Maelwys

I get the jeebies taking Alphas with Recharge Aspect unless the toon isn't proccing their attacks out. Boxing is a bit pants, yes, but with the base damage and utility boosts from taking both Kick and Cross Punch IIRC it becomes roughly on par with Punch; and having an extra ST attack at very low levels is situationally useful to fill a gap when exemplaring. OF's knockdown Proc has a little synergy with the other powers and its set bonuses, whilst comparatively underwhelming, are all useful for this build and got the toon's defence totals perfectly even (which my OCD really appreciates! 😁). The contents of its 6th slot might look rather funky too... but there isn't much recharge aspect in the power so a 4.5 PPM purple damage proc activates reasonably well despite its low base recharge (~21.5% chance); and since all the other ST attacks in the build are crammed full there really wasn't a better place to put it. All that said, I think this toon (albeit a version with SJ instead of Fly) is the only one in my stable which uses more than one OF enhancement. Leaning into Knockdown is a bit of a throwback too - back on live it even had Air Superiority for a while!

As a visual example: here's an Energy Melee/Rad Armor Scrapper who I enjoy playing in regular content and occasionally bring Active S/L AE Farming at +4x8. The defense numbers you see below are with Shadow Meld Active; which has roughly 50% uptime. Without it, he's at a smidge under 15% S/L Defense. His build is not focused on mitigation but instead on Damage Output via Procs and enough Global Recharge to create a high-DPA seamless attack chain. Scrappers only have a resistance cap of 75%; and their Maximum HP is also lower than Brutes/Tankers (this toon only clocks in at ~2008!) so you don't see them used much in AE farming. However whilst he definitely can't claim to kill as many things as quickly as an optimised Tanker, his procced Radiation Therapy, Ground Zero and Whirling Hands can still make short work of Minions and LTs whilst he focuses on the Bosses with EM's high Single Target burst damage - and the resulting mob killing rate is fast enough that enough Inspirations come in to keep him alive between Shadowmeld recasts (alongside occasional uses of Void Radial Judgement; and Barrier Destiny for emergencies!)

You just about have sufficiently high passive regeneration providing that you have all your +HP/Endurance Accolades and Particle Shielding is active. However without Meltdown running your highest resistance figure (Smashing/Lethal) is only at 78.5%. It should be 90%. And your Highest Defence figure (Smashing/Lethal) is a smidge shy of 31% without Melee Radial Embodiment running. It should be 45%. Whilst the -ToHit debuffs from Beta Decay and Dark Obliteration can help a bit, they'll only affect the foes they can hit. On a typical farming map there will be several times that number shooting at you. Unfortunately you're also not outputting anywhere near enough AoE damage to defeat foes quickly enough to allow you to keep yourself afloat via Inspirations; so as-is, I suspect the only way that build will survive in a +4x8 Asteroid map is if it's a S/L farm and you're keeping at least 10 foes within 10ft of you with Melee Radial Embodiment running. If you want to farm at that sort of pace; then pick a single common Damage type (like Smashing/Lethal; or Fire) and get its Resistance to 90% and its Defense to 45%. Alternatively; pick lots of high-DPA AoE attacks; load them up with Procs; then use temp powers and inspirations to keep yourself upright whilst you slaughter everything much faster. Rad Melee unfortunately does not overly lend itself to this type of play... but Radiation Armor does. I'd recommend proccing the crap out of Ground Zero and Radiation Therapy at a bare minimum, swapping to Mu Mastery (for Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning - procbomb both of them!) and taking T4 Incarnates that help (e.g. Void Radial Judgement, Barrier Destiny; Reactive Radial Interface, Assault Radial Hybrid; Banished Pantheon Radial Lore; and either Musculature, Vigor or Nerve Alpha).

AFAIK the way it functions currently is that a target affected by Shifting Tides can get that Cold Damage triggered on them once every 0.1 seconds. And every single attack made by all entities attacking that target will trigger a separate opportunity for this damage to activate. So "the more things attacking and the more attacks being made, the better". That cold damage is affected by damage boosts (like slotting damage enhancement aspect into Shifting Tides, and any buffs like Red Insps and Tide Pool and Fulcrum Shift) and -resistance debuffs (Whitecap, Brine, -res IO procs)... but the Shifting Tide power itself counts as a wide radius toggle for the purposes of proc IOs; so slotting damage procs into it will have very little benefit. Go with capped ED damage instead. [Edit: pipped to the post by @Auroxis who summed it up better anyway!]

That one works as a set bonus; it's a 5% chance for ANY attack to recharge Build Up; not just the attack that it's slotted in. And no, it's a flat 5% chance not a PPM-linked chance so recharge rate has zero effect. Though IIRC you may need to use the attack it's slotted in once per map before the set bonus will actually kick in and start operating.

Yeah unfortunately Mids has a consistent bug where if you load an Invulnerability build that already has Invincibility toggled on + set to X targets then it often won't actually include it in the defense totals. To get it working again you need to drop the target count to zero, turn Invincibility off and back on again, then finally up the target count to 1 again. It's annoying so I tend to set Invincibility to 0 targets and detoggle it before I hit the save button on my builds! Don't worry about database mismatches, I poke at the backend of my copy of Mids a lot (re-fixing things like Protector Bot Bubbles) but it won't affect the values.

Assault Radial Hybrid (the one with the "chance for Double Hit") always gives the same boost regardless of your damage scalar... which means that it'll end up providing more proportional benefit to you the lower your current AT's "base damage" is. So if your AT's melee damage scalar is considerably higher than 1.0 (Scrappers are 1.125) then using Assault Core Hybrid will be better; and if your AT damage scalar is considerably lower than 1.0 (Brutes are 0.75) then using Assault Radial Hybrid will be better. Tankers are very slightly weighted in favour of Radial (0.95) - so it really comes down to if you prefer spiky or consistent damage... IMO if you're farming lots of EBs (which will smooth out the spikes!) or if you're at the damage cap (via chugging Insps or Fulcrum Shift) then go for Radial; but otherwise chances are that many of its additional damage spikes will end up doing a lot of "overkill" damage on lower-tier foes like minions and LTs. (Also FWIW Stalkers have a scalar of 1.0; but realistically should always go for Radial because their ATOs plus a Gaussian Proc in Build Up means they'll often be at the damage cap even when soloing. If that wasn't the case then running Core would work out a bit better for them because Radial's damage proc doesn't scale with Critical Hits)

I'm pretty sure he was played by Phil Harris.

FWIW, I've rejigged my "all rounder" AFK-Farming RadMelee/StoneArmor Brute build into a StoneArmor/RadMelee Tanker build to try + provide another example: zTanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee).mbd Looks like it's clocking in at ~2.2 End/Sec Net Recovery and a passive regeneration of ~45 HP/Sec without Earth's Embrace running. It's worth noting that Atom Smasher on Autofire slotted as it is above (procbombed) will be dealing an average of 34.585 Dmg/Sec (38.778 with Assault Core Hybrid active). If instead it was slotted with a 5 piece Armageddon Set (ED-capped for both local recharge aspect and damage; and with a smidge more global recharge) then it'd be dealing an average of 34.933 Dmg/Sec (37.208 with Assault Core Hybrid active). So there's really not much in it there between procbombing and ED-capping recharge + damage aspect... unless you're also combining + popping red insps (or being Fulcrum Shifted!) in which case the Procbombed version will start pulling much further ahead.

Be careful of running that one as-is, since it looks very endurance heavy. According to Mids it's getting a Net recovery rate of 0.17 End/Sec but it'll require at least 0.91 End/Sec with Atom Smasher set to Autofire (assuming no non essential toggles running like Travel Powers/Sprint/Tough/etc). The Panacea and Performance Shifter Procs will be adding an average of 1.1 End/Sec over time; so It should just about be OK as long as you get all your +MaxEndurance accolades... but don't go fighting any foes with electrical attacks let alone active endurance drains or recovery debuffs. Definitely level it up as a different more regular build first (lots more attacks; Hasten; no leadership pool) and then respec into it at level 50 for AFK farming. Some ideas here for regular builds; though for anything I'm levelling quickly + don't overly care about I typically just use a few choice Global/Proc IOs (like a Panacea and some LotGs) and slot the rest with either SOs or Common Crafted IOs with or a little bit of junky frankenslotting that all get NPC-vendored or sold on the AH for 1 inf each after the respec.

Once you've it built (see here for how!) the easiest places to see its performance in action will be Monster Island (North of Portal Corp in Peregrine Island) for seeing how it copes vs monsters and/or large amounts of Smashing and Lethal damage... and the far North of the Rikti War Zone for groups of mixed damage Lv54 foes. Then soloing an ITF might be a good idea to see how it copes versus Defence Debuffs. Finally you can also check Architect Entertainment for any of the popular "Farming" maps (It'll cope just fine vs Smashing and Lethal damage critters without using any clicks) or even some of the 801 series if you really want to push things.

You're welcome 😉 (Pilot the MM, since you'll want to 'goto' and buff the pets with ID and Speed Boost a lot whilst spamming Fulcrum, Fireball, Bonfire and Transfusion. Set the VEAT autofollowing the MM [with Group Fly disabled on them via Null the Gull] with either frenzy or Venom Grenade on autofire and all their toggles running. Resummon the VEAT's pets when their timer's up; alternate Support Hybrids; and try not to blink!)

Musculature (or Intuition Radial) tends to be the goto Alpha(s) because of the Damage Enhancement boost which partially ignores the Enhancement Diversification limits. However the rest of that build and its currently selected Incarnate choices is actually more defensive than offensive driven: Melee Hybrid, Rebirth Destiny, etc. and Energy Mastery for Focused Accuracy (the ToHit Debuff resistance it grants plus Rage means you have options when you're under heavy debuffage from a roomful of CoT ghosts etc). Whilst KO Blow, Footstomp and Cross Punch do have some damage Procs (as they're the most important attacks) there are defensive related procs and set bonuses mixed in there too. Regarding endurance management... without Fly or Focused Accuracy active (and you really shouldn't be leaving them toggled on constantly anyway) you'll note it has a Net recovery of just over 2.5 Endurance per Second. For most toons anything over 2 is plenty. However since the toon doesn't rely on Barrier Core Destiny to get its mitigation capped you could certainly choose to run Ageless if you wanted to. INVs tend to gravitate towards Ageless Radial Destiny in harder content for its Defense Debuff Resistance anyway. Unstoppable is a mule power, yes. The crash is pointlessly crippling for the benefit it grants especially since you'll be able to sit at the Resistance hardcaps to everything (including Psionic!) without it via Superior Might of Tanker Procs plus Melee Core Hybrid. It can very occasionally be situationally useful for its non-toggle-based Mez protection; but carrying a big breakfree inspiration does the same job better. I used to be a big fan of using Unstoppable way back when before inventions were a thing (managing to time Dull Pain to help pick yourself up from the crash came with bragging rights!) but these days it's really just there to contain an extra global.

Typically in an AE farm the aggro cap is the major bottleneck. So the big benefit that bringing a second account along will accomplish is to attract an extra 17 targets into melee range so that everything gets AoE'd to death faster. Therefore I'd say bring something with an AoE taunting ability, either a Taunt Aura (so some Scrapper secondaries will count) or Gauntlet/Punchvoke (Brute/Tank PBAoE abilities). And aside from that? Moar Damage. Resistance debuffs always help, but most times an Active AE farmer will be combining inspirations into reds and sitting at their damage cap, so bringing a Kinetic buffbot etc will be largely pointless. All that said, making the second account into an AFK farmer and throwing it into its own separate AE map instance will always give you a better return than partnering two accounts up in the same map. The only time I'd bring two toons on the same farm is if one of them isn't level 50 yet or I'm just messing around (watching a Bot/Kin Mastermind plus a VEAT Crabbermind destroy one Asteroid after another is utterly hilarious but not exactly the most efficient!) 😉

A lot of the Invention Origin enhancement sets include one "global" or "Proc" enhancement; which has strange/unusual effects. There's a list here. One of the popular types of "proc" enhancements are "damage procs": essentially if you slot these in a power then whenever you activate that power it gets a chance to deal additional damage. There's a complicated formula to work out the exact chance; but the short version is that the longer the recharge time of the power (including slotted recharge enhancement; but not including external recharge from buffs and "global" set bonuses) the better the chances that a proc will activate. "Proc bombing" is whenever you slot lots of different damage procs (and/or resistance Debuff procs) in a single power - often neglecting to slot it fully (and sometimes neglecting to slot it at all) for regular damage enhancement aspect. After the power has enough accuracy to reliably hit, the rest of the available enhancement slots are filled with as many procs as the power can take. Infrigidate from Cold Domination is a good popular example of this: 1x Accuracy and 5x Procs is the typical slotting. I'm fond of doing something similar for Sleep Grenade from Arsenal Control and a good few other powers.

Here's a slightly shuffled variant of one of my builds that might work. zTanker - INV_SS (Hover).mbd With one foe in Invincibility range and no incarnate clickies running it looks like this this: The Superior Might of Tanker Proc (assuming you're using KO Blow on cooldown) will be adding another 6.7-20.1% resistance to all on top of that. Regarding the attuned vs non-attuned enhancements question... it depends. Generally you'll want to attune all your "globals" (check this list to see what counts as a global and what counts as a proc) but whether regular IO enhancements (Set IOs and Common Crafted Enhancements) are better attuned or boosted will depend on your current level as per https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements#Details and also on whether or not the set bonuses they grant are vitally important to your performance. Personally I almost always just boost them (unless they contain recharge enhancement aspect and the power they're in has lots of damage procs). Procs don't care about attunement; and Universal Damage and Archetype Enhancements are "pre attuned". PVP set enhancements and Very Rare (Purple) set enhancements can technically be attuned but they don't gain any benefit from it, so you'll always want to boost those.

Anything will survive soloing at +2x8. So speaking purely offensively I'd vote for BattleAxe + Radiation Armor. Scrapper if you want more Single Target damage; Tanker if you want more AoE damage. Fiery Melee isn't too far off either if you really don't like the look of the Axes.

As long as you have maximum damage aspect in it the rest doesn't really matter. The inherent Cold damage procs dealt by shifting tides is affected by Enhancements and Damage Boosts, but the power itself only activates damage proc set IO enhancements at the minimum rate so there's little point in procbombing it. So slot it for damage, cast Tide Pool for +Dmg and Whitecap/Brine for -Res, and make as many things as possible (henchmen temp pets pseudopets players whatever) attack the target.

Honestly, I found the reverse to be true. Sleep Grenade is one of those messy complex powers that has multiple components and conditional statements. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=controller_control.arsenal_control.sleep_grenade&at=controller It spawns a pseudopet with an ongoing Patch effect that applies a repeating Slow effect plus a repeating Mag3 Sleep effect (as long as the target has been attacked recently)... but there's also separate brief spike of AoE burst damage that doesn't repeat. When slotted with both Slow and Targeted AoE IO set damage procs; they'll all have reasonable chances to proc initially, then the Slow procs will also have a low chance to proc after 10 and 20 seconds. Even unslotted for duration the sleep ticks will keep a regular +3 LT permamezzed; so the only thing it needs is a bit of accuracy which leaves plenty of room for procs. Mine looks like this: And performs like this on the initial hit (quick shot into a random mob of Nemesis goons in PI) The only other powers in Arse Control I bother proccing are Cryo Freeze Ray and the Tricannon; but Sleep Grenade is up every spawn and pulls a lot of weight.

SS is a top tier offensive powerset on Brutes, but there are a few tricks to getting it to that level. Generally most SS toons will lean heavily into Rage and Foot Stomp and KO Blow and Haymaker. However you'll very likely want an additional filler attack or two from the Fighting Pool (e.g. Cross Punch) and/or an Epic Pool (such as Gloom + Dark Obliteration from Soul Mastery; Spirit Shark and Arctic Breath from Mako, or Electrifying Fences and Ball Lightning from Mu Mastery. A procbombed Char or Dominate can work too). Stick a Force Feedback proc in Footstomp (to make things recharge faster) and slot Rage for +ToHit (so that you don't need to slot the attacks for accuracy) then slot as many -res and damage procs as you can fit into each of your other attacks (because they won't need any accuracy slotting due to Rage... and Brute's low base damage combined with buffs from Rage and Fury generation reduces the benefit of slotting your attacks for damage aspect; but damage from procs isn't affected by the Rage Crash). With sufficiently high recharge you can double-stack Rage; but the more frequent crash hurts unless you source most of your damage output from procs.

Definitely a Thugs/ Mastermind. 🕶️🚬🔫🔫

I'd shy away from the ATOs as the Brute ones really don't give you much bang for your buck. The Set Bonuses are decent; but the Procs/Globals are rubbish and it's quite expensive to slot multiple ATOs for the set bonuses. Instead; I'd look at a few choice regular IOs... although instead of purchasing these via Reward Merits you'll get a far better return by spending your Reward Merits on Enhancement Boosters or Convertors + then selling these on the Auction House and using the proceeds to buy whatever IOs you want. Battle Axe is very endurance intensive; but Rad Armor can alleviate that via sticking a Theft of Essence Proc in Radiation Therapy. The main thing that'll help your overall performance is putting a Force Feedback Procs in both Axe Cyclone (most important!) and Pendulum. If you want to push things further then offensively you can also use "chance for -resistance" procs; Fury of the Gladiator fits into Axe Cyclone and Achilles Heel fits into Chop or Beheader or even Beta Decay (which is a toggle and so will have a lower activation rate; but is an AoE so will potentially hit more targets!)... and defensively you'll benefit greatly from the Reactive Defenses and Shield Wall +Resistance globals and anything that boosts Maximum HP (Unbreakable Guard global being the big one). Once your Resistances are sufficiently high you could then look into pushing your Defense up a bit; but another way to go that won't require as much effort/compromise is Healing Procs. You can stick these in Health (Panacea) and in Stamina and Gamma Boost (Power Transfer) as well as potentially also in Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection from the Energy Mastery epic pool (Power Transfer) and they'll happily keep ticking away - on average each kicking in once every 20 seconds. One of the big selling points of Rad Armor is additional AoE damage via Ground Zero (as it hits a very large number of targets and takes lots of damage procs) and Radiation Therapy (which can also be slotted up for damage procs). So eventually I'd recommend getting at least Ground Zero procced up... but for Battle Axe it'll be a lower priority than other primaries since you already have so much AoE capability.

Barrage gets the regen debuff in all the ATs I think? Certainly present on the Stalker version (near the bottom, "-100% Regeneration (all affected targets) for 15s" with the "EnergyRelease" prerequisite!) https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=stalker_melee.energy_melee.barrage&at=stalker I mean, in practice it's decidedly meh on everything except a low-level GM. Archvillain Resistance and Purple Patch and all that. No, the really "not fair" thing is this Even if it doesn't possess the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag, which makes it vary depending on what foes you're fighting and results in this sort of messiness!

I especially love taking Soul Mastery but ignoring Shadow Meld; because obviously it doesn't embiggen the red numbers... 😜 The closest I have in my stable is a EM/Rad Scrapper. They can just about survive indefinitely at +4x8 with the higher MaxHP pool and at-will Defense softcapping plus the enhanceable +100% Regen buff to self in their version of Radiation Therapy that none of the other ATs get. I occasionally break them out for active AE farming just to see the expression on people's faces. No FF Proc though 😭 Scrapper - EM - RA (Moonbeam).mbd