Call Me Awesome

Fire/EM blaster - Burn it from out of range. Boost Range is a fantastic power on a Blaster.

I'd agree with Fire/EM as one of the bottom dwellers, in it's current form EM is by far the worst tanker secondary so that's a given to have it. On the primary side it's arguable which set is weakest. SR is admittedly a one trick pony but in all fairness it's a fairly good trick and it will tend to survive pretty well. Fire has historically been among the squishiest tanker primaries.

Likewise, didn't know, could care less.

I had a perma-PA Ill/Rad back on Live, the Radiation secondary is a huge help with the recharge bonus in Accelerated Metabolism. As Adeon mentioned you'll need to find about 205% in recharge bonuses after slotting PA to the ED cap recharge. Hasten is worth 70%, AM is worth 30% leaving 105% from IO bonuses. Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge is another chunk leaving you to find 67.5% in other IO bonuses. Doable, but it will get expensive. Back on Live a Perma-PA Ill/Rad cost around a billion inf; an Illusionist with a secondary that didn't provide +recharge could jack that price up almost double. The good news is IO prices are MUCH better here and merits are much easier to come by so it'll cost you far less than it used to. Or you can get a buddy to toss Speed Boost on you, or team with another Radiation character so you'll have two AM's (60% recharge there). If you're running a static team with a few friends it's MUCH easier. Edit Hmm, just realized this was a necro post. Well, I assume the OP has gotten everything squared away by now.

Issue 0 - The Great Age of the Blaster Issue 2-4 - The Great Age of the Tanker Issue 5 - The Fall of the Tanker <lotta stuff in between> NOW - The Rise of the Tanker If you wait long enough things come back into fashion.

Agreed that it's hard to fault pairing Shield with much of anything. I've never even studied Savage much less played it so I can't talk about that particular combination but Shield will certainly get the job done.

There's not really a bad pairing for Shield... well, except for the few that aren't available like Claws. The top popular pics seem to be Electric, Fire and Broadsword. I've played all of these, but admittedly only SD/Fire as a tanker, and all of them are quite effective. Of the sets you've listed I've only played Dark Melee and that only into the upper 20's before abandoning it due to a lack of AOE. I admit to a bias against SS, originally due to the fact that back in the old days it seemed like every other tank you saw was Inv/SS and later because I disliked the way Rage works. While I haven't played Mace I had a friend with an Inv/Mace tank back in the issue 5-9 era and the set seemed quite effective albeit very endurance heavy.

Well, it lists ACCURATE to hit debuffs but NOT ToHit Debuffs on the allowed enhancements. Sounds like it's an omission rather than a bug per se. I'd agree that if it'll take the Accurate version it should also take the standard version as well. That it doesn't is either an oversight or a deliberate decision by the Dev team.

Remember the first rule of the Forum Cartel.

Build for ranged defense and a Fire/EM blaster becomes quite godly. Heck, any blaster becomes godly when they get high enough defenses to handle the return fire.

You do come up with some unusual concepts there, no doubt about that🤣

Er, just HOW would Stone Armor work on Stalkers? Penalties of -run, -jump, -recharge, -damage baked into Granite Armor. It's a not well thought out tanker set that doesn't lend itself to a damage oriented AT. I've played Stone Armor to 50 twice back in the issue 5-9 days and it's unrivaled for pure durability but it sacrifices everything that makes a damage AT to get there. It's a big, nearly immobile stone wall that will survive nearly anything the game can throw, but it can't fight back well. 30% damage and recharge debuff as I recall, inability to jump over a 6" curb and massively slowed movement speed is incompatable with a primarily damage dealing character. I played it in the days after the Great Defense Nerf and ED destroyed the durability of all other tanker sets because it was best suited for a pure tanking role and the only set to approach the durability tankers took for granted in the old days. Once IO's came around and allowed other sets to once again compete on durability the penalties of Stone were no longer worth the benefits.

I'd thought the same about 20 years ago and found that nearly everything from the 80's & 90's was mostly worthless. I had several thousand issues, mostly complete runs from the early 80's to the mid to late 90's and only got about 5 cents an issue on average. If I'd sold them myself piecemeal I might have done a bit better but still they weren't worth much. Apparently the comic market glutted in that era and there's way more supply than collector demand.

A SG mate of mine on Live had fun with that with a couple characters, Local Man and Area Man. "Local Man, the most famous hero of all"

Wow, I found that omnibus book in my high school library around 1980 and loved it. The Hollywood "adaptation" seemed to have been done by someone who never even read the thing.

I own both 1 and 2; it's been so many years that playing KOTOR 2 now is like a new game. I do suggest some of the graphics mods from Nexusmods.com for it to bring the resolution up to something relatively current; it is a 2004 game after all and by default unmodded runs at around 800x600.

I've found when I'm stuck for a name that either going to a historical reference (Archery/TA blaster named Sagitarii after the Roman archery units) or loading up a Synonym checking site provides inspiration. For example, plugging in Ice gets Crystal, Frost, Glacier, Rime etc. Play around with it until something clicks. That approach way back in issue 4 got the name for my Dark/Dark Defender, Dusk til Dawn.

Agreed, these are the two skippable powers in BS. Hack, even though it's the T1 is actually a quite good attack. Slice is a nice wide AOE. Parry, what more needs be said about it? Build Up is a staple in a Scrapper build. Whirling Sword is another nice AOE. Disembowel combines a lot of damage with a nice knock UP. Then you get to Headsplitter, technically an AOE but practically your best ST attack since the cone is so extremely narrow.

I tend to think that ANY KB power is much better with the KD proc. Aside from a couple of Blaster secondary ST "Go AWAY" KB powers everything works better as KD.

He's always been a little twitchy, but this time I think he burned out a microchip.

I tried out Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. I've gotten to the third planet and I'm not really impressed. No ranged attacks... but the enemy usually have them and start shooting at you way before you close to melee. Nothing but mazes intricate enough to make Oranbega seem straightforward. Jump/move sideways/JUMP/RUN/force slow the pounding hammer/Jump/RUN again and if you're a half second slow you start over. I'd expected a similar game to Knights of the Old Republic and got a maze puzzle game. No armor upgrades (or armor at all for that matter). No lightsaber upgrades other than purely cosmetic. I'm debating reloading KOTOR.

He may have been effective in actually getting things done. Unfortunately I think he should have stuck to running the company instead of sticking his oar into the development. Ultimately I think COH was at it's best after he'd been shown the door. He had his vision and whenever players didn't follow along with his vision he took it as a personal insult. Remember when he thought everyone would use multiple different enhancements in a power and was astonished that they'd maximize it's effectiveness instead? He tended to swing the nerf bat HARD. And then swing it again. And again. Then promise no more nerfs. Then the very next issue hit us with ED, the biggest nerf in the game's history. Then he made a snarky comment that it wasn't nerfing powers, it simply nerfed enhancements. Frankly I don't know of any player who wasn't thrilled when he left and Positron took over the top job.

It should work just fine. Since you're familiar with the way the Brute version worked you'll find the Tanker to be very similar. As you know Fire Armor isn't the toughest set but it's capable of handling most anything with a good build and intelligent play. It should play very similar to your Brute without needing to chase Fury.

My Blaster's plenty tough as a general rule but the cascading defense debuffs those Romans toss out are death to a defense build with no DDR.

Glad you're having fun with your tanks. I've played both Shield and Fire primaries on Tankers and they're nice. The Elec secondary I only have with my Elec/Shield Stalker and I've never played SS but both should be solid pairings. Yeah, I know SS is the thematic Tanker secondary but I just never got into it. At first around issue 3-5 it was because every other Tanker you saw was Invuln/SS and later on because I wasn't a fan of the Rage mechanic. I know Hyper swears by it, I just figured I'd likely end up swearing at it.