JCMcBoo

Named after my supergroup and being a list of my characters on Torchbearer. This is just a start, more to follow... Living Doll (Dual Blades\Regen Scrapper) ***** "You've heard of elf on a shelf?" Amelia asked from her perch on the low wall that separated the stairs from Jonas' small attic library. "Yes" Jonas replied as he pored over the crackling pages of an antique book. "Well this is doll on a wall mate." Amelia replied in a self deprecating tone. The cursed mask on her face was made of smooth, bone white porcelain graced with gold filigree on the cheeks and forehead. The rest of her body was much the same. Smooth, white porcelain clad scantily in gold. "You're frightened, aren't you?" Jonas asked. Looking up from his book with genuine concern. "What makes you think that?" The sarcasm in her voice dulled by her static features. "You always resort to humor when you're scared or nervous." "I tell jokes." Amelia countered defensively. "Yes but not good ones." Jonas said with a gentle smile, hoping to lighten the mood but failing miserably. Amelia jumped to her feet, slamming a fist on the wall in frustration and shattering the heel of her hand and pinky in the process. She lifted the remains of her hand to her face to consider the damage. As she watched on the broken pieces, surrounded in an aura of soft gold light, followed through the air then quickly fit back into place to make her hand whole again with only thin surface cracks to mark the injury. Those too would fade in time. "I have good reason to be frightened." she said in a sullen tone, drooping her head glumly. "We will find a way to get that mask off Amelia." ***** Real Name: Dr. Amelia Sparrow Current Occupation: curator Citizenship: British (Permanent US resident) Legal Status: No criminal record Place of birth: Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, England Height: 5' 7" Weight: 140 Eyes: Black Hair: Gold Bio Amelia Sparrow was born and grew up in the village of Cottenham outside the city of Cambridge. Her favorite places growing up were the museums where she could spend hours exploring the antiquities and learning about their history. Her keen interest led her to get a doctorate in Archaeology from Cambridge University. After university Dr. Sparrow worked for many happy years at The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology> From there she had a brief stint at the British Museum before being offered what she considered to be the opportunity of a lifetime, to curate the private collection of Jonas Blackbeard, the fabled Blackbeard's treasure. The collection was vast and full of unrecorded oddities beyond mere gold and jewels. One of these oddities was a delicate porcelain mask inlaid with gold and a single onyx gemstone set in the forehead. She decided to try the mask on but when she placed it on her face she felt a shock throughout her whole body and was transformed into a being of living porcelain. In a panic she attempted to remove the mask but it would not come off. Her new form grants her certain abilities with which Amelia will often assist Jonas in his adventures but she also continues to work as curator of the Blackbeard treasure, partly in the hope that she will find something that will allow her to remove the mask. Powers Blades - Living Doll has the ability to transform her hands and forearms into heavy porcelain blades which are extremely tough and sharp. Over time, and with Jonas' help, she has learned to wield them effectively in battle. Regeneration - Living Doll's porcelain body has the ability to self-repair almost immediately. When damaged the porcelain will shatter revealing that she is hollow and filled with some form of golden energy. This energy surrounds the broken pieces and pulls them back together making Living Doll nearly impervious to any long term harm. The only part of her body that is completely invulnerable is the mask and she has speculated that she could suffer major damage such as shattering her entire body and still survive. She has no desire to test that theory because she does experience the pain of her injuries however brief. Living Doll does not need to eat, sleep or even breathe. She has various theories on how she is still able to speak which she would happily discuss with anyone that is willing to spend a few sleepless nights in conversation. Temperature extremes do not appear to affect her unless they cause actual damage and she believes that in her current form she is effectively immortal.

If the person using the name Stout is no longer actively playing their character on Torchbearer I'd really like to have the name. It is the name of a character that I created years ago in a Play by Email RPG and was able to recreate in CoH when the game was live. Unfortunately it was already taken by the time I joined Homecoming.

Stone/Ice is the most survivable tank I have ever played sans expensive IO builds.

It's the ridiculous conceit that some sort of competition exists between the archetypes. I have yet to see, with a minimum of exceptions, anyone trying to build the "perfect team" for trials, TFs, door missions or even farms for that matter. The previously mentioned exceptions are usually when damage-centric teams go up against higher end GMs that require some sort of meaningful debuff to defeat. The archetypes are meant to be about play style not "grind cred". I haven't tried it personally but I have enough experience with taking a fire/rad controller to 50 to wager that, with the right build, it could probably farm fairly effectively. Does that invalidate every other archetype in the game? Hardly!

Thanks for the reply! Sad to hear but at least now I know.

I have looked but have not found any information on pet commands specific to Beast Mastery. My goal is to order my pets to sit or lay down and stay in that pose until I move or tell them to move. I have tried a few thins, (sit, lay, lay down, down. etc) but none appear to work. Do such commands exist?

Either of those is a great choice. SR may pull ahead slightly since there is some redundancy with Ice Armor. I have a DM/SR scrapper that feels almost tanky and I have an Ice/DM tanker that is nigh unkillable and I would think that a DM/Ice scrapper would be fairly impressive as well.

Divine Avalanche increases your melee and lethal defense with each successful hit and stacks for scrappers and brutes. Tankers are unable to stack the buff but that just means they can keep the initial buff active (I don't have the numbers handy) permanently during combat provided DA is fired off every time it recharges. This makes it easier to reach the soft cap for melee and lethal while in combat. The real question is why wouldn't you use it?

I am not sure about your personal experience with the combo but I have a level 38 Ice/Dark tanker and it's amazing!

Sorry.... SD/BA because you're not talking about a brute and Battle Axe armor would just look silly. 😛

I am having a ball with my Ice Armor/Dark Melee tanker. The buff/debuff synergy takes my defense over the top and the regen/recovery overlap is amazing! I am also enjoying my SR/Katana tanker. Another good synergy for nigh unassailable defense and a fast attack cycle. I also have a great pirate themed back story that got me a 10 million influence honorable mention in a recent costume contest. 😄

Only if you assume that we are dealing with a zero sum equation which I personally do not believe is the case with CoH/CoV.

I can only speak for Divine Avalanche but yeah, 2 recharge SOs in DA will get your tanker to the point where they can keep the defense buff up continually as long as you use it just about every time it recharges. I have a Katana/SR brute and I am able to 3 stack DA for a short period of time and I had a similar experience with a Katana/SR scrapper when the game was live.

Sarcasm costs nothing? 😉

I am still down with the suggestion to remove stacking altogether and just restart the clock each time that Rage is reactivated. This kind of behavior already exists for the tanker version of Divine Avalanche as opposed to brute and scrapper versions. You could possibly add a slight debuff to accuracy and endurance recovery while Rage is active as a downside. Thematically the fact that you are in a rage means that you are just lashing out wildly with everything you have.

I have a pirate themed SR/Katana tanker currently at level 34 and it's been a blast so far. The only thing that I noticed is that Divine Avalanche doesn't appear to stack for tankers like it does for brutes and scrappers.

I was listing the grouping in my power tray rather than my actual attack rotation. After getting AoD my attack rotation became: TS, DS, WS, AoD, reposition for maximum impact and repeat until I get down to a single target when I switch to my single target attacks RA, FT, CB and AoD if necessary. The power tray grouping just makes it easier to switch from group fighting to toe to toe fighting on the fly.

This! So much this! I'd be especially happy with a tintable stone skin for my avatar or even just the stone plates used for fire and ice sans the glowy bits.

Titan Weapons is, IMHO, the tanker secondary. It starts out slow until you get enough attacks to capitalize on Momentum. I have also found that Titan Weapons requires a strategic approach in that you need to be aware of where you are standing in relation to the mobs in order to take full advantage of your cone attacks. This requires some readjustment during battles. I recently hit 50 on my Inv/TW tanker and have personally found that setting up my power tray as outlined below allows me to easily swap between group and single target fighting but YMMV. 1 - Defensive Sweep 2 - Titan Sweep 3 - Whirling Smash 4 - Crushing Blow 5 - Rend Armor 6 - Follow Through 7 - Arc of Destruction I thought of moving Arc of Destruction into the #4 slot and shifting the single target attacks but I don't find the current set up all that confounding.

Rooted This came out of a discussion from another Tanker thread. Rooted stays active as long as you are immobile. If you move the animation/effect drops but you get 4 seconds of residual (possibly weaker) mez protection and the ability to move at normal speed. If you stop within the 4 second period the animation/effect reappears and you are back to full mez protection as long as you remain immobile. That would allow stone tankers to move around in a battle situation without fear of being "mezzed". A quick and dirty test puts that at roughly 40 yards with no debuffs to movement which is probably more than is needed in a battle situation and, depending on the proximity of groups on a mission, could possibly allow a stone tanker to move from group to group without having to drop Rooted. Build Up This one occurred to me just after getting Build Up on my Inv/WM tanker. Replace the +Self Damage with a +Max Targets effect that turns the first and second tier single target attacks into cone attacks for a brief period. This would make tanking easier at lower levels and effectively make soloing easier as you are able to briefly damage multiple targets. Discuss...

When did we get Staff Armor? It's gotta be noisy and uncomfortable! 😄

The most popular specific request is, of course, Mastermind customisation (what else would it be?!) So are we talking about just cosmetic changes to the existing Mastermind primaries via the character creator, like Ninjas made to look like Morris dancers or re we talking about full customisation where you can control the look and available powers of your minions ala AE?

I wasn't suggesting any hard controls like holds, just a more widespread application of their damage and inherent crowd control secondaries like disorient, KB/KD, slow, etc. using Titan Weapons as the template.

David Eddings would agree but he wouldn't call it magic. He did have a word for it though. 😄

My main on live was an Inv/Axe tanker but I went with Inv/TW on Homecoming because it was more in line with what I thought tanker secondaries should be.