Heraclea

For that, you need serifs.

The Wizard of Oz - If I Only Had a Brain

And if you are going to want five different costumes, make them before level 10; after then costume changes cost inf, but 1-9 they are free. I end up tweaking too late. Also, the costume you make in your first slot gets copied to all five at character creation, so give it some thought. I had no idea that villains and heroes could share supergroups. So I created a separate group for villains on Torchbearer, with a very basic base that included porters to the villain zones. I have rather neglected it.

No character of mine has much of a chance of being played without at least three, in-character banter binds. This is a tanker-driven thing, from when I wanted actual taunts to accompany the taunt power. They do serve a gameplay purpose, because I use them to call out significant or milestone mobs like sappers, quantums, name bosses, and AVs, and let the group know that's my target. They always go to local, except for maybe one that comments on Romulus's cutscene. Biographies often come later, because they tend to be strongly influenced by in-game career things like fighting a lot of a certain mob or getting a slightly unusual badge. Concepts get expanded this way.

This is not how it is presented to new players. Instead, you're presented a menu of armors you can give your new tanker, scrapper, or brute. Nothing there tells the player that soem of these choices are only for advanced players who are at minimum familiar with the inventions system and basic game mechanics, and ideally have access to a treasury of accumulated in-game resources. Nothing there tells them that this path is much harder than that one. I think instead that all the sets ought to have rough parity of baseline performance. I don't want to make them all the same either. I am fine with all of them having separate strengths and weaknesses. One basic problem with Dark Armor is that the things that it does differently from other sets don't work very well, and don't work together as an ensemble.

Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell

This is the first entirely original AE story I've made on Homecoming. It is my entry into the most popular genre here, and is a cosmic story that takes you to the heights and depths ... who am I trying to fool, it's just more of my usual silliness. One note of caution: in the second mission, an outdoor map, very often mobs will spawn quite close to the entrance, so be ready for combat when you enter. It is, however, the best map for the scene depicted and I like it too much for the purpose to let that faze me. 3 missions. Mostly custom mobs, with a few official ones thrown in. Contains elite bosses, and mobs with custom power selections.

Mechanically, one thing I have noticed in my HC journey with the set is the lack of resistance to -recharge debuffs. On a tanker set that relies so heavily on its self-heal, this should be a given. Burned a Winter's Gift I had not planned to use to add a bit.

Sure - this is a direct readout of her current build in game. This is quite ad-hoc, composed while levelling on the fly. I have not sat down in Mids and made a plan. If it gets too bad I may frankenslot the Gauntleted Fist two apiece in several powers the way I did on Heraclea:

I rolled a DA/Savage tanker on Tuesday and now have her at 32. She's now heading into the slots levels, after which I will be able to better assess how tough she is. I have deliberately built the character with every recovery advantage I know how to give. I knew what she was in for, She has Health typically frankenslotted with Panacea, Miracle, and Numina procs, as well as Preventative Medicine. I do this on most of my melee characters as a given. She has one Performance Shifter proc in Stamina, two 35 straight recovery IOs, and that new set chance for health proc as well. It has been somewhat difficult to judge the depth of the character's endurance issues as a result. What was noticeable, when she ran Penny Yin and Synapse, is that she does have strong resistance to endurance drain - comparable to Electric Armor. She has just picked up Weave, and the first of the savage melee attacks that spend the buff stacks. These may make a significant difference. Then again, so may Conserve Power and Physical Perfection. She was able to slot this way because I have built up a lot of resources to share in my supergroup and as such could twink the character right. Endurance issues are the no. 1 thing that leads me to abandon characters. I don't think that the endurance discount of Savage Melee would be enough to carry her on its own. I did take Cloak of Fear, and may take Cloak of Darkness as well, more for the defense than the stealth. If I take them all she will have something like 12 toggles including Combat Jumping. She has eight already. Her health does yo-yo wildly, especially on something like Synapse. The Energy weakness shows. What seems to be carrying her is Dark Regeneration. The self heal is indeed impressive and as long as it's up the health yo-yo does not concern me greatly. When it starts to slide and DR is not available there will be trouble. I am seeing another lowbie niche character, one that gets trotted out whenever Penny Yin or Synapse are the weekly targets. I have a regen scrapper and a fire/DB brute currently in that niche, but it will be good to have a tanker that can fill the role also. Especially one that can laugh off Super Stunners. On a tanker, everything in the armor set that directly keeps you alive is in play by level 12. Playing level 12 content with level 50 slots is much more fun than it was at level 12. Unlike Regen, Dark Armor is probably capable of tanking level 50 content also. Hopefully once the armors get slotted up the yo-yo factor will diminish. We will see.

I very seldom use Brawl on levelling characters. I occasionally use Brawl on non-Torchbearer characters, where getting resources to them is a bit more cumbersome. On a tanker slotted only with SOs and generics, there will be many stretches of combat where you're swapping between Taunt and Brawl while waiting for endurance to come back. They at least give you something to do. A scaling DO enhancement that's free is good enough for Brawl in those situations. Better than slotting Brawl with something that costs salvage and inf.

Peter of Blois / New London Consort - Olim Sudor Herculis

Another in my series of folklore and mythological themed heroes. For my new dark armor tanker I did not stray far from the official lore of dark powers. Based on the folk figure of the same name:

The fears and stuns of the set would appear to me to allow slotting of many exotic procs and sets, but far better if you weren't compelled to focus so exclusively on recovery.

I typically put one on Brawl, and the other four into my first and second attacks. The ones in powerset attacks get replaced as soon as something better comes down the pipe. I still have this in Brawl in many level 50s.

I suppose I oughtta get off my duff and make a Dark Armor character. Which attack sets have synergy with it? Staff is an obvious candidate, and Dark Melee has a slow enduurance recovery power, but I have 50s of them. Savage seems the obvious choice of the melee sets I have not yet tried.

I still take Salt Crystals on most of my willpower heavies. Now that aggro auras have been equalized, tradition is the main reason for keeping it. It does several things for me. It has a huge area and affects large numbers of mobs, making it attractive for aggro purposes. It does a minor defense debuff that can't hurt. It procs a chance to heal self from an inexpensive and easily acquired sleep set. The fact that immobilizes many mobs and sleeps them is the least interesting aspect of the power, but happily irrelevant, since the effect will be broken very soon anyways.

I think you're right, unfortunately. Never used OneDrive for anything, although it is constantly forcing itself on my attention. May give it a try.

From the main entrance it's on the left side, on the main floor. If you know the path to the elevators where Recluse and the Patrons are hanging, make a left rather than a right in that corridor and you should find some NPCs chatting about PvP and a noisy portal. That is it. If you've done your patron arcs, I think it's the same door that sends you to defeat future Recluse.

One interesting thing I have discovered about NPC Allies. If you want them, turn them into Escorts instead. I have not found any maps where rescuable allies are allowed but escorts are not. Just turn off the escort as a required mission goal. That way the player won't be made to do each one. Turning the allies into Escorts does the player a small favor, though. Make the escort's goal a mission objective rather than the door. Then the player gets a waypoint on the map that leads to the objective. If there are multiple objectives you can create an escort for each and multiple waypoints to the several objectives appear. This way the player can decide if they just want to beeline to the goals and get them done, without having to search for them.

I typically /bind g targetname "sapper", or "surgeon", or "electro", or what have you, depending on what you're fighting at the time. If there are multiple targets another goes on 'h'.

The relative incongruity of putting stealth on a melee armor set for tankers. scrappers, and brutes is also an odd design choice. The stealth is also the set's immobilization defense, which suggests that this one was meant to be on all the time. As stealth, I recollect it was good enough to get by; with a stealth IO or Super Speed on it lets you get past anything that Invisibility does. It's still obviously incompatible with running Death Shroud. I get the impression that the intent was for the player to be constantly fussing at their toggles. Turning this one on and that one off situationally. Other sets from the early issues of the game like Invulnerability had similar issues. I got in early enough to remember that for several weeks when I started, Invulnerability's mez protection rooted you. Stone armor is another old set that shares this misfeature. (Stone armor also desperately needs Stealth, of course.) But most of the melee player base is used to the idea that toggles are turned on and stay on. We try to crowd out Recharge in the defense and resistance sets, because the way the toggles are used means they don't benefit from recharge; it's the least desirable stat. Having a toggle drop is usually an endurance failure and an immediate disaster. We don't fuss with toggles, so armorsets that expect you too break the pattern and seem clunky and difficult.

Scrappers know their role, and that role is DPS. Brutes can be made into tanking brutes, but some brute armorsets are better at that than others. Other brute builds are DPS oriented like the scrapper. Which means it gets awkward when your DPS brute is the only heavy on the team. Scrappers do more damage than brutes, but their damage spikes are entirely RNG-dependent. Brutes start from a baseline lower than tankers, but can build it up to close to scrapper levels via the Fury mechanic, which thanks to recent changes is more easily sustained.

Eagles of Death Metal - Speaking in Tongues

Whenever I have made a Dark anything character, I have always taken care to recolor all of the associated funks and fogs hot pink. It helps.