ZemX

The problem I have with it is that I once heard it called "NASCAR Melee" and now I can never un-hear it. Vrooooooomm...roommmm.... zoooooom. *CRASH*

It really depends what you plan to do. Tanking, the team role, doesn't need you to be at the top of a pylon rankings chart. Soloing, it makes a big difference obviously. And damage seems to be wanted for everyone on a Hard Mode. Other than that.... I'd say pick whatever strikes your fancy. I took a Rad/Staff to 50 and got nothing but praise on random teams for my tanking. Worth remembering that no matter what you pick, *any* Stalker, even one with a staff, will still eat your lunch on ST damage. On a team, the difference between the best and worst ST damage tanker matters a whole lot less when you have real damage dealers in the mix. It makes *a* difference, to be sure, but nothing like the dramatic difference you see in pylon times for the tanker. And another thing to remember is that picking the "top tier" secondary is only step one. If you really want to chase that top time, you'd need also probably mix in patron and pool attacks like Gloom and Cross-punch that may not match your concept, that's a concern for you. And also probably go to town on damage procs, skipping out on set bonuses that would have boosted your survival capability.

I'm afraid they are all very.. axey looking. You might get away with calling the Rularuu one a "scepter" though: Still, they are all held one handed and all animations are swings. No stabby, stabby like Staff's Serpent Strike or Innocuous Strikes. Not going to convincingly look like a spear/staff. I have used the Naginata on a Staff Ninja Stalker and it looks great. You also have a trident and some glowy-tipped Carnival of Light/Shadows options. I think you'll be hard pressed to find anything in Axe that fits as well as those.

A little confused what you mean here. Are you soloing or are you just "going solo" into the group of enemies before the rest of the team? If the latter, then grabbing and keeping aggro on a team is best done with lots of big AoEs. Rad/Staff has that. A lot of it. Both in primary and secondary. Staff's AoEs are faster/lighter so they are available often. On the ground, the PBAoE Eye of the Storm looks like break-dancing. In the air it looks less ridiculous and more spinny. Either way it's up often and hits around you in a 15ft radius, so that's nice. But yeah, it's not the best offensive set. You might indeed want to look at Rad/Axe instead. Since its rework, Axe is a beast. It has the unique Axe Cyclone that sucks enemies towards you before delivering a crunching blow. This can be hilarious if you're flying above them (though a bit more scattering). Pendulum, which used to be a cone, is now a targeted AoE at melee range, so it kind of still feels like a cone, but a super wide cone since what's really happening is it's hitting everything in a 10.5ft radius around your chosen target. In other words, you can almost treat it like another PBAoE that's just offset from you by a few feet. No positioning necessary. That said, the whole set feels slower and more deliberate than Staff so keep in mind whether that fits your desired aesthetic here or not. It swings slower and hits harder. Overall, much better damage. It pairs absurdly well with Rad Armor because every attack in Battle Axe can slot FF:Rech if you really want to juice your recharge. And you really want to to that with Rad Armor because the faster your absorb shield and self heal refreshes, the more immortal you are. And Rad Armor has the endurance to fuel all that speed. Just completely ignore defense. Laugh at seeing -50% defense in the combat monitor against defense debuffing enemies because they STILL can't hurt you through that much resist, absorb, and healing.

Yeah... then I don't get it. Any FREEM should surpass mag 12 protection. And you have no knockback resistance in FA right? Rad Armor has the usual 10,000% resistance which means pretty much anything not tagged unresistable will have no effect. And it's why nothing except GMs/AVs with unresistable KB ever knocked me down before even with just mag 10 protection. And I've looked and so far haven't seen a council power with unresistable knockack. Even this new critical knockback is not tagged unresistable. Unless they did something new that CoD isn't able to parse. Beats me. But mostly... not a huge annoyance. Get to go for the occasional ride is all. Then I get up and they get a frosty boot stomp for their trouble! 🥶

Yeah, it's mostly not a big deal since it doesn't hurt and they can't juggle with it (has built in 10s protection from being FREEMd again)... but it is pretty confusing. War Wolves have a 50% chance of +3 KB with Hurl and a 5% chance of +13 KB with the same. It seems both are independent meaning you can be hit by 0, 3, 13, or 16 mag KB. You sure you don't have mag 13 protection? FA has mag 1 protect in Temperature Protection auto so if you have 3 KB IOs, you have 13. That would explain things. I have 10 protect in Rad, so I get knocked if the 5% chance happens. With 13, you'd only get knocked when both 5% and 50% chances align... i.e. half the time I do. But I haven't looked at all the other Council who have Freem.

Boomerangs aren't dumber than archery or street fighting. It's hardly just shield defense that is silly from a practical standpoint. This is a game where you can dodge a mental attack because you've got super.... reflexes? But I get it. This is one of the reasons I've never made a "natural" origin human hero. Because this is a game, game balance dictates that some normal human with street fighting can go toe-to-toe with a super strength super hero because... they've trained a lot? Yeah, okay. If I'm going to punch someone or slice at them with a sword, I'm not a normal human and that's not a normal steel sword either. I have standards.

Okay, not the best choice of words. Obviously, having gotten characters to 50, I know you can't six-slot every power and inherent. I meant the 50's build is complete. All the slots that were the plan for that build are assigned and filled with with either boosted or attuned IOs. That's miles apart from the natural 20 who has all of 20 slots to assign, probably no accolades yet, and usually not using IOs with set bonuses yet outside of a few one-slot-wonder procs.

You didn't actually run the task force at level 8 though, did you? Should have been exemplared to 15. edit: Nevermind... some reason I thought Rule of Three was a signature task force.

Fair, but I just hopped in game and asked Synapse to help me win an internet argument. He agreed and promptly exemp'd me to 20. Here's a couple quick snaps: Global 1.3x accuracy bonus. 45% acc in my big hitter here. Is that ED-cap damage? No, of course not. Does this make any real difference at level 20? Not that I've ever been able to tell. Again, maybe this is a much bigger deal on a Blaster. I don't know. I don't play Blasters. But this situation above looks pretty damned good and it's definitely not what I remember from being actually level 20 with this same tank. I haven't posted every stat here but I'll just say Resistances on this mostly-resist-based tank look pretty damned good too. From a purely enhancement scaling perspective, for example, I am losing all of 6% smashing lethal defense in the pic below compared to what it looks like at 50 with ED-capped RES enhancement in the toggles. And this is more than made up for by the set bonuses. No SO-slotted 20 rad tank is looking this good for resistances: I'm not sure why your experience is so different but your statement about being more effective at real 20? Not just no. Hell no. Not for this character anyway. Maybe this looks markedly worse at 15. But it's a clear win for the exemplar at 50 here going down to 20. It's not even close. Maybe per punch this is doing less damage, fractionally, but its getting in more punches, managing endurance better, and is WAY sturdier. Again, it's not even close. Could be you have a different build strategy at 50 and not nearly as many purple set bonuses as I am showing here. That's definitely making a big difference. But this matches what the OP is saying about having 50s roll in and own the place on low level teams. And this is why. The benefits can easily outweigh the "teeth filing" you are talking about.

Yeah, I pointed that out. You can easily max one aspect. Maybe two in one power. But at 20 you've got 12 powers and 20 slots to assign to each beyond the default one. So that's not a lot of fully slotted powers. The 50 has all powers fully slotted at least, which means yes, those strengths all get dialed back to 55% but you have more aspects e.g. acc/dmg/end/recharge in each power than any natural 20 has. AND you do have any purple, PvP, winter, and ATO set bonuses. You have all the procs. Maybe it's different for other ATs, but my experience exemplaring down my 50 tanker to even as far as 20 is that it still feels stronger than any natural 20. I can see it being a bigger deal on a Blaster that was enjoying soft-capped defense at 50 losing all that going down to 20 and having their attacks no longer even enhanced to ED cap on damage. But I would still wonder if all the other benefits outweigh that vs. a natural 20 blaster who is just as fragile but is probably struggling more with endurance or slower recharge on powers than the exemplar.

I think that still works out in favor of the Exemplar. You might have your individual enhancement strengths scaled to 55% or so going 50 down to 20, but you probably have more than double the number of enhancement slots in the powers you have access to. Speaking of which you have access to two more powers than everybody else (your 22 and 24 power picks) as Exemplars get to use powers up to five levels above the team lead. Granted, there will be single aspects where the natural 20 may be beating the Exemplar. e.g. You have an attack with three damage SOs and I have a full set of Mako's Bite or something like that. You've got much better damage enhancement. But I have better everything else probably. And while few sets are active down to a minimum level of 20, there's still purples, winters, ATOs, and PvP sets that are. Those set bonuses don't get scaled down and they are active whether they are in a power you have access to at 20 or not. And the aforementioned number of slots probably also means you generally have more of those sweet one-slot-wonder procs scattered about. Performance shifters and Numinas and Luck of the Gamblers and the like. You probably also have all the accolade stat boosters, which few at 20 would have done yet. The above is not a math proof, but it matches my anecdotal experience exemplaring tankers anyway. Always feel WAY more powerful and sturdy than I did at real 20. I can definitely see why the OP might not want such an overachiever on their team all the time.

Want to hear something more weird? I mostly exemp down from 50 to run on lower levels teams... for the same reason. Level 50 steam-roller teams are boring AF. Good for money. But hardly what I call playing. There isn't really tanking or controlling or debuffing or any other role on an Incarnate 50 team except damage. Not doing normal content anyway. It's just rolling explosions following by corpses. So as one of these fully tricked-out 50s ruining your fun.... absolutely put a max limit on your team if you want to. And I won't bother you. And I'm not offended. You have your fun. I have mine. For what it's worth, I try not to exemp down quite as low as 20 unless it's a TF at that level. 25 is decent. 30 is the sweet spot.

I've somehow yet to play any GoW game, so... thanks for that warning. 😉

If someone is annoyed by your unsolicited advice... then it's back seating. It's just as annoying when some games do this to you too. I was recently playing Horizon: Forbidden West because it had finally come out on PC and the protagonist, Aloy, does this ALL THE FREAKIN TIME! She "talks to herself" but really is prodding the player with unsolicited advice without almost any delay allowing the player time to figure things out on their own. Like, "Oh, I think I can move that crate over there!" or "Maybe if I scan this area I can figure out what to do!" Gahh! Give me five freakin' seconds to look around, will ya?! There is literally a mod on Nexus called "Shut up Aloy!" to help prevent this because the game developers didn't think to put in a game setting to tone this stuff down. I'm not saying this is exactly what you're doing, but it's one example of how this kind of thing gets under people's skin, even if they're just trying to be helpful. A lot of the enjoyment playing a game is doing things your way and in your own time, which might not suit someone else who is watching. It might be as simple as slowing your roll. Like that example from HFW above, it would never have been that annoying if the game would let even 30 seconds pass before prompting the player with hints on how to proceed.

I assume the same meaning as "back seat driver". Someone who isn't playing the game, but is criticizing the way YOU are playing it while you're playing it.

This is just a topic that sometimes attracts trolls is all. To be fair, some people really did believe back in the day that you had to have tanks and healers on teams. You'd see them broadcasting all the time "LF emp!" or "LF tank!" Meanwhile teams of buffers, debuffers, and controllers were wrecking everything. The only thing IOs changed was to make people less dependent on teammates. In other words, they don't enable things you couldn't do before. They enable us to do it with less. So yeah, your Brute can solo an AV. But your Brute could tank an AV back in the day with a little help from teammates too. And it didn't have to be a healer specifically. Buff/debuff Defenders/Corrupters were often more powerful and better at mitigating damage because again, they did what you do today with IOs. They boosted DEF/RES/Recharge/DMG etc. And everybody could contribute damage, so there was no need for specialists in that role either. But really I'm just restating the OP at this point. It's a good read and says it better than I am here probably.

I think it's basically the same reason that global +recharge doesn't affect proc rates either: Proc rates don't take global strength modifiers into account. Only base+enhancement values. So Alpha slot recharge enhancement affects proc rates. LotG:+rech does not. And in the same way, since Tanker Gauntlet is a global strength modifier, it's just not considered in the calculation. As a result, Tanker PBAoEs that are 15ft radius and excluded from Gauntlet, like Foot Stomp, have slightly worse proc rates than 10ft radius PBAoEs that are expanded to 15ft by Gauntlet, such as Ice Melee's Frozen Aura or Staff Fighting's Eye of the Storm. Note, this applies the same way to Gauntlet's arc improvement as well. Normally, proc rates are negatively affected the wider a cone is. But just like radius, Gauntlet's global arc strength improvement doesn't impact proc rates.

Depends on the necro. The most hilariously absurd necros are the ones where someone swoops in five years later and directly responds to one of the posts in the thread, as if anyone is still waiting around for that response. Extra funny if it's an angry response which like, "Oooo.. you showed him Mr. Five Years Later! You win that argument... finally!" If, on the other hand you necro a thread and preface your "5 years later" post with a "Hey, I found this old thread but it didn't quite answer my question, which is..." then that is useful. it gives people all the previous context as well as your new question. Or, you could start a new thread and just link to the old one. The latter is probably much safer from the knee-jerk necro-hunters out there.

I'm just gonna call it Frost Stomp from now on! 🥶

Honestly, the CoD page on this guy doesn't look that impressive. Is this not him? https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=genericvillains_mr_g Whirling Sword is the PBAoE. 8ft radius. Yeah, it's a decent chunk of damage but it's neither autohit nor unresistible. How is this guy one-shotting you through a stack of insps before you can even exit the elevator? Or is CoD missing the correct info on this guy? Don't know when last I ran this and probably didn't betray him when I did, so I can't say I remember.

More @Spaghetti Betty I would say. My advice is geared to general content and I think HM+ upends that almost completely and puts the primary focus on damage dealing, assuming survival will be more of a group buff / coordinated-Incarnates effort than traditional self-reliant tank toughness.

By itself, it's not that big a deal, but I think people also use it in a rotation with other boosts like Hybrid Melee incarnate power and Rune of Protection to give more complete coverage with boosted resistances. Unless you're building for Hard Mode with that, I think it's largely unnecessary. If you have nothing else to do with a power slot late in the build, it's not a bad thing to have as a panic button and/or single slot to mule some useful one-slot-wonder IO like Gladiator's Armor or Steadfast Protection.

Defense on Rad Armor isn't conventional. It's a house of cards. If you built for resistance, heal/absorb, recharge, and slow resistance, then you've done Rad Armor "conventionally", in my book. And it doesn't need help from a Radial Lore pet.