SoilentGreen

These findings are bogus...way too many assumptions. I find the idea of someone who regularly posts in the Market section of the forums "pretending" to level a toon like they think a casual player would kind of funny...maybe with hopes of justifying their own beliefs?

I hope MM whips have the crazy range that the Balrog whip has in LotR

Do ponytails (or other hair) count as tails?

Tails...meh

Animated hair would've been better

Not sure that any of the GM's can actually outdamage each others regen. If they can, it makes for a long, long, long boring fight.

World-chagning events. And by that I mean, a severe lack of them. I've been playing since the beginning and very little has changed in terms of setting, storyline progression and an overall sense of "this is actually going somewhere". A character I roll today is about to have the same experience as just about every other one I've played in the past 5+ years. You'd think with all the super-powered forces around, things, big things, would happen every so often that change the story and the landscape of the game.

I'd like to get some advice from the 'experts' that frequent this forum. I'm looking to get a new PC on a budget and I've been looking at various outlets...and I believe I'll be purchasing from Newegg.com due to previous experience and comfort with their process.

I must admit, I know a bit about PC's, but not enough to feel comfortable relying on my own knowledge. I'm wondering if some of you could recommend a good budget system from Newegg that would fall into the $600 - $800 range? There just seem to be so many to choose from, but my only real requirement is that it fall in this budget range and that it have a setup that I can upgrade over time.

Thanks!

I would agree in terms of "raw" damage, a Scrapper will win out every time. But in reality, you have to deal with things like raduis of attack powers, recharge, secondary effects, survivbility etc. A lot also depends on the primary and secondary combos and what you want to do with your tank.

A lot of comparisons look at relative strenghts for things like TF's and farming. In my experience I've had more success farming with my SD/SS tank than I have with my SD/Fire scrapper. It may seem like a minor detail, but the huge radius of Footstomp and its frequent availability (high recharge build) along with very good single-target damage make it easier and more effective (for me) to farm with.

another plug for SD/SS/Pyre Tank.

With Rage perma'd and stacked (with a good recharge build) + Against All Odds, you can easily take down spawns of +2/x8 with your opening flurry of Footstomp, Fireball, Shield Charge, Footstomp. Sure, your damage cap isn't as high as a Scrapper, but you're running at a constant +100% - +200% to your damage, and that's pretty dang good. Once the AoE's are done, then you can just take down bosses with your KO Blow and other single-target attacks. Or if you prefer, run without bosses and just go for fast kills with Lt's and minions.

If you bump up to +3 or +4 it takes a couple of applications of the AoE "alpha", but is still quite effective.

This Tank is also great for running TF's to earn merits.

SS + SD Brute or Tank

So do I.

Striga has those spawns with explosives that hurt you and the enemies...not sure if those are in any missions, however.

Unless your fury bar is already full, consider letting the bad guys take a couple of shots at you while you do a couple of single target attacks. Then do the BU + AoE's attack chain...that will maximize your damage. Should kill all +2 minions and Lt's will either be dead or have a sliver of ife. If you're also farming bosses consider attacking them a handful of times with single target attacks and TS, then go into the AoE chain. By the time you're done you'll have TS up again and will finish them off with a few more single target hits.

Well, like I said before, pick a specialty and go with it. I'd never try to take the forms and the 3 human shields, so retoggling wouldn't be an issue.

Personally I like having the awesome range and damage combo that Nova puts out. You still get all the benefits of heals etc. from human, plus you put out a lot more damage. Also, the "shifting downtime" can be lessened by traveling (fly or run) while you shift.

BB actually had a strong population on Freedom for about a year or so. For some reason that ended right after the massive changes to PvP were made. I think it probably had something to do with a decent number of players quitting as a result of those changes.

I too was surprised to hear that they ran into anyone in BB on any server...but I actually miss those times. BB was casual fun.

I am at work so I don't have the particulars...but I'll give you what I can from memory.

My build isn't super-expensive, but it will take a bit of change to get there. In the end you'll have soft-capped defense to ranged and melee. In addition to the Shield powers, I also run Tough, Weave and CJ. The latter two provide nearly 10% defense to range/melee once they are slotted up, so that's a piece of the puzzle.

I built my ranged from bonuses from various sets:

-3 sets of Red Fortune (2.5% each to ranged). 1 each in the two shield toggles, and 1 in Weave.

-I have Gaussians 6-slotted in Build Up, and that grants another 2.5% (I think) to ranged and melee.

-I think I also slotted a full set of Mako's Bite into one of my melee attacks, which grants another 2.5% or 3% to ranged.

-I have 2 Blessing of the Zephyr in CJ, and that is another bonus to both ranged and melee, I believe.

For melee I have

-Obliteration slotted into both Shield Charge and Lightning Rod.

-I have a set of Touch of Death in another melee (maybe Havoc Punch?).

That's all I can think of from memory...probably missing something. To offset the end usage I have both a Miracle and Numina unique running in Health, as well as your standard Stamina slotting. If you have a spare slot throw in the performance shifter chance for +end.

The build is quite fun and can be very strong. You end up with a good deal of defense bonuses as well as +rech and + acc. I farm all sorts of things with it, usually at the +2/x8 level you mentioned. It's also a lot of fun on TF's. Feel free to PM me and I can get the particulars of the build to you when I'm online at home.

I wish Cosmic Balance was changed for PvP...either a much wider area for the current bonuses or a smaller bonus that applied zone-wide as long as you are on the team. Now that would be cool.

As it is right now, whether or not I'm on a team I see no difference in effectiveness because people move too quickly in and out of range. Now, if you can fight club and have your full team of 8 standing right there...then you'd see a difference.

Here is my advice, for what it's worth. I've been PvPing with my PB for 3 years and it's very different now than it used to be. I'll give you what I can from memory as I'm at work. I hope some of this is useful to you.

First of all, a note on set bonuses. If you have interest in playing in all the PvP zones and benefit from the set bonuses, you need to plan accordingly. If you want them in Bloody Bay, your enhancements need to be 28 or lower. In Siren's 33 or lower. In WB 41 or lower and RV 50...all set bonuses work. The exception are the Purple sets/PvP sets, which will work anywhere...so if you have the funds, go for it. If you know you won't ever play in BB or Siren's etc., then I'd recommend slotting higher level IOs.

With a PB in PvP I think you need to specialize. I've seen players who want to be good in all 3 forms, and while that's possible in PvE, it's not so possible in PvP. Your slots are spread too thin if you attempt to do this. You can be decent in all 3, but if you really want to compete with the other players, you need to specialize.

First of all, we'll talk about DWARF:

I'll tell you that, with the mez changes and diminishing returns, Dwarf form is no longer viable, even for slugging it out toe to toe with a Brute. I used to be able to stand toe to toe with Brutes and duke it out...even beat them a lot of the time. But Dwarf resistance was lowered from 65% or so to the mid-40s. That's a big hit. Also, the ability to TP out of trouble in Dwarf form was taken away with travel suppression, so it's not really viable anymore as an escape power. With all of that said, I would still highly recommend taking Dwarf because it has its uses.

For the form itself, I'd put 3 or 4 slots in the power, depending on your preference. Right now I have it 3 slotted with 2 Dam Res 1 -KB IO.

I'd take the heal and 5 or 6 slot it (depending on how many slots you have to dedicate). If you're building for set bonuses, you could slot this up with something like Doctored Wounds. However, I already had plenty of set bonuses, so I decided to frankenslot this heal to get the max out of the heal, recharge and endurance reduction. If you use the End/Heal/Rech from the various sets (Numina, Dr. Wounds, Miracle, Reg. Tissue etc.) you can get 97 Heal, 97 Recharge and 75 End Reduction with 6 slots. If you 5 slot it you can save a slot and your loss on those aspects will be negligible.


(By the way, when you use a tri-aspect, make sure that the enhancement is lvl 44 or below. This is kind of a tricky bit with exemplaring. If the enhancement, like a tri-aspect, is over 20% on each aspect, it will take a hit when you exemp down. If it is 20% or below, it won't change when you exemplar. You won't have to deal with this on too many sets, but on Numina and Dr. Wounds, they go to 50 so make sure you use lvl 44 or lower. Of course if you're just going to do Arena or RV, this doesn't matter).

I never attack with Dwarf any more, so no sense in slotting any of the powers beyond the single slot. However, I have one of the melee's slotted with Absolute Amazement and the AoE with Apocalypse for the set bonuses. You could 1 - 2 slot the taunt to pull someone off a teammate or reduce a targets' range, but other than being a place for bonuses, these powers go largely ignored.

One last thing. I have macros in Dwarf form that I can click to drop from Dwarf into human and instantly activate fly, another one for SS and another one for Q Fly / Phase. Same thing in Nova. This way if I'm fighting in the air, I can still use my Dwarf heal by shifting to Dwarf from human fly, hit my heal and drop back to human and fly. You only lose a few feet of altitude in the process, and get a big heal out of it.

NOVA:

Here's the basic slotting - the 2 single-target powers are 6 slotted. The 2 AoE's are 1 slotted, UNLESS you want to use them for a set for bonues or you fight MM's all the time...which really doesn't happen. I don't have anything slotted in them (other than a single IO) because I have my set bonuses elsewhere. The form is 6 slotted.

The single target attacks can be slotted like this: You can either use them for a full set and get set bonuses or you can slot them with 3 Dam/Rng Hami-O's, 2 Acc and 1 Rech. This will give you basically 150 ft. of range (unslotted snipe range, very handy), 95 Dam, 85 Acc and 42 Rech. You could drop the recharge out if you have Hasten and/or a lot of +Rech bonuses. In fact, the weaker one doesn't need it anyway since it cycles as quickly as it activates. In this case, you could put a hold or dam proc in there as well. I personally have the 3 Hami-O's, 2 Acc and 1 damage proc at the moment.

The form itself should be 5 or 6 slotted. I personally used it to put in a set of Adjusted Targetting to buff the +To Hit and get set bonuses. I have 5 of those plus 1 Fly IO. Some prefer to put more flight speed in, so I made a bit of a sacrifice to get another set bonus.

Nova does great damage from range, debuffs the opponents' defense and has pretty good flight speed. It can be a pretty quick killer, so for this reason, I chose to specialize in this form. I do most of my attacking from Nova. You do need to watch out for other fliers and webnades etc., but you have tools to get out of that with Q Fly and your Heals...or you can try to blast your way out of it.

HUMAN:

I used to use Human form quite a bit for attacking, but it just didn't cut it. I use it for set bonuses and other support powers. The one exception to this Incandescent Strike, which can do -Fly and still does good damage.

The Human form blasts aren't great. I wouldn't slot any of them. You could use one of them for a set of IOs to get bonuses. They take ranged damage or defense debuff sets, so you have a pretty good variety to choose from. Many of those sets offer good bonuses like +rech and +acc. I wouldn't slot any of these unless I was going for a set bonus or unless I was choosing to go all-human OR if I could multi-proc a power, which is also possible. I'd also skip Radiant Strike. They lowered the damage on this from previous issues and it's a melee attack, which makes it harder to use.

Like I said before, I have IS and use it form time to time. This can be used for a set (I have a set of Hecatomb in it) or you can frankenslot it. There are a lot of melee sets to choose from, so pick a set with the best bonuses for your needs, or you could frankenslot with Quad and Tri aspect enhancements to get full use out of it.

Human form seems to take a lot of end, and I don't waste power picks or slots wtih Stamina on a PvP PB...I'd only do that if I was all-human. This is another HUGE advantage to Nova attacks...you use hardly any end, so that's not a concern if you specialize in that. If you go Human, however, you'll really want to keep an eye on this.

Human form heals are another priority. 5 - 6 slot each of them in much the same way you would the Dwarf heal. If you want more set bonuses, you could place them in there (like a Dr. Wounds etc.). Another way to get them to max out recharge and heal is to frankenslot them. You could also use the 6th slot (if you are so inclined) for a Miracle or Numina unique. With a lot of set bonuses, Hasten and good slotting, you can get Essence Boost to be permanent. This will help you be a lot more survivable. Reform Essence will recharge every 15 - 20 seconds with good slotting and bonuses, so you'll have a lot of heals available to you in Human and Dwarf.

Incandesence is your lvl 1 power. You could 1 - 2 slot that and use it for -KB IOs, Dam Resistance or +Def Uniqe. I have a -KB IO in mine.

If you don't specialize in Human, don't take the shields. If you do specialize in Human, you could take the shields, but there is another alternative to consider. For 1 fewer power choice and a lot less endurance usage, you could just get and run Tough, which grants you +resistance to all in PvP. Fully slotted Tough will give you around 27% resistance to all (along with your PB inherent resistance bonus in zone PvP). Contrast that to about 35% resistance to all with all 3 shields running. Not a huge difference in my opinion. You'd save a ton of slots and have just a little bit lower survivability doing this. However, since I don't run in Human much, none of this applied to me.

Hmmm...more random slotting:

I have Combat Jumping 1-slotted as a spot for an LotG.

I have an LotG in my Combat Flight.

I have Stealth 6 slotted for a set bonus and 1 LotG.

I have a +Stealth IO in my Energy Flight. With this IO and Stealth I can run around without being seen but by stalkers and widows. I helps to reduce the incoming attacks from the others ATs.

+Perception IO in Build Up

Well, that's about it. No matter what you decide to do, have fun and don't get frustrated initially. There is a bit of a learning curve.

As a long-time vet and real-life friend of someone who started up just 2 months ago I'd say YES.

People old and new are constantly rolling new characters, so I don't think you'll have too many problems finding teams (especially in Atlas Park). I'd recommend rolling a character on Freedom or Virtue servers to get the highest population.

The learning curve isn't too steep in this game and the community is quite friendly. With the way the devs have smoothed out the XP curve later in the game it's not such a grind either. And the "loot" portion of this game is totally optional...so that shouldn't be a huge concern in the beginning.

Feel free to PM me and I'll get you my ingame global. I'd be happy to show you around and team up with you on one of my lowbies.

So many things I'd like to see tweaked...

Animations and VFX:

Hopefully, this is something that will get some attention as power customization is given to the APP's and Epic power sets. For PB's specifically I'd like to see:

-Ability to change power colors
-Alternate animations (Solar Flare to get the 2 "Footstomp" animations, IS gets the KO Blow alternate animation)
-Kheldian Aura selection...give us the ability to choose where this appears
-Selection of forms or atleast the ability to tint the forms

Powers:

-Solar Flare KD to KB
-Build Up duration needs to be increased to account for form switching. That or change it to be more like Fiery Embrace
-Photon Seekers...sigh...sure, they are "improved" now, but I'd still like to see a persistent pet like Dark Extraction, or I'd like to see the A.I. improved and the recharge time reduced.
-Human form blasts could use a bit of a buff
-Secondary effect of attacks is nice in PvP (-def) but isn't nearly as useful in PvE. I'll second the push to add some -res or something else.

I'm not sure why you would be purposely gimping yourself like that, but if you must...

Team. This is the number one thing I'd look to do. Soloing can be painful in the lower levels, but you've made it even worse by insisting on the Human-only option. Human Form is do-able with the team link bonuses. Outside of that, you're bordering on defender-level damage and very few support tools...not a recipe for success in my opinion.

18 will help a bit with a high-damage hold, and, as mentioned before, Stygian Circle will be a game-changer in terms of healing and end recovery.

If you're running in human and running out of end I'm assuming you're using the shields. I'm not sure that pre-SO those are worth running vs. the amount of end they are consuming. Consider shutting them off most of the time if not entirely.

Stock up on and use inspirations liberally.

Final note...I get running human-only for concept or even respeccing into one in the later levels. But once you get Nova on a Kheldian you can practically PL yourself fighitng large spawns of even-level or -1 enemies. Good luck on your human-only quest!

There are a number of options that have been mentioned, but here are my current favorites red-side if you're farming for drops and inf (in no particular order):

*Paper misssions with Council. Council are an easy target and your Fire/Fire brute should have the requisite resistance/healing and damage output to run through a map of +2/x8 with no problems. The bonus to his is the mission complete bonus which gives you a little extra cash. The only downside is the occassional choice of missions that doesn't include Council as one of the options.

*If you haven't done any of the RWZ missions yet, Levantera has 2 good missions in her arc that are quite farmable. You get her as your first contact just for going in there. You'll do a series of errands before you get any actual good missions from her, but it only takes about 5 mins. to knock those out. Farming Rikti is rewarding, they drop a little more XP and Inf than other factions...of course, this also depends on how tough you've built your Brute and if you can take the energy and S/L damage that you'll be receiving from Rikti. There is a mission about 2 or 3 into Levantera's arc on a burning forest map. This gives you large groups spawned close together in a convenient set up. The end-mission on this is a 'kill named boss' so just be careful not to kill him and you can repeat this again and again. If you do, there is an outdoor industrial map that has you kill 3 bombs and 3 captives in order to complete. The setup isn't quite as convenient, but it has a ton of Rikti on it and has a number of good corners to herd multiple spawns to.

*TV farm is always a classic with the Nemesis on Dreck's map...I always get annoyed at the multiple firings of Veng, so not really my favorite.

*Finally there is the AE - no you won't get drops outside of Influence and tickets, but the tickets can be cashed in for some decent things...TF recipes or rare salvage. Best part is you can fight against factions that would be weak to your fire or things that your highly resist, like fire.