Placta

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."

Back in the before times, I didn't like leveling up my "real" characters on Double XP weekends, so I'd find other stuff to do. One of those weekends, I decided I was going to get six villains on a second account to level 15 so they could go to Bloody Bay and be farmed by my main for the reputation badges. I didn't play villains much, and this was I think between GoRo launch and non-epic ATs being able to start on either side, so this was my first real experience playing brute/corruptor/dominator/stalker. (I did get a mastermind to 50.) Three of the four felt quickly familiar, more or less (Fury/assassination made some difference to bruting/stalkering, but they were still melee types). Dominator took a while to figure out; it finally clicked that it was a blapper with controls. My main is a very controlly blaster. (I refused to blap in the before times. I've changed that with Homecoming, thanks in large part to discovering dominators.) Once it clicked, I loved it. I made a dominator as my main's Praetorian, and the dominator I rolled the day I bought the game was my very last 50. Those two characters were also the second and third I rolled and got to 50 with Homecoming. My blaster's still my main, but I think dominator's my favorite archetype.

Yes. All Incarnates were subscription-locked. [1] [2] [3] Shards dropped from normal content. Threads dropped in Incarnate content (trials, DA, Belladonna Vetrano), which was also the only place to get XP for Judgement/Interface/Lore/Destiny (and Hybrid, from the Magesterium trial only). With Homecoming, that distinction is lost.

Dani (Placta), an electric blaster distantly related to the Cabal, has adopted "Witchy Woman" by the Eagles. It started when someone set the Knights' base's sound system to play it whenever she teleported in, which annoyed her at first because the later verses are not very flattering, but she got over it.

The Council/5th Column and HYDRA.

I've always found soloing controllers, at least until the pet gets built up, to be painful. Pretty safe, unless you run up against something that resists controls, but slow, even with IOs and Assault + fighting pool powers. With that in mind, mind control/empathy is probably the least appealing solo character for me.

Been a while since I used it but IIRC /savebuild will give you a text file with the data you want. If everything goes as planned you can import it into Mids for easier viewing.

Running Arachnos missions on my elec tanker, when I'd get Smoke Grenaded, I'd sit there running Lightning Field and alt-tab out for a few minutes. Come back, the widow was defeated, the debuff had worn off, and all was well. Real thrilling gameplay.

Forming a Doctor Q task force and going AFK for a long time without setting the final mission. They can't advance without you. They won't want to drop because that would mean doing most of a Dr Q for no merits/badge. Because you're in TF mode you won't get logged out. Is vote-kicking an option for normal teams? If not, the best hope is to wait for a GM and see if they can do something. DISCLAIMER: Author does not endorse this action and assumes no responsibility for consequences should someone actually do it.

In the before times, I couldn't get through the Tyrant vs. Arachnos mission without being overwhelmed by the Arachnos lag cannon and crashing, so I autocompleted that mission and got the badge. I don't know if that's still possible, but if it is it should also work for other personal story missions.

I've had the idea for awhile of special enhancements that can be slotted into Rest that grant global effects. One could be a global knockback to knockdown. The problem is coming up with others that: Are strong enough to create a significant opportunity cost for the knockback stopper Aren't too power creep-y I would suggest an Incarnate Interface tree but that requires level 50 to get.

My first character I made the mistake of not putting more than one enhancement of a given type into a power, and kept her that way until level 50. Fortunately this was a character who got by just fine with a single slot in Stamina. I learned just in time to stop myself from putting knockback enhancements in knockdown powers on a scrapper. That first character was a blaster, and I was adamantly "blaster = ranged" in the Live days, so I got used to thinking of the secondary as not particularly important. Playing a scrapper quickly made me realize blasters were special in that department. I slotted AIm and Build Up for tohit rather than recharge. I built a bots/ff mastermind as an entirely passive character who did nothing but summon and buff pets and walk from enemy group to enemy group. I got it to 15 (my goal, one of the characters who existed to be repeatedly whacked by my main to get PVP reputation), and recognized along the way that the combo had potential but the way I was playing it would bore me to death. The version of the character I have now on homecoming has the pulse rifle attacks; not because they're any good (but every little bit, yeah?) but they give me something to do. Hasten's a "when I can fit it in" power for me. Usually that's 24 or 30, but I've got characters who don't have it until near the end.

My peacebringer has two fully-kitted out builds, one for human for general play, one triform for special circumstances. Every controller I've leveled got varying degrees of unfun to solo without a specialized build in about the mid-teens. Back on live, I just committed those characters to being team-only, but with Homecoming, I've used my second build to have one for teaming and one for soloing, the latter using SOs and getting abandoned once the main build comes together. Sometimes I think of taking all the spare inf in my inbox and making a pure level 50 build with everything boosted up the wazoo for my main/badger, but when I think about it I'm not sure it'd be worth it and I'd rather use that inf to fund alts.

A few more characters where you could make a decent version but couldn't do a signature power: Captain America: Can't throw his mighty shield. Rogue: The Carol Danvers powers are easy enough, but her power doesn't exist. Gambit: Maybe a staff scrapper with Exploding Shuriken from the one epic pool, but that's a long wait for a not-that-good version of throwing exploding playing cards. A thrown explosives blaster with a staff-based secondary would be better. Any shapeshifter: You can do a low-budget version with costumes, but you can only have ten at once, which limits spontaneity and flexibility. Also, Jamie Madrox. No, Phantom Army doesn't count.

Kitty Pryde immediately comes to mind.