Unthing

I would avoid the Medicine pool, get Dark regen, it is the best self heal in the game. It's only drawback is it's large endurance cost. Slot it with 1xACC, 3xend red and 2 recharge reds. If you don't run out of end you can fill your hitpoints to top every 15 seconds.

With Tough ( 3 SOs ) you can get to about 52% resist to S/L from about 35%, which means 25% less damage. Weave gives 5% defence ( 3 SOs ) and is a pointless power to get unless you already have Cloak of Darkness as they are almost identical. However Cloak of Darkness gives +perception and stealth as well as the immob protection and defence and I think it is cheaper too.

For extra defence consider oppressive gloom or cloak of Fear. Both are better defensively than Tough, cloak of Fear provides a 9% to hit debuff and a fear effect on minions which gets temporarily broken when the minion is attacked. My suggested slotting is 2xACC, 3xEnd, 1xToHitDebuff or Fear. It does cost quite a bit of endruance though.

Oppressive gloom does the same but with disorient, but sucks some hitpoints per minion stunned. It isn't broken with power use, so it possibly more appropriate with your primary and with death shroud running.

Also it is worth getting Divine Avalanche from your primary, if provides more defence ( at the expence of damage ) than any other power you can get.

What level are you?

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I think BA has a 10ft range, as Chilling Embrace, 15 ft is the range of Combustion and Footstomp and I don't think it's _that_ large.

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Well bizarrely Sherksilver's Hero Builder puts it at 8 ft, which seems a bit small, so I'll just shut up.

If there's space, I can bring the Hibernal Flea or Cryostrike.

Okay, I'm usually on in the evenings, so no doubt it will be some evening in the next week.

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Fiery Aura. Nothing holds aggro like it when slotted correctly and coupled with taunt, makes them so much more effective at aggro management than other builds.

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I take you never tried Chilling Embrace..
That's the best taunt aura you can hope for, the foes are aggroed for an astounding amount of time, it's by far the best taunt aura you can hope to have. If you add to that that in the set there's _another_ taunt aura(Icicles) you'll see that at aggro grabbing there' nothing like Ice Armour.

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Chilling Embrace + Icicles = the best aggro retention ever. Add Energy Absorption every 30 seconds for your end recovery and addition defence and aggro grabbing and you have a cool combination.

IIRC The only advantage Fire have over Ice in aggro grabbing is the range of the Blazing Aura is bigger than Chilling Embrace(10ft) and Icicles(8ft). I think Blazing Aura may be 15ft but I could be wrong. This can be over come with a bit of mobility. However on the flip side Blazing Aura is not auto hit.

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Overall you don't need to think much with Regen.

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I'd say it's the most fun, you have to pay more attention because at times your Health bar can go like a Yo-Yo. I'd say you need to think more - and be quick with the clicks.

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Yes, regen is definitely yo-yo health. React too slow and you are toast. In I4 regen didn't have to think ever. DA is pretty yo-yo ish but travels slower down than regen, but it has a better self heal. DA with DM is yo-yo health and endurance .

I don't know yet. When there is enough demand..

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succesfull thus boring.

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Ooooh uh! Boring is NEVER good!

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I'm not quite sure why he says boring. It sounds like a pretty standard tanker set to me.

One thing tankers don't get is the same edge of the seat feeling that blasting gives you. On the flip side playing a tanker well is deeply satisfying as you feel that you are letting the rest of the team perform better by
- Keeping enemies packed, allowing them to debuff / AoE more effectively.
- Removing risk, allowing them to concentrate on their job rather than trying to defend themselves.

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As for the primaries...

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Thinking like a Brute Unthing?


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DOH!!!!!

I've got the Speunker badge mission on my scrapper Miracinonyx.

Does anyone need it? I don't care about getting xp for it so any levels welcome.

PS I'm normally a Unionite so hi Defiant!

Invulnerability is a solid tanker primary that is a combination of good S/L resistance, poor other resistance and scalable defence but misses one of the key features of tanking early on... a taunt aura. It also is one of the 2 sets that is significantly better when surrounded than others ( shared with Ice ). It is best against S/L damage.

I have never played stone but it has a combination of reasonable defence , poor resistances and moderate regen. The final power Granite gives potentially permanent high resistance and reasonable defence a the expense of mobilty and damage/recharge.

As for the primaries...

Super strength is great for single targets.. It has a pretty lacklustre first power, but the level 4 power ( Haymaker ) is a nice hard hitting attack. It has Rage instead of Build Up, to allow you to permanently almost reach blaster level single target damage output and has a nice whopping great minion one-shotting attack in Knockout blow available at level 20. It's major drawback is no damaging AoE until level 38, which to me is a reasonably large drawback, however if you use Rage with a primary with a damage aura ( Fire, Ice or Stone ), you can make up for that. You feel powerful, but slow....

AFAIK Energy is much like Superstrength but gets it's AoE earlier and has no rage. It has 2 big attacks rather than 1 but you get these late at 35 and 38. Also it has stun rather than knockback as a secondary effect.

AFAIK Stone is like Super Strength but with slower beefier early attacks, however again, no Rage.

Firey Melee secondary is almost the opposite, it is AoE centric. It has a pretty reasonable 1st attack ( Scorch ) that has a long animation time but does better damage than most of the other 1st attacks. At level 4 you can get Combustion, an awesome power with a huge aggro grabbing AoE and decent damage too. Ideal for herding and teaming as yuo will always be surrounded. The set also gets Fire Sword Circle at 28 and so these 2 attacks provide your bread and butter as far as damaging enemies are concerned. The sets major drawbacks are long animation times and lack of control, which might send you dipping into the power pools for help.

Stealth stacks with hide, allowing you to become more than completely invisible.

This is useful for perceptive enemies in PvE who can see through stealth ( Rikti drones, snipers and others ) and for sneaking up on people more effectively in PvP.

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Are you serious? The Fire Primary is easily the worst of the tanker primaries at the moment - weak RES, no DEF, no knockback protection and a poor self-heal.

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The fire heal is not poor at healing, it is actually a better combat heal than the others. Where the others shine is that they increase your hit points by 60% effectively magnifying all the rest of the primary by 60%, that is their value of them.

Firey Aura is weak because it only has 47% damage mitigation*, compared to about 70%-85% for Ice ( except fire which is still >50% ) and 45%-75% for Inv ( except for SL which is 75%-90% ). Stone has about 40-60% pre granite depending on damage type but has regen to back it up, it has 90-96% with granite.

So as well as being the weakest in pure damage mitigation, it does not have the 60% multiplier.

*Damage mitigation = 100-(100-debuff)/100*(100-resist)*(50-defence)/50

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When I play my 21 tanker (inv/ss, all primaries fully slotted, taunt in secondary) I find that with a bit of care (e.g. occasional pulling) the team I'm in can sometimes even make do without a healing defender or controller (i.e. can work quite happily with a defender or controller with bubbles or storms and no major heals).

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My issue here is that there isn't always a defender/troller. A tank should be able to contribute in an 8 man team without a suitable defender/controller helping him. Now I have managed to do the 3rd respec with my Inv tank without dying with only a Storm controller but I can't imagine being able to do the same with my Ice tank.

Gratz on 50!

I suggest your next character should be :-

The amphibious Racoon Baby (Racoon-Baby, Racoonbaby, Baby Racoon, Baby-Racoon, Babyracoon)
Power(s): Earthquake generation, Matter consumption
Source of powers: Magic
Weapon: Web Rod
Transportation: Blind Chair

Or

The altruistic Martian Squirrel (Martian-Squirrel, Martiansquirrel, Squirrel Martian, Squirrel-Martian, Squirrelmartian)
Power(s): Computer hacking, Gravity control
Source of powers: Genetic engineering
Weapon: Martian Thingamabob
Transportation: Squirrel Stilts

Both generated by Lee's useless Super-Hero generator

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I say you bring Booster out of retirement and team with me for the next 15 levels.

I love Kins

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I got booster to 35 on Friday night so he's in....

He's a bit of a sucker for TFs too.

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NOTE TO ALL DEFENDERS:
If someone asks you to use one of your buffs then you're not doing your job properly.

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I think that's why I sometimes dislike playing my Kin defender, keeping speed boosts on a team is a pain.

For an empath with Fortitude though, they aren't many buffs to go round so I'd change your statement to

If someone asks you to use one of your buffs and it is recharged then you're not doing your job properly.

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Bottom line and what I think gives empaths a bad name, is that some empaths think of themselves as healers and that's all they focus on.

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I tend to agree there are some really bad empaths out there, not that there aren't good ones too though.

1. I slotted mine 3xdef buf, 3xrecharge. It provides 0.5% base def per enemy, but the first one counts as 5, so 3.12 + 0.78 per enemy. So you range from getting 3.9% - 10.9% defence per application. Unslotted for defence that would be 2.5% - 7%.
The important thing is that if you get Hasten, you can double stack it most of the time, meaning than you get anywhere from 7.8-21.8 extra defence. Given that your base is around 30% that it pretty good. It's a power well worth six slotting, If I could I would 9 slot it with end mod, recharge and defence.

2. Aid self verses Tough. Aid self is better for survivabilty from a self sufficiency point of view, but becomes pretty pointless if you have a healer watching your back, so it depends how muvhyou team. If you go with tough, then definitely get Weave ( perhaps instead of Hibernate ) , it will do wonders to your survivability, giving an extra 7% defence 3 slotted. I have that on my Inv tank. I don't think this decision would change for me between I6 and I7.


As for other stuff.

I'd advise six slotting Hoarforst. The Dull Pain/Earth's Embrace / Hoarfrost powers are some of the most importnat powers for tanker survivability.

Chilling Embrace might be better off slotting for taunt perhaps, until you actually get Ice Storm when the slows will probably be awesome. Slow enhancements only change the run speed of the enmey not the -recharge.

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3 slotted targetting drone is fine if you are fighting up to orange conning mobs but if you want to fight a lot of purples an extra acc enhancement in your attacks wouldn't hurt

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Accuracy for various slottings from this thread .

Against white, yellow, orange, red, purple, purple+1
0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5
95 90 82 73 64 54 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 91 84 78 71 64 - 3 slot I6 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 I6 drone ( SO )

So basically 3 slotted Targetting drone is better than 1 ACC in all powers.

PvP is approximately the same as fighting purples ( +4 ).

When playing a blaster remember that you are the enemies favourite punching bag. Don't let them!

So my blaster philosophy is when you [censored] off an enemy make sure that you can defeat them when they come to you.

I tend to alternate between picking off dangerous enemies and putting AoEs on the tank.

Each of the Primaries has advantages and disadvantages.

Stone Advantages : In Granite, the best damage mitigation, non-granite a regen tank. Aura has slow effect.
Stone Disadvantages : Mobility, has -jump and -fly in powers as well as self slow. Non-granite suffers from higher levels and high ranks until I7.

Inv Advantages : Slash Lethal damage and melee king!
Inv Disadvantages : Weak against non S/L damage types unless in Melee. No damage Aura.

Ice Advantages : Best Aggro holder, good consistant defences verses SLEN. Capped resist against cold. Aura has slow effect.
Ice Disadvantages : Weak against Fire. Suffers from higher levels and high ranks until I7.

Fire advantages : Consistant resistances verses SLEN. Capped resist against fire. Has the most usable combat heal. Most damaging primary from the best damage Aura + Burn + Fiery Embrace.
Fire disavantages : Weakest overall defensively, has no Hitpoint increasing power. No knockback protection meaning that you are 'forced' into the Leaping pool.

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Plus, Knockout blow has the funniest animation ever. FACT.

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Just imagine that on a 3' tank, like my Ice/SS. That's just painful...

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Well depending on how my end usage goes once I have DOs (Which might be tough as I'm on Union with no high level toons to feed my enhancement habit ) I might move Build Up to 24 and take Taunt at 16, Health at 18 and Stamina at 20.

I can survive without Taunt for the mostpart - I very rarely have to use it with Spad as CE does more than enough to hold aggro. Admittedly at some point between Lv10 and Lv16/18 someone is going to drag a mob off me, but with SS I can happily recapture the aggro with CE before the other mobs have started to move.

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I think I rely on Taunt a great deal for starting engagements, I think it is quite a big part of my tanking style.

I assume SS is superspeed. I've never used Superspeed in combat on any of my tankers, except as a fast way to close with malta Sappers before they drain me. Given that Superspeed suppresses and IIRC Taunt Auras cause suppression I'm not sure it will help.
I did use the Combat Jumping/Hurdle combo a great deal with Hibernal Flea, I found that it was very effective for kiting and jousting bosses, especially good against Atta's guards who hit a little bit too hard and often for me to be happy with. It was also in character too. Unfortunately that particular playstyle seemed to get less common as I levelled.

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The real problem is fitting in all the powers I want before Lv20. After 25 it's fairly easy.

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Gosh.

Totally already been pioneered by Unthing and I, last summer.

Spur of the moment thing as we both decided to make our 4th costumes beach wear and this prompted most of the SG to move to an Island near the Arena at Talos and boogy on down..

About 10 minutes later there was about 30+ toons there.

Probably helped that Posion VEINS was in the SG at that time too, so everybody listening to the radio turned up.


So yeah, should be sucessful. My beach wear is long gone though, got replaced by Elf-fox and then classy-fox.

Suppose i could reinvent it as it's almost summer (spring?).



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Just what I thought when I read that. Unthing still has the somewhat expensive ( 350k+ ) and rather tasteless beach shorts.

The only thing I'd say is how can you face leaving stamina until 20. I'm so impatient and taking it at 20 was great.

Similarly, despite the fact that I was going to leave it until 22 I got so annoyed with not having taunt that got it at level 12.