Rodion

Bosses have a higher chance for drops, so it depends on how fast you can take down bosses. If you're a brute, blaster or scrapper that can destroy a boss and all the minions/LTs in very short order, then you should include bosses. If you're a tanker or controller or something else that takes forever to whittle a boss down, then it will depend on exactly how slow you are at taking down bosses.

The answer will vary for different characters and how they fare against certain mobs. Without more information we can't really say. We would need to know how long it takes on average for you to take out a spawn with a bosses vs. one without bosses.

It depends. If you want to maximize the time your defense debuff resistance is stacked, you want Active Defense to recharge as fast as possible. It makes a big difference, especially if you're only slotting recharge IOs (and not Membrance Exposure).

If you don't have 10-15 million to spend on Pangean Soil, then taking the relatively short amount of time it takes to get 540 tickets in AE is probably the most efficient thing you can do. The odds you will get that rare (or any rare) running regular content in the same amount of time is much less than the 100% certainty of getting it once you've got 540 tickets.

Standing around fretting about the cause of market inflation does not increase the supply. Increasing the supply by getting them in AE is good for you and good for the market (because it's one less person chasing after the rares and bidding the price to the sky).

Just because you "might" get a decent recipe with the eight Bronze rolls with the 540 tickets would buy you is no reason to not spend those tickets on the sure thing. Random rolls guarantee you nothing. Not that I'm against them -- I think they're great.

But if you need rare salvage and can't afford it, you should obviously do what gets it for you in the shortest possible time. That it will also reduce inflationary pressures in the market is icing on the cake.

Sonic/Energy is very survivable, and Sonic's secondary effect is -dmg resist, which means that once you hit an enemy, all attacks that hit it afterwards will do more damage.

Sonic also has a number of powers that help make soloing easier: Siren's Song and Screech are a cone sleep and a stun. You can sleep a large group, stun one, take him out with your other attacks in total safety, and repeat, sleeping and stunning when those powers recharge.

If you're concerned about XP, select arcs that run you against standard enemies (Hellions, Outcasts, etc.). If you fight the same guys you fight in the streets you'll get the same XP (unless the author is a dunderhead and made a custom group that's missing the boss, LT or minion level).

Note, however, that some standard critters award less than full XP: Freaks, at least some Family, etc. In general, though, the standard critters that give less XP are easier to fight.

I'm not sure how you know this. Back when AE was first released you might have been right. But now I see almost no one in the AE building. I rarely see any spam for people looking for AE teams.

But we can't really pass judgment on AE yet. First, you have to separate exploits of AE from non-exploits. Exploits are bugs, and unintentional. AE has been riddled with exploits up to this point. Eventually all the exploits of AE will be fixed.

In non-exploit AE missions you will actually get less XP/inf because your Patrol XP isn't used (except for debt). You don't get a mission XP/inf bonus. Also, custom mobs will often reward less XP than standard mobs because custom mobs at full XP are much harder to defeat than most standard mobs, so many authors use standard/standard, standard/hard, or hard/standard. I17 may hold some hope for improving that; we'll see when open beta starts.

Probably the biggest factor on inflation in the market is the ability to set team size to +2/x8 or higher when you run solo. This has nothing to do with AE. This allows characters built for massive AoE damage to rake in equally massive amounts of influence, and especially get more purple drops.

I think that at this time the majority of serious farmers are running their favorite regular content farms, and not AE: simply because they will get purple drops in those missions, and they can't get purples in AE. AE is also very inconvenient because of the ticket limits on maps. Most maps will hit the ticket limit at solo x8, and then there's the hard limit of 1500 in each mission. It's just too damned inconvenient.

So, all in all, I think the majority of farmers are currently running regular content farms. There have been spikes of AE activity when PLers find exploits. But these are being eliminated.

One thing AE has done is develop a ready (and quick) source of common and rare recipes that drop from mobs. The Bronze Roll is an extremely good way to use tickets, and I've sold hundreds on the market. This is a good thing for the market because it directly increases supply of these recipes, which reduces prices. If you want to get a Reactive Armor set, for example, run AE missions and get Bronze Rolls. You will eventually get one or two Reactive Armors and at the same time get dozens of other useful recipes that you can use or sell on the market at inflated prices. If market prices are too high, simply get drops and sell them on the market. Then you too will have too much inf.

Similarly, rare salvage often went for two, three or four million in the past. Now it's pretty much settled in between one and two million, perhaps because it's so easy for lowbies to make 540 tickets in AE and sell that rare salvage for a cool million on the market, or because farmers get so much rare salvage running at x8.

Common and uncommon salvage prices below level 40 have been spiking lately. This is probably due to three things: 1) Farmers are running all their missions at level 50, decreasing potential supply. 2) Farmers are raking in so much loot at +2/x8 that they don't bother to mess with penny-ante salvage anymore, and simply delete it to make room for rares. And 3) since farmers have so much loot, they don't consider spending 100K for a pneumatic piston to be a deal-breaker.

The only ones who can really answer where all the excess influence is coming from are the devs. But anecdotally, it sounds like not many players are using AE for much anymore. Except for the occasional exploit that's found, serious farmers are running regular content because that's where the purples (and the real money) are.

While not a buff/buff AT, in some ways Earth/Storm is a debuff/debuff AT, although it has decent damage in the secondary. I found Earth/Storm to be one of the more fun and survivable controller combos. It's very decent solo when you hit 50 as well, if you take the Fire epic. The pet is extremely resilient against most enemies, and has a much improved AI, and you can keep it alive with O2 Boost. The pet's hold is also very nice for stacking on bosses.

With Earth/Storm there's almost always some kind of debuff or control power ready to go. You can often lock down two, three or more spawns. It can be rather chaotic so you don't want to unleash the fury of Storm all the time, but when things start going south for a team (due to ambushes, unintentionally aggroing nearby spawns, etc.) an Earth/Storm controller can cut loose and save everyone's bacon.

I find FBZ with a solo character is the fastest way to get this badge, providing you can handle large spawns with two bosses.

Take a look at this article in Paragon Wiki. You should also get Mids from http://www.cohtitan.com/ if you don't already have it.

Since the vast majority of IO sets are attack sets that give Accuracy bonuses do so with 4 IOs slotted, you will probably have to slot a fair number of IOs with an accuracy component anyway.

Also, because there are things that debuff accuracy or to-hit (dark powers, Carnies), and things that have very high defense (drones, Nemesis after a couple of LTs go down), you may not like what you get if you skimp on Accuracy.

People generally hate missing, and feel like they miss all the time even when their to hit chance is pegged at 95%.

I recently did this one with another player, who got lost when Crimson started to run, so I chased him solo with an SS brute. I managed to take him down near the exit. No immobilizes: just damage, so it is possible to take Crimson out when he's running away from a brute.

The devs don't expect you to do these missions solo. In everyo one that has EBs/AVs they tell you in so many words to get a team. If you can't do it solo, there's really nothing to complain about. When I fail these I just suck it up and go on to the next mission.

Such is the lot of soloers.

Since anyone can create a supergroup and use it solo, I'm not sure what difference it would make to link extra rewards to supergroups. I would guess that the people who have extremely large amounts of influence are more likely than not to be in their own solo supergroup (so that they have storage in the base that no one else can touch).

It's also not clear that adding merit reward prices for purples would accomplish anything at all. The number of merits required would have to be a thousand or more, if the highly desirable rare recipes are 200-250 merits.

I'm not a casual player, but it is extremely rare that I get 200 merits with a character by level 50. Task Forces are simply too time-consuming and painful compared to regular missions. And unless you run your own missions exclusively (meaning you run solo or don't let anyone else run their missions when you team), you won't get many merits running regular content. And if you run AE, you won't get any merits.

The real problem is with the way the merit reward system is set up: to get a reasonable number of merits you have to run TFs (regular ones or arcs in Ouroboros) or your own missions exclusively.

This does not represent the way most players play the game, especially casual players who run on pickup teams. Add to that the fact that many pickup teams run radio/paper missions because there's very little downtime compared to standard content, much of which is riddled with time-wasting talks, running back to the contact, defeats, travel to multiple zones, etc.

The devs have intentionally done this to reward players for engaging in more time-consuming (and tedious) content, and perhaps to reward team leaders. The real problem is that -- unlike with TFs -- only the mission holder gets any merits running regular content, even though the entire team has to suffer the inefficient nature of this content.

This is the problem that should be fixed: only one player generally reaps the rewards of running regular arcs. This is somewhat different in some newer zones, such as Faultline, where a team can pick up contacts in order, contacts give the missions in order. There it's possible for a team to run one or two short arcs together and have everyone get merits. But even in that case, teams are very fluid, and it's rare for a whole team to stick together long enough for everyone to complete an arc simultaneously. Add to that the fact that many people SK (or exemp) and can't get the contact, and it's nigh impossible for pickup teams to get merit rewards.

So, I don't claim to have an answer, but the merit reward system does not compensate the vast majority of players because they don't do the very narrowly defined content that rewards merits.

If the devs fix that problem (if they even consider it a problem), it will help bring inflation down and allow players a non-market solution for desirable items.

You're right, people do pay much more for level 50s. But it's not really logical -- the difference between a set of 48s and a set of 50s is between like 0.3% and 1.3% depending on how much ED is kicking in. It's not really worth paying that much more for such a marginal increase for the vast majority of characters. Heck, the difference between 35s and 50s is only like 2% when ED kicks in fully (and 5% to 9% for the other bonuses, like acc, recharge and end red). Stopping to eat a snack while playing will cost you more far in DPS than having level 48 enhancements.

Economic arguments aside, how one have any pride farming -2 mobs? It's like stealing lunch money from little kids .

If you're looking for some extra slots you might get them out of Tar Patch. I've found slotting Tar Patch for recharge is more useful than for slow, and the only useful set bonus you're getting out of it is 9% Accuracy, which you probably already have plenty of.

If you moved one slot from Tar Patch to Darkest Night you could slot 4 Dark Watcher's Despair for three good set bonuses (including 5% more recharge).

Also, one of your 6.25% recharge bonuses from Posi Blast is not being utilized because of the rule of 5.

Similarly, killing and torturing people who have done evil things is also evil.

However, it is often necessary to do evil things for the greater good, such as fighting a war in self defense or killing someone who is trying to kill innocents. But anyone who does these things will have to answer for those actions in whatever court of law is applicable.

But saying that these necessary evil deeds are not evil, or lying about having done them, or failing to admit your guilt, or reveling in those evil deeds, or finding other excuses for those evil deeds, unquestionably marks you as being evil.

In the case of legally declared wars, soldiers are not evil when they kill if they abide the laws of war. Similarly, law enforcement officers performing their duties according to the laws of the land are not evil if they must kill. But when someone in those positions employs deadly force and finds pleasure in it, they are evil.

However, if the laws themselves are evil, then even "legal" actions performed by military or law enforcement personnel are evil. Soldiers and law enforcement personnel must not obey illegal orders or follow unethical or immoral laws. If forced to choose, they must refuse the order or resign their positions or they become evil themselves.

Of course, what's evil is defined by the religious, moral and ethical beliefs of the population involved. But acts that cause irreparable harm are unquestionably evil regardless of whatever moral compass you might have: murder and torture are always evil. Whether they are justifiable is another question that must be answered on a case-by-case basis.

I concur. This combination is pretty fabulous.

I have a Fire/Dark and survived an ambush by three groups of Longbow led by a Ballista. At +0/x8. I doubt I could do it again, but I was flabbergasted when I walked out of that mission.

You really should read the whole post and not extract quotes out of context. I actually agree with you: brutes that are built to tank should tank. Brutes that aren't should get support from the rest of the them if they expect them to hold aggro.

Exactly.

The proposal for high rents also ignores the history of bases. Originally bases were outrageously expensive to create and maintain. Now they are much cheaper to construct and cost next to nothing for upkeep.

Charging outlandish rents for apartments would be yet another slap in the face of the casual gamer, who is much more likely to want an apartment than the market mavens who are so rich they have to store their excess billions in bids for non-existent items.

Apartments should be relatively cheap for the basic layout, and as with bases, upkeep should be based on the number of storage devices you have. If you're not hoarding items, you would pay no upkeep.

Anyway, I'm really not sure that truly casual gamers even care about inflation. If you're casual, by definition you don't want to spend time doing anything other than directly playing the game. You certainly won't want to chase down salvage and recipes and monkey around in the market, or min-max your character. So the casual gamer will continue to use SOs, which are easily obtained and are getting cheaper in relative terms, because the effective inf earning rate has gone up significantly (in part because recipe drops can be vendored and at level 50 some go for 110K+ a pop).

I actually find many of the "junk" sets to be quite useful (hence the quotes). Many of them have excellent bonuses because, I assume, the devs want to encourage players to take the powers that can use them.

With IO sets and global recharge, many characters can have a very short attack chain, which opens up power selections to the "lesser" powers (such as the melee stuns, fears, slows, immobilizes, etc.). You see these powers used occasionally in various builds to get the set bonuses, but you get the feeling that they're taking them for the bonus only and never actually use the power. Many of these powers can make a major difference in a battle if you understand things like the effect of stacking stuns on Paragon Protectors before they use MoG...

While brutes have pretty much the same Taunt as tankers, they don't have quite the same defenses. With a lot of effort you can IO out most brutes and make them nearly as robust as a tanker. But not until level 40 or 50, in most cases.

If you were running a level 50 brute it's not so unreasonable to expect you to hold all the aggro. But at level 20 or 30 (or even 40), a brute doesn't have the defense powers or numbers of slots to tank well. It's very rough for a level 25 */Energy brute, for example, to take all the aggro for an eight-person team.

The only way low-level brutes (or tanks, for that matter) can do it is if the rest of the team is acting as support. Was the complaining player running a /Pain Corruptor, buffing and healing you the whole time? Or was he laying down Tar Patch or running Darkest Night on the bosses? In other words, was he playing "defender" for your "tanker?"

If not, he had nothing to complain about.

I'd rather see the duration of these quick-recharge, low-endurance buffs extended to last much longer, say 20-30 minutes, or until you zone. Buffs like Fortitude and Adrenalin Boost would work as they do now. This might require that some buffs be toned down, or the stacking rules be changed to avoid unreasonably powerful multiple buffs.

In general I prefer single-target buffs because I don't like forcing the team to gather round: I'd rather target each recipient separately according to their desires. Many people don't like getting buffs such as Speed Boost, and having to dismiss dialogs constantly would be a nightmare (it's bad enough with teleport and mystic fortune). Adding potentially dozens of configuration options for the buffs you will accept seems unnecessarily complex.

One additional change that I would like to see, however, is the ability to right-click the icon of a "friendly" effect to bring up a menu that includes a command to remove the effect from the character. That would allow each player to dismiss an unwanted Speed Boost, much the same way that a controller can right-click a pet to dismiss it.