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Brutes don't need to be tweaked. The only Brute-related issue that comes up is for the %proc effect of the Brute ATOs, but Brutes are already "top performers" by commonly recited play metrics, and the only way that another AT looks like it is doing better than Brutes is the Scrappers leveraging their ATOs. IMO it would be a real stretch to motivate Brute buffs (including ATO changes) considering that the Scrapper AT can only be out-performing offensively with the Scrapper ATOs, and the Tankers get extra surviving out-performance because of the Tanker ATOs. If the Brute ATOs deserve to be reworked (more than some other ATOs) then I think the entire Fury mechanic should end up on the table for being revamped. (i.e. non-starters across the board, or the effort will be half-hearted)

Robotics IMO doesn't need the extra "survivability" from Force Fields... I know that this combo seems like a no-brainer, but even on Live it wasn't as good as something like Robotics/Dark IMO. Robotics also don't really need any more KD on HC. MMs with whatever secondary can overcome this classic word of caution I am about to type: I think MMs perform best when they focus on debuffing enemies rather than focusing a majority of effort on keeping henchmen alive. FF makes it easy (through power choices) but other secondaries can do this as well, with a more layered approach to surivability (Marine Affinity is probably tops, including for KD)

The Signature Story arc (Who Will Die?) can be soloed... it is practically designed to be a solo effort, IIRC originally it was gated content for subscribers.

Don't bother pointing me to a definition of a word, if you are going to misuse the word: Playing the game generates rewards. You are effectively saying "every part of the game is a grind". I get it: You are arguing for free stuff (for yourself, or for some hypothetical player), and you think the game is keeping you (or hypothetical players) from doing anything other than "grinding". I don't see it this way. My first engagement with the game generated rewards I used for that first character, and it just so happens that it also generated rewards that I could use for future characters. My experience is not unique, and if players (old or new, but such players cannot be hypothetical) can learn a variety of clever ways to do the same.... none of these strategies require cheats or grinds. There are no "gates" keeping players from these things... they just need to be clever enough to recognize how the content they want to play can yield rewards.

They aren't all immune, my Bots/Traps has Jack and Eochai flopping around. I've never seen Lusca nor Tentacles flop. I can't recall if I've seen any others flop since i28p2.

I'm curious if this is possible (Beam/Traps Corruptor) without relying on Lores. I have no experience with the Bombs in Traps, and I think (depending on attack chain) you want to be trying for as much Knockdown from Beam as possible. You absolutely will want Poison Trap for -Regen, I suggest the Superior Entomb Recharge/+Absorb be in the mix. I'm pessimistic about the chances against most GMs solo because of the i28p2 changes that improved their ToHit and MaxHP. With Lores and Barrier, you stand a chance against several of the softer GMs if you can keep their regeneration down. You shouldn't skip Disinitegrate, and you will almost certainly want a tight attack chain with Aim. Without Barrier and DPS from a Lore pet, I'd worry that most GMs will eventually score big hits on you simply because the fights last longer. This is a scenario where Triage Beacon may actually be beneficial. For Adamastor, you'll probably want Trip Mine.

Gameplay: I wouldn't say the gameplay is "rich", even if I find it rewarding. The basic gameplay is "defeat enemies" with a sometimes addition of "click glowie". It isn't as if there are a ton of alternate win conditions or even strategies that don't require one or both of the above. The only alternate win conditions I can think of are costumes and base building, but those aren't games everyone plays. I guess marketeering might count as a minigame that requires no physical combat. Variety: We do get a LOT of variety within the narrow gameplay restrictions... and via Ouroborous we can even replay a LOT of it... including stuff we missed while leveling up. Depth: Because it is very likely to miss level-appropriate content without disabling XP, I'd say the game is pretty deep. We do get to start blue, red, or gold.

I can't speak for Ice or Stone, as I've never used them as armors... but Invulnerability is nearly perfect, except for its joke of a T9... MHO is that if Unstoppable could be traded for 4 more inspiration slots I think I'd respec immediately to take advantage of it. It can be a mule for an IO without investing any slots, but that is about it for ultimate utility IMO. In my experience with Invulnerability, it doesn't particularly shine at low levels (resistances don't mean much, and toggles drain endurance) without relying on temp powers or global IOs (starting at level 10)... so some ATs may feel 'slower to start' than others... and running all the toggles can make it feel like "where is my sustain?"... but because of the way the resistance are grouped with certain toggles it isn't necessary to keep them all toggled on, or even to take each of them ASAP. For example: I've often delayed Resist Energies until the late 20s because there is some pool power that would be more useful to me below that level. If given the choice between a Dull Pain (+MaxHP, Heal) and an Absorb (with or without a secondary effect)... it would be something of a close call for me. For 99% of the games content I don't even touch Dull Pain.... so a faster recharging Absorb would probably suit me better. It's the last 1% of the content for which I'm comfortable working below full Health but want a heal and +MaxHP before things go truly pear-shaped that would probably get me to stick with Dull Pain... there are just too many extra things I've built into my Invulnerables that kick in once the Green bar starts burning. (Like %+HP, %Absorb, Scaling Damage Resistance). It's possible of course that if I hung sufficiently below top HP and also got Absorb it would go even better... but for some content my Invuln Tanks feel like they can hang longer than my Rad Tanks.

I definitely agree with the @Neiska sentiment that there appears to be a peculiarity amongst some 'measurers' by which nerfs get called for... and both Pylon and Trapdoor metrics contribute to it, specifically with their 'DPS/defeat times'. I was super impressed by Ston's attempt to compare three melee classes... and when each of them solo, across (almost) all of their primary/secondary choices finish certain specific content within percentage points of one another, it was declared to be the end-of-game-balance. To this day, I don't see why three different melee classes achieving parity of completion times (by leveraging all possible tricks at their disposal) is seen as anything except a success for balance.

I don't understand the use of the word "grind" to describe playing the game. No one needs to grind to accumulate stuff... just complete content and get rewards. Some minigames don't even need players to complete content: The costume editor is free (up to level 10), the base editor is no cost.

Please describe to me what this hypothetical player of yours is going to do in game, given that they aren't motivated enough to have stuff from the AH or base storage, unless that stuff is free. I have no preference on how people play the game, I literally just want to know what you think they are going to be doing that isn't

I've seen the same behavior each side, and (from memory) the timer from once side applies to the other side as well. It is possible to rerun the arcs as often as desired for 5 merits, but each 'extra' reward is (essentially) once-per-week. The extra rewards are similarly time-locked, for characters that qualify (e.g. Astral Merits for level 50s)

The first time you repeat one of those arcs, you can claim an extra 20 merits. After the first repeat, you can repeat an arc once per week for 20 merits.

So your argument is: people don't want to play the game they were given... a game that gives them what they want... so we should just give them stuff they want so they don't have to play the game? You don't need to buy anything to pew-pew with energy bolts... unless you pick an AT that doesn't have energy bolts, at which point the game lets you buy energy bolts (Plasmatic Taser).... but maybe you want those to be free too? Maybe you should buy an analogy, because this free one seems to only be 4/7 complete.

From my MM (not a Corruptor) I found that 4-slotting Undermined Defenses (reasonable set bonuses, plus Recharge), a level 50+5 Accuracy and a %-Res piece was optimal. Any %Damage wasn't noticeable compared to getting a "damage boost" via -Res for the henchmen. There is a slight subtlety (for me) for the choice between Achilles and Annihilation: Enemy critters can only have one %debuff from a particular (proc) source at a time, a second application from anyone simply extends the duration of the debuff... my MM happens to have a lot of powers that take Annihilation, so (when solo) there is a balance between maybe extending the duration of a smaller -Res, or maybe getting some periods of a bigger -Res. I find Poison Trap to be excellent for Superior Entomb's Recharge /%+Absorb.

Is Dull Pain not a thing? EDIT: If this is about wanting a sustain... I don't see the need. In my experience, Invulnerability doesn't need to run all of its (resistance, travel) toggles all the time. and as a practical matter slotting them with Resistance, Resistance/Endurance gets them pretty good values and lower End costs. No matter the AT, there probably should be some Endurance reduction in attacks. For Regeneration: The large Tanker/Brute HP pool already puts them high on the HP-refill side, a single slot of Power Transfer %Heal is shockingly good for those ATs. The contribution to slotting a single Healing/EndMod pieces in Health/Stamina goes far (for all AT), even before considering IO globals. The only hard-to-get bit of 'layering' survivability for Invuln from my PoV is Absorb... if a desired change to Invuln is requested, a choice between a +Absorb and Dull Pain makes more sense to me than to ask for a Sustain.

I don't use the changeling exploit, I don't mind that it exists, I do wish players would only use it solo. The Kheldian HEATs can be IMO a pretty miserable AT to play, at least once I've experienced their arcs. Many ideas have been kicked around in the HEAT subforum, I get the sense that the reason the changeling exploit hasn't been addressed is: Folks literally can't figure out how to disable it without somehow eliminating/highly restricting a key feature of the AT (i.e. changing forms) The HC powers team hasn't (through reluctance, blind spots, whatever) demonstrated a willingness to directly increase damage output on the scale that would be necessary to otherwise make Kheldians compete with non-control ATs I am putting very little judgment behind the second bullet point... it's more that because the Nova form attacks don't ever really become better than low/mid-tier blasts, and the Dwarf form isn't supposed to be a DPS form I get the sense that the powers team is pretty stymied about what an alternate to changeling would even look like.

Hero/Villain merits are a currently just a 'higher denomination' of Reward merits. The $50 bill to the $1 bill as it were. The game has a cap on 9999 Reward merits, so a merit vendor allows players to effectively exceed that cap. It is also a convenient way to email merits between alts on an account.

I never called players dumb. Stubborn about what they won't do, sure. Unclever because they can't figure out how to play only the content they want without figuring out how to do it. You are going to have to explain how each of the following is simultaneously true: A player who doesn't want to play content (which rewards them with powers, slots and means to get enhancements for the powers and slots), and A player who wants a full-kit character with all powers, slots, and their preferred enhancements It looks like one of the poster-children is a player that only wants to play level 50 content... and won't accept anything less than a fully-slotted character... which if is the case, that sort of player is pretty much skipping over a LOT of the game's content just to grind their preferred content. There is nothing wrong with this, but let's not pretend that such a playstyle is being kept behind some gate... Play level 50 content and leverage the rewards from that.

If a player is playing content (even Farming! even below 50!) the game provides a LOT, even if that player never visits the AH. One simple example: Merits can be converted into recipes and some IOs directly. My initial HC character simply ran a lot of content via Ouroboros well below level 50 and accumulated hella many Merits. That character did have something not currently available: the ability to earn Inf at the expense of XP, but I wasn't earning much Inf relatively speaking (such as level 49s could at that time). This ended up funding my next character, and so on. I don't think I decided to make some bank on the AH until maybe my fourth character, as I was having too much fun playing the game without the AH. The "magic" about having a level 47+ is this: once level 50 common IO recipes drop, each of them vendors (on average) for 100Kinf, so it takes little time to accumulate Inf... of course if the player eschews content that rewards merits and also ignores the AH completely, that's being stubborn as opposed to clever. For those two stubborn forum members who insist on never leveling their large stable of alts above 30, and also insist upon upgrading SOs... and complain about these choices... again, I'd judge that to be a "not clever" strategy. If the game is a grind for them, it isn't because they can't afford what they want.

So why would people not ask for free badges, free XP, etc.? For anyone who has played to level 50 and beyond, there is no "grind" involved with getting 99%+ of what is available on the market. Especially not if they've played thousands of times over the course of twenty years.

The mechanics of the game are pretty well-understood (by me, for me), so my (solo) enjoyment has been coming up with a concept, translating into a new AT/primary/secondary and running with it. The Homecoming variant has a tremendous number of Quality-of-Life-over-Live improvements which allow for all sorts of drudgery to be side-stepped. In particular, I find the changes to the market and other means of earning enhancements to have been life-changers.

This is the combination I've decided to try... I also haven't tried an Elec Controller yet. The character is still low level, and I'm mostly soloing to get a feel for the Primary poers. Eventually I will reconfigure the character to work in more of the Secondary, I like that this is a bit of a balancing act with when to take the ally-affecting powers from the Secondary.

There is no need for more Incarnate powers IMO. The Incarnate system was one game tacked onto another game, with (on Live) extra grind for subscribers. In terms of "Game Lore"... I don't love the Incarnate add-ons, mostly because the Live dev team essentially broke the 'evergreen' nature of the CoX content. Dark Astoria was reworked... I'm still not a fan, but I can't argue that it was (next to Terra Volta) probably the least engaging of the Hazard zones. Praetoria was canonically destroyed... this is far more upsetting, since the First Ward story demonstrated just how to make an 'evergreen' zone. Let's not talk about Galaxy City. All signs were pointing to the Live dev team growing both bored and desperate, which was a deadly combination for a narrative game.

One of the few things I'd change: Critters should have some amount of travel suppression like players do. I find it especially frustrating on fliers that zip away at super-speed. I understand that the original dev team had a fascination with HUGE body types often having superspeed and an immunity/resistance to almost all forms of control, so I see the grounded ones as more of a lol focused at players... but rando Cabal etc. that simply make an attack and then hightail to some corner of a map is pretty annoying.