Rodion
-
Posts
1531 -
Joined
-
Quote:Yes, I always make sure to use at least Build Up and usually Aim with nukes. I almost never have a problem with minions surviving, even with Blizzard, which has to make a lot of separate hit rolls, which sometimes allows minions to escape if they started out near the edge of the effect.Originally Posted by Duchess_Frost
Add in aim and buildup to increase the damage, and a tight group is pretty well decimated except for the occasional lt, and most bosses.
So I'm really not sure where the OP is coming from. If you're using your nuke properly, the minions are all dead and the LTs are mostly toast.
As a test, I just entered the Chimera mission (with all the Cockatrice and Basilisk guys who throw caltrops) at +0/x8. I used Build Up and Aim, then Thunderous Blast (slotted with five Positron's Blast, no proc). Fourteen Cockatrices and one Basilisk were defeated. One Basilisk was left standing with about 30% hits remaining (the ambush was merging into another group so I got some of that spawn before capping out at the 16 max targets).
If Thunderous Blast is the weakest of the nukes, there's nothing to complain about. Of course, there may be some minions that are resistant to your nuke, but the vast majority of minions are not. Calls for buffing blaster nukes are going to fall on deaf ears. -
Quote:If you have ranged defense of more than 35%, fully slotted Flash Arrow will essentially softcap you the rest of the way. But, like defense, a little bit of -tohit debuff is barely noticeable.Originally Posted by BrandX
Flash arrow gives a bigger -tohit that is noticable. Really, I never found it's -tohit noticable.
I'm of two minds about Trick Arrow. The real problem with it is that it's so painful to solo a TA/Archery with a straight-up SO build. The damage is pathetically small, and the aforementioned alpha problem is well known. I'm working on getting a ranged defense of 35+% with IOs to see if that plus Flash Arrow really works against alphas. I'm able to run my Storm/Electrical defender on +0/x8, so certain defender builds can survive it even if they don't have the highest DPS.
On the other hand, a team with a Trick Arrow defender runs roughshod over mobs when the TA can get all the debuffs out there without being skewered. Throw in a Dark Defender or controller, and nothing can stop the team.
While the buffs you suggest would make running Trick Arrow defenders solo more fun, they would probably be overpowered for teams. That's always the dilemma for defenders -- some of them just don't play very well solo, but become huge force multipliers on teams. It's not clear you can buff solo play without giving the team way too much firepower. -
Quote:If you're talking about other sets, I find my Earth/Storm a lot of fun. You are able to lock down two or three separate spawns very easily with the wide variety of AoE effects, plus you get decent damage from Lightning Storm.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
If you want maximum holds I'd suggest Earth/Trick Arrow. You get 2 AoE holds and 2 single target holds. Plus you get quite a lot of defense and resistance debuffing.
The one HUGE advantage /Rad has is Lingering Radiation. The -regen debuff on that power is great for taking down GMs and AVs. Neither /Storm nor /Trick Arrow have anything that compares. -
Quote:Doing the same mission over and over for 25 levels should gave any sane person some kind of disturbed feeling. Whether it's cheating or not is another question. If he was running solo at +4/x1 or +3/x2, it's entirely possible that he could find some standard mobs and tactics that would give him lots of XP. Hover-blasting against Warriors, Freaks or some similar group might work.Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
However, a friend of mine somehow managed to solo a blaster from about 25 to 50 in around a week (playing a few hours at a time) using some AE mission he'd found. He said it felt like cheating but he really wanted to get to 50. I have no idea why he thought it was cheating or what type of mission it was.
When starting new characters on a new server I've often used the market to transfer inf by selling some trivial trainer for a million to one of my characters on another server. This is no longer necessary: just run a decent AE arc and you'll get a few hundred tickets, which you can use to buy rare salvage, which can easily be sold on the market for 1-2 million. -
Quote:Having Dark Consumption, Energy Drain and Conserve Power seems like overkill. I'd definitely dump Conserve Power for something else, and probably Dark Consumption.Originally Posted by Gypsy_of_Paradox
Here you go, got him softcapped to eveything but psi
I've got an Energy/EA brute with just Energy Drain, and it recharges fast enough to be useful as a heal in addition to replenishing Endurance (I'm only 44 and don't have Tough and Weave fully slotted yet). And I don't even have Hasten.
If you're aiming at being a sapper Dark Consumption/Energy Drain would be nice, but I'm not sure that's really what the OP wants, especially at the prices some of those sets are at. -
Quote:This is a subset of the worst sin of all: wasting the player's time.Originally Posted by OzzieArcane
Chained objectives. People have a tendency to use them poorly, those same people have a tendency to use too many. This results in you running back and forth on the same map multiple times. That's not fun, that's annoying!
Unfortunately, it seems that the devs just LOVE multiple chained objectives, because so many of the arcs that win the contests have them. They may illustrate features of AE, but they don't necessarily make for a playable arc.
The problem with chained objectives is that once you've been over the map a couple of times, it's completely cleared of "fog," and you have no way of telling where you've been. This can make it very hard to find a chained objective. It's not so bad when it's on a small outdoor open map with little clutter, but in a multilevel office building or lab, or a big outdoor map with lots of buildings, the chained spawns can make missions take two or three times as long.
Most of the missions I've seen with multiple chained spawns don't need to chain so many: in most cases only one is usually justified for story reasons. It almost never matters which order the objectives are completed, because there's no mechanism for making decisions based on player actions. It's an artificial way of enforcing a linear story order in a fluid medium that is very much like life. Chained spawns are railroading the player. That story order should be provided by the separate missions of the arc, and not by artificially breaking down the mission into a series of sub-missions. If MA had a decent way of enforcing positional order on mission objectives it would be a different story: it doesn't, and no matter how much you test it you're not really guaranteed that the spawns will be in the order that you intend them to be.
This is the same reason why defeat alls are bad: you're wasting the player's time by making them kill that last minion, especially when that minion got knocked into a cave wall and can no longer be targeted by most attacks. -
Quote:Добрый день! Как дела?Originally Posted by clutch
what?
Just dropping in to say hi. Coming over from champions, i think i'm going to nest on virtue since i found some people to play with over in the fanart forum
i also make pictures.
so yeah, hi
-
Your PB gets status protection for each controller you team with.
The only power you can get that provides status protection (as opposed to resistance, which only reduces the duration), is Acrobatics. This provides a mag 2 hold resistance. I don't know the mag of the Rikti magus hold, so I'm not sure it would make a difference against one of them, and it won't help if several are spamming holds at you, and it won't help with stuns or sleeps.
Sonic Resonance and Force Field both have big dispersion shields that cover the caster and give 8.95 status protection vs. stun, hold and immobilize.
As illicity said, you should avoid getting hit at all. You should avoid stuns and holds by staying out of melee (because there are a lot of AoE and single-target stuns in melee), and to crank up your ranged defense as much as possible. As was mentioned, this still won't help against certain holds because they're Psionic only (which is bogus -- they have a limited range, so they should be ranged, but it works that way for Illusion controllers as well). You may have to take Weave and Maneuvers, and you may have a hard time softcapping your ranged defense unless you have some kind of shield already on your defender (Storm and Dark have these).
This won't work out well for your Kin defender, though, because Kins need to close to melee to get the best use out of FS. I have a Rad/Kin corruptor that I softcapped with S/L damage, and he does pretty well running against big groups. He stills gets stunned, but with almost-softcapped S/L defense, soft-capped energy and fairly high ranged defense, they don't hit him much while he's out. The basis of this build is Scorpion Shield, which defenders can't get, and Tough/Weave.
Basically the game is designed to make ranged attackers prone to mezzes. The only reliable way to get around it is to team with someone who can use a protective power on you, or to carry a lot of Break Frees. I carry at least 3-4, and as soon as I use one I make another by combining other insps. -
Quote:That ... that would be like smothering your children!Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Question for everyone on this statement: Why not just strip and delete?
Actually, I've done it a couple of times, once with a Katana scrapper and a Plant/Thorns corruptor. I just hate the constant redraw animations; even though I know it's now supposed to make any difference, it just bugs the hell out of me. -
Quote:I might have done it once or twice way back in the beginning, but if so it made no impression on me because I don't remember it. Super Leap is a test of eye/keyboard coordination: I always practice landing on a dime, jumping on safe areas such as rooftops and ledges or windowsills on buildings to avoid landing on mobs in zones where it matters. In zones with snipers and tall buildings (PI, FF) I use the tops of smaller buildings as a sort of ladder to get high above the mobs and travel the rooftops like the Tick.Originally Posted by Cynical_Gamer
This doesn't ring true for me at all. I've never landed in an enemy group, let alone die from it.
Using Teleport is much more nerve-wracking and dangerous than Super Leap, and much less convenient. You basically can't conduct any kind of conversation while using Teleport (unless you have Hover). That's the primary advantage of Fly: you can be sociable and have no risks doing so.
I've never really had a consistent problem with being last to the mission when using Fly, especially on pickup teams. When you have things like mission teleporter, Ourorboros, base teleporters, Pocket D, etc., you have a lot of options to get around the city. Knowing how the city is interconnected and finding the most efficient way to use the transportation systems is more important than raw travel speed. For example, I can't count the number of time I've been in Faultline and someone asks what the best way to get there is. When you say "Pocket D" or "your base" they just say, "Huh?"
Add to that the large number of players who take biobreaks, stop off to shop at the market, sell salvage, etc., and a conscientious player who's actually trying to get to the mission quickly will get there with Fly long before the guy whose SOs all just went red. The practicalities of teaming cancel the advantage of the raw speed of a travel power all too often. -
Quote:Two techniques:Originally Posted by Postagulous
I'm not the best at navigating, say, small blue caves at 90 mph. I ocassionally like to have invisibility with the ability to attack, so running SS plus a stealth happens sometimes.
And SB makes me look like a fool. Who would turn down SB? Some do, but I'd rather smash into walls. As long as I'm targeted I'll turn the correct direction when firing or when the F button is pressed.
But what I'd like is something like..
/bind G "+forward 30%"
Or something like that.
Is there a way to dial down so you aren't always going the maximum speed?
1) Get Hover. Speed boosted Hover is pretty nice. I use Hover with my Kins while Siphon Speed is active, and toggle it off when SS wears off.
2) Technique. In a confined space you can't press and hold the movement key, nor can you "run". I just tap W to move forward in the caves. -
Quote:I have a Rad/Kin corruptor and have had many blasters. I had more trouble surviving solo with the /Kin corruptor than any of my blasters, mainly because Rad/Kin doesn't have much in the way of mitigation (pretty much only Cosmic Burst, which is a stun). My blasters have all had some fairly reliable mitigation: holds for Ice and electric, KB and sheer damage for my Fire/Energy, sleep and stun for Sonic/Energy, sleep/stun/immobilize/KB for Psy/MM, and so on.Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
If you want to solo much on a /Kin corruptor, I'd recommend Sonic/. Or if you don't like that, Ice/. A /Kin corr tends to be lacking in solo survivability; a control/debuff heavy primary helps that.
Recently I sold a Ragnarok purple recipe and used the profit to increase the defense on my Rad/Kin to something respectable. For about 100 million I was able to get 42% S/L, 46% Energy and 37% Ranged defense (by taking Scorpion Shield, Tough, Weave, Web Envelope with four-slotted Enfeebled Operation, two six-slotted Obliterations, Steadfast Pro: -KB and +def, etc.). The character is much more fun to play now, and is able to solo decent-sized spawns. If I had a do-over with this character, I think I'd go with Fire/Kin or Sonic/Kin, as the damage always seems kind of anemic. The -Def secondary effect isn't all that useful with IOs because you wind up getting 30-50% extra accuracy.
I also have a Fire/Dark corruptor and she has immense survivability, great damage, and a huge -regen power (which is useful for taking down AVs and GMs), for a much smaller investment than the Rad/Kin. She has 46% Ranged defense and many ways to keep enemies at range. -
Quote:For the superhero genre, it's more logical that heroes appear to be be fairly rare on the street during an average day. How special would we be if we outnumbered the civilians and the villains? In a fantasy game any number of adventurers can seem reasonable in a town. But how much sense would it make for 20 heroes to be standing around waiting outside a bank for robbers to come out? Instancing resolves this problem and many others.Originally Posted by Justaris
Heavy instancing sometimes creates the false impression that a server is empty or a 'ghost town'. Players who do not make use of the tools for finding players or who refuse to learn them may have difficulty getting on teams since brute force methods like running up to people you see or shouting in broadcast do not work well when most people are not there to see you or to hear you.
There are places where you can find congregations of other players, however. The markets (Wentworths in Atlas Park, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Talos Island, and the Black Market in Mercy, Port Oakes, Cap au Diable, Sharkhead and St. Martial) often have many people standing around. There are occasionally people to be found inside the Aeon Entertainment building between missions. Depending on the server, there are sometimes people gathered in the Portal Corp courtyard in Peregrine Island.
You can get a rough idea of the number of people on the server by using the search window to do a blank search. It will tell you how many matches there were, and cut the number displayed down to somewhere around 50. That won't include anyone who is hidden or members of the opposite faction (villains/heroes).
Finally, one huge advantage that City of Heroes has is Supersidekicking. Level doesn't really matter much anymore. When you're on a mission, everyone is raised to one level less than the mission holder, or lowered to the mission holder's level. Everyone still gets XP. Once you get a travel power (which can be as early as level four or five), you can go almost anywhere in the world (except PvP zones), and team with anyone of your faction of any level. You can even team with the opposing faction in certain zones. Some specific missions (task forces/strike forces) are still limited by level, however.
It's sometimes hard for level 5 characters to keep up with level 50s, but once you hit level 20 or 25 you can pull your own weight on most any team. -
Quote:I just tried using the Nemesis staff on the Oil Slick created by my Defender, and it doesn't ignite. The details on the staff say it only does Smashing damage. I also tried using EMP Arrow, which is energy, and it also does not work.Originally Posted by Psylenz
Fire and energy damage will light the oil slick. This add robots to the mix with both mastermind attacks and robot attacks. Also keep in mind your inherent power related to your origin can do energy damage. Magic and Tech origins both do energy damage to light the slick.
edit: I believe the veteran power, nemesis staff, will also do the trick with more range.
However, the Divining Rod I got from Croatoa is listed as an energy attack and does ignite the slick. That won't do the OP any good, obviously, but at least some energy attacks do ignite it. -
Quote:I just pulled out my old Energy/Energy blaster, the first (undeleted) character I made which is still stalled at level 43 after five years, and soloed Black Scorpion.Originally Posted by Ultimo_
I don't know who negative repped me with this comment, but I'll answer it nonetheless.
The point of this thread is to do precisely what you suggest. I'm trying to figure out how to play the Blaster successfully. Also, this is the first time I've posted regarding my Blaster, so I don't know how it could be "getting old."
Same tactics as my Fire/Energy blaster: kill the minions, then Hover and blast him till he drops. It took a little longer, but he only hit me once. I used two purples, but I don't think they were necessary. He spends all his time dancing around instead of attacking you.
The main thing about blasters is that you just have to avoid getting hit until you get your shield and any mega-defensive powers in your 50s. For an energy/energy blaster that usually means hovering or preemptively using your KB powers (Power Push or Power thrust) to keep melee types away from you (because melee usually does more damage).
I think the guy who said that this "was getting old" is suggesting that you use the search function to find the previous threads that talk about this. If so, he should just say so rather than being snarky.
However, the problem with the search function is that people write so many utterly useless posts (i.e., "this is getting old") that the search function returns thousands of hits that have no useful information. I wish people would stop filling the forums with pointless posts that simply quote someone else, adding only "QFT" or "/signed" or some kind of personal jab. Don't the forum rules deprecate this?
If I have nothing new or useful to say, or find the post so totally lacking in merit that it is its own refutation, I just ignore it. -
I just ran my Fire/Energy blaster against Black Scorpion as an EB. Nothing special, just ran Temp Invulnerability, used two purples, no fancy defenses or anything on this character. Basically a traditional straight-up level 50 blaster.
Using Hover, I roasted him in less than a minute. He hit me twice with arm blast and did no significant damage. I didn't even use a green. He ran around like nuts, to no avail, while I blasted him from above.
Blasters should be able to handle most EBs with the right tactics and use of inspirations. Best tactic is to divide and conquer -- peeling the minions off first is one of the best things you can do. -
Quote:You have to realize that blasters can do this fairly easily, but not until level 50.Originally Posted by Ultimo_
I could go on the rant some are expecting, but instead, I'm asking for advice.
How do Blasters deal with this sort of thing? You have no defenses, and the pools provide very minimal benefits. Thus, you're going to get hit, a lot. You have decent health, but with no defenses, two or three hits is enough to kill you. When a typical spawn of three foes can defeat you on their first volley, I'm left wondering how you're supposed to be successful.
I have two suggestions:
First, when you get to level 41 you can take the Force Mastery Epic power pool. The first power you can get is Personal Force Field. This is very useful, as it makes you pretty much unhittable, as well as providing decent damage resistance. You can't attack while this is up, but you can keep it up until your opponent uses the big attack that would kill you, then you can drop it and attack. It's also useful for running into a big group with the bubble up, then hit buildup/aim, drop the bubble, and nuke them. And it's a good "Get me out of here Mr. Wizard!" power.
At level 44 you can take Temporary Invulnerability, which gives you about 33% Smash/Lethal resistance when fully slotted. I haven't looked at Black Scorpion's attacks, but if they have a smashing or lethal component, the damage will probably be reduced by a third, which will let you survive. At level 47 you can take Force of Nature, which will give you 55% damage resistance to smash/lethal. While this is up, you will have capped your damage resistance to smash/lethal at 75%. FoN is a click with a two-minute duration, after which you lose all Endurance. It also has a long recharge, but this is good enough to allow you to take down the Big Bad at the end of a mission.
The other aspect of this is to get IO sets that increase your defense to ranged or smash/lethal attacks (which depends on your playstyle, though ranged is probably much cheaper and easier to get). You should get the Mids character designer to help choose your IO sets. You'll probably need to get Tough and Weave, and maybe Maneuvers, to get your Defense as high as possible. Depending on your play style you may wish to get ranged defense and be a hover blaster, which reduces your exposure to hard-hitting melee attacks. The goal is to get your ranged defense to 45%, but if you can get it to 35% that'll be good enough to make you "softcapped" when you use one purple. The base to-hit chance for most even-con mobs is 50%, and there's always a 5% chance that any attack will hit, so 45% defense is the target "soft-cap" for defenses. Defense debuffs are pretty common, so more is better, but almost impossible for blasters to obtain.
There are other possibilities (Cold Mastery has a defensive shield), but they may not fit your character concept.
The second possibility is to make an Energy/ corruptor with a secondary that fits. A corruptor can use defender powers, which provide a LOT of mitigation. I have a Fire/Dark corruptor, and usually run her at +0/x8. I did a rescue Ghost Widow mission without knowing it involved an ambush by an EB and three waves of Longbow. I survived this without being defeated. The mitigation provided by Dark is pretty fabulous. One of the Corruptor epics has a smash/lethal shield. With that I was able to build a Rad/Kin Corruptor with 42% S/L, 46% energy and 37.6% ranged defense, using Tough, Weave and Scorpion Shield. You should be able to make an Energy/Kin Corruptor that has similar defenses (this doesn't have damage resistance, though, which means a lucky -- 1 in 20 -- shot can take you down).
I'm not all that wild about playing villains, but with Going Rogue coming out I've found a renewed interest in them. Eventually I can redeem them.... -
Quote:I used this to get the Spelunker badge on a character that had outleveled the arc, back before Ouroboros. Yay for Ouroboros!Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn
Yes, you can do that.
Bonus: both characters of yours will get the badge! -
Since I16 and the drop fix came out I've received six purples on four different characters. I've tracked the number of kills with the chat log, and it's somewhere north of 20,000 mobs (mostly soloing +0/x8 groups, but got one purple teamed). This drop rate seems within the expected statistical variation. I estimate that's about 80 hours over a 10-week period, or eight hours of play a week. I played more than that, but much of that time was spent playing lower level characters that aren't eligible for purples.
I don't have purpled out characters (I have four or five purple sets on as many characters, most of which I bought before prices went sky-high). I have IOed builds, but no PvP IOs, or LotG: +Recharge, or Numina: Recover/Regen, or the other crazy expensive stuff. Just bread and butter uncommons like Crushing Impact and Thunderstrike, and rares like Positron, Scirocco and some Obliteration (getting very pricey these days).
The truth is that tankers can fairly easily solo most standard +0/x8 content (Council and CoT are generally easy at level 50 for most tankers) with uncommon and rare IO sets, and probably with SOs (though I admit I haven't tried this because I don't have any characters with SOs anymore). You do have to use a lot of inspirations and know when to cut and run to avoid face-planting.
And the honest truth is: you simply do not need purples. They do not provide a broad variety of bonuses: mostly they just have recovery, fire/cold resist, accuracy and recharge. You can already get accuracy bonuses out the wazoo with uncommons and rares, most characters using IO sets don't have end problems, and the incremental damage resistance values provided are next to useless. The only great thing about purples is that vaunted +recharge, and the fact that those bonuses work when exemped. But unless you're PvPing in Siren's Call, you don't really care all that much about exemped bonuses.
Complaining that the average player can't afford purples is akin to complaining that the average American can't be CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation. These things are rare, and unless you do the work and spend the time you won't get them. You don't need to be a CEO to be happy, and you don't need purples to be happy with your character.
The devs have in fact arranged things so that it's easier for players to get purples. The problem is that most teams aren't as efficient as a solo player time-wise. If you play on a pickup team or a TF you waste an inordinate amount of time waiting for people to show up, zone, refresh SOs, go AFK for bio break, yada, yada, yada. Many team leaders still spend more time packing the team with a full eight players than they do running the missions, even though there's no longer any reason to do so: if any one well-designed tanker can solo +0/x8, that same tanker teamed with a decent defender and blaster should have more than triple the defeat rate, which means more than triple the drop rate.
And it's not just tankers that can solo +0/x8. I have a Fire/Dark corruptor that does quite well, and you don't need a tricked-out build. Heck, I can even solo that with Storm/Electrical Blast defender (but it's pretty slow, I admit), an Ice/Ice blaster, and many controllers. And you don't really need to run at +0/x8: -1/x4 is much easier, quicker, safer and probably more mobs/minute, meaning more chances for purple drops. But that's not much of challenge. -
Quote:I would concur. As an experiment I outfitted my SS/Electric Armor Brute with Melee defense, and it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped it would. Malta Gunslingers and Nemesis troops really hurt.Originally Posted by Jabbrwock
Since you cannot reasonably build for all 3 positional defenses, I'd go for S/L instead - it's gonna defend you against more stuff than any one position. If you're willing to blow wads of influence and can manage a build, covering all 3 positions with reasonable amounts of defense is better, though - it's just that if you can only pick one defense stat to build, S/L covers more than any other single defense.
At least, that's my impression.
The vast majority of melee attacks have some smash/lethal component, and many PvE ranged attacks have some smash/lethal component (including guns, arrows, energy blasts, sonic, many cold blasts, etc.). So that means S/L defense covers most melee attacks and many ranged attacks, while Melee defense covers all melee attacks (including the relatively rare pure fire/cold/energy/negative attacks), but no ranged attacks.
The best strategy is to maximize S/L defense and include any ranged defense you can fit in without sacrifice. -
Quote:To be fair to you, this is extremely confusing. If you modify custom characters and groups in your published arc it seems the local critter and group files are changed, unlike the .storyarc file. This inconsistency makes it hard to understand and manage arcs.Originally Posted by Acroyear2
I think this was the problem. We were editing the local version and not the version already published. Gah.
There should be a way to read a local file into a published arc, the inverse of the save to local operation. This would remove one of the biggest problems I have with the system -- accidentally editing the local version and then not knowing what changes are made where. -
Quote:Since I turned on the chat logs on several of my characters (before pohsyb's purple drop fix), I've had six purples drop. Scanning those same logs I've had 25,000 lines with "You have defeated" in them. This includes many hours of play in AE and many hours with characters less than level 47, and many Mayhem missions where I defeated fire hydrants.Originally Posted by JohnX
Someone should also mention, that probabilty-wise, a purple should drop in about 1 out of 5000 kills. Of course, individual results vary.
I'm not sure who said that, but I've seen that number posted a few times. So I cant point you a source right now.
I think the 1 in 5,000 number is a bit high, but it's certainly within reasonable statistical variation. The 1 in 3,500 value is more in line with my experience. -
Quote:Taken by itself this statement is misleading. They are more expensive in the short term, but cheaper in the medium term (five levels), and ridiculously cheaper in the long term.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
However, IOs are more expensive than SOs are.
Take, for example, crafting an accuracy IO for one of your powers. If you buy SOs from level 25 to level 50, you will spend a total of 265,872 inf*. You will have the inconvenience of having to replace your SOs every 5 levels, of suffering from reduced accuracy half the time, and so on.
A level 25 IO provides a 32% bonus, better than a -1 SO (an even-con SO provides 33.3%). It costs 34,800 inf to craft a level 25 acc IO, if you have the recipe and the salvage. If you bid ahead on the market, you can get most level 25 recipes for very low prices, much less than what they cost on the crafting table (which is 17,400). If you're planning ahead, saving up the salvage for crafting your IOs is trivial. You have more than enough space in your market slots, personal vault and on-character storage.
So, even if you have to buy your IO recipes from the table, the cost to craft that level 25 common Accuracy IO is 52,200. If you don't have the salvage you can buy it on the market. Most common salvage at that level is no more than a few thousand, and much is only 100 or less.
That means you're paying about five times more for the "convenience" of SOs compared to IOs. Level 30 IOs have a bonus of 34.8% (almost as good as a +1 SO). If you decide you want the better bonuses of level 30 IOs, they're still three times cheaper than SOs, even if you have to buy the recipe on the table. If you're using found recipes and salvage, crafting level 30 IOs is more than five times cheaper than buying SOs every five levels.
That means using IOs of level 25 or 30 pays off in less than two cycles of SO replacement, or five levels.
Also note that buying level 35 SOs is more expensive than crafting level 30 IOs from found salvage and recipes, and level 30 IOs are better than than even con level 35 SOs. Therefore, buying SOs after level 30 is just throwing away good influence/infamy.
This also ignores the fact that you can often get crafted IOs on the market for SO-level prices. This is because people who are going for field crafter have to produce hundreds of these IOs, and they don't have enough market slots to sell their stock fast enough (that, or fill up your base storage with hundreds of unused IOs). If you bid a reasonable price, say the crafting cost, and wait a few hours, you can almost always get the IO you want.
* Level 25 Accuracy SO: 29,952, 30: 35712, 35: 41,472, 40: 47,232, 45: 52,992, 50: 58,752. -
Quote:I'd recommend running Ouroboros missions that your tank does well in. Try setting your solo team size to something like +0/x4 and see how you do. Keep cranking it up a la the Peter Principle (you reach your level of incompetence). This way you'll get merits, salvage, and the best shot at purples. Since I16 I've got six purple drops.Originally Posted by Sterling
I have two level 50 toons at my disposal, a Fire/Fire/Pyre tank and an Ice/Rad/Fire controller. I am figuring my tank is still the best for farming influence. However, I am not sure what the best way to go about that is now. I have just been running some regular missions and while I am making a bit of influence I am thinking there must be a faster way to do this. Is it better to run certain types of missions or is just farming in a higher level danger zone the best way to go?
You could also run Radio missions in PI the same way, though you won't get any merits. For a change of pace you can also run some AE missions to get tickets that you can use to get random Bronze rolls (often very good results with this), and buy rare salvage.
Fire tanks are pretty durable against Nemesis and Council, and do fairly well against CoT and Cimerorans. Not so hot against Carnies. If you fight Malta you might want to respec into Char so that you can hold sappers before wading in. -
When you're setting the difficulty with the Field Analyst (or Fortunata) you have four basic options: set level, set team size, set bosses/LTs, and set AV. When you make one of those selections you're placed in a dialog that tells you what you've done.
On two of those dialogs there are two options: "What are my difficulty settings?" and "Leave". The first one brings you back to the main dialog so you can select another setting to change.
On the other two of those dialogs there is only one option: "Leave". If you want to change the other settings you have to click the Field Analyst again.
The omission of the "What are my difficulty settings?" option on the two dialogs (for setting level and team size) seems like a bug. It would be nice if all the dialogs were consistent and had both options.
(Also bugged in-game)