Call Me Awesome

Absolutely and utterly agree. Any powers that phase shift enemies need to die and players who insist on using them need to be kicked from the team. I also have similar thoughts on Wormhole, I've had chuckleheads who, once I have a group nice and tight, decide to wormhole them all to the other side of the room. Please, if you're going to use Wormhole PLEASE take the mobs TO the tanker, don't yank them AWAY from him.

Personally I think you're going to have a rough ride with either; if I were looking to solo to 50 I'd roll a Stalker, Scrapper or Brute as they're more durable and deal lots of damage. Playing a Blaster or Corruptor you're going to eat a lot of dirt until your build matures and you get some decent mitigation. Even with a high end IO build and near soft capped Ranged defense my Fire/EM blaster doesn't solo nearly as well as a melee character. Can it be done with a squishy character? Of course. Will it be MUCH harder? Also, of course. My best solo character is, without doubt, my Elec/Shield Stalker. High defenses, moderate resistances, incredible AOE damage and decent ST damage.

The answer is conditionally NO... you can mix the Superior and normal versions but you can't have two of the SAME IO. For example you can have a Superior Acc/Dam and a normal Dam/Recharge but you can't have a Superior and a Normal Acc/Dam. Be aware that if you have the set 6 slotted and you catalyze two of them to Superior you'll get the Superior 2 slot bonus and loose the Normal 5 and 6 slot bonuses. In most cases I'd wait to catalyze until you can do the entire set at a go for that reason. I'd wondered that myself since the older versions of Mid's allowed it but it doesn't work and the new Mid's does not allow it anymore.

I recall a post from the Dev's a few months ago about dual boxing and that it was prohibited except on some circumstances but I don't remember the specifics, something to do with number of players on the server. You may want to search for that post to make sure you aren't going to get in trouble over it.

In my opinion here's the worst offenders: Black Hole and similar enemy phase shift powers need to die in a fire after being castrated. Nothing else I've ever teamed with is worse. Playing Solo they MIGHT have some small utility but on a team they're totally worthless and impede the team greatly. Expect to be kicked from any team after using one of those powers. Group Fly and Team TP are so incredibly situational and detrimental on most teams that they're all but worthless. They're ONLY useful if you run a static team and everyone's built for and plays around them. Otherwise they're a team griefing tool that will likely get you kicked. Fallout from the Radiation Emission set. Yes, I know it does good damage but it's so situational that you won't use it much. First, you have to have a teammate die in a group of enemies. Second, you have to get in range of him and set off Fallout before he rezzes or you die yourself. Third, you have to do this before most of the mobs die or disperse. It isn't a bad power but the times I've seen it used successfully are very few and far between... your power and slot choices are almost certainly better spent elsewhere. As mentioned the Presence pool isn't often very useful; the AT's it can benefit already have better tools in their primary and secondary. In my experience with leveling 3 Stalkers to 50 I find that Placate is very limited in it's use, it hides you but it doesn't shed aggro from anything other than the target so you'll still get attacked by the rest of the spawn. I've decided that the conventional wisdom is correct and there's better power choices for you. A long animation while you're getting pounded on that gets broken if they land a hit and only affects one mob isn't a high performer. Powers with significant AOE knock back are problematic unless handled well; you'll want to be careful with them or turn them into knock DOWN powers with a proc. They aren't (mostly) useless but they do require careful handling to avoid seriously annoying your team. Most power sets have one or two substandard powers in them, if you aren't familiar with the set then it's a good idea to ask in the AT specific forum about it.

/kick from team. Unfortunately I didn't have the star last week.

As has been said most TF leaders aren't looking for anything specific and take whatever shows up; most players here are long time vets and there's FAR more good players here than I ever remember seeing on Live. A bad player on a team is a rarity now instead of a common occurrence. Now useful characters? Well aggro control is useful which is classically the Tanker's role although it can get fuzzy as most AT's are capable of handling aggro if built well and in skilled hands. Damage is always required, which Blasters bring a lot of to the table but everyone deals damage to some extent. If you want to know what the fastest team for completing a TF? 8 Fire/Rad Controllers. I really don't know of anything that can match that kill speed.

Strongly seconded. This will drastically reduce the kill speed of teams and make your teammates hate you. I had a team last week with a character who loved spamming the damn thing every time it came up... I'd grab the aggro and then the idiot hits Dshit and they're all gone so my AOE's hit nothing, the two blaster's AOE's hit nothing. The only thing worse is a Storm who insists on standing next to the tank with Hurricane running. It's extremely situational in it's usefulness, so much so that a useful situation may only happen once in the character's entire existence. Take anything else instead.

In the old days we referred to two types of Scrappers, the "Wild" scrapper who was a mostly solo player and would run off and go go go ignoring the group and the "Domesticated" scrapper who stayed with the group and paid (some) attention to the team. Brutes are kind of built to be the "Wild" type thanks to the rage mechanic.

There's not a lot of melee sets that are faster than Claws so you may want to keep that in mind.

I've always thought that /Rad was an excellent secondary for any primary. Yes, there's some it benefits more but I can't think of any that it isn't a good choice with. Back on Live I played Ill/Rad, Fire/Rad, Earth/Rad to 50 and had several friends with other primaries, it's always good. My old SG had a saying that there's nothing that a little Rad can't fix. It just works. If you're putting together a static team then there's few better choices than everyone rolling Fire/Rad, I don't know of anything better when you start adding more of them. I had several dedicated teams, some mixed and some not but a group of Fire/Rad 'trollers smashes through TF's faster than anything else I can think of.

It's MAG 4 on a Tanker, and a fantastic attack even though it's single target. I never played the 'troller version so I can't comment.

It's a great combo, I have it as a Stalker and clear the Comicon asteroid map set x8 in around 5 minutes. Build Up/LR/SC/Fire Ball kills most of a spawn in around 5 seconds, Thunder Strike/Chain Induction keep the AOE rolling with another Fire Ball on the next spawn then LR/SC/Fire Ball is ready again on the following spawn. I currently have 155% recharge so LR & SC come back in about 25 seconds. "Would you like a side of BOOOOOOM with that sir?"

That's the basics, as you get more experience you'll get so you can gather them up in a clump and face them away from your team by reflex and do it fast enough that the team doesn't slow down and wait for you. You're just starting and learning so taking the alpha and being aware of loose aggro threatening the squishier members of the team is enough, and already puts you ahead of about half the tankers I've teamed with recently. I have a mental checklist when I'm tanking that goes something like this: 1. Grab the attention of the first group by getting into the middle of it and hitting an AOE, then move to the far edge of it so they'll turn and face YOU instead of the team. 2. When you see a mob turn and face the team toss a Taunt on it to get it back. 3. When the group is dead or nearly so move straight to the next one and repeat. 4. If your team is out of endurance or low on HP (which they shouldn't be) then possibly hold up a few seconds before you grab the next group. 5. Remember in the current game most of your teammates will be capable of handling the odd mob or two themselves, particularly any melee characters so don't get too stressed if you have some loose aggro, but if you see a teammate's HP start dropping taunt the mobs off of them... the easiest way to do this is usually to target them and taunt so you taunt their target. That presumes they're targeted on the mob that's killing them but there's seldom time for more finesse. There's lots of subtle tricks you can use to gather the mobs up tight; a good way to master this is to practice while solo. Set for -1 x 8 on your difficulty and practice clumping them up fast, Council are generally a good group to practice with, Tsoo are NOT. You can do this by moving around or by breaking line of sight (but this is slower). The quickest way I know is to run around the group then stop. That allows your aura to work for you and you'll likely get their attention. If you have two groups close together you can move from one to the other then back to the first, this usually snugs them up to you, although remember you can only hold the attention of 17 baddies at once due to the aggro cap. Don't aggro more than 17 mobs at once or the extras will go straight for the rest of the team. Master all that and you'll be one of the best tankers around, just going from group to group and taking the alpha and moving as fast as the team can kill will make you a very useful teammate. I've occasionally teamed with really good tanks and I always watch what they do and try and add their tricks to my skills. The truly skilled tanks are treasures and are few and very far between, if you happen on a team with one study what he does. I like to think I'm competent at it but there's a couple I've teamed with over the years that I'll freely admit I can't begin to match.

Sonic's great... as a Defender set. It's big bonus is the -res debuff it has and Defenders get MUCH more benefit from it than any other AT. It's out of the box damage is a little lower than the front runners and a Blaster doesn't get as much good out of the -res debuff. I find that teaming with one of my /Sonic defenders that the team's kill speed goes WAY up; hitting the group with Howl causes the team's damage to go up by 20%, on a single hard target I can more than double team damage with stacked debuffs. It's my favorite Defender/Corruptor set but I'd grab something else on a Blaster.

I agree there, with a ranged character one of the best survival IO bonuses you can get is Ranged defense... and Thunderstrike is one of the best choices out there to get it. As a bonus it's cheap... a few months ago the IO's cost just under 1 million each; as of yesterday when I checked they were going in the 200-500,000 range. 3.75% Ranged defense, 7% accuracy and 2% recovery for that price is very hard to pass up. Even my "money's no object" Fire/EM blaster still has 2 sets of Thunderstrike slotted in his final build, alongside a set of Mako's Bite in Bone Smasher and a couple of purple sets. There's just so much good in the Thunderstrike set that even replacing it with purple doesn't improve things much.

On the other hand looking at the results on the Primary Testing thread Dark Melee comes in at the bottom in killing speed out of all the primaries so keep that in mind. It seemed to take twice as long to clear the standard testing mission as the front runners. It's heal and -tohit do make it safe but it's kill speed is lacking. *edit Which I see GB made the point of in the post above me, I guess I need to hit refresh when sitting back down at the computer before responding.

I use Mako's Bite in ST attacks for Ranged defense, you can use Obliteration in PBAOE for Melee defense or Scirocco's for AOE. Touch of Death is another melee ST set for Melee defense. Try the Set Bonus Finder in Mid's in the Window dropdown menu for more ideas. Be aware it lists bonuses that don't exist anymore like Defense (Melee) shows nothing but Defense (Melee), Defense (Lethal), Defense (Smashing) does. Here's a reference, it's my old Live build on my Shield/Fire tanker from issue 19. I haven't updated it for Homecoming so for example it's missing Grant Cover which is highly recommended now due to the debuff resistance it provides. Also at the time Membrane HO's in Active Defense boosted DDR, I believe that has changed. I was a poor broke tanker at the time and IO prices were insane so it lacks a lot of uniques I'd use as a matter of course now, it was a cheap build to get the job done. Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Call Me Frank: Level 50 Natural Tanker Primary Power Set: Shield Defense Secondary Power Set: Fiery Melee Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Medicine Ancillary Pool: Pyre Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Deflection -- GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx(A), GifoftheA-Def/Rchg(3), GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(3), GifoftheA-Def(5), ResDam-I(5), ResDam-I(7) Level 1: Scorch -- TchofDth-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), TchofDth-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7), TchofDth-Dmg/Rchg(9), TchofDth-Dam%(9), TchofDth-Dmg/EndRdx(11), TchofDth-Acc/Dmg(11) Level 2: True Grit -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(13), Heal-I(13), ResDam-I(15), ResDam-I(15), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(17) Level 4: Combustion -- Mlt-Acc/Dmg(A), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Mlt-Dmg/Rchg(19), Mlt-Acc/EndRdx(19), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21) Level 6: Active Defense -- HO:Membr(A), HO:Membr(23), RechRdx-I(23) Level 8: Against All Odds -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 10: Taunt -- MckBrt-Rchg(A), MckBrt-Taunt/Rng(25), MckBrt-Acc/Rchg(25), MckBrt-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(27), MckBrt-Taunt/Rchg(27), MckBrt-Taunt(29) Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A) Level 16: Battle Agility -- GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx(A), GifoftheA-Def/Rchg(29), GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), GifoftheA-Def(31) Level 18: Boxing -- Acc-I(A) Level 20: Tough -- ImpArm-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(31), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(33), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(33) Level 22: Weave -- GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx(A), GifoftheA-Def/Rchg(33), GifoftheA-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(34), GifoftheA-Def(34) Level 24: Phalanx Fighting -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 26: Shield Charge -- ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg(A), ScrDrv-Dmg/EndRdx(34), ScrDrv-Dmg/Rchg(36), ScrDrv-Acc/Rchg(36), ScrDrv-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), RechRdx-I(37) Level 28: Fire Sword Circle -- Mlt-Acc/Dmg(A), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx(37), Mlt-Dmg/Rchg(37), Mlt-Acc/EndRdx(39), Mlt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), Mlt-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39) Level 30: Aid Other -- Heal-I(A) Level 32: Aid Self -- DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(A), Mrc-Heal/Rchg(40), HrmHln-Heal/Rchg(40) Level 35: Incinerate -- Mk'Bit-Dam%(A), Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Mk'Bit-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Mk'Bit-Dmg/Rchg(42), Mk'Bit-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Mk'Bit-Acc/Dmg(43) Level 38: Greater Fire Sword -- CrsImp-Acc/Dmg(A), CrsImp-Dmg/Rchg(43), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), CrsImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45), CrsImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), RechRdx-I(45) Level 41: Char -- Acc-I(A) Level 44: Fire Blast -- Dvs-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Dvs-Acc/Dmg(46), Dvs-Dmg/Rchg(46), Dvs-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46) Level 47: Fire Ball -- PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), PstBls-Dmg/Rchg(48), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(48), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(48), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(50) Level 49: One with the Shield -- ResDam-I(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Health -- NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(A) Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(50), EndMod-I(50) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) ------------

I've never put the proc in Repel on my Sonic/Kin corruptor but I do use the power occasionally as a positioning tool kind of like Hurricane. It's not really useful for long term use due to all the aggro it draws but it's quite useful for knocking a few strays towards the tank or simply into a tighter group for AOE's. I'll toggle it on, kick the mobs in the desired direction then toggle it off and get back to work. I've rarely used it as a Gandolf (You Shall Not Pass!) power but in some rare situations it's useful there, like bottling up the massive spawns into the reactor door on the Yin TF until the team gets the mobs in the reactor thinned out. You have to be careful of your positioning or you'll have ALL of them shooting at you though.

I think the vet levels go to 999, some people have mentioned getting to 300+.

That combination works quite well, I had one on Live. Not quite as tough as Invuln but not squishy at all.

I don't know Bio at all, but Street Justice is a good single target set that's a lot of fun. Stone is the hardest feeling set available and has lots of soft control with knockdowns and offers really good AOE aggro control. It IS endurance heavy so be aware you'll need to address that. Spines is pretty much the AOE king but a bit weak on single target. Broadsword/Katana are fairly interchangeable and offer Parry to buff your melee defense and do good damage. I've only played Broadsword on a Scrapper but it's a good, but end heavy, set.

Sorry, that's been the way things were since CoV launched, and the merge came with Going Rogue so I didn't think about the disparity. It's always been the case that Blue = Epic and Red = Patron; Going Rogue made it possible to choose between them with a little effort.

It all depends on your character and build, I generally go with the Epic pools unless the character's a Blaster/Defender type going for S/L defense, then I get the Scorpion Shield. My melee characters usually grab Pyre Mastery for a ranged attack and another AOE unless they have severe endurance issues, in which case Energy is a consideration. Most of the time however endurance issues are solved by level 35.

Why does that tempt me to make "GenericDragon", a loudmouth Sonic character?