damojs

I would make a few alterations to the above build:

Deflection: Go with 4 Gift of the Ancients here, and two steadfast, including the res/def one. Don't take the -knockback one.

True Grit just needs three Healing IOs and call it done.

Health needs two slots. Keep 2 Healing IOs in it for now. But eventually replace it with a Numina +regen/+recovery and a Miracle +recovery. Yes, these can be expensive. But they are extremely doable, and for no influence at all. Just run task forces until you get the 250 merits for them. They're so worth it. I got mine without paying a dime.

Combat Jumping: Does not need the third Zephyr with the knockback protection. Just put a defense in there until you find a Luck of the Gambler. Nor do you need it in Super Jump.

One thing that the build did which I disagreed with, was stack way too much defense. You do NOT need six slots of Multi Strike, Red Fortune or Titanium Coating, to soft cap a tank. Come on guys, one of the benefits of playing a Tank shielder, is that you don't need to do the ridiculous things to get bonuses that a scrapper or brute shield does.

Don't take Jump Kick at level 6. That's just weird. DO take Hasten. You WANT Hasten. The best thing a Shield tanker can do is perma hasten, so that you can fire off Shield Charge more often. Getting Conserve Energy is nice too, especially for boss fights. My shield tanker has a perfectly fine attack chain with jab, haymaker, knockout blow and footstomp. Most of the time, nothing is alive that a single jab or haymaker won't kill, after a shield charge every 20-25 seconds followed by a footstomp. You're a tanker, so you will never solo an AV anyways. But you will still be doing a massive damage on teams. I often do the most, thanks to shield charging and footstomping alone.

You want a Force Feedback +recharge in foot stomp.

Also. Ditch the Multi-strike set in Shield Charge and Footstomp. DO Frankenslot for damage and recharge in both. Two eradication, two cleaving blow, a single multi-strike and a forcefeedback in footstomp is good. 4 eradication, 2 cleaving blow in Shield Charge is good too. Both will help your recovery/endurance.

Slotting stamina can always be weird. People find ways to be cute with it, and I've made that mistake too. But a Performance Shifter change for +end is nice.

For defenses, aside from what I said about Deflection, I put 5 Red Fortune in Battle Agility and Weave. Which along with three sets of Crushing Impact in Jab, Haymaker and Knockout, is a nice 25% recharge. I put an extra slot of end redux IO in Haymaker and KO blow.

Neither Tough or One with the Shield should be six slotted. I don't even run Tough most of the time, unless I'm doing an Imperious task force. I've had just 3 resist damages in there forever...But I've gotten to the point, with all my end bonuses these days, that my base Endurance is like 119. So I rarely have end issues, and in any case, slotting toggles for end reduction to be effective is a myth. It's one of the least efficient ways to use a slot.

Instead, I think you will be EXTREMELY well served, by six slotting Taunt and putting a Mocking Beratement in there. It gives a hefty 7.5% recharge boost, and a bunch of other good stuff. Perfect Zinger is better, but its 5% recharge boost won't help, given all the room that a Shield/SS set has for crushing impact and red fortunes.

And WHY would anyone put Phalanx Fighting off until level 41!!? Get it as soon as possible. It provides 5% defense right off the bat, and could provide much more in the hard fights where you'll need it. That's one of the best things about the Tanker shield set. We can just get to 46-49% defense and chill. We have enough defense debuff resisting and with the addition of Phalanx Fighting, (not to mention our copious hit points) to do just fine.

All in all, I think that was a fine scrapper build (I guess), but it did not play to a tanker's strengths.

What I don't understand is people who put the Fighting pool back until their 40s. Why would you want to wait until level 49 to finally be softcapped? It's possible, without gimping yourself, to be softcapped by level 30-31, if not even sooner. There is more than enough room to fit in weave (and a res/def in tough), if you replace Jab with Boxing, and don't take Knockout until later.

Honestly, I think Knockout is a deceptive power. Yes, I've taken a SS/Fire Brute to 50 and got it at level 8 like alot of people, but it kills your endurance. And there isn't much that it will kill that a full bar of fury and a Haymaker won't.

I don't think there is a strong reason to pick it up until you start fighting alot of EBs and AVs...Or else somehow make it so your stamina problems go away.

My baby SS/SR has gotten along just fine without it. He also managed to get a level 16 res/def off a Longbow on a Mayhem mission. I was so proud of him!

I must say though. The villain side economy, especially for brutes, is ridiculous.

Also: One great thing about Super Reflexes, is getting your defense easily to just within a luck insp of the soft cap...easily done by level 22, and close enough sooner, and then just rampaging on all the big zone mobs around a contact that sells insps.

Lastly, don't ever let anyone tell you that either Evasion or Lucky are skippable. They're not. They provide vital defense debuff resistance. Elude is the only skippable power.

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This game has many issues with it's missions. Just adding to the list...

I hope with the new staff we get to see something fresh and exciting. Unfortunately it seems like they may have missed the mark with ROGUE. Using re-hashes of what we have seen and just making the enemies 'opposites' of existing heroes/vills is pretty weak. This was an opportunity to go fresh and exciting.

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At this point, anything which isn't another 'kill all' mission, will be fresh and exciting to me. Though, to be fair, they actually really got away from that with their most recent arcs. It is only the original task forces that are still kill all hellholes. Which is particularly boring when you start with a group of 8, three drop out, and for the rest of the task force, you have to kill 8 man spawns to the last gear or widget.

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It did seem very redundant, now that you mention it. I think one of those three is actually in the lower 40s though. They're timed missions, which is fairly annoying. I let the missions fail with my MA/Regen scrapper because Shadowhunter is a self-healing brick. I beat him up with my Ill/Rad controller though.

I'm avoiding the Praetorians with most of my other characters. However, I'll be using their followers in AE missions.

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Another thing is that there is never even given a plausible reason for having to go there. I'm not arresting Shadowhunter, and heroes don't kill war wolves. Maria Jenkins freaks out cause Chimera kills a war wolf.

So they're basically just sending me there over and over, to beat the crap out of them and leave.

You also can't get the Dimensional Warder badge without doing the arcs that have Shadowhunter in them, and he doesn't even count towards the badge. Yet he is fought repeatedly. Then there is 5-10 minutes of playing 'find the last wolf'. Meh.

I wonder who designed them.

The only way I could get Shadow as a shield tank, was having like 10 wolves around while I hit him. I can't even imagine how suck a time a non-shield tank must have.

EDIT: Oh well. I guess all arcs can't be as well made as the Vanguard ones. :P

I think it is lazy as heck that for the final series of 45-50 Portal missions, we basically got the identical Shadowhunter mission THREE times. Timed missions to go around hunting glowies and killing wolves, and then beating on his regenerating [censored], which is a bit annoying for a tank.

Did anyone else hate doing this same mission three times?

Best IO slotting invuln guide I've seen...

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post12970142

Courtesy of Call_Me_Awesome

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I'll suggest, however, that if you want to participate in serious discussions about performance, you should play the game more often and take a look at real numbers, using the ingame attribute monitor, paragonwiki or coh.redtomax - for example, you might see that these "huge" recovery bonuses from purple sets are about 4%, or that Shield and Willpower have no power benefiting from recharge bonuses.

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Um...Shield Charge? As far as powers go that benefit from Recharge...That might just be the ultimate example.

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I ran in an ITF yesterday with a Shields Tanker (I'm an Inv Tanker). The Shields Tanker died 5 or 6 times. I never died.

I'd say Invuln.

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I've done the ITF several times, with a shield tanker from 44 to 48. (was SKed for the level 44 one). Even with a random pickup group, I was never in danger of dying. Except the first time where we all ran pell mell through the tunnels to kill the crystals and I got separated from my mentor.

Point is. I've never been in a PUG where random buffs, even an odd leadership toggle or such, wasn't more than enough for a Shields to survive. Against All Odds and Shield Charge were devastating as well, and really helped clearing spawns fast. Especially the rejects that Romulus keeps summoning, or the chaos around crystals.

Sometimes you do need to jump back out for a moment, when they land a lucky defense debuffing hit, and then go back in. Grant Cover alleviates this need somewhat.

But yes. Invuln might be better in a vacuum. And I know alot of the analysis around here is done in a vacuum. But in a realistic 95% of the situations, Shield will be more than sufficient. And you're doing massive damage at the same time. I /love/ being able to tank, while at the same time putting out more damage than most of the team. Especially when I've got Shield Charge recharging almost every spawn.

In fact. On my last ITF run at 48, I spent a half hour after everyone else zoned out when we defeated Romulus, to jump around farming all the huge spawns by myself, to get to 49.

One of the liberating things about playing a tanker, is the acceptance that you will never have an optimal solo build as other archetypes understand it. You don't need to solo an AV. We simply can't, though a dark/shield could.

So yeah. If you're going to look at all content as being by yourself, then the invuln might be better. But if you're looking at in a realistic fashion, you'll see that the positional defenses of Shield Defense, and the ability to clear away most of the minions and lts in a spawn by yourself, is plenty efficient.

Same happened to me.

I like the occasional close up shots of Statesmen arching his brow and glancing about him as if to ask, "What is all this kung fu crap?"