tidge

The Dark Primary has a LOT of -ToHit, so capped defenses may not be as strictly important. I am well aware of compromises that go into builds. The most important thing is to have fun with it!

I have a Dark/Temp/Force, I can offer a few points of comparison, with some advice sprinked in. No real advice for slotting the ATOs, I have Defiant Barrage in the Level 1 attack (Gloom) for the +Status, and Blaster's Wrath in End of Time. Keep in mind you can always fire the T1 and T2 primary when under control. Time Wall: I also have this single slotted, but I have a level 53 Hami-O Endoplasm (Acc/Mez). This power helps trigger "TIME STOP' so I think it needs both accuracy and duration. Umbral Torrent: I have this franken-slotted with range and %damage Level 2: Umbral Torrent (A) HamiO:Centriole Exposure (37) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure (46) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 30 (48) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy): Level 50 (48) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage(Lethal): Level 50 (46) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown: Level 50 I delayed the choice of Aim until level 47; with Chronos it isn't needed/doesn't help as much. I have the same slotting on Chronos. My Aim is one-slotted (recharge) I have Moonbeam 5-slotted with Sting of the Manticore and the Gladiator's Javelin %Toxic. This is a tricky power to slot, as the level range for Sting of the Manticore is 35-50, but the power is a key attack at lower levels. The set bonus is too good to pass up IMO. This is a strong motivation for as many Accuracy bonuses as possible. I have Preventive Medicine as the 6-lot choice for Temporal Healing. I have Life Drain franken-slotted as a backup attack, there are many options for this power: Level 26: Life Drain (A)Touch of the Nictus - Healing: Level 50 (29) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Healing: Level 50 (29) Touch of the Nictus - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 50 (31) Gladiator's Javelin - Accuracy/Damage: Level 50 (31) Gladiator's Javelin - Chance of Damage(Toxic): Level 30 (31) Cloud Senses - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 30 IMO Blackstar merits a 6th slot with a %damage proc, since it is the AoE Nuke. I passed on Abyssal Gaze. Time Stop (at level 6, I have 6xGladiator's Net) synergizes much better with the rest of the powers (certainly the Secondary) than a single-target Fear. YMMV. It looks like you aren't leaning too hard into the secondary, so I can understand what I think you are going for. I found that once I hit level 50 (no Incarnates, just bonuses and accolades) I only needed 1 slot in Health and Stamina. This is somewhat common for most of my builds, I seem to write it every time 🙂 My advice is to use an unslotter on those powers to see how much you really need the non-global Performance Shifter. You will probably need it leveling up, of course.

1) I almost always use my lvl 50 respec before taking the mission. 2) I make sure I have the "Member of Vanguard" badge to be able to collect Vanguard merits. 3) I always run at x8, but I slide the difficulty depending if I have DPS or Debuffs 4a) I try to get the Ambushes to trigger before 100% engagement with the big bads. 4b) I try to take out the end-room portals first. 5) If I remember, I have SG buffs and big Inspirations. Once, with a very low DPS Controller, I used a signature summons along with Shivans.

While not precisely the same experience as LRSF / MLTF, I've had a few of my freshly-minted level 50 characters experience a similar reaction to Mender Ramiel's arc while solo. I find it to be a nice reminder that not all level 50s are created equal, and that just because a character was soloing x8/+4 Unai Kemen content that they may not be ready to do the same with incarnate content. It was some time ago that I helped a fresh-faced lvl 50 "fire farmer" finish that arc. I tried to explain what was happening and how to shift not just tactics but to also consider difficulty settings... I am not sure that either piece of my advice was considered.

I enjoy running +4 on PUGs for content down to ~lvl 25, but allow me to write why before dismissing my opinion: I've got nothing BETTER to do in the game. I've played most of the content and I want to see how I and other players handle adversity. The enemies require a LOT more team effort. There is far less of people dashing off by themselves. Those that do can either handle it, or not. I'm sensitive to players who struggle with "To Hit" against +4 enemies... but with "soft caps" on defense... this is basically what many players subject the enemies to! The AoE holds not working so well? Maybe don't slot 5 %damage procs? That rez power might actually come in handy! I'm not in favor of just turning missions into boring slogfests (ehem, no +4 Synapse TF thank you) or watching other players suffer... but seeing players come together as a team is AWESOME. I recently started a rather extreme Pinny Yin TF in which most of the members of the PUG were not full kits of exemplared level 50s, but I was running a character that could seriously debuff enemies and after a few scares (and an honest request to watch how we did at +4) we ended up completing the TF in about an hour (quite long for a Penny Yin IMO) but the XP rewards for the team were extremely generous and we had a lot of fun banter. YMMV.

I feel for you on the subject of Windows 10 rollbacks/restores. My son's W10 laptop ended up in a mode where it required a complete restoration and it was not a pleasant experience. Windows did allow for a rather 'complete' archiving of all his data, and the post-mortem did not leave any clues for any of the sort of things that could be assigned blame (e.g. external threat actors, hardware failures). As I wrote earlier: I really am not interested in understanding my own specific circumstances (since I think I recovered from the wound and I never plan to go anywhere near that again). I definitely got the sense that the the NVidia/GeForce software was brute-forcing (or should I say, "naively handling") elements of display in a manner that it shouldn't have. After all, I expect the Video Card to be doing 100% of "the work" as far as presenting the information on my screen, but when that application was running there was a clear disconnect between simple IO commands from the keyboard/mouse (e.g. stuttering and delay) as well as CPU (window processes killed/stopped but the window still displayed) and the video card (what I see on the monitor screen). I don't know enough about the raw basics of how a video card translates the graphical requirements for things like "move an icon", "close a window", or "redraw a screen"... but I got the sense that the software as implemented didn't have a full understanding of these basics either. I might have had some basic idea back in the mid 1980s, but this is an aspect of PC design and architecture that blessedly hasn't required much (if any) deep technical expertise to enjoy.

I've been revisiting my Tanker with the explicit intention of playing different styles with different PUG, just to see how the players react. I don't do this as some sort of grand social experiment, its more along the lines of exploring different corners of gameplay. The main thing that gets me to STOP experimenting this way and settle into a more commonly recognized play style is if one or more members of the PUG are in over their heads; as much fun as I may get from my squishy characters pushing far past the limits of what they can handle I don't assume that other players feel that way.

Frankly: I turned aware from the software so I can't offer details on what it was doing. I had intended to use a mode where I would pick when it started to record. My suspicion is that the software was always passing some small (a few seconds?) duration of the displayed screen through some sort of buffer in anticipation of the user asking it to begin recording. While the software was running, what was finally being displayed on the screen was IMO "obviously" not the immediate video output I expected (or had experienced) prior to activating that part of the code. The effects it introduced was a a "delay" (almost to the point of hysteresis, but not quite) in simply moving icons/windows on the desktop, and certain closed windows kept an "afterimage" on the screen. Task Manager would no longer show the programs as running, but the last images from them would be preserved. The first effect was highly annoying, but I can imagine that per the software implementation it was "working as expected". The second effect was a clear software defect. In either case, the program did not meet the needs of my intended use and significantly affected my quality of life. I'm not going back to it, and the experience was painful enough that I'm simply relieved to have recovered from the experience; I have no intention of going back to it... even to help better understand what happened.

I have the Gaussian's %Build Up slotted as mention, and I see it up often... but I question if it is really the optimal choice (for the rest of the MM build) only because I don't usually see the T2 Henchmen making attacks in the short window when it is active. This is the sort of thing that I think is objectively hard to assess because it depends on a certain amount of asynchronous syncrhonicity involving the positioning of the henchmen, available targets, etc. I think I keep it because I just like seeing the little violet fist appear next to the henchmen.

Good advice in the OP, but with a couple of minor sour notes (to my eyes, YMMV) that prevent me from applying a "like". Nothing worth starting a discussion over. Story time, just for discussion. I recently joined a Ms Liberty TF with my Tank that was being run by another Tank. No big deal, my casual observation is that we were roughly equal in terms of survivability but it did result in some odd (team) behavior that I hadn't witnessed before. When we ended up 'in the future' as part of Doc Aeon's trap, the other tank went through the effort to round up 3 of the 4 AVs while I held down the first... and then did the same sort of thing with the "big four" in the final mission. This struck me as a a reasonable way to demonstrate "I'm Tough", by my clock it actually made the TF missions go longer than they otherwise would have if we had 100% of the team focused on 1 (or 2) AVs at a time. The ONLY complaint I have about having two tanks on that TF was that when it came time to take down Lord Recluse, he ended up being 'pinned' at the top of a tower, which made focusing fire from the team difficult. (I think opinions can vary if this was good or not vis-a-vis LR's specific attacks). The Dominators can take some of this blame, but I feel like the competing tanks made it hard to get him to move. On a completely different tangent: I have grown to LOVE "Tanker Stealth" on missions in arcs such a Manticore's TF. I'm specifically thinking about the magic combination of missions where the team doesn't NEED a tank, and there is a desire to 'get to the glowie' ASAP, and the tank is the fastest toon on the map... the trick is to get past the early mobs (who will be aggro-triggered, but will eventually focus on the non-sprinters)... and then hit the aggro cap with some completely OTHER spawn (that won't lose interest in you) and get to the glowie without upsetting the nearby baddies. 95% of the time I just keep my Tank near the door mowing down baddies, but every once in a while it is fun to take a different approach.

Had you recently changed your costume? Was the arrangement of inspirations in your Insp trays different?

Here are some contributing factors why such things could me missed: At low levels, folks don't have many slots to put into powers At low levels, P2W offers free %damage enhancements that can be slotted at level 1 It is relatively easy to get through levels 1-12 very quickly

A couple years later, and I will add that my MM prefers that the FFG is a summonable (limited life) object as opposed to a toggle. I wouldn't want him to have to spend the Endurance tax to maintain it, and aside from some occasionally issues with paths/corners it will pretty much stay with me. Keeping it as a summon makes it feel much more like the rest of the (Mastermind) secondary.

I'm just dropping by to resummon the following message: There is a difference between PETS and HENCHMEN. Casually using the terms interchangeably IMO can lead to different expectations about how certain things work in the game.

My Thugs MM was rolled after the changes to henchmen AI; I'm not ignorant how to command henchmen. It's clear that your opinion is that Thugs are a cut above all others, and in many ways they are... but I believe in terms of AoE, against large spawns (e.g. x8), that it is Robots that come out on top. I completely agree that the Traps secondary is a large part of it. Traps has both the FFG and a Triage Beacon to provide direct help to the henchmen, beyond the Protector Bot's shield boost to allies. I don't typically experience "cascading failure" when it comes to Robots, except: against very specific enemy types (e.g. Rularuu) that have both nasty tricks stacked on their attacks AND don't cluster like other enemies If I am making a "mad dash" through +4 enemies as part of a TF (because I'm not laying down the AoE controls), and the henchmen don't keep up (losing both the benefits of protective auras and FFG). Against almost all single target tests, Robots are really bad(1). My Robots can typically handle as many different spawns as I can drag into their kill zone. It isn't a lot of fun, but my Robots are able to take down multiple GMs (one at a time, and sloooowly) which is not something I would bother trying to do with my Thugs. (1) Re: Single target misery (in Robots) No one should underestimate the importance of the T1 and T2 Robotic henchmen for dealing with single-targets. It is a common statement made along the lines of "80% of your DPS comes from the Assault Bot, look at TEH NUMBAS". I used the second build on my Robots/Traps to try the "one big robot" challenge, just to see what content would be like... and I swear that it took me between two (at x1) and three (at x4) times as long to get through typical game content (level-independent arcs, Ouroboros, tips). The force-multiplier effects from the T1 and T2 should not be underestimated.

I think the answer was /Traps.

Bots don't have Gang War to mule Aura sets, so if the measure is going to be 'slot the henchmen for procs', well... yes Robots will suffer. However... Bots don't run all over creation, they stay in place to finish off enemies. I've had ZERO problems keeping my robotic henchmen alive.. I can barely keep my different tiers of Thugs to stay in one place.

I've played Robots/Traps/Mace and Thugs/Thermal/Heat to level 50+, and the Robots are much better at AoE. The Robots can be made even better by making some choices to KEEP enemies in place. I regularly use: (Traps) Caltrops (AoE, slotted with %-Res from Annihilation) (Traps) Acid Mortar (AoE, slotted with -Res from Annihilation and Achilles' Heel on top of being slotted for the inherent debuffs) (Traps) Poison Trap (AoE, slotted for Hold Duration, some %damage) The Robots all have Sudden Acceleration KB -> KD. This is quite important. (Robots) Photon Grenade (AoE, slotted with %-Res from Annihilation and Overwhelming Force KB->KD) (Mace) Mace Beam Volley (AoE, slotted with with %-Res from Annihilation and Sudden Acceleration KB->KD) I want to note the following: The primary attacks (and Epics, naturally) are taken LATE in the build; they wouldn't help nearly as much before the final Upgrade at level 32. The build also includes single-target powers Web Grenade (mandatory T1 secondary, no extra slots) and Pulse Rifle Blast (with Sudden Acceleration KB -> KD). If they proc, the %-Res from Annihilation don't stack, but they will extend the duration of the debuff. I played around with Mace's Web Envelope (an AoE Immobilize, which looks like something I would want), but opted for Pulse Rifle Blast instead because: The extra immobilize wasn't doing much on top of all the other 'tricks' to keep enemies in place I found that the Single-Target ranged attack was more efficient at drawing enemy spawns into my Robot's "kill zone". I liked the slotting options for Pulse Rifle Blast (Ranged, Knockback) more than Web Envelope (Immobilize) I could drop my travel power (Fly) to take Provoke from the Presence pool, which would make the character a slightly more effective 'tank' at lower levels (leveraging Bodyguard mode), but that would cost me 4 points of KB reduction (Blessing of the Zephyr) and my Rocket Boots costume piece! I also wouldn't have the slots to give Provoke the respect it needs... and even with slotting it wouldn't do a job that needs to be done (either in solo or group play). I won't provide a similar analysis for my Thugs/Thermal/Heat build, but between the nature of the attacks by the Thugs henchmen, even if I made different choices for secondary and epic I don't think I could match what the Robots do (for AoE).

I (only) have Spirit Ward on a Controller, but it is pretty much exclusively as (a) a mule for Preventive Medicine's %Absorb and (b) a casual power to back up that character's otherwise half-hearted ability to protect allies via heals/absorb and (c) a stepping stone to Rune of Protection. This is a pretty selfish/self-oriented build. I didn't have the power choices or slots to do 'better' than muling an important enhancement, and I didn't need (and couldn't leverage) Arcane Bolt for offense. I have trouble imagining how to fit the power in on a VEAT.

The following comment is not precisely about Energy Melee (newly revised, or what came immediately before)... The Stun component of Energy Melee is (in my experience) one of the best places to experience 'disorient' as a type of control against enemy mobs, as you literally apply the disorient as you are actively working to get their health to zero (and reap rewards). I've played many sets that include stuns, quite a few that have them as secondary effects, but Energy Melee was always the best experience for me. I make this comment because I think that it is important not to minimize/trivialize the opinions of folks that lean into Stun as a part of Energy Melee.

No complaints about the rest of the OP, and I just want to chime in on: I suspect fatigue plays a big part, but it could also be timing. Aside from Vanguard Merits (and whatever XP/Inf that comes along) the reward is pretty much badges (and an eventual accolade)... and you can only get those once per character. I was starting Leagues (Blue Side) to help other players get badges simply because no one else wanted to do so. I also felt that since I was logged into a 50+ Stalker: being able to one-shot freshly dropped bombs has got to help other players looking for that badge. We never got full Leagues, but this week also has some high-level Weekly TFs that were running and I think some Incarnate trials were running simultaneously while I was logged in. The structure of the event really benefits large teams/leagues, especially if your character is low DPS (during the Bomb phase). The only tweak I feel would improve the event: I'd like to see the Rikti Master at Arms spawn similar as to how Nemesis spawns during his invasions. Maybe he does and I have always missed him?

The revamp didn't go the path I would have chosen. I think it is objectively a better version than the immediate predecessor. I happen to have fun with the new Energy Melee (on my Tank, no PVP), but there was a long stretch of playtime (on Live, with my launch-day character) after the AI behavior of stunned enemies was "fixed" that I leaned in HARD to the Stun mechanic. The current version has brought a lot of that feeling back, without me having to make as explicit choices in power selections or slotting. There are some enemies that just look so CUTE stumbling around in a daze.

Yeah I get it, especially the "your taking 50% less damage by going from 90% resistance to 95% resistance" (for example)... but sometimes the amount of survavibility is already 'enough' such that a build can get better returns by investing the slot in something else. That is past my point of diminishing returns.

Thanks for the cross-link @Troo I should note that for me: I almost never chase +Regeneration, either because (mostly because it hits the point of diminishing returns too soon for my taste, a little because of my opinion that needing +Regeneration is a function of play style choices that come from 'spending' Health) so a semi-regular +HP bonus is always preferred. YMMV.

The only build of mine (please consider that I don't have a full spectrum of ATs) for which I considered having multiples was with my Invulnerable Tank. I figured that for certain content, damage would be getting through and that the Max HP and the resistances might provide enough extra buffer during those periods where Dull Pain wasn't in play (because it hadn't recharged after previously clicking it, or BUTTON MASH MODE ENGAGED) or an Incarnate heal wasn't available. I ended up NOT moving a slot to where I could leverage a second instance, but I can understand similar math for high HP characters could motivate doubling up on the piece. I have the piece (singular) on some far squishier characters, and I am not adding more. As it is: it is just a random bit of healing that helps when I've taken some lumps and reconsidered my immediate play style (or skipping towards the next spawn). For me it's the final layer behind Panacea +HP/+End, Preventive Medicine %Absorb, and Scaling Damage Resistance. My (somewhat limited) roster of characters can typically find a better use for the slot. I like reading others' opinions however!