tidge

There are quite a bit of Crey in the SE (city) corner of FF, where ICON is located. The eastern red zone (of the city, not hills) is basically Circle of Thorns to the north and Crey to the south. There are definitely plenty of Crey, but it may be that these Crey are too high a level for you if you get this mission at lvl 35, especially if you run into bosses. It's similar to getting 'Defeat N Circle of Thorns in Talos Island' when you are just level 20.

Council/5th Column maps have wall-mounted pipes to help you navigate the turns, just as newer (originally red-side snake) caves have torches to help you find your way. The pool maps are very frustrating for 'defeat alls' and they sit somewhere in my top 3 peeves along with: Oranbegan 'rescue x' maps: It's such a pain to find things (including all the mobs to defeat)... so many nooks and crannies! (Unai Kemen's) 'Defeat All' missions that take place on the many-tiered outdoor factory map. I made the mistake of keeping one of these missions at x8, and it was Clockwork. Not only are there wandering patrols, but the enemies purposely jump off the structure, run away, or fly away!

Add me to the chorus of players who almost always take Fly as a travel power. Sure it has a slow cap speed, but that just means I slot it with some other IO! (I tried Afterburner, but didn't find it improved things much). My next favorite travel power is Super Jumping. Those two travel powers let me see the most of the world. I like to have Hover to go through missions, primarily because the animation evokes certain cinematic characters calmly moving through buildings bringing destruction (erm, justice) to all the opponents. To be honest, Group Flight really offers the best speed & combat control of the pool, but good luck finding teammates who don't think you're griefing them personally when using it. Only thing I'll add here: If you are in Pocket D for a League mission and you don't want to be 'punished' with Group Flight, take 10 seconds to visit Null the Gull to turn it off instead of using extra time to complain about it in team chat. The Sorcery pool is a fine alternative flight option, but with one major drawback: Choosing Sorcery: Mystic Flight means you can't take Force of Will: Weaken Resolve! I definitely understand if you are dipping deeper into the Sorcery Pool.

Aiming in a different direction: Setting aside ATOs with special effects (e.g. Energy Font, assorted PBAoE), there are only a few 'control' procs that I look towards slotting. For me, typically those are the %Damage in the (PB)AoE. I've seen the case made for +%Absorb from Entomb, and I'm a BIG FAN of 'Contagious Confusion' in single-target Confuses... but in general the procs in the controls seem rather lackluster. For example, is there really an advantage (aside from set bonuses) to %Disorient on top of a Fear attack? Or a -ToHit on a Stun? Can someone make the case (corner case if necessary) for these sorts of procs? Also: If anyone wants to start a petition drive to get the Fear and Taunt powers their own Superior (preferred) or PVP custom sets, I'm on board! For Fear, I'd like a 'Contagious' proc variant (since single-target Fear attacks are generally meh); for Taunts a % -ToHit (or -Damage) would be a nice proc option.

Hmmm. This isn't how I play AoE controls (a larger set than just Holds, including Mass Confusion, Invoke Panic, etc.), at least not on solo-running characters that can't AoE nuke every +N/x8 mob of enemies. When running solo against a large number of spawns, the toons with AoE controls have a separate control/AoE attack chain that is commensurate with the faster-cycling single-target attacks. The above use is in addition to what was described as 'emergency' use, but one player's emergency is another player's default standard of play. In my experience the AoE controls (again, more than just Holds) are not just great for rescuing teammates who are in over their heads, but also very good for priming large spawns in 'defeat all missions' when teaming. Here I'm referring to AoE controls that can result in some amount of damage as well. /agreed. It loses its luster on large teams that can nuke every group of enemies, and at +0/x1 the spawns aren't really big enough to enjoy it, but I find it to be incredibly useful when soloing content with larger team sizes. It is especially fun to find those large groups that don't particularly resist their own damage type!

-Fly and Slow, but only AFTER a To Hit Check, to a SINGLE target, and those debuffs don't do anything to most of the opposing figures you would actually want to keep in place, especially at lower levels (for example: Warwolves, Demon Lords, or boss+). Web Grenade is pathetic. I grok that the idea is that the Mastermind ties up a single character for the pets to attack, but in practice this is not useful. I'd like to see how many slots level 50 Mastermind players assign to this a la 'flavor of the month'. By contrast, the MM secondary T2 is Caltrops. This is an AoE slow that also does Damage, and is much more useful at keeping enemies where you want them for the pet attacks, and is better at grabbing initial aggro for Tankerminds.

I can't recommend chosing an AMD video card. I picked up an RX 560 (as a replacement for a card that had lasted 6 years) but it never worked well. As near as I can tell it was the AMD software, but it was a year of misery until I finally dumped it.

I grok the desire for more options, but I wonder if there isn't a clear case to be made that certain secondary T1 are recognized as being bad enough to merit swapping with the T2? Setting aside the question of Tanker/Bruising, the T1 choice that always bothers me is Traps secondary for MMs: Web Grenade. Even slotted it isn't very useful, and it certainly doesn't serve as a mule.

With Mental Training perma-Mind Link isn't difficult. That being said, it is only when teaming (or in extreme circumstance) that I even worry about using it. Fortunata/Widow positional Defenses are simply good enough. I know the conventional wisdom about S/L resistance but with different types of damage I would much rather use the power choices (and slots) elsewhere. YMMV.

Widows don't need Defense (Weave) and the Toughness simply doesn't offer enough IMO. There are other Secondaries that can take Resist IOs.

I also forgo the Fighting pool on Widows. They don't need the slots for Resist or Defense, and slotting Tough for S/L resistance is simply a waste. To the OP: if you really want a click heal, go three powers into the Presence pool for Unrelenting. I find that to be a good fit for the high Defense ATs like the Widow/Fortunata.

Most of my lvl 50s sit around 500M, because as I'm leveling them up, I am also playing the market, spending inf as I go. It is usually one or more of the level 50s that helps the new alts get started, usually by providing IOs, or by simply providing inf to buy things from P2W ASAP. I've found that 200M inf is more than enough to get an alt started in the market: that is plenty for the portable workbench, recipes, salvage, converters, and AH vig costs to quickly make even more inf to fund the inventions you want along the way. 200M can even let you be a little sloppy (but not too much) with higher priced items in the AH like ATO or Winter-Os.

Add my voice to the chorus of "wha?". On an Invulnerability Tanker the only way this could be disappointing is if you take it ASAP and think of it as nothing more than a heal, or are in a headspace that thinks it should be 'perma' to keep your toon at max HP. I suppose depending on Enhancement sets level ranges, if you do a lot of exemplaring against particularly difficult content you can find the 'natural' Dull Pain underwhelming at low levels. Once the rest of the primary is slotted, you may find that you don't even NEED Dull Pain, except in extreme circumstances. I feel like it's something I barely used after lvl 40, and then only against particular enemies able to hit me and cut through the defenses.

In Mayhem missions, you can unleash a spree of terror and destruction against civilians, police, and named heroes. I suggest you do SSA1 "Who Will Die?", and that you don't leave the final mission of Arc 1 right away. Once the FP abuse you, you won't think twice about putting them down in lvl 40+ content. My recollection is that at higher levels you really do get to be quite dastardly.

I also have found that the Fighting pool is wasted for both Widow paths. The AT has enough powers to slot what you need (from IOs) and the extra SL resistance isn't worthwhile. Try instead to maximize positional Defenses. Slotting Mind Link: with Global Recharge, I only 3-slot this with Recharge (from the ToHit buff set) and 2 LotG (Global and Def/Recharge). Any other x/Recharge were not really helping. I don't have this perma except on a Night Widow because I also pass on Hasten. Self-heal: my builds use Unrelenting (from the Presence pool) as the self-heal. It also provides a large Damage boost. If you 6-slot this (Preventative Medicine) on a high Recharge build it should be up every 3 minutes or so. Widows don't really need more control, but I love the PBAoE Invoke Panic.

One thing I did with my 'bots MM (upon Respec) was to slot the two (?) highest rifle attacks as well as Epic attacks with Knockdown. The T1 and T3 bots also are slotted with Knockdown. At higher levels this has my toon firing off shots to keep baddies in place. Prior to the Respec, I was using the Medicine pool to keep bots healthy. After the Respec I solo enough x8 content that the Triage Beacon is generally enough to keep the bots working, especially with Incarnate powers. You can also take Grant Invisibility if you feel like doing a lot of individual casting on pets.

There was always something that felt 'off' to me about the comics (as an original subscriber); I am still weirdly non-plussed by the SSA, Incarnate, and introductory Arcs that are "lore heavy". I'm just not interested in the 'drama' of certain characters. City of Heroes was always supposed to be about 'us' (the players) and the constant stream of content wrapped up around the big NPCs always felt like I was being forced to listen to someone else's retelling of a 'cool' RPG session from several summers ago. City of Villains (and the Villain take on 'Who Will Die') are very cathartic, as you get to punk all of the various obnoxious Blue-side NPCs. I even found weird satisfaction in taking down Indigo and Crimson as revenge for their painfully long story arcs.

IIRC the powexeclocation command can also take arguments for distance and radial direction, in case you don't want to target on yourself. For example: powexec_location 0:10 is directly in front of you "0", and 10 units away from you). The direction is 0 - 359 IIRC with "90" being to your right.

Allow me to jump in (very early) to this post. *IF* you can find a group of like-minded players who will team with you, it is perfectly possible to run Flashback missions that return the feel of the slow grind through missions/TFs as long as you select the specific limitations of the flashback. It isn't going to return you to the pre-Enhancement Diversification days, but if you want to eliminate Temporary/Travel powers and enhancements (e.g. from IO sets) you absolutely can do this. Do I have a desire to send my Energy Melee/Invulnerability tanker back through the Legacy Positron TF in this manner just to relive what it is like to finish a story under painful circumstances when everyone else on the team had dropped the TF because of boredom? Not really. It was something of a triumph for that character at the time... but that time has passed.

Can we take a few minutes to describe the groups which scatter that cause the most aggravation? For me it is the Knives of Vengance, specifically in the second mission of Heather Townshend's arc in Dark Astoria. I usually run this arc at x8, and the cursed RNG always allow a few to escape being hit...and so they will run (or fly) to the literal ends of the map. This unnecessarily prevents completion of the defeat X, as long as one of them is hiding somewhere else.

You may want practice by running a Ninja Mastermind on Test...

There are three ways I know of. You must meet the minimum level requirements of the individual arcs. 1) You walk up to the contact and talk to them. 2) You use a Pillar to select the mission as a 'flashback' 3) You can get a tip that starts you... this happened with Pandora's Box redside for me.

I craft precious few Orange recipes, and after lvl 50 I turn them off because they generally aren't worth the use of Rare salvage. Most disappointing to me is when a lvl 50 gets an Orange recipe drop notice and when I go looking for the PvP recipe and I see it is a Touch of the Nictus 😛

Like I wrote, I'm not using it. That is a self-gimp for now, but last I read it was scheduled to be removed from General access.

I get a lot of use out of Presence on Defensive builds that don't have (but can use) a self-heal. I generally find the Medicine pool to be difficult to leverage with the most utility coming for Masterminds (and I suppose Crabberminds) when solo. I can understand why some players have a low opinion of Provoke, but if you want a Taunt, as a targetted AoE I find it more useful than single-target taunts from ATs. I personally find Pacify to be a niche power, but if the character is allergic to a multi-taunt it is actually a great alternate choice, as in 1-on-1 combat it buys time for another couple of actions. The single-target Intimidate is IMO the most disappointing, but that's only because it is sort of complimentary to T1 single-target immobilizes which I generally find to be weak. The PBAoE Invoke Panic is a different story, as it can slow down a large group of enemies and even dish damage via the Psi proc... 5-slotting the PBAoE with Glimpse of the Abyss gets some decent set bonuses. I've already talked up Unrelenting, so I'll just repeat that I think it is best single-slotted or 6-slotted with Preventative Medicine. With 6 slots on a heavy Recharge build it can be available in about 3 minutes give-or-take. I certainly recognize that Presence doesn't offer single-picks for LotG, nor does it have a path to resistance set mules which many build crave. For my builds that don't need pool powers to get those slots, and don't care about Hasten, I find that it doesn't deserve 'detraction'. TL;DR The Presence pool offers a pleasant mix of powers usually restricted to certain ATs and powersets (AoE Taunts, Control, Self-heal/Rez) that offer utility to certain builds.