mauk2

LOL! Wow, hyperbole much?

To be honest, I would like to see Tanker damage caps increased by quite a lot. Not base damage, at all, and no self-buffing either beyond the extant. But tankers are, by nature, team-friendly. Make them even more-so: Make them highly effective buff amplifiers.

Specifically, I'd say raise the Tanker damage cap to 600 percent. Thus, Brutes, Scrappers, and Tankers can all do roughly equal max damage, but the Tanker needs a LOT more external buffage to get there.

Team friendly, you see.

A more interesting speculation is what do you do about Stalker damage/capabilities?

Well, not exactly poor, but not nearly what it was in the old days, when it was Willpower.

That said, regen gains a lot from the Alpha slot Spiritual Radial Paragon enhancer. Indeed, most of the resist/heal based powersets will see somewhat better results from the Alpha slot compared to more traditional power-houses.

Anything that boosts recharge AND heals at the same time? That reeeeaallly helps regen. Since it's not regen anymore, it's 'Self-Heal with Clickies'.

Bingo.

In many ways, the pure flippers are supported by the farmers, and it's all driven by inflationary pressures. If/when they decide to drain the money out of the system, there are going to be some major shocks indeed.

(grabs popcorn)

I can't wait! Change is fun!

One the the truly great strengths of City of X is the fact that the game has an enormous challenge range. Namely, it is very easy to play and have a ton of fun, but it is far far more difficult to master.

You can play the whole game through and never need to know anything about the market or inventions, if you want to.

Or, you can let the game absorb your interest and it really has the depth to keep your interest for YEARS, without going stale, because there really is that much to do, and it's all different.

There's no rush. Take your time, make friends, have fun.

Easy to play, difficult to master.

Eeeeee-YIKES!

Nice build dude.

I've been eyeballing those Shield Walls myself, as an upgrade from LotG's four-slotted. I just can't get past my irritation at the the PVP only baloney (afk farm much?) to obtain them.

But wow, NICE build, that one is.

How would you alpha that? Musculature?

Even better, the resistance-based tanker sets get a LOT of help from the Alpha slot. Electric, fire, and dark especially, since they are resist-heavy and have fast-recharging self-heals, get a HUGE boost from the SRP. (spiritual radial paragon)

I have been bullish on elec/ as a tanker primary for some time now, and elec/fire is near the top of the heap for a high damage tanker build.

Brute primaries are similar to scrapper primaries, except brute primary damage starts out much lower and builds up to scrapper levels. Top primarys:

1) Fire(exception to rule, can eventually do more than scrapper damage)
2) Claws
3) Axe/Mace

These are my preferences ranked from most damage to most mitigation. Yes, I skip SS because frankly, these ones are better.


Claws is very fast, axe/mace is quite slow, but that's by design: Claws is very little mitigation and tons of damage early. Axe/mace is quite good damage and will keep things off your back.

Brute fire melee is moderately fast, yet has no mitigation at all. But the damage, oh man, the damage.....


Brutes were created when Statesman got a great idea to buff tanks, and then turned it into a full Archetype.

They've always felt....second rank to me. But that's just me.

I agree on almost all this stuff.

The main place I differ is: If you are on a very strong team, where they do not need you to be a tactical anvil, then there are more roles available than 'bodyguard the squishies.'

First, tanks do good damage. (gasp) All-tanker teams kill just as fast and finish as quickly on any and all content as do mixed teams. Get in there and start wailin', you WILL be contributing, a lot. I tend to pick bosses/eb's for bruising and then just punch every button that comes up. If you're on a strong team, why are you worried about endurance?

Second, tanks make excellent scouts. If the scrappers/veats/sneakers are ranging ahead, go on and light out with them! If you don't have recall friend, well, I19 is coming any day now, right?

Third, I have always said that tanks have one primary duty on a team, which is, to give the team confidence. I find that many teams play much more aggressively and flat-out better simply BECAUSE a tank is present. Why? They all know that if things spin out of control and folks start getting pasted, the tanker is there to get things back in-hand (at whatever pace the tanker moves at) and the mission will proceed. I feel that when you hang back with the squishies, this is the function you're really providing.

That last thing is something that tanks truly excel at, and no other AT comes close to providing.

The absolute earliest scrapper build is claws/wp. You have pretty much your whole attack chain by level six, AOE, ST and all, and it's a doozy.

With inherent fitness, I'm going to go out on a limb and say one of my absolute favorites is about to become an early bloomer, namely, claws/inv.

Very good damage and that truly incredible Invulnerable survivability.

However, 'early' doesn't last too long. At the top end, the Alpha slot is not especially kind to Invuln or WP, being tilted a bit more to bolster the resist-based sets with their quick-cycling heals.

I think Claw/regen is coming on strong if you really like active playstyles. A claw/elec or a claw/fire is interesting if challenging. And man, the damage on a claw fire, holy moly the damage...

With alpha slotting and a LOT of IO investment, a claw/fire is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

But in the long run, play what you like, and a claw/wp is not going to let you down, ever.

Ok, good to know.

Does damage taken in AE count? Does anyone know?

How about in PVP? Or healing dealt to a villain?

Aha!

Thanks for the clue-in.

So, I need to heal 5 mill, while is sg mode....

Crap, I mainly play melee. How is a bullet-headed thug supposed to get heal credit? Does dull pain count?

Longbow are easy, as soon as you realize one basic fact:

The lovely person that designed the faction forced you to kite them.

Once you finish gnashing your teeth in annoyance at being forced to run around like a badly-coded flying ranged attacker (I hate those flippin' Eagles with a fiery passion), they're easy.

Joust in and out, popping Nullifiers and Bosses all while scampering out of 'wubba-wubba' fields. Cake, if you like your tank dancing like a pretty-pretty ballerina. Wear a pink tutu to complete the effect.

In my opinion, they're the stupidest faction in the damn game. But not hard.

BWAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!

(ahem)

Sorry, just the notion of ANYBODY who strolls around in here worrying about build costs....

HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

(whew!)

Oh, good one, that is.

Oh yes indeed.

After Werner demonstrated the formula for running the numbers (Thanks again!) I pondered for a few minutes and came to a realization:

For optimal builds, you should pick your Alpha FIRST. The reason is, it affects multiple powers, but all the same way.

After you choose which alpha you want, you then optimize your enhancement bonuses around that solid core, and then balance your set bonuses around all THAT.

For example:

http://goingrogue.na.cityofheroes.co...lpha-slot.html

Continuing the above thoughts, let's assume we are working up a MA/elec toon using the SRP (oh how we love it) as the foundation of the Incarnate build.

The mighty SRP grants:

Rech: 33
Stun: 33
Heal: 33
Slow: 33
Jump: 33
ToHitBuff:20

Two-thirds of these bonuses bypass ED, and the SRP adds a +1 level shift, so you affect all foes, and are affected by all foes, as if you were level 51. So you do one level's diff worth more damage, take one level less damage, etc, etc, but do NOT have to accept lesser rewards. (I think.)

Yes, say "HOLY MOLY."

This is equivalent (per Werner's workup, which I believe) to free global set bonuses equal to:
Rech: 22
Stun: 22
Heal: 22
Slow: 22
Jump:22
ToHitBuff: 13.3

So, you would take powers to maximize these things: In MA, you want all your stunners (EC,CS,TK).

In elec you want all your recharge-based buffs (energize, power sink).

You'll probably choose the leaping pool for movement.

While choosing sets, you have a lot more options now: Do you skimp on recharge, since you get 3-4 7.5's of benefit for free now? Where do those slots go now? Do you skip a purple set or two and go for more defense bonuses? Do you look at non-recharge sets more? In healing powers, can you drop a slot? Where do they go?

SO much more to look at and do now. I suspect frankenslotting will become MUCH more viable and common as people 'home in' to exact benefits to supplement the Alpha's potential.

However, you still need to make a build that's viable at below 50! So how tightly do you optimize? Do you put in a second build for exemplaring? (Very good idea for extreme min-maxer's.)

The build design landscape has opened up enormously.

This Dev team is expanding the game enormously. This is a very very good thing. Remember, the Alpha slot is the FIRST of TEN.

Easy to play, hard to master.

MUAHAHAHAHA.

Well, there's also level 50 tips, level 50 newspapers, and all the story arcs in PI(or the top setting in Oro flashback's if you like them that way.)


There is a TON of stuff to do at 50, and even better, with the new rewards at the end, much of it can now be repeated more often on the same toon for full rewards.

I promise you, even the hardest hard-core gamer can find a full day of play at level 50 now. I doubt you'd even have to switch characters!

People who are whining about I19 haven't thought this through.

LOL!

All-scrapper tf's are always glorious bloodbath's.

GLORIOUS I SAY.

People have been raving against this since the game was released. Tankers have been wanting more damage for six years. It is what it is, I am going to take my bruising buff and treasure it greatly.

If you want a tanker that does damage, go with fire, electric, or ice combined with fire melee.

It's really that simple.

For some builds, nothing. But it's a far more complex question than you seem to realize.

The most damaging scrapper is a fire/fire. (Maybe a spines fire....maybe.) Either AOE or single target. However, they are nearly as fragile as a blaster. SD is nice because it does almost as much damage and can have quite a bit more survivability.

With MASSIVE investment, a fire/SD scrapper can reach all caps, defense and offense, but it is....very expensive. And honestly, a SS/fire brute will do more damage and be almost as tough, for far cheaper.

Edge cases are edge cases.

(sigh)

Only one tanker there, dude.

That said, all of those builds are quite viable. Have a blast!


Because edge cases exist. Try tanking the LRSF with a scrapper. Can it be done? Sure. It is in no way easy or simple, and your 'tanking' mostly consists of soaking the alpha while the team gets ready to blow them out of their socks with temps.

...this is not WoW.

Good lord, is that your problem?

OK. CoH is a grown up game: NOBODY IS ESSENTIAL.

Lowly controllers make the very best 'tanks' in the game with enough investment. You can run the toughest content in the game, very quickly, with eight blasters.

This game is deliberately designed that way: Nobody is ever left out or made to feel as if they have nothing to contribute. Even tanks.

It sounds like you want to play scrappers, in which case, may I recommend a fire/willpower. They are a ton of fun, you will like them.


(Looks at forum)

Scrapper, duh.

Thank you Werner, that clears it up nicely.

Hmmm.

This will make designing a build much more interesting. For optimum results, we will want to choose which of the alpha's we want to use first, and then tailor enhancements to maximize the gain-per-power, and then optimize for set bonuses.

Innnteresting.

And, to address the main thrust of the thread:

I think the REAL reason why the Dev's are holding two-thirds of the alpha enhancers in-check is three-fold:

1) The level shift mechanic is...intense. It is at least as large a mechanic addition as the 'neutral' faction introduced with Going Rogue.

2) DCO is still not released, I suspect that they want to hold content as much as possible to counter it.

3) The Incarnate system is making large changes to toon design. I suspect they don't want to overload the players. (We already see many signs of this in forum posts.)

So... Much.... To do!

LOL! No doubt! The extra debuff resistance alone will be verah nice indeed, you will like it lots.



In my mind, there are two schools of thought here:

1) Take the stealth pool, no slots, never turn any of them on, and mule three LotG 7.5's.

2) Take the leadership pool, slot minimally, and go for as much -end as you can cram in. Use situationally. The real crown jewel here is vengeance: Suddenly, every time a squishy makes a mis-step, you can pop up a HUGE team buff. It is very, very nice.

Since you have six slots, you have the luxury of taking manuevers, tactics, and venge, and then shopping for set bonuses to taste. A very nice place to be.



For this guy, stealth pool and mule 7.5's.

See? ALWAYS a use.


...assuming you don't already have five 7.5's.....

I dunno.....


If I was willing to forego a set bonus, I could see the setup above being close to optimal. (And nice work putting that beast together.)

But, a more 'modern' combo might be 4 kinetic combats, two mako's (quad and acc/end/rech) and the upcoming alpha slot enhancer, Spiritual Radial Paragon.

The SRP, assuming it makes it into live with no changes, is...PERFECT for martial artists, and would pull the set up into the top tiers, especially if you team it with recharge-loving secondaries like fire, electric, and especially regen.

Until the SRP goes live, it's hard to argue with the alpha uncommon 'Spiritual Core Boost'. The SCB should be pretty easy to get and adds 33 percent recharge and 33 percent stun to EVERY power that can use them, namely, Cobra Strike and Eagle Claw, as well as Thunder Kick (much less so).

So, for me, that's where I'd go:

4x Kinetic Combat
2x Mako (quad, acc/end/rech)
Alpha Uncom: SCB

This.

I'd say a MA/elec. MA helps elec survive, elec adds more recharge, a self-heal, and a damage aura for more aoe.

Plus, with the recent HUGE buffs, MA is no longer weak in any way, shape, or form.

For example, an exercise for the reader:

What PBAOE power can slot a Force Feedback recharge proc, animates in a blistering 1.5 base seconds, does very reliable knockdown mitigation, and can form a two-power attack chain with Eagle Claw, thus achieving nigh-ridiculous critical levels?

Martial Arts builds need to be seriously re-examined in my book. I suspect it can perform much better now than folks remember.