_Tundra_

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prolly be better off just slotting more acc?

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Well, slotting for Def bebuff could conceivably help the aim in the OP (helping a team-mate's follow up AoE to hit) which certainly couldn't be acheived by slotting for accuracy.

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But the debuff is so small and so brief in duration that there are almost certainly better uses for the slots.

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The problem with stone/ice is that the -recharge will effect the ice secondary. This is second hand info, but a stone/ice player told me that he was unable to perma ice slick with granite on.

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He's mistaken, unless for some reason he refuses to slot it for recharge. It's not an aggro grabbing power, though. You need to grab the aggro before dropping it.

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Broadsword puts out more damage than katana, but it does it slower, so without checking specific attack chains, I'd say it's difficult to determine which actually puts out more damage. Against minions, BS is certainly better, but I don't know if it would even out over a longer chain.

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I think in terms of DPS they compare pretty well. The longer recharge times on the attacks mean you get more bang per buck from recharge enhancers / Hasten so a BS attack chain gets much closer in length to a Katana one at higher levels. Of course doing that puts BS at a way higher EPS - it's enough to wear even a Regen with Stamina down over the course of a long fight.

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Thanks for the advice Tundra, I had been hoping to catch you on Team Speak to go through the build but much appreciate your comments mate.

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No problem - am in France again at the moment, so on nightshifts rather than TS.

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I will definitely be getting Knockout Blow and haven't discounted that in the later game I expect to be dishing out as well as taking damage - at the moment my considerations have been around armouring myself the best I can so I can take the heat off my teammates - I'm sure since ED I will have anough slots to chuck around in my 30's so I can start doing some significant damage.

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It most likely won't take too long to get there, either

Lots of good stuff already covered here, but I'll just chuck in a couple of comments.

I'd look at the slotting of Mud Pots again. It's a gem of a power and can admittedly be usefully slotted in several ways. Despite taking Acc enhancements, the Slow, Immob and Taunt componenets of it are still auto-hit. Since the damage is pretty minor, I wouldn't bother with the Acc and swap in and End reducer instead. Once you've got Stamina one EndRed will be enough, but until then as many as you can spare will help.

As mentioned above, slotting EE for Heal is a good idea. Those extra HP boost your already impressive Regen rate - it's well worth slotting up Health for the same reason.

Personally I'd probably ditch both Brimstone and Crystal Armour in a post-32 respec and use those slots to pick up extra attacks - I've always found GA much more useful on big teams.

Stone Tanks really don't need the fighting pool (especially as you'll no doubt have plenty of buffs on you most of the time) but I'm afraid you will wind up needing Hasten. I picked up the Presence pool for extra Taunting, but that's not essential either. If I had a spare respec now I'd be tempted by the Medicine Pool - not so much for Aid Self but for the ability to act as a last ditch Defender as you're very likely to be the last one to go down if things turn ugly. Being able to cast a whopping Tank-size Heal, un-Mez a genuine Defender or cast an emergency Rez (since you'll also have TP and Recall friend) are all quite appealing to me.

Finally, make a nice comfortable bind for Teleport and practice sweeping the camera around with your middle mouse button to find the spot you want to land in. Being able to TP up onto ledges and walkways is a vital skill for any Stone Tank.

See you in game, most likely

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I believe its 12.5% increase in damage per foe hit, at least for a scrapper. Cant say I use it if there's not a large group to drain though so hard to test if ifs now treated differently

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Just tested it on my DM Scrapper:
+15.6% Damage from one target
+46.9% Damage from three targets

So it is linear (ie. a flat bonus per target) but has increased from the figure in the Hero Builders - probably due to the I5 Scrapper damage increase.

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Yes it has to hit. The more you hit, the better acc and damage buffs you get.

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That reminds me. I've been meaning to post about this for some time, but does anyone know if this power was changed at the same time as Invincibility and Energy Absorption, because it certainly seems to give a large +Dam for the first enemy hit and a much smaller one for each subsequent enemy. Or has it always worked like this? My DM/SR was only rolled in January, but everything I'd read about this power suggested a flat boost per enemy (a bigger boost for the first hit is better, btw, this is not a moan).

An interesting side note - this is probably because I fire it off in big groups whenever possible, but HeroStats surprised me with how much damage Soul Drain was doing - almost 10% of my total damage output - so I might even consider throwing a damage SO or two in there if I find I have spare slots (more likely is 5 slots with 2xAcc, 3xRecharge, though)

Congrats again Max, it's taken a while...

No screenies from me, but glad to be along for the ride.

Looks like a very solid build, but just a thought... until you've tried it yourself, very few people realise just how many attacks you'll avoid by dropping an Ice Patch. Between that and your high DEF values, you may find that you get more defensive mileage out of Aid Self than the Fighting pool - and in addition you get to make those high base HP of yours work for the rest of the team by becoming a rather effective emergency healer with Aid Other - the interrubtable nature of both is much less of a problem for an Ice Tank standing on an Ice Patch than it would be for another toon, and 40% of your base HP (when slotted up) is a big heal!

Just a thought...

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also, Freezing Touch is one of your stronger attacks - it's worth putting some Dam enhancers in there. For my money you're missing the best attack in /Ice, which is Frost. Quite a big cone, and a nice Slow effect too. Personally I'd make that the third power if I swapped out Fighting for Medecine, but otherwise I found it to be a much better attack than Greater Ice Sword - which is very underwhelming.

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Sines/DA is fairly good.

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Hmm, always though that was the AggroMonster choice.

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Well, /Regen does no AoE at all, so DA is infinitely better there... seriously, though, Death Shroud is one of the most damaging auras in the game so it's not just a slight increase. In terms of tanking ability, DA has a combination of resists, self-heal and AoE crowd control which make it capable of handling large groups of weaker (ie. minion to Lt. level) enemies - exactly what the AoE damage is good at taking out. A very synergistic combo indeed. Regen, OTOH, suffers against large numbers of enemies due to the potential for high incoming damage in a short period of time and although it's still a very good secondary I'd put it slightly behind DA for Spines in PvE. Much better for PvP thanks to the lower reliance on toggles, though.

Personally I'd go for Health - and I did. Too much of the damage in the game is non-S/L to rely on Tough, IMO, and Health synergises very well with the rest of Regen. Sure, it doesn't help against an alpha, but neither does Tough if the alpha is Fire, Energy, Psi etc. Dull Pain will help there, though, and Health will make all those extra HP work for you in getting you back up to strength again post-alpha.

The only exception - to my mind - would be if you plan to PvP a lot. Lots of S/L there, and things move a bit too quickly for Health to do you as much good.

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just a quick question for ice melee blappers, the lvl 38 power "frozen aura" is it a hold or is it a sleep because the sites i been on to find out say it is a sleep and wil be wakened if attacked so surely isnt this a pointless tanker power?

ice melee blappers with frozen aura let me know would ya cos i might make an invul/ice cos its good for AV's but if frozen aura is a sleep power it wont be as good.


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Yes, it is a Sleep power.

And yes... it is useless.

DEF debuff resistance is supposed to reduce the magnitude of the debuff rather than duration (form US redname posts - mists of time, though, so wouldn't be able to dig them out for you). No idea whether it works against self-imposed DEF debuffs, but my guess is it probably does (simply because there has never been any mention of exceptions).

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With Terrify becoming available within the next couple of levels, and Drain Psyche appearing too...I'm going to have a tough time picking my powers.

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From those coices I'd really, really suggest ignoring the many negative board comments and poor looking planner numbers on Drain Psyche and at least trying it out on Test. It can quite easily leave you in a state where you're recovering END at a fast rate whilst running TK and spamming attacks and single target control. It's already convinced me to spec out of the Fitness pool before even getting to Stamina, confident that I won't need it. I'd expect it to be a classic YMMV power, but it's most definately worth trying out.

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Mass sleep is poor, telekinesis is situational, mass confusion another powerset get at lvl 8. I still think they need some love

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Mass Sleep makes telekinesis far less situational, IMO. And Terrify, whilst not a Hold, is a great deal better than the mass Immob or Slow effects which tend to be present in other control sets. Mind remains my favourite, as you can probably tell - but then I always thought having another useful control power at 32 instead of a pet made it a better Controller set, too.

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I have no problems with he short circuit/ power sink combo at the momentn in PvE, can quite happily drain a group of 4/5 yellow's of all end.

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Whilst yes, that combo works it requires 1) that your Blaster has /Elec secondary and 2) that you're level 35 or greater.

Should only Elec blasters who choose a specific Secondary and have passed lvl 35 be able to make any practical use of the secondary effect of their Primary? This is not the case for other powersets, and was not the case for Elec prior to I6. It looked originally rather like an oversight in the implementation of ED, since End drain was already rather exquisitely balanced. However, I think the change to single target attacks with I6 was probably intended to balance this. It doesn't, but I think it was the intent.

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Um, you can't mass drain anything in one go on live now.

It was never that über and it's certainly not über now. Even before ED you could only fully drain even levels with one application, you needed another application or some other drain power for anything higher. And it could still miss because you needed to 6-slot with endurance drain so no accuracies. I don't know if that was too good, I didn't think so but ED nerfed it so it's gone anyway. I just don't think further nerfs are needed.

Getting into melee is a hell of a risk for a blaster. It takes over 5 seconds in the middle of a spawn to execute a Short Circuit+Power Sink combo. If that won't even fully drain them, I don't see how the reward is worth the risk. The only time I could see myself doing that was if there was a tanker holding aggro, and in that case I might as well just blast.

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I quite agree, it simply doesn't work. I don't recall there ever being any complaints about End drain being overpowered prior to ED - it is, after all, a very short-lived effect - but since I6 it has become simply pointless for a Blaster.

I still find DVM both fun and effective, but End drain - which used to be one of his primary tools - is now completely pointless. A combination of single-target Holds, AoE damage and - believe it or not - the Disorient/Knockback from Tunder Clap are now more effective. The poster above who suggested a SC/BL/SC cycle doesn't seem to understand that 1) in the absence of Epic armours a Blaster is lucky to survive the damage that activating one SC draws, never mind and AoE cycle like that and 2) in any situation where you can survive the damage from the enemies you can now kill them faster than you can drain them - once again rendering the End drain useless.

Certainly, at level 50 with all my Epics in place, I can still drain the End from a spawn if I want to (PFF on, run into group and soak up the alpha, PFF off, SC followed by Power Sink) it's 1) hardly worth the effort 2) impossible for a character under level 41. I now find it more effective to use SC for damage, PS for End recovery, Holds for control and just blap away for damage. Effective, but not the character I designed.

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And thats the trick: Taunt AND Provoke . thats the only way I can see a stoney getting reasonable aggro levels.

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It's not exactly a well kept secret, though. A fair number of Stone Tanks have been doing that since at least I3 - I know I was.

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Tanking is about playstyle. You may be a good tank, but most stoners aren't.

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That should probably read "most tanks aren't" going by most talk I've heard in game recently.

Even if there's no free respec, there are rumours of a plan in the works to allow you to earn additional respecs - probably linked to a TF.

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[...] My favourite power is actually Force of Nature. It's like a mini-MoG [...]

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MoG? More like Invulnerability's Unstoppable.

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Yup, just without the status resists. Stacking it with TI (both of them slotted up, naturally) will cap you out at 75% S/L resistance which can lead to very impressive results against mobs dealing those damage types.

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There is no free respec with issue 7 because there are no major changes to powers.

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Well, there's been no announcement either way, just to be really pedantic.

Cryptic have made a rod for their own backs here as people have - predictably - come to expect free respecs as part of a new issues. There's been one with every issue since before EU CoH went live, after all (I3 was the first to offer one).

FWIW, the one that came at around the time of I4 was nominally due to the 1 year anniversary, not because of power changes or I4 itself. I7 is likely to come out pretty near the 2 year anniversary, so I wouldn't necessarily rule it out just yet.

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It should make for a good PBAoE Scranker build - lots of damage from Fire secondary. Ice is a nice primary that's underappreciated. I wouldn't go Ice/Fire myself as I'd miss the control effects the other secondaries offer - but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for you.

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Having done Inv/Fire for 50 levels I would say that Ice/Fire is not only a scranker build but is a truly viable tanker build. If you concentrate on AoEs and leave off the single target attacks until later you can fill up with enough defensive powers to allow yourself to tank with the best of them. Ironically one of your defensive weaknesses is fire, the same as my Inv/Fire who never got Resist Elements.

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Oh, sure. It wasn't meant to denigrate the ability of Ice/Fire to Tank, rather to point out that it will be a very aggressive build since all /Fire offers is damage and lots of it. Of course that also brings the benefit of lots of aggro, but it does leave you with no control options at all other than drawing aggro. Not a bad thing at all, but I like more variety in my control.

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I wonder why I see so many Fire/Fire or Fire/Ice, but it seems that I rarely see Ice/Fire.

Is it that bad? Simply not up to par compared to others?

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Someone may have posted a guide to this build in the past... look for Spad's guide in Guides forum.

It should make for a good PBAoE Scranker build - lots of damage from Fire secondary. Ice is a nice primary that's underappreciated. I wouldn't go Ice/Fire myself as I'd miss the control effects the other secondaries offer - but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work for you.

Following up on my earlier post - afraid I won't be able to make it after all. Looks like I'll have visitors on Wednesday night.