LorannaPyrel

Reduced defense does reduce your survivability, yes, but defense is not the only form of mitigation available to super strength tankers. Resists, knockdowns, high base hit points, regen and self heals, all over ways to mitigate incoming damage or remove damage taken during the Rage Crash. The endurance penalty can hurt, yes, but endurance is an issue that plagues all Tankers all throughout their careers, not just Super Strength tankers. Slotting for endurance reduction, carrying blues, using the Recovery Serum temp power, or picking an armor set with good endurance management capability, all can mitigate the endurance penalty of the Rage Crash. The damage penalty does reduce your ability to hold aggro, yes. But as I've said before, there are powers which are not affected by the damage debuff, all available at the P2W vendor in Atlas Park. There's also our taunt auras, and the Taunt power itself, both of which continue to function during the crash - damage-based taunt auras will suffer some compared to the rest, yes, but they will still function. Gauntlet will still work, even with the damage penalty - in fact, Gauntlet should still be carrying over from the last attack you made before the damage crash hit. Finally, debuffs from epic pools, such as Darkest Night, the -to hit debuffs from any of the Soul or Dark Mastery attacks, or Melt Armor, also offer ways to grab aggro while your damage is debuffed. The Rage Crash is annoying, yes, and it does impair your functioning to an extent - but I hope my argument here shows, it's not an insurmountable obstacle. - Loranna

But it remains an attack set that has intentional misfeatures that are incompatible with your primary role, especially on a team. Could you please clarify why you feel this way? In what way does Super Strength possess misfeatures which are incompatible with our primary role? - Loranna

As I alluded to in my prior post, the -damage part doesn't apply to prestige powers like Sands of Mu, nor to your Judgement power. So you can maintain some offense, even during the crash. Also, while powers like Foot Stomp won't do damage, they will still knock enemies over during the crash, so you can still get some mitigation rolling, if you need it. And, again, Hand Clap is not useless; it does what it's designed to do, which is create space and stun minions. It's just that a lot of modern playstyles don't have a burning need to create space and stun minions, because Foot Stomp already provides good mitigation and does damage on top of that. Your claim that the rage crash is "monumental" to many sets - including resist based ones - is all that I'm taking exception to here; I understand that you don't like the way Rage works and wish it to be changed, and I can get behind that sentiment. But there are people who have found ways to make the Rage crash be far, far less than "monumental" on their builds. So please, stop calling Super Strength a gimped set based just on your experience; it doesn't work for your playstyle, fine, but it does work for other people just fine. Loranna

Sees someone say - again - that Super Strength is a "crap" choice because of the Rage crash not being avoidable anymore Experiences profound NERDRAGE; gets two minute buff to ability to blow hot air Ahem; as a longtime Super Strength fan, having paired the set to good effect on both Electric Armor and Radiation Armor, I can say, with confidence, that the set is not crap. Even with a base defense of only 20% to all positions, I run +4/x8 fire farms with my current Rad/SS, and the Rage crash has yet to kill me - and this is without popping inspirations, nor leaning on my Destiny slot. The set does have a disadvantage that hurts you if you rely heavily on Defense alone. But even then, Super Strength offers a way to mitigate its own Rage crash - the Hand Clap power. Really, that power isn't useless either; it's ideal for buying yourself time to let the Rage crash wear off, if you're taking too much damage during it. It can also be used to good effect by off-tanks to knock stray mobs back into the giant blob of frak-you that the party is cooking up. Yes, people usually skip Hand Clap - it's not a power conducive to every playstyle, especially playstyles that focus on speed, steamrollering the mobs. But the power, and the set it's in, are not crap. Takes a deep breath, experiencing ten seconds of lack of hot air Uses Sands of Mu to imitate Kenshiro, that power not being affected by the crash; follows with Ionic Judgement, that also not being affected Thought I was done ranting, did you? And oop, my NERDRAGE is back up! RAWWWRRR!!!! ^_^ Thank you for listening, Loranna

Hiya Warboss, I am on Everlasting, and have a fully leveled, 50+3 Tanker ready to go ^_^. We do not, to my knowledge, have a TankHQ SG established yet on Everlasting; if any Everlasting Tankers are looking in on this thread, please give a shout if you've heard otherwise. Since I've got a coupe of weeks before we run on Everlasting, I'm open to suggestions as to what we can run that Tuesday. If people are all starting new Tankers, we can go for the DFB/Posi combo, but I'm open to running most anything. Except Synapse. Or a Shadow Shard TF. But mostly Synapse :P - Loranna

I'd be up for Saturdays - though if we're talking the times you just mentioned, Boss, I'd be up . . . around 6 to 7 AM on Saturdays, as I'm on the East Coast. Granted, I'm up odd hours as it is, but that'd still be early. Very early :-\ - Loranna

Haven't looked at your build yet, but I believe I can account for the discrepancy between Pine's record of your resists and the game's. Pines is, most likely, taking your Might of the Tanker proc into account, adding one stack of +6% resist to your resists, which will hardcap your s/l. Check your Pines and see if the Clobber power has a little green light lit in the upper right corner; that will indicate that Pines is taking the proc's effects into account. - Loranna

I'd love to see stuff happen on Everlasting for Tanker Tuesday. I've got a fully-realized 50+3 Tanker over there already, and it'd be much easier to focus on her alt build than to worry about raising a whole separate version of her! ^_^ Does anyone know how Server Tansfers work if you're part of a SG? Do you maintain your membership in your SG, does it force you to drop it, can you get re-invited if you have to? And we have up to 5 server transfers a week, right? That how it works? - Loranna

Tanker: Hold my insp tray *knucklecrack emote* - Loranna

Query: Is that not the old "hover-tanking" strategy - minus the bit with the hiding behind a flagpole? I thought that was one of the time-tested ways to keep Recluse occupied - or have his ranged attacks become too powerful for even this idea to work? - Loranna

I get about 2600 HP and change with this build, plus another 1200 and change from Particle Shielding. And auxiliary sources of absorb from Preventative Medicine and Guaranteed Fist. And the absorb shield refreshes roughly every 45 seconds. At the least, you should be able to hover-tank a +4 Lord Recluse with Darkest Night thrown up on him, and a Rebirth Radial Destiny as a backup Oh Crap heal should he just somehow tear through everything else you've got. I find the Rebirth Radial helpful as a buffer against Ghost Widow's utterly hax D.o.T. hold, anyway ^_^ - Loranna

What's the passcode for the new Tanker SG? Or else, when can I get my new Excelsior tanker into the SG? Looking forward to doing Posi 2 next Tuesday with fellow Tankers. ^_^ - Loranna

On Pines, if you check under "Effects" for Radiation Therapy in the information box, it lists the -regen as -150% - a decent amount, for a melee toon, but by itself it will only do so much against an AV's debuff resistance. Still, any -regen is better than none - other mele toons have to rely on Envenomed Daggers and/or Incarnate Interface powers to get any -regen at all ^_^ - Loranna

I would suggest that Cardiac is a bit better suited for the build - tankers can always use more end reduction, and the boost to resists is always nice - but I think Agility would work just fine as well. The endurance mod boost will help some, the defense boost will be useful for your pool powers that up defense, and extra recharge is always useful, especially for a set with an absorb shield like Rad Armor - faster that recharges, the more damage you can just laugh off ^_^ Loranna

I'd be up for joining/helping with Tanker Tuesdays on Everlasting ^_^ - Loranna

I can solo +4/x8 for most content with this build, though I typically run+1/x8 instead, just because I dislike dealing with multiple rage crashes. Not because the dropped defense is especially dangerous, so much as I just find the -damage annoying, even with Sands of Mu, Blackwand/Nemmy Staff, and Judgement powers being unaffected by it. That's just my personal preference, however. I don't foresee any real problems going all out with double stacked Rage, except in outlier cases where you're dealing with enemies with both strong debuffs and heavy psi/cold damage - Carnies, for example, or Incarnate content Banished Pantheon. And even with them, well, Incarnate powers like Rebirth and a solid Judgement - along with some retreating around corners to pull annoying ranged enemies into Foot Stomp radius - will see you through a lot. Hope this helps, Loranna

I only have one slot for Gamma Boost because, between Gamma Boost, Stamina, and the recovery bonus from Particle Shielding, I found that I had over 4 endurance a second recovery already. Between that, the Panacea and Performance Shifter procs, and slotting for endurance reduction on my other powers, I didn't feel I needed any more recovery, and with a self heal and an absorb shield, I wasn't worried too much about my regen rate. I didn't take Meltdown, because I already had five or six of my resists hardcapped, or very nearly hardcapped. My two lowest resists were cold and psi, both of which were sitting at ~60%. With the Might of the Tanker proc boosting those resists even further, and a halfway decent defense rating across the board, I felt the resistance bonus from Meltdown wasn't really necessary - I'm already close to impervious. As for Meltdown's damage boost, well . . . I already have Rage, which lasts longer and is more easily made perma; even with the one slot I left it at, my global recharge is still enough to make Rage perma, especially so if I'm continually surrounded by enemies. Loranna

SR is kind of a one-trick pony. Admittedly, you do that one trick better than anyone - you can softcap defenses really easily, and you get near-unbeatable defense debuff resistance on top of that - but at the end of the day, you're looking at an armor set that boosts your Defense, gives some scaling Resist as you take damage, and gives a 20% recharge bonus, as opposed to, say, Shield Defense, which gives nearly as much Defense, a damage-boosting taunt aura, a teleport charge attack, and extra hit points, plus reasonably good resists. Now, plenty of people have made SR toons and love them, so if you find the set offers you all you want, then go on and keep it. :) Hope this helps, Loranna

Yeah, AVs do get massive debuff resistance. Fortunately, if you have some global recharge, you -should be- able to stack the the Envenomed Dagger debuff. For best results, go hunting AVs at your own level; +4 AVs will just have too much HP, damage resist, and debuff resist to make the effort worthwhile. And I think the exp is the same as if they'd been Elite Bosses too, so you don't even get that for a reward for all your trouble >.> Loranna

DPS wise, things might look grim, but there are other ways to whittle down AVs. The easiest way would be to go to the P2W vendor in Atlas Park, and stock up on Envenomed Daggers, a temporary attack power. They come with a juicy -250% debuff to regen, which will go a ways toward making what damage you do do, stick. Radiation Armor, one of the new I25 armor sets, also has a small regen debuff baked into its self-heal: -150% IIRC. So, if you fire off your self-heal - and it's slotted well for recharge - you could maintain a regen debuff on an AV even without using temp powers. And of course, there's always the use of Lore pets, temp power summons, and/or Shivan shards - Shivan shards being overkill in many a case, but hey, those dastardly villains have it coming, yes? :) Hope this helps, Loranna

Hmm . . . KO Blow isn't slotted, and is one of your better attacks, even with the long recharge time. Radiation Therapy is slotted as an attack, which it technically is, but it's not a good source of direct damage at all - especially compared to Foot Stomp or Ground Zero. No Haymaker, which means when exemped at lower levels, you'll be low on actual attacks - not a major problem if you're always teaming, but can be if you're soloing, or on a small team where your damage even as a tanker is important. Here's a build I'm using now, for comparison; feel free to borrow ideas from it: Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.962 http://www.cohplanner.com/ Click this DataLink to open the build! Rad Tanker: Level 50 Technology Tanker Primary Power Set: Radiation Armor Secondary Power Set: Super Strength Power Pool: Leadership Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Flight Ancillary Pool: Pyre Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Alpha Barrier -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), TtnCtn-ResDam(3), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(3), TtnCtn-ResDam/Rchg(5) Level 1: Jab -- Hct-Dmg(A), Hct-Dmg/Rchg(5), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), Hct-Acc/Rchg(7), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Hct-Dam%(9) Level 2: Proton Armor -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), TtnCtn-ResDam(11), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(11), TtnCtn-ResDam/Rchg(13) Level 4: Haymaker -- SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg(A), SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), SprMghoft-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), SprMghoft-Rchg/Res%(17), SprMghoft-Dmg/Rchg(40) Level 6: Fallout Shelter -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A), UnbGrd-ResDam(17), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(19), UnbGrd-EndRdx/Rchg(19), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(50), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 8: Radiation Therapy -- Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(A), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(21), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(21), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(23), Pnc-Heal(23) Level 10: Maneuvers -- Ksm-ToHit+(A), Rct-ResDam%(25), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(25), ShlWal-Def(27), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(27), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(29) Level 12: Taunt -- Empty(A) Level 14: Tactics -- RctRtc-Pcptn(A) Level 16: Beta Decay -- CldSns-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(A), CldSns-Acc/ToHitDeb(29), CldSns-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(31), CldSns-Acc/Rchg(31) Level 18: Particle Shielding -- Prv-Heal(A), Prv-Heal/EndRdx(31), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg(33), Prv-Heal/Rchg(33), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(33), Prv-Absorb%(34) Level 20: Knockout Blow -- SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg(A), SprGntFis-Dmg/Rchg(34), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), SprGntFis-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), SprGntFis-Rchg/+Absorb(36) Level 22: Gamma Boost -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A) Level 24: Kick -- Empty(A) Level 26: Ground Zero -- SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(37), ScrDrv-Dam%(37), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(39) Level 28: Rage -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 30: Tough -- ImpArm-ResPsi(A), TtnCtn-ResDam(39), TtnCtn-ResDam/EndRdx(40), TtnCtn-ResDam/Rchg(40) Level 32: Fly -- WntGif-ResSlow(A) Level 35: Char -- SprEnt-Acc/Hold/End/Rchg(A) Level 38: Foot Stomp -- Arm-Dmg(A), Arm-Dmg/Rchg(42), Arm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), Arm-Acc/Rchg(42), Arm-Dmg/EndRdx(43), Arm-Dam%(43) Level 41: Fire Blast -- SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(A), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), Dcm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), Dcm-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(45) Level 44: Fire Ball -- Rgn-Dmg(A), Rgn-Dmg/Rchg(46), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(46), Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Rgn-Knock%(48) Level 47: Weave -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(48), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(50) Level 49: Hover -- LucoftheG-Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Clr-Stlth(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Qck-EndRdx/RunSpd(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A) Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A) Level 0: Freedom Phalanx Reserve Level 0: Portal Jockey Level 0: Task Force Commander Level 0: The Atlas Medallion Level 50: Cardiac Core Paragon ------------ Hope this helps, Loranna

Level 50 Rad/SS Tanker here, with prior experience tanking yellow mitos on Virtue Hami raids, before sunset. I remember the gist of the task enough that I'd be up for assisting - my best days are weekends in the afternoon/early evenings. Loranna

If you ever decide to branch out to Everlasting, I'd be up for helping - I've got a Freakshow map that just begs for a bunch of Tankers to demonstrate why we're the best AT for beating down crime and injustice in Paragon City ^_^ Loranna

Oh, you lose your base? Eww . . . that sucks :( I don't suppose there's some way around that - say, by making an alt toon the head of said base? Loranna

I played an elec/ss back on live as my main, and have ben playing a rad/ss remake of her since Homecoming. I can speak on both in terms of end game play: Electric Armor is built around the mechanic of end drain and endurance discount. Power Sink, when slotted for end drain and recharge, becomes both your main method of sustainable endurance management, and a secondary form of soft control, working in tandem with the end drain from your taunt/damage aura. By themselves, they're not quite enough to shut mobs down, especially at max difficulty settings - but, say, paired with Electric Melee, or the Mu Mastery patron pool, you will notice the mobs slowing down their attacks as the fight wears on. Energize, meanwhile, gives both good regen and a great endurance discount for thirty seconds - for that period of time, you will be free to cut loose with your strongest attacks, and you'll heal up quick. However, I found that Electric Armor lives and dies by the amount of global recharge you have - you want Energize up as often as possible, both to heal big spikes of damage, and to take advantage of the regen/end discount bonuses. Electric Armor is a set that really benefits from having Hasten, and as much recharge as you can cram into the set. Conversely, Rad Armor is a bit more durable out of the box - its taunt aura can substitute for Hasten, while you have both a self heal and an absorb shield, the latter of which coming with regen and recovery bonuses of its own. Your self heal even doubles as an end drain - however, unless you're completely surrounded by mobs, this end drain will not amount to much; Power Sink, it is not. Therefore, while Rad Armor is potentially more durable, its endurance management, pre Incarnates, is not as robust as Electric Armor's, relying only on boosing your Recovery to - admittedly - impressive levels. But Tanker melee sets are endurance hogs, as you probably know all too well. The nice thing about Rad Armor, is that it plays much like a melee Defender - you're debuffing your enemies with three out of your nine armor powers. Stack the -to hit from Beta Decay with, say, Dark Melee's debuffs, or Soul Mastery's, and you'll be almost as untouchable as you are unbreakable. Or pair Beta Decay's and Ground Zero's defense debuffs with any set that lowers defense, and laugh at enemies' efforts to avoid your righteous wrath ^_^ And the great thing is, these debuffs help your teammates too! TL;DR - Electric Armor plays like a melee end drain Controller, Rad Armor like a melee to hit and defense debuffing Defender. Both can be absolute beasts; the former has a more robust endurance management game, the latter more durability thanks to an absorb shield and to hit debuffs. Electric really wants global recharge bonuses; Rad Armor is more robust out of the box. Hope this helps, Loranna