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While there must be valid reasons for being hidden (stalkers?) there are some players I encounter who must (in-part) decide to be hidden because they are skirting some of the terms of service... most obviously multi-boxing in the open world at certain times.

I'd vote 'no' for all my classic old reasons, plus a new one: If this option existed, I worry that TPTB would start leveraging Repel more often. As things stand now, I feel like I can mitigate Knockback (via slotting, or several immobilize powers), but I haven't found a satisfactory way to mitigate Repel.

Caveat: I don't farm or use specialty builds for particular content. So for resistance-based characters: Minimally: +6% Defense (All) from the Gladiator's Armor and Steadfast Protection uniques. After that, I usually try to pick up some enhanceable Defense toggle... or leverage a power in the armor set that has a defense component that I can boost. I generally want the equivalent of a Defense IO in such powers (at minimum) although sometimes those powers get more (from sets) or less (if only holding a Luck of the Gambler piece as a mule, and/or the Kismet unique). The Unbreakable Guard Scaling Resistance piece is another must-have IMO; it requires a defense power of some sort. After these... I'm sort of picking up Defense boosts via set-slotting. The only one I can think of that I commonly go for is the 4-set bonus from Unbreakable Guard (3+% Melee positional) because it slots nicely into a resistance set's powers. For some resistance-oriented characters I've gone deep into Presence (for Unrelenting), and Experimentation (Adrenal Booster). for situation boosts to defense (among other things). I tend to treat Sorcery's Rune of Protection as primarily for mezz, but it does more than that. Force of Will (for Unleash Potential) is one of those clickies that is good for resistance-based characters.

From a couple of recent threads elsewhere, I'm reminded by just how poor a choice most "armor" T9s are for characters, I am not saying that they can't be made to work, just that in comparison to other options they are pretty inferior. What do *I* think is wrong with them? #1: Inspirations can pretty much do most of what the T9s can do... Inspirations don't have a downside... and by the earliest point a character can pick a T9, that character will have 15 slots to hold inspirations. I kinda like when a power set includes a power that means certain inspirations can (mostly) be ignored! Most T9s don't fall into this category, for reasons: #2 The base recharge times are ridiculously long, and #3 The crashes (which don't happen with Inspirations) There is no shorter of Power Pool powers available (usually level 20) far earlier that T9s (even in a primary, at level 26) that have shorter base recharge times than T9s, no crashes, and effects rather similar to some T9s: Rune of Protection, Adrenal Booster, Unleash Potential, Unrelenting... and if we want to include the "OH $#!+" use case, Phase Shift). Obviously there are necessary pre-requisites for each of those powers, but most of my builds have a way to fit in three pool power choices by level 30 (when armor secondary T9s become available), if not earlier. Historically: I have a vague recollection that originally (Issue 0, and for the "Jack E" era) there was a deep concern about making players "impossible to defeat"... and this would have been carried over into the initial PVP-era thinking. However: The game doesn't really reward "not being defeated". Even if I wanted to imagine some sort of "unkillable tanker" (and I didn't bother to review the Tanker sub-forum to find self-described "unkillable tanker builds") teamed with a group of murder-hobos, the game still has the following mechanics in play working against (teams of) players: Aggro caps Floor 5% chances to hit Enemy-applied debuffs An undefeated enemy gives no XP, Inf, or loot drops I don't want to bust on Jack E, but this is the guy that initially thought rooting Invulnerability characters using Unyielding was both necessary and good for game balance. What would I like to see? Basically I'd like to see the T9s put on par with (or closer to) Inspirations: Remove the crashes (if T9 nukes no longer crashes, why should armor clicky T9s?) Improve the base recharge times For the latter point, I don't think the T9s should be able to be made "perma", and the enhanceable nature of powers (as opposed to Inspirations) is a kewl thang IMO. Certainly the way an Incarnate power like Destiny: Barrier (available every 2 minutes) can give us some idea of what a self-affecting buff could look like at 'maximum strength' (for non-incarnate content). I am pretty much open to re-imagining many of the armor T9s in ways other than my suggestions above. For example, some could become (weaker, for balance) toggles... or some could become (weaker and/or more limited and/or different) Auto powers. What has everybody else got?

I was considering Blinding Powder as my (current) build's only ranged attack levering 2x 50+5 Acc/range and three %damage... but the base recharge time is such a stinker! I typically end up with around +100% global recharge at level 50 without Hasten, so it wouldn't be terrible... but this is a melee toon I'm playing! As this is also a level 28+ power, I feel like I would probably be better served picking a ranged attack from an Epic/Patron pool.

I agree! This is more-or-less the strategy I use on other non-Tankers for such T9s. I'm not allergic to the T9s, but I see a big opportunity cost with taking them as anything but a very rarely used "OH $#!+" power. I find it somewhat odd that Rune of Protection, even with its now un-improvable recharge time, and other pool powers like Unrelenting, Unleash Potential, and even Adrenal Booster can be more reliable than most Armor T9s. Let's not even mention Inspirations, which we can hold a LOT of by the time the T9s can be chosen.

The original Positron TF had (and still has, via Ouroboros) one nice feature: it is soloable by pretty much any AT, at level. Of course in the way-old days, you needed a team to start the TF, but it wasn't unusual for players to give up and quit, which would allow those who didn't quit to finish it (solo). Synapse isn't as easy to solo at-level, but if exemplared down it is completely do-able, especially with any sort of temp summon for the final mission.

This is one of the reasons why Blinding Powder feels (to me) like it should be an earlier choice (maybe the T5?), as with the small arc and short range it feels a LOT more like something a character might want for soloing level 20-ish arcs. I guess that logic holds true for level 28+ arcs, but for Scrappers... they should be able to handle 10 enemies that are lined up in a cone in front of them. I'm not looking for the next Seeds of Confusion, and I can see that Scrapper T8s are all over the place, but on paper this looks clumsy to use. I can sort of understand the thinking about "maybe it is to mitigate Defense Debuffs?" but again... relatively few enemies are likely to be hit, and the cone is going to be in the direction a scrapper will be facing anyway. I do tend to change between targets, but my <TAB> and <near> strategy doesn't always get me the next optimal target. Setting aside my personal feels, maybe the -Perception is supposed to synergize with Shinobi-Iri (the Stealth toggle)? Again, the level difference between a T3 power and a T8 power seems pretty huge to me. I can't really believe this because of the 2 minute base recharge time... it feels more like a bad port of a Controller's primary T7 or T8 AoE. If I didn't know better (from experience), and because I sometimes do clutzy things just to try them out, I might replace Blinding Powder with Kui-In Restu (the T9 crash) and rely on the Endurance reload to get my toggles back up. I still have the T9 penciled into the build as a mule, so by 'replace' I mean 'adjust the order of picks' and shuffle slots out of Blinding Powder. I've experimented with this sort of approach before, but I find it to be a sort of big investment (in slots) for a power that has such a LONG base recharge time.

I am still leveling up a /Ninjitsu Scrapper, and my thoughts are not yet solid on Blinding Powder or Seishinteki Kyoyo (the Endurance reload). For the latter, I am using it level 30... but mostly (I suspect) because I don't have all my other powers fully slotted so Endurance burn can be an issue (if I keep all my travel toggles on). I had planned to take it earlier than level 30... but along the way I didn't really need it. For Blinding Powder, I had planned to 6-slot it with Coercive Persuasion. The set bonuses are really quite good! However... I am not crazy about the narrow/short-range cone. The Contagious Confusion %proc might help a little to find some extra targets, but I am going to need to test how much utility I get out of this base two-minute-recharge power. This seems like the sort of power that could be more useful at lower levels... but like I said, "still testing".

As written above, it is a matter of taste. I do tend to slot Meteor with a KB->KD piece because I've found that in some content a total-wipe of all the critters hit doesn't happen... and sometimes there are things like ally toggles on creatures' corpses, or allies that want the bodies for their own nefarious reasons.

This bit I snipped isn't specific to the Synapse, but this is a good place to see this issue(*1). FWIW, even on characters for which I don't have many attacks, I usually try to have some plasmatic tasers or hand grenades in the pockets; each is a relatively temp power from S.T.A.R.T. (*1) The issue being: players with relatively ineffective characters for low level content. The number one head-scratcher for me is the commonly-seen-in-build recommendation to take Hasten at level 4, although any time Hasten is taken much earlier than a power with something like a 60+ base second recharge is available seems wasteful IMO. I suppose there are REALLY tight builds possible, but usually those I've seen also have more than one pool power picked before level 20.

I smell what you are cooking. I can imagine it being slotted... especially if the power has no other damage type (beside poison) %proc available, but all things being equal, I might just prefer the extra 6% psi defense (6th slot of Apocalypse) and guaranteed 5%-ish more damage by adding Damage/Recharge (from the attack). On average I guess (some scribbling off-panel) the difference is only 6ish more of the same type damage versus 36ish (of a different type of damage), but it is still only against a single-target. I tend to drop %damage in the AoEs. Another personal feeling about %damage in a single-target attack is a somewhat arbitrary one: Ultimately I want to minimize the total number of attacks against large groups... so if the both the 6xApocalypse choice and the 5xApocalypse+2nd %proc choice don't end up speeding clear times (after nuking a goup) then the extra %damage wasn't really helping (to my thinking). Obviously things are a little different for Sentinels and Blasters with respect to AoEs... but again, if I have an extra slot for %damage, I am probably putting it in an AoE attack.

AFAIK, once an attack hits, any DoT from that attack will not require further ToHit checks. Toggled Auras are things that get repeated ToHit checks. Some pseudo-pets obviously make subsequent attacks (with ToHit checks) and I think there are a small number of powers that leverage something like a pseudopet to randomly try to do damage. Those things shouldn't be part of the players' streakbreaker(s)... I think every critter that can attack gets to benefit from streakbreaker (henchmen do). Also AFAIK, any non-guaranteed child effects (from a successful attack) don't factor into streakbreaker at all, those chances belong to the power not the player/critter so I don't know why they would. Many of these above are all rolls on the RNG of course... but from players who have shared logs of their own roll results we've seen a remarkably flat distribution... which was how it was designed. It would be worse for all of us if it didn't give flat results! I have no complaints about the RNG, it is more that I think the implementation of streakbreaker is the confounding factor at least for characters with typical 95% ToHit chances on all attacks, because those characters REALLY don't want to miss. I also don't entirely blame the live devs for implementing streakbreaker... it was more-or-less an attempt to shortcut any complaints that the RNG is being unfair w.r.t. combat. I do think that the choices of cutoffs are weird... for example: given a 50-50 chance ToHit, there is a 6.25% chance of four consecutive misses... and a 3.13% chance of a fifth miss (that streakbreaker forces to be a hit). But for 95%, streakbreaker's trigger after 1 miss (on the second roll) is only 0.25% to have been a second consecutive miss (the first one had a chance of 5%). It is hard to convince folks that the flat RNG is being fair when streakbreaker is often jumping in, especially at the ToHit ceiling. I feel like it would have been easier to convince players about RNG by not included streakbreaker but instead include direct logging of all RNG rolls, or at least all ToHit rolls if that is what streakbreaker is supposed to address. I apologize for rambling about this... I feel like I started thinking about this when I had trouble figuring out why AoE attacks against large spawn sizes (up to 8 grays, clustered close enough in the area-of-effect) seemed to be generating more than one MISS message too often for my taste. I grew bored collecting and analyzing data for the 'power' side of the hypothesis I was testing: I used AoE to get many rolls at once, and I didn't have the stamina to keep executing single-target attacks. Ultimately I collected enough data to 'disprove the null hypothesis' I had chosen, but not with enough power to convince anyone (myself included)... so I could be wrong!

I would agree with an argument that most of the ATs don't feel particularly distinguishable (in play) from one another until about level 12. Below that level... the S.T.A.R.T. (formerly P2W, formerly veteran reward powers) attacks and travel option make initial content very tolerable, even for long-timers. With 2XP and easy patrol XP (exploration badges) it takes very little effort to 'graduate' from Atlas Park (or Mercy Island) even without trying something like Death From Below. Starting at level 5, with radio/newspaper missions it is pretty quick to start getting the Safeguard/Mayhem missions. By level 20, with Ouroboros in the mix, there is plenty of content. Obviously Ouroboros and Safeguard/Mayhems can be run at level 50 too, but most of the 'flashbacks' are low(er) level content. I personally do find some of the arcs at certain levels to be a bit of a drag(*1), but I never feel short of different content to do below level 30, and above that point I find myself working to mix things up. (*1) Mileage may vary.

I'm trying to gauge how much of the game is seen by the user as a "waste of time"... there is very little reason to spend much time in the intial level ranges, and at a certain point there is a lot of content available, so I'm trying to calibrate the comment.

As I wrote, I don't have direct experience with Liquid Nitrogen... but I expect it to act like other AoE and trigger the %proc on cast... it appears to be a rather large AoE with a 10-target cap.... but the cycle time is pretty miserable. The non-intuitive thing about powers like this (patches, puddles... most pseudopets) is that they work better (for %proc) if the power itself has accuracy slotted in it. Sometimes folks just load the power with %damage pieces and get frustrated when they don't see them proc. For these sorts of damage-over-time powers, I never count on any %proc damage from the 'ticks', just on-cast.

As an aside... I truly can't remember the last time I used a Gladiator's Javelin %Toxic piece in a build. Maybe on a Stalker's epic snipe from long ago? I know that there aren't many options for %damage from purely ranged damage sets, but there is a lot of design space that makes adding that %proc to a single-target ranged attack an uphill battle for me: single-target ranged attacks are usually good for set bonuses single-target ranged attacks are usually bad for %proc rates (and benefit more from set-slotting as opposed to franken-slotting) single-target ranged attacks often have another component (e.g. Defense debuff) that offer alternative %damage type Gladiator's Javelin has some IMO mediocre set bonuses, YMMV.

What level range are you calling "low levels"?

Thanks! I certainly got the feeling (from a Citadel TF) that extra KB protection beyond Bo Ryaku wasn't going to be necessary, but it was more-or-less going to be near level 50 when I could do more serious testing. I appreciate the heads-up that I can very likely make some different choices along the way and at end-build.

I haven't used this primary, but my instinct would be to treat it like Caltrops... for which I have two (and one-half) weird strategies, and then a final likely approach Single-slot wonder, focusing on recharge... possibly 2 slots if it is being really useful. (moar recharge) Mix/match set bonuses and %proc, which out to reliably trigger on cast, something like: (A) Annihilation - Damage/RechargeTime (*) Annihilation - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (*) Ice Mistral’s Torment - Damage/Recharge (*) Ice Mistral’s Torment - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge (*) Ice Mistral’s Torment - Chance for Damage (Cold) (*) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage (Lethal) Because it is a 'puddle' it might work better with the sort of slotting I use for Corrosive Vial (more accuracy, more recharge, less endurance concerns) (A) Positron's Blast - Chance for Damage (Energy) (*) Bombardment - Chance for Damage (Fire) (*) Javelin Volley - Chance for Damage (Lethal) (*) Ice Mistral’s Torment - Chance for Damage (Cold) (*) Javelin Volley - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50+5 (*) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50+5 As a practical matter... I think ultimately the best use of slots in Liquid Nitrogen would be to hold a useful set for a set bonus. The base recharge time is a little long (90 sec) for my taste to try to use it as a source of %damage, although I can see the appeal for a Controller if it were available every 45 seconds.

Ah memories! Looking back at the 'roadmap' much was offered in 2020... although I still confused what the 'endgame' meant. I took it to be 'content for 50+', which we got... and which is playable by pretty much most ATs, although some perform 'better' than others... we did get a lot of what was else was hinted at, especially in Issue 27p1. I won't rehash my position that PPM/procs do far more for game balance (across ATs and builds) than they upset balance, but I don't really see how any choice on that spectrum has much to do with 'endgame.' I'll continue to hope that TPTB calmly looked at the PPM system and agree with me... or at least recognize that in order to believe the PPM system makes the game unbalanced there has to be an extraordinary level of precise examination of very specific player choices.

Here is something that is on my mind, that isn't directly related to the (static) builds: are the attack chains used in the fights for both builds exactly the same (specifically the timing/use between single-target and AoE)? There is a very subtle sort of RNG effect I'm convinced I see but is very hard to completely believe (in hypothesis testing this would be "high confidence, but with low power") between performance of different chains (AoE, ST)... see below. This could manifest itself in the %+Res in a marginal way for the extreme content here. My attempt to explain my thinking, because 'streakbreaker': Normally this sort of thing kinda washes itself out, and is highly annoying to check (for high power, see my hypothesis test comment above) because so much has to be controlled for but for this more extreme sort of content that has been run repeatedly with similar results... I think it may be possible that the reliance on a %proc in an attack for more resistance... could be falling in the margins for this (unfortunate) build. To first order, if a log-parser is used, you could take a look at the total number of streakbreaker calls for each case. This won't be super-informative, but if the number is consistently different between the builds while being consistent among both builds, this could be a clue. Like I wrote: this is a PITA to test for many reasons. (1) we don't see the roll that was tossed (if it was!), (2) we don't get told in the logs which streakbreaker (AT, AoE) was used (but we can tell by power choices, so not impossible), (3) we have to take all other sources of player RNG calls out of the mix (including %procs).

I can understand the thinking, but Blaster's are the last AT that need any sort of 'buff' across the archetype.

I started a /Ninjitsu Scrapper to try out a new-to-me secondary, and as I was planning out the build, it looked as if it would be pretty easy to add enough extra KB protection (via set bonuses from sets I was going to be using anyway) to cross some major thresholds (20+, because FREEM!). Don't judge me (yet), as this was just the planning.... Bo Ryaku is an Auto power that provides a scaling resistance to KB (133% at level 30, 173% at level 50), as well as a scaling protection to KB (3.99 at level 30, 5.19 at level 50). I know that KB resistance can mitigate KB without (much, any) need for KB protection, but I was more familiar with the ginormous amount of KB resistance from something like Super Reflexes' Practiced Brawler (10000% Resistance). In game so far, from some limited testing, it looks as if (at level 30) that I'm not taking FREEM! KB with just Bo Ryaku and 3-point KB protection from rando enhancement slotting (so 7 points on top of resistance). Normally, FREEM! is the KB I worry about (for melee) beyond something like 4 points for CoT/BP baddies... but I don't have to dogpile more KB Protection into a build I won't... ...so can anybody offer some clearer insight about the level of KB Resistance and KB Protection specifically for Ninjitsu? The KB resistance is orders of magnitude lower for Ninjitsu than SR or Invulnerability, but maybe 130+% is good enough? I'll eventually test, but I don't quite have the build where I need it to be to do deeper testing.

The utility cutoff (for rewards) at 100 Vet Levels is a somewhat new thing. Of course running other content that offers rewards, including fun times, will keep earning XP... so it isn't exactly only "vanity".