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I find Status Protection to be less important than Defense values high enough to be capped against +N enemy Lts. and Bosses. I assume FF and Time can do this; I know Robotics/Traps can do this. I definitely think the primary plays into the concern because the henchmen will need to be doing the Bodyguard thing for a mezzed MM. My Robotics/Traps MM can absolutely "lead from the front". The squad has high enough defenses that enemies are pretty much always in the 1-in-20 chance ToHit range... Protector Bots toss an additional shield AND launch seeker drones to debuff enemy ToHit. The Supremacy and global Aura pieces supplement the Force Field Generator's effects. The other items in Traps either draw aggro (Acid Mortar) or keep enemies occupied (Caltrops, Poison Trap). The only status effects I regularly encounter that bother my MM enough to pop an inspiration are: The long duration Fear from Jack In Irons Skull Stare The long duration stuns from Malta The first case is a Giant Monster, the henchmen often don't need my direct involvement for the full duration of the fear... it's just that it is soooo looong. The second is slightly more problematic when the stun hits before the MM has done anything else against two-or-more full spawns of Malta. Malta is otherwise easy to handle/distract with the Traps set. In contrast I never worry about the holds or sleeps.

I was running my 14-point KB Scrapper against Council with the +10 point KB SG base buff and was shrugging off the FREEM! It was nice to see nothing but the message. I probably could get 20+ KB protection on Dark Armor without too much effort, but I feel like I'd be compromising some of my other build choices. I suspect I will be making some slight adjustments to my Dark Armor Tanker who will be coming out of mothballs to get some anniversary goodies.

I almost always build Blasters following one of two paths, depending on (mostly) the chosen secondary: Blappers, who will engage in melee combat Ranged attackers, who will almost never engage in melee combat As I wrote above, it depends on what the secondary offers. Some combinations of primary/secondary don't have melee attacks, so blapping with such a combo would be working against what the character is best suited for. For all Blasters: I want enough global recharge to have hard-hitting powers up ASAP. For Blappers: I will generally try to get some layered Defenses, along with something like Combat Teleport to get in-and-out of melee. For ranged attackers: I will try to get all the attacks at a common range number. I also like to mix in more (ranged) control options. If I want to lean hard into something else (the control, the surviving) and still use "blasts" I will roll a different AT (Sentinel, Dominator/Controller/Defender). If I take franken-slotting to mean adding %damage, Ranged AoE attacks is where the payoff is IMO. There are three ranged AoE pieces that can be used in every such attack (Javelin Volley, Positron's Blast, Bombardment). Each does a different type of damage (good against different resist critters) and one of them is a PVP. doing more damage. There is also the %-Resistance proc from Annihilation, plus any other additions that can be made if the attack has a secondary effect like Knockback/Knockdown, -Defense, whatever. There are HOs/DSyncs for Accuracy/Damage, Accuracy/Range, and Damage/Range to support franken-slotting. I think there are a number of excellent set bonuses to be had in Ranged AoE attacks. I quite like Annihilation and Bombardment as sleeper choices. I agree with the general sentiment that bonuses from ranged-attack enhancement sets for single-target strike me as being somewhat lack-luster aside from full-ish Apocalypse and Winter's Bite, but I think mileage varies. Thunderstrike is an excellent inexpensive option for single-target ranged attacks. Snipe slotting is something of a mixed choice for me. I like the set bonuses from Sting of the Manticore best... but they only kick in at levels 32+. I'm almost always slotting something other than Sting of the Manticore in a Blaster's Snipe. I'm about evenly mixed across my Blasters if I use an ATO, PVP Experienced Marksman, or a Winter/Very Rare set in a Blaster's Snipe. Something I notice about my Blaster builds is that I usually have enough attacks to be able to split the Blaster's Wrath ATO, fully slot the Defiant Barrage, mix in a Winter set and still have room to add in set bonuses all over the place.

Activation time should have nothing to do with %proc chances. The only power I can think of that has a different recharge rate based on Quick/Normal "snipe" is LRM Rocket. However, the Quick version of LRM Rocket (Blaster's Arsenal Mastery) still has a very proc-favorable inherent recharge time that I think you would have to do some work to demonstrate that it was noticeably different than for the normal (slow) version.

I came back to this thread because I've started revisiting my multi-form Fortunata / Widow. I had not used a respec on them since before page 5, so they were overdue. I had been pleased with the performance, especially on the Fortunata. It had incredible defenses, even without a quite perma Mind Link. I took that half of the character into the control route, skipping the Widow Training and leveraging the Presence pool for more control + survivability. After page 5, when the late power choices could come earlier I don't find it as 'natural' to slot in the power pools as before. I'll post the build eventually, I'm still experimenting with it. I also have to revisit the Widow half. The big changes to my build (aside from reordering when powers were picked) were: Dropped: Subdue, Aim, Ball Lightning (Mu Patron) Added: Fate Sealed, Psychic Tornado, Hasten Changed some slotting: I am running with fewer set bonuses (taking positional defense hits) for some %damage. Fate Sealed doesn't have slots, and with one fewer attack I sprinkled the freed slots among other powers to improve some quality-of-life and boost some random bits of other powers I felt could use improvement. I made another slight change in parallel with adding Fate Sealed to the build, relating to Dominate. As a single target Hold/Damage, it can take a lot of %damage pieces, but years of play have convinced me that it is better to either leverage Dominate as a single-target damage power (psychic meh) that also has a Hold, or as a single-target Hold that happens to do some damage. slotting it for mostly %damage feels to me like ignoring both of those aspects. Right now, I have it 3-slotted with Gladiator's Net (Acc/Hold, 4x, %Lethal) plus %damage from Unbreakable Constraint and Apocalypse. These are the %damage pieces that offer the highest proc rates and/or higher, not-psychic, damage. I've not been a fan of Psychic Tornado, but previous use of Subdue was driven by available power choices and I had used it to hold ATO pieces. I moved those pieces to Psychic Scream, shuffling the previous franken-slotting of Psychic Scream into Psychic Tornado (better %damage chances, albeit not a cone). If this character was a hybrid, I would almost certainly be using Spin instead of Tornado. I'd previously had three Mu Patron attacks (Mu Lightning, Static Discharge, Ball Lightning) primarily to get set bonuses and to do AoE in higher level content. I found these to be somewhat anemic, so I reconfigured Static Discharge to be a franken-slotted cone (it performs better now, IMO) and swapped the set on Mu Lightning. Hasten was added to the build (quite late)... it doesn't help that much, but my reconfigured power choices meant that Aim was going to be super-late in the build and so I felt that the utility of being able to support teammates for end-game content (slightly more often) was better than a self-boost from Aim. Choices!

I was faithfully using the Tequila launcher. I made the switch to the HC launcher; it was painless (this time). I hadn't stuck with Tequila completely out of stubbornness, I want to say that shortly after the HC Launcher made its debut that the install attempt had some sort of pain that I really had not been expecting. The current package worked smoothly.

On my Dark/Electric Tanker, I skipped Oppressive Gloom (the Stun toggle) because I have a more reliable Lightning Clap. Otherwise... yes I took Death Shroud and Cloak of Fear. I delayed taking those toggles however, as they don't have very good Accuracy on top of the Endurance costs. I put a Kismet +ToHit piece in Cloak of Darkness to help with those, but each of them still needs a lot of help. My slotting on Cloak of Fear ended up as 6x Siphon Insight. I convinced myself that applying a PBAoE -ToHit was probably better than whatever the Terrorize is doing.

About this... I think it does make life easier if only one of the first doors (the ones between the hallway and the "belt" room) as opposed to the second set of doors between the belt room and the reactor room (the little foyer)... because the ambush spawns in the hallway. It is easy for one player to hold aggro and also allow teammates more lines-of-fire to use powers if they can come to the belt room as opposed to someone in that little foyer. If only one of the first doors is open, pretty much any of my level 50s can hold off the entire hallway ambush spawn indefinitely. The only "smart" use of the foyer IMO is for the first defeat of Clamor; If she can be kept in the foyer she has seriously reduced lines-of-fire, and more teammates will stay away from the one teammate she has put her debuff toggle on. That trick also helps to break up the two spawns. Often, some fraction of the team can't get through the foyer... it's far more of a choke point for the players IMO.

I'd plan for 5xLotG Defense/Recharge pieces, as well as a Kismet +ToHit in an Auto power. I'd go deep enough into the Fighting pool to get Toughness, to use as a mule power for Gladiator's Armor *Def), Steadfast Protection (Def) and Unbreakable Guard (+MaxHP). There are pretty much only two Enhancement set Bonuses I like from Defense sets, YMMV: 6x Reactive Defenses 3x Shield Wall (and I pretty much only like this one because I can boost PVP sets to 50+5, and it has a nice Global) Aside from attuned pieces of Reactive Defenses and the LotG Global Recharge piece, I am either using boosted Defense IOs (cheap!), boosted 50+5 pieces, or Hami-O/Dsyncs (if Endurance is a factor). Depending on other choices in the build, I would probably go 2x 50+5 Defense IOs in Dodge and call it done. My recollection of SR is that it needs very few slots to have excellent positional defenses. Once any individual power is at the point of diminishing returns, use slots to get Enhancement set bonuses elsewhere to push the defense values.

I approach Scrappers as @Uun , here is my general take: Scrappers typically have attacks with fast inherent recharge times (less than 10 seconds), so %proc rates will be low. Scrappers typically have single-target attacks, so a %damage proc in a ST attack will only hit that single target. Scrappers have a good damage scale for melee attacks, so enhancing damage yields excellent results on average I feel that Scrappers benefit from set bonuses a little bit more than some other ATs, so leaning into the set bonuses is preferred. YMMV I do try to franken-slot %damage in Scrapper ranged attacks, especially if those ranged attacks are AoE. I tend to favor Barrier on my Scrappers that have typical Defense values 10% (or more) below "soft cap". My scrappers draw a lot of attention, but with relatively little AoE I find that the enemy critters can get a LOT of swings on them. My builds also tend to have enough power variety in them (that is: I don't design precise attack chains only using a limited number of attacks) so I lack room for teh sorts of powers that can boost defenses across the board.

When the build is complete, I'm sure I'll be at 14. This is at or above the sort of protection I typically have from other armors. Here is another re-leraned lesson about Dark Armor, but about offense. My build includes Cloak of Fear (for thematic reasons). I knew it had a terrible Accuracy and I have plans to mitigate that, but what I'd forgotten was that while using it, and while it is missing (with poor ToHit chances) it was basically ruining my AoE Streakbreaker chances by pushing all my AoE attacks into the ghetto of requiring more misses to get a Streakbreaker. I picked the power knowing full well that it barely rises to a mediocre level of utility, but this extra level of minor handicap has me seriously considering if I want to keep it. I probably will, again because of theme, but it will always slightly bother me. When the build is complete, the final Accuracy of Cloak of Fear should be on the order of 110%...but I think I'll be delaying it until much later in the build.

By the time a team gets to the reactor room, everyone on the team should have a very good sense about what a team can handle. In case there is any doubt specifically about Freakshow (because maybe players were sleepwalking through the first two missions?) the first large room + doors gives a team the opportunity to see how they do(*1) against multiple spawns of Freaks. A team that has steamrolled the second mission in the Yin TF should be able to handle a near-instant resummon of Clamor. The primary difference in the reactor room is that Clamor applies Radiation Infection. The player who gets that toggle really has to pay attention that they aren't debuffing their teammates. Standing next to teammates while suffering Radiation Infection is a far bigger behavior problem IMO than dealing with a couple of extra spawns. (*1) The most typical problems I see PUGs having on a Yin TF are Not being able to hit the enemies Constantly getting hit by enemies The first is primarily because of poor slotting choices. For an exemplared team of level 50s this is only seen when applying atypical settings to the TF. The second is more common, but as I wrote above... if Clamor is debuffing a whole team (because players are not paying attention) yeah, things can go pear-shaped. The Endurance loss against Freaks can be a PITA, but Endurance management is a key feature of the game.

Re: Yin TF and the Reactor Room. If a leader specifically asks us to NOT click them, I won't click the PCs If it doesn't come up, and the team is manhandling the enemies, I am inclined to resummon Clamor ASAP. If a team leader says they want speed, I expect that the team leader wants us to resummon Clamor ASAP. If a team leader makes a fuss about how we need to wait for the ambush before clicking the PCs... I am leaving the reactor room to intercept the ambush.

I want to say that I once knew Dark Armor didn't include any form of Knockback protection, but it has certainly been re-learned! We occasionally have threads like this, but it has been a while. I almost always drop a +4 KB protection piece in all my builds ASAP, and the current /Dark Scrapper also had a +3 set bonus for a total of 7. I typically use Positron's TFs to judge how I am feeling about KB... and things seemed good. I suppose I could have been lulled into a sense of security from teammates, but between those TF and solo, I was feeling good... my mistake. Getting knocked down is one thing, but getting knocked away from the spawn I am trying to fight/use to heal is murder! Ranges are short and I have multiple PBAoE that won't help me if I am tossed across the room. I am aware of the SG base temp power, but I don't like relying on those to cover this sort of problem. A relatively easy change of my plans from 3xOverwhelming Force to a PVP set gets me +3 more points... no big deal I was just hoping to use some OF pieces. 10 points should be enough except for a couple of things. Setting aside FREEM! the worst is happening when multiple enemies hit me with KB. The defenses on this character are going to be mediocre, and I would have to make serious compromises to my power choices to make significant improvements to defenses. I'm thinking that I should just go to 14 points of protection by swapping a LotG for a Karma. I have a couple of long-recharge powers, by my calculations it is roughly 4 seconds max difference in recharge times of the longest wait powers. The attack chains are already pretty smooth with simple slotting and minimal global Recharge. If this turns out to be overkill, I can always unslot. So what say you all? My experience has been that 7 is effectively the same as 4... but is 10 really enough for x8 spawns of enemies that will be focusing fire on me? Is 14 going to cover me?

I oscillate between: Building characters that are effective, but not in an obvious way Building characters that have defects (that may or may not be obvious) but lean into fun, demonstrative powers The first is when I'm making sure the character has high survival skills first, and then concentrates on its "AT thing". These tend to be the sorts of characters that can be solo on a TF with little to no problem. The second is when I go hard-concept, sacrificing the sorts of things that I think of as "collective wisdom". For example, not taking the Fighting pool for Tough/Weave even though it offers some obvious survival benefits. Sometimes these characters end up almost as able to survive crazy situations by leaning into the crazy concept. I enjoy the second more, but these can be sometimes frustrating. One example comes to mind: I have a Defender who is designed to be a force-multiplier. It can survive a +4x8 onslaught solo... but it has to be quick, and a second simultaneous onslaught is not something it can stand toe-to-toe with. It may look glorious while this is happening, but that character performs much better with an ally close by doing their thing. I honestly don't know if teammates for that character realize what the debuffs and buffs are doing!

This is the current state of affairs. This is the part of the suggestion that feels slightly entitled to me. If the proposed box is checked, all anyone will know is "did someone check a box?". It won't impart any special knowledge if the character is "being used" (maybe it is just holding inf, salvage or enhancements?) or if has been "forgotten about." Don't get me wrong: I think the person who took the name first is entitled to it, I simply cannot think of a better measure than this. I also don't see what the big deal is about not having any form of communication with someone else... who happens to have taken a name that someone else wants. As @Ghost wrote: Why would a player not check the box that they want the name they just came up with?

I did this to explicity avoid a wall of text. The first block is my thinking about what I see as the defect (which may or may not be relevant to the suggestion). The other two blocks are meant to mimic the code, at least as it is represented in City of Data. Not everyone looks at the City of Data representation; I wanted to include it mostly to demonstrate (a) it is possible and (b) I actually looked at multiple powers when considering making a suggestion.

I get a sense that the OP is trying to come to some method by which there is an fractionally greater chance that they could maybe(*1) get a name they want from someone else who got to it before them... but what I am reading (and I admit, this is not what is exactly written!) is that there is a multiple aspects of entitlement: being entitled to a name being entitled to know that the person who already has the name either: wants the name (they already have) or knows that somebody else also wants the name. The PM/email is something of a red herring, because I think we already have the option to ignore PM/emails, and even if a checkbox is implemented people could still send PM/emails (presumably to ask "please uncheck the box"). (*1) Unwritten in a lot of the hypotheticals for getting names released is the very likely circumstance that more than two players are interested in the same name. Each player after the first person to use the name feels the same.

I feel like responding to a couple of other points that are tangential to my request, yet since they were introduced... My argument isn't about "I want the good stuff and not the early picks", it is A player that wants Invoke Panic would still have to take two other power choices from the Presence pool, just like the limitations for every other pool. Thinking I am arguing against this is a complete misreading of what I wrote. There is a LOT of direct synergy among the powers of the Fighting pool, as well as indirect synergy. Direct: MOAR smashing in the attacks, Indirect in that you want to stand and fight you get some toggles that help with that. Let's also not ignore the existence of some excellent global enhancement pieces that can get slotted in those powers and the toggles never even have to be turned on! But I digress. The only real synergy in the Presence pool is that Intimidate and Invoke Panic have the potential to stack. The other powers offer no synergy amongst themselves, and as I see it offer radically different approaches to being used in PvE combat. "Powers are not balanced around IO", yet I feel obligated to point out that there are only Two Threat Enhancement pieces which contain an Accuracy element (needed for Pacify and Provoke), and those two pieces are in two different sets. There is also now a D-Sync, but that is a late addition and an expensive one! The Presence pool powers of Intimidate and Invoke Panic are already coded to give extra benefits to Dominators (based only on the AT), per City of Data.

I agree with this, and per my proposal the Presence power pools would still be less useful and effective than the primary/secondary counterparts. The primary powers have better recharge times (both options are generally bad for %proc, if anyone is thinking about those), and IIRC the pool powers cost more endurance and have a shorter range than any of the primary/secondaries. Of course I mentioned the lack of a necessary ToHit check for the primary/secondary Taunts... I'm not sure about the Placates, but I know the Presence pool does require a ToHit for Pacify. The number of targets consideration is a bit of a wash: Pacify is always single target, Placate is not. Confront is always a single target whereas Provoke has a chance of hitting 5.

I will be discussing the PvE aspects of the pool. I am not ignorant of the PvP side, but for the purposes of my suggestion I will be only refering to PvE. Background for my interest: I like the Presence pool, as it offers a unique set of powers but I find it has some issues that make it rather clumsy to dive into. I will briefly enumerate what I see as its primary barriers to entry. I don't intend to address all of these perceived issues! My specific suggestions are motivated by this: The barrier to entry into Presence pool requires the choice of either/both Pacify or/and Provoke. My biggest complaints about the Presence pool boil down to this: Several ATs will be required, if they want any of the "last three" powers in the Presence pool, to either Take a power that is orthogonal to a power in their primary/secondary (e.g. Tankers with Pacify) Take an inferior (primarily because ToHit check, but also duration, etc. ) version of a power already their primary/secondary My suggestion is to add archetype checks to both Pacify and Provoke to almost duplicate what the relevant primary/secondary powers would be doing. I am not suggesting a change to the ToHit requirements or number of Targets, or range, etc. of either Pacify or Provoke. Examples to be added for Provoke (pardon my poor coding, I am not sure of the check for all the Widows). All are 100% Examples to be added to Pacify (again, forgive my poor coding). All are 100%. Again, I'm not sure if my code hits all of the VEATS correctly. Ideally, the other PvP effects could also be changed but I didn't feel like reviewing all of the PvP effects for (target>enttype eq 'player') I am aware there is a (lingering?) concern about how these effects manifest in PvP, so I'd be fine with not changing the PvP portions of the Presence pool powers. TL; DR: Let's add a little bit of code to the Pacify and Provoke powers so that if a player who already has similar powers in their primary/secondary wants to leverage the Presence power pool, they aren't automatically taking a power that is inferior (in magnitude, effect) to a power from their primary, in addition to whatever penalties there may be to range, recharge time, endurance cost by taking a pool power. I am aware that Provoke has a larger target cap than Confront, but Confront has no ToHit check and I believe has a greater range (in all cases), so this doesn't feel (to me, YMMV) like trying to sneak in an improved form of Confront for Widows and Scrappers. The only other change I would make to the Presence pool is to allow the choice of Intimidate at level 4, and remove the restriction that either Pacify or Provoke be taken as a pre-requisite for Intimidate. I do not think it would be game-breaking to allow level 4 thru 14 players to have access to a single-target Fear attack with a duration of 10.43 seconds.

Immediately logging out after a respec and relogging puts trays "back to where they were", although it will fill empty spots with temp powers. This suggestion isn't terrible... however there are temp powers that I keep in my trays. Envenomed Daggers for instance, and often Flight packs.

Don't skip Taunt! You can mitigate not having it while solo, but IMO a Tanker without Taunt should probably just be rerolled as a Scrapper. I don't like tanks that rely on aura as their means of grabbing aggro... even with Axe Cyclone in the toolbox. I don't have a Bio Tanker, but I agree that you will benefit from having almost all of the powers from the primary. Luckily, Adaptation gets no slots, and a few others don't require many slots. I would probably skip/delay Genetic Contamination. I wouldn't skip Parasitic Aura, but I might not take it until much later in the build than when it is first available. It has a long inherent recharge time and I feel that you ought to be able to Tank most of the game's content without relying on a T9 power. My /Battle Axe Tanker IIRC took: A few comments about my Axe choices. My build is a Shield/BA. Shield plays differently than Bio, but I feel like each has similar powers that offer "offense" despite being a Tanker primary. 1) Yes, %proc. I don't often include the Force Feedback +Recharge (global), but on my build I had some longish recharge powers that I felt could benefit from a little more recharge. See comment by @mcdoogss above. 2) I delayed Build Up, and also opted to not add any recharge to it for this build... I needed the slot to get some more Toxic/Psi resists. I like to have Build Up available ASAP, but for my /BA tanker I found it to be less important than on other builds. I don't think Bio would benefit that much from it either. My Tanker thinking on Build Up is basically this: I want it to put my tanker in a position to one-two-shot a Paragon Protector that has gone Moment of Glory.... this means the build has to have massive ToHit without Build Up and significant high damage fast attacks. YMMV 3) Don't skip Taunt. It's a key early piece of the Tanker toolkit that remains useful across all content. There will be enemies that won't be moved by your attacks; there will be spawns that are widely spread out and won't be within a Tanker's AoE. I 6-slot Mocking Beratement on Tankers, I feel that the set bonuses are extremely synergistic for Tankers. If you are allergic to Taunt, you can get by without dedicating any extra slots to it beyond Threat/Recharge and no one will be any wiser about your choice. Teammates will know if you aren't taunting. 4) Battle Axe is a slow-ish set for attack chains. I did not put Hasten in my build; once I had set bonuses etc. the chain smoothed itself out without Hasten. I also added a few other tricks from pool powers to fill in gaps while leveling; those tricks are still valuable to me even with the level 50 build. If you don't need more Toxic/Psi, drop the FF +Recharge piece from Pendulum and move the %Fire from Cleave into it. This frees up a slot to put more Recharge into Build Up... or wherever. Come to think of it... I may have done exactly this!

I can almost appreciate the suggestion for being a a sort of "well maybe you (player) don't really want the name you chose to use"... ultimately I think so little would come out of it that this "one simple change" would have no meaningful impact. I'm going to rewrite a couple of things I usually add to "free up my name" threads: Any specific character name could have just as much (or more!) sentimental value to someone else. Avoid a victim mentality. It is impossible to know the thoughts and feelings of another player. I well remember on the days of Live (and to a lesser extent on HC) wanting to recreate a beloved character from one server on another, and finding the name was taken. I felt a temporary pain of loss, but I realized that such a player would feel the same if migrating to the server where I was using the name. We players really can exercise some creativity. Writing only for myself, I appreciate seeing clever, well-considered names. I am confident that I have some character names on one HC shard that somebody would want... this confidence is born from playing specific characters in a rather public way, and within weeks seeing several near clones in name and sometimes costume. I've gotten direct comments from other players on my newest characters along the lines of "I'm disappointed I didn't think of that name". Personally: I have a rather small roster of characters I play. Among them are level 50s with thousands of merits accumulated... and yet despite rarely playing them now, it is extremely unlikely that I'd give up their names to a seemingly random request from another player. My first instinct, right or wrong, would be to think "I've had this character for years, why do I think this random person would be a better keeper of the name?"

I rather like this piece of advice. I can imagine a variety of circumstances for which a player might want a full team, but precious few of those hypothetical situations would require anything like a full team. If folks are looking for a challenge in sub-50 content, running with fewer players on a team strikes me as being more acceptable to most "tough guys" than choosing debuff/buff options on some random SF/TF.