Phalanx Fighting

Hello all,

Got my elec/shield scrapper to level 24 and just wondering if I should take Phalanx Fighting? Looked at the tanker's guide to shield and it said that it could be useful as long as I am teaming with many melee, but nonetheless, it DOES come with a base 5% defense increase...

Just wondering your views on it?

Or

Should I start digging into the Fighting Pool to eventually get Tough and Weave?

Thanks for any pointers.

Well for a Scarpper it gives +3.75%, or around there. I think it is a very good thing to have it only takes one power and you get good defense from it. People pay 2 bill for the +3 PVP IO so taking one power for more defense is better to me. It is also a great place for the LoTG +7.5 too.

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It's a passive power that grants +Defense to you.

Take it, put a +7.5% LotG IO in it and go!

Yeah, you can't increase the Defense it gives you, but it still gives a good chunk of Defense to you.

I got 2 LotG on mine for the xtra 10% regen. But it could also be the diff between 42% def and 45% to soft cap.

You can also stick a kismet +6% to hit in the power

Yea take like love it just think about it it is like having an extra +3% defense IO

i prefer the Kismet unique in PF since the def enhancement value seldom comes into play, not to mention i have five better places to use the LotG +7.5% global recharge

Thank you all very much for taking time to respond!

I'm not incredibly wealthy... is the LotG terribly expensive?

Well and the teammate defense bit is affected by enhancements, yeah? Could be quite nice if you can get people to stay close. Just get a /kin, and they'll yell at anyone who isn't nicely grouped up

Yep.... Fury is right... about 100 to 150 million...for the RECIPE. Eep!

I must be doing something wrong... because I think maybe COMBINED all my toons have 125 million influence. To pay that much just for ONE of my toons to have a 7.5% global recharge rate... baffles me.

But it's on my end... because it's certainly a powerful IO and in VERY high demand obviously.

A good level 50 farmer brings in over 25 million per hour, probably more than 50 on average selling drops. You can make a whole lot playing the market. You can farm merits or tickets. Lots of ways to make influence, and a lot of people that enjoy at least one of those ways. So there are a lot of rich people out there, all competing for the same short supply of the good IOs.

Werner, I have no doubt about that! I admire some players and the SPEED with which they farm. I just don't think I'm a good farmer with regards to that. LOL. But perhaps I need to join a few farming teams just to at least see how it goes. For me, I guess I get bored too easily (always been a flaw!) so farming doesn't do much for me. I'm not criticizing those who farm, mind you --- I just wish I had their patience, I reckon!

Eryq, when you say "get them" by doing TFs, do you mean recipes? Or merits? I was under the impression that we gain merits by completing TFs and with THOSE we can purchase recipes? Am I wrong?

I've gotten into the habit of merit crafting lotgs at lvl 25 for basically all my toons. With a shield scrap you should have more then enough powers to slot 5 lotg procs in. They may be expensive to buy off of the market, but if you plan on playing the toon a lot just run tfs and story arcs while leveling the character and save up the merits.

Aside from lotgs, a good tip to make some nice inf is to save up 240 merits, use them to merit craft a lvl 20 miracle proc, craft it, then sell it. Can net ya 150-300mil, depending on the market at the time.

Blue side merits are very easy to come by.

Hey Tamaki, thanks for the input.

Seems like I need to look more into doing TFs and story arcs for merits... and just learn more about the merit system in general.

Appreciate your advice!

Yeah, I don't have any farmers either (all of my Scrappers are mostly single-target), but I DO sort of just zone out and kill, and don't much care if the scenery changes, so I could easily be a solo farmer if I had a toon designed for it. My best farmer right now is my Katana/Dark, who "farms" at about 1/3 the speed of a good farmer. But my Fire/Shield is 46 now, and I'm considering an all-swords concept build, which as a side effect would be quite good for farming. It won't surprise me if I turn into a farmer in the near future.

But yeah, lots of ways to skin the influence cat. Task forces and arcs are quite rewarding I hear, so that may work out well for you. And even if you just play the game normally, if you do it on a level 50, the influence comes rolling in. Not at farming speeds, sure, but pretty darn fast. I purpled out my namesake by simply playing the basic game on him - no farming, no marketeering, no merits, not even task forces (I mostly solo). Yeah, it took a long time, but I was having fun, so it didn't bother me.

I am rather confused as to how this power works, and my Search-fu brought me to this thread... Here's what I'm unclear about:

Phalanx Fighting yields 3.75% base defense (unenhancable), with a 2.25% bonus (enhanchable) for each teammate within range, correct? With 0 teammates in range (i.e. solo), does it still give the base 3.75% defense, or does that only occur once there is at least 1 teammate in range?

Awesome. That was my understanding.


Thanks!

With Phalanx Fighting I think it is very important for folks to keep in mind that the radius for a teammate adding to your defense is very small. For my shield toons, I never consider that bonus will ever apply, and I'm happier for it.

Thematically, this makes sense, I suppose, but really, how often do you find yourself shoulder to shoulder with a teammate? Not often, if you're on teams that work anything like the ones I play on...

I tend to have a fairly sporadic schedule due to work/kids/life so merit farming through TF's doesn't fit in for me. I love AE though and will do a couple runs a night through some player created missions. Once I get a couple thousand tickets I'll do the random 10-14 bronze recipe rolls. I just delete the junk but craft the good ones and usually end up with a Steadfast Unique, a couple KB protction recipes, the odd kismet 6%er, maybe an Erad 4 banger or a Regen unique. I'll generally make 20-50 million a run, easy peasy.