New Dawn

i have a sonic/sonic corrupter who is level 39 now called Ghost Banshee. She is a little aggro magnet and dies more than any of my other toons but i didnt call her Ghost Banshee for nothing. Sure if i picked more personal defense powers i wouldnt hit the deck so much, in picking some defensive powers my running toggles would remain on more. i pretty much have all the powers but for sonic cage, sirens song and screech. These are the defensive powers that would help me soloing, would save me from faceplanting as much in teams but i am expecting people in the teams to help save me but usually i manage to out aggro everyone. Sonic repulsion and shockwave could be the 2 powers worth dropping to get 2 of the 3 somewhat personal defence powers but i need that 4th debt badge for accolade so not yet as i am still trying (3rd debt badge at 37). Screech and sonic cage being the best 2.
For a good solo/pvp build you take all single targetters and amplify and when in teams your contribution can come from having all but sonic repulsion in the secondary. Fitness pool id say a must to run toggles and attack. Leap pool for acrobatics to prevent being knocked back yourself is okay but could normally get away with hover and fly. I went hover and fly as knockbacks was the only other thing i needed to do something about really and ghosts float.

To be team and solo based this build may suit you, my own build is very aoe and cone based so its different.

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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
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Name:
Level: 41
Archetype: Corruptor
Primary: Sonic Blast
Secondary: Sonic Resonance
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01) --> Shriek==> Empty(1)
01) --> Sonic Siphon==> Empty(1)
02) --> Scream==> Empty(2)
04) --> Sonic Barrier==> Empty(4)
06) --> Sonic Haven==> Empty(6)
08) --> Shout==> Empty(8)
10) --> Hover==> Empty(10)
12) --> Amplify==> Empty(12)
14) --> Fly==> Empty(14)
16) --> Swift==> Empty(16)
18) --> Health==> Empty(18)
20) --> Stamina==> Empty(20)
22) --> Sonic Dispersion==> Empty(22)
24) --> Disruption Field==> Empty(24)
26) --> Aid Other==> Empty(26)
28) --> Screech==> Empty(28)
30) --> Aid Self==> Empty(30)
32) --> Sonic Cage==> Empty(32)
35) --> Clarity==> Empty(35)
38) --> Liquefy==> Empty(38)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Scourge==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------

the slotting is normally attacks 2 acc 3 dam 1 end or control durations in your case. Shields 3 dam res at least and disruption field 3 end slots. Liquefy is lovely you have to have it!! I might go "sod the patrons!" and be a pure build.

Yep i just tested it, i take my hat of to ya Alvan cos ive been tanking on 3 slotted double origin armours post ED till 22 so yeah if only i knew! I dont know actually what would of changed considering my slotting priorities and lack of them between 0 and 22 but it would be funny to work out.

I did a test with 3 slotted SO and a test with 6 slotted DO and the amount of resist offered was exactly the same (well to 2 decimal places anyway).

So hang on i've been 3 slotting, tanking with no personal problems whilst other people have been 6 slotting and saying they are squishie??

All i can say is look at the defenders and controllers and play to suit them well.

Edit: way way back when i was new with shannon (march 2005) it took to mid teens to find out i could even stack slots. I had 4 slotted rest 1 recharge, 1 heal, 1 end mod and 1 interrupt but most of what i faced was toxic so it wouldnt of mattered too much about the stacking.

What you are saying does in a way go with this quote:

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These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 40% or more, and a severe reduction at 60% bonus or greater.

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but i would have to check it out for myself as i am sure someone in the past was hoping to 6 slot DO's but was assured not to.

With schedule B single origins i think its approximately this

1 SO = +20%
2 SO = +40%
3 SO = +56%
4 SO = +59%
5 SO = +62%
6 SO = +65%

the benefits as you can see tapers off after 3 DO's
i think DO's that are schedule B would offer this

1 DO = +10%
2 DO = +20%
3 DO = +28%
4 DO = +29.5%
5 DO = +31%
6 DO = +32.5%

So past 3 double origins it still tapers off and the last 3 slots add only 4.5%

A good well balanced team willing to cooperate with eachother adds quite a bit more in %.

Read my post here

because Ive tanked at low levels with each type most of how it can be done is within what i wrote.

Best was icetank, then stone, then fire (for actual aggro grabbing) then invuln (fast recharge taunt required at lvl 10 now). With a firetank you can avoid kbs (pre 10 they are not much of a prob after that just head to bloody bay at 15 or get hover at lvl 6. The other day due to good team support an icetanker friend of mine lvl 11 was tanking 15-16 in one mission, the rest of the team was 12-13 (i was highest and only one at 13 and it was my mission).

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I got Taunt and the first time I activated it a mob rushed me and KO'd me in about 10 seconds.

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In those ten seconds you should have the mob in your aura for taunt control, "then" debuffers if you have any should of debuffed the mob (so they hurt less) and controllers should of controlled most of the mob (so they hurt even less). If you have a buffer they should of buffed you before you start or atleast you should of waited. The defender and controller AT are to you the 2 most important ATs to know are ready. Then you have taunt control, buff/debuffs and controls before scrappers aim for mezzers or bosses, scrappers with taunt could attract heavy hitters of you (but itll probably be my scrapper if you ever see one of them) and blasters can fire at the rest of the mob.

For speed and on some maps you dont have run into a mob and run to a herdpoint with them hitting and chasing you, you can taunt as you jump to your herdpoint (flyby taunt) and have the whole mob coming straight to you. First one at herdpoint and in your aura gets debuffed (immediate damage mitigation and you may of not even been hit yet). By the time the lot come you should aim to have them all in your aura and then the controller applies mass holds, immobs to keep them there and "then" blasters and scrappers go in for the kill, hopefully not taking out the debuff anchors if any first. All of this can be done so fast it can look like its all happening at the same time (probably is).


It pays to know about controllers and defenders especially in the lower levels in case those that you have in the team dont yet have a good understanding of their own toons. I have met some that do in fact decrease survivability rather than increase it and after my saying how to play we could then up our settings that much more.

Try to have star, make the teams so that if anyone makes you tank on anything other than your terms and due to the fact that if anyone should die first its your toon (although some people just cant be saved) atleast if you have anyone not wishing to try to find a way to function well in a team for the good of all you can kick them. Also you can say to yourself what might be lacking and do something about it rather than the person with star getting a final member who is in their sg 4 lvls below everyone and about as much use as a tanker without an aura.

Remember your there for taunt control so that direction of fire comes your way, controllers and defenders are there to add to everyones survivability especially yours and blasters and scrappers are who cut the fight duration down to a minimum (peoples holds etc have a a duration its a good idea to have killed everything in that time).

If you have an empath make sure you are buffed and try not to pull forward to herdpoints as you may block yourself for heals or people may have to pass untaunted foes to support you.

I say all this cos i havent seen you play so cant exactly see what is going wrong.

Establishing full taunt control does take cooperation from the rest of the team and if you can establish it that well then the rest of the team wont need their sturdies, lucks and respites etc and they can pass them onto you offering you more survivability.

It is possible to tank at almost anylevel, imo the devs havent actually gone and knifed tanks in the back its just the better the team your in the better the chance of successfully playing like a tank.

Your there to add to the teams survivability through taunt control and the whole team is there to add to yours.

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what about when you have a nice mob around you and there are some at a distance attacking your team mates?


[/ QUOTE ]Personally, I use either of my two ranged temporary powers, which should have enough time to last until L41.

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and if you miss? dont get me wrong i do believe its okay on certain sized teams more so familiar teams and bye and large a tanker in most mission shouldnt have to make any recoveries that are the result of a player doing something unnecessary, it is possible for your tanker to get to your level without it and due to the teams/enemies you have had not of found a use for it but from other peoples perspective the power choice is simply something of a must have. In a few levels to come i maybe the only icetanker running around with frozen aura, maybe i will see something great about it others wont and from my sleep grenade on my blaster i already have a few ideas.

Edit: well okay just 3 ideas

I think i see what you have done (my way is complicated??:P) your way has gone way over my head!

I just have all my attacks queued in the order of use and the endurance cost of each attack is added up and divided over the total time for the complete attack chain. In my attack chain everypower is used twice and its symmetrical in look (starts with footstomp and ends in footstomp) but once its finished its repeated.

Shouldnt you be earning double xp?

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what about when you have a nice mob around you and there are some at a distance attacking your team mates?

I have taunt on my ice/fire tank and I find it very useful.

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Last night Cuddles was kiting dreck that would team wipe with a pbaoe and using another mob to up his invincible defense (sick sick man) but most interesting to watch.

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One end red per attack is usually enough. Attacks generally cost about 1 end per second each

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Look at stone fist action time 0.57secs endurance cost 5.2 points, endurance used per second becomes 9.1228

hurl boulder action time 3.83 secs endurance cost 9.36 points, endurance per second becomes 2.4439

It looks bad dont it, but you need to look at your overall attack chain to know whats bad:P


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You are using action times. In order to work out rough eps values for the attacks you need to use action time + recharge time.

Stone fist recharge 4, 5.2/(0.57+4) = 1.13
Hurl Boulder, recharge 8, 9.36/(3.83+8) = 0.79

I might as well do the whole lot ( numbers from here)

The others are
Stone Mallet 0.92
Heavy Mallet 0.90
Build Up 0.06
Fault 0.46
Tremor 0.78
Seismic Smash 0.86

This assumes you fire off all the powers as soon as they recharge and they are slotted with equal end reds and recharge. It also assumes you aren't running Hasten.

So every time you get a new attack, it costs you about 0.8ish end per second.

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i use action times yes but i dont wait for recharge because i am using another attack costing endurance in that recharge time. So eps is constantly changing within an attack chain, using your attack chain you would get an average eps. ill go away and be back with shannons in a mo.

Her average chain eps is 4.70 eps with all attacks with an endurance slot in them and base end recovery but with stamina it becomes -2.04 eps and all thats without toggles running as well. Thats how i looks at things. Which is why i say it looks bad but ya have to look at your overall attack chain.

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@MaXimillion
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Don't bother taking taunt early, or at least don't prioritize it high in slotting, you won't need it with CE.

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I'd go with you on the slotting priorities. Generally I've found Taunt pretty good without slots.
Fire has a great advantage over other tanker secondaries for taunting. Given that most of the time you will be spamming Combustion/FSC rather than using your Single target attacks, you can be targetting enemies outside your Aura with taunt and protect your teammates from them.

Why are you so anti taunt?

[/ QUOTE ]Because I don't find it necessary, or even that useful, in most situations.

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By all means come across anti taunt for your own build and own experience. I am forever having to give scenarios and reasons and yeah its mainly for those mobs that would 1 or 2 hit a person, if i was always teamed with scrappers or yet to give AV's that can wipe a team including my tank in a single attack, i'd be like "taunt?"

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You cant 6 damage slot an attack but you can have 3 dam 3 recharge to equal the damage over time you would of had with that attack pre ED with 6 dam slots

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If we ignore perma-Hasten, which was very common for high damage builds.

DPS and DPE both got lowered for the high-end builds with ED.

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The actual base rates for damage and/or recharge are you saying? because i dont remember that. I do remember powers getting an endurance discount raising dpe.

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One end red per attack is usually enough. Attacks generally cost about 1 end per second each

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Look at stone fist action time 0.57secs endurance cost 5.2 points, endurance used per second becomes 9.1228

hurl boulder action time 3.83 secs endurance cost 9.36 points, endurance per second becomes 2.4439

It looks bad dont it, but you need to look at your overall attack chain to know whats bad:P

As far as dps is concerned it wouldnt surprise me at all if a damage pretty much normally equalled a recharge as i often see this. You cant 6 damage slot an attack but you can have 3 dam 3 recharge to equal the damage over time you would of had with that attack pre ED with 6 dam slots (low action time attacks are especially good for this providing you have sufficient alternative means for endurance and accuracy buffing).

As far as damage per endurance (providing you always hit) a damage enhancement equalled your first endurance slot.

And an endurance slot generally equals an accuracy slot taking into account that the second endurance slot is a reduced amount of endurance saved compared to the first and the second accuracy isnt really as needed as the first is good enough overall (thinking more minions to hit than lieutenents, more lietenants to hit than bosses, less accuracy required for the minions or perhaps in terms of fighting +1,+2,+3).

As everybody knows i dont do maths so this is seriously speculation on my part but i think there is some element of truth in it although cos i never do maths i cant prove it.

i do think that 1 acc, 1 end and 3 dam is always a good start in that order for a tank and a rechg on multihits is nice too. Acc first to get gauntlet.

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Don't bother taking taunt early, or at least don't prioritize it high in slotting, you won't need it with CE.

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depends on how you like to be as a tank

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Don't bother taking icicles with fire secondary, get breath of fire instead.

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Your going to be surrounded by mobs from herding you may as well be doing great damage whilst you are doing so. I look at the damage it does to one and times it by 10 (the amount it can hit in total) and then look at the endurance cost and it does looks like value for money to me. Obviously a poor power when you use it on a small amount of foes at a time.

A fire/fire eats xp, this is down to it being such a seriously multihitting tank, it also has lower fight duration, i dont find /fire once its fully damaged slotted endurance inefficient either considering how much total damage in a mob it can do. Ice/fire is not far from doing the same and you get hibernate instead of RotP and a +hp heal (which both are handy versus AVs especially of the psionic kind). Ice/fire should make for an awesome tank but due to lack of secondary effects of /fire which can be useful tools i'd of chose another epic, a -fly (keep AVs grounded) and a hold/disorient (keep your main worries controlled for yourself) are nice to have.

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Hmmm is Aid Self needed at all? I'm 22 and I've been running into 26's all day with CE on and Taunting and coming out just fine...

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I think pure builds are fine, today one of my mates was a tanker a level 11 tanker tanking level 16.

how?

good team support.

Sad fact is you cant always get it and people dont like being told how to play and would rather misuse or ill time their powers thinking they are naturally good and not understand that they were the starting point of a teamwipe.

Gratz to ya Golden girl!

Your one of my global friends btw!

I am the one called Dawnie

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Who, after enduring 5 lifetimes' worth of debt, and accidentally aggroing countless groups of mobs, finally managed to limp his way to 50 after being dragged most of the way there by his awesome SG as part of their successful "Help The Sucky Underpowered Doms Level" campaign.

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Somehow i find all that very easy to believe but Gratz Filth i hope you acknowledge just how much you owe a special thanks of gratitude all those around you for getting you there

No worries mate i have no doubts everything was the other way around

When as a firetanker your accuracy is debuffed your aura could be there for visual effect only and the secondary taunt could be the only thing to save the team. Sure you could always avoid certain enemies of certain level and never see any of that but i like to try and build a tanker with not just a concept but also useful versus as much as the game content as possible.

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My attack chain is just KO blow and kick and I do ok (mind you I don't solo).

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You must be jab, kick and knockout blow and brawl and the origin power. You would of gained slightly better dps from choosing haymaker before knockout blow and boxing instead of kick, but kick is better for anyone with a weapon draw time.

No one can tell you what you will play best and have the most fun with. Now this is nothing to go by but i do know more people who are seemably addicted to fire/fire and elec/elec than anything else, by that i mean they still happily play them for hundreds of hours post 50.
Energy/ is good burst damage but high in knockbacks which could potentially lower the dps of everyone else, Assault rifle is high on dps but is also high on knockbacks too. These are the 2 i'd least suggest to anyone who may not know where to direct the knockbacks (ie towards other groups or away from walls causes problems) or when to use the knockbacks (a knockback aoe can mess with other peoples aoes/pbaoes but mainly cone attacks, can also cause aggro loss to a tanker and reduce the number of debuffed depending on type of debuffer).

Being good in pve teams is down to using powers at the right times in the right way so that they work well with other peoples.

My empath is pretty pure with 2 secondaries but i do have 4 epic powers as i do like 3 of them being controlling therefore damage mitigating. I personally would find soloing an empath a slow bore even with all the secondaries so i much rather base my slots on team effectiveness. Empathy does no debuffing to make better the use of the secondary powers and the only self buffs are regen aura recovery aura and heal aura out of 9 powers making it even more team biased anyway. In teams other sets are more likely to offer more time or no choice for time to be offensive and/or more damaging. I'd prefer not to be caught in a pants for damage action time when someone is killed or mezzed as it lowers the rest of the teams overall dps. I will say cleverly selective timed use of attacks is okay.

As for best dom to prolly solo i reckon fire/ice would be good.

Gratz on 50 firebeetle!

i still cant connect > is anyone else having this problem still?

I see what you are saying, you'd have to tell us how many taunt DO's or TO's and recharges were in the stonetankers taunt compared to your taunt with SO's. It would also be a question of timing.

If you ever team with another tank and he makes a bad AV pull delete ya taunt SO's asap so he bears the brunt of his mistake rather than you doing so and him going "im the toughest!" after you die:P.

One minute i was teaming with powernova comparing my tri form peace bringer with his human form peacebringer next i am dc'd and the next i can log into anything on the internet but not the game (i dunno) so sorry powernova for my unexplained absence and sorry if i dont make it to the raid in time or tonight.

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Unyielding def penalty is 5% still afaik. It is exactly same as unslotted +def of tough hide.

The ATs that have invul as secondary (brutes,scrappers) got the penalty reduced recently so it corresponds their version of tough hide.

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ah!

i was informed about a change and when looking it up i found it and still almost overlooked the scrappers and brutes bit!

i still think its an okay thing to do even with tough hide 1 slotted this more than offsets unyielding and without combat jump there isnt a problem in being able to tank imo, 3 slotted combat jump will mean say 2.2% less defence than tough hide one slotted but i wouldnt as a pure build invuln (no fight pool) myself cry about it. I do think that defenders and controllers mainly but also everyone else in team should in theory be adding enough survivability.