Kruunch

Mmmm yeah ... dunno how having more slots with enhancements that more then double DO output puts a DO build in range of an IO build (forgetting all about set bonuses for a moment).

Solo I don't have to worry about dying really ... its just the chore of running out of end constantly. In groups, dying becomes a fairly larger concern.

Is why a full group Positron TF is the toughest TF in the game ... STILL!

Ja

Again ... that's what second builds are for.

But I suggest trying your second build in-game ... it plays a little differently from Herostats

P.S. - Checking Mids ... 3 slotted Icicles with damage SOs puts it at 8.9 damage per tick in an 8' radius (which is painfully small btw). Also to put it in perspective, Icicles costs twice the endurance of the most expensive Invuln toggle (.52/sec). It also has a base accuracy of 75% which means you have to have an ACC SO just to get it to normal baseline toHit. And if you're killing so slow that Icicles dramatically adds to your damage output ... you built something wrong.

Ah if I knew you were doing solo farms I'd have suggested keeping Pyre and say don't worry about Tough and Weave.

Also doing solo farms, you'll probably find that LT maps yield more influence/tickets per hour then Bosses (just for the speed at which you can kill).

Neither should generate the numbers to really trouble a naked WP Tanker.

Seriously.

To the OP: Run CE and Icicles on a second build and you'll see what I mean

Not really ... Burn has been reduced in size to such that the enemies take two steps away and come running back or you end up chasing them out of the Burn patch.

But having said that, that's probably why Fire isn't a great primary with DB.

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The fact that the OP himself has not posted numbers does not means that other posters that complain about the set have not seen these numerical issues or posted about them in the past. I know I have, and I'm feeling all my posts are being bypassed here during this argument about no one posting numbers...

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Perfect timing Starsman. I was going to mention, as well as thank you for the numbers that you have put up.

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I have to be honest, I usually start nodding off when Stars breaks out the charts and graphs which isn't very fair to his mathematical prowess or super human attention to detail.

/salute

I can agree with that.

Try that without SO/IOs

That's been the telling difference for me in levelling up a Tanker versus exemplaring down. When I exemplar down I always think to myself "Hey this isn't as bad as I remember it ..." and then I roll a new Tanker and I'm like "Oh yeah NOW I remember ...".

(mind you it takes years for changes to happen that are glaringly obvious )

SS is an excellent choice with WP. War Mace is also a fine choice (more AOEs). Stone is good (high single target damage). From a casual player point of view I don't think you could really go wrong with any of the secondaries though.

Agro shouldn't be a concern. Just remember to take Taunt at some point if you're grouping a lot. WP does have a taunt aura but you'll find that taunt auras are a bit overly discussed on these boards and not as meaningful in game (unless you plan on making Ham sandwiches while your team fights). My WP/Stone Tanker (one AOE) has no problems at all holding agro.

Invuln for soloing? YUCK!!!!!!!!!

Just by virtue of soloing you're skipping a lot of powers (most of the group oriented ones out of your primary and Taunt at the very least out of your secondary) so you have plenty of room for your secondary choices.

And Invuln is clunkier then nuts from a solo perspective until about L30 and then not much better from then on. It's protective ... but not exactly solo friendly (kill fast, kill often being the operative solo definition here).

I like Fire simply because I like to RotP my foes to death

But honestly I've found Ice and WP much more solo friendly because both have great non-stop power, and Shield outshines Fire in the damage department these days I believe.

What he said.

Solo wise I think any would be fine. Probably Fire or Shield (for damage) or Ice or WP (for go power) if straight soloing is your intent.

Alabaster I think we're agreeing on the issue, just not on the fix. Stone is out of whack. You see Granite as fine and the other powers as "broken" while I see the other powers as fine and Granite as "broken".

In either case, I think we agree that we'd like to see all of the powers in Stone work homogonistically (wow I just made that word up) rather than the current oil and water that we have now?

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Plus they are available by lvl 20, technically the level you are finally "out of the gate and into the world." All required powers should be available by then.

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Disagree here. All *required* powers should be available around the time that they are *required*.

Either that or Stamina should be selectable at L1

Killing fast does serve as a form of mitigation but is usually a bad form to rely on (if given the choice) given that you can and will come across farms that you can't kill as quickly (not sure if we're talking about solo farms, team farms, or filled solo farms here).

I just wanted to point out the differences in case you took on a pack of 15 bosses and got walloped and think I gave you bad info.

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On my Inv/SS Tanker, for Invincibility I 4 slot Gaussian's (including Chance for Build Up) and 2 slot Gift of the Ancients (defense, def/end) for recovery.

This seems to be the best of both worlds to me. Before IOs I would suggest 1 endRedux, 3 defense and 2 toHit.

Hope that helped.

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Aren't you really shorting your defense with that slotting? With just those 2 GotA at max level, you're only getting 37.7% defense enhancement. Granted, the Gaussians give you +1.88% HP, but you're missing out on roughly 3% defense by underslotting for it.

I'm theorycrafting here, since I don't have a high-level Invuln, but I'd go 4 GotA and 2 Gaussians. That +1.8 max endurance for the 4 GotA is usually more valuable than the +2.5% recovery you'd get from the Gaussians. But I personally would probably not focus on the +tohit, since I prefer to have my attacks a little overslotted for accuracy. YMMV.

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Actually my Defense is capped with 4 foes in range. My build also has Tough and Weave, which pretty much means I can slot Invince with pretty little daisies and not make a realistic difference in my survivability by and large. Numbers can be misleading

Hey_Tiny: I like the idea of Chance for Psi Damage in Invince ... I might have to try and squeeze that in thanks!

There are a ton of reasons why it's not done this way but mainly because of the balancing issues that toggles represent (endurance cost).

Invulnerability is not the only primary to have this problem. In fact, except for Will Power, *every* Tanker primary pretty much underwhelms before L22 (Stamina and SOs). Such is the life of the Tanker.

However you do have a valid gripe ... Tankers are painful to play in their first 20 levels or so.

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Despite how some build their tanks, the set has to be viable from level 1 relative to other sets at those level ranges.

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I think you're getting away from the OP. The set obviously is "viable" from level 1 ... otherwise you would not have any Stoners around.

I agree with your analysis of Stone and Fire pre-Granite with the exception of alphas where Healing Flames may become a non-factor.

My issue with Stone is that in an attempt to make each Tanker primary as individualistic as possible, they (the devs) chose that to mean in mechanics as well as intent. Hence the only T9 powers that you absolutely *have* to take out of all the Tanker primaries to make the set work at high levels reasonably well.

Is this broken? Obviously not since Stone works as is and is even considered the best "tanking" set going.

Is it good design? Here I would argue no and I think this is the main area where people are throwing their opinions about.

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I could argue though that a lot of sets have powers that you "have" to take. In particular a lot of the tanker sets have powers are mandatory it's just that this one happens to be at tier 9.

Inv is all but required to take ti, uy, and inv and I guess I have a hard time seeing the difference just because granite is at tier 9.

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The difference is that UY, TI and Invince don't override eachother ... they compliment eachother.

Granite replaces all the toggles below it. That's bad design imo (my main beef aside from the lack of customization of the stone form itself)).

We've diagreed before on CE and we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Definitely stay away from Icicles though ... fully slotted, doing 8 dmg per tick is paltry for the stupendous endurance cost especially given that we're talking about an AOE build where endurance (even with EA) will come at a premium.

I'll give you Hibernate but if I'm taking the primary that has one of the best "oh crap!" T9s in the game, then I'd feel obligated to take it. Also works as a great way to get back endurance if you need a rest mid-fight -OR- when you remember you forgot to set your DVR to record your favorite show at the last minute

By the same token, Tough and Weave could be optional ... I notice that when I make an AOE built toon, I generally like to go for big packs of mobs. In this regard Tough and Weave become handy while soloing (is also why I recommended Hibernate for when your eyes are bigger then your maces ).

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Despite how some build their tanks, the set has to be viable from level 1 relative to other sets at those level ranges.

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I think you're getting away from the OP. The set obviously is "viable" from level 1 ... otherwise you would not have any Stoners around.

I agree with your analysis of Stone and Fire pre-Granite with the exception of alphas where Healing Flames may become a non-factor.

My issue with Stone is that in an attempt to make each Tanker primary as individualistic as possible, they (the devs) chose that to mean in mechanics as well as intent. Hence the only T9 powers that you absolutely *have* to take out of all the Tanker primaries to make the set work at high levels reasonably well.

Is this broken? Obviously not since Stone works as is and is even considered the best "tanking" set going.

Is it good design? Here I would argue no and I think this is the main area where people are throwing their opinions about.

Not until its released and actually offers more diverse content (in style specifically) no. So far it just reads as a large co-op zone. The branching storylines is very similar to the base "choose your own path" mechanic which I am actually looking forward to the most. Hopefully it will be implemented well and often.

CoV was a huge let down from the standpoint of actually expanding content ... it didn't. It was actually more of a add-on to the current game (or more accurately, the finishing of the original concept) rather than actually expanding it. The only real addition to content with CoV was the Safeguard/Mayhem missions which *was* actually a large improvement over existing content (more dynamic if only seemingly).

As far as the new "metric" for character alignment .... I have yet to see that implemented well in more advanced games, much less one as crippled (development wise) as CoH is. The only game that comes close from a mechanics standpoint is Fable and that's a closed console game. Shadowbane had a very interesting player driven dynamic but that won't exist in CoH. My fear is that alignment will only serve to change the tone of the random passing NPC's dialogue which will be really frustrating if that's all it turns out to be.

I was doing 1-2 packs of 15 each last night (bosses) without breaking a sweat (had an excellent team however). The main telling point was that after picking up Tough (and later Weave) on the build I posted above, I could solo those packs while waiting for the team to kill the last pack.

I couldn't do that prior to getting Tough and Weave last night (had to wait for the team to be with me).

One other note ... my secondary is Stone, and Tremor is an amazing mitigation tool to let your regen catch up after absorbing a large alpha (and on through longer fights for that matter). Fire doesn't have that mitigation, so you may find yourself still alpha prone.

Let me know ... I'd be curious to see how Fire Melee plays out.

Fire Armor (especially when Healing Flames was changed) was a FOTM build for quite awhile in PvP. I'm not sure it still stands up but I'd think it would be good still.

The downside of Fire Armor of course is that it's the least durable of the Tanker sets. Not sure how that fits in with today's PvP.