Moraelin_EU

It wasn't supposed to be an Offender, it was supposed to be, basically, a ranged light tank that still functions as a _Defender_ in a group. There's a difference there. The primary focus is still doing a FF's job in a group.

Here's a crazy tank-mage idea, and I can vouch first hand that it works: Force-Field + Combat Jumping + Maneuvers. Once you're on SOs, you get hit a _lot_ less often than any other kind of defenders, and it'll get a lot better yet in I7. You can replace CJ with Hover if you want to, but beware that it'll need 6 slots instead of 3 to really be useful in combat, _and_ uses more endurance.

It also gives you limited mez protection. It neatly makes you a _lot_ less "squishy", though you're no tanker.

Now let's apply some more lateral thinking. Being hard to hit has an extra advantage: you can use your snipe as a regular attack. Both Psy and Dark get a snipe attack at level 4. So you can get a solid 3-attack chain early with either, although until the mid-20s you'll still get interrupted often enough. (Though you can still use the snipe to open a fight.)

Dark has the extra advantage of lowering enemy accuracy, i.e., it makes you even harder to hit. Psy, on the other hand, is resisted or defended against by slightly less enemies. Though some do. E.g., by the time you start meeting Zenith robots, those resist about 50% of each psy attack. Your choice.

At this point you've used two pools, though one is a travel pool, so it's not entirely wasted.

You'll also want Fitness as your third pool if you want to solo lots. (And you will solo lots. More later.) Vigilance is great in a large group, but the effect seems to range between a lot less and none at all when soloing.

Which leaves you with one more pool choice. On one hand, you can take Medicine, which really helps by the time you can heal yourself with it. It will make you a lot more popular at parties too. Or you can go really crazy about the tank-mage idea and get Tough and Weave. (But at that point, seriously, make sure you have Stamina first.)

The beauty of it is that when soloing you don't have to do anything special, really. No debuffs to cast, no enemies running far from the anchor (or the anchor running away through 3 other groups!), etc. Turn your shields on and start blasting with impunity.

The downsides are two fold:

1. Be sure that's what you want to do in a group. As was said, you might have to cast 2 shields on 7 team members regularly. And better not count on waiting before they expire to re-cast the shields, because it goes downhill fast if everyone gets unshielded in a major battle. So in a group you'll spend most of your time re-casting shields ad nauseam.

If you also took Medicine, also be prepared to heal people lots. (Yeah, a lot of people love to claim that shields make everyone completely unhittable, but in practice enough still gets through. So if you can tollerate doing that job too, it can cut down on the downtime a lot and even keep the mandatory berserk blapper alive through a long fight.)

2. Be prepared to actually need to solo lots, as a lot of people just can't get out of the "ur not a healer!!!" mentality. I'd love to be able to say that it's just in the 20s, when people still think they're in the Hollows on Trainings, but in practice it'll continue all the way to level 50. In fact, far from going down in the 20's, you might find that the problems getting a group as a non-empath actually peaks somewhere in the 30's.

To their defense, though, I must also say that it's easy to generalize when playing a non-defender. A lot of non-empaths out there do an awful job (e.g., grouping with a FF and only getting bubbled once per floor, maybe even once per mission, seems to be more of a norm than an exception) and a lot outright lie to the group too. After a couple of really bad experiences, I can easily see someone falling back to what does work, even if not optimally.

Then again, there are plenty of badly played Empaths too.

Actually, if anything, I'd take Siphon Life a lot sooner. Having no healing whatsoever is going to suck a whole lot. _Especially_ before SOs, when your defenses aren't even that effective. Personally I'd postpone whatever else can be postponed, Agile, TOF, whatever but get SL ASAP.

Also, hmm... it looks like that build will severely lack an attack chain until level 32 or so. I can tell you first hand that even Shadow Punch + Smite + Shadow Maul will leave large holes in your attack chain even _with_ Quickness. Going for 20 levels with just Smite and Shadow Maul? Oooer. Now that's going to royally suck.

So personally I'd at least temporarily get Shadow Punch too. It can be respecced out later, although even there I'd drop some recharge reducers in the other powers first.

But grinding for 32 levels with just 2 attacks is just scary. Even most Tankers don't find that fun. For a main damage dealer it'll be a very non-fun grind.

It's pretty hard to give an all-around great template, because each set is good for something, but sub-par for something else. I.e., the question is pretty much: well, what do _you_ want to use it for?

E.g., AOE builds (such as the Fire Blasters that were mentioned) work great for 8-player groups, but are a waste of endurance when soloing groups of 2-3 minions. They're also less great against enemies which prefer ranged combat instead of being easily herded in a compact AOE-able herd. For soloing, a high-damage single-target set can actually get the job done faster.

E.g., pure damage builds (e.g., Fire Blaster again or certain Dark Melee builds for scrappers) are great when you always have a tank getting the aggro off you, but utility sets with lots of knock-down, disorient, hold, etc, effects can be quite useful when soloing and for certain specialized group roles. E.g., my Martial Arts + Air Superiority scrapper was debatably more useful for the ability to shut off an enemy than for the damage itself. (Although the MA damage output is pretty high in its own right.)

E.g., certain sets and builds may really shine for PvP (against other players), but be a nightmare to level up in PvE (against NPCs). Super-Reflexes vs Regeneration comes to mind. While SR is later a great set, and will be even greater in I7, and is more useful for PvP too, until the 30's Regen is much easier to play in PvE.

So again, which is good and which is bad is more of a question of which fits your play style and goals.

And also let me state the obvious: pay attention to the animations, sounds, graphics, etc, too. No matter how powerful a character is, if that character's appearance or animations or concept turn you off, it won't be fun to play anyway. E.g., while I can understand why other people like Spines, for me... I can't really get into playing one. So basically don't hesitate to switch to another character if you find yourself in a similar situation about a set. The goal is to have fun.

So basically all I can do is take a wild guess, and recommend a build that I found easy and fun for soloing PvE at all levels. Not too shabby in a group either, but it can really plough through missions on its own when you can't find a group or aren't in the mood for groups. Namely, Martial Arts and Regen.

Martial Arts is a high-damage single-target set, and has some nice utility effects too. So it's great for soloing and small groups, but in a large group it becomes a more specialized role. You'll never be the guy who singlehandedly did 50% of the group's damage, that'll always be an AOE class. Don't even try. In a group you'll be the guy who hand-picks and elliminates the bosses, stuns the Tsoo Sorcerer before it tosses the Blasters around, and so on.

Martial Arts also gives you a good continuous attack chain early, and starts with an accuracy bonus which is a _lot_ in the early game (before level 22 or so), so you can start having fun right away. Take Thunder Kick, Storm Kick, Crane Kick ASAP, maybe even Cobra Strike if you want to shut off any liutenant whenever you want to. (And trust me, when you'll start meeting Tsoo Sorcerers, you'll be glad you took it.) If you don't mind taking flight as your travel power, get Air Superiority from the flight pool ASAP. It's a good damage attack in its own right, but the knock-down part makes it a _great_ attack.

You can skip Crippling Axe Kick or take it and respec later, your choice. CAK and TK are roughly equal damage-per-second, and both are the lowest in the set in that aspect. So basically when you get enough other attacks, you'll want to get rid of one or the other.

Regen is again a special set, great for soloing, but a bit more specialized in a group. Regen is (over-simplified and inaccurately speaking) more about cutting down the downtime than about damage mitigation.

For starters, Regen gives you more endurance than any other set. If you take Stamina too, you're pretty much on infinite endurance. (At least until you start taking Tough, Weave and Leadership, if you want to go that route.) So a Regen scrapper has no endurance-related downtime, ever. You can keep going for hours like the energizer bunny, ploughing through enemies non-stop. Compared to other builds which face an always-out-of-breath grind for Stamina, a Regen can be a _lot_ more fun at low levels, and still not shabby even at level 50.

Ditto for health. The Regen set isn't about taking less damage, but about healing it right back while running to the next fight. Heck, in most fights, by the second half of the fight, when most enemies are dead, your health is already rising back up in preparation for the next fight. (It may not be obvious from level 1, but when you get Integration you'll see what I mean.)

If by now it sounds too good to be true, and a case of "then what's the catch?"... well, the catch is also just that: it's a downtime reducer set rather than a mitigation set. It's pretty much god-mode for soloing (except AVs and early elite bosses), but it's also the most fragile secondary in a large group. You'll never be able to tank or herd for a large group, and even letting it rip with an AOE (e.g., Dragon's Tail) against a herd of enemies can earn you a faceplant before the Defender can react. If 12 enemies suddenly decide to shoot at at you at the same time, you _will_ face-plant without damage mitigation, no matter how fast you could regen that otherwise.

But finally, don't let me make it sound like it's some rocket science or recipe you must follow to the letter. One of the great parts about MA/Regen, and largely anything/Regen, is that you can go nuts and pick whatever you wish, and still not do too bad. E.g., while everyone else must get Stamina at 20, you can take it later (I took it at 24), or not at all.

So just use your common sense and you'll do fine. If it looks like you need another attack, get an extra attack, and stuff like that. You can deviate from the perfectly min-maxed template a _lot_ (I know I did) and still do just fine.

I'll say I like Scrappers precisely _because_ of the button pushing. There's always something to do, I'm always hitting something or running towards something to hit it.

To give you a comparison, when I first tried WoW, I just had to start with a Paladin. You know, all noble and good and all that. You know what my impression was? "OMG!!! This is so slow!!!" I'd attack an enemy and watch my Paladin auto-swing his mallet once every 3.5 seconds, while I yawn and occasionally heal myself.

Compared to my COH martial artist, it seemed _painfully_ slow. It was like a game that's overdosed on sleeping pills. By the time the Paladin swung his mallet twice, my COH Scrapper would have done a whole attack chain and killed a lieutenant or two minions already.

I like my games a lot more lively, even hyperactive, so to speak. So COH's Scrappers are a pretty good fit for my temper.

Finally, sorta unrelated, playing all your characters to level 8 or 10 isn't really the best way to judge an archetype. I've been through the same altaholic phase in I1, and again at various other points, so I can relate. But at some point you start realizing that playing a character to, say, level 22 doesn't take that much more time and lets you see a lot more content. You see new areas, new enemies, new powers (e.g., travel powers, mez protection, etc), have access to new enhancements, etc.

(E.g., the difference between SOs and Trainings is so freaking huge, you start realizing that Trainings didn't even _do_ more than let you learn slotting in a benign and harmless way. It's like playing with a wooden training sword, when compared to the real thing.)

Now it won't change the Scrapper's reliance on hitting the enemy often, but, you know, you might as well give it a try anyway before deciding if the AT as a whole is or isn't for you.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort zu::[/color]<hr />
so you dont need either tanks nor empaths to team with you?
would love to see you handle an av or a gm without either´of them.

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I've _tanked_ AVs, for example Bile or Nemesis (one +1, one +2, can't remember which was which), with my Regen Scrappers and a Rad/Rad or such as the only defender on the team. And it's, you know, just freaking Regens, without even Moment Of Glory. (I find that power a waste of a power choice anyway.)

And I don't even mean in a team of scrappers, so we could switch who gets the aggro when, but just me tanking for a bunch of blasters and a defender. I won't say I thought it was possible, and I pretty much thought "it's over, I'm dead" when my Instant Healing ran out, but guess what? I still didn't die.

Mind you, the defenders deserve the credit there, not I.

And I'll tell you who else deseves credit there: guys like the ice blaster who slowed the AV some more, and occasionally even froze him solid. The hold effect from the Ice set does stack with the Rad's Choking Cloud hold.

So please don't underestimate what other defenders can do. In fact, don't estimate what any set or good combination of sets can do. See above the combination of a Blaster set with a Defender set to hold an AV.

Basically anyone viewing COH as some over-simplified combination of "pure damage AT" (every Blaster should be a Fire Blaster), "pure healer AT" (every Defender should be a "healer"), "pure meatshield AT", etc, is just... living in their own fantasy world. There's a reason why there are more sets or secondary effects out there. Learn to use them right, and you might be surprised what they _can_ do.

Even if you play an Empath, there's more to it than being a heal-only bot. There are powers even in the Empathy set which can help a team more. E.g., Clear Mind can be worth a lot more than watching the Blasters wander around disoriented and healing them when their health gets low. E.g., here's an underrated one: Fortitude. E.g., I probably don't have to explain why Recovery Aura is more needed than Healing Aura at levels 40+. And then there's Adrenaline Boost. Now that's a nice power.

I know you probably use those, but just saying: those are buffs, not heals. Noone's playing a pure heal-only bot, or if they do, then they're doing a massive disservice to their team.

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Intelligent slotting makes your end problems go away. You'll never have as much end on an SR as on a Regen, granted, but you can avoid serious problems when slotted correctly.

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Intelligent slotting will only become a viable alternative in the 30's. Before that you just don't have enough slots to go around. Every damage reducer in your attacks for example is one less damage enhancer or accuracy. So, sure, you can pull more attacks out of the same endurance bar, but you'll also need more hits to fell an enemy.

A SR is a freaking nightmare to get through levels 1-20, since your defenses don't even _do_ much on DOs (and only half the defense powers yet), end redux DOs don't do as much as you'd hope and you severely lack the slots for them anyway (if you had an extra slot, a second accuracy DO would serve you better anyway), and you don't have Stamina yet. So basically you don't even have much defense _and_ you're out of endurance after 2 groups of 3 minions. In a large group you may be out of endurance before even one group is over.

Even your mez protection, while in the 40's it does beat the one Regen gets (SR's is not a toggle, so it doesn't drop when a Sapper drains you), pre-SO you can't even make it permanent (or not without wasting extra slots on it, that you're going to need a respec just to get rid of later), so still spend half the time being mezzable or thrown around by Tsoo whirlwinds.

And here's one more thought: while having a level 50 alt to mooch inf off is often taken for granted, there are enough people who are genuinely new to the game and don't. So they can't spend 1 million on SOs at level 22, because they've earned a total of 300k or so up to that point. For those the nightmare will extend all the way to level 35 or so.

Maybe SR will shine if Cryptic introduces the I7 electrical melee as a Scrapper (and maybe Tanker) set. Then getting some xp back by attacking will make it more pallatable to have end-heavy defenses.

But until then, if we're talking "easy to level", then Regen all the way. SR is more of a case of "it will be powerful in the end-game, if you can live through the non-fun grind to get there"

Nope, they're not the same thing and they apply to different powers. Both for heroes/villains and for henchmen.

Accuracy enhancements are something for the attacks, and affect the henchmen's attacks. E.g., if your Genin miss too often (especially when facing enemies with defense to smash/lethal), an accuracy enhancement in them will help. This affects all their attacks.

ToHit Buff enhancements do pretty much what their name says: enhance power which buff to-hit chance. These are not attack powers but buff powers like Focus Chi, Focused Accuracy or Tactics in the Leadership pool. So if a henchman has such a power, then that's what a ToHit Buff will enhance.

E.g., if your minion has Leadership (e.g., the I7 Thugs, although I haven't played with them on test yet), and more precisely Tactics, it might take a ToHit buff. In that case, it will affect _only_ that power, and not (directly) the accuracy of their attacks.

There are shades of grey between being UBER and being a complete gimp. I don't expect everyone to be a perfectly min-maxed munchkin, but there's also a matter of using some common sense. E.g.:

- a character who the whole TF only ran around healing others with Aid Other, and only had 1 attack (+brawl) he didn't even use... I don't know, his "Character Concept" sounded more like a Defender concept to me. Why roll a Scrapper then? A Defender fits that concept better and lets the other expect that concept too.

- A Tanker without mez protection, taunt aura, taunt, or for that matter anything except RPD just can't tank in any form or shape. That character was built at best as a Scrapper, so why not roll a Scrapper and be done with it? He'd even get to do more damage, since obviously he took only damage-dealing powers anyway. Even if he wanted punches instead of kicks, there are ways to fit Boxing and Air Superiority in a meaningful MA or DM build.

And even as a Scrapper, I'm left scratching my head what kind of character concept might involve skipping the mez protection. "Utterly Defenseless Man"?

- the Defender with 4 travel pools, but no Clear Mind, no RA, nothing but a heal aura and 2 attacks. Let's even skip the fact that giving a blaster CM helps the group a lot more than giving him Group Fly. Ok, so let's say she wanted to be a kinda group taxi. Well, let's put it like this: she already had Recall Friend, Fly _and_ Teleport. (So presumably teleporting people did fit her Character Concept already, right?) Exactly what further transport opportunities do Group TP or Group Fly open there? She could have flown or teleported to the destination and then recalled everyone there anyway. Trying to Group Fly or Group TP everyone instead just finished her endurance after half a mile, since that was in I4, long before Vigilance. Why not at least take Fitness then, so she can at least keep up the group fly, if that was part of some concept?

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort zu::[/color]<hr />
Also, what's the point in taking a set if you're not going to use it? Reminds me of an Invul scrapper I teamed with that didn't take his Mez resistance. Man, was that a fun team when he was taking point against CoT.

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Very good question and one I've asked myself a lot of times after teaming with such a character. And it's not just a mez resistance, I've been teamed before with such builds as:

- an Invuln Tanker in the mid-20's whose _only_ primary (literally) was Resist Physical Damage

- an Empathy Defender again in the mid 20's who apparently since level 6 had taken _only_ travel powers. All bloody 4 travel pools maxed, including the utterly useless Team Fly and Team Teleport. (Fly+Recall Friend or TP+Recall Friend are a faster and safer way to transport someone anyway.)

- a Claws Scrapper in the mid-20's which had literally a single attack and brawl. But he had the whole Leadership pool and tried healing the team with Medicine instead. (I can respect that he _did_ try to help the team with those, but why not roll a Defender then? Even the Leadership pool gives bigger bonuses on a Defender.)

That's just from the respec trials of my various characters, which I suppose does have a tendency of collecting more odd builds.

Plus the more usual suspects, like Fire Blappers (at least Energy has disorient and KB as "damage mitigation", but Fire Blapper is just sad), Force-Field Offenders (if it can't debuff the enemy, how's it an offender?), melee Controllers (Boxing+Kick+Flurry+AS+Jump Kick at least looks like a Scrapper, you know), etc.

What possesses these people to create such characters? Your guess is at least as good as mine.

Just because someone took a set (mis)named Empathy, it doesn't really mean they're going to role-play an empathic character. It's just a healing and buff set, nothing more. So everyone who wants to be a "Healer" takes Empathy because it has two heals. (And therefore a lot of them miss the other fine points of that set. E.g., Clear Mind or Fortitude at lower levels.) And then there are people who really only wanted Healing Aura for the self-heal.

Anyway, again, it doesn't mean they were actually planning to be all empathic and understanding. Same as a Katana scrapper probably isn't going to role-play a Samurai living by the Bushido. Or likely even know what Bushido means.

Yes, a lot of teams are unbalanced, and a lot of time that support isn't forthcoming. A lot of teams have a defender who thinks he's a Blaster (and never even heals _himself_), a melee controller, a Leeroy Jenkins scrapper, a fire Blapper who starts whining for a res... again... after jumping in another group than the tanker and letting it rip with Combustion and Fire Sword Circle, etc. Or the always popular option: the guy who goes AFK for half an hour without even telling the team anything, and then pipes up with "soz, was having dinner" after the mission is done. (Yeah, that provided soo much support to the team.) Etc.

That much is a given if you accept PUG invites ever. That's what every other PUG is about for any class/archetype/whatever-you-call-it, not only for Tankers. So in a balanced game I'd expect everyone to have, you know, roughly comparable chances there.

If Class A can do pretty well even in a bad PUG (even if by falling back to mopping stragglers and refraining from AOEs to avoid too much attention), and Class B needs the perfect group just to survive... then I'll go ahead and say: something is wrong with Class B.

In COH a lowbie Tanker has the hardest time in such a group. Yes, he needs a group that's perfectly balanced, perfectly clued, and which works very well together, and then maybe he can tank for them. And, oh, he can't even solo well when such a group isn't immediately available. The problem is: noone _else_ needs that kind of flawless cooperation. That's the whole issue.

So you're telling me... what? That a Tanker's role at low levels is to sit and twiddle his thumbs in a safe place until those people log on that he already is comfortable grouping with and depending on their support? Or?

Actually, I consider Tankers to have the worst time in the low levels.

E.g., for damage dealing sets, you do less damage, yes, but the enemies also have much less HP. An AR Blaster in the low single digit levels kills some minions in 1 shot with Slug, for example. Or a Scrapper in the low levels, frankly out of all I've played the _only_ problem I've had was the endurance... or not even that on Regen scrappers. E.g., if you're a DM scrapper and don't mind going for flight, with Air Superiority you can have the same attack chain at level 6 that you'll use until level 32 when Midnight Grasp fills in the last blanks.

Defense and Resistance sets on the other hand are a whole other class of problem. The effect isn't anywhere near as linear as for damage sets.

The difference between even say, 50% DR and 75% DR isn't just a tweak, it's _halving_ the damage taken. And the difference between 50% and 90% (the DR cap) is no less than 5 times less damage taken at 90%. It's bloody _huge_.

So allowing a newbie tank even 50% DR would _still_ leave them 5 times less effective at tanking than an oldbie who's already reached the cap. And that's not even taking into account that the oldbie also picked some Defense along the way. And frankly, the % of your max hp per enemy attack does not increase 5 times between level 1 and 50, with the sole exception of AVs.

The current situation is even worse. A tank in their pre-SO levels isn't just "struggling", he's just totally unfit to tank the enemies available at that level. He's got not much more HP than the Blasters he's talking for, and the damage mitigation ranges between none yet for some types and "hardly more than nothing" for Slash and Lethal.

It's just not the same kind of "struggle". A Blaster or Scrapper _is_ fit to kill the enemies available at those levels, it just might take a bit longer or involve some resting for stamina after. A Tanker on the other hand is unfit to even survive if he tried doing his job for a large team at low levels.

As for how easy or hard it is doing the maths, I believe the various Hero Builder/Planner/etc programs would still do them for you. Or the Windows Calculator could do them for you. Plus, it's not any screwier than doing Defense maths, if you wanted to find out how much damage _are_ you mitigating with it. And that hasn't stopped anyone from playing a Defense-based AT. (Quite the opposite, if the number of Stone Tankers is any indication.)

First of all, even in the 10-20 range, it may be necessary. E.g., an Invuln Tanker won't even have any kind of Taunt aura before level 18, so just jumping in their middle will achieve exactly nothing. Sure, they'll start attacking the tank as it's the nearest target, but as soon as the Blaster lets it rip with a fireball, he'll get executed by firing squad.

_Also_ something people (and occasionally devs) forget is that not everyone has a level 50 alt to get a few millions from. There are genuinely new players out there, who'll only have 200-300k hard-earned inf at level 22.

What I'm getting at is that a Tanker in the 20s may not only still miss a lot of powers (e.g., maybe they don't have resistance to fire yet in a COT or even Sky Raider mission) but may actually still be on DOs too. It can be a _lot_ squishier than people assume. And a Tanker in their teens may still be on TOs.

Basically maybe they won't survive jumping in the middle of the group. If he jumps in the middle and faceplants in 5 seconds flat, you're next.

Probably the biggest curse of Tanking isn't the grind to level 20 with 1 or 2 attacks, it isn't the stamina, etc. It's the people assuming you're a granite herding machine at single digit levels.

I've had my own characters asked to do absolutely _stupid_ things like tank an 8-man level 9 Frostfire mission on Invincible... at level 6. I mean, geesh, it may have been I4, but Unyielding is level 8, Resist Energies is level 10, and it was chock-full of lead shockers. And I was supposed to jump in their middle and _herd_ them. (To make it more surrealistic, the one asking that was a Kheldian. Was he PL-ed to level 50 or what?)

And just when I think I'm done with that nightmare, comes another Frostfire on Invincible ('cause it's more xp!!!11oneeleven), this time even without a Defender in the team. Surely any Tanker should be able to just regen the scratches from the alpha strike.

It can be a right pain to even try to group in the teen levels -- make that until the 30's for people who don't get cash from another char -- because people assume the tank to do things that aren't even possible. Then act offended when reality doesn't match their fantasy.

Hmm, could be that I've fought different groups or had a very good tank or defender around. The only ones that _do_ occasionally mez my MA/regen are Sappers in the 40's. When the endurance hits zero, Integration goes too, so the Hold kicks in. (So ok, I've exaggerated the "for ever" part a bit.) Still even that is fairly rare. If I see the Sapper first, he's toast.

Well, on a totally unrelated note, level 12 may not necessarily be the best time to decide whether you like a whole archetype or not.

For example, since we're talking */regen, you become a _lot_ less squishy when you get Integration at level 16, and IH at 28 lets you basically turn into a (very) light tank for a brief time. A Regen with FH+Integration+Health three-slotted for heal regens roughly as many HP per second as an equal level Stone Tank with Rooted+Health on, but without the speed penalty. Not only that, but Integration marks the end of all your Sleep/Hold/Knockback/etc problems for ever. That's it. Once you get it, you'll never be mezzed ever again.

It also depends on the build and what you had in mind.

E.g., _the_ reason why I liked */regen isn't actually even the Health regen. It's the Endurance regen. With QR _and_ Stamina you're basically on infinite endurance. You're a relentless rear-kicking machine with close to no downtime ever.

MA is also a very high damage single-target set, once you get a good attack chain, with some disorient and KB effects thrown in for good measure. Used wisely, they can be both damaging and a kind of damage mitigation. (Of the "someone dead doesn't hurt you any more" kind.) E.g., one Cobra Strike _kills_ a Tsoo Sorcerer, because he'll be insta-mezzed, his whirlwind drops, and he stops teleporting.

In the even longer run (think: the 30's) the _massive_ endurance regen also allows you to buy other defenses. E.g., Resilience+Tough puts you at about 27% damage mitigation for Lethal and Smash, and CJ+Weave shaves a little damage taken too, especially from the minions. It's not quite Brute class, to be sure, but combined with the health regen it does raise your survivability quite a bit.

Basically, I don't know, if you liked to smash things relentlessly as a Brute, a MA/regen may actually be closer to that than Tankers are. Mind you, it's not a direct equivalent by any kind of reconning, but then again nothing else is a 1-to-1 equivalent of any COV class.

But, again, it also depends on what role you had in mind. If you used your Brute to tank for COV teams, then a Tanker is far closer to that. A */regen will always be too squishy to tank most AVs, at least without some massive debuffing the AV by Defenders or Controllers.

[/color]<blockquote><font class="small">Antwort zu::[/color]<hr />
Erm.. 50%+20%+25% = 95% -&gt; cap 90% resist.

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I probably haven't explained the whole point well enough, then. The point was:

1. A different way to do the maths. I.e., precisely that they _wouldn't_ get just added to each other, but would be a multiplicative system. I.e., taken those 50, 25, 20 numbers, it _wouldn't_ be 50+25+20, but rather a case of 0.50*0.75*0.80. Completely other kind of maths, really.

2. That such a system would allow boosting the current values greatly, for the benefit of those only taking 2-3 of them. (E.g., lowbies.)

The current values in COH, if you look in the Hero Builder, are much lower than mine. E.g., the current RPD is 7.5 unenhanced, versus 12.5 in my example. Unyielding is currently 10% enhanced, or about 16% when fully enhanced, versus slightly more than double that in my example.

That's really the point there: a multiplicative system would allow using much larger values for the individual powers, without screwing up the game at the higher end. It's possible to tweak the numbers to still be able to reach the 90% cap, for people who take all the powers, so noone is nerfed. But the poor newbies who can only afford 1 or 2 before the grind for travel powers and Stamina, would see a pretty big increase in their damage mitigation.

If you will, the idea is that if you plot a sorta curve with your level as X and the damage mitigation as Y, it's possible to raise it at the left end (lower levels) while still aiming for roughly the same point at the right end (higher levels).

Or here's another idea: apply defenses in layers, so each one only gets applied to the damage that got through the previous ones. That way the first layer matters the most (i.e., for new Tankers), while the next ones become increasingly less of an advantage.

Let me illustrate, using the Invuln set just for example sake.

Let's say they'd bump RPD to 20%, once fitted with 3 SOs. (I.e., approx 12.5% base unenhanced.) Let's also bump TI to a generous 50% (again, when fully enhanced.) Let's also give Unyielding a generous 33.3% and while we're at it, let's make Tough a good 25%. (Again, both fully enhanced.)

But here's the trick: let's apply them in layers.

So let's say you get hit by a 100 hp smash attack. Someone who only took TI (and enhanced it) would take 50% of the incoming damage, i.e., 50 hp. Add RPD and it reduces 20% of those 50, i.e. 40 hp damage remain. Let's add Tough too, subtracting 25% from the result, i.e., a further 10 hp, leaving 30 hp getting through. Add Unyielding and it absorbs a further third of that, leaving 20 hp through.

So basically all those powers only add up to 80% damage mitigation at the high end, _but_ a newbie who only took TI would still see a decent 50% defense. Well, ok, about 32%, since it's completely unenhanced yet. Still, not too shabby. They might even tank for a small team with it.

Of course, this lowered the cap at the high end, but there are ways to deal with that.

For example one could bump my numbers higher, since they were only picked as a random example. (Or rather so the example maths neatly involve only integers.) They could easily be tweaked upwards to still allow hitting the 90% DR cap, with the side effect of increasing a newbie's defenses dramatically too.

Or the enemy damage could be reduced, so tanks at the high end could still tank the same enemies.

You know, this reminds me though of an idea I've had a while ago. Change the TO/DO/SO progression so it's less useless at the low ends.

E.g., take the majority of them: 8.25/16.5/33. (Or in that ballpark.) Why not make it something like 11/22/33?

It wouldn't create any unbalance later on, but would make life a lot easier in the lower levels. Not to mention for people who didn't transfer a couple million inf from their alt.

Or, since we're talking tanks, the current progression for DR and Def enhancements is 5/10/20. Why not make it 6.66/13.33/20?

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It's not the stone primary that's at fault, it's the player. Yet the primary is encouraging that sort of play.

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Well, that's just the thing. My hypothesis based on playing a lot of online games, is that most people do what works or move to another game if they really don't like what works.

E.g., if a game makes camping more rewarding than anything else, it gets campers. If it makes farming rewarding, it gets farmers. And if Stone is what currently works without going to illogical extremes (e.g., sure, you could almost max your resistances with an Invuln too, but then you'll be taking just defense powers, including Tough and Weave, until the mid-30's), then people make Stone Tankers.

So any game basically gets the players it "deserves", so to speak. Or at least the play styles it encouraged.

You can see this in COH's history too. E.g., the way it started as City Of Blasters in I1, as Smoke Grenade could floor the accuracy of anyone, bosses included. Every second character was a Blaster, because that's what worked. Then it moved through various "flavours of the month", including being basically City Of Fire Tankers in I4. You can see the same pattern, really: people do what currently works best.

So to get to the point of this long rant: IMHO, no, it's not the player, it's the game.

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I always quite liked the idea I heard about increasing the damage of tanker attacks but decreasing recharge - making them a bit more like the unstoppable hard hitting but slow powerhouse a lot of people think of when they think of tanks.

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Umm, nope, sorry. Much as I'm all for fixing tanks, this would just make Scrappers obsolete, and probably Blasters too. (What's the point of being squishy at a range when you can maul them faster and safer up close?) Plus, if anything, it would just create _more_ Scrankers, since it would make attack-heavy builds even deadlier.

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How about a temp armour power for low level tankers that increases resistance but decreases damage when active, making them able to tank for teams when needed. Or make it time limited like the cryonite armour you can get.

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The only problem I have with the recent temp powers is that they're a band-aid hack instead of addressing the real problems of the low levels.

See, I have nothing against getting better as you increase in levels, but in most MMOs that's an illusion, really. As your abilities increase, so do the abilities of equal level mobs. Raising in levels on, say, WoW allows you to take on higher level monsters and survive new areas, but doesn't really make you more powerful compared to equal level monsters. My Paladin on WoW didn't have more % damage mitigated at level 35 than at level 1, and my Rogue didn't dodge better at 35 than at 1. If anything, it was the other way around: newbies are given a substantial boost there.

_And_ both of them had a comparable attack chain at low levels. Sure, later you can get more auras or finishing moves, but even at level 1 you don't sit and twiddle your thumbs while your lone attack recharges.

In COH it's exactly the other way around. A level 1 or even 11 Tanker has a laughable damage mitigation compared to what comes in the later levels on SOs, and a level 1-11 SR Scrapper (the best equivalent of a WoW Rogue, I guess) just can't dodge. Both can at most burn endurance at lower levels, rather than actually mitigate any damage. And the Tanker also faces a non-fun stretch of having only 1 or 2 damages if he wants to actually have a tank build.

The percentages based system of COH, plus the whole TO/DO/SO/HO progression and the slots, create a long stretch where you're basically sub-par. You have laughable damage mitigation, you have huge holes in your attack chains, everything sucks huge quantities of endurance you just don't regen fast enough, etc.

It's not made any better by the "mandatory" power picks. As it is, half your power-picks until level 20 are basically reserved for travel and Stamina. Sure, you might postpone Stamina until level 22. (Whop-de-do, that's such a huge improvement. Not.)

It's a system that you can't even balance at one end without it going nuts at the other end. E.g., in I4 it was possible to have a half-way decent damage mitigation at low levels, but then it went nuts at the high end and allowed the herding and PL-ing that were rampant back then. Lowering resistances and defenses in I5 to fix the high end, only kicked newbies in the teeth, as their crappy damage mitigation only became even crappier.

And I wish someone sat and rethought it all, rather than add more band-aid solutions that address the symptoms instead of the problem. COH seems to be an ever increasing
mass of illogical band-aid hacks. And I don't just mean the temp powers, but also stuff like:

- giving healing powers a resistance to toxic instead of rebalancing the stupid Vazhilok already

- the illogical damage resistances in SR passives, so people can survive on those until the 20's (if they know about it, that is) instead of addressing the hideous endurance costs of the toggles, or the fact that neither of them really work before SOs

Etc, etc, etc.

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And what about dropping gauntlet and replacing it with an auto-taunt inherent?

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You mean like the already existing auras? I'm pretty sure I'm taunting the living heck out of everyone around when I have Invincibility or Mud Pots running

Ah, well, when you have Granite things change a lot, and having a full attack chain is a whole other class of Gauntlet too. But we were talking Atta at teen levels. I did say "until the 30's" in a couple of places.

As for who's to blame, I don't think it's as much a changing situation, nor that there's ever really was one archetype to blame for everything. There are people who do a great job, and there are people who do a bad job, and a lot of people somewhere in the middle. Including defenders, tankers, scrappers, blasters, kheldians, you name it.

It's been like that since I1 (I started on the US servers), and I don't think the clue quota really went up or down by much for any given archetype ever since. There still are defenders who don't either heal or buff/debuff, there still are suicidal blasters, etc. And God knows the Tanker with only Resist Physical Damage syndrome isn't new either, since I distinctly remember grouping with one in I4.

In most cases it's the same people anyway. Most people have more than one character, and chances are it won't all be the same archetype.

And then, yes, there are people who expect the physically impossible and pass the blame around when that doesn't happen. Nothing really new there either.

And again, it's not concentrated to one archetype. For example, for every unreasonable expectation from a Tanker, somewhere there's an unreasonable expectation _by_ a Tanker. Ditto for all other archetypes. There's some kind of cosmic balance, I figure.

As usual for such issues, there's more than one aspect to it.

1. Aggro auras.

Some builds have an easier time than others due to their auras. For example Ice has two auras that aggro everyone around, so it's the ultimate aggro magnet. Stone and Fire aren't bad either with their damage auras, though less so than Ice. Invuln tanks, on the other hand, have the weakest aggro aura of them all, presumably because of the lack of Gauntlet effect, _and_ only get it at level 18.

So basically it depends on the type of tank who was posting. If an Invuln says they have trouble keeping aggro at Atta, I can believe them very easily, because they just don't have an aggro aura at all yet. _All_ they have there is a 5-target taunt, if they even took that, and you don't even know which 5 it'll hit.

(E.g., Atta's layout is easy, but it's happened to me in other missions that it only hit 1 person in the group I was trying to taunt... but 4 from a room upstairs we didn't plan to aggro yet. AOE's don't hit in a circle, but in a sphere.)

2. Gauntlet.

Maybe it's just me, but I rank it as barely more than nothing. Keyword: barely. It's a very short lived taunt and a very short range one. You can see that the enemies right next to the punch one turn towards you... then turn back and shoot the blaster.

So basically a tanker with two attacks in their low levels, and none of those an AOE (the exception being the Fire Melee set with Combustion) isn't going to keep a lot of aggro with Gauntlet. Maybe someone who already has a full attack chain _and_ some accuracy SOs or Rage/Build-Up is gonna do OK with just Gauntlet, but a lowbie isn't.

Yet, sad to say, that's just what a lot think they're going to do when they create their character. ("Who needs Taunt? Punching does the same and does damage too!" Quoted from memory from yet another such post, repeating the same falsehood, on the US forums.)

3. Surviving the aggro.

That's really the trickiest part at low levels. Atta is easy because it's smash and lethal damage. Surviving Outcasts is already a slightly trickier proposition. Doubly so when being asked to tank Frostfire on Invincible, because someone cares only about XP. (Bonus points if they didn't invite a defender either.)

Again, it depends on the tank type. Stone can have _some_ defense (not much, but still) to more attacks, because they're smash+something or lethal+something, and defending against one component defends against the whole attack. Add _some_ regeneration from Rooted, and you might survive an extra attack. On the other hand, something like Fire or Invuln can have a lot of damage types they don't mitigate much or at all yet.

That's really one of the major reasons for the recent negative press about the AT. The resistances and defense these days are a _lot_ lower than in I4. And while some ways to compensate in the long run do exist (e.g., Tough and Weave), someone trying to get a travel power at 14 and Stamina at 20, is going to have to postpone even most of their primaries on the way there. In the shorter run, tanks _are_ squishier than before. Gaining a lot of aggro only to faceplant a second later isn't particularly motivating, and doesn't really help the team much either.

4. Solo vs team-only meatshield builds.

I still say that a lot of problems a lot of tanks have is basically being built like a scrapper. I've seen people in the 20's who had Resist Physical Damage as their _only_ primary, but a lot of attacks and/or pool powers. No, seriously. I'm not making this up.

The problem is basically that until the 30's (at the very least) there are only so many slots and powers, and a lot of them are as good as pre-selected. You need at least 5 powers and a lot of slots for travel powers and Stamina alone. For a Stone tank, 3-slotting Swift is pretty much a pre-requisite. Etc. Which leaves only so many powers and slots available for both defenses and attacks. Every attack is one less resistance power, and viceversa. Every slot in an attack is one less slot in a resistance power, and viceversa.

So one can basically create something that soloes really well (the groups of 2-3 minions when soloing don't really need much damage mitigation if you can hit them hard), or something that's the ultimate meatshield but can't solo at all, or something in between that's mediocre at both.

So basically my take is that it isn't a problem with the AT as such, but with people who don't build their tanker as something that's gonna, well, tank for a group. Something built to solo awesomely isn't going to really be much of a use to a group until well into its 30's. Gauntlet is _not_ going to keep an awesome lot of aggro. It'll generate some, but again, short range and extremely short lived, and close to none at all when they get their accuracy debuffed and can't actually hit. (Good luck generating aggro with Gauntlet when you're in overlapping Tsoo whirlwinds.) And a scrapper build isn't going to mitigate the damage resulting from that aggro.

It's not a new problem as such, but I5 and I6 made it worse. The reduction in resistances mean that a tank built like a scrapper can tank even worse now than he did before. And while before they at least took taunt because of the mirage of being able to herd whole maps later, nowadays even that has disappeared from most builds.