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I just felt like quoting this: I suppose in the minds of many of the players, they've 'maxxed' something, and in some (small?) fraction of those players I suppose it is possible that for some content the build will sit on something like an "plateau of performance"... yet there never seems to be a shortage of posted builds that simply don't look fun to play. I enjoy seeing the builds where the player talks about their choices for play, and less about stats.

This argument only goes so far: once a player knows enough to come to the forums to propose a specific and radical change to the game, I have to believe that they were capable of first asking for advice. There certainly are participants who are peculiarly stubborn about not taking some advice. Internal to the game: Some of the basics are explained, some are not. For example, the blue side tutorial explains "ToHit" but not damage. From memory: Endurance isn't really explained (nor is Health), but enhancements and inspirations are (and these are things that can be clicked/hovered over.

I hadn't noticed this (Robotics is the only MM I've played since i28p2)... but I've also not been paying attention except to watch the henches get hit easier by Giant Monsters.

Wasn't this also carried over to any of the Pool powers that affect -Res? e.g. Weaken Resolve.

I became bored with the accumulation of Inf many years ago... I swapped to a game of simply accumulating things (recipes, IOs, aethers, merits, catalysts, fishcakes) that the next character will use. I mainly use the market as a garbage disposal mechanism and as a place to get other players' junk that I want to try to use on a new character. I don't have a lot of alts, nor do I power-level... so there isn't much of a need for anything I can't get by simply playing one or more of my existing characters. I think the most recent item I was surprised to see I didn't have immediately on hand was a Scaling Resistance IO... three rolls of converter roulette closed that gap.

This thread?

For solo, I rarely turn up the relative levels until I get closer to 50... I find it more rewarding to fight larger spawn sizes. So "hard content" is only a thing on teams/pugs for me. Teams cover each other. I'm perfectly happy running with only an extra +6% (All) Def from Global IOs until I can do better... but I don't worry too much, since getting defeated has no real impact. If solo, its just some down time for me, if on a team, then unless I'm the only character filling a very particular role (only tanker on a MLTF for example) my defeat isn't holding the team back. I've gotten to the point where I'm now often leveraging more oddball powers into builds (including Tankers!) than chasing more resistance/defense; as I find those builds to be slightly more fun to play. The one build choice I typically go with is to try to have a Kismet +ToHit piece in play, but specifically for when I'm on a team facing +4 enemies... all my characters have something to target against enemies and I'd rather not miss.

I've also never played WoW. I don't think I could even participate in a conversation along the lines of "someone who has never played WoW describes it." My diagnosis: You have too many toggles at level 23... and you are expecting them to do too much at low levels. Shield is a positional defense set, so you may not even need most toggles, depending on how you are playing. Tough is a poor choice, considering it is only S/L. When I take it, I almost never toggle it on. My Shield/ Battle Axe went as follows. Notice I'm also 3-powers deep into a pool, but aside from the travel power none is a toggle. 01 Deflection 01 Chop 02 Battle Agility 04 Gash 06 Mighty Leap 08 Weaken Resolve 10 Active Defense 12 Phalanx Fighting <- This is an Auto 14 Against All Odds <- This is a 1-slot wonder, and somewhat optional 16 Taunt 18 True Grit <- This is an Auto 20 Pendulum 22 Wall of Force

A harsh, but fair closing statement. The game offers many ways to "play like an over-powered hero" and not run out of Endurance.

The OP has stated that they are using every power, as much as possible... so I'm thinking; 1) Sprint and Athletic Run are toggled on at all times. 2) They've taken some or all of: Hasten, Tough, Weave with those clicked/toggled as often as possible. For the VEATS, they're probably running a whole lotta toggles. Keep in mind: at low levels, toggles still burn the same amount of endurance but provide relatively little extra enhancement (of whatever)... and that enhancement values scale with level... which often makes running toggles like Tough (or any low-level Resistance power IMO) not that critical to run solo (when at low level)... and is also the reason why IO pieces like +End, +Recovery are kind of a big deal to slot ASAP.

I use Combat Teleport strictly to position my character for melee/PBAoE attacks. The TP part has some limited value (Mayhem missions, for example). See my bug report on the observed wonkiness with the ToHit Buff.

This is not my experience in the game... except maybe the senility.

I invest in IO pieces that can give +End, +Recovery before level 20, and by that point all my attacks have some endurance reduction in them. The inherent Fitness pool *is* the place to slot these! After these, it becomes straigtforward to work on +MaxEnd Accolades. There are some primary/secondary that will struggle with burning the blue bar. In my experience this is usually due to: Running Hasten as often and as early as possible. (*1) Keeping Toggles on, and not paying attention to the endurance cost of toggles (Sprint, Athletic Run are big culprits) Attacking too often (at low levels, Temp and Prestige attack powers make this easy) <- a typical instanced mission should allow plenty of recovery between spawns when playing solo There are some specific Armors I find require special attention, and a couple of the VEAT paths can be demanding of Endurance. Otherwise the tools I have available can handle the blue bar just fine (Dominators are a sort of special case). I often pooh-pooh Hasten, and a LOT of my meh feels about it originate from my perception (so my fault!) that a LOT of players associate moar attacks/moar often with a "winning strategy"... but unless the focus is only on high-level content with only inherently slowish attacks in a very precise attack chain, it should be possible with smart slotting (and leveraging the easy-to-get IO sets) to not need Hasten to support T1 thru T5 attack powers. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the builds having serious Endurance problems aren't making old-school build choices like Hasten, plus Tough and Weave (the latter two always being toggled on).

Crey shows up as major players in a lot of places, but the most obvious one that has been left off the list is probably the Manticore TF.

...I need my Reactive Defenses, Power Transfer, and Preventive Maintenance to start kickin'!

Stay tuned for "MAKE INFLUEECE A NON ISSUE", with the request that only new players provide feedback...

I suppose there is the possibility that the SOs have been out-leveled.

Vulnerability is a pretty awesome power. If there is anything wrong with it, I'd say the inability to change the color of the effect may be it.

When I was a new player: Endurance is an issue! When I was a slightly experienced player: Taking Hasten before level 20 sure makes Endurance issues worse! When I was an experience player: Hey, thanks for inherent Fitness pool, and slotting my powers with enhancements really helps! Where I am now: Oh yeah, it is up to me to plan to handle Endurance burn.

I was very disappointed when playing a Scrapper using Dual Blades. The most disappointing element of the set for me was the lack of an inherent Build Up. So maybe I'd like it better on a Stalker?... of course it is still pretty much only Lethal damage :P

MMV, but most of my Controller builds with 90s AoE controls were almost never slotted with %damage... I either needed the set bonus in that power and/or the nature of the power made it such that I'd want it slotted with control and recharge anyway.

This is how I felt about what was happening with Maintenance Drone. I've got a long-used routine with my henchmen, and every once in a while I get the sense that there have been some subtle tweaks to henchmen AI (robots are all ranged, so it is pretty easy to notice when something is different).... but without any notes it seems really paranoid to ask about this sort of thing. For example: The Giant Monster ToHit chances were buffed... so when Maintenance Drone wasn't repairing the henchmen, it wasn't as if I could get a huge sample size, but it certainly felt like henches weren't getting healed by the drone as in the past... because Protector Bots were still casting their heals (which aren't great). This turned out to be an introduced bug. A similar 'new' effect I've noticed, but could be attributable to the new ToHits (but feels like it isn't) is that repositioning henchmen, even within Supremacy range (so also FFG, MM auras), seems to make it much more likely that a GM is going to hit them... I'm basing this off of the GM AoEs, when I have a Barrier up on the henches, This isn't the sort of thing that is easy to monitor, and after a week of i28p2 I've basically stopped repositioning henches and getting results (defeat times, hench survival) closer to what I experienced from the previous year.

I don't like this argument about increased resistance... specifically because "85% -> 90%" is referring to an AT that has already extremely high HP, such that the player shouldn't be ignoring how much HP they'd be Regenerating (or gaining, through something like a %Heal), or extra resistance they might gain through a Scaling Damage Resistance effect, or whatever. This specific "math claim" about resistance seems to be ignoring half-a-dozen other features of the game.

I see Hasten as burning a pool choice. On the character I referenced above, I have 4x from Force of Will, 2x Concealment, 1x for Combat Jumping and 1 for Aid Other. Only the Force of Will powers are holding more than 1 slot. EDIT: I also want to add (since it only occasionally is brought up) that the slotting of any Recharge IOs in Hasten will have their potency scale down as a player exemplars. Practically this often means that for some lower content and some builds it becomes necessary to have 3-slotted Hasten in order to have it be "perma". As a practical matter, I rarely take Hasten before level 20 (Hasten doesn't really help most lower tier primary/secondary powers IMO, other pool powers provide more bang-for-the-choice IMO below 20) so I'm pretty comfortable having something like perma-Dom tied to the lowest level an attuned LotG will work at. For such low-level content perma-Dom isn't really necessary IMO, especially if I've got my attacks and controls 5-slotted.

perma-Hasten does not interest me, but perma-Domination does. A recent build: 5x +7.5% from LotG 4x +10% from Purples (3x Damage, 1x Control) 1x +10% sATO 1x +8.75% Reactive Defense <- 6 slots 1x +7.5% Gladiator's Net <- 5 slots 1x +7.5% Basilisk's Gaze <- 4 slots 1x +6.25% Decimation <- 5 slots 1x +6.25 Cloud Senses <- 4 slots 1x +6.25 Positron's Blast <- 5 slots 1x +6.25 Expedient Reinforcement <- 4 slots. I', not crazy about this, because of the set level (and there is a Force Feedback in a power as well)... all this is slight overkill, but I found that the target of +136.25% was covering all my attack chain shenanigans. Perma-dom would be easier, and might scale down below lvl 20, if I used Hasten... but I rather like the sets where I have them, even without considering the global Recharge. I will note: I have at least one Dominator where I didn't catalyze the ATO so I could get 5x +10% and another +8.75%. Practically this typically results in a net of only +1.25%