Alabaster12

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It's a much better option than trying to re-engineer one existing archetype to duplicate the abilities of another existing archetype.

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It's not re-engineering so much as an addition to fix a design flaw the lead developer admitted was an error.



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They obviously don't believe it is still an error since they have done nothing (in your eyes) about it... so continuing to post what the lead developer said years ago doesn't really support your case.

Also once again... I'll present a question this time:
What gives you the impression that the only concept for a brute is someone driven by anger?

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Based on their strength levels alone, The Thing and Superman would be Blue Side SS/INV brutes.

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Superman and the Thing are not Brutes. They are not ruled by their emotions. The Hulk is a Brute.


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Please stop using your lack of imagination that a brute can only be fueled by anger as a justification for needing a change with an AT.

The way you are describing them Brutes only have a single concept and that is patently false.

Superman "stepping it up" as you say when the fight gets tougher could easily be signaled by a fury bar. Whether that bar equals anger or not is completely up to the individual behind the keyboard.

Short answer:
Yes

Long answer:
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSS


There are a few AV's that I had trouble with (positron I'm looking at you).... but for the most part a large chunk of them were soloable. I did the entire epic pool chain solo on the highest setting.

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Superman has super strength and invulnerability. That means he's a Tanker, since that's the only class that allows that combination.

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Superman... can also walk right up to a building... and keep walking.

Superman... can also walk up to a mountain... and keep walking.

Superman... can start flying up... and just keep right on going until he gets to the moon.

Superman... once he gets to the moon... can play soccer aiming for saturn's ring.

I find it funny that you were talking about superman and then talking about presentation... when the extreme majority of superman's "animations" are standing their absorbing bullets, or hitting a guy once and sending him flying a thousand feet... other than that he's pretty much tearing the environment apart (in an attempt to save, protect, catch) which isn't possible in an MMO. That to me is pretty poor animation.

This is the problem. You can't pigeon hole super heroes into any game if you want literal translations. There will always be someone saying they aren't happy that their super hero isn't super enough. There have to be rules in a game, and if you can't accept that there are some limitations on powers then I'm not sure what game to advise you go play.

It feels like your suggesting that knockback is the only valid way to make a power feel super... and that I disagree with. Personally I think the haymaker presentation is pretty great but again this goes back to taking two sets in a game... and comparing them over and over and over again to comics which cannot EVER be realized as well as some people want them to be in a game. No matter what the game developer does someone won't be happy.

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Those are, um... sub optimal.



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It depends on what you want out of your tanker. How frequently do you solo missions that have exclusively psi damage that makes it worth using up such an exclusive power choice?

If so... why wouldn't you just use an alt build so that you didn't have a sub-optimal build in that you took minerals and hardly ever use it?

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And Granite's disadvantages.



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Thank you captain obvious.


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Why do you assume this? I solo my Stony all the time (helps that my damage output is rarely hampered by Granite). I duo him w/scrappers or other tanks a lot. I most like pairing him w/a blaster. I doubt very much that I team w/a support toon w/some psi band aid more than 10% of the time.

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I solo mine all the time as well. Perma-Granite is more of a team qualification for me than anything else. When I'm on a larger team it's highly likely I'm in granite... when I'm not I'm not..

But how frequently do you solo where you actually NEED minerals to survive? I haven't found a single instance at all in leveling several to 50. The few missions that are exclusively psi... I've never felt like I needed minerals to survive either solo or teamed.

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You think it's easier to get to 25% psi def/resist than to get to say, 40-45% S/L/Psi def out of Granite? I'd disagree, though more to the point, they're both somewhat difficult/expensive to get. The more practical solution would be to get Minerals and learn to toggle through your armors. Of course, this also means stop playing perma-Granite, which... well, see paragraph 1.

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Also see paragraph 1.

I absolutely think it's easier to get 25 or so psi defense and resist than it is to cap everything else with IO's with the rest of the stone armors. Hell... I did it and I legitimately wasn't even trying too. I IO'd my toon out and got it for free.

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This, I agree with, but for those few situations... And as you state, Minerals is a great mule.

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It is a decent mule... but there are better powers to mule IO's in that will help the solo build also. Fighting is a lot more bang for the buck as far as getting both a +res and a +def power in the same pool than you will get out of minerals... which you will rarely if ever use.

I will mule IO's to a power, but only if I can get some use out of it either solo or in a team. If it's virtually useless to both and I'm only keeping it around for a mule, that doesn't really seem worth it to me.

I definitely don't agree with this one.

With some careful slotting you can get decent psi res and def while still being in granite.

I've found that minerals is just not worth the power selection (if you are running a perma-granite build) unless you want to mule some IO's in it.

For example... I think I'm at like 25 or so psi def another 25 or so psi res while still in granite and I still keep all of the rest of the granite benefits. Keep in mind you almost always have some kind of support helping out with these missions as well. It's not like you won't have a defender or controller along for the ride that will help out substantially with that psi hole.

It's a lot easier to give granite psi defenses than it is to give a non-granite build with minerals the same defenses to everything else as granite.

In general I think the psi hole is overrated.

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I found you need 1 or two slots for equip and upgrade. They tend to take a chuck of end. not close to epic atm so not worryed which is better. Although, it's still a struggle between mu and soul, but this build will have soul manip. the other build is already a lot different.
is 2 slots on fearsome stare too many?

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I'm trying to remember what I had pre-IO's in fearsome stare.

Don't quote me on this but I think I had 1 acc, 2-3 tohit debuff, 1 rech (not so sure about the rech... I genuinely can't remember).

Probably to taste depending on how much you use it or whether you want it for a hold or tohit debuff.

It is definitely possible. I think my current build runs about 25-30 mph while in granite.

1. Get swift 3 slotted.
2. Get tough and rock armor and put a couple of the GoTA +Run speed IO's in your +def powers
3. Get IO sets that have +run in them. There are a couple that are pretty easy to get and there aren't a lot of people outside of stone tanks looking for +run so you can usually get them pretty cheaply.

I'd recommend stone/fire. I've done a lot of stone builds and that one gives the best bang for the buck. Fire is great for aoe's so having slower recharge won't really matter, and is a pretty high damage set, and also has build up. The downside to it is virtually no mitigation, but you don't need it with stone.

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thanks with that. I updated the build again swapping repair with swift and putting fearsome stare instead repair. I'm looking for best slot positions. I picked Soul Manip because it gives some pretty good hold powers. Mu doesn't really have as many hold powers as soul becuase your really just going to want electricfying fences from Mu and nothing else. Not worryed about IO's atm for some fairly obvious reasons.

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There are certainly pools that have more holds, I just found that I didn't need holds at all with this char. Stuff just died way too fast. What I did want was -kb so that when the assault bot fires it's missles the mobs stayed in the fire. They don't flee and they don't get knocked back. Only Mu gives you that. The armor also isn't necessarily a bad thing since it gives S/L and energy which is a small weakness of your bots (which is what I took as the prerequisite to fences).

That being said, I've found the rest of the epics pretty lacking for a bots/dark. You just kill far too quickly for it to matter what you are locking down. IF I didn't take Mu for -kb, I probably would've skipped the epic pools all together.

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I'm going to continue not complaining

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I feel like I should make this my signature or something. J_B stating that he not only doesn't complain about something... but will continue to do so. (which is funny because in the very next sentence he goes right on to complain about it).

I guess "not complaining" is relative and that one was pretty mild for Mr. J_B.

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Thanks for all the replies everyone. =D

As for similarities to WoW, the main reason I quit was because I couldn't stand the endgame anymore. The reason I had so many characters at max level was because I'd get one to 80 (or whatever the level was at the time) and then get bored and level an alt.

So I'm looking forward to CoH/V.

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I was trying to avoid taking a stance on the game in case you still played it, but that was the exact reason I left as well. Glad you landed where I did and hope you find the same experience as me.

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General rule: The Best= Stone


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Stone, while running Granite, is the toughest tank. Not the best. Especially since you do about as much damage as a four year old with a whiffle bat. Stone Armor itself is nothing overly special or fantastic aside from its tier 9.

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It has a great 'dull pain-esque' heal
a fantastic taunt aura that slows immob's and damages
A generic passive that a-la RPD provides S/L res.
A very nice regen + mez protection power

So there we have 4 out of 9 powers that I think are pretty great right off the bat... 5 if you count the tier 9... and rock armor is a great tool for when your out of granite. So... you have 6 out of 9 powers that are pretty good... that sounds like a nice set to me. No question the remaining 3 are total crap, but a lot of sets have that.


To the OP... Having played a lot of WoW myself I can tell you that CoX isn't really following the same paradigm. The fun is in the leveling and creating a character, where in wow the fun is in getting a single character to max level so you can do end game content or pvp.

That is why the answer is try it and see in CoX and isn't tried and true as it is in WoW. If you don't like an AT it's pretty easy to just start another one up, and not only have you lost nothing, but you also now get to try out a second set. Almost everyone who plays CoX is an alt-aholic.

The answer is really what do you want...
Do you want a challenge? I'd recommend DA (but most definitely not for a first tank).

Do you want to ease your way into the game? I'd recommend Inv.

Do you want an immovable object with some major penalties for being unkillable? I'd recommend stone.

Do you want to hold enemies to you no matter what happens? I'd recommend ice.

Do you want to deal damage? I'd recommend shield or fire.

Do you want to be the jack of all trades master of none? I'd recommend WP.

Some of these are glaring oversimplifications (as I'm sure someone was about to comment on how bad one of my generalizations were) but you get the gist.

It really is up to how you want to play the game.

Repair is a bit redundant with bots/dark. I can't remember ever needing extra heals the entire time I was leveling mine to 50.

The slots in equip and upgrade are slightly less useful now than they were before when you had to cast them once for each pet. As long as you can cast both in a row end-wise you should be fine.

It looks like you're skipping fearsome stare... which I would recommend against. It's great for a to-hit debuff. I never actually use it as a fear and always just cast it for the tohit debuff.

I would recommend taking Mu as an epic pool for the prevention of knockback and so enemies stay longer in the assault bots burn patches. This one is pretty debatable as various people have reported that this is and isn't useful. I've tried it.. and like it. The size isn't huge, but if you can clump them enough you can get a good chunk of a spawn, and if you put some recharge into it you can cast it enough to be able to get a full spawn.

I also take leadership just because I found that bots/dark has a ton of extra power selections available, and it helps a lot to have tactics and I can't complain about the others either. This is another one that is heavily debated around here, but I would recommend trying it (maybe with a second build) and seeing how you like it.

Minimum you want 2-3 acc in your drones, 1-2 in your prot bots, and 1-2 in your assault bot. Fill to get at least 3 dmg in the rest of them. Put a end redux in your prot bots after you get upgrade.

Dark is pretty easy to slot. Get your dark servant maxed out for recharges. The rest go either to-hit debuff or heal depending on playstyle.

Get acc in twlight grasp.. then fill the rest with heals. You really don't want this to miss when you need it.

Shadowfall +res and +def and +end to taste. This is another playstyle one you have to figure out.

Recharge and tohit in virtually everything else.

You want your debuffs to be very powerful.


IO's are obviously an entire other ballgame.

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OR you can take all your attacks, skip fighting pool, pick up a good epic, slot enough recharge to overcome granite, slot enough runspeed to be fine, and if your lucky, put a dent in the -30 percent damage that granite gives you. for every secondary power you dont take, thats one more armor you can grab.

You can pull of massive recharge if you slot right and not have to give up too much damage or attack power! People will do what they want, but I just think there is no need for fighting on a stone tank. mean, i can stand in the middle of two level 54 boss spawns and afk.

now granted, you can take fighting, and run granite only when needed, but its far from nessecary. with my guy being a stone/stone/fire tank, I use ALL of his secondary and epics. Oh well....its your 15 dollars

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It's also where to mule the IO's... at least for me. I want as many of the +def and +res IO's as I can get.

Having 2 extra spots to put those IO's in tough and weave is a great benefit for a single set, and it also helps me solo.

I usually run Granite + Mud Pots + weave and have everything but psi capped off.

If I took all of the attacks from my secondary my guess is I would have severe recharge, end, and run speed problems. My stoner is stone/fire/fire though and focuses almost entirely on the aoes. I don't take Fire Sword, Greater Fire Sword, Breath of Fire, and in the epic I only use melt armor and fireball (took char but it's not even on a bar). Between all the rest I have both a great aoe attack chain and a great ST attach chain... why would I need any more attacks?

I don't need a kin, or any other defensive support for that matter... and any team that I make can basically be straight debuff and damage dealers.

Thanks for all the helpful responses.

I ended up trying out merc/storm. I don't know why but my original concept for the character didn't fit with a bow and arrow... but a technological military device that alters the weather I could somehow fit in.

So far still grinding out the early sloooow MM levels as it has been for every other MM I've started up, but I'm liking the synergy of the kb and having all ranged pets. It doesn't feel like nearly as much of a burden as it was for my bots (where I actually took mu just to stop it).

Thanks for the response.

Having never played a storm before do you think the sets would work well together?

Anything I should keep in mind? As I said finding guides for merc has been a lot more difficult than I have found any other power sets I've checked out.

So I'm looking to bounce back to the redside for a little bit and trying to find a good secondary to go with Mercs. I've played pain up until about level 10 and it feels too much like an emp (which I already have a 50)... I also don't want dark as my only 50 mm right now is dark.

Any suggestions that people have tried that work well... and why?

I was thinking about storm for some buff/debuff to help the lower tiered mercs (from the other mm's)l, but I've never played a storm before and don't know how well I'll like it. I've checked most of the guides and searched the boards and haven't seen much about it. I guess a lot of people don't play mercs?

Just out of curiosity... I like having all of the following pools on my stoner:
speed,
fitness,
teleport,
fighting

Obviously you can't give up fighting or fitness since that would kind of defeat what you were trying to do with the build above.... so which of the other two do you skip to get leadership.... or do you just skip both?

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What a complete waste of time.

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The better question to ask is which AV's can solo a tanker?

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Tough and Weave slotted up, when added to what Stone Armor already has, makes for an INCREDIBLY hard to kill tank, especially against S/L damage, and also allows one to rarely need to bother with Granite Armor even on large teams (although some AE stuff will still require it), since you can get very high +Def numbers that way.

You cannot run either Hover or CJ with Rooted or Granite, so if you're going for a Def-heavy build you might look into Maneuvers as well despite it being rather an end-hog until you get good Endred slotting into it.

Leadership numbers for tanks aren't that good, but slotted up Maneuvers+Weave is in the neighborhood of 10% +Def, combined with Granite and a Steadfast 3% unique you should be near the cap against all non-Psi and have 13%ish to Psi (there is no +def to Toxic). you could then IO for +Def (Psi) and can get that to about 25-30% without too massive an investment cashwise (will eat a lot of slots though). The tradeoff is that you will not have much (if any) room for IOing to cover Granite's penalties so you'll still be slow while in it.

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I've thought quite a few times about taking manuvers but couldn't figure out what I would give up to take it so I have consistently just stuck with what I have.

Between fighting, fitness, teleport, and hasten there are none of those that I would want to give up for the 3 def or whatever it is.

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Then how can there be improvements made to systems that could and should be improved upon?

The devs have said they can't do a lot of things because of the legacy issues. Any new things you add are just bolted on to a rotting foundation.

Why should we have to keep broken, outdated crap when they can do better with a fresh start? In the case of the AT/power systems, the devs have said there can't be any major overhauls or improvements because of the legacy sytems and how they interact. Add to that a thousand other things players would like: super speeding up walls, power customization, environmental interaction, that also can't happen because they can't break free of the old design and old systems.

If you want improvements to the core systems, you're going to have to cut ties eventually. Five-seven years from launch is a good "eventually" in my opinion. That's a long time for any game's run, but there's this notion for some reasons that MMOs should go on forever. Eventually, they just end up shoveling fluff and snuffing themselves out (unless their developer's name ends in 'izzard').

And how long before they can't drum up support for a sequel even if they wanted to? From what I've seen, this expansion was hard fought, and I don't expect it to do as well as maybe the devs and the publisher hope it will. Now may be the last shot they get to make a sequel happen. I don't think Going Rogue will be able to extend CoX's life another five years and I don't think further expansions are likely either if it doesn't do spectacular, or at least better than CoV numbers.


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You're right. We should all just quit to show them the error of their ways for not listening to a single extremely loud, annoying, uneducated and ignorant voice telling them what they should do with their game. Perhaps you should apply for a job as the senior VP (or whatever the title of the person who is ultimately responsible for CoX) since you seem to have all the answers.

*Waits for J_B to quit*

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I solo quite a few of the Preatorans as EBs with my tanks and I could care less if it take 5 minutes or 20 when it's over I just took out a villain boss solo that some 8 man teams face plant trying to handle.

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No, you didn't. You took down a watered down EB version that most 8 man teams would steamroll over in a couple seconds and not the AV that spawns for 8 man teams.

Face them as AVs, their true form, and I strongly suspect another outcome.



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How would you know?

Unless you actively play a game you dislike so much... Although I suppose it's possible because you do actively post with such blatant misplaced authority against others experiences about a game you dislike so much.

If you do play ... why would you?

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Because long drawn out fights with Bosses and EBs isn't boring? Challenge through annoyance isn't good game design.



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CLEARLY it is not boring to a large group of people if the global MMO population is any indication. I'll even include myself in that vote since I still play and enjoy this game. I do not find it boring... anyone else?

Lack of challenge through anyone being able to do anything they can imagine is also boring. Why bother playing if we all really had super heroes that were literally 'invulerable' and were able to move mountains? If you know you can't be beaten, and you know that you can beat anyone... Conceptually it's just like some of the higher end comic book powers, but to me that sounds like the worst video game of all time.

Thank you for nitpicking a single statement about how the game you would like to play is not possible and turning it around to this game is boring to you. I concede... this game is boring to you and will never be fixed to your demands. You can stop wasting your time arguing (read: trolling) about it. Let those who still enjoy it play and you are free to go to whatever it is you do actually like.

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One-shotting hazard spawns = Bad melee damage?

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I'm not impressed by what your level 50 does to minions in Boomtown.

But really, the complaint is not about 2 or 3-shotting minions so much as it is about 12 to 19-shotting Bosses.


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Oh I see.... I thought my level 40 was soloing that even level mission 1 shotting all the minions and 2 shotting all the lt's but apparently I was in boomtown. My mistake. I should just ask J_B next time about my experiences playing the game and save myself the trouble of actually logging in and playing. I mean... why bother unless I'm 2 shotting Recluse himself. Anything less wouldn't be like the guys in the comics who can move mountains.

Also... I call BS on the this is an MMO problem. Did you ever happen to notice that Superman... in virtually every single game created using him... can still die if enough plain old bullets or rockets hit him? There are also several games I can remember playing where he can't just run over whatever you happen to feel like as the character playing him. I couldn't just walk straight through any building I felt like, I couldn't fly out into outer space, I couldn't play soccer with the moon.

It is impossible to accurately represent some superheroes in a video game. They are so powerful that whatever the person controlling the toon wanted would be possible and that is outside of the scope of any video game I've ever played. There have to be some rules to what a character in a game can and cannot do, so your conceptually having a "Super Hero" game is impossible in the way you want it, and has NEVER been done and can NEVER be until games get AI to the point where the game can alter itself based on the person playing so that even though you are ultimately powerful the game can still present challenges enough so that it doesn't get boring.

Unless of course you think it makes conceptual sense that my "invulnerable" super hero in the game can be killed by normal guys shooting guns... or that shotting giant balls of molten fire at simple powerless thugs on the street sometimes isn't enough to stop them.

If you are so unhappy with the game... please quit and stop trolling on the forums for people who clearly have such little interest in hearing your broken record opinions of the game that they mock you openly every single chance they can.