ClawsandEffect

You're absolutely right about this.

If it worked how a fight would REALLY work, your tank would be useless or dead in any given battle. We can discard how fights work in comic books and movies too, because those happen however the writer wants them to happen, which is almost always just as illogical as you think the game's AI is.

Let's look at how an Invuln/SS, the "classic" tank, would fare in a battle in which your opponents behaved like real people with working brains. You know, like in real life.

- No one is going to get within arms reach of someone who shrugs of multiple people shooting him with machine guns. Your AK-47 can't hurt him and you're going to PUNCH him?! Darwin Award waiting to happen right there.

- If your enemy has someone just as tough as you, they will assign that person to keep you occupied. The two of you will be locked in a fight neither will ever win, effectively removed from the equation.

- Sooner or later, someone will figure out that you're vulnerable to psionic attacks, and they will bring a telepath to shut your brain off, rendering you brain dead and no longer a threat to anyone ever again. And if you manage to survive, you'll find that there's a telepath with any group of people who even thinks you MIGHT show up.

- Anyone with a brain is going to ignore the guy yelling insults at them and avoid him for the aforementioned reason that it's idiotic to get within range of your arms. Instead, they're going to go after the guy who just vaporized 30 of their buddies.

- There is no way one group of guys is going to run up and attack you while another group standing 50 feet away is going to stand around with their thumbs up their butts. If there are 75 guys in that room, you'll be fighting 75 guys, not 17.

Comic books, movies, and video games are one thing. Real life is another thing entirely. In real life, Lex Luthor would have shot Superman with a kryptonite bullet a long time ago. He's so used to being invulnerable he wouldn't even try to avoid it. Pretty sure a kryptonite bullet in the brainpan would take Supes out.

Other tanks would face similar problems:

- How well would an Ice tank fare against a dozen guys with flamethrowers? Because that's what they'd bring with them.

- Fire tanks would find that a lot more people have access to liquid nitrogen than they ever thought possible.

- Shield tanks would find that their little piece of metal isn't much good against an air strike.

- SR tanks would discover that napalm is difficult to dodge. Filling an entire room with sticky, difficult to extinguish fire will ruin the day of even the most agile person.

- Stone tanks would be mired in so much movement hindering materials that they would be effectively neutralized in a combat situation. Then there is the sniper waiting to put a bullet in your head the second you shut Granite Armor off so you could move again.

- Electric tanks would have great fun being doused in liquid rubber.

- Willpower tanks would find that a lot of people have rocket launchers, and they've gotten very good at hitting the same target with them all at once.

You don't want the game to be more realistic. Tanks would be completely useless in real life because people aren't stupid enough to let them dictate how the fight is going to go. They can and will bring your weakness to the fight, it wouldn't be like a video game where you can just avoid the groups you don't do well against. They would seek you out and remove your ability to stop them in the future, probably with lethal results. A real life superhero's career would be very short and end very messily.

Well, look at what else about your build is being gimped and ask yourself if it's worth it.

If I'm reading this right you will have:

5 resistance powers 5 slotted with Impervium Armor. That's 24 slots you spent chasing 15% resistance, when slotting fewer Reactive Armor will give you defense to 4 types you will be facing MUCH more frequently than Psi.

3 defense powers 6 slotted with LotG. So, that's another 15 slots.

You've spent a total of 39 slots chasing Psi defense and resistance. What are your other defenses looking like?

And more importantly, if you spent that many slots on protection from Psi, how well are your attacks slotted?

I wouldn't waste that many of your available slots chasing Psi defense, when they could be put to much better use.

The way I see it, how much I choose to pay for something and why is none of anyone else's damn business.

I overpay all the time, as mentioned before, mostly because I like to finish what I'm doing before I log off a given character. I have numerous characters, and it could be weeks before I log that one in again. There is a decent chance I will have forgotten what I was doing before I logged off in the intervening time.

If overpaying for a piece of salvage means I can be done with what I was doing now, rather than later, I can live with that. 50,000 influence one way or the other isn't going to make a huge difference in anything, especially when I can earn it back in the course of fighting a single spawn at level 50.

I think that little fact is commonly forgotten. How ridiculously easy it is to earn influence just by playing the game. My level 50 characters can earn 50,000 influence literally in less than a minute. Why should spending that much bother me when I can make the same amount back so quickly?

Like I said, it's play money, and the amount of it you have is completely irrelevant in terms of things that really matter. Now, if a car dealership would accept influence as a valid means of payment for a new Mercedes, maybe my opinion would differ.

But wouldn't increasing the amount you get back per tick be an improvement to regen? That's what I meant, I'm well aware of how it works.

From what I understand, you can make any AT work, it's just specific power sets that are more desirable.

But definitely in a 1v1 situation, pretty much any melee AT is at a disadvantage against a ranged one. It's much easier to kite than it is to close with someone who's kiting. The kiting person can keep attacking, while the melee AT is only going to get one or two attacks off before they have to chase them down again.

I like Tankers for the simple fact that I am required to put MUCH less effort into survival, and can slot for other things instead. A combination like Super Reflexes/Street Justice for example, can be softcapped by level 24 using just power choices and SOs. That leaves me room to do things like slot a silly number of procs in my attacks to up my damage output. With lots of recharge, a Street Justice character with proced out powers will deal a significant amount of damage over time.

I can't do that with a Street Justice/Super Reflexes Scrapper or Brute, because I have to spend a good chunk of my slotting chasing the soft-cap that the Tank got to on SOs.

Yes, Scrappers and Brutes can be built to be survivable, but how much of your IO slotting was spent getting there?

THIS.

See my current location for emphasis.

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That assumes that you know enough about the differences to be aware of the value you're getting.

Most brand new free players don't have that understanding. There are probably quite a few people who have spent more than $15 a month on the game for things a VIP would have gotten for free, like powersets and unlocking ATs.

Cool, thanks for the info.

Also, I'm willing to put a few hundred million in it. By "not-ridiculous" I was referring to the 20 billion+ builds I've seen on occasion. I just don't PvP frequently enough to justify that kind of expense.

Maybe the Baron boots from the Magic pack could work.

That's actually not true.

Granted it will depend on specific sets, but a Rad Emission Defender will make short work of any Scrapper or Brute that lacks a ranged mez.

The Defender will never close to melee range and will debuff the Scrapper or Brute into a kitten, because without a ranged mez the melee toon has no way of shutting off the Rad toggles. If the Defender's secondary happens to be Psychic Blast it gets even uglier, because any heal powers the melee toon has will never recharge fast enough to keep them alive.

Basically, if you're playing a Scrapper with no ranged mez and a Rad Defender drops it's toggles on you, you have 2 choices: Run away or die. It's pretty rare for the melee toon to win in that situation.

So a level 50 damage IO boosted 5 times would be equivalent to the straight Damage enhancement from a purple set?

Interesting.

I'll be surprised if Bill subscribes again. He didn't seem especially impressed with the Incarnate stuff, and he's been around forever, so he has pretty much everything permanently unlocked as a premium player. He really doesn't have a compelling reason to pay them.

They decided not to make us pay 15 Astral Merits to unlock the new Incarnate slots, based on our reaction to it.

How many other dev teams would do the same? I'd say it's a safe bet the answer you're looking for there is "none".

That means they DO listen to us, it just doesn't always end up how we'd (as a whole) prefer.

You heard incorrectly.

-resist will indeed stack, but it depends on the source.

For example, the Achille's Heel proc will not stack with itself, but it WILL stack with other sources of -resist, such as that found in Reactive.

If you have the cash for it, you can also slot a Gladiator's Fury -resist proc, that will, again, not stack with itself, but it will stack with other -resist abilities.

You can potentially have -40% resistance from the two procs, and whatever Reactive maxes out at.