Talionis

Is there a Fire/Trick Arrow guide?

When I first started playing a tank, I slotted a lot of my powers for Taunt Duration. I took taunt. I used Taunt a lot.

Use Dual Builds to have a Tanking Setup and a Solo Setup. In the team version, be heavily slotted for defense and taunt. Take AoE attacks that can taunt. Take Hand Clap type powers that can be helpful to control the environment. On the solo build, be a little more normal, slot for damage, take powers that you would use solo. That way depending on what the team needs you have both.

If the team needs a tank, they should be going at your pace. Tanks are really the leaders of most teams I play on. It is your debt if you die, not theirs. So man up and make decisions.

The control that a Tanker can get over a spawn is magnificent. It allows a team to do as it will.

Take notice of what others are doing to make things worse for you though.

1. Often if they aren't letting you "grab" aggro before they attack its their fault. Its much harder to take aggro from other toons than it is to hold aggro.

2. Knockback can literally push mobs out of your AoE taunt effects. If that's what is causing the problem, the problem is with the person using the knockback, not your tank.

3. Know that there is an aggro limit. That you can't possibly hold 20 mobs all by yourself. With that many bad guys even rotating attacks will not keep them all taunted. I think you could do this in issue 3, but you can't today. No one should expect you to.

4. Pay attention to who is buffing you. It is important to know how much tougher you actually are from buffs, debuffs, and heals. Often as things start moving faster the buffers forget to buff you and it can make a huge difference in what you can tank. Debuff's are also important to know because they are less obvious, but still very effective.

5. Some teams you just can't team with, but usually tight nit communities tend to be more helpful in the long run. They want you to be better and available to help them in the future. But know when a team is asking the impossible and call them out.

6. As you get better, and learn more, you will get a feel for it. I laugh when I see posts that say are Tanks dead because Brutes can go Blueside. Brutes and Tanks are just not the same. It is laughable because a Brute can be an offensive machine, but it will never have the control ability available to Tanks. Gauntlet is too good an inherent at what it does. Tanks are very valuable, but if you are soloing with yours then yes you are wasting your best powers. Tanks are really support characters and give up a lot in firepower to be able to help protect a team from really hard stuff. And to be honest, teams don't need a tank if they aren't doing really hard stuff, but a Tank's ability even on easier stuff to keep all the mobs in one tight place is so helpful to team speed, since AoE's will be more effective.

Tanks are awesome bud; they may not be for you but they are awesome. I hope you figure it out.

They should make Fly faster by about 15mph and then give you like 2 times negative stealth and slightly increase its endurance usage. Thus you can be seen from farther away. That would "balance" it, but it would make it more fun to get to places.

The thing is that none of the travel powers are hard to use safely for anyone that has played for awhile and is paying attention. The one exception might be Super Speed since it has no verticle movement, but even then people make it work for particular builds. I think many like it in PvP.

I think the logic behind balancing fly is no longer necessary. Don't confuse Fly with Hover either. Hover provides defense and allows positioning for fights. Flight is a separate choice that is really the travel power. Flight generally uses too much endurance to be used during fights, if it doesn't you could increase it to do so, forcing people to take Hover if they want to use it to put distance between enemies.

I like Ninja Run. I bought Ninja Run and think its a great thing for the game. Now you don't need to take a travel power. But I think creating a gap in travel speed between Ninja Run and Flight is important.

I would rather have more new powersets than this type of costume only change.

Dual Pistols is probably balanced pretty well from what I can see so far.

But if it were granted anything like that I would say it should be - To Hit. This is probably thematically more accurate as it would be like cover fire making it more difficult for people to get a good accurate shot at you.

But to be honest I'd get out of the way and take cover from any of the other blast attacks probably more than I would the Dual Pistols. Think about it a lot of things are bullet proof, they won't be scared and ducking from a couple little guns pointing at them.

Blast sets just don't seem to have access to that kind of thing. If they did they should be in the form of a Debuff.

If you are soloing then Ninja/Poison should be fine. Its a combonation very good at single target damage.

Ninja's are good at single target damage, if you can get them into melee. They also don't have a lot of mitigation on their own. That is not always easy especially for beginners. Ninja's do not have a lot of AoE damage, so larger spawns will give you problems. Ninja's are also run fast and aggro the next spawn before you are ready often.

Poison, is a great AV killer, but it doesn't have a lot of AoE debuffs to make your Ninja's more survivable.

The combonation you are leaning towards is one of the better AV killers, but it is not a generally great PvE build. You may find that without a lot of IO's invested it will be difficult to play and lag behind most MM's abilities.

If you really want ninja's go Dark, Traps, Force Fields. I went traps and really liked it. But I would also suggest Thugs and Bots as the intro to Mastermind powersets. Necro and Mercs would be in the middle. I would put Ninjas as the most difficult to play.

Has anyone had success using the Healing Proc? I noticed the heal is both small and unlikely to happen but on some of the fast recharging attacks especially in say an AV battle it might have applications.

I saw the same bug yesterday. They are still there. I found that as I traveled before I could get where I needed to go they came back.

Dark/Stone makes for a very tough tank. You'll tank well providing control keeping almost everything near you stunned with Oppressive Gloom and Fault keeping everything stunned. Stone also has a lot of mitigation in Knock Up. Its a fabulously survivable set.

It will drain endurance.
Tremor is a slow activating AoE.
But with multiple aggro grabbing aura's you'll really be a tremendous tank and be able to hold aggro ridiculously well.

In Electric, don't count on the Endurance coming back to you being very helpful, you always spend more in Endurance attacking then you get back.

Dual Blades is cheap on Endurance usage, but a little deceiving since they activate so fast you still can burn through a goodly amount of endurance.

With proper slotting even Dark/Stone works, just make a conscious effort to slot for endurance in your attacks.

I think some of the hyperbole and misunderstanding have been corrected in the thread.

When you say some of these changes may be coming in Going Rogue, that gives me hope, that all the work the Dev's have done really has made future improvements to the game easier for them to do.

I really am not so fixated on crossbows per se. I really wanted to see what has changed in the engines since the Dev's have added many of the customization features we have talked about in this thread. What are the future types of requests we can make?

I think there is merit in using the three new customization features in unique ways and I appreciate people going through the exercise of what is and is not possible.

I'm really not saying Ninja Run is too fast. I think its about right.

Fly on the other hand feels less impressive. I know it has all that manueverability, but manuervability doesn't help you in a fight PvE. It might avoid one, but most players won't aggro with Super Jump. I wonder if the balance reasons for making fly slower may be gone? Have IO's and computer processing power made the slower fly speed unnecessary?

My assuming isn't stupid, but it still may be wrong. I say that because I don't want to be as absolute as everyone that doesn't know any more than me who is saying "No it would take a really long time" with no real knowledge of that.

I think people have jumped on me like pack dogs telling me abjectlly "no, it simply can't be done." Most with no real knowledge of the actual programing. A year or two ago, I would've agreed with each of you because red names had mentioned how hard any of these things was to do. But a lot of the programing has obviously changed since then.

I'm not trying to bring any one down.

I know that what the Dev's have already done was not easy. It took a lot of work and I appreciate it.

My assumption really is that when the Dev's changed the programming to allow alternative skins for Assault Rifle, that they left the code open to add new ones much more easily than first time. So if they wanted to add a new skin for claws it would be much easier to do a new skin now.

Great Guide!

Well written and full of good information.

People will find it ironic that I'm supporting Gale after ranting about Knockback in another thread. But I feel like people use Gale correctly more often than a knockback power with significant damage in it. Since its only real use is positioning. People use it to blow things back into Tar Patches, keep bad guys away from squishees and near to Tank taunt auras.

Plus, Gale makes a wonderful opening power to mitigate alpha strikes because of the rag doll effect.

I was too upset when I originally posted. Long day and night and day and night of 2xp. A lot of pressure of managing, recruiting, and keeping a team. So I was too blunt and tactless. Knockback still is a connundrum.

I really didn't want spend a lot of time to teach a level 49 Peacebringer how to play her toon. And to be honest, I don't know enough about Kheldians, to teach her.

I do know a lot about knockback. I don't get kicked when I use my stormie or my explosive arrow, but I know when and how to use them. But even then, I often don't use those powers in big groups and I feel like I'm underproducing. If my explosive arrow doesn't kill them all, then it makes it so the next fireball can't knock off three of them in one shot.

The reason players get so up in arms about Knockback is that in most playing experiences you don't need the knockback to stay alive. And there is huge benefits and synergies to keeping mobs together. The strategy for most toons is to keep the bad guys bunched up and away from the squishees.

If you have a tank, its not just about keeping bad guys around him for the buff from the numbers. Keeping bad guys near the Tank, keeps the bad guys in the Taunt Auras and off the squishees. It is funny that Tanks get blamed for "not holding the aggro" when the very player that is getting chased around knocked the mob too far from the Tank for him to do just that.

If the bad guys are bunched on the tank, then Fireball hits them all. And if the bad guys are near the tank, then its more likely the bad guys are in the Tar Patch. Keeping the group together, is an enormous part of team strategy and synergy. Far more strategies for good players revolve around keeping a mob bunched.

Knockback is a great power. Its enormously impressive visually. It also provides a valid form of mitigation. But it is often missused and even more often if you play correctly it means the power doesn't get used and is more a solo power.

Oldeb,

I'm not trying to be unreasonable about it. And I am trying to do exactly what you are saying mix three different new things the Dev's have put in the game: Alternate Weapons, Alternate Animations, and Power Customization.

My hope is that by doing those three things, the Devs have changed something that was "impossible" because it would take so much work to: "well actually, we have done this, and that, and that, and Talionis is right now that I think about it, we could put those three things together to make a new powerset look, animation, whatever, we can give them crossbows and its not that hard."

I could be wrong. I am mostly likely wrong. It really depends on how the code was written and how its been changed. My profession is not coding. But on the off chance what I'm saying really does make sense and the three things can be put together to give a good crossbow attack with little actual work, I think its a great idea.

If its going to take a lot more time than just cut and paste and clean. Then I wouldn't suggest worrying over it either. -- I still want the crossbows. But I'd rather have newer stuff.

But I think the best suggestion to come from this thread would be to re-examine now that all these changes have been made, what can be put into the game more quickly and easily. Does it make Power Set Proliferation easier? Maybe this will jog a Dev to think of ways to make new stuff in a simplier way.