Gashes

CMA, while your strategy is flawless, he did say he had to tank over 40 min ...

30 min per inspiration, he'd have 5 min of cap to LR time.

I'd have to say the team wasnt optimal or suffered from the repairman bug is the problem, and the tank suffered from it.

Softcapped SLEN with 1 foe, wow!

You were BETTER than a granite tank.

AND you had to tank him over 40min, that is a very long time.
I've done STF (mostly on my granite), and i've been killed a few times on less than optimal teams (dr aeon and his horde of clones, recluse). In fact, in granite (-70% recharge), I used earth's embrace 4 times, all my inspirations, and begged the team to have someone run over, drop inspirations on me, then go back to the towers (and this was before the tower nerf).

Suriving the STF for 40 min, with only 3 deaths is way beyond the scope of most tanks. Nothing wrong with that.

on a side not, you can usually find 1-2 regular mobs after the hencmen AV's. You 'might' be able to taunt them over and use them for invincibility fodder to make your softcap defense even higher (though, I think that will only add 9% at most)

Based upon lvl 50 and active (actually played in the past month):

7 tanks (* when electric is released) - favorite blue side AT.
2 controllers - loved my ill/storm, mind/rad was ok'ish until 50, cant seem to get into other controller sets.
1 blaster - fire/fire is a blast. I have 1 new lowbie blaster, they play significantly different from tanks (no duh).
1 WS (mentalmaden has no idea what she is missing)
1 defender (dark/dark) - only defender I enjoy
1 PB
1 scrapper
1 brute
1 corruptor
1 widow (love the widow!
1 crab
3 master minds (tied with widow for favorite redside AT)

NO STALKERS (hate the D&D AT).

I wont make any more scrappers/brutes, just tanks, thanks to power proliferation, wish I knew, I'd skip the regen scrapper and dark brute.

I dont reuse power sets (e.g. invul scrapper and invul tank. Only exception so far is my dark brute and dark tank, pre proliferation) if possible.

new redside will be almost exclusively masterminds. blue side will be tanks

I'm the SG mate who logged on late and made the comment.
Every story was a 5, only because it wont let me give you a 6.

I'm thinking these belong under 'the best MA arcs your not playing' category.

Personally, in hindsight, I would have made a dark/mace (stacking stuns), as opposed to dark/dark.

And it is a late bloomer. At 50, I enjoy it, but leveling up, stacking ToF with CoF ... ugh, heavy endurance (not even talking about dark regen).

dark/dark can be viable, but if I could do it over again, dark/mace in a second. I just love mace attacks.

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i dont care what anyone says...im looking forward to my spanky new elec/elec tank.

already got 3 sets of glad armor and pancea waiting for him. plus the 3% resist unqiue and the 2 3% defense i.o's....ooooooh what good times ..

now i just need a outfit for him

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Didnt you say the same thing about dark/dark? And we all know your feelings on that one.

It really helps to post your expected build.

We can look at power choices, and slotting.
37% SL defense is pretty good. You can cap melee/SL defense, but at what cost? More recharge to help healing flames? More HP? More regen? Sounds like you have a decent build (without seeing it, cant comment).

Your question depends, with/without IO bonuses.

short answer: no

In your primary, you have only 2 defense based powers.
tough hide (5% base) and invincibilty (5%+1% per foe in melee range). fyi, invincibility used to be 1.5% per foe, but unyielding was a -5%. Imho were much better off this way.

at base, with 1 foe, you have 11% defense to all but psi.
TH+inv with 3 SO's, 1 foe you have 17.2%

Invincibility can be powered from 1-10 foes.
at 10 foes (good luck getting that many), you will have 31.2% defense.

fyi, CJ is 2.5% base, and weave is 5% base. combined, thats 7.5% base for both, or with 10 foes (inv+th+cj+weave) your at 42.9% (mid's is your friend, I suggest downloading it).

Softcap is at 45%. Adding manuevers your at 46.4% (with 10 foes in range), but that drops down to 32.4% with 1 foe (e.g. AV).


Still need IO's (res/3% def will do it), but you will need cj+weave. Without them, you will need an additional

without tough+weave, you'll need another 11.7% defense from IO set bonuses. Not necessarily an easy task, esp depending on your secondary for IO set placement.

off the top of my head
granite : -30% damage, -70% recharge

rage (base) : 20% to hit, +80% damage

I went stone/fire.

Your tough enough that using fire (no mezz secondaries) wont interfere with survival. Most secondaries have some form of mitigation to help you survive (knockdown, stun, etc).

/fire gives you some nice aoe's, and stone is tough enough to not need secondary mitigation.

I'd go ice/stone. EA will make the endurance have effects of stone trivial.

dark/ has more mezz type primary powers, but with a corresponding higher endurance use (esp with dark regen and cloak of fear). But you'll probably get board of being out of blue all the time.

the build is reasonably priced, so why throw in lotg +recharge?
Use def/rech, much, much, MUCH cheaper.

If your going into lotg +recharge territory, use kinetic combat instead of smashing haymaker (higher sl defenses, but more expensive)

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Does anyone have a uber Inv/WM build I can look at...been wracking my brains...and I seem to be going a tad bit insane.

Its for a buddy...but thanks in advace. PM me in game if you want to or email or carrier pidgeon whatever

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if you want an uber build, you need to define uber.
capped defenses, but no attacks? perma-dull pain? more recover/endurance so you can fight and fight and fight? multi-billion infl build with purples and lotg? Something a bit more sane and under 300M?

strangely, fire/cold is the defense you have to worry least about.

and out of a whole group of cimerians, only the engineer (about 1 per group) will do fire damage?

until they put in fire breathing dragons, I'll go energy before fire defense.

My problem is the opposite of yours. Its too easy to get fire/cold defense, the energy defense is pathetically small.

Besides, outside of ITF, the majority of energy/fire attacks have a smash or lethal component to it. You will defend your highest defense against each component (fire/lethal, you will use lethal).

Dont gimp yourself trying to cap everything (it is possible), but you will probably loose your extra 5% defense for SL.

btw, before we had defense debuff, the cimerorians could take down my tank every once in a while. after it (and we have GREAT debuff resistance), it hasnt happened.

I'm curious how much fire damage your getting on an ITF, that dull pain cant instafix? I'd brather have energy/dark defense there anyways.

For myself, I only count '1' in invincibility for determining soft cap defense (I assume its an AV of some kind).

I wouldnt mind seeing some -dam on the tier 1/2 attacks.

Bosses spank baby tanks bad. Being able to drop their damage some would go a long way to help survivability.

As you level up, since they are single attacks, it means less (unless it is an AV, which, I assume would have debuff resistance, so it would help some)

I like the concept, but I'd vote -dam. Lower level tanks need to survive esp against bosses (and its only single target), as you level up, its just a nice benefit.

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I have to disagree with the fighting pool... in my experience it's a nearly complete waste for a Stone tanker. First, with Granite and Stone Skin you're already at the S/L resistance cap so Tough does nothing for you. There's a few who say it's useful outside of Granite... and that's true to a point, but generally if the incoming damage is enough to make Tough useful you're probably about ready to go to Granite anyway. I can't see it being worth the cost of entry (usually 3 power pics, boxing-tough-weave)

Now let's look at Weave... it's helpful to soft cap your def in Granite, but it's also overkill since I can only think of one non-psi mob that's a threat to a well-slotted Granite tanker and that's Hamidon. Even Lord Recluse isn't that dangerous, just Granite, Stone Skin and Rooted slotted with SO enhancements is generally plenty for the STF. I didn't find anything in the game too tough for my Stone/Fire once I got to 34 and had Granite slotted up... and I leveled him to 50 before IO's even came into the game. Personally I don't see it being worth 3 power pics on a tank who's already nigh-unkillable.



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less of an issue with dual builds (I added tough for solo action pre dual builds), but tough is useful on a stoner. some of us really, really really dislike the -recharge -damage and slow penalties. If I need to granite up, i'm staying granite. If I'm solo, tough makes the difference of toggling granite or not, its going to hurt my xp-infl/min rate (greatly)

But it is a cost (power wise) to consider.

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I guess part of the problem is the level of expertise. I still think Ice > Invuln > Stone in this context, but that's

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for basic IO or SO slotting I agree. with EA, you dont have the endurance problems, and can use attacks to also maintain aggro, plus the 2 wonderful auras.

Heavy IO slotting (key word, heavy), I'd go invul. making up for defense vs resistance, ice is near softcap already. Invul has better resists and can soft cap, esp SL.

ice/ is wonderful tank, esp for a new player. No funky auras (invincibility/RTTC) that depend on foes in melee range, no -speed (in fact you can get 100% slow/recharge resist), which makes KoA and ninja caltrops meaningless.

I had it (ice storm), cursed it, dropped it, got fireball and was happy.

Fire ball will do more damage (ice storm lasts longer than burn, and some foes will just range attack), especially with fiery embrace.

If you team with a controller who can lock them down, it may be of benefit, but I find fireball to be much better dam/sec.

just say no to ice storm

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I would like to make an over-blown brute that is capable of soloing boss ae's (or harder). I enjoy AoE Oriented builds. I am leaning towards /Super Strength. However I wouldn't mind seeing /Fire or /Axe.


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am I the only one thinking he is in the wrong forum?

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T
I'm not sure exactly how high it's knockback is (I don't have AV knockback tables), but since it's scale 11 and you got launched, its over MAG10.

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11? So ... what your saying is, statesman is in spinal tap?

Did he hit your toon with a nerf bat?

If he got a solid hit, all bets are off

I'm surprised to hear this, but it might be some bad concept thing.

I think we can all agree, as my entire team did, its a booooring TF.
one not really worth repeating.

who wrote it, posi's 5 yr old nephew?

ice armor (as has been said) is an excellent aggro holding primary. WP, while a great set, does have a weak taunt aura.

not sure what you mean by 'pure tank', but here is a hint: secondary build.

at early levels, your attacks will do more to help the team than your armors or taunt. In fact, I usually dont recommend taunt as soon as poosible, odds are, your not tough enough to survive it (yet).

for secondaries, you cant go wrong. In your cause, just take taunt.

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I'd recommend anything but EM.

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I agree with you.

/em is a fine melee set, esp for solo attacks.
I wouldnt recommend it for 2 reasons:

1. aoe is weak. I think its the weakest of all the melee sets.
2. The 2 big hitters, the ones that make /em worth it are at lvl 35 and 38. That is a loooooong wait for effective melee attacks.

The stuns can stack. dark/em would be a better match for /em. I'd still prefer mace.

but wp/stone (which I have) - wow. Loving it, loved every level, every mission. Very few tanks (invul/ss [my first] and shield/mace) are the only ones I felt this love.

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Ignoring Coldmed's posts are like ignoring car wrecks. Could you really do it?

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honestly, I would slow down, point, and go 'ewwwwwwww'

actually, I would stop, and check the driver to see if he had any cash in his wallet

:O