Zolgar

Several guides on the forums here use popmenus, for the most part though it’s “here, use this popmenu to do the thing.” without any guidance on how to modify it to suit your needs. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially since plenty of people don’t want the added complexity of modifying or customizing a popmenu. I am not one of those people, and if you’re reading this guide you probably aren’t either. I like to poke things. I like to figure out how they work and how I can make them work to suit my needs. So recently I decided I wanted to make a custom popmenu for chat, just a simple one, but I wanted quick access to multiple presets for chatting without a bunch of keybind. Unfortunately, Paragonwiki’s article on popmenus isn’t that helpful: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Popmenu_(Slash_Command) SO! What is a popmenu? A popmenu is a custom menu which can be used to execute any number of slash commands, it essentially allows you to bind a large number of options to a few keystrokes. Why popmenus? Because they’re cool? In all seriousness, popmenus are ideal for commands you want ready access to, but don’t need at a single push of a button. You probably wouldn’t want to use a popmenu to activate your general combat powers, though you could certainly use one that way. You might use popmenus to combine inspirations on the fly, or start chatting in certain ways, to send commands for a raid, or maybe to set up flyposes… The options are nearly endless. So how do I do it? The first step to making a popmenu is creating the directory the game will look for them in: <game install>/data/texts/english*/menus *or the language your game is in. From there you will create a .mnu file named whatever you happen to want to call it. In Windows 10 I find that to create an .mnu file, I have to create a text document and then ‘save as’. Do make sure you don’t accidentally save it as menu.mnu.txt. Inside that .mnu file, you will need to use this format: Now… this doesn’t make a lot of sense, let’s be honest. I copy and pasted that from the Wiki article, and you can read what they say about it, but there’s a lot you really don’t need right now. Like the divider command, that just puts a divider between options (.. Seems like wasted space to me >.>). The LockedOption command is cool, if you want options to only be available to certain people (super cool uses, but pretty advanced stuff), etc. If you want to make any notations in your popmenu, you can easily do so! If you enter // in to the menu, it will ignore anything following that until the next line break (the next time you hit enter). I don’t tend to make use of this for my own popmenus, but I can see why some would want to have notations and comments in their files. We’ll start with the basics by looking at simple one I built for chat: Menu “Chat” This just tells the game what the menu name is, and this is how we will find it later. { Title Chat This is what will display as the name of the menu when we open the popmenu. Option “help chat &q” “beginchat /hc [@Zolgar] “ Option tells us this is a new command in the popmenu. What follows in quotes “Help chat &q” tells us the name of the command, and the keystroke for it, in this case the keystroke is q. The second set of quotes is the command it issues. Like keybinds and macros, you do not need to use the slash before the command. “But Zolgar, it says /hc right there!” Correct! That’s because I’m using the beginchat command. This particular command line will open my chat box up for typing starting with /hc [@zolgar] , which allows me to quickly send messages with help, tagged with my global handle (since I alt all the time.). Option "LFG &w" "beginchat /lfg [$level $archetype] " Same deal, sets up to send a chat to the looking for group channel, opened with my level and archetype, saves me a bit of typing. 🙂 } Just closes the menu out. Update: I am am idiot and missed a key piece of Information! Popmenus must be preceded by // or a blank line So it should open like: // menu (menu name) Or: menu (menu name) Now, how do we turn that into a thing in game? First, you can’t add/modify popmenus on the fly, you must reload the game for it to acknowledge they are there or have been changed. In game, you use a keybind to open the menu, so you have to set that up, in my case I used shit+enter for this. /bind shift+enter popmenu “chat” That’s a really simple example, of course! You can get fancier, like you could do a menu for mastermind commands! Credit where it’s due, I got the idea for this, and stole the commands from this thread: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,7092.0.html The numpad binds are super amazing and the only reason I don’t like them is the number pad is on the right side of the keyboard my right hand never leaves the mouse while I’m playing except to type. I want something to function on the fly… SO! Let’s play. A quick side note, you’ll notice I use q, w ,e r, a, s, d etc. as commands a lot. This is because I want to be able to hit the commands needed from the natural state of my left hand. This gives the functionality of the keybinds in the above link, but as a popmenu. Unfortunately, some of the commands don’t work on keystrokes (go to and dismiss), but these are two things you’re not going to need all the time. 🙂 Really, I have only scratched the surface of what popmenus are capable of with this post. I have heard tell of some amazing things, like using it for a badge checklist. I am currently trying to suss out how to make a popmenu that I can use to check and see what badges I am missing for a given accolade, but haven’t figured it out yet. Over all, I hope I have given you some idea on how to create popmenus to do whatever crazy and/or useful things you might need them to. What else should I know? So, I recently discovered an interesting quirk with popmenus that make them annoying to deal with while editing my chat popmenu for a global channel I joined. I joined the channel Looking for RP, so as you can imagine, the first thing I did was add a line for that in my popmenu, that looked something like: option "LFRP &r" "beginchat /send "looking for RP" [$name, Everlasting] " This should have the effect that when I hit shift+enter r, it pops the chat bar up to send to the channel looking for RP with my current character's name and the server I am on autopopulated. Except instead it pops up a chat bar with /send It took a lot of fighting with it to figure it out, and several other helpful folks in Help Chat fighting with it and doing some Google searches. Ultimately the issue was discovered: You cannot have quotation marks in a popmenu command line. I came to the conclusion that the popmenu expects the command to be encased in quotation marks, and so sees one and basically reads it as a full stop on the command line, ignoring everything after. Further testing, if I leave the quotations off, it tries to send "for RP [$name, Everlasting] " to global channel 'looking'. Unlike powers, I cannot use underscores in place of the spaces in the global channels name. Basically, you cannot use a popmenu to chat in a global channel with spaces in its name... I, however, was not satisfied with this answer! So I built a workaround. This deviates from popmenus a bit, but it's still interesting, and it will let you know how to get around the issue, if you run in to it: I discovered the /powexectray command will activate macros, and will do so from a popmenu. So I created a macro and shoved it in to the first slot on my 7th tray: beginchat /send "looking for RP" [$name, Everlasting] " Then, I added the line to my popmenu: option "LFRP &r" "powexectray 1 7" Now, I don't particularly want to type "/macro LFRP "beginchat /send "looking for RP" [$name, Everlasting] "" on every character I roll and then drag that macro to 7:1, and I have a few keybinds I use on all characters already, so I finally got around to setting up a bind file for them, and added to it: f11 "macroslot 60 LFRP beginchat /send "Looking for RP" [$name, Everlasting] " So yes. I have a keybind. To make a macro. To be activated by a popmenu. To chat in a global channel. You might say it would be easier to just make a command like ctrl+enter as a bind to just chat in looking for RP. SURE, it would be, but then I would have to use a different command than I do for all my other chats, plus that's quitter talk 😛 Side note: the /macroslot command is super cool, it automatically dumps the macro generated in to whatever slot you choose, from slot 0 (1:1) to 89 (9:10)

OK, so first you need to go to, or create this folder chain in your CoH install: Data>texts>english>menus Create a file "damage.mnu" (what I usually have to do is create a text document and then 'save as' to change it to a .mnu) Open that file with the text editor of your choice, and paste the following in: You can change the keystrokes for the menu by editing where it says "Make Enrage &e" and "Use &r" to whatever keys you wanted, so if you wanted it to be 1 and 2, it would be &1 and &2, for example. You must reload the game for it to realize there are popmenus to be had. When you log in to the character you want to do it on /bind e (or key of your choice) popmenu damage You can also run all the commands together so you can hit a single keystroke and combine /and/ munch them. To do that, you replace replace the use section, including quotations (" Option "Use &r" ") with $$ There's a thread in the guides section that goes in to a bit more detail, and has menus for every inspiration type.

Both Radiation and Shield contribute to your damage output, Invuln does indirectly by debuffing foe defense which allows for Achille's Heel proc, and tends to ensure you'll hit more often. I do agree that Titan/Bio is easily one of the best options for a scrapper farmer, but I am not sure I would say it's the only optimal one. I can see rad/bio, titan/rad, and rad/rad all being solid options for farming as a scrapper as well, and that's just off the top of my head. I could also see Electric/Rad working. I can also see a /shield scrapper build being an utter powerhouse farmer, focusing on damage output instead of survival and nuking foes where they stand.

Blasters. The intention was: MM = Tank Brute = Scrapper Stalker = Blaster Corr = Def Dom = Controller At least as far as their primary role within a team goes. Also, the only brutes I have that take taunt are Stoners, or if the concept calls for it. Or if at level 50 I have a spare power pick but no spare slots. >.>

I've talked to a few people about it recently, so! Addendum the second: Scrapper farming. So if you want to farm with a tank, you can just basically follow what I said about brutes word for word, scrappers are a different beast. One would think that since their raw damage numbers are better than brutes, and their survival isn't much worse, that a scrapper would make a great farmer, and they do, but they follow slightly different rules to it. Something I didn't explain in the Brute section- Taunt auras. What are they and why do they matter for farming? A taunt aura is a toggle that while active, actively makes anything it hits focus on you. I didn't cover this for brutes because most, if not ever, brute secondary has one, and any time a brute deals damage they taunt what they hit. Same with tanks. Scrappers, on the other hand? Scrapper attacks don't come with an inherent taunt effect. This means that powers like Blazing Aura and Quills won't keep things focused on you like they do as a brute or tank. Some scrapper secondaries though include a taunt aura! Bio Armor- In my opinion the king of farmer sets for scrappers. It includes a taunt aura, Evolving Armor, and it provides enough tools for survival to make up for the lower resist cap of a scrapper. As with a brute, you have defense, resist, regeneration, recovery, heal, absorb, and a pile of debuffs at your disposal, plus the versatility of being able to pop stances if you need to. Invulnerability- If you don't want to play Bio, Invuln is a good second choice. It doesn't have the tools for survival that Bio has, but it's still a mixed resist/defense set which makes capping both easier, and it comes with Invincibility as a taunt aura, which boosts your defense and to-hit, making it easier to hit those +4s. Willpower- Another good choice if you don't want to play Bio, like bio it offers you resist, defense, regeneration, and recovery. It's taunt aura is Rise to the Challenge, which not only gives you more regeneration for every foe near you, but also debuffs their to-hit, improving your survival. WP lacks a click to restore HP, unfortunately. It does have a 'god mode' T9 that has a very minor crash.. Still not one I would use, but it can be good in an emergency. Radiation Armor- I have very little experience with this set, so I cannot comment on its quality for farming at all unfortunately. Going by its stats, it should be a decent farmer set though. While it doesn't offer any defense, defense is easy enough to build through pools/IOs, it offers you resists, regeneration, recovery, absorb, healing, and foe debuffs. Its taunt aura is in form of Beta Decay which reduces your foes to-hit and defense, while increasing your Recharge which is a nice bonus. Shield Defense- Probably the worst choice for a farmer scrapper. This is not to say Shield is a bad set (it's not, it's an amazing set!), just that it doesn't stand up well to farming. Shield is pretty much a one trick pony, +def. Unfortunately defense is the easiest survival trait to build up from pools/IOs. You will softcap with shield super easily, it does offer a small amount of resist, and a +max hp passive which are nice. Shield's taunt aura comes in the form of Against All Odds, which increases your damage for every foe nearby, and decreases their damage as well. You can certainly make a Shield farmer, especially since it does come with a nice PBAoE attack in form of Shield Charge, but it's going to take some work. Another important note about farming with a scrapper, is your DoT auras cannot crit, so Spines, and Rad are not AS strong of choices for a primary, Titan on the other hand, has a lot of AoEs that can crit. I was misinformed on this information. Apparently it is only your secondary sets that the DoT auras can't crit. Outside of that, when selecting your primary for a farming scrapper, it's really no different than selecting your primary for a farming brute. You don't have to put as much weight on sets that have DoT auras, because those don't add to your holding agro as a scrapper and don't help your damage much- though they are nice to drop Fury of the Gladiator's proc in! Scrappers make great farmers if they have a few good AoE attacks, because their single target damage is exceptional, so they can usually turn bosses on before brutes can, they focus on the boss and typically the lesser ones will fall to the AoEs in the attack chain. It's also easier to get a scrapper to damage cap than a brute, and at damage cap, scrappers deal more damage than damage capped brutes, once crits are factored in. Scrappers are softer than brutes though, so they require you to pay more attention to your farming, and be quick on your click survival powers. Scrapper farming is kind of training wheels to lead you in to farming with a 'squishy', because you're still survivable enough, but it teaches you to pay more attention to your HP and how much agro you've gotten. Do not expect an addendum any time soon regarding squishy farming. That's outside of my wheel house, to be honest. >.>

So, priority: Is it a hot 'port? If yes, tanks first, followed by support, then DPS. (Even this isn't really set in stone though) If no, does anyone else on the team have teleport? If yes, other teleporters first, followed by whoever. If no, teleport whoever the hell you feel like, and if someone bitches about the order you teleport in, don't teleport them. >.>

Excellent, I have at least one person fooled. In all honesty: "Don't be a dick" is something everyone needs to hear sometimes. I am certainly no exception, and I know and acknowledge it.

Suspected as much, thanks.

With how easy it is to obtain merits, and the fact that you can get a purple recipe for 100 merits, you will not see the standard price of a purple IO much of any higher than the current market value of 100 merits. Presently speaking, one merit is worth approximately 300k, so 100 is worth 30mil. The only way we will see purples hit 200 million is if a single merit becomes worth 2 million inf, which would basically mean converters selling for 700k each, which I don't think will happen.

I've been seeing /c/ in some people's bios.. Dahel iz dis?

If you use "leveling" enhancers, it's also worth noting that you can store them in a SG base when a character outgrows them. Personally, my system is this: Level 12: start slotting 15 basic IOs and keep filling empty slots with the highest level I can until... Level 22: If the character is struggling, switch to 25 basic IOs. (More often than not, I'll use unslotters at this point, even though yes they are worth more than the low level IOs, they are worth less to me than the time to craft or try and get everything I need from the market >.>) Level 32: If I didn't update at 22, or if I did but need to adjust power selections, respec, switch to 35 basic IOs. (toss all the lower level ones in to my base) From here out, I seldom use anything above a 35. Level 50: Final respec to make sure I have my end game powers and number of slots. Slot any sets I have, filling in the rest with 35-50 basics which I unslot and toss in to storage as I get the set pieces I need. Because I am an altoholic, I still spend a big of inf on every new char, because I have a lot of low level IOs slotted on alts. If I only ran one or two at a time, I would seldom have to spend any inf on an alt until 32, and even then not a lot until 50.

So, this is my Titan/Bio scrapper. Titan Hunter. She handles +4/x8 Council Empire like it's nothing, the S/L version of Bloody Rainbow Comic Con is a little more dangerous for her, she can still handle it at +4/x8 but it can get dicey (pun maybe intended). It's important to note though, her focus is not farming, farming is tertiary for her. Her primary purpose is killing GMs, her secondary purpose is TFs, trials, and other content. Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Titan: Level 50 Magic Scrapper Primary Power Set: Titan Weapons Secondary Power Set: Bio Armor Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Flight Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Defensive Sweep -- SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc:50(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(3), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(3), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:50(5), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg:50(5), LucoftheG-Rchg+:50(48) Level 1: Hardened Carapace -- UnbGrd-Max HP%:50(A), UnbGrd-ResDam:50(15), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx:50(15), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam:50(17) Level 2: Inexhaustible -- PrfShf-End%:50(A), PrfShf-EndMod:50(34), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg:50(50) Level 4: Environmental Modification -- LucoftheG-Rchg+:50(A), LucoftheG-Def:50(17), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx:50(34), Rct-ResDam%:50(50) Level 6: Crushing Blow -- Hct-Dam%:50(A), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx:50(7), Hct-Acc/Rchg:50(7), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(9), Hct-Dmg/Rchg:50(9), AchHee-ResDeb%:20(46) Level 8: Follow Through -- SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc:50(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg:50(11), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(11), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:50(13), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg:50(13) Level 10: Adaptation Level 12: Build Momentum -- GssSynFr--Build%:50(A), GssSynFr--ToHit/Rchg:50(36) Level 14: Kick -- Empty(A) Level 16: Ablative Carapace -- Pnc-Heal/+End:50(A), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux:50(36), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg:50(36), Pnc-Heal/Rchg:50(37), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg:50(37) Level 18: Rend Armor -- SprCrtStr-Rchg/+50% Crit:50(A), SprCrtStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(19), SprCrtStr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(19), SprCrtStr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(21), SprCrtStr-Dmg/Rchg:50(21), SprCrtStr-Acc/Dmg:50(48) Level 20: Evolving Armor -- UnbGrd-ResDam:50(A), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx:50(43), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam:50(43), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg:50(45) Level 22: Tough -- GldArm-3defTpProc:50(A), GldArm-ResDam:50(23), GldArm-End/Res:50(23), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+:30(31) Level 24: Weave -- LucoftheG-Rchg+:50(A), LucoftheG-Def:50(25), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx:50(25) Level 26: Whirling Smash -- SprScrStr-Rchg/+Crit:50(A), SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(27), SprScrStr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(27), SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(29), SprScrStr-Dmg/Rchg:50(29), SprScrStr-Acc/Dmg:50(50) Level 28: DNA Siphon -- TchoftheN-%Dam:50(A), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg:50(45), TchoftheN-Acc/EndRdx/Heal/HP/Regen:50(45), TchoftheN-Heal/HP/Regen/Rchg:50(46) Level 30: Hover -- LucoftheG-Rchg+:50(A), LucoftheG-Def:50(31), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP:50(31) Level 32: Arc of Destruction -- Arm-Dam%:50(A), Arm-Dmg/EndRdx:50(33), Arm-Acc/Rchg:50(33), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg:50(33), Arm-Dmg/Rchg:50(34) Level 35: Genetic Contamination -- FuroftheG-ResDeb%:50(A), FuroftheG-Acc/Dmg/End/Rech:50(37), Obl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg:50(39), Obl-%Dam:50(39) Level 38: Parasitic Aura -- Prv-Absorb%:50(A), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx:50(39), Prv-Heal/Rchg:50(40), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg:50(40), Prv-Heal/EndRdx:50(40), Prv-Heal:50(46) Level 41: Hasten -- RechRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(42) Level 44: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Rchg+:50(A) Level 47: Caltrops -- PstBls-Dam%:50(A), Ann-ResDeb%:50(48) Level 49: Fly -- WntGif-ResSlow:50(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Critical Hit Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I:50(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I:50(A) Level 2: Health -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+:50(A), NmnCnv-Heal:50(43) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I:50(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%:50(A), PrfShf-EndMod:50(42), EndMod-I:50(42) Level 10: Defensive Adaptation Level 10: Efficient Adaptation Level 10: Offensive Adaptation Level 1: Momentum Level 50: Spiritual Core Paragon Level 50: Mighty Core Final Judgement Level 50: Degenerative Core Flawless Interface Level 50: Vanguard Radial Superior Ally Level 50: Assault Core Embodiment Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 50: Ageless Radial Epiphany ------------

As someone with relatively little experience in formal online RP, I'd like to see an explanation/definition of the various tags, codes, etc. used in chat. I see some of these used and I usually get the general idea, but don't understand the specific meaning. Such as, what's the difference between using (parentheses) or ((double parentheses))? A basic primer on how to use chat, emotes, or other communication tools for RP would be a huge help! OK, so the thing is there is no "right" or "wrong" way to chat in RP. Some people will put quotes around everything they say in character, things without quotes are used for the narrative, so it's a little more like writing, others will use /me for their narration elements. Some do all their RP in first/second person (the narration using "you" and "me" type pronouns, over gendered, or the use of the name), some RP exclusively in 3rd person. Some treat tells as long range communication (texts, psy, radio, etc), others will RP being 'present' in tells. The list goes on and on. Find a format you're comfortable with, and honestly, you'll start to pick up the style and habits of those you RP with the most. General gist of things though: Use something close to proper grammar and spelling. (We're forgiving of poor spelling and typos. Not so forgiving of "B CN U. ;)" in character (without good reason)) Don't assume all the information in bios is public knowledge unless it says so. Be patient and give people time to respond IC (unless your character talks fast without concern for who they're talking to) Don't be a dick. As far as the (( vs ( question? There's no difference. Different people use different methods of distinguishing OOC (Out Of Character) chatter. They may use (( )), they may use ( ), they may only open or close the paragraph with brackets, they may say OOC: before anything OOC...

On live my farmer was Claws/Fire :) Fair assessment, and if your build is purely for farming, I suppose that is definitely a very valid consideration. I tend to build characters to Farm and... (or I build them to do something else then discover "oh, this farms well!")

Excellent question, I was going to address that and forgot! Addendum the first: AE farming rewards. The first thing that should be remembered with AE farming is that on all Homecoming servers, AE only offers 50% xp, making it less efficient for powerleveling and grinding veteran levels, though this can be made up for by the enemy density and speed of access. When farming in AE you are offered two flavors of rewards; standard and Architect. Standard rewards are drops just like you would get when running any other content. Recipes, enhancers, salvage, etc. Architect rewards offers Tickets in place of those rewards. As far as I can tell, you cannot get incarnate threads/shards in this mode, but I may be mistaken. You will get the same XP and influence in either mode. So which is better? If you ask me, I vastly prefer standard rewards due to the chance for high value items like purple and PVP recipes, also I don't have to worry about the ticket cap*. That being said, there are some who like tickets. Tickets are kind of like mini-merits that you can spend at the top floor above the AE portal. You can get recipe rolls, salvage, etc. with them, it's worth checking the vendor to see what you think of the rewards. You'll generally get about 1000 tickets in 5-10 minutes of farming, so keep that in mind. *It's also very import to note that if you choose tickets, maps have a max amount of tickets they can award based off their size, which you will often hit before you clear the map, so you need to keep an eye on your tickets and, if you're going for efficiency, end it as soon as you hit the cap.

People have often asked me about farming, not so much about builds, but literally ‘how’ to do it. Personally, I am someone who actually enjoys farming. I find it to be quite relaxing and somewhat cathartic, especially after a rough day or a bad task force. Farming is also a great time to catch up on your podcasts or audiobooks! I decided it was time for a guide! First, what this guide isn’t: This guide will not give you specific farmer builds, or tell you to use specific missions. Specific missions may be mentioned, and people are welcome to reply to it to share their farmer builds or the missions they like to farm. This will not cover farming Reward Merits or Incarnate components, as those require a bit different of a mindset for faring. Second, what this guide is: This guide will help you understand the ideas behind farming, help you find, or make, missions that suit your needs for farming. It will help you understand how different archetypes farm. It will also help you select some of the best tools for farming. It will cover the ideas of farming for influence, recipe drops, and experience. Part the first: the decision! You’ve decided it’s time to start farming! So, do you make a new character just for farming, do you make a second build of an existing character to farm with, or do you just use an existing character to farm? While many characters can farm, not as many can do it highly effectively. Generally speaking what you want from a farmer is the following: High AoE damage output. At or near softcapped defense of a specific damage type. At or near cap resistance for a specific damage type. If you have someone who fits those criterea, you can probably use them to farm fine, for now. If you don’t, or just don’t want to farm with that character, then you need to- Part the second: building a farmer. “What archetype farms best?” There’s not a set best, but some do shine. I won’t tell you which to play, I will, however, offer some insight on which archetypes are easy or efficient to farm with. Brute- Easily the most popular farmer and the easiest to build. Some brute builds are such that they can farm certain types of maps while AFK. Brutes are easily the ‘best’ beginners farmer, they’re super easy to build and pretty efficient. Tanks- The most popular farmers before brutes could be started blue. They don’t deal nearly the damage of brutes, but they are far easier to build high defense and resist on, making them slower but safer farmers than brutes. I rank them as an easy farmer, but they are not a popular choice because they’re pretty low on the efficiency totem. Scrappers- A less popular choice for farming, but still solid with a good build. They’re a little more challenging to farm with than brutes and tanks because most scrappers lack taunt auras, and while they share the base survival numbers with brutes, brutes have higher caps and more hitpoints. That said, a well built scrapper farmer is more efficient than a brute. Blasters- There are two kinds of blaster farmers, good ones and dead ones. I think blaster farmers are crazy, but I have mad respect for them. Farming as a blaster is not an easy task, and definitely not something I recommend as a beginner to farming. That said, when you get one that works, they are some of the most efficient farmers you will ever see because their damage is so high and some have great AoEs. Defenders and Corruptors- I am lumping these two together because they’re comparable farmers. These two both require some very special love and attention to farm with. I’ve seen people who farm well with them, and it’s impressive. Definitely not recommended for a beginner farmer, because they’re not even as direct to build as a blaster farmer. Controller- Once upon a time, fire/kin controllers were the undisputed supreme leaders of farming. They’re still good. Controllers though are an archetype that is a very slow starter, and if you don’t build them just right, will be one of the worst farmers you can imagine. Again, not a good “my first farmer”. Dominators- I have heard of people being able to farm with doms, but I have never personally seen it. Doms don’t have the best damage output, but when built well the can farm pretty safely by just locking everything down and picking them off. Probably one of the worst options for a first farmer, because their only inherent survival mechanic is locking foes down. Stalkers- Here’s the thing with stalkers, they’ve got great single target damage output, but most of them are super weak in the AoE department. They range from being about as good as scrappers at farming, to literal garbage at it depending on the power sets chosen. Also, AFAIK no stalker has a taunt aura. Masterminds- Not popular for farming, MMs can do it with relative ease, but not the greatest efficiency. The problem with MMs for farming is that your pets often cannot survive sustained fire from +4/x8 mobs. The advantage of MMs for farming is that some builds you can literally just sit there and read or crochet or whatever you like while you farm because they need very little input. Sentinel- I am sure someone is going to come along and tell me I’m wrong for saying this, because their sentinel is an amazing farmer, but sentinels are garbage at farming. They have scrapper survival numbers and closer to tank damage numbers. They’re slow, inefficient, and too squishy for the speed they farm at. Epic Archetypes- I have insufficient data on the viability of these four classes for farming. I can see specialized builds for each of them being decent at it, but I am not familiar enough with the archetypes to comment on it, and honestly, I don’t think I have ever seen a EAT farmer. At the time of writing this, the most popular farmers on Homecoming are Spines/Fire brutes- they’re not the best, mind you, but they are one of the easiest. For your first farmer, I do really recommend a brute though. Learn the trade with a forgiving archetype, use that to build in to something else later if you want. So from here on out, I will specifically discuss brute sets (because this guide would take me months to write otherwise), most of what I say translates to scrappers and tankers too though. If you want to farm with something else, consider what I expressed made a good farmer, and why I say some of the following Brute sets are good for farming, if you can’t glean from this information how to select sets for another archetype, you’re probably not ready for one of the more difficult farmers. When choosing your archetype and power set, determine what type of farming you want to do. Fire farming is the most popular, smashing/lethal farms are popular as well, if you’re building a character just to farm, then honestly, stick with one of those two. Fire is a popular choice because it is super easy to cap fire resist, and fire damage doesn’t tend to come with annoying secondary effects. Smashing/Lethal is popular because it’s super easy to resist and defense cap (or close to), and it doesn’t tend to have as many annoying secondary effects. Energy isn’t popular because while it’s not hard to resist/defense cap to it, it almost always comes with stuns or endurance lost (in a farm environment enough stuns can stack on you to stun you for an instant, which is enough to drop your aggressive toggles). Psi isn’t popular because it’s not easy to resist/defense cap, and it tends to come with slows or other annoying side effects. Cold is fairly easy to resist/defense cap, but like psi it is unpopular because of the slows. Negative energy damage is not particularly easy to cap against, and tends to come with accuracy debuffs. Unlike archetypes, I won’t cover ALL the brute power sets, just the ones that tend to shine in farming. That said, any brute can be specced to farm, seriously. Primaries: Spines- Super popular for farming because it’s got decent animation times, a lot of AoEs, and comes complete with a PBAoE DoT aura. Radiation Melee- I actually like Rad more than spines. We could argue until we’re blue in the face which is better, I think they’re pretty equal. The place where I feel rad surpasses spines, personally, is that all your attacks have a defense debuff in them which means it’s easier to hit +4s, and you can slow Achilles’ Heel procs if you have slots to spare. -resist is always good. Titan Weapons- I don’t really like TW on brutes, but it still an immensely powerful AoE set that deals a metric shitton of damage. Side note: One of my favorite farmers is a TW scrapper. Super Strength- Once upon a time, SS was the top tier melee farmer set. This was due to Rage being bugged. Rage got ‘fixed’ so that the defense crash was unavoidable and SS went from top tier to … not that good. SS only has one AoE, Footstomp, but it’s a beast, if you’re fine with every 2 minutes having your damage and defense tank to exactly nothing, SS still works well as a farmer. While Rage is up, SS is amazeballs, without Rage, SS is butts. Claws- An oft overlooked set for farmers, Claws works well as it several good AoEs and is an extremely fast set both in animation and recharge. As an added bonus, it's build up power is an attack, so you do not even have to stop dealing damage to use that. Staff- Not an optimal choice for farming, but it works none the less. It has a couple of decent AoEs, and its PBAoE is on a fairly short recharge time. While it lacks a build up power, the forms lead to some interesting benefits, and if you have three stacks of perfection your PBAoE gains an extra benefit. Secondaries: Fiery Aura- If you’re wanting to farm things that deal fire damage, you cannot go wrong with /fire. You sneeze and you’re resist capped, defense is a little harder to get, but can be made up for with Luck inspirations until you have the money to get your fire defense up. Great thing about a Fiery Aura farmer is that you can actually farm yourself to 50 with this set, because it has the distinction of being able to farm adequately without set bonuses. Fiery Aura also offers some serious extra damage output in form of Burn, and Fiery Embrace. Scrapper note: No taunt aura for scrappers. Bio Armor- Where do we start with bio? Boasting two separate taunt aura, a wide array of baked in debuffs, a mix of defense and resist in the set already, one of the greatest armor T9s in game (which can almost be perma’d), health and endurance management, absorb, and the versatility of the Adaptation stances, literally the only bad thing I can say about bio armor is “there are no skippable powers”. Bio is an amazing choice if you want a farmer who sees play outside of farms, or you want to change up what you farm. Scrapper note: Bio has a taunt aura for scrappers, making it a great farmer set for them. Invulnerability- If you want to do Smashing/lethal farming, Invuln is a great option for you. It provides a mix of defense and resist, easily resist capping to smashing and lethal, defense softcapping with a little work. Willpower- Kind of like Bio, WP is a mixed bag. Defense, resist, and regen are its big things. Can be super solid as a smashing/lethal farmer with a bit of work. Stone Armor- A very unpopular option for farmers, and for good reason, it slows you down and reduces your efficiency by a lot, but especially if you want to do smashing/lethal farming, you could do worse than Stone Armor for a secondary. Once you get Granite it takes basically nothing to get capped smashing/lethal resist and softcap or close to smashing/lethal defense, you could also build for fire pretty easily with IOs. And while it's true that this means you have a reduction in recharge speed and damage, you also have a lot more power picks and slots free to build for offense. It will, as I said, be a less efficient option.. but also a very safe one. As I said, any brute can farm. Just because it’s not listed here doesn’t mean it won’t make a good farmer, it means that either it’s not as good as what’s listed here, or I am unfamiliar with the elements of the set that make it a good farmer (because I am one man, I haven’t extensively played every brute primary and secondary yet). As an aside, my primary farmer is a Titan/Bio scrapper, FotM sure, but I built her before I knew it was a popular combo. Epic/Patron pool selection: It’s pretty flexible at this point, your primary and secondary are usually your main elements. Mu and Fire are the two most popular options for farmers due to the damage output and animation times. Power pool selection: So, as far as farmers go, the popular choices for power pools are things that add more defense, mostly. Fighting, so you can get Weave. Tough is also super helpful if you want to do smashing/lethal farming. Leadership, Manuevers is a nice bit of extra defense, Tactics is useful if your IO build isn’t super strong and you want to farm +3/4s as soon as possible. Venge is a nice LotG mule. Speed, Hasten. Maybe super speed too, if they’re feeling frisky. Leaping, Combat Jumping, super cheap source of +def/Luck of the Gambler mule. Stealth, it’s an odd choice to some, but it provides several Luck of the Gambler mules. IO selection: So this is where things will get super vague, because the exact IOs you choose will depend on what your build is and what kind of farming you’re doing. Your main concerns from set bonuses are going to be defense against your selected damage type if you’re not already softcapped, resist against your selected damage type if you’re not already hard capped, recharge speed, because you want your best powers up constantly. Most anything else you’ll need will come as part of reaching these benefits. Accuracy, Max Endurance, and Recovery are super useful though. Some generally useful specific IOs: Steadfast Protection: Resist/Defense Gladiator’s Armor: +defense Shield Wall: +resist Reactive Armor: +maxHP Reactive Defenses: Scaling Damage Resist Fury of the Gladiator: chance for -resist (great in your DoT aura) Performance Shifts: Chance for +Endurance Numina’s Convalesence: +regen/recovery Miracle: +recovery Panacea: Chance for Hit Points and Endurance. Kismet: +accuracy (generally more useful before your build is ‘done’) Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Global Recharge (Slot as many of these as you can up to 5) Pretty much regardless of the archetype you’re choosing to farm with and the type of farming you want to do, your Archetype sets will be super useful for you to 5-6 slot. If you are fire farming, the Winter sets are really nice because they offer fire resist and defense. They help a fire farmer reach the point they’re resist capped with only one toggle running. Side note: Don’t make the mistake of slotting Avalanche: Chance for Knockdown in Burn. It sounds like a great idea, things flop around you and can’t hit you…. Burn ticks so fast that the Knockdown can stack up to Knockback, and send foes flying. Funny, but terrible for a farmer. Very Rare sets, like Armageddon, Ragnarok, etc. are super useful as they tend to offer high recharge, high accuracy, and the usually something else nice like recovery or regeneration. Incarnate selection: Hybrid: Basically assault is your best option here. I’m not going to tell you which version of Assault to get because the arguments of which is better are endless. I like the +damage more, YMMV. Lore: Find a set with a support pet you like, but don’t bank on your Lore pets for farming due to the long recharge time. Destiny: Ageless is almost always the best option here, typically you want the +recovery version because farming is thirsty work. You may find though that Barrier closes gaps nicely for your farmer build. Judgement: Take basically whichever you want. I dislike the cones for farming, personally. Pyro has a slightly quicker activation type than the rest. Their damage is pretty uniform over all, and for farming you want to crit version, not the secondary effect version. Interface: For farming, Reactive is probably the strongest. A DoT paired with a resist debuff. It may not be much -resist but every little bit helps in farming. Alpha: Choice of Alphas is going to depend on what power sets you choose, and what holes you still need to fill. Spiritual and Agility are my two main go-tos, but if you’re sitting at permahaste and softcapped defenses without your Alpha, Musculature or Intuition is a great choice too. Update: I had a discussion with a friend regarding Alpha selection (specifically for a /fire brute, though this will apply regardless), we were bickering a bit about whether Alpha or Musculature was better for DPS, so being the nerd I am, I mathed it out. The damage per second of individual powers varies based off the activation and recharge time, but at a certain point based off global damage and global recharge, Spiritual will eventually eke slightly higher DPS than musculature. However, spiritual also improves the recharge of Build Up and (where applicable) Fiery Embrace. If you're popping reds constantly, +recharge is definitely a higher value to you than +damagae. Now that you have all of that stuck in your head, go tinker with a build.. OR… Start your character and work on getting them to 50! Part the third: What to farm? Now that you have a farmer, or have decided to farm with an existing character. You must decide what you’re going to farm. If you’re running a fire farmer, your two choices are AE (there are more fire farms on AE than I can keep track of. I like Bloody Rainbow Comic Con farm myself) or the Praetorian Demon farm from Harvey Maylor (to get this arc, be prepared to fight a bunch of carnies and other annoying enemy types before you get it). If you’re running smashing/lethal, there’s some good smashing/lethal farms in AE (I don’t know the names of any off the top unfortunately), the Council Empire farm from Unai Kemen is my preferred option for this, you get it from Unai pretty quickly. If you don’t mind being below 50 and can soak some energy too, the Freakshow War arc in Ouroboros is decent to farm, and offers merits at the end as an added benefit. Plus you can always just get Council radio missions (which is super inefficient for farming). I am sure there are some other good Ouro arcs for farming Smashing/Lethal, if anyone would like to share them. If you’re running something else, you’re kinda limited to just using AE, and you’ll probably need to custom build an arc for it. I may go into some detail on doing that at a future point if there is demand. You’ve decided what to farm, you have your farm ready to go.. Now it’s on to… Part the Fourth: Farming and Fine Tuning. The goal is to eventually be able to farm +4/x8 with bosses without breaking a sweat, sure.. But odds are, especially if you’re just starting out, you’re not there yet. Start by increasing the spawn size until you can comfortably handle x8 (some will go to -1/x8, if you need to do that by all means. I refuse to acknowledge -1 exists, personally), then start raising the enemy level. Lastly, add bosses. You will find the rewards/minute are best from more enemies, and least from bosses (until you can rip through bosses like they’re nothing, too) - as a side note though, bosses are noticeably more likely to drop a recipe, so you’re less likely to get purple drops if you don’t have bosses on. Figure out your optimal attack chain. This might involve respeccing later if you slotted poorly for that particular chain. That’s great because you’re still learning, and realizing you made a mistake and tweaking it teaches you more about making a build than reading a dozen Pines builds. Make sure you’re not running any unneeded toggles. This is especially noteworthy when you have a build that is meant to run outside of a farm as well. Things like on a Fiery Aura character, don’t run Tough in a fire farm, depending on your build you make be able to do without Plasma Shield on. If you’re farming with Bio Armor, play with your efficiency between stances. Sure, sitting in Offensive all the time may be tempting, but you might find you do better in Efficient due to the endurance benefits of it. Something that needs to be said as well: Do not be ashamed to use inspirations in farming. People may try to shame you if you munch purples while farming, those people are jerks and should be stabbed with a spork. Following that up, once your build is completely done, hopefully you no longer need anything but reds while farming. Until that day comes, use whatever you need to maintain the most efficient rewards/minute you can muster. I recommend going to the P2W vendor and disabling Awaken and Break Free inspirations, and then setting up either a macro or a popmenu to convert inspirations of the other types to the type(s) you’ll need. If you’re using inspirations heavily while farming, I also recommend against enabling Dual and Team inspiration drops, because you can’t convert those and they clog up your inventory. (There are guides for quick insp. conversion elsewhere on the forums, so I won't cover that here). I shared the popmenus I use A few posts down. That's all, for now. Feel free to ask questions and myself, or one of the 10,000 other farmers around will probably answer them quickly enough.

Could that not be said for just about anything in the Leadership pool, though? One thing that we're all sort of forgetting is that the OP is dipping into Leadership for RP purposes and has already said he/she/it isn't aiming for an optimal build. Maybe he/she/it would be better served if we offer RP interpretations of each of the powers? "Are there any skippable powers in the pool that don't do much for the team?" is literally what the OP asked. I broke down, mechanically, how valuable each one tends to be to a team. We can't really answer that question from an RP stance due to the fact that RP could mean literally anything. And yes, literally the entire leadership pool is situational. I mean, I think Tactics is the second best power in the pool. I also just think it doesn't offer that much benefit most of the time. :p

My Ele/Rad controller will challenge you to a "sitting in the mobs without dying" competition :p

Electric/whateveryouwant controller or dom. Nothing will ever have endurance again, period.

I’ve always used security level as a gauge of celebrity. Everyone knows the incarnates. They are mega superstars. Level 50’s are still A-list celebrities, just not able to command a spot in the “top 100” list. Level 40-49 are your B-list celebrities. Level 31-39 are like a-list music stars, models, athletes. Etc, etc...and under level 10 are unknowns making a name for themselves. And with the FRSB and smart phones, I always imagine that I have access to an online database or registered superhumans, villains, etc. I know it’s not perfect role play , but I am a RP lightweight. It's a pretty good gauge if the player doesn't give you more to go off of. Like, my character, the Silver Hornet, I mention that they were a moderately known hero ... who died in the Praetorian War. So even if the security level CURRENTLY doesn't line up with how well known they would be, some may recognize them and be like "... wait, you ded."

I think the problem might be that so many blaster powers use both hands extensively in the animations that shield would be wonky as hell. I've always assumed that's why Sentinels didn't get Shield.

I'm working on writing a guide for farming right now. Not a guide on "Make this build, do this.", a more in-depth guide on the concepts of farming and how to make your own build for what you want to farm. ... it is, however, a pretty noteworthy undertaking because there's a lot of information to cover, so it may be a couple of days before its up. *edit* I lied. It's up: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,7106.0.html

In my experience rare enough that if I am soloing, or on a team where no one has decided that they like Tactics, I can pop a yellow and hit Build Up and destroy whatever is hurting my accuracy, and go back about my life. I'm not saying people shouldn't take tactics, I've just had too many people basically trying to tell me that tactics is like the best power in the game and everyone should take it and... yeah, it's got it's place, and when it's useful it's amazingly useful. I just find that for most builds, the situations where it's needed are rare enough that you can get away with just popping a yellow insp. instead.

As a side note, I love breaking these people's brains by making jokey characters or obvious homage characters who are like legit in-world role play characters that fit better in to the lore than most. My Tyreal homage, Sword of Justice, is a great example of this. >.>

E=Erotic. They are down to detailed RP the sexings. All and Mature might encompass that, Dark might encompass dark themes within that. In general, regardless of what their tags say, use some caution on approach if the RP you're seeking is something outside the standard bounds of human decency. It is always best, until you get to know the individual behind the computer, to err on the side of caution with how you approach them for RP. A quick Tell saying ((My character is kind of aggressive and doesn't respect personal boundaries- is that going to bother you?)) before you approach can save you, and your potential RP partners, a lot of headaches.