Maelwys

Meh, it's fine now. Better than fine actually; with some work you can make what survivabilitywise is top-tier build. It just lacks any form of damage increases and (on Scrappers at least) a Taunt Aura. IMO pairing Regen with an offensive powerset that has a situational +Def buff - like Katana, Titan Weapons or even Staff - makes a pretty good starter toon. It'll withstand a LOT of punishment and let you get used to the game and solo anything short of a GM... it just won't be breaking any damage output records. Or keeping runners from bolting.

I'm guessing "according to Ston's Melee Powerset Rankings" (which is not optimised for ATO2 and is also out of date since it leans heavily on pre-recharge-nerf Epic Snipes).

This 100%. It is possible to build a Tanker who can do both; but for completing regular content you generally want to focus on boosting your all-round survivability... and for farming you generally only focus on withstanding the attacks of one set of very specific foes with very specific abilities within very specific Architect Entertainment "farming" maps. So as an example... a farming toon doesn't need mez protection (beyond perhaps a few points of knockback protection). And they don't need S/L/C/E/N/P/T Resistance or Defence if they're only going to be fighting foes that deal fire-typed damage. And they don't need to take Taunt (the ability) or a travel power. And "Active Farmers" don't need to worry about recovery or endurance reduction because they'll be running Ageless Destiny constantly. The build @Warshades posted above is an extremely good starting point to illustrate this - they've gone for maximum damage in each attack plus capped (95%) Hit Rate vs foes that are 3 levels above you (as you'll typically be a Level 50+1 character fighting level 54 foes); 90% Fire Resistance and 45% Fire defense; plus lots of Global Recharge. That's the typical goals on an average farmer. Personally I'd not even bother getting all they way to the 45% defense cap on an Active farming toon (as you'll be behind the wheel to press buttons and activate heals and insps) but if you can reach it without much offensive sacrifice then it makes things considerably easier. As an example in tweaking... below is the same build but with the Concealment pool instead of the Leadership pool. It has an additional LotG +7.5% recharge and a smidge more passive healing; at the expense of additional endurance consumption. Tanker (Fiery Aura - Battle Axe) B.mbd And here's a version of the build if you ever plan on fighting foes that are 4 levels above you instead of 3. Tanker (Fiery Aura - Battle Axe) C.mbd - - - - - - - - - - Now... if on the other hand you fancy a Tanker that's designed for regular content and is also capable of active farming (but not the most efficient at it!)... then rather than boosting just Fire Resistance and Defence, IMO you'd want to look at other forms of Resistance (particularly Smashing/Lethal) and boost your MaxHP and Healing Flames numbers; then maybe pursue melee positional Defence instead of fire typed defence. Note that a lot of players nay-say stacking defence on a Tanker that has no native Defence Debuff Resistance; but IMO it's still useful in a lot of content and can help you if/when you ever decide to step into a farm. I have a BattleAxe/FieryAura Brute that is built like that. Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd If we compare it to the above Tanker... Note that they have exactly the same Global Recharge and roughly the same Passive Regeneration Rate (despite the former being a Brute!). However the former's Healing Flames is much more powerful (plus they've more "Chance for Heal" procs) and they have capped S/L Resistance and softcapped Melee Positional rather than Fire Typed defence. They could probably still do with a bit more Recharge Debuff protection (e.g. Winter Set IOs in Chop + Axe Cyclone and a Winters Gift in the Travel Power) but I purposely leaned in favour of more Global Recharge and Regeneration and as-is running Ageless Radial + the Time Lord day job + a Base Empowerment Buff can get it to North of 80%. The difference is that the Brute didn't take the Mu Patron pool (not enough enhancement slots left to do it justice!) and only Axe Cyclone and Burn are really "Procbombed". It does however have a fairly solid (although not procced-up!) Single Target attack chain and a Travel Power and Taunt. It's an all-rounder; not a dedicated farmer. Since a Brute can strike this sort of balance; a Tanker should be able to reach similar survivability numbers with much more wiggle room given their higher resistance + defence base scalars and the considerably-more-powerful-than-anything-Brutes-get Superior Might of Tanker ATO proc!

Nope. Spines was never great for Active Farming. Except maybe on Scrappers circa issue 7 (my old Spines/DA used to have loads of fun on Carnie maps!) These days it's handily beaten by Super Strength, Martial Arts, Battle Axe, Titan Weapons (bit fiddly but doable), Savage Melee, Claws, Dual Blades, and even War Mace. Battle Axe, Super Strength and Martial Arts are the big three. Super Strength is technically "best" in terms of pure efficiency; but it requires keeping Rage up (for constant +ToHit bonuses; which let you ignore slotting any accuracy within your attacks) and dealing with the resulting "crash"... so if you don't like doing that; I'd go with Battle Axe. Fiery Aura is still good; especially if you're Procbombing Burn - 90% native Fire resistance plus top-up clickyhealing and +MaxHP means you hardly need to focus at all on survivability from Set Bonuses (particularly if you're chugging rather than combining purples!) so you can devote more slots to procs and +rech. On Brutes, personally I'd still give the performance edge to Rad Armor; with Stone and Fiery more-or-less both sharing second place. And for AFK-farming it's Stone all the way. Rad Armor has Healing, Absorb, oodles of Recharge and two PBAoEs (even if Radiation Therapy isn't as OP as it once was) Stone Armor has Brimstone Procs and +Rech; plus a lot of regen and a Clickyheal. Honorable mention to Bio (in offensive stance, naturally!) for the -res debuffs, +Tohit and additional Toxic damage. Psi Armor is actually not half bad either if you have Aura of Insanity slotted with Acc/Mez HOs. And obviously you'll be running Ageless; so Endurance Consumption and/or Recovery buffs are a non-issue. The "Fastest" active farming toon isn't actually a melee AT at all - that title belongs to AoE-specced Blasters (albeit typically with lots of temps + pre-hoarded insps...) Out of the three four Melee ATs that can active farm relatively safely without external assistance however; Brutes are now a smidge ahead of Tankers. (And also sometimes behind Scrappers... because honestly Active Farming is something like 10% build and 90% method/skill!) 👨‍🌾

In Blazing Aura the proc would have a 30.7% chance to activate once every 10 seconds; against up to 10 targets. In Burn it would have a 83.0% chance to activate every time you cast it against up to 5 targets. In Electrifying Fences a similar proc would have a 37.3% chance per casting against up to 10 targets. In Ball Lightning a similar proc would have a 71.8% chance per casting against up to 16 targets. (all assuming no LOCAL recharge slotting; but you can have all the GLOBAL recharge you want!) Primarily it's due to the base recharge time measured in Ice Ages (120s recharge time for Soul Drain and 180s recharge time for Dark Consumption). But the poor base damage, low radius and decidedly average target cap limits don't help either. And the fact that none of them have any worthwhile secondary effect (-ToHit pales in comparison to Slow, -Def and Knock whenever it comes to Procs; and ideally for "active" farming you want at least one good regular AoE that inflicts Knockdown so that you can put a Force Feedback +rech proc in it and speed up the rest of your AoE attack cycle)

Yes. AFAIK the culprit is the bit at the top left of https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=set_bonus.set_bonus.stalkers_guile&at=stalker Whenever the IO activates is applies the above set bonus on you for 10s. That set bonus lasts for 10s before expiring. Once you attack it cancels (not suppresses) until the set bonus can be applied afresh. Compare that to the Scrapper ATO2 proc: That proc expires after 3 seconds, but the Critical Hit buff lasts longer than that and does not cancel when you attack; so there is effectively no such "lockout period".

Maybe if you're in melee range of multiple foes constantly (e.g. not jousting!) and you can keep the surrounding mobs from walloping them, *maybe*. In my experience against the standard +3 mobs, they only inflict ~5.3 damage once every 4 seconds and whilst they can last up to 20 seconds (4-5 ticks) it's rare that they'll survive beyond the first tick or two. And that's if they can actually close to melee range of more than one mob... which is rare because they use the regular "PL_FightPreferMelee" AI which means they'll try to hug whatever mob is closest; not the mob you actually want them to target. So the fight tends to go like this: (i) Attack activates, Pet gets spawned at your own feet. 1st Damage tick gets utterly wasted. (ii) Pet determines what enemy is closest, and starts flying towards it. It may or may not reach it before four seconds fully elapses (2nd damage tick) (iii) Pet stops a bit short of that nearest enemy; just within damage tick range. The next damage tick that actually lands (e.g. up to 4 secs wait) will grab its attention. (iv) The other 10+ mobs behind that enemy notice the orb and run towards it. Pet gets clobbered. It may get an extra damage tick off if it's very lucky. (v) Then the enemies aggro me. Hurrah! Realistically, yes, a Controller or Dominator can pin down mobs to stop (iv) and (v) from happening. But (iii) is still an issue. The stupid thing will keep hugging its chosen enemy until it dies or the font itself despawns; dealing a maximum of about 20 damage to it- e.g. less than a regular damage proc. Therefore realistically the only way to leverage it is to summon it in the middle of a big pack of mobs that are already bunched up and unable to fight back - in which case that 15ft radius autohit damage aura might actually do something. But standing in the middle of a big pack of mobs constantly is not typically something that most of my Controllers ever desire to do. They're basically identical other than the damage type (Fire vs Energy). I've tried one fairly recently on both my Illusion/Time Controller and my Arsenal/Psi Dominator. I did try rather hard to get one to work on the Dominator; as Psychic Shockwave already puts me in PBAoE range a lot... but you can only ever spawn a maximum of one per casting; and it consistently contributed less damage than a regular 3.5PPM proc. The 'Troller actually still has a copy in Distortion Field... but only because it was either that or a Superior Entomb proc and Perma-PA + Clarion-plus-PB'ed Farsight is nuts. FWIW their stats both look like this: They do gain the benefit of any Aura IOs and AoE Buffs... but I've never bothered to try and actually time (ha!) a Power Boosted Farsight to hit one.

NERF NEPOTISM! ✊

This. Whilst one thing or another might be "better"... if you don't speak spreadsheet and have never found yourself hunched over the keyboard buildcrafting until 2am then honestly just slot whatever you like. And avoid any Scrapper threads that include more than one page worth of people using the term "ATO2".

The best Milage I got from it was in some of the (very oddly coded) Arsenal Control Pseudopets. You can absolutely get multiple copies out at a time and they can each last for up to 20 seconds (if a hostile mob doesn't sneeze in their direction before then!). However as mentioned above; the Fonts spawn at your own location (not at the location of the current target of the ability that procs them!) and their damage aura is quite low-radius yet they're both slow to choose a target and slow to travel towards that target. And if their current target dies, they're slow to pick another one. As a result... I find unless I'm standing right in the middle of a big dense pack of mobs; the daft things seem to do considerably less damage than a regular 3.5PPM damage proc. And the IO has +Rech aspect; which is actively harmful for PPM. 💩

"RL" is the one with the fancy graphics, steep learning curve and slooooow level up progression; right? I think it's broken. No matter how many small animals I stomp on I never seem to gain any exp. And the NPCs keep giving me funny looks.

Scrappers generally don't make efficient Active Farmers unless they're purposely not combining Purple/Green insps into reds and/or running either Temps or GodMode abilities to help keep their Green Bars full. And they can't Passive farm at all (unless you stick a self-heal on Autofire instead of an attack I guess...) Looky here if you really like the idea of Farming with Spines/.

You have Burn; I guess. That's a start. Lose the current Epic Pool and take Mu Mastery instead. Slot Burn, Ball Lightning and Electrifying Fences like this: Acc/Dam HO, Acc/Dam HO, Damage Proc, Damage Proc, Damage Proc. In the 6th currently-empty slot, Burn should have Fury of the Gladiator: Chance for -Res. Ball Lightning should have an Annihilation: Chance for -Res. Elec Fences should have a Trap of the Hunter (Immobilize set) damage proc. That's your baseline AoE attacks. Add Hasten and a Musculature Core Alpha Slot, a Reactive Radial Interface slot, an Assault Radial Hybrid slot. Use the Inspiration-combination keybind from the above farming thread and spam it so that you convert inspiration drops to Reds and chug them as you go. The ideal would be to use a different offensive powerset than Dark Melee as it has no viable AoE attacks. Battle Axe, Martial Arts and Super Strength all have at least one proccable PBAoE ability that can be slotted like the above whilst leveraging a Force Feedback +Rech proc. Bonus points if you take Corrosive Vial (for an Achilles Heel -res). All that assumes you want to "active" farm, not "passive" farm though - the latter has much higher survivability requirements. Have a read through the above linked thread.

Assassin's Strike itself is fantastic. The "Chance for Hidden" ATO Proc however has a 10 second lockout period on when it can kick in. + So if you stick the proc in Assassin's Strike and you then use Assassin's Strike just over every 10 seconds? Great. That means that 10 second lockout period on the proc's buff almost never impacts you. + But if you stick the proc in Assassin's Strike and you then use Assassin's Strike just under every 10 seconds? Notsogood. As whenever the proc activates it'll be unable to activate again until after your next Assassin's Strike. Now also consider that the "Chance for Hidden" proc comes with a built-in 23.2% Recharge enhancement aspect; which will lower the activation rate of any other damage procs that you happen to have slotted into whatever power you stick it into. So in some cases, sticking it in Assassin's Strike can actually lower your average damage output. A few examples: (i) On my Savage/Psi Stalker, Assassin's Strike cycles every 7.128 secs. So at most a "Chance for Hidden" proc can activate on 2 out of every 3 AS's. (e.g. I'm performing 3x AS in 21.384 seconds; so if the proc activates on the 1st AS then it'll skip the 2nd AS and then have another chance to activate on the 3rd AS!) (ii) On my Elec/Shield Stalker, the Assassin's Strike cycles are slightly lopsided as there are different attacks between them - 6.864 secs then 6.6 secs. But again, at most a "Chance for Hidden" proc can activate on 2 out of every 3 AS's. (That's 3x AS in 6.864+6.6+6.864=20.328s or 6.6+6.864+6.6=20.064s depending on the point in the chain!) So the benefit that placing the "Chance for Hidden" proc in AS actually grants to my above two builds can be ballparked by taking the average additional "stealth crit" damage of whatever offensive power(s) immediately follow(s) Assassin's Strike (as that's what would actually get the benefit of you suddenly becoming "hidden"!); multiplying it by Proc Activation rate; then multiplying the result by 2/3rds. (Although in practice it'll be a bit better than this estimate, since if the proc outright fails its chance to activate on the first AS then it'll have a fresh opportunity to activate on the next one... but the above math is probably dense enough for most folk as it is!) 🙂

Fossilize should get the Psi damage Proc; and the Font should go in the bin. Volcanic Gasses spawns pseudopets; but there are multiple copies of them that spam a 10ft AoE that has a 6-second recharge time so proc activation of Hold-Set procs actually decentish. However you generally want it ED-capped for Recharge and Hold Duration with a decent chunk of Accuracy. 5x Unbreakable Constraint set IMO (without the "Hold" one) plus maybe an extra Gladiator's Net or Neuronic Shutdown proc in the 6th slot. The Font is garbage. It spawns at your location, has no movement speed increases and dies to a stiff breeze.

As a slight aside: I currently only use the Leviathan Patron pool on two toons (an Ice/Marine Corruptor and a Savage/Psi Stalker; and for the Stalker it's not even on their primary build!) Mostly that's due to performance-related choices, but it's also at least partly because I just can't with all the fish related attack animations. The aforementioned Corruptor is even styled as a "Fishfolk" and they still only take SharkSkin, Hibernate and Summon Coralax. The Stalker is just there for Water Spout. Back when they revamped Spirit Shark I had high hopes for exploiting Leviathan Hunger stacks to overcome its iffy raw DPA. But in practice it feels more like tossing a guppy. Procbombed Arctic Breath (Tankers/Brutes/VEATs/Sentinels) has some merit if your main powerset can't fit an Achilles Heel proc and you don't want to take Corrosive Vial or Weaken Resolve... but the opportunity cost in giving up Mu or Soul Mastery (Tankers/Brutes/VEATs) or Electricity Mastery (Sentinels) is just too high for my liking. Maybe one day on a Broadsword Brute. Maybe. Meh.

Ahh. Lightbulb. Sounds like you're playing a lot at Max Range then, despite Psychic Shockwave. That's a perfectly viable playstyle for anyone who doesn't intentionally ride Rise of the Phoenix and leverage multiple PBAoEs and/or melee attacks. I always joust in and out of Melee Range on my Fire Blaster, and occasionally will simply sit in Melee (on top of an Ice Patch). Frozen Aura and Inferno are PBAoE and I've at least one Melee attack (I've flicked between Ice Sword and Freezing Touch a lot, but I'm currently using the former. FT is technically higher DPA but IS is upfront damage to the latter's DoT). My Fire Breath is technically 114.6ft, but I rarely activate it more than 30ft or so away (typically whilst hurtling towards a mob and leaping either into or over them). Frozen Aura + Fireball + Fire Breath + RoF (and I can vastly reduce scatter via Shiver and Ice Patch) is more than sufficient supplemental AoE ability for me between my ~22s Nuke cycle. Yes, I've tried it. I'm not a huge fan of narrow Cones on most toons, since it requires staying a long distance away to effectively leverage them. Too many cave map flashbacks!! 😛

16 target cap instead of 10, sure. And it's 20ft longer. But faster...? Maybe if you just look at DPA in a vacuum... but B.S. inflicts lower (and far more commonly resisted) damage over a considerably longer duration and it's available half as often. (i) Bile Spray takes just over 5.167 seconds (1.167s ATBE, plus 5 damage ticks 1sec apart) to deal 75.0757 base damage. And it recharges in 32s. (ii) Fire Breath takes just over 4.167 seconds (1.167s ATBE, 1s delay, then 3 damage ticks 1 sec apart) to deal 109.7982 base damage. And it recharges in 16s. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly shilling for Fire Breath, but I'd prefer my limited epic pool power selection to give a more tangible benefit than a "mostly superfluous" one that I can pick up with zero restrictions from my primary powerset. However admittedly I've never been particularly keen on trying to consistently hit a capped number of targets with a very narrow cone (30 degrees!) regardless of range; so the only other Blaster Epic/Patron abilities that I'd consider for padding my AoE damage are Force Bomb and LRM Rocket!

Staff was at least capable of being semi-viable as a Hybrid AoE-damage-plus-Utility (built-in -Res, +Res, +Def, plus lots of Proc exploitation opportunities) powerset even before the i28p2's buff to Sky Splitter damage. I'm still a bit bitter about the Tanker Cone arc nerf though... 😝 Kinetic Melee on the other hand... well, the most accurate description I've ever heard of that powerset is "prolonged ineffectual spasm".

Same for Savage Melee TBH. (or more accurately, it's reasonable on other ATs but very strong on Stalkers) Even just swapping Blood Thirst for Build Up is a major buff since you really want to avoid the 15 second lockout on building Blood Frenzy stacks...

I agree in the "different strokes for different folks" idea, but I'm not so sure it comes down to buffs/debuffs. I think most people will want their character to idle at 95% or higher hit rate vs the mob type they're intending to fight (currently +3 for the bulk of non-incarnate endgame content) and enough recharge and recovery to keep all their attacks flowing optimally, plus ideally some form of Mez protection (even if it's just Clarion Core Destiny). Then typically after that it'll come down to some kind of balance between damage output and survivability. However different people on different toons will sit in very different places whenever it comes to "how much damage mitigation is sufficient?" and "how much debuff resistance (particularly -recharge and -defense) is sufficient?". And that risk appetite will determine how they want to build their character. In my experience there's usually only a fairly minor sacrifice in damage output required in order to attain about ~20% defense (and/or ~40% resistance, or MaxHP or whatever other survivability buff takes your fancy) but if you keep pushing beyond that then the sacrifices tend to start skyrocketing - particularly in terms of attack chain DPA. Some specific powersets benefit less from damage procs and so lend themselves more to the pursuit of non-damage-output-related set bonuses; but a large part of buildcrafting effort goes into finding the most efficient tradeoffs on each character... effectively attaining your build goal(s) with minimal sacrifice in damage output. - - - - - - - - - - My Fire/Ice/Fire blaster has practically zero defense and debuff resistance. They tend to stay mobile and joust in order to stay alive between RotP recharge cycles (whenever they instead actively invite face planting!). If the crap really hits the fan they can pop insps, turtle up with Ice Patch and Shiver, activate Hover and/or start actively stacking holds on bosses... but they're primarily built for damage output. "Frigid Protection" has decent heal aspect in it, but "Fire Shield" is barely halfway to the ED-cap for damage resistance. However I also have an Archery/TA/Force Blaster who is also an AoE damage dealing machine. That character has full invisibility, sits at the Ranged positional defense softcap with Repulsion Field running constantly and >43% S/L resistance (raisable to 75% with Force of Nature!) plus ~40HP/Sec passive regeneration and multiple chance-for-heal procs and is also an avid user of both Hover and Personal Force Field. All of his AoEs are usable from at least 95ft away and Repulsion Bomb is (rather appropriately!) rocking multiple Procs including a FF +Rech. Both have a "Nuke" up every 20-22s, but they play very differently. The former is a total joy on regular teaming content, but the latter is my goto for "No deaths" TF runs.