Grendar

It might help if being in the queue caused members to automatically be added to the largest group in the queue without launching the trial/TF. That would make queueing akin to what advertising in Help and global channels does now, a way to build the teams instead of launching them. Make launching a separate action from queueing, so teams can queue up to collect a few extra members while going over the strategy or take care of things like collecting inspirations or clearing out their inventories for the drops during trials.

Dark and Time are among the best MM secondaries in the game. Dark is a heavy debuff set, you floor your opponents tohit, slash their damage, and remove any damage resistance as part of your opening attack. On top of that, you have some of the best control powers outside of a Controller/Dominator set, which is great for locking down a spawn while your henchmen clean up. Meanwhile, Time is a mixed buff and debuff set. You make your pets stronger and your enemies weaker. Like dark, it has a lot of powerful options, but it trades a lot of dark's control powers for more buffs and debuffs. This means that overall, Time is a little more powerful but a little less flexible, while Dark will take a little more time to finish off a spawn but will rarely find itself in a situation where it has to retreat and regroup. It's a matter of opinion, I prefer Dark's better hard controls to Time's more glass-cannon style, but Time will play faster in a typical scenario. Both are top notch secondaries.

As for the heals, Dark's heal is much faster than Time's, not slower (8 vs 18 second cooldowns). Twilight Grasp (Dark's PBAoE heal) also heals for a lot more than Temporal Mending (Time's PBAoE heal). The difference is, Temporal Mending gets a heal over time effect (which is still less overall than Twilight Grasp's burst heal), and heals more when the target is Accelerated (like, say, from a previous application of Temporal Mending). Dark's healing comes with a -acc debuff that stacks with the other -acc powers in the set. Both are solid powers, but Twilight's Grasp is generally better from a numbers standpoint. Twilight's Grasp does have the drawback of requiring a target to be used (meaning you can't heal your minions outside of combat), but I've found that isn't really an issue since one application is about enough to heal a henchman to full. Your experiences may differ from mine though, I have a Necro/Dark MM so all of my pets have limited healing on their own.

The only arguably skippable power in Time is Time Stop, though I wouldn't recommend it. Being able to hold a troublesome enemy (like one with lots of AoE) is very useful for a MM. On the other hand, Dark only has one skippable power, Black Hole (two if we count the single target hold Petrifying Gaze), so either way you're stuck taking most of your secondary. Considering that you can avoid most pool powers except for Leadership and you don't need an epic/patron pool as badly as, say, a Blaster, you shouldn't be too tight on powers. Maybe you should post your theoretical build so we could see where the problem is.

Both sets are solid for solo, teams, or AV's/GM's. Masterminds are the kings of boss fights, a well played MM is like having an entire team in one character. Ultimately, you should take the one you like more. Whichever set is closer to your preferred playstyle will be more fun to you. City of Heroes isn't a big min/max game, as long as you slot intelligently and take a reasonable power selection you'll do just fine with any set combination.

I'm rather fond of /Dark Miasma myself. You get a PBAoE heal with -acc, location based snare and -res, AoE -acc and -dam, AoE disorient and rez, a hold, a cone fear, and a pocket controller. It does require a lot of attention, but the number of tools you have is incredible. If you die, it's because you did something wrong, not because your toolkit didn't have the right tool for the job. A great secondary in my opinion.

I would advise against /FF unless you just love it. It's not a bad set, but it's very one dimensional. Boring even. Unless you want to juggle targets with knockback you're basically there to resummon dead henchmen, rebuff every few minutes, and stand close enough to give your pets your auras. Kind of boring.

Uber-incarnate Wade will get smacked down by level 10 toons sidekicked up to 50.

Wade gets curbstomped by Emperor Cole, who brought an unstoppable army of Pretorian citizens with rocks.

Wade discovers that he also drained Sister Psyche's... psyche. Begins to cross dress and tries to "go back" to Manticore. Synclair marriage becomes even more awkward.

First off, this would probably be better in the Suggestions forum. The class forums are more for players to discuss issues related specifically to the class, the Devs don't usually look here for ideas. Secondly, they don't all work the same. Attacks from the Demons set inflict a -res effect. Attacks from the Necromancy set inflict a -acc effect. Even if the technology existed for allowing power swapping between sets, which it doesn't, they wouldn't because it wouldn't be an equivalent trade.

Edit: If you want a bow and arrow power, though, there's a temporary power you can get an infinite number of times via Ouroboros. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Bow_and_Arrow.

I finally got fed up with my Gunmage and left her at 43. I'll hop on if I can find a group to run with, but it was unbearably frustrating running at +0/x1 and still being picked off by a single pull if my mez missed (admittedly, I was facing Malta, so one mistake resulted in a sapper decimating my blue bar). In TF's and Trials it felt like she contributed pretty well, she could cut down entire enemy groups while the more support oriented members kept them at bay and whittled their health down, but solo was aggravating - if anything went wrong you either ran or died, there was no middle ground. Running on a Necro/Dark MM now, it's refreshing. If I get mezzed, my entire primary pool still functions (albeit on a somewhat retarded AI), and I have ways to proactively avoid mez like flooring their tohit, cone fear, or just sending in the meat shields first. So much easier.

Bots/FF is so easy it's stressful. You literally have nothing to do but watch your little team of softcapped blasters run around and slowly pummel everything to death. It's very powerful and very easy. Not sure if that's what you want though.

I have noticed that the Lich avoids melee combat. In fact, the Lich is probably the only henchman I've seen on any of my MM's who doesn't really need much babysitting - he always stands clear of the fighting, debuffs like crazy, and drains health to keep himself topped off. If only more pets were like that.

A Mastermind fits the bill if you don't turn the difficulty up. Your minions can shred a +0/1 mission without keybinds. Pretty easy.

A stalker could be relaxing if you do a lot of glowie missions. Just stealth to the end, grab the glowie, pick off the boss, collect rewards.

Beyond that, a Brute should be fairly simple. Tough enough to take a beating designed for a tanker, but can met out damage on par with a scrapper.

Blasters aren't unplayable, but they are undeniably weaker than any other AT. A War Mace Scrapper with just SO's can easily run in and one shot an even level LT with Build Up. An average Blaster would take two to three attacks to do the same, and in the meantime has no real way to protect himself from retaliation (which vs some enemies like Malta Sappers really sucks). It's not impossible, but it is harder when you have fewer options than classes who can do your main schtick better than you can.

Did Moonfire today. Got a level and a half from finishing. Great stuff.

I think the reward rate from individual arcs is fine. I think we need more arcs though, and they need to put each arc on its' own time gate. If players want to run arcs constantly and race to +4, I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to. It's not like they can't get to +4 through trials much, much faster.

I recently ran Claws/Fire(/Frost... which I regret, Energy would have been better) to 50. It was kind of like pouring gasoline on a blender, you always had an AoE going and all of them were good. It could get a little dicey if you didn't get enough purps or triples to keep yourself softcapped, and it can be a bit of an endurance hog, but you kill fast enough that you should be able to stay damage capped and defense softcapped (at least) without trouble.

I wouldn't say it's the best, it has endurance issues and most of it's AoE is very close range, but it's viable and very capable. Much more fun than my (admittedly limited) experience with SS.

My War Mace scrapper would have happily caved in Wade's skull the second he entered the Midnight Club. Protect the artifact's my ***.

I wouldn't have bothered with capturing Malaise. The SOB already killed my charge, nobody was around, he would have "died resisting arrest".

At the end of the double arc, I wouldn't have turned Protean over to Longbow or the PPD. I would have given him to Wyvern...

I suspect they set it intentionally low so they could increase it to where they want it later. Someone's sig put it best - "if the game gave out $20 bills, people would complain the serial numbers weren't sequential. If it made them sequential, they would complain they weren't random enough". The devs know they're going to have to adjust it, by setting it low they have room to increase it later and don't run the risk of angering the playerbase if they have to reduce it. Sick? Maybe. But not entirely illogical.

I agree. Basically, the terrorist theme should fly, but the name will not. It's too close to a copyrighted character and too close to being racially insensitive at the same time. I like Admiral Itzat Rahp though, going with a mixed alien and middle eastern theme should avoid the copyright and political correctness issues without ruining the joke. Still wouldn't guarantee you won't be generic'ed though. It just takes one sensitive person to ruin a joke.

Just to echo, I think there are two problems here - you're a defender, and you're in Pretoria. If you want a defender feel without the defender exp debt, roll up a Mastermind or a Corrupter. Pretty much any other AT would be easier to run through Pretoria, defenders have a painful combination of low health, low damage, and limited control (compared to the control oriented archtypes). They shine in a group, and they're good enough once they've been slotted out, but early on they are terrible for soloing compared to Brutes, Scrappers, or Masterminds.

My biggest problem with Pretoria is that waves of mobs always target you. That's pretty brutal for squishies and Stalkers, who's survivability depends heavily on being able to decide the terms of most engagements. Even the tougher mobs weren't that bad, so long as the player has the ability to counter them it won't take more than a few deaths for them to learn how to deal with the content unless you force them to do it under pressure. If they went back and simply had the mobs do a move_to rather than attack order, the difficulty of the content would be much more regular. The Pretoria content model would have been better at higher levels, once the players had tools to deal with those situations.

Found a new one, Ninja MM. Between the horrifically bad melee AI and the complete lack of survivability, they're just aggravating to play.

Psi blasters should probably go on that list too. Not that they're bad, but the whole "enemy psychics have massive defenses against you" gets old fast, especially since you as a player don't get equivalent defenses.

Bodyguard mode. Either have your bots aid you in attack (finally a use for attack powers!) or have it always be on if they're set to defensive. Right now I flat don't use it, if you let your minions attack first they don't shoot at you anyways, and your minions are much more durable than you are (especially with /FF, even with the -2 level shift my drones are tougher to hit than I am).

Being able to enable/disable attacks would be nice too. Turn off that melee attack on the drones so they don't go running halfway across the map and out of the limited range of my forcefields heals.