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I want to get this out of the way: I avoided the new Storm set(s) because everybody else jumped into them at release. I write this because some of what follows may be old news to others. I did see some messages that run counter to what I am seeing... and I am enjoying the Storm / Storm combo so I thought I'd share my initial thoughts. I've almost entirely run solo, and I've got the character just shy of level 35. I can have whatever enhancements I want, so for leveling purposes think: ATO, leftover catalyzed PVP, Overwhelming Force, etc. I don't have any Winter pieces in the build right now... for leveling (especially low level) this is less about set bonuses and more about having enhancements that don't need to be replaced. I was carrying a bunch of KB->KD pieces, but as I was playing I found only a couple of powers actually needed them IMO. This combo is the most Controller-like Defender combo I have run... and I really like it. I think it's a good sign when by level 30 I only have one power pick that isn't from the Primary or Secondary! I want to add this bit of personal mistake: I accidentally set myself a Bricktown level 30 Radio mission at +0x8 (Freakshow) and I was able to clear it... I would have stealthed it, but the map and spawns did not allow that option... that setting is not a solo setting for me with a fresh level 30! The ability to have a bunch of (pseudo) pets and area control options really made the difference. My hot takes on the Primary, Storm Summoning: T1 Gale. I toke this, slotted it with Accuracy and %damage and it actually works quite well both as a means of control and some extra damage. With Accuracy slotting it is a pretty reliable source of %damage (for an somewhat short recharge power). I had planned to make this KD->KB, but I'm pretty experienced with KB and so I think that choice would be wasting a slot. T2 O2 Boost. I took it as a Mule for %Absorb. I've used it to heal allies. T3 Snow Storm: Endurance reduction only, used as a means of area control T4 Steamy Mist: Holds Kismet, Resistance and Defense mules. The real beauty is it allows me to get really close to most critters to set up Storm Cell. T5 Freezing Rain: Area control with a great debuff. I have this slotted for Accuracy/Recharge and %damage. It isn't a great source of %damage on cast, but it isn't nothing. I'm reserving judgement if I keep %damage in it until after I regularly face large spawn sizes or not and test with some 50+5 pieces in it. T6 Hurricane: Endurance Reduction only. I use this for indoor map control (rarely). T7 Thunder Clap: I had intended to take this, but I ended up skipping. I wasn't seeing where in my chain I would use it and still be making best use of the secondary set's synergies. T8 Tornado: This has a KB->KD piece. I have plans for some slotting it it, but I don't use it very often... pretty much only when I am facing enemies that can mezz me, as it gets their attention. T9 Lightning Storm: A keeper! I like that it can be cast while nowhere close to a ground surface. Hot takes on the Secondary (Storm Blast). As a Defender, I'm less concerned about uber-damage so I felt that a Blast set that requires a little bit of setup to leverage synergy is fine. When I've teamed, I don't sweat doing damage, except to get more attention to the group. T1 Gust: I skipped. There is nothing wrong with it, it is more that there are only so many single-target ranged attacks I want in a build. T2 Hailstones is the Single-Target ranged attack I chose. It eventually has 6x Defender ATO. T3 Jet Stream is a typical cone %damage attack for me, which requires Accuracy. Works well, needs no KB->KD with Storm Cell, and otherwise is a reasonable board control attack. T4 Storm Cell: Taken, holding 3x Vigilant Assault ATO (Dam/Recharge, Dam/End/Rech, Rech/%+Absorb) Honestly, this slotting strikes me as wasteful, but: The power strikes me as one that wouldn't benefit from %damage, The power shouldn't need many slots, and other powers benefit more IMO from more slots I wanted the %absorb on a power I would be using all the time, for a lot of content (so, "early power" pick), I wanted the 3-piece bonus. although I am often satisfied with a 4/2 split of Vigilant Assault T5 Intensify: Taken, but no plans to heavily slot. T6 Direct Strike: Taken, and used as my "opener" after Storm Cell. See Steamy Mist. Works reasonably well even with a few slots. T7 Chain Lighting: Taken, not heavily slotted yet. Planned to have the three accuracy pieces of Vigilant Assault ATO and three %damage... I don't have this fully slotted, but so I may make this a four-piece ATO (for more Global Accuracy), and have another slot for somewhere else... I have to experiment with a more complete build. See note below on Global Recharge. T8 Cloud Burst Chain Lighting: Taken, not heavily slotted yet. T9 Category Five: Taken, not heavily slotted. It will probably get 6x Annihilation. The recharge time is too long IMO to go for %damage, and the 6xAnnihilation set bonuses are comfortable to me. Note on Global Recharge: Without much in the way of Global Recharge at level 35, I am finding that solo I can still run through missions reasonably quickly, and depending on how many critters I face at once... the long recharge Category Five isn't needed ASAP... because this is a Defender. On teams... I think if the team is relying on this Defender to do MOAR damage (on top of debuffing, healing and controlling the field) then the team can bloody well be comfortable with my pace! This ends up with me not sweating trying to get every LotG or 5xPurple Recharge set bonus. The shortcomings (so far): Enemy mezzes. I'm probably going to respec into the Sorcery pool (I've been using Flight) and can fit Rune of Protection painlessly into the planned build at level 44. For low level content, it is Inspirations. Sorcery lets me mule some other pieces, freeing up slots. I had intended to use Force of Will for Weaken Resolve, but I feel like Sorcery will do more. Endurance: I have no accolades, not tons of slots yet, and not great set bonuses... so I am pretty much pacing myself. Defenses: Not great! Maneuvers is in the build, but I don't expect to have particularly high Defenses even end-build. The worry is seeing how it will do against +4 enemies. I pretty much only take Defenders against such content on teams, and I am mostly worried about having enough slotted accuracy to make the %damage work... and powers like Gale which have an inherently low base Accuracy can become unreliable as a control mechanism. I'll probably just end up with a second build explicitly for that kind of content, leveraging more set bonuses.

I took it at 49 to mule a Psi resist piece.

My experience with Inv Tankers is that they don't really need to run most of their toggles, especially at low levels. If teamed with others and running content where the toggles are needed, slow down on the attacks.

A well-timed Build Up with a big single-target attack works well.

I rather like the TIP missions, for all alignments across both sides. My only complaint is that it isn't possible to solo the TIPs once you have out-leveled them.

Feel free to edit in the information about clearing (sub)spawns into the original post; I think it is pretty important information. As a recent test, I saw that a Rubble (so the child spawn of a Jurassik Rubble, which itself is the child spawn of Jurassik) was left in Crey's Folly and I decided to leave it unharmed. Normally I clean those up. The server went more than 24 hours without a new Jurassik spawn, and it wasn't until I defeated that rubble that we got any new Jurassik spawns. I know that several players use "Giant Monster Targeting Binds" to "help" them look for potential targets, but I think those do more harm than good... because those binds ignore the extras. I'll also share another bête noire about would-be Giant Monster hunters related to the stewardship aspect. It is somewhat common that some time (6+ mins) after an announcement that a GM has spawned, that a player will use one of the global channels to ask if such-and-such GM has been defeated. I can understand that player not wanting to "waste time", but it takes less than 5 minutes to scan a zone for most GMs (Caleb can be the outlier, and zones with multiple potential GMs can take a little longer) yet if the player actually goes looking they might come across the extra spawns that also need to be cleaned up.

Including this link, because I've observed many folks clamoring to fight monsters but they leave messes.

At low levels, Hasten isn't doing that much. If attack chains are inferior, supplementing them with temp/S.T.A.R.T. attacks is usually fine. The temp attacks also burn more endurance than regular attacks... it's more that picking Hasten early generally means sacrificing some other power that likely helps the build more than occasionally having more Global Recharge... which causes endurance spend from attacks as well as when the Endurance bill comes due for Hasten. Most characters that have "well-slotted builds" simply don't need more Global Recharge for those lower-level power picks. MMV.

Also: Don't take/use Hasten below level 20.

I forgo attuned pieces and go with 50(+5) from sets for powers that require things like both Accuracy and Recharge, so Analyze Weakness is a typical candidate. +10% Regeneration (the 2-piece bonus for that set) is one of those bonuses that for anything but a Tanker or Brute would be almost impossible to observe, unless somehow that was the only source of +Regeneration, and the character was constantly taking damage. YMMV.

I always use Cloud Senses and never Siphon Insight, and almost always 4-slotted.

I don't recommend a Sentinel as a first AT, only because *I* have high expectations about Sentinels I team with... namely that they use Vulnerability. New players may not know what it is, or when it makes sense to use it. Sure the Sentinel can survive without it, but if the goal is to be part of a team and the team never sees the glowing crosshair, that's the Sentinel not doing their thing.

That was my thinking to... My feeling is that Regen can't by itself shrug off all incoming damage.... which is what I think an Absorb would do. My initial thinking is that the timer for the self rez should maybe be reduced? If nothing else an inherently shorter timer would allow for the character to get back into more fights, quicker. self-rez options aren't exactly hard to come by, so would it be that bad if the base recharge time was 3 minutes instead of 5 minutes?

There are a handful of instances when I pretty much always use city gates: The Citadel TF where there is a delivery to the Steel Canyon contact standing near the Atlas Park gate. I insta-travel to AP and zip through the gate to deliver the schematics (or whatever). After a Positron TF #1, I usually Ouroboros back to Independence Port, and then zip through the gate to Steel Canyon for Positron TF #2. On Numina, I usually use the Perez Park -> Atlas Park gate for the Clockwork hunt, and then Skyway -> Faultline for the Trolls/Vahzilok hunts. Likewise for the Founders Falls/Eden hunts. Occasionally on the Manticore TF, I'll go through Brickstown -> Crey's Folly to do one of the hunts, it just depends on which character I am playing and how the rest of the team is doing ...because of the different levels of Crey at different parts of the zone.

Just to chime in: For solo play, I don't see any noticeable change in drop rates... and I don't think there was an issue previously (for solo)... I think the issue was for teams/leagues. I will say that there is one "monster" that I have no evidence actually drops a mini-pet recipe. Sally doesn't normally give rewards upon defeat, and I am wondering if with no rewards she won't yield up the mini-pet. I have gotten her recipe from RNG rolls of Monstrous Aether conversion. By my count I have 25+ defeats of Sally with no mini-pet recipe drop (or any other rewards). The game can be very fluky about its RNG, so I'm not saying something is obviously wrong, just that I've been explicitly looking for this drop and haven't seen it. I have gotten drops from all of the other blue-side GMs since the recent patch.

Assault Rifle's Nuke (Full Auto) has both an inherently long range (80') and very wide arc (90°)... and with how most large spawns are positioned, the added range makes it easier to find everything in the target cap (10 IIRC). I'm always a little surprised how many critters can get swept up in it, even without +Range bonuses. AR isn't unique, but it is one of those sets with attacks (including multiple cones) with wildly different ranges. On my AR Blaster I did not even attempt to 'even them up', rather I shift between attack chains depending on enemy positioning. I also found that Blapping did not come naturally to my choice of AR/Plant, so I think of the different ranges of the various attacks as a sort of compromise to being willing to be 'in the mix'. This is in contrast with my Archery/Trick Arrow Blaster for which I made an effort to slot the short-range attacks with Range enhancements specifically to be able to better stay in place (at range). The only other Blaster I can think of where I made a conscious choice to add range to a cone is on a Dark Blaster's Umbral Torrent. This is a T3 cone with a long range albeit small arc. It also happens to be a good candidate for %damage and offers knockback/knockdown... which I find most useful for grabbing the attention of distant spawns without being immediately overwhelmed by them. The small arc otherwise makes Umbral Torrent a somewhat poor choice for close combat fighting against multiple nearby enemies.

I think all the folks interested in changing to a different game engine are working 100% on City of Titans.

I'll always use Mission Teleport/Team Transport if the door is farther than 1.1 mile (unless I can fly on autopilot and use the AH), or if the door is likely to be somewhere non-trivial to navigate to, such as being below street level.

As written by others: Pretty much any AT will contribute to teams. I'd start with something relatively simple and obvious like a DPS-oriented character to start. Of all the debuff options, I do not recommend starting with a Poison primary. A couple of things: Generally with debuff characters, I think it is hard for a new player to understand how the debuffs are working until you have some practice with how enemies behave while NOT debuffed. Poison as a primary (especially with Defenders, in my experience) is a really mediocre choice. Poison is (again my experience) a fine secondary, so let me share my hot takes on the Defender primary. Alkaloid: a T1 single target heal, with a 60 sec +Rex for Toxic. Nothing great, but boring for solo play and on teams you'll end up Single-target-spamming it for some content. Envenom: An excellent debuff, but it has such a small radius that it is effectively single-target, It can take %proc, but it isn't particularly a great %proc power. Weaken: Another fine debuff that will effectively be "single target". Quick note about these first three powers: they won't really be that useful at low levels (YMMV when facing Vahzilok with allies) and you will have to take two of them as a primary! Neurotoxic Breath is a cone slow. It has a decent range. AoE Slows are fine, and I use them, but they do relatively little in the scheme of things and cones are inherently trickier than other AoE slows. Elixer of Life is rez that can be used as a mule for Enhancements. You'll take it, but rezzes are generally not necessary. Antidote is a real stinker, because it is a single-target buff for teammates. It is a great buff, but it is a true PITA to try to apply it to all teammates AND debuff enemies. Paralytic Poison is a fine ST hold that can also be leveraged as a single-target %damage attack. The secondary will determine which direction you go with it. Poison Trap is a great AoE hold, but a somewhat tricky one to use because of its placement and trigger distance. Venomous Gas is a T9 that I really dislike. It is a good debuff, provided enemies aren't murdering you while you try to use it. My experience has been that it is nearly impossible for a solo character to have defenses high enough to really leverage this for even-level large spawns. Against +N critters, it gets that much worse. If teammates don't know that you will suddenly be in teh mix and need looking out for, it gets really ugly. I just don't think this power gels with the rest of the set. TL;DR: The Poison set has some good stuff, but it the powers don't synergize really well with each other and makes for boring play. I love it as a secondary, because I find it easier to pick and choose which powers will better compliment whatever fun primary I have chosen.

While I don't recommend trying to solo Tarikoss at level 15, there is "one dumb trick" that can be exploited in the final mission: Infernal will fight Bat'Zul for you.

This is how I feel about it, with a *twist*... I think most of the "How do we explain ____ to new players?" is a worn-out consideration, with all the subtleties about the Incarnate content/system to be particularly tiresome... because those who want to "better explain Incarnates to newbs" (my words) also want to "better explain" all sorts of things like the invention system, contacts, TFs, leagues, Hamidon raids, Null the Gull, etc. etc. I'm not at all against wanting new players to learn all the different parts of the game... it's more that I often get the sense that some folks want hypothetical new players to be able to master all elements of the game with nothing more than a couple of hours and clear instructions. The Incarnate system, is simultaneously a grafted-on mechanism for MOAR POWER that was designed to draw subscriber $$$ *and* (right or wrong, depending on the player) seen as the "end game" goal. My thinking about the shards/threads discussion is two-fold: If a player is actively pursuing INCARNATE POWER, they'll do their own research how to achieve it If a player asks "what do I do with all these ____ (shards/threads)?" that's the time to explain what to do with them

Vigilance isn't the last inherent I think needs consideration... and it definitely is not the first. My personal assessment is also that it is perfectly fine, and has benefits for both solo and team play. In comparison: The HEAT inherents offer nothing for solo play, and the VEAT inherent is not nothing... but it is close to nothing in the scheme of things.

I am in favor of alternate animations. Specific to Sorcery... I do agree that Rune of Protection is a peculiar standout, considering how the other powers in the set can be minimized (to different degrees). I get the original idea behind the "Origin" pools... but from my PoV those pools offer enough variety between each other that sometimes it just makes sens (to me, anyway) to take powers from an Origin pool even if the pool makes no thematic sense for my character. Some of this is indistinguishable from "min-max" thinking, but sometimes there is a specific non-travel power I want for concept so... Bob's your uncle, that pool gets picked.

I'm going to do some experimentation with Gale (on a Defender). I want to say this: Gale has an inherently low Accuracy (0.9 base) which will be working against the %damage chances. I plan to slot the power with Accuracy, The inherent recharge rate is quick, so %damage won't be great, but with the large number of targets it ought to wash out. I haven't settled on my build, but I suspect I'm probably just going to have a 50+5 Accuracy piece in it... possibly a boosted Accuracy/Range, but I am leery of the lowish base Accuracy against +N critters. Sidebar: There is some evidence (based on code reviews) that beyond the %proc chances (based on radius, recharge time, etc) for a power, the %proc which can affect enemies require an additional ToHiT check based only on the accuracy of the power being used.... so personal global Accuracy or ToHit bonuses don't apply. I believe this is implemented to prevent AutoHit powers from guaranteeing damage (such as Taunts). %+Recharge almost certainly does not need a second ToHit check against individual critters, as it doesn't apply to them.