Dr Causality

That's what I'm thinking too. It makes me want to start a "Best of the Worst" SG that only accepts AT combos from the top of worst combo polls like this. So the SG would be composed of the best that can be done with the worst power sets and combos in the game.

Inspired by @Scarlet Shocker's "The 105; the Worst of the Bunch" post. I'm curious what people think the absolute worst performing MM combo is? I will roll and level whatever combo is chosen as the worst combo in this thread, to see what can still be done with it. 🙂 To narrow things down into a manageable poll. I'm working from the assumption that Trick Arrow is considered the most underperforming MM 2ndary. And that Thugs, Bots and Demons are widely considered the top pet sets. That leaves Beast, Necro, Ninja or Mercs paired with TA as the most likely suspects for worst performing MM pairings. But just in case you disagree I included a none of the above option and you can reply in this thread with your write in vote.... **Update** Ninja/TA was voted as worst combo, and as promised I rolled one to see what I could do with it still. Finally finished grinding all the T4's, so my first stupid test was a solo MoITF at +2/+8 with further restriction of nothing from email or outside mishes and only sm inpirations to start. I was able to do it on Beta, but having completed this on Beta, but died once in final AV fight. (Sadly the recent change to MM Goto controls for melee pets makes it nearly impossible to keep the T1 Ninjas alive in the final AV fight.) Write up here:

I guess that's why I'm leaning towards Ninja/TA being the worst combo. TA doesn't offer much to keep the Ninja's alive, so the combo misses out on a good amount of their damage too.

To expand on what @Coyote covered. You're going to want some source(s) of -Resistance. Ideally these will be continual and reliable. You can increase your overall -Res if you have a long cooldown power that can slot the Achilles -Res proc, yielding capped proc chances. That means for a Mind confused based AV hunter build, I'd really only look at Ice or Mace. Ice Mastery PROs Sleet is aoe and a very useful power outside of AV fights. HoarFrost is another heal and the HP buff it gives will supercharge the HP/s regen you get from DrainPsyche Frozen Armor - Some easy Smash/Leth Def. But more itakes both Def and Res IOs, so can be a great slot Mule for the uniques you may want to slot. (LoTG, ShieldWall 5% Res, Reactive Def +Scaling Res, +7.5% HP etc.) CONs _Res from Sleet will not be continually up. This version of Sleet has a long 90s cooldown, with a short 15s duration, so even on very high recharge builds you will have downtime where you are not getting -Res Rain powers like Sleet are not reliable for procs, so Sleet does not offer a useful power to slot the Achilles -Res proc No Epic Resistance shield for common S/L or energy damage Mace Mastery PROs Poison Ray - Offers -18.75% Res, but also due to single target and long cooldown will very reliably proc Achilles for another -20% and high recharge builds should have it's cooldown under 10s letting you keep the Achilles -20% up at the 90% proc chance cap. This also means if you can spare slots it can further be turned into a dmg power by slotting chances dmg procs. Scorpion Shield - Gives a place to slot another slot a LOTG for +Rech and easy Smash/Leth/Energy Def which can protect you the most common damage types in the game. Personal Force Shield - a handy one-slot wonder for LOTG to get the high recharge you need on Doms. Disruptor Blast - Isn't great DPS and does KB, but against full mobs it is a very reliable way to proc the ForceFeedback +Recharge bonus. This can be handy to help have DrainPsyche up perma letting you smash head first through regular trash mobs on the way to the AV fights... Toxic Tarantula pet - I personally don't love this pet as I find it a bit fragile. But this is no problem against AVs you have perma mezzed, so it will add DPS especially if you can give it the LadyGrey Dmg proc. But overall pets you can't control are tougher to use on a build that centers around stealthy confusing it's way through mission content. Still pets are an easy 4 slot source of +Rech bonus from the Recharge Intensive pet sets. your high global recharge means it's easily possible to have the pet permanently up and having a power where you can slotting the pet uniques means they also buff your Lore Incarnate pets if you want a more pet centric playstyle... CONs Poison Ray - Is only single target. No Epic Resistance shield for the common S/L or Energy damage Nowhere to slot Res IO's, so if you want uniques you'll have to pick up a pool like Fighting or Sorcery. (And you can't have Sorcery if you also want Force of Will...) Worth mentioning the new 'Force of Will' Powerpool. 'Weaken Resolve' is basically a poor man's 'Poison Ray'. Only -12.98% Res versus Poison Ray's -18.75%. Only a 15s duration vs 30s. A longer 30s vs 24s cooldown. But it's just as good a way to get the Achillies proc -20% Res reliably up. The longer base cooldown means you mean need to slot it for Recharge to have it up every 10s to keep applying the Achillies, but have plenty of room to slot Rech while still being at 90% proc chance cap. That means it similarly can be turned into a dmg power with procs. It's worth noting here that Achillies -Res does not stack, so not much value in having both Poison Ray and Weaken Resolve. But if you wanted to go Ice Mastery for Sleet, then adding Weaken Resolve would give you almost all that you'd be missing out on from losing Poison Ray....

How's that Necro/TA MM going?

Thanks for calling out the Petless. That's hands down the worst and wasn't mentioned yet. /Trick also seems like the weakest 2ndary. But I'm confused by Mercs and Beast getting rated as worse than Ninjas. Ninjas - Absolutely Zero Resistance, HP bonuses, No heals or Regen Buffs and disappointing 6% Defense except for Jounin. And they prefer melee making them by far the fragilest of the Pets. *Edit* wanted to add that Genin and Oni don't have attacks that work well with their procs, so only Jounin are worth procing for extra dmg. Also, Ninjas don't have a power that can let you slot Mule for the pet uniques like Gang War, Hell on Earth, Soul Extraction. Ninjas basically come up short on everything except cool factor. But even coolness themes turn against them, as it's particularly cruel that thematically they pair well with Trick Arrow....they most underperforming 2ndary. Genin Def - 6% AOE/Ranged/ Melee Defense Jounin Def - 13% AOE/Ranged/ Melee Defense Oni Def - 6% AOE/Ranged/ Melee Defense Whereas, Beast - No ranged attacks can be an issue, but they have Resistance, Def, self-heals, Dire gets an HP buff etc. Howlers Def - 11% AOE/Ranged/ Melee Defense Res - 18% Smash/Lethal/Cold Lions / Dire Wolf Def - 12% AOE/Ranged/ Melee Defense Res - 29% Smash/Lethal/Cold Mercs - No Defense, but they have Resistance and a Medic with heals. Dmg isn't great on it's own but they take lots of procs, letting them close the gap. Recent ranged AI update should open up solid strategic play as they are all ranged attacks. Soldiers Res - 25% Smash/Lethal Spec Ops Res - 26% Smash/Lethal Commando Res - 26% Smash/Lethal

Maybe you meant Temporal Mending is buffed? Or I am I missing something else? My understanding was that neither Regen, nor the +dmg that Temporal Selection has are buffed with Powerboost.

You're making an unnecessary choice between before and after, when you can easily have both. Assuming you have good global recharge like almost all /Time builds will, and you slotted Temporal Mending for Recharge, then Temporal Mending's cooldown will easily be under 6s....and it has 6s duration. You can have the heal over time up constantly. In terms of prebuffing with it before combat, that means you can cast it, then use your opener to start the fight, fight for 4-5s and then have it up again and healing you, all before the prebuff Heal over time from out of combat has even stopped ticking. My experience is bit different than yours. Because it's not all at once or front loaded, I find that to get the most of Temporal Healing you optimally need to use it slightly before you see that you need a heal. And it works best when you have enough Recharge to slightly overlap and stack two Temporal Mending heals at once.

I used to do for the team with two characters when I dualboxxed back on Live. Now you're doing the same thing with a single character.

I'm late to this party. Just off the top of my head the Bio, TW, Darkness Affinity, and Time sets, Sustain buffs for Blasters, Nukes not having End Crashes, plus most of the Incarnate powers, and a bunch of the later issue IO set bonuses, procs and even some temp powers all never should have been made if the designers were true to or cared about game balance. I'd probably be happier they'd kept the game balance. If these were recently released sets or changes, I'd be open to discussing nerfs to balance them. But that all goes back to Live. Taking that away now just adds a 2nd wrong, that will ruin the game for people who built characters around those many clearly out of balance elements. Power creep at this point is a lost cause, like trying to get your virginity back. If we want to balance the game I think the only fair way at his point is to buff underperforming sets and then let the difficulty dial go to 11 instead of just +4/+8 for those who want more of a challenge.

Wacky. I wonder which one is a bug? Clarion first making it multiplicative? Or PB first making it additive? Christ. So /Darkness Affinity can do the same thing, but with it's additional Shadow Fall and Maneuvers toggles that means full 59% Incarnate soft cap for the team.

Fascinating. So Mid's numbers are wrong. How does the math work on this? Are you saying that the two powerboosts stack multiplicatively instead of additively? [The MM version of Farsight starts out with just a 9.38% unenhanced, so you're saying stacking the two PB you can get to nearly 3 x the base Def even without slotting. Mace Powerboost is 65% and Clarion looks to be 80% at peak from what I can tell, so the math checks out: 1.65*1.80 = 2.97 2.97 * 9.38 base = 27.86%] That's so broken if that how it really works. Lol. *edit* I guess I never though about and had no idea how the two powerboosts would work.

Preface: I'm always amused by how experienced strong players in this game can still have such radically different opinions. This game is fairly easy. Both sets are viable and you should play what you'll have the most fun with... With that out out of the way, I'll tell you what I really think. 😉 Whether teaming or solo /Time is miles ahead on fully IO'ed lvl 50 builds. It's in a totally different league from /Rad, particularly if you play Tankermind style. (And maybe my strong preference for Tankermind style is why our experiences and opinions are so different...) /Rad will probably level more easily, especially if not fully kitting out with Attuned IO's on the way to 50. /Time doesn't come into it's overpowered state until well after lvl 28 where you get Farsight, then get it fully slotted and stacked with other sources of +Def to hit full soft cap. The closest MM comparison to /Rad on my take is /Dark Miasma. /Dark can do most everything /Rad can except /Dark has a 4 x bigger heal and Shadowfall that slotted gives you a team buff of around +5.75% Def, and +23% E/N/Psi Resistance, plus a healing pet, and aoe stealth that helps with accidental premature pet aggro. /Dark's Shadowfall also offers a built-in power to slot all the Def and Res IO uniques. Outside of theme, I see almost no reason to play /Rad on a MM when /Dark Miasma is an option. But if the Controller /Darkness Affinity set were an option on MM's, then I'd see very little reason to play, /Rad, /Dark Miasma or /Time on a MM. 🙂 /Rad Compared to /Time, starts out stronger and probably maybe would be the better set.....if you were stuck to permanently using SO's or generics. Hence why there's a lingering sense that it's one of the strongest support sets in the game despite all the more recent discussions that it's now too slow for the rapid pace of the game's current team meta. Overall /Rad is a strong debuff set, but very lacking in buffs for henchmen/pets that other top MM sets have. Here are /Rad's shortcomings: You have no +Def for pets/henchmen. Meaning that even Thugs with their massive up to +24% Def from 2 x Enforcer's Maneuvers still can't be softcapped without Incarnate powers. (Maxing out at 38% with IO's and Manuevers, so that /Rad needs Incarnate powers or buff from teammates to hit even regular non-incarnate 45% softcap. .) You also have no +Res for pets/henchmen. This makes them more vulnerable to being one shotted. Has no +Def or +Res for yourself meaning you have to choose MM's powers and IO's set bonuses to fill in your own Def and Resistance, when you could instead be slotting for procs and dmg. You also have no mezz protection like /FF, /Traps or Sonic do. Rad survivability turns mostly on toggles, meaning for safety have to build for mezz protection or carry trays of breakfrees to avoid "detoggled death syndrome". Relying on toggles also means the set is sloooow. You have to fire off 2 - 3 powers for mitigation to get going. easily enough time for pets to have died from the Alpha. Relying on toggles also makes the set very active at the beginning of battles. /Rad is still firing up it's toggles when other sets have already gotten off an attack and Provoke to draw aggro... Rad's aoe heal is mediocre. (For set with only two buffs, I'd like to see the heal at least be top tier...) Rad has weak Mezzes. Choking Cloud is a mostly useless chance for Mag2 Hold. EM Pulse is very situational, at a massive 300s base cooldown, and worse yet a -1000% End Recovery debuff on yourself making it difficult to keep your much needed debuff toggles up in a fight. Other sets without buffs like /Poison and /Trick Arrow fill in some of that survival gap with reliable Mag3 mezzes. The biggest things /Rad has going for it is strong -Regen and the massive Fallout Nuke if teammates die. (Fallout's cooldown is too high to use reliably. But on teams of /Rad's we used to port around a permanently dead lowbie and alternate between Fallout Nuke's....cheeasy but fun.) /Time Time gets a slower start, but by level 50 with IO sets is, if not the best in the game, then is at minimum a top tier Tankermind set. Farsight out of the box an gives your MM, pets and team almost +15% Def buff. This can be further Powerboosted up to a full 21% using Epic Powerboost. (There's also another cheesy trick that purportedly can get it up to a total of +28%.) This +Def gives you a huge amount of flexibility and freedom in builds, letting you build for damage in procs, power choices and Incarnate selection, where other sets have to choose survival powers and slotting. It also frees you up to choose a Resistance Epic shield so you can not only be full Soft capped but also full 75% Smash/Lethal Resistance Capped. No other MM set can give your MM itself this much Def. Traps has about 1% more of out the box, but can't be Powerboosted so falls about 5% below PB-ed Farsight. Force Field is only up to 12% for your MM, and likewise can't be Powerboosted. Next best are the stealth aura toggles from /Dark, /Cold and /Storm at about +5.75% Def. /Time is the only MM set that can get Thugs to 59% full Incarnate softcap without relying on Destiny, Hybrid or external buffs from Teammates. But in addition to that massive +Def, /Time also gets: Two heals and Rez that doubles as a big 120s duration single target +Regen and +Dmg buff when used on living targets. Single target Mag3 Hold that can be proc-ed into a Dmg power and/or a somewhat reliable mag5 hold. AOE Slow and Mag3 Hold patch that can be double stacked and again procced out turning it into a Dmg power. -Tohit, -Dmg debuff toggle Permeable AOE -22.5% Res debuff AOE, +15% End, +50% Rech, and 30% Recovery team buffs AOE+Tohit team buff that's equal to Tactics. Nothing is perfect. /Time's shortcomings are: Mediocre -Regen No mezz protection No +Res No aoe team +Dmg buff (does have a single target +18.75% Dmg buff that w/ high Recharge can be comfortably kept up on about three pets or teammates.) Literally everything else is covered. If you want /Time can be played very inactively, relying on just the +Def like /FF. I'm not saying you should skip it's other great powers, but all you really have to have is Farsight for Def, which can be made perma from just Enhancement slotting. It's a much faster set than /Rad. Farsight only has to be clicked once every 120s. Not relying on toggles means Mezzes are not such a worry since you can still have decentlyhigh or near soft cap Def when mezzed. The Distortion Field patch has a 45s duration and keeps working through mezzes. The buffs can be applied outside of combat, or on the way to the next spawn. The base heal is on a longer cooldown than Rad's, but is also bigger (20.54% vs 13.34% base). This means you can spam your heal less often for the same overall heal amount. It's also a heal over time, so you can prebuff just before combat, with some of the heal lingering into the beginning of the fight. Likewise the -Tohit and -Dmg debuff is an aura from your MM, so is already toggled on when a fight starts. /Rad spends the first 2 or 3 combat actions building up the debuffs it's pets need to survive. /Time due to it's Def buffs can be built for more damage and can instead spend those first 2 or 3 actions on attacks and mezzes on the annoying targets. The toughest build choice with /Time is choosing between Epic Powerboost and an Epic Resistance Shield. Another 6% aoe Team Def vs. 75% capped Smash/Lethal for your MM when you stack Epic Shield with Tough and the +Res Uniques or IO set bonuses. There's an even crazier thing I haven't gotten around to experimenting with in game. Destiny Clarion is another source of Powerboost, plus Mezz protection. I hear you can stack the Powerboost from Mace Mastery with Clarion's Powerboost. There would be gaps when Clarion on was down, but you have so much +Rech with /Time that can fill your regular Farsight and Powerboost, and still have them both up again when Clarion is. With Clarion and PB stacked, Mid's shows me Farsight's +Def goes up to a whopping 28% 33% **. But you'd also have the option of just Clarion with a Epic Resistance Shield. **Edit** Read on below where @Bopper schools me on how to properly stack Powerboosts getting it higher than I realized was possible. **Edit2** A more succinct way to put this argument would have been /Rad doesn't have a 10+ page threaded dedicated to needing to nerf it. In sum: /Time is so good that it makes some people think it makes even Ninjas decent. 😜 (Paging @Redlynne)

Base Recharge and Mag is the same as the single target Holds but the base duration is 29.8s vs only 17.88sfor the Holds. That difference gets further increased by Enhancements and Domination. All told that means you can stack a far higher magnitude of Confuse than you can Hold, because with full Enhancement and Domination up its translate to around 40s of additional duration (roughly 92s duration for Confuse versus 53s for Holds.) Which given the low Recharge often roughly 3s rech of these power translates into numerous additional possible stacks of Confuses. Additionally, Confuse (unless you slot with dmg proc) generates no aggro, so if you're stealthed you can build up to the needed mag of Confuse mezz in complete safety. My old Dom builds from live didn't even slot for Def or Resistance, all recharge and dmg. 🙂 The Confuse Proc is also another small advantage. It's 4.5PPM, 10s duration and Mag3 mezz, whereas the best Hold proc is Devastation 3PPM, 8s duration and is only Mag2. Where Holds have the advantage is you're doing some damage while keeping the AV mezzed. But you have to be able to take the aggro while you build up the required mezz stacks. And you also have to use Holds much more frequently to maintain the same overall level Mag of mezz, because each stack of hold mezz expires sooner. So you can use fewer Confuses, letting you use more of your high damage attacks in the mezz-attack-chain. To get the most from either you need to slot for mezz enhancement. That means you can't fully proc the hold to maximize the damage. Confuses do have longer activation times than the better Holds like Fire. On controllers Hold stacking has the advantage of generating the Containment that you need for Dmg. But Dom's don't have this worry. **Edit** Fully ninja-ed by @Troo and @Coyote. 🙂

Something I noticed was the ATO was accepted into certain 2ndary powers. Martial's Thunder Kick -- Should be very interesting for single target attack chains since it's a very respectable base dpa of 109. Because the Superior ATO version is a 6 PPM, at zero recharge it would still have a respectable 66% chance to proc in Thunder Kick which has a 7s recharge and blazing fast activation. With the buffs 10s duration, on a high recharge build this should easily allow stacking while doing solid dpa. Thorns Impale - For a ranged power with a 72 dpa. It wouldn't help with soloing AV's, but the aoe powers might be craziest. The question is does it stack? And if so, how many times? Earth's Fissure -- The 6 PPM means with zero recharge it has an 85% chance to proc in radius 10 aoe power. Electric's Thunderstrike: Larger 12' radius than Fissure with much better dpa. Drops to a still respectable 78% chance to proc. Energy's Whirling Hands: Even larger 15' radius and higher recharge. Etc.

I had a mind/fire back on Live that solo-ed things like the ITF before Incarnate powers. I used all Confuse without switching to Holds. You get somewhat less damage that way since your confuse spamming does no damage, but with the Contagious Confusion proc, it's actually much easier to stack Confuse on a high recharge build, so it was surprisingly safe. And it's also pretty amusing to have AV's like Romulus either out right kill off the other AVs. But since coming back I've been thinking that Dark is probably better than Mind for the same reasons you're mentioning about pet damage. All you're really missing from Mind's toolkit is the aoe Sleep. The pets will give you a massive DPS boost and let you slot the pet uniques that also buff your Lore pets. The taunt from Haunt should help you survive any gaps in confuse. And the Haunt Shades taking damage unlike Illusions Phantasms is easier to work around with Domination keep the AV's mezzed. Dark really should be hands down the AV killer Dom primary. The only reason I haven't finished building one yet, is haven't been able to settle on a 2ndary. Fire has great single target dmg. But surprisingly aoe damage is not all that impressive and I read that they don't get access to the new fast snipe? Anyone know if that's correct? That would be deal breaker for me on fire. Psi having the highest -Regen in game makes it a contender despite not so great attacks. Martial (pre-nerf) had what on Beta felt like very respectable single target and great aoe. But looks less appealing after the admittedly broken Envenomed Blade's nerf. (This led me to abandon mine in the 30s...) Rad looks like it might be doable since it can slot for -Rech and extra dmg procs Earth has some very high DPA melee attacks. But I don't love the idea of being in melee range when I'm a glass cannon slotting mostly for Recharge and Dmg bonuses. One miscalculated slip up with stacking Confuse against an AV and they can easily one shot you from Melee range. Basically, I'm not entirely set on or satisfied with any of them, so haven't been motivated to finish building one yet.

Bump. Would be interesting to know more about Control. I've been meaning to do some testing on Beta server, since I couldn't find much in the forums here. but with the Tanker/Brute changes Incarnate still on free on Beta server

I agree with all the people saying /Darkness Affinity. It starts out strong at early levels and just keeps getting better, keeping well ahead of enemy level advances. Once you get Incarnates /Dark Affinity becomes a solo powerhouse because you can defense cap and heal a small army of pets. The Damage tier of the Incarnate Lore pets, like Rularuu Core Superior do insane amounts of damage. Most AT's solo struggle to keep the Lore pets alive versus strong EB, AV, GM type targets. But for /Dark it's relatively easy and if you can keep them alive for the summon duration combined with the -Res from Tar patch and -Regen from Howling Twilight you can solo most AV's. And when I say small pet army it's because you can get one or more summons from your Control Set, you Fluffy from /Darkness Affinity and you can take another pet from the Patron pools. Taking the Patron pool pet gives you the slots to easily fit all the four unique pet IO's, while still slotting the pets well. The broken mechanic being that those unique create a buff radius centered on your character, so they buff all your pets, including Fluffy and the Incarnate Lore pets. They also buff temp summon powers which can be handy while leveling since you can buy Radio Summons at the P2W vendor. But the even stronger way to go with Epics is probably give up the extra pet and choose Primal Forces Mastery since Powerboost works on Fade for 122% buff to the Defense, which since Fade is click buff lasts past the 15s Powerboost duration. That will easily make up for the two +5% Def pet uniques, so you just need to squeeze the two +10% Res procs into your Fly Trap, so you Fluffy and the Lore pets get an extra 20% global Resistance... But for solo play Plant/Dark > Fire/Dark But for solo play I disagree with the people saying Fire/Dark. I have both. Fire is probably better on a team, especially a team with a Tank or Brute where Plants powers can make it more difficult to herd and tightly pack spawns. But for Solo play Fire is just no contest against Plant. Procced out Carrion Creepers and procced out Seeds combine for both more damage and more control than Fire gets. And you can do that from a safe distance instead of needing to close into Hotfeets pbaoe range. With high global Recharge Carrion Creepers can be made perma and follows you to next spawns for the 120s duration. It's not just the massive proc damage that the Creepers do that's impressive, they also draw aggro, knock down and slow enemies. You can get 3 x dmg procs into Seeds by the time your level 20 (the first two at lvl 10.) As long as you keep enhancement recharge slotting below 60% they have 90% proc chances. (Even the lackluster non-Superior Overpowering Presence Controller ATO has a surprising 28 to 32% chance to proc it's Energy Font Summons in Seeds...) Plant also gives you a location based +Regen buff in Tree of Life, which with full slotting is up to +300% Regen. I skip SporeBurst and the 240s Rech Vines pbaoe hold, freeing up power slots for Pools and Epics. For leveling I recommend the new Force of Will set. You'll be short on slots while leveling. Force of Will lets you get Weaken, so you have a free place to put an Achilles -Res proc for hard targets. Mighty leap is a slot mule a Knockback protection proc. Having two powers gives you access to Wall of Force at lvl 14. Wall of Force does almost no damage on it's own, but against big spawns Wall of Force has great proc chances for ForceFeedback +chance for 100% Recharge and decent dmg proc chances. The 5s 100% Rech buffs you can get from FF proc will help get your Carrion Creepers, Seeds and Hasten up more often when at low levels you won't have much access to +Rech bonuses. For Pools take: Hasten, Maneuvers and Tactics. You won't have the endurance to run all with /Dark powers and using attacks. So early on I don't run Maneuvers, instead I use it as a slot mule for Kismet +Acc proc, and then later a LOTG 7.5% Rech proc. The thing /Dark is missing is -Def which can help with Tohit during leveling when your accuracy slotting is lacking. To fill that gap I recommend a Kismet proc and picking up Tactics so you have better Tohit chances despite slotting mostly procs in Seeds and Carrion Keepers. (The Kismet doesn't get passed on to summons like the Creepers, but they do benefit from your Tactics aura...)

Something tells me that you have more procs and less End Reduction slotted than I used. 😉 But good to know as it, confirms @Rathys fears, warranting testing viability on Betaserver ... As much as I want the Regen from Rebirth, Ageless is probably the way to go for the Def Debuff Resistance like you mention.

@Xandyr & @TheSpiritFox I've been experimenting with Force of Will on both a /Storm MM and /Fire Controller I'm leveling. Weaken with an Achilles made a more noticeable difference on the Controller who had trouble whittling away at bosses and EB's at lower levels. Alternating the large down times of Unleash Potential with Victory Rush did a lot to fix pre-50 Recovery issues on those End heavy sets. Unleash Potential is also great as a preemptive in those situations where you see you will double pull. But for the Defense portion it's not up quite enough to be dependable. To give you a feel for the uptime, Sorcery's 'Rune of Protection' is up 50% longer at the same 600s base recharge... The Stomp KD in Mighty Leap is "Meh": High Recharge, no damage and can't slot for FF procs. Basically, why bother. Making it worse it pops up that extra temporary power tray like Sorcery's Fly does. But to my surprise the standout power is: Wall of Force. I may respec out of it at 50 but it's been amazing during leveling. It does almost no damage so isn't even worth slotting for Dmg. But it has a 90' arc, with a short range. Together that makes for okay PPM chances if you avoid any recharge enhancement. But with a Range enhancement it easily hits entire spawns, even when they close in on you. I keep meaning to go over my combat logs to figure out what the target cap is, but I can say it's big enough that even though FF has only a 16.5% chance per critter to proc, on full spawns it procs very reliably. My guess is it's a target cap of 10, which means against a full spawn, FF would have about an 83% chance of proccing of at least one of the ten. The standard 3.5 PPM dmg procs are much better at 29%. With 3 x dmg procs, 1 x FF. 1 x Range, and 1 x ACC/DMG/END it started doing very respectable damage (... for a Controller or MM.) But definitely needs End slotting if you're going to spam it. Probably not worthwhile on AT's that have good inherent dmg. But pretty sure it will be a leveling build mainstay for me on MM's and Controllers going forward.

Vigor is a global 33% Endurance Reduction. 1/3 less Endurance use is a massive difference. Toggles limit our effective Recovery/s, but it's using all those powers in rapid succession that gets us into End issues. In that sense End Reduction is worth much more than an otherwise equal End Recovery buff, because End Reduction not only reduces the costs of click powers, it even lets you go farther on your base 100 End reserve during peak over use. But I agree you should test on Beta once free Incarnate gets added back before grinding a T4 Alpha... Also there's Accolades: It feels like a lot of tedious work to get them now, but Accolades make a massive End difference and for the reasons mentioned the large End reserve they give, goes even farther with Vigor's reductions....

@ScarySai I'm curious about two powers in your posted older build and your game play style: Provoke / Tankerminding: I always thought you wanted Provoke on sets with AOE heals to melt away the spread out damage from Body Guard mode. What function is Provoke serving in your game play? And how are you using Provoke without having even a self heal, soft cap, res cap etc.? Is it mainly to keep critters from running? Or are you actively trying to tank with your MM... Electrifying Fences: Has great activation time, combined with small radius giving it decent PPM chances so it's arguably the best of the MM Patron Immobilizes. BUT with /Storm a lot of your mitigation comes from KD and Electrifying Fences is the one Epic MM Immob that does -KB, effectively giving your enemies KB protection to your /Storm powers. Are you finding this to be an issue? When do you use Electrifying Fences?

Darkir's build has some impressive global Rech and Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold Resistance bonuses. Here's a build based on my theory crafting above that gives up some global Rech bonuses and Resistance bonus to fit more procs into key powers that it tries to keep optimized for proc chances by keeping to low recharge enhancement in those powers. The build expects you to have Alpha Vigor, which should offer enough Endurance reduction to drop Body Mastery freeing up power slots. In addition to End Reduction, Vigor also allows for short slotting Acc. Set bonuses are used to match the roughly 5% Max Endurance lost when giving up Superior Conditioning. (But for comparison what doesn't immediately show in the stats is Body Mastery allowed for two additional Performance Shifter procs and there's no way to make that up. Body Mastery builds will definitely have more Endurance recovery...) The build focuses on HP bonuses getting a total of over +45% HP without Accolades. The extra HP pairs well if you plan to use Rebirth Regen, since it significantly increases the HP/s regen delivered. The FF proc in Shield Charge should make up for some of the missing +Rech. But I'm concerned that the single Rech Enhancement in Active Defense will not be enough to safely double stack for Def Debuff Resistance. In that case unless taking Destiny Ageless, it might necessary to steal a slot from somewhere for a 2nd Enhancement IO to ensure double stacking Active Defense. One with the Shield is taken just as a Slot Mule for the Preventative Medicine+Absorb proc. Shred is expected to be used as part of the attack chain. Keeping it's Rech enhancement at zero gives the Achilles and Fury of the Gladiator -Res procs 42.8% to proc each, which is roughly a 67% chances of proccing at least one of the two each attack. Since the -Res debuffs last 10s, while the power itself recharges around 3s this should give decent uptime on -Res against single targets. I suspect that sustained -Res would contribute more dmg increases from your other higher dmg attacks following it, then you would lose from not having a better dpa power like Savage Strike in your chain. Additionally, when fighting multiple enemies the cone from Shred gives more chances to proc Buildup recharge, which is a further global damage boost. If it turns out you don't have End issues pre -Vigor, then switching to Alpha Nerve would offer the same Acc but nearly 4% additional Def. This would let you drop and redistribute the Gaussian slots from Buildup. I'd don't remember the threshold to stay under for build up or how the formula is slightly different but the Recharge in the Gaussian's hurts the Guassian Buildup proc chances (and you really want those double buildup stacks...). I really wanted to fit a Decimation Buildup proc in Moonbeam. Even at the low 1 PPM rate Decimation has, at zero Rech Enhancement the fast cast version of Moonboom should be over 40% proc chance. With the 36.7% Rech from the Manticore set that should still be a healthy 29%. I kept CJ and SS in this build. But personally I would swap those out and look to add Soul Storm with a Devastation Hold proc. Being able to mag5 Hold a target at range can make solo life much easier when dealing with Sappers, Surgeons etc. When soloing while leveling up, I liked subbing a Kinetic chance for KB in Assassinate instead of one dmg proc. Knocking down tough targets I couldn't one shot from stealth gave me time to finish them off before they could use powers. I would even add a Kinetic to Hemorrhage if I had the slot. My hope would be to get the Endurance manageable enough on it's own perhaps with Accolades that I could switch to Nerve freeing up slots and power choices to fit in all those extras... 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Anyway, to check on or be notified of when this changes back? I have some testing on Incarnate powers I want to do... 🙂

Your 2ndary should include an aoe Heal, because /FF lacks one, but will provide you and your pets +Def and some Mezz resistance. If you pick pets that have their own +Def like Thugs, Bots, or Beasts, then just your duo's /FF bubbles, plus both of you taking Maneuvers, and Unique pet bonus IO's should able to get your pets to softcap. In that case your duo will be stronger with a set that buffs Resistance rather than stacking even more +Def. /Dark would do some of all of the above. /Time is great but does not buff +Res. /Nature suggested by The SpiritFox would give several heals, and both MM's pets+Res, and Absorb. As for choosing the pets. Think about the playstyle you two want. With the recent patch your duo's Bot's will finally stay at range. So you could choose another mostly ranged pet set, then the two MM's could focus on keeping enemies away from your pets. /FF has some built-in powers for that. (For all ranged pets you have either /Bot or /Mercs). Or you could choose melee pets and play the damage sponge while the Bots shoot enemies in safety. You'll need big heals for this style like /Dark, /Nature to keep the melee pets alive. Beasts would be this style because they have basically no ranged attacks. /Necro too are mostly melee. / Thugs would be a blend because their Bruiser T3 is melee while the other henchman after the recent patch stay at range. (Except Arsonist still closes in to enemies for some short range cones....) Demon's have ranged attacks but will run in to use claw attacks. There's also Tankerminding where you try to get all aggro onto your MM while in Bodyguard mode spreading it across all the henchmen and which you then heal with aoe heals. /Nature would be great for this combined with all Ranged pets. Since you can run forward to take aggro, but use the heal cone to direct heals back to the pets, but it still heals your MM. **Edit** /Thugs could also be great for this since the Bruiser would go into Melee with your MM, while the other pets stayed at range. The /Nature cone gets massively wide with some Range Enhancement. /Dark's heal is massive but is an aoe around the MM so requires positioning your MM near the target that needs healing... Something else cheesy to mention is if you can convince your duo to re-roll as Thugs, the Thug's leadership bonuses stack across all the Thugs. This doubles their defense bonuses since all the Enforcers Maneuvers stack to all pets. That's a base of 8% Def, so x4 is 32% Def for pets without even slotting for Def Enhancement. With IO slotting easily up to 11% each x 4 can hit softcap on it's own.