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Muling is generally used to indicate a power/slot choice of an IO piece that will give you a bonus (usually Global). For example, there are plenty of pool powers that take Defense IOs, and folks will often take a power, invest no slots in that power, and simple add a piece like the Luck of the Gambler Defense/Global +Recharge to it. You don't have to activate the power to get the global bonus. The "Mule" is simply carrying the IO. It is possible to add more slots to powers just to carry more Global pieces; I still consider this muling. (see @Chaos Stringpoint above about muling with a set bonus) Franken-slotting is the term used when a power is equipped with multiple slots but the slots are filled with different kinds of IO pieces from different sets. Usually this is done because adding %damage procs to certain powers can increase the amount of damage done, depending on the AT (Masterminds themselves are a low damage scale AT, so the %damage procs contribute more on their attacks) and the proc chance. Crudely: Longer recharge powers with more targets have the best chance to proc; toggles are generally the worse place for procs. %Debuff and %control procs are similar A common power that uses Franken-slotting but not for %damage (or %control, or %debuff%) is Mind Link / Link Minds. This is a power worth having as much recharge as possible, but it ONLY can have boosted Recharge from ToHit sets. This makes it worthwhile to frankenslot with both Adjusted Targeting (Recharge) and Luck of the Gambler (Def/Recharge and Def/Global Recharge).

Preferred, unless you are using the Overwhelming Force piece in another AoE power that doesn't usually do Knockback. My Bots/Traps MM uses the Overwhelming Force piece in Photon Grenade (along with a -Resistance piece) to further keep enemies in areas where they will be taking AoE damage. Mastermind attacks are terrible at damage, but they can be leveraged for (soft) controls and debuffs. I have found that the Robots tear through opponents quickest when the enemies are all 'stuck' in one place.

This was the source of my dislike for the Incarnate system on Live: Aside from the cognitive dissonance of (per the narrative) being one of a handful of entities receiving Incarnate POWA) and playing on leagues with multiple-dozens of other Incarnates) having to limp along on Incarnate Trials just to unlock the slots was insulting. I greatly prefer having the solo path, as well as the ability to unlock Incarnate XP levels via defeating enemies.

An important part (IMO) of the changes is: Every point of ToHit buffing the player has will increase or decrease this damage, up to a cap of 2.76 scale damage with +22% ToHit buff. How this affects my builds: I will try to make sure that characters with snipes (Blasters, but also Scrappers/Stalkers with Patron snipes) have ToHit bonuses from IO set bonuses (and/or Kismet: Accuracy, in an active power) to eek out as much damage as possible. Please note that the Kismet piece contributes to ToHit and not Accuracy, and it is ToHit (and not Accuracy) bonuses that contributes to this extra damage. 'Slow' snipes will do extra damage. Generally, the revision to Snipes has meant that Snipes can now be incorporated into a regular attack chain (which is why having a constant ToHit bonus.

If they go on sale, I'll buy a fixed number and leave them unopened... until the time comes when I have a character that wants to make use of Winter sets. Converter roulette will fill ~80% of what I'll need and then I will simply buy the pieces I am missing. This isn't a market area I play in.

Perhaps the most famous hockey graphic for reducing... something

I have no direct experience with Thugs, but I suspect that Gang War is probably the primary power that moves it to a top-tier primary. The Robots are 'tanky', and Dark almost certainly is one of the better choices for 'Tankerminds' where you put the henchmen in 'Bodyguard' mode and keep the aggro on yourself. The Dark T1 heal should keep the henchmen alive for standard content. Homecoming is very generous with 'respecs', and I encourage new players to try different choices, especially while leveling. As far as picking enhancements to go into powers: Every T1 pet benefits from adding an "Overwhelming Force: Chance for Knockdown" piece, as it adds a soft control. If you stick with 'bots, they all do knockback anyway, so you may want to consider another piece (Sudden Acceleration) that converts all knockback to knockdown. The Overwhelming Force piece is unique, but the Sudden Acceleration piece is not.

Even though I have level 50s that don't slot Incarnate powers, I deeply appreciate that those toons can still slowly unlock the slots. Has anyone yet mentioned Mastermind pets in Incarnate content?

I started a Bots/Elec build, but shelved it due to boredom. As @Crysis points out, henchmen are supposed to be expendable. I didn't the feeling from the /Elec set that I'd have more fun with it than my Bots/Traps build.

Missing a 95% final-to-hit-chance with an Assassin's Strike is at least half the reason to take an epic snipe from the Patron pools. when you miss with the AS, the (slow, damage-boosted) Snipe will hit for maximum damage. It's Streakbreaker lemonade.

I've never slotted one, but I have come close, in the following circumstances: On a Kinetics build, because I had slotted all the alternatives in assorted Kin-powers. On a character with a "combined" travel power (e.g. Sorcery's Mystic Flight which combines both Flight and Teleport) for a slight performance edge. Since I discovered that it is possible to boost any of the Universal Travel set pieces (Blessing of the Zephyr, Winter's Gift) to 50+5 and have them work at any level (down to 7, I presume) and I am almost always using the Knockback protection piece, if I ever multi-slot a travel power it would almost certainly be to get a set bonus.

As far as ZOMG sums... IRL I am responsible for a tiny fraction of a very large budget at a business. The amount I am responsible for is certainly not small, but the annual amount would not be considered 'life changing' (in a non-work budget sense) for even the poorest people without being invested in some specific way. My budget area is essentially in an area with fixed costs, such that those costs will never decline without a radical re-imagining of that area of the business... yet every year I get the same speech about reducing expenses... never mind that every year I've used those fixed cost resources to get more return from them than is expected. I like to think that I'm investing the money I'm entrusted with to do more with it than could be expected by just playing it safe... you know, as in the parable of talents. My perspective is someone limited, but I can recognize that the folks above me responsible for the larger budget don't have the ability to differentiate between good investment over bad (because they'd otherwise ease up on those of us investing their talents wisely) or can't justify to those above them how wisely they are spending the talents they've been entrusted with. I was reminded of this because I *just* got the speech about reducing costs, and if my entire budget line was eliminated it wouldn't cover what I assume is the target goal for the entire department. Let me do some of the radical re-imagining of the entire department and I'll let you know where I think we can get better return for the investment.

To be honest: for my character concepts and build desires the Winter set pieces are almost never added to my builds. I suppose if I was specifically looking for Fire/Cold Resistance/Defense or for some Ice-support from the procs I would feel differently. I have a couple of builds where I included a Winter set for some positional defense, but aside from the Universal Travel -Slow piece I rarely consider using them.

As reported, the AoE Holds become very good sources of damage with %procs. Even pre-50, there are three %damage procs that can be added, with a fourth available at level 50. Confuse is also not bad, with two available %damage procs, plus the Contagious Confusion proc to beef up the single-target confuses. It's most of the the other control (and debuff) sets that could use some proc-love. In particular, the Fear powers don't have either a PVP or Purple choice! I can sort of understand the historic reluctance to not having a PVP Fear set, but Fear's four IO sets when compared to the six (not counting the Superior or Winter varieties) IO sets for Holds definitely feels like it is begin short-changed. I'd like to see a new lvl 10-30 Fear set with 3 or 5-pieces (including a %damage proc), and a Superior (lvl 50) set that includes a "Contagious Fear" proc. I know that there is a difference of opinion on slotting the Contagious Confusion proc in AoE or single target, but it is clear that players find it a valuable option.

The one aspect of the Incarnate system that annoys me the most is the UI. I am non-plussed by these aspects: The UI window cannot be 'permanently' re-sized. I manually resize the window every time so that the recipes (including description) are all visible. The window tab for choosing the types of incarnates does not allow you to 'click to close'; instead you have to pick a different incarnate ability. This is particularly tough with the Lore pets, as there are so many options that it swamps the window (which is always at a default size, see point 1) I would appreciate being able to set certain mission arcs (SF, TF, Ouro) such that Incarnate powers are disabled. Presumably the Incarnate-level content has been designed to 'require' Incarnates, but the more classic non-incarnate content becomes easy-mode with full incarnates.

Two comments. The first is self-reporting of my own opinion; the second is my interpretation of what some other people want. The second almost certainly doesn't reflect the diversity of intellectual nuance of other people's thoughts, but it is how a certain class of arguments comes across to me. 1) There are parts of the Homecoming game that I don't play: those areas are 'gated' by my interest in those areas. I don't think there is a need to put such things behind an actual gate. 2) It appears that the folks who are most in favor of gated content, also want the game-world to recognize that they have been able to open the 'gate'. It could be visually obvious (e.g. a costume piece, a badge name, a +1 badge count) or it could be performance based (e.g. more enhancement slots, more accolades/powers). The conversation in this thread have revealed that there is not even agreement on what the rewards should be for passing through hypothetical gates.

How would you feel if you were the only person playing behind a gate?

My Blaster is using the Force Mastery set as IO Mules. I think it is the only Blaster (Epic) pool that lets you slot both a single Defense and Resistance piece without having to invest slots in a power that can take both types. It also has a second Resistance toggle if you want it. When it came to the selection of Epic power choices and the possible allocation of slots in those Epic power pools choices, I had room for 3 powers and only 6 extra slots. 5 of the slots went to a 6-piece set bonus and the last went to a Global IO choice. My play experience: With consideration to slotting: Generally, I haven't found the need to run my Dark/Time/Force Blaster with Resistance toggles on either via the Fighting or Epic Pool. I suppose I had them on during a successful 3-man Master of the Imperious Task Force run, but I think it was playstyle more than resistance that made the difference in success.

One of the areas I'd like to test would be removing streakbreaker... or at least set the required number of misses to be something like 100 for all 'buckets'. My motivation is two-fold: It's essentially an ad-hoc mechanism that is supposed to assuage hard feelings about 'unlucky' streaks; but it's very presence just inflames passions and attracts attention to the RNG The RNG is already pseudo-random (requiring a seed, and applying a 'flat-fill' approach to result-space), tacking an ad-hoc system on top of the pseudo-random RNG just seems like applying non-maths on top of maths. (*1) When other testing is done on the test servers, I'd happily play for a while just to test this aspect of combat. (*1) As I wrote elsewhere: when final to-hit chance is already 95%, there is very little need to FORCE a hit after a single miss (ignoring that next result and then resetting the streakbreaker). A truly random RNG would make the chance of a miss 5%, but a 'flat-fill' pseudo-random RNG almost certain has a greater than 95% chance that the next RNG roll would be a 'hit'. Streakbreaker isn't really breaking streaks, it's just triggering 'ignore a roll and reset a counter'.

I can't speak to it as a Dominator, but I use it on a Controller. For my current build (not yet level 50): It will be a set mule at lvl 50+ It is used for the ATO pet proc while leveling. I know that folks are not shy about expressing disappointment about the ATO pets (for both Dominators and Controllers), but I happen to like that those pets are really good at grabbing aggro; I have no expectation that they will be doing anything else. In my experience, this is pretty important when playing solo. I think @Coyote hit the other points I would say about the power.

Since I've written this in many other threads on this topic, here goes: Feeling like a 'lackey' is on the player. The original conceit of the game is that "contacts hand out missions" with a modicum of "street sweeping". Red or Blue (or Gold), you have to have contacts (or later, Tips) to get missions. It's up to the player how to interpret the missions, for your point in your career. By the time a villain has reached the 40s, you are getting missions that take you up against not just the finest from Paragon City, but also the patrons & powers of the Rogue Isles. You can go into the PVP zones and try to rule them with an iron fist should you desire. You can stand anywhere you want and try to recruit other players to do missions you pick. Even Victor von Doom had to take a science class!

Doesn't "making the Rich Richer" actually take influence out of the economy?

I also never felt like the Shadow Shard lore/arc came together. I can excuse my poor reading comprehension, but I'm not going to automatically excuse the writing/plan. It felt as if there were at least two different ideas for the Shard dimensions, and I'm not sure that those ideas either ripened or jelled. Maybe that's why we had to collect all that fruit? I never understood: Where the native inhabitants/civilians of the Shadow Shard came from. Where the 'Reflections' came from (considering that there are 'natives') Lord Nemesis: He used the Shadow Shard to launch his attack on the Rikti Homeworld? or not? ...and then there is the conclusion to the "Who Will Die?" SSA.

The only times I've groaned about that particular respec is: When testing a 'from scratch' build on a Test server When constructing a second (or third) character build on a character (which is practically identical to the first case) The VEATs benefit from having multiple builds, so folks can hit this several times in a career, but other than those circumstances you never really encounter them in a particularly painful way. YMMV.

I know that many folks see the forced VEAT respec at 24 as an issue, my thinking about Hami-PEATs was that it would work similarly, such that the 'mad skills' would be unlocked after a certain level. Before that, the PEATs would have a more basic set of powers.