Minotaur

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Ok..anyone who has heard a funny AE related comment in a zone recently..I want to hear it.
Here is a perfect example of what I mean..with the name changed to protect someones feelings.

[Broadcast] Generic Name: Fully slotted and enchanced 18 tank lff ae

I find that totally hilarious. Lets hear some more

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Not sensible on a tank, but he might have done something similar to what I did on my posi runner and be a perma 18 SOd toon. My perma 17 fully 20 SOd posi runner outperforms a non purpled 50 most of the time at level 15 and cost <1M for the whole build.

Overheard:

What does board train mean ? (a level 37)

Scrapper dark to tankers, tentacles + burn

To add to what others have said, be careful what level you buy, numinas and miracle uniques are often most valuable at the lowest available level, this may not be true of LotGs where the def component varies with level, do a little research.

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Can you run a crab or a widow like a stalker? Do they have stealthing ability like them?

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Bane or widow, not crab, and yes.

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I'm going to be dinging my first 50 villain in the next couple days, and I was wondering which VEAT is more popular, and why. Or, which do you like better to play, and why?

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There are actually 5 VEAT types, all of which work well (you can do a proper bane spider, or pick bane, but take almost only powers that use the pre 24 gun, often referred to as a wolf spider).

I have 50 NW, played a fortunata in the beta, 40 crab, 39 wolf and I like them all. Just depends on your playstyle.

NW can be scrapper or stalker style, bane is closer to stalker, the other 3 are like blasters with mez protection.

And whichever type you take, take your maneuvers

Almost anything will work including 3 empaths (healers in other MMO terms but much more than that here), double fortitude and mez protection from early on and perma recovery/regen auras plus adrenalin boost later.

I'd be inclined to go with

fire/shield scrapper
cold/rad, cold/dark or cold/sonic defender
plant/kin troller

none of these are really fotm builds, but all are fun to play in a small team, and this should kick butt from very early levels. The cold shields will top up the scrapper's defences and his aggro aura should keep stuff off the squishies, but plant's AoE confuse and later creepers should do a lot of that anyway.

I would expect with the available debuffs that you could handle AVs easily later without ay expensive IOs.

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Unfortunately heals, end replenishers and build ups stacks poorly with itself.

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Actually having played this combo as a tank they don't stack poorly, the buildups mean you don't need excessive recharge to have one up a lot of the time, and the end replenishers are on long enough timers that having two is a bonus. This is something you can build cheaply and make pretty effective. Siphon life is more like extra regen than a heal and a part of your attack chain, healing flames is your real heal.

While I did this tank side, I can see the potential of DM/fire. Not the sturdiest, but 2 heals, 2 end replenishers and 2 buildups if you want them.

Otherwise any/SR can be made very powerful with very little cash, cheap set IOs purchased at level 35 and 125 merits for a steadfast res/def will be all you need (and it can be done without even those). Since you will have end issues without many IOs, try dark melee which synergises well anyway as it gives you a heal, to get an energy replenishment tool and enjoy.

The "I spent 500M and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" costume option would appeal to some people.

Purchasable costume objects and badges would sink a fair amount of inf knowing the people that play this game.

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I suppose I could save one slot by just going Hasten/Super Speed, but Mercy Island architecture already has me head-desking. Does it get less bad later on?


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Depends, since you can obtain 3 flight temps and a jump temp, and buy a flypack in grandville. I tend to find a travel power superfluous on most of my toons redside other than those that want SS to stack the stealth with something else.

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May I also suggest building your IO sets toward melee defense. Stacked with your DM -tohit, an extra 20-25% or so melee defense from IOs would make those swords whiff 95% of the time. Throw in Darkest Night later on and be untouchable and unkillable even if they do hit you.

Take Taunt with this advice, the -range is crucial to making things close to melee where your defenses are strongest and they can be within reach of Soul Drain and Lightning Field. Melee is your friend.

Slot Lightning Field for endurance [u]drain[u] as well as accuracy, damage and endurance usage. By itself with enough time and slotting it can drain an enemy to 0. Combine with Power Sink and you have a whole additional level of mitigtion, since you can drain most mobs and keep them at 0 indefinitely.

Punch/Tough/Weave can come in extremely handy. This build is probably the one time I'll actually recommend Fighting in its entirety, since you won't have much else you'd want more and endurance should never be a problem. Since you're DM you can skip Medicine. With a travel power, Fitness and Fighting (and probably Hasten if you want to buzzsaw) you should be fine on pools. Set Punch to auto for Fury generaton and you're golden.

DM/ELE is the original buzzsaw build. Take Shadow Punch, Smite, Siphon Life and Punch and just rotate then furiously. You'll see what we mean. Toss in a Dark Blast and Midnight Grasp every now and again and you'll be shocked and amazed at what you can accomplish.

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I'd agree with most of this, but you can get melee defence up in the mid 30s relatively easily without compromising anything else, stacked with darkest night this should make you pretty untouchable.

4xToD sets in SP, smite, boxing, MG = 15%
Multistrike set in lighning field (Oblit has insufficient end red) = 1.88
2x6 Ti coatings in 2 of the toggles and a steadfast unique in the other = 8%
Weave and 1 slot CJ =8.2
This comes to a little over 33% and I believe there's a PvP IO you can add too.

That implies you logged into somebody else's Manti, which is a pretty serious database error.

Most of us were in Europe so it was getting a little late to restart it otherwise we would have done.

Logging into a second instance is not new, I had it on the Waldorf factory map psychic clocks mish a couple of years ago, but only seen it regularly in MA when you add somebody to a team already in a mission.

If you want to have another go, I have a couple of other toons in range, look me up @minotaur.

Has anybody else had anything like this:

7 of us try to enter first mish. 5 disconnect, instantly on clicking door, not the usual lingering kind.

An 8th person wants to join so we disband and reform.

Try to enter first mish (different door).

5 people get in normally.

2 people instantly disconnect and when they log back in, enter a different instance of the first mission.

One has one of the usual slow disconnects (shows on mission map but he never arrives), is booted off the TF without he or the leader doing anything, finds he has the mission complete message for the first mission of manti up but has unexemped back to 50.

The 5 that cleared the first mission also completed it for the 2 on the other version of the map, but their exit button didn't work, after they exited the long way, they could join up with us for mission 2.

The 8th never did get back on the TF.

Edit - Victory 2130 ish UK so 1630 Eastern

2nd Edit several of us then DCd on exiting the final mission, so no idea if we got any merits as was no message before or after exiting to say.

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I think it's because DM is more complementary to SR than Katana, which is more complementary to Regen.

Katana's Divine Avalanche provides tons of melee and lethal defense. If you're trying to softcap an SR scrapper, it's helpful but it's also pretty easy to softcap using IOs At that point, DA becomes superfluous. For Regen though, which starts with no defense, DA really helps to make it more survivable and it allows people to reach the melee def softcap which helps in those AV fights.

DM on the other hand has a lot of overlap with the benefits of Regen. Both have superior end recovery mechanisms as well as great self heals. Regen benefits from those, sure, but not nearly as much as if you can get ~25% defense to range and aoe from IOs and cap your melee def from IOs and DA. For SR, the self heal is a huge deal. Siphon Life used with capped Defenses makes SR a hell of a lot tougher. Same with the end recovery in DM. People have always complained about SR's end use and having DC frees you up from searching out IO recovery bonuses.

That's not to say that Kat/SR isn't a great combo. Hey, I've got one at 50 myself and loved it the whole way.

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I love my kat/SRs. Having capped melee defence (or close) from the high teens onwards with just one application of DA makes levelling really easy. Then get to 40 ish, respec into a soft capped build and dump DA.

IO slotting depends on what you want to achieve. Soft capping is easy and comparatively cheap. I decided not to spend very much on mine, then added a couple of purples later, and bought a few things with merits along the way. The levels of the IOs are not exact, in many cases they are low to mid 30s which still ED caps the key attribute and makes it a lot cheaper.

This is extremely survivable in normal play, but you'd want more hits and regen for AV soloing. I decided not to go for +recharge, so my attack chain is GD-GC-SD-GC-FS-GC.

(50 respec build)
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I just did the math, and the average is about 20-30 million each, once level ranges and times of day are factored in.

I'll gladly sell you my merits for 15 million per roll, since I'm such a philanthropist.

And don't bother double-checking my numbers, I already did, and they're right.

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Of course this is obviously true, but I'm a bigger philanthropist. I'll sell for 12M (but you know I'll drop siphon insights and glimpses of the abyss all day, I always do).

I'm not sure tbh what prices are doing, I've recently sold a couple of things (in the 15M range) I put up at the height of the market that have been hanging around ever since then.

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I currently have 4 damage procs(gladiator's javelin,darkwatchers,shield breaker, and apoc procs) and 2 nucleus's in my rad's neutrino bolt and procs seems to work amazing in that power due to the speed of recharge and activation time.

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My kat/SR has GC slotted HO acc/dam, Purple damage and proc, Makos, achilles and lady grey procs. I calculated that the makos proc added more damage than slotting my damage up from eightysomething to 96. Not that worried about accuracy as all the kat attacks debuff def anyway and there's always BU where I have some extra to-hit slotted to get me going.

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The act of setting the bombs wouldn't break stealth, but you would need another type of +stealth to add to CD in order to jump into the middle of a spawn. A +stealth IO or Super speed will work(or both, or even SS slotted with a +stealth IO and no CD)

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Since when? Cloaking Device suppressed as soon as you activated Trip Mine or Time Bomb the last I checked, but it's been quite awhile since I've logged my Elec/Dev into the game and tried any toe-bombing.

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It seems to suppress part way through the setting animation. I went sonic/dev for the AoE sleep to kick off with solo.

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I generally don't take on more than 2 groups at a time. I'm rarely in a hurry to level.

It sounds like both Fault and Tremor should be put on the backburner at any rate given my playstyle.

Pardon my nubishness, but silly orange numbers?

I hadn't considered the Endurance problems I might have. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there. My other Brute is WP and it seems that she has a neverending supply of Endurance. That'll probably take some getting used to.

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Silly orange numbers, that appear above the heads of people you hit, ie damage you've done. Seismic smash is one of the hardest hitting attacks in the game, and with the damage boost in shield, would expect you to be generating some seriously large numbers with build up (which I would probably take if you solo a lot, depends how many picks you have spare).

Stone melee responds very well to IOing for global recharge bonuses, but I'd be interested to see what balance of recharge, positional defence and recovery can be obtained, as you'll need all 3 to be truly uber.

My tanks:

50 Stone/axe, 50 Stone/DB, 50 Fire/fire, 50 Fire/ice, 50 Fire/dark, 50 Ice/fire, 50 Ice/stone, 50 Shield/mace, 38 ice/SS, 33 dark/axe, 32 ice/stone

Which ones do I recommend ?

Ice/stone I like so much I've done twice. Once you sort your endurance issues it's just tremendous fun to play. SM gives you a lot of mitigation with the knockdowns and a boss level hold. Ice armor allows you to refill your end bar frequently enough to power stone melee.

Ice/fire is an AoE monster with good aggro holding without taunt.

Stone/axe was my original tank from 5 years ago and for sheer indestructibility is great on teams.

Fire/dark is fun as a sort of heavy scrapper type, 2 heals, 2 consumes, just roll and don't stop.

Dark/* I would only recommend with a secondary that can stack stuns with oppressive gloom, energy works well as does stone melee.

My WP and invul tanks are just lowbies, although I've done both sets to death in other ATs. WP has the huge advantage of effectively having stamina at level 12.

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I didn't realize Fault was so good. The no damage part scared me off. Thanks for that input.

And I thought Grant Cover provided 0 benefit to the caster and only helped teammates? It's not that I don't want to be a team player, but I team up so rarely that I was putting myself first -- especially for leveling.

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If you mainly solo, what is your preferred playstyle, run group to group, or gather two or three groups and kill them all ?

Fault is useful solo if you herd/farm or run on the supersize mobs difficulties, and useful on teams, but tbh if you run solo group to group it's just about skippable, as in fact is tremor in that circumstance (long animation, low damage AoE which is great on large groups, but not essential solo).

I'd take stone fist, and slot it with the kinetic combat chance of KD. SM's strength is in its single target attacks which hit hard and fast but recharge slowly, and AoE mitigation. Stone fist, stone mallet, brawl and boxing gives you enough attacks to build fury fast at low level.

GC is helpful solo purely for the defence debuff resist it provides, and in MA mishs with all the combat hostages.

I suspect you don't see much on SM/shield because the end use is going to hurt. Be prepared to spend cash, tickets and merits to mitigate this, and I suspect you'll be putting up some silly orange numbers later on.

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I'm playing a 50 Shield/DM, I've finally got my IOs set up to soft cap my defense.

Here are my questions: Once I'm at 45% how important/useful is it to have a little extra as a cushion? How big a cushion is desirable/worth investing in?

Thanks.

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Once you're at 45% the cushion is only useful to deal with mobs with +to-hit or defence debuffs. Depends to an extent on how much defence debuff resist you have, but I like to go a little over, 47/48 ish on my SRs, but they have 90%+ debuff resist so nothing takes more than 1% off most of the time and it's easy to avoid cascading defence failure.

DM will help a bit with the debuffs, but as a tank, you want to be able to cope with being hit by say 2-3 Cimerorans without uncapping. I believe they take c. 8% each before resists, so just calculate it back using your resist figure.

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... [censored]

I need to finish IO'ing fast! Before another simple set of 3 IOs costs me 25mill Blessing of Zyphers: KB protection = NOT FUN! put a giant hole in my wallet...

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Then do a few TFs and buy it with merits, it's only a little over 2 Dr Qs

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This is why I don't visit the blaster section too often... Gives my elec/dev an inferiority complex. >.<

But, uh - yeah, I'd say devices is fairly oddball compared to other sets. It isn't HORRIBLE, but - it just doesn't synergize well with most primaries, and it plays COMPLETELY different, requireing set-up time that just isn't desireable on most teams. So - unless you're willing/able to work at least half a spawn ahead of the team setting up a timebomb; on the run you only have about 3 atacks to use: web nade, caltrops, and taser.

And I can't speak for many other primary sets, but to do what it does really well, Elec blast tends to need either /elec or /energy. Because elec's additional effect is endurance drain, it's an all or nothing type thing, and since ED, you cannot rely on a single application of Short Circuit alone.

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I play a few blasters but they're mainly team focused, I decided to play a sonic/dev intending to solo using AoE sleep and bombs. Currently lvl 22 so hasn't got to those powers yet, but I thought it would be different to anything I've done before. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but it will be different, which not many things are when you have 130 toons including 34 (non PLd) 50s.

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So, after reading this guide I decided to put it use on my newbie PB and it works very well. You kinda hafta start at level 6 to get the most benefit, as that's when your recipe storage expands from 1 to 4, but I'm already making significant profits.

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Some of us did this immediately post IOs hitting the scene. I made 1.5BN in 6 weeks then gave it up, although I did have a level 10 with 18M from doing this when I started up on a new server.

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Go make a DB/Stone Armor tank. thats something I don't think I've ever seen.


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Actually I've been on ITF (?) with one of these, it's a very strange sight indeed, yet oddly compelling

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I have a level 50 one of those, was done for animation stupidity purposes after experiencing the awesomeness of the granite jump kick a while back. It's not very good, slowing the combos recharge down is not a good idea.

On the blaster front, sonic/fire is not common and I'm told by my friend with one, sucks. I'm not sure if I've seen a psi/ice, AR/elec arch/elec, the last two I suspect because the primaries are ranged, and the secondary suits blapping.