OK, if you're interested in Force Fielding, you've probably found The Force Fielder's Bible.
I've been arguing with Philotic Knight for five years... and here's my side of the story. Call it the Satanic Bible of Force Fielding.
1. Don't Do It.
You don't want to play Force Fields. That's right, you don't. I didn't play 133 levels of FF defender because I know some grand secret, I just have a high tolerance for boredom and an appreciation of efficiency. You don't get dramatic last-minute saves. You don't get people thanking you, humbly, when you screw up and let them die and rez them. If you're doing your job right, people take you for granted. All Force Fields does is keep the team from losing, ever. Make a Rad/Sonic. It's better.
2. You ARE a buffbot.
You can provide most of the benefit of being a Force Fielder with four powers, in 25% of your time. Those four powers are: Dispersion Bubble, Deflection Field, Insulation Field, and Maneuvers (from the Leadership Pool.) If the whole team is bubbled, within the radius of the two toggles, and you are not stunned, dead, or in Personal Force Field, you have raised all of them to the Defense softcap from about level 17 on. Blasters are ten times tougher, Scrappers and Tanks are between two and ten times tougher [depending] and anyone up close has mez protection and you don't have to lift a finger beyond that. The only one on the team who is NOT a tank is you. Let me reiterate: If you do NOTHING besides keep the team bubbled and stay close to the guy on point, you are a good Force Field Defender. If you do everything else in your power and do not bubble the team, you are a bad Force Fielder.
3. Most of the rest of the set isn't much to write home about. You have a lot of knockback/repel, one enemy phase/team griefing power, one "Oh s***" and one actual damaging attack.
So why, you may ask, do I do it?
4. YOUR TEAM IS IDIOTPROOF AND INDESTRUCTIBLE. While Rad is a very good set offensively and defensively, and Dark is a very good set offensively and defensively, Force Fields has nothing to go wrong. If you put bubbles on someone, they're at least twice as hard to kill for the next 4 minutes, no matter WHAT. This includes stray Archvillain aggro, Blaster falls down a hole, you fall down a hole, unlucky mez, monster knockback, hitting the "R" key at the wrong time... everything. And if you haven't done ALL of those things, you haven't been playing very long.
5. So what do you do?
5a. Regular buffing. Playing FF isn't tricky but it's hard. If you miss a buffing cycle, people may start faceplanting very fast with no warning. So you just have to be OCD-level consistent in rebubbling. I use a digital kitchen timer and every 3 minutes, I reset it and start rebubbling. Some people use Herostats. Leave "gather" for the Empaths and drama queens. Rebubbling is your JOB and you can do it so smoothly that people don't stop shooting for a second. I use keyboard shortcuts- shift-1 gives you the top person on the team, shift-2 the second and so forth. I have 6 and 7 set to insulation and deflection shields. So my "reshield cycle" goes shift-1, 6,7,shift-2,6,7 and so forth. You get good at it fast.
5b. Relax. This is the thing that makes Force Fields different from any other Defender primary: once you've rebubbled- an eight person only takes 45 seconds- you have literally done everything you can to keep the team safe. If they STILL manage to get horribly maimed that isn't your responsibility. And trust me, even through the considerable protection you provide, someone will still manage.
5c. Don't tell people what to do; tell them why. This one was hard for me. If someone runs off away from the group, and you can't FIND them to rebubble them, don't. Just send a tell saying something like "/t $target, your shields are going down soon." If they want new shields, they can come get 'em. If they die, that was their choice and their responsibliity. I also tend to give a message when I join that says something like "For best results, keep arms, legs and tentacles inside the big bubble. Oh, by the way- it gives mez protection." Last, I tend to be the [passive-aggressive] leader of the split party. I will click on the person I believe should be leader, and say something like "Following $target". People can either come find us and live, or wander off and take their chances.
Again: You give the OPPORTUNITY for people to live forever. You're not their mother. You're not their boss. They have to keep themselves alive.
6. Quick rundown on primary powers:
Deflection, Insulation, Dispersion : Take them, slot them, use them. If you don't like these powers you will be happier playing "not force fields". You may want to 4-slot all 3 by level 17, so you can load them up with level 20 Defense IOs [put in your bid early, get 'em cheap] and defense-cap the entire team five levels early.
Force Bolt: Recommended. Force Bolt is a great power because it is accurate, reliable, single-target knockback. Knockback makes people mad and you are the only person on the team who is NOT a tank. So pick and chose your aggro. It does about zero damage, so don't slot for damage. Slot once for accuracy.
Personal Force Field: The "I escape" button. It is nearly impossible to get killed with PFF up, but you don't affect the rest of the party in any way. If you are dead, you also don't affect the rest of the party in any way. Use PFF to avoid being dead. It requires no slotting of any sort, really. Maybe recharge.
Repulsion Bomb: Recommended. Force Fielders don't do much damage, but this helps. It's a "scale 1" aoe attack that does knockdown- about the same damage as Explosive Blast or Ball Lightning or any other AOE attack. Defenders don't throw up big damage numbers anyway, but this will help a little.
Repulsion Field: Not recommended. This does AOE knockback, but no damage. All this does in my experience is focus the enemy damage tightly on the only delicate member of the team:You.
Force Bubble: Much like Repulsion Field, except it is Repel and Repulsion Field is Knockback. (Don't ask why.) Which means that nearly nobody resists it; but they keep their feet and shoot you while sliding backwards.
HONORARY MENTION: Maneuvers. This only provides around 5% Defense, but the difference between 40% and 45% Defense is, literally, 45% Defense means half the damage. I recommend it.
7. What about Force Field Controllers?
I don't play controllers, so I'm not really expert here. They get about 30% from the bubbles instead of 40%, so they're letting 2 or 3 times the damage through. On the other hand, they have things to do in combat and force fields to recast outside combat, so it might be a good combo.
8. What about soloing?
You don't want to solo. I counted, once, 54 damaging attacks to drop a Boss. That doesn't count Force bolts. It probably died of old age. It's about twice as slow to solo a FF as anything else.
9. What about teaming?
Teams good. Blasters love Force Fields like they love breathing, and for the same reason: they stay alive. So if you're OCD, and the Blasters learn to love the Force Fields, you will never want for a team. If you're building your OWN team, try to get about four blasters and one to three "anything else". Once the blasters pick up on the fact that they can drop as much damage as they like and not die? The team will have a wall of bodies about eighty feet in front and will only slow down for elevators. You can even invite yourSELF to a team, if you do it carefully. Find a blaster in the level range, and ask "Does your team have any use for a Force Fielder?" Be ready to apologize for bothering them, and by all means take no for an answer. If you don't get a "yes" in three invites, go play something else. Adam Smith says: [ QUOTE ]
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest.
[/ QUOTE ] Don't ask for a handout, offer a service. Eventually you may be on the "Friends" list of every high level blaster on the server and never have to ask strangers for a team again. It happened to me; it can happen to you.
10. Any last words?
FF isn't for everyone. In fact, it's for just about no one. If you're not having fun, play something you like better. Have fun.
11. What about Detention Field?
I can't believe you even brought that up. Detention field sucks.
(edited: point 11.)
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Well, it's about DAMN time.
Doesn't FF have 9 powers?
So I guess this means a holy war between the two side can't be far off.
Synergy Lvl 50 Def FF/Electric/Psy - Protector
Cimarron - Protector Mascot
My DA Page
Naw, he has his territory, I have mine. I don't want his "stuff", and I doubt very highly he wants mine. 
I feel like I should hand out some razor blades after reading this. Its like you HATE FF, yet you play them multiple times over and over and over and over... While I see your point about the power selection, I think you are approaching the powerset with the wrong mentality. 
To sum it up "FF sux and you will hate it, wont you join me?"
[ QUOTE ]
To sum it up "FF sux and you will hate it, wont you join me?"
[/ QUOTE ]
I think a more accurate summation is "Force Fields is an incredibly effective power set which will bore the average player to tears".
@Mindshadow
BurningChick: Fixed.
Everyone else: It's a lot less boring with, like, five Blasters on the team. Plus, I'm trying to prevent people from playing force fielders and NOT bubbling their teammates, cause it's boring and stuff. And yet, there they sit, making ME look bad. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BUBBLE YOUR TEAMMATES PLAY SOMETHING ELSE. Or I'm gonna cut you. Out of the will.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
There are a lot of people who come to the Blaster forums with questions like "How do I play a Blaster?" And they get a lot of answers that boil down to two categories:
1) Very carefully.
2) Like an absolute maniac who doesn't care about dying.
You may have started a blaster and thought, "Why, this isn't hard at all! This is EASY! What are they on about?"
You may have played it a little farther and gone, "Wait. No. This sucks!"
Basically, this is a brief guide to what Blasters can do, how they can do it, and what to expect when.
1. OVERVIEW.
Blasters have a primary that is all about damage, and a secondary that is about, allegedly, "utility." That's a lie. Almost every secondary consists of melee damage that works very well, one or two utility powers, and a bunch of things stolen from Tankers that do nothing but get you aggro at pointblank range from lots of people at once.
This leads most people to conclude that Blasters have a Primary that does damage, and a Secondary that does ... damage. I pretty much came to this conclusion several years ago and have seen no real reason to change. Other archetypes have a primary or secondary which, umm, keeps them alive... I have four level 50 Blasters, so apparently I consider this to be overrated.
2. HORRIBLE DEATH SYNDROME. As mentioned in the intro, Blasting goes from "really really easy" to "startlingly difficult" somewhere around level, say, 26. The reason for this is a matter of game design. In the low levels, everyone is about the same. Everyone does about the same damage, everyone has about the same HP, and nobody's all THAT much tougher. The only real difference is outgoing damage, at which Blasters are king. (This is why low level tanks die all the time, because they're trying to take point and they don't have the tools yet.) So enemies are designed to be slow to kill tanks, which means "slow to kill everyone."
By level 35, Scrappers are about six times tougher, and Tanks are maybe ten or fifteen times tougher, than Blasters. So if it takes an enemy group a minute to kill a Tank, it takes them about five seconds to kill a Blaster. one mississipi, two mississipi, three mississipi, four mississipi, OW.
For the first 25-ish levels, Blasters get more damage while everyone else is getting "defenses" and "mez protection" and wimpy stuff like that. They win the war of attrition by just blowing stuff up THAT FAST. Then they run out of damage... and the enemies still keep getting tougher... and other people start filling out their attacks.
On top of this, because Blasters haven't ever really had to do anything but throw damage, they usually haven't developed any other tactics than "Blow everything up RIGHT NOW."
Added to this is the team dynamic. When you are level 16 it really kinda feels like you're carrying the team. So you don't need those guys, so you don't team with them. Then, when you're starting to think "Maybe I need a team" they're all starting to think "Maybe we don't need a blaster."
It's all very sad.
3. SO WHAT DO YOU DO? First, understand your role. Your role is to shoot people until they drop. This means very different things if you're soloing or if you're on a team. When you're soloing, you want to roll out the big hitters as soon as possible, because it's not like you're going to get shot LESS if you're passive-aggressive about it. When you're on a team, you probably can't drop the entire spawn in your opening salvo. So you let someone else start the fight. There are archetypes whose entire job description is " Jump in and get shot." Let them do so. Your job description is "finish them." So you maybe start out with a couple single-target attacks while the badguys are taking their initial hits. Then you do the last half, or 75%, of the damage in a series of big, impressive explosions. Think of yourself as the cavalry. When the cavalry shows up, the fight is over. Sometimes (Inferno, for instance) you can start and finish the fight at the same time. That's perfectly valid. But if you take someone down to 25% of their hit points, and do not kill them, that's a mistake. They will blame you for some reason, and you will die.
4. HOW DO YOU DO THIS? There are several crucial powers to being a Blaster- well, I lie. There are two. Build Up and Aim. Sometimes they call it something else, like Amplify or Concentration, but they all work the same. They all last ten seconds. Build Up is a medium ToHit bonus combined with a 100% damage bonus- not "double damage" but like four red insps- and Aim is a larger ToHit bonus combined with a 65% damage bonus. In combination they give you eight seconds of 165% damage bonus- almost double damage once you have SO's. This is what lets you do things like 1-shot Sappers and, with Nova, destroy up to 16 +2 minions before they know you're there. Depending on your attack set and their level, you may be able to destroy all the minions, from full HP, with only one of these buffs (or in some cases with none.) At that point it's a much more even fight ... damn the aggro, full speed ahead. Besides, you probably have teammates to clean up that one smouldering boss.
5. SO WHY WOULD I WANT TO GET INTO MELEE RANGE, ANYWAY?
Ah yes. The "Blapper" build. (The Blaster that plays like a Scrapper, in case the name isn't obvious.) The root of this is that the Melee attacks were originally designed to be "emergency" powers, or else generally higher-risk. So they do more damage, with very low activation times. Charged Brawl hits like Power Burst. Havoc Punch hits like Sniper Blast. You can throw them both and be running back out in two and a half seconds. Remember how I mentioned wiping out the minions with your Area of Effect attacks? This is what you can use on the guys who are left. Whether you use them only in emergencies, or whether you actively seek out trouble, you have an impressive burst capability in those attacks. Fire Manipulation and Mental have actual melee AOE attacks. That means "running into the middle of a lot of guys who aren't dead yet" but sometimes, you can do that.
6. WHAT CAN I DO TO SURVIVE?
* There are builds that, at high levels, can rummage together respectable levels of defense. This doesn't help in the first 40 levels, though. I wouldn't rely on it.
* You Are Not Iron Man. You're more like James Bond. Sneak in, sneak out, run if you have to and always try to leave impressive explosions behind you, because if they shoot you, you will die. There are individual bosses in the 35+ game who can hit you for around 80% of your entire health bar with one shot. Don't let them.
* Break Frees Are Your Friend. Chemical dependency or none, you _need_ those inspirations. Yes, you can shoot some of your attacks while stunned, but that doesn't help you get away from the horrible death. Other good inspirations are purples (try taking three Lucks at a time for 60 seconds of bulletproofing) and of course greens.
* Blastersense. If you've been playing Blasters a while, you may sometimes get the feeling that "In about four seconds, I'm going to die." Listen to that feeling. Run. Run far. Do not stop. Most of the time I die it's because I turned around and came back to a situation that was bad enough to run from in the first place. And it hadn't gotten any better.
* Know Your Threats. Crey riot cops, for instance, will stun you at melee range. Rikti, on the other hand, stun you MORE at range than in melee. Not that the sword half of the gunsword is a treat either.
* You usually have SOME kind of active mitigation- mostly mezzes- in your primary or secondary. Energy blasts do a lot of knockdown. People falling down or getting up are not usually shooting at you . Elec has the lovely Tesla Cage, Sonic has a huge sleep AND a stun, the slows in Ice are surprisingly good mitigation; everything's got something. Learn who needs mezzing, and mez them. Preferable first.
* I mentioned "sneak in?" Blasters do much better at delivering alphas than receiving them. Stealth (I like the travel IO's but they're expensive; superspeed or the actual Stealth power also work) is VERY useful to a Blaster who wants to get the first shot.
* Another useful IO- I would say crucial- is some sort of knockback defense. It will cost like ten million inf with careful shopping, but it is worth it. They say that "you don't need IO's to play the game" but in this case I would disagree. Karma in something like Combat Jump or Hover, or Blessing of the Zephyr in any travel power, is the usual thing. Some people pick a power that does knockback and slot several Kinetic Crash IO's in it. If you do that make sure you either get your damage up to 95% or pick a power you can afford to do less damage in.
7. ANY MORE ADVICE ON TEAMING?
Yeah. Try to not assume that your teammates have razor-sharp reflexes and that they're reading your mind. I've played with an Empath that was so good they could keep me alive no matter what I did. I actually apologized for working them so hard and they said "No problem, it's fun!" OK, I've played with four or five Emps that good. In five years. The rest were... mixed. Take credit for your survival, and take blame when you die.
8. ANYTHING ELSE?
I'm sure I left something good out. Set up a bind for just before you nuke. Change it often. Something like this:
/bind numpad7 "say Alert the hospital. I'm going to do something cool."
9. WHAT IS THE BEST BLASTER?
The non-answer is "The one you like." Unfortunately this is true. I would recommend something with decent mitigation, which means [for me] Sonic or Ice primary, or Mental or Ice secondary. My personal favorite is Fire primary with Ice or Elec secondary, and my personal least favorites are Energy primary and Dev or Fire secondary, but that's like telling you my favorite flavor of ice cream. It only helps if you're me.
[Edited: active mitigation, point 9. ]
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
So I guess this means a holy war between the two side can't be far off.
[/ QUOTE ]Oddly enough, from my perspective, they're both saying much the same thing, but
from a different viewpoint.
Both:
* Emphasize the 3 defining bubble powers.
* Are amusingly in sync with regard to: if you don't like those 3 powers and don't
keep up on casting them, you probably shouldn't play this set - in spite of one
saying "You're NOT a buffbot" and the other saying "You ARE a buffbot" (which IS the
amusing part) 
* Appear to be in agreement about the team role and activity priorities within the team
* Seem to agree on the (meh factor) of an FF bothering with attacks, although PK does
cover some herding management concepts (that good storm/grav trollers are familiar with -
after all, it's good to have something helpful to do for the two minutes between bubble
casting)...
PK puts a lot more emphasis on the knockdown/knockback of the other powers in combat
whereas Fulmens tends to really hammer home the defining role which, rightly, IS quite
important for the player to understand if (s)he really intends to go through 50 Levels
of FF-dom.
I enjoyed both guides (re-read PK's when I read this one), but I have to say Fulmens'
did make me laugh out loud a few times (in a good, entertaining way).
Nice Work!
Regards,
4
PS> I really like the eggtimer tip, and maneuvers - good ideas both.
Edit: Hey Fulmen's, you can edit really old posts...
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
I'm not sure exactly how I stumbled upon your blaster guide here, but I must say... exceedingly well done. I like how you educate without condescending and make use of humor.
This is an excellent guide that doesn't get into specifics but gives a fantastic overall view of the play style and mind set needed to play a blaster successfully.
Well done.
Make a man a fire and keep him warm for the day, SET a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Incarnates: K'lir(Fire/Dark Corr):Hot-House Flower(Plant/Fire Dom):Kinrad X(Kin/Rad Def):Itsy-Bitsy Spider(Crab):Two Ton Tony(Mace/WP Broot):Teeny Weeny Widow(Fortunata/Widow) : Zeroth Law (Ice/Fire Tank)
Nice guides Fulmens.
I have two FF toons, a FF/Psy defender (39) and a bots/FF MM (50), and on both my first priority is always to make sure the team is bubbled. I don't view it as being a buffbot so much as just doing my job. Like you said, why play a bubbler if you don't want to bubble people.
Dunno how much experience you have with the MM version of FF, but its a little weaker than trollers and is heavier on KB effects unfortunately. For example I skipped Repulsion Bomb as a result, as it does 1.11 KB instead of 0.67 like the defender version. I figure there's no sense spreading things out since the PvE game is all about AoEs, and also because the bots tend to ignore the "follow me" command at times and run off to get into trouble. On most good teams that one attack isn't missed much, as it lets the team use their AoEs with no worries of their targets being blown away from where they want them.
I especially like using the MM as fire support for zone invasions or mothership raids. Once we get to an area I view it as my job to provide that spot as safe refuge for the squishies and as a platform for attacks to be launched from. This holds true whether its the center of the mothership or in an open area in a zone with a red or green sky overhead. Keeping the team bubbled in those lagfests is exceedingly easy and allows the team to survive and even prosper in them.
Overall I agree with just about everything in your guides here. Nicely done.
Quote:
|
Daemonchilde: ((fluffy thinks he's a tank)) Demon . Hunter: (( I think mine is >.> Daemonchilde: ((Yours is no longer fluffy, it is Obliteron, destroyer of worlds)) |
My own experience with both FF and Sonic is that they are really good sets. You keep up the buffs every 4 minutes (and run your toggle/toggles) and the remaining 3.15 minutes you'll be able to do other stuff, like using your blasts repeatedly (and those blasts generally aid the team too, for instance sonic blast lowers resist, rad lowers defense, dark lowers foe accuracy. Generally the only set that doesn't have this secondary is Archery).
So I think the FF set is a very interesting set to the person who wants to support, but also wants to do some damage and feel useful that way, even if the damage is lower than the blaster.
As for FF'er being a buff-bot? That's actually a good question and I'll say no, it is not a buffbot unless you make yourself into it. Yes, you provide buffs to the team, amazing buffs. But you also have lots of spare time that you can use to blast enemies to pieces. This means that you're not just there for the buffs, you give more to the team. The lazy FF'er may demote himself into a buffbot, since you'll have done most of your job simply by keeping the shields and toggles up, but then that is his own decision.
Hanging back to wait for the aggro to be collected before unloading when on teams is a good general rule, but most Blasters will learn when disregarding that is a viable tactic. For example, I discovered by experimentation with my AR/En/Mun Blaster that I could reliably take out white minions with Build up and Full Auto (and yellow minions that aren't particularly resistant to Lethal damage), and that doing so against a large group (like the Nemesis spawns in Peregrine Island) wouldn't be able to do more than about half my hit points while I was rooted there waving my BFG back and forth spraying lead. Given that experience, and familiarity with the relative damage output of different mobs, it lets me make the decision when I'm on a team whether it's more effective to let the Tankers/Scrappers collect the aggro or to pop Range boost, Build Up, and thin a spawn on the other side of the room. For example, with some villain groups, like Carnies, having the minions do their End-drain dance way over there instead of clustered around the Tankers and Scrappers reduces their annoyance factor significantly.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
This was going to be a guide on "making your first 20 million on the market, just so you're comfortable and not stressed" but... there are plenty of those guides already.
And while there are also some guides on "shopping without losing your shirt", it looked like there was a lot more room for this guide.
There's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt associated with the market in a lot of people's minds. Some of this is justified: there's a lot of stress in the market, a lot of pitfalls, a lot of mistakes that can cost you your whole bankroll, and a perception that ebil marketers, such as myself, are lurking and trying to get your money.
Actually, most of us are trying to get the money of billionaire farmers, but that's not the point here.
The point here is that there are about six simple things you can do to prevent yourself from getting wiped out by market mistakes, or the Ebil That Men Do.
ZERO: Leave a bid up for a while. My current sig is "If you didn't leave a bid up for 24 hours, you didn't really try to buy something." It's true. If you do nothing else, do this. Salvage, especially, goes through price spikes where something that normally costs 5-10,000 inf costs 100,000 or a million. Usually these price spikes last about ten minutes- I remember buying a piece of salvage for 50K and by the time I'd crafted my IO and come back, it was selling for 5,000 again. People put stuff up for sale all the time, and a lot of people put stuff up for 1 inf. I divide it into roughly four time periods:
A) The time it takes to put down bids on every other thing you're trying to buy for the recipe. So, like, 30 seconds. Yes, sometimes the spike will end that fast.
B) Overnight. Maybe if you play for a couple hours, you can bid when you start playing and check when you finish, but a full day is better. A lot of people dump their stuff at the end of the night, a lot buy stuff when they first log on, and you'd like to hit all the time zones. If you leave a bid for 24 hours, it doesn't matter WHEN someone decides to build 40 generic IOs and kills the supply. It doesn't matter WHEN someone comes in from the shadow shard and dumps everything for 1 inf. Someone's going to dump stuff at some point and your bid waits around so you don't have to.
C) Over a weekend. There's a lot of activity on the weekend, especially Friday night and Sunday night. People who only get to play on weekends produce MASSIVE demands, and MASSIVE supplies, and you get shortages and overstocks and prices slosh all over the place. The important thing is, again, your bid sits around watching so you don't have to.
D) Till monkeys type Shakespeare. If your bid didn't fill over a weekend, you're probably not going to get it at that price.
ONE: You can both sell stuff and buy it at Wentworth's. If you have a recipe that's "not worth anything" check the prices for the crafted IO, before you vendor it or throw it out. Also, check the amount of time it takes to sell the crafted IO- if only five sold in the last three months, you will be level 50 before it sells. I actually set prices about 20% below "normal" for the last 5 sales, so my stuff sells quicker.
TWO: Do not buy crafted Set IO's. Most of the time crafted Set IO's sell for about twice the price of the ingredients. Or half a million more, whichever is higher. This is even true if the recipe has dozens in stock, and all the ingredients are common and cheap. If you are a little dubious about crafting your own inventions, go through the tutorial in Steel Canyon/Cap Au Diable (on a new character if needed.) The crafted IO's tend to be available whenever you want them, RIGHT NOW, but you pay dearly for that convenience. If you want something weird like a level 28 Slow/Range, you could check ... there might be someone who had crafter's regret... but generally, if you look at the prices of the recipes (plus salvage, plus crafting costs) the crafted is around twice that much. Go check level 50 Crushing Impacts (don't forget to count the crafting cost!) To save a million inf, I'm gonna build it myself, thank you.
THREE: Check ALL the costs before you buy a recipe. That is the cost of the recipe itself, the cost of the salvage, and the crafting cost. Nothing like picking up a 25K yellow recipe (Air Burst: Dam/Rech comes to mind) and finding out it requires ONE MILLION INF of impervium to make it.
FOUR: You don't have to pay the flipper's sell price. You just have to pay 1 more than the flipper's buy price. Lemme find an actual example. As I write this, the price for blueside level 50 Doctored Wounds looks like this:
2,500,000
1,011,125
1,011,125
1,200,000
1,011,123
... someone has a big stack of bids sitting at 1,011,125 (or 123) and is probably reselling them at something just over 2 million.
... I just bought one for 2,100,000. 1,900,000 didn't get me the shiny.
If you want it now, you pay the 2.1 million. If you don't mind waiting, you can buy it for THEIR price. Plus one inf. So is the "price" 1,011,126 or 2,100,000? Your choice.
FIVE: Plan a couple levels ahead. If you can level, put your slots in, and you already have two IO's in your tray ready to put in those slots... it's easy and no-stress. You can do your shopping when you log on or off and you get a free Wentporter out of it.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Quality stuff Ful, although I don't expect it to have much impact on the type of folk who would most benefit from the information.
=p
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
and a quick comment:
[ QUOTE ]
As I write this, the price for blueside level 50 Doctored Wounds looks like this:
2,500,000
1,011,125
1,011,125
1,200,000
1,011,123
... someone has a big stack of bids sitting at 1,011,125 (or 123) and is probably reselling them at something just over 2 million.
[/ QUOTE ]
As an eeebil flipper, what's I suspect here is someone noticing that one guy was buying for 1,011,123 and putting in their own stack of bids at 1,001,125.
I do this all the time when I spot someone's 'niche', throw up a ten-stack of bids at their price +1 (so they know it's on purpose- *twirls mustache evilly*).
You could make a pretty good 'living' doing nothing but poking around the market for these obvious flipping niches and 'cutting in line' for a quick profit.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
[ QUOTE ]
The point here is that there are about six simple things you can do to prevent
yourself from getting wiped out by market mistakes, or the Ebil That Men Do.
[/ QUOTE ]Some very good advice in your mini-guide. Once again, Nice Work.
If I could add a just few more points, they'd be:
* Treat the last 5 sales as pricing guidelines, not gospel ... but ...
* Don't bid more than you're honestly willing to pay
* Don't list for less than you're honestly willing to accept
* Always start bidding with a low (crazy low) bid - mine happens to be 111.
You might be surprised at how often it actually works.
Regards,
4
PS> OP's points ZERO and FIVE are very important - patience and planning ftw.
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
[ QUOTE ]
Don't list for more than you're honestly willing to accept
[/ QUOTE ]
Did you mean "list for less"? Because both are good advice, but for different reasons.
To clarify for the intended audience: If you list for 1 inf, you will get the highest outstanding bid- or if nobody's bidding you get the next bid.
It is entirely possible for there to be 58 bids on a "ten million inf" item, and none of them are above 50K. Don't make the 1 inf bet unless you'd be OK selling the thing for 1 inf.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Don't list for more than you're honestly willing to accept
[/ QUOTE ]
Did you mean "list for less"? Because both are good advice, but for different reasons.
[/ QUOTE ]
Indeed, I did mean "less" for that one. Good Catch. My Bad - duly edited.
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
I actually use "How to play a blaster" now i know how to play a blaster.... on my Defender
Whining about everything since 2006.
Ammo switching for Dual Pistols was my idea:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
Frankenslotting is the process of slotting a lot of different sets in the same power to build a monster out of spare parts. The classic cookbook on this is Cap'n Canadian's. However, that's really designed more for "replacing SO slots with something that performs roughly the same way." I figured I'd start something from the ground up to show how I think and what you can acheive.
The reason for Frankenslotting is that Set IO's have two benefits: the Set Bonuses and the actual high bonuses given by the powers themselves. The set bonuses are what people mostly think of when they slot a set: slot a Positron's Blast Acc/Dam and a Positron's Dam/Rech in the same power, get a 2.5% End Recovery bonus (equivalent to 10% more bonus in Stamina.) However, Set IO's also work like miniature Hami-O's. A level 45 Generic Accuracy IO [to pick a nice neat example] gives just about a 40% Acc Bonus. A Level 45 Generic Damage IO gives the same 40% Damage Bonus. But two level 45 Acc/Damage IO's (say a Devastation and a Thunderstrike) will give 50% Accuracy and 50% Damage. Two level 45 Acc/Dam/Rech IO's will give 40% Acc, 40% Dam and 40% Recharge in two slots.
Now a Devastation Acc/Dam/Rech recipe sells for something like 20 million influence. A Ruin Acc/Dam/Rech, on the other hand, sells for more like 0.2 million influence. If you don't care about set bonuses, you can get the Ruin for a tiny fraction of the cost.
You can get a lot more from slotting for set bonuses than you can from ignoring them: the equivalent of an extra SO of Accuracy in every power, one or two SO's of Recharge in every power, extra endurance and regeneration and whatnot- but you will end up spending a tremendous amount of money, and you may not finish your dream build until long after you hit level 50.
Frankenslotting is something you can do at any level (I tend to do it around level 32), for cheap, and it makes you something like 50% more effective than slotting SO's. 50% more damage per second, 50% more damage per endurance... frankenslotting can solve almost any problem your build has.
There are some set bonuses that you get in a Frankenslotted build- by accident, usually, or because it's no more expensive than avoiding them. The only set bonuses I deliberately aim for are these:
1) Accuracy. For every character I frankenslot, I usually pay for one or two sets that give Acc bonuses (in the 4th slot, generally) . This means that I can slot "one SO of accuracy, or a little more" and still hit nearly everything I aim at in the PVE game.
2) Knockback protection. If you don't have KB protection in your build, you should fix that. Acrobatics provides very good KB protection, but it also commits you to Superjump and takes up an entire power. Steadfast Protection and Karma have individual IO's that provide mag 4 KB protection, which basically means that almost nothing knocks you back in normal play.
3) Low hanging fruit. If it's cheap, or easy, I will get a few HP bonuses (usually 3-of-a kind) and Recharge or Regen bonuses (usually 2-of-a kind.) Those are slightly useful and very easy. I also will end up with a lot of worthless spam, like "1.65% confuse resistance" or "1% debt protection". Those are accidents.
In general, Frankenslotting is less like baking and more like making a casserole. If you dump in 5% more onions or 3% less butter, nobody cares. Likewise, if you get 5% more damage [over the softcap] or 3% less End Reduction, nobody cares. For this reason, it doesn't matter so much which specific IO recipes you use, or what level. I build with the idea that "31 to 37 should be fine."
You do need to know what weaknesses you're trying to fix- are you more concerned with tightening up your attack chain? Do you keep running out of endurance? Unexpected horrible death syndrome? and then you can work from there.
Next post: the specifics.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
So for starters, you need to know what your goals are , what your budget is, and what you're trying to do.
I picked a Claws/Dark Armor scrapper at level 34 for a number of reasons:
* It has Resistance, Healing, Defense, Melee, Ranged and AOE attacks. It shows off a lot of different types of Frankenslotting.
* At level 34, you don't have remotely enough slots for everything you want to do in this build.
* Dark Armor is a huge end drain. Tremendous. This takes a lot of pressure off by letting you slot, for instance, Death Shroud for "1 acc, 3 damage, 3 endurance" or very close to it- and it does it in 5 slots.
* Level 34 is about halfway through the level-up process and slightly above where I usually do my serious Frankenslotting. If you Frankenslot around now, you can enjoy it for half the life of your character.
DISCLAIMER 1: I made some choices to show off the Frankenslotting that I wouldn't have made normally. This isn't built with an attack chain. There are things I would have slotted differently (Slash instead of Cloak of Darkness, for instance) in actual play. Do not play this literal build.
DISCLAIMER 2: I'm not using Mids' because I want to comment on each power. I've probably made some mistakes.
DISCLAIMER 3: I assume 50K for the recipe, 50K for the salvage, and around 50K for the crafting cost unless there's something expensive in there, in which case I'll mention it. Appendix 1 covers shopping techniques.
OVERVIEW: We're going with Flight for no real reason - you could just as easily throw in Jumping or Teleport (for the Nightcrawler effect) or Superspeed. Our goals are this:
-- One "global acc bonus" . As mentioned, this allows us to go a little light on Accuracy and still hit regularly. Follow Up, in the specific case, solves this... but Follow Up is not available to everyone. I did it for you!
-- 20%+ endurance reduction in nearly every attack. The rough rule of thumb is "one SO of End Reduction in one attack pays for one toggle." This isn't one SO of End Reduction, but it's a start.
-- Slash and Tough are not slotted for anything yet. I just didn't have the slots to show off EVERYTHING and those are very similar to other powers we demonstrated.
-- Dark Armor needs Knockback resistance. Instead of going with Acrobatics, we're going with a Steadfast -KB, which is one of the expensive [but very, very worth it] things in the build.
--My goal is to spend around 20 million on this build. For some powers I will put a "$$" with an option that costs a lot more but will give you some slight improvements.
-- In this build, I usually use level 34 or 36 IO's. you can go with just about anything in the 32-38 range and get essentially the same results. Buy what's cheap.
-- EXPENSIVE THINGS: Steadfast -KB in Dark Embrace (2.5 million); Scirocco's Dam/End in Death Shroud (approx 1.5 million); five Thunderstrikes (about 1.5 million); one Positron Dam/Rech (approx 2 million); one Air Burst Dam/Rech (approx 1 million.) Everything else is about 8 million, estimated, for a total cost of around 16.5 million. These prices may be different when you go shopping. The market is like that.
Name: Exemplia Gratia
Power sets: Claws/Dark Scrapper
Pools: Fitness, Flight, Fighting
LEVEL 1: Dark Embrace. 5 slots. Steadfast Protection: KB protection, Reactive Armor:Res/End [level 34], Titanium Coating: Res/End (level 36), Generic: Resistance (level 35), Impervious Skin: Res/End (level 29) . This gets you about 67% End Reduction and capped (54%-ish) Resistance.
Alternate: Replace Generic Resistance and Impervious Skin Res/End with Titanium Coating: Resistance and Titanium Coating: Res/End/Rech .Gives 1.5% more HP (set bonus), trivially less End Reduction and Resistance, and may cost more.
$$: Replace Generic: Res and Impervious Skin: Res/End with Impervium Armor: Res and Res/End . Increases End Recovery but costs a LOT more (a bare minimum of 5 million more at today's prices.)
REASONING: There's not a lot to improve on a Resist [or Defense] power. In this case we're putting the Knockback resistance in. Other than that, you want Resistance, you want End Reduction. And maybe you want set bonuses, although there's nothing spectacular here. Note the level 29 Impervious Skin: level 30 is max for the set, and that costs twice as much to craft [and often a LOT more to buy, although not in this case at this time.]
LEVEL 1: Strike. 4 slots. Focused Smite Acc/Dam (L34), Smashing Haymaker Acc/Dam (L34), Focused Smite Dam/End (L34), Generic Damage (L35).
REASONING: This gives capped damage (95.5%-ish), around 46% Acc (a bit more than a +3 SO) and around 23% End Reduction. This power is fast to recharge, so I didn't put any +Rech in there. Note that you have more than an SO of accuracy, half an SO of endurance, and three SO's of damage in your 4-slotted power.
Level 2: Slash. 1 slot.
REASONING: Limited slots. If I spent the slots, it would be Focused Smite Acc/Dam/Rech, Focused Smite Dam/End, Smashing Haymaker Dam/End/Rech, Smashing Haymaker Acc/Dam, Smashing Haymaker Dam/Rech for capped Dam, around 40% Acc, around 60% Rech and around 60% End Reduction in five slots. The recharge would be fairly well matched to Strike.
Level 4: Death Shroud. 5 slots. Multistrike Acc/Dam/End (L36), Multistrike Acc/Dam (L36), Multistrike Dam/End (L36), Cleaving Blow Dam/End (L36), Scirocco's Dervish Dam/End (L32).
REASONING: This should give around 40% accuracy, capped damage, 85% end reduction. The Scirocco's is very expensive (with careful shopping, most of that expense is the Military Cybernetic) but you need as much end reduction in Death Shroud as you can manage. Death Shroud is like having an AOE attack on auto, only it runs at the same time as all your other actual attacks. The end drain is colossal. With this slotting, it's merely painful.
Level 6: Boxing. 3 slots. Focused Smite Acc/Dam (L37), Smashing Haymaker Acc/Dam (L34), Generic Damage (35).
REASONING: 46% accuracy, about 83% damage. You never WANT to 3-slot an attack unless you have Hamidon Enhancements in there, but sometimes you have to. This is an example of doing the best you can in very limited space. Damage is not capped, and that makes me itch all over.
Level 8: Follow Up. 5 slots. Focused Smite Acc/Dam/Rech (L36), Focused Smite Acc/Dam, Focused Smite Dam/Rech (L36), Smashing Haymaker Acc/Dam (L34), Smashing Haymaker Dam/End/Rech (L34).
REASONING: About 64% Acc, 58% Rech, 18% End and capped Dam. Follow Up is a weird attack-it's almost more like Build Up than it is like an attack. It is crucial that it hit. So we slot for extra Accuracy, then "enough" Recharge (around 50% so it comfortably overlaps the 10 second duration of the buff), and then we fit in whatever damage and end red we can manage. This is one of the only times I will recommend skimping on damage "if necessary." Due to the magic of frankenslotting, it turns out not to be necessary.
Level 10: Obsidian Shield. 1 slot, level 35 generic End Reduction.
Level 12: Swift, 1 slot, level 35 generic Runspeed.
Level 14: Health, 1 slot, generic Heal .
REASONING: We don't need to slot these things much at this level. Ob. Shield is mez protection [very important] and psi resistance [almost never important, especially below level 40.] Health - two more slots is the difference between +56% Regen (0 to full in 153 seconds) and +80% Regen (0 to full in 133 seconds.) And at level 16 you get the Biggest Damn Heal In The Game.
Level 16: Dark Regeneration. 5 slots. Generic Acc (L35), four Harmonized Healing (Endurance, End/Rech, End/Heal, End/Heal/Rech) .
$$: Touch of the Nictus: Acc/End/Heal (L36), Touch of the Nictus: Acc/End/Rech (L36), Touch of the Nictus: Heal/Rech (L35), 2x Generic End Reduction (L35).
REASONING: about 36% Acc, 40% Heal, 40% Recharge, 95% End Reduction. This is another weird power. Your primary concern is Endurance Reduction: one Dark Regeneration = 34 Endurance = 3 Shockwaves. It heals about 1/3 of your HP bar per guy you hit, so in big groups you don't need Healing or Accuracy at all, really. I put in enough Acc and Heal that you _should_ get about half your HP back in melee distance of a single AV, and a little bit of Recharge because hope springs eternal. You never know, you MIGHT need it again and have the endurance to use it. The expensive version gives almost exactly the same numbers for the power itself, and a global Accuracy Bonus and a HP bonus, both of which are nice things to have.
Level 18: Focus. 5 slots. Five Thunderstrikes at level 36 or so (Acc/Dam/Rech, Acc/Dam/End, Dam/End/Rech, Dam/End, Dam/Rech) .
REASONING: 37% Acc, 95% Dam, 60% End Reduction, 60% Rech Reduction. Thunderstrike gives us the global ACC bonus we need to get from somewhere, as well as a nice End Recovery bonus. Focus is one of the crowning glories of Claws, so it's good to have a lot of everything. Shopping is crucial here because Thunderstrikes frequently vary between 100-200K and a 1+ million inf. If you're having budget troubles you can do a swap of ONE thunderstrike (losing only a travel speed bonus) as follows:
Acc/Dam/Rech: Replace with Ruin
*or*
Dam/End/Rech: Replace with Maelstrom's Fury
*or*
Dam/End or Dam/Rech: Replace with whatever's cheap.
Level 20: Stamina. 3 slots. Generic L30-35 EndMods.
L22: Hover. 1 slot. Flightspeed.
L24: Flight. 1 slot. Flightspeed.
L26: Murky Cloud. 4 slots. Except for the Steadfast, you can use the same slotting as Dark Embrace. I recommend the three Titanium Coatings and the Reactive Armor.
L28: Tough. 1 slot. When you slot this, use the same as Dark Embrace/Murky Cloud. I'd slot one Dam/End for now and only run it if I really had to.
L30: Cloak of Darkness. 4 slots. Red Fortune Def/End, Serendipity Def/End, level 29 or 30 Kismet Def/End, and a generic Defense IO. When you can get a fifth or sixth slot in here, Red Fortune has very good 4/5/6 set bonuses at reasonable prices.
L32: Shockwave. 5 slots. Detonation Acc/Dam, Air Burst Acc/Dam, Detonation Dam/Rech, Air Burst Dam/Rech, Positron Dam/Rech .
$$: Replace one Acc/Dam with a Positron Acc/Dam.
This is another power that you're probably going to want to use all the time, although I don't have any personal experience with it. The Positron Dam/Rech is going to be expensive and there's no way around it. The Air Burst Dam/Rech is also surprisingly expensive (it uses an Impervium.) With aggressive shopping you may be able to find a nearly-affordable Positron Acc/Dam; this gives a significant End Recovery bonus.
RESULTS: Compared to SO's or generic IO's, you use a lot less endurance, hit more often, have more accuracy and hit just as hard. Go forth and rip the place up.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Appendix 1: Shopping.
There's a lot of overlap with the market self-defense guide at post 16 in this very thread.
If you read nothing else, read this: You can leave a bid up overnight and collect it the next time you log on. That will save you millions.
Also, something that saves ME a lot of time is the idea of "too small to worry about." Worrying about 5000 inf on a 20 million inf build is like worrying about $5.00 on a $20,000 car. I don't personally bid less than 5000 inf for anything, because I know that what kills the budget is the million -inf items.
STEP ZERO: Gather thy ingredients. You're going to need "About five" of every common midrange salvage. That's sixty total, and you can only hold around thirty , plus thirty in your vault. You don't want to get crammed up with stuff you don't need. Some of them have thousands for sale and almost no bidders- the poster child for this is Improvised Cybernetics- while others have thousands of bids and maybe thousands for sale. Alchemical Silver typifies this one. Then there are the ones in the middle: things like Circuit Boards where there could be 500 for sale, or there could be like twenty.
Only stock up on the expensive ones (Alch Silver goes for between 50 and 100K) and the medium ones (Circuit Boards vary between 5K and 50K.)
STEP ONE: Pick two powers to change. Hopefully you either have a second build to use for this, or you have a lot of storage space in your SG. Anyway, pick two different types of powers (resistance and melee, or a hold and a ranged attack) and figure out what you need. Sometimes you can substitute something else- a Touch of Death Acc/Dam might be cheap and available, instead of the Focused Smite I always use. Make sure that the field in the upper right that normally says "For sale and bidding" is changed to "All." This lets you bid on stuff that nobody is selling OR buying right now. Then you get to be the first in line if someone wants to dump it cheap.
Plan your price point- you may WANT to buy it for 25K but be willing to go up to 50K. Try buying all the ones for sale between your chosen levels (I like 32 to 38 as I mentioned) at your chosen price. Then for your max price. If you don't buy any of those, leave bids on two or three levels AT YOUR CHOSEN PRICE. Figure out what salvage you still need to buy (probably the uncommons) and put in reasonable-to-low bids.
At this point it's a balance between impatience and greed, really. You've probably, out of eight or ten slots you're working on filling, you've probably got about four recipes that you bought on the spot. You need about six pieces of salvage for those, and a few more for the other recipes. Put in your bids and go do a radio mission, or do the dishes, or walk the dog or something. There are four periods of time in the market:
1) RIGHT NOW.
2) In the next 5-10 minutes.
3) Overnight.
4) Over the next seven days.
An amazing amount of cheap salvage moves in group 2. A lot of cheap recipes move in group 3. Most of the rest moves in group 4.
So you let the market work, just like when you put stuff up for sale and walk away. You get most of it, and you come back and some of it still hasn't been bought for your price. You maybe spend more for the last two things you need. No big deal, that's kind of normal.
STEP TWO: Pick two more powers. Start buying the stuff for them.
And so it goes.
Remember:
1) Cheap salvage comes along in the next ten minutes.
2) Bid on three or four levels of any recipe. Worst case, you get extras, craft em and sell em for a profit.
3) It's nearly always cheaper to buy the ingredients and craft. A lot cheaper. Millions cheaper. You can SOMETIMES get cheap crafted generic IO's, and SOMETIMES get cheap "unpopular" IO's (fear, snipes, stuff like that.)
Have fun! And remember: You can outfit an entire character for less than the cost of one Decimation: Dam/Rech IO. You don't have to grind for loot.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
This is sort of a general heading, because I've noticed that I write the same post over and over... and I keep saying that "I should write a guide on [x]" .
The series is planned to include:
* Force Field Defenders
* How to Be A Blaster
* Mid-Price Frankenslotting With Examples
* Making Medium Money On The Market
and probably a couple of other things as they occur to me. None of them are probably worth being full-size guides.
Without further ado, here I go: Force Field Defending.
(Edited as updated.)
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.