Onlyasandwich

It is an amazing power, though of course subject to the weirdness of pet AI. It has an aoe heal. It spams sort of noticeable aoe damage with a root. It has a hold that will stack with any holds you have. It has the strongest tohit debuff in the game attached to it as a passive pbaoe aura. On top of that, it casts its own darkest night as well! Double triple quadruple tohit debuffs. -Damage on top for a treat. You'll very commonly see it 5 slotted with siphon insight to max out tohit debuff and achieve some solid accuracy. Final slot goes to Cloud senses proc, as it applies to almost everything our cloudy friend can do, even the heal. The only thing that won't proc it is the hold. You might consider another tohit set perhaps if you don't care about S/L defense, but achieving some accuracy in the mix is important, so accurate tohit debuff RECIPES are pretty optimal overall. Whatever you do, make sure there are at least six of them. 😄

It's also a great way to pick up some S/L and/or recharge bonuses - strong sets all around.

It's objectively much more powerful now. Some people don't like the refocus of what powers do what debuffs, but the overall package is much stronger in every way. Ha, whoops! They were talking about Blasters. : ) Indeed, Blaster TA received a bit of a nerf, but not terrible.

Agreed! These days, my preference is for characters either with a taunt aura, or some type of extreme slow or hard lockdown for this very reason. My poor little Claws/Fire Scrapper just runs up ready to unleash, but luits and above end up bolting with a sliver of health before I can cleanly finish the job.

It's well worth the add. It has good soft control in its fear effect, and does really solid damage, especially with the procs in play. The set bonuses are strong as well for the slot investment. I wouldn't recommend skipping Umbra beast unless it was just super outside of theme for a character, or if you very much dislike pets for whatever reason.

Well I learn new things every day! Thank you for clarifying, Bopper.

A few exceptions I would mention to @Bopper's wisdom and what others mentioned: If the power is a level 47 or especially 49 pick, you may as well put a 50 non-attuned IO in there and +5 it, as exemplaring won't be super relevant for scaling the set bonuses for these powers. I was corrected on this - you retain set bonuses even for powers above your exemplar range. Go ahead and +5 any regular old non set IOs across the board, of course. If the set bonus is sort of marginal to begin with, but you might benefit from some extra enhancement push, I would +5. Then you get stronger enhancement in the power, and a happy little bonus at high level play. An example of this might be a small regen bonus. Feel free to +5 any set IOs that you aren't actually using as a set, but instead using to frankenslot max enhancement value. The only extra weirdness I can think of would come to dedicated PVPers. As I understand, they choose certain levels to set their IOs at and then plus them out at that lower level to ensure the highest possible enhancement value for that range, so they can get that extra edge over opponents at the same level. There are extra shenanigans with Quad attribute enhancers, which scale down more effectively, as their smaller values in each attribute don't get cut down at all by examplaring because they are below a certain threshold value.

I recommend a hearty stew. Umbra beast can have a bit of an oily, metallic undertone. Slow cooking it along with 6 recipes worth of ingredients will help to mitigate this overwhelming flavor, and leaves a pleasantly mellow earthy base that pairs well with winter tubers or a nice pile of beans. Really though, it's a good power other than the annoying howling, which I have grown to find charming. I would say it's one of the better control set pets overall. Personally, I 4 slot Expedient enforcement (no resist proc), Soulbound Buildup, and Cloud senses proc. This maximizes overall damage, and gives you the best return on proc power. Fear procs get marginal return, as this is not a heavy part of the beast's rotation.

Just think of them like set bonuses that activate a power centered around your MM.

It's basically instant. You can definitely queue up a melee power behind CT on a runner and it will activate as long as you hit it right after CT.

Gravity doms are super fun! Would you be able to provide the mids export? This would make it much easier to provide feedback in context. Do you have any particular goals in mind with this build? Are there situations with which you struggle now, or where you would like to especially excel?

Personally, it would actually be my Stone/Ice tank. This isn't so much due to this being a particularly powerful combo (it's fine), but more because I am really satisfied with the theme of the character and how I have achieved it. This is an ungranite build. If I were just looking at the powers themselves and how satisfying they are to use, I'd have to say Ice/Stone. Stone is so chunky and satisfying, and Ice has a lot of neat tricks. I love all of my other tanks as well, and I'm sure this answer will be different depending on the week and my mood. : )

They're talking about DDR rather than DR. This is resistance to defense debuffs, which would allow forcefield to remain relevant even against heavy defense debuffs.

I recommend any flavor of gravity with enflame! You've probably seen the threads lately. My personal flavor is grav/energy, but other secondaries would work great. Teleporting a flaming singularity that Hoovers everything up into a tight ball is the most powerful I have felt on a character in a while. I do love the idea of stacking passive confuses too! I may tangle with my own iteration of this build

I always proc out my follow-up, and the return on doing so is even better on Tankers than for Scrappers. I am using it at every opportunity, so anything I can add here gets a lot of mileage. Follow-up actually has pretty desirable stats for procability. As others have mentioned in this thread, even modest global +recharge and Hasten is going to get you double stacked anyhow. Personally, I like a couple Winter IOs for baseline dam/acc/end plus a nice slow resist bonus, three damage procs, and then whatever. The whatever could be a Dam/End, or even nothing. The procs increase output by ~50% baseline compared to just max damage enhanced follow-up. If you double down on local recharge for follow-up, you are not only limiting the room for procs, but also taking up more animation time in your attack chain with a lower value power, as you are using follow-up more often and it is weaker than it could be. In any case, traditional slotting does work fine, but there is nice optimization to be had here. I don't heavily proc other claws powers other than maybe an extra damage proc if there's room.

I like a couple of the winter iOs to establish solid acc/dam/end along with a handy recharge debuff resist set bonus, and then fill the rest with procs.

Repulsion bomb has been natively knockdown with no IO needed for a good long while I like the idea of a stun on Force Bolt, but it would look a bit silly for it to knock something up in the air.

The -regen component of EM pulse only lasts for 15 seconds, and can't be enhanced to last longer. I would also examine duration in game for ESD, as Mids indicates the -regen lasts much shorter than 30 seconds here as well. I don't have a live character with which to check this myself.

I'm not going to argue that ungranite Stone is top tier, but it can be built very well, and compared to invuln, can cover its psi defenses without sacrificing other IO slotting opportunities. It also gives more thematic options for people who don't want to be a silly looking rock monster.

These are solid powers for their hold/disorient capabilities, but not worth picking for robot damage. I'm not sure how much is too much regen to be honest, but it would be hard to rely on either of these powers overmuch for this facet, as they both have very short durations compared to recharge time, so won't be nearly as impactful as an effect you can maintain permanently like Lingering Radiation. The biggest problem with ESD in my view is that you have to invest in the lackluster charge mastery pool to get there.

I can definitely appreciate that one! My /beam Defender is Traps/Beam. I like cutting beam for when I solo, which I can do capably on this character. On fast-moving teams, I prefer to simply open with cutting or overcharge, and then switch to my boss burning chain. I don't think it's crazy-time to skip cutting beam if you are always on teams that vaporize minions instantly, but in my experience there are plenty of situations where it provides strong value. Picking up repulsion bomb, you may well find even less use for the medicine pool! Its grab-bag of control effects is reasonably effective. It's not a set-definer, but it feels good and does good work. Like @PeregrineFalcon, I'm a fan of Force Bolt as well myself. I realize that this one is more to taste, so wouldn't fault you for skipping it. It is extra-special useful at lower levels when knocking a boss down/away is more important. A further element to consider regarding medicine: The ATO heal and shield procs are both very powerful, and proc super often when dropped in a moderate recharge power like a snipe or heavy hitter blast. Personally, I like to split up Superior vigilant assault into threes, with the less recharge intensive half of the enhancements in my Snipe along with the Absorb ATO proc. From there I drop extra procs to taste to maximize damage. The set bonuses for Defender's bastion are really nice, I admit, but you might consider splitting out the heal ATO proc here to use solo in lancer, along with some baseline thunderstrikes and maybe a proc or two to round it out. The remaining five bastion IOs can still bring their ranged defense bonus to the table in another power like cutting beam or even single shot. Ideally something that cares less about procability. You lose the 10% recharge from the 6 slot, but gain that back anyhow by splitting the other ATO set into 3's. The end goal here is to have Both ATO procs rolling at a high percentage in your most often used attacks. Lancer and Penetrating Ray are my personal picks for this, as I want to be using both on cooldown. With this particular proccing strategy, you may find that the amount of healing and absorb you get from the ATO procs more than makes up for what you lose in medicine. As an added bonus, you don't have to spend any animation time on using them! For reference, here's a FF/Energy build I've been working on. You'll see some of these concepts at play. I found I had a lot of slot freedom here, so actually ended up muling out most of Bastion in Force bolt for the defense bonus. I could ramp damage in my ST chain a bit more per hit, but am rolling with FFback maximization.

I hope you are enjoying your bubbler! A few observations: I'm not sure of the logic behind skipping penetrating ray. This is your best single target attack, regardless of what range you use it. You mentioned that cutting beam is hard to use - may I ask what you found awkward? It is a pretty standard cone attack, and your only aoe outside the nuke. Even ignoring the special mechanic, cutting beam is worth using on its own. How much do you actually find yourself using the medicine pool? You have very heavily invested in it here, at the expense of the above attacks. You are providing amazing defense to your team already without. Repulsion Bomb is actually quite a nice little power. It does modest damage, takes a good number of procs to do even more, and knocks down by default with no need for KD proc. The disorient is a happy bonus. What goals are you seeking to achieve with this build? It looks like one focus is ranged/aoe defense with hover to keep melee irrelevant, and you have reasonably achieved this. Are you intentionally limiting yourself to a budget-minded build? I certainly understand if so, but you could achieve these goals much more efficiently if not. With a shift away from medicine pool and opening up more expensive sets, you could likely achieve these same goals, but allow much more room to proc out your attacks. This would make an enormous difference in damage, especially if you pick up the snipe as well.

A while back I was under the same assumption. I'm not really sure where it came from! Maybe because power pool limits would typically demand too much sacrifice in most builds for stacking hover and CJ, so I never really considered that they might stack. Or maybe it was just intuitive (though wrong of course) that they would be mutually exclusive in the same way as travel powers.

Hover is far superior for precision control in flight, though combat jumping does remove a little of the slipperiness from flight powers. I would vote hover for sure. You can also use jump pack for a speed boost when needed so slotting hover for speed is less necessary.

Thank you for clarifying the reason it doesn't work. I did get that it would only last for 10 seconds on a toggle. The plan was to use it as a sort of quick defense boost to softcap when needed in a tight spot, but we'll have to do without I suppose! I wonder if they excluded these toggles for balance reasons, or some coding limitation that would otherwise force power boost type effects to enhance the damage resist alongside defense, even if power boost isn't flagged to enhance resist to begin with. Oh well! Who needs softcap when you have perma-dom, right?