JKPhage

"Oh my gosh, you guy! I swear, I heard something moving out there! Stick close together, you never know when one of those heroes is gonna jump out and just start wailing on you."

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

Oh yeah, it's been a while since I rolled him, forgot Jab is the autopick. Haha, now I feel like an idiot.

I may follow that suggestion, especially now that we can access three seperate builds, do a respec to set me on track for endgame, and another specifically for being useful at lower levels. Thanks for the tips. I'm gonna do a bit more reading around and experimenting and when I've got something a bit more solid I think I'll drop off an updated build here and see how the crowd reacts.

Hmmm, that does seem pretty sound, but it's kind of running counter to alot of what I've heard about Invul when I was reading up on it the past few days. General concensus seems to be that Resist Elements is totally skippable, especially if going for the defense softcap, and that the passives should mostly be put off and worked in around the 20's range. Not saying you're wrong, it's just different than what I've heard on the street.

The biggest problem that I have with the proposed build is that I'd only have 3 attacks pre-level 20 and if I'm exemping to do low-level stuff I'm going to be woefully useless solo. On a team, not so much, but on my own it would take forever to kill everything.

As far as taking Jab and Haymaker as opposed to Punch and Haymaker is there any particular reason? I know bruising lends a little weight to Jab, but does that really stack up towards endgame? I'd think that having a more powerful move like Punch would come in handier then. Sorry if I'm asking a ton of questions, I just wanna make sure I don't end up being "That Tank" in game, haha.

So I'm gonna be totally honest, I have a tank that's currently sitting at level 38 that I levelled several months ago by simply jumping on teams and running for fun, told them that I hadn't had alot of experience tanking and they all gave me pointers and supported me well and I didn't seem to have any trouble. Now I'm picking the toon back up, changing the name and giving it a makeover so to speak. I never really took the build all that seriously up to now, just kind of picking what seemed good at the time and figuring that I'd go back over it later, and now that time has come.

I've never played another tank before so I'm not sure what the best course of action would be for building. I've heard some people skip the Tier 1 attack, but with Bruising I wonder if that's enough of a boon to keep it? I'm also a little at a loss for where I can squeeze in pool powers for utility that won't completely cripple me in that level range, i.e. taking Hasten at lvl 18 and putting of Invincibility, would that make me subpar if exemplared out of range of Invinc? If I'm advised to drop Jab then I could easily squeeze in one of those extras early on. I'm also not sure if I should/want to take Taunt or not, I'm not sure I'd make a good main tank, but is it something that would be frowned on to not have in case I need to save a team mate from aggro? Would Gauntlet/Punchvoke be enough to get me by without spending a power pick?

Anyway, I've rambled enough, down to the nitty gritty. I plan to follow Call Me Awesome's guide to softcap defense with use of IOs and such, so the only real requirement would be to have space/accomodation made for that particular set. I'd LIKE to work in Spring Attack to have an occasional "double dip" attack with that plus Foot Stomp, but could possibly be talked out of it if someone has a better build idea that wouldn't allow for it. Aside from that I'm only really worried about being end efficient so I don't have to rest after every mob. I hope I'm not being unrealistic in my expectations. Mids build is below with the best power-pick route I could decipher being a Tank-noob, no idea how I should slot aside from what I was told in Awesome's guide. Anyone willing to go over it and let me know what they'd recommend as far as power/slotting order and anything that might be skippable (I know resist elements is, I just slapped it at the tail end since I didn't see anything else I'd want for this toon.)?

Sorry for the wall of text, looking forward to seeing what you awesome people can kick out.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.952
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Braintank: Level 49 Science Tanker
Primary Power Set: Invulnerability
Secondary Power Set: Super Strength
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Energy Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Temp Invulnerability -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Jab -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Punch -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Dull Pain -- Empty(A)
Level 6: Haymaker -- Empty(A)
Level 8: Unyielding -- Empty(A)
Level 10: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Tough -- Empty(A)
Level 16: Weave -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Invincibility -- Empty(A)
Level 20: Knockout Blow -- Empty(A)
Level 22: Super Jump -- Empty(A)
Level 24: Spring Attack -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Tough Hide -- Empty(A)
Level 28: Rage -- Empty(A)
Level 30: Resist Physical Damage -- Empty(A)
Level 32: Resist Energies -- Empty(A)
Level 35: Hurl -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Foot Stomp -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- Empty(A)
Level 44: Physical Perfection -- Empty(A)
Level 47: Hasten -- Empty(A)
Level 49: Resist Elements -- Empty(A)
------------
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run

I'm not sure if this is a known issue or not as I haven't seen it mentioned by anyone else, but when i21 went live I logged into one of my toons who had a custome brown UI interface to match his costume (as I like to do on some toons) and it was just fine. However, he was currently a MA/Will scrapper and after seeing Street Justice in beta I wanted to reroll him as Street/Will. And so I did when Street dropped. Now every time I log in I switch his UI window color to the color I want it to be, hit apply changes and it works fine, until the next time I log in and it's back to default blue.

This has happened three times in a row now and it's rather irritating. I just wanted to make this issue known as I don't know how many people out there make use of custom UI colors but it IS happening and if it's a bug then I haven't seen it reported. Anybody else experiencing this, or any word from the dev team on whether it's known or not?

Gotta say, I have to agree with everyone else, this is absolutely horrible pricing. The costume powers are fun to play with, hell, I have a shapeshifter character who'd love to have access to all of them so he could have his ten costume slots and THEN all the NPC morphs, but for 600 a pop on sale, sorry but you're not getting a red cent. The currently offered NPC costumes are for the blocky, low-res, ugly old NPC sets. The decent/fun looking stuff like the Rikti costume, Meat Doctor, Ring Mistress, Victoria and all the convention exclusives aren't even offered. I'd pay 400-600 for a couple of THOSE. The rest of these little cosmetic powers need to be priced at 100-200 points each if you ever wanna sell them in meaningful numbers.

Gonna have to say sorta the same thing about the storage expansions. The cost needs to be roughly halved (or at least put on deep discount for a week) before I'll consider buying them. Global or not, you guys really need to look at what you're offering and realize that we're not dumb enough to give you ten bucks to look like an ugly ghost pirate.

I'd also like to throw my support behind covering all the bases with Judgement trees. There are several concept toons I have that I just can't slot judgement on because I can't justify making my Mind/Psi dom suddenly hurl a giant lightning bolt or fireball.

I would LOVE an orbital laser variant (Photonic Judgment sounds good enough to me) as it can work for both tech and natural characters, and given a generic enough animation (Hand raised to the sky and then pointing at the target area) could be handwaved as something to go along with Energy blast/Gravity Control/Kinetic/Etc. powers instead of being intrinsically tied to tech. Very versatile right there.

I also want a psi judgement for all my psionic toons. I imagine something akin to an extreme damage character centered Psionic Tornado that just swirls around your toon and roots them in place would be ideal. Since all the judgement powers are different attack and effect types this one could be PBAOE, cause some knockdown, and have a high chance to confuse targets as that tends to be the psi thing to do.

Earth judgement would be awesome, and I'd like to see something like described in the first post, but with one caveat. Give us a targetting reticle like when summoning pets/storms/earthquake powers, and when activated, the character punches the ground, sending a fissure running along the ground and causing a huge burts of boulders/rock formations from the earth at the targetted location for massive smashing damage with a chance to disorient. This could be used for both earth based toons and Super Strength characters so again, very versatile.

And to fill the gap of lethal damage, perhaps we could get a Thousand Cuts style hurricane of blades power that sets off your toon on a whirling rampage of death in it's immediate area? This could work for natural toons as well, so it's giving people options if they don't want an orbiting death ray. Perhaps if something like this is implemented it could give us a weapon option on the costume screen ala Mace Mastery/Munitions Mastery to pick the blades we'd like to use? If so it would be extra nice if the devs were to include a new set of ascension weapons with said update, something glowy and magic looking so those who want could handwave the power as summoning magical blades to lay waste to their enemies, while those more naturally inclined could use standard blades and attribute it to "flipping out like a ninja".

Honestly if we were to get those four judgement options I'd be perfectly satisfied with the options knowing that one of the eight could fill the thematic hole in any concept character I could dream up.

As has been said a couple times, plant/storm is fantastic. I rolled one simply because I wanted to run with the concept of Plant/Storm/Earth epic for a nature powered character and didn't expect it to be as awesome as it is. It's more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys with POWER TOOLS. Seeds of confusion aside (as it is an awesome power for mitigation and some extra damage to mobs) I can lock down spawns in a ridiculous way, and given proper planning obliterate them just as easily. It's also much more active than ill/rad as you mentioned you wanted something more intense I believe.

Just imagine dropping your AOE hold, AOE immob, carrion creepers, then busting out a thunder storm, tornado and ice slick on top of them. Extra bonus in having your pet out already so it will charge in and beat the tar out of things. And if that doesn't finish them off, Fissue and Siesmic Slam surely will. I'm not even purpled out, just some basic IOs and a couple of sets, and I can double stack thunderstorm, practically perma'd tornado, and with the defense granted by steamy mist and rock armor I'm very safe while doing so. If you're worried about the knock-around aspect of storm then rest assured that plant primary takes care of that without trouble. And honestly, there's really just nothing in the game as cool looking as Carrion Creepers.

I've avoided playing the arcs in beta so I don't spoil myself before it goes live, I'm funny like that, but I must say the carnival as a whole looks pretty fantastic. You guys managed to take the Midnight Squad, Carnival and Legacy Chain, throw them in a mixing pot and come out with a group that has bits of all three, doesn't look ridiculous, and still manages to look like their own unique group. I also have to give props because I never thought I'd see a costume that made the jester pattern (on anything but ESPECIALLY on pants) look good.

My only concern is that those masks are SO awesome, and I just know we're never going to get them, and that makes me sad. I'd really like a porcelain mask for several of my toons (not just female either, I have a creepy serial killer type dude that would wear one if he was allowed) and those Carnival masks are just PERFECT. Even if we didn't get the frilly glowy bits, or the one with the big flowery protrusion, I'd be thrilled with simply the plain mask. Perhaps you guys would be willing to give us something akin to the IDF set in the near future? Maybe not a complete set of their stuff, as some of it needs to stay signature, but I'd gladly welcome some of those frilly corset tops, masks, and even the legacy chain-esque helmets, and if alternate staff/wand animations ever come about for blast/control sets I'd love to see that carnival wand available.

My only hope is that those high-level mage outfits will be available to players and not just a small selection of the pieces. I'd really like to make an accuracte Death Mage necro/dark mastermind. At the very least can you tell us if we'll get the silly hats/creepy hoods? Pleeeease?

Just to get the happy out of the way first: YAAAAAAAY! 30 enhancement slots! That's gonna make crafting badges much less painful and reduce trips to the auction house. Much pleased.

Knew about the costume slots but it's still nice to see it officially announced and confirmed account-wide.

The extra 12 character slots David kind of gave away this morning as coming down the pipeline but I didn't expect it quite so soon. This is a REALLY nice bonus for those of us with Altitis. I know I'll be making a mad grab for character names on the VIP server when it goes live (So I can finally get long-coveted names like Phage and Magenta *Crosses fingers*) and having the ability to purchase extra slots there will just make that server all that much nicer.

Now for the one thing that I noticed that I haven't seen anyone comment on. I know it's probably just a typo or accidental omission on a beta slide but, Time Manipulation lists the power set as being for Defenders, Corruptors and Masterminds, but fails to mention Controllers. I assume this was a mistake in that shot? The biggest draw of the set for me is to reroll my space/time manipulator Mister Eternal as a Grav/Time troller so he'll be an ACTUAL space/time manipulator instead of Grav/Kin. I know I'm probably just worried for nothing, but at least if we can get Redname confirmation sooner rather than later we can avoid some crazy tinfoil-hatter going nuts with it.

To reiterate pretty much everybody else in this thread, and likely every player of the game: Ghost Widow. She's hands down the most striking character in the game. The first thing I wanted to do when I got ahold of COV was go see her in person, and I spent about 15 minutes just walking around her, getting different angles, taking screenshots, that kind of stuff.

Mako is also really cool looking, though he's also a downside as, frankly, none of the monster/animal/mutant characters we can create look as good/cool as he does, so he kind of makes for a "I really like you, but you make me jealous" kind of dude.

Brawler draws eyes to him for the fact that he's a very large character but also keeps it nice and simple. He gives off that "Pretty cool bro" kind of vibe, like you could just walk up to him at a party, give him a fistbump (hopefully without shattering every bone in your arm) and be like "What's up dude?"

States is very iconic looking but needs work on that silly helmet and even sillier cape.

Swan is one of my faves (though she suffers from that awful tan-line issue with white tights with skin that needs to be fixed) and OLD Black Swan fit under this too. New Black Swan is absolutely hideous and looks like something that was made by a 7 year old emo wannabe. She was Swan with a malevolent bent and that was even more striking than normal swan.

Neuron and Bobcat are really cool looking to me. The only issue I have is that Synapse and Neuron are both grey-skinned and it just makes them look WEIRD. If they had a human skin-tone I'd like them both much better. They do a great job of saying "I'm a speedster" Bobcat is just very classic looking with her vintage Catwoman look. Mynx could do with a makeover to give her something that doesn't look like tiger-print footy pajamas.

Foreshadow and Mirror Spirit are FANTASTIC looking. They have very unique and striking looks, but are sadly sequestered away in zones that could very easily be skipped/missed altogether. (I played the game for 2 years before a friend pointed me to Faultline for the story and I was BLOWN AWAY that there was an entire zone that size that I'd never even heard of.)

Doctor Aeon is also very fun and eyecatching. You can look at him and know in two seconds that he's a mad scientist of the highest calibur.

Barracuda, Silver Mantis and Wretch are also very nifty-looking for sidekick style characters. Ice Mistral is okay but could use an update.

Numina has always struck me as very cool-looking, and not just for the ghost effect. Her outfit is very classic magic hero style and I like that.

My suggestion for future signature characters: Do NOT use mix and match bits from player sets and call it a day. Many high-res pattern sets don't flow into each other well and when paired look horrible and clash very badly. It also makes the character look less like a signature character and more like something that somebody just rolled up and power-levelled to fifty. Signature costume bits are part of what make the characters so striking, and cheapening those iconic looks by matching them with random player parts just cheapens the effect. If you must use a player set then use the entire set, or at least match the touching bits. See Black Swan for why mixing and matching is ugly.

I'm gonna have to agree with the sentiment above, as long as it's not an exploit and you aren't PLing someone who's only been playing for five minutes it's really just the same as any old farm mish in PI that was created by the devs, we just don't have bridges anymore.

The whole reason people are anti-AE is the AE babies. Heck, I was on a redside team on Virtue last night that was running one of the members' cape mish. We pop out right by ICON, as that map is set in Steel Canyon. One of the members commented along the lines of "I thought this was in Atlas?" and another member (who I won't specifically name but something along the lines of Misterawesomedude53, on virtue mind you) replied "It is Atlas, that's AE right over there." I couldn't help myself, I had to point out that "No, it's Steel, that's ICON right across the river which doesn't exist in Atlas and AE is in every zone. You'd know that if you ever stepped outside of it." Upon seeing this exchange the team leader kicked him, realizing that we'd picked up an AE baby. And that's a light example.

I've yet to play a kheld past about level 8 simply because it gave me too much headache to worry about how the build was going to play out, whether I was going to be gimped for skipping forms if I decided to play a humanform, or if I'd have enough slots for other powers if I decided to go tri-form or dual-form. And the biggest thing that keeps me from rolling a warshade is the lock-out from flight pool. Flight is my preferred travel power, and scoff if you will I have difficulty getting around the game as well without it, and trying to teleport properly without at least hover makes for a giant pain in the rear for me. When I did play a warshade for a short time I ended up taking nova form simply for flight, with no intent to use it as an actual attack mode, which really just ended up giving me a flight power with a far too long activation time.

Personally, the biggest changes I would make the Khelds based on what I've seen and things that I've read on the forum would be to open up travel pools to both (just gray out anything that could be a redundant pick, ala shield defense and two handed sets in character creation) for greater travel options, buff human form powers so they don't feel so anemic on a peacebringer, don't know if this is needed on warshade but if so, do it, and finally (and I know this is very unlikely to happen but I'm putting it out there anyway) when a player picks a form power, give the six powers that come with it an automatic 3 slots per power. That would allow players at least a little leeway when it comes to slotting their non-form powers and make it not such a huge decision to take one or both of them. I could handle 3-slotted form powers as an extra "I just felt like it for fun" power, and if I made a dual/tri-form build it would be much easier to slot them without totally gimping the rest of my build. Just a mostly outsiders eye on the situation, take it as you will.

Welcome back! For what it's worth, I apparently had my account hijacked, or they suspected it of such anyway, and had my account locked for a few days not too long ago. They asked for ALL the keys (all of them!) and I simply told them I don't have a full list but searched my connected email for anything from ncsoft and gave them the three-five keys that popped up, mostly recent booster pack codes and I believe Going Rogue. This was apparently sufficient for them, and I would imagine even just one would be sufficient as each code is unique and if you can tell them one attached to your account then it's pretty easy to figure out that you're the account holder, unless your email was hijacked too.

Don't sweat it too much, it's very easy to get your account back in your hands, it only took me about an hour, and then only because I was waiting on emails back and forth. I would have called the helpline had it been during business hours.

Plant/Storm is as fun as a barrel of drunken monkies with power tools.

I rolled one with the intention of making him a hippy character who was chosen as an avatar of nature, Plant/Storm/Stone power fitting rather well for that. I wasn't expecting him to rock SO HARD. He was my first incarnate, my first troller to 50, and the first toon I ever bothered to IO out.

Seeds of confusion is wonderful, though I don't find myself using it as much as some other people. I like to drop carrion creepers, slap down roots and vines, then summon tornado and lightning storm on top of the mob. Most of the time they're dead before I can finish summoning the lightning storm, but for the tougher mobs, you can also drop freezing rain on top of them. All that plus my flytrap going to town on them tends to be ridiculously powerful. And if they're still alive with all that going I can unleash seismic smash and fissure on them for some ridiculous damage.

The only think I really have to hold back on teams is tornado. Everything else tends to just make things die faster.

I'm relatively okay with this. I'll start off with 26 tokens myself, possibly 27 depending how late in the year this hits. Then I think I'll plan on purchasing about $60 worth of points so I earn 4 more tokens to buy up a little further, maybe $120 if I have the cash to spare, and then wait a couple months to put myself at the top of t9 with all stuff unlocked. Heck, if I've got enough saved back I'll just buy enough points to fill up the "bush". Then I'll just have extra points sitting around for when new stuff hits the market that I won't have to feel bad buying since I already spent the cash a long time ago.

The only gripe I have is that you have to take EVERYTHING to move up a tier. Currently when I'm claiming rewards I grab the tailor tokens and skip most everything else. I take sands of mu and one of the ranged bonus attacks based on origin, and that's it. I claim the second ranged attack usually just so it's not sitting there unclaimed in my rewards list but I completely skip the prestige sprints because I don't like having four extra powers in an already far too large power section on my powers list. I have to scroll past all that mess to get to power pools and that means I'm going past the Vanguard MVAS, Shadowy Presence, Mystic Fortune, Secondary Mutation, Prestige Power Slide, Pocket D porter, Mission Porter, Assemble The Team, Walk, Sprint, Ouro Portal, FOUR sprints, and so on and so forth. It's a very long list and very irritating when trying to get to your pool powers. If we're going to be forced to take the sprints to get to higher tiers could we possibly move the power pools ABOVE the temp powers list to avoid this?

I for one am not excited. You guys are so inconsiderate with announcing these things. Anyone who works most any kind of retail job requires 2 weeks notice to request time off. My schedule is already set in stone and includes two severely late shifts, one of which is followed by a morning shift, meaning the afternoon of that day will be spent sleeping. Would it really kill you to give us enough time to request off? Thanks, but once again it does me no good because you didn't take typical work scheduling logic into account.

I'm sure plenty of people have said some/all of this by now, but I'll drop my two cents in the machine anyway.

Dark blasters are awesome, thank you. Fire/Thermal defenders are as well. Psi/Poison corruptors? Where can I mail the million fruit baskets? I love you long time, Paragon. I'm also stoked to see EA getting a port to scrappers as I was just about to roll a light-themed speedster and was gonna go with SR which I really don't care for, but now with EA I'll have something that I can make look like light armor, and adding in Energize just makes it that much awesomer.

And I'm going to hope that the awesomeness coming for Dominators is BOTH Illusion and Dark/Dark. I want an Illusion/Psi dom (It would be an instant main for me. Superior Invisibility + Phantom Army/Phantasm + Psi Assault = Godmode) and a Dark/Dark dom as well (I want to be able to create something similar to Ghost Widow, considering she's a Dark/Dark dom, though I would hope, that being the case, that a dominator version of Dark Assault or Dark Domination would include Soul Storm as it's otherwise unavailable to doms). And I'm also going to hope that if Dark/Dark doms are in the works that Controllers will receive Dark Control as well as a port of Dark Miasma, it's only fair.

I seem to recall when I purchased one on Beta it gave me a certification (Or voucher, I can't remember which) that I was able to claim on the toon that purchased it. As far as I've seen, you purchase the item, receive the voucher/certification, and can then claim it on any character, so you should be able to buy the ice block cce on one toon, and then create your new toon and claim it on them. Given, I've not tested this theory, but it seems logical to me given that you can claim most anything else on another toon. Emotes seems a silly thing to restrict in such a way.