Maelwys

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.

Damage per Animation time never factored into the original game balance mechanics. Only Damage per Activation click (and the other raw stats like base recharge time, AoE radius and endurance cost)

Sure, but that's true for Fireball plus any additional AoEs/Cones (like Frozen Aura and/or Fire Breath and/or RoF and/or Bonfire and/or Melt Armor). My point is that the Levi Patron pool isn't adding very much to the equation, as Bilespray is essentially a weaker version of Fire Breath. FWIW, my own fire Blaster's mayhemic playstyle finds it very straightforward to use RoTP on cooldown, so it effectively becomes a third Nuke on top of Inferno and Pyro Judgement (although it really needs KB> KD via the Overwhelming Force unique otherwise you lose 2/3rds of the damage!)

IMO the Secondary is likely up for debate... but the Epic pool notsomuch. Bonfire + Melt Armor + Rise of the Phoenix (with Damage + Recharge + KB>KD) beats the complete and utter stuffing out of everything else for sheer AoE carnage. And Procbombed Char isn't too bad at filling a hole in the optimal ST chain either. I'm personally more of a fan of Ice Manipulation than /Fire, as Shiver and Ice Patch are invaluable when soloing and can at least help keep things in Rain of Fire for longer at other times. And Freezing Touch is high DPA. But Frozen Aura (even Procbombed) doesn't hold a candle to some of the other secondaries' AoE damage options... even Marital with a FF Proc in Dragon's Tail can outperform it and has Burst of Speed for setting up Inferno positioning. I'm not sure about /Mental though, Psychic S(h)ockwave is a shadow of its former self.

I believe that's the same tag all pet subpowers get, which stops Recharge Time Reductions affecting them. See other examples here and here. In days of Yore; you could slot a FF proc into the Robotics Assault Bot and as soon as they fired their Swarm Missiles off it'd trigger a FF Proc on them and they'd get a +100% Recharge buff; then merrily start spamming long-recharge-time attacks. It was glorious bugged as hell. The devs eventually figured out that allowing pets to be affected by recharge buffs tended to completely break their attack chain cycles; and stopped them being affected by any recharge alterations. As a silver lining though, Robotic Masterminds can now cheerfully farm enemies that have Psychic or Cold attacks (as Pets have become completely immune to any form of recharge changes, including debuffs!) The FF Proc will almost always kick in on the caster of Trip Mine though. So some habitual Toebombers can nearly get a bit of useful mileage out of it... 😛

AFAIK in Phantom Army that's the fault of the aforementioned "Ignores enhancements and other buffs" flag - the Padlock Symbol next to the pet entity creation in CoDv2. That flag is present on most "real pet" summons that possess any damaging attacks - and it stops you doing fun stuff potential exploits such as using Fulcrum Shift on yourself immediately before summoning them. Although they're still affected by certain things; like the Soulbound Proc and some Incarnate abilities which function as "self buffs" rather than "allied buffs" (the most noticable one in this case being Assault Hybrid as long as you activate it before summoning them...) However Trip Mine is different - my understanding is that "explosion" pseudopet powers (the ones that that create an entity that immediately "self destructs") don't benefit from external effects other than enhancements; because there's not enough time for those effects to begin to apply to the entity before that entity triggers its single damage-dealing ability and then immediately expires. That (rather infamously!) means that they gain absolutely no benefit whatsoever from damage procs... but buff procs like Force Feedback still function in them OK since they kick in on cast; not on power effect triggering.

Agreed. I think it would also be worth bumping up the base ToHit of all pet summons a bit; to be honest. Especially the ones that spawn at -1/-2 to you (like Fire Imps; VEAT Spiderlings and T1/T2 Mastermind Henchmen); as the Purple patch is already hitting their damage and debuff effectiveness very hard. Whilst it's possible to work around the accuracy issues on most "real" pets... last I checked even MM Supremacy plus ED-Capped Accuracy isn't enough in a -2 henchmen to allow it to attain a Capped Hit Chance vs mobs that are +3 to your own toon (they'd need to have +135% Accuracy aspect in them; which isn't feasible unless you're rocking a Nerve or Vigor Alpha Slot in addition to heavily slotting up their local Accuracy). So you really have to use Tactics and/or the Soulbound Allegiance +BuildUp Proc. And any pets that can't be affected by allied +ToHit buffs (e.g. untargetable Pseudopets, and Phantom Army) are only really left with the Soulbound Proc as a viable option.

Last time I bothered testing inspirations specifically was during the Epic pool Bonfire nerfs, but back then at least they were definitely having an impact. Global Set bonuses like Accuracy however I've tested a fair bit and posted about before (even if it looks like the second set of screenshots in the below example has been lost to the forum storage gremlins!)

"Boosts are copied to entity" duplicates all buffs that are currently affecting the caster, including slotted enhancements, inspirations, long-duration clicks (such as forge and Fulcrum Shift) and the current tick of any short-duration recurrent effects (like passives/toggles and set bonuses) In practice this means that any pseudopet abilities which possess effects that kick in immediately upon summoning (such as Arsenal Control Sleep and Smoke Grenades) will have those initial effects boosted by the caster's Global Accuracy. But then after a few seconds those short duration buffs expire, so any subsequent effects (such as the aforementioned Arsenal Control powers' lingering patches) will no longer get boosted by them. Note also that this can be overridden by another flag "ignores enhancements and other boosts" (which looks like a padlock symbol in CoDv2). Pets that have both flags don't gain any benefit from the caster's own buffs, only from enhancements slotted into the pet ability itself. AFAIK "Entity has creator's modifiers" relates to inheriting the caster's scalars and caps. It's typically used on pseudopet powers like "Burn" where having the power respect the higher Blaster 500% and Brute 700% damage caps (for example) make sense.

The active buff window is a little longer than that in practice. It kicks in on the slotted attack's ATBE (rounded up for Arcanatime) and extends for 4.25 seconds (the 3.25 stated in the description, plus 0.5s from the IO's ATBE, plus another 0.5s from the resulting Set Bonus's ATBE)

Sure, if it's guaranteed activation chance. But if it's a random percentage chance to kick in?!? I had my fill of badly designed pinball arcade games in the 90s.

Cryo Nite - Scrapper (Ice Melee - Ice Armor) A.mbd Cryo Nite - Scrapper (Ice Melee - Ice Armor) B.mbd Try those. One has Hoarfrost, the other has Rime. ST chain is Dark Blast + Freezing Touch + Cross Punch + Greater Ice Sword (you can swap Dark Blast for Moonbeam if you're happy using Frozen Aura as a filler)

IMO two different things would solve the issue. (i) Have a means of converting all KB to KD without requiring a separate IO in each individual KB power. AND/OR (ii) Make every single KB-inflicting ability available to a player 100% chance for KB. Particularly the AoEs. And ideally have the KB component autohit (like many sleeps) Currently even the good/considerate users of KB can unintentionally cause annoying "mob scatter" because of <100% percentage chances to inflict KB on their AoEs (and misses + target caps!)

The Regular and the Superior trigger exactly the same buff... but the Superior has double the chance to activate (4PPM instead of 2PPM). To figure out the exact activation chance you need to plug the numbers (from here) plus your local recharge enhancement % into a PPM calculator. To figure out how it affects your attack chain you really need to spend some time with CoDv2 and a spreadsheet.

Fair enough 🙂 I hate the constant graphical barf of the changeling exploit far too much to play one; but seeing how far you can push a Human Form's chain makes for a fun exercise IMO. Perhaps one day the devs will finally get around to tackling HEATs... 🤞

FWIW, mine looks like this at present: That works out at a hair over 226.63 DPA; before anything fancy such as Achilles/FoTG procs, Hybrid Clickies or "short term" Inner Light w/ Gaussian. Purely in terms of raw DPA it's actually a bit ahead of my Dawn Strike (although obviously still way behind a procced Radiant Strike!) "Cross Punch" can also be used instead of Solar Flare in the above rotation for a smidge extra DPS, but it requires giving up too many powers for my liking. Build below in case the OP finds it useful. It's technically a Bi-Former; but Dwarf is only really used for Tanking and set bonus muling. Peacebringer (Bi-Form Pulsar) [+4].mbd (95% Hit Rate vs +4s with "long term" Inner Light buffs active. Perma Inner Light; Perma Light form, Perma Essence Boost; Near Perma Hasten. Self-sufficient without Ageless Destiny.~40s Dawn Strike recharge. etc. etc.)

The below is what I'm considering for my Stalker, if it's any help... (The Ball Lightning and Water Spout variants are the current shortlist)

It also takes hold sets and has a 20s base recharge time, so you can proc the Smeg out of it. Still wish they'd give it the Total Focus animation though...

It does work in any power, it's a global proc and I have had it proc when I have it slotted in other powers, personally I have Essence boost 6 slotted with the proc and it still works all the time Preventive Medicine is the Global that can grant you Absorb regardless of where you place it. Panacea is a (3PPM) Proc that only functions in the power you stick it in.

Typically stacking Fire Defence gets accomplished via the Aegis (+4.69%) and Superior Winter sets (Melee Attack; Ranged Attack; PBAoE give +5%. Targeted AoE gives +7.5%) plus the Gladiator's Armor +3% and Steadfast +3% Uniques; plus some regular Defense buffage from Combat Jumping/Weave/Maneuvers. That said; you do not need capped Fire Defence for "Active" farming. And for AFK farming; you need a very specific type of build (and it's tricky to tick all the boxes on a Brute!). If you want ideas; look here; I rejigged someone's /FieryAura Brute build earlier this week:

A T3 Alpha Slot ability gets you a +1 level bump; so that's almost always #1 for everyone. After that; for farming I'd probably rank Interface and Judgement highest. Honestly though? If you don't have a stash of Transcendent Merits already then just run Heather Townshend's DA arc at +0x1 several times via Ouroboros Flashback.

I agree that it's easy to hit the S/L Resistance caps (especially on Tankers); but I've yet to see any builds where they haven't made significant build sacrifices to achieve it. IIRC the path of least resistance is alternating Rune of Protection and MoG; but there's a gap that can only realistically be filled with Melee Hybrid (in which case you're sacrificing Assault Hybrid) and/or the Eye of the Magus Accolade (long recharge time). Some swear by Shadowmeld; but that's got a cast time measured in eons and is +Def not +Res. You can take Tough and then chase Set Bonuses via 5-piece Numina/Mako/Touch of Death/Gladiator's Strike and/or 6x Superior Scrappers Strike ATOs; but that means less Global Recharge (Heals) or Procbombing (Attacks) and/or a very poor ATO2 proc activation rate. I find about 50% (on Scrappers at least) is the sweet spot. Beyond that you start having to make too many offensive sacrifices for my liking.