morality fast track

does anyone know the best type of character to use for running the tip missions quickly? i wanna be able to bust them out quickly so i can go on to other things (characters). was thinking setting mission difficulty to -1/x1 and making a single target heavy hitter but not sure what.

Best? Probably a Scrapper of some kind. FM/WP or something.

That said, IMO you'd be best off with a character you enjoy playing that is best suited to the task. No need to make grinding tips even more arduous than it already is. If you're working on a whole slew of characters, run the tips with them. Just integrated the tips into your normal mission running. If you run tips with several characters you'll be able to generate a lot more A-merits over time than focusing on just one character.

I don't think you can build a character that can't sneak past -1/x1 foes.

Would second Silas' advice - play something you like. Super Speed and some kind of fast vertical movement is IMHO more helpful to the task than your actual archetype.

For running tips quickly (in order to farm A-merits I presume) it's not the mishes themselves that take the most time, it's getting the tips. For the mishes themselves, it's pretty much irrelevant which character you use since you can do them at -1/x1. For gathering tips, however, you need something with a large AoE that recharges quickly, and you need a zone with a lot of preferably level 20 spawns close to each other, consisting of a lot of mobs. For the AoE, I'd want a 15' radius one, or a long and wide cone (pretty much any of the ranged damage set cones will do, as will Shockwave from claws, for example).

What I like to do on my Ill/rad is to run a nice merit generating ouro arc (instant army is a favorite of mine for this). I get 3 tips easily running the arc and some reward merits to use towards buying extra alignment merits.

Running the tips, SI makes zipping to the goals a snap and at the end of the 3rd tip mish if I havent gotten any new tips yet (unlikely) I simply kill everything in the mish... I can't recall ever being left without a tip doing this. This 4th tip mish is done the same way... invis to goal and mop up any mobs for the 5th tip.

What my on experiences tells me is that any character that can stealth... and unless you avoid the nemesis tips, it should be something that can hide from snipers, is generally able to handle the tip mishes quickly.

Since you can only cash in alignment merits once/day, you can't spend a lot of them unless you're saving up for a Purple or PVP IO. But several characters cashing out alignment merits could by an entire set and e-mail it to one of your characters. Since I tend to shop for several things at once instead of one thing every other day, I like to run tips on a range of characters and keep a few alignment merits on them all so I could force-buy several IOs at once when the mood strikes. Extra merits earned on a character after I've banked 2-4 get spent on sale items for cashflow.

Since I'm not going to make a whole bunch of tip-hunting specialists, I just use, you know, everybody.

I have run fast morality missions on the following chars:

Bane spider (mace stalker style)
Night widow
Electric/Shield Scrapper
ss/fire brute
shield/ss tank
archery/devices blaster
km/ninjitsu stalker

In each case the real key is to get familiar with the morality missions and pick the right ones. Avoid missions with escorts out (and there are some where you have to escort up to 3 npcs out), look for mission with simple kill end boss or click the glowie goals.

After that strategy depends on the character. In the case of my shield scrappers I turn off AOO to avoid extra aggro and just run though to the mission goals (softcapped). My blaster, stalker and my 2 veats both have stealth, so they stealth through to the goals. My tanker sometime times does the same as the scrappers and sometimes just kills everything in the way as does my brute.

Exxar is right about getting tips, it can take more time than some of the tip missions. Although as long as you are sufficiently high enough level even 1 fast cycling AoE attack is enough. Blueside head to Dark Astoria and kill groups of banished pantheon, redside head to sharkhead and go to the north end of the potters field - there are large groups of CoT and freaks there that respawn fairly quickly.

I find my Widow can burn through tip missions very quickly.

*/Super Reflexes is the best I've found, as it lets you click glowies while mobs are shooting at you without being interrupted. Anything at the soft cap to ranged & AoE will work, but SR also has strong defense debuff protection and is simple and cheap to get to the caps.

As mentioned above you probably want a fast attack chain of AoEs in your primary/epics for harvesting tips, so... spines/sr/* or */sr/dark perhaps? That should be able to AoE level 20-ish mobs as fast as you can get to them. Note that finishing off every mob in each spawn is a waste of time - get as many in the central clump as possible and move on to the next one.

As for stalker vs. scrapper, when you're capped for defenses the stealth is totally unnecessary, so the two are pretty equivalent really.

You don't need to be a Stalker to be pve invis and that's been the case for a while.

My primary tip farmer is a DM/SD with a stealth IO and SS.

I had used a level locked Stalker for mid30s tips, but as mentioned above, getting the initial tip, via tip farming, was too laborious, so I'll need to find another. The Scrapper is so much better at this with Fireball for lowbie npc hunting. Another thing that makes the Stalker not as effective as my Scrapper is the number of escorts that exist and ambushes keyed on you regardless of hidden status. At that point, running around without hide, you're just a gimped Scrapper, not a real Stalker.

Personally I don't like doing -1, just because lvl 49 drops are sort of a bummer. Just turn bosses off and the danger between 0 and -1 is negligible.

Note - I'm not saying Scrapper is "best" but an investment in a stealth IO is key. One neat thing about Night Widows - in addition to all the basic tools to be a good A merit farmer (stealthy, soft-capped def, kills objectives quickly and has enough aoe for tip farming), using smoke grenade you can click glowies without getting anyone's attention, unless they're right beside you and I mean right. Yeah people say soft-capping is good enough, but that means there's a 5% chance you get interupted, I prefer a 0% chance. So now that I think about it, I would say NW is the best A-merit farmer.

My Elec^3 50+1 Blaster has 30% ranged def so on most Tips (set to base difficulty) he just spikes the objectives and gets them done pretty quickly. Judgment also helps -- on that "DE capture Crey scientists" Tip, for instance, I usually just herd up the guard groups from all 4 scientists then take them out at once with Ion.

Basically as long as your character doesn't suck at soloing, anything will be fine. (As someone else said, I'm assuming your intent is to run on low difficulty for grinding Alignment Merits.)

Some good points from Exxar and Deacon. I guess you can always optimize something further.

I would think that even with the time spent gathering tips against relatively higher foes (on a lower level alt), it would be faster to level lock in the twenties and run tips that way provided the character you'd be using would have sufficient AoE power, as tips in the twenties just seem so much easier/faster, often with a single objective. I've never actually pursued tip farming so I may just be missing some knowledge, like what tips to drop and what tips to do, but I find level 50 tips often have tons of linked objectives that are annoying as hell to get done fast.

Hmm, weird. Maybe I just had some terrible luck and got all the worst tips then. I can't remember a single level 50 tip villain side where I just had to kill a boss or pick a glowie, and the only one I can think of hero side was rescuing Polar Shift in a cave with CoTs or Longbows.

What I do remember is having to wait for endless Miss Thytles "ambushing" me from the other side of the gigantic map (and of course each has unstoppable because S/L damage is for suckers, and of course the next ambushes only trigger once the body actually dissapears), some council cave map with glowies all over the place (and always in port oakes, bleh), chasing Maelstorm around in a council cave, having to kill Flambeaux, pick glowies, destroy crates and kill an ambush in a warehouse map, etc.. It could be that the slow ones leave a lasting impression while I forget the fast ones.

I've never done any 40-50 tips apart from blue ones, but I'd estimate that at least half of them only involve taking out one or two objectives rapidly. Polar shift, senior agent freymuth, malta plot, and council captives all involve just one or two objectives, often in the same room. The rikti hostages, DE hostages, and frostfire/miss thystle ones have three or four objectives each, usually not in the same room but often along the same path to the end and with some being optional. One of the carnie ones is beat up three bosses and the other is one boss and three glowies, there's the malta defector which has a sadly long mandatory wait, and the column/maelstrom one does have linked objectives but the only slow part is if you don't notice maelstrom's invisible butt while looking around. The one that is genuinely slow is the knives hostage mission. Looks like more fast ones than not to me (and I think I remembered most of them...) and really none of it is hard for even the squishiest empathy defender when set on 0x1 no bosses.

Then again I run them on 0-2x8 because I want purples! They still go by quicker than you'd want if you've thrown together a quick pug to run 'em.

The one with the long wait between ambushes isn't the malta defector mission, it's the one with Black Panther xxx. Malta defector is great, free him, Commander Pike will ambush you, mission over.

I guess Malta read Marvel comics and watched old Star Trek episodes, based on the names of these bosses.

I haven't done a bunch of tip missions, so forgive the noob type question, but when gathering tips, does it matter if the enemy cons grey to you, as long as they are level 20+ ?

I think that the best setup for doing these things quickly is a villain scrapper, ideally one that can go invisible using any of the myriad methods for it (super speed + a stealth IO is probably pretty common).

My reasoning is that Scrappers don't have any setup time, can walk right past all the enemies that aren't directly part of the objective, and because they don't rely on momentum like brutes do, they can eviscerate things from a standing start. And they're also tough enough that if they have to engage in a stand-up fight, they can do so -- although because those are usually escort missions, which are relatively long, you can just filter those missions out. The reason I suggest doing this as a villain is because you can go to the graveyard or air strip in Sharkhead and massacre grays until you get your tips, and the missions you get are much less of a pain in the neck. The only annoying enemy group you have to fight are the Carnies and arguably Nemesis, but Nemesis isn't a problem if you aren't cranking up the difficulty level, because then you don't get a bunch of Lieutenants venging their buddies.

In fact, I will even go the extra mile and list the villain tips at level 50 and what is involved in stealthing them. Keep in mind that I am operating under the assumption you're running at +0/x1 with no bosses. You really should run at +0, but the way, because the additional time it takes to beat down the required dudes is negligible, but the level 50 dudes can cough up shards. The level 49 ones can't.

Emergency Radio Broadcast: Find the glowy, hit it, beat down Polar Shift.

Exotic Armor Schematics: Run to the engineer, beat down the Rikti around him, and lead him out. You will probably want to dismiss this one, because it's an escort and those can't really be stealthed.

Extremely Annoying Ring Tone: Beat down the guys around the scientist, lead him the two steps to the glowy, then run to the end (mind the Rularuu eyeballs, they can see through stealth) and beat down Miss Thystle. Then beat down the next one. And then the one after that. And then three at once. It's not nearly as bad as it sounds.

Filmed Announcement: Find and smash the books and supplies. Beat down the ambush that comes when you smash all the books. Find Flambeaux and apply vigorous beatings.

Just How Evil Are You?: Run to the end, apply beatings to everyone in the two spawns that have the captive Longbow dudes, and then thrash the ambush that comes.

Lacquered Porcelain Shard: Find the captive, waste her captors, lead her to the waypoint on the map, click the resulting glowie. This one can't really be stealthed due to the escort bit.

Old Russian Ballad: Run to the end, hit the glowy, fight the ambush. Be warned that the ambush is Malta, but just one spawn of them at default difficulty shouldn't be so bad. Also be warned that if you get one of those tall reactor room maps and the glowy is in there, they may get a little turned around on their way to you.

Rikti Artifact Rumors: Run to the end, hit the glowy, fight the two bosses that appear. You will be ambushed by Rikti while fighting them, but they are not an objective and you can ignore them if you like. There's PPD in there, and I think they have drones, which may see through stealth. I honestly do not recall.

Seeds of Destruction: Find Desdemona and take her apart. Then find the glowy. At least, I think that's how this one goes, since it's been a while, but the point is it can be stealthed without an issue.

Taper of the Frozen Flame: Find the glowy, beat down Polar Shift when she comes for you.

The Dagger of Caernoz: Fight Desdemona, fight Caernoz (you may have to talk to him before he goes hostile), find and smash the glowy.

Two Too Many Flambeauxs: The two Flambeauxs may be up front. If they are, obviously you have to fight them. Then find three crates and break them.

Wanted: Uqua. Dead: Alive: Find a glowy, smash two boxes, beat down a boss, and then hit another glowy that's nearby. Just be warned that this is another Rikti mission, which means drones, which means dudes that see through stealth.

Bloody Bane Spider Helmet: Beat down the Base Commander. Beat down the Bane Spider. Find a glowy and hit it, then hit another glowy nearby.

Classified Mission Directive: Hit glowy, wait for and then demolish ambush, repeat twice.

This Is How She Dies: Find and take down Overdrive, then wait for Desdemona to show up and put the boots to her.

A Broken Nemesis Jaeger: Run to the end and find the two bosses. Take them out to lunch. On the menu: savage beatings.

A Hand Delivered Note: Run to the end, beat down Silent Blade's captor, then beat down the ingrate when she turns on you. Although to be fair, stomping her into the dirt is the reason you're there in the first place...

Huh. I got so burned out running tips daily on two different characters that I completely forgot just how many there really are. But given that there's only two that can't be stealthed out of eighteen, and most of those only present speed bumps to stealthing in the form of enemies with good perception...well, you can see how just dashing through everything is certainly not an issue.

As for the morality mission itself, I suggest holding out for the one where you burn down Croatoa. You can't stealth it, but it at least feels faster than the one with the message to yourself from the future (which may be stealthable but is kind of a pain in the neck). Run through and beat everybody, then go back and hit the glowies (fighting the ambush between each), and then for the last one, just run to Desdemona and open up a can on her before she whistles up her demons.