Arbegla

I put my vote in for /traps, as all the gadgets can get personalized named, even the Seeker Drones.

Doesn't the 'beast run' give you the option to run on all fours, regardless of your costume? I know its not quite the same as a full body transformation, but its still really close, and it doesn't suppress your toggles at all.

Having ran multiple characters through the old system back on live, I can say that I really enjoy the faster unlocks that Homecoming gives to the incarnate system. I don't agree with adding a 7th slot as the power creep for IOs themselves is pretty massive. Back on Live, the ATOs, Winter IOs, and other 'high end' enhancements were rarer than rare to get a hold of, and thus made progression slow down a lot. Homecoming opened up the flood gates, and allowed many different avenues to achieve power. Refactoring the incarnate system, while I will argue is needed, doing it the way you're proposing forces a lot of people to start from scratch, even if 'scratch' will be over soon, as you're making levels easier to gain. I think slight tweaks here and there, like adding the incarnate powers to the enhancement menu, and making the salvage easier to manage (and removing shards and anything that deals with shards..) would be a good first start, without really changing the overall system, just making it more streamlined. I also feel like there needs to be a real tutorial, like we have for the Invention system, where you literally get a free recipe, free salvage, and told to craft something yourself. Even if its a T1 power, and optional, its still a good thing to have the ability to get walked through how the system works. The university contacts, even on V side, do a great job of explaining the Invention System, but there is nothing at all like that for the Incarnate System.

If you really want high damage numbers everywhere, I recommend a bot/storm/mu MM. You have plenty of DoTs from the robots, plus fire patches, and the mu mastery gives you a -KB AoE immobilize so you can keep everything in your kill patches of fire, lightning, and tornadoes.

I know we have individual pylon times, but has a scrapper tried to solo ALL of the pylons before? I know there is a time limit on respawn, but what amount of DPS would be required to solo the entire raid, and get the shield lowered by yourself? Just curious.

That's basically defensive mode as it works right now. Once you attack a mob, the mob attacks you, and the pets attack the mob.

Sadly, Acid Mortar also makes mobs run a lot, due to the DoT and the debuff. But its not nearly as bad as Caltrops.

I thought this was changed actually, because of the Croatoa Giant Monsters and the fact that Jack in Irons and Skeleton Man can duke it out for hours and then noone gets credits for finally killing them, because of the 10% damage rule being regenerated over and over again.

Hmm, I thought it would also reduce the value of the endurance that the protector bot uses to cast their heal, but if that isn't the case, then I might have to revert back to a straight Heal IO. I use a heal/end HO just to have endurance reduction on the upgrade, but I've noticed that I'm not upgrading as much in combat anymore, so getting more Heal value out of the protector bots would be useful.

How is bot/traps not on this list? You get mez protection, amazing heals now (especially with the maintenance drone) stackable debuffs, and plenty of different playstyles, as you can create a death room, or just zip into groups and toe-bomb things.

Well, purple triangles don't affect immobilize, so they just have normal protections that a boss has and nothing special. In the grand scheme of AVs protections, though, it might as well be a vulnerability, as other forms of mez get destroyed with the purple triangles.

I know this might be a 'standard code rant' issue, but I was wondering if it would be possible to be able to track the last tohit roll made against you, to be able to better see how successful Defense and other buffs are doing for you? I know we can track defense, and we can stack our own 'last to hit against an enemy' but being able to track what the enemy is rolling against us would be neat too.

Auto-hit debuffs make sense. Autohit damage.. not so much. But -endurance and -recovery are hard to counteract, so putting some -recovery resistance (or -end resistance?) into the blue inspirations seems like a good idea. Its not adding +recovery, just makes it harder for you to get debuffed after using them. Plus it thematically makes sense, based on the names of the blue inspirations anyways.

So I'm late to the party, but did they nerf GM/AV hunting? Because that's my most popular activity on Homecoming.

Another way to die quickly would be to go to Siren's Call, and jump into the 'hot spot' zones where all of the NPCs group up before fighting each other. Even if you get a hot spot that is out of the way, its a quick run back, and they will slaughter you quickly.

For a level 50 character, you could get really really close to leveling up (full bars) then turn off XP. You'll still get patrol XP, but you wont visually be able to see it. You also won't get anymore Vet levels, but I'm not sure that is a concern of yours.

If bodyguard mode worked in any stances, MMs would be the ultimate Tank Mages. Bodyguard mode triggers when an attack is rolled against the MM, but that attack doesn't have to be successful. Meaning a fully softcapped MM can stand in melee combat, get swung at, and their pets will react, all while enjoying Bodyguard Mode benefits already. If you're standing away from the enemy AND away from your pets, you're doing something wrong, so getting one shot shouldn't be that much of an issue. Yes, high level content makes it dangerous for MMs to be in melee range, but with proper slotting, MMs have the highest effective hitpoints in the game, and should leverage that as best as they can by abusing Bodyguard Mode.

I'm surprised you're experiencing more running away, do you not use Web Grenade or other Immobilize effects? AVs (and even some GMs) have a vulnerability to immobilize built in, to allow for containment on Controllers, but it also allows MMs (and other classes really) to lock them down and keep them from running away. I've had an opposite experience with my Bot/traps since the changes, as things just melt so fast now that I don't have to lock things down as much. A quick volley of Web Grenade -> Electric Fences -> Web Grenade on a boss/EB/AV and by the time I get the rest of my debuffs down, its near death just from AoE and Single target attacks from the robots.

Instead of arguing for or against a reduction in time for the upgrades to affect the mobs, I think we should push to have the resistance split out, so you get half resistance on summoning the pets, and the other half (being enhance-able) when you upgrade them. This should give the pets some more durability, without changing too much in the ways of the pets working. With the fact that the upgrades are AOEs now, the setup time for a MM is MUCH shorter than it used to be, though I do definitely see and notice a different in survivability when not having the resistance equip on the bots. With the reduction in the flamethrower recharge time, I dont want to skip the equip power on the assault bot anymore, as its much faster and deals a decent amount of damage now.

Degen is the best for /traps IMO, because of the sheer number of DoTs you have. the -maxhp does more overall Damage then the -resistance you get from reactive. Especially once you factor in the pets, Degen is just the hands down the best option.

I focused on Maximizing Recharge on my bot/traps build. I run between 200-300% global recharge on top of ED capped recharge in most of my powers (Agility Alpha, and the +rech proc in my Arcane Bolt) I also run over 54% defense to most things (which is right around the Incarnate Softcap, before my Support Hybrid pushes me over) This allows me to double stack Triage Beacon, Triple Stack Acid Mortar, double stack Poison Trap (which the +absorb proc, which turns it into a mini protection power as well) and keeps Seeker Drones up every single spawn. Maintenance drone is up every ~25 seconds as well, so my bots don't die nearly as often as they used to before the patch. Going full Procs is nice, but do keep in the mind that the rumor mill has been saying Procs are going to be adjusted sometime soon(tm) so you might not want to stack all of them in one power, as we just don't know what is going to happen with them.

This is my robotics slotting now. I did try out the Pulse Rifle Burst on life, but unfortunately, Arcane Bolt just out performs it so much that its not even funny. I'm a /traps, so the loss of -regen doesn't affect me at all, and the maintenance drone just let me remove Spirit Ward and swap it right in, slots and all. I did take one other slot out of Charged Armor, just to get the two piece bonus from Unbreakable Guard in Equip, and now my Assault bot rocks 76% resistance to lethal/psi/cold (Remember Kids, Pets have a 90% resistance cap, like TANKERS!) Battle Drones 6 slots -> 2 Superior Mark of Supremacy, Straight Damage, 2 Call to Arms, the Dam/End, and the Defense Bonus aura for Pets and the Acc/Dam/End Sovereign RIght Resistance Bonus, Edict of the Master Defense Bonus Equip Bot 2 slots -> Unbreakable Guard Straight Resistance and the +7.5% max HP Protector Bots 6 slots -> 4 Superior Mark of Supremacy (Everything NOT in battle drones, so the Dam/End, Acc/Dam, Acc/End and the End/+resist/+regen Aura, Expedient Reinforcement Resist Aura, and 1 LoTG def/+rech Maintenance Drone 6 slots -> Full Preventive Medicine set Assault Bot 6 slots -> 4 Superior Command of the Mastermind, the Acc/Dam, Dam/End, Acc/Dam/End/Rech, and the Rech/+AOE def aura, 2 Soulbound Allegiance, the Dam/End, and the BU proc, Upgrade Robot -> level 53 Heal/End Hami-Origin With the additional damage that the Robots do, the current slotting keeps them all good on End even when really low level. I was able to solo the MSR last night on Torchbearer with this character, downing all the Pylons, and actually planting a bomb, so I'm definitely a happy camper.

Alright, so I ported my Bot/Traps/Mu over to test, respec'ed it to adjust some slotting and grabbed Maintenance Drone, slotted up Equip Bot to boost pet resistance, and got Pulse Rifle Burst instead of Arcane Bolt. I also swapped around 2 enhancements in the pet powers themselves, as I did notice some endurance issues in the Assault Bot and Battle Drones. Managed to keep the same set bonuses, just slightly different enhancement slotting. First test was normal missions running at +1/x8. Set didn't feel much different, except I didn't have to wait for Battle Drones and Assault bots to finish animating before moving onto the next group. Overall, clear times were faster, and the bots seemed more responsive to commands (probably because they weren't stuck in Animation Hell) Second test was a +4/x8 Solo ITF. I've only ran a +0/x1 Solo ITF on live, but its not much different really. I noticed that with the buffed resistance, the Assault Bot wasn't getting 1 shot, even against +4 mobs. I checked the numbers, and they now have a pretty large Resistance value (70+ in lethal/cold/psi) where they don't have that on live. It seems like the resistance values got scaled different, because Battle Drones actually have slightly less Resistance now, but all in all it seems ok. Maintenance Drone was amazing, as it was a full heal on the Battle Drones, and while occasionally the Protector Bots and the Drone would heal the same thing, it wasn't often enough to matter. Romans died fast, and the build performed very well. Third test was a solo Mother Ship Raid. This is meant to be a stress test, as you're trying to beat the clock on the respawn times on the pylons. This is where I really noticed the endurance being an issue and why I swapped out those two enhancements I mentioned earlier. On Live, I can solo basically down to 4 pylons, but I can't get them down completely, as the respawn time is too fast. On test, however, I was about to get it down to 1 to 2 pylons before the next respawned. I did have some player error and bad luck with the Drop Ship killing my pets, but overall the DPS increase MORE than makes up for the reduction in -regen in the Assault Bot. Yes, bot/traps already has amazing -regen in the form of Poison Trap, and I did use my Pulse Rifle Burst often (I put a +rech proc in it) but All in all, this is a massive boost to the powerset with minimal changes to my overall build.

Founders Fall Safeguard Mission. I left the Police Station (the side mission you get from there) and immediately fell under the map. Just happened for the second time, so its probably very repeatable.

I did +4/x8 as a test to see if it would even be possible to try the hardest of hard modes. I'm excited that I was able to complete it, and I have ideas on how to do it again. But right now, after a 44 hour drag, I'm gonna take a break from pushing on that. I'll update this thread once I try the other difficulties.