ZemX

I'm on Everlasting usually. The really detailed bios are the ones that tell me the serious roleplaying (even the stuff that isn't ERP) is probably not for me. They read like D&D character sheets, with all the stats and personality traits listed out. More like you're reading a dossier someone compiled on that character. I do usually get a chuckle out of how many of them list some form of telepathic immunity or "stealth" though, even on characters that wouldn't thematically seem to have psychic powers. I infer that people roleplaying telepaths must be a real annoyance in RP circles. I enjoy reading (and writing) simple backstory type bios, though. I usually do mine in the first person, like I'm speaking to the person reading the bio. I get the occasional compliment in game, so I must not be too terrible at it. 😀 That said, The most roleplaying I will do is being in-character on a mission team or TF when others are doing the same. It's just a bit more interesting than merely playing the content. It's not strange to me though that sexual orientation would be in there. Heroes are like celebrities in our world. People would be after all the intimate details and that sort of thing would often be widely known.

Isn't that just the financial derivatives market in the real world?

There are a few exceptions out there that can toss an unresistable resistance debuff your way. Some NPC Tar Patches (and variants like Nether Well from Black Knights) and radiation Enervating Fields. Desdemona. Antimatter. Bile. Might be a few more. Not super common but worth monitoring at least one of your resistance stats. I tend to monitor my lowest resists, knowing the main ones are usually capped. Are you able to see this in Mid's? I can't see any effect on Totals with the Alpha enabled/disabled or even just deleted from the build. It should certainly do something with the 2/3 ED-ignoring thing. Not crap, but I think you went overboard on recovery. Miracle:+Recovery? Toss it. There's one new slot to play with. Physical Perfection? Unnoticeable. There's a free power slot... unless you just didn't have a better idea I guess. If it was me, I'd treat myself to a travel power. You've got plenty of recovery in Rad Armor already and for those times you're facing serious endurance drainers, that Theft of Essence proc in RT will take care of it. Just a suggestion: Replace two of those superior Blistering Colds and two of the superior Avalanches with the regular versions. The 5&6 slot bonuses are worthless (to this build) defense and you can trade it for another 20% slow resist. If you go with that suggestion on a travel power (super speed or maybe combat jumping if you like mobility in combat) then drop Winter's Gift in there for another 20%. Or don't if you think 95% slow resist is more than enough, which it probably is. Or skip one of those regular winter pair swaps if there's another two-slot bonus from some other set that might be better. You'd still cap your slow resist with that Winter's Gift and one of the regular winter set 2-slot bonuses. I don't think you can have too much debuff resistance on a Rad Armor. Unless you're loaded up on team defense buffs and Incarnate DDR, everything hits you. Because I like to exemplar a lot, I also move Focused Accuracy to its earliest slot at level 35 for the toHit debuff resistance. There's also a bit of shenanigans you can play involving Irradiated Ground and procs. It's not an aura. It actually drops a new patch every 5 seconds which means, unlike most pseudo-pets or damage auras, it checks procs every 5 seconds, effectively, rather than every ten. If you can bear not having that purple set's bonuses, you can proc up IR something fierce... or so I hear. I've never actually been able to play Rad Melee very long before becoming totally bored by it. I'm sure it's far superior to my Rad/Staffer in damage... it's just not any fun to me. YMMV. It seems fairly popular that I've seen. Speaking of fun though... move the Superior Avalanche Knockdown proc from Atom Smasher into Ground Zero. The four-slot bonus in SprAv is crap too so Atom Smasher doesn't need it. You can use the extra slot from Miracle to put some other useful proc in Atom Smasher. The beauty of putting the knockdown in GZ is it hits up to 30 targets (though that includes allies) in a 22.5ft radius sphere (thanks Tanker radius buff!). In other words, "Everybody Take a Seat!" The proc chance will be capped at 90% instead of 43ish% in Atom Smasher. Sure you'd use AS more often but man is it satisfying to roll into a nice big pack and knock em all on their asses with GZ! 😈

You gotta be standing to do damage and for Tankers it's difficult not to be the center of attention given that even your single target attacks taunt in an AoE around the target. In the case of Rad Armor in particular, survivability and damage output share some things. Rad Armor is primarily a resist set with added regen/recovery. The two biggest add-ons to resist for survivability are the accurate self-heal and the absorb shield. RT is vulnerable to both toHit and recharge debuffs and Particle Shielding can be made unavailable by recharge debuffs. Coincidentally... both of those debuffs destroy your damage output as well. Rad Armor is particularly vulnerable to debuffs, in general, because it lacks solid defense and defense debuff resistance. More debuffs hit you, thus they affect you more than a defense-based toon. So for one, DON'T drop Focused Accuracy. It's not about the small toHit buff. It's about the massive toHit debuff resistance. It also adds perception and perception debuff resistance, which is nice because you generally also need to see things to hit them, at least with anything that's targeted. Two, DO follow @Onlyasandwich's advice and pick up slow resist. Sprinkle pairs of Winter Set IOs around your build for the 2-slot bonus and add Winter's Gift unique. This will protect the refresh rate on your survival tools as well as on your damage dealing tools. As an added bonus, it protects movement speed as well, meaning you won't be troubled by tar and glue patches. Tar Patches can sometimes be no joke as, last I checked, some enemies still have the unresistable version. Go up against a few Prophets in First Ward and they can just about zero your damage resistance if you can't escape their tar patches. Also agree on proc bombing RT and GZ but definitely keep that Theft of Essence in RT. There are enemy groups that can drain well enough to overcome even Rad Armor's respectable endurance recovery and resistance. For those times, it's nice to just hit RT in a crowd and fill nearly your entire blue bar in one step. You can laugh off entire strike teams of Mu, Malta Sappers, Carnies, etc.

Shinobi-Iri for non-Stalkers, yeah. I27, page 2 update got rid of the running component because there was this overhaul of how movement powers stacked allowing previously exclusive powers to stack. I guess that made the movement part of Shinobi-iri irrelevant or something so they nixed it. Not sure of the specifics but that's what they said in the patch notes, more or less.

Gauntlet's radius arc should affect any AoE not tagged with that disallowed strength note. Not sure about pseudo-pets though. I think not. So that probably rules out Fiery's Burn and Rise of the Phoenix (though RotP has a huge 25ft radius already). But I could be mistaken there. Pseudo-Pets do inherit other global strengths like damage, so maybe they get the arc/radius too. Dark seems to have the most that would be affected: Death Shroud, Dark Regen, Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, and Soul Transfer (yes, the rez will suck life force from up to 10 people in a 37.5ft radius of your recently deceased self!). Rad and Bio each have three. I love my Rad/Staff tank, personally. Rad may not have as many AoEs as Dark but it's got Ground Zero. And Ground Zero is absurd. It's a 90 second proc nuke already, but on a Tanker its 15ft radius goes to 22.5ft, which is important because it hits thirty targets. Granted, this total includes your allies, so being on a team of MMs might suck, but it still usually beats any other 16 target Tanker PBAoE, especially if you're leading the team into a nice meaty spawn and hit mostly enemies with it. I put a Superior Avalanche Knockdown proc in it. It's the "Everybody Take a Seat" power that I like to open with whenever it's up.

This is where you find that: That little red (!) icon in the Activation Details. Hover over it and this popup tells you what buffs don't affect this power. So you're right, Arc of Destruction from TW is excluded from the 50% tanker "Arc" width buff on cones. But then again, it's already a 120 degree cone, so it doesn't much need to be wider. ETA: All three of TW's cones are Arc Disallowed but all three are 10ft and 120 degrees. That's probably an important thing to consider if you are looking at how effective the build will be with cone attacks rather than just how many you can have at once. Tankers get a 10 target cap with most cones, but just try to cram 10 targets into a Shadow Maul. Even with the 180degree arc on Tankers, it's still a paltry 7ft range. The Gauntlet radius buff does not apply to melee cone range. Only certain cone attacks are range enhanceable like Frost, Throw Spines, and Shockwave. The rest are as-listed in CoD.

And here's why: Not every NPC that uses Enervating Field has this unresistable version of it. Antimatter does. Bile does. And apparently so do Paragon Protector Elite (Rad Defender version) bosses. I've also found just about any NPC that uses Tar Patch (or one of it's clones like the Dark Knights in Night Ward do) has the unresistable version of that too. Tar Patch you can run away from. If hit by this EV, running away doesn't help you... but it does help the rest of your team.

Fallout Shelter + Winter's Gift is a good start and you'll get a good feel for the build even without the pricier IOs. The main effect of reaching those heights anyway, I've found, is that I hardly ever use inspirations anymore because I run into fewer "oh shit!" moments that break through my resistances, absorb, and healing. It's not a must have if you're willing to deal with trouble spots with insps and Meltdown. These days I use Meltdown as a temporary damage buff and a place to hold a few res IOs for the set bonuses. Almost never to save my skin.

I haven't tried it myself but I don't see a problem main tanking with it. What you describe here is not a problem. You generally don't want to aggro two spawns (on a full team anyway) if you can help it because you'll be over the aggro cap. But if you do aggro them, stealth or no stealth if you are tanking you better be hitting them with something that has taunt attached to it. Which again means stealth is irrelevant to threat generation. When you want aggro, grab it. You never want to rely on perception aggro anyway to keep enemies on you. Not on a team. Shadow Fall, btw, works similarly but across an area. It does not suppress in combat so, like CoD, it can be used to wipe out one spawn while a nearby other spawn is blissfully unaware... at least until the controller on your team spamming stone cages like it's their only power nails them.

Stealth has nothing to do with Threat. If it has anything to do with the rate of Threat Decay, I've not heard of that either. Negative Threat is a separate effect that is featured in SOME stealth powers. It is not a result of StealthRadius. Shadow Fall and Cloak of Darkness do not apply negative threat level. Group Invisibility does. But that only affects the rate of threat generation. And even at one less threat level, a Tanker still has more ability to generate threat than anyone who isn't another Tanker or Brute actively fighting them for the attention of that mob.

It might be called movement speed resistance. I can't look at it right now as I am (hardly) working. I think, generally, that "res(slow" in a power description or set bonus usually means running, flying, and jumping movement speed debuff resistance AND recharge resistance. Whereas in powers it is sometimes separate. Tar Patch, for example, only does movement speed debuffing whereas ice blast powers do both movement speed and recharge debuffing. Anyway, here for example is how the slow resistance is shown in the power Fallout Shelter in City of Data: "+45.413% Resistance (RunningSpeed, FlyingSpeed, JumpingSpeed, JumpHeight, RechargeTime) (self only) for 0.75s" So Rad Armor gets a good bit of this "slow resist" baked into the set and you only need to stack on the rest to get to 100%. Edit: Okay Mid's calls it "Recharge" and "Run Speed" debuff resistance. Interestingly, while most slow resist powers, set bonuses, and uniques like Winter's Gift provide debuff protection from RunningSpeed and FlyingSpeed debuffs, they don't apparently provide any protection from JumpingSpeed or JumpHeight debuffs.

This must be what made me think of the Kill Bill scene. The first time I ever did this mission back on Live it was on a Nin/Nin Stalker. Felt like I should have gone and gotten her the yellow track-suit and everything just to complete the picture. 🤪 But yeah, corners and caltrops and Flashing Steel. Made that mission fun with that huge number of enemies chasing you all over the place.

If this is the mission I think it is... yeah, it's over the top with ambushes, even for Praetoria. I want to say it's probably an homage to that Crazy 88 fight scene in Kill Bill. They just keep coming. Huge waves of them.

No, I actually like a travel power. I've tried going without and it just eventually drives me partially insane. I have Super Speed in there currently just to try it out, since I've always preferred Super Jump. Probably going back to SJ soon. I like me some rooftop bouncing. That said, I DO want that slow resist in there to stack with the two-slot bonuses from various winter sets in other powers. This puts me just over 100% slow resist and it recently paid off big time when I joined a Night Ward team going up against Dread Knights (or whatever they are called). They had dudes who would drop Tar Patch, or something equivalent to it. If you weren't aware, NPC Tar Patches are unresistable resistance debuffs and of course they slow your movement too making it harder to exit the patch. Unless you're me, have 100%+ slow resist, and are monitoring your resists for any sign of debuff. The instant that happened, I was out of there. It worked like a charm. I had to move a lot more in that mission than I usually do, but they couldn't pin me down and kill me. And like I mentioned, it's also recharge resist, so the folks who try to make your next absorb shield refresh take until next week are in for a disappointment. But you can of course do without the travel power. I'd try to still hit that max slow resist if you can elsewhere. I haven't tried it myself so I am just looking at it on paper. It's got the same 7ft range as most other powers in the set do. Its arc is 80 degrees but that's before it's buffed by the Tanker inherent. So it's really a 120 degree arc when used by a Tanker. That's decent. Staff Fighting has spoiled me though with it's 9 foot, 135 degree (after the inherent) cones. I can almost cycle between the two cones and PBAoE for a constant AoE attack chain. Probably could if I focused a little more on recharge in the build.

I think you're way over-invested in recovery. Rad Armor has endurance to spare, I've found. Particularly if you slot the Theft of Essence proc in Rad Therapy. Speaking of which, Rad Therapy is a good place for a few damage procs too. On my Rad/Staffer's Rad Therapy, I have just a pair of Preventive Meds (Heal + Heal/Recharge) and the rest are procs. 3 dmg procs and one Theft of Essence, which I basically only ever need if I am being drained by Carnies, Malta, Freaks, Mu... stuff like that. You also won't be hurting for regen, so I'd dump the Regen Tissue in health. Maybe put that slot in Combat Jumping and slot a Winter's Gift slow resist in it. Rad Armor depends on refreshing Particle Shielding and, when needed, Rad Therapy. Getting slowed can mean getting dead. If you are looking for purples to slot at some point, look for multiple places to slot pairs from Winter sets for the slow resist 2-slot bonus. In general, debuff resists are solid gold to Rad Armor. Especially a Tanker. You're going to get hit by everything, which means all the debuffs. Focused Accuracy you took, which is great. But I'd move it to 35 after getting rid of Conserve Power, which you have no need of. Maybe add Hasten even if you can give it a couple slots for 50+5 recharge. I put Hasten on Auto and I use Particle Shielding manually when needed, which it often enough... isn't. I don't know Savage Melee all that well but I tend to favor AoEs whenever I can get them. AoEs are boosted on Tanker (cones are wider and sphere AoEs are bigger) and everything you hit with an AoE (and everything in 10 feet around everyone you hit) is taunted. So they're great for keeping things locked onto you in a big team. I know you admitted Jump Kick was an odd pick, but I'd really consider swapping in Shred for that. You'll do more damage and spread more aggro, easily. Here's a build I modified from my Rad/Staff. Maybe it gives some ideas. If you really really want that Jump Kick, you can swap it in here probably by moving a few slots around. You can cheapify a bit by not using the purple and PvP sets in Rending Flurry and Savage Leap I have here. I also put the MoT set in Shred. Note that by default, Mid's shows you your resistance totals assuming one stack of the MoT proc (when you have the little yellow dot selected in the power that has MoT slotted in it). But you can have up to three stacks adding to your resistances and the chance of that happening is much better in an AoE. Oh.. and be sure to check the totals for Debuff Resistance. That's key for this build and, in my opinion, Rad Armor. Like I said, you get hit by everything because you're not a super dodgey defense-based Tanker. If anything will kill a Rad Tanker, it's stacked debuffs.

How important is the Fire to your concept? Because Rad/Rad is already going to have a lot of AoE and one of things I find almost invaluable in a Rad Armor tanker is Focused Accuracy. ToHit debuffs are murder and it really helps a whole lot. Meanwhile, I haven't found building defense with Weave and IO's and such all that useful. Without good DDR you will lose it when you most need it and not need it anywhere else. But I suppose there's some argument to be made that having even some is good when you get on a team that can give you a little more via people running Leadership and such.

Okay, but in Granite form does it look like you're swinging a toothpick? 🤪

I've never been able to convince myself spending that many slots on caltrops for the kind of poor proc rates you get with a 10s pseudopet was worth it. I always have someplace better to put those enhancement slots in a Stalker build. I like Caltrops for just what the power does, which is make stuff slowly run and not attack me as often. I've also used it to cause a train wreck in ambush situations. It's great with just the default slot as a +5 recharge. If you think it already has enough recharge MAYBE put in a knockdown proc. It will add a little to the "not attacking me as often" effect.

And I've done that a hundred times and it works. You either got hit by some bug or lag in the case you're talking about. You can absolutely, in my experience, just step back and not be hit by their rez. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=freakshow.super_stunner.reserve_power&at=boss_grunt It's nothing but a 25ft PBAoE that directly applies its effects. You can see it's not got a huge range and isn't checking targets for some tag or power effect previously applied (which is how your "touched recently" idea would have to be implemented, if it were real).

It's called Reserve Power and has a 25ft radius. It also seems to cast instantly on defeat with no delay, which means if they are defeated by a knockback, it's not where they land but where they were hit by that last shot that determines who is hit by their rez. KB though, is a good strategy if you're on a team. Even if all you have is Nemesis Staff, use it on them. Knocking them away from the team can help, even if they still manage to rez, it will affect fewer teammates and they will have less health when they rez. Knock them back early and often. They tend not to come rushing back in usually because they can fire from range. If I'm on a tanker, I try not to hit them with Taunt so as not to debuff their range. Want to keep them out there taking long range shots, not in melee with the rest of the team. Second tip for Penny Yin though (also Synapse): Endurance Drain resistance is available from the SG base empowerment station. It does help a little.

Apologies for the necro, but I was asked for my Rad/Staff build in game and this is where I last posted it sooo... an update of sorts from earlier in the thread. This build relies a little bit on Staff's Sky Splitter +res(All) bonus when in Form of Body stance as well as the Might of the Tanker ATO to boost resists. I also gave up slotting defense as I found the lack of DDR meant any defense I put in was stripped anyway in the really tough fights which is the only place I ever need it. Instead I focused on addressing all the incoming status debuffs like toHit and slows. Not getting slowed is a big deal for Rad Armor in order to keep refreshing Particle Shielding or using the heal when needed. There are still a few rare cases where endurance drains can cause me trouble... so I've considered giving up a dmg proc in Rad Therapy for Theft of Essence end proc. Something to think on. Here's the latest build. Incarnates not shown since the build doesn't rely on them.

I once did an all-Stalker ITF way back before the Issue 22 stalker buffs... I kid.. it was surprisingly fun. Lot more so these days.

Just join any team and you'll be automatically exemplared to either the leader or the person who owns the mission the leader has set for the team (usually the same person but can be anyone on the team if the leader so chooses). For Task Forces, once it is started, you are either exemplared to the team leader or to the maximum level of the task force, if the team leader was higher level than that. So if you join a Positron 1 in Steel Canyon and the team leader is 30, you will be 30. Once they begin the task force, you will be 15 (and so will they). However, if the team leader is 10, you'll still be 10 when the task force is started because it's above the minimum but below the maximum. Sometimes for this reason the person who organized the team will ask if someone higher level wants the star before beginning. Or not. Up to them and the team. There IS an Ouroboros version of Positron's task force but it's not the same. It's the older original version. Sometimes you'll see people advertise that but much more commonly people just run "Posi 1" or "Posi 2". That means Steel Canyon to start.

As one of those pesky "vet level" folks who likes to join lower level PuG contact/radio teams, the whole reason I do it is that this typically DOESN'T happen. Not that you can't get on a steamroller team with the right makeup, but it's a whole lot less common in the mid-levels precisely because people usually do pick an appropriate level of difficulty. The thing is, you mention Moonfire but also that you made sure not to be on a speed run team. Was that Moonfire advertised as a Kill Most or something? Was it being run at high difficulty or at +0? Because in my experience damned near every TF/Trial that isn't a Kill Most ITF (or now the Aeon with the higher difficulty levels) people run for speed/merits at +0 even when they don't SAY they are doing that. It's like the default for TFs. They're less common, but look for (or run your own) "contact mission" teams. These are less popular with the level-up-fast set because you tend to have to do some zone travel and some talk-to missions rather than just processing batches of +4/x8 radio missions. You'll also want to get on a team that's at or below your own level (another benefit of being the one leading the mission) so that you don't end up trying to hit +5 and +6 purples because you're side-kicked.