BunnyAnomaly

To me you definitely want more than 2 SO's worth in Active Defence. 2 puts it at exactly 120 seconds recharge with 120 seconds duration.

Any kind of recharge debuff and you're in mez-town.

You got me, that is EXACTLY what I meant.

I'll just repeat what CMA said. Equal expenditure and a tank is 100 fold tougher than a scrapper. It just depends on if you find that extra toughness necessary.

See those tests where scrappers do RWZ spawns and try to survive? A well built tank laughs through it. Yes, they'll take 10x as long but they are largely indestructible when built right.

There are very few hard numbers on effectiveness because effectiveness is based upon your own personal judgements. Perhaps you find the ability to kills things very very fast as being most effective: choose scrapper. Or if you want to be the person up front that tends to be able to make the calls and decides the speed of the team: choose tank.

There are too many variabilities to say even between powersets which is the best and which is the worst. Again, same reasoning.

Tankers shine on hard content when you lack support. Simple. The tank is the only one who can stand toe to toe with an AV without blinking if you don't have any support. Scrappers can be built to solo some AVs, but soloing Rommie or other 54 AVs is probably going to end in disaster.

If you want the most irreplacable character, pick support. Otherwise, anything can be substituted.

This really won't 'prove' anything. There's way too many factors here that affect speed.

My two cents: Sometimes herding is fast. Really, really fast. Like running an ITF and while you are killing a double spawn of enemies, having an Ice Tank (or two, or equivalent) ninja run/sprint ahead and start a whole room running into your little killing field until you've made a pure mockery of the aggro cap.

Then there's when herding is slow, when you don't move until the last mob is down, and you pull just one at a time while everyone waits.

Which are you trying to test?

I think by far and away the popular sets are going to be Recharge and Damage. There are going to be some examples where other sets are potentially more popular but I really see those as being rare at best.

The key features of the others, Accuracy and Endurance Reduction, typically are taken care of automatically just by wise slotting and additional focus there gives basically nothing back. Especially Accuracy. How many builds are there out there that don't have 95% chance to hit against the vast majority of enemies? Do you want to sacrifice the Alpha slot for the 0.1% of the time you have to hit someone who just used a t9?

Effects such as +Resistance or +Defence are very very minor. Defence sets can expect 3-4% out of the Alpha by taking it. I don't think the amount you "save" devoting sets to defence by taking the Alpha for it is in any way going to justify the lost opportunity of just having oodles more recharge or damage.

For some Scrappers who are already at a huge recharge reduction it might give them a bit more breathing room to relax on sets, but additional recharge is easily eaten up by its own diminishing returns. Taking advantage of this additional breathing room to try and save inf might jsut end up being extremely expensive because tailoring a build in that fashion is going to mean that exemplaring and losing the Alpha slot could be very rough - people might need 2 complete builds if they want to min-max as far as possible. For most though that pick recharge, they are just going to see a fraction of a second taken off some of the key powers and ight do better with damage. Emphasis on "might" do better.

I really see the biggest benefit of this going in the way of people who use minimal IOs already. The strongest returns on Recharge especially occurs when you first begin to increase it.

Can anyone clarify if the Alpha slot works while exemplaring?

This post above raises a very good point. Will the Alpha slot act like a set bonuses (improved healing) which does not influence regeneration rates at all, or will it at like an additional enhancement slot in all of your powers, in which case it will?

I was under the impression it is exactly like adding that "Alpha Enhancement" to every single power individually.

The reason I ask for clarification is that the previous point about Healing Flames/Fire Tanks is only relevant to global set bonuses (which I might test later today on Build 2 of my /Fire Brute).

I don't see the benefit of using caltrops when they are in this nice little clump in the center of all your other debuffs, being taunted and ready to be nuked.

Elec Melee is accompanied by surprisingly smashy sounds too.

I'll go through every power, one by one, and give my thoughts.

First of all, I am going to assume from yoru sets that you have built for +hp. I don't know if that's especially wise, as you have ended up with a build that doesn't actually excel in any area.

1. HPT. If you were building for HP, *THIS* is where you should be putting heal enhances. In fact, this power simply must have it. The return is just too much to pass on. Ideally, it should have 2 resist, 2 heal.

1. Nimble Slash. 40% damage enhancement makes this attack pretty useless. Disorient bonus is highly dubious for value.

2. Power Slice. The Regen you have in there from Pounding Slugfest nets you less than 1 hp/s.

4. Mind Over Body. This is an awful lot of slot just to get 2.5% melee defence when basically you have no real defence to speak of.

6. Fast Healing. No heal slots? Fast Healing should have approximately 2 IOs worth of heals.

8. Rise to the Challenge. Too many endurance discounts. Take out one and you only lose 0.01/second. Take out two and you've lost a measly 0.05/second. This is the story for a number of other choices you've made. 1 endurance is enough - there is diminishing returns in the formula for endurance reduction.

10. Indomitable Will. See RTTC for why you have too many endurance reductions here.

12. Ablating Strike. A good set here. Why did you put this here but a confused mess into Power Slice/Nimble Slash? Also, six slots give you 2.5% resist which isn't a good investment. 5 should be enough.

14. Quick Recovery. Put 2 IOs worth of End. Mod here. The chance for end gives 1 per 10 seconds and another endurance modification would give you over double the returns, and be perfectly reliable too.

16. Typhoons Edge. A great set for Willpower. Max HP and Energy Defence.

18. Heightened Senses. The set bonuses are bad. LOTG gives a LOT better stuff in there. 5 slots is a lot to put here too. Lastly, you have put in a straight endurance reduction when you could have put in a shared IO (Def/Rech) and gotten some better returns.

20. Blinding Feint. If you aren't slotting your attacks for damage you shouldn't be taking them. Unless you intend them to be set mules. Which... none of these are.

22. Recall Friend. I'd probably use an Endurance Reduction as it costs 15 each time.

24. Teleport. Way overslotted.

26. Resurgance. You only need a rez on such a timer if you intend to use this current incarnation of the build which is extremely poor. You really shouldn't even come close to dying on a WP tank. Skip this once you sort out the build.

28. Taunt. A huge opportunity to put some of the best IOs in the whole game here for set bonuses. Otherwise, not bad for just 1 slot.

30. Vengeful Slice. Your search for max hp I think is once again the wrong direction.

32. Strength of Will. Endurance Reduction reduces it from 2.6 to 1.83. Big ????? here about what you are doing.

35. Sweeping Strike. The second good use of sets. Eradication is great for Willpower.

38. One Thousand Cuts. Why? Why do you just randomly assign sets? It's another PBAOE so you could be putting in Eradication, as an example, and instead you just do something totally different? Scirocco's Devish would be good for positional defence, but that isn't Willpower, so it's a wasted choice and another example where I suspect you are just randomly putting in sets anywhere for no real build goals.

41. Conserve Power. Not only one of the worst powers in the whole game but you have dedicated 3 slots to it. Get rid of this!

44. Physical Perfection. So you slot Endurance Mods into this but not Quick Recovery. You also put Healing into this but not Fast Recovery. Click the "Info" tab in Mid's and see why this is a terrible idea.

47. Energy Torrent. The sets for this type of attack aren't especially good for Willpower so choosing the one that gives 6.25% recharge is wise.

49. Laser beam Eyes. Underslotted with poor set bonuses.

I don't know why you chose 90% of your sets. You should look at what is important first, make sure what your powers do is actually what they will do, and then take sets to accomplish the objectives of your build without crippling it by making your actual powers useless.

Some tips:

Melee attacks can take Kinetic Combat. A very expensive set but just spectacular. HP and Smashing/Lethal defence.

PBAOE attacks can take Eradication. You used it at random. HP and Energy Defence.

You don't need every attack from your secondary. Especially not when you don't have the slots to make them useful. Pick and choose what you want and save choices for better things.

When i19 comes, make sure you 2 slot Health & Fast Healing with a good compliment of healing. Make sure you slot Stamina & Quick Recovery with a good compliment of endurance modification.

You do NOT need more than 1 endurance reducer in your toggles.

If you want to tank successfully you must choose Tough & Weave from the fighting pool and slot them appropriately. Without that you will find yourself reliant on your team supporting you. Can you tank? Sort of. But not without assistance.

Well the first attack was at 95% chance to hit and the second was only 75% chance to hit. I'm going to guess that this is why.

Likewise, your third attack didn't hit because the attack before it was at 75% chance.

I bet if you chained two 95% accurate attacks streakbreaker will catch the second one.