ZemX

Thanks for clarifying! That's what I had been assuming after reading the Page 4 patch notes.

PI Council Radios are farms for people who claim they don't farm, I think. I even sometimes see people advertise "PI Council Radios, no Caves!". Don't get me wrong. I hate cave maps as much as the next person, but it's like squeezing the last possible variety out of tings without actually throwing your hands up and just door-sitting in a fire farm.

Fair, and I am interested to see what you come up with. I haven't gone through this exercise but I've occasionally thought about it. My builds work great for me from 30 to 50 but are not quite so hot in the 20s. I am curious if it's possible to optimize outside of just maybe rearranging a few powers. Then again, I am not so rich that this sort of thing appeals to me more than spinning up another alt and spending all that cash on their primary build instead of one of my vets. So... you do the work and spend the money and then tell me how it goes! 😈

Okay, so for giggles, I hit the crystal and dialed up the Nova Responsibility Chapter 1 mission from Praetor White. It exemped me to level 10. I am running all 3 armor toggles in rad armor on this tank. And the taunt aura. I have two attacks and Taunt (not ideal). But here are my resistances (oh, I also hit up the base empowerment station for a few of these. Could have gotten more if I bought the right salvage. That's another boost to think about. Also amplifiers from P2W if you're willing to shell out that much money (level 50 amps are VERY expensive): For level 10 this is ridiculous. Oh and it stacks up another 6% res(all) when I hit with the Might of the Tanker proc I have in Frost, one of the two attacks still active at this level. Also funny: 100% slow resist at level 10! And 3.28 end/sec recovery NOT counting the Panacea in Health and the Perf Shifter procs in both the taunt aura and Stamina. This is touching nothing and just exemping my existing tanker build. This will get even better in the later arcs at 15 and 20. Granted, I can't solo x8 with even this (I... accidentally just tried that by forgetting to change my current setting of +1/x8), but +0/1 or -1/1 would be trivial. Yes, individual powers don't look great for stuff like damage enhancement. Here is Frost with a full superior MIght of the Tanker ATO set in it: Yeah, 35% damage enhancement sucks and you can get more by stacking more damage IOs instead of this set, but you'd be skipping out on all the other enhancement here AND the set bonuses, which are considerable. Not worth it.

You and I have a different definition of the word "lazy". 🤪 If you're really gonna run at -1, you will blow through this stuff like tissue paper. Unless planning this out and optimizing is gonna be part of the fun for you... I would at least give in a shot first. You might be surprised how well your existing build works.

Am I the only one surprised by this? Maybe I missed some conversation since then but the Page 4 patch notes gave me the impression that Phase 1 warnings would become actual name releases on day one of Phase 2. Timer is really being reset for Phase 2?

Level 50 names are never released by inactivity. This would apply to sub-50 characters, but also... nobody has to do this. If your name is common words or somehow obvious/popular for a superhero then it probably gets tried weekly or monthly just at random by people creating new characters. They don't have to know the person who has the name or anything about them. The more obvious a name is, the less time it is likely to last past the expiration date.

Good point. On Stalkers there are several auras, although not taunting, that suppress based on kMeter. Basically whether the Stalker is in "Hidden" status or not. Not exactly the same thing as suppressing on stealth radius, but more or less works the same on a Stalker.

It's related to stealth radius. The power has this in the fine print: So yeah, you need to toggle off stealth or enter combat, which suppresses stealth, to have the taunt hit anybody. To good news is nobody can give you more than 35.5 non-suppressed stealth radius, I think. So a teammate with Shadow Fall can't turn off your taunt aura in combat. Brutes might want to be aware of this though as they can't just run through a crowd to herd unless they attack something first, if they have stealth from self or a teammate, that is. I'm not sure if there are any other taunt auras that suppress like this. Shield Defense doesn't, so stealthy Scrappers would have to shut it off to sneak, or use something like Speed Phase, I guess.

Aw maaaan! I knew I forgot something this weekend! Now I gotta get Robin Hat to level 20 by next month!

Nah. PuGs are great. The chaos is a feature that keeps things interesting. Ruthless efficiency can be fun to watch for a little while but then it gets boring.

Which my response to that response would be, "Read the whole post". Impervium mentions not wanting to get into more detail. That means they HAVE more detail than the four words you clipped. The post ends with a guarantee that a LOT of names would be freed up. We can infer from that that a lot of those names are either on sub level 6 characters who haven't been played in thirty days or they are sub-50 characters who haven't been played in a year. Nobody is releasing names based on who played last week.

It does, actually. Taunt duration is a huge factor in threat generation. Meanwhile, it's not entirely clear that Taunt mag does anything at all. The reason taunt enhancers increase duration is because that actually DOES increase threat. Odd as it sounds, the amount of duration left on a taunt magnifies everything you do to that critter in terms of threat by a large factor. All else being equal, a taunt with a longer duration will beat one with a shorter duration. Hence a Tanker hitting something with Taunt will beat a Tanker just punching it with "punch-voke" as the latter is considerably less duration (though a Tanker continuing to punch something will BUILD threat over time and beat out one who just used a single Taunt). There is some information about threat gleaned from an old post by Castle on the Live forums, but even that seems to be a little sketchy to people who have tried to crawl through the code. Magnitude isn't mentioned in the equation Castle gave us but there's still some indication it does something. Some people think it's another multiplier for threat since we know even using damage-less Taunt powers generate large amounts of threat all by themselves (i.e. the threat equation calls damage a multiplying factor but clearly doesn't use "0" for damage-less taunt/debuff powers). If there's any critter in the game that has Taunt protection (not resistance), then magnitude would theoretically matter for breaking through that protection. But I don't know of one. The main reason you won't pull aggro from a Tank/Brute with Provoke is the AT modifiers for Threat level and Threat mod, which are highest for Tankers/Brutes (and I think Dwarf forms) and second highest for Scrappers. Lowest for the traditionally "squishy" ATs. A Tanker using Provoke would beat a Blaster using the same Provoke, in other words. That said, I have Provoke on several Stalkers because it helps keep mobs from running away. It's also useful on teams for grabbing stray aggro or runners that the Tanks/Brutes aren't handling.

Between the hit check and the low proc chance, it doesn't seem worth it. But it's free damage, I suppose. I like having Taunt available whenever I need it, so I fill the default slot with a +5 common recharge usually.

Really the only thing I don't love about it. I do use the dark customization but those spinning ping-pong balls are still visible. Dark Armor has that going for it at least. Lots of options for visual customization last I looked.

grrr... could swear I unchecked PvP data in CoD... fixing that (again) now...

I joined and, this time, successfully completed another PuG Tarikoss yesterday. To the best of my knowledge and ability to confirm... @Snarky was not on the team. 🤪

They are not. I only mentioned it because Magic Carpet would be very thematic for a mystical genie, so perhaps Rocket Board would look good for a space genie. Either (or Void Skiff) is a poor substitute for a real travel power. Not much experience with it. It is generally thought of as a more offensive Tanker option. I didn't mention it because it doesn't have any particular synergy with Leadership. It has no defense to add to. No team buffs to go with. Etc. That's not a bad thing. One thing you might do with it is pair with a Katana or Broadsword. The Parry attack in each of those adds stacking melee defense. Add that to Leadership and maybe Weave, Combat Jumping or Hover, and set bonuses and you can get some decent defense to reduce incoming damage. Though without Defense Debuff Resistance that defense will desert you when it's most needed. Another pairing option, if you're open to the idea, is Staff Fighting. Staff's Damage stance adds +dmg and has finishers which either buff your resistance or debuff enemy resistance. Very handy. Stacked with Tough and the Might of the Tanker proc, you can boost resistance considerably and make your Fiery Aura Tanker reasonably sturdy. Staff also does the slightly less resisted Smashing damage whereas the blades are lethal. And any of the weapon options has tech/energy weapon customizations that would go with the theme, although the blades do seem to fit it better than the staff. I know you mentioned already having done a Staff Stalker but one thing to note that's specific to Tankers is the Gauntlet inherent hugely benefits Staff on Tankers. The PBAoE becomes 50% bigger radius. i.e. As large as Foot Stomp in Super Strength, and hits up to 16 targets. The two cones get 50% wider each and hit up to ten targets. It's an AoE wood chipper on a Tank. It doesn't get Build Up like the Stalker does, but it gets the stance selection, which you wouldn't have had on the Stalker. To @PLVRIZR's point though: Fiery Aura and Fire Melee are a great combo because FA's Fiery Embrace is a kind of second build up that, while it adds fire damage to most any damaging attack, also boosts Fire Damage specifically by 100% for 20 seconds. So it's most effective when your attack powers are doing Fire type damage. And Fire damage is certainly already much less commonly resisted than Lethal or Smashing.

Think about Shield / Fire. Shield Defense and Leadership have a couple things in common. Shield has a team def buff in Grant Cover. Not as wide as Maneuvers, but a lot more defense. Maneuvers and Grant Cover, if you enhance both for defense, would be giving teammates around 20%ish defense and a little bit of defense resistance if they are within 22.5ft of you. YOU don't get all that (just Maneuvers and the DDR) but you're not hurting for defense with Shield. Shield has a self damage buff in Against All Odds. That plus Assault is a nice damage bonus. On the looks side of things, if by "space genie" you mean to add some tech look instead of just magical, Shield has some nice tech and energy shield customizations. Or you could stick with elemental for fire. Looks very nice with the Fire Melee swords out, speaking of which... Fire Melee has Fire Scimitars. Sorcery Pool would be a given for a mystical genie... not sure about space genies. Maybe go Combat Teleport. Pick up Teleport Target for helping teammates travel. Skimp on the actual travel power and go Rocket Board instead of Magic Carpet. It has a very Jetsons kind of cartoon spacey look to it, if that goes with the theme.

Mr. "Handsy" ended up regretting it. I let the rest of you have Mother Mayhem, tho! 😈

Well... that explains everything! 😈

I DID quit a PuG Tarikoss recently, but in my defense, it went down like this... Level 15 leader, no advertised specs for the TF. We fill and load into the first mission to find... yep... we're set for +4. First group of legacy chain is +5. People immediately charge in and are already engaged as I am stepping through the door. I'm exemplared from 50 down to 15 and the only tank on the team. Half the team drops dead straight away and exits to the hosp. I am slowly losing and about a third of the way through my insp tray before I start paying attention to team chat. *Assorted grumbling from people headed back from hosp* Leader: "Nah, we're fine!" Me: "We're getting murdered on the first group!" *eats another three insps* Leader: "If you can't handle it, quit!" *literally half the team quits* Leader: "WTF? I'm done!" *leader quits* Me: (to the remaining two other people on the team) "gg guys! tc!" /quit (Total Run Time: ... About 4 minutes? 🤪 )

It does still. If the goal is to have Dark Regen available as often as possible then it makes sense to keep ToE in there just to at least pay the cost of it, if not return some end. I don't have Mid's in front of me so I can't see if there is recharge enhancement in Dark Regen. If not, the proc rate is 56%. With 100% recharge, it's around 30%. Unless I've botched the math.

Bingo. I think a lot of people would point to ED as the big mistake, but I think it was really Set Bonuses. Making them additive bonuses instead of enhancements meant that you could add things your powersets didn't have, most notably, of course, being soft-capped defense to ATs that didn't even have armor powersets. But what powersets (and ATs in general) DIDN'T have was as important as what they did have in setting them apart from one another. That's really the only nostalgia I have for the old days. You could still put together a team from any collection of ATs and powers, but the team needed to work as a team. After Inventions, it was just eight people soloing together much of the time.

I'd say buffs are more efficient than debuffs in this game just due to the Purple Patch. Maybe the one exception there is -regen on an AV/GM... but then they went and put Envenomed Daggers up for sale so anyone can do it. Nice thing about choosing a debuff set though is all the powers are useful both in a team and solo. Not true of most team buffers. But the Purple Patch does make me sad.