Maelwys

Any APP/PPP can work, because you don't need Power Boost and with FFG plus Protector Bots you'll easilly be sitting at the softcap without Scorpion Shield. Flame Mastery (No Resistance Shield, but Bonfire slotted with KB>KD is still very useful even after the recent nerf; and it'll work great with Caltrops) or Soul Mastery (Dark Embrace + Oppressive Gloom) or Mu Mastery (Charged Armor and Electric Fences) or Dark Mastery (Murky Cloud and Possess) are standouts though. On my own Bots/Traps, between Trip Mine and the Assbot's Burn Missile Swarm I found groups tended to die very quickly; but tougher bosses could sometimes be tricky... so I'd probably rate "Possess" (useful for Perma-Confusing Bosses) a bit higher than "Bonfire" or "Electric Fences" (useful for locking a large mob in place). Five slotted with the Coercive Persuasion Purple set (which tends to be one of the less expensive ones) it should be pretty decent. Power Boost will do squat for the Protector Bot's Bubbles, PB is not an AoE and they won't inherit it off you. Realistically the only thing that will buff their shields other than direct Enhancement slotting is your Alpha Slot - and honestly, it's not worth swapping out of Musculature unless you're a /Kin. Throw an extra slot or two into Equip Robot. You want it ED-capped for Damage Resistance (so 2x level 50+5 Damage Resistance IOs will do it, but it's also a decent place for the Gladiator's Armor and/or Steadfast Protection Uniques) Upgrade Robot isn't worth slotting, throw the Preventative Medicine unique into it and call it a day. This story arc. You can run it repeatedly (even if you don't have the original contact unlocked) via the Ouroboros Flashback system for 57 Merits each time. It's better merits-per-hour than most other things you can find because it has a mere 8 missions, and only one of them is a "Defeat All". However since it's a level 25-29 arc, you won't be seeing many expensive recipe drops + the only useful thing it gives is the merits. So just set your difficulty at the minimum (-1/1) and blitz through it. If you're just converting the merits to influence (by buying Enhancement Boosters/Converters at the Merit Vendor and selling them in WW) then it won't beat the return of a decent "farming" character spamming +4/8 AE missions... but it has the advantage that it's rather quick and very easy to complete for almost any character. So it's decent money for anyone who is still levelling up and/or isn't fully min/maxed yet.

Yeah it's roughly on par with Thermal as long as you have enough +recharge% to get World of Pain and Anguishing Cry perma. Works out at a bit more more +healing and +regeneration; and a bit less +damage IIRC. Melt Armor and Anguishing Cry perform very similarly, although one needs you to be in Melee Range and the other doesn't. Painbringer's uptime is a bit of a killer though - a well-built Thermal can keep Forge up on all their henchmen simultaneously. Poison is the real black sheep. Think I played a /Poison MM once back in Issue 6, then I discovered /Dark and never looked back... ---------- Personally I'm still very fond of /Kin for a +Resistance/+Damage/+Healing secondary; although it probably pairs better with Bots/ than anything else at the moment due to the way the gaps in their inherent resistances and mez protection get filled in by Increase Density. Can just about hit the Defence Softcap with the right Lore and/or Hybrid slot too.

Oh I'm sure you can make a fun character with it, like most power combinations in the game. It's just that (i) layering two different types of mitigation (Defence and Resistance) to a medicore level tends to perform worse than pushing one single type to its effective cap (and Defence is generally preferred here due to the aforementioned "mez" issue) and (ii) Thermal tends to outperform Sonic on Masterminds. I mained a Sonic/Elec Defender for years so I know /Sonic can be a strong set; however it has a number of shortcomings on Masterminds which Thermal does not. Thermal gets Resistance Shields and -Resistance Debuffs (Melt Armor) as well; plus reliable healing (Warmth/Cauterise), a Damage Buff (Forge) and it can floor an AV's regen with Heat Exhaustion. About the only thing Sonic really holds over it is Sonic Dispersion's self-mez protection, and picking up the Clarion Destiny Slot nullifies that advantage. Disruption Field can also be rather problematic to utilise effectively on MMs with pets that prefer ranged attacks.

You'll find a lot of sample builds scattered around the forums; and they should open grand as long as you have a recent copy of Mids Reborn. MMs are a bit of an oddball compared to most characters when planning a build; because their primary powerset doesn't really benefit from things like Global +Recharge or +Damage set bonuses; and there are only a few useful Procs that Henchmen can use. However the OLD rule of thumb always applies (try to get the important aspects of your powers at the Enhancement Diversification softcap - Mids changes the colour to RED so it's easy to spot) so make sure your Pets themselves have about ~95% Damage and at least ~40% Accuracy, and your +Defence powers have about~55% Defence Buff in them. Certain Secondaries (like Time and Cold) benefit more from +Recharge than others. It's normally a good idea to Grab the Leadership pool and all the Uniques; including the SMoS (do a few Freaklympics arc runs via Ouroboros if you're stuck for Cash and/or Merits - it's trivial on a MM).

Just to be clear - are you activating Power Boost right before your long-duration +Defence buffs (Farsight for /Time, Deflection Shield and Insulation Shield for /FF) so that they gain the benefit of it? /FF Bubbles should go from ~17.7% Defence standard to ~25.1% when Power Boosted... so alongside your regular Dispersion Bubble (~11.8%) you'll be buffing all of your pets by around 37% Defence total. Throw in the Edict of the Master and Call to Arms +Defence unique IOs (both add another 5% each) and that's them sitting at the Softcap without even the need for Manuevers let alone any +Defence Alpha Slot or Barrier Destiny Slot shenanighans. Combined with the Robotics Primary it gets ridiculous. 2-slotted Protector Bot bubbles will add roughly 22% Defence on top of that; so you could drop both +Defence unique IOs and still be sitting at the 59% *Incarnate Content* defence softcap, let alone the 45% regular content one. Bots also get about +49% L/C/P Resistance whenever their T1 upgrade is slotted; so adding the three +Res uniques (Sovereign Right +10%, Expedient Reinforcement +10%, Superior Mark of Supremacy +15%) will get them to +84% total. /Time Farsight goes from ~14.7% Defence standard to ~20.8% when Power Boosted. Adding in Maneuvers (~4.1%) and both +Defence unique IOs (+10%) can bring that up to around 35% Defence total. A good 10% shy of the regular 45% softcap... however; Primary matters here. For Thugs, each copy of Thug Enforcer Maneuvers even unslotted adds +8.5% Defence (which you can buff via slotting). For Ninjas, they all get +Defence to everything of at least 13.5% (again, enhanceable via slotting) via their T1 upgrade. So it should be trivially easy to close that gap and ensure all your pets are softcapped all the time. Neither Thugs nor Ninjas T1 and T2 pets gain much in the way of Damage Resistance; but the T3s each have +26% S/L resistance; so the +Res uniques will bring them up to +61% total. Unfortunately Power Boost won't be doing much for the /Traps build; since the ForceField Generator is a Pet rather than a long-duration clicky so best case it'll inherit the buff for a few scant seconds. However, you're Bots/ so it doesn't really matter... the ~15.7% Defence standard from the FFG plus ~22% from the Protector Bots plus Maneuvers (~4.1%) gets you to just under 42% total. Less than a single +Defence unique IO away from the Softcap. Musculature all the way for a MM; unless you're a /Kin (Because Fulcrum Shift will cap your pet damage output regardless of your Alpha, so you may as well go for Agility Core or Resilient Core instead).

Boosting Survivability is certainly the main idea, however adding "damage resistance" might prove a bit problematic because it would be additive with the existing inherent henchmen resistances from the "equip" powers, as well as those from other sources. It could well benefit certain secondary powersets more than others (because going from 0% to 10% damage resistance is vastly different than going from 80% to 90%) You're correct that "locking pets at a minimum of -5" would only kick in whenever the MM is fighting foes that are +4 or higher for T1 MM henchmen, and +5 foes or higher for T2s. However "minimum of -5" could quite easily instead be "minimum of -4" (or even -3) and/or not factor in level-shifts depending on where you want to draw the actual line in the sand. The real benefit of approaching things this way is that your pets would only start seeing any benefit gradually at higher difficulty settings with the weakest pets being buffed first; instead of all of your pets getting buffed all the time regardless of content or the level of foes they're fighting. I'm definitely open to other solutions, I just really feel that it'd be a very bad idea to adjust MMs in such a way that their performance versus regular enemies at lower difficulty levels gets increased. That's tricky to accomplish without doing some kind of automated check against difficulty setting or enemy level... and the former (a buff based on difficulty setting) would potentially benefit all pets, rather than just the weaker ones that actually need some extra help at the time. A variant of that might work - perhaps buff Pet base HP a bit (say by X% for every teammate, similar to the Peacebringer/Warshade inherents). So not dependent on difficulty setting; but in general enough to stop them being immediately one-shot whilst you're not soloing?

I wouldn't say that all MMs lag behind other ATs in terms of damage, even against +4s/+5s. I regularly run a S/L farm on my Bot/Kin; and whilst it's *safer* to clear it at +2/8, he still clears it at +4/8 faster than any of my melee toons. And that's the crux here - IMO the main problem facing MMs at higher difficulty levels is the survivability of your pets - because against anything over +3 your T1 henchmen effectively get a defence penalty and become very prone to being one-shot. Admittedly, dead pets *DO* eat into your DPA; but they're annoying to constantly resummon and re-buff. A close secondary problem is also the mobility of your pets (or lack thereof) on teams. Whilst MMs can deal respectible damage output, they need to get "set up" first; they're unable to just barrel from spawn to spawn as quickly as a Brute or Tanker can; and MMs also can't micromanage their henchmen to always Alpha Strike every spawn with a well-procced AoE attack. Basically MMs excel when Solo; because they can set their own pace. But they suffer on high end teams and TFs because of limited mobility and the aforementioned pet survivablity issues when fighting versus anything over +3. Their mobility problems are also particularly evident in PVP (not that it matters to the majority of the playerbase!) Also, Pylons can be hammered in circa 30 seconds by Scrappers and Dominators. As far as I'm aware MMs are definitely not king of the hill there, and (just like Farming!) I don't think Pylons are a particularly good metric to be using for balance purposes. I'm certainly not arguing that removing the pet level differences is impossible - the devs literally did just that with Incarnate content, after all. However the pet level differences have been baked into the balance equations of CoH for years (Your T1s start out equal-level, then whenever you gain the ability to spawn TWO of them, they begin spawning at -1; and whenever you start being able to spawn THREE of them, they spawn at -2. See Also: Fire Control Imps, Electric Control Gremlins, VEAT Spiderlings and Disruptors). If you just made all pets even-level then to keep their damage output on an even keel you'd need to nerf the T1 pets' damage by at least 25% across the board and the T2 pets by 11%. Adjusting Supremacy would be largely pointless for this; as it's a multiplicative damage increase that you're trying to cancel out (Purple Patch), not an additive one (Supremacy) so you'd need to do a balance pass on their BASE damage. And there's another problem - doing this would negatively impact new MMs that are levelling up before they actually get access to all the T1 and T2 pets and they all finish "levelling down". I'm not saying there'd be a "crisis situation", but I am saying that this sort of adjustment would need to be approached very carefully. Conversely, locking the pets so that they never get treated as anything lower than "-5" to foes would be comparatively quick + easy and would have no negative impact on levelling up or requirement for a balance pass on pet attacks. That said, IMO there's been a trend for years to steer away from footery micromanagement; and if it was up to me I'd rework Supremacy entirely so that Bodyguard mode applies regardless of stance; and any pets OUTSIDE of a certain radius gain a substantial amount of +RunSpeed. And perhaps also replace the existing +Damage/ToHit with a scaling boost depending on how many pets you have summoned and/or teammates you have; mechanically similar to Vigilance (e.g. increase +MaxHP/+DamageResistance with more, versus increase +Damage/+ToHit with fewer)

On my very first toon on Live, a Kat/Regen Scrapper, I discovered that poking robotic enemies with my little pointy stick didn't deal very much damage. Council Mekmen; Sky Raider Forcefield Generators, Malta Titans, etc. And so I decided that I needed an alternative attack chain that did NOT deal lethal damage; for use on those sorts of enemies. Good In Theory? Perhaps. In Practice? I took Air Superiority, Laser Beam Eyes and Energy Torrent. Yeah. OK, so Air Superiority was actually semi-useful as damage mitigation since it dealt reliable knockdown; but the number of funny looks I got whenever a 'bot critter popped up and I suddenly sheathed my sword and broke out the kirk headslap and pew pew glowy hands. And it honestly took me quite some time to realise that I was actually dealing WORSE damage over time than I would have with my Katana. To make matters worse, Weapon Redraw delay was a real thing back then, and even tapping "Build Up" triggered it... 🙃

The pets already give MMs a ridiculous lead during the 1-50 process, so it'd be a really bad idea to buff their performance at all vs +0 -> +3 foes if you can help it. The Purple Patch buffs/debuffs final damage (a multiplicative effect). Supremacy just adds 25% regular DamageStrength% (additive with damage buffs like Enhancements etc) plus 10% ToHit (versus critters it's generally more effective than "+Accuracy" at letting you actually hit them, as well as at overcoming any +Defence buffs they might have). Hypothetically, if you made all the pets the same level as the MM and dropped Supremacy's damage buff entirely, then even if you weren't buffing your pets at all outside of simple SO damage enhancements (no secondary powers like Forge or Fulcrum Shift, etc); compared to before your T1s would end up dealing more than 10% additional damage vs just simple +0 foes. And it'd only get much worse from there - against +3 foes they'd be dealing double their original damage. That drastic shift in performance is why this needs to be approached very carefully. Ideally any buff to pet levels in regular content has to be a very gradual thing that only applies against very higher level foes. I haven't delved into the ins and outs of the purple patch code, but I imagine you could also put a clamp there (lock the performance drain from the purple patch at a maximum of -5 level disadvantage if the entity attacking/being attacked has the 'henchmen' flag - this is already done for stuff like Protector Bot Bubbles) ---------- To get vaguely back on track... IMO the most Team Friendly MM builds are those with primaries that tend to hang back a bit (Bots, Mercs, Thugs, etc) and secondaries that have AoE or PBAoE buffs/debuffs/heals that don't require a lot of micro-management to affect specific pets/teammates. Empathy, for example, is generally regarded as a pretty decent set; however it tends to function more poorly on MMs (because Fortitude's defence vlaue is lower and you can't keep it up constantly on all your teammates plus all your pets regardless of how much +recharge% you stack; and the other big buff - Adrenaline Boost - is single-target and +Recharge has no impact on pet DPA). By comparison, Kinetics is ridiculously good on MMs; because despite their lower base buff values it still only takes you 1-2 applications of Fulcrum Shift to get everyone on your team AND your pets to the Damage Cap... and Speed Boost/Increase Density/Transference/Transfusion are all AoE. However by far the single biggest thing a MM player can do is get a good set of keybinds. Even if you can simply reliably target an individual pet or teammate that's more than half the battle right there; and I'd happilly team with a Beasts/Pain MM that has a decent set of binds over a Bots/Kin MM that has just the regular mouse + power tray setup any day of the week.

Typically just Footstomp, Haymaker, KO Blow. Normally in Teams, the main idea is to recast Footstomp ASAP (or at least as fast as your procs will allow); and any other attacks you can fit in whilst it's recharging are just gravy. KO Blow and Haymaker are obvious standouts and good places for your ATOs; and Cross Punch is a very decent filler even though its Area of Effect isn't buffed by gauntlet - it can be Proced up pretty decently and you're likely already taking the fighting pool anyway. Then to round the chain out, things like Punch or Kick or Boxing or an Epic Pool Power (Gloom is by far the best Single Target DPA; and Ball Lightning or Fireball clinch it for AoE).

Yep, and that's actually where the real problem comes in. Things stay manageable as long as you aren't fighting mobs that are more than about 4 levels above you. Compared to fighting even-level enemies, vs +4s you'll deal just under half of your "normal" damage to them, whilst taking nearly half as much extra damage from their attacks. That's TOUGH; but it's still perfectly doable for a well-built character. However then things start to ramp up rather drastically. When fighting +5s, you'll deal a bit over a third less damage than you would deal to +4s (and take about 8% more damage). When fighting +6s, you'll deal just half as much damage as you were against the +5s (and taking about 7% more damage). When fighting +7s, your damage output gets halved yet again (and again, you'll take about 7% more damage). So your damage output rapidly drops off a cliff. And to make matters worse, as soon as you start fighting +6s or higher the enemy starts getting ToHit buffs, not just accuracy buffs. And ToHit buffs blow directly through your +Defence. Which means if you're aiming to Softcap your pets, you'll actually need to ensure that your T1 henchmen are sitting at 5% higher defence than the regular 45% softcap if you're ever planning on fighting +4s; and 10% higher if you're planning on fighting +5s. The pet level scaling works OK until your difficulty slider is about +2/+3; but after that it gets wonky pretty fast. This is one of the reasons why the MM sets that deal the bulk of their damage via their T3 pet (such as Bots) tend to perform better at +4/+8 difficulty settings; and why you see so many Masterminds having to continually resummon their T1/T2 henchmen during non-incarnate endgame content.

/FF and /Cold can get your henchmen to the Defense Softcap regardless of your Primary. Bots, Thugs and Ninjas can manage that with a secondary like /Time or /Dark, let alone /Traps. So... easy combinations? Demons or Necro or Beast plus /FF or /Cold. Alternatively; Bots or Ninja or Thugs plus /Time, /Dark or /Traps. But be sure to TAKE and USE Power Boost from the Mace Mastery pool if you're FF, Cold or Time. /Empathy is a bit tricky, since a lot of its mitigation comes from Fortitude rather than from the actual Heals and Auras (if your henchies get one-shot then healing them is superfluous) and you can only keep that up on a few targets at a time. /Kinetics is all-in on damage output; and I'd not recommend it for the faint of heart. It *can* be made to work on the likes of Bots or Thugs; but it takes considerable effort and exploiting a lot of high-end IOs and T4 Incarnate Abilities. /Sonic on MMs is basically a worse version of /Thermal. And resistance-buffing only works well on pets that have decent resistances to start with, like Mercs or Demons, and even then you end up mezzed and debuffed a lot.

Actually, they deal very respectable damage these days (Changed in Issue 27 Page 5 IIRC?) It used to be that each Protector Bot had to pause every few seconds to double-bubble on each of your other pets... but these days it's a single 4-minute-duration autofiring AoE; and they've gained a fair amount of DPA on their regular attacks. The downside is that they chew through Endurance like an Staminaless Fire Blaster on crack. But if you ED-Cap them for Endurance reduction or have something like Transference to fall back on, they're pretty decent. Drones only pull ahead with the Explosive Strike Proc. The Assbot is still the uncontested king of AoE damage though.

Your T1 Zombies are -2 to the mob you're fighting, so they'll take 22% higher damage from all of that critter's attacks and the critter will be getting +20% accuracy. Your T2 Grave Knights are -1 to the mob you're fighting, so they'll take 11% higher damage from all of that critter's attacks and the critter will be getting +10% accuracy. Your Lich and the Tri-Cannon will be even-stevens. Also be careful of thinking that Defence debuffs don't matter if you're on "0% Defense". Everything attacking you or your pets in PVE will have an 50% innate basehitchance, which can effectively be increased up to 95% by debuffing your defence even if your starting Defence is listed as zero (Critters max out at a 95% chance to hit you). Your Defence can be debuffed to a minimum of -100%, rather than to a minimum of zero.

There are plenty of MM guides kicking around out there; but a very rough rule of thumb is that all MMs tend to want the Leadership Pool (Assault and Tactics are useful for any of them, Maneuvers stacks nicely with the pet +Def IO uniques and doubly so for anyone with allied +Def or -ToHit powers. Ninjas get substantial +Def as part of their inherent resistances and you can increase it by slotting your upgrade powers for +Def, so you'll probably want to aim to softcap them. Maneuvers helps here) and any MMs without a reliable allied heal should take the Medicine Pool. Group Fly can also be very useful for some Ranged Pets (robots especially) but I'd not bother with it for Ninjas. Aside from that? It's really the usual deal until you get Incarnates (as some Incarnate slots drastically benefit pets more than others). Get Hasten and on-demand Stealth (if desired) plus whatever other powers you like the look of; then at endgame aim to Softcap your own Defence% if possible and stack as many other set bonuses as you like. -Resistance debuffs are very handy; as are any Crowd Control powers. Trick Arrow is full of useful tricks (hah) to help here. I'm no /TA expert, but the build looks OK-ish besides the lack of Aid Self/Aid Other, low (non-Enhancement-Diversification-capped) damage enhancement in the Genin and Jounin, and low Defence Slotting in Scorpion Shield (you're about 7% S/L defense below softcap! Eventually you'll likely want a Barrier Core Epiphany Destiny incarnate so can aim for 40% if you're slot-starved; but I suspect 35% Energy Defence will be pushing it even with Flash Arrow...)

The most straightforward solution here would seem to be to clamp the minimum Pet level at -5 (compared to what you're fighting) regardless of content. That way regular gameplay doesn't get affected, but whenever you find yourself fighting much-higher-level foes on Regular or Hardmode +4/8 (non incarnate) content your T1 + T2 pets won't suddenly become crippled. (This could likely reuse your team's current mission difficulty setting as an indicator. e.g. for any setting above "+2" [meaning "+3 foes can spawn"] the pet's level increases by 1, up to a maximum of whatever the MM's current level is) And yes, apply it to everyone - Crabberminds, Fire Controllers, etc. not just MMs. As an example: Currently if you're -5 to something then your T1 Pets will end up dealing only 8% of their regular damage, taking an extra 77% damage, and having the equivalent of a -10% Defence debuff. Clamping them to a minimum of -5 would raise this to 30% of their regular damage, taking an extra 55% damage, and no Defence debuff.

Really? Nobody? 🤔 That sounds precisely like the kind of sweeping generalist statement that should be confronted at all costs. WE THE PEOPLE DEMAND THE FREEDOM TO CONSIDER PEOPLE TO BE IDIOTS! (Disclaimer: I don't actually believe that Zem's an idiot, a moron, or any other kind of label insinuating sub-par intellect. And being a little bit confrontational about ones opinions on a forum is not [currently] an arrestable offense) *Raises Hand* Me sir, me! Over here! Super Strength is one of my favourite sets. I love the Footstomp animation and knockdown radius; the Damage output is just gravy (I also loved it on Kheldians whenever it was known as White Dwarf Flare; and I got royally cheesed off when they swapped it out for the ridiculous sparkly handclap!). I quite like Haymaker's "Captain Kirk double-fisted-headslap" animation. I get flashbacks to old Popeye reruns every time KO Blow's arm-spinning windup animation plays; and it follows through on the damage-per-activation front. Super Strength is one of my least favourite sets. Jab and Punch and Hand Clap are all horrible. Hurl looks fun but has some of the worst DPA around. You are practically required to take pool power attacks (like Boxing or Cross Punch) to fill out a reasonable attack chain. This is bad design. Rage's Crash flooring your damage output is fine. Rage's Crash reducing your defences can go and feck itself with a 10 foot pylon. If a power overbuffs your damage, then the crash should debuff your damage output (via -Damage and/or -ToHit and/or -Recovery. See: Conduit of Pain, Meltdown, etc) If a power overbuffs your survivability, then the crash should debuff your survivability (via -Endurance and/or -HP and/or -Recovery. See: Unstoppable, One with the Shield, etc) Rage does NOT overbuff your survivability, therefore Rage's Crash should NOT debuff your survivability. However EVEN IF IT DID there should never be a case where you self-inflict -Defence% or -DamageResistance% on yourself with a buff power. At worst, such a power should floor your Recovery and/or drain some Endurance. We got rid of that horrendous self-survivability-debuff garbage from all the other stuff (Moment of Glory?) decades ago. It beggars belief why the Devs ever felt the need to introduce MORE of it, and to a melee damage powerset no less! IMO the old Rage Crash where you literally couldn't attack anything was fine; and the fact that you could eliminate it with Perma Rage was a bug. 🥺 🤦‍♂️ 🙊

Fire/Kins with permanent Hot feet and Speed Boost 6-slotted for +runspeed made a good attempt. As did the Sonics and FFs who insisted on spamming their "Cage" powers on AVs. But my personal favourite was the Illusion/Empath Troller with no Phantom Army or Fortitude, who we ended up nicknaming "Vengeance Bait".

For a (rather long) while the only way you could be a character with a gun that fired futuristic looking energy blasts was by rolling a Bot/ MM. Can't speak for other servers, but I remember seeing a fair number of petless Bot/Traps MMs running around back in the day. Some of them even occasionally remembered to use Trip Mine and Poison Trap.

To be fair those other games have a noticably higher performance requirement floor than CoH. There is a long history of Drama here, which basically boils down to the community tending to look unkindly on those who throw shade on others for their build choices. The cliche goes something like this: "Heal Please!" "Whut?" "You're a Healer! Heal me!!! I need heals!!!" "Please, this game is so easy you could complete every single story arc with just Brawl on Autofire. Nobody needs a Tank or a Healer, get over yourself. Nobody else is complaining, and I'm having fun". "But you're not having the right kind of fun! Call yourself a Healer and you're not even healing me you dirty great Trolling Troll!!" "You do realise I'm a Trick Arrow Defender, right? Do you want me to shoot you in the face with my "Highly Effective Arrow Launcher" or something?" "OMG Troll!" Petless MMs can be perfectly viable. They get some Secondary Powersets which are very busy (like /Kin, /Dark, /Traps, /Cold, /Empathy, etc) and by ignoring most or all of the pets; a player can focus much more on teammate support. Sure, they've lower buff values than Defenders; but that doesn't really matter to certain powersets (such as /Kin) and they also get access to stuff like Powerboost and Bonfire via the Epic pools. Some of their primary powersets even have very useful riders on their personal attacks, like Bots/ (-Regen) and Demons/ (-Resist). It's also worth remembering that unless they're buffed to high heaven, a MM's T1 and T2 MM pets can end up being a liability on Higher Difficulties and Hardmode TFs. This is because a MM's pets are "lower level" than the MM themselves; and if you're fighting foes that are ~4 levels or more higher than you, your performance gets utterly crippled due to the Purple Patch. So they'll often end up unable to hit or dodge anything and just getting in the way of the "real" damage dealers... even if the MM avoids having to keep resummoning them every few seconds.

Maybe look at something like the below for some inspiration/ideas? (Photon Grenade can be swapped for Tactics/Arcane Bolt/Spirit Ward/Whatever if you don't fancy using it as a Proc Cannon) zMastermind - Robots - Time.mbd [EDIT: Tweaked it a bit to get a few extra Procs in Distortion Field]

I seem to be able to import the build OK - have attached a copy as an actual Mids Reborn file. Bots_Time.mbd Anyways, my immediate thoughts: Protector Bots wants +Defense slotting - ideally cap it. Battle Drones don't need a KB->KD IO any more. They do however benefit from an "Explosive Strike" Damage Proc. Assault Bots *DOES* need a KB-> KD IO (for regular Swarm Missiles) Equip Robot wants +Resistance capped Upgrade Robot wants the Preventative Medicine Unique (it's about the only useful thing you can slot there) Why +RunSpeed in Stamina? Why No Temporal Selection??!? It buffs your Bots' damage! Defence Cap Maneuvers if you're going to take it. You are a Bots/Time. You do *NOT* need the extra Defence from Scorpion Shield. Use it as a dump for a LOTG and/or one of the +res uniques. You're very starved for Accuracy in things like Time Crawl and Slowed Response and Time Stop. There's a new Slow Set called "Ice Mistral's Torment" with an additional Damage Proc you can fit into Distortion field, since you seem to be into that kind of thing I guess? (Distortion Field's 20ft radius means that even the SLOW set damage Procs within it will each be getting only a 17.95% chance to activate every 10 seconds. And the Hold effect only kicks in very rarely) You'll want at least one personal attack from the MM for -Regen debuffs. Photon Grenade is decent; but it's rather costly in Endurance to use regularly. Between Temporal Mending and Chrono Shift? Lose the Maintenance Drone. Incarnates: Aim for Clarion Radial Epiphany Destiny (Mez Protection for you and the Bots) and either an Intuition Radial Paragon or Musculature Core Paragon Alpha Slot. MM Hybrid tends to be Support Core Embodiment and Interface tends to be Degenerative Radial Flawless Interface. Judgement and Lore can be pretty much anything, although personally I'm partial to Void Radial Final Judgement and IDF Total Radial Improved Ally. I'm really not sure why you're slotting that many Damage Procs, but haven't taken Assault or an AoE Immobilise? Your Burn Missile Patches will melt things **FAR** faster than your procs will as long as you can keep your Assbot alive and damage buffed and the mobs clustered together.

Disclaimer: I mained an INV/SS for years on live, and I'm pretty familiar with EM (FA/EM Tank, plus a few Scrappers and Stalkers) Invulnerablity is a very old powerset. Its main draw back in the day was that it could hit the Defense softcap (45%) to virtually everything whilst also hitting the hard cap for Smashing and Lethal damage resistance (via it's inherents plus the Fighting pool) and capped Maximum HP (via Dull Pain). Stone tanks could do the same, but came at a hefty penalty to damage output and recharge. Fast forward several issues and other sets like Willpower and Dark Armour became available, and INV lost a lot of it's lustre. Willpower could do all INV could do (except completely cap Maximum HP permanently) but it had substantially higher regen and performed much better versus Psychic foes and Malta. Dark Armour could recover to full HP and Endurance every few seconds as long as it was surrounded by enough weaker foes of any type. Etc. IOs muddied the waters a bit. INV tanks could get perma Dull Pain with little effort, whilst also plugging holes in their Psychic + Elemental resistances or heightening their regeneration. With a good IO build they nearly matched Willpower as an exceptionally good all-rounder, with WP having a bit more Regeneration and INV a bit more Defense and maximum HP. With Incarnates? INV became even better at plugging it's resistance holes (as just a T4 Alpha slot by itself takes sooo much pressure off slotting for enough +Recharge for Perma DP or enough +Defence to hit the softcap to everything with just a single foe in 'Invincibility') Archetype Origin enhancements sealed the deal. A decently built INV can keep the resistance buff double-stacked constantly. These days an INV can still hit the regular 45% Defense softcap and S/L Resistance hard cap with just SO enhancements. Throw in enough IOs and a set of T4 Incarnate abilities and they can also hit the 59% hard mode defense softcap whilst having Perma Dull Pain and considerably higher damage resistance to types other than S/L. They will still never be *quite* as good as a DA tank versus Psychic foes, and they might need a heal occasionally in hard mode TFs, but other than that (or enough stacked Mez to overcome Unyielding, in which case you have Unstoppable) they are functionally immortal. And they exemplar exceptionally well. Energy Melee has been the subject of a great many nerfs and buffs over the years. In its present state (and thanks to the tanker inherent that buffs AoE radius) it is rather decent. Disorient is a little less team friendly than Knockdown but you can stack it enough to Mez bosses, and Energy Transfer is also unlikely to get you killed whenever you're passively regenerating enough Hit Points to ignore it. As a combination, an INV/EM should be very tough to kill and deal reasonably high damage (for a tank) but you likely won't be able to solo VERY tough foes without -Regeneration debuffs from the P2W temp powers or Lore pets. EDIT: Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a quick example of one of my INV/SS build's defences (with one foe in Invincibility range and no clicky Incarnates running) which is built as an all-rounder rather than for sky-high Defence/Damage/etc. It typically has another 6.7%-13.4% Resistance to everything on top of this due to the SMoT Proc; (roughly 67% chance for 3 stacks and 25% chance for 2 stacks) and its baseline regeneration is 40HP/Sec plus 2x Power Transfer and 1x Panacea Healing Procs. Can also gain more self-healing potential or +Def and +Res via clickies (like Barrier Destiny etc.) on demand if required.

Resilience? It's a useful place for the Steadfast and Gladiator's Armor Uniques; but the base damage resistance it grants you isn't going to be very noticable even slotted up. Moment of Glory? Stick a Luck of the Gambler +7.5% Global Rech in it and you're done. It's actually useful as an occasional "emergency button", but it already caps you to everything for its ridiculously-short duration. If you end up with more slots left at 50 than you know what to do with; then you could toss 2x extra Resistance-buffing IOs into Resiience (like a Reactive Armor: Resistance and Reactive Armor: Resistance/Endurance) and 2x extra 50+5 Recharge Common IOs into MoG.

Quills and Irradiated Ground are both damage auras, and both of those crit. It's only Damage Auras from the *secondary* Scrapper powersets which don't crit... since to my knowledge none of the powers from secondary powersets (and hardly any pool powers) have Crit Mechanics baked in. Which, yes, could do with being addressed, particularly in the case of things like /FA's "Burn" (I appreciate that one of the most familiar Brute outliers is /FA Brutes on Fire Farms, but that's an entirely seperate thread!). However you're right, my Original Post *did indeed* ignore rather a lot of things. It also ignored -Res Procs (which affect both ATs equally); and Epic Powersets (e.g. Zapp/Moonbeam on Scrapper vs Gloom/TarPatch on Brute); as well as powers with different mechanics for "Crits" like Seismic Smash (which doesn't Crit but instead deals more base damage) or Energy Transfer (which does a bigger heal) or Total Focus (which doubles its buff instead). It also only very, very briefly touched on Scrapper's greater ability to self-buff damage%, power-for-power, than a Brute (see: Perfection of Body, Blood Thirst, Power Siphon, Soul Drain, Follow Up, Against All Odds, Meltdown, Firey Embrace, Hardened Carapace, etc. and even Pool Powers like 'Assault' and 'Adrenal Booster'). This is because my Original Post was not intended to be an unintelligible encyclopedic thesis of any&all Brute and Scrapper powers, abilities and mechanics. It was however intended to address the Original Parent Poster's claims that "Scrappers power budget is roughly 90% put in the Archetype Origin enhancement for the critical strikes proc" and "One Thunder Kick from a Scrapper will always do X damage, meanwhile Brute will do X+150% damage which is basically a crit and a half when they are at 75% fury" - by illustrating rather simply the effect of a Scrapper's Higher Base Damage Modifier and a Brute's Fury on the same single attack under some different real-game conditions. And showing that the deficit (if any) was surmountable without ATOs. I'm not attempting here to state what the current bleeding edge endgame meta should/shouldn't be, or to give a set of best-case twinked builds or illustrate how quickly a particular powerset combination can run through a given mission or defeat a particular target (whether or not those sort of runs are actually a good benchmark of performance, since RNGesus can always suddenly decide to smike or bless your RL crit rate on any given run, is also a conversation for an entirely different thread). I am however attempting to provide a reasonably-well-reasoned counterpoint to some notions which I believe to be 'exaggerated' at best. Case in point. As I stated before: Damage Procs ignore Enhancements and other Buffs; including Fury. They are not affected by Damage buffs or Debuffs, so they do NOT CARE about Fury OR about Crits. A Damage Proc will add precisely X damage to an attack; regardless of whether it's a Scrapper or a Brute making that attack, regardless of how much Fury or Damage Buffs you have; and regardless of whether you Crit or not. The only things that affect the damage they deal is your level and your target's damage resistances. Therefore the only case in which slotting a Damage Proc will be "worth more" to a Brute is if that Brute can gain more raw damage by OVERSLOTTING the power in question with Damage Procs (e.g. Scrapper damage for an attack may well peak at 2x +5 Lv50 Damage IOs plus 4x Damage Procs; but Brute damage for that same attack peak at 6x Damage Procs). However this is due to the disparity in Base damage between Brutes and Scrappers; not a reflection on Crits or Fury... and since the Scrapper has the option of slotting 1-2x Acc/Dam HOs in place of those Damage IOs, the Brute will fall behind on accuracy. A -Resistance Proc will work similarly, except that it *does* care about BOTH Fury and Crits; and can therefore often be a better means of magnifying your damage output, particularly if you're fighting something that's big and tanky but which doesn't have much "-Resistance resistance". Haijinx has already pointed this out; but the SCS Proc has +23.189 local recharge baked into it. This is really getting into a tangent about the SCS Proc now (apologies OP!) but I'm sorta interested in the underlying mechanics of builds; so even though you haven't actually given me any example attack chains + slotting examples to work from it's still vaguely interesting to chew on + spitball; and I doubt that I'll be told to shush as long as we can keep the thread vaguely civil. So here goes: SCS is a 4 PPM proc (I'm not sure where you're getting that "effective 11" PPM figure from?) which means that it has a fairly low activate rate. So IDEALLY you'll want to slot it in a single-target attack which has a Long Base Recharge, a Long Animation Time and a large 'Animation Time Before Effect' value. And as you rightly mentioned, ideally you want your heaviest damage attack(s) to be affected by its buff. So you also need to slot it in an attack which is NOT one of your heaviest-damage attacks but which IS powerful enough to include in your attack chain without too much DPA loss. All that limits your options substantially, so in many cases (like my Katana Scrapper) it may be more efficient to slot it in a faster-recharging, faster-animating, high-DPA ST attack which you can use more often, despite the loss in proc activation rate. Since you mentioned Pylons and "best builds"and Gavlam already posted the link to Ston's thread ... lets take the attack chain of the 2nd place "Scrapper pylon soloer" there as a functional example (since it's only 2s behind 1st place but doesn't rely on any momentum building!) That build has the Battle Axe Primary, and apparently uses a chain of "Swoop>Chop>Cleave>Swoop>Chop>Zapp" with the Crit Strikes Proc placed into "Swoop". Swoop has a 12s base recharge and a Cast Time of 1.23s. With no other "local recharge" than the SCS Proc slotted, that works out at a Proc Activation rate of 73.1409% Swoop's 'Animation Time' is 1.233 sec and its 'Animation Time Before Effect' is 0.733 sec; which means that the SCS Proc activates 0.733 seconds in, with the 3.25s +Crit% buff itself likely activating after a further 0.5 seconds have elapsed due to its own 'Animation Time Before Effect' value. 0.733+0.5=1.233 seconds total, so the actual 3.25s buff window starts immediately after the power finishes animating; although before the next attack can begin activating you still need to round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) so you end up with 3.031 seconds left in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Chop has an 'Animation Time' of 1.2s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.7s; so it easily falls within this buff window. Again, round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) and you're now left with 1.579 seconds in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Cleave has an 'Animation Time' of 2.333s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 1.233s; so it will *just* makes it into the remaining buff window before it elapses. So that's Chop and Cleave affected by the buff... The Second Swoop itself won't be affected by the buff; but it WILL have a chance to proc SCS once more, so here we go again... Chop has an 'Animation Time' of 1.2s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.7s; so it easily falls within this buff window. Yet again, Round up for Arcanatime (1.452s) and you're left with 1.579 seconds in the SCS +CritRate buff window. Zapp has an 'Animation Time' of 1.333s and an 'Animation Time Before Effect' of 0.933s; so it falls within the buff window. Round up for Arcanatime (1.584s) and the buff will have expired before you can queue up another attack. None of the attacks that fall within the buff window gain bonus crit chance %; so they will each have a maximum of (0.1+0.06+0.50)*0.731409 = 48.27% chance to crit. Swoop itself will never fall within the buff window, so it has a maximum of 16% chance to crit. So I make that a MAXIMUM overall average Crit rate of 37.5% across all six attacks. However actually performing this attack chain without any gaps requires that Swoop's actual recharge time is at most 3.036 seconds long (1.452 from Chop + 1.584 from Zapp). Which is technically possible; but requires 395.26% recharge. You start off with 100% Base recharge; and you gain +23.19% in Swoop from the SCS Proc. +70% from Hasten leaves around +202.07% still to find from other sources. Tricky. Particularly if you really don't want any more "local" recharge in Swoop itself - since the more local recharge you slot, the lower your proc activation rate will become... and that 37.5% Crit rate figure above will very quickly start to plummet. Therefore I very much suspect that even most "best builds" will peak substantially lower than a 30% overall average Crit rate unless they're getting an imperial tonne of external +recharge buffs; barring any short-term shenaniganery like chaining both Ageless Destiny plus Geas of the Kind Ones etc. etc. Happy to be proven wrong, however; and I know there're still a few questionmarks over the exact timing mechanics of that SCS Proc... 😄