Unthing

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Best way to solo a tank is to do it on rugged you get an amazing XP per sec ratio as you are fighting yellows and oranges. Actually its probaly the best way to solo any thing.

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I prefer Unyielding. The smaller spawn sizes on Rugged are just Dull, Dull, Dull. I tend to depose of the larger spawns just as quickly as the smaller ones due to a large amount of my damage output being AoEs.

Nice build.

Good luck without stamina but I reckon regens have it easy as we only need one toggle. I still wanted it for the later attacks.

I'm not sure on the merits os Fast Healing and whether it is worth a power pick.

Mine is ( approximately )

1) Lunge
1) Hide
2) Barb swipe
4) Reconstruction
6) Assassin's Impaler
8) Hasten
10) Swift
12) Placate
14) Super Speed
16) Integration
18) Health
20) Stamina
22) Impale
24) Build Up
26) Ripper
28) Instant Healing or Dull Pain
30) Dull Pain or Instant Healing
32) Fast Healing or maybe a power pool ??
35) ?
38) ?

Obviously I haven't chosen the 28 or later powers yet.

I survived without Build Up until level 24.

Build Up is probably not essential but it is one of the better powers. It is also probably worth getting earlier than I did when it makes more difference.

However as someone said earlier, this looks like a scrapper build not a Stalker build.

I would delay or even forgo a passive to get Build Up.

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Fire is a great set and Healing Flames is wonderful (3x Recrd 3x Heal) what a shame none of the other Brute secondaries have such a good heal.

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Invincibility/Dull Pain, Dark Armor/Dark Regeneration, Stone Armor/Earth's Embrace these are not heals?

I think the only Brute set without a Heal is EA but they shouldn't be getting hit very often so a heal is less needed.

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Dull Pain and Earth's Embrace have a base recharge time of around 6 minutes and has a base hit of 40%.

Healing Flames has a base recharge time of 60 seconds and has a base heal of 25%. So in 6 minutes this can heal 150% of total hit points, almost 4 times more than Dull Pain or Earth's Embrace. So neither Dull Pain or Earth's Embrace are as good a heal as Healing Flames.

However as I pointed out earlier in this thread, Dark Regeneration is arguably a better heal power than Healing Flames.

The defence buff for stealth is tiny, around 2.5% defence. However given that you have a defence orientated set ( Ninjitsu ) it will stack and might become significant.

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Fire is a great set and Healing Flames is wonderful (3x Recrd 3x Heal) what a shame none of the other Brute secondaries have such a good heal.

It's not just knockback that you will struggle with as a */Fire Brute you will be held, stunned and asleep on a regular basis as your Mez protection is very poor. Fighting Circle of Thorns is not fun.

On the plus side it is a very offensive powerset that provides a great heal, an aura and an end recovery power.

As another option have you considered DA? Not as good a heal but similar levels of protection, an aura and some nice troller like powers later on but with superior Mez protection.

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I prefer the Dark self heal to the Regen/Fire self heal. I believe Healing flames is exactly the same as reconstruction, the regen heal ( 25% every 60 seconds ). This means you get 50% hp every 30 seconds with 3/3 heals recharge.

The Dark Regeneration heal has a recharge time of 30 seconds, provides a base heal of 30% per foe hit ( yes you have to hit ), but costs lots of endurance. I believe it is about 3 times as expensive ( hero planner says 49, but I believe they reduced it in I5 ). However with 1 acc, 3 end reducers and 2 recharges you can have a pretty good heal, 30% per foe every 18 seconds. I have 1 acc and 2 end reducers in it on my DD scrapper and it works pretty well and isn't a massive end sink.

Stamina is very useful, especially if you are going to run a second toggle and are finding yourself scrapping much.

Divine Avalanche, for when you get caught in a scrap perhaps.

I got Build Up later ( at 24 ) but I think I was relying on a slightly scrappier play-style. I got stamina at 20.

I get the impression Stealth is only useful for PvP. For PvE you are going to be more than completely invisible with Stealth + SS + Hide. I find Hide is almost always enough.

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Heh - I have one particular robots which runs off to close in for melee at the first given opportunity as well - always the same too
Perhaps there is some sort of suicide protocol built into them?

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Maybe he has a virus......

You've missed out on Placate so far. I believe your next highest priority is you status protection ( at 16? ) and then Placate at 18.

If you are having endurance issues then Stamina is a good bet, but costs you 3 powers and I'm sure there are lots of really juicy powers opening up in the 20s in both your primary and secondary.

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Probably the only reason I'd slot an End Red is that my attacks chew through blue being a fire / fire, I know slotting an End Red in them is more efficient but I prefer to cycle my AoEs faster and be more accurate so that I can grab aggro. So every little helps especilly in a prolonged fight.

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I just run Hasten as much as possible. I have 1 recharge and one end in my attacks. I think if I put an end reducer in Hasten it would be better than a end reducer in invincibility.

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I suppose it all depends on how you slot in other areas. I believe that the changes to the Inv set is still under test in the US with the recent patch I'll post a link as soon as I find something.

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The recent patch ( thursday ) had some large changes to Invincibility in it. The US folks ( Tiffany someone ) are testing it but haven't really stated whether they are final or not. None of them have bothered to test to hit buffs yet.

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Yeah, I think the special is unresistable in PvP but not in PvE which confused me a little. Only noticed when my AS was doing very poor damage against CoT spectral knights, etc as they are smashing resistant.

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Spectral knights also have a similar resistnace to lethal. I can't one shot CoT spectral minions at level 26.

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I'd six slot Invincibility an End Reduct and a couple of to hit buffs, I'd keep taunt single slotted I only tend to use it to pull stragglers off squishies and keep AV's attention and as you can only affect 5 targets I'd go with recharge so you can spam it if required.

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The cost I've seen for Invincibility are around 0.20 end per second. I'm not sure that is worth slotting for end reducers.

If the invincibility to hit buff is front loaded like the defence is then it is probably worth slotting for to hit buffs. I would like some numbers if anyone has them.

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If you have any slots left Scorch is a good bet according to the American boards it gives a better DPS than GFS not sure how but... I also find it useful as a quick attack to fill a gap in my attack chain.

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Scorch is available most of the time which is why it has a better dps than GFS. Note that some of this may be out of date, GFS's animation time was reduced ( in I5 I think ). However the problem with a short attack like that is that it gives me less time to taunt and stuff. I will slot it, I haven't decided when though.

Golden Golem has just hit level 45 and I have no idea what to slot.

I run hasten as often as possible. I have all resistance toggles in my primary 5 slotted ( 2 end, 3 resist ) as well as tough. Weave is 5 slotted with ( 2 end, 3 resist ). Combat Jumping, Health, Tough hide are all 3 slotted. Dull Pain is six slotted. All of my attacks ( but scorch ) are 6 slotted.

Here are the options that I can think of off the top of my head.

Taunt, currently 1 slotted. Recharge or duration, recharge is probably more useful.
Scorch, currently 1 slotted, a power I do use but only occasionally.
Invincibility, currently 3 slotted for def buffs. I could put to hits or taunts in here. What is the current to hit buff of invincibility. I'm guessing it is in the 1% per region.
Unstoppable, currently one slotted for resistance. I guess putting 3 recharges would make it available about twice a mission.

Well I just started Masterminding and found that 1-5 I was really weak and my Merc was poo.

I was almost ready to give up and then I hit lvl 6 and suddenly my mercs were great, now I had 2 and they can do decent damage.

I was also suprised how good force bolt is as a power.

Power picks for stlakers are really tight. I had to put Build up off until level 24 and still haven't got Dull Pain at level 26. At least I can say I'm not getting any more attacks now. This is with regen which I believe has it easy compared to the others. 1 power pick for regen + status protection. The self heal is the other important one, which means I have only got 3 powers in my secondary ( Hide, recon and integration ).

So far I quite like the way my tank plays. I thought it would be worse than this.

I've mainly been up against Nemesis but I also did a few Malta missions and a carnies one ( no I didn't just tank the Strongmen ). I also did a mission against ghosts ( in Tina thingies arc ) and was suprised how well Invincibility worked. The largest team I was in had 5 people in it, in the ghosts arc and I was perfectly happy tanking groups of them.

I worked out my Inv tanks defence against non-slash/lethal and I have 13 base, about 25 against 1 enemy, 34 against 5 and 46 against 10.

However the real test is against the nastier enemies ( Rularuu, some Praetorians ) with def debuffs ( which Inv has no resistance to *hurruph* ) and a largish team.

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Drop the def in Combat jump. They will add a total of less than 2% defence. Put them in something else.

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I say just leave them until the 30s or 40s. You get 1% def for the extra 2 slots. Sounds poor but def all adds up.

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This is assuming starting off at the aggro limit ( 17 ) with the cycle down enemies feature and slotting 3 in each power. It also assumes no power pools.

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Good idea about using 17 as the group size, I will change my defaults.

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Using 17 as a starting group size will put Inv and to a lesser extent Ice in a better light.

However I don't think the devs actually expect us to fight 17 enemies.

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Actually that has nothing to do with the reason why Invincibility now gives a lower buff. Energy Absorption, which had the same change of numbers (14->10) still gives the same overall buff.

Invincibility was bugged from the start, this "fix" has been in the pipeline for quite a while now.

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For the first time I have Invulnerability scoring less than Ice in everything but S/L.

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Incidentally Inv tankers now have the lowest average in most situations unless you include unstoppable, this includes non-granite stone tanks.

This is assuming starting off at the aggro limit ( 17 ) with the cycle down enemies feature and slotting 3 in each power. It also assumes no power pools.

With power pools ( Fighting, Health, Combat Jumping and Hasten ), Ice is the winner.

I guess I have to relearn my aggro levels. I hope it doesn't doom me to a Stateman style leacher.

Weave for a scrapper has a base of 3.75 and it a very expensive toggle ( 0.42 end per second pre ED ).

If energy cloak is like Cloak of Darkness then it has the same base but is probably cheaper to run and has +stealth.

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DA is very end-heavy, I get it. So I'm assuming from the comments that Dark Consumption is a really bad end recharger then? I'd always been under the impression it was quite decent, but then my DM/DA scrapper is only a sideline and hasn't made it into the high teens yet.

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The disadvantage with Dark Consumption is that you need lots of enemies surrounding you to get full benefit. I think it will fill the appropriate bar when surrounded by 3-4 enemies. However sod's law states that when you need end and Dark consumption is available all the enemies are nicely spread and you can only get 2 in range. If you miss one of them you might as well have not bothered. This is because you only fire it off when you are low on end and usually this is at the end of a fight.

Also Dark Consumption is part of Dark melee not dark armour. Despite these disadvantages it is a good power, just not necessarily reliable.

Personally I'd like to arrange to get together as a team some time. Most of the time I've been on in I6, I've found no-one seems to want to team. Tank soloing is boring.

Last night was an exception but Giant Monster hunting isn't going to get me to 50.

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Provoke could replace taunt. Atleast Im hopeing it can.

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Heavily slotted for ACC ( as you have ) I don't see any reason why Provoke can't replace Taunt.

Super jump at 38. You must be patient.

Combat Jumping doesn't need to be slotted for end red. It costs practically nothing. Only slot your most expensive toggles with end reds. Slotting it for defence is something you should only do in the late game anyway.

Your slotting is wrong. You have picked 3 slots at level 5.

Start with this.

Energy Punch==> Acc(1)
Hide==> EndRdx(1)
Focused Fighting==> DefBuf(2) DefBuf(3) Defbuf(3)
Bone Smasher==> Acc(4) Acc(5) Dam(5)
Assassin's Strike==> Acc(6) Acc(7) Dam(7) Dam(9) Dam(9)

Probably best off slotting Bone Smasher at 11 to get it up to 5 slots.

Don't plan all your levels at once, you won't be able to see the wood for the trees. Stop at 12 and see what you have.

Then stop again at about level 20 and check again.

I've never seen the point of people posting a build that is 30+ levels ahead of where they are now. For a starting build I'd stop at 20-25.

The question, what are you going to use taunt for?

I used taunt in the following circumstances:-

1. To initiate combat, ie Pull and get mobs to follow me.
2. To take aggro off a teammate, normally this is using it as though it is single target ( any others are a bonus ).
3. To ensure big nasty foes attack me and not other members of the team.
4. To hold aggro ( I4 and before ).
5. To play aggro tennis with other tanks
6. In PvP.

I found in I5 that use 4 was redundant, Invincibility did that anyway. Use 3 may well be redundant too. Use 1 and 2 are the important ones, use 1 can be replaced with an Epic power, such as Fireball.

You have already stated about PvP. I don't do it enough to comment.

Which leaves use 2. Can you keep aggro off an ally who is being attacked by a nasty enemy with a ranged epic like fireball. Possibly not. But it is easy to test. Don't use taunt. However taunt is auto hit and has a longer duration.

I wouldn't level up without taunt. You might be able to get away with using fireball instead once you have it, but if you do you may have to slot it with taunt duration.