Ironblade

First of all, your comment is completely ludicrous. "You shouldn't need to be rewarded to play the content." And yet, the overwhelming majority of online games have some sort of progression system. I guess developers and players worldwide have some sort of screwed up motivational driving factors. You know, like experience points, currency, loot drops, badges, etc. Addressing the OP - I think some of your points are valid. When things are basically thrown at you, you don't value them as much. I remember when we had 'SG mode' and, at higher levels, you had to decided to prioritize earning influence or prestige. I understand why the 'secret server' changed that - they just didn't have enough players. The Homecoming team inherited a lot of design decisions from the 'secret server', and not all of them good. The fact that everyone can build their own huge base has had a negative impact on supergroups. One of the reasons to join an SG has been removed. (Not all - just one.) Having said that, I don't think any content is obsolete. It may be grindy. It may be less fun. But content is content and it should stay around. Like we can still do the original Positron task force even though we now have the new two-part Posi TF. We just need new and better content - which the devs ARE producing. It's just a very slow process with a small team of volunteers.

It did not count any part of the 20. As for the second question, it did not occur to me to check that. I can do that easily enough. I run part 1 at least half a dozen times per week.

Yep. Look around and most people you see aren't even in SG's.

And now I have data on this from doing the Abandoned Sewer Trial last night. As I expected, based on the size of the discrepancy between the terminal and my actual merits: the terminal counted the 29 base merits and did NOT count the 29 bonus merits for it being the weekly.

I can speak to the soloing aspect. You can absolutely take other pools and be effective soloing. As for farming, I dunno. I farm so little I can't really address 'best practices' and 'best builds'.

(shrug) I have exactly one character with Black Scorpion as patron and one with Ghost Widow. I also have: - one blaster with Munitions Mastery - one scrapper with Body Mastery - one controller with Stone Mastery - one defender with Power Mastery - one corrupter with Dark Mastery And I have a tank planning to take Arctic Mastery. My other tanks (three), my other corr and my other defender took no Ancillary/Patron pools. Variety is good and I am indulging in it.

Well, it *IS* a mission arc, but I think it's not counting because instead of an automatic reward, it brings up a reward choice window - exactly like a Hami raid which also did NOT count on the info terminal.

It has not been my personal experience that prices have gone up. To be fair, I NORMALLY place bids and expect to wait a day or two for them to fill. Maybe the price for impatient people has gone up. I can't say. Basic economic principles apply in games just as they do in real life. The conditions and parameters are different, but the principles still apply. Price caps are never sound policy. Price caps simply lead to shortages.

Did I say weeks? I obviously meant hours. I just did several flashback arcs and the merits for each counted. (Apparently, now that they no longer track server-wide stats, the kiosks update immediately.) In the process, I earned the Aftershock badge for completing all arcs in Faultline. That awarded 20 merits which did NOT count. I expected that, since the kiosk says those are mission stats. I then did a Signature Story Arc for 20 merits and none of that counted. I did not expect that, since the SSA are clearly 'missions'. I'll have to do a WST TF and see what that does. Edit: Additional data - just did a Hamidon raid and it did NOT count. Possible pattern here - the Hami raid and the Signature Story Arc both have a reward choice window and neither was counted by the kiosks.

Derp. I'm stupid. I also did respec trials. That's where I would have gotten the respecs. Still not sure about the tailor coupons.

OMG, I was doing Penny Yin's arc in Faultline and I had to hunt down one of the Lost named Muxley. When I found him, he said: [NPC] Muxley: Rackin' frackin' rausey-rakin'! Classic cartoon curses. I think his name comes from Muttley, Dick Dastardly's sidekick (who didn't talk; he just snickered).

I don't think so. I don't have a version of that shot with characters names, but here are two with MsCats and names. She is Mud.Bug and Scrappy Brat.

If that had been the reason for disabling the double influence, yes, it would have been stupid. But, since it wasn't, your comment is meaningless.

On my tanks. I'll monitor either resists or defenses (or both on invuln and willpower). On a character I routinely use for stealthing missions, I'll monitor PvE Stealth Radius. For the Underground iTrial, I'll monitor Confuse Protection. On Ironblade, I monitor Melee Defense because I enjoy seeing how much I can stack from Parry. That's about it. Many characters don't monitor anything.

I'm pretty sure you get a free respec and free tailor coupon every 10 levels. Although my main character has 9 of each and I've only done the cape mission so I'm not sure where I got the extra three.

Based on my numbers, that doesn't seem possible. I do VAST numbers of TFs vs very few missions or flashbacks. My badge progress says I have done just 15 flashbacks. Back on live, I had a spreadsheet page tracking merits on Ironblade (earned 11,112 total, FYI). I may start doing that again to see exactly what the kiosk is tracking. Edit: I just set up the spreadsheet with separate columns for mission, TF, TF bonus, SSA, SSA bonus, flashback. In a few weeks, I should be able to draw some conclusions.

Well, I was curious about the merit situation now that two people mentioned it so I logged in to check. The Info Kiosk is showing 2178 merits while I have 4116 in my inventory. Despite hitting 50 quite some time ago, I'm pretty sure I have not spent any merits on this character. So I seem to have earned 'non mission' merits. Perhaps it doesn't count the bonus merits received for doing the weekly? If so, these numbers look about right. Aside from the bonus merits for the weeklies, I have been doing Signature Story Arcs quite often and that awards 5 merits plus 15 'bonus' merits.

That wasn't my "usual outfit" because that wasn't Ironblade in that shot. That was one of my tanks. Ironblade is a scrapper. You're referring to his original outfit as seen below.

Hey! I remember you. Oh, look, here we are completing a task force. Since I took this screenshot, my character is the one with no name over his head. That's my ice/SS tank Staff Sgt Frost.

Most of my costume decisions were made long before that. The Champions RPG was published in 1981 and most of my characters didn't have capes because they didn't seem practical. I had a character who had a cape that let him glide. I had a character with mental powers who didn't need to move around much in combat, who had a cape. A cape would obviously create a lot of drag when flying. 'The Watchmen' was published in 1986 and we got to hear about Dollar Bill, the masked hero who worked for a major bank. His costume was designed by the marketing department. While attempting to foil a robbery, his cape got caught in the revolving door and he was shot to death. We knew capes were bad long before Edna Mode told us.

I actually don't have any characters with multiple builds. As one of my previous suggestions indicated, I would solve this particular conundrum by making two characters.

Cool. I had an account to update ParagonWiki back in the day but have not set up an account to fix the HC Wiki when I see errors.

It looked like the main point of contention was whether or not it needed accuracy. A build with zero global accuracy or to hit would be the way to test that.

There's a new wiki, specifically for Homecoming, at https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Main_Page But.... it also says there's an arena in Talos. It's a work in progress.

The problem with coming up with an answer is where you say "team/solo". For mainly soloing, I would not take Empathy at all. Some of the best powers only affect others. I have an empathy defender at 50 and he solos fine (albeit slowly), but I didn't make him FOR soloing. The basic question is do you want to be mostly DPS or mostly support? Answer that and your question is answered. Maybe you should make two characters. On a side note, energy is a decent choice since knockback is damage mitigation. My empathy defender took dark blast for the to-hit debuff. And if you do go with the defender, hit that Leadership Pool hard. Defenders get the best effects from the Leadership powers.