Maelwys

The forums are still not letting me upload anything unfortunately... but I can recommend Water/Cold. Whirlpool is nice with Scourge and Dehydrate makes up for the lack of a self-heal in the secondary. Procbombed Infrigidate also fills the empty spot in the Single Target Attack Chain.

(i) It's not 3.25s. It's 4.25s. (3.25 plus 0.5s ATBE for the IO plus another 0.5s ATBE for the set bonus) (ii) There's another Arcanatime roundup that you're missing: you need to round the power that the ATO is slotted in's ATBE up for Arcanatime as well. So the available buff time window for Scrapper ATO2 is the Slotted Attack's Arcanatime minus its ATBE rounded up for Arcanatime, plus 4.25 seconds. Then after you work that out you indeed need to figure out how to get as much damage out of that narrow window as possible (via fitting in one or two low-arcanatime-high-DPA attacks and finishing up with a very low-ATBE-high-DPA attack; which seems to be what you're trying to accomplish here!) 👍 Full details/testing here:

The base damage in Epic AoEs isn't too bad. However, they tend to have rather long base recharge times, which means that procs have a higher chance to activate in them. Typical slotting is 2x Acc/Dam HOs (or 1x Acc/Dam plus 1x Dam IO if you have sufficient global accuracy) + 4x procs.

Epic sets indeed have decent AoEs; and on Tankers/Brutes you can get two such AoEs via Mu mastery. Alternatively; Shield Defense (Shield Charge) or Fiery Aura (Burn) or Radiation Armor (Ground Zero and Radiation Therapy).

I think this is still relevant:

You need the Visual C++ Distributable too otherwise the Bootstrapper will silently fail. (and DotNet 4.x as well; although that's included by default with both Win10 and Win11)

The forum doesn't appear to be letting me upload files at the moment (and I still have a good 20% storage free!) but: Infiltration = Lv50+5 Winter's Gift Movement Speed, Lv50+5 Blessing of the Zephyr Movement Speed, Lv50+5 Thrust Runspeed Global, Gift of the Ancients Runspeed Global. Stamina = Synapse's Shock +Runspeed Global Sprint = Common Lv50+5 Runspeed [Sprint and Infiltration both toggled on] = 92.5 (capped) Runspeed + 78 (capped) Jumpspeed (Note that Mids is bugged and doesn't show the Jump Height buff in Infiltration; but if you toggle on Athletic run it should appear even though Athletic Run is superfluous) 🙄 If you want "almost as good with less slots"... you can strip Infiltration back to just a single Lv50+5 Movement Speed plus the Synapse's Shock +Runspeed Global; then drop the slot in Sprint (swap it to a Celerity:Stealth!) and the slot in Stamina. That's about 84.5 Runspeed and 74.6 Jumpspeed. And using Movement/EndRed HOs in Infiltration instead of the Lv50+5 Movement Speeds is an option too.

Hyperstrike has been MIA for a while (Health troubles I think? There was a Dev post a while back confirming that he was safe and being looked after by family) so a direct response might not be forthcoming. But in answer to the OP... reaching about 60-70% resistance to non-S/L on an INV Tanker is quite doable with IOs and ATOs. However going higher requires a fair bit of build sacrifice or specific melee powersets (like Staff) or alternating clicky buffs like Melee Core Hybrid and Rune of Protection. There are some examples here (check the linked post and the next 10 or so replies) That said... maybe just aim for Softcapped Defense with one foe in range of Invincibility plus 60% ish resistance then buy half a tray of Super Orange insps from the AH (or email them to yourself) before the LR mission?

I suspect anything more than six might be pushing it... 😉

Ground Zero had its target cap drastically reduced, it can only hit 16 foes now. There was a couple of weeks when its proc activation rate was lower but this was a bug and has since been fixed. So if you're only ever fighting up to 16 foes at a time it'll be the same as prior to the patch. Radiation Therapy got adaptive recharge (so recharges very fast if you hit 0-1 targets with it; but proc rate has plummeted) however its base damage got a bit of a buff and it's a lot better now for survivability purposes - especially whenever you're only fighting a single target. Unfortunately due to the way it was recoded it also runs afoul of the same "overcap" exponential diminishing returns curve - so the first target hit will take full damage; the second target hit will take 75% of that first target's damage, the third target hit will take 75% of the second target's damage... etc etc. including damage from procs. All that means it's a lot worse than before when it comes to dealing AoE damage; even after trying various wildly-different-to-before slotting combinations. It's worth noting that the devs subsequently trialled yet another version of Radiation Therapy which looked a lot better... however this has been put on hold until a future "balance pass" patch. So we may see RT's damage effectiveness boosted again "SOON (tm)". All that said; I'd still rate Radiation Armor pretty highly for boosting your AoE damage in its current state.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. There are lots of caveats to consider; whether or not a proc will work as you expect is never a "sure thing" so for anything other than very straightforward attack powers (non-pseudopet and no "adaptive recharge"!) you're almost always better off testing it yourself or asking someone who has. Offensive Procs need to pass an Accuracy "Hit check" roll to do anything. Pets and Psuedopets make this tricky. Some "Autohit" powers like Caltrops can make it impossible to boost proc accuracy so they have a much lower observed activation rate. Both Defensive and Offensive Procs also need the power they're slotted in to actually "activate" that enhancement type - and this is hidden behaviour that cannot be worked out just from glancing at the in-game detailed power effects screen or often even by looking at CoDv2. One example of this is Liquid Nitrogen from the Arsenal Control set (damage procs only kick in whenever enemies are knocked down!). Usually a Defensive/Buff proc kicks in straight away on using a power... but not always; like in some Blaster Sustains - Frigid Protection (for example) won't ever activate Healing procs until an enemy is within its range. It is a convoluted mess and makes no sense unless you dive deep into power mechanics... and even then there are unusual "WTF?" cases that you really need to test... 🤯

In the very early game (->25 ish) Brutes are ahead of the rest. This is because they can get away with largely ignoring slotting their attacks for damage (because their Fury Inherent pulls a lot of weight) so their few enhancement slots can be used to boost Accuracy and Endurance Reduction (and Survivability if needed!) instead. After that; enhancement slots become a bit more common and Invention origin enhancements (IOs) start showing their worth; so Scrappers and Tankers will start showing the benefit of their higher base damage and larger Defense/Damage Resistance scalars and close in on Brutes. By the time you reach level 50; Scrappers will be ahead of Brutes on Damage (even at high fury) and Tankers will be ahead of them on survivability (due to their higher HP cap and them having an easier time reaching the defense softcap and resistance hardcaps). However once you factor in Archetype Origin Enhancements (ATOs) things change drastically. The Scrapper ATO sets "special" proc/global enhancements are both extremely good at increasing their damage output. The first boosts their default Critical Hit rate and the second gives them a short period during which their critical hit chance is raised by a flat 50%. So it's possible (with CoDv2, a spreadsheet and a bit of patience) for a Scrapper to get an attack chain in which two or three of their attacks quite often have a critical hit rate of 66-71% instead of the baseline 10-15%. The Tanker ATO sets "special" proc/global enhancements are rather good at increasing their survivability. The first is a proc which raises their damage resistance to everything by 6.7% and can stack with itself up to three times. The second is a proc which adds a decent chunk of "Absorb" (15% of their Maximum HP - so it's affected by your +MaxHP buffs and accolades!) that lasts for 20 seconds. The Brute ATO sets "special" proc/global enhancements are complete and utter garbage. The first gives them an extra 7 Fury generation when attacking with one attack (which is pointless since Brutes already generate Fury quickly and anything higher than about 80-90 Fury will drop off fast. Even in AE Farms the highest I sit at is 93 Fury). The second is a proc which grants a slight buff to Endurance reduction and Regeneration which can stack with itself up to 5 times (it caps out at about +33.25% Endurance Reduction and +100% Regeneration - which is considerably lower return than a single Panacea Proc in Health). As a result, when min-maxed with both IOs and ATOs Scrappers tend to deal considerably more damage and Tankers have a much easier time reaching survivability thresholds (like the Defense Softcap and Resistance Hardcaps) compared to Brutes. I did some "Mission Simulator" runs both during and after the recent round of Tanker nerfs in i28p2; which showed that currently a min-maxed Scrapper is about ~30% faster than a min-maxed Brute and ~40% faster then a maxed Tanker when clearing the same "average indoor mission map" solo at +4x8 difficulty. And bear in mind that difficulty setting favours Tankers with their larger AoE radius and Target Caps - they are supposedly intended now to be the "AoE specialist" Melee AT! >>> In practice however these differences don't overly matter in most cases; because City of Heroes/Villains is a very easy game. It's quite possible for even the "squishy" ATs to clear maps solo - survivability really isn't an issue at endgame once you're IO'ed out and have your T4 Incarnate abilities. Most teams will want something that can deal damage and/or something that can hold aggro and not overly care whether you're capable of dealing a bit more/less damage than a different melee AT <<< IMO the real differences in playstyle are: (i) "Deals decent melee damage and can hold aggro" - Tanker, Brute. (ii) "Deals higher melee damage and can sometimes hold aggro" - Scrapper (any Scrapper can take Confront to tank AVs, some secondary sets also have a taunt aura) (iii) "Deals higher melee damage and comes with built-in stealth capability to complete certain missions quickly" - Stalker. You'll notice that Tankers and Brutes occupy the same niche there - they've been fighting over that very same spot for years (Brutes were better for decades, then Tankers pulled waaay ahead in i26p4; now since i28p2 Brutes are a little bit ahead again). Suffice to say that I'm not a fan of this and would much prefer Tankers and Brutes and Scrappers and Stalkers to each have a slightly different niche on teams. There are some very strong opinions on this whole Brute vs Tanker vs Scrapper vs Stalker performance/balance thing... and since a lot of players aren't min-maxing their characters (particularly Scrapper players; given the complexity of just how their ATO2 proc actually works) different people are observing very different levels of performance disparity. However I think it's fair to say that there is at least a loose consensus that the Brute ATOs are letting the AT down. Mostly. They did a balance pass pretty recently which reworked a lot of the Regeneration powerset (which had a loooong history of being continually nerfed - so much so it became a running joke) and some other sets got tweaked up and down. There are still sets that "stand out" in different ways though... As an example: Super Reflexes is probably one of the most effective sets once you're fully min-maxed as it can reach the resistance hardcap to everything (via scaling HP-based damage resistances) and cap its defence debuff resistance. Willpower is also very hands-off (no clickies) and easy to use but it has a much lower performance ceiling. + Radiation Armor is a Resistance and Absorb based powerset; which has a fair bit of AoE damage (even since the nerfs). + Bio Armor is a mixture of all sorts of things; but when min-maxed it can reach the Regeneration and Recovery hard caps (230+ HP/Sec regeneration!). + There's a new powerset called Psionic Armor which can let you do some very interesting things. + Stone Armor is almost always better off now not running in Granite Armor (Minerals and Brimstone Armor in particular have very beneficial effects!) But the other powersets are all pretty solid too; INV in particular has a reputation for being very reliable when IO'ed out (75%+ Res to all including Psi is quite possible!).

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/entity.html?entity=pets_traps_timebomb The bomb entity that deals damage also immediately self destructs, so damage procs will do nothing for it and the most you'll get out of it is a Force Feedback +Rech.

I had loads of the regular enhancement set IOs (with their flat % proc rate!)... but I thought the old Paragon Market RMT store IOs worked differently and did leverage PPM? Checking the old Paragonwiki page suggests this is the case. Though to be fair I never bought any of those; had a thing against paying real money for in-game "loot"!

FWIW; I do remember a time when (most!) damage procs were a flat percentage chance rather than PPM and stuff like this was all new and shiny. (and IMO it was better back then the whole business with local recharge affecting them was only limited to the procs bought from the RMT store!)

Very minor increase to AoE (except on Tankers, obviously!) as Eye of the Storm's "bonus damage" got increased by 13-19 base damage. Slightly more noticeable bump to ST damage as Sky Splitter's "bonus damage" got increased by 35-52 base damage. Note that this Bonus damage is affected by damage buffs (like Enhancements and Fury and Build Up and Assault Core Hybrid) but not by Scrapper/Stalker Critical hits.

By far the biggest issue with Procs, for me, is that slotting LOCAL recharge aspect into a power can drastically lower its damage. It's both counterintuitive and bloody ridiculous that someone can (often unintentionally) punish themselves by enhancing a power. (and I know the mechanics of why this happens, but IMO the PPM mechanic in general needs nuked from orbit - give each damage proc a lockout period if you need to!) Another issue is how the procs apply in odd/unusual ways; especially where pets/pesudopets are concerned. Pets and Pseudopets can gain the effect of some procs; but not others. depending on what enhancements the summon power itself and its various subpowers accept. And it's not just damage procs - try putting a Panacea Proc into Triage Beacon/Spirit Tree; or into the second Necro MM Upgrade ability. Powers that create an entity that immediately "self destructs" (like Trip Mine) don't benefit from damage procs, but do from buff procs (e.g. Force Feedback). Some powers get far better milage out of procs on specific ATs - the Tanker version of Lightning Rod is coded as a Power Execution (and as such benefits fully from damage procs) but on all the other melee ATs Lightning Rod is coded as an Entity Creation (which procs very poorly) So for me, it's really the counterintuitive punitive nature of local recharge slotting; and the myriad inconsistencies in how procs actually apply (or not!) to different powers.

Perhaps, but (a) are they better at single target than Scrappers and (b) how do they compare to Brutes and Tankers? (a) IMO in general they are, yes. Mainly due to Assassin's Strike. AS allows for a much better Single Target attack chain (this is particularly true for sets like Energy Melee, Electric Melee and Staff). It also has a much better guaranteed Critical Hit mechanic in Assassin Focus stacks. The Stalker ATOs are a bit harder to quantify - the "Chance to Hide" IIRC still has a 10 second lockout period; so the benefit it grants is rather attack chain dependent... I typically put it in Assassin's Strike (since that is already getting an elevated crit chance via Assassins' Focus stacks!) and then try and follow AS up with either another hefty ST attack or an AoE like Ball Lightning. The "Chance to Recharge Build Up" one is tricksy too - it means you can get away with just putting a single Gaussian proc into the base slot of Build Up on Stalkers and they'll still be under the effects of it far more than an equivalent Scrapper. The Team Crit bonus is very nice; but it usually doesn't stack well with Assassins Focus stacks or the "Chance to hide" ATO; as Aethereal noted already. I think the Team Crit buff helps to make up for the fact that Stalkers AoE potential is so much worse (e.g. they get access to fewer AoEs; and the ones they do get tend to only have a 50% chance to crit from Stealth) and it makes them even better at non-Assassin-Strike ST damage for spiking down Bosses/EBs/AVs/etc. However my favourite "Team Stalker" is an Elec/Shield and their two biggest AoEs (Lightning Rod and Shield Charge) don't gain the benefit of Crits at all; so the only boost that really affects them is the "Chance to Recharge Build Up" ATO. I will say that I think in general Stalkers are easier to min-max than Scrappers since all you really need is Build Up, Assassin's Strike, a few decent other attacks (typically using the Mu Mastery Patron Pool as a filler if your primary is lacking) and a basic understanding of PPM mechanics. That's child's play compared with Scrappers; where you really need to spend a bit of time with a calculator or spreadsheet to manually work out how to gain the most benefit from your ATOs (e.g. the available buff time window for Scrapper ATO2 is not 3.25s; it's the Slotted Attack's Arcanatime minus its ATBE rounded up for Arcanatime, plus 4.25 seconds.... then after you work that out you need to figure out how to get as much damage out of that narrow window as possible via fitting in one or two low-arcanatime-high-DPA attacks and finishing up with a very low-ATBE-high-DPA attack!) and most Scrappers seem to struggle with anything beyond basic addition. Which brings me to (b)...

If you check the MAGNITUDE of those knock back effects, you'll see they're all under 1.0 except for the Assault Bot's Swarm Missiles ability. Meaning they end up inflicting knockDOWN rather than knockBACK. There was however a time in years gone by where this wasn't true and Robotics MMs really needed to take an AoE Immobilize power in order to prevent the stupid little dustbins from repeatedly punting foes out of their own burn patches.

Yep, that inheritance trick works for any special enhancements that are coded as Procs rather than as Set Bonuses. There are only a couple of enhancement types that are slottable into the henchmen upgrade powers though, and some of them don't end up inheriting down into all the pets. Sticking a Panacea or Regenerative Tissue or Numina proc into the Necro second upgrade ability will work well because that upgrade grants henchmen a passive MaxHP boost that inherits Healing enhancement. And sticking an Impervious Skin Proc into the Bots or Mercs or Necro first upgrade will also work well because those upgrades grant henchmen a passive buff that inherits damage resistance enhancement. However sticking a Panacea or Regenerative Tissue or Numina into the second Bots or Ninja upgrade ability won't give as much benefit because they don't inherit down into a passive effect, instead it only affects the Protector Bots 30s "Repair" and the Ninja 45s "Kuji-In Sha" clickyheals. IMO Panacea is the only real game changer there (in Necro), the rest just give too minor a benefit to be particularly noticeable.

Those Brute ATOs are probably just pining for the Fjords.

Since Firey Melee and Martial Arts aren't your cup of tea, I'd probably recommend either Battle Axe or Titan Weapons. Battle Axe can deal very high damage in both ST and AoE, and Axe Cyclone knocking things flying (yet towards you via inverse repel!) is a thing of mayhemic beauty. But it is also very endurance heavy. /Rad provides multiple recovery tools. Titan Weapons has a simple combo mechanic (building momentum) and solid smashy ST and AoE damage. It also provides an easier route to Softcap your Melee Defense via Defensive Sweep. If neither of those options speak to you... then Street Justice, War Mace or Ice Melee etc. would IMO all still provide a better mechanical starting point than Radiation Melee. Honestly the only time I could recommend Radiation Melee (other than AFK farming!) would be if you really want an offensive powerset with a self-heal - Super Reflexes is sometimes paired with either it or Dark Melee for that reason. Honestly almost any Brute powerset combo can be built to solo at +4x8 and survive indefinitely against AVs/GMs. However many of them will struggle to produce enough Damage and/or -Regen debuffs to defeat the tougher AVs/GMs without Lore Pets and Envenomed Daggers.

Radiation Armor got hit with the nerf bat recently - Radiation Therapy's Proc activation rate and Ground Zero's target cap both got drastically reduced (although they've since fixed a bug with Ground Zero's Proc activation rate being lower than it should). Radiation Melee is more of a utility powerset than a powerhouse (although due to its damage aura and hefty PBAoE it has a bit of a niche in AFK "passive" farming) and does not particularly lend itself to soloing AVs/GMs nor to clearing large groups of foes particularly quickly. I'd happily still recommend Radiation Armor since even with the nerfs it still has reasonable levels of AoE damage output, provides +Recharge via Beta Decay and Radiation Therapy inflicts a decent -Regen debuff... but are you dead set on Radiation Melee? Could (for example) Martial Arts, Titan Weapons or Firey Melee work instead?