Omega-202

I'd stick with Mu. Soul doesn't give you any advantage in the single target department over Mu, except the option to add one more kind of damage proc in the snipe, but Zapp can already slot 3. Zapp also got fixed a while ago so its damage is the same as Moonbeam, so don't let Mids or old databases confuse you. The only real difference between the sets is Shadow Meld vs Ball Lightning. Regarding the idea of Elec/Bio, you should do great. I have an Elec/Invuln/Mu that is functionally unkillable (capped typed defenses, except psi and capped or nearly capped resists across the board when I Rune of Prot is running) and can dish out silly amounts of AoE damage with BU>LR>BL>TS>CI. Overall, I agree with your assessment. Outside of TW (which Stalkers don't get) Stalkers have a higher peak performance in the melee damage niche over Scrappers, but generally require a bit more effort/attention than Scrappers. But they each bring slightly different tool sets. Scrappers generally have one more AoE attack over Stalkers, which can make a big difference on sets that are already anemic in the AoE department. But for sets like Elec, the Stalker version is objectively better than the Scrapper version and any Elec Scrapper would be better as a Stalker or Brute.

I build to the intended goal of the character. If I'm planning on soloing endgame TFs, I'll make sure to overslot accuracy, if I don't have other tools to address it. Same with other considerations you need for endgame soloing (-regen for AVs, high defensive numbers, escapes). But for general characters, I'm usually in teams (pick up or otherwise) for the kinds of situations you mentioned (LRSF for example). And in said circumstances, its highly likely you'll have sufficient stacking Tactics or defense debuffs to counter most enemy defenses. And if you don't, then a yellow insp or two will get you through the fight. I usually aim for a bit over 95% against +3s if I can and even running on random teams I've never felt the frustration you're describing. Maybe you just got really unlucky with your LRSF run? Regarding the aim/buildup question, the only character I factor it in for is my Stalker due to the refresh proc. With the refresh proc, Gaussians in BU and Decimation in Zapp, I have a lot of buff up time that makes overslotting even more of a waste.

- All of my characters share the same base costume, to the point that I can recreate it exactly (including height and build) from memory without loading a saved template. - I don't like having substantially different defensive values between damage types, if I can help it. I will sometimes prioritize a different IO set or power just to fill in holes in niche types over bolstering more useful or common ones. Eg. My Invuln Stalker doesn't have Temp Invuln partially because it would put my S/L so much higher than everything else (but also because it would be a waste and overcap me). Instead, I made sure all of my resists, including Psi, are in the 50-60% range. I don't know why that bothers me.

Glad it's worked well for you. I don't have a new build list handy, but off the top of my head, these are the changes I've made since that last one: - Gravitational Anchor "chance to hold" proc is now slotted in Fences in place of the accuracy slot. It doesn't hit 95% of the time any more, but it's definitely got more niche utility for the few times I actually use it. - Upgraded Positron's set in Suppression to Ragnarok. I don't recall which Ragnarok I left out (I think it's the Dam/Recharge), but I kept the Achilles in there. - Swapped the attuned Annihilation slots from Frag for boosted ones, pulled out one of them (I don't recall which, but I want to say the quad stat one) and added that slot to Mu Lightning to get a Gladiator's Javelin proc in there. Lose a bit of stats on Frag, but get an even harder hitting Mu. Regarding Channelgun, feel free to swap it for the melee attack. It won't matter much at lvl 50, but it will change how you play at lower levels as you'll be lacking a full ranged chain without the filler. For the set, I'd say anything with useful bonuses at 3 slots. If money isn't an issue, the 6% Fire/Cold resist in Hecatomb is a good call, and you can boost them to keep solid stats, while retaining the set bonus at lower levels because its a purple. Otherwise, Mako, CI and Touch are all decent, but you may want to boost instead of attune if you go Touch due to the lower level.

I'm pretty sure we basically have this already. Most every powerset has a counter, its just not something that slaps you across the face. Armor sets all have some sort of hole: Fire has a Cold and Psi hole, Invuln has a Psi hole and no offensive boost, Regen is weak to high burst damage, Dark has an Energy hole and is very endurance intensive, hence weak to sappers etc. Control sets have certain enemies that counter them: Nemesis resist fear and confuse, Warwolves basically ignore slows, etc. Enemies also have various damage type resists and defensive powers that make them harder to deal with. Ghosts are a solid counter to Ice users due to their cold resistance. Robots counter psi and lethal. Behemoths have Invincibilty making them harder to hit in melee range. Kudos for the creativity, but I don't think we really need an arbitrary extra mechanic tacked on. Especially one that seems overly complicated and half (quarter? eigth?) baked.

I'd say that it's not "flashy", but can make a pretty solid difference. It's good, but boring. Endurance at endgame is a binary situation, either you have enough to run all of your toggles and run through your attack chain essentially forever, or you don't and you start draining and have to pace yourself. I have found that with the same number of toggles, slotted similarly, with the same Incarnates and the big 3 unique IOs, my Crab can run forever while my Stalker can't, and needs to slow down or pop a blue every now and then. The fact that a kitted out VEAT can run 4 defensive toggles and 4+ leadership toggles and also loop AoEs forever is definitely something most builds can't do without heavy investment.

"You shouldn't raise taxes on the rich, otherwise they'll give away less to charity." - you Instead of fixing a systemic issue, lets just hope for some good old trickle-down.

That would require even less of an accuracy investment from your teammates because they're not suffering from the pet accuracy penalty, or the Spiderling's level penalty. If teammates didn't come to the party with enough accuracy slotted such that your 10-15% from TTL isn't enough, then you're dragging an anchor. If you did the math, you'd see that your teammates would have to be pants-on-head dumb to need double tactics from you. But, being that we're getting snippy, I'm talking to the person with some stupid addiction to slotting underleveled IOs, so whatever. You do you, and continue to give out bad advice.

We've previously discussed my lack of understanding for you not attuning your enhancements, so I'm not going to rehash it here, but I'll just restate for any other readers: if you're not going to boost them, there's no rational reason not to attune them.

The "when you need it" is under the following conditions: 1. Max Difficulty; and 2. You underslotted accuracy in your pets; and 3a. The enemy has substantial -ToHit that can land on you through your substantial defenses; AND/OR 3b. The enemy has substantial +Def. The biggest one is 2. In my opinion, 2 should never be an issue. I can't think of many excuses for not to being able to swing at least 65% accuracy in the pets.

FYI, if my math is right, the extra Tactics will only help the Spiderlings at max difficulty, if you're slotted with respectable Acc slotting on the pet themselves (~65%). At +3, the PPP and Disruptors should be accuracy capped (97%) and the Spiderlings would be at 82%. But after a Suppression volley's -Def the Spiderlings are up to ~90%. With Support Hybrid running, they're also accuracy capped. In summary, double Tactics is only worth it if you're running +4 or +3 and also dealing with a bunch of -tohit, + def on the enemy or if you don't have sufficient accuracy slotting on your pets.

I am aware. I use the larger radius 8% boost (Radial Embodiment), not the bonus pet defense (Core Embodiment). The 8% bonus works, based on my last check with a power analyzer. If I recall, the pets were at about 40% defense (~21% from double manuevers, 10% from double auras and 8% from Support). Add on a single teammate running Manuevers (which is 99% of teams) and they're capped.

My understanding is that all of those powers should stack, both from the same source and different sources. To the second question (since Red's response is kind of answering a different question) yes, HT can be cast with no dead teammates. You just need an enemy to target. In fact, I often use it as a back up CC / debuff opener on my Ice/Dark Corruptor as it will stun minions with one application.

You're right that Bile and Artic sounf tempting when laid out like that, but its all about opportunity cost. By taking Leviathan for those two long recharge cones, you're not taking a different PPP that helps with your single target damage. Crabs already do amazing AoE damage with their primary powers, so the question is "are the Leviathan cones actually helping that much?" Or are you better off just using Suppression in their place in the attack chain, doing slightly worse AoE damage, but taking a PPP that actually has a usable single target attack? Especially since you can still slot Suppression with the Annihilation and/or Achilles -Res Procs. Also something to consider is that the -res numbers you have up there are pre-level corrected. You need to multiply those numbers by 65% for +3 enemies and 48% for +4. So in the end, you're not increasing your damage by as much as you think. But to your conclusion: Fire Blasters and Crabs do different things. The Blaster would win the sprint but the Crab would win the marathon. You're never going to nuke a group as fast as the Blaster, but you also never need to stop firing AoEs.

That has been my experience using it with just the one Posi slot. During MSRs, when I get some random Clarions hitting me, Suppression starts hitting a solid chunk of the whole bowl. EDIT TO AVOID DOUBLE POST: I also did some napkin math and with 66% Acc slotted + 10% toHit from TTL, Spiderlings are only hitting +4 enemies (without any defense or -tohit from the target) ~80% of the time. With 1 application of Longfang or Suppression to the enemy, their accuracy jumps to ~90%. Thats a pretty significant bump in their damage.

Based on your Toxic Dart math, triple proc Longfang is about the same DPA as single proc TD (108 vs 111), before accounting for the extra toxic damage bonus. That is an interesting comparison, because that could save 2 slots for use elsewhere, or it can let you slot TD for bonuses instead of Frankenslots. Regarding Suppression, yes, its DPA is terrible, but its coverage is pretty absurd, especially with some range enhancement. And the -Def on it (and Longfang) are definitely helpful when it comes to letting the pets land their attacks. Spiderlings at -4, even with solid Acc enhancement and with TTL running, are pretty bad shots on certain enemy groups. Suppression spam definitely helps in that regard. And speaking of the pets, I dont find that being in melee is useful, necessary or recommended. I find its better to stay back a bit and then let them start their assault after I've taken the alpha. By that point, the mob is headed towards me and they'll start engaging as the enemies get closer. Running into melee guarantees the Spiderlings are eating AoEs and may not survive to help focus fire the bosses when the rest of the mob is dead, which is their main value in my opinion. I don't need their help wiping the minions and Lts, they're usually taken out in the first or second AoE cycle. The pets are more for boss mop up.

Ball lightning is definitely a solid pick. I have an SG mate who runs it over Suppression and it works fine, but it leaves a gap in the AoE chain due to the longer recharge. He also doesn't exemplar as well because of the lack of Suppression at lower levels. I am curious about Toxic Dart now that its available on test, but I am struggling to figure out what I'd drop to take it. Speed and Leadership are necessary pool picks. Fighting is pretty important to my build as well. I would need to drop Stealth, find another LoTG mule and probably would want to grab Super Speed for the other half stealth. I wonder how much swapping Longfang for dart gets you in the long run, especially when you can't slot -Def procs (Achilles and Lady Grey, also Shield Breaker if you want) in Toxic Dart. Would need to do some testing to compare.

Ditto to Seig's comment. Arctic Breath is great, but you definitely don't need 5-6 AoEs between (in my personal ranking of value) Venom, Frag, Arctic, Suppression, Bile and Heavy Burst. Pick 3 (maybe 4 if you're taking Artic and Bile) and you should be good to chain them. The limiting factor ends up being animation time, not recharge. I like exemplaring so I do Venom, Frag and Suppression and can chain them on loop. If you only play at 50, then you can drop Suppression and replace with the Leviathan powers. For single targets, there's 2 schools of thought: 1) go gun attacks for the faster animations, but you have to deal with constant redraw, or 2) use Longfang, Venom and a PPP attack (Mu or Gloom). I haven't tested Toxic Dart, but while it sounds decent on paper, especially with the Venom grenade debuff, the DoT sounds like a bit of a pain. Plus, Longfang is an absolute proc monster power and I wouldn't trade it. Achilles, Gladiator, and Lady Grey + 3 other IOs to max damage and acc gives you a solid attack that takes advantage of its longer animation by giving you a higher proc chance than similar, faster attacks. My build can be found at the link below as the second recommended build: EDIT: VERY IMPORTANT If you are making this build as an alt build of your Bane, please be aware that as soon as you pick a single Crab power in any of your Bane's alt builds, that character will have permanent spider legs on its back, even when Bane specced. There is no undoing this and no way to ever get rid of the legs on that character. Please be sure this is something you are ok with. Otherwise, roll an alt instead and don't make the Crab build an alt of your Bane.

None of the above. I've said it elsewhere: 1) Up damage to 1.0 scale. 2) Up defense scale to match Scrappers and Stalkers 3) Completely drop Opportunity and replace it with something else 4) Revisit and test the AoE cap decreases to see if they are also still necessary after the above changes I am honestly surprised that the priority has been put on fixing things like Dark Melee when the whole of the Sentinel AT is in such a bad place. Kheldians probably deserve attention before them, but at least both PBs and WSs are ponies with one good trick, while Sentinels are hard outclassed across the board.

The Overwhelming Force proc is a good call in the Spiderlings, but I am not a huge fan of the BU proc because they are not that great of a source of damage. They are -1 to you, so running at +4/8, they are -4 to the enemy even after accounting for the Incarnate shift. That extra level drop over the other pets means they do ~75% of base damage in comparison. The level differential means they are not going to do a ton of damage, and they only have 2 attacks, so in a single attack rotation, they'll be lucky to make use of the 5 second buff on a single attack. Most of the time, they'll proc it on Burst, then spend the 5 seconds of BU waiting for Burst to recharge or use it to run in and claw the enemy. Personally, I slot mine for straight defense in all three: Level 35: Summon Spiderlings (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge (40) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage (40) Expedient Reinforcement - Damage/Endurance (40) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (42) Expedient Reinforcement - Resist Bonus Aura for Pets (42) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge Level 38: Call Reinforcements (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge (42) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (43) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge (43) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage (43) Call to Arms - Defense Bonus Aura for Pets (45) Soulbound Allegiance - Damage/Recharge/Accuracy Level 47: Summon Striker (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Endurance/Damage/Recharge (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage (48) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (50) Soulbound Allegiance - Damage/Recharge (50) Edict of the Master - Defense Bonus This gives me 2 Defense auras, a Resist aura and maxed damage and recharge, as well as plenty of accuracy to make sure they actually hit. With double manuevers and Support Hybrid running, the pets are basically defense capped. The Disruptors and Striker are perma with more than a few extra seconds of leeway and the whole crew does a great job of spreading aggro while basically never getting hit.

Two quick comments for now: 1) FYI, Aim (and any other damage buff) has no effect on Judgement powers, so there's no need to try and squeeze it into your Aim duration. 2) What do you use Slice for? Is it part of your standard attack chain? Because you're probably better off swapping it for a PPP single target blast (Gloom is the best one, but Mu Lightning is also solid). Gloom does more damage, animates faster, is ranged and does negative energy damage instead of lethal, in exchange for a slightly longer recharge, which shouldn't be an issue with your global recharge.

The main reason you see fewer Banes and Night Widows than Crabs and Forts is because of two main reasons, in my opinion: A) AoE is king in City of Heroes. 9 times out of 10, you want an AoE monster at endgame. Single target damage is simply outclassed and is less efficient. Crabs and Forts beat Banes and NWs in AoE, by a LOOOONG shot. B) The main "playstyle" for "pure" Banes and NWs is basically the same as a Stalker, but Stalkers do it better. You lose significant single target damage (in comparison to a real Stalker) and gain some team buffs and debuffs. It's not a great tradeoff. Regarding the "ranged version" of the Bane aka Huntsman Soldier build, Crabs do that build better. They are bulkier and have access to an extra pet. Banes only get Surveillance in exchange, which is decent, but not that great.

I think you're mistaken on the bonus toxic resistance debuff on Arctic. You're probably confusing it with the bonus -res to toxic in Venom Grenade. I have dug and I am 99% sure you're wrong on that one. Here's i24 info on Artic Breath, taken straight from rhe game data: http://web.archive.org/web/20140821044448/http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Epic.VEAT_Leviathan_Mastery.Arctic_Breath

All I can say is 'thank you' for this an all of the other resources you've put together. This is definitely useful and something to consider on certain builds that would like to squeeze an extra power in. One suggestion, if you're looking to build this out further, is to include a section discussing the effect of various 'built in' movement speed buffs in power sets. For example, how does the math change for Super Reflexes or VEATs? How many siphon speeds would cap you for the various setups above? Just a thought.

If you wanted to go with the short lived period of time that Peter had his wrist stingers, Widow could work. I personally never liked that powerset for him in the comics (or any of the other random biological upgrades he got in that storyline).