Unthing

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for a stone tank, tp is a great thing to take allowing you to move quickly while in granite. Take hover to go with it if you can fit it in anywhere.

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Having seen a friend not get TP on a Stone Tank and then having to respec into it, I would say that teleport is an essential travel power for tanks, just for combat purposes.

This is in the same way that most Fire Tanks and Dark Armour scrappers end up getting Super Jump for the Acrobatics.

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Mine has Hover and Fly, hover has one slot and providing I have a Siphon Speed active it is a decent speed. However in a slow team it means I get left stranded in mid-air and have to use fly.

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I think I was planning on 3 slot because I have too many slots to use up... plus I personally found 1 slot hover + siphon speed too slow on my controller... didnt want to get stranded and left behind

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True. 2 Siphon Speeds is mega whizzy though!

I was getting annoyed with Hover last night so I am probably going to slot it up with some level 31 slots. It does work wonders on the knockback though.

Mine has Hover and Fly, hover has one slot and providing I have a Siphon Speed active it is a decent speed. However in a slow team it means I get left stranded in mid-air and have to use fly.

Powerpool wise he has Leadership ( Tactics and Maneuvers ), Speed ( Hasten ), Flight ( Hover and Fly ). I found I don't need the fitness pool with Hasten and 3 slotted tranference, although on long flying journeys it does mean I need someone to drain.

However Mezs are the bane of my life and I never seem to team with anyone willing to give me Mez resistance. What I would give for a Bubbler friend ..... If I had that I could almost tank.

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Indeed. Looks like I'm gonna need another Tanker ...



Edit: although, going by States' wording, Invincibility is likely to receive the same buffing. Yay!

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Fire will have to be buffed after this or it will literally be in a Conference League of its own when it comes to tanking.

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Hmmm ... not sure about that. It is the most offensive set, so it would be balanced in a way.

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However has it got enough offensive to be balanced?

I think they have to think long and hard about the last three powers to make them balanced. Obviously they can't really change them too much. Rise of the Pheonix will always be a self rez, Burn will always be an 'attack' and Fiery embrace with be a Build Up but if they massage the numbers I'm sure they could balance it.

For instance they could make Fiery Embrace a normal Build Up power rather than a slow one. Or make it less effective but almost permable.

Hi Chili, welcome back. Well if you want in to the Armoured Core, Golden Golem would be happy to invite you!

I don't think the 'disorient' from the electrical powers is real, I think they can still act normally if they have a power recharged.

I've found that without a tank or some mez protection being a sapper is really risky, possibly too risky. Doesn't stop me doing it, but with the Leadership Pool a stun, sleep or disorient really messes me up.

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I used to hate losing Genin, to the point where I considered coming up with a new name for each one as he died. Then I hit the higher levels where the Genin get to be three or four levels below the mobs I am fighting and, if I'm honest, (and they're not listening), they turned into a handy distraction while the real magic goes on elsewhere. A lot like Debbie McGee.

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However I'm not sure I like the idea of my Genin's marrying my other pets...
I just got a Jounin and he completely eclipses the 2 Genin.

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It's a critical fest from the people who can do real damage and the Genin are there purely to make sure that this happens. Which means they die, a lot.

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I guess Genin are cannon fodder, that makes me feel more evil..

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*As for aid other being as powerful as TG - sorry about my bad there. I do have AO on my dominator and, even slotted, it always seemed weak compared to my MM and TG.

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No probs, accurate power strengths are so hard to find in this game. Twilight Grasp is not a great heal, however it also does acc and damage debuffage according to the description... I think the heal in Rad is also a bit poor, not like the Kinetics one which is truly awesome.

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Yet more proof that you shouldn't listen to Jacqueline. Except when she says that you shouldn't listen to her.

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Now I'm confused, I guess that's more proof not to listen to Jacqueline.....

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Also, because it's a heal that has to hit, it's more powerful than an aura heal. So I'd advise against the medicine pool.

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Aid other is just as powerful as Twilight Grasp, however it is single target and autohit.

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Yeah, I wouldn't mess about with the medicine pool. Just work on your placement for using grasp well. The hitting is rarely a problem once you get some SO...its the aura range that will fox you. Its just a fact that you will tend to lose the odd genin, but thats no biggie, so dont worry.

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I did end up getting Aid Other from the medicine pool, as I worked out that if I run the whole Leaderpool and Shadowfall and Darkest Night I would have more end going into toggles than I have endurance recovery.

I still haven't decided whether to get and run Tactics, I suspect I will, however rather than getting it at 20, I'll be getting it a bit later, probably around 24.

Aid Other works wonderfully in conjunction with Twilight Grasp, allowing me to top up Henchman health when things go wrong. After all, 2 heals is better than 1. With Hasten running as much as possible I doubt I need to slot recharge, so 1 or 2 heals will be fine in it.

You say that losing Genins is no biggie, I agree that I can get new one in combat no problems, however everytime I do I feel like I've failed, if I lose both it feels like a team wipe. Maybe I shouldn't get as attached to them and treat them like the idiots they are.

Fire's main advantages are a good self heal and only needing 2 protection toggles which also provide your status resistances. So you only need 3 powers.
This is good if you want to take a lot of powers in your primary.

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With Dark I'd say the first 7 powers are worth picking.

It's that good a set.

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I didn't fancy Howling Twilight or whatever the Res is called. Not until later anyway, there were too many other powers I felt would be more use.

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Just can't make a decision about picking Mercs or Necro. Comment at will, evil soldiers.

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I can only say about Mercs, they seemed really naff until the level 6 training power gave them Heavy Burst. They seem to be able to fire almost constantly and don't charge in to fight stupidly either, I think becasue they don't have a melee attack. I didn't get to the second tier henchman, but apparently that's where the set gets fun.

I imagine Nerco are much like ninja in behaviour, one of the 2 ninja always insists on staying back and ranged fighting so you have to move him into combat. Once in melee he will happily stay there.

Damage = base + buff + slots

With 3 Dam SOs
Blaster damage = 1.0 + 0.0 + 0.95 = 1.95

Corruptor damage = ( 1.0 + 0.0 + 0.95 ) * 0.75 = 1.46
Corruptor damage ( Assault ) = ( 1.0 + 0.15 + 0.95 ) * 0.75 = 1.575
Corruptor damage ( buffed to blaster level ) = ( 1.0 + 0.65 + 0.95 ) * 0.75 = 1.95

Buffed to blaster level is with a total 0.65 buff, this could be from Assault + 3 x Siphon Powers ( around 18% buff each for Corruptors I'd guess ) from the Kinetics secondary available at level 2 IIRC.

If we were taking a /Kin corruptor at level 2, he could probably match blaster damage by using 2 siphon powers. Siphon Power will just stack unslotted IIRC, so he will be close for damage, but will also have a self heal.

I picked Ninja/Dark, so far he is level 11, so I'm just going to talk about the Dark set. The first 3 powers are all worth picking.

Twilight Grasp, The heal is centred around you, but it is very small AoE, so it is probably better for a ranged MM like bots or Mercs. With my Ninjas I find I have to get real close and personal to guarantee a heal. I ended up getting Aid Other from the medicine pool to back this up as I don't think it is reliable enough.
Tar Patch , get this, it is awesome, it is a resistance Buff ( 30%ish ) as well as a slow, so this really help the minions make quick work of a spawn.
Darkest Night, debuff the enemies ACC and Damage so it works well with defence based sets ( Ninja and the FF from Bots ).

I also tried a Mercs/FF build and didn't like it. I felt I wasn't doing enough and click buffs ( like the force fields ) really started to annoy me.

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How's your Fury bar doing? Because I'm sure that Brawl, Shadow Maul and Shadow Punch isn't a very smooth attack chain.

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I quite like that, i think i'll go with it, my fury bar aint that bad, its my endurance bar that i'm worried about

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On my DD scrapper I had Dark Consumption at 18 but didn't take Siphon Life. It wasn't enough to keep everything going but was suddenly more fun than always being out of endurance. Now I tend to use it occasionally. Leaving DC until 22 rather than 18 means that you will have 2 more levels of endurance pain ( 18 and 19 ) but stamina at 20 is a must and isn't worth delaying.

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I cant change anything bellow level 10 because my char is already there

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I'd probably go, but it is worth playing by ear a little
12 : Smite
14 : Super Jump
16 : Swift
18 : Health
20 : Stamina
22 : Dark Consumption
24 : Dark Regeneration
26 : Acrobatics
28 : Cloak of Fear
30 : Soul Drain
32 : Midnight Grasp

Also I particularly hate knockback, so you could swap Soul Drain and Acrobatics.

How's your Fury bar doing? Because I'm sure that Brawl, Shadow Maul and Shadow Punch isn't a very smooth attack chain.

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New build

Archetype: Brute
Primary Powers - Ranged : Dark Melee
Secondary Powers - Support : Dark Armor

01 : Dark Embrace
01 : Shadow Punch
02 : Shadow Maul
04 : Murky Cloud
06 : Combat Jumping
08 : Siphon Life
10 : Obsidian Shield
12 : Swift
14 : Super Jump
16 : Health
18 : Dark Consumption
20 : Stamina
22 : Cloak of Darkness
24 : Hurdle
26 : Soul Drain
28 : Cloak of Fear
30 : Acrobatics
32 : Midnight Grasp
35 : Jump Kick
38 : Soul Transfer

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Anything else wrong with it (i realy want to make this char right )

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Why do you want Hurdle? You have Combat Jumping.
Why Jump Kick at 35, surely there are better things to get ( Smite, Oppressive Gloom, Air Superiority, Dark Regeneration )
I don't think you have enough attacks, get Smite as well. Even though you may have to delay Murky Cloud to do it. Also you are missing Dark Regeneration, an awesome power that allows you to heal all your hitpoints from just 3 enemies. I'm not sure that Cloak of Darkness is really that great either, it only probvides a little bit of defence altough it does look cool.

I would probably start with Shadow Punch and Smite at 1 and 2 and get Shadow Maul at 4. You probably will have problems with endurance so I doubt you will be able to run Murky Cloud much before Stamina and Dark Consumption.

My Dark/Dark scrapper had endurance problems until about level 22 ( SOs, stamina and Dark Consumption all slotted ) to the extent that in the mid teens he was often running without his shields up.

I have a D/D scrapper and Cloak of Fear is a great damage mitigation power. It needs 2xACC ( because it is very inaccurate ) and 2xEND to be practical but is still moderately good with just an ACC, but very endurance heavy. It only fears minions, when feared they cower and only attack if attacked so if you run Death Shroud it may be pointless. It also applies a minor to hit debuff of around 9% IIRC to all it hits regardless of rank. For PvP this should be slotted with 2 to hit debuffs too.

I suspect it is slightly less good without Touch of Fear ( a single target fear that works on Lts ) as Cloak of fear and Touch of Fear stack to allow fearing of Bosses.

I've been paying some attention to Herostats and I'm pretty sure that Rage gives nowhere near a 50% accuracy buff. I think it is somewhere in the 15 - 25% range.

I tried on about 4-5 missions. I got average to hit percentages for missions from 79% ( Tsoo ) to 85% ( RIP ) all were +1s and +2 missions. This is for most attacks slotted 2 DAM and 1 END reds and none with accuracy in them.

So now I'm thinking about slotting to hits buffs in Rage. It seems more efficient than the extra slots in my attacks.

From the US boards, truly a genius suggestion.

SMASH!

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I already know many Brutes and Stalkers who just don't like teaming with them for any reason.

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Maybe its because I can use my pets to draw aggro off the fleeing stalker following his AS, that must really be annoying. Or keep all the mobs busy with my pets while he AS's the boss. Or draw aggro off any AT thats going down. Then after sacrificing all my pets to keep the team alive, i can still use my 2nd set to heal, rez, debuff, and generally keep the team alive.

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Well that's the good stuff...

However there is also the bad stuff, Pets getting in the way so I can't get to the enemy. Pets pushing me about so I can't Assassin's Strike. The Stalker problem of aggressive pets finishing off your target so you waste an AS. Brutes have it better than Stalkers I think, however Fury does seem to be harder to get in MM heavy team.

In a team with a single Mastermind, these are rarely a problem, it starts to happen when there are 3 or more.

Replying to both Shannon and Coffee.

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Thats how i feel about it! with all minions dead and just the AV left, weave aint gonna help ya, some AVs drain end like anything too.

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Agreed, sometimes almost nothing in my primary helps though. I don't think many of my primary powers help much against most AVs, Unyielding, Dull Pain and in some occasions the appropriate resistance.

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Also, Defense scales with enemy level. Resistances doens't. That means 7% Defense against a considerably higher level foe is totally negated, while Resist Elements and Resist Energies still negate the same amount of damage.

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Not quite the way I would put it, but yes, against high level enemies and high ranks, defence is less useful than resistance.

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..... If I need defense there's always inspirations.

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The AV kit I carry around on my tank is about 4-5 respites, 1 awaken and the rest Lucks. Normally 2 stacked at once allows a pretty long fight time.

The reason for taking Weave is to slightly improve my defences such that I don't need inspirations for the non-AV fights. So when I come to the AV, my inspiration tray has everything I need to defeat the AV.

You can use DrRocks Damage Comparison program to check this by altering the Group composition to 1 AV and nothing else. Using a +4 AV Weave is about half as good against an Energy AV than the passive, 40 without either Weave or RE, 43.8 with Weave and 47 with the Passive. However against 5 +4 enemies in the ratio of 4:2:1 of minions/bosses and lts the damage is the same at about 78 versus 68 with neither.

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I use ctrl+lbutton (lctrl?) instead as lshift is generally used as the Teleport clicky.

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I currently have
/bind lshift+lbutton "petcom goto"
/bind lctrt+lbutton "petcomall aggressive goto"
/bind lalt+lbutton "petcomall goto"

However if I was a teleporter this might be a problem as you said.

I also have z bound to a default setting as excessive use of goto can result in stranded pets.

/bind z "petcomall passive follow"

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* Resorted order of availability for Tanker melee powers. Swapped 3rd and 4th power so Tankers can get a 3rd melee power by level 4.


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From here.

So rather than being able to get taunt at 4, you can get the generally useful and usually quite good 3rd attack ( Combustion, Haymaker, Heavy Mallet etc ). At first I thought this was bad until I realised that I usually would get this attack at 10 anyway, ( I get taunt at 4 in most of my builds ) but swapping them round would just make low levels easier and less boring.

So I think this seems like a buff.

However it does imply that they want tankers to be more scranky.

/bind lshift+lbutton "petcom goto"

This means that shift and lbutton makes the pet go to where you click. This is good for stupid pets who go the wrong way, particularly good for the melee sets if they are insisting on firing ranged weapons.

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Smoke bomb is an amazing power and really comes into its own when you get the Oni.

Smokebomb, pet goto <edge of group of mobs>, pets attack.

Oni will unleash a Crit firebreath...truly a thing of beauty.

However i do believe stealth pool stacks with Shadowfall...oh hang on, that might be stacks with stalker hide...bah i've undermined my own confidence in that one....someone else better answer it.

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I don't think Shadowfall stacks with anything other than Hide or Superspeed.

I have another question about my Ninja/Dark.

I have been using Twilight Grasp to heal my 2 ninjas and have noticed that it is not a very reliable heal. It has a small area, so I have to expose myself to danger and sometimes I miss, so I sometimes end up not healing the Pet I really need to heal. I imagine things will get worse when enemies with large AoEs come into the game.
This makes me wonder whether getting Aid Other from the Medicine pool might be worthwhile, as the heal in that is ranged and single target. This would mean getting rid of the Leadership pool ( which I haven't got yet ). It seems to me that Tactics is the main reason I am getting the Leadership pool. However I can replace that with an extra Accuracy in each of my henchmen's at about the same slot cost. Does this seem sensible?

I was suspecting that that would be the case. Smoke Bomb it is then. Question answered, thanks!