Call Me Awesome

Shield is a good set, no question there. I've enjoyed my SD/Fire tanker quite a lot. All that said like all defense sets it suffers in the early going; until you get your defenses above 25% you feel really squishy. You don't start feeling like a tank until you get your defenses into the upper 30's and by the time you get to the 45% soft cap it gets really good. Still, you're going to be weak defensively until level 25 or so. Of course Shield will output a lot more damage than your WP and it'll be MUCH easier to hold aggro.

If you want something a bit sturdier yet you could make an Invuln tanker; in my opinion the best all-around tanker primary offering durability second to Stone without any of the negatives. Invuln is also much tougher early than Shield; there's much less growing pains. One downer early though is the fact that the taunt aura, Invincibility, doesn't come until level 18. Of course with either Shield or Invuln you'll immediately notice the difference in their aggro abilities over WP. Invuln will outsurvive Shield at almost all levels, however it doesn't have the nifty +damage aura or the massive Shield Charge attack.

Now for secondaries that's an open question. Really anything but Energy Melee would work well with either primary. Fire is the classic choice for damage and AOE; Super Strength is the classic pairing for Invuln and it does have a nice synergy. I'm a fan of Stone Melee for all the extra mitigation it provides with it's knockdown and stuns although I have more Fire Melee tankers than any other set.

Pick your primary and secondary, absolutely any primary in the game is better at aggro than willpower and the only "bad" secondary is EM.

I've been pondering my long-neglected Fire/Fire as well; I noticed in the build Mack provided there's only one KB IO... isn't that a bit light for a Fire tanker? My current build, still only level 40 (despite dating back to issue 3) has Acro since I've yet to respec for i19; what's the consensus on how much KB protection is enough? Two IO's? Three?

Ok, if you're taunting Romy and attacking him there's NO WAY a blaster will get aggro from you; even another tanker would be hard pressed to accomplish that. As a guess were you using Taunt on the puffballs and Roman ambushes and depending on your aura to hold Romy? That's not a reliable method for two reasons... first because of the 17 mob aggro cap and secondly because all auras, even normally autohit ones, must roll tohit against AV class mobs.

As a tanker you need to get there first and get the attention of the mobs. If you do this and keep up taunt on the AV I guarantee no blaster will pull the AV's attention away from you. On CMA even an Ice tanker can't pull aggro from me if I'm focused on keeping it and get there first. Of course the reverse is also true, that's why it's so important for the tank to get there first.

If the team is beating you to the mobs then you must pick up the pace.

Have to agree with Hyper here; while you could squeeze a bit more performance by upgrading your video card and PSU you're essentially throwing money at a basic platform that's out dated enough to be marginal at best. Although with that low resolution monitor you aren't asking for a lot out of the system.

If it were me I'd give serious consideration to a new machine instead of trying to put band-aids on your old one. You're looking at ~$60 for a decent PSU (assuming you aren't getting a monster vid card) and probably roughly $90 for a lower end video card. Yes, you would see improved performance; but the question is how much. Ultra mode is pretty much out of the question with that machine; you could get a powerful enough video card and enough PSU to run it but I don't think the rest of the hardware is up to the task.

Some of the more hardware savvy people may have a different thought but at a guess you'd probably get ~30-40fps out of a decent vid card at that (pretty low) resolution your monitor is showing with mid level (non-ultra) settings. What's your budget look like, we may be able to suggest something.

From your earlier questions I take it you're not comfortable with replacing components yourself so you may have to add in the cost of a shop doing the upgrades for you. This shouldn't be a huge issue; replacing a PSU and vid card takes about 5-10 minutes and it really IS pretty idiot proof... that's part of the beauty of a computer, anyone with some patience and the ability to use a screwdriver can build one from scratch.

I have a pair of the Asus VE245 24" monitors and they're very sharp and clear without detectable lag. They lack the speakers of the unit you're looking at but I've been pleased with them. Heck, I've a 7.1 surround sound setup anyway so I wouldn't be using those speakers even if I had them.

I don't see any real use for USB on the monitor, just get a good USB Hub and you're fine. It's currently out of stock but I've a couple of these and they're great units. 13 USB ports on your desktop; you'll never miss the ports on the monitor. Heck, speaking of monitor USB ports I've 3 high end Samsung 24" monitors on my editing machine with the built in USB... I find them highly problematic. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't... and these were $1,000 apiece monitors 5 years ago. Just shell out $40 for a decent hub and if it goes south simply replace it.

I can't answer on the display port but DVI ports were the "next big thing" several years ago and most monitors (all I've seen recently) STILL have a VGA port alongside the DVI port. At a guess the DVI port won't be going away anytime soon and when it does you'll probably be ready for a new monitor anyway.

On resolution 1920x1080 is just fine, one of the major drawbacks to going up to 1920x1200 is you're asking the graphics card to push more pixels causing lower framerates all other settings being equal. Heck, 1920x1080 is still a lot of pixels to push with CoH's... um, not really optimized render engine.

My editing machine has those three high end Samsung units and they do swivel portrait/landscape. Frankly I don't see any real benefit and I've never swiveled them. On stands there's any number of mounts that you can attach to your desk and then attach the monitor to if you need more adjustment. I've had my eye on this unit for some time.

I've worked with cheap Samsung monitors that were pretty poor, especially in the stands. The pair I previously had on my gaming machine ended up breaking and forcing me to lean the screen against the stand. I did that for about 6 months until one of them quit with a puff of smoke and I replaced both with the Asus. Based on that I'd be a little concerned about Samsung's cheaper line - the high end stuff is fine however.

CRACK! Ya broke da forums

Of the in game friends I had when I first started playing there's only one still playing... and we've known each other since college more years ago than I care to remember. I've a couple of other friends I've gotten pretty close to playing in the last few years and several more I meet occasionally. The trick is simply to find people you enjoy and team with them. There's going to be turnover in your friends list; that's just the nature of a game as people come and go.

Global channels are a great resource for finding fun people to team with, use it and build up a new friend list. I've seen many of my old friends quit playing, some moved on to other MMO's and some have stayed or come back.

From what I've read most of the PvP crowd moved to Freedom; there's very little of it on most of the other servers.

First and foremost I want good players as support, the AT and powersets come in a somewhat distant second.

Getting to the meat of your question though my favorite support powersets depend on what I'm playing and what we're running. If I'm playing a blaster then I love a kinetic (who actually USES SB), cold, bubbler and good aggro control. Debuffs are always welcome on ANY team of course. If I'm playing melee, tank or scrapper doesn't matter, I again like a Kin who buffs and I really like debuffs on the team. When I'm tanking I really want two main things: debuffs and damage... I'll handle the aggro.

As a player when I'm not tanking I mainly play debuffers; although I do have a Mind/Kin 'troller who's fun depending on my mood... and yes, I DO have and use SB . I also love playing a blaster when I'm in the mood to relax and not worry about the rest of the team like I do when I'm tanking.

In the final analysis anything can be "support", as an example CMA is nearly unkillable out of his own resources... most buffs aren't that important so for him "support" is a team with damage to kill the mobs quickly. In that respect a good blaster qualifies as a support character.