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Panacea isn't a favorite Health set of mine to multi-slot (Preventive Medicine is my go-to for multi-slot Health sets) but it is my second choice on high HP ATs and on melee characters when they have a click power. I find the Panacea set bonuses to improve QoL over small resistance boosts. Panacea can of course be boosted beyond level 50 too.

IIRC, there is an emote stance that can be done first that removes the shield but doesn't detoggle the shield powers... after using that emote, you can perform the other emotes. I can't recall which stance it is, sorry.

My feels are this: there has been an effort (Live and HC) to "do something different" with power sets, such as: Combos Unique mechanics in the set The buff to the Fighting pool attacks are of a piece with the first; Rage puts Super Strength in the second category. Personally? I like the buffs that the Fighting Pool can get, but I think this (and the interaction with Rage) is what got us here. I don't see the devs making further changes to the Fighting pool, my suspicion is that if *any* change was to come I'd guess they'd rework damage boosts (see recent changes to Tankers) in some complicated way to not help pool attacks (as much).

I think there is a case to be made that the team behind Pyro Control was trying to be a little too clever with the set, particularly as manifested in Brilliant Barrage... but there are potentially bigger issues from my PoV: The -25% ToHit (self) on Catherine Wheel... not sure why? Glittering Column looks like someone thought the set needed a power that was a slightly better version of Energy Font.

Taunt doesn't work differently for the ATs that have it, but it does have differences from Confront and Provoke. Tankers typically increase the amount of enemies they have "Taunted" by relying on their attacks (via "Punchvoke") and any enemy-affecting auras they may have. The strategy you describe is "working as intended"... as it isn't doing that much to gain their attention. You can of course shift targets and spam Taunt to try to increase the number of enemies affected.

The issue with a shapeshifting cooldown (as I see it): The shapeshifting is the defining play feature of the Kheldians, so any flat restrictions on this should be a non-starter. Eliminating the changeling exploit will almost certainly have to be an 'under-the-hood' change involving power-queuing.

Blue Side: Laura Lockhart immediately comes to mind.

It used to bother me that the MM ATO had to go into the henchmen, and I've lived with this for so long that my next statement may be without much perspective: There aren't really that many better options for henchmen than the MM ATO, certainly not when compared to which sets can be slotted into the MM attacks. I'd still want Accuracy, Damage and Endurance Reduction in henchmen., and the bonus structure of the MM ATO sets is pretty good: +40% global recharge for three 2-slots, and one 4-slot investment. IMO the "slot crunch" comes from the global aura pieces like Recharge Intensive Pet and Pet Damage sets, not really from the MM ATO pieces.

May I add to this? I find it really doesn't help discussions of "balance" in City of Heroes because no one agrees on what content makes sense to try to look for "balance". I appreciate that players can do testing on some specific things, but it isn't as if the Pylon testers (for example) are using level 24 characters to do their testing.

In a vacuum, I agree that the ATO2 proc duration seems way too short to be meaningful... yet considering the inherent Defiance, and that Blasters typically get sustains (IIRC, with no detoggle if mezzed) that other ATs would kill for, not to mention the favorable changes to the primary T9s, I wouldn't make any improvements to Blaster ATOs. IMO ATO2 only seems like a poor performer because of everything else that Blaster's have got going for themselves.

On Robotics, I pretty much only Frankenslot the Henchmen. 1) Henchmen need most of the global pieces (FF might mitigate the need for one of them) 2) The MM ATO work well in three sets of 2 and one set of 4 3) MMs benefit more from set bonuses than having attacks with some extra %damage (MMs must slot attacks for Endurance Reduction, otherwise they burn out) Not every agrees with my takes of course. IMO The only procs (see above for my comment on globals) worth slotting in the robotic henchmen are the Soulbound Allegiance %BuildUp and Explosive Strike %smashing in the T1. Some folks prefer the %Buildup in the T3, but I find having it in the T1 better distributes the damage done by the henchmen....intellectually I know the T1 need more ToHit than the T3 because of level shifts. The T2 can take a LotG Def/+Recharge but you shouldn't need to put that on a T2 with FF... you probably will want pieces containing Endurance Reduction in the T2 and T3. Flight is a good pool for Robots. Don't waste time with Presence or Medicine. I usually take Fighting, Concealment, and Mace because I need powers to mule global pieces.

My responses will be 1-AT-at-a-time, because I think it is less important to compare inherents and ATO across ATs, because otherwise everything trends towards "waah, look what ___ gets!" Having played a large number of VEATs... the inherent is pretty bad considering that the Fitness pool is inherent to every AT, and that every AT can get +MaxEnd and +MaxHP accolades. Once 'diminishing returns' for Regeneration and Recovery start kicking in from set bonuses, it is typically the case that Conditioning is doing almost nothing for my builds. My immediate guess (because, no numbers were crunched) for VEATs is that Conditioning should give +MaxEnd instead of +Recovery, simply to avoid "hitting the Recovery wall" with the side effect of improving actual recovery without having to explicitly slot for recovery (in something like Stamina). Regeneration bonuses are pretty easy to come by, so it wouldn't hurt my feels if the Regeneration part of Conditioning was changed to something else like extra Scaling Damage Resistance, +MaxHP, whatever.

Cupid's Crush has IMO an interesting place (in market, in game). Because of how they were introduced, there ought to be approximately 1 bajillion of them in player hands. Also as noted, the OF set can now be rolled into it. The laughing reaction is the best choice to describe how I feel when I see the market doing something that players should know better. As for utility: I used to use Overwhelming Force as an easy drop-in for "Universal Damage" for characters as they level up... similar to how I'd use (catalyzed) PVP sets or Winter sets so that characters had enhancements that scaled up and provided some set bonuses even at low levels. Cupid's Crush IMO offers more useful set bonuses at low/mid levels so it often gets used while leveling, but I rarely use it in final builds... typically there is a Very Rare, PVP, or (Superior) Winter/ATO set I prefer. There are a small number of powers that I think are a good fit for the CC set, but only if the build can slot all 6 pieces in the power. I know there are some folks who lurv the %proc, but it isn't really my cuppa.

I can't speak to the current iteration of Regeneration, but I do have some thoughts on skippable powers. I definitely agree that HC-era primary/secondary sets have fewer "obvious skippable" powers than on Live... I like when this is because each power is actively good, I'm less impressed when some powers have gaps that must be filled by other powers. My thoughts on 'skippable' will springboard from this post... On melee characters: I often delay (and sometimes skip) Armor powers in order to be able to pick ASAP level 14 pool powers that require two previous picks from the same pool. This is almost always a flavor choice, and it can run up against my personal desire to have something like an attack chain for very low-level content (without relying on S.T.A.R.T. attacks). I generally don't do this with Scrappers, but I have a couple of thematic Scrappers that rely on power pools. FWIW, I dislike taking Epic/Patron attacks to round out attack chains because of the level requirements. For my characters that pretty much only play at level 50 this doesn't bother me, but for lower-level play I find losing key attacks to be a large annoyance. I agree with the sentiment expressed by @Troo that while leveling, certain power sets have almost no skippable powers. As noted by many others in this thread, set bonuses on a full-kit build can often do what certain power picks otherwise provide. Obviously for playing only with a level 50 build a delayed power pick really won't matter.

Part of my assessment is based on my Controllers moving to engage with enemies in front of me, so as a practical consideration Singularity simply wasn't ending up doing that much KB/Repel control for me. As always, test with your play style.

It does work, but in my experience it does relatively very little. YMMV.

One reaction, one question. The reaction is this: Whenever I see "radiation" mentioned as a key to defeating Giant Monsters, I reflexively roll my eyes because that feels like an "early days of Live" ingredient for a GM-fighting recipe that we haven't needed to follow for decades. even so: Rad Armor is Awesome! This isn't me saying Radiation whatever can't be leveraged against GMs... just that there probably are better debuffs and utility than classic Radiation sets. My question: Are any Brutes reliably sololing (named) Giant Monsters these days without Incarnate Lores? I used to occasionally see solo Brutes going toe-to-toe with some (lower-level) zone GMs and defeat them... and I certainly see plenty of Brutes/Tanks who can stand up to Giant Monsters indefinitely... but I stopped bothering with solo melee against GMs even before the several rounds of Monster updates (increased HP, Resistances, attacks, and now ToHit) because I found it to be tedious (for me, tedium sets in at ~4 minutes). These days I rarely see anyone fighting GMs without Lores, even on teams.

I have a couple of Blasters that use Infiltration as their only travel power. Blasters are the only AT where a couple of primary/secondary combos aligned such that no other travel power worked as well for the build and concept... because I was going to leverage the Concealment pool anyway and I was going to run out of pool choices.

I can't know of any instances of silent raging(*1) from teammates about KB, but the only time I remember anyone on a team publicly griping about a KB power was when I was on my Storm/Storm Defender... for much of the session I'd been using KB (mostly with some skill, I want to say I was doing as much grouping of enemies with Gale as anyone else on the team was doing with whatever other powers)... but the gripe came after a near-total wipe and after I had turned on Hurricane to establish an area of control to allow for rezzes. Sure enough, the first teammate who rezzed wanted me to immediately turn off Hurricane... which was IMO a real 'read the room' moment. (*1) Personally? I don't rage against the scatter caused by something like Meteor, but I roll my eyes. Other players using their KB powers doesn't hurt me.

You asked for it in the OP... did I misunderstand the request?

I'm not going to rehash arguments about how I don't see solo pylon or trapdoor runs as offering a large amount of insight about utility of certain build choices for most of the game. When I'm playing the game, I'm stopping to chat, do some inventory management, whatever... and AFAIK none of the Ston tests include anything like social interaction. There is more to Quality of Life than trying to have fastest solo times... literally no one know how a solo times compares unless someone comes to brag or goes looking to complain about performance.. which is certainly valid, but not for sub-60 second times IMO. What am I doing with an extra slot? Could be almost anything! Tanks and Brutes can benefit a lot from a second %Heal. Low-DPS characters can use an Explosive Strike instead of %+Recharge. Most characters can benefit from Slow Resists. For level 50 characters, that is pretty much my attitude with respect to DPS. When you can add non-changeling Kheldians, VEATS and Controllers to that list, let me know... otherwise complaining about mere percentages in different times and trying to make grand pronouncements about how any of those ATs are under-/over-performing is IMO silly.

I pretty much never take Triage Beacon. There are a small number of circumstances when I think it can be useful, but the calculus comes down to the cost (as a power pick, plus slots, plus not picking a different power) outweighs the benefit (faction of 'viable content' is small, teammates rarely need what it brings). As noted in the thread: it really needs a lot of slots to be useful, and even then you've got a stationary item. I *like* the health sets, but it takes a LOT of self-sacrifice to put the Panacea %proc in a power other than Health (or another auto-power, or in a power I will always be able to cast on demand). The two main circumstances when I think Triage Beacon shines are: Low-level content where players haven't really become self-sufficient or otherwise tend to get in over their heads. Higher-level content where there will be relatively long, stationary fights (so... maybe +N with several MM Henchmen/pets) I think "low-level" is key, because better players will be leveraging inspirations when they get in over their heads, even if they have sub-optimal slotting of powers (and lack set bonuses). Extra rows of inspirations go a long way in low-level content.

I have no desire for such transfers to be trivial, but given how "easy" Homecoming is otherwise (compared to Live) I suspect that this is simply one area of the game where the Dev team isn't interested in making the game any easier. Disclosure: I'm mentally biased against the Incarnate system from the days of Live. I realize that there are players who don't feel like their characters have reached full potential without Incarnates, but I can't see it as anything(*1) but a tacked-on system to the core game. This isn't me writing that the Incarnate content is inferior/boring/pointless... the most negative feels I have about 50+ is that (from my PoV) it reinforces attitudes that the game requires level 50 characters and builds to be played. (*1) There was a short time on Live when I had a more positive opinion of the Incarnate system, focused entirely on: "Wow, I can fix this build problem with the Alpha slot!", or "Wow, now I can have powers that other ATs have!" I haven't come to see these previous reactions of mine as invalid, but I do think they were simplistic.

You aren't even trying without the S.T.A.R.T. temp powers of Plasmatic Taser and Hand Grenade.