Two_Dollar_Bill

I suspect that the proc might actually damage the mobs when it appears and taunts. It should be simple enough to test since the psi damage numbers will appear before the bomb does its primary damage. Even so, you will get far more damage in the end if you just slot Omega Maneuver like an attack... accuracy, damage and recharge.
The bomb's taunt is quite weak and easily eclipsed by any sort of attack (especially your own pets) and I would not bother to enhance it. It's actually more effective to include the Damage/Range IO from Positron's Blast so that you can stand a little further away when you plant it.

In one of these threads I explained that I wanted to play a Tanker but always deleted my tanks because I found their steady diet of melee attacks limiting and boring. I designed my Crab Spider to be a non-boring Tanker. He's tough and has melee attacks, but can also solve problems with ranged combat and pets.
You can design a Bane to do a variety of things, but I would design my own Bane as a non-boring Stalker. You can still play in the usual Stalker manner but you have so many other options that Stalkers lack.

I came to CoH after years of playing "healers" in other MMOs, and that experience affected how I play Empathy. My Empath has Fly running 100% of the time, largely for thematic reasons. He has a +Stealth IO that makes him less likely to attract random aggro, and he hangs back or above the team. Pretty-much all attacks, heals and buffs are slotted with a Range IO. Once battle is joined I use my mouse to target and I keep one hand on the hotbar 1, 2 and 3 keys. I tend to be stationary during combat but long range ensures that I can manage a large area. If someone needs a heal and I'm not within range, I punch F to auto-follow until the heal goes off.

Macros work well for buffs, but I find that I must keep my finger on Heal Other at all times, or I may miss that emergency heal.
Heal other is Button #1 on my hotbar, with my attacks occupying 2, 3, 4 and 5.

The combination of long range heals, single-target attacks and stealth means that I can use Absorb Pain freely without getting killed, and I can use it a lot, especially on a team without a strong tank to control aggro. Multiple team memebers may be getting hurt and need heals simultaneously, and there is no substitute for a second heal.

I don't really have any tricks for tracking buffs. I keep Fortitude on whoever I have to keep healing, and Adrenal Boost on the guy who obviously isn't slotted for good endurance efficiency. Between fights I spam Clear Mind on the squishies. Modern teams of 50s seldom need the auras and I rarely implore the team to "Gather for RA".

Concerning procs in toggles, my Crab does have Gaussian's slotted in a toggle and it does fire all by itself without restarting the power. I have not done the math, but Paragon Wiki says that a proc in a toggle power checks every 10 seconds to see if it goes off. So, in the case of a 5% proc like Gaussian's, it takes an average of 3 minutes, 20 seconds to fire. That seems about right based on watching my own proc messages scroll by when I'm standing around outside of combat. Getting a 5.25 second buff every 200 seconds doesn't seem all that great, but it's still more frequently than you would get it by hitting Aim as fast as it recharges.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Proc#Procs

Kick w/ Force Feedback... using that proc only hurts in the sense that it's worth money and you are robbing yourself of those assets. If your character's objective is to avoid melee combat at all times, and you wouldn't reach for Kick in a melee emergency anyway, it's never going to be used. I'd personally rather spend my infamy on something I will use.

I always advise against slotting Suppression with the Achilles' Heel proc. Suppression is for clearing away the riff raff... the minions that don't have enough damage resistance to worry about anyway. If you want Suppression to be the best attack it can be, give it 5 slots of Positron's Blast and a recharge IO. The Achilles' Heel proc is only really useful against the biggest and nastiest targets (Arch Villains, etc.) and only if you can spam it at high speed in hopes of getting that 20%. If you use the proc at all, put it in Channelgun.

I check the Soldiers of Arachnos forum quite frequently, but I never check the Build Workshop. It's just cluttered with too many builds that I have no opinions on. I only noticed this post because your bump came up on the global New Posts list.

So, what is your attack chain? I think you've got too many attacks here, and some of them are just mules for IO sets. I think it's best to spend your IO slots on powers you'll actually use. You've even got a proc in Kick that's completely useless unless you actually close to melee range and kick people, a lot.
After firing off some combination of your FIVE AoE attacks (Arctic Breath, Wide Area Web Grenade, Suppression, Frag Grenade, Venom Grenade) will you really be needing Spirit Shark, Channelgun AND Longfang to pick off the survivors? I would dump some of your least favorite powers and use the enhancement slots to improve the really good powers. I certainly would not 6-slot Channelgun while leaving venom Grenade and Suppression short. Suppression will give you a 6.25% recharge bonus with one more slot of Positron's Blast.

I would take Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control out of Aim and put it in Tactical Training: Leadership. Slotting Aim for To-Hit has little effect anyway since you already have a 95% chance to hit virtually everything in the game. You want Gaussian's proc in a continuous toggle so it can fire as much as possible, and the To-Hit bonuses from TT: Leadership will benefit the whole team.

Call Reinforcements... I would sell the purples or give them to a character whose pets are really important. Take a couple of slots from one of those unused attacks and 4-slot with Expedient Reinforcements. They will recharge faster just due to enhancements and give you a global 6.25% recharge bonus.

Does your hover Crab intend to keep Hover on all the time? I have a couple of characters that hover for thematic reasons and I always add flight speed IOs so they don't always lag behind the team.

I have an Assault Rifle / Sonic Resonance Corruptor. Most of the time I don't use Repulsion Field at all, but it's easy on enhancement slots and I have no plans to respec out of it. It's conditional but not useless.

Sometimes there's just someone on the team who needs all the help he can get to stay alive... like the free player with the new Fire Blaster. There are also some characters that just really don't want to be in melee combat, like the Kheldian who only seems to play in Nova form. For these people, it's a very useful buff.

When soloing against melee types I do cast it on my Power Drone Pet and stand behind it. It can be killed by AoE attacks, but it has no crazy AI to deal with.

I think it's a viable build, but it's FAR more expensive than it needs to be, and ties up a lot of slots on mule powers that you won't use.

You really don't need three sets of Kinetic Combat when you can soft cap all of your positional defenses using cheaper sets.

Cytoskeleton Exposures are also crazy expensive and you don't need them. Luck of the Gambler IOs may not be as efficient as Hami-O's but they will get the job done and give you set bonuses to boot. Extra hit points are always welcome.

You could make the case that more damage resistance is always good, but the main advantage of both of the "Armor" powers is status resistance. Wolf Spider Armor is really redundant and gives you a trivial amount of resistance for the enhancement slots you are investing.

I would not skip Suppression. It's your biggest and best AoE attack, and can get the attention of a large number of victims so they run in close for Frenzy.
I'm not sure I would give up Tactical Training: Leadership either. All of the Soldier versions of the Leadership pool powers are superior to the original versions and well worth having, for the sake of your team if not yourself.

I think you have way too many attack powers slotted up to make an attack chain. Things like Boxing and Mace Blast are just mule powers that will never be used. I think if you reorganized your IO sets to soft-cap your positional defenses you could put those power choices and enhancement slots to good use on powers you will really use.

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This is what I'm currently pondering for my melee Crab's next respec. It has a lot of odd quality of life features that most people won't care about, but you can see that it soft-caps all positional defenses without using Combat Jumping and it manages 50% smashing and lethal resistance without Wolf Spider Armor. 86% global recharge is fast enough that I don't need Hasten.

It is possible to make your Crab into a very competent melee character, but soft-capping your melee defense requires IO sets. So, it's mostly something that a Crab matures into.
Likewise, you can build a Master Crab who leads his horde of mechanical spiders into battle... starting in the late 30's.
When you are low level and building on the cheap, ranged AoE attacks are the way to go. You'll want Suppression and Venom Grenade backed up by whatever you like. Combat Training: Defensive is important for avoiding ranged attacks. Other than that, I advise you to experiment.

One of the things that frustrated me when coming up with an IO spec for my Crab was having to slot Positron's Blast in everything. With pets factored in you could have about 10 of those 6.25% recharge bonuses. I ended up taking melee attacks instead. Obliteration is a great set for Arm Lash and Frenzy. I would avoid taking perfectly good damage-dealing powers and slotting them for debuff or knockback. Better to violate the Rule of Five than to gimp one of your major damage dealing powers.

Suppression is your biggest and best room sweeper for removing all the minions from the area. You don't need to debuff their defense by an extra 2.51% at a cost of half the power's damage output. I would slot it with 5 Positron's Blast and 1 Recharge IO for maximum carnage.

If you want an enhanced debuff capability, Shield Breaker will work just fine in Channelgun where you can use it to debuff the Elite Bosses and Arch Villains without sacrificing a lot of your AoE damage. You are way over soft-cap for ranged defense so you can lose a copy of Thunderstrike without feeling it. Actually, the full set of Shield Breaker would add to your melee defense which is currently lacking.

Frag Grenade is one of those powers I skipped when I embraced melee. I feel the scattering from knockback makes my other AoE attacks less effective. If I were using Frag Grenade, I would slot it for damage, as above.

The Achilles' Heel proc is useful for characters that cannot naturally debuff damage resistance, but you have Venom Grenade which delivers the same debuff 100% of the time.
The Kismet Accuracy IO would be great if so many IO sets didn't already come with accuracy bonuses built in. A character with decent IO sets should already have a 95% chance to hit virtually everything in the game without popping any yellow inspirations.

You actually have more then enough ranged attacks to make a continuous attack chain, even without Hasten. You might consider dropping one of the single-target filler attacks altogether.

Omega Maneuver.... It's a fun power and it's so rarely seen that people often ask what the heck that big red explody thing was. The big problem with Omega Maneuver is not the 6 minute recharge time, it's the time between when you summon it and when it goes off. A modern team can roll through a spawn so fast that all potential targets are completely dead or scattered by the time OM goes off. Even if you are solo, the taunt is weak and you have to get very close to aggro range yourself to summon it. If you get a little too close, or if you have pets in tow, half the targets of your OM are liable to ignore it and come right at you. In any case, it is most useful as a damage dealing power and not as the world's slowest and most cumbersome crowd control power.

Your ranged defense is much higher than it strictly needs to be, and your melee and AoE are below soft cap.
Tactical Training: Maneuvers is by far the best defense power you've got and it will reward you the most when you slot it for defense. At the very least it deserves one more slot for the pure defense IO from LotG.
Weave comes in a distant second but it's still worth slotting until ED starts to apply.

Melee Crabs are certainly not new. A major benefit of VEATS (and HEATs) has always been that you could design them to work in a variety of different modes. There is no "correct" way to play your Crab. Decent melee Crabs are uncommon, but I have encountered a couple of them on Justice.

My Crab did have pets for a long time, but when I started doing a lot of incarnate trials, they just couldn't cut it. They were vaporized so fast that they contributed basically nothing. It was far more effective to take Tough and Weave and stomp fearlessly down the hallways of the Lambda Sector, or bathe in the radiation pulses of Keyes Island with all my capabilities intact.

A couple of previous tank Crab threads:

Finally getting around to a " Tank " crab build need help
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=254576

Making a Tanker Crab
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=271340

My Crab is the melee, no-pets variety. He cycles Slice, Arm Lash, Shatter Armor and Venom Grenade.

My Crab has been 50 for a long time and he's a badgeaholic. Nothing additional has ever been unlocked for that costume slot. At least for Crabs, you have one minor alternate version of most things available, and that's it.

I have two level 50 Defenders and their secondary power sets are critical to how they play.

My Empathy/Energy Blast Defender often finds himself in "Corruptor Mode" acting as a DPS character. Some teams just don't need healing, and his choice of secondary set really determines how he plays. I actually chose Energy Blast originally so that he could hammer one opponent with single-target attacks and avoid mass aggro that would distract from healing and buffing. If I had chosen Fire Blast he'd be a VERY different character.

My Dark Miasma/Dark Blast Defender uses both his power sets together. For example, the cone attacks in Dark Blast have great synergy with the cone fear in Dark Miasma and they should all be used together in the same attack chain. The stun from Howling Twilight stacks with the stun from Dark Pit.

I have never really liked Blaster secondaries, but some of them have genuinely useful powers. I mean, why would a Blaster refuse to take Build Up?

Crab Spider:

Although they can have very respectable damage resistance, the secret of Crab Spider survival is soft-capped positional defenses. At the very least, I recommend you cap ranged defense. I would drop Wolf Spider Armor and Combat Training: Offensive in favor of Weave and Maneuvers. Alternately, you could configure your set bonuses to favor ranged defense, using Thunderstrike, all 6 slots of Expedient Reinforcement, etc.

Have you used Afterburner yet? There is no point in slotting it for endurance cost reduction since you cannot attack while it is toggled on. What it does do is raise your flight speed cap, and it needs to be slotted for that purpose. I have a Defender with Afterburner and I think 1 Flight IO in Fly and 2 in Afterburner is the way to go.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=273237

Slot the most expensive toggles for endurance cost reduction first. For example, you have Tactical Training: Assault slotted with two End cost reduction IOs but the far more draining Tough is barely slotted for end cost reduction at all. Tough should really get that extra slot of end cost reduction.

People might argue that it's impossible to be "too accurate" but I do think your build has too many resources invested in it. My own Crab has Tactical Training: Leadership and only four +9% Accuracy set bonuses. He has a 95% chance to hit virtually everything in the game. Your build has SIX of the +9 Accuracy bonuses, Combat Training: Offensive, Aim five-slotted with a +Acc set, and a Kismet +6% To-Hit IO. The vast majority of the time, all that extra accuracy will be completely wasted.

Your build is not very tight with regards to the "Rule of Five". As a ranged Crab, you are pretty-much doomed to slot Positron's Blast in half your attacks, so you have four copies of some common bonuses right there (9% Accuracy, 2.5% recovery and 6.25% recharge). It would be best to avoid piling on more sets that have the same bonuses. For example, Call to Arms has both the Recovery and Recharge bonuses. In particular, you are not getting any set bonuses from the two Impervium Armor in Tough or the two Miracle in Health.

My first three City of Heroes characters were Tankers, but I really found the melee combat rather limited and boring. I found that other archetypes with buffs, pets, ranged attacks, etc. were just a lot more fun. However, many years later, I discovered that a Crab Spider is really what I was looking for along along... a non-boring Tank. Admittedly, my Crab will not outperform an actual Tanker or Brute in melee, but you get a lot of other fun abilities that more than make up for it, IMO.
As to why they are not more common... I personally like hybrid characters with a lot of varied capabilities, but for people who want to achieve perfection in a single area (often DPS, but could be lockdown, survivability or even pets) there are specialists that are more capable than VEATs.

After doing some experimentation with different IOs, I came to the same conclusion as Rigel Kent. 1 IO in Fly and 2 in Afterburner is the best bang for your buck you can get. You can squeeze a little more flight cap out of Afterburner, but ED eats most of it.

I did a little experiment last night to see if rocket boots actually work the way I thought they did, and they don't. That is, the rockets don't animate when you super jump. I guess some other rationalization will have to be found for anyone bothered by the physics.

Still, having tried both games' super jumps, I would respec out of it if we had to use the version that appears in "the other game".

If "support" involves locking down foes while casting obvious buffs on your allies, then I think Controllers are the way to go. You could even go back to Grav/Emp with a spec that emphasizes control instead of healing/buffing.

If "support" can be running two sets of Leadership and firing off Vengeance every time a teammate falters, while you run around blasting and stabbing things, then I recommend VEATs (Villain Epic ArcheTypes).

I have used super jump in "the other game" and while the physics are far more realistic, I'll take the CoH version as a movement power any day. If the bizarre physics bother you, I recommend rocket boots to explain your abnormal maneuverability.

Hasten bugs me for the same reason the ice shields do. I've had a lot of interesting character and costume concepts, but none of them have ever included glowy bubbly yellow hands. I use Hasten only grudgingly on characters that desperately need recharge (Ill/Emp Controller, Warshade). Those power sets with long animation times (Kinetic Melee, Crab Spiders) work great without Hasten, BTW.

I would like to go on record as the only person in City of Heroes that likes Sonic Repulsion. When soloing against melee types, I can cast it on my Power Drone Pet and then stand behind it. On a team I can use it as a brief emergency power to take the heat off a teammate that's in trouble. It's a situational power but it requires little or no slotting, and enhancement slots are a more precious commodity than powers in most of my builds. Disclaimer: I also like Repel and Repulsion Field.

Offensive phase shift powers, on the other hand, are in a whole different class of badness. Even during an earlier era when City of Heroes was more challenging and tactical, powers like Black Hole and Dimension Shift were pretty questionable. Ordinary crowd control was always a better option. In today's fast steam-roller style of play, using these powers in PvE is basically griefing.

My own Crab is very durable but not really a "tank" because he lacks taunt. More often than not, I simply cannot pull an AV off of a Scrapper. Of course my Venom Grenade is slotted with regular old Positron's Blast, not Ragnarok, which may be a factor.

In general I would say that your proposed build is more Scrapper than Tank. All those expensive purple sets add DPS but don't do anything for your defenses. If you've read all about soft-capping, then you know... being just a few points under soft-cap makes you hugely more vulnerable to getting hit.
On my own build I went well over soft cap, especially for melee. Those extra points may be wasted in many cases, but when something starts debuffing your defenses, it helps to postpone the cascading failure.

In addition to Linea Alba's suggestions above, I would also add:
- Hitting Serum before you take damage can save you from some of those one-shot scenarios, at least for 90 seconds. My Crab has over 2000 hit points while Serum is going.
- Diamagnetic Interface. That to-hit debuff makes your defenses even better.

If I were going to have a taunt, it would probably be the area effect version, Provoke. Anything that will make a group of mobs bunch up for more convenient Frenzy attacks seems like a good thing.

This is my Crab's current build. There are some things I will tweak next time I respec but this build generally delivers what I need it to do.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Clarke I20.5 - Keyes: Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Crab Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Crab Spider Training
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Teleportation
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mace Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Channelgun -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(3), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(9)
Level 1: Crab Spider Armor Upgrade -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), S'fstPrt-ResKB(5)
Level 2: Slice -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(7), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(7), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(11), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27), T'Death-Dam%(29)
Level 4: Combat Training: Defensive -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(5)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(9)
Level 8: Recall Friend -- Zephyr-ResKB(A)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(11), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(50)
Level 12: Arm Lash -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(13), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(13), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(31), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Oblit-%Dam(34)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(15), Zephyr-ResKB(15)
Level 16: Venom Grenade -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(17), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Posi-Dam%(34), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 18: Suppression -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(19), Posi-Dam%(36), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 20: Tactical Training: Leadership -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(23), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(25), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(37), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(39), GSFC-Build%(40)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Fortification -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(25), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(27), Aegis-ResDam(40), Aegis-Psi/Status(40)
Level 26: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 28: Serum -- Numna-Heal/Rchg(A), Numna-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(29), Numna-Heal(39), Numna-EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 30: Tough -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(31), Aegis-EndRdx/Rchg(31), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Aegis-ResDam(42)
Level 32: Weave -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Rchg+(33)
Level 35: Frenzy -- Oblit-Dmg(A), Oblit-Acc/Rchg(36), Oblit-Dmg/Rchg(36), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Oblit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Oblit-%Dam(43)
Level 38: Teleport -- TSM'n-Stlth(A)
Level 41: Mace Blast -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(46), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(50), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 44: Shatter Armor -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(45), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(45), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46), T'Death-Dam%(48)
Level 47: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(48), LkGmblr-Rchg+(48)
Level 49: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Acc-I(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Numna-Heal(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(23), Mrcl-Rcvry+(39)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(21), P'Shift-End%(21)
------------

I'm not going anywhere. In fact, once the free monthly transfers start, some of my alts on other servers will gradually migrate back here.

How late is "late night"? I generally log on around 7 PM Pacific, which is too late to start Hami raids or join the Darkness team. If there were events planned that started about that time, I would make an effort to show up.