Maelwys

IMO a Scrapper or Stalker could still do just fine as long as you lean into other means of stackable mitigation (like Shadow Meld). However if you swapped the Defensive set to Energy Aura instead then the dynamic would change drastically; and not just because Tankers don't get that set... 😄

Fighting (for Tough) and Speed (for Hasten) will likely be the best performing ones. Radiation Armor is a resistance based set, so the closer you can get to the S/L resistance cap (90% on a Brute) the better. It also has a substantial number of good long-recharge clicky powers (Particle Shielding, Radiation Therapy, Ground Zero) that will benefit greatly from as much additional +recharge as you can get. As for the 4th pool? Personally I always go with leaping for Combat Jumping... it's a solid place for a LoTG +7.5% Rech and gives solid unsuppressed movement; and will also help your fine control when you're flying as an additional bonus. You shouldn't really need any additional attacks; as Battleaxe is plenty good at both AoE and ST damage by itself. However it is very Endurance heavy. So stick a Theft of Essence proc in Radiation Therapy and your endurance issues will vanish. Your Epic/Patron pool choice isn't a huge deal... although Dark Mastery (for Tar Patch) or Fire Mastery (for Melt Armor) or Leviathan Mastery (for Arctic Breath) or Soul Mastery (for Gloom and either Dark Obliteration or Darkest Night) would be the "cookie cutter" picks. Spamming Axe Cyclone to draw things into range of your other AoEs is typically the way to go on Battleaxe; and IMO the best bang for your buck in that is going to be a Force Feedback +Rech and a Fury of the Gladiator -Res which you can slot from level 20+. I'd also very much recommend sticking slotting up Ground Zero for damage (leaning into procs) since it has such a high target cap. Radiation Therapy is usually also slotted with procs (both damage and utility) but using it for damage will be less of a priority when you're levelling up.

[Citation Needed] I don't see anyone in this thread who is fine with Brutes being suboptimal. What I see is two people who are both annoyed that Brutes have become irrelevant, with one stressing extreme caution in implementing big sweeping changes in case those changes make us end up in exactly the same situation but with a different melee AT now occupying the "suboptimal" position. Attaining balance is certainly possible, but it's not going to be straightforward.

This. IMO when you're soloing there's not a huge amount of difference, Brutes still underperform offensively but their higher mitigation caps can still be relevant and it's basically just the ATOs that are to blame for the Scrapper dominance, not the rest of the AT. However on teams... Tankers are valid because they're the AoE damage Melee AT. And they can tank harder stuff with minimal support. Scrappers are valid because they're the Single Target damage Melee AT. And they can still tank stuff, although choosing one of the secondary sets that has a Taunt Aura definitely helps. Stalkers can sometimes be more useful than a Scrapper depending on the team's goal and composition. They approach Scrapper levels of Single Target damage (especially if there isn't a Kin on the team since they can lean more into build up autorecharges) and they get stealth and some limited aggro control. They do just fine at [Elite] boss-killing but they can't really tank and their AoE damage is typically worse than a Scrapper. Brutes are currently what you pick if you can't get one of the others, or if you like the player and have a "pity spot" free. Want aggro control and AoE damage? Tanker. Want Single Target damage and aggro control? Scrapper. Want only Single Target damage and Stealth and/or don't have a Kin? Stalker. Want aggro control and lesser Single Target damage plus X? Brute. Realistically something needs to change so that we can find a decent value for X. Personally I still like the idea of making Fury and/or the Brute ATOs provide minor AoE effects - buffs to teammates or debuffs to enemies. But whatever it is it'll be a balancing act so as not to invalidate either Scrappers or Tankers.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission:Tip_-_Wizard's_Weakness

Too right. My main rig's still using a 5700 XT from >5 years ago. (and even back then it was under £2.1k for the lot including a new 4x4TB disk external NAS box...)

It's definitely important to work out your accuracy requirements. And for regular "pets/henchmen" what Tidge says here is always true. But pseudopets will need evaluated individually. Most (all?) pseudopets will inherit their caster's current boosts whenever they get summoned; including the benefits of accuracy set bonuses and stuff like +ToHit from Kismet. However the remaining duration of those copied boosts tends to expire pretty quickly; and they don't get refreshed. Some pseudopets will do something useful immediately (like inflicting a long-duration debuff; or substantial damage) which will likely not require extra accuracy because their summoner's boosts will still be in effect... however other pseudopets function by "applying a new short-duration effect every few seconds" - which will need extra accuracy if you want it to remain relevant after the first few seconds.

A few things are catching my eye... Easiest quick boost would be to switch out the Karma KB protection IO (in Maneuvers) for a Steadfast one in Crab Spider Upgrade. After that you'll have a LotG 7.5% plus 4x Reactive Defences in Combat Training: Defensive and 3x LoTGs in Maneuvers - swap them around (Maneuvers wants +Def and +EndRed. Combat Training just wants +Def). Swap the Unbreakable Guard unique from Tough to Fortification (the former costs considerably more endurance). You're not getting much out of the 5th and 6th ATOs in Bayonet. The Dam/Rech and Acc/Dam/Rech could likely be swapped out for 2x Damage Procs. Frag Grenade's KB>KD could be an Overwhelming Force (which gives more +Dmg) instead of a Sudden Acceleration. Longfang's chance to hit currently isn't capped against +3 enemies. So that Shield Breaker proc might be better off being swapped out for an Acc/Dam Gladiator's Javelin unless you're getting additional +Accuracy or +ToHit from external buffs. Channelgun could squeeze the Decimation "Chance for Build Up" proc in without much negative impact to its own DPA. And it goes without saying to Boost all the appropriate IOs to +5 unless you really want to attune them for exemplaring; and to reduce local recharge enhancement as much as possible in any powers that you're slotting with procs. Arachnos Soldier (Crab Spider Soldier - Crab Spider Training)2a.mbd

On the one hand... it's a toggle; so proc activation rate will be garbage. On the other hand... Willpower tends to need all the help it can get. I imagine it'll depends how scarce your slots are.

Get the 'Troller to go DarknessControl/Kinetics so you can run with a DarkMiasma/DarkBlast Defender (or Marine/DarkBlast if you can canon it) With Fulcrum Shift + either multiple TarPatches or Whitecap+ShiftingTides it won't really matter what your other teammates are running. You'll be steamrolling.

Tanker Base MaxHP is 1874; so your Maximum Absorb is 1874. Have you currently got 1874 Absorb? If yes, then you can't get any more. If no, then congrats, any more +Absorb you get will stack with it. Just don't start doing utterly silly things like expecting that whenever a long-duration Absorb buff such as 'Particle Shielding' or 'Ablative Carapace' overwrites itself it'll behave sensibly. Rather than deleting any existing +Absorb that it's granting you BEFORE it applies a nice new fresh dollop of +Absorb; these powers attempt to apply that fresh dollop FIRST (e.g. hitting and getting reduced drastically by the cap) and THEN the old buff expires; leaving you a good bit short of the maximum. (Typically in practice you'll be getting hit enough that the previous absorb buff has long been whittled away + so this won't really matter; but still...)

It ramps up much faster in AoEs, that 65% chance for a Damage buff is per enemy hit. If you're just hitting one enemy a few times and then waiting until the stacks wear off to whack one enemy again... then yes, it won't get much opportunity to ramp up... but in that case why did you bother popping your Hybrid to begin with?

Of those two options, I'd assume Dark... but it'll be impossible to say for certain unless you tell us what the other ATs and Powersets are. And what your secondary is going to be will play a part too (will you be inflicting notable AoE -ToHit etc)

Since you asked this on the Procs thread already; linking my previous answer: Scrappers essentially always want Core. Tankers probably won't see a huge difference; but I'd still lean towards Core unless you're a SS with double-stacked Rage or constantly team with a Kinetic.

None of the above; annoyingly. It's based on the attack's Base Recharge and its Area Factor (Radius and/or Arc) and it doesn't take into account the damage scale of the archetype you're on - so it'll add an identical amount of damage on both Brutes and Scrappers. Generally speaking Assault Radial only works out better than Assault Core if you're a Brute/Controller/Defender (Corruptors are on the fence - it might become worth it if you have more AoEs and long-recharge attacks) or if you're planning to sit at the damage cap a lot of the time (see: Kinetics, Warshades, and Stalkers with a Gaussian proc in Build Up).

@Auroxis's post above dated 1st Jan is decent; so if you want a Bots/Marine to base a build around then use that one. Bots/Marine will be considerably safer (since you can softcap all your henchmen without much trouble) but less damaging than Mercs/Marine or Demons/Marine.

In the Corruptor subforum. (in this one even an an unoptimized /Marine will comfortably beat the pants off everything else, no contest)

I can't see a FF rech; but I assume it's slotted in Ripper? Should be perfectly fine for most PVE content and Active Farming (if a bit on the slower side with Burn's small Target Cap and Spine Burst and Ripper's comparatively low DPA!). Fireball and Melt Armor will be pulling a lot of weight. For AFK farming; being ~7.5% short of the F/C defense softcap is probably what's hurting you the most there so I can see why you'd want to team it up with something else (even if it's just for an additional copy or two of Maneuvers etc.) but passive Health Regeneration is a bit low too unless you're behind the wheel to push the buttons for Consume and Healing Flames (with Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2530 which in turn raises its' passive regen to a smidge over 32 HP/Sec). - - - - - - - - - - Here's a setup that performs similarly but was constructed a bit different: Brute - Battle Axe - Fiery Aura (+Recovery).mbd This one's built for Softcapped Melee Defense + hardcapped S/L resists and spammable AoE. A FF proc in Axe Cyclone (which draws things into range of Burn + Pendulum + Blazing Aura) keeps things ticking along; with Cleave and Swoop there to tag runners and whittle down EBs a bit quicker. However unlike the above build their Epic pool choices aren't adding any extra AoE damage but instead survivability and sustain (whilst consuming no additional enhancement slots). With Consume up its MaxHP becomes 2209; which raises its Passive Regeneration to a bit over 27 HP/Sec and the three Power Transfer IOs bring it up to about ~38.5 before Panacea procs. Their high net recovery plus Consume also allows them to cycle Barrier or Rebirth instead of Ageless (even as a BattleAxe) which increases that sustain even more and helps counteract their lack of DDR when PVE-ing. The result can run and Tank regular PvE content and "Active" AE farm just fine - they're tough enough to survive unaided in the bulk of content and they're very quick (although not quite as quick as an optimized Tanker) at whittling down hordes of mooks whilst also performing decently versus AVs and Pylons. However their focus on MELEE POSITIONAL defense rather than Fire or S/L Typed Defense means that whilst they perform better against a variety of enemy types, they also take substantially more damage from ranged attacks and AoEs. So AFK farming with them becomes very tricky because any enemies beyond the regular aggro cap start ranged attacking them; which hurts more. They can technically just about AFK farm on S/L-damage AE maps; but not on Fire-damage ones. - - - - - - - - - - And because I'm on a roll and it's relevant to the discussion... here's my "PVE/AFK farming Hybrid" RadM/Stone Brute: Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Fold Space).mbd Note that "Atom Smasher" (which gets set to Auto on AFK maps) is not fully procbombed; and there are power choices that are "useless" for AFK farming (such as taking additional attacks and Fold Space instead of the Leadership Pool)... however the result has Softcapped S/L/E/N defense and a decent chunk of S/L resistance, rather than purely being focused on mitigating Fire damage. And the superfluous attacks combine to make a seamless attack chain (with substantial AoE) with Fold Space to bunch stuff up plus Taunt and a few ranged attacks to tag runners. I couldn't quite fit Hasten into the build; although this is one of the few toons where I can headcanon the character having an alternative power setup (in their case a "max mitigation" Granite Armor build) which takes Hasten and a substantially different set of attacks and can incidentally also AFK-farm - albeit at a substantially slower rate! Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Ejected).mbd (Admittedly these numbers are inflated due to Unleashed Potential and Earth's Embrace both running! Without Unleashed Potential their typed defenses sits at 45.2%; and their Regeneration will be ~59.4 HP/Sec with Earth's Embrace active and ~42 HP/Sec without; which is still plenty for AFK-farming. Also in this 'form' the toon purposely avoids taking Power Transfer or Panacea procs for thematic reasons - otherwise Health and Stamina would have a few slots shuffled around...) So yeah, there are lots of methods + it all really depends on what you want from your toon and if you're comfortable having multiple hyper-specialized builds. That said; whenever someone asks for "the best farmer" I'll generally assume they're talking about "the fastest/most efficient inf-earner"; beit Passive or Active. (And it goes without saying that the quickest way to earn influence is to just play the market; and maybe farm a bit between sales...) 😛

Yeah the changes to how enemies beyond your aggro limit behave (e.g. start shooting at you rather than just standing there oblivious) really ramped up the amount of incoming damage that a solo AE farmer has to mitigate. The resulting minimum ~35 HP/Sec regeneration requirement on top of 90% Resists and softcapped Defense cripples most non-tanker AFK-farming builds (and it's really a bare minimum - my Stone Armor Brute still faceplants occasionally with 40 HP/Sec regeneration + 5x Power Transfer/Panacea Procs!) I'm actually also not a big fan of using builds that are "fully optimized" for AFK farming. Assuming that a character is always going to be sitting in a +4x8 Fire Farm (for example) does let you build some very niche and powerful setups; but the result tends to be largely useless at running regular content. And whilst keeping a dedicated alternative build to swap to just for AE farming is also possible... to me that feels a bit too much like cheating and it's also quite jarringly immersion breaking. So personally I'd much rather have a "Hybrid" build (in this case meaning a build that can solo AFK AE farm and also run regular content) that is a smidge slower than a fully optimized setup; but can still whomp its way through a 10-minute Asteroid Farm at a decent rate of knots. "Active" Farmers have it a bit easier; as all they really care about is maximum AoE damage + they can go a lot lighter on the passive-mitigation side. Many Active Farming builds do pretty decently in regular "kill most" PVE teams. Aside from the obvious glut of Tankers; I currently have two Brutes that I still enjoy farming on (the aforementioned AFK-farming RadM/Stone; plus an Active-Farming BA/Fire) and occasionally I'll break out silly setups like Masterminds or Crabberminds or Dominators or even an EM/RadArmor Scrapper (which is capable of Active Farming at a decent pace as well as being one of my favourite all-rounder melee toons!).

The thing about using multiple accounts for farming is that for "maximum efficiency" it's best to throw two independent AFK farming toons into separate 10min AFK asteroid maps whilst you simultaneously active farm with a third toon. That way the three toons are not having to split the gains and you have much better chances for decent recipe and salvage drops; and your average inf/hour skyrockets. However if you're after safety (or amusement!) over speed then by all means combo whatever toons you want together. Even a few VEATs and/or Masterminds can layer up and obliterate a single farming map together pretty quickly in complete safety if that's what you're into ( @Neiska 's thread below is a good read, although these days the introduction of Marine Affinity has shifted MM powerset rankings around a bit!) And obviously the disclaimer applies about only using multiple accounts on servers that are not under heavy load 😉

After. Think of it as extra "Temporary Hitpoints" over and above the cap.

It'll stack with itself up to the cap, which is 100% of your "base" maximum Hitpoints. The mechanics can sometimes be confusing; because often the more hefty +Absorb buffs will "overwrite" themselves but the +Absorb already being granted by the previous copy is subtracted from the cap. E.g. If you have a "+800 Absorb" power and 1000 MaxHP after it overwrites itself you'll only have "+200 Absorb" active.

Yes. For Single-target damage it's passable on a Stalker.... and for AoE it actually veers into "decent" on Tankers as Gauntlet drastically buffs all three of its area attacks.

It'll function for regular Clicks like Blaze and DoT powers like Full Auto; but not for pseudopets like Blizzard (because these work by having the pet make lots of little separate "attacks" and the damage buff will wear off very quickly) I've not personally tested the gubbins of how Targeting Drone's damage buff duration interacts with power Animation Time Before Effect; but purely from eyeballing it... it looks like if the power you're activating afterwards has a ATBE of longer than 1.25s (such as Inferno) then it won't affect it either. [EDIT: A quick test on Brainstorm proves that it is affecting Inferno, so ignore this. I'm guessing that the "out of combat" flag doesn't actually get removed from your character until the attack's effect fully kicks in instead of at the start of its cast time; so TD's damage buff should work on any click attack power. Just not on pseudopets!] It'll depend if the target you're trying to have it Taunt possesses the "RAID" flag or not. Unlike Arsenal Assault's Tricannon (for example) the inherent Gatling Gun attack of Gun Drone only taunts foes that are not flagged as "Raid". It does also have a taunt aura passive but that has a low target cap and radius and is unaffected by Threat Duration or Accuracy enhancements (so +4 critters will not be permanently Taunted by it and it'll have issues hitting Raid-flagged foes and you need to keep the Drone on top of the mob for it to work!) That one's easier: Yes.

See also: Battle Axe. Spine's only real niche these days is standing there like a lemon and letting Quills tickle the mob to death... and even that's trounced by Rad Melee's Irradiated Ground.