Endurance.

Ultimo_,

Good to see you can be a reed in the wind.

First, I recommend re-reading the other threads you started on endurance issues. They really are full of good information to help you with end problems. For the first 10 pages at least...

Next, I highly recommend reading Fulmens guide to frankenslotting.

Finally, I recommend reading a few marketing guides. Like you, my goal is to play the game, not market. However, being able to recognize, and take advantage of a few marketing rules have allowed me to seriously IO a few toons with very little marketing effort/time.

If you are truly interested in getting your toon slotted up, do the homework, and learn a bit about the market. I will give you 150 mill. More than enough to frankenslot out at least 2 toons. Or you can use it to make more infl. and kit out all your toons. Just be prepared I may ask a few marketing questions before I hand over the influence.

Ultimo_,

As a huge fan of solo'ing FF characters, let me give you some advice from my perspective:

When soloing with SO's or their equivalent, your personal defenses are less valuable than soft control. With force fields and energy blast you can keep a single mob very well controlled by knocking it around, and with dispersion bubble you don't have to particularly be worried about incoming mezzes.

So turn off most of the toggles until you have more tools to manage endurance (probably through IO's).

Also mobs regenerate just like heroes and villains. So repeatedly using 1 single attack gives the mob time in between attacks to regen some of the damage back.

Have a modest string of attacks you cycle over and over again. Slot them heavy on damage (get more value for each point of endurance that way) and accuracy (making sure you actually get the value) with remaining slots going to endurance management. Attacks from pools are *generally* less efficient than your primary or secondary, so stick to the primary or secondary pools for attacks. Snipes are also often questionably efficient, so never use them after the first attack.

Taking a character whose primary powers have an emphasis on group play and playing them in a solo environment is a greater challenge than taking a character whose powers are solo/group agnostic, but the rewards are often there. FF/NRG for instance is an absolute beast when it's equipped with proper IOs. Thunderstrikes are exceptional since they synergize well with their positional defense bonuses. Sets or IO's with endurance recovery also make a huge difference and frankenslotting at the very least will dramatically increase your power through an increase in the efficiency of your slots.

Finally while you may not love the market aspect of the game, making a point of dropping by the market at the end of each play session and listing everything for 1inf is a proven money maker that doesn't require much time. Characters will end up with literally hundreds of millions of inf in the journey from 1 to 50 using just that process. The market forums are full of people who are willing to explain much more sophisticated methods of using the market, but for minimal time invested the 1inf method is very effective. You're even helping out your fellow players by increasing the supply of items they need!

Hope that had something that might help,

You know.. I heard you complain about endurance issues on other threads and I suspected you had no idea whatsoever how to build a character.

This just confirms that for me.

Sometimes, the most helpful thing someone can tell you is that you don't know what you're doing, and that this is your problem. Your problem is not that the game makes it too hard to get enough endurance, it's that your mental model of how the different enhancements interact to produce combat results is wrong. Until you fix that, you'll find the game much harder than it needs to be.

This has nothing to do with nice or mean, or being a "dick". It's just the information that is necessary in order for you to progress towards never running out of endurance except when there's sappers around.

I didn't read the whole thread.

I will start off by saying that I appreciate your frustration. Force Field is a very difficult set to play at higher levels in my experience without consulting help from other forum posters. My FF/Ice is constantly out of endurance due to the low damage of his attacks, and his shields are much better at keeping team mates alive than him. Folks who haven't tried to succeed with one of these characters probably don't understand just how difficult it can be.

I'm not sure this is really what you're looking for folks to do, but I built you a new spec to shoot for.

To start, I want you to take note of 2 critical places you can spend a couple of million and make your build shine like a new baby: Dispersion Bubble and Weave. You see, if you 6 slot these powers with the only moderately expensive Red Fortune set, you net ridiculously awesome defense from the power itself, and +2% damage, +5 recharge, and an additional +2.5 ranged defense! You simply cannot pass this up on a set like Force Field that has so many other places to slip Luck of the Gamblers. I feel this should be your next purchase. You will feel the difference immediately.

Next, reconsider your APP. Specifically, what you want to think about are the Villain PPPs. Why? Because what you're really good is making people invincible, and it turns out the PPPs offer you a pet to do just that. And since as a +Defense set you're really good at getting extra recharge, with time you'll be able to drop the recharge time on the pet to something extremely reasonable. And with a pet running around attacking, you'll save some endurance.

I selected the Soul Mastery PPP for this build example. It offers a Fortunata pet (with knockback of her own), a Resistance based shield to minimize what damage does get past your Defense, Soul Drain to boost your offenses, and POWER BOOST. Power Boost will allow you to nearly soft cap your pet when you cast a shield on her (or a player character), even when she's OUTSIDE your big bubble (she's already capped when she's inside it). It will also cause your bubble toggle to go into overdrive mode, capping you to everything with room to spare for 15 seconds. Feeling threatened? Hit Power Boost, and you're practically inside a PFF.

Now, in terms of acquiring the pieces you need for your build, you will need to take some time. I always shoot for the cheapest pieces first. In this case, that will be the Red Fortune set most likely, and possibly Positron's Blast. Go to Steel Canyon to buy the recipes and supplies and craft them there. If you can't find a piece immediately, don't panic and overpay. Place a bid and wait. The epic builds you see walking around don't happen overnight. They take time.

To make money to fund your future purchases, I recommend finding or building a simple AE map with an enemy you can defeat (Axis Americans are a good one to try). Earn 300 or 400 tickets, then go to the reward guy and do random rolls. For starting out, random bronze class rolls in the 35-39 range seem to do pretty well. Carry your random recipes to the auction house, and find out the prices of the crafted enhancements. For any selling for more than about 3 million (if yellow) or 5 -6 million (if orange), buy the components you need and craft the enhancement. Put the enhancement on the auction block at around the price they've been selling at or a little higher. Then be patient. It usually takes about a week for my sales to turn around (it mostly happens over weekends) but it does happen. And it only takes a few good sales in the 40 mil range to really get your finances cranking. Meanwhile, run Task Forces and Hero missions to build up merits for the Luck of the Gamblers you will want.

Here is the build. Note that it's defnitely not perfect and may even have some glaring errors. It's late here (early really) but hopefully this is a good start. Also note that when you get to 50, if you take the Spiritual alpha route you can crank the recharge down on the pet so that it becomes close to perma. This also makes Aim come back faster as well as Soul Drain. You will notice extreme improvements in performance if you take this route, IMO.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.90
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Ultimo Stage 1: Level 50 Magic Defender
Primary Power Set: Force Field
Secondary Power Set: Energy Blast
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Flight
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Deflection Shield -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(3), DefBuff-I(3)
Level 1: Power Bolt -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(5), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(5), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(9), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(9)
Level 2: Power Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(40), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(40), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42)
Level 4: Energy Torrent -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(11), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(31), Posi-Dmg/Rng(33), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34)
Level 6: Insulation Shield -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(7), DefBuff-I(7)
Level 8: Personal Force Field -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Ksmt-ToHit+(11)
Level 10: Power Burst -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(36), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(36), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37)
Level 12: Dispersion Bubble -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(13), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(13), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(15), RedFtn-EndRdx(15), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(17)
Level 14: Maneuvers -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def(19), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(33), RedFtn-EndRdx(33), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(34)
Level 16: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(17), RechRdx-I(19)
Level 18: Repulsion Field -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 20: Aim -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(21), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(21), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(23), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(23), GSFC-Build%(31)
Level 22: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 24: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(25), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(25)
Level 26: Weave -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(27), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(27), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(29), RedFtn-Def(29), RedFtn-EndRdx(31)
Level 28: Repulsion Bomb -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dam%(37), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(45), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46)
Level 30: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(43)
Level 32: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Explosive Blast -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(39), Posi-Dam%(39), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39)
Level 38: Hover -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A)
Level 41: Soul Drain -- AdjTgt-ToHit(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(42), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(42), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(43), AdjTgt-Rchg(45)
Level 44: Power Boost -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 47: Summon Mistress -- ExRmnt-Acc/Rchg(A), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg(48), ExRmnt-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(48), ExRmnt-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), RechRdx-I(50), ExRmnt-Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Dark Embrace -- TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(45), EndMod-I(46)
------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 13.5% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 13.5% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 4.25% Defense(Smashing)
• 4.25% Defense(Lethal)
• 4.25% Defense(Fire)
• 4.25% Defense(Cold)
• 8% Defense(Energy)
• 8% Defense(Negative)
• 3% Defense(Psionic)
• 5.5% Defense(Melee)
• 13% Defense(Ranged)
• 5.5% Defense(AoE)
• 6.75% Max End
• 81.25% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 36% Enhancement(Accuracy)
• 10% FlySpeed
• 53.41 HP (5.252%) HitPoints
• 10% JumpHeight
• 10% JumpSpeed
• MezResist(Confused) 2.5%
• MezResist(Held) 2.5%
• MezResist(Immobilize) 17.35%
• MezResist(Sleep) 2.5%
• MezResist(Stun) 2.5%
• MezResist(Terrorized) 2.5%
• 10% (0.167 End/sec) Recovery
• 30% (1.274 HP/sec) Regeneration
• 8.505% Resistance(Fire)
• 8.505% Resistance(Cold)
• 1.26% Resistance(Energy)
• 1.26% Resistance(Negative)
• 10% RunSpeed

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Oh, I didn't read that you weren't yet 50. Well, frankenslot for now, but start looking toward the build I posted as you approach end game. Note that it will require you to do a temporary switch to villainhood, but in the case of a bubbler who wants more solo action, crime definitely pays!

Still reading this thread, but can I suggest that the people try to avoid being dickish? Ultimo's really trying to learn something here, and that's something that should be fostered.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

In response to my pal Talen's impassioned plea, I'll offer this tidbit of wealthbuilding advice:

you don't need to 'use' the market in any meaningful way to make a massive pile of loot. if you play, you'll generate drops. if you list all of those drops on the market for 1/2 to 3/4ths the "going rate" you'll sell them all and make a mint doing it.

And any sort of alternative currency you accumulate (merits, tickets, amerits, what have you) can be cashed in for recipes that are worth quite a bit on the market.

Last suggestion- for those who don't mind fouling their hands with the grime of honest labor, crafting a recipe can often generate genuinely ridiculous profits.

Another thing to remember is that any time you get a recipe where the only things you need to craft it are uncommon and common pieces of salvage, you can almost always sell that recipe, crafted, for a million inf. Almost every damn time. Even stuff you'd never buy, like slow sets.

If you're really cautious about how long they'll take to sell, gleemail them to an alt and have the alt do the selling. It's unbelievable how consistantly this works.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Ultimo, would you do me a favor? I'd like you to try a build with power bolt, power blast, and power burst. Slot all three with one accuracy, three damage, and two endurance reduction. Six slots. I won't bother with commenting on everything else as long as you have dispursion and stamina slotted as they are.

Have no more than these toggles running: hover (with an endurance reduction please), dispursion bubble, & combat jumping. Maneuvers is optional, but for these purposes do not run maneuvers and weave.

Use no offensive powers other than the following: power bolt, power blast, power burst, and force bolt (when needed). Sniper blast is an optional exception only if it is slotted as previously mentioned. Do not use any melee attacks. Use your powers to keep the foe out of melee.

I think using your character's 2nd build to do this would be reasonable as I understand you are typically hesitant to alter builds in such a fasion, though I do whole heartedly suggest nothing less than 6-slotted attacks at your level.

Under those conditions, retry your encounter. IOs may be used, but SOs are sufficient (I won't tell you to get rid of your thunderstrikes). I guarantee you will have better survivability and damage with those conditions, and am quite seriously willing to monitor any battle against a single enemy that still provides problems.

I know many have said this before, but my inner forcefield defender cries at your epochal struggle with endurance. I am posting this while I am too drowsy to be obnoxious.

One more thing: I have mentioned avoiding melee. While you may reject this out of playstyle preference or for thematic reasons, humour us for the purposes of this discussion. To properly observe mechanical limitations, thematic limitations must be put aside.

I'll admit. I didn't read the entire thread. Maybe someone said this on one of the pages I didn't read..

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

At level 50, using level 50 basic IO's (Because I'm too lazy to change Mids to low-level SO's for this purpose alone) you are recovering 2.5 endurance per second. Your toggles (which are each slotted with a single endurance reduction) are consuming 1.55 endurance per second. Leaving you to consume a measly .949 endurance per second on your attacks to break even on endurance. I don't care if you slot your attacks with Unicorn Origin enhancements that reduce your endurance consumption with the POWER OF RAINBOWS, you're not going to get to a reasonable level of reduction given your current consumption, ESPECIALLY not at 41, using SO's or basic IO's.

Six-slot your attacks (except force bolt. I'd say one accuracy, one recharge should be fine). Using SO's, I would recommend: 1 Accuracy, 2 damage, 2 recharge, 1 endurance reduction. Your goal is to keep your enemy on their back as much as possible, negating some of the need for defense. If you can only five-slot, skip a damage. You really should be able to six-slot though, if your purpose is killing (*cough* I mean, arresting) enemies solo. Skip Energy Torrent. In my opinion, it's not worth the cost.

If you *MUST* take Maneuvers (I wouldn't, for the above mentioned solo'ing purposes), give it as many slots as possible, with at least two endurance reductions. Dispersion Bubble should have three endurance reductions before even considering defense. These are your two highest consumption toggles, and should be slotted as such. Hover and Combat Jumping really only need two slots. One endurance reduction, one defense. (Three slots wouldn't hurt for the lower levels, if you happen to have spare slots laying around. Use the third for defense as well, if applicable) Assault only needs one slot, for endurance reduction. Tough really only needs two slots. One basic Resistance IO, and a Steadfast Protection +Def/Res. Weave should be slotted similar to Hover/Combat Jumping.

Slotting as recommended, by 41, using basic IO's, I have you at 38% defense to all, 1.47 endurance consumption, with Dark Consumption to help out. However, my recommendation would be to drop the entire Leadership pool in favor of more effective powers. I honestly would even consider dropping Fighting, too. Aid Self comes in VERY handy (as mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread, I believe), as does Teleport Foe. Also consider hopping to the villain side briefly to pick up the Patron pools. I would recommend either Leviathan or Mace Mastery.

All that said, the best advice I can give would be to use IO sets. Kinetic Crash is an amazing set (Or even Force Feedback, though I prefer KC), and can be picked up VERY cheaply at the lower levels. Same goes for some of the defensive sets. These will give you recovery bonuses that will also help with your problem.

I might put one end redux into hover, but since CJ costs a measly .065 end/sec and slotting it with a lvl 50 end IO saves you whopping .019 end/sec. I wouldn't bother. That end redux slot would be better put to use helping cut end costs on other powers, like attacks or adding in damage to make the attacks more efficient on DPE.

Heck, putting a second end redux in dispersion should save you approx. .081 end/sec and if you did that with maneuvers .061 end/sec. A much more useful placement then in combat jumping. At least one end redux in Hover will save you .058 end/sec. Unless you're going for specific set bonuses or using one slot for a unique/global IO I generally wouldn't bother with a second slot on CJ.