ZemX

I wouldn't call that a waste. It's hilarious!

"Which is easier?" may be the wrong question. Yes, it's easy to hit the soft-cap on positional or just S/L defense, it being only 45%. But whether that is worth doing is debatable. I tend to fall on the side of the argument that defense without defense debuff resistance (DDR) is generally worthless. In specific situations like AE farms or teams where you can rely on having defense boosted further by teammates, then having some defense to stack up on is worthwhile. But if you're wanting to be self-sufficient AND be a tanker who is going to attract most/all of the incoming attacks for a team (or solo)... go with a set that has DDR, get it to soft-cap or above, then pile in other layers: resistance, regen, recharge, slow resistance (to protect recharge), etc. This will be tougher than Resistance Armor that tried to add defense only to have it blow away in the wind on a +4/x8 ITF. Resistance Debuffs do exist also, of course, and Resistance Armors with capped (or higher) res are better able to ignore them, but they are far less common than defense debuffs. Anybody hitting you with bullets or blades is usually debuffing defense. Think about how common that is. It works wonders for squishy ranged types to get soft-cap defenses with zero DDR because they're not tanking. And when they try, you often see them doing amazingly well... until they are suddenly dead. 😛 The "why" is called "Cascade Defense Failure" and it's what happens when you don't have DDR. Want to be toughest tank who ever tanked? Take SR, Shield, Invuln, or Stone to the IO shoppe and go nuts. Maybe Ice Armor too but it's less common. That said, I am a super fan of Radiation Armor, but I built everything onto it EXCEPT defense. It has resistance, an absorb shield, and a self-heal so I did everything I could to jack that stuff up as much as possible because even when defense debuffed into the floor, all that stuff is still working. Recharge to make absorb shield and heal refresh faster. Slow resistance to make sure it stays that way. ToHit debuff resistance to make sure I can hit with that heal when I need to. I think it does great, but a super tank build of one of those other sets I mentioned will still be even tougher. I just think they're less fun. 🤪

Two things: 1. Weapon redraw has been reworked globally. You no longer have to rely on power customization "no redraw" options. You basically just draw the weapon the first time you use it, then it reappears in your hand instantly any subsequent time without redrawing the weapon again. Up until a certain timeout where you haven't been using any weapon powers for a while. 2. Axe Melee was reworked on Homecoming not long ago, so you probably want to give it another look.

If you want to add something to this guide, it can be pointed out that Origins are basically only useful for arguing about Origins on the Forums. 😛

Seriously, the back and forth about this academic argument is beyond useless. It sounds like it was a hyper-specific problem with an out-of-date build after a bunch of big changes to the early game. Ancient History. @CometCometh, here's what you do: (1) Read @Sovera's Fire Armor Tanker guides to learn the what's what of today's Fire Tanker. (2) Join us for... And (3):

This thread probably got more complicated than it needed to be. If it puts your mind at ease, this statement above is absolutely not true in the game as it stands now on Homecoming. You might experience this sort of thing just starting out but if you want to you can build a character capable of destroying an entire +4/x8 spawn (that's +4 and +5 to your level and sized for a team of 8 characters, btw) without breaking a sweat. Not ANY character or build, of course, but it is certainly possible. Might be simpler if you just do some searches on Youtube. Watch people solo +4/x8 with various kinds of characters. That might be faster to get a flavor of where the game sits power-wise right now than wading through all of our opinions here. But long story short, the game is now nothing like you're describing. Homecoming team has even had to introduce such things as the "Hard Mode" Task Forces to really challenge the top character builds and teams these days.

You only "have to" do this if you are attempting some sort of wonky "do everything" kind of path through the story arcs. This is possible, but wasn't really intended. I'd say if this is what you are gunning for, the best advice is just to follow that thread that was linked earlier about side-switching. It gives the exact path to follow and avoids a few lock-outs that can occur. The Crusader storyline, I recall, is particularly messy towards the end because there's at least one instance where an actual mission contact can be killed, preventing another mission involving that contact from being completed. The side-switching thread mentions that and steers you around it in the proper order. But the way Praetoria seems to have been designed, I'd say the intent was first you pick a "true" side during the tutorial. Then you have choices: 1. Just run all the missions on that true side. You have access to everything. 2. Also optionally run some light undercover for opposite side contacts you have access to. i.e. Won't be everyone. 3. Switch sides and run deep undercover, with access to all enemy contacts but at the cost of some of your own (since even they don't know you're undercover and don't trust you now). 4. Switch sides "for real" and betray your original side. Sadly, however, you cannot become an undercover agent for your new side. Nobody trusts you enough anymore for that. Nothing wrong if you do want to "do everything". Just saying this looks like how it was intended to work, so it makes sense in that context only really. If you do want to do everything, seriously, just follow that thread. It's complicated and there are more than a few pitfalls to avoid.

It was entertainment. Conan O'Brien does the same thing with his "Clueless Gamer" segments.

ooo... nobody "just says" that and walks away. You might wanna prep for incoming. 🤪

You mean you're nervous about it if you play a non-SR tank? Because SR pretty much doesn't need to be concerned at all about it.

They are both wonderful. Not sure who we blackmailed to get Assassin's Mark to be a global chance to proc on any hit no matter where you slotted it, but that stuff is amaze-balls. Very noticeable if you have a decent amount of AoE since it has a chance to proc per target hit by any attack. I've had it happen a few times where it procced like two or three times in a row so I was alternating attacking and hitting Build Up for a couple attacks. Neat!

I suspect most people wouldn't like that. Your best bet here is to use that macro to turn off XP when you reach a contact's maximum level, then turn it back on when you move up to the next set of higher level contacts in the same zone or the next zone. It's annoyingly manual, to be sure, but just involves looking up the contact level ranges online while you play.

Or movies. Has no one given you grief for Bullitt Time thinking it was just a "Bullet Time was taken" name?

Just don't be that person on a team trying to lead a hostage out who doesn't turn off their stealth aura and can't seem to understand why they need to. 🤪

I know you don't mean it literally doesn't work but I'd worry new players reading this would think there's a serious problem of getting stuck somewhere with just run for travel. There isn't. Temp jetpacks are available at any P2W vendor for cheap and you could use them to hop up and over anything that gets in your way running if you don't want to find the long way around. You don't want to cross an entire zone with temp fly or do a lot of aerial combat with it, but if it's just an annoying wall in your way or something, punch the jetpack for a few seconds and then get back to superspeeding.

Yeah, I've never gotten far with MA. It definitely has synergy with defense sets on Tankers thanks to the +def in Storm Kick, but other than that, I am not a superfan of sets that have only one AoE, even when it's as fast as Dragon Tail or as smashy as Foot Stomp. Energy Melee got some love there. Of course Shield/Elec's claim to fame is the whole twin teleport AoE attacks you have access to. It's a lot of zoom-and-boom. I've not tried Fire Armor yet myself. Not seriously anyway. If I want more offense, I tend to go with another AT. I stick with Tankers for the whole unkillable (just about) aspect.

Redside was always smaller. Both the ability to switch sides (Issue 18) and create any AT on either side (Issue 21) happened on Live. This didn't happen because redside population was thriving. It was dying. Population is a feedback loop. People are more inclined to join the side where there are more people and more opportunities for teaming, which only makes the problem worse. Putting up barriers to movement just convinces people to stick with the side that has more people and NEVER switch over, even temporarily. The opposite needs to happen here. It needs to be as simple to join a team running papers in Grandville as it is to join one running radios in PI. Tell, join, travel. No barriers. No "you can't join because you're a hero". No getting kicked from the team because you went to Ouro or your SG base. Adding alignment switching to Null was easy and a small step that happened after Live. More needs to be done. If it is, you'll have teams running redside just like you have them running blueside. The overwhelming majority of players don't care about aesthetics or roleplay morality of heroes vs. villains. They just wanna play.

Shield will ultimately be tougher and Fire more damaging. You have reviewed the changes to EM since Live, right? Fire Melee also got updated. Just checking.

I have taken a Rad/Staff to 50 and Bio/Staff only about 30ish. I'm just a bigger fan of Rad Armor but the Bio/Staff is definitely interesting for all the stance selections you have. But you're already familiar with that from other ATs. As far as Staff goes on Tankers, the finisher bonus in Form of Body on Sky Splitter is a huge +13% res(all). On top of that, you have Tanker ATOs, both of which stack on top of Bio (or Rad Armor) res and absorb. Bio is more of a hybrid def/res than Rad Armor and Staff only gives melee/lethal defense in its defensive cone attack. Still, that might be worth something depending on your build. But yes, the main thing is that on tankers, the cones are both 135 degrees wide and can hit ten targets. The PBAoE is 15ft radius and can hit 16. The main downside of Staff is long animations, which harm its overall damage output as compared to other sets, if you care about that sort of min/maxing. Savage has three AoEs: the short cone, the tricky PBAoE, and the leap attack AoE. The last one is excluded from the Tanker AoE bonus. It's 20ft radius for everybody, I think. But both the small and large versions of Rending Flurry get the Tanker AOE +50% radius bonus. And the cone, though short, at least goes from a relatively narrow 80 degree, to a generous 120 degrees making it much easier to hit a few enemies standing side-by-side in front of you. The recharge bonus is modest, but nice, and the AoEs cycle pretty quick. Rending Flurry can be up often and is enormous (22.5ft radius) when boosted by Frenzy.

Just a thought, but maybe consider just having a primary or secondary theme only. Like all Ice Armor or all Fire Melee. A little more variety then and maybe more interesting. I would vote either all Fiery Aura (think of the Burn!) or all Shields ("This is Sparta!" Would be crazy defense and DDR with overlapping Phalanx.)

Eh.. won't they? If there's no Tanker on the team, don't they turn to the next beefiest and expect them to dive into the pile first? And it's not like you weren't gonna do that anyway Tanker or no Tanker.

If I'm going to run story missions on a new character it's gonna be red or gold side every time. Only a few of the newer blue low-level mission arcs are palatable.

Tricky! Not actually enough info to answer. But here are some rules of thumb: If you have high defense, the answer is probably "take the regen". If you have low defense, the answer is definitely "take the resistance" (caveat: Unless you're already capped in the most common damage res types). The reason for this is that resistance's value depends on how much damage is hitting you, because it takes away a percentage of that damage. Regen is a fixed amount that scales up with your maximum hit points. A 2400hp toon has a base regen of 10hp/s. +25% regen always adds 2.5hp/s to whatever regen you already have, again, if your max. hp is 2400. Scale it from there. Upshot is that you have to be taking about 168hp/s incoming damage before 1.5% resistance equals the benefit of +25% regen. (and note, I mean incoming damage as in "before any of your own resistances or absorb decrease this amount"). A high defense toon might be dodging most incoming damage. At the very least, the difference between taking one or the other on such a toon might be a coin flip in most circumstances. Then again, in any case where the crap hits the fan and you DO start taking a lot of damage, even on that high defense toon, that 1.5% res would easily be worth more than a paltry 2.5hp/s. A lot of what you are doing building a tank for survival is building for those corner cases, because almost any tank can survive the ordinary cases. Like I said... tricky.

They are using Flight and Hover both at the same time, which is possible these days. Travel toggles are no longer mutually exclusive. In that case, Fly speed will come from whichever power has better fly speed, which is Fly... of course. But Hover adds MovementControl which makes Flying a lot more maneuverable.

We usually favor at least a kill most style (as in, "everything between the front door and the target and maybe anything that looks at us funny along the way"). Usually at +1 or +2 at the most because we're not always running a team of level 50 incarnates and while Tanks aren't in much danger of dying we ARE usually in a lot of danger of taking all evening clear that many maps at +4x8. We're not all proc'd out for max. damage, not naming any names... *cough* @Spaghetti Betty *cough*. But we're flexible. Sometimes if something is going to take forever we'll be willing to speed a bit. The goal is usually to get through a task force within about the first hour and then, for those sticking around, to do some level 50 mission teams or another quick TF.