BunnyAnomaly

I'd say that this thread is filled with perfect advice Tanks at the start are squishy as anything and really can't be relied upon to absorb any alpha whatsoever in a decent team. They just don't have the hp, the resistance or the defence for it. At the early pre SO levels it's really a team's responsibility to take a bit of aggro each at the start and get as much control and debuff out there as possible before the tank takes over. If the tank just wades in he falls flat on his face. Possibly if the tank invests all his slots into his primary and then has full DOs in them so it is the equivalent of SOs he might survive but that is, to me, extremely suboptimal.

At 22, the tank's survivability increases exponentially. Then it's about time that a decently built tank can take full aggro and hold it comfortably long enough without eating dirt.

For me, the magic mark on all my builds seems to be 40 or so. At 40 there's a full attack chain with all the goodies, there's all the defences slotted completely, and there's tough and weave. At 40 your Tank becomes a God/Goddess and the rest of the team are just there as filler! ahem Wade through your +4 TF @ 8 players and watch your enemies' feeble and embarassing attempts at bringing you down! *sighs whistfully*

The road to getting there can be rough at the start.

Police State.

Your datalink doesn't work!

I have a SS/Fire brute at 50 and honestly I just don't like playing her much anymore The heal is meant to be nice but it's no good if you get your recharge debuffed, and without defence that will happen freely. There's just too many ways that the set can fall apart, and the damage, sure... it's nice.. but it's not *that* nice.

Ever since I started to play Tanks I've decided that Brutes just don't cut it for me, and so having the feeblest defence Brute available makes me

I believe the story is "Extremely Annoying Ringtone". When you enter as a villain the mission has a few glitches.

Firstly, the bosses for the American Axis are called (null).

Secondly, the Original Ms Thistle has a spelling mistake in her bio!

Thirdly, not a bug, but just general feedback. This is a HUGE mission that takes a long, long time to finish. Is there any chance something can be done to balance it out? You have to do a rescue, bring to an object (that part is fast), and then fight off a half dozen Ms Thistles, all between fighting American Axis and Rularuu (*shudder*). For just one tip it's probably better to abandon and do a different one.

It was a LOT of fun though

WP holds aggro fine if you play right. Invulnerability has incredible survivability so just because it has one 'hole' it is nothing to be dumping a whole set for. Well... maybe it is, but that's your choice I suppose!

As for your build, the first thing i see is manouvers, and it needs endurance or it needs to be gone.

Dark Regen needs more endurance modification too.

So does Whirling Axe.

Okay I sense a theme with that. The bonuses you get overall are very nice but I see yourself just gasping for breath very quickly.

What a load of rubbish.

Taunt as you jump in. Start using AOE attacks. Nothing is peeling off you. If you are then the tank isn't taunting or is over the cap.

Yes the taunt is bad but every set has its own issues. Try using some attacks and you'll discover they'll never leave you for someone else. Solved!

I think the HP buff is overstated. How many tanks exceed the HP tank? WP requires (to me) an overexpenditure on IOs to get there (they are better used in defence/recharge) and I'm not sure the upper cap for Inv when it has it's HP buff up.

Sure, it's nice, but only nice for a very small fraction of the community.

The bruising effect is great.

Tanks already were fantastic without these changes

Solo: no ammo selected so you get k/b

Teams: Fire for the damage unless there's specific resistance weaknesses

I don't really rate the extra effects very highly. Your buff/debuff trumps it.

I must say I wasn't especially impressed by this on my /DP defender.

Trollina is a homage in a sense to She-Hulk

If you're not limited by concept, I would be grabbing Fireball. mmm...

I find myself doubting the advice of someone who suggests that a Tank should open with a knockback from stealth.

Oh, a little more on topic to your actual original question:

No-one can really tell you how much you will 'suffer' if you choose Super Strength as your primary, because although it is pretty bad having 0 AOE capabilities until 39 or 40th level (Footstomp needs slots else it's rubbish), it is really a factor of how much patience you have and how much you want the end result.

From what I gather, you might be happier ending up with Super Strength as your secondary because most of your issues with it are this very same lack of AOE. If you get to 50, will you be disappointed you chose Electric Melee? I think that's a bad thing if you intend to play them a lot after hitting 50, but if you are just interested in the journey, then that's different again

Super Strength has a lot *not* going for it in the levelling up. Rage comes late, and until then your attacks are spectacularly weak - they are really balanced with Rage in mind, and until that you will find yourself very endurance hungry. All your attacks will do very little damage and you will have to whittle them down one at a time. Playing in large groups is probaby going to take a lot of that sting away.

If you can handle the grind, then I suspect you want to go with SS. Epics like Fireball are just incredible and help a lot for extra AOE. But only you know what your limit is to your own frustration. Once again, forcing yourself to always team and making your own teams when you can't find any is going to help you skip through a lot of the drudging.

From what I see, Shadowmeld lasts 15 seconds and has a 3 second cast time. That would just drive me absolutely nuts to have to constantly reapply. It also isn't permanent... the numbers look great with it up but that is a playstyle that I'll leave to someone eles!

That, or I'd play a Tank

Try Warmace. It has Whirling Mace, Crowd Control and Shatter, all AOEs, all on reasonably quick recharge rates. Just spam AOE and you're fine with any secondary IMO.

Also make sure you use taunt.

You have a secondary to deal with the taunt issue (ie: taking taunt and attacking people), but yes, the taunt from Willpower is negligable. But to call it rubbish is 'lol'.

I'd say for sheer survivability Willpower is a (small) step above Invulnerability.

In broad terms I would suggestion:

Your attacks are probably overslotted. I would try to remove some of the excess there and look at squeezing out the last 3% defence you need for soft capping non smashing/lethal.

For instance:

Ablating Strike : Negative Damage Proc. You'll lose a tiny amount of health by removing this but you could put some extra points into things like weave or combat jumping.

I feel you have too much into RTTC. The extra slot gives only 3 hp/sec more when you have either 1 enemy or when you have it saturated. 3 hp/sec for 1 slot is very inefficient when you consider your real mitigation is defence/resist and you already have 80+hp/sec regen.

I'd highly recommend Kinetic Combat in preference to Crushing Impact for your attacks.

When I first built for Willpower I thought "wow, 100hp/sec would be great". I actually reached that goal. But when I revisitted my build philosophy I came to see that a small increase in defence was worth an awful lot more than a small increase in regen that cost a lot of slots. I would probably aim for the defence right now. You can get a decent amount at a low cost or you can get only a very minimal increase in health/regen at a very high cost (of slots).

If it works the way I assume it works: as in, it summons a pet... then no, the FF proc will not buff you.

It will trigger and apply to the pet that is summoned, which in this case gives no benefit.

The disorient chance would make sense if it does work.

Hi all

The Extractor Sister <X> from the Knives of Artemis is consecutively bugged for me and now I just have to abandon this type of tip mission.

The first is that when I reach her being held as a hostage, my own attacks kill her. Even though I'm rescuing her... that makes it kind of hard to get her out!

The second is more of a balance issue. She is a lieutenant and the Knives' caltrops slaughter her. Without the ability to heal her the mission is exceptionally frustrating to watch her bug out, run around in caltrops and then die. Which she does over and over. This is also an issue on the first fight when you resue her - while you are fighting her kidnapper, they put caltrops down and there is simply no way of getting her out of them until the caltrops despawn because she won't move.