runt9

I did read it. I read all 5 pages of it. I did that AFTER reading this one. I understand the logic behind all of this now. I also had another large wall of text written, but it decided not to post.

To sum it up... I don't like it. It's being done specifically to prove that INF doesn't mean anything and you want to burn it away. I just don't like it. It makes me wonder why I even play this game if there are people out there that are specifically trying to piss people off. I realize that people don't like Unknown Heroes. I realize people don't like EverStryke. I realize that the marketeers don't like RPers. But why? WHY must you do this? It just makes me feel bad. I play the game to have fun, and I like seeing the numbers go up just for playing the game. I am going to be quite disheartened to see you at #1... But like I said, nothing a 5 month veteran with 40-some-odd posts can say will change anything on your mind. I just figure I need to put my thoughts out here... You won't hear anyone else in my SG say anything because they're not a part of the forums... I guess it's stupid for me to even care, but whatever... I don't want this to seem like a rant, so much as just opening my thoughts. A rant would be me getting angry. I'm just a little... upset. I wish you guys the best though, and I hope you enjoy your newfound way to burn off extra INF. I just wish it wasn't Virtue... I guess...

I thought that buying Prestige was completely and totally illegal and against all rules in City of Heroes... Not to mention, you ARE spitting in the faces of people out there who are playing the game to see the numbers accumulate the fun way, and I'd honestly be pretty disheartened to find out you are cracking up the list on Virtue without actually playing the game the normal way, instead paying for all of your prestige. I mean, are you really doing this JUST to piss off people? If so, you're going to achieve it quite easily. And I'm sure you don't care because this game doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to most of the players in the top SGs. But hey, nothing I can say will do anything to change your mind, and I'm sure you're actually going to be feeding off of this...

Pardon me if anything like this has been posted before, but this is something that's kinda been floating around in my head for a while, and I just wanted to share the idea. This is right at the top of my list, along with radiation defense, of sets that would be fun to see.

Tier 1: Body Manipulation: You create a field of psychic energy around yourself, able to deflect away physical and psychic attacks from harming you or slowing you. This one is pretty simple. Basic Defense toggle, so 17% Smash/Lethal for tanks, base, along with a 20% Psionic Defense. Also provides some decent slow resistance.

Tier 2: World of Control: By controlling the world around you, you can push away the elements and energy from your body, stopping it from harming you or blurring your vision. Basic second shield toggle. Gives you 17% Defense to Energy, Negative, Fire, Cold, and another 20% defense to Psionic. Also gives a perception bonus.

Tier 3: Unbreakable: By having a superior control over your mind, you become highly resistant to knockback, sleep, hold, immobilize, confuse, fear, disorient, and repel, as well as defense debuffs. This is your basic mez protection toggle. Also comes with 30% defense debuff protection in it.

Tier 4: Empowered Warfare: You love to fight in the middle of enemies, because they empower you. By draining the speed and endurance of all enemies around you, your body becomes resistant to incoming physical attacks. The first enemy provides the strongest resistance, and each additional enemy after that adds to the bonus. This is your taunt aura toggle. It is a -recharge -endurance to everything around you (a small amount of each, granted, in order to preserve balance, maybe -5% recharge per pulse, and -2% endurance per pulse) and a +resistance to Smashing, Lethal, and Psionic for you. The first enemy grants the highest resistance bonus, somewhere along a base of 5%, then up to 16 enemies can contribute to the effect. Each one adds a 2% unenhanceable amount of resistance. The base resistance can be enhanced, however. This would put you somewhere around the 42% resistance mark fully enhanced in the middle of a 16 man mob. However, you're looking at a much smaller number 1-on-1.

Tier 5: Self Motivation: No matter how dark things may seem, you always find a way to keep yourself motivated. This provides you a significant regeneration boost as your hit points drop. You also are highly resistant to endurance drain. This power is a little different. First off, it's an auto power. Second, it's a growing regeneration rate boost as your hit points get lower. It's not meant to save you from the brink of death, but it's meant to make it easier to not die after a certain point. The cap of this is about 100% at 10% health, enhanceable to 200%, obviously. Growing to that point is along the lines of 25% at 75% health, 40% at 50% health, 75% at 25% health, and so on. This also will add a good amount of endurance drain protection, but no recovery debuff protection.

Tier 6: Drain Psyche: You drain the psyche of nearby foes, thus weakening their Hit Point Regeneration and Endurance Recovery and boosting your own. Drain Psyche from the Blaster Mental Manipulation pool, only with a 15 second duration and possibly a slightly longer recharge for balance.

Tier 7: Mental Disruption: By emitting a constant wave of mental energy, you can keep foes around you paralyzed and unable to move. You are also able to stop them from bringing your defenses down. Alright, for this one, think the Cloaks from Dark armor. This one is a very close PBAoE toggle group Immobilize. Mag 2, so only enough to take care of minions and lieutenants, but it is still useful for keeping mobs on you. Also provides another 30% of Defense Debuff Resistance.

Tier 8: Psionic Havoc: You can expend huge amounts of endurance to keep every foe around you asleep. Every four seconds, you send a pulse from your mind to put every foe around you to sleep. These foes will not wake up unless attacked, and are helpless while asleep. This one is probably the one that people will immediately look at and yell "SKIP!" However, it can be an extremely useful power, especially while soloing. It'd have some insane endurance consumption number on it, in the realm of 1.02end/s. However, it can essentially allow a single-target-based tank to destroy mobs. Keep in mind, though, that something like Drain Psyche, your way to keep your endurance afloat with the end-hogging toggle on, would wake up everyone in the group long enough for them to get an attack or two off before you put them to sleep again. It can be used for great things, but can also be a very bad power in certain situations.

Tier 9: Master of the Mind: You can dig deep within your mind in order to become nearly invincible. Your body is filled with power, and you become highly resistant to all types of attacks and cannot be held, stunned, confused, scared or knocked back. You also become highly resistant to defense and resistance debuffs, as well as slows, endurance drains, and teleportation. Using all of this energy, however, will wear off eventually, and leave you drained of health and endurance and unable to recover any for a short while. The tier 9... Basically, you hit this, and a large bubble appears around your head. You will gain +60% resistance to all damage types, 100% defense debuff resistance, and pretty much will not be mezzed, slowed, or drained during this time. It lasts for 2 and a half minutes, after which you crash. The crash is a 50% health hit and a 75% endurance hit. Basically, you can avoid your toggles dropping as long as you're monitoring it, but your regeneration and recovery rates will hit 0% for 10 seconds, meaning no amount of Drain Psyche will save you. It's meant to be a hard crash, especially if there's no healer around, but not enough to instantaneously leave you to die.

Well, there you have it. Sweet, simple, to the point. Defense-based with some strong regen and the ability to become quite resistant as long as you're in the middle of a mob. Basically, this type of tanker/scrapper/stalker/brute LIVES in the middle of mobs. "If you hit me in the first place, I'll absorb the damage because I have so many of you around me. If I feel threatened, I'll hit DP and gain a huge regen and recovery buff. If you still take my hit points lower, I'll continue to gain regen and be harder to kill. I'll also keep you immobilized and held while you're here." However, against an AV, this might not fare so well. You lose a large portion of your resistance, you lose a large portion of your DP enemies, you're basically hoping that your defense is enough to hold you upright after your Tier 9 drops. Hopefully that makes it balanced, right? At first look, this screams STF tanker, because it can burn through Arachnos and all their Psi damage. But Tanking Recluse might be a little difficult on this guy, eh? But hey, maybe you just found a tanker that loves Carnies!

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Concerns? Flames?

Here is a theory supported by multiple people in my SG. It's called the Purple Window Theory (TM). It's about as random and insane as the regular drop thought, however, it supports the streakiness that the RNG likes to do sometimes. We even tested it tonight and it worked! Here's what it is:

The random generator picks a time of day, then a random period of time from 3 minutes to 10 minutes. During that time, a purple may drop on, we have believed to be, a 1 in 750 to 1 in 1500 chance. When you are not in the RNG's window of opportunity, then you will not get a purple, no matter how many mobs you kill. Period. The support of this theory is as follows:
Over the course of my 5 months in this game, I have seen the following happen a total of 26 times:
Random person in Global Channel: "Hey guys, just got a purple!"
Within 3-10 minutes later, people in coalition, the team I'm on, and other global channels say the same thing. However, at any other time in that day, not a single person in all 7 of my global channels and none of the hundreds of people in my coalition got a single purple drop.
Or, as it has happened this week... At exactly 12:45:06 EST Tuesday, my friend got an Armageddon drop. That same friend got a Hecatomb at 12:46:26 EST Wednesday, and then we tested it tonight, and at exactly 12:43:55 EST Thursday, another Armageddon dropped, and 2 people on the same team got purples within 4 minutes of that one dropping. Then after 12:48, not another purple dropped the next hour they were on.

It may or may not be as random as people think. I also believe that there are 2 Purple Windows, one for your not-so-popular ones, like your Sleep/Confuse/Immobilize sets, then the one with the more popular ones, AKA the damage purples. It's a theory worth testing. I, personally, have only had 1 purple drop on me in the 5 months I've been playing (about a week ago), but I also play a lot of lowbies. My time spent on my 50s is miniscule compared to my time levelling up toons.

Either way, random is random, lucky is lucky, streaks are streaks. You play the game, you have fun, and you squeal like a giddy little schoolgirl when you see Recipe Found!

I think the initial SS/SD was meant as Shield Defense rather than Stone. However, Stone, once it gets granite, is one of the hardest-to-kill defense sets in the game. Again, though, once she gets Granite at 38, if her Speed Boost drops, she'll be running slower than a 2 year old. That's why a pocket kin is a necessary evil to any granite, until you're able to stack on the run speed bonuses from IOs (way down the road).

A Sonic/Kin Corruptor is outstanding at higher levels, especially once you get into AV fights. A Rad/Kin Corruptor is nice for the initial levelling, mainly up until you get SOs because everything you'll be doing on your Rad primary will be lowering the defense of the enemies, making them easier to hit. It all depends on how you want to play it. You can do 1 of 2 things to make mobs melt quicker. Take a lower-damage debuffing blast set like sonic, rad, or ice. Or just go for pure damage and take fire. Fire/Kin Corruptors are great, and you wouldn't regret making one.

That just counts for Gauntlet. That's been around for a while now, actually. Most Tanker powers show up as AoE because the taunt put in each power is an AoE taunt because of Gauntlet.

I know Rogues/Vigilantes can initiate paper/radio/safeguard/mayhem missions, but can they initiate TFs/SFs/Trials?

There's not going to be a lot of flipping going on right now, I'll say that much. The prices are going to become much closer on just about everything because of stock liquidation before GR drops on Tuesday.

However, this is also a good time to stow away certain things in your base or enhancement tray...
-Sovereign Right and the Purple Pet Damage sets - Why? Cause there will be a crapton of Masterminds raising the prices on these, and given about 2-3 weeks for people to get them to 50, they'll be looking at IO's. Right now, when you can buy them for bottom-level prices, if you look at the red side prices, even when GR hits, you'll make a huge profit. I wouldn't be saying this publicly if I hadn't already bought up about 10 Sovereign Rights. The best one is the Damage/Recharge, if I remember correctly, because it sells for 20 million blue side, and 80 million red side.

Yellow salvage needed for common IO's, especially damage, accuracy, heal, defense, and resistance. There will be a huge number of people putting their basic IOs in, and uncommon salvage will SKYROCKET. Rare salvage won't see much of an increase, but stocking up on uncommon salvage will either do one of two things: Turn a profit, or decrease your crafting costs later.

I'd stay away from loading up on your orange recipes right now. If you have any, get them on the market before it's too late. Straight up, the new merits and the number of returning players will floor orange prices to a fraction of their current price.

Otherwise, I'd stay away from the market until Tuesday, probably Wednesday, so you can see the immediate effects of the market merger before you settle into the number of niches there's bound to be.

I've never quite understood why macros are more useful than binds, being that they take up tray space so there's more to click, and many people still bind their macros to keys. Can't binds do everything a macro can?

I looked at the title, and the first words that came to mind were "Well, this guy's never seen me tank an ITF..."

On blue side, Pet Damage sets are going to be the biggest profit I can think of off the top of my head. They're readily available, relatively cheap because only really controllers need them, but once the MM's start demanding them at prices they're used to on red side, i fully expect the prices to skyrocket. I could very much be wrong, but I know I'll be buying and crafting quite a few over the next couple days and storing them away until GR hits, and hoping I turn a significant profit.

Any heroes with Pet Damage recipes/enhancements will need to cling to them for dear life, cause once the markets merge, the MMs will be raising the prices through the roof on those, and you can get a lot more out of them. I'm thinking of even buying up a ton of stock and then selling when GR hits.

Well, I had originally planned to make new Corruptors and Brutes, and maybe a couple masterminds as Praetorians and bring them hero side because I love villain ATs, but hate the Rogue Isles, and as such, won't play red side. Now with Doms having awesome power pool choices, I just might have to make a couple doms as well. But yeah, I know that they're unlocked at 41 whether you're a hero or not, I just meant that in the grand scheme of things, I'll be bringing some Doms along as my Praetorian group as well.

Ohmahgod. Doms with Rain of Fire and Fireball and Melt Armor? I guess a million and a half corruptors and brutes aren't the only things I'll be bringing hero side...

Well, this is sort of what I came up with as far as set bonuses go. The highlights are 51.3% Smash/Lethal, 50% E/N, in order to still keep me alive if a defense debuff gets through. That also puts energy absorption at 60+ percent on both. Also, 34% Endurance recovery added in to make my blue bar hurt just a little bit less if I end up waiting on a recharge from one of my saps. Speaking of recharge, I was able to get 50% before hasten, though it'll take a lot of merits and/or money to get 4 LotG procs, but I know I can handle it. Assuming I can time my Hoarfrost/Hasten correctly, I should have near perma-hoarfrost, which, with accolades, can keep me HP capped for most battles.

The problem is that with tanks, I love taking the fire ancillary pool in order to pick up melt armor and fireball, which are virtually impossible to fit into the build. But anyways, here's what I have. Have at critiquing it

Level 50 Magic Tanker
Primary Power Set: Ice Armor
Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Medicine

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
|MxDz;1390;691;1382;HEX;|
|78DA9D93CB52134114867B921943924902C190100810EE101 9C9CECBC2B204158B5|
|4858BACD43884165260A02659E8CE07F0157C10CB27F0AE8F E165AD9602F19CF337|
|16963BA76AFEAFBBE7DCE67477E5D182ABD4932BCA72AFEDF 9AD566DDD6FEEEAC0A|
|9F8DB8DBA8A28A57258A92DE807BAD9D2DE525DD7AE060FF7 83ACF950D17B5A7B0B|
|7EB08B61CF52734707BAD9F64E0689EAFEFE9E77BDB1BDD36 E34B75D992D6BFF802|
|63199AC1D68BD05AB8ADE6AD41B4D9D5E3C68D4BD453F68EF D42A7EABAD83C739AA|
|6686DE9751128B5ED509AB2E1A4CA9900D0CD16259253316E 31BDBC9D3512A2F5F5|
|ED1920557C75A121FFB06705370E6165012F32EE03579854D C2709150505D40AC2C|
|06066FC8CE819D728AB264510B23A68648871ED547D3A8318 AA2D077E4178751388|
|EC0AE010227812CB9264CB0C4B42CFD24D794F9A1549530AA BA578055416E4D309E|
|0E73BC29B4E13D79F5981FEA4107D3E8601A1D9C4261614AD 80B3BBBB7DFE20867F|
|3C080203728982D0846C93C83FA4219B4AEEF2F0C9141D6FC 4056BAF1812AE95731|
|A9BF1F95E41DA0156297E28878164BA771485E0372043ACEC 0A710E71EFC0C7C118|
|C7C051063045EC394BD607A5558911F1C5A05D68075C1EC6D C1DC86E023E51A3635|
|0F23D051945B8AF4A3483F86F463483F86F4E3483F0EAF63F 29A40207B027B34891|
|D9BC4564D62ABCC1ED954EDB4A9763A26A5CCC4011748A0DA A4A08C1DFB4E494A48|
|E294EE4BBC733EB009D405735B92644E0B7E909767BCBC5F5 2FBF943E0083816943|
|BF2437430186FC96BDE9CE4F9AC9C8041FBD495930D5EFE67 A56A9BDB4B2B96ACCC|
|D87F2E7427DA4D77085FFFF779EE9E848BAEF2C95A67A9925 81B3CBAC37297A7F77|
|8E4F36893A52EC7F0857B5270EA02D77591E512CB65960CD5 A79EB26584AF6C9CC5|
|6549B02459522CDD2CBD2C7996672C9DDFDEDAF4D1|
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

First, look at my post count and don't leave. I'm not some moron asking for advice on how to build a tank that will never die because I'm tired of squishy level 20 tanks. I don't start a tank unless I commit to it and really want to see it all the way through. I'm also not here to say "How can I make my tank do as much damage as a scrapper?" which I, for some reason, hear a lot. The only toon I have at 50 is a tanker, so it's the one that I know the best out of all the ATs, and the one that I've spent the most time in Mids' with. I'm looking for general advice and specific help rather than general questions about tanking.

Now, onto the matter at hand... I got an idea for a Stamina-less tank, and then doubled the idea. It's an idea to use the fact that using a combo of Fire/Dark and Ice/Dark will both have dual saps. With just SOs, you can sap once a mob as your blue bar falls a little low. It should be relatively easy to keep your endurance from hitting rock bottom, especially with Ice because of the really quick recharge.

Also, with the combinations here, you won't have Health either, so in theory, you might have problems managing the green bar a bit too, so I'm already looking directly at the Medicine pool as a direct replacement in order to pick up a self-heal. This comes in really handy with Fire/DM, because then you'll have Healing Flames, Siphon Life, and Aid Self to just stop your green bar from dropping too low. Even with Ice, they'll rarely hit you because of soft-capped defense, and a serious hit-point buff, so if they do, just top yourself off with an Aid Self, which is also a lot better in the Ice build because if they're missing you, they won't interrupt your heal.

So, it seems like I have it all figured out, eh? Far from that. One: I don't know much about the Ice and Fire primaries, so I don't know what's skippable and what's not. I'm also not sure on slotting in order to get the proper set bonuses. Speaking of set bonuses, I'm not sure what's most important. Regen and Recovery make sense right off the bat, so I'd obviously aim straight for Miracle and Numina's procs, easy enough to achieve with either making money or merits, but recharge is important in order to perma-hoarfrost, get your saps up as often as possible, and get things like healing flames or aid self up more often.

As of now, if I were to roll a new tank, I'd go straight for the Ice/DM because it'd play similarly to my Shield/DM that I've played to 50 and IO'd. My direct problem with Ice is again the same I've faced with Shield... Defense is great until the RNG decides to eff with you. When you've got 15 Cimerorans on you, and 1 of them randomly hits you once, your defense gets debuffed back down under the soft-cap, and with a lack of resistances, you're looking at a swift death. With Fire, you've got a big self-heal, good resistances, and you also get an extra damage boost, which, when stacked with Soul Drain, can put you close to the damage cap. Unfortunately, the complete and utter lack of AoE in dark makes that virtually useless to take down anything in the mobs besides Bosses, which I guess isn't a bad thing, per se.

To sum it all up, I'm looking for advice on build options, slotting priorities, and ways to make it more survivable. The pools I'm looking at directly are Jumping for Combat/Super Jump, Speed for Hasten, Medicine for Aid Self, and fighting for Tough if fire, or Tough and Weave if Ice. Anything you guys can throw out there to help me out is great, but if you happen to have specific builds lying around for me to take a peek at, I'd truly appreciate it. If anyone would like, I can post the two that I just threw together in my spare time without even bothering with sets, just so you can see what I'm aiming for. I thank any and all of you who offer your assistance

I need to go back and do some of these, it appears.

However, for me, the 3 most fun things in this game are as follows:

1st Respec Trial -
Anyone who plays with me knows my love of Sky Raiders and the awesomesauce that spills from their bodies as I defeat them. Few things are more fun than BSing with a team of 8, running around in circles atop the Terra Volta reactor with a big red bubble around you, waiting for a mob of Sky Raiders to appear in front of a door and scare the crap out of you, only for you to run in and kill them almost instantaneously. There is so much fun in killing Sky Raiders to me, and the respec trial has an awesome ending map, and all in all, I think the most fun I have in this game is when I'm doing a first Respec.

Imperious Task Force -
This is far and away my favorite task force in the game, for many reasons.
1. You get to beat up on Ancient Roman jerks.
2. You get to face an Archvillain who gets infused with Nictus and then must be killed 5 times in total (counting the time before he gets infused).
3. The maps are huge and sprawling, so a kill-all ITF can take a couple hours just because of how long it takes to find and kill every last Cimeroran, especially on the last map.
4. If you run it with something not at 50, you will gain a level. Period. The XP is insane. When you get to the 2nd mission and you jump into mobs of Black/White Dwarfs/Novas and they're all bosses and you see your XP bar just cranking, you understand. Not to mention that every crystal you kill spawns a mob with an EB, either a freakin' Minotaur or a Cyclops. Also not to mention you kill Rommy 5 times, for more massive XP.
5. It usually has the best drop rate. For some reason, I've seen more people get purples during an ITF than any other TF in the game. I've always gotten at least one rare salvage or recipe that's worth a damn anytime I've run an ITF.
6. Tanking Rommy is hella fun.

Hess Task Force -
Why do I choose this one? Because it was one of the first TFs I ever did, and I ran it last night and it reminded me of it's awesomeness. I love fighting Council, especially in the 20's before the damn Wolves show up. The entire TF is all in Striga, so there's no "travel to this awkward zone to kill 20 of this, and then come back", it can be done in 30-45 minutes, you still get 19 merits out of it, and the last room of the last map is just awesome-looking.

The other TFs are good, like I could run the new Posi all day long, but those three things are my favorite things to do in this game. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have some story arcs I've never done before that I need to do...

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_Merit_Rewards

Bam.

Being on a TF and having the server go down... It's happened on both of my two favorite TFs, Manticore and Imperious... twice each. The ITF last night had warning because it was time for the 4am PST shut down, being Thursday morning and all, but when the 30 minute thing came up I was just like "Oh I hope we can do it in time....."

I had a feeling I'd see this in this thread... I'm the Shield/Dark tank...

I do believe when playing a defense-based tank when resistance just won't cut it for you, defense buffs are the answer. I can tell the difference in how sturdy I am between a team with no shielder and a shielder. It's a personal preference and I truly believe that once I started having trays of purples and started kiting Mr. Recluse effectively, I was able to succeed at my task while the rest of the team slammed away on the Towers. We got it done relatively quickly once I got enough defense to keep LR from hitting me.

However, that was pretty sad that it took us 2 and a half hours to do a TF that should only take 1. But then again, I was the tank and it was my first time. I don't plan on doing PuG STFs anymore, just because I feel like it's only run the right way if you have a team make-up that fits the bill properly. I was truly worn out by it, and just finished up an ITF before the server crash because I like the ease of Cimerorans. My SG is Unknown Heroes. Stryker will be running nightly STFs in a month or two. I'm not too terribly worried about what happened as I know I will only get better at it in my SG.

I would like to apologize to you and everyone else on that team for my lack of experience, and my arrogance-turned-bad situation that cost us many, many deaths in something that should NOT have been that difficult.

My brother actually uses alcohol as a way to cure his cluster headaches.