mauk2

Yeah, if yer buddy has the purse for it, use BeefCake's build, that thing is a monster.

50 percent defense vs all, 90 percent resist vs all, and 28 mph run speed before rooted.

All with enough recharge to actually fight a little.

Yeaaaahhh......

Seeing as you asked for costumes, I hopped onto my dm/inv and put it under the knife.

Here's what ten minutes of tinkering got, nice and grim:

http://s1214.photobucket.com/albums/...hot_DM_Inv.jpg


Very simple, but I kinda like simple.

Full masks for skull, red alpha aura for the eyes.
Top is sleek tights with claws in red.
Shoulder is medieval in black and gold.
Gloves are valkyrie in black and gold.
Belt is jewel.
Pants are sleek tights.
Boots are steampunk.

Poof! Done!

How about "The Unstoppable Wimp."

Make him narrow-shouldered and kinda pudgy, about 5 foot 2, with a combover, wife beater, and ragedy-*** jeans.

And completely unkillable.

Claws/wp is basically the smoothest, easiest leveling experience there is:

You have your entire attacks chain pretty well sorted by level eight, and have close to zero endurance issues.

It's a fun, easy ride. Even better, with some work, a claw/wp can peak out at a very high level of performance indeed.

A claw/inv is not as easy, although the light-end nature of claws works well with inv. At the top end, inv can be made stunningly durable, considerably more tough than willpower. It's just a bit more work to get there.

The important thing is, have fun! Either one will do very well indeed.

It is simple reality, that by the numbers, Brutes are better.

But as I have said many times, Scrappers got STYLE.

Rock on! Rawr!

Oooh, we have an AE dude in the thread. Let's see what we got here.

Claw/elec is a lot better on a brute. And make no mistake, it's still pretty dang good on a scrapper.

But the brute hp advantage is just...huge for electric.

Now it's not as big a delta as it is for fire, by any means, but it's pretty good.

Claw/elec, brute all the way.

OK, to actually answer the OP....


http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recipe_Drop_Pools


In short, if you want to run content for Inventions, you need to access as many pools as you can, and hopefully 'good' pools.

PoolA drops of all baddies: Just kill until yer hands are tired.

PoolB is awarded upon mission complete. So get in and out fast, and complete the mission.

Pools C and D are combined now, and you get them via tix or merits. HOWEVER, you can also access C/D by killing bosses. So, you want as many bosses as possible.

In the current content, I find the best 'farming' NOT to be mindlessly running laps around the Council map, or doing demons. Doing that means you get no B drops(crap though they are). And always kill bosses, they fatten up your droprate nicely.

So what to do?

Radios. (OMG, people still do those?)

Run radio missions at +0x8, killing everything in them, as fast as you can.

Yes, it takes a considerably better farm toon than a craptastic ss/fire broot doing laps in AE. But it nets you considerably moar stuff, and that precious purple glimmer.

Ah, even a crappy purple drop still gives a lift to my heart.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm gonna cut and paste the list of the bad guy powers in this thread as well, so folks know exactly what they're facing.

One of the design goals I deliberately tried to follow was, no surprises. They all have flight, so they all have big obvious wings. A color description of their powers is right in their info box. They are (mostly) color coded, so you can easily pick out the Smokes and the Blazes and the Ragers, etc. I even gave the Blazes a bright green 'kick me' sign by adding some heals to them.

Truth in advertisement, here.

The Bel 'Ean Kree (Belles) are designed to be an 'all around' faction with scaling buffs and debuffs as the spawn size increases. They use flight to minimize pathing and the time to combat, they have improved perception on certain mobs to force rapid alphas, and they have several unusual/rare status effects to mix things up.

They have roughly equal numbers of ranged, area of effect, and melee attacks, and have smashing, negative, and fire damage types, so that if there are any weak spots in defenses or resists there is a portion of attacks that will hit them. (I threw in a little lethal to give sword users a small gain for parry, to get a little more debuff in their melee, and to lower the 'wall of stun' in their melee attacks.)

They lack completely toxic or psionic because I feel those damage types are gimp crutches. YMMV.

They have some debuffs of many different sorts. To counter toons with heavy DDR, and toons with debuffs, they also have self-buffs to many things.

They do good to excellent damage, but rarely can hit hard enough to 'one-shot' even a squishy. That said, they have a LOT of attacks and attack quickly, and with their self-buffs they can hit for well over a thousand points of damage. Approach with caution.


Ok, all the Minions are 'Vixen's."

Lieutenants are "Virago's".

The Bosses are "Fury's"


There are four types of baddies.


Blazes are fire and thermal based blaster-buffers with ranged attacks, buffs, and debuffs. They are all set to "Ranged" fighting preference and have Flight.


Blaze Vixens have the Fiery Assault Primary with Flares, Fire Breath, Fire Blast, Fiery Embrace, Consume, and Blaze. The have the Thermal Radiation secondary with Warmth, Thermal Shield, Cauterize, Thaw, and Forge.

Blaze Virago's have the Fire Blast Primary with Flares, Fire Blast, Fire Ball, Rain of Fire, Fire Breath, Aim, and Blaze. They have the Thermal Radiation secondary with Warmth, Thermal Shield, Cauterize, Thaw, Forge, and Melt Armor.

Blazing Furies have the Fire Blast primary with Flares, Fire Blast, Fire Ball, Rain of Fire, Aim, and Inferno. They have the Thermal Radiation secondary with Warmth, Thermal Shield, Cauterize, Thaw, Forge, Heat Exhaustion, and Melt Armor.



Smokes are dark/dark blaster-tanks with dark blasts and dark armor. They have hefty debuffs baked into every attack, just for extra fun. Despite their armor, they are all set to 'Ranged" fighting preference and have flight.


Smoke Vixens have the Dark Blast primary with Dark Blast, Gloom, Night Fall, Torrent, and Life Drain. They have the Dark Armor secondary with Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, Obsidian Shield, and Dark Regeneration.


Smoke Viragos have the Dark Blast primary with Dark Blast, Gloom, Dark Pit, Night Fall, Torrent, Life Drain, and Blackstar. They have the Dark Armor secondary with Death Shroud, Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, Onsidian Shield, Dark Regeneration, and Oppressive Gloom.


Smoking Furies have the Dark Blast primary with Dark Blast, Gloom, Dark Pit, Night Fall, Torrent, Life Drain, and Blackstar. The have the Dark Armor secondary with Death Shroud, Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, Obsidian Shield, Dark Regeneration, Oppressive Gloom, and Soul Transfer.





Ragers are simple, brutal combat monsters. They have a minor ranged attack and a ton of melee attacks, and all the armor in the world. They are set to "Melee Fighting" preference, and have flight.


Raging Vixens have the Super Strength primary with Jab, Punch, Haymaker, Hand Clap, Hurl, and Foot Stomp. They have the Invulnerability secondary with Resist Physical Damage, Temporary Invulnerability, Resist Elements, Unyielding, Resist Energies, and Tough Hide.


Raging Viragos have the Super Strength primary with Punch, Haymaker, Hand Clap, Knockout Blow, Rage, Hurl, and Footstomp. They have the Willpower secondary, with High Pain Tolerance, Mind Over Body, Fast Healing, Indomitable Will, Quick Recovery, and Heightened Senses.


Raging Furies have the Super Strength primary with Punch, Haymaker, Hand Clap, Knockout Blow, Rage, Hurl, and Footstomp. They have the Invulnerability secondary with Resist Physical Damage, Temporary Invulnerability, Dull Pain, Resist Elements, Unyielding, Resist Energies, Invincibility, and Tough Hide.





Sparks are a bit of an oddball collection of meleers, with more status effects and oddball abilities. Ragers get in your face, Sparks stab you in the back. They are set to Melee fighting preference, and have flight.


Sparking Vixens have the Martial Arts primary, with Thunder Kick, Shuriken, Cobra Strike, Focus Chi, Crane Kick, and Dragon's Tail. They have the Electric Armor secondary with Charged Armor, Conductive Shield, Static Shield, Grounded, and Lightning Reflexes.


Sparking Viragos have the Claws Primary, with Swipe, Strike, Slash, Spin, Followup, and Focus. They have the Electric Armor secondary, with Charged Armor, Conductive Shield, Static Shield, Grounded, and Lightning Reflexes.


Sparking Furies have the martial arts primary, with Thunder kick, Storm kick, Shuriken, Cobra Strike, Focus Chi, Crane Kick, Dragons Tail, and Eagles Claw. They have the Ninjitsu secondary, with Hide, Ninja Reflexes, Danger Sense, Kuji-In Rin, Kuji-In Sha, Smoke Flash, and Blinding Powder.


You can look up the exact specs on every power in the AE interface in-game.

Well, us gearheads in the Scrapper forum decided to build a challenge map.

I had an old team challenge map from a couple of years back. (The writing is bad, I know already, gimme a break.) Sveral people have run this already at settings I frankly am astonished at.

The bad guys in this are designed, on purpose, to be tough but not abusive. No mastermind swarms or maps full of corruptors with every power.

My question is, has anyone here got any feedback on better/smarter ways to build a 'challenge map'? IR, one to wring out a very, VERY top-end combat build in a fair and comprehensive way?

Thanks for any constructive input!

Here's the thread I started about it:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=262469

There's also some discussion in the last pages of the Rikti Pylon Thread, if anyone is interested.

Well, I guess I'll post something about this.

The Rikti Pylon Challenge has served us well for the past few years, but with the Incarnate powers it's beginning to lose some of it's luster. Bill Z Bubba, in the Rikti Pylon thread, mentioned doing something in AE to serve as a challenge.

I mentioned that I had an AE arc build as a team threat run. 209245, 'Into the Darkness.'

I honestly thought it would be considerably too difficult for solo play, until Auroxis promptly solo'ed it on a SS/Elec brute. I was surprised.

I still think we should come up with something a little better, but judging from the number of 5-star votes (thanks all you masochists!), people like 209245.



So, since nobody else is putting any ideas out there yet, here's the challenges I think would be most interesting:

All valid runs have to finish in 2 hours or less.

Finish the mission at +0x1y/y. Congrats, you're a scout.

Finish the mission at +4x2y/y. Congrats, you're a hard target.

Finish the mission at +1x8y/y. Congratulations! You're a threshing machine.

Finish the mission at +4x8y/y. You're an engine of destruction, buddy.


Now, each of the four categories test different things, and all allow 'anything goes' rules. Eat all the candy you can cram, use any temp you want, Incarnate nuke every spawn, etc, etc. The way to compete in each 'anything goes' category is to do it fast. A scout run in 29 minutes is better than a scout run in 33 minutes. An engine of destruction run in 48 minutes is better than one in 54 minutes.

Now as I see it, there's three ways to make this even tougher: Run it with no Incarnate Powers, run it with no temps or inspirations, or the ultimate, run it with no temps, no insps, and no incarnate abilities.

That should give a range of difficulties that any toon would be able to complete in at least SOME fashion, while scaling to the utterly impossible.

Or at least, I think it would be impossible, who knows

Also, I really do not really think this mission is ideal for single-target stress testing. I think we should put our collective heads together and work out a replacement/improvement on 209245, to keep the challenge fresh.

I'll post links back to this thread from the other challenge/stress threads.

What do folks think?

How does this work with Energy Aura's Energy Cloak?