JRaven

I will contribute another anecdote about a recent experience in Recluses Victory. I duelled a Thugs/Poison Mastermind, who almost immediately detoggled me using Noxious Gas with its 1000 mag, 4 second hold. Needless to say my S/L resistances went from excellent to very poor (about 11%), since only the passive RPD remained. After the hold wore off, there was no other option than using Dull Pain to get health back and firing off Unstoppable. While he still held me with the next application of Noxious Gas, it did not matter. With Unstoppable running on top of the passives, my resistances remained capped at 90% despite the resistance debuff even when held.
After the duel was over he commented that while he usually took Granite tanks apart almost immediately due to the toggle drops, an Invulnerable tank was more difficult since Unstoppable could not be negated.

As an ending note, I will say that I have fought that mastermind several times in duels and consider him a skilled opponent. The particular duel described above I managed to win, though overall we are more or less equal in terms of wins/losses.

As I lack experience with Fire Armor I am not the one most suited to advise you on it. As you typed that any responses were welcome I will make a few comments though you should remember I might not be the best source.

From what I have seen I would say that Fire Armor is really durable nowadays thanks to Healing Flames. The ones I have fought in PvP are almost impossible to put down one on one due to the fast recharge on that power (although I do play a Superstrength tank, so my damage is almost completely S/L). If you end up surrounded by mobs you might start having problems depending on what type of damage they deal.

For mitigation from your secondary Ice Melee might also be an option, largely due to Ice Patch. It might not be the best choice for high damage output though. There is a guide on Fire/Ice tanks in the Player Guides section that might be of interest if you want to go that route.

Hello there. I have looked a bit at your build, and have a few suggestions. Depending on what you are aiming for, they might not be viable but hopefully they will save you some slots.

Dull Pain
In order to get soft-capped enhancement bonuses for Recharge and Heal, consider using
Numina - Heal/Rech, Heal
Doctored Wounds - Rech, Heal/Rech
You will lose one +hp set bonus, but gain two slots to put elsewhere.

Unstoppable
As you lack Resist Energies and Resist Elements, slotting a bit for resist will bring you to the cap even if Unyielding drops for some reason. However, just one Resist IO will put you at that point. Putting more than about two and a half worth of Resistance IOs in Unstoppable will give you very little return on the resist values due to the Enhancement Diversification (ED) rules. You can therefore drop about two of the pure Resist IOs either to free up slots or slot for more recharge.

General note on recharge and recovery
By using 5 or more IOs from the Purple Sets, or from some other sets such as Crushing Impact, you can gain passive recharge bonuses on par with what you get from running Hasten. As the other bonuses from these sets are rather good, it might be worth considering shifting some slots to powers capable of taking these sets and then slotting up using one set exclusively. Crushing Impact is rather cheap compared to the Purple sets and also gives you some psi resistance as the sixth set bonus.
It is worth to bear in mind that as your total recharge goes up so will your endurance consumption, especially if you run hasten on top of whatever passive bonuses you collect. Purple sets do give you some recovery bonuses, usually (the ranged damage set, for example, does not). The purple sets do however not contain much in the way of end reduction, although it is possible to substitute one set IO for an end red IO without losing much power effectiveness. As you have Conserve Power however, this might not be a problem for you.

General note on survivability
Given that you have Tough and Weave, you will be able to cap Smashing/Lethal damage resistance and when surrounded be close to the "soft-cap" for typed defense against all damage types except psionic. In order to gain slightly more defense you can consider the Steadfast Protection: Res/Def IO, which gives you +3% def to everything, including positional defense (Melee/Ranged/Lethal) and psionic. Resist Physical Damage would be a good power to put it in.
To get more protection against psionic damage, an effective way would be to go for layered defense. I.e. a combination of regeneration, resistance and defense.
To get resistance, consider using the Aegis: +PsiRes/MezRes unique IO as well as the special IOs from Impervium Armor. You have five resistance powers to slot them in, so you should be able to get +18% Psi Res just from that. Set bonuses can add a bit more.
Psi def you can get as set bonuses from some purple sets, the Impervium Armor resistance set and likely some more places I forget. Together with weave and the aforementioned Steadfast Protection IO you can obtain fairly good defense.
Regeneration bonuses are all over the place. Together with Health it is quite possible to get to about 300% regeneration rate for an Invulnerable tank. It is worth noting that this will help against EVERY damage type, not only psionic damage.

Player vs Player
As an invulnerable tank, you should be aware that those who will want to duel you (either in zones or Arena) will likely have slows, considerable debuffs, and/or a large amount of mez powers they can spam quickly enough to break through your mez protection. Furthermore, many squishies will have superspeed and superjump to be able to flee quickly or to keep out of range. To take care of them, unless you want to switch travel power, you will need to either chain knockback powers or put a mez effect on them (in the Arena they will very likely have Break Frees though, which means you will have to chase them down regardless) and start laying into them. There are some hold powers available in the Epic pools, such as char from Pyre Mastery, and a reliable PbAOE stun in Handclap if you can get close enough to them (dropping from above and firing it off once you reach the ground can work). Handclap will be available at earlier levels than the Epic holds, which might be worth keeping in mind if you want to fight in Warburg for example.
Another thing to expect is that Aid Self will be exceedingly common, both among squishies and sturdier archetypes. It is hard to interrupt if your opponent has slotted for Interrupt reduction. Placing a DoT effect or similar on them, or mez them, are viable options. The DoT route, given that you are Superstrength, is however difficult. The mez route is problematic when fighting Brutes, Stalkers, Scrappers and other characters with built in mez protection as you will have to drop their mez protection first. Unfortunately, as far as I am aware no Superstrength powers have the ability to drop toggles. Brawl does, however the chance per hit is minimal.
On the other hand, you will come across some archetypes that you will be able to pulverize completely. Rage gives you quite high ToHit, so defense based sets will suffer against you. Sets dealing only S/L damage will be essentially harmless to you, given that you have Tough, so a Claws/SR scrapper will be at a disting disadvantage.

I just noticed that my post has gotten quite big, so I will try to stop typing now. Hopefully at least some of the information will be of use. As an ending note, I should point out that although I was somewhat gloomy in the PvP section almost all kinds of PvP opponents can be dealt with if you are prepared. Some temporary phase shift powers can for example save you from an untimely demise against a Cold corruptor slowing you to a crawl. BreakFrees and Unstoppable can make you rather hard to mez for a Dominator, especially if he has to stop his hold spamming because you are closing in with a KO blow recharged.
Just do not be afraid to run/fly away, it is an acceptable tactic for injured tanks just as it is for a squishy. And ordinarily, the people who shout about the cowardly tank over broadcast tend to forget the fact that they were three or more beating on you or that their particular powersets is kryptonite to you.

Have fun with your Inv/SS tanker.

Agreed. I was rather surprised at the size of the gathering at the Arena kiosks in the Pocket when I passed by, so I stopped to participate in a few duels.
It was a lot of fun, though I did discover a few additional "kryptonite" powers/powersets I will have to watch out for. Getting my recovery and regeneration completely floored by Max Khaos was a bit of a showstopper, especially since I had not taken any CaBs (Catch a Breath) inspirations with me.

On the whole, there was no trashtalking during the evening which markedly improved the fun factor.

What is better would depend on what criteria you set. Neither Stone nor Invulnerability is better than the other in all respects. Depending on the level range you will also get different answers.

A stone Tank in Granite will almost always be more durable. There are some rare exceptions where an Inv can be more survivable, but they are highly specific and usually temporary as the Inv has to rely on Unstoppable. A specific example would be when fighting Ghost Widow (in the Statesman TF), as she can hold either easily. Granite will then drop for the Stone tank, while Unstoppable does not for the Inv.
On the whole, Stone in Granite is however the clear winner.

As for damage dealing and mobility, Stone in Granite is affected by considerable debuffs which makes it extremely difficult to compete with an Invulnerable tank assuming the same secondary. Outside of Granite, Stone fares better. It does however lose the protection Granite affords it, although it can have native psionic protection.

If you introduce IOs into the discussion, a comparison will become difficult as the Stone can start working towards getting rid of the Granite debuffs while the Inv can add on some more defense, more recharge to allow Dull Pain to be up continuously or tack on more regeneration.

As a final disclaimer, I have not played a Stone tank to any significant level. I have about 2.5 years experience with the Invulnerability set.

Personally I would like to play this first before making any judgements.

Regarding the no recovery part of the crash, I am not too worried however. I think I will prefer that over the total defense crash due to Invincibility going inactive. I got a taste of it this evening in Recluses Victory as a Thermal corruptor floored my recovery. Even with no toggles running I did not gain any endurance. What surprised me was how long I could support my toggles without the recovery. I was running Temp. Inv., Invincibility, Unyielding, Tough and Weave. At times Focused Accuracy and Sprint or Fly. As long as I did not continue attacking too much, it took considerably longer than 10 seconds for me to run out. I did have the accolades and some IO bonuses for a total of 116 max end, but usually I was not at full when the debuff was applied.

In addition, this might make the crash more manageable, as instead of having to prepare for it you can react to it. If you have too little endurance to last through it, you have a few seconds. Then you can either run away, pop a blue, warn the team, use an emergency power (such as Unstoppable) or something else.

So all in all, I would say I am cautiously positive so far. I look forward to it coming to Test.

If you want to make your tank a PvP monster, my first thought is that you will have to work at it. IOs will probably be more or less required, as well as a lot of practice as you will have to change tactics depending on what opponent you face at the moment. For instance, going toe-to-toe with an Energy Melee Brute will be very very difficult. Kiting him will probably be necessary to avoid defeat (though Aid Self may help there), though it will put a dent in your damage output as well.

I would recommed you to start looking at IOs to increase your survivability and damage potential. To accomplish the former I would recommend regeneration and health bonuses. Regeneration in particular is easy to come by, and reaching +300% (including the bonus from slotted Health) is quite possible.

Defence bonuses can be useful depending on your opposition. Most villains lack +ToHit powers, which will make defence viable if you can stack enough of it. If you decide to go for defence I would however recommend Weave from the fighting pool, though that may change quite a lot in your build. One advantage of defence is that any debuffing attack will need to hit you to apply the debuff. As an example, with five partial Aegis sets for your resist powers you can get quite a lot of fire and cold defence, which will help against Cold blasters/corruptors/et.c. Their slow and -recharge attacks will hit more seldom, which will be a large help since they are one of the more dangerous enemies you will find. On the whole though, defence is a bit unreliable in PvP.

To increase your damage potential your best bet would be to accumulate +Recharge bonuses. Crushing Impacts in your attacks would be one of the possibilities. Bear in mind this will increase your endurance use. I assume you have Hasten from the Speed pool, which does go a very long way in this regard as it gives you a +70% recharge bonus for every power.

I would actually like to recommend Hand Clap for PvP. It is able to stun enemies without mez protection long enough for you to seriously hurt or even defeat them. I realize you might have less need for it than myself though, since I lack both the Speed and Leaping pool and have flight as a travel power. Hence I usually need to lock my enemies before they run.

Lastly, just as the above poster did, I definitely recommend you to try out Mids Hero builder as it really is an excellent tool for planning out your build.

Thank you Rooks. It does occur to me that I might have phrased the question the wrong way to get the information I was after however (just goes to show that posting in a hurry is never a good idea). So I will ask a follow-up question...

What tactics and/or build would you, as the Inv/SS/Energy utilize against the opponents you described?

Regarding the cases you did mention, I do have some experience against those. Please tell me if you know of any way I can refine my tactics.

Dominators running domination constantly are difficult, as they cannot be mezzed easily by a SS tank (which is the main viable tactic I have found to lock kiters down so that I can engage in melee). The few I have fought generally chewed me up slowly unless my Heavy or a Longbow patrol came by before they finally got through my hitpoints and regen. I am still looking for a viable tactic to deal with them that does not rely on the environment.

Psi defenders I have not fought much, at least not in RV for obvious reasons. The ones I have fought in the Arena had trouble dealing enough damage through the IO added psi res. They were however empaths without the heavy-duty debuffs available to some sets.

Blasters, corruptors and any squishy without mez protection or Break Frees I find fairly harmless usually, as getting close enough to stun them with Handclap is doable before they chew through me (if they are able. Not all seem to be). Again slows and debuffs are highly problematic, which means that unless I stun them first I am usually in for a slow demise. Temporary phase shift powers can be a life saver in those cases.

End drainers... the few I have fought after IOs were introduced (admittedly they were mainly Brutes) did not use to be a problem as long as I paid attention to the blue bar, until I dropped Stamina. Still haven't completely shifted over to Impervium Armour from Aegis to compensate for the recovery loss though.

While I do agree that -Fly powers does put me at a disadvantage, the advantage of being able to scout from above and choose my battles is one I would not like to give up. Also, together with the Stealth IO and Focused Accuracy (which together usually gives me the range of sight advantage) it makes it easier to avoid any gank squads.

As I mainly play an Inv/SS tank and occasionally PvP with it, I would be interested to hear what particular characters others play that are capable of taking a well-built Inv/SS/Energy apart and what tactics you would use to do so.

For the purpose of the discussion, assume a highly IO:ed build with some purples, Numina/Miracle IO, Luck of the Gambler +Recharge, et.c. The tank travel power would be flight without superspeed/superjump.
The environment would be Recluse's Victory, and it would be a 1v1 case.

I do not expect honour from anyone in a PvP zone, as that is a good way to faceplant. Gank squads have to be expected. Loudmouths, braggarts, trash talkers, and all the other denizens on the PvP zones also have to be expected. As such I do not complain about it, as I have come to the conclusion that it is pointless.

Another fact of life is however that I will get a lot less respect from some players if I behave like that. In my experience those players constitute the majority of those I find it worthwhile/enjoyable/fun to socialize with in-game. The type of player that, while they are there to have fun does not have it as a goal to ruin the fun for others.

As for the rules in a PvP zone, yes, it is perfectly allowed to repeatedly go after a specific character. Personally I just do not see the point in doing so, if I do not specifically wish to make life difficult for a particular player or drive them out of the zone. It cannot be for the challenge if you know you can easily win after the first few times. It could be to "toughen them up", but only if I was confusing being in the game with being in the military. I can see an army drill instructor using that term, but in a computer game meant for entertainment? In the army you can not leave or quit if you do not like being "toughened up", as a player in CoH you certainly can and many likely will if they do not find that process fun. Heaven knows there are plenty of people in the game who do not want to go into the zones because of previous experiences where they got abuse hurled at them while being repeatedly killed (apologies to the poster who used the term in case I misunderstood the "toughening up" treatment).

However, as I stated in my previous post, there are occasions when I do wish to make someones life difficult. I do not mind farmers, badgehunters and their ilk, but I do dislike loudmouths who only go after people they know they are likely to wipe the floor with. If a player is repeatedly going after someone who is new in the PvP zone and wants to learn/explore the zone, while throwing insults at him/her in broadcast... well, that will make me go after the player in question. It does not matter if I faceplant as well, but they will be my preferred target for the foreseeable future.

I see the post is a bit longer now than I intended, so I will stop now. It was mainly intended as a statement of my own behaviour and reasoning in a zone.

Personally I tend to go to Recluse's Victory to test my characters limits and work out "lone wolf" zone PvP tactics. As a consequence I usually stray from the "don't bother them more than once" policy (which I do agree with) if they take me out or give me serious trouble. I dislike ganking when it happens to me and will therefore avoid going for opponents I have seen I will not have any trouble with. An easy victory does not hold much satisfaction for me.
This is more of a personal guideline than a rule though, so if I take exception to another persons manner it has happened that I continuously go after them. It is fairly rare though.

I intend to be there, at least. Might be a bit late due to training finishing around 7 pm, but I aim to be there around 8 pm.

That would've been UNSTOPPABLE I take it? I recall he was very happy the one time when he wasn't debuffed as soon as the battle started - though as soon as he expressed his joy about it on broadcast the rad reprioritized his targetting.

As for myself, at the start of the evening I recall the granite brute taunting me the entire time. It was a bit difficult to be effective then, I must admit.
I haven't done much team PvP before, mostly arena duels, so I'm a bit unused to the team dynamics. I did notice that conditions that would've been lethal for me in the Arena, or soloing in a zone, were more of a nuisance thanks to the defender and controller backup. In particular when I got rad debuffs on me at one point but could still keep fighting effectively, thanks to the buffs.

I turned up in RV at about 10pm, on the hero side. I hadn't checked the boards so I was very pleasantly surprised that there was some team PvP going on. And I must say it was a blast.
In the beginning the villains dominated, but after a short while someone went and got a rad. Then it was more or less even for a while (my impression), until half the people left for bed. Then heroes began to dominate.
Fairly sure that wasn't because of me though - once the battle was getting close to the drones at the villain base I went off to work on the pillboxes, without this changing the course of the battle much. Until Widow and Mako spawned at Delta. Then we got a nice little battle there with four heroes vs Widow, Mako and the opposition. <smiles at the memory>

All in all, it was an entertaining evening, especially since everyone was good-natured about the entire thing. No trashtalking on broadcast at all.

First off, thanks to Salacious for organizing it. Good job!

I've been on three Hami raids now. The first was where we didn't clear the Mitos. The second and third was this Friday and Sunday.
I enjoyed the one this Sunday the most, mainly because of the lack of lag. During the Mito clearing I didn't even have to tune the graphics settings. We could concentrate on organisation and fighting the Mitochondria in a far more enjoyable way. My experience was that it took longer than the raid on Friday - still, it was more fun and I suspect it might go quicker in the long run if there is a small but more experienced Mito clearing team as there were a few things to improve on. I'll shortly list my own experiences and reflections...

- There was a tendency for the different damage teams to attack different targets at times. This mainly seemed to be a question of discipline and confusion. On my team there were a few that had not participated in a Hamidon raid before, and needed to be told what to do and what was happening. After 15-30 minutes most people got the idea and efficiency increased.
- For those who had not participated in a raid before, information was very important for morale. The line "Yes, this is going slowly, but that's normal. For such a small raid it's good progress actually." seemed to work wonders.
- The use of a melee damage team meant that the healing turtle had to move up fairly close to the targetted Mito. This improved during the raid, but for Mitos high up the melee team was out of range of the turtle at times. At one particular time it was raining dead Tankers. Which was rather fun to see, just for the novelty value. A possible solution would be that if possible, the Empaths in the turtle should auto-follow the Targetter in order to provide easy and quick relocation of the turtle.

As a last point, I don't mind at all that all the holders that had to be called in at the end got their HO without the "work" of Mito-clearing. Sorry guys, but had you all been there during the clearing we would've had a lagfest and the server would've melted.
I actually consider having holders on standby somewhere outside of the Hive during the clearing phase to be a rather good idea for future raids.

Thank you for the interest killamonjaro. Unfortunately, Sunday the 5th was last weekend. I will probably attempt it another time though, as a sufficiently large team couldn't be assembled. The exact date and time I'll have to decide upon later, as I'm fully booked in RealWorld(TM) this weekend.

I'd like to sign up for the Trial please. Jessica Raven, lvl 50 Inv/SS tank.

Team member list so far...
1. Jessica Raven (tank)
2. Marko Darko (blaster)
3. Dreamshadow (scrapper)
4. Lost samurai
5.
6.
7.
8.

Also, Sara Moore is at the Mole Point in the Cascades, inside a cave with a portal to Firebase Zulu. She can be a bit tricky to find.

Hmm, interesting to know. I ran across some estimates that it could take about 10-12 hours. It's somewhat of a relief it can be done quicker than that. However, in the worst case I doubt many will have enough time to spare for the 1st SS TF during a single day, I've changed it to Sara Moores TF (2nd Shadow Shard TF), which is shorter and should be doable in one sitting.

Hello everyone.

As I've still not managed to do the first three Shadow Shard taskforces, I'll make an attempt to do the sedond one now on Sunday. If anyone is interested in joining, please post in this thread.

Short info on TF
Contact is Sarah Moore, in Firebase Zulu. A full team is required for the TF. Levels are 40-50. As I've not done the entire TF before I'm unsure of the time needed to do it - estimates would be in the 5-7 hour range. Additional team members with Fly and Teleport Friend will greatly reduce travel time within the Shard.

Meeting point for team: Sara Moore
Starting time: 12:00 Central European Time

Team member list
1. Jessica Raven (tank)
2. Marko Darko (blaster)
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

I'll bring Jessica Raven if required. Lvl 48 invulnerable/superstrength tank, probably at lvl 50 by the time of the raid.
I'll respec into the listed raid-friendly powers before the raid. Vanguard accolade collected, and a simple black costume already prepared.