Considering coming back...leveling advice, please
By
Domin8,
Posted on: 2011-09-28 19:06 in Dominators
Quote:
Powerlevelling isn't frowned on quite so much anymore. You still have a very vocal minority that will cry and moan about it, but a lot of players have gotten past that in favor of enjoying the characters they want to enjoy at the levels they wish. The "learned skills and tactics" are highly overrated for experienced players. If you've put any time into the game at all and teamed with a range of ATs, then you can pretty easily pick up any powerset blind at level 50 and be fine.|
Originally Posted by Domin8
I know that powerleveling is generally frowned on, and I was never a fan of it as the whole point of CoH, to me, was enjoying the arcs, learning skills and tactics as you add powers, etc...
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that being said, what would you recommend as the quickest way to get to 50? I'm guessing the answer is the standard "run a bunch of scanner missions and get on teams", but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks for any insights. |
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Why on Earth would you have deleted the 50's you had?|
Originally Posted by Domin8
I used to play quite a bit, but several years ago left the game due to a combination of external demands (work, kids, etc) and lack of endgame content. I wasn't playing enough to justify the subscription, so I quit cold turkey, deleted all the toons and ended subscription. With the advent of Freedom and some endgame content, I'm inclined to start a new character; if it sits for a couple months without being used, there's no guilt over lost fees.
Here's the rub: The trip to 50 was the whole point of CoH when I played, but I'd like to get to the Incarnate stuff. My fear is that with the limited time I have to play, it will take so freaking long to slog to 50 that I will give up on it. I was never much for melee, preferring the "thinking" ATs; mainly defenders/controllers/doms. I think it would be a hoot to have a mind/energy dominator blue side. I know that powerleveling is generally frowned on, and I was never a fan of it as the whole point of CoH, to me, was enjoying the arcs, learning skills and tactics as you add powers, etc...that being said, what would you recommend as the quickest way to get to 50? I'm guessing the answer is the standard "run a bunch of scanner missions and get on teams", but I'm open to suggestions. Thanks for any insights. |
Go to your old home servers forum and post a I'm back thread. See if any of your old mates are out and about in the game. They more than likely have a toon or 3 that can help level you up fairly quickly.
As to the fastest way to level it has and always will be farming. Non exploit farming can get you to 50 in a day.
Since you haven't played in a few years your better off playing a new toon up and getting back into the swing of things.
If you take that route then joining your servers global chat chans and seeking out TF's will blow thru levels at a really nice pace.
Global: @Kelig
Fastest leveling I know of as stated is the farming. Specifically CEBR (Claws electric Brutes Rock), level 1 ambush map farming. Put spin on auto. Walk away. Come back 2 minutes later. click glowie to end mission. leave. repeat as needed. Mine is level locked so I can general low-level recipes in large quantities with little-to-no effort. But I've been told people are hitting level 50 in less than 15 hours just teaming up and sitting in the missions. And I know I did incarnate trials with people using beam and time the day after they came out.
If you actually want to play, then the fastest way I know of is to use the new sewer trial (death from below) until you hit level 15. Then do taskforces.
I got my Peacebringer to 45 this way in about 23 hours of actual played time. Plus he has a couple accolades and is working his way through 600+ merits that have already earned him over 600 million inf just converting to alignment merits, buying luck of the gambler, craft, sell for 150-190million, repeat every 2 days.
If you do the weekly strike force, you'll pull an average of 2 levels per run and double rewards. but only 1 run per week. So can't do 'em back to back, but they're awesome.
The things I mentioned here: Merits replaced random recipe rolls from completing taskforces. They give you far better rewards on average if you were casual, but far less if you were a speed runner before. Hero/villain/alingment merits are rewards you can get if you don't "switch sides" and become a viginante or rogue. They can be turned in for 5 times the reward of normal merits, or pick any recipe you want. Only three are worth selecting: Luck of hte gambler 7.5% recharge, Miracle + recovery, Numina Regen/recovery. Anything else you want, pick one of those three, craft it, sell it, then buy the one you wanted and keep the leftover money as profit.
The weekly strike force is a new thing where every tuesday the devs pick one taskforce and double the rewards. Exp kick at the end is well over half a level. I got 1.9million exp on a level 49 for completion, not countng what I got in the task force.
Best task force for experience is the newish ITF (Imperious Task Force). You have to do a short story arc that starts in the university to unlock access to the midnighter's guild and a time travel portal to ancient rome. The ITF itself is extremely fun and the devs did a great job with it. It is available coop so villains and heros can do it together and it is unbelievably popular on nearly all servers. only need to be level 35 to run it. Expect to gain 1 or 2 levels each time and it takes less than an hour. On the right team, and when it was the weakly strike force, I gained 5 levels in one run.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
Thanks for the advice, everybody.
As far as farming, I have no interest in playing a melee tune. I rolled a mind/energy Dom last night. Any suggestions on appropriate farms for bringing him along?
Sounds like there should be a bunch of new toons getting on TFs now, so that's promising.
The Weekly Strike Target thing is good advice, but it comes at a bad time. For the rest of this month and all next month, it's all very high level TFs. You'd need to level REAL fast in order to be able to run them. But if you can level that fast, you don't need them.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304
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I'm quite different on that subject - I always buy SOs at 22, 27, and finally at 32 I start making vanilla IOs that will last me until 47, because somewhere around there they start being better than SOs.
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Originally Posted by streetlight
Frankenslot with cheap IOs starting at L22, for more effective slotting than SOs and to avoid reslotting every five levels.
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My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
Level 25 generic IO's are the best bang for the buck as they are the closest to SO level.
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I don't know about the quickest way to 50, but a very quick and fun method of leveling when starting a new character is to do the new Sewer Trial. It's not a big time commitment, XP flows fast, there are trainers inside the mission entrances, and it's fun to do, at least a few times. It forcibly exemps you at a fairly low level so as you level up past a certain point you will still get full rewards but won't get acess to new powers.
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Originally Posted by Domin8
I know that powerleveling is generally frowned on, and I was never a fan of it as the whole point of CoH, to me, was enjoying the arcs, learning skills and tactics as you add powers, etc...that being said, what would you recommend as the quickest way to get to 50? I'm guessing the answer is the standard "run a bunch of scanner missions and get on teams", but I'm open to suggestions.
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Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
The new sewer trial is indeed nifty. One run gets you to 7, two to 10, three to 12. And there are folks doing the lower-level task forces quite often, at least on populous servers. (Not slamming the others, just noting the limits of my knowledge. Others are welcome to add more, since I have known gaps in my knowledge.)
The new signature story arc's first installment is level 15-20 or so, in Skyway City, takes 20-30 minutes tops, and is easily worth a level and some fine loot, too.
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Actually, the thing that levels you the fastest is running through missions quickly against +5 enemies. This is the essence of fast PLing: having a higher level character bull through a mission set to +4/x8 against hundreds of mobs with you in tow. You don't have to run farms when you do that: it's just more efficient because you don't have to travel from mission to mission.|
Originally Posted by Domin8
Thanks for the advice, everybody.
As far as farming, I have no interest in playing a melee tune. I rolled a mind/energy Dom last night. Any suggestions on appropriate farms for bringing him along? Sounds like there should be a bunch of new toons getting on TFs now, so that's promising. |
If you don't have a friend with a character that can do that easily (a brute or tanker with lots of AoEs), and you don't want to create such a character yourself, your best bet is to team with players who are running at +1 to +4 and -- this is the most important part -- can do so easily. If people are dying or taking several minutes on each boss, the difficulty is too high. It's more xp/minute if you turn down the difficulty so that you're cruising than when you're struggling.
If you're going the team route, the key thing to running against higher-con mobs for fast leveling is debuffs. If your team contains two or three properly built characters with the following powersets: Dark Miasma, Trick Arrow, Storm Summoning, Radiation, Thermal, Kinetics, and probably Time Manipulation, you will be able to steamroll through most content at +2 to +4, starting in the late 20s and early 30s, when leveling starts to get really slow.
If you're not really committed to the dominator and just want to get some character to 50 ASAP, you might consider switching to a debuffing character -- any knowledgeable team will be glad to have you. The characters I found quite useful include a Fire/Dark Miasma corruptor (good for soloing), Earth/Storm controller, Rad/Sonic defender, Fire/Thermal controller, but any of the sets mentioned above will be fine.
Elec/Psi dom. Stupid easy to play, stupid easy to get creative picking powers for, stupid fun. When you get to your EPP, you can pick all sorts of things for crazy chaos too.
I run an Elec/Psi/Ice, and she is singularly my most awesome, broke, overpowered char ever. _EVER_. And I didn't farm her up to 50 either. It was trivial to do it the good old fashioned way. And doing tips the whole way got me a ton of LotG+ to fill me in. Permadom Permahasten PermaDrainPsyche PermaAWESOME. How can you loose?
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Hew in drag baby
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Level +0 SO = 33.33%|
Originally Posted by JayboH
I'm quite different on that subject - I always buy SOs at 22, 27, and finally at 32 I start making vanilla IOs that will last me until 47, because somewhere around there they start being better than SOs.
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Level +3 SO = 38.33%
Level 25 common IO = 32%
Level 30 common IO = 34.80% (Better than a +0 SO)
Level 35 common IO = 36.70%
Level 40 common IO = 38.6% (better than a +3 SO)
Level 18 Triple set IO = 34.7% (higher than a +0 SO)
Level 20 Triple set IO = 38.40% (higher than a +3 SO)
Level 21 Dual set IO = 33.6% (higher than a +0 SO)
Level 24 Dual set IO = 38.4% (higher than a +3 SO)
There aren't enough quad IOs to be relevant. But they are always better than SOs (except that one with a range mod since 9 times out of 10 you don't care about range and it's acting as a wimpy triple)
But I never wait for IOs. They are better than SOs starting at level 18 (when everyone else is on DOs) and they never expire.
Thanks to AE you can buy many of the yellow recipes for less than vendor prices and crafting and salvage (since yellows have no rare costs) are often less than the price of SOs (which get up to 48k each).
If you run AE yourself from time to time on lowbies, you can roll all the recipes you need to frankenslot pretty easily and turn a nice profit at the same time crafting and selling the others.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
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Cool, I was doing it right then, for the numbers I was looking for.
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Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
Level +0 SO = 33.33%
Level +3 SO = 38.33% Level 25 common IO = 32% Level 30 common IO = 34.80% (Better than a +0 SO) Level 35 common IO = 36.70% Level 40 common IO = 38.6% (better than a +3 SO) Level 18 Triple set IO = 34.7% (higher than a +0 SO) Level 20 Triple set IO = 38.40% (higher than a +3 SO) Level 21 Dual set IO = 33.6% (higher than a +0 SO) Level 24 Dual set IO = 38.4% (higher than a +3 SO) There aren't enough quad IOs to be relevant. But they are always better than SOs (except that one with a range mod since 9 times out of 10 you don't care about range and it's acting as a wimpy triple) But I never wait for IOs. They are better than SOs starting at level 18 (when everyone else is on DOs) and they never expire. Thanks to AE you can buy many of the yellow recipes for less than vendor prices and crafting and salvage (since yellows have no rare costs) are often less than the price of SOs (which get up to 48k each). If you run AE yourself from time to time on lowbies, you can roll all the recipes you need to frankenslot pretty easily and turn a nice profit at the same time crafting and selling the others. |
My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom
Quote:
Yup on the single bonus IOs lots of people think 30 or 35, but if you want to be BETTER than a +3 SO, you gotta wait for 40.|
Originally Posted by JayboH
Cool, I was doing it right then, for the numbers I was looking for.
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35 is pretty darn close though.
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
I used to play quite a bit, but several years ago left the game due to a combination of external demands (work, kids, etc) and lack of endgame content. I wasn't playing enough to justify the subscription, so I quit cold turkey, deleted all the toons and ended subscription. With the advent of Freedom and some endgame content, I'm inclined to start a new character; if it sits for a couple months without being used, there's no guilt over lost fees.
Here's the rub:
The trip to 50 was the whole point of CoH when I played, but I'd like to get to the Incarnate stuff. My fear is that with the limited time I have to play, it will take so freaking long to slog to 50 that I will give up on it.
I was never much for melee, preferring the "thinking" ATs; mainly defenders/controllers/doms. I think it would be a hoot to have a mind/energy dominator blue side.
I know that powerleveling is generally frowned on, and I was never a fan of it as the whole point of CoH, to me, was enjoying the arcs, learning skills and tactics as you add powers, etc...that being said, what would you recommend as the quickest way to get to 50? I'm guessing the answer is the standard "run a bunch of scanner missions and get on teams", but I'm open to suggestions.
Thanks for any insights.