Sailboat

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If you have Mids Hero Designer, use the "Set Bonus Finder" tool to help.

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Or the wiki:

Sets that improve run speed

Sets that improve movement speed

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I have had 5 cats. All have either been eaten by foxes, mauled by dogs or hit by cars.

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I find that there are very few foxes, cars, and dogs in my house.

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Rock on. My mother-in-law has mourned the tragic loss of several dogs in succession she's let out to roam the countryside because she didn't want to walk them. They usually find them smeared all over the road in front of the house, but some made it to the nearby highway.

I can see her thinking she lives in a remote, safe area at first. I can't see her persisting in this behavior after the first death. After the umpteenth, it's become macabre.

Yer cats're cute.

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What makes me nervous about Ice and Invuln are the holes in their defense. Specifically toxic. I’ve seen a number of Posi TF’s fall apart because the first few missions have Vahz in them and the INV tanks just can’t take the alpha from an 8 man spawn. Since I plan to solely level via TF’s I don’t want a gaping hole to any one TF. Am I making way to big a deal out of the hole? If so, please let me know.

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Interestingly, Invulnerability doesn't have a hole vs Toxic.

Nobody gets defense vs Toxic damage type per se. I'm not sure if Vazh toxic attacks have a positional component. But looking at resists against Toxic damage:

Inv: 10% res from Unyielding and 10% from Resist Elements
Fire: 20% from Healing Flames, stackable at high recharge
Dark: 20% from Dark Embrace
Ice: 20% from Hoarfrost
Shield: 15% from True Grit
Stone: 20% from Earth's Embrace (not very stackable)
WP: 7.5% from High Pain Tolerance

Some tier 9s give better protection (Granite, Unstoppable, One with the Shield, off the top of my head) but that's no help against Vahz, because you don't fight Vahz at high levels.

Note that from that list Shield and WP get the least Toxic resists but they also have the most permanent hit points due to the way the powers work. Dark and Fire can repeat their self-heals often enough to matter, making their 20% resistance go farther, and Fire can even stack the resist total a bit, although that's hard at Positron TF levels. Stone can't, not really, and probably won't have its 20% toxic res all the time due to the long recharge on Earth's Embrace; but Stone's Rooted will help with a little bit of regen.

Overall, Fire and Dark might be your best bet for unsupported (or poorly-supported) Vahz tanking, but perhaps Shield would be good too if there's a positional component to Vahz attacks (thus bringing Shield's positional defense into play).

But the truth is, nobody tanks big herds of Vahz. Not reliably. Tons of the right kind of buffs might make it doable, but generally I like control powers to neutralize the Vahz. (Ice Slick is a fantastic Vahz-hunting tool).

I think the "psi hole" is generally overrated in PVE. My Inv Tanker cruised through a six-player Psi Clockwork King mission with a little care. For Task Forces, the Devouring Earth drops (quartz emanators) and the Shadow Shard TFs (if you're including those) hurting defense-based Tankers would be a bigger deal. With Tough, an Inv tanker doesn't suffer too badly at the hands of the DE; Shields might have a harder time due to not having that fat 90% S/L resistance (haven't got a Shield Tanker above 8 yet).

In overall reputation, speaking strictly of durability, and bearing in mind these are fairly small degrees of difference, the heavy tanker types are generally ranked roughly thus:

Stone (in Granite)
Inv (tied with WP except a bit more solid against alphas and S/L)
WP (tied with Inv except a bit better in some situations of sustained high incoming damage and non-S/L)
Ice
Dark with an alert player (The heal can handle *anything* if your timing is perfect)
Shield and/or Fire

If you're really concerned about holes, I'd go Dark; it puts up with middle-strength resistances to gain well-rounded protection, and backs it all up with the best heal in the game. Throw in a control-oriented secondary and you're golden.

edit: a whole lot of posts slipped in while I was looking up Toxic resistance numbers and writing this. :P

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If anyone involved in electrobiomechanical engineering wants to develop a way we can poke other people in the eye over the internet.. not only would you become a billionaire, but spam email would be totally eliminated...

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How about merely reporting every in-game e-mailer's IP to the Chinese government's Internet control police? That would have no effect on people outside China, of course, but it might make a huge dent in RMT activity nonetheless.

If you lower your pointer in tiny increments you can usually get it to stop displaying the power info and just show the IO info. It's fiddly, though.

The beauty of it is you don't need accurate numbers to make statements about whether the game is dying. Just make them up! Assert anything you feel like, make exaggerated claims based on those assertions, and angrily defend them using personal attacks.

This is an established tradition on the forums.

After avoiding it for a loooong time, tonight I accidentally typed /d while trying to type /e and open the enhancement screen. This mangled my nicely spaced bio on yet another character.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease fix this bug!

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cool, although she seems to be missing about half of her skirt :P

outta curiousity what the arrow problem? wrong side of the bow?

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A right-handed archer holds the bow the left fist, and the arrow should pass over the knuckles of the left hand (resting to the left of the bowstave, from the archer's point of view, if held vertically).

Incidentally, the draw I was taught to use on the string involves making the three-fingered Boy Scout Salute , then placing the arrow nock between the index and middle finger. Optional to secure the pinkie by holding the thumb over it (or not, as in the picture). Draw until the webbing between your right thumb and forefinger is snugged up against the base of your right jaw. This is the "anchor" point. Always draw to the same point.

Note that there are other possible finger positions or anchor points. The side of the bow the arrow goes on isn't negotiable, though, due to Archer's paradox and another technical detail called "the arrow falling off."

These aren't really nitpicks -- good body mechanics are absolutely critical for good archery. The secret to consistently hitting is consistently using the exact same body mechanics -- otherwise your aiming is wasted if the arrow is starting from different points every time. It would be like if your gun randomly changed barrel length, grip, caliber, and powder grain between shots.

If you could live without Jump Kick, Combat Jumping gives a little defense that stacks with the rest of your defense. It doesn't really need slotting, so you'd free up 5 slots to go into Dragon's Tail and other things.

In general, typed defense set bonuses will help you a lot, it's worth looking into.

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I loved Stone/Dark, the obvious defense of stone plus the AoE from dark, combined with the Fire Epic pool made for a great AoE tank that didn't die fast

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Doesn't /Dark have the least AoE potential of any Tanker set, with the possible exception of Energy Melee?

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I has it! Today, round about eight months after my fuzzy old friend, Frisk E Cat, passed away, I have acquired awesome kitten power ^_^

Their names are Molly

And Olivia ^_^

They are a pair of loving sisters that I picked up today from a place called Forgotten Felines.

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Providing a home for homeless pets is holy work. Thank you!

Wishing you much fun with your new feline overlords!

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More importantly, it's range is around what a Blasters snipe is (and much better than anything Ice/ has), which opens a world of possibilities for pulling foes (ie on ITFs, or even STFs)

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LBE has a range of 80 feet according to City of Data. The first two attacks in Ice have a range of 80 feet (although the rest of Ice does seem to have more shorter-ranged attacks than most Blaster sets). Most Snipes have a range of 150 feet. LBE's range is better than the 40 foot range on Focus or Hurl, though.

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they wont ban people for making farms. and noone will mark them as such. get off this whole farming thing. the people who are totaly aginst farming and crying about it are the ones making the game less fun for everyone. stop trying to get people to play the way you want them to. they don't try to get you to play their way. and no one forces you to do those types of missions. enough is enough already.

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That is some spin.

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Your problem is you play Dominators. Anything with PToDs is gonna cook your goose real quick.

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That's what I thought the moment I saw you say "Domination up." Elite Bosses, like AVs, resist mezz effects. That's what the little purple triangles (of Doom™) indicate. The net effect is to neutralize control sets -- which leaves Dominators with just their lackluster Assault attacks and no mitigation to speak of.

I guess it's a conundrum for the Devs. Control tends to be all-or-nothing, they don't want their AVs and EBs neutralized, but making them immune to control really impacts control ATs.

Hrm. Can you confuse other mobs and use them against the EBs?

Ablating Strike has a -defense component to it, doesn't it?

Are you talking about getting Laser Beam Eyes for -defense? Is it really any better than using Focused Accuracy or Targeting Drone?

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And I can't believe this hasn't been stated yet, but this option was also widely used to create perma-bridges for PL farms in Peregrine and Grandville, but that was before the MA was introduced. Now no one cares about those perma 46s since MA can auto SK everyone.



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I can't believe it either. Mostly because Local Man covered it in the 4th reply.

I used it to lock my 49.9-level character until friends could get online and join me for hitting 50 on a Statesman Task Force. I was excited about playing the character and wanted to keep playing even though my friends weren't yet available. Turning off exp let me have the best of both worlds; got to keep playing and earning cash, then got to ding 50 on the Task Force final fight.

It's worth noting that Healing Flames got a big buff and is a very nice heal nowadays. You don't really have to be immune to damage as a Fire Tanker, you just need to keep it within Healing Flames' ability to handle, which is considerable, once slotted up.

I periodically run a headcount of ATs on Guardian heroside (I'm not interested enough in villainside to do it there) during prime evening playing time. I just query each AT in the team search screen and include the "truncated" count at the bottom.

Disregarding the EATs, because they're always much, much less played, they're not available to everyone, and I'm not that interested in them, I generally see the following proportions, consistently, year after year, from most to least:

Blasters (just a slight numbers advantage over the next spot)
Scrappers
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Controllers
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Defenders and Tankers almost always tied, they're usually very, very close.

To my memory there has never been a time I've done this that Blasters were not number one.

However, it's possible that they are overrepresented -- that proportionally more Blasters are logged in than are playing. Blasters are the first AT in the heroside selection screen, so people reserving names or solely using a character for market slots might find it easiest to click on Blaster in the character creation process. A stretch, maybe, but I can't rule it out.

Spin is really, really good in PVE. I'd never get rid of it for PVE team play. PVP you can certainly do without it. But as mentioned, /WP is not regarded as a good PVP set.

Much, much less common than the fetishization of it on the Scrapper forums would lead you to believe.

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It seems to me that everytime someone finds a problem with MA it turns into a big discussion -- and often ends up with the devs nerfing something great.

For example, power select customization: For story tellers, it would have been great if you could delete certain powers from characters like MM (the pets!!!) But because farmers could exploit this, everyone loses it!

BUT THERE WILL ALWAYS BE FARMERS!!!!

Farmers don't affect the way we play.


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Your last sentence conflicts with the first part of your post, my experiences, and the actions of the Devs.

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Is Super Strength unbalanced because it has Hurl?

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His point was that Super Strength is balanced around having Hurl already. One of the plusses to SS is that you get the ranged attack. Adding a ranged capability to other sets changes their equilibrium with regards to Super Strength.

I don't see why anyone would go to so much labor as to rebalance all the melee sets to pursue your vision of making them ranged sets.

Knockback works better than knockdown.

• When foes "ragdoll" from knockback it takes them a lot longer to get back up. That's more mitigation.
• Knockdown can't move a foe into a placed debuff or control like Tar Patch, Freezing Rain, Volcanic Gasses, etc.
• Area knockback can group scattered foes more closely! A spread-out group can be flung into a wall by Gale, Shockwave, etc., and they'll be tightly piled against the wall for AoEs. It can be faster than waiting for them to shoot teir ranged attack, change weapons, and run over to the Tanker to cluster up.
• Knockdown can't throw someone off a ledge. This can sometimes be handy if you are getting overwhelmed, but it's always hilarious.

Don't take away knockback because some players can't use it right and others can't mentally adjust to seeing it used. And don't say "But you can add a knockback enhancement to get it back!" unless you're going to spot me the slot to put it into. Why should my powers have (effectively) 5 usable slots instead of 6 to regain the capability they already had?

Teach the players who don't know how to use it. Kick the players who can't learn. Enjoy the tangible advantages properly used knockback give you and your team.