JediDave

Isn't practiced brawler also getting an absorb shield? I skimmed the update notes once, but I THINK that was one of them.

@Scarlet Shocker as a side note, it's Cobalt. You want Cobalt in your sandwich, not Carbon. Carbon would give you a BaCN sandwich. Gotta get use out of my chemistry degree somewhere.

When henchmen are in bodyguard mode (defensive and follow mode) they share damage with the mm. Basically, if you get hit for 100 damage, you'll take 25 of that damage, and each pet will take 12.5 damage. The math works out so that there are X+2 shares, where X is your number of active henchmen, and each will take 1 share of damage, and you take 2. The numbers I gave are based on having all 6 henchmen out. It's essentially a 75% resistance boost to you that stacks separately with your own actual resists. By increasing your health with an unbreakable gourd, that 7.5% health is carrying double duty because of how your damage gets split up.

Keep in mind you don't need that many extra powers to fill out an attack chain. Cross punch is by far the strongest pool power attack if you get boxing and kick both in the build. I'd say just use one of those on top of cross punch and call it a day. If you really want some variety, arcane bolt is probably next up after cross punch due to it being able to hit for double damage, which I think gets buffed by fury.

Any end reduction in any attack will lower your overall endurance consumption more than that end reduction in hover ever will. Also noted you pointed out evasive maneuvers has end reduction. Please do not have that one on while fighting.

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.

I'd suggest /energy, because big punch

Got a few levels Saturday, then had a longer session Sunday and went from 21 to 32. We are cruising. A good chunk of time from levels 12-26 was spent shooting smoke cannister into a mob, then trying to snipe the closest target to pull onto an ice patch, debuffing it and dropping it, then rinse and repeat, with a bit more "run in and shoot stuff" mentality when we "ride the high" of getting all 3 of us leveling up with big insps, which lasts a group or two. I had always solo'd KR arcs or done it with these two players at base or maybe +1x5 at most. We were all shocked to see Chernobog was an AV and not an elite boss, but we were at level 20 by that point and had all just gotten lingering radiation, which helped tremendously with debuffing his regen. It also helped that we had leveled twice in mish and he was only +2 to us. Level 26 was a game changer. Still smoke cannister opening, but now we send in a tri gun drone first, anchor the debuffs, lanch some tear gas, and double nuke. Then running in with 3 Choking clouds is great. We now "run to safety" by swarming the biggest threat until it's choking and in the lockdown electric bubble. Level 33 will see perma hasten and AM, with just a few rech set bonuses, mostly LotG. Arachnos gave us the most trouble so far, but that was last attempted pre 26, and I think now we would deal with them much easier. The leveling slowed down a bit, and we did the first Croatoa arc from 25-32. +5 groups are a bit slower, but still don't feel dangerous at this point. I think we're past the hard part and should be cruising now. I think we'll try our first tf soon, either moonfire or wait a few levels for ITF. *I just looked up the rotation and saw Manticore is the weekly, and right at our level, that may be the winner.*

Well our altitus came out and we made this new trio before getting the existing one to 50 (at 43). Ended up with 2 corruptors, storm and fire, and one controller, arsenal(me) all with rad. Had to pop some insps at the start of missions, ran into a +5 group right at the door a few times, but level up inspirations carried us through the Habashy arc and we ran over to KR for Shauna's skulls arc. We ended the night at 15, close to 16. First arc was a few "arrest X hellions" missions, so the +4x8 didn't really hit until about level 3, and I think one LT leveled us to 4 inside the mish. The strat for most of the night was rad infect at max range and running back to break line of sight, dropping liquid nitrogen on their path, and then hitting them with sleep grenade. From there, I tried getting bosses slept or held as much as possible, while corruptors were killing off LTs and minions. With higher level enemies at that point in the game, everything is a threat, so we went with the approach of thinning them out as much as possible first, while I kept bosses (mostly) neutralized. START vendor enhancements and staggered AM had sleep nades ready to use 2 times per mob, which helped a ton as we were losing health and needed some safety. Our biggest blunders were accidentally nemesis staff-ing anchors out of range, so we just removed that from the trays around level 7 or 8. Smoke Cannister and Direct Strike are helping pull with relative safety, still into a patch of ice, but we only had one mission at a level with those available. Not the next mission, but I believe the one after that will be our first EB fight, which I am a little worried about, but realistically we will probably be running into that fight with level up insps active. The hardest mish so far was a Shauna Stockwell mission where the warehouse we enter was empty until a glowie at the end of the map spawns in all the enemies and an ambush comes at us. I set up the ice patch a bit early and it wore off shortly after the group got to us, and we wiped. They will immediately rush the door when you re-enter that one, and it caused some issues. Things we think will help once we get past the "we just need to level up mid mish to survive" level range: 2 snipes with gaussians on aim to pull/kill targets at a safe range with arsenal location controls stopping unwanted extra pulls. 2 nukes with the same BU setup. 3 Choking Clouds with a lockdown in each. Things we want to avoid but likely have to embrace: Abusing fallout/veng in exchange for debt

*big gremlin

Part of me wants to pitch a guns and radiation theme. Mercs, Arsenal, AR all with rad secondary. We like themed powers and that would be easy to do. KB>KD on buckshot and M30 for corruptor is soft cc and aoe we'll need. M30 on MM and serum will add more KD and make our meat shields a lot tankier. Arse is just good and the drone as a makeshift tank is something we'll need at times for sure.