Unthing

What is the best primary for energy secondary, I want to make a blapping style Dominator as safely as possible.

Incinerate : I had a Fire/Fire dominator in beta for about 4 levels. This is not the Tanker secondary power incinerate, Tanker incinerate does completely DoT. It is more like a high damage version of the Tanker secondary power scorch, frontloaded damage followed by DoT.
Combustion : Assuming is it like the tnaker secondary it is a 15 foot radius PbAoE with decent but not impressive damage. A staple attack of my Inv/Fire tank.

Impale : Assuming is it like the Scrapper/Stalker power this is a good damage ranged attack ( 2nd best in spines primary ) with an Immob and -fly. Small DoT afterwards too. This is one of my favourite powers from the Spines set.
Ripper : Assuming is it like the Scrapper power this is a good damage ( best in spines powerset ) melee cone with a strong knockdown effect. It has a large slow effect and a long DoT. The melee cone is small and the only guaranteed way of hitting 2 people is to aim at the back one and stand with the front one in between. I have hit 3 enemies with it a few times.

Get Placate at 12, it's one of the best powers!

You might need Focussed Senses earlier.

I would put your level 5 slots in Bonesmasher. It will be your non-hidden bread and butter for a long time.

For few levels after AS put all slots into AS. You will want at least 5 slots in it, 2xACC and 3xDAM. The last slot could be used for recharge but probably isn't essential after Single Origin enhancements.

You haven't taken Build Up. It really helps for taking out Bosses, your primary role.

I suspect you want to get stamina earlier if you are going to be able scrap much.

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I also suspect that non spines scrappers might have problems with it due to the nasty flinging enemies around and therefore getting them out of melee range

[/ QUOTE ]Last time I used it it was knockup, not knockback.

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Yes. But knockup is enough to get them out of melee range. Especially as if you want it use it for any length of time ( due to the end cost ) you need to have knockback enhancements in it. Knockback enhancements are 66% each so with 3 you get + 200% knockup. For +1 or +2 minions this is loads, about 2 to 4 times the height of Whirlwind.

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I may be wrong. I hope I'm not.

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Well, Energy Absorption was never able to get a "massive" defense boost, so how making it harder to do so is not what I'd describe as a buff. But we'll have to wait and see, because once more we don't have the numbers to base our opinions on.

Lets hope they get their new Invincibility right first time around, because what Tanks need is another long running debacle...

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It's the "words more challenging to get a massive defence bonus" that are now concerning me. Maybe I was being optimistic.
Invincibility DOES provide a "massive" defence bonus when capped out. It is significantly more effective than energy absorbtion but is Invs only defence against some enemies.

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Modified Invulnerabiity/Invincibility and Ice Armor/Energy Absorption. for both powers: Max number of affected targets have been reduced to 10; The first target you affect grants you more defense than before; Additional defense gained for each affected target after the first is at a reduced rate. This change will ensure the powers grant a reasnonable defense bonus when facing few foes, while making it more challenging to get a massive defense bonus.

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There you go Ice Tanks, its now even more challenging to get good Defense. Just the change you were waiting for

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If I've interpreted this correctly it is a buff. Get the same maximum from 10 enemies as you did from 14 before but the 1st one counts for more.

I may be wrong. I hope I'm not.

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So now us Dull Pain users ( regen and inv scrappers, regen and ninjitsu stalkers, inv and stone brutes ) can have up to 80% more hitpoints rather than only 40%.

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Its not just Dull Pain, all powers that increase your total HP are affected. Which leaves SR and DA even further out in the cold, but were so used to it now we wear mittens.

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That's what I meant by Dull Pain users. I also left out Inv, Stone and Ice tanks.

Fire tanks are left out in the cold by this buff too.

From my experiences of playing Dark it is probably better than regen, but has endurance problems.

idris corrected me on the hitpoint boost, max is 60% which is not quite so excessive.

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Hasn't DP has always buffed an unenhanceable 40% max HP before? Or at least as long as I've played, which admittedly has been only 3 issues. The healing enhancements only buffed the heal portion of it.

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Sounds like a buff to me. So now us Dull Pain users ( regen and inv scrappers, regen and ninjitsu stalkers, inv and stone brutes ) can have up to 80% more hitpoints rather than only 40%.

Slightly off topic but my main problem I have with regen anyway at the moment is that it is really hard to work out whether Dull Pain is active or not now that it is non perma. We can have up to 4 green icons with + signs on them ( Instant Healing, Dull Pain and 2 stacked Reconstructions ). Please change the icons.

From here some changes that affect tankers on the test server in the US.

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* Powers that increase your Max HP, like Dull Pain, Earths Embrace, and Kuji-In Sha will now be affected by Heal Enhancements. That is, Heal Enhancements will improve how much the target's MAX HP is increased.

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Will be good but it will heighten the difference between Dull Pain being on and off. Dull Pain is even more of a must have power now. Of course Fire tanks are ignored in this buff.

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* Modified Invulnerabiity/Invincibility and Ice Armor/Energy Absorption. for both powers: Max number of affected targets have been reduced to 10; The first target you affect grants you more defense than before; Additional defense gained for each affected target after the first is at a reduced rate. This change will ensure the powers grant a reasnonable defense bonus when facing few foes, while making it more challenging to get a massive defense bonus.

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I assume this means the first enemy counts as 5. That is a good idea which will mean that invincibility gives a base of 11.7 3 slotted when near one enemy. Perhaps To Hit buffs might be worthwhile again when this goes live. This will be good against AVs.

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* Modified Invulnerabiity/Invincibility so it goes off every second instead of every helf seccond. This was for performance reasons. This does not change the effectiveness off the power, but it will cause the Endurace Cost to occur every second instead of every half second.

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Is this the 'fix' to invincibility?

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Actually I'd be curious to know how well I could solo an Heroic mish now. It used to be very slow before but now the three attacks I have are doing less damage. It's got to the stage where the best way for me to arrest something is put Stone Fist on auto and go make a cuppa.

I'll try running one tonight and let you know how long it takes me.

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My tank is still soloable on Unyielding against Nemesis ( the only arc I've done any of since I6 ). However nemesis are relatively easy and my tank is a good solo and team build. If I come across any problem mobs I'll try Heroic and post them.

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I was playing as my scrapper last night and noticed that I solo in much the same way as with my stalker.

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Either you're scrapper is really badly under-statted, or you're stalker face-plants a lot.

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My stalker never faceplants when against his own level range and can happily scrap against 4 or 5 even minions, against purple when in teams he does sometimes. I was also only really talking about solo.
I'm not really playing my scrapper very well, but he is on a harder difficulty level.

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I guess there is a similarity, but without that front-loaded damage, my Stalker would have a hard fight against the mobs she's facing (I know since sometimes AS misses ).

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Things changed a great deal for me when I got Impale on my Stalker at level 22. I am now a Stalker who can scrap. An Impale from Hide followed by a lunge finishes off a +1 minion, allowing a Placate and AS to be used on whatever is next. I'm really looking forward to Ripper to round off my scrapping attacks and then I can start concentrating on my secondary and the powerpools.

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OTOH, I was running War Crow through the Warburg instanced missions last night and he follows the same basic pattern. Wade in, kill everything. If I think it's going to get tough, I stuff IH on beforehand. Dull Pain and Reconstruction are emergency buttons, IH is used for pre-prepared trouble.

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It looks like you spent I5 actually playing your scrapper. I mainly didn't and spent most of the time on my tank.
I haven't managed to work out a decent set of binds to use Dull Pain as an emergency button. In I5 I had it perma.
I really hate the way that the icons for Dull Pain, Instant Healing and reconstruction look practically the same.

This has all gone a bit off topic so..

I really love my Stalker.

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I really quite like my Stalker.

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Huh? Is it really such a shock?

I recognise the deficiencies, I wish I could do what she does with my main (scrapper). I like sneaking about killing things.

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I was playing as my scrapper last night and noticed that I solo in much the same way as with my stalker. They look the same too, and the scrapper and stalker feel about as squishy ( unless I use Dull Pain or Instant Healing on my scrapper ).
The only major difference is the front loaded damage of the Stalker vs the far more impressively solid damage of the scrapper ( 2 and 3 shotting minions ) and the fact that the Scrapper has more powers. Superspeed seems to do a good job of providing my scrapper with all the stealth he needs.

I think I have to relearn how to use my scrapper, I don't think I use Instant Healing enough and properly. I didn't really use it much in I5, but now in I6 it is far more essential.

Just to let you know. You won't be able to do that to an Elite Boss in later levels.

Build Up + AS ( with 3 dam SOs ) only took off a third of a level 24 Elite Boss this morning. It was possibly the hardest fight my Stalker has ever fought solo without faceplanting. I ran away at least 3 times to gain time and must have used Assassin's Impaler and Placate 4 or 5 times. I got to red health at least 3 times. Unfortunately I didn't have enough reds at the time.

I've never liked the AoEness of spines. I do however love the Impale power.

I got build up late at 24.

With 3 SOs in AS I can't one shot an even Lt, however I can 2 shot him with a normal attack as the second attack.

With build up too I can 1 shot a +1 lt. I need to do more testing.

I haven't tried a boss yet.

I doubt it depends on the build whether you can 1 shot a generic boss. I think the Assassin's strikes all do the same damage. It would be unfair otherwise. Build Up is the same for all of them ( I think ) too.

AS often gets interrupted for no reason in the first second. I assume it is usually to do with movement and lag issues.

If you are interrupted you pay the endurance cost but nothing happens. Against the Sea Witch ( AV ) I drained my endurance just from failing AS multiple times because she was surrounded by a hurricane.

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PVP accuracy nerf just means a one slot difference as you add another +acc SO. But if you don't have that you will be in trouble.

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No its actually worse than that.

PvE Base accuracy is 75%.
PvE accuracy with 1 SO = 75 *1.33 = 100% capped to 95%

PvP Base accuracy is 50%.
PvP accuracy with 1 SO = 50 *1.33 = 66.5%
PvP accuracy with 2 SO = 50 *1.66 = 83.0%
PvP accuracy with 3 SO = 50 *1.95 = 97.5% capped to 95%

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I agree that 4 scrappers vs a fully shielded en/ brute is going to be a recipe for pain, especially if you miss. Every miss makes the brute hit you harder until they are effectively doing better than scrapper criticals every blow. En melee will result in a lot of stuns taking your toggles down and if you don't drop the Brute's, well, ouch.

My guess is you got a cocktail of having non-pvp builds, the wrong tactics and bad luck.

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Dark Armour is a resistance set with a medium defence too.

I suspect that the brute could have had Cloak of Fear and Cloak of Darkness and Combat Jumping, which puts her at up to 10% base defence and up to a 18% to hit debuff if the Cloak of Fear debuff hits ( which will be occassionally , depending on slotting ). This puts your 4 scrappers base to hit down to 22%, before slotting so with 1 SO you have a 30% chance to hit. If she pops a purple and you don't pop a yellow you are screwed.

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Can't really comment on the SS side of things but:

1. Unstoppable is a good pick IMHO. Even dropping Fly there would be worth it.

2. Those toggles are going to need some End Redux in them. Unless you have some crazy plan, that build is going to be heavy on the blue stuff. You've kind of gone to town on the slots in the attacks, maybe dropping some there and putting them in the toggles would be feasible.

Otherwise, good stuff.

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I have Unstoppable and hate it. I believe Inv tankers are divided over this power.

As far as the toggle end usage is concerned, I managed fine the 20 levels between Stamina and Conserve power with the 3 inv toggle and no end reducers in them. This was with perma-hasten too! If you can put an end reducer in a few of your attacks ( as done in this build ) you can save far more endurance than putting them in toggles.

I did respec into end reducers in my toggles but only because I decided to take the fighting pool which are exepnsive toggles. This was to get the endurance cost down of the whole lot to the same as just the Inv toggles.

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Hide
Tactics - Stalker visible from a very long way away.
Inspirations - Stalker visible from a good distance with 1 Inspiration.

......

But, is it fair that 2 people running a pool power (available at level 14 if I remember the Leadership pool correctly) can completely negate a Stalkers primary defense (i.e. his stealth) and thereby also negate his primary attack?

Hell, is it fair that if the Stalker doesn't know he has to take stealth to be effective in PvP that 1 person running Tactics or the popping of 1 accuracy inspiration will negate his Stealth?

Picking a Stalker is not an "I win!" button for PvP. In the hands of a skilled player a Stalker can be a deadly PvP opponent, but the same can be said of most ATs in the game.

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So that explains why on my trip to Siren's Call why the fact that I was hidden all the time made no difference. It explains why despite me not attacking heroes they attacked me. They had tactics and I only had hide. So I was visible from a very long way away.

They don't sound over-powered to me PvP. I have 2 characters with Tactics out of 6 or so characters, a defender and a scrapper. I don't even do much PvP.

I'm not sure it is wise to have only 2 attacks, jab and brawl until level 28. Especially as you aren't slotting jab until 43.

Currently you are slotting some powers very early, Comabt Jumping and taunt for example. Comabt Jumping is not worth slotting until you have SOs and have powers like tough hide and health slotted. Some say it isn't worth slotting but I disagree.

I would suggest having Knockout blow ( the level 10 SS power if I'm right ) before invincibility. Unfortunately that means you need to delay one of your must have powers until 22. However it does mean you could have one fully slotted attack when you get SOs. My tentative suggestion would be delaying Resist Physical Damage until 22. The other options are Dull Pain, taunt or the fitness pool.

On my build I got my second attack at 10. My third at 28 and the last 2 at 35 and 38.

I'm up for that with GG. Any chance we could arrange to get simultaneous level 50 level ups like Purple Shocker, Silverfox, Jugzilla and Reject did? They even got a screenshot.

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I came to the conclusion that it didn't seem like a great power choice anymore.

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The above quote is from me. I must say I wasn't very clear on that sentence, I was referring only to my own character.

My character wants to keep the accuracy of 2 SOs.

My character wants to keep his single target attack chain, which, with Hasten, was Ripper, Lunge, Impale, Lunge. This is not possible without 2 recharges on those attacks ( need to double check whether this is the case for all of them ).

My choices are Focussed Accuracy ( not available yet ), Tactics + 1 SO or 2 SOs.

I'm not sure what the to hit buff of focussed accuracy is but it would have to be around 33% or so to give the accuracy I desire. I am assuming it is this or better slotted.

Focussed accuracy will be better than the other 2 options against high defence foes. All the acc options will cap against reds.

My concerns are not really about end drain ( they would be if I was not regen which is why my tank doesn't have focussed accuracy ) but about options. With focussed accuracy I can't exemp without reslotting.

If I get toggle dropped somehow ( run out of end or held ) with tactics + 1 ACC or with 2 ACCs I am in better shape than if I rely focussed accuracy. If I decide to run whirlwind, I can turn off tactics to save end and still have a chance of hitting.

This is a very close decision, it is definitely not a slating of Focussed Accuracy. However it was certainly more powerful pre ED.

I came to the conclusion that it didn't seem like a great power choice anymore. In I5 my aim was to have Focussed Accuracy and go for 6 slot damage with 6 slotted stamina and 6 slotted quick recovery.

In my respec I went with Tactics to replace the 2nd acc in my attacks for my scrapper and am not sure which epic pool to go for.

I really don't like Unstoppable. I made the mistake of hitting it instead of dull pain when fighting Nemesis Rex and it caused a team wipe. So far I haven't needed it in any situation, but I haven't played my tank much in I6.

The fact that I changed versions of herostats and it didn't warn me of the crash didn't help either.

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What were you doing with your AoEs?

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I was using them !

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Using AoEs on a stalker is definitely griefing. So is moving around. So is using Tactics, Focussed Accuracy, Targetting Drone or Insight inspirations. So is having any friends nearby. So is using PBAoEs and burn patches. So is standing in water.

You should stand still, unstealthed talking loudly on broadcast so the Stalker can find you.

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Basicly this stalker was in the hero base with 2 of his stalker buddies, i saw them and used quicksand to hold them in place and freezing rain to uncloak them and then sat back to watch the npc's turn them into corndog.
I think he was just narked that i could actualy see him.

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Nice one!

Combat Jumping is only worth slotting when you have not much else to slot, slot all your armours first and Cloak of Fear should provide a far better protection ( slotted for to hit debuffs ). My tank has it slotted in his last respec, but he is level 44 with slots to burn.