Kruunch

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Wait till you play it. Brutes don't shun it for no reason

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They shun it because they have no clue. I love my WM/Elec brute. Then again, I love my Elec/EA brute as well. Maybe I'm just strange.

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You can almost see the lightbulb flickering on while he's writing this post

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No, I'm not because whatever the dictionary.com definition of the term, "Rube Goldberg-like" only has to invoke the illustrations of Rube Goldberg. The design of the powers system/animation system interface does. But its not especially complex. Although some Rube Goldberg systems are highly complex, not all are: the defining characteristic of Rube Goldberg systems are that they are more complex than they need to be. That doesn't mean they are very complex as such.

(Example: this is from the Rube Goldberg site in which sitting on a cushion forces air through a tube which blows an ice boat to a lighted cigar butt popping a balloon which causes a dictator to think he's been shot and fall over backward onto shutter bulb. That's characteristicly ridiculously more complex than necessary, but not very complex to understand in general).

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Actually, I wouldn't consider the animation systems to be more complicated than they need to be. I'd consider them to very uncomplicated, but because of the sheer number of animations that have to be wrangled, that simplicity makes the task extremely complicated and fragile.

The best analogy I can think of is to think of how the internet would work if URLs didn't exist, and instead all web pages were accessed using search tags. Defining an address for "The Official Beekeepers Society" web site would be pretty simple. "Bee" "Keeper" "Society".

However, the first thousand web pages were created using only 100 tags. Then they upgraded the web because there was only so many combinations where you could use "Bee" that made sense anymore, and they allowed for any number of tags to be defined and used. Then added about 5000 more pages into the mixture of old tags, new tags, recycled tags, massively overused tags, innapropriately used tags, etc...and the simplicity of the system makes it complex.

Tags as words isn't a very accurate concept either. Tags being keys that you would have to hold down simultaneously would be a more accurate analogy. So holding down "B", "K", and "S" would take you to "The Official Beekeeper Society." website, while holding down "B", "K", "S", and "L" would take you to the "Barbecued Steak & K'Bobs Lovers" website (great deal on aprons right now).

Then add in a half dozen or so cats who like to pounce on your keyboard while you try to surf the web, and you've got a pretty accurate picture of how our system decides what animation to play and why it's so damn tricky to keep everything working.

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Translation: Our animation system wasn't very well thought out with foresight in mind.

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I'd trade all the alternate animations for a non-glowing Rage.

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Bet I see a ton of pink hued Dark Melee running around

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Personally,i see Fire Armor as a armor set for tankers that will still outshine Elec/,mainly becuase it offers 2 major advances vs the 2 sets.

Fiery Embrace,more damage,and secondly,yeah,itll have some resistance diffrences,where fire will still be just under elec armor,but wheres the 3/4 HP heal for the Elec/ Tanker?

Fire/ wins,again.

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you can count HF as a bonus over fire, but FE at 90 sec recharge is not in my opinion.

The never ending endurance is nice. I have a dark/elec brute and siphon life helps quite a bit.

As always, I am happy for more power proliferation though. I will make an electric melee tank I think.

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Ahhhh now you're talking ... Elec/DM Tanker does sound appealing.

Wait till you play it. Brutes don't shun it for no reason

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I'm going to be testing this set when I get inot closed beta because I fear it'll be a big disappointment.

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A bit confident, are we?

I'm curious as to the effect that the lessened amount of -Res hero-side will have on the set's overall survivability, not to mention the increase in Res amounts due to being ported to the Tanker AT. On a Brute, you're getting holes knocked through your armor all the time thanks to Longbow and Arachnos. Aside from the few enemy groups heroes can fight that deal sonic damage (are there even any?) and toxic damage, an Electric Armor user is going to have their defenses tested much less than villains who use the set. In my humble, yet-unable-to run-actual-playtests opinion.

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That isn't an incorrect statement to make ... but I think the biggest telling factor will be the lack of heal. Using a totally resist based set (even with IO help to defense) will make it very difficult to pull off Aid Self when you really need it.

Small group and solo stuff shouldn't be a worry, but I can only imagine an Elec/* Tanker trying to do an ITF speed run or STF (or Reichsmann for that matter). Frustration comes to mind.

Ice Ember: A little above Fire Tanker yes (although the little part is in the the exotic damage types).

Depending who and what, most any Shield Tanker should stand up to most occasions if built properly.

Any other Shield (non-DM) Tankers try soloing an AV and what were your experiences?

Or just looking silly.

Shhhhhh .... or they'll do it and we'll end up with a 17 second animation time and a KB mag of 1000.

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So, one of you numbers people:

If Elec is ported to Tankers as is, what are we looking at in terms of resistance numbers?

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55% about to Sm, Le, Fire, Cold, Psi
90% to Energy
About 47% to Negative.

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Basically Fire Tanker levels.

New animations that aren't specifically tied to an emote?

Can they do that?!

Yeah Energy Shield with the color set on black is fairly unobtrusive (although still noticeable).

Uh oh ... I foresee much confusion with EM.

I elect that we call Electric Melee, Sparkle Puffy Bunnies instead.

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I think it's much harder for me to get my Hitpoints up on SD. I can only get to about 2400 or 2500 hp. More than a scrapper, but not as high as other Tanker primaries like Stone or Ice. But then again, others, like Fire, don't get anything at all.

And, right now, my Tanker build is looking to have a regen rate between 300% and 350% this includes the Regen Tissue, Numina, Miracle, Per Shifter, and the Panacea. Now is this over kill on a SD/Dark? Would this be overkill on a SD/EM tank that is damaging himself?

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SD is one of the few primaries that come with built in perma HPs (True Grit). Whereas Ice and Invuln can have high HPs for a limited time (barring insane amounts of recharge) via their heals (which also add HPs for a duration) SD gains more out of the box perma (about +370 or so for a fully slotted True Grit at L50). So your SD Tanker with nothing else added should be close to 2250 out of the box (at L50).

Add in IO set bonuses and the various accolades that increase HPs, you should be able to run around with a full time 2800 or so HPs.

300-350% regen on a SD/DM is overkill imo (I would look at +recovery and +recharge there personally). However on an SD/EM, 300-350% regen would be a good investment (especially if you didn't take Aid Self).

*EDIT* Fixed some numbers.

Dark.

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Yes, Hurl looks like the most likely animation change to me as well.

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What makes me wonder if it got the Propel treatment is that BaBs said he was in there already when people asked him about the /e alakazamreact changes. He said he was mucking around in the files already so it wasn't a big deal to do.

Now, Propel itself isn't a big candidate for customization, so why was he in the files for it?

Perhaps to copy the effects for an alternate Hurl. Maybe. We'll see.


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I was wondering what BaBs was doing on the grassy knoll.

New PvP secondary for Tankers

You're going to get a lot of quess work here. You really should hound the PvP forum and/or PvP Tankers more (find a Tanker in-game that does well and ask him).

Fire/EM used to do very well and probably still holds up. Fire gives you a nice fast heal while EM gives you specialized damage which comes with quite a few heavy hitters (animation times are less problematic in PvP due to Q'ing (although reaction time is effected)).

WP is probably not bad against the current crop of Elec/Therm Corruptors that seem to be the current FOTM. It gives you staying power, but as the poster above said, it lacks up front defenses against heavy front loaded attacks. Fortunately the two main sources of front loaded damage are Stalkers and Blasters, both of which you should see coming a mile away now (enough to avoid snipes and assassinations at any rate) if your PvP toon is built properly.

Invuln is prone to endurance drains in PvP.

Stone is too slow.

Ice and Shields: Defensive sets got nerfed big time ... global accuracy basically make Defensive sets the other white meat. I'd recommend Ice over Shields however, as Ice has a bunch more utility in it then Shields.

Dark: Meh ... dunno (but also end heavy so at least the same boat as Invuln)

Secondaries:

DM has a lot of utility to it but I've been told it's lack of extreme attack make it meh ... and the toHitDebuff isn't really a factor.

EM: used to be king of PvP ... now with the toggle fix, not so much but has a lot of big attacks and non-S/L (partly) damage type. Basically a break free really countermands the stun stacking abilities of EM, but the damage itself is still up at the top.

ST: Great speed chain so good fast damage even if it is S/L.

SS: One great hitter and Rage just flat rocks. Of course you *ONLY* Rage crash when you're about to finish a player off (or save yourself) and Elec/Therm Corruptors are given your precise location when they roll the toons up.

Fire: very good ... no real secondary effects (other then more damage) but most secondary effects are highly protected against in PvP anyways.

Ice: If it weren't for the fact that the ST damage in Ice couldn't kill a -L20 Rikti Monkey, it would be an awesome set. Slows really play havoc (still) in PvP. Great set to take if you're duoing with a damage dealer.

Axe/WM: Both decent ... WM has the slight edge combining stuns and KB/KD in my mind.

Dual Blades: Good lord no (not for any reason other than DB frightens and confuses me).

Hope some of this helped.

With support my Shield doesn't have a problem against AVs. Without support, if he didn't have a heal he'd eventually go down over the course of a long fight as soon as the insps emptied.

Granted my SD/DM doesn't have very high regen ... so don't know what an extra 200% or so might do in the place of an on-demand heal.

True ... about the same on hero side but they're virtually all sold out.

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Out of curiosity why wouldn't you use Shield Charge against an AV? Wouldn't it only serve to up a Tanker's DPS?

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Actually, after I wrote that and headed off to work, I realized that I don't have any data to back that up. Scrappers and tanks aren't the same thing at all, and Shield Charge doesn't get nailed with the AT modifier, which should make it a MUCH better attack for tanks than for scrappers (compared to other available attacks on each). So let me check the numbers...

... and it looks like I was totally wrong, at least on paper. Shield Charge on a tank does an extremely high base 78 DPS and has better DPE than most single-target tanker attacks. So it looks like you should use Shield Charge against an AV as often as it comes up.

However, in practice, you have to get that target on the ground before it activates. That adds a little time. I wonder where the break even point is with other attacks. Looks like maybe around half a second. If you can click, target and click in half a second, it will add DPS.

But then we need to get into how best to do single target damage with the Shield primary, and I think you'll get a lot better mileage out of surrounding yourself with minions to crank up your Against All Odds. You don't want to kill them, so you want to avoid all AoE damage if you can. And that's one problem with Dark Melee, in that it also relies on Soul Drain for its high DPS, which would probably kill minions before you can finish off the AV. That's just a guess, though.

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With the AE this is certainly doable (just spawn ambushes as mins die or AV reaches certain health).

However in the actual missions where the AVs appear you might run into logistical issues in keeping fodder around (as you pointed out).

P.S. - SD/SS would have survivability issues against an AV I would imagine.

Oops yeah I meant defense not resists there.

Building up typed defense is actually on the cheap side. I think I rebuilt Kruunch for about 60mil influence last month. Regen can be both cheap and expensive depending the sets (but you can do it cheaply). MaxHP isn't expensive to build up either as it comes early on in the set bonus usually (and is all over the place across lots of sets).

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However I love the look of EM's pink pom-poms.

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I cheerfully admit that one of the chief reasons I made a Fire/EM tanker was because the pom poms looked like they belonged with Fire Aura, much more than the various swords you pull out of nowhere that came with Fire Melee did.

Now, Dark Melee probably goes even better with Fire Aura, from a purely visual viewpoint. But Dark Melee was not for tankers when that character was made.

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I have a Fire/Dark Tanker ... it looks like a 57 Chevy hot rod ... blowing flames and exhaust all over the place

That's correct (or insps) ... which actually makes large amounts of defense more important, not less (one of the few reasons for going over the soft cap (either from yourself or with help)).

Oh yeah definitely. But if you run soft-capped (or near soft-capped) S/L on top of everything else that WP Tankers can achieve, you can literally go make a sandwich while LR or Statesman beats on you. It's an awesome feeling and WP Tankers are one of the few primaries that can actually achieve one of the sturdiest builds from one of the squishiest (rivaling Stone and Invuln (and surpassing both in some cases)).

Also, almost every non-SL attack comes with an S/L component, making S/L defense (in the case of typed defenses) always the primary ones to watch.