Supermax

Well, I just need 2 more shards for my tier 1 spiritual.

Hmm ok. I went spiritual on my fire/SS tank, and I like it a lot. Guess I will do the same thing on this guy. Thanks guys.

My build is pretty much a joke. To be honest, I was never a fan of the combo, but I got it to 50 just for the sake of getting to 50. The whole "pure single target" thing doesn't really appeal to me. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this guy. I just want to get an alpha slotted so I can do stuff like the Apex without the penalty.

The build is simple. Just SO's everywhere, except 3 attacks, which are slotted with sets that get me to the cap with the SR powers + weave + steadfast unique.

Do you think spiritual would still be better than musc even with an essentially SO'd build?

As recently as a couple days ago I was 100% sure that I would be going for the cardiac, since the biggest problem this toon had was ALWAYS endurance. For many years.

But after improving my build a bit this weekend, I've found that I've basically gotten rid of my end problems. With phys perfection and the 2 +rec uniques, it's hard for me to run low on end. And if I do, there's CP and dark consumption.

I don't know what the hell I did, but the change was insane. On paper it didn't seem major, but in reality it's like a totally different toon. So all of a sudden, something that was completely obvious is no longer obvious. In fact, I'm pretty sure going cardiac would be a total mistake.

Now I am leaning towards musculature. One of the paragons improves a bunch of effects, and almost every single one would apply to this build. Any comments or opinions about musculature for DM/SR? Is it a good choice?

This is an interesting concept. I think you have to approach it much like a PvP team. In PvP you dealt with real players, so you never knew what to expect. Therefore, your team had to be able to deal with absolutely any lineup the opponents could throw at you. AE is just as random, so you have to come with a similar mindset when building the team.

First of all, I agree that a tank would be needed. A team without a tank can steamroll just fine, as long as everything is going fine. But surprises tend to have a much bigger effect on squishies. A tank doesn't need to depend on his pets being positioned properly, or certain powers being recharged, or any other special circumstance. If the team runs into something completely unexpected, the tank can immediately grab aggro and save the team from a wipe. It's a good starting block.

Second, I agree that a permadom of some sort would be good for the hard control.

Third, you need a cold...probably either a corr or a controller. Cold really hinders AV's, arguably more so than any other set, so it would have that special role. Plus the shields would help the whole team.

Lastly, you need buffs. Two sets were always included on just about every PvP team that ever existed: kin and emp. There's a reason for this. You need kin for the resistance to slows. One guy can keep an entire team (except himself) essentially immune to all slows and also get rid of all their endurance issues. This is obviously a huge deal. Keeping them at the damage cap is an added bonus, as well as the -regen on AV's. The emp provides the entire team with +perception, status protection for squishies, and the obvious buffs/heals. If he keeps AB on the kin, that means the entire team is protected from slows. So with just 2 guys, you get rid of quite a lot of potential problems. Add the cold buffs and debuffs, and the team will be very adaptable to any situation. As for the force bubble, a kin's ID will protect the whole team from repel.

So that leaves 3 open spots. I think perhaps a couple melee's and one blaster would be good. A well-buffed blaster can definitely pump out the most damage, and the melee's would greatly benefit from the kin's FS. I'm thinking either 2 brutes, or 1 brute and 1 scrapper. Or maybe just 3 blappers, who knows. With a tank, the buffs/debuffs, and all the damage, I can't think of what the team wouldn't be able to handle.

Oh, one other thing. Technically, if you want to exploit vengeance, you can just have one guy die, stack 7 vengeances, and have the entire team become essentially tankmages. Vengeance is a pretty crazy buff. Most people don't realize all the effects it helps with. In addition to the damage, defense, and tohit, there's also resistance to all status effects, taunt, placate, knockback, repel....maybe more that I can't think of. And if you stack several, it's pretty much game breaking. Which is why it was "fixed" to not stack...except it wasn't.

I have kind of a horror story, although it wasn't from the WST. It was a couple weeks ago, and I ran into an STF team forming. I decided to join, but I told everybody that it was my first time on the STF. I was also the only tank. But they didn't seem worried, so I figured it would be ok.

The team consisted of good players, but the problem was the makeup. We had a full team of melees...me on a tank, couple brutes, couple scrappers, one stalker, and one blaster....and all of us were backed up by ONE emp. Zero debuffs on the team.

We got to the 4 AV fight without any problems, but this ends up being a complete dead end for us. Of course we end up pulling all 4 AV's at the same time, and I'm supposed to tank all 4 at the same time....as a fire tank with zero buffs or debuffs. Oh, I also happened to be completely out of insps. Of course one emp can't be expected to keep an entire team buffed, so most of the team has to rely only on themselves.

Anyway, we spent at least an hour on the one fight. Never got any of the AV's below like 98% health. Never even really got a chance to coordinate anything, since people were dying like every 20 secs.

Eventually we just gave up. Nobody blamed anybody else...it was just obvious that we had a wrong team for the TF. For a couple guys (including me) it was the one and only TF failure we ever had in this game. Oh well, at least it was a good learning experience.

Couple reasons why the team didn't follow the brute. First, he would run off before finishing fights, leaving the squishies to tank them. And second, it was a very unorganized team. One guy spent about 90% of the TF dead on the ground.

Either way, I stayed with the brute for the most part. I don't blame him at all.....I often do the same thing when I'm on my tank, because I can. But to make things run smoothly, when you're the team's only "tank", you really shouldn't be playing like a solo scrapper. In our case, a couple people ended up quitting, but we managed to finish the TF anyway. It just took almost 2 hours, instead of the usual 30 mins.

Yes, I've definitely noticed this. People that would normally HAVE to wait for a tank to take aggro are now simply jumping in themselves. Thankfully, the people that have softcapped squishies tend to be ones who actually know what they're doing, so it's not like it's some noob running around aggroing everything in sight. Usually these people can handle their own aggro.

Althought I admit it can get a bit annoying when one guy just refuses to fight with the team, and rather goes off on his own for the entire mission. The fact is, just because you can solo a mission, doesn't mean the rest of the team doesn't need you. Last night I was on such a team. The only "tank" (a brute in this case) was basically just soloing the whole time...while the rest of the team kept dying over and over in a different part of the map, because, well....we didn't have a tank/brute with us.

In summary, fighting as if you're solo is perfectly ok....if the rest of your team is capable of doing the same. But when your job is to tank for a bunch of SO'd squishies, you should probably stick to your job.

I've never been one for deleting toons, so I have only one that I can remember. I deleted a spines/WP scrapper at level 28, because I needed room for something else. Considering how many open slots I have now, I wish I still had him.

But oh well, these days I have a claws/WP brute instead.

I also have to say (just in case you didn't get it yet) that energy melee is really bad. I have a lvl 50 Invuln/EM, which I would really love to play more because Invuln is really good. But /EM is so horrible, he never gets played. I would definitely reroll with a different secondary.

FYI, EM used to be good, which is why I made my tank. Then it was nerfed

Liberty beat me to it. Fire tanker damage is definitely not something to ignore. As far as AoE burst damage goes, a well built fire tank is right up there with blasters. Sure, a blaster will pump out more damage over, say, a minute. But over a 10 second burst of time, a fire tank can 2-3 shot an entire spawn, the same way a blaster can.

Oops, I just realized I posted this in the blaster forum instead of general AT's. But thanks for the replies so far!

I'm trying to decide which toons to do the whole Alpha slot thing on. I've unlocked it on all of my lvl 50's, but it's slotted only on two so far.

I consider my main to be my fire/SS tank. My second guy is a fire/EM blaster. But from the rest of my toons, I can't seem to decide on a third...or fourth, etc. So I come asking...if you had to pick one for your weekly TF team, which of the following would you rather have?

Ill/FF controller
Kin/Rad def
Fire/rad controller
DM/SR scrapper
BS/regen scrapper

All of them are good in their own ways, but I want to work on one that would be most desired by teams. I assume most would pick one of the buffer classes, so I guess I'm asking which buffs/debuffs people tend to prefer the most.

I also have a second similar question. I want to move one of my vils to hero side, and again I want it to be the one people will prefer teaming with. It's either a spines/nin stalker or a Night Widow. The playstyles are very similar, so which one would you pick?

I did this again last night, this time on a blaster instead of a tank, and BM was killed in like 10 mins. We had tons of ranged damage, and I don't think the entire team had a single death on the BM fight. The fight is definitely about 10 times easier on a ranged toon.

I did this TF for the very first time last night on my tank, and I enjoyed it. The blue flames were not as hard as I expected them to be. Our team was not very experienced. It was the first time for a few guys, including me. But thankfully we did have some that knew what to do. They explained to me what would happen before we started the TF, and it sounded pretty scary. In reality it wasn't as bad.

Being on a tank, I barely even had to worry. At some points I actually jumped into the flames to kite BM. Having a PvP background, moving around while attacking is totally second nature to me.

The biggest problem was actually doing damage to BM. I have a theory that -speed debuffs actually hurt the team. I was desperatly trying to taunt her out of the patches so we could attack her, but she was practically running in one spot from all the slows. So there was simply no way to get her out of the blue. Every time we just had to wait for the patch under her to disappear. The whole fight took probably 30 mins. Overall, definitely fun. But I may have had a different opinion if I had been on a squishy

I absolutely cannot imagine playing SS without rage. It's as important to the set as buildup is to a blaster.

The 10 seconds of no damage is really not an issue. Like others mentioned, I use it to taunt, use insps, and if needed, keep attacking with vet reward attacks.

Pretty sure blaster Blizzard is the strongest attack if the target stays in it for the whole time.

Not considering nukes, probably a stalker BU+AS on an AV (don't they do extra damage to harder targets?).

Well, apparently this isn't a good forum to go to for information. Either way, I was able to create a 45% build myself, so no help needed.