Flints

I occassionally see 3 procs happening at once, which is always a nice sight.

I find it to be a good thing to have, as while at the HP cap 5% can be an awful helpful amount of HP to have with no reduction to DPS.

Pretty sure I could solo an AV or two with my Ice/KM, I'd most likely have to find new fodder for EA.

I managed Inferal on my Ice/Ice, although I did use a whole ton of insps to give myself stupidly high damage. I'm sure some of the scrapper AV soloers will say that doesn't count. this was about i15/16

I'm hoping for my Ice/DM to be even more effective in both general tanking and GM/AV solos.

The main trick is using the fury of the glad proc with breezing, if you've got a nice damage toggle/aura you can "slot and forget" and just work your tier 1 into your attack chain.

You may wish to slot for E.D capped end redux on every attack, and aim for roughly 70% damage and E.D capped recharge, using the tier 1 damage alpha to E.D cap all your attacks for damage, until the tier 3 or 4s come out with a decent enough recharge to make maxing out the stats an optimal idea.

I hate to say this at short notice, but due to starting a new job today I cannot attend the 17th Raid, and as such won't be able to lead the tank team.

I also have work at 8pm on the 18th, so I will be attending the tank team, but due to the limited timeframe of roughly 1h45m (15 mins to get to work etc.) I feel its best to not lead the tanker team on that time, simply being a part of it instead, due to the possibility of having to leave rapidly if the raid exceeds the time I have.

I will try to contact you in-game asap to repeat this message, but for the moment I'm only able to access the forums.

Once again my apologies.

The devs had decided cutscenes weren't going to be in the new TFs, hence the little text-boxes popping up instead, it was to reduce pauses and (Successfully) add a solid flow to the TFs.

If you read the dialogue, clues, mission text and watch the npcs rush BM and get flawed easily, you'll understand that Tyrant is draining the powers of all heroes, and channeling it into BM. This is why praetorians wouldn't just rush Primal with all their "Uber-buffed heroes" and destroy the place, Tyrant sent his best, with all his power put into her, to lead the invasion of the clockwork army.

And with Bobcat's "Vengence" running Bobcat's loyalist arc, you'd known how completely lazy she is, Neuron gets played like a fool by her and does almost all her work, until you come along and start helping Bobcat be lazy.

Also with the dialogue of Bobcat saying at 75%, 50% and 25% of Neuron, it's pretty easy to say sarcasticly "Oh, she's going to get mad and take revenge, oh, how difficult, we'll just DPS her down while she's no different because it's just dialogue." But you have ample reason to expect her to do something after defeating Neuron, she's not ultimately powerful either, she's fighting at full strength/effort and still is simple to get down, she's using claws though, that's a fast attack set, so whatever chance to hit she has, is going to be rolling more often regardless.

Pick up Hasten, get Power Siphon up as much as possible, work out a solid ST and AoE attack chain, and its awesome.

+dmg to you, -dmg to your target.

The whole set pretty much relies on Power Siphon being up though, which is why the common opinion is that it is mediocre in damage, in the same way that SS without Rage is mediocre in damage.

I personally love my Ice/KM/Soul tanker, due to -dmg synergy and a decent ST and AoE attack chain. During the lower levels and pre-19 (When I didn't have Hasten) I only used Power Siphon for AVs or tough battles, because I didn't have enough recharge in my powers to get to 5 stacks of PS quickly, enough for a Burst/Concentrated and then Repulsing attack.

While now I'm fully slotted, with fast regen, I'm constantly pressing the magic KM button and laying waste to targets.

Its fun, but its not all damage, you have to be aware that the set is balanced around not being an OP new set, and its signature power and debuffs (PS)

three places where you can move BM out of patches without having to go to max range and waiting for her to stop attack animations.

Middle use the bus, gives you all directions of moving her, if its clear of patches.

Right Car, also great for hiding out of LoS, not so much room to move about though, good to use while the bus is covered in patches.

Left and Other left bit tricky to use these spots, but theres some points/angles on the fallen communication pole that BM can't shoot you, so will move to the post, where you can then move again to move her around it.

Ice/Fire.

Fits nice thermaticly, insane aggro, insane AoE, easy to soft-cap, the list goes on.

Shield/Fire has better aoe though, but Ice/Fire isn't as end heavy.

Sadly there's not much you can do, occassionally any AV will get a lucky streak on a defence-based tanker, a few greens and Hoarfrost are useful, as is jumping out of melee range once you get hit to have a second or two to hit some insps before jumping back.

I've taken 3 moATF teams through (On both my Ice/ Tankers), one was mostly melee, one was mostly ranged, and one was a well balanced team.

Basically the main tanking idea is to hit her a few times and move, taunt etc. I specificly took Teleport as my travel power on one toon for this battle, as I can quickly attack, and move to a far enough range that BM will move instantly in range to you again, and thus out of a patch.

A good team tactic is to all move in one direction roughly, so the whole area doesn't get filled with patches.

On my first attempt I took no deaths throughout the TF, but I often take a few unlucky hits from the flying swords that can fallten my defences.

Telling my team it takes only 2 seconds to take off 3500 health, often isn't enough for them to grasp the damage of the patches, I have a bind that broadcasts the warning circle of the patches when they appear, while I don't use it throughout the AV fight, I use it enough to one: they know what to expect, and two: when they ignore it and die instantly, they know what the patch warning looks like, and why it needs to be avoided.

I don't really use any insps, except occassionally a green while Aid Self is recharging, and for the mo attempts I tell everyone to stock up on yellows and reds so phase one ends quickly.

Team buffs help dramaticly though, having the whole team soft-capped to S/L means the majority of the sword mobs can be avoided, and tankers don't have to run around keeping aggro on all the warrior and sword spawns (The finale of mission one is also another point where its difficult/impossible to keep aggro on every single mob.) so the swords can effectively be ignored while focusing on warriors or BM.

If you're struggling to tank on this encounter, I'd encourage you to look at how you're tanking, and if you're staying still or not paying attention to BM's patches, aggro and range, then you may need to change your playstyle for tanking.

In a side note, I find moApex TF to be one of the most enjoyable tanking experience in the game, from taunting all Warwalkers at the end of mission 1 to keep the orbital strikes spawning on me and not the team/drones, and the BM encounter where I'm constantly paying attention to the map, BM, mobs and my team, trying to make sure everything happens well.

You know, I can handle all 8 Heroes during LRSF on my Ice/KM tanker fine with a stack of orange insps.

But on both my Ice/Ice and Ice/KM toons, Lord Recluse floors me to the point that I typically run STF with another tanker who's resistance based.

I've yet to have a successful tanking experience of LR and his 4 towers of doom, specificly his combo attack of chain gun and the melee punch that seems to take off 2000 hitpoints in each attack and executes in under a scond floors me to the point where I don't even bother anymore.

If you're trying to go up against him, its handy to have a pain or empath on you to spam healing powers while you use insps to keep you res-capped and at 75%+ defenses. He's still going to hit occassionally, and it will hurt, which is pretty much why Granite tankers are FoTM for moSTF runs.

Its also worth noting that the "No Phase" self-buff drops when defeated, so even know you can't use Hibernate 120 seconds after the first "Hibernation" if you die while its recharged but not available it'll be free to use again.

I've been told the radius of Focused Burst is because it has a taunt effect in addition to Gauntlet, but I can't remember the source of that information, so I'm not sure if its true or not.

My /KM's damage is fine when Power Siphon is up, the -dmg% component is nice, but I agree that it feels lackluster without it.

You could expand on this for a therm or cold defender, using teamselect 1-8 commands, and having the powexec_slot or _name with where you've placed your team buffs. And use one button to cycle through each teammate, cast a string of buffs, then maybe send yourself a message at the end to say "buff cycle over"

Inspired by this thread on how people play their tankers, i18's addition of bruisng, and the 2 -resistance IOs (one for pbaoe, one for defence debuff.)

I thought on the idea of creating a tanker specialised for buff-heavy, steamroll teams.
But I've hit a few brick walls on the idea-front, first off, Dual Blades is the only tanker secondary with a defence debuff for Achille's Heel, so I'll be requiring Nimble Slash, Ablating Strike, and Typhoon's Edge. Which luckily is the components of the Weaken combo, the other closest combination would be the Empower combo. I could probably squeeze in Sweep in i19.

I'll also be using Willpower, which is also a powerset I've never used on a Tanker, I already know that WP/ Lacks a strong aggro aura, so Typhoon, Sweep, and Taunt will be the main aggro control, but considering its decided for steamrolling, as raised in the thread up above, aggro isn't really needed when the teams destroying everything.
Is there anything else I've missed about WP? I know its the set thats going to benefit most in a team, I intend to go for E/N defences, focusing on Resistance for S/L, as buff-heavy teams would most likely be including plenty of S/L defence, so that's not really an issue.

I'm thinking about taking the leadership pool instead of a travelpower, and using the flightpack for travel, because as I'm reducing the resistance with my procs and bruising, defence with my epic pool (earth), taking Manunvers and Assault seems more useful and a greater team bonus.
With Inherent Fitness, how's WP/DB's End use? I'm probably going to go for high-recharge, frakenslotting my attacks for acc/dmg/rech, so that with buffs like SB and AM, the build will once again benefit the most, and that I'll be proc'ing as much as possible.

Finally, the Earth Mastery pool for -def debuffs, probably going to stick HOs in there, for the defence-debuffs if that still works.

Has anyone tried to do anything like this before? Maxing a certain role of a tanker outside of simply holding aggro?

Tundara's guide is still useful, the main things to remember is Hibernate is only really good for slot bonuses in the way of enhancements. (But the power is great.) And that Freezing Touch and Frozen Aura are great for damage.

It's worth noting that I based my Ice/Ice upon Tundra's guide&build.

First things first, please don't think I'm telling you exactly how to build your Ice/Ice tanker, I'm simply giving personal suggestions on how to make it more powerful, more surviable, and hopefully by effect, more fun. If you want to keep powers like GIS by all means do so.

Here's my own guide to ice tankers about the basic things if you're interested.

Here's the Ice Meele guide that will explain why Freezing Touch and Frozen Aura is awesome, while GIS is not.

Secondly,
How broke is broke?
I'm assuming you have absolutely no inf at all, so respec that LotG Recharge IO and that Numina's IO out of your build, sell them on the markets for a nice 200mil to fund your cheap build.

Slotting health the way you're intending to will set you back about 400mil, sure, its nice to get triple-effect of Health, but just double it up with 2 generic heal IOs.

If you're going to use LotG recharges, you probably want 5 of them, which may set you back 500mil, you'll then probably want a nice bit of global recharge set bonuses to go with it, and those tend to be the most expensive sets.

Simply put, if you're not at max recharge for all your attacks, or not taking Hasten and other set bonuses, its really just a waste of an IO that could fund the IOs for 2 or maybe 3 attacks.

If you take either Combat Jumping or Hover, and take Weave (Drop Permafrost if taking Weave, my guide has a bit explaining why, but basically Tough makes Permafrost redundent.) You're going to be at 45% defence to S/L without EA, a nice place to be at the cost of 3 power choices.

Alternatively, go for the post-EA S/L soft-cap, I did that on my scranker (damage orientated.) Ice/Ice, she's only soft-capped to S/L when EA is up on 10 targets, but she hits like a truck dropped from a plane.

It's worth noting that if you go for post-EA, you will most likely not hit the N/E soft-cap, which means 2 of the four most common typed-damage types, are going to be hitting you more often than the other two. Dech's guide will explain the awesomeness of 45% defence if you're curious to know.

Frankenslotting will save you the most money here,
Find the cheap sets at a variety of levels (from 35+ you'll be almost the same as standard SOs), and stick 2 different sets of Acc/Dmg IOs into Frozen Fists, and 2 Dmg/End, this should cap you for Damage, and give you a nice buffer for Acc/End.
You don't really want to go for E.D capped Recharge on your tier 1, you'll mostly use it for applying bruising every 20 seconds, so you want it to hit and you want it to do damage, but your basic attack-chain will most likely be, FF - Frost - FT - Ice Blast - Frost. With block of ice being combined with FT to hold bosses or sappers.

Your AoEs will be coming from FA, your toggles, and EA if you damage-proc it. With Ice Storm up with Build Up if you match their recharge times. (I've literally 1-slotted Build Up for the fact I'm only pressing it when Ice Storm is up, to turn a 1dmg-per-tick to a 2-dmg-per-tick. But if you want Build Up, up as much as possible, by all means 3-slot it.

If you wanted to keep all of your decent powers in your build, drop Air Sup for boxing, take Tough and Weave by dropping Permafrost and GIS.
You'd have to drop fly too, but Swift + a temp flightpack is going to be the same speed as Fly anyway, it may be costing you 10k inf for every hour of use, but thats pennies at 50.
Slot boxing for Acc/Dmg again, its 2.5 sec recharge is fine with the 1s cast time. (Air Sup has a 3.3 sec cast time, its best to hit things fast in my personal opinion.)

That should give you almost exactly the same power selections, except this time you'd be at 40% defence, 5-7 targets in EA depending on how you slot will cap you for S/L defences. A few cheeky set bonuses for E/N defence will cap you for that as well.
If you took CJ from having to drop Fly, the combination of CJ + Swift + flight pack is great movement, then with CJ you'll be at 45% to S/L, and able to soft-cap for E/N with EA.

Slot EA for Defence/Recharge, its auto-hit and thus needs no acc IOs, the Kismet is fine in EA though, as you'll most likely to be using it way more than every 120 seconds. 4-slotting all the cheap Defense sets, (the 2 40 sets, 30 set, and the yellow 50 set.) will bring you close to the E.D cap for Dmg/Rech.

Stick an End-Mod in the last slot and you're sorted on that front.

Seriously take FA at level 38 though and fully-slot it, either by frankenslotting, or by sets and SOs. Stick the chance-for-heal Proc in there too, it only costs about 10mil crafted, and is beautiful in that power.

As its been said, Hibernate is overslotted, a generic Heal or generic End Mod will do it fine depending on taste.

You could easily make a beautifully-performing Ice/Ice for somewhere between 300 to 500mil depending on patience and if you're buying recipes or crafted, and selling those expensive IOs will take you halfway there, just run 4 days of tip missions, find whats good to sell for 2 A-merits, or 1 Merit each and you'll have enough to fund the build.


I hope you enjoy your Ice/Ice tanker, as I do love mine.

Firt of all Hibernate is overslotted, due to No Phase Recharge IOs do nothing for it, the basic slot is fine and put a heal IO or a end mod IO depending on taste.

I notice you're going for Fire/Cold defense as well, but EA is going to give you the most benefit towards Fire/Cold, dropping a slot from Hibernate into EA and sticking either a LotG Defense IO or a generic Defense IO will bring you close to the E.D Cap, going from 34.7% to 36.5%. One small Purple Insp will then soft-cap you to Fire/Cold.

You could 3-slot pounding slugfests in GFS and Incinerate, and frankenslot the other 3 slots in each with triples and quads to max E.D on those powers, as Scorch - GFS - Incinerate is your main ST attack chain.

Considering how tight you are on slots at the moment, If this was my build I'd either go

• Earth Mastery, take the 3 AoEs, slot them all for Recharge (6 slots in total) and use them to stack a 38% defence debuff.
  Mu Mastery if I could free up the slots, for the extra 2 AoEs due to Ice/Fire being a primary AoE tanker.
  Soul Mastery for Gloom (a Forth decent ST attack.) and Darkest Night (Doesn't really need slots aside from 1 or 2 end redux.) for the -dmg.

Instead of taking Conserve Power, simply slot more Recharge IOs into EA, Currently 4 targets will give you 88.62% of your endurance bar, as such maxing Recharge on EA will provide you with almost all your End back every 20 seconds, instead of the 6min unenhanced recharge on Conserve Power.