BrandX

I'm going to suggest Electric Melee/Invulnerable.

Here's why!

Regen will likely spoil you! That's right! It's really not that hard of a set to get behind, however Quick Recovry gets alot of people complaining about End Issues when they try other sets.

It's not that other sets are THAT BAD! It's that Regen is just THAT AWESOME, when it comes to End usage.

Electric Melee, because while it may not be the best for Single Targets, it's just a real fun set.

If you'd rather have a good mix, then Fire/Inv would be my next suggestion.

I'm still trying to figure out what's the string of attacks one uses to obtain that DPS with Energy Melee.

I've yet to figure it out. I keep hoping that MAYBE if I can figure it out Energy Melee might not feel that bad, but as is, I hate playing Energy Melee now. :/ It feels way to slow now.

...is it worth getting this power, if you can hit the HP cap without it?

The added Resists would be nice of course, but it's not that much resist to begin with.

Always grabbed it on my Tankers/Brute/Scrapper Willpowers, but not sure if it's worth it on a Stalker.

Reading the debat here I can't help but think it's come down to, Game Mechanics VS Imagination. Which leads to, I Want To Win VS You Want To Win.

First off even the game says NPCs can do stuff that they can't do with Game Mechanics.

Synapse for instance can run faster than 99mph.

Those who argue using Game Mechanics likely don't always use game mechanics anyways for RP.

And using Game Mechanics is kinda broken to solve thing because quite frankly, game mechanics are broken. Face it...I can have made plenty a AV/GM soloing toons that when they go into a PvP zone everything magically changes.

I just beat [insert in game cannon character here] yet I can't beat this [insert player here] when he can't go a single mission without dying.

And for all those Game Mechanic, I've seen more than a couple fight in the D. A place where it says in cannon, can't be fought in. You can't use most of your powers in it, without being kicked out.

Game Mechanic wise, you really couldn't even go long term RP, as the story isnt setup to repeat content.

Handwaving is needed.

This is why I don't tend to RP in the D. Not because of god-modders or any such thing. But with your SG/Coaltion you tend to know what's acceptable. Meet strangers to RP with and it can turn into "Waaaa...you can't do that."

My favorite example...game mechanic wise, a Blaster can be made to never be fully mezzed.

/em I hold you in a block of ice

/em I shoot you anyways AGAIN and AGAIN

/em I try to [insert mez here] you

/em I'm willpower and have the ability to resist all mez's including teleport, and even with your end drain, I have so much +END I cant be drained easily! Whoooot!

See...RP is give and take without hard numbers to rely on like you do in Pen and Paper. That's something a lot of people don't understand or don't want to accept.

Just a thought here...you can tell me if it seems balanced or not, Umbral.

First Rooted.

Keep it a toggle, get rid of the -SPD, and make it like Grounded. You leave the ground, you lose it's bonuses (Regen and Mez). this was someone elses suggestion, and I personally liked it.

Using Tanker values with 3 lvl 50 SOs:

Stone Armor = 25% S/L Defense
Stone Skin = 15.6% S/L Resist
Brimstone Armor = 39% F/C Resist
Crystal Armor = 25% E/N Defense
Minerals = 39% Psi Defense

Now, we'll take Stone Skin out of the picture, due to it always working while in Granite. We'll also leave Minerals alone, as it's never been useable with Granite.

So we give Stone Armor, Brimstone Armor and Crystal Armor a 25% Increase in effectiveness (now I'm using the slotted values with my math, so maybe it would be more or maybe it would be less but anways) it gets the following numbers...

Stone Armor = 31.25% Defense
Brimstone Armor = 48.75% Resist
Crystal Armor = 31.25 Defense

Now as it currently stands:

Granite Armor = 31.2% S/L/F/C/E/N Defense & 78% Resist All

And we turn it into a toggle that provides the following:

Granite Armor = 15% S/L/E/N Defense, 25% S/L/F/C Resist & 10% E/N Resist - UNSLOTTED

-SPD, -RCH, -JUMP, -FLY Penalties (get rid of the -DMG penalty or if needed keep it for balance, I'm not sure here...I just know I never saw how this one fit themetically myself).

Increase the End cost (this is me throwing out idea, if it sounds like a good idea, I'm sure someone can think of better numbers here) to 1.04/s with a 120 Second Recharge (4x the End Cost and 12x the Recharge Time).

Now the difference here would be Granite can now STACK with all the other Armors.

Now with just non Tier-9 toggles in use, they're not to bad off...and really not that far off from softcapping if they go the IO route. They'd be just over /SR level Defense with S/L/E/N Defense while still having Stone Skin to give a bit of S/L Resist.

They could of course take Tough/Weave, but that would also increase their END usage.

If they watch their end use, people could probably run all their toggles at once, but it would slow down their attacking for sure. Not to mention they're likely to have Mud Pots and Rooted going (maybe even increase it's end cost to .26/s to match the armors).

And if they let Granite drop, they have a pretty decent wait period baring any +RCH slotting. Seeing as how it's a toggle, and they'd likely want to go 3 Defense/3 Resist SOs, it's not likely to see much of that.

So with all toggles going (slotted) that would be...

Over 45% Defense to S/L/E/N, 54.6% S/L Resist, 78% F/C Resist, 15% E/N Resist (roughly after slotting), & 39% Psi Defense.

Grabbing Tough/Weave to stack with all that gives 78% Resist and EVEN MORE DEFENSE if wanted.

Now added in the Regen of Rooted and healing of Earth's Embrace and you still have a quite the sturdy tanker (S/L Resist King would go to INV now)...more end usage, but Granite could be saved for when it's really needed.

And again, not the numbers person, I'm trying to give it a good idea of where to go, adding in Tough/Weave like the other's do...I think the numbers become comparable to the other sets (you'll tell me if I'm totally wrong).

I mean with this, I'd actually play Granite with it's -SPD (this is really it's biggest killer for me...the -SPD)

I'm just curious, when people say Black Scorpion is easy, are you fighting him as an EB or as an AV? Team or Solo?

Okay let me say I love the ITF. It's my favorite TF for many reasons. But it's the most popular for these reasons...

1) All missions take place in 1 zone that isn't that big.
2) Lvl 35-50 TF, so you have alot of team member options, and do good.
3) Co-Op, no matter what side you're on, you can get in.
4) It can be sped through if wanted
5) alternatively, if can be a bit more kill all, and get great xp fast!
6) It's hack and slash! I play this TF, I feel like I'm playing Diablo 2 again! I love that about this TF. I go in and click away (no matter what AT) and I feel the same as I did playing D2.
7) 1 50, a bunch of lower levels, chance at purple drops!
8) Even killing all with a pretty weak team, usually just means (there are exceptions) 2 hours of play.
9) Many different ways to go about taking out the end AV. I can have one team rush Rom and do just fine, another needs to pull to the grass to avoid ambushes, the other might be better off taking out the nictus from range first.

I've yet to tire of this TF, and I've done this TF A LOT!

I don't know...most my villains tend to side with Sciricco, because well, he has heroic tendencies.

But there's an easy way to side with Mako.

When picking Patrons, I let my Elec/Therm choose Mako, solelyl on the reason it says, "Mako would like to see you..."

So, I had my Elec/Thermal pick Mako and go "Dammit, why's he want to talk with ME?!"

She's not a cold blooded killer. And I was looking for a reason to run his arc.