Soul_Fane

I thought the menders were around to actually prevent people from mucking with the past, and the "flashback" was you helping them fix your own history, under the assumption that this unseen, letter writing, force was the one doing the mucking...

You bring up a good point Cat. I didn't think about that specifically.

To Nethergoat though:
your first argument, no you didn't want it. You wanted the money you were going to make off of it.

And your second argument, selling drops on the market does not directly create money, it creates supply, decreasing the value of said supply, indirectly increasing the value of currency used to purchase it.

Defeating enemies, and level 50 casual gameplay is a necessary evil. The game is fun, people want to play and get rewards for it. The money sinks are in place to counterbalance that.

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The first 'scheme' I ever worked on the market was vendoring recipes. I'd put in bids on ten stacks of level 50 IO recipes then run them to the Mutant store in Steel Canyon.

Nothing wrong with it at all, but for me the profits didn't justify the labor.

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I would like to state that, in my opinion, there is something wrong with Arbitrage, at least when it's practiced on a grand scale.

Selling (insert your item here) to the vendor removes that item from the game, an item that someone may have actually wanted. This isn't always the case, especially with slow sets and immob sets, but there is at least one Arbitrage guide that tells you to go after common IO's, which there is obvious demand for. Selling something to the vendor also creates influence in the world that wasn't there before.

Therefore, you are removing commodities from the game world, and devaluing the currency of the game world by basically printing money that didn't exist instead of getting money that already existed from another character for your commodity.

In the end though, it's only really harmful if the practice of this is on such a scale that it competes with the printing capabilities of farmers, or even casual gameplay of 50's.

*snickers* Thank you

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Champions meaning the server in CoX , right? (Sorry I'm a bit of a newb still) I thought you were meaning that ... well frankly I'm not sure I understand this at all. Sorry!

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Means he's going to give it away in costume contests or just random acts of kindness to either SG mates, or random strangers.

I personally don't approve of this, as the inflated amount of currency in the game has deflated its value, and doing things like this only deflates it more-so.

For every billionaire that has made their billions flipping, crafting and marketeering, and not farming, I salute you. Not only are you pulling currency out of the economy via crafting fees and market fees, and not putting any extra in, only dealing with what's already on the market, you're also hoarding all that money you've earned, which will very likely never all be spent entirely by you, thus taking it out of the economy as well.

The billionaires that hoard their cash and do nothing with it increase the value of the influence/infamy by the simple fact that there is less of it, which is what this economy desperately needs.

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So I picked about 2 pieces of rare, looked at the most recent transactions, and bought 10 of each, for what I thought was reasonable then placed them back on for what I saw was the highest going rate. So then I come back and...the last few transactions were selling less than what I paid!!!!!!! Damn fickle market!

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The bolded is what I would say your mistake was. Just because a particular item is going for say, 100k, doesn't mean the people that are listing their items at a 100k are selling. Usually, it's the people selling the same stuff at 86,111, or some other number.

The trick when listing your items, is to see the price you want for it, list it for under that, so yours get sold first, but above the next increment down that people will be likely to bid creep at. To use the above example, something regularly going for 100k, people searching for a deal will often bid creep 75k, 75,111, 75,555, 77,777, or even 80k, but rarely do they go beyond that before deciding 100k isn't that much more than what they were trying to get it for anyway, and plunk down the full price.

Hope that makes sense, and I hope it helps. Congratz on gaining the ambition to join the CoX billionaire club. I'm currently in the same boat, having finally broken into salvage flipping, and now the richest character I've ever had is fully IOed out and sitting on 350mil. 1 billion, here I come!

Nothing a healthy dose of confuse won't fix. My melee fortunata passed with flying colors.

Getting free radiation buffs, free pain buffs, all while watching a bunch of thugs unload a hail of lead into their leader, is a sight that makes me giddy.

They're definitely challenging mobs, and how you balance them is your decision. For the majority of the playerbase though, I'd say they're most likely too hard. Minions should not be buffers/debuffers, because you will get alot of them.

At least you avoided the prime offenses for your standard mobs. Namely, status protection, and buildup/aim. The Rollback looked like he used Active defense, as I couldn't touch him with my mezzes, but it's hardly different from an EB/AV that has PToD.

Alright, I'll give this a go. The 'less "deadly"' tag caught my eye.

First off, a slight issue with your intro text, when it says:
"the determination there you step in and make a difference."
I think you meant to say:
"the determination there to step in and make a difference."

The premise is kinda weak, not a whole lot to motivate and pull in the player, but you didn't say this was SFMA, so what the hell, let's be heroes for heroing's sake.

Before we get to the mission proper, I soloed this with my tricked out melee fortunata, which I find is suitable for testing challenging arcs. Being extremely versatile, she can handle almost any challenge, and it prevents me from getting frustrated. I played on challenge rating 4, or Unyielding for you hero types.

Mission 1: Where to begin? The mission entrance text matches my sentiment, but you never figure out why you're in a graveyard, or how exactly the "Big Bad" is going to change history.

The all Lt. cast makes for a kind of dull showing, especially since you only have two of them, and their costumes are very plain. The Creature had no description. The two big no-no's here would be the Mummy's with status protection, and the Creatures with Aim. The only way that they could have been more difficult is if they had perception and confuse resistance.

The ally, Alley Cat, was a total righteous jerk, telling me I'm not a team player, and that I need to learn how to work together. All the while he's not respecting my play style(not dying), charging into mobs and face plants in a matter of moments. Ally's on aggressive is another no-no when the surrounding villain group is meant to be challenging. The ally Florah isn't much better, being set to aggressive as well. She's plant/kin, but I'd say, "Just because you have a speed boosting ally, doesn't make your challenge balanced."

The "Big Bad" is an EB/AV with PToD(false in advertising) and two control sets as his combo. He doesn't say a word in this first mission. No taunts, no unveiling of his plan. Nothing about his aim zombies. No clues on his defeat, no clues at mission complete. I get back to Florah, the contact, and she says he escaped... huh? No mention of this is made in mission...

Mission 2: The "Big Bad" is up to his old tricks(WHAT TRICKS?). The sentence structure here gets a little repetitive:
He's up to his old tricks again,
He's trying the same thing again,
and we have to travel back in time again.

More creatures and mummies, another graveyard. And with no extra explanation, it's a defeat all. That's a no-no in almost every critic's book.

The battle with Lightning Man and Alley Cat didn't spawn correctly. I'm guessing you wanted them fighting your aim zombies when the player arrives, but instead it's just 3 Lightning men. The Batman and Robin reference falls flat, as they get owned before I get enough time to throw down confuses on the aim zombies.

Florah actually ended up being a hindrance in this mission, as she almost got me killed by preemptively attacking the "Big Bad", was made ineffective by his PToD, and was promptly owned by his numerous pets. I managed to escape and came back for round two, fairing better on my own.
Even though the end boss is the same guy from the last mission, that's still two instances of the EB/AV in the arc(false in advertising).
This was the one time I really had to use inspirations in this arc was when the "Big Bad" summons the ambush at half life in mission two. I knew what to expect, so two purples, a big orange, and mindlink did the trick with little incident.
He actually said something in this mission, about how he's going to change time(how exactly?) to obtain all the power for himself(as a means to do what?). Queue mad laughter.

In summary, if this is your idea of 'less deadly', I'm not sure what audience you're targeting. I'd say, "Not everyone is a scrapper", but I'm not sure that casual scrappers can handle this. The only way I managed this without a defeat was through liberal use of confuse, getting your critters to waste their aim on their friends, and getting your EB/AV's pets to attack him while his PToD were down.

From the looks of your link, it looks like this arc is for your SG mates. I hope they understand what's going and appreciate your story more than I did. Best of luck.

I think you're in the wrong forum if you're asking for Corruptor advice...

One other thing to remember, is that thanks to ragdoll, disembowel knocks critters out of your melee range for about half a second, and people perceive this as a pause in their activation time.

Something many people don't realize, even though it was brought up when this discussion was at it's peak a while ago.

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The extra defense also makes for good padding against defense debuffs (like romans, and they have ALOT).

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He's SR. SR laughs at defense debuffs these days. Capped DDR without even using elude at level 50.

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/SR has about 90% resist to defense, yes. With enough auto hit powers, or enough lucky streaks, it's not uncommon to get hit with 50% defense debuff or more. With 50% defense to all positions, he'll only lose 5% and still be at the soft cap.

Edit: The amount of resist and SR gets depends on your slotting. I usually skimped slots on the passives for other choices, and didn't end up with 95% resist.

Assuming all your attacks and powers are also slotted with recharge, you're not going to notice the 10% recharge either. It'll be fractions of seconds off all your powers at best.

The extra defense also makes for good padding against defense debuffs (like romans, and they have ALOT).

Don't forget using Siphon Life on a regular basis is probably some of the best damage mitigation you can have for a set like invulnerability, which is the type of set to get chipped down rather than taken out instantly.

I have my set bonuses centered around smsh/lethal and energy/neg defense. I kinda figured that energy would be 3rd, what with energy melee apparently being Geko's baby.

Resiliance used to be a toggle, and thus when it was turned into a passive before beta ended, it still costed endurance as well.

And don't forget in the old days when elude was even more useless than it is now, when it was a toggle that made it so you couldn't attack. It was basically a gimpy version of personal force field.

And sorry phydaux *wink*, didn't realize regen was still in the dev's sights.

I still remember when they nerfed Integration: "made portion(read: half) of its regen unenhancable and slightly reduced unenhancable portion of integration. (read: gutted it by slicing it in half)"

I wasn't against the change, but dang it devs, say what you mean, and don't use the words 'slight' and 'portion'.

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Okay, this thread has got me curious to how my new dark melee/invul project stacks up with the competition.

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840 to 1343 depending on the number of targets in range of Invincibility.

Your peak performance is much higher. Surrounded by 10 or more smashing/lethal enemies, you're at 4446. That's what Invulnerability gives you – tanker performance in specific situations.

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Wow. I was not expecting those numbers. Thanks Werner!

If you do put it in fast healing or health, don't forget to actually slot that power with Heal enhancers. They actually enhance the regen value of procs like regenerative tissue, and numina's convalesance.

3: I wouldn't recommend it. I have a 50 melee fort myself, and the blood widow attacks suck alot of endurance, and you already a decent number of toggles if you take all your tactical training.

I only have the leaping and fitness pools, and everything else is taken up by fortunata toys. I don't have capped defense outside of mindlink, but it's high enough for standard play, and mindlink is up often enough (with Set IO recharge) to get me through the hard parts.

Actually, Claws/regen does really well against Vahz, because of it's click defenses(heals) which work for all damage and positions, and claws being quick recharging and lethal.

I think the Vahz big hitter, their close range zombie vomit, is a cone, and thus is an AoE, which SR has no defense against at that level range. I could be wrong though.

At least you don't have typed defense. Stupid reapers and their "All toxic no lethal" crossbow bolts.

Okay, this thread has got me curious to how my new dark melee/invul project stacks up with the competition.

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Yep, my fort has both.

I'd suggest dropping aura of confusion for standard confuse. As a controllery toon with defense, you should only need it on occasion, and the quicker recharge will allow you to confuse elite bosses and AV's outside the PToD.

I went for more surgical control with my melee fortunata. With your AoE defense buffs, you help the team stay upright, and you can take powers like confuse, dominate, and scramble thoughts to disable annoying targets before they become a problem (sappers, nulifiers; confusing nulifiers is especially fun).

And psi nado rocks.

I play a melee Fortunata, and she is my favorite villain. The blood widow melee attacks are very quick, usually under a second in activation time, but take longer to recharge and cost more endurance than the claws set, so night widows and melee forts benefit heavily from set IO's and global recharge.

For a fortunata, having powers like dominate and confuse, which are almost dominator level in duration, are an incredible boon, as having less hitpoints and less defense resists than an /SR scrapper will make you feel kinda squishy at times.

It is probably the most fun ever, confusing a longbow nulifier, and having him use his -res grenade on his balista friend prior to my engaging and bringing a world of pain to them both. (confusing custom kinetics mobs with speed boost in the MA is a close second)

The NPC ally that I have join the player throughout my arch actually has a different, relevant description in every mission.

Not even my friend, who loves story elements, who I had help test and check for spelling, had forgotten to right click-&gt;info her.

One thing I'm rather confused about, is why the devs decided that the mez protection toggle on certain armors should be included for standard - extreme settings, and only included for hard - extreme on others, and only for extreme on others still.

It's my personal thought that all armor sets should only get their mez protection at the extreme level. NPC's already have innate mez protection for a reason.

I encountered a similar problem to your ally auto rescuing. If the ally in question has a damage aura, their aura will kill their captors. IIRC, Infernal has an autohit fire damage aura that doesn't display visually. (my SR gets owned by it all the time)

As for positioning within the mission, I haven't had a problem with that map placing the ally in front. Be sure to look at the mission slots on the previous page, and make sure you aren't using that front slot for something else, (that map has only one front slot that's compatible with the Ally objective).