ZemX

If your criteria is basically you plus anybody needs to work then I agree with others saying Tanker/Brute. One of the Scrapper sets that has a taunt aura would work too probably but won't be quite as good holding aggro due to lack of "punch-voke". I'm gonna say Rad/Rad Brute though probably because it hits most of your points. You have a taunt aura and a damage aura. Keeping aggro won't be an issue. Definitely take Taunt though. Plenty of people will tell you you don't "need" it and that's beside the point. You don't need it. You want it. It's a ranged autohit AoE taunt. Somebody peeling off to go make a paste of one of your baby blasters on the team? Taunt. Without taking a step away from the main pack. Tanker will have wider AoEs but won't handle bosses as quickly. Fine if you have damage on the team but if you want this to work even with seven sidekicks? Brute. Rad Armor has broad protection against any of the enemies you'll face in its resists, including Psi (Carnies and Arachnos) and against endurance drain (Malta Sappers and Arachnos Mu). It has -def in the taunt aura to which you can then add Achilles Heel -res proc. More -def in Ground Zero. GZ and RT (the heal) can both be turned into proc bombs. GZ also does some minor healing of allies. Rad Melee does more -def. But you could also consider Super Strength if you want to go with a Tanker. Rad/SS is still no Brute but is something of an outlier for good damage on a Tanker and not being bothered when Rage crashes.

They can, so why not just use inf drops as a proxy for "reward rate"? This thread isn't a referendum on farming, though some have tried to make it so. It's specifically about AE farming, so it seems to me the comparison should simply be what reward rate you can achieve inside AE vs. outside AE. And that obviously means farming both ways. So @ShardWarrior's numbers seem like a good start. Unless there's some reason to believe the item drops inside vs. outside won't follow the same proportion as inf dropped. Do they? I don't know because I don't farm inside or outside the AE. But I am curious because I do buy stuff on the market. So my skin in this game is how the product gets to the shelf, so to speak. I don't necessarily WANT higher prices, but it also doesn't appeal to my sense of fairness if the reward rates are so much higher inside AE vs. outside AE (even farm vs. farm), so if that's not the case... good. But I suspect it is and @Ukase seemed to imply as much as well with his comment about the doom that would befall the market if people had to do their farming outside AE. If, on the other hand, AE farming is not significantly better than outside AE farming and the community has just decided it's a good place to gather, then I'm cool with that too. Keeps the farmers and their "sitters" out of the mission teams and TFs and that suits me fine.

This makes me wonder if 3D sound would actually fix a lot of this. One of the few disappointments I had after discovering HC was discovering 3D audio no longer worked. If it did, it might actually attenuate a lot of these sounds by their distance and direction to you. Instead it's like everything happens directly between your own ears, making those particularly annoying sound effects even worse, I think.

http://progressquest.com/

I'm not a huge fan of any of the TFs but Ice Mistral is kind of fun for the unique "jump down the pit" mission at the end where you have this huge cavern filled with exploding crystals ending in a AV fight with just massive ambushes. I also sort of like Sutter even if the final fight can be kind of problematic on some teams. It otherwise takes you some fun places. But my favorite "content" is messy mid-level PuGs. Well oiled steamroller Incarnate teams are boooooring as hell. Random teammates? No incarnate powers? Decent banter? Casual attitudes? Yes please! Bonus points if it's redside.

Yeah I've got a Rad/SS in the works at the moment. My problem is leveling it. I don't farm. And SS is kind of boring until you get Foot Stomp. Hand Clap is fun but does no damage. Otherwise there's no AoE in the secondary until 38. RadA helps a little bit with proc bombed Rad Therapy and Ground Zero though. For a "most survivable" tanker, I'm debating between SR/Staff and Inv/Staff. I like Staff for either because of the +15% melee/lethal defense in Guarded Spin and the +13% res(all) in Sky Splitter's Form of Body finisher. I love that the most defensive stance in Staff is the one that adds a damage bonus too and lets me pick between Sky Splitter's +res buff to me or Eye of the Storm's -res debuff to all the enemies it hits with its 15ft radius PBAoE. I'm leaning SR. Invuln of course has better full-health resist and hit points, but SR would be no slouch especially with Staff's add-on. And it has sky-high defense and DDR. Melee defense especially would be absurd with Guarded Spin's adder. Would only matter in the challenge mode content, of course, but that's the only stuff where you can really differentiate well-built tankers anyway.

I wouldn't think so as pseudopets are normally not targetable. But it does make me wonder about Oil Slick... Also what about Decoys? I would guess that although they can't be damaged or drained, they would still fuel the rez merely because they can be targeted and attacked.

As the name of the rez is "Reserve Power" it suggests, conceptually, the Stunner is tapping some backup battery to revive (though the text description of the power is just a copy of Soul Drain) But you're right. It's also the Stunner's most dangerous AoE attack, even just on damage, to say nothing of the crippling end drain and recovery debuff.

For even more win, make it a Rad/SS. Put Superior Avalanche: KD in Ground Zero. Go knock down avg. 27 out of 30 enemies it can hit in one go. Take Hand Clap and put Sudden Accel KB to KD in it. It's Foot Stomp without the damage... or the foot, I guess. 🤪 Take Mighty Radial Final Judgement. Find a large crowd of Scrapyarders and show them near Earth orbit. Slot KO Blow for knock to send one more into orbit to keep them company. You want Energy Mastery for FA, so squeeze Energy Torrent in there too strictly for variety. Sure, sure... you could do more damage. But can you have more FUN? I don't think so!

You've mentioned this before and it was suggested that maybe you were experiencing lag or something. I don't know what else to tell you. You can review the description of Reserve Power on City of Data if you like. It's a 25ft radius auto-hit PBAoE. If no enemy (of the Stunner, this would include pets or allied NPCs of the players) is in range then they don't rez. I've seen this work many times. But lag between your client and the server can also affect things. Most often I see this hopping into a pack of enemies and triggering a PBAoE attack too quickly. It hits nobody if the server hasn't caught up to my new position in time. i.e. It thinks I activated the PBAoE before moving in range of the enemies and it hits nobody. One thing I see happen fairly often with Stunners is someone hits them with a knockback that kills them. They land a good distance away but still rez. This is because there's no delay on their rez. It doesn't fire where they land. It fires where they were defeated. So if that's not the case that you saw then it's either lag or something went wrong. The power should work the way it's described. And I've seen it work that way because I usually TRY to knock them back from the team with a Nem Staff if I can. And if none of the melee or pets chase it, it works.

I occasionally get a problem where the keys act like I am pressing CTRL when I am not. Maybe it missed a key-up event or something. At-TAB out and then back in to the client usually fixes that for me. No need to restart. Not saying that was your issue but it might have fixed it.

I'm not sure it's going to matter what secondary or epic pool you choose. Invuln/Any, built properly, is going to live up to the name on the product label. If you're after hardmode survivability, that's more specific and you probably want to hang out in the few threads that are going about it now to see what works best there and what struggles with it.

I think redside's Dean MacArthur -> Leonard arc is better. Best is doing that first and then switching to blueside for Nance -> Adair. The nice thing about DMac->Leonard is it can end on a fairly heroic note if you want. Plus, who doesn't want a badge called "Army of Me"?? 😈

Shauna Braun, I think. Independence Port Vigilante contact arc.

You've already skipped some by doing the Wards. Here's the best crack at the timeline I think I've seen. If someone else knows of a better one, they can post it: To experience it all in order with one character is tricky and you'd had to have done the Wards entirely in Ouro flashback. That said, the Ward storylines aren't THAT connected to the Praetorian Invasion that you'd probably be bothered by it. I would pick up with the other content and return for Mr G. / Provost M. much later on.

Really? Nobody?

I'm surprised PhysPerf would be needed on a Bio, though I'm not to 50 yet with mine (and it's Staff so less end hungry than RadM). I am so addicted to CJ for combat mobility, I think I'd probably only use FA situationally and drop into Efficient Mode if I had to. But that's a lot of recovery already. The usual procs in health/stamina. Inexhaustible with another PerfShifter (and great EndDrain resist). DNA Siphon with Theft of Essence. And still as a last resort to all that, Efficient Mode. I've not needed it on my Rad/Rad at least, though RadA has admittedly slightly better recovery even than Bio, so maybe not a good comparison either.

I want to pair it with Staff. 😞

I vaguely remember there being a timer in this mission. Is that just the timer on those ambushes?

As convenient as the side switching stuff is now, you still have a few bugs to dodge. They don't always happen, but sometimes... You might not be able to join a blue team as a Rogue if the leader is already inside a mission, even if you are in a blue zone. You might get auto-kicked from a blue team as a Rogue if you visit an SG base, Ouroboros, Pocket D, or Cimerora, even though these are neutral zones. On a mixed team the mission can't be set by the leader if some of the team is in Ouroboros. This can happen on "Board Transit" missions because it's popular to open an O-Portal and use the portal in Ouro as the "transit" entrance instead of walking a few hundred yard to a train station. 🤪 I don't think any of this has ever happened to me on a Task/Strike Force, but on regular missions teams, yes. If I think I have time, I'll hit Null the Gull to switch Rogue/Vigilante to match where the missions are being run. If worried the team will fill, I'll send a tell first asking to wait for me to switch. Also a good test. Someone not willing to wait a minute for you to switch probably isn't much fun to team with either. Most people are fine with it though. Also a good idea to send a tell if you want to switch to a different character for that team.

Yes, but... WHICH ONE?!

Team leader: "LF Emp" LFG channel: "You don't need an Emp!" Team leader: "LF Emp"

Wow, I need to update Mid's more often. Mine was apparently really out of date and showing me low values for Bio's defense in these builds being posted. I was wondering why you were all so excited about them. 🤪 Now I want to try Bio/Staff because I need NINE MODES OF OPERATION!

I have a normal body guy. Taller than average, but not max. height. I find the various energy/elemental swords don't look quite as silly because the blade end isn't solid material, so you can imagine it is weightless. It also works for me with the audio. A couple of the attacks seem to "whoosh" but not have any impact sound, which seems weird to me if I am swinging a railroad crossing sign or a giant mallet, but not weird with the energy blade. They also mesh better conceptually with energy/elemental-themed armor sets, of course.