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The original (from Live) numpad binds are (in my judgement) much less necessary on Homecoming because of a variety of tweaks that have been implemented(*1). I think it was always the case that final performance (with/without) the numpad binds varied between primary and secondaries. It is possible to exhibit a LOT of control on henchmen with simple macros in the power tray(s), and/or the pet window. There can be certain powers (new HC Detonator in /Traps) than I see benefiting from rapid fingering of the numpad... but I don't use Detonator, and frankly my attention is usually focused on the MM and the MM's target... so while I do more than just follow/goto + Bodygaurd mode... that describes 99% of the henchmen's lives. (*1) The dominant HC change IMO is that the AH market and fungibility of drops makes it easier to improve henchmen MM/performance such that diminish the gains from more precise control of henchmen

I can't speak to this precise strategy, but I've only found a few cases where a Force Feedback %+Recharge was the 'best choice' for a slot... Masterminds typically don't fall into that limited category for me. MM spend more Blue on their powers, %+Recharge is somewhat unpredictable so +Global Recharge is more 'budget steady' MM attacks are relatively low damage anyway, better to support the henchmen/debuff enemies to maximize total damage Aside from this... the MM primary attacks are typically designed to help the henchmen. If this build is something like a one/no-henchmen build... those are a corner case that require a lot more consideration.

If you keep the 'pets' window open, and expand to see power icons, you can see which henchmen have which buffs applied to them.

The council updates are a good suspicion, but the last time I did the Kheldian arcs predated the Council changes AFAIK and I definitely recall seeing some absurdly high (for my difficulty settings) named enemies in that level range (30,35)... especially after they transformed. That arc was one of the very few solo times on HC where I had to use the classic strategy of "pick up specific inspirations on the way back from the hospital" to finish the fight.

This is tricky, and the final changes are subject to some more testing/consideration. For 80% of all players who try MMs... even level (multiple) T1 will probably be a big deal... but this will come with some cost (right now, their base ToHit is targeted to be reduced, even for Incarnate content where the henchmen are not subjected to a level shift).

Nothing improves character performance as much as +Recharge (especially Global Recharge), and since the LotG set includes a single piece that grants +7.5% Global Recharge, and be used 5 times) that is a common set choice. When I want the global recharge bonus, I will typically 2-slot (with Defense) or 3-slot (with Defense/---). I have a small number of characters where I have slotted the +Recharge and boosted 50+5 pieces, but that is only because the base Defense value of a power is really high so the extra defense is slightly noticeable. Personally: I am not a huge fan of the set bonuses from either LotG or Red Fortune (never slot it), 3-pieces of Shield Wall is superior to LotG (modulo Global Recharge), and the PVP pieces can be boosted while preserving the set bonuses. For click powers, I often consider 6xReactive Defenses. Extra recharge (from pieces) isn't usually wasted, and there are several set bonuses I like in it, including the scaling resistance piece. I think it is fair to say: for many Defensive powers, it isn't always a bad choice to minimize slotting and use IOs or HOs in them, giving up set bonuses completely, as long as those slots are being used to provide something else.

In addition to the "what is the henchmen doing?", the maximum range between a MM and a henchmen (for dropping inspirations on them) is not particularly great... this is also true of team inspirations. Single inspirations still work, it just that there are several things working against them. HC has tweaked the in-combat henchmen AI, so it is possible that the henchmen are now simply (on average) farther away from the MM than in previous eras. These are the sorts of things *I* (points to self) worry about when considering MM+henchmen performance... the hundreds of little things that other ATs never even have to think about to boost their performance. If other ATs had to worry about "scaling base ToHit rates" but still didn't have to worry about the things MMs deal with, there would be riots.

Pets/henchmen have a LOT of peculiar effects. I'm sure this is still the case, but it has been a few years: the equivalent "T1/T2" spiders for a Crabbermind all expire at the same time of the oldest one... even if new ones have been summoned to fill gaps in the crew. This isn't how MM henchmen work, how Kheldian pets work, or how Controller pets work.... and those don't all work the same either. I only mention this because "things be complicated".

@Maelwys explained the work-around. There is another inherent issue closely related to this: you cannot drop an inspiration on a henchmen that is in the middle of an unresolved animation... and the client-server ping can make it practically impossible to buff a henchmen this way (because the MM also has to be 'idling'). It is easiest seen on my T3 Assault Bot (when it is in combat), but I've seen this with Lore pets and other pet classes too. Team inspirations don't do an animation check, so this is one of those things I think could get fixed, but 'spaghetti code' is certainly going to stop it. The server-client resolution can result in henchmen being close enough to a MM to benefit from ____, but the server hasn't acknowledged this yet. This can also effect how bodyguard mode works! These types of issues are what annoy me most, and I am very tolerant of the sorts of issues other players commonly mention. I don't really expect that these things can be fixed (at some level, they are like race conditions) but since they cannot be fixed, I wish that the dev team was more sympathetic when it comes to abstractly applying nerfs, or limiting buffs. How hard I wish this is directly proportional to how much I wish that other players would recognize that some MM issues may be effectively too difficult to address.

Dual Pistols is the one set I've used (more than once) where both the dog and I find the noise (firecrackers) to be highly annoying. I recognize that most sets become audibly repetitive, but DP is the one that triggers me (sic).

I thought the Dual Pistol sound effects were supposed to be the cue to prepare another attack?

Wisdom: As @srmalloy noted, the university tutorial givens a 'free' recipe+ (I wait for the 25 one). the level 25/30 IO crafting badges offer a useful (to some) badge+bonus, and these levels happen to be when the IOs break-even/surpass non IOs. The sets are worth slotting but if you don't have the budget for attuned set pieces, 'common IOs' are usually very cheap on the AH, plus they drop. Useful attuned set pieces can also be somewhat inexpensive on the AH. If you play a level 50 for any amount of time, you should be accumulating lots of stuff to start equipping characters.

This sounds like a "driver, not car" issue. Five different S.T.A.R.T. enhancements can be slotted at level 1, so I am not even sure what the complaint is.

I've certainly played Defenders that are very good solo... and for Defenders I want to play solo I typically pick primary/secondary combinations (and powers from those sets *1) that will allow me to play solo. I'm confused why someone would pick a power set that focuses on allies, and then expect it to work on themselves. It isn't as if there is only one primary to pick (for non-Kheldians!). (*1) One thing I like about Defenders... if I pick a primary that is mostly team-focused, I can delay (or skip) certain powers to concentrate on the secondary. I've done similar things with Corruptors, focusing more on offense early and fitting in the team-friendly powers later. If I want a "blasty" character with self-protections and buffs... there are Sentinels.

IIRC Grant Invisibility works on the FFG... I long ago respec-ed out of GI, but I recall casting it on pretty much everything of mine I could target.

Right or wrong, I classify a lot of this sort of comment content as having its nativity in (a) limited game experience and (b) "I just thought of this and couldn't do it""/"Lemme share my most recent fleeting peeve". I can't think of a single recent "relook" thread where the OP led me to believe that there was ever a "first look".

As someone who is generally ok with the current implementation of "clumsy Mastermind mechanics"... I find the necessary workarounds to upgrade a henchmen ASAP (or one that it is off the ground) to be the one item on many folks' MM wish lists that I can support getting addressed/changed/fixed. I can tolerate a LOT of the remaining nonsense, and I can grudgingly accept that their is no chance to get an HC DeV to admit that the first (level 6) upgrade doesn't need to be a standalone power (because level 1-5 content is so well balanced that baking that upgrade into a single hench would ruin the game /s), but it is at times a cruel form of mental torture to work out why the upgrades aren't happening/triggering. On a different topic: Franken-slotting. On my favorite MM, I definitely franken-slot (henchmen, obviously... but also some secondaries) but not much else. I've always leveraged set bonuses for the MM attacks (I won't repeat my litany against MM's trying to achieve HUGE DPS from %damage) so my test may have been showing more set bonuses in the henchmen than other players might expect. The 40% still seems arbitrarily small given that the henchmen are destructable extensions of the MM character.... other ATs don't start losing set bonuses because of distance/damage taken. As noted by @Maelwys, crossing the mag 1 KB threshold for more levels seems to be in line with the reason for the MM changes (MOAR +++ CONTENT MKAY)... and as @WumpusRat comments: every little bit (of Defense, of MaxEnd, etc.) is a sort of "win" for the henchmen. On that build I mentioned, I have some Endurance reducing pieces slotted that I wouldn't mind changing to anything else... I haven't tested swapping them out... but among the set bonuses I chase are ones that improve the blue bar performance of the MM... so naturally I'd like to see MOAR of that trickle down to the henchmen.

The real villain in Knockback is the silent 'k', surely something can be done about it! Also, all ATs should be changed to end in the letter 'r': so Bruters, Masterminders, Warshadiers, Widowers, and Sentinelpeppers.

W.r.t. announcing "I see ___ in the wild". I get why folks might do it (excitement! rewards?) but I no longer bother unless I explicitly feel like fighting the Giant Monster and I feel like (or require) teaming (so the announcement includes a "want to team?" component. The GMs are on a regular cycle, and as long as the extras are cleaned up (for those that require it) the GMs will respawn. I used to be a LOT more "inviting" about Giant Monster fights... but between players not willing to stick around to cleanup (seriously, the Grim Vale fight couldn't make it more obvious that it *isn't* over) and players asking for 5+ minutes to "get there" and then showing up with a character that can't meaningfully help I now just shrug and take out the monster myself (on a GM hunter) or let it be. It's no big deal if my new PUGforce can't defeat the GM, but it is a little weird to recruit a team and then have to drop to get a different character because the PUG ends up as no match for the GM. WARNING: what comes next is pure AITA fodder! Spoilers: I'm ok with "yes" being the answer. The "last straws" for me was trivial: My solo GM-hunting character has a pretty well-established pace for all the GMs, and I'm comfortable "dialing back" so that whatever GM takes about 5 minutes... which is about as long as I'll wait for someone to zone in... I realize we all get caught in certain missions, but 5 minutes doesn't seem too short for me to get to wherever. Anyway, I had a couple of consecutive GM fights where I'd announced, dragged out the fight for as long as possible (~8 minutes) for someone who said they were coming, and when that character and I finished off the GM, someone else zoned in and started publicly berating us for "not waiting". I guess teh answer to AITA was "yes"? Another AITA GM circumstance... I'm in a mission and see someone announce that they want to stop the Grim Vale fight. I make a note to fly by after I finish themission I just started... after finishing I decide to check out the Grim Vale (>10 minutes later, I keep timestamps active on my characters, I didn't see the "normal activity resumed" so I assumed the vale needed cleanup) and the fight is still going, with no one engaging the monsters. I ask what is happening and I'm told "we are waiting for ____" so I announce "I'm going to soften them up, can they get here in 5 minutes?" and I'm called every nasty name in the book for being selfish about XP (of all things). Big secret: the XP for clearing up a couple of straggler bosses is going to be greater than the XP from the two monsters that have been pummeling each other. After I start softening, the two "waiters" drop their Lores and call me the bad guy. Like I noted: I'm pretty good at pacing GM defeats, especially without someone else's Lores in play. The vale fight is probably one of the least important fights to use Lores, so I get the feeling that this was just two incompatible approaches to GMs. I don't think the other player was an a-hole, but I think they have a very narrow view of how a 2-hour cycle GM fight can go.

For me it is four racks of enhancements, one for things like catalysts. I make every character buy its own boosters! My enhancement racks ended up being mostly full... for a while I was doing a good job pulling/replenishing(*1) the typical sorts of enhancements I use, but... ...for me the real space hog are the attuned PVP pieces. I use them while leveling, but at 50 if they aren't swapped for purples (or whatever) they are swapped for level 50s that can be boosted. Even converting them into pieces that are on as attuned, I have too many of those things. On the vary rare occasion that I have an unslotted 50+5 purple or pvp... if it looks like it won't get used I just reroll into something that will be used.... typically such PVPs become a Shield Wall or Gladiator's Armor, Purples can become almost any Damage or Damage/Endurance piece. I follow a similar practice for superior Winters and ATOs. (*1)Part of my own replensihment is that the level 50 respec grabs certain pricey (on the secondary market) pieces that are not attuned and swapping them to be attuned. LotG, some globals, etc. which makes the (old, previously) attuned pieces for the next character.

I find the Snipe sets to be (on balance) poor enough (because of level ranges) that when I am actually slotting a Snipe set I always opt for Experienced Marksman. Typically I want the Fast Snipe anyway, but MMV.

I occasionally boost common IOs for use with other enhancement sets: this typically happens on powers with two distinct attributes, such as defense/healing/EndMod.. one of those attributes gets a set, the other gets an IO. I've also used Defense or Resistance IOs boosted when I've already gotten the set bonus I want but I want MOAR defense/resistance. There are a handful of non-purple/non-pvp pieces I have boosted that aren't slotted... but those are quite few and they do get recycled (things like Accuracy/Damage for Brawl, or Accuracy/Endurance for %damage attacks) The boosted purples/PVP not being used... I just convert those into another piece I want. The boosters are pretty cheap (5 merits each), it's not worth sweating IMO.

And what is a solo level 4 bringing to Echo Dark Astoria to help with Adamastor? And why would the solo level 4 be the one to summon it?