Maelwys

Yeah. Surely everyone knows the real trouble will be Freakshow, Battle Maiden flunkies, or (Ouroboros help us) Praetorian demons. (We're pretending AE doesn't exist right? Right...) I loved tanking on my INV/SS tanker back in i6/i7. That lovable taunting, raging, superjumping, footstomping brick that he was. I sometimes wheeled him out in later issues for TFs because he could tank anything. Playing him was easy mode. He could cope with any combination of teammates (PUGs and random SG teams) because he could control aggro and weather all the incoming damage without needing any outside support - he could basically solo the mission by himself (and that was COH in a nutshell to me - your character being powerful enough to simply not care what other powersets/characters are on the team. When you don't need a "Holy Trinity" of MMO pairings, you can simply have fun experiencing the content and mucking about with your friends etc.) However what that tanker couldn't do is bypass the aggro cap, so as everyone's characters gradually became more and more powerful (e.g. level 50 incarnates with full invention builds etc) then there became less and less point to bringing a dedicated tank (or a dedicated anything) along. Because it's faster to steamroll through 4-5 mobs in the time it takes to herd 2 together (even with a minimal strategy of "Taunt the nearest mob, jump into another one. Then repeatedly Footstomp/KOBlow/CrossPunch/etc and get everyone to spam their AoEs"!). You can still bring a tanker to a TF, but demanding everyone wait for you to tank is going to be an exercise in futility, and rightly so. If you want the job of playing "protector" then fine. Go for the most dangerous enemies - Quantums, Sappers, Bosses, EBs, AVs, GMs. Sort your targeting binds out and be attentive. Don't worry about grabbing ALL the aggro; the Blaster can likely handle a few (dozen) minions... ...and if they can't? Then you can hand them a wakey and gently point out that they'll grab a little less attention if they let you leap in first. But always consider that they might be a veteran who wants to use Rise of the Phoenix or something, rather than a newbie who got in over their head - Faceplanting in this game isn't particularly problematic unless you're running a "Master of X" TF. So let the rest of the team bite off whatever they feel they can chew, and just have some fun with it all... 😅

Depends how you build them. Certain MM secondaries (particularly /Kin, and to a lesser extent /Nature and /Thermal) can put out some extremely impressive DPS figures. Primary matters too - e.g. Bots deal crazy amounts of AoE. Demons deal crazy amounts of ST. Thugs are somewhere in the middle. MMs don't have a taunt aura, and their damage output is staggered over the pets so there's fewer ego-boosting massive red number values floating over mobs' heads. But on the plus side, they don't share the same traditional weaknessess as Brutes/Scrappers - such as single target debuffs and endurance drains. The Crimson Prototype from Market Crash comes to mind - it's FAR easier to solo that AV on a Mastermind than on a melee AT.

By itself it's a bit pants, but it takes a fair amount of procs and it can even be used as a decent survivability buff (make sure to stick at least a Power Transfer: Chance to Heal in it) To put some numbers against it: + Base damage of Lightning Field is 12.5123 damage every 2 seconds, or a little under 6.3 damage/second per target. + "Regular" slotting at level 50 (+Acc and +Dam and +EndRed) = roughly 12.5 damage/second per target. + With Procs and Incarnates (Armageddon Proc + Eradication Proc + Obliteration Proc + Acc/Dam HO + Armageddon Dam/End IO + Power Transfer Proc + Musculature Core Alpha Incarnate) = average of 36.29 damage/second per target. The Power Transfer Proc returns 66.93 HP every time it activates. It can't activate more than once every 10 seconds, but each target hit by Lightning field has a seperate 26.32% chance to trigger that activation... so the more targets hit by Lightning Field, the more likely that you'll get healed. It works out at anywhere from +1.762 HP/sec -> +6.693 HP/sec (for comparison, unslotted "Grounded" gives about +5.58 HP/Sec).

Whilst I completely agree that debuffs are great, the problem with using -Tohit in your defcap calculations is that its effectiveness differs greatly depending on what you're fighting. +Defense is difficult to negate: very few foes have noteworthy +Tohit buffs or Autohit attacks (lategame it's mainly Nemesis, Rularuu and Incarnate content) so packing some Defense Debuff Resistance will be sufficient most of the time. However -ToHit debuffs get affected by enemy debuff resistances and level difference. So all your powers that inflict -ToHit tend to operate between 30% and 65% effectiveness vs regular foes in endgame, and they become negligible against AVs and GMs (e.g. best case vs a Lv54 AV is 8.45% effectiveness!)

You can hardcap S/L resists and Softcap positionals fairly easily with /Shield; and the Panacea and Power transfer Healing Procs do a good job of keeping your health topped up. Energy Melee is also one of the lowest cost sets in terms of endurance consumption, so you can get away without Ageless if you prefer taking Barrier etc. Here's an example that hits the magic numbers regardless of your incarnate picks (although I'd still recommend picking up Musculature Alpha, Degenerative Interface and Assault Hybrid!)

Look again. Bot/Traps is all about powerset synergy: + Caltrops keeping things from fleeing out of your Assault Bot's Incendiary Missile patches. + Triage Beacon providing top-up healing for you and your entire team of henchmen. + Forcefield Generator stacking with your Protector Bot Bubbles, and providing Mez protection (again, for you and all your henchmen). + Acid Mortar buffing the damage of you and all your henchmen. + Poison Trap causing everything to be mezzed and have their Regeneration rate halted. To combine with Acid Mortar, Incendiary Missiles, Bot's inherent -Regen blasts, etc. + Toebombing things with Trip Mines, whilst at the Defence softcap and stealthed and/or your henchmen are taking the aggro. + Web Grenade can immobilise and inflict -fly on AVs. + You can even tank in Bodyguard mode. It was one of the premium soloing powerset combinations well before Inventions/Incarnates; and I can attest to its effectiveness personally. The only thing it needs is Aid Self/Other plus a means of preventing knockback on big groups of foes (since cycling Web Grenade on each enemy in a big mob whilst your henchmen are laser-blasting and launching missiles at them gets old fast) but Inventions and/or the Mu Patron pool's AoE Immobilise have that covered.

That proc is only 1PPM, so a 32s clicky with a 1.32s arcanatime activation is never going to get a capped activation chance. The highest you can get (0% recharge slotting) is 55.53% activation chance. At 50% recharge slotting it becomes a 37.76% activation chance. At 100% recharge slotting it's a 28.87% activation chance. Using the build up proc in there is fine, but its performance will greatly depend on what other powers you're able to activate within its remaining effect time: 5.25-1.32 = 3.93 seconds plus a maximum of another 0.5 seconds (due to the additional "Animation Time Before Effect" that's present on the set bonus) so ballpark of "4 and a bit seconds in which to squeeze in as many other attacks as possible".

My first Blaster on live was a Fire/Ice because of Ice Patch and Shiver. Those two powers basically let him survive the aggro of nuking everything with Firebreath and Fireball (and corner pulling was a thing too). When he hit 50 he was by far my favourite toon to just hop on and enjoy a TF or some missions with friends. However by then he was never using Ice Patch and Shiver for damage mitigation; but to stop enemies running out of the effect of Rain of Fire. His attack plan was essentially: Locate the biggest nearby mob he can find --> Jump into the middle of it --> Inferno --> Jump into the middle of the NEXT mob and run in little circles until he Faceplants (with bonus points if there's a tank and/or healer trying to stop that from happening) --> Rise of the Phoenix --> Keep incinerating things with Fireball and Fire Breath and Blaze and Rain of Fire until Inferno is recharged --> Repeat. He was totally useless for "Master of [Insert TF here]" runs. But he was a real genuine joy to play. Eventually they even patched things so he could use a few lower-tier attacks whilst mezzed. Bonus! These days on HC, Blaster's nukes don't floor your endurance/recovery and they recharge faster, so that style of play is even better. Don't think of Blasters as ranged Scrappers. They're their own thing, and they are completely brilliant at precisely three things: Damage, Bedlam, and causing support-oriented teammates to have heart attacks. (Edit: I should probably also point out that I'm aware that "Blappers" exist. I'd a Sonic/Elec Blaster with softcapped S/L defense on live as well... he was survivable, he was effective, he was powerful... and he continuously slept in my ALTs list because he was completely boring to play in comparison to my Fire/Ice!)

There's no need to drop them. Aim for 45% S/L Defence (including a Protector Bot Bubble) and as much +Recharge as you can, with a secondary concern being +MaxHP. Getting your HP above 1100 or so (including accolades) should be doable. Don't worry too much about damage resistance or positional (Ranged/AoE/etc) defence. Softcapping your positional defences is difficult with the Mace Mastery Patron (particularly if you're aiming for +Recharge to get those Regen and Recovery Auras to maximum uptime!) and personally I'd just as soon not bother: you shouldn't need to to raise the mitigation of your MM very much through set bonuses; because the bulk of the aggro will fall on your Assault Bot. Even if you spam Pulse Rifle Burst and Arcane Bolt, you'll usually only need to withstand the attention of one foe at a time. AoE "splash damage" isn't much of a concern for you because there's very little reason for an /Empath MM to be standing right in the middle of your pets in the first place (although you can certainly dart in momentarilly to drop an aura). They're defence softcapped and you have ranged heals; so you only need to remain within Supremacy + Leadership aura range which is a good 60ft away. If for some reason you get into real difficulties, then you have Bodyguard mode and Healing Aura available to fall back on. Maybe try something like the below?

No worries! You could easily swap RS for Contaminated Strike if you prefer - or even pick up Cross Punch from the Fighting Pool and swap the "Brute's Fury" set into Proton Sweep instead. RS deals decent damage, but it's much more useful on a character that lacks other self-heals. A /FA Brute won't overly miss it. Regarding Fusion: The Gaussian "Chance to Build up" Proc is rated at 1PPM (Proc Per Minute). All of the "Build Up" type powers (including Fusion) have a 90s base recharge with 1.32s "Arcanatime" animation time, so you can slot anything below 70.85% recharge into them and still hit the 90% activation chance cap for the Gaussian proc. With a +1 level 50 Rech IO and a +5 level 50 Rech/Tohit/EndRed IO that's 70.92% recharge, so it's *just* shy of the cap (it technically has a 89.9604% chance to activate, which is close enough to basically be a rounding error!) 😁 ...so realistically, the Gaussian Proc will go off 9/10 times, with that exact slotting of Fusion.

Capping your Smashing/Lethal resistances and getting as close to the 45% Defence softcap as possible (mainly looking at Melee Defence) is the usual method to improve your survivability in PvE. Recharge is fairly important for getting power recharges back ASAP (including Healing Flames) but it's not usually worth pursuing "above all else". Your resistance to Defence Debuffs is going to be extremely low (likely non-existent) so you'll suffer a bit from the 'snowball effect' - if an enemy group has an attack that debuffs your Defence then as soon as one of those foes get a lucky hit in against you, the others will become very likely to hit too; which will make matters worse and your defence will very quickly be floored. The Ageless Radial Epiphany Incarnate can help a bit there, but it's often more straightforward to just stick to Barrier and overcap it. Acrobatics isn't a bad means of gaining Knockback protection, but getting Mag 8+ via IOs is nearly always "good enough" for PVE content The other thing to look for is Hit Rate: Open Mids, click on OPTIONS and then CONFIGURATION. Now go to the "Exemping and Base Values" tab. Find the box labeled "Base ToHit" and change its contents to "48". Doing that will set your powers' accuracy calculations in Mids so that it shows what chance each one of them has to hit enemies that are +3 to you (which is realistically the maximum you'll be fighting against most of the time in higher end PVE teams). You'll want to get each power as close to the 95% accuracy figure as possible, which is the effective "cap". Your power selection looks pretty decent, with the exception of Temperature Protection. Personally I'm a fan of having a Stealth ability in PVE (e.g. Superspeed + a Celerity:Stealth in Sprint) - it's handy to be able to avoid fighting the entire map occasionally. Also, having a Taunt that is autohit and ranged can sometimes help vs certain "tough" foes/ on TFs or AVs/GMs/etc. Here's one example build idea to aim for - it'll have a very similar playstyle, just with a bit more AoE capability and a lot more mitigation (it could farm, but it's much more of an all-rounder. Power pick order can be swapped around as desired):

I dabbled in PvP. I remember a few EU users (Can't remember exactly who it was, but Archy and Xanthus ring a faint bell?) tried to get myself and a few of my PVE SG friends into Arena 3v3 PVP fights back in the pre-invention days. This was before Travel suppression; whenever an Empath + a /Energy Blaster blapper duo basically won everything. I brought a Sonic/Elec Defender along and could take someone permanently out of the fight with Force Cage... but there just wasn't enough damage output to focus fire the others down. Most PVE-specced characters just weren't set up for burst damage. The matchups back then in Arena were very much Rock/Paper/Scissors. By the time Zone PvP became a thing... basically everyone just hated Stalkers; except for when they hated Masterminds instead (I mostly played on a Bots/Traps Mastermind with Teleport foe. Siren's call was hilarious). I do remember a certain match rather fondly however: myself on a Katana/Regen scrapper and a SG buddy on their INV Tanker (War Man? Hammerfall? Odin's Son? There were a lot of INV Tankers...) decided to have a friendly scrap in the middle of Warburg. We were standing toe-to-toe for a good 10 minutes, neither of us able to drop the other to zero. Eventually another SG buddy who'd been spectating our fight (I'm fairly sure this was MortalDecay, but it could have been DarknessBliss. Curse my dodgy middle-aged memory!!) called "time out" and we both hopped over to join them... ...and then we both promptly got blown up and KO'ed by the 20+ Trip Mines that he'd been secretly laying. Much swearing and laughter was had all 'round. Yeah, PVP back then was a fun diversion, but it got old + boring pretty fast unless you were a member of some of the diehard cliques and kept it up because of the community interaction angle. I wouldn't want to live there.

There are long threads somewhere testing this; but to briefly sum it up: Reactive is a stacking -2.5% Resistance debuff. Degenerative is a stacking -3.5% MaxHP debuff. Both can stack up to 4 times. Lets say you're a level 50 Minion, with 430.80 HP: With 1 stacks = you can either take 2.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 420.2927) or you lose 3.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 415.722) With 2 stacks = you can either take 5.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 410.2857) or you lose 7.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 400.644) With 3 stacks = you can either take 7.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 400.7442) or you lose 10.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 385.566) With 4 stacks = you can either take 10.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 391.6364) or you lose 14.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 370.488) Now, there is something to be said for how these debuffs actually function practically in the game. -MaxHP reduces your overall "maximum" HP value AND your "current" HP value by the same percentage whenever it hits (you can see this happening in reverse in MaxHP buffs such as Frostwork) so if the enemy is at 100% HP whenever it procs, then you'll reduce their current HP by the full amount... but if the enemy is at 50% HP whenever it procs, then you'll reduce their current HP by 50% of the amount, etc. So the actual amount of HP it "removes" from the target (and therefore the effectiveness of this proc) gets lower as the target's current HP drops. At this point you might be thinking "Hey Mael, doesn't that mean that if you've already damaged a foe then Reactive becomes better then Degen?" So lets do the same thing for a level 50 Minion with "half of their HP already gone" (215.4) whenever a proc kicks in: With 1 stacks = you can either take 2.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 210.1463) or you lose 3.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 207.861) With 2 stacks = you can either take 5.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 205.1429) or you lose 7.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 200.322) With 3 stacks = you can either take 7.5% more damage (effective HP becomes 200.3721) or you lose 10.5% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 192.783) With 4 stacks = you can either take 10.0% more damage (effective HP becomes 195.8182) or you lose 14.0% of your Hit Points (effective HP becomes 185.244) So the answer is nope. Degenerative's -MaxHP is still better because the effective percentages remain identical - you'd see exactly the same performance versus a weaker enemy that possessed that lower hit point figure to begin with. HOWEVER (and this is the very important bit!) there are a lot of things out there that function based on your Maximum HP - basically all self-healing abilities as well as regeneration rate. So Degen's -MaxHP Proc is actually a very good means of debuffing those things... and it is particularly useful on AVs/GMs because there is no such thing as "resistance to Maximum HP debuffs" to reduce the effectiveness of this proc! This means that the same percentage of Hit Points will get removed for every enemy in the game. Unlike "-Regeneration" debuffs, which get resisted like crazy by anything that's worth fighting. Finally: if you use a Degenerative Proc, then the enemy always lose the same amount of maximum HP regardless of its damage resistances. For comparison, Resistance debuffs get resisted by whatever your current Damage Resistance is - meaning that if you're fighting things on a Claws Scrapper (for example) and a Reactive proc kicks in, then your attacks will start dealing 2.5% more Lethal damage than you were previously dealing, regardless of whether the enemy is 90% resistant to your Lethal damage (e.g. a 1000 damage attack used to deal 100 damage, so now it deals 102.5 damage) or 0% resistant to your Lethal damage (e.g. a 1000 damage attack used to deal 1000 damage, so now it deals 1025 damage). TL;DR: Basically Degen is always better, and it becomes FAR better whenever you're fighting things which are resistant to your damage type. ----- Finally-finally: there is also a bit of difference in the other "Damage over Time" portion of the two procs. Degenerative deals 0.100 MeleeScale worth of Toxic damage. Reactive deals 0.125 MeleeScale worth of Fire damage. Technically Reactive deals more raw damage. But which one of these will be better "in practice" depends on the damage resistances of the enemy you're fighting. The impact of this is usually so minor that Degen's secondary effect wins out.

I don't have a Robot/Empathy MM, but I've played an awful lot of Robot MMs (/Traps and /Dark and /Kin and /Thermal and /Time; all extensively at level 50) and I'd a level 50 Ill/Emp Controller back on Live that I ran as a main for a little while. Robots have not got anywhere near Phantom Army's level of Invincibility by any stretch of the imagination, but they deal a good bit more damage and are a very "easy to play" MM set. They were fairly well behaved even back before HC's pet AI changes; because they're basically purely ranged damage dealers; and they bubble themselves for defence. There's a bit of lag time at the start of missions whilst the Protector Bots get the bubbles set up, but after that it's largely "cruise control" mode. You *can* micromanage them a bit should you so choose, in order to get the most out of Swarm Missiles. And sometimes having your Assault Bot (the pet with the largest health bar and highest level) run in to take an Alpha Strike can help smooth out incoming damage if you're not using bodyguard mode extensively. But usually you'll have a lot of free time to spend on using your secondary powerset's ablities. Which suits sets like /Empathy and /Kinetics very nicely - but there's few things more boring than a Bot/FF! The Synergy between Robot/ and /Empathy will definitely be via stacking Fortitude and Protector Bot Bubbles. Clear Mind doesn't hurt either. Softcapped pets with full Mez Protection are rather easy to keep healed up. Regarding ToHit, henchmen can indeed have it rather rough because of the level difference. If you're fighting things that are +4 to you then your Drones will be -6 to them (20% Base ToHit chance) but eventually you'll end up fighting enemies that are level 54 whenever you're level 51, so the effective level difference becomes +5 for your Drones in regular endgame content (Incarnate content is different, since henchmen gain "automatic Incarnate shifts" to bring them up to the same level as their owner). Supremacy (which grants +10% ToHit to all pets within 60ft) can close the gap a bit though. Throw in an "unslotted for ToHit" Tactics (it's an odd MM who doesn't take the Leadership Pool) and Fortitude, and you're going to have a very decent chance to hit... but you'll still want to slot the equivalent of 3x SO's worth of accuracy in the Drones, 2x SO's worth in the Protector Bots and 1x SO's worth in the Assault Bot in order to reach that magical "95% Hit Rate" cap. If you slot both Tactics and Fortiude for +ToHit, then you can get by with removing one SO's worth of accuracy from each of those figures; and any global accuracy bonuses will add up too. I'd say go for it. It's a decent combo and works out reasonably strong the entire way through the leveling progression. It'll be good for TFs, and these days few teammates at endgame will need the extra +Defence from Fortitude anyway, so at least on a MM your buffs aren't wasted. Maybe even forgoe the traditional Musculature Alpha Slot for an Agility Core or Spiritual Radial? Hmm... 🤔 😁 Your Empathy power slotting seems pretty much spot on. The only thing I'd change would be cramming as much recharge into the Regeneration + Recovery Auras as possible, since it's technically doable to get their downtime under 30 seconds (=90s up, 30s down) with enough investment. But for Adrenaline boost, as long as you can get its recharge under 120 seconds you're golden. Personally I quite liked Absorb Pain on my Ill/Emp; but I teamed with a lot of rather scrapperlock-happy headcases back in those days. Currently I agree it's skippable. I'd much rather it granted +Absorb rather than raw healing! Edit: I don't have a Bot/Empathy build handy, but here's my Ill/Empathy's and Bot/Time's as of the last revision:

For me it's pidgeonholing. There are certain Incarnate abilities that simply eclipse others 99% of the time (Musculature Alpha and Degenerative Interface spring to mind). The Hybrid slots are almost as bad (Assault being better on basically everything except Pet Classes). The Destiny slots at least require a bit of thought in terms of picking whatever's more useful to you - Ageless for Recovery, Barrier or Rebirth for mitigation depending on whether you're already Defence capped, Clarion for Mez Protection. I tend to have more than one of those available at T4 and swap them depending on the situation. The Lore and Judgement slots are all pretty fun though. Lore pets on live were terribad, but they're a little more balanced with a lot more variety these days. Techncially Void Radial is probably the most overall useful of the Judgement abilities, but if you don't care about the damage debuff then they're basically just "pick whatever you like the look/theme of". I do tend to build my level 50s with a particular Alpha T4 in mind (since it makes it much easier to save on enhancement slots whilst balancing the numbers properly) but the others are icing. I even get the heebie jeebies if I have to softcap defence by running a Barrier Destiny all the time... 😖

I completely get that. I started playing CoH in Issue 6, just after "Enhancement Diversification" hit. Although there was certainly an outcry over ED, back in those days leveling up was very straightforward. There were no Invention Enhancements, no "Pay to Win" powers, no veteran abilities and no Incarnate stuff. There was no Auction house and very little trading of enhancements went on. So once you got to level 50, that was it unless you did the occasional Hamidon Raid and decided to manually set up a trade to swap your Dam/Mez HO with someone else's Acc/Dam HO. There was even no "real numbers" readout, and the "City of Data" site had yet to come into being (or at least had yet to be widely publicised - this was long before RedTomax and the Titan Network took it on); so people largely had no idea what the powers actually did under the hood, or how close they were to the Damage/Defence/Resistance caps, etc. The general populace didn't really care about numbers or percentages until after City of Villains came out and Stalkers started to be seen roaming the PvP zones (and +Perception caps versus +Stealth caps actually started to matter). Thems were simpler days, and it was by far the most "casual friendly" era of CoH. You didn't need a "build planner" like Mids (although Jay Teague's 'Hero Builder' and Joe Chott's 'Coh Planner' were around if you wanted them). People usually just took whatever powers they liked the look of, and then ran a Terra Volta respec or two to pick up Stamina and Hasten afterwards. ...Inventions muddied the waters a LOT. Things became complicated. Too complicated for a lot of the old crew - if you didn't understand the numbers and have a character build planned out then you always had a lingering sense of inferiority to those that did. And to make matters worse, new inventions kept coming in with every new issue / feature update; which meant that you needed to replan again from scratch or be left behind. Some people also found it difficult to finance their builds - there was finally a "loot grind" in CoH which had never been there before. I hate loot grinds. I basically transferred to playing CoH from one of the more grindy MMORPG games (FFXI) and one of the big draws for me of CoH was the lack of a grind. So personally, I financed my own IO builds on Live using a very simple method that involved very little effort from me: However I do have something of a fondness for figures and knowing how stuff works "under the hood", so whilst I hated the idea of grinding for it, I loved the idea of getting the most out of a character by repeatedly tweaking their build until I was finally happy with it. I was one of the first people to actually make a Spines/DA Scrapper which was self-sustaining for Endurance Recovery (long before Incarnate Abilities made it easy) just by "frankenslotting" inventions, and it got me hooked. So I followed each update very closely and made friends with some of the numberheads on the EU forums. I communicated with Matt Bauer (better known as "Mids") and promoted his new builder on the EU forums when the other character planners stopped getting updates. etc. etc. I became perfectly happy with "Inventions". Then I basically quit the game shortly after Incarnates came out; that was my definition of a grind fest. I did NOT want to have to spend weeks/months to cap out each character's incarnate tiers by only playing specific types of content. I detest being forced to repeatedly "raid" things almost as much as grinding. No thank you. But these days, Homecoming has made climbing up the Incarnate tiers very achievable. You literally get everything handed to you just for doing the things you're already doing, and you can even email "spares" (in the form of Empyrean merits) to an alt. Plus, the cost of IOs has dropped vastly - so whilst it can be a bit of a grind to finance a full invention build, you can easily pick up a few select IOs that have a big impact on your performance (such as +Regen/+Recovery uniques, the +Defence% and +Resistance% IOs, the Archetype "Procs" and the KB -> KD conversion IOs, etc) just by setting aside a few merits from running story arcs. I do occasionally have flashbacks to the olden days. The idea has been floated before of creating a sever which doesn't have inventions (or Incarnates). But unfortunately getting enough people on board to actually make playing on such a server fun and enjoyable would be a challenge in itself...

No worries 🙂 Regarding #1, yeah I can understand that. If you're just in it for the run between 1 and 50, then don't worry too much about getting the IOs perfect. Basic "good slotting" will be the equivalent of 1-2x Accuracy IOs and 2-3x Damage IOs in each of the Summons. Battle Drones needs a bit more since they're two levels under you (at least until very late game and Incarnate stuff) Assault Bot can cope with less. The Protector Bots main purpose is to Bubble things, so you can go lower on damage slotting in favour of Defence and Endurance reduction. Once you hit level 32, your Asssault Bot gets access to Incendiary Swarm Missiles; and that's when you start really needing the KB->KD IOs in the Assault Bot and Protector Bots. After that; it's a case of trying to fit your uniques in. The two +5% Defence IOs (from Edict of the Master and Call to Arms) will give the most bang for your buck there - those combined with a non-power-boosted-but-defence-slotted Fortitude will bring all your pets up to ~27.6% Defence to everything. Then Protector Bot Bubbles (even unslotted for Defence) plus Maneuvers will softcap your Drones and Assault Bot and leave your Protector Bots on ~39% Defence. The three +Resistance IOs (+10% from Expedient Reinforcement and Sovereign Right; and either 10% or 15% from Mark of Supremacy) serve more to help them weather damage from "lucky hits" - as long as they aren't one-shot then you should be able to heal them up pretty quickly. ----- Regarding #2, as mentioned above... level 32 is when your Assault Bot gets access to Incendiary Swarm Missiles. This is where the vast majority of Robot/ damage comes from. You really want this power to fire off as often as possible and keep things inside the burning patches for as long as possible (slows, immobilises, no knockback, etc). Unfortunately the level 6 upgrade gives the AssBot access to "Flamethrower" which takes a loooooong time to animate and is almost always a drain on your DPS (it can technically hit 10 foes; but it has such a narrow cone that it almost always only hits one creature. Often one that is on a sliver of remaining health!). Time spent by the Assault Bot stuck in the long Flamethrower animation is time spent whenever it can't be firing its Swarm Missiles. This used to make a LOT more impact on a Robot/ MM's DPS back whenever pets were still affected by recharge buffs... but it still has some effect today. So basically post-level-32 you'll never want to use the level 6 upgrade ability on your Assault Bot. The issue with Battle Drones is a bit less obvious. Their level 6 upgrade gives them access to "Heavy Laser Burst". This can be helpful whenever you're fighting a big single target... but it inflicts knockback (which is bad for keeping things inside of Burn Patches). You could get around this by using a KB->KD IO inside of the Battle Drones... but consider that it can also sometimes interfere with the activation cycle of their level 32 ability "Full Auto Laser", which is where the bulk of the Drones' DPS comes from at higher levels (whenever you're fighting large spawns via either teaming or upping your difficulty settings). So you can go one of two ways here - either use the level 6 upgrade on them plus a KB->KD IO, or don't use that upgrade on them. Since Bots/ are already rather stretched for places to put the +Def/+Resistance unique IOs; it usually makes sense to choose the second of those options and just not use the level 6 upgrade on the Drones post-level-32 unless you're fighting a tough single enemy like an AV/GM. For the Protector Bot, much like the Drones its level 6 upgrade gives it access to a Single-Target knockback power "Heavy Laser Burst"... but that same upgrade also gives it access to "Repair" which is very handy to have. So it's usually better to just slot a KB->KD IO into the Protector Bots. Note that you *can* bypass the knockback issue by using a "rooting" AoE Immobilise from your Epic/Patron power pools (the Mu pool's "Electrifying Fences" being the traditional choice here)... but on Homecoming you have lots of KB->KD IOs available so it makes sense to just stick an extra one in your Assault Bot and Protector Bots and call it a day. Plus, as an /Empath you'll want to go Mace Mastery for Power Boost; and last I checked "Web Grenade" didn't negate Knockback. Personally I usually just summon my Protector Bots, use the level 6 upgrade, then summon the Drones and the AssBot and use the level 32 upgrade --> done, commence mission! 😀 ----- One final thing to note - your Pets will inherit buffs from Incarnate abilities (Alpha Slot and Interface Slot being the main ones). HOWEVER if you "zone" and allow your pets to automatically be resummoned after the zone, then they lose those buffs until you resummon them. (Check your "real numbers" combat attribute value display. You'll notice that things like the +defence added by the Protector Bot bubbles revert to their "non incarnate" values after you zone). So wherever possible, once you start using Incarnate Slots always dismiss and resummon your pets after zoning! 🤖

You can use the Pet Powers button, but stuff like this is not straightforward in Mids (needs a little database tweaking to fix the Protector Bot bubbles, for example) and I usually prefer to use a calculator + a notepad. That said, if you look in City of Data then it'll give you the raw values of things like Henchmen resistances and buffs - see https://cod.uberguy.net./html/powerset.html?pset=mastermind_summon.robotics&at=mastermind (check the stats/powers of each entity within each of the three henchmen summons plus the Equip Robot / Upgrade Robot abilities!) 👍

Incarnate System on HC is anything but a slog fest. You don't need to go and talk to any contacts to unlock anything or do any missions or earn any influence etc. etc. You can literally just keep doing whatever it is that you already want to do. After you hit level 50, the Incarnate slots will gradually open up automatically without you needing to do anything other than keep earning experience and keep fighting regular enemies; and you'll gradually accrue salvage drops and gain the ablity to craft components. Then every few levels, check your salvage: for Incarnate Thread and Incarnate Shard and Empyrean Merits. Click on your Power Tray and open the Incarnate Tab to see the recipe crafting/building screen. Click in it a few times to craft a recipe from the salvage drops you already have (keeping the Empyrean merits for spending on the Rare/Very rare components) and then equip your shiny new Incarnate ability. Hurrah! Sure, it helps if you farm the Dark Astoria arcs a few times. But that just means the drops go a bit faster. There are a few "trap" incarnate powers though, which is why it's better to have a glance over them and have a rough idea of what you want before you decide to craft anything (For LORE see here . For INTERFACE just remember that the secondary effects are mostly useless aside from the -MaxHP one from Degenerative)

1. No, Repair is borderline useless even for sets without a Heal. Drop it and good riddance. 2. Arcane Bolt is "better" (in terms of damage) than your primary attacks; and it doesn't inflict Knockback. So yes, it wins out in most gameplay if you can look past the thematics. 3. Enflame is borderline useless on Ranged Pets. If you were a Thugs/ then it might have a place on your Bruiser. As it is? Skip it. 4. Now we're talking. Perfect slotting is expensive - but if you're taking an Musculature Alpha Slot, then you can drop some +Damage Slotting... and if you're taking one of the others, then you might be able to drop some +Defence etc. slotting. so the exact setup will vary. Battle Drones don't need much Endurance Reduction or a KB -> KD IO (because the only KB power they get is with the level 6 upgrade power, which you should never be using on them or the Assault Bot after you hit level 32+) so you can use it as a mule for three of your +Def/Resistance uniques. Protector Bots need a bit of Endurance Reduction, capped Defence and KB->KD, so I usually go with 2x Level 50 Defence IOs, 1x Sudden Acceleration KB -> KD IO, with 3 slots left to cap Damage and raise Accuracy and Endurance Reduction a bit. On Empathy you can probably swap out 1-2 of the Level 50 Defence IOs if desired; since they'll be much easier to defence-softcapped due to Fortitude. That leaves the Assault Bot. It's probably the one you'll stick a 2-piece Mark of Supremacy in (the unique and another) which leaves four slots to cap Damage, raise Accuracy a bit and fit the remaining +Def/Resistance unique and a KB->KD IO in. If you want to maximise damage, then stick a "Soulbound Allegience: Chance for Build Up" Proc into the Battle Drones and an "Explosive Strike: Chance for Smashing Damage" into the Assault Bot. You could free up the slots for this by dropping the +Defence uniques altogether if you've crunched the buff numbers and you're confident with keeping your Fortitude cycle up. 5. Note that it's reasonably easy to keep Fortitude up 4-5 times. It caps out at 7-8 times with enough recharge. Roughly half of the time it can be power boosted, so whenever you're soloing, stick your POWER BOOSTED Fortitudes on your Protector Bots since they get single-bubbled, and then regular-buff the Drones and the AssBot since they get double-bubbled. All of your henchmen are going to benefit from your Heals and Healing Aura and Fortitudes. I'd keep Adrenaline Boost for teammates though - its biggest benefit is the +Recharge buff which is wasted on pets.

Using a target bind is your best bet. For the MM themselves, they can use "petselect_name PETNAME"... however since these are not your own pets you're probably stuck using "target_custom_next", which doesn't respect the customised names of henchmen- so regardless of what your son has called his pets, you'll need to use their default names in your targetting binds, and then keep tapping the key to cycle through each one that matches until you get to whichever henchman you actually want to buff/heal. e.g. /target_custom_next friend "battle drone" /target_custom_next friend "protector bot" /target_custom_next friend "assault bot"

Because it hasn't yet been expressly pointed out: AS YOU HIT VETERAN LEVEL 3 AND HIGHER, YOU WILL GAIN EMPYREAN MERITS. DO NOT WASTE THESE BY CONVERTING THEM INTO ANYTHING OTHER THAN "RARE" OR "VERY RARE" INCARNATE COMPONENTS UNTIL YOU HIT TIER 4 ON ALL YOUR INCARNATE SLOT ABILITIES. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Veteran_Levels#Empyrean_Merits https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Incarnate_System#Ability_List If you're a newcomer to the whole Incarnate system, then the short version is that Alpha slots and Interface slots are "passive" buffs which are always-on. Judgement is a "click" attack that is basically like a Blaster's Nuke. The Lore slot is a "click" summon ability which has a decent uptime. The Destiny slot is a "click" buff which can effectively become permanent at highest tiers (the effectiveness drops off over time; but a little bit of the buff lasts until all 120 seconds of its recharge time are up). The Hybrid slot is a "toggle" that has a maximum uptime of 120 seconds before it automatically detoggles and then takes another 120 seconds to recharge. The Alpha slot is the one you want to get to Tier #3 as soon as possible, as whenever you equip a T3 or T4 Alpha ability you become "level 51" in all content. Alpha slot is also the only slot that you can build with either Incarnate Shards or Incarnate Threads (there are two seperate recipes listed for each Alpha Slot ability!) The usual recommendation is to go T3 Alpha --> T3 Interface --> T3 Destiny/Lore (these give you a +1 level buff during "Incarnate Content") -> T3 Others; then T4 whatever you want. You can transfer Empyrean Merits to other characters on your account; and you can earn extra by running the missions in Dark Astoria, perhaps most notably Heather Townshend's arc - see https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Heather_Townshend (note that completion of story arcs gives one merit and a choice between another merit and salvage. Generally it's most efficient to go with the salvage)

Kudos where Kudos is due Neiska - it was your MM Farming thread that I linked in my "mobile blender" comment above too!! 🙂 Farming definitely goes much faster whenever you're able to aggro more mobs simultaneously. There are some AE maps which funnel mobs to you (like the "AFK" fire farm maps that use multiple patrols) but all MMs need to do is run around the map aggroing at least one enemy from each group; and the individual henchmen aggro caps do the rest! MM farming can be a bit more challenging though. There's obviously a lot more fine tuning required on MMs than on a Scrapper/Brute/Tank (since balancing damage output and survivability of your pets can get tricky without going down the triple-boxing route) and as you've noted in your threads the best AoE pets - Robots - can take a while to focus-fire down tougher single targets which decide to flee far away from the Burn Patches; so "too many runners" can become a concern. Thus far I've limited myself to 2-boxing; and my best performing MM duoing setups have been with a Bot/Kin plus either a /Cold or a /Time. However I've found that even with Bonfire and either Sleet or Distortion Field, I still need to pay attention to stuff fleeing out of the Burn Patches. That's why I've actually come to prefer using the Bot/Kin plus a Scrapper/Brute/Tank/etc follower with a Taunt Aura or two and a PBAoE ability on Autofire - it's less flashy and requires the use of staggered Barrier Incarnates to let the pets survive 4+ simultaneous groups of mobs, but there's much less actual concentration required on my part during farming sessions!

True that. So on a Brute during regular gameplay, Burn's initial non-pseudopet portion's damage remains in line with what you'd expect via regular Brute damage balancing (e.g. roughly 66.67% Scrapper base damage, but much easier to self-buff damage% via Fury) but its pseudopet portion's damage gets rather grossly inflated (due mostly to Fury). Which means that it's very difficult for a /FA Scrapper to beat a /FA Brute's damage output, at least solo. I suspect that the ease of self-buffing +damage% bit is why Brutes are king of solo farming. Generally once you start bringing along a pocket /Kin, Scrappers pull ahead (since Brutes only deal 93.33% of a Scrapper's damage when both are capped, and Scrappers cap with a single Fulcrum Shift) and Tankers (with their larger AoE radiuses) will start to give them a run for their money in terms of AoE lawnmowering. There's also the notion that with enough followers; you become able to aggro the entire map simultaneously but there comes a point where you're less "fighting" and more "trying to pull/push/throw everything as quickly as possible into the blades of a roaming mobile blender"...

AoE Powersets that rely on Pseudopets which differ according to the AT's damage scale are more damaging on a Scrapper than on a Brute. Brute damage output (including the base scales on many pseudopets) is largely balanced around having the larger damage cap of 700%, but psuedopets only have a cap of 400%. This means that most Brute psuedopets stop comparing with their equivalent Scrapper counterparts once you get above 400% damage (100% base + ~95% from slotting + ~30% Incarnates +~160% Fury = 385%? So additional buffs from teammates or things like Build Up and Against All Odds or the Gaussian and Decimation procs etc. are largely wasted!). Think of Lightning Rod. There are Scrapper (~90 dmg) and Brute (~60 dmg) versions of that pet. Think of Irradiated Ground. There is one version of that pet but it deals different damage depending on its owner's AT (~6.9/tick for Scrappers, ~4.6/tick for Brutes). Think of Shield Charge. There are Scrapper (~150 dmg) and Brute (~100 dmg) versions of that pet. But NOT Burn. Burn only has one version and it doesn't care about its owner's AT (~3.34 dmg/tick regardless). So in theory an ElecMelee/Shield or a RadMelee/Shield would be "better" on a Scrapper for AoE psuedopet damage (Patron pools are a bit of a wash, Water Spout is about the only thing a Scrapper has that a Brute doesn't, but it's rather difficult to leverage for AoE damage whilst farming. So it's probably better to just stick with Elec) ...the only problem with that is that it's also "better" on a Stalker; and they get to crit from hide and perma-build-up! From my own experience, Scrappers still mainly excel at Boss Hunting. They compete with Stalkers for that, sure, but Scrappers still have a higher base damage modifier than Stalkers and are a bit more survivable. So if you stick a Scrapper with a Taunt Aura on a duoing team with (for example) something like Bot/Kin mastermind which excels at AoE damage and can buff their allies' damage output, but suffers at Single-Target DPS... then you have an almost perfect farming duo. Different than a Brute, sure, but hellava fun.