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I have no personal experience with Hibernate, but I have a vague recollection that once upon a time there were some concerns about its use in PVP. The Concern may have been about griefing for all I know.

I like the concept, and the chosen primary/secondary. The primary challenge I see is that you will have to make a choice about how many/which attacks you want to take, and a second challenge will be when to take the powers you want. I think I would try to supplement the concept with the Sorcery pool, and eventually the Fire Mastery epic (for Rise of the Phoenix) because I think that fits the concept... but Force Mastery offers some potential for mules you may need. My quickie idea is: 1 Ki Push 1 Power Bolt 2 Energy Torrent (eventually %damage) 4 Reach for the Limit 6 Mystic Flight 8 Sniper Blast (usually I delay this, but level restrictions are coming into play) 10 Burst of Speed (you will want this for Melee followups to KB attacks) 12 Aim (often I delay this, see note below) 14 Enflame (or Spirit Ward) 16 Dragon's Tail (eventually %damage) 18 "dealer's choice" 20 Reaction Time 22 Explosive Blast (eventually %damage) 24 Inner Will 26 Nova 28 Rune of Protection (mules for resistance pieces) 30 Eagle's Claw 32 "dealer's choice" 35 Bonfire (because I don't like single-target holds on Blasters) 38 Fire Shield 41 Melt Armor 44 Rise of the Phoenix 47 "dealer's choice" 49 "dealer's choice" The "dealer's choice" is where I would look for power pool choices that offer (Defensive Enhancement) mule opportunities. Rune of Protection is an easy choice for Blasters, so I'd be tempted to take the low-endurance Combat Jumping at 18, which can hold the Kismet +ToHit piece (which will boost the damage of Fast Snipes, and generally help Accuracies). The Concealment pool offers plenty of powers to slot LotG +Recharge pieces. With some purple set bonuses you shouldn't actually need to many of them. I almost never take Hasten, but many people prefer it. I'd probably put it in at 32 if I was force to take it. Note on Aim: I penciled it in at the earliest available level, often I delay it because I can usually find a power that helps the build sooner than an Aim/Build Up power. I'd probably delay Aim to level 18 for this combination if I had a power I could take at 12 instead.

So now that I have my SR/MA Tank at 50, what is the thinking on Alpha Abilities? My default choice for Melee (and other DPS) is Musculature, but I'm wondering if Cardiac (as I have some Ranged attacks) or Resilient. Does a Resistance boost (from Alpha) do anything for SR?

FWIW: Group Fly offers unique problems for henchmen pathing. Occasionally henchmen will stop where they are when Group Fly is toggled off, and refuse to move unless you retoggle the power back on, and then force them to move (usually by moving yourself and commanding it to follow). Sometimes henchmen get 'stuck' when under Group Fly, and require it to be deactivated for them to free themselves.

Occasionally, when I am standing within 10 feet of a GM/AV and find myself resummonning henchmen, I wonder if this is what people are doing before they complain about squishy henchmen.

Personally: Defense, for the MM and the Henchmen, then Resistance, but aside from slotting choices, I don't go out of my way to grant henchmen more resistance, and I don't like actively trying to heal henchmen. If the primary contains a mechanism for the henchmen to heal themselves, or the primary/secondary contains some sort of AoE heal that I'd be casting anyway... sure that's a thing. But otherwise the henchmen are there to serve the MM, not the other way around. I find that if I get too focused on the henchmen, and not the enemy, I have taken my eyes off the ball. Once I have the first two covered, and even if there isn't a great quasi-passive heal, I can still occasionally drag green inspirations onto the henchmen, or use team insps.

I don't do MIDS, but I'll include my level 50 build for comparison in text format. I tried to pay attention to the different ranges of the different attacks, and slot them such that they were closer to each other than they would be without the specialize slotting. This combo doesn't lend itself to being in melee range, nor does it have a reason to be in melee range, so it made sense to me to take this approach. Archery/Tactical Arrow is one of those combinations that offers a lot of opportunities for Enhancement slotting for both %damage and set bonuses. There are a lot of choices.

I felt that the inherent damage wasn't worth enhancing as much as the Mag 4 immobilize, especially with the "front-loaded" %damage, YMMV. Purples can of course be boosted and keep their set bonuses "all the way down". The Bombardment 2-piece global set bonus (5% range, IIRC) is one of those things that looks good on paper, but in practice I end up caring less about it unless: I am playing a character that has multiple ranged attacks, and I can get those ranged attacks reasonably close to each other in range through my typical sort of slotting choices. If the character doesn't have enough ranged attacks, I ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and just pick a different bonus (if I pick one at all). If the character has attacks with all sorts of different ranges (usually because the is a mix of cones and single-target attacks) I don't like a global increase in range so much because it increases the difference between the ranges for the different attacks. I'll often slot cones with a range boost to try to even out the range-to-targets.

I went with this slotting for Carrion Creepers (on a Dominator) (A) Gravitational Anchor - Accuracy/Immobilize/Recharge: Level 50+5 (*) Gravitational Anchor - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50+5 (*) Bombardment - Chance of Damage (Fire) (*) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage (Energy) (*) Ice Mistral’s Torment - Chance of Damage (Ice) (*) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage (Lethal)

I agree with the above more than I disagree, however I don't think 'stealthing missions' is completely useless. It is true that I usually don't care if enemies see me or not, but I can think of lots of times when I've just wanted to get to a part of a map unmolested.

@The Volt has identified the symbol, I believe it is used for all the "Build Up" type effects (some powers that can trigger a build up via use, also powers with %proc pieces, etc.) It also shows up in the Pet window's icons if the henchmen/pets have a way to trigger the effect on themselves.

Laura Lockhart (Blue, Steel Canyon) offers a mission with junk minions, the only real challenge is to not run out of endurance and die from boredom. To an extent The Honoree room in Mender Ramiel's arc has a mission with mass spawns. Incarnates can run their own +3 against enemies of -1 in all sorts of missions. I don't see any TPKs and precious little enjoyment coming from this... but hey, design something in AE and I'll give it a try.

I do not recommend MMs take the Presence pool, even for Provoke. Provoke has a max target cap of 5, and requires a ToHit roll. Most MM AoE attacks have a larger maximum number of targets... if you want the attention of critters, just use a properly-slotted AoE attack to get the attention of the critters. Any of the ranged AoEs can be slotted with a %-Resistance piece, or a Knockdown piece as well.

I am having trouble understanding why we are spitballing changes to the game on the basis of a minority (possibly unique) experience of a relatively new (or simply uninformed) player's in-game choices.

I just finished getting a SR/MA Tanker to 50. I don't have the build in a share-able format, but I wanted to share that I found myself looking at a couple of "extra" slots, trying to decide what do do with them "defensively"... and I found my thinking somewhat aligned with the advice @Infinitum gave. My own circumstances and hot takes follow: I took Boxing / Tough / Weave as the final three powers in the build, even while leveling up FWIW. I mention this only because I wasn't "missing not having" them as mules. Tough is the only Resistance mule in the build. Without Weave, and not counting any effects from Storm Kick, I am above the non-incarnate Defensive "soft cap" on all positional defenses... without a heavy investment in defensive slots or boosters or HOs. Other build choices have ok Resistance numbers at 100% Health (for a non-resistance Tanker, IMO)... obviously these get better with Scaling Resistances. Other build choices gives the build a healthy amount of Regeneration, on top of the typical +HP choices for Tankers. The build includes Unleash Potential (at level 32, not perma of course, slotted with 6xPreventive Maintenance) I decided to not worry about toggling on Tough (although I did put 2xUnbreakable Guard in it for Endurance help), because I felt like any content where I was desperate for more S/L Resistance (beyond the base values of Tough), I would probably want more Defenses (from Weave)... because Cimerora. Of the two "floating" slots I felt had, one became a second slot in Weave (more Defense, a small LotG Regen boost), the other became a 5th slot in Tough (the Aegis Unique). I almost feel like...if I could rely on Storm Kick... I could swap out Weave (at 49) for Manuevers (at the same level), but with Weave on (and no other effects in play) the positional defenses are Melee = 60.21%, Ranged = 53.15% and AoE = 56.86%... so if I was going to make that choice I would almost certainly rethink one other power choice freeing up some slots for shuffling among several other powers, at the cost of a favored set bonus.

This sort of thinking (apply game effects based on a primary choice that affect other player's primary choices etc.) definitely feels like a peculiar spiral that the game doesn't exactly need.... This strikes me as a "big squeeze, little juice" situation.

IIRC, those missions, once selected, will have a "book" icon next to them. Most of the mission arcs are named (with bold text) when talking to a contact prior to selecting them.

Some of us have been pointing out that the CoT had also gotten "harder", yet I think it is very telling that it has been the Council that got most of the attention. Again, I suspect it is because the Council spawns were the preferred easy punching bags prior to their updates. Similar to the Council's powers... the CoT updates make sense to my head canon. Their new tricks are IMO essentially a doubling-down of tricks that the CoT use at low levels: debuffing players. Anyone who has played lower level content (e.g. a Positron, Synapse or Penny Yin task force) at a +4 setting realizes how important "ToHiT" (via Accuracy slotting, +ToHit, whatever) is important to clearing spawns. I have the feeling that some fraction of players don't always keep this in mind... writing only for myself, once I have some set bonuses, I occasionally don't pay attention to that sort of thing myself.

I can appreciate the effort to try to buff a different set (Arsenal Control) by leveraging tags from other sets (Water Blasts, Storm, whatever), but the identified sets that could (hypothetically, or otherwise) apply a +Wet tag are IMO already pretty well-performing and don't really need buffing or an additional reason to play them. Trying to synergize attacks across different primary/secondary choices seems dangerous to me. For example: uf the +Wet tag suddenly granted enemy critters +20% Resistance to Fire damage... I suspect players would become pretty upset.

Also: no one seems to know how to use the search function.

"Henchmen", not "pets". While my MMs certainly do get summoned and buffed, and occasionally get defeated... I have to be playing some rather extreme content or playing in a very sloppy way that this happens. Without focusing on specific primary/secondary choices, or making specific enhancement slotting choices, here is some general advice for all masterminds: Stay close to the henchmen, for Supremacy reasons. Let the henchmen do the fighting, but from Bodyguard mode. If the henchmen are taking huge amounts of AoE+bodyguard damage, you (the player) have probably picked the wrong fight. The spawn sizes may be too big (most enemies concentrate on single-target attacks) or the enemy is an AV/GM with a fast-charging AoE attack. I think it is rather important to, for most content, avoid the temptation to direct the henchmen to attack specific enemies. It takes them out of Bodyguard mode and for melee henchmen they will run all over the place to get to their target. It is also important to realize that while the Henchmen are the source of a MMs offense and hit points... but that they are intended to be defeated. It's not particularly different than a Blaster's or Scrapper's Health bar. The trick is to be playing content where you manage such things.

I rather like Infiltration, and use it as a travel power. Typically my Blasters end up taking 4+1 pool choices for power variety... I find the Concealment pool to be a good choice for end-build power choices for muling Defensive enhancements, so taking Infiltration early gets me a zippy, useful, travel power (that can be slotted with travel sets) that can also hold a Defensive enhancement (e.g. Kistmet, Shield Wall, Reactive Defenses) at early levels to give a character a little more oomph in lower-level content. I find that when Infiltration is slotted with a single Endurance/Travel piece I may not be the first player on a group to get to the cross-zone mission door, but I am usually in the first half of players to get to the door. I can understand other players feeling like all the other travel options/pools offer more of what those players find useful... I have plenty of characters that take more obviously recognizable "travel powers"... but I don't think Infiltration deserves any trash talk. For me, the "concealment" aspect of the power is not even one of the top three reasons why I take Infiltration.

"When the discussion on page 1 degenerates to an argument about how to have a discussion, then it is very likely that either it was a bad suggestion or the OP didn't really want a discussion." As for the OP suggestion, The game already has different instances of something this(*1), but maybe not in the way suggested. (*1) Aside from the common "in mission" things that spawn "extras" mentioned by @Rudra (who read my mind, BTW), several of the "Giant Monster" class will spawn a (usually relatively small) number of associated critters. The most annoying thing about these (to me, YMMV) is that without a targeting bind... they kinda get in the way of quickly targeting the GM. Otherwise, they are barely a threat. I don't see how this suggestion would play out any differently.

Did you have teammates? Running at 0x8 is turning up the difficulty.