ZemX

This is bait.

Not OP. since they haven't removed it from Dark Armor. But I wouldn't be surprised if they think it's not thematic or useful for a Tanker. And I have to say, I'd rather have the +maxHP/resists than a stealth toggle. Besides, any well-built Tanker already has TankerStealth(tm) which is exactly like any other stealth except everyone can see you as you run past them like this--->😁🖕

Yes. No. No. The first one was the intended purpose of the standard damage formula for powers. They just didn't understand that animation time should be part of the formula. Hence we have wildly different performance across sets with the biggest factor being the advantage fast animating sets have vs. slow animating sets. A few spot fixes have been done by HC devs to reduce some animation times for certain powers, but presumably just doing a tweak to the formula to incorporate animation time is... scary. It would touch every power in the game. But the concept behind it is fairness: If your big hitter 20 second recharge attack animates in 1 second and mine animates in 2 seconds, they simply shouldn't do the same damage. No to the second question because this is where variety SHOULD be. The composition of the powers in the sets should differ. It's really neat to have quirky shit like Axe Cyclone in one set and fairly standard just-hurts stuff in others like Foot Stomp. Having one set be more ST focused than another is fine. Some people dig that even if min/maxers will always tell you AoE is king. No to the last because... see previous answer. I think things are already varied enough by composition and workings of the powers to be interesting without needing to be foundationally unfair like we have now with balance having been largely decided by the art department when, for example, they made Sky Splitter a power you can activate and then go have a sandwich before it lands while something like Freezing Touch is "blink and you'll miss it" fast but still hits about as hard.

Well, I don't know the history... but I do know you won't see anything until you're below 60% health. Assuming you have all three defense passives (Agile, Lucky, and Dodge) then you should see +9% to resistances when you are at 50% health. And it goes up another 9% for every 10% health you lose from there. So +45% res(all) at 10% health.

I'm not disagreeing that Axe is a good choice, but that's not just because it's being nerfed less this go around. It's also because it was top tier before the changes. If Kinetic Melee were being nerfed less than other sets, hypothetically, that wouldn't make it a good recommendation. It was underperforming before. It might be underperforming still. What matters is where the sets end up when the smoke clears. Super Strength is in question. Yes, Foot Stomp didn't get nerfed for damage. But Rage did and since min/max testing that put SS in top tier probably relied on double-stack Rage, the nerf to damage buff scale hits SS harder than any other set. What it does to its position in the rankings is yet to be seen.

I don't think this is the case. Foot Stomp is an exception. It has always violated the standard damage formula and, so far, they haven't nerfed it to be in line with the other Tanker PBAoEs that are now 15ft. Axe Cyclone is relatively recent but it DOES obey the standard damage formula, it looks like. It does a lot less damage than Foot Stomp and is only slightly faster on recharge. I don't know of any other 15ft PBAoEs that don't already do standard damage for a 15ft radius AoE, though I can't say I've scanned the whole list. It's worth noting that Foot Stomp's extra damage goes for Brutes too. So it's been the case for some time that Brute 15ft Foot Stomp has done the same damage as other 10ft PBAoEs Brutes have access to in other sets. It hasn't been a hot button issue because Super Strength is otherwise seen as underperforming without things like Rage and too-good Foot Stomp. Now, double-stack Rage has always been a controversy, it seems. For Tanks at least, this is getting a bit of a nerf with the reduction to damage buff scale.

Pfft... defense is for people who can be hurt. To be serious though, double pulls of Longbow are especially dangerous to my fave Rad Armor tankers *because* of having no defense or defense debuff resistance. Not because of their -res but because of their mezzes. Enough of those popping off at once AND hitting me (see: no defense) means they can stack enough to break mez protection, even on a tanker. This is a great advantage high defense toons have because a lot of those mezzes miss. The -res is mostly no big deal if you have 100% smash resist. But the radiation-using Wardens have Enervating Field, which is tagged as not resistible. That means even with 100+% res, you can be debuffed by it. If they are +4/+5 to you, it's bad. Very bad. You can lose 40ish percent resistance from just one of them. Same goes for the radiation using Paragon Protectors in Crey missions (e.g. Manticore TF). There isn't much I run from in this game, but those guys scare me. If I get toggled by one of their Enervating Fields, I run away to drop it.

The part I really noticed is how ranged cones are getting nerfed into the ground. So now they get neither the arc width from Gauntlet (since that's going away) NOR the range/radius extension melee cones are getting in the beta BUT they are still getting diminished returns nerfing their damage. *pours one out for Frost*

Heh.. not actually but it's very difficult to follow, to be sure. There's another weird tag on the first effect that says "fallback - only used if no other affects apply". In other words, the two effects really are mutually exclusive. One applies to "raid" mobs (which I think it like AVs and maybe incarnate stuff?) and the other is everything else and the whole point of all that acrobatics was to make it so the piddly mag 2 sleep side-effect was auto-hit on some enemies but not on others. Wild. It's sort of funny though that it's possible to get so complicated with the powers coding that the game literally can't decipher it back into human-readable form. And like I said, Staff powers are even more complicated looking than that. Maybe look at it sometime you have a stiff drink at the ready.

The damage you're showing for Frozen Aura is also incorrect for a similar reason. It's actually half of what's showing both on Live and on Brainstorm. In other words, on Live it matches Foot Stomp's damage. On Brainstorm, currently, it is doing less damage than Foot Stomp. Basically there are some weird conditionals around some of the effects in the powers data and in-game window doesn't understand them so, in the case of FA, it's double-counting damage, essentially. It's a similar story, but worse, for Staff Powers which have even more conditional stuff for effects based on current level of "perfection" stacks. Live data here: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_melee.ice_melee.frozen_aura&at=tanker

Both Hand Clap and Foot Stomp are 15ft radius on Live already, hence they are not getting bigger. So damage on FS is not changing (or hasn't yet judging by what's on Brainstorm now) and proc rates for both don't change either, though that's because they were ALREADY worse than 10ft Tanker PBAoEs embiggened by Gauntlet in other powersets. The only damage nerf for FS and for procs in both powers is the diminished returns for hitting over 10 targets, same as everything else.

Well the one good bit of news for SS fans is that Foot Stomp is only getting hit by the diminished returns nerf, not having its base damage also reduced like all other Tanker AoEs. It's base damage has always violated the standard damage formula. It has a 15ft radius but does damage equivalent to a 10ft radius PBAoE, for all ATs that have it. Hand Clap has also not been nerfed! So that's TWO pieces of good news, actually! ... Right?

Seems reasonable. Will stay tuned I guess. I think you've already said this in the feedback thread, and I agree, they should do one or the other, but not both when considering Diminished Returns AND per-target damage reduction. Foot Stomp essentially got this treatment, in fact, since it is only being impacted (compared to Live) by the diminished returns. It has always suffered worse proc rates as a natural 15ft radius power and its damage hasn't been nerfed per-target, again, because its radius wasn't changed. I suppose that's something at least for SS fans to hold on to as they remember Rage. 🥺

It is not a byproduct. It is a choice. The area factor is included in the original design formulas for powers balance. It is not calculated at run-time. They had the choice to increase radius without nerfing damage and DECIDED to nerf the damage... then not mention it in the feedback thread. I'm not especially happy about that, I have to say.

Go neutronium or go home.

It would need a costume that manages to pack a good four or five rip-offs into a single costume. Maybe a claws/regen brute, cigar, huge, spiky hair, green skin, purple cape with mystic insignia, big iron rocket boots, blue and red spandex pajamas... hmm....

You know I get a bit of a chuckle out of this as it reminds me of a long ago time, perhaps shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth, when I got a college internship at a tech company and one of the first things I was handed was a book... of acronyms they use in the business. Maybe we need one a' those? 😜

The stigma isn't about experienced players PLing up a new alt. It's about new players sitting a door, not learning the game, then attempting afterwards to play on teams without even the knowledge of how to get from one zone to another. Playing SOME of the normal leveling up is a good tutorial for the game, after which if you wanna PL... knock yourself out. That's not any kind of rule. That's just good advice.

Looks good to me. Focused Accuracy is key to avoid being toHit debuffed. I haven't loaded the build but I see a couple pairs of Winters in there so Slow Resist is probably good. Debuff resist is so important when you lack defense. I tend to lean less on procs. My RT has a couple Preventive Medicine to boost heal/recharge and then the rest are procs, including of course the Theft of Essense. My GZ is where I put two Avalanche for recharge and knockdown (and slow resist set bonus) and then the rest procs. That means I give up some damage for utility so that just depends on taste. I lean more towards team tanking than soloing or I'd probably do differently. But no, this build looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Teleport is my new favorite travel. Always used to be leaping from the old days but once I went tanker and started getting hit by everything, I got tired of being -jump debuffed by webs or blocked going through doorways when there are mobs I needed to grab aggro, so... teleport. I use just the travel version Teleport, even in doors. It's not as zippy as CT obviously, but it's nice long range. I can bamf into the next group to lather them up before the team gets there.

Non-pool placate powers have a 5s window now where even getting hit doesn't cancel the hide, so it should be a guaranteed hidden attack follow-up no matter what happens with aggro or your defense level. The remaining 5s of Hide after that can be spoiled by getting hit though.

The staff in those pics is quite similar to the Carnival of Light staff you can choose in Staff Fighting. Bio seems the closest thing to that armor but I'd second giving Rad a look. Rad has a couple nice AoEs in it you can proc up for more damage, and Ground Zero looks very anime to me, especially if you slot it with knockdown. For added effect, use Teleport to get to the center of a big spawn and then hit GZ. You'll be floating a few inches off the ground, throwing your arms out... and everybody falls down in a radial blast of energy. It's just cool. Rad does have the spinning ping-pong balls animation on armor toggles you can't get rid of. You can tone down the ground effect on the taunt aura by using the very dark left side of the Bright Radiation palette. Dark blue looks like cool blue smoke on the ground.

Hmm... not quite sure about that. It appears to also redirect to Gauntlet Proc Aura which applies un-enhanceable 14.96s taunt mag 4 to all targets. A bit odd. I haven't played Willpower specifically but in my experience taunt auras are fine to hold the mobs near you assuming you're also attacking them with AoE and single-target powers. At least this works for me on Tankers. I only use ranged Taunt to grab aggro at a distance. Not to taunt mobs already next to me. I think taunt auras that also apply several debuffs are especially good at holding aggro because each of those debuffs also adds significant threat which is multiplied by the taunt. Faster pulsing auras naturally accumulate threat faster too. There is some variability in activate periods for auras in different sets.

This. Debuffs are pretty much the only reason I keep the power monitor mini-window up. Last Hit Chance, Recovery, Regen, Any defense, Any resistance, damage bonus, recharge bonus. I might take an extra defense or resist depending on the character but one is usually enough since debuffs tend to be -def(all) or -res(all). For resist, I like having my two or three lowest resistances shown if I know the rest are capped.

It's a lot weirder than that. Most people assume taunt is like an AI override. i.e. That it makes an enemy attack you for a certain length of time (the duration of the taunt). But this is not how it works. What keeps an enemy focused on you is a value called "Threat". Think of each NPC as having its own enemies list ranked by who it thinks is the biggest threat to its existence. Everyone who has attacked that NPC gets on the list and starts racking up Threat points as they attack, debuff, control, etc. Person with the highest threat number wins that NPC's attention. The taunt effect is essentially a multiplier. For the person who has put a taunt on that NPC, everything they do while that taunt lasts has its threat value multiplied. This is how a Tanker who does much less damage than a Blaster can still keep the attention of the NPC. It's like hitting for 10 damage and having it hate you like you just hit it for 1000 damage. The weird part is that multiplication factor is based on how much time is remaining on the taunt. So hit them with Tanker 41 second Taunt ranged power and then Brawl afterwards will do many many times more threat than hitting Brawl again just before the Taunt expires. If that makes sense. Happily, this is all pretty much irrelevant and only matters when you're teamed with another person who is ALSO taunting. And I don't know about you, but that doesn't usually concern me all that much. I'd only consider using Threat set IOs if I was looking for a particular set bonus or for a proc. Otherwise, don't need them. Taunt, even unmodified, is such a large threat multiplier that nobody is stealing aggro from you in most normal situations. Maybe if a Blaster has been blasting at some AV for a while and you're late to the fight trying to catch up on threat... I dunno. Like I said, never bother with it and never have trouble holding aggro on a team.