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I remember the discussions about Detonator... my play style is mostly GM hunting with my Traps MM, so for a "finishing" move it might work, but otherwise I simply don't have enough mental bandwidth to do the mental-math to optimize when/which henchman to go boom and juggle the bodyguard mode demands. My build is also super-tight in terms of chosen powers (see comments above about skipping so many Traps powers). I have one power I'd happily sacrifice, but it is a pre-req for the Fighting pool and there simply isn't another option (in my build) for Tough.

Specific to %procs: I always check the AH before listing them. There are quite a few %procs that (some) sellers appear to list incredibly high, despite the observation that very few builds could use those pieces and/or very few shared builds opt to use those pieces. This was true years ago, and it is still true. Trap of the Hunter %Lethal, I'm calling you out! There are a few others that used to have relatively large imbalances in for-sales and open bids, and everytime I check those the circumstances haven't changed. There are a few other things that I believe impact %proc sales, including new power sets and/or changes to existing powers/ATs. One example is this (my perception): Powers that don't do Knockback against even-or-higher level mobiles are less likely to "need" a Sudden Acceleration KB->KD piece... and it isn't like a lot of the new sets are adding multiple powers that do Knockback, so a single Overwhelming Force may be all that some players need... if they care at all! Obliteration and Bombardment are IMO an interesting case study in how the available level (30-50) is probably working against their desirability, because prior to level 27 (or 30) there are multiple options for other %damage pieces to be added to powers. The %Fire from Bombardment is IMO a nice mixed damage type for most of my characters, but the %Smashing from Obliteration is slightly more meh.

I have no issues with the "take a knee" animation. As @Jacke notes: the Pseudopets need to be slotted with Accuracy. I'm ok with this, because if they had a better base Accuracy most of them would become insanely powerful %proc bombs. I feel like this is just "one of those things" that Traps players need to learn, or need to accept from other players willing to explain it to them. My attitude on Triage Beacon is that this is the sort of power to take while leveling up, especially if the player can't afford enhancements for Defense or doesn't understand how to manage Regeneration. I think it is probably the worst of the low-level "healing" powers, but my opinion is that the current (2024-era) game deprioritizes all such powers. I'd only suggest a slight change: if Triage Beacon also boosted Recovery, I think it would be better (the blue bar is spent more commonly than the green bar) and I don't think it would be game breaking. (I still don't think I'd take it, but I can see a stronger case being made for taking it.) My personal perception of Traps is this: I like it because I can skip so many powers in it. On my MM, I've skipped: T1 Web Grenade (fine for a ST immobilize, but such powers have such a limited utility compared to what other powers can do) T3 Triage Beacon, because it is a fast-moving world, and who takes damage at a rate such that more +Regeneration is an important consideration? T7 Seeker Drones (I feel that the "fire-and-forget" aspect of them works against both the Stun and the -ToHit) T8 Trip Mine (Personally I feel that trying to commit to a stationary potential source of damage narrows strategic options, also it takes slots better used elsewhere for MMs) T9 Detonator (I didn't take it before it was Detonator... I understand it was improved but it just doesn't fit my play style of "debuff and kill")

While I am not specifically looking for Supremacy, I am monitoring The buffs affecting my henchmen The distance to my henchmen The first is mostly because occasionally henchmen decide to stop traveling; they end up far from me. Generally once I've engaged I want to know if anyone has gotten out of position. The second is not something I do that much (for henchmen), it is more a side effect of monitoring distance to target (a habit formed with /Traps) and playing the game for a long enough time. Again, I want to know which henchmen and pets are getting everything I want them to get.

IMO what sets Plant Control apart from other sets are the "fire and forget" powers that have the practical effect (for me) that I have to pay very little attention to most of the enemies in a spawn. Those powers are: Seeds of Confusion (level 😎 (*1), which becomes insanely good with the Coercive Persuasion set. Specifically, the %Contagious Confusion seems to pick up nearly all the targets that may have been missed on an initial attack. Carrion Creepers (level 22), which is practically a self-regenerating AoE 'nuke' With just those two powers, for a lot of content I find that I have plenty of time to figure out how to do whatever else I want to do with the character. (*1) It is insane comparing Seeds of Confusion with Mind Control's T9 Mass Confusion. I still don't know what the Live Devs were thinking, beyond subscriptions.

Moonfire TF is mostly Council, so it is certainly the FREEM! that is getting you. You need 20+ points of KB protection for FREEM! FWIW, 10 points of KB is IMO borderline... Once over 4, I figure you may as well go for 12 (or 13, depending on how you achieve it). The SG base buff can get you another 10 points.

What @Erratic1 wrote. It's a top-tier set that is somewhat "active" and requires paying attention. Smarter slotting choices can alleviate how much attention has to be paid to most content. The lack of Defense Debuff Resistance in Bio Armor is probably the most glaring issue and can be the biggest surprise.

I used to turn off the rare recipes, for precisely the reasons mentioned (costs, return). However... keep in mind I am only a casual marketer... I stopped doing this except for my "explicitly poor" characters. The primary reasons for doing this are: Generally, I build/slot characters with whatever I have around, and I keep pieces I am pretty sure I will use. This is wasteful once a character is "rich enough", but it is now a habit for me. Occasionally, I really want 50+5 pieces instead of attuned pieces. These cost the same on the AH of course, but see my note above about my habit to self-build. I'm lazy about turning these sorts of things off-and-on at S.T.A.R.T. !

Sure. I've seen that. The same thing will occasionally happen with a Slow Snipe (in my experience).

I use the common recipe drops (while leveling) to get the "sell 50 recipes" badge. My experience has been that I don't get that many until I can turn up the spawn sizes.

I thought September was the time to try to corner the market on uncommon salvage?

I believe the Assassin's Strike effect is the same as the Slow Snipe effect, and that each is distinct from the the PBAoE sometimes being out of range.

As near as I can tell (and I suspect I may be very generous in my assessment), this thread's complaint is: What the OP has ignored IMO are a LOT of game fundamentals that work in parallel with the "Who/what does the AV target first, and with which attacks?" The planning/preparation is at least as important as the continued execution of what will be a longish combat. The "but my defender was porting into melee range of all other mobiles and not dying!" is NOT an argument to support "AVs hit too hard!" From my PoV, this is the rookie version of the argument "FREEM! is TOO HARD", because sooner-or-later, every character is going to get hit by an enemy attack (the floor is 1-in-20), and if the enemy has a better base ToHit, it is unwise to assume that such an enemy is going to be as bad at hitting as even-level minions. Furthermore, this thread seems partially predicated IMO on another rookie-minded mistake, that somehow the player's reactions on the keyboard are going to be faster that what is happening at the server. Solo port into B2B combat with an AV with a notification toggle on? Guess who is going to almost certainly going to get the first attack! I find the argument that "but I want to survive one hit!" disingenuous, as if that was the issue, there are ways for Defenders to get +Absorb, in addition to a Scaling Damage Resistance.

in the LFG Queue, under Story Arcs, the blueside "Who Will Die?" arc from Theoden (part 1/7) says that the level range is from 10-120, it should be 10-20.

A boosted enhancement is not attuned, so unless it was of a special type (keep reading), set bonuses will not exist more than 5 levels below the base value. E.g. a 50+5 boosted piece won't contribute to a set's enhancement if you exemplar content below level 45. The special types of boostable enhancements that keep their set bonuses across all exemplarable content are: "PVP" pieces, which offer an extra set of enhancement bonuses in PVP zones (in addition to offering "PvE" bonuses) Very Rare/"Purple" pieces, which can't be equipped until level 50 For PVP or Very Rare pieces that don't boost any enhancement value, they don't need to be boosted. I generally have attuned versions of the PVP pieces because I am a hoarder, and I can slot them at level 10. Tankers have lower damage scales than other damage dealing archetypes. Generally, any attack can get to 100% boosting by picking a damage dealing set (this is without external boosts from teammates or inspirations... there is a cap for boosts). AFAIK, %damage procs do either 71.75 damage or 107.1 damage (the Very Rare pieces)... but only if (a) the base attack hits, (b) the %proc fires, and (c) the fired proc hits (based on the powers ToHit chance, not the player's ToHit chance). So generally, if the %proc rate for a power is "ok", and the power is also slotted with accuracy, chances are good that each %proc will do additional damage... so DPS can be improved if the player takes all this into account. Note that (c) exists so that "autohit" powers don't simply sit at the %proc chance. Please note that the RNG is a pseudo-random number generator that fills the RNG space between 0 and 1 "flatly", and that no matter how high the accuracy/tohit any RNG of > 0.95 will miss. The flat nature of the RNG pretty much guarantees that a power with 6 %damage pieces in it will never have all 6 %damage pieces hit. (This was "tested" by another player who didn't quite know what they were testing) Unslotters are cheap, you can always test! The Perfect Zinger set a %damage piece but has no accuracy (to help with the %damage to hit)... the enhanced recharge from that set also works against the %damage piece. I happen to value +MaxEnd and global +Recharge (from Mocking Beratement) more than whatever else I can get from Perfect Zinger. There are players who skip Taunt, I won't criticize Tankers who take Taunt and only slot it minimally. Similarly, I don't prioritize the set bonuses of Might of the Tanker, but I want the %+Res(all) especially because because that Tanker is Shield primary (a Defense primary). 5/6-slotting the Tanker ATOs means that there are fewer slots for %procs, and the slotted recharge is working against the %proc rate. Everything is a balancing act! (Global Recharge does NOT affect %proc chances.) For a Dark Tanker, I'd only use the default slot for the toggles and slot them with Endurance reduction. Multiple slots in Tanker primaries do very little for players below level 10. I slot attacks with Accuracy, Endurance, Damage, in that order. You can slot enhancement pieces from sets when possible. Unless you specifically want set bonuses or lots of %damage, I wouldn't over-slot attacks. I have "rules of thumb" but I try to play new (to me) power sets through solo missions to get a feel for what I need before joining teams.

I'm not buying what your selling, but I have a different perspective about Controls (hard/soft) and a different imagination about how the Live devs perceived them. Originally, on Live it definitely seemed to me as if the devs thought that players being able to control mobile enemies was something like an "auto win". So many control powers had recharge times, accuracy, endurance costs, levels of availability, etc. baked into them... mostly ignoring that controlling enemies wasn't the same as defeating enemies. Pre-ED kinda was a way around this... but I think this was just one more thing that motivated ED. There was another round of dev panic when PvP was introduced, because some 'controls' that had been mostly ignored turned out to be PDGood in PvP (Stuns).... I write this just to point out that in-game, controls have always been viewed from many perspectives. On the flip side... and this is where I think my perspective is somewhat unusual... some of the players felt that their characters were too easily victimized by enemies with controls, and so later in the game's life certain ATs ended up getting (IMO, disproportionate) attention to make playing those ATs easier... specifically Blasters, which can cast T1/T2 attacks while controlled, plus all have sustains for endurance, plus have much improved nukes (over Launch). I sorta feel that if Blasters didn't have it so relatively easy (compared to other ATs) and the original toggly/inherent ways for certain armors to shrug off controls (and keep in mind, players no longer detoggle most powers when controlled) , then there would be a more even appreciation of what is happening with critter controls. I write the above to explain my opinion is not that the Homecoming Devs are specifically trying to drive a sort of "trinity" style play in Hard Mode, it's more that they've got an uphill battle to make a hard mode given what exixts in the game (ToHit, Damage, Healing, Controls). I don't think it would make sense (or be popular) to remove status protection from armors, or strip Blasters of their inherents, or nerf the effects of Domination. There are enough different things here to parse that I'm not sure I could dive in... if Homecoming didn't make it so easy for so many players to get enemies to the point where many of the enemies only hit players 5% of the time, I'd be more open for more of the squishy ATs to get some of the love that Blasters got (either T1/T2 casts while controlled, improved "nukes", but these are slippery slopes). Homecoming also made it easy for players to get powers like Rune of Protection... a power that had to get 'nerfed' because it was simply too good.

I'm referring to the player that TAKES Group Fly, not an ally affected by it. No other toggles (aside from Group Fly) is needed to achieve lift-off.

It would be my mistake if it doesn't need a ToHit roll!

I skipped Soothing Wave, considered adding it as a late-build power, considered adding it to a second build, and I still don't have it. Generally: I find Ally Heals to be a somewhat mixed bag for 2024 CoX. I don't want to yuck on anyone's yum or explore the precision calculus of role-diversity for hard mode, so please recognize this is my general attitude. However: I feel that enemy debuffs always deserve a look! Reducing enemy damage by 12% should be pretty good! However, it needs to hit enemies, and the duration is 10 seconds, with a similar short base recharge time. I can believe there is an opportunity for some clever slotting (especially if any %procs can help teammates), but I'm thinking minimal Accuracy/Heal and pass on trying to get juicy healing set bonuses from it. I considered taking it late, but I didn't really have slots for it and my 32+ powers were pretty much dedicated to mules for enhancements. The easy change from my Controller build would be to swap out the level 41 Unleash Potential (2 slots) but I selfishly want that power because the modern 2024 game is so unpredictable in getting healing or buffs (from other players)! Ironic or not, you decide! I can see arguments for having Soothing Wave, but I haven't seen one to convince me to take it.. except as part of a "total support" build.

The "complete alignment" requirement would either make it very difficult, very wasteful, or both.

I don't understand this point. Currently IIRC Group Fly already allows a player character Flight. (It's not great, but it does) Before I proceed, I want to note that I have no problems with the way Group Fly works. I am unconvinced that there is any measurable amount of suggestions to change it that don't derive from a player who either didn't know how to turn it off (via Null the Gull), didn't remember to turn it off (if it upsets them) or resented having to turn it off. Frankly, the three powers that all offer some form of "flight", plus a power that adds "control" and "speed" is one of the things that I find odd about the Flight pool. From a historical context, I can understand why the pool is the way it is, but that doesn't mean I feel good about it it. I think the issue with the Flight pool is more subtle than players feeling griefed about Group Fly. My understanding of the historical context is that the original Devs were worried that if Fly was "too good" that there would be a very strong preference among players to take the Flight pool over all other travel powers. Part of this is simply navigating zones, part of this is a concern that "hover-blasting" would make the game "too easy". As a result, side from a somewhat common circumstance of including an attack power in the pool (Air Superiority), the first available flying power (Hover, a toggle) is pretty much most valuable on instanced maps as it is generally harder to "hover blast" on typical maps, and the complete lack of flying speed is less noticeable. Fly (another toggle) was established as the set's "travel power", with the (my choice of words) gimping of "control" (unless Hover is also toggled on) and travel speed (see original compromise/fear among travel pool options above). Group Fly is yet another toggle... it hasn't been helpful to (other) PCs for a long time (travel powers can be picked sooner, temp flight powers have long existed) but remains useful for henchmen/pet ATs. Evasive Maneuvers is a fourth toggle that mitigates (somewhat) the gimping (my word) of Fly (one of those other toggles) in terms of control and speed. TL;DR: Four toggles is too many! As a practical matter, if a player is running the flight pool (with or without Group Fly) at least three powers must be toggled on to get the full benefits of what Flight offers, with a fourth toggle for Group Fly. On the surface this may not seem completely unreasonable, but with so many other travel powers offering combinations of travel effects (superspeed, teleport, flying) with a single toggle... it strikes me as lackluster that Flight requires as many as four toggles and all it gets is an occasional Afterburner. These toggles take up shelf space in the trays! My own suggestion? Make Evasive Manuevers an auto power (no endurance cost), and make it selectable starting at level 20.

It is going to vary based on the AT, the power choices, and the content you intend to play. I can disclose some personal biases: I try to avoid using Hasten, preferring instead to have global Recharge bonuses from enhancements. A dedicated "min-maxxer" will likely have only enough (hardest hitting) attacks to maintain a single attack chain, often by leveraging global recharge (with Hasten) and attacks like T9s. I often build with a variety of attacks to get set bonuses and not sweat about exemplaring or mixing up attack chains. I try to build for AoE fighting against x8 I like reward drops, so I try to "maximize defeats". Generally this means I run solo only at +0/+1, and so I'm not trying to maxmize the "even level defense soft cap of 45%". and so... I typically try to build ATs with multiple "survival mechanisms" so I can stay in the fight against x8/+4 This will depend on the AT, and what tools they have available. For squishier ATs, I consider a self-rez to be a survival mechanism! I'm the kind of player that absolutely does not mind "spending the green bar" to finish content in as little time as possible. I have a few Tanker builds that could have MOAR of something (resistance, defense)... so not maximized"... but if I'm mentally engaged those characters never get to 0 HP. Was this me "minimizing" something? Maybe my investement in slots... but other players may prefer to "minimize" how much attention they want to spend in combat.

Fair point! It certainly seems to me that the OP wants to face a very limited amount of content (AVs, GMs) without using anything like strategy (e.g. Imma take a Defender into melee against an AV, and stay there) solo or in teams, and possibly without consideration for building and/or slotting their character. As other players are perfectly able to team their under-build ATs against the same content on teams without face-planting, and other players are able to solo that sort of content, the original post strikes me as the sort of proposal that literally has no lower limit on the ask to "make this game easier, hmmokay?" as players could always try to play worse and/or against all sorts of other content.

Hot Take: Min-Maxing "Stats" and using %damage procs are somewhat in opposition, as set bonuses are generally the way to hit "stat caps", and franken-slotting with %damage procs is the way for many (but not all!) ATs to maximize damage. There are common globals uniques (some of them are non-damage %procs) that will be recommended by most everyone, some fraction of those are better for some ATs than they are for other ATs. I know other folks like listing them, so I'll leave it to them. Within ATs, there are different things that are work "maximizing for the minimum"... especially when it comes to the Armor primary/secondaries.

AFAIK: Accurate Healing sets can only be slotted into sets that require ToHit checks, whereas (I believe) Healing set pieces can be slotted more liberally. You have sussed it out: when you want a power to succeed in hitting an opponent, Accuracy will be desired. Slotted accuracy is also important for %proc chances, and as Dark is a very Endurance hungry armor, I recommend the Theft of Essence piece as well. If you will be tanking against significantly higher-level enemies, it might not be a bad idea to replace (from my suggestion) one of the %damage pieces with a level 50+5 Multi-Strike Accuracy/Endurance piece. The game won't allow you to slot more than one of any "unique" piece. I often have the %-Res from Fury of the Gladiator in an attack to improve damage done by allies (against enemies that I am tanking). PVP, Winter, ATO and Very Rare sets will keep whatever set bonuses they offer no matter how low (well, as low as level 7 I think) a player scales down. Generally I find the the Very Rare/Purple set bonuses better than set bonuses offered by other choices, but not always. Winter and ATO can be made into a "superior" set, which offers better set bonuses than non-superiod versions. The enhancement of attribute values of Superior ATO and Superior Winters is IIRC the same as a boosted level 50+5 version from any other set. A single Superior Winter ATO for Accuracy/Damage (for example) offers the same benefits as an uncommon Accuracy/Damage piece at a boosted 50+5. Non-combined Hamidon/D-syncs (level 50) are roughly at the level of a 50+5, combined (levels 51 thru 53) exceed 50+5s. This might explain my recommended slotting for Cloak of Fear (which has a terrible base Accuracy) should you decide you want it... I only take it for flavor, as it is one of the more obvious Dark Armor toggles... but most builds are perfectly fine without it, and possibly better depending on which other power is taken and how the extra slot is used.