Coyote

I loved Herdicaning before they greatly increased the activation period on the repel effect. Maybe I was spoiled by having it activate so fast, but the newer, "slow to respond" version just felt so clunky to me that I haven't gone back to in. I do have Fold Space on my Ill/Storm, maybe I should try again with it to see how workable it is now that I'm not so upset about it anymore. Gotta say, though, with Fold Space, spawns get erased fast at +4/x6, and that's with Illusion (no AoE whatsoever from the primary). Bunching up mobs for Storm takes a high single-damage set and turns it into an AoE eraser with a 5 target cap. That's why I always suggest Gravity/Storm, because bunched up mobs for Tornado/LS is just ridiculously good.

One option if you can fit it into a build would be to run Cross Punch (which I feel is better than Explosive Shuriken, anyhow), and then use that first to line up the facing of the character before throwing Spinning Kick.

To note about Storm's "AoE"... it's not AoE. It has a very small radius, so it only hits mobs next to each other. It only counts as AoE when paired with Gravity (fortunately this is the case here), or with a Fold Space build. You need to have mobs packed shoulder to shoulder for Tornado and Lightning Storm to hit multiple targets reliably. The real AoE secondaries are Trick Arrows, Traps, and Poison, as they have AoE damage or proc-able Holds with large radii. For Gravity this isn't as much of an issue, but for other sets that need help with AoE damage, Storm is not the one that will help. Well, it will help with spawn clearing because it does so much damage in general, but it's not really AoE... it will work better on x4 or a max of x6, while the AoE sets will help all the way up to x8.

If done right and built for it, Endurance Drain can be very effective. If not done right, it's completely ineffective. Meanwhile, -ToHit or more damage is always useful, and you don't have to set up specific combinations and power uses. That's the real complain about endurance drain. I run Electric on a Sentinel and also Electric Control, so I didn't feel the need for an Electric Blast character... but if I did, then either Poison (for the -Recover from Poison Trap) or Energy Manipulation would be the ideal sets to pair with it. Because then endurance drain turns from "didn't matter because the damage killed the mob before I drained it" to "I shut them all down in 5 seconds, even though it took me 20 to kill them all".

An interesting option might be Storm Elementals. They do AoE damage more than ST, which is more useful for Beasts, and one of them runs Hurricane, with a very strong -ToHit debuff. The only downside is that your Beasts will go into melee while the Elementals will stay at range... but I think that as an MM, they may obey pet commands, so you can probably order the one with the Hurricane to go into the mobs to debuff them.

I really like Sonic with them. If you invest in it, you can punch up the Resist to 82-85 minimum, depending on how much into ED you push the enhancements, then their self-healing does a good job keeping them upright. Between that and green inspirations, you don't have to Aid Other as much, and are free to blast... and the Necro attacks add -ToHit, so by focusing on Bosses you can decrease incoming damage even more.

Demons. The set is just better all around. Robots do work really well with EA... I run one at max difficulty. But, I've recently started playing at +4/x6, to lower the number of Bosses in a spawn. Even with minions burning up fast, and the use of Fold Space to bunch up everyone for the AssBot's rockets, the time taken to kill off 3 Bosses at the end of a spawn is just annoying. Demons will kill things faster, period, and are about as tough defensively as a base but heal much more. Note that it's not a great disparity with this secondary... it really suits Robots better, so they close the gap against Demons. But it starts off as a pretty big gap, unfortunately. If you do play Robots/EA, it's a strong pairing, so you probably won't regret it. But Demons/EA will still be ahead.

So... your suggestion for replacing Repair is to give Bots a "Rocket Charge" power where they use those jets normally used to return to base, to do a high-damage charge at an opponent? 100% Knockdown, Stun, and high damage? Affects all bots of a given tier?

Well... due to how pure regeneration works vs incoming damage mitigation works, you still end up with the problem of "health drops off a cliff" with regen, while "health rolls down a slope" with other mitigation types. The shape of the curve remains the same, but the midpoint is moved. Now, the idea of boosting mitigation as HPs go down is interesting, but I'm not sure it works with boosting regen or heals... in many situations where doubling the incoming damage doubles the rate of HP drop for OTHER types, doubling the damage could easily increase the rate of HP drop by 4x or 5x, for regen. Adding kind of a buffer effect will slow down this increase a bit, which is what we want, but I don't know that there is enough room... you'd probably have to double regen rates as HPs go down through a mixture of maxHP increase and regeneration. What bothers me is the shape of the curve. We can move the centerpoint for today's "raised difficulty level" game, but unless we soften the cliff edge shape of the curve, the problem will persist, just take a slightly higher difficulty level to get there. If it can be done within Regen's base purview, with maxHP, HP, and Regeneration increases, that would be great. I"m just dubious.

Also, are you talking about not worrying about CAPS, or not worrying about Def/Res at all? I run a Brute with a build that'll have between 30 and 70% resists, so it's not near the caps (unless running Melee Hybrid), but it's high enough to be noticeable. Add in 50% Melee Defense (with no DDR), and it can be really tough in many situations. Even without great Regen. So the question would also be: how high defenses/resists would you have other than the regeneration?

Alpha: Incarnate or Musculature for Damage, with the choice dependent on the secondary enhancements Interface: Always go Core, you should have no problems hitting the stack limit even with 25% chance, so increasing the DoT chance is good. Generally, go with the DoT over the ones that provide double debuffs. Hybrid: Support is a no-brainer currently. Assault would be competitive if it worked better with pets. Judgment: Ion is best overall for damage, Void is good for having a debuff that actually matters on AVs, otherwise go with whatever fits the theme. Destiny: Barrier or Clarion are my choices, and it depends on how close I am to the resist or defense caps for the pets. If running Barrier's 5% is the difference between a soft or hard cap and being 5% below the cap, I'd go with Barrier. Otherwise, probably Clarion. Barrier in any case, if the support set has mez protection. /Rad, /Plant, and /Dark all really want Clarion to keep their -ToHit toggle running, and probably Storm also since it draws a lot of aggro. Lore is a lot better balanced. Read the spreadsheet posted above, and avoid buffing LTs with single-target buffs. AoE buffers and debuffers are fine, or go full-damage. Try to look at whether they're AoE-heavy or single-target heavy, and see what your primary is missing... Thugs and Robots do good AoE, so I would probably lean towards single-target with them. I took Robotic Drones with my Robots, as it both fits thematically and helps with Boss killing. Another thing to look at is if you do reasonable Cold damage... I'm pretty sure that I'm going Banished Pantheon with Demons, since BP's summons have -Resist debuff specifically to Cold damage, and that's most of the Demon Prince's damage. So that's one way to consider which is best for your particular character.

I agree with Mezmera that Energy is clearly better than Fire as a secondary. That said, Fire is a range-oriented secondary, and so is Mind, and they work very well as a ranged HoverDom (HooverDom? HooverDam? 😛 ). I certainly wouldn't consider /Fire on any close-range Dominator. But with Mind's ranged ability, playing all at range is a nice option if you take Fire, while Energy forces you to go into melee to use it well.

It's very good. It's not as good as /Storm because you can do the same with Freezing Rain and also get Tornado and Lightning Storm, but... it's quite good. And /Cold is very good against AVs. And /Cold is better for teaming than /Storm. So if you're more of a teaming character or want to solo AVs better, /Cold is an excellent option.

Holds: all for damage, especially with damage procs. Immobs: Um, generally not that useful, with a few exceptions... ...Plant is worth taking and using, and then you may as well slot it up for damage, because its Immob is Mag 4. If you hunt AVs, then a Mag 4 Immob is useful, and if you don't, then a one-shot Immob against many melee-oriented Bosses makes them a joke. A Tank Smasher isn't going to kill you with his ranged Grenade. ...Fire may be worth taking, its DPA is actually quite good compared to many Tier 1 blasts, and you get an Immob as a bonus. Generally it's competitive DPA-wise against Tier 2 attacks, so if you want to do damage while also Immobilizing, it's useful. Note that a downside is that the damage is DoT. ...Dark is useful because it has a -ToHit, so especially with double-Dark you can stack up enough -ToHit to keep a Boss at range and neuter their chance to hit. I'm not sure any of the others is really useful. Maybe Ice for double-Ice to stack up -Recharge against a Boss... I like -ToHit more, but a Boss does take a while to kill so -Recharge can be useful. I don't recall if the -Recharge out of Electrified Net Arrow is enough to matter, if it is, then it may also be useful and it has a fast animation.

That suggestion states and addresses the basic problem (which has also been stated a few other times in the thread) with Regen... regeneration doesn't scale with damage the same way as Resist or Defense. And all other sets incorporate some regeneration, and Regen has some resistance. But a pure regeneration scheme is one that will inherently fail more suddenly... even if you balance it so that against average opposition it's as good as another set, it will improve far more quickly as the opposition weakens, and will start to fail a lot more quickly as the opposition strengthens. So, sadly... any balance solution for Regen will unfortunately have to go away from regeneration/healing, and into mitigating incoming damage. So however you rationalize it... easy to cut but hard to damage, resilient to interior damage, whatever... you have to make the damage mitigation scale a bit more with the amount of incoming damage than we have currently.

Well, the increase of recharge to 6s is for ST Immobs. These actually do fair damage for a 4 second recharge power, but since it's DoT, it's less effective damage. So increasing to 6s recharge would make their damage good, but limited by being DoT. That's aside from using procs. However, for AoEs, procs are the only real source of damage. So these would improve a lot with a recharge increase (to 12 or 16 seconds... probably 16 would be too much), while even if the damage did increase proportionately, it's so low and so slow that it wouldn't be noticed. So for AoE Immobs, damage = proc damage. Unless they are willing to change their damage and make them real damage powers (which wouldn't bother me in the slightest, I think it's warranted). If they do this, then we may consider balancing damage IOs and damage proc IOs, like I do now in my single target Immobs.

Good analysis, good answer. I'm running Intuition on my Ill/Storm for similar reasons. And the shorter ranges of some of the summons benefit from increased Range, also, as does the cone range of Frost Breath.

I think you have to start robbing the bank, then start hitting yourself in the face. If you're tough enough to take it, then you keep robbing. If you hit hard enough to make yourself cry, then you run away from yourself. Did that make sense? If it did, be afraid.

Always. Nerf regen now AND later, because it will use Revive 😉

5: If you're going to just have a useless character, then make a useful one and get an Illusion/Empath or someone else who you can set on Auto Follow, and target you with a spammed buff power that doesn't draw aggro but boosts damage. Fortitude (Empathy) and Forge (Thermal) both are good options. 3: AoE buffs like Kinetics will buff everyone in the area. Pets, you, and teammates are all included. Kinetics on MMs only works well with melee- oriented pets, and you probably want to run some of the sturdier pets since it's not one of the stronger defensive sets... this means avoid Ninjas. Beasts and Necro are both decent options, with Beasts being better. 2: Robots/FF are a weak combination, though solid defensively. A lot of others will feel stronger. I like Demons/Time and Thugs/Time as good options here, both are ranged so you're used to that, both are strong defensively so you're used to that, and Time is strong defensively so you're used to that. But Demons and Thugs are both a lot stronger offensively, so mobs will die a lot faster than you're used to.

Remember that once you use your Snipe, you get a Range bonus. Off the top of my head, it's 50%, so it should be 20 extra feet as long as you keep using Snipe. And then you can run Dark/Energy like me, and add Boost Range, and then your Tentacles reach from here to Tokyo 😉

So he has a Wash AND a Spin cycle. Nice.

That's the most damage efficient method of using Snipes. Sometimes it's useful to start with a heavy hitter on the boss before aggroing, but afterwards the extra damage from a slow snipe can be made up by throwing 3 seconds worth of attacks into what would have been the Interruptible period that is the difference between fast animation and slow animation times.

If you want to make AoE Immobs useful in the current game, where keeping mobs at a distance is less relevant when they die faster and when they hit less often... either immobilize needs to have an inherent -Def/-Res effect due to the target being unable to dodge attacks, or you need to raise their damage a lot so they're useful as damage powers. Right now, IOs are the way to squeeze in damage, but if the devs are willing to turn the AoE Immobs into smaller-radius powers with real damage, that would certainly make them more desirable without needing the use of damage procs for it. It just seems like a relatively large step. Granted, the Snipe changes were pretty large, and I think they turned out pretty cool. So maybe it's worth asking for the AoE Immobs to get some real damage added to them?

Yeah, but you could actually squeeze out a lot more damage with an increased Recharge and a smaller AoE radius, with procs. Right now, the proc chance is about 13%, and on the damage procs that you can put in (4 of them generally), that's about 9 pts of damage. So 36 proc damage, plus a bit of base damage... with Containment, I think a bit over 60 damage. Not too good for an 8 second recharge, but it has a huge radius. Drop the radius to 20' and increase Recharge to 12, and the % goes up to 12, increasing the damage to 17/proc. Now, depending on the base damage, you're doing about 100 damage with it, which makes it a lot easier to clear spawns by alternating an AoE Immob and Wall of Force. It's not great AoE damage, but it becomes usable for a soloing Controller. At 8 seconds and 30' radius, the damage just isn't worth the endurance spent on it unless you have a good source of +Recovery.