu appears. Click the Create Desktop Shortcut item. The launcher will create an icon that automatically does all the selecting, checking and launching of CoH, bringing you directly to the login page.

So instead of having to click Next and Accept in the current launcher, you just click the Accept button in the game for terms of service, for a reduction of one button click with the new launcher using no hacks at all.

In addition, the new launcher has a menu item that allows you to create a desktop shortcut that allows you to directly launch the game without having to click PLAY. You still have to click the button in-game for the terms of service, but it's one less button click than the old launcher!

There is no reason to spend development time on a mechanism like this. If someone doesn't want to pay 500K for Alchemical Silver, they do not have to. They can spend five minutes in AE and then make ticket rolls for random Tier 2 arcane salvage. Alternately, as you level you can save away pieces of salvage that don't want to overpay for in your base, personal bank storage or market slots.

If every person -- and there are hundreds of them every day, it seems -- who wrote a note in the forums formulating and writing proposals like the one above instead spent that same time generating common salvage and posting it at a price they deemed fair, there would be no shortage of salvage and it would be much cheaper.

But since so many people just pay the outrageous prices instead of generating their own salvage, it's obvious that they don't really consider those prices to be excessive, and they believe their time is better spent doing something else.

This is a non-problem that deserves no developer attention, except perhaps to add a loading screen tip reminding players of the trivially easy way to generate common salvage in AE.

This is what I do. I just make up a random response and record it on an index card that I keep in a undisclosed, secure location.

I think entering real information for this, especially your mother's maiden name, is a bad idea. Maiden name is used for real security checks, like your bank account. Scattering that information all over the web increases the likelihood that a security breach will occur and that data will get out. Or worse, an unscrupulous data center employee will sell your information to criminals.

For this reason, I would recommend choosing the option to use information that is not used for things that really matter. That is, use pet name for frivolous things like gaming accounts, and reserve maiden name for things that actually require it.