Call Me Awesome

Trust me, the absolute last thing a mature BS/Shield build can be accused of is being squishy. Mine at 50 is tough enough to main tank the ITF. Once you reach the 45% soft cap the build becomes godly

I don't have Aid Self and don't need it... on a really tough mission, even on an 8 man team, I rarely need more than 4-5 green inspirations. Carrying a few inspirations is much better than investing in two power selections to do the same job.

As far as endurance goes, my BS/Shield runs 7 toggles (Deflection, Battle Agility, Against All Odds, Grant Cover, Tough, Weave & Sprint) full time and I literally cannot make my blue bar move below 3/4 after a 5 minute fight. Now that's due to +endurance accolades & set bonuses as well as inherent endred slotting from the various IO sets I've slotted, but it's not bad even on straight SO's.

I'd strongly suggest getting Hack from level 1, it's superior to Slash in every respect. A leveling BS/Shield build I'd build something like this:

Hack & Deflection
Slice
True Grit
Combat Jumping
Parry
Active Defense
Hurdle
Super Jump
Against All Odds
Health
Stamina
Battle Agility (two toggles is enough pre-stamina, and until you have SO's you'll be squishy anyway)
Phalanx Fighting
Disembowel
Whirling Sword (possibly swap with Phalanx)
Head Splitter
Shield Charge
Build Up
Boxing (throwaway prereq)
Tough
Weave
One with the Shield
Grant Cover (IO mule and provides a chunk of debuff resistance)

My build was slightly different leveling up because I was part of a static superteam of all Shield scrappers... we all took Grant Cover at level 28 and were soft capped from that point on.

Slotting ideas, I use 4 pieces of Gift of the Ancients in all the defense armors for the 2% recovery and 1.8% additional endurance. All my single target attacks get the full Mako's Bite set for the 3.75% Ranged defense bonus, all the AOE's get 5 Scirocco's Dervish (all but the proc) and a common recharge IO for the 3.13% AOE defense bonus.

Combat Jumping/Super Jump both get two Blessing of the Zephyr IO's... the travel speed and the travel/end for the 3.13% Ranged defense. Other than that I have the Steadfast Resistance/3% defense unique IO slotted in True Grit along with 95% worth of Heal IO's and a common Resist.

My BS/SD ends up with 45% Ranged defense, 44.8% AOE defense and, with one Parry, 47% Melee defense. Between the +endurance accolades (Atlas Medallion, Portal Jockey) and the +end & recovery bonuses I have a total of 119.5 points of endurance and 3.6 end/second recovery. Due to my attack slotting all attacks have from 40% - 55% endred slotted.

My base build probably cost roughly $100,000,000; the really pricey IO's (Miracle +recovery unique, Steadfast 3% def unique) I bought with Merits from running TF's... if you save them up until you hit the mid-30's they can amount to quite a pile (Positron, Synapse, Sister Psyche, Citadel, Manticore, Numina).

While leveling up my first priority for slots would be Hack, Slice & Parry early until you've at least 5 in each... 3 recharges into Active Defense and Stamina and 4 into Deflection, True Grit & Battle Agility. You should have that pretty well covered by the time you get Disembowel so it takes the next priority, followed by Headsplitter, Shield Charge & Whirling Sword.

Early SO slotting for attacks is 1 acc/3 dam/1 end/1 rchg; Parry you may want to toss a defense buff in place of the endred. CJ/SJ can get by with one slot until late in the build. Slot your armors (SO levels) with 3 defense/1 end until you can acquire the Gift of the Ancients sets.

Well, this has gotten a bit longer than I'd first intended, but I hope I've given you some food for thought.

Isn't Electric a bit light on ST damage? I know it'd be great against large numbers of relatively weak enemies... how's it vs single hard targets?

I've kind of mentally pigeon holed Elec Melee as sort of a Spines type powerset; a fantastic minion killer but not so great vs bosses. I freely admit I've yet to play an Elec past 20 so I could well be off base there.

The lack of mitigation in Fire Melee isn't a problem at all once your build matures... a mature, soft capped Shield doesn't need any help from the secondary. My BS/Shield scrapper is practically unkillable as a soft capped build... a Shield tanker gets even better defense & resist numbers on top of considerably more hit points.

I'm currently working on a Shield/Fire tanker myself; at only level 27 I need to be somewhat cautious (roughly 32% def to all positions) but once it matures I see no reason why I'd need more mitigation than 45% defense to all positions.

Oh, DM would be a terrible choice for AOE damage... it has decent ST and great utility but AOE isn't it's thing.

Nihili wasn't in any way attempting to demean you, he was simply stating a fact. There's no way around the fact that Fire Armor is underpowered as a protective armor when compared to other tanker primaries. This is an established fact. It's also a fact that, if built and played well Fire Armor is capable of handling the job of tanking for a team. I know several tankers who are very competent with a fire tanker.

Neither of those statements are in any way derogatory to you. Neither of them is disputed by any knowledgeable tanker.

Judging from your posts it sounds like you're very defensive about something, which I frankly don't understand. Apparently you've figured out a build and playstyle that works with your fire tank and that's all to the good. Based on your OP however you could also stand to do a little research into durability in the game however.

Your list of questions don't really make a lot of sense, only question 2 and 3 have any validity at all with question 3 being by far the most important. Question 4 I assume refers to Invulnerability's Unstoppable power... something that's entirely optional in a well built tanker anyway. My soft capped Invulnerability tanker doesn't have it and is able to tank any foe in the game. The only two primaries that don't have the ability to "burst heal damage" are Shield and Willpower... two of the 4 most durable sets in the game.

Back to Fire Armor:

• Built and played correctly a Fire tanker can do the job... nobody with experience will dispute this.

• Of all the tanker primaries Fire Armor is among the lowest protection sets... nobody with experience disputes this either.

Stone Armor's Granite is unquestionably the most survivable tanker in the game by a large margin.

Well built Invulnerability is about in second place, with Shield, Willpower and Ice following closely behind.

Dark Armor comes in below those sets in durability, although it's utility and the incredible heal of Dark Regen can in some cases push it up quite a bit.

Fire Armor is probably roughly on par with Dark or a little below; both have significant holes in their mez protections (notably knockback) but Fire's heal is substantially weaker. The lack of any form of defense means that it's going to get hit more often than any of the top performing sets but Healing Flames does recharge relatively promptly once slotted and helps offset this somewhat.

Electric Armor is another of the "bottom 3" sets... it's resists look good on paper but it's hampered by a lack of any form of defense and a long recharging heal so it's vulnerable to the "death of 1,000 paper cuts" with lots of relatively small bits of damage overcoming it's regeneration.

I was figuring an optimum SO build which, yes, included Tough/Weave and CJ.

Yep, I "knew" that in a theoretical way, but I'll admit my experience with WP is as a Brute so that may very well be coloring my perception somewhat... that 50 Fire/WP brute is adequate as a scrapper type character but it 'ain't no tanker, even with substantial IO investment. IO'ing a brute is substantially more difficult due to the terrible availability of the redside market... Kinetic Combat for example does not exist. I've had bids in on the redside market for over a month now... most of the recipes I'm looking for haven't even sold on the market for a month or more. With only the Smashing Haymaker/Reactive Armor IO's available soft capping looks out of the question.

My BS/Shield scrapper on the other hand IS tough enough to be a main tank (soft capped defenses of course), and the performance of that character is what I'm basing my thoughts on a Shield tanker... at 27 my Shield/Fire is really starting to get good. I'll have to wait until he approaches 50 to really know what it's capable of in comparison to CMA but I'm anticipating a highly capable tank.

With Shield I'm taking my experience with my BS/Shield scrapper and using that to figure the tanker's performance... from my numbers it looks like a Shield tanker using Weave & CJ should be a bit past 40% def. I did compare a level bumped Shield/Elec tank on Test with an old SO version of CMA and the two were close in durability against most foes... the Shield was better vs Carnies and Malta.

We're debating fairly minimal differences though... on SO's both tankers are highly capable... I'd expect that once my Shield/Fire matures it'll be close, but Invuln may have a slight edge. So far the Shield tank has been moderately squishy until around 24, at 27 now he's starting to show promise. I'll know more once the Shield gets closer to 50 and the build matures.

Trust me, it is. It's also far easier to softcap since you can use Parry to make up the Melee difference. Unquestionably the best solo killing machine I've played.

On straight SO enhancements with a good build Invuln is probably about in the middle of the primaries. Add IO sets to build up the defense and it really is second only to Stone in durability. The whole secret is the layers of protection that Invuln provides; it gives good amounts of defense out of the box coupled with capped S/L resistance and at least minimal resistance to all but Psionic and the huge heal and HP buff of Dull Pain.

If you're running into durability issues on your Invuln tanker then there's probably something in your build that could be improved on.

Of the sets I've played (Shield & WP as Scrapper secondaries and extrapolating to tanker numbers) I'd rank them something like this with SO's:
Stone Armor (Granite)
Shield
Invuln
Ice
Willpower
Stone Armor (no Granite)
Fire

Adding a good IO build and you move Invuln up into the #2 slot behind Granite Armor with Shield occupying the #3 slot. Bear in mind that this is based on sets I've actually played to significant level; in the case of Shield & WP those were played as Scrapper/Brute sets.

Granite is really so good that there's no need to build survivability with IO sets, I tend to focus on reducing the movement & recharge penalties instead. Granite running on SO's alone is plenty to tank the STF unsupported. Invuln, once built up to the soft cap, is likewise capable of unsupported tanking of the toughest challenges in the game. On SO's it's capable, but it requires a fair amount of team support.

I'd slot a second Acc into Parry personally, this is something you really want to hit. Out of the box it more than double stacks and it's pretty cheap endurance wise, I'd probably pull the endred and toss another Accuracy in. On my BS/Regen I put Parry on auto and just let it fill in any gaps in the chain.

Also, Hurdle stacks much better with jumping, adding considerable jump speed and distance. It doesn't add much height, but the speed and distance is very noticeable. The only characters I get Swift on are Stone tankers; for everyone else I've found Hurdle more useful.

I do somewhat question the usefulness of Res Energies & Res Elements, particularly Elements. Even with the tanker numbers Res Elements is certainly the most skippable power in the entire set. I do have Res Energies at 49 on my tanker, but it's there more as an IO set "mule" than any need for the power itself.

On my Invuln tanker before IO's I took the Medicine pool for Stimulant/Aid Self in place of the resist passives; slotted Aid Self is a 40% heal available every 15-20 seconds depending on slotting. My preferred slotting was 3 heal/2 interrupt reduction/1 recharge on Aid Self. With a little practice it was a reliable battlefield heal.

Oh, just noticed the Weave slotting... I assume you wanted 2 ENDURANCE reduction, not two RECHARGE reduction slotted there?

Other than the above tweaks I didn't see any major flaws in the build. Once you start looking towards a Set IO build things will change but this will work as an SO build. Oh, one more minor thing, if you're planning on using the prerequisite attack for Fighting then Boxing is a better choice than Kick... Kick has knockback. Both will put your sword away so there's no advantage there.

Well, depending on just when you left you may, or may not be aware of ED (enhancement diversification) that hit with issue 6... the thumbnail description is that slotting more than 3 of a given type of SO into a power is worthless due to enhancement values being severely reduced after a certain point. Back in the old days it was common practice to slot attacks with 1 accuracy and 5 damage... that simply doesn't work anymore.

A quickie example of ED.
One (even level) damage SO in an attack boosts that attack's damage by 33%. Add a second and you get another 33% increase, bringing it to 66% total as you would expect. However, adding a third, which used to bring it to 99% now, because of ED, only takes your damage to ~95% (so it's slightly degraded). If you were to add a fourth damage SO to that attack you would only get ~5% enhancement out of it instead of the 33% that it normally gives... that's why it's a waste to slot that way anymore.

Fairly common SO attack slotting nowadays would be 1-2 accuracy/3 damage/1-2 recharge/0-1 endurance reduction.

I apologize if you're already familiar with this, but it tends to surprise a lot of old players who're just returning.

As Werner mentioned issue 7 completely changed the rules for defense; the whole thing gets pretty complex but in practical terms there's now a "soft cap" for defense which is the point where you're reducing the enemy's chance to hit you as low as you can. That point is 45%; except in rare situations where enemies have tohit buffs (Nemesis hopped up on Vengeance or Devouring Earth with their Quartz buff pets) having a higher amount of defense is pointless. Against minions a character with 45% defense is going to avoid 95% of all attacks, minions will only have a 5% chance to hit. LT's and Bosses have slightly higher chances, I don't have the figures in front of me right now but I think Bosses would have roughly a 7.5% chance and LT's would be between Minions & Bosses.

In practical terms if you have 45% defense you're probably nearly unkillable. You may or may not be aware that there are different kinds of defense too, you have typed defense (works against specific kinds of damage like smash/lethal, energy/negative, fire/cold etc.) and positional defense (works against positional attacks like Melee, Ranged or AOE). These defense types do NOT stack with one another, the game uses the highest defense you have that applies to an attack.

The Invention system that was introduced in issue 9 had an extreme impact on player ability, it's way too complex to go into in this response but it allows for some rather extreme power levels and lets us pull off some seriously crazy things. Nothing in the game was made harder though, so you'll still be able to play through nearly anything in the game even on straight SO enhancements. A good IO build however can be as tough as we were back in issue 3-4.

Although they were written for Tankers my Invuln guides, particularly the soft cap guide will roughly apply for the Invuln scrapper as well. Scrapper numbers are 25% less than tankers but the basics apply.

Every SG I've been in has been a group of in-game friends who have decided to put one together so it's been a moot point for me, everyone is always someone I've played with regularly. Each time we've started a new SG it's been the same group of us starting on another server.

I'd fairly strongly suggest you invite people you enjoy playing with to your SG, don't be one of the idiots standing in Atlas trying to blind recruit every new level 1 player to your SG.

Oh, that would be sweet. After running that mission 6 times per character 3 years ago on over a dozen different toons for the temp powers, then having the temps duration nuked I haven't set foot into one of those missions since.

I've even got my shotgun all ready with a load of 000 buckshot!

Unfortunately no, I believe you get a code for one of the super booster packs and the 30 days free as well as a DVD with the issue 14? version of the client. You can buy the goodies from the GvE edition at the NCSoft store and apply them to your account though so all is not lost. The Jump Pack alone is worth the cost of the GvE goodies.

Terrible idea actually, it would probably cut your overall survivability by close to 50%. Yes, it would make that much difference.

The strength of Invulnerability is it's layered protections... you have defense which reduces the number of attacks that actually hit you, you have resistance which reduces the damage of the small number of attacks that do hit and you have Dull Pain to heal from damage and to boost your hit points so you can take more damage.

Of those layers the first, defense, is the most important... if an attack doesn't hit then you take no damage. Reducing that defense falls under the heading of A Bad Thing.

Here's an example for you, the new Electric Armor set is pure resistance, it has fairly impressive amounts actually but no defense at all. I have a level 50 Elec/SS on Test from the issue 16 beta testing who's boosted his resistance as high as possible in a straight SO build. I compared the raw durability of that tank with a straight SO version of my Invuln/Stone tanker in multiple radio missions. The end result was that the Invuln, against every single enemy type I tested, was considerably more durable than the Electric.

I tested against Carnies, Council, COT and Crey on a difficulty setting of +2 mobs set for a 6 man team... typical fare for an average PuG. Carnies chewed the Elec up and faceplanted him in about 20 seconds; the Invuln was able to solo the group and (slowly) kill the entire spawn. Council was somewhat of a wash with both performing acceptably but unquestionably the Elec was having a harder time. COT really hurt the Elec... again the Invuln had no insurmountable problems. Crey was kind of the same thing, both were adequate but the Elec was straining while the Invuln was coasting.

Both tankers were slotted 100% with SO enhancements, there were no IO bonuses on either. No inspirations were used.

What was happening here was the strength of defense showing in the Invuln tanker... the Elec had impressive resistance but it completely lacked that additional layer of protection so much more damage was actually landing. That whittled away the Electric's hit points faster than it could recover.

Lots of the mini-tool kits include a bunch of computer screws of different types as well... my favorite was a Fellows (I think) that cost around $15 - $20 and has 4 screwdrivers (2 Phillips/2 Standard), a couple of nut drivers, tweezers, grabby tool and a bunch of screws in a small zippered case the size of a paperback book.

In my experience you've a couple of different types of screws, each in a couple of different lengths... a coarse thread and a fine thread. Hard drives use the coarse thread & DVD drives use the fine thread. Actually, pretty much everything except DVD drives use the coarse thread

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Looking over Newegg they don't seem to have a kit with screws, but they do have all the screws you'll need here for $4 and a nice little tool kit here for $10.