Call Me Awesome

I don't think there is one yet; there's still a lot of things that need to be sorted out from the forum migration and that's one of the many issues still on the "to-do" list.

Hopefully it'll get back up and running before too long; past experience however tends to be a bit pessimistic.

Based on past history it's nearly a given that we'll get a freespec for issue 16; I honestly can't remember an issue that didn't give one since issue 5... I can't remember if issue 4 did or not; that's been awhile ago. They may say it isn't a guarantee, but I would be very surprised if we don't get one.

Of course issue 16 is probably still a good month or more away since it just last week went into closed beta testing; that typically means 4-6 weeks at least before it goes live. If they run into problems in testing it could be considerably longer.

RPD is useful, but it should wait until sometime in the 20's. For comparison:

• RPD offers 10% Smash/Lethal resistance, enhanceable to 15%
• Temporary Invulnerability offers 30% Smash/Lethal resistance, enhanceable to 45%

Roughly 75% of all damage in the game is either Smashing or Lethal... and close to 90% of the damage in the low levels is of that type so it's your most important protection.

Here's how damage resistance works, let's say you get hit by a smashing attack that does 100 points of damage. If you have no smashing resistance then as you'd expect you'll take 100 points of damage. If you have 30% resistance then you'd take 70 points of damage; 50% resistance and you'd take 50 points of damage and so forth up to the Tanker resistance cap of 90% where you'd take only 10 points of damage from that attack.

Here's what I would recommend for you as an Invuln/Fire tanker thru level 21:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 21 Natural Tanker
Primary Power Set: Invulnerability
Secondary Power Set: Fiery Melee
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Temp Invulnerability -- ResDam(A), ResDam(11), ResDam(11), EndRdx(17)
Level 1: Scorch -- Acc(A), Acc(7), Dmg(7)
Level 2: Dull Pain -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(3), RechRdx(3), Heal(15), Heal(15)
Level 4: Combustion -- Acc(A), Acc(5), Dmg(5), Dmg(13), EndRdx(13)
Level 6: Air Superiority -- Acc(A)
Level 8: Unyielding -- ResDam(A), ResDam(9), ResDam(9), EndRdx(17)
Level 10: Taunt -- RechRdx(A)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 14: Fly -- Flight(A)
Level 16: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 18: Invincibility -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(19), DefBuff(19)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(21), EndMod(21)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
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This would be a good basic build with decent Dual Origin enhancement slotting. Once you get to Single Origin at 22 (they become available as level 25 enhancements so you can slot them at 22) you may want to change the slotting a little; at that point one accuracy/3 damage/1 endurance will become fairly standard for your attacks. For the sixth slot I'd put either a recharge or another accuracy.

Pay attention to the power choices at different levels; you'll absolutely want Temp Invuln at 1, Dull Pain at 2, Unyiending at 8 and Invincibility at 18; those are critical powers. The slotting can change marginally although I've given you a good, functional slotting order. Notice the numbers after each slot? That's the level those slots were placed. This isn't set in stone, but it will cover your bases well, particularly while you're still learning. Following this build will get you a nicely effective tanker that will do the job adequately without the frustration of trying to learn while also playing a poor build.

Welcome to the game, and I hope you enjoy your tanker... you've chosen a good combination that can get really good in the later levels.

In order to give you much useful advise I'd need to know what primary you took; your origin (mutation) is nearly meaningless other than the stores you'll shop at for enhancements. Your secondary, /Fire Melee, is the best AOE damage set available to tankers and is a good solid choice.

Ah, from this I see you have an Invulnerability/Fire tanker. I would suggest you look at my beginner's guide, Invulnerability tankers, the first 20 levels. From your description you could do with a few changes. The passive resistances aren't very useful to you at this level and Resist Elements is the single most skippable power in the entire Invulnerability set. I'd also suggest getting a travel power; for a new player the easiest route is to get Air Superiority (a good melee attack and travel power prerequisite) and Fly. It isn't the fastest travel power but it's by far the easiest to use and it's fast enough... you're not in a race after all.

Oops, this isn't a good choice at all, the Taunt power in your secondary is vastly superior... it's autohit (does not need accuracy and can not miss in PvE) and has a 41 second duration as well as being zero endurance.

For an Inv/Fire tanker in the teens I would have Scorch (no choice here) and Combustion for attacks. Taking Air Superiority will give you another good attack and, at the same time, get your prerequisite out of the way so you can take Fly as your travel power. By the way, Combustion is the only AOE attack you'll have until 16 if you take Breath of Fire (which I do not recommend) and Fire Sword Circle at 28 (which you most certainly SHOULD take)

I'd suggest you check out my mini-guide for the first 20 levels to start out; from your comments it sounds like you've a sub-optimal build. Later on you may want to check out my guide to soft capping an Invulnerability tanker... I wouldn't suggest you worry about that yet though, for now just concentrate on building a solid foundation.

You'll want to download Mid's Hero Designer in order to plan out your build; it's a bit complex but playing around with it should give you more of a grasp of powers and enhancements. Additionally most of the guides for various powersets use Mid's for sample builds.

I'm going to make a different suggestion; I'd slot the Gift of the Ancients set into all your defensive powers; 4 of them gives you a 2% recovery and 1.8% additional endurance... it's extremely useful for compensating for the end use.

I've slotted 5 sets of GotA on my BS/Shield scrapper and running 8 (and frequently 9) toggles I can fight full speed for about 3-4 minutes before I need to pop a blue or pause for a second.

Oh, the 8 toggles?

1. Deflection
2. Combat Jumping
3. Against All Odds
4. Battle Agility
5. Grant Cover
6. Maneuvers
7. Tactics
8. Assault
9. Sprint (frequently on in addition)

Even running all that I'm still good for nearly as long in nonstop combat as my BS/Regen with Quick Recovery AND Stamina.

The endurance improvement fixes the biggest problem with that character; it's already at the soft cap for defense from powers and other set bonuses. I just rolled up a new SD/Fire tanker and that's the basic template I'll be using for him as well. Best of all the GotA is relatively inexpensive; and you only need 4 of them freeing up a bunch of slots for other purposes.

I've slotted my attacks with Mako's Bite and Scirocco's Dervish to make up the defenses; I'll admit I've relied on Parry for Melee which won't be an option for a tanker; but with the higher numbers it should be easily doable to cap all positions.

<edited to add a forgotten toggle, make that EIGHT or NINE instead of seven or eight>

No, you simply will have to roll up a NEW character; no need to delete the old one.

To clarify just what a respec is for the OP, it will allow you to change the powers from your sets; for example if you don't like your current build you can pick different powers... but you can't change your primary or secondary. If you rolled a WP/Mace for example then you could choose different powers from Willpower and Mace, but you couldn't change to an Inv/SS for example. That character will always have the same primary and secondary you originally chose.

When you respec your character is taken back to level zero powers wise and you get to re-choose your powers and slots up to your current level. Before you respec I STRONGLY recommend getting Mid's Hero Designer and working out just how you want to build your character; it's incredibly easy to screw up your build if you don't have one already mapped out.

True, I should have mentioned that. Still, Stone will do considerably more damage as compensation. It will be a challenge pre-stamina and you'll have to build in some endred but it offers a ton of mitigation and quite solid damage.

If you're playing the normal content and selling all your drops money shouldn't even remotely be an issue; I usually have over 10 million by level 20 on hand, and that's after buying 2 sets of DO's. For reference a full set of SO's at level 22 will cost roughly 1 million inf; you should be netting more than that per level in your 20's if you sell salvage at wentworths and the common recipes to the vendor.

Inf is extremely easy to come by currently; for example I sold a nevermelting ice (common arcane salvage) for 200,000 last night; I've actually seen it going for over a half million. Other common salvage prices are fluctuating dramatically as well; it's not uncommon to see a piece of salvage selling for between 100 inf and 100,000 inf. Heck, temporal analyzers, something that used to be vendor bait trash are now occasionally selling for upwards of 100,000. Trust me, just playing normal content and selling salvage at Wentworths will more than take care of any monetary concerns you have.

The only pitfall I see is the general lack of damage; in my opinion Stone Melee offers all the mitigation of Ice and solid damage as well. Your Inv/Ice should be a good aggro tanker and should be highly survivable... the damage is the only concern I'd have.

Stone/Ice won't offer you anything you're used to with damage... I really wouldn't recommend that combo to you, especially as a first tank.

From what you're looking for I'd suggest forgetting about Stone armor; the penalties of -speed and -jump in Rooted, to say nothing of the -recharge and -damage in Granite would probably bore you silly. Now I don't want you to think I'm down on Stone, I've leveled two Stone tankers to 50 and it's a great set; I just don't think it's the set for you based on your statements.

Primary wise I'd suggest either Invuln or Shield; both can be very solid defensively and both will do a good job holding aggro. The Invuln will be the tougher of the two nearly reaching Granite levels if built right while the Shield will do considerably more damage; either is tough enough for nearly anything you may face and they don't have the penalties of Granite. I'd probably suggest Shield for you due to the increased damage output; it'll be a bit slower starting than Invuln but once it hits it's stride it's quite survivable.

For your secondary Fire Melee will offer the most AOE damage as well as a good solid single target punch at the expense of any form of damage mitigation... other than killing faster that is. As a bonus, it's the lightest on your end bar.

Stone Melee offers a huge amount of damage mitigation; both of the hammers have knockdown, Fault is an AOE knockdown and stun, Tremor is an AOE knockdown with moderate damage and Seismic Smash is a MAG 4 hold (yep, FOUR, it'll hold a boss in one shot) in addition to being one of the hardest hitting single target attacks available to tanks.

Super Strength is the classic pairing with Invuln; it's a solid set but I haven't played it myself so I can't offer any first hand knowledge. It has solid single target damage and though you have to wait until 38 to get it Footstomp is an excellent AOE attack. I've been considering rolling up a Shield/SS tanker myself recently.

Ice Melee is effective with damage mitigation but it's somewhat lacking in damage output; coming from a blaster/warshade background it would probably be frustrating to you.

True, but you have to admit that's the rare exception to the rule that purples are... um, shall we say, collector's items? Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous?

Another thing to keep in mind is that most of the purple sets are EXTREMELY expensive at Wentworths; unless you have a huge bankroll you can probably forget about them. For the cost of one purple recipe you could probably completely outfit your character with really good non-purple sets.

A "cheap" purple set will cost ~50,000,000 - 80,000,000 per recipe while the better sets can cost hundreds of millions per recipe. It's something to keep in mind when you're planning a build.

It's a good secondary, and it seems to be the most popular pairing for Invuln; probably because it's the "iconic" pairing of an invulnerable hero. I haven't played SS myself, but it's quite capable if maybe a touch end heavy. Personally I've played Stone Melee, Fire Melee and Energy Melee to 50 and based on that I recommend staying far away from Energy.

Really the only secondaries I'd recommend against would be Dual Blades (a tanker has other worries than trying to get combos off, I personally feel this is a poor tanker secondary) and Energy (low damage until 35-38 and extremely long animations once you get the heavy hitters).

Axe is capable, but it's very end heavy so you'll have difficulty prior to Stamina and it'll be taxing even in a mature build. You can build to compensate of course if you really like the set. I can't offer advice about the mature set since I've never played it past level 20.

Stone Melee offers considerable damage mitigation with all the knockdown, stun and hold (in Seismic) as well as solid damage; it's also a mite hard on the blue bar, although not quite as bad as Axe in my experience. The Inv/Stone pairing is a fantastic survivor and highly capable aggro holder. I'll admit to maybe a touch of bias here; Inv/Stone was my first level 50 back 5 years ago and it's still one of my favorite characters. You'll have to tough it out until Stamina though; the teens are fairly rough on your blue bar.

Fire Melee is king of AOE damage with solid single target damage and it's the lightest of the bunch on end, the downside is no damage mitigation at all to it other than killing things faster. It's a lot of fun and the best of the bunch at killing large numbers of enemies quickly.

Whatever secondary you choose an Invuln is an absolutely solid tanker if you build it right, capable of handling any challenge in the game. I'm sure others can give you more perspective on Super Strength... I just know the more theoretical side since I haven't actually played it. I've been kicking around a new tanker idea and I've been tempted to try SS simply because it's a set I've no experience with.

If you build it right Invuln will be almost as tough as a Granite tank and it will do a fantastic job of holding aggro. WP can be nearly as tough, but you're going to be really struggling to hold aggro with the weakest taunt aura in the game. Invuln's aura, Invincibility, has a 16.9 second taunt duration at MAG 4. WP's aura, RTTC, has a 1.25 second taunt duration at MAG 3. As you can see, there's absolutely no contest there.

If you're wanting to be a true tanker and manage aggro as well as outputting damage then Inv will serve you better than WP. If you're looking for a more solo based build then WP will be a good choice.

This really doesn't make sense to me; I've tanked LR probably upwards of 70 times with both a Stone and an Invuln tanker and I've never seen an "unaffected" message. Oh, and you DON'T need the Kin to babysit you; he was perfectly correct to assist the team instead. The only offensive power other than Mud Pots you should be using while the team's killing the towers is Taunt and the base recharge is more than sufficient. SB is pointless at this point; worry about it once the towers are down and you're killing LR.

With a Granite tanker running Rooted you shouldn't need much if any support while the team kills the red/blue/orange/green towers. Your resists in Granite coupled with the def are more than enough all by themselves. If LR gets a couple of big hits on you before the Red tower dies just hit Earth's Embrace and continue on.

Here's the basic approach to tanking LR with a Stone tank:

• Using Granite/Rooted/Mud Pots you TP into melee with him and Taunt, then you can work your way back to the rear corner... this is so that if (when) the Flier respawns it won't aggro on you while you kill LR. Mud Pots will keep LR from summoning Banes but if you've any toggle debuffs such as Rad Infection or Darkest Night it's a good idea to anchor them on him to make sure.
• Once you have LR's aggro the rest of the team kills the Red tower, then the Blue tower, then the Orange tower and finally the Green tower. NOBODY should approach the towers until you have established aggro.
• If LR manages to take you to orange HP while the Red tower (it doubles his damage) then hit Earth's Embrace and keep on Taunting. Don't worry about attacking, you won't be able to hit him anyway until the Orange tower dies. If you get into any HP trouble after hitting EE (and you shouldn't) then eat a green insp or two.
• Once all 4 towers are dead everyone on LR and take him down as you would any AV. Warning, he has a nasty cone attack so keep him facing away from the team. He also has a "Pet Nuke" that he'll pop at 20%, spawning large numbers of Bane pets. Just ignore the pets and take LR out. If you've a Kin on the team this is an EXCELLENT time for Fulcrum Shift.

That's pretty much all there is to it, and trust me a well built Granite tanker, even running SO enhancements, doesn't need babysitting. Carry a few green inspirations in case you get into trouble and EE isn't up and you're golden. Stay in melee range of LR and he won't end drain you, of course with the protection of Rooted he can't drain you anyway.

Back in issue 6-12 I had Aid Self on my Invuln and with a little practice I was even able to get it to fire off between tics of a DOT such as a field of KoA caltrops. I had it slotted with 2 interrupt reducers to pull that off.

Ideal slotting might be 2 interrupt and then frankenslot heal/recharge from several sets; you could have a 40% heal available every 8 seconds. Back in the pre-IO days my SO slotting was 2 interrupt/3 heal/1 recharge.

Fire/Cold is possibly the rarest damage type; I'm not sure but it may be even less common than Psi. For that rare a damage type settling for roughly 30-35% defense is more than enough.

The advice about CJ is that it's base def is low enough that it's not really worth the investment in slots to build it up.

Swift won't do a lot for a jumper, but Hurdle will have a very noticeable effect on your jump speed and your jump distance.

I really doubt you'll have many endurance issues with only one of the uniques; CMA has none of them in his build and gets along decently... Stone Melee is MUCH heavier on end than Fire Melee as well.

It's a waste to use an AOE attack on a single hard target such as a boss or AV... you'll want a solid ST chain for that. Your AOE chain should drop all the Minions but you'll need the ST chain for any LT's and above. I've played /Fire Melee to 50 and you really won't have a seamless AOE chain anyway. Also your higher level ST attacks deal more damage than your AOE attacks... always a good thing for bosses and above.

As for the vet attacks remember that they're low accuracy... they'll run 75% base and you can't slot them. Generally I don't rely on them much once I have a full chain of attacks... with the exception of the Nem staff for a ranged attention getter.

For Fireblast my favorite slotting is 4+ of the Thunderstrike set; it's cheap and gives a recovery, def & accuracy bonus.

Remember you aren't only going to be wiping out Minions; against bosses or higher you'll really want the higher damage (and, incidentally, lower endurance) of your single target attacks over your AOE's.

I typically use this basic thought process in deciding on power selections:

1. Will this help me with my primary purpose, to control aggro?
2. Will this help me SURVIVE the aggro I get?
3. Will this help me kill the mobs so I can contribute more to the team?

Using that priority list I find the key powers that will help me be the best I can be. The decision between Build Up and a ST attack that will fill my chain and deal quite a bit of damage is fairly easy; the attack is usable many times more frequently than BU is, therefore BU is a lower priority power that I personally never find room for in a tank build.

There are a few exceptions for QoL purposes; the prime one being a travel power... although CJ can be argued to fall under #2. The Hurdle/Health/Stamina line is pretty much a given with any tanker... these eat up 5 of your 24 total power selections. 7 powers from Invulnerability (skipping Res Elements & Unstoppable) and 3 from Fighting (boxing/tough/weave) and your total is 15 out of 24 and we haven't even started the secondary yet with only 9 power slots remaining. I'd say you'll want a minimum of 6 powers from Fire Melee (Scorch, Combustion, Taunt, FSC, Incinerate & GFS) and now you're down to 3 choices. You want Fire Ball, so that means you're stuck with taking Char/Fire blast/Fire Ball to round out your build.

You can't have everything you want in your build so you have to prioritize, stuff that gets aggro and stuff that keeps you alive takes priority over frills. Damage is nice, but remember your purpose is to control the battle first, then to worry about actually killing things.

My Stone/Fire tanker uses the following attack chain (outside of Granite): Combustion/FSC/Fire Ball as an opener followed by GFS/Incinerate/Scorch/Fire Blast/Fire Sword on the mobs who survived the AOEs. It's a waste of end using an AOE against one mob. All of my attacks slotted to ED capped damage and at least 50% accuracy... obviously there's recharge in there as well since I'm dealing with a Stone tanker.

On the defensive side, my Inv/Stone tanker, CMA, has proven unkillable since issue 13 with my defenses approximately like this, with one foe in range of Invincibility:

• 45% S/L def
• 42% E/N def
• 35% F/C def
• ~24% Ranged/Melee/AOE def
• 90% S/L resist
• 31% E/N resist
• 19% F/C resist

I've tanked 3 Master STF runs with 2 of them successful (suicidal blaster in the failed one), more ITF's than I can easily remember, numerous other TF's and probably about 100 hours of other missions. To date nothing's been able to kill him; the only thing that came close was Ghost Widow with her godawful hold. Even the Psi AV's haven't been a big problem; the positional def deals with a lot of damage and Dull Pain and the occasional inspiration handles the rest.

By the numbers CMA isn't as durable as Granite Flame, my Stone/Fire tank. In the "real" world the extra durability of the Stone tanker is a moot point; CMA's more than tough enough for anything I've found.

Ultimately though it's your tanker and you're the one who has to be pleased with it; I can only suggest what I would do with my tanking philosophy. I understand what you're thinking about with your build; where it breaks down is when you have to deal with something tougher than Minions and possibly LT's. Combustion/Fire Sword Circle/Fire Ball should certainly eliminate most of the Minions and severely injure the LT's but you're going to have a lengthy period waiting for your AOE's to recharge... and even if you had a seamless AOE chain you'll need some stout ST attacks for the Bosses, EB's and AV's.

I hope this made sense to you, I'm typing this at 1AM so I'm not at my sharpest

I think it was during the beta that it changed; as far as I know it's been a good aura from the time it went live anyway. A little anecdotal evidence of just how good it currently is could be the fact that my BS/Shield scrapper was easily out-aggroing two tankers on a PuG team last night, one of the tanks was a WP so no surprise there but the other was a Fire tanker. Neither tank could peel aggro off of me without resorting to fairly extreme measures; of course it wasn't a problem on the soft capped Shield scrapper I was playing fighting relatively vanilla mobs. Apparently the Scrapper version of AAO must have the Tanker numbers.

I've got to say that leveling my BS/Shield scrapper has made me want to try a Shield tanker... I just need to come up with a concept and secondary... hmm; Shield/Fire seems attractive but I've already played /Fire to 50 once. Maybe Shield/SS... I've never played /SS before.

No tanker combination is going to output the damage that a Brute will, that's not the purpose of the AT. Scrappers are the high damage/good survivability melee AT on heroside.

That said, your Inv/SS tanker can do decent damage and if built right it will survive things that would turn your brute into a grease spot. The tanker's purpose is first to SURVIVE damage and manage the aggro of an entire spawn of mobs; dealing damage is, frankly, secondary. Not to say they don't do good damage, but they're never going to deal the kind of damage a Brute will. That's fair since a Brute isn't going to survive the same amount of incoming damage without outside buffs.

For raw damage output a Tanker won't ever reach Scrapper or Brute levels, given equivalent enhancement and buffs. Conversely a Scrapper or Brute won't reach the survivability levels of a well built tanker, also given equivalent enhancement and buffs.

If you'd like some ideas for your Invuln tanker you may want to check out the guides linked in my signature, if you decide to follow my Soft Capped defense build you'll find there's very little in the game that will threaten you.

For a Scrapper there's really no combination that's bad; some are, of course, better than others. I've played 3 Scrappers to 50, a BS/Regen, Spine/Regen and BS/Shield. Of the three the BS/Shield is my favorite and is by a good bit the most survivable late game; the BS/Regen is better in the early/mid game however. I've found that the BS/Shield is capable of dropping an 8 man spawn of +2 mobs in about 5 seconds though... jump into melee and let AAO saturate, then hit Build up and Shield Charge/Whirling Sword. Headsplitter/Disembowel on any boss or LT that may have survived and on to the next.

I personally really enjoy all the hero AT's and play them all. My favorites are Tankers followed by Scrappers; I've more of them at 50 than anything else although I'm getting close with Controllers with 2 at 50 and one in the low 40's.

If you want massive damage output nothing can top a mature Controller, particularly Fire/*. A team of several Fire/Rad controllers has to be seen to be believed with the absolute carnage they can wreak. The playstyle is completely different from a melee AT of course.