Erratic1

Yeah, I really want to try Combat TP. Problem being I am trying desperately not to make another character (got as far as only needing a name yesterday before I stopped the process). I really want to work more of my characters in their 30s and 40s to 50 before starting something new.

Quibble: I know terms evolve and their usage and meaning shifts, but min-maxing has nothing to do with following a concept or not. The term which used to be opposed to concept/role-play was power gamer (at least 35-40ish years ago after I'd been involved with RPing for a few years). Min-maxing is a tool to achieve an end. It can further concept building just like it can further power gaming. For example, point based systems often did not give one enough points to fully represent a character. You might min-max to further your points so that you could pick up some extra skill/power to match the concept. Of course you could also do the same to try to end up with a more powerful character too. Don't even get me started on "Pay to Win" and how that term has shifted. Then I will become a true, crotchety, "Get off my lawn!" codger. 😊

Taking it seemed up in the air but the hazards of English. 🙂 I think my routine is to open up with DA and then pop it again the moment it is up. Give that a shot and see if it makes fight easier.

Heaven knows I tried and tried to find a Blaster I could love. My accounts (Homecoming and original) are/were littered with the attempts. It was not their frailty nor susceptibility to control that was an issue. I would start a blaster, really enjoy the low level play and then usually in the 20s and less often the 30s grow bored with them. It just felt too...repetitive. I tried making them more controllery and I really thought I was going to enjoy my Sonic/Ice blaster but nope, got tired of it. And then I came across Beam/Martial which kept my attention and enjoyment all the way. He is my first and only level 50 Blaster. Something about seeing DISINTEGRATION sends me to a happy place and was enough to get me over the 30s hump. I've made two more blasters since, but neither is out of their 30s yes. We'll see....

There ain't no shame in liking what you like. When I first started it was all about the Defenders. Then after a few disappointments attempting scrappers I came up with my DM/Inv scrapper. Tankers were something I had no interest in and avoided for seven years. Now I've got several. And it was only with Homecoming that I finally found a Blaster I enjoyed enough to run all the way to 50 (and I tried dozens). Play what is fun. You may never get around to some ATs but who knows. . . .you might.

You may want to reconsider skipping Divine Avalanche. The thing about the Defense bonus it gives is that the bonus stacks. Each stack lasts only 10 seconds but you're using Energy Aura, which has Entropic Aura that gives you a bonus to Recharge based on the number of opponents nearby. Its not hard to get a couple of stacks up. The upper screenshot shows you will have 0% base Melee Defense. The bottom screenshot shows Melee Defense at 35.21%--5.21% from Energy Cloak and 30% from having used Divine Avalanche again within the 10 second window of the previous usage. With a base recharge of 3s before you consider any Recharge bonus from Entropic Aura, its not hard to get to Melee Defense cap with no Recharge enhancements slotted. Being capped on Melee Defense means you really only need to worry about AoE and Ranged. The type of attacks that come from range are quite often going to be the damage types Energy Aura works on. You will have to ask someone else the distribution of AoE attacks but I suspect that is a less rosy situation.

In the following clip demonstrating SM/EA, Blood Thirst (the Build Up for the set) has just been popped to give 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy. It should be possible despite the poor resolution (only way to get the file to fit) to make out Recharge Time Bonus being at 20%. That value leaps to 42.5% after Savage Leap lands the character in the middle of the Freakshow he is facing. That is more than an Recharge SO would give but the character does not have any Recharge SOs in his attack powers. After leaping in with Savage Leap Shred gets used. Roughly 5.25s later Shred is up again. The clip ends with using Rending Flurry, which consumes the Blood Frenzy stacks dropping the Recharge to a mere 19%. If you don't like waiting for attacks to cycle, SM/EA won't keep you waiting. KRBW.mp4

EA and SR both provide a Recharge bonus via their skills. EA's depends on how many foes are around you up to 10 foes, SR's is flat (equivalent to EA having 4 opponents IIRC). SR has scaling resistance from 60% health downward--Subtract your current percent of life from 60% and that is how much you have. So at 25% life remaining you'll have 60-25=35% resistance to incoming damage (probably not Toxic or Psi). On my SR/TW Tanker (yeah, I'm that crazy) I slotted the Reactive Defenses IO that gives 3-13% scaling resist based on your life total to boost that since every bit helps. EA also offers a heal combined with 30 seconds of endurance cost reduction.

<_< *glances both ways to make sure nobody is listening* >_> Savage Melee/Energy Aura For those who don't grasp why, a brief mention of mechanics is included.

I have not used Savage Melee on a Tanker (yet), having it on a SM/EA Scrapper. You may want to refer to the following thread from earlier in the year for comments from someone who has played the combo on a Tanker: A Dark/Savage Build - Tanker - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com) One thing I can say from my Scrapper experience is this... In the thread where they dig into Scrapper damage (Scrapper Melee Primary Testing: "Standard" environment - Scrapper - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com) near the end you will see that Savage Melee is listed as one of the top performers once IOs are factored in and is still highly rated on just SOs. There is however a subjective feel which may be at odds with the actuality of what is truly going on. On my SM/EA scrapper it feels like I am doing more activations to defeat targets when Rending Flurry is not up than on say my WM/Shield scrapper. In fact I probably am doing more activations since when I am standing in the middle of a bunch of foes between Blood Frenzy and Entropic Aura my recharge bonus can get up there. It can be easy to focus on the greater number of activations than how long it is actually taking to bring opponents down. WM/Shield feels more like Thor whereas SM/EA feels more like Wolverine. Of course with a werewolf theme, wolverine should be right up the alley you're looking for (just a bit slower for not getting the boost from Entropic Aura). Edit: One other thing that occurred to me is that my calculation in my previous post only applies to the endurance spent on attacks. If you keep Blood Frenzy stacks up their bonus will be applied to all your toggles, at least until you use a spender (Rending Flurry).

Nicely done Virtual Green!

One thing to keep in mind about Savage Melee is the Blood Frenzy stacks also increase Recharge so you'll tend to be attacking faster. With 5 stacks you attack 20% faster while saving 23% on endurance cost. So your endurance usage is 1.2*0.77=92.4% of normal. You're saving 7.6%. That is not going to make much of a dent in your endurance usage.

Yep, or at least, that is how I handle it.

So much Bio bashing on the forums. 😢 There are only two powers which are difficult to thematically work with--Ablative Armor and Parasitic Leech. No other power in the set puts any more limitations on theme/background than say Dark, Fire, or Ice armors do. This is my Fire/Bio Sentinel, Mind Blaze. The theme at work is that the flames he creates are the end result of mental psychoplasmic projections. The aura around is body below is not from Bio Armor but the Bio Plasma (Body - Combat) aura representing the excess generation of psychoplasma during flame creation.

I am not happy with this but best I could do quickly (I have to start cooking for Christmas dinner soon and still haven't gotten dressed). What I was shooting for was the manifestation of life force manifesting more fully the further up the body you look. So the greens grow brighter near the top. I can see you use Bioluminescence and Fire and Ice. I went with more Fire and Ice saving Bioluminescence for the face. That way, while not captured in the picture (tempted to post an animated gif but as I noted, short on time), the greenish body parts pulse. It more plant and earth and less animal than the original...not quite sure its the right balance.

This is NOT one of my characters. I was going through my screenshots looking for a particular image and came across a screen capture I made of someone else's awesome outfit and thought I would clear out the junk in the image so I could share the wonderful job someone did. Enjoy!

Energy Aura is indeed fantastic but if for one reason or another the timing of when it gets various abilities is a concern, Electric Armor is its resistance based mirror which gets a lot of the same features. It too offers healing, endurance recovery, and a recharge boost (with the difference being its recharge value is fixed--you won't get as high as Energy Aura can get but you will never drop to near nothing against a single target either). And if an aggro aura is important to you, it has one.

Came late to tanking and have created six tankers so far. Other than two failed attempts--my first (Fire/DB I think) and third (Ice/EM IIRC)--I have enjoyed each of them (DA/Fire, Ice/Stone, Rad/Psi, SR/TW, and Elec/Fire [still levelling at level 39]). SR/TW started as a jokey self-challenge. I had heard bag things about SR tanking and decided to push things by grabbing an offense set that was slow to start building aggro. Thinking about how to address the weaknesses really fired the imagination and I look forward now that he's 50 to continuing to work on enabling him to handle bigger and badder.

Pair Gravity with Energy Assault and hold or knock things away as needed.

You take that back! 😀 Its all about how you justify the look. In the case of my Fire/Bio Sentinel Mind Blaze, his fire powers are of psychoplasmic origin--emergent flame as a result of projections from the psychic plane. Yeah, yeah. . .it is probably time to update the costume. I'm thinking something with a heavily white base.

As has been noted upthread, respecs exist in the game and it can be helpful when levelling to keep that in mind. I started online play back when MU*s were a thing and so came up in settings where rebuilding your character was not a thing. So I tend to horde my respecs. Even so I have come around to intentionally spending them at certain points. Early on I want enough attacks to not be standing there with mobs in my face waiting on powers to recycle. I may not keep the T1 or T2 power from a particular set in the end, but early on I generally take both for the reason given. By the time SOs come available there are enough power choices that I usually plan my first respec then. Not all T9s are great to have but generally reading up on the powerset will let you know that well in advance so you can decide to skip it or if necessary use it as a mule for IOs.

biostem, I think that costume is about as perfect as can be had excluding minor tweaks for individual subjective tastes. As for the antenna, single comm or double comm would work depending on how retro a look you are shooting for. Personally I favor going without antenna. In the realm of utter subjectivity, I would go for a deeper brown on the gloves, belt, and boots to shoot for a slightly retro feel ala 30/40s Rocketeer wearing leather even if the boots clearly aren't leather. I also tweaked the colors on the chest and wings for a slightly more modern feel. Work is determined that I actually do work, so I did not have time to properly clean up where one of those annoying buttons overlapped an ankle, but the above should get the general idea across. Edit: Got a bit of time to clean up that ankle. 🙂 Free-Flier 1a.costume

Tried to stick close to the original while adding a few elements to subtly jazz things up. As you can tell, I am a fan of glowing chest stars. Inferno Nova.costume

A couple of things I routinely use: Make use of emotes to catch your character in mid-action During costume editing you can activate your powers, so that's a good way to catch your character using a power if you don't mind a non-in game background. For in game power usage, be ready to grab the screenshot. Had a fantastic image from original release (two computers ago) of my character doing a Thunderous Blast where the Fifth Column seemed to be shrinking away from her that I caught. Probably tried capturing it a half dozen times before I got the perfect shot. Jumping and falling can get you nice poses. In the case of falling you may want to do it from high up to avoid xp debt. Full screenshots are the resolution of your monitor and you may be interested in a smaller section. Crop to what you want to show using an image editor. Often there is enough detail left. An example of capturing a shot using a power while in the costume editor: This one is a slight cheat as I removed most of the buttons near the character's feet. The Rotate (left and right) and Brighten buttons were easy--just clip a section of the image from the same height and overlay over the buttons to get rid of them. Load and Zoom buttons took a bit more effort, which I can go into if you're inclined to do minor surgery for a clutter free screenshot. The Darken button would have only been a bit more involved and was left in to indicate what was removed (and because I'm lazy and thinking about dinner).

I know this was stated a month ago, but I have just come back to the game, happened to be reading the thread, and this caught my eye and reminded me of a test I had performed on the matter: Found a building, leapt off it, checked the resistance I had once I hit. 465.2 / 1372.5 = 0.33894 or 33.894% 33.894 + 26 = 59.894 ~ 60% Did something change or is the gain non-linear? Original thread: Bring the mocking and derision: I made a SR/TW Tanker - Tanker - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)