Develle

Sorry man, It was at 7pm GMT. Me thinks one of the random atlas spammers conned you that it was over at 6:30.

I didn't turn up until 6:40 ish, then wandered off to the corner shop and still got back for the judging from 7 onwards.

Play what you want, you will enjoy the game more, from a pve standpoint at least (I don't PvP so wouldn't know) all are viable.

I don't know (other than percieved Fotm builds like you say) why you don't see many mace or axe tanks around. For me I find it a conceptual thing in that I find the weapon users fits with scrappers more than tanks so I have never made one that uses a big pointy stick to beat things down with. Also shields is a newer power set than some of the others like stone/fire/inv etc, so you probably find there are simply more of the older types still kicking about from before you could even pick shields as a tanking option.

As I say though, just pick what you want and go with it, always the best way in my book.

Pfft, next you will be trying to tell us 'Customised' has a z in it.

I ain't falling for it

Cool, thanks for the advice.

Another quick question that I can't quite work out what's best to do:

The level of the IO's used. I notice they scale with exemplaring (and was reading about it on the wiki), and the build I was reading mentions using a good portion of level 30-38 IO's apparently to be good for exemplaring yet not effecting it much at 50.

Now is this something I worry about or do you guys just slot all 50's and be done with it where possible? Obviously as I have levelled up before these IO's were around so I am starting with nothing at 50, so should I just concentrate on getting 50's or take a more planned approach?

Has just finished installing a whale tank in their back garden ready for later in the summer.

Thanks for that, I shall have a read

Still trying to get my head around these IO's which are a new thing to me. I found a build on the US forums which I am using for now however using SO's instead of what it says in IO's. My tank wasn't exactly wealthy so I doubt I will be buying any soon, but I will see how it pans out.

Fun getting back into the game, I must have spent at least an hour last night re-discovering the joys of superleap + skyscrapers, not so productive on the re-learning to play the tank but a good laugh anyway

Hello,

Having just re-installed the game after a *cough* short break of several years, just seeing if any of the old Paragon Allstars or Scrapapocolypse members are still around. Would be great to catch up with folk if anyone still remains although I realise chances are slim with the ammount of time that has passed.

Hopefully will meet some new folk as well and find out exactly how to play the game again (or from scratch as I assume a lot has changed mechanics wise).

Feel free to say hello to a confused looking tank wandering around :P

See you around the city

Hi folks,

Well finally getting bored with WoW I decided to come back to my first MMo experience of COH for a while and dust off some of my old characters. Now as it was just after the time COV came out when I last played and as I remember my Tank was specced at the time for Hammi Tank duty I really have no ideas what I need to do with it to get it in a playable state now (the old brain has cobwebs about builds).

I suspect quite a lot has changed since the i4 / i5 time which is when it last respecced so I was looking for a build or two to get me back on my feet.

Mainly looking at PVE I think, primarily for Develle my INV/SS (although I also have a 39 stone/stone tanker kicking about, and started a WP/ENG tank just to get me back in the swing of things gameplay wise).

So builds for any of the above would be greatly apreciated, especially INV/SS as it was my main back in the day also any useful links on things to read up on on game changes since then.

Thanks in advance for any advice given.

P.s. Any of the old Paragon Allstars still kicking about, been a while since I have seen or heard from anyone there as I kind of lost touch after a few of us moved on to WoW before going our seperate ways?

Well I have a 50 inv/ss tank and a 39 stone/stone tank (have a 40 stone brute as well, which is more pleasent to play than the stone tank but thats a different story)
.

Toughest without a doubt is stone (after granite). Best is debatable.

Mobility or lack there of is a pain, don't underestimate the usefulness of being able to jump/sprint around in combat to grab back agro. Sure teleport or a speed boost help for granite but its not as good for mobility.

Soloing: If you want to solo, stone is pretty bad to be honest, lack of speed again can be an issue.

Agro control: While agro control on a stone tank is helped greatly by mud pots, the slower recharge once in granite does have a down side to all of your other powers, spamming attacks, taunts etc requires more effort with granite, doubled with you lack of mobility it again makes tanking that bit more difficult.

PvP: If you do want to do pvp, don't pick stone, I have pvped with all my characters at some point quite a bit, slam your head against a wall instead of playing stone, or just stay clear of granite for pvp its more enjoyable. Sure few will be able to kill you, but lets face it why bother even trying to kill a stone tank, just avoid it, its pretty easy and if you do use non granite then you are easy pickings due to lack of resistances (again though do try it, at least its more fun and you might if you are lucky kill something).

I won't comment on ice or fire as I've not played them.

Toughest but least versitile is stone, the rest are more balanced and rounded overall be it inv/ice or fire.

Heh was going to say, My Brute is EM and have PvPed with it from 22 up to 40 on most days I played it during that time.

Gah, sorry to hear that DK thats terrible news. Hope the new year brings you and your family better fortune, and look forward to seeing you around again soon.

FTW = For The Win!

I reckon flying monkeys has to be a good idea in anyones book The ultimate henchm...err. ape.

Yup good fun.

Well done all

I think its more a case of, the more you play the game the more you realise (or read up on) what works.

My first toon Develle absolutely sucked back in CoH beta, as time went on she became more refined and more effective.

Still another aspect is the continuing nerfs, sorry difersification of powers. To do the role that has come to be expected of the tank (i.e not die and take the agro off the team) the focus on what powers you need to do the job has become more and more narrow.

Certainly before you could have a far from optimum build and still perform the role, now tanks have to be very very specialised to fulfill their duty to any kind of effectivness due to their expected nature of them being the first one into the firing line.

I think mine would have to be the big Bridger/Rockjaw rumble the other week.

I was happily kicking villain butt with my scrapper on Union, I got there nice and early so was in the first zone instance and the heroes outnumbered the villains by at least 6-1.

Well the fight had progressed to the point that the heroes were now inside the villain base, so I thought what the heck I'll log on my brute for a bit...

On I log, instantly into the middle of the fight as I had logged out in the base the day before ...

I dutifly switch on my toggles an survey the massed heroe threat for a second or two.

Then a voice over team speak from one of my former hero companions says...'hey dev you are the most wanted'

'Ooooh Sh*$....' *Face plant.*

I barely saw what hit me

Well I can't argue about it being well thought out or not.

Aside from the number per second though, the thing I find is though you need powers in bursts as well all know. Now I tend to play on large teams so I need to be throwing out everything I can to help the team along in a short burst of time and power output. With something like vines the end use per second is pretty much meaningless as you will pretty much never cast it twice in one fight, so if I drop it I want it to last, like you say fights don't tend to last 2 minutes unless its an AV.

For something like your single target hold, I would question the end reduction, without it double stacking holds on bosses is reduced (with a small team environment this isn't such an issue mind you). Now you can do this with vines as a back up but only once in a fight as I say. I don't actually find the end use too bad anyway on it, then again I do have 3 slotted stamina with so's so thats probably why.

Personally I will probably be slotting something like vines for 2 acc/2 - 3 hold/ 1-2 recharge.

I dunno, on paper it looks great backed up by the figures and if you don't mind a bit of down time between fights as well I'm sure it will be ok, as I say I tend to play on large teams so I tend to need powers that hit, last and are back when I need them.

I'll be 6 slotting seeds and vines at least for my aoe control, probably carrion creepers too to be honest although not had chance to mess around with it myself yet. I suppose the other luxary I have is havng psi as a secondary I have another means of hit point regen in the form of drain psych as well as extra endurance if I need it.

I honestly can't see your build not working, I'm not trying to pick holes in it. The old stamina argument has been going since day one, so its nice to see a build at least that doesn't use it.

Yup energy melee does have a good number of 'stun' attacks. These only drop toggles if the target has no mez resistance, and will only drop toggles on something say like a tank or a scrapper if you can overcome their mez protection

Stun and total focus are the two prime attacks for this, they always do a stun portion, all the other attacks have a chance to do stun so its not guarenteed. You can break through sometimes on a tank or a scrapper, but you usually have to have a couple of attempts at it from my experience as its not 100% reliable. Usually it will take at least 3 stun attacks to be going at once to do the job, so as mentioned stun, total focus then hope for a lucky stun hit from one of your other attacks.

Well looking at the build I can't help but feel there is a bit of a mismatch going on. I know you said its not how you will be slotting but still worth commenting on I think :P

A lot of your powers you are slotting for very high recharge and not much duration on any of the effects (apart from an odd slow and a couple of holds on your single target hold). So you will be spamming powers out left right and center. Vines for example is only going to last a few short seconds when it is actually available. On the flip side, no stamina to enable rapid casting of lots of powers.

So for example if you slotted confuse for confuse duration in there somewhere you wouldn't have to cast it so often. I personally am finding this power about the best for rapidly bringing a rogue group under control although I'm only 22 with mine so far so some of the higher up powers like carrion creepers could be good.

Also if you are planning to heal things you are going to have a job keeping up with throwing out these mez effects and healing at the same time.

Personally I wouldn't take the healer option, with longer lasting mez effects you could use the slots and power spaces on other options, but if its a concept thing fair enough.

For example you take the 10 slots and 2 power spaces from healing pool. You drop another power, and go for fitness. You use 2 slots on stamina to take it to 3, if you want to do a bit of healing effect add in 3 more slots on spirit tree for health (it is noticable with so's the heal rate, even if it is situational when you can use it). Use the rest of the free slots to boost your other controlling powers like seeds etc or even some attacks for a bit more punch with domination. Your seeds of confusion could be lasting twice as long, so with only the one casting you not only free up power casting time you save on endurance.

The pet being slotted for damage, I'm not so sure it struck me from the description as being a more controlling pet than a beat down pet, still I'll have to wait to experiment with that one for myself I will be slotting control aspects in it at first.

Well not even sure the 850% thing is still there as a cap, think it got lowered but don't quote me on that.

It's kind of irrelevent anyway, as already stated fury gives about a 200% damage boosted.

I don't know on one hand I would say after a while a brute can out-damage a blaster. This is purely if they get fury going mind you and more so that they it easier to play a brute more carelessly as you have defenses and mez protection.

However off the blocks a brute is compariable to slightly more than a tanks damage with scrapper defenses.

I don't know, I have a 50 scrapper, 50 blaster, and a 40 brute. I don't feel like my blaster is not doing its share of damage, and although you might say range isn't an advantage it does give you more positions to attack from and to as well as having melee for the big damage when you can.

I would say if I put all three against the same mission, probably the scrapper would come out first followed by the brute then the blaster (obviously depending on enemies) but that wouldn't be down to damage output it would be incoming damage and mez.

It may not be the clear cut damage dealer winner it once was the blaster, but it does still have a lot of flexibility in its roll. True holds have been nerfed for them, but with 3 single target holds to choose from, I'm not lacking in control even now.

PvP wise, I would take a blaster any day over a brute at the current 40 cap (assuming a 40 blaster). Fury doesn't work too well in PvP to give brutes their big damage, and certainly in places like bloody bay and sirens, the blaster can string together a lot of very high damage attacks to floor anyone if build correctly. A blaster can litterally explode a very concentrated burst of damage as it has so many high damage attacks to begin with rather than relying on a long slugging match that the brute has to.

Meh don't worry, you should hear what we say to that Chump hobojack :P

And yes Focused accuracy brings us much joy. We will however need ketchup for the babies.

Basically, in most situations, useless.

Yes we can quote the one time in a hundred it saved the day but for most of the time past about level 10 you may as well forget about it unless you like debt (not that there is much of that kicking about these days) :P

Well, I wouldn't sniff at focused acc Solaris,

With 2 acc so's in my attacks and 2 so acc buffs in buildup I can miss 6 times in a row against ff defenders with my brute.

Now I may well have been unlucky, I have hit them in the past but still its enough for me to think all the acc I can get is good, I use both to make sure of the hit when you need it with my scrapper.

Basic mode of scrapper play:

1) Whats that I see over there?!
2) Is it moving?! Yes.
3) Hit it hard
4) is it still moving? If no goto point 1.
5) Hit it again to make sure.
6) Is it moving now?!: No ..... excellent.
7) Goto point 1