Call Me Awesome

Well, you'll have to wait a bit, Praetoria is part of the new Going Rogue expansion that's set to release in a couple of months. Right now only the Dev's know all the details about it and Marketing won't let them tell us about it yet.

I'd hate to count on that proc, it's what, a 10% chance for a 10 second duration +100% recharge buff? Nice if it hits, but you couldn't plan for it.

Likewise, is this something new? I have a Mind/Kin who's been 50 for a couple of years and gets sporadic play nowadays... I haven't pulled him out for anything major in a few months but I hadn't ever seen anything buff a confused foe.

I guess I should have said the rollout bugs that I've experienced myself, since I didn't play redside until about a year ago. I'll admit your example is a gamebreaker of a problem; I just never experienced it since I didn't get a villain into the 40's until last year.

Hmm, my mistake, you are correct and I was misremembering. Interesting that on your post I saw an "image moved or deleted" but when I quoted it I got the image.

That looks like it's from the enhancement tray... it's even smaller on the management screen and the enhancement number is on the bottom.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be the only thing that's broken or bugged with this launch.

Doesn't it start counting the inactive time from when you set it? In which case setting it to 120 days means it won't kick anyone for 4 months from now?

Anyway it sounds like a good idea to prune the inactives from the channel if we're getting close to full.

I've been here for every release since issue 3 and I do have to agree that this is among the buggiest ones yet. True, not EVERYTHING new is bugged some way or another but there are enough new features that aren't working correctly to be a definite concern. So far it does seem that many of the new "improvements" aren't quite ready for prime time.

I foresee a pretty major patch coming along in the very near future. Too many players are experiencing game breaking bugs. Worst of all is that many of these bugs have been repeatedly pointed out in the closed and open beta testing.

You're the first person I've seen in either Beta or Live who doesn't really HATE the enhancement screen font. I'd say you're rather outnumbered there.

Heat Exhaustion is a potent debuff on the enemy it's cast on. It drains ~10% of the targets endurance, reduces their damage output by 50% and reduces their regeneration by 500%. It's very useful on a hard target like an AV, it'll shut off their regeneration and reduce their damage output.

Oh, I suggest you refer to your character as a Gravity/Thermal controller; that way we know what your character is. As has been mentioned Origin (Magic, Natural, Mutation etc.) is, for all practical purposes, meaningless. It has absolutely zero effect on your character beyond the store you buy your enhancements from and the semi-useless origin power. (Well, and the 33 month veteran award but you've a long time to wait for that yet) It's kind of like saying your character is Blonde, a bit of flavor but otherwise it has no effect.

You may want to post your questions in the Controller forum, they'll be able to give you good advice about your powers and how to slot them. They'll be able to help you out and they won't jump on you foaming at the mouth

Hey, they had the longest closed beta testing of any issue and a lengthy open beta testing. No way that they actually had time to fix "minor" issues like this.

I have to say I'm very disappointed in the state of the issue 17 release; I know we typically have new issues go live full of bugs that are caught in beta but never addressed but this one seems to take the prize. My overwhelming impression of the release is that it's still in fairly early Beta... it's no way ready for release.

True, I'd neglected that in my thought experiment. Apocalypse in a ST blast, Ragnarok in an AOE blast and Unbreakable Constraint in a hold nets another 30%, bringing you to ~110% pre-Hasten.

Of course actually paying for all this does assume a Trump-sized bankroll

Personally if I were going to play it I'd build for defense bonuses instead of recharge primarily, when I rebuilt my old BS/Regen from his Hami-O build to an IO build I went that route. My numbers worked out to 45% melee (one parry), 24% ranged and 20% AOE defense with 563% full time regen and 25% recharge. I thought it was expensive when I did it last year at around 150 million... it would cost considerably more now with two sets of Obliteration among other things.

And I repeat, unless you're playing on a static team you cannot count on having those buffs available, therefore you should build for self-sufficiency. With an Invuln there's no reason not to; it's relatively easy to maximize your defenses without making any sacrifices... and it doesn't cost a fortune either.

I cannot understand deliberately accepting lower performance unnecessarily so that you can benefit from a theoretical teammate. A "Well rounded" tanker is one who has maximized all aspects of the build, NOT one that's deliberately settled on a weaker build.

Actually that 13% resistance is NOT "a lot better than none"; it would reduce an incoming 100 point attack to 87 points; which in practical terms will have nearly zero effect on your overall survivability. In order to get that tiny amount of resistance to an extremely rare damage type you're sacrificing considerable durability that would help you against the vast majority of damage you'd face.

You will have a much more survivable character by focusing your attention on the damage types you'll actually face every mission than by chasing minor resistance to the rarest damage type in the game.

See my first comment above, there is no reason to sacrifice your innate durability to allow for a theoretical "I may team with x sometime". That strikes me as a very sub-optimal build decision.

Let me see if I understand what you're saying, you would actually prefer for your teammate to make a sub standard build so that that player will appreciate your contribution???? I'm afraid I can't agree with this line of thinking at all, it's diametrically opposed to my own philosophy. I have absolutely nothing against buffers, but I simply cannot understand why you would DELIBERATELY weaken your own build simply so that a buffer can put you back to where you could be out of your own resources.

However the Smashing Haymaker provides 1.88% S/L defense, only requires 4 slots and costs less for all 4 IO's crafted than you'd pay for a single ToD recipe. That's the exact same defense bonus you get for SIX of the ToD set at a fraction of the cost. Finish out with a couple Pounding Slugfest for an 8% regen bonus and you've fully enhanced the attack with considerably better accuracy, damage, endred and recharge than ToD grants for far, FAR less inf.

I've been looking for a set of ToD for my Shield/Fire tanker for over a month now... in that time I've acquired 5 of the 6 IO's in the 30-35 range and spent over $40,000,000. I STILL haven't acquired a Dam/End ToD recipe in the 30-35 range despite having going rate bids on the entire range for over 3 weeks.

Contrast that with the Smashing Haymaker/Pounding Slugfest combination... those IO's are readily available and cheap; I have yet to have any difficulty getting them right away. The last time I bought those six IO's I paid less than 2 million, including salvage and crafting.

There's no practical reason to settle for lower performance in an IO Invuln build; you can have good offense, great defense and great resistance without any sacrifices at all... it's not even an expensive IO build.

I've never played DM, but I do know Invuln. I'd suggest first taking a look at my first 20 levels guide (in my signature) for the key powers, recommendations on power selection and slotting for a starting tanker.

Once you've gotten comfortable with the basics you may want to check out my soft cap guide for more advanced build and slotting suggestions to build a tanker with most of the durability of a Granite tank without any of the drawbacks.

Welcome to tanking and remember that much of what sets a good tanker apart from a bad one is attitude. If you feel it's your job to keep the squishies safe and if someone dies that it was partially because of a mistake on your part then you're thinking like a tanker.

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I agree that Inv/DM should make a highly survivable tanker... its only weakness is a lack of AOE. I also agree with the key powers.