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I'm assuming 'for levelling' : Enhancements are not endgame build quality Not using AE If there is a 'trick' it will be to do as much AoE as soon as possible...typically by 25+, so you can face as many MOB as possible in missions. Masterminds and Damage Aura types should get there sooner, but practically Stalkers, Scrappers and Blasters will probably overtake them by the mid 30s. I want to recommend VEATs, but that level 24 Respec will slow you down!

Dark/Time Blaster. You can fit Arcane Bolt (Sorcery pool) early in the Build.

I distrust the water, and some traffic patterns look nightmarish. I'd look for someplace like King's Row or Brickstown. If I had to live somewhat close to water, I think maybe Cap Au Diable.

From my PoV there are basically two categories for seeking MOAR DPS: AV/GM fights How many hits does it take to defeat a single MOB (any class) As written above, AV/GM will need a certain amount of DPS (in the absence of certain debuffs, purple triangles, blah blah blah fishcakes) to defeat. If the DPS can't be increased to the point that the character requires one fewer attack to defeat the MOB in question, from my perspective I don't sweat marginal differences in DPS.

There are a handful of niches that look like folks are flipping to drive up prices; folks can sell into those niches.

I haven't tried that many Tanker secondaries on Homecoming... primarily because if I am playing Melee I feel like I can (eventually) 'level up' a Scrapper or Stalker (I don't like Fury as a mechanic, YMMV) to satisfy my solo urges and be plenty tough for team play... but... I like the faster-cycling melee sets, both for aesthetics and punch-voke. I was OK with Energy Melee prior to the most recent HC upgrade (although I preferred the original flavor) but the HC update is an improvement. I felt that War Mace was too slow for me, so I rerolled that character as a Scrapper instead... it didn't improve the flow but it did improve the DPS. War Mace really only became tolerable for me after I had significant Global Recharge. I like Street Justice on Scrappers and Stalkers, I assume I'd like it on Tankers. Super Strength never appealed to me, nor have any of the secondaries with Aurae. Dark has always looked like it would be fun to explore.

The advice so far has been scattershot, so I thought I'd contribute a little to the chaos, specific to: Masterminds, not at level 50 Who want to run missions Who aren't 'tricked out' In my experience: a mid-level MM (say 20s, 30s) who has the low-level powers slotted (especially henchmen) can build up their 'bank' by running blue-side missions like Aaron Thiery's in Atlas Park and mid-arc duck into Perez Park to street sweep Hellions. The drops from the Lts and Bosses are quite good, and the exemplared henchmen can handle the Hellion spawns (with effort). This is NOT as quick or painless or rewarding as simply leveraging the auction house but it can be a fun distraction, especially if you want to work on some defeat badges (including Doorbuster).

Your point stands (no evidence of bias) but it is more like a pseudorandom even distribution, no opportunity for a normal distribution AFAIK.

I definitely remember the "gold sellers" back in the day, and for whatever reason I always seemed to run into them in the CoV zones (St. Martial is where i was when I felt they were the most aggressive).

I actually like the ambiguity of the phraseology on that one, as players will soon be clamoring to have motorized roller blades as a travel power!

I found myself browsing the short descriptions of old television show episodes (think "TV Guide") and I was struck by the Warhol-esque simplicity of some of them, and I wasn't sure what to think if I dropped the names of some of our characters into the text. For example, all of these are from Night Man Season 2: @Yomo Kimyata accidentally resurrects a mummified Egyptian queen, with predictably disasterous results. @Bill Z Bubba fights a gang using high-tech, motorized Roller Blades. @Saskia has been kidnapped by Keyes, and @Raleigh fears House of Soul will be destroyed. (Actual user names match the episode description for this one!) Let's get the AE team together to see that mission with enemies on Roller Blades!

@Uun wrote nothing wrong, but there are exceptions to #2 (which is one reason why I try to distinguish between "global" effects and "%procs". For example; The Preventive Medicine %Absorb piece does NOT have to be in an active power to trigger, but it is still subject to the rules re: levels. For myself, I have that piece in some pool powers I rarely ever use (Sorcery) or from some secondary set power that only works on teammates (but the %Absorb will still trigger if I take enough damage). AFAIK, I only have a couple of characters that have that piece slotted in a power taken significantly below the minimum level for the set, and those characters don't take enough damage in low level content that I think I'd even notice if it was triggering (think Dull Pain on an Invulnerable Tanker).

/agree, with some juice. First the drippings: Level 50's can be boosted to 50+5 (max) Enhancement converters can turn any PVP piece into any other PVP piece The auction house buckets individual PVP pieces independent of level (allowing 'conversion' of a non-50 piece into a level 50 piece) Now the gravy: convert (or use AH) the non-level 50 pieces into lvl 50 pieces that you will use and boost them to 50+5 IIRC you can't boost the %proc pieces, but you can convert a 50+x piece into a proc! There is no advantage to trying to boost a straight %proc piece. convert (or use AH) the sub-50 pieces into the %proc you want... and attune them (or use AH to attune) so that your characters can slot them ASAP. You will lose some money on the vig if you use the AH only to convert, but no prayers to RNGesus are required. For example: If I got a level 50 Shield Wall Global, it is more valuable to me as a level 50+5 Defense (or Defense/Endurance) piece. Roll that level 25 Experienced Marksman PVP Fast Snipe piece into a global that you want attuned, e.g. Panacea +HP/+end.

That's interesting! On my /Bio Stalker, I am often running Defensive when teaming with PUGs but Offensive when solo (mileage varies). I think I first made the choice to do this when I didn't want to be embarrassed in a PUG by that character "biting off more than it can chew." If the PUG is "speeding" a TF, obviously a stalker stands a solid chance of getting to the objective first... but even when we are doing slow clears, I will quickly admit to drawing more/nearby spawns into the teams' kill-box.

I agree: I think it's set bonuses and one-piece globals that make more of difference than %damage procs. I'm OK with this. For my inf, folks are a little too casual about calling things like the Luck of the Gambler Def/+Recharge a "proc". I can accept pieces like Performance Shifter %+End as a "proc" but somehow I don't think even the most strident advocates of damage-dealing ATs want to see their characters want the Nerf bats to hit such pieces.

I don't really enjoy iTrials (this is personal, a LOT of it has to do with leftover feelings from Live) and I'm always PUG-ing them, so there is that, but the most successful ones in which I felt like my characters were making a significant difference have been: Characters at/near the Defense cap without Incarnate (Purple inspirations are fine!) Characters that leaned into aspects of the build (and chosen powers) other than MOAR damage Mileage varies, and the Purple Triangles are nobody's friend, but their are important aspects of powers and ATs that aren't as useful in 98%+ of game content, but can be revealed in both "endgame" content as well as lower-level (i.e. below 30) SFs/TFs run at +4. I'm not suggesting that everybody run a Synapse TF at +4 (because of reduced number of powers available), but running a Penny Tin TF or Katie Hannon TF at +4 can give PUG-ers an informed sense of what role they may be able to play on end-game content.

I always assumed it was because Statesman was nominally an Invulnerability Tanker that could move around with all of his toggles on. (ehem, Unyielding Stance)

My perception of folks gathering in this thread to discuss the topic...

It always felt to me that Energy Melee was toned down because of PvP, especially the Stun aspect. I couldn't tell you when I started to get this feeling, but I have vague memories of early issue 7... such as taking my Day 1 Inv/EM tank int Recluse's Victory and getting dog-piled, but surviving partially because I had done "silly" things like slotting attacks for the stun component (and also taking Stun)... There were so many tweaks relative to this combo (Unyielding, stunned enemies zipping off at hypersonic speeds) you will have to forgive my possibly faulty memory.

My Bots/Traps went "Mace", but I can see "Mu" as well. rather than post a build, I will try to describe what I did with powers and with enhancement choices. Powers: My goal was to leverage powers to provide the following two things to support the henchmen: "soft"-ish controls (Knockdown, Slows) in addition to Holds. I should note, I put the KB->KD Sudden Acceleration piece in the Battle Drones and Assault Bot. As much -Res as possible In addition to inherent -Res from powers, I have %-Res in AoE/Pseudo-pets: Caltrops, Acid Mortar (x2), Photon Grenade, and Mace Beam Volley. I didn't pick any personal attacks until level 30, and I use the attacks to draw aggro for Tankerminding. Enhancement Choices: I focused on set (and single piece) choices to provide: Global +MaxEnd, Global -EndCost All the favorite 1-off uniques, including the henchmen globals Global Recharge I don't think I have anything clever to write about Tanker-minding, but I will make some points: There is only so much (personal) Resistance and (personal) Defense and to be gained, so don't go crazy. The FFG will be the main source of Defense. Scaling Resistance from Reactive Defenses is your friend. Health (Hit Points) are important for Tanker-Minds, but a set boost that gives ~10 HP is not worth it IMO. Power Transfer's %Heal is probably a better use of a slot than a 3rd LotG piece. I treat Regeneration a little more seriously on my MMs than I do for most other ATs. (see below) I use the AoE attacks to draw/keep aggro. They are much more reliable and effective than Provoke from the Presence pool. Since my MM is trying to spam sources of -Res, the need for Endurance management is serious. I have reached into some peculiar sets to help: Annihilation (different Endurance bonuses at 2 and 5 pieces) Preventive Medicine (Endurance discount, Recharge, and %Absorb) Ghost Widow's Embrace (MaxEnd) Undermined Defenses (MaxEnd), plus extra debuffing of Defenses helps henchmen Reactive Defenses (Endurance discount, Recharge, Scaling Resistance) I should note that I use 3 slots in Health: 2xPanacea and 1 for Miracle. In a build with Triage Beacon, Regeneration is something that is a bit of a balancing act. Obviously the Beacon is stationary, but I find the Robots performance to be best when they stay in one place... and if I am facing a hard target I will probably not be moving as much anyway.

On my characters: Flight + Afterburner + Jump Pack > Flying speed cap. Since both Afterburner and Jump Pack had limited durations, I will juggle them when flying long distances... otherwise if the distance is not too far...

Weaken Resolve got hit with the Nerf bat a while back, but as written by @Mezmera I still find it useful in limited circumstances. Mystic Flight is one of those powers that is almost too good in some (unfortunate) circumstances. For example: It is common that in the Mortimer Kal TF that the team drags a whole lotta CoT to that back room that eventually become untargetable, blocking exit from the room. I've had to use the Teleportation aspect of the power to get out of the room! Another note about travel powers that involve flying: I've been adding the P2W power Jump Pack to add a +Fly boost. It's a stronger boost than Afterburner for my characters with Fly!

Mileage varies of course. But if a Robotics MM wants to lean into %procs... My Robots MM has the AoE Photon Grenade slotted for -Res (5 pieces of Annihilation for the global Endurance Discount and +MaxEnd) and Knockdown (Overwhelming Force). This is an example of the set bonuses being enough to make me not care so much about %procs, but that power is a particularly good one (better than Pulse Rifle Blast IMO) for %damage (and other effects) for offense. IIRC with no slotted recharge in Photon Grenade, the -Res piece will have a ~40% chance to proc, the 3.5 PPM %damage will have something like 50% chance to proc, and (Absolute Amazement) %-ToHit should be above 60% chance to proc... and these are for each target in the AoE! Either choice (all %procs in Photon Grenade or minimal %procs in it) feels like a better choice for trying for a MM to inflict damage than Pulse Rifle + Tactics (w/ Build Up). One other advantage I see to Photon Grenade over a ST attack from the rifle is that you should draw more aggro to the MM than from just using ST attacks.

This is all true, but here is my thinking about Masterminds and the Gaussian's %BuildUp.... it's not worth it for most Masterminds. Masterminds have low damage scales, so the extra Build Up, while not meaningless is boosting already weak tea. Masterminds also have an Endurance tax, so trying to do enough attacks to benefit from the extra Build Up (by itself) is costing more end for the MM, as opposed to slotting the power to keep it up and/or improving the benefit to allies/henchmen/pets. Also if the MM is making attacks (to benefit from %Build Up), it likely means that the MM isn't doing other things to improve the damage output (or survivability) of the henchmen. On my MM builds, I find that I never have more than two slots for Tactics, even on the builds that have a LOT of attacks to support the henchmen (with Knockdown, -Res, etc.). I simply use one or two Cytoskeletons in my MM builds. For my Crabbermind, I absolutely have the Gaussian's %Build Up. IIRC The damage scale for VEATS is 1.0, whereas for MMs it is still 0.55.