Faultline_EU

Personally think that tar patch and DN are the two you should take earliest. Whilst TG is a good heal it misses too much at the lower levels. Combining tar and DN gives you effectively almost 50% res, a nice to hit debuff and a great boost to damage at level 2! Whats not to like about that?

It's not worth slotting anything with more than three enhancements as any after that offer very minimal improvements. Three dmgres slots in Granite takes you to just under 80% resistance. The reason most people take stone skin is so that they can cap the Smashing/Lethal resistance whilst in Granite (cap is 90%) and I think you can do that with just the default slot in stone skin (if the enh are green).

Most people either put three def slots in Granite (as it only has 20% base defence) or if they think that is overkill, might replace one or two with endred.

I managed without Stamina all the way to 50. Depends on your build.

Get Fearsome Stare as soon as you can and slot for acc. Tar Patch and Darkest Night are great at lower levels but be wary if using on a team where all the aggro will come to you if you use them (mainly DN rather than tar patch). Get a couple of acc in Twilight Grasp as you don't want it to miss - use it to debuff those bosses too.

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Having said all that, I do think a Tank should put some effort into their damage-dealing as well. It's neither efficient nor fun to have 1 or 2 attacks till your late 20s.

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I only have 4 attacks at level 50 and that includes Brawl.

There are a few builds listed in this thread, including mine. As most people do things a little different it might give you a base to start from and you can make your own alterations to suit your playstyle. My build was to level 41 there, beyond that I took QF, Glowing Touch and Restore Essence. Most of the remaining slots went into Dwarf powers at that point.

No real obvious problems. Might want to take the second acc for pulsar ealier? Hasten can up your DPS a fair bit but not sure how you could squeeze that in.

Pure tri-form. The Nova AoE are slotted up (including some recharge) and with hasten running I can get an almost continuous attack chain running with just those two attacks. Most of my time will be spent in this form if a tank is about.

Dwarf is fairly well slotted so I can dish out fairly good damage and stay quite safe (especially with hasten and conserve running too). I rarely use dwarf but like to have the option there.

All the standard human attacks are six slotted. No fitness pool, took leaping instead. Rest of the powers are the usual ones you'd expect a PB to have - Seekers, Dawn Strike, LF, QF etc.. Could do with a couple more slots to play with in all three forms but having saved slots that aren't really needed elsewhere (no endmod in forms, Dawn Strike only 3 slotted for damage etc..) I'm pretty much how I want to be.

Will be keeping my fingers crossed for you and awaiting your return. Take care mate. [img]/uk/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Can't see any real problems. I don't use it myself but I believe Pulsar needs two acc at least and probably more slots given to it to make real use of it. If you wanted to convert this to a human/nova build I would drop Thermal Shield and replace with Nova and drop Proton Scatter and Luminous Detonation, use the slots from those in the Nova AoE attacks and replace the powers themselves with Conserve Energy and something else.

Couple of points. If you are using Nova mostly, I would go 3 dmg in the AoEs and slot the single target attacks only if you have spare slots. The general consensus is three To Hit enh in Nova will let you take on +1's and maybe +2's but for anything higher you need acc in the attacks themselves. Endmod in the forms (both dwarf and nova) give some benefit but it's usually far more efficient to slot the attacks (the heavy users such as dwarf Flare and the Nova AoE) with endred.

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Granite, overpowered? Bah, granite is, and will always be gimped, unless they remove all the penalties.

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It depends how you look at it. In terms of tanking then all the penalties make it about balanced. In terms of it's ability to stay alive when facing stupid odds, it's overpowered. As Cognito says, there is no real risk when using it (except against psi). As I said, I don't think there is any real reward either. A granite tank won't speed the mish up with more damage and will probably be slightly less good at holding aggro (which will slow things down a bit). It's rubbish for soloing. The only time I can see it really getting a reward is if you team with people several levels higher, don't sk up and leech.

Well that's ok then - I was just wondering.

Granite is overpowered. There is no need for it to have any defence for a start. It doesn't gain that much from it though. Granite is not a way of gaining great xp it's just a way of avoiding debt. A GA tank can happily go on a mish against +5s but the rest of the team will probably die so whilst the tank has avoided a few k of debt he has to sit there waiting for everyone to get back from hosp. Best xp is usually against +2/3s and you don't need GA for that.

Now I would try and put together a build but well, I'm far too lazy.

If you stuck a rough one up I'd be happy to make suggestions.

Well, I would say drop the fighting pool. You're gonna get stunned a lot and re-toggling is a pain. On a team you'll get pretty high resistance anyway. Damage looks to be a bit low in the low levels. Seekers should be at 32 and solar flare earlier if possible. Many all human swear by pulsar too. Thermal shield is fairly pointless - I never had it - or at least take it a bit later. Conserve energy and hasten turn you into a high damage dealer (briefly) - especially when used with lightform so you might want to consider them?

Any reason you slot acc after dmg in the attacks (level wise)?

Rad has a much larger acc debuff than dark, so you will get hit more (albeit for less damage). You also won't be hitting them as often as you'll be missing the defence debuff of Rad too.

I started a dark/elec offender to see what it was like and took him to level 12. I could take on even level groups in the hollows but only with the help of a few insps usually.

Pretty sure it's all autohit. It's why I use it against Nemesis as when they get stacked with vengance I have real trouble hitting them with anything else.

I get what he means. I'm tri-form and it would make no difference to me either. Nova is available at level 6 so almost straight away you have somewhere to be putting your slots without wasting them. A human/dwarf build would benefit more I would imagine.

Maybe you should just accept that you don't get Khelds or how to play them Lui and avoid all the negative posts that might put players off ever wanting to try one?

I read about that on the US forums a while ago but was under the impression it had been like that for a long time - well before I7. A 'feature' that's never been changed.

It's Gauntlet but most people call it punchvoke. Dwarf doesn't get it I'm afraid and whilst your attacks will gather aggro, they are low damage and it will be pulled off you pretty easily by higher damage attacks. On the plus side all three attacks do knockdown which keeps mobs out of the fight for a bit.

I was trying to remember if it did or not but couldn't so left it out. I think it does but not sure what impact it has as Dwarf HP is already higher than human and I'm not sure it gets boosted twice. May just get the toxic resistance part of the power.

I'll check.

Maybe it's because my first toon was a tank but I don't really think of what dwarf can do as tanking (although I'm sure others will disagree).

You can take the alpha, use antagonize to taunt a few mobs and keep things busy with your attacks but at nowhere near the same level as a proper tank. Unslotted it's quite poor but even slottted you won't be contributing loads of damage so you will feel a bit like you aren't helping the team as much. Always thought of it as more of a self preservation power than a team power.

That said there are times when a team will benefit hugely from a mini tank so advice wise....

You will die more than a tank. Resists are not huge (especially if you haven't slotted the form yet) and you won't last too long against a large number of mobs or high damage. Slot the form with 3 dam res first and then slot up the heal and Dwarf Flare as they will help keep you alive longer.

Slot the antagonie with recharge, acc and taunt if you are serious about holding aggro.

Hasten and Conserve Energy will carry over to Dwarf and will help a lot by letting you fight longer and heal/taunt/bash stuf more quickly.

Pop the odd luck early on to give yourself some defence before your HP drops low.

Respites heal on your human HP, not the Dwarf HP so they are nowhere near as useful.

Careful about tp'ing into groups as you hover for a while and can't use Flare.

Enjoy Dwarfy.

It's difficult to justify spending slots on it early on as there are usually other things worth slotting first. I left it with just a recharge in the default slot for ages. If you have hasten running you may be better with an endred as it is quite heavy on End usage. If you plan on using it as an attack then a mix of endred, disorient and recharge.

I still only have two slots in mine but plan on having a few more when I can spare them (too busy slottings toggles for endred atm).

Blasters (or scrappers) would help a WS. A PB would need tanks or defenders. Khelds attacks are 75% of blasters strength for melee and 62.5% for ranged. So I think two teammates would push the damage up enough to equal a blasters for melee and three would be needed for ranged. That's when comparing attacks with a similar BI for the kheld and blaster of course.

That's for unslotted attacks - I think you'd need 4 and 6 teammates once the attacks are slotted with SOs.

With mires, a WS is probably not as bothered tho.