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Is there a difference (in Detonator damage) if you have boosted a henchmen (or other pet) with a red inspiration active prior to Detonation?

On my Mind/Poison Controller, Poison is a pretty good secondary but it is somewhat forgettable, I'll share my choices for the secondary: I quite dislike Poison on my Defender. I don't have a Corruptor. I tried really hard to make Venomous Gas work, but I simply could not build a character that could hang out in melee range and survive. Trying to do so felt like I was making a LOT of peculiar choices just to try to get the VG ticks to work against enemies while taking huge amounts of aggro (melee, ranged, AoE). In my mind, I was spending a huge amount of design (and play) space just to try make a T9 work.... for 18% damage resistance that is mostly for the benefits of allies who may or may not care (or be able to do anything about) me taking the aggro. It isn't the only T9 in the game that I find disappointing, but it is one of them.

Prior to the Robotics revamp, I used to slot the henchmen for Knockdown. Now I don't bother. I do have knockdown in Pulse Rifle Burst and Mace Beam Volley. Things don't fall down quite as often, but things are still flopping about quite a bit. I tried to make Seeker Drones work, because I *like* stuns, but I found the power to be a bad fit for *whatever* strategy I was pursuing. Knockdowns, AoE Immobilizes, AoE debuffs, AoE Slows... these were all IMO more reliable than the Stun. I don't need the -ToHit. I don't need the power to mule any set pieces, see below. My henchmen slotting: With this slotting, I see no endurance issues in any of the tiers. I don't do anything fancy to try to replenish the robots' health or endurance except for Maintenance Drone; it has 6xPreventive Medicine. Obvious level 50 is needed for this slotting, but it is what it is. I know there are advocates for the %BuildUp in the T3, or for KB->KD, or for %damage... my experience is that for the content I play, I can split targets using the MM itself with either the T3 or all the T1, leaving the other tier with the T2s, and the two groups finish off their hard targets in roughly the same amount of time. The one compromise I'd make, if Seeker Drones is going to be used to hold any of the pet global uniques, might be to replace the T1 Expedient Reinforcement with Explosive Strike's %Smashing and (depending on other slotting) swap the T2 Edict of the Master for a Luck of the Gambler Defense/Global Recharge piece. My own build is incredibly tight, so I'd have to sacrifice something to get even 1 more slot for Seeker Drones.

Ignoring the elephant-in-the-room that is the method the game gives rewards (Inf, XP, drops) for defeating critters, Blasters have a significant number of advantages over Controllers, including: Blasters can still fight while controlled. Blasters have generally better base Accuracies across primary/secondary than Control powers (especially AoE) Blasters' attacks are (for most primary/secondary) the same type of damage whereas Controller's typically only get a pair of same-type controls (for most primary/secondary) for "stacking"... e.g. a single-target Immobilize/Hold and an AoE Immobilize/Hold. It is far more common across all content to have enemies that effectively cannot be controlled (by certain controls) than it is for enemies to completely ignore/regenerate from damage taken from attacks. If we further consider IO enhancement sets, because of the nature of ATOs, most Winters, most PVP and most Purples... Blasters (with more attacks) end up with more options for building for set bonuses than an AT like a Controller. I'll grant that this point is "in my experience", and that "mileage may vary"... but some of those sets can end up giving very healthy global Defense bonuses. I'm aware that some of the control sets have some options for global defense, but for Control types they've got far fewer powers to opt to place their ATOs, whereas Blasters typically have powers in both their Primary and Secondary... I realize this is a somewhat subjective argument, however I think of it often whenever someone tries to invoke an "aprocalypse", as the non %proc choices already favor specific ATs over others.

As an aside: I groan about folks calling for some diminishment of %procs... often it is one or two players arguing over which melee DPS AT can clear a +4x8 map (fractions of a minute) faster than some other melee DPS AT, with no consideration for how far behind the curve (in terms of clearing similar content) an AT like Controller would be. Another aside: At some point I think the (mostly Live) devs took a healthy respect for control (of critters) and turned it into a full-on paranoia. If not for %damage, I'd find Controllers to be pretty boring to play.

On my Earth Controller I ended up 6-slotting Will of the Controller in Volcanic Gasses, From memory I found the power to be a poor one to use %damage pieces in... Stone Cages and Stalagmites ended up being better for that trick. I agree that the recharge times for the Controller AoE 'nukes' are too long to bother with trying for %damage. I never skip them, because they offer utility and an opportunity for getting enhancement set bonuses; I agree that performance (including lack of up-time) definitely dampens my enthusiasm for them.

I have a different take on most giant monsters, because they are open-world events: I dislike waiting around for more than 3 minutes(*1) for anyone to start fighting a giant monster. There is *some* variance in timing for how long a giant monster takes to defeat solo, but if a player isn't using Lore pets, and isn't multi-boxing (i.e. only one character is fighting) there shouldn't be any giant monsters that are defeated in under three minutes. There aren't many zones that take longer to check for giant monsters than 3 minutes, unless the character is rather under-powered. If I'm going to be that one guy, I'll announce that I'm softening up the giant monster, but I'm perfectly capable of pacing defeat times. I can't help it if other people freak out in an open world... the Giant Monsters will be back. When I've done this, I've never used Lore pets, which ought to be enough evidence that this isn't going to be a quick fight. (*1) It is always possible to send a tell to someone who has announced a GM, and the folks kind enough to post the $loc of the GM in LFG means that once in the zone players should know where to go and not have to zone in with "where is it?" broadcasts. As for the duration of fights, I *know* there are players who prefer to take 10+ minutes to assemble a team of 8 (or fewer, for the multi-boxers) players, have everyone pop Lores and then be done in under a minute. I don't understand how this is better than a small team defeating a GM in four minutes without lores. The monsters that can spawn in different zones, like Kronos, that's a slightly different kettle of fish. By now most long-time players should know that there is a good chance of a followup Kronos spawn, Finally: I know when I see some players announce a GM, and I know that that player isn't waiting around... I know roughly how long they take to solo GMs, so I have a good idea of if I can get to the GM in time to join in.

My slotting is in an earlier post in this thread: 2x Acc/Dam/EndReduction, 3x %damage. After this, 6x Annihilation would probably be my choice, although I might be swayed by a Knockdown strategy. I almost never bother with the Gaussian's %BuildUp in these sorts of powers for ATs that inherently do relatively little damage... I will have the build such that I don't need the extra ToHit, and if the ATs attacks already do somewhat small amounts of damage, I don't expect that the %+Damage is doing that much (for an AT that won't normally be constantly attacking). I don't think Comtrollers are quite as bad as Masterminds for using the %BuildUp piece, but I think they are probably among the worst choices... not because the proc rate is bad, more that these AT typically don't get that much mileage from it. Opinions may differ, and I like the 6-slot bonuses for the set, it's just that the ultimate yield in performance v. investment almost never strikes me as the best use of slots.

%damage does work in Shifting Tides. IIRC, the combat messages for it are in the PET category, but it has been a while since I felt the need to review the logs for my /Marine controller. I hadn't planned to add %damage (see my slotting above) to Shifting Tides, but I found it to be a pretty reliable source of extra damage for my Controller, The test that convinced me to lean into it as a source of %damage was against a relatively small group of street enemies... I mention this because usually these types of powers require relatively large spawn sizes to get a feel for reliability... but because it was toggled on an enemy, and persisted as long as the enemy body didn't de-rezz, the extra %damage in the wide area of effect was noticeable. Perhaps if the enemies are all being destroyed quickly without need for extra damage, or the spawn sizes are exceptionally small and/or not in the area of Shifting Tides, it might be easy to miss. I can't remember precisely (I got bored with that character, sorry!) But I want to say that my impression was that the %damage output in Shifting Tides was better than something like a more classic 'pseudo-pet' such as Caltrops. It could be the wider area, or the persistence, or all the other stuff also happening in Shifting Tides, but once I tested it with a simgle %damage piece I like what I was seeing. The net effectiveness was counter-intuitive to me, so I kept an eye on it across a somewhat large range of content with the result being that I kept it as franken-slotted. I probably wouldn't make this choice on a different AT (for example, probably not on a MM) but for a Controller that solos, yes. There are a handful of these sorts of powers that I wasn't expecting to be good candidates for %damage but turn out to be rather reliable. As I was going to be casting it anyway, getting the extra damage as long as it lasts is a pretty good use of the slots IMO.

I agree that Incarnate powers feel out-of-place, but it is IMO the incarnate content that has most of the game's "gotta understand specific mechanics" content... so I don't know if this argument really gels. I rather like the IO system, because it allows a solo player to emphasize their own build by making choices that work the way the player wants their characters to perform. Certainly there are elements of making characters with relatively few weaknesses, but as near as I can tell it is mostly the Incarnate system that is required in order to build characters able to handle the hardest difficulty settings (solo) for otherwise somewhat straightforward missions/arcs. Certainly if we didn't have power picks above 40 as well as all those extra slots most of the game would be much more challenging. I also don't want to discount the fat that having an inherent Fitness pool makes a lot of sense (because the game wasn't that much fun having to include that pool via choices), but even without IOs an inherent Fitness pool makes characters more powerful.

I also relied on 'old methods' to get the maps installed... afaik the only ones that are "messed up" are the safeguard/mayhem maps for Atlas Park and Founders Falls. The Cimerora/PVP zones are all fine, which used to be the tell-tale sign something was wrong with my install.

I don't have that combo, but I find Martial to be a good secondary for just about any primary. A typical set of baseline choices for me in Martial is: Ki-Push gets a 5-slot set Reach for the Limit is taken, but doesn't get slots Burst of Speed often has 3 pieces of Blaster's Wrath (including the %damage), and 3 %damage Dragon's Tail is a convenient power for %damage slotting, but mileage varies if I need/want that or a set bonus. Reaction Time is often minimally slotted... I have put an attuned Power Transfer %Heal and a boosted EndMod piece from the same set in it. Inner Will usually just has two Heal/Recharge pieces in it (boosted or D-Syncs). I often have this power on Auto. Eagle's Claw is a good candidate to be slotted for a set bonus I've posted a lot in various threads about Psy as a primary. The biggest drawback IMO of Psy is that at high levels there will be a lot of enemies that have hard resistances to the typed damage. There are a few different ways to approach this, but without knowing how you would prefer to approach it I am reluctant to provide advice that could be a bad fit.

I played from day one, I don't think it mattered that much. I do remember well the days of unending debt, fixed contacts, etc. We are not going back to those days, and the choice of an origin pool did not affect how any given character could be built. Set bonuses and %procs are a far different thing than the difference (on Live) between a Blackwand/Nemesis Staff temp power. AFAIK, the only really gated power choices for players right now are the alignment powers, and those can be changed by waiting a week and/or committing to a (flexible) alignment. I know this is NOT the argument being made, but If someone was serious about limiting powers and slots based on origin, then things like the Sorcery pool would be only open to magic origin characters (even though we might never see 'all five' 'origin pools'.) EDIT: I want to add this, re-emphasizing my early point about "Why Damage?" I think this request sort of betrays a limited perspective on the current game and how players build characters. As I noted above, Damage sets already have more options for enhancement sets that any other set. Secondarily, there are some ATs that have a LOT more liberty to slot damage sets than others, so adding another set option to those would be possibly given them more choices, but ultimately players are going to stick with the sets that work best for them given the likelihood of limited powers to put them in (ATO, Very Rares, Winters, PVPs, Overwhelming Force). This sort of suggestion feels like a LOT of effort for something that will hurt the feels of some players ("Whatta ya mean, re-roll my badger?") and/or be of marginal use for (likely) many more.

On one hand I have a little appreciation for the OP trying to put some spice in a thing that effectively doesn't matter (the character's 'origin'); on the other hand I think the OP has missed the memo that the game is more fun when it doesn't put up arbitrary gates for things that any player may want to use for any of their characters. MMV. From a purely personal perspective: more damage enhancement sets is NOT a high priority. If I was given a wand (of whatever origin) to come up with a BRAND NEW enhancement set, I'd make a UNIVERSAL CONTROL 6-piece set that boost whatever control like a HO Endoplasm does. The game offers a LOT of powers that can accept more than one type of IO, but AFAIK only Hami-O and D-Sync are the only available options to boost each of them (in a single power) with a single enhancement.

I've proposed several different tweaks to the Presence pool, but nothing so radical as these. My nearly trivial suggestion is that Pacify/Provoke/Intimidate each be allowed to be taken at level 4, and remove the pre-requisite for Intimidate. The "three power choices at level 14" is an annoying leftover from Live. The way it is now, I have never wanted to take BOTH Pacify and Provoke on the same character, so Invoke Panic and Unrelenting have an effective lower level choice of 16. My more detailed suggestion was that Pacify (IMO, the weakest power of the set... not useless, just weak in terms of game play) be given a little extra code so that for ATs which get a true Placate (Stalkers, VEATs) that Pacify also duplicated the effects of Placate, but not be given the values of Placate. This would help those ATs leverage the Presence pool without (possibly) doubling-up on a power that is already in a primary/secondary. I suppose a similar argument could be made for Provoke and Taunt/Confront, but I put no thought into that, because Taunt is so good, it never occurred to me to use Provoke instead. I definitelt feel like we are missing a fifth set for Fear and Threat. There are combinations we ought to have, like Acc/End and Acc/Threat (for Threat) and we could use another Acc/Fear for Fear. It is as if the devs didn't realize there are Threat powers that require Accuracy slotting.

IMO: The Exploration Badge tips are fine, and a cute addition to the game, but only for the zones which have them, and when I don't allow them to clutter up my tip window. There are some other subtleties with the tips that don't "solve" all my personal issues (e.g. the mechanism is slightly buggy) but my issues with the exploration tips are not greater than whatever issues I have with the vidiot overlays. Personally, I'd prefer something like the vidiot overlays showing markers as a default. It's not because I don't value the new tips, it is because I use those markers even after any given character has gotten the badge/clicked the plaque.

So keep going and apply that rationalization to the Tanker's Ranged Damage Scale. Once you have to reach into "but Epic pools" I think this is a VERY shaky argument.

A couple (more) things: *If* the enhancement set bonuses went down to level 1 (for those "low cap" sets), that would be a small amount of utility. Of course so few players stay at those low levels for very long. *If* the low level enhancement sets (which often have only have 3 or 4 pieces) offered different types of set bonuses for 1, 2, 3 pieces than the higher level sets... maybe folks would be tempted to franken-slot a few more of those.... but when the low-level sets are offering both smaller set bonuses of the exact same type and lower caps on enhancement values themselves, why bother with them? As things stand now, the only sets (so more than 1 piece used) that don't scale up to level 50 that I somewhat regularly use are: 2x Steadfast Protection, because I am probably using two of those pieces anyway, and every little bit of Recovery helps. 4x Basilisk's Gaze, for Dominators, because they always have more than one Hold and the extra global Recharge is nice for 4 slots, leaving 2 more slots for nuance, 4x Cloud Senses, because I'm using the %damage piece, the powers need accuracy, and the set bonuses are IMO superior to those of Siphon Insight for using fewer slots, 2x Call to Arms, for MM where I have to put the global piece in a henchmen (as opposed to some other pet power)

Ah, the old melee cannon! Sentinels have an even higher scale for melee than Blasters do. Like I wrote, I think the rationalization falls apart when looking at other pairs of ATs.

I don't use Detonator, (Mastermind Traps secondary), so is it possible to to Detonate anything that appears in the player's pet window (e.g. Acid Mortars)? I feel like this is how it was on the test server (at one point) but I don't know if it still applies now.

"Stay the course" definitely feels like the most likely path. As noted, there would be a loud (negative) reaction to pretty much ANY change except a blanket buff to Brutes. As much as I like the (current) Energy Melee changes, my initial reaction to those was closer to "Waaah, not what *I* wanted" than not... and I don't even think I was particularly vocal about the changes. I can imagine that if new melee (and possibly armor) sets are introduced that the Brute variants would get something unique (relative to other ATs)... but even this sort of approach would inevitably lead to some comments along the lines of "Another nerf? Why can't Brutes just get what ____ got?" Even though nostalgia dominates player feels about the game, I'd like to believe that a majority of folks bitter about the Brutes' current place in the game will eventually channel those Brute feels into another AT (most likely Scrapper or Tanker, as noted above) that "does whatever, but better" in the player's mind. Then maybe a particularly strong-willed dev could rework the AT (without changing primaries/secondaries) into something folks can be excited about. Not really relevant to the Brute discussion... but as much as I love Blapping, if I wasn't already used to the damage scales being what they are I would think that the Blaster's melee is probably too high.. at least considering all the survivability tricks Blasters have access to. This is not me calling for a nerf to Blasters, the comment is made more from looking at the damage scales as they are and being able to rationalize just about any ratio between ATs... but I'm not sure any one rationalization would make sense when applied to a different pairing of ATs.

My hot take on Triage Beacon: It's a fine power to use while leveling up but less important at higher levels (certainly at 50). Keep it where it is, as it is a natural power to respec out of as a character levels up.

I realized I goofed on some of the proposed enhancement slotting: Epic Indomitable Will does not take Resistance pieces. This is not the first time I forgot this! As it takes Defense pieces, I'll have to make some adjustments.... and try to turn things to my advantage. With room for another (6th) defense power, I can opt to turn the franken-slotting of Unleash Potential into a 6xPreventive Maintenance for 8.75% global recharge. At this point I think I can sacrifice a LotG 7.5% global recharge (using a Defense slot to hold the Shield Wall global Resistance piece) and still have the margins to drop Expedient Reinforcement for Singularity. I kinda hate losing the Defense boosts from Unleash potential, so I am still thinking this trhough. I'm thinking about minimize some slotting on Singularity, leveraging HOs. EDIT: I had realized that I could skimp on Range for Wall of Force (to keep it closer to the range of Buckshot), and I could get better-ish enhancement values using an attuned 5-piece Decimation (even with a lower level cap) as the 3-piece Gladiator's Javelin in the Burst T1 attack... which allowed me to franken-slot the Singularity (and save another slot) more to my taste. The net Global recharge bonuses will scale lower; I lose a little on the Singularity's (slotted) recharge but I get it slotted with more control. I also get to keep my franken-slotting and Defense emphasis for Unleash Potential! Oh, BTW... the Singularity is showing a Boosted Soulbound Allegiance Accuracy/Recharge piece. That was just a placeholder. I'll be using a common Essence of Curare Accuracy/Recharge piece from the Hold category at level 50+5 instead. No need to burn INF on that.

I won't argue against trying to mechanically use Fury to directly increase damage in some way, except that is (to my eyes) always what its been... but in terms of gameplay I've only ever seen a Brute played the same as a Scrapper (probably 90%) or a Tanker (maybe 10%). Apologies for comparing against the original ATs from CoH, but the timeline is what it is. I don't think there is another way to play a Brute... as there is no mechanical reason to (EDIT) not push every character as fast as it can go. I don't think there *is* another way to play a Brute! I realize that it can be tempting to point at Scrappers and Stalkers, but those two AT have enough different powers in each primary that there is room for obvious variation, even if (by some arbitrarily chosen metrics an optimized-for-that-metric build of) each may be comparable. I'd prefer that Brutes got a role not filled by Scrappers or Tankers, and preserved their primaries and secondaries. I don't think it is productive to start from a place where the idea is that the AT has to be better than another AT. The Tanker buff (at least the AoE-related one that is sometimes called the 'Brute nerf') was to make Tankers better at tanking, which had the side effect of making them able to fit (and ultimately defeat) more enemies at once... again, this is a somewhat arbitrary metric. Ultimately this is just my way of saying that I'd prefer an AT that offered both a different sort of playstyle and not just "this one gets the same powers but at a different level" or "this one gets the same powers but has different caps". I'd rather not have wholesale changes to the powers or caps, even if they would have to be tweaked to accommodate whatever the Fury mechanic ends up doing.

Thanks! I'm still not 100% sure on my final slotting, as I am testing the different interactions of powers as I play. I'm a long way from perma-dom, and at least you can see from my proposed sets how I intend to get to it. If I could convince myself to NOT franken-slot Wall of Force, I'd end up with slightly more options of what sets to use where... I hate that this choice is restricting me, but I love the extra damage it brings at such a low level. Right now, I'm looking at my (current) choice to have the ATO 6-slotted in Wormhole. I absolutely love the stun effect that it applied to the grouped targets, but I'm not liking that the post-teleport scatter that sometimes occurs. So I'm considering using 5-slots of Absolute Amazement with a 6th slot for Sudden Acceleration KB->KD. This would have a sort of cascading effect on which sets I use to get five 10% Global recharge (I'd probably not use Ragnarok in Ignite) but I have to pick a good home for the ATO. Choices!