abnormal_joe

Primaries you will be looking at Shield (AAO)and Fire (aura,fe,burn).
Secondaries I would suggest Superstrength (rage) Dark Melee (Soul Drain) or Dual Blades(combos and Blinding Feint).
As mentioned Pyre mastery is the clear choice for epic.

+1 on the idea of gauntlet debuffing effectct and debuff resists. Would give the AT something truly unique and highly desirable without having a balance breaking effect on solo performance.

I'm well aware of the potency of the buff and the numeric increase to damage for the team it provides. As you might be able to tell from my sig.
Demanding a buff or a playstyle from a pug invite is another thing entirely. as mentioned by others this game is not so difficult that it requires bleeding edge performance for anything resembling success.
For me and many others relaxing and enjoying the game are worth more than powergaming. And frankly if you "need" the buff there is more of a problem with your build than the kin's proficiency.

The difficulty is that there are many reason to pick a powerset, when someone recruits me to a team they may make assumptions but I play my toon for my enjoyment not theirs.
For instance I know of several ill/kins who are built to recharge PA as fast as possible and to feed phant with a steady stream of siphon power. Would you blame them for not having speed boost or the team captian who recruited them without asking if they were set up as a team buffer?
There is not a single "right way" to build and play a toon in this game. The main thing that keeps me here is the ability to blur class lines and suceed with nonstandard approaches.
Frankly I have more patience for nonstandard build/playstyle than I do with these stupid expectations of what others should be doing for your benefit.
It's a good bit of the reason why I play a lot of tanks and only rarely play a buffer these days. If someone wants to gripe me out for not granting them perma god mode they need not kick me, I will save them the trouble by quittting and adding a concise note so as not to inconvenience them again.
You think a SBing kin is so bloody vital for the team you go play one.

Johnny's arguments are weak:mediocre damage.

His metaphors are laughable:rodeo clown

He thinks all arguments are his personal territory:aggro monkey.

OMG Johnny is a tanker incarnate!!11!!1, which means that he is Statesman, which means that all his posts are a Nemesis style plot to create an mass exodus to his new project. em/faint

Welcome to Johnnyland folks don't bother looking at "real numbers" he contols the world in which you play.

As does mine.

Pot calls kettle black, film at 11.

The tank in me thinks the person who picks a potent buff set like kin and neglects to take or apply the teamate buffs is a moron.

The kin in me thinks anyone who picks me to fill the holes in their build, and then demands said buff to optomize their playtime is worse.

FWIW I pugged a kin/rad to 50 and my stone/fire tank is a 46.
I know a little something about both sides.

I have 40 odd levels of experience with both sets although on different tanks.
IMHO there are two keys.
1.frankenslot dark regen for acc/rech/end the heal portion is plenty strong unslotted. and remember the combo has two great heals use the one you need don't just spam both.
2.people skip the fear and it is there for a reason. coupled with the fear from the secondary or with the fears from the presence pool it is potent mitigation. it completely shuts off incoming fire to the entire team until they take damage and even then it greatly limits their ability to return fire. Pseudo resists for the entire team basically.

Dark armor has holes(as all sets do)but it shines where most other sets struggle the most. Learn to use the tools you do have and you should enjoy it greatly.

[ QUOTE ]


Now that I think about it, I think we could charge serious admission if J_B stood in front of Positron in Steel with a staff in his hand and just kept saying "Let My Tankers Go" over and over again.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heck I'll pay for it so long as he has to leave this forum to do it.

I'm a bit fond of it's ability to provide pseudo-resists to the entire team, and the fact that it works fine with nary a slot spent.

Dominator forum is over there --->

Seeing we're in the tank forum and all.....

I think the AT is going to see a substantial rise in demand. Folks in the forums that bother to read and plan builds can probably fill the roll with scrappers, brutes, MMs, insp whatever. But we are a very tiny miniority. Pugdom does not have the patience for such things and will keep screaming "we need a tank!!1!!11" just like they keep insisting on getting a "healer" whatever that is, despite 5 years of proof that practically any def/con/corr/mm will do just as well.

You don't like it, we get it.
If your looking for an angry mob to follow you out the door, it looks like this ain't your crowd.

Possibly add a "looking for crossover" flag to the lft drop menu? Readable to the opposing faction.

Great idea all around. While I agree sponsorship is core to this, supergroups and vgs should not be part of the mechanic. Too many team leaders either are non affiliated, do not have sg rank, or do not have a base.
Training, selling and teleportation could in most cases be routed through oroborous as the zone exists on both sides. This would enforce a minimum level of 25 however.

Tornado should negate MoG correct?

Also I understad -speed is ineffective, and PTOD negate holds, would the same hold true for immobs?

regards
joe

Extremely well thought out and written.

regards
joe

Go one step further with the idea, when you see adds and a faceplant looks likely charge and tank for her even if you are on a blaster. It looks so very noble dying for a lost cause.

regards
joe

Just be careful with the machine switchin trick, yours truly has officialy lost the good machine.
I won't complain to much though we have an assortment of duos spread across three servers. she has 2 50s plus a ton of 30s and we never pled.
You make good points re:costume creator, badge huntin, and min/maxxing as well.

regards
joe

Just to play devils advocate I use it on my em/nin stalker. During the early levels before I had real defenses I could use it to whittle down the "extra" spawn in a room and thus avoid a face plant. tping into a placate is just unfair anway.

Oh btw nice guide.

Did this at level 46 set on invincible with.

1.Stone/mace tank
2.katana/regen scrapper
3.kinetics/radiation defender<----me

It required spamming transfusion to lower the regen rate and the tank was smart enough to pull infernal back to the doorway withought aggroing the portal.
3 man avs are definitly doable but I think they require decent builds and a team that is used to working together to pull off.

As the proud owner of a post ed level 50 ar/dev who has been thru 5 respecs I have a few things to add to this discussion.

1.AR/DEV is for concept,style,and role play NOT power gaming. Min maxxing arguments have little application to this combo.

2.This build in my experience is perfectly viable for sub rugged pve particularly solo.

3.Kudos to the op for writing a fun guide on a combo that remains popular despite itself.

4.To those reading this guide looking for advice just keep in mind that there at least four "right" ways to build ar/dev all pretty much equal in effectiveness, always keep a respec in reserve and find what fits you.

That is all I have to say on the subject.

just wanted to show some love for a well thought out guide.

I have to agree with your take on mm my bots/dark has no attacks from his primary I figure I have enough to do laying down debuffs,keeping the pets on a short leash and positioning for heals. With all that going on who has time to fire a weany little plasma rifle?

This is just a personal observation but I find players who invest heavily in thier primaries to be a bit more team oriented. Of course there are limits no pure healers or taunt bots for me thanks. I just find the team flows smoother if for example a controller focuses on locking down the mobs first and buffing debuffing second. A tank with well built shields is a better front line than a skranker. Just my two cents.
I as well applaud a well written guide. I tried to do something similar just for the defender powersets and getting it that short and concise proved to be beyond me. Kudos, lets hope it is read and adopted.