Toxic_Torch

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I thought maneouvres had been nerfed al;ong with the global defence reduction to something like 3% even when enhanced with 3SO's?

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Should be 6% or so with 3 SO Def.

Not that spectacular unless you have an entire team of Defenders using it.

Hurdle will still do more for you than Swift since you aren't using Stealth, Fly or Teleport.

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Cleary you never partied with a dedicated empath or a fulltank tanker... And judging what are 'bad' characters, wrong again.

I can name several sets that even taking every single power of prim and sec, still cant solo very well.

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I've never seen a situation where a "pure" Empath was needed. Nor a "pure" Tank. Unless of course you're talking about something like herding an entire 8-man outdoor mission on highest difficulty after ED. Then again, you'll have a small problem holding the aggro of that, or defeating it the same way as before the AoE target limit.

The powers that make an Empath worthwhile to team with are the buffs (Fort, AB and both RAs) that let him/her concentrate on something else than the green bars. That "something else" preferably being defeating enemies.

Any Defender primary can step in and take over for a "pure" Empath, without going "pure". You just have to employ a different tactic than "Tank Aggro, Healer Heal, Nuker Nuke". The Holy Trinity of MMOs isn't required to run at the highest level of efficiency in CoX. You should try an 8 Rad/x Offender team at some point, you may even learn a thing or two.

You need competent players much more than you need specific ATs, except when the devs make something like the recent AV regen debacle. Then again, the player solution for that would you not find in any amount of "pure" Empaths or Tanks. In fact, both of those styles were counter productive in that situation.

As for soloing, you need to slot your attacks. If you do that then even an Empathy Defender with only two single target attacks should be able to solo his/her missions (barring EB/AV). Not at the speed of a SO'd Scrapper, but don't expect anything but a Fire Epic Controller to catch the solo speed of a well designed Scrapper.

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I don't know how much End drain the Fire Secondary does, but I'm thinking a lot. I'd slot more end reductions in your armour.

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Don't. Slotting your attacks for EndRdx will yield greater benefit. Unless you rarely attack, then again why would anyone slot Recharge if they don't plan on using the power(s) frequently.

Try doing some calculations on the end cost over time of a normal attack chain with and without EndRdx in the attacks.

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I'd try and slip Irradiate in rather than Assault - you'll be struggling for the endurance to run Assault

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Using Irradiate whenever it's ready, while in combat, is a lot more endurance intensive.

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Trust me, you WILL want hoarfrost. Not only is it non-interruptible and fast, it also heals way more than aid self, and because of the max HP increaqse, it will increase aid self's effectiviness.

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It _should_ increase the effectivness of Aid Self but it doesn't.
Any power that heals a % of your HPs (like respites and Aid Self) isn't affected by any HP buff, that's why a Respite used on a dwarf-form kheldian heals like 10% of your hp and the amount Aid Self heals is always the same, Hoarfrost or not....

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All Healing powers heal a static amount of Health based upon the level and AT of the user. Most healing powers scale at the same speed as the Health of the user making it look like they're calculated as a percentage.

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PvE Offender

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Drop the Snipe, you don't have a way of getting it safely off when combat is started. As a PvE Offender you'll want a decent single target cycle, Sniper attacks only help with this if you have Defense, ToHit Debuffs or someone else taking ALL the aggro.

Get Power Blast instead of Torrent at 4.

Get Torrent instead of ID at 8.

Get ID at 16 (instead of the Snipe).

Tactics will help you more than Explosive Blast. It'll let you slot less Accuracy in all of your powers, making it possible to slot for other effects.

Super Jump is way overslotted when considering Hurdle. You shouldn't be running it when fighting so the endurance cost isn't important.

Assault is probably not worth it. Especially not with the amount of toggles you seem to want to run.

Buckshot is about half the damage of Flamethrower, in aproximately half the activation time and with half the end cost and recharge. A decent filler attack for crowds. Missing slots for Buckshot could come from PFF, CD, Snipe or Bean Bag.

In any case, copy the character to the Training Room 3 or so times before you use the respec. This will let you test out a few different configurations before you commit to one on live. There are instructions for how to do this in the Training Room forum if you don't know how.

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And thay are Low HP... so what ? So is stalkers, and thay are only melee based

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There's a slight difference between Low HP and Low HP & Defense secondary.

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Short Circuit is a defensive power mainly - its damage is pretty low.

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It does almost as much damage as Ball Lightning.

And if you're going for offense then ditch Mutation before anything else. Both Assault and Tactics improve your offense, Mutation does not.

And Swift is pointless when going CJ/SJ, it doesn't stack with them while Hurdle does.

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08) --> Swift==> Empty(8)
10) --> Combat Jumping==> Empty

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Try Hurdle instead of Swift. Swift has no use at all if you're going CJ/SJ while Hurdle stacks with both.

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Would Hand Clap be useful? I figure it could be since Ice is +DEF so the less I get hit the better :P on on +Res you don't really need to disorient a foe.

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Trust me, AoE Disorient and AoE KD (but not AoE KB) is a godsend for a Fire Tanker. Every mob that has aggro towards you but can't attack is an additional mob you can tank above your theoretical maximum DPS.

That said, I see Hand Clap as more of an emergency power when someone aggros an additional spawn or two. You just have to consider if you feel you'll need such a power.

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Blasters (or scrappers) would help a WS. A PB would need tanks or defenders. Khelds attacks are 75% of blasters strength for melee and 62.5% for ranged. So I think two teammates would push the damage up enough to equal a blasters for melee and three would be needed for ranged. That's when comparing attacks with a similar BI for the kheld and blaster of course.

That's for unslotted attacks - I think you'd need 4 and 6 teammates once the attacks are slotted with SOs.

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Those estimates seem correct.

If a Blaster does 100 damage with a ranged attack then a Kheldian Human form will do 62.5 damage with a similar attack. If that Kheldian has 3 damage buffers on his team then he'll do 62.5 * 1.6 = 100 damage.

If both have 3 SO damage in their attack then the Blaster will do ~195 damage while the Kheldian will do 62.5 * (1.6 + 0.95) = 159.375. The Kheldian will need 6 damage buff team mates to reach the Blaster: 62.5 * (2.2 + 0.95) = 196.875.

The 1.6 is for 3 team members worth +20% damage each (ie. 100% + 3* 20%) while 2.2 is for 6 members (100% + 6* 20%).

Regardless of what he tries, the Kheldian will be capped at 250 Damage with that attack (4 * 62.5), or the equivalent of Aim (or 2 Enrage) + 3 Dam SO for the Blaster.

Of course, if talking Nova form then the Blaster is left in the dust from the start and only catches up when buffing gets high (Blasters have a 500% cap compared to the Kheldian 400% cap). Nova deals 120% of Blaster damage for comparable attacks and they start off with an inherent 45% damage buff (which shouldn't be included when thinking of ED & slotting). Using the above example, the Nova would do 174 damage without any slots or buffing with such an attack, 3 Dam SO would mean 120 * (1.45 + 0.95) = 288 damage. Or near the pre-ED Blaster damage levels.

Unless Nova attacks got downgraded in I7 of course.

Main thought: Stone Melee and no Fault?

That power can save your hide almost as much as Healing Flames, if decently slotted (Acc & EndRed would be primary). Another great thing about it is that it is a (short) ranged AoE, makes it easier to stop a fleeing mob or breaking up an alpha strike.

And Super Jump + Swift is not half as good as Super Jump + Hurdle, same goes for CJ.

Voltaic Sentinel probably adds more to your dps than adding a melee attack would. Do not underestimate an attack you don't have to fit into your chain.

Due to ED, 3 total slots in Stamina is enough, the remaining 3 will do almost nothing for you.

If you're going for AoE damage then slot Short Circuit for both Damage and End Drain (2 Dam/3 EndMod/1 Acc should be decent) while keeping Static Discharge. Slotted equally Short Circuit will do slightly less damage than Ball Lightning, add in Static Discharge and you'll have a decent 3 hit AoE.

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oh and just remembered as u are going human/nova i remember reading somewhere that slotting nova form 2 end mods and 1 end red is optimal although i could be wrong....

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Technically it would be 3 endmod and 3 endred for optimal Nova slotting.

To give it a little perspective, 3 endmod in Nova (assuming the figures I have are correct) would save enough End for one extra nova scatter attack roughly every 50 seconds. Slotting one endred in nova scatter would have the same effect and you save two slots....

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That is something you should always keep in mind.

Attacks often drain more endurance/second than your toggles combined while fighting. Slot that which takes most endurance and you'll see bigger returns.

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Obviously we want something other than a break free power tho...

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Mainly because we already have access to such through Clear Mind (Emp), O2 Boost (Storm), Increase Density (Kin) and Clarity (Sonic). Though Accelerate Metabolism (Rad) doesn't remove mezzes it reduces their duration and Dispersion Bubble/Sonic Dispersion (FF/Sonic) helps protect in the first place.

Only Dark and T&A lacks something to directly counter mezzes.

But a bar-click power that charges by the entire team's (including the Defender) attacks could be interesting. Something that'd be relatively fast to build up in a large team and extremely hard solo. Probably needs a somewhat slower grow factor than the Dominator bar along with a noticably faster decay rate, but it should still be possible to build it solo.

It could be interesting (but likely a coding nightmare) to have the duration of the power depend on the bar when activated. Something like a Def+Res PBAoE click could work, as could a Health+End instant recovery PBAoE click. It would of course need a decently long recharge and, if duration-based, should not be perma-able with Hasten + other recharge buff.

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I tend to agree about Nova actually. The reason I use it a lot when solo is that I have it and it's well slotted. The AoEs are huge, normally unnecessarily huge for solo missions. Skipping Nova would let you concentrate slots on human and dwarf attacks.

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An unslotted Nova is still higher dps than a pre-SO Human form, and you have an inherent endurance recovery bonus so you can blast more.

Taking Nova at level 6 will help your leveling speed more than anything else you can do at that level.

The main problem with Vigilance, or almost any other Inherent power you could think of, is that Defenders as a whole are just about as varied in playstyle as the other ATs combined.

None of the primaries play like each other at higher levels, while there are similarities there are also important differences. What one primary could use as an Inherent is almost completely useless to another.

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I dont see the point in voltaic sentinel, the damage is terrible and you can only have 1 out. It would be useful for someone who could not deal damage properly, but since your a blaster i really dont see the point. I had this power for a while, but as i got higher i found it useless, its not like it fires quickly anyway.

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You don't have to stop attacking just because it's out.

The only time you have enough damage is when you defeat everything you encounter in the alpha strike. Any less than that and more damage will improve your performance.

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But when I have domination running nothing gets a chance to Mez because it is Mezzed.

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You're not reading everything.

You'll be able to activate Domination while mezzed, if you have the bar high enough of course. If Domination didn't provide Protection then you wouldn't be able to do anything if activating it while mezzed.

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so IF its 12.5% or 15% total damage bonus its quite awesome even if the END cost is double nowadays.

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Damage buffs are always calculated from Base damage.

As a mostly Defense based Tanker you'll likely get more out of self healing than a bit of Resistance.

I'd take Scream before Howl, and possibly switch ID with Howl. Howl will simply be too expensive to cycle as a single target damage attack and sticking with just one attack is boring.

ie.

Level 4: Scream
Level 8: Howl
Level 10: Increase Density

Also the 3 Acc/3 Recharge slotting of Siphon Speed, is this a PvP build or do you plan on going up against +6s frequently?

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or ignore the fitness pool entirely concentrating on your primary and secondary till 24 then go on teh respec trial as early as possible and respec fitness in.

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Or ignore the Fitness pool and slot 2 EndRed in all toggles and attacks. Only recommended if you have slots to spare and lack powers.