Adeon Hawkwood

So what? It only took about 2-3 iTrials to unlock your slots anyway so just don't slot any abilities until you've run that many iTrials. Problem solved.

Literally nobody takes mastermind attacks unless they're Demon Summoning, so that's going to be a very low priority. My Bots/Traps Mastermind has two attacks (the AoE and the more powerful ST attack) and I may end up taking the third attack at some point. People talk about MM attacks as if they are absolute crap but the fact is they do almost as much damage as Defender attacks and no one ever suggests skipping those. Sure you aren't maxxing out the DPS charts with them but it's still extra damage and more importantly it's damage that you can immediately direct which can be useful for picking off runners. Additionally the attacks are well worth taking if you want to play a Tankermind, while Provoke is useful for grabbing aggro, due to the way the taunt mechanics work combining taunt and damage is a lot more effective than simply using taunt alone. So overall I would say that while not every Mastermind needs attacks the idea that the attacks are useless needs to stop, they are perfectly valid as supplemental DPS to add to your pets.

That does sound like a bug. Can you include a screenshot of your bid and the market history for the item?

1. Outdoor missions are incredibly rare so a lower population doesn't really matter there. In general a lower population leads to slower leveling since there are fewer teams and teams are the fastest way to level. 2. In general Scrappers solo better than Tankers. Extra survivability means you can potentially fight more enemies at once but if you take longer to kill them then this doesn't really matter. High AoE Tankers can potentially out-solo scrappers but those tankers tend to have Fire or Shield as their primary, not Invulnerability. For solo play I'd go with the scrapper over the tanker.

The P2W vendor let me grab one of each prestige enhancement. Might be a bug if it's only letting you take one...or maybe it's a bug on my end?! Right now the P2W vendor lets you take as many prestige enhancements that you want. Not sure if you can use more than 5 (haven’t thought to try) but you can get at least 10. They are unique so you can't have more than one of each slotted.

So one useful tip for fortitude. Membrane Exposures are brilliant in there (if you can afford them). Three of them will max out the enhancement for Defense, Recharge and To Hit which can save you slots for use elsewhere.

How are you converting uncommons to rares? When you do out of set conversions there's an option to roll within IO type (you have to change the drop down menu). Since most types have both uncommon and rare sets you can roll an uncommon into a rare that way. Also just to make sure that there isn't any confusion but rares I mean the orange recipes, you can't roll an uncommon into either a purple IO or a PvPIO in this manner.

So Montague is a special contact. You don't actually need an introduction to him, you can just walk up to him and introduce yourself. He's also considered high priority which is why your other contacts all want to introduce you to him. However once you have him on your active contacts list then doing a safeguard should give you a different contact in the right level range. So go and talk to him before doing the Safeguard and you should be introduced to another contact. EDIT: Also as a quick note, the classic contacts will always introduce you to another contact int he same level range after you do one mission for them. So if you want a specific contact in a level range just do one mission for each new contact and you can get all contacts pretty easily.

Your Protector Bots are seriously underslotted. You really want defense slotting in them since their shields are critical for keeping you and your bots alive. I'd also consider slotting at least a few of the Defense and resistance aura IOs in some of your bots to further boost their survivability. One thing to note regarding your use of Nucleolus Exposure's is that Hamidon Enhancements are quite expensive on the Homecoming servers. However if you get a level 50 Acc/Dam IO from one of the sets and use boosters to make it 50+5 it will be equivalent to a Nucleolus Exposure so that might be a cheaper option. Repair is overslotted, you only really need recharge in it. If your bots are having endurance problems then you should slot them for endurance reduction, not slot end mods in Repair (in practice the Assault Bot and Battle Bots are usually fine but the Protector Bots benefit from some Endurance Reduction). Also since you're /Pain you shouldn't need Repair that often anyway. I haven't really looked through the rest of the slotting in detail but I will add two comments. First, it's worth putting LotG Global Recharge in a bunch of your powers. Global recharge is great for keeping World of Pain, Anguishing Cry and Painbringer up. Secondly this is more of a personal thing but I find Victory Rush underwhelming and Vengeance is a great place to stick another LotG global recharge, just saying.

Just to clarify something, all of the attacks in Electrical Blast have a chance of doing -recovery, but only Short Circuit, Thunderous Blast and Tesla Cage are guaranteed to do -recovery, the others have a 20%-50% chance (and much shorter durations). Now personally I'm fine with saying that you need to use Short Circuit or Thunderous Blast to reliably drain groups of enemies, but I think you could make a decent argument for buffing the durations and/or proc chances for the -recovery powers on the single target attacks to make it easier to drain a single target without having to use Tesla Cage. As a side note -recovery is useless without -endurance so replacing the -endurance with -recovery would be a bad change.

So I had a Crabmind on live. They can solo just fine. Even with basic enhancements they were solid soloers, adding IOs and Incarnate took them from decent to excellent. They play very well on teams due to their built in Leadership powers but since those also affect them they can solo just fine. I can't comment on their ability to solo AVs though since that was never really my thing. Regarding survivability they are pretty tough. Stacking Tactical Training: Maneuvers and Combat Training: Defensive and Fortification gives them pretty decent Defense and Resistance that you can build on with IOs (and pool powers). It's relatively straightforward to softcap ranged defense from there although softcapping all positionals is harder. They do have a self heal in the form of Serum although since it's a clone of Dull Pain the recharge is quite long. Getting the MaxHP boost from it permanent isn't that hard since a Crabmind needs perma-haste anyway if they want permanent pets. In my case though I supplemented Serum with the Rebirth Destiny power for extra healing (this was also nice since it healed my pets).

Right, because Electrical Blast doesn't contain a PBAoE power at all. Oh wait, it does. Short Circuit is an important part of Electrical Blast so advising people not to use it is rather counter-intuitive.

I haven't really been doing much flipping. I've mostly been buying yellow recipes and converting the enhancements into useful rares and selling those. My average profit on that is probably in the 3-4million range (more on a good roll, less on a poor roll).

I don't think so, but if you're just using the merits to get stuff to sell then you can sell the stuff and send the inf to an alt.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you have 22% To Hit then Zapp casts very quickly. This generally makes up for not having a traditional 3rd blast.

If you'd asked me a week ago I would have advised trading reward merits for enhancement converters and selling those on the market but the price on those has crashed so it might not be a good idea now. Enhancement Converters are three per merit and sell for 120K-150K each so you're getting about 360k-450k per merit. That's still a better ratio than rare salvage or most recipes but it's probably worth checking the prices on enhancement boosters or catalysts to see if those are better (sorry I don't really keep an eye on those prices).

This isn't actually something that we the players can control. The prices are fundamentally set by supply and demand. If you want to keep prices low then encourage the homecoming team to keep the supply of items high and avoid doing things that will increase inflation. The prices of things like purples on live was high because there were relatively few of them relative to the number of people who wanted them. There wasn't a shadowy cartel manipulating them. Well this one depends on everyone. If you want stuff on the market then list it. Even junk. Enhancement converters are super cheap so most of the current supply of enhancements are there because someone took the time to buy cheap recipes and then converted them into more valuable enhancements. This is why most of the desirable rare enhancements are selling for about 7-10million each, that's high enough that it's profitable for people to convert them but low enough that there aren't to many people getting into the action. EDIT: I'll add an example here. Early on I was converting PBAoE enhancements. I'd buy Cleaving Blow and Multi-Strike recipes convert them into Scirroco's Dervish and Obliterations and sell those. The thing is lots of people are doing that now so the profit has shrunk and I've moved on. But you'll notice that the prices of the enhancements have come down and the prices of the recipes I was buying have gone up both of which are good things for casual players. Also, don't forget flippers. Flipping tends to be good for keeping a supply of items on the market. It brings up the price floor and lowers the price ceiling but also helps to ensure that the market doesn't run out. Well I've seen plenty of people offering advice on converting merits into inf for the first part and flippers generally help with the second since they raise the price floor for an item so sellers get a better price. So overall it looks like we're two for three but the first one isn't really in our control. Finally I'll add that marketeers aren't actually evil. In general having people flipping, crafting and converting is good for the market. It helps to keep the prices at a more stable level than they would otherwise be and ensures a steady supply of items that might otherwise be subject to feast or famine. Now I'll admit we don't do this out of the goodness of our hearts we do it because we want top notch builds for our characters and this is the easiest way to get that but there isn't a shadowy cartel controlling the market. For one thing it would be impossible to actually control the price of an item over an extended period. Bump it up a bit in the short term, maybe, although that tends to be caused by a lack of marketeers more than anything else. Now if you'll excuse me I'm late for a meeting. Where are my top hat and monocle?

They are globals so they will work even if the power is not on. However they will stop working if you exemplar more than three levels below the level of the IO.

I agree. I went to Kings Row to find some lost for the Midnighters and the places I recall seeing them spawn before (the courtyard area in the west) were all full of skulls. I did find some down in the south though.

One thing to keep in mind is Enhancement Boosters. For example you could save a slot in Hasten by taking one of the recharges out and making the other two 50+5s, it only costs you about 1 second of recharge.

I thought the title was about Incarnate powers and came here to explain why Rebirth is nice for your Destiny power.

I think Lazarillo said it best in the thread about Mercs: Beasts will be fine for both solo and group play, it's just not as good as sets like Bots and Demons. It's probably worth picking one of the stronger secondaries to give some damage mitigation though.

Yep you've hit upon the slightly confusing fact that the collective name for Arachnos Widows and Arachnos Soldiers is Soldiers of Arachnos. Another useful link: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets#Soldiers_of_Arachnos

You have to take at least two powers from power pools no matter what. Due to the levels at which powers in your Primary and secondary unlock you can't take a power from them at every level. You have to take one pool power at or before level 24 and a second pool power at or before level 30. Also, you get a total of 24 powers at level 50. Your primary and secondary each have 9 while your Epic pool has 5, as mentioned above you can't actually take all 23 of these though since the Epic pool doesn't unlock until level 35 and you have to fit in two pool powers before then. Personally I always take at least a few pool powers on my characters. I take Combat Jumping because it makes it easier to move around missions and I take a travel power (generally Super Jumping because I like it). Most of my characters take at least some Leadership powers (although you might want to avoid that until you've gotten used to managing your endurance since they do use it up). Recall Friend I'll take if I've got a spare power slot but it's low priority. I've taken most of the other pools on one or two characters but the other pools are lower priority for the sort of builds I like.

My main is an AR/Dev blaster. I'll admit some groups are more of a pain in the ass than others but it's not that big of a deal. If you're looking for a perfectly optimized AV killer than it may not be the best option but for general play it's not that big an issue.