LiquidBandage

Plus it sounds like you don't raid on Indom

more thoughts to come, spent some time thinking in the shower. A lot of what has been talked about so far talks around the issues and does not fully address the problem.

(1) Long term, once everyone gets Hamidon fatigue (similar to weeks long Rikti/Zombie invasions), people will just run away to other content to avoid the hassle. Then people who are trying to level or travel to a mission/TF door will have to contend with this threat just to be able to run the content they desire. More often than not, they will run in one by one or in small groups and just get slaughtered by Hamidon or Mitos. Hamidon would just become a giant blight on a zone until server reset or a League sized group comes together to deal with it (then presumably maybe spawning it somewhere else). This approach would be much more likely to deter the average player from wanting to play CoX. And just think what it would do to Villain zones. (2) A Praetorian Hamidon might provide more challenge (scaling up a bit or providing moderate defenses to Incarnate powers), but it would not affect the existing Hamidon in the Hive or Abyss. (3) IO sets are not the problem, it is Incarnate usage (Lore pets, Interface usage, Destiny powers to manage the entire League, etc). If we make Hami-os a key to being successful against Hamidon, it skews the access curve. What happens if you get a Microfilament Hami-o (the travel power one)? It has a Endurance Reduction component which makes it slottable in any power (unless there is a typed/set restriction associated with it), but then you'd be slotting an enh just to make a power not-suck against a single encounter? This would eventually skew towards the rich getting richer. Then you would have to contend with characters that did not have any (minimally effective) vs roflstompers. This would create a power imbalance that would not be evident until a raid fails and under current conditions, a failed raid means double or triple Mito spawns that make the zone untenable until server reset. (4) I remember the early days of Hamidon on Live. I used to have my Illusion/Kinetics controller with Group Fly for the sole purpose of following the CC targetter (Mending Mito team) so everyone else could stay huddled together for heals and actually attack through the targetter. It was a price to pay (taking Group Fly) just to make one Team of the League viable just to be able to make it possible to raid, and this is everyone running around at level 50 with Training Origin enh slotted. It was not pretty most of the time. If a group lost their Group Flier (lag, ran out of EoE or the random occurrence of bleed through that kills or stuns), the entire Team gets hosed and drops to the ground. If that happened the Team has to fend for itself until the Group Flier gets upright again and the remainder of the Team needs to not become an untended herd of cats that scatters to the wind. Making it harder to actually orchestrate a League-wide assault on Hamidon is not the answer.

This is why it is useful for non-Controllers/Dominators to diversify their builds a little and include some sort of CC (preferably a single target hold). Stacking mez is useful in almost any situation where you aren't just roflstomping minions & lieutenants all the time.

I have always had a Defender mindset when I make a Defender or lean heavily into a Controller secondary. It is just part of the ingrained mentality from when I first played on Live. My favorite Defender (FF/Psi) from live I remade here and did the Tactics/Maneuvers thing to squeeze every ounce of defense & tohit out of my buffs (if you were in my aura, you could insta-snipe back before HC changed Snipe powers). The change finally happened when I looked closer at the mechanics of handling Mending Mitochondria in Hamidon encounters. Typically you have Controllers and Dominators just spam their solitary single target Hold and single target ranged attack until enough mez stacks and it doesn't heal your attacks fast enough. Some of that can be overcome by debuffs, but I chose to focus in on the holds themselves. Controllers for all of their lauded "controllery" capabilities seem to have a hard time actually holding mobs that are tougher than Lieutenant level and that is a shame. I have a Bots/Time MM that dipped into the Fire epic pool to get a second single target hold and that gave me an idea once I saw the stacking of holds in action. I looked at Corruptor primaries for a set that had one or more Holds and settled on Cold. Then I looked at Corruptor secondaries and found a single target hold in Poison (plus a cone that seemingly does a hold). Then I looked at Epics for Corruptors and was disappointed and immediately looked at Patrons and found a gem in Soul Mastery. That could be four single target holds I could roll on any problematic mob. Envenom and Weaken could be a great prep to make the Holds even more effective. Weaken Resolve (Force of Will pool) stacks nicely into that debuff combo (plus I can get a travel power and a defense power in Unleash Potential). If you look at how a full team plows through content, what is typically the last mob to die? The Boss/AV or the problematic types. Blasters can do their thing and AoE everything while you lock down and devour the difficult targets. It is even more fun when you kill the Boss before the Blasters have killed all the scrubs. That was a the genesis of how I made my first Corruptor and actually took him to 50 and still play him today. I made him a specialist at controlling problematic mobs (Paragon Protector, Fake Nem, etc), bosses and Arch Villains / Heroes. Because the mainstay of the character is rooted in the primary set (the holds), they appear earlier in the character's development. The single target debuffs also come early, so the tools to do what I want are all there early on (I don't have to wait to 38 to "start playing my character"). I took the single target heal (forced to), the mez protection power and the rez power. That's it. Nothing else to allow me to fall back on playing like a Defender. I play that character like the deep dark boogey man that reaches out from the shadows (protective buffer of teammates) to dig its claws into a juicy boss and devour it. To be honest, a lot of the process is changing your mindset on how you play your character and keying in on core powers that you can get early _because_ you are a Corruptor instead of a Defender. Then the next Corruptor I made leaned much more into the mindset aspect and I have not regretted it at all.

Collect all eight Explore badges in _ANY_ zone to unlock the LRT. It takes maybe 5-10 minutes max. Zone Overview - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki (cityofheroes.dev) Then collect just _ONE_ exploration badge in each of the other zones to enable that zone in the LRT. It isn't hard to do. I have unlocked all zones (including shadow shard) on a sub level 10 character with just the 5,000 inf P2W jetpack and the use of my SG base teleporters. A good percentage of the time there is a badge close to the base "door" in the zone. It isn't a massive hardship to spend the time to do this. If it is a hardship, how likely do you think it is that the character will want/need to teleport to that zone then evaluate your cost/benefit ratio. Also, for Pocket D, exit the club via the ski slope door and fly over to the box truck floating outside the window to get one of the explore badges in that zone. Waiting around for 1 hour is tedious.

I will provide the tools to figure this out yourself. Only you know how you fight your character (preferred rotations, objective of your character/powerset). Look at your character's combat attributes to gain an understanding of where your character stands as a whole. Powers -> Combat Attributes -> Base Look at your recovery and recharge numbers and see how using some of your powers impacts that (Hasten, anything that impacts recovery, etc). Then look at your ToHit and Accuracy to get an idea of the likelihood of your attacks to land (Aim or BuildUp or Tactics, etc). Look at the detailed information of your powers in question (Right click -> Info). Get an idea of how much endurance is used each time you fire it. How long it takes to recharge and figure out roughly how often you use the power (in a frequent rotation or only in emergencies). Look at the Accuracy. Is it above or below 1.00? (if below, it might be worthwhile to invest more ACC in this power) (if above you might get away with just a single ACC enh). AoE powers typically fall into the 1.00 or below category (T9 nukes can be exceptions). Look at the damage numbers too then pay attention to what you see with your eyes when you fire it. Look to see if the CC effects (immobilize in this case) takes effect in a tiered manner. Some effects can have partial augmentation by enhancements (half is a static effect while half can be augmented by enhancements). All of the above can be used to judge how many slots you want/need in a power (from a generic IO standpoint). If IO set (bonuses or procs) are in consideration, that impacts slotting too. If your are a primary damage dealer, focus on damage. If the power seems to lean heavily towards debuffing, think about slotting for that. Level 50 IOs provide 42.4% to the stat (look up Enhancement Diversification), so two of those will get you to 84-ish percent. A third enhancement will slam hard into the Enhancement Diversification curve (three 42.4% will output 98%ish, wasting a good chunk of that third enhancement's potential). So consider purchasing some of those +1 enhancement augments (via reward merits) and just tweak those two enhancements until you get close to 95%. You'll essentially get three enhancement's worth of output from just two enhancements. You can go even further by potentially slotting Hamidon enhancements (they impact more than one aspect of a power). Some powers like Fortitude benefit from Recharge, Defense and ToHit. there is a Hamidon enhancement that impacts all three aspects, so slotting three of those essentially slams those aspects of the power into the Enhancement Diversification curve (it is like having nine Single Origin enh slotted into one power for only three slots). Not all powers can leverage enhancements like that, but there are some good candidates out there if you look for them. Also think about what Alpha incarnate power you might want to take (as it lets you punch beyond the Enhancement Diversification barrier). If you slot for the same stat(s) as the Alpha, you can have the potential to be even more effective at certain aspects. If you have a rough understanding of what your powers do to enemies it will help you recognize when someone is debuffing your target (or buffing you). If you know ahead of time that a debuff or buff is going to occur, you can time/sequence your powers to take advantage of it.

Next time, lead off with the reason for the post at the beginning.

There is always going to be a hole. If this is for your Brute (the one without taunt), don't worry about it as someone else will be tanking. If this is for another character, there will always be a hole. It is exceedingly difficult to build a nigh invulnerable character. Instead, learn how to group with people that provide buffs. No tank stands alone (at least not for too long). Learn what damage types give you problems, pay attention to which mobs do that type of damage then prioritize CCing/killing those mobs first. Learn how to corner pull to group mobs up so they can die faster. Another part about being a good tank is learning how to play a support character that supports a tank (there is more than one way to do it). Then when you see someone doing that for your tank, let them know their efforts are appreciated. It is hard to see how buffs keep a tank from face planting when you aren't directly involved.

A few nights ago we had a team of seven running at +2x8 and we completed it in 1hr54min killing most and exploring a bunch.

This feels like ground Booper might have already covered. I don't know for sure though.

You could have mentioned this in your first post as a courtesy to the rest of the forum so they could contextualize your request a bit better.

#0 Welcome back #1 Play what motivates you (inspires creativity). How a group meshes together helps determine the success of the group (play style combined with complimentary powersets). Is a healer or tank useful? Yes, especially if the group is all Blasters. Is it required? No. Can those capabilities be covered by other ATs with pool power picks? Yes. What is most important is that someone in the group mentally fills the role and leads the group (debuffing, tanking, healing). There are some edge cases like Hamidon or Lord Recluse (in MLTF) where just walking in without a plan will end in disaster regardless of what ATs you bring. #2 Armor sets ALWAYS have a gap in protection somewhere. Your offensive powerset can help mitigate your weaknesses (knock up/down, -ToHit) a little. iirc you can boost a character on the Test server to take a look. As a side note, Resistance plays a little differently than Defense. With Resistance, you go in expecting to take damage. With Defense, you go in hoping to not take damage. It is much harder to gauge your relative effectiveness if you aren't getting feedback (taking damage) on a regular basis. That is why players push hard to get to the soft caps ASAP. Also, the "endgame" content is not the goal of the game. Games with leveling systems invariably paint themselves into a corner content-wise. Take the time to enjoy the game as you level. There are different challenges to overcome that not being a nigh-invulnerable maxed out character will provide enjoyment. It also takes time to learn how your powersets and power choices work together (or don't, necessitating a respec). Some power combinations hit the ground running at character generation while others take time (needing specific powers or slots to make powers impactful) and playing through those rough patches helps inform you of situations where you NEED to be mindful of what you are doing. So if you run across a similar situation in the future (being exemplared or running a low level TF or mission arc via Ouroboros) you don't automatically face plant. It also helps to be observant of how the group tackles content (ref Bastille Boy's post above) and figure out how you can best assist the team. As a Energy Blast Sentinel that does plenty of knockback, I wait a tick or two for a tank to engage before firing off my AoEs. Once the mob fires off a power and moves in close a Controller can immobilize then you can go to town. Alternately you can target the Boss and slam your single target powers (they tend to be more resistant to knockback) while the pack huddles up. Or you can reposition yourself so your knockbacks drive them into the tank or against a wall, etc. There are multiple ways to be mindful about how you operate in a group. Then sometimes knockback is a CC in itself and is a great option.

I suggest that you tweet/insta/tiktok your own thoughts on this to the wind until you get tired and decide to just play the game instead.

A chunk of my group + pugs (team of 7) ran Graveyard Shift (at +2x8) Tuesday night and Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahz (at +1x8 I think) Wednesday night and we were able to finish without too much trouble. If we had a slightly more balanced team and employed corner pulls to limit pile-on combats, we could have avoided a wipe or two. We treated these mission arcs like a Task/Strike Force and just plowed through. Both arcs took a little under two hours to complete (we typically arrest/kill as much as possible). I can see maybe scaling things back a bit for solo players if things are out of whack for groups of that size, but please do not tweak it across the board. We had a good deal of fun on those runs. The only thing that felt out of place was the multiple "talk to X" missions in the Graveyard Shift arc. That type of mission makes some sense if the arc was available out in the normal game world, but since this is only accessible via Ouroboros it just leaves the majority of the group hanging. It felt like the Fun Bus slammed on the brakes while the leader ran around and the interaction (reading the text) was only accessible by the mission leader. Up to that point we could sort out what was happening via updated mission objectives. It just felt like there was a gap in the story for the players that were not team leader.

Were you soloing?

You are hoarding & holding onto too much stuff that is essentially not precious to you. Get your crafting character to 50. Focus first on kitting out that character with level 50 IOs (level 50 IO recipe drops from playing the game). You will earn the influence needed to craft them and a good portion of the common salvage needed to make them just by playing the game. If you bog yourself down by having a dozen alts all trying to level at the same time and all trying to craft/enhance at the same time you will forever be stuck in the mire of not having what you need. Take a look at what most characters need slotted in powers (not what you want, I mean what you NEED). You need to hit your targets, so you need Accuracy. You need to cut back on endurance usage (especially for toggles), so you need Endurance Reduction. You need your damaging powers to pack a punch, so you need Damage. You want to cycle your powers as often as possible, so you need Recharge. Universally all characters need those four enhancements regardless of powersets or build strategy. So focus in on memorizing those recipes first if possible. It will be useful to all of your characters. Adopt a hand-me-down philosophy with IOs that you craft, especially the Accuracy/Damage/EndReduction/Recharge ones. It really helped me to only focus in on three levels of enhancements to make it easy to store them. IOs are functional from the time you slot them all the way up to 50 and they scale down when you are exemplared. The level 25 IOs are roughly equivalent to level 25 Single Origin enhancements, so that is one of the levels I target. A character pretty much rounds out into what it is going to become in the mid 30s, plus you tend to get big powers at 32/35/38. So the second level I focus on is 35 IOs. Then the level 50 IOs are the third level I focus on. I only store IOs that are level 25, 35 or 50. All of the other IOs I craft for the purposes of memorizing a recipe I either send to a character that I KNOW will use them right now or I sell them on the AH (that gets you more inf to buy salavage/recipes that you need). To complete the thought, have your characters respec (you get a free one every ten levels) at level 32 and dump all of your level 25 IOs into storage and equip the level 35 IOs. Then when that character gets to 47, respec again, dump those 35 IOs in storage and equip level 50 IOs. That way nothing is wasted and you can effectively reuse level 25 & 35 IOs on multiple characters. Look at my post on the first page of this thread. Adopt some sense of sorting and categorizing for your salvage storage and be mindful of how much you are storing. You don't need 30 of each and every salvage, that is just wasteful. Once you restrict your crafting to a few level ranges, you will see which types of salvage are more commonly used and therefore useful to you. You will see the pattern emerge and can then adjust priorities on what you need to store for rainy day crafting. Do NOT store Single Origin enhancements. That is just wasting storage space that you are woefully short on at the moment. Sell them to get the influence you need to buy salvage or recipes to get them memorized. Another thing I see SGs doing is trying to store a handful of every possible IO for every possible level and you end up with five level 20 Confuse IOs, three level 30 Stun IOs, two level 40 Defense Debuff IOs, etc. All that crap is just taking up space that NO ONE WILL EVER USE. Don't hold onto that junk, it is not precious, sell it on the AH if you can or just delete them outright. Save your sanity and declutter your storage. When I was training up my first crafter I too stored as many recipes on non-crafting alts to be used at a later date. This is a useful tactic and I suggest that you go this route. But once you get your crafter fully memorized for whatever pattern, sell the excess patterns on the Auction House. Freeing up space for new drops is important, especially rarer recipes. Also, look into getting your characters to 40+ and running the Market Crash task force. You are rewarded with a purple recipe the first time you complete it (make sure you have enough free recipe space). Don't get sucked into thinking you need to have your character maximized at all moments of your leveling career. Do the best with what you can craft. Realize that a level 25 IO is just as effective as a Single Origin enh but with the added benefit that it never outlives its usefulness. Sure, at level 27 you could upgrade to level 30 IOs, but then you'd have to spend to craft them and only see a marginal increase in effectiveness. Save your resources for the other breakpoints and for level 50 IOs when it really counts. Once you get all of your characters running on IOs, you can focus in on sets or buying ATOs or whatever. I have never needed to grind AE missions. You have a group of friends, play the game. Invest in powers that make the group collectively more effective. Raise your difficulty level incrementally to see what the group can handle (+1 or +2 or x8). The enemy groups you face can impact how the group succeeds too, so if you see trouble, back the difficulty down a notch. Be willing to risk failure from time to time and you will enjoy the game more. Bring your friends together instead of fracturing them apart over this storage malaise. It is clearly a Nemesis plot that has wormed its way into your psyche. Liberate yourself. Declutter. Bring your friends together. Have fun.

Fissure (Stone Mastery for Controllers). I like the animation combined with the sound and al the baddies getting knocked down.

No no no. That isn't what UltraAlt is arguing/advocating here. The point under contention by the OP is that there is no need for anyone recruiting Hero side to state that it is "blue" because the player population skew is such that it should be assumed all calls for recruitment are for Hero-side content. Clarifying that you are recruiting for a Strike Force should by its nature imply it is for Villains and there is no need to further perpetuate these colorist labels. By supporting this colorist labeling regime, you are breathing life into narrative that there is more than one way to describe something.

Last year you would see people recruiting for DFB teams every couple of minutes non-stop. On both sides. So you'd have a hero side DFB fishing and a villain would send a tell and then they'd do the "I can't invite you" dance. So to clarify things they'd just say "LF3M DFB (blue)" and be done with it. If it is that big of a hardship, you can edit chat tabs to remove channels that offend you.

I have noticed this recently on my SR/EM tank when we did Manticore & Yin the other night. He uses the non-Huge male body with default settings. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with low ceilings or a x8 spawn size setting. He doesn't have Combat Jumping and Practiced Brawler is a click power (so not always on) and I had problems repositioning or jumping around. I don't remember if I've had problems on my other tanks. I usually chalk up maneuvering problems to getting pushed around by MM pets.

There are a couple good options for a Melee character, and a couple useful ones too. The Sorcery pool is excellent. Spirit Ward is a great compliment for grouping if you aren't the one taking damage (i.e. if you have a Brute/Tank taking the brunt of most attacks). If the tank has aggro, your target will be focused on them and you can just fire the power off at any point without having to retarget. It also does not generate any aggro. Plus you can use it on the tank prior to a pull. Arcane Bolt is a good ranged power, which is useful to a melee class. Plus it does KnockDown. Mystic Flight is generally really useful and a stepping stone for Rune of Protection if you think you'd need it. For your Poison/Broadsword concept, look into Experimentation. Most of the powers in that pool thematically could fit into your character. As for an Elixir inspired character itself, regeneration is sorta handled in two ways currently. Thematically you might want regeneration to be wounds "dramatically healing" right in front of your eyes, and +regen powers sorta do that, but at a much slower rate making it not very dramatic. Plus it is usually one big hit, the character is still alive, a pause in the action allows for regeneration to occur (cue the dramatic camera angle) then they stand up all healed. The other way regeneration is handled is through Absorption (usually short interval applications of a damage shield) to functionally act like the dramatic movie style regeneration. In game terms, Absorption kinda bridges the gap mechanically, but it does not thematically fit the bill. With absorption you get a secondary hit point pool that gets drawn upon before your main hit point pool. The periodic application of a absorption shield can possibly give you a breather to regenerate, but if you are under constant assault you will quickly wither. City of Heroes rarely affords the dramatic pause in combat for a regenerator to come back from the brink. You either have defenses or combined debuffs and enough offense to stem the tide or you get overrun and smothered by the onslaught. Take a look at one of the recent discussions on how to revamp Regen. They talk about how to make a regenerator feel/operate more like a regenerating powered being (iirc) instead of a combined healing/absorption/regen mishmash that is Regeneration currently. For your purposes, look at Regeneration, Willpower and maybe Bio Armor (if you can handle the aesthetics). There aren't any/enough weaponed melee pool powers to build a concept around if you came at it from the other end of things (a Defender or whatever) to focus on the healing aspect. Your only real options at this point are the Medicine pool and Sorcery on a melee character. The concept (weaponed melee + self healing + healing others) kinda lands in a void zone for power sets.

You need to provide more context. Your question is meaningless.

Another factor that needs to be considered is Single Target vs AoE "controls". I have an Ice/Poison Corruptor that basically only uses his single target holds & debuffs against problematic enemies (Paragon Protector) or AVs because everything else dies so fast it is a waste of my time & enjoyment. So how does not using controls factor into the matrix of possibilities? Also, how do you evaluate a power like Bonfire? It actively disperses a group making it harder to kill everything, but temporarily CCs them via knockback. But if you slot a Knockback->Knockdown enhancement it becomes a massively useful AoE CC tool that does damage to boot. Then consider recharge, duration and (to a lesser degree) casting time. A big AoE hold is nice, but the recharge is significant enough that you won't be using it much (unless the group has a lot of recharge buffs). A big AoE immobilize is less 'lethal' when compared to the AoE hold, and it recharges much faster. Plus there are usually secondary effects associated (debuffs) coupled with the fact that they are immobilized (i.e. not running around to escape further AoE powers). If mobs last long enough that you can cast the power again (minimal or no debuff down time), how does that factor into the matrix of possibilities? Consider also what some CC does compared to others when it comes to survivability. An immobilize makes a mob use ranged unless you are in melee reach, so there is maybe some benefit. A stun makes them wobble around a bit while they do nothing, so maybe they don't fit perfectly into subsequent AoEs. A knock-back/down/up temporarily takes a mob out of the mix until they stand back up which means they aren't attacking anything during that time. If you knock them again while they are down or standing up it does not do anything (you need to wait for them to be fully upright first which gives them an opportunity to fire a power). Then look at what can be achieved by some powers that have a knockdown enhancement slotted in non-CC powers. A tank with a damage aura requires no additional effort (other than having the power toggled on) to possibly knock something down and thus not take damage from that source. Or a large AoE power that recharges relatively quickly lets you manage more than one group if they are packed in tightly. A lot of how you use CC and under what context makes evaluating/ranking CC powers.

Wait for the moment when the brain goes *BOOM!* after realizing what eight Defenders all running toggles could do...