Call Me Awesome
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Quote:May I suggest taking a look at my soft cap guide for Invuln? I wrote it to be secondary-neutral; it applies to any secondary you might pair with Invuln.Originally Posted by TimeWellSpent
My 10 year old daughter brought her invuln/ice tank to 50 back in 2009 (without knowing English) and then decided that City of Heroes was childish. Now, two years older, she has started to play again and I think it was the incarnate stuff that brought her back.
However, her build is dated. I am not a tanker person myself (she is a better tank than I am) but I am quite the trader so I now want to spend unlimited funds on making her tank softcapped and overall awesome.
Does anyone have a good soft-capped invuln/ice build that I can follow. She loves the Arctic Mastery Epic, but the build does not have to use that. I can probably adapt it.
Soft capping an Inv tanker is actually pretty easy to do without spending huge amounts of money on it. Prices have gone up pretty drastically since issue 13 when I wrote it but you should still be able to get the core IO's in the build for ~100-150 million. Focus on getting S/L defense to 45% first, then work on getting E/N defense to 45%. F/C can be mostly ignored as it's rare and where it does exist it doesn't often come in amounts sufficient to threaten a tanker. -
Quote:Pretty negligible; somehow I doubt you'd really notice it. I'd say just go for the damage proc and forget about the debuff on the Interface.Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
-2.5% for the -resist
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Quote:He said in the BAF trial... if that's the case then something's wrong. You should get Threads in the BAF and Lambda, not Shards. After 5 BAF's and 2 Lambda's I've gotten zero shards but quite a few Threads.Originally Posted by Aggelakis
WAI, I *think*. Shards drop from any enemies if you've unlocked the Incarnate system, and I don't think I ever saw it stated they've explicitely turned off shards in the trials.
Um, just out of curiosity Firespray did you unlock your ALPHA slot in that BAF? That automatically drops a Shard in the Mender whatsisname arc so that may be where that shard from the BAF came from. -
Quote:I went Spiritual on my Stone/Fire tanker; mainly for the recharge. I'd had very little end issues before so that made sense to me. Of course I also respec'd for the inherent fitness and added a couple of toggles that I hadn't had before which changed that formula a bit.Originally Posted by SinergyX_NA
So i soon can finaly get my alpha slot, only a few more mats to go and i have to make the choice. As damage aint my primairy reason, Musculature is not really an option.
Im rolling a perma-granite with IO'ed 61.25% recharge bonus. Solo/small party i run the 3 armors (SL, E/NE, Psi ones), that work pretty well. Although i would still need 2 more steps untill a level shift, i want to make the right choice from the start and not wasting mats to recreate to another Alpha set.
So my thoughts:
Cardiac
Gives initialy a nice endurance reduction, since not all sets give ED-capped EndRed, it will give 'best bang for the bucks'. However, i hardly have end issues (3 toggles) and the later range increase is kinda useless (apart from taunt). The resist might nearly cap out my non-SL granite resistance. The final part (fear, imm, sleep) is pretty much useless.
Nerve
Accuracy is always good. Although most my powers have 60-80% enh-bonus already, hitting +4 still can be tricky (taunt doesnt need hit anyway). The 2nd bonus is my primairy goal, extra defence. As my Granite toggle has no maxed defense, this would boost my defense considerable. Hold then again is kinda useless, final 3 only taunt is nice (fly, confuse).
Spiritual
Primairy reason, recharge. I already have 61.25% from IO's, pushing the recharge even further per power would give nice effect, additional the healing for regen (rooted, health, EE). Disorient is less usefull as i dont have handclap, while the last 3 dont give much either (slow, tohit, jump - i cant even jump).
What would be the best choice? I personaly tend to go Cardiac, but extra defense from Nerve is nice to have too. Spiritual gives 2 nice bonus, recharge and heal.
I would tend to put it between Cardiac and Spiritual as the main focus of Nerve is accuracy... something that's pretty easy to come by in other ways. -
Quote:It all depends on what you want to get out of it. You can just cover the basics in my guide relatively inexpensively and get probably 90-95% of the durability and functionality of a tweaked to the gills build. What costs all the money is getting that last couple of % out of a build.Originally Posted by BigBoss Eyepatch
Thanks guys, I'll try that out probably by tomorrow for you. I'll also consult the paragon wiki's invention sets as I go along.
Grief!!! Making a really good and formidable tanker is a LOT more complex than I thought!
Invuln is a great set and it's pretty easy to get it to a near-unkillable level of performance without any sacrifice of offense. I ran a BAF last night and I never once even needed Dull Pain. The ITF is a snooze fest; the only time I need Dull Pain is for the first Romy takedown when that autohit nictus is still alive... and that's typically just a very minor issue. Literally nothing else on the ITF makes my green bar dip below 95%. You can get that level of performance out of your Invuln as well, and as long as you don't insist on max level IO's you can do it on a budget too. You ought to be able to cover the basics for ~100 - 150 million. -
Quote:This is the only one I've run (successfully) so far and it seems to go about 20-30 minutes. Lambda was a failure last night at roughly 45 minutes.Originally Posted by Brodir
How long on average do these new TF/SFs take?
Behavioral Adjustment Facility -
We had a variant of this on a Lambda we just did on Guardian. We formed up a league of 16 players (2 full teams) and the leader started the trial. We all got the pop up to enter the instance and all clicked yes, then we got the splash screen for about 40 seconds or so and suddenly we were all back in Pocket D and the league was disbanded. We reformed and tried again and that time it worked.
Based on past history I can't say I'm very surprised that new features are bugged on an issue release; we seem to see things like this more often than not. I imagine it'll get fixed in a week or two but it's irritating right now. -
Oh yes HT is a fantastic power, it's a massive debuff with a stun attached that as a side effect just happens to have an AOE rez.
Dark's loaded with great powers, Fearsome Stare can completely neuter an entire room with it's fear and -tohit; Tar Patch and it's slow and -res; Darkest Night with it's massive -tohit; Twilight Grasp with it's huge AOE heal and tohit debuff; Shadow Fall as an AOE stealth, defense and resistance power and of course Dark Servant with all that he brings to the party.
With all that greatness I guess we can forgive a couple of lackluster powers in the fairly ordinary Petrifying Gaze and the nearly worthless Black Hole. -
Quote:Or serve any useful purpose for that matter. I'd say just stick in another door mission and forget all the silly hunts.Originally Posted by Snow Globe
I hope the staff at Paragon Studios make sure that the Numina TF is never the WST overlapping any of the following:
Halloween
Rikti Raid Event Weeks
"Spur of the Moment" versions of either.
With 16 zone hunts and the frequency the zone events are triggered, Numina would take considerably longer than it needs to.
Then again, you could just remove all the kill grey hunts that Numina has. It isn't as if they are actually fun in the first place. -
Quote:I agree with most of this, but frankly the tanker version of Melt Armor is junk. 200 second recharge, 40 second duration and a 9.75% res debuff that's affected by the purple patch. Not really worthwhile unless you'll have several players stacking it.Originally Posted by Syntax42
Your goal for defense should be 32.5%. That puts you one small inspiration from soft capping. Most of the time, you won't need it.
Don't enhance the knockback in Crowd Control. I'm pretty sure enhancing it will change it from a knockdown to a knockback, which is bad for melees. I haven't tried it, though. A Force Feedback proc is very nice to have in Crowd Control.
The biggest reason people take Pyre Mastery is for Fire Ball. The extra AoE damage is nice. Melt Armor is also a nice debuff, but you missed it.
You probably don't need every attack. Having attacks on your bar that don't get used is a waste of power selections, usually. Take a look at the damage per animation times in Mids' to decide which single-target attacks are best. In Mids', go to "window" then "powerset comparison". Any other attacks you take after forming a decent attack chain are usually based on additional effects they add or doing AoE damage. Some attack chains may even include AoEs.
Now the Controller/Corrupter Thermal Radiation version of Melt Armor is a different story but Tankers don't get that. The version tankers have is watered down to the point of minimal benefit... you've better things to get and slot. -
Quote:You'd have problems making a SS scrapper so I guess that means MA?Originally Posted by Motley_Cruel
I'm looking to take one of these two to fifty and make it my main, the question is, which one will I enjoy more?
Conceptually, both are fine, so I'm mainly curious about:
-AoE (guessing FS beats DT)
-Single Target DPS
-Endurance sustainability
I want to make an IO'd to the gills toon, so any feedback before I start is welcome!
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Building isn't very hard; with a modern machine almost literally a monkey could do it. Installing the mobo is dead easy, most cases now already have standoffs in the correct positions for your board so all you do is attach the back plate that comes with the mobo, slide the mobo into place and screw it down. The CPU will only fit one way, all you do is raise the little lever and flip up the cover on the mobo, drop the CPU into the socket (and it goes in with nothing more than gravity, you don't have to exert any force) and close the little cover and lever. Then attach the heat sink and you're all done. If you don't have the CPU right then it won't sit in it's socket and the cover and lever won't close. If at first it doesn't fit then rotate it and try again. Or, you can line up the little mark on the corner of the CPU with the mark on the corner of the socket.
*Tip - it's easier to attach CPU/Heat Sink and Ram before the mobo goes into the case. Also, the only real gotcha is watching out for static electricity... I generally take my shoes & socks off and rest my foot on the case to ground out any static while I'm handling the components. You can buy a wrist band that attaches to the ground on an electrical outlet to do the same thing if you prefer.
After you have the mobo, CPU, Heat Sink and Ram mounted in the case just plug in the power supply cables, mount and connect your hard drive/CDROM and put your video card into it's slot. All the little plugs from the case look confusing but just look at your mobo's manual and attach them to the correct pins. You'll likely have one or two extra plugs from the case, you can disregard the "chassis intrusion" connection. You've already replaced a PSU before so you shouldn't have any problems figuring this out.
This is the easy part, next you hook up monitor, KB, mouse and speakers and hit the power switch. If you've done everything correctly the little lights will come on, the thing will beep and you'll get the BIOS screen. After that you'll put the OS DVD in your drive and install Windows. After that the fun begins where you install all the programs you work with and configure them all
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Quote:The first hunt must be done in Brick, killing Crey in FF or Crey's Folly do not count for that first hunt... unless it's changed from last month. While I've done it several times this week I haven't tested that this week, but last month and before you HAD to kill the Crey in Bricks on the first hunt.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The first hunt is 25 Crey, which I think can be done anywhere - and the second hunt is 40 Crey in Crey's Folly.
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Quote:I'd say a better analogy might be:Originally Posted by crayhal
LOL!
So mudhuts and berries = SOs
Mansion and steak = purple sets?
Thanks for all the responses! I have no objections to making myself more supah, of course.
Economy car = SO's
Corvette = good set IO build
Ferrari = bleeding edge multi-billion inf IO build
All of them will get you from A to B, the higher end builds will just do it faster.
Also I echo the statement that the team lead in your first example was an idiot. Most of my characters above level 30 fall into the "Corvette" class; I don't have any real Ferrari builds as I'm too cheap to shell out the billions on one character for fractional gains over what a few hundred million will do. Also I have too many characters competing for the available inf resources I accumulate to spend that on any one toon. Still I really don't much care if a teammate has dropped billions on his build or if he's still on SO's... I'm MUCH more interested in the question of "Is he a good player".
Anytime I'm building a team I first go to my regular buddies, then to my global friends list and then to the global channels to recruit. Once I start advertising on the globals I take players on a first come basis and don't much worry about what AT they're bringing let alone what build they have. -
I've leveled two stone tankers, one Stone/EM and one Stone/Fire. The Stone/EM has been retired since shortly after the /EM nerfs a couple of years ago... the Stone/Fire is an excellent tanker however. Soft capping S/L def does allow you to spend more time in Rock/Rooted instead of Granite thus bypassing the damage & Recharge penalties unless you need the supreme durability of Granite. If you need it, it's only one button click away and if you don't then why saddle yourself with the extra penalties?
In my opinion /Fire is probably the best pairing with Stone due to it's considerable AOE damage potential, good ST damage potential and quick recharge. As a bonus it's lighter on endurance than many other sets as well; the only thing it lacks is any mitigation beyond additional damage. If you're in the soup that deep that the lack of mitigation in the secondary becomes an issue then Granite's available. There's almost nothing in the game that's that threatening to a tanker in Granite + Rooted making Fire's lack of mitigation a moot point. -
Quote:I'd have to agree there, for running a farm you probably want something with more damage output, preferably AOE damage output. Scrappers are great for this with higher damage and enough durability to do the job.Originally Posted by Obitus
It's good for surviving S/L farms, but I don't think anyone would recommend an Invulnerability Tanker for running (solo) farms. The offense just isn't there.
You can plod through, of course; I just thought I'd throw out that bit of perhaps unnecessary clarification.
Also, I have to fairly strongly disagree with this:Even on an SO only build there's no need to slot Unstoppable; it's a panic button power, not something you'll use all the time... one recharge in the base slot is plenty. If you're needing it often enough that you have to slot it for recharge then something's wrong with your build. There's NEVER any reason to slot it for resist; assuming you continue to run your toggles without ANY resistance at all it brings all your resistances to the cap. Heck, even if you don't even take the resistance passives Unstop takes you to ~85% resistance to all but Psi... including Toxic.Quote:Unstoppable recharges quick as that is what 3 of its 6 slots are for. When it crashes, I just hit Dull Pain, pop a few blue insps, hit on rage and my toggles and away I go. -
Quote:You've answered the questions I was a bit hazy on; I'm already pretty familiar with real time encoding/streaming. I agree with the multi core bit; while the old single core could do the job it was running pretty high CPU usage cranking out a 700kbs H.264 live stream. It does help that the Viewcast cards can handle the encoding in hardware... when I've streamed using a laptop and an inexpensive Pinnacle USB capture device I don't get the same results and even a relatively powerful (Core2Duo) laptop is running flat out and occasionally locking up.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
I wouldn't recommend the heatsink in my $1350 build due to the constant movement of the rig. It's a great heatsink but as one review pointed out it can twist due to the how it's held in place. A heatsink with multiple connections between the heatsink and the bracket used to connect it to the motherboard would be better. A good source for heatsink reviews for me are the ones at FrostyTech. Also X-Bit Labs have numerous reviews of heatsinks but not a simple chart like you find in whatever latest review at FrostyTech that ranks them.
I'm sorry I can't be more helpful in this as my experience with any real time encoder is basically nil. The product page says anything faster than a 933MHz PIII but they also say you should keep CPU usage below 75%, hence the multiple cores and fast clock speed. The extra cores should help handle any miscellaneous processes while the encoder is blasting away on it's own core (assuming the encoder isn't multithreaded).
The 4GB of memory should be enough for that app and the OS to coexist without the need for any paging to disk.
Again sorry I can't be more help. Have you tried any AV forums or web sites that cater to real time encoding, they may be able to provide better recommendations.
I'm assuming that the Adobe encoder is multithreaded; all of their other A/V apps are and have been for a number of years. In any case if a 5-6 year old single core can handle the job anything modern can do it as well or better.
Thanks again for your advice! -
Quote:Ah yes, that was actually a normal mission, not a TF... I think it was on our first Pinnacle superteam. The idiot... I forget his name offhand which is probably just as well... kept going on and on finally saying "well kick someone to make room for my buddy" and so Carry hit the kick button on him just as he added "except me!"Originally Posted by Local_Man
CMA, you can correct me if I get some details wrong, . . .
CMA and I and a few other regular teammates started up a TF, and we had two more slots to fill. All of us regulars were on Ventrilo together, which the two others did not know. The TF filled up.
One guy, let's call him MISTER, who was one of the PUG invites started sending tells to our leader saying that his buddy had just logged on. MISTER wanted the leader to kick one of the others so his friend could join. There was an entire series of tells where MISTER was explaining to the leader that various team members wouldn't be very good in not overly nice terms. What MISTER didn't know is that the leader was telling the rest of us over Ventrilo what was happening in the tells . . . and asking us what he should do. One of our buddies said, "Give me me the star!" . . .
and as soon as he got the star, he said, "I'll kick someone!" and he promptly kicked MISTER.
MISTER had a few choice words at that point, but the rest of us were laughing too hard to pay attention.
It was a strange thing for him to be asking since I believe 7 of us on the team were all on one SG with him the odd man out. If I'm remembering right we were in the mid-20's running something in Talos. -
Quote:I think the "damage" portion only works for damaging attacks but the accuracy portion works on everything a pet does on the Pet sets.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
My understanding is that the pet damage sets are considered "damage" so they don't work in non-damaging pet powers but I'll admit I could be wrong about that.
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Quote:Check out the wiki for that... but you can assume that if the pet takes "x" set then that will apply to any power that has "x" effect. That's one reason the Pet sets are popular for them as they'll work with all of the pet's powers.Originally Posted by Golden_Avariel
How do you even know which of a particular pet's powers take which sets? Just looking at their effects and taking a guess? This all seems... gah words fail me. It's madness to think that every attack on a pet might use a different set of enhancements.
Failing that your next best choice is SO/HO/common IO's as those will work exactly as you'd expect.
Come on, if it was easy everyone would do it. Yeah, you're probably thinking much the same thing I always thought when my Dad made a similar comment to me growing up.
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Quote:Hmm, that pretty well means an aftermarket heat sink... the machine will be living in a portable road rack case and ventilation will be limited... and some venues aren't air conditioned. Lexington Kentucky in July under roof but with open sides gets a mite warm. I have a big 24" high power fan keeping ME cool thereOriginally Posted by Father Xmas
Yes, microATX should fix in an ATX case fine, there are mounting points shared in common between microATX and ATX however the case does need to have the mounting points for the "bottom" edge of the microATX board. I haven't come across a case yet that can't handle it. Other than that the primary difference is an ATX MB has up to 7 expansion board slots where the shorter microATX only has 4.
The stock heatsink should be adequate but it's not very good. Expect the CPU to run hot so hopefully you have good air flow.
I'll be rigging exhaust fans on the rack case to improve airflow but I think I'd be asking for trouble with the OEM HS. Ah well, another $30 or so won't break the bank. -
Quote:Yeah, those were really dangerous to my Inv back pre-IO and especially in issue 3-4. I took CMA from 1-40 in issue 3 tanking for large teams most of the way and never faceplanted... until the first time I faced Malta and the Sappers drained me and the rest planted me in an instant. It was a somewhat unpleasant wake up call.Originally Posted by Breog
Some very excellent points, Its definitely is important to remember that these comparsions do not take in the whole picture that could be going on while trying to tank/survive.
Control abilites are harder to factor in to surviable, and can easyly push biulds over other biulds in the real game.
Lost count the number of times I have seen high end biulds faceplant to a hidden Sapper Ambush.
Now with 45% E/N defense Sappers are far less dangerous; they have to hit me in order to sap me after all. They're still a priority mob to kill first of course and it's a good idea to find the Sapper before you jump into the group.
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Quote:No problems, it's all good. I was mainly wanting to point out to others who might not have the financial wherewithal to buy 40's that 35's or even 30's will do the job for them at a fraction of the cost and they'll almost certainly never notice the slight reduction in enhancement.Originally Posted by Breog
You seem to be missing my point I don't really "buy" them *shrug*.
I understand your point, and even argeeed with it. Doesn't mean I can't still use maxium Values -
Quote:I'm neither happy or unhappy, I was just saying that the difference is minimal and won't have any real effect in the game. It's your character and your inf so it's your decision on the value of the minuscule improvement slotting 40 over 35 gives is worth the money. Apparently for you it is and that's fine.Originally Posted by Breog
Yes it is... happy?
You do notice over ED points btw. If your looking anyways and dont mind burning slots for little gain. Case in point when I rebiuld my tanker I lost 1% off Smash/Lethal strickly because I was over slotted on Charge Armor and Tough. Now many will say 1% isn't a big deal... in this case however it was the difference between being 89% S/L and 90% S/L.
To some thats a BIG DEAL to others not so much.
If cost is a issue.. by all means use the lower ones. that .2% isn't worth the extra cost if its going to break your bank and biuld.
PS - I didn't Buy the level 40 Reactives, I got them in AE so "cost" wasn't even a factor.
For me I always plan my builds around level 35 IO's as they're almost always considerably cheaper and are more than up to the task of getting stats well into the ED cutoff range. It also gives you more latitude in exemplaring for lower level content without loosing your bonuses. -
Quote:Thanks for the suggestions Father, I'll need one PCI slot for the capture device so that fits. Audio wise it needs to support one speaker as a sound test so I imagine literally anything will do there and it'll have one SATA HD and CDROM. One question, I've never built a microATX board, I assume it fits in a standard ATX case? Also Biostar isn't a brand I've ever used before, how's it's stability, quality and durability compare with, say, Asus?Originally Posted by Father Xmas
For video compression I believe more cores/threads the better. Not sure about that Adobe product however. The cheapest tri-core at NewEgg is a 2.9GHz Athlon II X3 435 for $72, the 3.2GHZ X3 450 for $80. The cheapest quad is the $100 3.0GHz Athlon II X4 640 and I think that's too much of your limited budget.
DDR3 memory is fairly cheap today, less than $15 a gigabyte for basic memory. Actually it's more like 2GB (2x1GB) DDR3-1333 CAS 9 for less than $30, 4GB (2x2GB) for less than $50.
As for a motherboard one based on the 880G chipset. There are still a few motherboards using one of the AMD 7xxG series chipsets but not from any of the big name motherboard companies.
Most of the 880G microATX MBs still use the older SB710 southbridge so they don't support SATA III (6.0Gb/s), no loss since I doubt you are planning to use one of the new SATA III solid state drives on the market. They are split between having 2 or 4 DDR3 memory slots and most are under $80 new.
You should be able to find an acceptable combo for around. Here is an example.
BIOSTAR A880G+ - $70
AMD Athlon II X3 450 - $80
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNS - $40
Total - $190
Only drawbacks with the motherboard is no SATA III, only 2 ram slots and 6 speaker audio.
The machine it's replacing is an old single core Intel... I forget the exact details but it's circa about 2006-2007 so I'm not really concerned about processor horsepower since that machine was adequate to the task, albeit running XP. Would you suggest an aftermarket heat sink or would the stock be adequate? The old machine has a rather large Thermaltake on it which I doubt fits a modern socket. This thing will be leading a fairly hard life being hauled around in a trailer, drug into a coliseum and set up to stream 24/7 for a week then carried back to the trailer and taken to the next venue to do it all again.