Maelwys

Don't forget that you need substantially higher S/L resistance with Bio Armor + Offensive Adaption enabled compared to Elec Armor. You could certainly take AA's Page5 A/L AFK build and swap out Elec Armor for Bio Armor with a few minor tweaks (see below) however as soon as you toggle on Offensive Adaption your S/L resistance is going to be sitting well below the 90% mark. (That said I did manage to rejiggle some slots and gain it back at the expense of a little Recharge/Regen/Recovery though - see build #2 - so whatever floats your boat I guess?) AA_AFK_SL_Page5.mbd - Original Elec Armor build AA_AFK_SL_Page5-Bio1.mbd - Bio Armor Build #1, slight tweaks only. AA_AFK_SL_Page5-Bio2.mbd - Bio Armor Build #2, more tweakage for Offensive Adaption.

(i) The Difference between a T3 and a T4 Lore is "5mins up + 10mins down" vs "5 mins up + 5 mins down". This is what makes stuff like T4 Carnies' Forge very good for damage-dealing ATs; although Talon's Empowering Burst is the best bet for MM henchmen. (ii) The BP untargettable Support Pet's rain AoE inflicts a -damage debuff, not a -resistance debuff - and a pretty forgettable amount, although it's still an immortal pet that deals damage. The real "buffing" aspect of that pet lies in Empowering Burst which is a "30secs up + 30secs down" AoE buff to recovery/regen/recharge time.

Will echo this one. If you're looking at Psi Melee then 100% go Stalker; because performancewise it's hot garbage on the other ATs but Assassin's Strike props it up considerably. And if you're going Stalker then you'll likely be lacking in AoE damage unless you really lean into specific Epic Pool attacks - Shield Charge is an obivous answer there. If you're not sold on /Shield, then /Ice would be my next choice. No AoE damage or damage buffs... but a hefty heal and higher MaxHP, +perception, decent DDR and Recharge debuff resistance... and Icy bastion is an incredible T9 that's only available on Stalkers and Sentinels.

Thematics have been covered already, so I'll just come in from the performance angle... Unless you're soloing a pylon then the invulnerable SUPPORT Lore pets are typically the only flavour ever worth bothering with; because all the others will pull aggro and die extremely quickly unless you're buffing them to the gimlets and spamming heals on them. This is even true on Masterminds with their extra Pet Aura IOs available. However Masterminds are nearly unique in CoX (other than very specific VEAT Crab soldier setups) in that the vast majority of their damage output is spread across a wide number of pets. Therefore a regular meta support Lore pet like Carnies or Seers won't do much for them, nor will Clockwork (which can keep 3-4 allies defense buffed permanently whilst it's out, but not 7!). Robotic Drones and IDF etc also technically have an AOE defense toggle buff but the uptime is very poor. You can look through all the various options available... but in short, your optimal options are the following: + Talons of Vengeance (applies decent uptime AOE buffs to damage resistance, defense and healing received throughout it's entire summoning duration), + Arachnos (triggers an AOE 90s duration Defense buff immediately, once per summoning) + Banished Pantheon (deals AOE damage and applies a -damage debuff on enemies; plus a decent uptime AOE allied buff to Regeneration, Recovery and Recharge rate. Even if pets don't get affected by recharge rate buffs/debuffs!)

Power Boost doesn't enhance Resistance buffs. In fact, it specifically doesn't enhance any Defence buffing powers that also contain a Resistance buff (such as Cold Domination Bubbles, and Darkness Affinity's Fade) The same goes for Recovery and Endurance Cost Reduction (it affects "Endurance" strength, which is a fancy way of saying that it'll work on powers which directly drain or grant a chunk of endurance, such as Transference or Power Sink. But not Recovery Aura or Speed Boost) And it'll also not affect your -Regen, -Resistance and -Damage debuffs, or your +Regen and +Damage buffs. Wild Bastion's Absorb will certainly get buffed a bit. As will the raw healing from Regrowth and the raw Endurance from Live Giving Spores (although only whilst PB is active). It'll do mostly zip for your other buffs and debuffs though unfortunately. Full list of what it affects is in its CoDv2 entry. As for Overgrowth? Definitely not buffing the +Damage, and I strongly suspect the "Endurance Discount" will not be affected either as "Discount" is coded differently from "Endurance" (it's the difference between light blue and dark blue Common Enhancements). The +ToHit will get boosted a bit though if that makes it worth it for you.

Sometimes Toggling and Untoggling Group Fly repeatedly can shake 'em loose. Otherwise, you can try "/release_pets" (which unlike "/petcom_all dismiss" doesn't care about their animations) But the only surefire way is to exit the mission map.

Short Answer: The Devs haven't quite gotten around to implementing it yet:

The good news is that you're ticked on 90% Fire Resistance and 45% Fire Defense. However you're only pulling around 21 HP/Sec regen when Consume is down (assuming you've gotten your Passive Accolades) so it likely won't survive meteor AFK farming. And your AoE damage slotting is very much lacking for clearing maps quickly in Active Farming (aside from Blazing Aura NONE of your attacks have a single damage proc; and you're missing other important things such as Hasten and a Gaussian Proc in Build Up). You're also missing the Steadfast Protection +Defence; the Reactive Defenses +Resistance, the Shield Wall +Resistance, and the Preventive Maintenance +Absorb Globals; as well as the Miracle +Recovery Proc... and I don't see any Performance Shifters and only one Preventative Maintenance +Healing Procs; at a quick glance. So as it stands your damage output is going to be poor; and you'll only be able to survive if you're Farming lower level enemies or you're actively clicking on Healing Flames. Check AA's post a few thread pages back here which contains example AFK and Active Builds for a Spines/Fire Brute. Note that both sample builds there are also Fire Resist Hardcapped + Fire Softcapped... but the AFK build has much greater passive damage buffs and regeneration; and the active build has far more AoE attacks plus Hasten. Both of them have considerable amounts of Global Recharge and most of their important AoEs are completely laden with damage procs. Ever since the aggro cap behaviour changes it's gotten much tougher for Brutes to survive AFK AE farming; and so realistically you're probably going to have to fork out a fair amount of Inf to get a top-tier Brute build that can manage it (at least with anything approaching acceptable speed - Stone's Granite Form is there as a bargain option!) It's also possible to make a Brute build that is viable in most PVE and can also AFK farm pretty well - but due to the Regeneration requirements your best option there will probably be (non Granite!) Stone Armor. The one I'm currently using on-and-off is Brute - Rad Melee - Stone Armor (Fold Space).mbd - it can handle AFK Fire Farming on meteor farms at +4x8 no problem; if a smidge more slowly than a dedicated AFK-farmer with Assault and procbombed damage auras. I completed it a few months back and it probably cost me ballpark 300m excluding the couple of Winter sets and Boosters - and the toon made that back the first day just by me throwing it into a meteor map every 10mins whilst I was supposed to be working. For ACTIVE farming - there's more leeway in terms of survivability because you're there to activate Heals and clicky buffs on demand. But in those cases you really want to load up on as many big-radius-many-target-cap AoEs as you can and proc them front+back+sideways. Tankers have the advantage there mainly due to Gauntlet's increased Target Cap buff (its radius buff is a smidge less important as it only affects certain AoEs + when farming your targets are usually tightly clustered) If you want to farm with a lower-cost build, honestly I'd go for a Tanker over a Brute any day of the week. It's much easier to hit the important survivability figures (90% res, 45% Def, >35HP/Sec Regen) on a Tanker, which gives a lot more wiggle room for slotting or power picks that aren't bleeding-edge min-maxxed. [EDIT: Updated the build to reflect what I'm currently actually using. Compared to the previously posted one it's putting out a bit more damage at the cost of a little additional endurance consumption. Atom Smasher has more local recharge and the slotting of Irradiated Ground and Mud Pots has been shuffled around]

The Defense Hardcap is different for different ATs. For Dominators it's 175% as long as you're over level 20. That said, in practice what you actually want to do here is to floor the ToHit chances of your enemies... and that's where the "softcap" idea comes in as a minimum spot to aim for which you can reach via Defense buffs and/or ToHit debuffs. 45% effective defense (regular content) and 58.75% effective defense (incarnate and Hard mode content) is the value in question - any excess you possess over and above that number will only matter whenever your foes are +ToHit buffed or you are -Defense debuffed. Note that there are some enemies that inflict -defence debuffs with every attack they make... and once you start facing them, unless you possess a decent chunk of excess defense (or a good deal of Defence Debuff Resistance) you'll very likely encounter Cascade Defense Failure (getting hit once causes you to be debuffed... which causes you to get hit more often... which debuffs you even more...). Thankfully most of the really dangerous ones are melee attacks - RANGED attacks that Debuff defence are few and far between, so a softcapped Ranged Dominator build is perfectly viable.

Power Boost will just be affecting your raw healing numbers. It's nowhere near as beneficial for /Nature as it is for /FF or /Time. Don't drop Corrosive Enzymes unless you never plan on fighting AVs/GMs.

For AFK Farming, you definitely need two damage auras and any additional passive Global Recharge is extra useful (to buff the one single clicky PBAoE attack that you get to put on autofire) - so Elec has the edge there. And it's also got a few extra places in those passive powers to stick useful self-buffing procs (e.g power transfer) For Active Farming, Rad wins but Beta Decay's Recharge buff is almost an afterthought. The main draw is Radiation Decay and Ground Zero because when procced up those two clickies can take out entire spawns by themselves; and you simply never need to worry about Regeneration or Recovery.

More force of habit since it means I get to slot it early (and it's engrained in my hindbrain that only the PVP and Purple set IOs are "auto attuned"). I typically just buy an attuned version of each proc off the AH - as since it pools all the copies of the same enhancement together, buying an attuned copy is no more expensive than buying a levelled copy.

It does indeed, but the debuffs from Beta Decay (the PBAoE Toggle) won't always actually kick in on a target before your first hit (or two) land. Especially if you're barrelling from one group to the next like a rabid werebadger.

Since we're really on a roll here... I know some folk don't use Mids (either by choice or circumstance); but I do find it very useful for ballparking average damage per attack; including damage procs. If your attack uses any procs, then often if an enhancement within it contains any +recharge% you'll get better return by lowering its level (either by purposely picking it up at a lower-level, or by not boosting it). However if that enhancement also contains +damage% (or Damage AND Accuracy AND Endurance reduction!) then there's a balancing act. You typically want each of your attacks to have at least a 95% HitRate versus +3s; and unless an attack's base damage is pitiful then it usually pays to enhance it a bit instead of sticking yet another extra 3.5PPM damage proc in there. And Mids can perform those calculations on the fly for you when it comes to damage output (drop enhancement level by 1; check average damage figure) - and it's usually pretty accurate providing you ensure you detoggle any guff like Build Up and Gaussian Procs and Scrapper Criticals OFF first... 🙂 Sometimes an attack will need to contain some "special" procs which don't fit in anywhere else; or there are set bonuses that you desperately need which sometimes take precedence over "optimal" damage slotting... but there's often still some room for improvement with specific enhancement level tweaks. Let's take a few examples: Pretty easy to see what is trying to be accomplished here - a +10% Global Recharge set bonus plus the 4.5 PPM purple proc and an Achille's Heel -Res proc. Because Purple sets contain +Recharge% the proc activation rate won't be wonderful, but it's a trade off between raw damage output and a useful set bonus... however you can stack the deck a little in your favour by not taking the Dam/Rech purple, and only boosting the DAMAGE and DAMAGE/END Purples to +5; but leaving the Acc/Dam/Rech and Acc/Rech alone. This is a ranged variant of the above (this was the only place in the build capable of slotting a Decimation proc). The Rech/Acc is not boosted; but the Dam/Rech/Acc is actually Lv50+3 because as it turns out that is the "sweet spot" for maximum average damage with a 4.5PPM damage proc in this particular case. Mids is great here for showing you the results of small level tweaks in realtime... as long as you ensure it's using accurate values for the power's recharge time - many of the Epic Powers had their stats tweaked a few pages ago and the Mids database guys can be a bit slow to include those changes! For this one, we're going for the +3.75% Melee Defence set bonus plus a 3.5PPM Damage Proc. The Touch of Death set only contains a few IOs with "Recharge" - so those are taken at the lowest possible level and not boosted in order to buff Proc activation rate. The Proc itself gets attuned; and the other IOs in the set are all Boosted to +5. Similar to the one above - this is going for a 6-piece set bonus but we want to make best use of the damage proc. As almost all the pieces in the Obliteration IO set contain "Recharge"; only the first (Damage-only) gets taken at Lv50 and boosted. This one only cares about Set Bonuses, not about Procs. So we don't even bother 6-slotting it. This one mainly cares about maximised raw damage output. Note the Lv53 Acc/Dam HO and the 50+5 Damage Obliteration; then the rest are all Procs. As a small concession to Set Bonuses; it goes for a 2-set Obliteration over a second Acc/Dam HO in order to gain a bit of extra S/L Damage Resistance. Single-Target and Targeted AoE ranged variants of the one above - once again, maximised raw damage is the main aim here with a small concession for a useful 2-piece set bonus. This is one case where Mids will NOT directly help you figure out the optimum enhancement level tweaks because the proc you're going for isn't a damage proc - so you'll need to calculate the optimal recharge enhancement figure manually and then repeatedly tweak the IO levels in Mids until you get as close to that number as possible. Spoiler Alert: "Aim" and "Build Up" powers can take ~70.35% local recharge before a Gaussian Proc's activation chance drops below 90%. So this is my typical basic slotting. And this is the "maximum damage" variant where I don't need any additional +Perception. That's a Lv50+5 Rech/EndRed/ToHit plus a Lv50+1 Rech. This is the start of what I'd call true balancing acts - where you want a very specific set bonus as well as ED-capped damage and sufficient accuracy... then you utilise the remaining slots to boost the power in other ways via utility or damage procs. This is multiple-plates-spinning-simultaneously levels of slotting. Where you've worked out precisely how much Accuracy and Endurance reduction the power requires in order for the relevant pet to end up with a capped hit rate vs +3 foes and not run out of endurance with all-guns-blazing; and are utilising all the slots to achieve that whilst simultaneously also ED-capping their damage, transforming any knockback-into-knockdown; including a damage proc that actually applies to multiple sub powers of each pet and fitting in some necessary utility IOs (Pet Aura Globals). Plus useful Set Bonuses. And also *just* softcapping your Defense. 😅 Obviously there are many, many more other possible slotting combinations... but the above should give a rough idea of some of the tweaking I actually do on each of my builds.

Yeah, that matches with what I get (Binomial calcs give a 53.1441% chance for all six Procs to fire on a single test) Therefore (leaving aside the Interface Slot which needlessly complicates things) I'd expect just over half of Ground Zero's targets to be affected by all six procs. And given it has a Target Cap of 30? that's not bad... ...at least until you consider that you can increase the average damage contribution from that particular power over time by slotting fewer procs but more regular set IOs that contain Damage% and Recharge%. Everything's a balancing act! 😀

AFAIK that's only true for Pseudopet powers (and as mentioned previously it's due to "boosts" like Global Accuracy Set Bonuses and the Kismet IO being copied to the pet, then expiring after a second or two). The new Arsenal powersets in particular are riddled with multiple overlapping pseudopet effects; there was a thread that touched on this a few months back.

Slotting is in my OP: All of those are 3.5PPM except for the Armageddon which is 4.5PPM. The Interface Slot is a flat 75% chance (not PPM) Chance of each proc should be capped at 90% due to Ground Zero's extremely long recharge time. (Note that this power could be ED-capped for recharge rate reduction and still have >90% unclamped 3.5PPM proc chance!)

I'm saying that it's definitely possible to six-slot a power with procs and see all six of those procs hit 🙂 In practice however, personally I very rarely slot more than 3-4 procs in something. I almost always want to boost the power's Accuracy a bit (notable exception: SuperStrength Brutes, because Rage) and often slotting a level 53 Acc/Dam HO or two (or a two-piece Acc/Dam/EndRed + Acc/Dam Superior Winter set) will simply give more practical benefit than a few extra procs. Especially if I'm scraping the barrel and all that's left are the Psychic or Lethal Damage ones...

AFAIK it's affected by the power's listed "Radius" and "Arc". It definitely doesn't factor in any Global buffs so stuff like Tanker Gauntlet or /Energy Blaster's "Boost Range" won't reduce your chances. I've not personally tested if adding "Range" enhancements to a power actually matters or not... but I'd not be surprised if it did (like local +recharge% slotting)

Pretty sure that's from the Dominator/Controller/Defender/Corruptor Epic pools... 8ft AoE Toggle with a smidge of damage and a Mag2 Confuse? Damage Procs from sets other than "pure damage" (such as the various CC sets like Holds, Confuses, Knockback, etc) can be a bit funky in some powers. So if you were using any of the Confuse Procs here (e.g. from the Cacophony and Malaise's Illusions sets) then I wouldn't be surprised if those particular procs were only getting a chance to apply whenever the Confuse effect itself actually successfully kicked in on each foe. Therefore if you were testing versus LTs or higher then that may have skewed the results. You could maybe try retesting just using Procs from the regular damage sets? Should be able to stick a Fury of the Gladiator "-Res" Proc and a Superior Avalanche "Chance for KD" proc if needed in the last two slots to achieve a full set of six... EDIT: Also, it's worth pointing out that a TOGGLE with 8ft radius is going to have a 3.5PPM activation chance of 30.70%. Binomial Probability suggests that your average chance of seeing ALL SIX Procs activate simultaneously is 0.083720199172025% - therefore you'd need to make many, many thousands of trials in order to achieve a decent likelihood of seeing all them trigger. So in a toggle which will only get one opportunity for any procs to trigger once every 10 seconds and likely isn't reaching the 95% ToHit rate? Yeah; you're definitely going to be there for a while even with "pure damage" set procs... I'd probably swap to a long-recharge clicky and try that instead.

I've tested it a few times now on different ATs so I'm not sure what was happening in your checks. I can't see any sign that Damage Procs are currently doing anything other than inheriting the ToHit checks of their parent power... although if the parent power doesn't HAVE a ToHit check (e.g. it's autohit) then it definitely seems that they're forced to make one; as I've seen far too many instances of Procs in stuff like Caltrops and Burn patches etc. "missing" to be explained any other way. Those built-in checks do seem to obey the usual rule for Pseudopet ToHit rolls though - e.g. if it's still within a few seconds of the power initially triggering then the ToHit check will still be affected by most of the player's Global Accuracy/ToHit Set Bonuses (because those bonuses are coded with a refreshing duration of a few seconds)... otherwise they expire and you're stuck with the power's own base accuracy - which is typically rubbish unless you've purposely slotted it for accuracy AND the power itself actually accepts accuracy enhancement buffs (e.g. caltrops doesn't but bonfire does) Yep it's 1.2 Base instead of the typical 1.0 - not wild but nice enough that my slotting on the main servers for that character only includes a single Acc/Dam/Rech IO (an Obliteration) and the power still has >95% ToHit chance versus +3s! 😀

Yups. See here: Mids even has a function to export your current build to a popup menu on the Beta Server + you can semi-automatically grant yourself all the enhancements ("File --> Export to Beta Server")

Oh I know whose thread it was, they specifically hid it. Nonono, I meant buggered if I can find my testing. In any case, just reproduced it on Brainstorm with a quick Scrapper explosion in an AE farm: 13 mobs hit; and of those 13, 8 of them got hit by all six "slotted" damage procs plus the Interface proc.

I distinctly recall testing that theory pretty recently, with an Arsenal Control AOE slotted with six procs plus an interface slot. There were multiple screenshots with colour coded arrows annotated via MSPaint, highlighting several instances where all seven "chance for additional damage" sources triggered on the same enemy. Buggered if I can actually find it now though... In any case AFAIK procs only require a separate ToHit check in Autohit abilities (like Taunts or Debuffs patches) but if the parent power already needs to pass a ToHit check then the procs will effectively just use it's check.