Khenal_Baroney

Ice is almost certainly the aggro king, with two auras that really piss things off. Ice is also very tough, but it is a defence set. If you get an unlucky string against an AV, often the Ice simply can't react. Invuln and stone have resists to lessen the burst damage and can often deal with a bad luck streak. Not to say ice is squishy, far from it. A skilled ice tanker can use energy absorbtion to way overcap thier def and keep even Recluse missing.

Expertise is a very subjective thing. Most people here will call fire squishy, yet I tank almost everything without trouble. Rularuu, psi clocks, carnies, whatever group you want to toss at my fire/mace is fine with him. Recluse and GW are really the only two things that can consistently take him down without support. But I've played him for over 4 years, and he's IOd all over the place. A new or inexperienced fire tank can face those things and be eating pavement in no time flat.

Interresting, I never knew there were any attacks that did unresistable KB.

If you look a little lower you can get the obliterration for about 5mil. I've scored two over just the last week.

Granite tanks are the toughest, easily. Problem is, they have massive penalties to offset that. To me, stone is very booring, way too slow. Like Talen and Ice have mentioned, the difference isn't really worth the -dam/-rech/-speed.

Only thing I would worry about with WP is holding the aggro. Two taunts in RttC apparently locks it down, but I haven't had a chance to test it myself. An AoE heavy attack set also helps to keep the attention squarely on you. Fire and mace are some serious aoe, and stone and axe are no slouches either.

I'm with Aett, hasten is overrated, especially for inv/ss. Heraclea has a pretty good looking build there, though.

Early on is usually the worst time for endurance. There are a few things you can do to lessen the burden though. For now, running your smashing/lethal resist toggle only is usually a good option, though foes like outcasts will need your elements/energies toggle also. About the time you start fighting Tsoo, you'll want to use your status protection toggle all the time. Also, look into the fitness pool for stamina. It gives you better end recovery. For now, slot attacks with 2 acc at least, and sprinkle end redux enhancers liberally. Around lv 25 or so, I would look into IOs and build for +end and +recovery. Many sets also include a healthy ammount of end redux enhancement.

For attacks, I just pick up however many I feel I need to keep hitting things. Some people slot a lot of recharge to use the heavy hitters as often as possible, but that also tends to come with a heavy cost in endurance. My fire/mace has 5 attacks, which gives me a good cycle of attacks. I do know that energy melee has it's best attacks at the end of the set, so it's a decent time before you get the real showstoppers of Total Focus and Energy Transfer.

1) Dark needs the toggle resists, and dark regeneration. THe rest of the set is definatly worth having, but those are the "must haves". Don't know much about energy melee though.

2) Many people skip the final power from dark, and people tend to choose either the toggle for stun or cloak of fear, few take both.

3) For most tanks, any travel power will work just fine. For Dark, though, most like superjump to get acrobatics. Personally, I hate acro. It's a decent drain on the ol' blue bar, and dark is pretty mean on it in the first place.

4) The reason people take acro is because dark doesn't get any native knockback protection. Teleport has no mitigation for KB, there is hope, however. Get yourself a -KB IO enhancement. I believe the Steadfast Protection set has it for resist, and Karma has it for defence. They will typically cost 4mil or more to buy from the market. With a lucky drop or two and some patience, you can easily have some KB protection by the time you hit 25. Look at the market section for some better market advice.

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Traps defenders

*salivates*

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For two thugs, I would want something with massive debuffage, the pets are never going to get hit with all the def from the enforcers. The problem, as some have pointed out, is the sets that debuff are fairly active and perhaps not easy to 2x box. I don't know much about pain, but if it has a decent ammount of +dam to give the pets, it could work well.

Sounds right, barring +/- con modifiers. Resistance resists resist debuffs, if that makes any sence

I like RotP, but I also only put it in at 49. It's a fun power, and one of my favorite animations in the game.

I have mine with 3 recharge/1range/1acc. If you are tight on slots, the recharge is all that they really need. I put a range in to make it easier to summon them outside agro range, and I put an acc because it felt like they were missing a lot. I should see if I can cram a -to hit in there...

Bots/traps is perhaps the most versatile thing to play in this game. You have a tool for every situation. Played right, there are very few things that cannot be done. The biggest thing about traps is it tends to require a bit more situational awareness than most sets. You need to know what the situation is before you can apply the right tool.

Perhaps the best tool for your particular team is something to eat the alpha strike. Specifically: seeker drones. There is just something about making the baddies waste thier best attacks on something that explodes in thier faces to debuff and perhaps even stun them.

Looks like a tankermind, though perhaps a bit quirky. But Quirky is good Personally, I would drop leadership, move repair to around 18 and delay stamina for a bit. Oh, and pick up poison trap as well.

/Traps is pretty easy on the blue bar, though the personal attacks will eat it up. I play my Bots/traps fairly shock trooper, by sending in the seekers and then charging in with traps everywhere. Once you get to trip mine, you may have no real reason to pull out the rifle except for simple fun.

What you may also do is spec out of the attacks later down the road to put in things like leadership and such. Done right, you should be nice and hands on your whole trip to 50.

Each minion gets one share of the damage, and you get two of them. Remember, they must be within range of suppremacy for this to work. I forget if line of sight messes with it.

Bots/traps MM. Bots are the best behaved in my opinion, and traps is just fun. Just put on bodyguard mode and steamroll everything

/unlurk

Ya, been lurking about this one for a while. I have to say, one of the best reads I've had in a good long time, officially published or not. Keep up the amazing work, and don't get discouraged about NCsoft.

Willpower's weakness is not in durability, but in aggro management. The layers of def/res/regen make for a tough tank that doesn't care about what exactly it's fighting. The down side is that it takes a lot of work to keep everything focussed on you and not the squishies.

Dark has the potential to be the toughest non-Granite tank, but is always held back by endurance issues. High resits, several soft controlls and a massive heal make it a tough nut to crack. Unfortunatly, almost everything is a toggle and it will happilly eat all of your endurance running everything.

Yes, warmace got boosted recently. Clobber became the hardest hitter in the set, and the radius on some of the cones was increased slightly. Basically, it's behind only fire for AoE damage and has significant mitigation still.

/em grief

All of the attacks + all the defences is a pretty good way to go. You could cut out a few things to make room for tough and maybe weave, but in my experience WP is nigh unkillable with the primary alone. I also have the self rez, though it goes largely unused.

Your basic build sounds fine, which is why I originally gave IO bonus advice

It'd be interesting if they gave the MM melee attacks. It would certainly be unique, and I don't think it would be totally out of place. In BG mode, a MM is certainly tough enough to punch things in the face.

There....There are simply no words for how horrible that movie looks.

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Heroic zombies seems a bit... odd,

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Bystander : * gasp * "An evil Necromancer !"

Heroic Necro MM : * sniff * "Typical pro-living bigotry ! I'll have you know that I am an Undead Rights Representative, NOT a 'Necromancer' ! Who are you to say that my friends here can't fight crime just because they are Metabolically Challenged ?!"

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...

*runs off to make a character*

Shiver + Rain of Fire = Win Seriously, one of my favorite things to do with my fire/ice.

I wanted chilling embrace at first, but there were better powers I wanted instead of it. By the time I had a slot I might use for it, I found that melee simply didn't happen to me anymore unless I wanted it.

Ice Sword is very tasty. Combined with Blaze, you'll be taking down the hard targets in no time.

Ice Patch is obvious, and made Paragon Protectors much easier to deal with, especially once I got Freezing Touch. It may be melee, but it's still a hold and activates fast.