Call Me Awesome

The BotZ KB is MUCH more expensive though, that's why I put either the Karma or Steadfast KB into Steamy. If price is no object then sure, but you'll pay many times the inf for the BotZ.

In my opinion, based on my mid-40's plant/storm I skipped the following:

Entangle - I don't see a need for single target immob on a set with a nice AOE immob.
Spore Burst - This is something that wouldn't be bad to have but I couldn't find room and it IS pretty situational. I may pick it up for issue 19 when I get three more power choices.
Spirit Tree - I've never been that sold on an immobile regen buff pet; with the exception of AV fights I'm rarely on a team that would stay in it's range for long enough to be worth the cast time.
Thunder Clap - without anything to stack with it a MAG 2 PBAOE stun seems of limited utility.

The must have ASAP powers would be Strangler, Roots, Seeds, Freezing Rain and Carrion Creepers. Toey (fly trap) is kind of meh, but at worst he has mobs shooting him instead of you and he does contribute a bit of damage. Steamy Mist is highly useful as a stealth and exotic damage resist power... it also holds either of the KB IO's.

Tornado is nice, but situational. I find tossing Roots out first keeps his chaos under control... just be sure to toss Roots every 12 seconds or the KB protection expires and mobs go flying. Lightning Storm USED to be great when you could enhance it's recharge; now it shoots slowly enough to be much less useful. Still, it's nice to have for a really tough battle or AV.

The other powers all have their uses. Hurricane is as you know situational but frequently useful to round up stragglers and shove them to the tank. Just be sure you don't push mobs AWAY from the tanker with it! It's also nice to pin mobs into a corner if the geometry of the room you're fighting in allows. O2 boost is a typical "aid other" power with limited mez protection and end drain resistance... this is very useful against Malta and Carnies!

Not really, I've something approaching 100 million in mine at today's prices and lots of that isn't really durability focused. Soft capped (considerably over actually) to all positions and the most expensive item is the Steadfast 3% def unique. You can get most of the way there on SO's if you build for it; on my tanker I mainly used Multi Strike in the AOE's for some def on the very cheap.

While OwtS is up I'm at 90% S/L resist, ~50% to all the rest but Psi. With OwtS down I'm at 45% S/L resist, ~25% to all the rest. I have ~50% defense to all positions so I've a comfortable margin for debuffs and near-capped debuff resistance when AD is overlapped... or roughly 40% of the time.

It's plenty tanky... not quite up with Invuln but not far below.

True but you also have the fact that scrapper attacks generally recharge faster. I was looking at the DPS results that top end scrappers are showing in the scrapper forum compared to top end DPS of tankers. A few edge case scrappers are managing ~300 dps; I don't offhand know of any tanker builds that can top ~150 dps. That's what I was basing my statement on top end scrapper/tanker damage. Do you know of any tanker builds that can top 150 dps? The best I can come up with, Shield/Fire, comes in somewhere in the 130's with a ton of recharge.

On the other hand if we compare average scrapper vs average tanker damage then you're probably pretty close to right in overall dps comparison. I think that the Scrapper forum's only come up with a very few combinations capable of turning in much over 200 dps.

Doh! Yes, you're right; I did screw up my numbers a bit going from memory. Still, I was understating the advantage if anything.

Both Shield and Invuln are good aggro magnets; and it's true that scrapper versions of the taunt auras have the tanker numbers for taunt duration and mag. What a scrapper completely lacks is the "Gauntlet" taunt effect that's part of every tanker attack, and a scrapper's Confront power is a weaker, single target version of a tanker's Taunt power.

Your problem with getting aggro from a shield scrapper has to do with the mechanics of how aggro works. In order to gain aggro from another character you have to generate DOUBLE the threat of that other character; this is what leads to the typical "first in has aggro" effect you're seeing. Aggro is generated by many things, damage, debuffs and taunt effects. Who actually has aggro is the result of a very complex interaction of damage dealt, taunt effects, remaining duration of taunt effects and several other things. The power "Taunt" actually applies a HUGE multiplier to the user's threat (I forget exactly but I recall it's a factor of several thousand) thus virtually guaranteeing keeping aggro away from blasters and other squishies. Of course this same effect in a weaker form is also baked into taunt auras; thus your difficulty generating double the threat of that shield scrapper.

AV's are a special case. Taunt auras are autohit against all PvE mobs... except for AV's and GM's. Because of this you can't rely on your aura to hold an AV's aggro, but Taunt is a guarantee absent another player also taunting. Remember what I mentioned about needing double the threat of a character with aggro to steal it? If you aren't taunting an AV then a scrapper with a strong aura attacking full tilt is likely simply outdoing your aggro aura. Taunt is the leveler here.

Actually they can't, as I mentioned you have better tools for the job. It sounds like what you're running into are massively expensive builds coupled with the vagaries of the random number generator. I've had times where my BS/Shield scrapper (total build value over 1.5 billion and not complete yet) gets squished like a bug because the mobs get lucky and land 2-3 heavy hits in a row through my defenses leading to a quick examination of the floor. My Shield/Fire tanker has more hit points and better resistance to give me a better chance of surviving those instances where the RNG decides it hates me.

Top level scrapper damage would be close to double top level tanker damage, and top level scrapper durability would be about half top level (Stone Armor Granite) tanker durability. At the peak of scrapper durability you're probably about in the average range of tanker durability. And you're spending probably 100/1 in inf to get it, possibly considerably more. (100 inf on the scrapper vs 1 inf on the tanker)

Oh heck yes. By your own example the scrapper at resist cap is taking TWO AND A HALF TIMES the damage that a tanker at the resist cap does; and that tanker has 25% more base HP. Additional HP can be looked at as resistance to all damage types as well.

Let's take a simple case of a scrapper vs tanker HP. We'll assume that neither has any defense or resistance... the tanker survives 25% more damage due to his higher HP. You could look at that as the tanker has 25% resistance while the scrapper has 0% if you like and the numbers still come out the same.

On average a tanker will survive double the punishment of a scrapper thanks to a combination of 25% greater effectiveness in his armors and 25% more hit points.

What you're really asking for doesn't exist in the game... by design. The absolute best tanker at survival is unquestionably a Stone tanker in Granite+Rooted but you pay for that durability with a 30% damage debuff, 30% recharge debuff and a huge mobility penalty.

I've played several high level scrappers and by far the most durable is my BS/Shield. I have to admit though that he's not up to the durability of any of my high level tankers. I currently have 4 tankers at level 50 on live and 3 more level bumped tankers on test loaded with SO enhancements.

I played around a bit on the issue 16 closed beta with a level 50 Electric armor/Super Strength tanker with SO enhancements. I ran torture tests with that BASE LEVEL enhanced tanker and with my billion inf BS/Shield scrapper... I found that looking strictly on a durability standpoint that tanker was about even with the scrapper. An extreme build on one of the most powerful scrapper secondaries just equaled the durability of a base performance tanker. The same tests with a SO enhanced version of CMA, my Inv/Stone tanker, showed a marked superiority on the part of the Invuln tank.

I was testing solo with a variety of mob types on radio missions set to +2 level/x8 players on the difficulty settings to simulate a typical team. The only mobs where the Shield scrapper had an advantage over the base level Invuln (remember both tankers were SO only builds) was Malta thanks to the problem of Sappers. In every other situation - Council, COT, Nemesis and Carnies the tankers were superior.

If you have large amounts of inf to throw at it a Scrapper can approach a tanker's base level of durability and tanking ability. Of course the Scrapper will deal considerably better damage; after all damage is a scrapper's primary purpose while its a tanker's secondary purpose.

Um. Well, have you looked at Shield's aura, Against All Odds? Same duration, mag and tic rate as Invincibility coupled with a damage buff and small debuff. Trust me, Shield's every bit as good an aggro magnet as Invuln, and scrappers get the tanker numbers for taunt duration and mag as well.

Willpower does have a pathetic taunt aura... it's quite good at buffing the tanker's survivability but terrible at holding aggro. Shield doesn't have that problem.

I think I may have seen that tanker... was it about 2 years ago? An Invuln with an absolutely TERRIBLE build?

The guy I'm thinking of was convinced he was the greatest thing ever and don't tell him about powers, he knows it all. As I recall he was around 40 at the time and had 3 powers from his primary... his mez shield wasn't among them... and most of his secondary along with the entire leadership pool. I don't remember much else about him, it's funny the way the mind blocks out bad memories.

Like the LED leads plugged in backwards? I've built several machines where the proper alignment was... a bit ambiguous.

I think we're getting into definitions now; in my opinion we have two basic strategies.

"Gathering" or "Bunching" would be the tanker grabbing a spawn and getting them to gather in close to him, but not bringing them to another location.

"Herding" on the other hand would be the tanker running into a room, snagging the aggro cap and then bringing the mobs out into the hall or to another area for the team to take down.

Both techniques have merit depending on the circumstance but in general "Gathering" is more efficient since it's much faster. I see herding as a safety issue; if a room is too crowded then you'll have more mobs in aggro range than a tanker can control leading to all the extra mobs going after the rest of the team. This is typified by the infamous "Room of Death", the multi level lab room with the platform in the middle surrounded by an elevated catwalk. In this case it's much safer to have the team wait outside in the corridor while the tank grabs aggro and brings them back. One or two cycles of this should thin things out enough to go back to more conventional gathering techniques.

These arcs have been completely redone with new mobs... they now use lots of the new Praetorian mobs. Be aware that they're considerably more difficult now. It's a welcome change in my opinion even though the new clockwork are a huge pain in the butt. They've gone from wimps to nearly Malta level threats now.

Pretty much forget about what these used to be; there's some similarity of course but for all intents and purposes they're brand new arcs. You can still do the original ones through Oro though.

A quick search shows this page on Intel's website for updating drivers for that model video card.

I'd second this advice; the only downside is that the larger machine will naturally be heavier and less portable, you didn't mention if that was a concern however.

I wasn't a huge fan of Acer myself thanks to their really poor quality in the late '90's but apparently they're a different breed of cat now; I've a buddy who bought one for his young son a couple of years ago. After seeing what that kid put the laptop through without so much as a hiccup I have to say I'm impressed with the durability.

Here's the culprit right here. There are some general issues with Intel integrated graphics in the game but most people are reporting success with newer drivers. The drivers for your card are very old (2007) so you need to update them.

My preferred method for most situations is to jump in, cluster the group for AOE's and then on to the next. Most mobs only take a very few seconds to cluster so it's something you can do very quickly. The only times I'd use anything like old school herding is if the room is too crowded and standard tactics would result in mobs over my aggro cap going for the rest of the team. In that situation I'll have the team wait outside the door while I run in, aggro a bunch and run back out. By the time the mobs I aggro'd are gone (and the adds who come as slots on my aggro list open up) the room is usually thinned out enough to take with more conventional means.

In today's game that kind of herding is a safety issue, not necessarily a speed one. Of course dead teammates do tend to slow things down so there's some correlation there.

It used to be, now for the most part it isn't.

A good tanker should be able to condense a spawn in just a few seconds though so all you need is for the team to wait a second or my preferred method for the tanker to snag the next spawn once 80-90% of the previous spawn is down (barring anything dangerous in the previous spawn that is). A good team will watch for the group to condense then immobilize and bring on the hurt.

Your experiment will need to have different mobs too; some are REALLY easy to gather tight (wolves are a classic example) while others are harder (ranged mobs primarily). This tips the balance considerably. A spawn of wolves will clump almost immediately while others are notorious for staying away (Nemesis come to mind here) and require a little more finesse and maybe a couple seconds more.

Well, my usual buddies and I play most nights from 9-11PM EST on Guardian. We do have characters on Pinnacle and Infinity as well and we're nearly always playing heroside. While we have a few bad guys they aren't our focus. If you're on one of those servers we'll be happy to run some missions with you. Also, check out the forums for the Mentor Project; it's an effort on the part of lots of veterans to show new players the ropes.

The best part of the game is finding a group of friends and playing together. Having a bunch of friends is a large part of what keeps me playing after almost 6 years now.

Egads, what am I doing still up??? I've gotta work tomorrow.

I just sent you a welcome email and I'm glad to see you edited out your login. The last thing you want is to have one of the gold farmers hack your account.

I imagine you've edited your post fast enough and it's late enough at night (and what the heck am I doing up at 2:30AM??) not to worry about your account. Even if an unsavory type saw it they'd still have to get your password. I haven't personally known anyone to get their account hacked but it does happen on occasion. There's no point walking around with a wad of cash hanging out of your pocket after all so don't make it easy for the ill-intentioned.

No, and your login is something you shouldn't share. When you log in you'll see in the chat window "using global chat handle @____________", by default this is the name of your first character. My global is @call me awesome, is your first character's name Redempti0n? If so your global is probably @redempti0n (it isn't case sensitive).

If what you gave IS your username for your login I suggest you change it; you don't want to help someone to steal your account. Your login information is something that should NEVER be shared with anyone.

I recommend you edit your post to delete your login information.

Edit
Checking ingame I see that Redempti0n is NOT your global.