Unthing

Does anyone know what the -recharge debuff is on Quills, or any other Spines attacks come to think of it.

I was just wondering if Quills might be better damage mitigation than tough, although it will clearly be less good at dealing with alpha strikes.

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Im afraid you're not thinking in Brute's weave but in general weave.
2.5% base is for everyone but brutes,scrappers and tankers.
Weave base def is 3.25%(1 SO 3.9%) for brutes and scrappers and 3.75% base for tankers.
(maybe we aint talking of brutes...my apologies if i didnt understood it)

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Tanker Weave is 4.33% IIRC rather than 3.75%. Scrappers and brutes are as you say.

Okay everyone has given opinion posts.

Here are some numbers.

Tough is 7.5% resistance to S/L damage. ( 12% enhanced )
Weave is 2.5% defence to pretty much everything ( not AoE or Psi I think ), in also gives protection to immobolisation. ( 4% enhanced )

Both are reasonably expensive toggles, taking about 0.3 end per second.
No other pool powers do what Tough does but the Epic ones do it about 3 times better for the same cost. So Tough is basically rubbish. 10% resistance on a blaster isn't going to stop you being 2-3 shotted by a boss.
Combat Jumping does the same as weave and has about 1/3rd of the cost and allows you to jump better. Hover gives the same defence as Weave too but probably isn't as useful for a blapper. The other one is Maneuvers, again the same defence but it costs more than Weave and affects the whole team. All of these pool powers are tier 1 so you don't need to waste 2 powers to get them unlike Weave.

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Well I figured QR was better then Stam :P I don't think pool powers are "allowed" to be better then powerset versions right?

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I think the values are

Base Recovery 1.66 end per second
Stamina 0.42 end per second or 25% end recovery boost
Quick Recovery 0.66 end per second or 33% end recovery boost

Similarly
Health 40% healing boost
Fast Healing 75% healing boost
Integration 100% enhanceable + 50% unenhancable healing boost
Instant Healing 200% enhanceable + 600% unenhancable healing boost

As for taking stamina, my regen has had it since I4.

In I3 I wasn't high enough level to need it.
In I4 I needed it for running Instant Healing, Tough and Weave.
In I5 I had it for running Quills 24/7 and I was waiting for Focussed Accuracy. Also by this time I was in the mid 30s and so I had some heavy attacks. With 6 slotted QR and 3 slotted Stamina I never ran out of stamina unless sapped so I was overdoing it.
In I6 I screwed up my build a bit and went for Whirlwind as a damage mitigator, this is very end heavy and didn't really work. I also run Tactics from the Leadership pool. ED has changed my slotting to 2x recharge + hasten for all attacks too so I drain my endurance faster than in I5. I am still waiting for Focussed Accuracy...

In I7 I shall probably get Tough and will run Focussed Accuracy and so will get stamina.

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My Ice / Strength tank had a very painful time soloing on the rare ocassions when I couldn't get a team, before level 24 or so. I was really able to ease the pain, however, by slotting my ATTACKS FOR ENDURANCE REDUCTION.

Just do the math. If Haymaker recharges in 8 seconds, you use it every time it recharges, and it costs you 8.5 Endurance every time you throw it...then you're burning in excess of 1 Endurance every second just to keep up a fraction of your assault. Makes those 0.3 End toggles seem awful cheap, don't it?

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I agree...

Also all the attack recharges and end costs work out on the same formula, so each standard attack ends up costing about 1 end per second, regardless on what it is.

Given that base recovery is 1.67 end per second and SO slotted stamina adds about 50% to that you really need end red in most attacks.

Shame we had to do it sidekicked at the end. Level 42s are just too much for a team of level 38s.

As a result no shiny enhancement

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There is a badge that is on top of the Hydra's Head if any one is intrested in collecting the badges, i will try and go 4 it when we are attacking it, if this is ok

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I thought it was under the hydra's body so you only can get it if you defeat it.

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Seems like a good power choice selection. It leaves 16, 18 and 20 to get the fitness pool.

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Doesn't Glacial armour slip in there at 18? If so, stamina may have to wait until 22.


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Yes but you don't really have the endurance to use it at 18. I got it at 24, which was a little late as the Council galaxies were becoming a pain. 22 should be fine for Glacial Armour.

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... taunt is for regaining any lost aggro or initiating combat.

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Taunt is also for pulling in those pesky cave missions where groups stand too close to charge in without aggroing a second group and getting overwhelmed. This can be a problem especially if solo.

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Pullling = initiating combat. Taunt is good for pulling whole spawns, especially round corners to group them. It depends on your playstyle, I felt I needed it at 10 for the reason you describe. I would leave the decision until level 10 and decide then. As an Ice/Fire you need to keep everyone in chilling embrace to get it's benefits, anyone in Chilloing Embrace should also get hit by Combustion so you are sorted.

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Defence buffs TOs hardly make any difference.

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I tend to avoid actually buying TO's, preferring to save cash for DO's as soon as they are available. I slot what drops if it is immediately useful, and do tend to concentrate mainly on end reds and accuracy in preference to anything else.

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I do the same.

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Thank you for the advice, very much appreciated and I am hoping that with a bit of guidance this will actually be a succesful tank capable of team and solo play.

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Both /Fire and Ice/ are good team players, the combination is probably the best aggro grabbing and retaining tank build you can have. The main problem you will have is dealing with bosses solo, they will take ages until you start your ST attack chain later on ( the 30s for my Inv/Fire ).

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Another thought. I heard if you SK the toons with guns to the 50s, the spawns ignore/cant do jack all to them while the hydra goes down. It seems that a lot will be in it for the XP rather than just the badge though, which is fair enough.

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Don't forgot the Hydra-O enhancement! I don't want to miss out on that. Sidekicking up to 50 might mean I don't get it ( perhaps, I don't know ) as they have been messing about with the enehancement level drops recently.

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I am going to have to ask about wet ice though - with a magic origin I will be fighting CoT fairly early on. Wouldn't wet ice be better taken earlier rather than later? Though I suppose 8 isn't really all that late, thinking about it.

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The first heavy mezzer I encountered was Frostfire. Only CoT bosses mez AFAIK. I got Wet Ice at 6 and Hoarforst at 8 and I don't think I needed Wet Ice between 6 and 8.

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Level 1 - Frozen Armour + Scorch
Level 2 - Chilling Embrace? (I am at work - is this available at 2?)
Level 4 - Combustion
Level 6 - Hoarfrost
Level 8 - Wet Ice
Level 10 - Taunt
Level 12 - Air Superiority
Level 14 - Fly

How's that for a start? Slotting will focus primarily on defences, attacks getting an acc and a damage each, defences an end rec plus however many defence buffs I can fit in.

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Seems like a good power choice selection. It leaves 16, 18 and 20 to get the fitness pool.

You may want to swap Air Superiority and Taunt around depending if you feel you are needing Taunt or not. I did get it and 10 but I like corner pulling and for you Air Superiority seems a pretty useful power for making bosses less dangerous. You should have no problems keeping the majority of aggro in melee with just CE, taunt is for regaining any lost aggro or initiating combat.

Defence buffs TOs hardly make any difference.
I suggest the following slotting principle.
Levels 1-11 : Slot attacks with Acc and end red. Slot toggles with end red only.
Levels 12-21 : Slot attacks with Acc, Dam and End red. Slot toggles with 2xEnd and the rest defence.

In the low levels I had 4 slots in FA and 2 in WI and CE. In TOs these were all end reds. I had endurance problems until I switched them to DOs at level 12.

Attackwise, I suspect you are best off concentrating on Combustion, it is a wonderful aggro grabber and does significant damage if surrounded. Fire secondary is pretty poor single target damage until later on.

IIRC Hydra Origin enhancements are given out as level 40s always, so I expect that the trial is aimed for level 40s.

What difficulty are we doing this on?

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With fire as a secondary, is scorch enough to see me through the first ten levels or so solo while I build defences or will I be needing a fire sword and/or combusion?

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Scorch is a bit rubbish but is one of the better 1st tier tanker attacks, I relied on it for my Inv/Fire for 10 levels however I would get Combustion at level 4 now that it is possible to. For solo tanking you will need to gather up enemies. Combustion is great in hazard zones too. You can survive on just Combustion and Scorch until the late 20s.

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With Ice, I am presuming that frozen armour, hoarfrost, chilling embrace and wet ice are all more or less compulsary to be an effective tank? Permafrost seems quite meh, icicles a bit love-or-hate.

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For a low level tank, I would get them in this order Frozen Armor, Chilling Embrace, Hoarfrost and then Wet Ice. Some people say Wet Ice should be taken ASAP, but I think that it is highly situational until you have DOs slotted so I would get it at level 8 or 10 rather than 6 when it becomes available.

I wouldn't take Permafrost. I wouldn't get Icicles until you have stamina and SOs if you are going to take it ( I did and I like it ).
The other powers are Glacial Armor, which you can leave until the early 20s, energy absorption which you should get at 26 and Hibernate, which I feel is underrated and you should get at 32.

I've only done this one once and it was with a team which was well organised. I've just been doing some research and it seems that the Hydra is only damage by particle beams and thermite cannons.

As these temp powers only work for people in the level range it is important we have exemps set up correctly.

From reading up on it this is what we need to do:-

1. clear 150 Rikti in Abandoned Sewers, the leader then goes back to the contact and gets the mission location.

2. Everyone gets to the mission location ( recall friend would be useful here ). We then all enter.

3. Either
a) Clear the Rikti spawns down to the shaft picking up weapons* on the way.
or
b) Stealth to the weapons* and tp everyone in turn to them. When all weapons are collected go to the cistern at the bottom. This needs someone with grant invisibility and someone else with recall frieng and stealth/invisibility.

4. When at the Cistern clear the Rikti at the generator avoiding the tentacles and the Hydra in the middle. After that clear the Kraken near that generator. Repeat for all 4 generators, stay away from the Hydra and tenctacles. Do not kill the generators.

5. Clear the tentacles. Don't aggro the hydra.

6. Split into 4 teams of roughly equal damage. Destroy the generators simulataneously.

7. The shield on the Hydra should go down. Regroup and attack it using the temp power weapons. Use pets to tank.

8. When the shields go down we will need to clear Rikti near the generators again and then repeat 6 and 7.

9. Large Rikti groups will teleport in when the Hydra hits 50% and 25%. These must be dealt with ASAP as a team wipe will take too long to recover from. So the tankers need to sort them out.

We need to make sure that we have enough weapons as they are the only thing that can kill the Hydra.

Gratz x 3!

Oooo, looking forwards to this....

We have

Trill Stranger ( level 38 Pb , Idris )
Hibernal Flea ( level 38 Ice/SS tank, Unthing )
Luc Sr ( level 50 Inv/Stone tank, Primaxi )
C0rp0ral Punishment ( level 50 Stone tank, C0rp0ral_Punish )

Not a very balanced team so far. Any more damage dealers want in. We could also do with more support toons.

I was doing some hunts in Crey's Folly yesterday and noticed that the tanker enemy stacking exploit no longer works ( where you could hit multiple enemies with single target attacks if they were standing in exactly the same place ).

I suspect this was fixed when they introduced that tanker AoE bug on test.

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Darkest Night
Accuracy - People thought this was 35%ish for ages, which was only put to bed when Castle posted it was around 18.5%.
Damage - Bang on


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Really, I thought that Castle ( or someone ) stated this was 37.5%. Do you have a link?



Also if you put a tar patch down, the damage debuff gets multipled by the res debuff of tar patch ( 1.3 for corruptors so I'd expect 1.375 for defenders ).

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It seemed to be a great success.
Quite a lot of people arrived early and many stayed until gone eleven when the party turned into a bit of a roleplay fest.


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My computer[s] didn't let me come ( due to the old one being dead and the new one not being built ). I turned up at about mignightish and it looked roleplayey and I didn't know anyone so I left...

Oh well...

No it does not stack with stealth, only SS.

Sorry, I think you are right there. 1 second for Invincibility, I vaguely remember that from some discussions, it's almost impossible to test though.

The others are every 2 seconds though ( not sure about Mud Pots as I don't have it on any other character ).

This means that Invincibility is one of the best auras for not losing aggro when you have it ( I found that from experience anyway ).

Chilling Embrace is clearly better though, it seems to enrage them more.

Gauntlet is not an inherent like the others, it is a modification to all tanker powers that happened in I2 or I3. AFAIK these are hand crafted per power by the devs.

My understanding of it is:-

1. All single target Tanker attacks are actually tiny radius AoEs ( which is why you can damage stacked enemies as a tanker ). They have a secondary effect of a Taunt effect with a larger AoE which has a taunt effect, this AoE has a 5 person cap, I think these taunts are subject to a to hit roll. AFAIK the base taunt duration is based on the base damage of the attack.

2. All AoE Tanker attacks, whether cone or PbAoE have a taunt effect which is the same size of the AoE. This will effect those enemies which you hit and has the same AoE cap as the attack. AFAIK the base taunt duration is based on the base damage of the attack.

3. All Damage / Taunt Auras are different.
AFAIK
Invincibilty, this is an auto-hit taunt every 2 seconds. I have pulled mobs from Fire Tankers with this.
Chilling Embrace, this is an auto-hit taunt/slow/debuff every 2 seconds. This seems to be a better aura than the others.
Icicles, this is a rolled to hit taunt aura with damage.
Mud Pots, this is an auto-hit taunt/slow and a rolled to hit damage.
Blazing Aura, this is a rolled to hit taunt aura with damage.

4. When enemies take damage or get debuffed you increase the tendency to attack you when not taunted using the normal mechanisms. When the taunt runs out they will attack the person they dislike most. The damage in the damaging auras does this, but so do the attacks of every other AT.

I like the multiplicative idea. It means that the silly situation of the fighting pool being really good for Inv and less good for the other tanker sets. It also means that the devs could balance it so that taking all the powers is not overpowered but taking less than all the powers is not completely gimp.

One suggestion I liked that someone suggested ages ago too was rather than having a linearly stacking damage resistance percentage ( as we have now ) was to have a linearly stacking damage divisor, so if you had a damage divisor of 2 you would take half damage.

However I don't think they are going to make any changes of this magnititude as they have less developers as they had when initially developing the game and haven't seemed to have made the game engine extensible ( like when they added toxic damage to the game, they could not add toxic defence ).

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Only the Devourers will run backwards and forwards between me and Weasel.

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Perhaps Devourers are resistant to taunt. None of my tankers have problems with them but they tend to put out a lot more taunting ( punchvoke, stronger Auras and the occasional taunt power ) that an /Inv scrapper would.

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You can not steal aggro from a taunted foe without taunt

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Again, untrue. Try the DE Devourer's, they will run back and forth between the two highest 'vokers. Be they taunt or damage. Stase and me used to play ping-pong with them. (Inv/Clw Scrapper and En/En Blaster)

As Bridger has said, TAUNT paralyses aggro. You can lock someone onto you using TAUNT for the duration, but Taunt in Invince-voke, Gauntlet or any of the other 'vokes just increases the aggro.

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I think you are wrong on this Silver Weasel. Anything that takes taunt enhances ( [almost] all tanker secondary powers and the tanker primary powers ) will use the same taunt mechanic as the Taunt power.

I think the ping pong you are referring to is because the taunt duration for the enemy you are fighting on Scrapper Invincibilty is less than the tick rate.

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Okay, hows this power-wise?

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It looks very defensive and hard to solo with but if you want to be in a team all the time it should be okay. If you want more soloability try moving Frost up to level 4. This means you will have to rearrange the powers.

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Gonna need more back-up info on slotting because I'd like to hear it from all of you and thanks for the tip, Unthing.

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Up to level 40 this is what I have.

01 : Frozen Fists acc(01) dam(3) dam(3) dam(19)
01 : Frozen Armor endred(01) defbuf(5) defbuf(5) defbuf(7)
02 : Chilling Embrace endred(02)
04 : Hoarfrost recred(04) recred(7) recred(9) hel(9) hel(11) hel(11)
06 : Wet Ice endred(06)
08 : Combat Jumping defbuf(08)
10 : Hurdle jmp(10)
12 : Icicles endred(12) endred(13) acc(13) dam(15) dam(15) dam(17)
14 : Super Jump jmp(14)
16 : Health hel(16) hel(17) hel(19)
18 : Taunt tntdur(18)
20 : Ice Patch recred(20) recred(21) recred(21)
22 : Stamina endrec(22) endrec(23) endrec(23)
24 : Glacial Armor defbuf(24) defbuf(25) defbuf(25)
26 : Energy Absorption recred(26) defbuf(27) recred(27) defbuf(29) recred(29) defbuf(31)
28 : Freezing Touch acc(28) hlddur(31) hlddur(31) hlddur(33) recred(37) recred(39)
30 : Frost acc(30) dam(33) dam(33) dam(34) recred(34) endred(34)
32 : Hibernate recred(32)
35 : Greater Ice Sword acc(35) dam(36) dam(36) dam(36) recred(37) endred(37)
38 : Hasten recred(38) recred(39) recred(39)

Pre Ice patch you will be using Chilling Embrace and CJ/Hurdle to gather aggro and Jousting.
Post Ice Patch you will stay more static and use Taunt to deal with issues. That's why I moved Taunt up to here, you could change it round though.
Pre DOs you will need to slot more end reds ( in Frozen Armour and Icicles ) as this is SO slotting.
Before Stamina and SOs you will have almost no endurance to attack because of Icicles, but on the other hand it is doing your attacking for you. After 28ish you will not be worrying about endurance because of Energy Absorption.

I might consider swapping stamina and ice patch but I would leave it until you are near level 20.