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I think the Epic Fire Pool has Bonfire... not sure how it is in the Epic Pool, but as a Dominator primary you can always have one up and slot it with the Overwhelming Force KB-KD proc. For your purposes (as a Blaster) the Force Feedback +Recharge proc may be the only other slot worth investing in. The Presence Pool's Provoke isn't good at keeping mobs from running if they want to run. A better power from the presence pool is the PBAoE Invoke Panic, but you will have to be very Blapper to get the most out of it. The recharge timer is one the order of other AoE holds. I *like* the Presence pool on some AT but not on Blasters.

Or Infamy perhaps. Definitely not Information.

I understand the logic, but I disagree that it is ill-advised. Once I'm in combat, I am getting a significant damage (and toHit) boost every 20 seconds.... which is pretty much 'on demand'. If I'm somewhere in my attack chain when I want more, I have the other option (in my case, Aim) or Red inspirations. Like I said, I don't play on farm maps but I run x8 content at lvl 50... and to clear maps I want as much DPS and I am less concerned about specifically targeting bosses (especially at lower levels like in the Hollows) an moments of opportunity. I assume that the OP's mention of farming wasn't focused on boss-hunting in Grendel's Gulch. For the record, once I am engaged I am not waiting for Sniper Shots on Moonbeam either. About Rune of Protection: I think a better slotting for a 'panic button' power would simply be two slots of lvl 50(+5) recharge. I think the extra HP is only on the order of about 20, and the resistance from the set is on the order of 2%. I think looking to fit in a Preventative Medicine Absorb proc or an Unbreakable Guard +HP (7.5% vs. 1.5%) or a Reactive Defenses Scaling Damage Resistance would be better choices for the slots and offer more utility. I know this is supposed to be a 'budget' build, but those three combined should cost less on the AH than a single LotG Def/Global recharge. I offer apologies if I'm sounding too min-max; my own build has a few particularly non-max choices made for concept reasons!

Some folks are just farming responses...

For me, City of Heroes focuses on two main areas, and it excels in each by having many different areas of focus in each: The first area of excellence is the dedication to genre (comic books). This is manifest in many ways: The costume options, the power sets, the zones, the fights, the animations, the missions. The second are of excellence is the ability to play what you want, how you want. The different ATs allow so much variety by themselves, but even within a chosen AT with a specific primary/secondary there is a huge amount of possible variety because of pool powers, slotting choices. The Sidekick/Exemplar system is brilliant. The possibility of solo or team play is wonderful. The Flashback system was a godsend. One feature of the game that I never fully exercised was the extreme amount of customizing that can be done within the world: It is amazing to me that we have more than the ability to customize the appearance of our toons and powers, but that we can create custom bases and missions. Players often ask for a lot of things that would otherwise break a game; I think it was rather clever that we kept getting things that we could modify that actually didn't change the core of the game. I was a day 1 subscriber (no beta for me) through sunset. There are only a few major changes I actively dislike (nerfing Energy Melee because someone got punked when PVP was introduced) but I am extremely happy with where we are now. The Homecoming team has implemented many great quality of life improvements that have made the game even better.

I felt a great disturbance in the Badge forums, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Amen. I do find some hilarity in the proposed suggestions; they also remind me how much of the big picture folks are missing. I'd like to imagine a different world in which these absurd market fixes were used and the vocal minority was being equally off-the-wall about 'fixes' to implement in AE farms. "Debuff all AE Damage by 60% !", "Limit the number of mobs in AE missions!", "Charge merits/inf to run AE missions!".

I have a lvl 50 Dark/Time. I wouldn't use him as a farmer (although with enough investment, many different toons can play farm maps) but I can offer one piece of advice on the build that may be applicable, as I find it useful in regular content. I notice that these builds are quite skimpy on slots for Build Up (Time has Chronos as its build up, so mileage may vary). I've taken to 6-slotting powers like Build Up with Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control and have that be the power that is set on auto. The set bonuses synergize well with Blasters, and on builds with relatively high recharge you have a frequent and reliable %Build Up proc firing to boost damage further. The set isn't particularly expensive either, although it won't scale to the lowest content it will still work over a very large range of levels. On the Dark/Time build (again, with Chronos), I passed on taking Aim until lvl 47. Perhaps heretical, but I wanted to be spamming attacks rather than clicking the 'boost' buttons and so delaying the second on-demand boost until 45+ content seemed reasonable. If the intent is only to play high level content I suppose it doesn't really matter when you take it. On nemu's build above, I question the slotting of Rune of Protection. Even on high-recharge builds, the power is unlikely to be available more frequently than every 2.5 minutes. The choice of 3 Titanium Coatings and a non-global Aegis doesn't appear to me to be a good use of slots. I understand that this is supposed to be a 'budget' build, but if the player intends to farm, the slots are probably better used somewhere else where an eventual Shield Wall or Glad Armor could go for more benefit. Thanks for sharing the builds. I haven't chases Defense bonuses so I like to see the compromises others make.

75K is uncommon, but observable (over the past year). That's below my typical bidding price. I rarely have more than a few hundred bids outstanding, as my toons tend to be merit-rich. The total volume interests me less than the total for sale, as I am convinced that the market has a not-insignificant number of low bids on many items. There is no difference between a 1 inf bid placed on a forgotten character versus one that is not too far from the typical price placed by a player hoping for a 'good deal'. The number for sale was particularly low a week or so ago. Unlike many other AH items, Converters are needed in bulk so I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of low bids on them.

I just grabbed this post to comment on... but just wait until the Devouring Earth get this (or any of the proposed) updates!

I don't understand the request, because it basically sounds like either a request for a unique power pool for a specific AT (Why for VEATs? I understand that they can only choose Patron pools, but they have more power choices than most other ATs) or the ask is for another patron pool which would allow EVERYBODY to get as many as 5 (more) pet summons. Keep in mind the existing level requirements for the VEAT pets are levels 35 and 38, so there wouldn't be 5 available power picks for this hypothetical pool anyway. If it is the former, it is unnecessary. Crabberminds can already have 6 pets *before* Incarnate and Temp pets. In case you missed the recent Dev Discussion thread on Soldier VEATs, there was already complaining that Crabberminds lack true MM controls for the lil' buddies they already have. If it is the latter, somebody has pe... err... pet envy. Honestly, a better request is to add a new Mastermind primary instead of re-configuring the VEATs (or making everyone a Mastermind via an Epic pool).

I believe that Weaken Resolve's effectiveness was reduced as part of the general patch for Tanker updates, with the idea being that such an early Power Pool pick shouldn't be more powerful than the inherent bonus given to an entire AT.

I apologize for my lazy search-fu, but Sleep seems like a particularly biased choice as I'm not aware of which Power/Epic/Patron pools are available to all ATs that can slot Sleep IOs. This is a very different situation than Defense (or Travel or Attack power) IOs. AFAIK, Stun or Knockback would have been more applicable choices with less bias. I know that it is practically pro forma to be perma-Haten on the Presence Pool, but that pool allows slotting of Fear, Taunt, Healing, and End Mod IOs. Both Fear and Taunt are available to be slotted in 'first pick' powers, and both Fear and Taunt have fewer IO set choices than Sleep (and Defense, obv.) This is one of the (many) reasons I evangelize for the creation of (at least) a fifth (PVP or Purple) set for each of them. Personally I wouldn't want a 6th piece in either hypothetical set to be Global Recharge, but one of the set bonuses would presumably be a Global Recharge bonus.

I have toons with that use Hover, CJ, Grant Invisibility, Invisibility slotted with LoTG at level 49. I play a lot of content below level 40, so in that sense the powers are literally chosen to take advantage of the Global effect of the slotted IO. I have other toons that take and slot those powers at lower levels for flavor reasons, however the (travel) powers taken at low levels are likely to be slotted with a Universal Travel IO otherwise those pool powers taken above level 20 will almost always have a LoTG.

Did the non-Hasten perma-Dom rely on +Recharge in click powers/attacks? If so, how many? I'm genuinely curious. My (perma-Dom) experience already feels more frenetic than the busiest Brute...

Seconded. It may take more than 8 minutes with lower DPS toons (and fewer red insps), but it can be run lickety split. The longest part of that SSA1 story for me is the end-of-final-mission cut scene. I have some fun at my own expense when I start the first mission and realize that I have left the difficulty turned way up... not the easiest mission for certain ATs at lower levels, such as Masterminds.

I agree that crafting lvl 50 recipes is supposed to be an Inf sink, and I can live with it. I actually always craft my lvl 50 (uncommon, PVP, Purple) recipes and even craft the odd rares that accumulate (I have those turned off from dropping, but the game demands I still occasionally get them!). I find that vendoring the common recipe drops (@ lvl 50, they average around 100K each) more than covers the cost of crafting all the non-common drops, so it doesn't feel punitive to me.

Perhaps, but

I almost never build to be a 'proc monster' (*1) but at high enough levels I almost always have multiple sets with a proc, and I absolutely want that proc firing as much as possible... and Global Recharge does help with that. Otherwise this is not the primary reason for me to chase Global Recharge (with or without Hasten). For me, its one of two reasons: 1) Having the long-recharge powers available more often. Could be attacks, could be pet summons, could be heals. Those powers are usually key to my character concept, and I want them available ASAP! As was expressed by others, there are many builds (in my mind) don't need that much Global recharge to match the play with the concept. 2) As an extension of the above, on a few of my toons I want certain Buffs to auto-fire on a reliable schedule (often incorporating a proc, as was mentioned). Tuning the amount of Global Recharge has been key for those toons, with or without Hasten. (*1) I was going to make some observations about 'proc monster builds' but those are unnecessary.

On its face, it isn't unreasonable to ask for new Enhancement sets with improved procs, but I don't think Global Recharge is the place to look. As was pointed out, unless the name exactly the same as LotG, players will just add those new pieces to builds with NxLotG pieces (where N =< 5). I'd prefer that new IO sets be considered for types that currently don't have PVP or Purple versions. I don't think that adding Global Recharge pieces to hypothetically new sets would be my first choice. For example: Fear: I think Fear and Slow are the only Mez/Control set that don't have a fifth choice (either PVP or Purple). I want a Purple set with a sixth piece proc for "Contagious Fear" similar to the Coercive Persuasion set... In my experience one of the big advantages of the Contagious Confusion proc is that it keeps the single-target Confuses as a viable control when facing larger groups of enemies. Tight now, the single-target Fear attacks lose almost all of their viability against larger groups. Purple set bonuses for Fear would also be appreciated, not just for the improvement to stats, but to have a set that scales to all levels. Taunt: Also only has 2-pairs of sets (uncommon/rare in 2 level ranges). There is no reason to not have a fifth set with "Purple-ish" set bonuses. My personal preference would be that one of the multi-slot bonuses from such a set would include bonuses to Ranged/AoE defense, to synergize with the role of Taunting. I know the mechanics of Taunt are subtly different than other effects, so a "contagious taunt" is probably not viable, but a 6th piece with something like %Knockdown might be fun, keeping in mind that "6th piece procs" are often considered to be slotted in other powers (attacks) to improve certain aspects of those powers. I wouldn't want to open any cans of worms by considering a PvP Taunt set. As with Fear, it would be nice to have a set whose bonuses scale across all (level) content. Slow: The existing Slow IO sets offer variety in the bonuses that I don't see in the Fear set, so I am less personally invested in seeing a 5th set... but I am open to one. I will say that the market has pretty much identified a single piece (%Smashing Damage) as being much more desirable than all other Slow IO pieces, which is an indication that we probably deserve more choices. As with Fear and Taunt, I'd like a set that scales across all levels (as Slows are often very low tier powers). I'm not sure what kind of '6th piece proc' I'd want from such a set, but another choice of %Damage might be an option for those ATs that don't get a lot of raw damage. I don't have strong opinions on adding to the Buff/Debuff sets, except that the ability to cross-slot Accurate/Non-Accurate sets is appreciated.

Which (club) foot is the shoe on? If a player enjoys 'mindlessly killing lots of mooks' what does the amount of Inf gained through that activity have to do with the source of enjoyment? The amount of 'mindless killing' doesn't scale with accumulated Inf; if it scale with anything it is with crafted IO pieces. I appreciate the contribution of raw materials on the market from all players (especially farmers), but it is the Ebil MarketeersTM who are generating the largest number of specifically desired IO pieces. The ONLY measurable barrier to entry to becoming an Ebil MarketeerTM is the Auction House's Vig when posting items for sale.

Assemble the team and warm up the shredders. They are on to us.

Not a senator, but

I am completely unfamiliar with the code and the databases, but at some point in the last year there was talk that if characters started "Gold", that there were limited circumstances (Khallisti Wharf costume contests?) that they could not join. I never heard anything more than that, but from memory it had something to do with the fact that the character never officially started as a hero or a villain. The game keeps track of certain choices and behaviors (for example, the questions that come up at the end of SSA1 depend on alignment during earlier missions, and in NPC reactions in DA arcs) but I don't know if this is related.

I think the point of the Flambeaux dialogue is to make you that much more excited when she shows up in Tip missions... and 'interact' with her in those missions.