Sir_Lionheart

More of a general question, I know, but I figured /SR and other Def-based scraps would know.

A friend and I, Fire/Kin troller and Fire/SR scrap, were in the "Save Panther 952" somesuch Tip mission at +2/x8 and we were getting wiped out repeatedly. I am soft-capped to all positions, but was getting hit repeatedly, which surprised me. I assume it was the Bosses and maybe Lt's doing the damage, so I was curious.

Granted, we could have played smarter, but I guess we were too cocky in the beginning, and once all the ambush groups had spawned, it was difficult to maneuver when we re-zoned. Especially with all the damned smoke.

As a fellow noob marketeer, I get pretty jazzed now by these threads. I started dabbling in the market in late July/Aug, but got derailed by work and GR. I got back into it on 9/18 with my own experiment to see how much I could make just from buying/selling on the market, with no other sources of income (though my toon did start with 60M). I haven't taken any screenies, but am keeping a log on an Excel spreadsheet, which is a pain to do, but useful as a reference tool.

I don't have my sheet with me, but iirc, as of 9/22, I made about 468M in total profit. I am shooting for my first 1B profit by month end. Not sure how that's going to go… I started pretty strong out of the gate (it was a weekend), but my sales slowed down quite a bit so far this week. Here's hoping for another busy weekend.

Thanks for the replies. I was leaning towards Soul Mastery for defensive/survival purposes, and think I'll go that route.

Rolled a DM/FA Brute in Praetoria to play Blueside. I am planning out the build now, and am looking for suggestions as to which Epic pool would be more beneficial, Soul Mastery or Pyre Mastery?

My highest Red toon is 40, so I have zero experience with the Patron pools. Soul Mastery looks attractive mainly for Darkest Night, which seems like it would help survivability. This is big for me as I'm a little worried that my toon might be a bit squishy. Tentacles should help keep the mobs together in the debuff, and also in range of Burn and Blazing Aura.

I have Pyre Mastery on a level 50 Fire/SS Tank, which is fun, but I don't know how big a factor things like AT damage modifiers, perma-Rage vs. Soul Drain, and Fury will play into performance.

I haven't been been to the market lately because what little gametime I had in recent weeks I've been spending in Praetoria or running Tips missions. The last time I looked was a few days or maybe even a week after GR launch, and activity seemed very low. I know that the market was reset for the merge, and that a lot of players would be distracted by GR liek me, so I never really bothered to check in. Just curious if the market activity has normalized.

Really, it depends on how Def or Res you have, and I suppose on what your fighting. But as the game is right now, high Def is favored over Res. It is impossible or extremely difficult to cap Res other than to your set's specialty, or if you use a Tier 9. On the other hand, it's possible to soft-cap Def on many toons.

Soft-capped Defense, or close, with some DDR, is far superior to whatever Res you can get on your own. I generally find the effects of RNG to be very manageable with some Regen bonuses. There may be scary moments when you go red, but if you don't panic, you can usually regen back to green. However, things can get dicey if you're up against strong Def Debuffs or ToHit buffs, which requires alternative strategy like pulling or kiting.

However, at Def values of 30% or less, with no other active forms of mitigation, toons feel pretty squishy to me.

Has anyone played this combo?

I'm trying this mainly for ccharacter concept reasons. I like SR because it's easy to softcap Def and I like the extra movement speed. I have several SR Scrappers that I enjoy, so I basically know what to expect, and plan on playing this toon more like a Scrap, zipping around from target to target, rather than a Tank.

I am a little concerned about a few things. I'll probably have lower HP than other Brutes, and with no heals, this may be problematic for use of Energy Transfer. And having never tried SR on a Brute, and EM's poor AoE ability, I'm not sure how fast Fury will build.

Last question… in order to for a Blue AT to access the Patron pools, I would have to go Red to get the Patron arc, then switch again if I want to return to Blue side?

I'll probably go with the Scrapper, because I probably don't want to deal with that.

I am considering rolling a DM/FA Hero to try out the FA changes, but haven't decided on a Scrap or cross-over Brute, and I'm basically weighing the Scrapper's up-front Damage vs. the Brute's HP, as well as Scrapper Blaze Mastery vs. Brute Soul Mastery.

What makes the decision difficult for me is FA's lack of inherent Defense, and the fact that I will not likely get very close to soft-cap, so I'm wary of the squishiness factor. I have tried this combo as a Scrap, up to high 20s, but deleted it to make room for other alts. From what I remember, it was a bit squishy so I'm leaning towards Brute, but wanted to gather some input. Would the additional HP make a noticeable increase in survivability, given that the set has no inherent Defense?

As for the Epics, I think Tenebrous Tentacles would be more useful now with the Burn and FE buffs, and Darkest Night would help survivability. I am interested in Blaze Mastery for straight up damage, particularly Fireball.

I think I read somewhere that in order for Blue AT's to access Patron arcs, they need to switch sides and do the Patron arcs, and then can come back to Blue. Can someone confirm?

Haven't been able to log in to the game the last two days, so I haven't been able to check anything out.

Probably a stupid idea, but if there is still a question about FA not doing enough damage to offset its squishiness, how game-breaking would it be to add small amounts of Damage to Fire Shield and Plasma Shields? I mean, you are still on fire when you use them, yet they don't burn, which seems a little odd.

Might be seeing a few more back ingame, as I hear FA got a few little buffs. I'll be dusting my Fire/SS/Pyre off after GR.

I stopped playing him a while back mainly because I felt other Primaries were much better to Tank with. I tended to play my FA/SS like a Scranker. Which is fine, but I eventually gravitated to sturdier alts when I wanted to Tank, or one of my Scraps if I wanted to scrap.

If fear will be removed from Burn, it should make more fun to play.

[QUOTE=Cyber_naut;3114792]Actually, concept-wise, I don't see why SR and nin get kb protection, they don't strike me as 'sturdy'. Concept wise they would avoid kb by dodging blows, but if a blow connected, they should get knocked around.

QUOTE]

Not disagreeing with you, but if "Acrobatics" somehow gives KB protection (I never got that), I guess it's not a far stretch for SR and Nin to get it, too. Maybe they are getting knocked around, but always landing on their feet.

Thank you. I was mainly concerned about the team aspect. The SG base thing would have just been a nice bonus.

Just a few q's about the Flashback system:

1a) When completing an arc, does the team get merit rewards or just the mish holder? IIRC, on the regular mission arcs, only the mish holder gets merits.

1b) If only the mish holder gets the reward, will team members be able to click the same arc and auto complete as we go along?

2) Does doing the arcs from SG base give 2x merit rewards?

Thank sin adbvance.

Got it, thanks.

Thanks for the helpful hints. While I plan to be more active in the market, I'm not going be hardcore… I basically just designated a little used alt to be a market toon, to buy/craft recipes, then sell offline I play other alts. Not really planning on running a lot of AE mishes or creating a SG base.

She started with 67M on hand, and is now sitting on 189M, plus 80-90M in listed inventory (but as I said, not moving). I will probably re-list half just to free up market slots. I'll take a hit on those items, but I will still end with a net profit.

Here's something I forgot to ask last time: with merging markets coming in GR, I would assume that there will be an initial spike in overall demand, and ensuing shortages (I don't play Redside a lot, but I hear the BM's stock is a lot leaner than WW's). I guess it might be a good idea to build stockpile on some common IO's and salvage?

I know that Health/HP regenerates at certain time intervals or ticks, but I had always thought that these ticks were constant, i.e. everyone heals at the same interval, with Regen boosting the % of health healed per tick.

Someone told me that the ticks are actually variable, based on the Regeneration rate, and that the constant is 5% of total Health that is healed per tick. Thus Regen would decrease the length of the ticks. Is this correct?

As implied in the title, I'm a market noob. I have only used it to sell drops that I didn't want or to buy IO's that I wanted to slot on the spot, and since I'm an instant gratification type, I tended to overpay and undersell for the quick turnaround. I never really had the patience to study the market and try to use it to turn a profit.

Last Friday, I stumbled across a market guide (Fury Flechette's, I believe) while searching on other topics, and the principles were easy to follow, plus it had a couple of examples to start with. So I decided to give it a shot, and designated an alt as my "market toon". Following the guide, I made almost 120M from Sat to Tues morning just from crafting/selling,which I'm sure is small potatoes to experienced marketeers, but I was pleased.

The small downside is that I went through a bit of trial and error trying to gauge market demand, resulting in a bunch of unsold inventory. I probably did not factor in the weekend price fluctuations accurately. So my questions are:

1) Should I just wait to see if they move at my listed prices? And if so how long should I wait? Or just get rid of them at reduced prices, taking a loss on those items?

2) Generally speaking, is it better to craft a recipe for an IO that is in lower supply but has a fewer bidders (but still more bids than supply), or one that has many more bidders, but is in higher supply. Is there a certain number/ratio I should look for?

3) Since I'm a beginner, I've stuck to relatively inexpensive recipes/IO's (selling in the 10M-15M range). Is it worth gambling on buying/crafting some big-ticket items, or should I wait and see if get lucky on drops?

Thanks in advance.