Call Me Awesome

The Performance Shifter isn't a unique so you can toss in as many as you have powers to put them in. Hmm, the rule of 5 may apply; I really don't know. Immaterial to you however since you don't have more than 5 powers available to you that would hold it.

Remember, unless things changed with issue 15, AE missions do not count for kill badges or kill x missions.

If they have to be in Peregrine Island you might try around the two cargo ships just north of Ghost Falcon; they're an occasional spawn there and they should be level 40-43. Still, they ARE a rare spawn. If they don't have to be in PI then I'd suggest grabbing a radio mission against Malta as the easiest way. They're a fairly common spawn a little closer to Portal Corp but those will be 45+.

Of course the easiest way to deal with them if it is PI specific (if the mission says something about protect Peregrine Island from Malta) is to simply drop the mission... that's what I always do for Harvey Maylor's hunt 50 Carnies in PI mission.

Build Up is, in my opinion, a highly skippable power on any tanker; your main intent is survival and aggro management after all, damage, while important, is secondary. While it might be useful there's just way too many other powers that will help you more.

Your build to date is fairly decent; I'd swap Hurdle for Swift... particularly for a jumper the extra jump speed and distance is much more useful. Frankly I've found Hurdle more useful than Swift on everything I've ever played but a Stone tanker.

<edit> Oops I just saw your slotting for Stamina... unless you're slotting an IO set for bonuses you're wasting your slots, stick to 3 slots in Stamina. Also, I wouldn't slot Health yet; while it's useful it can wait until much later when slots aren't at such a premium.

I presume you know about ED? After a certain point slotting enhancements becomes nearly worthless; as a thumb rule 3 Single Origin enhancements of a single type reaches this limit. In your Stamina example the first SO gives you 33% enhancement; the second takes that to 66% but the third is slightly degraded and only takes you to 95%. A fourth is only worth 5%.</edit>

You've actually one more power than you listed by level 30; I would suggest Resist Physical Damage and Weave being added to your build at level 32. From there on you'll probably want Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword taking you to level 41 and your APP. I'd suggest getting Resist Energies in the 40's sometime and probably skipping Resist Elements entirely. Your other power choices aren't make or break things so it's up to you which way you go. I've always been partial to the Pyre epic for Fire Blast and Fire Ball but the new power in Energy for issue 16 makes for a pretty attractive reason to take that set.

If you want to be an unkillable monster you may want to check out my guide to soft capping an Invuln tanker linked in my signature.

I always snag Taunt at 10 on my Invuln tanks; typically it waits to 22 on other primaries with an early taunt aura.

Thinking it over I'd say that Invuln is probably the strongest tanker primary in the under-20 game when you consider the mobs you typically fight. I believe Dark is the only primary I haven't played at least into the teens and all of them have felt squishier than Invuln early. Sure it has kryptonite early; but for the most part those mobs aren't what you commonly face.

I guess we all seem to be coming to a consensus that you can't go wrong with either Invuln or Shield

I'd agree with your assessment there; my BS/Shield scrapper is durable enough to main tank the ITF unassisted and a Shield tanker would be even better. One possible advantage is the ease of soft capping a shield tank; if you take Weave & Combat Jumping you're only 2% short of the soft cap; the Steadfast unique will finish out your defenses.

One point in Invuln's favor is that it matures faster... a lowbie Shield tanker has a fairly tough time until the mid-20's or beyond; I know my SD/Fire tanker still feels very squishy at 23 while an Invuln, facing the foes you typically face in the low levels, feels pretty tanky at around level 12. Mature build to mature build however it's probably very close in durability.

From my solo testing I'd say the set is probably acceptable for a small team of up to 4 players facing relatively mundane foes... where it has problems is on large teams or facing the tougher villain groups. Testing against +2 Council set for an 8 man team started to show the problems... with a good team it could probably manage that with difficulty. Trying the same settings vs Carnies leads to an almost immediate faceplant... my best survival time against an 8 man spawn of level 52 Carnies with a boss was 10 seconds. My worst time was around 4

Add a force fielder into the team and it's going to be a really good tank in most any situation but on it's own merits it's lacking.

Nope, one of the reasons Fire has been on the bottom of the durability list until the addition of electric... and Fire has the advantage of a much faster recharging heal

Oh yeah, Stone Skin + Granite Armor will more than cap S/L resistance. Stone Skin with one resist slotted and Granite with 3 resist slotted. Your protections look like this on pure SO slotting:

• S/L resist - 90%
• E/N/F/C/Tox resist - 78%
• Defense to all but Psi - 31.2%
• Regeneration of 350% (with Rooted)

And it only takes three powers in your primary to get that. Nothing beats a Granite Armor tanker for raw survivability. Invuln is more than enough to handle anything in game built to the soft cap but it's still not going to reach Granite levels of protection; even with the Stone tank running SO enhancements and the Invuln fully IO'd out.

Invuln depends as much or more on it's defense than it's resistance; it's the layers of protection that make Invuln so powerful. That's the key, Invuln has three layers of protections... first you have a solid defense; 20% to all but Psi with one foe in Invincibility not including Weave. Second you have solid resists to S/L; 71% not including Tough and frankly, mediocre resists to everything else. Third you have Dull Pain to boost your HP by 60% and heal you by 80%. By the way, all these numbers are with SO enhancements... no IO bonuses at all and no pool powers.

Electric pretty much has one solid layer of protection with it's resists and a slow recharging heal without any +hp function.

No defense means you're getting hit by far more attacks... resistance alone won't be able to handle massive incoming damage. Invuln is, out of only it's own resources, getting hit about half as often as an Electric. Defense is simply more effective at keeping you alive than resistance; 1% defense is equal to 2% resistance. Best of all at survival is multiple layers of protections; that's what Invuln offers that Electric doesn't.

I'm not saying that the solution to Electric's woes is raising it's S/L resistance; just offering that as a possible option. Another possibility would be drastically shortening the recharge of Energize to about the level of Healing Flames; that would put the set on par with or a bit above Fire but still short of Dark Armor... to say nothing of Shield, Invuln, WP or Stone. A third possibility could be increasing the regen component and duration of Energize. A fourth, and by far the best possibility would be adding 15-20% defense to it along with some debuff resistance.

Yep, the game has to patch to the current version in order to play, although it shouldn't be taking that long... either you're on a very slow connection or something on your machine is hogging all the bandwidth.

As an aside I'd rather strongly suggest you change your forum handle by sending an email to CoHForums@ncsoft.com and requesting a change... your current one is likely to get hit by the ban-hammer and even if it doesn't it will create a negative impression of you in everyone's mind.

Speed Boost is one of the best buffs you can give your team; it allows your teammates to use their heavy hitter powers more frequently, gives them additional endurance and as a side effect increases their movement speed. It really makes a considerable difference in the kill speed of the team.

Your personal contribution to killing mobs as a Fire/Kin is significant of course, but you're only one person... making the rest of the team as efficient as possible lets the team move through missions faster. It's about 15 seconds of your time every 2 minutes to accomplish this; I see that as an efficient use of your time. Heck, as a Fire/Kin you can hit SB on your team while you're using Fire Cages/Hot Feet to melt the group you're currently working on. Flashfire, fire cages, run in with Hot Feet and the monkeys following. While you're melting the mobs SB a couple of teammates then on to the next group. I can't see that affecting your kill rate in any significant fashion, but it will have a noticeable affect on your teammate's kill rate.

Ok, to get that defense you're 3 slotting Weave, Combat Jumping and Maneuvers for defense. Yes, it will help some but the opportunity cost in power selection is pretty high. For what it's worth I've noticed that defense starts to make a significant impact around the time it gets close to 20%. 15% would help; I'd have to test it myself to know just how much.

Remember you've no debuff resistance though so mobs that debuff defense will chew your 15% away in a big hurry... and there are a LOT of mobs who debuff defense. A thumb rule is anything that uses Lethal damage or Energy damage is likely to debuff defense.

At this point you're getting pretty effective; I've never disputed that building massive defense bonuses would completely change the way Elec plays. You're still working on an very tight build to shoehorn in your Travel power, Hurdle/Health/Stamina, Boxing/Tough/Weave and Maneuvers. In my quickie tossed together Mid's build that takes up every single power slot in the build leaving no room for an APP.

I've no doubt that the numbers you've listed above will lead to a tanker who can do the job; my main objection is in the level of investment required. Looking over the primary it seems to me that you'll want everything in the set with the possible exception of the Unstoppable clone Power Surge. The SS side you'll want Jab, Haymaker, Taunt, KoB, Rage & Foot Stomp. Then you add CJ/SJ, 3 from Fitness, 3 from Fighting and Maneuvers and you've used all your power slots.

I realize that a soft capped Invuln also suffers some from this same problem; the difference is that Invuln is effective without that extreme a build. Adding the fighting pool to Invuln is gravy in other words, while it's a near requirement for electric.

I don't know what that build cost, but the build on my soft capped BS/SD scrapper cost roughly 150 million... I had to build a lot more def than a tank does though.

Looking over a build in Mid's you'll be sitting at 43% to all three positions simply by slotting deflection, battle agility and weave to ED cap and taking Combat Jumping... that only leaves you 2% to find with set bonuses... one Steadfast unique will do the job. I'd suggest saving up the 75? merits to buy it from the merit vendor... that's one Positron and one Synapse TF. That's the cheapest way influence wise to reach the soft cap, but it's pretty expensive in terms of power selections forcing some really hard choices in what you're going to leave out from your primary, secondary and APP.

Assuming you don't take Weave then you're looking for 10% in set bonuses. The Steadfast unique is good for 3% leaving you 7% to find. For that 7% you can look at Mako's Bite for single target attacks, a full set is worth 3.75% ranged defense and will probably run around 10 million in today's market. Melee defense can be provided by Obliteration, a full set is worth 3.75% melee defense... you may or may not get it done for 10 million per set. AOE defense you can get from Scirocco's Dervish; 5 of them gives 3.13% AOE defense.

Going that route you're looking at 2 sets of Mako @ roughly 20 million; 2 sets of Obliteration @ roughly 20 million and 2 sets of Scirocco's also roughly 20 million. That's pushing your cost into the 60-70 million range to soft cap. You may well be able to get these IO's substantially cheaper if you're patient... remember you don't need level 50 IO's; level 30-35 will do the job just as well and usually are considerably cheaper.

Please bear in mind that I'm guessing somewhat on the prices for the sets as they fluctuate considerably from day to day. A recipe that costs 2 million at noon may be selling for 100,000 that evening. There's also salvage costs which are extremely volatile with some pieces increasing and decreasing by a factor of 10 or more. I've seen Hydraulic Pistons for example selling for $500 one time and a few hours later selling for $100,000. Many types of common salvage have been yo-yo'ing like that for the last month or more... there's a lot of inf to be made with that kind of volatility.

That's the standard I hold myself to and if I can't hold the attention of an entire spawn then I've made a mistake somewhere. I try my dangdest to catch any loose aggro on the fly; like if a blaster has tossed an attack at an un-aggro'd mob but that's sometimes getting into problematic territory.

All of my high level tanks are capable of holding the aggro of one 8 man spawn; with work I can routinely hold the attention of 17 mobs allowing for a few adds. I take my responsibility for aggro control seriously, while I don't worry so much about a couple of stray mobs going for a scrapper I really don't like seeing loose aggro headed for squishies.

I admit that the majority of tankers don't even try to hold aggro but in my opinion that's a failure on their part; a tanker has the tools to hold the attention of up to 17 mobs. If a tanker can't hold the attention of a single spawn then they need to work on their technique. With the exception of WP grabbing the spawn is simply a matter of moving around them to hit them with your aura and tossing taunt on any leakers.

The tank dropping in less than 10 seconds to an 8 man spawn of +2 mobs? Are you just assuming every team will always have a sonic defender or force field? What about the typical PuG where you have pot luck with whoever joins up? I'll take a Shield scrapper as a main tanker any day over an electric tank; at least the Shield will likely survive.

I'm sorry, but "normal tanking duties for a team" WILL have you tanking an 8 man spawn; and difficulties above level 3 (current difficulty implementation) will have you facing +2 mobs. Right now there are two tanker primaries that can't handle that absent considerable buffing or IO sets: Fire Armor and Electric Armor and Electric is the weakest of the lot.

Let me explain what my definition of "normal tanking duties" is.

1. The tanker must take the alpha strike of an entire spawn of enemies on an 8 man team.
2. The tanker must maintain complete aggro control of that spawn until the spawn has been defeated.
3. The tanker must be able to survive against an 8 man spawn of enemies without any outside buffs for as long as it takes the team to kill it off.

That's the bare minimum that a tanker must be capable of in order to do his job... right now Electric and Fire are the ONLY two primaries that cannot do this. Fire is actually closer to that level due to the rapid recharge of Healing Flames.

As a tanker you won't always be able to count on having outside buffs available; therefore you MUST be able to handle the bare minimums listed above out of your own resources. Stone can, Invuln can, Shield can, WP can, Ice can, Dark can with good play. Fire is marginal and Electric simply can't. This is all figured on straight SO enhancement; what we've been repeatedly told is the standard level of performance.

IO bonuses of course change things considerably however if a set cannot stand on it's own with SO enhancements then that set needs adjustment. 6 out of 8 tanker primaries easily pass that metric... the two worst performers need to be brought up at least to the level of Dark Armor.