Heraclea

I don't do 'mains', really. Heraclea is semi-retired at this point. I will bring her out when somebody wants to run a master Ms. Liberty run, needs help with an AV, and similar content that makes survivability a premium. But she is overkill for most content, and my DPS tankers and brutes (bio/spines, rad/spines, willpower/mace, mace/rad, energy/fire) are more than adequate for most purposes and clear trash faster. On the radiation armor characters I will even enjoy an occasional Tinpex. Lately I have been on a support kick, and have been playing defenders (poison/dark, cold/sonic) and controllers (plant/poison, dark/electric, fire/kin) heavily. I am also slowly warming to masterminds; at least, I recognize that there is content (MSR, BAF) where the class excels. This latter point is probably the key. I have 38 level 50s on Torchbearer alone, and a level 50 tanker on each other server. On Torchbearer, at least, I can bring the character the team wants or that is most fun against the content at hand. So no, I don't do mains. I still am not yet bored enough with the rest of the other classes to roll a Kheldian.

Cognitive bias is a fascinating thing. Cycles of feast and famine are exactly what you'd expect from a genuinely random distribution. A steady and reliable pace for the drops would be something other than random.

I customize everything, use the character titles when appropriate, and go out of my way to get and select badges that enhance them as well. So it will be, for instance, 'The Valiant Mythic Heraclea, General' or 'The Honest Baroness Munchhausen, Defender of Truth' (or, 'Cobra') I customize powers at character creation. I change concepts in the playing, and occasionally rename and redo characters. I do tend to try to minimize glows and funks on characters to the extent possible.

I have an ice/plants blaster who has more holds than any controller or corruptor I have played. The character has been tuned specifically for Hamidon raiding.

There probably really isn't much of a downside for doing that; the character is already mostly played on teams and built for team utility. On the other hand, I probably get more value from sets like Lockdown and Basilisk Gaze than I do from the ATOs. Right now, in the Dark/Electric that's my current project, I have both sets five slotted in the Confuse and Fear, which I don't really consider to be core powers.

One problem generally with the AT is that I find myself moving the controller ATOs out of early available powers that I slotted up, and end up giving slots to powers that I ordinarily would not (e.g. confuse powers) just to get them out of powers that do damage so I can slot damage oriented sets in them instead. Am I the only person who has this problem?

Joining the Vanguard and doing the ship raid is a once and done thing for most characters. I run it once to get enough vanguard merits for the salvage increase. I will run the ship raid on the right character for fun; it's one of the places where masterminds shine, and it's also entertaining on the right tanker, but as you say it really isn't all that productive for the time it takes. If I get bored I may finish Levantra's first story arc, making sure that I have a mission skip available for the refinery mission. In my head canon Vanguard is as bad or worse than Arachnos and the Rikti are honorable combatants.

My other suggestions would be to turn areas of the zones into damage-typer themed areas, with large spawns of fire based enemies here, physical damage there. Make them farmable without bothering with AE.

My first suggestion would be to remove the double debt penalty for street sweeping deaths.

Wicked Soundtrack - No One Mourns the Wicked

Marlene Dietrich - Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind

Necro'ing this thread because the economy of vanguard merits seems extremely odd to me. Ran a kill-most LGTF to help someone get to level 50 today. When the dust had settled I had earned .... ... wait for it ... 32 vanguard merits! That and $5.75 will get you a cup of coffee downtown. It may be just that the conversion of vanguard to reward merits should move back; that way I would have made myself three extra reward merits instead of just one. But as an incentive for defeating Rikti and running the zone content, vanguard merits do not feed the weasel. There is only one way to earn enough vanguard merits to use them for anything; you run the ship raid. That's a full zone event that takes as many people as a Hamidon raid, takes at least three times as long, and is far less rewarding. Vanguard merits need to be made easier to collect or the prices of things boughten with them should come down.

I already make my male MM pets do plenty of offensive things.....

My characters run the gamut. The one limiting factor is that my female characters almost always have the shortest possible legs, which helps them look human; the default is way too 1990s mannerism for me. I would only use the default if I were rolling a Wisp or something. (Now there's an idea.)

Certainly would be worth a try. You'll want to get the recharge up on the rad toggles to be able to use them often. You'll be popular on Kahn runs.

It certainly will make a very tough Brute if that's what you are building for. For the Brute I would go with /Willpower. This too is a very sturdy build. I played this combo on old live; have not yet made one here. Willpower, of course, has no self heal, so having one in Dark Melee helps a lot. Brutes benefit from the sustain in Willpower. And Willpower also is a mixed resistance and defense armor that starts out of the box at a level just under Invuln generally.

Invuln/Dark Melee tanker. Invuln is quite solid out of the box; its major weakness is the slowness of the self heal. Dark Melee fixes that with a quick firing self heal that also does damage. And the -tohit that Dark Melee is doing adds an extra layer of defense. Tough as Granite with none of the drawbacks. Now, for a first or DPS tanker, I suggest Radiation/Spines or Bio/Spines. Either of these are aggro holding machines. I prefer Radiation; on paper it isn't the toughest set but it protects you against stuff like spikes of Toxic damage that catch other armors with their pants down. War Mace/Radiation Armor brute. Debuff everything before you kill it. Your AoE rotation will be at least as smooth as your single target. Poison/Dark defender. You won't get the kills. You will just trivialize just about anything for your teammates. And you will do so without the fussiness of Radiation and its anchors. And it plays like a 'normal' character since just about everything is aimed at enemies. The best utility/support character I have found.

Jim Reeves - The Blizzard

I made Masters of the Universe, the Adventures of Wonder Woman; the Yezukriis series (The Curse of Yezukriis; Yezukriis 2: Goosed by the Geas; Yezukriis 3: Lifestyles of the Lich and Famous; Yezukriis 4: Scandal at Guano Gate), the Adventures of Maciste, The Whole Armor, and Test of the Paladins - at least these are the ones I remember.

And I just rolled another. This faction is rather hard to build in the CC so I just went for a mix of exotic pieces.

About a year ago I rolled an Ice/Sonic defender. I recently picked this character back up and started playing her semi-regularly, and recently got the character to 50. I usually try to have some kind of concept or synergy in mind when I choose powersets, and I can think of none here. My thoughts are: 1./ Experiment to see how invisible and un-annoying I could make the Ice armor buffs. I seem to have succeeded, in that it's hard for me to tell who has 'em or when they wear off. 2./ Place to absorb all of the spare armor set enhancements lying around the base. (Done; so what's next?) 3./ Swiss army knife debuff machine. So tell me: what I should be building for and what goals I should have for this defender?

Dr. Quarterfield does not have the godawful zone hunts that JA does, though. Most of the missions there are door missions.

I have 3 1/2 going on 4 pages of level 50s on Torchbearer. and a page and a half of other characters ranging from 48 to 2 there also. I tend to develop concepts and biographies in the going, and more than once have done a total rename and rewrite of a character after getting a better feel how they played. I like having multiple characters that I can bring so I can bring whatever role works best for the content. Except healer. I don't do healer. I have three more level 50s, all tankers, one each for Excelsior, Everlasting, and Indomitable. Only server I don't have a 50 on is Reunion. I have one alt account that I used to publish some older AE material on. Highest level character there is 30 something, and there are maybe 3 characters on it.

It's also a big inf sink, especially if you have slotted many dropped or boughten SOs while levelling and don't want them to die. A character slotted with many SOs can cost a full million inf to level in that slog between 37 and 47.

I think the level cap for Graham Easton's Tsoo arc in Steel Canyon goes to 25. I know he doesn't require an intro. That's a must see arc IMO, and one that only makes sense to do solo.