InvaderStych

I was already 3/4 of the way into my coffee. 😉

I like this idea. Replace "Slow" with "Heal/Absorb" and then carbon copy the enhancement values/combos from the new Ice Mistral set. Chance for -Regen.

I'm no blaster expert, but my Fire/MC is easily my favorite toon so ... A few things at a glance: Either drop Throw Sand for RttL, or find some other way to fit it in. The rolling +dmg buff plays nicely with BlasterFury and it also includes a +to-hit component. I know some people like to talk down on RttL because it's not "Build Up," but I wouldn't roll another /MC without using it. My Fire/MC took it and never looked back. The -to-hit seems useful at a glance, but you'll have plenty of mitigation in Seismic and the +dmg would likely be more beneficial. Drop the Miracle from Health. Blasters get massive +recovery from their sustain toggles. Like "How Do We Sleep At Night With This?" levels of massive recovery. As long as Reaction Time is up you'll rarely be desperate for a blue tic-tac. Toggles could probably use some EndRdx in this case, but I'm inclined to go that route usually anyway. BoS doesn't really fire procs all that well. The Purples with higher PPM rates are decent, but that's about it. Also, BoS has a huge range and accepts range enhancements as well as the +perception unique from the new Warp set. That said, I *do* like a chance for knockdown in BoS, which I think is from a Winter set? Regen Tissue is a strange choice in RT. Not really sure about the dmg procs there either. Sure, technically "free" dmg chance every 10s, but compared to dmg from a blaster primary it's rounding error with just 2 dmg pieces in that aura. Those slots would be better used adding a Def/End piece to the +def toggles you're running, or elsewhere, like EndRdx in Tactics, for example. 🙂 EC is a trap. It drops nice big numbers, but SK has a superior DPA. My Fire/MC's primary build keeps it, but the secondary one I am toying with may drop it completely, although it is a good place for the 5 piece winter set with the big S/L defense bonus. Get some recharge into Inner Will and put it on auto. At that point it's a Break Free that fires automatically which is quite useful. -------------------- I've never tried building to soft-cap all the major categories on a Blaster; the Fire/MC I run around the S/L soft-cap and spend a *lot* of time in melee with that toon. My secondary build is likely to not hit a soft-cap on anything and is more offensively focused, theoretically.

I've liked it most in Short Circuit (low base dmg for minimal lost potential, larger radius/target cap than Ball) so far, but interested to hear other suggestions. There seems to be a cap of 3 stacks, anyone know for sure? In VS the buff would likely go to the pet... ie to waste. Irradiated Ground, for example, is also a toggle pet - as far as the game is concerned - Scrapper ATOs won't even slot there, and the cited reason is that it is not possible for the ATO to buff the player while in the pet aura. I'm happy to be incorrect, but as quote above, there are better places for it (any AoE would be more effective).

That does sound better, but /SD makes everything look cooler. 😉

Fun fact; IG, because of it's wacky pet nature continued to do dmg while inside Geode during Open Beta. The combo *is* end heavy, but with a ToE in Siphon, Body pool for extra PerfShifters, and a little endmod in Crystal Armor it was approaching sustainable (before incarnates, I don't like to lean on those for blue bar) while I was testing various combinations for Brimstone Goodness. The downside is, like all auras, no Brimstone for IG, but because of the long activation times, DS and AS get nice big tics of fire dmg from it. Now if I could just get over the Kirk-Fu-ish-ness of it the set. (That golf swing uppercut on Siphon, come on guys...) 🤣

Well.. now, wait a moment. You might be on to something, but not from the Primary, from the Secondary. <New Name For Additional Inherent that isn't Trademarked by another Game Company> The Sentinel is constantly vigilant to the state of the battlefield; their superior situational awareness allows them to provide cover and assistance their team-mates .... <a superior wordsmith should take over here> ... A small portion of the defense or resistance value from select powers in your Secondary is extended to your team-mates with 12' Easier with toggles, but if we're looking to give them a place on a team and do something in line with the definition of the word 'sentinel' ... maybe something along those lines? Giving it +dmg for soloing makes a bit of hand-wavey sense in that without team-mates to monitor, the Sentinel can go ham on their opponents. Does not necessarily have to be shared-benefit from toggle shields - giving the two clicks in /EA a pbAoE component would be an interesting alternative. Each secondary could basically do 2-3 in this fashion. Some could be shields, others not.

I mean, sure, why not? 🙂 That said, I'm not attached to Fan4 in any strong way, so as long as whoever was playing Richards convinced my brain to stop quoting Professor Impossible every time I see the character on screen, I would call it a win. Also, I *did* watch the entirety of Inhumans just because he was in it despite the obvious travesty that unfolded upon my screen. So my assessment might be ... biased. 😄 ----- Since this is about AoS; Fitz gets my favorite set of arcs throughout the show. Everything else was hit/miss and pretty well summarized above.

Anson Mount is fantastic. First saw him in Hell On Wheels (AMC, I think?) from a while back. Really good show; bonus points for Colm Meany as a baddie. It also turns out that Common can act, which was fun to watch develop in "real time" throughout the show.

Rad Armor solo'd The Wards just fine with a Scrapper. (Kat/Rad) ***/Rad Brute should roflstomp Rikti and do just fine in Praetoria 1-20.

It's ok. We have a room down the hall specially reserved for instances where someone might need a moment to extract their kicking thing from their noise hole. 🤣 I've been hanging out in there for a bit, it's nice. Highly recommended. 11/10.

Chill appears to be flagged to ignore resistance: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=event.lady_winter.chill&at=boss_archvillain But only the -rech, the -spd perhaps isn't? Looks like her Shiver has -100% also flagged to ignore resistance: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=event.lady_winter.shiver&at=boss_archvillain Which doesn't explain the difference between the two toons, but it's something, lol.

But ... but ... ... we already get Limitless Radial Freem, no extension needed. 0/10 for Social Engineering on that spambot.

So, did some informal monitoring of a "Pet Only" window just to see what's what. VS is currently slotted for 1dmg, 1Endrdx (SOs) and 1 NRGManip %Stun, running at lvl 32. Toon has base 81% to-hit from wearing a Kismet. Some anecdotal stuff: Consistent 95% chance to hit on even-con mins/lts. Found some +3s, generally in the 20ish% hit chance (lower on bosses?); but then it would periodically jump to ~70% possibly from hitting Charge Up although the timing did not seem to coincide that might be just a function of how I'm watching the log scroll rather than looking at it more closely in a text file. At the risk of stating the obvious/already known, it does inherit bonuses from yellows, so likely other sources of +to-hit as well. I guess it uses player's base to-hit to make its rolls? At the risk oversharing: this is on an Elec/EA/(TBD) Sent with a "Super Stunner" mechanical concept. AoEs + VS are all running the %Stun piece from NrgManip. The one in VS will probably be the first one dropped if I am tight on slots, which I probably will. APP will either be Psi for the second Hold or Elec for the aura and more %Stun action. --------- To swing this back to the original question: There's no way to enhance the pet's blast for recharge, and no reason to slot the power for it, so there's no danger of lowering the proc rate through slotting. How many you could/should slot in there is probably a function of how many slots you can spare in build against getting it some amount of +acc and endrdx. I'd be inclined to stick with the higher PPM pieces from Purple sets if I wasn't doing some "high-concept" nonsense. 😛 It's probably not difficult to compare the +dmg from a 3.5PPM proc against a +5 dmg IO or whatever enhancement value one can get from alternate slotting, but I have personally forgotten too much math to figure that out without tremendous research and effort. 🙂 It's possible that's already been figured out in one of @underfyre's Sentinel data sheets, which would answer the root of the question: Is a 3.5PPM dmg proc more "+dmg" than can be gotten via a +dmg enhancement? Finally, while I am playing games with %<effect> procs a lot these days I am also aware of the rumors of an eventual change to proc/ppm mechanics to rail in some of the more ... ridiculous ... applications of the %<dmg> versions. Not to imply they should be skipped/avoided, just that the rumors are out there so my thought is that when the rules change, so will the builds. 🤷‍♂️

I did not know him outside this forum, but he was quite clearly an artist, gentleman, and scholar who will be dearly missed by the many communities he touched.

Yes, the summon power has 2.0. 🙂 But when looking at VS's powers, its blast has 1.4, I can't tell in Mids if I should enhance that or not. PC powers with that much accuracy generally don't need much, but I can't think of an example at the moment: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=pets.voltaicsentinel_sentinel.electrical_bolt Edit: I also know next to nothing about Pets. So I have no idea how the two accuracy numbers interact with each other, if at all. I would expect not at all, and that VS check's against it's own accuracy, not the root summon power's accuracy. 🤷‍♂️ Nice to know. Wasn't really expecting it to "not" work, more wondering if anyone has found it worth doing. 🙂 It should fire, theoretically, more often than NrgManip %Stun, so that is promising.

FWIW: Energy Manipulator - %Stun - works decently in VS despite only being 2PPM. I'm curious how much +acc VS actually needs. Game description shows it with a base accuracy of 1.40x, which is pretty huge. If I can get away with slotting if for dam/endrdx + the %Stun and save some slots that would be sweet. How well does the Soulbound BU proc work in general? I know (fairly certain) it would only boost the pet, but does it work in VS?

Probably a Mids thing then. There's some ... oddities in the latest version. Something about some bonuses doubling, resulting in wacky totals numbers. Recovery was the first place I noticed it.

The Run Speed bonus IO? Are we talking in-game or in-mids?

Hmm.. Primary: Street Justice. Thematically fitting, and you get combo builders and a finisher in the first 3 powers (available before lvl 4 rule). Go fully into the Boxing/Kick/CrossPunch on top of those three and likely a viable attack chain. Maybe Spring Attack to round out a little extra AoE? Secondaries?: Energy Aura: Typed defenses in the first two toggle shields, and a good +Res auto in the middle. - or - The Unconventional Choice: Regen: The two Autos fit in theme with having lost powers. The Heal could be useful and RP'd as a device of some sort. AT?: Not sure it matters all that much; I don't remember if any Stalkers get AS by 4, so perhaps not one of those? The other 3 melee would benefit better from their inherent on a project like this. Seems like a "dealer's choice" sort of moment. I can't really speak to the other pool choices, don't know enough about them.

Honestly, if the badge isn't called something along the lines of "Those Poor Fools" or "You Cannot Be Serious" then it's a missed opportunity. Who in their right mind applies for a job sitting on a roof-top in FF or PI for the purpose of taking pot-shots at beings that can throw cars, teleport between dimensions, pull meteors from the sky, or assail them with a horde of literal demons? Or in some cases much, much worse? "Hmm... that hero flying by covered with auras of lethal radiation and capable of throwing me across town looks harmless enough even though I just watched them sweep the pavement with a half dozen CoT mages. I'm sure this .308 round will do the trick from extreme range, lemmie just check my windage ...." 🤣 FF/PI Snipers are either willfully self-destructive, or the job is the Crey/Malta/Nemesis equivalent of being sent to do "research" at a Cold Weather Testing facility in Siberia. Totally support a series badge for them though, sometimes it's fun to take a moment to remind them how dangerous their job can be. 😄

Where is this mythical "no redraw" version of Staff for scrappers? 😉 Gave Staff/Stone Scrapper a quick test: Every time I touch Combat Teleport, the Staff gets put away and re-drawn to attack. Need to use Earth's Embrace? Redraw. Want to drop Caltrops from the WM epic to stack some more slow/immob onto Mud Pots? Redraw. Sarcasm aside, all weapon sets should be equally unaffected by redraw penalties. Full stop. 🙂

I have mad respect for your Devotion to the House of Spin, so much so that I'm tempted to 'spin' one up of my own ... ... but Staff/Regen? Are you sure you're not moonlighting at the Church of the Almighty Redraw? 😄

Thanks folks. I suspected there might be some value in getting to 100% against -rech/-spd, but without knowing much about the mechanics behind it, I wasn't sure. I've always put some value into the stat; Winter's Gift is SOP in a travel power slot, for example, but anything above that was usually incidental from slotting up with a Winter set or two. I first got the notion working up a Svg/Invul Scrapper where Leap was a crucial part of the chain and I wanted to try getting immunity to -rech. Never finished it out in game though. While spinning up a spines/regen for an SG'mate I had the notion that extreme -rech resist would be Very Good (tm) for Regen. 🙂 Not sure which toon I'll end up trying this out with first; every time I sit down to tune my Psi/SD I cannot find changes I can stomach, lol. I'll try out something with full -rech/-spd resist, in game, at some point though. ---- I'm also toying with the idea of experimenting with 100% status resistance in the absence of actual magnitude protection. Some are easy to cap - like Sleep, for example, others I suspect cannot be capped, but it would an interesting experiment.

Hmm ... How to pose this question without my usual "wall of text" verbosity and needless backstory, lol ... -- Plenty of us are usually building for large quantities of global recharge on plenty of toons. -- Recharge debuffs are actually more common than they appear at a glance. Psi usually has some amount in it, anything with cold, etc. -- Conversely, I might be overly sensitive to them due to the way one of my most played toons is built, lol. -- It is actually not that difficult to get +/- 100% rech/spd resistance without that much slot investment or sacrificing other build goals. But how valuable might that actually be, theoretically? Do these resistances work like regen resist (reduces effectiveness) or status resist (reduces duration)?