ZemX

Go neutronium or go home.

It would need a costume that manages to pack a good four or five rip-offs into a single costume. Maybe a claws/regen brute, cigar, huge, spiky hair, green skin, purple cape with mystic insignia, big iron rocket boots, blue and red spandex pajamas... hmm....

You know I get a bit of a chuckle out of this as it reminds me of a long ago time, perhaps shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth, when I got a college internship at a tech company and one of the first things I was handed was a book... of acronyms they use in the business. Maybe we need one a' those? 😜

The stigma isn't about experienced players PLing up a new alt. It's about new players sitting a door, not learning the game, then attempting afterwards to play on teams without even the knowledge of how to get from one zone to another. Playing SOME of the normal leveling up is a good tutorial for the game, after which if you wanna PL... knock yourself out. That's not any kind of rule. That's just good advice.

Looks good to me. Focused Accuracy is key to avoid being toHit debuffed. I haven't loaded the build but I see a couple pairs of Winters in there so Slow Resist is probably good. Debuff resist is so important when you lack defense. I tend to lean less on procs. My RT has a couple Preventive Medicine to boost heal/recharge and then the rest are procs, including of course the Theft of Essense. My GZ is where I put two Avalanche for recharge and knockdown (and slow resist set bonus) and then the rest procs. That means I give up some damage for utility so that just depends on taste. I lean more towards team tanking than soloing or I'd probably do differently. But no, this build looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Teleport is my new favorite travel. Always used to be leaping from the old days but once I went tanker and started getting hit by everything, I got tired of being -jump debuffed by webs or blocked going through doorways when there are mobs I needed to grab aggro, so... teleport. I use just the travel version Teleport, even in doors. It's not as zippy as CT obviously, but it's nice long range. I can bamf into the next group to lather them up before the team gets there.

Non-pool placate powers have a 5s window now where even getting hit doesn't cancel the hide, so it should be a guaranteed hidden attack follow-up no matter what happens with aggro or your defense level. The remaining 5s of Hide after that can be spoiled by getting hit though.

The staff in those pics is quite similar to the Carnival of Light staff you can choose in Staff Fighting. Bio seems the closest thing to that armor but I'd second giving Rad a look. Rad has a couple nice AoEs in it you can proc up for more damage, and Ground Zero looks very anime to me, especially if you slot it with knockdown. For added effect, use Teleport to get to the center of a big spawn and then hit GZ. You'll be floating a few inches off the ground, throwing your arms out... and everybody falls down in a radial blast of energy. It's just cool. Rad does have the spinning ping-pong balls animation on armor toggles you can't get rid of. You can tone down the ground effect on the taunt aura by using the very dark left side of the Bright Radiation palette. Dark blue looks like cool blue smoke on the ground.

Hmm... not quite sure about that. It appears to also redirect to Gauntlet Proc Aura which applies un-enhanceable 14.96s taunt mag 4 to all targets. A bit odd. I haven't played Willpower specifically but in my experience taunt auras are fine to hold the mobs near you assuming you're also attacking them with AoE and single-target powers. At least this works for me on Tankers. I only use ranged Taunt to grab aggro at a distance. Not to taunt mobs already next to me. I think taunt auras that also apply several debuffs are especially good at holding aggro because each of those debuffs also adds significant threat which is multiplied by the taunt. Faster pulsing auras naturally accumulate threat faster too. There is some variability in activate periods for auras in different sets.

This. Debuffs are pretty much the only reason I keep the power monitor mini-window up. Last Hit Chance, Recovery, Regen, Any defense, Any resistance, damage bonus, recharge bonus. I might take an extra defense or resist depending on the character but one is usually enough since debuffs tend to be -def(all) or -res(all). For resist, I like having my two or three lowest resistances shown if I know the rest are capped.

It's a lot weirder than that. Most people assume taunt is like an AI override. i.e. That it makes an enemy attack you for a certain length of time (the duration of the taunt). But this is not how it works. What keeps an enemy focused on you is a value called "Threat". Think of each NPC as having its own enemies list ranked by who it thinks is the biggest threat to its existence. Everyone who has attacked that NPC gets on the list and starts racking up Threat points as they attack, debuff, control, etc. Person with the highest threat number wins that NPC's attention. The taunt effect is essentially a multiplier. For the person who has put a taunt on that NPC, everything they do while that taunt lasts has its threat value multiplied. This is how a Tanker who does much less damage than a Blaster can still keep the attention of the NPC. It's like hitting for 10 damage and having it hate you like you just hit it for 1000 damage. The weird part is that multiplication factor is based on how much time is remaining on the taunt. So hit them with Tanker 41 second Taunt ranged power and then Brawl afterwards will do many many times more threat than hitting Brawl again just before the Taunt expires. If that makes sense. Happily, this is all pretty much irrelevant and only matters when you're teamed with another person who is ALSO taunting. And I don't know about you, but that doesn't usually concern me all that much. I'd only consider using Threat set IOs if I was looking for a particular set bonus or for a proc. Otherwise, don't need them. Taunt, even unmodified, is such a large threat multiplier that nobody is stealing aggro from you in most normal situations. Maybe if a Blaster has been blasting at some AV for a while and you're late to the fight trying to catch up on threat... I dunno. Like I said, never bother with it and never have trouble holding aggro on a team.

It's not trying to be deceptive. The game calculates recharge assuming all current buffs/debuffs will go on forever. It can't really work any other way. You might think it could get a better estimate if it takes into account the remaining duration of all those buffs/debuffs but that wouldn't work in all situations either. Buffs/debuffs that are toggles or AoE ground patches, for example, only debuff you as long as the toggle is running or as long as you stay within the AoE of that debuff. The game can't know that. Nor can it know what new buffs/debuffs you will be hit with in the future. So it doesn't try to guess. Hell, my Rad Armor tanker gets a +recharge boost based on how many enemies are standing nearby, so my total recharge bonus can change by the second. All that said, in order to understand what you're seeing, you need to include the power monitor in your screenshot like @Maelwys has (showing Recharge Time Bonus and the breakdown below it) to see how many and how strong each of the debuffs are. One, or even two, cryo rounds can't slow you as much as you're seeing. So yeah, UI display bug or you're getting hit by more and/or stronger debuffs than you realize.

I go between Everlasting and Excel depending on my mood. Wouldn't say either is "home" since I'm good transferring my tanks wherever I need them.

Unless you want to believe the game has malfunctioned in a way nobody else has experienced, the only reasonable explanation is that what you're saying didn't happen or that the circumstances of what happened are different than you remember. Three cogs cannot zero your endurance. They probably can't even overcome your natural recovery rate meaning you could stand there forever and not be drained. Like I said, people face hundreds of these things, including higher level LTs and Bosses during the Synapse TF which was just recently the weekly strike target. This would be noticed if it were happening. It's not happening. This was essentially your opening question: Are debuffs worse now than they used to be? Answer: No. They are not. Edit: To clarify, endurance drain IS a thing people experience running the Synapse TF but only because they are facing nonstop hordes of these things as they have to clear out map after map of all Clockwork enemies. If merely 3 of the minions could zero someone's endurance, the TF would be practically unplayable, if not literally so.

Then definitely play a tanker first and you will have the benefit of knowing how to play a controller/dom without pissing off the tanker. 🤪 Also... welcome!