Gulbasaur

Stalkers are the only archetype that I'd say the Archetype Origin enhancements are definitely worth getting - they really push stalkers from Sneaky Scrappers territory straight into Action Movie Superhero territory. If you've got the inf or the merits to get the inf, I'd really recommend grabbing the two "special effect" ATOs. The stealth proc one should go into Assassin's Strike and the Build Up one can go anywhere it fits. Anyway, welcome to the club!

It has always bothered me slightly that -RES, +DMG, -DMG, -regen can't be enhanced. It means that several sets become one-trick ponies, reduces proc-friendliness and means that sets like sonic resonance, which should be a very powerful set on paper, is actually very middling because other sets can pump out more resistance debuff by abusing recharge boosts. Similarly, -DMG powers are often profoundly underwhelming, whereas they could be a competitive alternative to resistance boosts. Is it possible, per spaghetti code rules? In some cases, it maybe be appropriate to have "half of this power's effects can be enhanced" rules in place.

Your whole post was super cool and I really like the way you're doing it. I wrote a guide to story-arcs here that you might enjoy - it points you towards some of the cooler story-centred parts of the game. I do miss some bits out, but I put it together after running every blueside arc and it's kind a "greatest hits" compilation. I designed it to be played with no XP boosts because you can outlevel so much of the game by accident otherwise. Notable omissions are, sadly, pretty much all of Talos because I tried to follow stories that connect with other stories later and Talos as a whole doesn't really have a narrative so much as a lot of little side stories. The Freakalympics is the original Old Skool Cool story arc, though.

Okay, I'm going to let you in on a super-secret secret - the least-rolled archetype and my main squeeze, Arachnos Widows, are scrappers* with nukes. And holds.. And AoE confuse. And ranged attacks. And team support. And, curiously, they don't really have any downsides other than your first costume slot is a weird one. * or arguably old-style stalkers

Added recommended task forces. Running Redside content nearly ruined the me due to the awful, grindy broker system.

They were clearly really proud with the implementation of travel powers - remember frantic dash across Steel Canyon and Skyway City to hop monorail lines? The devs were proud of the world they made and how you move around it and it shows. Padding for length was also a real thing. City of Heroes was of an era where the grind was real and convenience was of tertiary importance in MMOs. WoW, which started in a similar era, had a flight path that could take around fifteen minutes of real time on what was a glorified tour of "look what we made!". I actually sort of miss it, but I admit it's so much more convenient being able to just teleport across zones.

It's a one of the stronger "old" sets and suits masterminds well. Its downsides are that it's quite heavy on endurance (as you noticed) and has a slow setup with the toggles as you noticed). As long as you don't assume perfect play, you'll be fine. It's a late pick, but there's at least one AoE immobilise in the patron pools. Accelerate Metabolism is great - if people don't gather, that's their decision. You can't win 'em all. My method has always been just to fire buffs like that off in the middle of combat where everyone's clustered up rather than wait for people to gather around me. Fallout - well, defeats do happen and you can't assume you'll spend the whole game at end game where everyone is a tank. It's a low priority power for sure. If you're going down the leadership toggles route, take Vengeance instead if you want a fun-with-corpses power as the defence boost is pretty significant. Mutation - there are other rezzes, so it's really whether you can find room for it as a one-slot wonder.

... who are the crayon-eating cousins of Stalkers. Want some crits with those crits? Stalker all the way.

I'd say more "stalker if you want every combat rotation to be about combos" because of the amazing ATO enhancements. Not that I disagree, but Stalker and Scrapper really differ in playstyle with higher complexity coming with higher damage (set for set - Titan Weapons are their own thing). Stalkers can hit for over a thousand damage, on demand but it's a more active style of play than Scrappers because of the way the ATOs add to the set. All ATs can tank with the right builds, but stalkers have a hard time holding aggro, meaning it's much more of a pure DPS class than scrappers. Brutes are, I think, too beginner friendly in that it has a positive feedback look that sometimes rewards antisocial play (teammates being alive is more important than fury generation and if you move on too soon the aggro cap causes the aggro to overflow onto the next highest threat, which is often the support sets). If you're just returning and just want to roll in and go hunt kill skuls, scrapper every time.

This is sort of what I've found - on my storm/water defender, very high recharge turns storm into a gimmick set to a massive AoE monster with control on levels that would make a dominator blush. On my fortunata, though, with decent separate melee and ranged attack chains and several "nuke" tier powers, it's completely unnecessary. I think it's broken. The original devs called it broken. However, in City of Heroes breaking builds and getting archetypes to do something they shouldn't is basically half the fun (controllers have been tanking since before City of Villains existed and defenders were once what you'd use if you wanted to solo AVs).

That sucks. Do you know what the issue is? If it's a case of an experienced person swapping out a single part, you may save yourself hundreds of dollars.

Complete tangent but last night I dreamt I was at a pride event with Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings (who was a youth worker but also still Aragorn) and Freckle from the Gay and Fabulous Life of Caleb Gallo (who was like seven feet tall). I have not been to a pride event in a decade, although I used to volunteer at a few. Anyway, I'll try to be there.

The Defender vs Corruptor issue is made even more complicated when you factor in that Defenders get a damage boost playing solo (of around 30%) and most sets with -RES come out slightly on top DPS-wise, inluding raiding whole-team DPS by a higher degree. Some support sets are more suited to a defender and get you more DPS - Storm is the best example because it has a stronger debuff and Lightning Storm does about 10% more damage per zap, but neither LS not tornado trigger Scourge so it performs better on a pylon test on a defender. If you're always teaming and don't have a -res debuff, corruptor wins - if you mostly play solo or have a -res debuff, defenders either come out on top or are about the same. The differences aren't nearly as exaggerated as people assume and a lot of it boils down to what triggers Scourge vs how big the debuffs are vs how many people are on the Defender's team.

I agree to some extent, but I was trying to be as like-for-like as I could. I actually love the utility of the whole set (spirit ward remains a strong contender for worst on paper, best in practice and enflame is good if you can immobile and unexpectedly good as a panic button because of the scatter effect) but it is a large investment. Widows are ridonks tanky anyway. Yes, the absorb goes on top of any health - you can use it on a full health ally.

I use it as a long-range pull. Slap a few damage procs in it and it's passable.

I play a fortunata main so I can only really comment on the shared powers, but this is my experience: You don't need Tough - widows have scaling resistances (like super reflexes, I believe) that don't show up in the hero planner. If you hit 50% health, you'll have about an extra 30% resists. Swap the knockback to knockdown in Kick to the +recharge one. It's so low magnitude that it is basically a knockdown anyway and the +recharge proc is a strong one. I can tank quite safely with my fortunata on less defence and only slightly more resistance than you've got - you'll be fine. I dropped Fighting altogether in the end, but fortunatas have more survivability as they have better crowd control so your mileage may vary. Indominable Will isn't worth slotting for resistance, unless you're going for the set bonuses. You've got really high psi resistance already. On a couple of powers, you've hit the defence enhancement cap and are getting very diminishing returns (mouseover the power to see the exact statistics), so maybe swap out some defence/whatever for endurance/whatever here and there to bring your endurance budget down. It's an easy thing to miss and widows chomp through a lot of endurance. You absolutely don't need all those +regeneration slots in Health. I'd kick two or three of them out (definitely keep the +recovery/endurance ones though). I get by on inspirations and teammates (and incarnates when they're up) for healing on the occasions when I do need it. If I were you, I'd grab some powers from the sorcery pool - Rune of Protection is absolutely worth getting if you want more resistance and if you do scale Health back, this would be a good place to put those slots. With four recharge/resistance enhancements, you can get +38% global resistances up every 200 seconds, which meshes well with whichever incarnate power gives you +resistance as you can alternate them. Spirit Ward is a nice little teammate rescue power (pulsing absorb shield allows them to take an extra 50% damage over 15 seconds, which is a squishy-saver) and there are worse one-slot powers than Enflame. Move the stealth IO out of combat jumping into sprint to free up a slot. Widow stealth is pretty high anyway. Assault is a 15% base damage buff (as in, damage before any enhancements) - I'd argue that it's not that useful and it's quite endurance-hungry. You might get better returns adding a damage proc to your main attacks.

As a DC fan, I enjoyed the fact that they basically wrote an entire continuity out of existence in universe because it wasn't working out. Sometimes it's canon, sometimes it's something that happened on an alternate timeline, sometimes it just didn't happen at all. A good chunk of The Flash is spend dealing with the fallout.

It's an extremely good levelling set because it debuffs ToHit and damage and buffs resistance and defence - it's one of the tankier defender primaries. Yes, everyone is drowning in defence at end-game, but the -DMG and +RES is never not useful and Dark Servant means most of your debuffs stack.

It does that check separately for every single person on your team - if you're in a team of 8, it goes off all the friggin' time. If you've got masterminds with you, it goes off even more and you'll start seeing it double-stacking. Solo, it's pretty useless, but on a team it's an uneven, unpredictable critical hit mechanic in disguise. I don't really have much to add beyond that. Have a serious look at a fortunata build, though - you'd lose Eviscerate and Mental Training but you'd gain a whole lot of ranged DPS options, many of which border on overpowered. Welcome to Arachnos.

It took me a while to work out what that was and GOOD GOLLY GOSH it is annoying.

* Bangs saucepans together and starts jumping up and down * Literally any kind of customisation on widows!

I've been playing with TT: Vengeance recently and I kinda love it, but that's mostly because my fortunata has spent the bulk of his time running tips in Atlas with lowbies. When someone goes down, it's a big heal and some more defence to cover things. Fortunatas have such a solid toolkit to begin with that you really can pick up what you want. Glad you're enjoying the build and finding it helpful!

There are a couple of ways to set up things like auto on two powers, one involves text files, rotating keybinds and three paragraphs of text explaining how it works and one is just a one-line fix that gets W to do two things as that's a button you press a lot. I am a simple soul. I like the "W does two things" solution.

Myrmidon speaks the truth. It's a strong set, but good golly it uses a lot of endurance. If you pair it with Dark Melee, you eventually get to recover your endurance, but as a set on its own it is quite rough. Personally, I love that it has an element of control built in - it doesn't feel like a generic tanking set. With cloak of fear or oppressive gloom running, you have a very respectable amount of crowd control very early in the game, which I think adds significant value as a team member. The lack of knockback protection can be mitigated with things like Hover and I think it is a fair payoff. I don't think it should be part of the set itself - all the sets should have some downside to prevent them from feeling too generic.

Keep Hasten on auto and bind W to "+forward$$pow_exec Mind Link". That way, you fire off Hasten as soon as it's recharged and Mind Link on moving forwards.