StGabe

This seems as good a thread as any:

I've been playing around with a Dark/Dark defender and I have to say I kinda don't get the control powers. Why would I stun stuff when I could just make everything whiff and do damage at the same time? I find myself only wanting to take the core of Dark/Dark with a ton of slots left over. For the record I like to mix teaming with a bit of soloing (especially more challenging solo stuff).

Here's what I'm currently looking at:

01 => Dark Blast ==> Empty(1)
01 => Twilight Grasp ==> Empty(1)
02 => Tar Patch ==> Empty(2)
04 => Darkest Night ==> Empty(4)
06 => Howling Twilight ==> Empty(6)
08 => Shadow Fall ==> Empty(8)
10 => Gloom ==> Empty(10)
12 => Hurdle ==> Empty(12)
14 => Health ==> Empty(14)
16 => Tenebrous Tentacles ==> Empty(16)
18 => Hasten ==> Empty(18)
20 => Stamina ==> Empty(20)
22 => Night Fall ==> Empty(22)
24 => Assault ==> Empty(24)
26 => Maneuvers ==> Empty(26)
28 => Combat Jumping ==> Empty(28)
30 => Super Jump ==> Empty(30)
32 => Dark Servant ==> Empty(32)
35 => Acrobatics ==> Empty(35)
38 => Tactics ==> Empty(38)
41 => Power Build Up ==> Empty(41)
44 => Temp Invulnerability ==> Empty(44)
47 => Total Focus ==> Empty(47)
49 => Conserve Power ==> Empty(49)

Am I missing something? Any other ideas on how to use my big pile of leftover powers? One thing I've considered is trying to see how how I can get my defense. It doesn't seem like I can quite softcap but I could make myself pretty resilient with tough/weave/IO's and boxing wouldn't be bad for filling in a single-target attack chain. Only problem seems to be that my end burn is already pretty high.

Is Acrobatics worth it? I find myself really annoyed at my lack of status protection but Acrobatics only seems to partially fill that in and the -KB I could get from IO's.

Tactics? Maybe Vengeance instead? 2 rez's seems like overkill.

Other ideas?

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Do those powers actually debuff? I'm not seeing anything about -tohit in the power description, in Mids, in City of Data, on the Paragon Wiki and in the powers info ingame. Yet I'm seeing people talk about it here a lot, so I must be missing something?

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Nope. Many of the DM abilities debuff hit, but not Soul Drain or Dark Consumption.

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Mmmmm the "no" part is so few and far between to be negligible on my SD Tanker. Keep in mind that I'm talking about making up only 3-5% tops, which the debuffs easily do.

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3-5% at softcap means 60-100% more damage on average. The case where it's worrisome is on an alpha strike. You don't have your debuffs layed down as you're getting into position, and you're not siphoning back life so if you're fighting something that actually has a shot at you that initial burst of damage could make a big difference.

Personally I like a bit over cap just to soak up a defense debuff, etc. Of course if nothing you're fighting is hurting you anyway then you should be fine.

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StGabe: I slot my Soul Drain with Obliteration for the bonuses but it also gives me good accuracy and recharge. End consumtion isn't as much of a big deal since it isn't spammable.


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Yep, that's what I originally had planned for and what I'll probably go back to. I just liked the idea of a low damage SD so that I wouldn't kill off minions too quickly when using them for a boost against AV's.

I actually factor this into my flipping. I have been flipping a lot of salvage because it's very easy and it's a great way to get some more slots with market badges.

Whereas I may only see a 10-20% profit on some of my high-volume trades I've had about 3 accident bids in the past 1-2 weeks that dramatically increased my earnings. My best was this morning when I logged in to see that I'd sold 9 rare salvages for about 54million, about 10x market value (obviously got an extra digit in there).

A few sales like that and suddenly my low margin salvage business is pulling in some pretty competitive profits. :-)

I definitely think you can go tankerless.

I disagree, however, that 54's are better. Everything that scales your ability to kill 54's also works against 52's. If you have a bad group then you're either going to kill 52's slowly or you're going to kill 54's that much more slowly. Either way, 52's tend to be better for tickets and, IMO, experience as well.

The only argument I see for 54's is that, if you're leveling up, it maximizes the amount of xps you can gain per mission. This can be useful in the case where you're PUG'ing and it's hard to find groups but that's about it. Otherwise I think you just want to do 52's and simply do more missions.

As for tankers versus defenders (or controllers for that matter), I'd merely challenge the notion that a good tanker would be less efficient. A well built tank is going to be doing decent damage and is a very efficient way to group up mobs and concentrate on killing them. It's not a matter of whether you can lead a team without a tank (you undoubtedly can) but rather a matter of whether you wouldn't still be better off with a tank-focused group. Defenders have some great abilities to keep groups a live and having a good defender in your group can let you do some amazing things ... but they're not gods and if they're spending all their time keeping the party up, they're not going to be as efficient as a tank that can quickly herd aggro and then focus on damage.

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And you got the recharge bonus. Soul Drain has the same idea since you can't up the damage buff.

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Note that if you don't put any accuracy into Soul Drain you may find yourself missing. I frequently find myself gettin only 6-7 hits even when fully surrounded and aggro capped (although I've been fighting on the wall recently and those guys have some defense buffs).

So, while I like the idea of a low damage soul drain, I think I'm going to have to find a way to get some accuracy in it.

For 2 slots and a chunk of change you can get +3.13 ranged/AoE. Just throw all three Blessing of the Zephyr's in your travel power.

Still newish to the game and so I don't have a good handle on all the sorts of high-end content and what I should be targeting with a build.

So the question is basically, what are some targets you guys have for accuracy on a build? I.e. what is something that will cap against 90% of the content? Are there other obvious cutoffs I should be looking at? Etc.

Everything I've read has said the aggro cap is 17. Where'd you get 16?

I'll admit I was guilty of pulling over the aggro cap a bit, early in my career. There's nothing in-game that tells you there's a cap so I think it's not that surprising that a lot of players aren't aware of it. Generally speaking taunt/aggro is really confusing and poorly understood. The Tanker version of "healer" is "tanker with taunt" (or "stone tank", but that's another issue) where many people think that "taunt" is uber when it's really just a useful but limited utility ability.

Also, YMMV, but I've found that the groups that can melt 54's still melt 52's even faster and get better returns, at least for tickets.

Yeah, going after 54 bosses is a pet peave of mine. As a tanker the 54's are more challenging and can be more fun but I almost always get better tickets/xps from 52's. I try to explain this to groups but they always seem to think that bigger numbers means its better.

Another pet peave is that, as a tanker, I like to be on damage heavy groups because I know I can keep a lot of aggro. However, eventually someone will get aggro and die. The problem is that sometimes I'll get yelled at for that. I can only do so much and most of the time when someone dies it's because someone pulled another mob and put me over aggro cap, someone is doing a lot of knockback and pushing bosses out of my taunt aura or someone messes up my pull and spreads out the mob. The thing is, we'll probably live, we'll probably wipe the xp debt in about a minute and we can kill a lot faster if I'm aggressive with pulls and team makeup. That, however, doesn't stop a minority of players from [censored] if they take a short dirt nap.

For the record I make an effort to call out any flavor of Defender for contributing to the group and while I'd agree that a little healing is pretty nice just to cover for slips in aggro or defender coverage ... I'll tell groups that I don't really need a healer (again, the group just needs to accept that there may be a few dirt naps in between great xps).

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I've got this almost worked out using the formula for a geometric series, but I need to run. Be back later with the final answer.

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If you have a hit chance of H over N ticks of dot damage then your dot will land an average of:

(1 - H ^ (N+1)) / (1 - H) - 1

times. For example with H=.8 and N = 8 you'd hit an average of (1-.8^9) / (1 - .8) - 1 = 3.329 times.

For a base damage of D1 and a dot damage of D2 the total formula would be:

Total Damage = D1 + D2 * (1-(H^(N+1)) / (1-H) - 1)

If that helps. :-)

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You're right .. I don't know what I'm talking about and I apologize for being defensive and wasting your time.

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If someone else comes up with a set of numbers you want to nitpick that it's not "perfect" but then you want to offer a far less perfect set of numbers and just have people accept it?

I mean basically what you're after is getting to sound smart about Tankers without ever backing it up, right?

The thing is, without some numbers and quantification you have no idea if something is really working or it just seems like it's working. For example you've talked of SM and Sands of Mu a lot. SM seems to be at least a small boost in AE damage if abused but after looking at the numbers I'm pretty sure that Sands of Mu is a DPS loss no matter what (because it's unenhanceable). You can either look at all the pretty numbers flying up above your targets and assume it must be good or you can run some numbers and figure out whether it truly is or not.

Anyway, I'd always prefer real world tests to number-crunching. However in this case a lot of real-world testing has been done to validate the number-crunching. Arcanatime, for example, is a result of exactly quantifying some real life imperfections with the damage model as it's understood. Once you know how it works you can definitely use it to better understand how your attacks are going to work.

Trying to approximate it with "oh, it'll be about 1.5s" is basically a dodge to avoid understanding it. It's there, it makes sense and other people have already told you how to adjust your cast times for it.

P.S. where are you getting perm/temp buff from and why is Dark Melee's number so low? My guess is you don't have correct figures for Soul Drain as Soul Drain is about as good as Build Up against a single target and scales it's damage buff against more than 1 opponent. Also you have it listed as "per foe". However the first foe offers significantly more damage than each additional foe (40% vs. 8%).

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The list I posted was only for single target, if you want to see DM while surrounded you can look at my charts on my sig's link, they go into a bit more detail.

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Except that, presumably, that multi-target number is factoring in AoE's against 10 targets when really what we're saying is that the Tank is doing single-target damage but happens to have gathered 9 other mobs around them to boost damage.

If you use the 10-person damage figure, minus the AoE, as a single-target damage, Dark Melee will probably top the single-target damage list. As that's a typical use case in Dark Melee AV solo'ing it's the number that's relevant to this thread.

Presumably DM is low because Soul Drain isn't being factored in?

Against a single-target Soul Drain seems to be about the same buff over time as Buildup (well, just slightly worse). Against 10 targets, Soul Drain seems like it's about 2.5x better than Build Up which doesn't scale (112% damage buff over 30s, every 120s versus 100% damage buff for 10s, every 90s -- 112*.25 = 28% buff over time for SD, vs 100*.111 = 11.1% buff over time for Build Up).

Factoring that in I'm guessing Dark Melee stacks up a lot better on groups and also gains a ground on single-targets when it's possible to grab adds.

Did I get the numbers right on Soul Drain? City of Data didn't seem right and in-game I see a 40% buff (first target) and 8% buff (each additional target up to 10, right?).

Of course there are other variables. Soul Drain takes time to cast. However so does Build Up (a little more than half as long, but then you also need to spam it 33% more often). I'm guessing other builds have ways to increase their damage that aren't being factored in as well?

I was basing my comments on a quote I found from Castle here:

"Slotting enhancements into powers they were not meant to be slottable in is an 'exploit.' We've pretty much firmly established that. The question isn't if something being abused in this manner will be changed, it's a matter of when. "

Of course when I follow the link to that it doesn't show up so I'm guessing this was said a long time ago? Anyway I'll think about it, it still seems a bit cheap to me but a lot less so than strafing SM.

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Forgetting the play-by-math criteria you're postulating here for a moment, this isn't an either-or scenario. You have both Shadow Maul and Smite ... switch from AOE to ST based damage. That's the beauty of DM that most people miss ... and it works especially well when combined with Shields.

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Along with my other reasons for not liking Shadow Maul, I don't really have room in the build for both powers unless I change something.

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As for "exploity" I think it's pretty obvious that ...

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Seriously? It sounds to me like your argument is really going around in circles with justifications.

It's like you're saying, "see it makes more sense to move around during combat therefore it makes sense if my combat move is to juggle 5 balls while I hit people". I mean, sure, it makes sense that you'd move around around however it doesn't make sense that this would increases a cone's area of effect.

I do move around to try and maximize AaO, Soul Drain and (if grouped) to maximize aggro. Moving around more frenetically just to mazimize a cone damage when it's pretty clear that this isn't "as intended"? That's taking it a bit far.

I'd say that instead of an implicit acceptance of your tactic, the recent change is just one that fixed half the problem but missed the other half. It gives a clear indication that they thought another similar use of cone attacks wasn't "as intended".

Anyway, whatever, I just don't see it. It still feels super exploity to me and isn't really how I want to play. If SM offered something that didn't require me to work hard to abuse a hole in the system then I'd use it.

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Animation times also need to be adjusted for server ticks. The formula is (iirc) ROUNDUP(Animationtime/0.132)+1)*0.132.

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Ahh! Another obscure gotcha. I found a post comparing DPA's with the adjusted animation time. It looks like Smite->Siphon->MG and Smite->Siphon->Smite->MG have almost identical DPA's. The difference then would be a higher HPA (heal per animation time) with the former but a lower DPE.

Of course I couldn't figure out some of the numbers used to calculate on that. They're using City of Data's "damage" number (i.e. 1.32 for Smite and 1.96 for Siphon). I'm not sure what that is. If I just use the raw damage numbers that City of Data has, it actually turns out that Smite->Siphon->MG is a bit better on damage as well.

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I see you mentioning AVs, so I'd swap DC for CP. CP is more efficient, requires less slots and doesn't kill your SD/AaO fodder.

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Makes sense. I think I have to try it. On the flip side CP can only ever reduce endurance loss whereas Dark Consumption can completely fill you up. Of course if I have no enemies I"m not going to be getting a lot from DC. Also I'd lose those yummy Obliteration bonuses but I think I could get some of them back.

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Slotting Active Defense with HOs is also a must, without good DDR you'll have a hard time taking on high defense debuffing mobs/AVs (think Cimerorans or Silver Mantis) without external help.

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Isn't this also a known exploit?

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I have a Stone/Ice tank in the mid 30s that will prove you wrong. Between slows, Gauntlet, the taunt aura from Mud Pots and knockdown from Ice Patch he's a certified aggro magnet. Mobility really isn't an issue either, even without Teleport. I've noticed that I can easily start running into a mob and fire off Rooted about halfway there. The -run speed doesn't take effect right away and by the time it does I've closed the distance to the mob and I'm ready to rock, as it were.....

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Like I said, if you play well I'm sure you can do fine as Stone. However nothing you've said really argues that you wouldn't have even better tools were you to pick a non-Stone set.

You mention Ice Patch for example. With a Stone tank you're going to need Hasten and/or set bonuses just to keep it up non-stop where a non-Stone tank is going to be able to throw out multiple Ice Patches with the same recharge boosts.

What do you do when your group gets ambushed by more than 5 enemies (I use 5 because that's the number of targets taunt will hit)? If you have mobility and recharge you can, for example, immediately run over and drop another ice patch. Meanwhile the Stone tank might be locked down in a spot and/or not even have the power back up yet.

Yeah, saw the videos. At 4 average targets, with a 1s delay to move to setup the Shadow Maul, you're looking at a 28% increase in DPS on groups. So basically you've got a 29% DPS increase versus single targets versus a 28% DPS increase against groups. It's up to you of course but I think the single-target damage boost is a no-brainer.

Also I feel like it would cost me a lot as a tank to be constantly maneuvering for SM damage not to mention that I hate the 3s animation delay where I can't react to anything.

As for "exploity" I think it's pretty obvious that strafing to maximize cones isn't intended behavior. If you can't see that I think you're probably trying not to look very hard. I mean go for it, ultimately it's up to the devs, not me or you, to decide something that like. For me though it just breaks the gameplay experience a bit to do something so obviously non-intuitive and wacky. I'm more powergamer than RP'er but that doesn't mean I don't care at all about immersion.

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I disagree. Mud pots is one of the best agro generation tools out there and on par with any of the other taunt aura's. Mobility can easily be built around. Take swift... 3 slot it... you're a good chunk of the way there. Take teleport, and add a click macro, and you're the rest of the way there.

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So you have to throw two powers and two slots away just to get almost the mobility of another player. That's neglecting recharge of course. One of the best aggro tools that a tank has is his attacks. Lower recharge is going to hurt you a lot when it comes to using those tools. Even taunt will be up less often.

And then there's the fact that some of the other sets are going to get tools like Shield Charge which are going to help a lot with aggro generation above and beyond just a taunt aura (edit: shield charge for example has an AE radius of 20ft, that's 2.5x the radius of mud pots or 6.25x the area -- a quickly recharging shield charge is clearly a far better aggro tool than anything Stone has).

All other things being equal the Stone tank will always be worse when it comes to getting and keeping aggro. Period. A stone tank can do the job just fine but it's always the case that a different defense set would give them better tools to do their job.

You're right that each set has it's strengths and weaknesses. What a stone tank does and does quite well of course, is live through just about anything. For a team tank it's just overkill. If you really want to be a team tank you want something in the middle -- not the best defense set and not the best aggro set.

I was curious so I did a single-target DPS comparison. The following numbers are based off of base damage from City of Data:

Smite->Siphon->Grasp:

Total Damage: 58.63 + 87.2 + 122.77 = 268.6
Animation Time: .97 + 1.93 + 2.07 = 4.97
DPS: 54.04 damage/second

Smite->Siphon->Grasp:

Total Damage: 87.92 + 87.2 + 122.77 = 297.82
Animation Time: 3.07 + 1.93 + 2.07 = 7.07
DPS: 42.12 damage/second

A 28% damage boost. When it comes to something like trying to break an AV's regen that's going to be pretty darn significant.

I was curious how many targets you'd have to hit with Shadow Maul to get equal DPS (warning, algebra to follow).

(x * 87.92 + 209.97) damage / 7.07 seconds = 54.04 dps
->
x*87.92 + 185.53 damage = 382.06 damage
->
x*87.92 = 195.53 damage
->
x = 2.24

So I've got to hit 2.24 targets on average, with Shadow Maul, just to break even. Without lots of strafing there's no way I'd hit that on average and without hover I'do lose a bit of time in my attack chain to set up the strafe. If lost even a second on my attack chain that's going to push the break-even to 2.85 targets. So basically I think it's pretty close and ultimately not worth it to me. If I can get a similar DPS boost to either single-target or groups then I'll take the single-target boost due to the fact that I'm more worried about single-target regen. The only case I can see really wanting Shadow Maul is solo'ing AE boss spawns or something where I don't care about gathering aggro and just want to down a group as quickly as possible.

Also, this makes me wonder if you can really justify Sands of Mu given that it's unenhanceable. What are the exact stats on it (I don't have it)?

Let me know if I messed up any of the math or left anything out. I like doing this sort of mathematical analysis but I'm still figuring out all the strange little quirks of CoH's combat engine.

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And... great job telling other players what they should, or should not be playing.

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Isn't this what you are doing by saying that Stone "one of the best"? The OP is asking us to tell him what to do after all! Frankly I think that there are a lot of misunderstandings about stone tankers, what they can and can't do, and it's well worth setting the record straight.

He has a valid point. Stone is great at standing up and taking damage but it's a weak build when it comes to mobility and keeping aggro.

Let me put it this way: assume that a tank of any build is going to stay alive (and a well-built tank of any build can probably do that against almost anything). Which tank build is going to be best then for a team? A tank build that has severe mobility problems that can be partially worked around or, say, a tank build that has great mobility, AoE attacks and other abilities that gather aggro really easily?

This is why I tried to give some perspective to the OP about defense versus aggro management in CoX. The thing is, they're very, very different problems. While a Stone tank is very good at one, it's not ideal for the other. There are better overall combos, IMO, for a well-rounded team tanker.

I'm sure your stone tanker does a great job. Most archetype combos are just fine if played well. Still, apart from staying alive through just about anything, a stone build doesn't really offer anything that isn't done better by other builds.

Yeah, no Shadow Maul. A few reasons:

1) Feels really exploity to me and I don't enjoy the play style required to use it well. I don't really have room for hover in the build (note I didn't even take Combat Jumping) so I'm stuck with running around trying to maximize Shadow Mauls which is just going to get in the way of everything else I want to do. Plus I don't want my whole game to be running around to maximize what feels like an exploit to me.

2) Subpar single-target damage. Not only does Shadow Maul require 2 targets just to equal Smites damage, but it would also slow down my attack chain meaning fewer Siphons and MGs. I don't really have room to spare for both Shadow Maul and Smite. If I have to choose between AE and single-target I'm going to choose single-target as I already have great AE options with a sub-30s Shield Charge, etc.

I haven't played anything but shields (which does quite fine) and willpower but here's some insights from reading A LOT about tanks.

I assume you're coming from another game so here's some background on things in CoH:

Defense: there are basically two ways to try and be a really hard-to-kill tank: defense and resist. Some builds specialize in one or the other, a couple can do both. Ultimately defense caps out a bit higher in total effectiveness but resist is more robust.

Aggro management there are several ways a tank keeps aggro. The biggest one is probably their "aggro aura" power. Each tank AT has an aura which adds taunt to enemies within a sizable radius. People are saying that Willpower isn't a great choice because it's taunt aura is subpar (basically the "taunt" that it offers has a short duration).

Another way to taunt is just to attack things. Tanks get a big boost in the taunt they create with their attacks. When things get really hairy I find the only real way to make sure that everything is on me is to run around hitting things. People are telling you that Stone might have problems because Stone tanks have to slow themselves down to reach their most defensive state. This can make it a lot harder to gather up the aggro whenever your enemies get a little bit scattered.

Finally there is the taunt power (and you don't really need to consider other powers). It's a ranged taunt. It can be pretty useful for picking up stragglers. Some people think it's magic, it's not really. For a tank with a good taunt aura, it's really just a secondary tool. However it can be pretty useful, it's also a great way to pull (it's one of our few ranged pulling options) and if you want to excel as a tank you'll want it.

Enemies Another thing worth mentioning is that in City of Heroes there are basically two types of enemies you need to consider for tanking. In most cases you'll be in a group fighting big mobs of enemies. The challenge is more about herding these enemies and keeping them close to you where you can lay on taunt. If your tank is built well or your party is decent then you're not really worried about defense in this case. The second case is where you are fighting some really big guy (an Archvillian). In this case you really should never have problems keeping aggro. Any tanker can dish out what is basically unbreakable taunt on a single target. Instead you're more concerned with just staying alive.

...

Having said all that I think pretty much any archetype will do well for you. If I were going to build a tank with (what I think are) your goals then I'd probably do Invulnerability to have something that was pretty strong on defense and then try to pick up a secondary with some good area attacks (which will apply a lot of taunt). Maybe Invulnerability/Superstrength?

Anyway, take all that with a few grains of salt as I'm not an expert on a lot of the tank builds.