Call Me Awesome

I'm afraid I have to completely disagree with this, in my opinion a team tanker's overriding responsibility is to protect the team first and foremost, THEN worry about dealing damage. I'll say a big HECK YES that a GOOD tanker IS there as a babysitter.

Yes, I do feel very strongly about this, and I have from the moment I rolled up my first tanker. If I'm playing a tank you better believe I'm doing my best to hold aggro and keep the rest of the team alive. A blaster who doesn't have to worry about aggro is much more effective at killing the mobs quickly; I'll handle the aggro while he handles the damage. Seems like a fair trade to me.

There are limits of course, I can't do anything about the squishy who runs the opposite way from the group into another room of baddies but anyone who's with the rest of the team can count on me doing my best to keep them alive, that's what I'm there for. If I'm playing a squishy then that's the kind of tanker I want on my team. I've no use for a "tank" who refuses to at least try holding aggro.

Dangit Junior, I've TOLD you to close the dimensional rupture when you come in the house!

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It is for any reasonably competent group... most of the time you're just sitting in the reactor room waiting for the next spawn... and waiting... Oh, we have baddies at door #3, kill kill kill, where's the next spawn... waiting...

A PuG of all newbies and/or extremely low damage might find it a problem but I haven't had any difficulty in years. Oh, setting the difficulty slider to "11" would cause problems but in general any team capable of running typical missions successfully can handle the respec.

Oh, and your buddy with the borked build? He can use his second build as a "ghetto respec" to correct his mistakes; he'd just need new enhancements... not much of an issue in the low levels anyway.

I'd put SR higher than WP late game... it's as survivable on less inf as SD. Early game it's no contest, regen would be number one as far as I'm concerned with the defense sets struggling. WP is weaker in the low levels since one of the biggest problems is endurance and regen gets QR at 4 while WP waits until 20.

Once you manage to get a defense set above roughly 25% def it really starts to shine, but before that it's fairly weak.

My only experience with WP is with a Fire/WP brute I took to 50 but it struck me as being fairly squishy even with moderate IO bonuses. Admittedly I didn't have a real pimped out build for it due to finances redside and IO availability but it was a decent mid-range IO build. It felt squishier than my 2 regen scrappers (both 50, one BS/Reg, the other Spine/Reg) to say nothing of my BS/SD scrapper.

So... if I were rolling a new scrapper I'd have to decide what I intended. If I wanted to try a primary I hadn't played and didn't know if I'd take it the distance? Regen is my top choice since it's strongest early. If I'm looking for a late game powerhouse then Shield is the top choice. Invuln would be a good choice in the mid-game, particularly with moderate IO bonuses added in. Frankly WP wouldn't likely make the cut with me... having taken that Fire/WP brute to 50 it just didn't show me any real reason to take it over other choices. Of course YMMV but that's the feeling I got from the set.

Ah yes, I well remember that. Even today Regen is a good performer... I consider it about the best performer in the early game then leveling off in the mid-20's to mid-30's as the other sets start to catch their stride. Late game Regen is still capable but sometimes outperformed by other sets.

Of course you can build around the problem areas with judicious IO bonuses and power selections... my first scrapper, a BS/Regen, is currently sitting at ~30% defense to all and soft capped Melee in addition to ~700% full time regen and a bit over 120% global recharge. It's highly durable and a good damage dealer.

Back in issue 3 (where I came into the game) conventional wisdom was that if something couldn't kill a mature regen in 10 seconds it couldn't EVER kill it.

Likewise, and I didn't roll up my first regen until issue 5 so I missed out on the "window of uberness" of toggle IH.

Oh, and Uber, HO's stayed at the 50% level until a fair way through issue 4... CMA didn't hit 50 until week one of issue 4 and I vividly remember 6 slotting Seismic Smash with the 50/50% Nucleolus HO's and how incredibly hard it hit. Then we got the first pebbles of Nerfageddon with the HO nerf, followed closely by the GDN of issue 5 and ED of issue 6.

The issue 5-8 era wasn't the best of times... we were told that all the nerfs were needed to allow for this new shiny IO system that was coming soon... it only took nearly 3 years to arrive. Most of us who were here for all the chaos still aren't happy about how it was handled.

I will say that the current game as it is now really is better than it was in the glory days, and the Dev's were probably correct about the need for the nerfs. The huge time delay though between the "nuke it from orbit" nerfs of issue 5-6 and the eventual restoration with the IO system was way out of line though. On the other hand, that was in the Jack Emmert days.

Well, I guess I've well and truly derailed the thread, so I may as well go all out. How 'bout them <insert sports team of choice>?

I used to use Unstoppable fairly frequently prior to the issue 13 buff to Invuln and IO sets; now that I've soft capped my Invuln I no longer have or need Unstoppable.

If you find the power useful, and I'll certainly admit it has it's uses if you don't have soft capped defense, there's a few things you can do to mitigate it's crash.

• You can only use it against foes that your team will be able to drop in under 3 minutes. This pretty well negates the penalty since you won't be in combat when it crashes... it does force everyone to wait after the fight until you crash & retoggle.

• You can eat a couple of large purples and/or oranges when you're ready to crash... pop a blue after the crash then dull pain and you should be able to continue on.

• You can get the "Ethereal Shift" temporary power... this is a 5 use CLICK phase shift power. Simply taunt the baddie just before you crash then click Ethereal Shift and wait out the crash and recovery in perfect safety. This is one of the many temp power recipes that you can find in Wentworths, usually very cheaply.

As I mentioned however, once you've built significant defenses approaching the 45% soft cap as discussed in my guide you'll have no need for Unstoppable anymore.

Sarrate covered this pretty well, my general rule of thumb is to push the pace as hard and fast as the team can handle, but to be careful not to go over that. This cuts way down on what I call the "Bored Blaster Syndrome" where someone decides to aggro a group over there while we're working on a group over here. Scrappers are generally pretty self sufficient and usually don't require a lot of baby sitting... unless I see a scrapper has gotten in over his head I generally worry about the rest of the team.

Blasters, Defenders and Controllers are the ones I usually concentrate on protecting, Scrappers usually can take care of themselves and also usually know what their limits are.

When I'm tanking for a team I'm usually more concerned about holding aggro and keeping mobs looking at me and away from the team than actually killing anything. I spread my attacks out to maximize the punchvoke (ah, Gauntlet I mean, they changed the name of the mechanic a few years ago) effect.

I always have the camera zoomed out so I can see as much of the battle as possible, if something turns away from me toward the team I see it and can do something about it.

Here's a tip, always position yourself on the far side of the baddies from your team, that way all the mobs are looking at YOU and have their backs to your teammates. By doing this you keep any AOE's from splashing on your team and you'll know immediately if a mob turns to attack the team.
Kind of like this:

(Team->)........(Enemy->)(<-Tanker)

Since you're Invuln you do have a strong aura to help you out, what you'll need to work on is clumping the mobs tight enough around you. There's several techniques for this, and some groups are easier to clump than others. Mobs with primarily ranged attacks are considerably harder to clump than melee mobs for example.

• One approach is to do a quick lap around a group to get their attention and then break line of sight by ducking behind a wall, pole or any convenient obstruction and let the mobs come to you. This is known as "Corner Pulling". It works quite well and is the easiest way to clump baddies but it does have the drawback of being slower than other methods. It also tends to get disrupted when a Controller suddenly immobilizes everything while they're chasing you and spread out... I don't recommend this method on PuGs for that reason.

• Another method that I frequently use is to jump into the middle of a group and then jump behind them. This is a quick & dirty method that will get most of the attention, toss a Taunt on anything that doesn't pay attention to you.

• Sometimes I just use the quick lap around a mob then stop behind them, that also works quite well, particularly for a group that's relatively compact already.

There's lots of other methods of course, one thing that will help your skills would be to run a few missions solo and practice gathering the mobs into a tight bundle... there's really no substitute for practice. There's three things you'll need to be aware of though.

• You have an aggro cap of 17 mobs... if there's more than 17 baddies in the group some of them will be unaffected by your aura and taunt. Keep this in mind while you're tanking, once you have your 17 new best friends you'll have a lot of trouble getting the attention of the Blaster's new friends.

• Taunt will only affect a maximum of 5 targets at a time, the mob you targeted and up to 4 others around him. By targeting different mobs with Taunt you can spread the love around.

• Your aura only affects an 8' radius around you... in practical terms that means only about 6-8 baddies maximum will be in your aura at a time. Move around a little to maximize your aura's effectiveness... Invincibility's aura will last 17 seconds against even level mobs so you can effect more baddies than will fit in melee with you. By the same token your attacks also have a small AOE taunt effect, by spreading your attacks you spread the effect.

Welcome to Tanking; it's great to see someone who's trying to learn how to tank effectively. The biggest key is simply practice... get a radio mission of easy mobs like Council, set it to 6 man/even level mobs and practice bunching groups. That will do more than anything in helping you learn the mechanics... and you don't have to worry about doing it wrong in front of your team.

Dunno, I've rolled up Long Tall and Ugly, then found I couldn't get the look I wanted... really wish there were better pistol models. The Desert Eagles are the only ones that look decent. I wanted a pair of Colt Single Action Army 45's! Wah!

Kidding aside I imagine we'll get more options once GR actually goes live. I can hope anyway...

Well, we all have a different definition of what's a good server... if you want the highest population then it's either Freedom or Virtue. Be aware that Freedom does tend to attract a larger number of rude players than most. Of course there are a lot of very good players there as well, but with high population comes a higher number of players you'd generally prefer to avoid.

Virtue is usually a near-dead heat with Freedom population wise and is our unofficial role playing server; you'll run across a number of players who prefer to play "in character" which if you aren't familiar with it can come across a bit confusing.

Personally I like the Guardian or Pinnacle servers... they're both mid range or slightly below in population and tend to have good communities. While you unfortunately find jerks on all servers they're pretty rare on these servers.

I'd suggest picking a server and seeing what it's like, you'll find good people on all of them who'd be willing to show you the ropes.

The way the population goes on the servers:
The server on top of the list is the last one you logged into.
Below that is the lowest population (at the time)
At the bottom are the highest population, again at the time.

Villain or Hero is really up to you... the Heroside population is double or more the Villainside though so that may be something for you to consider. Also I consider the Heroside zones to be considerably easier to navigate... Mercy Island (the Villain starter zone) is rather difficult to navigate. I have played both sides and have level 50's on both sides. I still prefer playing Blue (Hero) side.

Assuming you play a Hero I'd suggest rolling a Scrapper as your first character... they're the most straightforward to play. See the bad guy, run up and punch him in the face until he drops, then get his buddies. Simple, direct and you'll have enough survivability to be forgiving of new player mistakes. After you've learned the ropes you may well want to play a different type of character and that's perfectly ok, you have 12 character slots per server to experiment with.

I started with a Scrapper as a first throw-away character, then rolled a Blaster (which I didn't like at the time and eventually deleted around level 22) followed by my namesake Tanker who became my first level 50. Over the years I've played every AT heroside to 50, several multiple times. All AT's (AT = Archetype; - Scrapper, Blaster, Tank etc.) can be a lot of fun to play but some will seem to click with some players while others don't.

One thing to keep in mind... death isn't a disaster, you WILL get killed and you'll recover from it. Sometimes it happens because you did something stupid (and ALL of us do that on occasion, even 6 year vets) and sometimes it happens because a teammate did something stupid... it happens frequently because of simple bad luck as well. Just pick yourself up, dust off and give it another try. The "penalty" for dying now is so small that it's really pointless... you get XP "Debt" which has to be paid off. What that means is you'll get 50% XP until your debt is gone, and that debt is usually gone in a matter of minutes.

Welcome to the game, and enjoy your stay. Many of us have been here for years... several have been here since Beta. I've been here for over 5 years now myself and I'm still having fun. Apparently there's something being done right in the game

That's actually a very valid point; while we, the gaming population in general, understand that abbreviation I see where it's a bit... well, cryptic. Of course, the original developers of this game certainly were Cryptic most chances they got. DoT... what's the Department of Transportation have to do with an attack anyway... on second thought never mind.

Abbreviations shouldn't be used in the actual game information without somewhere spelling out just what it means. While we instantly understand AOE for example someone unfamiliar with the term wouldn't have a clue that we're talking about something that affects multiple targets at once.

I also think it's an excellent idea to have a mouse-over popup on the new powersets saying something along the lines of "only available to players with the Going Rogue expansion".

I'd say that a decent PuG would average roughly 2 hours for the STF; more typical PuG times would be in the 3 hour range. A good team who knows the TF and has a good mix of powers and experience probably knocks that down into the 1.5-2 hour range. Getting much below 1.5 hours requires a very good team who really knows what they're doing.

The STF is one of my favorite TF's in the game; it's also the most difficult heroside.

As Ribic mentioned slotting AD with Membrane Hami-O's will do the job... my BS/Shield scrapper has capped DDR when AD is double stacked. This isn't a cheap method unfortunately, but it does work.

I generally have no problem with LR on my Inv/Stone tanker, even without any support from the team. I've found it's easier tanking the STF with my Inv/Stone than with my Stone/Fire tanker, strictly because of the mobility issues inherent in Stone Armor.

There's three rough spots in the STF as a tanker; first the fight with Aeon, then Ghost Widow and LR. Taking these in turn:

1. Aeon. One of the mistakes commonly made with him is leading off with the Tree temp power then having him be untouchable for a few seconds and ignore your taunt. The problem is that he doesn't raise his shield until he aggros... while the Tree power WILL drop his shield after he raises it even if you lead off with it he still gets several seconds of protection.

The easiest way around this is to have your friendly controller drop a pet, ideally Phantom Army on him to eat the alpha then you can follow them in and hit the temp power AFTER he's aggro'd and raised his shield.

2. Ghost Widow. For Ghostie there's two basic strategies... either stay at range of her to prevent her from using her heals or make sure everyone in melee, including yourself, have near-soft capped negative energy defense. Remember her heal must hit in order to work, and all of her damage is negative. Personally I always want to get GW out of the way first; she's by far the most dangerous of the patron AV's and you really don't want her to suddenly decide to crash the party.

3. Lord Recluse. If you don't have outside buffs such as sonic shields or force fields then your best friend is your inspiration tray. My basic loadout for LR is 10 medium/large purples, 5 large oranges and 5 large greens. While the Blue tower's up you need 75% defense to floor his accuracy... if you're soft capped at 45% normally then one large purple per minute is enough. While the Red tower's up he hits like a truck so the oranges can come in handy... I always pop a couple in order to handle his alpha.

I HIGHLY recommend staying in melee with LR; one of his ranged attacks is a truly nasty endurance drain... it can and will drain you dry in one shot. The good news is he won't use it in melee. Likewise Invincibility interrupts his Bane summon so you won't worry about hordes of 54 bosses appearing while the team kills the towers. Best of all though is to have one of the defender/controllers toss a toggle debuff on him, this WILL prevent any Bane summon prior to his 20% health "pet nuke".

My strategy for LR is to eat 2 large oranges, one large purple and jump into melee with him. I taunt, then withdraw slowly to the corner behind the green tower while someone else tosses Rad Infection on him. (Snow Storm, Darkest Night and other toggle debuffs work equally well.)

While I'm holding him in the far corner the rest of the team kills the Red tower then goes on to the Blue, Yellow and Green. Once the Red tower drops you can stop worrying about orange inspirations and once the Blue tower drops you can stop maintaining purples. If LR gets through with a big hit then pop Dull Pain. If he gets you again use a Green. Unless your team has severe problems with the tower you shouldn't run short of purple or green inspirations.

Anyway, if you build your Inv tanker to the defense soft cap you'll find that you're nearly as durable as your Stoner; the only times I've had problems on the STF were when the repairmen were bugged a while back and the team couldn't kill the Red tower. After almost 10 minutes of them trying and failing I ran out of purples & greens and dropped.

Summarizing my LR strategy:

1. Pop 2 large Orange and 1 large Purple and jump into melee, taunting and leading him into a corner. A teammate's toggle debuff on LR prevents any Bane summons. Taunt on Auto is a good idea here.
2. Maintain 1 orange and 1 purple until the Red tower drops.
3. Maintain 1 purple until the Blue tower drops.
4. Once Red & Blue are gone you can let the inspirations expire.
5. Dull Pain is available for when LR gets lucky... if he gets lucky again eat a green inspiration.
6. Once all towers are gone keep LR pointed away from the team while everyone takes him down as normal. Remember he has a small radius PBAOE that will hit melee behind him... squishies should stand back.
7. Drop him like a bad habit and enjoy your shiny new Centriole.

Whew, I've always regarded Ghostie as possibly the single most dangerous AV in the game with her three heals, one huge, and that absolutely broken MAG 100 hold. I'd say soloing her definitely counts as an accomplishment, she's easily capable of wiping any STF team if they aren't very careful. She's perfectly capable of one shotting a Granite tank.

Congratulations.

Coincidence? Unpossible!

Anyway, I haven't played a mace tanker since way back when the set was terrible and even then only into the teens so I didn't think of it actually. Thinking about Mace as it is now I can see it being a good choice; a bit less control without the two AOE knockdown powers but considerably more AOE damage.

Hmm, maybe I should give Mace a whirl (pun intended) sometime. Now primaries... hmm.

Damnit, the last thing I needed right now was yet ANOTHER alt. I just got through rolling up my 6' 4" white rabbit Fire/Storm controller named Hare Drier.