tidge

Cryonic helps to put out fires in Steel Canyon!

I'm not going to parse the attached build; I'm sure you are completely satisfied with it. I personally wouldn't be bothering with %damage in single-target attacks on a MM (including Weaken Resolve) and I'm not entirely sure the Kismet +ToHit is doing all that much (modulo the general lack of accuracy slotting in attacks). We are not going to see eye-to-eye on this, as I see other choices in that build that I wouldn't make.

If the henchmen have good AoE, then they aren't "focusing fire" on just "LTs & Bosses", so my point about debuffing in patches (like with Sleet for /cold, or using AoE attacks with %-res or blah blah fishcakes) is improving everyone's output and not just trying to get some rando Nx70 HP %damage (while also sacrificing enhancement set bonuses, and not slotting for Accuracy, Endurance). Ultimately clear times come down to "make as few attacks as possible", so as long as the minions aren't somehow outlasting the bosses, it doesn't really matter if the MM is trying to %damage them or not.... but more soft control helps to keep everyone fighting, and more %-Resistance speeds up the fight. I know that for some folks, anytime they see a power can take a %damage piece their eyes light up... but not every power in every AT improves clear times this way. I'm sure that for the content you are playing, your approach looks optimal to you. I tried it, and I found it to be suboptimal for the content I play with my solo MM, which is mostly Alignment (instanced) missions and GM hunts. For the latter, I clean enough GMs in a relatively short time frame that on-balance I don't think more rando 70HP %damage would be worth giving up set bonuses for (such as from the Annihilation set). EDIT: As for the topic under consideration, I wouldn't consider Robotics to be "front line" primarily because they are 99% ranged attackers. I mean... it is possible to move them to the "front line" but it is my experience that they'll do just fine wherever they are (after moving, knockback) as long as they are in Supremacy range.

Robotic Henchmen are probably the worst example to pick if the argument is intended to be...

On Live, there was also a one-time (for a week?) Rularuu Invasion of Paragon City. I also recall the "Fighting in the Streets" Council v. 5th Column, although for a long time we've had this as normal spawns in a small number of zones.

I find that trying to decide where to slot the +50% Critical Strikes %ATO to be the most frustrating choice of any Enhancement piece, for all ATs: The Scrapper primaries are different enough that it takes some study to choose which power gets it That set offers good bonuses, both at full x6 and franken-slotted Occasionally a secondary power ends up being the most optimal choice The only rules of thumb I have without a deep dive into the primary/secondary are: Don't put it in the heaviest hitting single-target attack, If the build is going to have a reliable AoE %proc "attack", that power is a good candidate for it. I'm not quick to recommend opting for %damage in Scrapper primaries (for DPS characters I value set bonuses greater than %damage) but some secondaries offer very good options for PBAoE %damage.

Dark Armor is IMO a somewhat peculiar set; it's best purpose might be for characters that I don't want to spend a lot of time working on the costumes for. The historic issue is Endurance, but since the recent Council revamp its lack of KB protection (and resistance) can be a real issue. Luckily because of the powers in the set it is pretty easy to slot in enough KB protection to handle even the 20-point KB from FREEM! I only take Cloak of Fear or Oppressive Gloom if I want them for flavor or I have some synergy from them with other powers. The Accuracy needs of Cloak of Fear make it a particularly hard choice.

IMO the real advantages/purposes of MM attacks are: to draw aggro while Bodyguard mode is in use to apply soft controls (i.e Knockdown) and/or debuffs (preferably -Res or %-Res) MMs attacks have a hefty endurance cost, so even with %damage slotted in them I haven't found them to be as useful for keeping henchmen alive and maximizing henchmen damage output as the two points above. Cross Punch would be the real gem from Fighting, but I think Wall of Force would end up being a better path if a "cone attack" was desired.

Kinda sorta... Whenever I start a new character I almost always burn merits to provide them the ATO pieces they'll want. If the final build will include Winter pieces in the attacks, I'll usually use a merit purchase for those too. It isn't always the most economical use of Merits, but it is fast. There are IMO a handful of recipes for commonly used pieces that are not a terrible use of merits, but those depend a lot what is in the AH at the time. For example, 20 merits for a lvl 10 Steadfast Protection recipe isn't bad if the AH is out of recipes that won't force a lot of converter roulette. I definitely think the point made by @biostem stands. I've been funding new alts with a single Hero Merit.

When it comes to Tankers, even if I make suggestions about "What I'd do" more than any other AT I think Tankers fall on a spectrum of "if it satisfies the player for the content they want to play, all is good." Beyond having fun, I don't think day-to-day I'd consistently rank "what is important" myself, let alone agree with others!

As I a little surprised that the maximum number of merits a character can hold (in personal inventory) was 9999.... or was I more surprised that the maximum number of Monstrous Aethers was 999? ...anyway... I have yet to hit a cap on Hero Merits.... but after that, there are always Villain merits! I *was* using the merits to kit out characters(*1), but I'm somewhat slow to alt... so for me the answer is "hoarding". (*1) Not really recommended, based on typical market prices.

Digression! That thread brought up old feels about why I more-or-less checked out of the original forum(s): From my PoV there was often a lot of heat being generated over asymptotic edge cases, and it wasn't unusual (in my experience) for those sorts of edge cases to end up dominating certain discussions. I'd forgotten how polarizing/triggering the Purple Patch was at times! The most common manifestation of that sort of old-school thinking/advocacy are in-game or in-forum requests for specific ATs (with or without specific primary/secondary sets) for content that doesn't require such specificity to either succeed or be efficient at completing. I'm not strictly rolling my eyes at requests for "more healing" (that's a MMORPG trinity issue, not a CoX thing) but I do experience involuntary ocular motion when certain Tankers get poo-pooed for Hamidon raids, or when a request for "FRAD" goes out for GMs/AVs, or when Ill Controllers come up as GM killers, or "MF Warshades", etc. etc. I'm not intending to take anything away from those characters, its entirely that the game's context for when such specificity regarding optimal AT choices has radically changed. To circle this back to Enhancement Diversification... if the game didn't have the enhancement limits enforced by ED, we'd pretty much have even more asymptotic builds. I've no doubt this could be a fun intellectual challenge, but there isn't anything like a need for it.

^This^ sort of argument ("kludgy suggestion to get the one thing that will make the game better for some extremely narrow part of the game", often by an account with a rather low-ish number of posts) has got to be the number one reason why many long-time forum participants join into discussions... it's not because there is a cabal of nattering naybobs of negativism, its because so many of these types of suggestions are both/either kludges and/or missing the point about some key game factors. Before tripling-down on a kludgey suggestion and attacking other forum participants, how about we read what those folks are saying? Specific to *this* suggestion (My TLDR: "give some MMs weapons/attacks from other MMs"... my thoughts are "read the room" MMs recently got a "balance pass", so radical changes to the powers in the AT are not likely There are other ATs (besides MMs) that are just as restricted as far as "weapon types" (e.g. VEATS) so focusing on MMs is probably even more narrow than might be recognized Players want Whip attacks, and have for a long time. Whatever may or may not be happening in (closed) beta... I believe it is only a matter of time before HC releases a "Whip Attack" set. The animations exist, and HC recycles animations when possible. There are some obvious "gates" holding back "Whip Attack", with the number one thing probably being "How to build one (or more) 9-power set based on the Whip?" Personally? I get the OPs dislike of the Bow attacks in Ninja! The discomfort I feel would be addressed by alternate animations and not by re-imagining the primary AND power pools.

Hard agree about the debuffs. I used to make a point to take my Invulnerability armor characters into the Shadow Shard and Cimerora for some solo +4x8 map missions to get a feel for their performance. In most cases it "more offense" is the answer to whatever problems the game might throw at us.

"Dumpster Diving for XP" *was* a peculiar (IMO) choice, but it was essentially the same idea as "Asteroid AE Farm". It didn't become a thing until Peregrine Island was available and it required things like "bridge" characters to spread the XP around. It was MOSTLY for power-leveling, as the only thing to spend Inf on were store-bought SOs. The "fire farming" of those early days was due to the AI of enemies like DE Swarms, which would glom onto fire tankers and yield easy XP, starting at Talos Island. I missed the lack of an Aggro cap but only for silliness like herding all the Rikti monkeys (and sometimes Giant Monsters) to Portal Corps. The game is better with the aggro cap IMO. *This* is closer to my (pretty much) faded memory about the whole "Nerf Regen" narrative. I had been somewhat turned off from the CoH forums *long* before this... my recollection is that I felt there were some serious imbalance issues among power sets and complaints were not tolerated... even if many of those imbalances were later addressed (ehem, Invulnerability). The "Regen Scrapper" rings true-ish to me because even before CoV existed it was pretty much the case that Scrappers were out-performing Tankers for everything except "herding entire maps/GMs" once levels 41-50 were available... and bits of my memory are reminding me how annoying it was that the Live devs were pretty much only addressing a narrow issue (Regeneration on Scrappers) and kinda missing the bigger picture (Tanker performance). I know there are Brutists who see the HC changes to Tanker melee as a "nerf to Brutes", but as a player since day 0 I'm impressed that the HC changes for Tanker Melee channel a lot of my pre-aggro-cap feels about Tanker utility that have been missed for a very long time.

Sometimes, but not always./ Perhaps a status affect application is forcing redraws..

Invulnerability is hard to "get wrong", I see a few things I do differently (which I've posted elsewhere), with the primary points of difference for me: I never slot more than 3 of Shield Wall I 6-slot Preventive Medicine on Tankers. There isn't much content you should need "perma" Dull Pain for, but I smell what you are cooking. YMMV, but I like the Kismet unique in Tough Hide, and some Franken-slotting in Invincibility. On the offense side, I personally don't like taking Epic/Patron pool attacks to complete an attack chain. Dark Melee can feel like a lot of "waiting around", at least to me. Touch of Fear doesn't suck on Tankers.

My Robotics MM still does a redraw when switching between the Pulse Rifle and the Mace. Am I supposed to visit the tailor to get rid of the redraw?

JE certainly didn't come across well in light of the ED discussions. I have a narrow list of gripes relating to his leadership/game choices, and ultimately ED is pretty low on my personal list of gripes. If other Dwarven clans want to carve his sins into their Book of Grudges, I can't take that away from them. I'm amazed at just how much fun the game was (and still is) despite having huge amounts of pain early (the potential for crushing debt, the inability to truly FLY until level 14, gasping at the Blue bar, travel between zones, etc.) and the painfully tacked-on things like PVP, AE, and the Incarnate path/system, Shadow Shard, not to mention some later power sets with peculiar balance choices. I'm quite surprised that the IO crafting turned out to be as good as it *is*, but that took the fungible marketplace (including merit purchases) to really hit its full potential IMO.

A few things come to mind: During Live: The market was pretty bad, and using the AE to generate Inf was pretty easy. Also, Inf was pretty much the only reliable way to kit out characters. During HC: The market is excellent, and AE hasn't really changed (modulo certain general game changes that also affect the AE) and we have multiple reliable ways to kit out characters. There definitely appears to be a number of folks that approach HC with a set of beliefs that resonate very strongly with "during Live" thinking, and a number of folks that view (some fraction of) HC changes as "worst idea ever", and some number of folks who are in both camps. Complaints about "marketeering" and "flipping" appear to me to be firmly rooted in some die-hard beliefs about the market, as well as generation of Inf, from the days of Live. (AE) Farming does serve an important role in the HC market, as it provides a reliable stream of raw materials for the (fungible) auction house. Some elements of (AE) farming have gotten worse for some farming activities... specifically for (nearly) automatic rewards that could be converted: for example Rikti Mothership Raids' Vanguard Merit conversions and never-ending Empyrian Merit conversions... but from my PoV those (especially the Empyrians) were like whipped cream, chocolate toppings, and fresh fruit on top of a pretty rick cheesecake... and that didn't really go away, except that a new level 50 has to grind out the same Empyrians after vet level 100 (or just live without them). I mention the last point because I believe it is possible for some Farmers to be bitter enough about the change to Empyrians to throw anger at just about anybody, including folks who make Inf from the market.

And I came here just to gripe about the weapon redraw animation for MM's Patron Pool Mace Mastery!

The Microfilaments (and DS, and Synth versions) are the only enhancement pieces capable of boosting Run/Jump/Fly with a single slot, MMV if the Endurance Cost reduction is also part of the thinking. As noted by @COH Radgen above: if a character has multiple forms of run/fly travel, slotting this sort of piece in Swift provides a boost to each.

I am not a fan of the "dual" inspirations, almost entirely because they cannot be combined. I almost exclusively have them turned on (if I remember to do so) for MMs, since I usually have some pet (or pseudo pet) that can benefit from Red/Yellow. The MM ends up gobbling the others as they drop.

I'm trying to imagine a suggestions forum where no suggestion is allowed to have potential shortcomings pointed out, and then folks who made the suggestion are left wondering why they didn't get what they wanted... and then I remember a local church with a "silent prayer" wall. Of course, I don't get to read those prayers so I have no idea what folks are praying for or if their prayers are answered.