runt9

That's one thing I've been told to do by a couple of friends. I definitely need to set up a PvP farm, and make some money that way.

Otherwise, I guess I'm doing what everyone else does (which I guess is why my niches disappear so quickly nowadays) and will keep on keeping on.

Here's the problem. You'd get to 50 and have an attack chain sort of like this:

Glue Arrow>Disruption Arrow>Acid Arrow>Oil Slick Arrow>Ignite>Full Auto>Flamethrower

That's a lot of powers just to take down a mob. Not to mention, you need to do it all VERY quickly, so that your 2 -res debuffs don't wear off by the time Oil Slick and Ignite finish killing everything. You need glue arrow to start off with, otherwise everything will run from ignite, and I don't think that oil slick will be enough to keep em there.

However, as far as good toons go, you can't go wrong with something that can do that insane amount of damage (ignite and oil slick arrow ALONE can destroy mobs, what with the both of them together ticking for over 150-200dps). Redraw will become a pain later, but it's still something you learn to live with. I'd play the toon if it weren't so busy. But if you enjoy busy toons, you'll enjoy it.

For solo-ing, I would personally just go Soul Mastery so you can run INTO the mob and Soul Drain, then hit the above chain, destroying everything. (If you could bear it, this would be a pretty decent farming toon). For teams, I'd probably just go Power Mastery, picking up Power Build Up and Temp Invuln, so that stacked with tough (and hopefully capped ranged defense), you'd be quite sturdy destroying everything from range while someone else holds the aggro for you.

Any toon that goes Ageless does not need Cardiac. I will stand by that until someone can prove me wrong. Tier 4 Ageless at its worst will provide you with enough End to keep moving through everything. This way you can take Spiritual, keeping everything on an even lower recharge (though with a good build, you could even go musculature, honestly).

Hopefully this helps.

First thing I do with fresh Praetorian alts is level pact them to a toon on primal and level the primal toon so I don't ever have to touch Praetoria again.

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Alright, let me first start off by saying that I am in no way a genius of the market. Most of my marketeering comes from buying recipes cheap in bulk (10-20 at a time), and reselling them for a huge profit (I've made as much as 10x what I paid for, making 200+mil inf in 2 days).

However, my niches have disappeared recently, as more and more people are realizing that there's no reason for recipes to be 1/10 the price of the crafted IO, and have been spending a lot more time buying recipes. This has made my money-making slightly harder now.

I'm resorting to farming my brains out in AE, which can make plenty of money, but it's not surefire. I've rolled ticket cap 3 times in a row and gotten a total of 10mil worth of stuff. (I did silver 34-39 for the first 2, then silver 30-34 for the last one). Granted, that's not normal. Most of the time I see a Kinetic Combat roll into my recipe bank, or some other IO that's going to net me 30+mil everytime I ticket cap.

The problem is, I want money. Fast. I want to be able to fill my storage base with expensive IOs, so that when my friends say "Hey, does anyone have X IO? I need it to finish my toon." Now, if that happens to be an Oblit 4-count, perfect! I've got 6 in my base right now. However, I ran through my 12 LotGs quickly as I made a couple new toons and needed to build them out. I also just used my last Numina proc, and have also used a couple more expensive IOs.

So I come to you, the brilliant money-makers of this game, for help. I have an SS/Fire Brute on both my main account and my second account. The first one has tier 3 everything incarnate. The other one is... Well, I've been too busy using him to PL 2 new toons to mess with his incarnate stuff... I can farm quickly, I can clear Fire Cyborgs pretty quickly, but that repetition gets insanely boring sometimes. I'd love to just walk up to the market, spend an hour or two a day putting stuff up, bidding on stuff, and going and enjoying other game content.

So besides finding niches and buying bulk and selling for tons more, what are some of the other ways you guys all put money in to get money out? I know a popular method is by buying and cornering certain common salvage, however that takes a long time and many different characters to achieve. I was hoping there are some other methods to achieve said influence inflow. I do realize I need to do some damn tip missions and start accumulating some hero merits to help with influence inflow, and I really have no excuse, as my main tank (Shield/Dark) could blaze through 5 tip missions in 20-25 minutes at most.

And as of right now, if I put all my inf together on all my toons, I'd have somewhere around 1.8bil (I was up over about 2.5, but I've spent a lot on toons recently and haven't made all of it back.) if that helps in deciding what would be best for me to invest in. I'd appreciate any and all help you all can give me.

OBTW, Ghost Widow bugs every so often, too. Just FYI.

Well, I was just removed from my SG today, which was a big surprise, so now I'm sort of in a rush to find a new home. I think I'm going to be looking at making a slow transition from Virtue to Champion over time...

I sent out some global invites and asked for invites into BMT and Champions United. For the record, my global name is @runt9, if anyone would like to add me. The only toon I have over on Champion right now is Random Scrapper, just so I have something over there for free. As time goes on, I'll probably begin moving toons over there. I look forward to teaming with some of you soon

I think that's all I really needed to hear. You guys are friendly, knowledgeable players that do the same sorts of things I enjoy doing as a big, close-knit community. Now I just need to get the money to transfer over 9 50's and a few alts... :P

Well, I like the idea of one big, close-knit community.

Do ya'll ever use Vent for any of your TFs, Raids, so on, so forth? It's something that I've come to use almost as a crutch just so I don't have to type everything out during play time.

If I may be so inclined to ask...

Would any of the more populated SGs be willing to give sort of a "tour" of their SG, and sort of the feel of Champion as a whole, so I can be better informed of my decision on whether to come to Champion or Freedom?

I'm not going into details, but I'm a little stuck on Virtue right now, and I've been looking at the possibility of a change of scenery recently. I've looked around at all the servers, and Freedom looks good for Farming and PvP, which are sort of not my main priorities...

I'm a big TFer, especially speed TFs. I can run ITFs all day, and I really enjoy STFs, LGTFs, Manticore, Moonfire, Hess, and Citadel as well. I'd like to find a home where I can log on just about any time of the day, get a speed TF going, have fun for a little while, go farm for a little while, level up a new toon on a casual team or PL a bit, and enjoy being with a group of people who actually understand the game.

That's the biggest point. Half the RPers on Virtue have poorly designed toons that are built for RPing and NOT for performance. There are tons of noobs who come to Virtue because it's highly populated, and they run amok and ruin many of my PuG teams. They join our SG, they make me pull my hair out trying to help them when they don't understand a word I'm saying, and then when I want to run a TF, everyone tells me they'd rather not right now cause they already did one today.

So I'm thinking about Champion because from all the reading I've done on the forums, people like Silas (who has one of the best support guides I've ever read), and *insert name of guy here* who has the signature with the 15 minute ITF, 27 minute STF, etc, populate this server. It's lower population which means the people here are elitist and know what they're doing. I'd like to investigate that. If I were to create a toon over here, join global channels, and look into some of the better SGs, would I be going to the right place?

TL;DR: I want a change of scenery. I love speed TFs and could run them all day. I also want to farm and PL on occasion and raid from time to time. I want to be around smart players who are mature and understand the game. Is Champion right for me?

After reading this, I feel quite sad that I wasted my 8 hours in Praetoria to get a SS/SD Broot to Hero Side... I've had an Elec/Fire/Fire Brute on hero side for quite some time, but it's got SO's and that's it, and I'm not sure how most people do their ambush farms, but when I do mine, I literally have to pop 4 purples everytime I'm NOT softcapped, even though I'm only taking fire damage. It also takes me about 10 minutes to clear out all of my ambushes, and even then, that nets me about 1200 tickets a run. I don't even KNOW how people are netting 1-2 million inf a MINUTE. But then again, I haven't ever tried a SS/FA... So a couple questions...

My SS/SD is at 38, and I do enjoy him, but he's an absolute end hog and I don't want to waste any money on trying to fix his endurance problem when I'd rather spend it on recharge/defense. I know he could farm Council Empire quite nicely, but aside from that, is he really that great? Would I be better off deleting him, starting a new SS/FA and PLing him up (Oh the Statesman farm... How I love thee...) and throwing money at him?

Also, what are some of the suggestions for farming your way to the money necessary to drop 10 billion on these insanely expensive builds (My IO builds generally consist of zero purples because I barely have enough for 2-3 individual purple IOs, much less 5 entire sets)

To continue... Am I wasting my time on Virtue (a completely non-farming server)? Should I be on Champion or Freedom where there's more farming SGs, and more opportunities for PLing and learning how do it The Right Way (tm)?

And in conclusion... Is SS/FA alright with Fire Blast/Fire Ball? Because it's a PITA to take em all the way villain side, do the patron arc, and bring em all the way back JUST to get mu mastery...


EDIT: More Questions...

Is it possible to make a good SS/FA Brute WITHOUT any purples?
Since inspirations drop so insanely fast solo, is it pointless to build for defense when you can just pop a couple purples and be good?
Is there anyone that would be willing to show me in-game how the ambush farms and demon farm are supposed to be done The Right Way (tm)?

Thanks for any answers and sorry for threadjacking... :P

Sorry, but nothing is better than Fulcrum'ing Statesman at +4 and letting him 1-shot mobs for you...

What too many people fail to realize is how good farming actually is for this game... And also how easy it is to "pick your farm". Go run just about any of the arcs in PI. Unai Kemmon, Tina Mac, Maria Jenkins, they all have multiple missions with big, open maps and a single or multiple blinkies that you can choose to click or not click. Do you want to fight Banished Pantheon? Warriors? Council Empire? So on and so forth. They gave us farming. They HANDED IT to us. And look at all the people that farm. What do they do?

They get crazy amounts of drops. They keep the purples somewhat affordable. Without them, there would be a TON less purples on the market, meaning inflation and supply/demand would put them near PvP IO prices! That's not even counting the thousands of pieces of salvage, as well as uncommon and rare recipes and IOs. They also get money to spend on other toons, so they'll gladly put money into the pockets of anyone who puts things on the market by buying OUR drops. And this is just those people who farm outside of the AE buildings.

Now go INTO the AE buildings... These people roll tickets into salvage and recipes, and fill the market to the brim with all sorts of the lower-level recipes that are so hard to get a hold of. They single handedly keep the Steadfast Res/+3 Def proc under 100 mil. They help regulate the economy because they're significantly increasing the supply of recipes and crafted IOs on the market.

And you want to tell me the Devs HATE farming and want it to go? They may dislike the fact that people are using farming to level people faster than they would through normal game content, yes. But you cannot deny how much farming affects EVERYTHING else in the game, except maybe TO/DO/SO prices. AE was not built for farming. It wasn't. They built it to be a new system of creativity where people can build new arcs to their heart's desire, and make these arcs so different from anything else in the game, it's like playing a new game. But when you give someone lemons, they'll find some water and sugar and make lemonade. Some people are perfectly content eating lemons all day, but some people really wanted their lemonade, and thus they began to farm. Do I agree with any of the bugged missions (monkey farm, MM farm, so on, so forth)? Oh hell no. But when people farm in AE, and it's generally SLOWER exp than you would get farming in Portal Corps, how is that bad for anything?

Even if you take farming out of the game, you still have scanners/newspapers. People can go to PI/GV with their 2 accounts, set it to +2, and farm Council repeatable missions all day. And they'll level just as fast as they would in actual farms. Ok, so you took out farming and repeatable missions. Now look at how much of the playerbase you just pissed off. The Devs are extremely smart, and extremely good at judging their money. They can leave out stuff for the basebuilders and get away with it because it's not a huge community (this is no offense to that community. Just simply stating it from how I would view it if I were a dev). But if you get rid of farming and repeatable missions, you lose more subscribers than you know what to do with. Get rid of AE? Go ahead and throw in THEIR solid community as well.

I'm sure the no DXP is either a bug or is impossible because of patrol XP* in AE, and because they know it won't piss off too many people, they have no reason to waste their time to fix it. I don't think they purposely turned it off in AE so that people can't farm, because I know that if I put my nose to it and played about 30 hours this weekend, I could have myself 3-4 toons from 1-50 in "other farms".

*The thought is that once they introduced patrol xp, it made it easier to control DXP weekends by just setting everyone's patrol xp to ON and setting the XP given for patrol xp from 50% to 100%. That's why you don't use up patrol xp during DXP weekend and probably why it doesn't work in AE because AE ignores patrol xp.

If we're talking pure survivability here on SOs alone (what the game is "balanced around"), Willpower will out-survive Shield any day of the week. That's what it's good at: Surviving. It puts you in mobs, it keeps you alive while you mutilate things. The problem comes when you begin putting IOs in these two... Then Shield begins to pull in front. Why? Well, it's simple really.

A good Elec/SD Build can get soft-capped defense, Aid Self healing 40% HP up every 8-10 seconds, and can solo +3/x8 quicker than the equivalent Elec/WP because Shield Charge and Against All Odds makes it faster. Keep in mind, the best way to increase your survivability is by leaving mobs dead around you, and no secondary for scrappers can do that faster than Shield. Period. That equivalent Willpower can slot for more recharge, maybe throw in some defense set bonuses, and you'll be looking at a well-rounded, aggro-holding, very survivable, mob destroying scrapper that looks at the shield and wonders what could have been.

Note: That above paragraph is assuming NO purples and NO Hami-O's. I could make an equivalent 1 Billion INF build for both, and the Elec/SD could out DPS and out-survive the Elec/WP Scrapper. If we introduce more and more money, Elec/SD pulls further and further away as you get to kill a mob within 10-15 seconds, and by the time you get to the next mob, Lighting Rod and Shield Charge are already recharged.

If you want something that's easier to level, easier to spend money on, easier to have fun on, and will be a general, all-around survivable build, Willpower is that toon.

If you want to kill mobs faster while you grind your way through the minimal survivability levelling to 50, then drop more money on a build than you would on a Willpower, but feel so much better after all is said and done, Shield is the way to go.

In closing:

Willpower is a strong, sturdy, all-around survivability set that will keep you standing longer and with more HP than shield ever could while your levelling and putting SO's in it. Once you get to 50 and begin weighing IO options, Shield begins to pull away from Willpower in almost every aspect.

The reason why making a Shield tanker my first 50 has spoiled me for any other defensive powerset... :'(

If you, like me, find Praetoria to be a hideous grind for the first 20 levels, I would thoroughly suggest utilizing double XP weekend to make Praetoria go by super fast. I would totally create a few Praetorians, log them off there about a week before hand, and then come back to them on the 27th and just start rocking and rolling. Since it's 2XP weekend, you'll have no problem finding teams, either. A good team and you'll be in and out of Praetoria in 2-4 hours, I'd say.

After researching, I think I have an answer to what the Coming Storm might be... Though it's all speculation...

***Major Spoiler Warning***




Hro'Dtohz claims that through his failure in the first two Rikti wars, and to save himself the embarrassment of revealing the truth about how the first two wars started to his troops and homeworld, he would rather "bring enough troops across to wipe out everything on this Earth: he is going to bring over the entire Rikti military from the Homeworld" as quoted from the Wiki. Well, after researching somemore... Mender Lazarus accidentally refers to the Coming Storm as an Invasion, before correcting himself.

But the single most important link...

"Mender Silos mentions that his past self was somehow involved in the end of the world, which spiraled into the end of the entire Universe."

Mender Silos WAS Lord Nemesis. Lord Nemesis started the Rikti Wars. Because of Lord Nemesis, Hro'Dtohz wants to wipe out Earth. The Coming Storm could very well be the final Rikti Invasion.

Just a thought...

As someone who is in the SG that started this controversy to begin with (The macros in the original post are word for word of 3 of my close friends in the SG), I think I can give the best idea of how we run things around here in relation to what you're talking about.

We use a "herding mentality" in order to get things into a rhythm and pattern, so that we steamroll things based on the exact same thing happening over and over. It's not exactly faster, per se, but it's more effective in most situations. The one thing I heard, however, is that we generally don't leave spawns before every single enemy is dead, which is supposed to be completely false, though I'd imagine a couple of our newer tanks probably don't know how to do that for speed. However, if you ever watch "drill sergeant" roll, he will generally leave whatever bosses are left after the rest of the mob melts, and the next mob is generally herded up by the time the boss dies, this all assuming that we are in a closed-in map where everything can be herded up quickly, like office buildings. However, there are always spawns that have no way of being herded up, at least not easily. In that situation, you will see the "jumping in" macro, and they swirl around in the mob a couple of times, waiting for the enemies to fall down on top of the tank as closely knit as possible, THEN the teammates rush in. This is opposed to how things work sometimes where your resident controller wants to get his/her group immobilize off quickly so they can resort to doing other Fun Stuff (tm) and end up spreading the group out too much, ruining a spawn and creating extra time. It's all a method meant for AoE-built toons, and that's why you also hear us talk a lot about not liking knockback or chaos toons, things such as energy blasters or illusion controllers.

Now, the debate rages simply because people view this method as "old and useless" for reasons relating to the aggro cap, tradition, and personal experience. However, many who criticize it have simply not seen it done in our particular way. I completely understand, and I will agree that this game is far too broad to come to a conclusion based solely off of a handful of maps, a single enemy group, etc. Let me put it in plain terms for you.

There is no way to scientifically prove that herding is or is not better than conventional mob-to-mob techniques.

"Why?" you ask?

1. The tank makes the team. If the tank is bad at doing what he's doing, the team will be slow regardless. You cannot compare someone like "Drill Sergeant" to someone that's been playing this game a week and just learned the mentality. It's all up to the skill level, and more importantly, the personal experiences of a tank. If you've been herding your whole career, you're going to be worse at mob-to-mobbing than another tank, and vice-versa.

2. The other people on the team can ruin everything. Run with a herding team that's all my SG-mates that have seen it done a million times and knows how it works. Now make it one of us as tank and the rest random PuG people who have either never seen herding before or don't believe in it. The time difference is INSANE because most of us in the SG know the herding technique and in 10 missions will never see a single macro from our leader because we know all the spots, we've seen it before, and it's easy. In PuG groups, however, the macros must be spammed to keep everyone informed, and you also have to make sure that there isn't some newer or "smarter" player jumping into mobs before you're ready, breaking the aggro, and causing problems for the rest of the team. If the rest of the people on the team aren't ready for it, aren't smart enough to comprehend, believe that his way sucks, etc etc, then you're going to skew results in more ways than 1.

3. The support toons determine speed, not the method. This is the biggest point I have. I'd say herding and mob-to-mobbing are quite equal most of the time, but it depends on your support toons. If you are running a team of all tanks, then it really doesn't matter if you have a tight herd. If you've got a team that's got Rads, Therms, Colds, debuffs galore, you want a tight mob so that everyone gets a debuff, and sometimes that just will never happen without herding. If your team is filled with blasters, you want to make damn sure your entire mob is on you, cause you don't want your squishies to die, and herding is definitely SAFER than mob-to-mobbing. Oh, and did I mention that the perfect team (something with the perfect mix of damage, debuff, and buff) can steamroll anything in both ways in probably the same amount of time, and herding is simply meant to be used as either a teaching method or a way to hit a particular rhythm and pattern to keep things methodical. Again, it doesn't matter on the method, it matters on the team.

4. Some maps will never work for herding. This is another one of the biggest points. Take caves, for example. I run ITFs all the time, and I have never herded that task force once, unless you count rounding up the generals. I jump into a mob while the last mob is still dying, circle around, get em on me, and by the time they're on top of me, my teammates have killed them, and I'm moving onto the next mob. It's the quickest way to do that task force. Period. Herding would take so much longer because there really aren't any herd spots. Now go back to random office maps or warehouses... Many times, these maps will have multiple groups in the same area, and isolating them without disturbing other mobs is crucial to minimize faceplants. What works best there at keeping the team safe, AND creating the pattern that can get people into a consistent rhythm? Herding. Again, any given map can throw the method off. Please refer to point 3 for how speed is REALLY affected...

5. Some enemy groups will never condense in mob-to-mob. Nemesis, anything from Praetoria, anything that has no melee attacks... Try jumping into a mob of them, running around in circles, spamming taunt, and watch how they will stay scattered. Now grab all of their aggro, break their line of sight, and watch them cluster around you, ready to be destroyed. Sometimes herding is just simply more practical, not faster.

I might be able to pull a few more points out of my butt, but I don't believe it's necessary. You get the point. The argument is null and void, really. It's a matter of personal opinion as to what you prefer more. I prefer herding if it's possible in the right situation, other people may prefer mob-to-mobbing. There is no answer as to what is faster because the number of factors going into it are so many that you will never complete consistent runs on a part that will represent the whole. Period. Again, it's an opinion, not a fact, and thinking otherwise is ignorant. We will continue to herd because we like it. This is a game that we all pay $15 a month for. We play it to have fun and to relax, not to get into petty arguments about who's right and who's wrong in the world. What's fun to me is herding. What's fun to other people is mob-to-mobbing. That's what matters: What's more fun to you?

That's MY 2 inf.

I disagree. I feel that regeneration can be one of the hardest scrapper secondaries to play. It's not like Willpower where you toggle up and bash face. No. You have a self heal, a +Max HP click, as well as fast healing being a click. You have to micromanage quite a bit.

I suggest Anything + Willpower, and you'll be happy and sturdy.

I would imagine what happened in this situation is they have the Dom APP instanced FROM the Controller APP, and thus when they edited the code for the Controller APP, it changed the Dom one as well, as a result, and they didn't think to check the code. I could be very very wrong, but it's likely, haha. I'd imagine next patch will fix it.

Now that I have caught up, I feel I must elaborate a bit more...

Unknown Heroes is our SG, EverStryke is the leader.

I misspoke when I made some of the assumptions I did. You guys ARE having fun by doing this. You're taking your money and trying to accomplish a common goal. I was wrong to assume you wanted to do it to piss people off. I'll admit that. We all are stupid sometimes.

Now, to address the matter at hand... As far as I'm concerned... Yes, most of the top SGs in the game have paid for some of their prestige as well as farmed for the majority of it. In Unknown Heroes, the prestige is not our focus. The rank is not our focus. It is the common side-goal amongst everyone in the SG. The reason for it being a side-goal is because the MAIN goal is to find, train, and retrain players in CoH. EverStryke plays this game to TEACH people more efficient ways to play the game. He believes there is no right and wrong way to play the game, only the efficient and the non-efficient. He doesn't believe that farming does you any good and he completely disagrees with power-levelling. We do tons of TFs, we team all the time, and there's a significantly large group of nightly Vent users. The prestige levels we produce come with the amount of time we spend just straight up playing the game. EverStryke does like seeing high prestige numbers and he does want to see us climb the ladder, but his focus is on teaching and having fun, and letting the prestige follow. I just wanted to clarify all of that.

Now, I agree. Prestige is the single worst way to classify SGs. Honestly, I don't think it should even BE a competition. Why does it matter whose e-peen is bigger? These numbers are pointless, but if it must be a competition, we must be competitive, right?

Also, I know how easy INF is to come by. I made my first billion about a week ago just playing the game. I sold my drops, I did about 250 million of marketeering over 2 months, and I found and sold ONE purple. Now, with that billion, I can turn it into 2 in a matter of a couple of days playing the purple and PvP IO market. I just don't think I can ever see myself burning it away. I like seeing that big number there, and I like being able to say "Hey man, you need some startup cash? You need some cash for your build? Oh hey, I wanna buy this purple set for my 50..." It's a good feeling.

Just know that I feel bad for criticizing you guys, I was just kinda stunned at first. I don't want to come across as any sort of jackass, mainly because I don't like making enemies. I wrote that stuff late at night when I probably shouldn't have. I can't say I look forward to seeing you succeed, but I do wish you the best of luck. Maybe this will be something for the devs to look at and ponder whether or not it's worth it to continue ranking SGs...

Well, I was trying to find a slightly-less-conventional-than-Elec/SD Brute build. I kinda want to have the ABILITY to farm on it, though I want it to be more or less a PvE monster, no matter what I do. I'm not rolling in it, so I'd rather not have any purples in the build, but as far as everything else is concerned, it's fair game. I like lots of recharge, mainly because I like seeing healing flames, burn, Lightning Rod, and Thunder Strike up as often as possible, but if there's a way to softcap it or get a hefty HP buff in the process, I'd love to see it. I played around with this one in Mids for a while, and just got frustrated as I couldn't really find a build that worked for me, so I was hoping someone, or multiple people, here would shed the light on a strong build for me.