Placta

Containment increases damage to mezzed enemies, Domination makes it easier to mez enemies (in addition to protecting yourself and, if you get permadom, you never have to worry about endurance again unless you get hit by a sapper or something). With Domination, a dominator can hold a boss with a single shot, and can stack enough holds on an AV to get through the purple triangles. Dominators have higher base damage than controllers, and have a dedicated attack secondary so they don't have to rely on pool powers or the little bit of damage the mez attacks do. Containment makes up some of the gap, and debuffs can put a controller ahead on damage. That said, I've always found controllers tedious to solo from when the damage scales start kicking in until the pet gets built up, while doms are more fun out of the box. The thing that I think helped my doms click was thinking of them as blasters that trade sheer damage for the ability to completely neutralize their foes, from single dangerous enemies at level 1 to whole groups once you pick up an AoE or two.

Basically, up until Issue 9, events follow in level order. You can see some of this in the original hero stories; one that comes to mind is the last Sky Raider arc has the Sky Raiders talking to a Nemesis soldier, and the Nemesis arcs seem to suggest the Sky Raiders were absorbed into Nemesis' army. There are a few issues with retcons: the Council replaced the 5th Column, only for the 5th to come back; Sister Psyche went back to her original body and Aurora Borealis replaced Malaise; then Psyche and Statesman were dead before the whole game, which makes absolutely no sense but we're stuck with it. Then: * Issue 10: The Rikti return, and Vanguard opens up. Rikti Zone invasions, RWZ story arcs and LGTF. * Issue 11: Ouroboros invites people who know about time travel to join its ranks. Ouroboros initiation and task forces. * Issue 12-13: The Midnight Club begins recruiting and opens the portal to Cimerora. Midnight Club stories (recruitment, Darren Wade, Mercedes Sheldon), Cimerora story, ITF. * Issue 15-16: The Omega Team time capsule is opened and a new memorial to the team is established in Atlas Park's City Hall. Revamped hero cape mission, Kahn Task Force/Barracuda Strike Force. I think that covers most things up to GR.

The last time (that I'm aware of) they tried to fix Rage, this is more or less what they did: No crash if not stacked. It... well, you can read that thread to see why it didn't make it. If a single-stack crashless toggle mutually exclusive option like Instant Healing/Reactive Regeneration is off the table, I'd remove the defense crash to put it back like it worked on Live and call it a day.

IIRC there's a screen with GPS coordinates in the RWZ Vanguard base, and those coordinates match Providence.

Battle Maiden was captured at the end of Ajax TF and broken out of prison and recruited by Malta. Chimera survived the Magisterium but was killed in the start of the issue 24 stories. Aurora Pena is free of Praetor Tilman and was working with the Resistance (and later joins Marchand's "Praetorians aren't all bad!" hero team).

I have one and a half pairs of Primal/Praetorian counterparts: My main is distantly related to the Cabal. The Primal version (elec/elec blaster) discovered her latent powers when she was attacked by a couple of Cabal witches. The Praetorian version's (elec/elec dominator) powers appeared like a mutation, probably caused by Cole and Diabolique's magical extermination campaign. The two meeting helped both put together the pieces and figure out where their powers came from. The half pair is two sisters. On Primal Earth, older sister died trying to be a superhero and younger sister (db/sr stalker) took up the swords. On Praetoria, younger sister was killed in a Resistance terrorist attack leading older sister (db/wp scrapper) to join Powers Division.

Those are Infected, not Contaminated, and don't count for the badge. [Unless Homecoming has changed something here.]

Gaiman (and Mike Dringenberg and Sam Kieth) created the character for Sandman (which also had the backstory of leaving Hell to run a piano bar in LA) but the comic the show's based on was written by Mike Carey.

A few years back, I met someone who was at Paragon in 2012. He was aware of Homecoming, and happy it was there, but that's about all he said about it. (And he was amused I still had my lanyard from the 2012 Player Summit, heh.)

A quick census of my characters: Magic (13) – 2 magical bloodlines (one with Praetorian and Primal versions), three supernatural beings (fairy, genie, succubus), mage, powers from artifact, powers from magical weapons, learned powers from magical book, gained powers after falling into Netherworld portal, one gained power from experimentaiton on her soul, resurrective immortality Mutant (5) – Not much to say here, they discovered their powers in puberty like most mutants Natural (13) – One peacebringer, the rest are just normal people who are good in a fight Science (11) – Two mad scientists, four other experimental subjects (one by Crey, one by Neuron), one lab accident, two radioactive animal bites (kitten, monkey), prenatal exposure to Terra Volta reactor, warshade Technology (4) – Android, inventor, nanotech, "god mode" connection with surveillance-scanning AI Multiple/Ambiguous (3): Mutant whose powers are deadly and uncontrollable. Must be restrained by technology. "The finest minds of GIFT, MAGI, and SERAPH have examined her and concluded that she definitely has powers." Isekaied by unknown means which also granted her proficiency with weapons. Edit: Technically Teri belongs here because she's a mutant, but her mutation is useless and her powers come from the Kheldian bond.

My take on the "snap" idea: In late 2012, as a last-ditch effort to stave off the Coming Storm, an Ouroboros splinter group changed Primal Earth to a mundane world free of superheroes/magic/mad science/madder gods. A few (sliding) months ago, when they felt sure the Batallion no longer felt we were worthy of their attention, they restored it... with some unintentional changes. This explains: Differences in the Homecoming world and the world as we remember it from the Paragon days Differences in my characters – some changed origin/archetype/powersets, some had details of their backstories rewritten, modified appearances, etc. Why my characters (aside from Rachel, who's immortal) have a static age without me having to worry about birthdays/Stef escaped Astoria as a teenager/Cheryl's grandmother was a hero during WWII/etc.

Most of my character names are anagrams of their real names that usually end up being nonsense. But when "Avast Moon Cry" came up on the anagram server I knew I had to use that. The character's entire concept is her name is Anastasia Romanov and she is entirely sick of explaining that no, she's not that Anastasia Romanov(a). (She goes by Stacy.)

If the game's history is any indication, they give the task force to a new contact (or maybe kick it to Ouroboros and invent a new one) and retcon the entire game so they died before all the content.

I played my first Bots/FF mastermind to 15 on live and had the same bored out of my skull experience. The one I played to 12 before sunset and the one I have on Homecoming took the blaster rifle attacks. They may not be the greatest damage, but it at least feels like I'm playing and not sitting back and letting the game play itself.

I think the idea was to try to unify and consolidate the player base by creating a single new and exciting low-level experience. Of course they botched that by making it considerably harder than either Primal option (maybe intentionally, maybe they got caught up with all the new cool things they could do and forgot they were throwing them at low-level characters) and very solo-focused, so newbies found themselves thrown into the deep end with no support. My big dislike about Praetoria is the mission maps are too big. Low-level Primal maps tend to run smallish, but Praetoria's running huge maps from Marauder's arc. On Primal I run most missions, at least most indoors missions, as defeat alls even if I don't have to; this turns Praetoria into a slog and I quickly adapted to "fight to the objective, get it, get out, onto the next mission."