Inspirations and why they are awesome.

Inspirations. You should eat them. If you learn one thing from this super short guide make it: "Eat your inspirations"... or more detailed "If your inspiration tray is full and you are shooting bad guys you are playing wrong."

Inspirations let you do awesome things. Watch the video at the bottom. Know what the inspirations do. Know what each means. Know which ones your character wants.

For example, many characters without mez protection want Break Frees. Virtually every character wants stacks of Oranges and especially Purples so they can survive ludicrous scenarios. Greens and blues should be good to have around but generally aren't something that should be eaten constantly. Yellows, reds, and awakens should be situational. Here's the list.

You can combine 3 inspirations into 1 inspiration. You can make ludicrous binds and macros to do all the combining for you. Combine your bad inspirations into good inspirations. Eat the inspirations you make like the candy addict you are (or should be). Win. Like so...

/macro P1 inspcombine enrage luck$$inspcombine insight luck$$inspcombine awaken luck$$inspcombine respite luck$$inspcombine catch_a_breath luck

Now you have a grey button that says "P1". Pressing the grey button converts any stack of 3 enrages, insights, awakens, respites, or catch a breaths into nice, new shiny purple Luck inspirations.

You can make buttons for medium oranges, break frees or whatever other inspiration. There's a text limit to how long a macro can be. It's hard to make one super big macro to make everything into purples. You might be able to get around that using text files. Maybe someone else will figure it out.

You can also delete inspirations via slash commands. I use /macro XXX inspdelete awaken$$inspdelete bounce_back$$inspdelete restoration. This let's me get rid of those pesky rez inspirations that I can't eat like an addict.

So... eat your inspirations. Use ludicrous binds to make awesome inspirations. Use the link and make your own customized binds for what you want. Win.

The ability to combine inspirations is really the most useful thing to come along in this game in a long time. I have plenty of characters that go through greens like crazy, but whose Endurance bar never moves. I have others that burn blue constantly just trying to maintain normal combat, but which never take damage. (Tankers, I'm lookin' at you) Before I would have to drop my excess in a base to pick them up on my other character. Now, I just take the blues I have in abundance and turn them into greens, and vice versa.

I personally find it useful to save Inspirations for Bosses, and for other emergencies in which you suddenly need them. Once you get past level 25, though, you should have enough room in your tray to save one of each kind of Inspiration, with room on the top row for those that you can use as you earn them. Never let your tray stay full, but I usually only use the ones in the top row until I get ready to spend my reserve.

On a team, I almost never feel the need to use my reserve, but there's no reason to go ahead and use whatever's in my top row as I get them.

If you run into something REALLY tough, nothing can get you past it like going to the store and buying up a tray of nothing but Lucks. However, keep in mind that more than four Lucks is a waste. You should be able to make do with three, two if you have good defenses of your own. Rather than spending them all at once, spread them out so you can keep the fight going if the duration isn't long enough to finish off the foe. This is the secret to taking on EBs and AVs, too.

Awakens are kind of a mixed blessing. It's nice not to come back from the hospital, but if your foes are milling over you while you're dead, the Awaken won't help you. You have two choices, either make a run for it when you see you're about to die and hope you get far enough away that your foes will walk away when they lose aggro, or hit a Break Free and then a green and blue so you can get back into the fight right away. The period between where the Awaken revives you and you hit the Break Free is the critical period, if you can get out of the stun quickly enough, you might survive, but even that's no good if you're surrounded and outnumbered. Still, I always carry Awakens and Break Frees in pairs.

Actually, if you're doing well with combining and getting good material to work with, (i.e., you are high enough level to have a large tray) it can help to spend your big Inspirations to combine into a single Restoration, and then combine all your Awakens into Respites.

I never used my Inspirations. I selfeshly hoarded them, for "an emergency". Then, when an emergency came around, I was too slow to find and use the one(s) I needed.

And then Mission Architecht came around, and THAT taught me to Use What You Got!! I was doing it for the Badges, but still, it quickly became habit. Now, I make sure I always have at least 1 slot open for Inspirations, and use whatever drops as soon as it drops, unless I know a big baddy is right around the corner. Then, I don't use anything until just before I charge. I use the ones that I think I'll need (Accuracy and Damage at the very least), and then CHARGE!!

Inspirations are your friend. Don't be a hoarder. TRUST me. No good will come of it (unless you're working on the Debt badges... >.>).

And if you wanna make a crazy long string for converting Inspirations, instead of a Bind or Macro, check out this thread for a popmenu for doing it...

Listen to your Uncle Smurphy, and Eat Those Inspirations!!

[ ProTip: The banner is a link to art refs!! | The Khellection | The HBAS Repository | Brute Guides (4/16/10) | How To Post An Image - A Quick Guide ]
Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

Yeah, we need badges to go with this.

Gourmet: You have eaten and savoured 1,000,000 delicious inspirations

I recently set up my characters with some binds to combine insps and it rocks.

I've always used F1 to F8 for different types of inspiration (eg F1 is damage, F2 is accuracy) and now have ALT+F1 to combine oranges and yellows into damage, and so on. To save space I only set it up for tier 1 and 2 insps, since the odds of accumulating three identical large insps is small enough that you can do that manually when it occurs.

One thing to remember about Breakfrees: You can take them proactively. If you know you're about to get the attention of a pack of mezzers (Rularu, Rikti, etc) sometimes it's more helpful to take one BEFORE they hold you, rather than waiting until after you're snagged.

Excellent work. The responses are longer and more informative than the guide.

I use inspirations liberally, most of the time. I do, however, keep four in my rack at all times, my Oh Crap! pile: One rez, one bf, one blue and one green. Just for those times when you need to get up and there is no other way.

Always carry at least a set of 3-4 purple inspirations. These are an excellent fallback..use them together at once and you will be able to survive ridiculous situations. A second spawn? AND an Ambush? A surprise AV? With three small purples, you are very hard to touch for a minute. With four, you are over the 'softcap' and enemies will only have a 5% chance of hitting you. That's right, 5 in a hundred. Good odds, I'd say, for 200 inf.

Oh, and stacked purples become far more powerful than any oranges, especially on squishier characters. Why? oranges are additive in their effects, but purples are multiplicative. The resistance means they will hurt you, just for a bit less. Defense makes sure that it never touches you, and enough will make their chances incredibly insignificant. (Compare 95% chance of being missed with 4 lucks to taking 60% damage with 4 sturdies.)

And, of course, you can use 4 Luck AND 4 Sturdy, so that when that 5% chance happens, and they manage to hit you, they only hit you for 60% of the damage.

[ ProTip: The banner is a link to art refs!! | The Khellection | The HBAS Repository | Brute Guides (4/16/10) | How To Post An Image - A Quick Guide ]
Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

I think we all knew Inspirations were good o.O And unignore meh in-game, fool! :'< . I got my PVP Hold set finally so now you don't need to buy meh one.

If you have no idea what all these Defense %s and resist #s mean and don't care to learn the thing you should know is...
... just eat your purples and oranges before tough fights.

SR+tray full of 20 Lucks = whole mission in godmode.

I had a softcap SR build for PvE. I noticed all the free Defense dropping from the sky. I ditched that build and went for Damage, HPs and Regen instead and never looked back.

WARNING: I bold names.

Very nice Smurphy, was just looking for this after being able to solo a lot of +1/x4 stuff on SO'ed 25-30 toons because of the insp rain. This will save me a LOT of clicking, thanks.

EDIT: Unfortunately I can't see your video. Veoh doesn't allow people in Brazil, I'm sure other countries are restricted too, so perhaps if you want everybody to view them... Youtube or something (wegame works here but I find it so slow even on a 6mb cable connection)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daemodand I had a softcap SR build for PvE. I noticed all the free Defense dropping from the sky. I ditched that build and went for Damage, HPs and Regen instead and never looked back.

Lol that's how I soloed the Shivan Ouro mission at +1/x4/bosses on a 28 fm/shield. My defense was always at like -10% because of all the debuffing. I turned off my def toggles and started popping oranges, reds and greens, piece of cake