dave_p

For AoE damage, IM ranks behind Fire, SS and likely Elec. 4th hardly deserves a meh (esp since 2-4 are bunched rather closely together), but if you wanna get all subjective about it, SS tanks are pretty damn meh compared to my Fire blaster, so YMMV.

And SS's superiority over IM is directly proportional to how fast you can recharge Rage & spam FS. I've argued that a well leveraged Frost can close that gap, since Frost recharges far faster than either FS or FA. Still, Stars' charts puts SS ahead of IM and I trust his math.

IM's ST damage isn't meh. It's godawful pathetic. That's not subjective either--in the Oxford dictionary under pathetic, you can see a blurb about CoH's Ice Melee ST damage.

Dark, EM & Stone have by far and away the worst AoE damage among tankers, btw. Those are sets I'd call "meh" damage, but then I tend to favor AoE over ST damage, esp on tanks. No, I won't be soloing any pylons in my Stone/Ice tank (I mean I could, it'd just take me most of a day).

Start with that. Also, the bit about slotting damage powers for damage.

Every time I see a */Ice Melee build, I check:

1) Frost taken? Slotted?

2) Ice Patch at 20 or 22?

3) Freezing Touch slotted for damage (skipping shouldn't ever occur...)?

4) FA slotted for damage?

5) GIS skipped?

For more details on the secondary, please see the Ice Melee guide in my sig. Unfortunately, Ice Armor is the only tanker primary I don't play, so I got nothing there.

In the context of CoH, yes.

Yeah, no doubt. I've been asked for specific SO-only builds, which I've complied with, but I do usually add a frankenslotted build as a comparison and explain it's prolly cheaper to attain than the SO build just as a caveat & learning tool. I'll never just toss out a purped out or def-capped (on say a blaster) build to someone like that unless they ask for one.

Yeah, I quit around a year ago, but if I'd kept going at my then current pace, I'd be at around 34B even w/o accounting for inflation. W/the current prices, I would've been past 40B easy, even w/all the spending I've been done since. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there had 100B liquid, just for the hell of it.

I know guys in my SG who aren't even close to being big-ballers (who think *I* for all intents & purposes have infinite wealth, and I know I'm hardly a top dog) who are making 50M+ a transaction on some niches. These are relatively casual players who've prolly never even seen this board, but just through conversations w/me, and just looking at the market in general, are raking in prolly around 500M/mo, again doing very, very casual marketeering.

BTW, if you're talking about a single toon w/40B, that seriously would take a long time to set up. My 16B screencap (see sig) took me like 2hrs (including time to then redistribute back the inf) w/a very understanding SG-mate helping out. That's only 7 slots, so to fill up 20 slots (+your own cap, so 42B really) might take almost 6hrs. Of course, I was being *very* careful w/all transactions so as not to lose any inf--you should be able to cut that in half. Having said that, someone seriously needs to do this.

You could hit S/L cap w/your current build, or very close. Replace Hasten (you only have it 1-slotted, so I'm guessing it's not a big part of your overall play) w/Maneuvers, 3-slot w/LotG if you can afford it, 6-slot Taunt w/Zinger, and you're at 44.2. I'm sure you can find 0.8% somewhere else (like taking FA instead of PP and 2-slotting w/Rect Reticle). Going from 40% to 45% def makes a huge difference as I'm sure you know, but only you can determine if it's worth sacrificing Hasten and a few more slots from likely your attacks.

Oh, if you want some money back (say for some LotG), replace the lvl 35 Kin Combats in Brawl & Boxing (assuming you don't actually use those for attacks) w/lower level Kin Combats, and sell the D/E & trips for around 80-90M each. Also slot w/the A/D, D/R & procs, and whatever's cheaper this week bet. a lower level D/E and the triple. Still get the +def bonus for a fraction of the price.

Yeah, my Inv tank's def build has capped or near capped FCEN & Ranged def, around 40% S/L def and capped S/L resists, all w/1 in range of Invinc (so really, easy to cap all typed def). Plus much +recharge (for DP), +HP & +regen. Now *that*'s layered mitigation. Sux about those non-positional psi attacks tho...

My DB/WP has capped S/L def, 53% S/L resists and 750% regen w/1 in range of RTTC. My Kat/Regen looks similar, though uses DA for more def (and many clicky mitigation through Regen). More layered mitigations.

My FA & DA scrappers (and tanks) have capped S/L def, med-to-good resists across the board (save psi for FA) and a fast heal. Oh, high regen & HPs too.

My SR has capped positionals (and a bit of buffer), pretty much maxed out def debuff resists, high regen & HPs and AS. SD looks similar, but w/low resistances scattered throughout. Not really scared of much, but is prone to unlucky streaks. This is what separates the def-based sets from the res sets--you're more prone to unlucky streaks (WP/Regen also suffer from this a bit).

Bottom line, I like all my scrappers (and tanks), but I tend to prefer the resist based sets which you can then max out the def on, esp since they come w/a pretty kicka** heal (well, FA & DA do anyway). But as I alluded to before, if you're looking for the highest DPS builds, you can't afford to slot for +def, so SR or SD will often be your best bets for max survivability while minimizing your pylon times or whatever.

Not much, unless you're comparing them to the insane recharge builds, which you can't compete w/for DPS because you're focusing on +def sets. But my S/L softcapped Fire & Dark tanks & scrappers are amazingly tough, and don't give up a whole lot of offensive firepower (other than aforementioned crazy recharge). Yes, -def debuffs are a pain, but that's why you have layered protection--even stuff that gets through hits for less (thus the resistance), and you have decent heals to compensate. And it's not like those debuffs stick for very long, and again, w/layered mitigation, you can survive a complete cascaded failure far better than w/ just def (which, albeit, is less likely to face complete failure--in fact, SR should never see that happen).

Mind you, I like my SD & SR toons just fine--they allow me to focus more on offense (read, insane recharge) and a fully capped SR scrapper is very, very tough on their own (esp w/Aid Self thrown in), but I don't think it can fully compare to a def-capped resist based set in most situations.

Nicely done.

Just remember, there are only 10 kinds of ppl in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Fury sez:

Do eet! Show us your wealth!

Very well done.

Plus WP's FCEN def is already decent. Combined w/capped S/L and you're in fantastic shape. My WP/SS has capped S/L and around 42% FCEN, and around 720% regen w/1 in range of RTTC.

Yeah, I remember building for softcap 6~8 months ago spending laughably low prices and outperforming most purp'ed out builds (which themselves were relatively cheap back then). Good thing I stocked up on a lot of the now silly expensive IOs (which are still well worth it) back then.

Yeah, I'm tempted to say that too, but Regen's big weakness isn't usually "not enough healing," which is what Siphon Life gives you, but damage spikes, which DM doesn't do a lot about, to hit debuffs aside. I prefer pairing DM w/defensive sets (DM/SD here), so that you can heal back the occasional lucky shots that get through. Then again, you can't really go wrong w/pairing Regen w/anything.

You should never spec out of Rock, unless you're in Granite 24/7, which frankly is a boring & inefficient way to play Stone. W/Rock + Minerals, my Stony's at S/L/Psi def cap, which let's me stay out of Granite an awful lot of the time allowing me to do a hell of a lot more damage.

Since the OP specified Stone/Ice for RP reasons, I wasn't even going to comment on your build, but... well, it's pretty bizarre. Please try not to take offense at any of this, and I'm sure this build can survive a lot out there, cuz that's what Granite does, but it's really poorly built.

Why do you not have your armors IOed? You're using IOs elsewhere including some very expensive ones. If this were a pure SO, Granite-only build, I'd still say you're overslotting Granite for end redux. You have Tough (5-slotted at that) for what reason? Stone Skin w/1 slot caps your S/L resists. Same for Weave--you're so far over the softcap, you're just wasting end. Your psi def is negligible w/o your accolade temps (I was wondering how the heck you got it that high) and Weave won't help much in that regard. And what's w/the Stealth IO in TP? And resists in EE, no recharge? Assault/Tactics? Leadership & Fighting pools can be valuable to Stone tanks, but not used like this.

Small point, and one we've gone around before, but Ice allows for more damage procs, due to the slow effect, allowing for more damage, namely Frostbite can hold 1 more proc than Stone Cages. While that might seem minor, the AoE immobs can be spammed for some nice cumulative damage (end & recovery allowing), unlike powers like VG & even 'Mites that may add damage, but aren't up often enough to really contribute to your overall DPS.

It's genuinely hard to say who does more damage from my stable of Ice/Storm & Earth/TA though, since the secondary contributes so much. They're both on the low end compared to Plant & especially Fire to be sure.