_Deth_

This is wisdom to live by.

It's easy, people are lazy. People don't like to think, and god forbid things not go as expected.

So people figure out the path of least resistance, and if it means that they exclude others, as long as it doesn't exclude them they don't care. This is one of the reasons why there are an absurd number of stone tanks/brutes and kins around.

I find this even funnier that it happens so much in this game because of the amount of flexibility between classes and roles available.

of the 3, i would go elec/WP.

If you are really wanting solid farming, SS/*, Fire/* are both good primaries. Farming with DM/ and SM/ is a lot slower. If you have the patience, SS/SD, Fire/SD and Elec/SD are all beasts. /WP is easier, but in the long run for farming, once IOd, /SD is probably best.

I pulled multiple groups in boss farms with my WP tanker without IOs. Pretty easily actually.

And, grouped, I could tank boss farms pretty easily on my DA tank as well without IOs. Solo, not nearly as well, but still not too badly. And my DA tank has neither CoF nor OG.

If he is talking about end game content, boss farms aren't really a good measure anyway. If his build is sound, and he is on a decent team, ANY tank should be able to fill the bill. Now, as this is his first tank, and he already said no stone, Inv and WP would probably be easiest. Inv especially.

Your brutes may not be tough. Mine can handle anything a tank can handle.

*edit: Regular contentwise that is

I don't care for tremor, is nice for crowd control, but meh for damage. What is insulting is that it is the tier 9 power for Stone Melee.

Crowd Control was sexy on my tanker, haven't tried it on a brute yet.

As for saying "it's only rage that gets it up" is irrelevant. I have yet to see a ss/* brute that didn't have rage up all the time and double stacked at times. Double stacked, Footstomp is just crazy.

Even without rage, footstomp does more damage than Tremor. The only advantage Tremor has over Footstomp is that it has a faster recharge time. Tremor's animation time is almost a full second longer.

Tremor is far from a big hitter and does pretty pathetic damage, especially when you consider it is a T9 power. Footstomp does a ton more damage than Tremor by far. All Tremor has is a fast recharge, and is more of a CC power than a damage power, which is funny because it has the same mag KB as Footsomp.

Well, and in the past I have made the same argument that your are making now, supposedly the content coming with GR will be much more difficult, and will make tankers much more necessary. Whether this will pan out or not remains to be seen. If it does work out this way, I will be adjusting my brutes for maximum damage, survivability be damned, and I won't feel like I wasted my time IOing out my DA/DM tank. Just in case, I am rolling a DM/DA brute, cus if things pan out the way I think they will, my tanks are getting shelved permanently.

You are completely missing the point of what he said.

I was being sarcastic. I think that all the secondaries are pretty well balanced. I personally hate /stone, and find it boring as hell. I like /WP, and /inv, I loved DA for tanks, and am working up a DA brute because I just dig the set.

I have an elec/elec, and in groups it is effective, and pretty fun. I recently made a DM/DA, and if my tank is any indication, this will end up being my favorite toon in the game. I have a /SD that i really don't like, and a SM/WP that is just plain fun because I can go bonkers without having to watch my end bar.

Each secondary has a different flavor, and requires a different playstyle to get the most out of them.

Set and forget is nice at times, but so is having to be more active in keeping yourself alive.


I still believe that they are all relatively well balanced. Some are better out of the box, some don't shine til later levels. However, all things being equal, in the hands of a competent player, they are all pretty well balanced.

Some would argue that every AT in the game needs fitness. Many would argue that every tank and brute NEEDS to take the fighting pool. I am not arguing this at all, but then again, I am not arguing that most of the secondaries are out of balance either.

I agree with you completely on this.

Yeah, you're right, I just checked it. will be about 3%off. but, um, why did you quote me? I said it was insane and overkill, yeah, but I was speaking about the 8 billion, not the stats.

was wondering if anyone was gonna catch that

yep, pretty much sums up what I was saying.

That is on ElA, I, personally, haven't heard if it is being done to EA as well. If it is, I am gonna give EA another spin.

If you really push it, you should actually be able to softcap S/L def, without gimping damage output. Would have to see your proposed build to be sure tho.

Not really sure what you are calling your first and second AoE. Soul Drain and Dark Consumption take too long to recharge to really put in any kind of attack chain. Dark Obliteration is really nice tho. Darkest night is good too, like Tonality said, if you are going against AVs a lot, or running boss farms solo, but other than that, I wouldn't bother.

Sapping big groups is very possible if you slot the crap out of power sink. Not sure on IO slotting on it tho. The only thing is, it shouldn't be much of an issue, minions are sapped easily, but the ones that your really want to sap, Lt.s, Bosses and AVs, well, you won't get nearly as far with them. It really just depends on the groups. If you are planning on farming, I wouldn't count on that as a mitigation tool. In normal content, yeah, on all the little stuff it will work well.

Post your build tho, will make it easier for folks to make suggestions, or see where you can tweak it. If you are working on S/L defense(I would suggest it, as it is easiest to get softcapped), 4 Kinetic Combats in your ST attacks, 4 reactive armors in your resistance powers.

Personally, I would work towards getting softcapped and drop Power Surge, don't get me wrong, Power Surge has it's uses, but I really hate that big crash. Just my personal preference tho, I skip the "god mode" crash powers on all my toons. Normally, if I am in a situation where it would really help, I would have died with it anyway.

Well, yeah, you COULD get by without stamina. But to say wholesale that Elec Armor doesn't need stamina, well, I am going to disagree with you.

See, if you take stam, you can generally drop the end redux slotting in your powers and increase your damage output by putting recharge in them.

Plus, I don't like watching my blue bar much, so stam is a nice buffer. Fitness is a good idea anyway, as health is a nice boost to the anemic regen of /ElA.

But the biggest reason for getting stam. There will be situations where there is only one mob to draw off of.

My stone/WP, when I am done with him, will be softcapped for s/l def, have a few less hp, and a bit more regen. I skipped SoW, not a big fan of "god mode" then crash powers

There is no real reason not to shoot for softcapped def on all sets if you really want to be more "tankish," and it is achievable for at least S/L on all secondaries.

I am going this route initially, just my style of play, but when I find a brute that I love more than the others, I am going to start shooting for purples to boost my damage and recharge, and will back off on the def a bit.

I don't quite think it works like that. I may be wrong, but that just doesn't sound right.

Now, as I said, I may be wrong. the magic number for softcapping defense is 45%, because their minimum chance of missing you is 50%, their maximum chance of missing is 95%, due to the additional 45% from your defense. Any additional defense you stack on top is only useful in absorbing defense debuffs.

Now, and again, I may be wrong, the base on that chance for them to miss you is 50%. That is with 0 defense. Defense debuffs in this case, as I understand it, do not decrease their chance to miss you. As I understand it, those debuffs just increase the amount of defense you would have to stack to increase their chance to miss. For example, you have had your defense debuffed to -30%. As I understand it, that does not mean they are hitting you 80% of the time, but, say if you started popping small purples, they would have no benefit until you popped that 4th purple to get back above 0% defense.

Defense debuffs do not increase to-hit chances, they decrease the chance to miss. The base chance of a mob to miss you is 50%. So again, you cannot debuff what is not there. At least, that is how I understand it, I could be wrong

That all depends on the player. Seriously. I PL the crap out of most of my toons now. No time or patience to putter through content that I have already done a bunch, if I have to repeat something, may as well make it worthwhile. Now, when I am done, I solo a bit so as to gain a thorough understanding of my toons, that and to not inflict any ignorance of my new toon on others, but really, how long does it take to get a good feel for a character, this aint brain surgery.

*edit: Oh, and another thing, DA on stalkers is friggin sweet.

*scratches head* this makes no sense. Electric armor doesn't suffer from defense debuffs at all. Defense Debuffs can't affect you if you don't have any defense.

Now, if you get cj, hover, weave, stealth, or a bunch of IOs, then yeah, the defense debuffs will hurt you, but that is not part of the electric armor set itself, and hence not really an issue.

Without throwing in some defense, which would either be negligible or make the set way out of balance, all they really could do was add a heal.

Tell that to all the people that have played stoners that have done it, both blue and redside, me being one of them. Stone takes almost zero effort to gain the survivability that every other def set has to break it's tail to get. There is no "probably" in overcoming the debuffs in a team setting, at least the majority of them, otherwise you wouldn't have as many people screaming for kins.

If you don't know what I'm thinking of with Inv, then go play one, or talk to one of the many people that play them.

And yeah, I should have included WP with stone and Inv. Well, maybe just Inv, as I have seen people screw that one up too. So yeah, I edit my previous statement, all sets other than Stone are broken by your standard. Hell, even stone may be, as someone new may skip granite while choosing random powers.

I play my tankers very similar to how I play my brutes as well. Well, at least I did. I pay more attention to the group's survival when I play my tanks now. I do so on my brutes for entirely different reasons. I might actually die on my brute if I just ignore everyone else. What's worse, I won't get all those nifty buffs to my damage, debuffs to their defenses, and all that if THEY die. It's not so much about protecting the team as it is looking after myself, and that is not a bad thing, we are supposed to be villains.