Maelwys

I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with the undead one here. One of my mostest funnest toons from live was a Fire Blaster that used Rise of the Phoenix as part of their attack chain. Blasters excel at spike AoE damage; and building for maximum wide-area carnage and simply not knowing how to stay dead is an UTTERLY HILARIOUS and surprisingly effective way to play. Yes, things like "No Deaths" accomplishment badges and TF runs exist... but a single decently built and non-inebriated Defender can usually stack enough buffs to keep even the most dedicated Leeroy Jenkins fans alive, and in regular gameplay nobody really gives a flying fig about EXP Debt anyway.

If it's an Alpha slot then it'd be from either the Agility (Recharge + Defence/EndMod/etc) or Spiritual (Recharge + Healing/Stun/etc) trees. There's also the Destiny Slot clicky which really sticks your recharge into overdrive and is rather appropriately named...

I don't usually go in for pun/satire character names (although I'm a big fan of puns/dad jokes in general) but "Dangermoose" was simply too good to pass up. Now if only we had actual antlers.... 😭

I'm pretty sure High level Council "Freem" is a 5% chance for Mag 20 KB. There is a (slightly out of date) list of enemy knockback power Mags on the wiki which is fairly useful for determining how much KB protection you need depending on what you're fighting. Mag 7 protection does give some benefit over Mag 4, but Mag 12 is very much the "sweet spot".

Agree /Time is probably the strongest secondary that can do what you're asking here. FWIW at Lv50 it's possible to give you and your pets/teammates Softcapped Defence on an Illusion/Time as well. The Trick is using [Powerboost + Clarion Radial] every 120s to buff both [Farsight and Group Invisibility]. That can get you North of 40%, then Maneuvers can make up the difference (or just rely on Time's Juncture versus anything other than level 54 AVs - realistically that will bring you to the Incarnate Defence Softcap as long as you're fighting something without Archvillain Resistance). Controller - Illusion - Time (PwrBoost).mbd

SR is OP. TOs FTW. (Slightly less sarcastic response: it might help if you gave us more information here on what is presumably a build request...? Otherwise - as a very rough guideline typically in each of the various +Def abilities I'd stick an attuned LOTG +7.5% Global Recharge IO [5 max] plus either 2x Red Fortunes, 3x Shield Walls or 3x Active Defenses [in the latter two cases, that's 2 regular 50+5s plus an attuned unique]. As the barest of minimums aim for 45% Defence to all three positions, and ideally 59% for incarnate content. SR has plenty of Defence Debuff Resistance so you won't require much overcap and/or running Ageless Incarnate. It also grants scaling damage resistance as your health drops, so the higher your current HP is whenever you can hit the 75% Resistance cap the better...)

Power descriptions are often inaccurate so I'd not put too much faith in them. Interesting that it's not present in the other AT versions of the power though. It doesn't look to have been mistakenly copied from Particle Shielding etc. as the durations differ. TBH in practice a few HP per second of Regen here or there probably isn't going to make a huge amount of difference; but having that regeneration buff in RT at least gives Scrappers an excuse to not just automatically 6-slot it with damage procs... so I'd veer towards adding it to those other ATs rather than getting rid of it on Scrappers. If they do decide to get rid of it then I'd definitely suggest they also extend the duration of the 30s Regeneration buff in Particle Shielding; to bring it into line with the 60s duration of the Recovery and Absorb buffs (whether as a compromise or a bugfix - the fact that Rad Armor was added post-shutdown means that its powers have always been a little wonky like that). To be fair the target's level also affects the Regeneration Resistance component of Radiation Therapy; as well as Bio Armor's DNA Siphon (regardless of your AT) so they're going to need to add the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag in several places regardless of what the intent is for the Regeneration Buff.

That's a very good point. I was fighting +2/8 at the time so it's quite possible the enemies were +1 to me. Retesting in Atlas Park (vs Lv1s) and Talos (vs Lv25s) I got the original 15.89 HP/Sec rate... so it looks like it's ignoring the enemy's level if it's lower than my own character. However versus Level 54s (+3 to me) I'm getting this: 10.33 HP / Sec is 65% of 15.89 HP/Sec So you're quite right, it's the Purple Patch kicking in. Therefore the fix here will be to add the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag to both the Regeneration Rate buff and Resistance (Regen) buff components of the power.

Same thing's happening on Live with Rad Armor Particle Shielding and it definitely seems to be the "100% Absorb" cap kicking in prior to the buff renewal. Realistically whenever a melee toon is in the thick of things, enemies will likely whittle through most/all of your absorb shield by the time you can refresh it; but the fact that these "replace existing effect" powers don't necessarily refresh their full Absorb value is still annoying for anyone who isn't getting actively pummeled. Have submitted a bug report here.

I've noticed a few issues with the above powers on my /Rad Scrapper. (i) Firstly, Radiation Therapy - this power does several things. Regardless of the number of foes around you, it always restores a moderate [non-stackable] amount of hitpoints and endurance; restores a minor [stackable] amount of hitpoints and endurance, and grants a [non-stackable] Regeneration Buff and some [non-stackable] Regeneration resistance. If there are any foes within 20ft and it passes a ToHit check (with 3x regular accuracy!) then it also deals a minor amount of energy and toxic damage to them and the [stackable] minor amount of hitpoints and endurance mentioned above increases; up to a maximum of 10 times. The problem I'm seeing with this power is that the Regeneration Buff received is not remaining static. If I have foes around me when the power activates, then the regeneration buff I receive is noticeably LOWER - by almost exactly 10%. [With No foes in Range] [With Foes in Range] [Slotting] This appears to happen regardless of whether the effect is replacing itself (overriding an existing instance of Radiation Therapy's Regeneration buff) or if it's a fresh casting with no previous instance of the buff active. From looking at the power's stats I'm not certain what exactly is happening to produce that 10% discrepancy - the Regeneration buff is flagged to ignore resistance so it shouldn't be getting affected by the "+Resistance (Regen)". I can only assume it's some kind of unintentional interaction with the multiple foe mechanic? [EDIT - as per replies later in this thread, this bug appears to be related to the level of the enemies you're fighting. The Regeneration Rate buff and Resistance (Regen) buff components of this power do not have the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag set, which is causing their value to be affected by the Purple Patch whenever any higher-level enemies are nearby. So the fix here will presumably be to add this flag in order that these buffs remain constant regardless of enemy level. Most other healing/regeneration powers that can target foes such as Dark Regeneration , Siphon Life and Rise To The Challenge already have this flag set, but it's worth pointing out that this bug also appears to affect the recovery and regeneration buffs granted by Bio Armor's DNA Siphon] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - (ii) Secondly, Particle Shielding - this power is more straightforward. It grants a moderate [non-stacking] Regeneration buff, a moderate [non-stacking] Recovery buff and a [non-stacking] high amount of Absorb. The problem I'm seeing here is very similar to one reported in the Beta Bug forum about Bio Armor's Ablative Carapace. Namely, if you activate the ability a second time before the first instance of the buff expires, then the new instance of the buff is supposed to replace the old one. However the amount of Absorb granted is incorrect - in this case it drops by about 30%. At least in THIS case, I can guess the likely reason for the bug... As a Scrapper, my character's Base HP is 1339; so that's the maximum amount of Absorb that they can have. A normal fresh instance of Particle Shielding grants an Absorb shield of 790.7 HP 1339 - 790.7 = 548.3... which is suspiciously close to the 547.92 figure that the second application of Particle Shielding is granting me. So I very much suspect that repeated "replacing" applications of Absorb powers such as Particle Shielding and Ablative Carapace apply a fresh copy of their buff BEFORE the old copy of the buff gets removed (e.g. whenever the power is activated a second time and the Absorb buff attempts to be applied, the character's total Absorb runs afoul of the 100% cap and so the character only actually receives part of the buff... then the old copy of the buff gets removed and the character's total Absorb plummets, leaving the partial buff in place). I assume the fix here would be to either make it so that any "replacing" applications of an Absorb buff fully remove the original buff before reapplying it or allow the maximum Absorb value to exceed 100% under the hood before it gets capped at 100% later on (similar to what currently happens with other stats such as maximum hit points and damage resistance etc - since this issue does not appear to occur during the reapplication of powers that exceed those caps, such as Dull Pain and Eclipse).

The draw of a Defender over a Corruptor is the higher base buff/debuff values. (Vigilance grants a noticeable damage buff when soloing but on teams it's next to worthless...) There are a few solid buff/debuff powersets that don't overly benefit from Power Boost/Power Build Up; and that therefore really shine with those higher Defender base values. Cold Domination is a good example of this: Defender-level Cold Bubbles plus Arctic Fog and Maneuvers can hit North of 40% defense; so throw in Barrier and it's quite possible to permanently softcap your entire team by yourself... and the numbers for Sleet, Heat Loss and Benumb are through the roof. And of course Defenders also benefit from a higher scaling on Leadership powers, and many blast powerset secondary effects (even if Sonic Blast isn't quite as OP these days!) A good Defender can be quite literally a force multiplier on teams - you're not a Tank or a Blaster, but you make the team more powerful, faster, and safer. That Fire Blaster that can melt a pack of minions by themselves should be able to melt a pack of bosses with you by their side.

I double-boxed on Live quite a bit. Typically it'd be me actively playing one toon whilst the second was a dedicated Buffer (or Tank) either on autofollow or standing still. It made a lot of things easier, from farming to AV/GM hunting to just plain levelling up - a few favourite combos included "Fire Blaster + INV/SS Tanker with Footstomp on Autofire" for farming and "almost anything plus Earth/Thermal Controller" for GM fights. And yes, I'd occasionally bring multiple toons into a TF. But only if I knew it inside out, we weren't already capped on teammates and doing so actually made things faster/safer. If I joined a PUG TF where someone was multiboxing then I'd be perfectly fine with that as long as they weren't actively trying to hide what was going on. Bonus points if they actually played at least one of their characters halfway decently.

I've always played Warshades as Tri-Formers because the Eclipse + Double Mire + Nova Form Blasts playstyle performs so highly that anything else is basically intentionally crippling your own performance. However IMO Peacebringers are much less incentivized to take multiple forms in the first place; since the Human Form contains all of the core tools (Buffs, Heals, CC, Light Form) and can still deal reasonable levels of Melee, Ranged and AoE damage without the need to look like a deformed jellyfish. Even Triform PBs often prefer to remain within a single chosen situational form until they need to refresh a long-duration clicky (e.g. Light Form or Inner Light). Having an inherent that penalizes a Kheldian who does NOT take multiple forms and swap between them like an overly caffeinated squirrel with ADHD is not my idea of fun. Cosmic Balance/Dark Sustenance is rubbish, yes. However the idea behind it (buffing the owner depending on their team) isn't horrible. It could easily grant stuff like +Regeneration, Maximum HP, -Resistance Debuffs, +MezDuration, etc. in addition to or instead of Damage/Resistance/etc; and my personal preference would be to keep it simple and just give them a variable Vigilance-style buff that gets *SHARED* with their teammates... perhaps weighted towards Damage Output for Warshades and Increased Survivability for Peacebringers.

The short version is that there were a bunch of changes in i26 page 4 that raised Tanker damage scale and made most Tanker AoEs hit a *lot* more targets than the same ability in a Scrapper or Brute... resulting in it being possible for Tankers to plow through a large pack of mobs much faster than a Brute, with better survivability and without worrying about Fury. Power-for-Power against a single target? Brutes still beat Tankers. But unfortunately these days much of the "pushing the envelope" stuff (AKA virtual anatomy measuring contests) revolve around min-maxed-fully-IOed-and-T4-Incarnated builds either steamrolling through entire maps of mobs in the fastest time (where Tankers beat Brutes), or downing one big tough target in the fastest time (where Scrappers and Stalkers and a considerable number of "squishy" ATs beat Brutes). So it's currently difficult to find a powerset combination that shines brighter on a Brute than it does on a different Melee AT. That's not to say that Brutes aren't fun to play; but after you hit a certain threshold (basically level 50 with ATOs) they're seldom mechanically optimal. And there are a bunch of folk out there who enjoy min-maxxing and playing the most powerful version of each toon they roll up. IIRC Battle Axe is one of the standout sets actually - it has a few AoEs which don't really benefit much from the Tanker radius buff (although the lower target cap on Axe Cyclone and Pendulum is still a bit annoying) and if you pair it with a secondary that has some decent AoE damage output like FA or Rad (neither of which benefit much from the Scrapper or Tanker inherents) then even better.

Fair enough; I assumed the Judgement Nuke + Anguishing Cry/Flash Freeze spam would grab most of the aggro of whatever was still standing! 🙂 RE Debuffs - they're incredibly good versus stuff that doesn't resist them and specific buffs like -regen and -resistance can act as force multipliers... but unfortunately debuffs are only 48% effective, maximum, on +4 mobs due to the purple patch. Then some enemy types (not AE custom mobs, but regular ones) have inherent resistances or mez protection which cut that down further; and EBs/AVs have the 85-87% debuff resistance on top of that. It's not impossible to farm higher level mobs using debuffs; however doing so stacks the deck much more heavily against you compared to a decent buff set (which is why I was surprised to see that you said it was "just as strong if not stronger" compared to your Bots/Time; particularly when fighting +4s!) Things like -ToHit and -Defence debuffs tend to be greatly overshadowed by +Defence and +ToHit buffs - that's part of why /Poison is seen as one of the worst performing secondaries. Every little bit extra helps on "Hardmode" content though when teammate buffs are through the roof anyway... if you're already mostly buff-capped then throwing some debuffs around never hurts! 😁

Ah, so Single-box Solo Farming; and your MM is pulling the bulk of the aggro with incarnate clickies and AoE debuffs. OK. That explains the uncapped pet defence/resistance numbers and why you're fighting just a single group at a time. As long as you're enjoying it, great. However I should probably point out that certain MMs can absolutely solo farm entire maps worth of foes at a time though - circumventing the regular 17-enemy aggro cap is one of the main draws of having so many pets; and it's a perfectly viable farming setup that can compete favourably with Brutes (but not Tanks). Typically a MM farming toon is built for lots of AoE damage and extreme survivability. Here's an example from personal experience (the build given a few posts further down is a bit out of date - Mastermind - Robotics - Kinetics (Bonfire).mbd is the current one; with a smidge more performance squeezed out of the pets via HOs and Procs). A Bot/Kin/Flame can have bags of AoE output and capped Damage and Accuracy, Hardcapped L/C/P Resistance (as long as Barrier's running), Softcapped Defence (Barrier or Support Destiny or Lore buffs) and immunity to Recharge debuffs. Mine usually farms Ice Melee/Blast enemies in Asteroid AE missions; and it's not uncommon for them to pull (and kill) half the map simultaneously.

Might as well throw this up here too for a bit of variety. I leaned more towards ST damage and survivability than AoE damage (since I've got Tanks for that) so RT isn't quite as procced out. Scrapper - EM - RA (Moonbeam).mbd The Crit ATO is in ET; and the regular ST chain (without bags of extra recharge from saturated Beta Decay or Ageless etc) looks something like this: TF > ET (quick) > BS > MB > ET (slow or quick) > BS or vs targets that you want additional -Regen debuffs: TF > Barrage (-regen) > ET (slow or quick) > MB > BS > ET (slow) It's still got a bit of AoE due to WH spam plus RT/GZ; but it's mainly built for skirmishes vs a few very tough foes with little/no outside support.... which TBH is what I tend to value in a Scrapper anyway. [EDIT: Power selection order tidyup]

The MM themselves is sitting on about 47% S/L Defense without Hybrid running, and 75% S/L resistance. The Pets will be getting 21.6% (Melee/Ranged) and 28.8% (AoE) from Train Ninjas. Add Maneuvers (+4.2%) and the uniques and that's 35.8% (Melee/Ranged) and 58% (AoE). World of Pain plus the uniques will also be adding 52.7% Resistance to everything (so the Oni will be sitting on 78.8% S/L Res and 90% Fire Res) The Pets are a bit shy of the Melee/Ranged Softcap (unless Support Hybrid is running) and no Conduit of Pain seems like an oversight if farming speed is the thing? Also that FF Proc in Call Genin is doing zip; since pets are immune to recharge buffs/debuffs. I'm guessing the OP's playstyle here sees the MM draw the aggro with Flash Freeze and their various debuffs and then the pets "mop up"... but I very much suspect that it's not exactly going to be what you'd call "quick" at clearing large spawns. The Genin are also rather underslotted for accuracy if you're fighting anything over +2 (+4 to them)?

By all means heal your pets when they're damaged. The trick is to ensure that they only take damage very occasionally (which is where defence-capping comes in) and that they don't get one-shot before you can heal them (which is where resistance buffs come in) Personally I'd probably go /Time with Thugs. Chrono Shift helps with Gang War uptime; and Power Boost + Radial Clarion + Farsight will get you most of the way to the softcap (~28.4%) by itself - stacked with Enforcer Maneuvers you'll be golden.

Nope, closest would be this one: zMastermind - Robotics - Thermal.mbd (Pets are mostly Res hardcapped. With 'Bot Bubbles and Barrier they're at ~40% Def; so Lore or Destiny will softcap them) I tend to try to push my pets towards the regular 45% Def softcap, so I prefer a +Def secondary for Mercs. e.g. zMastermind - Mercs - Cold.mbd(Note that Power Boost doesn't work for Cold Bubbles, it's just there to buff other secondary effects) zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Hasten).mbd zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Spirit Ward).mbd I've not gotten around to building a Mercs/Time yet; but it'd work pretty well too... I'd probably start by repurposing one of my other MM /Time builds like this one zMastermind - Demons - Time.mbd (note that the main thing here is Power Boost + Radial Clarion to push Farsight up to ~28.4% Def. Throw in Maneuvers and the aura Uniques and you're in softcap territority before you even count stuff like Time's Juncture)

Repeatedly claiming hundreds of emailed items counts as "gameplay"? Fiiiiiiiine... have edited the OP. (and as a disclaimer for Big Brother - I'm all for "no botting"; some PUGs are bad enough whenever there's a human behind the wheel of the toon...)

This 100%. Pretty sure it's why the Devs gave us Vengence in the first place. On Defiant, there was a particularly infamous loudmouthed elbowhead and all-round serial troll whose globalname consisted of three letters beginning with "L". It got to be something of a running joke that the only time regular players would suffer their presence on a team was if they needed an extra dead body to teleport around...

Large hordes of mobs (ITF etc) would have been more difficult to hold the attention of before; and there are some Arcs with multiple EBs/AVs that could in theory one-shot a squishy; so I can sort of see the benefit of it. That said, I agree that none of my Tankers over the years have ever had issues keeping ~10 Foes taunted at a time. Even the OG Energy Melee one that dropped Whirling Hands.

I suspect that actually applying "Pets be the same level as the MM" is very straightforward; but rebalancing the T1/T2 pet's damage output (and survivability!) would be non-trivial. To keep things "level" they'd need to at a minimum go into every ability those pets get and adjust their "damage scale" downwards... they obviously didn't feel the need to do a rebalance for Incarnate Content, but aside from Dark Astoria that's mostly (supposedly) extreme endgame content on a team of veteran players.