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A quick comment on the build above: IIRC the set bonuses from 2xShield Wall and 2xLotG are the same, the Shield Wall piece(s) can be boosted to 50+5 and that set bonus will scale down because Shield Wall is a PVP set. I have Radiation Therapy slotted a little differently: It has the Gauntleted Fist Recharge/%absorb ATO and 2x Touch of the Nictus (%damage and Heal/Recharge) and the %damage. I wanted the recharge time improved on it. For Beta Decay I opted for a single HO: Enzyme (Endurance Reduction/Debuff) instead of the rando %proc. I took Gamma Boost early, I have 2x Power Transfer and 2x Numina in it... I like 2xNumina on Tankers. If I can, I'll post a snapshot of my Rad/Dark build.

the good news is that Dark Armor has a power that is a natural fit for 3xFury of the Gladiator, and another for 3xGladiator's Armor for a total of 6 points. 2 more slots can get 8 more, and 14KB is good for 99% of the content, except for FREEM!. FREEM! protection requires 20, so it ends up being possible to get to 22 and then pretty much never having to worry about it. The SG base buff in 90 minutes of +10.

Either that, or Kevin Matchstick's bat. More seriously... being able to buildup without a weapon draw would be the best choice. The Mace attacks are GREAT, but for some immersion I don't want to see the Mace.

This is one of the reasons I generally eschew Epic/Patron attacks: Whenever I see the potential to add Epic/Patrons, my mind immediately goes to: OOH... chance to proc with %Damage!, and/or OOOH... chance to add a 5-piece purple set! Which is usually making me think of how to come up with anywhere between 3 and 4 extra slots for those powers... and for Tankers specifically, there are a LOT of pretty good options for Quality-of-Life options by sprinkling whatever extra slots among other powers, such as: more than one Power Transfer %Heal Resistance and/or Defense Globals (LotG, Impervium, etc.) KB protection (for Tanks that need it), also Slow resistance +MaxHP, positional defenses, etc. from set bonuses Often those pieces/sets fit nicely into Tanker primary powers.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=defender_buff.radiation_emission.radiation_infection&at=defender I haven't tested this, but based on my experience with other powers Radiation Infection will likely: semi-reliably apply %damage on-cast, against whatever is in the 15-foot radius (up to 16 targets), and then not %proc reliably after that (for anything), because it is a toggle The power itself has a fast base recharge, and cannot take accuracy boosts (not even from the allowed sets, per CoD) so I'm not even sure how "reliable" my first bullet's "semi-reliable" would be. It comes early enough in a build that it should be easy to test... but IIRC the possible %damage pieces are only in level 20 sets.

That other user: I have mad respect for how good a job they do with thread titles that end up being the perfect 'click bait', but the content of the original posts in those threads is (mostly) absurd(*1) and (sometimes) mildly inflammatory, and it is so common that the user name is pretty reasonably associated with that forum behavior IMO. (*1) I'm thinking of things like "Yellow Enhancements Can't be Slotted and Don't Do Anything Anyway" (made up example) where forum regulars who should know better begin engagement.

This is my Invuln/EM Tanker, it was a Pre-page 5 build tweaked slightly for page 5 revisions. This build leans into the Psi Resistance, but as noted by @Biff Pow Psi isn't really a "hole" for Invulnerability Armor. Taunt isn't really optional IMO, although it doesn't need to be slotted. The Inv/EM combination isn't a great one for leveraging the radius changes to Tankers, and my own experience has been that Tankers want at least one of Taunt, Combat Teleport (or equivalent) or Fold Space, with really short cooldown times to grab aggro, especially when friends are in trouble. There are a bunch of enemies that will ONLY make ranged attacks (and otherwise stand in place), so the Taunt -Range effect helps the team (in addition to drawing them into Invincibility range). I almost never toggle on all of the resist/defense powers, and Dull Pain ends up not being used all that often... each of these tends to come out in "hard content", this build has plenty "Master of..." badges FWIW. The one tweak I might suggest is pulling one of the Impervium Armor pieces and adding another %Heal from Power Transfer (to Stamina). This character predated a slight fix that (now) allows multiple %Heal pieces to "work", because.... For "hard(er) mode", the one thing I like about my build here is that with Tanker HP, %Heal, Regeneration and Scaling Damage Resistance there isn't much of a need to worry about taking damage... so when this character has Tanked for characters that probably were not really up for whatever challenge (i.e. ally buffs were skipped) it was able to hang tough. When a single ally bring team buffs, a character like this one easily crosses all the thresholds of interest (resistances, defenses), so the extra "heal from damage taken" ends up making up a LOT of difference. This build passes a few opportunities to increase +MaxHP from set bonuses, but with Dull Pain triggered I'm pretty sure it hits the cap. YMMV, but teh power comes so early in the build that I didn't feel the need to chase those.

Having to use a Mace for BuildUp bothers me as well!

On its face, this seems like a reasonable request... yet I think it wouldn't have a net benefit, as some League Leaders could end up promoting (lower level) players on a tea, forcing all henchmen/pets to drop, etc. If the league leader needs to scan the roster of a team anyway, and there are fewer than 6 teams in a league, the league leader can do exactly what @Uun suggests. This seems like more of a problem than it probably is because Mapserver leagues frequently change open-world zones and immediately want to start combat. A similar problem exists on ToT leagues, but those stay within a single zone (for the most part). Aside from zoning into some instanced maps and the leader losing the league star, leagues work just fine as long as the league leader is paying attention and folks make sure they know if they have the star (for a team or league).

I don't have enough different characters, but I don't recall having any attacks that can one-shot the fires.

For Blasters, I'd rank: Assault Rifle > Dual Pistols > Beam Rifle. For Sentinels, Beam Rifle is preeeettty good. For shooty-shooty, try a Huntsman!

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.