Heraclea

The Stooges - No Fun

I took a hint and put the main utility NPCs in the entryway. But it's more of a 'theme' base than an 'efficiency' base.

This sounds to me like it has potential. I had a dark armor/ice melee back on Victory, later on Champion IIRC, that I rather enjoyed: a pure melee controller.

1. Once you get to 50, you can turn off XP only on exemped content and all the XP you would have gotten goes straight to inf. I usually do this once my level 50s once they have their unlocks so everything you make on Penny Yin or whatever goes straight to the bank. 2. Are you actually talking about mobs rather than maps. It is easy to make wildly overpowered custom mobs. This is why I use recolored standard mobs whenever I can. 3. Task forces, task forces, and more task forces. AFAIK every recipe in the game is available to buy with reward merits, as are the ATOs and event specials. This is how I get many of my enhancements. Run the weekly on as many characters as can. 4. Never measured an IO. Most of them seem to be the same size to me.

Started running this one this morning and got to the final mission before maintenance hit. At level 46. Still as tiresome as I remembered; forgot about all the locked doors. The base teleport 'exploit' has breathed new life into old content. Still, this had better yield 150 merits. PS. It got me 45 merits. So it might be worth taking at 24 to run at 46. No XP, and rather tiresome, but no complaints.

Somewhat different from the other suggestions - which are also good - Water/WP (or whatever) sentinel. Water is good for slowing down large numbers of mobs and keeping them in place. Water/Ice may be even better for that purpose, if you have a patron with major inf or merits to give to the cause. (Will need endurance relief.)

James Brown - It's a Man's World

Steve Miller - Living in the USA

As I said, my mace character is a Willpower tanker. I always skip generic buildup on tankers, it's too slow, and you probably have inspirations that do more and last longer. I'd suspect it's eminently skippable on most brutes as well: while DPS is more of a goal for the brute there are more efficient ways to buff your damage.

I had a hard time getting into the character at first as well... but after more was in place it rapidly became one of my favorites. That said, my newest character is a Willpower/Mace tanker. Curious as to how the AoE changes affect Willpower's ability to hold aggro. There are also many chances to add procs and to slot up control to add toughness in ways that aren't obvious in hero builders.

Tina Turner - One of the Living

I'll just run it for the merits after I have quite outlevelled it.

I did a random Tsoo mission for an IP contact. She then offered me the Tsoo Coup, which I remembered and specifically did not want. IIRC that story line starts with a street hunt and ends with a series of five chained defeat alls on random maps. She now appears with a book in my list. Am I screwed? Will test again when I'm sure I've outlevelled her. But I really didn't want to run that story.

Roll a radiation melee/electric armor brute, if melee strikes your fancy. You will have close to the pulsing AoE damage of Spines/Fire without the weaknesses of /Fire or the esthetic annoyances of Spines.

Nothing terribly flashy or interesting for this new tanker. But one of the Samurai chest details actually helps make a pretty good set of overalls.

Heraclea has always been Female Face 14, because she was Face 14 when she was made back in Issue 2. This is a face I've used on many female characters before. Female Retro Sci-Fi face is one I've gotten quite a lot of mileage out of on Homecoming. I might have chosen it for Heraclea, if she did not have a traditional face. Not a fan of Female Hostile Faces 1 or 2, but Hostile Face 3 doesn't really look hostile to me, only sarcastic and skeptical. I've used that face more than once as well. My male characters tend to be philosophers, wizards, or hanging judges. As such they get a fair amount of mileage from the Older Faces. What are your favorite faces?

Good idea. I am SO making Elvis imitators.....

With a bit of global recharge or Hasten, it isn't all that implausible to just use Soul Drain and Dark Consumption as reg'lar attacks. Heraclea doesn't run Hasten and finds them up reasonably often, And adding targets improves the buff you get from Soul Drain also. I just made a new TB tanker, Impetua, Willpower/Mace. Curious to see what bigger AoEs do for Willpower.

Dark Melee benefits a whole lot from larger AoEs. And ir already is the tankiest of the tanker sets, adding survivability to any primary with its reliable self-heal and constant -tohit debuffs. It works best with primaries that lack a self-heal (Shield, WP) or slow self-heals (Invuln) but it benefits every primary. Whether it benefits defense sets most or resistance is a perennial debate. If Willpower's taunt aura is normalized that would make an excellent pairing.

I havw a radiation melee/electric armor brute that I quite enjoy. Kills mobs and builds fury just by standing there thanks to two damage auras. Was an end hog and somewhat hard to level.

Fire lacks control, and is all damage. Damage is good. So a secondary that supplies it, like Dark Armor, would seem to commend itself. You will need KB protection. You should also try to max your recovery ASAP, starting with the Panacea unique at level 10. I would also take old Fly as a travel power because Air Superiority will also supply some missing control.

This happens mostly because the Homecoming servers encourage it. Running the weekly target TF/SF earns level 50s double merits and incarnate geemies that are slow in coming any other way. So of course there will be level 50s on your Synapse.

May be quite too late in your journey to point this out, but if ability to exemplar is a major consideration, Titan Weapons may not be your best choice. Even if you attune all your enhancements there are levels below which they can't follow. More importantly, sets that rely on buildup-and-release mechanics (like Titan Weapons), like the ones that use various combo systems, take less well to exemplaring than other sets. The pieces of the puzzle won't be there. I have level 50 characters that are born to exemplar: a fire/regen scrapper is one of them. Losing a few powers off the top of your attack chain is not a problem for such a character. But Titan Weapons may struggle at those levels.

Head East - Never Been Any Reason

None of these bother me half as much as "Phoebas".