Sailboat

Sort of an all-rounder. This character has run a lot of Task Forces, but to date I haven't really tested him as an AV-anvil tank; the AVs in the TFs just sort of started attacking and then melted under a cloud of color-customized powers, and I didn't notice a problem (that doesn't mean there wasn't one. :P)

When I'm idle, I like to use his area potential on massed enemies, but I'm hardly a power farmer.

I haven't really picked a direction to go with IOs, as I am working on several other projects, and desirable IOs now hit the market so seldom that I can't really work on numerous builds at once. So he's been back-burnered, except for the part where I realized I was running about 42% defense and it would be worth effort to hit the soft cap.

His attacks have sloppy frankenslotting for values like 95% dmg, 40-45% acc, 95% recharge, and 30-40% end reduction in the single-targets; same acc and dmg, but 81-86% recharge and 63-78% end red in the area attacks. In other words, much better than SO slotting but not particularly optimized (I was grabbing cheap stuff and tossing it in). It works pretty well, but in long fights I still bottom out the blue bar occasionally. I have no recovery bonus slotting (so I can improve that) and can somewhat improve the end reduction of the frankenslotting when I get serious about spending, though, so I think the endurance issue isn't particularly scary.

Frankly it would be nice to have an epic AoE like Fireball to go with Shield Charge, but I don't know what I'd give up -- I tried a travel-power-less Scrapper and always felt lame and un-super, so I would hate to give up my travel power, and it would take significant investment to replace the fighting pool's defense. I could give up two single target attacks, but that would deprive me of the nice alternate chains (Beheader/Gash/Swoop/Cleave for single targets and Pendulum/Whirling Axe/Cleave/occasional Shield Charge for AoE). So I've resigned myself to not having another AoE and finding something on which to spend these last two power picks.

My SD/BA (Shield/Axe) Tanker has been rocketing up in levels. I wasn't really prepared for this. He's now...47. I took

All Shield powers except One with the Shield and Grant Cover
All Battle Axe powers except Chop and Taunt (note that this gives me a good selection of attacks for a tank)
Fitness to Stamina, Fighting to Weave, Leaping to Super Jump.

I will be soft-capped to melee, ranged, and AoE when my last bid for that sixth Touch of Death pieces fills. It's a cheap and dirty soft-capping -- Combat Jumping, Weave, Steadfast 3% IO, and TOD set (for melee) and BOTZ 3-set (picked up the expensive -knb with merits) for ranged and AoE defense. Note that that left me a few tenths of a percent BELOW the soft cap for those last 2 positions, and I dropped a def IO into Combat Jumping to make the breakpoint.

With 2 picks and not many slots left, I can't get into the upper level Epic pool powers.

Foremost among my remaining choices:

Hasten
Grant Cover (for def debuff resistance)
One With The Shield (would stack with Tough and Defection to about 70% s/l resistance)
Taunt (if I decide to go there)
Conserve Power

Thoughts? Suggestions? Blindingly obvious choices I haven't made?

I strongly believe target cap has more practical influence than square area. My Tankers can get lots of foes in close. I find the target cap of 5 on Pendulum from the Tanker Axe set to be much more restrictive to my damage output than War Mace's very similar power with a target cap of 10. Likewise, Shield Charge has a target cap of 16, but the following PBAoE has a target cap of 10; the difference is quite noticeable, even with a larger area PBAoE like Footstomp.

The place where large "square area" attacks make more difference, IMHO, is teams that don't allow the enemies to clump up (via tar patch, caltrops, Tanker, Rad herding, what have you) -- particularly teams with immob-happy Controllers, who lock everything down while it's still spread out. That's when I'm happy to have a big ol' target zone.

No harm, I just don't want to confuse the young 'uns.

I'm not a regen expert. But I used to know one.

I used to team with a guy who liked Regen Scrappers. This was after the Great Defense Nerf, After Enhancement Diversification, after (as far as I know) the big Regen nerfs (notably the changes to Instant Healing) and BEFORE New Improved MoG and BEFORE IOs.

That is, the point in the game when Regen was at its weakest. No longer overpowered, unable to use Mog against alphas, unable to improve with set IOs.

This guy not only stayed standing through all sorts of hideous teamwipes that killed my Fire Tanker with Tough, but he'd do so usually without even having his green bar move. I never saw it go down normally, and even at the worst, when he was the last man standing, surrounded by +3 Nemesis, it would only dip down to about half and then fill back up.

Now maybe network lag prevented me from seeing most of the changes to his green bar if he refilled it quickly; maybe he was taking hits and the system wasn't accurately tracking them on my end. But I could never figure out how he did it. His green bar looked like a Granite Tanker's green bar.

Regen has been considerably improved since he played.

I've never been serious about a regen toon; maybe I should try one.

Is WP really the best secondary for AV soloing? It doesn't strike me as the best choice against single targets that deal massive alpha.

Mine's /Dark, not for the debuffs, but for stacking Dark Pit with Thunder Clap and Oppressive Gloom.

In general, I try to have certain goals in mind when making an IO build, and the slotting of various powers will be determined by those goals. There is seldom an absolute theoretical best slotting for a power; it depends on what the goals are.

For example, I've made characters with the defense soft cap in mind (for one or more postions or damage types); characters trying to pile up large End and recovery bonuses, damage bonuses, regeneration, or recharge; sometimes I make combinations of the above ("What's the best regen I can get on a soft-capped SR Scrapper without giving up much recharge?")

You can make a mishmash of different set bonuses and you will be stronger than a non-IOed character, but generally individual set bonuses are small, and the strength of specialist IO builds is in piling up many smallish bonuses to an impressive end result.

Do you have a goal, or something you'd like to push for in set bonuses? Telling us will help us help you.

If you don't have a specific goal in mind, you might do better by frankenslotting and ignoring set bonuses. IMHO really good powers are often better off frankenslotted to get the most out of them; trying for set bonuses can wind up costing you key enhancement values (for example, there are some nice set bonuses in expensive sets that nevertheless leave you with low values for endurance reduction or recharge. I'd hate to have only 30-40% recharge in Tornado in pursuit of another small set bonus.) Sets that have a lot of good powers (as opposed to thowaway powers) are good candidates for frankenslotting; I consider Storm to have a lot of good powers.

Swede Momsen, or maybe The Momsen Lung.

Frankly I am an old fogey and haven't gotten into downloading music or using an mp3 player. But I know I'm in the minority.

Would it be technically possible to have players select their own music tracks and play them in MA missions they build?

I assume there's also the legal question of music rights, which may well outweigh technical considerations. But stores supposedly pay the music licensing companies some kind of fee or rate for playing music in the stores; maybe something like this is possible if a payment scheme can be worked out.

Failing that, a selection of COH/V-provided music that IS legally allowed would at least allow for some customization.

The knockback in Crane Kick, if used badly, will occasionally cause you to run a few feet forward. How this is worth any significant level of complaint is beyond me -- it doesn't affect DPS worth a damn, of course, since DPS only matters for high-hitpoint targets like AVs, and they seldom take any effect from knb. It doesn't "scatter," since it only moves one guy and you're a hard-hitting, single-target attacker who will certainly be able to finish off that one guy, yet inexplicably I have heard AoE players complain about it.

Most of MA's good points have already been covered. The other thing about MA that's nice is that it has several hard-hitting single-target attacks (Storm, Crane, Crippling Axe, and Eagle's Claw) and some of them are very quick (Storm, Thunder, and to a lesser extent Crane). The end result is that when Claws and Dual Blades feel like a blender, chewing opponents down, MA can feel like a hammer, BAM-BAM-BAM-there's your drop and exp! I am often surprised at how well it holds up when I am in a friendly rivalry with another Scrapper or two. I definitely see my name in the "kill credit" text spam often enough.

Lastly, Dragon's Tail is your only AoE, but it's a pretty good one. When you get the recharge down pretty far it can be very nice.

Holy Carp

Those of us doubting the power of Invulnerability on Tankers may want to re-evaluate.

Yeah, ok, very narrowly-tailored scenario. Still...dang.

I liked the times TT came to Guardian, if we're placing requests.

It's worth noting that, unspectacular as it is, Quickness gives SR both a movement boost and a recharge boost, both of which are considered desirable when slotting out almost any character. Yes, it's not Shield Charge, but it's not chopped liver either.

It might mean your foes wind up with chopped livers a little bit more often per minute of combat, though.