ZemX

It's 0.4, 0.9, and 1.5 times the AT specific damage buff modifier. So not linear but a very slight curve.

In general, I am just not a fan of emergency-use-only powers. They took the right direction when they went crash-lite with stuff like Meltdown so it becomes a power you might choose to use on cooldown instead of just in an extreme emergency. But since they have the mutually exclusive option now, there's no reason to change what's there when they can just add something new and crashless or crash-lite and then see what the players pick.

I want a Shield/Staff tanker! It just needs a few alternate one-hand animations and a spear skin for the staff and boom -- THIS IS SPARTA!

Getting to 50 sooner and then running content at 50 by itself will roll in a lot of inf, especially in "kill most" TFs you join at 50 like the ITF. In the meantime, using merits as you have been doing, for cash is good. You can also use merits-to-converters and then use the converters on crafted uncommon recipes you have cluttering up your inventory. Make rare IOs out of them by converting and then sell those for a million or more a pop on the AH. What I do is drop by my base to unload enhancements in inventory and common IO recipes to a vendor. Then hit a crafting table to see if I can craft any recipes with the salvage I've collected. Then I sell off any excess salvage left over, leaving about 4 of each common and 1 of each uncommon just to free up space. Excess orange salvage goes on the AH directly (sells for around 400-500k somewhere apiece. Once the crafted IOs build up enough in inventory, I spend a few spare minutes converting them into things that sell better on the AH and listing them. Check back occasionally to see if anything sold and collect inf. Farming is obviously faster than this, but I'm not into that so can't advise.

Right. Sorry. Superior Might of the Tanker proc is 6.7% res(all) per stack and you can often count on two stacks in a decent combat. So I should have said total of about +26.7% res(all) if you have Sky Splitter in Form of Body and two stacks of SMoT. Might of the Tanker's is +5% res(all) per stack, so still plenty worth it in the lower levels before you can slot the superior set at 50. The six-slot bonus for the set is +5.25% S/L resist too (+6% for Superior set), so not too shabby.

Staff isn't winning any damage contests, thanks to long animations and this game's long-standing "original sin" of never considering animation times in the damage balancing formulae. But it makes VERY sturdy Tankers. I have an SR/Staff I haven't done much with lately, but my main is a Rad/Staff who can self-cap or nearly cap all resistances WITHOUT rotating any long cooldown +res powers like T9s or Incarnates. The sauce, as @Warshades points out, is really Perfection of Body's combo with Sky Splitter. On tankers, it's +13% res(all). Combine that with a couple stacks of MoT (+12%) and you looking at a whopping +25% res(all) added to whatever you already have from powers and IO sets. Very nice on my Rad Tanker. Just about cheating on SR's scaling resistance.

That's the thing. Can't really afford pulling too many people away to deal with the winter horde spawns when we need all the DPS we can get on the WL and WGs and we've been limited to just two teams in the new format. I'll probably get on some WL Realm raids this week and give pulling a try. It would be ideal if we can manage to just dedicate no more than two tankers to pulling in spawns (as well as the WGs when they appear) to the main melee with the WL.

Hey! Thanks for this summary. We recently tried this on Tanker Tuesday with around 14 tankers on two leagues. Mixed success. One league beat him and one ran out of time. Most of us weren't familiar with the new mechanics. But I wonder... would it not be easier to just keep most everybody on the WL, in a location well away from any of the crystals, and then designate two pullers to rope in spawning winter creatures (and the WG when it happens), and lead them away from the crystals and back to their doom in the WL mosh pit? Or do they resist being pulled away from the crystals?

Not bad for all tanker teams most of whom didn't know what they were doing (including me!). Towards the end someone mentioned we should have kept WL away from the crystals so that we could immediately pull spawners away. I think we want maybe two tanks ranging around pulling in herds of spawners towards the melee against the WL (assuming they can be taunted away from the crystals, that is). We were too spread out on league 1 and so we didn't have focused fire on WL most of the time. If everyone knows where they're supposed to be and only those designated to pull run off, we can keep more firepower on the WL more consistently. I noticed, btw, that my Vanguard HVAS lasted a LOT longer than my Incarnate Lore, for whatever that is worth. It might be a good idea to pick up an HVAS for those of us with heaps and gobs of Rikti Merits. Especially the non-Incarnate members of the league. One thing that did confuse me is how "Winter Essence" works. I was wondering why he had an essence bar when no minions were near a crystal and it seems it's because the Guardians add their HP to the meter too, up to 50%. But the essence bar does nothing for WL if it stays below 100% other than cause spawns to run towards the nearest crystal every 30 seconds when essence is below 75%. So as long as we're keeping the meter from reaching 100%, we can be focused on hurting the WL, switching only to, as quickly as we can, down the Guardians when they appear. In that sense, this is really still a lot like the original one where you focus on the WGs when they appear at the 75, 50, and 25 points. The added wrinkle is keeping essence below 100% by pulling spawners away from crystals (or ideally preventing them from reaching them in the first place). Keeping it from ever reaching 100 is also worth a badge, btw. I guess we especially need to be concerned when approaching the 75, 50, and 25 points that essence is not too high because the WG will add a BIG chunk when it spawns. Anything else we can do to boost damage for the WL bangers is probably good. Assault Hybrid. SS Ragers. Red insps. Bad attitudes. You know, the usual. We'll get him next time. Grats to League 2!

It's kind of like Bio without the defense and switchable modes. That is, it's a bit of a hybrid, just not as much as Bio. Its layers are Resistance, Absorb, Healing, and Regen in more or less that order. It used to have two proc-bombs but they pretty much destroyed the proc-chances in Rad Therapy with the change to adaptive refresh. So there's just Ground Zero. Which is still great, but less so than it used to be when it was a giant 22.5ft radius bomb that proc'd like it was 15ft radius. I suppose that was too good to last forever.

No defense and thus no defense debuff resistance (DDR). This makes any defense you add via other means fragile. That works fine if you're a blaster dodging the stray bullet but not when everyone in the room is attacking you and especially not if they have defense debuffs. So you get hit... a lot. The damage isn't a concern but the debuffs can stack on you. Particularly bad are slow and -toHit debuffs since they directly inhibit your Accurate Heal and Absorb clickies. Rad Armor has some slow resistance but one should build on it to achieve at or near 100% slow resistance. Similarly, Focused Accuracy is one I rarely skip on Rad Armor too for the -toHit debuff resistance. Beyond that, lack of Repel, Confuse, or Fear protection are occasionally annoying depending on what you face, but not crippling usually.

I balance things since I am usually doing a mix of team and solo in the early levels and also because of what @MonteCarla mentioned above. Always look at what each slot is buying you in real terms. A few percentage points in an armor toggle when you are nowhere near the cap (or soft-cap) isn't that big a deal. But like I said, I solo at least some of the time and there it matters to have 3xDamage and 1xAcc at a minimum in attacks, so I am shooting for that. I'll stick to maybe just one added slot in armor toggles and autos to give 2x def/res in them. A nice compromise. Beware slotting EndRdx. It is often mentioned and seldom useful... if you solo. If you're doing all the damage, you want to improve damage-per-endurance on your attacks. You can always slow down the pace of your attacks to conserve energy, if needed. Damage is thus more flexible an enhancement in these levels because it lets you choose between full burn and steadier pace at will. If you do know you'll be teaming almost exclusively, then yeah, I might suggest leaning more towards endurance and maybe even recharge to have a faster pace of attacks (and thus more punch-voke taunting). Even then, leaning on defenses only buys you so much. But you do want to set aside room for those one-slot wonders like Steadfast +def or Shield Wall +res. if you want to really maximize survival. Also don't sleep on buying the max of amplifiers at level 1 when they are cheap and will last 8 hours of play or so. Very nice in those levels. As is any temp buff from DFB or from a supergroup base empowerment station (90 minute temp buffs that are often very worth it, particularly for resistance, endurance, extra knockback prot., slow debuff resistance, etc.)

*cough* Unstoppable *cough*

None of that makes what he said "reasonable". Merely the part where he says most tanker powersets will fail and can't be considered a real tank... is where you laugh him out of the forum. Nobody saying that has any idea how tankers or tanking actually works in this game.

You're not a REAL tank unless you're carrying max. Stun and Frag grenades from the START vendor.

Rad is plenty tough so long as you don't forget to shore up certain debuff resistances. Because it has no defense built in, it's vulnerable to stacking debuffs like -toHit and -defense. i.e. Because everything hits you. So I never skip Energy Master for Focused Accuracy for one. And I also pick up a few two-slot Winter IO bonuses to stack up a little more slow resistance. Being slowed is deadly because Rad's other survival layers, the self-heal and the absorb shield, both depend on recharge. So do these things and stack up a bit more resistance and you'll be fine in most content, like @Warboss said. For extra survivability, I like Staff Fighting. My Rad/Staff is easily my toughest tanker. You can get decent melee defense without spending a lot on defense or defense IO set bonuses. You also get a +res bonus in the Sky Splitter finisher when in the damage stance. On Tankers, it's a hefty +13% res(all). That on top of Might of the Tanker can easily account for +25% res(all) full time. Basically I am hard capped to all but Cold most of the time without using any T9 or Incarnate abilities. Ground Zero is fun when procced for damage. I am also partial to adding a purple KD proc to it because seeing everyone take a seat when I fire that sucker off never gets old. It also clearly communicates to your team that you just got everyone's attention. I love seeing a Kin zip in and Fulcrum while everyone is still standing up.

My problem with Fold Space is it only seems useful in certain situations. Whenever I'm in a Praetorian undeground or lab full of ranged enemies spaced evenly out over a football field sized room, I think to myself, "Gosh! I wish I had Fold Space." aaaand pretty much no other time. There are always other power picks I will use ALL the time to put in my builds vs. this power that only seems useful once in a very long while.

I don't know that I'd call the RED-side population on any server "significant" and gold-side will be even less than that. Praetoria is not really designed to HAVE a population since it actively routes players to red or blue side once they hit 20. It's possible to stay and continue in First Ward and Night Ward, but very few people do that.

There are probably several that might work but I use '/e Idle1' (I assume Idle2 would work as well). I bind it to a macro button on my toolbar and punch that before using other emotes. Obviously, you still have the shield in hand though so whatever motions the next emote puts you though, the shield follows your hand.

The real problem is knockback as a secondary effect and, often, an unreliable one at that. If you have a power that ONLY does knockback then you can use it when you want to KB something and not use it when you don't. But when it's attached to your main damage-dealing attacks, NOT using them isn't a good idea. So you either reposition (costing you time), use KD converters (costing you an enhancement slot), or just do it and accept the consequences good and/or bad. I like using a Nemesis Staff to knock Super Stunners away from the team. Even if one person chases them down to engage, they'll maybe still only hit that person with their rez and not the whole team. And certainly I've seen KBers knock enemies INTO the pack too. There's no question it has its uses... if you can control when you use it.

It won't do the job by itself. Even with decent recharge, it will take too long to cover every enemy in a full team-sized group of mobs and be difficult to keep aggro without attacking. You need not just good recharge but also to be attacking. Without being close enough to taunt with the aura or PBAoE attacks, you will be even more dependent on ranged and ranged AoE attacks to get and keep aggro than a traditional melee tanker.

To understand taunt (the effect) you need to think in terms of another thing called "threat". Threat is like a counter (or a list of counters) on each NPC enemy. It's their "enemies list" and it has everybody on your team, their pets, etc. Anything that has attacked them. We all get ranked by most to least threatening. The NPC will attack whoever is at the top of their "most threatening" list. Taunt is NOT an override to this list. It does not jump you to the top of the list automatically and keep you there for the duration of the taunt. What it does instead is, first, apply a nice helping of threat to your own counter for that enemy. This alone often jumps you to the top of the list. The second thing it does is leave a taunt effect on that enemy for a certain duration. Every time you AGAIN attack that same enemy after taunting it, your attacks receive a very high multiplier to their threat. Meaning you can follow up your taunt with a Brawl and probably ring up more threat on that enemy than a Blaster with their best Snipe. The more you keep attacking that enemy, the more you count up threat. THIS is what keeps their attention. Not the taunt duration, but how high your threat counter gets on each enemy such that nobody else on your team can beat you for "most threatening" no matter how much more damage they do than you. A single Taunt power activation does a very nice amount of threat, but your teammates will quickly surpass that if they sustain fire on that same enemy for just a bit while you don't do anything else to them. And because it only hits five, you sort of have to use it multiple times. If you want this theme of yours to work better, you need to add ranged attacks. As a Tanker, any single target attack taunts the target and up to five enemies around your target. Any AoE taunts every target it hits. Claws would probably be your best choice for attack powerset since it has a couple ranged attacks that you can imagine are like Angel's wing feather darts or something. Shockwave and Focus. More ranged attacks can be found in pools and epics. Point is, if you want to taunt from range like that, you need to be cycling through attacks AND taunting and you need to spread it around to the group of enemies. What's making your idea less effective at keeping aggro than a traditional tanker who is "in the soup" is that you're getting no benefit from the taunt aura or from PBAoE attacks. A Tanker is taunting everybody around them for a 12ft radius constantly with the taunt aura on. So you can use ranged taunts and attacks to draw in stray aggro outside your little bubble of hate more easily. And PBAoE attacks can keep hammering those close to you. The one benefit to taunting at range is that enemy AoEs aimed at you aren't hitting your melee comrades. I do traditional tanking, but sometimes jump away from my team to range taunt enemies that are bombarding the team, like Nemesis troops with Storm Rifles.

I'll just pull the pin and leave this here.... We don't have the data needed to balance the ATs. The devs do. What data is that? Popularity. First, last, and only measure of whether an AT needs "balancing" is popularity. It's not clear times or what we think of their ATOs. We each have individual opinions but popularity is every one of those opinions put into a blender, mixed up, and then measured. Why should we aim for equal popularity? Because in a game where you have 'n' choices of what to play, you don't really have 'n' choices if some of those are simply not desirable. The more choices that are viewed as desirable, the more GAME there is. This is why giving us a reason to visit Kallisti Warf was such a good idea. It was there. It was a choice. But it was a choice nobody wanted to make before. Now it is. More of this. But with ATs and powersets this time!

No. DPA is literally an accident per the original design of this game. The original Live devs had no idea it even mattered.

Well, if this thread has accomplished nothing else, it has resoundingly answered the question of whether or not KB is still a "dirty word", I guess.