Unthing

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It doesn't use any end though!

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Meaning?

AFAIK Permafrost provides you with resistance to 3 things.

1) 20% Cold Resistance, as Frozen Armour, Wet Ice and Glacial Armour each also provide 30% cold resistance for a total of 90%, this is of barely any use as 90% is the resistance cap for tankers. Also there is very little cold dmage in the game too.
2) Slow resistance, Wet Ice also provides slow resistance, with just Wet Ice I've found I could pretty much ignore caltrops.
3) 12.5% Fire Resistance, Frozen Armour also provides 12.5% fire resistance. I've found that the lack of Fire Protection is not a real issue against any opponents I've come across.

So of the 3 things, one is completely pointless. One is probably unnecessary and the other is covering a slight hole in your defences. It is the most missable power in the set, the second most missable being Icicles.

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I feel that dominators are, by and large, fine. They need to sort out the AV's to give us a fighting chance of being able to hit them, this whole purple triangles thing is silly. How can a dominator expect to see the window of opportunity amongst all the special effects a team of 8 Wanging on an AV can bring?

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Controller have the same problem, but unlike Dominators their secondary is far more useful against AVs.

The simplest solution I can suggest is making it so that the holds in both controllor and dominator primaries have a significant debuff component.

This would means that spamming the holds would actuallt be useful.

Also I agree that the purple triangles is silly. They have already got a better solution, the PvP one, so that holds give mez protection after they run out. Effectively meaning that you can only hold an AV for half the time, which is the effect of the purple triangles too.

I think the underperformance of Dominators against AVs seems to be pretty game breaking, I guess that is because of the binary nature of control.

In CoH all archetypes are useful against AVs.

In CoX I would say Dominators and Stalkers are probably not much use.

To me this looks like a unplayable build until the 30s. As you won't be able to scrap until level 26!

Spine Regen is a very expensive build. Spine's single target chain is very cheap ( Lunge, Impale, Lunge, Ripper ) but the AoEs suck endurance. My Spines/Regen runs out of endurance with 2 recharge and Hasten so I had to put some end reds in some attacks.

Impale is a must in PvE at level 8. You are you scrapper which means you need attacks. Barb Swipe is rubbish, Spine Burst is expensive, so you need Impale for your single target attacks. With Hasten lunge , impale , lunge works as a nice half attack chain when Hasten is up. When you get to level 26 Ripper fills in the gap.

IMO Murky Cloud is unnecessary until you have the end to run it ( post stamina ).

Slot Dark Regen with end reducers. At least 2. The heal is unnecessary as it gets you to full with 3 enemies anyway.

The damage auras... getting 2 damage auras and then only slotting one damage in them seems... strange. Only put one ACC in there.

Lunge should probably be 6 slotted in early levels and then respecced down to 3 or 4 slots.

I would 6 slot Spine Burst and Throw Spines but only put 1 ACC in each.

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What makes it worse was I was LFT for about 30 mins with Soloth yesterday, hunting slowly in Croatoa so I wouldn't be in mish and sending Broadcasts (saying Kinetics defender lft too) and no teams a-going.

I think I'm gonna have to start being pro-active (god I hate that word. I sound like a marketing campaign for Flora) and sending nice tells to people currently in teams asking if they've room for a Kinetics defender.

Thats probably my biggest issue with the char. I need a team or really I'm not at anything. Once I have a team, even a duo with a scrapper or blaster, theres no stopping us.

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I have given up passively looking for teams with Booster. If I want to play him I log in, ask on Coalition, if there isn't a team I go straight to the search window and send a nice tell to the first teamed tank of the correct level range. I can't duo with Blaster / Scrappers, my playstyle is too aggro-magnetic.

However Booster always had to beg for teams from the teams onwards, unless he had current speed boost addicts.

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''Soloing : You really suck at this. Far more than nearly any other AT. Ok at level 26 I got Transference and that helped a bit, but its so slow and boring soloing him
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just 1 word..no

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Hmmmm. Care to elaborate? No to what?

Are you basing that on the experiences of your Illusion / Kinetics? Because Illusion is superb for soloing post Level 18. Kin/Elec Defenders don't have the Deceives, holds & Pets to distract & disabled the mobs that any Illusionist has.

Although Unthing is right. Fulcrum Shift will make it a bit easier. But then you've another issue. At level 38 suddenly every Kinetics Controller can do every trick you can nearly as well. Plus they have Containment Damage too.

Is there life post 38 for Kinetics Defenders?

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I'm talking about kin/sonic kin/elec now tho..elec has held btw?..and a somewhat weak kind of pets...great end drain?..its not the most damaging and takes some time buts its not bad for soloing at all..its a bit better for teams tho and for solo I would go the sonic way..but neither of em sucks for solo

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It's so slooooooow though. I mean it took me ages last night with Soloth to take out one orange boss solo at 26. I've never had a character take so long. And boring too. Poor Mr Streng had no Endurance so he just stood there with a confused look on his face as I tickled him with Snipes & Lightning Bolts.

So yeah, you can solo safely I agree but its so slow you do "suck" at it. And Kinetics is the offensive set!

Roll on Fulcrum Shift

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Even Fulcrum shift didn't make solo much better for me. My controller ( level 21 Mind/TA ) solos better than Booster. Short Circuit is good but I still get an alpha strike which means I'm still at risk. Not so for the controller who is almost as slow at taking out spawns he can have the whole spawn controlled before he starts taking much damage.

Apparently some Psi attacks are completely untyped positionally, these are the ones that directly affect the mind, dominate and mesmerise among them. So SR does not protect against them.

The problem I have with these charts is that they assume certain things, such as taking all powers and optimal slotting. As a result it means it does not help you choose a set that may be good at early levels, only what you will be like in the late 30s - 40s.
I think you are far better off using Dr Rocks Sustainable damage comparison as allows you to judge more comprehensively the advantages and disadvantages of different sets and whcih powers to pick when. IMO This is particularly important for scrappers as they need to take enough primary powers to be useful.

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So my next powers will probably be Dull Pain at 12, Taunt at 14, Swift at 16, Health at 18 and Stamina at 20. That lot should allow me to scrape by till 20. I can then get another Invulnerability power (maybe Resist Energies or Unyeilding) at 22, Flight at 24, Hasten at 26 and finish off from there.

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Personally if you are going that route, I'd skip taunt and get Invincibility at 18. You need Invincibility at 18, it is the best power in the set for many reasons.

Don't get Resist energies and consider getting Unyielding earlier if you can manage it.

My general plan for a tank is to get 2 attacks and taunt before level 20 and then the third attack either in the early twenties or at level 28, depending what is available.

For an Invulnerable tank, the major problem you will have is the inabilty to keep aggro without attacking constantly. This will be an issue until level 18 when you can get invincibility. Taunt is probably the best way of solving that problem.

By level 10 I would have planned to get Temp Invulnerability, Dull Pain, Unyielding and perhaps Resist Physical Damage from the primary.

For your current build, not having Dull Pain is going to really hurt your ability to soak up damage, Unyielding provides minor resitances but has status protection and mezzing enemies start appearing around level 8-10 and just get more common as you approach 20.

You have 12 powers in total up to and including level 20. If you are planning to get stamina and a travel power this means you have 7 to pick from your primary and secondary. Generally this means 2-3 from your secondary ( Battleaxe ) of which you already have picked 3 and 4-5 from your primary ( Invulnerability ) of which you have already picked 3. Unless you delay stamina that means you have 1 power to choose between the 3 essential powers Invincibilty, Unyielding and Dull Pain.

Tank Builds are tight.

Fire Secondary is mostly PbAoEs.

This makes it bad for a blapping set but good for team support in a good team so long as you have a tank keeping aggro or a controller holding. I wouldn't be suprised if a /Fire could wipe out a spawn without even worrying about their primary within one attack chain if someone bunched them up enough.

IIRC the AoEs are Combustion ( large ), FSC ( small ), Blazing Aura ( small ), Consume ( large ) , Burn ( small ) and Hot Feet(large).

I found Hibernate really useful for tanking higher levels than you would normally.

It's a good power when you get in over your depth or just want a little hit point boost when Hoarfrost is not available.

If you are doing it at 6, I'll come on with my level 26 tanker Flamedevil.

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Now I hate playing a fire tank cos of the nerfed graphics, they're nowhere near cool now

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So true i hate the new graphics, as for your build id question taking burn now on a fire/fire build unless your teaming with someone who can lock down the mob, burn is imo not any use to fire/fire now thanks to the major changes made to it.

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It provides 40 seconds of immob protection which IMO is essential.
It allows you to completely screw up the Artificial Intelligence of some enemies ( the 'I love melee' types ) approximately a quarter of the time.
It does moderate damage to all enemies near you, until they get out.

It certainly isn't as good a power as it was, but it still is of use to my Fire tank's playstyle.

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Death Shroud: This is fun early game (arrest 5 minions in 10 seconds) and devastating late game (arrest 8 bosses in under a minute). The endurance is a pain though. I don't plan on getting this until I'm raiding Hamidon, and can get some Nucleous exposures to raise the Acc and Damage of the move. This is more damage and almost half the end cost of quills, so if you want an aura for damage and not the -recharge, pick this. If I had it, I would go 1acc/2dam/3end redux.

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FYI the -recharge on Quills is in the region of 6% over time. Not worth getting for the mez effect IMO, get Death Shroud first, although the 2 of them together would be lovely. For -recharge it is Throw Spines that makes the most difference ( -20% recharge ).

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Also from what i've heard ancillary powerpools don't have AoE taunt but only have brute like single target taunt, so for serious ranged aggro control you have to wait until Fireball at level 47.

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That's what I was thinking, but then, you can't be too hard on fire tanks, given their relative fragility, if I was a fire tank I wouldn't want to be pulling too much agro either.

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My fire tank at level 26 ( not got Tough yet ) seems to be okay so far. Burn is reasonable damage mitigation in it's own strange way and Healing Flames is satisfyingly available. IMO taunt is not about getting lots of aggro ( that's what Combustion is for ) or keeping aggro ( Blazing Aura ) it is about getting the particularly bit of aggro ( normally 1 or 2 enemies ) that is going after a teammate who can't handle it without losing control of the aggro you currently have ( 4+ enemies ).

No. It can't be made perma, but Hasten is wise for a Ice tank as you have a few clickies that improve you surviability ( Hoarforst, Hibernate, Energy absorbtion ).

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Well, I suppose the best would be 2/3/3 really which I might get soon I hope. But I'll just stick with my 2/3/2 for the moment.

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Hammi-Os?

I'm not sure the concept of a soloing tank is a very fun one. IMO unless you are going entirely for street hunting, past about level 25, most things are not a great deal of challenge and take too long to defeat when soloing.

You seem somewhat accuracy obsessed. If this is a PvE tank what are you trying to hit? Invincibility gives an unslotted 2% to hit buff per enemy which should be enough to be able to hit anything you need to in missions with a single ACC. Especailly on Whirling Hands which you will probably be surrounded when you use it, 4 enemies and 1 ACC and you will be capping oranges.

I'm not convinced of the value of Build Up on a tank. However that is from having it with Fire rather than Energy Melee.

I would consider putting end reducers in your attacks, especially when you hit the late 30s and acutally have a few. Also Tough and Weave won't help either and Conserve Power isn't up often enough for it really to help a great deal.

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use my powers and use my fire mastery to get the aggro of enemys out of melee range

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Well, fire mastery isn't available until 41st lvl. So up until then what did you use? AFAIK a fire tank has no other ranged attacks.

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Fire Breath slotted for range perhaps? :O

Also from what i've heard ancillary powerpools don't have AoE taunt but only have brute like single target taunt, so for serious ranged aggro control you have to wait until Fireball at level 47.

Fire Sword Circle and Blazing Aura will taunt the same enemies. Combustion has a larger area and will get some outside your immediate vicinity. So aggro of the enemies around your tanker are well and truly taunted ( and heavily scorched ).

Taunt is not needed to keep aggro of a spawn in melee with you ( unless you are very low level ), it is needed to get those OUTSIDE your immediate melee zone, these are generally the ones who are most danger to your teammates.

Because /fire does not need a target to fire off either combustion or FSC you can leisurely target enemies outside the main melee with taunt and get them to attack you. This is one of Firey melee's huge aggro holding advantages over the other sets ( the other being the AoE heaviness ).

Also, one thing to note, Burn, whilst it is a PbAoE does not really help with aggro control, it makes it harder but does nice damage.

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The damage is unresistable so go make a stonetanker on dr rocks coh/cov comparison chart make a stonetank with rooted, no resists just health, haste and earths embrace and then make a regen scrapper with all its heals, no resists, health and haste and read the figures for sustainable damage. For me even in practice it stands out as completely obvious.


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Using version 3.2.0 of Dr Rocks Comparision program.

Stone Tanker running rooted + EE + health + hasten
Regen scrapper running integration, Fast Healing, Dull Pain, Reconstruction and Instant Healing*.

With 1x Defender spamming Heal Other and Healing Aura and 1x Controller doing the same.

Stone tanker 542 dps against all but toxic ( which is higher because of the resist in Earth's Embrace ).
Regen Scrapper 519.73 dps against all but toxic ( which is higher because of the resist in Reconstruction ).

The more healing support you have the less regen rate matters and the more being just a big bag of hit-points helps.

* I'm not sure it is fair to have a non perma power like instant healing in this calculation but I put it in anyway.

PS Without the defender and controller the numbers are 226 for the stone tank and 302 for the regen scrapper.

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1) I have the targeting drone and its 3 slotted with to hit buffs, do I therfore need any further accuarcy in my powers or is the Drone enoungh.

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Chances to hit against Evens, +1s, +2s, +3s, +4s and +5s.

75 68 61 55 48 41 - Base
90 83 76 70 63 56 - Unslotted Drone
95 90 82 73 64 54 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 91 84 78 71 64 - 3 slot Drone ( SO )
95 95 95 91 80 68 - 2 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 95 95 95 95 86 - 1 slotted attack 3 slotted Drone ( SO )

So a 3 slotted Targetting drone is a tiny bit better than a single accuracy. My Ice/Dev has six slotted attacks with 3 damage, no accuracies and an assortment of recharge and end reds. The only accuracies I have are in Freeze Ray and Bitter Freeze ray because when a hold misses it is often life threatening.

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4) I only have Webgrenade, Target Drone, cloaking Device and smoke greandes from devices. Is there anything else worth taking from the Dev pool.

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I have the same and Caltrops on my Ice/Dev. Caltrops is very useful solo, but it not much use in teams, except perhaps as a barrier between you and the melee toons. Some people swear by the trip mines and time bombs. I prefer being a purely ranged blaster.

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Out of interest, you weren't taking damage at the same time were you? I know I rarely get off an attack cycle from my /Fire blaster without taking a fair bit - and Defiance boosts the DoT part of the attack too.

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I probably was because they were evens. I forget Defiance even exists.

Generally for a tank I would recommend Superspeed or Leaping as Hasten ( speed pool ) is useful to speed up the long recharge heal and Combat Jumping ( Leaping Pool ) is a nice way to get a small amount of extra defence and superior combat mobilty at very little end cost.

For a fire tank as others have already said things are very different. You have no knockback protection in the primary, which bascially means that against certain enemies you can't tank. There are 2 powers from the power pools that provide knockback protestion, acrobatics from the Leaping pool and Hover from the Flight pool.

Here are the advantages/disadvantages of the 2 pools.

Leaping Pool :
1. Can get early immobolisation protection with Combat Jumping, immobs are a bad as knockback for getting a tank killed.
2. No extra slots need to be spent.
3. Have to wait until level 20 to get knockback protection.
4. 2 toggles, CJ and Acro, CJ is cheap, IIRC Acrobatics is about as expensive as Hover.
5. No special vulnerabilies.
6. Toggle on Acrobatics and Combat Jumping and forget about ti.
7. Uses 3 powers.

Flight Pool :
1. Must get Burn from the primary to get immob protection, however burn means you have to land during combat, sacrificing your knockback protection. Burn is availble at level 18.
2. You need to 3 slot Hover to be able to use it in combat. Fly also probably needs 3 slots IMO as it is a slow travel power otherwise. Hover with 3 SOs is about the same speed as normal running.
3. Hover really doesn't start being fast enough until SOs. But if you flip it on and off it can be workable with SOs.
4. Slightly better endurance usage.
5. -fly powers completely ruin your day.
6. Incredibly fiddly, you need a number of binds to be able to activate burn in combat in order to get your immob protection and then switch on hover again. It can be rewarding though.
7. Uses 3 powers including Burn from the primary, however if you were going to get that anyway it only 2 extra power picks.

Generally the Leaping pool wins, the major disadvantage with the flight pool are the landing thingy and the -fly vulnerability. However flightis still workable and looks cooler than Leaping.