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Disclaimer: I was not present for the Torchbearer SNS in question. Perhaps some (uninformed?) players may have been under the impression that something about the Kronos Titan was causing an issue, maybe because of the specific attacks? There are (precious few) enemy mobiles that can attack and damage each other. AFAIK Babbages/Clockwork and Kronos/Malta are not among them. Other players may be working from a different premise, thinking the Kronos was kill-stealing/scaring the Babbages? There could have been an undercurrent of "Stop (whatever) and listen to Kali!" that got translated (internally, to some players) that "Anybody being public with [Broadcast] advice that runs counter to what the league wants is wrong, and deserves shunning"... there are some folks that aren't real good about filtering, and it is possible that some folks turned their own (inward-directed?) annoyance and waiting around for the "Go Go Go" signal that they turned those bad feelings outward. If I hang out in Skyway before 8pm Eastern, it isn't uncommon to see folks being a little snippy before the leagues are even forming. I want to believe this is all in fun, but it is IMO silly to ask "Has SNS started?" when it is (a) 7:30pm Eastern and (b) it is trivial to see that the Hive is still full because of an ongoing Hamidon raid. It doesn't take much to get some folks to brigade. Hopefully the folks who took the sour approach will self-select themselves away from fun times.

I want to say that each of the %damage powers, when they trigger, trigger on one of the "hold" cycles. As near as I can tell, they work similarly to Poison Trap: The %+Absorb may fire upon cast, but the %damage require a target. Since there are no targets upon immediate cast of these powers, the ToHit check (and %proc check) happen upon trigger, and AFAIK it also requires the pseudopet to not vanish to work; Seeker Drones are one of those pseudo pets that appear to never do %damage. I can't swear that I saw the %Psi, but I know I saw the other %damage when the Hold power activated, per the logs.

As far as I have observed, with regards to both event spawns and standard zone spawns, that there are some identified spawn points that are more likely to have a spawn than others, but there are no spawns points for which I have never seen a Giant Monster spawn. There are some spawn points where I can a couple of months pass between observations of a giant monster thereat. I can't attest that I've been to every identified spawn spot in every zone, but I have covered almost all of the zones hero side, most of the zones villain side, and multiple runs in gold zones. I've done this for regular zone giant monsters (so mostly blue) and holiday events in the red and gold zones.

The complete absurdity of being upset that "someone brought a Kronos Titan", as far as I am concerned, is that had that player/team brought another Babbage the complainers likely would have squealed with delight.

I did some set-swapping to boost the hold values, at the cost of some recharge. I am missing the +Absorb (may add it back, may not) but I more appreciate seeing the critters be held for the duration than the 70 - 100 points of random %proc damage.

Don't forget the certain pets which inherent any boosts the player has while summoning them! So much variety! I have both Masterminds and a Crabbermind. I prefer Masterminds. This is not to say that Crabberminds perform poorly, its more that I don't think the pets (and I went for the Patron Spider pet) are as reliable for the Crabbermind... obviously the lack of direct controls plays into this, but for the most part I never feel like I'm getting that much performance from the Spiders. It is a nice variation to have a Crabbermind be the big bad, whereas my MMs the henchmen end up being the big bad.

I think it is demonstrated (by the later dive into Scrappers, immediately above) that there is a bit of cursory post hoc rationalization possible, for whatever point a person chooses to make on this relative comparison... and I write this not to make specific accusation about rationalizations, but to point out that the Brute/Scrapper/Tanker times are so close and so short which leads to both peculiar variations AND a situation where "small denominators" won't yield particularly informative results. Ston deserves a lot of credit for the efforts to transparently benchmark something(s). I don't think there is (or was) much value in nit-picking it. I feel that way because those times all look to be so short that the differences are (to my POV) essentially trivial. Also: I don't think this guy (points to self) would reliably be able to maintain the sort of attention necessary to keyboard-punch to sustain that sort of effort, even for a single Trapdoor type mission, or back-to-back Pylons... with-or-without travel times, chatter with friends, whatever. This need for a more-constant sort of engagement with the game via Fury is what I was referring to in my first post in this thread, before I was told using slightly different words to STFU and get out of the forum. IIRC, Ston was trying to come up with a new benchmark to replace Trapdoor, primarily because of the 2024 changes to the Council. (This came up in my search-fu trying to find the source of the histograms shown earlier in the thread). I vaguely recall that the original effort was for Ston to achieve the fastest times while trying to balance the different ATs. I'm not going to deep dive into the results or methodology, but I will look at the data when folks point to it as "proof" of something. Ultimately I think it proves that for certain 2023 content, Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers can yield nearly identical completion times.

I smell what your cooking, but that's more a prima facie argument about a the relative performance of specific set, and less about comparing the different ATs. The reported Pylon times for Fiery Melee for a Brute is 1m 40sec, for a Tanker 2m 8 sec. That is a difference of 28 seconds or 28% longer for a Tanker. (Done without a calculator!)

I'm not a hater, but I love fighting the Freedom Phalanx. The parts of the Freedom Phalanx lore that sat wrong with me: Statesman: As originally described, at launch, this was an Invulnerability Tanker. One that could move (without being rooted) and had ranged attacks! Unfair dude! Positron: I think he's had at least two costume changes since launch. The original over-pattern looked a little goofy, but it looked goof on players too! I was more peeved by the lore change that allowed him to remove his helmet... ultimately no big deal, but helmed players can't do that, and it felt more ego-stroking. In canon, Positron's role (or not) with the Well of the Furies seems weird at least to me. Manticore: The guy's role in the Shining Stars arc always seems off. It feels something like a mix of an absentee father as well as not really being present when things go pear-shaped, especially considering the alignment missions. I'm not a great fan of Longbow (in lore), so whatever he's doing with Longbow/Wyvern gets him tainted by association. I kinda feel like the whole Sister Psyche drama was role-playing something I didn't really want to watch. Who Will Die (minor spoilers): It's not like these guys show up to help. The Task Forces that many of them issue can also make me feel like I'm being their lackey. On Red Side, some of them seem much more human (Synapse, anyway).

I am not sure how one can claim the suckiness of Brutes is demonstrated by taking on average 7 seconds longer than Scrappers' or Tankers' (average 5 min 10 sec, for similar attack sets) time to complete (a 2023 version of) Trapdoor, pre nuCouncil.

I have an Earth/Cold build I'm pretty happy with: It's a great teammate, not too flimsy (without trying to be non-flimsy), and while DPS is so-so, it isn't my worst character to solo. I'm completely fine with the placed-AoE powers, although some maps mess with my macros. The one power I have, that seems like a bit of a head-scratcher is Volcanic Gasses. On most characters, I really like the AoE Holds, and I expected this to be somewhat similar. After making decisions on power choices and enhancement sets elsewhere, I landed on this slotting: Gladiator's Net Accuracy/Hold (50+5) Gladiator's Net Accuracy/Recharge (50+5) Gladiator's Net %Damage (Lethal) Superior Will of the Controller Recharge/%Damage (Psi) Superior Entomb Recharge/%+Absorb Unbreakable Constraint %Damage (Smashing) Which is a sort of typical long-Recharge AoE %proc-bomb, albeit with Recharge values deeper in the ED territory than is typical for me. On other AoE Holds, slotting like this adds reliable AoE damage and a good bit of control. It procs just fine, even with a pseudo-pet. The +Absorb is only on cast (this is my expectation, but it's hard to witness this if it also happens later), and the combat log shows the %damage hitting, but somewhat less than if there were no pseudo-pet effects (as expected), but not as poorly as what I've seen from other pseudo-pets. Where the head-scratching comes in: The chaining of consecutive, short-duration holds seems to make this a pretty bad Hold, even with the inherent (1.4) Accuracy of the pseudo-pet. Ultimately the AoE for the potential %damage is not great, and IIRC the target cap is also small (I think 5?)... So.... was my initial thinking to try to leverage %damage wrong on this power? I'm starting to wonder if I should be thinking of this more as a single-target hold that sometimes can catch more than one critter, provided I lean harder into the hold than just the 33% I currently have slotted.

It's ok to not reply to every one of my posts, within minutes, especially if you are going to keep moving goalposts. I thought you were the one asking for Brutes to be "better at surviving"? The Brute ATO set enhancement bonuses for 2-or-3 slotting are directly tied to improving Brute's having more HP, keeping them, recovering them, and damage. Accuracy from set bonuses is nice, but half of all enhancements in the ATO sets already boost Accuracy (one by 33%, two by 26%). The same of course can be written about Damage, but getting close to the damage caps and staying there is kinda the whole point of a Brute's offense.

Brutes have a higher base and max Health than Scrappers, something like 12% at base and 33% more at cap.

I don't disagree about how the %proc effects fall into tiers, but don't undersell the set bonuses that come from 2-slotting or 3-slotting ATOs. Brutes can get multiple Damage/Health Boosts for 2-slotting, and (some) Defenses or Regeneration from 3-slotting. Those line up pretty directly with what many players want Brutes to do. The Scrapper/Stalker/Tanker ATO bonuses for 2-or-3 slotting are much more indirectly tied to improving performance IMO, YMMV.

I definitely think that there are "worse" ATO %procs. The Brute's Fury-bonus proc is probably one of the worst performing game effects that should perform better than it does... see also the VEAT inherents. As an aside, the ATO %procs are all tied to a "pure Recharge" component, so for certain ATs I feel that looking at the 2-piece set bonuses and seeing how those can help an AT, because a Recharge piece on a long-baseline-recharge tied with a single other ATO piece from the same set often looks (to me) like a reasonable choice, if that power was going to be franken-slotted anyway. Mileage varies of course!

There are so many ways to quickly get to most contacts in these sort of FedEx talky missions, I simply don't see the need for this. Writing for myself, I will use LRT, SG base portal, Ouroboros, Tunnel, Submarines/Choppers/Ferries/Trains... In addition to using the Crystals, LFG queue when possible. It also helps to know the zone geometries.

It is not lost on me that the following is exactly the sort of argument that is used to explain why men should always be paid more than women for the same job, because historically men have been paid more than women.

Meanwhile Kheldians are in a far worse position than Brutes. It is silly IMO to keep pointing to "evidence" that some other AT now performs better than Brutes that there is some great injustice that needs to be corrected. Try comparing Kheldian solo performance against a Brutes solo performance in something like a Penny Yin TF if you want to witness a real discrepancy in times. I guarantee the difference in times won't be measured on the order of 20 seconds.

AFAIK Hasten does not require any other picks from the Speed pool.

I think were are going to disagree about this, although I go out of my way to avoid SNS league activity and I don't get worked up about it. Consider that another area of the game that offer tremendous rewards for league-level effort (Hamidon raids and IIRC ISMR) have actual player caps, presumably to make the game experience work better (i.e. play lag-free). I have seen chatter about "addressing leaching", but that would be impossible to prove. SNS is intended to set up a circumstance where much more than one full leagues worth of players (or at least, characters) are present in a zone in a way that would not be tolerated for Hamidon raids.

This threads needs a Titus Pullo reference like it needs a hole in its head!

ToT rewards are uneven. Setting aside the observable issue that it is very likely that some members of a ToT league probably don't have powers, or powers slotted, to significantly contribute to earning rewards... if the ToT league is interrupting ToT to fight Giant Monsters, the Giant Monsters may give merits, but the reward drops are otherwise terrible when compared to mass arrests(*1). Specific to ToT XP, it's the Elite Bosses that give beaucoup XP, and those are the ones least likely to be defeated if the league zips off to fight a Giant Monster. (*1) This discrepancy in XP is one of the reasons why I shake my head at players who hunt for Giant Monsters accompanied by level-less mobiles. I've seen players desperate to fight something like a Paladin but won't bother with the clocks. Defeating all those clocks is not just more XP, but that many more rolls of the rewards table.

Now, about the specific suggestion. I wouldn't change the "schedule" of Fear or Threat. Primarily, I don't see an issue with them as is. Secondarily, I don't want to think of all the downstream changes (particularly with Threat) that would have to be studied! I'm 100% in favor of either a PVP or Very Rare enhancement set for both Threat and Fear. I can imagine why PVP sets for them were never considered/made, as PVP play can get very triggering for some folks, especially when it (historically) involves Taunts and Controls. (We have nothing to Fear but) Fear itself has a complicated game history. But I digress. What I want from PVP (or Very Rare) Fear/Threat sets are pieces which can enhance multiple attributes that don't exist otherwise in the game (outside of Hami-O or D-Sync). Specifically: Threat / Accuracy, because not all threat powers are auto-hit Endurance / Threat, because there are threat powers that are toggles Fear / Accuracy, because there is only the one piece in Nightmare Fear / Recharge, because it doesn't exist at all in set form Also, I'd really like a %Proc (for Fear, but I can see the case for Threat) that acts like %Confuse in Coercive Persuasion. That %proc makes single-target Confuses worthwhile in xN content, so the same thinking should apply to single-target Fears/Threats, making them more useful in more content. If a hypothetical %proc was just %damage, I suppose that would be similarly well-received.