Heraclea

This game already has a fast, almost arcade-style feel to it, without the interface or twitch annoyances inherent in such. A good team can faceroll just about anything without having to worry about reaction time or attention spans.

This also makes it the most relaxing game I know, a good way to unwind.

As others have mentioned: it's not a conventional MMO with an emphasis on raiding for loot or PvPing for loot. There is grind, but you can grind level 20 content on your level 50 if you feel like. And your level 20 can team with the 50s if you want to.

You don't need a tank. You don't need a healer. You don't need buffs or debuffs, mostly.

We can make our characters look the way we want them to.

We can fill every server full of alts if we feel moved to do so.

I suppose I need to update my guide to tanking task forces to discuss the Tin Mage and Apex task forces. The basic premise of the guide is that if you have multiple tankers you can bring, you should bring the one with the primary that's best tuned to what you will be facing there.

"Note at the outset that any tanker can tank any game content, and the task force you need or want to run, or the one you just enjoy running, is the one you should play. Rather, this guide is intended for players who have multiple tankers to choose from, like I do. Some tankers will have an easier time with some content than others will. The purpose of this guide is to enable the tanker fan who has several available tankers to select the one that will perform best on the task force." This sentiment may require revision.

I don't have the kind of experience with these task forces that others may have had. I have finally gotten through both of them on my badging main so I am done with them, or at least done with Apex. (Tin Mage is actually rather fun.)

My unscientific impression is that multiple tankers might be valuable on Tin Mage but that any tanker (and any melee character) is a liability on Apex. Apex can probably be "tanked" as much as it needs to be on a scrapper, which of the three melee ATs is probably the least damaged by its "unique" features. Both Battle Maiden and Director 11 are essentially untankable encounters. Battle Maiden simply cannot be properly tanked, and trying to hold aggro on Director 11 is at minimum inconsistent with a master run.

Given the Praetorian clockwork stacking slow and recharge, defense sets might be more useful at least initially. I think that at minimum, out of the box (without expensive defense bonus builds), sets based on resistance and self heal (DA, Fire, Electric, to some extent Invuln) are strongly disadvantaged on Tin Mage, and generally throught Praetorian CW content. If you're relying on a heal to keep you alive, odds are it won't be there. Your only hope is in being hit less, and the Praetorian CW are also stacking -def, so defensive sets that can easily get past the softcap (Ice, Shields; maybe Invuln) will excel, especially if they also have good debuff resistance: Ice is probably best in that regard. All other things being equal, I'd rather be Reflexes.

For Battle Maiden, the only possible advantage I can see in a tanker primary are the ones that buff hit points. The sets with +HP (WP, Ice, Invuln, Shields) are really the only ones that confer a slight edge that I can think of. Obviously being a Stone tanker would be at a large disadvantage on Apex. I have not taken an Ice tanker on Apex; does Hibernate work on the blue patches?

For BM, your secondary is also going to make a big difference, maybe even bigger than your choice of primary. Being Energy Melee is probably a bigger disadvantage than reliance on Rooted or Granite. The set has been rebalanced around animation lag in a way that's inconsistent with the design of the encounter; your basic attack sequence (BU-ET-TF) is itself long enough to get you killed.

Willpower tankers are not disadvantaged by a weak taunt aura here, at least. It isn't like you are trying to gather mobs for your team; you can't.

My initial verdict would be:

Tin Mage: Ice, Shield, Invuln
Apex: None, but Shield might have a slight edge, especially given the Shield TP attack; also WP, Invuln, Ice for the +HP. WP's balancing weakness is less of an issue here. Don't bother with Stone. Your secondary is also important, and attacks with long rooting animations should be avoided.

This game has been the game I always come back to for the past six years now. There are several reasons for that. Most of these reasons have to do with this game's lacking annoyances that other games have, and that I do not enjoy all that much:

• Progression raiding
• Need / greed / team leader loot
• Gear and gear scores
• Gimmick fights that
  • devalue the contributions of particular characters or power sets,
  • make other characters and power sets necessary
  • feature complex choreography that must be mastered over multiple failed attempts to succeed at.

Not having to put up with this stuff is one of the reasons why I've always come back here. I do want to see the things that make this game unique and uniquely inviting preserved for all time in all future content.

I must admit that I do fear the impulse to "compete" with other games by adding that sort of thing. It won't work here, largely because it's not really consistent with the existing structure. You can't have a game that both requires fast reaction to some signal, and at the same time uses rooting and uninterruptable animations as game balancing features.

If that makes me a DOOMspeaker, so be it.

For tankers, I'd say that Willpower / Energy Melee, Fiery Aura / Energy Melee, Electric Armor / Energy Melee, and Stone Armor / Energy Melee might possibly have the worst synergies.

EM is a slow as molasses set with long pauses between attacks, only one weak multi target attack, and heavy animation lag. It's especially bad for:

- Willpower tankers need to keep mobs close by and constantly attack more than one at once to hold aggro.

- Stone tankers, who have -recharge in their signature power; and

- Fire and Electric tankers, who rely a great deal on their self heal for survivability, and so get killed by long animations.

I'd add Dark Armor to the last category, but the prospect of stacking stuns with Energy Melee makes that combination somewhat more synergistic than the others.

Movie - gotta go with Kickass here.

Album - Black Mountain, Wilderness Heart A solid year for music, with new albums by some of my favorite artists (Black Mountain, Espers, Black Angels, Joanna Newsom) and solid performances from artists I grew up listening to (Neil Young, Robert Plant).

Comics - Gotta agree with Power Girl. Bad year for the comics I read. Too many crossovers, too many Bold New Directions that fizzled.

I would add that Confuse, as well as Hold and Stun, seems to prevent Trapdoor from benefiting from his bifurcations, and may send him out attacking them. Unlike you, he can one shot them fairly reliably.

I pride myself on brevity in bios, while getting the whole story in. Whiskey Woman is my masterpiece, I think, just because of the way it tells a fairly complex concept in a few words:



Some other favorites:

The main thing about DB for tankers is choice of primary. Basically, you want one that has stuff you can skip in it. This is a bit less pressing now than it was before inherent Stamina, but to get the most out of DB you want to take every attack it offers.

My main DB tanker is Fire/DB. Since inherent Stamina that character now has room for Burn, Temperature Protection, and RotP, but still skips Fiery Embrace to have all the combos instead.

On the fifth day of Recluse-mas my true love gave to me

Five Aeon clones
Four Bane Spider Henchmen
Three Efficiency Experts
Two Flyer patrols beginning
And a crab spider on the half shell ♪ ♪♪