Sir Myshkin

Don't have Empathy or Cold specifically, but things translate pretty easily since its only one piece of the puzzle that swaps in and out. I might suggest doing Nature over Empathy though, a lot of the same benefits will apply, but you'll be able to provide them to an entire team instead of just focusing on one character. For that, I do have a build: In that particular instance it's because Boxing is the faster animating ability over Kick, and the gap that needs to be filled isn't much. From a damage stand point, Boxing is also a bit stronger DPA, so there's that too.

For what it's worth: From a solo stand point the power is less effective for most high-damage-capable AT's, but benefits support roles fairly well if it gets a full investment suite of procs and absolutely no recharge adjustment. If you get some accuracy into it, the Shield Breaker, Lady Gray, and Cloud Senses damage procs, and the Achilles' Heel backed by enough global recharge to reduce it down to 13-14/s (minimum effectiveness, 10/s would be ideal, but harder), then the ability will have a high (relatively close to its cap probability) chance to fire off the full assortment every time making it on-average a better "attack" than most support role early abilities. If I recall correctly its average in that circumstance is like 86 DPA and is self-improving by applying the -Res debuffs that boost proc performance. So awesome on Controllers, Defenders, Corruptors, and Masterminds, questionable on Dominators and Sentinels, negative value (solo) for everyone else.

Unless I missed something changing that proc doesn't stack regardless of who uses it, just refreshes the duration. The debuff is triggered from a player attack, but the debuff source is the enemy itself because the -Res was coded to apply/cast onto the target from the target itself, and it is flagged as "non stack from same source." Thus, no stacking regardless of who slots and "uses" the proc. This same thing applies to all of the -Res procs.

This thread needs an "ELI5": Meta is a Sandwich. No, really. Imagine a sandwich. I bet it's not the same sandwich I'm thinking about, because there are hundreds of options there, right? The core of sandwich is often the same though, some kind of top and bottom encasement (typically a bread) and then condiments of a variety (lettuce, tomato, pickles, etc), a topical sauce in some cases (mustard, mayo, etc), and a primary protein content. The entirety of the sandwich is any one given idea/topic/content (in this case: game, specifically "City of"). We can break that sandwich down to its individual layers, lets take something simple: A "BLT". Bacon Typically pork based, other varieties of protein-influenced bacon exist, those individual choices make an additional subsection Type of Bacon: Applewood, Pepper, Plain, etc Cook: Crisp, Fatty, Charred Lettuce Romaine, Iceberg, this list is ridiculously long Maybe no lettuce at all! Is it still a BLT?! Oh No! Tomato Massive variety of tomato based options, typical choices of Roma or a good Hothouse round one Maybe no tomato at all?! Panic! Fiends, who eats just a bacon sandwich! Bread Toasted, not toasted? White, wheat, pumpernickel? (you monster) Mayo (for some) Maybe you like mayo, whatever, a sauce condiment, but some don't even like that! Don't you dare say Miracle Whip. That is. not. mayo. This is a data set about what a "BLT" and the varieties of data under each subsection (types of protein, cook, seasoning) is called metadata, data about the data (and forgive me as I'm going to use the term a little loosely going forward to keep it simple*). This is what is "meta" the understanding the ideas within the entirety of the idea. How that relates to gaming, in our context, is when I say something like this: The best BLT is a Pepper Pork Bacon cooked to a nice crisp with iceberg lettuce on whole grain white sandwich bread that's been toasted with two fat slices of a hothouse tomato with a heaping slathering of mayonnaise on each inner-side of the bread. Now if I can prove that this flavor profile of "my" version of a BLT "build" is the best profile, more people will talk about it and it becomes many people's preferred flavor profile, or "build" for their BLT. This becomes the (more or less) slang-like adaptation of the term Meta, because now this particular type of BLT is seen as the optimal choice, it has now become "Meta" or "The Meta", which is kind of a crown to being "the best option to have, when having a BLT." So the BLT is my Sandwich (Meta), and each layer in the sandwich has different options (Metadata) and my choices within that metadata (bacon type, lettuce type, etc) as a singular whole version of a BLT, are A/The "Meta" of that which is a BLT. Like someone mentioned earlier, the idea of "game within the game", the breakdown of key important concepts about/within the game as a whole that change the dynamic of everything else around it. Or, in the extreme simplification: (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential. A "Meta" becomes diversified when multiple strong concepts rise and are equal to a small number of others, and clearly far 'better' than many others below them. In relation to City of Heroes, the game can be broken down by each AT as its own Sandwich type, with each type of sandwich having an optimal (or meta) "build" in their category, and in some cases two or three that the majority of players prefer. Like fire farming with SS/FA Brutes, there's literally over a thousand of them on Homecoming, all built pretty much identical to each other, that build is the "meta choice" for farming, and specifically for Brutes. They are the BLT in our sandwich meta, simple construction, target-specific purpose, limited build options, consistent expectation of taste. Side Edit: Further basic break down as the term loosely gets used here on Homecoming is the idea that when someone says "That build is the Meta" they're referring to "a lot of people are playing it (often/for X reason)" and that is a simplification of a current terminology based on the old term "FOTM" that used to exist in the early 2000's (Flavor of the Month) which was in principle the same exact thing, but far less confusing because it didn't have any esoteric idioms stacked on top of itself. As brought up within a few other posts, hopefully this makes more sense with the above. Second Side Edit: Meta is technically a self-reflective term, and when used in something like a forum or social media setting with commentary, when a comment is made on a post that refers to another comment under the same topic (but not in relation to the current comment tree), in response to a comment within that topic, is Meta. Example: How Sovera replied to Ukase's comment about the topic by referring to the other posts within the topic as reference material to Ukase's comment. And that's how we end up with a confusing term form an outside perspective. I promise this is my last edit. Okay, really, I hit a button on my mouse as I hit save and it added a 3 randomly, I couldn't leave it. Okay, now I'm done. Really.

Hmm, this is unfortunate. Having at least two did provide marginally better odds, but I did not look into it further than that. I hadn't considered/realized that it wasn't stacking them up when I initially did a dry-run check. I feel I might've noticed this sooner but I haven't been in-game much in the last couple of weeks. Thanks for the heads up.

Out of limited testing with it, I will say that having multiple auto powers slotted came off-the-bat as better long-term results. Even with having two abilities slotted with the PT+Heal proc, there were still activation triggers that failed to fire so it wasn't consistent, but better than just one. Now knowing that part of the problem is that they're eating each other is unfortunate and means that there could have been even greater potential than what we've ended up with. I'm not sure it feels like it'll be worth the extra slot now (when focused on auto's specifically) like I'd been expecting. I will say this does bring into consideration an interesting way to manage further proc development from the dev team. Of the talks about power interactions with procs going forward, having these limited-style trigger locks could give more focused control over proc use (and abuse) moving forward. I'm curious if the flag on the PT+Heal flag to be a one-time fire was intentional, or an unintended side effect of the coding process.

My Mid's is set to base 39, if I don't see a 95% or greater on an attack, it isn't good enough! I've put up plenty of builds, and in general try and stick to a fundamental rule of "+4 or nothing" but sometimes certain circumstances have dictated passing at +3 with Incarnate shift or good teaming, or a slew of debuffs to accommodate. For the stuff I personally play, it's pretty much always +4 values so that I can safely exemp to any comfort zone, and know that in Incarnate content if I get hit with any kind of debuff or the target is better built defensively I have leeway. Even in the realm of heavy proc building, getting that +4 is still more than feasible whether through a bit of boosting, grabbing Tactics or Focused Accuracy, what have you, there are options. The whole "+3 cause of Incarnate shift" doesn't really sit well in my mind, it doesn't take much of an exemplar to loose the shift, and also still be capable of playing content at +4. I find in a lot of cases that I'm still never just "95" but "96.#" or "99" "100.3", there's always some small extra push, and even just one tiny 9% accuracy bonus suddenly pushes everything in the build a couple points.

Anything in particular you were shooting for? Personally I'd try and fix up energize a bit better so you could get it closer to perma as it'll pretty well fix any endurance issues on its own. You could also use a Panacea unique in Health. Were you looking for a specific target for defense? You took Weave and Maneuvers, but the values are kind of all over the place and they feel a bit thrown-in. You'd probably be better just forgetting about those powers and just rounding out your resistances as close to cap as possible, and get some passive effects going like the new Power Transfer +Heal. Or grab some Winter O 6% bonuses in a few places, or grab a couple of Epic abilities to mule out for a bit more recharge and a ranged ability. If you are actively using Divine Avalanche, sticking a single defense IO in the power and double stacking it is sufficient to get you around soft cap to Melee with combat jumping running and nothing else really going. At least one thing you may consider is getting Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection from Energy Mastery, it'll bump your end gain and you can slot the Power Transfer +Heal into them both, and one in Stamina, that gives you three triggers every 10/s for a 5% heal; if all of them go off you're looking at at least 224.85 health for "free". I'd easily pass up Power Sink for those in terms of end-management options. You're also really low on accuracy across the build, only enough (even if Tactics is just a single slot pure ToHit IO) to hit +2 Tweaked as to the above: Capped S/L/F/C/E/"Psi" (Psi is reeaally close), attacks should all be good on +4 and the build can take a Musculature Alpha down the road to help pump out more damage rather than shoring up missing areas with something different. I had originally considered Cardiac a simple fix, but saw the path to hitting the necessary values wasn't far off so just made the adjustment accordingly. Also, a triple-stacked Divine Avalanche will hit 70+% Melee which should make it pretty easy to "Tank" for a lot of things.

And here I thought I'd manage to go this entire time without positing it (most of my posts were done from mobile, so I was never able to in the first place). Except the 2.244/s cast time burns a DPS hole and Achilles' only lasts 10/s over Weaken's 15/s. I haven't found a situation from a non-support-centric AT where the trade off of downtime makes up for the small gain in a solo scenario if they have another solution for the Achilles proc. For Def/Con/Cor and slotted with three damage procs it can actually turn out to be a decent attack comparatively for those AT's where they'll get a bit more mileage out of the ability's -Res (higher). It is a fun trick though, just "YMMV" strongly on Blasters (or any high-dpa AT).

It’s not worth creating undue fear over something that is likely months (or greater) away. Having said that, the Devs have said they are targeting specifically proc interactions with Epic abilities. The original intent of Epics was to give them longer recharges and greater costs to keep them balanced, but the very thing that once balanced them is what now massively unbalanced them when procs are involved. The goal is to try and find a way to properly adjust (or code) a method that appropriately scales purpose for these powers. @LordScrod if you want a better picture of what procs are doing, the dynamic they shift, and where the best impact exists, my signature has all the appropriate links with details, testing, and builds specific to what you’re looking for. A quick search for “Proc Monster” would have gotten you there 🙂

Update ... wait, Update?! No, not really, but I did have a contextual post to make to share a fun little build I put together that will definitely have a few folks scratching their heads and will undoubtedly get the crazy tell or two in game. I was recently on the hunt to try and come up with a functional build for Assault Rifle that could take advantage of its wide utilitarian usability of the FF+Rech proc (really I was trying to make another Mad King out of it... I did, but, digress). I've always seen Assault Rifle as this weird set that I understand, it exists in just about any super hero world, but it just feels... off, like it doesn't fully make sense in this game. Bullets are this lethal, crazy thing and for whatever reason I'll sooner accept getting lit on fire than shot with a bullet in City of Heroes. And then I thought "You know, this is kind of like the hilarity of shooting from the hip, lunatic stunts of 1980's action stars." And really that's about all it took before I was building "The Last Action (PROC) MAN." Some of you may recall the old Retail attempt at making builds that focused as much as possible on Power Pool usage and making these characters that were as far from a "super hero" and closer to the "average man" as possible. Two things stick out for me: Procs make anything hit harder, and: Defenders hit like crap anyway. On the other side of things Defenders get great modifiers to buffs and debuffs though, so what business I could do in Power Pools could be nicely bumped, and if I found a Primary that's as "simple/machine/mechanical" as possible, I could sell it (of course it was Traps). Of Traps nine powers I can easily get away with just four of them, and Caltrops still plays into theme, (so five technically because I have to take a T1/2) which lets me do pretty much everything else in Pools. I did want a bit of AoE which is harder to come by effectively in pool powers, and I wanted that "shoot from the hip" gun inclusion, so two AoE's and a required came out of AR. Overall it was just a really fun build and it turned out to be a bit of an uber-strong Defender (Softcap to everything you say?). Tackling that idea of an attack chain being Boxing > Kick > Cross Punch is crazy, but that's what this one does:

Am I doing this right? 😛 What, is green not good enough for you? Oh what, you saying your Jedi is too good to use Force Lightning? #soapboxstealthethreadandstarwarsrage Anywho, I was reminded of a Katana/SR build I did back on Retail for a Bleach Anime theme "Captain" character who ended up feeling more Jedi looking half the time with the transparent energy blade. For options on what best "feels" like a Jedi though, Ninjitsu calls out better with Blinding Powder (hand wave of confusion), the "mental fortitude/spirituality" nature of its abilities, and Kuji-in Rin giving Psionic resistance (no mind tricks here!). I would have to say that a Jedi-themed character should also take advantage of Force of Will, a KB in Project Will, and a sweeping cone in Wall of Force, plus Unleash Potential gives the build a nice Incarnate-level-booster for defense that comes on a good timer. Also threw targeting drone in there for some nostalgic thematic kick. I was very up in the air about the last power pick that ended up getting Tactics left in its place. Assault would be a nice overall boost, Build Up of course would be great for the burst damage but that ability feels very "angry ragey" in nature which doesn't flow well. I ended up leaving Tactics so the build could flip back and forth between the kitsch novelty Targeting Drone (has some decent debuff resistances too) over a team-supporting (Jedi Lead!) Tactics (plus it's cheaper to run). This might actually be one of the first Katana builds that has my interest in how it'll play.

Honestly I barely notice anything getting held because things are going down so quickly that it hardly matters. Maybe it'd be more of a concern in a solo scenario where you might want to target select differently, but I don't exactly wait for the team when I'm playing and often just run off and clean sweep on my own because I can see just how ineffective it is to layer my AoE with a teams when mine alone is enough to burn (freeze?) through a spawn at an incredible pace. I have Positron Cell, but I only ever use it when there's an AV (or otherwise considerably obnoxious target), and/or when a Controller/Dominator is on the team we can usually get a good stack flow going to have hold-blips on an AV. Mule Positron with a 4-piece of Basilisk's Gaze for the E/N defense and the 7.5% global and call it good.

Well... you... kind of have to take one of them, and on average the T2 is the stronger ability, but I'm guessing maybe you meant the secondary manipulation set and not the "blast" set like you said? But Ice Arrow is T3 so... 🤷‍♂️ There is some level of irony in the fact that if someone were to roll an Archery/Tactical Blaster that the T1 and T3 Tactical ability is a stronger attack than the T1 and T2 of Archery, and depending on how either of ENA or IA get proc-slotted they can become better than any slotting option on Archery's T4 or at a minimum close to the same performance value. When your ST arrow-based chain includes an immobilize, a hold, and a fire dot, doing psionic, lethal, smashing, toxic, and negative damage... man now I really want to build one.

Having down time between Shadow Meld's is leaving you a bit open, none of your defenses actually hit the 45% Softcap without SM going, which isn't such a great thing. Shadow Meld is better served as a safety net than a driving force to your survival, it eats into your DPS while you're attacking something like an AV, and its animation time locks you down for a long time (9-15/s every minute, you're burning 19-25% of your play time activating one non-enemy-impacting power). Do you have stealth suppression turned on? Hide won't be giving 8+% defense while you attack, if I flip suppression on your build's defense plummets to 38% for F/C/E/N. Same rule kind of goes for Melee Core, good for situational buffering, but that power is a 2 up 2 down (minutes) and is primarily impacting everything but S/L for what it can. I'd sooner scrap Melee Core on a Stalker and get Assault Core instead as it will add much more in the form of aggressive damage boosting. The following build is Offensive 'On', 73% S/L Resist and 46% F/C/E/N Defense (with Hide suppressed), Assault Hybrid swapped in. Build doesn't really need Ageless but it does give a bit of extra recharge for perma-ing Hasten; maybe Rebirth Radial wouldn't be a bad alt option to keep constant high levels of Regen going. I find it intriguing that Rending Flurry looks to do more damage than Hemorrhage, not sure how the Frenzy consumption on either of those powers impacts their final values.

Ice Arrow with four damage procs will often average being a better attack than most T2 Blaster Primary attacks, (minus Defiance building). Just throwing that one out there.

Personal play style can really have an impact on how a set fans out for individual players. For all the love I've had enjoying that particular combo, I suspect that my viewpoint of the set isn't quite the same from an atypical adaptation. For me the trigger is in how the build can manipulate more than one spawn grouping at a time, and isn't stuck dealing with just "this one thing" at a time. Once I had Blizzard in my toolkit I was dropping patches on multiple groups, and once I had a Judgement available, I now work three groups at a time. Blizzard on the first, Ice Storm + Atom Smasher on the second, and Judgement on the third. Anything that survives the initial burst collates on me and I can easily dispatch what remains through ST or another Atom Smasher, and I do it in relative safety at that point because I also often pop Radioactive Cloud which just sits and rolls mag 2 holds. Positronic Fist is a hard hitting, but slow casting typical upper tier hitter, and it is general garbage because of that 3/s cast lock down for a subpar ST. Negatron is a better all-around choice comparatively. Others have/do skip Atom Smasher because they're uncomfortable with the cast time on the ability, but with a few procs while in Ice Storm, it's an easy win. Under Ionize, Ice and Atom will typically deal with most Minions, or leave them so low a second Atom easily finishes them, and whittles into those Lieuts even further. Assuming you meant Bitter Freeze Ray, yes? That power is massively skippable because its animation is too long. Stick to Freeze Ray, proc it up with 3 or 4 and watch it tear through enemies. I made an adjustment to a previous post that I'd done on mobile and trying to recall/pull wiki for which attack was which, I mispoke on Bitter Freeze Ray when I meant just Freeze Ray being the better choice. If that was part of the confusion for you, I apologize. Ice Storm is doing two things for you: Adding damage in a big wide patch, and stamping a bunch of slow and panic on the enemies under it. It can be easy to not really focus on it because the panic it causes is a bit of "run!!!" and a bit of "attaccck omggzzz! run!" from the AI, but it does trim down the amount of instant hate you get using it as an opener. It does, slot it and glory in it for AV's. I will say for me personally though, because I have and judiciously use Ice Blast > Freeze Ray > Bitter Ice Blast, I'm often not otherwise in Melee outside of the swing-in for Atom Smasher, and my chain is close enough that I don't really need to use Negatron while teaming. Thus, Negatron gets reserved for specific purposes. I put it in Blizzard /em shrug. I don't put much stock in that particular proc and chose to go wtih Melee Core Hybrid as my Instant-Mez kit. I wouldn't worry about Ranged if you're planning on taking Clarion. Essentially all Ranged is doing is buying you a defensive form of mez protection because the majority of attacks that cause mez in the game are attached to a Ranged ability, so bam quick way to not even get hit with Mez! Clarion flat you gives you enough protection to not even worry about it though.

I don’t remember if I posted the results here or not, I know I talked about the result in the Tanker Proc Monster thread, but Spines isn’t that terrible. Chain wasn’t optimal either, I was likely undervaluing by testing with Radiation abilities in the mix of a Rad/Spines Tank. It’s obviously not at the top of the food chain, but it was able to fit into the 4:30-6:00 minute window against a Pylon with a suboptimal ST chain choice.

Sometimes adding damage to a build isn’t just about raw buffs, but things like Damage procs, or finding ways to gain access to other powers that can help boost your damage opportunities. Using IOS specifically to hunt down +Dam bonuses generally doesn’t end up going very far as there aren’t a wide variety of them, and they’re all pretty nominally low (1.5-3%, a few 5’ers, and rarer for any beyond that). If you haven’t seen the threads yet, take a look at the links in my signature (or search for “Proc Monster” in Tanker/Defender/Controller threads if you’re on mobile). If you want to do more exploration of builds that bend +Damage, then you’ll really want to take a look at my most recent post in the Mad King thread. I’ve put together a Brute that comes wickedly close to its damage cap solo.

Mad King Special Update! Not necessarily a functional update so much as a "I've been back to toying around with mechanic-breaking builds" update! The new-ish Experimentation Origin Pool brings us another fun and unique, twisty little ability in Adrenal Booster. It gives us a pack of +ToHit, +Dam, +Rech, and +Special, which is new here for these effects and has some interesting implications as most builds that might go after the other aspects of this ability would more commonly be AT's that wouldn't look for +Special boosts. But it got me thinking, and returning to one of my favored Proc Monster blast sets. A key mechanic of all these Mad King's are their utility with that FF+Rech proc, and one thing I've nailed down at this point is that it truly only takes one as long as the player is willing to keep utilizing that attached ability frequently. In this particular context I'm looking at Dark Blast which comes with Umbral Torrent, and also returning to Sentinels again for where Adrenal Booster is going to matter. When it comes to the base line performance between Blasters and Sentinels, it takes about a 30% damage boost to normalize that starting point, and this trick does that. Built as a Dark Blast/Radiation Armor and judiciously using Umbral Torrent at every opportunity, and the +Rech Adrenal itself packs, there's enough functional space to have a near-perma cycle of Adrenal > Meltdown. Yeah, Meltdown! Both abilities are going to grant ~30% +Damage (27.5% and 33% Adrenal/Meltdown). There's already a ton of endurance management tools flying around here too, which is nice to skip through worrying about the "crash" of Meltdown. Even in a single-target scenario where Umbral won't work there's still three straight minutes of buff happening, and if Ageless is taken, it'll be a small window (~15/s). An added plus here exists in the +Special, which includes ToHit debuffing. The build doesn't sport a tremendous amount of defense, but it doesn't need to! Dark Blast carries -ToHit across many of its abilities, and Darkest Night added in will get another 18%+, which is going to have our effective baseline for "defense" sitting around 35-38% before Adrenal Booster. Consuming a basic T1 purple or two is going to have a lot of leverage. Dark Blast/Radiation Armor/Dark Mastery Sentinel: After putting that together, a thought occurred to me about another direction that could take that same dual-combo of Adrenal/Meltdown and add it to an already absurd build concept. Essentially, how much damage could I stack? Super Strength. Broke this with a Mad King style a while back at the start of the idea, but tally these numbers up: 160% Double Rage, 80% Gaussian's Proc, 10%+75% Hybrid Assault Core, 27.5% Adrenal Booster, 33% Meltdown, (and I decided to knock this out on a Brute of all things, cause of the higher ceiling) 160% from 80% Fury totals out at 535.5%. Granted the Gaussian's is only for 5/s, but that drops down to 480% for a full minute, or ~450% if I split Adrenal/Meltdown over the two minute duration of Assault Core, and then during the cooldown I've still got 375%. Get 100% Fury and that's another 40% boost... A single T3 Red and the damage cap is tasting awful delicious being that close so easily. Ageless for Endurance correction and the 20% average Global Recharge, the build will live at 235-255.5% Global Recharge (FF+Rech!!!) at the whimsy of Beta Decay (22.5% scaling swing) This is definitely the most violent Mad King I've built thus far. Super Strength/Radiation Armor/Soul Mastery Mad King Brute

First off, strong build, I understand the direction and choices you made, but I can't help but tinker with things some times, and it can get crazy. I admit it, it is an issue. I looked at it and I was like "man, went a bit over on the S/L, and these two extra slots in Combat Jumping?" Before I knew it I was knee deep into a bunch of crazy slot flipping (and realizing that you had Melee Core turned on, and it was giving the 16% increase despite being set to '0'). What ended up bugging me was I saw a way to get 17% E/N Resistance into the build, but I had to bugger around a lot to get there. I'm sure you'll look at this initially and be like "... wut?" But it's in the numbers. I yanked overflow slots from CJ, and shifted Gaussian's to Tactics and dropped the Kismet so I could move the LotG out of Maneuvers. Did you know that LotG 5 Piece in Deflection with Steadfast gives the same amount of S/L Res as Steadfast and a single 50 Res IO? Nifty, and important for a later note. I left the Tanker +Res proc turned on cause that thing's pretty easy to get and keep going, but I got to thinking about that Melee Core, and the Alpha choice of Cardiac. Blood Frenzy is going to give you a bunch of end discounting up and down all over the place, so the smidgen extra from Cardiac... eh, there's an opportunity for better return by going with Resilient for the +ToHit bump and better enhancement overage; it'll give another 1% to everything (so 4% total), and 3% extra (7% total) on S/L since Deflection was "short changed" (technically), and leaves the build at 80% S/L "base" (proc) which is closer to that goal line than without Melee Core turned on before (among other stats). But wait, I hear you saying, what about that Regen? Simple, lets get you an honest burst heal and some IH Regen-levels of horse power: Rebirth Radial. At the tail end minimum of the ability you'll still get +200% Regen, not quite as much as a saturated Melee, but Melee also stipulates bodies, so there's ups and downs where your Regen won't be consistent, and eventually Melee will go into cooldown, Rebirth can be auto-fired every two minutes for consistent regen and burst heals. By going that path you can re-open your Hybrid and grab Assault Core, now you'll really be shredding! Build changes aside, I'd suggest this Incarnate path for you as (in my experiences) it'll serve you better*. Being a primarily defense-based build with high(er) resistances means your passive healing will do a lot. For any major content you run (iTrials) you'll find that Phalanx Fighting will do a killer job at getting your Ranged and AoE up to snuff just with a couple of other players nearby. This is where I landed (to see the total impact, you'll want to turn off Melee Core on your build to side-by-side): *small edit note on this I forgot: the Alpha suggestion is really dependent on just how effective/reliable you find the endurance discounting of Blood Frenzy. Looking at the values of the attacks things are pretty decent, and the value shift caused from toggles is small (.3/s) as it is barely shaving fractions of points off each toggle.

@Arctyc @Mistforged The build has been available this whole time right over here. 😄 Mid's won't reflect the Leadership buffs correctly that Tankers got, but I can tell you F/C/E/N will be 45%. Make sure you turn Jab "off" too. I ran the build through +3/4 groups, herded Monsters on Monster Isle in Peregrine Island, the works, and never turned Offensive off and did just fine. If it were ever felt warranted, you'd always have the other two "forms" to work with. Built and tested both Tanker and Brute so I could see their DPS scaling and killed a lot of Pylons in the RWZ. Tanker: Brute: Oh, and don't be fooled by the raw recharge numbers in there. The attack chain for both is KO Blow > Punch > Haymaker > Gloom > Punch, once the cycle starts up the FF+Rech procs stacked in two attacks will ensure you spend a ton of time under the +100% buff. Footstomp spammed in groups of 8-10 will also go off a lot too. Never, ever, EVER put Rage on auto fire, only activate the second stack AFTER the crash expires. The second swing of Rage will pop with the Gaussian's and give you that bonus 80% buff for 5/s, which is enough to get most of the attack chain in. With Hybrid Assault Core turned on it's possible to get close to Tanker damage ceiling in that brief window. Also, do not stop attacking during the Rage crash, the procs in each attack will still net ~150 DPS. And the best part about all that? I'm working on a build that may hopefully have even more raw power 😆

When a team is forming and the last spot fills with a Scrapper, the entire team:

The Tanker buff was a 90/90 split Survival/Damage Brute/Tanker. At the point of having double stacked Rage and all that damage packed in, they’ll be dishing out comparable damage and honestly whatever you’d have to do on the Tanker will likely happen within the same number of attacks on a Brute just because of overkill. That Footstomp will still be just a hair under killing that minion in the first hit, but will be drastically over on the second. Having tested both a Brute and a Tanker on a high end SS build, they’re ridiculously close. In fact, about 90-94% comparable (imagine that 😄 ), and when it comes to something like soloing an AV, we’re talking the difference of 10/s to kill. The line between the two ATs is pretty blurry with Super Strength. Brutes do have a higher ceiling than Tankers, but the only way you’re going to hit it is with outside help, or snacking on a lot of red inspirations constantly. Also, the Tanker buffs gave a good push to Tanker AoE effects and Taunt mechanics improving their ability to grab and hold aggro. Personally I’d say go Tanker, it’ll be easier to hit your survival values, and you’ll still be hitting like a freight train. Edit to clarify one point: Fury is bringing the Brute up to a “normalized” value, their starting point at zero fury is pretty abysmal.

Look at what I was quoting against in context to that specific sentence, it's referring to G.B.'s concept of creating another shift in ToHit/Defense/Buff scaling for that false illusion of "harder" content. It is senseless to keep shifting the goal post in the attempt to "make it harder" when the reality comes down to that what that claim is based on creating the dynamic shift that comes from SO to +4 content, but wanting to keep it on an IO build (because eating cake). Incarnate content created that next figurative goal post by amping the enemy ToHit factor and beginning the diversification of old enemy groups into wider dynamic ranges of abilities/mob types. To continue saying "do it again, shift the goal post further!" is most definitively going in the wrong direction. People are asking to mystically create some concept of difficult when the reality of it is already present, in a much simpler format. As I said before, the truth of this game's "future" isn't in what people want, it's in what they need. If people want to experience that "tough" +4 world, revert back to basic building blocks, or start looking at designing AE content around more dynamic enemy groups. I've played a few solidly built missions that were definitely challenging for an IO team without being bonkers nuts or broken, and that is the content the game needs.