ZemX

Can you really under-utilize something nobody wants to utilize at all? I would rather see more use of open-world glowies like you have in a few Praetoria missions. Have them spawn ambushes or result in quick "side" missions like stopping a pawn shop robbery or a jail break. This would make for a more interesting "patrol the city" kind of objective than just running around clicking call boxes for no apparent reason.

Fair. The reality of survival is you only need "enough" of it and more is wasted. Using Granite only as an on-demand survival tool makes the most sense because when you don't need it you can dump both its unneeded benefits AND its unwelcome penalties. Then you can have them all back the instant you DO need them. If I ever do play this set though, I like the idea that deciding how much survival I put into my non-Granite build determines how often (or how rarely) I need to use the ugly rock suit. But I'd still take it as an emergency measure.

Agreed, but KM isn't really special there tho. Disorient and Knockdown are pretty common. Probably less common are the attack types: Ranged single-target and Ranged AoE. Not TOO uncommon, but not every set has one and only a few have both types. As for unique secondary effects, I'd say Boggle in Psi Melee. Does anything else take Confuse sets? And Siphon Life in Dark Melee. Lots of Tanker primaries can slot heal sets in a self-heal power, but secondary attacks? Isn't Siphon Life the only healing attack Tankers get? And Dark Melee's Touch of Fear? And there's various endurance draining attacks in Elec Melee that can take endurance modification sets. I don't think anybody else does that in a secondary. Ice Melee does slow and has a hold. Only a few sets have an attack that does Hold. Stun/KB is much more common. After that, I'd say the +def attacks (that are enhanceable) like Guarded Spin, Defensive Sweep, Parry, and Divine Avalanche. Again, lots of primaries slot defense sets. But this is where a secondary attack can offer another home for LotG:recharge.

Soloable and "designed for soloing" are not the same thing. Saying it was designed as a team game does not preclude the ability to solo. But you know as well as anyone how many more barriers existed to soloing back then than today. If you wanted to team, anything worked because the idea was a team filled in anything you didn't do for yourself whether that was making up for poor damage or poor self defense or whatever. The same simply isn't true soloing where you can only rely on what you had. You might have been able to solo with anything but your performance doing so was wildly different from one AT and/or powerset to the next. Why? Because it just wasn't a goal to balance the game around soloing. I would put up something like SWTOR as a better example of an MMO that was designed to solo simply for making NPC companions available to fill another team role.

I don't think that changes much. You might see a lot of similarity in powersets available to melee archetypes but among all archetypes the powers available to them are wildly different and therefor so too are the proc opportunities. Yeah, lemme nip this one in the bud. It was an example to illustrate how different powers means different opportunities to slot procs. I know you know this. The procs only go in certain powers. FF:Recharge, Lotg:Recharge, and Achilles:-res are some of the most commonly slotted procs to increase performance. Ston's entire analysis of melee powersets could be boiled down to (1) Which sets have the best DPA attacks in a chain, and (2) Which sets offered the most opportunities for procs. Even missing one Achilles proc could rearrange the rankings for soloing. I agree with this. I think procs, together with Incarnates and IO sets, have all acted to push the various ATs closer together. I don't think they are even close to balanced in clear times as a result, but perhaps they are closer than before. They key thing all three of those things do is give the AT access to stuff it didn't have before. I happen to think it's the biggest FLAW in all of them, but that's me. I do not see solo clear time as a goal for balancing. The AT differences promoted diversity and encouraged teaming that was actually interesting. This can still be found in lower levels, where people do not have as many sets or ANY incarnates yet. I'd have quit by now if the Incarnate steam-roller endgame was all this game had left to offer. I can handle that in small doses, but it gets boring and pointless super fast.

Well, I did, for one. The point I was making, perhaps not well enough, is that some powersets have MORE opportunities for stuff like this than others. An even more obvious example is Luck of the Gambler: Global Recharge. Everybody uses this, but some people have a much easier time reaching the limit of 5 simply by having more (or any) defense powers in their primary and/or secondary to slot it. It's also just one example to illustrate that %procs are not some equal benefit that evens out everybody even just for solo defeat speed.

Baloney? There is zero balance among ATs and powersets around who can slot which procs. Entire powersets provide huge differences in global recharge just for having more places to put FF:Recharge. And that goes for every kind of enhancement category. Some powers slot more than others. There is absolutely zero balance here. But putting all that aside, what you're claiming is "overwhelming" game balance is just solo clear speed. The idea the game even SHOULD be balanced by solo clear speed is already debatable but it's also not even close to true for all ATs and powersets today anyway. %dmg procs don't solve that. They push a few ATs a bit closer together maybe but even that isn't 100% due to procs. Likely all the testing you've looked at has included IO enhancement sets and Incarnate powers too. All of that, by virtue of being available to all, pushes everybody a bit closer together. You might say it makes us all less different at the top end of the game and while one way to characterize that is "more balanced" the other way is "less diverse". This was envisioned as a team game and many people play it that way. That some ATs have less solo ability and more team utility in the bargain is a feature... not a bug.

Only some. The first two cones, Defensive and Titan Sweep are completely unchanged between Tanker and other melees. No increase in arc width and no increase in target cap. Both are 120 degrees and 5 targets for everyone. Whirling Smash is expanded to 15ft radius and 16 targets. It's the only AoE in the set to fully benefit from the Tanker inherent. Arc of Destruction, the last cone, does not get its arc widened but it does have its target cap increased to 10 instead of 5.

Panacea and Kismet are the only ones I slot on every character at level 7 (or as soon as possible if I need CJ or Hover to slot Kismet). The rest depend on what the toon needs. I don't add the one-slot +def or +res unless it's adding to what the toon already has (e.g. +res on resistance armor, +def on defense armor, or if it synergizes with debuffs I am slinging from my pri/sec powers). Otherwise, the slot is better spent at that level on an SO. I can add the one-slot def/res type IOs later if I am stacking up defense or res with IO set bonuses and pool powers. The ATO procs (just the procs) I might try to fit in early if they are remarkable. Not every ATO is. And they typically go in attacks which may be more desperate for SO acc, dmg, end this early in leveling. Generally don't start assembling sets until I get near 30. Their enhancement levels aren't worth it before then. Ones not to sleep on are the Winter's Gift and 2-slot set bonuses from Winter IO sets. These give slow resist, which is not just slow movement resist but also recharge time resistance. Enemies that slow your recharge can range anywhere from annoying to someone with great passive survival skills to life-threatening if your survival skills are more of an active click nature. And of course they are killing your damage output at the same time. Of particular interest to aggro magnets like Tankers and Brutes and especially to those who rely on resistance rather than high defense (and thus are more likely to be hit more often with debuffs).

Wow, now there's a movie I forgot even existed. I had to go read up on it to even remember the plot. He was kind of a Superman clone-gone-wrong no? Maybe Elec/SS/Energy (gotta have dem eye beams, no?)

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I saw it randomly mentioned in a Reddit post or something like that and then did some searches. Two years late to the party.

This. The next coolest thing after the nostalgia wave of just logging into HC for the first time was realizing I could import old costume files from an ancient backup of the client install. I was even more shocked to get a few of the same names after being two years late finding out about HC.

@Bopper is talking about running Granite all the time. That would be the only way of "Rage countering damage debuff from Granite". Granite is -30% dmg. Double Rage is +160% dmg. But only when you're NOT crashing. Any way you slice it, Granite is hurting your damage, but when it's +130% vs +160%, it's a lot less noticeable. That said... I see no reason to be in Granite 100% of the time. I think the changes have made Granite potentially situational in the same way many other T9 click "ultimate" armor powers with long recharge times always were. Break glass in case of emergency. Don't know if I'd want to be going in and out of Granite every Rage crash though. If you're double-stacking Rage, and you should be, that's 10 seconds out of every minute. But it's definitely something you can consider using if you happen to crash at a particularly bad moment and you've suddenly started taking a lot of damage.

Invuln is a brick wall, no doubt. It just doesn't DO anything else that excites me. If passive uncrackable survivability is what you are looking for though, Invuln is a great pick. Then go find "fun" in the melee and pool sets and never worry about survival.

There's no particular synergy there. It's just that Rad Armor is a solid armor set. It doesn't need Dark Melee's heal. It has a couple powers that can be turned into proc-nukes already, so Dark Melee's two just add to that. Or, you could skip Dark Consumption if you don't want to spare the slots to proc it out for damage. You won't need its endurance. Betweeen the recovery, end drain resist, and putting a Theft of Essense in Rad's heal, you have all the endurance you need in Rad Armor. So you might view that as a chance to choose some other power in place of Dark Consumption. Or if you just want that many AoE proc nukes, you can go that route too. Rad's weakness, if you can call it that, is Defense. You can try adding this in with IOs and pool powers and, with a whole lot of investment, end up at or near the soft-cap. And then a couple Cimerorans take it all away in a matter of seconds. So the route I go is ignoring defense slotting. If I take any pool defense powers like Weave, it's for the chance to slot a LotG recharge IO in it. Instead pile on the resistance and recharge. Because you lack defense, everything hits you. So for that, Focused Accuracy from Energy Master to prevent being toHit floored by enemies using Dark attacks against YOU. Tactics, if you can fit it, adds a little Confusion protection which you otherwise don't have. Though this is a fairly rare problem and one that isn't usually that serious. More of a slight annoyance that pauses your attacking for a few seconds (and which might end up with you taunting teammates as well). But otherwise, if you build to Rad Armor's strengths, you will better weather those defense debuffing enemies if you build stuff they can't take away from you.

Shield/Dark is a pretty great combo. I've been stuck on Rad Armor for a while, so my Shield/Dark is still hanging around the mid 30s somewhere. But Shield has great defense, a neat AoE attack, a taunt aura that adds to your damage, and good defense debuff resistance. It lacks a self-heal and Dark Melee provides one in Siphon Life. DM also does -toHit debuffing which neatly complements Defense and a +endurance power to help with the blue bar. If fact, I think I might bring him up to 50 next. It's him or the Rad/SS.... decisions.

Okay, turns out I only took two pictures myself this time. First, a nice sized crowd. I think we added even a few more after this shot was taken. And last, as promised.... RED CAP HOT TUB!!

Katie Team Two - a.k.a. Seventeen Times the Victor! Yeah... we "accidentally" started KHTF at +2 with eight tankers. We made it as far as Seven Times the Victor before it became clear it would be faster to restart at +0 and finish the entire rest of the TF than defeat the next three Marys, the current of which was already a +4 AV. We'd get her down to half or less and then she'd don her track shoes and drag us all over the map aggroing random witches while we tried, unsuccessfully to stay ahead of her regen. Many envenomed daggers were lost for good. Kudos to the entire team for sticking with it through a restart at +0. We finished the rest of the thing without incident. I attempted to dumpster dive a witch's cauldron in the cave map with little success. We were kind of spread out but it ended up more Goblin Hot Tub than Dumpster Dive. But you know, these things have to be tested... for science! Speaking of which, I attempted to provide the appetizer last night... unsuccessfully. I ran an Ouro World Wide Red up to spawning Kronos but when I LRTd to Kings Row, it failed to show up. Leaving to base and returning didn't produce any better results. Taking the tram to Talos however... spawned the Titan. So a random crew of Talos Islanders near the Tram helped me dispose of it properly. There are a couple different things to try. It's said the Titan won't spawn in Atlas, so I could go there and tram to KR... see if that does it. Or SG base to KR. I wouldn't think there is any blanket restriction on it showing up in KR since the zone also features Paladin. It might be the method of entering the zone matters for the trigger. More experimentation to follow!

My solution is playing each one up from Level 1 to fully T4d Incarnate 50. Then they go on a shelf of toons I still play from time to time when the mood strikes me. The rule is no farms and no PI radios before 50. 2xp is good tho. Between the hours I play, the 50s I occasionally re-play even after they are "finished"... I end up not having really that many different alts. Maybe 8 or 9 are "finished" and another half a dozen are serious starts on toons I will probably one day finish.

Not that I've tried it in the past couple weeks, but I usually just place bids for the whole non-superior set at around 8mil apiece and then go play. Might take a day or two but they all show up. I've got catalysts comin' out my ears from playing 50s so much so I just then convert the whole set to superior when that toon reaches 50. But I try to slot at least the proc at level 10 and then the rest of the set as I add the slots while leveling. If stock levels look especially bad and I am in a hurry, I will do what @Snarky suggested and flip some other ATO with converters. Don't forget this works best with ATOs from the same set. So if one of the set members is out of stock, consider if you can buy two of one of the others and just convert one of those "in set" to the desired one.

For Tankers that want to be the focus of all attention, that also means being the focus of all debuffs. Fine if you have the defense to avoid most of them, but I don't build for fragile defense on resistance tankers. It is too easily stripped. I'd rather have bonuses that stay with me always. Not just against certain enemies. So for me that means debuff resistance to go with my damage resistance. FA is difficult to skip for that. I'd definitely consider other picks on Defense-based tankers though.

This. On PuGs I always take a moment while the team is forming to check out people's info pages, note what actual level everyone is, and how many set bonuses / accolades appear on the powers page. That gives a rough idea what to expect. Many PuGs advertise "any level" can join, so if you see a Tanker hesitating, it might just be a low-level tank and if it's a +4/x8 mission? Yeah, they can be pretty squishy facing +5/+6 enemies. You can't turn off punch-voke. 🤪 One of the reasons why I generally avoid joining mission teams running above my level if I am leveling-up a Tanker whose build isn't finished yet. It can work out fine if the team has decent support, but it can also be a series of Leeroy face-plants for the newbie tanker.

I don't know about that. After generous consideration of all the many opinions of Tanks that I can find on the forums, I have decided that anything I do as a Tanker will be wrong. So... I might as well do whatever I want! So liberating!! I'm going to Six-Slot Brawl for Accuracy and Recharge, put that sucker on auto, and watch Youtube while I PuG "tank"... .... for Diantane!

That'd be Destiny. For Hybrid you want probably Melee to be tougher or Assault to be... saltier?

5 months? I'm over there in another thread right now hearing about how Tankers leave one fight too early to go start another and then in this one that they never start fights. It's Schrödinger's Tank! But no, seriously. In what universe are some of you living in where your DPS squirrels don't eagerly murder themselves to nuke a fresh spawn if you're the slightest bit slow moving your Tanker to the next fight? It sounds WAY more relaxed than my universe.