Dechs Kaison

I think you missed what he was saying. Try the same on a defense capped stone, invulnerability, fire, willpower, or shield tank. Tell me how they do when their endurance bottoms out.

Edit: Whoops, stone does have end drain resist in rooted.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Dave has stumbled on the reason I built a Dark Armor tank to begin with. I looked at the set and thought: "Damn, that has potential."

It only has two major weaknesses. One is the lack of KB protection, which is easily fixed. The second is the low energy resist (which is fairly common). That was harder to fix, but it's why I worked so hard on the E/N softcap.

The things that drop most tankers (such as psi damage and end drain) I can laugh at.

As it stands, the only thing I really have to worry about are defense and resistance debuffs (cimerorans and vanguard). Eating purples grant enough pseudo DDR for dealing with the cimerorans though.

And this was the second goal of mine. All the survivability in the world does a tank no good if he can't keep the attention of his foes. I disagree with your priorities, though, because dealing AoE damage is an effective way to grab and hold on to aggro.

I use taunt, combustion, fire sword circle, and the ancillary salt crystals to great effect. The salt crystals do a surprisingly good job of pissing the mobs off. I think it's the combination of debuff and status effect. It's got a very large area of effect to boot.

Two things. One: my build doesn't have a single set over level 40. I like being able to retain my E/N softcap on a Numina TF and sewer trial and my S/L all the way down to Manticore.

Two: Procs don't actually care what level you have them. A level fifty +stealth proc in sprint will still give you stealth exemped to level 1. A level 50 damage proc in brawl can still fire at level 1. If the power is available and the proc is in the power, it can fire.

Dark Armor ... tank?

Either acrobatics (free but costs powers) or KB protection IOs. Karma and Steadfast should be cheap. BotZ will cost more.

Because of this line, I'm going to suggest taking Dark or Ice Armor as your primary. Both are heavy on the control side.

Ice and Stone Melee are also very control heavy.

Edit to add: Another consideration: Ice is probably the biggest aggro magnet out there. Shield and invulnerability are close seconds. If you want to make sure eyes are on you all the time, pick one of those three.

Please note that I never said I took any of them.

Actually, I do have one, because it was either that or orbiting debt. Nice spot for a kb protect or the +3% defense unique, though.

Apologies for misunderstanding you. And while the highlighted portion is mostly true, IOs cannot add end drain resistance or fill the psi damage hole that granite and invulnerability have.

This was what I sought to correct with my build. It doesn't have either of the two control auras because I wanted to be the main tank. The stun/fear auras will do nothing to Lord Recluse on an STF, or any AV for that matter. Dark Armor's heal is all you need when there's more than two things hitting you. Up against a single target, however, is a different story.

Woah, woah, woah. That "first group of Malta" is the only group of Malta in the video (except for that one scene with the all sapper AE group). If you were to take all the Malta segments of the video and put then next to each other, you'd have the entire fight in one seamless section. I got hit by them a lot and did have to heal.

You compared the two in a vacuum of their other abilities. Different sets do different things with different tools. SR on a tank would be amazing with respect to survivability. A shield tank is going to have the edge in damage and comes with mitigation in the form of -damage and AoE knockdown.

While it doesn't go in the control auras, I'd like to bring up what I believe to be the single best IO for Dark Armor:

Theft of Essence chance for +end.

I've seen Dark Regeneration fill both of my bars.

Honestly? I think Dark Armor is one of the best low level tanks. Sure, at that level you tank endurance more than enemies, but DA has its "godmode" power at level 8.

Keep in mind the set has some defense in Cloak of Darkness. Weave is a standard for just about anyone who plans to main tank. I've seen willpower, and invuln tanks pushed to softcap too. Does that invalidate their abilities?

What makes Dark Armor so good is the potential. It can be softcapped even though it is mostly a resistance set with the best heal in the game.

Thank you Talen_Lee. All I did here was build to my strengths. If you invalidate Dark Armor because of its potential with sets, then you invalidate everybody. The playing field is even here.

Oh you sonofa...

You built a group with every debuff in the game. At least my tank had endurance left after the first 5 seconds. And I managed to beat one full spawn at a time. The damned force bubble guys pushing me into the next group just wasn't fair.

Is that arc still up? Proving Grounds - Spawn of Satan Edition or something like that?

I need to practice. I'll get back to you on that.

So very much this. Any combo can work, and fun is the real goal here. It's a game.

Yes, thank you. That is one of the things I was going for.

The control auras? One: I didn't have room for them. Two: I built this as a main tank and I didn't want to worry about losing aggro if they stumbled away or stayed behind in fear.

The one and only. Thanks. Finally got my MoSTF with him too.

*Grumble grumble* Silly scrappers getting killed on my Mo's.

Keep going. It'll pay off. The KD that axe is full of will multiply your survivability.

Thank you. Again, I went for fire because of thematic reasons. The character uses an art of "soulfire" as his offense. The scimitar also added to his desert warrior theme. But to keep it all earthy looking I would definitely go stone or dark melee. Stone actually has some nice synergy with stacking stuns but is more end heavy than most sets. I've always wanted a stone melee something, but never got around to making one... Dark Melee makes end management trivial and puts out great single target damage, but the heal is less than necessary.

That is the magic of the popmenu command.

Thank you, but the slotting helps more, I think.

Bah, no. I don't need more healing and I've got my endurance well under control, as you can see in the video. I do wish I'd have taken something with more mitigation though, instead of fire's straight damage. But fire fit the theme.

Ah, the coloring was supposed to look like sand. Thus the choice of Sandstorm.

The auto powers do turn off, but if you had a miracle or numina unique in health, that'll stay active for 120 seconds after you shift. As long as you drop to human every 120 seconds, you keep that benefit.

I do not endorse this practice, however, as a tri-form warshade would already be short on powers and couldn't afford the useless fitness pool.

Echoing this.

I rarely spend time in human form. Usually just enough to cast eclipse, mire, stygian circle, or summon a fluffy ball of doom.

The rule is: If I'm in human form long enough to toggle a shield, I've stayed in human too long.

Nothing beats flying around with a 157.5% damage bonus, 85% resist all, and a nearly full AoE attack chain.

Unless it's a Master attempt. One lucky hold spells doom. In that case, you're best to have a sonic defender in my opinion, or a /thermal controller, even a kin for the increase density (but what kin these days takes that?), but I guess an empathy works too.

The only thing I could seem the porting to us is veteran badges and maybe some "Legacy player" benefit. I doubt they'd let you bypass any of the new content by "pre-leveling" you.

Anyway, have you ever powerleveled a character to 50 and then tried to learn how to play/build it? It'd be like that, only with a potentially new combat/power system, a hundred times more complicated. If anything, pre-leveling would be a disadvantage.

That's likely the problem.

Thanks for the fix.

I suspect... that... if... they make... a CoH2... it... will... be like... totally new... and like... no one would... keep their... not so hard earned... stuff they... got in... an old... game.

GAH!

No, if they start from scratch then nothing should be the same. The bare bones archetypes and city structure could be different. I imagine they would get rid of the horrid war walls. At the very least, the zones would all be redone, and exploration badges could easily be added, removed, or moved around. New enemies, different enemies, and removed enemies could all lead to different defeat badges. Task forces could be redone as well as the badge granting missions, or maybe a whole new system enacted. More badges that change and affect the accolades.

Perhaps they want to rebalance the accolade powers. Even if they don't, maybe the badges you got them with before don't exist anymore.

What if they remove powersets (They didn't get finished for the new engine)? Consolidate powersets (Katana and broadsword become one set with different animations)? Change them in any way? Your old characters would no longer be able to be transferred.

Maybe they'd look at the game entirely differently than before, and have a 100 level cap. Or they go back to a level 40 cap.

Basically, given that CoH2 should start from scratch, there's no guarantee that your old characters would be compatible with the new game.

For what it's worth, I'm with you.

Vampire with sparkle powers. What has the world come to?

Dark Armor - Soul Transfer. I never get to use it. It's a nice set mule, though.