Carnifax

All 4 of the unique pet IOs give a Def or Resist bonus to all your pets. Great on masterminds and useful on you depending on your secondary. For Dark/Dark you get Fade so I'd aim for the Def ones if you have the slots. Typical pet slotting is 4 or 6 Expediant Reinforcements for the set bonuses, a proc if it'll go off a lot and maybe one of the uniques. Knowing which damage procs will go off means checking the powers they have and seeing what'll trigger. You can check Barkleys powers here for example. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=pets_umbra_beast Your slotting for fluffy looks good, I usually go 4 dark watchers and the cloud senses proc. The proc does most of his damage, because all his attacks do -tohit. It's not a LOT of damage but fluffy isn't for that. The soulbound proc is good for giving your most damaging pet build ups. I'd assume that'll be Barkley. I'd suggesting uploading your mids file totally so others can open it in mids and have a look.

Uun is bang on here. The issue isn't just "cones" but that Nightfall is the most ridiculously narrow, long going. You want to be a good ways back with it So you miss out on that lovely extra damage from the PBAoE -resist for almost all of your Cone AoEs lowering your AoE damage overall. The cones just don't play nicely with Poisons Tier 9 at all regardless of how good you are at moving about. You'll always move out of it's debuff range. Radiation blast might be a better fit. That come is crap anyway and Rad feels "poisony" too, although I prefer water.

I assume it's to bring it inline with Tornado in Storm. But yes since it seems that changing sets like this loses set bonuses from the old set even if you leave it in (verified earlier in the thread) I'd be dubious about forcing this change on everyone since it forces them to reslot or lose set bonuses in the rejigged powers.

Are you sure about this? Doesn't tally with what I am seeing. I jumped onto Beta over the weekend and checked the change and it looked to me like the Oblit set bonuses I'd slotted here weren't available. Beta is back up so I've checked again, I've two sets of Oblits in Dark Consumption & Soul but can only see one 5% Recharge and one 3.75% melee def bonus. So it's looking to me like you definitely lose the set bonuses from keeping melee slotting in the new power. There's also a 3.75% drop compared to Live

You need to switch on logging to a file ingame. From the original post : /logchat will stick a message in general telling you it's on (also don't forget to add the Pet channels to the Combat tab). Then once done the log file is in : [Base Homecoming folder]\accounts\[AccountName]\Logs Mine are here for example.

I found it easier to get Positional caps over Typed. That also lets you pick the Epic of your choice rather than having to go with Mace for Scorpion Shield. I'm 44.9% melee and 39.58% ranged def ingame alongside 66% S/L resists. Some tips : You're a Kin. You'll be capping your own damage. So you can easily underslot the AoEs for damage (Empty Clips and Bullet Rain). Your Damage Cap is +400% and slotting is included in that. So essentially if you can keep the Fulc Shifts going and stay at ~340 or more those AoEs are still at the cap. It'll drop off for AV battles but you don't use those in AV battles (I usually just focus on Fulc, Siphon Power, Transfusion and Transference and lob the odd shot in). Ditto for Assault. (and Musculature Alpha). You don't need them. You won't be at cap in an AV fight but you can still easily maintain a 250% damage bonus. Always split Scourging Blast 3+3 across 2 powers, that gives you two +10% recharge bonuses. Forced Feedbacks in the two AoEs are great for gets lots of little jolts of +recharge (Empty Clips and Bullet Rain) Remember you can take powers earlier now in CoH. Tier 8 Primary opens at 22 rather than 26. Tier 9 at 26. Tier 8 Secondary at 28 and Tier 9 at 30. Take them as early as you can. Yin with a Nuke & Fulc Shift is silly. I went Dark Mastery because Oblits are great for recharge + Melee Def and having two additional PBAoEs is great, but Soul Drain is changing with the next patch so I'll probably need to rejig (depending on what sets it'll take). Also having Dark Consumption + Transference (an Acc is enough) means I don't need to worry too much about End. I'll just siphon it off someone. 2 Performance Shifters in Stamina and Pancea in Health is plenty. 5 Superior Avalanche in Hail of Bullets, including the Chance to Knockdown is godly. Purple proc in the 6th slot. Somehow I get away with not slotting Tranfusion with Accuracy and can still happily heal away (34% Acc from Set Bonuses is probably the reason) The P2W temp power can give you 5% more Defense and 7.5% more resists (Defense Amplifier. 2.5 million per active hour at 50 but can be worth it, as you approach Def softcap every % gain is more and more worthwhile). Buy 8 hours of all of these at Level 1 cos they're dirt cheap. Hybrid Support also grants + Def so layer that in if you like. This is one of my favourite builds. Objective is always "Race the Tank into the spawn, Fulc shift, nuke". Be ultra aggressive because you have the defenses + heals to survive most things. Nemesis and the like can get annoying but you'll learn what you can get away with. BulletTime_Final_respecced.mbd

For end game content usually debuff is king (because a lot of the bottlenecks are AVs and the like). Psys summary is pretty bang on for my money, although I'll also give a nod to Dark Affinity (AoE resist & defense "shield" with DDR added in plus -resist and -regen debuffage), Rad and Trick Arrow (although TAs -regen is fairly time-limited as it's in EMP Arrow, but it does come with a single target immob also with -resist which is great for stopping AVs wandering around the place). One minus for Poison, it doesn't have much -regen compared to Cold, Traps or Rad (Darks & Trick Arrows are also better but not up 100% of the time). That said Nature is fine on end game content, my Fire / Nature corruptor is my character of choice for TinPlex because the combo of team wide buffs which don't need to be in close to enemies (because of the annoying Death Patches) and there is some debuffage : Nature has a single target -resist and -regen (issue is the Regen is 85% resisted by AVs so Natures 150 gets heavily resisted). The Tier 9 being "Mini-Buildup for all for the next 60 seconds" is lovely on fast moving teams (no squabbling with Blasters who nuke your Fulcrum Shifts, which happens sometimes on my Kin). Cold can throw out a LOT of -resist and a decent amount of -regen. Traps can basically floor Regen and in prolonged fights can have 2-3 Acid Mortars out. Trick Arrow and Dark can have good -resist. Mace Epic helps too, Poisonous Ray is yet more -resist. So I'd agree with Psy, Dark or Earth are good primaries because they've a lot of tricks (Illusion too, PAs are "free" damage in terms of animation times). Cold, Traps, Dark, Rad and Poison are good "Let's give the AV a bad day". I unwittingly soloed some RWZ Mission AVs in Gaussians arc on Carni yesterday (Illusion / Dark / Mace controller). One was level 50 and one was level 53 (allowing for the fact I was level 50+1). Wasn't expecting them but once the adds were dealt with I could fairly handily wear them down.

Trick Arrow still can't light its own Oil Slicks, it's why my Grav/TA takes Mu epic. But "fire or energy damage" isn't too hard to figure out. No clue what "wet" means. Cold damage? Something new added to some powers?

On my Warshade my answer is "close to the Tank", although if it's a herding Tank chances are I'll leave after one mission anyway cos that bores me. But the Tank is the handiest focal spot usually. So close to the corner so I can try and snag some into the Blizzard anyway, but since the follow-up is a mired Quasar it probably won't matter too much. I once had a Brute ragequit a team without warning because of Fold Space (or whatever the WS version is called). In my defence they never said they were Willpower and needed hugs to live. I'm used to Brutes basically being scrapperlocked 24/7 so I was just doing the usual yoink and explode manoeuvre.

Brute build but might be useful for you. Old & cheapish Staff / NRG Snookered - Brute (Staff Fighting).mbd

I've had a look at Shocked previously in my parser on my TA/Elec. It's... fine I guess overall. The results are weirdly erratic too. I can understand Ball Lightning since I use it a lot after Short Circuit (SC animation reduction is where the real buff was) but I'm a bit stumped as to why Zapp comes out so low since I use it as my main attack in combat (especially compared to Charged, they're used together for the most part). Thunderous I can understand since I usually use it as an opener. 10% buff to Ball Lightning (remember that's the final damage value, so its more like 20% of base damage) isn't awful though. But it's weirdly erratic.

Probably sapping, especially with the pbaoe + transference. Kin likes pbaoes. Fulc shift, pbaoe, transference on whichever boss is close by. Then a ball Lightning and go to work on the boss. I'd a Kin/Elec on live but corruptor nowadays is the better option (on live the biggest draw for the defender was not waiting 6 more levels for fulc. The 30s used to be sloooow to get thru)

Electric is fine. It has a layered approach to mezzes / end drain which is quite interesting. Damage is meh. But if you're just on a team running content it's perfectly fine, I enjoyed my Elec/Poison all the way to 50 but don't play them much any more. The gremlins are utter cretins though

One 50+5 Yellow IO is 50% accuracy so it's fine. Plus Kismet and a few set bonuses. Honestly the damage comes mostly from pets anyway. Checked a run I did over lunch and Phantasm + PAs do most of the work (PAs together do twice the damage of the Phantasm but he's no slouch either), Toxic T in 3rd (about the same as a single PA) and Dark Servant last, the majority of which is from the proc. Poison Ray is mostly to give 18% + 20% -resist to the toughest thing in the spawn if Achilles kicks in (Achilles never stacks on an enemy) on top of the 30% from Tar Patch. PAs like -68% resist.

For target location attacks I use the macro 95% of the time so if it switched to target an enemy I wouldn't mourn the change. Very rarely its nice to place a shield charge in the middle, because the mobs are slightly spread out but that's solo. Never have time on teams so Macro it is. And it's not the end of the world if I couldn't do it any more. But I guess where do you draw the line? Blizzard / other rains is a target location attack and I like being able to finesse where that goes. Ditto for oddball things like Creepers (or Freezing Rain). Definitely would be annoyed if those changed.

Here's Carni's planned "Oh crap they moved the powers" respec build. Pretty much as per live other than moving some powers around and taking Tarantula over the Epic AoE (I think personally without a good way to set up containment Epic AoEs are meh, even procced up). I like Mace because Scorp Shield gives S/L/E defense and there's a lot of Energy attacks flying around in end game. Poison Ray is a decent attack but a really nice -resist debuff (and one of the few places an Ill/Dark can squeeze in an Achilles Heel). Hits the Incarnate cap for S/L/E defense along with the standard softcap for Ranged. Incarnates are Agility, mostly for +Recharge and +Def but the End Mod is nice too. Void because it's thematic, Degen because the -MaxHP can be useful vs AVs, Phantom again for theme (Carnies are a good alternative or whatever you want), Ageless Radial both for more recharge AND stacking AoE DDR with Fade and Control Hybrid mostly for trying to add Immob to attacks. Carnifax_tarantula.mbd

Yup, I said this was a (very) rough scaffold to give Jeff an idea of the sets available, not a fully formed build.

No worries. Never said you didn't, just the Ranged Def requirement reminded me of the Water / Temp blaster I capped pretty cheaply a while back.

Actually there's two which are very handy for getting Ranged Def up on a ranged character at least. Thunderstrike & Artillery. They're what I used to get a Water / Temp Blaster to the e/n/r softcap. Here's a very quick and pretty dirty example for Water / Fire sent. Ingame (because Mids seems to underestimate def by ~ 1.6% for some reason I've found) this should be capped e/n and ranged Def. Numinas and Preemptive also give ranged Def so used them too. Not complete but should be a good base for experimenting. Not suggesting you go full bore like this, the Epics are way underslotted, but maybe go ~35% e/n/r and you're a small purple away from capping. Sentinel (Water Blast - Fiery Aura).mbd

Hit 50 yesterday and here's my mid-range version of the build (my Live build I've actually gone with 5 Hecatombs in Freezing touch but if you're on a budget I always just go for the Purple Procs and use a cheaper set instead). Other than that it's basically the ingame build. Not convinced I want to go full bore with adding Winters and more purples in yet. This build is still very strong and saves you a lot of Inf. Note that ingame my Def is about 1.6 higher than shown in Mids even mid combat. No idea why but it gets NRG Def to 44.9 and S/L to just about 50. Periglacial - Stalker (Ice Melee - Stone Armor).mbd

Here's my mid-range priced (and oldish) build for Water / Temp. Lots of Artillery and Thunderstrikes to get to ranged cap with a smattering of procs to make it interesting. I've kept and frankenslotted Future Pain for dealing with boss / AV fights. I prefer Aqua over the tier 2 just as a way to build Tidal up and fill the attack chain. Temporas_cold_rejigged - Blaster (Water Blast).mbd

Wow. That's a LOT. Amazing work folks. Very interested in the Time Bomb changes. Temporal Bomb looks very intriguing.

I've run multiple runs through my online parser and Targetted AoE procs in there are the way to go. They dramatically increase the overall damage. Procs do show onscreen and in your Combat Log file (if you switch it on). Even better for "pets" like Carrion they're logged with the name of the parent pet which triggers them which makes it easier to pick out how effective they are.

I've been doing my usual, IOing as I go and shoring up with standard enhancements. One thing I did find useful from 16ish to 30 when I respecced was taking Air Superiority (or Frozen Fists) to fill gaps. Only if you're happy to respec it out later though. I've taken Zapp & Ball Lightning as my epics. Ball Lightning is great as a trigger to set off Assassins Mark. Freezing Touch from Hidden, Assassin's strike, Zapp (again from Hidden) is a great combo. Solo hidden Zapp snipes are also a great way to thin out / pull. Was running a Carnie tips mission +2x4 with multiple bosses in the spawns and this was a great way to tactically deal with them (snipe them, drop ice patch and duck around the corner) Ice Patch is still the best no-slot power in the game. Oh, and for prioritizing which IOs you need ASAP Performance Shifter chance for End in Stamina and Crystal Armour are must-haves. I've some spare ones, email me in-game @Carnifax and I'll send them on to you.

Yep. Targeted AoE procs are very very good in Creepers. You want all 3. Final slot is a toss up between a Dam IO or Trap of the Hunter proc. Avoid the KB and Slow procs. They don't trigger enough to be worth it.