tidge

I hear what you are saying, but consider this: Once most of the enemy critters in the game have a floored 5% chance to hit, somewhat skews perceptions of what 'less survival' means. Blasters have it pretty good on Homecoming... I'd never advocate going back to the nukes w/ crash, or the era before 'sustains' but if you are talking going back to "old school"...

I don't think i28p2 is a massive nerf to Tankers. I do remember Live, and Tankers were more-or-less made irrelevant by Scrappers, especially when levels 41-50 (and all the extra slots) became available. The one thing I remember Takers could do what Scrappers couldn't do was herd entire maps at once.

This is still an issue as of 01 June 2025

These show different 'times' on the order of a minute or less between Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes. And IIRC (without reopening the builds) the various builds don't rely on what I'd consider typical for those AT... from memory, and I could be wrong because I don't use MIDS, but I think the Fighting Pool's Cross Punch was leveraged. Ston's work was interesting, and necessarily somewhat niche, but it is IMO showing neither a big difference (even if measurable) nor one completely applicable across all content and player builds.

The MOAR REGEN for critters is a head-scratcher for me. I can think of only a handful of circumstances where this can be an issue: low-level characters that have low-tier Damage-over-Time powers... the DoT is going to make less of an effect (AFK) Farming characters that rely on DoT... this is going to slow them down solo-ish characters that get defeated (by a boss) and have to trudge back to the mission from a hospital... to find the baddies completely healed up. If the reasoning was offered, I missed it. Maybe it's because new sets are getting -Regen components?

I almost never take Hasten, the economy of Homecoming makes it relatively easy to achieve high levels of global Recharge (plus other good stuff) from IOs, on every AT. I also tend to find the Speed pool mediocre, so picking Hasten often restricts other alternate build choices(*1). Many people choose to try to make Hasten "perma", but in practice this isn't really necessary. I can imagine circumstance when perma-Hasten would be preferred, but those are all niche content or for builds that are exclusively running attack chains exclusively relying on inherently long recharge attacks. When I do take Hasten, it is: Dominators, who won't otherwise have perma-Dom, especially a leveling-up Dominator, or "Tankers" that rely on longer recharging powers to survive the hardest content. (*1) There are a number of pools that have 4 (of 5) excellent powers; picking Hasten delays how soon I can get that 4th or 5th power *and* is getting in the way of a pick of a prerequisite power from those pools.

Canasta... the card game with the most grind. IMO, YMMV.

I can't say that I've ever soloed an AV with my Dark/Dark Controller, but I know I 2-man tackled most of the AVs helping someone else run through the MJ stories. The dominant impression of that Dark/Dark was that long before level 50, it was actually unusual for it to be in any sort of trouble on the Citadel+ TFs, even if I was solo against rooms of turned-up enemies. It felt odd that the character could be so survivable without being fully slotted or having a full kit of power picks.

Some of us have to speed through content to get back to costume creating and base building! I don't think Controllers are getting nerfed... obviously Seeds of Confusion was a massive outlier, it was pretty absurd to have THIS level of AoE control at level 8. I wasn't expecting the changes to Carrion Creepers... sure I see the explanation, but I rather liked being able to turn this power into a sort of 'nuke', given that the Fly Trap has always been somewhat meh. Tankers... they get nerfed in a much more meta way (i.e. all tankers are affected by a common set of changes), but this looks to be a dialing back as a result of other recent changes. I don't see how the Tanker changes upcoming in i28p2 are going to make the game go faster. Without testing (on my part) the Tanker changes look to have done more 'turning down' of the AT than I would have expected (less self-buff, less debuff, less damage dealt, etc.) It remains to be seen how this plays out on x8, on x1 there will probably be only a limited amount of content that it will be noticeable.

Of the Tanker-focused, across-the-board changes, I agree that the reduced damage for 'overcap' is a bit of a head-scratcher. In practice: if my tanker is targeting bosses, then I'm slightly less bothered by minions taking less damage... but with PBAoE and some cone/AoE attacks I can't guarantee that I'm actually going to hit the Bosses in the first 5 (or 10) targets. It also feels like one more thing for RNG to mess up. Radiation Armor (on Tankers) is going to take a little getting used to... I was mostly opting for Radiation Armor to use on characters which I didn't particularly crave loading up on offense from the secondary (early-ish in the build) because of the proc-ability of Radiation Therapy from the primary. It doesn't look to becoming a bad power for %procs, but the utility of it will diminish. I'm probably going to have to revisit my choices of Healing/Recharge in it and swap into Accuracy (while leveling, and I have at least one character that has slightly fewer ToHit and Accuracy bonuses that I usually opt for.

Here is a new reason to reject the idea of trudging everyone to the cell block on a TF just to fight "doors"... the number of doors in a cell block is only a fraction of what is needed for the Doorbuster badge.

1) Players have to do enough damage (over time) to overcome the inherently high values of health recovery from the Regeneration GMs get (for being big sacks of HP) 1b) Players debuffing GMs helps 2) Players have to survive contact with the GMs (usually through Defense values) 2b) Players have to be able to "take punches (and controls)" #1 is typically done by players by summoning Lores. #2 is typically done by using Destiny powers. A solo player that can handle 1 and 2 doesn't need Incarnates. A couple of players with full slotting (so close to 50) that have both 1 & 2 covered can usually handle most GMs. Jack in Irons is somewhat interesting since his rework: It's got several melee AoE (so it can hit multiple opponents at once) and several different controls (so it can take some opponents out of the fight). Jack (in the open world) normally isn't a "level 50" monster, and during the Halloween event I believe it is the old (pre-reworked) Jack that can appear in high-level zones.

On my Tankers, if the Tank lacks protection and has an obvious gap in resistance coverage, I'll often try to add the Aegis 20% Mez/5% Psi resistance piece. This is about the only circumstance when I chase more mez resistance.

As this is a low-level arc, extra START vendor attacks may come in useful for many players working on Doorbuster here.

I like Beam Rifle on Sentinels better than I like it on Blasters. The disintegration mechanic favors lots of target-switching and the shorter range is really no problem for Sentinels. I don't have a SR Sentinel but my general experience with the AT is that the secondaries are wicked good and it is pretty easy to make an extremely survivable character with most any of them. A casual (Sentinel) comment: For whatever reason I found it pretty easy to end up passively hitting the MaxHP cap on my Sentinels, usually with the two accolades. SR has the Master Brawler +Absorb, so I would definitely leverage it. If the protection from Practiced Brawler is desired... I'd probably go a different route (Sorcery pool perhaps?)