firespray

If you can spare 200 million inf, pay someone to take you on a 54/x8 private cave farm. If you start at level 1, you should hit 31 or 32 by the end. By that point, you'll be plenty able to keep up with your friends at level 45 or so.

I don't think that's really going to work. It would if the ATOs were all made equal, but they're not.

As has already been mentioned, the MM set is not very good. The blaster set is also sub-par. The scrapper and Brute sets on the other hand are fantastic. Because of that, demand will be much higher on the scrapper and brute sets, and much lower on the others.

Which kind of sucks by the way. Brutes get a proc that adds fury every time they attack. Scrappers get a unique that increases their crit chance across the board. Blasters get a damage proc, and not even a better-than-normal one.

My problem isn't with the concept of selling names. My problem is that the names the OP wants to sell aren't worth what he's asking for them. They're not good names, and they're certainly not worth 300 mil apiece.

I think that there is an extra salvage drop you get sometimes on the trials. I think it's either the first time you complete it or the first time you complete one of the badge requirements during the trial.

One thing that I think would really help blasters is to give them an inherent power that is actually useful and flavorful and isn't just a weak version of fury.

And fix nukes and snipes.

Personally, I think all nukes should be made ranged and have the crash removed. They'd still be on six-minute recharges, so they wouldn't be overpowered.

Without any resistance to back it up, a defense based character will not be able to handle the fire farms. I've tried it on 3 different characters (fire/sr scrapper, dark/shield scrapper, SS/shield brute). All 3 were softcapped to all positions. All 3 were purpled. All 3 had their alpha level shift. All 3 faceplanted within a few seconds. /EA might fare slightly better due to having a heal, but I doubt it will make enough of a difference.

EA ought to be pretty good on everything else, though you'll want to avoid the Minds of Mayhem trial.

You've already mentioned the best chains for fiery melee and dark melee.

I believe the best for claws is follow up > Focus > Slash

I took a break from the game for a few months recently. I was getting burned out, and just needed some time away.

I came back a couple weeks ago, and was pleased to see that there were a bunch of new incarnate trials to run.

I was slightly less pleased when I realized that people don't run them much, but it was better than nothing.

I've finally gotten a chance to check them out, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on each of them.

Keyes Island Reactor: Overall not too bad. Seems to be fairly similar to BAF and Lambda in terms of rewards, time required, and difficulty. I was pretty confused the whole time, but mostly because the leader wasn't explaining anything. I eventually figured it out though. I could see myself running this as often as BAF and Lambda.

TPN campus: Also quite confusing, and also because the leader wasn't explaining. Goes at a very breakneck pace. Very little time to take a few seconds and think about what's going on, which I don't really like that much. I don't see myself running this one all that often probably.

Minds of Mayhem: I really liked that this one had the lobby area where you could take a few seconds to plan strategies and explain what was going on in the next phase. That was a great addition. The pink patches of insta-death though were infuriating on a melee character. During the first fight with the nightmares I basically did nothing the entire fight because I couldn't get close enough to hit anything without dying. It's a terrible game mechanic, especially since there is no similar 'ranged characters get screwed over' mechanic to balance it out and let melee shine. The rest of it other than those parts was fun, but I doubt I'll run another one on any melee characters because of that.

Underground Trial: I loved this one at first. The hamidon tunnels look breathtaking, and it was enjoyable to have a trial that was more of a stand-up fight, without so much of the crazy AVs with specific ways you have to go about fighting them. A few things spoiled my enjoyment of it though. First off was the fact that you can't hand Desdemona off to someone else if she's following you. I have a fast computer and a fast internet connection, so it's not uncommon for me to be one of the very first to zone in when the trial starts. I've run 3 of these, and had Desdemona following me twice. The first one I ran, I actually got kicked off, because I was playing my scrapper, and refused to stay out of combat to keep Desdemona safe. I understand the leader not wanting her in combat where she can get killed and end the trial for everyone, but I shouldn't be forced to sit everything out because I happened to load faster than a ranged character. Second was the Olympian Guard with their ridiculous stuns. A large part of the reason I play melee so often is because I get mez protection. I hate being mezzed, there is absolutely nothing fun about it. Enemies who can stun me through my mez protection shouldn't exist in the numbers that the Olympian Guard do. The final problem came with the gimmick mechanic of many of the AVs in the trial. The whole 'don't stand in front of them or they'll insta-kill you'. The biggest problem with it is that the AV can change the direction he's facing MUCH faster than I can move in a circle to get behind him when there's 15 people and a dozen pets clustering around him beating him to a pulp. If that mechanic is going to be used, his orientation should be fixed from the time the warning goes off until he actually uses the power.

I've gotten a kick out of this thread for quite awhile now. It just got even funnier too, because I just rolled a WM/EA brute.

I'll have to see if I can talk my wife into going, but I'd like to try to make it. I haven't been to Origins since I graduated college.

DP isn't terrible, but it's not great either. The damage is average compared to other blast sets. It's in line with dark, rad, elec and such. The real problem is the animation times. The animations for the set look great, but they're REALLY long. Combine that with mediocre damage, and the set just feels weak. And you have redraw to deal with.

Ouch. Major ouch.

It happens to everyone eventually though. Maybe not quite to that degree, but everyone who plays the markets does it at one point or another.

My worst cost me like 300 million.

I've decided to give fire/time a try. Time looks quite nice on paper, hopefully it will translate into something I like in-game.

I love the idea of the new ATOs and catalysts, but as they are right now, they're a giant pain in the *** to actually use.

I bought a 12-pack and a 24-pack of super packs, and got lucky enough to get a full scrapper's strike set and 6 catalysts. I wanted to put them on my purpled fire/sr scrapper. The number of problems I ran into while trying to do so was staggering.

First off, I had claimed some of the catalysts on a different character, who is temporarily a villain. Then I found out that they can't be traded, even between characters on the same account.

The catalyzed enhancements can be traded from one character to another on the same account, so I decided I'd just send the enhancements to the character that had the catalysts then send them back to the character that wanted to slot them. Not that big a deal.

Then I found out that you can't combine enhancements with catalysts unless the enhancements are actually slotted into a power. So I used some enhancement unslotters and slotted the ATOs into the character that had the catalysts.

Then I found out you can't even use the catalysts unless you're level 50.

So now I have to wait until I get my villain to 50 so I can use the catalysts on the enhancements, then use more enhancement unslotters to get them out of his build, mail them back to the character that actually wants to use them, and slot them in.

It is absolutely ridiculous how difficult that entire process is.

Please implement any (or all) of the following improvements to make this process run more smoothly.

1. Make catalysts account bound instead of character bound. This should be easy enough to do since the catalyzed ATOs are set that way, so the code obviously exists already. This would solve nearly all the problems by itself.

2. Allow catalysts to be combined with ATOs without the ATOs being slotted. This could be considerably more difficult though, since I don't think there's a way to bring the combine screen up for non-slotted enhancements, but it's still worth at least looking into.

3. Allow non level 50 characters to combine ATOs with catalysts, but not to slot them. Might be kind of difficult to do if they can't implement issue number 2.

Honestly, just doing the first of these would solve almost all the problems.

There's not all that much left to proliferate is there?