Maelwys

Yeah that tracks. No Immobilize resistance (100% base) but they're getting Mag3 protection from their critter rank (AV) plus another Mag3 protection from the shield, for a grand total of Mag 6 protection. So your Mag12 Immobilize effect from stacking WAWG still has half of it's original kick left after reductions (that red "-6") and so will work just fine... but even stacking Mag7+ should work.

It's protection. It might be phrased as a percentage instead of as a Mag... but it's still "(-3.0 * Melee_Ones)% Immobilized" rather than "(-3.0 * Melee_Ones)% Resistance (Immobilized)" To be fair, the protection it grants might be quite low; but consider its impact on a Mag2 4.3 second base duration Spectral Interface Proc. Even without a 35% Purple Patch reduction it's unlikely for those to stack up beyond Mag6 or so, and I think it'd require a Mag7 or above effect to affect Rommy.

This. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=romans.romulus_base.energized_shield&at=boss_praetorianarchvillain

Caltrops can hit the Slow Movement cap by itself (it's -90%; which means you need -148.5 vs +3s. Caltrops inflicts -80% base, so you need at least 85.625% Slow Enhancement in it including Set Bonuses and Alpha) and you have Web Envelope and the forced root vomit animation of Poison Trap available too. The Arsonist's Firebomb is only up once every 17.584 seconds, which is more than enough time for your other CC abilities to recharge... so personally I'd consider Spectral's immobilize effect to be very superfluous. Simply put, you're choosing between an increased opportunity to inflict Immobilize and an additional -10% resistance debuff on the very things your henchmen are currently attacking. From a build efficiency point of view IMO the latter is the clear winner.

You can certainly achieve that with a single button (using button PRESS to trigger one thing and button RELEASE to trigger a second thing) but it'll require keybinds rather than macros. The other benefit of binding stuff like this to a key is that you can just keep the original ability in the power tray to display its recharge time properly.

The T4 has "75% chance for X plus 25% for Y". The T3 has "75% chance for X" or "50% chance for X plus 25% chance for Y". Since MM henchmen make an awful lot of attacks in a short space of time, the Debuff stacks will become saturated even with just a 25% activation chance. Hence the T4 Radial "75% chance of DoT plus 25% chance of Debuff". The Debuffs can stack up to 4 times, the DoTs up to 8 (with a "Chance To Cancel" so they often don't reach full duration). Reactive and Spectral and Preemptive deal 13.3862 per tick, Degenerative and Cognitive deal 10.709 per tick (power short descriptions are often misleading at best - terms like "moderate" and "minor" don't tell the full picture so you really need to check the detailed effects and CoDv2) The secondary effects make the difference: -10% res for Reactive is effective against everything, but -4000 MaxHP from Degenerative is much better vs a big bag of hit points (anything over Elite Boss gets -1000 per stack instead of -3.5%). Spectral is fine if you're after Immobilize rather than Killspeed. But the effect is only Mag2 (minions) and due to Purple Patch that 4.3s duration per stack will become 2.8s vs anything worth fighting so it's less reliable at rooting LTs and Bosses. However with access to Web Grenade, Web Envelope and Caltrops... I can't really picture a viable use case.

Foes in Incarnate and baseline Advanced Difficulty content have 63.75% Base hit chance instead of 50%. 0.95-(1-0.6375)= 0.5875; so 58.75% Defense. However as soon as you start playing anything above 1-star they gain additional +ToHit (+10% in 2-star, +20% in 3-star, +30% in 4-star) And Defense Debuffs are very much a thing in that sort of content (and /Traps has zero Defense Debuff Resistance). But all that also discounts buffs from Teammates and Incarnates - on teams it is very common to have a few copies of Maneuvers running and/or Barriers cycling. In fact; most of the min/max builders out there will not even bother hitting 45% Defence unless their character has close to 100% Defence Debuff Resistance. Instead, stacking damage output becomes the main goal; with perhaps 15-25% Defence gained from low-hanging fruit like Combat Jumping and the +3% Def Globals. However on a Thug/Traps MM both you and your henchmen will be gaining a fair amount of +Defence whether you choose to stack it or not; so there is much less of a performance tradeoff from pushing it up to the 45% mark. Pushing it higher is largely pointless given that typing "/AH" and the global email system exists - just email yourself a bunch of these or these for those extremely few occasions when you want to solo an incarnate AV or a roaming GM and popping Barrer Core Destiny + Support Core Hybrid for some reason isn't good enough. So in most cases aiming for "45% def for both you and your henchmen, before Destiny and Hybrid" is going to be the way to go on a Thugs/Traps. That will mean you will be softcapped in regular content (at least until you encounter Defense Debuffs; which aren't as worrisome on a MM with Bodyguard Mode; let alone on a /Traps with both Mez protection and oodles of CC) and more importantly it also allows you to focus much less on stacking +defense and much more on stacking -res debuffs and damage output. Even if you don't subscribe to the "faster cleartimes are better" meta... dead mobs can't hurt you! 😉 FWIW the only Interface procs worth a damn (especially on MMs!) are the ones that inflict a DoT. Spectral Radial isn't too bad; but most efficient is Reactive Radial for regular mobs; and Degenerative Radial for AVs and GMs. Damage Proc mechanics have changed a LOT since shutdown; Caltrops and Poison Trap used to be insane... but they're a lot tamer now. Slotting the henchmen up for damage procs (after figuring out how many of their attacks can inherit the enhancement set that each proc belongs to!) tends to give much better results.

I make that 46.2% S/L Defense for you and 55.2% Def for your henchmen; without Agility Core or Barrier up. So you're waaaaaaaay overshooting. I mained a Bot/Traps redside for years. /Traps is most definitely not an Endurance Heavy set unless you're purposely spamming Web Grenade and Toebombing TripMine. On the above build; using Acid Mortar and Poison Trap on Cooldown will be costing you only 0.535+0.732=1.267 End/Sec so is not a major drain. The additional EndMod you're gaining from Agility Core (and even then you could be using Musculature RADIAL) is granting you a mere +0.17 End/Sec so you'd be much better off just grabbing your passive +End accolades and occasionally standing in your own Triage Beacon (for Panacea procs) if needed. Without swapping the power picks around; personally I'd go with something like this instead: Super Punx 3a.mbd Poison Trap from /Traps doesn't proc well either; and TripMine can't activate damage procs before it self destructs. Currently the only power it has that is even slightly worth considering procbombing is Caltrops; and even then on a MM personally I'd rather go with -MovementSpeed in Caltrops and proc up the henchmen instead.

I make that about 27.6s recharge; so a 30.5 cycle time. Each Acid Mortar stays out for 60s; and their attack has a 5.5s cycle time and its debuff lasts for 20s; so best case each mortar will be inflicting -20% res for ~75s. 75/30.5 = 2.46; so as it is against a single tough target (like an GM/Pylon) you'll be inflicting an average of -49.2% res debuff over time. My own (long since shelved) Bots/Traps has the slotting I posted above in Acid Mortar, plus 182.5% Global Recharge = 23.82s recharge time and 26.724s cycle time. 75/26.724 = 2.81; so against a single tough target (like an GM/Pylon) they'll be inflicting an average of -56.2% res debuff over time. Personally I'd rate an extra -7% average res over an extra few DPS from damage procs. However much more concerning to me would be the fact that you're apparently getting "74.4% recharge with enhancements" in Acid Mortar with just a single Acc/Rech enhancement; as that indicates you're not using a Musculature Alpha but rather something with +33% rech like Spiritual Radial. Which is not exactly optimal, especially on a MM. Go Musculature Core and slot an extra Lv50+5 Rech IO in Acid Mortar (e.g. Ragnarok 50+5 Acc/Rech, 50+5 Rech, Achilles' Heel Proc) and use the saved slots elsewhere.

Yes; but one of the other replies asked if there was something going on which made an Annihilation proc less effective than an Achilles' Heel. It's worth an Achilles' Heel certainly... but you really want to get Acid Mortar ED capped for Recharge Aspect in order to have as many simultaneous mortars out as possible (since the -20% base resistance debuff stacks from different copies of the pet!). So procbombing it is not an efficient use of slots. Personally I'd go with at Endgame. Each Damage Proc will end up inflicting an average of just over 2.2 damage per second before Purple Patch to 16 foes within a 8ft radius; which IMO is a bit more dubious given that you can't control what the Mortar shoots at. If you have plenty of spare slots? Sure, go for it. Just be aware that you need ACCURACY ENHANCEMENT ASPECT SLOTTED INTO ACID MORTAR ITSELF for damage procs to actually have a decent chance of hitting anything; despite the fact that AM inflicts -def. Your own +accuracy Set Bonuses and Tactics and Kismet will only apply to the very first shot/tick.

Each Acid Mortar pet you have summoned (typically 1-3 of them) should have a 16.89% chance for each 3.5PPM Proc to activate per target hit, per shot fired (every ~5.5s). It's 14.47% for 3.0 PPM Procs; and 12.06% for 2.5PPM Procs. Note that Achilles Heel is a 3.5PPM Proc which inflicts -20% res for 10s, and Annihilation is a 3.0PPM Proc which inflicts -12.5% res for 10s.

See: Also; I suspect that it's not going to stay as-is for too long. They were trialling another change to RT on test a few weeks back; but it's been put on-hold until the next balance pass.

I had a Sonic/Elec Blapper many moons ago on Live who was softcapped to S/L. At the time it was both fun and very effective; since back then Blasters had no sustains (and consistent mez protection via Clarion etc. wasn't a thing) and a lot more attacks were S/L typed so softcapped S/L defense plus Aid Self drastically increased their survivability and let them hang in melee range to "blap" things almost indefinitely. And it wasn't a hugely difficult or expensive endeavour - in fact, I still have their original non-optimised build from ~2008 (empty slots are where the non-inherent Fitness Pool was: Hurdle with 2x Jump IOs, Health with a Miracle proc, and Stamina with 2x Efficacy Adaptors and a regular EndMod). Their playstyle essentially just involved closing to melee range (firing off Scream and Shriek on the way) then whacking away with Charged brawl, Havoc Punch, Shocking Grasp and Thunder Strike. Their Health was just over the 1600 mark; so they had a fair bit of leeway for a streak of unlucky hits; but Snow Storm and Siren's Song could be used to split up and/or mitigate damage from a particularly tough spawn; and Hibernate worked well as an emergency button. Power Sink kept their Blue Bar looking healthy (oh the days before Blaster sustains and crashless nukes!) They weren't my first choice for bringing on non-PUG TFs; but they were a good choice in PUGs and smaller groups. These days I only have one Blaster who is softcapped; and they're an Archery/TA. Their playstyle is almost the exact opposite of my old Sonic/Elec Blapper - they try to stay at very long range (up to ~150 feet away) whilst churning out a constant stream of AoEs (e.g. Snipe + Oil Slick + Explosive Arrow + Repulsion Force Bomb + Rain of Arrows + Fistful of Arrows) with the recharge rate of the two "nukes" being maximise via Hasten and FF procs (plus Ageless, if desired). Ranged Softcap plus passively three Heal Procs and regenerating ~40 HP/Sec keeps them healthy; and they have Repulsion Field, Force of Nature and PFF to fall back on in an emergency. Whilst at first glance it might look like most of their AoEs have been gutted to use them as set bonus mules; neither Oil Slick nor Rain of Arrows proc well (Pseudopets) so they're losing hardly anything; and Repulsion Force Bomb is appropriately frankenslotted + procced. So Explosive and Fistful are the only ones that are lacking; and they're essentially "fillers". The result is an effective AoE-focused Long-Ranged Blaster which is very self-sufficient. They're not quite as much of a rolling AoE engine of destruction as my Fire/Ice Blaster; but they're holding comparatively little back by building for the Ranged Softcap. (and yes, they struggle a bit more on cave maps; but they're decent on most other indoor maps and very good when "outdoors") I wouldn't bring this build to a 4 star team; but then optimal 4 star builds require very different approaches to general content builds anyway. I enjoy tweaking builds; and I like to hit arbitrary thresholds (like "round numbers" of Maximum HP - it irks me no end if a toon is sitting at 1592 instead of >1600!) but I also believe that having at least some level of mitigation is always desirable in CoX for general content... the trick is finding the balance - sufficient levels of mitigation; then ramping up damage output (typically via procs; but occasionally through other things like -res stacking and/or pet summons etc). And certain powersets (like Archery and TA) gain less benefit from having their core abilities procbombed, so on those sets you have much more leeway to chase "superfluous" set bonuses (like +Def; or +Rech; or whatever). So I think it's important to note that there are some occasions where you can "have your cake and eat it too"... even if they're in the (vast) minority. And I 100% agree that a lot of builds posted here (whether they're chasing +Def or not) are not remotely optimised.

It was faked, sadly. (but hey; at least I have chicken...) 🐔 🍽️

Oh I'm sure all those -1 endurance drains every ~6 seconds (-0.167 end/sec) were contributing. I'm just not so sure that they (or "the Endurance System in General") were the primary issue. A /Shield would be dodging at least three quarters of those blasts and just 3 enhancements (a Panacea, a Miracle and a Performance Shifter) can grant >0.875 end/sec. Choosing not to use all the tools available to you is an option, certainly, but if/when you subsequently start struggling there aren't that many directions to start pointing fingers.

Ahh yes. The one where your level 17 Brute was apparently getting their blue bar drained from 100% to zero in a single salvo, by three "Cog" minions on a rooftop. (Cog minions possessing exactly one attack that can drain endurance, at a whopping -1 endurance per shot).

AFAIK regular Clockwork drain between 1 and 3.75 endurance per ranged blast (before Purple Patch) and we're talking about a Shield Defense toon with a presumably decent chunk of Ranged Defense. So I'm guessing the plinking isn't the problem.

To be fair; Axe is extremely endurance hungry. Its attacks all have a very high Base Endurance cost plus a fairly low Cast Time; so if/when you get sufficiently high recharge buffs to cycle them all back to back the resulting drain on your blue bar can have you gasping pretty quickly if you haven't factored that in and adjusted your build to accommodate it. Sure; most of the old hands won't even blink at this and will just intrinsically tweak their characters to cope; or will pick powerset combinations that make it a non-factor in the first place... but I can definitely picture some less experienced players getting caught out. I have an Axe/FA Brute (so 3x toggles, plus Fighting Pool and CJ) who has a decent amount of EndRed slotting in their attacks (Gash and Swoop have ~70%; the others have between 15% and 41%) and both Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection plus all the usual passive accolades and various IOs and set bonuses; giving them a recovery surplus of about +2.53 End/Sec (before Procs and Consume). They can still comfortably blow through most of their blue bar between Consume cycles; and whenever they're fighting a Single Target and Consume gets an unlucky "miss" things can occasionally get a bit dicey. They're one of the few toons I have which intentionally keeps more than one Big Blue Insp in their tray. So whilst I'm a big fan of Axe's high performance ceiling... I'd be rather unlikely to recommend combining it with a powerset like Invulnerability which doesn't get any +Recovery boosts or Endurance Recovery clickies (at least without relying on Ageless). However Willpower (with Quick Recovery) is another matter entirely.

I'm guessing it looks something like this? Whenever it could look more like this: With Parry to fall back on I really wouldn't recommend getting Weave (particularly at lower levels) as softcapping your Melee Defense is trivial. Whilst stacking S/L resistance (Tough and True Grit/Deflection) is definitely worthwhile... IMO that's a "later on in the build" thing when you have more Enhancement slots and the Might of Tanker ATO and the two +Res Globals. At low-levels my focus would be on melee defense plus regeneration/healing procs; and making sure my (few!) attacks hit reasonably hard. Shield is also a very easy framework for 5x LotG +rechs; and you can fit them in early (as shown above) so your attacks and Active Defense could all be benefiting from almost a SO's worth of global +Rech with minimal investment. But the main thing will be just getting Health and Stamina + your attacks all slotted properly. The rest can fall into place later.

Insufficient endurance recovery has not been "far too much of an issue" since 2010. High endurance consumption can however be a slight issue for some builds whilst levelling up. Assuming that you're not using the usual IOs and not using START or Base Empowerment buffs. Battleaxe is certainly an endurance heavy powerset. However Willpower is one of the strongest sets for raw passive +recovery. Realistically you should not be having any endurance consumption issues on a Willpower, even a low-level Axe/Willpower, unless you are running multiple travel power toggles and/or have completely neglected Endurance Reduction slotting in both your defensive toggles and your attacks. This sounds like a build problem. As such I'd very much recommend posting an enhancement screen screenshot (or a /buildsave ) and letting us know what toggles you're running constantly. It's true that at level 50 there are additional things (like Alpha slot and Destiny abilities) which can drastically boost recovery and/or endurance reduction, but there are very few builds that actually require them. And the worst offenders are min-maxed VEATs with multiple procbombed low Cast Time attacks and sky-high global recharge, not a SO'd melee AT with zero global recharge and Quick Recovery.

Yep. Twice, actually. The power got the "reactive recharge" treatment, which means Proc activation rate dropped a good bit. It went from from 90% (@60s base rech) to 46.72% (@25s base recharge)... and then later on to 28.7718% (@15s base recharge). So procbombing it is pretty worthless now, but slotting it for damage and healing and recharge aspect works out pretty well. There's a breakdown in the link below. And on top of that, all damage dealt by RT to foes beyond the first target is subject to the same sort of reductions as "Overcap" Tanker AoEs. This started off as a scaling exponential -30% reduction, then got reduced slightly to a scaling exponential -25% reduction. The silver lining is that RT is now a LOT better than before for damage mitigation (eg healing over time) especially whenever you only have a single target nearby. And its damage dealt when fighting lower numbers of targets is still pretty decent (after I adjusted my Scrapper's slotting... compared to before vs one target its damage per activation has dropped slightly but damage per second has more than doubled; however vs 10 targets it's dropped to roughly a quarter of the damage per activation and a third of the damage per second) It also got a +Regeneration buff baked into it on all ATs (previously it was only giving this on Scrappers but not on the rest!) The good news is that there appears to be an intention to undo some of the negative impact to procs (the proposed change was going back to a 25s base recharge rate) But this has been put on hold until a future "balance pass" patch because there are currently more than enough other things for the Devs to worry about.

Single Target damage shouldn't have changed, aside from very minor differences to "damage buff" and "resistance debuff" scales. Perhaps if you're a Bio/SuperStrength Tank with double stacked Rage plus Evolving Armor and Epic pool Melt Armor... maybe. On Brainstorm back before they'd sorted out the Cone and AoE base damage changes my Bio/Staff Tanker's ST damage output was noticeably weaker since it's attack chain relies on two cones... but it's been fine on live.

Regarding "other things"... there were lots, but the main ones that might have impacted proc damage output for a Tanker are: The Proc Damage bug (which was fixed prior to i28p2 hitting live) And the Ground Zero proc activation rate bug (which a fix has been found for but hasn't quite made it to live yet)

So first they took away the global radius/arc buff (which was previously part of Gauntlet). Then they went through and manually increased the base radius (but not the arc) of most Cones and AoEs... which resulted in a reduction of their base damage as well as their proc activation rate. And at the same time they introduced a reduction to all damage (including proc damage) dealt by both AoEs and Cones to targets beyond the regular target caps (eg 11+ for AoEs and 6+ for Cones). Then there was outcry. And much testing. Then several cycles of tweaks, each followed by yet more testing. The TL;DR of it all is: + The manual increase to base radius for Cones (and the resulting Damage Scalar and Proc activation rate reductions) effectively all got reverted. So compared to before the patch Tanker Cones have lost their global buff, and now currently possess the same radius and arc as on other ATs. + The manual increase to base radius for AoEs technically still remains in effect, however at the last minute (the night before golive!) the Devs raised their base damage to compensate. So compared to before Tanker AoEs with a base radius of <15ft really just now have a slightly lower proc rate. + Whilst the higher target caps remain in effect for both Tanker AoEs and Cones, "Overcap" targets (meaning anything beyond the base caps so targets 11+ for AoEs and 6+ for Cones) now take only 33% damage from the attack itself as well as any additional sources like Incarnate Interface DOTs and Damage Procs. I wrote a fair bit about all the various bits during the Beta Feedback thread. Here's a summary of the original changes: Then they reverted the Cone radius changes: Although it took them a few tries to catch them all Then they finally raised AoE base damage: The nature of the "Overcap" damage reduction fluctuated a bit too- originally it was two different scaling exponential curves, one for AoEs and another more harsh one for Cones. Then they changed it to a flat -67% damage reduction for both. I'm still personally in favour of toning the Overcap reduction down a bit (to ~50%)... but to be fair to the Devs, they did listen to feedback and reverted the base damage reduction to AoEs and Cones, instead letting the Overcap reduction be responsible for the vast majority of the "tanker damage nerfs". And that has made the impact (i) far milder than it would have been, especially to those who don't regularly saturate their AoEs (e.g. soloists and non-farmers!) (ii) much more even across all powersets. The radius changes were originally disproportionately negatively impacting specific powersets like Staff and TW.