Rodion

Your numbers are way, way, way off. I can do the average alignment mission in 3-10 minutes, with any kind of character. I usually run at +1/x2, so that they aren't a total snoozefest and totally devoid of XP, as well as to increase the chance of tip drops (if you have too few mobs you may not get a tip dropped during a tip mission, which is a time sink in itself). I've done some level 20-29 villain missions in less than two minutes. Travel time between missions (when they force them to be in DA, or CF, or IP) is often longer than the time to do most missions.

If all you're interested in is cranking through them you can set the difficulty to -1/x1 to make it even easier. Once you've done them a couple of times you figure out exactly what you need to do, and minimize the time required. Some of them (escort missions) are hard to speed up, but by careful selection of missions you can avoid taking them. Since you can dismiss tips you can completely avoid the time-consuming ones by deleting them as soon as they drop.

So, quite realistically, you can do your five daily tip missions in 30-60 minutes on one character. If you're hell-bent on getting that full set of IOs in the shortest calendar time possible, just repeat the same process on five other characters.

That means you could, if so inclined, get a set of 6 PvP IOs in 70 calendar days and 210-420 hours of real time (5 characters each at 30-60 minutes per day times 70 days).

Doing 30-36 tip missions a day for two months is probably not realistic, admittedly. But you could probably do it in four to six months. In the meantime, if you're running level 50 tips mission you'll probably get many purple recipe drops that will net you billions if you sell them, and you'll probably be able to buy one or two recipes outright. That will reduce the real time required further.

And then you could always just PvP to get PvP recipes. It might actually be more time efficient...

I've played table-top RPGs for years, where disadvantages are common. Given that experience, I think your idea would probably backfire.

Disadvantages work fine in the comics where a writer gets to choose what happens and in table-top RPGs where a human GM likewise chooses the story and adjudicates all the action. Story and role-playing based considerations will always trump the numbers when push comes to shove in comics and TTRPGs.

In a computer-based game there is no writer or GM to moderate the use of disadvantages. That means players will just min/max their characters to do away with the limitations while retaining any positive effects bestowed by the disadvantage. We see this already with the existing powersets, most of which already have inherent disadvantages of the sort disadvantages would impose.

The most common one is knockback: every non-melee character (and some with melee powersets like Fire and Dark) has no inherent KB protection. As soon as I can, I get a -KB IO or slot Kinetic Crash. Getting knocked around constantly does not add to my character's personality or backstory, it just gets me killed. I doubt I'm the only who does this, and I'd guess that you also do it.

Because the game is so flexible and has so many ways of getting around our character's limitations, it's most likely that giving us some advantage for some disadvantage would be just another way to min/max the character to the utmost. With Incarnate slots coming out the opportunities for eliminating the negative effects of disadvantages will only grow.

That means disadvantages would probably have the opposite of the effect you intend: characters taking them would become more powerful in one aspect, while eliminating the weakness the disadvantage is supposed to impose.

In TTRPGs the GM will simply stop you from doing this because it violates the intent of taking the disadvantage in the first place. In an MMO, such a tactic will just make the players angry and causes harsh feelings and cries of NERF!

In the end, disadvantages that provide benefits would wind up being another source of exploits and would only result in a great deal of rancor as the devs closed those exploits.

Actually, the thing that would most improve the market experience would be for all players to be knowledgeable about the true value of things relative to supply and demand, for bidders to exercise patience (refuse to play ball with sellers who jack prices up), and for sellers to list at correct price points (listing too low allows others to profit from your hard work and listing too high clogs up the market and causes inflation).

That is, if everyone thought like a marketeer but behaved like an intelligent consumer the market would operate much more smoothly, with fewer ups and downs and crazy shortages.

Right now lots of people are impatient and lustful for shinies and will pay anything for them. That isn't marketeers' fault, but they certainly do things to feed that frenzy. For example, buying up recipes with lowball bids and crafting them them into IOs that the impatient rich folks buy for 10 or 20 times their value.

There are definitely a few "bad" marketeers out there who intentionally play games and force price spikes and shortages, but they can't do that for long and they can't do it unless bad consumers go along with them.

Finally, the thing that would help the market the most would be for people to stop wasting time writing whiny posts about prices being too high and instead go out and do things that generate more supply, which is the surest way to reduce prices (like rolling random recipes from AE tickets, tip missions and TFs, running level 50 content for purples and PvPing for recipes). The supply has to come from someplace. Be a part of the solution by becoming a provider instead of being part of the problem by only consuming.

This advice is well-intended, but it's off the mark. Sleeps are very useful even on teams, especially when used by dominators with domination up. It's extremely common for spawns to be closely located -- especially Nemesis troops at high levels. The devs place them in ways that allow them to cover each other with nasty AoE fire.

Because Sleeps do not cause aggro, you can use them to safely eliminate the danger with colocated spawns. Sleep one, and attack the other. If there's a boss you can quickly hold it with two applications of your single-target hold.

Tonight our team was doing level 50 alignment tip missions. A common trick the devs use for spawn placement is to put spawns on both sides of a T intersection of the caves. We were running 5 players at +0/x8, so we'd be hard pressed to engage both Nemesis spawns at once. But by sleeping one side, AoE holding the other and blasting it with AoEs we avoided a lot of tedious pulling. Then the tanker runs into the sleeping spawn and we AoE everything in near-total safety, very fast and very clean. We did have a dominator with perma-dom, but two players with single-target holds working together can quickly lock down anything that gets missed short of EBs and AVs.

Sleeps can save you a lot of time when you're on a team that knows what it's doing.

Sleeps are also great for emergencies. If you've been ambushed and things are going south, everyone is scrambling just to stay alive, a sleep will shut down most incoming attacks. You can regroup, heal and then wail on the baddies.

Even when you're in the middle of huge battle with AoEs flying everywhere, a controller that's taking a lot of heat can just cut loose with a sleep. Yeah, the blaster will wake them up with a fireball. But then they'll go after the blaster instead of you and the defender.

Finally, sleeps let you take on make larger spawns than you might otherwise be able to. If you're teamed with a blaster you can sleep the group, then hold the boss by applying two single-target holds in quick succession, and the blaster can take down the boss. Then you start locking down LTs while the blaster AoEs the minions.

Yeah, sleeps are somewhat situational. But the number of situations they can be used in is quite large. If your argument against using sleeps is that the people you team with can't handle the tactics, show 'em how it's done. If they can't hack you need to run with a better crowd.

There are also a lot of things in the game that cause a recharge debuff, which means you can have a significant downtime for PB if you've been hit by slows and some immobilizes.

I also find that in the heat of combat you can "lock out" autofired PB if you queue your attacks (which I do all the time). If you've got it too finely timed you may drop PB and if there are any holds stacked on you'll get held.

Brutes don't have Ice Armor because a major component of Ice's mitigation is the -32% recharge in Chilling Embrace. This is bad for brutes because over the medium and long haul it slows down the attack rate of mobs by a third, which hampers building up Fury. The same thing is true for Ice Melee -- each of those attacks slows the target by 8-16%, which means overall Fury would build up only half as fast as as it does for other brutes.

Since the damage increase Fury provides is the primary attraction for brutes vs. tankers, anything that detracts from Fury is bad for brutes. No one would want such a set.

Could the devs modify Ice Armor and Ice Melee to make them work for brutes? Maybe. But it would be a major rework on the basic conceit of the sets' secondary effect. That means they go to the bottom of the list for power proliferation.

You want to get as close as possible to 45% defense in all three positions (melee, AoE and ranged) This is the "soft cap". It's not a real cap, but just the amount of defense that minimizes the chances that an even-con minion can hit you without any outside buffs/debuffs.

First, you should get the Mids build planner.

Second, realize that you won't be able to hit the softcap until you're much higher level. You need to slot a lot of IO sets that provide defense bonuses, and you won't have enough slots until much higher levels.

Here are some tricks:

* Get Combat Jumping if you don't have it.
* You need all your Shield Powers (One with Shield is not needed for the softcap), as well as Weave.
* Slot the Steadfast: Res/+Def IO (usually done in True Grit).
* Slot Active Defense for recharge. It provides a lot of defense debuff resistance. One trick is to use Membrane Exposure, but they're expensive and it smells like an exploit and may not work forever.
* You'll need to slot a mix of sets that provide positional defenses. Sets that give a lot include Scirocco's Dervish. Mako's Bite, Obliteration, Aegis, and Red Fortune. Gaussian's Sync. Fire control is especially useful. Mids can help you find sets that you can use, and then do all the math to make the build.

I've got a BS/SD scrapper that's softcapped in all three positions, but it's easier than MA because the Parry BS attack gives significant melee defense. I'm guessing you can probably do it, but it might be a bit more expensive.

At the end of the day you'll fiddle around a lot trying to get an extra 2-3% here and there to softcap in all positions. Remember that 45% is not a hard and fast number -- if you can only get to 42% it's no big deal. But every percent you get when you're that high makes a bigger and bigger difference in the amount of damage you take.

Though it isn't the same thing, you can make yourself look like one of your decoys. One of my illusionist's costumes looks like the decoys; I've seen several others do the same thing.

It's not a big deal to tab through the decoys in PvP, but it does take time. Combined with Deceive, however, it can make fighting illusionists a royal pain in the neck.

In the original implementation in the closed beta the Alpha Slot could be unlocked with Reward Merits or Vanguard Merits. In a subsequent release it was changed to be just 50 Reward Merits, with no Vanguard option.

So I wouldn't be surprised if it's either 50 r-merits or one a-merit when it finally goes live.

To make a tough /Energy Aura brute you'll probably need to take everything except Conserve Power and Overload. You'll also need to take Tough and Weave, and buy a lot of expensive IO sets to soft-cap S/L defense.

Overload crashes spectacularly, so even though I've taken it I never use it. Using it will usually get you killed unless you're guaranteed the fight will be over before it crashes, or you can just run away before it does.

While Energy Aura is okay when fully IOed out, it doesn't do anything better than other Brute secondary sets. The only power of note is Energy Cloak -- that lets you be a sort of stealthy brute. I've been able to stand a few yards away from one mob while pounding on another without attracting any aggro. But most players of brutes don't see that as an advantage.

Basically, Energy Aura is a good alternative if you want to run a stealthy single-target brute. But most people want to run brutes like high-damage tankers against large spawns. If you want the latter, you'll probably want to avoid Energy Aura. Go for something like Willpower, Shield, or Invulnerability if you want to be tank-like.

You'll probably still need to take Tough and Weave, but with I19 it'll be a whole lot easier to fit everything in.

I'm glad the market was merged, but I never had any problems getting what I wanted on my villains. I have 3 level 50 villains from before I18, and maybe 15 heroes at 50. I've never bothered trying to hit even 1 billion inf; no need to run up the numbers. I just get what inf I need to buy what I want. I do some sugar daddy transactions, but most characters are self-sufficient.

For someone who was patient and could wait a few days or weeks the villain market worked fine. But most people don't think in those terms.

I never believed that a market merge would be detrimental to the villain side, because villains can make influence just as fast as heroes. With access to the same market they can trade and make money off the market, which is probably the biggest equalizer.

One thing I don't think has been mentioned in this equation is the ability to set solo spawn sizes. This helps villainside more than hero-side, I think. Certain Brutes and corruptors can run at +0/x8 very efficiently against a fairly broad selection of mob types. Scrappers might have a slight advantage, and Fire/kins may be as efficient for very specific mob types.

Side-switching and email transfers also make it easier. But the key thing to market equality is equal access to the market. Once you have that, wealth levels will equalize: villains will be able to sell their items to rich heroes and get rich too. I think that's what everyone neglected to consider -- yeah, heroes had a lot more money to spend. And they would be spending it on items sold by villains, which would make villains rich also.

And all the screaming about the high price of common salvage is silly. If people don't want to pay the high price, they should bid low and wait. Or just go bum salvage off mobs in missions (or AE). It's really that simple.

Exactly. The other thing is that Confused minions are extremely bad at hurting each other. They run around, switch targets constantly and generally don't do enough damage to make any real difference -- unless you let them go at it for a while. If you Confuse bosses and let them attack their minions, bosses will take out minions quite handily.

I suspect that the screaming about common salvage prices is that vendors only pay 250 for it, so it's only "worth" 250. If anyone charges more than 250 then they are stealing.

This mindset ignores the fact that all common salvage is not at the same level of demand and the same level of supply. There seems to be a large contingent of players who still run only Freakshow radio missions, which means that arcane salvage is always in shorter supply, and certain items (Luck Charm, Alchemical Silver, etc.) tend to be in higher demand because certain higher demand IOs (accuracy) use them.

Items are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. And some people have so much inf they would rather pay 10 times what something is "worth" to get it now.

Fretting about this fact of life is a waste of time. Your options are simple: you pay the going rate, you bid low and wait, you go run missions at +0/x2 or +0/x3 against enemies that drop the salvage you want, or you use AE tickets.

If people charge too much for common salvage you don't have to buy it. It's trivial to get in large quantities in just a few minutes of playing time, if you really object to paying an extra 10,000 to get a piece of junk that's only "worth" 250.

HOs are best used for powers that have only two or three slots. For example, a tank might select Fireball for the level 49 power. If you use two of your three level 50 slots, you can get 66% Acc and 96% damage for the Fireball by slotting two Acc/Dam HOs (Nucleolus Exposure) and one level 50 damage IO, which is the same as slotting 2 Acc SOs and 3 damage SOs.

Another use might be for a controller that wants to slot a Hold for maximum damage and mez.

Because IO set IOs often come with endurance and recharge bonuses as well you may still be better off Frankenslotting these powers if you have four or five slots. But when you've only got two or three slots and just care about accuracy and the effect (damage/mez), you might consider HOs.

You don't even need to do this. On most mid-level characters I'm able to be self-sufficient for salvage just by putting a variety of salvage in the personal vault, and then using several market slots to store whatever high-demand items (alchemical silver, masterwork weapons, etc.) I find. You can store up to 10 in each slot. When I get more than I need I just sell the extras.

Then I just sell off everything once I start making level 41+ IOs. (I IO characters as they level, starting in the late 20s, rather than waiting till 50).

If you do much soloing at +0/x2 you'll get more salvage than you need. When I team, however, I don't think you can quite be self-sufficient.

Burn is a pseudopet so you probably need to turn on pet damage display in the combat log, I assume (I haven't checked this myself to be sure).

Are you sure there were two in the same ambush spawn, and it wasn't actually two spawns?

If this happened to you in that hero tip mission that has an empty Longbow base where you talk to a guy and then you get hit by a ton of Malta ambushes, you've probably been hit by two separate spawns.

Running against Malta it's essential to have an adequate stock of inspirations. Carry several purples, greens, a break free and a blue at all times, and you'll be able survive most anything long enough to get away. You might have to flee the mission altogether, but you can almost always avoid getting killed if that's important to you.

This one is much cheaper, and slightly exceeds the softcap for S/L (45.3%) but its recharge and accuracy bonuses aren't as good as the build posted by bass_Ackwards. It dates from when Burn was mostly worthless and doesn't include it, but you might get a few ideas.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.81
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Fiery Wrath: Level 50 Mutation Tanker
Primary Power Set: Fiery Aura
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Melee
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Fitness
Ancillary Pool: Pyre Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Fire Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(3), S'fstPrt-ResKB(13), RctvArm-ResDam(13), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(25)
Level 1: Scorch -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(11), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 2: Healing Flames -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(5), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(5), Dct'dW-Rchg(17), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 4: Combustion -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(7), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(7), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Oblit-%Dam(23)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- Krma-ResKB(A)
Level 8: Boxing -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(9), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(9), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 10: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 12: Plasma Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-EndRdx(37), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(40), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(40), RctvArm-ResDam(42)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A)
Level 18: Blazing Aura -- M'Strk-Acc/Dmg(A), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx(19), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(19), M'Strk-Acc/EndRdx(33), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), P'Shift-End%(21)
Level 22: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(23), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(25), S'fstPrt-ResKB(42), RctvArm-ResDam(43)
Level 24: Consume -- Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(27), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(27), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 26: Fiery Embrace -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 28: Fire Sword Circle -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(29), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(29), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Oblit-%Dam(31)
Level 30: Taunt -- Mocking-Taunt(A), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg(43), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(45), Mocking-Taunt/Rng(45)
Level 32: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(33), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(33), RedFtn-Def(37)
Level 35: Incinerate -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 38: Greater Fire Sword -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40)
Level 41: Ring of Fire -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(42), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(45), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(48)
Level 44: Char -- HO:Endo(A)
Level 47: Fire Ball -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rng(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(50), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Build Up -- Rec'dRet-Pcptn(A), Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
Level 0: Ninja Run

Indeed. They can also be obtained by playing PvP. But very few people seem to be interested in actually producing these things the way they're intended to be produced.

To the poster who made the comparison to WoW: Isn't playing PvP a skill-based activity, and aren't the PvP recipes a reward for doing well at it?

Come on, guys. If you want PvP IOs, PvP!

I know the current PvP system ain't perfect, but someone's obviously doing it because there are PvP recipes on the market.