Maelwys

Like many others here, over the years I've played in a great many CoX teams that have had their share of hairy moments. Maybe the Tank simply got in over their head or encountered the Paper to their Rock, maybe the Controller is using AoE sleeps rather than hard Mez, maybe the Scrapper took the wrong fork in the cave map and has aggroed three extra groups chasing that fleeing Boss, maybe the Blaster decided to Leeroy Jenkins half the map. Often these days you'll see veterans running level 50 IOed builds which can do very crazy things and still be functionally immortal without any outside assistance. But whilst levelling up they're still reasonably vulnerable... and new players exist too who might be a bit less familiar with the game mechanics... and every now and then you get a team full of suicidal SO'ed Fire Blasters who've decided to try a no-deaths TF run. The best support/healer builds I've seen in this game have been those which always bring some benefit to a team regardless of it's composition and survivability. Increase a steamrollng team's Damage output via Attacks, Resistance Debuffs, or Damage/Recharge/Recovery buffs. Increase a struggling team's survivability via Defence/Resistance/Absorb/MaxHP buffs, Damage/Recharge/ToHit debuffs, Crowd Control, Mez Protection, etc. And yes, the occasional Heal and Regeneration buff. Or somewhere in between. The closest thing I've personally built to a "Pure Healer" in CoH was an Illusion/Empathy Controller. They could instantly heal a Tanker to 100% via Absorb Pain and keep a Blaster trucking through an old Nuke crash via Adrenaline Boost, whilst keeping the entire team buffed with Clear Mind and Fortitude (half of them Power Boosted) and high uptime on Regeneration and Recovery aura... but they could also deal a reasonable amount of damage, crowd control two mobs at a time, confuse an AV, etc plus Permanent Phantom Army. Thankfully in this game there's no need to limit yourself to just being a One Trick Pony.

Ageless is a crutch, but it's a damn good one. FWIW this is my current Hybrid Fortuna/Widow build. Perma Mind Link and near-perma-Hasten-plus-Ageless is what keeps everything trucking. Swipe/Strike/Lunge/Gloom obviously, and both Confuses plus Dominate. No Scream or Tornado but still very respectable AoE lawnmowering potential because 2x Assaults plus double-stacked Followup gives crazy buffage to Spin + Dark Obliteration + the odd Psychic Wail... and despite being built selfishly it's still somehow buffing allied defence by ~23.6%. Arachnos Fortunata (Hybrid - Confuse).mbd (above values don't include Ageless; nor the up to +10% additional damage resistance from the Reactive Defence Global at low HP)

Given that the Tanker will like getting heals and capped defences, and neither them nor the Blaster has much in the way of CC or Buffs/Debuffs... I'd probably go for a Time Manipulation toon. Toggle Time's Juncture on, and autofollow the Blaster. Then tap Farsight every two minutes (use Power Boost right beforehand if possible), Temporal Selection every minute (alternate between Tank and Blaster) and if/when things need healed tap Temporal Mending (or just leave it on constant autofire). Chrono Shift can either be used every time it's up or just saved for tricky fights (lasts for 90 seconds and can be perma with sufficient investment). Its other clickies like Time Crawl, Slowed Response and Distortion Field will be less relevant but can be used if needed for boss-killing. Almost any support AT would do; but I'd probably lean towards either a Robotics/Time Mastermind or an Earth/Time Controller. The Earth Controller would let you solidly lock down foes and its pet can "Tank" if you go up against multiple AVs or fight something that cuts through defence. The Mastermind's pets would be very low maintenance (they self-heal and with Farsight plus Protector Bot Bubbles they'd be very easy to softcap) and stay at range. If that's still too much clicking, a Cold Domination or Forcefield toon would probably be the next-best thing and only require tapping two buttons once every four minutes. Take the Leadership and Sorcery and Medicine Pools; toggle on Assault/Maneuvers/Tactics and Spirit Ward. Tap your two +Defence bubbles once every 4 minutes, and use Aid Other if needed. Also make sure to stick a Panacea proc in Spirit Ward - it'll affect the target rather than you which should help a smidge. FF gets built-in mez protection and a self-defence boost and its Bubble defence buffs can be greatly increased via Power Boost and/or Radial Clarion Destiny... whereas Cold's Bubble defence buffs are not power-boostable but it gets far better debuffs and will utterly neuter AVs. Pick your poison! (but seriously, don't make a /Poison...)

Veeeeery niche, but potentially relevant given the OP's previously-stated fondness for running Frostfire teams: Whilst levelling up one of my FA Brutes on Blueside I actually made a point of taking both Taunt and Hover extremely early (levels 6 and 12 IIRC; plus Healing Flames @Lv4?) purely so that they could be a functionally immortal aggro magnet in that particular scenario and mess with the heads of the "real tanks". Although of course they still actually took proper attacks at levels 1, 2 and 8 plus Blazing Aura at level 10...

Not always. True, a lot of people will just see the username and immediately write off this thread because they've attempted to help and handhold in the past and been ignored. But credit where it's due, you do occasionally write something useful which is well received and gets positive feedback. Unfortunately the vast majority of the content you have submitted here has been either rants about the mindset/behavior of other players which heavily invoke the No True Scotsman argument; or apparently-honest questions which receive multiple detailed helpful explanations that are then outright ignored and have to be restated in the very next thread a few days later. I'm not trying to disparage or be insulting/nasty here, I'm just trying to somewhat diplomatically point out a possible reason why you're getting this kind of reaction... (and given past experience, it's quite probable that this comment will be ignored as well... but at least I tried!) 🤷‍♂️ 😇

We have indeed. From 2021 all the way until quite literally just two days ago. We appear to be stuck in yet another rerun of the best of Diantane. Does anyone get the feeling this is a Nemesis plot ? It's like some kind of dastardly evil mobius loop...

If you really want to know, do a post history search. But honestly, no, you're *really* not missing anything. (I'm pretty sure some of the rest of us are down several wasted hours though...)

bind KEY "+$$powexec_name POWERNAME$$target_enemy_near" - should repeatedly try to activate the power and target the nearest enemy for as long as you hold the button down. macro MACRONAME "powexec_name POWERNAME$$target_enemy_near" - should do similar but won't keep retrying (so you may need to manually click it twice)

Nemu makes a lot of good points here, but I want to highlight this in particular. Combat Jumping isn't merely about increasing your jump speed and being a mule for a LOTG +7.5 global... it also grants Immobilise Protection and extremely good "Air Control" and a smidge of defence all for an utterly tiny insignificant endurance cost. On a powerset like Fire/Fire which has PBAoEs like Fire Sword Circle and Inferno; you often want to dart in and back out of melee range. Combat Jumping means that's literally just a case of "Jump in, activate power, jump out again" and often you can do that quickly enough that nothing will get a melee attack off; particularly with Hotfeet running. AoE CC like Bonfire can make it easier, but it's still very annoying when you start to "run in" and get knockbacked or rooted in place by an immobilise for several seconds - so always get at least a little KB protection (In my revision above I put +4 from a BoZ in Mystic Flight, and another +3 from a 3-piece Gladiator set in Fire Shield) and ideally some Immobilise protection as well. In my aforementioned revision build you could easily swap Maneuvers for Combat Jumping without changing anything else (other than taking it much, much earlier than level 44!) ...but if you're still dead set against that, keep the RoP button and some Breakfrees handy and perhaps consider taking Clarion Core instead of Barrier Core Destiny (since it grants 120s Mag 6 mez protection with a 120s duration).

That's better... however the Gaussian's still in an odd place and the attack power slotting is a little wonky (You've procs in pseudopet powers; and damage procs with recharge slotting in non-pseudopet AoEs). Also a few powers like Maneuvers and Arcane Bolt really aren't doing much for you. Maybe look at this revision? Puf 2.0.1.mbd I kept the same powers except for swapping Arcane Bolt > Spirit Ward to give an extra mule slot for the Preventive Medicine global; and Assault > Fire Shield because Assault gives a very low bonus on a Blaster and I still think it'd be worth having some extra damage resistance. Can work Arcane Bolt back in and move the slots over from Fire Blast if you want to use it for flavour purposes... or take "Char" instead (from the epic pool) which would give you a solid ranged CC ability. Powers are now better slotted with a few procs and minimal recharge (whilst still keeping sets intact) in the non-pseudopet powers. Still rubbish defense (Maneuvers is a mule and personally I would trade it for Combat Jumping in a heartbeat) but you'll have decent passive healing and recovery and ~1645 HP with accolades; plus capped S/L resists with Rune of Protection up providing either Barrier Incarnate is going or your HP is low (due to the Reactive Defences IO). The Ragnarok "Chance for Knockdown" is probably more useful in Fireball than Rain of Fire (where it only has a small chance once every 10 seconds because it's a pseudopet) if you want to keep it around, but Bonfire should be quite capable of bouncing things by itself. (and now that I'm looking at it screenshotted, all I can think is "if I moved the Rectified Reticle from Build Up into Combat Teleport that'd free up another slot for a Performance Shifter Proc in Stamina"... there's always room for more polish!) 😁

I did cover the Gaussian Proc in this bit (if you expand the quote I've put my comments in Blue!) Basically, stick it in either Aim or Build Up and make sure you have less than ~71% recharge slotting in that power. That way whenever you activate the power, in addition to its regular effects (Damage/ToHit buff for 10s) you'll get a 90% chance for the Gaussian to activate too; giving you a VERY powerful damage spike for the next 5 seconds. So that becomes the button you want to hit right before you Nuke and/or open with a devastating high-damage attack chain on an AV. Regarding Accuracy Slotting in Mids, make sure you set the relative enemy level to +3 (top menu bar dropdown box) then check the "accuracy" value in your attack powers - you want this to be capped at 95% at a minimum (above 95% is better as it lets you better hit things which have defence buffs and the odd level -shifted +4 foes on hardmode TFs). Note that this is a very easy bar to hit even without Aim or Build up running. As mentioned, pseudopets are handled badly in Mids - so assume that they have the same accuracy as a regular power (base 48% hit rate versus +3 foes) rather than the "2x accuracy" bonus that Mids often claims.

Agree with nearly everything else Betty says here. However Triage; last I checked; can actually become useful if you stick a Panacea proc in it. Admittedly I'd still only take it if I had nothing else useful, but for the sake of a slot or two it can be a decent sustain power for the entire team (particularly on a MM) if they ever find themselves needing to turtle up.

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My Staff/Bio Tanker is a total AoE damage woodchipper... but man do those animations sometimes seem as if they're taking forever! The Stalker version of Staff has the best Single Target damage, no question. Tanker version has the best AoE damage. The other ATs are a mixture; and if I'm perfectly honest I'd probably shy away from taking Staff on a Scrapper or Brute if damage is what you're after. They have a nice blend of AT, AoE and Utility... however Katana and Broadsword and Titan all play quite similarly and have better DPR.

As Erratic says, Both sets are fine. Katana possibly needs a little bit more love (-Resistance Procs; a lot of Global Recharge and careful ATO placement) to hit its sweet spot than Fire; but they're both capable of top-tier DPA. I personally would edge more towards Katana for a newer player, because it has a big safety net in Divine Avalanche that Fire does not have. Slot a few Defence IOs in DA and just by double-stacking that one power you'll be at the Melee Defence cap... and it can stack with Invul's built-in defence to give you more wiggle room to attain both the 75% Damage Resistance Hardcap for S/L AND the 45% Melee Defence Softcap. Fire is still top-tier; but it's all about damage output... and Fire's DoTs are actually a little bit less powerful than you might think on a Scrapper since they don't benefit from Critical Hits.

100% this. Personally I ballpark ~14% over the Defence softcap (2x hits with a Broadsword) as enough to ignore most cases of cascading defence failure; and reduce that appropriately for whatever amount of Defence Debuff resistance you have. AoE DDR is attainable via things like Ageless Radial Destiny if you really want it; but I'd usually opt for Barrier instead. And if it's difficult for you to overslot Defence by 14%; just carry a Purple Insp or two (the "Medium Team Purples" in a MM's case) as "backups". I'll also say that whilst relying on ToHit debuffs (e.g. Time's Juncture) so shore up your defence is doable... you need to account for the Purple Patch and Archvillain Resistance. The short version is to multiply ToHit debuffs by 0.65 in regular content (assume that you're fighting things that are +3 to you) and treat them as next to useless versus AVs.

You also said "I happen to be Mids-ing a Fire/Fire blaster now and decided to skim the forums for this topic before I started in earnest. I did notice this comment about the FF proc in Bonfire." ...and y'know, you are posting in the Blaster forum within a thread asking questions about how to build a Fire Blaster; and quoted the OP's reply to my comment about their Fire Blaster build using the Fire Blaster version of Bonfire. 🤷‍♂️ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The later statement was a clarification; but by all means feel free to look on it as a correction if it makes you feel any better. In the interests of precision I have just re-edited my detailed response to the OP to re-highlight that "clicking on the Bonfire power will trigger one chance for the FF Proc to activate. However unlike most non-pseudopet powers Bonfire's ongoing effect (the Bonfire pseudopet cycling its damage ability) will never trigger any additional chances for the FF Proc to activate... or more accurately - it will technically activate the effect of the FF Proc on the Bonfire pseudopet itself and since pets are immune to recharge changes nothing will happen." Happier now? 😸 Mondays suck enough as it is so I'm sorry if someone took a dump in your Froot Loops this morning. [A Smidge more Snark than usual and for once we can't blame the wampire...]

Bonfire on a Blaster comes from the Epic Pool, and has a 120s base recharge time. The ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you can get a power to recharge in is 1/5 of its base time (which would reduce that to 20 seconds). However that requires 400% recharge. I very much suspect that you're thinking of the Fire Control version of Bonfire. There is no way in hell you are getting the Blaster version to recharge in 20 seconds without any recharge slotting in Bonfire itself; unless you're stacking Ageless, Geas, Hasten, every set bonus under the sun and a considerable amount of caffeine.

On cast, yes, the Proc can affect the caster once for 5 seconds (the summoning of the pseudopet "pets.bonfire_epic" triggers the proc on the caster)... however the pseudopet itself can't gain the benefit of it; and subsequent activations of its own powers "pets.bonfire_epic.bonfire" (the actual ongoing damage and knockback ticks) do nothing. So I guess if you think a single 5 second recharge buff every ~40 seconds is worth the slot, go for it? I'll try and comment on the remaining questions now that I'm home from work and the kids are down for a sleeps... And whilst it's in my head - the Fire/Ice/Flame build I posted earlier in the thread has gone for high global recharge and AoE damage output (Burnout is excellent for double-nuking) and I often joke about them needing Rise of the Phoenix recharging as fast as possible because of all the aggro they're capable of pulling... but the fact is that if I choose to play them carefully then they actually very rarely die; despite having little/no defence buffs. At first glance, you might notice the high HP for a Blaster - I try to shoot for 1.6k+ via set bonuses, globals and accolades plus the Preventive Medicine Absorb Unique. Their resistances aren't sky-high but 30-40% is enough that they don't often get two-shot. Shiver plus Ice Patch plus Bonfire plus Rain of Fire (and occasionally Hover) can floor enemy movement and keep me well out of harm's way; and having a solid ranged mez (Char) can take care of nasty enemies like Sappers. Chilblain can even let me play keepaway with an AV. Frigid Protection gives me a health buffer and extra healing procs and helps whenever I dive into melee to activate Frozen Aura or Inferno. They also have full invisibility against most foes (Superspeed plus a +Stealth IO in Sprint) and +Perception which lets me go undetectable myself but spot invisible enemies. So IMO it definitely pays to build for a variety of benefits rather than monofocus.

I've a full pet-focussed Crabbermind setup on my Soldier's Crab build, so I went the other way on their Bane Build and opted for more "selfish" powers and burst damage. (Mids is claiming an average damage of 1284 for Shatter, 869.4 for Crowd Control and 477.7 for Dark Obliteration whilst Build Up is active...) Arachnos Bane Spider.mbd

Clarion Radial Destiny is the one that buffs secondary effects (like Farsight's Defence) and the Mez Protection comes in handy too. A more powerful Farsight is not always needed (and certainly not on Bots/ ) but it can make the difference between Farsight buffing you and your pets defense by ~28.3% (Clarion + Power Boost + Farsight) compared to ~20.8% (Power Boost + Farsight) or the regular ~14.7% (just Farsight). So Maneuvers plus Pet Aura IOs and Clarion + PB + Farsight is essentially "Softcapped Pets" regardless of your primary; which is exceptionally useful on sets like Demons and Necro. (I use the combo on my Illusion/Time Controller as well - which doesn't even need Maneuvers to softcap everything due to Group Invisibility also stacking with PB/Clarion...)

Base Tanker Footstomp is 20s recharge; and deals 75.02 damage. Now slot it up with a few basic IOs: one Accuracy and three Damage plus one damage proc (Explosive Strike will do) and a Force Feedback Proc, then activate Hasten and hit Rage: 241.2 damage and ~8s recharge. With double-stacked Rage: 301.2 damage. Yes, Epic Pool AoEs help and many of them become available at level 35-38. But just with Footstomp you should still be splattering most of a mob in well under 10 seconds whilst you're levelling up and severely underkitted. At 50 and properly IOed? <6s recharge and >400 damage easily even without Assault Hybrid active, and that's if you're not completely proc-bombing it. Other Tanker secondary powersets are not much behind Rage+Footstomp performance either. Especially RadMelee and Battleaxe. Even Staff (which often gets a bad rep in terms of DPA; but benefits *drastically* from Gauntlet +Arc/+Range buffs) can really put the hurt on hordes of fodder with minimal proc investment. The Teleport pool is not your only means of getting into the middle of a big group of foes. That's what stuff like Taunt Auras, Jumping and the WASD keys are for.

There's a lot to unpack here, and I'd a long step-by-step response mostly-typed whenever the Ctrl-Z forum monster ate it on me ( 😠 ) so apologies - I'll try to do a general response instead here and then follow up with any lingering questions afterwards. General rules of thumb are: + "Try and get ED-capped damage in all of your attacks, plus reasonable levels of accuracy (aim for 95% hit rate versus +3s at a minimum) and then slot damage procs" + "Craft an attack chain(s) using the powers with the highest damage compared to their activation time ("Damage Per Activation"). + Use global recharge rather than slotting recharge in your attacks themselves (exception = where activating a power spawns a "psuedopet" which applies the effect instead of your character applying the effect directly) because the more recharge slotting you have in an attack, the worse its proc activation rate will be. + Do NOT concentrate on damage set bonuses because these give a very small increase and stack additively with most other sources of additional damage (e.g Base damage, %damage slotting, Inspirations, external buffs like Fulcrum Shift, Incarnate abilities like Muscular Alpha [and Assault Core but not Assault Radial], and notably in the case of Blasters - Defiance stacks!) up to the damage limit of your AT (500% for Blasters) so they provide a very small proportional increase in overall damage output. They're fine to pick up in passing, but they should never be the main focus of your build and especially not something that affects the slotting of your attack powers. Many attack powers can only take one or two damage procs, but others can take 6 or more. Choosing whether to slot another damage proc over slotting more damage% is a balancing act and depends on a few factors - the base damage of your AT (e.g. the same attack power would gain more from slotting a regular Damage IO in a Scrapper than in a Brute) and whether you need more accuracy (The standard min-maxed attack slotting setup of "2x Acc/Dam HOs + 4x Damage Procs" is just as much about being able to hit the enemy as it is about pushing the limits of raw attack damage). Mids does a reasonable job of calculating the average additional damage contribution from damage procs in regular "clicky" attack powers. But it's rubbish when it comes to pseudopets and doesn't help when it comes to figuring our optimal slotting for non-damage procs (like "chance for build up"). Exact proc activation chances are best calculated with a PPM calculator, using values for power activation time and recharge time taken from City of Data (both of which I linked in my previous post) - the main things to remember are that offensive Proc chances get capped at a 90% (maximum) and 5%-and-a-bit (minimum) and it is affected drastically by how long a power recharges and how many targets it hits. Procs that debuff resistance (like the Achilles Heel and Fury of the Gladiator) tend to be seen as very important for damage output since -resistance debuffs stack multiplicatively with your damage output. So people will usually try to get the effects of these to be "active" as much as possible. Putting them in a power that is not part of your Single Target or AoE attack chain is a waste; especially for the FoTG since it's unique. A lot of "special IOs" (like Kismet, Miracle, etc) are coded as "guaranteed activation" Procs with a duration of 120 seconds; which means that you need to activate the power that they're slotted into at least once every 120s for it to work. Others (like LoTG, Preventive Medicine, etc) are coded as Global "Set Bonuses" and you can stick them in a power that you hardly ever activate and they're still always active. And a few annoying exceptions exist... like the Stalker's Assassin's Mark ATO and Kheldian Essence Transfer ATO which are set bonuses that need you to activate the power they're slotted into ONCE each time you zone before they start working. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects

I've already responded to Spock via PM - but thought it was worth repeating my take on this here too, just in case anyone else is similarly curious and happens upon this thread: Really depends what context -DPS builds aimed at (for example) killing a Pylon in the fastest time are different from "Trapdoor Mission" DPS builds (which is another well-accepted benchmark of DPS) ...and both those are different from builds that want to AE farm as quickly as possible.Are you intending to mostly Solo or Team? Are you wanting to focus on Farming AE missions or Killing AVs/GMs? Do you want to be effective at level 50 or also when exemplared doing lower-level TFs (and if so at what level)?And most importantly for a Mastermind - what difficulty level do you intend to play at outside of Incarnate Content?There's no one-size fits all approach unfortunately.If you're soloing then you'll need to survive whatever aggro you pull - surviving the attacks of an AV is different than surviving farming AE missions at 4x8 difficulty, and if you're intending to handle Incarnate content and/or Hard-mode TFs then there's a whole different set of Defence and Accuracy requirements. Tier 1 henchmen also need a LOT more help when they fight anything over +4 to them (+2 to you) which means difficulty setting is a big factor.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -However I appreciate that's not hugely helpful... so as a few general rules of thumb?- Primaries - Bots is best for AoE damage. Necro is best for ST damage. Demons and Mercs are good all-rounders; with Thugs pretty close behind. Ninjas can be built for pretty good damage but you need to really exploit their "Critical hit" mechanic. Beasts are the worst by a large margin.- Secondaries - Kinetics is king of damage; but needs a lot of investment and effort to survive.Traps is the best solo AV/GM killer; mez protection, loads of -regen, a bit of AoE damage (Trip Mine) and healing (stick the Panacea proc in Triage Beacon) and the FFG helps you softcap. It's SLOW though - you can only move as quickly as the FFG; and that's turtle pace compared with most toons.Forcefield and Cold make Softcapping your pet defences much easier. FF gives more defence and mez protection (and its bubbles stack with Power Boost), Cold gives more debuffs (including -regen which is important for fighting AVs)Thermal and Pain and Nature and Elec are all Resistance-based sets with decent AoE healing; they play very similarly but Thermal performs the best and Elec the worst. Just be aware that they won't help you softcap your pet defences at all.Dark and Radiation are strong debuff sets; and debuffs are very good until you fight things that are higher-level than you and/or AVs (when they get neutered by the purple patch and AV resistances).Sonic is rubbish on MMs. It's basically Thermal with no debuffs or healing.Poison is rubbish full-stop. Radiation beats it in every single category.Empathy is usually a good powerset, but not on MMs. It relies on Fortitude which is very difficult to get enough recharge on to buff more than 4-5 of your pets simultaneously and you can't Power Boost all of those activations. Adrenaline Boost is mostly wasted on pets too, unfortunately.Storm is decent, but it's difficult to play well. It's a mix of utility, debuffs (with Hurricane taking up a lot of slack), CC and direct damage (Lightning Storm). A bit like a mix of Traps and Radiation.Time - as long as you take Farsight and Power Boost and Radial Clarion Incarnate - is by far the best all-rounder. It lets you softcap you and your pets, has debuffs (including -regen), grants a fair bit of +damage, has AoE Healing, slows, holds, etc... and if you can get Chrono Shift perma for team content it's fantastic."Best all rounder" is probably Demons/Time... it won't be highest DPS in any particular category; but it'll perform decently at almost anything and very survivable. Again, the main thing to remember is to combine Power Boost + Radial Clarion + Farsight every 120 seconds - in the example below that'll buff you and your pets by +28.38% def instead of the regular +14.73% def. zMastermind - Demons - Time.mbdPersonally the MM I've invested the most into is probably my Bots/Kin/Flame; which is specced for AoE DPS and does pretty well at AE Farming - I've posted its build most recently in this post Spock then confirmed that they're thinking about a Demons/Storm. I don't have firsthand recent experience with that particular combo but perhaps someone else reading this might? 🙂 Storm isn't exactly team friendly, as most of it's CC comes from high mag knockback and repel, it moves pretty slowly (Lightning Storm and Freezing Rain are the big DPS boosts and they're both immobile) and it requires you to get into melee range to leverage Hurricane's ToHit debuff. I'm sure you could make it playable (slotting all it's powers with Knockback>Knockdown IOs is a good start) but it'll be a case of shoring up the set's shortcomings rather than playing to it's strengths. Last decent chat I can see about that powersets combo is here - and it's mostly about solo performance.

Assbot is the only one that actually needs KB>KD these days. The regular swarm missiles still inflict KB, and that's annoying since it'll knock foes out of the burn patches that the incendiary swarm missiles spawn... I typically stick the OF piece in there because as it adds a bit of damage% it's a smidge better than the Sudden Acceleration piece. Explosive Strike damage procs are 100% worth getting in the pets though - Drones get a hefty ST damage boost; and the Assbot's AoE spike damage gets noticeably better. Protector Bots only gain a little benefit so can be skipped if needed. I agree with Tidge here that Distortion Field isn't worth Proccing unless you have slots going spare (and even then, the two "Slow" ones should activate substantially more than the "Hold" set ones... IIRC the one that can sometimes make a difference is the Lockdown 'Chance for Hold' but even there it's skippable) so I'd probably try and bump the movement debuff slow effect up a bit instead and reduce the endurance cost. Slowed Response is definitely worth sticking a few damage procs into though; and proc accuracy isn't a huge concern due to the amount of +ToHit buffs and Defence debuffs that Time flings out. FWIW I don't think the bulk of the OP's build is that bad - but if it was me I'd tweak the pet slotting a bit. Personally the last time I rejigged my Bots/Time this is what I came up with: zMastermind - Robots - Time.mbd In this one the MM is at ~55.9% Def to all and the Pets are at ~57.3%. So a smidge under the Incarnate Softcap; which is typically made up for by Time's Juncture or teammate buffs... (if you really want you could swap the LOTG globals in Protector Bots and Combat Jumping for regular 50+5 Defence IOs and swap the +Rech/EndRed/Def in Maneuvers to a pure +Def, which should just about be enough to tip you over. But I'd much rather have the extra Global Recharge!)