Kruunch

Actually my Endurance comment was specific to the Shield/WM combo but yeah it could have been equally applied to just about any secondary with Shields at that level.

Past that I will defer to your love of minutia

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while Dark... has a self heal (up to 20% of your HPs when slotted) which is almost always up (and works amazingly well when coupled with Dull Pain which boosts your HPs)

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Note that click heals are based on class base HP, not actual HP. So when you say "20% heal," it's actually more like 10-11% on a character with a slotted Dull Pain up.

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Nitpick: to be exact, a 20% heal would be 12.5% on a character with slotted Dull Pain up and no accolades.

Formula to calculate this being:

FinalHeal = OriginalHeal * (1/(1+HPBuff%))


Basically, HP buffs equate damage resistance to all damage types AND also healing resistance.

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You just made my day in ways you couldn't possibly understand

Ah well ok if you're going to hold up Fire (either primary of secondary for that matter) then yeah anything else by comparison will seem off by comparison.

I can't argue that Fire (and possibly Ice) has the best agro tools of the Tanker sets (the Primary sometimes to its detriment).

And for the record I wasn't including SM in Dark's list of AOEs and since I run Hasten on all my Tankers those 60-120s recharge times aren't as daunting to me as they might be to some others. I'll take another look at Siphon Life however as you could very well be correct (been awhile since I ran Dark Melee). Actually a Shields/Dark Tanker was my next pet project

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My personal opinion now is you're out of touch with the game, and you seem so proud of having been playing the game in I1 you won't listen to any experience that is different to your own. So I won't try to tell you anything.

I'll suggest, however, that if you want to participate in serious discussions about performance, you should play the game more often and take a look at real numbers, using the ingame attribute monitor, paragonwiki or coh.redtomax - for example, you might see that these "huge" recovery bonuses from purple sets are about 4%, or that Shield and Willpower have no power benefiting from recharge bonuses.

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Ahhhh the cry of the anguished who are disagreed with.

Here is what my experience is and this is from beta and I1, and again in I4 when I came back, and again in I7 when I came back and yet again in I13 when I came back (I've been back and playing almost everyday since March by the way):

When you tell someone they can't do something, 90% of those who disagree run up here and claim the impossible just to "prove" that it can be done. I used to spend time debunking a lot of those crap posts in-game and now I just call BS when it sounds and smells like BS. Like all those who have posted Mid's builds which they thought would work only to admit they didn't even run those builds (and/or their precious respecs didn't hold up to what they were bragging about when side by side with me).

5% of those who disagree rush up here to post what they've done only to find out that they (and me) had misconceptions of what was originally posted. Havoc (an old time tanker) got really annoyed when I said that an I1 Regen Scrapper couldn't tank what I could, so he ran out and grabbed up 40 nemesis and solo'd them down (not run and gun). I then took him to Crey's Folley and pulled over 100 Freakshow and solo'd those (ever so much more slowly). He tried the samething and got flattened. He was making the point that his Scrapper could tank all but the most extreme encounters in the game, while I was making the point that I could tank things his Scrapper couldn't. A miscommunication on both our parts (since both our points were valid).

4% can actually do what they say they can do, but usually under optimal conditions (i.e. support).

The last 1% actually can do what they claim under the conditions that were discussed and actually prove me wrong (it's actually less then 1% since this has only happened to me once).

So turning what you said back on yourself, I'd suggest if *you* want to participate in serious discussions, you actually listen to those who have had more experience in the game then you have.

P.S. - Anyone who doesn't acknowledge that a Tanker's secondary is a huge part of their tanking ability doesn't even belong in this forum. Your recharge comment is so ridiculous as to merit it's own definition in Webster's Dictionary.

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Kruunch, did you just call BS on people doing something and in the same breath said there's no player skill in this game ?

... Anyway. To post something constructive, purples haven't much to do with survivability. Most of the bonuses are damage, recharge and accuracy, with some HP in a ranged set, some fire/cold res (useless against Rommie), some toxic/psi res in the 6th slot (useless against Rommie and I hardly see anyone 6 slotting a purple set).

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Yes I called BS on people and their BS.

What does that have to do with skill or were you commenting on me calling BS on their skill at BSing?

And I would say perma Hasten and huge Recovery bonuses (not to mention I1 like recharge on abilities on top of perma Hasten) play a huge part in Tanking.

Or are you gonna tell me about your three legged parapalegic monkey who can tank Romi with no endurance now?

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My SD scrapper can tank Rommie without support. It's not that hard. An SD tanker should be able to do it easily if built well.

That said, Invulnerability is a lot more survivable, but it doesn't add much offense, which Shield Defense does.

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I'll decline the obvious retort. See above however.

And +toHit (Invincibility) doesn't count towards offense? How much more damage does a Shield Tanker do again when he misses?



Edit: Actually I could see where a DM/Shields Scrapper who is built well could tank Romi possibly unsupported (same with Shields/DM Tanker). The likelihood of it happening through Romi's 3 ressurections is extremely improbable. Mind telling me how you did it if you'd be so kind?

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However I'm not a huge fan of one set mitigating the need for a power in the other (sort of anti-synergy there). Will Power would also mitigate a lot of the need of Siphon Life making it (for the most part) an underwhelming attack (but also making WP less alpha prone so you get the good with the bad here again).

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This is not true any more. Since the DM buffs in I13, Siphon Life is a great power - it deals roughly twice as much as it used to. (On a different note, since taking Tough/Weave I've never really been scared of alphas on my WP - it's an exaggerated weakness.)


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Siphon Life *is* a great power (one of the best bang for your buck powers of any Tanker secondary imo). However as a stand alone damage power, its underwhelming. Will Power basically makes it a stand alone damage power (because the Heal portion in most cases becomes irrelevant), which is a big part of the reason I don't like WP/Dark. And Siphon Life may or may not help survive a large alpha ... changes are if your WP Tanker is taking that kind of damage, the extra 20% or so in boost in HPs won't help (talking large game content obviously).

I have Tough and Weave on my L41 WP/Stone Tanker and in large groups he can still get alpha'd out of existence. It's not consistent enough for me to say that he's squishy but I definitely eye large packs of bosses a little more warily then my Inv Tanker does. This might change a bit with IOs (defense bonuses specifically) which he lacks.
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As for set synergy, there are a lot of different ways to look at it. You think Ice/DM has no synergy because it renders EA redundant - that's true, but it also has SL which is a great heal to keep Ice healthy when HF and Hibernate aren't available. On a different vein, I'd say that WP/Dark and WP/Energy are counter productive at holding aggro due to their more limited AoEs

Just food for thought.

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Dark has a pretty decent flavor of AOEs so I will disagree there.

And Energy has the same amount of AOEs as Super Strength and no one is complaining about SS having problems holding agro so I'd disagree there as well (and Whirling Hands comes up faster (albeing has less of a radius) then Footstomp).

Holding agro is one of the few things that is really more player oriented then set oriented (although I will admit that WP primary offers the weakest of these tools past Taunt) in my opinion. The more active the Tanker, the better the agro retention. Which you apparently agree with in the "aggro" thread

Edit: For the record, I'm not saying WP/Dark is a bad combo. Conceptually I don't like it. In practice I've never played (or seen played) that combo before so it may turn out to be *very* fun to play. I'm definitely a huge fan of the non-stop go Tanker builds which this would definitely be.

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I ran an ITF a few days ago as a Shields Tanker. Never died. Not even tanking Rommie. Had an easier time than even my Inv Tanker.

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Did you have a defender or controller who wasn't Kinetics?

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One note ... I've never been on an ITF yet with a Defender (cry).

Having said that, I consider the ITF a *baseline* for tanking. All s/l damage, limited debuffs, non-range heavy mobs. If your Tanker is having problems running through the ITF, then there is either something wrong with the way you built your Tanker or something wrong with the Tanker primary itself.

And some form of support is needed for tanking Romi in general. I couldn't see a non-supported Tanker of any type (unless really purpled out and even then probably not because of how far he can floor your defense). And I include the traditional "holding" method as support here.

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I have seen people tank romulus on tanks with no support easily. I have seen people tank romulus on non-tanks with no support easily. It comes down to the player's skill ultimately.

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I'm sure you've seen astronauts walk in space without a suit too but I still call BS. Seriously.

LostHalo: Take your Stone Tanker (lets assume normal mix of yellow and orange IO sets) and do Romi with a group composed of Blasters/Scrappers.

Then you'll see what I mean by unsupported.

I don't include full purple sets in my examples because the *majority* of Tankers don't have them. I think we can all agree if you have enough purples you can be just like an I1 Tanker (by and large).

As far as player skill (and not to demean anyone here) there just isn't that much skill involved in this game. The last few TFs that CoH made are really the only examples where you have to *attempt* to know the fight and even then they are fairly easy examples to learn.

The real skill involved in Tanking boils down to this in my experience (and in order of importance): 1) how you built/slot your Tanker; 2) How to position your Tanker for the less then handful of fights in CoH where positioning is important; 3) Knowing when/how to pop an inspiration (and the fact that I even mention that pretty much sums up the difficulty rating of this game).

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You should give WM another try Kruunch. Invul no longer suffers from knockback that WM used to do. Fire Armor synergize well with all the KD from the WM set. Clobber is now the best power in WM, in case you missed it.

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I have a L24 Shields/WM Tanker (talk about your Endurance woes ... eeesh). They did a nice job (thus far that I've seen) with War Mace in terms of the set being closer to on par with other Tanker secondaries. My three issues still with War Mace is that it still feels subpar to Axe in terms of damage, weapon draw times are really REALLY annoying (to me), and the last issue is more of a personal opinion ... I just think War Mace is visually the least appealing Tanker secondary (I don't get the Thor's Hammer feeling at all using it ... they really should have made a ranged attack or two where you actually throw the mace and it comes back type of thing imo).

While Shields/WM isn't a great combo in terms of endurance and WM in my mind doesn't give you the same secondary mitigation that SS or Axe does (or even the reliability of Energy's disorients), it does have explosive damage when combined together.

I ran around with my buddy who was playing an Earth/Storm Controller and the -defense that Earth gives made me feel like I was in melee heaven (never missing being a create cure all for endurance issues).

Will Power I usually team up with endurance heavy secondaries such as Axe or SS or Energy, although the -toHit would potentially make WP more survivable on large alphas.

However I'm not a huge fan of one set mitigating the need for a power in the other (sort of anti-synergy there). Will Power would also mitigate a lot of the need of Siphon Life making it (for the most part) an underwhelming attack (but also making WP less alpha prone so you get the good with the bad here again).

I like the idea of Shields/Dark a lot since Dark helps offsets one of Shield's primary holes (Endurance). Dark's secondary effects (toHitDebuff) also compliment Shield's primary defense (being .. defense).

Ice/Dark to me is less attractive because Ice's Energy Absorbtion is up so often (I can use it 2 or even 3 times in a large fight) and can be slotted to return almost a full bar of end with just one mob that it totally mitigates the need for Dark Consumption (again me not liking one set mitigating powers of the other). However, like Shields, you still have the synergy between Ice's primary defense (defense) and the toHitDebuff of Dark which is nice.

Ice works amazingly well with SS/Axe/Energy because those secondaries tend to be more end heavy. I like Ice/SS a lot especially.

Edit: It's really too bad Tankers never got a Broad Sword secondary or a set that debuffs defense across the board (not sure if Dual Blades fits this or not).

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I ran an ITF a few days ago as a Shields Tanker. Never died. Not even tanking Rommie. Had an easier time than even my Inv Tanker.

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Did you have a defender or controller who wasn't Kinetics?

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One note ... I've never been on an ITF yet with a Defender (cry).

Having said that, I consider the ITF a *baseline* for tanking. All s/l damage, limited debuffs, non-range heavy mobs. If your Tanker is having problems running through the ITF, then there is either something wrong with the way you built your Tanker or something wrong with the Tanker primary itself.

And some form of support is needed for tanking Romi in general. I couldn't see a non-supported Tanker of any type (unless really purpled out and even then probably not because of how far he can floor your defense). And I include the traditional "holding" method as support here.

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while Dark... has a self heal (up to 20% of your HPs when slotted) which is almost always up (and works amazingly well when coupled with Dull Pain which boosts your HPs)

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Note that click heals are based on class base HP, not actual HP. So when you say "20% heal," it's actually more like 10-11% on a character with a slotted Dull Pain up.

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I stand corrected. But in terms of playability, you're getting a damage power that also doubles as a ghetto Healing Flames (heals for less but recharges sooner). Very powerful for a Tanker I think you'd agree.

I ran in an ITF yesterday with a Shields Tanker (I'm an Inv Tanker). The Shields Tanker died 5 or 6 times. I never died.

I'd say Invuln.

Recently I've gotten a few PMs and ingame tells with new players and/or new Tankers asking me what I think the best Tanker combos are. Their primary requirement (almost identical verbatum) is that they want a Tanker who can take a beating but also dish out some damage. Here is what I told them.

Every Tanker combo can take a punch and deal out damage. The question really boils down to "what's going to be fun for you to play"? I can tell you what's fun for me and you can decide if that matches your criteria.

First off I like AT sets that go well together. That means that both the primary and secondary sets work well together rather than in opposition of eachother. For instance Inv/Dark works well together. Invulnerability is one of the best all around defensive sets, based on resistances and backed up by solid defense and finally has a great panic button in Unstoppable (takes a little getting use to) while Dark dishes out decent damage, debuffs toHit (making Inv shine that much more), has a self heal (up to 20% of your HPs when slotted) which is almost always up (and works amazingly well when coupled with Dull Pain which boosts your HPs) and an Endurance booster which off sets Invulnerability's fairly heavy endurance use (toggles) and if you happen to use Hasten (Hasten crash) which I do on all of my Tankers. So with this combo you have +toHit (for each mob near you), +toHitDebuff (x4), +health, healing (x2), and endurance recovery. You take care of most of those things in the game which can be really annoying (you missing, you getting hit, your health dropping, and running out of endurance) without much added work (notice I didn't mention IO sets or optimal builds).

So that's the kind of (pardon the 80s term) synergy I like in my Tanker combinations. With that in mind, here are a list of combos that I've found work well together out of the box:

Inv/Dark
Ice/SS
Fire/Eng*
Fire/Fire
Shields/Dark
WP/Axe**
Ice/Axe**
WP/Eng*
Fire/SS

* Energy Melee's damage matures late (best damage powers being L35 and L38) and two of the animations are obnoxiously long. I happen to like the aesthetics of the set though (glowing pom-poms ftw!) and it happens to double well for PvP (I think it's the best PvP Tanker secondary personally).

** I'm not thrilled with weapon secondaries in general because of the obnoxious weapon draw mechanic (stone, fire and ice secondaries don't really suffer from this as much even though they have a "weapon" that is used). I also don't know enough about Dual Blades from personal experience to comment, but I've not been thrilled with it yet from having heard/seen the experiences of others.

Fire Primary Note: Fire primary is nice because it has AOE offensive capability, one of the best Tanker heals in the game (because it comes back so fast) and a great endurance booster. The downside to Fire is that you have to really work at making it stand up in full group situations as the lead/lone tank (Tough, Weave and IO sets being very important here if you want to be the lead tank in large groups). One of the biggest traps for the Fire primary is lack of knockback protection which many go the route of Acrobatics to get. I say trap because the majority of Knockback woes can be handled with a single -knockback IO instead of blowing a power on it.

Note: With IO sets, you can shore up the holes (to a greater or lesser extent) in *any* Tanker combo. However, the Hero side being as expensive as it is for IO sets, the casual player might find it daunting coming up with the 100+ million influence it takes to *moderately* outfit a toon with IO sets (although you can ghetto your way through this for about 50mil or so depending on what you're trying to do).

Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and opinions.

To all good things ...

*RIP*

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My thoughts about the old version of rage are based on not running perma-unstoppable. Believe it or not, you could not run that gimmicky build and still be unkillable in those days.

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Errr I beg to differ. I was herding through Unstoppable crashes back in the perma-Unstoppable days. In fact, I died once due to an Unstoppable crash (back then) ... ever (and that was due to a slow that kept me from overlapping Unstoppable).

Using UY to mitigate Rage's crash back then was annoying because you would get disoriented by a mob hitting you with Brawl (happened quite a bit to me at any rate) and then watch all your toggles (and then life) drop like a stone. Doable ... but I prefer the crash today generally speaking. Much easier to play around.

I would much rather have your #1 suggestion (although I would argue that would make Rage overpowered when compared to Build-Up from other sets).

I don't like the multiple debuff scenario ... it would make Rage basically useless in PvP (and most likely a build killer) and I could think of many PvE instances where you it would hurt worse then the old mag 5 disorient (anything that could stack slows for instance).

Camo: No, stacking Rages does not mitigate the Rage crash.

Touche puttytat!

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If you don't like the way Rage works now, what would you do to change it?

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I thought it was perfect as it was. I'd change it back.

Of course our level of status protection has changed since then but assume level of stun from Rage = level of Protection from Unyielding, Rooted etc.

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Ewwww.

You don't happen to follow a religeon where you flog yourself on a daily basis too do you?

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If you don't like the way Rage works now, what would you do to change it?

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Trust me, guys, the Rage penalties now are far better than they used to be. The original Rage penalty was that you were very suseptible to mez attacks for the 10 seconds, but that was nearly unplayable. You would get mezzed, then die. (This was before Break Frees were set up the way they are now.) The next one they tried was making your end fall to 0. Unfortunately, this pretty much had the same dead effect that being mezzed did when you were in a mob heavy situation.

As annoying as that Rage drop can be sometimes, believe me, it could have been alot worse.

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QFT.

Rage crashes were alot worse when they came with mag 5 disorients attached.

I think by "beneficial" badges you mean Accolades.

You're missing the Crey Pistol (freeze gun), Vanguard (+status effect durations) and Arch Magus (+resist) accolades.

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Can some explain exactly under what circumstances a stalker will not lose health when using Energy Transfer? I've been seeing some health losses when I shouldn't be losing health.

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If you have "Hide" status, you can get a critical hit with your powers. Energy Transfer's critical eliminates the Self Damage property of the attack. So, if you use Energy Transfer while you have the "Hide" status, ET will do no damage to you.

FYI:
Hide gives "Hide" Status.
Placate gives "Hide" Status.
Smoke Flash does NOT give "Hide" Status.

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There are instances where I Placate, but the "Hide" text doesn't display. However I can still get an AS/Critical off. I figured it was a print issue.

However if the "Hide" text isn't appearing after certain Placates, then perhaps it's triggering ET's damage loss (even though technically you're still in "hide" mode)?

Possibly lag/packet loss related if you spike when Placating and/or ETing?

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Allow me to point you to this thread I started a couple of days ago:
You click here.

There seems to be some debate as to whether they're working or broken in PvP. I don't think there's any debate about their PvE usefulness, but I am yet to experience anything other than frustration with using them in PvP. Teleporting someone into them only to have them instantly run out of them seems a little...odd.

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As KOS noted, they seem to not be working very well. I'm used to Caltrops on my /Dev blaster, and I'm certainly getting different results. Castle told me the sets all point to the same Caltrops power, but it really appears as if this is either untrue in some way or that the code to fix Caltrops in PvP (which came I think in I4) is somehow separate from the Caltrops power itself and so we've received the old broken version, anyhow.

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Yep. Exactly the same as Traps or Devices Caltrops powers. There ARE limitations to Caltrops -- anyone above them (jumping, flying, doing cartwheels) won't be slowed by them. It is also possible in certain cicumstances for a super speed character to run into and out of the area of effect before the Caltrops power can effect them. That limitation is the same on Tar Patch, Ice Patch and other similar persistent area powers.

To sum up, Caltrops can be a very powerful tool in PvE and PvP, but in PvP players have quite a few 'counters' to the effect. It is not meant to be an "I Win" button.

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You can add server lag to the list of "counters". I've been caltropped about 300 yrds away from where the caltrops actually were for a couple of seconds after having super speeded or run/teleport away. If the server is slow to respond, you may see some of this weirdness.

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I had this happen to me for an hour straight by two Stalker's in Siren's on Infinity today. The 3 Towers close to the Hero Safe Zone/Hospital - Villains TP Foe Heroes in there, and there is no way out, outside of a Teleport or death. I had it happen on my /Storm controller, when it had been made clear they could not kill me unless I shut off my Hurricane, yet they still did it.

Anyone who does this... its more grieving than a valid tactic, especially when its known that the Hero can't die in there.

Firstly, Drones need to be given a TP Foe Aura protection. Secondly, those Towers need to not be Reticle targettable.

Fix it - Petition those who do it. They do not want players taken out of their Safe Zones... it is grieving.

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I think the word you're looking for is "griefing".

Grieving is what you do once you've been griefed

Ummm healer agro has always been in the game (never noticed buffs drawing agro before tho (although debuffs certainly will)).

We had a heckuva time keeping our Emp/Elect Defender alive in fights where he'd have to heal a lot (larger missions and TFs come to mind). This was earlier on in the game (L10-L30).