Clave Dark 5

I tend to team too, so the Sent does sound like a good choice. I also lean Dom, so @Auroxis and @Octogoat's suggestions are strong. Meanwhile, the venerable @JJDrakken posted no less than 4 builds across other various ATs for me on his page. I haven't closed in on a choice yet, so anyone who wants to speak up, please feel free!

Just like the label says: I have a character concept that is vague enough for any AT or power sets, long as one is psionic and the other is fire based. As usual, I'm looking to embody the concept so "what role do you want to play?" or something is moot here. What's worked for you, on what AT? I'll take pretty much any AT other than squids or VEATs (sorry fans of those!).

It's funny to me that people on these boards dislike that knockback forces them to go chasing the scattered, or at least to ungroup things, and many also stridently defend Fold Spacers who don't bother to tell people they're going to use it or how ("I'll be Fold Spacing onto the tank"), making others often waste their AoEs... Thinking about these two things, I'd put money on the HC team finding some easy/quick work-around to allow us to ignore KB, as they seem to do everything they can to support grouping foes for quick steamrolling/farming benefits.

This. "SMFA" literally started as a way for authors to tag their works as "I swear this is not another farm!" if you've ever gone looking for something to play in the AE, you'll understand why it was needed. Past that, a story can be whatever you want: I've published a few arcs that are like a collection of "radio stories," meaning each mission inside the arc was its own thing (with some light connecting tissue between them) but yeah, this does mean each one's sort of light on the complex storytelling. Musically, this would be like one song. I have many arcs that tell a single story across the missions inside (up to five each). Musically, think of a 'concept album' (or CD or whatever). Some people have published multi-arc stories. I prefer to keep mine shorter than that, that's just me, I'm not faulting any who go further; I'm working on a two-arc story (with five mission in each) and finding it hard to keep track of all the spinning plates ha ha... and to keep myself motivated to get the darn thing done, too. Musically, think of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle, which was a series of operas telling one vast story. Last thing: remember there are no rules to any of this ("SFMA" as a helpful tag aside) beyond what you can make work! Imagine it,. create it.

I know many are meh on the AT, but a Dominator who's Plant/Sav might fit that bill too.

I once chased +damage on a Dominator just cuz I wanted to; no matter what choice I was faced with, I always chose "whatever adds to my damage, no thought given to anything else." Installed a little window thingy to keep track of how much % extra damage I was getting, as much of it was like situational based on Incarnates, etc. Played that toon up to 50 and more, she was a lot of fun, on teams I was often hitting the cap of 300%. I've thought about trying the same thing on a "real" damage toon, like a Blaster, but that feels too obvious so I just haven't gotten round to it.

I was going to say "or proctologists", but did I see somewhere someone had a toon named "Crey Proctologist"?

Eochai

One single glowie or similar looking NPC to go meet on big big maps.

In case it was lost or missed, that was my point yes. Incarnate powers, perhaps because their numbers are more limited often end up being much more cookie cutter.

Fun new combo of powers like the one giant AoE AND the one that gives you lots of Endurance to make up for your limping build? It's so exciting!

Back on Live, I used to play on a lower population server. I played red side exclusively. I was working nights, but still had no trouble finding teams. Then later, I did, so I switched the the highest population server. Then I started to have trouble there as well. One night, fresh out of the Zig with a brand new villain, I stepped out to find... no one about. After some checking, I discovered that something like 80% of all villain characters online at the time were, yep, you guess it Frank Stallone lined up in Pocket D for Incarnate content. If you restrict people on this again, that is what we'll end up with again, I figure.

Pretty sure it's this right here. That said, I have sen them get Held before, so focus on that instead, if you're planning out a toon to excel at one thing (I mean, it's useful elsewhere too, of course).

I think this was done (well, "not done") to save file space back when that was more of a concern.

"Unrecognizable Lump" would be a great name for a Bio character, and it even fits into the character limit!

My firs 50 on HC was a Beam Corr. The utmost boring set of all the ones I've tried so far is Kin. Yes yes, attack number go up and we rush around faster and recharge like mad, but playing it? So boring.

Best way I've seen it done is tie them all to another glowie with the interact time set as loooong as you can, and some kind of explicit message that spells out that "this really doesn't look like it's worthy of your time, maybe you should be looking elsewhere," something like that.

I was going to say Gold side foes. I haven't been back since before Live ended because of them, all these low levels toons of mine (solo or not) would walk down some ramp and three guys would go BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA and somehow have a wide enough cone to hit everyone and each BUDDA took off like a fifth of health. No thanks.

AoEs aren't the end all and be all of the game, but if you want to prioritize them, them maybe melee isn't for you.

"Present"

Good question, one I'm facing myself with the current story I'm... well, I won't say 'working on,' but 'still sort of working on.' Anyway. In general I design more for my foes to carry the story along that be a big-fight thing in and of themselves, so this is just my take: I've heard advice to not give foes Armor sets because that can make them far too tough to kill, so if you are doing that, try skipping it for an Elite-level foe... and maybe DO try giving one to a Boss-level and see how they work out; this may also come down to which Armor set you assign. As for the attacks, I'd still consider giving them as few as the XP setting will allow. I often keep clicking around back and forth on the primary and secondary sets trying to figure out which combo or single powers really mess with XP levels (up or down), which sometimes means it the foe fairly often ends up without a wide range of attack powers; if the XP is still good, I figure that's probably best, but you might end up with some guy with like two top-tier attacks and nothing else (which of course will carry quite the wallop though, and will lead to angry messages from Controllers who had to drop out). Like everything else AE, my experience with this says you just need to experiment and test test test. ETA: forgot to mention if you haven't seen this page yet, you might find some good advice on the wiki https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect_Custom_Units

I don't save big ones, they all get used just when they get used, are needed, but I do exactly that with wakies and break-frees, in that same far-right column. Given a little time I do try and organize them too, so that I don't have to search thru a patchwork to find that Health I need right now.

This can be when chaining events, one spawns of the previous, helps a lot. I've been relying on it a fair amount of the time recently.

Dang, missed opportunity. He'd probably hire his relative and sue anyway.

If you can't beat 'em, why not work for them?