Maelwys

There are plenty of MM guides kicking around out there; but a very rough rule of thumb is that all MMs tend to want the Leadership Pool (Assault and Tactics are useful for any of them, Maneuvers stacks nicely with the pet +Def IO uniques and doubly so for anyone with allied +Def or -ToHit powers. Ninjas get substantial +Def as part of their inherent resistances and you can increase it by slotting your upgrade powers for +Def, so you'll probably want to aim to softcap them. Maneuvers helps here) and any MMs without a reliable allied heal should take the Medicine Pool. Group Fly can also be very useful for some Ranged Pets (robots especially) but I'd not bother with it for Ninjas. Aside from that? It's really the usual deal until you get Incarnates (as some Incarnate slots drastically benefit pets more than others). Get Hasten and on-demand Stealth (if desired) plus whatever other powers you like the look of; then at endgame aim to Softcap your own Defence% if possible and stack as many other set bonuses as you like. -Resistance debuffs are very handy; as are any Crowd Control powers. Trick Arrow is full of useful tricks (hah) to help here. I'm no /TA expert, but the build looks OK-ish besides the lack of Aid Self/Aid Other, low (non-Enhancement-Diversification-capped) damage enhancement in the Genin and Jounin, and low Defence Slotting in Scorpion Shield (you're about 7% S/L defense below softcap! Eventually you'll likely want a Barrier Core Epiphany Destiny incarnate so can aim for 40% if you're slot-starved; but I suspect 35% Energy Defence will be pushing it even with Flash Arrow...)

The most straightforward solution here would seem to be to clamp the minimum Pet level at -5 (compared to what you're fighting) regardless of content. That way regular gameplay doesn't get affected, but whenever you find yourself fighting much-higher-level foes on Regular or Hardmode +4/8 (non incarnate) content your T1 + T2 pets won't suddenly become crippled. (This could likely reuse your team's current mission difficulty setting as an indicator. e.g. for any setting above "+2" [meaning "+3 foes can spawn"] the pet's level increases by 1, up to a maximum of whatever the MM's current level is) And yes, apply it to everyone - Crabberminds, Fire Controllers, etc. not just MMs. As an example: Currently if you're -5 to something then your T1 Pets will end up dealing only 8% of their regular damage, taking an extra 77% damage, and having the equivalent of a -10% Defence debuff. Clamping them to a minimum of -5 would raise this to 30% of their regular damage, taking an extra 55% damage, and no Defence debuff.

Really? Nobody? 🤔 That sounds precisely like the kind of sweeping generalist statement that should be confronted at all costs. WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND THE FREEDOM TO CONSIDER PEOPLE TO BE IDIOTS! (Disclaimer: I don't actually believe that Zem's an idiot, a moron, or any other kind of label insinuating sub-par intellect. And being a little bit confrontational about ones opinions on a forum is not [currently] an arrestable offense) *Raises Hand* Me sir, me! Over here! Super Strength is one of my favourite sets. I love the Footstomp animation and knockdown radius; the Damage output is just gravy (I also loved it on Kheldians whenever it was known as White Dwarf Flare; and I got royally cheesed off when they swapped it out for the ridiculous sparkly handclap!). I quite like Haymaker's "Captain Kirk double-fisted-headslap" animation. I get flashbacks to old Popeye reruns every time KO Blow's arm-spinning windup animation plays; and it follows through on the damage-per-activation front. Super Strength is one of my least favourite sets. Jab and Punch and Hand Clap are all horrible. Hurl looks fun but has some of the worst DPA around. You are practically required to take pool power attacks (like Boxing or Cross Punch) to fill out a reasonable attack chain. This is bad design. Rage's Crash flooring your damage output is fine. Rage's Crash reducing your defences can go and feck itself with a 10 foot pylon. If a power overbuffs your damage, then the crash should debuff your damage output (via -Damage and/or -ToHit and/or -Recovery. See: Conduit of Pain, Meltdown, etc) If a power overbuffs your survivability, then the crash should debuff your survivability (via -Endurance and/or -HP and/or -Recovery. See: Unstoppable, One with the Shield, etc) Rage does NOT overbuff your survivability, therefore Rage's Crash should NOT debuff your survivability. However EVEN IF IT DID there should never be a case where you self-inflict -Defence% or -DamageResistance% on yourself with a buff power. At worst, such a power should floor your Recovery and/or drain some Endurance. We got rid of that horrendous self-survivability-debuff garbage from all the other stuff (Moment of Glory?) decades ago. It beggars belief why the Devs ever felt the need to introduce MORE of it, and to a melee damage powerset no less! IMO the old Rage Crash where you literally couldn't attack anything was fine; and the fact that you could eliminate it with Perma Rage was a bug. 🥺 🤦‍♂️ 🙊

Fire/Kins with permanent Hot feet and Speed Boost 6-slotted for +runspeed made a good attempt. As did the Sonics and FFs who insisted on spamming their "Cage" powers on AVs. But my personal favourite was the Illusion/Empath Troller with no Phantom Army or Fortitude, who we ended up nicknaming "Vengeance Bait".

For a (rather long) while the only way you could be a character with a gun that fired futuristic looking energy blasts was by rolling a Bot/ MM. Can't speak for other servers, but I remember seeing a fair number of petless Bot/Traps MMs running around back in the day. Some of them even occasionally remembered to use Trip Mine and Poison Trap.

To be fair those other games have a noticably higher performance requirement floor than CoH. There is a long history of Drama here, which basically boils down to the community tending to look unkindly on those who throw shade on others for their build choices. The cliche goes something like this: "Heal Please!" "Whut?" "You're a Healer! Heal me!!! I need heals!!!" "Please, this game is so easy you could complete every single story arc with just Brawl on Autofire. Nobody needs a Tank or a Healer, get over yourself. Nobody else is complaining, and I'm having fun". "But you're not having the right kind of fun! Call yourself a Healer and you're not even healing me you dirty great Trolling Troll!!" "You do realise I'm a Trick Arrow Defender, right? Do you want me to shoot you in the face with my "Highly Effective Arrow Launcher" or something?" "OMG Troll!" Petless MMs can be perfectly viable. They get some Secondary Powersets which are very busy (like /Kin, /Dark, /Traps, /Cold, /Empathy, etc) and by ignoring most or all of the pets; a player can focus much more on teammate support. Sure, they've lower buff values than Defenders; but that doesn't really matter to certain powersets (such as /Kin) and they also get access to stuff like Powerboost and Bonfire via the Epic pools. Some of their primary powersets even have very useful riders on their personal attacks, like Bots/ (-Regen) and Demons/ (-Resist). It's also worth remembering that unless they're buffed to high heaven, a MM's T1 and T2 MM pets can end up being a liability on Higher Difficulties and Hardmode TFs. This is because a MM's pets are "lower level" than the MM themselves; and if you're fighting foes that are ~4 levels or more higher than you, your performance gets utterly crippled due to the Purple Patch. So they'll often end up unable to hit or dodge anything and just getting in the way of the "real" damage dealers... even if the MM avoids having to keep resummoning them every few seconds.

Maybe look at something like the below for some inspiration/ideas? (Photon Grenade can be swapped for Tactics/Arcane Bolt/Spirit Ward/Whatever if you don't fancy using it as a Proc Cannon) zMastermind - Robots - Time.mbd [EDIT: Tweaked it a bit to get a few extra Procs in Distortion Field]

I seem to be able to import the build OK - have attached a copy as an actual Mids Reborn file. Bots_Time.mbd Anyways, my immediate thoughts: Protector Bots wants +Defense slotting - ideally cap it. Battle Drones don't need a KB->KD IO any more. They do however benefit from an "Explosive Strike" Damage Proc. Assault Bots *DOES* need a KB-> KD IO (for regular Swarm Missiles) Equip Robot wants +Resistance capped Upgrade Robot wants the Preventative Medicine Unique (it's about the only useful thing you can slot there) Why +RunSpeed in Stamina? Why No Temporal Selection??!? It buffs your Bots' damage! Defence Cap Maneuvers if you're going to take it. You are a Bots/Time. You do *NOT* need the extra Defence from Scorpion Shield. Use it as a dump for a LOTG and/or one of the +res uniques. You're very starved for Accuracy in things like Time Crawl and Slowed Response and Time Stop. There's a new Slow Set called "Ice Mistral's Torment" with an additional Damage Proc you can fit into Distortion field, since you seem to be into that kind of thing I guess? (Distortion Field's 20ft radius means that even the SLOW set damage Procs within it will each be getting only a 17.95% chance to activate every 10 seconds. And the Hold effect only kicks in very rarely) You'll want at least one personal attack from the MM for -Regen debuffs. Photon Grenade is decent; but it's rather costly in Endurance to use regularly. Between Temporal Mending and Chrono Shift? Lose the Maintenance Drone. Incarnates: Aim for Clarion Radial Epiphany Destiny (Mez Protection for you and the Bots) and either an Intuition Radial Paragon or Musculature Core Paragon Alpha Slot. MM Hybrid tends to be Support Core Embodiment and Interface tends to be Degenerative Radial Flawless Interface. Judgement and Lore can be pretty much anything, although personally I'm partial to Void Radial Final Judgement and IDF Total Radial Improved Ally. I'm really not sure why you're slotting that many Damage Procs, but haven't taken Assault or an AoE Immobilise? Your Burn Missile Patches will melt things **FAR** faster than your procs will as long as you can keep your Assbot alive and damage buffed and the mobs clustered together.

Disclaimer: I mained an INV/SS for years on live, and I'm pretty familiar with EM (FA/EM Tank, plus a few Scrappers and Stalkers) Invulnerablity is a very old powerset. Its main draw back in the day was that it could hit the Defense softcap (45%) to virtually everything whilst also hitting the hard cap for Smashing and Lethal damage resistance (via it's inherents plus the Fighting pool) and capped Maximum HP (via Dull Pain). Stone tanks could do the same, but came at a hefty penalty to damage output and recharge. Fast forward several issues and other sets like Willpower and Dark Armour became available, and INV lost a lot of it's lustre. Willpower could do all INV could do (except completely cap Maximum HP permanently) but it had substantially higher regen and performed much better versus Psychic foes and Malta. Dark Armour could recover to full HP and Endurance every few seconds as long as it was surrounded by enough weaker foes of any type. Etc. IOs muddied the waters a bit. INV tanks could get perma Dull Pain with little effort, whilst also plugging holes in their Psychic + Elemental resistances or heightening their regeneration. With a good IO build they nearly matched Willpower as an exceptionally good all-rounder, with WP having a bit more Regeneration and INV a bit more Defense and maximum HP. With Incarnates? INV became even better at plugging it's resistance holes (as just a T4 Alpha slot by itself takes sooo much pressure off slotting for enough +Recharge for Perma DP or enough +Defence to hit the softcap to everything with just a single foe in 'Invincibility') Archetype Origin enhancements sealed the deal. A decently built INV can keep the resistance buff double-stacked constantly. These days an INV can still hit the regular 45% Defense softcap and S/L Resistance hard cap with just SO enhancements. Throw in enough IOs and a set of T4 Incarnate abilities and they can also hit the 59% hard mode defense softcap whilst having Perma Dull Pain and considerably higher damage resistance to types other than S/L. They will still never be *quite* as good as a DA tank versus Psychic foes, and they might need a heal occasionally in hard mode TFs, but other than that (or enough stacked Mez to overcome Unyielding, in which case you have Unstoppable) they are functionally immortal. And they exemplar exceptionally well. Energy Melee has been the subject of a great many nerfs and buffs over the years. In its present state (and thanks to the tanker inherent that buffs AoE radius) it is rather decent. Disorient is a little less team friendly than Knockdown but you can stack it enough to Mez bosses, and Energy Transfer is also unlikely to get you killed whenever you're passively regenerating enough Hit Points to ignore it. As a combination, an INV/EM should be very tough to kill and deal reasonably high damage (for a tank) but you likely won't be able to solo VERY tough foes without -Regeneration debuffs from the P2W temp powers or Lore pets. EDIT: Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a quick example of one of my INV/SS build's defences (with one foe in Invincibility range and no clicky Incarnates running) which is built as an all-rounder rather than for sky-high Defence/Damage/etc. It typically has another 6.7%-13.4% Resistance to everything on top of this due to the SMoT Proc; (roughly 67% chance for 3 stacks and 25% chance for 2 stacks) and its baseline regeneration is 40HP/Sec plus 2x Power Transfer and 1x Panacea Healing Procs. Can also gain more self-healing potential or +Def and +Res via clickies (like Barrier Destiny etc.) on demand if required.

Resilience? It's a useful place for the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor Uniques; but the base damage resistance it grants you isn't going to be very noticable even slotted up. Moment of Glory? Stick a Luck of the Gambler +7.5% Global Rech in it and you're done. It's actually useful as an occasional "emergency button", but it already caps you to everything for its ridiculously-short duration. If you end up with more slots left at 50 than you know what to do with; then you could toss 2x extra Resistance-buffing IOs into Resiience (like a Reactive Armor: Resistance and Reactive Armor: Resistance/Endurance) and 2x extra 50+5 Recharge Common IOs into MoG.

Quills and Irradiated Ground are both damage auras, and both of those crit. It's only Damage Auras from the *secondary* Scrapper powersets which don't crit... since to my knowledge none of the powers from secondary powersets (and hardly any pool powers) have Crit Mechanics baked in. Which, yes, could do with being addressed, particularly in the case of things like /FA's "Burn" (I appreciate that one of the most familiar Brute outliers is /FA Brutes on Fire Farms, but that's an entirely seperate thread!). However you're right, my Original Post *did indeed* ignore rather a lot of things. It also ignored -Res Procs (which affect both ATs equally); and Epic Powersets (e.g. Zapp/Moonbeam on Scrapper vs Gloom/TarPatch on Brute); as well as powers with different mechanics for "Crits" like Seismic Smash (which doesn't Crit but instead deals more base damage) or Energy Transfer (which does a bigger heal) or Total Focus (which doubles its buff instead). It also only very, very briefly touched on Scrapper's greater ability to self-buff damage%, power-for-power, than a Brute (see: Perfection of Body, Blood Thirst, Power Siphon, Soul Drain, Follow Up, Against All Odds, Meltdown, Firey Embrace, Hardened Carapace, etc. and even Pool Powers like 'Assault' and 'Adrenal Booster'). This is because my Original Post was not intended to be an unintelligible encyclopedic thesis of any&all Brute and Scrapper powers, abilities and mechanics. It was however intended to address the Original Parent Poster's claims that "Scrappers power budget is roughly 90% put in the Archetype Origin enhancement for the critical strikes proc" and "One Thunder Kick from a Scrapper will always do X damage, meanwhile Brute will do X+150% damage which is basically a crit and a half when they are at 75% fury" - by illustrating rather simply the effect of a Scrapper's Higher Base Damage Modifier and a Brute's Fury on the same single attack under some different real-game conditions. And showing that the deficit (if any) was surmountable without ATOs. I'm not attempting here to state what the current bleeding edge endgame meta should/shouldn't be, or to give a set of best-case twinked builds or illustrate how quickly a particular powerset combination can run through a given mission or defeat a particular target (whether or not those sort of runs are actually a good benchmark of performance, since RNGesus can always suddenly decide to smike or bless your RL crit rate on any given run, is also a conversation for an entirely different thread). I am however attempting to provide a reasonably-well-reasoned counterpoint to some notions which I believe to be 'exaggerated' at best. Case in point. As I stated before: Damage Procs ignore Enhancements and other Buffs; including Fury. They are not affected by Damage buffs or Debuffs, so they do NOT CARE about Fury OR about Crits. A Damage Proc will add precisely X damage to an attack; regardless of whether it's a Scrapper or a Brute making that attack, regardless of how much Fury or Damage Buffs you have; and regardless of whether you Crit or not. The only things that affect the damage they deal is your level and your target's damage resistances. Therefore the only case in which slotting a Damage Proc will be "worth more" to a Brute is if that Brute can gain more raw damage by OVERSLOTTING the power in question with Damage Procs (e.g. Scrapper damage for an attack may well peak at 2x +5 Lv50 Damage IOs plus 4x Damage Procs; but Brute damage for that same attack peak at 6x Damage Procs). However this is due to the disparity in Base damage between Brutes and Scrappers; not a reflection on Crits or Fury... and since the Scrapper has the option of slotting 1-2x Acc/Dam HOs in place of those Damage IOs, the Brute will fall behind on accuracy. A -Resistance Proc will work similarly, except that it *does* care about BOTH Fury and Crits; and can therefore often be a better means of magnifying your damage output, particularly if you're fighting something that's big and tanky but which doesn't have much "-Resistance resistance". Haijinx has already pointed this out; but the SCS Proc has +23.189 local recharge baked into it. This is really getting into a tangent about the SCS Proc now (apologies OP!) but I'm sorta interested in the underlying mechanics of builds; so even though you haven't actually given me any example attack chains + slotting examples to work from it's still vaguely interesting to chew on + spitball; and I doubt that I'll be told to shush as long as we can keep the thread vaguely civil. So here goes: SCS is a 4 PPM proc (I'm not sure where you're getting that "effective 11" PPM figure from?) which means that it has a fairly low activate rate. So IDEALLY you'll want to slot it in a single-target attack which has a Long Base Recharge, a Long Animation Time and a large 'Animation Time Before Effect' value. And as you rightly mentioned, ideally you want your heaviest damage attack(s) to be affected by its buff. So you also need to slot it in an attack which is NOT one of your heaviest-damage attacks but which IS powerful enough to include in your attack chain without too much DPA loss. All that limits your options substantially, so in many cases (like my Katana Scrapper) it may be more efficient to slot it in a faster-recharging, faster-animating, high-DPA ST attack which you can use more often, despite the loss in proc activation rate. Since you mentioned Pylons and "best builds"and Gavlam already posted the link to Ston's thread ... lets take the attack chain of the 2nd place "Scrapper pylon soloer" there as a functional example (since it's only 2s behind 1st place but doesn't rely on any momentum building!) That build has the Battle Axe Primary, and apparently uses a chain of "Swoop>Chop>Cleave>Swoop>Chop>Zapp" with the Crit Strikes Proc placed into "Swoop". Swoop has a 12s base recharge and a Cast Time of 1.23s. With no other "local recharge" than the SCS Proc slotted, that works out at a Proc Activation rate of 73.1409% Swoop's 'Animation Time' is 1.233 sec and its 'Animation Time Before Effect' is 0.733 sec; which means that the SCS Proc activates 0.733 seconds in, with the 3.25s +Crit% buff itself likely activating after a further 0.5 seconds have elapsed due to its own 'Animation Time Before Effect' value. 0.733+0.5=1.233 seconds total, so the actual 3.25s buff window starts immediately after the power finishes animating; although before the next attack can begin activating you still need to round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) so you end up with 3.031 seconds left in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Chop has an 'Animation Time' of 1.2s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.7s; so it easily falls within this buff window. Again, round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) and you're now left with 1.579 seconds in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Cleave has an 'Animation Time' of 2.333s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 1.233s; so it will *just* makes it into the remaining buff window before it elapses. So that's Chop and Cleave affected by the buff... The Second Swoop itself won't be affected by the buff; but it WILL have a chance to proc SCS once more, so here we go again... Chop has an 'Animation Time' of 1.2s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.7s; so it easily falls within this buff window. Yet again, Round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) and you're left with 1.579 seconds in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Zapp has an 'Animation Time' of 1.333s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.933s; so it falls within the buff window. Round up for Arcanatime (1.584s) and the buff will have expired before you can queue up another attack. None of the attacks that fall within the buff window gain bonus crit chance %; so they will each have a maximum of (0.1+0.06+0.50)*0.731409 = 48.27% chance to crit. Swoop itself will never fall within the buff window, so it has a maximum of 16% chance to crit. So I make that a MAXIMUM overall average Crit rate of 37.5% across all six attacks. However actually performing this attack chain without any gaps requires that Swoop's actual recharge time is at most 3.036 seconds long (1.452 from Chop + 1.584 from Zapp). Which is technically possible; but requires 395.26% recharge. You start off with 100% Base recharge; and you gain +23.19% in Swoop from the SCS Proc. +70% from Hasten leaves around +202.07% still to find from other sources. Tricky. Particularly if you really don't want any more "local" recharge in Swoop itself - since the more local recharge you slot, the lower your proc activation rate will become... and that 37.5% Crit rate figure above will very quickly start to plummet. Therefore I very much suspect that even most "best builds" will peak substantially lower than a 30% overall average Crit rate unless they're getting an imperial tonne of external +recharge buffs; barring any short-term shenaniganery like chaining both Ageless Destiny plus Geas of the Kind Ones etc. etc. Happy to be proven wrong, however; and I know there're still a few questionmarks over the exact timing mechanics of that SCS Proc... 😄

Sorry, that post was a generalisation rather than specifically addressing the exact mechanics of precisely when the Superior Critical Strikes Proc activates. As I understand it; whenever you trigger any power you have to wait until its Animation Time Before Effect duration expires (likely adjusted for Arcanatime, since AFAIK server clock ticks still apply whenever a parent effect triggers a pseudopet or child effect). At that point anything the power actually does or contains (including Procs) get parsed and (if you're lucky) triggered. The SCS Proc itself is composed of two parts - the first is the base "boost" which itself has an Animation Time Before Effect duration of 0.5s. The second is the Proc effect which is classified as a Set Bonus and ALSO has an Animation Time Before Effect duration of 0.5s. Conventional Community Wisdom holds that the actual 3.25s buff window kicks in at [Triggering Power's Animation Time Before Effect (potentially rounded up for server ticks) + 0.5 seconds (potentially also rounded up)] but because that second "Proc" effect has its own activation there could be an additional delay happening of a further [0.5 seconds (seriously are we rounding up or not?!?)] Then you have another questionmark over whether the buff window (once it's actually kicked in!) needs to extend into the initial animation time of an attack, or until that attack's Animation Time Before Effect - although the second seems far more likely. Unfortunately I don't personally have the free time to do much RL testing on this at the moment due to childminding antics; but I do know that the Gaussian and Decimation Procs function in exactly the same manner as the SCS Proc (they have identical two-part 'Set Bonus' components and 0.5s Animation Time Before Effect durations); and the effects of those Procs are quite straightforward to test and observe due to the guaranteed raw damage boost (as opposed to an "additional chance for a crit", which may or may not result in a crit occurring which may or may not have happened without the buff!) plus a nice big buff icon on your screen...

Fair point and apologies. That was likely a toddler-sleep-deprivation-induced brainfart rather than a typo. That said, the numbers in that post you're referring to still shed considerable doubt on your statement that "Fury in its present state is just fine to make a Brute handily outdamage a scrapper who isn't using the ATOs". Consider: + 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. Therefore there is definitely a point that is pretty trivial to reach for many powerset combinations where Scrapper ATOs are just "icing on the cake". Without any +Damage from an Alpha slot then things would certainly shift in favour of the Brute... however the breakpoints (+49% Damage @80 Fury and +65% Damage @85 Fury) still aren't exactly insurmountable even when soloing, especially if the Scrapper is Claws/ (1-stacked Followup puts Scrappers ahead instantly @80% Fury and only +16% Damage behind @85 Fury) I'm not sure where you're getting that from? Damage Procs ignore Enhancements and other Buffs; including Fury. Therefore if a Brute deals "X damage" and a Scrapper deals "Y damage" with an attack... and both slot the same damage proc... then all that will do is raise each of their damage by exactly the same amount (e.g. You just end up with "X+ProcDamage" and "Y+ProcDamage". ProcDamage itself remains constant regardless of Buffs or Fury - the only thing that would affect it is resistance buffs/debuffs on your target) If your argument is that "Brutes tend to perform better with their attacks 6-slotted with damage procs"... then that'd be a fair statement; but the reason for this is that Brutes gain proportionally less benefit from +Damage Enhancement whenever they run at high Fury; and Scrappers have a much higher base damage modifier (which confirms my earlier statement that a large part of the power of Scrappers comes by way of their high damage modifier). However slotting attacks entirely with Damage Procs also requires ignoring +ACCURACY Enhancement; which requires substaintial concessions elsewhere in your build for sufficient +ToHit buffs or +GlobalAccuracy set bonuses to let you reliably hit your target with all of those procs. Now you're just messing with me. Surely there is no way in hell that any build is consistently averaging "50% Crit rate"??!? As far as I'm aware, the highest Crit Chance you could conceivably reach is with a few specific T9 attacks vs LTs+ and a SSS ATO (+21%) plus a Critical Strikes ATO Proc (+50%) for 71% chance for that single attack to crit. Aside from that, you could maybe fit an additional low-Arcanatime attack into the same Critical Strike Proc buff window (+16%+50% = maximum 66% chance for this second attack to crit), depending on what your T9's 'Animation Time Before Effect' value is. However the SSS Proc itself has a maximum 90% chance to activate even under perfect conditions, so in reality you'd instead be looking at an average of +63.9% and +59.4% crit chance at *best*. Then the proc-triggering attack itself along with any other attacks in the chain would have at most +16% chance to crit. Therefore even with a hypothetical 3-attack chain, you'd be looking at an *extremely* best case average crit rate of 46.4%. As I understand it, even in today's meta builds will have a bare minimum of 4 attacks in their chain; and likely closer to 6+. Perhaps you might get the average Crit Rate up sufficiently if you somehow managed to squeeze in another additional low-Arcanatime attack into the Critical Strike Proc buff window...? Maybe?? But even then, I suspect that hitting the maximum 90% Proc activation rate on SSS is often... dubious. In practice, any given Scrapper's effective average crit chance should be far, FAR lower than that, because it is extremely difficult to cap the SSS Proc's activation rate in a fast-base-recharge attack (at least without enough Global Recharge that your ears are bleeding and/or the first 10 seconds of an Ageless Epiphany Destiny running). Which means that you have to choose between either using a short attack chain with a lower chance for the SSS Proc to activate; or a long attack chain with a higher chance for the SSS Proc to activate. (As RL examples from my own toon stable, I've a Katana Scrapper with a 4-attack chain that has a 32.9% chance for the Proc to activate; and an EnergyMelee Scrapper with a 6-attack chain that has an 85.2% chance for the Proc to activate...)

True, but in this case it's not a binary 1/0 thing - the get-knocked-on-my-ass-and-stand-back-up-again animation refreshes every time a knockdown occurs; and you'll inevitibly encounter situations where no extra procs kick in during that animation time and a foe manages to fully stand back up again... but the next chance to perform a knockdown isn't due to occur for another X seconds. So "less frequent but more likely" actually ends up being more spikey/unreliable versus "more frequent but less likely".

/jranger I literally posted the comparative numbers earlier in this thread. Purely with SOs alone and a basic (non ATO) crit rate, attack-for-attack Brutes will draw equal at ~80% ~65% Fury. With any more damage buffage than that (Build Up, Against All Odds, Firey Embrace, Set Bonuses, Musculature Alpha, Teammate Buffs, etc.) or lower Fury, Scrappers pull ahead. If you believe that I'm erring here (always possible!) then please show me the math.

I've been that character a few times. An utterly Indestructible Chain-Footstomping Inv/SS Tanker who consistently takes point, leaping from spawn to spawn to quickly bunch up a aggro-cap's worth of foes without any corner pulling shenanighans. A Sonic/Elec Defender who is quietly keeping everyone at the Damage resistance cap, draining all the Foes dry of Endurance and holding Bosses, and can stack enough Mez protection to overcome Ghost Widow's hold. An Illusion/Empath Controller with Perma-Phantom-Army and Powerboosted Fortitides who is keeping Andrenaline Boost on the Blaster so that they can ignore their Nuke crash, and is also somehow finding the time to chain cast confuse on all the tough bosses.... etc. etc. I've also been the idiot everyone loved to hate. A Human/Dwarf bi-form Peacebringer whose number one priority was to go toe-to-toe with and mercliessly obliterate any and all Void/Quantum mobs and Shadow Cysts that dared to oppose them. A /traps MM who loved running in to toebomb every big spawn with Trip Mine (long before you could shove pets out of the way). And best of all... a Fire/Ice/Fire Blaster that had one gear ("Top!") and tended to completely ignore whatever pace the rest of the team were trying to set and was specifically built with 'Rise of the Pheonix' as part of their attack chain.

Mine's EM/Rad/Soul. It was originally built on my alt account as a farming companion to my Bot/Kin MM... but it's very nice by itself. Extremely powerful ST attack chain, with decent AoE in Whirling Hands plus the utter AoE insanity that is Ground Zero. Hardcapped resistances, decent MaxHP and silly amounts of +Absorb, Regeneration, Recovery and Self-Healing Procs. Near-Perma-Hasten with a saturated Beta Decay, plus two Survivability buttons which can push it to the Defence Softcap for a short duration (Shadow Meld and Barrier Core Epiphany) for whenever Beta Decay isn't quite good enough by itself. And finally, Meltdown as a "Solo Berserker Mode" option. Capable of Stealthing Missions and good movement options with both Super Speed and Super Jump. Scrapper - EM - RA (Moonbeam).mbd

Best I've played (for different reasons) have been Kat/Regen and Kat/Bio. Bio's Environmental Modification buffs your defence to practically everything except Melee/Lethal; which is in turn covered by Divine Avalanche. Obvious Synergy! The -res debuffs from Evolving Armor also stacks nicely with all the Achilles' Heel and Fury of the Gladiator Procs which Katana can slot in abundance; and the -regen debuffs don't hurt vs AVs. Regen has tons of flat mitigation, but very little scaling mitigation outside of Moment of Glory. So it gains a *lot* of survivability from softcapped defence, and you really don't lose much performance from the rest of your build by doing so if you factor in keeping up a single stack of Divine Avalanche (double stacking is sitll useful on Incarnate trials or vs -Defense debuffs)

Generally I'm chasing personal +Defence% instead of +Recharge% on Bots/ and also want to squeeze in all the +Def and +res Pet IOs I can to the main pet powers, so my defaults look like this: Level 1: Battle Drones (A) Blood Mandate - Acc/Dam: Level 50+5 (*) Blood Mandate - Dam: Level 50+5 (*) Blood Mandate - Acc/Dam/End: Level 50+5 (*) Call to Arms: Defence Bonus for Pets)- Attuned (*) Edict of the Master: Defence Bonus for Pets) - Attuned (*) Explosive Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage - Attuned Level 12: Protector Bots (A) Blood Mandate - Acc/Dam: Level 50+5 (*) Blood Mandate - Dam: Level 50+5 (*) Blood Mandate - Acc/Dam/End: Level 50+5 (*) Cytoskeleton Exposure (+Defence/EndRed HO): Level 50+3 (*) Common Crafted Defence IO: Level 50+5 (*) Expedient Reinforcement: Resistance Bonus for Pets) - Attuned Level 22: Assault Bot (A) Superior Mark of Supremacy - Acc/Dam: Level 50 (*) Superior Mark of Supremacy - Dam: Level 50 (*) Superior Mark of Supremacy - Acc/Dam/End Level 50 (*) Superior Mark of Supremacy - End/Pet +AoE Resistance and Regen Aura: Level 50 (*) Sovereign Right: Resistance Bonus for Pets) - Attuned (*) Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown - Attuned That's all the useful procs plus ~60% Accuracy, capped Damage and reasonable levels of Endurance Reduction. (I don't like the Command of the Mastermind set at all - the unique is largely worthless and for Bots/ even moreso! Assbot still needs a KB>KD IO in order for their swarm missiles to behave itself; but that's the only case of actual KB these days. Battle Drones make decent use of the Explosive Strike damage Proc)

@Devs: Posts like this one are precisely why we need more icon options for forum likes. I'm thinking "Gold Star with Lollipop" - for all the times whenever a 5 year old wanders in with a Red Crayon and proceeds to patiently explain everything to all the silly grups. (Bonus points because of the military connotations of the username and the fact that the crayon is BLOOD red...)

This is exactly the case. The largest part of the power of Scrappers comes by way of their high damage modifier; which is baked in from level 1 and drastically raises the base damage of Scrapper attacks. To bring it back to the Brute comparison that the OP was making... at extremely-low-levels, a Scrapper with no Enhancements deals decent damage compared to a Brute by dint of their modifier alone as per my earlier post. Scrapper "Hack" Base damage including Crits vs LTs+ (+10%) = 112.9 versus Brute "Hack" Base damage = 68.4 Therefore only +65% Damage (a hair under 33 Fury) is required for a Brute to equal the Scrapper without enhancements being factored in at all. So if you're too low to use any damage enhancements; then a Brute that can maintain high fury will pull noticably ahead of a Scrapper. ...but at that level it is common to encounter endurance and survivability issues that prevent you from maintaining high Fury in the first place. And that is only the *extreme* early game. After only a few short hours of playing (levels ~17-22+) the same Scrapper and Brute will typically start slotting the equivalent of a few Damage SOs into their attacks. Scrapper "Hack" 3-slotted with +3 SOs including Crits vs LTs+ (+10%) = 222.6 In order for a Brute to hit/exceed that under the same conditions, they'd require roughly +130% Damage (65 Fury). So as long as you're playing with SOs/Common Crafted IOs then Scrappers appear to be just fine compared to Brutes (and Tanks and Stalkers too; pre-IO-sets). I appreciate that it can be tempting for certain people to not slot any SO/Common Crafted enhancements until level ~27. But at the other end of the scale are the guys who run the "Death from Below" trial over and over and over. I imagine most of us sit somewhere in between. Personally I never bothered with TOs even on live, and tend to use DOs and SOs between levels 12-22 ish; then swap to Common Crafted IOs as placeholders until I can start to slot all the various Attuned and +3 Set IOs in. Also; just in case anyone who is unfamiliar with Scrapper/Tank/Brute/Stalker damage mechanics happens to have bothered reading this far through the thread (kudos!):

And then came the Fury nerfs. ATOs were a much later thing - by the time they arrived Brutes and Scrappers were largely on par because Tankers were still punching like wet noodles and Brutes filled the "hardier than a scrapper but slightly less damage" role. And then came the Tank Damage buffs. These days a Brutes niche is pretty much soloing dedicated Farming maps (whenever there's no Tanker with AoEs available + a Kinetic....) which is a very far cry from circa issues 6-10. These days? Perhaps vs Stalkers but definitely not vs Brutes.

Not a TF, but an Ouroboros Arc. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mender_Lazarus#The_5th_Column_Overthrow (A very guilty pleasure - SO MANY NAZIS to "arrest with prejudice" after a hard day at work...)

Strangely enough, it was actually the opposite experience for me on my first Scrapper. At the time /Regen was unique to Blueside, Stamina needed a power pool pick and level 20; and no other DPS ATs existed with access to a buff like Quick Recovery. By comparison to other ATs I'd played, my little Katana/Regen Scrapper just DID NOT STOP. At full pelt they could go for days, essentially a cross between an energiser bunny and a woodchipper; and they could switch into "turtle mode" with a single button press (Divine Avalanche). By comparison, other toons managed maybe one attack chain before their Blue bar bottomed out and they were reduced to using Brawl; and they tended to faceplant if a single red-conning LT so much as glanced at them. After they hit 50, that Scrapper still took pride of place on my character list for a long time... until Inventions hit + other sorts of toons became able to deal better damage whilst hitting the defence softcap solo. However they still got pulled out any time the SG ran any Malta, Carnie or Shadow Shard missions; and eventually the introduction of more damage and -res procs helped them raise their head again - not top of the pack, but a respectable "upper middle tier". My Controllers on the other hand certainly experienced exactly what you're talking about here. I'd an Illusion/Empath that was SOOOO slow to level up... even with Deceive and Phantom Wounds doing most of the heavy lifting. However once at 50 + IOed they were easily one of the best toons I've ever rolled up prior to Incarnate Abilities; with Perma-PA, Perma-Adrenaline boost, almost Perma Auras and Power Boosted Fortitudes.

The OP specifically referenced Scrapper damage in comparison to Brutes rather than Stalkers or non-melee ATs. Presumably this is because Brutes and Scrappers have identical powerset and are both generally seen as "melee DPS" ATs. The rebuttal I made was that Scrapper Damage compares favourably to Brutes even without Crits due to the Scrapper AT's substantially higher base damage modifier. I think it's fair to state that between those two ATs; Brutes have a higher survivability peak (Damage Resistance and Maximum HP); and Scrappers have a higher damage output peak (raw red numbers) and that when soloing at lower levels, Scrappers that can self-buff their damage output will pull ahead. The Damage per Animation of Scrapper attacks in comparison to Blasters, Sentinels, Stalkers, etc. is an entirely different conversation, and every point made against Scrappers there will apply to Brutes as well; since they share common animation times and powersets. That said, I have an old DPA spreadsheet dated 2011 in which a Fire/Shield Scrapper comfortably places at the top of the ST damage charts... and ten years later (2021 was when I last properly bothered mathing it) a lowly solo Katana/Regen could push >340 DPA when procced-up with an optimised attack chain without ATOs or Build Up running; and Energy Melee could comfortably push >420 DPA under the same circumstances. Yes, ATOs will certainly increase Scrapper damage; but unless things have changed drastically in the last few patches they will be adding at *most* roughly an extra attack's worth of damage onto your attack chain every ~10 seconds (The Superior CS Proc grants +50% crit rate activation for 3.25 seconds, which includes the animation time of the activating ability. Given most scrapper powerset activation times, you can typically get 1-2 attacks off at most with that buff applied to them. However hitting the 90% activation rate cap for the CS proc is only possible when you slot it into a power with >12s base recharge; and *most* of those have longer activation times. Best-case you might fit a lower-DPA 1.188s or 1.32s activation time power in, followed by something slower and heavier...) There's also an argument that other ATs (Stalkers, for example) rely much more on their ATOs for DPA than Scrappers do!