tidge

IIRC, the Spiderlings only have 2 attacks (1 range, 1 melee). There are plenty of 'pets' which don't have the Mastermind controls. I know it can seem odd, but a VEAT is fundamentally different than a Mastermind.

You can run lvl 50 tip missions in many low level zones.

Why not? A winter pack sale is a great sink to take Influence out of the game. Obviously higher prices removes more inf, but I feel like there were many more bulk purchases when the prices were lower.

It's irrelevant for streakbreaker, but having a 95% final chance to hit delays (over a 90% final chance to hit) getting into the streakbreaker situation at all.

I'd never advocate lowering the final ceiling of 'to hit' to 90%, I do think it is mathematically silly that (with a 95% final chance to hit) after 1 miss there is now a forced hit (100% with no regards to the roll) when for a 'fair' RNG the actual chance of a hit is 95%. If the RNG is 'unfair enough' that it is required to trigger an auto-hit after a single 1-in-20 miss, I don't know why we'd believe that we're still getting 'fair' 19-in-20 rolls after the streakbreaker count is reset.

I grok that all (Defense/Resistance) sets can be made better by plugging holes, but is this an emergency that needs to be corrected for a majority of the game's content?

The recent thread I recall was simply a collection of the (as logged) to hit rolls. There was some concern that there was a 'plateau' of to hit rolls in the >0.95 range but the discovery (IIRC) was that there were auras in play that were also making to-hit checks that weren't being logged (unless they miss). I don't specifically recall any analysis of streakbreaker except that the code was presented. My own posts in that thread were written while not knowing that streakbreaker code 'throws away' the result of a roll when you are 'due for a hit'. All praise to @Eclipse.for including the source code snippets in that thread.

I always forget about the Empyrian conversion. Lately I've been taking the super inspirations and filling up the SG base storage with the non-Rez ones. The Resurrection ones go into account email. Even though the Incarnate grind (my opinion, YMMV) doesn't really interest me I run this arc a lot (0x8) for the drops. This takes about 30 minutes for my favorite character, so it isn't as good for the reward merits, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at them!

Is it ok that I don't like the idea even if I haven't dedicated any thought about what the possible (stated or unstated) attitude of the OP is? For full transparancy, I have only two (internalized, self-aware) opinions about %damage procs 1) I think that folks are generally too quick to recommend procs in builds. 2) I think that too many folks believe that procs will sell on the market at a better return than other pieces. For (1) that falls into the category of 'you should play your character the way you want'. There are too many variables outside of the raw numbers to make an honest assessment about how an alternate slotting choice will make a character more fun for its creator. My opinion on any given choice is simply somewhere else in the head space. For (2), if there are 1K+ items on the market but only 200-ish open bids... well, it's not my INF being tied up there.

Because of the way Streakbreaker forces a hit while ignoring the actual result (and then resets the 'streakbreaker counter') I don't believe it is 'mathematically correct' to treat the 'rolls of the d20' as independent. A true 'streakbreaker' wouldn't fire until the next result of a roll was an actual 'miss'; that's the point at which there is an actual streak of misses that require 'breaking'. It is subtle, but the RNG generating flat results over the spectrum 0.0 < P < 1.0 (forgive me, but I don't know what the exact limits are) doesn't mean that a character at the ceiling of 95% final-chance-to-hit is actually hitting enemies 95% of the time. This is because Streakbreaker is artificially throwing out one of the results of RNG. To my mind, there are two different experiments that I'd do if I could. I'd do this at the ceiling of 95%, but only because the math is easier and it ignores the effects of final-to-hit chances being in different tiers. 1) With Streakbreaker off, record every attack cast against every target and see what the actual fraction of hits is. My expectation is that the fraction of hits is going to be 95%. Changing the code isn't really an option, but I assume that back-in-the-day some of this was done pre-streakbreaker. 2) There is an easy way to see if Streakbreaker is actually behaving as if breaking a streak of 'unfortunate' RNG rolls, provided that we can log the result of the 'to hit' rolls that are ignored by streakbreaker. The ceiling case of 'final to-hit chance' of 95% is easy to achieve without worrying about debuffs and the like... so run a level 50+ through something like the Sewer Network of Tunnels of the Trolls (to restrict the routes of enemies who run away) and see how often the forced hit by streakbreaker aligns with a to-hit roll that would have been a miss. Also record every attack cast against every target and see what the actual fraction of hits is. My hope would be that only 5% of the time would Streakbreaker align with an actual miss roll, but that by comparing the actual hits with the expected hits (when streakbreaker is forcing hits) the final fraction of hit enemies will be less; something like 94.7%. The difference between 94.7% and 95% is pretty small, so a lot of data would have to be collected to see this difference... but if the results aren't close, that would show up with less data. Now having blathered about all this, I do think there is a sort of experiment we can do without either 'turning off streakbreaker' or 'trying to capture data that may not appear in the logs (i.e. the ignored rolls), but it wouldn't be conclusive (*1) just informative: 3) We can look at occurrence rate of RNG rolls in the range P< 0.05, as well as the occurrence rate of consecutive RNG rolls in that same range. I would hope that these mimic the situation at the ceiling of 95%. Obviously streakbreaker is still going to get in the way or recording some of the rolls, but (assuming a character could survive) it may be possible to 'turn down' your own characters final to hit chance such that streakbreaker interferes with the data record less frequently. My suspicion is: that because everything points to the RNG populating the result space (0.0 < P <1.0) evenly/flatly that a followup result in the (same) range P <0.05 is happening less than 5% of the time. (*1) It wouldn't be conclusive because while I would expect that the results of the RNG near the boundary 0.0 would be the same as near the boundary 1.0, I know enough about probability density functions and priors to know that there can be subtle effects at one boundary and not the other... and with the rather crude implementation of streakbreaker I wouldn't trust that a similar crude approach I can easily believe that some other odd bias would be present at one end and not the other. I think this week's statistical Riddler from FiveThirtyEight is tangentially related to this question: (my wording) given that you know just how biased a 2-sided coin is (i.e. P <> 0.5), can you establish the limit of the algorithm to achieve a final result of P=0.5.

Wouldn't that just make Willpower a better version of Super Reflexes?

I just want to chime in on: /amen. On my favorite Fortunata build, I am perfectly comfortable with 'hop and pop' to utilize the Cones and PBAoE, but I realize this is not a playstyle for everyone. This playstyle is also one of the reasons I don't have Electrifying Fences in that build; I want the enemies to group up for AoEs, even if some fraction will always (eventually) run away. I enjoy seeing players make different choices and adapting their playstyles to support their power choices. The Yin TF is such a treat to play with a full-kit build exemplared down, especially VEATs. I'll often park my VEAT in the entry foyer to hold down the onrushing mob of freaks; there was a recent TF where that was going perfectly fine until I noticed by team's health bars were blacking out... sure enough Clamor had respawned so time to leave the freaks and help out with her!

The best simple idea I've seen (suggested by many folks) for Repair is to simply make it be a targeted AoE heal for the pets. As I wrote, the primary issue I have with Repair is that it is rare that healing the pets is a top choice for a given situation. In my experience: If the pets are taking significant damage at a sustained rate, either the pets are in over their heads or the MM is. Healing the pets isn't doing anything to address that sort of situation. If they are just taking limited damage and not recovering it between fights... congratulations! My 'bots are good at cleaning up minions but not that good at speedy boss kills! My experience has been that the resummon power has typically recharged by the time I lose a pet to atrophy. The philosophy of the Robots primary is understandable, but there is a design flaw that the two upgrade powers (not unique to Robots) don't need any slots and only serve a limited purpose, and likewise Repair is of extremely limited utility. No MM (aside from the petless heretics) can really skip the two upgrades. Replacing Repair with a robotic equivalent of Gang War (maybe summoning those little Vanguard HVAS or Spiderlings) would be a much more useful choice.

I agree that Repair is bad. More damning is that I haven't found it necessary. While leveling up my Robots/Traps MM, I used the Medicine pool's Aid Other to keep the minions alive during circumstances like Perez Park street sweeping... but as the build approaches maturity I found that it simply wasn't important to worry too much about healing the pets (aside from using an Incarnate heal occasionally in farming content). For farming, I actually took triage beacon although that is in the secondary. The simplest thing that would make me take Repair would be if I could slot the IO pieces that give global bonuses (e.g. Defense) to the pets but now must consume precious slots in the Robots themselves. The 'bots odd combination of AoE and Knockback pretty much demands slotting KB->KD, which further reduces the number of available slots in teh pets.

Re: 'gaming' on a CV submitted as part of an application. Pretty much everything on a CV should be applicable to the job being applied for. Keep in mind that the first cut of applicants is to identify those applicants that have the necessary skills as identified in the job description. The applicants who pass that cut will (if interviewed) be called on to explain everything on the CV... if the people making the decision about interviews don't flag them for some other reason that they don't want to call the applicant. As @Omega-202 wrote: it is FAR more likely that 'gaming experience' is more like a hobby. Hobbies can develop skills, but I expect to see the skills listed on a CV, and not necessarily where they were developed. How skills were developed will come up in conversation (I make hiring decisions) and helps me ask further questions to make an assessment of the candidates.For example: If I was hiring someone to do rework of printed circuit board assemblies, I would expect to see 'experience with rework' listed as the actual skill rather than try to make some guess about their skills based on a Ham Radio Operator's license number.

Can you give specific examples of power with current slotting that is both already deep into the damage cap (for ED) and is using %damage procs? I have builds that do both, but I want to know where you think more (beyond what we have now) is required.

I want to say that I tried running "who will die?" SSA1 on both sides in less than a week... I can't recall if it worked but I think if it did I would have added it to my list of tricks! I prefer blue-side for trivial reasons: You get to fight igneous bosses (for the badge count). The most annoying part of that arc is the final mission if you lack Perception and the spectres fly away from you!

I feel like the the OP may have a fundamentally different opinion about %damage procs. Some snipping follows. My sense is that all that has been discovered is that %damage procs aren't benefiting single-target DPS-dealing AT as much as they benefit ATs with less DPS and/or more AoE. My own bias is that I don't expect %damage from procs to contribute to DPS-dealing characters, except for 1) Fast recharge AoE (e.g. cones), which generally do less damage and require some positioning, so a %damage proc 'helps' on average. 2) Long recharge AoE (e.g. 'nukes') which have an inherently long recharge time, so a %damage proc 'helps' on average. Generally: I don't expect single-target attacks to rely on %damage from procs. On non-DPS characters, I will hope for some extra proc damage but that's because those AT will typically not have the DPS that will otherwise allow them to complete missions/earn XP by defeating enemies. The current implementation of %damage procs appears (to me) to be a great help for a majority of non-DPS builds, while adding to the offensive potential of certain DPS builds. I don't know that the suggestion to bypass ED benefits anything but DPS builds and would hurt non-DPS builds.

For mid-level characters: The first SSA arc is an extremely easy 20 merits per week (40 for your first run!) even with the lowest DPA characters. I think the slowest time I've had on it have been with a Mastermind (because of the SSA level) at around 11 minutes. Another relatively fast arc for Blue Side is Aaron Thiery's Atlas Park arc. You can rerun that one for both Wolf Spiders and Doorbuster badges. Red side, almost all of the low level villain arcs have very good merit rewards for relatively few missions. It isn't hard to get a reasonably full team for the Penelope Yin TF, and it is rare that a team objects to running that as fast as possible. Even a 'defeat everything' team can finish in about 30 minutes. While we have the 'fast travel' options, it isn't hard to get to Echo: Dark Astoria to get there and earn some merits when someone has summoned Adamastor. I expect this to get slightly more difficult when the changes to travel via SG bases roll out.

I don't understand why the Homecoming game would implement (more) gates. The game still HAS gates, it's just that without a paywall/micro-transactions they aren't as obvious. A simple example are accolades: each of them still has an element of 'grind' to them, and several of them benefit the character that unlocks them. The situation from my PoV is that the game has grind if you want it (ehem, Incarnate content), and plenty of ways to speed through the various 'grinds'. I can't imagine that any new content wouldn't immediately be exactly like all the other content in the game.

I'm a fan of almost all of the level 40-50 Redside arcs, as many of them offer you the chance to punk the marquee Hero NPCs. And if you do the Patron arcs all the way through, you get to punk the marquee villains as well.

Regarding: So many AT have a 'Knockback Hole' that is (as noted above) trivially plugged by the use of a Universal IO piece in a travel power that I don't think this specifically requires an 'emergency' fix. I know that dedicating a slot (Resistance or Travel) to getting 4 points of KB protection was the specific complaint, but this strikes me as a pretty narrow issue given that there is a fix for everyone. I am aware that not everyone wants to take a travel power, but that is a somewhat radical choice given that a travel power can provide a character KB protection, and KB resistance is a craft-able temporary buff.

SMH

I don't consider myself qualified to speak to all sets, but the performance of Mastermind primaries seem... uneven.

Some minor editing down to the bits I want to comment on: The one piece of the Streakbreaker that doesn't appeal to me is: the Streakbreaker doesn't trigger on next roll that would miss, it triggers on the next roll because "it is time for you to have a forced hit". These are very different things! When I'm at 'finl chance >= 95%', I'd prefer it if the streak was broken when I got the second miss, and not on the followup roll no matter what. The RNG appears to be a pseudo-random "space filling" algorithm design to guarantee a flat spectrum of results. To put this in the context of a ">=95% "final chance to hit", for such a pseudo-RNG (for historical implementations that look to 'evenly populate' the space of potential results) the chance of getting a second "1-in-20" result after a first "1-in-20" is less than 1-in-20. I'd like to measure how big this effect is, but my data collection skill are not up to the challenge.