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This is the current state of affairs. This is the part of the suggestion that feels slightly entitled to me. If the proposed box is checked, all anyone will know is "did someone check a box?". It won't impart any special knowledge if the character is "being used" (maybe it is just holding inf, salvage or enhancements?) or if has been "forgotten about." Don't get me wrong: I think the person who took the name first is entitled to it, I simply cannot think of a better measure than this. I also don't see what the big deal is about not having any form of communication with someone else... who happens to have taken a name that someone else wants. As @Ghost wrote: Why would a player not check the box that they want the name they just came up with?

I did this to explicity avoid a wall of text. The first block is my thinking about what I see as the defect (which may or may not be relevant to the suggestion). The other two blocks are meant to mimic the code, at least as it is represented in City of Data. Not everyone looks at the City of Data representation; I wanted to include it mostly to demonstrate (a) it is possible and (b) I actually looked at multiple powers when considering making a suggestion.

I get a sense that the OP is trying to come to some method by which there is an fractionally greater chance that they could maybe(*1) get a name they want from someone else who got to it before them... but what I am reading (and I admit, this is not what is exactly written!) is that there is a multiple aspects of entitlement: being entitled to a name being entitled to know that the person who already has the name either: wants the name (they already have) or knows that somebody else also wants the name. The PM/email is something of a red herring, because I think we already have the option to ignore PM/emails, and even if a checkbox is implemented people could still send PM/emails (presumably to ask "please uncheck the box"). (*1) Unwritten in a lot of the hypotheticals for getting names released is the very likely circumstance that more than two players are interested in the same name. Each player after the first person to use the name feels the same.

I feel like responding to a couple of other points that are tangential to my request, yet since they were introduced... My argument isn't about "I want the good stuff and not the early picks", it is A player that wants Invoke Panic would still have to take two other power choices from the Presence pool, just like the limitations for every other pool. Thinking I am arguing against this is a complete misreading of what I wrote. There is a LOT of direct synergy among the powers of the Fighting pool, as well as indirect synergy. Direct: MOAR smashing in the attacks, Indirect in that you want to stand and fight you get some toggles that help with that. Let's also not ignore the existence of some excellent global enhancement pieces that can get slotted in those powers and the toggles never even have to be turned on! But I digress. The only real synergy in the Presence pool is that Intimidate and Invoke Panic have the potential to stack. The other powers offer no synergy amongst themselves, and as I see it offer radically different approaches to being used in PvE combat. "Powers are not balanced around IO", yet I feel obligated to point out that there are only Two Threat Enhancement pieces which contain an Accuracy element (needed for Pacify and Provoke), and those two pieces are in two different sets. There is also now a D-Sync, but that is a late addition and an expensive one! The Presence pool powers of Intimidate and Invoke Panic are already coded to give extra benefits to Dominators (based only on the AT), per City of Data.

I agree with this, and per my proposal the Presence power pools would still be less useful and effective than the primary/secondary counterparts. The primary powers have better recharge times (both options are generally bad for %proc, if anyone is thinking about those), and IIRC the pool powers cost more endurance and have a shorter range than any of the primary/secondaries. Of course I mentioned the lack of a necessary ToHit check for the primary/secondary Taunts... I'm not sure about the Placates, but I know the Presence pool does require a ToHit for Pacify. The number of targets consideration is a bit of a wash: Pacify is always single target, Placate is not. Confront is always a single target whereas Provoke has a chance of hitting 5.

I will be discussing the PvE aspects of the pool. I am not ignorant of the PvP side, but for the purposes of my suggestion I will be only refering to PvE. Background for my interest: I like the Presence pool, as it offers a unique set of powers but I find it has some issues that make it rather clumsy to dive into. I will briefly enumerate what I see as its primary barriers to entry. I don't intend to address all of these perceived issues! My specific suggestions are motivated by this: The barrier to entry into Presence pool requires the choice of either/both Pacify or/and Provoke. My biggest complaints about the Presence pool boil down to this: Several ATs will be required, if they want any of the "last three" powers in the Presence pool, to either Take a power that is orthogonal to a power in their primary/secondary (e.g. Tankers with Pacify) Take an inferior (primarily because ToHit check, but also duration, etc. ) version of a power already their primary/secondary My suggestion is to add archetype checks to both Pacify and Provoke to almost duplicate what the relevant primary/secondary powers would be doing. I am not suggesting a change to the ToHit requirements or number of Targets, or range, etc. of either Pacify or Provoke. Examples to be added for Provoke (pardon my poor coding, I am not sure of the check for all the Widows). All are 100% Examples to be added to Pacify (again, forgive my poor coding). All are 100%. Again, I'm not sure if my code hits all of the VEATS correctly. Ideally, the other PvP effects could also be changed but I didn't feel like reviewing all of the PvP effects for (target>enttype eq 'player') I am aware there is a (lingering?) concern about how these effects manifest in PvP, so I'd be fine with not changing the PvP portions of the Presence pool powers. TL; DR: Let's add a little bit of code to the Pacify and Provoke powers so that if a player who already has similar powers in their primary/secondary wants to leverage the Presence power pool, they aren't automatically taking a power that is inferior (in magnitude, effect) to a power from their primary, in addition to whatever penalties there may be to range, recharge time, endurance cost by taking a pool power. I am aware that Provoke has a larger target cap than Confront, but Confront has no ToHit check and I believe has a greater range (in all cases), so this doesn't feel (to me, YMMV) like trying to sneak in an improved form of Confront for Widows and Scrappers. The only other change I would make to the Presence pool is to allow the choice of Intimidate at level 4, and remove the restriction that either Pacify or Provoke be taken as a pre-requisite for Intimidate. I do not think it would be game-breaking to allow level 4 thru 14 players to have access to a single-target Fear attack with a duration of 10.43 seconds.

Immediately logging out after a respec and relogging puts trays "back to where they were", although it will fill empty spots with temp powers. This suggestion isn't terrible... however there are temp powers that I keep in my trays. Envenomed Daggers for instance, and often Flight packs.

Don't skip Taunt! You can mitigate not having it while solo, but IMO a Tanker without Taunt should probably just be rerolled as a Scrapper. I don't like tanks that rely on aura as their means of grabbing aggro... even with Axe Cyclone in the toolbox. I don't have a Bio Tanker, but I agree that you will benefit from having almost all of the powers from the primary. Luckily, Adaptation gets no slots, and a few others don't require many slots. I would probably skip/delay Genetic Contamination. I wouldn't skip Parasitic Aura, but I might not take it until much later in the build than when it is first available. It has a long inherent recharge time and I feel that you ought to be able to Tank most of the game's content without relying on a T9 power. My /Battle Axe Tanker IIRC took: A few comments about my Axe choices. My build is a Shield/BA. Shield plays differently than Bio, but I feel like each has similar powers that offer "offense" despite being a Tanker primary. 1) Yes, %proc. I don't often include the Force Feedback +Recharge (global), but on my build I had some longish recharge powers that I felt could benefit from a little more recharge. See comment by @mcdoogss above. 2) I delayed Build Up, and also opted to not add any recharge to it for this build... I needed the slot to get some more Toxic/Psi resists. I like to have Build Up available ASAP, but for my /BA tanker I found it to be less important than on other builds. I don't think Bio would benefit that much from it either. My Tanker thinking on Build Up is basically this: I want it to put my tanker in a position to one-two-shot a Paragon Protector that has gone Moment of Glory.... this means the build has to have massive ToHit without Build Up and significant high damage fast attacks. YMMV 3) Don't skip Taunt. It's a key early piece of the Tanker toolkit that remains useful across all content. There will be enemies that won't be moved by your attacks; there will be spawns that are widely spread out and won't be within a Tanker's AoE. I 6-slot Mocking Beratement on Tankers, I feel that the set bonuses are extremely synergistic for Tankers. If you are allergic to Taunt, you can get by without dedicating any extra slots to it beyond Threat/Recharge and no one will be any wiser about your choice. Teammates will know if you aren't taunting. 4) Battle Axe is a slow-ish set for attack chains. I did not put Hasten in my build; once I had set bonuses etc. the chain smoothed itself out without Hasten. I also added a few other tricks from pool powers to fill in gaps while leveling; those tricks are still valuable to me even with the level 50 build. If you don't need more Toxic/Psi, drop the FF +Recharge piece from Pendulum and move the %Fire from Cleave into it. This frees up a slot to put more Recharge into Build Up... or wherever. Come to think of it... I may have done exactly this!

I can almost appreciate the suggestion for being a a sort of "well maybe you (player) don't really want the name you chose to use"... ultimately I think so little would come out of it that this "one simple change" would have no meaningful impact. I'm going to rewrite a couple of things I usually add to "free up my name" threads: Any specific character name could have just as much (or more!) sentimental value to someone else. Avoid a victim mentality. It is impossible to know the thoughts and feelings of another player. I well remember on the days of Live (and to a lesser extent on HC) wanting to recreate a beloved character from one server on another, and finding the name was taken. I felt a temporary pain of loss, but I realized that such a player would feel the same if migrating to the server where I was using the name. We players really can exercise some creativity. Writing only for myself, I appreciate seeing clever, well-considered names. I am confident that I have some character names on one HC shard that somebody would want... this confidence is born from playing specific characters in a rather public way, and within weeks seeing several near clones in name and sometimes costume. I've gotten direct comments from other players on my newest characters along the lines of "I'm disappointed I didn't think of that name". Personally: I have a rather small roster of characters I play. Among them are level 50s with thousands of merits accumulated... and yet despite rarely playing them now, it is extremely unlikely that I'd give up their names to a seemingly random request from another player. My first instinct, right or wrong, would be to think "I've had this character for years, why do I think this random person would be a better keeper of the name?"

I rather like this piece of advice. I can imagine a variety of circumstances for which a player might want a full team, but precious few of those hypothetical situations would require anything like a full team. If folks are looking for a challenge in sub-50 content, running with fewer players on a team strikes me as being more acceptable to most "tough guys" than choosing debuff/buff options on some random SF/TF.

I have no issues with a dual-box player in mission, behind closed doors, beyond whatever grumpiness might involve any other PUG mate. I do believe that open-world multi-boxing, such as for hunting Giant Monsters or other zone events, ought to be verbotten. Rationale follows: The multi-box player is reaping greater rewards than a solo player in the open world. The multi-box player is potentially denying solo players an opportunity to reap rewards. For example: the 60-second-long zone Giant Monster defeats. It has been my experience that multi-box Giant Monster hunters also happen to be really bad about "cleaning up" after a Giant Monster defeat... maybe because they are worried about their multi-box more than they are worried about the zone they are in? I realize it takes a little bit of effort (i.e. cross Kings Row) to clean up after a Paladin, but there is next-to-no effort required to know that the Croatoan Grim Vale event has been reset. Leagues can also be bad about Croatoa, but there are enough multi-boxers that I regularly see them leaving the Vale not reset. The GM rewards are an order of magnitude smaller than something like a Hamidon or Mothership raid, but I'd rather see open-world multi-boxing of GM and zone event fights be restricted than a daily clock be implemented on all GM rewards. I feel that the daily GM reward clocks may have been a contributing factor to why I've seen so many more dual-box GM hunters (Monstrous Aethers contribute as well, I am sure).

A couple comments about ATO and catalysts. If I am not rushing a character, I will typically have about 600 merits by the time it gets to 50. When I am rushing, it is more like 150, probably from TFs/SFs that I would have done anyway. I personally burn a new 50s merits on Boosters, but if you don't have ATO, I think there are worse things to spend Merits on. It may not make the most "economic" sense, but it is somewhat "self sufficient". Catalysts drop 1 every 24 hours for level 50s, and they are surprisingly cheap on the market. I stockpile catalysts. I end up using more for attuning crafted enhancements than Winter/ATO upgrades, but that is me being 'self-sufficient'... the Auction house is a cheap way to attune most enhancement pieces. A solo player without much time can do quite a bit of content that yields healthy merit rewards, such as the Signature Story arcs. When I find characters in a "lull between levels", and I want to solo, I'll do things like: Radio/Newspaper missions, plus the Safeguard/Mayhem PVP zones (exploration, plus PVP unlocks) Ouroboros (particularly for badges, but there are some decent merits to be had)

I am leveling up a Claws/ Scrapper right now, and while I am going to have an "expensive" build when done, right now I am facing the following question on the primary: How many attacks do I really need (for most content)? I don't min-max recharge times and attack chains, so I'm not trying to find a theoretical answer. My initial play has had these choices, all by level 8. T2 Swipe T3 Slash T4 Spin T5 Followup Leveraging the ATOs and some leftover PVP/Winters/O-Force, I didn't need many slots to make these four attacks feel like a solid attack chain from the get-go. I could tell I was playing a Scrapper really early. I picked up T8 Eviscerate at 22, and upon midlife respec intend to have T9 Shockwave at 26. The T7 Focus doesn't feel critical to my intended style of play, but I have slots for it and I was thinking of dropping it in at level 32 or 35... I have other choices for this build that demand I take more pool powers early. While I enjoyed having all those melee attacks early, I'm thinking that Slash will be dropped. Am I in left field with this? Because of other powers I am putting in the build, I think this will have Hasten (almost perma FWIW) at 32 or 35... so I am feeling that chaining attacks isn't going to be too much of an issue while Hasten is available... I should mention: I plan to slot the attacks for set bonuses (and enhancement values).

I'm going to springboard off this post... The fundamentals of damage-to-defeat critters as the basis of almost all rewards in the game (Inf, XP, drops, etc.) is why I think the current implementation of %damage (i.e. "procs") is so healthy for the game's variety. I doubt I would enjoy a game where "game balance" directly turned "controls" into equivalent rewards as for defeats. I rather like the current state of the game where I can construct control ATs to lean hard into the controls or mix it up with some %damage. How to make Controllers "feel better" for controlling? I don't really know. My Controllers are less bothered by fast-moving +Nx8 content by the opening thesis of the original post... maybe it is experience with which critters to focus on? Maybe it is the variety of controls/debuffs/buffs I typically make sure to have available? My controllers tend to get peeved when there are enemy critters that have a seeming endless amount of protection and/or resistance and also engage in "run away" AI antics. Igneous, Warwolves are common critters, but there are some EB level enemies. Basically, whenever it becomes extremely difficult for a solo controller to "stack" enough control onto some of these rather common enemies, I get a little peeved... it's not like Warwolves have some special weakness that balances their crazy behavior.

Here is another vote for "you don't need to get multiple levels in a single session". One of the nice features of the current Homecoming is that players can choose their T7/T8/T9 powers (as well as most of the Epics) earlier in a character's career. The positives manifest themselves in many ways; one of them is that it is possible to experiment with a more-or-less complete suite of powers for a character earlier than we used to be able to do on Live. Obviously we are waiting for more enhancement slots between 35 and 50, yet I like to see how those powers are working for me to get an idea of what sort of attack chains should I be using, what quality-of-life slotting should be considered, and if there are any hidden gem powers I can leverage. Writing only for myself: I find it easy to slip into a mode of thinking that I've "solved" certain power sets and ATs. That is: I am tempted to look at a power set, identify the optimal power picks and slotting choices, and "see" what the level 50 build will be and imagine how it will play. I fight this mode of thought on almost every character I build... and the levels 30-50 are key for me to get a feel for the choices I'm making. It is common that I discover something subtle about slotting choices. It is not that rare that I find some power to be of low utility and can drop it. I suppose it is possible to do a similarly deep level of testing with a level 50 build (as I have done this too!) but I find I learn more about the various choices by playing content up to 50.

I'll answer "No, it is not merely risk acceptance." Answers follow for %damage procs. Sometimes the damage component of a power is low enough that sometimes more damage (via a proc) is better than simply boosting the damage component via an enhancement. Sometimes a player (points to self) wants "off brand" damage, even if it comes via %proc. For example, there are some enemies that resist Psi a lot, so having non-Psi damage in a character that does mostly Psi can yield improvements in clear times. There are other factors that play into the decision, on top of "what can I do to improve %proc chances", but those are the two primary things I consider. Some players appear to slot %procs just because they can.

I hear you... I did a cursory glance at other power pools to see which ones had 4 of 5 powers be toggles, and I didn't see any. While looking I wanted to see which ones (if any) had 4 of 5 powers that didn't affect enemy critters, and I also didn't notice any. As I wrote, Flight pool strikes me as being odd... I take those four toggles on MMs, and almost always three of them on "fliers", without complaints... it's partially that when I am in another travel power pool I always feel like I have more variety of options, with the possible exception of Concealment.

I find myself concentrating on these, roughly in order: Characters I am leveling Characters I am "finishing" (accolades, certain temp powers, sometime incarnates) Characters I am "accumulating" with (AH, merits) When I have to pick from my roster teaming, I prefer to use a character that has some "hybrid" characteristics, like control/damage or buff/debuff. If it is more of a low/no AoE character I try to go with damage/survivability.

On Blue I like to run the Tina and Marie missions in PI. On Red, this is the time to run the Patron arcs among others. Basically: do the stuff you need for accolades.

Wall of Force on Tankers, slotted with %damage (because Tanker Ranged Damage Scaling), is something I find fun to use. I primarily use Unrelenting as a damage buff, or when characters are being ground down by enemies. It also is a rez.

I had a similar experience at the Department of Motor Vehicles... except that the other person had outstanding warrants! I had to suggest that the state office check the driver's license information... of the state-issued license I was renewing.... before I could conclude my business.

Since Penny Yin is the weekly, I ran a few more non-Brutes through the Penny Yin TF at +0x1 Beam/EA Sentinel: 12m 20sec. Warshade: 20m 20sec. Obviously both Brute and Tankers need to be nerfed to make the Warshade feel better. /s

Imagine if the final power in the Flight pool was a toggle that made you fly faster.. oh wait... Excuse, back to the Medicine pool. TL;DR: I think it is fine. Re-read the post by @Glacier Peak above. I don't see the role of the Medicine pool to be to turn characters without healing powers into healers, I see the pool as a way to give a limited number of healing/support powers to characters that want them... plus (as mentioned in the referenced post) a pretty good %damage melee attack option. I'm not categorically opposed to making some updates to the Medicine pool, for reasons: #1 The Medicine pool occupies a peculiar, particular part of design space from my PoV... there isn't often much need for healing (+status) that can't be addressed by the use of Inspirations... or just running away and allowing Regeneration to do its thing. Since Inspirations are essentially just 'click powers', I don't know why a character who invests an actual power pick needs to have those early powers be interruptible. #2 In a lot of team play (in my experience), preemptively applying the Absorb from Spirit Ward (Sorcery pool) to someone on the team who is likely to be taking damage is probably superior to retroactively applying Aid Other to someone that has taken damage. This doesn't sit right with me.

I find the Flight pool to be something of an odd duck. I don't know what I'd want changed about it, but here are my thoughts, pretty much every time I play my characters who went deep into the Flight pool: Air Superiority: I like that this power is in the pool! Alternate melee attack with a fun animation. Hover and Fly: Not the same thing, but kind of the same thing. Obvious differences that we all know and love, I find I need both but then... Evasive Maneuvers: makes Hover and Fly "better"... but I primarily only use it for +Fly speed... and I think this is because I have run out of slots for Hover and Fly! Group Fly: Unique sort of power that I think is fine for what it is. Sidestepping Group Fly's potential effect on teammates (because henchmen/pets), 4 of the 5 powers are strictly affecting only the player picking the pool... which is a little bit of an outlier. For me... it feels like Evasive Maneuvers is the oddball. I like having the "flight control"... lack of control while using Flight is a design feature of the game I know... but it feels weird to me to have to (a) pick an extra power and (b) toggle it on and (c) have the other power(s) also toggled on to get the full effect. It's not as if there aren't other powers in pools that aren't "auto". I also don't like keeping it in my power tray! I suppose if I was going to propose a change to the Flight Pool, it would be to make Evasive Maneuvers an Auto power.

IIRC: Confront is an auto-hit in PvE, Provoke (presence pool) requires a ToHit check in PvE.