Diantane

If you are slotting those dark blasts with tohit debuffs, then you are correct, but slotting them for damage would be a waste of enhancements and slots. However you are spreading out your defender's duties (jack of all trades, master of none). A primary defense defender or a primary debuff defender would be much more powerful. Its called specialization.

Players seem to think that a tank does incredible damage. I see players with several low tier, weak secondary attacks up front. Made an Invul tank one day and a player asked me if I had Super Strength. That is a very popular cookie cutter build. Does it do a lot of damage? Not compared to a scrapper or brute where those same attacks are their primary powers. A tanks main job is not doing damage. There are lots of others on your team that do way more. Your job is to protect your teammates from taking damage. To attract and absorb, deflect or mitigate those attacks. The more damage you take from others, the better. When I make a tank the first attack I train is taunt (the main power of a tank). You see a boss headed for a no defense blaster? Taunt them away towards you. Sure, those attacks have taunt built in, but do players slot them for taunt? Nope... damage. They are misled. So when starting a new tank your focus should be on your defenses and only your defenses (your PRIMARY powers). Also add the fighting pool powers tough and possible weave if you are not resistance based. When a team first sees a large mob, they always hesitate (waiting for someone else to make the first attack - the alpha). This is when the tank is supposed to just jump into that mob and pull all of that damage to your TANK. Then the others can safely go in and eliminate those foes. Of course a healer's primary focus should be healing the tank. If the tank dies, the rest of the team will lose their main defense. The best team will also have a "defensive" built tank, a dedicated healer (no blasts), and controller or defender with lots of debuffs/buffs (no blasts). The remaining team should be your DPS. Unfortunately you rarely see this.

Love this reply - thanks! I'm not rushing to 50. Another player had suggested not using 2X and I went back to life without that. Was able to do more missions, more contacts that I missed before (over running the content). Hosted teams in the Hollows to do all of the arcs (not just Wincott and Flux). They get increasingly tougher, but mostly enjoyable. One difficulty is deciding which alt I want to use the incarnates with for my first experience. Not a grinder, yes, but I'm talking farming with a rad/fire brute (that is grinding that I tried and didn't care for). Doing the storyline arcs is not grinding to me and I really enjoy them, but the most difficult part is finding and playing new arcs. Tired of playing the same arcs over and over again. Like Lockhart, Agent Watkins, Roy Cooling, Provost Marchland (have done all these over 80 times). One day I did the Provost arc three times @ 5 hours each on three alts. Not a badge collector (collect them all). I do find exploration badges because it allows me to go to other places fast using the Long Range Teleporter accolade. This has changed gameplay a lot. No longer do I have to "find" the base portal to train. Now I go to the entrance of the next mission (don't go in). Then cast the accolade and select my base where I have a trainer, quartermaster and nurse. When I'm done I exit the base and I'm back at the mission entrance again. Amazing.

Thanks for the supportive replies (got a few), but most replies were just garbage as usual. For the answers I did get I don't understand most of it.

I still go back to some of them. One of them I added a dozen levels to last week. About to play a 41 that I hadn't touched for two years.

Tried a Ninjas/Kin mm, but they weren't in melee range all the time. Sometimes I could give them a 15 to 30% damage buff with siphon power, but I couldn't keep them healed and they died A LOT. Finally gave up on it, but before I did I noticed that they had a good amount of defense. Got an idea. Rerolled a Ninja/FF mm. Giving them a higher DPS with siphon power didn't do much if they were dead, so I increased their defense. It worked and ran them up to level 37 so far. They just don't die much (let alone take damage). Trained the medicine pool for the few times they did (the team's aoe heals helped too). The bigger shields (dispersion, repulsion field and dampening bubble increased their defense. Plus using repulsion bolt and force bomb kept the foes off their feet so they couldn't do damage to he ninjas much. Also trained leadership (maneuvers (3 slotted with def), assault and tactics)). I didn't bother with the attacks. I already had plenty to do. Another reason I liked ninjas is because they often get crit's and they are very fast fighters.

The Force Field Defender is one of my favorites and extremely fun to play. Have a FF Def on Excelsior called, "Shield-Generator". Since attacks from a defender do very little damage (unless your primary is Kinetics), there's absolutely no reason to train them past level 1 (my prerequisite tier one attack isn't in my toolbar). Because of this we use very little endurance. That blue bar stays near or at the top at all times (unless we're fighting Freakshow's and then only down 25%). Most FF Def's don't train or use only seldom, "Repulsion Field." Because the description says that each enemy that it repels cost you additional endurance. Well since I use so little of that, my repulsion field is always on (and the end rarely drops because of the endless endurance ). Even the dampening bubble is on auto and is up nearly 100%. I use the Force Bomb and Repulsion Bolt constantly and they are well slotted with SO's (acc, rech, rech, kb, kb on the bomb, acc, kb, kb on the bolt). Using the bomb makes me laugh when it hits almost every time (you would too when you see a bunch of baddies fly into the air). The deflection and insulation shields are three slotted with defense buff SO's ASAP. My teammates really enjoy this level of defense when doing arc missions at +3 and +4. Defenders that put all of their slots into their attacks and only the free slot in the shields are only wasting their time. When a FF defender puts that one slot bubble on me, I check the attributes and can see how weak it is (see this a lot too). So when I play a defender, I "PLAY" that defender. As a FF defender I keep the extra baddies away from the team until they are ready for them (I can keep a whole group in a corner. Oh, I don't get hurt much by this. In conjunction with the Dispersion Bubble which increases our defense, I also train Weave which raises it up even more. Hover is also always on which gives me a little more defense (have two Fly SO's in it, so I move around quickly - adding defense buffs in it, helps very little (one def SO only raise defenses by 1%)). I also trained medicine (heal self) just in case). Sure, I could train the leadership skills, but what I do to protect the team is so much better and really noticed by the teammates. Most FF defenders I see cast their one slot bubbles and then casts their weak blasts. If you want to use blasts, play a blaster or a sentinel. A team with a defender that trains and slots all of their primary powers and doesn't train the weak blasts makes for a much stronger team. Note: One of the FF powers, "Detention Field" only keeps one foe trapped. Repulsion Field is so much more useful.

That is grinding. I am not mentally able to grind. When we played Asherons Call years ago, players would kill the same creatures over and over again for a month to get to the max level (and then do it again and again). It took me 4 years to get to max level (275) by completing interesting quests (no grinding).

Getting a character to level 50 takes me 3 to 4 days depending whether or not I use the double XP buff. With this buff I go from level 1 to 30 in approximately 7 hours doing arc missions with full teams. My problem is, getting to 50 is the end of my character's career. Since I have no idea how to proceed beyond that with the incarnates. Sure, there are guides that are very hard to follow and I'll hear something from another player from time to time that I still can't figure out what they said. There should be a simpler guide built into the game. So going beyond level 50 brings me no benefit and is just grinding. Because of this, I have 120 alts so far and its very hard trying to design a new character since I have done almost everything.

The martial art's powers flow very well, but the damage it does is awful. At level 27 with two damage SO's, I do 35?? YUK! And that tier 9 power, "Eagles Claw" takes entirely too much animation time to do low damage. On a sentinel with radiation defense, I can click on "Particle Shielding", run into a group (taking the full alpha like a tank), do a few aoe's and get out without a scratch. On a scrapper, I'm dead in 3-4 seconds. Completely worthless.

Thought about that. My next character will be played old school. Was tired of seeing the character completed in a few days anyway. Going to do every Hollows arc (did this before by turning off my XP so I could bring others through these nostalgic arcs). Even before this, I will start with the arcs in city hall. Doing the ones that I have never done (still some left). Only problem is, I always play a natural origin and the only enhancements that drop are magic in the beginning.

I was born in 1955 with three types of ADD. It was never cured because they didn't know what it was. This means that I cannot grind (doing the same thing over and over). COH was great for me as it allowed me to make a lot of character types. Unfortunately the max level is only 50. Other mmos go much higher, but have far less "classes". If COH had a higher max level (say 150) and that much content, it would be wonderful. My first mmo was Asherons Call. The max level is a whopping 275. Players grind to get that high as fast as possible. It took me 4 years, but I made 275 by doing quests.

Correction: Having no influence doesn't force me to play other games. It allows me to play other games. Have over 115 alts on Excelsior. Running out of ideas to try (looking for synergies). Last trial was a beast/FF MM. The wolves kept dying (a lot). Busted and abandoned at 19. Cost me 2 million.

I once created a FF Defender and three slotted the shields with SO's @ level 7. Noticed when we were doing the Wincott missions @ +1 and Flux @ +3 (Frostfire @ +4); not only did no one die, but everyone's health was maxed out. Right there I saw the the importance of the single origin enhancements so I kept on buying them and upgraded every five levels. Kept on doing this and my savings ran out. That's when I learned how to make money in the game. Didn't know that! That all server auction pools are the same. Glad to see it. I've never done anything with the incarnates. Frankly its mostly because I could never afford it. Read that some players spend billions on their character and I thought workbench IO's were high.

Recently the auction price for an enhancement booster has dropped below a million influence each on Excelsior. That may sound like a bargain for buyers, but its a huge loss for the sellers. Selling these boosters provides me the revenue I need just to play the game. Of the approximately 8,900 boosters available on the Excelsior auction, about 6-7% belong to me and I can't sell them below one million each. So I'm forced to hold out with about 500-600 boosters in the bank. When I start a new character it cost me 74,000 influence. I pay 24,000 to max out the amplifiers at 1,000 each for 8 hours. And 50,000 influence for a decent travel power until I train one in my teens. I play at double XP so there is no influence coming in. If I relied on the little money coming in from missions with no XP boost, I could not afford to buy more than 20% or less of the enhancements needed. Financing a character through level 40 costs between 7 to 12 million influence to upgrade the enhancements every five levels. It costs about 25 million for level 45 workbench IO's. If you use IO's during leveling, they don't expire, but then your percentage boost drops as you level (compared to the single origin counterparts). So you have to replace them too quickly which is expensive. I found that these workbench IO's only provide a few percentage points increase over buying level 50 SO's which are much cheaper. I enjoy the storyline arcs in the game, but found that the high level arcs (level 40+) are mostly computer generated and boring. Playing them is just a grind which I do not enjoy. Have found that if I grind a level 50 doing these arcs, the influence coming in is decent, but again this is short lived unless the arc has a good storyline. The bottom line is I'm holding out selling the boosters that I made from buying them with the merits I earned while playing the arcs. There will be a lull in the market until the price goes up. My funds have been disappearing and will be forced to play other games until the market collapse is gone.

I put the 3 Preventive Medicine in the Instant Regeneration power on the sentinel. I didn't notice much change on absorption (+6). Hardly worth spending many millions on them

I put the 3 Preventive Medicine in the Instant Regeneration power on the sentinel. I didn't notice much change on absorption (+6). Got a much better benefit on the defender.

Is there some sort of program that will tell me all of the recipes and salvage I have and in which character they are in?

Thank you! Lots of great information there.

Is this the best enhancement for this?

I don't play the defender anymore (not for almost a year). Thinking of moving these enhancements to a Sentinel with regeneration to the Instant Regeneration power.

33.1 +25% = 41.275 -- still not as high as the IO above - yet the performance is about double?? This is used on a 50 Defender with Pain Domination Health bonus is 1.88%

Three Healing/Absorb Healing /Absorb/Endurance Healing/Absorb/Recharge

I'm looking at a few healing enhancements and got confused. Here are the ones I have: L45 Invention Origin - Increases healing, hit point buffs and damage absorption by 40.5% Here's the confusing part: Preventive Medicine: L50+5 each Healing/Absorb/Endurance 33.1%/33.1% But when he power is used they heal for twice as much as the IO's above. How? Why?

Thanks for the tip 🙂 Thread based components?