Maelwys

Don't discount Vigor or Nerve (Accuracy, plus either Defense or Healing) if you're trying to maximise Proc damage. Brutes lean into Fury rather than big base numbers for the bulk of their damage. So often it can work out better to six slot an attack with damage procs instead of slotting any damage aspect in it at all (especially if you have one of the offensive powersets that can take additional Damage Procs via secondary effects like -Def and -ToHit and Knockback). However if you're going that route then you won't be slotting any accuracy aspect into the attack in question, so you'll struggle to hit higher level foes unless you have a ToHit buffing ability like Rage to fall back on or are getting substantial accuracy buffs via set bonuses and/or your alpha slot. Personally I tend to go the "2x Acc/Dam HOs plus 4x Procs" route plus Musculature Radial (the Endurance Recovery boost is almost always better over going Musculature Core) but "6x Procs plus Nerve Core" may well be mathematically optimal for a Procbombing SR Brute (for example).

They're mostly still accurate. See here for the full stats/powers list. A few things to keep in mind: (i) IMO the Invulnerable Radial Lore pets are the only ones worth a damn unless you are playing at very low difficulty settings or have very strong allied buffs/heals. The others die far too quickly. We're talking a few seconds under sustained fire at +4x8. (ii) Good Radial Lore Pets include BP (because it deals damage and has a mediocre repeating AoE buff) and Talons (because it has strong repeating AoE buffs and a ST heal) and Carnies (because it has a strong repeating Single Target damage buff and a ST heal). There are a few other non-radial pets with situational usefulness like the Longbow Boss's -Regen debuff. (iii) Pets with "toggles" unfortunately do not perform well as the toggle will not stay active indefinitely but instead flicks on and off again. For this reason the only pets with a reliable lasting +Defense buff are Clockwork (Field Projector can be kept up on 3-4 allies indefinitely) and Arachnos (Mind Link lasts 90s once per summoning)

Yep, they've both got "other benefits" on a Crit in lieu of dealing full double damage. Energy Transfer heals you instead of damaging you (meh) but Total Focus grants 2x Energy Focus buffs instead of one (meaning that you get to use 2x "Quick mode" Energy Transfers before your next TF instead of one quick and one slow; which typically results in you being able to fit in an extra "free" Bonesmasher into your attack chain). So of the main primary Energy Melee attacks, IMO the one that has the least value critting is Energy Transfer. Plus it's also used pretty often in an EM Scrapper's attack chain. So it's a shoo-in for slotting the Crit Proc; and ends up providing me with regular decent opportunities for additional crit chance to kick in on 2-3 BS, a TF and a Patron Snipe.

There is a full thread about the details just two posts up, but the short version is "no, the guy who told you otherwise was wrong". The +50% Crit Proc works off PPM chance just like most other procs, so its chance to activate will depend on the base recharge rate and recharge enhancement aspect slotting of the power in which you place it. Then whenever that power is actually triggered (midway through its attack animation will be a point when its effects actually trigger, known as ATBE or Animation Time Before Effect), a timer of a little over 4.25s starts counting (3.25s+0.5s+0.5s+Arcanatime roundups). Any subsequent attacks that trigger before that timer runs out will get +50% extra Crit chance. You can often fit 2 and occasionally 3 followup attacks in there depending on their animation times and ATBEs. For Energy Melee I personally put the proc in Energy Transfer, because you get more benefit from Bonesmasher and Total Focus critting than you do from from Energy Transfer itself critting.

FWIW, since it came up again recently here and I can't see any further definitive testing/confirmation on the exact Scrapper ATO time window... I've revisited this notion. With the more visible Decimation and Gaussian procs the "Build Up" buff is definitely lasting well beyond its stated 5.25s window. But the math has to get a little wonky in order to even roughly fit the observed in-game behaviour. OK. So; the Decimation Proc IO functions in the same way under the hood as the Gaussian Proc IO and the SCS ATO Proc IO. In each of these cases the IO itself has an ATBE of 0.5s; and its effects apply a Set Bonus that has a ATBE of 0.5s (which finally applies a buff - and in the case of the Decimation Proc; it's a buff to Damage and ToHit with a listed duration of 5.25s). However whenever the Decimation proc activates it has a major measurable impact in your combat log (unlike the SCS proc, which is random as hell) so in theory we can manipulate a few attack chains and narrow down just when its buff window actually expires; and use that as a guidestick for when the SCS ATO proc's buff window will actually expire. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SCENARIO #1: Consider Quick Moonbeam + Barrage + Bone Smasher + Total Focus. "Quick" Moonbeam has a total Arcanatime of 1.584s, and a stated ATBE of 0.933s; 1.584-0.933=0.651s remaining arcanatime after its ATBE. Barrage + Bonesmasher gives a combined arcanatime of 1.584+1.452=3.036. Total Focus has a ATBE of 1.767. 0.651+3.036+1.767 is 5.454s. Therefore if a Decimation IO is slotted in Moonbeam, Total Focus should NOT be affected by its 5.25s buff unless it's delayed by AT LEAST ONE of those extra 0.5s ATBEs. Note the damage figures of the first Barrage and that last TF; and compare them to standalone hits without any Decimation buffs in effect at all: In each case the first is ~39% higher damage than the second. So the 5.25s Decimation Buff window is definitely getting extended/delayed by at least 0.204s. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SCENARIO #2: Now... consider Quick Moonbeam + Bone Smasher + Total Focus + Whirling Hands. "Quick" Moonbeam has a total Arcanatime of 1.584s, and a stated ATBE of 0.933s; 1.584-0.933=0.651s remaining arcanatime after its ATBE. Bonesmasher + Total Focus gives a combined arcanatime of 1.452+2.772=4.224s. Whirling Hands has a ATBE of 1.2. 0.651+4.224+1.2 is 6.075s. So if a Decimation IO is slotted in Moonbeam, Whirling Hands should NOT be affected by its 5.25s buff unless it's delayed by MORE THAN ONE of those 0.5s ATBEs. And once again compare the Total Focus and Whirling Hands hits with standalone hits without any Decimation buffs in effect at all: In each case the first is ~39% higher damage than the second. So the 5.25s Decimation Buff window is definitely getting extended/delayed by at least 0.825s. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SCENARIO #3: Now... consider Quick Moonbeam + Barrage + Slow Energy Transfer + Whirling Hands. "Quick" Moonbeam has a total Arcanatime of 1.584s, and a stated ATBE of 0.933s; 1.584-0.933=0.651s remaining arcanatime after its ATBE. Barrage + Slow Energy Transfer gives a combined arcanatime of 1.584+2.904=4.488s. Whirling Hands has a ATBE of 1.2. 0.651+4.488+1.2 is 6.339s. So if a Decimation IO is slotted in Moonbeam, Whirling Hands should NOT be affected by its 5.25s buff unless it's delayed by MORE THAN TWO of those 0.5s ATBEs. And yet again compare the Barrage and Whirling Hands hits with standalone hits without any Decimation buffs in effect at all: In each case the first is ~39% higher damage than the second. So the 5.25s Decimation Buff window is definitely getting extended/delayed by at least 1.089s. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SCENARIO #4: Now... consider Quick Moonbeam + Total Focus + Whirling Hands + Barrage. "Quick" Moonbeam has a total Arcanatime of 1.584s, and a stated ATBE of 0.933s; 1.584-0.933=0.651s remaining arcanatime after its ATBE. Total Focus + Whirling Hands gives a combined Arcanatime of 2.772+2.64=5.412s. Barrage has a ATBE of 0.5. 0.651+5.412+0.5 is 6.563s. So if a Decimation IO is slotted in Moonbeam, Barrage should NOT be affected by its 5.25s buff unless it's delayed by MORE THAN TWO of those 0.5s ATBEs. And yet again compare the Barrage and Whirling Hands hits with standalone hits without any Decimation buffs in effect at all: FINALLY! The first WH is ~39% higher damage but the Barrage Hits are identical. So the 5.25s Decimation Buff window is NOT getting extended/delayed by 1.313s. Therefore in "Quick Moonbeam", Decimation's stated 5.25s buff window is actually being extended/delayed by somewhere between 1.089 and 1.313s (so "6.339-6.563s" total) I suspect that it's actually only getting extended/delayed by 1.0s (both instances of the 0.5s ATBEs) for 6.25s total; and that the discrepancy I'm seeing above is to do with the fact that powers in CoH (including IO Proc and set bonus effects) can only trigger on the next available Arcanatime tick. If we adjust Quick Moonbeam's ATBE for Arcanatime we get 1.056s (instead of 0.933s) which would mean that when the Decimation Proc actually starts "kicking in" there is 1.584-1.056 = 0.528 remaining Arcanatime on Moonbeam. Quick Moonbeam + Barrage + Slow Energy Transfer + Whirling Hands in this case would be 0.528+4.488+1.2 is 6.216s. (less than 6.25s = OK!) Quick Moonbeam + Total Focus + Whirling Hands + Barrage in that case would be 0.528+5.412+0.5 = 6.44s. (more than 6.25s = TOO LATE!) So the above suspicion appears to check out mathwise. It's using the arcanatime of the originating power's ATBE and being extended/delayed by both the IO Proc and Set Bonus +0.5s ATBEs. However there's also one other interesting thing: If we assume that both those 0.5s ATBEs are DELAYING the Decimation 5.25s damage buff rather than EXTENDING it; then in Scenarios #1 and #3 Barrage would have come very, very close to not getting the benefit of the +damage buff. Because "Quick" Moonbeam would have only 0.528s remaining arcanatime after its ATBE; but Barrage has a ATBE of 0.5s - so if the 5.25s buff window was getting delayed by 1.0s then Barrage would only qualify for the buff by the skin of its teeth - a margin of merely 0.028s! As it would happen, I have a few other characters with Decimation procs handy: and one of them is a Soldier VEAT with Gloom. Gloom's listed ATBE is 0.833s and its Arcanatime is 1.32s... which is low enough to test whether that extra ~1.0s time window on Decimation's 5.25 buff is effectively working as a Delay or as an Extension. Regardless of whether Gloom's ATBE is actually being rounded up for arcanatime or not, the remaining duration on its animation afterwards is still going to be low enough (0.487s or 0.396s) that triggering a low ATBE power like Pulverize (0.5s) is still going to get in under that 1.0s window. SCENARIO #5: As above: Gloom followed by Pulverize. Now compare that Pulverize to a standalone hit without any Decimation buffs in effect at all: That's about ~33% higher damage on the first hit. So it appears as though for all intents and purposes the Decimation buff is getting extended; not delayed. So from what I can tell: (i) The Decimation IO's listed 5.25s buff is effectively getting extended by 1.0s (presumably due to the 0.5s ATBE here and the 0.5s ATBE here) (ii) The start of that 6.25s "total buff time window" is starting on the ATBE of the power in which the Decimation proc is slotted rounded up for Arcanatime. Therefore given that the Scrapper Critical Strikes proc ATO works in exactly the same manner "under the hood"; I would assume that: (i) The Scrapper ATO's listed 3.25s buff will likely be effectively getting extended by 1.0s (presumably due to the 0.5s ATBE here and the 0.5s ATBE here) (ii) The start of that 4.25s "total buff time window" will likely start on the ATBE of the power in which the Scrapper ATO proc is slotted rounded up for Arcanatime. Anyways, I'm completely done with smacking Pylons for now so make of the above what you will! 🙂

Think the best examples are here: and here: Although the point in that 1st link about the 0.5s ATBE value within the proc events list is worth highlighting: as far as I'm aware this is effectively a delay to the proc's effects kicking in... so you'd look at the ATBE of the attack in which you slot the ATO then add another 0.5s (or potentially even two sets of 0.5s, for an extra 1.0s total - see here!) to find when the 3.25 second proc duration window actually starts. (This seems to be occurring for the Gaussian and Decimation procs; both of which function in exactly the same way as the SCS proc but have effects that are considerably easier to isolate in the combat log than "Critical hits that have been generated by an ATO instead of by the regular baseline Scrapper Inherent"!)

Yeah that 10 second lockout on the hide proc can definitely get annoying if you're spamming attacks constantly (e.g. vs a pylon) using that rotation for the TS build; as you'll eventually encounter the 10% chance for it "not to kick in" on Zapp which will throw things off unless you can correct it. If you're paying attention then it's possible to swap the chain around on the fly (fitting CI in after the next AS instead of BL; by using an additional CB or popping Build Up etc to make up the extra ~0.918s)... or you could just move Zapp and BL both back a place so that CI always goes after AS instead (trading a little potential damage for more consistency). When I'm soloing on Stalkers I always tend to aim for 3x Focus stacks between ASs for consistency (although aiming for 2x Focus stacks between ASs likely gives better average DPA!) and that aversion to spikiness may well be why in regular (non pylon) situations I also prefer the notion of opening with BL out of Hide vs groups and Zapp out of Hide vs Single Targets instead of just using TS vs both (as TS's AoE output tends to rely on procs which are less consistent and can't crit; even before you get into any of those ATBE/corpse blasting conversations from earlier in the thread!). I think that TS rotation with your previously posted build will require both Ageless running and a Base buff to be completely seamless - as otherwise towards the tail end of Ageless there'll be a very short gap before the second AS will be ready with just the "raw" global recharge. A quick eyeball suggests that it's not worth substituting HP for CB for extra wiggle room (despite the better chance for 2x Focus stacks) but it could potentially let you shuffle the slotting of CI around a bit (e.g. swapping the Dam/Rech for a Dam then +5 ing everything). In any case; glad to see things aren't hugely different on the median values in actual testing even with all the potential variance! 👍

JL can however be used as a decent filler to gain Assassin's Focus; and since it's up twice as often as TS you also end up with better -Res proc coverage. With like-for-like builds, the overall picture looks roughly like the below (using the average chance where appropriate for both Focus stack accumulation and damage/-res proc activation). Basically from what i can see the JL version starts out very slightly ahead; then the TS version gains more benefit from the Hide Proc; and then the JL version gains more benefit from the Gladiator -Res proc so in the end there's still only a smidge separating the two. So which is "best" will probably come down to a mixture of personal playstyle and whether or not you have teammates/pets to take advantage of the increased -res coverage. The builds referred to in the above are: Stalker - Electric_SD IOed (Rech + Procced JL).mbd Stalker - Electric_SD IOed (Rech + Procced TS).mbd Although I'll throw one more spanner in the works... because there is a little bit of extra wiggle room in the JL build's attack chain (e.g. you can sacrifice some global recharge for additional damage procs and have it still be "seamless") - the best I could come up with this afternoon was the below by proccing out both AS and JL: Stalker - Electric_SD IOed (Procced AS + JL).mbd This does however come at the cost of slightly increased downtime on the two nukes... so whether it's "better" will still depend on the player's goals + preferences. The changes to TS have been very beneficial though; and it's worth pointing out that Mids (at the time of writing) is still using the wrong values for it. I needed to refer to CoDv2 and manually poke at my Mids database to get accurate numbers appearing for TS's Single Target PVE damage during the above comparison... 😑

That's the thing though... we have plenty of high HP characters running around now with bigger numbers across the board than those old pre ED Regen Scrappers ever had. I ballparked oldskool Regen capping out at about ~167 HP/Sec (with accolades and Perma Dull Pain and IH + Integration + Fast Healing all 6-slotted with Heal SOs). Nowadays the same powerset on the same AT can easily reach the same health regeneration numbers whilst IH is running (so about a 50% uptime) plus things like Panacea Procs and Defense / Damage Resistance set bonuses; and a much better panic button in "new" Moment of Glory. And that's not even considering things like Rune of Protection and Barrier/Rebirth Destiny and Melee Core Hybrid. However Regen as a set has been utterly left in the dust defensively by things like Bio Armor (which beats it even in terms of Health regeneration) and almost any build these days will have sufficient endurance recovery to spam their attacks repeatedly so Regen has lost most of its old niches despite it still being roughly equivalent in performance to pre ED. And offensively it's not even close. The best a Regen Scrapper used to be able to achieve was about ~3.0x base damage (with their attacks 6 slotted for damage) with Focused Accuracy and Quick Recovery and 6-slotted Hasten to keep them hitting and ticking. Nowadays Scrappers will be sitting at ~2.3x base damage (attacks at ED capped damage aspect plus Musculature Core) plus ATOs and Damage Procs and -Res Procs and Reactive Interface and Assault Hybrid and oodles of non-Hasten-reliant global recharge. I honestly think it's a case of Rose Tinted lenses combined with new enemy groups and higher difficulty sliders. ((And that's before Challenges and Hard mode and "cheating" mobs that deal oodles of -Regen or -MaxHP like the infamous Crimson Prototype in Market Crash!)). Remember that before ED hit the toughest things we were fighting were stuff like Freakshow, Redside didn't exist yet and AVs/GMs still didn't regenerate a notable amount of health.

Last I ran the numbers the survivability performance ceiling of a pre-ED Regen was roughly equivalent to what they can achieve these days when IOed up even without Incarnates. The rest of the game has simply experienced so much power creep that it feels worse...

3 for Regular Content. 1 for AVs/GMs. And "anything else with a damage proc attached to it" if there are already too many people in your team running 3 and 1 and the stacks are constantly capped.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification ((and after you're done pursuing the above, just use Mids and stop slotting more of X whenever you see the numbers start to turn red!))

Run the first DA Arc (Heather Townshend) through Ouroboros Flashback; and at the end pick the "Incarnate Components" option. You'll get 1x Empyrean Merit plus a decent chance for a Rare or Very Rare Incarnate Salvage drop of your choice. It's a very fast arc to complete (easily <20mins if you're not intentionally dawdling) and because it counts as incarnate content once you have all your level buffs from existing T3+ Incarnate Abilities then you start to drastically outlevel the foes and utterly steamroll everything. Decent source of EXP on +4x8 too if you're looking for Vet Levels. If you get sick of it, you can always just email Empyrean or Transcendent Merits to yourself from alts. I believe you'll need to actually perform a click with a GOTO command. The closest would probably be to use a FOLLOW and then a STAY command (which is just "GOTO the point where you are already standing" under the hood)

I will not buy this record, it is scratched. My hovercraft is full of eels. Our postillion has been struck by lightning. That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing.

Honestly? Probably power bugfixes. And not even big sweeping "make Regen and/or Empathy viable again" ones; but smaller stuff like how Tanker Lightning Rod is coded as a power Execution Redirect and all the other AT versions are pseudopet Entity Creations. Or the fact that +Absorb buffs which are flagged as 'overwrite rather than stack' don't actually get their old copy of the buff removed until after their new copy has already been applied (which means that those latter buffs will often encounter and get drastically reduced by the hard cap). Or the fact that the amount of Regeneration granted by certain powers (like DNA Siphon) is affected by enemy level but not others (like Rise to the Challenge). Things that have in the bugfix pile for aaaaaaages but aren't rated as a high enough problem to ever actually, y'know, fix.

Procs and Power pools are nice, but IMO by themselves they're rarely the primary factor behind whether a given toon will perform well or not. A large part of Controller performance on teams is going to come from their "Support" set; and certain powersets simply don't care about the higher buff/debuff scalars of a Defender because you become "capped" just as easily on other lower-scalar ATs. Kinetics is a prime example of this: Fulcrum Shift spam is going to get you to the damage cap regardless of whether it's from a Defender or a Controller or even a Mastermind. Marine Affinity is another one that can work better on non-Defenders - the more friendly entities attacking (e.g. MM Henchmen or Controller Imps/Phantom Army/Vines/etc) the more damage Shifting Tide procs deal. There are also a good few standout "Control" powersets: Plant is widely regarded as the best all-rounder; to the point that many won't play it because it makes things "too easy" (Seeds of Confusion + Creepers can practically carry a whole team by itself) . However Arsenal can come pretty close (Smoke Cannister + Sleep Grenade/Flashbang spam) and has the ability to tank AVs. And obviously Illusion becomes very good too whenever you get sufficient recharge for Perma Phantom Army (and give them the Soulbound proc) - but opportunities to leverage Containment are few and far between on it. And IMO this is the biggest point worth making about damage procs on Controllers - using them in attacks that have low base damage but reasonably high base recharge (e.g. many controller abilities) will provide a noticeable boost to that attack's damage without you having to jump through hoops to leverage containment... and whilst they don't benefit from +damage buffs; they will from -resistance debuffs (e.g. what your 'Support' powerset is may be very relevant here). Epic/Patron pools can also provide a big boost; depending on how you choose to go. Armor toggles. Decently-damaging attacks. Powerful Debuffs (like Poisonous Ray). More Pets. Endurance Management tools. Mez Protection. Self-Healing. Self-Rez. Damage/ToHit buffs. And Power Boost (absolutely huge for Forcefield and Time Manipulation). As for pool powers? Specific ones can be leveraged to add a large amount of performance in specific situations ('Hasten' for Perma-PA Illusion Controllers; for example) and whenever you combine them with Procs a few pool powers will become surprisingly good sources of damage and/or debuffs (such as 'Weaken Resolve' from the Force of Will pool) but IMO usually they'll only be providing minor additional utility or a filler attack or two; rather than a character-defining boost in performance.

That build is geared towards big Resistance numbers via alternating RoP and Melee Core Hybrid (which doesn't work so well ever since the change to Rune of Protection duration)... and whilst it's still "durable" without those... IMO gaining ~20% additional res to E/N/F/C at the cost of having virtually no Global Recharge or Damage Procs and ~40% less MaxHP is quite a large build compromise. And yes, a few of the slotting arrangements make little sense (SMoT in Jab for example - and using KO Blow as a Mule for a Winter's Set...) but it's useful as a starting point and/or showcase. They've also been debated to death before - one of my favourite exchanges is on one of Diantane's old rant threads.

Might be a mixture of both. With no superfluous toggles and averaged Panacea procs you'll have a net recovery of 2.895 End/Sec. Footstomp on autofire in the above build will consume an average of 1.47 End/Sec without FF procs and 1.74 End/Sec with procs; leaving plenty for doing other things. If you're going balls to the wall using a constant attack chain of KOB > CP > HM > FS > CP > HM (note: both Haymakers are optional depending on your current recharge buffs - you can almost always drop the first even without Ageless) then you'll eventually bottom out after roughly 65 seconds of attacking flat out; assuming no inspirations or external recovery buffs. I would consider a toon that's self-sufficient for anything over 60secs of "full out attacking" without Incarnate clickies or Insps to be in a very good place endurancewise. My VEAT Widow can run themselves dry in roughly 30 seconds and is the only toon which I always run Ageless Core constantly. Regarding playstyle... about the only thing that might apply is that I tend to pop Lore Pets regularly whenever I'm soloing to speed things up (and the typical one I use for my INV/SS is Radial Banished Pantheon - which have about a 50% uptime on this) and my movement keybinds all have "$$inspexec_slot 5" on the end of them (with Rez Insp drops disabled) to keep the skittles flowing. But I do that on all toons, not just Tankers. [EDIT]: And one last thing actually - whilst the above build is very close to what I'm running; I don't take the flight pool. So Fly is replaced with Mighty Leap; and Hover is replaced with Physical Perfection (slotted with another Power Transfer proc) therefore my own Tanker has a little bit more passive recovery: ~0.24 End/Sec. AFAIK it's just as pants now as it's always been. Many many moons ago; loooooong before inventions my old Katana/Regen Scrapper main used to swear by it (along with Laser Beam Eyes) partly because of the 100% KD effect; and partly because at the time having a few attacks that didn't inflict Lethal damage sounded like a good idea for fighting Robotic critters 🙈

IIRC Arachnos Endurance Drain/-Recovery attacks are mostly Mu; and those are all flagged as Energy typed and so you'll be dodging the vast majority of them. The -Recovery debuff they inflict also tends to be quite low and short (e.g. -50% for 4 seconds) so it'll take a fair number of them hitting you to cause noteworthy trouble to your blue bar. Especially if you're getting Panacea procs and chugging Inspirations as you go. It's certainly nothing that Ageless Radial (with the Debuff Resistance and +Rech; rather than the Recovery and +Rech) can't handle. Tanker INV Resist Energies also grants 25% Endurance Drain and Recovery debuff resistance natively; which will stack nicely with Ageless Radial if required. Use Taunt. Its built-in -100% Range debuff will make them come towards you. Or break line of sight (run behind the nearest Geometry like a corner) which does the same thing. Alternatively: Jousting. Jump up to them with an attack queued up; then let yourself drop back to the ground again and wallop them as you fall past. After a few repeats of this eventually their AI will queue a melee attack up and they'll approach you themselves. Technically you could also take Air Superiority or Hurl for the -Fly debuff... but I haven't bothered with that guff since circa issue 8.

The "overkill" Defense in Invincibility (since it softcaps you with just one foe in range) plus INVs native DDR should help you weather most Defense Debuffs without Ageless Radial; but there's nothing to stop you using it to smooth things out. Whenever I play that toon I typically follow my oldskool Tank mentality from live of "jump into middle of a big mob and activate Footstomp, then jump into the middle of the next mob (and/or throw a Taunt at them) and wallop things until there are only a few upright foes left, then repeat" so I'll have a constant stream of nearby foes to ramp the numbers up on my Invincibility (and on my Melee Core Hybrid, should I choose to be running it over Assault). Endurance consumption isn't an issue with all the boosts from the globals, set bonuses and passive accolades (~2.5 Net End/Sec plus Panacea Procs) as long as I'm not running superfluous toggles like Focused Accuracy and my Travel Power and Sprint etc. during combat. Using Combat Jumping and Hurdle for unsuppressed movement is a bit of a throwback in these days of Combat Teleport, but it's fun and thematic and it doesn't slow me down that much once the train gets rolling. However I'm honestly not sure if I'd be able to personally put up with the slowness of running Hover/Fly constantly during combat on a melee toon. Regarding Arachnos specifically... they have a fair mixture of Toxic and Psychic typed attacks, which is where the hole lies in INV's defense. Ageless won't help with that, but Barrier (or even Rebirth) Destiny or Melee Core Hybrid will, as will simply bulldozing through the blighters and popping the resulting dropped Inspirations like candy. However you have more than one layer of mitigation: after your Defense there's still your Damage Resistances, MaxHP pool, Regeneration rate and Absorb buffs to get through and all the Knockdown spam (and occasional hold/stun) you're inflicting will slow them down. I personally haven't found them that bothersome. Now a mapful of Carnie Master Illusionists...? 🙈

There are two problems with Thunder Strike... one is the comparatively low DPA; and the other is the long Animation Time Before Effect (ATBE). It takes nearly two full seconds before its hit actually "lands"; and as @Warshades pointed out in an earlier post, on teams that means quite often you'll end up dealing damage to corpses. I think if I didn't have both Shield Charge and Ball Lightning to fall back on in addition to the rest of the Electric Melee abilities, I'd probably take and Procbomb TS in order to shore up my AoE damage. But as it is, IMO TS is not required for AoE damage coverage and it's demonstrably detrimental to your ST damage output. It's a decent place for a -Res Proc (which is the only real benefit of a long ATBE) but so is Jacob's Ladder. And whilst Jacob's base numbers aren't wonderful, with procs it'll make an above average ST damage filler attack that can inflict -Res and will occasionally hit more than one target.

I had a little time this afternoon to get the spreadsheet out and poke at my own ElecM/Shield... and from what I can tell that's indeed essentially the best way to go. There's zero benefit to using Havoc Punch over Charged Brawl whenever you're purposely trying to build three Focus stacks. Because it really comes down to CI>JL>CB plus either Zapp or Ball Lightning (because both bring your average DPA up) between Assassin Shocks. Which leaves a little wiggle room in the recharge of Zapp, JL and AS. So sticking an extra proc or two in AS (3x ATOs+Hecatomb+GS+ToD) actually works out a smidge better than "best case" AS crits without them (5x ATOs+Hecatomb). The last proc only has an extremely minor benefit over a +5 Hecatomb Dmg or Dmg/End though. So all things considered I think mine'll be respeccing into this shortly: [EDIT: Mids build file link removed; see this post for a more accurate breakdown and multiple build options] (Still no Kismet required. OwtS having the slots over Tough is purely personal preference - I tend to run without the latter toggled and keep the former for emergencies!)