Coyote

I think Seeker Drones are a good power for many powersets, not so much for Illusion. They go great with primaries that say "you can attack me, but not very effectively", like Dark, Earth, or Ice. Adding more -ToHit and -Damage to attacks that are coming your way, but slowed down due to knockdowns and less accurate due to -ToHit debuffs, is useful. But debuffing attacks going into PA is irrelevant, so you only debuff a portion of the attacks that come at you. That said, it's not too bad. It does lower damage, it has a decent -ToHit (10% with both, slottable to around 15%), so you stack that with Spectral Terror, and add it to the normal Defense from FFG, and reduce the damage that does hit, and it makes you a lot less worried if the spawn is scattered and not controlled, or too many mobs for PA to maintain aggro, etc. It can allow you to play a lot more aggressively, and not wait for PA to recharge since you can open fights with the Drones plus Spectral Terror, etc.

Nah, why would we give Defense-based sets resistance to Defense debuffs? ... Oh. Wait.

Mercs take a pretty long time to attack... 4+ seconds on Full Auto is okay when it's a Tier-9 attack with 90 second Recharge and does pretty good damage. Even then, it's not a great attack due to that animation time. The Mercs version has a 16 second recharge time... and 6+ seconds of animation time. That's just really, really bad. And with its cone width, it's practically a single-target attack, too. Fix the animation times on these (and some of the Robots cones, too), and the set would be a lot better.

I meant the personal MM attacks in the Robots powerset. The actual Robots attacks themselves pretty much bracket the scale: I think the Incendiary Swarm Missiles are the best attack available to MM henchmen... and Full Laser Auto (and its 6+ second animation time) is the worst. But overall, they're not terrible. Just the personal attacks.

Regen would be fine if it had DDR, but there's no rationale to giving DDR to a non-defense set. It might also do well if MoG had its stats cut to 1/3 of what they are now... and it's uptime increased to 3x. A 45 second MoG... or better yet, one with 1/3 the Recharge so that it can reliably soak up the alpha strike on every spawn, would generally be fine. As it is, it's really vulnerable to stacking -Def debuffs ramping up enemy damage, since its mitigation doesn't ramp up. So you have to worry about the alpha strike AND about the backloaded damage against enemy groups that stack -Def.

Exactly. It's most effective to use SOs at least until 22 or so (when you start considering level 25 IOs so you don't have to worry about levels anymore). Use unique IOs as soon as they become slottable. Otherwise, go for set bonuses only where you can get useful ones in 2-3 slots (Steadfast, Thunderstrike).

It depends on the set. Robots attacks are terrible, Mercs are poor, Beasts are very good, Demons are great. Beasts/Kin: with relatively minor +Damage boost (+100%, so not a full Fulcrum Shift), the damages are: 3 second recharge (Swarm): 102 and Achilles Heel IO 6 second recharge (Hawk): 226 and Force Feedback IO 14 second cone (Ravens): 204 and Achilles Heel IO. Also of note is that Beasts AoE is really poor, so this is actually the character's main AoE damage even after the level 32 upgrade. These attacks also generate Pack Mentality, to boost the critical chances of the beasts. Demons are also good with damage, but more importantly, add -Res and places to slot Force Feedback. Endurance is really the issue... MMs can run hot due to increased End costs, so it depends on how well the secondary supports Recovery or +Endurance. But if you can support it, there are some sets where I feel the attacks are worth it: Demons and Beasts definitely have good attacks. I would take 2-3 from these for sure. Necro has decent attacks, and can help with Endurance burn since you can put Theft of Essence in Life Drain. I would take 2-3 here also. Thugs attacks aren't too good, but can slot FF and Thugs like more Recharge. I would probably take the two Knockback attacks and see how the Endurance plays out. Mercs, similar to Thugs but don't benefit so much from Recharge, so I would take the knockback attacks if the secondary is one that really benefits from Recharge. Burst can slot AH, however, so if there is room to spare I might take that... but not on most builds. Ninja and Robot attacks, ugh. For Ninjas it's both more effective and thematic to take the Fighting pool. For Robots, I could see taking the AoE and using procs to get AoE damage before 32... after that, I'm not sure it's worthwhile. The single-target attacks are crap in any case. Also, if you're going to run in Bodyguard mode, losing some personal defense is rarely a major issue. The only time I feel personal defenses are important are on a MM who is micromanaging the pets for efficient attacking, in which case I'm probably not taking the attacks more because I'm too busy controlling them. It will be a rare build where I'm attacking AND I'm controlling the pets as they attack, so in most cases I'll be attacking/Bodyguard, or controlling/Personal Defense, but in the latter case, I'm not taking attacks anyhow.

/Martial's best strength is to be in melee with several AoE attacks that can all be used without having to change range. I wouldn't try to pair it with a primary that functions best as a ranged character, like Mind and Gravity. Dark is more usable in melee range because it has a PBAoE Stun, but it still has a couple of cones. Match it with a melee-oriented primary (Fire, Electric, Ice) for a better match. For theme, there are the Fire Clan from the Avatar cartoons, Sub-Z from Mortal Kombat, and the Lightning bad guy from Big Trouble in Little China.

Absolutely, Tornado needs a KB converter, but it's possible to set it up nicely with a converter... use the Overwhelming Force one that adds to damage instead of your current Sudden Acceleration, and then replace the Acc/Dam (or the Acc/Rech) with the FF proc. You end up with enhancing that is still pretty comparable, get the FF proc, and just lose the 5-piece set bonus from Expedient Reinforcement, which I don't recall as being anything valuable.

Putting FF procs in LS and Tornado would get over 30% Recharge when they're being spammed. I don't think LS really need a KB2KD converter unless you exemplar a lot, as the KB is listed as being only 1.0... against +1s or higher it should be KD anyhow.

AA doesn't do damage, so at least you get a chance to let it get a few rolls on the targets before you wake them up with Ice Slick. I personally would avoid pairing Ice, which really wants to be in melee range, with Fire Assault, which is best as a ranged attack set. Ice Control works well with melee-oriented sets like Martial, Savage, Earth, and Energy... or with neutral ones like Ice Assault. But if it's what you have, well... make lemonade.

The incarnate-oriented mobs have higher base To-Hit, so they will hit you more often than mobs in normal missions. I assume the ones in Moth Cemetery follow this rule, and it's really painful for squishies using high Defenses. Mez them first, Stun/Sleep them, etc. You cannot depend on passive defenses as much, so letting them attack you and trusting in your defenses to passively handle incoming fire is a recipe for running out of Awakens. With Sonic Blast, you can use Siren's Song to sleep them all, then wake them one at a time with Screech. Doing AoE damage is... risky. But you may be able to do it with heavy use of Shockwave to keep knocking them down. But the short version is to try to limit incoming fire from high-accuracy mobs, rather than trying to survive it.

I don't get it 🤔

You might look at a Storm/Water Defender (or Water/Storm Corruptor) for a character who doesn't look that aggressive but blows the mobs away. It washes, it rinses, it even has a spin cycle.

Anything with a lot of Stun effects. Energy Melee, Mace, Stone Melee.

If you want a strong defensive set but don't want to heal, I'd go with /Cold. Demons/Cold would probably be the best option, but Beasts/Cold and Bots/Cold are quite tough. Beasts will be the toughest if you go for high Recharge and a perma-Fortify Pack build... with the Cold shields they'll be way over the softcap, enough to even withstand a decent amount of defense debuffing, and they have pretty good resists behind that. However, they'll face more damage in melee, also. Bots won't be as tough statistically, though they'll also pass the softcap, but will play tougher due to playing at range. They do less damage, though. Thugs do more damage than both, and are not as tough as either but will play pretty tough due to being all ranged. They won't be as far into the softcap as either, and don't have strong resists to back them up like Beasts, or heals like the Robots, but having a lot more damage does decrease incoming damage nicely. A different option would be Necro/Sonic. Eventually the henchmen all get heals, and you can have them at 85% resist to everything if you wish to max things out that way. They'll be suffering a lot more debuffs due to not having Defense, but... will be a lot less vulnerable to cascading defense failure.

Actually, you have a much lower chance for each jump to fail, because it makes an AoE attack... so if it misses a target, it rolls on the next one, until it hits, up to its maximum number of targets. So you really only have a 5% miss chance on the first attack, and then when you're down to only one target who hasn't been hit. Everyone else will get hit basically 100% of the time, as a miss will just mean another attack roll on the next viable target, and the odds of missing 2+ consecutive 95% rolls are very low. The self-targeting procs (+Recharge, +Endurance, +Heal) treat it like an 8 second recharge single-target attack, so they're fine. It's a strong defensive power that works well with interrupting attacks until you have everyone Slept/Drained, so I think it's worth spamming for defense... and if you're going to do that, adding procs for damage is a good idea. I mean, just as a single-target attack that you'll spam on the Boss for damage while knocking everyone else around, it's worth proccing, so any AoE damage from the procs is just a bonus. Now, I'm not sure how good the AoE procs are... although the power that each chain uses to attack says it has a 4 second recharge, it also says that it has an activation period of 4 seconds. I assumed this means that it's treated like a toggle, and considered to have a 10 second recharge. If it's only 4 seconds, then it does a lot less damage after the first target. But without having run tests, it looks to me that it fires chained procs at 1/2 the rate of the main, not 1/5 or so, so it seems that a calculation based on 10 seconds is right. But it could be observer bias. On Doms, they have enough attacks that you can skip slotting it... but it's still a good source of self-buffing procs, knocks everyone around the target down, and drains the primary target. I use it on my Ele/Earth in between Tremor/Fissure, since there will be a downtime, as long as there are enough mobs in the area to make AoEs more worthwhile than single-target. This coincides with the fact that it's more useful at the beginning of the fight when not all the mobs are drained. After a couple of rounds, I switch to Seismic Smash in its place, but it's definitely worth using a couple of times at the start of the fight. It also helps stack Holds on a Boss without getting attacked, at lower levels when Domination is down.

On a quick perusal, there are a lot of things there that I don't like. First, though, can you update to Mids 3.0 or higher? I can't open the data link, there seems to be some backwards incompatibility. Notes: once you get to 50 IOs, getting 2x50 in Hasten is good enough, the 3rd slot doesn't help much. Bonesmasher is a damage attack, not a Stun, and if you're putting a purple in there for the set bonuses, put Hecatomb. Better yet, put Hecatomb in Total Focus (that's where you want more Recharge) and put Crushing Impact in BS. Mesmerize is a damaging attack and should be slotted for damage.. or, better yet, ignored and 1-slotted with Acc/Sleep. With Domination up, the Sleep lasts for such a long time it's not necessary to heavily slot it. At worst, 2-slot it, but I wouldn't spend the slots on it. You're missing Power Burst. It's a good attack without Energy stored... with Energy stored, it's a great attack. Take it and love it. You have enough attacks early that you can skip Power Blast (or respect out of it later) and take Burst instead. Weaken Resolve by itself is not a very good power... it becomes great when you put an Achilles Heel in it, as it will have a 90% chance to proc. That adds an average 18% -Res to it for 10 seconds, making it a very good power. If you're going to spend a valuable pool to get it (Doms usually like to max out on pools with Defense powers to squeeze in more LotGs), then get a better effect from it by slotting Achilles Heel. Here is what I'm running... a lot more expensive, but it has easy perma-Dom as well as capped S/L & Ranged defenses (with Barrier or Power Up active only, though). It can perma-Confuse AVs and kill some (depending on level and their Resists) even with Confuse eating a lot of animation time.

Ele/Nrg is a good pairing, because both work best in melee. Electric does a good job sapping opponents so that after a short while you're safe from short-range attack, so build your set bonuses for Recharge and Ranged Defense. Energy does all of its AoE and its best single-target damage based on melee attacks. You use Synaptic Overload and Static Field to break up and prevent a heavy alpha strike. Unlike most Doms, you will want to take your AoE Immob because it helps drain Endurance, and because both Static Field and Conductive Aura give you back Endurance so you can spam it with less pain on the blue bar than for other primaries. Once you have the mobs Confused and Slept in the Static Field, you go into it so that Conductive Aura starts sapping, and start with the Jolting Chain/Chain Fences combination, knocking mobs down and draining them, and then there is a good chance that Static Field will pulse and re-sleep them as they get up so they don't even get to shoot back. This goes on for a short while and then sleeping doesn't matter much because they're out of Endurance. I like to put the Fiery Orb ATO in Whirling Hands... due to the insta-recharge mechanic when using it after a Total Focus, you get twice as many proc activations out of it as from a normal AoE, and Doms build for global Recharge anyhow so that's also proc-friendly. Triggering the orb when in the middle of a spawn means that it has no travel delay and starts doing damage and Stuns immediately, and its stun aura stacks with Whirling Hand's small chance to Stun, adding another layer of safety at point-blank range. One issue to be aware of: Energy Assault blasts will do knockback, and your Chain Fences do NOT convert KB to KD like most Immobs. Instead, you have to use Tesla Cage to prevent knocking mobs back. That's kind of fine, you can go with AoE attacks while targeting the boss, and then using the blasts along with Tesla Cages is pretty natural. But if you like to bounce around targets, knock this guy down, then Hold that guy, etc, you will end up knocking targets away from your draining area and end up taking more damage. Lastly, put every proc that you can fit into Jolting Chain. At 50, that's 3 damage and one FF, and then at least one more proc... a self Heal or chance for +Endurance (Power Shifter) are probably the best options, but it does take a Chance to Hold IO also. If you have enough Accuracy from set bonuses you might 6-proc it. At lower levels you can't put the Apocalypse into it, so fill it out with +HP, +End, and the FF proc, and spam the heck out of it. It'll give back Endurance, Health, and boost Recharge to get Domination up faster, while constantly knocking down mobs and doing a bit of damage.

I know that location-based powers can be executed at the user's location based on how the power is activated via a macro or keybind. Is there a version of the pet GoTo command that can have the pet come to the Mastermind's location? Not Follow, because that has different AI rules and I may want to set the pets up at a location and then move back, but a GoToLocation command based on where I am currently? I have a macro and set up a mouse click sequence to do it, but it would be nice to have a one-touch keybind for it.

A dedicated sapping build for a Blaster would almost certainly take the Musculature Alpha, so once Incarnated, the character would have higher End Drain. Also, the Alpha at Tier 3 will give a level shift, so you generally won't see +4s again... Level 54 mobs will count as +3 to you when calculating level adjustments. So sapping at full Incarnate levels should be somewhat stronger than in the 40s.

That's my favorite Dom so far. Savage is fun fun fun, but low on mitigation... Plant helps with that, and also eats up very little animation time, freeing you to go all Savage-like on your enemies.

I think Proc Monster is the way to go. Kinetics boosts your Recharge, so you're not as strongly compelled to look for Recharge bonuses. This frees up powers to slot for proc damage, with Kinetics helping you reach the damage caps without them. It creates a build that is rare in Controllers, a direct-damage dealer. The build I'm working on, after Fulcrum Shift, does: 480 damage with Dark Grasp (8 sec recharge) 350 damage with Shadowy Binds (4 sec recharge). Also 320 or so with Ice Blast, but that's rarely going to be used because Kinetics is so busy... SB-DG-SB just leaves room for one Kinetics power out of every 4, so there really isn't much room to use Ice Blast... more as the 3rd hit in a 1-2-3 sequence at a fleeing mob at the end of fights. 600 AoE damage from Frost Breath, along with 700 from Ice Storm and almost 400 from HoD as a fight-opener. And 160 or so from Living Shadows on an 8 second recharge. So... AoE damage, single-target damage, and a lot more survivable platform than the pets. I don't think you can get close to this damage by focusing on putting out more pets, and they also start feeling a lot squishier at higher difficulties even with all the -ToHit debuffs. This is a preliminary build, because I'm close enough to soft-capping that I'm thinking it may be worth pushing a bit closer to it... it wouldn't normally matter since the -ToHit debuffs easily soft-cap for most situations, but sometimes ambushes get to shoot you before you can debuff them, and soaking up an ambush at +4/x8 will kill you if you depend on debuffs/controls to be your main line of defense.

Except that the usual damage procs have a 3.5 PPM and cap out at 90% chance to proc, which occurs at 16 second recharge... so a longer recharge doesn't actually increase the chance to proc on a damage power (though it would on a power like Chance to Hold, which has a lower proc chance), but just lowers the number of checks that the power manages per minute.

Funny, I'm also on the Plant/Poison/Earth wagon. Though Plant/Kin/Cold is a good option also... Frost Breath does obscene damage maxed out with procs and Fulcrum Shift.