Maelwys

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=controller_control.mind_control.telekinesis&at=controller

There's a little synergy in Elec Mastery: I've got a few Sents that use the AoE Immob (Chain Fences) to keep stuff in place. (and in at least one of those builds it's not even procbombed...) 100% agree that there are much better "utility" pools out there though if maximum damage output isn't your schtick.

Plus the fact that the biggest hitter abilities like Havoc Punch actually come online at level 35 (and so remain available at level 30). It wasn't so long ago that your Primary and Secondary powerset capstones only became available at levels 32 and 38 respectively, and there's only a comparatively small number of taskforces and Ouroboros arcs that cap out below 30.

Fair point, even if a lot of swill ends up with more than one iteration through the pig. (Warning: do NOT google "coprophagia" from your work computer.... although if a coworker is dumb enough to leave theirs unlocked, have at it!) 💩 🐽 ((and yes, it was actually dumb enough to give the pig two sets of ears and no visible eyes by default))

Look further down, there's another 35.5ft (which unlike the first 15ft cancels when you attack or click a glowie)

Seismic/Elec with procced out Thunderstrike and recoloured Void Judgement? (Epic could be Arsenal for LRM, Elec for EM Pulse or Force for Forcebomb...) Or just a Seismic/RadArmor Sentinel with procbombed Ground Zero.

Nah. We'd end up with even worse tat than the above. AI output is known as "slop" for a reason. It bears a strong resemblance to pigswill. Isolating a LLM to produce output for use by MMORPG NPCs will likely result in a regurgitated assortment of tired old Everquest and WoW tropes with no plot coherence; and if you attempt to weight it to be superhero appropriate it'll have trouble determining any difference between 60's Stan Lee paperbacks and a copy of Watchmen. Besides, we already have plenty of our own Stupid Jerk Hackers around here. (Next thing you know we'll all be Gone to the Americans...)

None. It boosts raw Healing but not +Regeneration or -Regeneration.

Sucking for regular content =/= Sucking for farming. If you're only ever dealing with less than or equal to a single aggro cap's worth of enemies then the changes I pointed out above won't overly impact you (beyond a slightly reduced killspeed). It's on AE farming missions that you're going to notice a major difference to before (since several dozen mobs will be shooting at you simultaneously on top of the regular old 17 that're trying to chew your face off). It's possible to build a /FA Brute for AE farming but it involves major build concessions so your damage output will lag considerably behind a non-Granite /Stone Brute and practically any decently built Tanker.

For Set Bonuses; yes. For raw aspect enhancement; nope. Boosted 50+5s give better raw numbers better than attuned (at least over most of the level range) For "Globals" (special enhancements that are coded as set bonuses); yes. You want these to be attuned otherwise you lose access to them at lower levels. For "Procs"; it doesn't matter. As long as the power they're slotted in is accessible you'll get the benefit of them regardless of whatever level you/they are. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements

Yes:

This. And it's worth pointing out that there's no need to spend a long time and spend lots of imaginary money in order to try different builds and/or enhancement slotting combinations out:

Some further relevant reading:

Also, this bit is old info - the bug that prevented multiple Performance Shifter from all giving benefit simultaneously was fixed years ago. @Psyonico is quite correct here in that whilst all those IOs are desirable and useful there is always an opportunity cost- you have to use up one of your precious enhancement slots on each of them. Many of them will be worth this tradeoff on virtually all builds, but I have plenty of characters which simply cannot fit a Panacea, a Miracle and a Numina (for example) so you need to think and prioritise. After meeting your immediate essential build requirements/goals in the most efficient way possible, then by all means use any leftover enhancement slots on unnecessary "would be nice" perks (like additional Mez resistance and surplus regeneration/recovery/recharge/etc)

They also have seven times the Aggro Cap of a regular Tank/Brute/etc and the part of them that is dealing damage (the pets) can "die" with minimal repercussions. MMs generally can't hold aggro worth a damn (outside of Presence Pool shenanigans) but their pets can technically attract the majority of the map's attention whilst the rest of the team focus Single-Target attacks on one thing at a time (which is a horrible and outdated way to play and a Perma-PA Controller does it infinitely better). The thing that makes me personally believe that the Devs originally thought Brutes = Redside Scrapper and Mastermind = Redside Tank is that in those days Jack Emmert was in charge and there were much wackier ideas/notions than using a low-threat pet AT as a tank.

Certain mobs are coded to either resist Taunt effects or ignore aggro (flagged as "relentless" within the code) and/or focus on a particular target over all the others ("primaryTarget" + "primaryTargetFactor", "neverForgetMe", etc.) and some things have particularly weird AI (like Clockwork who really loathe whoever attacked them last) Taunt (the effect) is usually the deciding thing because tauntFactor is worth an order of magnitude more than the other factors. tauntFactor = 10 * (1 + status->taunt.duration - ABS_TIME_SINCE(status->taunt.begin)); distanceFactor = 0.1 + 0.9 * (100.0 - distFromMe) / 100.0; damage.toMe += -amount * 0.1; damageFactor = 1 + status->damage.toMe However there is technically an "aggro ceiling" (which is pretty much reliant upon your longest duration Taunt effect) and Threat level decays quite quickly. If someone is "tanking" by not actually dealing much/any damage but just relying on a Taunt Aura that is not slotted for duration... then yes, a teammate who deals high damage to their target and that target's allies might briefly trump their Taunt effect. But running a Damage Aura won't influence things anywhere near as much as spamming regular attacks.

Yeah, so here's a few more examples: Two Scrappers, both possessing unslotted Taunt Auras, vs a regular +3 LT mob. Providing they both stand right next to it, then whoever's Taunt effect kicks in first will claim aggro and keep it until several seconds after that mob moves out of range of the claimer's Taunt Aura. This is because Taunt Auras typically refresh every 1 second + so the 'active' Taunt effect will never be able to decay to less than half its total duration before it refreshes (0.65*13.6 = 8.84s total duration on a +3 mob; half of which is 4.42s). However if the mob is ever outside of the 'active' Taunt aura for >3.42s then the second 'inactive' Taunt aura will start getting a chance to kick in - so at that point it will becomes a competition to see whose Taunt effect actually "ticks" first. If one of those Scrappers was a Brute then the Taunt effect from "Punchvoke" would be constantly trying to kick in as well; which would give them extra chances to be the first to claim aggro (both initially as well as after that >3.42s duration elapses...) and if they were a Tanker they'd only need a window of >2.978s outside the Taunt Aura to pull aggro off the Scrapper. Now consider a Scrapper with Confront and a Tanker with Taunt, vs a regular +3 LT mob. Scrapper Confront will inflict 0.65*26.6=17.29s duration; whilst the Tanker Taunt will inflict 0.65*41=26.65s duration. So the Scrapper will only be capable of holding aggro if they're spamming Confront at least every <4 seconds; however the Tanker will keep aggro until >18 seconds after their last Taunt (and that's if the Tanker isn't leveraging Gauntlet/Auras). So whilst it's possible for a Scrapper to hold aggro over a Tanker on a single target via spamming Confront, it takes a fair bit of work and/or Taunt Duration slotting.

Taunt (the effect; not the power) works much the same as any other mez effect: if the Magnitude of the mez effect exceeds the target's inherent status protection then they become affected by it until the effect duration expires. Whenever you affect a target with the "Taunt" mez effect, your entry on their threat list gets set to an incredibly high score... so high that no amount of regular damage dealing will come anywhere close to reaching it. So for all intents and purposes you can think of the Taunt effect as a very straightforward "this person is now my main target" setting which persists for its duration. There were multiple exhaustive tests of this done back on Live; and I've seen nothing to suggest that it works any different on HC. A slightly different interaction does come into play whenever a target is subjected to multiple Taunt effects; but in most cases this is also very straightforward: the Taunt effect with the longest duration always wins (not the effect with the longest REMAINING duration; but the one with the longest TOTAL duration regardless of how much of that duration has currently elapsed!). As an example: if two Scrappers both use Confront on the same target; but one of them has a Threat Duration IO slotted in it and the other one doesn't... then the Scrapper with the longer Confront will almost always always hold rock solid aggro unless their Confront effect fully wears off, regardless of what attacks are used by either Scrapper in the interim. This is because the spike of Threat from the initial application of each Taunt effect is weighted very strongly by its duration and also factors in any previous threat score you might have prior to Taunting. Your Maximum Threat Score is also determined by the longest duration Taunt effect you're throwing out. Basically: if your Taunt has a considerably longer duration than anyone else's then you will likely win aggro and keep it. The REMAINING DURATION of a Taunt effect only really comes into play whenever you're comparing two Taunt effects from different sources with similar total durations (e.g. Scrapper A and Scrapper B; both with unslotted Confront). Technically your Threat score on a target gets determined by multiplying your damage dealt to that target by Debuff Mod * AT Mod * AI Mod * Range Mod * (TauntDurationRemaining * 1,000) ... but a target can only have one active Taunt effect at a time. And their "active" Taunt effect will only be overwritten if either (i) the new Taunt effect is coming from the same source (e.g. you're overwriting your own Taunt) or (ii) if the new Taunt effect has a total duration of at least twice the remaining duration of the currently active Taunt effect (e.g. your Taunt is wearing off but someone else on the team also has a Taunt). This can occasionally result in aggro pingponging around if two people on the same team have Taunt effects with similar durations; unless one of them possesses multiple sources of Taunt (like a Brute's Punchvoke) that lets that person refresh their own Taunt effect more often. In short: someone else will only be able to "pull" aggro from you if your Taunt effect's Remaining Duration ever drops lower than 50% of their Taunt effect's Total Duration. "Taunt Auras" typically have a very small-radius, a limited-target cap and a rather short duration (especially versus higher level foes); so whilst they are a good way for a soloing Scrapper to prevent runners; they run afoul of the above "competing similar total duration taunt effects" issue and it's also unfortunately rather common for a few enemies in a full spawn to be unaffected and peel off the Scrapper to stab the squishies. So they are definitely not a foolproof method of keeping aggro solidly locked down on teams. Careful positioning plus Slows/Knockdowns/etc can all help mitigate this; alongside simply killing everything faster.

Even Oldschool Blasters had plenty of options in order to "reliably solo"... albeit mostly via splitting spawns up and taking things at a slower pace. /Devices leveraging caltrops and Tripmines; /Ice leveraging Ice Patch and Shiver and Frozen Aura; Sonic/ leveraging Siren's Song; etc. However ever since the changes which granted all the Blaster secondaries a "sustain"; most of them can just Leeroy things providing that mez protection is catered for (via Clarion, Rune of Protection, Inner Will, whatever). That said; IMO the ones with +Absorb tend to lend themselves to that style of play the most (which is part of why I really like /Ice) and having Rise of the Phoenix to fall back on is always a plus! It's quite possible for Blasters to AE Farm at +4x8 if you decide to build them that way. They'll never compete with Sentinels for layered mitigation or DDR; but neither will Sentinels (even if they're /Shield or /Rad) compete with Blasters for AoE damage.

IIRC it involved swearing a few more times in order to generate a sufficient ply count of paperwork...? Hopefully in this case the OP takes the hint rather than subjecting their own warnings to the same treatment!

By that logic RadArmor should win hands down due to having a Taunt Aura plus two regular large radius AoEs with big target caps. All a damage aura does is inflict damage. Without a additional taunt component they won't help with aggro control and in practice can actually be detrimental to it (because of the PVE mob AI favouring "scatter" as they get focused upon and their health decreases). I've played all the armors too. And whilst Bio is generally a good choice it's not because of any additional aggro control, but because it inflicts -res and -regen and has multiple layers of defenses plus practically infinite endurance. DNA Siphon does not have a Taunt Component on a Scrapper regardless of what its short description claims.

I'd take an intelligently built and competently piloted Brute over a Scrapper or Tanker any day of the week. But then I'd also take an intelligently built and competently piloted Petless Mastermind over your average PUGer on a copy-pasta Ice/Cold Corruptor. IMO build and Skill trumps AT every time. Even in hardmode where you sometimes can't win by just repeatedly rolling your face over the keyboard.

It started the old buggy Cathedral of Pain trial as well IIRC

If you're only walloping one Target at a time and don't overly care about runners/scatter then it's irrelevant. If you're trying to leverage AoEs (including farming) and/or in a team with squishier teammates; it's very useful. I've never personally encountered a situation where having a Taunt Aura was a detriment... other than when stealthing/speedrunning, in which case it just gets temporarily detoggled.