DarkGob

I don't even use Thunderstrike that much, I only kept it for the knockback. I took Lightning Clap for the mitigation and...I don't know, the second one must have made room for something else in my build, since I don't see what actually replaced it.

By the way, I played up into the mid-30s (and that's before they smoothed the level curve) with the melee attacks, so I'm not unfamiliar with them. I just don't like to be in melee with such a squishy character. I respecced because my character sucked on toast. He doesn't suck on toast anymore.

(no underscores in the names because I forgot about that when I wrote it, never got around to fixing it; BFs and Awakens left out because they drop so infrequently)

FYI 2XP weekend has been extended into Monday.

I had thought that Stone Mallet was technically a power effect, not a weapon like War Mace, Axe, etc.

I see Pink Crash, Afterlyfe, 3 Decoys, a Phantasm, Amy, and a Shivan.

The entire reason Pain Domination exists is because Empathy was considered to be conceptually impossible for out-of-the-box villains. The devs have said as much. Now, you have a hero who goes rogue, that's another story. (I wish I could use a comic book analogy here, but Empathy as it functions in-game is one of those powersets that is rarely seen in comic books.)

A majority of Pain Domination is mirrored in Empathy. Empathy has the RAs and a very minor effect differences between the shared powers, but that's really the only difference. I seriously would not count on Empathy ever being proliferated.

Masterminds and Corruptors already have Empathy in the form of Pain Domination.

Speaking of Masterminds...Nictus Summoning primary! You've thought it, you can't un-think it!! (Think of it as trans-archetypical power proliferation.)

But you can still play the game the way you described. It wasn't made any harder with the inclusion of Real Numbers, Inventions, and Set Bonuses. You can still level up to 50 with nothing but TOs (lawl), DOs and SOs. (I speak of the PvE game of course, PvP of course is another matter entirely. lolpvp) It's fine if you don't see the benefit, but as long as there's no detriment in not taking part, I can't imagine why this shouldn't be done.

As to the OP, /signed. More customization = good, it bugs the hell out of me that my Robotics Mastermind, who is a robot "him"self, doesn't share "his" henchmen's resistances and weaknesses. of course, this could be really easy to manipulate if done carelessly (*coughAEcough*). What I envision is an option available at character creation - along with Archetype, Origin and Powersets, you have another option that lets you choose from several options, like human (the default, no particular strengths/weaknesses), robot, etc. Enemies have these sorts of classifications, why not us?

It also doesn't add up that people who have rigs half as good as yours aren't experiencing the same or worse problems. If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend hopping over to the Tech Support forum, what you're describing is truly bizarre and obviously not what most people are experiencing.