Maelwys

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!

Might be worth pointing out that Serum's buff isn't constant - it starts out at full strength but decays pretty rapidly every tick (0.132s). After 30 seconds half of it will be left; then after 60 seconds it'll finally reach zero. In practice you'll have a window of about 30 seconds before your henchmen will start taking major damage. IMO the difference in survivability between Necro and Mercs is that Necro's migitation is more consistent (with stacking -Tohit plus regular self-healing and Panacea procs in the T2 upgrade) but Mercs has a very effective at-will panic button that lets it ignore dangerous alpha strikes and "hang in there" until the situation stabilises. And also that the Mercs henchmen will stay back rather than try to lick an AV's face off. The /Marine secondary brings a bit of synergy because you can intentionally delay activation of Power of the Depths until Serum starts wearing off (as its +MaxHP buff decays in much the same way as Serum!) and Toroidal Bubble lets them stay "capped" a bit longer whilst the odd Soothing Wave keeps them topped up.

Bots/Marine is definitely safer than Mercs/Marine; which in turn is safer than Demons/Marine. Mercs has far better ST damage than Bots though; and far more on-demand survivability than Demons. So on balance I usually rate it higher than both. It also outputs more -res (due to Achilles Heel opportunities) which when combined with /Marine will be producing so much additional damage that Archvillain passive health recovery is barely a speedbump even without any -regen debuffs. GM passive regeneration might be more noticeable; depending on how lucky you get with proc activations. That said, any /Marine MM is going to be a supercar. Agonising over which model is best in a drag race or around a track is very much splitting hairs. ...and then there's /Poison.

I'd a quick hunt through some builds. The closest thing I currently have to a "Procbombed T1 attack" is on my Crabbermind VEAT - Channelgun has a 5 second recharge time and is effectively a "T1 blast"; and it's slotted with 4x ATOs (including the global Toxic Damage proc) plus 2x additional damage procs. However that toon only has six attacks which get chained back to back constantly; and all of them are 6-slotted. Channelgun gets used every 7 seconds and the two extra procs bring it from ~186 to ~218 damage per activation. My Bio/Staff Tanker has a similar looking setup for Mercurial Blow which has a base recharge time of 3 seconds. However it is the only attack in the build which can take an Achilles Heel -res proc; and as such it makes sense to use it as part of the toon's limited Single Target attack chain and increase its output as much as possible. The two damage procs in it raise it from ~153 to ~188 damage per activation. I also have a 6th slot in my Fire/Ice Blaster's T2 attack which has a 4 second recharge time; but this one was more of an afterthought (I happened to have one spare enhancement slot and a smidge of extra ST damage was more useful to me than a E/N defense set bonus!). It brings it from ~217 to ~232 damage per activation. The rest tend to all look more like this: The fastest-recharging "fully procbombed" attack I can find across my builds is this Water/Cold Corruptor's T2 attack; which has a 7s base recharge time. The last four enhancement slots are all Damage Procs and they bring it from ~153 to ~298 damage per activation; almost doubling the attack's effective damage. I have a very large number of builds with 8s+ base recharge time powers that are all fully procbombed. Although some have more procs "available" than others.

The main point worth bringing up here is that T1 attacks tend to have extremely fast base recharge times. So it's unlikely to become a "good power" by adding damage procs. Proc activation rates are primarily governed by recharge time, so powers that recharge in only a few seconds will gain very little from being procced out. That's not to say "don't proc it", especially if the power is going to be a part of your regular attack chain... but that you'll get comparatively little bang for your buck by procbombing T1 or even T2 attacks. A rule of thumb is to avoid procbombing anything with a base recharge time of under ~6 seconds. Instead I'd focus on procbombing your other higher recharge attacks first, then only procbomb those very low-base-recharge attacks if you have spare enhancement slots left AND if you wouldn't be better off using them to get a particular set bonus (like Global Recharge and/or Global Accuracy). Generally you'll want all your attack powers to have at least 95% hit rate against enemies that are +3 to you (set the relative level slider in Mids and untoggle stuff like Build Up and Gaussian Procs). Whenever you're procbombing attacks a single Acc/Dam IO or HO will not get you to that 95% accuracy threshold unless you also have a considerable amount of Global Accuracy... and whilst using 2x Acc/Dams plus 4x Procs in each power is a valid way to build, being able to swap out one of those Acc/Dams for things like Dam, Dam/End or Acc/Dam/End tends to give better overall numbers and set bonus opportunities. More Global Recharge is also very handy to achieve a seamless attack chain and get important defensive clicky powers up sooner. Therefore trying to fit in a few sets of five purples in your lower base recharge attacks and/or toggles can work wonders.

Those two can each handle pretty much anything. Bot/Traps outlasts GMs/AVs by completely flooring their regeneration; then debuffing their damage resistance and gradually whittling them down. They tend to dodge the bulk of incoming damage and heal/regenerate whatever makes it through. Mercs/Marine simply outputs enough damage to obliterate stuff in seconds (mainly via Shifting Tide procs, but Whitecap and Tide Pool help too). Whilst it's possible to build them to withstand a lot of punishment; a single use of Serum tends to be more than long enough to down a GM/AV.

It's decidedly middle of the pack in terms of AoE damage, and near the bottom in terms of Single Target damage. It's not the worst set out there, but the best you can say about it is that it's got a decent amount of utility.

Depends on what you're trying to accomplish. It's quite rare that slotting a full 6-piece set is worth it in any power... but using lots of damage procs in toggles (IR basically acts as one now in terms of proc activation) generally performs pretty poorly. So frankenslotting them (to minimize its enhancement slots) or using them as a mule to chase a particular set bonus tends to be a better idea - particularly with IO Sets that have lots of inherent +recharge% aspect because local recharge slotting doesn't negatively impact proc activation rate in them. However for AFK-farming (which I mention because Rad Melee is the premier offensive powerset for it!) you'll definitely still want a proc or three in IG. Such as Fury of the Gladiator -Res and/or Achilles Heel and/or the Tanker/Brute ATOs.

They don't take additional damage. A number of the powers in Dominator Energy Assault have a chance to apply the Energy Focus buff to you when you use them against a stunned enemy. Example: https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=dominator_assault.energy_assault.power_blast&at=dominator Whilst the Energy Focus buff by itself doesn't deal extra damage, it does cause Power Burst to deal additional damage and also drastically reduces the recharge time of Whirling Hands.

Because Irradiated Ground is not technically coded as a traditional toggle but instead a pseudopet with a constantly refreshing AoE effect, any procs slotted into it used to get a chance to tick that was much more often than once every 10 seconds. This was "corrected".

Nope. Although it looks like there's an inaccurate power description text that refers to it. The NPC Freedom Phalanx version does though.

Super Reflexes or Energy Aura. Both are predominantly Defense based sets, which perform much better than Resistance based sets on Stalkers, Scrappers and Sentinels due to their lower 75% cap. SR is particularly good on Sentinels due to Master Brawler (which essentially grants both Absorb and Mez Protection) and it will have a slightly higher defensive performance ceiling (due to having more protection against Defence Debuffs). However Energy Aura would be easier to play and significantly more forgiving for a newer player (due to having a regular self heal and no worries about Endurance Consumption) and will have a slightly higher offensive performance ceiling (due to having Power Drain to sap endurance, which combos well with Elec Blast's Zapping mechanic). The Electricity Mastery epic pool is thematic but also has a gimmick worth pointing out for anyone who prefers to fight at ranged: Shocking Field is a damage aura which keeps on affecting the foe for 10 seconds... which means you just need to jump in and use Havoc Punch every now and again rather than staying toe to toe with enemies. And Chain Fences can keep them in place.

Most Sentinel hate I've observed is from folk who have never seen one that's sensibly built and played. Even an Ice Blast (consistently touted as one of the worst Sentinel options because they completely gutted Freeze Ray) Sentinel can hit ~240 sustained DPA with a Ranged attack chain and ~285 with a Melee one, before buffs like Aim and Assault Hybrid. For comparison, a Blaster would be sitting at around ~275 and ~305 sustained DPA under the same conditions. Now if you're a team leader that's looking for maximum damage... then sure, the Blaster wins. But in the vast majority of PVE content the performance difference will be irrelevant and/or the Blaster will require far more babysitting, especially on PUGs. Now if someone new was looking for a ranged AT that will have an easy time soloing it's way through most content? An Electric Blast Sentinel would be one of my first recommendations.

FWIW, here's what I personally would currently be aiming towards at level 50 if I was to build a new Bot/Traps MM: zMastermind - Robots - Traps.mbd (the "Impervious Skin" proc in the T1 upgrade is pulling the least weight and can be swapped to a "Force Feedback" proc in Pulse Rifle Blast if you want more +Recharge... however as-is Hasten and Poison Trap are both Perma and there'll be 3 separate -res debuffs from Acid Mortar in play constantly) And here's a very basic cut down version of it; using minimal procs/globals and lots of unboosted Common Crafted IOs: zMastermind - Robots - Traps (Basic).mbd (power picks can be swapped around depending on what you prioritise. For example, taking Maneuvers at 30 instead of Hasten would softcap your defenses earlier; but vs AVs you wouldn't have multiple Acid Mortars out + there'd be about 8 seconds downtime on Poison Trap's -Regen debuff) Both builds have softcapped Pet and Personal Defenses; the former just has better damage output and will be a bit more survivable.

TBH Clarion Core Destiny is such a boon to squishy toons like Controllers, Defenders, Corrupters and Blasters that I have a tough time picking anything else. The exception is stuff with long duration buffs that can be Power boosted... in which case I'll go Clarion Radial instead (and potentially also pick up Rune of Protection too just for giggles) 😜 Unfortunately it won't help much unless you're at level 50. And I get the feeling the OP wants to take things slowly.

Mastermind control macros/binds is a topic that has a few forums worth of threads devoted to it already, but I'll point this and this out. Regarding a build? It'll depend on your budget and the level you're aiming for. Most of the existing builds in my own stable are min-maxed for level 50 (and whilst they exemplar pretty well, it's still a lot different from how you'd slot whilst levelling up). Typically when I'm levelling up a new character I'll just pick up the most important globals/procs ASAP and use Single Origin enhancements for the other slots until level ~22-27 (when I'll start either using level 25 or level 30 Common Crafted IOs, and potentially also "Frankenslotting" some cheap multiple aspect Set IOs). In the case of a Traps MM, IMO the important globals/procs would likely be Panacea, a KnockBack protection IO, the +Def and +Res Pet Aura globals and an Achilles Heel for Acid Mortar. Thankfully Seeker Drones can slot the aura uniques, so your main headache will be fitting in sufficient Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction and Defense into Protector Bots without using multiple aspect set IOs that are level 50 and +5 boosted (although they only really start guzzling Endurance after the second upgrade so you'll have a little leeway. And Panacea in Triage Beacon can help a bit!). Optimal damage slotting for Robotic Henchmen essentially requires being at level 50 and a fair bit of cash... but the rest of the build will be far more forgiving. The more Acid Mortars you can have out simultaneously the quicker you'll destroy AVs/GMs, but as long as you have at least one Poison Trap active plus a few personal blast attacks their Regeneration rate will be at zero, so you'll whittle them down eventually regardless.

You'll have one henchmen and caltrops at level 1, then another henchmen plus an upgrade at Lv6. Acid Mortar (-Res and another means of pulling Aggro) is at Lv10. The Protector Bots (with their AoE +Def shield) start at Lv12. Force Field Generator (more +Def and Mez protection) comes at Lv16. Lv18 is another Henchmen and Maintenance Drone (healing!). Lv20 is Poison Trap (-Regen and "puking animation lock" AoE Mez). You can also either pick up Aid Other or Triage Beacon if you want more early healing (I'll often stick a Panacea Proc in it).