Uun

Spectral Terror has 2 powers, Cloak of Fear (a 20-foot radius PBAoE aura with a mag 3 fear and a 15% -tohit) and Terrify (a ST ranged mag 3 fear with an unenhanceable 15% -tohit). The fear from the aura will refresh as long as the foe stays in the radius and the base duration of the ST fear is 25 seconds (note, the ST fear stacks and can fear bosses when it does). As a result, I don't think there's much reason to enhance the fear duration and I slot Cloud Senses to enhance the -tohit on both my Illusion/Time and Illusion/Poison. (I slot the ATO in Blind and forego the proc damage.) I don't need this as often with /Time, but standing under Spectral Terror creates a safety zone if PA has dropped or you're taking aggro from a mob that's ignoring them.

The majority of my characters take Super Jump/Mighty Leap or Fly/Mystic Flight. I don't add slots to these and will put a -kb or slow resist in the base slot (occasionally a speed/endred). I've got a couple that use Infiltration, but this needs 2-3 slots to be effective and you still need a jet pack to get over many obstacles. I've got one character that uses Teleport, which also gets 2-3 slots. I never take Super Speed/Speed of Sound.

I'm not in the camp that thinks Oppressive Gloom or Cloak of Fear are necessary for Dark Armor. Both affect minions only. Oppressive Gloom can be effective with just the base slot if you've got a spare power pick, but Cloak of Fear requires significant slotting. It has a 33% accuracy penalty and a very high endurance cost. I can't justify devoting 4-6 slots to a power that does so little. I would devote the slots to getting your resists above 80%. I don't agree with this at all (although I would drop Electrifying Fences for Crowd Control). You'll want Tough to cap S/L resistance, and unless you've capped all your resistances without it, Rune of Protection is a much better panic button than Unrelenting. It's up 60 seconds out of 180, as opposed to 30 seconds out of 200-300 (depending on recharge slotting), plus the healing and rez in Unrelenting is superfluous when you have Dark Regeneration and Soul Transfer. Taunt is vastly superior to Provoke and Intimidate and Invoke Panic are clicks with short durations and long recharges. Why interrupt your attack chain fearing foes when you can be defeating them?

Energy, Invulverability, Shield, Stone, and Willpower have repel protection.

There haven't been any changes to War Mace or Dark Armor, so it should still work fine. Rune of Protection can no longer be slotted for recharge, so you might want to rethink those slots. I'm surprised you skipped Crowd Control. It's one of the defining powers of War Mace. Personally, I don't bother chasing defense on Dark Armor. The set has no defense debuff resistance and it can be stripped away in a flash. I recommend swapping the defense set bonuses for resistance set bonuses to get closer to the 90% cap.

In Incarnate content, the foes have higher tohit and the defensive soft cap is 59%.

I don't think so. After I armed the last bomb the explosion animation played and the map filled with smoke. I wasn't even close on Penelope Mayhem's health - she was well over 20%.

In the Cracking Faultline mission from Mr. G, I armed all 5 bombs before Penelope Yin and Penelope Mayhem finished their fight and did not receive the Pyromaniac Badge.

Not Arachnos, Arachnoids. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Arachnoids

Just bringing it up so they can make an informed decision. My EM/EA stalker has 44% neg, 18% toxic and 20% psi defense (as well as 26% ranged and 30% melee defense) plus 28% toxic and 20% psi resist. I find psi is more of an issue than toxic, particularly against factions like the Praetorian IDF. Hydra aren't particularly challenging. They only have 2 attacks and only the ranged attack (Spit) is toxic. If you want a toxic challenge, try Arachnoids. They show up blue-side in Agent Kwahu's arc (Who Will Die Ep. 3) and red-side in Dr Forrester's arc.

Shield is positional defense (melee/range/aoe), so has no holes unless an attack has no positional vector (largely limited to Mind Control attacks). It has no heal but it does have +hp abilities. EA is typed defense (s/l/f/c/e/n/t/p) and has holes to toxic, psi and to a lesser extent negative attacks. It also has a heal, endurance management abilities and protection against end drain and slows.

This is mostly explained in the Sister Solaris and Dream Doctor story arcs and personal stories (part of the Dark Astoria story line).

I agree with you about the amount of DDR, but I'm not convinced that whether it's enhanceable factored into the balancing. Originally, none of the DDR powers were enhanceable. In 2008 it was added to SR, with the following patch note: Super Reflexes powers which granted Defense Debuff Resistance were, in most cases, not increasing that resistance when enhanced. This has been corrected. In other words, your Defense slotting will now also increase your resistance to Defense Debuffs. This suggests that DDR was intended to be enhanceable and this was a correction, not a buff. Shield Defense (the only other armor with enhanceable DDR) was added to the game after this change. It wouldn't surprise me if the original devs just never got around to fixing the other sets. I think the current set up, where some DDR is enhanceable and some isn't, leads to a lot of confusion among less informed players. If they made all the DDR powers enhanceable, I wouldn't object to adjusting the base values as required to maintain appropriate set balance. I'm not advocating for increased DDR across the board.

All of the defense-based armor sets have powers which provide defense debuff resistance (DDR). They do not all treat enhancements in those powers the same way. All numbers below are for Brutes/Scrappers/Stalkers and ignore T9s. Super Reflexes: DDR is enhanced proportionately to the amount of defense you have slotted in each of the 6 powers. The base DDR of 62.3% can be enhanced to 97.2%. This wasn't always the case and was changed in 2008, seemingly as a bug fix. Energy Aura: base DDR is 51.9% and cannot be enhanced. All 3 powers are coded to ignore enhancements. Entropic Aura doesn't accept defense enhancements, but Kinetic Shield and Power Shield do. [If DDR in Kinetic Shield and Power Shield was enhanceable, DDR would be increased to 71.3%.] Shield: base DDR is 45.0%. Battle Agility can be enhanced but Grant Cover cannot. Active Defense stacks with itself and can be doubled with sufficient recharge. As a result, DDR can be increased to 70.0%. Ice: base DDR is 41.5%. All 3 powers are coded to ignore enhancements. Wet Ice doesn't accept defense enhancements, but Frozen Armor and Glacial Armor do. [If DDR in Frozen Armor and Glacial was enhanceable, DDR would be increased to 57.0%.] Stone: base DDR is 41.5%. All 3 powers are coded to ignore enhancements. Rooted doesn't accept defense enhancements, but Rock Armor and Crystal Armor do. [If DDR in Rock Armor and Crystal Armor was enhanceable, DDR would be increased to 57.0%.] Ninjitsu: base DDR is 34.6%. Both powers are coded to ignore enhancements and accept defense enhancements. [If DDR was enhanceable, DDR would be increased to 54.0%.] Invulnerability: more of a hybrid set than a true defense-based set, but it has base DDR of 50.0% (DDR was added to Invulnerability in 2008). Both powers are coded to ignore enhancements. Resist Physical Damage doesn't accept defense enhancements but Tough Hide does. [If Tough Hide DDR was enhanceable, DDR would be increased to 64.0%] I'm fully comfortable with the idea that some sets have more DDR than others and that SR is the king in this regard. I'm not suggesting that other defense sets be buffed to that level (but a balance pass may be in order if Invulnerability has more DDR than most defense armors). I am suggesting that, barring coding constraints, DDR provided by powers which accept defense enhancements should be increased by those enhancements. Is this power creep? Possibly, but I'm really trying to level the playing field so that powers that provide DDR are treated the same way.

2 seconds. Look at the CoD link I posted above.

Don't buy attuned versions of Very Rare (purple) or PVP sets. The lvl 50 versions (which can be boosted) retain their set bonuses down to lvl 10.

I can't imagine running this in 4* content. It's a hot mess sorely lacking in defense and resistance. 5-slotted Brawl? 6-slotted Stamina? I don't have the time to rebuild this from the ground up, but here are some suggestions: Drop the slots from Brawl Slot Stamina with 2 Performance Shifters (endmod + %end) Add slots to Arctic Fog - 3x defense set + 3x resist set Slot the 2 +def uniques and the 2 +resist uniques. These can go in Ice Shield, Glacial Shield or Arctic Fog. (The +def uniques can also go in Mind Over Body.) Slot Freeze Ray and Bitter Ice Blast for damage, not procs. I would slot the full Malice of the Corrupter set in one of them. Slotting Sleet for damage is a huge waste. Move the 3 pieces of Scourging Blast to Freeze Ray or Bitter Ice Blast (whichever one doesn't get Malice of the Corruptor). Slot Sleet with 2x recharge IOs or the defense debuff set of your choice. Slot Heat Loss with one of the non-damage endmod sets. Heat Loss does no damage. Not sure why you have Dominate since you already have 2 holds in Ice. I would drop this or Bitter Freeze Ray for Ice Storm. If you keep Bitter Freeze Ray, slot for damage, not hold (move the Apocalypse set from Ice Bolt). Slot Mind Over Body with 4x Unbreakable Guard.

Hit 50 this week. Now fully IOed (no purples beside the ATOs), it's got a gapless attack chain and Incarnate capped defenses. I use Boggle for laughs, but it's really not needed. Psi Melee isn't top tier but if feels solidly middle of the road. Uunthinkable - Scrapper (Psionic Melee).mbd

Another option would be Kinetics. It only has one end drain power (Transference), but it drains a LOT (56.25% unslotted on a defender, 49.5% on a corruptor). Enhanced, you can take a foe to zero as long as they don't resist it. Note that the end drain is ST (the buff is AoE). For additional sapping, add Power Sink from Electricity Mastery or Mu Mastery. In that case the end drain is PBAoE (and the buff is self).

The DoT is coded 100% chance. The only reason they wouldn't go off is if the target is dead.

You're missing the point entirely. If you have a complete attack chain with no gaps, the power's recharge is irrelevant to the set's damage output.

Recharge time is immaterial. Damage per activation time is the correct metric.

From the Page 5 patch notes (the last round of fire armor changes): Consume Power now grants a small Max HP buff even if no targets are available or hit. Power no longer needs a target to grant End Drain protection. (+End still requires targets) Power is now auto-hit. Damage still requires a to-hit check. This power now takes Healing sets and enhancements.

On Wild Growth slot 3 pieces of a resist set and 3 pieces of a healing set. The +regen is substantial and worth enhancing. The Panacea proc in Wild Bastion will only go off when you fire the power. Better to slot it in Health where it can fire 3x per minute. The Numina proc has a 120 second duration and works well in Wild Bastion if you re-apply the buff when it expires.

I don't think there's a need for both Shadow Punch and Smite and would drop the former. I would also take Moonbeam instead of Dark Blast. Scrapper's Strike provides a global bonus, so it doesn't matter what power you slot it in. I generally slot it in a power that has a long cooldown (like Midnight Grasp) to take advantage of the recharge boost. Alternatively, you can split the set between two powers to double the 5% S/L defense bonus. You want to slot Critical Strikes in the power you use before your heavy hitter. Core works best for ATs with a damage modifier of 1.0 or greater.