Heraclea

I have a Dark Armor/Savage Melee character nearing 50 now, but Staff is another set I'd recommend to use with Dark Armor. You can add a layer with its defense boosting attack. More importantly, one of your stances gives you a substantial endurance discount that's probably wasted on my Staff/Regen brute.

I have a 50 DB/Fire brute. I took the whole primary to have all the combos, and Taunt because it is handy and needs no slots. I skipped Fiery Embrace as well as Rise of the Phoenix in Fire. My understanding is that FE was eminently skippable: it was really only beneficial to fire-based attacks, and Dual Blades isn't. My main attack combos now are Attack Vitals and Sweep. On the other hand, I rely on the combos with Nimble Slash when exemped. I could drop Blinding Feint - I gather that Fiery Embrace would take the same set, which is rather ad hoc in any case. This wasn't really a carefully planned build, as you can see by the separation of the two Steadfast pieces that prob'ly ought to be together, maybe put all that stuff in Temperature. Is Fiery Embrace really worth having? Isn't it weak and skippable unless your primary is also Fire/ ? Don't want to lose the Kinetic Combat in Nimble Slice either. Again, this isn't a 'plan' build, I don't have a Mid's for it. This is just the picture I took planning for a respec so I remember to put most things back where they were.

Bad Company - Holy Water RIP Brian Howe.

I took all of Dual Blades, wanting a whole-game character. Having several skippable powers in Fire always was one of the attractions of the Fire/DB pairing,

I used to have a Fire/Energy tanker on Victory. She got stripped and sent to Champion after the energy melee changes; she still relied way too much on her self heal, and making animations much longer put it out of reach too often. Have the Homecoming AoE changes improved the playability of the set? I did remake the Fire Armor character that replaced her (Fire/Dual Blades) as a brute. Did not take Fiery Embrace; my impression was that it did not benefit a non-Fire Melee character that much. Is that also a mistake?

When it gets too bad, going into graphics options and turning particles down to say 200 helps a lot. (You'll want to turn them back up to see what you're actually doing in base building, though, )

Stone Melee/Regen scrapper or brute. I have a /Regen scrapper who is one of my low level content specialists. Granted, the character is level 50 and has her slots, which make the low level content that much more fun to play. Regen sucks at higher levels and incarnate content, because of its unreliable click heals, which are adversely affected by animation lag, and vulnerability to -recharge and other debuffs. But for low level content it remains quite inviting to play, because it gets as good as it ever is going to get very early. I choose Regen because it gets endurance relief very early, and you'll need that if you're playing Stone Melee. Your endurance relief is also passive, basically a double Stamina you can get at level 4. At 20 you can have both Panacea and Miracle +recovery uniques; I use Health to slot them. You have three of your four self heals as well. Just steer clear of attack sets with combo/stack systems like Titan Weapons or Dual Blades; the pieces of the puzzle won't be there for you at those levels. Stone Melee, likewise, has a very solid ST attack chain at low levels. It is a bad endurance hog, hence /Regeneration. But you will be one-shotting or nearly one-shotting most minions with the hammers. Another armor set that gets good at low levels is Fire. Your endurance relief is Consume, which is very slow in recharging out of the box. You get that at 20. But everything in the set that helps keep you alive is there by level 16. Fire also does a bit better in the late game than Regen. I'd still prefer Regen for this particular niche.

I do try to make a point not to mind other people playing their characters or tell them how to play them. That said, Wormhole does seem rather rare. Rare enough that my usual reaction to it is to reset the wifi. Hard to distinguish from ordinary rubberbanding.

The Tubes - Proud to Be an American

Thus far I don't even have Soul Transfer. The procs go active at the right level in Health and I likely will leave them there.

I've been tinkering around with AE lately. The missions I've been playing all have escorts. It's a lot easier to keep the escorts alive playing a tanker than it is with a brute.

One question: this build has Combat Jumping (leaping) and Mighty Leap (Force of Will). Wouldn't Super Jump from Leaping also get the job done? My Dark Armpr/Savage Melee is at 43. If I pick up Cloak of Darkness, I will probably add a stealth IO to Sprint. Does Panacea work in Soul Transfer? (I just four slotted Health and put all the +recovery and Preventative procs there.)

I did not realize that the 'Description' of the contact was not what was shared, and that you instead have to put it in 'About Contact'. That's been fixed. I spend a lot more attention to NPC chatter rather than contact dialogs, since NPC chatter is available to teams while contact dialog usually only gets read by team leaders. Some of the more 'interesting' mobs have their own stories told on one or another of the missions. Since given the random placement of goals you may not encounter each set piece on every playthrough, there is a bit of replay value built in to doing it this way.

It is a very good set to be sure. Best t9 power in the game. It lacks a real minimal FX mode; at best it will turn your character into Pig Pen. This is somewhat limiting for your concepts. I still think Invulnerability is the best tanker primary, especially when paired with a secondary with a self heal like Dark or Radiation Melee. But Bio is quite adequate and probably more fun to play with. I have a Bio/Spines at 50; all she has to do is show up and mobs start dropping.

Another thing that's come up a number of times. Fire Melee: swords vs. no swords. I know of some people who shy away from the set because they don't want swords. My own Fire Melee characters, of which I have two, would work better with everything being a sword. An all sword set would open up to adding weapon costume pieces to the set provided that the weapon looked good wreathed in flame.

I have an INTENSE dislike for the Taunt animation and especially the sound effect assigned to my Shield/Axe female tanker. Instead of the usual 'ah-Ha' given to female tankers, the game gave her a wheeze that sounds like a dying giraffe. If this can be changed without mucking around in the sound files I don't know how. I also do not know how often this sound effect turns up.

1./ Pull the tree out of the ground. 2./ Shake it until the cat falls out.

At least at present, I try to keep my stacks at 5 for the endurance discount.

Apropos of nothing, this is my wish-list build for the Dark Armor/Savage Melee tanker I rolled last week. I took a cue from Heraclea's build and split the Gauntleted Fist set into two apiece spread out among multiple powers. I just might respec out of Rending Flurry, because it doesn't really find a place in my attack chain.

I just started a Dark Armor tanker (DA/Savage) and I took Cloak of Fear. It is more useful than it looks on paper; it eventually hits all the minions and keeps them out of your hair while you work on higher priority targets. Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom look like 'pick one from this column' powers; there's no point in having both. I don't need the extra damage from OG, and feared mobs stand still while stunned mobs may wander. I may eventually take Cloak of Darkness, but stealth on a tanker is rather pointless, and I have instead added a bit of defense with Weave and Combat Jumping, which also provides immobilization protection. If the numbers are good I may take it.

Sergio Mendes & Brazil '66 - Mais Que Nada

Like I said, I like that map too much to stop using it. What I can do, though, is change the conditions of victory in that boss fight. Minions running off or falling down the map should not be a problem any more.

Don't ever accept alpha related salvage as a reweard choice from high end task forces. Alphas can be crafted two ways: the shards path and the threads path. It isn't obvious that this is so, because you have to scroll down quite a bit to find the threads alpha recipes. I usually let shards-path salvage sit and make everything with threads, it's much easier to get rolling on a new 50 that way, and as noted above, empyrean and astral merits can be mailed to yourself to get them to characters that need. I do use the shards as a stepping stone on the path to t4, because by that point I usually have accumulated enough to make one or two of the steps on the path not taken. The shards path is harder because the uncommon shards-path salvage needs to be crafted from specific commons and more shards. Most importantly, shards are only for alpha slots. Everything else is made from threads and only threads. I generally am able to craft something to put in an alpha slot as soon as it unlocks. I will transfer empyreans from characters with many to get alpha to t3 ASAP. 3 merits for an uncommon, 8 for a rare, plus maybe one or two if you don't have enough threads. I craft something when judgment/interface open up, but boosting those is not a priority. Rather, I save the salvage and threads for when lore/destiny unlock, and usually by that time I have enough salvage of the various kinds to get both of those boosted to t3. After that it's your choice what to prioritize. I generally make Destiny and Interface priorities and get those to t4 first, then Hybrid and Alpha. Judgment is more a big deal on a low damage character than on, say, a blaster.

Also, Hamidon raids, if you can get into one. One option you will be given on completion is four empyrean merits. On Torchbearer, the custom has been to do these in groups of three, so you can choose one of each reward. This may be the most time-efficient way; a group of three raids is usually over in around 45 minutes. Often done in leagues of 48. Both Hamidon and BAF tend to be rather unfriendly to melee characters, with BAF specifically hostile to tankers. What you want to bring instead to Hamidon is a DPS character with one or more quick recharging ranged ST holds.

Anima Sola nobis refertur a constabulario urbano. Mi videtur, apparuit repente in urbis vias, Latine loquens; idcirco constabularii putabant eam esse nostra. Haud vero; profuga est ab ira dei nazareni, cordis negotii causa. Latinitas eius prisca et pristina. Nomen eius Cælestina; vincta fuit in inferis nazarenorum duo mille annos. Certe refugium dedi. Pro multa meruit deus nazarenorum colaphum in faucibus, sique mihi datur dare, dabo. Anima Sola was referred to us by the city police. Apparently she appeared suddenly on the city streets, speaking Latin; on that account the police thought she was one of ours. Not true; she is a refugee from the anger of the Nazarene god, on account of some affair of the heart. Her Latin is quite old and pure. Her name is Celestine; she was a prisoner in some Nazarene hell for two thousand years. Of course I took her in. The Nazarene god has done much to deserve a punch in the chops; and if it is given to me to give him one I will give it.