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Hard NO. I like having a merit vendor in my SG base, and we can't have AH in SG bases for the reasons posted above.

It's not called Influence Redside or Goldside. Aside from the user interface to the market, I'm satisfied with it. The fungible market (and converter roulette) has allowed me the freedom to update new characters with IO set pieces on a scale that would have never been available on Live. The most annoying bit of the interface (for me) is that the AH often won't display the most recent sales data (right or wrong!) without me placing a bid and checking my bid. The display delay even shows up when trying to sell, which also is annoying... but eventually it will show. The lag has occasionally led me to buy copies of things I was trying to sell. No big deal, but it is annoying when it (rarely) happens. I believe the cause of a couple issues has been explained; I'll repeat my understanding. "Last 5 sales" bug seems to be caused by one or more database indexing issues. This may required a different sort of 'bug fix' than other code changes. These can be extremely tricky to track down. Not being able to open the Auction House in missions or SG bases: As has been written in this thread, the entire AH needs to be instanced in the map at least once when a player connects to it. This is resource intensive and somewhat wasteful.

I finally thought of something I'd change about Dominators: I'd like them to be able to customize the visual appearance from the ATO and Winter IO sets. Not every Dominator wants a Fiery Orb, and not every AT wants to see Ice effects. This is extremely low priority for me.

As I wrote at length in one of the weekly threads: I'm perfectly happy with where Crab VEATS are, and this include the way pets function. I don't want to rehash all of those posts, but I will try to summarize my opinion as: The pet powers play different roles for the different ATs; any desire to standardize the behavior of pets across classes (MM, "Controllers", Crabs, as well as ATO-spawned, Epic and Incarnate pets) is deprioritizing the different roles those pets play. Personally: I don't like the Fury mechanic, so I don't play Brutes. I'm not asking for the mechanic to be changed to be more like the ATs that don't have it... I'll play those ATs. The VEATs are all really quite strong across almost all content, and that includes leveraging the Crab pets. The only part of the ban against making public videos is that we can't obviously demonstrate such things to disbelievers.

This is where I land as well. Crabbermind pets require a different sort of thinking than that of Masterminds or Controllers/Dominators/Defenders/Corruptors. The OP's immediate concern appears to be on the pet survivability, but I believe that sort of thinking is backing the OP into a cramped, dark corner. There is plenty of advice in this sub-forum that can guide the OP away from there. Now, if anyone wants to propose that the Spiderlings get a third attack (preferably ranged)... I'll be behind that with no other changes. It presumably wouldn't radically change the AI behavior but it should help... unfortunately I think the side effect of such a change would be that more folks would simply want them to become MM pets.

There is a lot to digest there... but I will say that my Crabs have never felt the need to have any kind of Taunt, despite my personal appreciation of the Presence pool. (I skip Presence on my Crabs because of Serum.) Provoke is IMO better than any non-aura Taunt, except that of Tanks, for 98% of content.... the VEATs already have a beefy Threat factor. I have a very different opinion of the pets (which are all "recharge intensive"). I'm mostly satisfied with them (including a Patron pet).

Just my opinion, but on a Tank resistances and defenses really ought to be prioritized for slot placement. I don't (edit: "feel the need" to) dedicate all that many slots to those anyway. Again, only for myself: once uniques/global pieces are slotted, and the ED/bonus cap is effectively 'pushed' I will only add slots for specific set bonuses. For example, I don't have extra slots invested in Resist Elements... some may consider it blasphemy but I don't sweat that little bit of extra typed damage because the defenses to those types is reasonably high (solo).

I have an Invuln Tank and I don't consider the Psi hole do be all that painful. There are plenty of places to slot 5xImpervium Armor Psi Resistance plus an Aegis; so while you aren't going to get 90% resistance on Psi, with Taunt affecting enemy range, Invincibility boosting positional defenses, and a perma Dull Pain, it doesn't have to be that bad.

I'm not interested in new content specifically for "Hard Mode". I don't feel the need to have more Incarnate levels. I don't object to adding settings to disable (mission/arc-wide) Incarnate powers (& level shifts) to make current content 'harder'. If there is to be an investment of priorities, I would deprioritize all of the above. If I had to pick a priority, I would prefer to see mission arcs/content that focus either on: "Hazard Zones" (Boomtown, Terra Volta, Eden, Crey's Folly, Monster Island) at appropriate levels Instanced missions (like Summer Blockbuster, Halloween, Winter)

Much of my attitude on the choices comes from my specific playstyle for this character, as well as the levels I play at. I'm also extremely comfortable with cone attacks (that character has two, each with 4 %damage procs), and since all my other attack options (aside from Poison Trap @ level 35) are ranged attacks... I simply wasn't getting as much benefit from the -ToHit aura as I hoped. The %proc rate of Auras is not good, and I didn't see Venomous Gas helping me against EB/AV.... and I ran with it through the 40+ into Praetoria arcs. Against everyone else, the controls do a better job protecting me... against EB/AV, I still found myself relying on controls to win fights, with or without the toggle. I should note that while leveling up, I didn't include Terrify in my build. My mistake.

I just wanted to quote a key piece of information: I used to avoid the Leadership pool on Tankers, but with the Homecoming buffs for Tankers it is now a very worthwhile investment. If you intend to be a team-based Tanker, I would go so far to say that the Leadership pool will be more useful for the team (boosts) than the Fighting pool's self-boosts. (Yes, I am aware of how Tankers use the Fighting Pool to address 'holes' and close certain 'gaps'... but I'm specifically thinking about teams which include others players an ATs that look out for each other and don't a priori want/need the 'toughest' solo tank for the team)

I also have a Mind/Poison controller. It's probably my favorite "proc monster" (note: I only try to leverage procs in specific ways) which can be seen in the Controller sub-forum: My Mind/Poison went with Epic Force Mastery to get a %proc-ful Energy Torrent and a Resistance set IO mule. I will note in this thread that I did not find the T9 Venomous Gas to be particularly useful, despite having it from level 38-50 while leveling. The short version of the story is that the Aura did not mesh well with my positioning/attack style. Comments on my build are in the linked post.

Being bad at recognizing 'randomness' is one of the reasons why I don't like streakbreaker, which I see as a human-imposed mechanism that further screws with both our human perception and our ability to analyze actual results. If the RNG is resulting in a 'flat' distribution (like the top image) then it is actually getting in the way. I believe the CoX RNG is giving us extremely 'flat' results (as in the top picture). If the RNG is resulting in random clusters, why do we care? Why would we keep streakbreaker? Either the RNG is so messed up that it needs streakbreaker to 'fix' some (rather undefined, from my PoV) issue, or the RNG needs streakbreaker to hide what is really happening. Streakbreaker is a post-hoc fix for some undefined issue... and a clumsy one IMO. The top picture illustrates why I believe streakbreaker is 'getting in the way' (although picture a histogram rather than a scatter plot)... if a 'to-hit' roll lands in the p >0.95 space, a flat RNG is likely to put your next result in 0 < p < 0.95 range more than 95% of the time... yet (for folks with toHit chances at the ceiling) streakbreaker essentially acts as if 50% of the time when you got a 'roll' of p >0.95 that your next 'roll' was also going to be p > 0.95 and forces a hit (and resets the streakbreaker count). I'd really like to see streakbreaker disabled (or just have the count index increased to the same high value for all 'to hit' chances) to be able to do some testing. I accept the possibility that for some arbitrarily low to-hit chance that a streakbreaker might increase the quality of life... but at the higher end of the scale I think it is hurting.

I run a Dark Blaster with Umbral Torrent as the primary attack. It's trivial to pick up range boosts, and with Knockdown it is an easy soft control as well.

I'll add this to the plus column of 'end game' utility for Controllers and Dominators: Locking down/grabbing aggro makes obtaining certain badges much easier. A single example is getting the Valet badge (either through Market Crash or the Brickstown event). You still need to know what you are doing, but preventing the destruction of the property is much easier with control than it is with DPS. Things like AoE Sleep/Hold and Knockdown patches make it possible to pace the defeats of the enemy groups, whereas the combat ATs tend to over-aggro (and lose it) leading to the eventual property destruction.

Is this happening with single-target attacks or AoE attacks? Is this happening on a character with an aura that makes "to hit" checks?

I completely accept that there is an effect of observer bias, BUT.... blaming the seed is only a small part of the issue. The following discussion is shortcutting to the corner case of always having a 95% chance to hit, with no auras or the like. A slightly larger issue to me is that the RNG is trying to populate the probability space (0 < p < 1) in a FLAT manner, so the chance of a following a 1-in-20 roll with a second 1-in-20 roll is almost certainly NOT 5%. My (slightly informed) WAG is that it is more like a 4.5% chance. However, the streakbreaker algorithm ignores the followup roll to a 1-in-20 event. In other words, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that there actually was a 'streak' that needed to be 'broken'. I'd be much happier with streakbreaker if it actually fired when it needed to (to 'break a streak') and not preemptively fire. This would be a PITA to track/code, so I am not surprised it doesn't work this way. I'm actually curious what the effect would be if we got rid of streakbreaker altogether. From my PoV its primary purpose is to assuage 'hard feelings' about the RNG, but since it obscures RNG results (the rolls from a streakbreaker 'hit' are not displayed) I feel like it is doing more harm than good....especially for characters that regularly run with 95% final toHit chances. Some tangential comments about RNG visibility in the game:

I can offer some comments on /Poison and the Presence (Pool) /Poison comments on the powers I took. No comments on the ones I skipped, with one exception. I didn't slot Alkaloid. It can hold powers for set bonuses if you have the slots. If you don't have any other power to easily drop the Preventive Medicine %Absorb piece, that is a good spot. I have Envenom 6-slotted: 4xShield Breaker, 1xAchilles Heel %-Res, 1xTouch of Lady Grey %Neg. I felt that's how I could get the best set bonuses and do a little extra as well. Elixir of Life was chosen to be a Resistance piece mule. Paralytic Poison is one of my go-to attacks. I have it 3xGladiator's Net (including %Lethal), and the three other %damage pieces available for Holds (Ghost Widow, Neuronic Shutdown, and Unbreakable Constraint) I have the Acc/Hold and Hold pieces from the PVP set boosted. Poison Trap: is used to carry the Armageddon set in my build, plus a %Lethal piece from Gladiator's Net. Other primaries may be able to slot this better, but for my Mind/Poison I felt this was best. Venomous Gas: I had this while leveling up, but even with it slotted I noticed no difference in performance if I used it or not (except that it burned Endurance). I dropped it at level 50. Presence Pool comments follow: I like the Presence pool, but I don't think it is a good fit on Controllers. They aren't particularly survivable, so Provoke and Unrelenting won't help much. The base damage is also bad, so again Unrelenting doesn't really help. Pacify is only good for a single enemy; which will go against the AoE of most of your powers. The best use of Pacify is to get breathing room when fighting against an AV/GM/EB, but your primary already has tricks for that. The single target fear (Intimidate) is very lack-luster given your other controls. The gem for Controllers (and most other characters) is the PBAoE Invoke Panic, but even that isn't offering much more than a little more damage and some respectable (but not stellar) set bonuses from Glimpse of the Abyss.

Better to think about the 'defense cap' in terms of "Every enemy has a (floor) 5% chance to hit you with an attack roll." This will allow you to properly consider the other combat effects which are contributing to you getting hit.

I should write this just to explain my PoV: I don't consider using 5 set pieces (which include a %proc) and adding an extra %proc from a different set to be "proc-monstering". I generally prefer set bonuses to "proc-monstering", but I make exceptions for: Builds that have terrible base damage (ehem, Controllers.) Ranged Cone attacks. There are many good choices for %procs, and franken-slotting range often really improves the performance of the power. PBAoE powers that otherwise don't do (much/any) damage... or could contribute an additional affect. My category (1) favorite character is my Mind/Poison/Force build above. That Controller also hits the other categories, so I'd rank that as my build that relies on %procs the most. I've been experimenting (on other ATs) with franken-slotting powers like Bio-defense's DNA Siphon; I really like it with extra %damage procs. See also Dark's Life Drain for something similar for single-target. Obviously powers like Bonfire are great with IO proc pieces.

I have also had this happen on the FF Safeguard map. One fun element of this happening is that (with Flight) you can zip around and attack the enemies from below!

I almost never advocate perma-Hasten, because I will typically have builds with more attacks than are strictly necessary for an 'efficient' attack chain. However, there are a couple of things going on for Crabs that make high global Recharge valuable IMO (incarnate powers not considered): Pet summons (not an issue for this thread) Serum (or its cousin Unrelenting) goes a long way when it can be 'perma'. Crabs can get very high positional Defenses by themselves, and don't need (IMO) to pursue maximum resistances with a strong Heal and a reasonable Regeneration rate. The two highlighted powers are not identical, but having one or the other on a character with great defenses is one of the main reasons I don't recommend Tough/Weave on certain builds, especially if you don't intend to play the limited amount of content where the extras from the Fighting pool would make a difference. Aim - from the category of "marginal or not... you decide!" - is a power that really benefits from near-continual use. Cutting the recharge time from 32 sec to 25 sec (which keeps the Gaussian's %Build Up chance at 90%) does improve damage output. If you are using this in a Tactics power, this won't apply to you; I like to have the boost 'on-demand'.

I tried to spitball a build (different than my own variants) that was A Crab without pets, using both the backpack and the gun. 6 different attacks, but the focus is on ranged AoE. Used the Fighting Pool Didn't skimp on Accuracy/ToHit or Recharge Several caveats (on top of "this was a quick try"): This looks to be a very Endurance hungry build. I tried to get +MaxEnd and Endurance discounts where possible. It has a second Performance Shifter to try to help out with Endurance, but I'm pretty sure that only triggers on use so it won't help too much. I almost always use the Patron pools for powers that I can slot for Set Bonuses, but I didn't do that on this build. This forced me to use the 6-piece annihilation in Suppression. There are much better ways to slot this power! I especially don't like putting lvl 20 pieces in a lvl 8 power! If you really want to be a "team guy", replace Aim with Tactical Training Leadership, but keep the slotting. Feel free to replace some of the later powers for more team buffs.

This is very good advice for trying to trigger the %Contagious Confusion... but honestly the rewards for getting that %proc to fire that I'd rather just have the 2-second Confuse itself, and enjoy the nice 6-piece set bonuses from the entire set. YMMV.

Renaming also extends to the 'Signature Summons' characters.