Top 10 Most Useful Game Elements People Never Use

An ongoing discussion of very useful game elements in City of Heroes that people don't use, don't know about, or don't appreciate enough.

1. Empowerment Buffs.
For the price of three pieces of salvage (two common, one uncommon) you get a full hour of a buff of your choice from the Empowerment Altar in your Supergroup Base. Your dominator still 3 LotG's away from perma-dom? No problem, get a 20% boost to your attack rate for pennies. You have issues with endurance below 20? The Empowerment Altar can grant a recharge rate boost as well.

The altar also grants bonuses to resistance of various damage types, and even protection from unusual and annoying effects like knockback and endurance drain.

Somebody cranking up the price of Demon Blood today? No problem, each buff has three recipes, one for each salvage tier!

2. Confusion
In the category of "Something people don't appreciate enough", I hear all the time people complaining about confused creatures "stealing exp." This is true to a point, but the math behind how confused creatures' damage effects the rewards gained at the defeat of an enemy means you won't get a better deal on exp/time than pitting confused enemies against each other.

Think of it this way: Say it would take you 30 seconds to defeat monster X with your normal rate of damage. That's too long! Lets enlist monster Y to help us out by confusing him: You and monster Y both wail on X and it takes you half the time to defeat the enemy, so about 15 second.

But wait, Monster Y dealt half the damage! Now he steals half the exp, right? Nope. Monster Y only steals 20% of the exp, you get a full 80% Do you see what just happened there? Your exp/time just went up by 60%

Let's say you're fighting really tough critters, and your damage is just piddling compared to theirs: in this situation, Monster Y deals a full 90% of the damage! Well, surely you'll get a piddling percentage of the rewards, right? Wrong. You get a full 30% from a mob a confused creature dealt 90% of the damage to. It would have taken you ten times as long to kill this guy by yourself, which means by using confuse here your exp/time went up 200%! That's three times as much exp as normal. Unless you're facing enemies you can one-shot kill, confusion is ALWAYS a bargain.

Add the fact that confusion is a hard control: confused monsters will not attack you. Even better, confused monsters will actually turn around and buff you if they have buffing powers. Confusion is, quite frankly, overpowered. However, the intense misunderstanding of how it works by the playerbase have kept is fairly safe from the nerfbat all these years.

I came here looking for a list of 10. Those 2 were interesting.

I never remember to use my base for the buffs. I do love hitting duplicity though on my rogues.

I never remember about Empowerment Buffs until Malta goons go to great lengths to do so, at which point I remember to go shopping. "Okay, Stun resist, Hold resist, End Drain resist..."

Later on,
Gate

Don't the Empowerment buffs also count towards the Crafting badges? I should go knock some out, I have like 30 pieces of Regenerating Flesh. Which is weird, because I only had 20 pieces last week...

INSPIRATIONS
For the love of god, people--if you wipe, and are laying on the floor dead, and I can't trade you a wakie because you are DEAD with a FULL INVENTORY, I'M GOING TO LEAVE YOU THERE. It's even worse on level 50 characters. Really? You have 20 INSPIRATIONS that weren't useful in a fight you just lost?

The LFT Flag
This isn't even that hard to find. C'mon, people--if I'm flagged DON'T BOTHER ME with a red X, don't invite me. If I'm flagged GIMME GIMME GIMME with "Looking for Anything," don't spam broadcast with "No one plays this game any more."

Chat Channels
Even better than the LFT Flag. There are HOW MANY chat channels in this game now? With something like 15 global options, too? You have no excuse, people.

ENHANCEMENTS
You know who you are. You just don't know what an enhancement is.

anyone who doesnt respect confuse has not played a plant dominator, i cant imagine not having it, it is, dare i say, set defining.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

3-4 lucks, taken together.

60 second godmode (no crash!) for 150-200 inf.

11. Binary Numbering Systems
This is a great way to add excitement to your Top 2 Items lists.

I'm surprised at how few people use the little empowering vet-pets. Considering the lengths people go through to squeeze out a few points of defense, here's a free way yo get 3% and an endurance boost on top of that!