Duckbutler

I personally just don't play certain powersets if I don't get enough personal benefit from them. So it's not like these powers not affecting me means I team instead of solo. It means I have slightly fewer character options available. So I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world, but I do think there are broader implications for the game that would probably require some rebalancing. Possibly of the entire game.

There's a lot going on here. This is what gets me. Isn't there an aggro cap of like 16 targets attacking a single player? And like, on an 8 player team spawns tend to be more than 8 mobs so there will definitely be mobs running around loose if you try to pull more than 1 pack at a time without killing at least some of it? It's fine if you have maybe a tank and a brute or if you have a tank and control powers in the group. But then you leave unenhanced lowbies alone attacking boss mobs that are +5 to them and they're doing like 10% of their damage potential. It's not great.

They literally soloed all the way to 50.

I think both controller and mastermind work for Professor X. Early on he's more often directly involved, like in the 1960's stuff. There are more than a few times where the team's losing a fight and then Xavier intervenes to telepathically lock down their opponent. His role in the 90's comics that I grew up with was much more passive, particularly as the team got bigger and got split into different sub teams. The problem with hero mastermind types is that disposable minions and nameless mooks is not very heroic. Because we also spend more time with protagonists, we know who those allies are and they may become characters in their own right. Incidentally, if I recall, it is possible to rename your henchmen in game to give them each more unique identity and feel less "disposable minion" and more "friend and ally."

There's so much difference between this and the former live economy! I played a lot of red side on a low population server and... yeah. There was no economy to speak of prior to the merged markets. And when I did play blue side, I remember bumping into market slot and inventory limits very frequently. One of the other things that has struck me since returning has been how much is available through the P2W vendor and how good some of it is. And I'm going to cut myself off there before I say something regrettable.

Oh, and leave the build that you leveled with intact. It's comfy and familiar, it will work. Make the budget build in the second slot so that if it's terrible and unplayable, you can fall back on the original. Rip apart the original build and salvage anything valuable when you're confident the second build is here to stay.

I just went through this myself. I would make made a budget build in Mids that avoids ATOs, Event enhancements, and any other purples. If there are key, game changing global IOs, go ahead and put those in, too. Anything that's intended to stay as a common IO permanently, maybe use a level 50. Otherwise just put in level 25 common IOs that you don't mind destroying as you build the resources and acquire your permanent sets. My personal threshold for cheap was initially under 500k to personally make buying the recipe on the market. It pretty quickly became 1-2 million and buying them attuned. Consider that the full cost of the character is going to be 90-ish slots filled at whatever your budget per slot is, plus those key globals. Even just a little into the build you're going to start feeling the extra oomph as the individual powers get better. Then when you start racking up the set bonuses (and get the alpha slot with a level shift!) it will feel like a new character.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I had an opportunity to take the plunge over the weekend and apply all the advice here. We ended up smashing so many task forces I honestly lost count!

This character ended up being a lot of fun and I think I've found the character I want to sit and run TFs with! The whole thing started because I was making a hoverblaster. Even with devices, I was skipping a lot of secondary powers in favor of pool powers and not getting super far. I really wasn't looking to take the dark epic pool. I did try it, it wasn't working so well. I tried Power instead to lean more towards hoverblasting and I think there's a redeemable build there, but that build had other problems (not enough recharge, too big a gap in hasten creating very large gaps in the attack chain). I went back to dark, swapped out leadership for fighting. The current/starter build ended up being closer to Without Pause's build, minus hasten and maneuvers, plus Flares and teleport target. Chasing enough recharge to drop Flares was cost prohibitive for now, but I can absolutely see doing that on a mature build. On a budget of maybe 50 million I was able to get defenses into the 20-30 range, S/L resistance above 50, and endurance issues addressed. The build is now sturdy enough that I'm leaning into Soul Drain and playing a lot more aggressively, getting up into melee and PBAoEing when that's available. The damage combo of Aim, Soul Drain, Inferno hits hard enough I don't (personally) care that I'm on a corruptor instead of a blaster. Dark consumption has been problematic because I tend to wait until I'm completely out of endurance and then by the time I realize this and hit the button someone else has killed most of the pack and I'm just out of gas for the next spawn. That's probably a skill issue. I had it poorly slotted to begin with and am fixing that. The question from here is where to go with Incarnate abilities? The answer is probably if I really enjoy the character, make a few and give myself options. Alpha - I went Cardiac. I wanted to go Musculature but felt Cardiac was prudent because of how heavy the endurance costs can be. I want endurance to either be on autopilot with zero outside help or have Conserve Power for convenience. I might try making a Musculature as an alternate, especially if I want to try the Power epic. Interface - Reactive seemed like the best option both thematically and mechanically. I'm not sure about Core vs Radial. Judgment - Seems very personal preference oriented. Destiny - No idea. I've seen votes for Clarion for mez protection and someone was recruiting in game for something and requiring a high tier Barrier slot to come along. Lore - What I've read indicates Banished Pantheon is a good pick and it's thematic for this build. Hybrid - Support radial looks like an obvious option. Assault looks attractive, too. Edit - Added my "budget" build. It's not all cheap. There are costly global IOs. But I believe it's something that you could level into smoothly and exemplar to any level with very easily. I'm still building it out in game but I started with the endurance fixes, then attacks, and now I'm working on debuffs and defensive powers, which is definitely the most expensive part. Elysia Luccan - Corruptor (Fire Blast - Dark Miasma - Dark Epic).mbd

I've seen a few thermals around and always appreciate them when I see them. I had a thermal corruptor back in the day and while she wasn't great solo, she was the lynchpin of many villain night teams. If I let her shields lapse people started dying very rapidly. Plus she had heals to back it up! If I were to do it again, and I would but other character builds have my attention for now, I would put it on a mastermind to make the solo experience better.

I tried it and couldn't get into it. Managing the momentum mechanic was not intuitive because of the way it doesn't refresh as you keep swinging. Attacking without momentum, yeah, sucks. If you pop build momentum and then swing, it's fine. I'm sure you can probably get it to a state where you're regularly refreshing with build momentum, but playing it to that point wasn't worth it to me. If there's another trick to quickly gain momentum or work around it, I'd like to hear it since I'm still interested in the set as a whole. I like the look, just not the feel.

If that's what it is, that's what it is. Rather than getting aggravated fighting it, I'd rather learn to fly alongside everyone else. I have an invuln/staff tanker and a fire/dark corruptor and neither is at cap yet, but both could easily run through a map and pick up at least teleport target at some point in their build to pull stragglers forwards. I love 'em both and only paused the tanker to stop and observe other tankers some more. I spent the last decade since shut down over on FFXIV and the thing that they did that was really smart was they just standardized the dungeon layouts. They saw the speed runs happening in ARR and have pretty much forced it so that everyone is on the same page. Every once in a while you get someone on the forums asking about single pulls vs mass pulls and everyone is like, "No, default to mass pulls. Slow down if you wipe." Content is pretty sleek and polished nowadays and balance is very tight, the difference between tank DPS is something like 1-3% and they all share analogous cooldown suites. Some people complain about being on the rails and how it gets boring and how there's no real character customization. But that's why you take breaks and go explore and play games like this one where you get to tinker for a while. That's the perspective I think I've gained, anyway.

Fashion is the real endgame! Oh wait, FFXIV is that way... --->

I'm mostly on Everlasting! I spilled over into Torchbearer for double XP and then Excelsior to check out what the higher population server was like. It's kinda like living in the suburbs and driving into the city. My level 50 scrapper, Daisy Dawn, is on Everlasting.

Yeah, base hit chance changes based on the difference between you and your target. Check that table I linked. The base hit chance for the 50 attacking the 53 should be 48%. A 50+1 attacking a 53 should be 56% base hit chance, and that's part of why the level shift is so good. Your To-Hit buff from tactics gets directly added to that, then the total gets multiplied by accuracy. Without any to-hit modifiers or defense on the mob you're attacking, you would need roughly 1.69x accuracy to get a 95% hit chance from a base 56%. You can divide 95 by your to-hit to get an accuracy target number.

That helps, by the way. Thank you.

Yeah, if it didn't come through in my first post, I definitely favor more cooperative gameplay in a team environment. I like to be independent because I hate feeling helpless! But I'm not likely to leave anyone behind, either. I remember this being a problem with stalkers in particular because they could get to the objective, not actually be able to do anything with it, and then just go afk. If I were to play the stalker I would see it as my duty to take at least teleport target so I can bring everyone to me once I found the objective. I had a roommate get sucked into a Quarterfield Task Force long, long ago. He was sold on it having Fake Nemesis for his accolade. His entire Saturday went down the drain, like a full 8 hours or something along those lines.

Punching up against +4 sucks, but with tactics running and accuracy slotted it shouldn't be terrible. I've been crunching numbers and trying to get a good handle on fundamental game mechanics. See the data table here on this link: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Data_Tables (39+15)*1.6=86.4. Maybe there was something else going on like debuffs on you or buffs on the mobs?

This game has always been one that is more about the journey than the destination. Back in the day, once a character hit 50 I might try to get their accolade auto powers but otherwise they were pretty much shelved unless a friend wanted help with something and I wanted to fill a particular role or I was in a specific mood. This time around I thought I would try to stick around a while longer and enjoy the "completed" level 50, actually do some incarnate content, maybe put together some real builds that have some time and effort invested into them instead of just being the best I can do on a very limited budget. What's stopping me is that I don't really know what to expect. It's very easy for me to find an hour here, an hour there. With that, I can very easily pop in and out of radio teams and help with random contact missions. It's much more difficult to find 2 hours together that are uninterrupted. From the Task Forces that I have done, clear times are ranging wildly from 30 to 90 minutes and I feel like I probably need the 2 hours reserved to include recruitment time. What I have done so far is basically everything for the Task Force Commander accolade except Numina, then add Moonfire. The other thing is I don't really know what to expect when someone starts advertising a "speedy" TF. What that sounds like, to me having not really gotten into it yet, is that it's going to be every man for themself running through the mission and if you can't keep up, you're toast. If I see a "kill all" or a "kill most" ITF, I get it. That's self explanatory. So these are my real questions: 1) Are my task force times off base? Is there a guide out there that can help set expectations? 2) What is the expectation when someone starts advertising something as speedy and how can I prepare for that?

Yeah, I think the more common path is to run DFB, then either go into the Posi 1 & 2 task forces you eventually need to do for Task Force Commander anyway or find a radio team. Both options have you sailing into the mid to late 20's pretty effortlessly. The task forces are more fun, personally. I'm not relying on whatever motivates a level 50 with incarnates to invite a bunch of new lowbie characters to tag along.

That IS good news! I had a few bumps picking the game up again last month. Knowing that you need to trade with other players is super basic MMO stuff, and once I figured out that you need to do just one DFB for the tohit buff and then pick up enhancements when that wears off at... guess what? 22! That fixed most of the issue.

I've been following this thread with some curiousity. 15 years ago, circa the issue when the invention system was released, I had an AR/Energy blaster. This character was probably the most miserable experience I had with City of Heroes and my only blaster that got anywhere because I hadn't even learned to hoverblast. Everyone kept telling me I needed to mix in my melee attacks. I eventually clawed my way to 50 paying XP debt most of the way. This character is now literally impossible to fully and precisely recreate because not only have both power sets been reworked since then (energy got changed while I was playing it, even), but the blaster inherent power got reworked. Suffice it to say that the concept of a blaster having any survivability whatsoever makes my head turn a little. I'm curious to try it where it might actually be fun. The compromise that I personally came to was to just play support builds and hoverblast with my corruptor, which can fully justify never being in melee because it doesn't have any melee attacks.

I'm not really doing endgame builds yet, just leveling alts and tinkering. I've laid out some general rules for myself that come down to "Accuracy, endurance, then damage, then everything else." First you want to make the character reliable. That means slotting accuracy first, then endurance so you can keep going. Then worry about making the attacks strong. So the first three slots on attack powers are accuracy, then endurance, then damage. By the time I have enough free slots I'm looking to add a 4th slot to a power, I'm probably wading deep into purple enemies, my DFB ToHit buff has worn off, and I need accuracy again. Defensive powers tend not to have as many variables so they tend not to benefit from additional slots as much. Also, when looking at reducing endurance costs, consider not just the cost per cast of some abilities, look also at the amount you're using that power on a per-minute basis. Somewhere on these forums there's a thread that compares various ways to improve endurance recovery and translates everything into a per-minute gain. Regardless, any two attack powers used on cooldown likely cost more endurance than your entire load of toggles over that same minute. I did an analysis on my Street Justice, Super Reflexes Scrapper and found that the SR toggles were like 50-ish endurance per minute while Initial Strike, cast on cooldown, was like 69. Now, that particular example, it's a Tier 1 power, it's mostly a filler attack, I'm probably not keeping it on cooldown at all times. I personally didn't even take it! But I think most of the attacks in that set were consuming above 50 endurance per minute. I guess to answer the original question... I'm pretty confident! And what I'm doing seems to really be working for me.

As things are, I think new players should be directed at common IOs and steered away from SOs entirely. Maybe call attention to the level 25 breakpoint and that they don't necessarily need anything higher level than that. Market tricks and everything else can wait until people are ready to discover those for themselves or become invested enough to go looking for guides. Even if people make themselves IOs that are below level 25, those still won't ever go bad and will be incredibly cheap long term. That buys them time to learn and do better on the next character or eventually save up and replace their early 10/15/20 slots with 25s. Playing countless new alts over the last month, I can kit a new character out with a complete set of self-built level 25 IOs for about 2 million at level 22. On average I'm halfway there just on selling rare salvage the character has earned. On my first character, where I didn't find the XP booster that also turns off influence gains, I was well in excess of that... or I would have been had I not messed with the SOs at all. Sets, builds, market tricks, etc can all wait. I think the best advice I found was in the brute forum where someone said, "You don't need a build, you need a strategy." You don't need any of these market tricks if you aren't trying to build an expensive character right off the bat.

Yeah, I feel like the economy here is way better than it was on the original servers, too. Even just as a poor, non-farming alt-aholic. As long as I'm selling what I *do* get via consignment and trading with other players, I'll get enough to make myself a cheap set of level 25 common enhancements for every character when they get to that point. I may need to loan money from one character to another but I can usually return it. Back on the live servers I remember trying to survive off that same level of enhancement because they were supposed to be cheap. Runs on salvage could push the cost of low level salvage up to where level 25 accuracy enhancements cost as much to make as level 50 enhancements. I often used SOs all the way to 50 because they were available on demand and cheaper short term solutions. Now, with all the salvage being interchangeable, that problem is completely eliminated.