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Also a legit strategy. I got used to having attuned PVP pieces around to act as placeholders for "purples" and to experiment with different power/slotting choices.

I don't think that unattuned and unboosted PVP pieces will enhance better than the level they are, in other words a level 49 would be better than a level 10 (for player content above level 10). Since PVP recipes will drop for all content in levels 10-50, I've gotten plenty of sub-50 PVP recipes. These either get converted into the "every build uses one" pieces and/or attuned for reuse on future builds.... while they level up, or while they await their own level 50+5 versions. I find teh level 50 respec to be a convenient time to reshuffle/attune pieces, but enhancement unslotters are also cheap.

Slotting Fold Space with 2x Provocation is about as close to the ur-Example of "throwing good influence after bad power choices" as I can imagine. I also hate Fold Space (but not Shadow Slip!), both from the perspective of "How I see it used" (almost always, "clumsily") and from the perspective of "What poor build choices did the player make to get that?" Particularly: What are they doing with their build that Combat Teleport doesn't suit them better? Are the players' AoE so bad (in radius, in recharge) that a Fold Space -> AoE is the superior choice to just popping into a group and doing... whatever? Did they really take two other powers from the Teleport pool to unlock Fold Space? Combat Teleport is absolutely wonderful... and if they'd been using it before taking Fold Space, why take Fold Space? It makes me think (rightly or wrongly) that they are very likely the sort of player that doesn't realize how good it is. Also: Teleport is probably the most inferior of all Travel powers. Maybe the other pre-req was Teleport Target? If so... how did they slot that, and why don't I see them using that power (on friends or foes)? Did they really put at least two slots in Fold Space: to improve Accuracy to the point of Fold Space mostly working, and recharge so that it is available somewhat during missions? Did they sacirfice something like improved damage or a Taunt to be able to have slots for Fold Space? Did the inherent recharge time of Fold Space drive them to have to take Hasten? Did they make other choices that cornered them into chasing global Accuracy and Recharge? I realize many purple sets get both, but that's a choice. Three slots in the Teleport pool cut down on LotG mule choices! What level did they chose to take Fold Space? I mean... after level 40, most teams of at least two players should be able to handle whatever at least as well as they could without having Fold Space. Related: What did the player skip to take Fold Space? For something like a Tanker, I can see delaying Tough/Weave until 47/49 but if I find out a Tanker skipped Taunt to be able to fit Hasten and Fold Space.... sheesh! What's the theory craft of what to do with all the critters that Fold Space missed? ... especially for Tankers. Those level 54 Bosses aren't exactly going to be repositioned for whatever is supposed to come next.

Short answers: If you have attuned pieces, they will always provide enhancement bonuses as if they are at the level the character is, with the caution that if the set tops out at a level below 50, the enhancement value will be capped at the level of the set, not the player. So an attuned piece from a set that caps at 20 will provide less enhancement than a piece from a set that caps at 50. PVP and Purple sets act as if they are attuned, so this is why players often boost them to 50+5. HO/DS act as if they are attuned. Winters, ATOs, OF are always attuned. All slots are "available" in powers, the game doesn't "remember" at what level a slot was placed. The game does remember when powers were taken, which is why when exemplaring down players lose access to some powers. (IIRC power are available up to +5 above the level exemplared to). Something I recall fondly from the days of live: The Kheldians were particularly tough in Bloody Bay, because a Kheldian could either respec into having a LOT of slots in Dwarf form, or eventually just exemplar down (much later IIRC), which made a single Dwarf able to hold off huge numbers of villains in PVP.

I have long observed that on some maps, a placement of a pseudo pet via a macro like this won't work, even though clicking on the power itself will bring up the reticle to allow placement. powexec_location target Caltrops One of the easiest places to observe this behavior is on the open world Croatoan map in the Grim Vale. The targeting reticle allows Caltrops to be tossed, but targeting an enemy doesn't even allow the power to be activated. This also occurs on some of the elevated areas of Grandville. There are a handful of similar powers where (on certain maps) the power will be activated, but the pseudo pet is not placed at the feet of the enemy, rather it is (I believe) placed at some geometric level below (z-axis) the target $loc. I've observed this with Bonfire, when on instanced "tall room maps", the macro will trigger, but it won't be placed at the target location. A similar sort of issue occasionally happens with target location "teleport macros" (which I use for Burst of Speed, Combat Teleport, etc.) where despite the target being in range and the power being recharged, the macro will not fire. This is rarer, but I have observed it. For years, I just accepted this.. it is annoying to not be able to rely on favorite macros, and it appears to be limited to certain map geometries. However... With the Terra Volta respecs as the weekly, I observed that a different, non-macro power appeared to be not working: The Blaster Epic Melt Armor. Melt Armor works like the macros do... pick a target (it won't work without a target) and then a patch appears at the targets feet. In the Terra Volta map, I can cast the power, but the patch doesn't not appear. This also happens in the Grim Vale. At some Grandville locations I can't even cast the power. I have also observed in some player constructed bases where floating "floors" appear, there are other powers that require a floor surface won't work... like summoning teammates, so I am relatively sure this is a map geometry issue. This doesn't really bother me for Quality of Life... but for some powers (like Melt Armor) this strikes me as a "bigger deal". I put this in the BUG forum, but perhaps a suggestion is appropriate? Maybe Melt Armor could be applied to the target, rather than to the target location?

My build suggestions won't be for you, because outside of something like a Dominator needing a little more recharge, or maybe a Trap-layer who is desperate to get one more whatever out, I think the Force Feedback %+Recharge pieces are niche. Mileage varies, but unless the build contains some really long recharging power (Blaster nukes are not that long IMO, I'm thinking something like Unrelenting) that is almost always used when ready (so again, maybe Unrelenting) I think global Slow Resistance is probably more useful across more content than a short-duration %+Recharge. another hot take: Blasters should probably have enough variety in their attacks to sustain both single-target and AoE (also rang and melee), and swap between them such that %+Recharge isn't required to keep pouring out damage. A little bit of %damage in place of %+recharge may mean that the Blaster has to make fewer attacks, where as %+recharge can at best allow a Blaster to make more attacks in a slightly shorter amount of time. As for how to best use /Atomic? My suggestion is to invest in Combat Teleport. Because this combination allows for a nice variety of set choices, I will share my slotting for Radioactive Cloud. It requires IMO more than just dumping every possible %damage piece in it to work best. It has a long enough recharge time that I didn't find investing a 6th slot in it to be contributing significantly to DPS compared to what else I could do with the slot. Since you will have Psi damage in the primary, you may not even want to include the 5th %Psi slot... I find off-brand damage to be a better choice outside of Purple/PVP choices. Level 28: Radioactive Cloud (A) Unbreakable Constraint - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50+5 (*) Unbreakable Constraint - Chance for Damage (Smashing): Level 50 (*) Gladiator's Net - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50+5 (*) Gladiator's Net - Chance of Damage (Lethal) (*) Ghost Widow's Embrace - Chance of Damage (Psionic)

Thanks for saving me the trouble! I recently hit the limit after running a character through a level 40 Ouroborous arc at x8, and tried to dump hella-many level 45 recipes in email for a different character to use for crafting badges.

Perhaps this is a personal defect, but I cannot imagine what a "roadmap" would look like that doesn't already sort of exist in the game now. For example, we have both hero and villain "roadmaps", plus whatever a player chooses to do with Gold/Incarnate/Ouroboros. We have "Zone arcs". The game launched with contacts that were more-or-less tied to "origin". The game has EATs that have their own arcs. Why is "skipping content" considered to be such a problem? I am reading that there is a recognition that this is a personal problem, and NOT a problem with the game. Every time you cringe at a posted build, perhaps follow up with a helpful suggestion? I pretty much only post "Level 50 builds", but that is because it would be a huge waste of my time to post more than one build, and it would be a true PITA to post "intermediate" builds with incomplete slot assignments, not to mention power choices. For 90% of *my* builds, the level 50 build: Accurately represents the powers taken at what level Accurately represents the power pool choices (if applicable), also taken at what level Accurately represents the types of Enhancements slotted, if the specific choices aren't available because of level restriction I don't feel like my builds insult new players because they use ATOs... ATOs are only 100 merits each and until players can afford them, IOs will do. Same with Winters. The reference to "multi-billion" is IMO a tell that this sort of thinking is mired in the past. It is true that a player almost certainly needs (or has) a level 50 (no incarnates needed) to collect merits to buy ATOs.... but a character with no enhancement slotted can tag along with all sorts of content, including regular Hamidon raids, and few players are going to complain. I don't feel the need to explain that for most of my high-level attacks, I almost never slot more that 3 pieces while leveling up... because I am making choices about other sets to look for set bonuses... and I don't feel obliged to explain all the nuances of my particular choices for which powers get slots at what levels. I don't feel the need to offer a build that doesn't contain attuned enhancement pieces, in case there is some "new student" who isn't familiar with enhancements. I do occasionally try to explain what *I* find fun (and tedious) about certain builds... but at some base level I don't expect players to have radically different ideas about what some ATs will do... for example, the Tanker forum is always going to have threads about the "most toughest", and other forums will always have threads about "most DPS".

I can't parse the data (don't MIDS, sorry). I haven't tried Ninjas/TA... but on Necro/TA I was underwhelmed by (my choices) in Trick Arrow. I was hoping I could use the secondary for debuffs and controls, but I just couldn't get it to come together. Writing only for myself, I think I know what the issue is for me: The Trick Arrow secondary requires picking too many powers and requires too much activity (on the part of the MM) to gel... at least for me. There is another slight issue (for me) in that the best of what Trick arrow offers comes late... so options for power picks start to bunch up in addition to being somewhat late blooming. My personal experience has been that MM builds that can skip at least two of the T7/T8/T9 secondary powers, and don't need more than a Shield from the Epic/Patron generally perform more smoothly that those that "bloom late".

I pretty much only take Hybrid Support, except on raw DPS characters, and occasionally hard control casters. The advantage of Support for MMs is that they always bring their own team with them.

This won't help you recycle slotted enhancements, but the second (and third) builds of characters can be used for testing. Writing only for myself: The few times I want to do something like "move a single slot", I've done testing with unslotters first to see what sort of pieces I can do without. This won't help with wanting to add slots, but I do consider it important to know what I might be sacrificing first. When I am not that familiar with a power (or how it behaves for a certain AT), I definitely play around with it before level 50. Occasionally, powers that may not need many slots get 'extras' to make it easier for me to slot/unslot different pieces in them as I am leveling up. I've tried many powers that looked good "on paper" but ended up being rather inferior in practice. There certainly are powers and slotting approaches that are often highly recommended in builds yet range from mediocre to hot garbage IMO. The only way to know is to test... and the best tests are done while leveling up.

My Hot Take: If a Blaster is going to make "Range" the primary focus of the build, unless effort is put into making the ranges of all the attacks roughly equivalent the effort is not well-directed.

The Upgrade button is not something I'd ever see myself using...setting aside that I'm constantly reusing/resupplying Enhancements from sets... I'm willing to bet that some low bids on common IOs (especially 25/30/45/50) would end up being cheaper than trying to keep SOs updated.

I'm leaning towards this being a ridiculous question, if only because I believe that many different MM builds could end up with similar sorts of clear times. Critter AI behavior can also factor into "map clearing" in ways that some combos could be better suited to handle than others. The secondary choices that I think would have relatively slow map clear times would be those builds that focus on buffing/healing the henchmen... because buffing and healing don't directly contribute to clearing. As for primaries? I want to say that Robotics may be the top, only because the henchmen are nearly pure ranged attackers. If the henchmen don't need to move, that ought to improve x8 clear times. If the maps are filled with x1 spawns, then other primaries should be faster.

I think Burst of Speed is a necessity for /Martial. I dislike Water Jet, Dehydrate is IMO a more reliable ST-attack. You should not need Hasten, especially with this combo able to switch between range/melee ST/AoE. EDIT: I would not put the Ice Mistral pieces in Reaction Time, two of those should probably be 50+5 Healing IOs.

Even though I like the changes to the first upgrades to allow pieces other than Endurance & Recharge, I still think it makes no sense that the first upgrade is available before the T2 and T3 henchmen AND that the T2 and T3 henchmen require the application of that first upgrade. That first upgrade comes early enough to T1 summons that there is literally no content except at a character's initial pass through levels 1-5 that the T1 won't have the ability to apply the first upgrade. There is no flashback content when the first upgrade wouldn't be available. My preference would be: Henchmen get summoned with the first upgrade applied The first upgrade be replaced with a buff pet (not a henchmen) to provide something (I'd suggest the current options, or something to further help with henchmen ToHiT); this would allow the power to take (recharge intensive) pet enhancements I'm not hurt that what I suggest was not the path taken, as the more recent HC changes are improvements I can work with... it is more that I am scratching my head about the peculiarity of the first henchmen upgrade.

Red/Blue Characters should get the "admissions" contact when they reach a certain level. At least my recent characters have gotten him.

I completely agree that this would not be to "solve a KB problem", I make the suggestion more for consistency among general advice along the lines of "immobilizes mitigate knockback".

I can explain why I tend to not take Leviathan Mastery, even though I agree that "Sharks are cool". I'll stick with Defender-specific reasons, but some of these are applicable to other AT: The biggest reason is that I prefer to have my characters' core powers, including attacks and controls, well-established before the Epic/Patron pools become available. Unless such a power wasn't available at an earlier level, I simply don't find the AoE attacks/controls to be a good use of slots, and especially not single-target controls. MMV, my thinking is this: If I have to invest slots in Epic/Patron powers to make them sing, then those slots are almost certainly ones that I could be using on lower level powers. I exemplar all the time, so I tend to see slots put in higher level powers as wasted. I can of course have multiple builds, but that is a more advanced form of character crafting. To expand on the point above... Spirit Shark Jaws looks to be an excellent single-target Hold. Hold powers offer the opportunity to slot for some excellent set bonuses, as well as for %damage. My issue is that this power won't be available for content below level 36. I'd lean to the set bonuses and try to increase hold duration, but maybe 3xGladiator's Net, and then %damage... but Defenders who want to improve DPS get better results by adding %damage to AoE (i.e. other) powers... so essentially this starts to feel like (to me) like a rule of cool choice. The next biggest reason is that the alternate choices for Epic/Patron pools offer different sorts of powers, and often those other choices don't require many slots to be excellent. This is min-max thinking of course. I think Storm/Water/Leviathan is a fine thematic choice.

A good point worth repeating was made: Setting aside the applicable (but not for new characters) comment about "HO", I want to repeat the point about the Enhancement sets with pieces that increase multiple, individual aspects of a power when slotted. Using pieces like these (from different sets, or from the same set) is a good way to "enhance more" of a power using fewer slots.... plus of course the possibility of getting enhancement set bonuses. There is an inherent "diminishing returns" effect, known colloquially as "ED (Enhancement Diversification)... which would be worth learning about before planning on doing something like slotting more than two of the same level 50 IOs. Elsewhere on the forum there was a recent post by a player who appeared to believe that 5-slots of IOs in an attack (1x Accuracy, 3xDamage, 1xEndurance) was the "best" way to slot that power... which I disagree with. Yet I suspect the player was relatively new and didn't have a holistic view of build strategy. An easy thing to do in-game is to "hover" a potential enhancement over the power to see what the effect of slotting will be for a given enhancement. It won't factor in things like global bonuses, but it is a quick-and-dirty way to see the first-order effects of adding/replacing an enhancement.

I pretty much use the search function(s) (including /whoall) exclusively for open-world hunts, zone events, and Giant Monster fights. If the player is hidden, obviously I'm not going to notify or invite them. I can live with the cooldown period, because database queries... yet I still find it annoying because the of the 50-player display limit. If I had to guess why there is such a limit, I suspect it is probably more to do with the UI (e.g. window, scrollbar) than anything else... the window UI seems to get flaky above a certain number of lines to display... for example, with recipes. The biggest issue IMO is that I can't query across red/blue/echo sides/zones. Maybe this exists for PvP reasons?

This isn't a super important change, but with the Immobilize powers adding knockback resistance to their effects, I was somewhat hoping that the %proc immobilize would also apply a knockback resistance to the immobilized foes. I can see through testing with the Winter's set Frozen Blast that this is not the case... I'm guessing it is the same for the other proc %Immobilize pieces. At first I hesitated to even make this suggestion, because I wasn't sure if it was possible in the PPM code to add a secondary effect like this to the immobilize, but I sort of believe that this may be possible... if only because in addition to the effect of a PPM we also get a graphical indicator that the %proc was applied. As I led: This isn't a big deal, but I rather like that actual immobilize powers can mitigate a lot of player knockback... so I happened to be looking at options other than KB->KD slotting to (sometimes) do the same trick. If implemented it would not be a particularly great solution (i.e. lead with an attack that includes %immobilize, followup with a KB attack), I think this falls more into the category of requesting a subtle tweak.

Normally, I don't like the sort of default advice to "Slot a Force Feedback %+Recharge" in all/most powers that do Knockback... I especially don't like it for the Energy Blast primary for Blasters. Why you ask? Energy Blast attacks are mostly already pretty quick to recharge The quick recharging attacks don't have good %proc chances Blasters benefit quite a lot from set bonuses (Range, Accuracy, +Recharge, etc.) Energy Blast (and Atomic Manipulation) is pretty much doing pure Energy/Smash damage, an off-type %damage would probably be a better choice than %+Recharge Knockback doesn't bother me, but with the combination of range and melee I think a 100% Sudden Acceleration/Overwhelming Force KB->KD piece in those Knockback AoE might make attack chains go smoother than just hoping for %+Recharge There is something else about this combination (Energy/Atomic) that is I think slightly more subtle and disfavors seeking %+Recharge. There is IMO a nice combination of both range/melee and single-target/AoE attacks available. This allows for a good variety of set choices (again, bonuses) and would allow an Energy/Atomic Blapper to shuffle up attack sequences based on the enemy spawns... this will be most evident if soloing x8 when there will be lots of spawns (that survived Nova) and are not standing near each other. I don't have this specific Blaster Combination, but I do have both Energy primary Blasters and Atomic secondary Blasters. Neither of them need %+Recharge, or Hasten, to be effective murder machines. All of these are "Blappers" that have solid mixes of range/melee/ST/AoE attacks.

You can email yourself Rez inspirations.