Parabola

The short version of proc mechanics is that it is a function of the recharge of the power, its area of effect (if aoe) and its activation time. Activation time isn't a huge factor and you can't change the aoe size (adding range to cones doesn't affect the equation), but you do have a great deal of influence over recharge. If you are going to use procs in a power ideally you won't add any recharge enhancement to it (and this includes recharge enhancement from the alpha slot). You can have as much global recharge as you like (hasten, set bonuses, destiny slot) as this also doesn't affect proc chances. All other slotting in a power such as accuracy, damage and end reduction don't affect the proc chances either. My advice would be downloading mids reborn (from the tools section of the forum). The proc rate calculation it uses is mostly accurate now so you can see the effect different slottings has on the average damage output of a power.

Good work @Sir Myshkin. As I said before I've definitely seen this but I think it has been only while zoning in my case. I don't have records but I have been playing a rad/dark tank exclusively recently and I have all the IO's you mention in my build. So not tied to rage crashes exclusively but perhaps something to do with those IO's going haywire when a global refresh of the characters values happens? I'll jump on later and see if I can force it to happen.

Ah, but that's a different problem entirely. Believe me I feel your pain. I was ranting about this the other day; people running off to engage a new pile of minions because they can't be bothered to stay and clear the bosses is the scourge of the modern game. Increasing the aggro cap likely wouldn't do much to combat this, the bosses would soon lose interest in the tank who has run off over there, and would turn their attention to the juicy squishy support types trying to tickle them to death.

Yes the power levels of players vs mobs have shifted but I don't think that alters the basic argument against raising the aggro cap. You mention mobs standing around waiting for their turn to die but that only happens when the only available target is saturated. In a team scenario excess aggro spills over onto other players (who are far more able to handle it due to power creep but that's beside the point). Increasing the aggro cap makes sense from the overdeveloped tanks point of view. 'I can survive more therefore I should be able to have more'. But the overall dynamics of the team combat experience rely on aggro spilling over onto other players. The game would be dull otherwise. With my tanker hat on, and I play quite a few tanks, I would love a higher aggro cap. With my farmer hat on I would bite your hand off for it (and I suspect that alone is the reason it won't happen). But when playing any other AT I don't want the tank to be able to hold more than they can now; the game is easy enough as it is.

I have generally played my characters all the way through the levels, doing content and teaming often. Like others I felt that it was the only way to become properly attached to a character. However I've also found that I often burn out with a character doing this, generally prior to 50 or sometimes the moment I hit 50. Recently I've wanted to do more endgame stuff so I have farmed my latest project straight up to 50 and started playing from there. Incarnating her out and collecting accolades still takes time and you have to run quite a bit of content to do so. I've found myself just as attached to her as the characters I have raised slowly through the ranks but with the benefit that she's fresh enough that I want to keep playing her. I will always be a 'play through the levels' person at heart but powerlevelling to endgame does have its place.

This has to be one of the most popular bad ideas (imo) that keeps getting raised round these parts. The aggro cap was introduced for the very good reason that watching tankers herd everything was dull. Even without zone herding it was still dull if tanks (or others) could manage aggro to the extent that no-one else was ever in danger. The game is better for aggro management being imperfect. There are also apparently technical issues around raising the cap for just one AT. It has been said that other servers have changed this but that doesn't necessarily mean they've done it in a way the homecoming team would consider. The idea of having a sticky thread with the very common suggestions and their rebuttals has been suggested before hasn't it? This would have to be one of the first things on the list.

It would seem sensible to have some sort of mechanism to unattune. I also habitually use attuned for everything and find myself having to rebuy and replace. It bugs my ocd a bit having to have a mixture of attuned and unattuned in a build anyway, the attuned IO's look so much better. And before you ask, yes the aesthetics of the enhancement screen are important!

I found it worth taking on a war mace brute while doing a load of pylon testing with different secondarys. My builds weren't optimised for bleeding edge dps though. With the guassians proc in it you get quite a damage spike even through fullish fury. Certainly not a mandatory pick though.

Probably worth linking this thread:

This is the most irritating thing in high level play. Drives me absolutely nuts. To be fair to brutes though it isn't just they who are guilty of this. I think it has a lot to do with people playing any AT building almost exclusively for aoe performance and then finding they lack the ability to down bosses in a satisfying manner. Ironically the best teammate at high levels could be a single target focused stalker who is prepared to do the hard yards against the +4 bosses. What really grinds my gears is when people are so stuck in the 'all aoe, all the time' mindset that they can't vary their play when required. Fighting +4 nemesis bosses is hard enough without stacking vengeance multiple times on them because some idiot couldn't resist burning the rest of the spawn to the ground.

Yeah I've noticed this too. I just assumed it was a reporting glitch due to the zoning refresh. I couldn't tell you what characters it was on but I think more than one. Certainly wasn't anything to do with rage crashes or the like.

Nearly all the time. Autohit damage and particularly enemies with massive tohit buffs still ignore defence regardless of ddr. These aren't exactly common but they come as a very nasty shock when they do appear.

I think the idea is that it can be slotted in any heal/resist/defence power and have enough enhancement of the appropriate type to be useful. Using all aspects of the enhancement in one power isn't necessary. It's an interesting idea. My concern is that it is trying to cover too many bases and the bonuses aren't really grabbing my attention. I doubt I'd slot it (but then I've never played stone armour).

That isn't quite how procs work any more with the ppm mechanics. In a slow recharging, slow activating single target power without too much recharge slotting it will have a much greater than 20% chance of activating. There are guides around that explain this much better than I can here. While it's true that having more of them will up the odds of always having one in effect they are taking up a space that could be taken by a damage proc. Getting the balance right is the trick! I tend to lean away from multiple -res procs simply because I can't see them in action as clearly as I can extra damage procs.

I like rad for its procability (definitely a word!) in general but not specifically for achilles heel procs. I find them unreliable in aoes and you have to bear in mind you can't get them to stack on the same target so too many in single target attacks could be wasteful.

yes it is Or foreplay...

The selling point of ground zero is the huge number of enemies it can hit over a wide area. It is superfluous if you have enough aoe in your melee set though. Procced out rad therapy is a good choice regardless of how much aoe you already have. It's quick, does good damage, heals you and buffs regen, can give end with a theft proc and I only recently noticed it does -150% regen to enemies. If it made a cup of tea at the same time it would be the ultimate power in the game.

I think you'll struggle to spend that kind of inf on a build too. Fire farmers have such a narrow focus that they don't need hugely expensive builds. Once you have fire def and res capped that's all you need to worry about, easily achievable with fire armour without anything particularly expensive. And damage output seems more limited by how many reds you can chew down than anything else. I'm sure there are gains to be made by going to town on a farming build, but whether they make enough of a difference to its earning power to be worth it I'm not so sure. Map clear times will be like pylon times when you get to the sharp end; variability in the rng and mob behaviour will have more and more influence making the results very uneven.

I much prefer EA to Inv. EA is easy to softcap to the common types and a little work can get you in icap territory with the use of the absorb power. It also has a decent heal, endurance management, some resists and the utility of stealth. The stealth suppresses when you engage so it makes no practical difference to aggro management that I have seen. DA tanks seem to do perfectly well with a similar power. I have never taken the t9 though! As far as I'm aware none of the bought self revive powers have the combat utility of the t9 revives. The stun on the dark one for example is not messing around, mag 30 iirc. With those powers available I react to imminent death by running towards the enemy rather than away. They aren't the best powers in the world but they have great flavour and provide something extra to the set. If death could just suppress toggles rather than shut them off they would really benefit though.

In order to be in any way worth it t9's need to be providing something that the rest of the armour set doesn't have much of. Sadly in too many cases the opposite is true. Adding more defence to a defence set, or resistance to a resistance set is often pointless in the IO world. This is particularly true when the t9 doesn't even address the specific protection holes the rest of the armour set has, psy or toxic being common examples. I like the self revive t9's and try to fit them in for flavour if nothing else. I think it does depend on how you view defeat; when playing with a self revive I only consider myself truely defeated if I've gone down a second time and am having to make a hospital run. My only major gripe with them is having to spend most of the untouchable period retoggling. This is where hibernate really shines and I consider that a generally underrated power.

And you could always drag a herd of enemies to the pylon...

Yes please. It really bugs me that we can't do this. I often stick with degenerative simply because it doesn't stick out as much as something like reactive. Pretty please devs?

Oh btw - if you want to +5 an enhancement in mids you hit the + key a few times while hovering over the enhancement before placing it.

I've shuffled a couple of things around for some minor gains - slightly less end drain, slightly more defence and one more psi res. I'm surprised you are having end concerns and have taken a slot out of physical perfection as it's not so great for pure end slotting. Your best bet for destiny might be to go for Ageless as the recharge will really help you out and that will also refill your end every now and again. I prefer radial for the debuff resistance but ymmv. I've also changed the slotting in radioactive smash to hecatomb, previously it was a bit low on accuracy for my tastes (prior to focused acc) and you don't lose much in the way of damage from it. However the ff+rech isn't going to be all that great in it as it's a fairly fast recharging power anyway. I'd be tempted to drop the power altogether and take radiation siphon instead which will give better damage and a self heal. In fact I'd probably put the hecatombs in devastating blow where they will have the most effect and use the might of the tanker pieces in a lower tier power. But I'm not all that familiar with rad melee so take all that with a pinch of salt!

Your best single target attack chain is jawbreaker->clobber->shatter if you can get the recharge together to pull it off. That may allow you to save slots in single target powers you eventually won't be using. I like to put just a couple of winter ios into another low level attack so I've got it for exemping and the slow resist is always nice. Shatter doubling up in both the single target and aoe attack chains is hugely efficient in terms of slots. That power is a bit more understated than clobber or crowd control but it's a real star of the set.