Call Me Awesome

I did my damndest to build a decent Stone/Fire tanker years ago, originally it was rolled up in response to the massive nerfs of issue 5-6 and more or less shelved when IO sets came in and you could build Invuln to close to the same durability with none of the penalties. I devoted every bonus I could beg, borrow or steal in order to overcome the -speed, -recharge and -damage; there wasn't anything to be done about -jump though. I ended up with a character that was less effective than my Invuln, far less mobile and almost up with his damage with a small edge in durability that was mostly academic outside of a few edge cases. I found the character to be far harder to play effectively and even at it's best it wasn't the equal of the Invuln in playability. I have to agree, Stone Armor as it currently exists isn't worth the penalties it imposes, especially in the current game of fast moving teams. Even at it's IO'd best "fast" isn't something Stone can pull off.

No problem, I used to overslot endred in toggles back in issue 3-4 until I saw the numbers and how much more you saved from the attacks. I think one endred in Seismic Smash saved enough end to run all the Invuln toggles for more than 10 seconds.

At first glance it reminds me of Xcom, I'll be interested to hear how it plays. Unfortunately I'm temporarily sidelined gaming wise; my gaming rig corrupted it's drive and I took the opportunity to order a new M.2 SSD for it... I'm waiting on UPS before I wipe and reinstall. I can't do much gaming on my business machines; for one I don't want to introduce potential issues to my video editing systems and for another both it and my laptop are Macs. Hopefully I'll have my gaming rig back up over the weekend.

Sorry, but Fault is one of the best powers in the set. Yes, it doesn't (natively) do damage, but it's a large AOE attention getter and pause button while it dumps everything onto their butts. It also takes a few damage procs and those procs will reliably fire almost every time on everything in the AOE. At level 50 a pair of procs will pretty reliably dish out ~200 damage. I use it just about as often as it's up, and it's a faster animation than Tremor, which has a similar knockdown and roughly similar damage. Admittedly it's low priority but the slow resist is the main reason for it, and the fact that it's a mule for a resistance unique. Ice armor doesn't have an abundance of those. This is also a defense boost based on the number of targets hit in addition to a massive endurance recovery, slow & -recharge resist. It's a core power in the set. Take it, slot it, love it. It comes in handy when you're slowly getting overcome, Taunt the bad guys, pop Hibernate and drop it within 10 seconds and you'll retain aggro. It's situational but it will save your butt when things go sideways and a quick in/out of it won't shed aggro. You won't need it often, but when you do you REALLY need it bad. There's several valid APP/PPP choices, my default for a Tanker is usually either Pyre or Energy. Soul will work, but I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to swap to redside and run a mission arc to unlock it. For an Ice tanker you'll have no need for the endurance so I'd leave Energy out and take Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball, a nice ranged attack and a raged AOE.

As was mentioned one of the first priorities is to unlock your Alpha slot and the fastest method is the Oro Mender arc. Once you've unlocked it you'll want to start running missions to acquire threads to craft your first Alpha enhancement. Note I said Threads, while you can use Shards for the Alpha (and ONLY the Alpha) the game's very stingy with those and relatively free with threads. I enjoy running the main level 45-50 TF's like the MLTF, Lady Gray, Dr. Kahn and the ITF (which is I believe level 35-50). You'll likely also want to join some Incarnate Trials, the BAF being the lowest and most commonly run. As a brand new level 50 you do NOT want to run the higher Incarnate trials yet unless you want to face +6 or higher mobs. Dark Astoria is also an Incarnate level zone with various contacts and arcs to run, many new 50's do spend some time there. Be aware that it's considerably more dangerous than standard content; it's keyed for players who have up to 3 incarnate level shifts... functionally level 53. They also all have significantly higher chances to hit you so you need higher defenses than normal.

Just to nitpick a bit, you'll save LOTS more endurance with one endred in an attack than slotting two endred in all your toggles. The old school rule of thumb was 1 endred per toggle and 1 accuracy, 3 damage, 1 endurance, 1 recharge in attacks. Toss three endmod in Stamina and you're good. If you're using level 50 IO's then two endmod is enough. Slotting went like this: Armor toggles - 3 Resist or Defense, one endred. Attacks - 1 accuracy, 3 damage, 1 endred, 1 recharge. Passives - 3 Resist or Defense Stamina - 3 Endmod Health - 3 Heal That was considerably more endurance sustainable than slotting 2 endred in the toggles.

I've never played that combination, but I have played both sets. For Ice Armor you'll want everything, Permafrost is useful but it's lower priority, get it when you have a free slot with nothing more useful available. I think my Ice tank took it as a level 49 power. For Stone Melee you'll want Heavy Mallet, Taunt, Fault, Tremor and Seismic Smash, pretty much as they come available. For your build goals your first priority is getting your defenses to the 45% soft cap, then work on your resistances with S/L/E having priority, unfortunately your specialty of Cold resistance isn't overly useful since that's the rarest type of damage in the game. After that work on things like recharge, recovery, regeneration and whatnot. I recommend Tough/Weave from Fighting and Combat Jumping is a useful pick both as a source of a small amount of defense and a useful IO mule; I usually toss the Kismet +accuracy in there. Obviously you'll want the two 3% defense unique IO's and the 6% resistance unique. The tanker ATO's are highly useful, albeit a bit pricey. I do recommend trying to get them as the bonuses are really nice. The rest of the build is up to you, there's arguments to be made for several of the defense sets. Also Fault is an opportunity to slot multiple damage procs that should fire off nearly every time, I think CMA slotted 4 Stupefy and a couple damage procs in it. You'll find getting and holding aggro easier than with any other tank you've played thanks to Ice's fast tic aura of Chilling Embrace backed up by the damage aura of Icicles. Thanks to this you'll likely want to get your defenses in order ASAP... always remember the old adage about dead tanks holding no aggro. In the early going Hoarfrost will be a mainstay, later on Energy Absorption and when it goes into the toilet Taunt + Hibernate can save your chilly butt. I don't have Mid's on this computer so I can't give you a specific build but that's what I'd work on off the top of my head.

Gray arcs... we've all been there. I made the mistake WAY back when, probably around issue 4, of talking to one of the low level story arc contacts pre-level 10 and then got sidetracked teaming with friends, then TF's and suddenly I was 50 and unable to get missions because I had the maximum story arcs open. It took a bit to figure out what they were and one of them was something like a 5-7 mission arc of level 10's. Really a challenge at level 50. Kill all missions too of course... pain in the butt.

That reminds me of a time way back around 2005-6 when Guardian had a "clear Perez event" and over a hundred high level characters came in and attempted to completely kill all the mobs in the zone. I doubt we succeeded but it was a lot of fun and a great time was had by all who participated. I think we also had a couple of Devs show up for the fun and after we'd finished our sweep they spawned various GM's and AV's. Sigh, those events were a lot of fun.

You roll the character up as normal and select "Hero" before you enter the game. Your choices are Hero, Praetorian or Villain, then you have the choice of entering the Tutorial zone or going to Atlas Park. If your character is already in game then go to Pocket D and talk to Null the Gull, the bird on top of the truck in the room on the villain side of the zone. You'll have the option to change how buffs affect you, change your alignment and several other things.

I took Earth once years ago to experiment and fairly quickly respec'd out of it. In my experience it was pretty lackluster. My default choice for an APP is Pyre for Fire Blast and Fire Ball, two decent ranged attacks, one with a large AOE. My second choice is Energy if I'm still having end problems; but I usually have that under control by the mid 30's. My Inv/Stone tanker currently has Hurl Boulder, Fire Blast and Fire Ball for ranged attention getters/attacks and Heavy Mallet/Fault/Tremor/Seismic Smash for melee attacks. I drop Stone Mallet and only use Stone Fist in low levels.

No, he's right. You're insisting on SO builds, then insisting on "6 slot all armors". In an SO build you'll NEVER go more than 3 slots in any passive and almost never go more than 4 slots in a toggle. Unless you're slotting for IO bonuses you'll almost NEVER 6 slot any armor. The rule with SO's is 3 resist or defense in a passive and add one endurance reduction to that for a toggle. More than that is a waste with SO's. When you start looking for IO bonuses the slotting becomes much more complex, the number of slots in any given power depends completely on the overall build. Sometimes you'll 6 slot an armor power or two and sometimes you'll stop at 3 or 4 depending on your build. There is no one size fits all rule for the number of slots in a power when Set IO bonuses are involved.

This one caused confusion on a team I was on a couple months ago. I think I was the only veteran player on the team and it wasn't until about halfway through that I realized they couldn't figure out where the glow was and I had to tell them it was a kill all... like so many of the happy happy joy joy missions in that TF.

I originally tried using the 8 way option on the rocker switch back in 2004 on the original Belkin Nostromo, I found it a bit tricky to get it to register the diagonal settings and after some frustration abandoned it and haven't looked back. I was always getting the wrong function when I was trying to move, or moving when I tried to access whatever I set to the diagonal settings. By the way, you CAN map multiple keys by creating a macro on a key, and you can make a pretty complex one if you desire. The macro record function is fairly capable and you can have it include or exclude time delays between portions of the macro. Admittedly I don't use them much and generally set my macros in game. I've found the scroll wheel is a bit buggy, I have it set for scroll up = next target and scroll down = previous target but it frequently seems to default back to the mouse wheel zoom in/out. After a bit of experimentation I decided to forget about it.

Haven't thought of Cyberstorm in maybe 20 years, it was a lot of fun. Hmm, I DO still have the game in the old junk drawer, maybe it's time to try it out again.

Here's what you want to shoot for if you're melee tanking him: S/L/E Resistance of 90% while the Red Tower's active (it doubles his damage) S/L/E Defense of 75% while the Blue Tower's active (it gives him 30% to hit AND Speed Boost so he's hitting you more often) High endurance drain resistance (Stone Rooted or Electric Armor) or a couple big blue insps if his end drain hits. If your primary doesn't have this then you're SOL and need to carry Blues for when that drain hits. If your defense is high enough he won't hit very often. Until the Yellow/Orange tower dies don't bother attacking him, just spam Taunt. That tower gives him a MASSIVE defense bonus so you'll only hit him 5% of the time. Also, by not attacking you're not wasting endurance, this can be huge if his end drain hits. If your end is full when he hits with it you'll drop to, if I remember correctly, around 10-20% endurance. If your end is NOT full when he hits with his drain your toggles drop and a second later so do you. With my tankers I go into the last mission with roughly this inspiration load out: 8 big Purples 4 big Oranges (depending on the tank) 2 big Greens (if he gets lucky) 2 big Blues (if the end drain hits) I'll modify it some depending on my tanker, I want to have enough Oranges to maintain 90% S/L/E Resistance until the Red tower dies, enough Purples to maintain 75% S/L/E Defense until the Blue tower dies and the emergency green/blue for backup. LR is a tough foe to tank when he's buffed by the towers, but you can use your insp tray to compensate long enough for your team to down the Red and Blue towers. Once they're down he hits about like a normal AV so presuming you can handle AV's you should be good while the team kills the final two towers.

It really depends on AT's and power sets. Some are easy with most any well built and played characters while others can be tough thanks to AV powers and mechanics. As you discovered all the Signature TF's spawn at the TF cap, so I HIGHLY recommend running them once you've reached or exceeded the max level of the TF. A good duo should easily handle the signature TF's, particularly Posi, Synapse, Yin and Citadel. Manticore is the potential problem due to two AV's at once, you'll either need to solo both of them or have a method of dealing with them one at a time. Hopkins is a really pathetic AV, if you have good defenses you can ignore him while you take out Countess, then get him later. I had no problem soloing him with a Fire/Regen Stalker while the rest of the team focused Countess down. By the time they'd killed her I had Hopkins down to about 25% The ITF has been solo'd successfully quite a few times so a good duo should be able to handle it as well, you WILL need to bring your A game and very good builds. Dr. Kahn will be a major challenge as will Lady Gray. The STF/MLTF is possible but it will test you more than any of the others. I've heard of it being successfully solo'd but that was an extreme outlier and a fantastic build/player. You'll need to have your strategy down and you'll need really good builds and synergy between both players. I see the final battle with Lord Recluse and the Towers as the biggest problem; you'll need massive defense and resistance to survive his attention while you kill the Red Tower and Blue Tower. The bottom line is your two characters, their AT's & power sets and how they work together. Two high damage/durability melee characters works for most of them, a pair of really strong buff/debuff characters with good damage can work as well. Ideally both characters have very good damage, good buffs and good debuffs.

Certainly, as Psyonico said Oroborus will allow you to run missions and contacts you've out leveled. Additionally you can run lower leveled Task Forces which will cap you at the maximum level of the TF. Do you have friends who are lower level? Join a team with them, give them the star and bang, your level is the same as theirs. When you're on a team you will automatically be either exempted down to the team leader's level if they're lower than you or you'll be sidekicked up to one level below theirs if their level is higher than yours. This game is extremely team friendly allowing players of disparate levels to join a team and run missions. The only limiting factor is Task Forces which have a MINIMUM level to join, so everyone on the team must be at least that level. There's no maximum level, if you're higher than the Task Force cap you will be limited to the cap level, or the level of the team leader, whichever is lower. As an example, the very popular Penny Yin TF in Independence Port has a level range of 20-25, so you MUST be level 20 or higher to join, and if you're higher than level 25 you'll be lowered to level 25 for the TF. Task forces are generally a lot of fun, and they come in all level ranges with the first, Positron Part 1, having a minimum level of I believe 8. Positron Part 2 has a level cap of 15 if I remember correctly. The highest TF's in the game will be for levels 45-50.

I have button 11 on the pad for jump, having it as one of the thumb buttons would require me to take my thumb off of the movement control, this is a problem when jumping. Jumping forward requires holding spacebar and the forward movement control, you'll also need left/right/back at times to control your movement in the air. When you let go of jump you immediately start descending, not always what you want when moving. Particularly with Super Jump. When you're Super Jumping you hold the spacebar to jump AND you hold the directional control to jump forward instead of straight up. Having both controls on the thumb won't work. It's the same for Flying, spacebar moves you up and the directional control moves you forward/back/left/right. You need to press both at the same time.

Star Kissed doesn't want Tuna with good taste, they want Tuna that taste good! (And isn't that a mental image)

Ego the living planet? I'd think Natural, as I recall he's an evolved lifeform that either grew into planetary size or colonized and co-opted a planet. It's been a lot of years since I paid much attention and the Guardians of the Galaxy version didn't go into any details as I recall.

I've gotten into the scrapperlock mentality on a Blaster before, albeit from range since my Blasters are built as ranged combatants. I DO build them for near soft capped Ranged defense which may be a contributing factor. I do like the Aim/Buildup/Bonfire/Rain of Fire/Nuke combination though, and it's great for eliminating most of a spawn. I've tried other APP's but I always come back to Pyre for Bonfire... a KB-KD IO makes it into a thing of beauty.

When the STF was first introduced it WAS actually possible to avoid all the towers, their effects had a limited range and you could pull LR back to the boat. That particular strategy got nuked fairly early on. Ever since then I've been a fan of killing all towers, the extra time in killing the potentially skippable Blue was more than made up for in the reduced pressure on the tank and the lower numbers in the 20% spawn. My record time taking 4 towers and LR down was under 4 minutes, if your team is good it's no big deal taking down 4 towers instead of 3. Even a slow team if they're competent should be able to kill a tower in 2 minutes. If I'm leading I usually set for a MoSTF run so leaving the blue tower up with it's tohit buff and speed boost is a pointless risk.

While the Incarnate Trials don't technically have an order requirement I'd highly recommend not running Underground or higher until you've gotten at least one level shift, and preferably two. The final trial, Magisterium, should wait until you have three level shifts. You'll find that the BAF and Lambda are run quite often while the others are more rare, I don't think I've been on a Magisterium since shutdown. The later trials get considerably more difficult, the AV's will start being level 56 - 59 so you don't really want to face that until you can do so as a 53 (50 +3). Even at max the Magisterium is tough, facing a +6 AV. The rough order of them is: Behavioral Adjustment Facility Trial Lambda Sector Trial Keyes Island Reactor Trial TPN Campus Trial The Underground Trial Minds of Mayhem Trial Dilemma Diabolique Trial Magisterium Trial As far as the standard level 50 TF's go the popular ones are the ITF, Dr, Kahn, Lady Gray and the STF (MLTF). They're all challenging but a good team will make them look easy and they're a lot of fun.

IF you have enough non-S/L/E damage in the team. I'll bet that a minimum of half of the team deals mainly or exclusively those damage types, and likely most of the team does. Any Scrappers on the team? Almost certainly they do one of those damage types so they'll be useless against LR. Tanks? Likely the same boat. The majority of attack sets in the game are based on S/L/E damage either completely or in part. Skipping Red is a bad idea, LR hits twice as hard... hard enough to one shot a non-melee character and unless the tank natively has 90% resistance to S/L/E he'll likely end up dropping before LR. Many of your teammates will be unable to damage him at all so he'll go down much slower. I always want Red down first, followed by Blue, this drastically reduces his danger level. I've been on a few STF's where the team decided to leave the Blue tower, it always made for a harder fight and twice lead to a team wipe once the tanker was out of purples and couldn't maintain the 75% defense. Oh, and I was on one where the idiots decided to leave both Red and Blue and couldn't be convinced they were wrong even after multiple team wipes. That was the only TF I've ever bailed on. They were ABSOLUTELY convinced they could kill him without taking ANY towers down, then it was "We just need to kill the orange tower" and then "Just the green tower". Red and Blue are the towers that make your Tanker's life hell, kill them FIRST.