Call Me Awesome

This is mostly correct. Let's take the Dark Miasma pet Dark Servant for example. He has a heal, a hold, an immobilize and a tohit debuff. I believe he takes all four of those sets as well. Slot him with an Acc/Hold from one of the hold sets and when he uses Petrifying Gaze then he'll get the benefit of the accuracy and the hold... however when he uses Twilight Grasp, his heal, he'll get NO benefit from the IO, not even the accuracy portion.

What all this means is that in order for a set IO to enhance a pet's power that particular power must accept that IO type. In the case of Dark Servant everything he does has a tohit debuff attached so a tohit debuff set will work for all his powers. Common IO's and SO's will work on all his powers as well, HO's are also functional on all his powers. Pet sets (which Fluffy doesn't take) are coded to function on all pet powers.

If it's worth it to you to pay 5-10x the price for an extra .2% resistance then go ahead. It's something you'll never notice in game however. I was trying to point out that there's no real benefit in slotting 40's over 35's numbers wise and you'll pay much less for those 35's.

The market is global, not server or side specific. The figures I had are with using 4 Reactive, excluding the End and the End/Recharge... and you'd use 4 anyway for the set bonuses.

Don't get tunnel vision on "must have max level IO"; often a 39 is 1/3 of a level 40 and a level 30-35 may be a tenth the cost. Level 30's still get you well into ED range at ~55% enhancement.

I can't speak for all powers of course, but on my Inv/Stone tanker Fault and Tremor are still KD instead of KB on level 50's. I haven't really made a thorough search of powers but it's been a non-issue on anything I've played so far... including my Shield tanker & scrapper's shield charge.

I'd worried about that exact point but it doesn't affect anything I've played so far at 50+1.

Say what??? Has it changed that drastically in the last two weeks?

I've bought a lot of Reactive Armor sets for various characters, most recently just a couple of weeks ago and they go in the $500,000 - 5 million range as long as you're not buying level 40.

Here's an interesting statistic for you, on an Invuln tanker slotting 5 sets of level 25 Reactive Armor instead of level 40 lowers your resistance by a whopping ~2%.

At 5GB/month you're likely to go over the limit. Just COH would probably (I don't have any exact figures but since it's playable over dialup the transfer can't be all that high) be ok but when you add email, web browsing and other file downloads that 5GB/month doesn't cover a lot.

is a bunch of bunk; I've never had any problem holding his aggro. Now, a tanker will HAVE to use Taunt to keep aggro as all auras, even autohit ones, have a hit check against AV's and with the yellow tower up you 'ain't hitting him.

Slot an interrupt in it and with a little practice you'll be able to get it to fire about 75% of the time even standing on caltrops. I used it constantly in the issue 6-11 era and I well know how it works.

Which is neither here nor there as a soft capped Invuln will very rarely need even dull pain let alone aid self. That's with a fully functional build too, not some monstrosity that sacrifices everything on the alter of defense.

I think I may not have phrased that quite right and I see I goofed. Ack, math... why was I figuring 40% instead of 45%???? Brain fart.

Anyway, to correct my figures Invuln starts with a base with slotted Invincibility, Tough Hide and Weave of ~25% while Electric starts out with a base assuming slotted Weave of 7.8%. That means Invuln needs to find, with set bonuses, 20% defense while Electric needs to find 37.2% defense.

Getting to Slainsteel's comment Your basic premise is flawed. The point is that absent some serious build compromises you won't be getting soft capped S/L/E/N defense on Elec, or for that matter any tanker without inherent defense... you're going to make some fairly serious tradeoffs just to soft cap S/L to say nothing of E/N. Getting 37% defense to one damage type via IO bonuses is a non-trivial exercise. Getting it for two? Remember, you'll have to stack up 37% defense in both S/L AND E/N to meet your criteria. I'm not sure that's really feasible. I worked up several Mid's builds of Elec tanks and it was tough enough reaching the soft cap for S/L alone. I'm not sure it's doable to also get E/N there without some really strange build.

The fact is that non-defense tankers are NOT going to manage to soft cap more than one position or type absent some serious build compromises or multi-MULTI billion inf builds. Invuln CAN do this without any compromises in the build.

Um, really? You do know that Dark & Elec both start with either no or very little defense so you have to build it from scratch? Invuln on the other hand starts with ~17% typed defense to all but Psi with one mob in melee if you slot Invincibility and Tough Hide... ~25% typed defense to all but Psi including Weave. Add the Steadfast unique and you're at ~28% defense to all but Psi. That's only 17% from the soft cap and that's before you start looking for further set bonuses. Electric would need to find another 34% in set bonuses to soft cap assuming the Steadfast and slotted Weave... more than twice the bonus that Invuln needs.

<edit to fix my numbers above>

Yes, Dark has Dark Regeneration, the most massive heal in the game... that's a sizeable chunk of it's durability right there. Nobody will question that Dark's heal is awesome. Elec has Energize, a 48% heal with a 30 second duration 190% regen bonus (slotted). On the other hand have you heard of a power called Dull Pain? You know, Invuln's tier 3 power that when slotted provides an 80% heal and a 60% hit point buff? Of course once you've managed to do the "difficult" task of soft capping that Invuln tanker you won't need it much. In the last week I've tanked the ITF, Apex, Tin Mage, Numina, Kahn, STF and Manticore with my Inv/Stone tanker. In the ITF I've used Dull Pain exactly ONCE. I used it twice in Tin Mage and once in the STF. Once an Invuln's build matures Dull Pain is a backup; not anything you'll need on a regular basis.

If you can add significant amounts of defense to Dark & Elec then they're quite good sets but they're both considerably harder to soft cap than Invuln. Additionally Invuln has 50% defense debuff resistance making it less likely to suffer from a cascading defense failure... something Dark & Elec both totally lack.

Slainsteel, everyone has been telling you that you're wrong. A Granite Armor tanker is, as everyone agrees, the most durable tanker in the game. A soft capped Invuln is in second place behind a Granite tank. If you can throw enough inf at them lots of other sets can really shine but it takes far less investment and no compromise on the build to get Invuln to that level. THAT'S why Invuln is in the #2 place behind Granite Armor.

If your Invuln really is vulnerable to exotic damage and debuffs then you're doing something wrong. Trust me, if you build it right there's nothing in the entire game that it can't handle... including the tower buffed Lord Recluse on the STF.

I've tanked everything currently in the game with CMA and have yet to find anything that's problematic other than the toxic hydra tentacles in the Apex TF. Even Psi AV's aren't that much problem; you've an inspiration tray and when you're facing that kind of content you also have a team behind you.

F/C damage is very rare in the game, and even more so when it comes unmixed with S/L damage... and anything with a S/L tag has to beat your S/L defense first. On my current live build, which should be attainable for most players looking for an IO build has the following numbers:
Defense - S/L/E/N - 45%, F/C - 31%, Melee/Ranged - ~20% (applies to Psi)
Resistance - S/L - 90%, E/N - 34%, F/C - 34%

The build has NO high dollar IO's in it that apply to defense and shouldn't break the bank of anyone considering an IO build.

You could be right there; it's been a long time since I saw that message and I could be forgetting. I'm surprised it was so late that things merged, I could've sworn it was pre-IO when they granted everyone with either game access to both.

It's been awhile, but as I remember it gave you the same [You cannot enter] message that you get from any door that isn't an active mission door.

On the bases opening up I'm not sure; probably sometime in the issue 7-8 era.

It looks pretty good aside from the massive expense of the Glad Armor but it's your money. I've no doubt it'll be very effective for you. I like it better than the first build.

Ah, I just took another look at Fly... is that 5% cold resistance really worth a slot to you? Looking over your build I'd consider tossing it into Weave and getting the 9% accuracy bonus instead; ever since i19 hit Fly is at the speed cap unslotted so you're not getting any travel speed increase out of it.

I've done much the same as you with CMA on an exemplar build... it maintains soft capped S/L defenses down to level 25 and E/N of around 40%. Every IO in the build is level 27 or lower... 89% S/L resist (slightly below cap due to 20-25 Reactive Armor) and 45% S/L def and 40% E/N def at level 25 is pretty much unkillable.

The thing with going 3 and 3 with Thunderstrike and Devastation is you're missing out on another 1.25% E/N defense on the 6th bonus of Thunderstrike. It doesn't conflict with the 1.25% E/N in Reactive Armor either since it's a "large Ranged Bonus" or some such.

You're correct that DP won't cap your HP, with the raised cap you can't reach it with DP and the +HP accolades... CMA's sitting at 3,504 HP (cap is 3,554) with DP and 2,389 without and I have all the stat boosting accolades (FF Reserve, Portal Jockey, Atlas Medallion & TF Commander). Still I very rarely even need DP with my soft capped build... the durability is more than enough for anything I've tried to date with him.

Amen to that, since I'm usually the fastest zoning on a team I always try to get in the last mish first, then I take Impy over and introduce him to some mobs off to the side and leave him to have fun.

I can't think that I've ever run an ITF where Impy was an asset instead of a liability... nowadays I always ditch him right off.

Weeelll, you need to be gentle....