Call Me Awesome

I'm not sure what the best way to improve EM would be; I do know that I simply can't stand playing it anymore... pre-nerf it was borderline acceptable in my Stone/EM tank, now I find it very lackluster even on that level 50 tank.

Leveling up it was the carrot of ET waiting at 35 that kept you playing the set despite it's low damage and high end use; the new animation means that on a team you're usually firing it off on something that dies before the anim finishes... remember that lots of Blasters tend to target thru the tanker and their attacks fire off faster.

I tried the set post-nerf... I brought it out for a couple of ITF's and other missions. Frankly, based on that experience I'd rather have had any other secondary other than EM. After those trials the character got shelved and probably won't be played again until the set changes. One thing playing since issue 3 has taught me is that things go in cycles of nerf/buff/nerf/buff; so I have some hope of future changes making the set fun again.

Well, I'm no expert on the drivers but it sounds like you may have a slightly corrupted driver. I'd try uninstalling the drivers completely and then reinstalling. That fixed a similar issue I had a while back. Maybe someone else will have some further information... I just turn the screwdriver and install the software; more complex issues I need to look up myself

There's lots of combos that are solid performers, it depends on what you're looking for. I haven't yet played a Shield tank far enough to have an opinion, but I DO have a Broadsword/Shield scrapper at 48... once the build matured it was awesome... but it was quite squishy until the defenses matured. I would expect similar performance out of the tanker version... slow starting but quite tough once it matures.

As an interesting sidenote, I was running a few missions with a Willpower tanker and my (soft capped) BS/Shield scrapper... we ended up facing several AV's and the WP tanker dropped very quickly. I ended up tanking the AV with my scrapper; even after the tank rez'd she wasn't able to regain aggro from me. I ended up tanking the rest of the night... my Shield scrapper was considerably more durable and a better aggro magnet than the Willpower tanker.

I had so much fun with that BS/Shield scrapper I've rolled up a Shield/Dark tanker; he's still a baby but I'm looking forward to the matured build.

I know my scrapper started to really take off defensively about the time my defenses got above 30%... prior to that he was quite squishy and had to be cautious. Now that my defenses are over the 45% soft cap he's become an unstoppable juggernaut.

My opinion is the best pairing with Stone is /Fire... as was mentioned Fire gives you the best AOE, fast recharging single target attacks and light end useage coupled with great damage. The downside is, of course, the lack of damage mitigation in /Fire... but a Stone tank doesn't need any extra mitigation past level 32.

I currently have 3 tanks at 50, an Inv/Stone (my first 50 and still my favorite tanker overall), a Stone/EM (gack, stay FAR away from that combo now; it was bad when I leveled it in issue 7 and it's horrible now) and a Stone/Fire.

I can assure you that even on SO's the Stone/Fire is extremely effective... I tanked the STF with that character several times on a SO/HO build with no IO bonuses. Just the base durability of Granite armor slotted properly with SO's is plenty for nearly anything in the game so why worry about any mitigation in your secondary? Add Rooted for the really nasty AV's and you're pretty much unkillable. My Stone/Fire is my fastest group-killer tanker by a considerable margin, even in Granite. I've a full single target chain with Hasten down and a full AOE chain with Hasten up.

Beyond some basics I haven't even bothered to IO the character out; I think I've pushed about 20% recharge bonus and a small runspeed bonus... I use TP for combat movement anyway so the runspeed really doesn't matter.

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Sound's like a floppy power connector if it's at the end of a cable with 4-pin Molex (IDE hard/optical drive) power connectors.

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Yeah, based upon the pictures in the link it is a floppy power connector. It seems everything is okay without it plugged in.

I have the two plugs into the motherboard, harddrive, vid card, and cd drive. Think that should be it, right? I plugged plugs into all the spots that had them before.

I played the game for about an hour without any sign of the problems I've been experiencing recently so thats a good sign, right?

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Sounds like you're probably ok; I'm actually somewhat surprised that the old PSU worked at all for you... you've plenty of power for that machine now. I'm certainly not at all surprised you had power starvation issues with the old unit.

Really you're into overkill territory here already with your S/L so you're good. Fire/Cold is the rarest type of damage in the game, even rarer than Psi... I wouldn't be at all concerned with lower F/C def.

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Ok, I put all of the cables in the spots they are supposed to be plugged in to, but I have many cables that are not being used. Is this normal?


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That's perfectly normal, you have extra power connections for additional drives and other miscellaneous items. The things you'll need are the 20 pin connection to your motherboard and the 4 pin connection to your motherboard (a square 2x2 connector)
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Also, at the end of the plug that connected to the harddrive and vid card, there is a small, skinny plug that I thought was plugged in, but when I went to plug the new one in I found that there was no spot for it. Could it have just been stuck between something that made me think it was plugged in?


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That sounds like it may be a SATA connection... new hard drives use a different power connection. Does it have kind of an "L" shaped slot in the end of the cable? If so then it's for new Serial ATA style drives. Anyway, as long as you have power to all your drives, and the two cables plugged into your mobo you're good.

Unstoppable is an interesting power. Prior to issue 13 I used the power occasionally... the crash was never a major problem to deal with, you just pay attention to when it's coming and then you react accordingly. Things like the temp power phase shift (Ethereal Shift I believe) were perfect for the drop as it was a 30 second click phase shift... Taunt, then hit the temp just prior to the US drop... 30 seconds later you're toggled back up and ready to continue with the butt kicking.

With the Invuln and IO changes of issue 13 I respecced into a soft capped defensive build but I kept Unstoppable because I was unsure if the defenses would be enough for the more difficult content. Well, I kept the power in my tray for an entire issue and never once needed it, even thru several STF's and ITF's. With issue 14 I finally dropped it.

A Stone tanker is quite capable of handling aggro as well as an Invuln... I've played both to 50 and for pure aggro control either can do the job equally well.

Swift + TP solve most of a Stone tanker's mobility issues... it's a different playstyle true, but it's very effective. You were talking earlier about needing powers to compensate for the drawbacks of Stone; yeah, you do. That's part of the price of being the toughest tanker. With an Invuln you take different outside powers to compensate for different drawbacks; both end up in roughly the same place at the end of the build however.

I won't try to say that Stone is for everyone because it isn't... if you don't know how to deal with and overcome it's penalties then obviously it isn't the set for you. I've been saying since issue 13 that, properly built, an Invuln can nearly reach Granite level survivability. It does require sacrifices though. That Stone tanker also requires sacrifices, it just requires different ones.

Bottom line, in competent hands a well built Stone and a well built Invuln can both handle anything in the game about equally well, and both are completely capable of handling the aggro for an 8 man team. Pick whichever appeals to you but don't try to argue that the other can't do the job.

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I've been messing around with all the graphics options, but can't seem to get it higher than 14. It fluctuates between 10-14 for the most part. After I get the new PSU, should it get better? Or will i need to replace the vid card to improve it to where it needs to be?

BTW, ive been testing it while in the Cap AE building which is prolly the most populated place in villains these days.

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You may see some improvement once the vid card isn't having power starvation issues but I wouldn't expect a ton of it. One thing you can do is to drop your 3d resolution to 800x600... you can keep the 2d overlay at 1024x768. This is sort of the last resort though as it has a fairly severe impact on the visual quality, particularly on a flat panel monitor. You'd do this by leaving your resolution at 1024x768 and then adjusting your 3D Resolution to 800x600. It will require a restart of the game.

Looking at improving your performance via other methods... from the top you can:
Reduce Physics quality to minimum
Particles to minimum
Particle fill way down
Ansitropic filtering to off
Texture LOD to crisp
Water, Bloom & Depth of field off (this will have a dramatic effect)
Shader Detail to Low (I don't notice a lot of difference between low & high visually, but it will improve your performance)
World & Character texture to low (large impact on visual quality)
Entity detail level to minimum
Shadows off (another biggie)
Suppression of Extra Player FX - ON
Suppression of FX When Camera Close - ON

If all that buys you acceptable performance then don't worry about dropping your 3D resolution... from your original post I'm assuming you have a flat panel monitor? If so changing from the "native" resolution will have a fairly major impact on image quality.

Once you've gotten the performance to a playable level (this is fairly subjective so you'll have to make your own decision) then you can start increasing settings until you find your best balance of performance/quality. One thing I've found is that I really dislike having World Detail below Medium... you won't be able to read billboards and such very well. Particles can reduce significantly without major impact... it decreases the visual impact of powers and effects.

There should be enough horsepower in that 6800 vid card to pull off decent framerates without completely gutting the quality... you will need to tone things down considerably however.

Good luck with your tanker, the combo is highly survivable and effective. One word of warning, it will be end heavy so plan on slotting your attacks for endurance reduction. With Stone Melee I would get Heavy Mallet at 4, Taunt at 10, Fault at 22 (this one is huge, no damage but massive mitigation from stunning all minions and putting an entire spawn on it's butt, it's usually my lead attack... I guarentee you have the attention of anything you hit with it.) I'd finish up your secondary with Tremor & Seismic Smash at 35 & 38.

Generally I'd say it's a waste slotting attacks for taunt, accuracy/damage/recharge/endurance are more important, and if you're playing intelligently you shouldn't have much problem maintaining aggro. I do slot a taunt duration into Invincibility, but this is a late game thing once slots become plentiful. While I get Taunt at 10 I generally wait until the 30's to add slots to it; in the early going slots are move valuable elsewhere.

Remember, Invincibility's taunt aura will last for 17 seconds unslotted... anything that's been in melee with you will be on you for at least that long after you've moved away. That already outlasts the duration of the taunt in your attacks so I don't see the point in enhancing attacks for taunt.

Go to menu - options - graphics and audio.

A short ways down you'll see something that says advanced graphics options. This opens up a whole bunch of other settings including the water, bloom, shadows and so forth. I'd experiment with those settings while you have your frames per second up (type in chat /showfps 1) in a "busy" area, preferably somewhere that lots of people are congregating.

What you want to shoot for is framerates above 20fps... 30 is better. Anti-ailiasing can be turned down or disabled entirely for a small bonus, world & character detail can be taken down a notch or two for noticeable improvements. You can turn down max particles, this can make a significant difference with lots of powers going off.

I turn water effects off... they do look very nice but they're a huge drain anytime you're close to water. Bloom is maybe the worst offender in draining your framerate... I kill it as well. Depth of field costs some performance and I personally don't like the looks of it anyway so it's an easy decision to kill it. Shadows likewise can be shut off for a significant improvement.

I'd advise experimenting with all of the advanced graphics settings until you find a balance of graphics quality and performance that suits you. Turning everything to minimum will get you the best performance of course, but it makes things look terrible. Likewise everything at max is beautiful but your perfomance goes straight into File 13.

Once you've found your ideal settings then try them on a team while keeping the FPS indicator up... you may want to tweak them a bit more if you're really lagging in heavy combat.

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He knocked you back on an Invuln??? That's very interesting... I can't think of ANY time my Invuln has been knocked back by anything as long as Unyielding was running. I haven't ever faced States, but I've tanked Tyrant on many occasions... and never been KB'd. To the best of my recollection my Invuln hasn't ever been KB'd without something dropping Unyielding first.

For the moment I'd have to go with the "fluke" idea... is it possible Unyelding might have gotten detoggled? Maybe a Rage crash dropped the toggle at the critical moment?

Oh, just for the record, Hamidon can NOT knock back an Invuln with Unyielding... I tanked him a couple of hundred times on Guardian back in the issue 4-8 era.

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Hamidon has knocked me back on my Invuln tank. A few times. Until Statesman, that was my only KB experience on him. My end was fine. Nothing ever detoggled.

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Strange, I never had Hami KB my Invuln in something like 200 raids; is this a recent change? I haven't done Hami since the changes in issue 9... the zone limits and other changes pretty well spoiled the encounter for me.

He knocked you back on an Invuln??? That's very interesting... I can't think of ANY time my Invuln has been knocked back by anything as long as Unyielding was running. I haven't ever faced States, but I've tanked Tyrant on many occasions... and never been KB'd. To the best of my recollection my Invuln hasn't ever been KB'd without something dropping Unyielding first.

For the moment I'd have to go with the "fluke" idea... is it possible Unyelding might have gotten detoggled? Maybe a Rage crash dropped the toggle at the critical moment?

Oh, just for the record, Hamidon can NOT knock back an Invuln with Unyielding... I tanked him a couple of hundred times on Guardian back in the issue 4-8 era.

I agree with Mace being a good choice, I just haven't played one and don't have any personal experience with it. Super Strength is probably the most popular tanker secondary, and it is an effective one. The drawback is that it's only AOE comes at 38... although it's quite a good one.

Oh, on the speed thing... it's funny but I generally have teams asking me to slow down with both my Invuln and Stone tankers , I tend to always push the pace and I rarely herd anymore... I just jump/TP (depending on the tanker) into the next group, toss a taunt at any mobs my aura missed and position myself opposite the mobs from the team... that way all the baddie's AOE's point at me and away from the team. Once the group we're fighting is dead I immediately grab the next one.

I've found that keeping things moving quickly cuts way down on what I like to call "Bored Blaster Syndrome" where someone decides to aggro another group of baddies while I'm grabbing this group in front of us. If I'm keeping things rolling along the blasters are happy just following and shooting at my baddies. If I wait around then the blaster gets bored and decides to take a potshot at something I don't have the attention of.

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Hello, my name is Alyosha, and I am a meatshield.

I'm a tank, it's what I love. I keep trying other archetypes but every time I heal or back up the tank in a team I feel like I'm in the wrong spot. I love taking the beating, being in the thick of it, taunting mobs off my teammates, maxing out resists, rushing to be the first in and last out. Bring it on.

So how is one a pure tank in City of Heroes? I don't care much about dealing damage outside of doing what it takes to keep the attention on me. I'm first and foremost concerned about staying alive and taking the brunt of it so others don't have to.

Right now I'm looking mostly at willpower/?, but I'm not at all set on it.


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From what you're saying I would NOT recommend willpower; it's by far the worst aggro magnet of all the tanker primaries. For pure durability you can't beat Stone Armor... no other primary can match the raw survivability of Granite. You'll have mobility problems though... your mez protection, Rooted, slows you down to a crawl and makes it impossible to jump while Granite hits you with a double whammy of -recharge and -damage... roughly a SO worth of damage and 2 SO's of recharge. If you can deal with those penalties then you'll be the next best thing to unkillable.

Another choice would be Invulnerability... properly built a mature Invuln can rival a Stone tanker in survivability without the penalties. I've played both Invuln and Stone primary tankers to 50 and both are very proficient aggro magnets... Invuln is a bit easier though since you don't have the mobility problems.

Shield, when mature, can be quite tough... not quite up with an Invuln but not too far below. I haven't played a Shield tank, but I do have a 47 Shield Scrapper who's highly functional and extremely survivable.

Ice Armor is possibly the best aggro magnet with two very good aggro auras and a mature build is fairly survivable... not quite up with Stone or Invuln but it can do the job.

Now let's look at secondaries. AOE's help quite a bit for aggro generation, which makes Fire Melee arguably number one for that purpose. The downside of Fire Melee is that it offers no mitigation... your primary will have to be able to survive anything that comes at you all by itself. The upside is that Fire Melee offers the most AOE damage available to tankers and is the fastest at killing large groups of baddies.

Stone Melee however offers two AOE's and a ton of mitigation... both hammers do knockdown, Fault is an AOE knockdown and stun while Tremor is a damaging AOE with knockdown. Seismic Smash, your level 38 power, offers massive damage coupled with a MAG-4 hold capable of holding a boss. The only secondary that rivals Stone Melee for control and mitigation is Ice Melee and Stone deals far more damage.

Let me recommend AGAINST Energy Melee... it's by far the weakest AOE secondary and the low damage until 35 coupled with the very long animations make it undesirable in my opinion. I say that as someone who has a level 50 Stone/EM tanker... the set was painful to level before the animation changes a couple of issues ago and now it's lost the "carrot" that made the early pain worthwhile.

Based on what you're asking my top recommendation would be an Invuln/Stone Melee tanker with a soft cap defense build (see the guide in my sig)... it's highly capable early and it matures very well. A second choice for an even more durable tank would be Stone/Fire Melee... it's somewhat slow starting and will be a bit squishy until 32 but from 33 on it's awesome. For the record and admitting I may be a bit biased I have both of those combinations at level 50... the Inv/Stone was my very first level 50.

I realize you don't care about damage per se, but a good tanker can be an excellent aggro magnet while also being a solid attacker. Given that it only makes sense to fulfill both roles... sure your main focus is on controlling the aggro of the mobs but since you're hitting them anyway you may as well actually accomplish something

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Primaries that I've never heard of anyone using for AV soloing: Martial Arts, Spines, Broadsword

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Broadsword is perfectly capable of soloing several AV's... I've soloed Dr. Vahz, Maestro (but those two don't really count), Bobcat, Anti-Matter and Synapse with a BS/Regen. I admit the Praetorians did require judicious use of inspirations and temps... most notably the Wedding Band. I haven't tried any yet with my BS/Shield (he's been almost exclusively part of a superteam) but it should actually be easier thanks to higher damage output; I've gotten something close to the recovery of the BS/Regen and soft capped def thanks to set bonuses.

Of course EB's shouldn't be a problem for any halfway decently built scrapper past level 20.

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You can do everything with standard SOs as well. I mean.. at one point, that was the best thing we had anyway.


[/ QUOTE ]Actually, as I recall we have always had HOs and CTOs

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Originally the level cap was 40, so Hami didn't exist yet... correct me if I'm wrong but I believe Hami came in with issue 1?

I've a few characters at 50 who have been *ahem* fixed by changes in the game and simply aren't any fun anymore; my Stone/EM tanker comes to mind. Even so, I can't see deleting a character I've invested hundreds of hours on... after 5 years I've found that the changes seem to come in cycles and I always hold out hope that future game changes may make them fun again. I had a similar situation with my namesake Inv/Stone tanker... the issue 5 & 6 nerfs so completely destroyed the character that I pretty much stuck him on the shelf except as a Hamidon raid toon until about issue 10. Now with the changes in issue 13 he's become a lot of fun to play and a powerhouse tanker again.

The price of more slots really isn't an issue, nor is the price of a server transfer. I look at it as being MUCH cheaper to buy slots or move a character than throwing away hundreds of hours of my time. After all, in my "real life" I charge quite a lot per hour for video production... figured in those terms my 50's are extremely expensive individuals

Generally if a character has lived past the mid-20's I'm probably not going to toss them; if they're no longer fun to play I'll simply shelve them... several characters I shelved that way I've come back to a year or so later and they're fun again.

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The one other question I'm not sure about is whether my sixth slot in DA should be used for recharge or defense. Right now I have 5 pieces of Kinetic Combat and a level 50 recharge. That grants me 82.6% recharge time, and it basically can fire every other attack, for 15% melee defense. I'm not sure if slotting for defense (or a defense/recharge IO) would add much per hit... I need to experiment with that I guess. ^_^

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Scrappers are a bit beyond the scope of this guide, but I have played a couple of Broadsword scraps, one BS/Regen to 50 and a BS/Shield who's around level 48 right now.

Personally I've slotted Parry on my BS scrappers one of two ways. My BS/Regen is an old character who's heavily Hami-O'd out; I have 3 Nucleous (Acc/Dam) and 3 Membrane (Def/Tohit/Recharge) HO's slotted... if all you're worrying about is maximizing the power's stats that's the best I've seen. It ED caps Acc/Dam/Rchg/Def.

My BS/Shield scrapper goes a different route, I slotted 4 Mako's Bite, 1 common def IO and 1 Acc/Dam/Rchg from the Crushing Impact; it gets me the 3% damage bonus while keeping around 80% acc/dam/rchg. I may rethink that a bit now that the BS/Shield is approaching 50 but that's the slotting I've used since level 33.

How you want to build your scrapper is ultimately your call; you can focus on S/L def and thus defend against the vast majority of incoming damage; you can focus on positional and build Melee & Range... AOE is somewhat less common. If I was rebuilding my BS/Regen (it would take me about 5 respecs to pull all the HO's off of him) I'd probably load up all the single target attacks with 4 Kinetic Combat (all but the proc) and 2 Pounding Slugfest. That approach added to Weave and the Steadfast proc should net me considerable S/L defenses... probably more than enough to fill in the burst damage hole that afflicts /Regen.

While I've played a few scrappers to high levels, two of them to 50, I wouldn't say I'm a "scrapper guru"; I've always been most comfortable playing a tanker. I'd advise you to play around in Mids, find a build that seems to work for you and then test it out.

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So do the defense bonuses work even when they are in powers not "on" or recently activated? Or would you just turn on sj, then turn on cj every couple minutes?

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Set bonuses work at all times, it's procs like the Numina or Miracle unique that work for 2 mins after you turn off the power.

My BS/SD is soft capped without Weave using the sets I mentioned; I just need one parry to get my Melee def from ~28% to the soft cap. He's much more survivable and deals considerably more damage than my previous favorite scrapper, my BS/Regen.

You have an alternative in your soft cap build... what I did was focus on Ranged & AOE def and ignore the Melee relying on Parry. With your slotting for Range/AOE one parry puts you over 45% on Melee.

My BS/SD ended up slotting the full Mako into Hack & Disembowel and a pair of Zephyr in CJ/SJ to handle the Ranged def. I tossed 5 Scirocco's into Slice, Whirling Sword, Head Splitter and Shield Charge to handle the AOE def. Slotted up Maneuvers and a Steadfast def IO in True Grit finish the defenses.

From what I'm hearing the few teams to accomplish the STF since issue 15 all had a fire 'troller spamming bonfire on the towers knocking the repairmen away before they can heal... and even then they were getting one heal off on the tower.

About taking down LR while the towers are still up... impossible. He'll have a huge defense, something in excess of 70% as I recall, and the green tower will be healing him for ~4,400 HP (I forget the exact amount) every 4 seconds. I don't know of any 8 man team that could reliably hit thru the defense and put out 5k of sustained damage every 4 seconds.

Earliest I've ever solo'd an AV was at 19 vs Dr. Vahz on my BS/Regen back in issue 5. As I recall it took most of an insp tray and 15 minutes or more but it's been awhile back.

The same character solo'd Maestro at around 27-28... much easier that time as he's sort of a wimp as AV's go.

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1. GW - as a tanker I've found that taunt alone will NOT hold aggro from range, and without a way to immob her you'll have a LOT of trouble keeping her at range. I'd suggest everyone just eat enough purples to stay at the 45% soft cap and pound from melee... her heal has to hit in order to work.

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I have to disagree on the first two parts. I had no problem holding aggro with just Taunt and, as long as I had Sprint on, I could just run in a big circle and she only got in melee heal range of me once because I was a little careless. Immobs make it easier, certainly, but we had none on that team.

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I've lost aggro on GW to scrappers if I was only taunting and not also hitting her with a ranged attack; I've never lost aggro if I include an APP blast with Taunt. About staying out of melee with her; yeah I can do it if she isn't immob'd, even with my Stone tanker. The problem lies in the rest of the team having to keep chasing after her... no big issue for blasters but a nuisance for melee toons.

It just struck me as easier and faster for a team of scrappers to eat a few purps to stay at 45% and not worry about her heal. Certainly easier than a hit her, chase her down, hit her, chase her again... cue Benny Hill music