Sir Myshkin

First time it was only two as I was just swapping out for existing slotting, but then I moved over to four with what I did tonight. I actually forgot about the Slow proc. Something that is interesting, in your two sample sets there you did get 25 and 21 total procs, but one versus the other, the first set you had only six ticks with nothing, where in the second there was double that at 12 empty ticks. You had a lot more multiples in the second sample. I might just have had bad luck, and I've not devoted a significant amount of time testing a single target with all four, I only dropped it three times and saw the same thing coming back (one hit) and stopped after that cause I got killed doing a fourth on two Monsters at the same time and died before I got to the fifth tick and didn't feel like going back to keep doing it tonight. In terms of Rikti Monkeys though, I didn't get that same level of consistency on them either. Harder to gauge on them considering a purple and regular proc would kill them, but it took three regular (160.6 HP, procs were hitting for 79.9 or 79.8, something like that, so it was leaving them skittering around at .6-7 health after two hits). But I had a fair share of DF's end and have one or two Rikti running around either not hit at all, hit once (half health), or a sliver of life. You're probably right about testing fatigue though. That's all I've really focused on for two-three hours (building and testing) a night, every night since Sunday... time to go just play for a bit I think and come back at it fresh later. Edit to add: When I did run off and test Distortion with more procs, that was a slot-less build. The only thing at all with anything in it was Distortion Field, so no set bonuses, no toggles, nothing contributing globally (so no +Acc). But I did drop an Acc/End and Acc/Hold into the set to inherently enhance it, and that was it.

Proc Monster Updates I'm so easily side tracked on different proc testing hunts this week that I've not stayed on a focused thing consistently, so I have two builds put together that haven't been tested, but I felt like sharing. One is a "I'd really like this to work out" and the other is "Quite a few have been asking around about this." Traps Build Traps is something I hope will translate well for use to boost flexibility and give a solid back bone to a Proc Monster focused blast set but I tried pairing it with Water Blast, and that's kind of a tricky set to really maximize. It has a lot of AoE potential, and its ST options are very weirdly bent on trying to make Water Jet do more than it probably should. There are also a ton of questions I have for Traps on what, where, and just how exactly some of these powers work with procs. Specifically Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Trip Mine, Seeker Drones, and Time Bomb. Everyone's always "Time Bomb Sux!" But that thing can take like six damage procs! That's huge! Trip mine is the same way, along with accepting the FF+Rech. Hypothetically speaking, if laying a single Trip Mine procs FF+Rech and reduces it down (based on this build) to 5/s, I can just keep cycling drops one after the other until I hit 45, and that gives me about 25/s to bring a pile into my Trip Patch. Four procs, 45 mines, 12,915 damage... I mean is that practical, no way! BUT IMAGINE! It'd take about 4:00 to set those up (and they have 260 duration, so the top of that chain has ~25-30/s at 45 mines). But if you could walk an AV into nearly 13,000 damage? Have a hidden Acid Mortar and poison trap there too? Just... it would be such joy. But I haven't tested it, so I have no idea how--or if--that has significant value yet. If anyone else wants to beat me to testing it, there's what I'm initially looking at as "functioning" build. Other testing with the Traps primary effects are going to result in some potential changes, obviously. Trick Arrow (Spoiler!) The other build I put together I've seen get brought up across Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors collectively about viability, and also for procs, and I was curious what kind of utility could be packed into it given the "Blast" set that pairs here doesn't have a ton of proc flexibility, but the Primary does. I give you Trick Arrow/Archery! What's kind of interesting here, too, is the validity of this set is in need of testing, much like Traps, because a handful of the powers have some interesting options for procs. This is also the one Proc Monster build I wouldn't necessarily even suggest Dominate/Char because it has access to Ice Arrow, which is a Hold and a Slow, and although it has a longer cast time, should hit for a similar amount since it can get packed with one more proc. Dominate hits for something like ~330 damage (just pulling some things from Mid's, this isn't exact), and Ice Arrow will go for ~355. I included EMP Arrow, but I'm not 100% certain that the ability is going to provide enough value. Maybe with a team hitting a major target, that initial burst of -Regen will have enough value, but on its own that's not a lot for Trick/Arch to work with, and it has a pretty long recharge, even when globally enhanced. Speaking of global recharge, this is probably the first variant build that Hasten isn't full necessary to make work at an efficient level. There are two -Res effect abilities in Trick Arrow, and both can be kept up perma (even with some overlap) on global efforts alone. Hasten does shrink some times, but we're shaving 1-2 seconds off some things, maybe 6-8 off bigger things, but a lot of Archery fires fast, recharges fast, has a higher accuracy, and is just really quick on its own merits. Something that definitely needs testing: Impact of procs on Acid Arrow's rain effect, and Oil Slick. I feel like somewhere back on live there was talk about procs and Oil Slick not playing well together, but in the hypothetical untested (by me) realm, those two powers would generate a stupid amount of damage (when the slick is lit). This one looks like it could be pretty fun. Side note to Scrap: Eh, it's the internet. The most we can do is take what we read as it reads. Sometimes we miss intent and connotation someone might inflect in mannerism that gets missed in font. I am reminded of this scene actually:

I had considered maybe the pylon was an oddity so I went up to Monster Island (was just a short flight away after all) and stomped on some giant DE. I didn't spend an extensive amount of time over there given I was using a secondary build that was only slotted on Distortion Field (with Acc/Hold and Acc/End on the last two of six slots, for what it's worth). If I dropped DF on one Monster, I got the same results as I did on a Pylon. If I grabbed a second critter and did two in the field, then I'd go from just one, to two, sometimes three. I didn't have the energy to properly build that thing up to test a larger group, but it feels like--to me--that Distortion Field is driven by how many things are sitting in the field when it procs. The more things in the field, the more it does. Now, statistically speaking, duh, right? But to me it (from a visual perspective, and without hard-core going over the actual data in the log) looked like I was getting a set amount of hits back based on how many things I packed in. Kind of like the testing I did for Tenebrous and Torrent. Torrent especially, with the FF+Rech proc. If I only ever tossed it against one target, up to 4, I almost never saw it go off, but if I did 5, I'd suddenly see it here and there, and if it was 10, I was nearly guaranteed to get it. I feel a tad bit like I'm randomly rambling, acknowledging that I'm a bit tired and probably scrapped like two paragraphs worth of just... thoughts that didn't make sense, so I guess we'll see what you come back with if you do a ST test run longer than I did.

I'd reconsider that proc and find out what the AI's priority is on those two attacks. How many attacks do those pets ultimately have? When I checked for viability on a Robotics, the Battle Drones end up with four attacks with both upgrades, but only end up with one attack (Heavy Burst) that actually supports the proc. However, for the AI, it stacks that attack as second highest priority below Full Auto (which is 16/s recharge). While it's not a perfect flow, for four attacks, Heavy Burst is 8/s on recharge, and shows up just as much as Laser Burst (the base attack) that the AI uses to fill in between HB, Full, and Smash. Essentially FA and Sm only show up "once" in a "chain". Anyway, just that one attack taking the proc was a net gain of 7 DPS per bot, so 21 DPS collectively, over not having it all. I'd hop into the RWZ and set those bots onto a test dummy and see what kind of chain you have and where those KB powers fall in.

The thing that comes about from this, to me, is that if I have to have a mass target of 20, just to get a guaranteed 1 hit, then there's really not much point Okay so I went up to Monkey Island and killed 15 minutes testing it there, which is particularly easy considering how viscous those little buggers wanna get with you. I will say, from an experience stand point it was like I just tested two completely different abilities. For every 10-16 monkeys I pulled together I got 3-4 (on average) hits, with up to 6 in one swing on initial drop. If I was patient enough I could kill the entire group, but it took two drops of Distortion Field to do it. Something I did see here that I never saw on a Pylon: double proc, and it was always the purple proc backed by one of the others. So that was interesting. I can also say that I had several ticks that also did not proc anything at all. Even some scenarios where I got a few procs at drop, and then nothing until the last tick. My take away on this comes down to the fact of yes, it looks to spread some damage around within a larger group, the more you can pack in, the larger the opportunities become, but on small to singular instances, it's kind of wasted effort. I think this comes down to if the slots are freely available, 2-3 damage procs will only help in an AoE short-fall, but this might really be a "YMMV" kind of choice. The procs end up doing ballpark similar damage to Irradiate for me, but random instead of guaranteed. If I ultimately have to fire off Irradiate the same number of times, regardless of the one or two extra dying in the process early, have I really saved myself added effort? And yet I have never gotten Sleet, Freezing Rain, Ice Storm, or Blizzard (all Rain based effects) to ever proc, either initially, or at all in their duration). I think of how that stands now, versus how it used to be when procs first came out and people put them into Rain of Fire and it was like lighting a landfill on fire, you just watched everything burn into a messy pile of ash in a fast hurry. Considering that, I can't really say I'm surprised that whatever the original Devs did to stop that from happening might more-or-less strip these powers of being proc-capable, but it'd still be nice if they some how translated a toggle-style percentage or something. Maybe even some kind of code-setup like Tornado (that is proc friendly).

I think this is a matter of contention at the moment. Distortion Field works in the same manner, and takes all the Hold procs, but there's currently a conflict in experiences. Bopper did the math and what they showed should do pretty decently with 4-5 procs in the ability, however in my testing against a single target (which to me gives more incentive to invest the slots, which should extrapolate to a larger crowd) I did not see a positive return. One proc hit, in total, over the duration of the field itself. Distortion has a 45/s duration and five ticks (one initial, and one more at each 10/s interval). Bopper's math says that I should actually be seeing at least one proc occur to the target per tick, but that's not even remotely close to what's happening. We both also noticed Purple procs having a higher probability over the others than should be occurring too. Now if there became a minimum expectation of a guarantee proc against everything in the mob, that could be useful if it happened at the start up as a nice little "bump" to the power's utility. I was seeing the proc anywhere from the 10/s mark all the way to the last tick, but never at the beginning. That doesn't mean it couldn't, I just never got a proc right at dropping the power. What's interesting is that I'm not 100% certain that every one of these powers is coded to act the same. Irradiated Ground is a pseudo-pet drop kind of like Distortion Field would act, but I've seen a far more significant return in proc rates in that power. I've plugged in -Res and gotten a reasonable amount of kick-back on it. So each power may need to be investigated individually, or find out just how exactly they're coded. Some powers like Sleet and Freezing Rain, as an example, are the same exact ability with different names.

Just curious, has anyone actually gone in and tested the opportunities of this in-game? The Decimation +BU Proc that is. I read through everything in the thread right quick and saw a lot of probability math, but no actual mention of testing. I tested it on multiple runs in Gloom with a Dark/Dark/Psi testing procs, chains, and general survivability (lot of stuff in one two hours session). I recorded a few single target runs on Pylons to watch for different things, like the Decimation proc. I only ever got it once in a 4:00 run, Gloom > Moonbeam > Dominate (Filler Dark Blast). I have zero recharge enhancement in Gloom, and enough global to bring it down to a 3/s recharge. Even if I went to the floor of probability, in a 4:00 window I would have, as a maximum potential doing nothing else, 3 procs, and that was still more than I actually got: 1. Kind of not really worth it as I see it. Swapped it out for Overwhelming Proc to give Gloom an amusing KD component instead. "Oh, that crippling dread weighing you down? My apologies."

The only reason Blizzard is re-releasing "Classic" WoW is because they got tired of shutting down private servers running the old game files before many of its expansions came down the pipe. It is an incredibly niche part of their market and this is mostly just an attempt to spend less money on legal efforts and actually just recoup the funds internally through their own servers. From what I remember from a few years ago, one of the biggest servers they chased after had maybe 100-150,000 "players" (accounts). Get that many replacement accounts back in their pocket at even just $5-$10 a month subscription, that's a lot of money for something that has zero development, and is just idling on servers with a few GM's monitoring it. Even if that cost them a million to keep running a year, they're still making half a million just keeping the lights on.

What did you test this against? Actual grouped mobs, single target, or parsing math into it for an estimation? I did testing against a singular target to see the validity of the patch on a single target and I only ever got one proc, period, per target, per Distortion Field. Never more than one, and sometimes none at all in a couple instances. I did see a far higher margin of the purple proc over any other proc though. I had written up a better ask/comparison last night before the browser ate my post in a failed connection, but this is the shortened version of "I didn't get the same experience from the Distortion Field."

Preface Note: This is both a mixture of a response, and a testing update in general towards this thread. Distortion Field doesn't work that way, so I didn't leave anything on the table. It procs nothing off of being dropped, and its actual triggers are minimal through its duration. I ran it for 3:00+ minutes dropping a new one every 20/s and this is all I got out of the deal: Now I only tested it with a purple proc and a standard 3.5 proc. You might notice that the purple proc is what went off more often, and they never went off together, it was always only one, or the other, never both in the same instance, and there was anywhere from 5-10/s of delay on what the combat log reported back. Towards the concept of evaluating an assumption on Rad as a set, versus possibilities of what it can be expanded with, Reducing an attack chain down to one or two Rad abilities, and two Epic abilities is no longer contrasting Radiation as a set, but just stealing two powers from it to mosh-pit some attacks together. Radiation Blast as a whole needs something to improve what it's doing, and the testing below will kind of show that. In my original build, I even went and double checked to make sure maybe I didn't post the right thing, I had Time Stop in there with all four hold procs and attempted using that because it provided -50% Regen (it was something to try and contribute to the fight. So I was already actively trying to use those procs regardless. I also stated in the very post you quoted from that Bopper was using a Dual Pistol build with Suppressive Fire proc'd as Char/Dominate and had that power hitting for 500 points of damage, and even he still couldn't get a good swing at the Pylon, and that included me dropping Howling Twilight on one for him to give it -Regen. It was faster, but not substantially. I also don't know how else he was slotted either. Testing Char & Enflame: So I hopped back on to test and made some quick alterations to the Time/Rad and swapped Power Master for Flame. Loosing Power Boost is a bad call (in my opinion) but Clarion Radial can at least replicate that effect so I could still test this out (to a degree). The build was already very tight on endurance use, and can only run two toggles at a time for anything to work out. And its a depreciating return, after 6-7 minutes the thing kind of gives out to exhaustion, or sacrifices its last toggle (Res Shield) to limp by for another minute. I ended up doing a multiple-purpose test with this revisit to the Time/Rad, both to try out Char/GFS, and also Enflame. I chose not to use GFS initially (gave it one whirl at the first run and it bottomed out my end halfway into a Pylon). I focused instead of just using Char as a replacement for Time Stop. Just cycling that attack in (PV > CB > Ch w/ XB on chain gaps), I was still looking at 7:30-8:30 minute times, Char wasn't dramatically doing anything different than Time Stop at that point. Past that I started tossing Enflame in to the mix with Posi Dam/Rech, Acc/Dam/End, +Dam, and Ann -Res. Still using the same cycle, I dropped to a consistent 5:20. It was eerily clock-work. Down to the second +/-, I was taking them down exactly. I also tried tossing Hybrid Assault Core in to see if that would change much, but I didn't get much for improvement, only about 20 seconds. This kind of makes sense though considering how much damage this is driving from procs, and those don't have any benefit from +Dam% effects. On GFS: I initially struggled with my first slotting on GFS (more damage focused), and it burned me out way too fast. Build is too fragile. Changed the slotting up for it eventually, but I passed on it for the time being because I was looking at adding an attack that drew more end that I was already struggling against. It definitely wasn't coexisting with Cosmic Burst, so taking that out meant I was basically not using any of Radiation at that point but Proton Volley, Char, and GFS pretty exclusively. I still cycled in X-Ray to get some triggers for Achilles and cover the ~.5/s gap I had. GFS is the longest animation out of the set, but is doing the same level of damage as Proton Volley, but at a lower DPS due to 1.33/s anim v. 2.5/s. My time to run a Pylon with this ability came in at 5:56. My first attempt I mentioned earlier, despite the mess it became, included GFS and after seeing how badly it was originally killing my end, I swapped over at about 40% health (which was almsot three and a half minutes in to that attempt) in to excluding GFS and finished that Pylon at 7:30. Between those two runs, I'm not seeing GFS as being a reasonable contender for ST focus. However! It does hit like a mean, mean truck as a straight burst attack with four damage procs in it when a target is heavily debuffed with -Res. Yeah, I loaded FOUR into that thing. Without -Res debuffs, that thing only spikes for ~334, up to ~530 under -72% Res Debuff. Cosmic Burst, however, I have hitting for ~280 standard, making it marginally better DPS. Test Results Are In! Char helped a little bit over using Time Stop slotting the same set of procs, but GFS was (in my opinion) a failure. its animation is a bit too long, and drags the kill time out a bit too far (nearly +40/s). The real winning gem here was Enflame. That simple addition of a flame-pet doing a base average of 9pts for 24 ticks (counted what popped into the log on the activation), and then triggering -12.5% Res Debuff (usually at cast) and then once or twice as follow up during its what I think is 20-30/s duration(?) was a huge push. I'm dead-locked into 5:20 for a Pylon Kill Time (still find that eerie). Still not as good as Dark/Dark/Psi though, but it does show an interesting tactic that could be picked up by other sets that need to stretch for more Debuff tools. It also gives Time a valid tool to work with to bring its times (aha) down. Tweaked "Final" Build. This is taking a few things in to consideration like the forced need for Clarion Radial which has a lower coverage window, so included Rune of Protection, had to wiggle some powers back into the build that I stripped for testing, and reoriented slots since I also took GFS back out. Going Psychic the shield gives Psi Res, and Rune's bump gives a decent across-the-board jump. Either way, doesn't really matter too much Char/FireShield or Dominate/MindShield

You're trying to compare two completely different scenarios. A team fighting an AV versus a team clearing mobs are not focused on the same concept. Of which, powers like Tar Patch and Freezing Rain have nothing to do with whether or not a player should include a low probability proc into a cone/pbaoe ability that will only impact one or two mobs out of a group of 10. There is absolutely no sense in talking about using that kind of an ability on an AV in the first place, so no it has no relevance in that context. I mean, if you want to grind Tenebrous Tentacles on auto-fire against an AV for the 20% chance that it might at some point give him a debuff versus using a much more significantly damaging ability, then... I guess? But trying to compare an AV fight against clearing groups of enemies... it's just not the same thing. But I feel like I'm just repeating myself... actually I am repeating my self at this point: Your Mileage Will Vary. Use whichever proc you find benefits your experience best.

The Logitech G600 Mouse was literally marketed directly to City of Heroes players as its primary user base when it first came out (2011 to early 2012ish). Originally retailed $70, can get it on Amazon right now for $30-35. Has 12 initial (properly positioned) thumb buttons with a "g-key" that instantly swaps them to an alt option when pressed, and another button that swaps the profile of the entire mouse to an alt profile of bind options. It's possible to have 48 trigger thumb buttons on the fly. It was designed for Macros/Binds for games like City of Heroes (which at the time was really the only major game that had that much flexibility). It's what I'm using currently actually, same one from the day they launched. I almost never click a power in my power tray.

The first version of the concept behind this thread was a Time/Rad Defender, so there's already a tested build. Worth mentioning that Time gets a lot of bang out of Power Boost or Power Build Up with Farsight (doubles the power and it sticks for the full 120/s). You touched on the biggest problem with -Regen. Time doesn't really have a stable/reliable outsource for -Regen in the build (not at a value that's beneficial enough to compensate for what it costs in DPS loss just to activate it). You can definitely make a Time/* Anything Defender (or Corruptor, really, and Controller, honestly) that can run around with 50%+ Defense to everything and Perma Chrono/Hasten with little effort, but there's just not a secondary it can pair with that can compensate for what it lacks in debuffs. Slowed Response is just not enough -Res, doesn't double on itself at all unlike most of the other Primary sets that have a similar power (Freezing Rain or Tar Patch both have a 10-15/s overlap possible). I tested it, and Bopper tested it, and I even tagged along for one of the Time/DP tests to toss Howling Twilight on a Pylon just so we could see the impact of -500% Regen benefiting Dual Pistols with similar proc-slotting to what Rad can do (plus Suppressive Fire can take the Hold sets, and hits for 500 damage). He still couldn't take a Pylon down as fast as I could with Dark/Dark/Psi. Without that -Regen, we weren't talking about "7 and a half minutes," but more like 10:00. Just -500% Regen cut the difference in half on a bad run, and better on a good run. What's a plus for Dark is that Howling has several other secondary effects so using it doesn't have just one singular purpose. As I said way early on, Time/* as a Proc Monster is functionally walking around as a standard decently performing Scrapper in the 200-250 DPS range. Small touching note on Darkest Night, for what it's worth too. That single power is the difference between my walking into a fight, and walking back out of it alive. It is effectively 22% of my "Defense." With so much given to filling voids with Procs to amplify damage potential, no room for those kinds of set bonuses. Having a group saturated in Darkest Night is what's getting me to 45% "Defense." If I can get a group entangled into Tenebrous/Torrent loop, then I can turn it off and take the group out that way, but it's kind of a necessary power depending on how you build and what teaming experience one is going for (like Solo, limited engagement, or full 50 High-Spec build team, as examples). What I originally said is still the main point, though. Removing a target from combat would be better over making them "slightly squishier." Either Hold it, or kill it. The -Res proc is still going to have the basic probability that the Hold proc did and only hit 1/5 the targets. For those two, if I just trade for a damage proc that has a higher chance to hit more targets, I'm more effectively dispersing damage. In a Solo scenario, this is even more significant a loss. I didn't run a huge amount of tests on it, but at 50, killing 45/46's to test odds, I was taking the mobs out in ~3 applications of Tenebrous. Hunting down some 53/54 Rikti, about 4, with two swipes of Torrent, took out most minions relatively quickly and whittled Lieuts to slivers of health, and then I just had to knock out a boss or two with my "ST Chain." And that was all without dropping Tar Patch before hand. I've been on enough break-neck speed 50 teams that -Res effects are the last thing they're focused on. The person who applied the fastest stack of damage is who's moving the group to the next spawn. It still stands as a YMMV choice. None of the options are necessarily a bad call, but there is a relevant order of importance and I'll stick by the fact that Damage procs are going to be at the top.

I am--officially--sick of testing Ill/Storm. I ran around with a build nearly identical to yours and I have to say I spent more time trying to just clear a Pylon in 1:30 than anything, and I was doing a lot of that without Phantasm, or letting him die early and saying "screw it" and moving on, just trying to get a baseline. The thing I did add differently was Ice Storm since it was something I could drop in two seconds right off the bat and get 400 points of "free" damage essentially, and there are plenty of lulls that make that reasonable. In the end I noticed a few things, some that I suspect are probably not working as intended. Arcane Bolt is hitting for double damage (it appeared to be no-matter-what). So the some-odd 100-110 damage we can see in Mid's, is applying twice, and not with a containment notifier or anything, just "This power hit for XXX damage" (but twice). I also feel like it was probably procing the FF+Rech more than it should've. I got into the habit of cycling it constantly and watching the proc ratio and seeing it spike up a lot after Arcane. (Question if this is WAI) - Edit in: Maxzero pointed something out that didn't occur to me: Pylon auto-containment. I test so very few Scrappers against a Pylon that containment didn't even occur to me. With all the proc bonuses spiking around on +Rech, I ended up at 187%, 197%, 287%, and 297%, from a base of 177%. Something that I'm apparently vastly missing, kept giving me +10% (doubling), and then I was getting the FF+Rech 100% on top of that altering value. I also spent a lot of time at 287%, and I can say that's a big contributor to whether Storm can get a better time. (Something broken there, honestly have no idea what was/is causing the oddity of +10/20%) I totally forgot about Ageless being active, duh moment for me. 🙂 Enflame pretty much has to be the first thing fired after Phantom Army, and then FR > T > LS Facing the Pylon, towards the top, dropping PA behind the Pylon, and then summoning Phantasm behind myself was the only way to keep the Phantasm in the fight longer. Without Phantasm present through the majority of the "fight," there's just no way to creep close to 60-75/s. He may die, but he is unfortunately far too pivotal to make it happen. If he dies before at least 30/s in, might as well restart. So T4 Degen Core, T4 Musculature Core, T4 Ageless Core, No Insp, No Temps Ageless activated in Advance, with Hasten. I summoned Phantom Army, which is 3.3/s, then Phantasm, which is 2.2, a collective of 5.5/s. So feel free to assume whether that should be "pre pull" or not, and then dropped Enflame -> Everything else. So if you want to include the 5.5/s, then my best time was 66/s, or 708 DPS. If we call some, or part of that "pre pull," then I'll say my time was 61/s, at 756 DPS.

Borrowed your build out of curiosity and went over to Test, swapped out Arcane Bolt for Poisonous Ray (and consequently the entire Epic) with similar slotting to see if the extra -18.75% would add anything of value. Turns out, no. In fact, I couldn't really get a time close to 1:13 in general despite the fact I even added a pet to the equation (Tarantula). Only thing I walked away with was a pretty consistent time window. Only thing I really noticed was that if I walked into the Pylon pre-loaded with all the pets in tow, it was marginally faster than summoning the Army at the Pylon. Basically, start the timer the moment I swooped in and hit Freezing Rain, versus PA and then Rain. Followed the same principle of FR > T > LS. Times: 1:51 - 473 - Figuring it out 1:34 - 535 1:33 - 540 1:20 - 607 - Swooped In (relatively close to the previous Pylon, was kinda just sweeping the zone) 1:28 - 563 1:30 - 553 Average DPS of 559, average time of 1:29 I did periodically summon Phantasm and Tarantula back into the fray when I had a 3/s window to do so, but didn't make a concerted effort on their survival. At least two Pylon times I didn't bother summoning him at all (:34 and :33). The 1:20 time was the only abnormality, and incidentally was also one that the pets got Nuked by the Dropship about 30/s in, so anything that wasn't Army still alive, wasn't wiped out. Lucky me for being above the AoE apparently, as I completely avoided it somehow (is auto-hit).

I was going to try and break things down in bullet points to answer along, but a lot of those questions end up having cross-over answers, so here we go: Dark Blast kind of has to be in the build because there's not enough global recharge present to have Gloom fire off more often, nor bring Dominate down to a more reliable chain. Ideally I'd want something like Gloom > MB > Dom to be as consistent as I can, but Dominate has a 6/s recharge and all of my attacks animate relatively fast (1.188 or 1.32 w/ Arcanatime). The best choice would be having Gloom come down to 2/s (or at least >2.4) so I could cycle it right after MB > D, and end up with ( G > MB > D > G > DB > MB > G > D > DB > G > MB > DB ) Anyway, you can see how that gets stupid confusing trying to time and know exactly where and when to drop which abilities. That's not a chain, that's a roulette wheel of "who's on first." Plus, my current recharge is still off from that, so I really have to have DB filling in for G and MB having 3-3.75/s recharges. And if I'm going to use the power, I want to keep it proc'd up because that's the only way I'm going to eek out extra damage from it. Your suggestions for Fearsome and Servant are legit thoughts. I put Basilisk in Servant for 7.5% over 6.25%. In a solo-stand off, I'm not 100% certain on how alive he's going to keep himself in a rather aggressive-attacking build. Originally I wasn't even going to put anything other than an Acc IO in him until I found three slots to get the global recharge. Swapping to Clouded Sense isn't a dramatic loss (1/s on Hasten, and only .01/s on any of the attacks). So if the proc is going to validate his use enough, more power to him using it. Another reason I'm not really hellbent on making Fearsome any better is that it still has a fairly long cooldown (even with enhancement), so relying on it for damage isn't a priority, although if the slots were freely available, it'd definitely be worth the double-proc. Side note on Fearsome for damage versus just Tenebrous and Torrent: Torrent is packing the FF +Rech, and so long as there's 5-10 in the cone, I'm very likely going to Proc, which fairly quickly snaps Teneb back into business, and keeps Torrent on a 4/s recharge, meaning I can pretty much put it on auto-fire, keep the mob count high enough, and sit at +100% boosted recharge. That sits and KD's everything in the path, and Teneb keeps them from wandering out of my cone while slowly whittling down. It isn't the fastest AoE in the West, but it does alright. For the Gravitational Anchor, like I said before, that's very much a YMMV kind of proc. In 5-10 mob groupings I got pretty consistent expectations of 20% trigger. If I didn't immediately see something get held, it was safe to assume it was probably a Lieut or Boss that got the triggers and if I spammed again, and also target them with Dominate, I was likely going to lock them into a Hold. If I were going to suggest swapping that out for any other kind of proc, it would be for another damage one (like Posi). Annihilation -Res just isn't going to bring anything significant to the power that just having the mob tossed over a Tar Patch wouldn't already be effecting everyone, instead of just 1 or 2 in a 10 pack. Random damage is better than the random chance for slightly more damage than normal, but not as much as random pure damage. Savy? As for the Decimation +BU... yeah I think I've seen that thing go off like once so far, in total, across any given 4:00-5:00 minute run against a Pylon. Sadly, I don't really have a better choice other than maybe Entropic's +Heal or stripping the Apocalypse proc out of Moonbeam and moving it to Gloom. I even considered straight dropping the entire set (5pcs) into Gloom with an extra proc, and loading up Moonbeam, but no matter which configuration I came up with, Moonbeam was always the better damage by a reasonably solid margin (40-60+ damage). The only thing I could really do otherwise would be to mix them up and test them, but Apocalypse is also pulling Moonbeam's recharge down into the >4/s range, and it kinda need to be there. If I took Apocalypse out of Moonbeam and gave it optimal slotting (56% Rech to bring it down enough) and three procs, it still only has a potential of 410 damage which is 20 points lower than the alternative; if Gloom has the Apoc set, it only bumps 10 points on probability meaning I'm a net loss of 10 damage between the two attacks versus just leaving them as is and doing more damage at a slightly unfortunate slotting loss. What I think I might ultimately do is put the Overwhelming KD Proc in Gloom instead. Bump its damage a hair and then give it a utility KD. Better than not doing anything at all. This forum system is weird about trying to add quotes into edits. Didn't want to create a whole new post just to make this comment: Consume wouldn't be a bad addition in the particular case of Dark/Dark since it helps alleviate endurance woes that the build sort-of suffers. Would give it the chance to take Clarion instead of Ageless, but at the same time it really thrives on the better attack chain timings at the front portion of Ageless. Sort of comes down to a ST Performance v. General Play preference.

I have to ask, are you bothering with Phantasm in this scenario? Given his tendencies, and how much I see it get brought up lately about how suicidal he is, is this time attempting to use him, or did you potentially just scrap using him altogether?

I've gotten rather use to the tactic of "If you're all too busy running for your lives, you wont have time to stop me!" This, however, comes with enough time and experience on how to utilize/maximize Storm to your benefit to be able to really pull off. It's not a "flawless" approach by any means. Learning and understanding the set, along with what Hjarki and Obitus pointed out, are key elements. But in its simplest form if I go into a mob under stealth, and Gale them into a corner, block them in with Tornado, and drop Freezing Rain, that entire mob is going to spend its entirety KD/KB and running in Fear to get out of the Rain patch. Will they attack me? Some will try, many will fail. I'm running around on an underslotted/not-yet-50 build and even when I'm teaming with a Melee, I'm still rushing to get into the next mob to lay down the maximum amount of chaos I can. Office buildings are some of the best maps to be in since I can corner and pin things so easily it's ridiculous, and the Melee might get that initial run-in before me, but my primary goal has been trying to clump things faster, before they get there, so they don't have to run after them (albeit it is only once before they're pinned down). In the event that any mezzes slip through, I'm carrying half a tray of Break Frees to shrug it off and keep moving, and the other half is Blues cause Storm has a serious case of asthma. TL;DR: Storm is the mez protection.

Since it keeps coming up and no one's walked into the Barber Shop to get their haircut, I went ahead and pulled up my Robotics/Kin. Now Robotics only gets one damage proc to work with (Explosive Strike), but I think just having the one is going to be relevant to the point being brought up. With full upgrades, Battle Drones has four attacks. Full Auto, Heavy Burst, Smash, Laser Burst. Heavy Burst is the only ability they carry that can trigger the proc (only KB component attack). I ran a four minute test with only first tier upgrade (to give Heavy Burst), and counted how many times it showed up; 25 in total with a success rate of generally 2/3's to 7/8's. With its base recharge at 8/s, and an animation time of 3.3, that power gets really close to max probability, so that's good. The bigger question comes down to "How often?" Watching, logging the pattern, the Bots AI favors Full Auto, but that power has a 16/s cool-down, incidentally so does Smash, however Heavy Burst, when Full Auto was down, was the favored attack and if that ability was up, the Bot AI would cycle it in as often as possible. That became two activations per cycle, typically going into combat with Full Auto > Heavy Burst > Laser Burst > Smash > Heavy Burst > Laser Burst > Laser Burst > Heavy Burst > Full Auto > Laser Burst > Heavy Burst > Laser Burst > Smash > Heavy Burst > Laser Burst > Laser Burst (Repeat). The AI isn't smart enough to understand optimal attack chains, obviously, so it was just looking for quick-checks on what was available as the "best option." Sometimes nothing was available and there's a delay in its processing. There are three of these guys after all trying to figure out the same math problem over and over again. But for 42/s I got about 5 hits of Heavy Burst out of 16 attacks, or about ~30% of my output, which at the high end of that was 88% bonus proc damage. Or +62 per Heavy Burst. Or +7.75 DPS averaged out per Battle Drone. So take that value for what it's worth. MM pets are already a pain to effectively slot for between the +Def, +Res, and just packing enough +Acc/Dam to make them actually hit okay in the first place. If one slot might make the different of 23 DPS, I might consider that worth it if I don't need the trade off of the other status unique pieces.

Cross noting it since I linked to this thread from "Proc Monsters" Figured I'd post the run I came through with. Definitely reliant on some additional testing, but Dark/Dark/Psi Defender on a Proc-Focused build. T4 Core Degen, Ageless, Assault (not activated), T4 Radial Intuition done over on the Test Server. Primary focus was on Gloom > Moonbeam > Dominate with Dark Blast splashed into gaps. Ageless helps keep things cleaner at the beginning, and then they get a bit muddy towards the end. There were some trial-and-error attempts, and one run I had to throw out for technicality of another player boosting my Recharge. The solid, unquestioned and best attempt was 4:02 (286 DPS) Need to get timing down, and figure out the pattern for where Dark Blast best fits in so I'm not fuddling around as badly.

Spent the night on the Test Server after spending the evening mulling over how to make Dark Miasma work as a Proc Monster. Time Manipulation is definitely the best for just "Click and Go." As Bopper pointed out, we had the same basic premise there, even with Time (PB/PBU+Farsight makes the build sing a sweet tune of easy-peasy). Incidentally, I ran into our fellow Proc Tester on Test tonight, and we had an opportunity to do one thing that I had wanted to do with my Time/Rad and couldn't. Give it some -Regen to play with. I'll leave that discussion up to Bopper since they were driving the Time/DP that I provided Howling Twilight for. That test carries a lot of its own weight, and I saw the pre-HT attempt too. The simplest thing for me to say is that yes, it did make a difference. For me, my goals otherwise tonight were entirely bent around testing Dark Miasma/Dark Blast/Psychic Mastery in all its Proc-loriousness. On tonight's docket: Tenebrous Tentacles and Torrent as Proc Vehicles Impact of Howling Twilight's -500% Regen General Survivability not being Softcapped Can I kill an AV level target? And for those playing along, I'll have the build posted at the bottom for reference 🙂 Tenebrous and Torrent Plenty of effort burned on these topics tonight. Some things I trialed with Tenebrous was, of course, effectiveness of Procs in the power, but more specifically I wanted to know how Gravitational Anchor's +Hold would pan out in the cone. We know that, after a certain point, Procs become pretty much "guaranteed" in ST attacks, but cones and AoE's have an area multiplier that fiddles with that a bit. So for Teneb T's, my final conclusion after chasing 10-drop after 10-drop Malta mobs in the RWZ (about 20 in total) plus a few half dozen Rikti mobs right before that weren't clumped enough that I looked for Malta: 2 out of 10, so 1/5, or 20% success rate. Some things to keep in mind though, these Malta spawns had Lieuts and Bosses (two each boss on average), and the +Hold Proc is only a 3.5 PPM with a Mag 2. If it "hit" on a Boss, or a decently resisting Lieut, the effect wont show, which I could attribute to the fact that I was consequently getting follow-up stacks to hold Boss levels and only attacking with Teneb T's to validate that fact. If I had four or fewer mobs in a given cluster, the likelihood of seeing a hold was pretty much null. Food for thought on that one. I saw the damage procs fire off in those larger clusters pretty consistently on something in the group, but the +Hold, much lower opportunity there. And I just realized, typing this, that I forgot to pull the combat log to go back over it later. I never converted the log into my chat tab so it'd auto-log. Kind of kicking myself on that right now. Either way, YMMV kind of concept of the status-based procs there. Being able to fairly-consistently take one or two targets out of given mob size was pretty decent, and up to the discretion of the player. In a team setting things will probably mow-down faster than that proc really matters, but I'm more looking at these as Solo or small-team minded. Which reminds me... Bopper, while we teamed up, we unintentionally cost ourselves -10% Damage Bonus 🤣 There's a laugh for all of you out there on that one. Torrent! So, I dropped a FF+Rech into Torrent. Tested it a ton to see what kind of ratio I'd get. The probability was something like 19.##% (Bopper did the math, I'm just vaguely recalling). So long as I had 4-5 targets in the cone (kinda just like Teneb), I was getting the proc. The fun part was the fact that so long as I had enough targets in my cone, and they didn't die, I could basically put Torrent on Auto-Fire and sit at 262.5% Global Rech. That wasn't 100% of the time, but I got it to finally occur a few times after I started amping up the cone-count. I have ZERO recharge enhancement in that power too, which helps the odds considering it starts at 15/s recharge and my global brings it down to 5/s. Honestly it kind of felt like I was fast-forwarding a VHS. Torrent-Torrent-Torrent-Torrent-Aaargh. All of my other powers were just crazily sucking up that bonus recharge on one attack cycling over and over until the Rikti started dying and I had to find a new group to play with. Howling Twilight The impact of -Regen was 100% exactly what I expected. I went from doing "decent to eh" damage, to suddenly tearing through a Pylon. For those who haven't ventured into the Rikti Pylon Thread in the Scrapper sub-forum, most of your "good" times tend to be anything that can mange to go 3:00-5:00. Your power playing builds that get those "great" times are 2:00-3:00, and your "that's broken" builds will get 1:00-1:59. Anything that crests beyond 5:00 into 8:00 is just "Decent" and anything further than 8:00+ "Eh." For a Defender, typically we were looking at "Eh" or worse. Some cases could get into "Decent" and some, like those that use Storm and its massive push in damage, can get somewhere in the "good", occasionally "great" times. This is also all a bit subjective for grouping. As I kind of said before, what I classed as "Scrapper" level damage, for sets that don't bend a lot of -Res or other debuffs (in some fashion) within their builds or a significant spike in +Damage options, a typical Scrapper DPS is going to put them somewhere in the 200-250 range, which pits them at clearing a Pylong around 7:00-10:00 minutes (roughly, I'm not looking a spreadsheet or anything). For the elephant in the room on this change in pace, I did go from Time/Rad to Dark/Dark, but in the Time build I was still carrying the potential to leverage -50% Res, as a trade off Dark gave me -30% with a double-stack of ~10/s every 30 for -60%. This is likely a bit of a net gain overall, and is great on a Pylon, but keeping an AV in a patch is notoriously difficult, so that is what it is. In the end, -Regen is still the real key here. Without that I definitely couldn't achieve the speed I did. Of which, current best time on a Pylon with Dark/Dark is 4:02, beats the 9:00-10:00 marks I was looking at before with Time/Rad General Survival I went out and chased 53/54 Rikti down. Not having a solid 45% to [/i]anything[/i] kind of sucks, but if I can keep the surprise attack on each group and get Darkest Night dropped into a mob, I'm virtually there at that point, and then I can easily control them between Fear, Tenebrous, and Torrent until I whittle down to just Bosses, and then Dominate, Gloom, and Moonbeam tear them apart in a very quick hurry. I have to be a lot more careful than normal, but in the event of teaming, even with just one person that brings some +Defense in, the build doesn't need much to hit soft-cap to all. In team environments, this build will kind of just swim along at Shark speeds. I do miss out heavily on not having any mez protection in this thing. The build chugs endurance, and while I can get by for an okay amount of time not using it, Ageless is kind of a necessary safety net. I'll have to go back and look at it more closely because I didn't entirely monitor my end, I just know with Ageless up I didn't hit empty, and when I wasn't using Ageless during my Teneb testing, I did at one point drop to zero. Given we're talking about relying on an Incarnate ability though, that's pretty much only an end-game concern, and Blues and +End Temps will easily stopgap all the early levels for Exemping. Can I kill an AV? Oh yeah, handily, just as any circumstance, so long as I can keep the AV in one relative spot and get a second Tar Patch down, they're not going to moving far very fast. My attack chain is kind of all-over the place, and I'm sure a more consistent one might prove best, but I was bouncing Gloom > Moonbeam > Dominate with Dark Blast splashed throughout here-and-there. In early Ageless I can run G > MB > D > G > MB > DB, but after a certain point Gloom goes back to its 3/s rech and I have to either be doing something else in that lull between it and Dominate, or drop Dark Blast in there. Given procs in sub 4/s base rech attacks seem to be low-to-no odds on average, I maximized damage in the ability and dropped two procs and couldn't spare a last slot in the power that isn't being used that often. It has enough damage to make sure i'm not doing "zero" in those 1/s gaps, but isn't good enough for anything else. Even though Gloom is considered a great power in itself, my real winners were Moonbeam and Dominate. Under -60% Res, Dominate was crushing it. I forgot to write down the exact value, but ballpark was 500-525 damage in one hit. Perspective on that, the "Dominate" part of that power was about 100pts. Unbreakable Constraints hit for 137 pts, and standard procs were hitting for 91-96 pts. Those have inherent values of 107 and 71.75 respectively. The procs in that ability are just insane and accounting for 80% of its damage output. Given all of the above, I feel like Traps, despite the fragility of the traps themselves, would perform at this level while also having a "more stable" defensive option in FFG's bubble (with Mez protection!). Poison Trap and Acid Mortar provide the same level of debuff (actually more in Poison Trap) that Dark Miasma benefits from. Radiation would definitely be in the "End Hog" category, but I think Rad/Dark would also prove to be pretty strong with AM helping to alleviate some of the endurance concerns, and giving that small push on +Rech to possibly bring Gloom down to 2/s recharge and boost its up-time. tl;dr What's the Build!? Dark Miasma/Dark Blast/Psychic Mastery I also put together a Water variant that should perform just about identical to the Dark Blast variant:

I feel like it sort of became this weird wild-fire effect of a few people talking about it and now it's just bouncing around everywhere in regards to the PPM changes and how they impact the game. A few of us have already been investigating this alteration and the impact that it carries, and been spending a lot of time testing those theories. I decided to start this thread in regards to a very specific test slash goal I had that spurred from discussions in the Storm thread (didn't want to derail that thread's purpose). So my current hunt, experiment, goal, desire, scientific need to destroy things in obscene matters is: Turn Defenders into Monsters. The "new" PPM formula that Bopper started testing has an interesting note that it does not take Global Recharge into account for variables in the proc chances. If a player can build enough global to bring a reasonable attack chain into functional use, we can avoid slotting recharge at all, improving the chance by just that slight bit more. Essentially the desire is to get as close to max probability as possible. The higher to 90% probability per-attack, the more virtual damage is going to be done. For those playing the home-game, Mid's (Pine's, Homecoming Reborn, whatever version you want to call it) has a relatively accurate algorithm already (only Purple procs seem to be slightly under-estimated and I did not validate all of the AoE attack values as that's less relevant to my plan) so you can use this for the "easy maths." My initial purview of this plan was to come up with what I figured should/would be the best suited build to pull this off, and of course what AT. I chose Defenders because of their higher buff/debuff values. They would get the most bang-for-buck out of abilities like Tough, Weave, and Maneuvers when trying to fill-in holes within a build since I won't be able to rely on any of my attacks for set bonuses (they'll be proc-filled). Of all the Primary sets for Defenders, Time looked like the best place to start. It has Farsight, which will soft-cap me to everything, gives me access to a ton of Global Recharge, and has a nice quick-click -Res ability that I wont have to target and drop, or deal with end management on a toggle. For secondary blast sets, there are a few that have some nice secondary effects, but the biggest thing I want/need to pull off is maximizing proc-loads. More procs mean more damage, and that's the whole point of this experiment. I considered Psychic Blast since it has some variety in the effects within the blast set (sleep, immobs) and the more exotic damage type, but most of those extra effects don't come with damage procs (only Immob sets). I did put a build together, but it ultimately got swapped for Radiation Blast. Rad has -Def component which comes with the ability to grab -Res and +Dam procs (several). My hope was at least three procs per power, and then I could bend the last three slots on Accuracy and Damage enhancement. For an Alpha, also used Intuition Radial to get the extended Damage enhancement, and to help boost some of the lingering other effects, and add a bit more range to all my attacks. This is the build I landed on: I carries a ridiculous amount of global recharge, a solid amount of damage (plus Vigilance solo). I went out and started swinging down on some Pylons in the Rikti War Zone to try and get a metric on my proc-ability, and whether this thing could dish out the kind of damage needed to kill a hypothetical AV. First thing I discovered is that Neutrino Bolt will basically never fire off Achilles Heel, or proc with consistency. The attack is apparently so dramatically low in base recharge and animation that the game just kinda forgets to give it a bone or two. I ended up swapping over to X-Ray Beam (because I didn't have a choice at that point) and got all my sweet procs in line. In the end, however, it still took me ten minutes to effectively take down a Pylon. Procs all went off as expected with relative consistency (2/3, sometimes 3/3, occasionally only 1), had cycles with PBU and Aim that got me so close to the Defender damage cap it was crazy, kept a solid amount of -50% res on the Pylon, but ultimately I needed more (like -Regen) to get the ball rolling faster. I took a Defender from Team Support to Mid-Level Scrapper, but Time Manipulation may have been playing it too safe, too easy. After a certain point there's only so much I need Global to bring down most Blasts, and with Procs I'm easily fixing the validity of "DPA" on one's that might not normally be taken. I also looked at what I might gain by not being forced into Power Mastery for PBU, and that landed on Dominate. Dominate has a ton of proc options and can be reduced to a fairly decent time with just global reduction, so I shifted my Epic over to that direction, and am now looking at what alternatives to focus on for Primary. Current Primary considerations I'm manipulating builds for: Traps: Gives me -Res, -1,000% Regen, FFG for +Def and +Mez protection. Downside of this set is that all of those traps are susceptible to destruction. Plus I have played Traps in the past, and I dislike repeating sets without very apparent need, or an immense amount of joy for the set. Poison: -Res ST, and -Res toggle, -Regen in Poison Trap, gives me the two key components from Traps set, and the -Regen I know is going to be necessary here, but I'd only be taking four out of the nine powers functionally, with one or two being "because I had to." I feel like the rest of that set has almost no intrinsic value in the game anymore (or really in the first place), and the heal is only a ST. The set also does no favors for giving me global recharge, or making it easier to get there, and has no defensive benefits. Cold Domination: -Res, some -Regen, a recovery tool. Lacks +Rech and Arctic Air is selective in its defensive grants. Thermal is basically this same thing but with a Heal instead. Radiation: The toggles concern me for endurance, even with Accelerated Metabolism giving a small boost to +Rech and +End, I'm not convinced that I wouldn't need Ageless to make this viable. The -ToHit components in the abilities to make it so that being at 28-30% Defense is okay as the heavy -ToHit will compensate and give me a virtual safety net of "45%." Kinetics: Lots of +Rech and +Dam, but no bend towards survival, and I was already finding a lot of ways to ride higher +Dam totals, and Defenders don't have a high ceiling. Plus, Procs don't get any advantage from the +Dam and I'm not really focused on how effectively I can Fireball a group of minions as I am dealing a lot of ST damage in a fast hurry. Typical pairing is Fire/Kin for Corrs, but again loosing out on some of the other survival tools, and Kin is just Brute-Force damage at that point, and I already can do that with any of the sets now (thanks to the Proc setup) so this isn't proving anything relevant now. Dark Miasma: This is strangely where I'm landing currently in my plans. If it proves to be more successful than Time Manipulation did (in speed-to-kill), then I'll basically consider it the optimal choice. Shadow Fall gives me a blanket of added defense utility, Howling Twilight packs a solid -1,000% Regen, Twilight is AoE Heal on me (with another -50% Regen!), Tar Patch gives me -Res, and Darkest Night will give me my offset -ToHit for added survivability. Some thoughts I've given on alternative Blast Sets: Dual Pistols: Gives me access to -Def as well, but is considered one of the lower-value inherent damage sets and only comes "in line" with Procs, which is "eh" concern to begin with. Sonic: Gives -Res, but...that's it. Doesn't have a wide Proc option. Dark Blast: Access to the -ToHit procs, can turn Petrifying Gaze into a 203pt Attack Hold which makes it nearly as strong as Life Drain, Torrent gives me access to at least one FF +Rech (and another proc). I may have initially underestimated this set. Water Blast: Dehydrate gets a few good options, and the multiple AoE's can all carry FF+Rech for some fun there in improving overall global. Might be just enough combinations available to get 3 damage procs in every ST attack. Ice Blast: Needs a lot of global recharge to get its fast animating attacks down low enough without internal recharge (IB, FR, and BiB). Would work really well with Time for the global, but the remaining AoE's in this set have zero partnership with procs (Rain effects don't appear to proc currently, at all). So it might pull off ST, it doesn't get the "all around" Proc Monster utility. So I think what I'm going to look at next is Dark Miasma with either Dark Blast or Water Blast. Both blast sets should have a similar slotting ability. Water will have access to manipulating its global recharge, whereas Dark will have some interesting effects with its control abilities, and the possibility of turning Tenebrous Tentacles into a cone hold. Edit: Adding a couple of alternative builds I has already started putting together before I decided to write all this up as a full-on post. Both built in Pines 2.23, so wont load in older Mid's. Rad/Psi/Psi: Traps/Rad/Psi And just because it was in the initial experiment: Time/Psi/Power: Updated Build List These will be a collective of the builds experimented with, updated accordingly, and also a catalogue of builds put together based on the research performed here (and/or collectively) in regards to Procs and improving this concept for others. This is the cumulative result of all the experimentation done through the thread to make it simpler to refer back to the final results, and also give newly interested folks a library to look through. Of Primary sets, Time, Traps, and Dark Miasma are the best suited for survival and providing proc synergy space for the blast set. Storm can be patched up for some moderate safety, and is the most offensive option, and also has its own proc-focused utilities as well. Radiation can mimic a lot of what Dark Miasma can, so should be fairly similar, but likely skips a chunk of its abilities and doesn't have a built-in +Def utility that is kind of needed to help shore-up defenses (trade off with +Rech instead). Of Secondary sets, Dark Blast is probably the best suited, with Water Blast, Dual Pistols, Assault Rifle following up. The reason I see Dark as being optimal is because of carrying an Immobilize. That's huge in helping contain and manage spawns for many of the associated Primaries. Water has a ton of general AoE, so in the realm of something more Farm-Focused, this would be a good direction. Dual and AR have a good assortment of access to extra Debuff utility. Depending on the Primary, these can be an added boost if those procs aren't available. Ice Blast would be a nice follow-up contender since it has several high-yield ST attacks that can pack a lot of procs (more than normal), but its AoE's are Rains that have no appreciable proc value and end up more as mule sets. Psychic Blast, just because I did build a few things around it, also has at least a 2-proc minimum and an exotic damage type in its favor. Psychic is also the one other set that's more favored towards ST damage with 3-4 useful attacks (optimal chain of PL > TB > WD > Dom/Char), but it looses out on AoE with only having Psionic Tornado as a good Proc tool and Ice Blast still has the stronger chain. Honorable Mentions: Trick Arrow and Archery. Trick Arrow actually has an assortment of solid options, Ice Arrow easily can serve as Char/Dominate (or even pair with them) if someone wanted to go that path, but not many people like flipping between a weapon set and something else constantly, so these two are likely stuck together for most. Not a bad thing though because (in my opinion) this is actually a pretty fun and decently strong match up. It's definitely not the fastest/strongest option, but it will definitely get the job done. Stuck with Scorpion Shield for S/L/E Defense alone, no other reasonable source of survival and the Primary/Secondary don't have any +Def or wiggle room at all for non-proc slotting choices. Incidentally, this is probably the most flexible Proc Monster besides that. It's the only one that doesn't absolutely have to take Hasten as all of its abilities are fairly quick, Hasten just makes things happen a bit faster. From an AoE perspective, I'd probably say this set has Water beat, just out of pure options. Acid Arrow, Oil Slick (Lit), Explosive Arrow, Fistful of Arrows, Rain of Arrows... it gets pretty insane. Storm/Dark/Mace: Kinetics/Ice Blast/Mace Dark Miasma/Dark Blast/Psi Dark Miasma/Water Blast/Psi Radiation/Psi/Psi Time/Psi/Soul Time/Rad/Psi Time/Dark/Power Traps/Water/Psi Trick Arrow/Archery/Mace Poison/Dark/Mace Update 04/03/20 Patch update with information about Electrical Affinity (new set). Link Here to the specific post in the thread.

I got hellbent, slash am hellbent, on trying to turn a Defender into what I'm classifying as a "Proc Monster." However I have so-far been somewhat disappointed with my research. Don't get me wrong, the idea 100% works, just that it doesn't end up bringing a Defender into a realistic playing field with the "big boys." I put together a Time/Rad/Power with 65.8% +Dam between bonuses and Assault. BU Proc in Aim (up every 25/s), Power Build Up (technically for Farsight boosting, but still in the cycle). 191.25% Global Recharge. It still took me 10 minutes to take down a Pylon. With all T4 Incarnates (and activating Hybrid, but no Lore pet, which is kind of obvious). And this was on Test, so even included the "altered" Snipe which I included in the attack chain. And it worked. I proc'd like a madman on all my attacks, everything was throwing out damage that just shouldn't exist on a Defender, but at that point I was just bringing myself up to a mediocre Scrapper's level of performance.

Posted this in another spot, but I'll add it here too: Irradiated Ground (which it sounds like Enflame is doing basically the same principle effect) drops a pseud-pet patch on the ground. The power itself is a toggle, the toggle is a trigger into (every 5/s) dropping the pet in the current position of the character. When I tested Fury of the Gladiator -Res proc in this ability against a Pylon, through watching with a Power Analyzer, I could see it hit and apply the debuff regularly. Any time there may have been a gap I often only caught it for 5/s (basically until the next trigger). I cannot confirm the regularity of this application, however, because the duration of the debuff overlaps greater than the amount of triggers I have, and the combat logs don't show anything for it.

At +4 content, Cinders (specifically) has a 43% Accuracy. There's a lot of +Acc bonuses that people trip over in their builds by the time they get to 50. +30-40% is pretty easy to obtain. I popped open a build that didn't plan for it that has Fire Control already. Dropped Cinders into the build and all I had to do was give it one Acc IO to hit 95% (from 43%) between global bonuses, and just base-line Tactics. If you have enhanced Tactics, it's even less needed. Just to give an example on recharge as well, my Fire/FF doesn't have Hasten, and is only bending global bonuses with 61.25%. If I put just the Acc/Rech from Unbreakable Constraints (which'll also get me 4% recovery since I'd use that proc), Cinders sits at 123/s. That build uses Agility and when I toggle that Alpha on, it pulls Cinders down to 105/s. The base recharge is so high on that power that there's not a lot you could really do that wont keep it at max probability to proc. 105/s is also somewhat tolerable for a mini nuke. This scenario is still not optimal, just a way of trying to make a poor power be more relevant in the current state of the game.