Sailboat

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
And hey, a Nerf is a Nerf is a Nerf, even if it comes in the guise of a politically correct Nerf.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you even know what a nerf is? The devs have to change a power to nerf it. Rttc always detoggled when a player got mezed. It wasn't buffed like other toggles that no longer drop when mezed.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now now, if this one player says it's a nerf, it's a nerf! Never mind what all the other players, the devs, and two decades of common usage have established as its meaning. All that's out the window. This guy gets to control us all.

What trudge to 50?

I turned off exp at 47 on one character and 48 on another, and dithered for weeks over IO sets and final powers, then turned on exp and in a few nights of idle soloing and a couple of random PUG invites, BOOM, went to 50 on each one. The exp piles up relentlessly if you're doing anything that earns exp, and before you can say, "I was hoping my friend would log on to see me hit 50," it's over. Leveling -- even the longest levels in the game, the last few -- is embarassingly fast in this game. Without powerleveling, without AE, without large teams, without un-sidekicking to get the bigger mission bonus, without day job bonuses, without even trying, I've gone from 45 to 50 before my IO recipe bids filled. I got 40% of the way from 49 to 50 in one evening of a few solo, heroic missions, some time spent eating dinner, and one small team. That's lazy, no-account leveling, and look at how fast 49 flew by.

I'm constantly baffled by this complaint.

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed! So would being able to change the fetter for your powers!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah! New fetter! New...uh...what?

[ QUOTE ]
And I assume that Stamina would be desired, as would Combat Jumping (for def), and Tough and Weave?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you're Inv/SS, Stamina will be very important, because the Rage crash knocks off a quarter of your end bar in addition to all the rest of your activities. Other Inv/* Tankers won't be quite so bad, but generally you'll do more stuff per time period with Stamina than without.

I personally went with CJ, Tough, and Weave to make my Inv Tanker stronger. Some people feel like taking Tough to move your S/L resists to the 90% cap is overkill. Generally they are right, outside of super-heavy-duty tanking like hard AE custom content.

But it's just so cool to get hit by someone's huge sword and see a tiny "13" pop up for damage.

You know how the Secrets of the Ninja give you REAL ULTIMATE POWER?

These procs grant you REAL INSIGNIFICANT POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ QUOTE ]
OK, another question/concern. (And btw, thanks Finduilas.)

Survivability is an important concern, but obviously so is grabbing and retaining aggro. While the Invuln set is quite good it seems at survivability (especially with respect to S/L), I don't see a damage aura as part of it. If Invuln has no way to generate aggro, then all the aggro management has to come from elsewhere - such as the secondary.

[/ QUOTE ]

You've missed Invincibility. It's hard to see it because the power offers several things and does not do damage, but Invincibility is a taunt aura. It gives:

<ul type="square">[*]Some base defense when one foe is in range, plus additional defense per foe in range [*]Some to-hit for every foe in range [*]and generates Taunt (mag 4) control on every foe in range, with a 16.875 second duration[/list]
It's a very good taunt aura, strong and long-lasting. Note that it has advantages in some circumstances over damage auras -- you could help out newbies by standing in mobs which would turn to target you, but you wouldn't do any damage that would reduce their exp or "kill-steal."

[ QUOTE ]
Ironically, I believe the devs consider (or at least, at one point, considered) scanner mission ramrodding

[/ QUOTE ]

What's ramrodding?

It'll take a multi-pronged attack. Remove some AE buildings, tie AE to veteran badge status, dedicate someone to look through AE and remove farming arcs more vigorously from the AE arc listings, hire someone who's played the game and can recognize that enemies who don't shoot back should be removed from AE enemy lists, then do so; randomly hammer a few of the worst exploiting accounts (okay, that last part isn't strictly necessary, but it feels right. And reprogram a Predator drone to take out RMT sellers' web servers.

That's a start, anyway.

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, if anyone wonders more why I harp on this, I've only ever had 2 pets in my life, my cat's still alive, Liberty was my first dog. And having her for 1/3rd my life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Trust me, it's not like you build up an immunity to losing a loved companion. Losing a good pet is going to hurt because of the love and caring, and because you miss him or her, not just because of the first or twenty-first time.

Liberty sounds like a great companion. That almost certainly means you did a great job loving her and caring for her. Take comfort in that -- that's all we can really do for each other, dogs or humans.

There won't be another Liberty, but you will find another friend worthy of your efforts if you look.

Peace to you and yours.

[ QUOTE ]
or reducing the number of attacks the enemies are allowed to make through crowd control or killing them faster.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or slows -- one of the strengths of Ice/, if I understand it correctly.

WP. You can take more Claws powers than you can with SR.

[ QUOTE ]
I think it is -possible- to have a game with CO's version of power selection or DCUO's version of power selection in the world because, low and behold, they are actually developing those games to be that way as we speak.

[/ QUOTE ]

You know, the sorry history of vaporware in the superhero computer game genre (and I'm not just talking MMOs) inclines me to say "publish or it didn't happen." Ar either of those two games released yet? (Honest question -- I haven't kept up.) Until they are released, they can SAY anything they want about their system and it's all talk. Remember COH had a classless system too before it released.

Well, the last 5% cuts your incoming (S/L) damage in half (that's a 50% reduction in "ow!"). Of course that's probably not strictly necessary as you point out.

Oh, I'm not running into a lot of fire, and certainly not on ITFs. It's really only demons in COT missions and the occasional flamethrowing Nemesis or Nazi trooper that do detectable fire damage, and cold I've only noticed from a few Crey Cryo tanks. My question was just about build philosophy.

I managed to get E/N so high by using the Reactive Armors that give both S/L and E/N and by slipping in two pairs of Basilisk's Gaze set pieces at 2.5% E/N each...and Thunderstrike in Hurl, among other things.

This might be dependent on my secondary being Super Strength, since I get a hold and a ranged attack and a bunch of single-target melee attacks for Kinetic Combat; maybe it's harder for other secondaries.

Yes, in general, the 50% def debuff resistance is great -- it's probably my prior experience being Super Reflexes that accounts for any implication I might have made I wasn't impressed by Invuln's resistance.

I have a level 50 Inv/SS Tanker I've carefully kitted out with IOs, focusing mostly on soft-capped defenses. Because the def debuff resistance isn't very robust, I wanted to be a little over the soft-cap.

After massive fiddling around, I settled on around 50% defense with one foe in Invincibility range for smashing and lethal damage, and the same for energy and negative damage, but fire and cold is much lower (I don't recall exactly, but probably around 40% with one foe in Invincibility).

I do take fire damage more often because of this setup. I can't see how I could get more fire/cold defense without major changes (I haven't posted a build because I don't have Mid's and I'm not really asking for specific IO choices, this is more a general philosophical question), but I could lower my S/L and E/N defenses a bit to invest in at least 3.13% more F/C.

But the 50% number seems about right for holding defense debuffs at bay -- on the Roman walls, facing the aggro cap of debuffing Romans, every once in a while my S/L will dip below the soft cap for a few seconds, then a debuff wears off and I'm good again, so that 5% margin seems good to have.

So I have opted to stay with padding S/L and E/N above the soft cap and letting F/C run a moderate amount under it. My F/C does eventually reach the soft cap in crowds (not sure exactly how many are required).

Do others feel this is a sound approach? Would you rather have all three at the soft cap with one foe in range? Or would you rather have the more common damage resistances running a bit "too high" to hold up better under the sort of debuffs one might typically encounter?

After having carefully ensured that my SR Scrapper hit the soft cap to all 3 positions, I feel a little exposed (or maybe it's just obsession with round numbers) with "lopsided" defense values on my Tanker, but in practice it seems plenty strong.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Champions Online is currently trying a more free-form system, but the restrictions seem to be creeping in.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find this somewhat amusing, because back when I was hanging around with people who played the pen-and-paper Champions game.....

....they were constantly talking about all the restrictions GMs would put on character creation in an attempt to prevent the powergamers from making completely broken monster characters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. Champions "Offline" (the pen-and-paper version) did not restrict you by archetypes, but it had suggested team roles as sort of loose categories to make it easier to describe characters: Brick (very roughly equivalent to our Tanker), Energy Blaster, Martial Artist, and so on. You could make just about any combination of powers, but it ONLY worked as a game if the GM carefully monitored the characters and was explicit about what he or she would allow. Players sometimes got strange ideas in their heads about what would "work," and it was better to hash that out beforehand than stop a good adventure for a long session of rules-lawyering or argument. I kept copies of all my players' character sheets and set guidelines for character design -- not out of the urge to control them, but so I'd have a firm idea of what sorts of appropriate threats and adventures to design.

Absent the game master, like in an MMO, I'm very dubious that unlimited selection would work.

What are the final defense numbers with this build (i.e., with toggles running)?

[ QUOTE ]
What IS really disturbing is that she got to 50 without anyone correcting her weird habits.

[/ QUOTE ]

Eh, what are the odds anyone would help her learn in the 6-8 hours she took to hit 50?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Sometimes I do wonder what it is like to live in a world where such things matter and context is overridden by pedantic nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

Eh, accuracy is important; details matter. We DO live in a world where you will die if you see a sign that says "Mines" and assume it says "Mimes" and walk into a minefield.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd actually run away faster from a mime field.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh come now -- such a thing is unheard-of.

[ QUOTE ]
Sometimes I do wonder what it is like to live in a world where such things matter and context is overridden by pedantic nature.

[/ QUOTE ]

Eh, accuracy is important; details matter. We DO live in a world where you will die if you see a sign that says "Mines" and assume it says "Mimes" and walk into a minefield.

[ QUOTE ]
Any more thoughts, pet stories, funny or sad? I don't want this thread to die, not just yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's Simone's story. (This is a write-up I did for someone who asked about keeping a feral puppy, hence the emphasis on the challenges.)

In February 2007, our nephew found a completely wild, starving American Pit Bull Terrier puppy, about six months old, in the streets of a rural town. At first he took the little dog to his grandmother, my wife's mom, but she wasn't able to keep up with the pup, and she was due in the hospital for cancer surgery (she's currently okay after treatment, fingers crossed!). The vet informed her that the law requires stray dogs to be turned over to the animal control people in case they're claimed, so the disoriented pup, who did not know how to interact with people or other dogs, was turned over to the shelter for the required six days.

Nationwide, the odds of a pit bull being adopted from a county shelter are 1 in 600, I read; that includes the completely perfect ones. Certainly the odds were even worse for this ragged, staring little foundling with poor bite inhibition.

We had no significant experience with pit bulls. The pup would need to be trained and exercised with a dedication we had not yet had to exert for any of our other animals: she wasn't housetrained at all, she expressed herself with her increasingly powerful teeth, she didn't recognize any dominance or submission cues in other dogs, she didn't respond to human touch, she didn't respond to treats, and wasn't particularly interested in food or toys. I think she’d been raised in isolation.

In short, she would be a ton of work with uncertain results. We knew almost nothing about “pit bulls” except what we read in the news. I did not especially find the idea of a pit bull attractive, and we had certainly not planned on another dog in our small condo...and our resident dog was dog-aggressive. Every rational indication was against going back to the shelter and claiming her. My wife said to me, "Can we do this without totally changing our lifestyle?" and the answer was NO, without a doubt.

But there was no one else. No one was going to step up for this little thing.

To make it seem possible at all, I told myself we would be temporary foster parents.

We brought her home, and named her Simone, because it seemed like a sophisticated name for a little uneducated rural pit bull.

Simone barely interacted with people -- mostly she chewed things (including me!) and stared wide-eyed at everything. The vet thinks she was six months old, and her behavior seemed (to my admittedly out-of-practice eye) to be behind the curve, as if she was neglected and was only starting to learn things other puppies learned months ago. For example, puppies learn bite inhibition from their littermates.

We kept her in the kitchen behind a baby gate, and (when we weren’t home) in a crate, while trying to housetrain her.

One secret to taming a feral animal is just to be present. Sitting in the kitchen with her, passively keeping her company for long stretches of time, seemed to calm her...but I got sore, I got tired, I got bored. Boredom is a powerful tool for taming animals, however -- eventually she started taking an interest in me; at first falling asleep in my lap, then hanging out near me while doing her own thing, and finally staring at me with the eternal question, “What now? What should I do?” and, once I had her attention, it became possible to start teaching her.

I wasn’t by any means an expert on how to housetrain. But I was (and remain) committed to positive reinforcement training, so I had to come up with something. My homemade solution was that when she peed in the house, I’d dip a paper towel in it, and take her and the towel outside and put the towel in the grass, make sure she sniffed it (no nose-rubbing or scolding), then praise her. And of course take her out early and often, every two hours at minimum.

It worked really well! She learned quickly, and hasn't had an accident since she was sick in early May (2007).

Simone had puppy energy to burn. Going out frequently is one key to housetraining, too -- so “up and out with the dog” became the force that drove me. She wanted to run up and down the sidewalk in the frigid spring weather we had, even in snow and ice, so I ran up and down the slick sidewalk at all hours of the evening and night, trying not to fall. I struggled to keep up, losing 18 pounds that spring.

I made it a priority to work on her bite inhibition – she wasn’t malicious, but she was getting stronger, and seemed unaware that grinding away on Daddy could hurt him. And, of course, a biting adult dog is intolerable. Because my instinct is to be positive, not punitive, I looked on the Internet for positive bite inhibition training methods. I let her bite my hand and then I’d yelp like a puppy and turn away and stop playing. Biting ends the social interaction! By that point she hated being ignored, and my turning away riveted her attention on what she could do to get my attention back. We worked on bite inhibition over and over, and to my mild surprise it started to work pretty quickly. All I had to do was willingly get munched on by the pit bull who didn’t know her own bite strength. The things we do for love, eh?

All this extra effort seemed less of a burden because we thought we’d wind up rehoming her -- it felt more like a temporary displacement I was willing to endure to give her a better chance at being adoptable. And she was a huge disruption in our lives. We even got so far as dropping her off for a weekend trial visit with someone we thought would adopt her! He seemed to really like her, and seemed like a nice guy. When he called the next day and said she was too wild, and asked us to come get her, I was frustrated -- but secretly, my heart leaped in my chest.

Some time later my wife gently asked me if she should stop listing Simone on adoption websites. Somewhat crossly, I asked her why. “You look like you want to keep her,” she said. ”Does it show?” I foolishly asked.

And here we are.

Simone's training has been very successful. I found a great positive trainer who works with the natural behaviors of the dogs, and really loves pit bulls -- she volunteers time at a pit rescue. I also found something that motivates Simone – the humble, unsalted, roasted peanut, of all things. Simone has completed two six-week classes so far, and had one private session. Simone responded very well to clicker training. She's still a bit willful when she wants to walk one way and I want to walk the other, but she knows a lot of behaviors and she was the star of the class at the "here!" and "leave it!" commands.

So far, Simone's shown no dog aggression at all -- she's eager to greet other dogs, and plays with them quite happily. She's been knocked down by another dog, while running with him, repeatedly, and just bounces back up for more, or turns away and walks off. Other dogs can take a toy or food from her without her doing anything other than stare after them, as if to say, "why'd you do that?"

Of course she's become a daddy's girl. She follows me everywhere. Even though I don't always feel like it, and have lots of other pets who need time (we have something of a menagerie), I give Simone as much time as I can, because I'm all she has.

Ahem...and because I'm in love.

Simone

Sometimes, during the windup, I mutter under my breath, "Here it comes, Khan."

[ QUOTE ]
I do remember tanks pulling entire warehouses and then just nuking them all down, it was fun but it did seem a little retarded lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

Word.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Here's my take on "pure" meatshield tanking: it requires your teammates to work with you.

If your team isn't going to stand back and let you set up the mobs -- and few teams need to, so you'll seldom find people inclined to do this and seldom find players mentally agile enough to adjust to it -- you'll need to be mobile and damage-dealing to keep as much aggro as you can in a fluid team environment.

There's no question Granite is the ultimate anvil, but I find my Granite Tanker wanting teams to slow down and let me take some time to get aggro set. It's very hard to be as flexible and fast-moving with Granite (or Stone as a whole, if you consider Rooted) as it is with other sets.

I generally agree with what Call Me Awesome wrote above. Willpower is a fabulous Tanker set, but it's less attractive for meatshield/aggro duty. I personally would extend the recommended secondaries beyond his choice of Stone Melee to include Super Strength, Battle Axe, or War Mace, because of controls in those secondaries. It's too easy to get fixated on setting up combos (and lose track of teammates or aggro in the process) for me to recommend Dual Blades for a meatshield build; Fire has no controls per se, and I have little experience with Ice or Energy Melee, both of which are often cited for low damage (at least pre-35 for EM) to boot.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a WP/Fire that's nearly IO'd out and he's a complete beast. I have one taunt in RttC and I have taunt from fire. I jump into a spawn and hit combustion, which has a large radius, then hit fire circle sword after they've gathered on me. Doing that plus taunting anyone on the outskirts keeps the team chugging.

And this sucker is crazy tough against most mob types. Without a huge investment, he's softcapped to s/l and over 40% to the rest, except psi. If the enemy is in melee, he's softcapped to all except psi, which is still &gt; 30%. He's got 70% resist to s/l, but weaker resists to the rest. Add this to 3100 hit points and 600% regen (much higher surrounded by enemies) and this tank is a force. My only issue are spawns with large number of -def attacks, but many builds have this issue.

[/ QUOTE ]

You seem to have misunderstood me. I didn't say Willpower isn't a complete beast; in fact, I called it fabulous. I did say that it's tougher to control aggro with it -- which is true, even if you manage it just fine, it would be easier with one of the other sets and the same skill level.

But more to the point, I said that for pure tanking -- with any set -- it's hard to find teammates who will stand back, hold off, and let you set up the mobs.

Your reply -- "I jump into a spawn and hit combustion, which has a large radius, then hit fire circle sword after they've gathered on me. Doing that plus taunting anyone on the outskirts keeps the team chugging" -- indicates that you have, or expect to find, teammates who will wait and let you set this up. That's great! Unfortunately, most teams I find these days will not let the Tanker find a group, jump in, set off the slow-animating Combustion, wait for the foes to gather on the tanker, set off Fire Sword Circle, and then look for, tab to, and taunt mobs on the outskirts. Usually by the time my Combustion ticks its initial damage, the Blasters have spammed everything they've got, well before the mobs have clumped up, so they miss a lot of guys, and peel off some of the aggro.

If I had that much set-up time I'd do the same thing you're doing. but I don't find it likely enough to advise people to plan on it.

Here's my take on "pure" meatshield tanking: it requires your teammates to work with you.

If your team isn't going to stand back and let you set up the mobs -- and few teams need to, so you'll seldom find people inclined to do this and seldom find players mentally agile enough to adjust to it -- you'll need to be mobile and damage-dealing to keep as much aggro as you can in a fluid team environment.

There's no question Granite is the ultimate anvil, but I find my Granite Tanker wanting teams to slow down and let me take some time to get aggro set. It's very hard to be as flexible and fast-moving with Granite (or Stone as a whole, if you consider Rooted) as it is with other sets.

I generally agree with what Call Me Awesome wrote above. Willpower is a fabulous Tanker set, but it's less attractive for meatshield/aggro duty. I personally would extend the recommended secondaries beyond his choice of Stone Melee to include Super Strength, Battle Axe, or War Mace, because of controls in those secondaries. It's too easy to get fixated on setting up combos (and lose track of teammates or aggro in the process) for me to recommend Dual Blades for a meatshield build; Fire has no controls per se, and I have little experience with Ice or Energy Melee, both of which are often cited for low damage (at least pre-35 for EM) to boot.