Maelwys

For recovery purposes: Panacea Unique is always the most powerful, by far. Miracle Unique is 2nd-best. Performance Shifter Unique is 3rd-best. A regular SO/IO in Stamina is a very close 4th. A second regular SO/IO in Stamina is a very close 5th. Then lastly there's the Numina Unique. For regeneration purposes: the Power Transfer Proc (which is NOT Unique - you can slot multiple copies of it) comfortably beats the Panacea Unique, which beats regular SOs/IOs, which beat the Numina Unique. Numina is technically "worst" at both... but it double-jobs. Therefore Panacea is the only one that's better than it 100% of the time. Personally my baseline is a Panacea + Miracle in health; and 2x Regular SOs/IOs and a Power Transfer in Stamina. I'll try to throw extra on top of that if I have the slots free, but I dislike Performance Shifter's unreliability - I'd much rather have the guaranteed steady recovery from regular IOs (and often Numina as well!) and since the average performance difference is negligible I tend to drop it. I never really miss the extra recovery - and I build all my characters to maintain an unbroken maximum-dps attack chain without running dry at endgame, often even without ageless. Performance Shifter only has a Proc rate of 25%. This means that over the course of a minute it has a 18.00% chance of not kicking in (see cumulative binomial probability) compared to the "always active" additional recovery from a regular or second regular IO in Stamina... and the theoretical performance difference between them is so slight (the region of 0.04 End/Sec) that PS becomes less attractive. Panacea technically suffers from the same issue, but its higher proc rate of 50% means that it is much more reliable in practice than PS - over the course of a minute it has only a 1.56% chance of not kicking in, and its theoretical average recovery rate is also considerably higher. Tidge has it right there actually: The Preventative Medicine unique functions as a set bonus. This means that it's always active, regardless of whether you actually use the power it's slotted into or not (it even works if the power is unavailable because you're exemplaring!) You'd be correct for the Numina and Miracle uniques, since they don't function as set bonuses but as a glorified proc e.g. a "chance for X to happen every Y seconds". Although in their case, it's a 100% chance for an effect to kick in and the effect lasts for 120 seconds... which means that their effect would always be active in a Perma Dull Pain setup anyway. And personally I'd be loathe to give up Perma Dull Pain on any INV; even in a high-end one with hardcapped everything, self-healing from their secondary powerset and a bunch of extra DDR from ageless. (Edit: Also, I should probably point out it's perfectly doable to make multiple powers trigger as soon as they're recharged with zero extra clicking effort. Whilst it's only possible to flag a single power as "autofiring" (as-in place the green circle around it) you can trigger as many powers as you want in sequence via the game's built-in keybinds/macro system. Many of my keybinds trigger a list of things like *Hasten* and *Dull Pain* FIRST before the other underlying powers fire off...)

Don't forget Staff. It pairs particularly nicely with the likes of WP and Bio because they natively buff E/N/F/C Defence and Guarded Spin buffs Lethal/Melee... 😀 Honestly, lots of different powerset combinations work. You can even cover certain holes with Epic/Patron pool abilities (such as 'Conserve Power', 'Darkest Night' or in the case Scrappers/Stalkers, 'Shadow Meld') or Incarnates (such as Ageless and Barrier). However if you're asking about efficiency, then SD is probably the set that is overall the most well-rounded (and yes, /SR is good too, but it doesn't have +Damage buffs or a Teleport Nuke...) It lacks a self-heal, but Dark Melee or Radiation Melee have that covered. Rad Melee + SD is rather difficult to beat in most sorts of content. Note that nothing is completely immortal - autohit abilities and certain mobs that deal ridiculous amounts of particularly tricky debuffs (such as the Crimson Prototype from Market Crash) can + will wreck your face if you're not careful. You can beat them, but it requires a bit more effort than "just roll your face over the keyboard until the mission ends"... ⌨️ ⌨️ 🥳

Indeed! A full discussion is probably beyond the scope of this thread, but if the OP wants to get into the nitty-gritty of it all, a good place to start would be https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Attack_Mechanics As a very quick summary:

In a vacumn, +Def beats +Res. That's because you cap at 90% Resistance (you take 10% damage) compared to Defence flooring your enemies hit rate at a 5% ToHit chance (you take 5% damage) However you can generally get a mixture of both - and characters start off with an inherent 50% chance to be "missed" by foes; which helps keeps things even-ish until you start really stacking up the numbers. The general consensus in the CoH community is to layer things. Focus on Softcapping Defence first, then raise your Resistance and Maximum Hit Points as much as possible. For a melee character, aim for at least 45% Defence (regular content) or 59% Defence (incarnate content) on at least your "Positional" Melee defence or your "Typed" S/L defence. Then make sure that you're packing some Defence Debuff Resistance (DDR) if at all possible. However certain defensive powersets have very little if any +Defence buffs - some examples here would be Radiation Armor and Electric Armor and Regeneration. In those cases, a valid way to build would be to largely ignore Defence and instead focus on hardcapping your damage resistance at 90%; and/or increasing your other mitigation ("clicky heals") by stacking +Recharge and Maximum Hitpoints. WP is a "good" powerset for damage mitigation - but not because it's Regen-based. WP provides +Resistance and +Defence and +Maximum Hitpoints in addition to its +Regeneration. +Regeneration is currently the weakest form of damage mitigation, because it is only designed to cope with a certain level of incoming damage. Beyond that level it gets completely overwhelmed. By itself, +regen simply can't keep up with the sheer amount of incoming damage that a melee character can expect to recieve in today's game. And a LOT of the newer enemy types have powers which debuff your regneration rate: +Absorb is often objectively better than +Regeneration because it can't be debuffed. I should probably point out that I do actually like +Regeneration. My namesake on live was a Katana/Regen Scrapper, and he could solo nearly anything. But that was due to him being melee defence softcapped (via Divine Avalanche) combined with being at the maximum hit point cap with a decent level of health regeneration.

WHUT? You're /Flame Mastery. A dead hero does PLENTY of damage! More seriously: swap a few enhancement slots around. Get Bonfire perma with a KB->KD IO in it. That'll take care of 99% of your mitigation needs. (a Sudden Acceleration KB->KD plus a few Common Rechs is fine. Bonfire doesn't need accuracy and you'll deal plenty of AoE damage from other sources. But you can 5-slot sets like Bombardment or Ragnarok if you've enough spare slots free) Then slot RoTP for Recharge, Damage and another KB->KD IO. So if you *DO* ever faceplant, you get to nuke things. And they'll take the full 3 ticks of damage (which works out very similar to Inferno!) rather then gettting shoved out of range by the first tick. (my goto for RoTP is 3x Overwhelming Force Rech/End, Dam/Rech/End, Dam/KD plus an Armageddon Dam/Rech. Combined with a Musculature Alpha) For Mez protection, Clarion Core Epiphany Destiny is difficult to beat because it's perma. But you may find that Melee Core Embodiment Hybrid suits you better. It's also worth noting that Assault Radial Hybrid is generally a bit higher performance than Assault Core Hybrid because Blasters tend to be saturated for +damage buffs already via Defiance, Aim and Build Up.

The Short Answer is: ReRoll as a Dominator and grab Power Boost. The Longer Answer is: You need to stack mez abilities (aside immobilize) to an EXTREMELY high Mag to hold AVs through Purple Triangles , and Higher-level Debuff Resistances mean that your mez effects will wear off faster... so you'll need to buff your duration as much as possible. You'll want to be able to inflict a smidge over Mag 57, permanently which is difficult/nigh impossible to attain on a Controller against higher-level mobs, even with Power Boost. Dominators get additional mez mag/duration via "Domination"; so it's much easier for them to keep that up. Although even they will struggle vs +4s. Some control powersets have Single-Target "Confuse" powers that possess a far longer base duration than Hold powers - these are much easier to use to keep AVs mezzed (especially with Power Boost) but it takes ages to set it up, and you won't gain Containment. There's a reason most Controllers are stuck using Immobilises vs AVs. Or Phantom Army/Mr. Poo to just tank the AV rather than mez it! 😸

Can't speak for "current / inclusive of the most recent changes", but here's a slightly tweaked version of mine. (Note that personally I don't run Hover+Fly but Maneuvers+Tactics... I stealth in and toebomb things with Trip Mine; then go to town! However I've swapped the power pools around and added a spare IO to Combat Jumping to keep S/L Defence softcapped)

Slightly older build but should still be reasonable. You may want to work more procs into Volcanic Gases these days - Posi Blast, Bombardment, Annihilation, etc... but bear in mind that the way its pseudopets are coded means that procs from mez/hold sets will in twice more often than procs from damage sets. The incarnates can be swapped around easy enough. If I recall correctly, the Resilient Core Alpha is mainly just there to ensure ol' Mr. Poo is as close to hardcap as possible whenever Barrier is swapped out for Clarion!

That's a little better, your HP isn't quite capped (Dull Pain without any Health slotting is a sad Dull Pain, and it's not going to be perma unless you keep spamming Kick) but your Endurance consumption shouldn't be as much of a problem now. Looks like 3364HP now with accolades (not capped but much better than previously) and Softcapped S/L Defence with one foe in Invincibility range (perfect!). Your Energy and Negative Energy defences are about 10% under the softcap though, so you may struggle against certain Negative-damage enemies... but there are very few attacks out there that deal purely Energy-typed damage. Realistically you should be fine here on the vast majority of content. Your S/L Resistance is hardcapped without Tough running (good, this means you don't have to run Tough ever!) or the Might of the Tanker IO kicking in (this is technically a little bit inefficient, since you'll typically have at least one stack up and usually two!). A potential upgrade here would be to drop one of the Might of the Tanker IOs - the Dam/Rech - for a decent proc. A "Fury of the Gladiator: Chance for -Res" would get my vote. I'm not a huge Titan Weapon fan, but I've an INV/SS Tanker build that might give you some ideas:

Your resistances are decent, especially Psionic. But unfortunately without Dull Pain you're lacking a self-heal, and your HP is scrapper-level at best (2239 in your mids file, rising to about 2614 with accolades? Compare that to with Dull Pain: 3534 HP and a self-heal of north of 2200 every few minutes...) Also, your Endurance is going to be an issue unless you swap to Ageless. So you're going to be playing like a lower-damage scrapper with no sustainability outside of popping green and blue inspirations. Grab Dull Pain. Stick the Panacea proc in Health and the Power Transfer Proc in Stamina. Personally, I'd drop Stealth, Infiltration, Grant Invisibility and Resist Physical Damage for Dull Pain, Super Speed (Celerity Stealth in Sprint), Conserve Power and Physical Perfection (which can take another Power Transfer Proc).

Meh. It's a Big Red Button. I like Big Red Buttons. More seriously: back when I actually played my INV tanker, I had a costume change ready for triggering Unstoppable. So whenever I had to press it, everyone on the team KNEW that I'd just had to press it... because my normally Blue Big Spandex-Clad idiot became a Yellow Big Spandex-Clad idiot with a little red and white mulletcape. I didn't use it every fight, I used it to stay upright in certain AV fights whenever my healthbar was depleting too quickly to remain viable; or I was in danger of being mezzed beyond what Unyielding could handle. I also got very good at anticipating when the crash was about to happen - it got to the point that I could reliably activate "Dull Pain" immediately before the crash, and have its Health Bar refill kick in immediately after the crash (The +MaxHP and +MaxEndurance Accolades also helped to give a lot of breathing room). It was fun to do this in the middle of tanking multiple AVs such as on the STF. Fond memories of back when player reaction times and skill actually occasionally had an impact on regular teams! These days with incarnates? There's very little need for the level of extreme +resistance buffing granted by Unstoppable. So I'd certainly get behind removing/reducing the crash (at least the -HP and -Endurance portion of it; let it do -Recovery and possibly -Regen instead!)

Yeah. Surely everyone knows the real trouble will be Freakshow, Battle Maiden flunkies, or (Ouroboros help us) Praetorian demons. (We're pretending AE doesn't exist right? Right...) I loved tanking on my INV/SS tanker back in i6/i7. That lovable taunting, raging, superjumping, footstomping brick that he was. I sometimes wheeled him out in later issues for TFs because he could tank anything. Playing him was easy mode. He could cope with any combination of teammates (PUGs and random SG teams) because he could control aggro and weather all the incoming damage without needing any outside support - he could basically solo the mission by himself (and that was COH in a nutshell to me - your character being powerful enough to simply not care what other powersets/characters are on the team. When you don't need a "Holy Trinity" of MMO pairings, you can simply have fun experiencing the content and mucking about with your friends etc.) However what that tanker couldn't do is bypass the aggro cap, so as everyone's characters gradually became more and more powerful (e.g. level 50 incarnates with full invention builds etc) then there became less and less point to bringing a dedicated tank (or a dedicated anything) along. Because it's faster to steamroll through 4-5 mobs in the time it takes to herd 2 together (even with a minimal strategy of "Taunt the nearest mob, jump into another one. Then repeatedly Footstomp/KOBlow/CrossPunch/etc and get everyone to spam their AoEs"!). You can still bring a tanker to a TF, but demanding everyone wait for you to tank is going to be an exercise in futility, and rightly so. If you want the job of playing "protector" then fine. Go for the most dangerous enemies - Quantums, Sappers, Bosses, EBs, AVs, GMs. Sort your targeting binds out and be attentive. Don't worry about grabbing ALL the aggro; the Blaster can likely handle a few (dozen) minions... ...and if they can't? Then you can hand them a wakey and gently point out that they'll grab a little less attention if they let you leap in first. But always consider that they might be a veteran who wants to use Rise of the Phoenix or something, rather than a newbie who got in over their head - Faceplanting in this game isn't particularly problematic unless you're running a "Master of X" TF. So let the rest of the team bite off whatever they feel they can chew, and just have some fun with it all... 😅

Depends how you build them. Certain MM secondaries (particularly /Kin, and to a lesser extent /Nature and /Thermal) can put out some extremely impressive DPS figures. Primary matters too - e.g. Bots deal crazy amounts of AoE. Demons deal crazy amounts of ST. Thugs are somewhere in the middle. MMs don't have a taunt aura, and their damage output is staggered over the pets so there's fewer ego-boosting massive red number values floating over mobs' heads. But on the plus side, they don't share the same traditional weaknessess as Brutes/Scrappers - such as single target debuffs and endurance drains. The Crimson Prototype from Market Crash comes to mind - it's FAR easier to solo that AV on a Mastermind than on a melee AT.

By itself it's a bit pants, but it takes a fair amount of procs and it can even be used as a decent survivability buff (make sure to stick at least a Power Transfer: Chance to Heal in it) To put some numbers against it: + Base damage of Lightning Field is 12.5123 damage every 2 seconds, or a little under 6.3 damage/second per target. + "Regular" slotting at level 50 (+Acc and +Dam and +EndRed) = roughly 12.5 damage/second per target. + With Procs and Incarnates (Armageddon Proc + Eradication Proc + Obliteration Proc + Acc/Dam HO + Armageddon Dam/End IO + Power Transfer Proc + Musculature Core Alpha Incarnate) = average of 36.29 damage/second per target. The Power Transfer Proc returns 66.93 HP every time it activates. It can't activate more than once every 10 seconds, but each target hit by Lightning field has a seperate 26.32% chance to trigger that activation... so the more targets hit by Lightning Field, the more likely that you'll get healed. It works out at anywhere from +1.762 HP/sec -> +6.693 HP/sec (for comparison, unslotted "Grounded" gives about +5.58 HP/Sec).

Whilst I completely agree that debuffs are great, the problem with using -Tohit in your defcap calculations is that its effectiveness differs greatly depending on what you're fighting. +Defense is difficult to negate: very few foes have noteworthy +Tohit buffs or Autohit attacks (lategame it's mainly Nemesis, Rularuu and Incarnate content) so packing some Defense Debuff Resistance will be sufficient most of the time. However -ToHit debuffs get affected by enemy debuff resistances and level difference. So all your powers that inflict -ToHit tend to operate between 30% and 65% effectiveness vs regular foes in endgame, and they become negligible against AVs and GMs (e.g. best case vs a Lv54 AV is 8.45% effectiveness!)

You can hardcap S/L resists and Softcap positionals fairly easily with /Shield; and the Panacea and Power transfer Healing Procs do a good job of keeping your health topped up. Energy Melee is also one of the lowest cost sets in terms of endurance consumption, so you can get away without Ageless if you prefer taking Barrier etc. Here's an example that hits the magic numbers regardless of your incarnate picks (although I'd still recommend picking up Musculature Alpha, Degenerative Interface and Assault Hybrid!)

Look again. Bot/Traps is all about powerset synergy: + Caltrops keeping things from fleeing out of your Assault Bot's Incendiary Missile patches. + Triage Beacon providing top-up healing for you and your entire team of henchmen. + Forcefield Generator stacking with your Protector Bot Bubbles, and providing Mez protection (again, for you and all your henchmen). + Acid Mortar buffing the damage of you and all your henchmen. + Poison Trap causing everything to be mezzed and have their Regeneration rate halted. To combine with Acid Mortar, Incendiary Missiles, Bot's inherent -Regen blasts, etc. + Toebombing things with Trip Mines, whilst at the Defence softcap and stealthed and/or your henchmen are taking the aggro. + Web Grenade can immobilise and inflict -fly on AVs. + You can even tank in Bodyguard mode. It was one of the premium soloing powerset combinations well before Inventions/Incarnates; and I can attest to its effectiveness personally. The only thing it needs is Aid Self/Other plus a means of preventing knockback on big groups of foes (since cycling Web Grenade on each enemy in a big mob whilst your henchmen are laser-blasting and launching missiles at them gets old fast) but Inventions and/or the Mu Patron pool's AoE Immobilise have that covered.

That proc is only 1PPM, so a 32s clicky with a 1.32s arcanatime activation is never going to get a capped activation chance. The highest you can get (0% recharge slotting) is 55.53% activation chance. At 50% recharge slotting it becomes a 37.76% activation chance. At 100% recharge slotting it's a 28.87% activation chance. Using the build up proc in there is fine, but its performance will greatly depend on what other powers you're able to activate within its remaining effect time: 5.25-1.32 = 3.93 seconds plus a maximum of another 0.5 seconds (due to the additional "Animation Time Before Effect" that's present on the set bonus) so ballpark of "4 and a bit seconds in which to squeeze in as many other attacks as possible".

My first Blaster on live was a Fire/Ice because of Ice Patch and Shiver. Those two powers basically let him survive the aggro of nuking everything with Firebreath and Fireball (and corner pulling was a thing too). When he hit 50 he was by far my favourite toon to just hop on and enjoy a TF or some missions with friends. However by then he was never using Ice Patch and Shiver for damage mitigation; but to stop enemies running out of the effect of Rain of Fire. His attack plan was essentially: Locate the biggest nearby mob he can find --> Jump into the middle of it --> Inferno --> Jump into the middle of the NEXT mob and run in little circles until he Faceplants (with bonus points if there's a tank and/or healer trying to stop that from happening) --> Rise of the Phoenix --> Keep incinerating things with Fireball and Fire Breath and Blaze and Rain of Fire until Inferno is recharged --> Repeat. He was totally useless for "Master of [Insert TF here]" runs. But he was a real genuine joy to play. Eventually they even patched things so he could use a few lower-tier attacks whilst mezzed. Bonus! These days on HC, Blaster's nukes don't floor your endurance/recovery and they recharge faster, so that style of play is even better. Don't think of Blasters as ranged Scrappers. They're their own thing, and they are completely brilliant at precisely three things: Damage, Bedlam, and causing support-oriented teammates to have heart attacks. (Edit: I should probably also point out that I'm aware that "Blappers" exist. I'd a Sonic/Elec Blaster with softcapped S/L defense on live as well... he was survivable, he was effective, he was powerful... and he continuously slept in my ALTs list because he was completely boring to play in comparison to my Fire/Ice!)

There's no need to drop them. Aim for 45% S/L Defence (including a Protector Bot Bubble) and as much +Recharge as you can, with a secondary concern being +MaxHP. Getting your HP above 1100 or so (including accolades) should be doable. Don't worry too much about damage resistance or positional (Ranged/AoE/etc) defence. Softcapping your positional defences is difficult with the Mace Mastery Patron (particularly if you're aiming for +Recharge to get those Regen and Recovery Auras to maximum uptime!) and personally I'd just as soon not bother: you shouldn't need to to raise the mitigation of your MM very much through set bonuses; because the bulk of the aggro will fall on your Assault Bot. Even if you spam Pulse Rifle Burst and Arcane Bolt, you'll usually only need to withstand the attention of one foe at a time. AoE "splash damage" isn't much of a concern for you because there's very little reason for an /Empath MM to be standing right in the middle of your pets in the first place (although you can certainly dart in momentarilly to drop an aura). They're defence softcapped and you have ranged heals; so you only need to remain within Supremacy + Leadership aura range which is a good 60ft away. If for some reason you get into real difficulties, then you have Bodyguard mode and Healing Aura available to fall back on. Maybe try something like the below?

No worries! You could easily swap RS for Contaminated Strike if you prefer - or even pick up Cross Punch from the Fighting Pool and swap the "Brute's Fury" set into Proton Sweep instead. RS deals decent damage, but it's much more useful on a character that lacks other self-heals. A /FA Brute won't overly miss it. Regarding Fusion: The Gaussian "Chance to Build up" Proc is rated at 1PPM (Proc Per Minute). All of the "Build Up" type powers (including Fusion) have a 90s base recharge with 1.32s "Arcanatime" animation time, so you can slot anything below 70.85% recharge into them and still hit the 90% activation chance cap for the Gaussian proc. With a +1 level 50 Rech IO and a +5 level 50 Rech/Tohit/EndRed IO that's 70.92% recharge, so it's *just* shy of the cap (it technically has a 89.9604% chance to activate, which is close enough to basically be a rounding error!) 😁 ...so realistically, the Gaussian Proc will go off 9/10 times, with that exact slotting of Fusion.

Capping your Smashing/Lethal resistances and getting as close to the 45% Defence softcap as possible (mainly looking at Melee Defence) is the usual method to improve your survivability in PvE. Recharge is fairly important for getting power recharges back ASAP (including Healing Flames) but it's not usually worth pursuing "above all else". Your resistance to Defence Debuffs is going to be extremely low (likely non-existent) so you'll suffer a bit from the 'snowball effect' - if an enemy group has an attack that debuffs your Defence then as soon as one of those foes get a lucky hit in against you, the others will become very likely to hit too; which will make matters worse and your defence will very quickly be floored. The Ageless Radial Epiphany Incarnate can help a bit there, but it's often more straightforward to just stick to Barrier and overcap it. Acrobatics isn't a bad means of gaining Knockback protection, but getting Mag 8+ via IOs is nearly always "good enough" for PVE content The other thing to look for is Hit Rate: Open Mids, click on OPTIONS and then CONFIGURATION. Now go to the "Exemping and Base Values" tab. Find the box labeled "Base ToHit" and change its contents to "48". Doing that will set your powers' accuracy calculations in Mids so that it shows what chance each one of them has to hit enemies that are +3 to you (which is realistically the maximum you'll be fighting against most of the time in higher end PVE teams). You'll want to get each power as close to the 95% accuracy figure as possible, which is the effective "cap". Your power selection looks pretty decent, with the exception of Temperature Protection. Personally I'm a fan of having a Stealth ability in PVE (e.g. Superspeed + a Celerity:Stealth in Sprint) - it's handy to be able to avoid fighting the entire map occasionally. Also, having a Taunt that is autohit and ranged can sometimes help vs certain "tough" foes/ on TFs or AVs/GMs/etc. Here's one example build idea to aim for - it'll have a very similar playstyle, just with a bit more AoE capability and a lot more mitigation (it could farm, but it's much more of an all-rounder. Power pick order can be swapped around as desired):

I dabbled in PvP. I remember a few EU users (Can't remember exactly who it was, but Archy and Xanthus ring a faint bell?) tried to get myself and a few of my PVE SG friends into Arena 3v3 PVP fights back in the pre-invention days. This was before Travel suppression; whenever an Empath + a /Energy Blaster blapper duo basically won everything. I brought a Sonic/Elec Defender along and could take someone permanently out of the fight with Force Cage... but there just wasn't enough damage output to focus fire the others down. Most PVE-specced characters just weren't set up for burst damage. The matchups back then in Arena were very much Rock/Paper/Scissors. By the time Zone PvP became a thing... basically everyone just hated Stalkers; except for when they hated Masterminds instead (I mostly played on a Bots/Traps Mastermind with Teleport foe. Siren's call was hilarious). I do remember a certain match rather fondly however: myself on a Katana/Regen scrapper and a SG buddy on their INV Tanker (War Man? Hammerfall? Odin's Son? There were a lot of INV Tankers...) decided to have a friendly scrap in the middle of Warburg. We were standing toe-to-toe for a good 10 minutes, neither of us able to drop the other to zero. Eventually another SG buddy who'd been spectating our fight (I'm fairly sure this was MortalDecay, but it could have been DarknessBliss. Curse my dodgy middle-aged memory!!) called "time out" and we both hopped over to join them... ...and then we both promptly got blown up and KO'ed by the 20+ Trip Mines that he'd been secretly laying. Much swearing and laughter was had all 'round. Yeah, PVP back then was a fun diversion, but it got old + boring pretty fast unless you were a member of some of the diehard cliques and kept it up because of the community interaction angle. I wouldn't want to live there.

There are long threads somewhere testing this; but to briefly sum it up: Reactive is a stacking -2.5% Resistance debuff. Degenerative is a stacking -3.5% MaxHP debuff. Both can stack up to 4 times. Lets say you're a level 50 Minion, with 430.80 HP: With 1 stacks = you can either take 2.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 420.2927) or you lose 3.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 415.722) With 2 stacks = you can either take 5.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 410.2857) or you lose 7.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 400.644) With 3 stacks = you can either take 7.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 400.7442) or you lose 10.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 385.566) With 4 stacks = you can either take 10.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 391.6364) or you lose 14.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 370.488) Now, there is something to be said for how these debuffs actually function practically in the game. -MaxHP reduces your overall "maximum" HP value AND your "current" HP value by the same percentage whenever it hits (you can see this happening in reverse in MaxHP buffs such as Frostwork) so if the enemy is at 100% HP whenever it procs, then you'll reduce their current HP by the full amount... but if the enemy is at 50% HP whenever it procs, then you'll reduce their current HP by 50% of the amount, etc. So the actual amount of HP it "removes" from the target (and therefore the effectiveness of this proc) gets lower as the target's current HP drops. At this point you might be thinking "Hey Mael, doesn't that mean that if you've already damaged a foe then Reactive becomes better then Degen?" So lets do the same thing for a level 50 Minion with "half of their HP already gone" (215.4) whenever a proc kicks in: With 1 stacks = you can either take 2.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 210.1463) or you lose 3.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 207.861) With 2 stacks = you can either take 5.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 205.1429) or you lose 7.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 200.322) With 3 stacks = you can either take 7.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 200.3721) or you lose 10.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 192.783) With 4 stacks = you can either take 10.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 195.8182) or you lose 14.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 185.244) So the answer is nope. Degenerative's -MaxHP is still better because the effective percentages remain identical - you'd see exactly the same performance versus a weaker enemy that possessed that lower hit point figure to begin with. HOWEVER (and this is the very important bit!) there are a lot of things out there that function based on your Maximum HP - basically all self-healing abilities as well as regeneration rate. So Degen's -MaxHP Proc is actually a very good means of debuffing those things... and it is particularly useful on AVs/GMs because there is no such thing as "resistance to Maximum HP debuffs" to reduce the effectiveness of this proc! This means that the same percentage of Hit Points will get removed for every enemy in the game. Unlike "-Regeneration" debuffs, which get resisted like crazy by anything that's worth fighting. Finally: if you use a Degenerative Proc, then the enemy always lose the same amount of maximum HP regardless of its damage resistances. For comparison, Resistance debuffs get resisted by whatever your current Damage Resistance is - meaning that if you're fighting things on a Claws Scrapper (for example) and a Reactive proc kicks in, then your attacks will start dealing 2.5% more Lethal damage than you were previously dealing, regardless of whether the enemy is 90% resistant to your Lethal damage (e.g. a 1000 damage attack used to deal 100 damage, so now it deals 102.5 damage) or 0% resistant to your Lethal damage (e.g. a 1000 damage attack used to deal 1000 damage, so now it deals 1025 damage). TL;DR: Basically Degen is always better, and it becomes FAR better whenever you're fighting things which are resistant to your damage type. ----- Finally-finally: there is also a bit of difference in the other "Damage over Time" portion of the two procs. Degenerative deals 0.100 MeleeScale worth of Toxic damage. Reactive deals 0.125 MeleeScale worth of Fire damage. Technically Reactive deals more raw damage. But which one of these will be better "in practice" depends on the damage resistances of the enemy you're fighting. The impact of this is usually so minor that Degen's secondary effect wins out.

I don't have a Robot/Empathy MM, but I've played an awful lot of Robot MMs (/Traps and /Dark and /Kin and /Thermal and /Time; all extensively at level 50) and I'd a level 50 Ill/Emp Controller back on Live that I ran as a main for a little while. Robots have not got anywhere near Phantom Army's level of Invincibility by any stretch of the imagination, but they deal a good bit more damage and are a very "easy to play" MM set. They were fairly well behaved even back before HC's pet AI changes; because they're basically purely ranged damage dealers; and they bubble themselves for defence. There's a bit of lag time at the start of missions whilst the Protector Bots get the bubbles set up, but after that it's largely "cruise control" mode. You *can* micromanage them a bit should you so choose, in order to get the most out of Swarm Missiles. And sometimes having your Assault Bot (the pet with the largest health bar and highest level) run in to take an Alpha Strike can help smooth out incoming damage if you're not using bodyguard mode extensively. But usually you'll have a lot of free time to spend on using your secondary powerset's ablities. Which suits sets like /Empathy and /Kinetics very nicely - but there's few things more boring than a Bot/FF! The Synergy between Robot/ and /Empathy will definitely be via stacking Fortitude and Protector Bot Bubbles. Clear Mind doesn't hurt either. Softcapped pets with full Mez Protection are rather easy to keep healed up. Regarding ToHit, henchmen can indeed have it rather rough because of the level difference. If you're fighting things that are +4 to you then your Drones will be -6 to them (20% Base ToHit chance) but eventually you'll end up fighting enemies that are level 54 whenever you're level 51, so the effective level difference becomes +5 for your Drones in regular endgame content (Incarnate content is different, since henchmen gain "automatic Incarnate shifts" to bring them up to the same level as their owner). Supremacy (which grants +10% ToHit to all pets within 60ft) can close the gap a bit though. Throw in an "unslotted for ToHit" Tactics (it's an odd MM who doesn't take the Leadership Pool) and Fortitude, and you're going to have a very decent chance to hit... but you'll still want to slot the equivalent of 3x SO's worth of accuracy in the Drones, 2x SO's worth in the Protector Bots and 1x SO's worth in the Assault Bot in order to reach that magical "95% Hit Rate" cap. If you slot both Tactics and Fortiude for +ToHit, then you can get by with removing one SO's worth of accuracy from each of those figures; and any global accuracy bonuses will add up too. I'd say go for it. It's a decent combo and works out reasonably strong the entire way through the leveling progression. It'll be good for TFs, and these days few teammates at endgame will need the extra +Defence from Fortitude anyway, so at least on a MM your buffs aren't wasted. Maybe even forgoe the traditional Musculature Alpha Slot for an Agility Core or Spiritual Radial? Hmm... 🤔 😁 Your Empathy power slotting seems pretty much spot on. The only thing I'd change would be cramming as much recharge into the Regeneration + Recovery Auras as possible, since it's technically doable to get their downtime under 30 seconds (=90s up, 30s down) with enough investment. But for Adrenaline boost, as long as you can get its recharge under 120 seconds you're golden. Personally I quite liked Absorb Pain on my Ill/Emp; but I teamed with a lot of rather scrapperlock-happy headcases back in those days. Currently I agree it's skippable. I'd much rather it granted +Absorb rather than raw healing! Edit: I don't have a Bot/Empathy build handy, but here's my Ill/Empathy's and Bot/Time's as of the last revision: