Doomguide2005

See the HCwiki article entitled "Enhancement Set Bonuses". Goes into detail. Same article containing information about the Rule of Five. There are 7 colors linked to 7 different descriptors from Tiny to Ultimate. Gargantuan is the 6th while Ultimate is the largest, i.e. 7th. Each is paired to a multiplier of a base value (which is the 1st descriptor, Tiny) for a given aspect (Accuracy, Recharge, etc.) of an enhancement.

Two major things (at least) are at play here I think. First there are a lot more players with characters at or near the soft caps. Second there are and always have been a lot of defdebuffs among various foe groups. The overall increase in characters with higher if not capped defenses has led to a greater expectation of "I will hardly be hit". Before players more less expected to get hit and rarely noticed cascade failure if when it occurred. Blasters were 'glass' cannons. Now those glass cannons are soloing up lvl large mobs with the not unreasonable expectation of not being hit. But that has also led to cascade failure being much more noticeable and remembered when it occurs owing to the prevalence of defdebuff attacks that really been there all along. This not to say Devs haven't spiced things up a bit or auto hit attacks aren't a thing but it does make me wondered how many of the auto hits are masquerading as cascade failure induced by previous attacks. Certainly would explain at least some of why my SR main rarely notices "auto hit" attacks in any significant frequency.

Those mobs (certain Rularuu) specifically have a large bonus to their To Hit ... large as in would make 4* Hard Mode small. It's +100% as memory serves me, they also ignore Stealth. Likewise DE eminators give off various buffs to DE in range and again one of those is a brutally large +100% to hit. If I recall right that one is a 'Quartz' and dropped by Guardian DE. Kill them asap or move drawing the DE out of the buff. Or invite a couple Force Field Defenders with Power Boost or Power Build Up to buff the daylights out of you. Cimerorans probably are stacking some not insignificant defdebuffs which with no or small DDR can rapidly induce cascade defense failure in a character. PS: Players are not limited to +45% defense hence the term soft cap or Incarnate cap. The actual hard cap is ~175% or better and based on AT (Tankers sit around 225%). Some auto hit powers are in the game to promote not just standing in place and pounding such as Super Stunners. Move away let ranged attackers finish them or use a ranged attack yourself (epics, temp powers, vet powers etc.). Many, many hours on SR tell me there's really not that many troublesome mobs and most can be dealt with via thought, situational awareness and preparation.

Empathy A buff and healing primary requiring no targetable foes to function. I think it really shines on small teams (under 6) and or lower levels. Most of my builds spend a lot of time exemplared to lower levels running TFs. Healing Aura: The t1 healing PBAoE power and sole power capable of healing the Empath (plus the potential buff from Regeneration Aura). I'll typically use either 5 or 6 slots focused on Healing sets with recharge set bonus. Doctored Wounds or Panacea in 5 slots or Preventative Medicine in 6 slots is typical while building for a teaming Empath build. Heal Other: The t2 single target heal power it is unable to be used on the casting Empath. It heals roughly twice the health of the t1. Usually I'll slot this with the alternate number of slots I used on HA. If HA got 6 this will get 5 or if it was 5 I'll give it 6, again slotting for Healing set for a recharge bonuses. Absorb Pain: The t3 heal. Overall I consider this a trap choice and almost never take the power on any build particularly for a high end, high recharge endgame build. This is largely owing to the intersection of playstyle and the powers drawbacks being a bit severe compared to what is necessary in the vast majority of game play. My playstyle is typically that of an "offender", a defender who slots and more importantly uses their secondary blasts. As such particularly with a blast set with PBAoE attacks can draw aggro which brings us to the second reason, the drawbacks to the power. It pretty much prevents you from being healed not a good thing if you are drawing aggro. Last the amount healed while large is rarely going to make or break the difference between life or death of your targeted ally when compared to rapidly spamming HO/HA back to back as needed a cycle time of right around 4 sec to fire back to back. But that is the one advantage of AP it is a very large heal to hit someone with if a second very large damage spike is likely to follow typically by an endgame AV. If I did grab the power I'd probably either slot a Heal set with recharge in mind or 2 slot it with 50+5 Heal IOs. Resurrect: The second power and t4 Resurrect I rarely take. In this case there's nothing particularly wrong with the power there are just so many alternate ways to get someone back up and in play that the power choice is easily wasted. There's crafting or carry Awakens (which as I understand, it can still be done during even 4* hard mode play when most inspires are disabled), various self rezzes and just about every other defender with a rez power the Rez offers more buffs to either the targeted dead ally and/or the caster than the very plain generic Rez of Empathy. Instead I stand ready to remove any stun, use a Fort, Heal as needed or even use my blasts to drop or neutralize their attackers. When taken Ill slot with a single endurance IO as the high end cost might be tough to come up with the end despite Vigilance if its been a tough long battle as Murphy always seems to pop up right about then. Recharge is not really going to do much given the lengthy cooldown teams typically wont wait for you rez to recharge repeatedly and well range is a bit silly to enhance while working off a base 15ft range. Clear Mind: Almost always take and use this t5 wide coverage single target mez protection as a one slot wonder. Typically I slot with a Range IO to get that one guy who always seems to get in trouble waaay over there. But it truly doesn't matter 99.99+% of the time what sits in the slot. There is some debate if this power is worth taking/having available in the endgame as between Clarion, Hybrid, defense amplifiers, other Defender powers and a tendency for players to have high if not soft capped defense avoiding mez altogether in the process. In turn this makes some consider it skippable (somewhat the way I consider Resurrect skippable I suppose). I see it through the eyes of someone who exemplars frequently running into characters even armored melee characters who still lack their mez protection or like Practice Brawler can have gaps in uptime. I also want everyone to enjoy teaming and as someone who plays a lot of support characters it can be frustrating to be standing around due to getting mezzed watching everyone else play ... even when or if most of us are individually not "necessary" to the overall teams survival and success on a lvl 50+ team. Fortitude: The t6 is a single target buff and one of the premiere buffs in Empathy. I'd immediately suspect some weird off the wall build if a character didn't include this power fairly early on. Almost without exception I'll take it at 12th and drop my lvl 13 slots in this power. Heck my solo builds have included Fortitude. Possible slotting is all over the place and largely dependent on the needs and desires of the character and the build. There's a thread elsewhere in the Defender forums where I list a whole mess of options and they range from using 3 slots up to all 6. Fortitude buffs defense, to hit and damage. Base recharge is half the base duration making it possible to cover 2 allies with no slotting or global recharge, It just gets better from there. Recovery Aura: The t7, and t8 which follows, are the two PBAoEs both of which effect the caster as well as allies in a 25ft radius. They possess the same recharge (500 sec) and durations (90 sec). It is not possible even at the recharge cap to make either perma but it can be reduced to under 60 seconds in a high recharge build fairly readily before Incarnate considerations and is typically one of my build goals and reason for going all out on recharge. Recovery Aura boost endurance recovery and even at the base amount tends to be more than enough endurance recovery to keep. I tend towards 3 slots which I usually slot with a single recharge IO and 2 Endmod/Recharge IO's. The overall importance of Recovery Aura tends to get overshadowed by lvl 45+ and Incarnate up play with the advent of mature builds, Regeneration Aura: The t8 which buffs the regeneration of those effected. I tend to think regeneration is undervalued by many. Its effects are fairly subtle. I'll use a Healing set with a set bonus of recharge in mind in 5 slots. The other thing I typically aim for is to keep both Auras on the same over all timers so both recharge in roughly the same time. That's one less thing to worry about. If one is recharged then both are or the other is about to recharge in a couple seconds. Position then fire them off. I find I tend to due this while the team is clumping up to finish off the last couple foes. Adrenaline Boost: Arguably this t9 is one of the best single target buffs in the game boosting regeneration 500+, recovery 800+, and recharge 100% plus special. The special is a potent 80% resistance to all sorts of movement and recharge debuffs making the target nearly immune to those debuffs. AB plus Regeneration Aura can boost regeneration to near the regeneration hard cap for most support characters. This is 1600% when enhanced towards the 2000% of the cap and does not include the characters base regeneration. Thoughts and comments as always welcomed.

While Fort can go on roughly 4 while PBU is active and all 7 allies with a high end build. And add both +Damage and +To Hit (boosted to hit) to those targeted allies. That DDR, however, is a dang sweet addition to FF's bubble making the provided defense harder to remove via debuffs. Edit: And based on these facts I'd say a definite edge belongs to Force Fields on large (6+ Allies) and especially shielding even a small League while I'd say an edge belongs to Empathy on a small team owing to the other Empath buffs (and my own bias as an Empath fan).

Little late to reply but there are edge cases where the ability to stack PB can be useful. The first and most common is vs the large mag stun of Rommy's rez. Likewise there's instances where having kb protection in a build can be useful if like me these days you don't auto PB (for example you have Hasten on auto) or even necessarily run it 24-7 (or get scrapper locked and just forget to click) since as it can be used when mezzed. The kb protection keeps you where you were if your mezzed and knocked at the same time. Being SR means an awful lot of mez just doesn't hit in the first place. Not having it up and running tends to happen both by 'oops I forgot to click moving between spawns' or these days because I'll be attacking non stop in hordes of foes or vs an AV/GM and don't wish to take a ~2 sec break/loss of damage involved in using PB when the mez is rare to happen (and I'll just take the time to click when it does happen). PS i would also raise an eyebrow in slotting for set bonuses via a heal set while not fully enhanced damage in Siphon Life first

It's basically saying the damage resistance resist damage debuffs ... but specifically vs smashing damage by smashing damage resistance. As just like us critters have damage resistance values that vary by damage type done.

Or Power Build Up. Respectively from Soul Mastery and Power Mastery epic power sets.

Just going to point out that Share Pain can stack itself and has a 15 sec recharge. If you're "insane" enough a high recharge build could use it several times prior to one all out attack (rather than several buffed by 31.5 over the 15 seconds of up time).

If I'm not mistaken, my memory not being what it was, it's because you cannot enhance the resistance aspect unlike Cold where you can.

For what it's worth your alternate builds aren't required to have the same epics or pool powers. Only your primary and secondary has to be the same (but the individual powers of the set can differ).

It's just plain really good. Primary, Secondary It's just good

Not sure about being at the tippy top but Electric/Fire Blaster can put out silly amounts of PBAoE damage with the advantage of doing a differing damage type compared to Fire/Fire while draining mobs of endurance. In the presence of another end drainer this can be very fast and effective even vs +4 mobs. Largest drawback is it's a lot of DoT damage.

Have two Elec Blast characters. The Elec/Fire Blaster is a PBAoE monster sitting in the low 40's and a relatively newly 50 Emp/Elec Defender. Have a great deal of fun with both. But the blaster clearly does far more damage though the advent of the shocked mechanics and Endmod sets with damage aspects the difference is not as noticeable as it once was as the Defender pretty much flatlines most mobs (+2 or less) very rapidly. Both pretty much live or die in melee range. The Blaster just kills stuff like many before they can hurt him much while the Defender takes longer but is perhaps even safer due to foes having zero end to work with combined with HA and RA extremely rapidly. Mez would present far less threat in a Sentinel I presume with their armor options especially when not heavily IO'd from early on in the leveling process. And in that way it might be more like the Defender, slower but safer since the main threat to overcome in both Blaster or Defender would be mez as landing mez is going to suppress toggle defenses followed or accompanied by any defdebuffs causing cascade issues. Haven't tried it out yet but working on including a bunch of Tempest -end procs in the Defender to see if I can get around the minimum values of endurance AVs and GMs retain even with drain otherwise draining them as dry as they otherwise can get. Which seems to be about 15 end.

Help channel is sort of like stopping random folks on the street. Sometimes you get actual knowledge from someone knowledgeable, sometimes not so much ... kind of like the descriptive text now that I think about 🤪

My main is /SR and she approves this message. Of course I doubt her sanity.

My choice would be DM/SR if I wanted something familiar but new pairing (had the pairing on Live haven't run it here ... yet). Otherwise EA or Ice. My Claws/SR scrapper is very hard to kill despite a lack of self heal. I can see why @Without_Pauserecommends RoP as especially on a Brute with their higher resistance caps even if the scaling resists have kicked in hard Rune has room to push you higher without "wasting" the provided resistance.

Never tried that pairing either as a duo or dual boxing. My only concern would be using Share Pain as a damage boost while the partner is using PFF. The Share Pain user is going to effectively increase their threat and be unable to heal/regenerate as effectively while their partner is in a position to be unable to assist them.

All the above. Been a long time since I used the set on a Dominator but I'd never skip either Volcanic Gases or Stalagmites on my Controllers

Going to guess this is covered by the portion of the Threat equation called "AI Mod" or perhaps buried in a similar value in a similar equation related to "Run/Avoid/Afraid". This value is largely unknown per the wiki article and I'm just throwing that out for thought.

If all it takes is 10 tics in a 'short' period of time I'm surprised in some ways I don't get (notice?) more runners especially once I get into Incarnate abilities. Between procs, (Interface) Reactive, (Hybrid) Assault and DoT attacks the number of tics occuring fairly quickly is probably higher than i think or aware of occurring

I think the addition of a damage component to several Endmod sets plus the "shocked" mechanic has also made a large difference in play. You can now pursue both damage and effective end drain without impacting the other. Previously if you rigorously pursued end drain doing max damage was difficult at best. Now Musculature is the icing on the cake as you pursue both.

Yeah a single Elec drainer can be nasty and fun. 2 or more and a lot of mobs even higher level mobs will be near instantly at 0 end (the non AVs). For an Emp/Elec who teams once RA is a thing you shouldn't have to worry to much about having the end for multiple Leadership toggles. Just focus on getting your recharge high and rely on inspires and teammates for mitigation.

But, but ... so life forever. Sounds like plot, a Snarky plot.

@UltraAlt The first part of the response, well I guess I wasn't clear but I agree overall with you. There's likely a large degree of annoyed and frustrated emotion behind the OP's " chasing half" of each spawn down but I've never come close to having to chase half a given spawn down. The few runners I do see I generally don't have to chase. Both Focus and Shockwave are ranged attacks ... so they just get whacked at distance no 'chase' involved. Worst case my movement speeds are sufficient to readily and rapidly over take the fairly rare runners. As this part wasn't directed at anyone specific, just the thread in general. @Ston mentioned the AI causes foes to flee if they take 10 tics of damage and it made me think about how scrappers with taunt auras how those auras in addition to benefitting the scrapper also tend debuff. The debuff I suspect would also cause a response to run much like damage. The taunt is there to help counter the additional "RUN" influence of the debuff. Maybe, I'm just guilty of thinking outloud in this case (and running out of typing time prior to work).