Shred_Monkey

It's funny... my original logic that got me playing /SR was that every time I ran into trouble in this game, a purple insperation (or 4) was the solution. And now, as they're throwing more challenges at us, even on my /SR toon, I'm still saying the same thing... pop a purple, and the red numbers stop showing up over my head. I haven't worked the build out to my satisfaction, but I may end up taking elude for the first time to help address the upcoming challenges.

Yeah.. didn't see the OP before it was edited, so maybe this doesn't match what he said... but as I understand the streakbreaker, i believe a power can miss 11 times in a row if you use another power between uses that hits.

Granted, the point is moot because it didn't happen.

In any case... slot for accuracy in your powers... I hate missing... I always try to push the limits, and i'm always counting on that attack to do what it does... so when I miss, bad things happen.

I'm curious if how good our RNG is. Does it evenly distribute well? Or does it tend to be streaky? Is it only evenly destributed over an extremely large sample? Is it truely evenly distributed? It would be bad if it had a tendency to produce edge cases with higher frequency. Although when I say bad, it's really not bad... the game is not broken... i'm just curious.

Yeah.. the only think I buy with A-Merits (and i earn them almost as fast as one can), is LoTGs or Miracle Uniques (both sell about the same). Or, if I want something at a lower then max level that's just not available on the market (most frequently for me that would also be a LoTG or Miacle unique come to think of it).

I think one exception to this may be the +3 Defense PvP IO.... that's selling off market for 3+ Billion. (in market you can bid 2 billion and then wait a month or 2...no thanks). I'll consider earning merits for that next time I want one. Mainly because I trust off-market trading and at that price it's about as cost effective as buying/selling LoTGs anyway.

Also, 200 million is being optimistic (he did say "generally")... They bounce around from 150-200. If you list for 200, it may not sell.

This brings up a good point. When you're a vigilante you may not be running vigilante tips (could be hero tips, vigilante tips, or villian tips). So technically what you're asking for may not really be what you really wanted to broadcast anyway.

Interesting trick though with $side. Are you sure as a vigialante it's hero, and not related to which side you're actually in at the moment, which could be the red side? That would make more sense to me.

Quick comment... the influence cap is 2 billion, so it's ok to go over 1 billion influence if you weren't aware of that.

Without a little more information it's hard to give more detail. But here's a general priority I place on IO'ing out a new toon:

1. Get endurance under control. The big hitters here are a Miracle Unique (healing IO), a Numina's Unique (also in the healilng IOs). And a Performance shifter proc (endurance mod IOs). 99% of the time I'd place those in health and stamina.

2. Purple damage proc's for my most used attacks. These can get pricy, but they make a pretty big difference without having to revamp an entire build.

3. Recharge... these come from LoTG proc's in defense powers and 5-slotted purple sets. There's other sources, but they're pretty specific to each different build. How much is enough depends on what attack chain you want to be able to run and other variables about your playstyle. This can be some serious money invested (2 billion can disappear fast).

4. Defense... in your case I'd try to get my smashing/lethal defense up as much as possible. The best starting point for doing that will be from getting 4 kinetic combats in each melee attack. Plus the steadfast protection +3 defense IO. Adding more depends on what powers you have. I'd pick up defense pool powers to augment these as much as your endurance allows.

Generally, I have all my IO's planned and purchased before hitting 50, so I don't really go in that order, but if I were to go in order, that's what i'd do. I can see putting defense before recharge, but I'm a damage junkie... it's likely others would say different.

In order to plan things out you'll want Mid's Hero Designer if you don't have it already.

Sounds like you're really enjoying the game... warning, once you start down the path of IO'ing out your toons, you'll find something vast and deliously complex... more so then you'll find in any other MMO i've ever seen. If you have any questions, this is the right place to ask. It's the primarly reason a lot of us are here.

With that much mitigation, the guys you are are taking out of the fight with oppressive gloom were doing less damage then you'd take running the power.

I'm in the same boat here although I don't generally skip missions, I just don't like them. But I really like the tip mission system as a fitting risk vs reward for players who like to max out their toons and play solo. Generally, the more solid your build is, the faster you can run these missions and get a valuable reward. However, missions that are just arbitrarily lengthened by mechanisms like timed ambushes, or having to wait for caltraps patches to go away before the hostage you rescued realizes they've been rescued, or bosses who spawn 6 pets and phase in and out are just annoyingly time consuming that can't be countered (much) with build strength.

In regards to "one good spider" vs "the usual suspect"... imho, the problem is that "the usual suspect" is too short... one good spider is the appropriate difficulty and time investment for something as valuable as a hero merit. I'd like to see the rest of the alignment missions brought up to that level.

I'm sorry... I gotta call ** on that one. I play on freedom, that's a high population server, and have never see stalkers avoided when a scrapper would be accepted.

I completely agree that stalkers are underpowered. I completely agree that they should be buffed. But I completely disagree that it's prevented them from getting team invites. Yeah, people look for support classes and tank classes, then just fill with damage or whatever, so stalkers are less wanted then others. But scrappers and blasters have that same issue.

Really, rather then have the temp powers awarded by class, change the mechanism to make sure all the powers get distributed to the team regardless of AT. That's more consistant with the standards the rest of the game is made to.

I agree that communication is really the bigger problem. The way TF's work in this game, there's no clear explination to the people on the team that they'e supposed to be doing something other then the normal "kill next objective". I've been the defender on the BSF that was supposed to get the temp power to stop the phasing, but nobody told me, so I just commenced my buffing/debuffing and killing. Some people were saying "use your temps" but that could mean pull out a shivan, or a few dozen other things without a clear explination. Nothing told me "the defender has to go stand in the machine and get a temp power that nobody else on the team will get or this won't be successful." Eventually I figured it out, but it took quite a bit of time and frustration.

I think with the new TF's they're adding some narration dialogue that helps a lot. But they really need to go back and add some clerity to the old TFs and SFs to explain what's going on and why.

In my opinion, the BSF is one of the better TF's in the game for content and challenge. I like how instead of giving arbitrary mission objectives, it actually gives you powers you can use to improve your fighting ability for defeating the final objective. What it lacks is communication to the full team (I've never led, so I don't know if the leader sees a good explination of the intended strategy or not), and obviously the reward needs to be adjusted upward.

Thanks.. it looks like they have a melee attack. Do they close to melee, or they prefer to stay at range?