Innigo

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Rez is a waste of a power, since 95% of the time, when you plant, you'll be in melee range of bad guys, so rez'ing then would be asking for trouble.

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Actually its generally quite safe to rez in the middle of a melee. When you plany you lose all agro and although there's some dispute you do come back ready to start fighting immediately.

I took it because I hate downtime and it has come in useful more than once.

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The bit that annoys me the most is when people stand in plain view when I say "Get out of sight, I'm pulling to here" and/or attack the enemies before they reach the designated point.

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And thus agro the group you were trying to peel some mobs off without agroing. It does my head in. I actually asked a team is everyone spoke English and if so were the words I was using too big for them?

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It's a whole other issue if you already have taunt, and won't use it and can take the aggro as the original post was all about.

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Thanks for picking up on that. It's an important point. No tank should feel obligated to take taunt, but if they DO take it then they should learn how and when to use it. JUST as a blaster should learn how and when to use his AoE.

The OP was a team setting where it'd be safe for the tank to use taunt. We had the right composition, a defender who could keep the tank alive and my attempts to explain this to the tank ALL went unacknowledged.

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That'll be the wonderful Knives of Artemis. *shudders*

On a positive note, autohits from those are apparently getting looked at so that +DEF sets (In particular) can't be taken apart by Caltrops / various [currently] autohit auras. Yay!

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Yeah that's them. I don't whether I agree caltrops shouldn't autohit. The damage is not worth thinking about and the real penalty is simply being slowed.
And if you've got fly or hover then they don't even do that.

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But the AoE cap on it just makes it less appealing again. I might pick it up one day, but so far I'm doing fine without.

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A tank's job is to hold agro. That's their primary function on the team. If you can hold agro without taunt (and I know many who can) then fine.
I remember being caught on caltops, can't remember the name of the mobs who throw them down, layer upon layer of them so I can barely move. I'm taking a HUGE hiding, dull pain is up, IH is running and I'm downing greens for all I'm worth - standing RIGHT next to me is a stone tanker whose chipping away at one of the mobs, full health and who has taunt and refused to use it.
"I don't taunt," was his reply to my pleading.
The upshot was I faceplant. Now that's bad tanking and I'm seeing more and more of it.
(BTW the example I gave, it was around lvl 42).

I can't help but feel if the defenders did likewise then no one would be getting buffs anymore.

BTW I've never seen a SS/Inv tanker hold agro WITHOUT taunt and their damage output (I have one) pales next to a scrappers damage. IMHO, and it is purely an opinion this type of tanker without taunt is just a scranker and the team would be better off with a scrapper.

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As for the Hollows though...taunting even with heals is a little on the dodgy side in 8 person teams. You have no idea if your team will cover you.

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They're definitely NOT going to cover you if they're spread over 2 rooms fighting individual battles

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I dont want to labour the point, but after having looked in both the coh manual and hero planner the following is described.

'If you fall in battle you return with half hit points and no endurance'.

Oh and i forgot to add - you will be disoriented and unable to recover endurance for a while (from the coh planner explanation)

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Well at the risk of arguing with a document that was written 5 issues and however many patches ago I can tell you two things. You revive with a healthy start of Endurance and the starting hps (I just remembered) are dependent on how many health enhacements you've got slotted into the power.
Whether your disorientated to begin with i can't comment - I have reilience afterall

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Um...

Since Revive will bring you back with half hits and no endurance, and you'll be unable to recover endurance for some time, I think that an Awaken is actually about as good as Revive is.

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Revive brings you back with around 2/3 hps and 1/2 endurance.

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Where you perhaps thinking of the way Resurrection works?

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Nope.

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Resilience only protects against Disorientation. It will eliminate the time after a Rez when you are disoriented, which will get you back in the fight faster, but using Revive you'll still have no endurance.

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I don't know what revive your using but it's not the one in the regen powerset.

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Resilience probably won't help with toggle drops. In my experience, toggles on a Regen scrapper drop due to endurance loss, not disorientation. Integration has a huge disorient resistance anyway (though not as big as it once was). The other way would be in PvP and, AFAIK, things like Brawl just drop a random toggle, they don't need to disorient you to do it.

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Fair enough but I don't think integration had disorientation defence, or am I thinking stun? Can't remember.

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As for the one that didn't, many Tanks don't like to use it. There are other tools for Taunting in the Tank sets (PBAoE auras mainly, along with the 'punchvoke' effect of the attacks and Gauntlet) and some Tanks find that enough. Not saying I agree (Far from it, I personally wouldn't consider building a Tank without it), but some people certainly do.

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I went through 40 lvls with a fire tank who didn't use taunt. Didn't need it, her fiery aura was more than enough.
I think I'm irked for two reasons, the first being completely ignored by the offending tank when I tried to explain that if he taunted I could lock down most of the mob.
The second being watching the team fragment into little groups and have individual battles. At one point I was left with 2 bosses and an LT all to myself whilst the tanks messed about with some minions.

Revive and resilence can't be replaced with a bf and awaken. The insps offer a pale shadow of what the powers give you. With resilience dropping an awaken means you come back stunned with no endurance and what, a 1/3rd health?
Revive gets you on your feet and back in the fight in seconds. To get that using insps you'll need;
Awaken
Break free
1 green and 2 blues.

Resilence means you never get stunned, no toggles dropped - at no point will you be without integration cover and of course these two powers mean you can keep insps slot free for other, more vital, insps.
SJ and SS combined IS a waste of power slots INHO. The speed bonus you get from SS isn't much and the way I look at things; why waste a slot on another travel when you can use that slot for a power that'll help you in combat.

Frosty lvl 15/16 party even lvl mobs. 2 defenders, 1 controller (me) 2 tanks, 1 scrapper and 1 blaster. Using taunt was far from certain death. The defender had a heal, as did I.
We even managed it right on 1 occassion; the tanker rushed in, taunted, I hit them with an AoE hold, locked down the boss then the lts and AoE'd the rest of the mobs again.

On that ocassion the tanks took LESS damage than when they didn't taunt. When he wasn't taunting neither me nor the blaster were using AoEs so the mob wasn't slowed or being damaged as quick.

I have a tank, I know taunt can be certain death if you don't have the right team backing you. But this wasn't the case here.
I think the group was made up for the most part of newish players. One even commented, after the third death, about how well it was going ?!?

Not directed at anyone specific but if you have "taunt" the USE IT. And if one of the squishies cries out for you to use it as their health plummets redward then don't ignore them and keep on scranking. That makes you a rubbish tank imho.

Sorry, a rant prompted by a rubbish team I was on last night. Two tanks, one couldn't taunt and the other WOULDN'T taunt. And the latter ignored me everytime I brought the subject up.

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I've fought a lot in Sirens Call recently and there are often big groups with several defenders/controllers with empathy, and stacking clear minds on each other pretty much renders me useless.

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Well you're on onion and so I can't comment being on defiant but in all the time I've been running around Siren's I;ve never had someone cast CM on me.

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In a big battle it can get annoying, but I think clear mind is more annoying than break free's, it's way overpowered and need a nerf. Stacked resistance to effects AND stacked perception. :/

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What? You can't even use it on yourself. Seems to me this is another controller-esque type believing they have some *right* to hold ppl.
CM might be powerful but you try and find someone who remembers to cast it on a regular basis!

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It's not even a test of Inf - all lvl 40+ characters have access to a limitless supply of tier 3 inspirations and will earn Inf whilst fetching them.

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Do we? Why did no one tell me before?

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Rushing out of the zone to re-stock every time your tray's empty, OTOH...

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Is hardly unexpected.

An energy stalker beats my blaster by;
TPing me in.
Delivering a blow that stuns everytime.
Placate
AS.

And I'm effectively toast everytime. My only hope is;
1. Not get in tp range in the first place.
2. Have a BF on my person. If I use all my BFs is it lame for me to go restock? Or should I just give in to the energy stalkers only tactic?

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I guess, at the heart of it, I wanted to just get things moving. So rather than trying make a hugely elaborate piece covering everything and anything, I just put something together dealing with Mercy Island that would give the reader a taste of what I was writing, and get them interested in further parts.

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Then maybe consider dialogue rather than a journal entry. One person telling another about the history. It's a nice technique as you can use the listener to anticpate the reader's questions and have the stroyteller say something like "All in good time," or "that's another story". Skimming over huge social upheaval is more believable as in conversation that's what people tend to do.

I didn't actually, but in my defence it'd Bridger the toon, not the moderator

Lets hope he sees the funny side. Assuming he reads it of course.

I'm pulling your leg, but this comment;

"be forced to team to be of any use in PVP"

Any AT can be built to solo in PvP and hunt whatever builds are paper to its scissors. Stalkers are no exception. I do think the tide has been turn against stalkers for some time as more and more heroes take tactics, I think the time where 75% of heroes had no chance of seeing them until the AS hit has passed, but things haven't changed that much. I saw a stalker take down an SR scrapper tonight in Siren's. I get chewed by stalkers all the time, although I sometimes get them back now

Bear in mind the number of time people were told to get into a team when they found themselves on the recieving end of an AS just too often for their liking. If it's good for the goose...

With a whole range of successful solo builds at your fingertips I'm wondering why you're throwing your toys out your pram over a slight adjustment to the stalker

I'm glad. I was quite chuffed when I came up with that gag

You've tried to do something extremely difficult; cover a lot of history in 664 words. A task, I would guess, that would task even the best writers. Why the rush? Why cover so much ground in such a compact space?

Two major points.
1. What's your hook? What's in this piece that makes me want to read on?

2. Leaving stuff out that will be explained later. You state this before the story starts. A piece of prose should be a self contained entity. It shouldn't need any explaining beforehand, if it does then it's not complete and should be fleshed out further.

A final and overall point. This the memoirs of your character and the opening entry covers several months (I assume) of considerable social upheaval and yet you skim over the major events - none of which touch the character in any real sense.
If you were to write your own memoirs you might tell the reader what's going in the world (I'd be surprised if you didn't) but your real focus would be how all this effected YOU. What was happening specifically in your own corner of the world.
And it's that the reader wants to read about. It that the reader will identify with. if that's missing then it's a history lesson and I can't speak for anyone else but I slept through them when I was at school.

I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh but you've got a great concept that you've skimmed over. In fact I'd go as far to say you've got enough material there to build a novel from.

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And the arguement that heroes have been forced to team for months to deal with stalkers just wont wash. This was true for support AT's in particular, other AT's could cope with em, and a Stalker is NOT a support AT.

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Co* is designed as a team game in either PvE or PvP. Why stalkers think they should be a special case and be able to successfully PvP solo is beyond me.

A stalker can function very well as part of a team. It seems they just don't want to.

The scrapper, especially the regen (imho) is the king of solo missions and who can tank if he's up against foes with no big hitters (the DE spring to mind). On a solo mission the spawns will be 3 mob strong and even when 3 lvls higher than you present no real threat.

This is at the higher lvls obviously.

You say you haven't played beyond lvl 10-12 which means you've made it about 5% of the way into a toon's total potential. Obviously he's still fairly fragile. He's running on TO enhancements with powers that aren't even close to being properly slotted.

As for the run the remaining distance for a melee attack to hit comment I think this highlights your problem; you haven't even learned to properly control your toon yet.

A scrapper isn't a tank, he doesn't stand in the middle of a spawn spamming his attacks. A good scrapper is almost constantly in motion, positioning himself to minimise the number of mobs who can hit him with a melee attack at any one time.

That's my take on a scrapper anyway.

Actually scratch my conditions. Fight in Warburg and bring all the insps and use all the travel powers you want. I like large ranging battles. (Aerial dogfights in Sirens with my blaster always bring a smile to my face).
Best out of three bouts and the first one to run for the ship loses

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He will just hurt you more. Hes got fast unsuppresed movement (you prolly dont). He isnt rooted while attacking. He can slow you. all in all you wont get close without a travelpower.

Go ahead.

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Prolly won't get close WITH a travel power. SJ is awful in the arena. This is no finely tuned and lovelingly crafted PvP build. This is pure PvE and as such I expect to lose.

As the man said, he's got THREE travel powers - that's a PvP build if ever there was one.

I'm just curious to see how it happens. Whilst the slowing usually prevents me from hitting trollers I've yet to see one put out enough damage to bring me down. Not saying it can't happen just that so far it never has.