Maelwys

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.

Try this then: i) Take the "Build Up" power and slot a Gaussian into it. ii) Open your "Combat Attributes" page and look at the value for 'damage bonus' iii) Now activate "Build Up". 9 times out of 10 you'll see an extra ~80% damage on top of what Build Up normally grants you, which will expire after about ~6 seconds. You can also slot a fair bit of Recharge into Build up and still keep the chances of that additional damage buff activating capped at "9 times out of 10". 1x Lv50+5 Recharge enhancement by itself won't do it (the sweet spot is 1x Lv50+1 Rech plus 1x Lv50+5 ToHit/EndRed/Rech). The most important takeaway is that despite the wording on the Gaussian Proc, "Chance for Build Up" doesn't actually mean "Chance to activate the power named Build Up"... instead it just gives you a large passive damage + tohit buff for a short duration; which will quite happily stack with any other active damage buffs you already have from buffs/inspirations/whatever... a lot of the short descriptions on stuff in CoH are incorrect or at best misleading.

Both the Decimation and Gaussian procs trigger a power called "boost up", which grants a big chunk of extra damage and ToHit for several seconds. And with a Gaussian Proc slotted into either Aim and Build Up those powers can each take 70.35% local recharge aspect before it'll drop below the 90% activation chance limit... so yes, you will typically end up with Uberbuffed damage for a short period of time. (There's a bit of a faff with Animation Time Before Effect and Arcanatime which means the effective duration of the buff is a smidge over 6.25 seconds. So less than the duration of either Build Up or Aim but long enough to get ~2-4 attacks off!)

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=sentinel_ranged.electrical_blast.short_circuit&at=sentinel

That's not how cumulative probability works. Three 30% chances for a debuff to activate (Longbow Boss) results in a (1-(0.7*0.7*0.7))=65.7% likelihood for that debuff to activate at least once. So that's 65.7%*500=328.5% "average" debuff over time at the low end. At best each Drone would be getting two constant -50% debuffs; one from the attacks that are (8s+animationtime) and another from the attack that's (5s + animationtime). 2*(2*50%)=200% "average" debuff over time at the top end. Therefore Drones are always going to be worse off (and will also require you to use Core over Radial + keep two pets alive instead of just one!) In terms of fighting an AV or GM, you can also hold back and only focus fire on it whenever the Longbow regeneration debuff actually kicks in; because as soon as it kicks in you'll know you have a rather lengthy 30s window to unleash holy hell; as well as a ~65.7% chance of extending that window by at least another 10s... At level 50 AVs regenerate roughly 102 HP/Sec; and GMs regenerate roughly 353 HP/Sec. That -50% regen from a Drones Attack will end up being reduced to 0.15*50=7.5% against an AV, even when they're even-level with you. That -500% regen from the Longbow Boss will end up being reduced to 0.15*500=75%; meaning a SINGLE LORE PET ATTACK negates 3/4 of an AV/GM's passive regen.

If you're running with a premade then allied +recharge buffs might be a given. And it's possible to build a PermaDom without Hasten; especially if you're rocking Ageless. So... "it depends" 🙂 (Also FWIW I typically skip Ring of Fire, Smoke and Cinders in Fire Control; and Flares and Combustion in Fiery Assault...)

Back on live I'd a Sonic/Elec/Elec Defender that was built as a "Sapper" - Power Sink plus Short Circuit made short work of any spawn that didn't contain an AV; and Short Circuit would keep 'em floored (assuming you're cycling it every <10s). Elec Blast is probably "best" on a Sentinel due to their Tesla Blast actually being worth casting. However Kinetics can do very decently with Transference as well (and will be jousting into Melee Range for Fulcrums anyway so any PBAoE Short Circuits won't overly rock the boat) therefore if I was to focus on a "Sapper" it'd probably be an ElecBlast/Kinetics (/Mu or /Elec) Defender or Corruptor; running Clarion Radial. Or perhaps a very high recharge Elec/Mental Blaster with "Perma Drain Psyche".

Always: + Panacea +Health/+Endurance + Up to five LotG +GlobalRecharges (depending on powers - I don't intentionally take additional Defence powers simply for the sake of getting 5 LotGs) + Preventive Medicine +Absorb + Unbreakable Guard +MaxHP + Winter's Gift +SlowResistance + Gaussian "Chance for Build Up" (typically in Aim or Build Up; occasionally in other powers like Invincibility or Shifting Tides or Tactics) + Damage Procs; wherever it makes mechanical sense to slot them in order to maximise average damage output. Almost Always: + Miracle +Recovery + The two Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor +Def uniques + The two Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall +Res uniques + Power Transfer +Healing (love these on toons with no/little self healing; especially if there are multiple auto powers that can take them) + Achilles Heel -Res (at least one; ideally in a power that gives it a high activation chance + uptime) + Fury of the Gladiator -Res (again, ideally in a power that gives it a high activation chance + uptime) + The Pet +Def and +Res Aura Uniques (always on MM's and Controllers/Dominators/Crabberminds; occasionally on others with Epic/Patron pool summons) + Soulbound Allegiance: Chance for Build Up (always on non-Kin MM's and Controllers/Dominators/Crabberminds; occasionally on others with Epic/Patron pool summons) + Overwhelming Force KB>KD (in a power that deals KB, obviously. I've got a particular penchant for putting this in stuff like Rise of the Phoenix) + Rectified Reticle +Perception (on any characters that don't already gain +Perception via powersets or running Tactics. I HATE not being able to see stealthy enemies) + Blessing of the Zephyr +KB protection (on any characters that don't already have some KB protection either via powersets or a 3-piece Gladiator's Armor set bonus) + Celerity: Stealth (typically in Sprint) Often: + Numina +Regen/+Recovery (after Panacea and Miracle; if I have enough slots left) + Annihilation -Res (depends on the power - and often another damage proc will provide a better average return) + Force Feedback +rech (I rarely stick this in Single Target attacks, but PBAoEs are fair game especially if the character has multiple long-recharge clickies) + Sudden Acceleration KB>KD (if I have multiple powers that inflict KB and I've already used a OF elsewhere) + Decimation "Chance for Build Up" (depends on the power - and often another damage proc will provide a better average return) Seldom: + Kismet +ToHit (only if all the attacks aren't yet at 95% Hit Chance versus +3 foes AND using the slot elsewhere won't gain sufficient global accuracy via set bonuses) + Performance Shifter +End (only if I particularly need more Recovery AND I have surplus slots left. But I almost always go with 2x 50+5 Endmods in Stamina first) + Impervious Skin: Regeneration (only if I've a vast surplus of slots left or there is a specific use case/odd interaction e.g. Mastermind Henchmen upgrade abilities) + Regenerating Tissue: Regeneration (only if I've a vast surplus of slots left or there is a specific use case/odd interaction e.g. Mastermind Henchmen upgrade abilities) + Aegis: Psi Resistance (on some res-focussed Tankers/Brutes) + Impervium Armor: Psi Resistance (on some res-focussed Tankers/Brutes) I'm sure there's a few more I've forgotten about. And ATOs obviously depend on the AT (e.g. Scrappers always get them, but Brutes don't)

Doubtful.... not everyone has your.... flare. 😜