Call Me Awesome

Well, I've a couple of machines that both handle CoH fine... at least the live version. One is an Asus with a 15" 1280x800 screen, Intel Core2Duo T6400 2GHz CPU and GeForce 9300M GS video card. It's ok at medium - medium/high settings due to the lower resolution screen; I bought it a year ago for ~$600, I generally see framerates in the 30-40 range. No way would I expect this machine to handle Ultra Mode though.

My second machine is considerably more powerful, I bought it as a portable video editing workstation and plunked down nearly 3 grand for it... it has a 17" 1680x1050 screen, Core2 running around 2.5GHz and a GeForce 7950GTX dual GPU video card. It's capable of running the current live version with most settings maxed or one step down and delivering an average FPS in the 40-50 range. This machine IS capable of running some of the Ultra Mode goodies, albeit with a significant performance hit.

A good place to look for a laptop is www.powernotebooks.com, they're highly reliable and you can order exactly what you want, with or without an OS. The prices are quite attractive; what Dell would charge 3k for you can get from them for around 2k.

I don't see any major issues with it; you should have a nice solid build. A few things I might have done differently but that's mainly personal preference and playstyle, not core issues. Overall it's quite similar to my current live build. I skipped Hasten and 6 slotted LBE for example, but it should work fine as is.

Oh, for Dull Pain I'd skip the End/Recharge IO instead of the pure Recharge, but it's not a big deal either way.

I'd like to try and find one more slot for Stamina... but I wasn't able to on my build either. I simply tossed 3 common endmod and called it good. Mathematically I believe your slotting might be marginally superior based on the probability of the Perf Shifter proc firing. Slots are really tight though and I don't see any really promising candidates to steal from.

One thing I'd change is to trade Kick for Boxing... I'd rather not have to chase something I'd knocked back. While Boxing isn't on my main tray I do have it set to auto as a filler attack; since I don't have Hasten I didn't have anything else needing to autofire.

Overall I don't think your tanker will disappoint you with that build.

I didn't mean to advocate dropping Dull Pain; it IS still quite valuable, just not needed full time. I think DP should certainly be your level 2 power selection; and I'd 5 slot it with Doctored Wounds. I don't in ANY case suggest skipping Dull Pain, it's one of the 4 critical powers in the set!

Looking further into your build Fault works great with Stupefy for a nice recovery & recharge buff, just skip the proc... you don't want to knock mobs to the far corners of the map if the proc hits. On my Inv/Stone I fill the 6th slot with the Perfect Zinger Psi proc... if slots are tight you can stop at 5 slots.

It looks like Invincibility is overslotted; you could easily drop one of the common defense IO's. My preferred slotting is 3 Cyto's and one common taunt.

Weave works great with the Gift of the Ancients set, and you get bonus endurance and recovery out of the deal.

I would drop super speed and build up to open room for Dull Pain and a ranged attack... since you're grabbing CP go ahead and pick up Laser Beam Eyes and slot the Thunderstrike set for a good amount of E/N defense. Finding the slots for everything is a juggling act; you can drop slots from Invincibility and Fault. Also, I think you're going overkill on Health... yeah the uniques are nice to have, but are you really going to need them, or would those slots be better somewhere else? It's a juggling act and the "right" decision can be argued either way.

On my tanker I 4 slotted Tremor with Eradication and tossed a Nucleous HO in the 5th slot; Health got two slots, the Heal and the Regen/Recovery from Numina.

For another thing I would definitely get the +HP and +end accolades (portal jockey, freedom phalanx, atlas medallion & task force commander), those will add 20% to your HP and 10 points of extra endurance. Best of all they don't cost anything at all except time acquiring the badges.

MoITF isn't a huge deal for me one way or the other; it does ratchet up the tension though. I'd leave that call for once we've assembled the team and know what we have to work with; I'll fill in any holes we have in the team.

Let's see, I have:
Inv/Stone tank (soft capped), BS/Shield scrapper (soft capped), Fire/Rad controller, Ill/Rad controller (perma-PA), PB (Tri-Form), Dark/Dark defender (built for maximum debuffage), Mind/Kin controller all at 50... Fire/EM blaster 43, Tri-Form WS 41 and Plant/Storm controller at 40.

I think I can shore up any weak points in the team

Sounds like fun, I've any number of characters who can come along... scrappers, tankers, blaster, PB, WS, controllers, defenders; all are 40+ (most 50) and all have access.

I think I'm loose at 7EST tomorrow and will be happy to bring whatever you need.

While I do have Resilience on both of my 50 /regen scrappers it's more of a "filler" power than anything I really see as particularly valuable. Yeah, the additional MAG 5.5 stun protection is occasionally nice to have but I wouldn't consider it essential by any means.

I'd certainly take it over Revive, but after that it's probably the most skippable power in the set now that MoG has been changed into something useful.

In looking over your build it strikes me that you're spending a fairly hefty amount of inf in search of perma-DP... I'm not really sure that perma-DP is all that important; certainly it's less durable than a soft capped tanker is.

Right now you're sitting at 123% recharge; a bit short of perma-hasten but respectable. (The Force Feedback proc only has a 10% chance to fire for a 5 second duration each time you use the power so it shouldn't be included in your recharge calculations) You're probably close to perma-DP as it is though... but is it worth it? I've found, in the last 3 issues, that my soft capped Inv/Stone tanker only even USES DP maybe twice per playsession... based on that experience I don't think having it up full time is all that valuable.

Frankly you'll be considerably more survivable soft capped to S/L/E/N defense... and you'll spend a heck of a lot less doing it. I'd also shift a few things around in the build, pick up Heavy Mallet in place of Stone Mallet, Fault at level 22, Tremor at 35, Seismic at 38 and I'd drop Res Elements altogether. Tough Hide could use another slot (or two if you're using it for set bonuses... but enhance the defense more) as could Weave. I personally think Health is overslotted... I understand what you're doing with it but most of it's "fluff"; the slots are probably more useful elsewhere.

Oh, as a jumper you're better off getting Hurdle over Swift... Hurdle stacks very nicely with CJ/SJ to give a sizeable boost to jump speed and distance.

Check out my soft cap guide (in my signature) for some more thoughts; it's quite possible to reach 45% defense to Smash/Lethal/Energy/Negative damage without breaking the bank. That level of defense also makes Unstoppable entirely skippable... I retained it for 6 months after issue 13 hit and never used it once, even on a couple of Master STF runs... at the last respec Unstoppable got dropped from the build.

ED kicks in at a little more than 2 SO's worth of enhancement and kicks in hard after three. In your example of defense you would have ~40% bonus with two SO's (20% from each) and 55% from three SO's with the third being degraded by 5%. Adding another SO would only give you a bit less than 5% enhancement... you're vastly better off using that slot elsewhere.

Based on the figures you're giving it sounds like you're using DO enhancements, which only give you 10% enhancement per slot. While DO's can hit the ED cap it takes 6 of them to do so... for practical purposes ED applies to SO or higher enhancements.

ED's cutoff is based on a percentage of enhancement... with schedule B enhancements like damage resistance or defense that cutoff is 55%, with schedule A enhancements like accuracy or damage the cutoff is 95%. That pretty well works out to a thumb rule of three SO's worth... schedule B enhancements offer 20% enhancement per slot while schedule A enhancements offer 33% enhancement. (All these figures are based on even level or "white" SO)

By the way, you will NOT have any real improvement in survivability from overslotting your armors... the actual increase is a tiny increase in the overall defense value of the power. To illustrate, let's take a best case situation... a Shield tanker's Deflection power. At base, unenhanced, it gives you 15% defense to Melee. Adding 3 SO defense enhancements brings it to 23.4% defense to melee. Adding 6 SO defense enhancements to it brings it to a total of 24.8% defense to melee... for the expenditure of those THREE extra slots you got an additional 1.4% defense, or 0.46% defense per extra slot. There's no way that you wouldn't see greater benefit from those slots elsewhere in your build.

Yep, the area where your video driver info should be is blank... that means something's wrong with them.

Monitor:
Monitor's Max Resolution: (blank)
Video Device Name:
Manufacturer / Chip: /
Video Memory: n/a
Driver Version:
Driver Date: 1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM
Driver Language:

As you can see it doesn't list anything about your video card... that's a big red letter that something's wrong. Try uninstalling your video card drivers, run a driver cleaner app (sorry, don't have a url offhand) and get the latest drivers from either Nvidia or ATI depending on which video card you have. That ought to correct your problems.

That section should list your video card, for example "Nvidia 9600GS" or whatever, the memory on the video card, the driver version and all that good stuff.

Grats on the accomplishment! By the way, I like the name of the character