Call Me Awesome

My typical approach is to use SO's until level 27 or so then start working on set IO's. I'm usually a mix of IO/SO until around 35 by which time I've completed an IO build.

I plan all my builds around level 35 IO sets and usually end up with mostly 30-38 level IO's for exemplar purposes... after all I'm really not giving anything up slotting a power with 35's than with 50's and the lower recipes are almost invariably cheaper.

As an example, the last character I leveled bought DO's at 12 and 17, SO's at 22 and 27, then started on the planned set IO build. From 27 until 35 I bought the sets as I could obtain them at reasonable prices filling in the gaps with SO's. By the time I reached 35 I had no SO's left on the build and pretty well kept it that way to 50. I tried to have most of what I'd need in base storage for when I leveled up, if I didn't have something, was on a team and leveled up then I'd hit a store for SO's to have something to fill the empty slots.

I've been playing around a bit lately with a Spine/Electric and it seems to be pretty dang good so far... I just hit 33 with him and I'm still on SO's. I rolled him up after watching several buddies with Spine/Elec scrappers... it's an AOE monster but a bit squishy. Endurance isn't THAT big an issue with him either; he's playable with all (very) yellow SO's.

I've two high level Shield scrappers, one Broadsword/Shield at 50 (soft capped to all positions) and one Fire/Shield at 47 that's lacking in Ranged defense at the moment due to an incomplete build... I think I'm soft capped to melee and almost to AOE but still only in the high 30's for ranged. Of the two the BS/SD is better AOE and defensively but the Fire/SD seems to hit a bit harder in single target. Both are quite capable, although both are somewhat late bloomers due to the nature of defense sets.

I also have a Spine/Regen and Broadsword/Regen at 50; both are older characters and neither has had extensive IO work... the Spine/Regen is even a HO build. Still, both are competitive in today's game although not as dominant as they were prior to the Regen nerfs of yesteryear. Good damage output but very unforgiving of a slow finger on the heal buttons in the high levels.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the last dXP weekend I remember that it specifically did NOT apply to AE. If that's the case then any AE exploit would be fairly meaningless in context of double XP.

I'm still somewhat amazed that they released AE allowing it to give XP in the first place; I'm not at all surprised that players find exploits as fast as the Dev's fix them, I expected that from day one.

I seem to get a purple drop on average every other month or so figuring from when they were introduced. Very occasionally I get a couple in a short period then usually nothing for a long time.

In the last week I've gotten FIVE Calibrated Accuracy drops. I counted them... FIVE of the worthless (in every sense of the word) pieces of junk. The most valuable drop I've gotten this week was a Mako that sold for around 3 million. On the other hand I had a raft of fairly high dollar drops about a week ago that were in the 20-40 million range so as the saying goes average is average.

Father pretty well covered the cards; as a suggestion I wouldn't even consider buying a video card from Best Buy, you'll get screwed on the pricetag.

Check out www.newegg.com and look for the cards Father Xmas suggested for you; they'll have about the best prices around and they're totally reputable. Typically when I order something I have it in my hands in 2 days.

On brand names I've had good luck with Evga and Asus; don't buy Diamond Multimedia, it's one of the few brands that trip the "Danger Will Robinson" flag due to poor quality.

Heh, I just realized that I'm dating myself a bit there.

What do you consider higher levels? For me I consider higher levels the 40-50 range and I usually get just under one level per playsession on most characters in that range playing about 2-3 hours at a time.

The mid levels I consider 25-40 and they usually go a bit faster... at least one level per session in the 25-35 range tapering off to about a level per session from 35-40.

Low levels are 1-25 and they fly by; I usually get a brand new character to level 12-15 in a session and to 25 in three.

My average time in today's game to take a character from 1-50 is a little less than 100 hours.

Like Dark Tower said though Kelds now unlock at level 20, not 50 anymore, which I personally think was a questionable decision on the Dev's part. Kelds are NOT easy to play, there was a reason that they originally required a level 50 character to unlock. They are NOT epically powerful... nor are they weak. What they really are is complicated; they're really three very different characters in one and each form plays dramatically differently than the others.

Most people who got a character to 50 in the old days and rolled up a Keld ended up deleting the character in the teens simply because it played so differently than anything else. Yes they can be quite powerful in the late game, Warshades especially. They're an advanced AT designed for experienced players. I enjoy them but they're definitely harder to play well.

InUse, it's really a question of what role you want to play. Of course with the way the game works there's no "role" that's required... except for damage.

As I mentioned in the other thread on the Tanker boards, yes my BS/SD scrapper CAN main tank the ITF. That build also cost nearly 1.5 billion inf and it can't do it as well as my Shield/Fire tanker can on a build costing way less than 100 million.

In order to manage the aggro for the team on an ITF with the scrapper I had to work my butt off and my damage output suffered because of that. The SD/Fire tanker was MUCH easier to manage aggro with and I may well have been doing close to the same damage simply because I didn't have to work so hard at managing aggro.

What I'm getting at here is that while I CAN tank with my scrapper it's MUCH easier to do with a tanker. The scrapper's extra damage was largely irrelevant in tanking simply because I was too busy with aggro to devote enough attention to damage.

I can also tank with my Ill/Rad controller for that matter quite well and both my Kelds (peacebringer and warshade) can handle the job adequately in Dwarf form. I can even manage aggro (not really tank but accomplishing the same purpose) with my Dark/Dark defender. And for that matter my Archery/EM blaster can kill an entire spawn from 80' away in 3 attacks. That's part of the beauty of this game, there's more than one way to accomplish anything.

Want to know what the most unbalancing, fastest killing team in the game is? 8 Fire/Rad controllers... teams of them have crushed the Statesman's Task Force in around 25 minutes. A group of them can literally move through a mission killing everything almost as fast as they can run down a corridor.

I've run nearly everything in the game with virtually any combination of AT's you'd care to name. The STF is one of the hardest challenges on the hero side game and I've done it with lots of different groups both with tanks and without. Obviously the tactics change based on the group but it can be done with any combination of competent players. I've had easy runs with teams you'd think would struggle and I've had failures with teams that from the AT's present you'd expect to breeze through.

Competent players behind the keyboards are vastly more important than any AT or build. Nothing in the game NEEDS any particular AT.

My opinion? Presence is among the more useless pools in general and even more so for a tank; you already have far superior tools for aggro management. I wouldn't even consider it on an Ice tanker; you already have the best aggro tools in the game at your disposal in your primary and secondary.