Sir Myshkin

I don't actually know how many I had been able to collect, I ... think there's five or six in that picture, it's kind of hard to tell. Didn't have a taunt, harder to keep those things engaged without it. That screen is pre-sunset too, so it's been a long while since I attempted that. I know the modified Homecoming build has superior performance. Slowly rebuilding a character with it (the Regen part, at least) alongside two other toons so I'll eventually have it functional again.

You have Acid Arrow, stick the Positron's Blast +Dam Proc into the power; if you have at least 70% global recharge you wont need to put any recharge enhancement into it, and that proc will pretty much trigger every single time you drop it over the Oil Slick, which ignites it (Energy Damage). I can't really say I can recall an event ony my TA/A Defender that the Oil didn't ignite after dropping Acid afterwards. A backup, of course, doesn't hurt, so see if there's other places in your build you can drop either an Energy proc, or something that does Energy damage (doesn't have to be Fire, can be either).

If you want the max optimal chain you'll need to hit 160% Global, and it'll probably rely on Ageless to keep up your endurance. Bit iffy on that since Bio Armor has some end tools that SR doesn't, but I had been running Ageless too, and at the tail end of its use it still gives 10% (so I was really floating towards 170% Global). However if you're using the FF+Rech proc in FT and Arc, you've got a fair chance of one of those going off in a chain cycle and boosting your recharge anyway. Toss in Whirling Smash (slotted for proc and not purple set) with another FF+Rech and you up your chances even further. Just keep in mind, inside Mid's it'll try and auto toggle-on that proc in the power, you don't want to leave that toggled on as its not a perma effect, its temp and wont always fire, but it will give you a chance to see the impact it'll have when it pops. The FF+Rech proc will give you the ability to budget-build a bit more friendly and get away with a lower volume of global rech (140%)

So what's it mean if I can do that with a Regen Scrapper 😛

Something important to mention that gets missed a lot when Nature is talked about is the Bloom effect, and how that works with Lifegiving Spores. Each stack of Bloom (up to 5) boosts healing effects by 4%, any heal effect, not just yours. LS when placed on its own isn't anything significant, but when it hits on a target carrying +20% effective heal, it's far more impactful. Bonus for team mates hitting their own self-heals too. Lifegiving is effectively your AoE heal when you pop things like Bastion or Overgrowth. Also, I super hate Regrowth being a cone as a MM. Pets move about in weird ways sometimes and positioning around them for a heal is irksome. Oh, and the fact that it is a cone that is stuck facing outward, and not locked to a target meaning if you jump... whoops.

First, a shout out to @Bopper for a great breakdown in their response, hopefully that gives you kind of the "why" and "how" of it when choosing and slotting. Something I want to add that was a personal rationalization on the "Equality" concept, and why I varied the set choices was because I know I can make one set really speak well to a 100% focused proc build, but I want to demonstrate how this can apply to a multitude of build opportunities. Some of my choices were definitely intentional pairings, like TW with Super Reflexes--I wanted to really hone in on the raw power of TW without something like Bio Armor's toolkit mucking about in my test, or the initial testing of SS with Willpower for similar reasons (and also just demoing the ability of a generic muscle build). Certain sets, like RA/Spines was to get an AoE Blender going and see what kind of AoE specialist I could make. These are the kinds of combinations we'd expect to see, what people will and do play, so I wanted to show how I could make the survivable while being a proc-centric build. I have yet to be able to test this on Beta for Tanks because the set is bugged and corrupts the character and forces the game to hard-crash. This would ... not be correct in the sense it seems like you might be thinking. Proc damage does not, in any way, shape, or form, benefit for AT modifiers or +Damage effects on a player. They are a static, pre-determined value that triggers equally for all AT's at a set rate. If it says it's damage is 71.95, then that is what it'll be for everyone, (+/- resistances on the impacted enemy). The sets that actually benefit the most from procs are actually low-performing sets like Defenders and Controllers as it gives them a better ability to not just solo, but also just execute reasonable amounts of damage on their own accord and in more dynamic ways. Yes melee AT's get to leverage them too, but we're talking about a smaller window of improvement and utility by contrast. Keep in mind, however, that we're not just looking at the +Dam procs, but also the unique attributable ones like the Gaussian's +BU effect, or FF+Rech having interesting interactions in the performance of these builds. Quite a few folks are seeing the +Dam procs as the reason I can get SS over the hurdle of its crash, but a good portion of favor is actually directly responsible to the simple addition of the Gaussian's proc in Rage. By waiting to trigger my second application of Rage until after each crash, I can pop it with the bonus +80% and get a ton of extra mileage out of Gloom and KO-B immediately.

It's the fact that I'm stacking up to 400% +Damage on the Tank, and 500% +Damage on the Brute. Not saying that the proc damage isn't contributing, it is, but the vast majority of it is coming off of the +Dam, the -150% Regen of Bio Armor, and the extra -Res from Bio Armor. I had posted up a WP/SS video earlier in my Tank thread on the topic that was kind of the base line of non-Bio, but I also tweaked the SS side of things a bit after a lot more testing with it, so that's part of it too. I realized I was missing out on a key factor in the puzzle that added a significant improvement from one build to the next. The reason I did my Proc Monster testing with Tankers was specifically because they get the most opportunity to leverage not requiring the set bonuses to achieve build goals. Same value impact when I reviewed Defenders first in this whole project, and how I translated the Defender knowledge to the Controller testing. In several videos I added general play testing to show survival was still capable, and I hard tested all of the builds I ran against 51, 52, 53, and 54's. the tl;dr version of my answer is: go read up the Tanker Proc Monster thread, I dive into ALL of it over there, from survival, value testing, determinations, impact, everything. What I can say targeted here towards some of what you ask: I could've cared less about the crash, honestly. I often forgot that the crash even had a -Def/Res component at all. I will say that what was being tested on Beta actually was split to impact both Def and Res, instead of just Def, but either way we were talking about having intentionally built up 85-90% S/L resistances in the first place (and often overcapped), plus a ton of defense. But really, especially for Bio Armor, its secondary tool kit easily made the content passable. I'm pretty sure I had a video somewhere of testing SS/Bio in the Comicon farm, too many videos to double check at the moment. The procs though, in all cases I did as much as I could to avoid sets in the attacks at all cost. I wanted maximum proc saturation. There are a few cases, and a few powers however that the proc-to-enhancement balance don't trend a certain way. Snipes from the blast set, and Gloom are two examples where I was finding a 5-set of Apocalypse (w/ proc) and a second added +dam proc was better (marginal) value for that specific power than trying to cram 4 +Dam in. It was partly recharge necessity, partly just over-enhancement on a very strong attack. I also want to point out that what I did with IO's in Super Strength took a path that many aren't looking at. Too many people are focused on set bonuses and are missing small interactions in single IO's that impact an entire build much better than any +10% bonus. In this case specifically the Force Feedback +Rech IO. There aren't a lot of sets/attacks that can leverage this IO effectively, SS is one though. I put the FF+Rech in Haymaker and KO-B, Haymaker hits twice, KO-B once, in a ~7/s chain, and the effect stacks its duration each time it triggers. I was going 15-20+ seconds with +100% recharge. That's better than running Ageless. Because the effect went off so often I was able to shrink KO-B's recharge down significantly (1-2/s to get into the 5-6/s cool down range). I just needed that bonus to stack at least once every 8/s to keep KO-B in my window, and it was pretty much a guarantee at that point to occur just on KO-B alone. Procs aren't just the +Dam, they're the Uniques, the +This, or +That. In this case FF+Rech is a big attribute, as is the Gaussian +BU in Rage, and why I don't reactivate Rage until AFTER the crash occurs so that I can boost my +Dam, compensate the loss of time, and keep moving forward. Yes I'm doing some damage with procs for that 10/s, but right after that debuff falls, I'm spiking to 400% +Dam for 5.25/s with Hybrid running, ~280-300% without. I tested everything under "normal" conditions you'd expect to find in game. None of the builds are specialized to AV/Pylon testing, this is just a proof-of-concept validation for them. What's funny about this is I was like "I have a video... I'll just go grab the video" Then I realized I never uploaded a lot of the Bio Armor tests cause it got a bit stressful/overwhelming/tiresome at the time and I didn't feel like editing any of it. I still don't, but a few of the videos are pretty straight forward from original "cut" and Youtube actually has an audio library so I pulled two and put them up raw-ish. Oh, and additional note about the "normal" circumstances, I went zero temps, zero inspirations in that execution as well, both in the Pylon runs, and in the general testing. I didn't want the build stability to have a terrible lynch pin in insp or temp use. This is the Brute SS/BA run, right off the bat is the Pylon destruction in 1:55 total time. I also run around for a bit afterwards just wrecking Rikti. I also have a 1.9 Gig 25 minute long video of me attempting to take down as many Pylon as I could in 30 minutes. What's amusing about it is the fact that I totally missed that, in my rampage, the video actually has a time captured that beats what I had thought was my best time (2:09). It's currently processing and I'll edit it in when it's done, but between the 7:00 and 10:00 mark there'll be a Pylon that I took down in a flat 2:00 even, and I totally missed it, or wrote my maths down wrong, or something when I scrubbed these originally. Like I said before, I was getting pretty exhausted doing so many/much of these. Edit: Here it is, had to validate my existence with Google to have this video loaded. 7:14-9:14 (two minute window), Pylon down, among many many many other attempts in this back-to-back pylon attempt.

Only if I can get screen shake and a relooping animation from something like the ground effect of Tremor where debris flies around and the ground cracks up. Then have a Tornado-effect stack on top of it that picks up those rocks and swirls them around.

How is no one talking about War Mace/Energy Aura? It's both Strong & Pretty! 😉

I have to vote Ice Tank. Particularly Ice/Stone as its the only Tank I've ever played, and/or will play. Knockdowns, Slows, Damage Aura, a T9 that you can Taunt before hand and become an impregnable iceberg, the ability to soft cap most of your defenses on SO's with Energy Absorption (and never have a dry end bar). I still remember back when Recluse's Victory was in Beta for the first time way back with Villains just coming out, a lot of people were rolling Tanks to see what they could hold up against. I watched an Ice Tank live beyond even a Granite to swarms of players bashing endlessly on them. All the Ice Tank had to do was make it from one Hibernate to the next, and there was just nothing significant enough that anyone could do that they didn't just heal back up to full in the next activation. Ever since then I was sold, it'd be the only Tank I ever roll.

Except for the fact you can use it in the exact opposite way and Shift your team WITH the enemy spawn, and isolate them from everything else going on, and thus the outside mobs are wasting their attacks on something they can't hit. Players can freely move in and out of the Shift while it's active. The reason mobs on the inside don't leave is because they instantly get snagged into an Immobilize.

If you try to class the idea of a Saiyajin into a game world scenario, they would be the class that earned their XP points on a per-damage-received basis, with no level cap, and opportunity gates that act as amplifiers to their base damage and resistance values. Whenever they were injured (simplified) they'd heal back stronger, the greater the critical impact, the more significant the recovery (again, simplified). I personally think it'd be a hard-pressed idea to try and really take their concept and fit it to a role in this game as each character had different approaches to their combat methodologies. A character like Gokuh would be more methodically a Scrapper (imo), terrible general resistances, but significant burst critical capability. Bejita on the other hand I'd probably see more as a Brute for his temperament and need to fuel his anger into his purpose, and also just generally having a pretty strong tolerance for taking a hit. Gohan I'd probably class a Stalker because he was always a sleeper-agent of burst capacity for the majority of the series, and granted it was emotionally engaged, it was always short, extreme bursts (assassin's strike). I kinda felt Sentinels should've been a better blend of ranged blasts with a couple of good melee attacks to really be a balanced option, and then it really would've spoken a lot more to the idea of a DBZ/S character. That aside, I'd probably peg Piccoro as a Sentinel option as he's always portrayed as a much more methodical, tactical minded individual looking at any given fight from a distance. I mean, look at the very beginning of DBZ with the long-range attack he said he developed to take down Gokuh, and ended up using to kill Radditsu. Note about the concept of Super Saiyajin: In the lore it wasn't specifically anger that spurred the transformations, it was the ideal of great emotional distress (one way or another). It was easy to take the idea as "anger" when Gokuh does it "first" (even though it was partly driven by loss, and his moral drive for balancing evil) but it wasn't until the OVA with Mirai Torankusu (Future Trunks) that anyone got a chance to see a loss-driven reason. Bejita's wasn't even loss or anger driven, but raw failure and realization of his own inadequacies. Looking at things from a whole-series perspective really changes the impact of an individual moment in DBZ (especially in its original airing format) when so much just random combat happens most of the time. Core it down to the heart of the story and it could've been translated and written in a much different way. Basically, if it hadn't been Shonen (before Shonen was really Shonen even, DBZ kind of made that format). Semi off/on topic, I actually express the level of effort on my Rad/Dark Scrapper as what stage of "Super Saiyajin" he's gone into. There's a set of abilities that kind of determine what threat level I feel he's facing. Oppressive Gloom, Shadow Meld, how often I have to use Dark Regen (if at all), the use of Hybrid, and whether I summon a Night Widow, or the Lore Pets. Very rarely does he ever get to the stage of warranting more than OG+Regen, and any case I've ever gone full-tilt has just been to show off (per request). Sorry, way over-analyzed that 😅 Dragon Ball Z

THIS INSTANTLY MADE ME THINK OF ENGINEERS IN GUILD WARS 2, THEY HAVE A VARIANT BUILD THAT FOCUSES ON GRENADES AND GRENADE MULTIPLICATION TO ENHANCE AOE ABILITY AND JUST DO STUPID AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE WITH BOMBS, TRAPS, AND THROWABLES. SIGN ME UP FOR TWO PLEASE.* *COMPLIANCE

With your attacks, I'd strongly encourage using your first two slots on any damage-centric power as your chance to patch Acc/End/Dam (specifically Dam in this case). A decent rule of thumb is, of course, "when the proc becomes better than enhancement" but with Controllers you have to weigh in containment which won't reflect as easily. So taking your Gravity Distortion, as an example, one damage proc will be about on par with a bit more additional damage enhancement in that power (when contained), and given that it could also be marginally buffed from team members, it'd have more value, and also be a chance to slip in some more accuracy. Most of your build is going to struggle with anything beyond +2 from a consistency on Accuracy. Any time you include an IO that effect recharge enhancement directly in a power, it'll negatively impact your proc probability in that power if the base recharge is below 30/s, especially so if it's below 16/s to begin with. I'd definitely re-evaluate Propel and Crushing Field's slotting. The entire reason to have Power Boost with Darkness Affinity is to combo it with Fade. If you hit PB before Fade, than it'll double-up the +Def aspect and leave it that way for the full duration of Fade's effect. Given that, your build is actually covered with just Maneuvers alone (No Weave or Hover required). You also have access to Darkest Night that provides opportunity for a lot of -ToHit which acts like a reverse Defense. The more -ToHit you can apply to an enemy is like giving yourself an equal amount of +Def. You could dump the entire fighting pool, Hover, pick up Combat Jumping instead (gives you some jump height to pair with super speed, and a single LotG in its slot), along with Assault and Tactics and Howling Twilight, move those excess slots to other places, and find a few extra +Res% to get S/L Res closer to 75% on its own and be in a really good spot. The reality of it, with Darkest Night, the whole PB+Fade thing is a super bonus, but not a must-have. I had just as much success leveraging Darkest Night to fake-softcap as I did giving myself 45% true softcap.

Okay, hold on, I just... I can't... Okay, wow, much better. Super Strength is an outlier set with the Rage in its current state. Procs are not the cause for action in this regard, it is Rage itself causing this distortion. And when I called it second best, that was, yes, behind TW, but it was also still creating a significant gap between it and everything else. Your next best performing (with +Dam and extra -Res) sets hit the 2:45-3:00 mark on a targeted Pylon DPS test. Based on that factor alone SS is in its own outlier category with TW. Initially, no they didn't, but you can plainly see the impact of IO's in their design choices later on with anticipation on how those sets would perform on an IO level compared to an SO level. No one said you had to? I already tested TW with Procs, that information was posted already. I talked about it at length. For an inefficient TW build, procs managed to keep TW swinging at the 3:00 range (+/- 15/s). For a corrected build I hit 1:59. It is important to point out that this is definitely contingent on Assault Hybrid Core assisting this process, which is the same case for those other "high" (transversely low) variances we've seen with other AT's (Brutes/Scrappers). This was also on a build that did not leverage Bio Armor, like I did with Super Strength. Take that into a moment of consideration too. TW without Bio Armor is equivalent to SS with Bio Armor. Sub note: Procs didn't cause these variances, the sets would've still had consistent placements here or there, I used a standard maximization practice on everything I ran so there's not an abnormality for abnormalities sake. Melee sets get the same love across the board so there's far less extreme cases like with, say, the Blast sets or Control sets where some sets benefit far more than others. In most cases, for those, the sets that do benefit are ones that naturally have lower output so procs actually help bring them in line. I don't know how "well stated" I'd, er, state that to be. A lot of people were adamant that SS was in rough shape for years until this point, when hard data point numbers (and video proof) demonstrated just how wrong that myth was. Without Rage, and just looking at its practical values, most of SS falls in line with many of the sets sans Jab which has a considerably under powered damage value. When I tried running a single-Rage variation of SS, it was somewhere around that "not quite in the top, but not really in the middle, feels like it could do better, but it has a perma build up so what the heck" impact. The reason it sits there is because it doesn't have the ability to leverage other tools like some of the other sets do (mainly -Res procs). Without Procs, and measured equally across the board, SS is still a top performer. Yes damage procs do allow SS to waive that Rage crash a bit by keeping some inkling of performance, but we're not talking 400 DPS. We're talking about a marginal window. And you have to remember that all the values are tested on an even proc-based playing field. All the sets are dipping into the same pool to try and get the same benefits. Super Strength is the only one that says "Hey, how about +160% damage, all the time." And then it had a lousy patch to "balance" that fact with negative damage, and that's where the IO system, and procs, came in and went "nah, it's cool, here, we can fix that." And what that revealed was truly the fact that SS actually is broken, in a not-so-good very-overpowered way. And it's been that way for a long, looooong time. But because it has that crash, we all just kind of accepted it from a logistics standpoint. The IO system, and procs, I personally don't believe to be bad, imbalanced, or broken in any way. The devs put out effort before sunset to fix their performance to the level we have now, with their own notes stating that the system pre-i24 was not working to their expectation, and that the fixes in i24 were designed to correct that. There's nothing anyone can pinpoint at this stage that would change the hard-line fact that Super Strength, in its current condition, is over powered, regardless of the Invention System. Yes, Titan Weapons is too, and unfortunately there is not a considerably easy fix for that one that doesn't involve a serious reconsideration of the sets overall design. I actually attempted to experiment with alternative evaluations of the set by restricting to non-momentum choices and the set STILL performed at the top of the pile, albeit with a much narrow gap. Super Strength, however, has a much simpler resolution: a nonstackable, perma-capable Rage with an adjusted damage value and no crash. Allow it to stay upper-levels, but with a margin in the 10-20/s variance and not the 1:00 variance. A more honest evaluation would likely revolve around changing the fundamental mechanics behind Super Strength, pulling the concept of Rage entirely, and installing an SS "unique" condition to help stabilize its performance without the inclusion of an "always on" 160% +Dam effect. If you really want to stick to budget performances you have to look at the entire build and concentrate on the important aspects of your goals. If you don't think, or don't want to try and really core out a significant amount of global recharge to make TW work at that upper echelon, than maybe some of those attacks might be something you reconsider. What I can tell you is it's pretty easy to get a solid, but not top-tier chain out of Rend Armor into Crushing Blow, Follow Through, and Whirling Smash. What you have in your build works for you as a player, so remember that first and fore-most if you're happy with how it runs. If you do want to start nit-picking and seeing where you need to go from here, then read on... Radiation Therapy and Ground Zero are killer vehicles for procs to live in, and if you're going to use them, a warranted investment. You are talking about a pretty slot-intensive build though which was one drawback to Radiation Armor in general; has a great toolkit, but it requires more slots to fulfill than normal. You can cut a slot from Beta Decay, and a slot from Stamina and use those elsewhere. If you're not going to properly slot out Ground Zero for (anything) that there's not really much reason to carry it. You really need more investment in Particle Shielding, that's the power which is really going to support you the most between what could be 200+Regen, and a big Absorb boost on a relatively short cooldown. You're also way overslotting Gamma Boost for End Mod. There are a few shortcomings in accuracy in a few places you might want to be running Tactics (also dump Focused Accuracy, that power costs a lot of extra end to do just about the same as Tactics from a functionality standpoint). TW is an AoE heavy set, and Rad Armor is an AoE Armor. You frankly end up with too much AoE to support. You gotta figure out where you need/want to cut from, and focus the build's planning fore carefully. Either more closely evaluate Rad Therapy and Ground Zero against Titan Sweep, Whirling Sword, and Arc of Destruction, or start looking at cutting from your build .

If it is a cast effect that requires you to select a point on the ground, yes. I did it repeatedly when testing combinations between Wormhole and Dimension Shift. I wanted to know specifically if I could Shift a group and then Wormhole another group into it, and what would happen to that group after the fact. I also tested other Location-Based TAoE effects too. The game doesn't summon that object as sourced from you, it kind of... pulls it up from out of subsurface, or spawns it exclusively there, and if that 'there' is inside the shift, than so be it. I suppose I did unintentionally generalize targeted-aoe, I don't mean things that you target, and then cast on to, it has to be specifically stuff you get a ground reticle and click, to spawn something in that location. Apologies for the confusion on that part.

If by investment you're referring to the set costs, the Winter-O's are actually skippable, upon reflection. When I added them I wasn't thinking about the effect of Power Boost on the toggles and was trying to clamber up to 45% (or as close as I could) S/L defense. Swapping out for a pile of procs does just fine. Most of the build is actually pretty affordable beyond the time investment for gathering Incarnate parts. The base version of the AT-O's can be purchased or pack-pulled-converted for 10mill a piece (so 120mill for both sets), and catalyzed by what gets dropped in natural game play. I don't think there's been a single case where I don't end up with 10-12 catalysts by Vet Level 1 in just basic play (even at 2x XP play). The HO's, those can be swapped for a bunch of cheap Def/End IO's, swap when affordable, or +Boost the IO's as available and get the 'same' return. I could also "budget build" this a bit further by swapping the Apocalypse set for Sting of the Manticore and tossing a different second proc in there. Yeah, I'd say ~300mill, maybe 350mill inf. For an IO build, that's... kinda cheap I think. Well, technically the core of the Blaster is Ball Lightning + Short Circuit (-15% End, and then -75% End & -133% Recovery in that build). But I get what you mean, Controllers do make it a bit easy, but not as fast in my opinion. I did a fair amount of testing Electric Control for other things and found its Sapping ability was pretty decent without any intentional effort involved.

The power can be slotted with both the Controller AT-O and Immob sets since it causes an immobilization when it captures everything. It has no appreciable limit to how many things can exist inside its radius, so the best thing you can do to be both a "control" and a source of mild damage would be to Wormhole together two groups, and then drop the Dimension Shift on the entire mass. Slot the shift with the Controller AT-O (Will of the Controller), 5-pieces, and 6th slot place the Trap of the Hunter damage proc. Now I know that'd be pricey to just run and do, so you can hodge-podge Rech (x2) and an End IO, but the bonus from that set is really good, especially when catalyzed, but the key piece is the damage proc from there; if you can get the two damage procs in that power, you'll see it do some crazy things. The first activation will usually hit quite a few (if not potentially all, but usually at least half, with both procs), and then it'll trigger a second hit 10/s later. If you have enough global recharge to get into the 150-160 range, that power will recharge in ~25/s, with the AT-O in there, closer to ~20/s, which makes the power "perma," or in most players cases accessible on a regular spawn-to-spawn basis. Oh, and Wormhole, get the KB>KD (the converting IO, not the Overwhelming one, that's wasted here), Force Feedback +Rech, and a slot or two for Acc/Rech and the two abilities will be up nearly at the same time. When you use Wormhole with that FF+Rech proc, it's nearly guaranteed to go off which'll super-charge Wormhole's recharge for the last few seconds to keep the two powers in-line. Perform the combo on top of whoever's on point for the team, and most will likely not even realize you're doing it. It softens up two mobs together, immobs them together, and hits double the body count for a solid amount of damage. You can also drop pets and other TAoE effects inside the Shift when you yourself are outside of it. Or, if you use it as a panic button before Wormhole, you can Wormhole additional bodies INTO the Shift. It's also really amusing to Wormhole > Shift > Tornado and watch it tear apart everything inside, the mobs completely helpless.

I was mostly being facetious. What's actually interesting to me about this thread is the back and forth about this very singular question. Pre-Sunset, and even further back than that actually, I used to have a Kin/Elec Defender, classic Sapper build. It was all pre-I9 and all that jazz, and after the advent of IO's I truly felt like his value dropped significantly because Kins, collectively in a high-yield environment, end up being nothing more than a +Dam source since there's not a lot else they bring to the table that most high-yield builds haven't already corrected (end management, speed, recharge). That's subjective experience for some, but I definitely felt--as a Kin Defender--absolutely useless. I could however use him still as an effective Sapper, run into a spawn and completely mitigate their ability to do anything because I could siphon through Short Circuit so quickly that once I'd stolen their endurance, I could keep it indefinitely, but I couldn't kill worth a darn. In high-impact teams, again, neat party trick, worth a ton solo, but Defender, so damage sucks anyway (subjectively). Electric Blasters could do the same thing but invariable, and lacked a few of the other tools that made it safer on the Kinetic. With Procs and Incarnates though, there's a lot of interesting things that can massively amplify what Electric Blast and Electricity Manipulation do in their secondary effects. As Exhibit A: The capacity to neutralize endurance with this build is incredibly high. Nearly every spawn is facing close to full reduction within just two hits, if not full reduction from Interface inclusion (resistances aside). For this one specifically the biggest kicker is Power Boost as it amplifies the -End effect, which in turn amplifies the return, and by having an Alpha slotted worth 33% End enhancement, now every single end-impacting attack has a significant kick that most players wouldn't have slotted for in the first place (either for set bonuses, or damage, or whatever). Preemptive is contributing a unique trigger here too with its -End over time, does an initial kick and then keeps kicking for a short period after to catch that next tick, ontop of -Recovery, which means all of my attacks are now contributing. What's it add to the table? Soloability with more safety by being able to shut down a mob faster. Ball Lightning + KD, run in and Short Circuit before they can get to their feet and... well that's about end game for them (aha, ha... ha, puns). And this is just one variant. Elec/Elec could do similar with its toggle AoE to marginally slower effect, and a Kin/Elec Defender (with the proc portion of this equation) finally actually have some contribution, and a couple of tools to more significantly impact bigger targets faster (Transference). General side note: Shocking Bolt (Epic) is better than Tesla Cage (Primary Blast Power), and that bothers me.

I will not make an OP Electric Blaster I will not make an OP Electric Blaster just I will not make an OP Electric Blaster just to I will not make an OP Electric Blaster just to prove I will not make an OP Electric Blaster just to prove a I will not make an OP Electric Blaster just to prove a point. I will ... I hate you guys. /em opens mids

I've been wrapping my head around Beast/Nature MM all evening, deciding a path and approach to it. After messing around with a Nature variant of my Mad King Special concept, I realized I could translate that into a MM and keep that perma-Overgrowth going for my pets. If you can get a decent amount of starter accuracy into your pets (enough to compensate their level shifts), include Tactics and Overgrowth in there, and then you can easily leave your focus on Intuition or Musculature. Personally went with Intuition since I am attempting to keep Entangle in the build and Intuition Radial will give more to that play style. This is the build I'm going with, if you want something to compare against:

Amongst the changes I made, I broke part of that balance you had before. This was really one of those "break it down to build it up stronger" kind of things. If you chase 2.5% Melee, Ranged, and AoE in three other places, it doesn't make sense compared to just filling one single slot that completes that same tri-fecta effect. Since you were already pouring slots into that ability anyway, it just makes sense to take advantage of that one slot to achieve that balance. It's tantamount to being the same equivalency (at that point) as the Steadfast or Gladiator +3%. Biggest past is simplifying where and how you get to 45%, first, and then seeing what it would take to go over that value by a few points. As a Defense based character, you'll run into enemy groups that do something called Defense Debuffs. Now, you have some resistance to these debuffs, but even at a capped value (like Super Reflexes can achieve), you still get hit with something, and even in the smallest portion we're talking 0.5-1.5% ranges. If you were only sitting at 45.#%, that one (even resisted) debuff is suddenly dropping you down below 45%, and every point you drop below, you're quickly increasing the amount you could be potentially hit. When that happens we call it Cascading Failure (one debuff turns into two, your defense starts to tank, you start getting hit more, more debuffs stack, and bam, you eat dirt). To combat debuffs, you go a couple points above 45% to stabilize the threat of one, maybe two that you may get to stay above 45% until the effect wears off. In that modified build I posted, technically Ranged and AoE were sitting at 45.9%, but that was without Hover running, so you have an instant buffer by toggling that on (if you aren't already using it), to pad up quickly to 48% and avoid failure. Shield Defense is a bit unique in that it is realistically a Defense based set, but it can get a pretty solid resistance foundation that blurs the line on where it stands. For me personally I try and hit 47-48% on defense based characters so they can have that wiggle room, and if possible maybe even try and find a way to get them to 59% (the Incarnate softcap) if possible (not so much on Shield). For characters that are resist based that I'm padding with defense, then it doesn't really matter because they don't have any inherent DDR and if they get hit with a debuff that bonus defense is going to sink like the Titanic.

Eh, I don't know that I'd necessarily agree with that sentiment. I got 160% pre-Ageless without a whole lot of effort, and that puts Nature in a pretty good spot to begin with. Either way, I did take a look at it, and honestly, I see this topic being holistic to all build variants despite being in the Blaster sub-section. If more people were aware that there is actually an ability to post under "Archetype General" I might've just done it there, but it's pretty easy to pass that fact. I also already started adding quite a few variant builds in the first post so doing another wasn't much of a stretch. Just didn't have time to do it sooner than today. But, Perma-Everything (Core Abilities), Spore Cloud will effectively "Softcap" the build, and Unleash Potential will get it close otherwise as a burst emergent ability every other 60-70/s. Since Ageless didn't necessarily change a dramatic amount of this variant's circumstances, I put Clarion in instead (definitely doesn't need the end boost either, thanks to Overgrowth). This is actually a pretty ridiculously survivable build. Capped S/L/Psi resists, and -30%+ Dam is going to stack an absurd amount of mitigation. I didn't try fitting Entangling Aura because, well it's practical use isn't really a huge one with this much rat mitigation in the build (Def, Res, -ToHit, -Dam, Heals, Absorb), and it being able to rely on Clarion to fill the mez gap for things that do get through... Figured Assault and Vengeance would likely get more mileage, give more to the team, and fit in a hair more global recharge over a (max mag 3) aoe hold. Oh, I did save this file in 2.6, since most seem to be on that and it includes Unleash Potential, it should load correctly for all. Second Edit: Been working on trying to nail down a build for Beast/Nature MM, used some of this idea to sort-of fuel making the MM variant work around the same core concept. Does get hit pretty hard by the lower buff values, but this is it: And since @Caemgen mentioned it, and I had it on the backburner (half built), here is Energy/Atomic Blaster build as well (also formatted to 2.6):

Most of the blast sets will have reasonable amounts of AoE/Cone/PBAOE, but being a Defender I’d encourage a blast set that has more damage proc options to leverage more output since Defenders kind of sit near/at the bottom of the damage scale. Best options: Dark, Water, DP. Alt options: Rad, AR, and Energy. If you want a bit more info on what I’m referring to on this, look for the “Proc Monster” thread in the Defender subsection, it’ll go into a lot more detail. It’ll also talk about building a primary pairing that’ll support playing at +4/x8 solo.

Ah yeah, I keep forgetting to forewarn on that. I'm still using 2.23 for sake of those that still haven't patched up, but the Force of Will set from 2.23 to the newer (2.6+) was altered so when the database calls for the info, it's pulling the wrong powers out of the set from what I picked, to what you see in updated versions of Mids. You should be able to correct the power selections and see the slots in the text version of the posted build to correct your file. 🙂