Call Me Awesome

I use it primarily as an attention-getter and another AOE damage power with procs. Thanks to it's base recharge the procs fire quite reliably, I almost always get two to fire doing about the same damage as Tremor.

I have a level 40 Sonic/Kin corruptor and I agree; the combination is better as a defender thanks to the debuff numbers. That said the combination is still very effective on a corruptor, it would just be more effective on a team as a defender. Solo it's likely a tossup with the higher base damage of the corruptor and the defender inherent kicking it's damage up a bit solo while having 25% more debuff power.

It's tough Hyper, but it skips one of the best powers in the set, Fault. It's an interesting take, I'd shuffle the power levels and get a travel power much earlier and certainly get Fault in place of Build Up. If I wasn't happy with CMA's current build I might take some ideas from this build though.

I seriously doubt Lambda is solo-able even using the team queue then everyone else drops. You have two areas you need to be to get the temp powers in the time limit, and between beating down Marauder AND all the adds I don't see it happening. BAF is a flat no way, you'll fail on the prisoner escape even if you manage to take down the first AV solo, then after that you'll have to take both AV's down at the same time. I'm not sure one person could handle the prisoner escape even if the mobs were gray.

Well, I just hit 20 on my Nature/Sonic defender and it's quite effective so far in team support with a fair bit of damage tossed in. I've so far taken everything in the primary and finding uses for most of it. I'm trying to decide on slotting; Spore Cloud and Corrosive Enzymes are fairly obvious since they don't have a lot of set choices. Lifegiving Spores I'm debating on going with heal sets or Performance Shifter. Wild Growth and Bastion seem to want recharge and heal although I'm kind of leaning toward frankenslotting Growth with Heal/recharge and Resistance/Recharge. Ah slotting tradeoffs. How do those of you with experience in this set handle it? I'm definitely going shopping for the Defender IO sets, after that I'm uncertain. Fortunately Sonic has several skippable powers to make room for the Leadership toggles.

This is really the expectation of most groups. Learning to quickly clump the mobs for AOE's and hold aggro puts you in the above average category. Paying attention and picking up adds moves you into the top 10%. Most groups won't wait for you to position mobs so learn to get to the next spawn quickly and get their attention ASAP. The few special mechanics are fairly easy to learn, like the BAF incarnate trial's need to trade aggro with other tankers and the Apex TF's need to avoid the appearing patches of doom.

It likely falls back in ST, but for AOE my Elec/SD stalker is a beast. Lightning Rod/Shield Charge/Fire Ball/Thunder Strike and everything but a resistant boss is dead and he's gonna be gone once AS lands.

A mature Invuln is a pretty unkillable beast as well, CMA has so far never tasted the floor on the trip to 50. That may change with more challenging content, or possibly less competent teammates, but I'm sitting at 50 with soft capped def to all but Psi, capped S/L resist (obviously), 84% F/C resist, 70% E/N resist and 53% Psi along with just under 200% regen (28HP/Second). On the other hand it was NOT a cheap build, not counting IO's bought with merits (about 16 of them) I probably have close to 300 million in the build. If I'd had to buy all the IO's that price would likely shoot into the 500-600 million range. I have to admit to a bias against WP due to it's terrible taunt aura. It's certainly strong defensively and I had a blast with it on a Scrapper on Live but my main focus on a Tanker is to make the mobs focus on me while my team rains hell down on them and it's much harder without a strong aura on your side.

You know I hadn't actually put the numbers together but a quick 5 minutes in Mid's came up with a SR build with soft capped to all positions, 80% S/L resistance, 40% E/N/F/C/T/P resistance and a decent chunk of regeneration. This set looks like it can get really good really early.

Siege actually does appear in a Maria Jenkins mission, just not one in the Hero's arc. I just ran through that whole arc on my newly 50 Elec/SD Stalker yesterday and was fairly upset when the arc finished without the badge... then I ran a couple of her other missions and there he was. I believe it was a Patrol for Warworks, then something, then Siege.

As others have said, it's STRONGLY recommended to NOT go "Healer", in fact that word is almost an insult in this game among the veteran players. In this game Healing is possibly the weakest form of team support as it's purely reactive. A Force Field defender can prevent 95% of the damage his team takes, a Sonic Resonance Defender can make attacks do much less damage, a Radiation Emission defender can make the mobs miss the team, make them take more damage, keep hard targets from regenerating, give the team increased damage, recharge and endurance, and as an afterthought, can heal. And there's Kinetics... from the awesomeness of Speed Boost which gives massive endurance, recharge and movement speed to the minor little detail of Fulcrum Shift buffing the team to the Damage cap. You'll never lack for appreciative teammates as a Kinetic. Oh, if needed you also have a massive heal based around an enemy. Buffs and debuffs in this game are VASTLY more powerful than you're likely used to in other games. Even the "Heal" set of Empathy is mostly buffs for the team instead of heals like a team buff that gives endless endurance, a team buff that turns the team into Regeneration scrappers, a buff that gives bonus defense and damage to a teammate. Those are more useful than mere heals. A defender's secondary powerset is damage, so you need to be dealing damage in addition to laying out the buffs and debuffs. Oh, and buffs and debuffs STACK as well so more support characters are always better. Dealing with the Defender/Controller (and Corruptor) question it's a matter of what you want to do. Defenders have the strongest buffs and debuffs since their primary powerset is support. Controllers have control as their primary set and support as their secondary so their support powers are a bit weaker... about 2/3 strength as I recall. Corruptors are a reversed Defender... their damage powers are stronger while their buffs and debuffs are weaker since they have damage as a primary and support as a secondary. Also, you'll get powers from your primary set at earlier levels. As an example, a Kinetic Defender can get Speed Boost at level 12 while a Controller has to wait until level 20.

Interesting build, and it is extremely tough at the end game. Have you played it up or is this a theoretical build? It's ending up tough but it's going to be a long time reaching it's potential and it won't exemplar very well. The first thing that occurs to me is you're going to have end problems; Stone Melee is very end heavy. I realize your final slotting gives you several recovery bonuses but you're still running an extra toggle in Maneuvers that you don't really need. Also I would slot Tough Hide up, it provides more defense than Maneuvers so it benefits more from slots. Dropping Maneuvers and slotting TH up leaves you ~2% from the Def soft cap; you can make that up with some set bonuses in your resistance armors. Fault is your go to opening act to grab attention; I'd slot it a bit more. It will take several damage procs and with it's base recharge those procs will hit nearly every time. On CMA I usually get about the same damage from the procs in Fault as I do in Tremor. For my personal preference I'd skip Stone Mallet & Build Up... it's a filler attack in the lower levels true but by loosing those you open up the build for your epic, I generally grab Char, Fire Blast & Fire Ball for more ranged options and another AOE. Frankly in the lower levels you won't have the endurance to use both Hammers in a constant attack chain so it's of limited utility. Build Up is a personal preference with me, as a tanker I'm there to control aggro and survive first and do damage second so BU is a skippable power in my opinion. For Scrappers, Stalkers, Brutes and other primary damage AT's then yes I take it; for Tankers I have other choices that are better for my role in the team. Here's my current build on CMA. It's considerably more end-friendly, although it's still easy to run low. This is a build I leveled more or less organically and it retains much of it's durability down to the teens while topping out in the upper levels. Tough is there mostly as a mule for the two +defense IO's... I don't need to run it in 99% of content. I could shift some slots around and get another proc into Fault at the cost of some Psi resist, I could pull a slot from Seismic Smash to make room for the Regen or the Absorb proc in Health but overall I've been satisfied with the way it performs. At the moment I have the Cardiac Partial Core Alpha slotted bringing my resistance up about 2.5% and solving my end issues. 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 Awesome: Level 50 Natural Tanker Primary Power Set: Invulnerability Secondary Power Set: Stone Melee Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Sorcery Ancillary Pool: Pyre Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Temp Invulnerability -- UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam(3), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(3), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(5), UnbGrd-EndRdx/Rchg(5), UnbGrd-Max HP%(7) Level 1: Stone Fist -- HO:Nucle(A) Level 2: Dull Pain -- Prv-Heal/Rchg(A), DctWnd-Heal/Rchg(7), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(9) Level 4: Heavy Mallet -- SprGntFis-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg(13), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), SprGntFis-Dmg/Rchg(15), SprGntFis-Rchg/+Absorb(15), SprGntFis-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(17) Level 6: Combat Jumping -- Ksm-ToHit+(A) Level 8: Unyielding -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), ImpArm-ResPsi(17), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(19), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(19), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(21) Level 10: Taunt -- PrfZng-Dam%(A) Level 12: Resist Physical Damage -- UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(A), UnbGrd-ResDam(21), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(23), ImpArm-ResPsi(23) Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A) Level 16: Boxing -- HO:Nucle(A) Level 18: Invincibility -- ShlWal-Def(A), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(25), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(25), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27) Level 20: Fault -- PrfZng-Dam%(A), ExpStr-Dam%(27), Stp-Acc/Rchg(29), RopADop-Acc/Rchg(29) Level 22: Tough -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(31) Level 24: Weave -- Rct-ResDam%(A), Rct-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Rct-Def(31), Rct-Def/EndRdx(33) Level 26: Tough Hide -- ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(A), ShlWal-Def(33), ShlWal-Def/EndRdx(33), ShlWal-Def/Rchg(34) Level 28: Resist Energies -- RctArm-ResDam/Rchg(A), ImpArm-ResPsi(34), RctArm-ResDam(34), RctArm-ResDam/EndRdx(36) Level 30: Resist Elements -- UnbGrd-ResDam(A), Ags-Psi/Status(36), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(36), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(37), ImpArm-ResPsi(37) Level 32: Hurl Boulder -- SprMghoft-Rchg/Res%(A), SprMghoft-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37), SprMghoft-Dmg/Rchg(39), SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg(39), SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), SprMghoft-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40) Level 35: Tremor -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), Erd-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(40), Erd-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Erd-%Dam(42), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 38: Seismic Smash -- SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(42), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(43), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(43), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45) Level 41: Char -- HO:Endo(A) Level 44: Fire Blast -- SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(45), SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(45), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(46), SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(46), SprWntBit-Rchg/SlowProc(46) Level 47: Fire Ball -- SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(48), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(50), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(50) Level 49: Mystic Flight -- WntGif-ResSlow(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(9) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(11), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(11) ------------

I kind of agree that Regen needs some help now; while I was able to make it very durable and functional it did require a lot of investment in IO bonuses to soft cap S/L. Maybe roll half of IH's regen into Integration and turn IH into either a resistance or defense toggle? I kind of like the clickie nature of Reconstruction/Dull Pain but pure heal/regeneration isn't enough in the current game.

Interesting, I guess I'll try out various powers and respec if needed. I've decided to go with Nature/Sonic; I know the Sonic set pretty well and I like the -res it tosses out. As for a concept I'm thinking about a tiny fairy character with a big mouth. Unfortunately I can't make a character the size of the buff pet fairy but that's what I think I'll go for.

I've noticed on my Elec/Shield Stalker that Active Defense is frequently ceasing to autofire; when I enter a mission the gold Auto ring is getting detoggled and I frequently don't notice it until I get hit by a mez or KB. I haven't noticed any particular event that causes it; sometimes it's happened when running a Flashback arc, sometimes when running a TF and sometimes just running standard missions. I always have it set to Autofire... sometimes however the gold ring vanishes. I'm currently level 50 and haven't noticed this in the lower levels; last night it kicked out twice, once on an ITF and once on a Maria Jenkins mission. I first noticed this a few days ago and it seems to be random, I just suddenly get hit by an effect and then I notice that AD isn't active.

Ah, so it's a Choking Cloud analogue? While I take Choking Cloud on a Fire/Rad controller due to the synergy with Hot Feet I don't take it on a Rad defender since there's no real reason to hang out in melee. It's the combination of Hotfeet/CC that makes it so desirable on the 'troller IMO. The Nature/Water combo is interesting; it certainly works thematically. Water seems to be about slows and -defense as secondary effects while Sonic is about -res. I have mid-30's characters with both sets so I'm somewhat familiar with them, albeit the Corruptor versions. That's a fairly impressive Nature/Water build and I see why you spend time in Melee with it.

As I recall that's correct. I don't think anything was ever really made clear on it, likely it was planned for after the Incarnates were completed. As of now I doubt anything will come of it unless our Homecoming team goes wild with new content. (Hint, Hint)

I'd originally thought to roll a Rad/? defender next but then I realized I already had a Water/Rad Cor going so my altitis kicked in and I started pondering Nature. It's a set I've never played... for that matter I know almost nothing about it other than what I see in Mid's. It looks like it has a good selection of debuffs and buffs and at a glance looks like it would work well with Sonic, any opinions? Also, any opinions on the set itself? Good powers, mediocre powers, bad powers? From the look of it Entangling Aura looks to be pretty useless with only a Mag 1 hold but it seems everything else is decent to good. Looks like it's a set that wants to stay at range so IO sets would focus on recharge and ranged defense?

Of the sets you list Fire/Rad is, by far, the most powerful in the end game. Teams of Fire/Rad controllers can crush anything in the game as fast as you can run through the map... on Live there was literally nothing faster than a team of Fire/Rad controllers. Solo they're less dominating but still highly effective; I had one at 50 and it was a fairly smooth ride the whole way and awesome once the build matured. Mind/Emp will likely be a disappointment... I found Mind as a primary to be good in the early game but very lackluster in the mid game and beyond. Mine was Mind/Kin and from 20 on I was mainly playing a Kinetic with a small side of control, it certainly wasn't a powerhouse by any stretch. I did get to 50 with it, mainly teaming on the strength of the Kinetic secondary. Ice is a decent set, just don't try to solo with it, it's like Earth... good control and team utility but very VERY little damage output. I ended up abandoning mine because of the low damage. Ice/Rad BTW. I played a Plant/Storm 'troller to 50 and it was good, but I can't say it was a favorite of mine. The other sets you list I've never played so I can't give you meaningful advice on them.

This isn't right, a well built Ill/Rad can handle anything in the game. It's from before shutdown but check out Local Man's Ill/Rad guide: http://guidescroll.com/2011/07/city-of-heroes-illusionradiation-controller-guide/ I had one on Live built in a similar fashion and it was a beast able to solo nearly anything. I typically teamed with Local Man on Live, he was a SG mate, and the character can handle anything. He's a Lawyer but I never held that against him ☺️

That explains it, I hadn't realized a new version of Mid's had come out. None of the other builds I've made have shown any discrepancy; I guess either something changed in game or some Stalker numbers were off in the old version.

Interesting historical perspective... back in issue 3-4 the Golgi was one of, if not THE most desirable HO in the game due largely to the exorbitant end cost of Instant Healing before it became a clickie.

Ok, here's the screenies. Hide ON Hide OFF

By all means go with what feels right to you; the combo should work just fine for you.

Not 50 yet so I haven't catalyzed them yet. I tried turning Hide off both in Mid's and in game and I still show roughly 3.5% more def in game than in Mid's. I'll grab a screenie when I get back in game.