G_Tanker

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SS is a tad poor (FM I *think* isn't that great on single target either but I haven't looked at the numbers recently).

Animation times being the operative factor above.

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Starsman had some charts up a while back with varying recharges ... iirc Stone, Fire and SS were the top 3 for single target with good recharge. If those charts are around, easy to check.

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There are two folds in AE's success. One is it gives people more reasons to play the game. I know some of my friends like AE because they can find a team so easily now! They just log on and go to Cap and can get on a team within 5-10mins. Unlike before, I've seen people advertising LFT for an hour in Grandville.

A lot of people play online games to TEAM, not to Solo. They like the interaction. In this respect, I think AE is good for the game.

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QFT x1000. I really like that it's easier to find teams and that I don't have to worry about the levels with auto-leveling missions.

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I'll admit if I know I'm gonna be up against a AV or Monster, I look for a Rad- because I need -regen, and Rad is the most well-known set with -regen. Trick Arrow seems to have it too though, so I also look for that.

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This kinda kills me. Dark has better -regen than rad. HT is 100% identical to LR, and TG has more on top.

I view Tornado as storm's -regen, but after checking the #'s, 6.67 smashing damage per second (more after FR) probably doesn't kill 93 hp/s AV regen as well as I'd hoped. Still, it rocks.

WP/Stone and WP/Mace are my usual suggestions for new tanks.

Just keep in mind WP doesn't scale as well as you might think without building well.

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The more potent team, as always, is the one with more skill, better builds, and also importantly, the team that does not rely on heals but on force multipliers. A reactionary team looking for that granite tank may find one, and thus enable them to complete their "hard" mission, but their success will pale in comparison to the team that ups the difficulty after verifying their team has the proper mix of skill/build/force multiplier to succeed.

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Shh. Don't share secrets. I got booted from a 54 farm yesterday on my just respec'd and newly io'd dark/fire/pyre tanker ... farm was a granite tank, a fire/ss tank, a plant/kin, and a something/emp with some blasters and scrappers. I think the quote that ticked off the lead (in tells) was, "So, is this how you normally build teams?" Short discussion on makeup then she got angsty and booted me - which I was quite happy with. The build tested the way I thought it would, and the team was sloooooow.

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I gotta say, I don't see many sonics or Forcefields that much anymore. Since it's easy to hit soft-capped defense in the higher lvls, so why need them?

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I wish I saw more sonics. I think the powerset as a whole is ... not great, and the devs should retinker it.

Force fields will always have it's place ("ie: My pug team is now win") but it's pretty one dimensional, with a trick or two. I'd usually rather a cold, but I've seen FF do some crazy, crazy things that colds will never be able do.

Pure or nearly pure resist sets (fire and dark armor) have the toughest time dealing with the damage output. While both *could* theoretically handle AV's, I'd heartily recommend against them.

DM's easily the best single target monster (from a damage + utility standpoint) available with a self heal, tohitdebuffs & great damage output. Stone, Fire Melee and SS are all still single target monsters IIRC.

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I have a dislike for fire armor and how weak it is is. I have a 50 fire tank and I would hate to see how squishie fire armor is for scrappers. I do really like my fire/shield scrapper. It is great.

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Fire armor is a beast... against +0 to +2's and against normal spawns (ie, 1-2 bosses) ... it's against the higher levels and bigger targets that the weaknesses of being a resist set shine through and the damage in the secondary isn't enough to overcome it.

I love my spines/fire but my fire/invuln and fire/sr can tank farms....

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No point in trying to argue with these two "believer" types, logic and facts mean nothing against their belief that they are right.

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@Turbo-> ??? Seriously, this from you? You ran away from the previous argument thread a month or so back because you didn't know the difference between sleet and FR and thought they were the same numerically. There's little point in having an argument with someone who's more interested in winning than debate, and that pretty much describes your 'discussion' style.

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I have nothing against corrupters. I personally don't find them fun, but I don't have any grudge against them. What I have a grudge against is people claiming that corrupters are innately superior to defenders thus all defenders should reroll as a corrupter once Going Rogue comes out. But then I also have a grudge against people claiming controllers are innately superior to defenders too.

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@Madam -> I took a dark/arch defender from 14-50 leading pugs in the last two days, softcapped it to ranged, and ran a quick <1hr ITF with the coalition. (/mourn vacation ending last night) Defenders make low leveling easy, and at the high end their increased damage multipliers from debuffs are ... niiiiiice. To level, I ran 54 boss farms rather constantly (led pugs, no pinch hitters or friends helping, often tankless) and it only took about 13 hours total (2 of which was IOing at 50, gawd that took a while - but I managed to softcap range defense, get 37.5% global recharge and some recovery+kb protection, all from tickets - had $4MM left over at the end!) before I was set and off on another crazy (no melee) ITF with a poor little 38 blaster sk'd to me and trying desperately to stay in range to live (his alternative mentors might have been worse, hah). I've done similar on corrs, but since their buff/debuff powers come later, they can't help steamroll as early.

Well played defenders make the low and mid game *easy*, and they stack obscenely well, while corrupters need to wait a bit. I prefer corrs only for fire blast (and somewhat ice), and defenders for sonic, arch and psi blast. As for buffing/debuffing powersets, I'd always rather have the defender version, so it really depends on whether I want to blast that much.

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Lots of to hit debuff means not worrying about defense caps.

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As long as you keep in mind the purple patch... "Lots" becomes subjective. Defense scales better than to-hit debuff if you're taking on higher levels.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Levels above you / power effectiveness:
0 1
1 0.9
2 0.8
3 0.65
4 0.48
</pre><hr />

Wanting to tank narrows the options a bit.

Secondaries: Invuln, Shields, SR and WP are all tanks that scale well. None besides WP are really friendly early game.

Offense: Swords are the only tank-inclined offense because of the parry skill (in katana and broadsword) which is +15% melee/lethal defense, which scales to 24% when enhanced. IE: 2 parries and you're softcapped for defense.

As long as you have either one of the secondaries or a sword primary listed, you're well on your way to tanking. I tank a lot on my fire/sr, fire/invuln, broadsword/dark, kat/fire, and dm/invuln, so really it's just how you choose to build/spec it.

I'd try a katana / willpower, it's a very friendly starter. Fire/wp was mentioned below, and it's excellent.

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You can't stop people from being stupid. There are people who swear that a healer is mandatory for ANY content, even if you have a team with a Tank leading who has 90% RES and 45%+ DEF. I know, because I've argued with them. Several times.

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Eh... they're entitled to their ideas of teams, I s'pose. I did ~15-45 yesterday in a series of pickup group 53 &amp; 54 boss farms without tanks or healers, so clearly I'm doing something wrong by their standards, but I do what works for me and they do what works for them.

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Have any of you had a power combination that you just found to be so exciting, you didnt want to stop playing it? Something that was just so powerful, or maybe just so all around fun that you loved playing as it?

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Dark Miasma and Storm Summoning on defs/corrs.

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Archery/Archery Defender.
*smirk*

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Given the day I've had, this makes me lol pretty hard.

Favorite: Cim's
Hit like *trucks*. Cascading defense failure. Annoying self defense buff and resistance to status effects. Pile real well. Easy to softcap certain builds against. Nice high "risk" when tearing through an ITF at mach 10.

Loathed: COT
(Ghost / Darkness mage / earth casters in particular) Generally speaking they're just an evil low and midgame opponent. They really should have been high end, and council lower. The tohit debuffs and auras they've got are just evil. Which is probably why I have so much success on my darks?

I'd hang on to it just since it's rare and find a build that needs it later. I have two sitting around on alts, trying to decide whether any need it.

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I think this concept should be applied to Tankfenders. You don't have to be incredible directly out of the box. You don't need to softcap all defense types. You just have to be more survivable than your teammates. Do crazy things. Jump into piles of aggro. Head straight for the mobs. Your teammates will think "Hey, if he can do it I can too." But they can't You are built to do it better than they are built to handle ginourmous amounts of aggro.

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And when in doubt, team teleport them into a mob on invincible for fallout, eh ?

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I'd generalise what you're saying here to "any team with 2 Defenders probably doesn't need a third" and leave it at that.

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Gah! Heresy!

I second Smurphy's love of Fallout. On a serious team, it is a fantastic and well utilized power.

I'd also recommend the rest of the leadership toggles and vengeance, if you're looking for an "end game build".

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I'd love to have a ss on scappers. It would give that badass superman fists of steel feel.

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I want elec melee first. Having far too much fun on the elec/inv brute.

I built a fire/invuln to be my AE boss solo'r. If I had unlimited inf, I might have made it fire/wp or spines/wp.

I've never tried to solo an AV on my broadswords, but I don't think that the set would have any problems. It's just less popular for it. Same with MA.

Spines might be the only really troubled AV solo'r

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I also noticed that /storm seems to be more solo oriented while /cold is more team oriented. Am I right?

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Um. Cold is definitively more team oriented, since you can't use 1/3 of its powers on yourself. Storm is very, very solo friendly, but is also very team friendly. The only power I hesitate to pull out in team situations is Tornado (it's actually fantastic against AV's/Hero's (LR farms!) and GM's as long as you clear the rest of the spawn!) but I use the rest regularly.

Storm can be employed with a lot of skill, or it can be a disaster. Cold is a little more friendly. No one really cares if you forget to heat loss or benumb on most large teams, as long as you drop sleet and keep shields and your fog up they'll be happy.

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I'm looking at rolling up a scrapper, and continuing my AV-hunting focus, I'm curious what scrapper powersets are generally good against AVs in general.

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Pretty clear you haven't read the scrapper boards recently, there's a new "AV solo thread" every month it seems...

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And no, Rad/Sonic is not an acceptable answer. Or Ill/Rad. Or Fire/Kin. Strangely, despite controllers having some of the highest DPS in the game, they are not scrappers.

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Scrappers have been soloing AV/EB's for ages... coming to the scrapper boards for advice will get you lists of scrapper powersets, not controller.

I think it was listed out pretty well above, I have nothing to add, just moderate amusement that you came in thinking the scrappers care at all about controller solo power

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I would think that we may get some sets ported over to both sides, in preparation for going rouge, and maybe a few new sets.

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Fire blast on defenders... stillllll waiting....

Oh, maybe scrappers will finally get a fourth epic pool?!