tidge

I dunno. I certainly value regeneration on Tankers; I don't play Brutes and (in my personal opinion) other ATs with smaller HP caps make extra Regeneration a secondary effect (at best). I take the point about MOAR (Global) RECHARGE. I will take MOAR if it is in easy reach (LotG) or comes from otherwise synergistic (bonuses from enhancement sets that scale well, e.g. Purple, PVP and ATO), but if I can have a smooth (enough) chain of "clicky things to do" I often find myself not caring about something like Hasten... even if it is in my build! Less recharge is a perfectly acceptable Endurance management strategy (even for button mashers)! I tell a different story if there is a specific power that I want available as often as possible: My Crabbermind has more than enough recharge to be able to resummon all of the pets (including Epic) by the time the natural period of pet duration expires. I have personal opinions (which vary per build) but I'm not critical of other players' attitudes to Recharge, including prioritization.

Hmmm... 'A Titan Named Joe"? There are a lot of Blue side arcs that I enjoy for the nostalgia (and dips into the lore) but almost all of the ones that come to mind involve an obscene amount of travel between zones find the (many) glowies/hostages on large/complicated maps drag/rescue an NPC across/through a large map wait for spawns I do appreciate the Blue arcs that stay 'within zones': Hollows, (new) Faultline, Striga, Croatoa. Several of these zone arcs have 'problematic' elements from my list.

I've occasionally eye-rolled when I've seen a single player spamming a request to join any farm (or door-sit), but I've never felt that such requests needed to be segregated to another channel.

For almost all content and circumstances: I prefer to have the Build Up / Aim power over Tactics (or the equivalent). If my Primary/Secondary allows both, I usually take both but delay the second until late in the build. For example, I find Chronos from /Time (for Blasters) to be superior to Aim, but occasionally (in high level content) I want Aim available when Chronos is down... I have Chronos recharging in ~22 secs, so this is about a 12 second window. As noted by @skoryy the primary benefit is to hit the +22%(?) ToHit damage bonus on Fast Snipes. The actual accuracy/final to-hit is purely a secondary effect (barring considerations like enemy MoG, or PVP). The Aim/BuildUp boosts don't hurt other attacks of course. Random thoughts I've posted elsewhere. I also favor having the Gaussian's %BuildUp piece in the on-demand power for DPS ATs. If the player is surrounded by teammates and pets, it is possible to get more firings of the %proc (slotting it in Tactics, or equivalent), but IMHO this is not as reliable as just working on the DPS attack chains (including target selection). YMMV. I like having the Kismet +Accuracy (really +ToHit) global for the same reason (e.g. fast Snipes)... the issue for me always comes down to finding the right power to put it in! The power has to be active for the +6% bonus to kick in. For Blasters, if can be a while before there is an applicable power. (Stalkers at least can put it in Hide, provided they toggle it on!) My experimenting with other ATs indicate that the Kismet bonus doesn't contribute if it is in an auto power and the auto power isn't available because of exemplaring. This shouldn't affect most (any?) Blasters.

I held off on posting in this thread simply because of the title (TL;DR "there is a difference between henchmen and pets") but on the sub-subject of Health/Regeneration and Endurance/Recovery slotting I think @Maelwys is making valid points. Writing only for myself: I almost always find that characters while leveling up are much more Endurance hungry than end-game builds (even without considering Incarnates). Lack of slots (for Endurance reduction, for set bonuses) is the obvious reason. I almost always over-slot Recovery until I get to the first level 50 respec. I used to have a bias about "giving up" certain important (for leveling) enhancement pieces, but it's become second nature to take a good look at what those pieces are contributing to a level 50 build (including during exemplar content). Some advice: Enhancement unslotters are a cheap mechanism for testing the impact of certain pieces in a build. You can't move power slots with them, but if you want to try going without a certain piece (or alternate slotting) they are fine for this. Because I can't keep myself from writing this: I feel that a majority of builds (across all ATs) overvalue Regeneration. In game play, Health doesn't get 'spent' the same way Endurance does. It is much easier to mitigate Health 'expenses' (via Defense, Resistance) and frankly it is very hard to predict what level of Regeneration is optimal for any given build... especially for AT with relatively low Health caps. I'm not claiming it is impossible to establish a relatively precise level of regeneration for some specific content, but I feel that many builds simply go "Softcap Defense, Maximize S/L Resists, MOAR Regeneration".

My mind isn't going to be changed (see above for my attitude), but I am starting to wonder if folks have different definitions of "Tankerminding"? Personally, I would never try to out-tank a Tanker with a MM, as the tools available to a MM are simply too weak compared to a Tanker's tools. Quite frankly I think they are too weak to act as a Tanker on large groups (see dozens of similarly-themed posts claiming "I tank with my Blapper/VEAT/Dominator/HEAT"). For myself only: I only consider Tankerminding to be keeping aggro off of my henchmen so that they can keep a stance such that they share their Health with me. This is most evident in solo play. A solo player can control the flow of combat and generate threat in many different ways. The only aspect of this that occasionally works against me is if there is 'too much control' or enemies that turn tail and run for the hills may require some adjustment of henchmen stances to finish off a spawn... but at this point the Health pool isn't as important to share. In large PUG it is almost always another player that has most of the aggro, so the purely defensive stance has to be evaluated... in my own experience (for most content) it isn't worth trying to peel the aggro of just a limited number of enemies simply to preserve the defensive stance... and if a PUG is fighting enemy spawns with AoE you can go ahead and keep the henchmen in a defensive stance... provided your MM is in the AoE. You may want/need the Health pool to survive, but surviving isn't Tanking.

GAH! Boost those Shield Wall pieces to 50+5! (except for the global) My Inv uses Resist Physical Damage as a mule for for Steadfast Protection and Impervium Armor. If I has a third slot it would probably just be Endurance reduction. Inv goes way past the S/L cap without extra slotting. (Edit: I forgot this was an auto power! LOL!) I suppose you could worry about debuffs, but Inv has other tools like Dull Pain and the Scaling Damage Resistance piece from Reactive Defenses. I've been experimenting with the Kismet +Accuracy (really to Hit) in Invincibility, but per my testing it appears to be doing nothing without an enemy nearby. I have Dull Pain 6-slotted with Preventive Medicine. I keep the Gaussian's %Build Up piece in Build Up (6-slotted) specifically so that I have the boost when I want it... often I find myself 1-on-1 against something like a MoG PP and I would rather have it on demand... YMMV of course, I realize why others keep it in auras. I used to take Unstoppable as a mule (as shown above) but I found it easier to re-jigger my build to not have to burn a power. I used to mule Gladiator's Armor in Resist Physical Damage (see rationale above) but 3-slotted it in Resist Energies instead.

The Icon/Facemaker missions are very much the same. EDIT: I want to say that in-mission defeats didn't count the last time I did Carson's (Founder's Falls) mission.

Y'all are thinking too small. Somebody needs to start the thread to clear locked Supergroup names.

IIRC both Port Oakes and Mercy Island have areas that have this problem. From memory, the Port Oakes problems are in the NE corner (Fort Hades) and in Mercy Island it is in the NE part of Darwin's Landing/Fort Darwin and/or the NW part of Darwin's Landing. I want to say this gets me whenever I am collecting exploration badges in these zones. I have some version of Vidiot's maps installed.

On my Robots/Traps Mastermind I skipped Triage Beacon while leveling, but it came back into the build at the level 50 respec (taken at low level). My experience was that (while leveling) I didn't have the slots to make it as effective as possible and I had alternate priorities to support the henchman (and allies). I find that it helps my specific build quite a bit in x8 content, since I can keep the henchmen where I want them and draw enemies to me. YMMV with fast-moving teams or poorly controlled henchmen/allies.

An extra build is IMO useful for Tankers and end-game content, since it is also possible to make use of boosted (50+5) pieces instead of attuned pieces that may be used on other content. We can argue (as with anything) about the marginal improvements from running with 50+5 pieces, but for end-game content with debuffs the "margins" could end up being meaningful. Even without considering the use of boosted pieces, having a "team-friendly" build with Taunt may motivate the player to leverage some other team-friendly powers from the Leadership pool, which IIRC was boosted on Homecoming for Tanks as well.

Dear Devs... please don't add a "travel power" to the Presence Pool, even to replace Pacify.

"It's Puppet Therapy. The Psychology world has come to recently embrace it after seeing it on Law & Order."

If I am chasing a specific badge (that gives more space in recipes or salvage) I will craft the recipes and just toss them on the AH at discount prices. IIRC the expanded storage is for lvl 25/30 and lvl 45/50 recipes. Yes, Inf to burn... but only to a point. Level 50 common recipe drops usually just get sold (~100K each) to vendors to pay the scrub crafting fees for other recipes.

Except the ones that take the Fitness pool.

I have experienced 'buggy' behavior with that arc if I used Tip missions to fight Carnies. As near as I can tell, that 'defeat X carnies' needs to be done on the streets of Peregrine Island.

I had one character that used the Concealment pool, including Invisibility, extensively... I was completely unimpressed with the shift to Infiltration. I gave it a fair shake, but ultimately it just felt like the change was motivated to simply make all the effects of Invisibility available to players with just dipping a single toe into the pool. I understand that there are some other subtle points, but I thing those are only nibbling around the corners.

When I wanted a Controller that didn't look like it was really controlling (my opinion, YMMV) as much as it was sowing chaos, I went with Mind/Poison. I went all-in on %damage from procs to beef up the damage output. The Poison debuffs are a help against AVs and GMs. With Mind, it is less obvious (from the graphics) what is happening with enemies (compared to any over Controllers) and you don't have to have anything that looks like a pet chasing you around.

You can always try to motivate players to full-kit out their second and third builds. Outside of VEATs (every one), HEATs (multi-form/single-form), Masterminds (standard vs. petless/one-big pet) and builds for specific 50+ content (Attuned? BAH! Boosters FTW!) I have trouble motivating myself to do such a thing.

"Canonically" per a Forbes (?, Money?) listicle. I've seen it attributed to Time, but I'm relatively certain it was a magazine focused on finance.

For me: Gaussian's is in the category of "should be worth more than it is valued at in the /AH", along with Thunderstrike. It doesn't mean I have a swarm of unsold ones, just that for a variety of reasons it isn't a set that is ever in demand. One of the reasons may be that the To Hit piece cons yellow (uncommon), but it is a rare. I personally like the 6-set bonuses it gives, and in most click powers (Aim, Build Up, Chronos, etc.) the slotted recharge from the (attuned) set doesn't move the %BuildUp proc chances below 90%. I can completely understand skimping on slots in such powers (going with just the %proc and a Recharge), but on most of my builds the performance from randomly distributing those slots isn't improved as much as I miss hitting enemies (ehem, Moment of Glory Paragon Protectors).

I use the +Absorb proc strictly so that I don't have to watch my Health bar.

To find those IO Enhancements you need, be sure to visit the auction house: Wentworths, Black Market or /AH in any non-PVP zone.

I tend not to think about using Taunt on Hamidon as much as I think about using Taunt on Lord Recluse.