What's the deal with Rage?

So my Shield-SS tanker is in the 30's.....

I am considering taking Rage again, but it's something I can't remember that well from my old school tankers..... how bad is it? The description seems almost unplayable from the crash.... but a lot of people seem to take it. What's the best way to deal with the crash?

Since temp attack powers aren't affected by damage buffs, they're also not affected by damage debuffs like the Rage crash.

I find that Ghost-Slaying Axe -> Blackwand -> Nemesis Staff exactly fills the duration of my Rage crash. Of course, you need to be 57+ month vet for that option. It's also a bit of an End hog.

Sometimes, I just use the Rage crash as an opportunity to pause and take a recovery tick.

It's far from crippling by any means. You just learn to work around it.

Ah, that's great info about the temp powers.

I only have Sands of Mu, and the Blackwand (mutant),... but I think I'm a 52 month vet right now, so no Staff.

I imagine you do have to take the end crash into account for your build?

Now the description mentions a defense crash, how bad is it?

Also it says your attacks are weakened, so... how does that work exactly?:

You rage, crash, low def + low damage kicks in... then Rage starts up again, and 'negates' the damage crash? Does anyone know the numbers on that? If you overlap is it mitigating the crash on damage?

My build is about 56-57% on positional defense.... so I'm hoping the def crash isn't too bad. (I imagine this is less of a concern for non-shield or def builds.)

The def crash won't happen if you have Rage active, so if your Rage stacks even a bit you're fine. The end crash and damage crash will still happen though, so you should consider the end crash while building your character.

The crash is -25 end, -20% defense, and 9990% damage for ten seconds. Taunt, heal, combine insps, resume killing.

20%? Gees... that is harsh. For 10 seconds? And this will happen every 120 seconds... that is definitely important to a shield tank.

My non self-heal build had nearly 60% defense, so I'd be down to 40%. My heal build is only 55%....

As shielders, we simply don't have the res to compensate. I wonder if those with even overlapping rage, do you use it in a team? or on task force, or going up against an AV?

The huge Def drop, as a shield tank, has me thinking maybe I should skip it. Shield has Against All Odds which is a nice little damage buff.

I rarely even notice the Rage crash on my Fire/SS Tank. I just keep punching things. Yeah, a couple attacks don't do anything except keep aggro, but I feel that's a fair price to do the ridiculous amount of damage I do on him.

ah... ok.

So with hasten active (I won't have it perma til 50) it will recharge every... 63 seconds and change... and lasts for 120 seconds. (without Hasten active, its about... 76 seconds, so I should still be safe.)

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but if the Def doesn't crash on any overlap of the power, what about the -damage, and -endurance?

Looking at my build again, even with a set of Gaussian's in it, I should be ok.

But it does make me think it's probably a bad idea for a Shielder like myself to 'use' it until he/she can make it overlap.

Bear in mind that ToHit-enhanced Rage gives you a buff of 30+% ToHit and 80% Damage. With enough Rech, you can get periods of double-stacked Rage where those bonuses climb to 60+ and 160.

That's where the tradeoff happens.

If you wanted to play conservatively, you could almost certainly manage to have the crash hit between spawns.

I do happen to think that the Rage crash is too heavy-handed... it was one of the few occasions where Castle let a bug up his behind override his sense of design. Even so, I still think it's a worthy power.

One thing I did to make dealing with the rage crash easier, was to have the damage bonus mod appear in the top middle area of the screen. If it's red, use vet attacks and other stuff. If it's green, business as usual.

You can get that through the powers menu->combat attributes->base->then right click damage bonus and monitor. You can then drag it around wherever you like.

I absolutely cannot imagine playing SS without rage. It's as important to the set as buildup is to a blaster.

The 10 seconds of no damage is really not an issue. Like others mentioned, I use it to taunt, use insps, and if needed, keep attacking with vet reward attacks.

That's fair, but like I just discovered during our conversation, and I don' t know if this is a limitation of Mid's, but AAO and Rage don't seem to stack. That's pretty stinky.