Rodion

Yep, you're right. If you know what you're doing it's easy to go from level 1 to level 50 kitted out with decent IOs at the early levels and getting yourself great sets by the time you're 50, and still have 100+ million when you're done.

The problem is that the casual player doesn't know how to do this. They don't have the hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of hours of experience that you have in the best way to accomplish every aspect of this game.

You have to realize that something we think of as trivial is totally opaque to the majority of players out there. The early game steers everyone down the SO road, and IO mechanics are very confusing to most people. And if you don't have Mids, figuring out how to build a character with IO sets is a major project.

So, us telling them that this is actually very easy to do doesn't really help them -- they'll need to spend the hundreds of hours themselves getting familiar with the system to learn all the things you know. And in this instant gratification universe, that's a message that doesn't go over well.

Even without consideration of the overall merits of either set, if the other guy didn't have his powers slotted correctly you will do better than him.

A head-to-head comparison is only possible if you're playing the characters yourself, making similar slotting decisions and adapting your tactics to each character's strengths and weaknesses.

I created a Broadsword/SD character along with two other players who made a BS/SD and a Fire/SD character. I never face-planted, but the other two did occasionally. I use Mids to design my characters, always IO them, use inspirations liberally (they always come right back), and at every opportunity use terrain to block ranged attacks forcing enemies to close to melee. One of the other players doesn't really get IOs and forgets about inspirations, the other delays getting IOs till higher levels and has a thing about not using inspirations.

Your knowledge and skill may well be a better indicator of your survivability at level 16 than the inherent strengths of SR and SD.

I've got a Fire/Dark corruptor that's pretty tough. Did a Longbow mission at +0/x8 that had a wave of three ambushes with a Ballista (EB) leading it. I survived it, even though I was mezzed about four times (break frees are wonderful!).

I also have a Rad/Kin/Mu corruptor that I really hated playing from level 1 to 50: it was basically a glass cannon because neither Rad nor Kin has any serious mitigation along the lines of /Dark Miasma or /Radiation Emission. I respecced into Mace Mastery and the Fighting pool, to get 41% S/L defense and 32% ranged defense. It makes a huge difference: you can actually run into a mob and use Fulcrum Shift without getting creamed. Even if you get mezzed, your defense doesn't go down (unless you're fighting something that does -Def), so being mezzed isn't necessarily fatal.

As others have mentioned, if you put Scorpion Shield into your build, you can probably squeeze at least 40% S/L and 30% ranged defense out of most any corruptor. The most expensive items I have on that character are a couple sets of Obliteration and a Steadfast: Res/+Def. I could softcap if I wanted to spend a couple hundred million, but I'm not really into villains.

The devs have to make it a Dev's Choice arc to give users the option to chose between tickets and regular drops.

I save salvage and slot common IOs that I craft myself starting at level 12. I use common IOs till I get level 25s in most things. Level 25 IOs are almost as good as even-con IOs, and a character would not be gimped if you played with them all the way to 50. From level 27 onward I start slotting IO sets that I keep for the rest of the character's life.

That means for powers that I got from level 1-32 or 35 I have IO sets between level 30 and 39. Later powers get IOs at the level the powers are obtained at.

This means I get most of the IO set bonuses when I exemp down to level 35 or so. Level 30-35 is where IO bonuses are better than even-con SOs. If you slot IOs at these levels it's cheaper than buying SOs every five levels (if you ignore the cost of recipes and salvage).

Doing it this way you never HAVE to update enhancements in any power after you hit level 22. Your enhancements will never go red in the middle of a mission and you'll never have buy anything on the market in a hurry.

Because of ED, you're not really missing much if you slot level 30s as opposed to level 50s. For example, a ranged attack power six-slotted with level 35 Thunderstrikes gets 59.64% Acc, 98.58% Dmg, 59.64% recharge and 59.64% end red. At level 50 you get 68.9% Acc, 101.47%, 68.9% recharge and 68.9% end red. The extra 9% Acc bonus is essentially worthless, considering that the Thunderstrike set bonus itself gives you 7%. Thus, the only real advantage to slotting level 50s is the extra 9% recharge and end red on the powers. In a power that takes 6 seconds to recharge, you have a net gain of .21 seconds -- a duration barely distinguishable to human reaction times.

The question is then: is it worth minuscule increases in recharge and endurance reduction to slot level 50 sets, which cost half a million to craft. Plus, if you wait till 50 you'll wind up having to buy dozens of recipes and hundreds of pieces of salvage at once. Your impatience will get the better of you and you'll wind up paying much more than if you just took your time. Also, your character will be much more responsive and end-efficient when you slot those sets in the 30s, making it more survivable and more fun to play. And when you exemp down to the 30s you'll get all those bonuses.

I start placing bids for things I know I'll need several levels ahead of time. The real key to getting what you want is to make reasonable bids and have patience. If you make a lot of low-ball bids you can often get lucky, but you might not. If you bid near the low end but still reasonably high you'll beat out the flippers who depend on people underpricing and overbidding to make their profits. You may need to adjust your bids over time if you're not getting what you want. Let them sit for a day and readjust as needed. Often someone will put something up at a nearby level and you can get that instead.

You can also get a lot of good recipes by doing AE missions for tickets starting at level 30 or so, then do the Bronze reward roll for the tickets. Many of those you can use yourself or sell on the market for millions.

This strategy works best for someone who plays several characters and is in no hurry to get to 50.

I've started playing my Grav/FF recently, and got her to 34. It's not as slow as I remember it being; it's actually not bad. The pet also does more damage than I expected it to; I was thinking it would do nothing but hold things, but the repel effect and its attacks make it quite useful.

Now, it's not like a Fire/Kin, but it's comparable to other controllers. I can easily solo +0/x2, and could probably crank it up to +0/x4 without much trouble. But it's kind of pointless since it does take time to defeat mobs. Once I get all my ranged defense IOs slotted I'm guessing I'll be able to tank pretty effectively (because of the mez protection to all but sleep), and if I get Force Bubble not much will be able to touch me.

But again, the DPS issue would prevent this from being an über farming build. That doesn't bother me, though, as long as it's fun. And I still get a kick out of Propel.

I never said they intended it to be a store. I just said that the market's rules and limitations exert a downward price pressure to encourage faster transaction rates.

If they intended to be a store, they would have let you list any number of items, displayed the prices and choose the seller you're buying from. By having to compete blindly with other sellers and awarding the sale to the lowest price, you're encouraged to sell low (or at least post at "$9.99"-style prices).

The market's rules also make it a lot more interesting than the auction and sales systems in other MMORPGs. The uncertainties about pricing, who gets the sale and the lack of time limit on postings let you do "long-term investments" that you just can't do with the auction style systems.

The fact that it's a time sink goes without saying.

I'm not a market apologist, but there's no question that marketeers provide a service by using their slots to store items. The limit on the number of market slots forces players who collect a lot of loot to make choices about what they put on the market. To move items out of their slots non-marketeers have to price them to sell fast, or delete them. By being there to buy them, the marketeers theoretically prevent them from being deleted or vendored. But since marketeers only deal in high-demand items that would sell quickly anyway, this service is of marginal utility.

The question is, how much is that service worth? The answer: as much as people are willing to pay for it. Marketeers have the same slot limitations that everyone has, but since many of them specialize in specific niches they can have up to 10 of some item for sale in each market slot, whereas players who are just selling their drops will typically only have one item per market slot. Their slot usage is therefore more efficient than scattershot sellers. So, for some marketeers at least, selling in bulk really does have some efficiencies.

I personally don't have a problem with the limited number of market slots because I play a lot of characters. I use the same tactics that marketeers use (buy low, sell high, have patience), but I'm not flipping. By the time I get back to a particular character my bids are usually filled and my items are sold. If they're not, I adjust some bids, add others or play another character.

The limited number of market slots is two-edged: in some ways it causes prices to go down (by forcing you to list items at low prices so they sell fast), and in others it causes prices on certain items to spike (by causing some players to delete or vendor items that drop frequently). I'm guessing that's why common salvage prices are so up and down. A lot of serious farmers get so much salvage that they don't bother to waste market slots on it: they just delete it when their salvage fills up. Even if you can sell Nevermelting Ice for 50,000, that's still much less than the stuff the farmers are posting.

The point is to allow users to exchange drops such as salvage and recipes that they cannot use for something that they can. Influence is used because a barter system would be be unworkable.

The limited number of market slots, blind pricing and the "lowest price gets the sale" rule are to encourage sellers to list items at low prices.

So, while the devs don't prevent you getting rich off the market, there's every indication that they intended that it be used primarily to facilitate the free flow of excess drops, and not for players to notch their billion-influence belts.

I don't think you need to start slotting accuracy until level 10 or so, because low level characters have a higher to-hit number. You start out at level 1 with with a base 90% to-hit bonus, which eventually decreases to 75% by the time you're level 18 or so.

That means at early levels a single even- or minus-one-con trainer will put you over the 95% accuracy cap (if you're fighting even-con enemies, of course). At most you'll need to slot one accuracy. You'll probably be better off slotting damage and/or endurance reduction.

To be honest, though, I don't bother to slot anything except what happens to drop until level 12, when the to-hit bonus has dropped to 81%. Until then I save my influence and all my salvage and recipe drops. At 12 I start slotting level 15 common IOs. At level 17 I start slotting level 20 common IOs in new power slots, and at level 22 I start replacing those with level 25 common IOs as funds and time allow. Level 25 IOs are better than -1 SOs, and don't really cost that much more. You can keep level 25 IOs pretty much for your entire career and never really need to get new ones. I start getting IO sets in the 30s, and stay with them forever: level 50 sets pack a little more punch, but between the ED cap and frequent exemping, the difference is so minor that I just stick with IOs in the 30-39 range.

In the long run, getting level 25 common IOs is actually far cheaper than slotting SOs every five levels. Even if you swap out for level 30 common IOs (which are essentially the same as +1 con SOs), you will save millions over the course of levels 30-50.

Most defenders can't truly tank because they have no mez resistance. If they get held or stunned, their debuff powers go down, they lose aggro and the rest of the team becomes vulnerable.

That's not to say that defenders can't be an effective replacement for a tank in a pinch. It's just that there's a much bigger risk for the team than there is with a tank that can hold aggro and won't get mezzed.

Also, some defenders' tanking tactics won't have a lot of happy campers in the scrapper and AoE blaster columns. A Storm defender can effectively tank with Hurricane, Lightning Storm and Tornado, but many players won't like the knockback.

There's no question that flippers cause inflation. That's the entire point. Their profit has to come from somewhere. But they're not the sole cause. Impatience and excess wealth are the primary drivers of high prices in this market.

The only "value added" flippers provide are the market slots for items, allowing more items to be on sale than would otherwise be possible due to slot limitations of players who are actually obtaining items (i.e., doing honest work in the minds of the marketeers' critics). If there were no limit on the number of for-sale market slots marketeers would have less impact on prices, because then everyone would be able to sell their own items (but there would be other impacts, and probably not all benign).

Legitimate marketeers take advantage of people who don't have enough market slots to sell their production, or either don't care or are unaware of the true value of an item. They place lots of low bids on high-value items hoping to snag them cheap, then turn around and sell them at a high price that's set by normal supply and demand. This type of behavior is allowed in most modern financial markets in the real world.

"Illegitimate" marketeers are trying to corner the market on certain items, hoping to drive prices up through sheer scarcity, then sell their stock in the new high-price regime they artificially created. This type of monopolistic behavior is banned in most modern markets. It's what led to the silver crash in the 1980s, when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market.

The recent economic collapse was in large part fueled by real estate flippers who got overextended and couldn't make good on multiple dwellings they had bought with no money down. Flippers drove the price of housing way up early on and the overheated market eventually caught everyone else up as they couldn't make good on their mortgages.

Since there are no loans in the game the consequences of flipping and monopolistic behavior are less important. And there are many players who apparently never use the market. I've started looking at the bonuses on other characters, and I'm surprised to see how many characters have no bonuses at all. Which means they're not IOing their characters, which means they're probably not using the market at all.

So the only consequence of an overheated market would be if enough players quit the game because they couldn't get the things they wanted due to excessive flipping and monopolistic behavior. And it's not at all clear that would happen. Sure, some individuals will quit out of frustration that they can't purple out their character for less than 10 million. But anyone who wants to reasonably IO their characters can do so with a combination of AE tickets, reward merits, drops and minimal market activity. And wind up quite rich by the time they're level 50. All without flipping and without being a mark for the flippers.

There's a long history of hatred and distrust for certain kinds of financial activity. Speculators have long been reviled. To this day it is illegal under Sharia law in many jurisdictions to charge interest. Hebrew law was often interpreted the same way.

The Council of Nicaea forbade the clergy to engage in usury (charging more than 1% interest/month), and this was later applied to the laity. In the middle ages Canon law in some parts of Europe forbade Christians to charge interest to other Christians (which is why Jews were the moneylenders). Interestingly, in some areas it was illegal to charge more for something than you paid for it unless you transported it long distances. The Church explicitly forbade flipping.

So with these attitudes firmly ingrained in cultures all across the world, is it any wonder that players who just want to have fun playing the game don't like it that you're getting rich at their expense?

This is dead on. For many AT/power set combinations you can completely or nearly softcap some kind of defense with common IOs. To get the high recharge you need to get purples and rares. Since anyone can get Combat Jumping and Maneuvers there are many ways to get additional defense and places to slot sets like Red Fortune, which is another cheap set that provides ranged defense and recharge.

If you go solo +0/x8 missions you will almost certainly get at least one purple after 10,000 mobs. You will probably get three to five. It doesn't take as long as you might think.

There was a problem that they fixed with purples dropping. It's possible there are more bugs, but unless you can demonstrate statistically that you're not seeing a purple after 10,000 mobs, I won't believe it. I've probably had a dozen purples drop since they made that fix, around I16 or a little after.

This is really the key. I've found that it's extremely rare that I actually want more powers than are available even after I take five or six pool powers (usually Swift, Health, Stamina, two travel and sometimes Hasten).

You get 24 powers, so if you take six pool powers that still leaves you able to take 18 other powers, and since there are only 18 primary and secondary powers, the only thing you're really forced to omit are other pool powers or epic powers. In most every primary or secondary set there are at least one or two powers that most players won't want or need. Which leaves most players plenty of room to fit everything in, even with Stamina.

The pool powers most desired outside of those mentioned above are Tough, Weave, Assault, Maneuvers, etc. These are such endurance hogs you generally can't use them effectively without Stamina (unless you have Quick Recovery).

So, while I can jigger things to avoid Stamina, I never bother. I've made WP and Regen scrappers without it, but eventually I respecced into it because of the inconvenience of running out of Endurance (it's a frill, I admit -- I usually get it in the 40s). Scrappers, in particular, don't really need the Epic powers because they're so well-rounded to begin with, so they often have extra power slots to play with.

Also, some sets take regular hits on their Endurance bar (Super Strength, when Rage drops), and not having Stamina means toggles rudely dropping, using lots of blues or standing there doing nothing while your End recovers.

Ultimately, "managing" your Endurance means not attacking, constantly toggling powers when they're not needed, slotting powers for end red instead of damage or acc, and so on. It's a real chore, and takes the fun out of playing for me. It's like being level 10 for the whole 50 levels. By level 20 or so I want to feel super. Stamina is key to that for most characters without QR.

I am not seeing this behavior. I approach a group with Singularity in tow, yes, but once it engages the enemy it seems to stop and attack at range. I move around to hit mobs with Air Superiority and it doesn't follow right behind me, though I sort of wanted it to so that Singularity's Repel would keep melee mobs off me.

But in the instances I'm thinking of I've had a clear line of sight to the Singularity, so my experience is consistent with Redlynne's explanation of the "tether" function.

Which means that if you want to control the behavior more closely you should experiment with popping in and out of the pet's view to see if you can force particular positioning.

I wind up tabbing through to the next target while powers are activating. That usually gives me one or two seconds, which is usually plenty of time to select targets even if you have to backtrack (SHIFT-TAB lets you go back to the previous target). I also queue attacks all the time. It really helps to be able to remember what you've done to each target, so that you know which one needs to be held next.

Remember, when you use an attack against a held target you get a 100% damage bonus due to Containment. You therefore want to be attacking held enemies, but your first priority is to get them all held so they can't attack you and subsequent attacks get the Containment bonus. So, using Lift on held targets is definitely worthwhile.

Actually, with the right power choices and tactics you can easily handle three or four mobs with this controller, even at fairly low levels. The problem is that it's not very fast, and it requires a totally different mind set than Tankers and Scrappers: you can't focus on one target till it's dead, you have to attack all your targets at once to keep them occupied.

Because Lift, Force Bolt and Propel all take the mob out of commission for some period of time due to knockup/knockback, you can "juggle" your enemies. By constantly switching targets you keep them held or knocked down and whittle away at their hit points. Your single-target hold (Gravitational Distortion) is also very useful, as it does some damage. (I often slot my holds for damage for this reason.)

Controllers get a big damage boost from Containment (your damage is increased when you attack a held foe). Generally, when I play a character like this I'll hold one mob, hit another one with Force Bolt to take him out of commission for a time, hit another with Lift, then hit the held one with Propel (which does a lot of damage because of Containment), then by that time the hold is recharged and you can hold the one that's getting up from being knocked back from Force Bolt, then you can slam the third one with Lift again.

You cycle through them, eventually applying your hold to each one so you get the Containment damage bonus. Propel will eventually do a lot of damage when it's fully slotted, so you can take mobs down at a fairly decent clip.

When you learn to play this way you'll be able to solo missions easily at normal difficulty. You'll even be able to hold bosses in with a combination of your hold, a knockback/knockup power to keep them busy while your hold is recharging, and then another hold. Obviously you want to have high recharge, so you may want to take Hasten and put recharge enhancements in your hold.

You can also take Air Superiority, which is a very nice attack that damages enemies as well as knocking them up. It's easy to make the recharge on AS low enough so that you can keep bosses permanently out of commission by constant application of AS.

But the damage on this set is all Smashing, and since a lot of enemies are more resistant to Smashing it will generally take you longer to put them down than certain other sets.

Another thing about those über Fire/Kins: many of them are custom built to farm one specific map. Sure, they can mow down level 50 Family or Council like nobody's business. But they quickly lose their luster when presented with the other common enemies you meet at level 50: Carnies, Malta, Arachnos, etc.

The downside of /Kinetics is that it doesn't have much mitigation: it's mostly offense. Other sets, like /Rad and /Storm, provide a great deal of mitigation in the form of -def, -to hit, -dmg resist, big -regen, knockdown, etc. And /Rad (arguably) gives the best area hold in the game. Combined with the holds, stuns, fears and damage of the /Fire, it's probably easier to deal with a wider variety of mob types than you can with /Kinetics.

The OP is complaining mostly about how much endurance it takes to defeat mobs before getting Stamina. Are you seriously suggesting taking Hot Feet before Stamina? Seems like you'd have a rough go of it before Transference.

Fire/Kins aren't really different from most other characters pre-Stamina. Only Regen and Willpower characters are relatively free from endurance problems. Everyone else sucks wind like your Fire/Kin until 20.

Influence sinks can be a good thing if they cause players to stay around long enough to get vested in a game for reasons other than just leveling up and getting cool new powers. Influence sinks are essentially time sinks, and time sinks are required to create loyal long-term subscribers.

If players get everything they want in one go, they may still miss seeing the vast majority of the game, and may not develop into long-term players.

For example, if you can buy everything you could possibly want immediately, you may well decide that the game is trivial and offers little variety. Depending on when that is, you may completely miss things such as the Rikti invasion, the Zombie Apocalypse and the holiday events. You may never go to zones such as Firebase Zulu (a zone that looks really cool, but whose potential has never been realized). You may never try out villains (or heroes). You may also not be around long enough to try more than one kind of character, and I think the wide variety of ATs and power sets is the primary draw of the game.

It's got to be your tactics. I have an Ill/Empathy controller and run at the same +0/x8 (no bosses), and I don't die. And my PA isn't even perma. I do have high ranged defense, but to be honest, I just don't get attacked that often: with Spectral Terror, Flash, PA, knockback from Phantasm, and liberal use of Blind, the mobs really don't have much of a chance to do anything.

The market is cross server and doesn't require me to be online (to advertise or see advertising). These two things alone make it worth the 10% fee.

Without the market it would be virtually impossible for players to get full sets of of IOs without spending merits.