Apparition

Mercenaries are bad. Terribad. Just don't do it. As far as I am concerned, they don't exist as a primary, more as a cautionary tale. Unless you go with Robots, you want a secondary that can heal. There's nothing worse than waiting around for several minutes for your pets to heal back up. The five best secondaries for Masterminds (IMO), are Dark, Electrical Affinity, Nature, Thermal, and Time. Radiation and Kinetics are both considered subpar on Masterminds because their +recharge powers don't work on your pets. It'll make them run fast, but that's about it. If you go with Beasts, just be aware that they are almost entirely melee so you want a secondary that can support them in melee. Key bindings are not necessary (I use macros instead), but they are very helpful. You can find them here. The only Hybrid Incarnate you should take is Support Core. The rest are either broken or barely functional on Masterminds.

Are you playing on a desktop, or notebook?

This is one of the few missions where I just auto-complete and move on with my day.

Yeah, it's not a good look. IMO, crowdfunding can work well for many things. Books, documentary films, graphic novels, podcasts, tabletop games. Video games is not one of them. They just require too much time and money.

City of Titans apparently needs more money.

I just have to commend the OP on posting a suggestion that the playerbase as a whole can finally agree on.

Read and learn. Once you enter a PvP zone, it is open season on you. You can request not to be PvPed inside the zone, but no one has to oblige and they would not be in the wrong for PvPing you, since that's the intended use of the zone.

You want Start11. It'll cost money, but it's worth every penny IMO.

Ace McKnight is a pushover. That said, my friends specifically ignore me whenever I call out that I have the Captain Mako patron badge mission up because of all of the Knives of Artemis in the mission. 😆

Early in the Issue 23 beta, the Statesman Task Force became the Back Alley Brawler Task Force. However, IIRC, a bunch of players didn't like it and felt that Miss Liberty was more appropriate since she is Statesman's granddaughter. You can find references to it in a couple of changelogs. From the July 31st, 2012 patch notes: From the August 8th, 2012 beta patch notes:

There's just really great scenery there that I couldn't help but to stop and admire the view.

Between Scrapper ATO enhancement sets, damage procs, Brutes' damage cap being nerfed in Issue 26, Page Four, and the Tanker buffs in Issue 26, Page Four, Brutes are now objectively the worst of the four melee ATs. There's no room for them in endgame. Scrappers and Stalkers do more damage, while Tankers are substantially more sturdy and do almost as damage, (and sometimes just as much or more damage thanks to a combination of damage procs and their wider radius AoE attacks). You'll find Scrappers, Tankers, the occasional Stalker on non-PUG level 50 teams and leagues, but Brutes? Once in a blue moon in my experience, except for the occasional farming Brute someone brings along to try to get Incarnate abilities more quickly. In any case, not what this thread is about. See numerous threads in the Brute and Tanker forums. MTeague nailed it. If you do Gold side story arcs via Ouroboros Flashback, you can't do any of the undercover options. I'm a Loyalist at heart, I want to double cross the Resistance scum as often as I can. The goal was/is to do all of Nova Praetoria, Imperial City, and Neutropolis. Ding level 20, head on over to the Rogue Isles. Use Ouroboros Flashback to do as much of level 1 through 20 red side that I can. Then use Ouroboros Flashback to do as much of level 1 through 20 blue side that I can. Then start doing absolutely all red and blue sides content from level 20 through 50. I realize that I'll miss some level 1 through 20 red and blue side content as a result, but it'd all be filler, and for blue side not very good filler. Oh, I'll definitely be back. I intend on being there Fridays for the mothership raids, and for the trials on Saturdays. The game is Hotel California for me. I can take an occasional vacation, but in the end I can never truly leave.

Most people go for either Black Scorpion or Ghost Widow as their patron. They are the easier of the four. Scirocco's patron arc is pretty good, but you fight a lot of Mu, so having some sort of endurance drain resistance is a big plus unless you just hate having endurance or something. Personally, I always take Captain Mako. Why? Well, I'm from Philadelphia, so I have to always root for the underdog. :P Generally perceived to be the most difficult and most annoying of the four, thanks to all of the "defeat all Longbow" missions and multiple missions with the Knives of Artemis. So, for ease and in relative popularity: Black Scorpion/Ghost Widow --> Scirocco --> Captain Mako.

The Freakshow beg to differ. Leet speak has been in the game since Issue 0.

(No, not the power.) For the past month or so, I get to the log on screen, look at my list of characters, look over them again... and think, "Meh." I don't feel like playing any of them, although I'll pick one for the scheduled raids I co-lead and for iTrials with my SG. I thought maybe I'd try something a little different... make a character to solo absolutely everything in the game, from gold side to red side to blue side. I must have made and deleted about ten different characters over the past two weeks, all by the time they get to Imperial City. I make a Brute because I keep reading and I keep being told that Brutes are the way to go for this project. But then I get near the end of Nova Praetoria or the beginning of Imperial City and think to myself, "Brutes are terrible at endgame. Do I really want to do all of this on a Brute?" and delete the character. Then I make a Mastermind, because Masterminds were my favorite AT back on live and I miss playing one. But then I get near the end of Nova Praetoria or the beginning of Imperial City and think to myself, "Praetorian ambushes are deadly for Masterminds. You know this. On top of that, quite a few people I know intensely dislike playing with Masterminds. Do I really want to do all of this on a Mastermind?" and delete the character. Then I'll try another Brute, and eventually go back to thinking to myself "Brutes are terrible at endgame. Do I really want to do all of this on a Brute?" and delete the character. As I've said, I've done this about ten times in the past two weeks. I now realize that I'm burned out on City of Heroes. I just really feel no interest in playing it other than for scheduled events with friends. How do y'all deal with that?

Yep. Paragon Studios intended to flood the game with so much Incarnate only content... more and more Incarnate trials, more and more Incarnate only zones, an Incarnate only Praetorian Hamidon raid... that they felt that people would eventually stop doing the pre-Incarnate content and only do the Incarnate content, so Incarnate abilities working outside of Incarnate content would eventually become of trivial concern since no one would be doing it anyhoo. Unfortunately, NCSoft removed the floor from underneath Paragon Studios, and here we are.

Now you know why I have been pushing for two and a half years now for damage procs to be nerfed to the ground. They really need it. They break the balance between power sets and even entire ATs completely. IMO, Captain Powerhouse had the right idea when he posted back in 2019 that they should be tied to the AT's damage scalar. Shield is very good, but it's worst on Brutes as the +dam from AAO is pretty meaningless on Brutes. If you're going to play Shield, you're much better off playing it on a Tanker or Scrapper instead.

There's nothing you can do about where you first zone into Mercy Island, but if you can make Kalinda or Matthew Burke your first contact and do their missions just like you could back in Issue 7.

Super Reflexes is like Force Field. It does what it does well, but at the end of the day it's a one trick pony. If I wanted a defense based armor set, I'd rather go with Invulnerability, Energy Aura, Shield Defense, or Stone Armor as they offer layered mitigation, additional tricks, and in the case of Shield Defense and Stone Armor, additional offense. YMMV.

Only for people who don't know how to slot it properly. Dual Pistols is currently ranked the second ranged damage set in AoE damage, and something like number six ranged damage set in single target damage.

IMO, it'd be more along the lines of: Primaries: S: Claws, Energy Melee, Savage Melee A: Katana, Martial Arts, War Mace B: Dark Melee, Electrical Melee, Ice Melee, Titan Weapons C: Dual Blades, Radiation Melee, Stone Melee, Street Justice D: Fiery Melee, Psionic Melee, Staff Fighting, Super Strength F: Battle Axe, Broadsword, Kinetic Melee, Spines Secondaries: S: Bio Armor, Radiation Armor A: Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Invulnerability, Stone Armor B: Energy Aura, Fiery Aura, Shield Defense, Willpower C: Ice Armor, Super Reflexes D: Regeneration

That's a very good list in general, but I have to question putting Martial Arts *below* Kinetic Melee and Fiery Melee on Brutes. At worst, I'd rate it C tier, and honestly more like B. With enough recharge, it really shines. Best paired with Electric Armor, Energy Aura, Radiation Armor, and Stone Armor IMO.

Instanced mothership raids were added to Homecoming on October 1st, 2019. They require everyone on the league to be level 35+ and have the Member of Vanguard badge. However, there are numerous advantages to the instanced MSR. Everyone must be level 35+, so there are no level two or level ten characters on the league using the raid as a cheap way to power level. Brutes and Tankers get Vanguard merits from their team while pulling, no matter how far away from the rest of the team they are. The hospital is inside the instance and much closer to the mothership, so you get back into the action more quickly. The instanced MSR map is only about half the size of the RWZ map, so there is significantly less lag. Everything in the instance is level 54, including the pylons, so it’s slightly more difficult than a zone MSR. Everyone is automatically boosted to level 50 upon entering the instance, so there is no need to fiddle with the league to ensure that all team leaders are level 50, as everyone in the league is level 50. All of this adds up to a much smoother mothership raid with significantly more Vanguard merits compared to zone mothership raids. On top of that, you don’t have to compete with people doing other things in the RWZ, and vice versa. There’s no need to ask people trying to form a LGTF or Tinpex to leave the zone, and LGTF and Tinpex leaders don’t have to worry about some teammates being in RWZ 1, 2, and/or three. Unfortunately, only mothership raid leaders on the Indomitable and Torchbearer shards run instanced MSRs.

Most of my characters’ builds cost about a billion INF each between enhancements, enhancement catalysts, and enhancement boosters.

Every time someone in-game asks me something along the lines of: “Are you the Apparition from the forums?” I think to myself: “Ah crap. What am I going to have to apologize for this time?”