Maelwys

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...) 😛 [Edit: Build files updated to reflect what I'm currently running]

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.

Also this: And MacSkull's PPM Calculator Spreadsheet (make a copy) plus City of Data v2 for the base numbers to plug into it. And maybe this for some other info + illustrated examples:

Ehh. versus Giant Monters maybe. I'd much rather have -res versus AVs/Heros/EBs. (30677.2*0.05)/(15) = 102.2573333 HP/Second regeneration for a level 54 AV. 102 DPS is pretty trivial to outpace these days; and any -Regen debuff would be working against both AV inherent debuff resistances and the Purple Patch. Versus Giant Monsters/Monsters? (70679.18*0.05)/(10) = 353.3959 HP/Second for a "regular" level 50 one and more of the -Regen debuff is likely going to land on them due to the level scaling.

-Resistance ? 😉

It isn't. It's important to qualify if you mean ACTIVE FARMING (when you stay behind the wheel and activate powers/clicky defenses) or PASSIVE "AFK" FARMING (when you just enter the mission, stick one PBAoE attack on autofire + then come back 5-10mins later)? Those two goals each need very different types of builds to be effective. Active farmers don't need much regeneration and can get away with uncapped defense/resistance; because you'll be there to pop inspirations. They also often don't bother with multiple damage auras; but they do want lots of AoE powers; all crammed full of -res and damage procs. Passive farmers absolutely require 90% Resistance and 45% Defense and >35 HP/Sec regeneration. And they'll generally want two damage auras and one decent high-radius and high-target-cap PBAoE that can be procbombed and set to Autofire. After that it's a case of cramming in as much global +Damage and +Recharge as you can. Depending on what form of farming you're after (Active or Passive) Brute killspeed may not be too far off that of a Tanker. But only a few Brute setups can actually survive Passive Farming on +4x8 nowadays without making large build concessions (in terms of trading damage output for survivability)... it's basically a shortlist of one secondary: non-Granite /Stone. Stone Armor Brutes also have a major advantage over Stone Armor Tankers as the additional "damage procs" granted via Brimstone Armor benefit from Fury.

I hardly ever slot the Perf Shifter Proc. Panacea and (usually) Miracle in health, sure... but Stamina's Base slot is almost always a 50+5 EndMod and the second slot is typically a Power Transfer Proc. The only time Performance Shifter gets used is if Stamina ends up 3 or 4-slotted. It's just too unreliable + spikey. As for LoTG +7.5%s? Typically any of my powers that I'm already taking which accepts Defense IO sets will get one. But I very rarely go out of my way to take specific additional powers just to slot extra LoTGs.

If they're listed here- https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Vanity_Pet they're cosmetic only. There are a limited number of pets that can buff you - see https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Veteran_Reward_Powers#Combat-Buff_Pets They can be aggroed and have extremely low HP and die to a stiff breeze; but can provide a useful buff to recovery (for example) at low levels. The "useful in combat" ones are https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Signature_Summon It's 10,000,000 Inf for 5 charges (so 2m "per summoning") and their full power listing is here

The additional defense from Evasive Maneuvers gets suppressed in Combat.

That wasn't actually what was said in my post. What I posted was: "Homecoming's published Server Infrastructure Cost for last month alone (for the current 6 shards) was $4,853.37. That's a average of a smidge over $800/month per server shard". A current average of $800/month per server doesn't necessarily mean that adding a new HC server would automatically cost another $800. However it does show that running six HC servers is pretty expensive; and suggest that adding another would likely require an additional non-trivial monetary cost. As far as I'm aware the way the HC hosting platform currently works, multiple server shards can be spun up and hosted within the same shared resource bucket. And the hardware limitations of that bucket will likely care much more about how many maps + critters are loaded into memory simultaneously rather than how many individual shards are online and accepting logins (certainly a few years ago when I had more free time to dabble with the SCORE code, RAM consumption was the major bottleneck...). So if the current setup has sufficient unused capacity then it might well be possible to spin up a new server without shelling out for extra hardware. This sort of thing is generally referred to as "technical debt" - an additional hardware/processing time requirement that is not properly covered by a new project's budget but instead gets absorbed by existing ICT infrastructure. It will always eventually catch up with the organisation and eventually need "paid for", and typically this happens whenever the relevant hosting/licensing contract comes up for renewal and you end up with a far bigger quote than before (because all those little extras have accumulated to bump your requirements into the next performance tier!) so wherever possible these additional requirements should be acknowledged and budgeted for ahead of time regardless of whether or not you'll get affected by them right away. All of which (alongside the reduced need for a forked codebase and major lore changes) is a big part of why I'd be far less against the idea of adding "Permadeath mode" to the existing servers as an optional extra.

AFAIK moving the original set of three trays to the very top and docking the inspiration tray there is the only surefire way of stopping it wandering.

That'd certainly require a heck of a lot less attention from the powers devs; but it gives me the jeebies thinking about all the scenarios where a lowbie toon on a TF could die to splash damage from someone else's fight and then get dumped straight to "game over" without even knowing how they died or being able to check the combat log (let alone being able to bitch about it to the offending teammate!) 🤣

I mean, I can only think of two possible situations for what happens during "permadeath". + One is that whenever the toon dies things get "paused" temporarily - the toon is stuck in a state where nothing can bring them back to life; but their body hangs around (if that doesn't make good "Vengeance" fodder I don't know what would!) and the player can still type in chat etc to say farewell before they eventually timeout and their character gets wiped. Potentially at this point the player might be permitted to choose to "chicken out" and forever disable Hardcore Mode and continue as a regular player [EDIT: which upon further reflection would allow the badge-gatherers a way to get to level 50 as a 'hardcore mode' player before intentionally dying + choosing the chicken out option and starting to farm their debt badges…] + The other is that as soon as the toon dies they instantly get deposited back on the Character Selection screen. No hanging around. No chance to activate Inspirations or get rezzed. No chance for Teammates to Vengeance your body or commiserate with you. Gone. Immediate game over. The first would definitely need HC to implement some way of disabling rez effects both intentional (self rez) and non-intentional (allied rez, getting enough EXP via teammate activity to level up, etc) on the toon whilst their body is still hanging around.