JediDave

It's pets in general, not limited to just henchmen. Trollers, Doms, and Crabberminds also get considerably more value on the radial for that reason.

"We have mezz protection at home"

Might of the Tanker and Superior Might of the Tanker(SMoT). Usually just referring to the proc that gives ~7 resists to all at a bit higher than normal proc rate.

I do try to get a 6 slot on these for the recharge and range defense. If I build for defense on either Doms or Trollers, it's usually just ranged and I stay out of melee. Granted, the other ATO set for each AT is usually ignored, but one in each is AT decent. If I'm not going for ranged defense, I still usually 5 slot for recharge and use the troller proc in a power that has limited proc options, typically aoe cc that has no damage and can't use the TAoE or PbAoE set procs, or something that has a minute+ recharge time so the +recharge aspect isn't hurting

Nothing too crazy to follow up on here. Once we hit the 30s and had access to all our primary/secondary powers, things got drastically easier. Perma AM and perma hasten means all my hard cc is up whenever it's needed. Smoke cannister opening with a tri cannon go-to command to start combat works great and gives plenty of time to drop anchors. 2 nukes clears out 90% of the group, leaving the remaining enemies to get stuck in 3 choking clouds and whatever cc I drop. We did Manticore as our first TF, expecting the level lock to be an issue, and it was barely noticeable (we used to struggle through the +4 groups, level mid mish, and wipe the floor with +3 and lower groups). +5 groups are slower, but as long as we notice the extra level, it's not any more dangerous. Just needs us to be a bit more rigid on sticking to the standard plan. The 2 AVs at the end of Manticore were a bit of an issue, mainly because Countess kept running and I picked one of the few control sets without any immob. We ended up just having me put one AV to sleep and treat them like a solo AV fight. Once AVs get to half health and scourge kicks in, they just melt, even at +4 with only the 2 "real" damage dealers. The tri cannon having 90% resistance to everything still dies a decent chunk of time, and can't seem to keep aggro on AVs super well, but it does it's job as our pocket tank well enough to get the job done. Haven't been able to get all 3 of us on at the same time much, so we actually started Manticore when it was the weekly and didn't finish it until the following week. Did all the Provost Marchand missions in a night and got a handful of levels. We are at 45 as of now, and trying to plan out incarnates. I think they're both going musculature radial for damage and boosted debuffs and boosted AM recovery. I'm likely going intuition for the debuffs and hold. We're going to have 1 each of clarion, barrier, ageless, with barrier being the non perma one so we can drop mutate and use that as a revive. Likely the fire blast corruptor will take it because he also has rise of the phoenix for a full team bounce back if needed. The plan is to get on Thursday night this week and ding 50, then start DA missions at +5. Might just hit an ouro arc for the last few levels. DA arcs will be repeating the finale missions once per character (not hitting auto complete at the end) so we get 3 times the salvage drops for the relevant arcs. I think Max is the only one that doesn't work for. I'm excited to see how Incarnate arc enemy groups feel when they are "actually" +4 to us after accounting for level shifts.

I never thought about that, that's a good loophole, especially since most ATOs are already good value at orange. I don't frequently have room for 5 separate purple sets, but I'll for sure remember this trick on doms. Another thing I like is on brute/scrappers getting the 3pc bonus twice for 10% smash/lethal defense on a set that's lacking it. I know, I know, low DDR and all that, but on WP and Bio particularly, the 10% from those and 5% from a winter set gives a solid 15% s/l defense on sets that are specifically lacking that typal defense. Even if it gets debuffed later, it reduces the alpha considerably. My old TW/Bio and StJ/WP benefitted a lot from that split. MM ATO split 3 ways gives 30% recharge, which I think is kind of common knowledge at this point. Defender and Corruptor splits give 20% recharge for slotting 3 and 3. The one I'm constantly torn on is the Tanker 6 slot resistance bonus, because you get resistance, but then the proc chance goes down considerably with that much recharge aspect, which is then dropping your resistances. And as stated above, I think stalker and scrapper are the two biggest proc boosts to overall build performance. Scrappers take some more strategy/planning to maximize, but even winging it gives a big boost. Meanwhile the stalker one ALMOST makes me want to try kinetic melee for constant BU refreshes from the proc, and the guaranteed T9 refresh from the other proc. Almost.

I think that's the issue. The current meta is just "do the most damage" and WP isn't great at that. If you're looking at the armor set for the purpose of providing survivability, WP is completely fine. If you're looking at it to maximize your damage, you should look somewhere else.

Did an emp/sonic duo with a friend on live and recreated it on HC. Fort+double stacked 3 leadership toggles+Adrenaline is crazy. With hasten and weave thrown in, we needed basically no set bonuses to get capped defense to everything and perma adrenaline boost, then the sonic blasts debuffed enemies to hell. I think we may have needed a doctored wounds or a single LotG to get hasten/AB perma, and maybe the 3% defense pieces, but the rest of it was cheap IOs for simplicity and we still crushed it. Dark Mastery was the icing on top with mag 4 stun toggled up and soul drain. I think we respec'd out of the RAs after AB was perma, and maybe tossed them back in at 47/49 for teams. Mostly just did things with the 2 of us.

I will say, inexhaustible is fine getting just a +end proc and calling it a day. It definitely can benefit from more slotting, but if your build is tight on slots, this one is perfectly fine as a one slot wonder.

Absolutely not. Off the top of my head, inexhaustible and ablative carapace are the only powers that don't get an offensive bonus, and both are great. Bio is kind of a "take everything" set regardless of build goals or play styles.

While I don't think it's as big of an issue as OP seems to think it is, it seems like the MM changes coming up will likely help. T1 and T2 henchmen being even level with the MM at all times will add some sturdiness.

I have a BR/Dev blaster based on Rick Sanchez that will use it when soloing, but that's about it. Just toss trip mine on auto, grab a quick snack, come back, and tp the whole group into a mine field and clean up whatever is left (usually just bosses). It's gimmicky, but if I'm gonna make a Rick character, I gotta teleport people. Outside of that, I think I took the WS version on that character, but I haven't played my warshade in about 2 years so I can't be certain.

I'd think with slower clear times, it will depend on if you're doing active farming or if you're afk farming, and if afk, how often do you check back in to reset. If you go afkk for 10 minutes, but it's cleared in 5, that clear time going up to 9:59 makes no difference. A lot of other variables to be sure, but I think this one might be overlooked.

I think they are referring to a def/rech enhancement being wasted rech aspect on a toggle, not the 5% and 7.5% recharge set bonuses. They are (from my interpretation) not thinking about things like Fade, Farsight, Fortitude, etc that all need recharge and defense, and the OP is more focusing on armor sets having defense toggles. Unless they just think the set bonuses apply only to the power they're in, which would be odd with the HP/regen bonuses on LotG

Share the one you made so people can see what you're already leaning towards and to get an idea of what you want out of the build. Or at the very least, give a bit of info on what pool powers or epics you think you'll want. You'll get a lot more results when people have a starting point to work from.