Maelwys

Yup It's been reported, but, y'know... small bunch of devs volunteering their time and all that. (Also, fixing stuff like this would presumably require the powers team to temporarily stop selecting half the melee AT defensive powersets, thumping the "randomize" button and sending the results to Closed Beta...) 😛

IMO since Fury has a big effect on Brimstone Procs; Stone Armor (non Granite) is a major contender for your secondary. And since it also buffs DoT damage; Fiery Aura isn't bad either. For Primary? Nothing will match a Scrapper vs a Pylon; and nothing will match a Tanker on an AE Farming map or ITF kill-most run... but if you go by Ston's old 2022 Melee Powerset Comparison for Trapdoor (back whenever that mission was a decent finger in the air for "overall offensive effectiveness") then the powersets that pull a smidge ahead or come very close on a Brute are: Staff Melee, Kinetic Melee, Super Strength, Electric Melee, Titan Weapons and Broadsword. Of those I would probably go with Super Strength, personally. Single-stacked Rage slotted for +ToHit can do most of the heavy lifting to buff your accuracy levels enough to 6-slot your attack powers with Damage Procs... and the crash is much less of an issue whenever you're not double-stacking it and your attacks are proc-heavy. TL;DR: "Maybe try a SS/Stone Brute?"

Granted Freezing Ray > Chilling Ray; but since it still takes both Impeded Swiftness and Ice Mistrals Torment procs basic [2x Acc/Dam HO + 4x Proc] slotting remains viable without touching the Sleep sets. And it seems the rest of the set currently still holds enough water to place 5th or higher out of the 15 Sentinel Primaries (largely on-par with Fire apparently, although Elec unsurprisingly places consistently higher alongside BR and Seismic) I do actually have an Ice/Elec Sentinel somewhere... although IIRC they lean pretty heavily on their Epic Pool attacks; and TBH they were originally just a concept build created on a whim after I happened upon an unclaimed name that matched a certain Manfred Mann song...

Tanks have a damage cap of 500%. For Brutes, it's 700%. Lets take a SuperStrength Tanker versus a SuperStrength Brute as an extremely rough example: Both ATs will get 100% (base) + 80% (Single-stacked Rage) + 95% (Enhancements) = 275% total damage. Tanker Melee damage scalar is 0.95, and Brute is 0.75. So comparatively that's 0.95*2.75 = 2.6125 (Tanker) versus 0.75*2.75 = 2.0625 (Brute) However the Brute will also get an additional +2% damage per point of Fury. They'd only need 37+ points of Fury to draw even with the Tanker in the above example; and it's normally trivial to keep your Fury bar in the 65-80 point range. However most Tanker AoEs get major buffs to radius and target cap - even FootStomp on a Tanker (which doesn't get radius buffs) can hit 16 targets versus 10 for a Brute. In the above example, a Tanker's Footstomp will quickly start to pull ahead when surrounded by 12+ targets even whenever the Brute is running at extremely high levels of Fury. However once again, this comparison is EXTREMELY rough. Tanker attacks tend to be best slotted with [4 damage procs + 2x Acc/Dam HOs] compared to a Brute's [6x Damage Procs] due to the differences in melee damage scaling. Epic/Patron power pool picks skew things a bit. Incarnates and Set Bonuses will confuse things even further. Maybe look at some of the listed "Trapdoor" mission times in Ston's Melee AT Comparison thread for both Tankers and Brutes to get more of a feel for it?

It's certainly possible to tank on a Brute; as you can get survivable enough and deal decent levels of damage and they have Punchvoke (and occasionally Taunt) available. However most of the time; Tanking for groups will be considerably better on a Tanker, because: (i) Tanker damage scalars are pretty high on HC, so the difference in Raw Damage output isn't massive. (ii) A Tanker will tend to hit a much larger number of enemies simultaneously given the same AoEs and Auras; due to their Radius and Target Cap boosts from Gauntlet. (iii) A Tanker will find it far easier to reach high levels of resistance and defense compared to a Brute - requiring less compromises elsewhere in their build to hit the "caps". High-end hardmode content builds, perhaps counterintuitively, actually tend to be skewed towards maximum damage output rather than survivability. This is because whenever everyone has strong allied buffs plus T4 Incarnate abilities on rotation there is lesser need for any inherent mitigation; and everything becomes a DPS race. And in terms of DPS, versus single-targets a Scrapper or Stalker will win out; and vs groups of foes Tanks are so far ahead that it's not even funny. Brutes are languishing somewhere in the middle - "good enough" but not really shining at anything in particular. Which is the source of much wailing and frustration in these parts. All that said... there are a few areas where Brutes still have a few advantages - they have a much easier time at low levels since Fury ramps up your damage output drastically regardless of whatever buffs you're getting from enhancements; and they get their big damage moves earlier than Tankers do. DoTs tend to be affected by Fury (but not by Scrapper Crits) making them more attractive on a Brute; and certain powersets have big splashy AoEs (such as SS's Footstomp) which are either flagged as ignoring radius buffs or coded as Pseudopets so they're no better on a Tanker than they are on other ATs. And the additional damage granted by certain special abilities like Brimstone Armor is also affected by Fury. The Brutes I personally still enjoy at endgame tend to be either Fire Aura (for Burn and Firey Embrace) or Stone Armor (for Brimstone Procs). And for their offensive powerset, things like Spines/Savage/Fiery Melee (DoTs), Super Strength (Footstomp is excellent; and Rage means you can ignore slotting your attacks with accuracy and focus on maximum damage procs) and Battle Axe (Axe Cyclone is bags of fun on any AT) all have a place in my stable.

(Can't remember the exacterifics, that "H" may have been a few letters earlier in the alphabet...)

The easiest for a Support Blasty AT ? + Top recommendation would definitely be a Forcefield. These come in Defender/Corruptor/Controller/Mastermind flavours; and of those Defender and Corruptor are the most "Blasty". As long as you keep your various Toggles running; really the only thing you need to do is press 2-3 buttons at least once every 4 minutes (Power Boost or Power Build Up whenever you get access to it at level 35+; plus the two allied Bubbles Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield) and you'll be set. "Damping Bubble" (a buff/debuff patch that needs recast once every 45 seconds when fighting very tough targets) and "Force Bomb" (a glorified AoE attack that inflicts a 30-second duration -resistance debuff) are the cherries on top. FF also has mez protection that affects the player (Dispersion Bubble) and a "Panic Button" in Personal Force Field. + Sonic Resonance is an obvious alternative. It buffs +Resistance rather than +Defence but otherwise playing extremely similarly to FF. However you will get hit more often and because -resistance debuffs are so valuable your teammates may also expect you to spam Sonic Siphon (a single target resistance debuff) more than you'd be comfortable with. + If you're OK with a little bit more hands-on buffing/debuffing then look at Cold Domination. Compared to FF it has two very similar once-every-four-minute bubbles (although they don't work with Power Boost/Build Up) and three important long-duration buffs/debuffs in Benumb (30s), Sleet (45s or less) and Heat Loss (90s). Sleet is the thing you'll be expected to be using the most regularly; but they are all used proactively so none of them require you to press buttons with anything remotely close to split second precision. Snow Storm (a Toggle Slow/Recharge Debuff) can be used a little more actively, but most of the time you can get by without using it. Frostwork (a 120s duration Allied +MaxHP Buff) is completely proactive and much less important; many builds (particularly Corruptors) even skip it entirely. The easiest for a Pure Blasting AT? + Likely a Sentinel. For the secondary powerset you'll probably want a Defense based one with mostly Toggles/Autos. You could certainly reuse /SR (and using either Dark Blast or Water Blast would give you some regular self-healing)... alternatives would be Energy Aura, Ninjitsu, Stone, Ice or Invulnerability. For the primary powerset, traditionally Fire, Ice and Elec Blast are the gotos for decent damage with little/no complex chaining mechanics; and Ice Blast also works a smidge better than you might expect on a Sentinel due to all the extra Damage Procs it can fit... but honestly just pick whatever you like the look of. ...or as a completely different idea: Have you considered a VEAT? Some Widow (Fortuna) builds play very similar to an "/SR Sentinel" with better range, more control, and just one clicky buff every 90s (Mind Link) that you need to worry about. And they also provide substantial buffs to Teammate Defence, ToHit and Damage as well. Very non-optimized example build - zArachnos Fortunata.mbd (Ignore the Melee Defense value being higher than the rest; that's just my own preferences showing. However do note their hefty SR-like damage resistance scaling - displayed below at 100% HP and 25% HP. The actual figures in-game will differ a smidge due to the Reactive Defenses IO also giving a bigger buff as your HP drops; which Mids ignores!)

Try using the Search Function again If you're looking for a post by a particular Author, then state that under "more search options". The above link is a search for the keywords 'invulnerability' AND 'brute' by author 'Infinitum' and the 4th result (dated June 2022 but likely still decentish) still has a valid Mids file attached to it.

Oddly enough, it consistently takes my MMs the longest to summon and rebuff their 'bots whenever Group Fly is toggled on. Both Equip Robot and Upgrade Robot only successfully cast whenever you're targeting a henchman that has its feet firmly planted on the ground. It's one of my few remaining bugbears about Robotics MM gameplay (although these days due to powercreep it's rare that I lose a henchie even in the midst of AE Farming permaspam...)

Peacebringers get copious amounts of Knockback in most of their attacks AND Group Fly.

Matt 4:5-6 NHFE (Nonsensicial and Heretical Forum Edition) Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his Flight Pool toggles concerning you, and they will lift you up in their holy aura, so that you will not strike your foot against a skirting board’”

If memory serves the way Null's various "I don't want X to affect me" abilities are currently coded is as a series of different "tokens" - a bit like invisible passive powers/flags. If an entity possesses the correct token, then relevant power effects are counteracted at the point of casting and have no effect on them. You can see this in the CoDv2 entry for Group Fly as the condition: if !target.TokenOwned?(Power_DisallowGroupFly) Which translates as "if the target does not possess a token named Power_DisallowGroupFly then apply the affect on them" It's quite technically possible to reverse this condition - making Group Fly ONLY affect other player entities which have such a token. However you would also need to make Group Fly provide two additional effects in order to continue to apply to the original owner of the power and their pets (otherwise someone could pick a power and have it do nothing for them until they visit Null) (i) An effect which has a maximum target cap of 0 "Self"; that provides Group Fly buffs regardless of any Null the Gull flags and affects ONLY YOU. (ii) An effect which has a maximum target cap of 255 "Own Pet (Alive)"; that provides Group Fly buffs regardless of flags to ONLY YOUR PETS (this may need a wide number of caveats to pin down all the allowed entity types - examples here and here - although a similar setup already exists with the "Boost doubled for Pets" Support Hybrid powers) So quite doable, but would need a tweak or two from the already infamously busy powers team.

100% agree. However having something someone else does affect your own character's gameplay can be hellava annoying. See Speed Boost, Knockback Spam, etc. Admittedly it's usually Melee players that gripe about this stuff; and there are methods (like Null and AoE Immobilises) to cope with most of them. This is not a new player. See "I’ve been playing this game on and off since 2004." Whilst I personally do think that going to Null is ultimately the thing to do... in this case their teammates would have been unable to do that until the TF ends. And ultimately it sounds more like this was an issue with not listening to the person with the star more than anything else. The team leader asked one of their recruited followers to do something, was refused; and then kicked the offender. That kick took place later on during a TF and it may have been well-deserved or tyrannical depending on who you ask; but what occurred is still firmly within the limits of what a team leader is allowed to do and there doesn't appear to have been any other active griefing taking place. So definitely not one for the GMs. I'd like to think more communication may well have smoothed things out... but some folk are just plain harder to co-exist with than others. All that said - in this case the request may have been to turn off Group Fly. But it could have been a request to turn off a genuinely migraine-inducing bubble power (I've seen this happen) or just changing to a less annoying costume (this too). Some requests are more frivolous than others. (I suppose I should be thankful that both players in question even had their chat windows enabled...)

Unfortunately multiple other fellow Mastermind players and advocates for the use of Group Fly have stated opinions and experience to the contrary in this very thread. The consensus here appears to be that Temporarily turning off Group Fly will have very little impact on your gameplay (Leveraging FOLLOW or GOTO commands on the ground is doable 99.9% of the time and at most will require a few extra clicks from you; the player who is familiar with micromanaging the critters in the first place) and would be the polite and appropriate response in general teaming situations; let alone in a TF where the other party would have to actually quit the task force in order to visit Null. Also Robotics henchmen (unlike a lot of MM Primaries) take very little micromanaging to get them to clump up. Across many, many, many hours of gameplay I can confidently state that they work just fine at range whether on the ground or in the air. Group Fly is primarily just a method of keeping them out of melee and AoE range of tough enemies, something which is simply not needed on teams where you're getting lots of additional buffage and/or your teammates are locking down aggro either via taunting or spamming CC abilities. Apart from that it's only been on huge dedicated farming maps (where there are so many NPC bodies milling around on the ground that I have found myself simply UNABLE to get my henchmen to cluster tightly enough together for buffs) that running it really matters. Worst case, I'd have just picked a different route far away from the rest of the team and Tankerminded it - the vast majority of MM combinations can solo a TF by themselves anyway.

The Sun is still up ... he will be here shortly Should I just hide thread now? There is NO HIDING from @Snarky (and a particular fondness of a bit of Potential Undead Giddiness...)

Pretty good, as it happens. @Neiskas guide is about triple box Mastermind Farming and it's available here. It's a smidge less relevant these days than it used to be after the recent changes that affected AE critter behavior whenever you're at the aggro cap; but it is still quite a useful reference piece. It describes well what happens whenever you bring a Mastermind(s) with multiple henchmen, each with their own aggro cap, into a tightly packed farming map. In short, GLORIOUS BEDLAM. Multiple stacking AoE buffs and Group Fly in that scenario is a godsend. My own Bot/Kin/Flame still makes good use of the same style of farming, albeit typically dual-boxed with whatever alt I fancy leveling up at the time.

"Hey man, mind turning off Group Fly? It's severely messing up my rotation." "Oh, sorry. Yeah no problem. That'll make my Bots take a few extra hits but we should be grand. Although you realise you can visit Null to global disable GF and stuff yeah?" "Aye but I forgot on this toon and we're on a TF. Thanks. You know I was half expecting this to turn into some kind of major argument or something." "Naw... it's just a game, right?"

There was a little bit of artistic license going on, sure, but from what I can tell it's a valid summary rather than a strawman. I realise you called this a "vent thread" and I'm not leaping on the judgement bandwagon. However FWIW, here are some of my "greatest hits" of the thread so far: "the team lead can be tyrannical" "Can GMs do nothing to these people" "others shouldn't be able to impose on my playstyle" "I'm practical" "I would even been gracious enough to quit" "If someone presents a valid argument, I'll concede it." "I've been nothing but civil." "my time is very valuable" "As far as I'm concerned, they didn't take the correct steps." "I hope its a hard piece of wooden furniture."

This. I actually agree with the statement "Group Fly is very useful on certain ATs, therefore anyone who wishes to never be affected by it should visit Null the Gull to turn it off". However I do not agree with the statement "Whilst on a TF the Leader asked me to do X. I refused to do X. The leader booted me. Therefore the leader in question is a very terrible person and anyone who disagrees with me should go whack their foot off a skirting board." I mean, we all love a good rant and a therapeutic bitching session about Group Fly and/or Knockback and/or nerfing Regen. However as a PUG horror story this needs 50% more Snarky.

Yups. Was from Zwillinger apparently: "to answer the question as to why Null's wonderful reality bending capabilities are not put into a UI/Options window: UI work takes a significant amount of time. Creating an NPC that offers these toggles takes significantly less time." https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Null_the_Gull#Historical

The public education system has failed me If Spellcheck didn't exist. I would concede the point. 😉

One of my favourite toons is a Bot/Kin MM. They have Group Fly on all the time because it makes the Henchmen far more survivable and much easier to place for Fulcrums. However I've been the melee-only-Scrapper-with-poor-suppressed-movement-speed too; a long long time before Null existed. I can see both sides of the argument here; and personally I would probably err on the side of "if it annoys you enough Null it, otherwise stop whinging" That said, ultimately THIS PARTICULAR scenario smells of a distinct lack of communication. The Leader of the TF failed to communicate just how bloody annoying they (or the rest of the team) were finding your usage of Group Fly; and you failed to communicate just how important leaving it on was to you. They're perfectly within their rights to boot you for not listening/obeying; and you're perfectly within your rights to 1-star them and complain on the forums about it. Also, and I cannot stress this enough: it's spelt "AGGRAVATED".

Two Force Feedback Procs (one in Titan Sweep, another in Whirling Slash) plus Hasten. And an Agility Alpha slot to boot. To be fair, after you detoggle Superjump, Sprint and Tactics and swap the Def/Rech in Weave to a Def/EndRed the Recovery rises to +1.67; but the build still has a fair bit to go. With one foe in Invincibility range it's currently looking like this: Ideally Defense to all damage types here should be 45% or above; and S/L Resistance should be capped (90% is fine, but 100% is better as you ignore debuffs). Alternatively, you can push Resistance to other things higher and leave Defenses a smidge lower (so that you can lean on Barrier and/or keep a few more foes within range of Invincibility to hit the softcap) but IMO that approach goes much better on a Tanker - with lower base numbers and no helpful ATOs, getting Brute resistances high enough to justify it simply requires too much sacrifice elsewhere in the build. If all you want is MOAR DAMAGE then start with 2x Acc/Dam HOs and 4x Damage Procs in every attack (or even 5-6 damage procs and 0-1x Acc/Dam HO if you can swing the Accuracy requirements to cap your ToHit chance vs whatever you're fighting) and work up from there... although in that case /SR might be a better choice than /INV.