Shocktacular

I started with a bio/rad tanker and just had to make the corresponding brute for exactly this reason. She's a lot of fun! (I'll probably want to re-slot IG now, though; I did have it super procced).

It's not so much that the question is too hard, it's that it sounds like you're really after something else and are settling for "uber-br00t". We're trying to help you make the "something else" work. As for the title question: I've rarely gotten a brute to 50+incarnates that couldn't solo at least +3x8 against most enemy groups. The two most fun I've made so far are probably my rad/bio (although I haven't played her since the rad melee updates) and my elec/WP: /Bio is a pretty active secondary, but it's very flexible and you can adjust your toughness as needed with the different adaptations. I generally leave mine in Aggressive for more dmg, and have tweaked her build for this. She's ever so slightly squishier this way, but between /bio's debuffs and dmg aura and rad melee's Irradiated Ground, things tend to die too fast for it to make much of a difference (also, Destiny Barrier helps a ton). I'm not sure about her as much as I used to be since IG got tweaked, and I tend to play her more against large groups than AVs or GMs, so I'm not sure how she'd do there. I have a spines/bio in progress as a potential replacement/alternate, but haven't gotten her to 50+ yet, so I can't really compare them yet. I've heard that that's a good combo, too, though, and it's similar to rad melee in that you do toxic damage and have a damage aura. My elec/WP is my namesake character and my badger (1573 badges and counting!). /WP is basically "set and forget" which means you can spend all your time attacking things. Elec melee has the most multi-target powers of any melee set. Again, I tend to focus on large mobs with her, but she's soloed a couple GMs as well as some task forces and strike forces (including Aeon when it first came out and no one knew the tricks yet, although admittedly at a much lower difficulty level).

To make a blood-wielder, maybe try Dark powers colored red / darker red (especially the soul noir versions, which have some lovely drippy and fluid effects)? A lot of concepts can be made to work if you get extra creative with the power customizations and/or costume.

I'm having a great deal of fun with a necro/elec right now. She's tough, too. Those extra minions from the blasts help a lot. I'm usually a bit cautious when it comes to increasing the difficulty while soloing. I generally don't touch it until the mid to late 20s at the very earliest. With my necro/elec, I started turning up the diff at lvl 8 and I've never looked back, so this combo definitely gets my vote.

Is this asking about powerset combos, animations, character concepts, or any/all of these?

Illusion/Dark Controller if you don't already have one. I have an ill/dark/psi with (barely) perma-IW who's just AMAZING! The combo is a bit clicky, but once you get rolling with perma-PA, the good times just keep on coming. Mine is basically "summon, debuff, attack ...aaaaand everything's dead now. NEXT!"

I find sentinels to be pretty forgiving and fairly straightforward. They've been updated recently, though, so some of the old advice threads are no longer pertinent. However, these updates also include some nice improvements, so that helps. One of the best things about this game is that you only really need a few basics under your belt to make a playable character. There's a whole bunch of other bells and whistles you can add on once you get comfortable, but it's not too hard to grasp right out of the box. I'd also like to second what others have said: go through the tutorial and the beginning arcs (especially the intro arcs from Twinshot or Dr. Graves) maybe a couple times to get the info down. Also, if you get stuck, there's a homecoming wiki for reference (although it can be a bit overwhelming just how much stuff is on there when you first look at it): https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Main_Page That being said, WELCOME BACK!! 😄

I'd probably go with /invuln since they're made of metal and metal is tough (also because I made a beam/invuln and she was really fun). Maybe consider /energy, too? /Elec could work, but wouldn't all the elec auras from the powers make it look like they're malfunctioning?

You could also go /dark and use the original /dark graphics colored like poison/gas clouds, maybe. I haven't played one myself, but I've heard that ill/dark is a good dom combo.

I'm not entirely sure how the numbers would work out, but I've just finally gotten my ill/dark to perma-fade (barely) with fade as-is and I don't want to ruin it, but if the changes OP proposed would still let me have perma-fade (or at least not make it harder to get perma-fade), I'm all for them. 😛

I recently made an alt named Stained Glass who is a spines/stone brute with the spines and stone colored to look like, well, stained glass (or at least colored glass). I have a decent costume for her already, but I'm looking for more ideas. I basically want a character that looks like she's made of stained/colored glass. I know that this is basically impossible given the current costume constraints, but I'd like to see what you guys can come up with.

Yeah, it's the Tech Knight belt that has that option, although you have to set the "colors linked" to color the underside of the cloth. I was thinking maybe the Translucent cape?

I can't really answer many of these, but I'd like to give you my take anyway. I'm usually more into armored ATs, so finding a Blaster that I could stand to play to 50 was really hard, especially since I tend to play at off-peak hours, which means I solo a lot. DP/Martial was the Blaster that worked for me, and, even better, was actually fun! I made mine before the secondary T2 was available at creation, but I think I'm going to keep Ki Push (aka Super Yeet) because it's a good "get the hell out of my face" power and the animations of the enemies flying backwards are hilarious. Reaction Time is really good for keeping baddies from running up on you and smashing you, which apparently was one of the main issues I'd had with previous blasters. I ended up slotting it mostly for healing and slow. I also put a "Chance to Stun" proc in there and took Soul Mastery for Oppressive Gloom, which also stuns so I could stack them for some good PBAoE damage mitigation. It works pretty well, if I say so myself. Burst of Speed is good for getting into/out of melee quickly, which can be life-saving at times. I tend to use it more for this than for damage, which I tend to view as mostly a bonus feature. I took Reach for the Limit because, hey, more damage, plus you can't slot it, so you have more slots for other things (I ended up with a total of 10 of powers either 6- or 5-slotted, which gets me some really nice set bonuses.). I'm not an expert blaster builder, as I said, but I hope this is helpful nonetheless. Have fun with your new character!

After the Mids' update: respec city and try the new stuff. also get back to some of my sentinels. Until the Mids' update: fidget from impatience caused by building curiosity. read stuff on the forums to find the best combos for the new stuff. Also, for whoever was talking about trying elec affinity, I HIGHLY recommend it on a mastermind. It tends to be pretty busy, so on a MM you can use it while your pets are killing stuff. Plus the mez protection dome is AMAZING for pets. And it has a +dmg power to make them kill stuff faster and a +absorb power for additional protection. And an +end power for when your blue bar gets low. It's basically a perpetual motion death machine.

Use crystals. Make a prism- or lens-themed character. Maybe even a stained-glass window?

One of my first thoughts hearing about the inherent revamp was that I was going to have to reconfigure a number of sentinel builds for better recovery since we won't have Defensive Opportunity anymore. That thing can really be a godsend in some situations (Defensive Opportunity + Nuke = full or nearly-full end bar so you can keep on slaying). I'm hoping that the damage increase will speed up the kills enough to help make up for it, but honestly I'll probably just increase the difficulty and have end problems anyway.

This account you want to recover is a Homecoming account and NOT an account from when NCsoft was running the servers, right? The old accounts from the NCsoft era are not recoverable; the data no longer exist. I don't know about recovering a Homecoming account. I'd suggest you follow Aries' link in the post above.

This. I'm still confused... how does this change help?

Hooray! Moar badges!

I just want to say "thank you" to this thread for motivating me to dust off (and improve) my ill/dark controller. I'd forgotten how fun she is!

I did this and I can't load my stone armor stalker now. The option for stone armor doesn't even appear for stalkers anymore. Just FYI, it's still possible to select the Tier 1 powers; just put the cursor right below the powerset selection box (at least, this works for me. IDK about anyone else).

HALLELUJAH, IT'S USABLE AGAIN!!!! Thank you so so SO much! 😄 Now to make some symph builds... 🙂

Does anyone have a workaround for this?

I've heard some people talking about a different private server having that feature, but Homecoming does not (as far as I know). I suspect that you're just in the wrong place.

Yeah. This is unusable without being able to make it bigger. I can't see the powers in the secondary powerset at all, which means I can't select them. I can't see more than the first two powers in any of the pool power sets, either.