Cognito

I know, I know, the devs dont agree with me, Nobody agrees with me...

And Im sure everything is balanced, and everyone gets exactly the same risk...


Pffft.... The Granite tank told the Fire Blaster...

Granite is number one top of my needs to be nerfed list. I cant think of more spectacularly unbalanced power in the whole game...

Risk vs Reward? pfffft! Try telling a fire blaster and a granite tank that...

Better....

As we suspected, Windwraith!

Better get a macro for when that Rage icon starts flashing...

Loook, let be honest about this.

Taunt is a great power. No questions. Auto hit 5 mobs, 4 second recharge, zero end cost, good duration.

No matter what your skill level is, you will be better at grabbing aggro with taunt than without it.

Lets face it, not taking taunt means you are freeing up a slot for either another attack or possibly more protection. Lets be honest, skipping taunt means you either take a step towards being a skranker rather than a tank, or take a step towards being more resiliant rather than being an aggro grabber.

By all means, argue all you want, dont take taunt if you dont want it, but lets call a spade a spade. Skipping taunt makes you a less team freindly tank, more of a skranker and lets not deny it.

I know I know that a good tank without taunt is far better than a bad one with it, but this is actually a completely irrelevant comment to my argument above - you have to look at it as all things being equal. You can say the same about nearly any build in the book but you dont get people saying a good controller with jump kick is better than a bad controller with his single target hold, do you?

Thanks for all compliments for FC. Sounds like he's pretty useful to have around!

Derek... fantatic work, really fantastic. Love the posts so far.

Have put FC's bio on there, sorry was a bit long

Get posting guys!

May I suggest Tuesday 9pm Atlas Park for Militia cozzie competition? - turn up with a level 1 toon, dressed in militia gear (toon acts as a model, will not be part of Militia and gets deleted thereafter).

Means we can all play around, look at the cozzie, then decide?

If you are in a duo you can - probably - get away with it, until you fight some primarily ranged / flying foes. Sky raiders and cabals are absolute nightmares, and if you havent got taunt you are practically a leech.

Id say get it, it needs only one slot, but if you just duo you could leave it till 20s when you start facing those kind of enemies.

Thanks for an awesome night, TF players!

Sorry for being a bit "bossy" and "Commander" like at the beginning.

I have to say the Babbage fight was the highlight of the Militia so far. We really felt like a SG coming together to fight a huge menace. Somehow getting the non-Tf members reinforce us halfway through (when we were flagging) really made the whole thing feel epic. The four of us werent making a dent - a few passers by came in... and it was looking possible but really slow... then another few Militia back up.. and down he went!!!

The best news is, after the rather long and tedious Synapse TF (Babbage being the exception), we have reached the FINAL MISSION!!! (For those that havent done it, its a cool unique map and a tasty AV at the end!!)

Lets kick off next Thursday at 7:00? Hopefully as many members of the TF will be on as possible by 7:30, by which time we should have reached Clocky himself. We will need at LEAST 4, but probably 6 or more to take him down (Thank goodness FC has a -regen power or we would be needing 6-8 at least)... and then we all get a tasty badge, superduper XP, and a +3 SO!.

Id suggest we look at a Militia uniform in the meantime.

Has anybody got a free slot they can model the uniform on?

Id suggest we all turn up with a level 1 toon for design purposes only, at Atlas Plaza at a certain time. We can then judge which one we like the most.

I suggest we use the winning design as a guideline / theme... Ex and Portent might have a few tech belts / gloves on top of the costume for instance, Derek might keep his glasses, to say nothing of Mer'de et al!

And someone post the babbage fight on the militia thread!

Great Night!

(Although will be nice to finish TF so the "excluded" members can come back in!)

Id rather have taunt and not need it, than need it and not have it...

IMO a tank without taunt just isnt a TANK.

This is probably more because it represents the psychology of the tank. Taunt is such a good power, not taking it can really only mean one thing... the tank is not particularly team minded.

Taunt is 4 second recharge, 0 end cost, auto hit, 5 target.

There is no way that any epic ranged attack can come close to this.

If some poor defender is getting blasted into the red... what do you think that defender wants? a fire bolt that might hit one of his/her assailants, or a 100% certainty that they will all be pulled of him/her?

Taunt only requires 1 slot to be effective (you can slot more to be more effective, but it works right out of the box).

Also... Cabal? have you tried being a tank without taunt? Forget it, you may aswell not being on the team. Porters and Skyraiders can make life difficult.

To my mind there really is no excuse for not taking taunt. You can be an ok tank without it, but who wants to be just ok?

Nice on derek!

Guys FC will certainly be on time today, but I may have to drop out just before 9 for about 30 mins (RL taxi duties).

Sorry about that. Please continue without me after I drop, and even complete the TF if it comes to it! (Although you may need FC for the AV - yikes!).

Bear in mind I will prob be back on around 9:30 (Traffic and politness permitting!)

Nowt wrong with punchvoke indeed. But I can happily swallow 100% aggro with Chilling Embrace and taunt and never need punchvoke.

I agree most tanks can (but probably shouldnt) get away with taunt till earl/mid 20s.

However, for Invun tanks, who dont get the aura till level 18, there is no way to delay it. YOu simply have to take it at level 10, or you will face 8 long levels of being a under-damaging scrapper and doing very badly in teams. You probably wont make the top of anyones invite list.

If you conisder Gauntlet as part of the "taunt aura" thing, its basically invaluable.

If yoyu consider Gauntlet as "Punchvoke"... i.e I hit things to make them hit me, its kinda sucky but helps.

I know some tanks think they can get away with taunt aura and punchvoke. Personally I disgaree but hey ho.

Thanks for the insight!

From your rather considerable experience, it seems the damage that blasters vs scrappers do is equivical.

And yet blasters face more risk?

Forgive me if I misintepret, but your experience seems to give weight to me feeling that the scrapper/blaster thing is pretty broken.

Fair points.

I would kind of agree with them if blasters where actually AoE kings rather than having the potential to be AoE Kings.

At the moment all i see is ice and energy blasters who seemed determined to survive at all costs, by taking and using single target attacks. heh, thats their choice I suppose and i cant blame them.

In my world, the game mechanics would mean work this way:

The TARGET of an AoE takes 120% of the damage and is aggro'd.

The "SPlashed" enemies take 80% of the damage and ignore this for the purposes of aggro.


If something like this was put into place, we would have a proper risk vs reward system and a return to AoE users.

There needs to be some solution. THe whole blaster / scrapper thing is severely broken on two counts IMHO.

1. Risk vs Reward... Clearly blasters do far worse out of this than scrappers. I do mean clearly. Everybody I know who has played both will agree with this, no matter how skilled you are.

2. Solo vs Team. To my mind, the penalty for being easy to solo should be you are less valuable to teams (not by a lot mind). This clearly is the case for fenders, trollers, and tanks vs scrappers, but there dosent seem to be any meaningful difference in value when a team chooses a scrapper or blaster for damage output. And yet, scrappers are far easier to solo than blasters.


The whole thing is pretty screwed up if you ask me. Now I may get flamed by a load of protesting scrappers but please only do so if you have actually played both scrappers AND blasters.

Yes, its a reward for both the scrapper and the blaster

Risk vs Reward? Thats a joke!

Consider a scrapper and a blaster in a team:

Both will get the same reward (xp)

Who takes most risk? The single target aggro avoiding scrapper who has more hp and personal defences, or the AoE aggro grabbing blaster with less hp and no defences at all?

Reward - the same.

Risk - cmon! blasters are dicing with death far more than scrappers.

Blaster do better with AoE for sure.

But no-one uses them - have you seen the ratio of fire blasters to single target blasters like energy / ice?

Anyway I wont derail. I did a thread on why I think AoE users get a rough deal and Im still smarting from the flames!

*ouch*

Id just like the game to be have an unequivical demarcation that blasters outdamage scrappers. This only seems right as they have less HP and no defences. But, alas, everyone seems pretty happy with them being in the same ballpark.

Personally I dont trust tanks without taunt. Aside from the fact it impairs aggro pick up (It just does ok? No getting away from it! ).

I know good tanks can manage fairly effectively without it (with the exception of flying/ranged foes like the cabal and fofr AVs), but my anxiety comes from the psychology of taking it.

If I see a tank with taunt I am always somewhat reassured that he/she sees it as his job first and foremost to save people and take aggro.

As its one power, works well with one slot - its auto hit, fast recharge, no end cost, I am very nervous about a tank without it, because of what it suggests about the psychology of the tank.

Please bear in mind this is not always true - but it has been a pretty good indication of the tank from my experience.

However, as an invun tank, I dont think you really have much choice but to take it at level 10. You could possibly respec it out once you have invincibility at level 18 (although I wouldnt advise it).

I dont know... compare scrappers to blasters and scrappers seem to come off incredibly well...

Basically yes, you just cant see it.

Anything next to you gives you +defence (and +accuracy i think) and is taunted. Its "Auto hit". Slot it with defence and end reducer enhancers.

And get it at level 18. Its impossible to really tank effectively without a taunt aura.

The bulk of a tanks job is attracting aggro.

The main tool for this is the "Taunt aura". Chilling embrace (by far the best for the job), Mudpots, Fiery aura, and Invincibility. Invun tanks dont get their aura to level 18 so are pretty pathetic at grabbing aggro.

So you need taunt to make yerself worthwhile until then.

Punchvoke? Dont ignore it, but its the weakest tool in the box. Any tank who says they can get by without taunt aura or taunt with punchvoke is a liar and you must never team with them!

Frankly, if I had my choice, I wouldnt team without a tank with taunt and taunt aura.

Rad secondary effect: -def debuff, IMHO not needed for a rad primary.

Elec secondary effect: end drain. Very helpful.



I appreciate that the tier 1 rad blast is very rapid recharging. I have a rad/kin defender. Its not much damage though.

As to AoE. Rad secondary has, iirc, irradiate (PBAoE), That cone thing i cant remember, and neutron bomb. The last has a horribly long animation (yuk).

Electric has short circuit (PBAoE with a truly magnificent end drain) and ball lightning.

I would accept that Rad has more AoE, but individually the electric AoE are better, if you ask me. Which you probably dont, but hey ho. Ball lightning is certainly better than neurton bomb. Irradiate and Short Circuit are equivival (Irradiate does more damage but has a pointless secondry effect, SC has a fantastic secondary effect) - I prefer SC myself. The cone rad is ok, but again with a longish animation and the potential to knockback which is the last thing you need for a rad fender.

Just my opinion, based on playing both a /rad and an /elec defender. Both are pretty good IMHO. The only difference is its secondary effect, and as I said, the end drain is far far more use than an extra def debuff.

As soon as humanely possible.

And if you are an invun tank, take it at 10 or you wont be worth much to a team.