Thermal_Velocity

It should be said that I had never done much PVP before. I had done about 5 minutes with my Defender, before I decided it was too squishy. In PVE I felt I did okay with Dark/Dark, but in PVP I got completely destroyed, since I lacked status resists.

Now I finally got a tanker to the point where I could take it for a spin in PVP. Fire/Fire. Lots of IOs. Yet it didn't take many seconds before I found myself being Held, for the first time in more than 40 levels!

After that it just became worse. Lost most of my health to a an assassination from a stalker. After that I found myself inflicted with more status conditions, in particular immobilize.

So what I'm asking is: Why doesn't my status protection work? And is there room for a tanker in PVP, to me it seems like dead weight, the damage being the lowest of the melee classes and protection just doesn't seem to work at all. Or if they do, they are much lower than in PVE.

My own experience with both FF and Sonic is that they are really good sets. You keep up the buffs every 4 minutes (and run your toggle/toggles) and the remaining 3.15 minutes you'll be able to do other stuff, like using your blasts repeatedly (and those blasts generally aid the team too, for instance sonic blast lowers resist, rad lowers defense, dark lowers foe accuracy. Generally the only set that doesn't have this secondary is Archery).

So I think the FF set is a very interesting set to the person who wants to support, but also wants to do some damage and feel useful that way, even if the damage is lower than the blaster.

As for FF'er being a buff-bot? That's actually a good question and I'll say no, it is not a buffbot unless you make yourself into it. Yes, you provide buffs to the team, amazing buffs. But you also have lots of spare time that you can use to blast enemies to pieces. This means that you're not just there for the buffs, you give more to the team. The lazy FF'er may demote himself into a buffbot, since you'll have done most of your job simply by keeping the shields and toggles up, but then that is his own decision.

While my own Psy/MM blaster isn't that high level yet, it seems quite decent so far.

One thing that people seem to have skipped over is Telekinetic Blast and Telekinetic Thrust. Yes, they are knockback, yes, some people may hate you for it. But on the other hand knockback is migration, especially if you solo. AND Both TB and TT are not solely Psionic damage, meaning they might be your best attacks against Psionic resistant enemies.

Also the status effects on certain powers will be used to buy you more survival. And of course the -recharge means enemies will hit you less often, as their powers are recharging.

So far the only issue I have had is the fact that the entire world is PINK as a Psi/MM, which is nice for a while, but there's a limit for just how much pink a straight guy can take at a time.

For the ranged blaster, I enjoy Mental Mastery as the secondary. Subdual is a ranged immobilize, so great at stopping one foe from reaching you. You get Concentrate (it's the Buildup of the set), you get Drain Psyche, which is great as a panic button when your end/health is getting a bit low. You have a ranged fear, to buy yourself time. Finally in the lower end of the set you'll find two PBAOEs that are both great panic buttons too, World of Confusion and Psychic Shockwave, both inflicting a status change on surrounding enemies, so you have time to get to a safer distance so you can resume blasting (or if necessary flee). The damage is psionic and unless your primary is psionic attack that means you'll have an energy type that isn't strongly resisted, no matter who you meet.

For the primary, that's really up to you. I play Fire/ and Sonic/ myself and I greatly enjoy the damage output, relying on my secondary when I don't kill mobs fast enough. Fire/ just does a lot of damage, the secondary effect being that you do more damage over time, while Sonic/ makes enemies less resistant to attacks, which means that the damage from it will be increase the more you blast.

If not using Kheldian (which has shields, blasts and melee attacks in the normal power set), I think the way I'd make an armored suit character would be a Blaster with Energy Blasts and Energy Manipulation. From the power pools you'd get the Fighting Pool for Tough and Weave, which increases your ability to survive. Hover also adds a bit of defense, which stacks well with Weave, if you're choosing Flight as your travel power. And Combat Jumping if you're going for Leaping (which will also give you Acrobatics so you can resist knockback). And when you get the APP's in the 40s, you have access to Force Mastery, which gives you Personal Force Field, Temp Invulnerability and Force of Nature. Overall it's not ideal, but it isn't completely bad either.

If you want a ranged/melee character with shields, roll a Kheldian.

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I also think most, if not all of the penalties should be removed.

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If you remove the penalties, you will also need to downgrade the overall strength of the set. It is by far the most durable tanker set. It surpass all the other tanker sets in that area by A LOT!!!!

Granite should be comparable to a power like Unstoppable. Since Granite is a toggle that gives you the same survivability as an Inv tank, without the a 3 minute duration click power, having no 16 minutes cooldown and doesn't almost kill you when it runs out, there should be other penalties. I honestly think the current penalties are fine on Granite Armor.

I'm not the big scrapper player, of my many toons I have only two Scrappers.

Katana/Willpower - lvl 32
Dark Melee/Super-Reflexes (shadow maul+flurry goodness on a super-speedster concept character) - lvl 14

Remove the penaltites from rooted and balance it against the other status protections (which I think it mostly is anyway).

Remove most of the Def bonuses from Granite Armor make it maybe 5% defense, reduce the resistance bonus from 50% to 40% (number may need tweaking, to balance it with other power sets) and spread those 10% resistance to out over the other armors (so lethal/smashing armor would give both resistance and defense to lethal and smashing). Then allow the tanker to use all armors at the same time. When not running Granite armor the tanker is comparable with other tankers out there not using their ultimate protection power (well, the sets that has one anyway) and when putting on granite it would be comparable to the inv. tanker hitting unstoppable. But where unstoppable has a 15 minute cooldown or something like that, the Granite armor is a toggle, but also comes with the built-in penalties that it already has. So yes, you could run around in granite all the time, but 90% of the stone tankers would probably not hit granite until in the middle of a mob and that only if they really felt it was a problem they couldn't handle without. This would also allow stone tankers to get other powers than teleport for travel, since they could detoggle that granite armor to use fly, jump or super-speed. It would also get rid of the "At 32 all my previous armor powers are obsolete! Eat that, other tankers"-thing.

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Thanks guys!

I'm definitely leaning hard toward rerolling the more I look at the possibilities. I hate to start over, but the fact is I never play this guy anymore. I knew Dark Armor would be a challenge, but I wasn't prepared to face plant every mob.

I'm still up to try Dark Armor again. I'm looking at Energy Melee as a possible replacement for Fire. It looks to have stuns that Fire lacks... do you all think performance would be greatly improved by switching?

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I don't think the performance will be greatly improved by switching to Energy Melee. Perhaps Solo, I haven't seen how your toon solo, but in large groups you're a single target specialist and will therefore be vulnerable to alphas. Your AoE Whirling Hands only has 30% chance to stun if I remember correctly, so most enemies will be able to attack.

My suggestion would be one of the more crowd controlling sets (/Ice, /Stone, /SS) or /dark (has healing, fear, -to hit)

I can personally recommend either Force Field/Sonic or Sonic/Sonic for a first timer.

Both FF and Sonic primaries are a lot about running some toggles and rebuffing the team every 4 minutes. You'll have a few more tools at your disposal in both sets too, but they are more tools that you use when you really need to use some heavy stuff and turn the tide of the battle. This means that since you rebuffed outside battle, you will be able to focus your attention on blasting your enemies with your blasts, not just be spending all of your time using powers from your primary.

Advantages and disadvantages of both sets have been discussed in various guides, but the FF is focus on defense and is extremely protective of the team, while Sonic is resistance based and offers no protection against psionics, but with the -resist, you and your team mates will be doing more damage against enemies, thus making it a set that boosts both damage and protection of the entire team.

For a Secondary I'd generally recommend Sonic. Both as FF and Sonic primary you'll be focused on teaming and will have some serious disadvantages soloing. Sonic secondary is a perfect teaming set, making enemies that you hit more vulnerable. Especially team mates doing lethal/smashing damage are going to love you for it, especially in the later levels, since enemies in those levels tend to have very high resists against those damage types.

If anything I think /kin needs a nerf. Though I think the set is fine now. It is kinda sad to see people on broadcast channel look for a kin. Not that they're looking for a defender or a controller, no, they're specifically looking for a kin. For one simple reason: SB.

SB is a powerful buff. Especially on teams with granite tankers. However I think it is overrated. Yes, recharge is good. At higher levels I've got more than enough attacks to fill my attack chain, even without a recharge boost. Extra speed is situationally good, though most often I hate it, it makes maneuvering in caves very hard. Honestly I'd rather prefer having some good shielding.

However I do expect to see SB being used by someone playing a kin/ or /kin. Just like I expect to see shields being used by sonic or force fielders. Or Fortitude being used by Empathy. You get my point? It is a buff and you should be using it on your team. However I do ignore people that directly asks for it.


I think people should go by some simple rules when it comes to buffs:

Yes, I will buff when necessary/possible. A team with buffs are a stronger team than one without. 7 people getting better will in 99% of the cases be more beneficial than you firing off a power.

Or you could do as I do in most cases. Buff player 1 - fire off power on enemy - buff player 2 - fire off power on enemy - buff player 3, etc, etc. Speedboost has a small cooldown and in that time you'll be able to use one of your other powers. In some cases you'll be using Increase Density, but in most cases Increase Density is just too little benefit compared to the casting time (unlike Speedboost in my opinion).

TA/A is in my opinion one of the better sets for soloing, also at lower levels. It has no buffs, just a lot of debuffs and crowd controls and most of the powers in the primary are AoEs.

Simply start out the fight with a Flash Arrow (debuffs enemy to hits and lowers their perception radius a lot), which doesn't draw attention. Then Poison Gas Arrow, which will put them asleep and is a considerable damage debuff. After that you can pick them off one by one, if you feel there's too many. Acid Arrow is an AoE debuff to defense and resist. With Glue Arrow you can slow enemies considerably. And Archery offers both some nice single target and aoe attacks.

As an added bonus the set is easy early on. Cheap on your endurance and with a high built-in accuracy (I think it's equal to a dual origin accuracy slotted in your archery powers), which means that while Stamina is good, it's not a power you have really been missing and looking forward to and you will miss less shots than your opponent.

At level 18 you'll have most of the tools from your primary you'll be using later on in every combat (At 12 all you lack is Disruption Arrow, the last two powers are on a very long cooldown and you only use them when you really need to pull a rabbit from the toolbox... Oh, who am I kidding, you'll be using Oil Patch as often as you can, even taking down a blue minion because it's just so nice!)

As for your secondary, it's a well-rounded set, having a few AoE attacks and some single target. The damage is lethal/smashing (except for Blazing Shot, which also has fire), but fortunately you'll get Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow before enemies start having really strong resistances to it, and both of those debuff resists, so in this case lethal is not completely crap. And of course you get Rain of Awesomeness (though you'll have to wait to 38 to get it). Basically you can nuke in every combat (well, okay every 30 seconds) and it costs you a good amount of endurance, but doesn't drain you completely and you recover endurance normally after that (so by 38 stamina may be a good idea, but it's not the most important power to get by level 20).

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Toggles are cheap.

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Tell that to my Illusion/Sonic Controller. Superior Invisibility, Sonic Dispersion, Disruption Field and Sonic Repulsion are all very costly powers. Even slotted with End Red SOs and fully slotted Stamina, this troller is still using large amounts of blues, even if it doesn't use many attacks in combats and none of those attacks are end costly.

The one thing to remember about pure healers is that you might feel like the groups hero up until the mid 20s, but after players become equipped with SOs and start completing their own defenses, having strong attacks and similar, you'll find yourself more as a buff'er. Yes, you will once in a while use a power to give one of your allies some green, but there will be combats in which you'll wonder if you're really pulling your own weight in a group.

My experience is that it is very level dependent. Low level tankers are... well, not that good. As they level up this change and once they reach level 22, now having both stamina and access to SOs, the Tanker becomes an invaluable member of the team.

The main issue I have found with the tanker is when there's multiple tankers in a group. The tanker has one role in a team, being a meat shield. There's only really a need for one of those (perhaps two if you fight large mobs and there's more mobs than one tankers aggro can handle). Scrappers and Blasters provide damage and more damage is always nice. And the Controllers and Defenders are a diverse bunch, so the more of those you have the better. This means that if a team already have a tanker, they'll not be interested in a second.

I've got many defenders and it's really hard to choose between them. If I've got to choose one, it'll probably end out being either Sonic/Sonic or Trick Arrow/Archery. I enjoy both greatly and I guess it depends on my mood/energy which one I choose.

Sonic/Sonic is a great set and has both good buffs and debuffs. +resists (including some +resist to many mezzes) to your team, -resists to your enemies. Running both your shield and the ally toggle, while renewing your buffs every 4 minutes, means that you'll be spending most of your time having fun blasting on your enemies and you'll feel very useful even if you're not the one providing many green numbers. On the other hand you'll provide some good red ones and due to having Sonic blasts, those numbers will continue to increase the more you blast. Sonic is also the set in which you can slack a bit, since your team should be fine in most situations, as long as your shields and toggles are running, the blasts just add to your usefulness.

Trick Arrow/Archery is a set that is far more active than Sonic. It lacks healing, it has no buffs. But it has great debuffs and some crowd controls. This means that you'll be spending your time in combat using both debuffs and blasting, so you'll not really get a quiet moment. Having archery is very thematic for Trick Arrow, but the set also has great accuracy and a very low endurance cost. Of all the toons I have played, the TA/Arch is one of the only toons where I've considered whether or not I should get Stamina. It also means that you can save some slots in your powers (Endurance Reduction and Accuracy), either using them on other powers or slotting in different enhancements. The fact that the secondary ultimate power doesn't leave you completely drained for endurance (like the other ultimate attacks in most Blasts) makes it a far more useful power for a defender.

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Yeah. What was funniest to me was the Blaster's apparent belief that a Controller with Radiant Aura would have romped through content that repeatedly felled Granite, Invulnerability, and Willpower Tankers fighting side-by-side. That may represent an all-time high in overvaluing healing.

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The healing in itself would have very little influence. Now however if you add in the debuffs of radiation and it paints a completely different picture... Radiation has insane amounts of debuff... Put up Radiation Infection, enervating field, Lingering Radiation and you debuff enemy to hit, defense, damage, resists, regeneration, recharge and speed. Choking cloud is good for holding and if you have radiation emission as a controller, you also got a good toolbox for holds/immobs in your primary.

Personally I'd advice getting Bright Nova at level 6. Before 22 (stamina+SOs) the Nova's bonuses to accuracy, endurance recovery and damage are immense and in a team you may equal or perhaps even surpass a blaster. Before getting slotted with SOs I spent most of my time in Nova form, simply because it is that much better than human.

At level 20ish I'd suggest getting the Dwarf. Very durable and with Footstomb, healing, taunt, what's not to like? You're lacking a taunt aura and gauntlet, but you're as durable as a tanker and if your tanker friend is a bit squishy (fire springs to mind), you can take an alpha strike to the face.

I personally found myself having a nova/human build on my 1st slot and at 20 I made a human/dwarf build in the 2nd slot. I'm mostly playing using the 2nd slot (DWARF IS JUST SO AWESOME!), using dwarf for off-tanking and human form for it's versatility and if there's a need for blasting.

While you can play without using any forms, being purely human, I think you'll find that you have a much harder time, at least from 6-20. Your shields are quite draining, especially when you don't have access to SOs and stamina. And if you don't run with shields, you'll mostly be a nova blaster without any of the nova benefits (+dam, +to hit, +recovery).

I'm a house scrapper, a scrappus domesticus. >_>

I hate soloing and mainly I tend to play one of the squishies and I team 98% of my time. So am aware of team dynamics and usually dislikes the scrappers who aren't Scrappus Domesticus, simply because they're usually running around doing their own thing, rather than work together with the rest of the team. More than once I've experienced a wipe because the scrapper felt invincible, pulled too much aggro, while the tanker was already busy in another fight.

I think both the wild and the feral scrapper should be house trained, so their presence isn't a danger to the rest of the team.

While having fortitude and clear mind at such low levels, the fact is that at those low levels the empath is far more in need of healing. The tank still has trouble keeping aggro and fortitude only protects one toon at a time pre-SO. Also it is at the lower levels that you will find yourself in need of resurrection far more. At higher levels you'll find that your healing isn't really as good as the other defender ATs heal, with howling twilight stunning and rezzing more people at once and mutation providing a boost. It is also far more likely at higer levels that players have enough inspirations to make their own wakies, something which may not always be easy when you have 10 inspirations for instance.

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I don't think there is anything really wrong with your build. People pick those powers that you picked, just that they usually pick some of them at higher levels. If you always play in a team, then you don't really need to respec, you just need to play. When you level, you pick some attacks as other people mentioned.

Long time ago, there used to be some discussions about invulnerability should be called vulnerability. As you mentioned, invulnerability is only invulnerable against s/l, so the name of the power set is in fact a little misleading. I think nothing can be done about it, it is what it is. However, when you're higher level with more inf, you can use IO bonus to patch up the weakness. The bonus works pretty well and it doesn't really take a lot of inf. So, I suggest that you just level up the toon and spend some time designing an IO build for your tanker later.

And actually, it might be good that you go through all these things. I think you should realize by now that you do need the support of other teammates even though you're the tanker. The game is designed such that you need other people. I think there is a bad culture that melee toons always think that they should tank all and kill all by themselves, and ask other people to stand back.

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Well, as a tanker I'm kinda thinking I should tank all, but not kill all, the killing is best left to blasters and scrappers. I just kinda feel like I'm not able to tank all, since I'm so vulnerable to anything that isn't smash/lethal. The tank all/kill all/can-do-everything-themselves tend to be Scrappers (no offense to the good scrappers out there, I've just met many scrappers who think they can do everything by themselves, having slightly less protection than tanker, but far superior damage)

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Back to the original post... Have you thought of a human form peacebringer? This has potential to fit the concept you're looking for quite well.

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PB has shields for defense, they have self-healing powers, they have various blasts available and some melee attacks. As long as you avoid the dwarf and nova forms, you will fit very well. Yes, power-wise they fit Iron Man well, only their origin is really any hindrance, since they're all natural, not technological.

While I'm not a veteran of 5 years, I've been in the game for about a year or so, but rather than having gotten lots of toons to 50, I've got so many toons spread out over the various servers and many been deleted and remade. But most of that time has been spent playing defenders, with some time spent on blaster, controller, a bit on scrapper and the least on tanker. It is only recently I've really taken up the role of the tanker. However before this I had no idea invulnerability was such a... well, I guess I'd use the word weak, though it might not be really fitting, set.

I've always gotten the impression that Stone was the one with most survivability, which made sense, since they had superior defense. Secondly came Invulnerability, which lacked defense, but instead had very high resistances (yes, getting not hit is better than just resisting, which was why I figured stone to be overall best, but invulnerability not far behind). Willpower was a strange mixed set, which was meant to be decent against everything, but not superior in anything. Ice was a defense set, less defensive than stone, but not having the drawbacks. And dark and fire were both less protective, more damaging, due to their auras.

Trick Arrow/Archery is also a very fun set, although it's probably far from as focused as most other power sets. In addition to that it is a set that is very endurance friendly and accurate, meaning you can save slots for accuracy and pre-20 you're not constantly having endurance issues.

Trick Arrow feels a lot like a bag of mixed goodies, having arrows that give -resistance, -to hit, arrows that give -movement and -fly, you can cause entire groups to sleep, so you can pick enemies one by one, you got an arrow that can hold. And oil slick knocks down and slows and can even deal damage if you set it on fire. You can't heal and you don't buff, but on the other hand you've got a power for any situation. EMP arrow is a strong aoe hold, though it's on a rather long cooldown and is very endurance heavy. Like Dark/* it feels a lot like a controllerish set and I have found it to be excellent for both teams and soloing.

Archery fits well together thematically with trick arrow. And with the -resistance in Trick Arrow, the resistances to lethal isn't as horrible late game, as it is for power sets that do not have -res. In many ways it's like any kind of blaster set, having a cone aoe, a burst aoe (with knockback), some standard single target arrows and a build up. One of the single target arrows is a fire arrow, which deals fire damage and lethal damage, good against very resistant enemies. Lastly we have a single target stun (not a bad power, though it seems to be more like it was meant to be a trick arrow) and let us not forget Rain of Arrows, the nuke of the set. It doesn't deal as much damage as the other nukes, but it doesn't drain you of all endurance and can be used once every fight (can get around 30 sec cooldown if slotted with recharges).

I'm not arguing that it's the most powerful set, but it is one of the sets I find to be most fun to play, because you've got so many different options and also deals a good damage (at least for a blaster I think)