tidge

It is a totally unnecessary "synergy" that exists for MMs, for no other reason than the game used to have a time when it took time and effort to get from level 2 to level 6. It isn't as if ALL the other powers available to MMs hinge on that one power to make the player embrace "synergy".... but all the henchmen summons that come levels after it DO hinge on it. It is a totally artificial construct that is being rationalized, and for all practical purposes ONLY affects "game balance" before level 6, because AFTER level 6 almost all MMs will have taken it. I haven't had a Tanker yet where I needed to toggle or click on my low level powers. Specifically for Invulnerability, I rarely toggle on Temp Invulnerability below level 50, and Dull Pain pretty much only gets used in extreme content. Four of the other powers in Invulnerability are Auto, no clicking or toggling required! My other Tankers are similar, most have toggles I don't feel the need to run with, especially Lethal/Smashing toggles. Especially not between levels 1 and 6! Anywho, it is something of a stretch to equate Tanker toggles/clicks with the first henchmen upgrade, which is mostly offense. I'd be perfectly ok with the defensive characteristics of the first upgrade staying with a hypothetical resummonable "buff pet" (assuming it had a respectable radius for henchmen), but it seems silly to me that the henchmen summoned with level 12 and level 22 need a level 6 power cast on them to unlock a significant portion of their offense.

I don't disagree, but it makes no sense to me that the henchmen summoned at levels 12 and 22 require a level 6 power to be fully efficient. I have zero issue with the second upgrade being what and where it is, but I cannot imagine a non-gimped MM (with henchmen) delaying the FIRST upgrade until after level 12. Status protection powers aren't part of those later powers... they are separate powers.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong direction... my argument is less about freeing up a single power although that could happen(*1). Imagine if a Tanker had to take a power at Level 6 just to make their higher level choices of armors work at full capacity. AFAIK, except for a few offbeat power sets (examples include: Dual Pistols' Swap Ammo, Bio's Adapatation) and the way Hide works for Stalkers' offense (but Hide isn't in a primary), I can't think of any AT where all the primaries from the same AT specifically require an earlier power to be taken to unlock new abilities in later choices. (*1) As I wrote above, I'd like if all the MM primaries had a place to slot the henchmen/pet globals without having to actually sacrifice henchmen slots. This is why I suggest a long-recharge based resummonable pet at level 6. If the henchmen had the first tier of upgrades baked in, the proposed pet could do something else that buffs the henchmen.

Lemme 'splain. Current: @01 T1 Summon @06 Hench Boost @12 T2 Summon @22 T3 Summon @26 Hench Boost The T2 and T3 are available AFTER the first boost... so why would those henchmen simply not be summoned with the effects of that boost already? It would be a change to give the T1 henchmen that boost but only for level 1 thru 5 content. I don't think there is any place for pearl-clutching how that would ruin the play experience for Masterminds. Baking in the effects of the Level 6 Boost into all the summons would free up a power for all Masterminds.

This is a common problem for those windows. I see it all the time on the Invention crafting screen (when the list is overpopulated). I suspect there is a miscalculation in the UI for the window display and the code for the slider portion of the UI. I suppose it could be triggered by the characteristics of the items being displayed, such as length of strings or embedded breaks, that cause the slider/window to underestimate what is needed to display. I can suggest a possible fix: force every window to be sized as if there was "one more" entry to be displayed. We'd get some dead space in a LOT of places, but this problem would probably go away.

Obviously we need some "January Releases" of simply terrible movies.

The one change for MMs that I had been advocating for is building in the effects of the first upgrade to all the henchmen... it makes no sense that the first upgrade is available before two of the three henchmen summons, and that it is available IIRC for the T1 henchmen in all exemplared content. We are WAY past the point at which players would take a long time to get to level 10+, which is teh era I think that the placement of the T1 summons and first upgrade reflect. I've tempered my calls for this, only because MM now have some better slotting options for that power, so it can yield set bonuses/mules/etc. Never-the-less, for primaries that don't have a "fourth" summons power to mule the Defense/Resistance globals, I wouldn't mind if the first upgrade was changed into some sort of resummonable "buff" pet (not a henchman) that could take those globals. I wouldn't mind there being some sort of balance pass.

For me, x8 solo Synapse becomes a personal bugbear for me because of the way the spawns scatter/run on the "defeat all" mission more than anything else. It only takes missing two mobiles from more than one spawn to make life miserable on some of those maps.

I want to explain why this might be happening. Tankers generally take many more attacks to finish off bosses than other AT, even while they are holding the aggro of the boss. AoE attacks are generally not good against bosses... so a Tanker might be trying to cluster another group while dragging the bosses along. All of this would be in the service of "fewer attacks to defeat more mobiles" which is good for the team. A good tanker is usually paying attention to the team's cycle of attacks, controls, and aggro situation. Fore example: A boss that is locked down by controls probably doesn't need the tank paying attention to it.

Stock up on those [Arrows of Romance] ! No one should endure side-eye from another player that is getting upset because that player doesn't understand their limits. I have a couple of "support" characters that are perfectly fine running off by themselves when necessary; often I just go with "The needs of the many..." and stick close to those who benefit most. Oh... I've got some taunts for that player. With the influx of new players, I suspect we are going to go through another phase of "My Tank doesn't need Taunt" (pick a reason why: "I make attacks" and "I have an Aura" and "I have Fold Space" are common rationales. It took a while, and some changes to Tankers, but I think the critical consensus among veteran Homecoming players is finally "Tankers need a Taunt". If someone wants to play a Tank without Taunt, they should probably just roll up a Scrapper and no one need be the wiser. Don't be discouraged, and play the way that drives your satisfaction.

I have found it useful to keep a Valentine's Day mission "all year" to have a tip that won't disappear if you change alignments or after doing a morality mission. I find having one is useful for the times when I start a mission with difficulty parameters I don't want and forgot to change.

The winter lord always (per my observations) spawns in place of an opened present being replaced. Minions from the winter lord that are not cleared will (I believe) prevent a new WL from spawning. Minions that otherwise appear from a present (with no WL) will eventually respawn.

Always has been. OK, read the massively editoral, and it feels like a complaint that comes from a mode of thinking "race to 50". I look forward to the author's realization that the answer to the question: is either "Base Building" or "Costume Design."

I've done solo Synapse in about 30 minutes. I honestly can't recall if I broke the 30 minute mark, but... probably? I know that I've been on PUGs that have either broken 30 minutes or just missed it. There is some luck involved in maps, but the keys for solo were: run it exemplared, so powers are slotted don't turn up the spawn size, or difficulty have AoE (including P2W) spawn Babbage in Steel Canyon (near Positron and Valkyrie) and call out for help (if you want the merits, otherwise skip) have some sort of temp summons to help defeat the final AV. It doesn't take much, a Shivan or a Warwolf will do. High DPS characters may not even need this. It definitely helps if you are familiar with the cadence of the missions to use "fast travel" options where optimal. SG base buffs for travel speeds can help.

It absolutely would work, because it has been implemented already. Merits (from TFs) can be used to buy recipes now. Not every TF/SF offers enough merits to buy every recipe, but running four weeks of the weekly TF/SF certainly would offer more than enough.

I blame the Incarnate grind from Live as the primary reason I do so little of the Incarnate content (including slotting Incarnate powers beyond Alpha) with most of my characters. Homecoming has made incarnate paths much more palatable, just like they did with non-incarnate power slotting. I can sort of judge my own headspace about "what constitutes grinding?", because it appears (to me, from my PoV) that there are an order of magnitude more gripes about the market/economy/auction house than there are about slotting Incarnate abilities.

I don't have a EA Scrapper, perhaps my Sentinel choices can be informative? Generally: I find Energy aura to be a rather straightforward set to slot, leveraging Global pieces and set bonuses as desired. With my Sentinel, I did end up making the (unusual for me) choice to 6-slot some Very Rare sets to improve Toxic/Psi resistances. On other characters I usually just rely on positional defense values, but that is not how Energy Aura rolls. I run with the Kismet +ToHit in whichever toggle will always be on and also has room for it. As an aside, with Accolades, the EA Sentinel is the only non-Tank in my roster that sits at the HP cap for its AT. I mention this because it feeds into how survivable the character is with the resists, scaling damage resistance, etc.

I dislike the idea of Robotics/FF, mostly because Robots benefit more from a debuffing secondary than a defensive one. Traps, Time, Dark would be before FF. Here is the slotting I use (Robots/Traps) for just the primary powers: While leveling up, I don't rely on the MM attacks... so I don't really use slots on them until later. The secondary powers will almost certainly need slots. If the secondary powers don't need slots, then it was probably a poor choice of secondary!

Praetoria runs on Duncan.

Whenever I'm on a Posi 1, I almost always try to save (any level) Inspirations for the Shadow fight. Boosting Defenses/Resistances and Accuracy can be key to beating down the Shadows. A couple of things I've observed about Posi-1: Occasionally the Shadow Duplicate will have access to powers that the player doesn't have (this is weird, but I've seen it solo) Occasionally the Shadow Duplicate will use powers that the player has skipped, and it turns out that those powers are force multipliers... for the Shadows Duplicates In the second category, it's often those powers that don't benefit fast-moving or solo play... and can come as a surprise for the unprepared.

I am in 99% agreement with the above sentiment. The 1% allows that maybe there is an end-game, but whatever it is is completely variable depending on the player. The market doesn't need to factor into any one particular player's end-game... and if it does, then the market is now part of that end-game, and should be treated as such for the purposes of "winning" that player's end game. Even if I narrow my own understanding of a very general gripe about "equipping" characters to "I wanna equip, I canna afford it" (my words, not anyone else's)... there are SO MANY players who understand how many different in-game strategies exist for "equipping", I can't see this any different than a gripe about "I wanna travel, I canna do it" or "I don't wanna be hit by snipers in FF" or any of a thousand other in-game challenges for which many players can offer advice.

What about all those awesome Travel IOs to go into the prestige sprints?

Quoting myself, as it slipped my mind: Living Shadows (mostly) nullifies Knockback. Personally, I don't get worked up about other players using a lot of knockback... but I won't deny that scattering spawns makes the AoE controls much less effective. There is a flip side of course: Immobilizing enemies in a large spawn makes it that much harder for a Tanker to "gather" them. The now larger Tanker AoE help to mitigate this, but it does sometimes appear that Brutes struggle slightly more.

I can't see myself changing my slotting of the henchmen or pseudo pets (or FFG, thanks for the reminder about Dam/End D-Syncs!), but I am definitely considering sliding Detonator into the build. It looks like I'll have to sacrifice a LotG mule, and find a single slot for more recharge for it. I have a couple of candidate slots in my build: My Mace Beam Volley still has a KB->KD piece in it. This was really useful before the Robotics revamp but I haven't experimented to see how it is still working as a soft control. I also have a Gaussian's %Build Up in Tactics... My MM is spamming attacks (for -Regen, aggro) but I'm not kidding myself that the extra damage/toHit is doing that much. I think I'd be satisfied with just the Endurance/ToHit piece in Tactics. I'm leaning towards this choice, because if I were to learn that the Mace Beam Volley soft control wasn't doing much, I'd probably swap out the KB->KD piece for an actual damage %proc.

I see what you did there.