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For me, x8 solo Synapse becomes a personal bugbear for me because of the way the spawns scatter/run on the "defeat all" mission more than anything else. It only takes missing two mobiles from more than one spawn to make life miserable on some of those maps.

I want to explain why this might be happening. Tankers generally take many more attacks to finish off bosses than other AT, even while they are holding the aggro of the boss. AoE attacks are generally not good against bosses... so a Tanker might be trying to cluster another group while dragging the bosses along. All of this would be in the service of "fewer attacks to defeat more mobiles" which is good for the team. A good tanker is usually paying attention to the team's cycle of attacks, controls, and aggro situation. Fore example: A boss that is locked down by controls probably doesn't need the tank paying attention to it.

Stock up on those [Arrows of Romance] ! No one should endure side-eye from another player that is getting upset because that player doesn't understand their limits. I have a couple of "support" characters that are perfectly fine running off by themselves when necessary; often I just go with "The needs of the many..." and stick close to those who benefit most. Oh... I've got some taunts for that player. With the influx of new players, I suspect we are going to go through another phase of "My Tank doesn't need Taunt" (pick a reason why: "I make attacks" and "I have an Aura" and "I have Fold Space" are common rationales. It took a while, and some changes to Tankers, but I think the critical consensus among veteran Homecoming players is finally "Tankers need a Taunt". If someone wants to play a Tank without Taunt, they should probably just roll up a Scrapper and no one need be the wiser. Don't be discouraged, and play the way that drives your satisfaction.

I have found it useful to keep a Valentine's Day mission "all year" to have a tip that won't disappear if you change alignments or after doing a morality mission. I find having one is useful for the times when I start a mission with difficulty parameters I don't want and forgot to change.

The winter lord always (per my observations) spawns in place of an opened present being replaced. Minions from the winter lord that are not cleared will (I believe) prevent a new WL from spawning. Minions that otherwise appear from a present (with no WL) will eventually respawn.

Always has been. OK, read the massively editoral, and it feels like a complaint that comes from a mode of thinking "race to 50". I look forward to the author's realization that the answer to the question: is either "Base Building" or "Costume Design."

I've done solo Synapse in about 30 minutes. I honestly can't recall if I broke the 30 minute mark, but... probably? I know that I've been on PUGs that have either broken 30 minutes or just missed it. There is some luck involved in maps, but the keys for solo were: run it exemplared, so powers are slotted don't turn up the spawn size, or difficulty have AoE (including P2W) spawn Babbage in Steel Canyon (near Positron and Valkyrie) and call out for help (if you want the merits, otherwise skip) have some sort of temp summons to help defeat the final AV. It doesn't take much, a Shivan or a Warwolf will do. High DPS characters may not even need this. It definitely helps if you are familiar with the cadence of the missions to use "fast travel" options where optimal. SG base buffs for travel speeds can help.

It absolutely would work, because it has been implemented already. Merits (from TFs) can be used to buy recipes now. Not every TF/SF offers enough merits to buy every recipe, but running four weeks of the weekly TF/SF certainly would offer more than enough.

I blame the Incarnate grind from Live as the primary reason I do so little of the Incarnate content (including slotting Incarnate powers beyond Alpha) with most of my characters. Homecoming has made incarnate paths much more palatable, just like they did with non-incarnate power slotting. I can sort of judge my own headspace about "what constitutes grinding?", because it appears (to me, from my PoV) that there are an order of magnitude more gripes about the market/economy/auction house than there are about slotting Incarnate abilities.

I don't have a EA Scrapper, perhaps my Sentinel choices can be informative? Generally: I find Energy aura to be a rather straightforward set to slot, leveraging Global pieces and set bonuses as desired. With my Sentinel, I did end up making the (unusual for me) choice to 6-slot some Very Rare sets to improve Toxic/Psi resistances. On other characters I usually just rely on positional defense values, but that is not how Energy Aura rolls. I run with the Kismet +ToHit in whichever toggle will always be on and also has room for it. As an aside, with Accolades, the EA Sentinel is the only non-Tank in my roster that sits at the HP cap for its AT. I mention this because it feeds into how survivable the character is with the resists, scaling damage resistance, etc.

I dislike the idea of Robotics/FF, mostly because Robots benefit more from a debuffing secondary than a defensive one. Traps, Time, Dark would be before FF. Here is the slotting I use (Robots/Traps) for just the primary powers: While leveling up, I don't rely on the MM attacks... so I don't really use slots on them until later. The secondary powers will almost certainly need slots. If the secondary powers don't need slots, then it was probably a poor choice of secondary!

Praetoria runs on Duncan.

Whenever I'm on a Posi 1, I almost always try to save (any level) Inspirations for the Shadow fight. Boosting Defenses/Resistances and Accuracy can be key to beating down the Shadows. A couple of things I've observed about Posi-1: Occasionally the Shadow Duplicate will have access to powers that the player doesn't have (this is weird, but I've seen it solo) Occasionally the Shadow Duplicate will use powers that the player has skipped, and it turns out that those powers are force multipliers... for the Shadows Duplicates In the second category, it's often those powers that don't benefit fast-moving or solo play... and can come as a surprise for the unprepared.

I am in 99% agreement with the above sentiment. The 1% allows that maybe there is an end-game, but whatever it is is completely variable depending on the player. The market doesn't need to factor into any one particular player's end-game... and if it does, then the market is now part of that end-game, and should be treated as such for the purposes of "winning" that player's end game. Even if I narrow my own understanding of a very general gripe about "equipping" characters to "I wanna equip, I canna afford it" (my words, not anyone else's)... there are SO MANY players who understand how many different in-game strategies exist for "equipping", I can't see this any different than a gripe about "I wanna travel, I canna do it" or "I don't wanna be hit by snipers in FF" or any of a thousand other in-game challenges for which many players can offer advice.

What about all those awesome Travel IOs to go into the prestige sprints?

Quoting myself, as it slipped my mind: Living Shadows (mostly) nullifies Knockback. Personally, I don't get worked up about other players using a lot of knockback... but I won't deny that scattering spawns makes the AoE controls much less effective. There is a flip side of course: Immobilizing enemies in a large spawn makes it that much harder for a Tanker to "gather" them. The now larger Tanker AoE help to mitigate this, but it does sometimes appear that Brutes struggle slightly more.

I can't see myself changing my slotting of the henchmen or pseudo pets (or FFG, thanks for the reminder about Dam/End D-Syncs!), but I am definitely considering sliding Detonator into the build. It looks like I'll have to sacrifice a LotG mule, and find a single slot for more recharge for it. I have a couple of candidate slots in my build: My Mace Beam Volley still has a KB->KD piece in it. This was really useful before the Robotics revamp but I haven't experimented to see how it is still working as a soft control. I also have a Gaussian's %Build Up in Tactics... My MM is spamming attacks (for -Regen, aggro) but I'm not kidding myself that the extra damage/toHit is doing that much. I think I'd be satisfied with just the Endurance/ToHit piece in Tactics. I'm leaning towards this choice, because if I were to learn that the Mace Beam Volley soft control wasn't doing much, I'd probably swap out the KB->KD piece for an actual damage %proc.

I see what you did there.

I'll use Combat Teleport for all sort of the things mentioned above, plus for those occasions when I really want to hit a Paragon Protector that has gone MoG. I especially like Combat Teleport during Reactor Trials. It is a perfectly good power that needs no changes.

My BR Sentinel has Refractor Beam slotted mostly for %damage, because I wanted to get damage apart from Energy if I could.: Hami-O Centriole (Damage / Range) D-Sync Guidance (Accuracy / Range) Javelin Volley %Lethal Bombardment %Fire Shield Breaker %Lethal Touch of Lady Gret %Negative I have no complaints about the %proc rates. I have Annihilation slotted in Piercing Beam (mostly for set bonuses). I felt like the timing wasn't good enough to try to go heavy into a %-Resistance,

My old PEAT suggestion (which also used "PEAT" FWIW) was a classic male/female split, a la VEATs: The "male" path would start as a grunt member of the IDF and then branch into either a sort of Hybrid Devouring Earth Fusion or as a IDF Boss The Male path offers different types of assaults and summons. The "female" path would evolve into either a Seer or a Carnival of Light path The Female path is more offense and control.

Sign my petition for a Defense/Damage D-sync. Acid Mortar can have Damage slotted, but FFG cannot. I wonder if the Soulbound Allegiance %Build Up slotted in a (T1) would carry over to the pseudopet?

I agree that Living Shadows is a power that I would give up. I get some damage out of it, but mostly it is a control that lets me know who I have aggroed.

I used a HamiO for Acc/Mezz partially because Dark Fluffy has different types of controls that I wanted to buff. EDIT: IIRC

For leveling builds, having a 'sugar daddy' (or SG base storage) can help newer toons with ATOs, Winters, and level 10/attuned PVP pieces (Panacea's global for instance). P2W offers several different %proc enhancements at no cost which eventually expire, but can help early with damage. All of my "level 50" Richy Rich builds, while leveling, use IOs or leftover attuned PVP pieces where I have Hami-Os or Purples. My general advice is to slot first Accuracy and Endurance. The actual effects are hard to notice at low levels, but by level 20 you should be able to see net benefits. Investing in a Kismet +ToHit piece in an always-on power (even if it is a toggle) really helps. Cheaper sets like Annihilation don't need many pieces to offer tangible benefits.