Using A-merits: Advice?

I've been doing quite a few tip missions on various toons, mostly to get all the Miracle +Rec and LotG:Recharge IOs that I need for my various I19 respecs. But I'm starting to wonder if it would be better to get something else with my hero or villain alignment merits, which would be worth more inf, and then buy the recipes I need. Anyone have any advice for the best use of A-merits?

You're on target for two of what used to be the "big three" items. The other recent one was Blessing of the Zephyr knockback protection, specifically level 10 versions.

In general, lower-level pieces of all of these have historically sold for more than level 50 pieces, but the sale throughput rate is lower. Also, it's often possible to make (sometimes significant) money selling the crafted item and buying the raw recipe off the market.

Some other pieces to look into are Kinetic Combats rare pieces, even the ones which cost one A-merit. These can be very good deals on a profit/A-merit basis.

I haven't been tracking as much lately, but prices on a lot of these historical "go-to" items from Pool C/D have been decreasing lately, sometimes significantly. You might want to do some research before going the A-merits->sale->money->purchase route.

IMHO, directly purchasing recipes you're actually going to use is a good use of AMs. If you would rather put a number on it, look at the going market price of the recipe you want and compare it to the number of AMs it takes to purchase. A good rule of thumb would be 1 AM is worth somewhere around 72 million inf. If the recipe costs 1 AM and costs significantly more than that on the market, use the AM to get it. If it costs significantly less, use inf to get it. About the same, it's a judgement call. If there are none available on the market, use the AM.

These are all guidelines/suggestions of course, so do what works for you and what you feel comfortable with/rewarded by.

If you just want to accumulate inf, random-roll>craft>sell is most likely the optimal path. If you are a bit lazy like me and don't mind "losing" the extra 20 million inf per roll you would get by crafting, then just random-roll>sell.

WARNING: I bold names.

I think the OP is doing pretty well- maybe not perfectly optimal use of AM's but not, like, off by a factor of 10.

On the list of "potential sale items", most of them have been mentioned. It's worth looking at (I haven't checked lately) minimum level travel stealth IO's.

Edit: "most of the ones I KNOW" have been mentioned.

Thanks, folks. Sounds like for the big guys like Miracle and LotG, using the merits directly is pretty close to optimal. Probably close enough, considering the extra time that would be needed to squeeze out of few million extra inf by crafting, reselling, and rebidding. If I ever get to the point where I have all my toons fully outfitted with those...and it'll be a long time before I manage that...then maybe doing some random rolls may make sense.

Halloween seemed like a good time to unearth this zombie thread. I did some tracking (see Market Transactions link in sig) on a bunch of random rolls, and interestingly enough, it worked out to be almost exactly the same return whether I rolled or went with the LotG:+Recharge.

The way I did this was spend 1 A-merit for the 5 random recipes (on a L50), craft the IOs, and sell them on the market. The average selling price of all the rolled IOs was approximately 14 million. The approximate selling price of a LotG:+recharge is 150 million. You get ten random recipes for two A-Merits, or one LotG:+recharge: 140 vs 150 million. Pretty darn close.

I did keep some of the stuff I rolled, so this is probably skewed a bit low on the rolls, given that I tend to keep useful stuff that would have sold a bit higher than average. Still, I think I'm going back to the LotGs. They sell quicker, so I don't have to wait for my inf. And I can get them at L25 so that they're useful on lower level toons.

i usually use alignment merits to get LOTGs since a large amount of my builds call for 5 LOTGs and i refuse to pay market price for them

if its on a lower toon i will sometimes do the random roll but about half of the time ive gotten nothing but junk from that

Any particular reason why you guys locked toons at L33? I might get a toon or two locked in to run the SSA and/or tips for A-merits, but I was thinking it should be at either L25 (to get min-level LotG or Miracles) or L30 (min level on Numina).

33 was popular for PvP and it is pretty decent for exemplaring. So there is a built in preference among buyers for level 33 recipes (they pay significantly more than for 32 or 34 for instance), therefore some people generate more 33s specifically for this nice. the higher supply in turn keeps that demand going.

they're not the greatest, but they are reliable and profitable and really, what more can you ask for?

I'd like to chime in. I had a discussion with a buddy over the global channel on random roll vs specific recipe. His opinion was that mathematically, the randoms are a better deal. I disagree. However, it all came down to what level your toon is when that toon makes the roll.

I think if you're amassing alignment merits that you are better off acquiring and selling off-market one of those oh-so-pricey PvP IOs.

The factor that can really impact the net gain is whether or not you convert your reward merits into alignment merits.

If I amass 30 hero merits and get 30 random rolls, I would get 150 recipes. Given the math presented just in this particular thread, 96 of these would be valued at over 50 million. This is an estimated 4,800,000,000. Now, these are raw recipes. I think it's fair to say that even if you have all the salvage you need already in your base, it's going to take some time to craft them. This is a large obstacle that many don't choose to overcome.

Crafting cost of the "good" 96 is a negligible 8,580,000. The salvage costs are ...varied, to say the least.
I think it's safe to say that most of these good recipes are going to require 1 or 2 pieces of rare salvage and an uncommon and some common. Because the commons and uncommons are easily obtained through standard play, to offset the times when a recipe requires 2 rares, I won't even include the commons and uncommons. The values of the specific rares does vary, and fluctuate a bit. 2 million used to be the price where in almost all cases you could buy one without waiting a day. Now, that price is floating between 1million and 1.5 million. So, I compromise and call it 1.25million.
That comes out to 120,000,000 (1.25*96)

So far, that's 128,580,000 of costs associated with this estimate of 4.8 billion
Then there's the broker fee of 5% up front, and 5% at the completion of sale. So, that's a total of 10% bringing our profit down to 4,191,420,000.

And I said you'd be better off with the PvP io? I must be insane! The sad problem with all this conjecture is that in order for this picture to be complete, I need to know what happens to the other 54 recipes. Dare I assume that their value is offset by those recipes that are worth well over 50 million? I do dare.

Now, from a more practical perspective, I think I'd rather just craft 1 recipe and sell off market for 2.5 billion than to do all that crafting. But, if you've got alt-itis and you play all of your toons on a regular basis, taking 10-15 minutes a day to craft the randoms seems like the better deal.

My friend was right! : (


Oh, I neglected to mention this: I totally discounted the conversion rate of 20 million per alignment merit, because I felt like this is a constant, regardless of what you do with your merits.

With anything in the market, you pay extra (often a LOT extra) for convenience. Random rolls vs purchasing stuff outright keeps with that.