Maelwys

Might as well throw this up here too for a bit of variety. I leaned more towards ST damage and survivability than AoE damage (since I've got Tanks for that) so RT isn't quite as procced out. Scrapper - EM - RA (Moonbeam).mbd The Crit ATO is in ET; and the regular ST chain (without bags of extra recharge from saturated Beta Decay or Ageless etc) looks something like this: TF > ET (quick) > BS > MB > ET (slow or quick) > BS or vs targets that you want additional -Regen debuffs: TF > Barrage (-regen) > ET (slow or quick) > MS > BS > ET (slow) It's still got a bit of AoE due to WH spam plus RT/GZ; but it's mainly built for skirmishes vs a few very tough foes with little/no outside support.... which TBH is what I tend to value in a Scrapper anyway.

The MM themselves is sitting on about 47% S/L Defense without Hybrid running, and 75% S/L resistance. The Pets will be getting 21.6% (Melee/Ranged) and 28.8% (AoE) from Train Ninjas. Add Maneuvers (+4.2%) and the uniques and that's 35.8% (Melee/Ranged) and 58% (AoE). World of Pain plus the uniques will also be adding 52.7% Resistance to everything (so the Oni will be sitting on 78.8% S/L Res and 90% Fire Res) The Pets are a bit shy of the Melee/Ranged Softcap (unless Support Hybrid is running) and no Conduit of Pain seems like an oversight if farming speed is the thing? Also that FF Proc in Call Genin is doing zip; since pets are immune to recharge buffs/debuffs. I'm guessing the OP's playstyle here sees the MM draw the aggro with Flash Freeze and their various debuffs and then the pets "mop up"... but I very much suspect that it's not exactly going to be what you'd call "quick" at clearing large spawns. The Genin are also rather underslotted for accuracy if you're fighting anything over +2 (+4 to them)?

By all means heal your pets when they're damaged. The trick is to ensure that they only take damage very occasionally (which is where defence-capping comes in) and that they don't get one-shot before you can heal them (which is where resistance buffs come in) Personally I'd probably go /Time with Thugs. Chrono Shift helps with Gang War uptime; and Power Boost + Radial Clarion + Farsight will get you most of the way to the softcap (~28.4%) by itself - stacked with Enforcer Maneuvers you'll be golden.

Nope, closest would be this one: zMastermind - Robotics - Thermal.mbd (Pets are mostly Res hardcapped. With 'Bot Bubbles and Barrier they're at ~40% Def; so Lore or Destiny will softcap them) I tend to try to push my pets towards the regular 45% Def softcap, so I prefer a +Def secondary for Mercs. e.g. zMastermind - Mercs - Cold.mbd(Note that Power Boost doesn't work for Cold Bubbles, it's just there to buff other secondary effects) zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Hasten).mbd zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Spirit Ward).mbd I've not gotten around to building a Mercs/Time yet; but it'd work pretty well too... I'd probably start by repurposing one of my other MM /Time builds like this one zMastermind - Demons - Time.mbd (note that the main thing here is Power Boost + Radial Clarion to push Farsight up to ~28.4% Def. Throw in Maneuvers and the aura Uniques and you're in softcap territority before you even count stuff like Time's Juncture)

Repeatedly claiming hundreds of emailed items counts as "gameplay"? Fiiiiiiiine... have edited the OP. (and as a disclaimer for Big Brother - I'm all for "no botting"; some PUGs are bad enough whenever there's a human behind the wheel of the toon...)

This 100%. Pretty sure it's why the Devs gave us Vengence in the first place. On Defiant, there was a particularly infamous loudmouthed elbowhead and all-round serial troll whose globalname consisted of three letters beginning with "L". It got to be something of a running joke that the only time regular players would suffer their presence on a team was if they needed an extra dead body to teleport around...

Large hordes of mobs (ITF etc) would have been more difficult to hold the attention of before; and there are some Arcs with multiple EBs/AVs that could in theory one-shot a squishy; so I can sort of see the benefit of it. That said, I agree that none of my Tankers over the years have ever had issues keeping ~10 Foes taunted at a time. Even the OG Energy Melee one that dropped Whirling Hands.

I suspect that actually applying "Pets be the same level as the MM" is very straightforward; but rebalancing the T1/T2 pet's damage output (and survivability!) would be non-trivial. To keep things "level" they'd need to at a minimum go into every ability those pets get and adjust their "damage scale" downwards... they obviously didn't feel the need to do a rebalance for Incarnate Content, but aside from Dark Astoria that's mostly (supposedly) extreme endgame content on a team of veteran players.

Mmm. Likewise though I believe the damage scalar buff was designed to make Tankers better at soloing and/or leveling up. Perhaps a rework of Gauntlet to operate like Vigilance (damage buff when <X teammates, arc/radius buff when >X teammates) might work...? However any adjustment presupposes that the devs actually consider Tankers to be overperforming currently.

Disagreeing with someone is not bullying... And to be fair, there is a [Citation Needed] on some of those earlier claims. Has anybody asked for such? Actually they have. I mean, we get some nutjobs on the forums (myself included!) and I'm sure at some point just about everything has been asked for... but at present I'm not aware of a big movement of players demanding the devs repeal the Tanker changes. And as has been pointed out before, Brutes still deal more raw damage than Tankers in terms of Single Target and AoE. Tanker's get the arc/radius boost, which definitely makes them more valuable versus groups of foes (and by extension, more attractive to most teams) but there are plenty of cases where Brutes have the damage output edge. Such as Levelling up, Soloing; and AV/GM fights. Personally I'm firmly in the "Buff Brutes" camp... but if the Devs did decide to lower the Tanker Arc/Radius buff but leave the higher damage modifier as-is I'd not lose any sleep over it.

There's a line in the Proc effects itself (linked above) that reads: "-1000% Knockup, Knockback Strength (self only) for 10.25s" That should reduce any stacking KB to KD again.

It is *difficult*, but not impossible, to make a Thugs/Kin shine. Between your own Maneuvers, the Enforcers' Maneuvers and the +Def Aura Pet IOs you should be just about able to softcap your pets defence. And Speed Boost (+Recovery and Travel Speed. Henchmen don't benefit from Recharge buffs) plus Increase Density (Smashing/Energy resistance) are nice buffs to have - the Bruiser in particular will end up hitting some very nice numbers given their own inherent resistances plus another 35% from the Aura IOs. But lining up a perfect Fulcrum Shift is going to take more work on Thugs/ given the Bruiser's tendency to Melee and the others to stay Ranged. Likewise, Transference/Transfusion positioning may be tricky. Get a good set of keybinds and be prepared to use "Defensive Goto" a lot.

Yeah, that was fixed in Issue 27 page 2. "Enhancements > Overwhelming Force > Knockback to Knockdown: Fixed this proc not always converting to knockdown when stacked with other knockback effects" It's also worth noting that unless anything's changed recently (I know it says "2.5PPM" currently in CoDv2 but I can't see anything obvious in the patch notes...) Overwhelming Force is one of the very few enhancements that has a "chance for" something which does NOT operate based on PPM - it gives a 20% chance to inflict additional KD upon power activation regardless of the recharge enhancement slotting in the power.

Might have been true back on live, but i27 Page 5's T8/T9 power level requirement reshuffle smoothed the attack level progression out a LOT. Between getting to choose your first secondary-powerset ability at level 1 and gaining access to all the rest by level 30; I don't think Tankers are particularly attack-starved these days.