tidge

I've never been a fan of Trip Mine (or its variants). Part of it comes down to its a lot of effort to pull off the sorts of tricks that come to mind, and I'm not sure it isn't faster just to eradicate enemies with direct attacks. Eventually, I'd want to place Trip Mines while in the middle of enemies and I don't know how that would go over in regular play. Also: I got a LOT of teleporting unwilling enemies around out of my system on Live. I've come to see Wormhole as more of a reliable mass Stun that has a side effect of lining up those teleported.

My Grav/Arsenal Dom went with Unleash Potential, see snapshot below :

I am always spending the Blue Bar, so I prioritize +MaxEnd and +Recovery. I will eventually spend some of the Green bar, so +HP is welcome (it also synergizes well with Scaling Damage Resistance) +Regeneration is a lower priority, except on Tankers/Brutes (big sacks of HP) and resistance-based Scrappers/Stalkers/Sentinels.

Technically true, but also IMO a waste of slots for a Mastermind. /Cold MMs should take the Ice Shield, and primarily only consider Infrigidate for debuffing hard targets. %Damage away on a different AT that needs the single-target DPS boost, MMs will have their henchmen. I agree that Marine *is* an 'overperforming' set, but after thinking about it... it really only becomes this way (offensively) on teams, so solo ATs with lots of henchmen, pets, pseudopets are where it sees the largest performance jump. I'm not sure TPTB actually see this as an issue... it seems like this is exactly how it was intended to perform (sort of like Plant Control is OP compared to most other control sets).

The base Accuracy of Rise to the Challenge is "only" 1.0, so in addition to the toggle giving it a poor chance, the ToHit chance won't be particularly good (against higher con enemies). For Tankers, I typically only opt to include the Perfect Zinger %Psi piece in attacks. Some Tanker primaries have good candidates, but not IMO Willpower. I don't even use %Psi in Taunts, because I like the set bonuses from Mocking Beratement better, and the max number of targets for a Taunt is only 5.

In the Homecoming era, IMO there isn't much solo-experience different between the melee classes. Tankers are a fine choice, as they will get generous amounts of HP and the larger range of melee powers is very nice, even without trying to fine-tune a build with enhancements.

Regarding Accuracy and ToHit, when considering %damage, here is what I typically do for my characters: 1) Any power with multiple %damage (or other %procs, like %-Res) pieces will also include Accuracy enhancement(s). A power that misses won't apply *any* damage. Typically this is via Accuracy/Endurance Reduction (and/or Accuracy/Damage/Endurance) franken-slotting, boosted if possible... or when I don't care about whatever the set bonus might be. In long recharge powers, this can be Accuracy/Recharge instead. Some powers simply get an Accuracy IO. There are some subtleties depending on the specific power: Some candidate %damage powers have a really good base accuracy, so adding accuracy isn't strictly necessary Some good %damage candidate powers don't take Accuracy pieces, but can get Accuracy boosts from Enhancement Sets (*but not HO/DSyncs) Neither henchmen, pets, nor pseudo-pet attacks benefit from any +Accuracy or +ToHit set bonuses that apply to player, unless the source is an aura that affects all friendlies. These almost always need to have accuracy slotting (especially if level shifts for henchmen are in play). 2) Players can benefit from enhancement bonuses +ToHit (e.g. Kismet) and global +Accuracy (e.g. most purple sets) bonuses such that they might be able to skimp on accuracy slotting in some powers for some content. Mileage varies of course, especially if a player is being debuffed or facing +N enemies. A tool like MIDS can help assess, but scaling across levels of content and difficulty settings can make this a little complicated. The second point occasionally rears its head when a player leaning hard into %damage plays content and they can't land many attacks... so like a +3 Synapse or Yin TF.

I used to feel the same until: I saw the umpteenth request to ask for MM level controls on "all pets" I saw the umpteenth discussion on "combat levels" (but I can't recall if that discussion was about Incarnate content or not) I played enough content to understand the difference between the different types of pets, and how the powers work and how they behave. On the second point, there are Lore pets, Crabber pets, Controller pets, Epic pets, and "pseudo pets". Of those, the only two that are remotely similar IMO are the Crab (spider) summons and the Epic pets, and even that is a stretch because of the intense amount of effort it takes to be able to resummon an Epic pet when the first summons would expire (of not defeated).. and there is only one of those, so it isn't like a player familiar only with Controllers would know the subtleties of the 3-or-2-at-a-time Spiders, especially if recharge was lagging.

As was (indirectly) mentioned by multiple folks in this thread, Hasten is in a different power pool than Vengeance... so folks may not want to give up the Leadership pool for a single choice from the Speed pool. I suppose this is obvious, but here goes: Vengeance is a perfectly adequate mule for LotG (or Shield Wall, or Karma, or Preventive Maintenance, etc.) This choice shouldn't be that mind-boggling. The "70% sooner" isn't quite right, given the diminishing returns of (not ED, but) how much time gets shaved off of certain powers, especially if the build is going to have Global +Recharge bonuses from enhancements. I'm not saying it would be nothing, more that for many powers the difference in recharge times (at least for my builds) is on the order of the animation time (or shorter).

Don't get discouraged by Tanker early level Tanker play. The early level content is highly tilted towards defeat enemies (quickly) rather than 'surviving' them, so there isn't as much need to focus on the Tanker primary powers... also, early toggles and auto powers don't do that much (generally speaking) at low levels. There are some relatively inexpensive temporary attacks available at the S.T.A.R.T. vendor to help with solo play (especially at low levels). Also: running toggles (especially Resistance) at low levels is not that necessary, and even if teamed it is guaranteed that a toggle (again, especially Resistance) is helping to survive whatever damage (type) being thrown at you. The philosophy of 'defeat quickly' never really changes across level ranges, but once your tanker gets an AoE attack, enemy defeats will start to happen quicker, even at 0x1.

Having played both Street Justice and Dual Blades, I think Street Justice will channel the feels better. I like each of Ninjitsu, Willpower and Super Reflexes on Scrappers.... in that order. Ninjitsu edges out Willpower for me because it is less 'set-and-forget' (in a good way). I actually don't like Energy Aura on Scrappers. It isn't terrible, but I find that (my EA Scrappers) can too easily end up in over their head. For my play style(s) and build choice(s) I find Energy Aura works better for Tankers/Brutes (more HP) and Sentinels (who start combat from range and then close the gap to enemies).

It depends on the timeline, natch.

This is a big reason why I consider Hasten (on top of +Recharge from set bonuses) to be something of a (wishy) wash. In my experience, not character is that worse off with less Global Recharge, except Dominators in the perma-Domination regime. I realize that not every player goes out of their way to kit all their characters with Purple sets, but it really doesn't take that much effort. See also @Jacke point about how minimal (Recharge) slotting of Hasten can work against a player exemplaring down because of Enhancement scaling. The game does have a peculiar number of "capstone" powers with weirdly long recharge times.... especially considering the timers on Incarnate powers... so I grok why folks with an eye on certain ATs higher tier powers or Epic pools would crave more global recharge.