Cognito

Difficult one that. All I can say is taking both seems a bit pointless.

Dimension shift is nearly always an excellent "Oh S..." button. From a team persepective, its the best button in the game I can think of.

I suppose whilst Sonic Detention gives you a fairly good "Split" of peeling one of, Dimension shift varies from an annoying breathing space (all shifted), to a spectacular battle turner (around 25-50% not shifted, team wipes them out, then moves to the shifted as they phase out), to something akin to the detention cage.

On balance, I felt dimension shift was more useful.

And as for not uber? No, i guess not. But sonic siphon + containment + propel will give you a whacking huge blast that most blasters would be hungry for. Its just its animation time that lets it down.

Goy my grav / sonic to level 24, so no expert... however Id agree with previous comments.

Must have power is sonic dispersion.

Must not have power is the sonic repel one.

Sonic cage is a good power, but its kinda replicated (and in a better way) with dimension shift which is why i didnt take it. Better get a bind for it in team play tho!

Sonic disruption is an excellent power with a tank.

All my 2 inf

DOnt know what the big fuss is about, TBH. A tanks job is to take it first, dish it out second. The most important power in your secondary will always be taunt.

Whilst I would agree that the secondaries need balancing and fine tuning, I dont think differences in them are THAT vital, compared to other much more serious inequeties (*nudge* regen, *nudge* trick arrow, *nudge* granite armour )

My only comment is that if you want to solo, you are looking at a high Single Target / AoE ration. Hence, battle axe comes out well, Fire poorly (cant recall the other sets to well). Ice is fantastic as a team tank (Ice slide will improve your survivability like nothing else on the secondary or even primary!), but has low damage so prob not solo friednly

Of you want to make a solo-able tank i would say fire / energy as it has the biggest damage output of any tank. I find battle axe a good single target basher aswell.

Unfortunately, but not suprisingly, just like any toon, the more solo-freindly you are, the less team freindly you will become.

Personally, if you want to play a tank, you should be prepared to work largely in teams.

Whatever you do, get taunt early and you should qualify as a team tank. IMO, and most players i team with, a tank without taunt is not a tank, end of. But I dont want to open that can of worms again *duck*

TO my mind, the skill of playing a stone tank is the aggro management. If you want to team then no matter how hard / tough your tank is, if the rest of the team are getting clobbered, you are failing big time.

I am always nervous around stone tanks because of their relatively poor aggro management. Taunt is a necessity

The stealth aspect of Superspeed kind of attractive. May i ask what the intangibility power is like - i presume it has the 30 second limit so therefore limits its use as a stealth/scout and recall way foward?

Also, I note you have picked shadow bolt rather than (is it ebon eye or something... the negative energy eye beams anyway)... any reason. Very fast recharge i like, especially as I may not pick to many attack powers, but is it worth it at higher levels???

Thanks Spad

I may drop out of the travel powers (not going to be a PvPer) and add in some leadership pools if going for all human. I have no intention of solo'ing. If i want to solo, Ill play a regen scrapper or oblivion

Although I am not partiularly keen on Kheldians for concept reasons, I thought I might play a few up - yes, I admit, so I can grab the freespec for them

COnceptually, I wanted a triform PB and all human WS. However, a freind who dragged a WS up to 50 strongly advised me against an all human WS.

I was thinking of having a more support type WS - bit blasttery, bit trollery, leadership pools, stealth and recall freind inherent, plus the 'ol corspe boosting powers.

Would this be a feasable / workable build? Im not a min/maxer but I have sometimes struggled when making concept characters who clearly underperform, and I dont want that again

I wont post any actual proposed build - Just bear in mind the brushstrokes above...

Help!

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Recall friend is for using someone's corpse as a portable bomb/vengence buff before I res them

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Great tactic PvE... you will need lightning reflexs to use in PvP tho

Choking cloud is a moderate deterrent to stalkers in PvP, thats it main advantage i find.

Fallout is just to slow with to small an AoE to matter much in PvP unless you are fighting a stone tank or some highly immobile enemies.

Teleport for is much more useful than recall freind in PvP

Not a big PvPer myself but am a rad user

Well you took cyberskin to peices yesterday with current build m8. Granted im a team build, but you still took me to peices.

hmmm... so if i pick 7 from elec (which i will), Im looking at dropping charged brawl and lightning clap i suppose... although i may pick up the 'clap at epics... geddit?

Hmmm ill avoid lightning clap then...

Thunderstrike seems a bit of a must despite its painful animation as its AoE (better for teams) and disorientate effect for double effect on nasty bosses...

Between charged brawl and havok punch it looks like havok punch?

I suppose i may loose the first sonic attack to free up an elec slot later

Rolling a sonic/elec myself, hes gonna be pure team and more "Concept" than "Uber". However, looking through all the permutations, i need to decide on two out these four:

Charged Brawl
Havoc Punch
Lightning Clap
Thunderstrike

I was tempted by last two - im playing him inbetween blapper and blaster. I would have thought thunderstike better because of disorientate effect (stacking with the sonic disorientate) and its AoE. Thunderclap for similar reasons.

Thoughts?

Hmmmm... good point. Might need some caltops in there then

It would still be a demon in PvE tho... I used to wonder why ice tanks dropped first next to another tank - whirr - click! - a) they get more aggro and b) chiling embrace is helping their invun freind!

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For a PvP tanker I would go for invuln, hands down.
Mobility, excellent mez resist toggle and resist based, wich is the most important thing.
Ice is just too much unrelyable and with Aim + BU your defense is next to useless, while the resists are always there, like a warm fur

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Is this true in issue 7? I think it is but not sure... If defence is going to scale in PvP things could be very different.

An interesting thing we may see now is multiple ice tanks. In effect, Ice tanks are the only tanks whose defence "stacks" with eachother.

Anything sitting in 3 or four chilling embraces is going to be effectively slowed to a standstill, with terrible recharges and with very signitifant damage debuff.

Makes you think how an ALL ice tank PvP team would fare - no squishies to target, they run up to defender/troller, hit him with stacked CE - no escape - pounded to dirt - move on... Give them all medicine pool and its hard to see how they could be stopped... very high resistance to slows, practically unmezzable... they just run up and catch you all in a stacked CE death trap...

Any thoughts on this?

Personal Experience from playing MM up to 33:

Leadership pools are HIGHLY attractive (i.e. get at least assault and tactics - When your minions are -2 to you, accuracy is important)

Stamina - havent needed it

Hasten - havent needed it (what for? I dont attack ever)

Im toying with the idea of rolling a second tank fire/fire, more offendery in nature yet still tank-able. Anyway, for concept reasons I would like flight instead of jump.

Would it be possible to play in perma hover/fly mode?

It would seem to be still vulnerable to KB, but my experience of KB in hover mode is it seems to spin you around, but not back, meaning the build (if in perma-hover) seems viable...

Any thoughts?

Does anyone know if combat jumping would increase the aura effect?

Im gonna call my TA defender "Empath Healer McHeal" just to get some invites....

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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.

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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.

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Agreed. No tank grabs aggo like Ice. Period. I cannot see how anybody could argue this, and Ive tried all tank primaries. I went back to ice because the others are nowhere near as good at aggro grabbing.

And IMHO:

A good tank is not merely a function of how "hardy" there are: The value of a tank is:

HARDINESS MULTIPLIED BY AGGRO ATTRACTION

If you are just one or the other, you are no good.

If you dont have taunt, IMHO you can forget it.

One should be aware that in issue 7 and scaling defence, defence powers are going to become far more viable. IIRC, Ice will gain most, followed by Invun, then stone, fire gains next to nothing.

The issue remains that defence still leaves you open to the occassional big wallop (in the case of ice). The damage debuff of Ice's chilling embrace does mitigate this a little. If you choose Ice, grab CE as soon as possible.

I would also add that a tanks job is not merely to survive, but to help the whole team survive. I have seen a great surge of "skranker" builds since taunt become a tier 4 secondary power.

A good tank also needs to grab the lions share of the aggro IMO. A single tank in an 8 man team cant take it all, but in a 4-5 man team you should be grabbing most if not all of it. In this regard, a good tank has taunt, and Ice primary (particularly) and fire secondary are probably the best way of attracting aggro.

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I agree with that, certainly when playing with *my* non-empath characters, I'll be a lot more careful if there's no empath around.

It's always nice to know that you can just keep pounding away with a greatly decreased chance of debt.

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Isnt this the case with all defenders???

I think the effect is psychological ONLY... you can keep pounding away and if your help drops you get healed. However, with other defenders you either a) dont need the heals in the first place or b) you ratch up the difficulty until you do need heals and then everyone screams they need a h38lor!

Personally, when tanking i consider debuffs far more of a safety net than my healer. I prefer my health bar not to move thankyou very much

Nothing wrong with the leadership pool at all, for any AT, if you are a team player. That seems to be a dying breed tho from the amount of tauntless tanks, single target blasters/trollers, regen scrappers, and attackless empaths (none of whom trust the other) playing...

/em rant off

No

Because if a team is doing fine without heals, healing wont make anything go better. Buffs/Debuffs however will speed up the whole thing

On the other hand, if you are an empath in a team not needing the heals, probably best to up the ante and have a harder mission