ZemX

Same. I can tell myself there's on real difference in performance on my Rad/Staff tanker every time I redraw after using a click Rad power, but it's still aesthetically displeasing to laboriously redraw. It feels slower even when the stopwatch tells you different. And it's a bit janky when you properly queue powers to see those animation cancels happen after redraw. So looking forward to that being gone. Bonus points if it gets rid of some of the animation-not-p[laying problems.

Nah, it just suffers from long animations. Even though it was one of the later sets, it still didn't get balanced by animation time. The original design balanced only around factors like recharge time, AoE area, and other attack effects. The animation time was literally just whatever the animation ended up being and apparently no adjustments were made to either penalize short animation attacks or benefit long animation attacks. Staff could use some adjustments to bring up the damage of its slower animating attacks but then again... so could a lot of other powersets probably.

You don't need to take Jab these days. You can take Punch from level 1 instead. Also, Foot Stomp is available at level 30. Probably that version of Mid's doesn't have these updates. Other than that, in no particular order: Rage: Already mentioned, but I'll give an "Amen!" to that. Skip Rage? Skip SS. It's that stark, in my opinion. Rad is a great primary for SS mainly because it doesn't care too much about the crash. It has fantastic end recovery and it doesn't care about the defense debuff. Its main survival comes from Resist, Absorb, and Self-Heal. Defense is always nice, but with no Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR) that defense is gone when you most need it anyway. Build so that you don't EVER need it (except in Hard Modes where you're gonna need more defense than you can possibly build yourself anyway). On the Resist, Recharge, Heal theme.... Recharge is key and so is keeping it. You want to both build recharge and slow resist. I can't load up your build right at the moment, but if you don't have 80% or more slow resist, consider aiming for it. As long as you can keep that absorb shield up and your heal ready, you're invulnerable. Two-slot winter IOs give a nice slow resist bonus and Rad has some to begin with. The three-slot bonus in Perfect Zinger isn't worth spending the two additional slots there. Put one +5 recharge in Taunt and that's all you need. Some people like to put in the Perfect Zinger psi proc but it's not worth all that much, IMO. Low proc rate. Still needs a hit roll even though Taunt is autohit. Taunt only hits 5 anyway. Nah... skip it. You want Taunt ready whenever you need to rope in some aggro from range without leaving the group you're beating up on. Hand Clap without a KB/KD converter is... well, people will have "opinions" about that if you team. Unless you plan to never use it, but in that case, a power and five slots just to gain those set bonuses is iffy. Consider swapping one of those slots for a KB/KD IO. You still get five great set bonuses and now have a fun control power you can use anywhere and, like any AoE tanker attack, taunts everybody it hits. Ground Zero isn't a great place for Might of the Tanker. The recharge is too long. You want a decent chance to stack the +res proc twice (and it doesn't self-stack in a single power use). Take KO Blow and put it in there instead. GZ is a good place for two Avalanche winter IOs (I like one of them being the Knockdown proc. Try it and you'll see why) and the rest damage procs. Radiation Therapy is another good mini proc-bomb opportunity. One IO you definitely want in there is Theft of Essense:%end. In a crowd, Rad Therapy will then fill BOTH the green and the blue bars. Very wide area, though only 10 targets hit. Still... nice for grabbing attention and doing a bit of damage. Up often enough you can use it both offensively or as a health or end heal when needed. You don't need Physical Perfection on a Rad Armor Tanker. It already has great recovery and regen tools. Group Fly? Really? 🤪

Ice Melee on a Stalker. I mean, I like it quite a bit on a Tanker too, but on a Stalker it trades the mediocre Greater Ice Sword for the amazing Assassin Strike. Unlike most sets proliferated to Stalkers, it does NOT lose an AoE. This is how you do it! I like pairing it with Shield Defense and using the Elemental Ice shield choice colored to match the Swords. Makes it look like you are uniformly just Ice themed even though you aren't using Ice Armor. You use your super powers to form objects like swords and shields out of thin air and coat the ground with it to aid your defense. If only there was a way to have the shield form up and then disappear based on whether you were in Idle stance or not.

The suggestion was to autocomplete a mission while standing in Atlas park. Seems like it should work. I don't know if you can get a GM to spawn (unless a GM or seasonal event does it) in Atlas Park. Missions that spawn GMs like the one in Synapse TF (Babbage) and Crimson's Arc (Kronos Titan) should spawn that GM in the zone you exit the mission into, so you could hypothetically exit to Atlas park from inside the mission via LRT. But I've heard that doesn't work with some zones like Ouroboros and Atlas Park. Plus, the idea sounds like a TV show plot. Aspiring hero concocts ill-advised plan to make himself look like a superstar in front of admiring throngs in Atlas Park. It all goes sideways when the monster lured for the fight smashes buildings, topples the Atlas statue, and kills innocent bystanders. The show's actual heroes need to swoop in and save the day. @Shenanigunner ends up in the Zig. Credits roll.

It sounds like he wants to do it in front of Miss Liberty, Wait... that didn't sound right.

Isn't sapping an all-or-nothing tactic though? 78% sounds great but if you don't follow it up with other drains that drop them to zero, you haven't affected their damage output at all, have you? Or am I misinformed? Never actually tried such a thing myself.

ooo... now this thread has made me curious. Imagine if you will, how much Elec/Dark would suck. And I mean that in more ways than one. Energize - Suck health from your foes! (edit: Correction: It doesn't suck health from foes. It just sucks). Power Sink - Suck endurance from your foes! Siphon Life - Suck more health from your foes! Dark Consumption - Suck even MORE endurance from your foes! Soul Drain - Okay look.. just eat their souls now. It will make you stronger. The only thing that sucks as much as this is how much time most of these powers take to recharge. 🤪 But on the other hand, having so many of them would mean theoretically one of them is probably always ready to use and a couple can be fashioned into proc bombs, can they not? Might even find Power Sink to be unnecessary with all the endurance discount and recovery protection Elec Armor has. Then again, there's that sweet Staff Stance Selection that lets you decide to do more damage or get more recharge bonus. So maybe Elec/Staff? ... hmmm.

Mercurial while leveling and Precise after you have more slots and global recharge. If you did decide to take OG in Dark Armor then Precise Strike's disorient would stack, for whatever that is worth. Otherwise neither secondary effect on the T1/T2 is worth worrying about more than the fact Precise is much better DPA in your attack chain. But DPA only matters once you can close the attack chain. Early in leveling I prefer the faster lighter attacks to standing around doing nothing. Not an issue if you intend to farm your way up, of course. Another decision might be Innocuous vs. Serpent and that one just depends on whether you want more AoE or better ST. On a Tanker, I tend to prefer more AoE. Having two 135 degree 9ft cones to alternate is not a bad thing.

Of those two, I'd pick... Rad Armor. 🤪 I am sort of being serious if you're willing to expand your choices a little. Whenever I've considered rolling up a Dark or Elec Armor Tanker, I keep coming back to Rad "doing it better" (IMO) than either. They are all primarily resist armors that aren't terribly difficult to get at or near the cap on most/all (excepting the occasional res hole). They all have a self heal. They all have good (or great) endurance drain resistance. Rad and Elec also have +endurance powers. The big thing Rad has over either of these is the absorb shield. This is sort of like another heal or +HP like power that's a third layer of protection on res and self-heal. It also has great end recovery. It is notably missing a damage aura, but instead has the odd Ground Zero power, which is both a minor team heal and a minor enemy damage power with a large radius and a huge 30 target cap. Great "proc nuke" potential thanks to the base 90 second recharge. The self heal can also be procced for damage and +endurance, so it doubles as a very effective endurance refiller as well. Not as huge a heal as Dark, but also doesn't need to be. As such it's a lot cheaper to use while still getting the job done. Tier9s are, as usual, skippable in all three of these armor sets, but here again, Rad's is at least something you can consider taking and using, if for no other reason, the +dmg. It's in the newer style of shorter recharge, less powerful, but also crash-less or crash-lite Tier9s. Dark's Rez is the least useful for a well-built Tanker, I'd think. Elec's surge is the more traditional "god mode with heavy crash at the end" Tier 9 which you might also rarely use. Both Meltdown and Power Surge can mule a +res(psi) Impervium or Aegis IO if nothing else. There's not a huge amount of synergy with any of these and your secondary picks though. Rad does a little -def debuff and Katana does more. Dark has some minor defense to add to Katana's Divine Avalanche +melee/lethal def. Street Justice has some stuns if you took Oppressive Gloom in Dark Armor (most people don't, I think). Savage Melee is pretty much just damage... and that goes with anything. Outside of your choices, Staff Fighting pairs a bit better with any Res armor set due to the nice +res(all) finisher in the damage stance and also has a +def in a cone attack to stack with any defense you already have. Dark Melee does -toHit and some fear to stack with Dark Armor. Elec Melee does end drain to stack with Elec Armor's. etc.

Red Ink Men and Swift Steel, it should be noted, do unresistable slow run/fly debuff with Siphon Speed. It's a rare case where high defense is better than 100% slow resist. Fortunately, they don't also do recharge time slow with it like Animus Arcana Dispel Magic does. In general, I'm starting to favor Teleport Pool on Tankers so that being slowed or glued to the ground never prevents me from getting to some mobs that I need to tank. Great for cutting through a crowd blocking a doorway too.

Weapon redraw does not detract from performance, provided you queue your next attack immediately after the first one that caused the redraw animation to play. The first attack's actual attack animation will be cut short in that case to compensate the time. The second attack in the chain will begin at the same time it would have regardless of whether there was weapon redraw or not. It has always been an aesthetic issue only. Unless this new implementation changes that. Guess that's something to check.

For learning the game, I'd recommend staying away from "speed" Task Forces and sticking to "radio" teams until you have a better handle on things. These are teams doing repeatable missions for XP. As such, they tend to be a lot easier to follow since they are defeating what's in front of them as they go, not skipping around the map trying to speed complete objectives. If you play a Tanker or Brute, you might be asked to lead the team into each fight. So keep that in mind. A ranged character like a Defender, Corruptor, or Sentinel might be easiest. Sentinels are pretty safe thanks to the armor secondary. But mainly, range lets you shoot from the back of the team where you can get a better view of what everyone is doing and how they are playing. Good way to learn. You can also run Task Forces that are advertised as "casual" or "kill most/all" or something like that. Since they will operate in a similar fashion, moving steadily forward and defeating what is in front of them. Teams will still go like crazy travelling between missions, which is again where radio teams are easier. All missions will be in the same zone so it's just travelling door to door. Not figuring out how to get to some zone you've never been to. But definitely TELL people you're new and ask questions. I think the community is pretty good here and usually wants to help. You can ask questions, in game, in the /help channel too. Welcome!

I've been doing this and haven't run into any issues. To be perfectly safe, create a place-holder character on your home server, rename the character you are about to send to another server for TT (e.g. add a "1" to the end of the name or something), and then give the original name to the placeholder on the home server. Then transfer your tank. You can rename again at the destination or pick some alternate if the name is taken there. Make sure you're not leaving a SG consisting only of your tank or you will lose the SG base. If this is the case, FIRST invite your temporary place-holder toon to the SG with /altinvite before transferring your tank out.

Depends on the team and the mission. If you're on a team that's just steamrolling content, sure, it doesn't matter much. But that makes a lot more than just Stalkers feeling not very useful. If the team IS more well matched to the content, then the value of a Stalker is similar to a Scrapper. You are a boss killer. Bosses have 6x the hit points of minions, better resistances, and are more dangerous to squishies. Taking them down fast is valuable. And they aren't dying to an AoE barrage unless the team is just way overpowered compared to the difficulty. That said, if I'm answering the question I think is actually being asked, a Stalker I've played that has a lot of team utility outside of the primary damage dealing... is Ice/Shield. I play this one as off-tank (or if the team is really desperate... tank). I even have Provoke (which btw is useful even solo to help control runners). Keep an eye on the outskirts of the battle and intercept anything either running away or towards any of the squishier teammates. Block ambushes or choke-points with Ice Patch. Add a little hold mag to deadlier enemies with Freezing Touch. Attacks slow enemies a little bit, contributing to less incoming damage a little bit. Ice Patch is also great on lower level teams where the tank or brute can use a little help surviving. Really cuts down incoming damage.

It's just not that useful on most of the common maps. It's really only great when enemies are spread out all over the place and prefer ranged attacks, so they don't easily group up themselves. Ironically, it's also one of the few scenarios where it actually saves time to let someone try to herd to a corner or pillar or something like that. Think Praetorian sewer maps here. The advantage FS has here is that you don't need anyone else's cooperation (which you 99% of the time won't get for the herd tactic). But I can never justify taking it myself for only that one case. In most other situations, it just doesn't help enough to justify the heavy investment. And on top of that, I'd need a very high recharge build to make it something I can use every fight (or sometimes even every-other fight).

Shut it down, folks! We have fixed everything that ever needed fixing!

Wouldn't really work as there are all sorts of upper and lower body part options that aren't compatible with a prison uniform. Robot or beast arms and legs, for example. If you want to do this, best bet is creating your own custom prison uniform. Prior to level 10, you can change your costume for no charge, I think. So just create your super suit costume, save it, and then load it into each of your costume slots after leaving the Zig. A little extra work, but you can make the orange jumpsuit look right at least if your toon is not a standard human body.

Whenever I've seen this, I've always assumed a GameMaster was behind the scenes spawning a few Kronos for fun but it would probably make more sense if zoning through Ouro caused it to glitch like that. It would also explain why they tend to show up in that area of the map because the zone-in spot from Ouro is just on top of the hill near the tram station. We just did this the normal way on Tanker Tuesday last night. Two teams running World Wide Red coordinated exiting by mission door into Founders Falls at the same time from the "Stop all Wildflower Agents" mission. Boom! Two Titans we brought together for an all-Tank beatdown. If we'd known we could multiply that... hmmm.... You don't need to complete the arc. Exiting the 9th mission spawns the Kronos Titan ambush in the open world. I think the final mission has another instanced Titan inside of it, tho.

Oh, it'll drop your Tanker. It's kind of random though. It does some ungodly amount of Stun and either ridiculous damage or unresisted damage in random attacks. Sometimes I'd just be knocked back for little damage. But occasionally, it would just drop me in one shot, through capped resists and an absorb shield. Or it would stun and THEN drop me. As a fun little wacky side event, they probably wanted to be sure it wasn't just a boring tank and spank GM like all the others.

First off, thanks everyone for giving it a shot! It was fun and we learned some stuff. As the saying goes, "No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy!" 🤪 The two hurdles to doing this are: 1. Crimson has a whole ton of little random arcs but only ONE story arc, entitled "World Wide Red". That title appears at the top of the dialogue window when he gives you the mission, but it's easy to miss if you don't know to expect it and aren't looking for it. I had to do one of his lesser arcs prior to TTT yesterday in order to queue up the story arc. 2. The mission that spawns Kronos is the ninth one in the series. So however many teams you have going can get significantly out of sync. So you can have teams end up twiddling their thumbs in the final mission, not able to leave (because leaving spawns Kronos) until everyone else is up to the same point. Ouroboros seemed like a good way to solve #1 up there. You can ONLY pick the World Wide Red story arc there. But then we discovered it has a min level when you run it that way. Ooops! Also, a problem with running from Ouro is, I think, you can't add latecomers to the team. So it's probably not a good plan going forward. Everyone would have to be 45+ to join. Given that, it seems like if we want to do this again in a future TTT, my suggestion would be lining up volunteer team leads ahead of time and getting them to run Crimson's arc in the open world, solo, until the "Stop all Wildflower Agents" mission appears. Then freeze it there. When TTT rolls around, we can ask how many such leads we have ready to go. That's how many Kronos we can spawn. If we decide to go with the Kronos event on that TTT, each volunteer can lead a team for just the kill-all mission we want. No confusion with story arcs. Easy one mission and out. Last note: I THINK that Kronos probably spawns after the first person on the team leaves the mission and it spawns relatively near them. We saw the two Kronos last night spawn reasonably in the same area as each team's mission door. We can use that if, instead of leaving by the door, we all agree on a zone to LRT to from inside the mission. I've also heard it's possible to go to Ouro or an SG base and then leave and whichever zone you go to from there is the one Kronos spawns in. If we do it that way, we can both pick the zone to Kronos Bomb *and* we shouldn't have to do too much long-range Kronos wrangling to get them together. We just have to be sure none of us is too near a Police Drone. Talos might be a good choice. Everyone in the Wildflower completed mission can leave to Ouro, then to Talos. You end up on "Beacon Hill" well away from the Tram. It's not a bad stage to fight on either. (Note: Any Rogues on the teams can just wait a while in the Wildflower mission after their teammates exit, then LRT to Talos to avoid possibly being dumped from the team due to faction bug). Anyway, something to think about!

Not exactly. I was curious about it, so I went to my go-to experiment in horrific Tar Patches... the Shepherd Compound (via Ouroboros) in First Ward. Here you can find the dreaded Prophets and their Unresistable Tar Patches: Summary: It's good news / bad news. The good news is that flying above a Tar Patch, you are not affected by the -FLY debuff (obviously, since I am not grounded in this pic and you can see my fly speed is unaffected in the combat monitor). So you can fly away from it. Caveat: If you get within a few feet of the ground, even with fly toggled on, you will be considered ON the ground and the Tar will grab you and ground you with the -fly debuff at which point you won't be able to fly away and if you don't have slow resist... you won't be able to run away very fast either. The bad news is I am being hit by everything else this Tar Patch does even while in the air. You can see I am being hit with -runspeed and -jump height. My jump height has been zeroed but my run speed is unaffected because my slow resist here is about 94%. So even on the ground, I'd be able to run out of this patch. That's not really bad since I am flying. I don't care too much about running or jumping, but.... You'll notice my Smashing Resistance is 62% here. I checked it outside the mission. It is capped at 90% even at this level standing still (no MotT proc). But in actuality, it is closer to 96% total. So this +1 Prophet boss is knocking around 34% off my resistances with a single Tar Patch. And there are two of them (mission is at +0/x8). We talked up this mission in the Tanker forum a while back. Some stoner posted a picture of his resistances nearly zeroed from a couple +5 Prophets while he was in Granite Form. So yeah, if you're careful enough to punch down on these guys from about head height in the air... you're good. Just don't hit the ground or even get near it. The good news is that Tar Patch isn't terrifically common. In fact, I mostly run into it in First Ward / Night Ward. Here in this mission and against any Beast Hunters (or whatever they are called) and Black Knights. They all have some form of Tar Patch.

Yeah, that guy cheats (at least better than my Tanker cheats at any rate). I waded into that GM fight the first time on my strapping Rad Armor tanker and just about got one-shotted (and color randomized) immediately. Whatever mag KB and Stun/Hold he is doing... it's far more than I had protection for. It was just running around among the crowd decking people. Worth a laugh... once.

Speaking of dancing, another Tuesday has arrived and I have a suggestion: Sure, we could do another boring TinPex or grow old together doing a Dr. Q. which are the weeklies this week... OR... ORRRR! We could spawn four or more Kronos Titans by running synchronized missions teams doing Crimson's World Wide Red arc and then all exiting into the same unsuspecting city zone at the same time! Maybe even five-tank teams to maximize our Kronos Kount?! Thoughts? Excel is usually our most-attended Tuesday!