tidge

This attribute is always at the top of my attribute monitoring, for the same reasoning. Below it will be three positional defenses, simply because those offer a quick look if I'm likely to see things go pear-shaped, and how quickly (even on characters that don't rely on positional defenses). Occasionally I will also monitor a particular travel speed, sometime ToHit bonus (if the character uses fast snipes). The number I WANT to be able to monitor is whatever the game thinks the LAST ATTACK ROLL was. Streakbreaker and I exist in an uneasy state of peace; I'd just like to keep my eye on that little bugger.

You forgot: "proselytize on the forums".

We need a poll of the best use of multiple accounts: a) skewing polls b) skewing farm rewards

Please, can we all just give our likes and lock the thread so I know who won?

Rune of Protection is in the Sorcery pool, what are you referring to?

For many (half?) of the ATs the effects of Rune of Protection were a selectable Primary/Secondary power. It isn't as if Rune of Protection is really nerfed, it just can't be (near-) perma. The AE Veteran Level Empyreans? Those are different than things like random drops for a group of 8... put 7 characters in an AFK farm run by an 8th, those 7 are all getting equal Empyrean merit rewards at the same time. If the player is really greedy (or abides the 3-box rule) they can respin the dedicated farmer as well. I've no doubt there are some folks who've do this and also have personal ideas about when to actually level characters (to get more slots for insps perhaps).

From memory: The second(?) VEAT mission offers the Shady/Shrouded badge, if that is somethig you want to collect ASAP for a (blueside) accolade. I wish I could remember the details, but on my first HC VEAT I was surprised how early I got the badge. If you aren't power-levelling (even by accident) I do recommend doing them in an level-appropriate way... as I recall, the final VEAT arc feels a little better that way... at least it did to me.

I don't think there is a precise equivalence between those two (pool) powers. Some comments from a player who was mostly ignorant/unaffected by the Rune of Protection nerf. It was my belief that the "nerf" was due to the disproportionate benefit the click power was providing as a Pool power (compared to other clicks available within Primary/Secondaries). At the risk of playing too much into whataboutism: Hasten is a different animal, as so few AT even have anything like a way to enhance global recharge, it it is a little difficult (for me, but I have blind spots) to imagine what my answer would be to a question like "which AT inherently (as a primary/secondary power choice) ought to be able to have more global recharge?" without already knowing which ATs currently have something like that. I am not ignorant on what Hasten can do, nor am I ignorant why it is such a common build choice. I have some awareness that the dev team is considering (for some possibly arbitrarily small values of "consideration") changes to other game effects that may be skewed because of beaucoup (Global) recharge (e.g. "%proc changes").

This made me flash back to trying to use Combat Jumping to get on top of the roofs of building in King's Row to complete that accursed "Defeat 10 Circle of Thorns" after out-leveling Galaxy City. I spent hours after reaching level 14 just using Super Jump.

The 'slow travel' is something I am nostalgic for, but I don't miss it. When the game and zones were all new, and so much was still unknown about the geometry and the lore, this was just one more (big) element of exploration. I can recapture this feel with restrictions on travel in Ouroboros missions. I still occasionally feel a little twinge when I encounter the 'new' architectures in certain zones (Steel Canyon, Founder Falls) where the Universities and Auction houses were put up. I completely miss Galaxy City as a starting zone. Quantums and Voids should really make a default comeback, at least on Council Radio Missions above level 30, even without Kheldian team members. Players may consider Council Radio missions to be a joke, but I'm not sure that everyone appreciates that these spawns were one of the early "hard mode" challenges.

I often find my characters not running toggles when leveling up... in fact, I am so inattentive to them that I'm only occasionally surprised to find that I am running "difficult" content and realizing lack of toggles may be the reason I am taking more damage/getting mezzed/whatever. I'm planning on respinning an unloved Shield Brute into something else... probably not a Stalker... as I've been using a BAMF-ing style of play on my last two characters (a Defender, a Dominator) so your ideas here have appeal to me. Weirdly (?) I find the BAMFing works best in PUGs. I anticipated that within a PUG, there would be more AoE (including Taunts) and less of a need to try to focus on single targets (no matter the type)... but it turns out that the PUGs have made it more likely that there is a lone enemy that was either blessed by RNGesus or simply wasn't targeted. A quick BAMF and the enemy is being dealt with. The tactic also works great in maps where enemies appear on multiple levels... for instance the Terra Volta Respec trials.

I know how to use the macros, it doesn't make it any less boring for me. I don't have any opinion or attitude beyond this.

I'm ignoring the advice offered (the OP should not, I am just disclosing I won't specifically discuss it)... Low-level characters have inherent bonuses that fade (with level), not even accounting for potential bonuses from something like Death From Below. IIRC, level 22 is when these are all gone. From approximately levels 16+ (can be earlier, can be later, depends on content being played) is when you start to run into enemies with more "tricks". The most noticeable IMO are the Circle of Thorns which can both debuff ToHit/Accuracy and mez (including knockdown). Until a character has enough slots (could be for direct enhancement, could be for some global set bonus... even a 1-piece global), it is necessary to make some focused decisions on how to slot which powers. Obviously: different ATs and different primary/secondary sets offer different kinds and levels of mitigation... this is less obvious on exemplared characters with lots of slots, but it is still an element (a fun one!) of leveling up.

I want to believe it is because of all those TFs I ran with my Inv/Em tanker that never turned on his toggles.

I've done this, but I grew bored of opening packs.

I've been playing with Combat Teleport, I quite like it. A macro to get in-the-face of a target is super helpful, and I also have a standard CNTRL+click bind to move to certain spots. The (limited) range takes some getting used to. I would not slot it for Recharge Reduction, but rather Endurance cost reduction (if not used as an IO mule), especially when leveling. I've never found myself wanting it available and NOT having it. One a recent character that wanted a bit more Recovery, I got better (Endurance/second) results by using the Miracle +Recovery piece (in Health) than by slotting a Performance Shifter Endurance piece in Stamina. I was being super sloppy with my maths, and I can't promise I'm still not being sloppy.

For my ally is the Auction House, and a powerful ally it is.

I can only write about my own feelings and motivated behavior: I'm frivolous with my own use of merit rewards, to the point (and beyond) of inefficiencies. Even so, I still only burn Empyrean Merits on Incarnate powers... that is, when I remember to craft Incarnate powers. I am sure that I have occasionally bought Super Inspirations to help with an iTrial. If I had to rank how I burn Reward Merits, it's pretty much: Converters (especially on new characters building up their own wallet) Boosters (level 50s, obviously? Precise scaling of enhancement bonuses for specific PVP zones isn't my game) ATO/Very Rare Recipes (I almost never use Winters) from the vendor Unslotters (because I'm too lazy to pull them out of mail!) The third one is incredibly rare, and it has literally been because I simply didn't feel like marketing for a single, specific piece NAO. I'd simply be lying if I said I hadn't done it. I've been out of the League of Ebil Marketers for a long time... yet I still market my drops (crafted, converted), essentially so each character can "pay it forward" to future builds. This is basically second nature for me, so like others I am surprised to read about bad attitudes towards the Auction House. While I try to be open-mided... I remain surprised that there would be any significant overlap of players who (a) despise the marketplace (b) farm (multi-box?) Empyrean Merits (c) participate on the forums and (d) remain ignorant of alternate means to "get the good stuff".

AND make Atlas Park a PVP zone!

Oh look: first the market was going to raise prices, now if we don't take action it is going to catastrophically drop prices. Economics, amiright? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For those not following the linked thread from Beta, I'm not sure it is really worth having the "economics" discussion there as the proposed change ("Sorry boyo, you won't be able to convert Empyrean Merits to Reward Merits") has people scrambling to every corner of a room; and that room has corners where no one expected corners to exist. I think @Yomo Kimyata wrote it best (paraphrasing): "We don't even know what is motivating DevThink." Of course, I have no insight into DevThink. The only coincidental (possible, planned) rollout that comes to mind is the name release policy... maybe the Devs have taken a deep look into the way players are using Homecoming and saw a few extreme methods of play that strike them as so peculiarly different than what was expected that they are drawing some lines. (*1) As I (and a few other market regulars) have written in the Beta thread: I don't think eliminating the conversion of Empyrean Rewards to Merit Rewards is that big of a deal. Without a doubt, there is some number of players who only buy Enhancements/Recipes from Merit Reward Vendors... so some (tiny?) fraction of those people might be using Empyrean Rewards (farmed or otherwise)... but this defies (market) logic. (*1) Random, unsubstantiated imagination of hypothetical player behavior motivating DevThink: Farming (XP, inf, drops) is clearly tolerated, and hasn't been a problem for the game or the market. It hadn't previously occurred to me (because of the effort involved to get a currency) that a multi-box player (even one adhering to limits on multi-boxing) might be also farming vet levels for Empyrean Merits. In hindsight: the static number of Empyrean Merit Rewards (for veteran levels) is a currently fungible asset that doesn't neatly scale with team size... so from that perspective I wouldn't at all be surprised if the fungibility was removed.

70K inf x 30 Enhancement Converters = 2.1 MInf. No flipping.

Thanks for the info on the Thunderstrike %procs! I so rarely hit the actual target that I haven't even been able to notice any %proc behavior on adjacents. As a practical matter: after my character brings the control (typically Seeds of Confusion and Roots, also Carrion Creepers), I'm simply not having enough enemies near one another to even notice the PBAoE aspect of Thunderstrike. Part of the issue for my play of this character is that the best control (Seeds of Confusion) and my best non-pet %debuff %damage (Static Discharge) are both cones, so popping into Melee (even after picking an optimal target) is rarely helping clear spawns. More often than I even connect (ehem, corpse-blasting and RNG), it is just opening me up for a melee counter-attack. As for runners... that's what Voltaic Sentinel is for!