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These are the head-scratchers for me. The OP reads to me something like: they got a character to level 50, the character doesn't have the inf to make a very specific sort of change to their character that they have been playing, and wants to play "hard mode" but not unless that very specific change is made. Minimally, the player could try the "hard mode" with the build that was used to get to level 50... of course I'd suggest they not start with "hard mode" and play some incarnate content (with that build that got them to level 50) first. I can guarantee that teammates will notice a lack of Incarnate power (ehem, Tinpex without Alpha) before they notice if a build is using attuned enhancements or not. +1

I'm not sure this is true. As a player that (a) will have attuned pieces in a build while leveling up, (b) always respecs at level 50, (c) does replace some attuned pieces with level-50s that will get boosted... this is not even close to being an "often" circumstance, and I don't even think it is a problem. This feels (to me) like the "problem" of having to combine five +1 boosters when for certain pieces I *always* want +5 on certain pieces. This is literally something I'll do once for each each level 50 build then pretty much never think about it for that build again. Both respecs and unslotters are dirt cheap, and the auction house vig for any single piece that may have been used while leveling is going to be small potatoes, unless there are some very poor choices and/or buy-it-nao also happening.

So... now that my latest Bane/Huntsman is in the 40s, I remember what it is I find painful/frustrating about this AT: 1) The RNG is the RNG, but for reasons, every MISS on this character is extra painful. It has the typical "different STREAKBREAKER for singe-target and AoE" of course, and with an even mix of both types of attacks, it is trivial to end up with two misses in a row when cycling through attacks. I find it REALLY painful on this character (with an emphasis on +Accuracy as well as +ToHit, plus slotting choices), because for many levels I've been sitting at 95% ToHit chance (and there should be no toggles running making ToHit checks). It also has the pain felt by Stalkers when an attack with a chance to Critical misses after either Placate or Surveillance. Of course, missing with what should be a hard-hitting melee mace attack to finish off an enemy is painful. 2) The wind up on the Mace attacks, especially when trying to get a runner. Of course I expected Wide Area Web Grenade to help, but see the above point about RNG. It's not a BAD choice of AT by any means, but I think it is the lack of having TWO (reliable, so not %proc) hard-hitting attacks, either of single-target or AoE) that can follow one-another upon a MISS (to use STREAKBREAKER) that makes *my* build feel weirdly clunky in combat. Mileage varies of course.

I don't slot the Gaussian's piece in henchmen, but I regularly observe henches that have the Soulbound Allegiance %Build Up piece to have multiple instances of its effect (by watching their power icons).

I feel like this would make Giant Monsters *too* easy to find and defeat. There are already plenty of multi-boxers who do things like camp in Echo: Dark Astoria, or who sweep through zones after Giant Monster announcements, bringing their alts... there is no reason to take ALL the skill of "hunting" out of the game. Many players already don't "clean up" after Giant Monsters, leaving Rubbles, Clockworks, Croatoan extras, etc.... putting an indicator of the GM presence would almost certainly contribute to keeping monsters from eventually respawing, as who will patrol a zone looking for a GM that they "know" isn't there? The only Giant Monster I feel that this request would make any sort of sense for is the Arachnos Flier, and even requesting for it I have mixed feeling. The reasons I feel it might make sense for the Arachnos Flier: There are four different Fliers, each is invulnerable when flying on the (different, non-random) paths The Flier will "despawn" in a very mobile way. AFAIK the only other open-world "zone" GM that will despawn is the summoned Adamastor timer. All the other GM will stay in the zone until defeated, some will move, some will not.

Some speculation on my part about players that use only (level 25) IOs, and I suppose SO/DOs. I know these players exist; some of them even use the forum! I highly suspect that these players are some combination of: Players with low/incomplete information about Homecoming Self-imposed build/play restrictions, possibly through nostalgia or stubbornness Adding new aspects to Homecoming isn't going to help with point 1 (when the game already includes what the player wants), and won't make a difference for point 2. Specifically about level 25 IOs (which I agree are perfectly viable to use for huge amounts of content)... because of crafting badges with specific character rewards for 25/30 and 45/50 IO recipes, the market has large numbers of these for sale at any given time. Personally: I usually craft my own (for the rewards), but I have to believe that outfitting a level 22 character with level 25 IOs (purched from the Market) has got to be cheaper that trying to keep upgrading SOs or following some other enhancement-upgrading path that isn't using attuned pieces from sets in a range that goes up to level 50. As for the request to somehow turn slotted, catalyzed pieces into level 50 (or whatever) pieces that can later be boosted... this is a niche request that can already be done in-game, just not via some magical new piece of salvage. I would use it (very rarely) but even I recognize that this is highly niche(*1). Pretty much every non-PVP or non-Very Rare enhancement set piece I've ever wanted to boost to 50+ has been a relatively cheap uncommon (to buy or craft) or something I happened to have in storage or have the level 50 recipe anyway (because those are what drop for level 50s). Writing only for myself: I've been playing long enough and know my build preferences well enough that I save specific recipes, the market is a perfectly fine (and often cheaper) source for 90% of my needs I can't just fill from SG storage. I suspect that once the OP plays more (both with the newly minted 50s, and with more characters that either play organically or get power-leveled), they will find that pretty much all they need is a SG base with storage racks, a merit vendor, and an invention table.

The Atlas Park exits is labeled "Mercy Island". The Steel Canyon Exit is labeled 'Cap Au Diable". The Kings Row exit is labeled 'Port Oakes'. Skyway City and Boomtown exits are correctly labeled.

I want to say that I tried all combinations of %damage in it, and it was the hold piece for the Pets.Liquefy and Liquefy.Shock that was the most reliable. The Targeted AoE %procs go off on-cast, and are incredibly reliable. IIRC everything else was acting as a pseudo-pet, so "bad %proc" chances.

I think this idea *is* exploitable, but not on the market, since the market doesn't care what level a piece is when it is sold. This is why the whole idea of a de-attuner doesn't need to exist. It is exploitable in this sense: I could buy (or get from drops) low-crafting-cost recipes and burn a bunch of stuff/effort to make the 50s, and then boost them. It would essentially become a method to "sink" merits and/or inf. We don't need this. It smacks of a passing idea that someone had with one of their first level 50s.

I very rarely ever take Patron pets (or a Psi Nexus) on any character. I've done it for theme, and when I had a character that was already taking a Patron pool and I happened to have at least 3 extra slots to spare for them. I think a Crabbermind is the only character i have where I knew going into the build that I'd have one. Anywho, when I have them, I pretty much just summon one whenever it is available. I don't put any more thought into it than that... except on one of my defenders, who will usually try to remember to buff it. My guess is that for a Scrapper, there isn't much that the Scrapper can do to help keep a Patron/Epic pet alive, except to keep on scrappin!

I often find that PUGs for Positron, Synapse go smoother without a non-exemplared Tanker or Brute. Of course, exemplared characters can pretty much carry anyone for a lot of this low level content. Yin is a different sort of kettle of Freaks, because the one point I wanted to make about Clamor was that her Radiation Infection is going to end up on somebody, and that somebody shouldn't be adjacent to teammates. A Tanker's Taunt is the most reliable way to get it and not have to stand adjacent to here (and any melee friends). As a practical matter, whichever of my characters gets the toggle I move away from my teammates... even if I'm playing something like a Scrapper (unless the rest of the team is staying out of melee range of Clamor... but that is rarely the case in my experience). A Tanker/Brute that relies on punchvoke and/or auras for aggro is often staying toe-to-toe with Clamor, and any other melee types. The Radiation Infection debuff is probably bears more responsibility for player defeats in the reactor room than anything else.

I'd really have to see which powers, and what is slotted in them, before I'd believe that boosting an entire (non-VR, non-PVP) set makes much of a difference in Hard Mode. I can believe it for 2-slot only powers, or Franken-slotted powers, but only to a point. I don't do much 'hard mode', but I have to believe that team buffs (i.e. actual power choices) being layered on top of individual builds is more important than 50 vs. 50+5 enhancements in a set.

Are you sure they weren't talking about Incarnate powers? In many cases the extra effects of boosting sets of 3 or more Enhancements is extremely marginal. At two-or-fewer enhancements it is barely a set, and a pair of Hami-O might do the trick even better. Besides, by the time a character is level 50, it can have up to 20 inspirations on hand at any given time.

Writing only for myself: I find it pretty crazy what some characters can produce in terms of raw damage in a limited period of time if I push them well into the red and don't mind "burning green" (i.e. Health). Having a self-rez available on the order of every 90 seconds (because of Global recharge, and what-not) beyond things like Barrier, Rune of Protection, Inspirations, blah blah blah fishcakes is just one more piece of a puzzle to make playing certain characters more enjoyable. My only regret is that if it is Rise of the Phoenix from an Epic pool, the self-rez comes pretty late for my tastes. Unrelenting can be had much earlier, but its power pool is much less satisfactory and is something of an acquired taste.

My fundamental point, which I think you are missing is this: There would be an equivalent cost for the mechanism you propose, because the powers that be don't give away anything for (essentially) free. I get the sense you think this new magical de-attuner would be extremely plentiful and essentially no-cost. I can't imagine that would be the case. Some points for a new-ish player: 1) Respecs are abundant and cheap. A respec can be used to unslot ALL of your enhancements. Writing only for myself: I always do a respec at 50 to do exactly this. I often respec before 50 for all sorts of reasons as I am leveling up. 2) Enhancement Diversification puts a practical limit on how much benefit a character will get (at any level) for reasonably complete sets. I can't immediately think of a set that is available before level 50 and scales all the way up to 50 for which using most of the pieces in the set don't pretty much put you at the point of diminishing returns by level 50, for all the attributes boosted by that set. Many of the Very Rare (50-only) attacks skimp on Endurance reduction, but generally 3 or more non-proc pieces will be "pretty excellent" without being boosted... so a majority of players who think about this simply keep attuned versions in a majority of cases. 3) The Advantages for boosting most attributes for most sets above 50 are marginal, thanks to Enhancement Diversification. MOAR is absolutely MOAR. However: as someone who will often boost all non-proc pieces of a very-rare set used in a long recharge attack, sometimes the extra ends up being practically insginificant... such as a potential 1 point more damage on an attack that is otherwise doing hundreds of points of damage. You should be able to see this in MIDS, if you are using it. I'm not going to tell a player what enhancements they must use, or what content they must play. I do feel that (A) if you are playing 50+ content, almost nobody (including the game engine) will be able to tell the different between a character using all Attuned and all Boosted enhancements, and (B) As a player, you will definitely feel a drop in performance for content below level 45 if instead of attuned pieces you have all 50+5 pieces, unless all those pieces are from Very Rare or PVP sets, because those will always scale down (as will pieces from sets that are always attuned, like those from Overwhelming Force, Winter, and ATO sets). Finally: If a player never/rarely exemplars down, then that player will miss the opportunity to play in a lot of the weekly strike forces, which offer some great rewards specifically for level 50 characters.

There are minimally 2 villains in the Level 50 PI Safeguard mission. One is robbing the bank, the other is in a jail cell. Blue siders can (now) get 1 villain from the first Who Will Die? arc from Theoden, which is much more convenient, although running it 25 times in a row might be tiresome... but it is a low level arc.

The question of (lack of) funds doesn't make that much sense to me if: A player already owns the attuned versions A player is already funding that character's unslotters A player is already funding that character's boosters A respec can be used to pull out a LOT of the pieces (up to the limit of a character's Enhancement trays), but Boosting even a significant fraction of the enhancements isn't cheap. If all of the above are true, I don't consider that character to be "poor" either in terms of Inf or Merits. Realistically, take a look at the following: The drop rate for Catalysts (1-per-day for level 50s) The drop rate for boosters (these don't drop AFAIK) The Market cost for boosters, catalysts, unslotters The Market cost for Recipes/Salvage and level 50 crafted recipes The merit vendor cost of boosters, catalysts, unslotters and recipes (which can be purchased at whatever level they exist at) The ask for a new type of item "turn this attuned piece into a level 50 plz" is NOT somehow going to be rolled out as cheaper or easier to obtain than what already exists. The ask for this new type of item is unnecessary, because: The marketplace is full of level 50 pieces of the exact type you want The marketplace is full of people willing to buy the attuned versions of those pieces from you The merit vendor allows you to buy recipes for whatever (craftable) piece you want The merit vendor also sells catalysts and boosters Catalysts and boosters are available to be purchased/sold in the marketplace This request appears to me to strictly be one that asks for something new, that would very likely be complicated to implement (in code, in the market/vendor, in whatever content might drop it packs/days) for an extremely niche convenience. It absolutely would be a convenience, but so would automatic +5 booster pieces. We didn't get those, but we kinda got close with a minor change to the interface.

A little bit of Column A (Defense) and a little bit of Column B (Resistance) is usually the best choice. Without DDR, defenses will eventually fall (when fighting huge enemies). IMO the real advantage of Tankers when it comes to Resistances is that they have a HUGE pool of HP (which can be pretty straightforward to boost) so incorporating something like Scaling Damage Resistance can make a Tanker a LOT harder to defeat when the green bar is below 90%. This is probably what you are seeing on the SR Brute, as SR Tankers are the same. Absorb is a complicating factor for this sort of thinking, but generally it is a very positive feature for Tankers (again, because of the base Health). "Immortal" Tanker builds got slightly more complicated when the damage typing was changed on Homecoming, but from my PoV it only really affected the "lololololol I got my muh S/L to 137%" builds. I exaggerate, I suppose. The only Tanker Armor I wouldn't recommend as a first Tanker is Dark Armor. It is notorious for its toggles and Endurance cost, and it doesn't have any inherent knockback resistance/protection which can be problematic for its self-heal PBAoE. There is at least one toggle that is terrible (Cloak of Fear, primarily because of the base accuracy), and others that require some investment to make worthwhile (Oppressive Gloom, and to some extent also Death Shroud). This is not to say that a full-kit 50 can't make the entire suite of Dark Armor work, I've got a couple of different Dark Armor ATs. But it is a weirdly complicated set that will always have some sort of issue while leveling up. Plus you will never get to see your costume!

The exploration badges for both Hero and Villain Safeguard/Mayhem ALL ZONES are all part of what you can get at level 50 by using the contacts @Rudra mentioned. Thankfully, a somewhat recent patch established that for certain defeats it is easier to get appropriate credit: previously it was only certain enemies in Safeguard/Mayhem, and some oddball missions like on the Khan TF and the Brickstown "Who Will Die?" that counted. For level 50s, i believe that the highest level safeguard/mayhem offers content for all of the possible Mayhem/Safeguard badges: Blue has A jailbreak, arson, shop, weapons deal, Red has its versions, plus PPD Civilians, a vault door (natch), etc. A level 50 could repeat those missions to unlock the needed contacts, but it was a bit of a PITA before that (somewhat recent) change.

I don't have a "boosted build", except in one case where I explicitly wanted a little bit MOAR on a Tanker... and that is a second build for only 50+ content (although it would work the same down to 45 I suppose). I do have characters that use attuned pieces while leveling up, and at level 50 I pull them out and use level 50s that get boosted... which is what I *think* @TheMultiVitamin is saying he does, possibly to a far greater extent than I do. I sometimes swap in level 50s of PVP pieces that won't get boosted... but only if I have extras of them around, because the attuned pieces become available for future characters, This is a minor, wasteful, thing I do with certain recipes. I could of course play converter roulette with them, and sometimes I do, to get things like Shield Wall Defense pieces or Gladiator's Armor Resistance pieces to become 50+5. What I was describing in my earlier post are the times when there are some pieces I slot as attuned to use when leveling up, because I don't want to think about them. When I eventually hit 50, those pieces will become boosted level 50+5 pieces. An example is a power like Surveillance. It has a base Accuracy of 1.0 and a base recharge time of 45 seconds. In my calculus, I want that power to recharge faster (because it is a -20% Resistance Debuff)and I want some Accuracy. The only pieces that offer me both Accuracy and Recharge (in combination) are in the Analyze Weakness (the "goes to 50" Accurate Defense Debuff) set so I typically invest two slots of Accuracy/Recharge and Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge to do better than what I'd get from just an Accuracy IO and a Recharge IO. Those two slots get me pretty much what I want from a single-target debuff, and the set bonus of +10% Regeneration is not something I'll miss below level 45... so the attuned pieces I use while leveling may as well become Level 50+5 pieces. Another place where I've sometimes applied this sort of thinking is when using 3 pieces of Luck of the Gambler, because the regeneration and health bonuses are kinda meh below 45. YMMV. I'll keep the global recharge piece attuned, but if the power the set is in has an otherwise significant Defense portion and needs a little Endurance reduction, I'll boost the Defense and Defense/Endurance pieces to 50+5. If I really didn't care about the set bonus at all I'd probably slot Hami-O (if I needed Endurance savings) or 2x Defense IOs (if I didn't) <- I've done all four combinations (all attuned same set, mixed attuned/50+5 same set, mixed LotG + Hami-O, mixed LotG + IOs) on different powers for different characters.

Just to echo the words of Senator Rudra, I also tend to take the self-rez powers. There are times when I want to live on the edge of the knife, and other times when I want to live on the tip of the knife.

I also boost level 50 enhancement pieces (that aren't Very Rare, PVP or IOs)... it is pretty much for: Franken-slotting, such that there was not going to be an enhancement set bonus anyway Sets that will only have a few pieces, don't have a viable Hami-O or D-Sync alternative, and I don't really care about any enhancement set bonus below level 45. There aren't many in the second category, but the same ones keep appearing in certain builds.

I find the detuner suggestion to be slightly more than niche, and possibly troublesome (but not too much) because of PVPs... we can effectively 'detune' and leverage the auction house to turn an attuned piece into a level 50 non-attuned piece, because of bucketing. There is the vig of course. If a character was somehow totally short on cash for the vig (and unslotters I suppose) I'm not sure how they'd be able to afford this new salvage piece and boosters.

The blue side Tip missions which I remember pretty much always being in specific zones: The level 20-29 Desdemona mission is in Talos Island (9 times out of 10). The level 40-50 Mister Phipps mission is in Independence Port (9 times out of ten) at the same helicopter. The Ghost Widow Vigilante Morality mission (40-50) is often in Peregrine Island, at the same ship. I want to say that there is another mission in the 20-29 range (blue side) which doesn't seem to have a set zone, but often will be in a different zone from wherever I take it.