MTeague

a) No, powersets do not need to be homogeneous. b) But I disagree that they're being made that way. I do think the devs are trying to make them comparable in effectivness, which is a different thing. Electric Blast saps. Energy Blast is the ragdoller. Ice Blast has slows. Fire has DoTs. Dark has -hit, etc. Empathy and Dark Miasma both offer support, and wildly different means to achieve it. Mind Control and Fire Control both offer control, and strongly different ways to acheive it. Battle Axe vs War Mace? OK, those are closer. But they always were pretty close, going back the Eldar Days. Are all sets comparable to each other today? No. Sonic Resonance is nearly useless for a solo Defender or Corruptor, vs say, something like Trick Arrow, or Rad Emission. Should every set be able to solo well, even on Defenders? Well, I would like it if that were so, but I'm not a dev, and I'm not privy to the Dev's opinions on that question. (Yes, I'm aware Sonic Resonance can be great for Masterminds) I don't think doom and gloom is warranted, but everyone's milage is going to vary.

CC "has no place" in endgame content? .... I'll be curious to see how you like content involving Blackwing Industries.

I respect your right to your obviously strongly held opinion. I disagree that this is operatic tragedy. Plant was wildly overtuned, and everyone knows it. After the first few pages of reflexive panic, most of what I've seen on the focused feedback thread was "OK, we can make this work".

If a powerset got a major revamp, that traditionally happened. But I don't believe there's ever been a firm promise there. That said, considering how much is changing in the upcoming stuff currently on beta testing... for those powersets, I consider freespecs much more likely than not. Given that there's also some non-trivial AT level changes, they just decide everyone gets a freespec. Just... remember that's at their discretion.

Yup, lol. I'll still file that under "pain, agony, and suffering." 🤕

if I'm hungry for pain, agony and suffering, I can always do an Ouroborus "No Enhancements" badge.

I greatly appreciate that the ability to respec exists. Back in 2004, not every game had them. Some games were just "too bad, that was the choice you made, live with it or create a new character." I would be happy if the Full Respec just also had a VIEW ONLY detail of what powers you HAD taken at which levels, for your pre-respec build, and (again, view only) how many slots had been in the pre-respec build. We can screenshot before respec, of course. But while screenshots can tell you what order you took powers in for your primary and secondary, it's not the same thing as knowing precisely what level you took every power at, and what level you allocated every slot at. Even with a screenshot, you have to guesstimate some of that. Having a View Only for prior build during respec would help avoid easy mistakes.

Many things are possible, but this absolutely does not jive with my own personal recollection. I played a Mind/Kin troller in live. Always been my favorite combination, even back when people shunned Mind Control for using confuse and "lowering XP". (Which really did happen, people would quit teams over it) I seem to remember always getting an equal share of XP for all mobs. Scrappers and blasters did not outlevel me rapidly after a few hours on the same team. Now that said, what might have been so, is if you did NO damage whatsoever, might you have gotten no xp for a given mob? I still don't think that's how it worked,.... but I can't conclusively rule it out, as I no longer have logs of any kind from those days. Maybe. But even as a controller, I was always damaging mobs with holds and sleeps, and later with Terrify, all the time, as well as spamming Transfusion to keep my teammates standing. Mostly what I think it was, was when your team was very successful on a regular basis, you gained XP faster than you gained influence. If you piled up debt here and there (remember the joys of running Oldschool Positron TF, back in Oldschool Faultline, or the joyful mission with hordes of CoT daemons? That was the Debt Emporium). Working off that kind of debt would delay me from levelling up until I'd earned enough Inf to afford my next batch of enhancements. It may have also mattered if you fought bosses or not. I always played on at least "Rugged" difficult, back under the old notoriety system, so every mission would have bosses, and bosses are worth quite a bit more in both XP and Influence.

Admittedly, I do use the Black Market / Wentworth's a lot. But I think the last time I had trouble massing influence was back in Live, circa 2006. If you have no interest in crafting at all, you may still find it very helpful to post your orange salvage and yellow/orange recipes on the AH. They'll sell well. If you do not want to use the Auction House period, another option can be (Heresy alert!!) using the "No Xp" button to deliberately delay your levelling, so you can spend more time with your current enhancements before you need to upgrade them. This can let you fit in more story arcs, do more Safeguard / Mayhems, get in more TF's as you're levelling up, as well as letting you pile up the currency.

re-reading the first, post, if I understand you correctly, this is actually not about the Mastermind primary in any way whatsoever. You're looking for low level enemy types to become a "surprise! we're baaaaaack!" threat later on. I think you're going to get what you want with Kahlisti Wharf skulls.

The type of enemies you fight, also makes a Large difference. By everything I've read on the Focused Feedback thread about Blackwing Industries, BWI was specifically designed to issue a wake up call teams that are only half paying attention.

It's wonky naming, but https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetics#Repel has absolutely no Repel component, despite the name. Just a fairly strong knockback. KD to KB KB-to-KD is an option, just like it can be for Whirlwind.

Honestly, I would not disregard Repel out of hand. For primarily ranged pets, like Mercs or Robots, allowing the MM to run around bowling their enemies over while the henchmen gun blast away, is not without merit. Yes, I get teams dislike Knockback, but just like Energy Blast, Repel can be used for damage mitigation as well. Enemies that are flat on their back or flying the friendly skies, are not attacking you.

Seriously delayed response, and not sure if it will fit the bill for you, but as of this writing Starvortex is available.

I concede there is considerably more for new players to learn. And yet, past lvl 20, I can't remember the last time I felt in any real danger when levelling. Team wipes feel far rarer than they used to be. The need to coordinate feels greatly reduced vs what it was in some early issues. Maybe some of that is having stronger enhancements right out of the gate, instead of having to make do with Training Enhancements and Dual Origin enhancements. Maybe some of that is people spending at the START vendor for status protection, or other temporary powers that weren't even in the game until the Veteran Rewards came along after the first several years of Live. I remember being delighted when a Force Fielder joined the team in the early days. Now, it's ho-hum, sure that'll help some. It is what it is, and I can't say I haven't leveraged the heck out of low level SO's, I can't say I haven't stacked the heck out of set bonuses after lvl 25. But teams being in no real danger makes it much easier for new folks to rapidly level up compared to the old days, too.

Sure. soloing.

I admit, I do tend to solo on my Thugs/Traps MM, because teams are all gogogo like rabid 5 year olds after a big bowl of Choco Frosted Sugar Bombs. They'd never benefit more than a tick or three from Triage Beacon, never bring new mobs back to my Acid Mortor, and have no interest in even trying to stay near my Shield Generator Drone. Never mind making effective use of Trip Mines or the like.

None of this is necessary. You are free to ignore the market and even ignore IO's altogether. But as stated above, either using the market, OR, getting a few characters up to lvl 50, either or both, can make Influence a LOT easier to come by. I am also a big fan of "Converter Roulette". That is, whatever IO set recipes drop for you during the course of play? Craft them. All of them. Without exception. If you wish, you may also choose to buy recipes or even some finished set IO's from the market. But starting out, just craft the recipes that happen to drop for you. If it needs rare salvage, spend the money and buy it. You'll make it back easy peasy. spend some Reward Merits to buy enhancement converters. I buy 30 at a time, 3 times. open up the convert window, and put your set IO's into the converter. almost never convert in-set. Use the radio button / dropdown over to the right. if it's already orange, convert by Rarity, to get a different orange IO set piece. if it's yellow, convert by Type, until you get an orange IO set piece, then if it's not a valueable set category, convert by Rarity until it is. Some set pieces are worth Way More than others. Anything that's a Damage Proc, keep for your own use, or sell for a bunch. else, other unique pieces like Reactive Armor Scaling Resists, or Preventative Healing Absorb Proc, or set pieces with Knockback Protection, sell pretty well. else, other pieces that are Melee, Ranged Damage, Defense, Resist Damage, and healing sets, tend to sell good. else, keep converting. That is the Quick and Dirty version, and is not intended to cover every nuance. Just the very basics to get you off the ground. But seriously, individual set pieces can easily sell for 1-4 million influence each. Sometimes they'll fly off the shelves. Sometimes you leave them up for sale overnight. Before you'll know it you'll be decking out a character with ridiculous amounts of set bonuses, not even caring if you just spend 200 million to do so.

while that would be nice, the "Bladed" staff option is ... pretty much a spear already.

sigh. A meme, once begun, cannot be stopped by the efforts of mortal man. Much like a forest fire, it must run its course.

To be fair, people have been doing enough Timey-Wimey shenanigans with Ouroboros, that there is no such thing as a coherent timeline. There's 100,000 or more varients of the timeline, growing daily. Loki should be exploding a few times about now. Also, not necessarily every character had to already be lvl 50 and have taken part in incarnate trials. Some in theory could happened before your hero's powers manifested. I know, I know, heresy, we are all the Main Characters of our own stories, and all the world's plot MUST revolve around us. But it's no different from any other MMO. Warcraft, you do the same raids and defeat the same bosses for several months on end, and no one bats an eye at "timelines". New characters get levelling up through multiple expansions, and no one bats an eye at what "has already happened". Its a game. We plays it. We rationlize timelines however we care to, and often we just don't overthink it.

Redside is bestside! Gotta rob them banks!

I mean, the tutorial is what it is. You may sometimes see other players in it, but it's not 2004, and there won't be 30-40 people in it at any given moment anymore. That's life. The cave missions... trying to decide if you mean one of the purple-blue caves from classic CoH, or one of the multi-instance caves from Mattthew Habashy's quest line with the Hellions and the fire, or a redside cave with Snakes. I'll grant you, they all look dated in their own way. But we are looking at an all volunteer not-for-profit, may-never-be-for-profit Dev Team. They do this in their downtime hours after their real life day jobs are over. While I wouldn't be against a facelift of some cave maps, I'm not personally expecting any change there.

Keep in mind, some of the animations will have you jabbing with the top of the staff, vs the business end of the scythe. But I'm certainly not opposed to this idea. I've also seen people ask for Hockey Sticks, etc.

I use a 17" laptop. LG, don't have the model number handy. Plenty big enough for me. I used to be "desktops or go home". But life took some interesting turns, and I find myself travelling 1,000 miles for a few weeks at a time now. I now use my personal (non-work) laptop for my general gaming, surfing YouTube, etc. Simply because it's easy to take it with me. Important documents get backed up to external drives at home. It does help that this laptop had a decent graphics card when I bought it (4-5 years ago now?), but many diehard gamers would consider this laptop to be a potato, just by age. Still. It runs the games I personally want to play, with fairly high graphics settings, and that's where the rubber meets the road for me.