Lazarillo

It's weird to me that Spirit Tree (which puts literal roots in the ground) moves and Triage Beacon (the power core for which floats in the air) doesn't. I'd be all for more movement, along with a general buff. I do also kinda like the idea of taking it and FFG together resulting in a single power summoned pet that provided both buffs. That's pretty creative, and as @Greycat mentioned, seems not entirely without precedent in terms of how powers can work.

Going to need you to source an OG dev quote stating that Masterminds were intended to be Pets! (+DPS), because I was there when they released and that was never said. They were always presented as "use your disposable minions to tank".

See, this is the mistake you're making: confusing what happened in development later with what was originally intended. "Tankermind" building in its current form works because of Bodyguard which didn't come until later. Mastermind "tanks" were intended with the idea of the MM not taunting because the pets were supposed to go in and soak up damage first. It worked terribly and thus, changes were made, but just because it didn't work doesn't mean it wasn't what they intended it to be.

(Small note, Brutes were designed to be the villain equivalent of Scrappers, not Tankers, but consistent redesigns over the years shifted a lot of those original concepts.) With that in mind, Brutes already kinda have their niche, with the low-base-high-potential situation they're in. While they start out with worse damage than Tankers or Scrappers (and defensively a little in-between), they can get to close-to-Scrapper damage while having closer-to-Tanker defenses. I think they serve pretty well in that regard as-is. Rather, I think most of the issues the AT has comes more from perspective, particularly on the tanking front. A Brute might not out-tank a Tanker these days, but people may already be forgetting that when the game re-opened under HC, playing a Tanker was considered sub-par because Brutes were so much better at it...and nothing on that front was diminished when Tankers were buffed. They don't need to do better at something than one AT or the other when they can be (and are) such an effective halfway point for both. As it is, the AT isn't quite at bottom of the list of ones that need the whole once-over treatment, but they're pretty well down from the top. More might effectively be done by encouraging people to build their best Broot, and not trying to go for just one side of their potential or the other.

Perfect, thanks, to both of you. Right now I'm looking at using the two single-target attacks and will likely alternate between them as suggested to help manage endurance.

I had a Ninjas/Thermal a while back that I never really got off the ground, been thinking of giving it another try, but since I tend to "pre-build" stuff in Mids and then buy enhancements when creating new characters, I'm looking at the build from before again and sorta re-trying things. One of the big, notable aspects is how HC changed the bow attacks to add a Crit chance to all the pets. So with that, how big of a difference does it make, and how high should it be prioritized? Based on my previous experience, working the attacks into my actions frequently enough to keep them shouldn't be terribly hard, but should I definitely be taking all three? Or just two (for my Necro/Electric I used only two and it still seemed to provide decent benefit). Any other tips to be aware of?

/SR, admittedly, I haven't on Homecoming. So I admit I missed that. That said, I'm not trying to say /SR is "bad", just that what it offers is not so much better that it's worth trading for the status protection. Frankly, I can say from any set that doesn't have protections that not having them means getting impeded in un-fun ways. From my "laundry list", bearing in mind that Confuse protection actually is in /SR would generally mean you could knock out Crey and high-level CoT (some of the lower level ice demons have Terrify but they actually get leveled out), but Longbow are still a pretty major factor as you're probably going to get Illusionist or Mind Control Wardens every bunch or three, and IDF are gonna be an issue as well if you're unlucky enough to see high-ranked Seers, just as examples. Meanwhile, the Defense Debuffs that people seem to think is so game breaking, in my experience, really doesn't become a big problem most of the time when playing a set that has high resistances and regeneration (or, at least, again, certainly not a problem more often than an annoying status could). EDIT: I think, upon further reflection, that a lot of it comes down to what one's looking for: 90% performance against 99% of content, or 99% performance against 90% of content? The former is definitely more valuable to me, but one's own mileage may vary.

Now I'm a little more confused, I think just 'cause of the wording, of what content you think WP does better than those other examples, or what you think they do better at. So I'll answer both ways, hope it's clear enough. Basically, WP is gonna be more fun to play against any enemy group/content that uses those things I named as comparative shortcomings. For /SR, it's enemies like Longbow, Circle of Thorns, Crey, IDF, or KoV that use a lot of Confuse or Terrorize effects, particularly. Or fights against large numbers where enemies scatter after the alpha strike. For /Shield, again, it's less a matter of what it can't fight, and more that since it can't be paired with Claws, it lacks access to that set's as-close-to-it-as-you're-gonna-get ability to both tear through groups and to stunlock bosses and keep them (and similar enemies) from popping untouchable/godmode powers that drag things on excessively. But even without that, it's still less appealing because of the animation/appearance jank. On the flipside? Well, it's Christmastime. /SR's gonna do a hell of a lot better at rescuing Baby New Year with all the Quicksands and ice melee slows being tossed around, just off the top of my head (on my 50s, again, Ageless makes up a lot for that, but it still hurts WP quite a bit). /Shield, meanwhile, can pair up with Energy or Ice (or Stone on a Brute/Tank) and catch up to and even surpass Claws on the stunlocking front, but those don't tend to steamroll whole groups quite as well in my experience.

Also, for reference on the whole, "Tips grant missions in the zones you pick them, with specific, rare exceptions, so you can use them to play in the zone you want" thing. I've been running a fair number lately. Here are some I picked in St. Martial: Then some more sets in Mercy: (how's that for irony?) And finally, a couple more sets in Nerva: So, all in all, not a single Tip spawned a mission in the zone I was in. And there's approximately a 2/3 chance, by this reckoning, that you're gonna get stuck back in boring ol'Grandville.

Procs are desperately out of balance as it is. We don't need more of the "git gud" crowd making everything about minmaxing them.

I mentioned these in a previous reply as well, but summarizing it bullet points: SR: -Lacks taunt aura, causing enemies to scatter very quickly -No protection against Confuse without Tactics. No protection against Terrorize, period. Shield: -Can't be paired with several sets (including, IMO, the best set) -Locks character stance, makes you look stupid while moving (looking cool, by contrast, being objectively the most important thing in the game)

I'd note that if you're steamrolling groups at x8, the ride to 50 is gonna be pretty short anyway. And that, again, that's only part of the equation. There are things that /SR and /Shield can do that Willpower cannot, but they do not make up, from my perspective, for what Willpower can do that they can't.

I think when you get down to brass tacks, that might sound nice but isn't something that works in execution. When there's one, maybe two updates per year, each with one arc per side at best that's one and done, after which Ouro becomes the only option, it just won't compare to what we're talking about here, even if it were great and wonderful and perfect content that was universally beloved by all (and don't get me wrong, y'all have come up with some good ones, but also, I'll be frank, some real stinkers). Doubly so if it just leads to resentment on the part of the content creators who feel existing content needs to be "rebalanced" in the first place to push people away from it and into the new stuff that some players may not jive with for whatever other reason.

See, that seems backwards, though. Once you hit level 40, if you're Blueside, Peregrine's pretty much the only place in the city to do anything in the first place. Want to do something in IP? Too bad! How about Steel Canyon? Nope, nada. There is no moving through the city because there's no place else to go if you want to do some superheroing/villaining. And that, I think, has far more to do with the second half of what you said than anything: Cimerora, DA, and the Shadow Shard are all incredibly narrow, in terms of theme. If you've got a concept to play City of Romans, then Cimerora is no doubt your bag, but if you want to take down stuff that's more traditionally associated with the setting, Peregrine and Grandville are the only choices. "We won't let you play in Port Oakes because maybe people wouldn't play there anyway." does not really make much sense, particularly when even if someone wants to play in Port Oakes, they can't.

I'm not sure if something changed in the code, but I find more often than not, I get bounced around. I do feel like it used to be a lot "better" at this. I've definitely been thinking about this a lot lately, and how much it'd be nice to have "hometowns" for my characters by guaranteeing Tip missions give missions in the zone, as well as opening up the paper/scanner. I'm sure there's some fear that, kinda like the AE buildings, devs would insist on not doing it in Atlas or Mercy, but even expanding it to everything but that, would still be really nice for making each part of the cities feel more lived in.