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I often use Infiltration as the travel power on Blasters... I usually find the builds to be quite tight in terms of pool and power choices. My preference is for some sort of Super Jump (I like the Force of Will pool variant quite a bit), followed closely by Flying (Mystic Flight will do in a pinch). I have "super speedsters" but I really dislike how jumping while using variants of super speed (certainly Speed of Sound) kills inertia; it breaks my immersion and it a PITA when trying to navigate most zones.

FWIW, I believe that Blueside, it is impossible to be given all of the Atlas Park arcs without using Ouroboros. IIRC it is the later (on Live) arcs (Sondra Costel?, Officer Fields?) that you get either one or the other.

Kick is an attack that can be made while the character's hands are holding something else, like a weapon or a shield. I disagree about the "joke" of fighting... self-buffing of other powers is slightly different than synergy IMO (even though that is what it is called!). The fighting buffs certainly aren't OP, but very few other power pools offer anything like self-buffing among pool powers. The only other ones I can think of, and these are reaches IMO, are: Flight, if you take an additional toggle Evasive Maneuvers. Medicine, if you take an additional click Field Medic. Presence, if you take both attacks Intimidate and Invoke Panic, you can try to stack a higher magnitude Fear effect on a single target. This is more like synergy, but most of this pool's powers are practically anti-synergistic with each other. I've lost track of what, if anything, stacks in Concealment. My apologies if my thinking is incomplete. I don't really consider stacking from Vengeance with a Leadership toggle as the same type of direct buffing of other powers in the same pool, even if it is obviously "synergistic".

I also really like the animation of Air Superiority! In terms of K00L PWRS being kept behind gates... I definitely feel like Tough/Weave in the Fighting pool are far from the worst. Imagine the griping if Hasten required a pre-requisite power pick! I've long complained about how the first three power choices of the Presence pool offer almost no practical synergy, and I've come to view Flight as an outlier because how 4 of 5 powers are toggles that (almost entirely) affect only the user... and one of those toggles is a "makes the other powers work better", similar to Medicine. I'm accustomed to the configuration of the power pools (especially with the HC tweaks) but even so I'd rank Presence, Medicine, Flight and Speed ahead of Fighting in terms of "pools to look at". All Presence need IMO is the ability to take Intimidate (single-target Fear) without either Pacify or Provoke at level 4, drop the pre-requisite for Invoke Panic to a single other pool power and raise the min level of Unrelenting to 20. I think this would make it more like the Origin pools. Medicine and Flight should probably have Field Medic/Evasive Maneuvers reworked into either auto powers or better yet worked into the other pool powers' effects and replaced with something else, possibly enemy facing. Speed doesn't get much thought from me, but I can't say I recall ever seeing people recommend Burnout or Whirlwind... maybe one of those from the days of Live.

I don't go out of my way to try to get the combo... part of this is button mashing, part of it was paying attention to it was sapping my personal enjoyment. Sweeping Cross is an attack I found I enjoyed more once I started facing larger spawns. It can take slightly different enhancement sets than the other attacks. My StJ/WP scrapper skipped the final two powers in WP. I supplemented WP with Maneuvers, Toughness and Weave... also Shadow Meld, but I rarely use it. As far as the secondary goes, I have rather minimal slotting in everything except Fast Healing (5x Panacea) and Rise to the Challenge (6xPreventive Medicine). The many Auto powers offer lots of opportunities for Enhancement pieces. For a while, my StJ/WP was leveraging the Presence pool (with Unrelenting)... this was fun, but it ended up consuming a little too much in terms of extra power picks and slots for too little in return.

So many questions, and presented in such a disorganized way! Are you referring to the Melee attacks, S/L Resistance, and/or +Def (All)? The pools are more than just travel powers, they offer all sorts of different things. Players can lean into different types of attacks/animations, or pick up a type of attack they normally don't have access to. Fitness happens to offer melee, including a PBAoE cone. Self resistance/Defense powers come in some primary/secondaries, and not at all in others. If a character with such a power from their AT already has some, getting more does offer utility. The scaling upwards of defenses and resistances is part of the game. "Incredibly potent" manifests itself through Enhancements... even if Enhancements to don't factor into "balance" thinking, it would be silly to ignore the many game pieces that could be added on top of what Tough and Weave provide without enhancements. As a practical matter, whenever I take Tough and/or Weave I rarely even toggle them on, no matter the AT. I'm against gish-galloping, does that bring any sunshine to your day?

I always find myself reaching for MOAR melee positional Defense on Tankers, for reasons like I can always move into melee range melee secondary attacks punchvoke I can (almost) always Taunt enemies to come into melee range Often any given scrum gets to the point where it looks like all melee all the time, but part of me wonders if Melee positional defense is really helping me absorb alpha strikes.... it seems like so many enemies will do some sort of ranged attack as part of their alpha. I can't argue that melee defenses don't work, it is more that (especially while leveling up) those various ranged attacks seem to stand out... especially the ones that apply -Defense debuffs.

I put a thumbs down, pretty much because both Tough and Weave are incredibly potent power choices for muling Enhancement sets, in addition to their inherent powers. I know there is the whole "IOs don't factor into balance", but Resistance and Defense are core elements of the game, they really shouldn't be made (even more) trivial to come by. Even though it is rare that I lean into 4+ powers from the Fighting pool, I think it is one of the better "legacy" power pools, considering everything it offers and how the powers compliment each other. It has far less of an opportunity cost IMO than Presence, and the way Fighting's attacks boost each other is more natural IMO than the Flight pool's toggles or even the Medicine pool's progression.

I have a couple of characters that aren't exactly unique in their approach, but turned out to be surprisingly good at clearing maps and/or surviving when maybe they shouldn't. My most-favorite weird character is a Mind/Poison/Energy Controller. He was build explicitly to make enemies fall down (so also, Force of Will) or otherwise stumble, tremble, whatever. With his controls, debuffs and a good bit of %damage he turned out to be brutally efficient across a very wide amount of content. A slightly less imaginative pairing is my Dark/Dark/Soul Controller. This one doesn't win any awards for clear times, but it ends up mostly not falling to large spawns that should (on paper) completely outclass it. It wasn't built with surviving in mind, it just so happens that the combination of powers and slotting choices make it weirdly (weird to me anyway) able to handle live through some pretty grueling encounters.

This is IMO key. Eventually you will get enhancement sets (this isn't the Day 0 game of Live) so the attacks will have some recharge... it isn't like you will be standing around with nothing to do. There are a handful of Blaster combos that I feel lend themselves to taking more attacks than would be otherwise necessary (especially if character concept is a factor), but generally I don't plan to take all of them. As for how I choose? AoE is generally superior to single-target. My #1 rationale is that RNG is a cruel, cruel mistress. I find very little in the game to be as frustrating when trying to drop an enemy with ST attacks and missing two out of every five (even at 95% ToHit). At least with AoE when I miss some, I still hit some. AoE also have better options IMO for slotting with enhancement sets. While leveling Blasters, I tend to try different things. Sometimes powers like melee attacks work really well, other times not-so-much. The only sorts of powers I have mostly (*1) given up on trying with Blasters any more are single-target controls. I'll take one if I can double-up on the same type of control for increased magnitude against a chosen (single) target, but otherwise I feel like I am not leaning into what a Blaster does best: damage. I'm aware that single target attacks (Holds especially) can be slotted with a lot of %damage... but often I find whatever slots could be put into a single-target power could probably just be put into other powers to increase their output. (*1) By all means, try them... no matter how many times I read the same rationalization for a single-target immobilize, I'm pretty much never going to take such a power if I can help it considering that the arguments in favor of such a thing are either for 1% of game content (AVs that eventually run) or get can possibly be leveraged into peculiar combos (e.g. Atomic). I simply am at the point at which I can't justify the investment in either slots or power choices for a typically niche power.... and I take single-target Fears!

This should be my current Assault/Plant/Arsenal build: Some comments: While playing, I found very little synergy between the primary and secondary "attacks". I found it too clumsy to try to use the secondary attacks. It was more convenient for me to leverage cones and AoE without trying to get in close most of the time. The Epic Arsenal simply reinforced (or leveraged) my choice to go minimal on the Plant secondary. So much %damage! There is a healthy amount of damage-over-time in this build, so I wanted more "up front" %damage... and when possible off-brand damage types. I didn't exactly skimp on set bonuses, because... ...So many attacks! I wanted to lean-into doing all sorts of rando-stuff with the Rifle! I didn't necessarily want a 'clean and simple' attack chain. This is NOT a tank-mage. It has weaknesses... but it was built to be all about FIREPOWER. It is hella fun.

My Arsenal slotting ended up as: Body Armor: 4x Unbreakable Guard Cryo Freeze Ray: HO Endoplasm (Acc/Mezz), 5x %damage Sleep Grenade: 5x Fortunata Hypnosis LRM Rocket: Ragnarok Accuracy/Recharge (+5), 4x %damage I realize I haven't shared my build, I'll try to do that within 24 hours. I took a somewhat crazy approach leaning much harder into %damage than I would normally recommend (for a Blaster), yet it kinda works. I practically ignored the secondary to be able to focus on all the gun action. I didn't take Surveillance. My build already has Weaken Resolve (much earlier), and with only two more power picks I needed mules for KB protection and a Shield Wall.

Another data point: The final three rifle choices in the Assault Mastery set (for Blasters) do not appear on the costume when selected in the costume creator. One of these IIRC is teh Shard Cannon.

"almost always"

I made my points earlier in the thread about my preference for the Redside content, yet I typically play Blueside. I think my reasons are: It is easier to level at whatever pace (slow, fast) I choose. That's not to say it is impossible to level quickly redside, but because I like the arcs more, the red starting zone being harder to travel in, fewer players all contribute to this. The Red starting zone is a PITA. Grandville is also no cakewalk/cakejump/cakefly. Aside from the travel being "complicated", I kinda hate the "defeat 5 snakes" early mission when I have to travel around for 15 minutes trying to find some open-world spawns of them. Content is more familiar, and useful accolades are mostly more straightforward/easy to work towards blue side. This is like, just my opinion, but often I will take villains blueside to get two of the statboosts, whereas I only take heroes red to get one of them.

Force of Will has a lot to offer, especially Tankers IMO. My typical choices go something like this: #1 Mighty Leap as the travel power. It's a PDQ zone travel power and it has the fun "Takeoff" option for an occasional lulz moment in PBAoE combat. (Tanks!) #2 Weaken Resolve as the hard target debuff. Accuracy is all it needs, but does accept a further %debuff or %damage at reliable proc chances. #3 Wall of Force as an early-build ranged AoE cone. I find this to be a wonderful addition to a Tanker's arsenal of tricks for getting the attention of distant critters. There are a lot of different ways to slot this as well. I try to configure a Tanker build to get those three powers as early as possible. Often this just requires delaying the choice some power (often a toggle) from the primary. It always feels like my character has gotten their Epic power pool powers before level 20! After taking those three powers, it isn't a hard choice to pick up Unleash Potential. I typically will try to 6-slot that power because I am a fan of a couple of different 6-slot bonuses from either Heal or Defense sets, and not every primary/secondary offers me the chance to slot those sets. The long timer on Unleash Potential doesn't really bother me on a high-HP character, especially if there is some Scaling Damage Resistance in play. The only Health Enhancement for muling would be IMO the Preventive Maintenance %absorb piece. There are of course several Defense globals that could go into it as well. I don't think I'd ever consider adding EndMod procs to it, YMMV. I have at least one character that picked Project Will instead of Weaken Resolve... but that was a case of specifically wanting to have a single-target ranged attack for Enhancement set slotting reasons.

FREEM! knockback can be protected against, IIRC it is magnitude 20. My melee types have been targeting 14 points of KB protection via build/power choices, a +10 point KB protection from a SG base buff (90 minutes duration) seems to nullify FREEM! I'm ok with the FREEM! addition, as magnitude 12+ KB is a rather rare type of enemy control, typical seen only on unique individual critters. If we need a head-canon reason for it, let's just pretend that it is where all the knockback from slotted KB->KD enhancements go.

@Spaghetti Betty point about team buffs is a valid one, and related to my comments about not necessarily needing to turn on Resistance toggles, as well as it not being necessary to slot them particularly deep (modulo Enhancement set bonuses, 'natch). I'm particularly flummoxed about how the Invulnerability Tanker was running out of Endurance without taking attacks (beyond the level 1 and Taunt picks I suppose). I kinda want to see what that build looked like, especially below level 10. Even simply picking primary powers before level 10 would have been two auto powers. I suppose if the player was somehow relying on START/P2W attacks, yeah those could burn through Endurance.

Funny thing about this... resistance toggles below level 10 are IMO barely worth toggling on, and really not worth slotting... especially for "SO" theory crafting. So exactly what is an "Alpha Tanker" doing with the build before this point?

It is IMO pointless to engage with the OP with anything approaching constructive dialog, based on the long history of the OP Starting blunt, nuance-free threads explaining "how ____ is bad, and that's just how it is" (often the blank is filled with an archetype) Offering a tangential rationalization for the blunt statement, often with some peculiar baseline Harboring an apparent unwillingness to rethink any part of (1), no matter the topic or to reconsider an review of (2), because... there is no such thing as a shared reality? Even when good advice is posted on one of these threads, I don't think the advice benefits anyone... because players looking for advice wouldn't start with such a thread and... I want to believe... those other players would ask "what am I missing about ____?" and not immediately start with judgemental nonsense. In this particular case, the thesis of the OP is prima facie absurd. Viewed in the context of other claims made by the same account in the last 24 hours (been playing since hour 1 of Live, hosting teams for 4.6 years) it is inconceivable that this player has seen a team "frozen before battle" or "cracked the code" and come up with the tank that has now saved the game for the rest of us. Does anybody really think that Invulnerability is a bad Tanker primary after having tried it? What could possibly have been the metric? Fighting Vahzilok at level 6 in the early days of Live? Y'all have been sweethearts, but we've seen this before.

I know it was changed, the steps and conditions I am referring to are: keeping an eye on the henchmen, to decide if it would be worthwhile to detonate resummoning henchmen, and buffing them EDIT: so for me, this is more mental bandwidth to juggle for keeping the squad alive (including bodyguard mode) and defeating enemies.

I'm mostly familiar with Traps as the MM secondary. Quickie: Don't put %procs in anything that doesn't "leave behind" a thing. A %proc might trigger on cast, but otherwise this is usually a waste of a slot. Hot takes on the MM secondary: Caltrops is my preferred first pick. Patch Slows have a more general use than... Web Grenade is skipped. It has uses, but they are very limited. Triage Beacon is skipped. It isn't bad for what it does, but what it does is of limited use for many MMs. Probably more useful for leveling builds than for level 50s. Acid Mortar is a must take. Force Field Generator is a must take. Poison Trap is a must take. Seeker Drones is a power I like, but I skip. Not enough utility for my taste. Trip Mine is skip for me. I find I'm too active to use this, and I don't have the slots to invest in it. Detonator. I haven't swapped into this. I can see how it could be used, yet this feels like too many steps and conditions to leverage for better damage than just having the henchmen do damage. Basically it comes down to me picking only a limited number of "drop in place" elements, and focusing on the things that speed up defeats via debuffs to act as a force multiplier.

I enjoy watching the Fake Nemesis pop a personal force field and then fall to a damage-over-time attack.