Panache

Plant/TA and Plant/Poison/specifically Stone were both an absolute blast from 1-50 and beyond.

I love the nesting doll mystery box of the prestige sprints

Yep, to the right. The default is everything, I think, but you can toggle them. It sort of sounded like OP didn’t know that the Pocket D doors are identified on the maps, so I thought maybe they were just getting lost in the clutter.

It’s not super intuitive (at least it wasn’t to me back in the day), but you can zoom into and out of the zone maps; really helps to find markers in those bigger zones that have clumped up points of interest (like Talos).

Retcons and reboots ARE different. Barry Allen is absolutely NOT a retconned Jay Garrick. Retcon example: Zatanna mind wiping a bunch of villains (and eventually Batman) Reboot example: New 52 (a literal brand new start to the entire multiverse) Neither of those things: a brand new character with powers and a superhero alias that are the same as a pre-existing character's (aka, Barry Allen::Jay Garrick)

I still don’t think you’re understanding what a retcon is. Jaime Reyes and Ted Kord are two different characters. Who cares that they have the same name. Is Laura/X23 a retconned Logan? No. They’re just both sometimes called Wolverine. Is Kamala Khan a retconned Carol Danvers? Is Wally West a retconned Barry Allen? This is the next sentence of that ScreenRant article: ”Despite sharing the same name, Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes are very different heroes with their own personalities and looks.”

V.E. Schwab has two books ('Vicious' and 'Vengeful') that are fun, poppy entrants into the 'first generation of superpowered humans' party. They are solidly and stolidly YA books, FWIW.

Retcon: the act, practice or result of changing an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information in a later work that recontextualizes previously established events, characters, etc. Nothing about Jaime Reyes is a retcon of the Ted Kord Blue Beetle. Jaime has been around for damn near 20 years. He's also heavily featured in several of DC's animated shows/movies. I don't really have a comment about the emphasis placed on who can or can't fly other than, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

550+ without Hybrid and still hitting soft caps? I would love to see that build!

New Placate is streets ahead of Live Placate. It’s worth some fiddling around with.

Ended up switching this concept to a Plant/Poison/Stone proc monster. Shouts to @Frosticus, that thing slaps.

I’m at level 31 now and have been running at +1/x6, eating BFs when necessary. I skipped Antidote in favor of Spirit Ward; partially to open up Sorcery for the mez protection later but also partially to see how I’d do without it. It’s not too bad. Probably will grab Antidote at 32 though, for the specific focus of keeping my Noxious anchor up. Still missing a lot of procs (no Shield Breakers in the pets yet, nothing in Poison Trap and don’t have the MM ATO that has Resist/Regen). Opening with Weaken + Envenom then Provoking dudes to me and toe bombing Poison Trap has been working pretty well as an alpha soak. After that it’s just spreading poisons and summoning specters. There is a bit of that binary feel where everyone is either completely fine or I’m hosping. Some of that is just me being dumb and staying in melee for too long because I keep forgetting that I am not the source of the Noxious Gas.

Absolutely rips (at least at low to mid levels). /Poison's 'flexibility' allows you to take all the Necro blasts without power choice worries, so my lowbie MM is running around with a full 'attack chain' of the 3 blasts and Envenom/Weaken. Between all the -toHit, extra 'pets' making use of the -Res and the specters pulling aggro, it's just a non-stop button spamming bulldozer. Highly recommend.

I’ve been using it as a few seconds of space to get off a Shadow Meld or Dull Pain if I take two or three big hits. The HP they gain back in the interim is negligible, as it’s gone within the first burst rotation from Hide. Started up an Ice/Shield and grabbed Placate there for more shenanigans, with Hide-safe Shield Charge in the mix

First and only attempt at a +4 Malaise; got him down to 5% health before he got me (and then Penny showed up and finished him off; I was happy for her). This was without Barrier. Pretty sure it’ll be doable after some of my Incarnate things hit T4. Maybe I’m a little naive about the current meta (I’ve still got a lot of build habits from Live that are probably outdated), but an /Inv Stalker doing that well against high level burst Psi damage feels pretty damn good. Edit: oh, and I beat up Adamastor. I think this is my first melee toon to pull that off 🙂

I tried it with the Hide proc in TF, but I found myself accidentally firing off slow ASs (heh), no matter how not stoned I was. Sometimes there’s a rotation where AS happens to be what’s queued up after TF; I usually have my next attack queued before the current one is done animating, so it’s a bit of a bet on the Hide proc going off or not. I’m not sure if/how much slow AS and/or slow ET drag DPS down over the course of a long fight, but it *feels* significant.

Oh snap, DPS royalty. I like that Hide Proc in TF idea, I think that ought to bump it a bit. My slotting is probably less than ideal because I can’t get Mids to work for s***, but I am soft capped all around, sitting at 172.5 global recharge before Ageless (perma DP and Hasten) and never have end issues, so it feels pretty decent. (oh, and mine is also /Inv 🙂)

What are y'all rolling with? Between the Stalker procs and the revamped EnM mechanic, it feels like it's not fully possible to just endlessly cycle one chain. I've got Moonbeam rattling around in here too, and right now I've been chaining: (From Hide) TF > ET > AS > MB > ET (if first TF crits) / TF (if first TF doesn't crit) I've run this through a few pylons and I'm sitting around 360 dps (T4 Agility, T3 Reactive, T3 Ageless), but it feels like I'm leaving some damage on the table.

Is this Spoilsport? Always enjoy bumping into that toon

Wild. It honestly feels like using it is “cheating”. When my melees hit 50 and inherit their enhancements, I run them through A Hero’s Hero to see what needs tweaking. This particular Stalker is En/Inv/Soul, and burned down everyone (even Malaise and Mother Mayhem; eff your Psi) at +2 (no Insps, temps, pets, boosters, etc). Gave Chimera and Marauder a go at +4 and tore them up too. +4 Psi AVs is the next test.

Picked up Placate for the first time ever because I had the spot and the slots and Mocking Beratement slaps. Has this thing always put AVs in time out? I understand what it does to your attack chain, but being able to turn an AV off for a while is still pretty amazing.

I’ve run a bunch of Stalkers to 50 and got them to various stages of Incarnate stuff. My favorite of those was a Stone/Stone/Body, but right now I’m leveling an En/Inv/Soul (a rerolled En/En/Body) and I think I’m going to like it even more. I’m a big fan of “new” En/ and /Inv on Stalkers is really solid. Adding Shadow Meld for alphas and/or heavy Psi enemies has really helped round out the build’s defensive toolkit, and low click management means staying in the pocket on the attack chains.

There it is

Junior Anger

Y'all should try the book; Paul Tremblay is a really good horror/suspense writer.