Sailboat

"I'm not the messiah!" "Only the messiah would deny his true existence!" "Well, what chance does that give me?! Alright, I am the messiah!" "HE IS! HE IS THE MESSIAH!"

Yeah. They don't want you to "save" all the IOs from a character. They want IOs to use up time and influence; they exist as a goal you can choose to spend effort on, but they are consumables.

Sadly, this only works if the other players work with the Tanker. Fairly regularly I run into PUGs whose players have one of these flaws:

1) They don't actually follow the Tanker. Even when they SAY "Follow the Tanker!" they don't seem to be able to do it. I've had the team leader message me "You're split," and I look at the map and the team turned left when I went straight...but this is a team leader who said "Everyone should stick with the Tanker." I replied "Am I? At least I'm with the Tanker." Caveat: you don't actually have to follow the Tanker; Tanks can travel with the team and just run forward for alphas. But if you repeatedly wander away from the Tanker there's not much he or she can do for your safety.

2) One or more players, usually Blasters and Peacebringers, opens up with big AoE attacks just as I start to run in for alpha. Of course, I don't actually HAVE the aggro yet. Maybe the first rank of enemies have seen me and turned toward me and attacked, but they're not aggroed to me specifically, and the back rows may not even know I'm near. Boom, a dozen-odd foes wasterize the Blaster. Repeatedly. I try to be nice and say things like "If you'd like me to be more effective at holding aggro so you don't get hit much, please wait two seconds* for the enemies to get focused on me before opening fire," but it often doesn't work. I don't get it. It's like someone told Blasters they won't get exp if someone else gets the kill, so they gotta spam early. I'm not talking about waiting while I herd; I know some folks like that and some don't. I'm just talking about letting the enemies pick me, letting my aggro aura tick once or twice, and ideally letting them shoot their ranged attacks and then close in tightly around me while I start saturating them with Gauntlet. THEN they're grouped nicely and they will be hard to pull away; do your worst!

Sometimes it's comical to see Fireball hitting every time just as I arrive at the spawn. And predictable.


*edit: maybe the problem is 'Blaster seconds' are like 'dog years,' and two seconds to another player is an eternity to a Blaster. Maybe they think they are waiting two seconds when they fire before I even reach the spawn.

Eh, it's not like the enemies are doing anything in that timespan.

Broadsword/Shield feels to me like it has a lot of tools. Slice recharges very quickly for a Scrapper PBAoE, which is nice; Parry is awesome defense; Disembowel gives a surprising amount of mitigation too if you time it right and use it on the right enemies. Headsplitter is all kinds of awesome: a cone, huge damage, knockdown, defense debuff, extra crit chance...and it's back up again really fast if you slot it right. Shield has a ton of offense generally, decent defense that becomes studly with Parry, and some AoE help with Shield Charge. And even some aggro management of sorts with AAO. I've been running one on a Hardcore team, where we delete the characters if they die, and he's still alive at 32 and climbing, outliving numerous Tanks. He's often the aggro manager, main damage dealer, principal alpha eater, and AoE support for the medium-to-small teams we've been running.

I have numerous Scrappers with a wide variety of powersets and I think BS/Shield is quite tasty. You can play the character with confidence.

I'd add that in my own experience, Dark Melee damage didn't seem particularly noteworthy until I got Soul Drain. Soul Drain really beefs it up impressively. So if it seems underwhelming early on (and since you're coming from Blasters, it might) don't dismiss it until you've seen the good part.

A Controller should have hit the enemy with controls and debuffs, if available, and not have any real problems. Unless ambushed, the player has the initiative -- strike first and disable them before they mez. Learn what foes are able to mezz you and prioritize on them. If you don't have enough area controls yet because you're low-level, don't solo on x3 yet.

There may be no "best" Tanker or even one that's "best" for survivability, but this is the best post you've made yet, Fireheart.

What's "end game leveling?" Usually people want either a leveling build or an end-game build.

I wonder sometimes about the "kindness" aspect of buffing people who are standing in the auction house, for example. Is the auction house a hotbed of hitherto unsuspected danger?

OK, maybe I've forgotten...but didn't the old system have the sidekick at -1 to the mentor...or lower? So wasn't that leaving the sidekick facing worse level disparity against enemies?

What level is your EM Scrapper?

Uh...if this were true then hundreds of stupid conspiracy theories wold be true, because we keep hearing them. It's entirely possible for large numbers of people to be completely wrong about something and argue their point tirelessly. Even something they themselves use and observe all the time.

Just look at driving cars. Large numbers of people drive cars every day and think they are good at it, but are objectively poor drivers when observed.