Call Me Awesome

Nearly all attacks have at least two flags, one for the type (or types) of damage it deals (S/L/E/N/F/C/Psi) and one for the position (Melee/Range/AOE). Positional defenses are more powerful as they cover all attacks in the game... with the exception of a tiny handful of Psi attacks that lack a positional flag and the infamous Hamidon damage that lacks any defense flags and punches through all resistance. Come to think of it Toxic damage may ignore positional defense also... I know there's no typed defense to Toxic. I don't think I've ever checked that on either of my Shield characters.

A character who's softcapped to all three positional defenses won't gain a thing from typed defenses except for the extremely rare Psi attack that lacks a position flag. SR actually gets fairly substantial resistances tied to the HP bar... as you get below 50% you start picking up resistance assuming you have the passives. It starts small but it ramps up to significant amounts below 20% health.

A tanker who's taunting shouldn't loose aggro from debuffing the towers... I've been on both sides of that equation many times.

It seems that "One Good Spider" comes up much more often than "Unusual Suspect". The good news is you can keep killing level 20+ mobs and eventually the other morality mission will drop. I'll street sweep Talos for awhile and even go on and do other things waiting for the better morality mission to drop than run the damn spider. Yes, I can run it in about 10 minutes but it's another damn lead out... I avoid all of those.

Over the time since issue 19 dropped and gave us that new morality mission I've had One Good Spider drop first about 20 times... Unusual Suspect has only dropped first twice. I guess the Dev's felt that stealth to the first room on the first floor, free the hostage and take out two ambushes was too easy... it usually took me 2 minutes to do on my Ill/Rad, BS/Shield or Fire/EM blaster... my main hero merit farmers.

Yep, the flier will respawn 20 minutes to the second from the moment the first person COMPLETES zoning into the mission. Since I'm on an SSD I tend to zone very quickly and I always start a stopwatch the instant I get off of the loading screen... I've never been more than 5 seconds off on the flier respawn. It spawns when the first person enters the mission and every 20 minutes thereafter. When I explained this to one team they decided they wanted to camp in the mission and farm the flier for merits (it gives 2 for each defeat). I've no idea if they actually did since I and my 3 SG mates exited the mission once we completed it.

On taunting LR... that's something I've done literally hundreds of times and you do need to constantly taunt or you will loose aggro. 20 seconds give or take of taunt duration sounds about right although I haven't timed it. Your aura alone, even an autohit aura, will not hold him... against AV's it will have to roll tohit at 75% base accuracy. With the yellow/orange tower up don't count on it actually hitting. I actually set Taunt to autofire on my Invuln while tanking LR... I don't forget it during the tower phase but I've occasionally gotten enough into the rhythm of attacking in the end phase that I forgot to include taunt in the chain and lost aggro.

Oh, always make sure your tanker has some large blues (unless he's Stone or Electric) to deal with LR's end drain... particularly while the blue tower's up providing him with power build up on it. On my Invuln that attack generally drains 60-70% of my blue bar with one hit... on my Shield it drains 80%+. Let him land that twice in close succession and you're looking at a toggle crashed tanker... likely leading to a grease spot on the floor. I managed to survive it on my Shield my last run by instantly popping 3 medium purples and a blue, fortunately he missed his next attack and I was able to retoggle. I actually had to have my team feed me a couple of blues during the tower phase on my Shield when I ran out of them. His using that attack in melee did come as an unpleasant surprise the first run I made afterward but as a partial tradeoff he no longer summons his Bane spiders prior to his 20% HP "pet nuke". All in all I'd rather have the Banes since you could have a teammate anchor a toggle debuff on him to prevent the summon.

The ambush the OP got while working on LR came from one of two sources... either they missed one group in the courtyard or the flier aggroed on them and dropped some mobs.

The Contagious Confusion purple proc is a special case and as far as I know unique in the game. When used in a single target confuse it has an AOE (I'm not sure what the radius is, but it seems to be at least 10'+) spawn radiating from the target that has a chance to confuse any nearby enemies. I have that proc in my Mind/Kin controller's confuse and my Ill/Rad controller's deceive power and it quite frequently hits one or more nearby mobs.

There's some precedent for AOE attached to ST attacks; there was a time on Test when all tanker attacks were hitting all mobs in the gauntlet AOE due to a bug... tanker attacks all have an AOE taunt effect and the bug was applying the damage as well. It was a great time to be had by all who experienced the (short lived) bug; nailing a bunch of mobs with Seismic Smash was truly a glorious thing.

On your idea of a "contagious damage" proc I don't see any tech reason it couldn't work using the same mechanic as the CC proc... such a thing doesn't exist in the game at the moment though and if it were to be created it would probably be overpowered... you could slot it into ANY appropriate attack power. As I see it it would have to be flagged as "unique" and even then it would either have to be low probability (10% or less) or low damage.

I've no idea how the higher level incarnate damage would work; going from the first mission in the incarnate arc where you're playing your fully incarnate character it appears that something is working as a DOT proc on every attack you make. I'm not sure if we've any hard information on later incarnate stuff or not but the rumor mill seems well stoked with information/speculation as normal. I've heard about the AOE attack speculation in the Incarnate levels and it wouldn't surprise me if there were other additions to your existing powers. The Alpha slot adds more enhancements to your powers; I can easily see other slots adding procs and whatnot as well.

Really this cannot be overstated. Being a tanker isn't about standing there and not getting hurt, although that's certainly part of it. Tanking by definition is getting and holding the attention of the bad guys so they're shooting at you, not your team.

I always evaluate a tanker on the following criteria, in order:

1. The tanker is the first into the mob (exception - extremely nasty group or AV when there's an Illusion controller on the team, then let Phantom Army take the alpha) and keeps as much of the mob's attention as possible on him. Any stray aggro going towards the squishies on the team is immediately dealt with.
2. The tanker moves the team efficiently from group to group in a minimum of time and collects the mobs into a tight bunch for AOE's if possible.
3. The tanker is durable enough to survive the attention.
4. The tanker has enough damage output to contribute to the team's kill speed.

If a tanker can do all four of those then I consider that tanker player competent. If he can't or won't meet those criteria I consider him marginal at best, incompetent at worst. Attitude is the number one part of being a tanker; the "you're going to kill my teammate over my dead body" point of view. If you have the attitude then all the rest is simply technique, and attitude is what makes a tanker a Tank. It doesn't matter how tough a brick wall is if the castle gate is standing open. Likewise it doesn't matter how tough the tanker is if unchecked aggro is killing the rest of the team.

I consider it a failure on my part if any member of the team dies while I'm in the same room tanking (if they go off on their own then it's their lookout). I consider it a mistake and something I need to correct in my technique if any member of my team even gets aggro... I guess I'm something of a perfectionist in that I hold myself to a higher standard than I hold other tankers. I also rarely have a mission where I don't make some mistake that I notice even if nobody else does. I always think I could have gotten that aggro faster, or I could have gotten that loose mob faster or I could have grouped the mobs tighter.

Moving from being competent as a tanker to being a great one is a matter of practice, practice, practice. There's some days when everything's clicking and I consider myself in that realm and others when I'm making stupid errors and barely consider myself competent. As I said I'm my own worst critic; that's almost a requirement to move up to the next level.

Willpower's "taunt" aura is a joke compared to every other tanker set. Let's look at the taunt aura of all the tanker sets:

• Willpower - Rise to the Challenge - Mag 3 taunt, duration 1.25 seconds, tic rate 1 second

• Invulnerability - Invincibility - Mag 4 taunt, duration 17 seconds, tic rate 1 second

• Shield - Against All Odds - Mag 4 taunt, duration 17 seconds, tic rate 1 second

• Stone - Mud Pots - Mag 4 taunt, duration 13.86 seconds, tic rate 2 seconds

• Ice - Chilling Embrace - Mag 4 taunt, duration 13.6 seconds, tic rate 0.5 seconds (the most effective aggro getter in the game due to it's high tic rate)

• Fire - Blazing Aura - Mag 4 taunt, duration 13.6 seconds, tic rate 2 seconds

• Electric - Lightning Field - Mag 4 taunt, duration 13.6 seconds, tic rate 2 seconds

• Dark - Death Shroud - Mag 4 taunt, duration 13.6 seconds, tic rate 2 seconds

The worst of the other tanker auras weigh in at Mag FOUR with a 13.6 second duration. Rise to the Challenge has a Mag THREE taunt with only a 1.25 second duration... if you're facing +2 mobs it won't even last until the aura tics again. That's why Willpower is unquestionably the absolute worst tanker for holding aggro. Yes, in experienced hands with a strong AOE secondary to do the heavy lifting aggro wise it can do the job but it's much worse at it than any other primary. Willpower can be quite durable, but it's terrible aggro abilities make it the worst possible tanker primary if you want to hold aggro.

I've many times run my BS/Shield scrapper on teams with Willpower tankers, I've never seen one yet who could peel aggro away from my scrapper (Shield scrapper's aura has identical taunt numbers to the tanker version) or that could hold aggro from me if they got in first. If I'm on a team with a WP tanker I just assume I'll need to handle the tanking with my scrapper... I'm tough enough for most things and I'm going to have the aggro anyway.

I wish you good luck with your endeavor, you've already accomplished something extremely significant getting as far as you did.

When I'm tanking him with CMA I have the following loadout of inspirations:

8 medium purples (I'm at 45% def so I only need 1 medium per minute to soft cap him at 75% until the blue tower dies)
4 large oranges
4 large greens
4 large blues

Immediately before I jump into melee with him I pop one medium purple and 2 large oranges to put me at 75% defense and 70% resistance to E/N damage. I then jump in, taunt him and draw him back behind the green tower. The team starts on the red tower at this point. I keep 1 medium purple and 1 large orange active until the red tower dies, at which point I allow the orange to expire. I keep 1 medium purple active until the blue tower dies, at which point I'm basically home free... he's just a normal level 54 AV at this point from a tanker's point of view.

If he nails me I hit dull pain (which I have bound to the thumb button of my mouse). If he nails me again I pop a green. If he hits me with that end drain attack I pop a blue. On most teams I'll finish up with at least half my inspirations left giving me a cushion for problems. This is a dangerous game, but with a good build and the right inspiration loadout an Inv can tank him without help from the team. A Shield tanker can do the same, I ran my Shield/Fire tank through the STF earlier today using the same tactics. We had a sonic on the team so I didn't need the oranges but otherwise we lacked support.

Still, even though I've tanked him over a hundred times on various tanks I never take him lightly, he can as you discovered lay a ton of pain down in a hurry if he gets lucky. I've had him drop my granite armor tanker in less than 3 seconds through 75% defense and 90% S/L, 80% E/N resistance. It's very unlikely he'll do that, but it IS possible and if the RNG hates you that badly you're going down.

LR buffed by his towers is the most dangerous AV in the game. He's beatable but anyone who approaches tanking him with anything but care and caution is looking for trouble.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway, the thorn tree temp power only lasts 6 hours so you'd have been in a hopeless situation working on Aeon with his untouchable shield up.

Well, technically you CAN get over 90% resistance, it's just that the game will cap it at 90%. Invuln for example reaches 93% S/L resistance with Tough... the additional over 90% is disregarded unless you're debuffed... and damage resistance resists resistance debuffs (whew, a bit of a jawbreaker there) so at the resist cap you have 90% resistance to debuffs too.

I don't think you've been able to get more than 90% resistance since launch... I know it was capped there by issue 3 when I started.

That would be my suggestion as well, load up on the temps for Aeon. He's tough, but if you can manage to keep on target he should be doable.

In any case the OP has my respect for getting that far solo; it's quite an achievement. Oh, another thought, have you crafted the tier 3 Alpha and gotten the level bump yet? Being effectively level 51 will make life easier.

Since I'm working on the Absolute Amazement set myself I can say you'd be surprised... it isn't at Hecatomb price levels but most recipes are still going for 100 million +. Since I'm cheap and since I'm not going to respec until the next freespec drops I've put in a bunch of lowball bids and am letting them sit for awhile; I've no interest in paying the "buy it now" price especially since it's still inflated from double XP weekend.

Spiritual for recharge certainly, in all likelihood he's already at ED cap for damage. While it's true that part of Musculature bypasses ED, until you get to high tier Alpha enhancements you'll be talking about pretty small improvements.

In issue 3 & 4 an Invuln could reach 90% resist to S/L/E/N/F/C damage quite easily (CMA had that durability in those days) and Invincibility gave many times the buff it does today due to higher base numbers, no ED cap and the fact that the buff lasted for 3 seconds and pulsed every second allowing it to triple stack. Unstoppable was basically a pointless power since all it gave you was the end recovery... you already had all the resistances full time without it.

It took a lot of slots; you needed to 6 slot Unyielding, Res Energies, Res Elements and you needed one slot in RPD and Temp. Invulnerability but that would put you at the hard cap for all damage but psi. There also were no AOE caps and enemies would literally stack into the same space leaving dozens of mobs all in the same precise space. I remember running the old Drek map and herding up the entire main island, bringing them to one place and having a blaster nuke them into oblivion. It really was a lot of fun having 300+ mobs all focused on you and being unable to move your green bar at all. Invuln was truly unkillable then.

Of course we had the 1-2 punch of nerfageddon with the Global Defense Nerf of issue 5 that reduced all defenses and resistances by almost half, doubled the recharge on controller AOE controls and halved the duration. We were promised by Jack (Statesman) Emeret that there would be no further nerfs to powers literally a week before issue 6 gifted us with ED further cutting defenses and resistances by another 50%. That was not a pleasant time to be in the game or in the forums let me tell you; the level of player anger surpassed anything I've seen before or since. The forums haven't even approached that level of meltdown since.

Yeah, I was on voice chat with him when you asked him about it so I asked him to put in the word for me. Ill/Rad it is, and I imagine Local will bring his Ill/Rad as well. We've tag teamed LR before with those two characters and on occasion we catch aggro when LR doesn't swap to the new PA fast enough... still we should get it done.

Maybe if we stagger the PA 30 seconds apart (we're both perma) that will make him go to the second set instead of the person who's PA just despawned. What the heck, the worst that happens is things get exciting for a moment.

Oh heck yes. After awhile the popular channels fill up and it gets to be a real challenge to get anyone new into them... you end up with the old timers all being in those channels and the newer players relegated to the less popular ones.

The two main channels on Guardian are both full or very nearly so... this tends to create a closed community on those channels that excludes newer players.

Nope, Stone isn't required at all; Invuln is quite up to the task if it's built right. Heck, I've tanked it myself with Stone, Invuln & Shield as well as been on teams with everything but Dark Armor tanking LR. Now Dechs, I know it's up to it, I just haven't had a run with a dark tank yet.

A few tanks can do it unassisted but any well built and well played tank can do it with support. Yes it's tough, but if you know what you're doing it's far from impossible no matter what the team composition.