Katie V

When I did Field Crafter in Praetoria, it was on a Resistance character. The Resistance auction house is right next to the University, just a quick zone-change away.

1) The number of dots indicates server load. It's a rough measure of number of players: it's possible for a single player or a small group to do something to cause the load to spike, but it's not common. On the Stateside servers, the PvP community has concentrated on Freedom, while the RP community is on Virtue. If you left with i15, then you're familiar with the i13 PvP nerfs, which essentially killed PvP.

2) If you left with i15, then there probably haven't been any major changes to gameplay that you'll need to get used to: you know about Enhancement Diversification, the Global Defense Nerf, and the invention system. Leveling a new character vs. picking up your old one is your choice, though if you want to PvP, you may need to create a new character: the i13 changes mean very few builds are viable these days.

3) After you pick a server, join the global chat channels for that server. That's where most of the teaming is organized, and where you'll meet people to talk to. On Virtue, at least, non-mission roleplay takes place mostly in Pocket D, with some under the statue of Atlas. I'm not familiar with Union.

5) If you want to powerlevel, AE is the best way. It's nowhere near as fast as it used to be; the main advantage now is that you can find a mission tuned to your character's strengths and weaknesses. Most powerleveling is done solo: there's a new difficulty system that lets you get enemy groups sized for any team size: you don't need to look for fillers if you want to face eight-man groups. Most AE teaming is done in Atlas blueside, Cap redside, and occasionally cross-faction in the Rikti War Zone.

Three changes you'll want to look at: the new difficulty adjustment system, the super-sidekicking system, and the removal of level gating on hazard zones. No more sidekick tetris, no more looking for fillers, and you can go to almost any zone starting from level 1.

Note that the Talos masks only spawn if you go there at night. If you go there during the day, you may find some left over from someone else going by at night, but once you defeat them, no more will spawn until the next night.

"She", and yes, that's what I mean. With all the attacks being thrown around by six bots, plus damage-dealing traps, plus the occasional personal attack, I'd never be able to pick out the source of any particular 5% debuff.

XP boost is probably exactly like the current vet reward: you redeem it, and get ten bars of patrol XP. You still need to go out and beat things up if you want to turn that into levels.

We've got our answer in this thread. Premium players can access the market once they've thrown $105 at NCSoft; they get access to the invention system at $390.

If you can pack enemies together, Assault Bot wins with the massive AoEs it can put out. If you've got some form of anti-knockback (you might be able to put Electrifying Fences on auto and have your pet mastermind target through you), it'll be even better. The Arsonist from Thugs also puts out large amounts of AoE damage, but it's far less durable.


/Pain has a good toggle in Suppress Pain, and three good candidates for an autopower: World of Pain (minor AoE damage buff), Anguishing Cry (PBAoE resistance debuff), and Painbringer (massive regen and recovery buff, with a moderate damage buff).


/FF has Dispersion Bubble as a good toggle (protect the pets from AoE splash damage), but doesn't have a good autopower. You could put Insulation Shield on auto for more AoE protection.


/Traps may sound a bit odd, but putting Acid Mortar on auto will give you a 20% AoE resistance debuff, and Forcefield Generator only requires summoning every four minutes.


If you're willing to wait for i21, /Sonic will give you a resistance toggle in Sonic Dispersion, a resistance debuff toggle in Disruption Field, and Sonic Siphon would work as an autopower giving a single-target resistance debuff.

There are two types of ambushes: player-targeted, and location-targeted. Player-targeted ambushes will aggro on the player who triggered the ambush, will chase that player from anywhere on the map, will follow them through elevators, and ignore Hide (and other forms of stealth). Location-targeted ambushes will run towards the location where the ambush was triggered and will attack anyone they see. Stealth works just fine against location ambushes, as does simply staying out of the way.

That's the nature of random rewards: some people get them quickly, and some don't.

As long as you're facing opponents of +5 or lower, the softcap is 45%.


I've found that absolutely nothing has any measurable effect on my "particpation score": I got my first VR on a run where I was seeing if I could get the "you didn't participate" reward while still contributing to the team, and the second on a run where I was going all-out to participate.

Slotted Protector Bots give you about 11% defense to all, which is a lot of IO sets that could be giving you other benefits.


Charged Armor is much better than Scorpion Shield, since you've already got plenty of defense. With the powers you've picked and the Protector Bots shielding you, you'll be at 40.5% defense with just a Steadfast Protection 3% IO. Scorpion Shield would put you far beyond the softcap for Smashing/Lethal/Energy, wasting most of its power, where Charged Armor will stack nicely with Tough, without putting you over any caps.

You might be confusing Electric Shackles (single-target hold) with Electrifying Fences (AoE immobilize with knockback prevention).



Other powers you might want to look at are a resistance shield from your APP (the resistance is applied before bodyguard mode, magnifying its effect), Caltrops (good for keeping enemies away from an area), and Hasten (so you can set your traps faster). Some people like to take Tough because when stacked with bodyguard mode and an APP shield, you get higher smashing/lethal resistance than any tank, but I've found that just the APP shield is enough for almost everything.


I'm not sure how useful taking all of Repair, Aid Other, and Triage Beacon would be: if you're tankerminding, your bots aren't taking very much damage unless you wander within range of something with Footstomp. I don't expect Aid Self to be very useful, either: I didn't take it, and the only time I make much use of green inspirations is when I'm running from something that just one-shotted my bots -- not a situation where I could stop and use Aid Self.

If you want to get it through defeating other players, your best bet is to set up an AFK PVP farm and leave it running for a few weeks.

Yeah, it's expensive. I make it somewhere between 10 and 13 billion, depending on your luck at the markets. You can easily reduce that by three billion by replacing the Gladiator's Armor 3% with a Steadfast Protection 3%.

On the defense side of things, your numbers in Granite look good: you've got softcapped defense, good resistances, and good regeneration. If you ever need to drop out of Granite to tank something psi-heavy (such as the Psychic Clockwork King or Praetorian Malaise), you'd better hope that the rest of the team has dealt with any non-psi attackers, because you're nowhere near the softcap, and Tough is badly underenhanced.

Slotting-wise, I'd rearrange things to put the Numina's unique into either Health or Rooted: right now, you only get the endurance and regen bonuses from Numina's for two minutes after you fire off EE, and the recharge on EE is longer than that, so the bonus isn't permanent. You've also got a huge endurance drain in Focused Accuracy: you'll need to either put some endurance reduction into that, or reserve it for situations where you really need the boost.

Offense-wise, I'm not familiar enough with Super Strength to evaluate it, but I can say that the damage numbers Mids' is showing you are exaggerated: it's assuming that the Gaussian's proc is firing every time you activate Rage.

Using your build in the first post, running your stated toggles, and assuming an attack chain of Quick Strike -> Fire Blast -> Quick Strike -> Focused Burst, my numbers show you running out of endurance after about 67 seconds of sustained combat. You've got a net endurance recovery of 1.17 eps.

For comparison, my stone/fire tank, when running Granite, Mud Pots, Maneuvers, and Weave, has a net recovery of 1.70 eps, and I had endurance issues when solo until I got my Cardiac Core Boost. (When teamed, Taunt was part of my attack chain, reducing endurance use to reasonable levels.)

To give a concrete example on this, removing the knockback from Force Bolt would violate the cottage rule, but removing it from Crane Kick would not.

Dealing with the pulse is easy: just follow the crowd and hope you've got a healer who's rocking the aura.