MTeague

IO sets for sure. I would first decide if you plan to mostly do lvl 50 content, or if you plan on doing a lot of flashbacks / exemplaring. if mostly lvl 50 content, then you want to buy Crafted IO Set pieces that you can Boost. If mostly flashbacks / taskforces / exemplaring, then my recommendation would be to get Attuned IO sets. Buy them as already attuned, right off the auction house. IO sets can be expensive. 40 million might get you between 1 and 6 full sets, depending on which sets you buy. Good news you absolutely DO NOT have to buy them all at once. Take your sweet time. Also, the influence should start to flow like a mighty river at lvl 50. Lvl 50 recipes will vendor for a fair chunk of change, as will the SO's that drop. To earn more infl: you could do Converter Roulette if you were so inclined (it's good to know HOW, even if you won't want to do it yourself) you can just buy Enhancement Converters with merits and sell the Converters if you want Influence on a more immediate basis. you could do AE farms, if you were so inclined. you can just join random lvl 50 groups and enjoy the ride and at the end of each session you'll have a decent chunk of change. Then buy more IO sets until you have the sets you want in the powers you want.

It will vary. My Mind/Kin did the solo'd it at +2x3. All KINDS of Mass Confusion going on to gradually clear the static spawns / kill portals. His attempt was also when I learned that it's possible, (though reallllllly tricky) to manage to split one of the EB's out from the pack and and take him down without aggroing the other. It involves a lot of aggro-and-run, and re-aggroing some of them as they start to walk back to their original spawn point. I also had fully loaded Shivan Shard and I wasn't afraid to use it. I had to full clear the entire map leading up to him to give myself room enough to do that without more adds adding in. But I was able to do it. My Claws/SR scrapper just embraced her inner scrapperlock. Static spawns I still pulled back and tore apart. When all the static spawns were dead, I went after the one with the gun first, and then the honoree after. I died a couple times. But tricked out SR plus a tray full of purples and reds, plus having Elude as an emergency button, will get you through a LOT. It was terribly satisfying. I have not yet done it on certain AT's. I'm sure some will be No Fun, and I'll need to lean very hard on temp powers

That would definitely explain our difference in experience to it. I level super slowly, turning off XP for long stretches along the way. It's very common for me to to activate "No XP" immedinately upon accepting a group invite, because I want to have fun grouping with friends, BUT, I don't want to skip past content that I'd wanted to do AT CONTENT levels. The flip side of that, is that I slot IO sets (attuned) at their minimum level, and build them up as I go. When I ding 50, I'm pretty much already fully kitted out. I'll often do a respec at 50 to juggle some slots around, steal one slot from this power to give to that power, etc. But the only time I use basic IO's or SO's is if the power is incapable of taking sets. So yea, when I'm doing the Ramiel arc, I'm already fully ready to go. (Not unusual for me to be carrying a pocket Shivan temp power from lvl 25 onward, just in case I need to drop an "I Win" button.... when I decide the game is just being sufficiently unfair, I throw down the Shivan and say "right back at you ,pal")

When I first came to City of Heroes from EverQuest, I chose my main specifically to be a hero analog of my EQ main. EQ Main - Enchanter CoH Main - Mind / Kinetics Controller. I did make him taller, (EQ character was a gnome), since I wanted him to blend into society more. But the toolkit is very close. EQ Mezmerize / Memory Blur - Mind Control Sleeps + Fear EQ Stuns - Mind Control Holds EQ Charm - Mind Control Confuse EQ Chanter Cripple / Debuff - Siphon Power, Siphon Speed EQ Chanter Buffs for Hasten - Speed Boost / Fulcrum Shift EQ Chanter Buffs for Mana - Transference, Speed Boost EQ Chanter Illusions - um.... Costume Changes. Have never regretted it. Your average murderball team may not have much care for Mind Contrl when doing PI radios, but there is content out there that will make you glad for a controller on your team. And I very much enjoy soling him as a Lamont Cranston / The Shadow type of figure, old man in a hat and mask who slips into a warehouse and a couple hours later the cops find the bad guys all trussed up and ready to be arrested, and the bad guys barely even understand what happened.

You have every right to make these suggestions and to try to sway the devs to your point of view. That said. I oppose every change you propose here, and am quite happy with AR as it exists right now. Not every powerset needs to be a roving speedclear murderball set. Ignite does right fine as a power when you combine it with some way to limit mobs ability to move. Immob's from your secondary or from Frozen Blast Proc, Slow effects, Knockdown to the keep them in the fire, or Knockback as long as you have the pinned into a corner before you spray fire. The powerset is Assault Rifle. Full Auto makes perfect sense as a nuke. If you want a big flashy weapon-based WHOMP there's always Munitions Mastery/LRM Rocket

I have to echo @nihilii. Several of the missions people are listing as must-skip are ones I really enjoy and make sure to do on every character. I love the Stop 30 Fir Bolg one, and the Stop Takeover of Salamanca. I'm sure some of that is nostaglia from live days where those missions ruined my day. Crushing them now is just a "HA! I Win!". Honoree I look at as a rite of passage. If I can't defeat that misson, my character doesn't deserve incarnate slots. No matter if they unlocked or not, I do not fill them until the Mender Ramiel arc is done. Is Honoree / Trapdoor easier for certain characters, oh yea, no question. But there's *very* few problems in the game that can't be overcome by Inpsirations and Set Bonues, and temp powers that I've earned in missions along the way.

I admit, I do prefer being "organically" introducted to contacts by doing enough missions for a prior contact. "There's someone I'd like you to meet..." But the Contact Finder is there, and can be browsed, and there's actually a LOT of content out there at low levels. I have zero shame with utterly disregarding any "forced" contacts like Twinshot or Shauna Stockwell. I do enjoy the missions sometimes. But ultimately you the player are in charge of who you do missions for, not the game.

Note: I'm excluding HEATs and VEATs. But yea. Spare a moment's thought for the Kheldians. And the Widows/Soldiers are only a teeny bit better. Blaster - 13 primary, 14 secondary = 182 Brute - 22 primary, 13 secondary = 286 Controller - 10 primary, 16 secondary = 160 Corruptor - 13 primary, 16 secondary = 208 Defender - 16 primary, 13 secondary = 208 Dominator - 9 primary, 11 secondary = 99 Mastermind - 7 primary, 16 secondary = 112 Scrapper - 20 primary, 13 secondary = 260 Sentinel - 13 primary, 12 secondary = 156 Stalker - 17 primary, 13 secondary = 221 Tanker - 11 primary, 22 secondary = 242 Gold Medal: Dominators, still in only double digits for possible combinations. Silver Medal: Masterminds, with a footnote for having the LEAST number of Primary trees. Bronze Medal: Sentinels

I only use autocompletes if I'm absolutely certain an enemy has fallen through the world. Even then, I'll methodically explore the entire map, looking for mobs hidden in various corners. I've found Family mobs in warehouses waaaaaay up in the rafters at the absolute cieling. No idea how they got there, but I was able to finish the mission legitly, no autocomplete needed. I've zoomed in the map a lot and zipped around looking for hints and "ooooh yea, I can see the edge of a corrider there I missed in that far section of oranabega", and finished that way. I do not use autocompletes just because it's a big map with lots of enemies and I just want to speed through a mission. I get that lots of players do that. I commonly see it advised for Black Scorpion's defeat-all in particular. That's fine for them. Not how I handle it.

Hm. Maybe if I can get that center color to also go dark. I'll experiment with to tomorrow. Too sleepy to log back in and do character creation now.

<Obligatory post directly contradicting your stated preferences> Have you considered a /Stone Melee Tank? 😄 okay. With that out of the way..... um.... tall order. Verrrry few Blaster secondaries are truly Full-Bore Ranged. Blasters were never really designed as a range-only AT. They're GOOD at ranged of course, but almost everything includes melee's and PBAE's. You could try supplementing with Pool ranged attacks (Project Will, Wall of Force) but I do NOT recommend this. I think Tactical Arrow is the only true "everything is ranged or self-buff" secondary. And Beam/TacArrow is a LOT of redraw. I think you'd have to pick one of the others and just flatly ignore the melee and PBAE options. I would not enjoy. You might. But I can't really advise anymore than that.

Archery/Tac Arrow. Both use the bow, so weapon redraw is at a minimum. Glue Arrow you get verrrrry early and is very handy for kiting across and making baddies run to you (slowly) isntead of attacking. Yea it's lethal damage (mostly) but it still does a heck of a job on critters. and you get quite the toolkit in your secondary to draw on.

While I'm not using clown based costume, my Illusion Controller, "Kodachrome", does use a wide variety of colors.

my biggest issue with Dark Blast is I don't like the fluffy ghostly look of most of the powers. I want something that looks more inky black. Rad Blast recolored into pitch dark, maaaaybe with a hint of midnight blue, would do it perfectly. That's what I do for my Dark Control / Rad Assault dominator. Functionally though, Dark Blast seems plenty good for Blasters. If I wanted damage and more damage with a heaping scoop of damage and don't forget the damage, I'd play Fire Blast. But I like having a good mix of secondary effects in there. Both for slotting options / procing options, and just to allow for interesting things. An Ice/Ice blaster with several different hold powers to lock down troublesome things, and ice patch making enemies flop around like fish on dry land, and lots of extra kiting power from the slows is just more my playstyle. Similarly, Dark Blast having some back-door +DEF in the form of to-hit buffs is nice, and Negative is a nice damage type to be doing, and the Keep-Away of the Immobs (which can be used to nullify OTHER players not using KB wisely), just feels like it's in a good place to me. I really do want an more-inky, less nether-y look to the blasts, though. (Optionally; I get that sight unseen, legions of you probalby LIKE the nether-y look).

So much this. I know the Devs have said that branching "you can either choose power A - OR - power B" caused them a lot of grief and it's not a door they want to open again. But I do think some of that could help in a lot of these situations. I cant think of any power in Mind that I would be willing to give up for a pet except Teleknesis. I use EVERY other power in Mind and I want to keep them all. And my Mind Controller is my main. And even TK, I have hopes that they can salvage that power by other means... if they change it from Repel away, and instead make it an Attract Toward (attract other enemies toward the anchor target, not toward you the player) like new Singularity does, that could totally change how people feel about Teleknesis. But I get that there IS a sizeable chunk of people out there who do want a permanent summonable pet. Perhaps the branching choices, even if currently unfavored by the devs, really does need to be looked at again for the long haul.

True for many Dominators. but Plant Control does well again here. Tree of Life / Spirit Tree / whatever it's called, is quite good, and if you're Permadom you can easily keep two Trees of Life up at once. Your pets will be quite durable inside that.

There is a reason I mostly solo on my tankers. I like having a couple of characters who just DON'T DIE. Period. Against Anything. Defend the Midnight Mansion? Yup, just keep slogging away and watch the mobs start to have conniptions when your tanker simply refuses to fall down. But only on rare occasions do I want to be tank for a group of players. I main tanked for a Warcraft raiding guild for 8 years. I feel like I've already served my time in hell, and I don't care to be the "pace setter" whose probably always got people somewhat angry at him for moving onto the next group too soon, or not moving onto the next group quickly enough. I generally only tank for groups of people I already know, and who I know are doing casual kill-all missions without concern for how fast we clear, who don't get all "WTF are you doing typing banter? You're the tank! You're not here to entertain us, you're here to pull shit! Keep GOING!!!" Maybe I just had some real bad luck on my first few forays pug tanking. But I think what most groups want, is simply not how I'm interested in playing my tanker. So, solo's a lot.

On my stalker if I'm placated, I just tab target and keep doing the stabstabstabStabStabStabSTABSTABSTAB routine. It's only really an issue if the Placater is the Last Man Standing, and for this reason, I do prioritize Bane Spiders to put the pain on them first whenever possible. Note that the Placater can still be hit by any AoE attacks. Target the guy right next to him and Throw Spines, Fireball, Total Domination, whatever you got. Another reason to hurt them early if you can. When placated, maybe you can melt them down with AE, and briefly look down at their corpse and say "HA!!" before pressing on. Enemies Taunting me is a pain. It's rare in most content. I've definitely had it happen in First Ward / Night Ward, and some of the newer high lvl arcs. It does make me long for https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Leadership#Assault, to make it wear off faster. But maybe only 1/5 of my characters run Assault. Maybe less. Taunts are especially irriating becuase you can't just tab target someone else. You have to attack THAT GUY, or not attack at all, until the taunt wears off. And when you're stuck in 2 tar pits and moving at a crawl, and then taunter is 30 yards away and not coming closer? /fume. Super annoying when mobs protect their major debuffers or healers / rezzers that way. I mean, it is entirely logical and good tactics for the AI. On that level, I strongly approve. But it comes with a heaping scoop of "Do you MIND?! I'm TRYING to stab your friend over here!!! Jeez, what do I have to do for permission to murdalize freely in these parts??"

I could see that. I mean the Blaster ATO proc to grant status protection exists, sure. But easy would it be to maintain 3-4 stacks for an entiree map? Compared to if you run acro, maybe you only need to maintain 1-2 stacks of that proc. Might be tough to fit in on my blasters, but you've got me at least considering it.

Gotcha. Thinking of Reese in original Terminator "Can you stop it?" "I don't know.... with these weapons.... I don't know."

Wellll....if someone starts barking out things we NEED to do, and never says why, that might get my back up. Especially if we haven't even TRIED a run or two as we were yet. And especially if his solution means we'd need to reset a really long map and it looks like the final fight is RIGHT THERE. But if we've wiped a few times, and it wasn't even close, and someone say "hey guys. There's some interesting mechanics on this one. Maybe not everyone's familar with it. Plus, with some people sidekicked and looking at +5 AV's, this is going to get very rough. If we want to keep going, we can do that, but I think we need to make sure everyone knows where to find their temp powers and how and when to use them. Or, we could drop difficulty some, though we'd need to log for a couple minutes to be able to do that." Then, I'm a lot more willing to listen. Yea, I know. Grumpy Man is Grumpy. I've totally had nights after a bad day at work when I'm like NOPE, I want to just go nuts in a Mayhem and level an entire city block while doing the BWAHHAHAHHAHAH laugh. Some nights you ain't gonna want to be diplomatic about anything, even if it might be more effective. That's fair. But approach reallllly can matter. EDIT: I wasn't there, don't know what you tried or didn't. But I've often gotten the impression you don't suffer fools gladly, and might not be inclined to walk people through steps like that.

Leadership / Assault makes you resistant to placate. Do you normally take that on your characters who face off against Bane Spiders?

having them in a Radio mission would probably need to be a Difficulty Notoriety setting. But, I'm on board with it becoming an Option that can be checkmarked for those players who want to face off against it. Another thing I'd love.... but god how would you manage it? Would be some way that the game to scour MY account for Supers, both Friendly and Hostile. If I had no qualifying characters, then sure, okay, draw from a standard list somewhere. but how cool would it be if entering a mission with my Mind/Kin controller, I'm met at the door by my own Invuln/SS tanker, and halfway through the mission, my own AR/MC blaster, and after 2 levels of obligtatory trash packs, we all face off against my own Plant/Psi Dominator, my own Dark/Dark Corruptor, and my own Spines/Regen Stalker? All with their full set bonuses, their full list of slotted powers, pool powers, etc, their incarnate powers if we're at the appropriate level, and oh yea IT'S ON!!! Showdown / Throwndown!!

They're just MMO players who had it drilled into them "Fire Bad. Don't stand in Fire." 😀 But yea, I hear you. Maybe something like the recent change to Enflame? Mobs still don't LIKE standing in Enflame's fire patches, but it's no longer their A#1 priority to GTFO, either.

Hm. I've never had the luxury of having x4 Accelerate Metabolism's rolling on me all at once. I can definitely see how that would ping your recharge to wild levels, though. Yea, at that point, maybe Spectral Wounds is plenty good enough. On Radiation Infection: "Anchor Debuffs" like Radiation Infection will persist even after the target dies..... as long as the target leaves a corpse behind. Council gunner? Drops to the ground dead *cough* "defeated" *cough*. Your toggle will not auto-drop until the corpse fades out of existence which is a good 30 seconds after. You may choose to automatically deactivate your toggle sooner. Council Hoverbot? Explodes on death, and nothing remains behind. Your toggle will auto-drop upon death. Same with Tsoo ninjas/ink men, body on the ground, toggle stays, but Tsoo Guardian Spirits just fade away, toggle auto-shuts itself off right away. and CoT mages vs CoT spectral demons. You get the idea. Therefore, knowing whether they'll leave a body on the ground, is an important thing to keep in mind when deciding who to place Radiation Infection (or any other "Anchor" debuff... same applies to Storm Summoning / Snow Storm, or Dark Miasma / Darkest Night, etc) on. That said, I really really do recommend this power. It's a severe To-Hit debuff and can really turn a bunch of mobs from beating the tar out of you into the Keystone Kops. It also comes with a strong Defense Debuff, meaning you'll almost never miss the affected mobs, either.