Call Me Awesome

Actually that sounds like a thermal issue... are any of the vent fans covered or dirty? Laptops sometimes can overheat if you've set them on something that blocks the intake/exhaust vents in the bottom, from your description you'd been running for awhile and were in a pretty graphic intense area thus making the card work harder.

This really sounds like temperature to me, if it persists you may want to consider getting a cooling mat for the laptop. Asus makes good stuff; I wouldn't be worried about the machine from a minor drop if there was no apparent damage and it works fine.

That's a dummy card to keep crud out of either an expansion card slot or a memory stick slot when the slot isn't in use; it's not important. It's sole purpose is to keep crud out of an unused slot.

I highly doubt there's anything serious wrong; I've had 3 Asus laptops in my business and they've all been bulletproof, I use them to stream live Flash video over the internet. As I said I'd really suspect a temperature issue. Ensure that you have the laptop on a solid surface with the vent fans clear and you'll probably be ok. If it happens again check and see if the underside of the laptop is really hot, if it is then get a cool mat (a laptop mat with cooling fans in it).

I've been on both sides of this equation with a tanker and a shield scrapper; I see your point about aggro. As a BS/Shield scrapper the aggro I get is almost always mine even with a moderately competent tanker on the team. For that character this isn't generally a problem since he's defensively at midrange tanker levels... I've used him to main tank the ITF before. Yeah, a well built Invuln, Stone or Shield tanker is tougher but for most content that's academic... and I've actually run into a granite tanker who was squishier than that scrapper. I hate to think of what the slotting must have been as he had the prerequisite powers.

As a tanker with a shield or invuln scrapper on the team I generally let them handle what they can and keep one eye on them to see if they get in over their heads. I'll admit it's difficult to get aggro from them but it can be done. That's part of the reason I always push the pace; so that I'm (as much as possible) the first one into battle. The other part is to keep the ranged AT's from getting bored and pulling another group down on us unexpectedly.

I do have to shake my head on occasion with uh, suboptimal tanker builds. There's almost always enough slots to manage good offense as well as good defense once a build matures. In the early levels true you have a problem, but by the mid-late 30's you should have enough slots for both a solid offense and defense.

In short I look at having a scrapper with a strong aura as an occasional challenge instead of a handicap. If they're tough enough to handle the aggro it makes my job easier; if they aren't then I've a challenge on my hands.

I'm not at all surprised, that's why I don't really recommend that set. While the Smashing Haymaker only provides half the bonus it's FAR less expensive and much more available. The recipes for Smashing Haymaker used to be in the $50,000 range and don't use outrageous salvage. I'm sure they're more now but they won't be anything like the Kin Combat set.

Indeed, Stone Armor is the exception to the rule on purple's usefulness. Still, there's other ways to get considerable recharge a good bit cheaper. It all comes down to what you want for the character and how deep your pockets are.

Yeah, I've heard what causes the sound, it's something to do with the heads though... a plastic bit I think that tends to wear. Seagate drives are infamous for this, I've had about a dozen over the last couple of years that had the "click of doom".

Lately I've been sticking with Western Digital and haven't had any of those fail in 5 years and roughly 40 drives.

From watching the videos (I haven't gotten my beta invite yet damnit) that's my impression... most of the animations seem to be in the Total Focus range for duration. Maybe those are all dated and the final animations will be on par length wise with existing sets but from what I see in the videos I'm not impressed.

Not that we've been informed of per se, but there are frequent releases of new costume pieces and textures; and the recent addition of being able to customize your power GFX.

This means that the 30-34 is one of the worst choices simply because there's so MANY possible IO's in that range, most of which are utter junk, to come up your odds are really bad about getting a good roll.

Some mature controller builds are the most powerful characters in the game; Ill/Rad for example is one of the very few combinations that can solo Giant Monsters... with a fairly high end build of course, but most are quite capable even on SO enhancements once they mature, just not at quite that insane a level. Most controllers are somewhat slow starting and struggle in the early levels but quite a few get really strong in the mid-30's and beyond.

Mind is an oddball controller set, it actually starts out pretty strong but it peaks early; below 30 it's frequently stronger than most other controllers but once other sets reach 32 and get their pets they generally pull ahead. Mind is still quite capable though; I have a Mind/Kin at 50 and it's a good character. It just isn't on the same level as my other controllers, a 50 Fire/Rad, 50 Ill/Rad and 44 Plant/Storm.

That IO is part of a Hold set and goes into hold powers... unless you're electric you probably don't have any holds on your blaster therefore the IO isn't useful to you. Unfortunately it isn't worth much on the market either.

Different IO sets go into different types of powers. As I said Hold sets go into Hold powers, while melee damage sets go into single target melee attacks like punches and kicks, range damage sets go into single target ranged attacks like most of your blaster's single target blasts, targeted AOE sets go into things like Fireball and other AOE ranged attacks.

There are LOTS of different categories of IO sets and a specific power will usually only accept one or two of those categories. When you start getting into IO set builds things can get really complicated in a big hurry.

Read up on Paragon Wiki about IO sets, download Mid's Hero Designer from www.cohplanner.com for the essential tool in planning your builds. I'd suggest going to the Blaster forum for more specific advise about your powersets and build.

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Apparently I type too slowly

This really cannot be stressed enough, if it's the hard drive that's clicking it WILL die soon. If you've already backed up all the data (the programs themselves don't matter as they can be reloaded from the original disks but the DATA is critical) such as your email, documents, pictures and so forth then a hard drive failure is simply a nuisance. If you haven't backed up your data then when the drive dies all your stuff is GONE.

Even if it isn't the drive that's clicking I would strongly recommend regularly backing up your data... I've had drives suddenly die with no warning. Any important data on my machines is resident on at least two hard drives... really critical stuff exists on more than one computer. It's a fact of life that hard drives die, and it's not that uncommon for them to die suddenly.

I've had this happen a lot also, one possible culprit is a wire that's dangling down into the fan, that gives a ticking sound and can freeze the fan entirely. Most commonly this happens when I haven't tightly secured a wire and it works it's way loose. More often than not I'd just been into the case and replaced a drive or card and forgotten to make sure the wires are all out of the way.

Bad bearings on a fan can also cause this, as can a bent fan shroud. If the shroud's bent it's usually an easy fix to bend it slightly so it no longer touches the fan. If the fan bearings are making noise it's time for a new fan. Generally new fans cost around $5 so it's no big deal.

I'd personally still be tempted to go with the HO's simply because the slots may be more useful elsewhere. Not having seen his build I can't really comment on that but I tend to find slots a bit tight on my tank builds... that's where HO's shine; they allow you to save slots in power A for power B while maintaining full effectiveness.

On the topic of recharge more is always nice but is going after more worth extra slots? It all depends on your build, more often than not IMO you'll find the slots more useful somewhere else but it all depends on your build and individual playstyle.

All of this is sounding way too familiar... I had Insight for almost 10 years until Comcast bought out my area a couple of years ago. Since that time I've had things slowly get unstable, just like they were allowing the network components to decay and not replacing old components. Now it's not uncommon for the internet to drop out 1-2 times a day for up to 20 minutes at a stretch. When it was Insight I had 4 outages I can remember in 10 YEARS, not 2 outages each DAY. Naturally the TV service is fine.

I passed on switching to Verizon DSL because their speeds were about half of the cable modem service but as unreliable as Comcast is getting I'm having second thoughts. I'll take a 10 Mbs connection that's reliable over a 25 Mbs connection that flakes out.

Sure, go to your powers tab, then click the "combat attributes" link on it. That will give you the numbers behind your character, and you can have a window up full time on your HUD monitoring up to 10 of those stats.

That's why I tend to write my guides in generalities... I leave the specifics up to the player; after all they'll be playing it not me.

Quite so, I just was simplifying since the OP's just starting out and I didn't want to start loading him down with the math behind it.

Like Dechs said Purples aren't really useful for tankers... recharge is always welcomed but ideally you're looking for other bonuses. The good news is that those other bonuses are generally much less expensive.

For some thoughts on your Inv tanker check out my two guides linked in my sig; the soft cap guide gives you the most cost effective method I know of for soft capping your defenses. When I wrote it that build could be done for under 15 million; with prices as they are now it's probably more like 70 million now.

In the later game your Shield/Fire will be incredibly effective if built right but like ALL defense based sets it will struggle early. You've rolled up what's arguably the highest damage tanker set and it's good once your defenses mature around the mid-30's.

I'm currently leveling a Shield/Fire tank myself; it was rough until the mid-20's when my defenses got above 30%. By the time you approach the soft cap (45%) all defense sets suddenly get really, REALLY good.

Yep, it does.

I will have to give that a try when I get home, if so then thanks!

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Indeed that did solve the problem, I ticked both options and the problem is gone.