BigBoss Eyepatch

A most intriguing set up. I just wondered what advice you could offer to an Elec / WM tanker?

If the Freedom update somehow helps to bring the cost of things down a little, then I'm all for that. And I've learned now at last how to use the market to buy and sell.

I think the benefits of having more affordable things on the market, far outweigh the cons. If the stuff is more affordable, it sells quicker, demand for it will increase turnover is high and it will encourage others to use the market and contribute to the community, and, it will mean players that are usually strapped for inf can afford to improve their characters more efficiently.

Orange coloured very rare salvage for example, even if there are literally thousands of the item in stock, if you want one, nothing less than a million inf will do. Which is fair enough that I don't grudge, heck, in AE it'll cost you 540 odd tickets. Which is a fair amount of tickets. Its thje recipe costs that crease me with regard to the market. Some, you pick up for a song, others, may as well remove your arm and leg now. There is no consistency, no reasonable middle ground.

That IMHO has to stop.

I only leave my tier 1 on my tanks with one slot for an accuracy common IO. I tried 6 slotting jab, and found even 6 slotted it was most underwhelming. Had a full set of Mako's Bite in it too.

It also only lasts for 10 seconds. So make sure to keep it going.

My pick would be electric armour to go with it. Power Sink is just freaking epic, and of course, you get lightning reflexes to boost recharge.

With tough from the fighting pool, you can hit about 80% smashing and lethal resist. With cardiac you can then take it to just short of 90% and there must be some set bonuses to hardcap you to smashing and lethal.

Stone attacks pack a mean wallop and so will not lack damage, but they need the End to carry them off. Electric Armour can sort that for you. The downside is, Elec has no defence, at all. So you're going to need to spend spend spend, on those sets to get defences. You'll definately need weave from the fighting pool, and you'll also need manouvres too from leadership if possible, and maybe something else from the pool set to squeeze out a bit more defence.

I have an elec / WM tank and an Invul / SS Tanker, and I project and anticipate, when I am finished with my Elec, she will be a bit more powerful over all than my Invul / SS will be and Im not trying to make that happen either. The Invul he is a beast, he is nigh unstoppable himself, and packs some mean damage output, enough to make an SO scrapper take note.

Electric Armour is an expensive power set to roll with to really get that genuine unstoppable feeling, but, I don't think you'll be disapointed with it. The only thing, stay well away from the Devouring Earth, that toxic damage, its really gonna hurt you!

Invulnerability on the other hand, as far as taking physical damage goes its unmatched, its fire, cold, energy, negative and toxic resistances are rather poor though, without any kind of bonuses or sets, you'll maybe squeeze 32% for each of them. Though I did manage to boost my Invul's fire and cold resistance to about 40% thru the sets and Cardiac Alpha's secondary damage resistance effects. I've got about 40% ish, defence for fire and cold, so, using a few lucks and small oranges I can fire farm with him. Not to the level a fire aura tanker can, but I can be passable at it. Plus when the exrement meets the fan... there is always Unstoppable. But I tend to avoid using that as the crash is just nightmarish.

With either, you're going to go through enemies like a bird goes through fresh air. But I would lean toward electric personally, power surge, your final power that is a monster of a crash also, but, its as good as Unstoppable on Invul.

Want Inf pretty quick?

Cash in those alignment merits on a couple of Kinetic Combat recipes. Craft it, hell, don't even bother to craft it sometimes. Stick it on the market for the going rates each. Wait a few hours, sometimes minutes, and pow. 300 million+ straight into your greedy coffers.

I think a freeze time option would be absolutely wicked. You set it off and every enemy within the AOE is hit, while they are frozen in time, they can be punched, and defeated. They are unable to attack, nor can they regenerate health or stamina and their attacks stop recharging completely.

I don't see this as a bad thing, as the free players will only have 2 characters each, its doubtful that the servers will be swamped with an influx.

Probably good in the long run for the games longevity.

Im not saying I agree with the fact Defenders are now unemployed, Im just trying to show depending on how you look at, it can look like Defenders are just back up blasters. However, even on normal content, I think its nice to have somebody there who can plug those little gaps that even the most recipe orientated players could potentially miss.

I think much like everything else in CO... its about finding what sells for big bucks, and what sells pretty well. In plain English, learning the ropes!

A lot of people I know seem to have some kind of "farming..." Whatever, and then just literally pummel their way through AE collecting INF and tickets. They then have the option of using said tickets to buy valuable salvage which they can sell for about 2 million a unit, plus all the inf they earned pummelling their way through AE in the first place, it all amounts to 100% profits no matter how you look at it. May not be mega bucks, but if you have a Tanker or a Brute than can solo a farm on +3 or 4 and x8 and you could potentially earn 30 million inf an hour (ish). I did this morning.

If you can lay your hands on some of the most sought after recipes too, Kinetic Combat, Reactive Armour, Aegis, Obliteration, just to name a few, most of those are attainable either via reward or alignment merits. Or even via tickets in AE for random droppage of recipes.

Truthfully though if you are short of inf another thing you can do till your reserves are levelled off accordingly, is try to turn off super group mode. I personally earn my inf via a combination of AE farming, and tickets usage. Its slow and its monotonous, but, if guys like me didn't do this, there wouldn't be all them lovely recipes that you Wentworth, Black Market shoppers crave so much.

I can seriously see what you mean about this. Defender primaries that buff / heal allies when you get to 50 would seem to become rather unnecessary. Empathy which is designed primarily to heal and buff allies, and you guys can nitpick till you're all blue in the face about that, Emapthy heals things.

So the problem could be this, when you are a level 50 Defender, with Empathy powers, and you're on a team of likewise level 50's who are immune nearly to smashing and lethal from set bonuses, and others who just can't be harmed almost. You must feel, well, what IS my function here?

I have a Force Field / Electric Blast Defender on the way up, and essentially, a Force Field Defender is meant to stop things hitting your team mates by boosting defences to the softcaps almost. There are other clever applications for an FF Defender to be of use, but, it does make you think that the Defender is only going to be needed for those who aren't incarnated out or full to the hilt with set bonuses.

Ah i see. Well, as long as you don't exemplar under level 27, you'll be fine as you'll still have granite.

As for TP and Super Speed, I fully understand. But ideally, if you did it with TP having just one slot for range increase, and two slots on Super Speed. Your super speed will be capped to full then even with ordinary SO's.

I only played my stone stone tank to about level 24 before giving in on it, the speed penalties were getting on my nerves way too much. I have a few observations here, mainly to do with power choices.

Leaving Rock Armour, your main smashing and lethal defence, till level 47? That's just invitation to be punched and stabbed. And only 2 slots, might not be enough. As you are taking Rock Armour, which is a good smashing a lethal defence power, you may as well get it at the start and slot it accordingly.

Stone Skin will not provide you with enough resistance to make it worthwhile in taking it over Rock Armour. And as you won't have tough till level 14 you could be squishy. Although, I do note you're going on the lines of the best defence being a good offence. You've grabbed a few attacks there Favouring secondary over primary.

Im also not so sure personally, about 5 slotting build up either just to get the recharge bonus, when there are other ways you can slot to get a rech bonus. Build up is a 10 second wonder. Ideally I'd triple slot that, with to hit/rech, to hit/rech/end, rech. You want that recharging as fast as poss without losing out on slots.

Hasten is a good pick, and it may be worth taking a slot from build up to triple out hasten with recharge common IO's.

Why take Super Speed as well as Teleport though? I understand why take teleport, when you're in granite form it will help to pop over places quickly. But I would surmise that mostly you'd use teleport on missions, in which case, one slot on TP and make it a boost range enhancement and its done. 2 slots there which could be utilised elsewhere.

Also mud pots 6 slotted with 2 taunt duration IO's. The attack itself combined with gauntlet means that those taunt duration's are not really needed.

Swift I'd have put 3 in it, also stamina I'd look for 3 in that although if you can have 4 to squeeze that bit more out. And if you can, health, 3 again. That combined with rooted will help your regen quite a bit.

Also stone fist, I'd just have one slot in that a single accuracy IO, and put the hectacomb in something else, heavy mallet would be a better contender for that as its your big gun. Bruising is all you need off Stone Fist, once their resistance is cut by that 20% then you can unload with the big shots on them. That's just me personally though, on my Invul / SS I only have one slot in jab for bruising, and no more else, all my main damage comes from 3 places mainly, punch, haymaker and footstomp. With some hurl and KO blow mixed in, I've got no complaints thus far.

Another reason to make a Defender over a Corruptor. Force Fields!!

Made a new Defender last night, FF/Elec, what a vicious combo! Between my single target bubbles and my AOE bubble toggle, I was giving my teammates just over 32% defence! With a few lucks they were literally untouchable almost! I had a Blaster tanking!!

Its sometimes a tough act to follow, being the tank, you can't always be the saviour for your less durable teammates continuously, as the guide says in fairness. Sometimes, you have to think, I'm here to enjoy myself and play the game, I'm not in some... military war exercise here.

But sometimes a team wipe is inevitable and it happens irrespective of what the tank is, or what they are doing. Does it make you bad in your role, or a "failure"? Not in my opinion it doesn't. Unless you are doing something glaringly wrong, like, not taunting, or not running in first something like that. Bad things happen sometimes.

I personally go on 5 rules when playing a tank in a team:
1) I go in first, if anybody else goes in with me and steals my agro I hope they are super enough to take it.
2) Hit an AOE on the group if possible immediately.
3) Make sure your taunt charges quick enough in case you need to grab a stray enemy(ies).
4) Keep a watch on the teams health and if they need a moment for resting, rebuffing, take it.
5) The golden rule, try not to bite off more than your tank can chew.

I think percentage values aside, the reason to make a Defender over a corruptor is the simple fact you get your buffing / debuffing powers sooner rather than later.

And I guess, that makes you more useful to a low to mid level Team of heroes (or villains).

A Defender's main function is to support his/her other hero (or villain) teammates. Fighting, is a secondary priority for sure. Corruptors are there, like most other villain based archetypes it seems, to fight, first and foremost. All the villain Archetypes are there to damage things.

I think you can ask yourself the same question re: tankers and brutes for example. Why make a Tanker, when you can have a Brute that does more damage once fury gets going, and has the same res and def caps? I suppose the answer is similar to Corruptors and Defenders.

I would rather be more useful to my team sooner rather than later, which is why I personally favour Defenders over Corruptors, and Tankers over Brutes.

That's not to say Tankers and Defenders can't fight well unlike their villain equivalents, because they can fight, and fight well.

As a combo on a tanker it works very well. I was thinking I may want another brute at some point, but, I don't see many SS/ Invul brutes going about. Are they just Tankers with a fury bar?

Do they work as a brute would be expected to?

Ive seen a Shield Defence / Super Strength tanker in action and that was a little beast. The damage output was nothing short of extreme, and his resistances gave my Invul / SS a run for his money. Between rage and against all odds, he was far outstripping me in damage, and my Invul / SS hits hard when rage is going.

I do think that Invul / gives you one benefit in as much as the smashing and lethal elements are huge, so softcapping them all the way to 45% while doable is ultimately to my mind dubious, because if you can find a way to tie in some additional regeneration into the build, you can take the damage anyway as you have 90% capped s/l resistance, and what damage you do take you can heal through anyway. Besides you always should carry a few lucks IMO. ;-)

as the other resistances in Invul are a bit on the low side, getting more defence for them is probably a more worthwhile pursuit. Im in a minority more than likely for my thinking that softcapping s/l is not mandatory on an invul tank. So perhaps not best to listen to me just yet till I get more proof.

Sometimes it cant be helped and circumstances conspire in such a way you are the last man (or woman) standing. Many times I've gone up against Nemesis and as we all know they have some nasty AOE's. Sure I can position myself, but if some of the team needs to engage in melee (scrappers and brutes), also Blasters and Dominators who fancy themselves as part time scrappers are the worst for that and will get hit hard by said AOE's.

I have a bind on my tray that says literally "smaller guys get back, you're taking splash damage."

In cases like that I was the last one standing. Then there is also when some of your team mates accidentally pull. There are a lot of occasions where sometimes despite the best of intentions there is only so much aggro even the best of tankers can hold. Sometimes as well you have to account for teammate actions... For example maybe you have a Defender who doesn't buff and heal, just blasts away mindlessly.

So many variables can come into play, but I think mostly tanking comes down to just common sense and making sure you understand the archetype you are playing. But that is an excellent guide for sure.

Im registered now. Woo

http://faces.cohtitan.com/profile/bellicosebumpkin

Well, if I go for rebirth then that's effectively like giving your character an advanced healing factor. Which is nice. So you take something that's hard capped to smashing and lethal damage, and at about 35% resistance to everything else, and add super healing to the mix. That's very potent.

You get something that can withstand merciless punishment and then just heal right through it, top that off with tier 4 cardiac alpha, and you can literally punch and pound your way through it all. The ability to return the punishment with interest.

I am definately liking the idea of rebirth. I must admit, I haven't bothered to cap the smashing and lethal, I don't really see the point at the moment for normal content, as Im hardcapped and I can easily solo smashing and lethal farms on +3 x8 without hassle. Capping smashing and lethal seemed, to me at least, a bit pointless. Although, when the time comes that I'll be forced to do those trials... I might well have to yield and do the capping I've put off. I have tried to up my defence to fire and cold and energy and negative as much as possible.

A few purples and a few greens which is all I carry now by way of insps makes all the difference.

I'm waiting for the Carnival of Shadow's Strongman skin texture to be available in the creator.

I think that'd be an awesome skin for all your disfigured villains.