Sailboat

Passives don't seem to fit with Force Fields as we know and love them. An all- toggles set will drag down the user's blue bar.

What about taking another property from the Force Fields set and making click-type timed self buffs that work like the ally-only bubbles, except they defend the casting player? If done right, click-type defenses can be chaeper over time than toggles (see Practiced Brawler). Have the hero bubble himself every few minutes and it works, looks, and feels like the familiar FF, without tons of expensive toggles or hard-to-rationalize passives.

Per this: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...41#post2076741

Does that mean the new 08/04/09 build that fixed the chat bug (among other things) will be reverted back to the old (chat bug, etc.) build until further notice? And that they're taking the servers down for 2 hours tonight to do so?

Frankly if I was planning to retire the character at 50, I wouldn't worry too much about the level 47 power either (Fireball). Especially if you're cherry-picking your enemies in AE; you won't take long to go from 47 to 50. I also think it's going to be close to "more trouble than it's worth" to IO the character, especially if you're concentrating on recharge, typically one of the most expensive qualities to build sets for. Heck, purples are a great source of global recharge enhancement and available only at 50.

But don't let me deter you from what you want to do; fun is subjective.

88888224640001Great!

The build looks pretty sparse on attacks. If you drop GFS you'll have Scorch, Kick, and maybe Char as your single-target chain? Yet it's hard to see what to do about that if you keep Fireball.

My suggestion if you keep Fireball is to drop Melt Armor for Fire Blast, and incorporate Fire Blast into your attack chain.

My own Inv Tanker also took the Fighting Pool and a Travel power, so I decided I couldn't afford to fit in the ancillary/epic pool and still have enough attacks and defenses.

As power proliferation continues, it becomes more important than ever to be clear about what's a primary and what's a secondary. Your tanks must be Inv/SS and WP/Mace, not Mace/WP or SS/Inv.

Some people find WP to be trickier to use to tank for teams, due to its weaker taunt aura. Otherwise it's a great set.

Shannon has a point -- tanking for a team is about setting up the battle and positioning the enemies as much as it is about negating the powerful enemy alpha strike and holding aggro. Tankers don't have to lead the team, but they should lead off into combat. Teams often, dare I say, usually, want the Tanker to take the lead role in who you fight, how many, when, and where.

Well, if it's toughness on teams but not Willpower you want, I'd say Invulnerability. It's very solid now that it was buffed and the typed defense IO sets were revamped. If it's too much like Willpower for your tastes, try Ice perhaps, that's a more different mechanic but still pretty tough.

"...sure up?" Are you trying to say shore up?

Interestingly, I too have a Claws/WP parked at 39 while I try to decide what direction to go with IOs. I've done several soft-cap builds so far and don't want to go that way with this guy (just for the sake of variety).

Great God, how is this kid going to function in the real world when he's finally school age?

I don't wish to single a player out for ridicule, especially since this guy was a nice guy and he stuck with us through a tough mission against +4s.

But I have to tell somebody.

Was on a team that decided intentionally to take on a tough mission (+4 Crey, Paragon Protectors and Crey Tanks) despite having little in the way of synergy/support characters. We were all damage dealers save for one lower-level tank (who would be facing +5s) and one lone Controller.

But the Controller was Earth/Storm.

There was a lament that we couldn't get any Defenders, but I expressed confidence that Earth/Storm is a really strong Controller build.

But when we got into the mission: no Steamy Mist (and we're getting a lot of Energy and Cold damage), no Quicksand or Earthquake (and we're having trouble hitting), no stuns, no holds, no Freezing Rain! No Hurricane, Tornado, or Immobilize when we're in trouble and getting defeated.

What's he doing?

He's spamming O2 Boost to try and keep the team healed.

He did use the pet, and he put up Lightning Storm from time to time, which in itself was surprisingly helpful, knocking down clusters of purple bad guys. But nothing else.

So I sent him a nice /tell to avoid making a public complaint and suggested he break out his full suite of powers. He (very politely) asked if I thought I could survive without O2 Boost. I offered to try my damnedest (note: I was on a Willpower Scrapper, extra healing was of limited effect).

Now things did start to improve -- but I didn't get to see much more, or talk to the player about it, unfortunately.

Unbeknownst to me, my spouse was in the other room communicating with my ISP, and persuaded them to troubleshoot the system, involving my having to check connections of cables and cords and ultimately including a request that we shut down everything for five minutes and reset the modem and router. It was a good long while before I came back to the game.

Anyway, if that player reads this and recognizes the situation, the answer is not "you are a bad player," and it's not "you should be a weak healer when the team is in trouble."

The answer is, you are an Earth/Storm Controller. All the earth and the sky above are your birthright! Be what you were born to be -- a GOD! Crush your enemies in stone and soil, flay them with the winds of chaos!

Once you've got the enemies trapped, held, debuffed, slowed, stunned, and knocked down, the Scrappers will know what to do. And we won't be waiting for a heal.

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Case Study:

Which works better vs melee Fire damage:

A. 50% Melee Defence
B. 50% Fire Defence
C. 50% Melee Defence with 30% Fire Defence
D. 50% Fire Defence with 30% Melee Defence
E. They are all the same

Serious question. Just want to be sure.

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None of them work until you have some DEFENSE instead.

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In his defense/defence, it's spelled with a "c" in Britain and Commonwealth countries.

People who want pistols for scrappers mostly just want status protection and durability because they want to win, not because it makes any kind of sense.

Now if we fixed tiny bayonets onto each pistol....

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Freezing Rain:
This just needs recharge and end redux. Forget about anything else, unless you just have slot space to waste. Look at:

Undermined Defenses Rech/End
Undermined Defensees Rech
Touch of Lady Grey Rech/End

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It's probably worth it to stick in an Achilles Heel proc for additional chance for -resistance.

Speaking of procs: you can get one or more into Gale (I don't recall the details). Gale is a fast-recharging cone and won't scatter once you have immobilized (unless you're Grav). Might be useful for a splattroller build.

Dull and uninteresting would be an inherent I had to stop scrapping and plan how to use for maximum advantage. Wild and scrapper-like is one that crushes my foes unpredictably, without requiring any thought on my part, during frenzied melee.

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Recharge of haste in the build, if you bothered to open it, is 119.1 sec (Duration of Haste 120 Secs) Unless we have different understandings of what a Perma Power is?

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Turn off the Force feedback proc in KO Blow. Recharge of Hasten is nowhere near perma. It's 216.5 sec with Hasten off and 162s with Hasten on.

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A classic example of how a theoretical build made in a planner can differ from a build with actual playing-time experience.

When did Day Jobs go live? It may have been after BaB gathered those figures...but I'd think that any determination of "ATs logged in during time period X" would be muddied by Day Jobs, as I now log in all my untouched alts regularly to shift them to new Day Job locations.

Bump. New issue in the works, time to respectfully place this idea back into circulation.

Now that you can paste into chat, can you paste a Mid's data chunk and send him one of those for each of the "what are their builds" ATs? That would have been totally worth the time it took to do.

Just as a word to the general readership, WP can be very strong, but its strengths are a little more crowd-oriented and less AV-oriented. So for this goal, I'd go SD for the reasons already given.

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Is Ax really whats killing me here?

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Yeah. However, Axe is also what's killing everything else, unless you have Veteran attacks; and even then, one of THOSE is an axe. :P

So you gotta use the Axe even if it uses end. Generally attacks, over time, use much more end than toggles, so slip an end reduction in each one once you get to DOs and SOs. The other big end-sucker for low level characters is missing -- a miss uses the same end as a hit, but you have to swing again. Make sure to have accuracy slotted as well.

Lastly, the low levels are always rougher -- hang in there, you'll see improvement eventually.