Heraclea

By this logic, Statesman should be dead, dead, dead!

The main thing I would like is an option to add at least certain textures and colors to more of the "With Skin" patterns. I would like a way to add cheetah spots to the strapless top and the tank top, for instance.

And make certain items appear in different places. I always use the Cimeroran pieces as effective Tops with Skin, not chest details. I want male characters to be able to have both a goatee and a Jester ruff, which should be a shoulder option as well as a face detail.

It does not show up as a bonus, like the Numina or Miracle. It has a 10% chance to give you 10% of your endurance every 10 seconds. You will see it in the combat log; there is no buff icon or blue bubble effect or anything else to let you know that it is working.

It is worth having in Stamina; on the average, it gives you more recovery than a third even level SO does in the third slot. I always four slot Stamina on a character that will be using this proc, though.

It works, but there are often enemies that resist the effect entirely. The Cimerorans strongly resist the effect -- it's one of the effects of the Roman Yell -- and Vengeanced Nemeses don't fall down either. If it's failing completely, it's likely the mobs have some form of resistance.

Shield gets a useful AoE attack in its primary, and a damage boost. Fire gets one that's much less useful.

Most primaries get aura DoTs, including Fire, Dark, Stone, Electric, and Ice. Of those, Fire's is probably best for damage. Willpower, Shield, Invulnerability don't have damaging auras.

Secondary - a toss up between Fire and Electric for the first tier. In pure number of attacks, Electric wins, with three damaging AoEs and one non-damage. Fire has 3 damage AoEs. But the non-damage Electric AoE is not worthwhile, and one of Electric's AoEs is a very narrow cone. Fire's AoEs are all fairly easy to hit multiple targets with. Electric has a bit of control; Fire has none at all. Some of the Electric powers are technically splash damage rather than actual AoE attacks, but they all taunt what they hurt.

Shield/Electric is a favorite combination; you have two teleporting AoE attacks that make it easy to round up two close spawns.

Mace and Battle Axe are the second tier, with Mace beating out Battle Axe slightly because one is larger. Dual Blades is close to them on paper; its actual value will depend on how free your build is and how much you enjoy the combo system.

Ice has two damage AoEs, one PBAoE, and one a broad cone. It also has one pure control AoE.

Dark Melee has 3 AoE attacks. All do damage. But 2 of them have such long recharges that they hardly count. The other is a very narrow cone.

Super Strength, Stone, and Energy Melee all have one damaging AoE attack. Super Strength's is easily the best, but it comes very late in the build.

Stone, Ice, Super Strength, and Electric all have no-damage control AoEs. The ones in Stone and Ice are very useful; the ones in SS and Electric much less so.

Set bonuses seem to need some tweaking. The biggest discrepancy I know of is between defense bonuses (which everyone covets) and resistance bonuses (which everyone ignores). If they tripled the strength of resistance bonuses across the board they'd still not be as valuable as defense, but there would be more to think about.

Resistance would still be not as good, because defense also provides mezz and debuff avoidance; but if it were possible to go from 0 to 50% resistance on set bonuses alone, you might want to give that a try.

Sorry to hear about that incident. I know they're a Sixties soul band, and I remember the video game too, but the first thing I think of when I see the phrase "tower of power" is the Frank Zappa song, "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)".

No, not posting a link to that one. You'll have to find it yourself.

The character in question was one I had enjoyed. She came to have a favorite concept, too; one that actually developed in game, when she got the "Intellectual" badge unexpectedly while pursuing another. Unfortunately, she was Fire/EM. While I wanted an offense oriented tanker, I'll admit that I chose them for pure aesthetics. Before customization, they just looked like they belonged together.

The later career of the character seems to be a parade of bad choices. First, it turned out that she made a bad choice of primary, and lost most of the offense in Fire. The /EM secondary and its stuns were just an annoyance when the fear was put into Burn. They do nothing at all to help. Then it turned out that she made a poor choice of secondary too. Now all she's got is a secondary that detracts from the use of Healing Flames. There just wasn't enough left of that character to bother with any more.

The slow feel of the Energy Melee set is just depressing to try to play. I had to respec into Air Superiority to get back a minimally fluid attack chain. Compared to ET/TF, the other attacks just feel like ineffectual thrashing around, a waste of endurance you don't have.

I actually paid for a server transfer to move this character from Victory to Champion. It was that or deletion. Now I have a high level tanker to participate in original Tanker Tuesdays there. But even so, actually playing the character just makes me sad. And now that I have a few more high level tankers on Champion, there's probably no reason to keep the character around at all.

So yes, I am somewhat aggrieved more than most by this history of what turned out to be bad choices. And while I still care, I will warn anyone away from Energy Melee.

Yes. There was something I saw, maybe in Mids, maybe in real numbers, that seemed to suggest that slotting up end mod in the power made your own recovery negative. This would seem to defeat a strategy of TB - pop a blue - hit Drain Psyche on the survivors that I had planned to use on the character in question (Electric/Mental).

I would like to slot up the end drain in the power; it seems the best one so far for actually draining mob endurance. I just didn't want into some weird IO set bug that made my own recovery negative during the debuff because I was eccentric enough to slot endmod in the power. It also seems to be a good candidate for frankenslotting: it doesn't require full accuracy slotting because of its bonus, and you can get a little accuracy in endmod sets.

Do I figure right, that there's no point in slotting endurance reduction into the power, and that doing so will not reduce its drain to less than 100%? If I go with frankenslotting, endredux is the unwanted stat I should try to squeeze out?

I don't think being a min/maxer is a binary proposition. When I create a new character, it's usually because I've come up with a concept for one, or want to experiment with the play style of a certain powerset. Once I've decided on one, I'll make a subjective determination of what the character's strenghts and weaknesses are, and work up an IO build based on my own perceived needs.

I will try to make my characters play well and be useful on teams, once I've decided on them.

I used a server transfer to move a Dark Armor/Ice Melee tanker into semi-retired status.

Dark Armor was a bit too busy for my tastes, but that wasn't an issue. I can see it's potentially a very strong set, and would improve with set buffs.

My specific problem was that I tend to spend almost half of the 35+ game in Cimerora. Since I relied heavily on Ice Patch for mitigation and avoiding the need for a self heal, this was a problem; the Cimerorans strongly resist the knockdown. This more or less closed my chief path to levelling.

The way I used to use the set in practice, the animations are a problem. The long animations on ET and TF don't occur in a vacuum. Instead, my usual practice was to cue up Build Up, Energy Transfer, and Total Focus one after another; while one is playing, the next one is prepared. With the new animations, this puts your character out of commission for more than 7 seconds.

Also, the duration of Build Up in the set was not enlarged to compensate for the longer animations. This means that your other attacks cannot benefit, and they need it. By the time your heavy attacks are done playing you have little or no Build Up time left.

I am equivocal on the value of stuns in melee sets. If you have stuns in your primary like Dark Armor does, then they will surely help. If you have movement slows in your primary like Ice and Stone get, this makes them more worthwhile.

For most primaries, stuns will stop incoming damage from some mobs for a while. Since EM is almost entirely a pure single target set, the value of this is a function of team size. Stuns also mean that you don't need to plan for Sappers and similar mobs if you run Malta content.

But stuns can harm some primaries. If you're Fire, the only controls that really help Burn are hold and immobilize; stun just means they're stunned when they wander away. If you have a weaker taunt aura like Willpower, stuns mean that you just lost aggro.

Mine are based more on roleplaying considerations than anything else, but I have my eyes on at least two. Androphonissa (Shield/Mace) and Hypsiste (WP/SS).

Androphonissa is the most, for want of a better term, proletarian of the warriors from New Colchis who came to Paragon City. She has prejudices typical of the masses. She believes firmly that any arrangement that gives authority to members of the male sex is dangerous and unnatural. While she's happy to bash in the skulls of men for hire, she resents taking orders from them or obeying laws they wrote. Whether she'll be more impressed with the Rogue Isles is rather doubtful.

Hypsiste is just rather reckless, and will try anything twice. This has led to trouble before.

I intend to at least partially redeem at least one of my brutes, of whom I have far fewer, and perhaps start a new one that was always a hero.

If you're considering Spines/DA, I'd say to give Spines/WP a try.

You aren't getting the constant DoT of Death Shroud. But you still have Quills. You are as tough or tougher than any Dark Armor scrapper, without the fussiness of a self heal. And you will not face anything close to the endurance issues that a Spines/DA will have.

I have one and it's one of my favorite scrappers. My other scrapper that would probably answer well to your goals is an Electric/Shield.

If you want a farming tanker, I'd go with Shield/Electric. But those two scrappers farm more efficiently than a tanker will.