callador0630

I'm a new player that briefly played COH/COV when I was gaming back in the day while mainly playing WoW. I always liked the the concept of the game, but it was pretty hard to play solo as a tanker. Like others mentioned, endurance usage really sucked. I also felt like there weren't enough missions, so I was stuck street sweeping or doing newspaper missions. I really disliked doing both of those. After coming back, and I'm still a newbie, it's feels a lot better to level. Maybe all the missions existed before, but it helps that I can easily find contacts and do real story arcs. I don't know any of the tricks to power level, so it isn't like I am hitting 50 any time soon. It is fast leveling, but for a new player, not ultra fast. So I'm getting way more into playing my tanker this time. Now I want to actually level a guy to 50 and start doing some real tanking. I played EQ before WoW, and that was also too hard to play for solo leveling, raiding, etc.

Thank you both for posting those builds. 🙂

One other question, how tough can a stone tank get using granite more as an "oh crap" button and mainly sitting in the other forms? Resistances seem pretty low to everything but fire/cold, but I would have the bonus from staff. Like you said Tsuko, he would be more of a regen style tank with rooted.

Thank you Tsuko for posting a good starting build to get me going. I think in another thread I saw, you had a pretty awesome INV/Staff build which got me thinking about Stone/Staff. I thought another good one could be fire/staff, just to help max resistances and plug some of the holes.

I've seen messing around with a few of the power sets, and I think I settled on Stone/Staff as the first tanker I want to get to 50. I'm pre-granite, but with mud pots, rooted, tough, weave, and rock armor running, I'm actually pretty durable and taking down mission mobs with ease. I purposely have been picking missions (when I can) that have more melee/smashing/lethal damage. I haven't taken any of the other stone armors, and I was hoping to wing it all the way up to 32 and just stick with granite. Worst case I could grab some of the other ones to have more resistance/defense in the other areas. I'm a total newb, so I don't know much about the sets. I've been making generic IO's so far. Being new, I won't have a lot of cash, so I figured this would be the best tank to get up to speed in the tanking department. Then I can keep adding more custom sets as I go. What I would like to do: - Leverage the +13% to all resistances from staff and hopefully have enough recharge to keep that going constantly. I will take hasten to help, but is there a way to get perma-hasten so I can negate the -65% in granite form? Or at least negate enough of it so I can keep guarded spin and sky splitter up for the buffs. - With the bonus resistances, I would like to spend less slots hard capping them and focus more on my psi defense/resistance. I will get 13% resistance from sky splitter, and I should get some psi defense from weave and maneuvers. I also get some bonus defense from guarded spin, so hopefully that can save me some power choices to focus on psi. - For the damage debuff on granite, I will take assault to negate most of it. - If possible, I would like to use rooted and earth's embrace to get my hip points near capped and have decent regen. Thanks in advance!

I agree, full disclosure is important for sure. Especially since there are no official contest rules. When clearing hard content in other games, i always used group buffs, food/potion buffs, etc. Any little edge might be the make or break for beating new bosses and gearing everyone up.

I can bench 405 with no hand off, etc. But the type of equipment you use factors in as well. For instance, out of an er combo rack, which has 1" hole spacing, i can take any weight i can bench raw out by myself. The height is fully adjustable, so I can be in a good position. But at the local YMCA on their hammer strength rack, I would be hard pressed to do that. The j hooks are super deep, abd it's 3" spacing between each hook, and they are non-adjustable. So with my ape like long arms, the bar is still really low, like I'm starting at 1/2 a rep. My strength is still a constant, but it's the equipment that makes one successful versus not being successful. And someone with short arms might be ok on the hammer strength bench. This is why doing in under competition rules with max time limits and strict form (no touch and go, butt lifting, etc) matters. The competition also spells out what equipment you can use, like the adjustable combo rack.

I powerlift and can't think of any feds that don't allow wrist wraps in the raw division. You also get a hand-off. You do have to pause on the bottom to get the press command. So that would be the "gold standard" for a raw bench press, since it follows the rules set in competition by most if not all feds. Any additional handicaps (5 second pause, etc) would be self inflicted. And it's ok to do that, but you won't win yourself any points competing that way. I'm new to this game, but I see the builds going on the same way. There should be a standard (pretty much any power you can get, even if they are not up 100% of the time), but outside buffs shouldn't be allowed. But I'm new and really don't know much about it. But I can tell you everything about powerlifting having completed, coached and judged since 2011.

Thanks for posting the builds! 🙂

That's really cool. Do you have a build you can share? I'm pretty new, so I'm not even 100% sure what some of things are you mentioned. But I've been going for 6 slots on the attack powers, and now I have an idea where to go with my defensive powers. I took staff for the same reason, since it offers +res on a set that doesn't have any. I just hit 22, but so far it's been pretty good.

Thanks again to everyone who posted. I will keep looking through the thread for build ideas as I progress in level.

Thanks guys. I will keep leveling up my fire and sr tanks. Are there any mobs that get more +to hit that 13? Would going higher in defense negate that, or is it more into autohit territory where resistance and regen are the better option (on SR)? For fire I'll definitely take your advice and make sure I can push damage to kill things quickly. I agree that the faster things die, the less chance of seeing special attacks or sequences in raids (thinking WoW here), which means less chances for the group to die because someone makes a mistake. I really appreciate the help. And now my guy is rich enough to make those IO's. 🙂

I did mess around with SR/MA and SR/Staff. I heard that staff is lower dps, but I thought the inherent bonus to resists would be nice. Staff has the nicer cone attack early on, but it does feel a little slower. I guess I'm not sure end game if you can patch up resistance using other slotting, especially with MA making it so you don't have to focus too much on defense. Sovera- I read through your guide and now I have some money! 🙂 Thanks for that. So for the pro's that are looking on this thread, would you think that SR/MA or SR/Staff would be better for end game? I'm thinking maximum damage mitigation for group content. One other question, and maybe I should make another thread for it. But I've noticed mobs debuffing my defense. If I'm over the cap using MA (say 50%+), will that help when counting the debuffs up? For situations where you get debuffed or mobs have big to hit bonuses, would it make sense to get defense super high, like 70%+? Or is that sort of waste after hitting the soft cap?

Thank you for the replies. I'm definitely open to grouping, but I haven't seen much action going on. Way back in the day I played Everquest. I had a warrior so I could tank. But outside of groups, I couldn't really do anything. I just wanted to make sure I could solo ok (doesn't have to be the best) when I can't find groups. I will stick with it and see how things go up in the 20's. Sovera- I will check out your guides. I did read through a bunch of threads to get ideas. I really was trying to min/max everything. I made Shield/MA and SR/MA for the synergy on the extra defense figuring the low level defense boost would help. But the LT's and bosses still were tearing me up. I also tried Rad and Bio. I liked the endurance bonuses, but I still got rolled by tougher groups where I had to pop a lot of inspirations or bail. But again I was trying to take the secondary powersets that gave more defense or resistance (staff). The last guy I made was fire/rad. I was looking for more damage vs extra defense. I did like that rad had the extra heal (I don't have it yet). So far this guy has been the best one to level. I can pop my fire heal and have consume if a get low on endurance. Is fire/claws a lot better? I know I could make a cool concept with that build too. From what I've read, people are saying fire is weaker end game. With enough influence, can you cap all the resistances and get some kind of type defenses going (melee/ranged/aoe)? Or is that not really the way to go? If it can't hit those numbers, does it make sense to play MA or Staff to bridge the gap, or are the other secondary power sets just that much better damage wise? I don't know numbers, but my fire/rad tears through groups a lot faster with my aoe fire dot and cone attack from rad. Plus I get extra splash damage with contamination.

I'm new to the game, and I've made a few tanks that I got up to level 10 to 12. I need a little help with some ideas. I'm looking for something that can be very sturdy end game. I like to tank in a variety of games. I will be coming in with no influence, etc. so Ideally it would be nice to have something tough out of the box. Then I can slowly tweak the character out as I get more influence. I'm assuming I can do that just by continuing to tank or maybe farm. I've played games like WoW, so I'm not too sure how it goes. So here is the conundrum. I've backed by missions down to -1 for level, and depending on the character I either kept it as +1 for number of heroes or +2. Nothing I've made seems all that tanky at low levels. I also feel like I'm not doing that much damage. I pop inspirations and get through it, but it feels underwhelming. So being new and leveling with no influence, I'm also looking for something that can solo well enough to level up. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks! 🙂