Sardan

Found it. Interesting reading. I suppose one could argue that it might not be valid statistically due to having a small sample size (27 runs total); in other words, maybe he got a few lucky drops that skewed the numbers. But I haven't seen anyone else post a larger data set.

I seem to recall that a couple of years ago TopDoc or Smurphy did an experiment and concluded that purple drops hugely swamped XP/min from mob defeats. Does anyone recall that?

I used to before I thought a bit about proportionality. Bid creeping makes sense on expensive stuff. But bid creeping on common salvage matters about as much as putting off a purchase of $20, thinking that if only you're patient you can get it for $19.99. It's a rounding error.

I don't bid stupid: if I see something has zero bids, I'll bid low knowing I'll get it. But I don't stress about buying common salvage for 50K or more if prices have temporarily heated up. Spending an extra few hundred thousand in order to avoid waiting 5 or 10 minutes is a good tradeoff. My time is worth more than easily acquired imaginary currency.

I can't bring myself to roll up a Plant character because the pet creeps me out.

Optimal for what? If you're after shards and the chance for purple drops wouldn't +0/x8 be better?

Note this excerpt from the post right above yours:

Clarification please: "penultimate" means "next to last". Is the Lore slot the next to last? If so we're not going to see what it's all about for a long time. Or did you mean to use the word "ultimate"?

I'm not a regular reader of the Market forum but from my experience it's full of people who really, truly want to help new players. If you ask how to turn your millions to billions there, people will gladly share the info. It'd be easy for them to hoard information and shun new competition but they're just as open, welcoming, and helpful there as the rest of the forums are.

The problem is when the occasional player visits and vents about how evil market manipulators are the cause of his woes. The replies for the most part early on try to educate the angry visitor, but the typical pattern is that someone who's seeing red already has their mind made up. They're impervious to reason. They lash out. Then the Market forum unleashes Nethergoat in full snark mode.

But seriously, I've been amazed at the efforts Fulmens and the others put in. They'll patiently write long essays trying to help angry, ignorant folks to see how the market really works.

Anyway, overall I have to agree with the many others in this thread who have said that one of the best things about this game is its community.

This is a huge sore point with me. I get that they want to encourage old players to return but can anyone honestly claim a strong emotional attachment to a character they haven't seen for 3+ years?

I say that they ought to free up names from accounts that have been inactive for an uninterrupted 3+ years. If someone re-ups for as little as 1 month, it resets the timer. If they come back for free reactivation weekend, it resets the timer. This policy would only snare people who have clearly expressed that they have no interest in coming back.

And hey, if by some miracle someone who hadn't played for 5 years came back, it's not like their characters would be gone, only the names.

What really gets under my skin is that this policy unintentionally punishes active players in favor of inactive players.

Sorry, but just typing "LOL" doesn't invalidate the math.

Look, I get that you like your Elec, that's cool. Elec is a very fun powerset. But let it go already; it's been shown again and again on the boards that SS puts out more sustained DPS than Elec with the bonus of better ST damage too.

You should look at the old build guides that ThugsRUs did. He was a very hardcore farmer. He created an extremely expensive Elec/SD brute for farming (and wrote an associated guide), and later stripped it of IOs once he realized that SS/SD was better. He most definitely didn't simply fall in love with a particular powerset. He was all about maximum results.

Anyway, like I said, it's great that you're passionate about the Elec powerset and I'm sure you've built an impressive build. Just because there's another powerset that edges it out doesn't diminish your character in any way.

He wasn't being pretentious. "Necro post" is a term widely used in online forums for the situation in which a user replies to an extremely old thread. In this case Slainsteel replied to a thread that hadn't had any activity in over a year.

Mind/Fire is sooo much fun. Fire blast is by far my favorite blast set and just being able to play that without fear of getting mezzed would be worth what it cost to achieve permadom.

But the added bonus of the Mind powers is awesome. I love being able to jump into the middle of a big scary spawn (like, say Malta) with my brute to take the alpha for a team. But being able to alpha strike as a squishy is even more fun for some reason. Seeing those lovely "confused" dots floating above all the NPCs' heads never gets old.

Completely apart from the point you're making, I love that you use the word "boni" instead of "bonuses".

I still stand by my statement that the actual enhancement amount of a hypothetical purple defense set could be important even with ED.

It's easy to get moderate levels of defense. But as you close in on the magical 45%, each incremental percentage gets harder to get without compromising other aspects of your build. That's why people are paying 3 billion inf for a PVP IO that grants 3% defense.

I know that purple IOs are limited by ED, but if a purple defense IO boosted effectiveness by even 2-3% that's a big deal in terms of game balance.

Caveat: I'm not a math guy so maybe my concern is unfounded.

Hint: another superhero MMO just launched.

No, purple enhancements don't enhance powers "like any other set". They have higher enhancement values than other IOs. Given that there are already so many means to buff defense, my concern was that it wouldn't be good for game balance to pile more on by making a new superior enhancement set available.

I don't know where you get your "1000%" number from. The softcap for defense is 45%.

Fire armor is an armor too, but it's visualized as a close-fitting aura, not slabs of fire that rigidly overlay your costume. I'm talking about my desire for an alternate model; if they ever did this (which I'd bet money they won't) they wouldn't drop the current armor, they'd offer the new look as an option.

Pretty sure that you're wasting your breath here. I'd bet that a commandment came down from NCsoft corporate "Thou shalt use the corporate launcher."

Edit: wow, having read more of the thread, it's worrying that there's nearly universal hatred of the NCsoft launcher. What is the problem it it? It's hard to imagine it being so horrid if NCsoft uses it for all their games.

60 years of content in comic books does not trump 7 years of active MMO development. A month from now (or less) we're going to see the complaints of DCUO players that they've exhausted all the initial content. Same as what happened with CO.

I think everyone in this thread understands that Sexy Jay is the Loki of CoH rednames. It's fun to try to tease out what he's hinting at and then later look back on his writing in light of what's eventually released. But he's a trickster and we mustn't assign any certainty to any interpretation of his fever dreams.

I must add that I appreciate that he goes out of his way to drop these hints. It can't be easy for him to do it in a way that doesn't get him in hot water. Far easier/safer to just stay mum. He adds a lot of fun and flavor to the forums when he chimes in.