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I definitely agree that homogenized builds are a peculiar thing. I've posted quite a bit about how I feel about the Numina %proc showing up in AT builds where it is almost certainly doing next-to-nothing. Very few of my builds (which would otherwise be considered frivolously expensive) include Winter sets... the benefits tend to favor Melee and Fire/Cold resistances that I often don't need. Purples tend to give +Recharge, which many more of my characters value. There is at least one set where I think the bonuses from multi-slotting PVP outweigh both Purple and Winter options (straight Holds, because of the many %proc options). I am also a hug fan of bonuses from sets that are either uncommon (e.g. Thunderstrike) or con as uncommon (Gaussian's pieces) and are never very pricey. Frankly: creating an AH index would simply incentivize folks to manipulate it. If there is any doubt, just review the past attempted manipulation of uncommon salvage prices. I suppose it was a good sink for inf, but otherwise I am not sure what the point was of that.

Many of the %proc pieces would (deservedly) lose their spot on any such index for being notoriously bad performers (both in the market as well as in builds).

Originally: in order to unlock the HEAT, it was necessary to get another character to the level cap. This implies (to me anyway) that part of the calculus involved with HEATs was that players would be willing to face a specific, dedicated challenge while playing them. Over the course of LIVE, the barrier of entry to HEAT-play was significantly lowered so I think it is easy to overlook this aspect of the AT. It's a different sort of discussion about whether or not it was 'fair' to non-HEAT players to add HEAT-specific enemy types to non-HEAT missions. Many players clearly didn't think so ("No Khelds, plz"). The nerfing (my words) of the Quants/Voids from was a compromise, considering that the Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance inherent abilities explicitly rely on having teammates.

I enjoyed the original batch of Nemesis arcs (back when the game was capped at level 40), and there are some 40-50 (and 50+) Nemesis missions I enjoy... I never glommed onto the direction Lord Nemesis took in the game's lore. Bluntly: I was expecting to see more in-mission explanation of the jaegers and warhulks. As much fun as those Shadow Shard Nemesis base maps are, I also could never bring myself to believe that Lord Nemesis could actually recruit enough humans to staff his missions.

What is it that an "AE farmer" (as opposed to a "street sweeping farmer" or "Ouroboros farmer") are taking away from other players? I can't see what the impact to other players is. Spoilers: I know it is not that the price of good on the market has increased, because of all the reasons already explained. I think that at certain times on Live, it was possible to make a tangential argument that AE Farming (for XP and Inf) that got characters to level 50 was potentially diminishing the chances for non-Farming players to experience/enjoy/collect the rewards from incarnate content... which was something that players had to explicitly pay $$ (not inf) for the privilege of enjoying.... If the Incarnate content was being flooded by 'freshly-minted farmed level 50s'. That is certainly not the case on Homecoming.

The Malta faction has an explicitly different sort of thing going on with their robots, which are exposed during a blue-side level 45-50 arc "A Titan Named Joe". Nemesis automata (and Jaegers) are explicitly 'clockworks'. In the early days of Live, I remember being creeped out by 5th Column Steel Valkyries on the streets of Founders Falls having conversations that didn't sound like the sort of things robots would being talking about. I always expected them to be revealed as "brains in jars".

It has never happened to me, but... ... the game client does have a peculiar handshake such that when a player is interacting with 'storage' elements, game behavior is 'odd'. I typically see this if I have pulled an ehancement catalyst from a (salvage) storage place and catalyze an enhancement and get and error... it is as if the client is trying to put the enhancement into the storage rack. I have long suspected that some fraction of folks reporting issues with "failed respecs" (unrelated to untrained levels) is because they were interacting with some sort of SG storage item. I didn't bother investigating this particular AH "warning" message I recently encountered: I was getting an AH alert to the effect that "storage is full" when trying to dump some extra salvage into the AH. My character's pockets were not full, nor did I have enough in the AH (bids won/placed, pending sales, unclaimed inf, stored items) to have come close to the limits. The salvage still made it into the AH (despite the warning) so I just shrugged and kept going. I tend to only investigate when things go wrong, so I cannot even remember the circumstances, except that I obviously was not on an instanced map.

My character with the Sorcery pool uses Arcane Bolt to abra the cadavers before they can reach out and grab her.

While not specific to HEATs, I did this trick on the Protean story where you fight yourself while playing as a VEAT. Most of my VEAT have multiple builds leveraging the different possible paths, and one of my VEAT has a completely different body type (and costume) to represent the different "characters"... for whatever reason I decided I wanted to play one half of the character against the other half, so after entering the mission I changed builds and got a chance to fight the different alts against each other.

Each to their own taste. I have at least one %proc heavy Controller build that relies on the Accuracy bonuses from purple sets to help those %damage attacks land.

My own rule: Uncommon red recipes (especially Snipes, and Pet damage) ALWAYS get rolled into another uncommon before rolling into rares.

Pure Anecdote: I haven't been doing content where I would expect(*1) to get Purple recipe drops, yet I got one in the past week from play. (*1) Such content for me is Heather Townshend's Dark Astoria arc set at 0x8, solo. Clear every map of all four missions. This takes about 30 minutes (YMMV depending on AT) and has (roughly, by my estimate) a 40% of dropping a Purple recipe. I don't think there is anything special about that arc distinct from any other content, it just happens to be one that I frequently ran.

Health is a different matter, this reply is for Endurance: Presented in roughly the order I do certain things: Put Rest in power tray one, use it when necessary. Slot toggle powers for Endurance reduction, then the primary Attribute. Use sets when appropriate, but most Def/Res builds don't need more than 4 slots in those powers. Many Def/Res powers require far fewer slots. Slot attacks for Endurance reduction, after slotting for Accuracy. Use sets when appropriate. (for me, this is when the %damage P2W pieces turn off) Pace yourself. Slot the following globals, in this order: Panacea, Performance Shifter, Miracle (in Health), EndMod (or attuned Performance Shifter, in Stamina) Use the SG base to craft +Recovery with that salvage that is accumulating. Take Rest out of power tray one, unless you skipped step 4. Earn the +MaxEnd accolades. Don't click Hasten unless you REALLY need it. Your teammates won't notice your improved performance but they will see you sucking wind. Slot powers with enhancement set bonuses that given MaxEnd, EnduranceDiscount, and Recovery. (e.g. Annihilation, Preventive Medicine, Unbreakable Guard, some PVP) respec when appropriate (this may let you break #9)

I level my characters through 'regular' content, so my response is formed through that lens. Defensively: I think Willpower is probably the smoothest set, although Bio's Adaptation helps to smooth out a lot of other choices. IIRC Super Reflexes has an AoE gap that can be hard to live with if difficulties are turned up. I haven't played all the other sets, but the other ones I have played rely on enhancement slots to really sing. Control: I find these sets to all be very 'clunky', because of the low damage.... with the possible exception of Gravity's Propel. Offensively: I don't tend to notice, unless I'm waiting for attacks to recharge. I havn't tried Titan Weapons, but I found War Mace to be a set that was "too slow" (while leveling) for my taste. At level 50, it is fine. I rather like the VEATs. The forced respec is annoying, but once completed your character has new sets of powers with extra slots to place!

I dunno. I certainly value regeneration on Tankers; I don't play Brutes and (in my personal opinion) other ATs with smaller HP caps make extra Regeneration a secondary effect (at best). I take the point about MOAR (Global) RECHARGE. I will take MOAR if it is in easy reach (LotG) or comes from otherwise synergistic (bonuses from enhancement sets that scale well, e.g. Purple, PVP and ATO), but if I can have a smooth (enough) chain of "clicky things to do" I often find myself not caring about something like Hasten... even if it is in my build! Less recharge is a perfectly acceptable Endurance management strategy (even for button mashers)! I tell a different story if there is a specific power that I want available as often as possible: My Crabbermind has more than enough recharge to be able to resummon all of the pets (including Epic) by the time the natural period of pet duration expires. I have personal opinions (which vary per build) but I'm not critical of other players' attitudes to Recharge, including prioritization.

Hmmm... 'A Titan Named Joe"? There are a lot of Blue side arcs that I enjoy for the nostalgia (and dips into the lore) but almost all of the ones that come to mind involve an obscene amount of travel between zones find the (many) glowies/hostages on large/complicated maps drag/rescue an NPC across/through a large map wait for spawns I do appreciate the Blue arcs that stay 'within zones': Hollows, (new) Faultline, Striga, Croatoa. Several of these zone arcs have 'problematic' elements from my list.

I've occasionally eye-rolled when I've seen a single player spamming a request to join any farm (or door-sit), but I've never felt that such requests needed to be segregated to another channel.

For almost all content and circumstances: I prefer to have the Build Up / Aim power over Tactics (or the equivalent). If my Primary/Secondary allows both, I usually take both but delay the second until late in the build. For example, I find Chronos from /Time (for Blasters) to be superior to Aim, but occasionally (in high level content) I want Aim available when Chronos is down... I have Chronos recharging in ~22 secs, so this is about a 12 second window. As noted by @skoryy the primary benefit is to hit the +22%(?) ToHit damage bonus on Fast Snipes. The actual accuracy/final to-hit is purely a secondary effect (barring considerations like enemy MoG, or PVP). The Aim/BuildUp boosts don't hurt other attacks of course. Random thoughts I've posted elsewhere. I also favor having the Gaussian's %BuildUp piece in the on-demand power for DPS ATs. If the player is surrounded by teammates and pets, it is possible to get more firings of the %proc (slotting it in Tactics, or equivalent), but IMHO this is not as reliable as just working on the DPS attack chains (including target selection). YMMV. I like having the Kismet +Accuracy (really +ToHit) global for the same reason (e.g. fast Snipes)... the issue for me always comes down to finding the right power to put it in! The power has to be active for the +6% bonus to kick in. For Blasters, if can be a while before there is an applicable power. (Stalkers at least can put it in Hide, provided they toggle it on!) My experimenting with other ATs indicate that the Kismet bonus doesn't contribute if it is in an auto power and the auto power isn't available because of exemplaring. This shouldn't affect most (any?) Blasters.

I held off on posting in this thread simply because of the title (TL;DR "there is a difference between henchmen and pets") but on the sub-subject of Health/Regeneration and Endurance/Recovery slotting I think @Maelwys is making valid points. Writing only for myself: I almost always find that characters while leveling up are much more Endurance hungry than end-game builds (even without considering Incarnates). Lack of slots (for Endurance reduction, for set bonuses) is the obvious reason. I almost always over-slot Recovery until I get to the first level 50 respec. I used to have a bias about "giving up" certain important (for leveling) enhancement pieces, but it's become second nature to take a good look at what those pieces are contributing to a level 50 build (including during exemplar content). Some advice: Enhancement unslotters are a cheap mechanism for testing the impact of certain pieces in a build. You can't move power slots with them, but if you want to try going without a certain piece (or alternate slotting) they are fine for this. Because I can't keep myself from writing this: I feel that a majority of builds (across all ATs) overvalue Regeneration. In game play, Health doesn't get 'spent' the same way Endurance does. It is much easier to mitigate Health 'expenses' (via Defense, Resistance) and frankly it is very hard to predict what level of Regeneration is optimal for any given build... especially for AT with relatively low Health caps. I'm not claiming it is impossible to establish a relatively precise level of regeneration for some specific content, but I feel that many builds simply go "Softcap Defense, Maximize S/L Resists, MOAR Regeneration".

My mind isn't going to be changed (see above for my attitude), but I am starting to wonder if folks have different definitions of "Tankerminding"? Personally, I would never try to out-tank a Tanker with a MM, as the tools available to a MM are simply too weak compared to a Tanker's tools. Quite frankly I think they are too weak to act as a Tanker on large groups (see dozens of similarly-themed posts claiming "I tank with my Blapper/VEAT/Dominator/HEAT"). For myself only: I only consider Tankerminding to be keeping aggro off of my henchmen so that they can keep a stance such that they share their Health with me. This is most evident in solo play. A solo player can control the flow of combat and generate threat in many different ways. The only aspect of this that occasionally works against me is if there is 'too much control' or enemies that turn tail and run for the hills may require some adjustment of henchmen stances to finish off a spawn... but at this point the Health pool isn't as important to share. In large PUG it is almost always another player that has most of the aggro, so the purely defensive stance has to be evaluated... in my own experience (for most content) it isn't worth trying to peel the aggro of just a limited number of enemies simply to preserve the defensive stance... and if a PUG is fighting enemy spawns with AoE you can go ahead and keep the henchmen in a defensive stance... provided your MM is in the AoE. You may want/need the Health pool to survive, but surviving isn't Tanking.

GAH! Boost those Shield Wall pieces to 50+5! (except for the global) My Inv uses Resist Physical Damage as a mule for for Steadfast Protection and Impervium Armor. If I has a third slot it would probably just be Endurance reduction. Inv goes way past the S/L cap without extra slotting. (Edit: I forgot this was an auto power! LOL!) I suppose you could worry about debuffs, but Inv has other tools like Dull Pain and the Scaling Damage Resistance piece from Reactive Defenses. I've been experimenting with the Kismet +Accuracy (really to Hit) in Invincibility, but per my testing it appears to be doing nothing without an enemy nearby. I have Dull Pain 6-slotted with Preventive Medicine. I keep the Gaussian's %Build Up piece in Build Up (6-slotted) specifically so that I have the boost when I want it... often I find myself 1-on-1 against something like a MoG PP and I would rather have it on demand... YMMV of course, I realize why others keep it in auras. I used to take Unstoppable as a mule (as shown above) but I found it easier to re-jigger my build to not have to burn a power. I used to mule Gladiator's Armor in Resist Physical Damage (see rationale above) but 3-slotted it in Resist Energies instead.

The Icon/Facemaker missions are very much the same. EDIT: I want to say that in-mission defeats didn't count the last time I did Carson's (Founder's Falls) mission.

Y'all are thinking too small. Somebody needs to start the thread to clear locked Supergroup names.