Maelwys

Nope. The biggest thing is getting enemy ToHit chance floored against your pets; which can be attained via a combination of +Defense Buffs and -ToHit debuffs. Robotics and Thugs and Ninjas can achieve that with almost any Secondary Powerset (like my Bots/Kin) and Beasts aren't far behind. Buffing your henchmen's Damage Resistance is nice too; as is an AoE Heal and allied Mez Protection... but because of how Bodyguard mode works you'll typically get more mileage out of aiming for the Defence Softcap than Resistance Hardcap for your henchmen. In reality since the Aura IOs grant 35% Resistance and even the Defensive Henchmen have a smattering of inherent resistances you'll end up with multiple layers anyway... and there are some powers (like Mercs Serum) which can put them at the Resistance cap natively. All that said... if you want the best all-rounder secondary at present then it's hard to look past Marine Affinity. +Def, +Res, +MaxHP, an AoE Heal and major levels of additional damage; a well-built Mercs/Marine or Demons/Marine is very much a force to be reckoned with. Worth noting that the Regular ATO is +10% AoE Def; but the Superior (Catalyzed version) is +15%.

That flag is usually just a holdover from the unusual Hamidon-Origin slotting exploits back in the day (e.g. +Damage Resistance Enhancement is coded the same as +Damage Enhancement under the hood; etc). In this case it means nothing other than the PET SUMMON power itself doesn't benefit from any enhancements/boosts. However the actual pet that this summon power creates can still get affected by enhancements/boosts just fine; as it has no impact on the powers of the pet. AFAIK all targetable pets (Phantom Army being the obvious exception!) can be buffed just fine. Also as mentioned upthread; most Pseudopets tend to inherit their caster's buffs as well. But the duration of the original buff effect still applies. In practice, this means that any effects/ damage triggered by a pseudopet immediately upon summoning will benefit from all of the caster's current buffs (including short-duration effects like set bonuses and toggle or auto powers)... but for effects/damage that reapply every few seconds (such as Bonfire or Tar Patch) then after the first few ticks a lot of those buffs will expire; therefore later ticks will only be affected by long-duration buffs (such as Inspirations, Forge or Fulcrum Shift).

Complete Isolation. (The toon in question is a Battleaxe/FA Brute rather than a Claws/FA) 😁 100% agree that applying an identical flat damage buff to both ATs (regardless of whether it's from Follow Up or Rage or whatever) would favour Tankers... and even without it, as soon as you take any AoE power that does get affected by Gauntlet's Target Cap and Radius Increases then Tankers will start pulling ahead anyway. (Even with Fury buffing DoT damage; last I checked about the only relevant powerset that ends up performing a bit better on a Brute than on a Tanker is Dual Blades... the likes of Savage, Fire and Spines just gain so much more from Gauntlet...) That said, I still rate Fiery Aura (because Burn isn't affected by Gauntlet but is by Fury) and Stone Armor (because Brimstone Damage Procs get affected by Fury too) as substantially better performing on Brutes than the average player might expect.

Question: How does Burn favor Tankers these days whenever neither Gauntlet's Target Cap nor AoE radius buffs apply to it, but Fury Buffs do? (Note the "Max Targets Hit" field being hardcoded to 5; and the "Strengths Disallowed: Radius" red exclamation mark flag at the top left in its CODv2 entry. However the Pseudopet entity summoned has the caster's boosts copied to it and uses the caster's modifiers, so Damage boosts from Fury apply to both the frontloaded damage spike and at least some of the DOT ticks) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [EDIT] - I had a spare 20mins this morning so here's a quick example of it in action: Setup = a Lv50 Brute versus an even-level RWZ Pylon. Pylons have 20% Resistance to everything; so the expected base damage of a Brute's Burn is: 60.0591*0.8 = 48.04728 (for the initial hit of Burn) 3.3366*0.8 = 2.66928 (for the ticks after Fury Buffs expire) Trial #1 - [No damage buffs/slotting] 48.04 (initial hit with no prior Fury) 3.19 (tick damage, with Fury from Burn Activation) 2.66 (tick damage, without Fury) Trial #2 - [3x level 50 Dam IOs: +99.08 damage] 95.64 (initial hit with no prior Fury) 5.84 (tick damage, with Fury from Burn Activation) 5.30 (tick damage, without Fury) Trial #3 - [3x level 50 Dam IOs plus a Full Fury Bar and half a tray of Red Insps] 336.52 (initial hit with Full Fury) 18.68 (tick damage, with Full Fury) 18.65 (tick damage, without Fury) Note in particular the numbers whenever both the Brute themselves and the Burn Pseudopet are at their respective damage caps: Initial hit damage: 336.52/48.04728 = 7.00393 Tick damage: 18.68/2.66 = 7.02255 ...so both are dealing almost exactly 700% of Base damage Therefore (as expected from the "Entity has creator's modifiers" Tag present on the Burn Pseudopet in CoDv2) currently all of Burn's damage is demonstrably using the 700% Brute Damage cap, as opposed to the regular 400% Pseudopet damage cap. Damage buffs present on the caster are also being copied across correctly to the pseudopet; although any damage buffs granted to it via Fury will only persist for a few seconds before their duration expires; resulting in the later Burn ticks dealing a smidge lower damage. Whilst Tanker base numbers are a good bit higher, Brutes will start to pull ahead at ~27 Fury (Initial Hit) and at ~38 Fury (average damage including all ticks)

Sometimes you join a team a few mins late and miss the bit in chat where the other players mention they're just there to farm their Debt Badges.

You can use two regular Acc/Dam set IOs that are Lv50+5 and get nearly the same performance. Lv53 HOs are for those of us that want maximum performance and have lots of inf to burn (and you can often make them for far cheaper by playing the combine-lower-level-HOs-into-a-+3 lottery. Check the AH regularly and don't use the "buy it now" prices. That said 140m isn't surprising, last I checked some of the rarer type of Lv53 DSyncs were going for about ten times that figure!) For PPM likelihood, use this to calculate the proc chance (make a copy so it's editable) and this to find any inputs you're not sure about (power recharge/radius/cast time etc. and PPM rate of the IO). The short version is that the recharge and cast time on Blinding Feint are not long enough to cap a 3.5 PPM proc's activation rate, even at 0% local recharge% slotting, so any recharge slotting you place in the power itself will lower its proc activation rate. Whilst the +CritRate SCS ATO contains some +recharge% it is best placed in BF so that your other harder-hitting powers can take advantage of its buff window... but that should be the only source of local +recharge% you put in it unless you really don't care about procs. [EDIT] - Just checked your original v4 build in Mids; and it looks like you've sufficient global accuracy buffs to have a >95% ToHit chance versus regular +3 enemies (typical endgame PVE baseline acc requirements) with just a single Lv50+3 Acc/Dam IO slotted in BF. Then after BF is already activated (even single-stacked) you'd be getting enough additional +ToHit buff from it to *just* put you just over the 125% mark (capping your ToHit chance versus regular +3 enemies in 4 Star Hard Mode content, with their baseline +30% Defense buff). So rather than forking out for two Lv53 Acc/Dam HOs, I'd probably just throw a Lv50+5 Gladiator's Strike Acc/Dam plus a regular Lv50+5 Dam IO in there and call it done. If you don't care about HardMode then you could even get away with using a Lv40+5 Touch of Death Acc/Dam IO instead to boost your E/N resists a smidge. Or as a potential alternative; using Acc/Dam and Dam/End Superior Blistering Cold IOs would give you some additional Recharge Rate Reduction resistance.

The other consideration (which may or may not matter to you!) is that even when attuned, the sets that procs belong to have different active level ranges for their set bonuses. Mako stops working if you exemplar below Lv27. Touch of Death stops working below Lv22. Gladiator's will keep working all the way down to Lv7. Will likely only become relevant if/when you run low level Task/Strike Forces; but still worth bearing in mind! 🙂 Global Recharge doesn't reduce Proc activation chance, only Local recharge slotting within the power itself does (so equipping an 'Agility' Alpha Slot ability which adds local recharge reduction % to all your powers would impact proc chance, but Hasten and a +7.5% Recharge LoTG would not!) Hasten is always useful for getting powers up faster. But if your attack chain functions without it and you're not relying on Clicky Buffs/Debuffs then it's skippable. Just be careful of Recharge Rate Debuffs... 😀 [EDIT: Good grief what was I smoking when i originally wrote this? Hopefully should make some semblance of sense now...]

Well the default Melee ST Set IO Damage Proc options are Mako's Bite (Lethal), Touch of Death (Negative) and Gladiator's Strike (Smashing). You're already doing substantial Lethal damage, and the things that resist that damage type heavily (such as Robotic enemies) tend to be weaker against smashing. However if a power allows additional damage Procs from other IO sets, slot whatever type you like. Just remember higher-PPM Purple Damage Procs will nearly always be better (unless the power has an long enough recharge time to cap activation chance on the regular 3.5PPM procs!) In Lv40+ PVE content enemy resistances vary a fair bit, but in general Fire > Negative > Cold/Smashing > Energy/Lethal/ Psi > Toxic.

That one certainly went on for a while. But it was less "quality entertainment" and more "watching a bunch of toddlers fight over a packet of crayons".

Quick note on Blinding Feint - + Optimal Slotting there is going to be 2x Acc/Dam HOs, the Superior Critical Strikes +CritChance ATO, the Gaussian Unique and two damage procs (e.g. Touch of Death and Gladiator). That would give you 23.19% recharge slotting in the power itself; meaning the Gaussian would have 18.24% chance of activating and the ATO 72.94%. + By using a 4-piece SCS set in it, you're increasing the recharge slotting in the power itself and drastically lowering proc activation rate. In the build v3a above there is 72.59% recharge slotting in the power itself, giving the Gaussian 13.59% chance of activating and the ATO 54.35%. Judging by the slotting of your other attacks it looks like you're not really focussing on attaining maximum damage output here; but you could still juggle some slots around a little to bump up your red numbers a smidge. e.g. [Veil of Blades 3b].mbd

I'd be tempted to strip an Unbreakable Guard from "Bo Ryaku" plus the second slot from Mystic Flight (changing the default slot to a Winters Gift unique) - that would give you 2 spare enhancement slots to 6-slot Blinding Feint with (swap one of the existing SCS set to the ATO; then stick another another damage Proc and a Gaussians Unique in it) Also, the Aegis in "Kuji-In Rin" could be swapped with the Gladiator's Unique, and the spare slot moved to RoP to keep all your resistances capped. [Veil of Blades 3a].mbd [No-Rop] vs [with Rop] Other slots that aren't doing much for you are the last two Unbreakable Guards in "Tough"; but they're probably better placed there than anywhere else unless you really want more recovery or Fire/Cold Res etc.

Notably; apart than Fireball the AoE DPA from range of Fire Blast isn't wonderful. Inferno requires you to have enough nearby foes to cuddle; but Electric Blast and Water Blast can lay the smackdown from half a map away. I love my suicidal jousting Fire Blaster as much as the next lunatic, but they're definitely not the be-all-and-end-all.

Twixt was a sphincter-behatted PVP troll who was fond of performing "Monster Player Kills" and who happened to use a different excuse than normal to justify their antisocial behaviour ("It was all an experiment! You can't sack me I has Tenure!"). I'm not sure how that relates to what @Scarlet Shocker wrote above which compared a newb player entering a PVP zone ["ALERT! WARNING! YOU MAY BE GANKED!"] versus them inadvertently inviting a Group Fly user onto their team [OK WTF why am I suddenly airborne and unable to activate half my attack chain and why is this one guy ranting at me about a seagull?]. Unless Twixt swooped down on you that one time and stole your fish 'n' chips?

Yups. Players will generally still want some Knockback Protection to allow them to actually ignore the effect entirely; but with enough Knockback Resistance you can reduce the magnitude of a KB effect to under "1", whereupon KnockBACK turns into KnockDOWN. These days most AoE immobilises grant 10000% Knockup and Knockback resistance for this very reason - it makes teammates that spam AoE Knockback powers much easier to live with! 🤣

And extra horribly, if you want to MAXIMIZE the damage of Cross Punch then you need to take both of them... 🤦‍♂️ I think I've slotted boxing/kick a few times over the years, purely for set bonuses. However in terms of actual usefulness, they're both Total Whittle. "Total whittle, Vimes thought. He wasn’t sure of the precise meaning of the word, but he could hazard a shrewd guess. It sounded like whatever it was you had left when you had extracted everything of any value whatsoever." - Terry Pratchett, 'Guards! Guards!'.

Used to do that myself back in the day in Warburg on Defiant. If memory serves; one account was my Katana/Regen Scrapper namesake with a PBAoE (Lotus Drops) set to auto, and the other was my EM/Regen Stalker with their self-rez (Revive) set to auto. Both toons were lvl50 (the level of the PVP IO drops were based on your uncapped level rather than on your zone-limited level) and I found a nice little nook up on some pipework that meant other players couldn't spot them from the ground. However IIRC the real trick was to get the Stalker's passive regeneration and self rez recharge levels just right so that they didn't get autobooted or hospitaled etc. I left the pair of them going like that unattended rather a lot (twas during my university era so there were a large number of parties lectures to attend) and very often I'd arrive home to find a few billion inf worth of IO drops. Whilst I never bothered with the more inventive inf storage methods, most of my many level 50 alts across both accounts were sat at the inf cap. So I never experienced many problems tricking out new characters and neither did any of my SG/Coalition buddies.

@OP: FWIW if you're using Mids to provide accurate numbers for Bio (bad idea in general IME; as Mids is rubbish at getting the effects of the stance changes correct) then it may be worth turning off Parasitic Aura and DNA Siphon. Whilst Bio can achieve utterly mind-boggingly high Regeneration and Recovery figures on paper... in practice it's quite tricky to keep DNA Siphon fully loaded because it has a 10 target limit and 20ft radius and acts differently when it hits *defeated* targets vs *alive* targets. Ideally you want to have 10+ defeated targets but no alive targets within 20 ft of you every 30s or less; and this is often easier said than done in real gameplay. FWIW, my Bio/Staff Tanker (the "Bio" toon that I've invested the most time into) runs Musculature and Barrier rather than Vigor and Rebirth. Whilst in Offensive stance they sit at "+503%" (~64 HP/Sec) Regen without Parasitic Aura and DNA Siphon running. With them up it's "+635%" (~80 HP/Sec) with one foe in range and "+1822%" (~230 HP/Sec) with ten foes in range. Throw in stuff like Melee Core and Efficient stance and it'll hit the "+2500%" hardcap (~316 HP/Sec); and that's not even counting stuff like Panacea and Power Transfer Procs and Brute ATOs. However honestly; speaking as an old /Regen scrapper main... once you start being able to passively regenerate about 50+ HP/Sec you'll become functionally immune to chip damage. So personally I'd worry more about avoiding being one-shot than bumping up your already-sky-high Regeneration levels. Bio has some very nice on-demand survivability buffs (like Ablative Carapace; and DNA Siphon when used vs "alive" foes) but getting 90% (or even better 100%, since it makes you immune to -res debuffs) S/L Resistance is still a worthwhile achievable goal; as is 45%+ typed or positional Defence (even if you have no Defense Debuff Resistance). With Bonus points if you can keep that up in Offensive Stance. You can fall back on Barrier Destiny and/or Melee Core Hybrid to push you to the caps if required; but don't confuse flat mitigation (+Regen and +HP) with Scaling Mitigation (+Def and +Res). I'd far, far rather get from 40%-45% Def or 80%-90% Res than gain another ~10-15HP/Sec regen! 👍 🚑

1. Mez *Protection* is what to look at. Mez *Resistance* is largely ignorable, especially on a melee AT. All it does is cut the duration of mez effects on you; which is occasionally useful whenever you're facing lots and lots of incoming mez of the same type and you have poor defense. Additional Psychic Damage Resistance might be helpful, but I'd much rather hardcap S/L resistance and softcap S/L/E/N defense instead. Can also fit a few more Power Transfer Procs (Superior Conditioning + Inexhaustible) 2. Alpha = Musculature or Vigor Core. Destiny = Barrier Core. Lore = Seers or Carnies or Banished Pantheon Radial. Interface = Degenerative or Reactive. Judgement = Whatever (although I'm personally very fond of Void Radial for the damage debuff). Hybrid = Assault or Melee Core.

Looking at it in CoD... the owning player's boosts (including Power Boost) will be copied onto the "Wellspring" Pseudopet entity. This Pseudopet then gets to activate its own power named "Barrier Reef" every four seconds; which applies a 2.25s duration +Defense buff once every two seconds. So best-case I'd expect Power Boost's effect will last for the duration of Power Boost plus a few extra seconds; but not for the entire 240s duration of the Wellspring Pseudopet. Unfortunately there is no big long "apply a +Defense buff for 240 seconds" listed anywhere; instead it works via a constantly-reapplying pseudopet subpower. However the power is not flagged as ignoring external external strength boosts; so Power Boost and Clarion Radial etc. should still do something for it. As to whether the benefit is worth it or not to you...? 🤷‍♂️

(Also FWIW, there have been substantially more than one user of Group Fly commenting within this thread. Although if you're only counting the ones who have stated they would refuse to turn off Group Fly if asked to by their Team Leader...?)

Yup It's been reported, but, y'know... small bunch of devs volunteering their time and all that. (Also, fixing stuff like this would presumably require the powers team to temporarily stop selecting half the melee AT defensive powersets, thumping the "randomize" button and sending the results to Closed Beta...) 😛

IMO since Fury has a big effect on Brimstone Procs; Stone Armor (non Granite) is a major contender for your secondary. And since it also buffs DoT damage; Fiery Aura isn't bad either. For Primary? Nothing will match a Scrapper vs a Pylon; and nothing will match a Tanker on an AE Farming map or ITF kill-most run... but if you go by Ston's old 2022 Melee Powerset Comparison for Trapdoor (back whenever that mission was a decent finger in the air for "overall offensive effectiveness") then the powersets that pull a smidge ahead or come very close on a Brute are: Staff Melee, Kinetic Melee, Super Strength, Electric Melee, Titan Weapons and Broadsword. Of those I would probably go with Super Strength, personally. Single-stacked Rage slotted for +ToHit can do most of the heavy lifting to buff your accuracy levels enough to 6-slot your attack powers with Damage Procs... and the crash is much less of an issue whenever you're not double-stacking it and your attacks are proc-heavy. TL;DR: "Maybe try a SS/Stone Brute?"

Granted Freezing Ray > Chilling Ray; but since it still takes both Impeded Swiftness and Ice Mistrals Torment procs basic [2x Acc/Dam HO + 4x Proc] slotting remains viable without touching the Sleep sets. And it seems the rest of the set currently still holds enough water to place 5th or higher out of the 15 Sentinel Primaries (largely on-par with Fire apparently, although Elec unsurprisingly places consistently higher alongside BR and Seismic) I do actually have an Ice/Elec Sentinel somewhere... although IIRC they lean pretty heavily on their Epic Pool attacks; and TBH they were originally just a concept build created on a whim after I happened upon an unclaimed name that matched a certain Manfred Mann song...

Tanks have a damage cap of 500%. For Brutes, it's 700%. Lets take a SuperStrength Tanker versus a SuperStrength Brute as an extremely rough example: Both ATs will get 100% (base) + 80% (Single-stacked Rage) + 95% (Enhancements) = 275% total damage. Tanker Melee damage scalar is 0.95, and Brute is 0.75. So comparatively that's 0.95*2.75 = 2.6125 (Tanker) versus 0.75*2.75 = 2.0625 (Brute) However the Brute will also get an additional +2% damage per point of Fury. They'd only need 37+ points of Fury to draw even with the Tanker in the above example; and it's normally trivial to keep your Fury bar in the 65-80 point range. However most Tanker AoEs get major buffs to radius and target cap - even FootStomp on a Tanker (which doesn't get radius buffs) can hit 16 targets versus 10 for a Brute. In the above example, a Tanker's Footstomp will quickly start to pull ahead when surrounded by 12+ targets even whenever the Brute is running at extremely high levels of Fury. However once again, this comparison is EXTREMELY rough. Tanker attacks tend to be best slotted with [4 damage procs + 2x Acc/Dam HOs] compared to a Brute's [6x Damage Procs] due to the differences in melee damage scaling. Epic/Patron power pool picks skew things a bit. Incarnates and Set Bonuses will confuse things even further. Maybe look at some of the listed "Trapdoor" mission times in Ston's Melee AT Comparison thread for both Tankers and Brutes to get more of a feel for it?

It's certainly possible to tank on a Brute; as you can get survivable enough and deal decent levels of damage and they have Punchvoke (and occasionally Taunt) available. However most of the time; Tanking for groups will be considerably better on a Tanker, because: (i) Tanker damage scalars are pretty high on HC, so the difference in Raw Damage output isn't massive. (ii) A Tanker will tend to hit a much larger number of enemies simultaneously given the same AoEs and Auras; due to their Radius and Target Cap boosts from Gauntlet. (iii) A Tanker will find it far easier to reach high levels of resistance and defense compared to a Brute - requiring less compromises elsewhere in their build to hit the "caps". High-end hardmode content builds, perhaps counterintuitively, actually tend to be skewed towards maximum damage output rather than survivability. This is because whenever everyone has strong allied buffs plus T4 Incarnate abilities on rotation there is lesser need for any inherent mitigation; and everything becomes a DPS race. And in terms of DPS, versus single-targets a Scrapper or Stalker will win out; and vs groups of foes Tanks are so far ahead that it's not even funny. Brutes are languishing somewhere in the middle - "good enough" but not really shining at anything in particular. Which is the source of much wailing and frustration in these parts. All that said... there are a few areas where Brutes still have a few advantages - they have a much easier time at low levels since Fury ramps up your damage output drastically regardless of whatever buffs you're getting from enhancements; and they get their big damage moves earlier than Tankers do. DoTs tend to be affected by Fury (but not by Scrapper Crits) making them more attractive on a Brute; and certain powersets have big splashy AoEs (such as SS's Footstomp) which are either flagged as ignoring radius buffs or coded as Pseudopets so they're no better on a Tanker than they are on other ATs. And the additional damage granted by certain special abilities like Brimstone Armor is also affected by Fury. The Brutes I personally still enjoy at endgame tend to be either Fire Aura (for Burn and Firey Embrace) or Stone Armor (for Brimstone Procs). And for their offensive powerset, things like Spines/Savage/Fiery Melee (DoTs), Super Strength (Footstomp is excellent; and Rage means you can ignore slotting your attacks with accuracy and focus on maximum damage procs) and Battle Axe (Axe Cyclone is bags of fun on any AT) all have a place in my stable.