Apparition

Just break into two groups. Five and four, or six and six, or something. The game has been designed for a maximum encounter of eight people for over a decade. Changing that balance would fundamentally break the game unless you re-balanced everything, which would not be justifiable for any development team besides ones working for EA or Blizzard perhaps. Uh... not everyone's toons can easily carry seven other people. That's a concept that a lot of AE babies have, and why so many ITFs are slogs. "That one level 50 Fire/Rad Tanker powerleveled all of us to level 35, so we should be able to easily do a +4x8 kill all ITF if there's one level 50 on the team!" I was on a steamroll ITF on a level 50 Beam Rifle/Sonic Corruptor. Everyone else was level 42 or below. A couple of them insisted on running it at +4 because "there was a level 50 on the team!" It took about two and a half hours, and there were many, many team wipes. My level 50 Beam Rifle/Sonic Corruptor kicks butt... but not enough to carry 7 lowbies.

It's been attempted three times before, including once by myself. None ever got off the ground. Mine didn't because it was strongly alluded to a few weeks after starting that Homecoming was working on their own Wiki.

Welcome back to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. FF is one of the power sets that is better on Corruptors than Defenders. Defense is easy to come by now. What is not so easy to come by is AoE mez protection, and FF Corruptors actually have stronger AoE mez protection than FF Defenders.

IOs nullified the use of Force Field long before Incarnates came along, although they don't help.

The problem with procs aren't on the the high damage ATs, they're a very significant problem on low damage ATs. They enable the low damage ATs to do as much damage, or perhaps even more, than the high damage ATs. On top of that, the low damage ATs have better defense than the high damage ATs. That's why you're seeing so many more Defenders than Corruptors as of late. Why play a Corruptor when you can play a Defender with better damage and better defense?

Why? The other tools aren't clearly overpowered and in need of a nerf like damage procs.

Yep. I specifically avoid any group looking for a tank, Defender, or "healer," because nine times out of ten it means that the leader is clueless.

I pretty much ignore damage procs for the most part because it is only a matter of time before they rightfully get nerfed to the ground. I consider them more of a hack than a proper solution for more damage in most ATs. Blaster will always do more damage than Sentinels, even with Dual Pistols, simply because of the much greater AoE cap and the higher damage modifier. More damage to more targets.

Yeah. I typically run TFs/SFs below level 30 at +1, and TFs/SFs below level 50 at +2. At level 50, it depends. If we're carrying a bunch of lowbies on an ITF or LGTF, or doing a speed run, set it at +2. Otherwise, +3.

Yeah, "annoyingly lackluster damage" is more of a Sentinel issue than a DP issue.

You definitely want Swap Ammo. It's the bread and butter of Dual Pistols. Dual Pistols does a lot more damage with Incendiary rounds than with standard. If my team is light on support (or if it has none), then I use Chemical rounds for the -dmg debuff. If I'm doing something where I expect a lot of ambushes (hello Praetoria), then switch to Cryo rounds for the slows. Anything else, use Incendiary rounds. I never use standard rounds after getting Swap Ammo.

Considering that it takes me three weeks to solo a toon from level one to 50, and you can get a toon to level 50 within a week just by running Task/Strike Forces, the pre-50 game window is much smaller now than it was prior to sunset.

You can fix the defense debuff resistance with the Ageless Radial Destiny. Energy Aura sucks down endurance because it has Energy Drain, which you can use to cap your endurance right back up. Even then, I don't notice the endurance suckage much after level 30 or so. That's probably because I have complete builds planned out before I make a character and slot IO sets as I level, though. As for endurance sappers... sap them right back. When fighting Freakshow, Carnies, and Malta, I use Energy Drain on them even if my endurance is good just for funsies. Tankers don't get Energy Aura, so they don't need to cloak. :P As for Brutes, why not? It's something different. Uh... I've leveled up multiple Energy Aura toons, one of which is level 50+3 ATM. I actually had to intentionally repeatedly die at level 50 just to get the first debt badge, nonetheless three for the High Pain Threshold accolade.

The game incorrectly includes Scourge in Corruptor damage numbers.

Actually, I'd say that the epic pools should be locked to heroes and vigilantes as well. Not that it matters to me, I've never used them.

Yeah, I can confirm.

Captain Mako's patron story arc has you hunt down and kill Ace McKnight. To my characters, after that crap he pulled on Willy Wheeler and my character, having us secretly help Longbow... well, if taking on Captain Mako as my character's patron is the price to pay for some payback, so be it. :P

The only worthwhile alignment power is Villain, so I don't see that as an issue.

For three reasons. First, the patron power pools should have been limited to villains and rogues in the first place. If you go hero or vigilante, you should lose them. But it's far, far too late for that. Secondly, as I said before, the game caters far too much to blue side as is already. If it weren't for the patron power pools, the majority of the player base would never set foot in the Rogue Isles to begin with. It's a small price to pay to expose them to life on the other side. Thirdly, the patron arcs were and are villainous content. They should remain that way. Red side doesn't have nearly as much content as blue side to begin with. To take some of that red side content away and open it up to all alignments is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Everyone can already pick them at level 35. Just talk to Null the Gull. Done. If that is gatekeeping, then so be it.

I don't see the point. Go talk to Null the Gull, switch alignments, run the patron arc, come back to Pocket D, and talk with Null the Gull again. Back home safe and sound within a few hours, tops. Going villain or rogue for a few hours is just the price of admission. If you are not willing to do even that, then I don't know what to tell you. The game already caters to blue side far too much.

Just a reminder that the weekly scheduled MSR trial will launch from Pocket D in less than eight hours, y'all. You must be level 35+ and have the Member of Vanguard badge to participate. There will be a 100 million INF kill shot prize for the drop ship! I hope to see y'all there.

Just like paywalls!

I think it's all related to the league bug I reported back in August: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/7384-league-bug/?do=findComment&comment=67217 If you just invite someone to a league (not team, but league), the system can get confused (and often does), thinking that the person is not on a team. If you just randomly invite people to the league (not your team), and then lock the league before queuing, odds are that the system will get confused because it sees someone not on a team trying to enter a locked trial, and kick that person from the league and trial. I've lead over a hundred instanced MSRs on Homecoming. I have never locked the league, and I invite people to my team first, and then shuffle them off to another team just like GM Solace suggested on the thread linked above. Out of those 100+ instanced MSRs, the league has only been scrambled twice. The league scrambling, and people being kicked from the league, is vastly more likely to occur if you lock the league before queuing for a trial and if you just invite people to the league without inviting them to a team first. It definitely is an issue that's been around since Homecoming started that needs to be fixed, but the best way around it at the moment is for trial leaders to invite people to their team and then shuffle them off to another team as needed, and not lock the league.

Bueller?