Merits or the AE? That 'tis the question.

Mighty Gurus of the Market & Inventions Forum!

I have just today reached level 50 on my first hero. He is strong, yet incomplete. Therefore I ask of you, what is the best way to acquire the necessary goods/influence for said goods to make him the best that he can be? He is quite capable of defeating +0x8 (and possibly greater) spawns on his own. Having learned much from this Forum, it seems that two options are open to me. The first of these options is to run Task Forces and acquire Merits (whereby I sell such drops as I might acquire), and then trade in my Merits for random rolls from the level 35-39 bracket. The other option is to farm the AE and trade in my tickets for the same drops from the same bracket. Which of these options, or which of any other option, will give the best "bang for my buck"?

QR: Both.

either one will work great.

I don't have the time for TFs so I farm tickets.
Cap a map in 10-30 minutes depending on who I'm playing, roll bronze 35-39, delete the junk and craft the good stuff.
It's a living!

AE tickets beats reward merits hands down. It isn't even close.

Barring good purple drops during level 50 TFs, there's no way a merit farmer can compete with someone who can make dozens (hundreds?) of bronze rolls in the same period of time.

I will say however that if you like teaming, getting merits via TFs is probably more fun than steamrolling patsies on the same city block map over and over again.

You might well want to do both. The other thing you might consider is whether you only want your "mega toon" to work at 50, if you want to exemp, you're much better pegging another toon at a lower level and obtaining your recipes at say level 33.

The other thing you might want to consider is if you're generating stuff at level 50 and then selling it to buy lower level recipes, is that some things (Gaussian's rech/end being the one that comes to mind) just never seem to turn up at levels other than 50, so you might have to merit buy them directly.

For pure cash generation tickets is better, and if you're going to simply buy level 50 pool Cs it's probably all you need to do, but if you're slotting lower level IOs, you probably want a mix of merits and tickets.

And I suspect the toon makes a difference.

Farming AE is a different play experience than farming a SF.
Merit farming tends to be about getting to the objective, hit it and quit it.
AE farming is a kill-all proposition.

Merit farming works with some sort of sneakiness, the ability to travel well, and burst damage to take out a boss and/or minion group, with only the occasional kill-all.
AE farming is a straight out grind. No traveling, not sneakiness, and DoT is more valuable to the grind than to the SF farmer.

That said, there're some SFs with a large volume of mobs that could be farmed, for purpls while doing a SF for merits. But it stops being SF/merit farming if you're not running it as fast as you can.

Some toons are more suitable to one type of play over another.
Also, never forget the fun/sec ratio. That's THE most important one.

If I had more play time I'd mix it up and do both. As Fury notes, mowing the same massive spawns on the same city map can get tedious if that's your whole diet. But profits are high enough and the time investment (given a relatively efficient character) is low enough that I can pop in when I have some spare time, cap a map, roll bronze and get out.

If I get lucky and have another block of free time later, I do whatever- run story arcs, mess around with the character creator, fiddle with the market, maybe join a PUG if I get a likely invite.

The sheer efficiency of the MA/bronze roll combination leaves you a lot of 'free time' to do whatever else strikes your fancy.

Someone claimed once (I don't know if it's true) that once you cap on tickets, you can finish the mission by clicking glowie and then run it up to the ticket cap again.

Probably worth checking out if you're taking that approach to things.

That doesn't work in my experience. Once I click the glowie I get the "You have reached the maximum tickets for this map" message.

I recently discovered, or was told, a AE mish that I find fun to solo. I think it's 271212 off the top of my head and was made by Cyvert as a high level scrapper test. It rocks. Each black and white Leut triggers an ambush. Bad craziness.

Tickets are a side effect, but because of this I discovered what you guys have been talking about all along. Previously I would get burned over and over on merits, and thus changed to just buying LotG7.5s instead.

BTW, try that. It's very fun. Oddly enough, I suggested it with a medium low level team and we wiped horribly.

I run it +0/x8.

Generally I don't AE after level 46 because of the obscure possibility of getting purple IO recipe drops. I prefer to use Ouroboros for level 45-50 arcs to get merits and keep the purple possibility alive.

So...I have the standard IO f/k build, any good suggestions on AE mishs to farm purples i.e. dev choices, etc...? Don't mind the BM and Council dance, just wanted to mix in other stuffs.

Thanks.

If I'm playing just to play, any arc that doesn't stink will do.

If I'm looking to be efficient, I've never been let down by my sooper secret technique:

searching 'ticket farm'.

=D