Call Me Awesome

I have to question this. You're actually reaching 45% defense to S/L/E/N damage without taking Tough Hide? Absent a truly strange and incredibly expensive build I just don't see that being possible. Are you figuring constantly having Invincibility saturated with 10 mobs? Realistically you're seldom going to have more than 6 normal sized mobs in your aura at once and when you need it most against an AV you'll only have one mob. Commonly Invuln players try to soft cap their defense with only one mob in range for that reason.

Invuln got a huge buff with issue 13 a couple of years ago and at the same time IO defense bonuses were paired up (a bonus that used to give 1.25% Smashing defense now gives 1.25% Smashing AND Lethal defense as well as .625% Melee defense) making it far easier to build defense. My guide was written in issue 13 so it doesn't mention the inherent fitness of issue 19 but Invuln hasn't changed since i13 so everything still applies.
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Oh, and ABSOLUTELY take Tough Hide. It provides (slotted) ~7.7% defense to all but Psi or a bit under 1/5 of the defense you'll need to reach 45% AND half of your debuff resistance in a passive power.

Forbin, I'm hardly someone who ignores the forums. I read them several times a day and I generally check out the digest daily. Still, I missed any comment about discounted transfers myself. I saw something about character slots but nothing beyond that.

I think I'm better informed about the game than the average player and this was something I didn't know about. Doesn't that seem to indicate that it should be publicized better?

Facebook and Twitter aren't part of the official game or game notifications. As such I wouldn't consider a post there by the rednames an official notification... maybe I'm old but while I've heard of them I've never even gone to either site much less gotten an account and looked for others there.

Agreed, there should be a compelling reason for taking both sides. Making core rebirth so much weaker than radial doesn't strike me as good design. It needs something more to bring it to parity with radial... either greatly increasing the +HP (of marginal value anyway to many who already approach their AT cap) or adding another secondary effect that's equally valuable to the +regen of the radial. What that secondary effect might be is open to interpretation but whatever it is it should offer something as useful as the regen. Possibly a larger heal or a shorter recharge?

Trade offs are good things, it should be a question of "I could really use this side for x benefit but the other side for y benefit is also nice" The Alpha slot did this quite well; there was a valid benefit to going with either core or radial depending on the character. Heck, most of the other incarnate slots seem to likewise be a decent trade off for one side over another... I'll admit I haven't done an exhaustive comparison though. For some reason Rebirth Core got screwed.

Except give you part of the set bonus for cheap... which may be something to consider if the power's just a set mule. Still, the set as a whole isn't that expensive (for a purple) and I'd skip it.

No way I'd take core on a melee when I could have radial instead... the +HP bonus is even less useful for a melee since it's a fixed amount that doesn't scale for AT.

If core's designed for melee characters then there's a serious flaw in the design thought process. Heh, imagine that, a flaw in the implementation of the new incarnate stuff... whodathunkit?

True, after looking over the stats it's a complete no brainer to go with the Radial side. +HP sounds great and all until you look and see just how small that HP increase is... and how large the +regen on the Radial side is. At Tier 4 the Radial gives you perma +200% regen... and half the time it's much higher than that. Even comparing Tier 2 to Tier 2 the Radial wins out every time.

On my Fire/EM blaster I went with the T4 Rebirth Radial... the ~800 point heal and (minimum) of 200% regen was hard to turn down. I do have a couple of friends who went with T4 Clarion for perma mez protection... that's another choice but frankly I don't spend a lot of time mezzed so I chose something that would offer me more benefit.

If you're having problems with mez then consider Clarion. Otherwise Rebirth offers a lot of bang for the buck.

That seems off to me as well, I have it on all my characters with an AOE immob and I'd swear I've seen it hit LT's as well as minions. The 8 seconds sounds right though.

That matches my observations with CMA as well; DDR sits at 50% despite any slotting as expected from slotting both of the DDR passives.

I could wish for another 3% def IO but if it were added it'd probably be like the Stealth IO's... only one permitted per character so you'd have a choice of either the Steadfast or the hypothetical new IO. Currently you CAN slot both the Steadfast and the Glad Armor 3% IO's provided you're in the more money than brains club.

The way IO bonuses are currently set it's futile to attempt to build any meaningful resistance bonuses unfortunately... I'd love to see some new IO sets that do grant meaningful res bonuses. As you mentioned for res bonuses to have parity with def bonuses they'd need to be twice as strong. If I had the option of soft capping defense or pushing resistance close to the soft cap it'd be a much tougher call on build choices. As things stand since it's impossible to build meaningful resistance via IO bonuses it tends to make for a lot of similarity in builds.

Snow, kicking someone from a team or trial is NOT a petitionable offense, every team or league leader has the power to kick players for any reason. The leader in question was within his rights to kick anyone he may choose. The only recourse that the players who were kicked have is to not team with that person again.

Again, this is something that wouldn't happen if the league leader could lock the league.

I've only once gotten hosed that badly by a virus and I ended up doing a reinstall. I don't have Linux available but I did a copy of my outlook.pst, my documents and everything else to another drive (a USB would also work here) then I deleted the boot partition and did a fresh install.

I agree with Hyper that if you get hosed that bad you're likely to have issues with the OS even after you clear out the virus. Considering that Windows is famous (infamous?) for corrupting it's registry just from normal use over time you're likely to have significant problems post-virus.

Yes, protection will prevent a status effect from affecting you provided that the effect isn't higher MAG than your protection... and Acro only provides MAG 1 protection. Nearly every status effect in the game is at least MAG 3, therefore Acro won't help you... even a minion's hold/stun/etc. will bust through.

If a Rad defender gets mezzed then yes RI and EF will drop. Leadership toggles will keep running though, as will travel powers and anything that doesn't affect enemies. Trying to get a meaningful amount of hold protection on a character without status protection is pointless; there simply isn't any way to get it short of being in a FF or Sonic dispersion bubble or having Clear Mind or similar maintained on you by another character. However... a status effect has to HIT you in order for it to affect you. Because of this many squishy characters are building for defense.

The only real benefit Acro has is it's MAG 10 Knockback protection and it's a fairly expensive toggle to run. Unless you're a melee character you'll almost never get hit by more than a MAG 3 knockback... and one KB protection IO gives MAG 4 protection for the cost of no endurance and a single slot in an appropriate power.

Pre-IO the only characters who ever took Acro were Fire tankers and Dark Armor scrappers... melee sets what lack any KB protection. Since issue 9 most players find a slot or two for a Karma or Steadfast KB IO... or, if you've the inf, you can get the Zephyr universal travel KB IO that fits in any travel power.

Frankly I can't recommend Acro for any character anymore; it just offers too little benefit for it's cost in powers and endurance. Ranged characters will almost never need more than MAG 3 protection and even melee won't often need more than one MAG 4 IO. Acro's a power that served a purpose when the game launched but now it's in real need of a buff as it doesn't provide anything that you can't get through other means at lower acquisition cost in powers and endurance.

That would be my assumption also Aett. Scrappers without an aggro aura tend to do a poor job of holding aggro off of ranged damage dealers. Now once that scrapper gets AAO it'll be a totally different story and he'll hold aggro nearly as well as a tanker.

As an example my BS/Regen scrapper at 50 has good damage output but if I'm first into the group and nail several with my attacks before a blaster tosses an AOE I'll STILL tend to loose aggro to the blaster. No taunt aura means I'm competing with pure damage... therefore I loose some aggro to a higher damage blaster. Yeah, I usually keep stuff I've hit with headsplitter or disembowel but I tend to loose the stuff whirling sword hit.

I'd agree with that; also at the high end of the durability scale Inv will outperform Shields by a fair margin. I've both at 50 and with relatively equivalent IO investment (~350-450 mil) the Inv is considerably more durable in most situations. On the other hand the Shield does considerably better damage so it balances out.

Shield is good though... it's just not as durable as a well built Inv. Still, Shield's more than up to the task and performs nicely. I've enjoyed my Shield/Fire tanker; it took a little bit to get good (in the 1-25 levels it's fairly squishy) but once it matured it got really good.

I've yet to have the AV follow me any distance at all in that situation... if it does find a path I simply move to the other side and force it back where it came from. The AV very quickly looses interest in me with the other melee pounding on it.

If you don't have 4 sturdy characters (2 per AV) to share AV aggro then you have to improvise and in that situation you're probably best off just pulling the AV's. It's very easy to keep the AV in place while you're pulling out however... just pull out in a direction that the AV's path is blocked by other melee characters. The AV will look at you, turn sideways, turn back to you and try to figure out how to get past the obstruction. By that time another melee should have the attention.

Admittedly if you have a league of idiots then you're best off just doing the standard pull to the tennis court but it really only takes two melee characters per AV who know what to do in order to handle the spawn point method.

I agree that if the AV does follow the tanker then it's the tanker's responsibility to get it back in place before it moves beyond the spawn point tether... the easiest way is to jump to the opposite side of the team.

For example:

• Starting position: Team..Melee.AV.Tank

• Tank gets second warning: Tank....Team.Melee.AV

• AV starts to follow: Tank...AV..Team.Melee

• Tank jumps to the opposite side: AV..Team..Melee...Tank

• AV moves back into position: Team..AV.Melee...Tank

• Another melee has aggro: Team..AV.Melee...........Tank is out and works with the reinforcement team until the red rings fade, then replaces the Melee.

• Rinse & Repeat until finished.

Super Speed also works with Fly... I use it on my Blaster to give me invisibility since I have the Freebird stealth proc in Fly. SS + Stealth proc = invisibility. Admittedly it doesn't boost Fly speed... which is already at the speed cap unslotted... but it does give the -aggro effect.

Ninja Run + Sprint is slower than Super Speed and the jump height/distance is roughly equal to Combat Jumping and far less than Super Jump. Ninja Run also doesn't give any defense bonus like Combat Jumping does. On the other hand Ninja Run does admittedly make a decent substitute for a true travel power if you've a tight build and it's available much sooner.

However I have to agree that most tanker builds don't have a lot of room for extras and in most cases multiple travel pools are frills that you can do without.

That Vicky WarWork pet does quite a number on mobs... she's a buzzsaw with those blades. I took the Seers on my Fire/EM blaster and they're also useful... who doesn't like getting Fort?

They won't follow if you're trading aggro with another tank/brute/scrapper; nor will they follow if they're pinned by other characters. There's some latitude for "killing at the spawn point" though so as long as they're close you're fine.

I've done this many times; I hit Taunt when I first acquire aggro then leave it alone so that the other tanker/brute/scrapper can get aggro once I need to leave to avoid sequestering. It's actually fairly easy to do this and if the aggro holders have their act together it works very well and the AV doesn't move much if at all.

In order for the AV to follow you it has to have a clear path to get to you... if other characters are in the way it just sits there and does a little shuffle trying to get past. If your team's any good at all the other aggro monkey on the team will establish aggro long before the AV figures out the pathing. They have the same idiot pathing AI that hostages have... how many times have you sat there watching a hostage run back & forth before finally figuring out how to use the ramp?