Adeon Hawkwood

This is a common misconception but it's not actually true. While there are a few places where the path is difficult (primarily in the Cascade Archipelago due to the geysers being a bit wonky for vertical travel) in general a character with Super Jump and a map of the gravity geysers is faster than someone with flight. This is especially true with the Jet Pack or Steam Jump inherent powers since activating those lets you remain in the air while traveling at the jump speed cap instead of the fly speed cap.

It's a lot stronger now. Assault Rifle is still an AoE monster but the fast sniper changes and Targeting Drone means that you can now use Sniper Rifle as part of your single target attack chain. The devs are also looking at putting some buffs to Devices in the next patch but that's not finalized yet.

So I noticed another bug, Power Boost is increasing the Defense of powers that it shouldn't. For various reasons Power Boost doesn't affect powers with enhanceable resistance but it is buffing the defense both of the shields in Cold Domination and the Dominator version of Mind Link, neither of which it will buff in game.

Does Power Boost actually work with Link Minds? I've heard conflicting reports. I know that Pine's said it does but I've also heard people say that it doesn't work when testing in game. You got me wondering so I did a quick test and it DOES NOT. I'm gobsmacked I guess I should have been following rule number 4 in the OP. I Thanks for confirming. In case you're curious that's quite common for powers that buff resistance since if they benefit from external buffs then your damage bonus would increase the resistance buff as well. Technically since Mind Link doesn't take Resistance Enhancements it should be possible to have it benefit from Power Boost but apparently when it was implemented the wrong method of handling resistance buffing powers was used so it doesn't.

I know right. Can you believe you can only hold 2 billion inf on each character and can only email 999,999,999 inf at a time. It is such a pain in the ass.

Well, 16 KB Protection and 20% Slow resistance, I think I'd use one of them for the Winter's Gift IO instead. 16 points of KB protection is sufficient. You get 6 sprint slots. You could throw a Stealth IO in there too and still have 20 KB protection. Sure, but I'd rather have 16 KB protection (4 BotZ IOs), 20% Slow Resistance (Winter's Gift) and a Stealth IO. Sure 20% slow resistance isn't much but I don't really need those last four points of kb protection either.

Well, 16 KB Protection and 20% Slow resistance, I think I'd use one of them for the Winter's Gift IO instead. 16 points of KB protection is sufficien.

Just as a point, this isn't a Quality of Life suggestion, this is a huge buff request. Personally I don't really care one way or the other since it's not that big a deal for PvE but I do feel that calling it a QoL suggestion is a bit disingenuous.

Does Power Boost actually work with Link Minds? I've heard conflicting reports. I know that Pine's said it does but I've also heard people say that it doesn't work when testing in game.

I forget the name but she's a fairy person hanging out in the back right area from the portal, a bit counter-clockwise from the big blue guy.

So this is unlikely to happen but there are other options. The first is to bind your movement keys to both move and activate hasten. This means you will activate hasten every time you move. The downside is that you get the annoying "thrum thrum" every time you move if it's recharging. The second option is to use binds to frequently toggle which of your powers is the auto-execute power. That's more complex so I'kll just point you towards the thread explaining how to do it for Domination and Hasten. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,5021.0.html

There's a vendor in Ouroborus who can convert them for you. You can email Astral and Empyrean Merits between characters (and even to other players) but you have to do it one merit at a time. Components and Threads cannot be emailed.

Honestly heavy tanking is generally not needed. Most teams just need someone who can take the alpha strike whether that a Brute, a Tanker, or just a Blaster with a ton of defense buffs doesn't really matter. For most cases the built in taunt that Brutes have on their attacks and taunt aura is more than sufficient. There are a few places where having Taunt is somewhat important (such as STF and Hamidon) but those are the exception not the rule. That being said Taunt is useful as a range debuff to encourage enemies to come closer to you for punching.

Capping S/L Defense is actually quite difficult unless you have a melee-heavy secondary (or possibly Dark Control). S/L Defense is one of the rarer set bonuses in the IO system with Kinetic Combat being the best non-ATO set with a S/L defense bonus (Siphon is also decent hence why Dark Control might work). That being said, it's pretty easy to get to 32% S/L Defense (with the powers you listed plus Maneuvers and the two 3% Defense IOs) on a Dominator which means you're only a small inspiration from the cap.

Yes, if you know, or even strongly suspect that you'll want a set at level 50 it's worth buying an attuned version of the IO and slotting it early. I often buy a few Thunderstrike sets and a Positron's Blast or two to slot early. The extra defense and recharge helps while leveling. Worst case I sell them on once I hit level 50. I also tend to buy a set of ATOs since they have good stats and it lets me play around with the proc. Sometimes I'll keep them at level 50 and make them superior, sometimes I resell them. Definitely. I slot a kb reduction IO, the miracle and Numina procs and several LotG recharge speed IOs on basically every character I make. I also slot the Kismet To Hit IO on those characters that don't have To Hit buffs. It still works fine, however there's a better option which is attuned IOs. Due to how the market is setup you can buy an attuned IO for the same price as a regular IO and it will increase in power as your character levels up. Basically the only disadvantage to attuned IOs is that you can't use enhancement boosters in them. Every Purple IO is unique so you can only have one copy. You can potentially split them among powers to get multiple copies of the 2 or 3 piece set bonus but that's generally not worth it. The same applies to the ATO sets although there there are a couple of sets with very strong bonuses int he 2 or 3 piece slot so it can be worth splitting the set (ex Superior Mark of Supremacy gets 10% recharge for 2 pieces. Generally the best way to get IOs is to buy them on the market. If you need inf then either use merits to buy enhancement converters and sell them or use merits to buy enhancement converters and use them to convert your recipe drops into something sell-able and sell that. There are three advantages to buying. First you can get them attuned for free (yay!) if you want. Second you can take advantage of lower crafting costs by having someone else craft it at a lower level and then let the market upgrade it to your level. Third you can take advantage of the converter roulette. The odds of getting a specific enhancement you need through converters is low but the odds of getting an enhancement that someone else needs is a lot higher. So convert your enhancements, sell them to people who need them and use the inf to buy the enhancements you want. It's win-win. Attuning enhancements is nice, especially if you exemplar down. In general I attune any enhancement that I'm not planning to boost except for Purples and PvPIOs. However I don't use catalysts to attune them, I buy them attuned by the market since that's a lot cheaper (even if you already have the IO it's cheaper to just sell it and rebuy it as an attuned version). Boosting IOs is more situational. I mostly do it in three situations. The first is purple sets, since you generally only want to 5-slot them I find the best option is to skip the single Damage IO and then use boosters on the Dam/End or Dam/Rech to make up the difference. The second is cases where a power only needs two aspects enhanced (for example Force of Nature only needs Resistance and Recharge), for these powers taking a dual-aspect IO (i.e. Res/Rech) and making it +5 is the equivalent of slotting an SO of each aspect into the power so 2 or 3 of these is sufficient slotting for the power. The third case is powers like Hasten that only need recharge, slotting two level 50 generics and using boosters on them lets me max out recharge for two slots.

It's a known bug, sometimes the TF will fail to recognize that you have an Alpha slot ability and will apply the -4 level shifts (that's why you're at -3, you get the -4 from the debuff and +1 from your alpha slot ability). The only solution is to either exit and re-enter the mission or unslot and reslot your alpha slot ability.

Paragon wiki is your friend: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets#Blaster

You can in theory stack it up to three times. Also note that if you put it in an AoE you'll only get one stack even if you have multiple targets. Personally I opted to stick the set in one of my AoE powers. I tested the proc in my T2 blast while leveling but in the end I didn't find it compelling enough to justify giving up the ranged defense I get from having an extra Thunderstrike in one of my Single Target powers and putting it in an AoE allowed me to replace a Positron's Blast set (effectively giving me a larger recharge bonus and the ranged defense) at the cost of making the proc basically useless. So overall, it's got good set bonuses but I found the proc itself underwhelming.

Well keep in mind most of the people selling them probably have crafting badges so the crafting cost is halved (and there's no recipe cost). Either that or they're selling them at a loss because they crafted them to get the crafting badges.

I believe that Katana sets use the left-hand, that's why you can't use it with Shield Defense.

It's not applied as a buff, they basically get slightly higher base values for regen and recovery than other ATs. So at level 50 and turning off all buffs (including Health and Stamina) they get 5.36 hp/sec and 1.75 end/sec compared to 4.46 hp/sec and 1.67 end/sec for a Corruptor (since Corruptors have the same base HP). It's not really that much of a bonus, the VEATS were designed to not need an inherent but Conditioning got added to give them something since everyone else gets an inherent. On the plus side, since the bonus is applied to their base regen and recovery it means they get more benefit from regen and recovery buffs than other ATs as well.

From what I can recall when the game was live this was a display bug only, they still got the full benefit of the enhancements. Basically the issue is that Damage and Resistance enhancements are the same behind the scenes so there's a bit of weirdness in a power that can slot both.

What is veteran XP good for? Every veteran level you get some bonus Incarnate stuff, either threads or Empyrean Merits.

There are two missions in the Rikti War Zone arc that are a pain. First is one where you've got to rescue six negotiators from Nemesis. The problem here is that while four of the hostages are just normal rescuees two of them are active fighters who will try to help you. Both are pet class and if either of them dies the mission is failed. The second one is the one where you have to protect Lady Grey from rogue Vanguard. The problem is you get three enemy squads spawning once you rescue her and it's quite possible for two of them (or even all three) to spawn right on top of you in which case she tends to get killed pretty quickly before you can get things under control.

The servers aren't giving it out anymore. Basically there was a period when new characters were given 5 charges on creation but when they implemented the customizable XP rates they stopped giving out Experienced.