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Full disclosure, when I quickly referenced my 'favorite' Widow build, I have LotG Def/Global Recharge in Combat Training: Defensive (lvl 1), Tactical Training: Maneuvers (lvl 4), Foresight (lvl22), Mind Link (lvl 24) and Combat Jumping (lvl 49). That particular build doesn't even include Hasten, and That build happens to have Mask Presence 6-slotted (with Reactive Defenses)... I agree that this looks like an inferior choice (because once engaged with an enemy or glowie it provides less defense than Foresight (3 slots on my build, including Steadfast Protection Global... which could go somewhere else), but I stuck with with this slotting since Foresight is an Auto power and Mask Presence is a toggle and I wanted to cut the endurance usage on Mask Presence by half. I won't pretend that there are a lot different options for Widows with all of their available different Defensive powers. I checked my notes and I have a proposed respec (to test) that shifts 6-slots in Mind Link (Reactive Defenses) and 4-slots to Mask Presence (1xLotG, 3xShield Wall) which should improve both positional defenses and recharge time on Mind Link. (with no other changes to the rest of the build). I'm a big fan of the 5 and 6-piece bonuses from Reactive Defenses!

Inefficient is accurate. I am a fan of Reactive Defenses (I actually try to 6-slot it somewhere) so using the 3rd slot from Hasten to bring it to six so may help... but... With Mind Link, I think the 'optimal' slotting (for a large swath of content) is 3 slots with: Adjusted Targeting (Recharge), Luck of the Gambler (Def/Global Recharge) and a 50+5 Shield Wall (Def/Recharge). This assumes that you don't already have 5 LotG. You can eek out slightly more Defense and Recharge, and more ToHit (base it +5% IIRC) but the real value is in the Team Defense and Psi Resist boost IMO. IIRC, any more investment in Recharge (which must come from a Defense or ToHit set, no HO, no IO) is in the enhancement diversification limit. Widows are typically on the limit of getting perma-Mind Link, so YMMV on this advice. You could put six slots in Combat Jumping or Mask Presence (for Reactive Defenses, which would help endurance costs as well) and have four slots in Mind Link (put the Global Shield Wall piece in there as well). I can sort of see what you are trying to do with the two Red Fortune pieces, but the little extra S/L you get is probably not as important as what you give up. There may be a slot or two where they are.

It reduces your annual subscription cost by $1.

Prêt-à-porter fails are the worst.

I look forward to it. The additional EndMod sets added on HC certainly made the market here harder, but there are times when this niche looks downright weird. Anecdotally: I still stick with one of these in Stamina for everyone of my characters, although I have done some experimenting with a few characters (that don't have extra slots invested in Stamina) to see if I noticed any difference between the %proc and simply slotting an IO EndMod (boosted, natch because of Inf). I had a couple of characters with large +MaxEnd boosts (accolades, sets, buffs) and I ran them across a lot of different content at many different levels... it felt to me like keeping the Performance Shifter proc was the right call for most cases. This was not a rigorous study by any means.

I have no disagreement with the above, but I am reminded of other threads with many posts on the topic of "make the game harder for me, but don't make me play with debuffs". The game offers challenges, it's just that the game may not offer the challenge that a particular player wants.

I totally agree, but my union boss requires that I point out there is a difference between henchmen and pets. Of the mentioned classes, I think the VEATs hit the best balance between having enough pets and making enough well-scaled attacks to benefit from the Gaussian %BuildUp in a toggle. MM Damage scales are too low with too high an Endurance cost for the Build Up to make much of a difference for them. Better to slot Tactics to boost the Henchmen.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What else are you doing with your time? (Costume designs? SG Base building? Revealing maps via travel?) (this is written in jest) The SSA1 (blue/Skyway or red/Cap Au Diable) takes my lowest DPS characters (at that level, MMs) about 10 minutes to run, high DPS characters (including well-kitted Controllers) take about 6 minutes. Even counting glowies and doors, I think there is less clicking (including necessary combat) in that first arc then there would be to play market with common salvage. There is a cut scene of course. The Heather Townshend DA arc can take about 10 minutes to finish with minimal enemy engagement, and 30-40 minutes to clear all maps at 0x8. Either way you end up with convertable/marketable/saleable items at the end of the arc, and if you run at 0x8 it's the near equivalent of farm in terms of things you can sell (e.g. common IOs for ~100Kinf each)

I'm not surprised (and not unbiased, see below) to read that (modern) MIDS is misbehaving and causing issues. I'm not knocking the hard effort that is in it, but the times when I've tried to install and use it (on my 64-bit system) if always felt like it was using too many diverse resources (video, memory, etc.) for what it ought to have needed (my casual assessment, but if I can watch local video and edit audio while running CoX I feel like MIDS should work without issue). My bias against it became deeply ingrained when it was literally the program I (reinstalled) on an older HDD before the PCB of the HDD smoked. The HDD was older, but it actually smoked at the point of the install/launch of MIDS. This is absolutely anecdote, but I'm not a luddite when it comes to software design. Is there an architecture document for MIDS that details the interfaces of the software with system (and network) resources?

! MInf a week? That should be doable with just running a a Dark Astoria arc. Common IO drops at level 50 vendor for ~100 KInf on average.

I'm not particularly irked by requests for builds (or build advice). I will admit to emoting *facepalm* when I see a blanket request for a full build (with no parameters) and then a response form the requester "No thanks, not what I am looking for." I recently found an area of improvement for one specific, long-played character that I feel like I slightly improved (for the content I favor) only after helping another player with a suggestion for a similar build. The bitter irony of this specific situation is that I have now convinced myself I have 1 slot that probably isn't doing as much for me as I'd like and so I'm now endlessly tweaking the build to gauge potential improvements.

I almost never advocate the Gaussian's %Build Up in tactics (TL;DR I approve if it is on a team-playing toon that is also providing constant attacks, otherwise keep control of it yourself) but because of the specific Stalker ATO I can see a couple of corner cases for a Stalker opting to slot it in Tactics... but I still wouldn't recommend it in general. As for the OP's question: I almost always prefer Fighting over Leadership across characters. The specific possibility of slotting global pieces is often simply too important for most builds. I have a spectrum of attitudes for this. In the specific case of Stalkers, if a build has Maneuvers it is only to use as a LotG Global recharge mule and is likely not even taken until level 47 or 49. I might toggle it on during some high-level team content, but even then it is only going to provide some marginal benefit for players (and their henchmen/pets) that may be close to me.

In my experience: Dark is not as fast as quickly defeating enemies, but I wouldn't call it under-performing. I suppose a case can be made about inefficiencies inherent with damage-over-time and 'overkill', but I don't think that is close to being a primary issue with Dark. The most difficult aspect I had adjusting to my Dark/Temporal Blaster was this: My build is not really designed for "Blapping"... and so while I have PBAoE, in practice I don't find myself leading with them... which ultimately means that they aren't strictly a key component of my attack chains. This feels like under-performing compared to many of my PBAoE characters, but I have taken this character through a lot of content at a variety of difficulty settings without really noticing terribly inefficient times. In groups, I can take more risks but even so I find keeping the field of enemies in my vision makes me more effective on the teams. EDIT: I should add that my character has and uses the melee and PBAoE, but primarily on the enemies who get to me, or for when I decide to engage in close combat.

Don't forget that the Inspiration table ALSO counts against SG Base storage. I maintain one of these for the 'extra special' inspirations for difficult content. Here are some tricks I use for Inspirations: Rezzes stay in global email (to my account), and I turn off drops of them. I have stacks of 4x Essence of the Earths purchases in AH for my characters that play Hamidon Raids. Yes, they usually drop but I find managing the Insp tray to be annoying during Hamidon Raids. I maintain 4 tables for Enhancements, they are mostly full of crafted PVPs and Purples which have dropped. about 30% is dedicated to other pieces which I will use on future characters. I have 1 rack just for Catalysts, "Event Salvage", and Access Bypass. If a character has bought boosters and I have leftovers I drop them there. I don't pull these out of email character items if they come from opening packs. I actually do maintain far too much storage for white/yellow/orange. I craft a LOT of SG buffs, and every once in a while I decide to craft with a character to get extra (individual) salvage/recipe space. I make no effort to stockpile recipes, except in the occasional cases: Yellows, PVP, Purples get crafted (for the market or for me) Certain orange sets get crafted (otherwise I'd just turn off orange drops) Whites (of levels 25, 30, 45) get saved/put in email IF I am pursuing those crafting badges. Level 50 commons drop like rain, and selling them covers all other crafting fees.

I've only read the OP, and this is my response to it. I haven't really noticed a change, it's something that has been happening for years on HC. Some folks are just loners, rebels. Sometimes a TF is advertised as "speed", this presumes that at least one member of the team will be rushing to the end. Often one member volunteers to wait by a contact and never even enters the mission. Sometimes folks misinterpret this. Often, I encourage teams to split up once I know they can handle the content (ehem Synapse TF, Citadel TF).

I recommend cutting back Hasten from 3 slots to 2 slots of 50+4 IOs. I already disclosed that I don't slot Web Grenade. I doubt that Stealth needs 2 slots, let alone 3. Powers like Acid Mortar and Poison Trap deserve more slots IMO.

I'm not a lawyer. My response is: "Why even go there?" Why invite accusations of 'artistic theft' from other servers on top of any aspect of 'code theft' from an actual design studio? There is a wide spectrum of (potentially) implementable ideas from active Homecoming participants who have accepted the terms of service for Homecoming. I'm perfectly comfortable with the Homecoming teams doing their own development according to their own established process. re: "Wrist Blasters" I think that the Paralytic Poison animation already originates from the "wrist", but it is a launched "blob" and not a "blast".

Mmmm brownies.

In my experience while leveling: Masterminds offer the most amount of variety while leveling (because you can skip the primary attacks) and at end-game (when you have all the extra slots). After Masterminds, the VEAT have the interesting (or obnoxious, depending on attitude) feature of the forced level 24 respec that lets you choose/tune the character that you have been playing. The respec is IMO at the level where (if you have been playing through normal content) you will likely want to shift around slots and enhancements anyway, so I always see it (at least on the first build of a VEAT, I kinda hate it on builds 2 and 3 for the same character) as an extra reward for VEAT players just playing content. For a smooth play experience, I think Stalkers are very good, until you start getting kidnap/rescue hostage missions. For those, Hide disrupts the mission in ways that can be painful for lower-level characters. In Homecoming (and at the end of Live) the ability to add Prestige/P2W attacks (and boosts) at level 1 addressed one of the biggest problems the game had for players who just want to level up through content. Personally, I hated starting out with certain AT because so much time was burned at low levels waiting to attack enemies.

Trip Mine? That's pretty much a defining "play style" power! I don't want to yuck in someone else's yum, but I think three slots in Force Field Generator are better used as LotG Def/Global, LotG Defense and IO Defense. The third slot with LoTG is only getting something like 10 hit points for the MM, but an straight-up IO defense should be giving something like 3% more defense (that the henchmen also benefit from). I also invest no slots in Web Grenade. Endoplasm HOs should be cheap. A Bots/Traps MM is one of the builds (along with most other MMs) that I suggest you play through normal content to level up. My experience is: more than any other AT, you will likely have different power choices while leveling... and certainly different slotting. For example: The Triage Beacon is a power I skipped when leveling, and only added it to the build (as part of a respec) at a later level because that's when I could reliably face the largest spawns... which kept my henchmen more-or-less in place to benefit from it. On a similar note, I had Seeker Drones while leveling but they are not in my 50+ build. I loved the little guys, but they simply weren't doing enough to support the relatively low DPS henchmen (for most of the content I was playing at higher levels), My own build (after a level 50+ respec) has 6-slotted attacks: Photon Grenade (@30), Pulse Rifle Burst (@38), Mace Beam Volley (@41) for set bonuses, AoE %-Res debuffs, and KB->KD to support the 'bots and pull aggro. These powers aren't that useful (IMO) until you can slot them. MMs never really get good at endurance management, so my usual remarks about reconsidering slotting (after level 50) for Recovery when Accolades and set bonuses come in don't apply. The only other pieces of advice I have about the all-range Robots is Knockback-to-Knockdown is your friend Try to slot as much %-resistance as you can Control and soft-control really help improve DPS and survivability

What is all this talk about trying to avoid aggroing distant groups? For me, this is half of the fun of playing a Dark Blaster. Talking otherwise just makes the devs feel less bad about nerfing the range of Fast Snipes.

The Tailor should allow you to turn off the pom-poms, or switch to a less obvious theme (Dark?). I'm used to them, but tinted the pompoms to white.

My Bots/Traps Mastermind went with Warworks. Part of his backstory is that he pilfers tech from various groups.