Call Me Awesome

Really it isn't needed if you slot enough recovery/+end bonuses... my BS/SD has 4 sets of 4 Gift of the Ancients and 1 set of 4 Impervium Armor slotted and I can hardly make my end bar move... and I'm running 7 toggles: Deflection, Battle Agility, Combat Jumping, Tough, Weave, Grant Cover and Sprint.

If I can't drop my blue bar below 50% after 20 minutes of non-stop farming on the Cimerora wall I really don't think more endurance is a priority

Using the same slotting on a SD tanker you should be even better off since you're unlikely to be attacking that non-stop.

I can guarantee that slotting for recovery/+end as I listed will eliminate any need for conserve power... my BS/Shield scrapper is slotted that way and has better endurance recovery than my BS/Regen... I have yet to drop below 50% endurance on that BS/SD even while farming the wall in Cimerora non-stop... and a Broadsword scrapper will burn more end than a tanker.

I'll admit I haven't tried to put together a SD/Mace tanker... it's always a jigsaw puzzle to fit in the powers you want. I'll defer to those of you who've played Mace on power selection there; the only Mace tanker I've played is sitting at around level 8 so he doesn't really count.

Your skippable powers in Shield are Grant Cover and, to a lesser extent, One with the Shield. You really won't need OwtS very often, but my experience with my scrapper shows that it's very nice when things turn pear shaped on you.

I recommend taking Combat Jumping/Super Jump so you can get a bit more def and combat mobility out of CJ. Hurdle/Health/Stamina are a given... always take Hurdle on a jumper as it stacks very nicely for jump speed and distance. Fighting for Boxing/Tough/Weave is another strongly recommended pool... even if you've soft capped with IO bonuses without Weave you'll want Tough for the added S/L resistance when something gets through your defense, and trust me it will on occasion.

Let's see, that's 7 required powers from Shield and one very nice to have in OwtS and 8 pool powers. You have 24 total powers available at level 50, so that leaves 8 or 9 from your secondary and/or epic. You're certainly getting into a tight build getting everything in... you simply can't get everything you want so you have to prioritize. If you want 8 from the secondary (and I do always recommend Taunt for anyone who wants to tank, yes I know it can be done without... I've done it with my shield scrapper... but it's a useful tool) then you're getting a really full build. In order to fit in an epic pool you're going to have to make some painful decisions, drop _______ in order to make room for ______.

On my SD/Fire tanker's projected build I've had to make the same kind of choices... there's three powers I'd really like to squeeze in but others took priority. I always prioritize a tanker like this:

1. Powers that increase my durability so that I can survive the aggro tanking for a full 8 man team.
2. Powers that increase my ability to gain and hold aggro.
3. Powers that contribute to killing the mobs to speed up the team's progress through a mission.

Item 1 and 2 are fairly interchangeable but I firmly believe that when I'm playing a tanker my job is to get into battle first and keep the aggro on me instead of on the squishies on the team. That's my primary focus, I concentrate on killing mobs after I've gained the aggro and always watch out for any stray aggro I need to grab during combat. I have attacks and I use them, but on a team it's my job to allow the rest of the team to go all out without fear of aggro.

Mid's is an invaluable tool for fitting together the jigsaw puzzle of your build; as you start thinking about more complex set IO builds it almost becomes mandatory to have a way to work out the build. Set IO bonuses are wonderful things that allow characters to do phenomenal things but they all work together... the maximum benefit comes with stacking many of these small bonuses together. I really cannot recommend it strongly enough; it's extremely useful even with a simple SO build.

Uh, ED is Enhancement Diversification, the mechanic that makes slotting more than 3 SO's worth of enhancement in a power pointless due to drastically reduced values. The way ED works, let's take an attack for example. You've slotted 1 even level damage SO and improve the damage by 33%. Slot two damage SO's and you've improved damage by 66%. Slot 3 and you end up ~95% damage instead of the expected 99% because that third SO is reduced by ED. If you were to slot a 4th damage SO you would only get 5% benefit from it instead of the 33% it should give... that's what's known as the "ED cap", it's the point where slotting for further improvement in that aspect of a power is wasted because enhancements are so severely degraded.

ED works off of a percentage enhancement, not the number of enhancements present... it just works out that the ED cap is equivalent to 3 even level SO's. For Tier One enhancements (accuracy, damage, recharge etc.) that percentage is 95%, for Tier Two enhancements (defense buff, resist buff etc.) that percentage is 55%.

Heavens no, you absolutely want Stamina. The slotting I discussed along with Stamina will eliminate your end problems. Stamina with 3 endmod slotted is more or less assumed on any character... I only have two above level 20 without it out of almost 50 characters.

Well, if you're only at 34% then you're a long ways from the soft cap, I would think in terms of a respec to shift things about. For one, Grant Cover is of limited utility for you... the only thing that helps you is the debuff resistance in it. It's nice def for your teammates, but realistically it'll only cover scrappers on your team... the radius is only 15'. I would take it, but much later... 49 looks to be a good spot for it.

One with the Shield is nice, but again it isn't a priority... I've planned it late in my build on my Shield/Fire tank. Tough/Weave is more important in your survivability, you'll notice simply immense improvement in your durability once you reach the 45% soft cap.

All in all it sounds like there's room for improvement in your build... at level 36 my Shield/Fire is at 40% def to all and will hit the soft cap at level 41 when I can snag Weave.

Now, getting back to your original question of epic pools, I pretty much lean toward either Energy if I need Conserve Power (and if you 4 slot your defenses with Gift of the Ancients you won't need it) and Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball. If you're only taking two then you may consider Ice... Block of Ice and Ice Blast are both nice powers.

I typically start slotting set IO's when a character hits 30... I mostly slot 30-35 IO's since I can hit ED caps with them and they let me exemp farther down without loosing my bonuses. Also it lets me enjoy the bonuses on a character I'm still leveling up.

In my slotting I like to slot Deflection with 4 Gift of the Ancients and two common Resist IO's. Battle Agility gets 4 GotA, Active Defense gets 3 recharge to allow for overlap and stacking, True Grit gets the Steadfast 3% def unique and ED capped heals with any leftover slots going to common resist IO's. Tough I like to slot 4 Impervium Armor (a bit pricey but nice recovery/bonus endurance) and Weave also gets 4 GotA. With that slotting you'll have enough recovery bonuses and bonus endurance that your troubles with the blue bar will be a thing of the past. Excepting the Impervium Armor set you ought to be able to afford the rest of that pretty easily by the mid-30's.

That slotting will also push you pretty close to the soft cap; tossing in a few minor defense bonuses from your attacks will easily push you over the 45% mark. A few suggestions would be slotting a Touch of Death set in a single target attack, toss a set of 5 Scirocco's Dervish into an AOE attack and toss a set of Mako's Bite into another single target attack. That should push you to the soft cap leaving plenty of room in your other powers to slot for other bonuses.

Wolf, he probably meant that he'd be fixing it on an internal build then; it usually takes some time for those fixes to filter from that internal build to the test server and then to live. As a guess the next test server build may well have his fix.

I seem to remember BaB mentioning something about having fixed something internally awhile back and that it would get to us in an upcoming patch, but they were programing a couple of patches ahead at that time.

In any case I can sympathize with being sidelined by a bug. As many of those bugs as we have currently I wouldn't be surprised if we get quite a few patches in the next couple weeks.

I really can't see it making much noticeable difference either way to tell you the truth but I'd imagine you'd be slightly better off with another 27 points of heal than a half second of recharge.

Whichever option you choose I doubt very seriously you'll ever notice the difference in practical terms.

I didn't mean that as a criticism and looking at it again I can see how you read it that way. My apologies.

Posts like this are why people don't take you seriously. If you put a little effort into your post and brought it up to maybe a 5th grade level then you'd find people were more than willing to help you. I do have to admit it's better than your OP, but you've still a ways to go.

Most of us are more than willing to help anyone with a problem as long as they're coherent and moderately civil; I'm afraid you are neither. My 8 year old nephew can write coherently and many of his online friends don't realize how young he is.

I'd go with option one and a little bigger heal at a cost of about a half second of recharge but you aren't lying about nitpicking there. Frankly I wouldn't worry about it; I base all my calculations on level 35 IO's anyway so a few tiny fractions either way don't matter much.

Quite possible, and if so he's correct in regarding himself as a new player; this isn't the same game it was in '06. To the OP, welcome back to the game and I hope you enjoy your stay. Remember, if you're confused or stuck on something there's lots of players who'll be glad to help you out. We've all been there, and while we hate to admit it sometimes we've all made bonehead mistakes from time to time

Of course it is, it's an ultra rare enhancement; they're supposed to be hard to get and expensive. The hold set is actually cheap... for a purple set.

As an FYI, you would get much more favorable answers to your questions if you would use coherent sentences. As a general rule the playerbase of this game is more mature and doesn't have a lot of patience with incoherent and difficult to understand posting. Most of us had no idea what you were trying to say in your original post.

On a forum board the only thing we have to judge a person on is how they type; if you post in a clear, coherent manner then you are assumed to be an intelligent person. Your posts so far frankly don't give a favorable impression; this is why you've been getting unfavorable responses.

If you just figure the +def set bonuses I went after with my BS/SD scrapper I'd guesstimate that build at around 100 million in today's market; the Steadfast unique, a few sets of Mako, a few sets of Scirocco and Weave to make up the 45% Range/AOE def and Parry for Melee. I did add in quite a few other bonuses of course bringing the final tally into the 300 million range but for the most part they were recovery/bonus end/recharge bonuses, not core survivability.

Since you don't have Parry to leverage the Melee you'll have to invest in a few more bonuses; that would probably double the price tag or maybe a bit more.

Don't think you HAVE to chase perfection though, I've a friend with a 50 Elec/SD and he was quite effective and survivable with his defenses hovering in the 35-40% range... it's not a case that your build sucks if it isn't soft capped, it just moves from very good to godly. As with most builds you generally get better the more you can throw into the build but it's by no means bad with moderate bonuses.

As a general rule I build my characters for maximum performance at minimum expense... I've only one character who has close to a billion invested and that's my perma-PA Ill/Rad controller. Most of my characters have less than 200 million in their builds and some, like my namesake, have less than 100 million.

I'd recommend not slotting the Stupefy proc, it's knockBACK, not knockDOWN so if it hits it'll send a mob flying; generally not a great idea for a tanker.

You could slot the Kinetic Combat knockdown proc in a couple of single target attacks if you like though.

Yep, there's a jetpack dealer there, as I recall he's just to the left as you enter Firebase Zulu from PI.

Going one further, whenever I log in a character with toggle armors the first thing I do is toggle on all of my defenses and then ignore them the rest of the night. The only time any of your armor toggles should be off is if you just popped a wakie.

There may be a few situations where you'd turn off RttC, but the only one that occurs to me offhand is if you're trying to stealth past mobs while invisible. Outside of that situation you'll turn 'em all on at log in and leave 'em run until you log out.

ALL toggle powers have a constant effect that is applied each time the power "tics", none of them vary in what they do simply because you just turned them on. So, log in, turn on all your armors and go beat up stuff.

Interesting, my slotting on my Frad for Cages is 5 Posi Blast and the Grav Anchor proc... possibly loading up procs might be a better choice. I may have to ponder that for a respec when and if the market comes back up.

Well, sort of. They feature some of the Praetorian enemies and AV's but they're all on the standard maps like all missions in the game now. Hopefully we'll get more information about Praetoria in the next few weeks; and Going Rogue should start closed beta testing in a month or so.

We'll all know once it goes live, I believe they're planning on launching in July?