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This is where I am: I won't even bother with Solo hard mode, so I'm even less likely to try to decide on which power to drop to add Placate. As it is now, with my favorite Stalker, I don't really have any slots to spare for it. If I absolutely wanted to fit Placate into that build, I think I would have to make the hard (for me, YMMV) call to not have a pool travel power... which on that build is holding the Winter's Gift Slow Resistance unique... which means that I'd have to be relying even more on P2W/temp/SG Base powers for the performance I've become accustomed to. I can easily imagine Stalkers (and Widows) making use of Placate while leveling. Without access to all powers and many slots, defenses won't be as good as they will be on an (exemplared) level 50 build. There may also be some lower-level content that folks want to run at extreme difficulties in which the "breather" provided by a Placate would be valuable. I'm thinking about all the times when I've started a SSA1 and I've forgotten to reset the +N/x8 difficulty setting!

As I have written many times, I'm in favor of the T4 (level 6, i have occasionally mistakenly referred to T6 when I meant level 6) that, FIRST upgrade be replaced with a recharge-intensive BUFF pet (not a henchman) and just bake that original upgrade into all the henchmen. I feel that the level 32 (Tier 9) power is fine to keep as is, simply because game balance would be affected over a wider range of content. The only levels of content that would be affected (to first order) with baking in the T4 upgrade would be before level 6.... and that would only be for one henchman (maybe 2 for some very low exemplared content). A recharge-intensive buff pet could be tuned to the primary (there are plenty of already existing pet assets like drones, wisps, spiders, etc.) and could take those global pieces that many primaries have to slot into their pets.

Some say that puns are the lowest form of humor. Ice puns should always offered in the spirit of Good Humor.

The thinking you express in this post aligns closely with my own. Even if my own tastes in what I want and get from CoX are considered unrefined, I am not motivated by the CoT efforts on artwork (characters, the world, the buildings) to really switch. I appreciate the challenges and effort that programmers are putting in, but those things won't get me to jump ship as long as the comfortable, appreciated, and supported Homecoming exists. Not that it is up to me, but if *I* were the majority investor in something that was originally intended to be something like a 'comic book universe', I'd try to reconfigure the work done so far to change from a CoH-clone (because that effort is unlikely to offer enough exciting new experiences) and instead focus on one or more of the following: idea-clone Freedom Force, which was a beloved game even if it was rather limited reskin the efforts into an explicitly PVP (or Team Co-op PVP) that has a comic-book bent... as these are more-or-less an area that CoH doesn't really appeal to most players and have proven difficult to balance with the core non-PvP game. I'm not saying that some great new comic-book MMORPG can't some along, but any of them that's been in development for 5+ years is unlikely to be the game-changer.

No complaints from me... if I could use P2W to turn off enhancement drops I would. Dropped enhancements just get in my way when I respec (or when playing the AH)! I think the level 50 enhancements have something like less than 25% lower vendor prices than the worst level 50 IO recipes.

May I suggest that this title be "Pizza Delivery Guy/Gal" instead? That's always the vibe I get when I solo that mission.

The simplest change I would like is if we Masterminds could slot the Global enhancements for Henchmen (and pets) into the 'upgrade' powers, so that we can actually use our henchmen (and pets) slots to enhance specific features of them. As it is, so primaries that don't have a recharge-intensive summon have to burn enhancement spots in the henchmen powers to get the global bonuses.

I don't think you are making a mistake in playing any AT that appeals to you... and if "farming" is your ultimate goal, any DPS character should be fine. There are degrees of efficiency, but for my 2 Inf you don't "need" to do much classic AE farming in this game. The main in-game advantage I see to having a "farmer" is for 2nd account XP boosting if you simply can't bring yourself to play with characters below level 50. I have no shade to toss at folks that would simply prefer to play a farm scenario in the AE. Some thoughts: Merits are very easy to get, for all AT and all "sides". Merits can get you a lot of what the game provides directly (merit vendors) or indirectly (auction house) The Auction House can provide a LOT of Inf, with relatively low Inf-vestment. You do have to do some learning, but it isn't that hard to figure out. Once a DPS character is reasonably well kitted, especially with Incarnate boosts, there is a HUGE amount of non-AE content that can be run "just like" farms... with an exception that not all characters would be equal for "AFK farming".

I dunno about recommend %procs as a spot for Market Chaos... it feels to me like there is already a baseline of "Chaotic Stupid" in that niche. The last time I looked at such things (I'm not talking about Globals here) there are quite a few %procs that had 1000+ available with only a few hundred bids. In addition to looking like a bad market niche, this is as good a sign as any that some times of powers are poor choices. Even in the case of %damage procs for things like Attacks or Holds, the non-Purple variants are almost always 2Minf or less. There have been (in the past) a couple of reliable %damage pieces, but I've seen those niche fluctuate. In order to cause any sort of peculiar market stir, I think it would be necessary to buy up nearly all of the pieces/recipes from all of the sets that only exist in the level 10-30 range, since very few players would do anything like "solo farm" at lower levels to replenish such supplies en masse. There are still ways that the fungible market works against such a strategy, so it wouldn't stop dedicated folks from filling their builds or marketeers from putting things on the market.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have so many unclaimed unslotters I don't even think I'd notice. I couldn't even tell you what the going price of them is. They are also pretty cheap in Merits, IIRC.

Didn't we already see this in the Uncommon salvage market? To my thinking, the only "chaos" in the market place would have to be in an area where: players can't reliably farm/convert/but from vendor the item players actually want the item the server team won't simply repopulate (so 'packs' are out) Uncommon salvage was in a peculiar spot because the 'seeded' price is much higher that the supply of (a fungible piece) of uncommon salvage demands. Salvage is 'weird' in the sense that it is fungible, but when you need it the fungibility doesn't actually help you convert a piece you have to a piece you need. I stockpile all the rare salvage that drops and I often find myself with 20+ of certain types; that is the point when they go on the market. The only other areas that I can think of immediately are things like HO/DSO (non-trivial drop-onlys that can't be converted) and Essence of the Earth/Ambrosias The latter insps aren't exactly hard to get, and for EoE most typical Hami raids will generate enough for raiders but some folks simply buy from the AH and don't sweat the drops. Not a lot of space for true chaos there. It would be possible to make life painful for folks by buying up converters, but merits are easy to get in the game.

You mean the duration of the %proc? Obviously longer times with a Resistance debuff on an enemy would be better, since the PBAoE attacks that take this specific %proc are generally lower damage against a single hard target, so following up more several high-damage ST attacks against the same target is better that fewer high-damage ST attacks. There is a more reliable way to apply -Res available to everyone was mentioned by @Mezmera Weaken Resolve. This is single target only, but I think the ("do you have to hit twice?") case has been made that it it pretty much against hard single targets with sacks of HP where most of the value in a -Res debuff is. A debuff from Weaken Resolve is guaranteed on a hit (and can take an additional -Res %proc !) with the obvious difference that Weaken Resolve isn't an inherently damaging attack (modulo a couple of %damage pieces) with a chance of -Res. Some AT (Soldiers of Arachnos come to mind) that can focus on lots of AoE attacks might find slightly more value in AoE %-Res than %damage in 0x8 content, but that falls under what was discussed above by several players.

I feel like I don't see this acknowledged enough: I've spent a lot of time leading Penny Yin TFs with (pre-recent) boosted difficulty settings, and uniformly the most chatted observation is "I can't hit anything!"... even more than "No Endurance!" I should disclose, even the most ill-equipped teams that have faced this content still were able to finish the TF in just over an hour... so it isn't as if this becomes a terrible slog. I always enjoyed these runs because they really encourage teamwork, and they can be a great source of XP for lower level characters. Back to the Gladiator's proc: Something else I realized that works against me including it in more final (solo play) builds is that it is unique. If I had the chance to slot it into more powers with the hope of extending the duration of the debuff I'd feel better about it. This thread has a few of my characters now carrying around copies (with unslotters) to drop it into certain powers for some PUG content.

I played on an ASF run with a Fortunata, I want to say we had at least two other VEAT as well. I don't think we were playing at the higher difficulties, although we started the arc at +4 (by mistake or habit) and had no issues. We did go out of our way to face as many AV as possible, which we handled in a very 'normal' manner. I didn't feel like it was very different than other runs, or other content. We definitely had deaths... I want to say that I died maybe thrice: The first was against the initial Goldbrickers (I wasn't paying attention... I specifically aggroed a group to bring to the cauldron and instead of just finishing them off I dragged them and then made the mistake of ignoring them). Once against Ripplesauce (I wasn't really paying attention, forgot what AT I was playing) and possibly once in the long drawn-out fight against the Council AVs. I can't recall on that fight because I hadn't realized how many AVs there were, and the fight took something like 30 minutes to clear them out... that specific fight would probably had gone faster if we had been focusing fire... all I really remember about it that teammates were dropping and so I switched up my attempts at MOAR OFFENSE to MOAR CONTROL to give others a chance to rez. I also remember bruning through all my Insps and consuming all the drops during that fight... I just can't remember if any of them were used as part of a self-rez. I definitely remember being confused, but I think that was from enemy status effects and not rez. I know I took some big hits in the big AV fight, but by that time I was paying much more attention to my combat stats and power timers. There were definitely later points in the arc when I was still playing fast-and-loose (doing solo stuff in the multiple objectives bits... so BAD for 'master' runs) but by that point I was really paying attention and was able to handle all sorts of crazy. At least for 'standard' difficulties, I'd say that the ASF definitely benefits from teams staying together, although there ARE points at which some characters can go solo depending on build and powers. Specific to my Fortunata build, I found myself using the controls (Confuses, Fears) a LOT more than I ever have on other SF/TF content.

I definitely get a Diamante vibe from this one, but here goes nothing: Go ahead and monitor Attributes like your Accuracy Bonus and Last To-Hit Chance. I think you can also monitor your Base To-Hit as well. I WISH that the last To-Hit ROLL was also a displayable attribute, but AFAIK that is only visible in the combat logs. If you can see them through the tears, you'll have an idea if you are getting debuffed or fighting an opponent with serious debuffs. Depending on your power picks, if the last To-Hit chance was REALLY BAD, you may want to consider an action other than button mashing.

My 2 Inf: The game suffers at (almost) every point where some sort of over-arching narrative was added. The game is at its best when it sticks with the pre-1980s age comic book sensibility that there really are no lasting changes to the world, it's simply a "never-ending battle". I like(d) the original payoffs of the Lost arcs; and I get a kick out of some of the (original, added) level 40-50 blue content... but in general I find all the assorted 'forced lore' to leave a sour taste in my mouth, even if I find some of the missions to be fun. Some examples: The Council / 5th Column changes, in-game, always struck me as clumsy. The ultimate result is that we have all sorts of forced exposition in all sorts of odd places. The Midnighters / Cimerora / Shadow Shard connections, not to mention the odd ties to the RWZ and Dark Astoria incarnate content, almost literally "come out of nowhere" SSA1 "Who will die?" always strikes me as more like "Who cares who dies?" Oh, and BTW, the Hollows is full of lava. The destruction of Galaxy City felt like a needlessly cruel loss. It was quite telling that zone content (badges, mob spawns) weren't originally considered for things like accolades or TFs (Numina, Vahz hunt in Faultline) when major changes were first made to the city. Lord Nemesis... sigh. I get some serious "Davros" vibes everytime he worms his way into a story. I have no real complaints about Goldside, except that the original team felt the need to "end the story", despite there being lots of great content using Praetoria! The only 'revamp' that I really like is the Faultline makeover. YMMV. IMO Redside (despite the Mercy Island redo, and the "destined ones" Time Travel shenanigans) has a much more coherent set of stories. There are the peculiar links to the Midnighters and Vanguard, but I find it pretty easy to sidestep that content.

There is a peculiar / obnoxious reason to pick a VEAT, although I wouldn't recommend it: there are the mandatory Respecs (on each build). I think you can 'interrupt' a second (and third) build before you get to that respec. This won't help for catalyzing ATO or Winter sets of course, since the forced respec happens at too low a level. I think having a dedicated 'attuner' is already too much effort, but hey... if you want to do things the hard way!

It would be silly if they had to use those powers every time they used a level 12 and level 26 power.

I'm now picturing toons strutting around causing Lenny Busker levels of -Res.

I'm on the fence about this piece. I almost always use it while leveling, but it is rare that it makes it into my final build. I don't always have a power which will take it, such that the power offers a reliable %proc rate while also being a regular part of my attack chain I do a lot of solo play, so the 10 seconds often feels like not enough time to capitalize on the (resisted) resistance debuff I can totally see the utility in team play, especially if it is a reliable %proc power. DNA Siphon is a good call: as a secondary it is available for a lot of lower level content, it can easily be available to fire every 30-40 seconds with a 90% proc ceiling, it's not a "regular" attack, and that is a power that you will be likely using against (very) hard targets anyway. Personally: I still don't have the piece slotted in my Spines/Bio Stalker's DNA Siphon. I prefer to see the damage NAO, and removing one of the other %damage pieces would cost me ~25% of the damage output from it. I suppose I could sacrifice a Touch of the Nictus set bonus (along with actual power enhancements) but I like the 9% global accuracy bonus. I may start carrying one around to swap in when I join PUGs. Level 28: DNA Siphon (A) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50 (39) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Healing: Level 50 (40) Touch of the Nictus - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 50 (40) Eradication - Chance for Energy Damage: Level 30 (40) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage: Level 50 (42) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance of Damage(Lethal): Level 50

I've suggested that the T6 (for all Mastermind primaries) be replaced with something like a Recharge-Intensive Pet (not Henchman) that provides some sort of buff dependent on the primary, but including an Accuracy or +ToHit) which could also take the Global set bonuses. I agree that opting to add the Global pieces to an actual henchmen works against the idea that you can customize the henchmen with slotting of (non-Global) enhancements. I think the game already has assets that could be recycled (e.g. P2W "pet" toggles). I feel that all MMs could benefit from an extra power that helps the henchmen HIT once the level shift comes into play. I grok that the larger number of T1, T2 henchmen is supposed to make up for their lower chances to hit, but this is one of those things (like the endurance penalty) that ends up feeling like a double-whammy when you have to burn slots in the henchmen to add the global pieces. The "Equipment" from the T6 really should just be baked into the Henchmen upon summoning. It is silly to have to summon Henchmen at level 12 and 26 and have to apply a level 6 power to them! On Live, with the first Masterminds it felt really cool to be able to equip those first (T1) henchmen at level 6... but those days are long gone. I completely believe in keeping the level 32 "Upgrade" as is, I simply don't think there is enough content between level 1 and level 6 to worry about "game balance" being broken by giving the level 1 pet the extras provided by the level 6 equipment power. Alternatively, if we could slot the global enhancements in the existing level 6 or level 32 "Upgrade" powers, I'd be happy.

I just put my build here:

My Thugs MM is a "Sweet Little Old Lady" accompanied by her boys.

We've been running at standard settings, not trying for any special badges. If others want to run it and try for special badges (besides the defeats, thankfully this arc offers many enemies with defeat badges) I'll join. I like that it is a Redside arc, although it has the typical trouble getting players to join. Go ahead and judge, but we haven't been spending too much time on dialogue and we have the duration about right at just under 1 hour so far. It feels like there is slightly too much going on in the arc, but I have been enjoying the mix of enemies and the maps. The feeling is almost certainly due to being able to race through so much other content.