FrauleinMental

I finally got the Voyager badge. A long way to go to get all the badges, though. To save the world, some sacrifices must be made... 😱

You may or may not have meant it, but this does smack of elitism, especially with the "minimum difficulty allowed" bit. (If not, I apologize for the mini-rant.) But first you say you want challenge and then you cite things that might already add challenge. Hami is already challenging. Many of us are spoiled because there are already really good Hami raid leaders and teams. But it doesn't take much to have a Hami raid go sideways. You want more challenging TFs? Lead one, and turn up the difficulty. You can even put the same challenges as in Ouro arcs--click all 4 radio buttons and choose AT powers only from the drop-down menu--these will definitely put the challenge on you. For Incarnate Trials, don't slot your Level Shift powers--everything in them is already 54--or don't slot Incarnate powers at all if you're really L33T. But make sure you let people know up front. You want the game to be more challenging in general? Play a more challenging character. Not everyone is soloing +4/x8 on Fire/Kins and Brutes, so don't force choices for the rest of us.

Most of my friends are altoholics--they're interested primarily in making a lot of comic book characters with different backgrounds, costumes, and power sets. I'm quite the opposite--I fell in love with one character early on and spent a lot of time playing her (around 2,500 hours on Live, already 600 hours on HC). I played mostly solo until the mid-40s early on Live, 8 months in 2006 to get to level 50, during which she was the only character I played. I'd built up head canon for her on Live, continued it through the shutdown (Existential Shutdown Crisis, I've called it), and into her comeback on HC. Badges are also a driver--she's almost to the Voyager badge (1232/1250 badges, as of a couple days ago). I do have a handful of other 50s, but I could lump their play time together and not get close to my main. (My second has around 60 hours of play on HC.)

Thank you so much! Mind/Kin/Psi, played on Champion in the old days, now on Indomitable. If I'm on, it's probably on this character.

"Shazam!"

My most super moment on my Mind/Kin was Confusing Ghost Widow during the Statesman TF (back when it was STF and not Ms. Liberty). More recently, draining bosses of End: "You're not gonna use that, are you?" Or, as much as people rave about Incandescence Destiny, I've saved a few teams from wiping with well-timed uses of the Barrier 2x Rez.

City of Heroes: The Itchy & Scratchy Cut.

IOs are good to slot. Level 30+ Common IOs outperform SOs, and 50+ Common IOs are way better and can save you slots. For example, you might be tempted to 3-slot End Mod SOs in Stamina, but you can 2-slot level 50 IOs and get almost as good, and you get better performance if you're 2-slotting 50+5 IOs. That being said, I only use Common IOs on stuff I'm only 2-slotting. Any power that gets more than 2 slots gets either a proc (3-slot Stamina, but one is the Performance Shifter +End proc) or a set (all other powers). Keep an eye out for procs or IOs that give some kind of global effect beyond just the normal enhancements. The aforementioned Performance Shifter +End proc gives an occasional End boost. Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Global Recharge Speed is popular enough to be expensive and good enough that I slot one in every power that can take a Defense set. Freebird: Stealth (for Fly; other travel powers have equivalents) is a nice way to get a little stealth on a non-stealth character. Numina's Convalescence: Recovery/Regen is a global +Rec/+Regen that's hard to pass up (and everyone can slot it in Health; might as well at least 2-slot the set for the Regen set bonus as well). For Mind/Kin, I really don't want to miss, so at the top of my set bonus list is Accuracy. Everyone has room for Recharge, especially if you're chasing Perma-something (I'm not, but Recharge is still good because I have a few long-recharge powers). Damage, Recovery, and Regeneration are all solid choices. If you're slotting sets, you'll get some Resistance and Defense along the way that will improve your survivability, but I don't slot looking for those unless I'm on a character looking to cap those.

Most of the time, sleep isn't that useful because the team will burn through mobs, but sleep is useful in keeping bad situations (overaggro) from getting worse. Sleep is mostly useful when you're soloing and need to get past something without aggro. Sleep does cut through Purple Triangles, for what it's worth. If you want really hard control, you probably want a Dominator. I love my Mind/Kin--Doms will out-control me, but the secondary brings valuable support tools.

I've mained a Mind/Kin since i6, and I've spent more time on her than all my other characters combined. She does well enough at supporting most everything (except that I lack PvP skillz), and she's saved a lot of bad situations from going fully sideways. I've never used Mids, but here's what I'm slotting: Mind: Everything except TK. It's just never worked for me, though I took it at first access and respec'ed out as soon as I could. Kin: I don't use Repel, Siphon Power, Inertial Reduction. Increase Density was a late choice, mainly because I finally noticed how nice the mez resistance is, but it also takes the edge off of Speed Boost for those not ready for the speed. Psi Mastery: Mental Blast (more ranged dmg is nice), Indomitable Will, Mind over Body, Psi Tornado Sorcery (mainly for concept): Arcane Bolt (more ranged dmg is nice, but a longer cast), Mystic Flight (with Stealth IO), Rune of Protection (doubles nicely with Indomitable Will) Concealment: Grant Invisibility, Invisibility (allows you to stealth most stuff except mobs with +Perception). Also, both allow LotG +Recharge. Teleportation: Recall Friend (a holdover from Live but nice for low-level exemplars) Alpha: Vigor Radial Paragon (Heal, Acc, End Redux, Confuse, Sleep, Fear). I like the +Hold from Nerve, but I get solid use out of everything Vigor provides. As you've mentioned, we never want to miss with Mind/Kin, but I also slot for Accuracy IO set bonuses. Were I more intentional about reslotting Incarnates for a given scenario, I might get more use out of Nerve or Intuition (Hold/Dmg) Judgement: Ion Core Final (usually fire-and-forget, though I'm in close quarters a lot) Interface: Degenerative Core Flawless (suggested for Hami raids for the -MaxHP proc) Lore: Storm Elementals, mainly for story reasons, but they're solid. Destiny: Incandescence Core Epiphany (I'm a recent convert for the team recall; I used to slot Barrier for the combat rez) Hybrid: Assault Radial Embodiment (+Dmg passive, Chance for Doublehit is a nice boost) This is my only character who's never had Hasten, since Siphon Speed, LotGs, and IO set bonuses give pretty solid +Recharge. She also never took Stamina before the Fitness Pool became inherent. (Remember those days?)

I kinda imagined (or wished) that the Omega incarnate slot(s) would have been a sort of Signature Power, perhaps defined by a set of slots you'd have to craft to shape the power. Maybe even a means to slot it, crafted with incarnate mats. On the other hand, I recall hearing that the plans were mentioned around shutdown, but I never found out what the plans actually were.

Remember when you had to hit every exploration badge in a zone, in SG mode, to unlock the teleport beacon for that zone in your SG base? And yes, I remember the lack of tram in FF. I also remember doing a lot of solo street sweeping in FF in the upper-30s.

The billboards were certainly there when I started playing around Issue 6. The world had just suffered through the Rikti Invasion and lost most of Omega Team, so a little xenophobia might be expected. But it's something Kheldian characters are warned about pretty early.

So do I. Just like the holiday badges are available year-round at the Ski Chalet vendor.

You can always do a Lady Grey TF to trigger an invasion.

I gave it a try on my newest 50, who hadn't done Mender Ramiel's arc yet. Mender Ramiel's crystal does count as a door, and I was able to TT to it from another zone. My guess is the other Mender arcs also count.

Apparently there are, since the wiki page (https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ouroboros) indicates it as a way there. I think the only ones are the missions the Menders give, which you enter from the crystals. The earliest contact is The Pilgrim (level 25+). I wonder if you can trigger a Tip mission to spawn in Echo: Galaxy City, or if it's "outside the city". That is, go to E:GC and open your Tip missions there, then use it later for a TT destination. EDIT: I tried it for the two tips I had: Go to E:GC, open the Tips tab under Missions, and it at least allows me to look at them (unlike when I'm outside the city). However, it dropped the two missions into other zones (Skyway and FF).

I have Heather down to about 12:10-ish consistently, my best time so far is 11:40 (when the Tsoo mission has two glowies in the center, since there's always a glowie in the Warden's room). Running 0/x1 on my mind/kin with Invisibility.

I'm looking mainly at the 17-second cast time (not to mention the 15-second interrupt time). I'd love for the Base Teleporter, Mission Transporter, and Pocket D VIP Pass powers to have the same cast time as TT (6 seconds) instead of their current 17 seconds. They all have a 30-minute cooldown, which is usually sufficient, but somewhere in the 15-20 minute range would probably satisfy most heavy use needs. For that matter, the Ouro portal has a 2-second cast time and only a 5-minute cooldown, though it's somewhat different.

True, it is very wibbly-wobbly. I think one of the major causes is the refusal to raise the level cap past 50. Not that I want a rise in level cap, and maybe it wouldn't even work now, but most MMOs manage their timeline/progression by just raising the level cap when a major expansion comes out. CoH attempted to give a bit of expansion to all level bands, but it jumbled the story continuity. Star Trek Online hit at least some of the wibbly-wobbliness with its time travel arcs and the introduction of the Romulan third faction. All that being said, I think SurfD does make a good argument for the streamlining. Some efforts were made during Live, when we started seeing the Signature Arcs and Incarnate content, to retcon some of the older arcs. But I worry that such a task would be Herculean.

P2W vendor would be nice in the SG base. But I just realized a couple days ago that the other functional NPCs could be placed, so I've been doing without them for quite a while. 🙂

It pops up a warning when you use the zone portals leaving RWZ toward Paragon City or Rogue Isles. But yeah, I use my SG base 90% of the time and it doesn't come up.

This stuff happens all the time in the genre, and perhaps it's only exacerbated by the need to have the story occur at various levels so different-level characters can experience it. The only things really missing are the references to Other Comic Book #352. Probably not a satisfying answer, but we're just resurging from the Existential Shutdown Crisis. It'd probably be another Crisis-level undertaking to "streamline" all of those story arcs. Maybe an Ouro-based mega-arc could handle it, though.

Kinetics: Speed Boost and/or Siphon Speed. (Kin already buys a self-only version with Siphon Speed, though it stacks with Speed Boost cast by others.) Also Increase Density.