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I second this nomination. 😉 I agree with the idea to require a bit of thinking by the teams/leagues who fight the GM's. I personally prefer something fairly simple, like the forcefield projectors in Market Crash' Big Red Robot fight or the Essences at the end of Dilemma Diabolique, i.e. some kind of of invulnerability gizmo that has to be disabled multiple times during the fight. The Reichsmann fights at the end of Barracuda's and Dr Kahn's SF/TF also have some interesting "you must do this, and you absolutely mustn't do that" requirements. I prefer it to be be something which league leaders can explain to their minions league members in a few concise sentences - prepping for the battle and designating team members' roles should not be a very time consuming task. Easy to explain, difficult to actually do, that is how I prefer it. I would not want to add any new GMs to CoH. If anything, I suspect we have a few too many GMs overall. Generally speaking, the more rare (rarer?) something is, the more likely people are to consider it precious and thus worth taking the time to team up for.

Thanks a bunch for the info, guys. For the overview as well as for the detailed pros and cons and hows and whys. The reason for my question is/was that I already have 2 blasters at lvl 50, a Dark/Atomic and an Energy/Ice, both of which are fun to play but kind of underwhelming in damage (at least when built for ranged damage, which how most of my squishy chars are built). So if/when I make another blaster, I want it to have better damage output than its two predecessors. This thread is a big help for that - thanks again. 🙂

If Fire/ is not an option because of self-imposed concept limitations, and if focus is only on ranged damage (again because of a self-imposed restriction) - what are the best primaries for AoE damage, besides Fire/ ? Like, what are the top-5 primary powersets for ranged-only AoE damage?

Ditto here. Partly because of my CDO, and partly to automatize hitting the correct F-key when in trouble, without even having to look at my keyboard. On all chars regardless of AT and build, the system is: Column 1 = Blues ; Column 2 = Greens ; Column 3 = Purples ; Coumn 4 = Reds ; Column 5 = Varies according to AT/role requirements. It does mean a bit of wasted space, because most AT's mostly only need 2-3 different types of inspiration, but on the other hand this system saves time in hectic fights.

Whenever there is a farming-related thread, there are usually a few people posting that they do their farming on some offbeat AT or powerset combo, as opposed to the Fire-, Spines- or Rad brutes/tankers that most people usually think of as farming builds. So, since I have a lvl 50 invuln/BA tanker sitting unused and forgotten on my alt account, I wonder if this character can be repurposed (and very much rebuilt) for a bit of farming. Am I crazy for even thinking of this, or have others done this before - and if so, perhaps I can see your build? Heck, even if +4/x8 is too ambitious, perhaps something like +2/x8? If this idea makes no sense whatsoever, feel free to tell me so with creative use of verbal abuse - I can take some heat, and trash talk is entertaining for all the other readers of this forum 😜 Thanks in advance.

You can run Architect Entertainment missions alone, you are not dependent on having other players (or rather, other player characters) together with you. Go to one of the computer console-looking thingies in the big AE room and search for an interesting mission. After you select and confirm the mission, you go talk to one of the NPC's who stand around the shimmering, Matrix-esque data stream in the middle of the room. Unless by "...hoping to get some levels..." you mean that you were hoping to join another player's farming mission and get some exp that way. In which case, yes, you would be dependent on finding other players who happen to be farming at the same time you are there. But once they enter their mission, you won't actually see them in the AE building anyway. So there might be lots of other people using the AE in the same building as you, but you can only see them for the brief time they spend in-between AE missions. If, on the other hand, you were looking for other players to team with on a non-farming AE mission, e.g. one of the SFMA-tagged missions like Cranebump mentioned, then I would say your best bet is to shout out in the LFG channel that you are looking for like-minded players to join you on an AE mission.

A propos fads - does this mean we are going to see FOTM builds which maximize the moistness of critical hits? I, for one, have never paid attention to how moist my crits are, but I guess that I have to wait for @Ston or @Croax to publish a listing of stalkers ranked by moist crits. I can already guess that Fire/ has the driest crits, but the rest in anyone's guess.

Yes, the Mission Architect system is where you can play in missions created by other players. And make your own missions for other players to try, if you feel like it. More info here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect. There are Architect Entertainment buildings in a lot of zones, both redside and blueside. The lowest-level zones with an AE building are Kings Row for heroes and Port Oakes for villains. AFAIK there is not a minimum level requirement to use the Mission Architect, but I might be wrong - I have never tried to acces it with a lowbie character.

Thank you for all the feedback and info, everyone. Definitely useful, and this has helped me streamline the way I play my Elec/SR. 50'ed and IO'ed out now, with t3 in all incarnate slots except Hybrid. Great stuff, thanks all. :)

Thank you for adding this last part, @Riot Siren, but after three days of no other replies, I will assume that no one is going to take the bait. Not a big deal, though, because the general stalker tips you posted are very nicely explained, enough so to help me figure out a better attack rotation on my own. Which is better than just being given the rotation by a(nother) expert, because it is better for a man to learn to fish than to just be given a fish etc etc. 🙂 So, many thanks for the help - much appreciated. 💪

So, I made a new Elec/SR stalker. Lots of fun, and I am killing arresting stuff left, right and center. But the thing is, it feels like I am not doing so very efficiently. As in, there is probably way more damage potential in Elec/ than I am currently* getting out of it. I have played an Ice/Energy for several years, and Ice/ has a very simple attack rotation to make the most of Hide, crit mechanics and ATO procs. I wonder whether Elec/ has something similar. So here are my questions to this forum: 1) Is there a generally agreed "best practice" attack rotation for electric melee on stalker - vs. hard targets and vs. groups of minions/lieutenants? 2) If not, what is everyone's personal preference for attack chain? 3) What are the "must use" and the "must avoid" powers in the Elec/ primary? I hope the questions make sense. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Well, if the info came from some online place, then it must be true. I, too, recently searched for info on some online place, it is odd that we didn't see each other while there. 🤔

Oops! Is it too late to remember to include my in-game global? If so, this might teach me to read the instructions before posting next time 🙂 If not: @Atrocifist.

That was actually what I intended to reply when I first read this thread, but then the suggestion of a suburban neighborhood intrigued me so much that I got sidetracked 🙂 That said, there is plenty of unused real estate in the exisiting residential zones, so the suburbia could be added to e.g. the open areas of southeastern Talos Island or Founders Falls.

I second that motion. We have nice residential neighborhoods in Paragon City already, but they are built up with high-rise buildings which gives a different feel than a suburban neighborhood - street after street with single-family houses, white picket fences and well-cared-for lawns. Nothing is ever quite what it seems in the City of Heroes, of course, so there needs to be something sinister going on in suburbia 🙂 A few possibilities: 1) A Stepford Wives kind of place - it is a Nemesis plot somehow. 2) The underground Oranbega zone (as per @Spaghetti Betty's suggestion) is located directly below suburbia. So a very literal "evil lurks beneath the surface" vibe. As an added bonus, the presence of underground sorcerers probably keeps the moles away, which is great for property values because no one likes moles ruining their lawn.

@Tachstar Might you be thinking about The Major's story arc? https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/The_Major It doesn't involve exactly what you are describing, but a somewhat similar mechanic - a surprise call from a very hush-hush contact who insists on using phone booths to communicate.

You can spend the inf on a second build for your Widow. @KaizenSoze has a thread about making an extra-tanky Widow, which sounds pretty fun. And if you find yourself accumulating too much inf again later on, you can make a third build for a purely ranged Fortunata, or some other exotic subvariant of your main.

I think your Forever Scrapper will end up being Elec/Nrg. Because: - Good balance of ST- and AoE damage in elec/, which is important in a Forever Scrapper, since you need that versatility to be able to use this character in a variety of different settings - exemped, itrials, solo, team, kill-alls, single hard target, etc. etc. - Elec/ has short activation times on its main attacks. This reduces the amount of wasted damage from attacking already-dead targets, which can be annoying. - No weapon-like animations in the elemental attacks. I seem to recall that being a bit of a peeve of yours. - Lightning Rod is a really fun power to use (like all TP'ing melee attacks). You need something in your Forever Scrapper that makes you smile whenever you use it! - Not much analysis behind the /nrg secondary, except to say that it just works. Whenever I play my /nrg armor scrapper, it is simply a nice, smooth ride. /Nrg has a full suite of utility powers when you need them, yet it is not very clicky outside of the utility powers. With all that said, I wonder if we need a separate betting pool re. how long your Forever Scrapper will in fact be your Forever Scrapper before being replaced by the next Forever Scrapper 😁 After all, a char in CoH is like a pair of jeans: In the time it takes you to realize that this is your best-ever, I-will-never-find-better pair of jeans, you will have worn them out to the point where they are at least halfway to being worn out and ready to be replaced ...by the next, magically perfect, best-ever jeans 🙂 My guess/bet is 6 weeks. Although that is based only on how long my own Forever Characters typically last before getting de-forever'ed, so of course YMMV.

Now I have a mental image of dozens of longboats full of large, bearded men wearing ninja robes and horned helmets, the ships running up on an English beach and the viking-ninjas leaping out of the ships with a mighty battle roar - only to start sneaking along the beach and trying in vain to not be seen.

I agree with this. Granted, a Numina TF does take longer than most of the other signature TFs, but not much longer, provided the team does a decent job of planning out the hunts for minimal delay between one hunt ending and the next one starting. It doesn't require a team of uber players, either; if just one member of the team is experienced enough to understand how to assign hunt-zones to the team in the right order, it is quite doable. ...provided that everyone is able to read chat and willing to do their part. If they are not, then Numi takes forever. But if the team is that bad, pretty much every TF takes forever 😉 At the risk of sounding like a mindless fanboi, I would also argue that Numi's TF is one of the more socially oriented TFs in the game precisely because coordinating the hunts requires communication between team members.

I wanted to highlight this bit, as I think this is a big deal. One thing I have noticed when playing AE arcs in general - and for that matter the canonical story arcs and TFs in CoX - is that if the story doesn't do a good job of making me care what happens to the main NPCs and/or groups in the story, then I lose interest in fulfilling the story's objectives and find myself merely facerolling attack buttons to get to the next part of the story. So, yeah, thanks for the tightening-up, I suspect the story is improved now. Dunno when I personally will find the time to play through 'Glitters myself, but one day...

Funny you should mention that - I had wondered myself if the PvA series would be better off as part of the larger Post Praetoria campaign. I didn't have a clear idea of how that would be done, but the 6-arc make-over you listed makes a lot of sense. For some reason I can't figure out, the two PvA arcs didn't grab me in the same way that your other goldside (and goldside-related) arcs did, so mixing the PvA arcs directly in with the overarching Post Praetoria campaign might help in that regard. That said, I think there are better uses of your time than creating 3 new arcs just to get to that magical number of 9 arcs. Your proposed combination of Glints and PvA looks like a coherent storyline, so no need to add anything to it. ...unless you already have one or more stories inside you that are just begging to be written, in which case by all means do so. What I am saying is, don't be a slave to the number 9. Edit: Added the missing word 'idea'.

Damn you! Just when I thought I had gotten out, you pull me back in! I finished Police Vs. Alien 2 a few days ago and thought I would take a break from goldside AE arcs, but now thanks to you...

Assuming the character has not earned any Empyrean Merits of his own (a faulty assumption, of course, but this is just to keep the calculation simple), you would need to mail him a total of 408 Empyreans to get him to all t4's.: - A tier3 costs 7 commons, 1 uncommon and 1 rare. That will cost you 18 Empyreans to create. - A tier4 costs 2 tier3's, 2 commons and 1 very rare. The latter two items will cost 32 Empyreans to create. - Thus, a tier4, craftef from scratch using only Empyreans, will cost 68 Emyreans to create. - 6 x 68 = 408 Empyreans total = 8 Transcendents and 8 single Empyreans. Or perhaps it is faster to mail 9 Transcendents and let your pure goldsider keep the change 🙂 @Zepp Maybe your question was rhetorical and you already know the math for this better than I do, but nonetheless the answer might be helpful for some other readers of this thread.

Yes, you do 🙂 I have recently played through all of Glimmers, Glints and Gleams on my dedicated goldsider character, and missing that one mission (Glints 4.1) is nagging at my OCD. 😉 A couple of other feedback points: 1) I thought the were very well thought-out and added a lot to the various arcs they appeared in. I would like to see more of them in future arcs or in possible future reworks of the existing arcs. Interesting groups, and they fill a gap in the game lore. 2a) Ref. your ideas for a new naming convention, I agree that getting rid of the Glitters/Glimmers/Glints/Gleams prefixes and calling them all "Post Praetoria Campaign No. X.X" makes the whole thing appear more cohesive and more RPGesque. 2b) How set are you on the campaign title "Post Praetoria Campaign"? It is, of course, very accurate in describing what the campaign is about, but to my artsy sensibilities it feels almost too clinical in its descriptiveness. In order to sell the campaign to future AE users (or reselling it to someone like myself for future replaying), something slightly more dramatic might be better. Perhaps something along the lines of "Post Praetoria Power Plays", since there are many different groups who take turns throughout all the arcs vying for power among the ex-Praetorians. Or something else that includes the words Post Praetoria (which I agree signifies nicely what the campaign is about) but with a few fluff words added to make it sound more grand. Anyway, your campaign, your choice, these are just my loose pre morning coffee thoughts. 2c) Putting the name of each arc last in the sentence makes the most sense to me. I would, however, place the "fork title" before the number, like this: "Post Praetoria Campaign - Tech - 2.2: Fortunes in Faultline" rather than "Post Praetoria Campaign 2.2 - Tech: Fortunes in Faultline". Makes it easier to identify at a glance which fork one is looking at.