tidge

You are correct about the 67 being "extra" slots, and I neglected to account for Fitness. As for how it affects the costs, I usually start my characters with 60 Minf and by the time they are ready for the level 50 respec (when the "good" slotting becomes "D*** GOOD" slotting, they typically have around 100 Minf. Not enough to BIN Purples, but I wasn't using purples on the "good" build. I 100% agree that there are more efficient ways to use the market to convert Merits to other things... but some people will resist using the market house, so I thought it was worth mentioning. Even if someone buys recipes via Merits, they are still likely to need the market house to get some of the ingredients.

I'll repeat: As near as I can tell, The period of time between when a henchman model appears on the field/pet window and when the player can actively select the henchman as a target appears to only be a combination of "animation lockout" (*1) and "server-client delay"(*2). I really don't think this is a "configurable" element... if this is make-or-break, it is pretty much only the players' wetware that can be modified. (*1) I've observed this with henchmen (and pets): if the thing is in the middle of an animation, it is possible that the client (i.e. player) can't take certain actions. Specific to MMs and their henchmen: I can never drag an inspiration onto my T3 Assault Bot once it is engaged in battle, as it is constantly ycling through its attacks. Every other henchman (and pets!) on that mastermind can take an inspiration drop (unless the pet is forbidden, like a green insp on a Maintenance Drone). (*2) Players can AoE/PBAoE enemies bore they can be targeted. (oh hai Super Stunner!) During a league event like a Rikti Invasion Henchmen and pets can target enemies before players can via the client.

Welcome HOME!

It's a reasonable argument to make that "my view is that controllers aren't about doing damage", but it ignores that 99% of the game's rewards are directly correlated with doing damage. If damage-dealing ATs required a controller to mezz EVERY critter before critters could be defeated, that would be a TERRIBLE game. Even in-game circumstances that explicitly require controls (e.g. Hamidon raids) have been done without Controllers (the 8-man Stalker runs).

I have a minor quibble about character builds, depending on personal values of "good". With 67 slots on a level 50, I think a "good" character can be built spending an average of no more than 2 Minf per slot for attuned IOs. Common IOs can be bought for much less... so I'd put the cap closer to 134 MInf than 500 Minf. The rest of the @Jacke advice is fine, although it ignores the ability of players to directly convert merits into ATO/Winter enhancements and/or recipes for PVP/Very Rare Enhancements, for players that don't *want* to bother with the AH (because "tutorials", or whatever) It's rather trivial for a level 50 character to be able to accumulate 600 merits (convertable to a full set of ATO) in one weeks' play, but the player has to make some choices to do that.

Well... this thread does have at least one player that self-admits that they may have missed the difference. It's ok to not like the FREEM! popup, but it offers some value explaining the mechanics. I'm guessing there exists a player that feels the same about damage number popups. Take a Tank with a Taunt Aura into a PVP zone sometime... it is possible to get used to the mechanics popups.

If nothing else, the FREEM! popup lets players know if they'be been hit by a high-magnitude KB, and if they don't see the pop-text it almost certainly means that the KB they are experiencing is something they explicitly forgot to account for in their build. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of players shocked to find themselves suffering KB have been skating by on nothing more than high (positional) defenses. If someone took a Tanker without an Alpha slot on Apex/Tin Mage, I can completely believe that the character was "ragdolled".

I've often observed teams of players fighting nuAdamastor ignore the warning to back away just to watch it heal back up to full health. Most of the time this simply delays its defeat... but every so often I'll be with a team that is clearly struggling to make damage stick to it and the play behavior is indistinguishable from "facerolling on keyboard". Soloing Giant Monsters isn't IMO one of the things that should be common for most builds. I dare say that most builds can't tackle GMs solo without Incarnates and/or temp powers, and if we are talking about Defenders, I think those are probably among the least likely to be able to solo a non-Holiday Giant Monster... maybe Kheldians would be worse?

Please share the Tanker's primary/secondary, because... FREEM! (IIRC Magnitude 20KB) can catch everyone by surprise, especially resistance-based ATs that have no meaningful KB resistance or KB protection. I haven't played a Fire Armor set, but with Dark I typically build for 14 points of KB, as it is easy to get 2 x +3 (set bonuses) and 2x +4 from unique enhancements. 3x +4 is pretty much as viable from 3 uniques... I just feel like I get more mileage from the PVP sets that offer 3-piece +3 KB protection, and usually want that 3rd unique mule slot for something else. With 12 or 14 points, the SG base buff can put me at 22 or 24 points, which takes FREEM! off the table. IMO It's crucial for Dark to build for KB because of the PBAoE powers, including the self-heals. This is IMO just one of those lessons that has to be learned, it isn't the Homecoming Devs being out to get players!

There is quite a bit of mental-modelling in Homecoming that relies on half-formed memories of Live and/or "player guides" from (different eras of) Live. I can believe that the pre-crashless nukes may still be affecting certain players' thoughts. Just to pick something different but tangentially related to this topic: "hoverblasting" still gets a surprising (to me) amount of advocacy.

Vigilantes can solo/lead the Synapse TF.. so they presumably can exit the mission into a Red (or Gold) Side. I typically spawn the Ambush Babbage in Steel Canyon, as there can be three NPCs to help right near the base portal. Usually I use LRT, but in the past it has worked by exiting the mission to a SG base and then zoning into Steel Canyon.

FWIW: The ambush Babbage from the Synapse TF can also be spawned in other zones. I keep meaning to see if I can get one to spawn red-side.

No thanks to the suggestion. Catalysts are a direct reward for playing, and can be earned via Merit conversion or purchased via the AH. Anyone who would be "happy" to pay more for an attuned can buy a Catalyst from the AH, often for less than 1 MInf.

Fast Snipes get a bonus to damage (up to +22% damage IIRC) for +ToHit; whereas Slow Snipes do not get that bonus. Most of my Blasters rely on the Fast Snipe as part of a regular attack chain, falling back on the slow Snipe only if circumstances are right. Snipes are a single-target attack, so only relying on the Slow version would be IMO limiting DPS after the character reaches a certain level.

I would only consider playing "Iron Man" rules if I were playing exclusively with like-minded friends or playing exclusively solo. I've been on too many open-world PUG leagues where the league leader moves 50s onto teams lead by characters too low for the zone. On a single team with the difficulty turned up? That doesn't bother me as I have some agency. Dashing through Peregrine Island and finding yourself at level 20... not cool.

While I don't quite align myself with the OP (because not all Controllers get pets), I have long felt.... since the days of Live... that Controllers were on the losing end of "the game is balanced around IOs" philosophy/paradigm. There are IMO many ways to see this... see the post above by @Riverdusk ... for myself I always felt the disparity between a Controller and other ATs when facing large spawns (solo, or on teams)... because the Controller can trivially get the attention of a large spawn using its "nuke", but is then faced with: The aggro of all the non-controlled critters "What next?" for all the controlled critters (start spamming the single-target controls, Bob!) I've long been in a headspace where I believe it is only through crafted enhancements (especially %damage, and set bonuses) that can make Controllers capable of handling content like other ATs can handle content. As I have often written: The game's reward system is for defeating enemies. This is IMO a fine way to have rewards (I can't think think of an easier, more straightforward mechanism that we players know works), but for ATs like Controllers, it is pretty much only %procs (specifically %damage procs) that keeps the reward scales-per-unit-time within an order-of-magnitude of other ATs.

I'm slow-walking a Plant/Marine Controller right now. As I make more progress I'll post my build(s). My personal focus is on solo play, and it is looking pretty good at this (similar to my Mind/Poison), yet... I can definitely see how the Marine Affinity blooms into a team-focused power set. I personally find it hard, despite having multiple builds to choose from, to sacrifice solo clear times to build for predominantly team support... I eventually do this, it's just a gate I have to open and walk through. So many players can build for self-sufficiency that I find the latch on the gate to be stiffer every time I approach it.

I have Burst of Speed with 3x Blaster's Wrath (the Recharge pieces, including %Fire) and 3x %Damage. It is a reliable source of damage on top of popping into combat. I have Inner Will 2-slotted with Heal/Recharge, no set bonuses. This is the power I keep on Auto... sometimes it is "overkill' on the mezz recovery, many times it is not. I find that it is rather trivial to maximize Global recharge on Blasters without worrying about Hasten, I also picked up Rune of Protection as the backup mezz protection.

My BR toons are mostly on stand-bye these days, but from memory, my Sentinel's attack chain is: Distintegrate -> Lancer Shot (same Target, to spread) -> Refractor Beam (or another AoE, even Piercing Beam which it is possible to get good at positioning for AoE). After this, it is usually alternating among (Disintegrating) targets for the ST attacks. Sentinels can leverage Vulnerability more-or-less at will, so when compared to my Defender BR I find myself focusing much more on spreading Disintegration than any other tactical choice, especially considering BR debuffs. Annihilation in Piercing Beam is a slight compromise as it is %-Resistance along with the set's inherent attribute boosts.

Maybe I don't understand this post. It reads to me like this is saying the CoX Giant Monsters are too hard, which I don't think is true. In my experience the CoX Giant Monsters have a floored 1-in-20 chance to hit most player characters, and I am pretty sure all of the GMs shuffle between single-target and AoE attacks. If the characters have any sort of resists.. or ya know... have a strategy that involves getting the GM to focus fire on a character with resists... then the limiting factor for GM defeats becomes dealing damage (to overcome the "sack of HP" -> Regeneration, plus whatever resistances the GM has)... as was noted above. The one giant monster that seems to catch some players defense values by surprise (in my experience) is the Arachnos Flier; because this spawns in a level 50 zone and spawns its own varieties of (lots of) minions, players fighting the flier have to be prepared in ways they don't exactly need for Kraken, Paladin, or Babbage. My personal experience has been that most random pairs of level 50 ATs with incarnates) can handle most any of the nu Giant Monsters... and a single level 50 with debuffs can lead a small squad of lower-level characters with any sort of attack chain to whittle down most Giant Monsters that are not in level 50 zones. Different ATs have to change things up of course, and some will be relying on Lore pets for the necessary damage. Standing in place and button mashing may not work for nuEochai for example. For the most part, I think the nuGM changes were pretty mild... mostly added resistances, some health boosts for low-level zone GMs, and in rare cases some long-timer AoEs. Those aren't particularly problematic for veteran level players, especially if they are willing to change up tactics. AFAIK, the only open-world GM with an "unavoidable damaging attack" is Eochai's Pumpkin Patch, which is a location-based AoE. I suppose folks can argue about Paladin's Pulse, but I think that attack is avoidable... if not it is at least possible to get out of its range. Circling back to the debuff: Anything in the game with a large sack of HP will regenerate significant HP via the regeneration formula... just like players do. Debuffing giant monster regeneration is important! Raising the base health of some of the GMs was a good idea IMO, but this was more of a way to draw out the length of GM fights (for small teams) than it was to make the GMs particularly dangerous. Longer fights only make them more dangerous because of RNG and streakbreaker.

Here is a single macro to do what @Yomo Kimyata suggests, to self-target, just make sure there is no trget selected in the reticle. I picked Tar Patch, but any power (and macro image) can be selected. /macro_image "DarkCast_Aim" "TARP" "powexec_location me Tar Patch$$powexec_location target Tar Patch"

Personally: I think Iron Man rules are somewhat silly, as all players can choose to take self-rez powers from pools. There is also the "all it takes is a sloppy league leader to murderize anybody" effect. by the common assessment of the silly Iron Man thinking: I'd say you were dead, Kev.

The -Regen effects of some Beam Rifle attacks are good, but I think they are not nearly as important on a Sentinel as they are on something like a Defender, because of the wide difference in (ranged) damage scales between those AT. I'm sure there are some corner case content where the BR -Regen can manifest itself, but for most play I'd focus on Sentinel DPS.

Players may want the loot, but they don't always want to make sure the events respawn. As long as it is more common for multi-boxers and "dedicated monster hunting teams" to leave extra spawns around, I see no reason for solo GM hunting to be considered taboo.

My BR Sentinel went with: T2 Single Shot, 6x Sentinel's Ward T3 Cutting Beam, 6x Ragnarok T4 Disintegrate, 6x Opportunity Strikes T5 Aim, 6x Gaussian's T6 Lancer Shot, 6x Apocalypse T7 Refractor Beam, Centriole, Guidance, 4x %damage T8 Piercing Beam, 6x Annihilation T9 Overcharge, Frozen Blast +Javelin Volley (Acc/End/Damage/Recharge) + 4x %damage Because it is such a single-target focus of the set, and with a Sentinel's choices for secondary being what they are, I felt like I needed all the attacks after the T1/T2 choice (plus Aim). I didn't feel like the character really came together until I had Refractor Beam (slotted).