siran

I think I am with you Bubba. I was in an ITF (+3x8 not +4x8) with what looked to be a twinked ice tanker last night, and obviously watched quite closely. So Hibernate stopped him dying quite a few times, but he still died twice. .. and while he was hibernating he wasn't really tanking. Still it's a challenging project and I'm going to see what i can get out of it! Mitigation ====== The mitigation is 14% less damage on Mids (from chilling embrace), and the recharge reduction... Perhaps the -recharge will actually cause a measurable game effect . I'm certainly thinking of building for it, and maybe looking for procs that do more -recharge. Any advice on how to improve the mitigation would be greatly appreciated! When I get to patron powers I'll see if ice (and hence more recharge minuses) or darkness (and more tohit/damage reduction) are better. Most of my tankers don't need this help, but I suspect the ice tanker needs all the help it can get. Aggro management ============= I've got to the mid 20s and I don't see the magic in the chilling embrace and icicles keeping aggro: lots of other people seem to get the aggro off me. Mind you I don't normally have any problems with aggro management though: most people that get the aggro are twinked and can handle it for the few seconds that the monster exists post aggro being pulled Mitigation from primary =============== One reason I picked kinetics was that it's damage reduction should (hopefully) stack with chilling embrace, and the knockdown will help a lot (there's a lot of knock down!). Plus I've not played it a lot! So far the kinetics is great: looks cool, does decent damage and does lots of knockdown/range and other goodness Stalker/Scrapper =========== Again I heard the same thing Bubba. I'm doing the parallel leveling up: Kinetics/Ice scrapper and Ice/Kinetics tanker. We'll see how it works out. The T9 for scrapper does look nice. Especially as you can have shadowmeld as well... that's a lot of 'emergency powers that are actually good'. And I do like moonbeam on scrappers... Hyperstrike ======== As ever your builds are nice to see. Thank you. It's quite a bit better than one I have half worked out in my head. With a couple of stacks of the tanker resist IO it will look even nicer. I'm doing kinetic melee, but I think the core slots will be similar Brandx ===== Thanks for that encourage.I'm looking forwards to the magic when I get to the end of the journey and get IOed up.

I have more tankers than any other archetype. Several dark/, several fire/ a couple of rad/, a shield or two, a SR/, a stone/. I am now looking to try a new flavour of tanker, and selected ice/ I have to admit 'I don't get ice'. Numerically it looks just inferior to every over tanker (except maybe fire... but fire has lots of compensatory things). It has terrible DDR. It has terrible defences against nearly half the attack types: toxic/psi/fire and even the cold isn't great (it's just resistance). The resists are poor if not non existant. When I compare it to Stone or darkness it looks like a joke. Dark gets capped (most) resists, decent defences, soft controls and a total heal many times a minute. SR gets fantastic DDR super capped defencses, scaling resist (which scales all the way up to 90%). And so on. So what makes ice special? What is it that makes it worth playing one. What is the special gem that I can't see to compensate for it's massive shortcomings? I want to love my characters, and so far my experience with ice tankers is that a shield or SR scrapper is tougher in most situtations. Is it that I have to pair it with 'the right' offense to compensate? I've tried with fire for damage, and now am trying with kinetic melee as it's 'debuff damage' looks to stack with ices chilling embrace. I'm trying an ice scrapper at the same time to see (and especially to see the difference between hibernate and the scrapper ice T9 - which looks far better than hibernate on paper). Do I need to do 'some special slotting'? I can see how to get to def caps.. with the the terrible DDR - 50%? really???? I can't imagine surviving an ITF without a faceplant or two. It's a far cry from a stone tanker that can afk tank in the middle of crowd of Rularuu...

In response to Maximus Primes comment... I think SR is a three trick pony, not a one trick pony * It never suffers from cascading defence loss. Not ever. (well maybe at level 10...) And if you don't think that's a trick consider what it's like being fire tanker facing the Rularuu. Shield on the other hand needs ageless (in my experience) to survive incarnate content * It dodges everything except a tiny tiny tiny part of the game (+100% attacks/auto attacks/pure psi) * It has 90% resists to everything by the time the hit points drop to 1/2../1/3 depending on how you build it.... but actually in play this practically never happens. I only get it in very serious content. Going through the Dark Astoria line ...didn't happen once. Going through DrQ... happens a bit because those Rularuu...they are scary.. but once the resists are there... the hitpoints stop dropping You can also add maybe 'doesn't need ageless/doesn't need barrier'. Other tankers that I have all have to get one of those two for hard content. SR... nope... Oh and it costs almost nothing to build it. So it can do huge damage/have other cool things. And it has a small recharge bonus thrown in as a free gift... which other people rate highly but for me is a bit 'meh'. So while your friend might be veng bait... I think I can safely say that my SR tank isn't vengbait. I don't think even the first debt badge has been earned. I did get defeated once during tinplex...I blame lag 🙂 Shield... it's a great set. Love it. My only issue with it is that it is really expensive to get nearly as safe as a casually built SR and can't do the same proc glory... And all my shield tankers have debt badges... the journey to 50/exemplaring isn't anywhere as friendly as for a SR

I'd just like to say 'thank you Darkir'. I created a dom to a very slight variation of yours and it's the first dom that I've actually enjoyed. I kept making them...trying to get one that feels 'super', but they always felt weak and ineffective. Sure they could control the bad guys, but who needs to control them when you can ignore them even as a blaster and just smash away.. and I seem to need to hit many times as a dom than I do as a scrapper or blaster. (that might be just perception... not sure). Without a nuke (for me) my doms feels so much less powerful than a blaster or even a sentinel. This one though is a ton of fun. Charge in, and there is so much confusion. More even than my attempts at plant (just because grouping makes it awkward for plant sometime... if they bad guys are scattered). I don't worry about other controls, not even ice patch (unless fighting confuse resistant enemies) and the they tear into each other. The tougher the bad guys, the more effective the confuse seems to be. I don't normally run solo, but I wanted to see what this was like, and doing PI missions (even arachnos) at +3/x8 was a pleasure. I thought I would miss unkindness and Jack Frost, but I seem to be too busy clawing at the bad guys to worry about it Endurance is still an issue (I don't have ageless... and the toggles...). Before I had an alpha slot, if I put all the toggles on, the cost is more than the recovery! But the perma dom is great for that... I'm wondering what other dom I could try now that feels as 'super'.

Goobledegook: That is some serious MIDs work there. Far far nicer numbers than I usually get! It's a really sweet build: need to try it.! Hyperstrike: Nice defensive build. Far better numbers than mine. Its not my style: I'd rather toss a dark obliteration than a taunt... I have a couple of tanks with taunt and I usually regret 'wasting' the slot as I could almost always get a power that would let me get the aggro better. All that said I think I will be t trying that out as an alternative build. Having a 'much tougher' second form is great, and I can try taunt out again and see if it's better than I remember Report on more experience Exemplaring is really not fun. I had to go back and do positron to get the task force commander's badge. I like positron, and for my Dark/Martial arts its a sweet smooth ride from beginning to end. Here... not so much... I died twice (ok we were duoing and it was +1x8. So we ramped it back to -1x4). The lack of AOE is really noticable and not at all a pleasure Higher level content. Although end is still a problem (don't have ageless yet), recovery serums handle it. The toon is rock solid, and a pleasure. Bad guys bounce all over the map. No problems at all in tinman: I just didn't knock out punch so much and then no problems with the blue patches of doom. I expected the rage crash to cause annoyance but it doesn't... I still attack because I want them bouncing... the dark regen and the handclap do their thing just fine. I can always drop in a hand grenade or a plasmatic taser, and with rage I seem to hit very often. I haven't had any significant problems with DDR since the first bad experience in ITF. I just keep an eye on the elite bosses...everyone else is bouncing. If defence goes red (hardly ever) I leap away and a few seconds later problems gone... and that's pretty rare. Summary: It's a great build for high level content. If you want a generalist that can do anything and be awesome at it, the dark/MA is I think better.\

I used that export from game, import to mids and ... thanks! really nice to have that I've my current build here. It's not even close to how I will keep it: I want to get dark obliteration or change epic for example.... I just built by having fun and buying things that added to things I wanted I'm just posting it to show where I am at the moment. Summary: Smash lethal resit 72ish (before tanker proc kicks in) Energy / neg 56 Smash/Lethal/melee just over soft cap

Oh wow. That I didn't know! That is frankly fantastic.... I am in a hotel traveling at the moment and the hotel firewall seems to block all games (huh???) But I will post that when I return (If I am not too busy turning my characters into mids imports) The tanker build I had was | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1450;704;1408;HEX;| |78DA65934B4F135114C7EFB453B1432B20055A0181F228CFA1454CD468880255902| |624A80B159B11AE65E2A434D392C8D2447CEC7C46172A6E75E11770E3DB6FE07BE7| |DA47E27B359ECEF94B9B3049FB3BF7DC7B1EF79C735367C6020FF79F1D114A60D43| |2F2F9F421237B5ADABE949131E7047DFE29D3B25A27272CAB825611DE4E8FC95332| |9B977AD294F6727AEF926D346227252D29F599A51CC933055B66338505A14D2F2E5| |AFA4C4ECAF9A02B26CDCC42C1CC6602EE6A4A1A395A54FD5FCC4B3BBF60E66AC773| |E69C3E9E957666399D32F2058A15A624BAE9F7D84F7F4A3141C7273E788548A8C2F| |31E7CCD54DF806F991BDE31FB35818F6C6FA8AE6EF03A7819BCC24C5C05AF319F50| |5C85E3AACA7685FD0E3337C6C16D4C6D88F9946CBCC8D5FB9773D07E3003BFC03FC| |C9E236C33709819A5AAFBD856F1F50957B709D4E91E15C8A5621F214C7BA3CCEA31| |666F37FBEDED446DC89F9F6D847FC5E3EA9E537E954273FD54DEE37B56DF666EBE0| |3DE658656992FC826C87EBC41E41EC29DEA7F82BF9971725DC5F516559FD8FE25D9| |D7A026359758D77491B9F51CB8029E67B65E402FC85F2DFA579B26C468EF047894D| |9760C3C0ECE32EBE9FE75885B57C7350E7FE73CC307995B26C124B3E900D34BB60D| |A877037ADE8E9EB72740F4BC0333A0924D043611C4EB80FF0EF8EF9A0011E715D5A| |6113D6A44AF87E8CECDEEE039A2F93EF52DA48A1AF2DD02DF2DF0DD05DF31F88EC1| |670C319E91EF28DB78A24398B9E2A59A6946C2CC618AD5891A75EEE119E9DF0DEE0| |0773207768198A5552FBFCF629EDDC8FD4150883ECC70DF4D0FDE15739062E938AF| |DBAC6BA77BC5A18B7F645D8FBAF6DE9D2675EDFD16978E23A6D669A6551C278DE26| |A3E6B6B2F179A2FEB345F4B1A4569437526157772BE959FC62D46680C13C8EA51B4| |28BBAFC8B955D4737427122A9D493694E459AD241B65F2C93279BA4CFE07B53ADF9| |6| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| From what I can tell searching the forums it seems that when you are damage capped (doesn't happen that often to me because I don't farm) brutes have about a 10% damage bonus over tankers. Looking at this build it has quite a lot more than a 10% survival bonus over my brute! My original question was 'are there any existing build'. I wonder if anyone has seen any fire/superstr builds that do proc based damage. I guess superstr isn't that desirable in farms, so not much interest. It doesn't have a second damage aura, rage is only a disadvantage because in a farm you are at the damage cap anyway... so you only get the rage crash, and who needs the mitigation of the baddies bouncing in a farm? In normal content I think it's interesting because the survivability added by all the knockdown counteracts fires flimsiness compared to other armors.

Thank you!. I'm going to put existing build into mids (if only there was an 'export from coh to mids' option... and see how i can improve it with data from that. I was comparing mine with tanker build... but I guess I should lower my expectations a lot! Or play a tanker... After the tanker buffs last year do you know if the ss/fire brute is going to outdamage the fire/ss tanker?

My search-fu is weak... I have a superstr/fire brute that I had a lot of fun leveling. I don't have a mids build, but the stats are '46% melee defence' (and same smash/lethal), capped fire resist, smash/level 77%, energy/neg 56 and not much else defensively. Quite fun to play but quite fragile in anything other than a fire farm (and I don't farm). I had a look on the forums for a superstrength/fire brute. Didn't find much. Does anyone have a few links they could share? Thanks

I am playing a little with this at the moment myself. * dark/electric. Awesome fun against huge mobs. Lightning rod in... stack stuns with lightning clap... only problem is tough single targets. In a group ... that's someone else's problem you just need to keep them attacking you. All that said 'if you are tired of lightning rod you are probably playing the wrong game'. Electric melee is made by that one power * dark/martial arts. Surprising a lot of aoe. dragon tail / dark regen together mean that you are constantly aoe. Opponents melt. Single targets that are hard you kick in the face...very strong defensively. Good vs single targets. Exemplars fantastically well. Silver Mantis is a joy, Positron is easy... My current project * dark/super str.... working great so far. Feels like it will be much better in high level content than the other two. But it sucks below about level 38. It certainly feels more 'super' than the other two at higher. I've tried staff/dark brute and it was pretty much everything pizzamuri said. My sole issue with it is the damage... it's low damage... Mobs don't melt away. But it feels great. And feeling great is important. On a team I doubt if anyone can tell any difference between the three builds as everyone else so out damages you anyway ------- Putting all that together it's hard to beat dark/martial arts. It was great all the way up (well from level 20 onwards) it's one of the toughest things in the game and is plain fun to play. Make sure you put the +recharge proc in dragons tail and the endurance proc in dark regen and you are good to go If you don't have a lot of influence then dark / staff might well be better

That ambush you mention is the one I use to say 'is my tanker OK'. Like you I have a few nightmare stories! If I can be alone in a +3/8 and not sweat then I know the character's OK. Other people of course have +4/8, but that's just too slow for me... (maybe I need more damaging builds...). This character loved it. All the bosses where flopping all the time, stunned all the time, and I don't think I cracked a fingernail... Hard to tell because I spam the dark regen as soon as it is back anyway as a damage/resist debuff/taunt/end recovery Staffs big sticks for dark/ are (as far as I know) * awesome endurance management (like really awesome) * an extra 10% Damage Resists * A little extra melee defence The downside of course is quite poor damage... unless you have a kinetics along in which case it becomes top tier (the replacement for build up works great when you are damage capped). I don't think there is any DDR. I don't have a dark/staff tank, but my first 50 on homecoming was a staff/dark brute. I didn't have any influence, and it works just fine on SOs... (dark regen ... it's so hard to overstate how good a total heal every 10s is - it plugs almost every hole even 'just SO build') The reason I didn't try it as a tanker after the tanker buffs is the low staff damage. It _feels_ great and is fun to play, but the actual numbers are poor. As well as that I think dark/martial arts is more resilient than staff... it gets a buff to most defences, and most of the resists are capped anyway negating the benefit of the staff's 10% damage resists. My dark/martial artist is defence capped to everything, resist capped to everything except toxic (although I need a temp power to help with energy) a total heal every 10s and can stun even elite bosses which just attacking normally (Don't need to reduce damage done to do the stuns - unlike handclap). My Dark/martial artist hasn't died yet in ITF (and doesn't need temp powers there). It just seems to take a while to deal with lots of opponents As for dark/dark I have a dark/dark scrapper... and ... wow... I team up usually with another dark/dark scrapper. We run around with everything feared, stunned and rip into them with soul drain buffed fireballs / PBAOE attacks. No problems to hit, huge damage... We can run around most content with quite rubbish defences, and maybe 50% damage resist and just own +2/8 content (we normally just run at that because we don't like the slowness of higher - that's +2 not including any alpha slot bonus... so often +3) . I think it's the teaming that makes it... I don't think the controls are _quite_ good enough to make a difference to a tanker if there's only one... but with two of you. We're also contemplating doing it with something like one of us being a corruptor... But at the moment we are having too much fun to want to mess with a winning formulae. I haven't tried the dark/dark tank... I can imagine it's quite good... but it will be relying on fear instead of stun, and the cloak of fear is heavy endurance poor accuracy, and usually negated - by death shroud if nothing else) Invulnerability is (only personally) close to the bottom of my list of things I enjoy. if I was doing a low damage build I'd go stone instead of invuln... it's only a small damage penalty and only some of the time, and just a ton safer while doing more damage most of the time (There is now no longer a material mobility penalty ... and usually I don't need granite anyway.. its just great to have when you are in the small amount of tough content) . I know those words are heresy to others, and that's one of the good things about the game: we can all try different things and enjoy different things. Those are just views. Different people / different likes/dislikes. Dislike is probably too strong a word anyway... the only power I dislike in city of heros is black hole (some power has to be the absolute worst in the game and that one is the clear winner of that competition). With these it's more 'which one I like more than the others'

I just noticed that I didn't answer the question on the tanker ATO. It works great in death shroud. Perhaps better than great. Most of the time it is double stacked. I don't need to do anything and it just happens. Perhaps against a single target it would be bad, but it seems to be at least single stacked all the time. I just went through part of maria jenkins today to check how it behaved, and when I was surrounded by bad guys it was always double stacked. When it was just an arch villain left I didn't notice it ever 'not there' but it didn't double stack. I've heard rumours it can triple stack but I didn't see that myself. I don't think this is great for damage against AVs though... without envenomed daggers I don't think I would have been doing much at all. With them, and with the weaken resolve... then it was OK

I am playing with energy melee at the moment as a fire/EM tanker, and for damage it seems great. I'm really enjoying the mix of high single target damage and the burn giving me crowd clearance in that buld. But whirling hands is a small aoe (8'base) with a 30% chance of a magnitude 2 stun that lasts for a base 4seconds. Handclap is 15'r lasts for 6 seconds base (and thus it can be perma) and always stuns. It also places everything on their back for a second or two in which they aren't attacking... (assuming the stun didn't get them) From a damage point of view whirling hands is nice, and it's nice when it works. Handclap though is sheer joy as a crowd control (stacked with oppressive gloom... without that it's bit meh) The unleash potential was just a 'why don't a try it'. The major issue with the build is endurance. I am constantly clicking 'recovery serum' and I don't really like needing temporary powers. Unleash potential is a 'soft cap me now' (without it I need purples) + a whole lot of endurance back. Was it a good experiment? I think so. I put an achilles in the weaken resolve and that really seems to make a difference against single hard targets. The super leap is something I just find little use for... even with the recent nice buffs I rarely bother with a travel power. BUT the winter's gift in it lift the slow resistance to 80% which means that it's hard for bad guys to significantly trash my recharge (which as you said Warboss exists to compensate for the lack of ddr) You are I think right about smash lethal being too low for it... but remember the stuns.. Even the bosses are stunned... it's just the elite bosses that got me... and now I am more conscious of that. The novas are a bit of a 'need to keep aware of them' but so far its only 'two crits from minotaurs when I let myself get to half hitpoints'... (which actually was because I wasn't handclapping and getting the others) How does it compare to my other tanks? Well with the recent huge love given to stone tankers... nothing compares to stone/xxx. It's so hard not to relish running around capped hps, decent regen, capped resists to everything but psi (and about 60% psi) and if you have a secondary with a heal in it (dark/radiation... well ... gosh...it's seriously nice). I'm reading the stone/super str thread and thinking about starting my own Even with that love for stone, so far dark/martial arts is surprisingly my favourite. Mostly because it exemplars so well. Dragons tails is there in positron, and since it and dark regen are both aoe attacks... all the way from positron upwards it is just great. This toon isn't there. I think the top end of this is better (aoe stunning is great, double rage is great, there is so much bouncing going on with purple bosses in ITF... oh so very satisfying... the dark obliteration/gloom is great with double rage is great) but at lower levels the martial arts wins.... Got to say it's nice that there is no clear winner. If anyone has any advice on how to build a less resilient but much higher damage character that would be great! Nothing wrong with two build!

Thanks for looking at it and taking the time to reply! I have to admit I don't mind the goons wandering off... they don't tend to last long enough for it to matter! I tend to leap in, dark regen (it's an attack and a great aggro pull + res debuff), then a hand clap/foot stomp, and usually I am teaming and all the minions are down... only a couple of stunned bosses wandering around. Those bosses are usually single targeted anyway... and since I have unpleasantly aggroed them, they come running right back... I find that ST damage is my main goal: AOE is good enough, and most minions get dealt with by the splash damage, so I went 'soul' to get the gloom attack instead of the lightning cages and the dark obliteration which seem to do nice damage (especially with rage/double rage). My main worry is that I 'don't know how to use procs'. So I just stuck one or two into some of the attacks. I've also seen a lot of people do much better builds than I can do 🙂 I tried it on an ITF the other night (+4/8) and I actually died on it. First death for this toon ... ever I think. I was on about 1/2 hitpoints and about to do a dark regen or not when I think I was double critted by two minotaurs... and that was that. The lack of DDR had kicked in (-60% def or something) and obviously it's hard to stun minotaur elite bosses.

I've been experimenting quite a bit with different Dark/ tankers. I like darkness quite a lot: the heal is fantastic, the resists are great (even if we are vulnerable to energy) and it has a small amount of defence which helps. But as well as that ... perhaps the icing on the cake ... there is the gem of oppressive gloom which stacks with other sources of stunning My dark/ma is great fun, and is perhaps one of the toughest things in the game. Sure it doesn't have much defence debuff resist, but there is so much stunning and healing going on that I just don't miss it (the heal really makes a huge difference to the character). I've gone through multiple +4/*8 manticores and had not a single paragon protector go into god mode... the single target stuns from martial arts and the oppressive gloom really keep them controlled What I've been trying to do recently is try and get an aoe/stun character that can stack an aoe stun with oppressive gloom. I've tried Dark/Elec... which is awesomely impressive to watch, great fun to lightning rod into battle... but ... but ... the single target damage sucks. Hence this experiment. I've found that the handclap is great. The damage mitigation is good from the bouncing never mind the stunning. Combined with footstomp very little spends much time hitting. I didn't find any builds on the forums (maybe that was my weak google-fu) so I thought I'd share this. In addition I am not great at things like 'adding procs' so I wondered if anyone would could offer advice on how to improve this, or perhaps offer a second 'DPS' build. It would be very nice to have a build that is 'tough as old boots' and a second one that can really put the hurt in.

I've heard people say that 'Peace bringers are training wheels'. I have to say I don't agree. I played my Warshade on live for years, and play here as well. It's good, and I enjoy playing it (it's higher veteran level than my PB) But... it needs bodies. It needs opponents. So in this game AOE is easy, groups are easy. The only hard content is archvillians and giant monsters, and Peacebringers (IMHO) are much more satisfying when playing against the hard content. Sure it's possible to 'go into a group of enemies, get buffed and fly back to bash the AV, and I've done that. But Peacebringers are extremely capable on their own In a group I can offer a lot more as a peacebringer. Other people don't rate the heal, but many times I've been the only healer, and it's adequate. It's on a 2 second cycle time, heals around a third to half most toons hit points. Just recently I was on an ITF as the only healer. We absolutely kicked butt and it was only on a couple of the fights that we even needed a healer... but when we needed it we really did. Perhaps as better players we could have avoided that, but with PUGs you get what you get. In the same vein: in a group the cosmic balance power is just better than the warshade equivalent (you get to do what the team is weak at). On big experienced groups this doesn't matter, but on PUGs when exemplaring (PBs and WSs both are great when exemplared) it can be great I would say rather than 'training wheels' that the peacebringer has a much higher floor, and a tiny bit lower ceiling. The ceiling only a tiny bit lower because at the end of the day all the WS's buffs can (and often are) be duplicated by a defender or by clicking a couple of inspirations. The PB's self heals are something the WS just struggles with in AV fights, and the intangiblity power allows the Peacebringer to do things the WS can only dream of. The only weakness of PB compared to WS is psi damage, and it's possible to effectively remove that weakness with IOs.. In addition the peacebringer has a lot more hps... An offensive WS strength compared to PBs is 'fluffy'. I have seen people use 'fluffy' very effectively, but I'm not one of the people that can do that when I actually need them. It might be that if I could work out how to keep them alive in difficult content I would like them more. They are easy to summon and use in easy content, but easy content does need them. And again: fighting AVs ... if the fight goes on it's easy to not be able to get another fluffy without wasting a lot of time. As for forms: I like all three. The dwarf is fantastic as a 'break free inspiration whenever I want it' and a 'eek it's going wrong, lets go dwarf and click the heal power'. The nova I only use when 'hunting' really. PB human form has good AOE with with the nuke, the second nuke (the seekers), the AOE smash and then some single target punching there isn't really a lot of need to use the nova. But I'm glad I've got it: when the baddies run away then it's great, when we are zooming around a zone looking for 'get 40 council' etc it's great. And in easy content it's good to just hover and blast As the others have said , the keybinds are really important. It's important to be able to swap your trays and change form with a single key press. Especially things like 'going into dwarf because it's going bad' If you want advice on which to try: take the 'training wheels' PB first. Both archetypes are complex but PBs are less complex

OK we did it. Two of us (both Fortunatas... we wanted those holds). We each died once: I got criticalled by Honore, and my friend blasted by Hamidon. It did take us about three hours though! And maybe half an hour at the end bashing away what felt like forever at Honore. Still we had written this of as 'can't do with just two, so it was very satisfying to finish. Thanks very much for the help

Ah I didn't know about the Essence of Earths. Awesome The rest is straightforward: the Mito's we just take carefully and blast/melee hold... but the main body was a problem The idea of ninjitsu is good. Perhaps Sentinal ninjitsu as well? Well I shall give it try this week and see what happens. Thank you

I like making and playing tankers. They are perhaps my favorite architype (although Fortunata is also pretty good). I keep thinking I have found 'the ultimate build'. And then I take my tanker and try her out on the Lady Grey TF. And I can't get any further than the big blob. I usually 'duo', and we can get past the mitochondria. It's the body. I go in and die or stay back and die. So my question(s) are really a simple one: What would be a good tanker build for tanking the weakened (?????) Hamidon Are there any known 'good techniques'. Is there a support combination (tanker + support) that would make a big different Is there something I should be doing with the incarnate powers? The tanks I've tried are Dark/MA (softcapped and resist capped with a dark regen every 10s or so). Probably my favourite tank Dark/Electric (not nearly as robust) ... but stacking oppresive gloom and the mag 2 stun from lightning clap never gets old, and lightning rod is the power that if you don't like you are probably playing the wrong game SR/Rad (obviously uber softcapped but not much healing .. enough for most content, just not for this) None tanks TW/Bio scrapper (Softcapped to S/L/E) ... and so very much fun to play SS/Stone brute (is made of granite...nuff said) I've done this with groups, and usually many people in the group die, but someone that knows what they are doing tanks the Hamidon, the blasters blast and down he goes. When I try I last a few seconds, maybe half a minute and then it all goes horribly wrong...

Thank you all for your responses. I learned quite a lot from Doomrider in particular. I had read the 'peacebringers still suck' guide, and my experience was that psi damage just wasn't nice. As you can see in the build it has 80% slow resistance. I do have one with more, but I found the 80% was 'good enough'... mind you maybe I should get that extra goodness! The mission that destroyed my earlier enjoyment in them was the Maria Jenkins where Penelope comes along and you end up fighting Mother Mayhem ... 100% psi damage... and the character felt like an utter weed. Then I went and fought some Rularuu and everything was OK (with effort) except the wisps who just blasted me back to the hospital again and again. I went back in with a slightly tweaked build (I adjusted it after reading Doomrider's comments - especially on knockback) and it was a pleasure. Clicking 1 orange meant that I went back to being 'uber' instead of a cloth armor wearing blaster that lasts about two seconds in the fight. I suspect if I was a better player I could have handled the situations differently. The new build seems to work much better. It takes very little to get to psi damage cap, and then it's much more straightforwards. The Rularuu who are up close I keep bouncing around with lots of knock up so they don't seem to do too bad a job on debuffs, and the ranged wisps I can now just ignore. The seers in the Maria Jenkins were a little harder, but corner pulling and double nuking never gets old... What I have particularly enjoyed though is teaming with the peacebringer. I have a couple of times been the only healer... Once on the ITF and when facing 'Nictus' at the end I did almost nothing other than heal and nuke when the nuke was bad. It worked great. When there is 'high support/low damage'... wow it's so good running around near the damage cap most of the time. Most of the time I am just free to rampage and a double nuke just smashes its way through most content. It exemplars really well: last week was Citadel, and the only significant loss was Light Form. But with the team... I had enough resists that I didn't really need to go lobster more than a couple of times.

I have been trying to get a peacebringer that I want to play for some time. I have a warshade that I love playing (while teaming), but the peacebringer never 'did it' for me. I think one of the major issues has been psionic damage resistance. I tend to play with pick up groups and there is quite a lot of psionic damage in the higher levels. I feel extremely vulnerable with the peacebringer After some thinking I've come up with the following build. It is based on the following observations I exemplar a lot... so I will usually not have light form, but will usually have dwarf and nova I like heal other. I know it's a small heal, but it comes back quick and quite often I can use it when things are going bad. It's especially good with 'not so great groups', which is where the peacebringer tends to shine anyway. I don't need to slot it a lot I don't think... it's seems Ok with just 1 slot I don't really use the human toggles other than concealment... they are basically mules I haven't used unleash potential much at all (I usually aim for rune of protection), but it seems like a great fit: offering a huge defence bonus which is great when things are going bad. I suspect when I use that I might use the toggles! Normally in a fight I will open with a innerlight/nuke/photon seekers. There are usually only a few scattered remnants left, which I usually use human attacks unless there are a lot in which case I shift to dwarf (the aoe is great: lots of mitigation, seems to come back fast enough). The 'phew phew' of the nova is really for when teaming or exemplaring: I don't seem to need it a lot Highlights: Dwarf caps resists except psi Unleash potential is up about 1/3 and caps defence (if toggles running) Light form also caps resists except psi psi resist is 60%, but with other party members will often be more, perhaps even capped. A single orange will usually cap it Special effects are awesome: the character feels great even if the damage is anemic The nuke is awesome! Nice slow resist... those caltrops don't do a lot Good mitigation with lots of knock around Weaknesses Defense. Like... wow this is really low. I have no other character with this low defenses Psi... a bit The nuke doesn't have a kb/kd convertor. Is this needed? I think most other powers work fine (I hover above foes usually in squid form) Advice requested is the control power (pulsar) as poor as it seems (mag2? really?) Slotting around attack powers: I heavily slotted solar flare, but would it have been better to go for incandesent strike? Or other things Would I have been better putting more effort into some of the heal powers? Should I be focusing more on hps? Should I be as worried as I am about psi damage (there are 6 slots in there just for psi damage, if I didn't do this what would be good to spend them on) Any other general advice around slotting. I don't really know what I am doing... I've played around with Mids but I'm no expert Should I be more thorough in the KB/KD Things I am still wondering about The peacebringer is one of the few character that I like a self rezz on: I am tempted to self rezz instead of quantum flight or conserve energy I like the self rezz because there are no toggles...so apart from 'is light form / haste' back there is no down time, and dwarf form is good enough to stay in while waiting I've never really made intangibility work so this is a bit of an experiment... I can see it might be awesome if I can learn how to use it I hardly ever use conserve energy... but I feel I 'should have it' Do I have enough accuracy? I rarely do +4 (and if I do there is usually a ton of tactics flying around) but if I do I don't want to whiff Is it sensible to do something with weaken resolve/project will? Are they in anyway better than the attacks I have slotted Is it worth getting luminous detonation or wall of force? They look utterly terrible in Mids, but what is the reality of using them? Thanks in advance

One thing people don't mention is 'you spend a lot of time not at level 50'. Even at end game there is 'the task force of the week' and 'joining other people's missions'. People correctly say that blasters can be very tough, but exemplar down and an awful lot of that toughness vanishes I have blasters that can tank a lot of content. All that said I've never seen one tank carnies or banished pantheon or rularu (sp?), and I've seen a lot get smashed into little pieces by nemesis... so I think they are tanky as long as there is no heavy debuffing going on. Sentinels though are tough and with a rapid charging nuke they can really dish out respectable damage.. Procs help a lot. With blasters you can expect to face plant a lot. Really a lot. On that journey from one to 50 maybe you faceplant a dozen times. I've very rarely been on an ITF with blasters and seen them all make it all the way through without one faceplanting. Sentinels... they don't tend to do that. My last one didn't get defeated from level 1 through 50, and has only been defeated twice since. All my blasters get debt badges: Lots of debt badges. So I think I am with the 'I disagree with the common consensus'. If all you do is level 50 content with eight man teams and lots of supports, then blasters are great. If you want to be tough and do the damage at any level, exemplar to give support to friends or to do the weekly TF, then sentinels have a lot to offer.

I like what you have done to improve the energy resistance: while I'll use the kinetic dampner when fighitng antimatter or something, I'm not a fan of it. A quick look at mids says my damage per animation for Jaccobs ladder is about 83 (potentially multiple targets) while your havoc punch is 87. It is better, but neither are great. I am wondering if something like gloom would help: I was reading in the huge procs thread that gloom is probably the best single target damage improvement. I tried it in Mids, but I wasn't able to great a dpa much over 100 with charged brawl, jacobs ladder, chain induction and gloom.

I have been playing COH since around June last year when I heard about Homecoming. Like many of us I suffer from ALT-itis... which I think is one of the best features of the game. I do though have a few characters that I love to play. This is one of them. She's over Veteran Level 50, and would be higher if I didn't keep making near clones trying to improve on her. I have for example dark/martial arts (better than I expected and perhaps the toughest thing in the game), dark/titan weapon (*gasps in exhaustion*, but very satisfying) and dark/super strength (dies in the crash if I am not on the ball) all at decent levels I most like playing her in ITF actually. Especially the big ambush in the first scene. She has the bosses bouncing, and stunned in a way that is a pleasure to do. Occasionally she even stuns a cyclops or minotaur and stops them going into god mode which is also fun. The aspects that I like are * Capped resists to everything except toxic (I use the kinetic damper if I start taking hps from energy, or if I am worried, but that doesn't happen often) * A total heal every 12 seconds or so, which also often tops up my end bar if I have a load of bad guys around me * Decent defence. Melee is 40 so with a barrier it is capped. The others not so good at about 25. But it doesn't seem to matter... * Lightning Rod... if you don't like this, you are probably playing the wrong game * Lightning clap and Oppresive gloom... this is why I don't need they defence so high... They stack and put a mag 4 stun on everything around me * I think this toon has died three or four times ever. So no debt badge. I solo (rare because I prefer teaming) at +3/x8 because of clear speed, not because of toughness * In a whole ITF at +2x8 it is not uncommon for hitpoints never to budge from full (or if they do I don't see them) * It exemplars well, although if below level 30 I really miss lightning clap * She eats the Rularuu for breakfast... I have a few tanks that just fall over light wet paper bags in the shards, and this toon is just fine In a fight I will Lightning Rod in, zap off a dark regen just to get the aggro from anything I missed, maybe lightning clap to stun then. After that the usual attacks, focusing thunderstrike on the biggest to get the stun magnitude up. Lightning Rod is back surprisingly often with the recharge procs in lightning clap and thunderstrike. The aspects I don't like * You probably guessed this. Single Target Damage * Doesn't exemplar well down to Positron level * Which is why I keep trying other variants. of dark/ but they don't have lightning rod... I'm writing this post for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn't find a good Dark/Elec build, so I thought I would publish mine for other people to try. It's a 'defensive build', and end game. However when leveling I just had cheaper sets for the purples, but otherwise the same. This character is about getting aggro quickly and aggressively and not particularly worrying about what the bad guys do . The second is that I'd like people to help me improve it. I would like to take better advantage of procs and perhaps improve the single target damage. Examples that are obviously able to be improved are the dark regen slotting (I have it for the energy resist) and I doubt if the recharge proc in lightning rod is doing anything... Neither of those help my goal for single target damage improvement though, and this character clears minions and lieutenants so fast that I would rather put my effort into bosses and above I am tempted to have a second build for bosses that I only use at the end of taskforces etc. Thus it doesn't need to be a general purpose build. What I would like help with: * Advice and review of the build. * Where and how should I put procs for better single target damage

Thanks for the response. It's nice for you to cast an eye over the build and make advice like that. It was just 'how it ended up' rather than with much thought, so now I'll take your advice and see what I can do. I did consider tactics instead of focused accuracy, but I hate being 'to hit debuffed', and with the overslotting for endurance the cost didn't matter. I suspect it will if I reduce the slotting for end so I'll think hard about it. Your comment on too much AOE was interesting. The easy option is to drop titan sweep, but I often exemplar... mind you perhaps I can have second build for exemplaring.... something to consider. I'll also take a good hard look at accuracy and so on.