Sailboat

Well, since when we're talking about them collectively, a group of "wives and girlfriends" means essentially the same thing as a group of "wives or girlfriends" -- in fact, it's probably better, consider a sentence like "Look at the cows and bulls over there" -- I don't know how the "or" got there in the first place. Using "and" entirely avoids the unpleasant acronym and any confusion non-UK posters like myself might cause.

The usual method would be one at release and a follow-up freespec a few days or a week later.

"Wives or Girlfriends" would be WOGs. WAGs sounds like "Wives AND Girlfriends."

In which case, I would definitely attract more WAGGRO than I could handle.

It's a nice punny construction though, so I'll probably use it when the situation calls for "wife aggro."

I suggest "tanking, scrapping or brutality."

Because Fiery Aura isn't especially tight, I would lean toward keeping Swoop, myself. I generally drop Chop -- it's not a bad attack, but something has to go, and Swoop hits harder and the knockup chance is 100%, so it's better mitigation.

I like having Beheader/Gash/Swoop/Cleave as a single-target chain and Cleave/Pendulum/Whirling Axe (and in this case, Burn) as an AoE "chain," so I prefer to keep the other Axe attacks if possible.

Assuming you meant s/l defense....

My main Invuln Tanker has 50-51% s/l defense (I forget how it rounds) with one foe in range (it's a flat 40% with no one in range of Invincibility). Coupled with the 50% DDR and the fact that multiple foes in range will pump up the defense even further, he does very well on the ITF. I've seen him get debuffed down to 35-38% while surrounded, but the Roman sword defense debuffs wear off pretty quickly, and his defense doesn't stay there, but rises back up after a few seconds. He's never suffered a flat-out cascade failure.

So I'd say a 5% cushion, coupled with herding up enough guys to keep Invincibility performing well, and of course taking the two passives that give defense debuff resistance, you'll be fine.

Well, I'd say that if it is not encountered anywhere in play, "the game" doesn't have healing aggro, even if "the code" has provisions for it. But that's a semantic argument, I admit.

Really? I've run several forcefield Defenders over the years, and I routinely combat bubble, because after fights the team wants to move onward. For years now I've flown into battle and cast bubble shields on everyone and never noticed aggro unless I used attacks (which I do, but generally after taking care of the team). I suppose it could be happening and, since I do blast, I'm mistakenly assuming it's aggro from blasting. But it's never jumped out at me as being buff aggro.

I'll pay more attention next time.

Veteran's Day is Nov. 11th in the US (I think it's Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth countries). "Before the holidays" could be very close!

No, Castle said right out that the "problem" is that Spines has lots of nifty additional effects, moreso than other sets get, and is in his opinion overpowered. Consider that Spines attacks slow recharge and movement and add toxic DOT...and some of them also do knockdown or immobilize.

Removing the "baked in" penalties would speed Spines chains up, exaggerating the imbalance of the set. Castle said he'd be inclined to "rebalance" it (i.e. nerf the damage or remove effects like the slows) to compensate, and while he might still do that, it's not as urgent as it would be if he speeded up the set's attack chains. Of course it would be wildly unpopular, which may be a factor in his letting sleeping dogs lie. But it's a deliberate decision, not a technical limitation.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. I'm not "assuming other sets have redraw time baked in," what I did do was "not assume I know everything about powersets I don't play and make sweeping statements." Thus I caveated my statement in case there was something I didn't know. I realize that one hardly ever sees that on the forums; it seems like the typical poster makes all sorts of patently untrue assertions about the game mechanics based on personal assumptions, prejudices, other games, and hunches. And I'm for damned sure not accusing the Devs of laziness.

It's not "in a sense." The players very specifically argued for it in overwhelming numbers. I was there and read the threads. The reasoning was twofold:

• Redraw feels like a penalty even when it's not, and so many people were already chaining attacks in such a way as to minimize redraw
  
• Once people saw the "new style" attacks without redraw "baked in" they realized just how many pauses were in the old style sets and found the dleays irritatingly unnecessary

One of the hallmarks of the classic Japanese haiku is that it evokes a season.

Yeah, that's what the badge description calls them.

Correct. Perhaps I was too cautious in not asserting that I knew all the sets, but I know for sure that Spines appears to redraw your spines but that it does not make any difference whatsoever in your attack times -- because it was never changed when they changed the other powersets. This was expressly discussed by a dev -- Castle, iirc.

Although "redraw penalty" is a penalty that was added to the game essentially at player request, as Luminara says, it is a good thing, because we used to have the time penalties all the time, even if we were chaining the attacks, and now we only pay the time penalty when we actually do something that causes redraw.

A matter of opinion perhaps, but in many cases the inherent taunt (gauntlet) is by no means weak.

Exaggerated. Nothing will see you and aggro onto you through a wall. If you're visible and they shoot, the shot can still hit if you subsequently duck behind a wall; but the game engine works like that for everybody (with the strange exception of player snipes).

I don't think that's necessarily the case. Ambushes just start out aggroed to you. Already aggroed mobs don't check perception, they just come and whack you. Stalker hate this, but they're not really being "spotted," per se, they're just being directly attacked.

I think this complaint is entirely imaginary; never heard of or encountered anything like it in six years.

The game is well-known to be one of the few in the industry without buff aggro or healing aggro.

The game is well-known to be one of the few in the industry without buff aggro or healing aggro.

Never heard of, seen, or experienced this. The game is well-known to be one of the few in the industry without buff aggro or healing aggro.

I agree hovering and ranged defense will help. However, note that mobs generally do not auto-hit and typically hit you 50% of the time or somewhat better -- and never hit 100% of the time unless they are using a real auto-hit attack.

On the wiki, the Category:Invention Sets page is very useful.

Note the difference between "Sets for improving X," which merely lists all the sets that a given kind of power can take, and "Sets that improve Y," which lists all the sets that give a particular sort of bonus, like movement. Click on that and you'll get a chart with sortable columns (click the symbol at the top of each column). This is a VERY handy way to make slotting decisions.

Teams, yes. Particularly on story arcs and Task Forces, possibly because you don't spend time discussing what to do next but just chain a bunch of missions together. Atta and Frostfire are good at low levels. "Sewer teams" in Atlas break up pretty often, but they're like strapping on rocket skates when leveling from 1-10 or so.

Then wrangle Task Force invites. Find your server's global channels (or ask what they are in your server's dedicated forum) and monitor them for Task Force recruitment -- or start your own Task Forces, you can use the Titan network's wiki to read about each TF so you know what to expect and what levels to recruit. It's not hard to lead a Task Force if you have some uninterrupted time to play. I always find TFs really speed the time by while pushing up levels steadily.

And while you're at it, leverage the social network. Note the players you liked playing with. Put a player note on them so you can recognize them again, and ask if they mind being put on one of your friends lists (either "server" or for the really good friend, "global."

This has worked really well for me. Characters I've been soloing always take off and mature quickly whenever I remind myself to make the effort to do this.

Of my current two favorite Tankers, one has the Fire primary and the other has the Battle Axe secondary, so I understand completely.

Yeah, my Fiery Aura Tanker is currently running 29.55% defense to s/l/e/n damage (and considerably less to fire/cold, but at least fire I resist at 90%). Might pick up Combat Jumping after I19. I could have had more defense, but I wanted to keep my offense highly slotted and massively enhanced. If you don't want to fight deep purples, and thus don't need tons of accuracy, it's possible to have all one's AoEs slotted to the ED cap for damage and recharge and still get good defense out of them. I'm particularly fond of 3 Erads and 3 Cleaving Blows in the PBAoEs for e/n defense and then four KCs and 2 frankenslotted multi-aspect IOs in the single-target attacks for s/l defense.

(I did make an exception for Blazing Aura, using 3 Erads and some Multistrikes to get the end reduction enhanced more and ignore recharge enhancement).

Reactive Armors in the resist powers, and no sets in the build up/ fiery embrace powers that would interfere with their recharge (i.e., no Gaussian's). And the cliché but effective 5 level 50 Doctored Wounds in Healing Flames.

Kind of simple overall. [edit: let me clarify, I mean, the plan has a zen-like lack of complication, not "anyone could have figured this out, dolt."]

To reiterate, this is a medium-defense plan that maximizes offensive output (as much as a Tanker can, anyway).