Maelwys

Yeah unfortunately Mids has a consistent bug where if you load an Invulnerability build that already has Invincibility toggled on + set to X targets then it often won't actually include it in the defense totals. To get it working again you need to drop the target count to zero, turn Invincibility off and back on again, then finally up the target count to 1 again. It's annoying so I tend to set Invincibility to 0 targets and detoggle it before I hit the save button on my builds! Don't worry about database mismatches, I poke at the backend of my copy of Mids a lot (re-fixing things like Protector Bot Bubbles) but it won't affect the values.

Assault Radial Hybrid (the one with the "chance for Double Hit") always gives the same boost regardless of your damage scalar... which means that it'll end up providing more proportional benefit to you the lower your current AT's "base damage" is. So if your AT's melee damage scalar is considerably higher than 1.0 (Scrappers are 1.125) then using Assault Core Hybrid will be better; and if your AT damage scalar is considerably lower than 1.0 (Brutes are 0.75) then using Assault Radial Hybrid will be better. Tankers are very slightly weighted in favour of Radial (0.95) - so it really comes down to if you prefer spiky or consistent damage... IMO if you're farming lots of EBs (which will smooth out the spikes!) or if you're at the damage cap (via chugging Insps or Fulcrum Shift) then go for Radial; but otherwise chances are that many of its additional damage spikes will end up doing a lot of "overkill" damage on lower-tier foes like minions and LTs. (Also FWIW Stalkers have a scalar of 1.0; but realistically should always go for Radial because their ATOs plus a Gaussian Proc in Build Up means they'll often be at the damage cap even when soloing. If that wasn't the case then running Core would work out a bit better for them because Radial's damage proc doesn't scale with Critical Hits)

I'm pretty sure he was played by Phil Harris.

FWIW, I've rejigged my "all rounder" AFK-Farming RadMelee/StoneArmor Brute build into a StoneArmor/RadMelee Tanker build to try + provide another example: zTanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee).mbd Looks like it's clocking in at ~2.2 End/Sec Net Recovery and a passive regeneration of ~45 HP/Sec without Earth's Embrace running. It's worth noting that Atom Smasher on Autofire slotted as it is above (procbombed) will be dealing an average of 34.585 Dmg/Sec (38.778 with Assault Core Hybrid active). If instead it was slotted with a 5 piece Armageddon Set (ED-capped for both local recharge aspect and damage; and with a smidge more global recharge) then it'd be dealing an average of 34.933 Dmg/Sec (37.208 with Assault Core Hybrid active). So there's really not much in it there between procbombing and ED-capping recharge + damage aspect... unless you're also combining + popping red insps (or being Fulcrum Shifted!) in which case the Procbombed version will start pulling much further ahead.

Be careful of running that one as-is, since it looks very endurance heavy. According to Mids it's getting a Net recovery rate of 0.17 End/Sec but it'll require at least 0.91 End/Sec with Atom Smasher set to Autofire (assuming no non essential toggles running like Travel Powers/Sprint/Tough/etc). The Panacea and Performance Shifter Procs will be adding an average of 1.1 End/Sec over time; so It should just about be OK as long as you get all your +MaxEndurance accolades... but don't go fighting any foes with electrical attacks let alone active endurance drains or recovery debuffs. Definitely level it up as a different more regular build first (lots more attacks; Hasten; no leadership pool) and then respec into it at level 50 for AFK farming. Some ideas here for regular builds; though for anything I'm levelling quickly + don't overly care about I typically just use a few choice Global/Proc IOs (like a Panacea and some LotGs) and slot the rest with either SOs or Common Crafted IOs with or a little bit of junky frankenslotting that all get NPC-vendored or sold on the AH for 1 inf each after the respec.

Once you've it built (see here for how!) the easiest places to see its performance in action will be Monster Island (North of Portal Corp in Peregrine Island) for seeing how it copes vs monsters and/or large amounts of Smashing and Lethal damage... and the far North of the Rikti War Zone for groups of mixed damage Lv54 foes. Then soloing an ITF might be a good idea to see how it copes versus Defence Debuffs. Finally you can also check Architect Entertainment for any of the popular "Farming" maps (It'll cope just fine vs Smashing and Lethal damage critters without using any clicks) or even some of the 801 series if you really want to push things.

You're welcome 😉 (Pilot the MM, since you'll want to 'goto' and buff the pets with ID and Speed Boost a lot whilst spamming Fulcrum, Fireball, Bonfire and Transfusion. Set the VEAT autofollowing the MM [with Group Fly disabled on them via Null the Gull] with either frenzy or Venom Grenade on autofire and all their toggles running. Resummon the VEAT's pets when their timer's up; alternate Support Hybrids; and try not to blink!)

Musculature (or Intuition Radial) tends to be the goto Alpha(s) because of the Damage Enhancement boost which partially ignores the Enhancement Diversification limits. However the rest of that build and its currently selected Incarnate choices is actually more defensive than offensive driven: Melee Hybrid, Rebirth Destiny, etc. and Energy Mastery for Focused Accuracy (the ToHit Debuff resistance it grants plus Rage means you have options when you're under heavy debuffage from a roomful of CoT ghosts etc). Whilst KO Blow, Footstomp and Cross Punch do have some damage Procs (as they're the most important attacks) there are defensive related procs and set bonuses mixed in there too. Regarding endurance management... without Fly or Focused Accuracy active (and you really shouldn't be leaving them toggled on constantly anyway) you'll note it has a Net recovery of just over 2.5 Endurance per Second. For most toons anything over 2 is plenty. However since the toon doesn't rely on Barrier Core Destiny to get its mitigation capped you could certainly choose to run Ageless if you wanted to. INVs tend to gravitate towards Ageless Radial Destiny in harder content for its Defense Debuff Resistance anyway. Unstoppable is a mule power, yes. The crash is pointlessly crippling for the benefit it grants especially since you'll be able to sit at the Resistance hardcaps to everything (including Psionic!) without it via Superior Might of Tanker Procs plus Melee Core Hybrid. It can very occasionally be situationally useful for its non-toggle-based Mez protection; but carrying a big breakfree inspiration does the same job better. I used to be a big fan of using Unstoppable way back when before inventions were a thing (managing to time Dull Pain to help pick yourself up from the crash came with bragging rights!) but these days it's really just there to contain an extra global.

Typically in an AE farm the aggro cap is the major bottleneck. So the big benefit that bringing a second account along will accomplish is to attract an extra 17 targets into melee range so that everything gets AoE'd to death faster. Therefore I'd say bring something with an AoE taunting ability, either a Taunt Aura (so some Scrapper secondaries will count) or Gauntlet/Punchvoke (Brute/Tank PBAoE abilities). And aside from that? Moar Damage. Resistance debuffs always help, but most times an Active AE farmer will be combining inspirations into reds and sitting at their damage cap, so bringing a Kinetic buffbot etc will be largely pointless. All that said, making the second account into an AFK farmer and throwing it into its own separate AE map instance will always give you a better return than partnering two accounts up in the same map. The only time I'd bring two toons on the same farm is if one of them isn't level 50 yet or I'm just messing around (watching a Bot/Kin Mastermind plus a VEAT Crabbermind destroy one Asteroid after another is utterly hilarious but not exactly the most efficient!) 😉

A lot of the Invention Origin enhancement sets include one "global" or "Proc" enhancement; which has strange/unusual effects. There's a list here. One of the popular types of "proc" enhancements are "damage procs": essentially if you slot these in a power then whenever you activate that power it gets a chance to deal additional damage. There's a complicated formula to work out the exact chance; but the short version is that the longer the recharge time of the power (including slotted recharge enhancement; but not including external recharge from buffs and "global" set bonuses) the better the chances that a proc will activate. "Proc bombing" is whenever you slot lots of different damage procs (and/or resistance Debuff procs) in a single power - often neglecting to slot it fully (and sometimes neglecting to slot it at all) for regular damage enhancement aspect. After the power has enough accuracy to reliably hit, the rest of the available enhancement slots are filled with as many procs as the power can take. Infrigidate from Cold Domination is a good popular example of this: 1x Accuracy and 5x Procs is the typical slotting. I'm fond of doing something similar for Sleep Grenade from Arsenal Control and a good few other powers.

Here's a slightly shuffled variant of one of my builds that might work. zTanker - INV_SS (Hover).mbd With one foe in Invincibility range and no incarnate clickies running it looks like this this: The Superior Might of Tanker Proc (assuming you're using KO Blow on cooldown) will be adding another 6.7-20.1% resistance to all on top of that. Regarding the attuned vs non-attuned enhancements question... it depends. Generally you'll want to attune all your "globals" (check this list to see what counts as a global and what counts as a proc) but whether regular IO enhancements (Set IOs and Common Crafted Enhancements) are better attuned or boosted will depend on your current level as per https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements#Details and also on whether or not the set bonuses they grant are vitally important to your performance. Personally I almost always just boost them (unless they contain recharge enhancement aspect and the power they're in has lots of damage procs). Procs don't care about attunement; and Universal Damage and Archetype Enhancements are "pre attuned". PVP set enhancements and Very Rare (Purple) set enhancements can technically be attuned but they don't gain any benefit from it, so you'll always want to boost those.

Anything will survive soloing at +2x8. So speaking purely offensively I'd vote for BattleAxe + Radiation Armor. Scrapper if you want more Single Target damage; Tanker if you want more AoE damage. Fiery Melee isn't too far off either if you really don't like the look of the Axes.

As long as you have maximum damage aspect in it the rest doesn't really matter. The inherent Cold damage procs dealt by shifting tides is affected by Enhancements and Damage Boosts, but the power itself only activates damage proc set IO enhancements at the minimum rate so there's little point in procbombing it. So slot it for damage, cast Tide Pool for +Dmg and Whitecap/Brine for -Res, and make as many things as possible (henchmen temp pets pseudopets players whatever) attack the target.

Honestly, I found the reverse to be true. Sleep Grenade is one of those messy complex powers that has multiple components and conditional statements. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=controller_control.arsenal_control.sleep_grenade&at=controller It spawns a pseudopet with an ongoing Patch effect that applies a repeating Slow effect plus a repeating Mag3 Sleep effect (as long as the target has been attacked recently)... but there's also separate brief spike of AoE burst damage that doesn't repeat. When slotted with both Slow and Targeted AoE IO set damage procs; they'll all have reasonable chances to proc initially, then the Slow procs will also have a low chance to proc after 10 and 20 seconds. Even unslotted for duration the sleep ticks will keep a regular +3 LT permamezzed; so the only thing it needs is a bit of accuracy which leaves plenty of room for procs. Mine looks like this: And performs like this on the initial hit (quick shot into a random mob of Nemesis goons in PI) The only other powers in Arse Control I bother proccing are Cryo Freeze Ray and the Tricannon; but Sleep Grenade is up every spawn and pulls a lot of weight.

SS is a top tier offensive powerset on Brutes, but there are a few tricks to getting it to that level. Generally most SS toons will lean heavily into Rage and Foot Stomp and KO Blow and Haymaker. However you'll very likely want an additional filler attack or two from the Fighting Pool (e.g. Cross Punch) and/or an Epic Pool (such as Gloom + Dark Obliteration from Soul Mastery; Spirit Shark and Arctic Breath from Mako, or Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning from Mu Mastery. A procbombed Char or Dominate can work too). Stick a Force Feedback proc in Footstomp (to make things recharge faster) and slot Rage for +ToHit (so that you don't need to slot the attacks for accuracy) then slot as many -res and damage procs as you can fit into each of your other attacks (because they won't need any accuracy slotting due to Rage... and Brute's low base damage combined with buffs from Rage and Fury generation reduces the benefit of slotting your attacks for damage aspect; but damage from procs isn't affected by the Rage Crash). With sufficiently high recharge you can double-stack Rage; but the more frequent crash hurts unless you source most of your damage output from procs.

Definitely a Thugs/ Mastermind. 🕶️🚬🔫🔫

I'd shy away from the ATOs as the Brute ones really don't give you much bang for your buck. The Set Bonuses are decent; but the Procs/Globals are rubbish and it's quite expensive to slot multiple ATOs for the set bonuses. Instead; I'd look at a few choice regular IOs... although instead of purchasing these via Reward Merits you'll get a far better return by spending your Reward Merits on Enhancement Boosters or Convertors + then selling these on the Auction House and using the proceeds to buy whatever IOs you want. Battle Axe is very endurance intensive; but Rad Armor can alleviate that via sticking a Theft of Essence Proc in Radiation Therapy. The main thing that'll help your overall performance is putting a Force Feedback Procs in both Axe Cyclone (most important!) and Pendulum. If you want to push things further then offensively you can also use "chance for -resistance" procs; Fury of the Gladiator fits into Axe Cyclone and Achilles Heel fits into Chop or Beheader or even Beta Decay (which is a toggle and so will have a lower activation rate; but is an AoE so will potentially hit more targets!)... and defensively you'll benefit greatly from the Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall +Resistance globals and anything that boosts Maximum HP (Unbreakable Guard global being the big one). Once your Resistances are sufficiently high you could then look into pushing your Defense up a bit; but another way to go that won't require as much effort/compromise is Healing Procs. You can stick these in Health (Panacea) and in Stamina and Gamma Boost (Power Transfer) as well as potentially also in Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection from the Energy Mastery epic pool (Power Transfer) and they'll happily keep ticking away - on average each kicking in once every 20 seconds. One of the big selling points of Rad Armor is additional AoE damage via Ground Zero (as it hits a very large number of targets and takes lots of damage procs) and Radiation Therapy (which can also be slotted up for damage procs). So eventually I'd recommend getting at least Ground Zero procced up... but for Battle Axe it'll be a lower priority than other primaries since you already have so much AoE capability.

Barrage gets the regen debuff in all the ATs I think? Certainly present on the Stalker version (near the bottom, "-100% Regeneration (all affected targets) for 15s" with the "EnergyRelease" prerequisite!) https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=stalker_melee.energy_melee.barrage&at=stalker I mean, in practice it's decidedly meh on everything except a low-level GM. Archvillain Resistance and Purple Patch and all that. No, the really "not fair" thing is this Even if it doesn't possess the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag, which makes it vary depending on what foes you're fighting and results in this sort of messiness!

I especially love taking Soul Mastery but ignoring Shadow Meld; because obviously it doesn't embiggen the red numbers... 😜 The closest I have in my stable is a EM/Rad Scrapper. They can just about survive indefinitely at +4x8 with the higher MaxHP pool and at-will Defense softcapping plus the enhanceable +100% Regen buff to self in their version of Radiation Therapy that none of the other ATs get. I occasionally break them out for active AE farming just to see the expression on people's faces. No FF Proc though 😭 Scrapper - EM - RA (Moonbeam).mbd

This. I will often completely ignore slotting for duration on hold powers on other ATs - Epic/Patron Pool "Char" or "Dominate" mainly get treated as "high DPA ST blasts that take more procs than usual"... however on Dominators/Controllers/Fortunas I'll frankenslot for hold duration plus a mixture of damage aspect, set bonuses and proc damage. I'm not quite as keen on local recharge aspect; because I tend to have oodles of global recharge anyway and it negatively affects proc damage so much. But I can appreciate sometimes folk just want to be able to stack the magnitude as fast as physically possible. This is my default; a Gladiator's Javelin Acc/Dam + Proc, a Dam/Mez HO, the ATO proc, and an Unbreakable Constraint Hold Duration + Proc... which results in >95% hit rate vs +3 foes plus ED-capped Hold Duration and almost ED-capped Damage aspect plus 3 damage procs. And a smidge of local Recharge aspect (urgh!) from the ATO. Whilst there isn't any local Endurance Cost Reduction aspect; it's providing a total of +6.5% Recovery (roughly 0.12 Endurance per Second) from Set Bonuses. This one has four damage procs instead of three, in exchange for a little Hold Duration and Accuracy aspect. I only use it on characters with a lot of Global Accuracy (because 95% hit rate vs +3s is my non-negotiable benchmark!) and an Intuition Radial Alpha (which brings both the Hold Duration and Damage aspect to just under the ED cap). This one may also be worth including. I procbomb Elec Blast (not Elec Control!) Tesla Cage because its inherent damage is so poor (except on Sentinels) but a single Acc/Mez + 5 damage procs can transform it into a decent blast which fills a noticeable gap in Electric Blast's ST attack chain whilst still allowing it to permahold a +3 LT. Taking an Intuition Radial Alpha as well will (just about!) let it permahold a +0 Boss... but because the rest of the Elec Blast powerset benefits more from Endurance Modification than from Hold Duration and Range I tend to roll with Musculature Radial instead.

Presumably that's because by itself it'd result in a noticeable damage nerf to the procced out double Rage stackers. However removing some of the damage buff from Crashless Rage whilst adding to the rest of the powerset's base damage would allow SS to maintain a high performance ceiling without leaning into maintaining multiple Rages (because additional damage buffs would all end up granting larger red numbers) and as long as the high ToHit buff is kept it'll allow the min/mixers to continue to ignore accuracy slotting and procbomb everything. Effectively a soloing SS who currently single stacks Rage would end up benefitting (no Rage Crash plus their damage output would end up rising a bit due to other sources of damage buff like Inspirations, Set Bonuses, Fury, Musculature Alpha, Assault Hybrid, etc). And a soloing SS who currently double stacks Rage would end up dealing a bit lower damage but having no Rage Crash (although Brutes would be less impacted from the reduced Rage damage buff than Tankers due to Fury). However on teams with external damage buffs like Fulcrum Shift etc. both those players would be dealing higher damage than before. So whilst a min/maxed double Rage stacking SS Tanker would not be able to attain as high red numbers solo (which is where the balance problem lies and why it's been historically problematic to port the set to Scrappers and Stalkers) they wouldn't have to deal with the Crash and their performance on teams would actually improve a bit. "Crashless Rage" could potentially also be turned into a toggle to avoid having to manually trigger it every few minutes and free up a few enhancement slots... but that'd be a different argument + balancing act. Obviously any changes are going to have some knee jerk "nopes", but SS is a big outlier primarily due to all the self damage buffing that it's capable of achieving purely via Rage. Soloing SS characters that don't stack Rage have a drastically different performance ceiling to soloing SS characters that do, so IMO any attempt at balancing the set will have to try to reduce that variable.

https://truesteamachievements.com/a35170/go-hunt-kill-skuls-achievement https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kill_Skuls Also http://web.archive.org/web/20121025114624/http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/game_info/know_your_adversary/skulls.php "Some stories describe him as a feral hero, barely able to communicate. He pulls in new heroes to his cause with a terse, muttered phrase, “Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls." 😉

It's not a huge task to rebalance the damage aspect - assume ED capped damage slotting in the attacks and Single Stacked Rage, then lower the damage buff on Rage whilst raising the base damage on the attacks. As long as you end up at the same final damage figure then the only folks that lose out will be those that double stack Rage, which is what makes the set so problematic anyway. And you can help counter those complaints by lowering the Rage crash. Frankly, if it was me I'd eliminate the crash entirely but make Rage overwrite itself instead of stack. Too many edge case shenanigans otherwise.

Aye it's (70679.18*0.05)/(10) = 353.3959 HP/Second for a "regular" level 50 one. Given that the builds in question are outputting well over 3k DPS vs a pylon (close to 4k in the top run; albeit with temps out!) that's still a speedbump. Damage resistances will definitely be a factor even with the added -res procs from Mercs (Smashing/Lethal versus mostly Energy) but the Merc and Demon Henchmen attacks deal better basic single target damage than Bots and as the animations are a fair bit faster it'll mean more Shifting Tide proc activations. My gut says there probably won't be a huge deal of difference, but it'd be interesting to watch it played out sometime. 100% agree on the melee pets = problematic thing. Running Group Fly with Bots or Mercs makes things a lot easier for most (non /marine!) toons. One of my favourites for messing around is a Crabbermind; plenty of -res debuffs but no -regen and they peak at roughly ~1.1k if all the pets are on form, before Lores + Hybrid. Keeping the pets alive is a minigame in itself!