Heraclea

I am going to have to go back and take a look at the custom critters in the Amazons faction. Some of them may actually be set to hard/hard and that fact escaped my memory.

On the most valuable defense bonus sets like Kinetic Combat and Eradication, my banker characters keep reasonable bids for them open for weeks at a time; if one fills it's banked for future use. The rest get bought with merits or rolled at.

Looking to "exotics" is another way to get defense bonuses. The taunt sets Mocking Beratement and Perfect Zinger are obvious choices for tankers. Electric Melee players can slot for accuracy, recharge, and endurance in the sleep set Lethargic Repose for some of their attacks, and then add regular damage buttons when they get the bonuses they want. If your attacks have stuns, there's Razzle Dazzle. If you have slows, there's Curtail Speed. All of these sets give you some defense bonuses at fewer than six slots and allow you to choose them for other desirables like accuracy, endurance, and recharge; you can then slot generic SOs or IOs or frankenslot other sets for any defects in damage.

Tankers for solo and farming generally do not need to approach softcapped defenses; they're tankers. Team build tankers that benefit most from softcapping do not need to be ED-capped for damage on their attacks. I have a big stable of tankers, so I can build both ways; if you have only one tanker, you can use a second build for the two approaches.

No --- this is what caught my attention in the first place. Unless the custom critters you tested on are set to have two Hard power sets, they should only be giving 75% of the XP and inf of a standard (1.0 multiplier) Council critter. If they are not doing that, the standard custom critter nerf has indeed been reversed. That would be good news, not bad, but it remains an unannounced change.

The character has no patrol XP to speak of; was also running radio missions on that character today, and she finished a long SF yesterday. And patrol XP, even if it were a factor, should not affect the fact that standard critters are supposed to be awarding full XP in MA while custom critters are not. That difference should still be obvious; but they are in fact the same.

Both are effective, but the +def bonuses tend to be a bit harder to come by; the sets that add major defense bonuses at less than 5 or 6 slots are often insanely overpriced for their level on the auction house. Boosting hit points and regen is going to be much easier and cheaper.

Achieving soft caps for defense is rather hard to do on a WP tanker without serious misplacement of slots for set bonus pursuit as well. I'd go with some easy +defense (the Steadfast global, and defense bonuses from Mocking Beratement or Perfect Zinger - as a WP you will be slotting up Taunt anyways) but go for HP and regen overall. A little bit of defense is better than a little bit of resistance.

Yes. The Amazon faction contains all three levels. So do the ICF faction.

The Amazon faction also contains standard critters, but none at the minion level. I filled them out by borrowing the female Cimeroran Centurion and a Battle Maiden Follower boss. The custom critters in the Amazon faction also include custom Lieutenants and Bosses that can spawn at any level. None of these appeared in that encounter though.

The Amazons also appear in the arc "Death by Snoo-Snoo", published as 247372. If I remember right, "Welcome to the Future" is 326680, but you can find it by searching for Heraclea. The arc was in fact designed to test the i16 changes, and demonstrate that they did not work as planned: so each faction contains all levels.

I think that came in with i16. I originally created the custom Council/5th faction on Test, IIRC.

Regardless of which it is, the custom critter ought to be giving only 75% of the Council critter; or, the Council critter should give 133% of the custom rewards; fairly sure that Council/5th have an XP scale of 100%. This should be true even if the rewards for either group were reduced because of lack of all three tiers, which I was careful to include.

Maybe, if they added a slow movement and recharge debuff to Burn, Fire's stock would rise a bit too. I've tried to use Burn similarly, but feared mobs move out of the area too quickly to have much of an effect.

I haven't played through Electric on a tanker yet - I did roll an electric armor Scrapper - but a lot of the resistance based sets get good early. One advantage of Fire is that everything in the primary that directly contributes to your survival is available by level 12.

The answer to the first question is "yes".

As to the second question, the answer is "maybe". WP's resistance blunts a good deal of physical damage, and incoming physical damage may not be enough to overcome regen, especially if the WP's regen is being buffed by surrounding enemies. Non physical damage or ranged damage may require Inspirations or SoW. Then again, that's what they're for.

My WP scrappers get off even easier. The Caltrops power from Weapon Mastery can do wonders for an overwhelmed scrapper. I use it regularly while working the Roman wall, where it is possible for your defenses to crash hard. It makes an even handier panic button than SoW or most inspirations.

True. But I'd much rather be a Willpower or Dark Armor tanker than an Ice tanker on a Rularuu task force, so unless I am badging that's what I will bring. And there are some task forces, like Kahn, that benefit a whole lot from having two tankers with different builds.

Since you and I have a fairly large roster of tankers to choose from, one thought for organizing this would be:

Which Tanker should I take to:
- Positron
- Synapse
- Katie Hannon
- Imperious
- Statesman's
- Kahn
- Lady Grey
- Rularuu TFs
- Ship raid
- Hami raid
- Solo farm
- Team farm
- Praetorian AVs
- Mission Architect?

and so forth....

This does not sound all that significant, especially since all of these powers can approach the ED soft cap easily with four buttons.

On the other hand, defense sets don't exemp down well either; I doubt I will be running Positron on my dark/reflex scrapper any time soon. (This is what Regen is for.)

Not sure you'd really like my main shield tanker. Shield/Electric, and by the time she is done going BOOM! there is maybe one or two bosses left standing.

Well, your SO level defenses will be exactly the same, but you are getting 2 nukes, either of which are capable of clearing out an entire nest of minions, as well as plenty of splash damage from your other attacks.