Lazarillo

In fact, back in the day, that was explicitly stated to not be the case: Psychic powers are their own thing and are considered "natural", in and of themselves, in-universe. It's also why back before they were unlocked after the game's initial closure, Arachnos Widow characters, including the Fortunatas with all their psychic powers, were locked in to the Natural Origin. Of course, like you said, that doesn't mean someone can't have awakened their "natural" psychic abilities via a mutation or any other method. If you're looking at something like "chi", I'd say the same. It could just as easily be "you have nanomachines that focus invisible aura energy through your body" tech or "you trained your ass off in martial arts".

The trick I try in some missions is to dual-box it. Send a "dummy" character into the mission for the NPC to latch onto. Then send the character you actually intended to play the mission with to, y'know, go ahead and play the mission. As long as you don't have ambushes coming in from behind, that should work pretty effectively.

But you're asking for a system that's designed only to reward players for not taking risks.

And I'm asking why you think players who make an effort should suffer "consequences", while the lazy players who are all-talk but are to chicken to actually challenge themselves should get rewarded.

So then how about consequences for the lazy tank who let you get ahead of them. They should start getting tubby from the lack of effort they're putting in. Or that cowardly brute should start losing the ability to control their fear and suffer a sporadic Terrorize effect as it overwhelms them.

So what you're saying is, you don't like to challenge yourself and you resent it when your teammates try to do so as well? Because dying in this game simply means you were actually testing the limits of your abilities.

If I'm trying to draw a line, a lot of times, I'll look at which SO Enhancements the character's more likely to use. For example, for damage, and let's say I'm using Assault Rifle as my primary. All else being equal, is this a character who would enhance their damage through cybernetic enhancements that would upgrade the Assault Rifle's munitions? If so, then Tech. Or would they focus on applying martial arts or similar principals in ways that would result in a more damaging sniper shot? Then Natural.

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.