Carnifax

So first thing is Time does the things you normally chase Set Bonuses to do (Def & Recharge). This is great for you because it frees you up to chase other things like Procs. Sadly Psi doesn't proc that well. Also toggles & patches don't do well with procs, so I tend to put them in "direct" attacks. Took my Time/Sonic and rejigged them to Time/Psi. I prefer Snipes / Quick Snipes to standard attacks so replaced Subdue with the snipe. Also Scramble Thoughts is kinda meh, you don't have a lot of other Stun to stack it with. So I dumped it for the nuke. Time is one of the few builds where the Epic pets from Villains can be permaed (and Soul has Power Boost for that critical PB > Farsight combo) so I went Soul for them. This isn't cheap. Feel free to replace the Winters sets with "normal" alternatives. The ATT sets (Defenders Bastion & Vig Assault) are very good value. They're basically Purples but at 1/3rd of the price (or used to be). I always split Sup Vig Assault 3 and 3 into two powers for the +10% recharge bonus twice.

Last week we ran a TinPlex and I had a mission at that door. Somehow we found ourselves on my mission rather than the TF *twice* (Not a bug, just us being useless / easily confused)

Just want to say a huge Ta to you @Faultline for this. Steam deck arrived just now and this is the 3rd thing I've done with it (4th if you count trying some native steam games). I'd already installed ProtonGE so just told it to use that. Everything else worked flawlessly. Not planning to play in Deck mode, it'll be mostly for playing in the home office with my wifes monitor and keyboard connected to the dock.

It's not offensive, so the new changes don't count. It's not defensive because if it was, like armours, it would already be supressed when mezzed then spring back to life after. So what exactly is it supposed to be? Sounds to me like it fell between the cracks a bit .

Fire/Rad is the old school "death roomba" build. Stun and debuff them, get in close and burn em down with Hotfeet & Choking helping to whittle things down. Stone mastery goes very well here (stone goes well with all Fire builds where you have Hotfeet). The buffbot version would be Fire/Nature. Same basic idea but you buff yourself and the imps up 1st then Stun / Bonfire them, get in close and burn em down. Imps will love the Absorb shield & overgrowth. Downside is less debuffs. Rad is better on AV fights generally (Nature will be better at keeping you alive, Rad is better at making the AV dead). I'd be tempted to squeeze Sorcery into either if you can. On Live mezzes, even micromezzes were the bane of my life. Now we have the "offensive toggle suppression when mezzed" thing instead so that may help but I'd still be looking for Bolt, Enflame and Rune. Dark and Trick Arrow go with basically any primary. Neither much reason to be in close (dark has the PBAoE regen/recovery buff) but neither penalizes you for doing so and both have heaps of -ToHit. My Trick Arrow/Elec defender is happy at point blank range twacking debuff arrows into things.

This is interesting to me because on my Tanks I usually have to tell people not to Fort me or whatever. I'm already at the resist & Def caps. Nothing is going to kill me. Give it to the Blaster who can take advantage of the +Dam better. Obviously in some content totally. Gotta keep the meatshield up in tough content. But I don't play the tough content on PuGs, it'll be an SG team and they'll know. I used to play an empath on Live where i found the same issue. Tank is safe, I'll heal him as needed but I bet the Dominator would like Adrenal more and that Scrapper and Blaster can get more from Fort. So I guess I agree with the OP, but for the opposite reason. "I could do better. Id use that buff on X rather than me as the Tank. I don't really need it at all" Edit : If I'm on a Team as a Squishie fighting something like +4 Malta and keep getting mezzed then I'll just say something like "Bloody Malta. Hate mezzes" knowing one of my teamies has something to help. If they take the hint great. If not I'll probably just switch chars at the end of the mission to something able to handle it better (switch the Blaster to my Inv Stalker for example where I don't need to worry about Mez and can focus on brutally murdering the problematic individuals while the team AoEs the rest).

Proc up Poison Gas Trap. It's seriously well worth it. Much, much more so than Paralytic (switch them around). Here's a solo parse run I did back in June with it procced up. Note these figures are slightly misleading because procs in non-pet powers like Fissure aren't grouped like Poison Traps are (it's down to how the Combat Logs logs them, I've no way to tell which power non-pet procs belong to).

A very fun oddball combo alright. Good sapping (especially if you go Mu) although I went Elec / Poison / Stone for the melee Scraptroller feel (all-in on Stone bar Hurl Boulder). It's a study in layering controls really. Sleeps, knockdowns holds and confuse give you time for the sapping to kick in fully. Poison Gas Trap is both an excellent proc-bomb and a good Sapping tool (-recovery rather than -regen). The Gremlins are indeed total idiots. Even stupider than Imps somehow. This is my current build, tweaked to allow for the earlier opening levels for powers. Only thing I'd really change after parsing things out is removing some of the proc slots from Jolting. Chains proc poorly 😞

Yep. I've it 4 slotted with Expedients and then Soul Chance for BU & Soul Dam/Recharge to max out Dam and recharge on them. PAs are awesome. Could be an oversight, could be balance. Homecoming Devs seem to dislike procs in general (which is a shame because they give build variety in terms of Set bonuses or Procs).

You keep the rez (or rather debuff-Stun-thing-which-also-happens-to-rez. Howling is awesome). You lose Fade & the recovery / regen drain-bodies-to-buff thing. Or rather you don't get them rather than lose them, because Darkness Affinity (the Controller version with Fade) came after Dark Miasma. You get the OG version, not the newer Controller version. Still a very good combo, I played it on Live. Fearsome Stare is great and the -ToHit will stack with your Knights and Lich darkity dark dark attacks. And Dark Fluffy combines well with melee pets. The Hold is meh but as it's a hold it's fairly proccable (not as much as a Hold which also takes damage mind). When it came to re-zombieing on Homecoming I mixed it up and went Nature. Nature isn't great on debuffs but has nice buffs which your zombies will like (more Resists, Absorb Shields and +ToHit & +Dam in Overgrowth). Cold or Thermal are other good options. Thermal is a nice mix of resist shields (appreciated on teams), heals and debuffs. Plus you can pretend you're running around with 6 little Ghostriders.

So I need a new character and since Symph is new and I've never done Pain thought this might be a useful combo. Still at the pure build theory stage but I've tried a more aggressive-than-usual proccy build. No idea how the pet should be slotted overall so I went with the usual Expedient. Went with Sorcery because I like it and it seems to fit the theme well. Ice Epic I'm willing to change on. Tips or tweaks appreciated.

Expedient into Tornado, whatever you like into Lightning, like you say it won't take Pet sets. I used a 3-4 Tornados for the Ranged Def but 5 Winters works too. Although personally I'd take the Forced Feedback over the kb2kd because that constant stream of Recharge buffs is nice. You've 3 slots to go. I'd move 2 slots into Grav D and pad out your hold. Also since Rune is only up some of the time remove slots from it (use it as a Gladiators mule) and that gives you slots to fill Shark Skin. Also remember after the last update powers open up earlier, so I've rejigged things so you get your Big Hitters earlier (Wormhole, Singy, Tornado and LS). Also personally I wouldn't bother with Propel that late. You could take Hurricane (it's situationally good) or something like the Coralax pet 4 slotted if you prefer. Hurricane 4 slotted with Dark Watchers or Coralax with Expendient. You'll lose a little ranged def but in terms of single target attacks Hold > Lift > Bolt will do (Propel is an iconic Grav power I know but Propel + Arcane probably isn't needed).

It's a fair trade-off (although we could do with more +Energy Resist bonuses). Harder to build up but comes with DR protection "built in".

No, not quite. If you drop from 75% to 70% you'd be taking 20% more damage (I would have taken 25 damage, I took 30. 20% increase). If you drop from 90% to 80% (which is the equivalent of 45% to 40% def) you'd take twice the dame you were, just like Defense. The big difference is that DDR is a separate stat, RDR is just equal to your un-debuffed total resistance (with no cap that I could find). And of course there's a LOT more -Defense running about which leads to Cascading Def failure (one attack with -20% def gets through suddenly they all start doing it).

It used to be coded as Target (it's why I skipped it on my sapper). They could have fixed it / changed it to Caster but it definitely used to be Target. I really hope it's not now (runs off to the test server....) Edit : Yes, you're right. It's been changed from Target to Caster by the looks of things. Edit 2 : Ahh. I think I see. They added a clause so it'll only affect Friendly Player targets if I'm reading CoD properly. That makes sense since I'm also a target of End (Tesla takes End from them and gives me a tiny bit. So I'll get the buff but enemies no longer do)

Nope, not quite true. Damage procs will go off whenever a pet uses a power which could benefit from that type of enhancement. So Lady Greys on a Grave Knight will try and trigger for their Dark Blasts (because they have -ToHit). Achilles on their Broadsword attacks (because those have -Def). Other procs will be the same but the effect depends on the recipient of the buff. For example you could give "Chance to Heal Self" to a Mu Guardian and their lightnings could heal them a little. But it's likely not really worth it. Performance Shifter is a weird one. It affects the Target. So if you gave your Mu Guardian that he'd be occasionally be topping up their End with it(!!). The specific problem with Forced Feedback is that pets can't be buffed (or debuffed) with Recharge. So Forced Feedback is wasted on them. They're immune to +Recharge from it anyway. As you say FF also has a change to proc when you cast the "pet" power. That's why it's useful on a Stormies Tornado and Lightning Storm, because you'll be recasting them a lot and it'll typically give you a brief chunk of 100% recharge every time.

I've two "sappers". In both cases Sapping is part of the build rather than being the be-all and end-all. Sapping just isn't good enough to be your "only reason to be" First is Elec Control / Poison. Poison is useful here for PGT. The Poison version of this does - Recovery rather than -Regen, so stops things from recovering. But Sapping is like another layer of Control here. I'm relying on it plus Holds, Sleeps, Knockdown and Confuse. That said a Elec Control/Poison/Mu should work well as a Sapper (or Primal for Power Boost but I think the slap from Power Sink will be more useful). The 2nd is a Defender, but not what you'd expect. Trick Arrow / Elec / Mu. On the face of it Trick Arrow doesn't seem to bring a lot to a Sapper at all. But it's got 3 powers which help to some extent : Disruption Arrow, EMP Arrow and Acid Arrow. Disruption lowers their End by a tiny amount, making it a little easier (typically 6.25%). Pretty meh. The only reason it's nice is that it allows you to slot the Chance for Self Heal in, so you've a chance to top up on healing just by casting it. Since it no longer needs Recharge this is a good "default slot" for it. EMP Arrow does ~40% -End. But it's on a long timer. So again not great. Acid Arrow however has a load of -Special. This basically acts as like a "debuff powerboost" so if I Short Circuit after an Acid Arrow my End Drain goes up. Testing on my dummy AE arc "Vanilla" short circuit 2023-01-03 13:51:35 You hit Dummy Minion with your Short Circuit for 66.49 points of their endurance. And after an Acid Arrow 2023-01-03 13:50:01 You hit Dummy Minion with your Short Circuit for 90.44 points of their endurance. So nearly a 50% buff. (note my Short Circuit isn't quite maxxed out for End Mod because I 6 slotted Power Transfer for the set bonus. It's a decent compromise between End mod and Damage though and gives me a change to self-heal on every one I hit with it) You could combine that with the Power epic for Power Build Up and you'd be doing a lot of sapping for small periods of time (PBUs recharge is looooong). Personally I went Trick Arrow / Elec / Mu for the great Resist armour & Power Sink as a source of extra AoE Sap. Overall though I'm a Debuffer, where some of that debuff is the blue bar. Although Trick Arrow is pure ranged there's nothing wrong with using it point blank. So you can blind everything (with a huge -ToHit), get in close, Disrupt them, Acid them, Short Circuit + Power Sink and then they're basically helpless. Then you can layer Oil Slick and/or EMP and/or nuke as you like. So my recommendation for a "Massive debuffer who also is decent at Sapping" is this. It's also a pretty cheapish build. Two purples (not sets, just the damage procs), Defender ATOs and no Winters at all. I'll note that Tesla Cage is still pure dirt and to be honest I should respec it out. The chaining mechanic is worthless and the proccablity is also terrible (so there's one Purple that can be dropped or moved). The Short Circuit mechanic is also disappointing. It looks flashy but the total damage is adds is pretty awful when you parse it out. The best improvement to Elec wasn't any of those changes, it was simply lowering the animation time for Short Circuit. Shocked! adds about 4% damage to SC. It's pretty chronic.

Tornado notably takes expedient reinforcement (despite not being a targetable pet). 4x expedients 1x frankenslotting (to max out rech) and optionally a KB2KD is an easy way of picking up some much-needed rech. Procs are pretty much a waste in Tornado thanks to the way it works. It's essentially a pet running a small AoE aura / toggle and toggles / auras proc really poorly (they only check once every 10 seconds). There is one exception though.... My preferred slotting for Tornado is 4 Expedients for the set bonus (everything bar the Resist aura and Dam/End), 1 Overwhelming Force kb2kd (because it brings the damage up too) and a Forced Feedback Chance for Recharge because that will trigger every time you cast the Tornado. You can repeat the trick with Lightning Storm. 3-4 Thunderstrikes or whatever, a Forced Feedback and 1-2 slots of whatever you like (I do Overwhelming Force kb2kd because I don't like LS knocking things but up to you). LS needs a lot of End to cast so slotting for -End isn't a bad idea. In combat I'll usually drop Tornado, fart about with other things for 5 seconds then LS. That gives me ~10 seconds of +100% recharge. As for dealing with Endurance on a Storming you need to fully slot Stamina (1 Performance chance for End, 2 +5 End IOs), Panacea in Health (this is the single strongest IO for End recovery), then Miracle and / or Numina uniques if you can too. Miracle is slightly stronger than the +5 End IO in stamina (15% as oppose to 12.5%) and Numina slightly weaker (10% against 12.5%) so if you only have two extra slots go Health with Panacea & Miracle, Stamina with Performance Shifter & a +5 End IO. But I usually end up with 2 in health and 3 in Stamina, skipping Numina. I typically then take either Mu or Ice as my epic (I understand concept is king and wanting Water Spout on a Stormie makes sense). Ice gives you Hibernate as a "Combat Rest" to recover. Mu gives you Power Sink. I started on Ice for the Freezing Rain > Ice Storm combo and Defensive Armour (if you're skipping Fighting the Def Ice Armour can take the Resist uniques which usually go into Tough, handy for some controllers) but switched to Mu for the great Resist armour, Power Sink, Ball Lightning and Summon Guardian (with 4 more Expedients in there for the set bonus again).

I'm with Snarky. Find the early levels tedious so I usually use a Fire Tank to PL a new character to ~ 27 (or 32), start IOing them with sets and play from there on. I'll happily exemp down to run TFs or join lower teams but I really don't enjoy not being well on the road. 30s are actually my favourite part of the game to be levelling because the characters & build tend to coalesce then (enough powers to make it interesting, enough slots & sets available to make them powerful).

So I don't specifically have one of these (so why are you here Carni?) but I do have a Dark/Tact Arrow and a Water / Temporal both designed for the same sort of thing. Dark/TA was more "Blastroller" then they nerfed EMP Arrow (Boo) So merging them into the Dark/TA but keeping the Fire epic for control-via-bonfire gives me this. Future Pain is procced up because it makes for good AV fight DPS (assuming you don't die horribly) or just to give a boss who got up into your face a bad time (Time Stop them, then Future Pain followed by Gloom, Umbral to make them fall over and snipe) Just the data chunk because half the time when I post full builds it throws weird template errors in the forums. *Edit : Switching Blackstar to the Blaster ATO as you've done is an obvious improvement I missed. https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1777&c=745&a=1490&f=HEX&dc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

Numerically 2 HOs is 66% and a ACC/Dam + ACC/Dam/End would be 45/45/20 plus set bonus(es) if I remember right.

I love pets. Always have, will generally try a pet build whatever game i'm playing. Phantom Army, the why is probably self explanatory. PAs are your "tank too slow. We go now". Singy is also amazing. Gremlins because they're awful. Just terrible bless them. Demon's and Bots because theyre so big and noisy. Edit : And Barkley. The Chihuahua trapped in the body of a hellhound. I'm guessing we're talking about -1 / -2 rather than incarnates? Hate them. Bad bandaid because the purple patch isn't linear. Just balance the pet damage as a same level pet if you must but dump these, especially for masterminds. I also adore the oddity pet power which Warshades get. The only thing I'd change is the ai to make them act more like Singy rather than Fire imps / gremlins. Way too fond of getting in close considering their frailty and lack of any melee power whatsoever.

I've one of these (The Binman) but haven't played them in two years. Less Baumph (I prefer that spelling so I can cheat in Scrabble) and more bzzzzt with Mu for Ball Lightning and the snipe. Racing Ball Lightning with Savage Leap is immense fun. Also he predates whatever the hell they did to Haemorrhage. Data Link only because I ended up in a fight with Spoilers and the Full Export from Mids. https://www.midsreborn.com/builds/download.php?uc=1733&c=759&a=1518&f=HEX&dc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

If you're using the NoRepeats rule I'd suggest Ice/Poison/Earth with as much Sorcery as you can stuff into the build. My Ice/Traps/Earth/Sorcery plays quite like the Elec/Poison but the pet is less stupid (Gremlins are even thicker than Fire Imps).

Elec / Poison isn't bad as a Sapper because Poisons Poison Trap does -Recovery rather than the -Regen of Traps Poison Trap. Note that procs perform poorly in chain powers like Jolting but I put them in anyway. Poison Gas Trap procs well. Mine is an Elec/Poison/Earth (because you'll be in close for the 2 auras anyway and Earth epic gives good defenses and excellent close up damage) but here's a remix of mine as a Elec/Poison/Mu which might help. Note Static Field does a decent amount of -End too. Not suggesting you dump Elec Affinity if you like it, just some slotting pointers. Playwise Elec / Sapping is a bit of a "layered" control build. You don't have the same level of "stop you dead" like something like Plant, instead you're layering Sleeps, Knockdowns, Confuse and Sapping via the auras, PGT and Chain Fences along with your holds. Elec Control means you'll always be busy 🙂