BigBoss Eyepatch

That pun was pretty cool.

I don't think Kick and Boxing are that bad, certainly I've found a use for kick on my invul / SS tankers.

Kick them, watch them going flying, follow it up with some hurl for that extra crunchiness.

Boxing on a MA scrapper is good too, nice to have an additional punch that is actually better than brawl.

I have two Invul / SS tankers now, one villain side and one hero side. And I can say they are decent farmers in AE, yes, you will get through it much faster on a brute, but a Tanker is a fine substitute for farming. My Hero SS tanker, has got enough fire and cold Defence that he can make a passable attempt at a fire farm now as well with enough greens with him. But smashing and lethal farms are where he's best.

While the others are right it is an uphill slog to get through it on a tanker, or can feel like it, you will get through it, its not THAT bad. The inspirations you'll need;

Reds (increase damage as far as possible)
Blues (you need to keep swinging)
Greens
maybe purples for when you get a defence crisis, believe me it can happen.

Make sure Dull Pain is charging quickly, even if you are not taking that much damage, use it, every time it pops to up out your hitpoints.

Perma Rage, this is essential, as long as you can keep this running constant you won't have a defence crash, the 10 seconds of next to no damage still stands though... but this combined with your red insps, you should be able to bludgeon your way through.

And footstomp, this needs to be charging fast when you are knocking mobs on their backside, they aren't trying to knock you on yours. You may also need some set bonuses from various places to increase your defence, but its not mandatory in the strictest sense if you carry a few purples in, but if you run out of purples at a bad time...

Which type does the most damage then? Im guessing the mindless ones!

I think a Tanker can be split into two categories.

Combat Tankers: Tankers that focus on fighting and defeating enemies while enjoying massive resistances. Like heavy duty scrappers.

and

Tanking Tankers: Tankers that pretty much follow their name sake, and focus on rounding enemies and distracting them etc.

Some builds can fill both sub-categories, others only fit in one. From what I can see, if you are building a Tanker for combat chiefly then might of the tanker is going to be ok for that given the bonuses. But IMO once you got the 4th bonus you got all the ones worth having, 5 and 6 don't seem worth it.

I doubt I'll use this set on any of my current tankers, because most of those bonuses aren't going to really help me.

I think it really depends what situation you are in. Having tried both powersets extensively, I have to say, I lean towards Invulnerability for generally being more durable of the two.

hardcapped resistances to smashing and lethal when you add tough from the fighting pool into the mix. You don't even need to slot tough to get it up to the cap, just one resistance enhancement will do it close enough (on a tanker at least).

If you go cardiac you won't need tough at all unless you exemplar or malefactor.

I think the reason I prefer Invul over Willpower is, its possible, via IO sets to get larger regen on an Invul, ok, so it will never compare to willpower, but you are starting from a higher plateau anyway. Plus, you have got resistances to the exotic damage types. Not much, I guess most invul tanks have about 35% (with cardiac alpha) as a ball park figure to energy, negative, fire, and cold. Its not much, but its about 35% more than willpower has sans strength of will.

Invul just feels tougher to me. I'll say one thing, strength of will IMHO beats unstoppable as a tier 9. The penalties are much lighter on it.

Currently got a Robotics / Traps leveling up.

Just wondering what the actions of your pet are when you have something different as a primary.

For example, zombies and robots blow instantly, what do pets with a brain of their own do when you trigger the detonator?

That's the new character creation tool for after I21 lands? I think, call me old fashioned I rather the one we have now.

The only terrible debuff in an AV fight, is the one you don't use friend. That tiny percentage can be the difference between success and fail.

I actually found an AE farm ages ago, and it was the inspiration for my wanting to make an AE arc myself. It was absolutely hilarious!

The map was supposed to be the inside of a barn, (abandoned warehouse) and of course you had the "silage tanks". (Ambush triggers)

The ambushes and mobs were fire enemies, naturally, but they were all decked out like farmers. The mission introduction was hysterical and the contact looked like a real yokel. He said about how the competition is destroying his livlihood and that big farm, you must destroy it.

It was blatently a farm, but they had actually put some real effort into at least trying to make it funny.

I wish I could remember its name, or the handle for the chap or chapess that made it.

Im gonna chip in with NuclearMedicine's idea but instead of point of contact... I'd say, "Focal point" which means the same thing and sounds better than "meat shield"

As a Tanker your job is make sure the enemies focus on you not the teammates.

I got 80% smashing and lethal resistance on my Electric Tanker.
something like 55 or 56% resistance to fire and cold.
Energy is 90%
Negative is at about 40% ish I think.
Psionics at about just over 50%

The only thing she is missing really is defences I got about 25% to most, and usually I carry a clutch of purples if I am getting hit too much I just eat purples, even a small purple is worth 7.5% 3 purples and Im untouchable. But given the cost of trying to "softcap" and the fact I don't really use her to be a tank, even though she is a Tanker, I'm happy with her as is. I didn't take lightning field so have no aggro aura, but sometimes even gauntlet is enough to get mob attention.

So I like Electric.

Invulnerabilty is just a beast and is probably the preferred tanking durability set. Plus you have the insanely risky but insanely good unstoppable to fall back on in a crisis, make those 3 minutes count!

Stone I would personally not use, too many cons and not enough pros with it. In my personal opinion. I leveled a stone tank to 25 and it was a nightmare every step of the way.

I have to say hands down this thread is a homage to the Defenders of the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, their powers simply put... make the impossible, possible.

I sampled most Defender primaries, and I have settled on my two personal favourites, Empathy and Force Fields.

I love Empathy because its great, it can counteract a variety of concerns to any super-team. It can counteract damage, it can counteract holds, sleeps, immobilisations, it can restore you to full from unconsciousness. It can give you enough stamina to turn the whole group into a player controlled wrecking ball. It can take one character and supercharge them to the hilt. Its just an awesome set, and offers good fire and forget potential. Once the team are all buffed nothing to stop you having some fun is there? I paired it with Energy Blasts for a bit of knockback, after all, can be quite funny to watch an enemy go flying in the opposite direction, it also packs a decent wallop and fit the theme of my character quite well.

I love Forcefields because its the ultimate "fire and forget" set, you make sure all deflection and insulation shields are up, your dispersion bubble is running and if you got it, manouvres, mostly you're going to be seeint softcapped defences which means you get free reign to open fire, and if you pair forcefields with electrical blasts that = stamina sucking for the enemies, so their big attacks that may have hit, they can't do now, mwa ha ha.

There are my two main Defender and I love them both so much. I enjoy playing my Defenders as much or even more so than playing a tanker.

Defenders 4 life!

Thanks for the reply Zamuel, some good pointers. I spent all last night in testing on the mission and trying to figure out what to do with it.

I think I may change the contact completely so that its not my villain in human guise, but somebody else entirely maybe a reporter for the Rogue Isles Protector who using clues managed to piece together how Kinuke was murdered, and has created a simulation for villains to see just how it was done in actuality. I may try that, test it, and see.

For the first mission, I agree totally, it was a defeat all, but I changed it last night, so that defeating everything is not a requirement for completion. However in the final room where the computer is, defeating all the enemies in there is compulsory, after all, if you don't, they'll know what changes you made to the computer and the hero's mediporter. There is also a little ambush after you've hacked the computer as well but again, if you've already killed everything in the room first, then fighting the ambush is not mandatory. So mission 1 affords flexibility, if a player wants to crush everything in sight, they can do. If not, just ghost to the last room, do the deed, and kill the witnesses.

The second mission had a revamp, obviously you've just cut off the hero's mediporter, and from the computer you got his general location as well. So now you have to draw out the hero, basically there are a number of things to do here, in this mission it has a lot of mission objectives but are easy enough to complete. The building is swarming with PPD.

The main objective is to plant 5 explosives on key structural points to devastate the building (in testing one key structural point was a couch LOL). Then you have to plant a virus in the police mainframe. You also have to fight a "token" boss at the end as you "interrogate" him for information on the hero. There is also a kidnapping that you can do as well if you wanted to, but that is 100% optional.

The Third mission sees the showdown between you and the hero (Elite Boss) in an abandoned warehouse. This is strictly a you vs them... However I was thinking to have the final battle in the open, rather than inside. When you get the hero down to 50% health he calls for some longbow reinforcements to back him up. When you've worn them down and took out the hero, that's it, mission accomplished.

When Im ready to expose it, I shall post the arc number here for you all to see. For a total novice to making arcs, I don't think this plays too bad.

Hey guys, I decided I was going to make an AE chain of mishes. Its not published yet...

Recently, I deleted one of my blueside Defenders (Kinuke = Kinetics / Rad) to make space to make an Ice / Ice blaster as I ran out of character slots, so got the idea, what if I made an AE mish, where one of my main villains (Apex Penumbra = Invul / SS / Tanker) killed off my hero? This I thought would be an epic homage to a guy who served me well through praet.

The story is told from the point of view that YOU are in the shoes of Apex Penumbra carrying out the heinous act, what he did to find and beat Kinuke. Now Ive played mishes where you take on the role of somebody else, its kind of hard to describe I think.

Firstly you talk to the contact which is Apex Penumbra in his human form using his alias name and he says to you that you're here to see how the supervillain killed the hero in a recreative simulation designed to match what really happened identically etc... and he then when you accept tells you what you have to do.

The first mission involves you breaking into a hero base in paragon city which has 3 levels filled with longbow, your mission objectives are to defeat all the longbow and then to hack the computer to find Kinuke's location. After hacking the computer you will then find yourself ambushed by a longbow team and you can either exit there and then or, fight and beat the ambush. I was going to make you run back to the exit to complete, but decided against that going for the exit button.


The second mission, you need to go into a building in Paragon city and plant some bombs, in order to cause a ruckus to draw Kinuke to the area. When you arrive at the area, you find that it seems the 5th Column had designs on that building too. Too bad! Crush any 5th Column that get in your way (optional), plant the 3 bombs and then take out the council team leader to complete the mission.


The third mission, you take on Kinuke. After the assault on the base, followed by the destruction of that building, Kinuke is now hot on your heels, or so he thinks! You have both crashed into a storage warehouse on the docks, and you fight, the only objective here is "Kill Kinuke" Once you have defeated Kinuke in the mano e mano fight that's it, complete.




So that's a very brief synopsis of how the chain goes. I just wondered how I could improve it maybe make it feel more villainous any suggestions before I publish?

I personally have no problem with somebody referring to my Empathy Defender as a "healer" that is what he does, he restores hit points. Though, I wouldn't say the title fits well on his head.

Ive never been told by anybody to heal more, generally if health bars are not moving down seriously much, I go into blaster more and throw some shots into the ring myself otherwise what am I gonna do? Float there waiting for somebody to get hurt?

If somebody is on, or at, nearly full health then I am better served assisting in the defeat of the remaining enemies.

I had a tel this morning while I was just editing my costume on my Emp / Energy thought Id share with you...

"Hi, im making a team, are u a healer, if so wud u like 2 join us?"

I kid you not! That is a ver batum of what I had, the moment I saw it, I thought of this thread.

IT HAS BEGUN!

Tankers win their fights via war of attrition. What would kill another AT quite readily often doesn't even tickle a tanker. If a Tanker had the same damage as say a Scrapper, and kept their top of the rungs durability, well, why play a brute, stalker, or scrapper ever again?

I do wish when solo they had a damage uplift like a Defender does, but, they have bruising which is almost as good.

Say for example an elite boss, where a scrapper would kill it quicker, they'd maybe need to use more insps along the way for example, where a tanker may not even need one insp. But you'll be trading punches for longer.

No no no. Don't get rid of personal forcefield. If your ninjas die, and even with forcefields they will sometimes especially if there a load, PFF is your best friend to escape unscathed and resummon. I would strongly urge not respecing out of that. I have it on my Defender and believe me, its a great standby.

Force Bolt you must take,

Deflection and Insulation shields are essential

Detention field is handy to have, it takes the biggest threat out of the equation for 30 seconds.

Dispersion Bubble again I'd say is vital and works with Deflection and Insulation shields

Repulsion Field I'd skip personally, some may disagree though. It repels enemies that come near to you, but it costs you endurance for each one, and once you get Force Bubble at 38, this power typically becomes pointless as they can't get to you anyway while that is up.

Repulsion Bomb I'd take personally, however on an MM it could be skipped possibly if you were thinking of powers elsewhere, because its a knockdown and while the baddies are getting back up, they can't hit you, or your ninjas. But be careful as its an aggro magnet of an attack. So you'll need to let your ninjas get off a few hits first. I'd take it though just in case things break through the lines to you.

Force Bubble keeps enemies away from you and stops them getting to melee range. If they try to push through they usually get knocked down, and the beauty is,

Snap Shot is skipable on the Ninja's side of things. Doesn't do enough damage to make it a worthwhile take at all.

Your other powers are takers.

Think of this for example as a strategy, you fire off fistful of arrows aggro all the mobs in front to you, while your ninjas, already bubbled are set on passive. You run in, turn on PFF you are now untouchable, nows a good time to tell the ninjas to attack. While the mobs focus on you, when the mobs turn away drop PFF so your dispersion bubble can work again.

How many people do you need before you can begin a lambda or baf trial?

Id say if you are going with ninjas, forcefields is the gold standard on them. and they are useful when teaming too.

Trick arrow is an option as well if you were wishing for a synergy of kinds, but, it might not be an easy ride, and your flash arrove would be your best friend in the whole world.