Call Me Awesome

Focused Accuracy just costs too much end for the benefit it gives... if I run into a case where I get blinded yellow candy fixes the problem without devoting a power selection to an edge case situation.

For the Invuln portion you can check out my guide in the Guides section or my current build from this post: CMA is Inv/Stone but it should get you a good starting point. On the /EM portion I haven't played that set since they nerfed the crap out of it sometime around issue 8 so I'm not the right person to suggest powers although you'll want the AOE as an attention getter if nothing else. I'd also consider Pyre for your epic for Fire Blast & Fire Ball; I use them as aggro tools and Fireball is another AOE attack... it does work just as well in Melee.

In a nutshell this. Brutes can reach very high durability and they can hold aggro, but a tanker is simply better at it due to higher modifiers in all their taunt auras (apart from Willpower which has the weakest aura in the game by far). I had a Broadsword/Shield Scrapper on Live who was quite capable of tanking the ITF strictly on the strength of the taunt aura in Rise to the Challenge. Even with that taunt aura, which was tanker level, I lacked the other tools a Tank has so I had to work harder and couldn't snag loose aggro as well as a tanker since my attacks had no taunt component beyond simple damage. Every Tanker's attack also taunts the mob hit and mobs close by, even the Tanker's ranged attacks.

That's a different story, static teams tend to have wildly non-standard builds to maximize synergy between everyone on the team. My old Rad superteam on Pinnacle consisted of an Ill/Rad & Fire/Rad controller, Rad/Rad & 2 Kin/Sonic defenders, Fire/Fire blaster (don't ask, Dragonar marched to a different drum... usually straight to the floor. Repeatedly. Every mission.) and a couple of rotating friends who came and went. I remember taking out Lusca with just the 6 of us at level 25 in under 5 minutes. Certain things were a given, everyone had Leadership, AM and SB took care of recharge & endurance issues (this was pre-IO, and pre inherent fitness) so we were sitting with high defenses, high damage and high debuffage. Yeah, we could have optimized the team more but it was still the most fun trip to 50 we ever had. And yes, in that case we DID have Fallout and Vengeance thanks to our suicidal blaster. Really suicidal. Frequently faster than 3 different Mutation's could recharge. Always cussing a blue streak about dying again. Always debt capped.

In the early game I'd probably give the nod to Shield on durability as it matures faster. Mid game and beyond Invuln will be better in most situations, the Psi mobs being the exception. End game SO build? Possibly a tossup depending on mobs. Endgame moderate IO (Say $100 million) then Invuln almost all the time baring Psi. Endgame high end IO build? In my experience Invuln but Infinitum's build is very interesting and could give it a run for it's money. The last time I played a Shield tanker was on Live and IO's were different then, you couldn't build up anything like the resistance numbers you can now. Still, both are ending up with similar defense/resistance numbers and Invuln does have Dull Pain waiting in the background, or just there to keep you at the HP cap. By the way, I imagine everyone's aware of this but Invuln's T9, Unstoppable, is a delayed death sentence and strongly NOT RECOMMENDED for any tanker to take. The one in a hundred times it would save you is outweighed by the availability of your insp. tray (FREE, no power pick) and the greater utility of almost any other power. It'll cap out your resistances and give a recovery buff but it WILL kill you when it drops 2 minutes later unless you simply sit out of combat waiting for it. That 100% end drain and 90% HP drain make it useless, a detoggled tanker with 5-10% HP is a dead tanker one second later. Infinitum, you've given me some ideas for my two Shield characters here... one's an Elec/Shield Stalker sitting at Incarnate T3 and the other's a BS/Shield Scrapper at 45.

A good friend and guild mate of mine back on Live wrote an excellent guide on Illusion/Rad 'trollers, I can attest to just how powerful they can be. The guide isn't on these boards but here's a link to the archived version of Local Man's Ill/Rad guide: https://guidescroll.com/2011/07/city-of-heroes-illusionradiation-controller-guide/

I have one at 50 as well and a couple things I've noticed are first, the combination is, without question, the lightest endurance combination I've ever played on any AT. It's the only character that I never bothered to slot Stamina beyond it's default slot and I never run out of End. I built mine based on always flying via Mystic Flight and I don't have Hover. I do have Combat Jumping with the Kismet +acc and the LotG +recharge slotted. Second, not only does the dang thing never move the blue bar but it has a range and accuracy bonus over other sets as well so it doesn't miss very often and you can stay way out of range and bring hell down on the mobs. The TA secondary is very controller-y and packs nice debuffs which are a nice benefit... you're more of a high damage controller than a blaster in play style. Almost like a Corruptor actually; the TA set is what Trick Arrow SHOULD have been. Of course you have no melee powers, so no need to get in range and take a Boot to the Head like Ed Grooberman.

PvP is for most of us a complete non-issue as the empty zones on most servers can attest. If more than 5% of the population cares about it I'd be surprised... I think I've engaged in it on purpose twice since Going Rogue came out. I've played the Fire/EM combo to 50 twice, once on Live and again here on Homecoming. I build for Ranged defenses, To Hit bonuses, Recharge bonuses and damage output... I'm sitting at about 39% ranged defense fully T4 incarnate. If I get into problems a small purple solves it and it leaves room in the build for other bonuses. On the primary I rely on Blaze, Blazing Bolt, Rain of Fire, Breath of Fire and Fireball along with the Nuke. On the secondary I go light there with Bone Smasher/Power Push for mobs that get too close and Boost Range. Aim/Buildup are a given. I have the Sorcery pool for Flight and the Mez shield; Hasten of course and the Leadership toggles. For the Epic I have Pyre with Bonfire (with KB-KD proc), Armor and Rise of the Phoenix for when things go pear shaped. About Rain of Fire, I don't find that it has much effect on mob packing... they don't tend to move much. I also lay down both Rain and Bonfire for an awesome BBQ. Slotting I toss Thunderstrike into the single target attacks, I believe I have Mako slotted in Bone Smasher and the Blaster sets in the AOE's. That plus Maneuvers pretty well pushes the Ranged def to where it ends up, the Kismet +accuracy in Combat Jumping along with a LotG +recharge, both +3% defense uniques in Fire Armor and a few other odds and ends round things out. My To Hit is sitting at ~98%; I never reslotted after the Snipe changes so I still have the bonus I needed for fast snipe. I haven't seen the point in changing to a different set of bonuses. Sorry I don't have a build to share; I'm on my laptop without Mid's.

After playing Archery twice to 50 on Blasters here's my thoughts on the powers. Sorry I don't have Mids on this computer to make a build. You want Blazing Arrow, Fistful of Arrows, Exploding Arrow, the Snipe (Aimed Shot I believe? Don't have Mids in front of me) and Rain of Arrows as a priority. Fistful in particular is better than a lot of people think and it's a fairly wide, long cone. Standing about 10-20 yards from the spawn will let it hit most of them. Remember, one of the perks of Archery is longer range. Another perk is much lower endurance cost; neither of my Blasters had any endurance issues at all and they never slotted Stamina past the default slot. Compared to my Fire/EM blaster they had unlimited endurance only running to 50% end after a couple minutes of nonstop attacking vs an AV.

How about Archery/Rad? IMO Rad is one of the strongest sets out there and it brings a lot to the table. I played Rad on Defenders, Controllers and Corruptors back on Live and it's a great all purpose set with very effective debuffs along with the awesome Accelerate Metabolism. The classic pairing is Archery/Trick Arrow but I've never been that impressed with /TA. Personally my go-to secondaries (or primaries on a Defender) are Rad and Kin though I've played Dark, Storm, Emp & Sonic on various Defender/Controller/Corruptors. I would NOT pair it with Storm however, you've a few nice AOE's and unless played very well Storm is counterproductive to that. I know I had great difficulty on my Plant/Storm 'troller with all the chaos and I had the advantage of an AOE immobilize to eliminate the KB. Rad just works, with anything. Kin is like being a Crack Dealer, everyone wants their fix. I haven't played Archery on a Corruptor but I've played it twice to 50 on a Blaster; it's a great set that benefits from fairly long range attacks. There's a few skippable powers there to open up room in the build but the core of the set is quite good.

True, but very few Rad characters take the power, it's one of the most situational in the game since you need a dead teammate who died in the right place and has a group around him, and also doesn't pop a res power or have another teammate res him first. I skipped it on all my Rad characters and I think I only saw it used a handful of times in all the years I played. Rad has so many excellent powers that fitting in everything else in your build gets tricky and you have to sacrifice something.

Oh HELL yes get the Dark nuke. Stealth in, KABLOOIE!, then enjoy soft capped defenses for the entire team. It was very good back when nukes killed your own blue bar and recovery, now that it's a zero consequences massive debuff with a side of Kaboom why wouldn't you have it and use it on every big group? Welcome to your new job as a FF defender.

It's good and stout. Here's CMA's current numbers: Just short of softcapped S/L/E/N, over cap on F/C, 90% S/L resist, 84% F/C, 70% E/N & 54% Psi. By the numbers it's tougher. Not to say that Shield isn't extremely durable, it certainly is, it's just a small step below Invuln which is a small step below Stone.

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned that there were a few enemies that needed different tactics. Good point on the BAF since it's so popular once you hit 50, the AV's in it have an AOE hold mechanic that will hold the tank and everyone nearby once it's hit the same character 3 times so you MUST hand off aggro to another character before you reach 3 rings. It's fairly easy to see, for one you'll see a large ring around yourself (or two, or you're held at 3) and you get a big popup saying "First Warning" and "Second Warning". Never taunt once you have the First Warning, you have to allow another character to take the aggro before you get the entire Raid held. Frankly, you won't need to really worry about special tactics until you reach higher levels; offhand I can't think of any AV's below 50 that can't be handled by standard tanking tactics. There may be one or two but they don't come to mind right now. Incarnate trials are different and many require different tactics.

Having played both, and both with high end IO builds, there's a definite difference between the two. Invuln will easily handle things that make Shield reach for the inspiration tray... and Shield will deal higher damage than Invuln as a general rule. As with all defense sets Shield's great until the RNG decides it hates you, then it doesn't have the layers of defense that Invuln does. Both have if I recall correctly about 50% defense debuff resistance so both are equally resistant to having their defense stripped. Invuln has higher resistances as a second line of protection and Dull Pain as a last line/massive HP buff. There's a few edge cases where Shield wins out over Invuln like vs Psi damage but for the most part it's less durable. Note that's LESS durable, it's a far cry from "Fragile", of the sets I've played I'd probably rate it #3 in durability behind Stone and Invuln. The closest thing to fragile in a Tanker that I know of is probably Fire. Personally I've played Invuln, Stone, Shield, Fire and Ice tankers to 50 and I've played Dark and Electric into the upper 30's on Live. All of them have pluses and minuses to them. Fire was the least durable of the ones I've played and Stone was the most durable.

Shield's good, I've played it to 50 on a Scrapper, Stalker and Tanker. It's more durable than Ice, less than Invuln and it's good damage wise. I've tanked a +4 ITF with a BS/Shield Scrapper without any issues and a full team of squishies. I've tanked the tower buffed Lord Recluse on a Shield/Fire tanker in the STF (MLTF now) unassisted... with a little help from my insp. tray.

I've noticed the issue with Regrowth... if the team's a little spread out it can be hard finding and hitting the person who needs it with the heal. And it suffers from the same issue Rad has with the anchor debuff, either mobs get scattered from the anchor or it's "Look, an anchor! Kill it FIRST!" At least the anchor sticks around on the corpse awhile now. And we all know about the KB happy teammate that scatters a nice tight group all over the place, I ran into that on a Penny Yin the other day playing my Stalker. We had a newbie player with a Storm who tossed Tornado into the middle of the spawn JUST after the tank had started to get aggro. He also had the idea of "helping" the tank by standing next to him with Hurricane running, and I think he must have had chat turned off as he never responded to many requests to stop.

Yeah, that's my one gripe with the set. Well, that and that Jacob's Ladder is only technically an AOE and has an even longer animation... I dumped it on my last respec and just tossed a few slots into Boxing for when I needed a filler attack while running lower level content.

If you really want aggro then go with Ice. If you want aggro in a set of vice grips go with Ice/Spines... I can't think of anything that will top that for aggro holding. It's not the toughest, but for sheer aggro holding it can't be beat. Following Ice look for the sets where the taunt aura is autohit and has a decent duration (sorry WP, but even autohit Mag 3 with a 2 second duration doesn't cut it. Everyone else gets a Mag 4 with at least a 14 second duration). Sets where the aura deals damage like Fire and Stone require a tohit roll for it to taunt so they're a bit less capable in aggro. Ice hits a homerun with an autohit aura that pulses every half second AND a damage aura backing it up. As far as I remember all other sets have an aura that pulses once a second. If you want damage output, well, you really should roll a Scrapper, but in a tanker the old standby of Fire/Fire is still going to be hard to beat. Raw durability? Stone in Granite armor. You'll have to deal with all the penalties to mobility, recharge and damage that brings however. Taking a slight step down in durability you have Invuln, and with a decent IO build you can nearly match Stone with no downsides. A really high end IO build can match Granite, although you're getting a bit theoretical since stuff that can threaten either is hard to find, and mostly it'll either completely ignore durability via mechanics (Hamidon's untyped damage for example) or have such overkill to make durability meaningless. Most tanker primaries can, with sufficient IO investment, become durable enough to make the question mostly irrelevant. The most durable are those that combine high defenses, high resistances and strong healing/regen mechanics.

I suppose I have a bit of a statistical lean towards melee, Tank, Scrapper, Stalker or Brute. However, I've played everything except Mastermind to 50 at least once on Live so I have a considerably more diverse experience. Nothing at all wrong with Controllers, I had Ill/Rad, Fire/Rad, Mind/Kin, Plant/Storm all at 50 so I certainly see the attraction of the set. I also had Invuln/Stone, Stone/EM, Stone/Fire, Fire/Fire, Shield/Fire and Ice/Dark tankers at 50. Blasters? Fire/EM, Archery/EM, Archery/TA all at 50. Defenders? Dark/Dark, Rad/Rad, Kin/Rad all at 50. Scrappers? I think I'm forgetting some but BS/Regen, Spine/Regen, StJ/Invuln, BS/SD. A couple of Corruptors, PB, WS, Widow, Dominator, Brute, Stalker. If you want a set with an obvious, immediate impact on the mobs and team have you tried a Rad/Sonic or Kin/Sonic Defender? Solid debuffs along with either more debuffage or massive team buffs. All that said, play what feels right to you at a given point. You won't find many teams complain about having a Fire/Rad or Fire/Kin 'troller on the team. I tend to get into a bit of a rut and run mostly one AT for awhile, then I get bored and pick up something completely different as a change of pace. After a period of paying close attention to the team's aggro and controlling the mobs playing a Tank it's pretty relaxing just sitting back and blasting the bejeezus out of spawns with a Blaster. The concentration and attention to detail of a Tri-Form Keldian is kind of like playing a Blaster, Scrapper and Tank all in the same character. Masterminds are the only set I've never been able to get into, I've tried a half dozen times and always end up abandoning them by the early 20's; they're too fiddly for my taste.

As has been said, with some caveats a secondary set will have a lesser effect than the same set as a primary. The exact amount of difference varies by AT and other factors but it's a fairly reliable thumb rule. A Defender's primary is stronger than the same set as a Corruptor secondary and so forth. There's also different modifiers on different AT's; a Blaster and Corruptor may share the same power set but the Blaster will do more damage than the Corruptor since Blasters have higher base damage. The same thing applies to all AT's, a Scrapper has a higher damage modifier than a Brute for example even though both have the same sets as primaries. (Ok, to nitpick Brutes have higher damage CAPS and with high Fury they can do massive damage)

I think this thread has gone way past any benefit. A disruptive player has no legitimate complaint if the team lead kicks them. In fact, nobody has any legitimate complaint about getting kicked for any reason, the team leader has the final say on what happens on his team. Personally I VERY rarely kick anyone... I think I've only had to do it 3 or 4 times since 2004. Still, he who holds the star has control over who's on the team. Ask the disruptive player to cease being disruptive, if that fails then simply kick them from the team. Do NOT rant and rave about them, simply remove the problem and move on. Nobody is required to team with a specific player and nobody is required to keep any player on their team.

How about giving yourself flight so you can get at them in the air? Oh, and a Tanker's taunt won't bring flying mobs to the ground although it does cut their range so they'll come a bit closer so Confront won't bring them down either.

You know, when your team is fighting +3 mobs, scattering to the 4 corners and aggroing everything it's kind of hard to keep them alive.🤬

Here's a few thoughts on this build. First, toss a Kismet +accuracy (It's actually +TOHIT, not accuracy) into Combat Jumping, this gives you a 6% increase in your BASE tohit before any accuracy is figured. Personally I use this on every character I build, it's just that useful. It'll do you more good than the minor Regen bonus from 2 Luck of the Gambler. Next, you absolutely need more slots in Invincibility. This is your scaling defense, a tohit buff and your taunt aura... I toss 4 slots into it for either Shield Wall or Reactive Defenses. This soft caps you without needing Maneuvers. It looks like you're focusing too much on Recharge bonuses; while they're useful they're not vital for you like they are for others. If they fit then great, if you don't have the free slots then other bonuses are likely more useful. It's unlikely you'll be able to reach perma-hasten levels of recharge without crippling your build and there are fairly severe diminishing returns on recharge bonuses. My thoughts on an Invuln are to worry about recharge after everything else. Particularly Stone Melee; the set hits the blue bar hard enough before you figure in attacking faster. You're also overslotting Tough Hide, yank a couple of slots and toss them to Invincibility instead. I understand why you're slotting out Health however it's mainly overkill. I'd stop at the Miracle & Numina procs, toss one slot into Stamina for a common Endmod (You'll appreciate that as you level thanks to the endurance cost of your secondary). The +HP and +absorb procs are nice but chances are if you're in a situation where you need them things are going sideways fast enough that they likely won't help. Rely on your Inspiration tray for those edge cases; unless you're doing seriously stupid things they won't happen very often. You could pull one slot from Tremor since you don't need the 6th bonus of S/L resistance. Consider changing the Ragnarok in Ball Lighting for Frozen Blast, it gets you a bit more F/C defense although it's kind of a tossup, and the cost outlay is going to be similar whichever way you go. Along those lines try slotting Decimation into Mu Lightning, you get an end bonus, E/N resistance and recharge. Alternately you can consider going with Energy Mastery and snapping up Conserve Power (for when the blue bar isn't your friend), Laser Beam Eyes, Energy Torrent and Physical Perfection. I tend to look to either Energy or Pyre for an epic on my tankers. The slotting choices are the same as I mentioned for Mu Lightning and Ball Lightning. I'm not sure about getting Hasten at 49 and not slotting it, if you're going to have it you should 2 slot it. At 50 with two 50+5 common IO's you're at the ED cap for it's recharge. This build will work for you, it's just making a lot of sacrifices that you don't need to make.