Call Me Awesome

Er, you mean Freebird +Stealth. Celerity is a runspeed set.

And I agree, that's my typical slotting for Fly, 1 Freebird +Stealth in the base slot.

Ah, I'd thought the PVP recipes were 30-35 merits and figured the Glad Armor proc for the high end.

Tips aren't just for high level, they're there from level 20 on and a great way to afford expensive IO's, and to make good money by selling those aforementioned expensive IO's.

Glad to see a new tanker in the game, if you haven't yet I'd suggest checking out Dech's Kaison's tanking guide for some tips and techniques. Tanking is more than just taking hits; you need to keep the mobs from directing that damage at your squishy teammates. My philosophy on tanking is that it boils down to attitude; the "you'll get to my team over my dead body" thing. Anyone can learn technique, learning the attitude is harder.

Ok, I was just thinking they'd be consistent... silly idea. One case of finding out is worth hundreds of reasoned guesses.

I imagine so; for example you can't (or couldn't prior to i21 anyway) use the O portal unless you've TRAINED to level 25 (now 14). Chances are tips are the same way.

This is a good point, running 10 tip missions and an alignment mission will get you one Hero Merit which can be exchanged for recipes at the Fort whatever in Atlas park. One Hero Merit can buy 5 random recipes (which may be junk or highly valuable) or you can choose one rare recipe from the list. The more valuable recipes cost 2 hero merits and can sell for 100-200 million influence at Wentworths. The really valuable recipes are the Miracle +recovery IO, the Numina's +recovery/regeneration IO and the Luck of the Gambler 7.5% global recharge IO... all of those are worth 100 million +.

You've doubtless had tips drop on you; investigate your tips and choose the "hero" option. Once you've filled up your rep bar with 10 tips (you can do 5 per day) you'll get an alignment mission drop as a tip. Run that mission and you'll first get 50 reward merits. The next time you go through this you'll get a hero merit.

Wouldn't it be Mighty_Sejj_EU? That's what they did to the EU forum names anyway.

The problem with epics opening at 35 is you also have your tier 8 & 9 secondary powers open at 35 & 38... frequently they're more important to you. For Fire Melee Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword are both very nice, hard hitting single target attacks. If you're tight on your build Incinerate can be skipped but I would always get Greater Fire Sword. I'd still be juggling things in the build to try and squeeze Incinerate in though... it's one of your hardest hitting attacks albeit as a damage over time.

For your Ice/Kinetic controller don't forget about Transference (35) and ESPECIALLY Fulcrum Shift (38), these are two of the best powers in the Kinetic set. One drains enemy endurance and refills the endurance of anyone nearby while the other is a MASSIVE damage buff to everyone nearby. By massive I mean "damage CAP". I would get both of those powers ASAP. I'm not as familiar with the Thermal set but those last two debuffs look quite nice.

I'd suggest delaying your epic power pool until 41; there's nice stuff there but I'd rather get the big powers in the secondary first.

Now on what APP to choose... for tankers I usually have two basic choices. If I'm having endurance issues then Energy for Conserve Power and possibly Physical Perfection. If my endurance is under control my default choice is Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball. Since you're running as a trio with a Kinetic you'll have Speed Boost all the time (and if you don't then smack the Kin and tell him to hand out the crack) you shouldn't have endurance issues making Pyre the standout choice.

With a tanker I take Char at 41, Fire Blast at 44 and Fire Ball at 47. Char is more or less a "throwaway" power; I seldom find use for it so it stays with the default slot. Fire Blast and Fire Ball on the other hand I slot out and use constantly.

The controller may want to consider Psi for Indomitable Will (mez protection) if he's in melee a lot and having problems with getting mezzed. Otherwise Fire Mastery is nice for more damage... something that Ice control is lacking. Ice Mastery gives you an Oh S@#! power in Hibernate and a good defensive armor in Frozen Armor... it also fits the ice theme if that's a consideration.

The MM I hesitate to recommend for as I've never played one but Heat looks good from a damage point of view.

In any case I'm glad to see you enjoying the game.

Agreed, first you have to deal with the massive defense he gets from the orange tower that puts him WAY over the def cap meaning you're going to miss him ~90% of the time... I doubt you'll get enough +tohit to compensate even with everyone running Tactics.

Secondly, thanks to the red & blue towers he'll be dealing double damage and be speed boosted with power build up meaning that pets are dying very quickly and his channelgun attack will be draining considerable endurance from the tank.

Finally, and this is the big one, the green tower will cap his regeneration and provide a ~4,000 point heal every 4 seconds. Do you really think any team can beat that much regeneration coupled with the heals when you're missing 90% of the attacks? I haven't run the numbers but you'd need to output ~40k damage every 4 seconds or 10k per second figuring that only 10% of your damage will actually hit to just keep pace with the heal. That doesn't take into account the insane amount +regen he gets from the tower which would push the required DPS up much higher.

To sum it all up I'd have to say there's no prayer of pulling it off while the green tower's up; it just gives him too much regen and healing.

Doh, you're correct there. Chalk it up to my first time playing MA and not knowing the powers well enough yet.

The question is do you have 2.5 - 3 billion influence to spend on one enhancement? Or 35 Alignment Merits?

Frankly except for the Incarnate trials more than 45% defense is pointless in 99.9% of the game, and the times it may be useful the bonus tohit you're facing is simply too much for another 3% to help much (DE Quartz pets come to mind).

Personally I wouldn't get it; with that influence I could fully outfit four level 50's nicely, two with optimal builds or one with a monster build.

Frankly if I was mostly soloing I'd probably roll a scrapper instead; the tanker's advantage is in durability and aggro control and a scrapper has plenty of both to solo and better damage. I play a tanker as a team character with the primary purpose of being the shield that allows the team to fight more efficiently and safely. For shielding a team the tanker is the better choice.

That being said I might pick up an extra attack early, particularly since you no longer need a travel power prerequisite... you can go straight to fly, super speed, super jump or teleport at level 4. I see I should make a small change in the guide now that issue 21 has changed the travel power availability.

Remember you only need one pick now since issue 21 hit. That said you could grab your tier 2 attack, start in on the Fighting pool (recommended if you want to be as tough as you can) or grab a "fun" power.

I always take RPD by the early 20's... it's a chunk of S/L resist that, with Tough, can take you to the 90% hard cap in S/L resistance. The other passives I'd rank as follows:
Tough Hide - in my opinion a must have, it's the same defense as Weave for no endurance cost.
Resist Energies - a moderate chunk of E/N resistance and a secondary effect of 25% end drain resistance. It's worth having and I usually slide it into a free slot sometime in the 20's.
Resist Elements - the most skippable power in the set, it's a moderate amount of resistance to F/C damage... two of the rarest in the game. It's secondary effect is 25% slow resistance... something that also doesn't often come into play. It's not a bad power, but don't take it until you've already taken everything else you want.

The attacks you want really depend on your secondary, and thanks to the recent changes in travel pools you do have at least one more free slot. If you find you need another attack then you can go ahead and snag it to get you through the early levels. I rarely solo my tankers so a break in the attack chain in the low levels isn't that big a deal to me. A set with fast recharging attacks will have an easier time than on like Stone Melee with rather leisurely recharge times.

I do have Sands, Nem Staff & Blackwand to fill in but even before I got them I typically went light on attacks in the pre-20 levels. Of course endurance was a much bigger problem then. My first tanker, CMA, had truly massive endurance issues in the early game. I spent most of the time taunting, waiting for endurance to return enough to use Heavy Mallet, taunt, wait for end... of course I didn't really understand how to slot for endurance reduction in attacks back then. The last thing I was really looking for then was another high endurance attack

Indeed, see if they're worth anything on the market and if so sell them.

Personally I don't find them useful since frankenslotting IO's gets you more benefit and they don't go bad but there are some collectors who are "OOO, SHINY! MUST HAVE THEM ALL!" and willing to drop ludicrous amounts for their latest obsession.

Good luck getting to the bottom of this; I know just how frustrating it can be to run into game breaking bugs like that.

This is kind of a shot in the dark but do you have access to another computer you can try the game on? If so you can see if the problem is related to your account or if it's something really odd on your machine.

A question... do you have any problems with anything else you run on your computer? Windows is such a packrat that after a year or more it can end up with such a convoluted registry that things can get screwy. When Windows starts having issues my usual fix is to back up my files then format and reinstall from scratch. It takes me about 2 hours on average to completely install Windows and all my stuff and it fixes most problems that can accumulate over time.

If you aren't comfortable with backing up all your files including email, bookmarks and anything else you want to keep, formatting your drive and reinstalling Windows and all drivers & programs then I wouldn't suggest you do this without help.

Elec would make a good choice, particularly if you can get it's S/L defense above ~35%. A little less damage than Shield, a little less durability (unless you can soft cap it) than Invuln but it would strike a happy medium between the two sets. I'll probably level one someday if I find the time. I have taken a Spine/Elec scrapper to 50 and it worked really well.

Now while I have played a level 50 Electric tanker it was in Beta on a level bumped toon and I don't think that really counts. I wasn't playing or building it optimally... it was all SO's after all and I didn't know the set. Comparing the Elec tanker with SO's vs my Inv tanker, also with SO's, the Elec tended to be squishier than the Inv. Frankly both tanks came in even or possibly a bit behind my fairly massively IO'd Broadsword/Shield scrapper in durability (roughly 2 billion inf in today's market).

In any case I think any of those primaries will do a fine job for you.