MTeague

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.

Still? On dial-up? Even now???

Technically you still do get a little bit more recharge for the 4th and 5th slots of recharge enhancers. But sooooo little it's not worth the slots. So, I would definitely recommend a respec to re-organize where slots are allocated. Your aura heal is serviceable, but I wouldn't go wild slotting it. 2 slots at first should be plenty good. Really your To-Hit debuffs should seriously limit how much people are getting hurt at all, (you HAVE taken Radiation Infection, right?....), so your aura heal should be maintenence heals only, nothing you'll lean on much. Spectral Wounds, if you're not doing IO sets yet, nothing wrong with 2 acc 3 dam. Maybe 1 acc 3 dam 1 end reduction?. Hasten never sucks. Only about 1/3 to 2/5 of my characters use Hasten, but I almost *always* take it for Controllers or Dominators. Being able to pop hasten and stack magnitude of Hold/Confuse in rapid fire can save your hash when soloing before you have Phantom Army. Accel Metab, nothing at all wrong with 3 recharge. Radiation Infection, I like 2 to-hit debuff, 1 end reduce to get me off the ground and then reslot it with sets later. I'm normally a HUGE fan of Decieve or any other source of Confuse. But if most mobs are going to be in your Radiation Infection and unable to hit the broad side of a barn, then Confuse is perhaps less valuable for you. If it doesn't conflict with character concept / theme, I'd take a good hard look at Sorcery. Arcane Bolt would give you another attack, and Enflame is very very nice now. Particularly teamed with other controllers providing you containment.

Good to know. Just dinged six on a Praetorian corruptor at the end of tonight. (Sonic/Sonic. Yea. I know. I'm a masocist, I think.) I'll make sure to nab the breadcrumbs before 8. It's not as make-or-break for me, I wouldn't delete if I missed one, but I do *like* to get them. Thank you for going for science and getting the hard numbers!

I do think having a curated selection of alternate looks per Primary tree is in many ways easier to control. Removes "Hey, he can totally customize his mercs, why can't I customize my demons?" Makes it more possible to have the *very* slightly different looks for each minions.... Unbuffed.... with T1 buff... with T2 buff. No good way to do that on 100% customizeable henchmen. would allow for greater theme enforcement. "you picked Mercenaries. Explain to me how the headless cheerleader costume work with that?" makes it more possible to ensure weapons better mesh with the skeleton/frame, that powers activate from the correct height, and so on. But I also think there will be a very very strong desire for full customization. Forever. It will never really go away. People will always still want it. And with Phantom Army / Mirror, people are going to say "look, we *know* it's possible....".

I tend not to do street sweeping as actual team event, because well, inertia of teams doing what they been doing all along. But if I'm zipping across a zone, I'll clobber some enemies for the sake of doing it. Because yea, I'm I'm on a hero, and a bunch of Family are shaking down for poor soul in Independance Port, hey, ain't it our job to stop that? Redside, it's easier to justify the "you're so not worth my time." and cruise on past enemies. But sometimes your villain can just feel like saying, "Hiya Mr. Blue Ink Man! Now you're gonna die!!!!!!" And particularly with the Tour Guide Tips, it's a nice way to grab a bunch of Exploration Badgers I always meant go get, but never quite got around to getting

oh yea. also, I have to give honorable mention to the Rogue-to-Hero and Vigilante-to-Villain tip missions. Where redside goes to blue, or blueside goes to red, to do their tips, in the other guys' back yard. Those are very well written missions, and a good bit more interesting than your blue-stays-blue / red-stays-red tips.

My experiance has been the breadcrumb lead ins drop off one level BEFORE the contacts refuse walk-up-introductions. I don't know why. For Nova Preatoria, I would say get all the breadcrumb missions no later than level 8, and turn off XP at 9 until you're done with those arcs. For Imperial City, I would say get all the breadcrumb missions no later than level 13, and turn off XP at 14 until you're done with those arcs. For Neutropolis, I would say get all the breadcrumb missions no later than level 18, and turn off XP at 19 until you're done with those arcs. [EDIT: My values were slightly off, see @Apparition's more accurate numbers below] I do think this is somewhat dumb. I don't see any reason for the breadcrumb missions to drop off earlier. But given your goal, that's what I'd plan around.

If you include the Praetoria 1-20, there's also another 4 factions... beyond Hero/Vig/Rogue/Villain. but since those.... in very large portion.... go away when your Praetorian hits primal earth, most people do not care about them. I'd kind of like more callbacks / references / indicators of a praetorian background if it exists, but..... probably not gonna happen in the near future. Alignment is significant only if you are someone who very much cares about "What would my character do?" and do a least mental-roleplay-vs-environment, or if you go beyond that and roleplay with other people. If that's not your thing, then in terms of strict practicality it is OFTEN best to be Vigilante or Rogue to open widest possible ability of zones and content that you can do. Excception: For a Dominator, there's a LOT to be said on the Functional/Practical side for going Full Bad Guy, and getting the Frenzy alignment power for being a Villain. Having a button that can instantly fill your Domination bar on-demand (albeit with a large cooldown), has saved my hash a few times while levelling a Dominator.

On the plus side, this character has the "Balding" hairstyle. So there's only so much left to lose lol.

Technically not: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Excelsior But you hear LOTS less about Excelsior compared to Supradyne. And it's still a bit of "wait, WHAT?" when you see it

There's always Granite! 😀 Seriously though, *I Think* you could still do it with any character, you'd just need a macro / bind that disabled walk just before you strike.

Still trying to figure out how I'm going to get a Sonic/Sonic through Praetoria 1-20. So far it's looking like "Team" or "Nope". I'll being seeing what can be seen with Sonic Cage to do some splitting but... I know it won't be enough to actually solo with. Not in the land of timed laser guided ambushes.

All of this is absolutely true. My current experiment is how a Psi Melee/Fiery Aura brute will fair doing First Ward and Night Ward at content (not flashbacked, but actually in the 20's and 30's, don't have all my slots, don't have extra powers from being exemplared down, etc... and won't have most accolades becuase it will be a character that will not leave Praetoria until dings 50. I'm still assuming it will go decently well, becuase Fire Brutes F**k S**t Up. But I'm a little leary of how it will work against the Awakened with very limited Psii resist and limited defense at lvl 25 or so, when my pride hubris demands I run it at like +2x4.

Use Fly or Mystic flight. It's less breakdancy, more mid-air twirly, but head remains above belt remains above feet. Of course, it's not totallllly dependable, more than a few mobs can drop you out of fly. At the very least several in First Ward/Night Ward can.

Also note that you cannot use an Epic pool AND a Patron Pool at the same time. If you've already selected powers from a Patron Pool, you will be unable to choose an Epic pool, unless you respec, then during the respec, you could choose the Epic pool instead.