Unthing

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The Reservoir Dolls, an all AR/Dev theme Sg on Union, has been going for a while. As a team they're pretty effective in pve. Granted we haven't faced an AV yet but it's only a matter of time.

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Multiple Caltrops and ignites should be enough to take an AV down pretty quick. You can use 8 Smoke Grenades to get a decent to hit debuff too, despite only being a 3.25% base.

Firstly Tough is pointless for a granite tank. Stone Skin with 1 slot gives you enough to cap your S/L resistance. Anything over the 90% cap is wasted because even -res debuffs don't actually take your resistance off, they multiply up damage. So you only need Stone Skin or Tough if you're going to stay in granite the whole time.

Tough and Weave do stack pretty well against the other shields, so if you are planning on using the basic ones the fighting pool still might be worth picking up.

Weave adds 7.8 defence. in granite this puts you from 28 to 36, meaning that you last about 30% longer unless def debuffs or to hits are present.

I don't think CJ works with Granite or rooted.

If you're going to be tanking higher levels, I'd definitely put 3 taunts in Mud Pots. I'd also be tempted to pick up focussed Accuracy or Tactics. If you get manuevers too, it will improve your survivability a little bit ( 10-15% ).

Most granites 3 slot swift.

I'd fit in Hasten. It improves some of your most important powers for survivability. Also glowing orange hands are pretty good with fire sets.

Permafrost has too little fire res for me to waste a power, you're capped on cold anyway.

The fighting pool on a Ice tank. I'd only go there if I could fit in Weave as well, Tough has a comparatively small effect on an Ice tank as there is nothing to stack it with. Maneuvers protects you better than Tough given your defence from other armours.

Aid self is meant to be good, I've never tried it on a tank. It certainly would be a better choice than Tough. For dps survival it is probably better than Hibernate, it probably needs more slots though.

Incinerate is a good one to have, but I guess now that veteran rewards are around, Sands of Mu probably fills in your single target attack chain ( I think of it as a Smoke Punch on my Fire/fire tank ).

As for the last power. I got build up on Golden Golem. However the last power always seems a bit pointless, as you can't really slot it well.

PS Don't you like hibernate? I find it's awesome. It really whacked up my survivability by a massive amount. I bind it to the ` key ( next to 1 ) so I can activate it at a moment's notice. Generally though I'll plan to have it go off about 10 before I activate it so I can really consolidate aggro with a taunt and a foot stomp. I guess though as I use perma rage, I am used to my aggro turning off every few minutes anyway.

If you haven't got Revive, I'd pick that instead. The same with Resilience.

With Unthing I came to the conclusion that there wasn't that much I could do improve survivability from a defensive point of view. So I ignored a lot of minor damage mitigation powers that previous builds had in order to run a regen blaster build using heavily slotted Focussed Accuracy and other powers from the Body Mastery pool and the fun stuff in my primary. So I picked more attacks, Quills, Energy Torrent etc.

I tried Whirlwind at one point as a damage mitigator, it rarely works in general situations and hurts your end lots, but I did use it to save my butt against some enemies. It's a bit less situationally useful than MoG but you can use it for fancy costume changes.

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I got an 1 acc, 1 end 3 dam and a rechg and i use foc acc or rage or both.

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1 Acc, Rage, Foc Acc and Invincibility ( 3 targets ) will cap you against +6s, assuming no to hit enhancements...
1 Acc, Rage and Invincibility will cap +4s.
1 Acc, Foc Acc and Invincibility will cap +3s.


1 ACC + Invincibility was all I ever needed for Golden Golem. Rage 1 slotted with to hit buffs and invincibility is generally better than that. I think I have Rage 2 or 3 slotted for to hits with Hibernal Flea and I think I don't use ACC enhancements except maybe on KO blow, which I hate when it misses.

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I don't know how recently you've tried it, but the rooting time of Burn was reduced quite significantly not so long ago. I find it to be incredibly effective - in fact I'd say it's by far the most effective and efficient single target attack on my Elec/Fire Blaster. Also a very good AoE attack when on a team, but both its DPS and DPE make it well worth using as a single target attack when solo.

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I've only tried Burn on my tank and have come to the same conclusions and that's without an Immob attack. It costs the same as a tier 1-2 attack and does the same kind of damage as Total Focus if it all hits.

I thinking of making a defender. I'm pretty set on FF. I like the idea of a blasting defender with well slotted attacks. I have managed to get a FF/Psi to 10 but I'm wondering whether I should try out a FF/sonic.

Has anyone got any comments on which I should go for?

Does the -res of Sonic Blast for defenders make enough of a difference to make you soloable, at least through the early content? I like teaming but toons I can't solo if I want to are always a bit off putting for me.

If you slot Rage for 1 or 2 to hit buffs and go perma, you can probably forgo the Accuracies all together, depending on what you're fighting, but it should be as good or better than 2 ACCs for a normal person. Remember you get a to hit buff in invincibility too. This is about 2% per IIRC.

As for slotting for Rage. 3 slotted for recharge without Hasten or 2 slotted with Hasten guarantees having Rage up at all times.

I've been having success with the flight pool for my Fire/Fire tank. In order to get decent movement you need Hover with 3 slots of flight speed. This gives you faster movement than base run speed. The main problem is you then become susceptible to knockback when some uses a -fly on you. However it is certainly workable.

Immob protection is vital. I use Burn from my primary, which has the downside of having to land to use it. You could use Cloak of Darkness from your secondary, which gives you stealth and immob protection but makes your toon into an invisible dark thingy, it also gives +perception and some decent defence. Another option is Combat Jumping which I believe you can still use when flying/hovering, this is very cheap to run, has no real visible effects and gives a little bit of defence too ( half of Cloak of Darkness ).

Generally there are a number of ways to go in inv. I decided to get

Dull Pain for heal/extra hit points.
Temp Invulnerability, Unyielding, Tough for resistance.
Invincibility, Tough Hide, Weave and Combat Jumping for defence.

This is concentrating more on the defence side rather than the resistance side, but it gives just under 80% S/L resistance ( plenty with high defence ) and 16% to other stuff.
It isn't the best defences an Inv tank can get, but I think it was a good compromise for my playstyle.
I didn't get any of the passives because I really like my secondary and ancillary powersets.

If I was to PvP I susepct this would not be a great way to go, I expect the passives and Aid Self would be more useful, invincibility is a far less useful power in PvP as you are only able to get the bonus of one person some of the time. Also defence can be easily bypassed with an Insight or Tactics.

However for the pre 20s I would just get Dull Pain, Temp Invulnerability, Unyielding and Invincibility.

Incidentally what level is/are your Ice tanker(s)?

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Is this an intended property of early-level Chilling Embrace, or is the taunt effect still broken on it? Can experienced players of Ice tanks please give recent anecdotal evidence?

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At low levels <5 Chilling Embrace has little or no aggro control ability. Also I believe gauntlet doesn't actually have any effect until level 5 either.

I know ( or think ) this because about 6 months ago I started a duo with an Ice/Fire and a Fire/Fire blaster. I was the blaster and was very suprised when the tank wasn't able to stop me from being ganked everytime I threw fireballs at hellions.

By the time you get to level 10, the aggro management of Ice tanks is solid though.

Early Regen is pretty squishy early on, as you have no real defences other than reconstruction. Try and get Reconstruction 6 slotted with heals and recharges, it is the power that makes the most difference.
Dull Pain isn't that great until you get SOs.

Integration removes the squishiness a lot. It is the power that provides your base regeneration.

Later on Instant Healing ( level 28 ) is a good one, it gives you 90 seconds of extreme regeneration.

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Dark/sonic is great damage and a lot of it comes from the resist debuffs so the whole team benefits. The AoE damage isn't great and by your 20s you'll really notice howl doing less and less.

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I have a Sonic/Dark corruptor. The 2 sets complement each other quite well. With Howl ( Sonic Cone ) well slotted you can do a nice debuff to an entire spawn. Single target res debuffs are really nice but only really come into their own on AVs. Resistance debuffs increase the effectiveness of damage debuffs too, so when you are fighting an AV he/she/it will hit like a wet kipper, meaning that tanking AVs is possible providing you don't get mezzed. Choosing Sonic blast turns the Dark Miasma set into more of a -dam set than a -acc one.

On the other hand choosing Dark Blast improves the other side of Dark Miasma, turning it into more of a -acc set. With Dark/Dark you can have a spawn of floored to hit enemies at level 16 ( tenebrous tentacles, Fearsome Stare and Darkest Night ). With Nightfall too it gets even better.

Goodbye Kin. Have fun in WoW!

I would not really recommend Breath of Fire, it is about a 10-20 degree cone with a 10 foot range. You are lucky if you get 2 people with it. Perhaps it may work with a Chilling Embrace with heavy slow. I would probably swap it with Icicles.

I would also consider Incinerate rather than GFS as IRC it is slightly better DPS and DPE.

I've posted this before, but... it depends what you are going to fight.

To hits against enemies White, Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, Purple+1
75 68 61 55 48 41 - base
88 79 71 64 56 48 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( DO )
87 80 73 67 60 53 - 3 slot blaster tactics ( SO )
90 83 76 70 63 56 - unslotted drone ( SO )
95 90 82 73 64 54 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 91 84 78 71 64 - 3 slot drone ( SO )
95 93 86 80 73 65 - 6 slot drone ( SO )
95 95 95 89 79 70 - 1 slotted attack 3 slot blaster tactics ( 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 )

My Ice/Dev blaster is pretty much PvE only.
I have 1 end red and 3 to hit buffs in the Drone.
I slotted my 3 single target blasts with a mixture of 3xDAM 2xEND,1xRCG and 3xDAM 1xEND,2xRCG, this is balanced for sustained combat and depends on your playstyle and end usage. I think I slotted Frost Breath 3xDAM,1xEN,1xRCG. Freeze Ray is 1xACC,3xHLD,2xRCG.
I also run Hasten.
This gives him a slightly better chance to hit than if he didn't have a Targeting Drone but slotted accuracy. For Freeze Ray, the attack that has to hit, I put an ACC in there for almost guaranteed hittage.

Treat PvP as fighting purples. I would say a PvP build shoulf have at least 1 ACC, 2 or 3 if you want to take down defence based builds.

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I've seen so many MMOs where the perfect build is all that matters, and I'll be honest, in many of them my minority builds have been kickass. CoH is probably one of the best games for minority builds because of the way the game can be played.

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Experimental or minority build are good so long as you realise that you might hate them. However I thing CoH does seem far more forgiving than some MMOs ( DDO for instance ).

I did an experimental build on Unthing at about level 38 or 39, this was in early I6. It was a Speedster Whirlwind build for a Spines/Regen. I had Tactics ( because I wanted to drop down to 1 ACC ), the Speed Pool ( obviously ), the fitness pool ( Whirlwind is end heavy ). From Spines I didn't take Spine Burst or Quills because I realised that for this build to work I had to jump in and out of melee in order to not run out of endurance all the time. Enemies in melee would often be up in the air.

This all sounds reasonably well thought out but it was pretty unsuccessful. A few weeks after I had it on live, with what was a hard to play toon they changed whirlwind to be knockback instead of knockup. The whirlwind concept was dead.

Just before I7 hit I started playing him again, I barely used Whirlwind, which was 6 slotted, so I had a fair few powers that weren't slotted as much as I would have liked. However once I got used to it, it wasn't really that noticeable that I was underperforming.

I found Twilight Grasp pretty unimpressive until I got SOs, I would delay it's slotting, but have it 6 slotted by the late 30s.

Tar Patch needs 3 recharge as soon as possible. The slow is unnecessary, you have TT for pinning enemies in place. The reason you want this is for the -res, to make the enemies more vulnerable.

Slot both TT and Night Fall with 6 slots, these are your most effective attacks as they are Cones, they also reduce the enemies to hit significantly. Slot for ACC and damage initially and then add recharges when you get SOs. Using them effectly does require enemies to be closely packed but that is easy using Darkest Night and Tar Patch.

I would put a few less slots in Dark Blast and Gloom.

I would delay Shadow Fall until after stamina, in order to get stamina earlier, you have 2 AoEs as main attacks.

My view on stamina for regen is that it can wait. Almost everyone else needs to plan for stamina at 20. Regen doesn't. Regen is not very end hungry. It only has one toggle and the clickies aren't that expensive. I would plan for stamina late. You might start needing it in the late twenties to mid thirties.

Later on in the 40s, depending on your picks you might find it necessary, for my Spines/Regen/Body build I certainly needed it ( mainly because of Focussed Accuracy and excessive spammed AoE attacks ).

I find that Hibernate is a far more useful power than Unstoppable. However they are completely opposite types of powers.

Unstoppable gives you moments of Godhood, followed by almost certain death if you in a fight when it crashes ( some people are very adept at preventing this ) . Used well it is very fun, especially against enemies that have been giving you trouble.

Hibernate is a great power for saving your life. I find that I use it every 2 or 3 spawns, it allows you to constantly tank closer to your limit without fear. It is good at giving a feeling of relief when you are taking a pounding, also it is quite amusing seeing a really dangerous enemy beating on your indestructable shield. The animation is good too.


From experience Combustion from /Fire helps cover Invs lack of aggro generation early on. Also Ice/SS works well because Hibernate and the defence debuffs protection from Ice help deal with the Rage crash from SS really well whilst Rage really turns your Icicles into a good damage dealing power.

If you keep rain f fire, be careful about using it in teams. Most of the time it messes stuff up. However it is great solo.

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I know aidself basiaclly takes two powers to get and hibernate is just one so there is a good arguement, also what secondary you have (hibernate after rage wears out is obviously useful).

I'm not saying hibernate is the worst powerchoice, I just find aidself more useful.

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Without doing a side by side comparison I can only guess, however I would expect Aid Self would beat in most situations Hibernate just from looking at the numbers.

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I've respec'd out hibernate and I don't use/need it, I'd get more use out of permafrost!

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That's because Hibernate is for tanking over your weight class. IIRC doesn't your build have Weave, Aid Self and Ice Patch? In which case it really is no suprise you don't need it. But for those of us who picked less pool powers Hibernate is a pretty good investment survivability wise.

I use it every other spawn on average. When fighting something tough I use it as often as I can. It makes a huge difference to survivability. The trick is learning how to not lose aggro when you use it.