Dechs Kaison

Out of Energy Aura, Ice Armor, Invulnerability, Stone Armor, and Willpower (the only typed defensive sets I can think of at the moment), only Stone Armor and Willpower have any psionic defense. Willpower doesn't have enough to matter, and most stone players (admittedly not the good ones) rarely come out of granite.

Typed defense sets have a hole to psionic attacks. Position based defense sets have no such hole.

I didn't realize we were restricting this conversation to only non-AE PvE play.

Please give me an example of a position lacking attack in PvE that does not also bypass Energy Aura's, Ice Armor's, Invulnerability's, or Granite's defenses.

I'm still waiting to see the weaknesses of a position based set that isn't shared by the typed defense sets.

I do agree that the exceptions are relatively rare, but there are still more exceptions to bypass typed sets.

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of the psionic defense found in the Energy Aura set.

There's not much in the normal PvE content that has them, true enough, but kinetics attacks lack a type. Basically any debuff that doesn't do damage. Any of the poison debuffs lack a type of defense. Benumb from cold domination may be tagged cold, but I know it has ranged.

Don't forget the psionic attacks that bypass typed defense. There are also attacks (particularly debuffs) that carry no type of attack, but they still have a position.

IOs or not, m/r/a defense will always perform better than s/l/e/n/f/c. Most things have a type, but everything (short of a very few psionic control powers) has a position.

"Why is it that we feel most alive on the very edge of death?"

My SOP is to stay in the mob until the group is "well in hand." That depends largely on the team and task to define much farther. Most of the teams I'm on, we're running +0 TFs, so that means I pretty much take the alpha, throw out my two AoE's, taunt the fringe, then move on.

The way I see it, the tank is only needed as long as the group has a slight danger of actually getting hurt. It sounds like you turn up the difficulty quite a bit, Hyperstrike, so on your settings, waiting for "well in hand" may very well be until there's only 1 or 2 foes left.

I have the map up at all times, regardless of what character I run, but I find it most useful to my tank. I also play my tank with the zoom out a bit more than usual to help with situational awareness. These two things allow me to see at a glance whether the team is ready to move on or not.

You're thinking a thicker skull, which yours couldn't get any more so.

He suggested a thicker skin, so you don't get so whiny and defensive when someone disagrees with you.

Heh. I also have "If you thought you could handle it, but couldn't, you're expected to get back up or hosp out."

Outside of that one, my rules are only there to keep me in check (or to be a Fight Club reference). Any build, any budget, no exclusions.

I'd love to say more, but I've already broken my first rule enough.

This is very true, but I'm not really talking about PuGs doing radio missions, or even your vanilla TFs. In the case that there is actual teamwork going on, then my statement of "tank should be the first to die" holds true.

Actual teamwork, however, is not a requisite to having fun, or completing mission objectives. I don't organize radio teams, but I do run quite a bit of PuG TFs, and most often with my tank. I run those TFs under a very strict set of rules, to include things like "You must be having fun" and "If you think you can handle it, you're free to go for it." I pretty much encourage scrapperlock. Hell, one of my rules is that a first timer on one of my TFs has to take an alpha, regardless of AT/build. We'll back you up, but you still gotta open up at least once.

Master runs are a different story. Those require teamwork and some strategy and I run them under a different set of rules, but the "Have fun" rule remains.

A whole ton of this. Aggro control is a tank's purpose. Most of the time, that requires you to survive.

A tank that doesn't have any aggro won't ever faceplant, but he's missing the point.

A lot of wisdom in this statement as well. The tank should be the first guy dead on the team. If anyone else died, it was probably something he could have prevented. I only take charge of Master TFs on my tank, and one of my rules is "No getting angry at the guy who dies unless it's me."

This is just another reason I love Dark Armor, by the way. When fecal matter hits the fan in amounts I can't deal with, I just turn into a controller with a mag 30 stun.

I'll be honest, I always try to have at least three defenders and at least a controller or two on Mo* teams, although I prefer to have the debuffing kind. The best Mo* teams I've been on have only had me in melee range (it's always the scrappers that die), but I don't exclude people unless its something like a third tank. Give me any two blasters, any three 'fenders, and any two controllers, and I couldn't be happier. The blasters can happily be replaced by kheldians or more trollers/fenders.

On the most recent MoITF I had a cold domination corruptor, which was enough to keep my defense from ever cascade failing. Outside of that, it was all debuffs and a pair of scrappers.

Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.

All you had to do was ask. PM sent.

Also, it's only four pages for me.

/thread

In fact, /forums. We're done here. Move along, everyone.

I'm not really disagreeing with you. I'm trying to say that between force bolt and provoke you could be pretty constantly active since they both recharge fairly quickly. Force field secondary, life drain from necromancy, and demon -res whip attacks are pretty much the only reasons I could justify taking the personal attacks.

Mastermind personal attacks do piddly damage as is, and the damage per endurance is simply atrocious. I'd suggest slotting the devastation hold procs, or slotting for the attack's debuffs. Make the attacks do something, you know?

I don't have a build for dark/dark, but I'll send you a PM with my dark/fire's build. You should be able to take it from there.

Right back at you.

I linked the post where the math was done, and it did not take into account any resistances. Also, EM does more smashing damage than it does energy.

Stun is the guaranteed attack, and the majority of the others stun more often than they don't. Stun->TF->Bone Smasher->ET should have anything stunned much more often than it doesn't. No other attack set can boast that kind of reliable control.

Here's an easy way to balance everything perfectly: Change all the sets so that they do the exact same thing just with different animations.

No more shield charge, lightning rod, soul drain, fulcrum shift... none of that. Dark Miasma, Radiation Emission, Trick Arrow, and Empathy will have all their powers replaced so that they all have the same effects for enemies. Same treatment given to every other set of powers. They will all do the same exact thing, and now we're perfectly balanced.

Of course that's a ridiculous idea, but it's the only way to make things perfect.

Balance isn't a simple equation, but at its simplest principle is "If it's the best at one thing, it should suck at something else."

I'm fine with the little differences between sets.