I recommend checking out the first part of my Taskmaster guide (General Guide to Henching) in order to better understand how I view and calculate stats. I would put it all here again, but I ran out of room on Taskmaster because of that massive word wall so lets not repeat that here. This is something that should have been mentioned over there but wasn't and due to a lack of room I'll leave it here. Most % modifiers you see on abilities and talents are multiplicative instead of additive which makes them much better than the amount initially seems.

As stated in the Taskmaster guide this was originally notes I made while getting my footing again and is meant as a general info guide to help people get started and not a Best damage guide. The build above is what I enjoyed and there are most defintely things I may have overlooked and optimizations that can be made by people far more talented and dedicated than I am. The bad jokes that are sprinkled in there were in my notes and not added when I started converting these into guides meant for others to read. No I will not remove them.

Attributes

Ant-man is the only intelligence/speed hero in the game. Intelligence gives us 0.75% crit damage per point at lvl 60 and 0.025 seconds off our med-kit cooldown. Speed gives us 1% dodge rating multiplier and 0.25% area damage reduction per point. What that means is that INT is a better dump attribute than speed.

Powers

Our Ant resource counts as summons they benefit from things like spear. With only one ant resource they attack twice every three seconds. At 2 they stagger a little and have about 2 seconds without damage. At 3 ant resources we start seeing a constant source of damage. At 4 it looks about the same as with 3 maybe slightly shorter stops. 5 has zero stops in my testing. This means you should probably avoid dropping below 5 for optimal damage. The ants also take a snapshot of our stats from when they were summoned. This means the first few summoned will actually do less damage.

 Main spender. It gets modified by all three of our first row talents which means you probably aren't using his basic or forcing another non-CD power as the spender here.

  Decent damage and applies weaken. Summoning ants has an internal cooldown so this still only summons one resource per use.

 Fun ability. Deals good damage if you take the survivability talent in row 2.

  Gives our ant powers +15% crit chance. Despite the tooltip not changing from 6 seconds using the 25% shrink damage bonus from our talent I can confidently say that it is increased with duration items. Our resource doesn't have the ant tag and therefore is probably not affected by the crit chance boost. 

 Slightly lower damage than definite particle. If I take Tanker's talent over particle's then Tanker replaces Decoy.

  Inch High Goodbye has great damage and an execute. It will be a great option no matter what build you use.

 This is a good ability. If you aren't running For the Colony this will probably be the main ant spender for you. A talent allows this to get 100% extra damage after an Inch High Goodbye. It isn't a base damage increase. That usually puts the high end damage of it slightly below the low end of For the Colony.

 This my favorite ability it gives us nice big red numbers that make us feel warm and fuzzy and slightly itchy... maybe thats just an allergic reaction now that I think about it. Anyways while nice it is less consistent than just using fistful. The ants are such good damage that they can make up the difference in fist's damage. With the amount of resource fillers we have and the chance to not spends in our final talent row this can out damage fist, however it can also perform considerably worse if you don't get brutals or crits on it.

This is really only needed on For the Colony builds in which case this is just a second for the colony button with a 15 second cooldown.

 Our basic dots. Red hots gives vuln and is applied directly to the enemies. Drone Strike is a stationary DOT zone if the enemy leaves they stop taking damage. There really isn't much to say about them. You really want at least one of these on your bar. I tend to like the slow a little more since we have other options for vuln.

 Our signature ability. Good damage and paired with a regen core this solves our spirit problems. The extra health is also nice. With a 20 second cooldown you can use this to clear mobs without much concern of it not being up for the boss.

Utility Powers

 This has very few uses now that we only have one bar. That slot is just too important for this to be used. My favorite use is just shrinking in hubs. My second favorite is using it to see how team-ups perform.

 For some reason this is working like a gear summon. I think it might have had this issue on live as well so it may never be fixed. It doesn't scale with us and despite what the tooltips says it only does the base damage displayed here on the talent. it also only does the basic 150% crit damage on the rare chance it does crit. Still just as fun of a power as I remember it being though. The knockback on it seems to be irresistable so you can play pong with villians if you want. Also good for blocking charges or other villain powers that would move them out of AOEs.

 "Strike" means melee hits from enemies. Ranged enemies don't get hit by the dot for shooting it. Those pesky cowards with their guns can be dealt with by taking the talent for exploding. This is mostly for the taunt. If wall worked properly you would place one of these in it to force enemies to take wall's damage. 

Talents

Row1 All 3 of these talents adjust Tiny Takedown

Death by a Thousand Bites- Adds a nice DOT to Tiny Takedown. At first glance this seems like the best option and I'm fairly certain it is since the DOT adds considerably more when it crits/bruts than the other options. It also summons ants when it causes damage.

Set em' up Knock em' down- 30% on Tiny Takedown and 10% to area powers may not seem like much, but their multiplicative instead of additive which makes it rather nice. This is comparable to our first talent though I believe you will generally get better results with the other due to it being another layer that can crit/brut.

Art of the Swarm- This is one of our many resource fillers and helps make For the Colony! a little more useable. Generally I still would use one of the other options over this.

Row 2 

Jerk Seeking Missle- This is a survivability choice. The extra damage to Bouncing Bullet is nice, but not the main draw here in my opinion. Guarded provides 10% base health which is 730 health. All heroes have a base health of 7,300. The 1% regen is very useful. Most people will be around at least 20k health if they've avoided defensive itemization which means this gives at least around 200 health regen a second for you and others.

They're Ant Food- This is our damage option here. the 20% is handled the same way Set em' up Knock em' down is. Our ant resource is not tagged as an ant power and as such does not get the 20% from what I can tell.

Wall of Bites- Currently bugged and only deals the base damage shown here. If you are using Wall O' Ants you can mess around with this but the other two options will do more until it actually starts scaling with our stats.

Row 3

Paralyzing Venom- Irresistable stun means that this has utility in general play since it won't be affected by other player's spamming CC on bosses.

The Particles Must Flow- This is the damage option here once again that 25% is for our tooltip's final damage and not base damage. This is affected by Power Duration.

Tanker Throw- This is a nice visual and burning could open up some odd gear choices like Bacon-Wrapped Hot Pepper. Generally speaking we have enough DOTs elsewhere in greater values that it doesn't beat Particles Must Flow.

Row 4

 One Two Punch- This is the most used option here and for good reason. Just like our other percent increases this is also multiplicative which means calculated seperately after the our base damage percents.

Large Drone Strike- This is a feel good perk for anything that isn't using Fistful of Ants. The 50% size increase is really nice if I don't have fist or decoy then that means I'm using this with Drone Strike.

Ant Trap- Good DOT. This really wants us to not run power duration for the best effect though. The quicker it explodes the better damage we get. Not going to out do One Two Punch and is mostly just a fun option instead of a serious one. Doesn't trigger when you try to summon a 3rd and excede the max amount the oldest one just dissolves like it would without this talent.

Row 5

Tiny Punch, Huge Dent- This is another survivability option. We already get a lot of regen and health on hit. This is really the only option though if you aren't having spirit problems or running For the Colony!. 

Helping Mandibles- If you don't have a good regen core you can use this instead to help alleviate spirit problems. If you had 160 spirit then using Fistful of Ants gives 6.4 spirit it isn't much, but it does help.

Ants For Days- 15% chance to not spend ants. This is great for For the Colony! it can also be used for other builds though they don't gain nearly as much benefit from it.

Gearing

Relics-  This is the best option the crit damage affects all of our abilities unlike other options here. 13.84% crit damage at 1k stack. At 250 stacks it gives 6.9% and at 500 it gives 9.7%.

Other options are less useful since most of our big damage For the Colony! and Fistful of Ants are just area and not melee or ranged. 10.275% from A.R.M.O.R Alternate Reality Relic Could be interesting, but the crit damage is considerably more impactful than base damage.

Legendaries-  Is going to be the best option at ilvl 70 though  isn't bad due to the beam proc being 50k. At ilvl 80 I would recommend  or   Trident puts our ants 210 damage higher than with axe and we only lose 10% on our physical abilities which isn't too bad for how much better that makes our ants. Also strangely Wall of Bite's tooltip and ant decoy's retaliation damage is higher with axe, but the Decoy explosion is better with trident.

Slot 1 All stat calculations will be done at max values of ilvl63.

 This is possibly the best option. 53.025% damage (+17.65% against enemies not targeting you), 13.4% crit damage. Theoretically the 526 extra damage to our ants from the proc puts this ahead of other options.

 Good option offers 63.275% damage. 18% crit damage and the 200 health regen on physical power use is nice. Since Spear is all INT we actually only have a 2% crit damage increase here. This is good until you get a well rolled spear or fragment though.

 35.9% damage, 23.7% crit/brut damage. Technically it is 47.4% brutal damage since crit increase brutal as well. Smaller base damage increase, but considerably better crit/brut modifiers might put this ahead of Spear once procs are included.

Slot 2

 This is a good defensive option. I have had several that had the proc at +4 speed which puts it at 36% damage instead of the 28% from live where it could only be +2 from what I remember. Still due to the lack of crit/ brut chance or crit/brut damage this is going to fall behind a cosmic damage wise.

 Cosmic slot 2s have a static 3k health on them. my crit chance is already around 49% so I went for brutal strike chance instead of crit chance. Crit damage increases both crit and brutal damage so this is a high priority. +4 attributes is 16% base damage and 3% crit damage if its intelligence. I have enough brutal chance with the increase from this that I feel fairly comfortable going for brutal damage on this instead though. If you've had poor luck with attribute rolls on other equipment though I would probably recommend attributes over brutal damage. You could also aim for a defensive affix in the third slot to increase survivability. Stat wise what I have on this build would be 20% damage from cosmic might, 15% crit dmg, and 25% brutal dmg+15% more from the crit damage increasing it for a total of +40% brutal damage. With cosmic might active just having crit damage puts this above our slot 2 unique.

Slot 3 

 22.7% damage plus 8% vs bosses. Almost 500 brutal strike rating and 20.6% brutal damage. This is honestly good enough that I don't feel replacing it with something is going to be a big enough gain.

 This is commonly used in slot 3 for a lot of heroes. It offer 18.75% damage +5% vs bosses, same brutal damage%, more brutal strike rating. The only thing that might pull it ahead is power duration, so if you have dropped Wasp Wings or God of Mischief this is probably what you would use to keep power duration up.

Slot 4

 34% damage, 15.1% crit and brut damage, power duration, and attack speed. It also has a good amount of health on it. This is a really nice unique there is probably something that out does this. I just don't see much reason for dropping this when power duration is rather important and it gives that in a decent amount more than other options here. You could go for a cosmic and push damage if you aren't using Definite Particle though I'm pretty sure uptime of the 25% dmg to shrink powers and 15% crit chance for ant powers outweigh what you'd gain from dropping this.

Slot 5

  16% damage from attributes, and 14.4% crit damage. I'm not really going to suggest using this. It suffers from the same issue that a lot of slot 5 hero specific uniques suffer from. Which is that slot 5 is an offensive slot for cosmic gear when these uniques don't have flat damage on them they need to at least have good crit/brut chance or dmg or about 5 to 6 attributes depending on their other stats to compare to a cosmic slot 5's static 25% damage. This unique is still usable and if you really don't care about min maxing it will work just fine.

 May be the best option. Has a nice spread of stats and a constant vuln application. 32.6% dmg, good crit/brut chance. The poison cloud proc probably puts this over other options. Red Hots really isn't that bad of an ability so the vuln here is really just for if you don't want to use it.

 21.775% to our summons, 14.7% dmg rating, slightly less crit/brut rating than Cobra. 20.6% crit damage might put this over Cobra's stats though I think the poison cloud keeps this from out doing it in terms of low end TTKs. In my testing this felt a little nicer and more consistent than Cobra.

URU

 I generally prefer the 800 defense over the 5% extra dmg. God of Mischief gives us extra power duration meaning our Doom Medallion can be rolled a little low. We want over 8 seconds of duration on The Definite Particle With a base of 6 that means at 34% we get 8.04 seconds. A little cushion is nice to have so I'd recommend 40% putting it at 8.4 seconds. The damage option would be The Power Doop potentially 59.7% brutal damage is massive and isn't going to be beaten on melee physical heroes unless you need utility like power duration.

Artifacts

 The most popular artifact in the game and also former trade currency. Yes that sounds weird but there was a point where people valued stuff in blessed gems of the Kursed. 11.25% crit/brutal dmg combined with the decent 375 hit rating for both as well means that this is just always going to be a good consistent artifact if you need the hit rating.

  If you don't have a cobra or don't want to use it and also don't want to use red hots this is going to be a good vuln alternative our sig has a lower cooldown than it's uptime meaning we should be able to keep it constant. 18.75% brutal dmg, 9% dmg vs vuln enemies, 300 crit chance.

As the only int/spd hero this is ours and occasionally Taskmaster's if he wants a defensive artifact. 20% dmg from attributes, 452 crit chance, Nice defenses. Damage wise there are definitly better options, but as far as defensive options go this is amazing.

 Decent brut/crit rating 28.5% dmg, invisibility when you drop below 30% hp. Loki illusion don't deal much damage. Not much else to say here this is essentially a base damage Gem of the Kursed for int heroes.

 13% dmg some crit/brut chance 22% brut dmg once the proc is stacked. That 13% is only on our melee and ranged abilities which means Fist and Colony only get 8%. The proc is linked to the ranged roll. The more I look at it the more I feel like there are just better options unless you need that crit chance.

I feel like  is slightly better for melee characters it offers 12% less brutal dmg for 100 more brutal chance, but isn't tied to hitting crits. Yes, credentials must be crits not brutals for the proc to go off. It also offers more dmg since 4 attributes is 16% dmg. Then it also has health regen meaning it is also a better defensive choice.

 "I've seen the power of gravity first hand. So you can shut your trap about it." This is probably my favorite villain defeat line and is one of the reasons I use Pym over Lang. 28.5% dmg, some health, and we get the Wizard to pop in and show others the power of gravity since we clearly aren't impressed enough by it. Back on live Wizard used to give you exp when his timer ended. My luck has not held out on Tahiti and I have no clue if that was fixed before the servers went down or not.

 28.75% dmg, extra power radius, and slight spirit recovery. This isn't bad if you want extra radius.

 23% dmg, 12% atk spd, a revive, and recovery on crits means this is a decent defense/offense hybrid option.

 12.5% crit and brutal dmg, Good brutal strike rating, and if the proc had slightly better up time I would call it a basic must have on every hero. The proc is 26% dmg rating which is only 2% off from being equal to 7 attributes.

Generic Artifacts for when you are a fresh 60 I won't go into detail about them. Brooch is gotten from the asgardian shop that appears when you protect the door in Lower Asgard and is good for melee heroes. Shield Medal is gotten when you complete ch10. Adrenalizer can be crafted if you have gotten the recipe from ghost boxes or like the other options not mentioned above can be dropped from random mobs.

 

Blessings

Either Hela or Odin is probably the best option. You can go Hogun and boost your melee powers, but Fist and Colony are just area tagged. 4 Hela gives 20% brutal dmg and 1600 brutal strike chance. Since we want around 5-6k (45-49%) brutal stike rating with the 5% from infinity stones putting us at or over 50% at that point. If you are around that range without Hela's I'd recommend going for odin or one of the dmg options. My build with savage axe instead of Trident is hitting that range with 1 Hela so I would go for odin there. I am rather close or maybe even at the point where Brutal dmg would probably outweigh the 13% dmg though. Dropping some brutal chance or low rolls would mean you should probably go Hela.

Medallions 

 I don't think we can really let go of that potential 25% power duration when using Definite Particle. So other options would purely be because you aren't using it's talent and therefore don't need to keep power duration high.

 TonyBing suggested this in his guide and I just don't see it. While I like the extra survivablity we get here we aren't really lacking good sources of that elsewhere and I really feel like the unique effect here isn't better than +1 all attributes that cosmic medallions give. The 3 int is only 4% more dmg than what a cosmic medallion's +1 all gives. The 5% proc here is essentially just Mental Focus Headband's proc and that isn't enough for me. 

Ring

Sling Ring of the Kamar-Taj (physical) is probably the best option here. I think Cosmics might be able to get slightly better damage if rolled with the right stuff however you lose the extra survivability that slings bring.

Insignias

You won't see me mention these much as they really are a use what you got sort of thing. There are all kinds of options that perform decently here and the affixes tend to do a bit more for you than their actual effects.

Infinity system

 I like getting 150 into each gem before investing more into specific ones. Though a large part of that comes from the fact the system used to be round robin and I still don't feel like trying to min max this. You could probably skip a few such as soul and get more damage if you really wanted to since 8% dmg is going to be less important than some nodes. Gem infusions are nice and you probably should throw at least 1 point into all of them.

Mind- Mental focus for the crit damage is the first goal here after that you want a few gem infusions and dump into int.

Power- Strike Through and Superhuman are the important nodes here. Which you get first depends on your prefrence.

Reality- I feel potency for sig damage is really the only reasonable thing here to drop points into.

Soul- I prefer regen over health on hit you might find the other more useful however. We really already have a fair amount of regen so this gem isn't a priority.

Space- I like having the extra health from gravity well here. In my experience it gives much better survivablity than the other options here. each point in this is 73 HP.

Time- Most characters get a decent boost from temporal loophole and Ant-Man isn't really an exception since it takes our spender from 5 attacks/sec to 5.9 attacks/sec. Also it is important to take the gem infusion to be equal to our speed attributes.