MonteCarla

Wow! These look amazing! Well done

Yes to more proliferation! We've had stealthy tanks since issue 1 (Dark Armor) - Ninjutsu would work fine for the heavy melee classes.

I read something the other day about extrinsic and intrinsic rewards in games. Extrinsic rewards are the merits, XP, badges etc - the stuff you get given by the game for completing tasks set by the game. Intrinsic rewards are the sheer joy of using your powers and flying across city blocks while having a cool costume and so on - the rewards of just enjoying the game for what it is. They're linked - all the merits and XP allow me to later on enjoy the intrinsic reward of solo-ing a +4/x8 map and surviving, and so on. Apparently playing games purely for extrinsic rewards is linked to depression. I immediately thought of Synapse! I now try to focus on the intrinsic rewards when I'm doing it - big merits payoff, TFC progress, the big XP boost you'll get if you do it at low levels. That and having a captive audience for 90 minutes to talk to in-character. 😄

There's very few builds that won't benefit from extra Recharge in set bonuses, and the amount you can build up is quite generous. Chasing +Recharge set bonuses, and adding in the Luck of the Gambler +global recharge pieces will get you to around +100% Recharge in bonuses, equivalent to 3 extra SO's in each power without diminishing returns. Defence is usually my next priority. Either building to the softcap because I already have Defence (typed or positional) or adding defence to an un-armored character. Add in the Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor uniques for an extra +6% defence to everything. +Recovery, +Accuracy, +Endurance, +HP are all nice to haves. +Resistance can be a big deal for a resistance-based armor set, I did a guide on that. +Damage bonuses are less generous. Chasing them will typically give you 1 extra SO's worth in each power. If you're chasing offence, slot for damage procs and build up +Recharge and +Accuracy with your set bonuses.

Yep, the Energy pom-poms sure are strong and pretty! Probably one of the most satisfying sounding powersets in the game. I've realised I had played a Psi Blast/Time blaster to 50. She was.. forgettable, I guess? 🙂 Another reason to go /Energy.

Take Repulsion Bolt. It does a -15% Resistance debuff these days. And it has a 1.4 Base Accuracy, so you can single slot it either with KB->KD or a damage proc.

Ways to make Synapse Task Force better: - Use the Base Empowerment buffs to give yourself End Drain Resistance and +Recovery. Tell the whole team to do this. TAXI-4000 has base buffs in Everlasting, not sure what the best public bases are on other servers. - Everyone grab Plasmatic Taser and Grenade from the START vendor, as many stacks as you can hold. The worst Synapses I've run have been due to lack of AoE damage for all those Defeat-Alls. Single target-punching out Gears sucks. - Run it on the week when it's the Weekly task force. Its length becomes an advantage then, with the big double merits bonus.

I'd suggest /Energy, because /Time's heaviest damage powers also do Psionic damage, and when it's resisted it tends to be heavily resisted.

Power pools I take most commonly on Defenders: Leadership - adds some extra buffs. Tactics also prevents blindness status effects from sticking. Speed (for Hasten) - if you have Aim and a Nuke you'll want them up as often as possible. Also, many powersets have long cooldown buffs that benefit from taking this, especially Empathy Teleport - Teleport Target can bring a dead teammate to you for a safe rez via an inspiration or the START vendor device. Teleport can be used to teleport to a teammate in trouble with a macro eg "\macro TP powexeclocation target Teleport" even if they're in a neighbouring room sometimes! Fighting - Tough and Weave make you sturdier. With the right IO sets a Defender can get to softcapped defence of 45% and resistances of 75% vs Smashing/Lethal (depending on primary powerset) Medicine - don't take this if you have heals in your powerset. But it can be handy if you've taken Force Fields, Cold Domination or Sonic Resonance to patch heal a teammate who's health is slowly dropping. Concealment - Stealth will make you fully invisible these days. Taking this and Teleport Target makes you a great scout, able to find the end of mission boss/objective and bring the whole team in. But there are no hard and fast rule. Experiment, and see what works for you.

Superman and Batman harm other people! Everyone in this game harms other people! Its how we get XP! 😄 So I must respectfully disagree with your thesis that damage and debuffs are for naughty villains and buffs are for nice heroes. There's plenty of precedence for villains who empower their minions and sit back and let them take the lumps. Lex Luthor does it. Mystique and Destiny leading the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants do it. Morgana le Fey enchanting Mordred to go out and be her *ahem* little bitch on the battlefield does not make her less of a villain. There's an entire villain AT in this game dedicated to doing exactly that. If you can do a Positron Task Force on your villainy villain, you can surely justify buffing the odd teammate in character too. If you don't find the playstyle fun, that's totally cool, and I'm glad that there are debuffing powersets for you to enjoy. Just like I'm glad that there are buffing sets for me to enjoy.

So... buffing other players is somehow... emasculating? 😄

I think buffs and debuffs are balanced. 1) Debuffs get hit by the purple patch and AV purple triangles, unlike buffs. I'd rather have the +Def of Force Fields than the -To Hit of Dark Miasma if I'm fighting Jurrasik. 2) Debuffs need to be applied to enemies once combat's started. This leaves gaps in time when your powers aren't helping. Freakshows and other rezzing enemies need to be re-debuffed. A surprise group of adds or an ambush need animation time to debuff in a way that a buffed up team don't.

I'm mostly a no here. Rather than approach this from a balance perspective, what you're asking for here is taking away a particular player choice. Firstly, if I run a Task Force an no-one's health bar budges because of my Force Fields, how am I not the star of the team? I feel that way when I play my buffers. I probably get someone on my team saying how great it was to team with me. And I've chosen to play in a support role. That mindset of winning the game through making my teammates better really speaks to me, and in no way makes me "just a sidekick" to my Blaster or Scrapper buddies. I actually prefer the older support sets that have "only use on ally" powers. eg I prefer the single target heals in Storm and Empathy to the cone heals in Nature and Marine. They don't work on me, but they're WAY easier to save a teammates dipping health bar than something that requires me to face them. Even a PBAoE needs me to pay a bit more attention to finding the dying teammate and getting into range. If I need to heal myself, I have insps, I have the Med Kit temporary power, and healing procs to lean on. None of which help me with healing other players- I need my powers for that. Most powersets, you can get your powers to work on yourself if you invest in slotting. Force Fields has enough personal +Def to allow you to softcap yourself through slotting. If you only ever intend to solo, make an /Energy Aura Sentinel. Empathy allows for some self healing, and you can augment this by slotting for defence. Or make a /Regen Sentinel. Kinetics has a self +End tool in Transference, and you can slot to your heart's content for +Recharge to effectively give yourself Speed Boost. Sonic Resonance - OK, this one does need help 🙂 It's the worst soloing support set in the game, and there's no good reason for not allowing you to use Disruption Field on yourself. So I think what you're asking for is already available - you can make a buffer character who doesn't miss out on their own buffs via slotting. And I really don't want to see one of my favourite playstyles taken away.

(Inspired by @Lockpick's thread on getting an O-Portal the easy way) If you complete 10 tip missions and the alignment mission, you get 40 merits and the appropriate Alignment Countdown power. You have to be level 20 for tip missions to start dropping. e.g. Countdown to Justice for heroes means that in exactly a week you get Call to Justice, a teamwide buff that gives +10% to Hit, +30% damage for 30 seconds every 6 minutes. If 8 heroes do this together, that's +80% to Hit, +240% damage. Avengers Assemble! Very nice on Task Forces before facing the big bad AV at the end. Rogues get a AoE Confuse, Vigilante's get an AoE Fear, and Villains get a self buff that varies by AT eg fills up your Domination bar immediately for Doms. But did you know... you can also get the Countdown power by talking to Null the Gull in Pocket D, and changing your alignment, and then changing it back again. This is much easier than doing 11 missions! Just did it on my new level 8 🙂

I sense a pattern... The only AT I haven't got to 50 is Warshade, and my Peacebringer was human-only. After that it's Scrappers and Sentinels (3/2 out of 101 level 50s). I mainly lead Task Forces, and they're the best solo classes, so that makes sense. And very cool to see your stats, @mistagoat! Edit: adding my AT distribution in for my 101 level 50s Defender 22 Blaster 16 Controller 12 Tanker 10 Corruptor 9 Dominator 8 Brute 7 Stalker 4 MM 4 Scrapper 3 Sentinel 2 Arachnos 2 Peacebringer 1 Warshade 0

I think Corruptors would be optimal here, since Scourge has a chance to kick in against the +4 enemies. Radiation Emission is perfect and blossoms really early. 3x Rad Infection against +4s gives you close to capped -To Hit, as long as your toggle anchors don't run off. Electric Blast gets some really good early AoE with Ball Lightning and Short Circuit by level 6 for the x8 hordes. I don't know if full sapping will happen in a timely manner, but you'll be able to leverage the Shocked bonus damage pretty well. Draining enemies does make them run away though, which can be bad for toggle targets running into another group. Dark Blast provides an immobilise in Tenebrous Tentacles which would help against runners, plus it would softcap your -To Hit.

I'm definitely down for Incinerate. I'd been looking at taking Flares instead of Fire Blast, but could probably skip both, right? Dominators are one of the clickier AT's, and once I've got Blaze and Blazing Bolt and perma-Dom level recharge, they'll cover my ranged attack requirements. Has anyone experimented with damage proc-ing Tesla Coil? Is that worth doing?

Oh yeah, the Electric Control powers are packing -Recovery. I missed that. I think I'll give Elec/Fiery/Fire a go. Fire Breath, but not Combustion. Got it! Thanks for the feedback! 🙂

I'm trying to choose between a Fire/Fiery and Elec/Fiery Dominator Fire Control: All powers benefit from Fiery Embrace, which might be up for 30 out of every 50 seconds once I'm all perma-Hastened up. Is this a big deal though, since most of my damage will still come from my secondary. Hot Feet adds extra AoE Damage and control via the slow and avoid. Flashfire's a good hard control. Is Bonfire going to be much use for someone with this much lockdown? Is the damage worth it? Hasn't changed much since I last played it. Electric Control: Adds a second damage type, useful vs fire resistant enemies. Jolting chain now does base ST hold/immobilise damage, adding some extra AoE, but still eclipsed by my secondary damage. Sleep patch and confuse give me more AoE control Tesla Coil has been given the Volcanic Gas treatment. This means it will proc well compared to Cinders with adaptive recharge, but proc what exactly? Some damage, which will trigger with each pulse might be good. The extra hold from Lockdown would be wasted on a perma-Dominator though. The end drain would mostly be wasted because I'd have no -Recovery, plenty of hard control, and my own end will be fine through Domination and Consume. Has changed since I last played it (but that probably benefits Controllers more) And while I'm here, which powers in Fiery Assault are most skippable? Combustion has a slow animation, and Fire Breath has a small narrow cone. Take both, or which one? I'll probably leave Fire Blast and take Flares. I want to take Incinerate, even though its mainly DoT and does less damage than Blaze. Consume is ripe for damage-proccing as a mini-nuke as well as an end recovery tool. Everything else is a definite take. What do people who've played these sets think?

I routinely drop level 50 recipes silently on starting characters training at Ms Liberty when I come back to train after a high level run. I check that the recipient is below level 20, and doesn't have any set bonuses which would indicate that they're already comfortably off at that level. The recipes are worth 100,000-ish, and sell at exactly the same point - 20 metres away from Ms Liberty, where new players run into financial trouble trying to afford enhancements. Doing this takes up literally zero of their time. Although, between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2 times I get a "thanks" tell and reply "no worries 🙂". (maybe the others are silently fuming at my sheer audacity? :D) We all start with a recipe inventory of 80, so there's no world in which I'm clogging up a level 20 or lower character's inventory with 1-5 recipes. I do this because the starter game is really badly balanced against new players. Struggling to buy enhancements that then go off in a few levels time is not a fun challenge. Saving up for sets when you know what you're doing is fun, but I'm not taking that away from anyone with gifts of 100K. If this happens to annoy the richest players in Homecoming... umm, bonus? 😛 I also teach people how to use merits and other stuff.

+1 to everyone saying earn a few merits, and sell converters/boosters on the auction house. This absolutely changed the game for me when I came back, by allowing me to buy all the SO's I needed as I levelled up. You get 5 merits for collecting all 8 exploration badges in each zone. The wiki has little [Copy] tags on pages like these that will thumbtack each badge for you. Doing this for Atlas Park and Kings Row will get you your first couple of million, or close. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Atlas_Park#Exploration_Badges

Hey Dozer! I remember you from my Faathim Task Force! 🙂 General rule for SO's: Only slot up to 3 of the same kind in each power, or you get hit hard by diminishing returns. So 3 damage in each attack, 3 defence in your main shield powers, and so on. For attacks, 1 accuracy, 3 damage, 1 recharge, 1 end redux is a good start usually. Shield's a Defence set primarily, so you really want to hit 45% Melee/Ranged and Area defences - that's the soft cap at which you're very hard to hit by most enemies. (You can monitor these by clicking on the menu above your powers tray Power->Combat Attributes and then find the defences, and they'll pop up in a little window as a live display) Your main powers (Battle Agility and Deflection) will give you 24% or so when slotted. Combat Jumping adds another 3% maybe. Phalanx Fighting adds maybe 8% lightly slotted with 2 allies in close range. So that's 35% The Steadfast Protection Res/Def and Gladiator's Armor unique IOs can be bought (see end of post) and slotted in True Grit for another 6%. You can find the remaining 4% in set bonuses. Good melee def sets (maybe grab 2 of these) - Unbreakable Guard x4 in True Grit, inlcuding the special +Max HP one - Touch of Death 6 slotted in any melee power - Obliteration 6-slotted in your PBAoEs Good ranged def set (from the wiki here https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Category:Sets_with_Ranged,_Energy_and_Negative_Energy_Defense_bonuses) - Mako's Bite 6-slotted in a Melee attack Good AoE defence sets - Scirocco's Dervish in a PBAoE 6 slots of Gaussian's Synchonrised Fire Control gives you +2.5% vs Melee, Range AND AoE! OR take Tough and Weave from the Fighting pool to be even tougher! After that, start looking for things that can boost your Recharge, so you can use Shield Charge and Fusion more often. Luck of the Gambler +Recharge global is a great start. YOu can slot 5 of them, and have at least 5 defence granting powers in Shield Defence To afford these enhancements... I know you have 144 merits from the Task Force we did 🙂 Go to the Auction House in Atlas and buy Enhancement Converters from the little ATM on the right. List them in the auction house for 1 inf each and they'll sell for at least 50,000 each! So 144 merits = 432 converters = 21.5 million inf! Feel free to hit me up with more questions.

There's the START vendor Survivability Amplifier - gives you +20% Recovery. I always have that running, but it does get expensive Cheaper than that there's the Base Empowerment +Recovery buff, which gave me +17% just now. Stock up on the ingredients for that and refill it every 90 minutes as you zone through bases. (And the End Drain resistance one if you're fighting Clockwork or Freak or whatevs) And the Recovery Serum from the START vendor gives +100% in bursts. It can't be made perma, and you are quite obviously stopping to shoot up during missions 🙂 For slotting, I'll get by with a Panacea in Health and Performance Shifter +End in Stamina, and no extra slots in them. I find my end woes tend to disappear in the 30s when I start slotting sets in all my attacks. Sets like Crushing Impact or Thunderstrike give you around +50% to +70% End reduction for the full set as you level up, in addition to good set bonuses. Its like slotting 2 end reducers in each attack without having to compromise on anything else. Before that - it makes sense that my characters run low on end in the absence of external help. It makes me appreciate that Kineticist who joined my team, or the ease I experience after slotting, or the ease I have when I pick Regen or some powerset with a self-sustain power (like all Blasters now). If I had my way, I'd make blue insps a bit more powerful. Either give you double the current end back (so the big ones are a full bar refill), or a lingering recovery buff and even some drain resistance.

That would cover one of my other goals - to do a character with Drain Psyche. It's an odd odd power - a big buff for 30 seconds that can almost be made perma with some kind of extreme recharge slotting. (+130% in bonuses, +70% from Hasten and +100% in the power itself). But then every 30 seconds you're trying to maximise your drain, compared to say maxing Eclipse targets on a Warshade every 90 seconds. I'm sure I'll end up doing both at some point. 🙂

Thanks, Mista! 🙂 I found having the spreadsheet really pushed me to try new powersets. Without that I wouldn't have given Stone Armor much of a look, for example, but it turned out to be a really fun character. I'd recommend this practice for any altoholic. I made Gwydiana (a Welsh tree faerie) purely to tick off Bio Armor and Spines, both sets I'd been put off by the default graphics. I decided to make them work. She'll be #101 after a Faathim TF this weekend, no doubt. She would have been #100 but I dug out an old Corruptor parked at 40 (half of an Empath duo with a friend who left) to run with my all-Corruptor group friends on a triple XP ITF that got me very close to 50... After that - I think I'm cooking up a Fire/Fire/Fire dom. It's been a while since I did a Dominator, and Fiery Assault is calling to me! I made a Demons/Dark MM as another way to explore two new sets. She's at a quick Halloween 20 or so, and will continue. My Warshade- I just need the character to click and I'll be off. I doubt I'll worry much about AT balance. Scrappers don't do it for me - I have a number stalled in the 30s and 40s. If they have a resistance armor, then being a Brute would be better for the 90% cap. If I'm going for single target damage, Stalkers are better. I always feel like a move to either side on the spectrum of melee ATs gives more to my team, either aggro-control or stealth-and-port in TF's. Maybe that's how I'll finally tick off Psionic Melee? Sentinels - I feel like I made the best one ever with Tiger Wasp: Elec Blast/Energy Aura/Elec Mastery. I'm not sure how to improve on that experience!