Maelwys

It was the first upgrade (Equip Robot) that used to be skipped on both the Assault Bot and Battle Drones. But that's old news. Don't do this any more. They buffed the Assbot's (previously AWFUL) Flamethrower attack that gets granted via Equip Robot in Issue 27 Page 5. Also Equip Robot is now what gives all your 'bots their Damage Resistance - so you're far better off using it on all of your henchmen. One other thing worth noting is that whereas previously all three Robotics henchmen types inflicted knockback (which was counterproductive to you trying to keep stuff in your Burn Missile Patches; and the main reason why the first upgrade used to get skipped on Battle Drones) nowadays the only henchmen ability that deals knockBACK instead of knockDOWN is the Assault Bot's regular Swarm Missiles (which has a 40% chance to inflict Mag 6 KB). This means you only really need to stick a KB->KD IO in it (the Overwhelming Force unique is best if you're not using it elsewhere); but not in the Drones or Protector Bots. The Battle Drones' Single Target attacks do however inflict a fair bit of Knockdown and so they really benefit from slotting an "Explosive Strike" Damage Proc. The Assbot's AOE attacks will also benefit somewhat from slotting that same Damage Proc; however don't bother with sticking one in the Protector Bots. (Also; "Repair" became "Maintenance Drone" and is now worth taking, particularly if your secondary doesn't have a heal. And they moved the -Regen debuff out of the Assault Bot Henchmen's attacks and into the MM's own Pulse Rifle Blast, Pulse Rifle Burst, and Photon Grenade Blast attacks. And unfortunately they also gutted Incendiary Swarm Missiles' Burn Patches so they now only hit a maximum of 3 targets - Bots are still good at AoE damage; but they can't melt entire maps anywhere near as fast as they used to... the tradeoff is greatly increased survivability due to the new Maintenance Drone; Equip Robot becoming slottable for +Resistance; and Protector Bot bubbles becoming AoE!)

FWIW I managed to grab 20mins earlier and did a few very quick + dirty RWZ pylon tests with a bunch of procs and enhancement unslotters. Long story short, it looks like @tidge is correct here and the Hold and Targeted AoE damage set Procs are indeed actually using the recharge of the parent power. So you can ED cap Liquefy's recharge and these procs will still get a capped 90% to activate once on initial casting. Procs from the -ToHit and -Def sets are definitely getting a lesser chance to activate on casting; but it's repeating as expected every 10s thereafter for 3 opportunities total (the predicted 15.3% pseudopet chance seems about right for these procs; so that's what I'm going with!). Whilst personally I'd still recommend ED-capping Liquefy's Recharge and -ToHit over loading it up with damage procs; if you've no other source of AoE damage then procbombing it with Hold and TAoE sets is technically a viable option. [6-slotted with 6x Damage Procs from TAoE and Hold sets] [6-slotted with 2x Lv50+5 Rech IOs and 3x Damage Procs from -Def and -ToHit sets, plus an Achilles' Heel] (I also did 10 more tests with a mix of 3x Hold and 3x -ToHit/-Def Damage procs - it was rare that any of the Hold procs failed to kick in on casting; but there were only seven instances where one of the other procs kicked in on casting... which is much closer to the predicted 15.3% pseudopet proc chance than it is to a capped 90% proc rate!)

The best chance you'll have of keeping them alive long enough to matter will be if you take the Soul Mastery pet (17.5% to Melee positional Def) or the Ice Mastery pet (25%+ to all typed Def except Toxic) and you happen to possess a Shield Defense secondary with a decently slotted Grant Cover (~13.5% when ED capped for +Def). The two +5% Pet Def Aura IOs and Barrier can then get the pets to softcap. However that's a fair bit of investment and IMO the additional damage contribution from the pet themselves hardly justifies it. They're also difficult to control and prone to running out of endurance even if you can keep them upright. So personally I'd skip them and just go with a BP Radial Lore pet and/or some signature summons instead.

IIRC because those effects live under Liquefy.Shock rather than under Liquefy itself and the parent Liquefy power is executing Liquefy.Shock as a "new power" (rather than redirecting to it like what happens in many other pseudopet abilities) any Targeted AoE or Hold Procs end up getting based off the listed base Recharge Time of that new Liquefy.Shock power (10s) rather than that of the parent Liquefy (150s). Meaning that they would get exactly the same initial 15.30% chance to activate as the -ToHit and -Defence debuff procs (assuming enough +accuracy or -defense to cap the hit rate of all the procs equally). However because that new Liquefy.Shock power is also flagged as inheriting Recharge Reduction enhancements, the internal "local recharge" of that new power can drop; which in turn lowers the proc rate of those Targeted AoE or Hold Procs... and since the lingering Liquefy.Liquefy pseudopet only inherits ToHit debuff and Defense debuff enhancements, those other types unfortunately won't get any additional opportunities to activate after that first initial tick. However I could well be misremembering things; as it's been a while since I poked at it (my Corruptor isn't exactly as hurting for AoEs as some Controllers might be; the only proc they've ever used in it is an Achilles' Heel!) and unfortunately I won't have the chance to hop on Brainstorm until the middle of next week. -ToHit/-Def procs in the Pseudopet should definitely be getting a 15.30% chance to apply on cast and every 10s thereafter (e.g. 3 opportunities total; per proc) though. [EDIT: Testing shows that the Hold and Targeted AoE damage set Procs are actually using the recharge of the parent power, not the pseudopet. So you can ED cap Liquefy's recharge and these procs will still get a capped 90% to activate once on initial casting. Procs from the -ToHit and -Def sets get 15.3% chance to activate on casting and every 10s thereafter, for 3 opportunities total. Whilst personally I'd still recommend ED-capping its Recharge and -ToHit over damage procs; if you've no other source of AoE damage then procbombing it with Hold and TAoE sets is technically a viable option]

I had an old Sonic/Elec Defender on Live which took + used Liquefy; and back then its base recharge was a whopping 300 seconds. They 6-slotted it in order to ED-Cap Recharge, -ToHit and -Def; for a total of ~56.3% -ToHit and ~58.6% -Defense; and on my Hastenless build it ended up with a 129s recharge time (and 30s duration). Since Sonic Resonance is otherwise exclusively a +Resistance set that made it an extremely useful "Oh Crap" button... however unfortunately the horrendously long recharge time meant it was impossible to use it as a regular debuff. So it was mainly just used to let the team "catch our breath" or to survive a particularly difficult alpha strike (pulling multiple AVs was a favourite IIRC!). I remade that old Defender on HC as a Elec/Sonic Corruptor a while back; and they still take Liquefy. However it's only 4-slotted now (plus a Intuition Radial Alpha) with the aim to ED-cap Recharge and -ToHit; and largely ignore -Def. Despite Corruptor base numbers being considerably lower than Defender base numbers, it's still inflicting a smidge over 41.5% -ToHit (and about 33.25 -Defense...) and the recharge time (thanks to various changes by the HC team in recent years) is just 47 seconds even without going out of my way to push for major Global Recharge bonuses. Factoring in cast time that's about 30s up/20s down. That's FAR better than I was enjoying on live; almost to the point of being active every other spawn. Being able to effectively floor the hit chance of every other spawn is a MASSIVE plus for a Sonic Resonance toon (OK, yes, Purple patch reduces the effctiveness of all that -ToHit by a good bit... but I can still stack it with Diamagnetic and Barrier and Lores!) I would not recommend procbombing Liquefy (although if you ARE going to then go for Cloud Senses, Touch of Lady Grey and Shield Breaker over any damage procs from Targeted AoE Damage or Hold IO sets; as those will get additional chances to activate every 10s) but I would 100% recommend taking it and ED-capping Recharge and -ToHit. [EDIT: Testing shows that the Hold and Targeted AoE damage set Procs are actually using the recharge of the parent power, not the pseudopet. So you can ED cap Liquefy's recharge and these procs will still get a capped 90% to activate once on initial casting. Procs from the -ToHit and -Def sets get 15.3% chance to activate on casting and every 10s thereafter, for 3 opportunities total. Whilst personally I'd still recommend ED-capping its Recharge and -ToHit over damage procs; if you've no other source of AoE damage then procbombing it with Hold and TAoE sets is technically a viable option]

Certainly... and all that corresponds to what I said above. Each custom weapon gets sized for the character model via a single FX file that is unique for that custom weapon on that character's gender. Linking a Behaviour file within this FX file can adjust the scale of the weapon; reposition it (relative to the default attachment origin point on a character skeleton IIRC) or even flip/rotate it. These changes don't kick in differently for each power animation, they only kick in the once for each custom weapon. This means a single custom weapon will end up the same size and orientation and position across all animations that use it. But two different custom weapons can have completely different scales/positions/orientation because they're using two different Behaviour files to modify how that weapon appears. Even if they're using the same root weapon model and texture. Therefore without changing the power animations themselves (I 100% agree that'd likely require lots of work!) I'm fairly certain that it's possible to tweak CustomStaffA to always be held back-to-front; let alone simply making it a little smaller and moving it so that it gets held a few inches closer to the body compared to CustomStaffB... and I suspect that those minor tweaks to a behaviour text file might just be enough to allow for some kind of double-sided laser stick that didn't obviously amputate the wielder's shoulder/feet/whatever to the point that the average CoH gamer's suspension of disbelief gets overridden.

If you're asking how its powers function they're viewable here. If you're asking how to handle Hami? Take out the Pylons first. Use the Rikti as a diversion. Melee the yellows, Range the blues, Hold the greens. If you're lacking a means of dealing Melee Damage, Ranged damage and inflicting Mez then you'll struggle a bit. The Weakened Jolly Jello Fellow deals Toxic damage rather than his regular form's Special damage so you won't need Essense of Earth insps, just regular Oranges.

+ A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha and a /SD secondary (AAO vs 1 Foe) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead of a Brute until ~83+ Fury. + A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha plus a /Bio Secondary (Offense + Hardened Carapace) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead until ~88+ Fury. + If we ignore Damage Buffs from the Secondary (Scrappers gain 1.25x the buff from self +DamageStrength compared to a Brute; so it could be seen as unfair) and just take the Musculature Alpha then the Scrapper would require an additional +17% damage (@80 Fury) or +32% Damage (@85 Fury) to begin to pull ahead. Those are trivial numbers to reach solo with Set Bonuses, let alone with outside buffage from teammates/pets. Suffice to say this sort of thing keeps coming up time and time again. Scrappers already pull ahead of Brutes on damage output simply by factoring in IOs and/or teammates (as they should, since Brutes get higher Resistance and MaxHP caps and better taunting ability). Slotting ATOs engages the turbo boosters on the Scrapper, but not on the Brute... and that is the main reason why I don't think Brutes are in a very good place right now balancewise.

Admittedly it's been a while since I looked into the animation gubbins; but IIRC the way weapons "attach" to your character's model can be adjusted for each custom weapon in a single line of text in one file per body gender rather than having to poke at each of the individual power animations. Under the hood there's the "you the player" entity that stands there and waves your arms + hands about; and there's another "your current weapon" entity that also moves around completely independently. In order to get it to look like your character is wielding the weapon; these two entities get overlayed on top of each other. Weapons get "attached" to your character model via a set of default root coordinates which corresponds to the relevant bone on the player character's skeleton (left hand + right hand work independently for stuff like Dual Blades IIRC). Each custom weapon gets a seperate FX file per body type (so three small text files per regular custom weapon - one for huge, one for female, one for male. Dual Blades gets six because it can use both hands). Each FX file contains a link to the relevant anim "model" used for that custom weapon; and they can also contain a link to a 'behaviour' file which can be used to offset or flip/rotate/otherwise adjust that model relevant to the defaults and is how scaling weapons for different body types works. So in practice, somewhere on the server is going to be something like "Fem_Broadsword_Gladius01.fx" which defines the Custom Weapon on a female gendered character; and links to a file called "Female_WepRScale.bhvr" which in turn contains two lines that resize and reposition the weapon relative to the defaults in order to get it looking right on a female gendered body; e.g: PositionOffset 0.0375 0.0125 0.0 Scale 0.85 0.85 0.85 Therefore tweaking a "double bladed staff" to get it bigger/smaller/moved a bit to the left/etc can be done by simply creating a new behaviour file and adding in a few lines of text; there's no need to go poking at the more complicated internal animations or textures. It's only if you need to redo the movement of the animation itself (e.g. you can't get the weapon to look right with the existing animation no matter how you rescale or reposition that weapon on the player's model!) that you'd need to delve deeper.

Merc resists are great (assuming an optimal Serum cycle) but getting your henchmens' Defense up (or applying consistent -ToHit debuffs) too will drastically increase their survivability ceiling. They're certainly playable without it... but at higher difficulty levels you'll likely find yourself spamming heals and incarnate buffs and resummoning a lot. Getting hit and mezzed 1 time in ~20 rather than 1 time in ~3 simply puts much less strain on your poor medic. If you're going for a secondary without +Def/-ToHit then the most you can buff your henchmen by is a smidge over +14% Def to all (2x Aura IOs + Maneuvers) plus the SCoM ATO for another +15% to AoE. Incarnates can add at least another 5% (Barrier Destiny) with more on demand via Support Hybrid and Lores (Talons and Arachnos Radial FTW).

Mercs/Marine is one of the better combos; assuming you can get Serum to a decent level of recharge. Demons/Marine is technically a bit higher damage output IIRC + would buff your own damage resistances; however they're considerably harder to keep a leash on. Necro/Marine is alright... but if I rolled one then honestly I'd always be pining for one of those other two primaries. For Kinetics, honestly I'd shy away from any primary except Bots, Thugs or Ninjas; as your pets will really need a decent chunk of additional +Defense to survive at endgame. And of those three... Bots is my #1 choice. They stick together better for PBAoEs; have a better range of resistances and mez protection which combines well with Increase Density; and their bubbles boost YOUR defense; not just that of your pets (my Bot/Kin's numbers end up looking like this).

I think they were referring to the +Defense component; which does indeed get "half suppressed in combat" (like most Stealth abilities it has two separate effect lines that grant additional defense; one of these gets Suppressed/Canceled if you are Attacked or Damaged etc. and the other always applies unless you get mezzed) But yes the +StealthRadius effect gets (fully, not half!) suppressed too.

Worth highlighting that since Banes use a "Stealth" power (Cloaking Device); turning on Suppression in Mids is a good idea to get accurate numbers for their Defense. My more-or-less-fully-offensive-focussed Bane sits just at the Softcap without Barrier running; and the -ToHit from Soul Mastery powers gives them a bit of extra wiggle room. (Passive regeneration in game is 18.57 HP/sec; although the Panacea and Power Transfer procs each kick in on average every 20s, bringing that up to ~24 HP/sec over time) Also... a VEAT Soldier is one of the few toons where I always run Degenerative Interface Incarnate over Reactive (on other toons Reactive is better for everything except AVs and Pylons). This is because they can already inflict a lot of -res debuffs natively and Venom Grenade grants an additional -20% res to Toxic damage (which helps -Degen's DoT). Optimal Lore selection is typically the usual Carnival/Seers Radial when soloing (+Damage and +ToHit / +Damage and +Defence) and Talons Radial when Teaming (AoE buffs plus a Boss pet which has an 18s Nuke that has a target cap high enough to hit every enemy on the map). However if you can manage to survive without any additional spot healing... then Banished Pantheon Radial is probably the best all-rounder. Whilst its Support pet doesn't possess a clicky heal; it does have some AoE buffs and a little bit of AoE damage and more importantly the BP Boss pet inflicts substantial -res plus an additional debuff to Negative Energy resistance which can help your Soul Patron pool attacks. All that -res stacks with your own -res and the -MaxHP from Degen Interface to utterly evaporate single tough targets like AVs. e.g. -20% (Surveillance) -20% (Venom Grenade) [plus an additional -20% to Toxic] -20% (Achilles' Heel in Poisonous Ray; @62.24% activation chance without any local recharge) -20% (Fury of the Gladiator in Crowd Control; @71.53 activation chance without any local recharge) -12.5% (Annihilation Proc in Venom Grenade; @32.43% activation chance with my slotting) -30% (BP Boss Frigid Beam) [plus an additional -25% to Cold/Negative via Frigid Slam] = a maximum of -122.5% res to all; and an mean/mode of -90%/-100% providing that the Lore Pet stays alive (face the AV away from them and don't use Placate!)

I find mine pretty decent at both actually, although they do heavily lean into Procs and utilize Patron Pool attacks to pad out their attack chain. The lack of any self healing (outside of Lore pets) and only 45%ish S/L damage resistance hampers their survivability a little bit; but their damage output has never been much of an issue for me. They're not quite as fast as soloing a Pylon as my Crabbermind, but they can take down either an AV or a roomful of mooks just fine. Completely agree on the force multiplier thing though. The Leadership buffs plus multiple -res debuffs (all three procs plus Venom Grenade plus Surveillance!) just makes things melt. However I did draw the line at going Mace Mastery for Shatter Armor or Leviathan Mastery for Arctic Breath... it didn't test as well - all that vastly higher raw DPA from Soul is simply too useful!

Try buying some attuned sets off the AH. Especially ATOs. They are about as worthless as actually putting fuel in your car instead of pushing it up a hill barefoot.

I don't believe it's possible to do via command line. That said, it's quite possible to override how specific powers (such as those annoying allied bubble powers) appear on your local client via texture mods like this.

The same reason they thought hiding the mechanics of what the powers actually do from the players was a good idea. Never give the guy in the red pyjamas and tinfoil hat free reign over the leadership decisions.

It currently does precisely nowt. At one point it was allegedly a "for flavour" bonus:

Then go to the thread that was linked in your first reply. Locate some builds within it that were posted in 2023 or later. And PICK one. You originally asked which was better at farming, a Tanker or a Brute, on specific Powersets. You were referred to the Farming guide thread for answers. You now appear to be saying that you don't care about AT or Powerset or even AFK farming versus Active + you just want a viable build to use. Those builds are available in exactly the same place. Read. The. Darn. Thread. As I pointed out earlier, AFK Farming builds and Active Farming builds are vastly different. Neither of them have auras packed with damage procs. Damage Procs in auras only get an opportunity to activate once every 10 seconds (and even then it's typically a very low chance to do so). AFK farming builds tend to have multiple Damage Auras. This is because in an AFK build you only get the opportunity to set one power to autofire (typically THAT power is an AoE with a large radius and target cap which gets Procbombed). They also need to have enough mitigation to survive 50+ enemies attacking them simultaneously (it used to only be 17, then the Issue 27p4 aggro changes happened) and a lot of global recharge. The main idea is to survive indefinitely whilst dealing decent "passive" damage. Active farming builds don't tend to have multiple damage auras. In fact the only aura they need at all is one that Taunts. They do however tend to have multiple Clicky AOEs, all procbombed, and the bigger the radius and the larger the target cap the better. The main idea is to inflict as much AOE damage to as many enemies in as short a time as possible. Survivability is not as important because you can pop inspirations and buffs like candy. There are many, many examples of people saying "Can I have an Active/Passive farming build for [insert AT and/or Powerset combination here] please" in the farming guide thread. People are generally quite willing to help providing there is at least a modicum of effort put into thinking through and phrasing the request.

If you want to use Staff, then Tanker is by far the best AT to solo at +4x8. (Stalker is best for ST damage) Out of SR and Bio? I'd lean Bio. SR certainly has less holes whenever you're passively attacking... but Staff is not a passive powerset. The +Melee/Lethal Defense granted by Guarded Spin and the +Resistance granted by Sky Splitter (assuming you're running with Form of the Body, which you should!) shore up Bio's shortcomings very nicely; resulting in a performance ceiling that is far greater than SR versus anything other than extremely high levels of -Defence debuffery (most levels of -Def are ignorable due to the ability of Guarded Spin to stack with itself plus all of the +Regen and +Absorb that Bio throws out... my Bio/Staff can certainly cope with main tanking an ITF just fine!) Might also worth pointing out that I've found Staff doesn't play nicely with lots of Epic Pool attacks due to all the combo mechanics; so mine skips the likes of Ball Lightning or Dark Obliteration etc. in order to focus on spamming three staff attacks plus Eye of the Storm. I recently posted a build and some chat around it here if you want something to glance over. Older threads are here and here.

Spoiler Alert: He faked his death and changed his name to Sandwichman; and is enjoying a happy retirement behind the counter at the local deli.

The one I used to work for considered money to be more important than most of the faculty...

That Farming Thread contains lots of Brute builds because that was what a lot of people were used to using prior to the Tanker Damage Scalar buff and Gauntlet changes in Issue 26 Page 4; and which really only stopped being viable after the Aggro Revamp in Issue 27 Page 4. This doesn't mean Brutes are the current recommendation; and America's Angel even highlights this fact in BIG BOLD LETTERS on the very first few lines on the very first post. The later advice (including AA's followup testing) is still solid; and you can find a lot of up to date builds towards the end of the thread. I've even contributed a few myself. By far the most important thing to ask yourself is: WHAT TYPE OF FARMING DO I WANT TO DO? Do you want to just enter a mission then leave your toon there whilst you walk away from the computer for 10+ minutes? That's AFK farming. Do you want to be behind the keyboard actually playing the toon and paying attention? That's Active farming. Those two types have VASTLY different build goals. Active farming builds can rarely AFK farm safely; and AFK farming builds will rarely be enjoyable if you try to actively farm with them (they're sloooooooooow). Homecoming allows you to play up to three accounts simultaneously (providing the servers aren't overloaded) meaning that it is quite possible to juggle multiple accounts so that 2 toons are AFK farming whilst you actively pilot a 3rd. Personally I like having at least one toon on each of my accounts that is capable of farming... but I don't enjoy pigeon holing a toon into the role of being solely an AE Farmer, so I'll always ensure they have 'unnecessary' attacks and other types of damage mitigation in order that they can run general content as well. My AFK Farmers can actually actively solo their way through the Dark Astoria missions and main Tank on teams at +4x8 just fine.