CaptainLupis

Neither do I, I've only ever bothered to get perma hasten on one build, my StJ/SR stalker, but usually you are having to sacrifice some set bonus or other to squeeze something like the FF in, where with gale for the sake of 2 additional slots (for the KB to KD and the FF) you have turned a power that most people hate (but have to take anyway depending on AT) into a wonderful utility power with minimal effort and investment.

No force feedback chance for +rech in gale?

I'd suggest a Bots/Rad MM. The good thing about them is they are really useful even with common IOs, so it can be cheap to run on a second account. You have accelerate metabolism for a team buff and a PBAoE heal which could be set to auto. The you have your debuffs: Rad infection, enervating field, and lingering rad for AV fights. Choking cloud is also really useful for shutting down minions and and LTs, plus if you add the lockdown chance for +2 hold you'll be surprised how often it gets bosses out the fight for a whle. Keep the pets in bodyguard mode and with the heal on auto the MM is unlikely to die quickly if things go south. The only real downsides are the bots don't really come into their own, damage wise, until they get the second upgrade at 32 and you'll probably want to invest in some sudden impact KB to KD IOs to keep targets in the bots, and the rest of the team's, AoEs. The first point shouldn't really be an issue as if you had a defender tied to a second account set to follow they probably wouldn't be attacking at all, so any damage the bots do is better than none. But once you get the second upgrade the damage will be good even when exemped down to level 27.

It's been a while but isn't Rage the level 28 power on a tank? Regardless I think it's a likely to be a combination of things, and going defensive is a big factor. Another is Super strengths lack of an AoE damage power until level 38. It's a bit of a slog getting there with just ST attacks as it feels weak. Personally I tend to just switch between offensive and efficient on my Bio/SS tank, I very rarely bother with defensive except in very dire circumstances, and then it's usually just to get the extra absorbtion HP from ablative carapace, then switch back after. But it's pretty rare that's required. Yes, it'll get better, with more slots you'll feel less like you need to be in defensive, that'll help, more recharge will help and the AoE will help as you can concentrate on the bosses with the ST attacks while AoEing the minions, which speeds things up and makes it feel stronger. But I also use rage. I don't find the crash as annoying as many seem to. You can still do other things like use your bio powers, taunt etc during the downtime.

Do you use Negatron Slam, or is it just there to get the kinetic combat set in? I'm presuming you use it but if not you could consider slotting out boxing to get the set bonus which would give you another power pick.

Got my SR/MA to 31, running at +3x8 solo and decided to do a bit of stress testing. Scroll of Tielekku arc so mainly Banished Panthon, but the last mission also had CoT and warriors, meaning I was able to mix it up a bit, aggroing different spawns at the same time. It looks like where I am just now my smash/lethal res maxes out when down to around 14% health. My health kind of bounced around between that an 30% for a fair amount of time, but never really went lower as far as I could tell. My build is very similar to your build here: horn tooting, Redlynne, at the same level, except I have CJ and SJ instead of mystic flight and spirit ward and isn't as fully slotted. I have maneuvers but frankly I don't have the end to run it at this point (which is also why I am going +3 instead of +4), so it just has the PvP +res unique in it and is turned off. I have to say it's a lot of fun, even though it isn't the best damage going and I still have some serious end issues when fights get drawn out (thanks BP and CoT witth your -tohit!). I was saying to a couple of friends in game that it kind of reminds me of old school regen, back when it had the toggle instant heal, in that your health bar is yo-yoing up and down constantly, but you never really feel like you are in any great danger of faceplanting. And I expect it will only get stronger. It's definitely a set worth checking out, and you won't really go wrong if you take Redlynne's build as a template, though there is definitely room for tweaking it to your own style.

Are you meaning as a mule for set bonuses? As far as I am aware the power itself can only be used on others, and taking a pool just to get one power you can't even use on yourself seems a bit wasteful.

Yeah, that's much clearer and easier to read now. Good job.

As I said in my reply to Bill I wasn't really being serious about doing it wrong. To be honest I rarely, if ever, pre plan builds and I'm even less likely to look at other people's builds. When levelling (unless it is power sets I am already very familiar with) I tend to take what sounds good and give it a whirl, then try to find sets to get the best out the ones I like, for both the power and the overall build. It was just a coincidence I happened to be thinking about where to go next with it when I was reading Bill's post about scaling damage res and saw your post linking your build and thought why not check it out. It certainly has food for thought, even if I am unlikely to follow it exactly.

I have SR scrappers, stalkers and brutes (but this is the first tank), plus I had a bunch back on live as well and I think I might have taken aid self on the very first one. Once. Then ditched it for tough and weave instead. I know you are joking here but it's a power I've never really liked for some reason and it's been so long since I last used it I can't even be certain why any more. I suspect it was a combination of animation time, interruptible and still using endurance even when it's been interrupted, but I think there was more to it than that.

I was being a bit tongue in cheek with the doing it all wrong comment. I really was, however, looking for something to change it up as I had been having extreme end issues before hitting 22, although I had just mitigated a chunk of that with level 25 IOs and some set IOs. But it's hard not to like a set that can have around 32% def (I think it was) to melee and ranged by level 4! I'm pretty sure it had around 42% to all by around level 10. Admittedly that was with using storm kick and the 5% def buff from the amplifier. But even so it's still pretty impressive at that level.

Thanks for this. If nothing else knowing they last for 90 minutes, and not the stated 60, makes them a bit more appealing.

I just got my SR/MA tank to 22 after running it through Praetoria, and few Talos missions, and was thinking about what direction to take her, as I already had softcapped def (when using storm kick) even just using common IOs. Then I saw you link this in Bill Z's scaling damage res thread. After my head stopped swimming I thought, damn, I've already taken boxing, tough and cobra strike, looks like I managed to do everything wrong! Ah well, I still have my free respecs at least, so I might give your way a try.

We already have tohit affecting damage in snipe powers, how about for MA more tohit increases the chance for the mezzes to land from their current level up to 95 or 100%? It would be like targetting specific body parts to cause the effect.

I went for softcapped ranged and smash/lethal def on my fire/atomic blaster. Not a single purple or ATO in the whole build, and it is still a bit of a beast. By contrast my StJ/SR stalker has 2 full purple sets and 5 from a third, plus both full ATO sets. It's very much horses for courses as to what is better for any individual build.

Generally I don't bother +5ing the whole set now (and there is no point, to the best of my knowldge, in +ing the proc anyway), what I tend to do is just + the one that has end red in it. That tends to be where the purple sets are weak, as they usually only have one IO that gives end red. If you absolutely have to squeeze every last iota of performance out of it then by all means unslot (or respec) to sell those ones and buy the level 50 versions and + them up. Other than looking at the numbers in the enh screen I really don't notice the difference in actual gameplay. But then I don't do pylon tests and things which might show up a few seconds difference if you do + them all.

Personally I start at the other end: what do I need? Am I lacking in defence, resist, recharge etc? Then look at what powers I have and what sets are available to get me where I want to go. Need more ranged defence? Slot single target ranged attacks with thunderstrikes, targetted AoEs with Artillery set. Need smash/lethal def? Kinetic combats if you have melee attacks. etc. Without knowing where your weaknesses are, or what you are trying to achieve it's hard to give more detail. But yes, if you are going for recharge the 10% the purples give isvery useful indeed.

Purples are only the way to go if they give you the set bonuses your build needs, ie if you are building for recharge, or the like. Yes the bonuses are higher, but if they don't fit with what you need that's kind of irrelevant. I have purple sets on some level 50s and none on others.

-acc or -tohit? Either way I doubt it should be allowing sets to be slotted because of an effect that can only be triggered under specific circumstances and is unenhanceable.

I posted the following (with a few new tweaks here for clarity) in the blaster section before I noticed I had received a reply to the petition asking me to log it here: I was doing a respec of my fire/atomic manipulation blaster and noticed that Positron Cell says it does -tohit and takes accurate tohit debuff sets. However the detailed power description has no mention of -tohit, it actually says it does -10.5% defence. I tried slotting sets from both and it allows cloud senses (acc tohit debuff set) to be slotted, but it has a zero value of -tohit to start with. However it doesn't allow shield breaker (acc def debuff) to be slotted, it remains greyed out when you pick up the IO. Something is off. Either the description and allowed sets are wrong, or the power has been set up wrongly to do -def when it should be -tohit. I would expect it doing -def is correct (as other powers in the set do that as well), and it's the description and allowed sets part that are wrong, but I don't know for sure.

I was doing a respec of my fire/atomic manipulation blaster and noticed that Positron Cell says it does -tohit and takes accurate tohit debuff sets. However the detailed power description has no mention of -tohit, it actually says it does -10.5% defence. I tried slotting both and it allows cloud senses to be slotted (but has no effect to get boosted) but doesn't allow shield breaker. Something is off. Either the description and allowed sets are wrong, or the power has been set up wrongly to do -def when it should be -tohit. Is this already a known issue? If so what should the power actually be doing? I would expect it doing -def is correct, and the description and allowed sets part are wrong, but I don't know for sure.

Personally I have only ever seen it in Founders' Falls.

I'd maybe look at slotting the power transfer chance to self heal in stamina, as well as the panacea in health. It's not a huge amount of healing but it should still tick along even if you get hit with a lot of -regen. Admittedly I've not tested that as I've not really IOd out any regens since coming back, I did have a fair few of them on live though. The highest I have got one here is 41, a rad/regen brute, but I am not liking the pairing as the rad animations seem to take forever (they probably aren't that bad, but it certainly feels like it), and that's not good when you have click heals.

Slight nitpick, but just to avoid confusion you actually have to train up to 50 before you start earning incarnate xp, just hitting 50 isn't enough.

It's removing 10% of it.