JRaven

I'd just like to second you shazan.

I agree wholeheartedly with Ghostraptor's post.

After reading it I also did NOT get the impression he was tarring everyone with the same brush, or generalizing the PvP community as some posters seem to believe. Saying that the majority of the invited testers did not provide useable feedback is NOT the same as generalizing.
Saying that "all feedback we can get from the PvP community is unusable" on the basis of the PvP testers that were invited, or the PvP:ers posting on the forums, would be generalizing. And this he didn't write.

(QR)
This post is meant to be some feedback on how PvP gameplay with a heavily slotted Inv/SS/Energy tank has been affected by I13. It is not aimed at anyone in the thread, it is merely meant to provide some data (hopefully useful) for the developers. I should note that I have not altered my I12 build yet: I am putting together a new one with significantly higher defense and some minor power changes, which should hopefully perform better.
If requested I can post the Mids data block for my I12 build.

Build performance in I13 PvP
The mechanic changes introduced in I13 PvP have in most cases favoured my chosen character. Examples of this are:

1. My main character, Inv/SS/Energy tank was not very affected by the diminishing returns mechanic except in one significant area, which is S/L resistance (90% PvE, 53.6% PvP). This is likely a consequence of the layered defenses in Invulnerability, together with an attempt on my part to have a well-rounded build that doesn't rely on, for example, very high recharge. So relatively speaking, the build got stronger in most cases. The exception is S/L damage opponents who have gone from harmless to, in some cases, dangerous if I'm unable to manouver.

2. The Invulnerability set was improved with some extra resistances (region of 4% against all except psionic, after slotting), slow resistance, def debuff resistance, endurance drain resistance, et.c. These have had very minor effect in PvP, with the exception of the removal of the Unyielding defense debuff. Having roughly 22% defense with one opponent in melee range is sufficient to reduce most opponents net ToHit from the cap at 95%.

3. Even with the reduction of the ToHit bonus in Focused Accuracy, Rage still has sufficient amounts of ToHit after slotting (I'm using two lvl 52 HOs) to achieve 60-80% NetToHit against Super-Reflex / Ninjutsu opponents when Focused Accuracy is running and they are not using their Tier 9. If it is running, common net chance to hit values for my attacks are in the 20-35% region.
I have some global accuracy boni from IOs, and no Kismet unique.
Before I13, I would always have capped NetToHit against SR or Nin outside of their Tier 9, with which my NetToHit was floored.

4. Given the change to Tough to affect all damage types, and the addition of psionic resistance to Temp Invulnerability, all resistances are roughly within the 40% - 55% bracket. In case of fire, cold and psionic damage this is partly due to IOs.


Playstyle changes due to new I13 PvP mechanics
My experiences so far is that on the whole, my playstyle has not been affected much.
There are however the following exceptions:

1. Mezzes are useful for dropping offensive toggles on my opponent, but not much more. Handclap sees much less use for this reason as even slotted the stun is insignificant. Previously a common tactic I employed relied on ambushing squishies from above to stun them for 10 seconds, allowing me time to work them over. It -has- however been useful in I13 PvP due to the knockback, given the increased vulnerability to such among Willpower and Invulnerability Brutes in particular. I knocked one Willpower brutes backward into a drone outside the hero base on one occasion. Also, when being attacked by more than one stalker it can usually send at least one of them backward.

2. Dangerous targets have now altered significantly. The only non-brute opponent so far to give me significant trouble are Thermals, as they kill my recovery. When they show up, it's either pop Geas, blue inspirations or fly away. This is however in marked contrast to I12, where mezzes, slows and debuffs were exceedingly dangerous. Due to the now high damage ranged attacks available to me, Laser Beam Eyes (full Apocalypse set) and the veteran Nemesis Staff, I was able to take out a Spider that lacked heals while standing still and using only these two attacks. In another fight with a Dark Melee / Willpower brute (not fully slotted) I found I couldn't last in melee due to his heal and regeneration as I was slowly being worn down: flying out of melee range, I could however slowly whittle him down with ranged attacks while his Gloom failed to do the same to me.
On the whole however, Superstrength brutes have gone from the lowest end of the threat scale to one of the largest ones. This is a direct effect of the S/L resistance reduction. I have managed to win against some, although against an IO:d, well-slotted SS/Wp brute I will be at a distinct disadvantage. I get worn down by them even with Unstoppable up, which I commonly end up using after the first 30 seconds. I should note that the only enhancement in Unstoppable is a Res/Rech IO, which is my old I12 slotting.

3. Due to Diminishing Returns, surviving an attack by more than three players is now much more difficult as powers like Unstoppable, Eye of the Magus and Elusive Mind will not protect you as much. Excessive inspiration popping is also not as efficient as it used to be. I find that I'm usually capable of holding my own, and occasionally win, against two opponents without resorting to temporary powers or inspirations. I had a duel in RV against two regeneration Stalkers and just barely managed to take them out. The fight was incidentally one of the most fun I've had in a long time, mainly because it was so even. Whether I should be able to take on two Stalkers with a fully IO:d tank and win can be up for debate though. I can say that it wasn't easy though, and that I had to play proactively by starting the fight in Unstoppable and Eye of the Magus. I suspect that with a purely reactive playstyle I would not have lasted. As it was, there was still one stalker standing when Unstoppable dropped making the fight require a crash recovery. Total length of the fight was roughly four minutes.


Some more specific feedback now:

Combat Attributes
It is difficult to see how much a character is affected by diminishing returns in the Combat Attributes. Adding raw totals before DR is applied within paranthesis, or in a tooltip, would be nice.

Proc damage unresisted
Finally, in a few tests in RV the purple Hold proc, Unbreakable Constraint: Smashing damage, seemed to cause unresisted damage unlike the purple damage procs in Hecatomb and Apocalypse. This was checked by switching on and off resistance armours for the relevant damage type, and seeing whether the extra damage changed for the procs.

Knockback for Inv,Wp and Elec
I have to confess I am somewhat confused as to what sets can be knocked back/up. Invulnerability and Willpower both have their knockback protection significantly reduced by Diminishing Returns, from 10 to 3.5 for Unyielding (according to the Combat Attributes). I am not certain whether the knockback resistance in Unyielding functions at all in PvP now. I do know my character gets a trip skyward if hit with KO blow and Unstoppable is not running.
However, Electricity Armour brutes are not affected by knockback/up as easily as Invulnerability and Willpower. Both my Handclap and KO blow fail to knock them around. An Electricity Armour brute I chatted with said that she had roughly 15 knockback protection from Grounded, after Diminishing Returns. That doesn't seem to rhyme with the base value of roughly 15 knockback protection indicated by the power information window.
For reference, I have neither Handclap nor KO blow slotted for knockback/up.

Hibernate
Concept-wise, it seems strange that a Stalker can Hibernate and while in Hibernate fade from view. Together with the great piece of ice he/she's encased in. I am not certain of the mechanics, but could Hibernate be made to add visibility while it is active without having a detrimental effect on Stalker performance? I do not mind the Stalker instantly rehiding once the ice breaks, it is just odd that a large block of ice can fade from view completely - it breaks immersion.
Additionally, you already always know when and where the ice breaks since there are many small pieces of ice being spread over the ground when it happens.

(Quick Reply)

I lack experience with Dark Armour, so I'm not a good person to judge which combination would be best. However, it might be worth keeping in mind that Invulnerability is getting Defence debuff resistance in Issue 13 (barring any changes from the current version on Test). For a build focused on defence, this should result in a more even performance against enemies such as the Cimeroran Traitors, who will have more trouble removing all your defence.
It does depend on what enemy groups you are primarily expecting to fight though.

Yes, it is no problem at all setting up a hero vs villain match in the Arena. Having everyone meeting up at the Arena kiosks in Pocket D is likely easiest since it is neutral ground, but it is possible to set up the match in a hero or villain Arena and let the opposing faction join via the kiosks in their own Arenas.

Glad to hear you had fun.

Hi Rooks.

If you are referring to the "Thank you, you're now a prioritized target" comment then perhaps it did come across as somewhat cold. My personal view is that if I see something like that I will remember it but I would hold off attacking someone I consider a good player even if they do say it. By good player I mean not those good at zone PvP but more those who help newcomers, give tips and keeps it friendly.
If someone is not a newcomer in the zone though, or is acting in a way I disagree with, I will most likely go after them immediately and then give them a friendly hint over a tell that giving away such information in broadcast is not in their best interest to do.

I still stand by the comment that having enemy broadcast on is a valuable information channel. As with any other piece of information you can choose to ignore it though. And if I know I'm in a bad mood I'll consider switching it off in case there are flame wars going on, before I join in.

Oh, I just remembered one more general zone advice: if you can stand the trash talk in broadcast, leave all the enemy broadcast/tell/et.c. options on. You don't have to say anything, but occasionally someone on the opposing side will tell you something useful. Examples include:

- LOL im out of bfs now...
Thank you, you're now a prioritized target.

- The AVs are at Delta.
Nice to know you're at Delta at the moment, saves me the trouble of looking for you.


And so on. You don't have to talk in broadcast, not even if you are being insulted, but it can be useful to listen on it. I do not know who said "Information is power", but it is very good advice.

Thank you for the praise Rent.

Regarding the quoted part, I included it because it is good to know about and there are some situations where I do not mind if it is used, by either side. Those situations are mainly the ones where the fight is so skewed in one direction that it is not even close to being interesting: being chased by a gank squad composed of ATs and sets that are kryptonite to you, if someone with a kryptonite powerset combination has made you a number one target because you are easy to kill for them (especially Dominators with Confuse powers will be such enemies for a tank)... then, simply in order to make things interesting, using a heavy or NPCs is (at least to me) acceptable. I should note that I'm personally somewhat loathe to do what most do in such a situation: leave the zone to get more inspirations. That's mainly because I find it a bit boring - too much like a FedEx mission. Anyways, it's more fun/challenging to try and whack Arachnos while dodging the gank squads.

You are completely right to remark that those tactics are considered somewhat underhanded though, something to be aware of in the zones as you'll get lots of criticism over broadcast. I wouldn't consider using them if the fight is equal. I'd like to emphasize that most of the tricks, excepting the temporary powers, are easily avoidable by anyone paying attention in the zone. Against a smart player that is aware of the surroundings, you'll be in trouble even with them. Anyone's that run into the lvl 54 AVs will not make the mistake again (after all, there's a message going out which pillbox they are at), and if a Heavy or pillbox is troublesome it can always be taken out first or you can just ignore the person going there for awhile. Hanging around the pillbox/NPCs/et.c. is not really fun as you are in a zone to do PvP.

So to close off, yes, those tactics are used to cover up weaknesses that you'll have against some opponents. I don't think those weaknesses always are due to skill deficiency though, as there always are some opponents you're an easy target for. I prefer people to stay and get creative to make the fight interesting rather than to leave the zone.

Those who use it when it's not needed, or to cover up skill deficiency, well... I agree they don't and shouldn't get much respect.

Edit: then again, if you are new to PvP I could see the Heavies in particular as being a useful equalizer while you learn. An idea for the Suggestions section would be tying the use of Heavies to your PvP score. On the other hand one function of the Heavies is likely to act as an equalizer if your side is outnumbered (I'm second-guessing the developers intention here, hence the likely), so locking them if your side is outnumbering the others could be another idea.

Currently in zones, it is possible to have some success with a tank (I'm assuming that by success you mean getting kills). It is not easy though, and personally I've found the needed playstyle to be very different from in the PvE game.

If you get a team, you'll have a much easier time getting rep points. By and large however, the somewhat subpar damage and the focus on melee attacks means that you will be in a support role. Taunting dangerous foes to get them focused on you instead of others will be one of the most effective tactics, although you should always keep in mind that you are very unlikely to survive three or more villains in the long run barring team buffs, inspirations and/or creative use of Tier 9 powers/phase/teleportation.

Solo in a zone you'll have difficulties getting kills, again due to somewhat low melee damage. If you can, aim for high burst damage in your build as that is harder to protect against for enemies with a heal (Aid Self is very common), phase (also common) or escape powers. Most villains will not be able to kill you either, although there'll always be some dangerous set combinations. Dominators in particular are dangerous due to the holds. I'd recommend always carrying a few break frees, as well as monitoring hold and stun protection to see if you need to pop them. In case of Invulnerability, Unstoppable can give you very high mez protection for three minutes, will stay up even if you are mezzed and will make you very difficult to kill for anyone without psi or unresisted damage (note that Stalkers AS strike is not resistable, so a stalker/Dominator combo is dangerous. If there are stalkers around, do not get mezzed if you can avoid it).
Slows are also very dangerous for most tanks, Ice Armour excepted. Since you focus on melee damage, not being able to close the distance to your opponent will make you harmless. So along with Dominators, any villain with slow powers should be treated as a prioritized target.
I should note that if you are getting chased by a villain with a powerset combination able to take you out fairly easily, you can still "win" or at least make him work for his kills. In RV, standing close to a pillbox is one option. They can't hurt you much unless your toggles drop, but for a squishy they are much more dangerous. Picking up a Heavy, leading your opponent to a pillbox where half the Freedom Phalanx is having a party or picking up some temporary phase power are a few of the options available.

Furthermore, a tank mindset is not very useful in a zone. Especially the "I do not retreat" mentality, which gank squads love. Personally I've found it better to ambush villains; coming out of hide (if you have Stealth) or dropping from the skies (if you have Fly) to stun them with a power slotted for stun duration will give you time to finish them off. Strangely enough Superstrength's Handclap is very good for this, as it's a PbAOE and you can thus drop down into a group of squishies to stun the lot of them to focus on a single enemy without being disturbed. Plenty of the villains will carry Break Frees though. Note that stun and fear effects are far more useful for you than holds, as Acrobatics is a very common power pick.

The more sturdy opponents will give you trouble. Brutes, Masterminds and well-built Stalkers can prove troublesome. If you have good AoE output the masterminds will be less of a problem; against Brutes you will likely struggle as they are highly resistant, has very high damage output once fury gets up (which it will - you will have trouble taking them out without going toe-to-toe with them). Energy Melee has a very large advantage here, as you'll be able to stack stuns on them to drop their shields. It also prevents them running, which smart brutes will do if they see you're close to taking them out. Stalkers usually consider the 'retreat and heal up'-tactic more acceptable, and will frequently do so. Some also like to use Elude or similar powers to AS you, fight in melee and then retreat before it drops. Generally I'd recommend Focused Accuracy against stalkers - it gives extra perception and greatly boosts your ToHit. Not enough for Elude-running stalkers though, unless you use a lot of yellows (Rage is excellent for a Superstrength tanker though, as it also boosts ToHit by a large amount). Many tanker armour sets also have auras that a stalker will have to deal with in order to pull off an AS.

....

This post is becoming very long now, so I'll stop. Hopefully you'll find a bit of this useful, though as the other posters have mentioned the PvP rules will change shortly once I13 comes out.

Have fun.

(Quick Reply, not aimed at anyone)

Hmm, one effect of the diminishing returns for PvP should be that less specialized builds get better relatively speaking. Layered defenses, such as Invulnerability with a little regeneration from IO sets, should not take as large a hit as a purely resistance based set though the S/L resist will likely see a significant decrease.

I am curious to see how the different Tier 9's are affected, such as Elude and Unstoppable. They boost defense or resistance so much that they'll likely see a significant decrease in effectiveness due to diminishing returns. For example, Unstoppable with just one resistance enhancement plus the passives might not put a tank at the resistance cap anymore. This would not be purely academic since all the toggles would be suppressed if mezzed.

Further, the diminishing returns and no mez protection may have some effects on fight clubs (whether one likes them or not) as the usually high S/L resistance will likely take a hit and all shields suppress for a short while from mezzes. Energy Melee should be very interesting due to the stuns, and having stun procs in powers like Brawl or Jab to get a stun window for a heavy hitter like KO-blow could be a viable strategy. Though I have to admit that whether those sets will be good or not is complete speculation at this point. It'll be interesting to try out the new PvP, that is for certain.

I'm looking forward to it - it should liven things up for a bit.

I agree that Fire/Cold/Toxic isn't very common in the PvE game. For those who enjoy occasional PvP fire and cold will be fairly common though, along with high ToHit and accuracy for the attacker which serves to lessen the usefulness of defense-based shields. So if anyone finds themselves wanting to PvP with an Inv, it might be worth consideration.

How so? Given the lower resistances for a Brute I'm curious as to why it would be more useful for them than a tank?

Quick Reply

A comment on the usefulness of Resist Elements: given that it is possible to get about 10% extra resists for Fire/Cold/Toxic using sets (purples in particular) it shouldn't be completely disregarded, for those who are planning major investments in an Inv tank build.
Sitting at 40% resists, especially when coupled with extra regeneration, is a not insignificant contribution to survivability. It also improves performance against pure Toxic attacks, which although rare do exist.

Ordinarily I do not build for resistance values, but I've found the purple IO resistance boni sizeable enough to be useful IF Resist Elements is already part of the build. In addition the other purple set boni are highly useful as well, so no set boni are "wasted" in order to get get the extra resistance.

The attack mechanics are explained at ParagonWiki . Higher level enemies will initially get Accuracy boni rather than ToHit boni. This is true up to +5. After that, they gain ToHit.

[ QUOTE ]
Defense=To hit based mitigation therefore as To hit scales Def now scales to compensate.


[/ QUOTE ]

I am uncertain what you mean by this; we might be using different concepts of what ToHit is. In any event, if you are fighting one opponent and the opponent gains a ToHit bonus the effect will be identical to an unresisted Defense debuff applied to you. Depending on the opponents accuracy this can then have a proportionally larger effect on the final chance for the opponent to hit you. Players can often have 95% extra accuracy, so ToHit/Defense buffs/debuffs in PvP are rather potent. Higher rank enemies in PvE, such as Archvillains, also have accuracy boni.
I'd like to point out that if your opponent has extra accuracy, the approximation "1 Def = 2 Res" is NOT true. Def will become more valuable, if the final tohit is within the caps.
All in all, I would recommend the ParagonWiki page. It has the details and the formulas you need.

Resistance values do not change depending on your opponent, except if specific powers buff/debuff you. However, as resistance always removes a percentage of the incoming damage the mitigation does scale in a sense. At 50% resistance an attack dealing 100 damage will be reduced to 50 damage. An attack dealing 150 damage will be reduced to 75 damage.

PRAF, while I agree with most of what you have written regarding the mechanics behind defense and definitely agree that the 5% base defense debuff going (if that happens) is welcome I am a bit confused here.

As far as I know the psi defense buff given by the Elusive Mind accolade power is 25%. The 5% base defense debuff in Unyielding is far from actually nullifying it. The psi resistance granted by Elusive Mind is 7.5%. Perhaps that is what you referred to?

My impression is that very few psionic attacks are typed as anything else than "psionic damage, [positional damage]" and that some of the ones that are actually lack a positional component and are pure psionic attacks.
An exception would be Telekinetic Blast in the Blaster psychic blast set, which has a smashing component. There are also exceptions where only psionic defense is applicable. World of Confusion from the Mental Domination set is typed as purely psionic, to take an example.
The Mind Control set for Controllers is notorious for this as all of the powers are typed as purely psionic without a positional component (which means SR scrappers and brutes may as well be naked).
Now, in the PvE game I'm not certain how prevalent pure psionic attacks are. I suspect they usually have a positional component. My personal experience is that they very seldom has another damage type component however, given that my Defense rarely seems to help against psionic enemies.


Note: I've taken the information from Red Tomax' City of Data site; while usually correct there could be errors.

[ QUOTE ]
As much as I would love a resist against slow or energy drain, I hope he isnt thinking along those lines. And I'd have a problem understanding why they would go that route at all. There is nothing about being "invulnerable" that woiuld prevent an opponent slowing you down or draining energy so that would make no thematic sense. Better to buff the resists and be done with.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure adding secondary effects to the passives would be wrong conceptually. Consider -Recharge resistance in Resist Elements for example. If the cold, which is a common source of -Recharge, does not affect you as much then you shouldn't get as much -Recharge either. Same argument can apply to endurance drain in Resist Energies, or Slow in Resist Elements. In the latter case, there are Toxic attacks that can slow you. Granted, physical impediments such as a sticky web -should- slow you down regardless of what kind of damage you can resist. Then again, you can consider Resist Physical Damage and Caltrops...
My impression of "thematic sense" in CoH is that it can require a lot of suspension of disbelief due to the nature of the game mechanics. There's often no right or wrong, just different viewpoints. Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing what changes will be made to the passives. And if there are secondary effects added, I'd be very happy as endurance drain and debuffs in general are dangerous holes in the Invulnerability defenses.


On an unrelated note to the above I am particularly interested to see what will happen to the defense debuff in Unyielding. Even if a removal is compensated by a decrease of the defense available in Invincibility, it would represent an increase against psionic damage defense as well as being a boost when all enemies are firing at the character from range. Small mercies, but they could occasionally be significant.

Inv/SS/Energy - the character I play 99% of the time. Lack of time due to real life concerns has immunised me against altaholism. I still find it fun after close to three years.

I've been looking a bit at slotting up the KO-blow for Hold duration; it does seem to be possible to do so without sacrificing too much in other areas (damage, recharge, end reduction) although you will have to resort to mixing the Melee damage and Hold purple set to reach that point. Damage enhancement will be a bit lower than with a set of Crushing Impact, but still in the ED range. Recharge and Hold will comfortably reach levels where ED kicks in.

Of course, this will not help much unless the Tanker has some other Hold power available. It will still be too difficult to stack sufficient magnitude to overcome a Brute level mez protection.
It might come in handy to prolong the Hold if the Tanker can manage to drop the mez protection toggle with Brawl though, unlikely as that is. Without extra Hold powers, I would still expect the Willpower Brute to win.

I have done a few duels against EM/WP brutes as an Inv/SS tank. Not surprisingly I have no hope of taking them out while their toggles are up, both because they resist smashing damage fairly well and because they regenerate too fast. I suspect the best avenue for a melee character would be to mez them. EM for tanks has the option of stacking stuns, as well as pouring on the burst damage once the Brute shields drop. Slotting for stun duration or using the Vanguard accolade, together with Hasten or Geas to boost the recharge might be able to succeed. Timing it to happen after Strength of Will has just dropped would be best.
I am a bit in the dark about what other melee characters has the ability to stack toggle-dropping mezzes however. Except for Energy Mastery, the tank ancillary power pools contains a few holds that could help.

The formula for calculating recharge should be (unless I am mistaken)

RechargeTime = BaseRechargeTime / (1 + RechargeTimeReduction)

where RechargeTimeReduction is the sum of IO recharge boni, Recharge Reduction enhancement slotting, Hasten, buffs, debuffs, et.c.
Unless there are caps, stacking recharge buffs would make Perma-Unstoppable attainable though you would more than likely need outside support to achieve that. To achieve a zero recharge time you would need an infinitely large recharge time buff, but in order to make any power 'perma' you only need a buff sufficient to cut the base recharge time of the power to below its duration.
As for caps, I have not found an official source on them, much to my chagrin. However, they are discussed in this post on the US forums. The numbers mentioned there by players imply that RechargeTimeReduction is bounded between -0.75 and +4.00. It should be possible to test it in-game with the Combat Attribute monitor.
In case anyone has a more reliable source on recharge caps that says differently, or has tested it personally with different results, I'd be interested in the numbers.

In any case, using City of Data numbers the Unstoppable duration is 180 s and base recharge time is 1000 s. As the cap mentioned above would prevent you from going below 1/5 of the 1000 s (200 s) you will always have at least 20 s of downtime. This is disregarding any possible effect from activation times.

I take it the recharge rates rely on the +Recharge proc then? I have heard that it is a very useful proc in Footstomp, as it is said it has a chance to trigger per enemy caught in the blast. I have not tested it myself however, though I do have a recipe for it.

I am curious about your defense numbers. The 20% psi I assume you got by Impervium IOs, the +3% Def/Res and some extra +Def powers? 30% for the other damage types sounds either very good or average depending on the number of enemies in range. How many enemies did you let Mids Hero Builder assume for the Invincibility calculation?

Another question I have regards recovery. Since you seem to go for greatly boosted recharge, how much end/s do you regain? As your endurance consumption goes up with increased recharge, you will need recovery to compensate.

On a final note, perma-Unstoppable is not possible. There is a cap on recharge, which together with the recharge time of Unstoppable makes it impossible to make it permanent. At least nowadays. I understand it was different in the first few issues.

Assuming you attack non-stop it is generally more efficient to slot attacks for endurance than your toggles.
However, as noted above you might want to concentrate on damage slotting first. Accuracy is also nice to have, but since you are a Superstrength user Rage (after you get it) might be able to help you out sufficiently that you can avoid slotting more than one or so Accuracy enhancement.
Also, you can look into the crafted Invention enhancements (IOs). There are several IOs that boost both damage, endurance and accuracy. They are one of the best ways to boost several power attributes at once.

Keep in mind that if you pick up Hasten or slot heavily for recharge, your attacks will start to use up even more endurance each second compared with your toggles.

As for the Taunt duration, I am unsure. I recommend you go to the City of Data site by Red Tomax, where you can find statistics on most powers.

Hi there.

There are some interesting guides around on the US forums. One of the best I've seen which includes different IO slotting alternatives is in a thread by Vox_Populi. You might want to check this link out:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....fpart=7#8405737

The invention update starts on page 7 in the thread and continues from there. There is a build for a more aggressive tank in the thread.

In my experience, Superstrength does have a few things going for it:

- Large ToHit from Rage makes opponents using defense as their primary mitigation much easier to deal with.
- Very reliable PbAOE stun in Handclap allows you to finish off unprepared opponents that lack mez-protection, since they cannot run. If your opponents like to huddle up, so much the better.


Weaknesses would be:
- Exclusively smashing damage, which makes fights against smashing-resistant opponents dependant on luck and the opponents behaviour. If they stand and fight and are not too resistant, you can whittle them down as your average damage output is not bad. An opponent based on Willpower or Invulnerability will probably not go down at all however. Still, fewer characters are resistant to smashing damage than you would think.
- Rage drop greatly decreases damage output for a short while, and also affects your defenses and endurance. Still, nowadays you still get full use of the mez effects in the Superstrength powers (Handclap, Taunt, KO-blow, et.c.). It should be noted that damage from veteran powers, temporary powers and IO procs is not affected by the damage debuff. Saving these for the drop will prevent your damage output dropping too much. On the other hand that damage is not boosted by the +80% Rage buff either.


In comparison to Energy Melee, spike damage is poor. KO-blow does a good job, though not at the same level unless you manage to double-stack Rage which can be rather tricky (depending on your build and other factors).
Energy Melee also has access to good stuns, and is able to stack them better than Superstrength does since only Handclap has a guaranteed stun application. Jab only has a very low probability to apply a stun.

On the whole I would say that it is trickier to win against your average opponent using Superstrength than Energy Melee, although this should be taken with a grain of salt as I have not personally played an Energy Melee to any significant level. The exception should be very high defense opponents, where a Superstrength tanker/brute slotted for accuracy will hit through even soft-capped defense very reliably while Rage is up. "Very reliably" should be roughly 70% net to hit, if I got the numbers right. Outside of Buildup, Energy Melee will not manage anything close to that, although the difference between the two will decrease once set bonuses and other powers are added into the mix.




PS

For the "70% net chance to Hit" number I assumed
- "soft-capped def" was equivalent to 45% Def
- about 0.9 power accuracy from enhancements
- Rage fully slotted for ToHit

DS

True, though it does depend on how the Arena duel is set up. For the standard 10 minutes you do have to plan for the drop if you use Unstoppable before the 7 minute mark.
My intent with the anecdote was however to highlight a situation in which Unstoppable was preferable to Granite, which I believe would still be the case in a standard Arena duel against a Poison mastermind.

I will elaborate a bit on my experiences with the Unstoppable crash, which hopefully connects somewhat to the topic of Stone versus Invulnerability as the crash is often used as an argument against the Invulnerability set. It is not my intention to "prove" the superiority of either set as what is superior depends on what criteria you use to judge the sets by. It will just be empirically collected information that might be of use to others to decide for themselves. I lack experience with Granite either way, so I do not feel I can make a qualified judgement.

In any event, handling the Unstoppable crash in a duel is possible - retreat is almost always an option in an Arena duel due to the teleportation temporary power and possibility to stock up on Break Frees. Unless your opponent is on his toes, or have applied plenty of DoT effects, you can usually buy yourself enough time to heal up and retoggle. Timing the crash to occur after a possible duel time limit expires is an option.
In zone PvP, stocking up on Ethereal Shifts can make the crash completely safe. Since Ethereal Shift is a click power it will not drop when you run out of endurance, unlike the Concealment pool Phase Shift. The drawback is that it runs out after five uses. This also works in PvE, though here you may run the risk of losing aggro control. Ethereal Shift can not be turned off - once you are intangible, you are for the entire power duration. Depending on team capacity and skill, this may still be acceptable. Warning beforehand is advisable though.
A less safe alternative to the Ethereal Shift power would be to pop Eye of the Magus or several purple inspirations as the Unstoppable crash approaches. Unless you are heavily debuffed this is likely to see you through, especially if you have Dull Pain recharged. You will retain aggro control, though your opponents might get enough lucky hits in to drop you.
Lastly, one of the safest ways to handle the crash is to kill everything hostile to you before it comes. This is not an option in time-based Arena duels however, due to your opponent respawning. Depending on your opponent, it might also be somewhat tricky to pull off.

In all, my personal experience is that the crash is manageable though many tactics for managing it relies on preparing beforehand.