Maelwys

I can understand the frustration with being locked into unwanted Prereqs. But there's always a bit of wiggle room. Take my current build for example: Arachnos Crab Spider (Soul).mbd There are two spare slots in Stamina which are really just there to buff MaxHP above 2k; and the Numina Proc in health is likewise doing very little. If I wanted to take Darkest Night then I could drop either Aim or Assault (my preference would be to drop Aim and move Tactical Training: Assault to Lv16) then use 1-3 slots from Health and Stamina to fill it with either a 4-piece Dark Watcher's Despair (skip the ToHit/Rech and the Proc) or 2-3x Enzyme HOs.

You can open the pool with either Gloom or Soul Tentacles (0 powers required) then it lets you select Dark Obliteration or Darkest Night (1 power required); then it lets you select Summon Widow (2 powers required). So you'll need to take either Gloom or Soul Tentacles regardless of whatever else you pick unfortunately. Thankfully Gloom is a really good Single Target attack with high DPA and proc chances; and it IMO fills out the Crab's attack chain nicely. Nothing to stop you taking Gloom at Lv35, Dark Obliteration at 38, Darkest Night at Lv41 and Summon Widow at Lv44 if you want them all?

Arachnos Radial is fine, as long as you're aware that it grants roughly the same benefit to your pets as using a single Medium Purple Team insp once every 10 minutes. Mids is indeed lying if it's claiming that. Note the "requires ownPowerNum?(Epic) >0" line in Darkest Night's CoDv2 entry. You should only need a single other Soul Mastery power to take it. (Note that you can only pick Darkest Night at a minimum level of 41 (not level 38!) but you only need one prereq for it!) I've just tested this in an in-game /respec and seems accurate: IIRC optimal Darkest Night slotting is 4-piece Dark Watcher's Despair (skip the ToHit/Rech and the Proc) or 2-3x Enzyme HOs.

Hybrid: Support Core grants +12% Defense to your pets and 6% to you rather than Support Radial's +8% to everyone. Destiny: Barrier Core lasts for 120s rather than Barrier Radial's 90s. Lore: Talons Radial gives you an invulnerable AoE-buffing support pet rather than Talons Core's Boss and LT pet (which deal more damage but do not AoE-buff anything and are not invulnerable!). The only other Lore option worth considering is Arachnos Radial - it can essentially be thought of as a 90 second PBAoE +10% Defense buff (since as soon as you activate it the support pet casts Mind Link which due to its high recharge is only available once per summoning) plus a bit of Single-Target healing. Talons is better if you're fighting longer than 90s once every 10 minutes; and brings benefits that a Purple Team inspiration does not. Interface: Typically Degenerative (-MaxHP, better vs AVs) or Reactive (-Resist, better vs Everything Else). Radial gives more chance for the debuff, Core gives more chance for the DoT. You have lots of pets so the debuff tends to be maxed out regardless, therefore always go Core. Judgement: Pick whatever you like, however the only one that has an impact to your pets will be Void Radial since it inflicts a hefty AoE -damage debuff. Alpha: Typically Musculature Core, since that provides by far the biggest outside-ED damage boost to your pets. Intuition Radial (+Range -ToHit) or Musculature Radial (+RunSpeed, +EndMod, -ToHit) are your other options... although realistically the main thing they'll affect is Gloom and Dark Obliteration's -ToHit debuff and IMO it's not worth the tradeoff in damage output. I believe Darkest Night can still be taken in place of Dark Obliteration; it only requires one prior pick from the pool. Darkest Night inflicts -11.25% ToHit compared to Dark Obliteration's -5.625%... although your Crab's own AoE damage output will drop pretty drastically and IMO it'd be better to just slot DO for -ToHit and swap to Musculature Radial (which would raise its debuff to around -9.54% ToHit as per my "Aim+Assault+Weave" build posted earlier)

Oh, forgot the Crab themselves: As per previous post - bit shy of softcap (which for Melee and Ranged is made up by Barrier cycles and Dark Obliteration) and a decent smattering of Resistances which gets boosted by Barrier as well as the Talon Lore pet's PBAoE buff. Max HP being >2k alongside a <100s Serum recast and its inherent Regeneration plus Power Transfer and Panacea +Heal Procs seems to keep them upright just fine despite the Crab tending to draw more than their fair share of incoming fire. (Occasionally on tougher teams I'll run Melee Core Hybrid instead of Support Core in order to Hardcap their Resistances...) Mids sometimes borks at displaying the actual healing from Serum, but it's ~865 HP (unaffected by external buffs sadly, so doesn't increase if the Lore pet buff is active!). Finally - my original post touched on this briefly; but one recommendation that doesn't come up a lot is using an Overwhelming Force "Chance for Knockdown" IO in the Spiderlings. Spiderlings don't need ED-capped recharge in order to get them perma (unlike your other summons) and using a 4-piece "Call to Arms" set (including the aura IO) plus the OF Proc and a Musculature Alpha will very nearly cap their ED damage whilst leaving the 6th enhancement slot free for another Aura IO. However more importantly - that Knockdown proc is actually very useful to the Spiderlings, because whatever each of the three little scutters are attacking will get knocked prone quite often (it's 2.5 PPM chance in both of their attacks!) and since they don't have much else in the way of inherent mitigation it can really prolong their lifespan.

Also for anyone wondering what the Pets will look like in actual gameplay: [Spiderlings] [Call Reinforcements] (same Defense values and Status Protection/Resistance values as Spiderlings) [Blood Widow] - - - - - - - - - - Whilst your Talons Lore summon is active the invulnerable buffing "Siren Essence" pet will constantly cycle a PBAoE aura buff called "Soothing Song", which buffs you and all your pets - boosting Healing Received by 25% (the pet also spams a Single Target heal named "Regenerating Song" on things, so this is actually helpful!) and boosting Damage Resistance and Defense by 10% and 5% respectively. This PBAoE buff has 20s duration, 45s recharge and 2.244s cast time; so roughly a ~42% uptime for the entire 5 minute duration of the summon. Since the Summon Power itself has a 10minute recharge time this pet can be out half the time. The other Talons pet summoned alongside the buffing one is the "Diviner Essence" boss. It doesn't last as long (not invulnerable and only a 200s duration rather than 300s) but it does quite high damage with its regular ST attack and two cones... and the real kicker is its "Seasonal Shift" ability, which is a PBAoE attack with a target cap of 255 (!!) that deals reasonable damage on anything within 30ft plus a substantial -ToHit debuff on anything within 15ft (18s recharge). (same Defense values and Status Protection/Resistance values as Spiderlings) - - - - - - - - - - Whilst the Lores are NOT active your Spiderling and Disruptor Drone pets will sit at around 31% Defence to all (14% short of the regular content Softcap) and the Widow will sit at 53.5% to Melee and 46% Ranged/AoE (comfortably softcapped; albeit with no Defense Debuff Resistance!). However running Barrier on a Cycle will add a minimum of 5% defense and resistance constantly; and attacking your foes with either Gloom or Dark Obliteration (without any -ToHit enhancement slotting) also inflicts decent amounts of -ToHit (-5.63% vs +0 targets; 3.64% vs +3s). So typically in regular gameplay even your Spiderlings and Drones will end up at ~40%-45% effective defense before Lores or Support Core Hybrid. Support Core Hybrid can add another 12%; and alongside Barrier will push the pets beyond softcap at roughly ~50% uptime (120s up, 120s down) even without spamming -ToHit attacks. If you want to have all your pets permanently "softcapped" then picking up Darkest Night instead of Dark Obliteration is the way to go (lowering your AoE damage output but increasing survivability another notch with its additional -tohit -damage debuffs) but IMO going that far is typically unnecessary. And frankly I really like spamming Dark Obliteration... 😸

FWIW the Soul Mastery variant is what I've been playing myself, and yes all three of my builds primarily try to get the best performance out of the pets (in terms of both damage and survivability- the build throws out a lot of AOE buffs and debuffs). The Crab themself has slightly less performance but I managed to get them close to softcap and pretty resilient with a spammable attack chain that contains a lot of AoE. If the pets die off the damage output starts to plummet, however it's still a very nice team support toon if/when all the pets are gone. It's also actually currently one of my favourite Farmer AFK follower toons for doing AE maps alongside my Bot/Kin/Flame MM. Regarding Ancillary Summons... I tried them all, extensively. Guardian stays at range and takes less damage as a result but deals very poor damage (and a Power Transfer 'Chance to Heal Self' Proc does nothing for them unfortunately). Blaster and Coralax and Widow all melee, and the Widow deals by far the most damage... at the expense of blowing through their endurance bar extremely quickly. The Widow is probably the best option as long as you slot a fair bit of endurance reduction in them, and as a bonus they get a decent chunk of +defense (and so tend to be softcapped with Crab Manuevers and the two +Def pet aura IOs - although they do have a major case of "scrapperlock" and can start to struggle if they stray too far from the Crab). The prerequisite powers in the Soul ancillary pool also have very good DPA and inflict substantial -ToHit (Dark Obliteration can also be slotted with a 4-piece Cloud Senses + a HO + a Ragnarok as shown in the first "Aim+Assault+Weave" build linked in my original post if you want to maximise the -ToHit debuff). If you wish to go all-in on pet damage then one of the Coralax prereqs can be Arctic Breath (cone -15% res) and one of the Blaster prereqs can be Shatter Armor (single target -20% -res)... but neither are as spammable as Dark Obliteration or Mu Lightning; and Dark Obliteration at least helps your pets out a bit defensively. Also, Incarnatewise I'd almost always go Barrier Core Destiny, Support Core Hybrid, and Lore Talons Radial.

Post count is srs biznss. Having paid attention to it. I'm not impressed. It's not even over 9,000! (from The Fifth Elephant by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett)

So all-rounders. Gotcha. Fire is up there obvs. Have you tried Assault Rifle since the i27p2 changes? Ignite and Full Auto are actually pretty good DPA now. I'm kinda partial to Elec too - if you're leveraging Shock then it keeps your blue bar full and closes the ST damage gap a bit. Or just be an Archer and throw out Nukes every <20s.

First, swap to Musculature Core Alpha. Because the outside-of-ED damage boost it grants is pretty major. After that; pick up Assault and preferably Tactics from the Leadership pool. Then look at your pet slotting... here's an example from one of my Bots/ MMs for some ideas: Assault Bot and Battle Drones can both use an Explosive Strike Damage Proc - if you only have room for one then put it in the Assbot. Make sure all pets are ED-Capped in Damage across the board and remember that since your T1 pets spawn at -2 to you they need considerably more accuracy to reliably hit enemies. Change the combo box at the top of your Mids window to "Enemy Relative Level: +5" and strip out your Kismet IO and all your Accuracy set bonuses to show what your Drones will actually be like vs regular +3 enemies - at present it's only listing a 68.33% hit rate even with Nerve Core Alpha; and you really want that to say 85%+ (so 95%+ with Supremacy). Slotting Tactics and using Support Core and moving the Soulbound "Chance for Build Up" Proc into them can help. Your Protector Bots are fine at 89.68% (vs "Enemy Relative Level: +4"), as is the Assbot. Tar Patch - leave the two End/Rech/Slows (or switch one or both of them to Lv50+5 Recharges) and swap the other slots for Impeded Swiftness and Ice Mistral's Torment Procs. I'd be very tempted to proc-bomb Electrifying Fences too. Another consideration will be Lore and Hybrid incarnates. The best all-round Hybrid for pets is Support Core (even if Assault Core can provide a much higher damage spike if you time it right it's very fiddly to leverage reliably). Best Lore IMO is Banished Pantheon for pure damage (via lots of -resist debuff and raw attacks) or either Talons or Arachnos for survivability (with Arachnos acting as a single-use 90s AoE +Defence panic button compared to Talon's much smoother benefits to +Defence, +Resistance and +Healing over their entire summoning window).

Do you mean DPS when hitting one big tough foe like a pylon; or DPS when soloing a large mapful of foes? (for the second I doubt secondaries other than /Kin are even on the same playing field...) 🧦 For ST I think Ston's work still mostly stands. For AoE I'm not sure Fire is hugely far in the lead, as Water and AR and Elec etc. all have their own merits. But it's certainly fun... 😀

A long time ago in a server far, far away... Pre-issue 14 all pets were affected by recharge rate changes (buffs/debuffs) including the FF Proc. This was particularly brilliant in Robotic's "Assault Bot" as the best damage output on that pet was traditionally achieved skipping the Equip power (which gave it the rubbish Flamethrower ability) and only using the Upgrade Power (which gave it the two Swarm Missile powers). This left natural gaps in its attack chain; and with the FF Proc it ended up being able to utterly spam Incendiary Swarm Missiles. Pre-Issue 13 slotting a Recharge Intensive Pet Set IO could also reduce the recharge time of your Pet attacks. Although that was more useful for non-MMs IIRC.

All of those ATs can be built to solo at +4/x8 relatively stress free - just floor your enemies' chance to hit you (either by raising your defense or lowering their ToHit or both) and then go to town with Controls/Blasts/Whatever. What they can't do is solo at x4/x8 in a regular AE Farming map stress-free. At least not quickly. If you don't mind taking longer, then easymode will be a /FF or /Time Mastermind with Power Boost (especially for the latter). If you want faster killspeeds and don't mind using your self-rez, then go for a Fire^3 Blaster or a Dominator. Defenders and Corrupters and Sentinels will be somewhere in the middle. Controllers are their own thing - a good Plant/Time or Illusion/Time will be even more chillaxed than a MM; but likely slower to wade through mobs. Personally I've long since gotten to the point that AE farming on my Bot/Kin/Flame MM can be rather relaxing; and it's not hugely far off my Tanker times. But that's taken me a lot of practice plus a rather unusual set of AE mission foes (Cold or Psi damage!) and a very min/maxed build. And I still prefer a second account tagging along (preferably something with a Taunt Aura and/or Fold Space; although my pet-buff-focused Crabbermind is hilarious). But given you can pick practically any Tanker (or a /Stone Brute), throw them into a map then come back ~10mins later to a sea of dead foes and a full HP bar...? Yeah, it's going to be hard to out-do that.

Over the years I've definitely used Spreadsheets far more often for "pretty looking data manipulation" than for maintaining sortable lists of things. There are a lot of use cases for a crayola-inspired splash screen which can perform a large number of recalculations based on you changing one of more input values; and Spreadsheets can accomplish that without you having to resort to breaking out a full compiler + spending half a day just writing the initial frontend (assuming that you even know how to code in the first place). Spreadsheets are also portable and tweakable in realtime in exactly the same way that source code isn't. They're not a patch on a proper relational database mind you (although I've seen them used for that too; and almost always badly) but I'd still prefer a well-built spreadsheet to anything created in the sticky lukewarm mess that is Microsoft Access 🤮

Staff has three AoEs (Guarded Spin, Innocuous Strikes, Eye of the Storm) all of which get affected by both the radius and the target cap increases from Gauntlet, so I'd be hard pressed to consider it better on a Brute. Elec Armor is definitely a decent resistance-based powerset though and it doesn't lose a huge amount from having an 8ft rather than a 12ft damage aura.

AFAIK that's only true as long as you've not actually dealt any damage to the target from regular non-Brine attacks? The -MaxHP debuff Brine Inflicts is flat, but the actual "damage" that ends up being subtracted from your target's red bar scales down in proportion to their current HP as per player testing. And I suspect that's an intentional result of how MaxHP debuffs/buffs operate rather than a bug. Using the numbers in that linked video as a functional example: [Casting Brine whenever your target is at 100% HP] After -282.56 MaxHP debuff (Brine x1) --> CurrentHP 584.84/584.84 HP (=282.56 "damage dealt" by Brine) After -565.12 MaxHP debuff (Brine x2) --> CurrentHP 302.28/302.28 HP (=282.56 "damage dealt" by Brine) [Casting Brine whenever your target is at 43.1% HP] After -282.56 MaxHP debuff (Brine x1) --> CurrentHP 251.9/584.84 HP (=121.7 "damage dealt" by Brine) After -565.12 MaxHP debuff (Brine x2) --> CurrentHP 130.19/302.28 HP (=121.7 "damage dealt" by Brine) 121.7/282.56 = 43.07, therefore Brine is "dealing" only 43.1% of its regular -MaxHP debuff value as damage in this second example; the same proportion as the target's initial remaining health. However whenever Brine wears off it seems it also *restores* that HP again instantly (the only attack I'm aware of that kinda-sorta does that is Spectral Wounds). So as it stands you could begin a fight with a GM, use Brine (taking ~500 HP off its current bar) then gradually whittle the GM down with regular attacks; and then whenever that stack of Brine eventually wears off it will instantly gain 500 HP back again. And as you gradually whittle its overall HP down subsequent casting of Brine will do less and less "damage" to it. Thankfully the -resistance debuff is always helpful and is reason enough to take the power.

Quoting this bit because it's resonating with me. I started out playing CoH as a break from a *very* grindy teamplay-and-loot-orientated MMoRPG where I'd completely burnt out. A self-sufficient Scrapper was my first toon; and a self-sufficient Biform PB was my second. They were both very cathartic (I did eventually level up several support-orientated characters; but my Tankers, Defenders and Controllers probably still 2-boxed more than they teamed and even my Fire Blaster could solo on max difficulty pre-inventions. When Redside opened up I made a few MMs and Stalkers to experience the content and zone-wide PVP and then went back to heros again...) I had a nice friendly SG and a large set of Coalition buddies and various Global Friends + Channel memberships to chat to and occasionally hang out with... but for the most part I'd only actively join teams if somebody else wanted help with something. I am simply not the type of person who actively seeks out other people either for assistance or out of loneliness. I like my own company and being able to hear myself think; and whilst I've since gotten married and had multiple kids it has just made me treasure my now-incredibly-rare "me time" even more. Now PUGs? PUGs are glorious. But I'm there for the antics, not for the company. Witnessing the occasional exceptionally hilarious clustf*ck is good for the soul; and powering through it despite the odds has always felt appropriately heroic. I also really really frelling hate any form of forced enemy movement. AoE Knockback was bad enough on live, but Fold Space on HC is absolute armpit. And unfortunately it seems to have turned into the modern day equivalent of corner-pulling (which IIRC had a similarly large number of zealotic proponents despite being consistently overshadowed by an PBAoE and an easily-accessible "jump" button) and many players appear to delight in always using it on cooldown (regardless of whether a decent Combat Teleport bind would have accomplished much the same thing but without the irritation...) 📢 🙉

He's already weighed in on Page #1... poor chap's been over-invoked recently! Regarding lone-wolfing; surely that's been a major draw of many of the melee ATs since day #1? Sure, what with all the power creep from Inventions and Incarnates "Scrapperlock" may have become more common on other ATs in recent decades... but I remember an awful lot of situations circa issue 6 ish where the rest of the team took one fork and one of my Scrappers took the other and we met in the middle (generally for the sake of good-natured competitive merriment rather than as the result of greediness, alcohol intake or sleep deprivation!). IMO it's all good as long as you don't get in over your head and your absence doesn't particularly negatively impact the rest of the team (as even today certain team compositions still end up with someone filling a "Main Tank" or "Healer" role...). For this sort of player, myself included, teaming is primarily about socialising rather than about gathering sufficient extra firepower to overcome an obstacle. However I can understand that at lower levels and/or when exemplaring down to join lowbie TFs most toons' power levels won't have peaked yet; and therefore there may be substantially less wiggle room for showboating. Good natured or otherwise.

Above poster has already pointed you in the right direction for up-to-date farming conversations. The short version is that /Fire Brutes can still do OK at active farming (where you're actively piloting them and clicking things) but they can't really AFK farm any more unless you go all-in on +Regen (this is because of changes to how enemies beyond the "aggro cap" behave - they now shoot at you so farmers have to withstand substantially more incoming damage); and they'll also be soundly eclipsed in farming speed by almost any Tanker worth their salt (this is mainly because of the changes to Gauntlet where AoEs on Tankers get a wider radius and a higher target cap). Realistically your original build should still be able to Fire farm but it'll require a smidge more effort than before not to die. The only dedicated farming Brute I still use these days is a non-Granite RM/Stone; but last time I took a crack at "an all-round Spines/FA that can also farm" I came up with the below: zBrute - Spines - Fiery Aura (Fly).mbd

Resistance is the main draw. The -MaxHP is flat rather than percentage driven, best case you'll be decreasing the target's HP by a bit shy of 500HP. A level 50 AV has 28271.7 HP. I doubt you'll be hitting both the Resistance hardcap and Defense Softcap with a Grav/Marine without some major build compromises (particularly damage procs and global recharge). That said, you can definitely get one or the other whilst raising Singy's damage resistances up to the 90% mark... and spamming both Fold Space + Wormhole to deposit foes directly into an uberbuffed KB>KD Singy is hilarious. zController - Grav - Marine.mbd

Whilst levelling up IMO there's more wiggle room for suboptimal attack chains and the cost of serum stacks is negligible... however for an endgame build I'll always have worked out precisely what my attack chain recovery requirements are and build for that plus a slight buffer. A decent rule of thumb for most toons will be to aim for a surplus of >2 End/Sec recovery after whatever toggles you're running have been accounted for, plus a panacea proc in an auto/toggle power. Unfortunately some characters (like VEAT Widows!) are simply never going to be capable of offsetting the sky-high endurance requirements of their optimal attack chain without running Ageless or having a pocket Kin following them around everywhere! 😹

Personally I'd take a /Cold or /Kin petless MM over a Tanker that only took Taunt from their secondary in a heartbeat...

Did you miss the bracketed footnote at the very bottom of the post you're quoting? 😉 As detailed in a different thread... I usually don't use Performance Shifter Procs unless the build is extremely endurance heavy or I have a major surplus of enhancement slots. I prefer consistency to spikiness; and whilst a PS proc gives almost the same average return as a Lv50+5 EndMod in Stamina it has nearly a 20% likelihood of not kicking in over the course of a 60 second period. IMO the main benefit of PS is that it applies the same whilst levelling up as it does at Lv50... but a few stacks of START Recovery Serums handles those issues easily.

Whilst the best performing Lores tend to be the Intangible Support ones (the rest tend to die too quickly to be useful) in order to be worthwhile for MMs they need to have decent AoE buffs. So that's Arachnos Radial (which you can treat as an on-demand 90s +Defence buff plus a little additional healing) or Talons Radial (their buffs are much better over time than Arachnos) or Banished Pantheon Radial (the only Lore with an immortal support pet that DEALS DAMAGE and can pull aggro). Most of the time my MMs run with Talons. There's a Developer-built guide to all Lore pets available here (it's a Google Sheet with pictures) and exact power stats here.