Rodion

If you have no real goal other than to rampage through Mercy, you don't need any slotting at all. But if you're actually trying to accomplish something with your slotting, then we need to know what that something is to give you serious advice.

I have a SS/Electrical Brute that I was trying to get high Melee defense with. I took Hand Clap so I could slot it with Razzle Dazzle (a Stun set that gives 2.5% melee defense). After having done this, I can't really recommend going after melee defense (you're better off going for Smash/Lethal), but it was an interesting experiment.

I was expecting that I would never use Hand Clap, but it's actually useful a fair amount of the time. Because the Brute isn't as robust as I'd originally hoped, Hand Clap is very useful for essentially turning off incoming aggro at will, with high Knockback and a decent stun.

Hand Clap works fine with Electrical Armor, Stone, Fire, etc., because they don't depend on the proximity of mobs for defense. But Hand Clap can be a problem with sets like Shield, Willpower and Invulnerability because they depend on keeping the enemies close.

However, if you position yourself properly, you can mitigate the problems associated with knockback: taunt enemies into a small area, such as a small enclosed section of a corridor in a lab, a narrow section of a tunnel in the caves, or just move to one side of the spawn you're fighting so as to put most of them between you and a wall. The majority of the spawn will just hit a wall near you, which will minimize the scatter and the amount of defense/to-hit debuff/damage buff you lose.

I did the same with my Fire/Dark corruptor. Fluffy slotted this way is amazingly robust, and gives a very good ranged defense bonus.

I slotted this corruptor for ranged defense: Thunderstrike in the blasts, Positron's Blast in AoEs (for recharge), Red Fortune in Shadow Fall and Maneuvers, BotZ in travel, Cloud Senses in Dark Servant), Lockdown in Petrifying Gaze and Combat Jumping. I was able to squeak out 44.7% ranged defense.

You should be able to replicate these numbers using a similar strategy with a DDD, and maybe even do better.

I started an AV soloing build for my DDD for the sake of doing it, but never completed it. While I'm sure I would eventually be able to solo particular AVs, I came to realize it would be kind of tedious actually doing it and my interest waned.

I find a good compromise on XP and custom creature toughness is to make the primary be Standard and the secondary be Difficult. This avoids the worst offenders in most power sets (like Build Up), but gives pretty decent XP (87.5%). Some power sets are workable with Difficult for both the primary and secondary. I find it better to make the mobs more durable than to give them more damage so that they don't one-shot players; it's not such a big deal if it takes a shot or two more to put them down.

About begging people to play them: don't worry about it. If you have fun making the mission, that's all that matters.

It's not clear the markets will equalize. More players seem interested in playing heroes than villains, and I anticipate that many such players have wanted to play corruptors, brutes and dominators but just don't like the villain vibe.

I expect they will create those ATs in Praetoria and eventually become heroes. While there will be players who run back and forth between the markets, it's not certain that there will be enough of them to make a difference. They will certainly be market junkies, so any items they bring across will not be for sale cheap.

And, face it: the market is only a fabulous way to make money because so many people post things at far below their actual value

Also, there are still a lot of people who never use the market. Although I have IOs for absolutely everything, I was on a pickup team today where half the members had no IO bonuses at all (all level 50s or so).

Recently the market has been way up and down heroside. Common and uncommon salvage prices are totally irrational, with histories like 100,000, 1,234, 1, 11, 1,000,000 not at all out of the ordinary.

Given this kind of behavior, I don't think you can expect the market to ever make any sense. This is a game, and it doesn't really matter how much you pay for something as long as you have enough to get what you want. It's not like you have to save your money for a house payment or to buy food.

Bids are making less and less sense as time goes on. Is it manipulation, impatience or ignorance? I don't know. But when the markets are acting this nuts merging them would not have any kind of predictable outcome.

Not exactly. The chance of getting a purple from three minions is, if I'm calculating correctly, 7.8% and not 8.1%. You can't directly add probabilities of three independent events to get the probability of something dropping. If you could, then you'd be guaranteed to get a purple after defeating 38 minions, and we know that doesn't work.

But, generally, you're right: if you can defeat three or four minions much faster than you can defeat a boss, then you're wasting time on the boss. However, the level of the boss may be 47-49, so if you have a ready supply of bosses of that level mixed in with minions it won't take you much longer to take them down, especially if you're using lots of AoEs -- you can concentrate on the bosses and your AoEs will wipe out the minions without even trying.

Very possibly not: he's probably SKed to some 50s.

I had a similar problem with Lord of the Rings Online, so I can sympathize. It worked for a couple of months, then they had an update, and I could never make it work again. So I just gave up on it.

I've run the game on several different PCs, including a laptop, so it works and is stable on a wide variety of platforms. Problems like the UI not working are generally related to the graphics card. I'm not sure how old your graphics card is, but your system seems to be on the lower end of gaming hardware performance specs, so I'm guessing it's several years old. I'd suggest you update to the latest graphics drivers and then try again.

Stamping your foot angrily will not get you any results. You need to give the devs information so that they can isolate the problem.

This may not even be a problem with the game. It could quite easily be caused by a key logger or some other kind of malware that only crops up with the market. In that case, no amount of screaming at the devs will ever resolve the issue.

Literally tens to hundreds of thousands of people use the market without any delays or crashes. So there's obviously not an inherent design flaw.

That's not to say you haven't found a legitimate bug. But your problem likely has something to do with software on your computer, or your Internet connection, and it does not affect the vast majority of users. You need to isolate the factors that people who have these crashes have in common. It's probably some kind of graphics driver bug, because most weird problems like this are "loose" pointers in third-party drivers. It's not at all uncommon for graphics driver problems to clobber data that have nothing at all to do with graphics, which makes such problems very hard to track down. This may also be bug in the game that appears only under certain circumstances: used with a particular graphics driver or some other piece of software on your computer.

The market does not load the "entire database" of transactions to your computer every time you open the market window. Because of the large initial delay the first time a character uses the market, it obviously uses some kind of caching or timestamping mechanism that initializes the first time you use the market on a character by setting up all the possible items locally. It seems likely that only the database information for the specific item you click in the left pane is actually downloaded (and the existence/nonexistence of bids for other items based on your filtering selections). That information is monitored in real time, which you can see because new bids and purchases (including your own) will appear as you watch. Only the item you're looking at is being monitored, and that is a very small amount of data.

You can monitor data transmissions from the server to your client by typing "/netgraph 1". When I monitor data while opening the market window I see a pause in the data transmitted to the client, then it increases a small amount, then it goes back to the base data rate. I'm seeing data rates in the range of 3-5K with only slight upticks occasionally.

The server software is obviously sending only changes to the clients, because the data rate is so low -- generally no different than when I'm standing there in Wentworth's with the market window closed.

Your problem could also be some kind of bug in the market caching or timestamping mechanism. Have you tried this with different characters? Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game?

I joined a team without any Khelds on it. The leader selected my mission, the Save Walter Daschle Red Cap mission. We had been mowing everything down with ease when I noticed a shadow cyst in the middle of the field. The rest of the team had no clue what it was, and plowed right in. Before I could tell them what was going down they were all dead.

The villain EATs actually help the rest of the team in extremely useful ways. The hero EATs generate random team-wiping spawns at random intervals, even on teams that no longer have them. Also, though I'm not one of them, many people despise playing with khelds because of the extreme amount of knockback they cause. The crab form often plays havoc with tankers who are used to herding in a certain way.

For an AT that depends on teaming for much of its oomph, Khelds are extremely team-unfriendly. A decidedly bad design, especially compared to the VEATs.

At a minimum, the "Kheldian taint" bug should be fixed. Optimally, Khelds should be redesigned so that they actually help the team, not just provide annoyances. While it might be fun to play a jack of all trades, they're not helping the team as much as the AT they're currently emulating. Generally, a blaster or scrapper is better than the squid or human form, and a tanker is better than the crab form.

If I'm leading a team -- especially on a TF where time is critical (and when isn't time critical on a TF?) -- and I had my choice between a kheld and any other AT, I'd pick any other AT first.

This is a shame, and is something the devs should address.

Even this is not necessary. All you need to do is Rest with one weak minion bopping you.

The problem is that game designers put things that require the excessive repetition of completely mundane tasks to achieve rewards. In order for characters like corruptors and dominators to get the Born in Battle accolade you need to get the Ironman damage badge, which requires taking 1,000,000 damage. When these characters are played the right way, they take no damage at all.

Recently the requirements for these and other similar badges were reduced, but the values are still ridiculously high for certain ATs. Playing my Fire/Dark corruptor in the normal fashion, it would take literally years to suffer 1,000,000 damage (by the time I reached 50 I'd taken only 300K damage, and at that point I had soft-capped ranged defense and my prospects for taking damage in normal play on teams had dropped essentially to zero).

Many of the defeats and damage/debt badge requirements need to be further reduced, to remove the incentive for players to do Bad Things. It may also make sense to have different values for different ATs.

The best weapon for combating automation in game play is to remove the need for repetitive play. CoH/V has made several decisions along these lines already: for example, there's no concept of mining ore deposits used in crafting like in other games -- here you get raw materials (salvage) for crafting by defeating mobs.

There's nothing wrong with badges for taking lots of damage per se, but when they're far beyond the reach of many players and you link them to accolades that provide a material benefit, you're inviting abuse.

I think the reason Fiery Aura lacks KB protection is because of Burn, which also provides immobilize protection for the set. You got massive damage by sacrificing KB protection.

However, Burn was severely nerfed with the addition of the Fear component, and at that point it would have made sense to add some kind of KB protection. Now, though, a better fix would be to add some kind of slow or brief immobilize to Burn to give it back some of its former glory.

Dark Armor probably trades KB protection for Psi resistance. It was originally the only set that got any psi resistance, and it gave up KB protection to get it.

I have two Fire tankers and a Dark/Dark scrapper. I got Acrobatics on the Fire tanker, but have since switched to KB IOs instead. Originally I used Hover for KB protection on my Dark/Dark scrapper, but Hover was changed and I now use KB IOs. I started the Fire/Ice tanker to try out two things: using Kinetic Crash for KB protection (it works fine, but is slot-intensive), and using Ice Patch to make Burn work (which also works well). When I got a Steadfast -KB I respecced out of Jump Kick and Kinetic Crash.

You can get KB IOs pretty easily these days. The price on Karma -KB and Steadfast -KB is way down from what it used to be, because Blessing of the Zephyr -KB is more desirable, and bronze rolls are a very easy way to generate them. You can get them now for a few million inf if you're patient. You can generate a few million inf by running AE missions and getting rare salvage that you sell for a million or more a pop on the market.

Finally, you can buy those Steadfast -KB and Karma -KB recipes from the merit vendor for 75 merits.

And, of course, you can just take Acrobatics if you're dead set against IOs, in the same way you can take Hasten if you want to attack more frequently without using IOs.

If it's what you really want, you can easily get KB pro for Fiery Aura or Dark Armor.

You do realize that you expected results for those four rolls are identical no matter when you do them? Saving them up will not improve your chances in any way.

Emotionally, I agree, you will feel less robbed because as you note with four or five rolls you're probably going to get something good. But all these rolls are statistically independent and the system does not track how well or poorly it has treated you.

Also, your success with the bronze rolls has nothing to do with how well you'll do with merits, because -- again -- the rolls are all independent.

These kinds of superstitions about independent random events are what make the gambling industry able to to milk hundreds of billions of dollars from us every year.

Players posting things at far below their actual value enables flippers to do their thing. You should generally post for the lowest price you'd be happy getting that's in line with that item's other sales (at that and nearby levels).

If my market slots are full and I've got something like a Crushing Impact that usually sells well but isn't currently (they used to go for 500K to 1M, but you often see them for 100K or less now), I'll underprice it, but never for just 10 inf.

You shouldn't sell things for less than what you can get them for at a vendor, plus 10%. If there are too many for sale or the going price is too low, you should just vendor them yourself. Similarly, to encourage others to post items on the market we should bid at least that same amount. It would be a small price to pay to ensure a steady supply. This kind of "intelligent market behavior" would lead to a stable equilibrium with fewer ups and downs in supply and demand.

A lot of people think this, but it is not true. If you select the right power sets, the right powers, and use the right tactics, an experienced blaster will not die any more frequently than other archetypes. Once I get back into the blaster mindframe, my blasters almost never die, even when they do crazy stuff. Playing tanks and scrappers does mess you up for a bit; you have to remember your old baster tactics when you come back.

The problem is that many blasters take the old adage "the best defense is a good offense" too close to heart. Blasters don't get much in the way of defense, but they can get attacks that mitigate damage (holds, immobilizes, slows, stuns, sleeps, knockback attacks, etc.). If you use these "mezzing" attacks to neutralize opponents you drastically increase your survivability.

And you can also just get out of the way; unlike a lot of MMORPGs, running away does work. You do not have to just stand there and trade blows: you can attack, sprint away, attack again at range, etc. Since player characters generally run faster than non-player characters (you can turn on sprint, or get powers like Swift that make you run faster), you'll eventually figure out how much damage you can take before you need to run away. Most of the time you'll make a clean getaway, if you use the fact that you can't shoot through objects or walls: when fleeing, be sure to duck around a corner or box so you can't be targeted at range. Don't just run down a long hall when you're being chased: jink behind boxes or rocks that happen to be there.

Combinations like Fire/Fire are a bit tricky because they'd don't offer much in the way of mitigation (an immobilize is really the only thing you get early on). Other sets get knockback (Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Archery), stuns (Energy Manipulation, Archery, Psychic Blast, Sonic Attack, Electricity Manipulation), holds (Ice Blast, Electrical Blast), Sleeps (Electrical Manipulation, Sonic Attack), slows (Devices, Ice Blast, Ice Manipulation), and so on.

Blasters basically need to get used to "juggling" mobs: for example, a Fire/Energy blaster will kill one enemy in a group outright on the first salvo, then duck around a corner (to avoid getting hit by several ranged attacks), then when an enemy comes around the corner you hit them with Power Thrust (a melee attack that knocks them way back), then hit another one with Bone Smasher, which has a decent chance of stunning, then you blast another one at range a couple of times to put him down, and by then the one you knocked back is at you again, so you knock him back, then you re-stun the one you stunned before, all the while whittling other ones down. Depending on what powers you have, you may be able to handle four or five or more enemies at one time.

This is the main difference in tactics between blasters/defenders/controllers and tankers/scrappers: ranged "squishie" characters need to neutralize multiple threats simultaneously, while melee characters have enough defense so that they can just concentrate on defeating one guy at a time.

Depending on your choice of power sets, you may also be able to use Build Up and Aim to supercharge area effect attacks like Fireball, Fire Breath and Rain of Fire to take out large groups more efficiently.

Finally, inspirations level the playing field quite a bit. Saving the ones you'll need for later and and using them at the right time can briefly give you a level of defense normally available only to scrappers and tankers. Purple inspirations can carry you through many a tough boss battle completely unscathed. Reds can pump up your damage and greens will heal you. I generally carry a column of greens, a column of purples and a column of break frees. Converting ones you need less frequently (yellows, oranges, reds) to purples, greens and break frees on the fly is something you should get used to doing.

I have a SS/ElA brute and I went with Melee defense as an experiment when I respecced, because I was already most of the way there with the sets I already had (Ti Coating, Touch of Death, Obliteration, etc.). I didn't go crazy and slot lots of marginal powers solely for bonuses and only got 32.7% melee def. Some of the time it works out okay, but there are a lot of things that have ranged S/L attacks (she just gets shredded by Gunslingers), so I have to be really picky about the order in which I take out mobs.

I'd recommend maxing out S/L rather than melee. Also, I'm not sure that it's worth the effort to just get to 32 or 35% defense. There are so many things that debuff defense that if you get hit just a couple of times it's like you don't have any defense at all.

So, sadly, I think you have to go all the way to the softcap to make it worthwhile, but as you noted you have to make a lot of sacrifices in slotting, or accuracy, or giving up other types of bonuses. Which makes the character less fun in other ways.

It's a lot easier to softcap for range, at least for ranged characters. It would be an interesting experiment to do a range softcap for a resistance brute and see how that plays.

I've got a character of minimum height and the fun wears thin after a while. When you're in a big crowd you can't see anything except knees. On many maps there are low walls that a regular size character can easily see over, but my wee blue man has to hover or fly to see what's going on.

You can pull the camera back, but the view point is still stuck three feet off the floor. An even smaller character would be a bear to play. If the devs allowed this they'd get hundreds of complaints from players who find it impossible to actually play a character of this height, and telling them to pony up ten bucks for the science booster pack would not go over well.

A lot of people seem to play with an inviolate attack chain that they repeat incessantly. I attack more situationally; I watch how many hit points my enemies have and often use an attack that reduces the number of opponents in the most efficient way, which may involve using a lower damage attack out of sequence on an enemy that will be eliminated by that lower damage attack, instead of continuing to cycle the main attack chain on the current target. That may also mean attacking with a hard-hitting melee attack in the middle of a ranged attack chain if the opportunity presents itself (a target has the amount of hit points that the melee attack will take it out of action). This isn't as hard as it might seem because you can change targets during power activations, mouse over targets to see their hit points, and queue attacks.

Many melee attacks have a secondary effect (stun, for Energy). Total Focus will stun most LTs outright. That and Stun will stun most bosses. Bone Smasher stuns 60% of the time. Mezzing or KBing enemies provides mitigation that raw damage does not. If you do this properly, you can deal with larger spawns.

If you have a blaster with high ranged defense you use your mezzing/KBing melee attacks to deal with mobs that move within melee range. Since the melee attacks do more damage, they put the mobs down faster even if the mez effect doesn't happen to fire (as with Bone Smasher).

If you just want to always push the same sequence of buttons in all situations, yeah, you don't want melee attacks. Just hover and repeat until they're all dead. But if you want to pay attention to the situation and take advantage of synergies that you have with team mates, melee attacks can be very handy.

For example, let's say I'm a Fire/Energy blaster teamed with a Dark/Dark scrapper. Once the scrapper's got a boss in Oppressive Gloom, your blaster's Total Focus or Stun will stun the boss in one shot. This can be very handy, especially for things like Master Illusionists which spawn lots of other nasties.

Similarly, things like Paragon Protectors and Fake Nemeses go into MoG/Unstoppable or PFF when they get low on hits. If you have two mezzing attacks you can hit them when they get to a little less than half and they'll be stunned and unable to go MoG/PFF. You can finish them off withou wasting all that time waiting for the PFF to go down or MoG to end. So, a Sonic/Energy blaster with Screech and Stun or a Fire/Energy blaster with Stun and Total Focus can save themselves a lot of time and grief by stacking mezzes.

Having the mez effects on the melee attacks gives you more tactical options. You don't just have to gut it out trading shots with the enemy hoping you'll last longer than they will.

I have a Mind/Kin, and Terrorize slotted for damage speeds things up considerably when containment is in effect. It is one of the best powers in the set.

The other thing about Confuse is that confused mobs will heal you and your team. The lightning storm of a confused mob will attack its summoner. Confused Rikti Guardians will bubble you and your team. It's one of the coolest things about Confuse/Deceive, and not everyone is aware of it.