Sailboat

You don't have more than 5 bonuses of 5%, do you?

Rule of Five

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Without getting into things like "why Hurl AND Laser Beam eyes, but no haymaker?"

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That's sort of what I was trying to get at, delicately.

KO Blow is great, but long-recharging; after that I saw an insufficiently-slotted Jab (obviously suboptimal), the slowest-animating attack in the set, and the weakest Tanker attack other than pool powers (Laser Beam Eyes). I'm no expert on DPS chains, but this one just didn't scream "AV Killer" to me. :P If it's working for you, great; I'm just surprised.

I tried this a long time ago. Every single item I looked at had at least one listed, and each time I bought it, another appeared instantly, so there was ALWAYS one listed. Couldn't get it to change.

It didn't seem likely that dozens of slots were being watched by players who instantly threw new DOs and TOs into the slots I'd bought every time I boguht one, so I decided either someone was using bots or the system was bugged.

From what I read here, other people have not had this experience. Good for them.

What attack chain are you using?

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was this on guardian? Cause about a week ago on the STF, we had the eternally dying granite tank (56% resistance!). I lasted longer in lobster (warshade) form than he did.

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I think I've met that guy. :P

Specifically positional defense (melee/ranged/AoE as opposed to Smashing/Lethal, etc.), specifically to 45% (or a hair more in case you get debuffed).

Look here for

Sets that improve Melee Defense

Sets that improve Ranged Defense

Sets that improve Area Effect Defense.

Note you can sort those tables by clikcing the hourglass at the top of each column -- handy to see "what can I get for 2 slots?" and so on.

Try to get close to 45% (counting your current powers too!) without losing too much from your attacks and utility powers.

After that youn can go for damage and regen and other fun things; the reason everyone suggests you go for the 45% defense "soft cap" first is because the effect is so dramatic.

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*Don't bother enhancing the hold in KoB, just worry about acc/dam/rech/end.

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While I wouldn't slot specifically for hold duration in Knockout Blow either, two Basilisk's Gaze IOs are a good (if pricey) way to grab energy/negative defense when slots are tight.

The quad and the acc/rech are good for frankenslotting, and if you can stand less than perfect da,mage slotting, can be combined with 4 Crushing Impacts (all with Damage enhancement value) for 91.8% damage enhancement, or various frankenslot pieces to get the ED cap on damage and whetever else you can cram in.

My SG makes heroes on one sever and villains on another server -- one we made sure was on the opposite coast. Not only does that give us roughly twice the slots to play with (minus the occasional other-side character built for cross-faction teaming), it also partially insulates us against one coast's servers all going down, or an internet backbone failing somewhere, which has happened a few times. All the East Coast servers go down at once and we just switch to the West Coast and change factions for the evening.

I like slotting up defense on an Inv Tanker, even though it can be overkill. I am not sure I'd take maneuvers though, and I am sure I'd never slot Hover like that. :P You could steal slots from Hover and some defenses to finish slotting your attacks. If you take understrength attacks to beef up your durability, you might as well be a Granite Tanker, eh?

I used the passives (res elements/res energies) to three-slot Aegis for fire/cold defense; the resistance is small enough that the slightly-under-ED-Cap enhancement value of around 52% doesn't change your final resistance numbers much (in my case, I went from 31% energy/negative resistance to 30.88% e/n res and saved a slot, then did the same thing with fire/cold except a set bonus raised it bit more. That's 2 slots saved). The toggles (including Tough) got the 4-slotted Reactive Armors which give full resistance enhancement and some end reduction.

You're putting more effort into regeneration bonuses than I did, which is fine...but you're overslotted on Health -- 3 lvl 50 common IOs *and* a 50 Nuimna heal is way over the ED cap. Convert one to something else or save the slot.

Not sure it's worth using a whole power's slotting to get 1.88 Psi defense -- I'd use those for stacking up the bonuses you're going to get a lot of. I managed to get an incidental 13% -something Psi defense just accidentally from Weave and the like.

Don't get fixated on just the set bonuses -- IOs offer more than that.

There are few set bonuses that add resistance. Defense is easier to find, but because a Fire Tanker starts without any defense to build on (thus making it difficult to soft-cap without giving up too much other stuff) you may want to settle for "some" defense instead of going whole-hog.

But one thing you should definitely look into is "frankenslotting" -- using a mix of multi-aspect IOs from different sets (Acc/dmg/rech from 3 sets, for example). You forgo the set bonuses (mostly) but you can really get a lot of enhancement value in your powers, equivalent to more than 6, 7, or even 8 SOs worth of conventional slotting.

This lets you do things you'd never have considered before, like get tons of end reduction in your attacks without having to lose accuracy, damage, or recharge.

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This thread is a non sequitir.

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Non sequitur or not, I predict a lot of page views.

IMHO the hot new thing will be to have a bind activating the "alakazamreact" emote every time you use Propel.

Everything else will pale in comparison. :P

I've also seen these called "Pool Boy" builds.

I don't know either. I only opened this thread because I was so excited to see rogue spelled correctly.

But...most people who've made characters on Freedom in the last several years did so BECAUSE that's the crowded one. Why cheat them of the Full Crowd Experience?

I see no change from the previous status quo. I see separately-named bonuses for "huge" and "LOTG" as before. Maybe there's a huge set bonus you've missed somewhere?

I think we can consider this a non-event.

Properly implemented, this would be a bad idea that would ruin the game.

But there's no way we can be sure it will be properly implemented -- it might turn out much, much worse.

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Sweet. Now if only they can get my contagious confusion PROc to stop making my pets attack me everything would be gravy.

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That's fixed, according to the patch notes.

Any travel power will do; Khenal is right that many choose the Jumping pool for Combat Jumping and Acrobatics, but the IOs offer a way around that. There's also an invention set, Kinetic Crash [not to be confused with the Kinetic Combat set!] that give knb resistance as a set bonus if you slot several pieces...you don't have any knockback-causing powers in your secondary to slot it in, but you could take Kick from the Fighting Pool.

Teleport will be slightly less intuitive for moving about the battlefield than leaping or flight, but it offers a nice synergy with your Oppressive Gloom toggle. You can port right into groups and hit them all at once with the stun, avoiding the alpha as you approach. So you might enjoy TP for that alone.

Speaking of the Fighting Pool, that's one of the pools many folks will recommend. You don't need it, but it'll make you a tougher Tanker. I'd recommend taking either Boxing or Kick to get to Tough; get Tough and slot it up. You don't have to get Weave; since you don't have other defense powers to stack it with, its advantage is diluted a bit, and it does cost a fair chunk of endurance. But Tough is good; it only helps against smashing or lethal damage, but that's very, very common in melee.

For attacks you'll probably want Whirling Hands for AoE (even if it's a mediocre AoE, it still is one!) and then the big two, Energy transfer and Total Focus, at the top end of your secondary. That (plus what you have already) would be a typical suite of attacks for a Tanker; 4-6 slotted-up attacks does it for most non-specialty builds.

For slotting -- short version is probably 3 into each defensive toggle ASAP, and 4 in each when you can; 6 into the main attacks and nothing (the default 1) into attacks you don't intend to six-slot (i.e., there's limited benefit and a high opportunity cost in sticking 2 or 3 slots into some low-level attacks and then running out of slots for the big guns). Long version -- http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Enhanc...versification. An exception is powers you slot only to hold a set, like putting 4 slots into Kick for the knockback resistance of Kinetic Crash.

But you don't have to worry about sets for a while -- they're more effective at higher levels anyway, you can afford them better then, and you'll have a better sense of the game. But more to the point, nobody needs sets at all; the game works fine with normal enhancements (SOs) and even the hardest content is routinely accomplished by characters without a single set invention.

Dark is a control-minded Tanker set with the game's best heal; learning to time your Dark Regeneration will be the key to your success. Energy is a very hard-hitting (at higher levels) single-target set. Be patient with it early.

Welcome to the game!

Entering the Architect datastream (going into the mission) gives the "you cannot enter" popup, but you enter anyway. This is new tonight.

I think they're close enough in effectiveness that the custom weapon models should tip you toward one or the other for your concept.

It's kind of tricky to go back in and fix the bios, though...when hitting <enter> to force a linebreak, I keep finding my cursor at the end of the whole bio instead of where I thought I'd stuck it. But fiddling with it eventually powered through this issue and it looks fine now.

Having the bios wrecked was like not having any color in the costumes; it just drained a lot of the uniqueness and creativity fro the game. Thank goodness it's now fixable even if it requires repeated, brute-force attempts.

I don't think that made the patch notes. It's not under City of Heroes/powers/Controllers anyway.

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maybe get yourself a bubbler, and some CM love and have at it. Try some different team makeup's and I'm sure there are quite a few options that will work.


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In my opinion, the minute the tank needs support to tank the finale, that invalidates Tankers.

In other words, if this AV needs someone bubbled/buffed up and being healed to tank it, why not just get a Scrapper? Or a Brute.

Which is the core of the issue I have with developers and how they treat and regard Tankers.

They'll penalize a Tanker with lower damage because of their ability to tank for a team, but hypocritically they won't hesitate to try to nullify or reduce that niche with enemies who circumvent that survivability advantage.

If a Scrapper can't tank an AV without support, and a Tanker can't tank the same AV without support, but both can with support (and such is true; already I've watched Scrappers tank this TF with support) then what is the point of the Tanker?

None. None at all.

They have no problem removing the need and advantage of a Tanker, while at the same time refusing to stop punishing the Tanker with crappy damage for that "advantage".

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But...

The Blaster is punished when AVs, EBs, and everything in Mission Architect take too many hits to be quickly killed, and deal out huge damage that Blasters cannot endure.

The Controller is punished when AVs, EBs, everything in Mission Architect, and in fact an increasing number of high-end enemies have status protection 00 or cmplete status immunity.

The Defender is punished when Tankers and Scrappers don't need or want buffs and debuffs, and the Defender can't do enough damage to take down AVs, EBs, and half the things in Mission Architect quickly enough.

The Scrapper is neither swan nor goose -- not matching Blasters for damag, while not being as sturdy as Tankers. In a world where it seems like everyone boss-farms at high end, what role is left for the boss-killer? Sure, you can buff a Scrapper up like a Tanker if you can find any buffers playing, but it's harder to do, and why bother if everyone's a boss-killer?

It seems like every AT has a potential complaint like this. Why are Tankers any different?

Your attacks are the big end-drainers (especially once you've got at least some end red in the toggles) so it's key to get them way, way down in cost. That's hard to do if six-slotting them for the positional defense set bonuses -- so don't.

My secret to soft-capping on my MA/SR is to use powers I don't attack with to hit the soft cap (Touch of Death in Boxing for example, although Razzle Dazzle is also a good choice) and then frankenslot the heck out of the real attacks for endurance -- my attacks run about 82% end reduction on average. A little end red in the toggles (there's diminishing returns from slotting end red too heavily in the toggles) and just one of the endurance IOs (Numina or Miracle uniques, Performance Shifter proc) and I'm good for long fights.

It's pretty tricky though, slots are at a premium.