Maelwys

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.

Might just be a sample size thing, although sometimes power changes do fly under the radar. For instance, I noticed recently that they've changed how multiple Power Transfer procs are handled. Multiple procs can stack in a single server tick now, so it's become normal for my own /Rad Scrapper to have 2-3 ticks of green numbers floating above his head even whenever he's just standing around doing nothing. They're a little bit disappointing in Radiation Therapy (my testing showed that they've only got one chance to proc in RT regardless of how many enemies you hit, the same as with the Panacea Proc) but they're excellent in Gamma Boost and Stamina. Body Mastery Brutes (with Superior Conditioning and Physical Perfection) could even slot five of them! Just another nail in /Regen's coffin!!

As shown in my screenshot above, Scrapper DPA (Damage per activation, meaning "how much average damage you deal during the time it takes each attack to actually animate") ranks GIS at 21.44338 damage/second, Frozen Fists at 27.43056 damage/second and Frost at 17.50797 damage/second. This means that against Single-targets, Frost is bottom of the pile. And against Multiple targets, Frost is better as long as you can hit two or more enemies every time you use it. Now as mentioned, that's DPA. So the "grain of salt it's to be taken with" is that it doesn't directly equate to attack chains. However... since both GIS and FF have a lower recharge time than Frost, in practice you'd be hard pressed to build an attack chain where Frost gives you better damage than either of them. Scrapper Crit rate has no bearing on faster attacks, it's a static percentage chance per attack. And all three of those attacks have a flat chance of 5% to crit in PVE (plus any global Scrapper ATO bonuses!) as you can see from the power figures in City of Data. Math isn't the be-all and end all of CoH certainly, it's not exactly a difficult game to "win" at. If you prefer the look/theme of Frost, then by all means more (Ice Melee) power to you!! 🙂

Yeah. Unfortunately DPA on Frost is terrible. It's by far the worst DPA attack that Ice Melee has, even below Frozen Aura, which is a True AoE rather than a Cone. And you're usually not able to hit several targets with it, at least on a Scrapper. A 90 degree Arc is decent. But a 10ft (Melee) radius isn't. Ice Sword has a DPA that's more than double that of Frost. Heck, even Frozen Fists comes close to double that of Frost. For Frozen Touch? It's not even in the same stadium (with a DPA more than 8 times that of Frost...) Honestly, you'd be better off picking up Cross Punch to round out your AoE attack chain. And for ST, Ice Melee definitely doesn't need it (see attached screenshot) All that said, I much prefer Ice Melee on a Tanker due to the Radius/Arc buffs. Tanker IM is usually more damaging than Scrapper IM when you're clearing 4x8s, simply because you can hit a LOT more targets with Frozen Aura (and Frost, should you choose to take it) on a Tanker due to the recent Gauntlet changes and their damage modifiers (and their +damage% cap!) really aren't that much lower any more. I also consider Rad Armor on a Scrapper to be a lot better if you don't try to softcap your defence - since you end up cutting far too many corners (in terms of additional damage output and recharge rate) aiming for +def set bonuses; and being completely honest the set can handle 4x8s totally fine without it. Capped resistances plus all the regeneration and absorption and Healing Procs it can stack is insane. Worst case you can just pop a Purple or use Shadow Meld etc. Example EM/Rad build:

Veteran MM player on both Live and HC here. I've experimented with a large number of control systems over the years. I agree that power tray macros certainly have their place; especially if you're used to activating your powers by clicking on icons in your power tray rather than using keybinds (or in my case, by using buttons on a joypad that activate whatever is inside each of your power tray slots!!) 😁 On my MMs, I fully admit that I like to use keybinds for "fine control" of my henchmen... ...however 99% of the time these days I find myself using only three keys and two power tray macros: Power Tray Macros (these instruct my pets to actually do something, and get tapped very regularly - multiple times during each fight) #1: "ATTACK THIS THING". (Either "ALL -> ATTACK MY TARGET" or just "BOSS -> ATTACK MY TARGET" - these get swapped around depending on the mission/situation; since sometimes against tougher foes I'll want to leave the bulk of my pets in Bodyguard mode constantly whilst my Boss grabs aggro) #2: "GO HERE". (ALL -> GOTO") Keys (these select the "Mode" of my pets, and generally only get tapped occasionally - a few times during each mission) "B" is Bodyguard mode. (ALL -> Defensive Follow) "G" is aGgressive mode. (ALL -> Aggressive, but doesn't specify Follow or Goto, so it allows me to move pets somewhere and then flag them as aggressive) "H" is Heel. (ALL -> Passive Follow) Finally, I've got a variant that I tend to bind to the "V" key for some of my tankier MMs. This is essentially "cruise control" - it swaps my Minion and LT henchmen to Defensive mode, but leaves the Boss on Aggressive. Which means that whenever I wade into a huge mob of enemies my Boss henchman will take the bulk of the initial aggro and weathers the alpha strike, and then everything else joins in. It makes soloing maps a lot easier to deal with whenever I'm only paying minimal attention. So during actual gameplay whenever I'm paying attention... I'll summon my pets and stick them into whatever mode I want by pressing a key; then I'll repeatedly use my power tray macros to actually instruct my pets either to "GO HERE" to kill all the nearby mobs and/or switch them back to bodyguard mode... and sometimes to "ATTACK THIS THING" to focus-fire tougher enemies. After clearing out a large area of the map, I can tap my keys again to switch my pets back to a different mode, or to tell them to FOLLOW me rather than to GOTO somewhere. Combinations of keys work too (e.g. B then G = Aggressive Follow mode). "Passive Follow" is rarely used once my MM gets over a certain level... but it's still something that I don't think I could live without a keybind for. Whilst they don't chase runners halfway across the map or block doorways as frequently any longer; Pets can still be annoyingly dumb even with the Homecoming AI changes... because spamming Defensive Follow simply doesn't clear their aggro list. So sometimes for positioning purposes, I'll still want to use H --> "STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING AND COME HERE NOW". A lot of newer players don't realise that "bodyguard mode" (e.g. the Pets absorbing a portion of whatever damage gets recieved by the MM) applies on both Defensive Follow and Defensive Goto. However the "Goto" command is much better at controlling your henchmens' behaviour during missions, at least for the Ranged MM primaries! 😉

Energy Resists is certainly loads higher, at the cost of a bit of Absorb and MaxHP, global recharge (unless you count the FF proc in RS), perception and endurance recovery. DPS looks pretty similar; aside from Irradiated ground (which will only be hitting 55% of the time against +3s with that setup - so your proc rate will suffer!) Slightly different way to build but nothing wrong with that - just goes to highlight how you can personalise a build a bit and still have a good level of performance. I'm not sure about the HOs in RS - admittedly I'm a bit biased against HOs in favour of IOs... but if I was aiming to get a bit more healing then I might aim for something like the below. (Basically I've swapped the sets in DS and RS around so that the only thing you lose is 10% global recharge, but RS heals for far bigger numbers. And since MaxHP can now break 3k without the Performance Shifter 3-piece set bonus in Stamina, my OCD will let me swap it for a Power Transfer Proc for even more passive healing!) And with that I think I'll step away from Mids for a while... could easily spend half my day in there, it's like linksurfing on tvtropes!

The Datachunk you posted was identical to the one I posted earlier (did you export the one you'd been working on?) but judging by those maximum HP, Endurance and Recovery values I'd guess that you're missing your Accolades (the +20% HP and +10% Endurance) and the "Ageless" Desitiny Incarnate. Maybe they're added in but not actually toggled on? The resistances being a bit under is probably due to the "Superior Might of the Tanker" set (which I had slotted into Proton Sweep, but it can be moved elsewhere) not being toggled on. In practice you can usually keep about 2 stacks of that up, assuming that it's in an AoE ability and you're actually using the power it's slotted into fairly regularly... so IMO it makes sense to include at least one stack in your character building. Another thing to be careful of when build tweaking is accuracy slotting - at endgame you'll usually be fighting things that are +3 to you (technically they'll be level 54, but you'll end up with a +1 level boost as well due to your incarnate slots) so it's a good idea to build with those sort of foes in mind. If you go into Mids and pick Options menu -> Configuration and then go to the "exemping and base values" tab you will see a number that you can edit called "Base ToHit". Change that from the default value of 75 to 48 and press OK. All your abilities will then end up listing accuracy values that will actually be useful to you (you'll want 95% accuracy to be "capped" versus regular level 54 mobs - see here for the maths) If you've been hunting around in different Radiation Melee build threads then you'll probably notice that slotting Irradiated Ground can get a bit tricky. In theory you'll want as many -resistance debuff procs and damage procs in it as possible, since IG has double the regular chance to activate procs compared to a regular damage aura (these normally have one chance to proc every 10 seconds, but IG creates a new damaging pesudopet every 5 seconds). However in order for those procs to actually do anything IG needs to be able to reliably hit your enemies - and IG is NOT autohit so ideally you'll want to get it up to 95% accuracy against level 54 mobs, the same as all your other powers. The build I posted is able to do that via one level 50 +5 Accuracy IO.

There're plenty of others floating around, but here's an example to get the neurons firing. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1493;723;1446;HEX;| |78DA4D93CB4F137110C767DB2DD0D2F22A501E2DD052EC9342518F8618812AD0848| |8F166C85A96B2D014427BD0A389CFAB1E38999878E2427C5D3D18BD7AF5FD07680C| |68F46414D7E97EC77637693FF39BFDCDCC77E6F7DBFC9519EF7EEEDA3429DE3325A| |D5259B9A09537F51D575E2B1A05AA3DCDFC0BC1BB32A3AFE9E58A9E595E37F4D2EA| |FF6550DEE6F592AE67CE6BAB865635B6CA589377696BAB9459D4B56DA35CF4588BE| |56D5D5FF559E69C515CAFF28B56AC4AB5A57F76DB28644EEF14AA466125AF55AAFA| |CED53E5691E6DF8C8FFF949A2ED3453D6C64556AE9A8D14D9E6EB07788197353340| |2C602CC904AFB315BEC1A597B1D45E13AD86480DE0DB06D93AC1AB35C5741ACAACC| |39AD772D39D0330F4E2C38ADBDD99FE023AEE7947ACE37F0A96F85EFC0A6F7A0F70| |3D8F611CC713D1762C99582965E3E8A66F89466E97DFC88ACDECEF27EB725D02477| |18FBCFB1AF5572B4CAFE00E7F0117CBE41D47ACC3ADB4567BBCCA543E6D22173E99| |2B974C95C7A652EF39CAC13B18E4EA99194F39890F3789E20F2A3A6D3FFC061F9BA| |1FD6E8A2E47DA65FA5893D8715FB8CB5F488BE9E0DEC9DE31A01D117F88C59F77D1| |11EA087C4246A25B2C213E002C7F64B6CFF6FE41BF8233C02837FC1215348C8F923| |4E3428B18303E83B780A3A470E1DD6DCC3AFB10E4F2326FC02FD4478CE2139AB909| |CDF907091350DCB3C8645E788E81F390E66A790EF09CF23221A2231E81B8D0B13C2| |24184D414B348ED8A71C3B26B163D755CB77EC86F0A6F01618BB2DBC032AAC3F2EE| |71097DE9DEC4B49BE94E84D8BDEF49450FA193F29F7F317B4B8393623F932724F46| |D93729BEC94FD09E50EBDFA81954491E9348342CDA7D6EC42CA912C23E258A7D079| |E7A1EA271F80EEDBE387CDF1A3E85C2D09ABC087DDF1BEF1C7457EEED3D30BB8BDA| |AF92F5EFC97C99ACF763EEF285CF4A1FE9EE86BD17615BF6E4020DBFF52CD8822E7| |B1AB666B32FD9EC259BFD35DAB0FF01C1CAD849| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

Heightened Senses gives typed rather than positional defence, so it doesn't really care if they're ranged or melee. Rise to the Challenge likes having at least one foe within melee range in order to increase your regeneration rate though. Some example numbers from my old SS/WP's i24 build are below (this is with Tough and Weave active and one foe in RTTC range, but no incarnates except for the Alpha Slot) and it's pretty cheap + far from optimised by HC standards...

To throw a few actual numbers at it... back in the "Olden Days" Pre-ED, you could six-slot things: + Instant Healing is +600% (Unenhanceable) +200% (Enhanceable). 6-slotted (Pre ED) that would have worked out at: +1199.6% Regen. + Integration is +50% (Unenhanceable) +100% (Enhanceable) 6-slotted (Pre ED) that would have worked out at: +349.8% Regen. + Fast Healing is +75% (Enhanceable) 6-slotted (Pre ED) that would have worked out at: +224.85% Regen. + "Health" wasn't a factor unless you took the fitness pool, so typically on top of this you'd just have the 100% Base Regeneration that everyone gets. + "Dull Pain" you could *just barely* get "perma" by 6-slotting it for recharge; which meant it granted +40% Maximum HP. With accolades, you can bring that up to 2142 HP (Scrapper cap is 2409 HP) So a pimped-out Pre-ED Regen Scrapper would have been sitting at about 1874.25% Regen total, applied to 2142HP. That works out at a grand total of 167.2901 HP/Second (Base regeneration is 5% HP every 12s. Extra regen shortens the time between ticks. So it's 2142.17*0.05=107.1085 HP regenerated every 12/1874.25%=0.640256 seconds) Admittedly, power values will have changed a bit over time from patch to patch even leaving aside ED... but that's a rough ballpark number. Now to give a few very rough modern-day comparisons... (i) My Kat/Regen's i24 build has capped (2409.52) HP and normally regenerates 71.25 HP/Second. (Plus a little extra from Panacea etc). When Instant Healing is active (roughly 50% uptime), that rises to 172 HP/Second. However they also have softcapped Melee Defence and between 50%-60% S/L Damage Resistance (depending on their current HP level) before incarnates. (ii) My SS/WP Tanker's i24 build has 3411.46 HP (Tanker Cap is 3534) and with one foe inside of RTTC Range, it regenerates 140.24 HP/Second. However they also have softcapped Typed Defence to everything except Psionic and hardcapped (90%) S/L Resistance. So in terms of raw regeneration rate, modern-day scrappers probably still can't meet the old pre-ED performance values; as even WP Tankers will struggle to reach it. However, in terms of actual Damage Mitigation (Defence, Resistance, Absorption) and Damage Output (Set Bonuses, Procs, Incarnates, etc) the modern-day equivalents are miles ahead.

Not on a Scrapper, no. Regeneration on a SENTINEL is considerably better though. You can certainly IO-out Regen Scrappers, and if you pair them with a primary like Broadsword or Katana then you can get very decent levels of regeneration and resistance whilst hitting the "59%" Incarnate content defence softcap. But that level of performance has very little to do with your secondary powerset. Almost everything regeneration brings to the table, willpower can do better (hitting the scrapper maximum HP cap is a little easier on regen) - but hey, it's still thematic. Even if you'll never actually be "the best you are at what you do" (TM)... 😉

I've covered that already, no less than three times: I'm really not sure how many more ways I can put this. It's beginning to feel a bit like a certain scene from Red Dwarf... I'll try one last time: Because it would only grant an extremely minor theoretical average benefit over time, but in practice the build's endurance recovery would be become much less consistent/reliable. "PS Proc + PS EndMod" vs "Two regular +5 EndMod IOs" ---> In order for the PS proc to become the better option you'd need to always be sitting at under 90% Endurance, but never bottoming out. Therefore you'd have to continually carefully juggle the use of your powers in such a manner that you remain under 90% and above 0% endurance regardless of how often the PS proc actually kicks in. And that is highly impractical. No worries, likewise I'm not trying to argue, merely trying to explain the reasoning for my decision. The explanations I've given have all related to my earlier post where I listed five recovery slotting options. One of those options was slotting a second EndMod IO into Stamina. The build I posted currently has a second EndMod IO in Stamina. If you took that IO out and replaced it with a PS proc then you'd still be at least one enhancement slot short of the "ideal" (which is to have all the Healing uniques plus both a second EndMod IO AND a PS proc in Stamina). And therein lies the problem. Ordinarily I'd figure out a build's optimal attack chain and calculate its Endurance consumption, then build the character so that they meet that consumption plus a little extra for leeway. However it's very difficult to do this for a Crabbermind because the powers they use will vary wildly depending on the situation (buffs, AOE, ST). The most foolproof method would be to drop all the slots in Health and Stamina and just use Ageless instead of Barrier... but doing that negatively impacts your pets' survivability... so we're brought back to the original point that Crabbermind builds are ridiculously tight on enhancement slots and getting everything you could possibly want on them simultaneously is impossible. So the best solution I can come up with is to produce a build that ticks all the boxes for sufficient recharge, damage output and survivability... then try to get as much reliable endurance recovery as possible using the remaining enhancement slots.

Willpower. Whilst it needs heavy IO investment to reach it, WP's performance ceiling is higher than Stone or Invulnerability. Softcapped Defence (with the fighting pool and enough set bonuses), Hardcapped Resistances, Respectible Maximum HP and bucketloads of Regeneration. Has no holes. But has absolutely nothing that adds to your damage output (unless you count the additional endurance recovery)

That's probably fairly accurate. Personally I'd usually go "sufficient recharge" --> "damage output" --> "survivability". And for survivability I'd prefer softcapped defences first, then a mixture of resistances and maximum HP before looking too much into regeneration. I'm not sure if people tend to drastically overvalue regeneration set bonuses due to the reputation that regen scrappers enjoyed back in the day...?

Because whenever your build has exceedingly few "spare slots", including all of the potentially useful supportive IOs (such as the +Health and +Stamina uniques) becomes impossible. So you need to choose which ones to include based upon the performance boost each brings to the character. That's why I included the comparison between the various endurance slotting options above: If a build only has one spare slot to use for boosting recovery, then it will only be able to choose ONE of those five options (likely panacea) and with two spare slots it can choose TWO (panacea and miracle?) etc. The build I posted has enough spare slots for four of them, which means that it needs to drop one. The PS proc was the one that didn't make the cut. In my last post I was pointing out that the reason I personally treat PS as the "least desirable" option is because it has only has a Proc rate of 25%. This means that it is unreliable. Over the course of a minute it has a 18.00% chance of not kicking in (see cumulative binomial probability) compared to the "always active" additional recovery from a second IO in Stamina... and the theoretical performance difference between them is so slight (0.04 End/Sec) that PS becomes less attractive. Panacea technically suffers from the same issue, but its higher proc rate of 50% means that it is much more reliable in practice than PS - over the course of a minute it has only a 1.56% chance of not kicking in, and its theoretical performance is also considerably higher. Unfortunately due to the slotting constraints it's not simply a case of "slotting a PS proc into stamina", it's a case of "deciding what to give up in order to free up an enhancement slot in order to slot a PS proc into stamina". And as it stands each of the "loose" IOs in that particular build are already performing functions which grant more benefit (to my mind anyway) than a PS proc would give. A similar notion applies for +perception (for example). Taking the Rectified Reticle unique and/or Power Pool Tactics would be potentially useful- they'd bring the character to the perception cap. But in order to include them you'd need to drop other IOs and power picks, and that trade-off simply wouldn't be worth it outside of very specific situations e.g. Stalker hunting in PVP.