tidge

You may want to examine your premise: I don't think this means what you think it means.

There is some discussion elsewhere on this topic, so I apologize for any perceived thread-necromancy. On this point: I have observed this behavior of Moonbeam on a "No Redraw" War Mace Scrapper. It is definitely my toon defeating the enemy, but it somewhat breaking of the immersion, as the animation completes normally. This appears to be an issue with the animations, and a separate bug than the one not applying damage from Assassin's Strike.

We've had various threads here is one: My own reply on that thread does include the observation that (for /Bio) Offensive Adaptation will still put damage on the target, even if all of the other possible sources of damage are not applied (when the bug occurs).

It's been a long time since I felt the need to question/scratch-my-head-over the AI behavior of certain henchmen (Thanks HC team!), but having a new Mastermind at level 50 (Thugs/Thermal) has me trying more challenging content and I have encountered two elements of Thugs' behavior that seem peculiar to me. I'd prefer some understanding, but I will also appreciate other players' observations as well. For background: I noticed the following situations when playing Crimson's "World Wide Red" arc at +0/x8. The behavior was most pronounced when facing Knives of Artemis on wide-open maps. Aside from KoA being the primary enemy, the only other item of note is that the missions where this was most obvious included those which have KoA spawns which move across the map to engage the player. Note that my Mastermind is also applying (non-incarnate) debuffs to enemy spawns, which I know causes the enemy AI to flee for the hills. The behavior described below is not necessarily observed for the T3 Bruiser henchmen. The henchmen are set to follow, with a defensive stance, putting them in Bodyguard mode. 1st odd situation: Every once in a while, one or more of my T1 and T2 will madly dash very far away from me. I initially thought that they were pursuing a specific enemy (as we known, enemy mobs will run very far away from a player) but I am positive that I have observed circumstances where they were not pursuing an (activated, aggroed) enemy. As near as I can tell, the henchmen were defending me against one-or-more enemies but had some sort of debuff applied to them (certainly Caltrops) at some point. I really don't like this AI behavior, as I want them acting as my bodyguards! 2nd odd situation: As an outcome of the first situation: one or more of my T1 and T2 won't rejoin my group, even if ordering the entire cadre to "Go to" a specific location. The disobedient hench will 'verbalize' receipt of commands, but essentially goes into 'walk mode' without actually rejoining the cadre. It doesn't matter if I change their stances, or even if I order the hench to attack a specific enemy... they've essentially defaulted to NPC status. The areas where this happened did not present the sorts of terrain that I associate with 'problematic path choices' for AI. In neither case, would a very distant henchmen "warp" to me, no matter how far apart we were. Obviously I make an example of the disloyal Thug by dismissing and summoning a replacement... but I never previously observed this sort of behavior with Robots.

Nope. I'm aware of the (new) default stances.

For most content I play, I can take-or-leave the defensive bonuses from Combat Jumping. I like to keep Beast Run active on this particular character for cosmetic/theme reasons; CJ is perfectly fine as a LotG mule for this build. I suppose I could try to turn around and make a similar "take-it-or-leave-it" argument about the ToHit bonus from Kismet, but to more directly answer your question: I don't often care about Combat Jumping, but I always care about ToHit and Damage. I'm not ignorant about +Defense, I'm just not an evangelist.

You may find some utility in setting up macros to help with targeted AoE powers. For example, one of my characters has a macro to drop Bonfire a short fixed distance in front of him. All I have to do is look in the direction I want and then trigger it. /macro_image "BanishedPantheon_Pain_WorldOfPain" "Bbbonfire" "powexec_location forward:5 bonfire" The downside is that macros will not show the recharge state of the power, but I keep the default power in the tray above the macro as an indicator. You can set up similar macros for powers which target specific (or targeted) enemies.

Sudden Acceleration (a Knockback set) Overwhelming Force (a Universal Damage set, but each piece is unique)

I could, but as I wrote, it primarily assists (my playstyle) with Moonbeam damage. IIRC Combat Jumping detoggles with Ninja/Beast/Athletic Run. I also expected the Kismet bonus to be a true Global, but it isn't. Stalkers can slot it into Hide, which they will almost always have toggled on, so it is far less of an issue for them. This can benefit Stalkers over their entire level ranges, and they get the same Snipes as Scrappers. Other ATs usually have to make some compromises if they want to leverage it.

Kismet only provides the bonus if it is in an auto-power or a toggled-on power. (verified by monitoring combat attributes)

I use unslotters for a couple of other reasons: Testing how builds play (breaking/removing set bonuses)... again avoiding a complete respec, usually just testing how well a build will play without a certain piece Attuning an enhancement (typically a non lvl-50 PVP) for another character (when I really don't want to bother with the market, but I have the raw materials). Not the most cost-effective, but also not really necessary now that the SG base has the commonly used old recycled/attuned PVP enhancements.

A quick on-point comment about 'failed respecs', and then an observation about a different type of failure (that is given a similar 'avoidance solution') The quickie observation: I've only ever had failed respecs messages when I had levels I had not yet trained into. A completely unrelated 'problem' I've encountered is the 'sometimes the catalyst doesn't apply to an enhancement'. Perhaps the most common 'avoidance solution' I've seen on this topic is 'Don't apply catalysts in your base'. (sound familiar to the respec issue yet?) Anyhow: EVERY time I've had a catalyst fail to 'take' it is because I was in a SG base and I had storage device window open (AFAIK, it has always been a storage rack) and the Catalyst went back into the storage rack instead of being applied to whatever Enhancement. The UI is resolving things, just not in the way that was expected. (I believe this is why sometimes you get another error/warning in a SG base when messing around with open Enhancement tables, even though you don't intend to be using the table.) Is it possible that (aside from the untrained levels) that some of the failures being observed are due to having an unclosed/unresolved UI window?

The Blaster /Time has the "Time Crawl" effect (boosting the effect of /Time powers) that gets triggered by application of more than one of the secondary powers. My /Time build only has a single slot in Time Wall, but ultimately this comes down to where you invest slots. Accuracy is preferred because this will help trigger the "Time Crawl" on a target. I have no in-depth build critiques, but I can make a few comments: I have Time Stop, and I have it 6-slotted with PVP Gladiator's Net. I find those set bonuses to be very good for my Blaster. I agree with your slotting of Chronos. I keep Chronos on auto; It fires roughly every 21 seconds, for the first 10 of those seconds I have a 90% chance of the extra %Build Up. I don't fault you for not taking either End of Time or Future Pain if you plan to exclusively be at range. I don't have Aging Touch, so I use Future Pain as the melee option. I don't think you need both. End of Time is a nice attack chain filler when you are up close and don't necessarily want to target; it is where I have a Blaster ATO set. Temporal Healing is a toggle, recharge slotting is of minimal help. I have this 6-slotted for the Preventive Medicine set bonuses, but there are plenty of other good options. I played around with Time Shift, but I found that the Disorient wasn't working well in my attack chain/strategy. I almost always gives Stuns a chance to pleasantly surprise me and this one did not. The only power choices that jumps out at me that I'd like to read your thoughts on are: Aim (level 6): I have Aim in my build, but with Chronos (at level 10) I don't really need it for most content, so I put it off until much later (level 47!) Hover (level 16): I seek that this is a mule for LotG, but it looks (to me) like it may be coming too early in the build (for the little bit of extra defense). YMMV.

I have a very specific reason to slot the Cacophony %damage proc, and since it tangetially relates to the Market I'll mention it here: I prefer to slot (PB)AoE Confuse powers with both available %damage procs, because getting any damage on a mob gets you on the list for a potential drop. I am well aware of some folks preference to avoid %damage on the PBAoE in an effort to avoid aggro, but: I'm always going to be swinging at enemies without caring about their particular confused state, and I want to have inflicted as much damage as possible. An enemy defeated by 100% damage from a confused (former) ally is depriving me of potential market madness! My assumption about Common IOs on the market is that at least 90% of them were crafted for badge purposes.

The PVP sets will work in PVE, but they have additional set bonuses in PVP zones. The Global effects of a PVP enhancement will work everywhere. PVP recipe drops are rarer than most other recipe drops. Henchmen need to either have the Defensive stance (Blue) or the Passive stance (Green) to take part of the damage dealt to you. When they are "aggressive" (red) they won't take damage for you. Henchmen in the Defensive stance will eventually attack the mobs attacking you, but it takes a short period of time.

Thunderstrike is an Uncommon recipe, so I don't think your example is proving that it was worth consuming Rare Salvage to craft Rare recipes.

Sounds... Fancy.

I have never joined an AE farm to get XP, but here are my thoughts: Lvl 50 Orange (rare) recipes have relatively little value compared to Common recipes. There are very few Rare recipes that are worth crafting, as opposed to crafting Uncommon recipes and converting. Presumably the request is being made about PVP recipes, see next bullet. The request for PVP/Purple recipe drops I could almost understand, but I don't have much sympathy. My observed odds of these pieces dropping (for lvl 50+ characters) are approximately 1 per hour (either PVP or Purple) of near-constant x8 content. It feels like PVP recipe drops are slightly more frequent than Purple recipe drops, but that could just be personal observation bias. Increasing the level of enemy mobs above 50 does not increase the chance of drops. I have gotten Purple drops on characters below level 50, but this has only happened on characters where I could turn up the number of enemies prior to level 50 and I was running (solo) a lot of arc missions relatively close to each other (basically, Portal Corp missions from Unai Kemen or Maria Jenkins)... and running such content usually ends up with a level 50 character PDQ, so there aren't many hours of this activity below level 50. So.... since AE missions aren't going to get more spawns, I can sort of understand why a farmer would "beg" for any PVP or Purple drops, because the "one lucky drop" might go to a different player. The reasons that I'm not so sympathetic are: "Purple drops are not guaranteed" Any level 50 player can run non-AE content for merits and/or a (better personal) chance a "lucky" drop I expect that typical AFK farmer builds are unlikely to be doing that much in an AE farm mission anyway, so just how much reward is expected for so little effort? If the farm build is fully kitted with enhancements, why even ask for a PVP/Purple recipe drop as payment? It's not as if there is supposed to be an arbitrary limit on the amount of "paying it forward" there is by letting people door-sit for XP and/or Influence. If a newly leveling toon gets a good drop, let 'em keep it.

Yep: even if the MaxTargets doesn't increase, lengthening the cones seems to improve performance. I've debated swapping out a high-level, under-utilized pool attack (which is essential a mule for a set bonus) to add the Tentacles to the build but I can't bring myself to do it. "Come to me you beautiful sources of XP / Inf / Drops!" My playstyle on PUGs (for good or ill) is to cast the long-range Umbral Torrent against the NEXT group of enemies to draw them towards the team. Typically a PUG Tank/Brute has got the local aggro, so no matter what attacks I cast I won't get the nearby aggro myself. I don't know how much aggro the PUGs really want, but if the team isn't falling I usually feel like we can handle it.

I suggest this character "roleplay" himself to get an apartment in Brickstown, and then he can fight the "street level" prisoners breaking out from the Zig (almost) anytime he feels like it.

I won't dip back into the debate about the value of Confuse powers and how to optimly slot them, but the limited value of Confuse pieces on the market should be pretty obvious: Relatively few ATs get Confuse powers, so not many character builds can even use such enhancements I suppose it is possible to take more than two confuse powers on certain builds, but I stop after a ST and a (PB)AoE. Epic Pool power confuses (like World of Confusion) are trash no matter the slotting The set bonuses from Confuse pieces aren't that great, and generally the most useful bonuses require 5- (or 6-) slotting I'm surprised that there were any for sale!

I think we digressed into AoE immobilizes (not the topic of this thread), but this goes back to one of my complaints about ST immobilizes: if a player is expected to invest slots and specific enhancements in a T1 power to make the power useful, this is a problem with the power. T1 powers are available (and mandatory, for secondaries) at character launch, and presumably should provide utility over a very wide variety of content (based on level). The comparison to T1 Blaster powers are a little disingenuous IMO, especially if enhancement slotting is considered. The Blaster T1/T2 primary powers retain some utility over the entire level range of game content simply because those attacks can be cast while mezzed.

It looks like you are trying to leverage set bonuses from Numina's Convalesence, but I (personally) don't think they are really that great and they aren't leveraging the use of slots in Drain Psyche in a particularly optimal way (except for the recharge time). Here is the my slotting of Drain Psyche in my Fire/Psi Dominator to get some extra +End, %Absorb (when damaged), and adds Accuracy (including a set bonus!) as well as %damage: Level 20: Drain Psyche (A) Theft of Essence - Chance for +Endurance: Level 30 (31) Preventive Medicine - Heal: Level 50 (33) Preventive Medicine - Chance for +Absorb: Level 50 (33) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Healing: Level 50 (33) Touch of the Nictus - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge: Level 50 (34) Touch of the Nictus - Chance for Negative Energy Damage: Level 50 None of the pieces should be particularly expensive, and IIRC the Touch of the Nictus pieces can be boosted to 50+5, should you desire. It also appears that for Fire Imps you went for the (defensive) set bonuses from the Call to Arms set, but keep in mind that that set is a level 10-30 set and that Fire Imps is a T9 power, so there may be some loss of Accuracy /Damage by using enhancements that cap at level 30. I also don't think it is worth slotting Defense/Resistance auras in Fire Imps. The Imps won't necessarily be that close to you against larger spawn sizes. They will help trigger the %BuildUp in your Tactics slotting if they are close, so mileage varies on this point. My slotting for Fire Imps is: Level 32: Fire Imps (A) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Recharge: Level 50 (40) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage: Level 50 (40) Expedient Reinforcement - Damage/Endurance: Level 50 (42) Expedient Reinforcement - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge: Level 50 (42) Soulbound Allegiance - Chance for Build Up: Level 50 This does include a Very Rare Soulbound Allegiance piece, but since the Imps don't have many attacks you could easily drop that slot. I do see it frequently triggering on my Imps. For reference, here is my own slotting of Bonfire: Level 26: Bonfire (A) Force Feedback - Chance for +Recharge: Level 50 (37) Overwhelming Force - Damage/Chance for Knockdown/Knockback to Knockdown: Level 50 (39) Javelin Volley - Chance of Damage(Lethal): Level 50 (39) Positron's Blast - Chance of Damage(Energy): Level 50 (39) Explosive Strike - Chance for Smashing Damage: Level 20 The Bombardment %damage piece could be added if desired. I primarily use Bonfire for the +Recharge boost and the Knockdown, so to keep the %proc chances high I don't slot Recharge bonuses (IIRC, with no slotted Recharge these %procs are at the 90% ceiling) EDIT: I agree that you should probably try to add a fourth slot to Char and then 4-slot it with the Basilisk's Gaze set for more Global Recharge.

My opinion is that chasing Single-Target DPS from any Mastermind attack is a losing game. For Robots especially: this strikes me as a bad use of attacks/endurance/power choices/slots. I feel that more debuffs or a (soft) controls against hard single targets will go further. I feel that if it is raw damage you are looking for, then the Photon Grenade can be slotted with three %damage procs, a %-Res proc and a Overwhelming Force KB->KD before considering the Stun component. The longer recharge time and AoE effect of the Photon Grenade should give each %proc a roughly 50% chance of firing on each target (assuming no slotted +Recharge). The %damage procs are the best way to add more damage to the Mastermind attacks IMO. [EDIT: IMO, the greater number of %damage procs (and greater likelihood of hitting at least one enemy with a chance to %proc) for the AoE Photon Grenade is more valuable than the Single Target Pulse Rifle's two possible %damage procs.... because of the Mastermind's poor damage scale. YMMV] If Mace Mastery is in the equation, Mace Beam Volley (targeted AoE arc attack) can use similar slotting options (3 %damage, %-Res) as Photon Grenade (but it can take Knockback enhancements, including Sudden Acceleration KB->KD and Force Feedback +Recharge instead of Stuns). Because of the attributes of Mace Beam Volley, I estimate that you could slot something like 30% recharge in Mace Beam Volley and still have a roughly 90% proc chance on each target. This is a somewhat slower attack, but I feel that with %procs for added damage it wouldn't be a bad tradeoff for a Mastermind who wants to do damage herself. My own (Robotics) build does not leverage that sort of franken-slotting, because I prefer the set bonuses I can get from those powers (primarily Endurance-related bonuses, but the recharge form sets hurts %proc chances) I use the AoE attacks as a combination of soft controls/debuffs I attack non-engaged enemies to draw aggro towards me and drag enemies to the henchmen

/echo I have a VEAT build that dipped into the Fighting pool for MOAR, but I found that I was sacrificing powers/slots that would end fights faster. That build also had serious trouble controlling aggro, so ultimately I felt that it was essentially a variety of the least effective and least interesting Tank I had ever made. I suppose it is possible to try to build a very sturdy, completely team-focused VEAT with the intent of (primarily) standing around while buffing allies, but I feel like that would work against the strengths and potential of the Soldier VEAT. I also suspect that such a build would likely encourage a player to go the Crabbermind route, and my response would be: if your Crab isn't also attacking the performance from the pets will be disappointing.