Justaris

Hopefully Dechs will be by himself to make further comment, and IIRC his signature Dark tank is also Dark/Fire so he should have a lot to say. However, I'll give you the major things I see on an overview of this build:

• Dark Regeneration. As mentioned above, this power needs better slotting. This is probably the single most important power in Dark Armor. I strongly recommend you pick up a Theft of Essence: +Endurance proc for this power, as it helps immensely with the high endurance cost. You'll also want at least some endurance discount in the power itself. This should not be slotted as an attack. The damage is minimal and not the point of the power in any case.
• Level-Up Build or Respec? This build takes a number of powers in an odd order. If you plan to respec into this at high level and never do any lower-level TFs with it that would require you to exemplar, that might be okay, but even so you're delaying a number of key powers quite late. For instance...
• Obsidian Shield. This power is your protection against status effects and also gives heavy psy resistance. You are delaying this until level 35 and I wouldn't take it much later than level 12. You're also waiting quite a long time for Death Shroud, which is your damage aura and will be helpful in holding aggro.
• No Knockback Protection. This is a big one. Obsidian has a hole where KB is concerned and you want to plug that right away. You should seriously consider getting Steadfast Protection, Karma or Blessing of the Zephyr -KB IOs. Most Tankers go for twelve points of protection, which means three of these IOs somewhere in your build. Without adequate KB protection you will have trouble tanking for teams, not to mention difficulty positioning yourself for Dark Regen.

That's the big things I see thus far. Also, while you have soft-capped S/L defense, you may want to consider aiming for more E/N defense as well.

Tangler, what sort enemies were you using LR on in your OP? Or was it multiple different types of enemies? There are some that resist or altogether ignore -run speed debuffs (wolves, for one)

As previously mentioned really the only niche role that the Empath is usually asked to fill is that of stacking enough Clear Mind on the primary Tanker to prevent GW's hold from taking the Tanker out of play. This role can also be filled by a */Thermal controller, a Kineticist or a Sonic, and frankly all three of these are likely to bring more to the team. Empathy is a great powerset, but on a Master run I'm more likely to go with one of the other three possibilities rather than chance ending up with a 'pure healer'.

At the end of the day what's really needed is 8 competent people. The rest is negotiable.

This badge can be a real pain to get. One other option available is to run (or Ouroboros) Crimson's arc as there are several named bosses in that arc who will always be Zeus Titans. In fact, if you are solo and playing something that might have difficulty bringing down a Titan you can even run the arc at the -1 / x0 / No Bosses setting and you can get lieutenant-class Zeus Titans that still count for the badge.

Of course the downside of this approach is that it basically requires you to go intot he mission, take out one guy, exit, reset... lather, rinse, repeat. Potentially 50 times.
It's dull but reliable if you can't get a large team going to farm a mission for them. I eventually had to cap off the last few my Defender needed doing this.

Welcome back to the game.

I'd just like to briefly mention that many things have changed in the game since you've been away and while most teams like someone with Recall Friend to teleport them around to missions and such, the 'teleport and resurrect' tactic is even less worthwhile now than it used to be since players can create their own awakens by combining inspirations now.

I'd strongly recommend you approach your empath from scratch rather than trying to play it the way you remember from back then - lot's changed.

Or, go give the short version: absolutely take Fortitude at 12 and don't skimp on your attacks. Good luck!

The character name doesn't matter, you need to send it to your global. If your'e new, then your global defaults to the name of the first character you made. You get to change it once (and only once, so think about it). If you've already changed it and forgot what it was, then you can check it in-game by going to Menu -> Chat Handle.

Also, any time you speak in a Global Chat Channel, you will use your global name regardless of who you are playing at the time. So if you're in any channels just say something and that will also tell you.

On the flip side, the ability to cage AVs (and towers in the STF) is a considerable advantage - although admittedly, FF and Sonic have powers better suited to this purpose.

You'll have 120 seconds of stealth after you turn off Super Speed. While Super Speed is running, your 120 seconds of stealth will renew every 10 seconds.

If you put a Celerity: +Stealth IO into Super Speed, then yes, you will have the full invisiblity whenever Super Speed is on (with the standard rules for invis, of course - you can't already have aggro and certain mobs who ignore stealth entirely will still see you such as Rikti Drones or Rularuu eyeballs).

One other thing that I feel ought to be pointed out that's often glossed over or ignored altogether in these discussions is the flip side of high prices for rare drops. Yes, the rarer stuff costs a lot. Purples aren't cheap. I agree with Panzerwaffen that this doesn't necessarily represent a problem.

If a certain desirable IO (say, a Basilik's Gaze) is selling for 100 million influence then yes, that could be difficult for a casual player to easily afford - but it also means that same casual player who gets a good drop gains a huge windfall. That 100 million might buy only one IO of the six you want for your hold to eek out a bit more +recharge for your perma-hasten build, but the same sum might fully outfit a character with less expensive sets or generic IOs. My wife IO'd out three characters completely, albeit conservatively, from the proceeds of selling one purple drop on her empath.

I'm not saying that inflation isn't a potential problem and I do think that the Devs at least keeping an eye on the extreme excesses such as much sought-after PVP IOs and Purples being sold for upwards of 2 billion inf is a good idea. But I think that the market by and large, at least in my experience, isn't in as much trouble as some people seem to think. If I stay out of the top-tier stuff, I can afford just about anything I want on a casual play schedule (on average about 6-8 hours per week).

As for the casual players having difficulty getting the top-tier stuff, there was something a while back posted about a casual player and his purpled-out tri-form Warshade which was played for comedic effect. Maybe I'm out of line here, but shouldn't the top-tier loot be pricey?

I suppose that there's a difference between 'pricey' and 'extreme inflation/abuse' that's somewhat subjective to assess, but personally I'd draw the line at the cap. If the market will support a price of two billion for a recipe or enhancement, that's a lot of inf in my pocket if I happen to land that item to sell. I can see taking action to curtail trades happening beyond that point, but even then I'm not sure how far I'd really want the Devs to interfere in the market.

If you know of a way to get Tournament Victor, I'd be interested to find out.

One additional point that seems obvious but that I haven't seen explicitly stated yet is the fact that some players hold multiple subscriptions - this would certainly account for some of the people who are "paying for a game they don't play". They're playing on their other account. Of course, they might log on both in order to PL, fill, whatever, but it's likely that at least a small percentage of active subscriptions are second/third/etc accounts and therefore from, say, four accounts you get one player online.

Now, obviously this isn't the norm especially for newer players and many veteran players especially now that we can purchase character slots have only a single account - but it's a factor that should probably be considered.

I'd also be interested to know if anyone really knows what a 'critical mass' would be for an MMO. Bill, you've mentioned several times that you don't know if the numbers you are seeing are low, but they seem low to you and this concerns you. While this makes sense, if the goal here is an empirical, factual assessment, then soem kind of objective benchmark is needed or whatever data is gained cannot be meaningfullly interpreted.

How exactly we'd go about getting such a benchmark number outside of direct Dev statements, I don't know.

The other topic of this thread, subjective perception of population, seems (at least to me) to be sufficient based on my ability to play the game the way I wish to play and to recruit up teams when I wish to do so without undue difficulty or time investment. I have knowledge and savvy that a neophyte lacks and I've gone into that issue upthread, but speaking strictly about population, it is my anecdotal assessment that the current population levels are adequate and often more than adequate. I wouldn't say excellent, but neither would I say troubling.

Ultimately, however, the only measure that matters is the one the Devs are using. I see that and on that level I am concerned that if the game's numbers do not match up to whatever internal benchmark the Devs are using, consequences are in store for us as players. Unfortunately, I'm not confident that we can make any meaningful conclusions without access to that insider information. The best we could do is compile really good data and hope a redname gives some kind of cryptic yea or nay to it.

Okay, here's what I see after a quick once-over. Overall this is a moderately expensive high-end Human/Dwarf Warshade build with an eye towards +recharge probably for perma-Eclipse. For the most part I think the power selection and slotting works, but there are a few areas I'd call attention towards.

1) Gravitic Emanation. This is the big one. Every other point in this post is more a matter of playstyle/opinion, but I disagree with slotting this power as an attack. The damage is very minimal - you should think of this as a control power and slot it as a stun, not a cone attack. You can get the same +recharge with Stupefy as with Positron's Blast and I think you'll be happier with this slotted as a stun.

2) Black Dwarf. As it stands now, you have good slotting if your intent is to use Black Dwarf for scrapping or for short-term turtling. If you intend to play backup tank for a team, you may have some difficulty, and without more slotting in Antagonize you may have trouble holding aggro. If holding aggro/playing tank holds little interest for you, then you may disregard this bit.

3) No Quasar. Again this is a playstyle choice and not necessarily a problem. but since with Stygian Circle you can instantly recover your endurance to full with sufficient nearby bodies, this is basically a free nuke. Some people don't like nuke powers on principle and if this is you, then that's all that needs to be said. But it's something I'd at least consider working in. If this were my build, I'd probably drop Super Speed for Quasar (with build shuffling, of course, obviously you can't take Quasar at 14). You could slot a +Stealth IO in Sprint to combine with Shadow Cloak for full invis when Invisibility is unavailable on exemplar (if you intend to exemplar at all). Once again, just a suggestion - it's not clear to me what your reasons were but if you're attached to SS or to the Winter's Gift IO, those are reasonable selections too.

4) Expensive build. This isn't the most expensive I've seen, but it will cost you. Several of your powers are underslotted for accuracy, relying on the bonuses from the IOs (especially the purples in OD) to make up the difference. If you can afford to purchase this build outright, there's no problem, but if you are filling it in as you can afford it then you may have significant issues with missing in the build-in-progress. If you are going to need to save up for this, you might consider an alternative build to play until you're ready to make the respec over to the final, expensive version.


It should also be mentioned, just to make sure you're aware, that passive powers (Health, Stamina) do not work in Black Dwarf.

"Worth continuing" is of course highly subjective. I have a Dark tank at 50 and I'll say this for it - it plays differently than all my other Tankers. In fact, the closest comparison I can make for how it 'feels' is a /regen Scrapper. Basically if they can't kill me with burst damage in a very short period of time, I'm invincible. Dark Regeneration is just that powerful (and the ToE proc is invaluable).

As a Dark you've got much more control than the average tanker and aren't quite as resilient, but you don't have to be - you just need to survive until Dark Regen recharges. That's it.

One other thing that I enjoyed was being very strong against enemies that are often problematic for your Stone and Invuln tankers - psychic foes.

If it were me, I'd keep it. I think at the end of the day it comes down to fun. If it seems fun, I say stick it out.

Same here - I have a static team who've all lost connection. Server appears to be down.

PennyPA does have a point, however - it's considered standard etiquette to do a cursory search on these (and most other) forums before posting an idea/thread to make sure you're not retreading a dead horse topic or duplicating an existing active thread.

It is not unreasonable to ask that you do that, nor is it rude to point it out when you fail to do so. Now, if you're having trouble with searching the forums, that's another matter and we can help you do that more effectively. Nevertheless, if you do post a 'dead horse' topic, you should expect that people will react in that way - it's not unlike spending four hours explaining a complex topic only to have someone right next to you tap you on the shoulder and ask you the exact same question and say "oh, I wasn't listening before".

Several of these ideas are high-profile items that should have been easily found on a search (see the copy/paste on Vehicles above).

The usual (and correct) points about hide options, the game being largely instanced, the summer/pre-GR slump, etc have already been made, so I'm not going to rehash all that. It's been said, the copy/paste has been done, fine.

Yes, population is lower now than it once was. There are many reasons for this, including time of year, the fact that a beta is currently in progress, the fact that a major new issue/expansion is upcoming, and just that this is a six-year-old MMO that doesn't currently have a major shelf presene (though this will change with GR). So yeah, population is lower.

This is not, in and of itself, a cause for concern. It is not a reason to merge servers. In fact, merging servers is quite likely to drive significant numbers of longtime players away from the game as this thread has already demonstrated (albeit in an anecdotal sampling).

The only issue raised in this thread that I can see as a legitimate cause for concern is one of new player perception. Servers other than Freedom & Virtue are not 'ghost towns' despite what some fond of hyperbole choose to believe, but to a new player unfamiliar with global channels, tells and our less-than-stellar team search system, that perception is an understandable one.

To recap: it's the perception that is the problem, not the reality. However, it's still a problem. On the one hand we have players on these supposedly dead servers who team quite nicely thank you very much. I'm one of them. So what's the difference? In most cases it's use of global channels and/or savvy use of the team /search and /tell systems. These aren't things that it is reasonable to expect a new player to know about and may not be reasonable to expect a new player to learn. In short, they shouldn't have to learn it in order to team well.

So what's the solution? Move to Freedom, where the blind invites flow like water? No, obviously not, because we have that option now and it does nothing to address concerns on other servers, not to mention that "lol u picked wrong server n00b rofl" isn't the message we want to send. So merge the servers, so the blind invites flow like blood? Also no, that could easily create more problems than it solves, and there's a better solution with none of the fallout. The solution is to fix the teaming interface so that new players (and not-so-new players) can find teams more easily without the need for the extraneous measures most of us now take for granted. We need a "team looking for more" option. The aforementioned "auto-add" feature where your character automatically links up with a team that has a matching "looking for more" set up would be even better.

Such a system would solve the problem of a new player's 'ghost town" erroneous perception without the numerous problems of a server merge (one of which happens to be sending a signal to those same new players that the game may be dying*).





* No, the game is not dying.

If the intent is the write this up as a formal guide, I'd suggest cleaning it up some so that it's easier to read and to follow, breaking it up by topic with some headers maybe so someone skimming it can read over areas they have questions on in more depth without having to scan the entire post(s).

Since you also talk a fair bit about slotting choices and IOs, posting builds might also be helpful to those who'd be reading this as a source of information or advice.

Offhand, I think breaking this into sections on powers, builds and tactics (at the very least) would make this more useful. Right now it's pretty much a wall of text and the reader has to dig into it and figure out what if anything pertains to him/her.


On the other hand, if the goal is just to brag about your build to 'the masses', then goal accomplished I suppose.

This is one of the few badges I still need on my primary badge-hunter - I hope this gets a fix soon, very frustrating.

Free food is not to be missed.

Glad to be of help.