Call Me Awesome

Popular uncommon IO’s are those with good bonuses and in popular categories. Things like damage, defense and resistance tend to be popular, while confuse, debuff and the like are less popular. Ranged damage applies to many different AT’s, the same with defense. Even ignoring bonuses characters can use things like accuracy/damage/endurance combination IO’s and anyone with defense powers will appreciate defense/endurance io’s. Oh, yes uncommon IO are yellow and don’t (outside of occasional yellow recipe in a rare set) use rare salvage. Almost any common or uncommon salvage can be bought for under 1000 inf if you’re willing to let the bid sit for a half hour or so... and I haven’t found any that couldn’t be had for that in 24 hours. There’s more to be made on some rare recipes but the costs are higher since rare salvage tends to stay in the 450,000+ range and many recipes themselves are fairly pricey. Remember to buy and craft the lowest level recipes, crafting fees are based on level and the market will sell your level 10 is and give the buyer the level 30 he bid on. You’ll pay around 5k to craft level 10 but a level 50 will cost the better part of 200k to create.

I tend to get any expensive IO's on my builds with merits; nearly everything I build gets the Miracle +recovery, Numina +regen/recovery and Steadfast +3% defense early in the build. If the recipe costs over 5 million I'll get it via merits and use the inf for the bulk of the build.

Well, both should be quite capable. The Invuln can be tougher with some investment... I'd guess you could softcap S/L defense for under 40 million if you're frugal. The Ice/Spine will be unmatched at holding aggro which can be a two edged sword in the earlier game as it's easy to get in over your head. You're probably in the same ballpark inf wise to boost your durability. Personally I'm a fan of both primaries and I'm currently leveling an Ice/Spine myself. I really don't see how you can go too far wrong with either tank; both of them will be capable of handling most anything the game can throw at them once they mature. One thing I'd suggest to build a bankroll is to search for level 50 recipes that have a lot of supply and very little bids, place lowball bids on stacks of them (around 100-200 inf) and sell them to vendors for 10k inf. I started my bankroll that way, filling my market slots with those lowball bids on stacks of 10 and then going on and playing the game. Occasionally I'd do the /ah to open the interface and collect the recipes, then vendor them. Once I was a few million ahead I started picking popular UNCOMMON IO's that had a large supply of recipes and required cheap salvage, buying stacks of the recipes at the lowest level available, crafting them and listing them on the market at about 10-20% under the average sale price. Doing that I'd craft an IO for around 30k total investment and sell it for around 500,000. Spend a few minutes crafting and listing a bunch of them and check on the progress a few hours later. That typically brings in around 20-30 million per day, frequently a good bit more... I usually have ~100 IO's up for sale at a time and they sell in the 500k - 1 million range each, averaging around 600k.

If you're patient you can get Catalysts for ~800k - 1 million each; I bought a couple dozen over the last couple weeks. Since I hit 50 I've had two drop in the last 3 days.

I have to agree Hyper, I had a couple of 50 stone tanks on Live and once IO's came in and were better understood there just wasn't much point in them. Yeah, they're tougher with less investment than anything else but the mobility drawbacks alone make them painful without a kinetic on the team. I've been accumulating IO's for my current incarnation of CMA, this time an Inv/Elec tank, and I think I'll get the S/L softcap with around 50 million invested. My final build will likely end up considerably higher and I'm still toying with it but some variants are softcapping S/L/E/N with F/C at 40% while also managing around 30% resists to all exotic damage including Psi (and of course hard capped S/L resistance). That's a tank with nearly the survivability of Granite without the drawbacks. It's still a bit theoretical since I haven't finalized a build, nor for that matter has the character reached level 25 yet. Go figure, my first character to 50 is a blaster :'(

Energy Melee was nerfed on Live several years before shutdown by taking it's main power, Energy Transfer, which used to be a fast animation hard hitting attack and turning the 1 second animation into a 3 second one. This had a massive effect on the damage potential of an, admittedly, not very effective set to begin with. Now you hit ET, stare at your hands for 3 seconds while your teammates kill your target, then unload on the corpse. When the changes went live I abandoned a level 50 tanker and never played her again. The issue is that EM was a fairly lackluster set that was redeemed by one power, when that one power got nerfed it didn't have anything to really fall back on. Terrible AOE, single target damage was it's only benefit. If you want an unarmed set you could look at Street Justice, the set has decent stats and the animations are fun. After all, who doesn't want to punch and kick the bad guy in the nuts? Other options are Electric Melee, Martial Arts (although I haven't played it myself) and the ever popular Dark Melee (includes a self heal attack that's always useful). Currently I'm leveling an Inv/Electric tanker as an experiment and at level 20 it's doing decently although it's still a ways to go to really come into it's own. On Live my namesake was Inv/Stone Melee and the combination is highly capable although it will take a bit to really mature and it's lacking in AOE damage. It has a lot of soft control with knockdowns and a short duration AOE stun that's a great attention getter that recharges decently quickly and knocks them on their butts.

It's not a bad mouse but as MunkiLord mentioned the side buttons aren't ideal. Still, with some setup and binds it works well. I recently bought a Razor Naga Trinity and so far I like it... it has 3 interchangeable side panels with either a standard 2 side buttons, 7 side buttons in a circle or 12 side buttons. I'm using the 7 circular pattern side button plate and it seems more convenient. I have it paired with a Razor Nostromo game controller (older model may not still be available) so I have 23 buttons conveniently at my fingertips as well as the thumb rocker for movement forward/back/left/right. I leave toggles and utility powers off the easy buttons (things like the O portal, Leadership toggles, armor toggles and the like, things I won't need to get to immediately in combat) and just click them when needed. I tried the 12 button panel on the mouse and didn't like it; keeping them straight was an issue and frankly I didn't need that many available. Right now I'm only using 5 of the 7 thumb buttons on the mouse as it is.

Granite benefits from a bit of "frankenslotting" of IO's, I would slot 3 defense set IO's and 3 resist set IO's. Off the top of my head you could toss 3 of the Gift of the Ancients (including the run speed IO) and 3 Aegis. That gets you 15% more run speed and some recovery. Alternately you can simply toss 3 resist/3 defense into it to maximize both defense and resistance if you're not building for sets. The sets I suggested aren't meant to be taken as gospel by any stretch, if you're working for a Set IO build then you need to consider the character as a whole and not just that one power. I've played Stone to 50 twice on Live and Spines (on scrappers) twice as well so I'm familiar with both sets. Without taking the time to study the set bonuses I'd plan on taking everything but Brimstone in Stone Armor and skipping Lunge and Build Up in Spines. You'll want Teleport to deal with the mobility issues Rooted and Granite impose and if you're looking to maximize your durability then Tough/Weave from the Fighting pool are recommended. Hasten is useful to offset the -recharge in Granite. Minerals is useful in missions featuring lots of Psi damage, but those are pretty rare until you get to the late game so it's not a priority. Set bonuses you want to look for are +recharge, +run speed & typed defense (S/L/E/N/F/C/Psi) not positional defense (Melee/Ranged/AOE). Work on recharge and run speed first, then defense as Granite is already extremely tough without any additional defense bonuses.

Let me point out here that unless you're playing PvP (player vs player) then slotting accuracy into taunt is totally POINTLESS since the power is autohit to mobs. Back pre-IO I used to slot Taunt 2 recharge/2 taunt. Nowadays I use either the full Mocking Beratement or the full Perfect Zinger sets since they're cheap and have good set bonuses.

I had that slotted, back on live. I don't remember if I confirmed with the combat stats window if that actually added defense debuff resistance as it was years ago, but it should be easy to test. Since that is a number that mids reports in view totals I would assume it is right. Yes, it DID work that way on Live, I had a BS/Shield scrapper to prove it. I well remember that... now with that said I don't know if it still works that way but it did back in the day.

Zep, you haven’t removed the Local tab from your chat tab(s) have you? No, I havnt. I see the random comments NPCs voluntarily make as you move about the city, I am talking about the ones where you used to be able to walk up and click on any ol civilian and they would say something. Last week it worked for me, I clicked on several NPC's and got their chatter based on their names. "You've gone on patrol x times" and "You've played x hours" in addition to the various flavor text others give. I think it's the "m" names that give the hours played message? I admit I don't remember what each is supposed to say.

Heck, with everyone having different concepts for most everything why not minimal fx options for all abilities? Well, except for attacks of course and there it's nice having alternate options. As it is on several characters I use the color tintable options to minimize the visibility. While I've no idea of the code logic suggests that it shouldn't be too difficult to manage.

My first was CoH which I started in issue 2. Over the years I briefly tried WoW (hated it) and Champions Online (meh, nothing special at all). When Shutdown happened I tried several others without ever finding what CoH had. Secret World was the first I tried, it was fun for awhile until I reached higher levels and ran headlong into the "Gear Snobs" leading to my exit from that game. After that I played Star Wars Old Republic for awhile and while the game had it's points it was very obviously a single player game with some MMO mechanics grafted on. The biggest downer of it was that many missions were forced single player only. After SWTOR I left MMO's and played various other games when I had time, the Mass Effect series being the most noteworthy of them. Now that we're back here I'm finally playing an MMO again.

Frankly as far as the STF is concerned other than Miss Liberty now giving the quest and some flavor text the TF hasn't changed so Oro for it is pointless. As I only ran the LRSF once years ago I can't speak for it but the STF is for all practical purposes unchanged by becoming the MLTF.

Indiana Jones! Come on, I know you're all thinking about it ;D

Guardianite from issue 2 to shutdown, currently on Excelsior.

I had a 50 Stone/Fire tank on Live and it's a beast. Decent damage in Granite with good AOE and most of /Fire's attacks recharge relatively quickly so it's not as affected by the -recharge penalty Granite imposes. Even on SO's it's very capable and few things will bother you. Frankly I focused on +recharge set bonuses to offset the penalties, if you slot Granite with a mix of Resist and Defense IO's you'll be fairly close to the soft cap defense on all but Psi and the Res hard cap for all but Psi. A few minor +def bonuses will make an extremely capable tanker unkillable.

Frankly at typical Posi levels no tankers are really tough; keep some purples handy for the large swarms and as long as your team's decent you should be fine. Yeah, it's a somewhat nasty mix of damage but it's fairly low damage considering. Synapse shouldn't be an issue, I've tanked it without problem on a below 20 Invuln who had zero energy resistance and only the defense that Invincibility provides. Dull Pain solves the occasional ouchie with an occasional inspiration to patch up when its recharging.

Stone tanks post Granite are by far the toughest around, with the drawback of limited mobility and a recharge penalty. After that probably a decently built Invuln tanker followed by many of the other sets although each tends to have areas it shines in and others it struggles with.

Back when I first started on Live I had the same problem with inf. It didn't go away until characters started getting into the 30's and beyond and they made more inf than they used updating enhancements. I always supported my lower characters with transfers from higher levels. Now that you're starting over again you're feeling the pinch. I suggest using the auction house to make up for the shortfall... the easiest way is to find level 50 rare recipes with lots for sale and none or few bidders. Place bids for stacks of them at 100 - 200 inf and then vendor them for 10k each. There's lots of recipes with no demand and the vendors will pay $5k for level 50 uncommon and $10k for level 50 rare recipes. In a few minutes of work you can easily get a million inf, enough to supply your DO's & SO's for awhile. When you run low just rinse and repeat. The prices on enhancements are the same as they've always been, or at least if they've changed it hasn't been by much.

This may very well have been addressed but a very cursory search didn't turn it up so... I've found that the salvage in the storage racks change order as you take them out. For example, I may be pulling 3 Luck Charms from storage and after the first or second click the Luck Charm suddenly jumps up above the Boresight in the list so I get a random piece of salvage with the next click. I then hunt up the Luck Charm in the list, click on it to get it and suddenly it jumps back to where it belongs in the list. This happens ALL THE FREAKING TIME when I'm trying to pull salvage from the storage racks and it's getting extremely annoying. It happens with every piece of salvage in every rack, if I'm taking more than 1 out the thing jumps all over the place. Whatever this is it seems to be a new post shutdown bug as I think I'd remember one this annoying on Live. I have 13 salvage racks in my base and all of them are affected.

Ah, I completely forgot about the option of Hover tanking. Since the only tank I had on Live without built in KB protection was Fire and hovering didn't let you use Burn (although I believe that changed towards the end) it wasn't something that came to mind.

I don't have Mid's in front of me and I don't know Ice as well as Invuln but Ice's passive ice/fire resistance power as I recall is less useful other than as an IO mule. In Spines since you're stuck with the tier 1 the only thing that immediately comes to mind is build up. I always take build up powers on my scrappers and brutes but with a tank I consider it of secondary or tertiary importance. As a tank I'm there to support the team with aggro management first and additional damage as a secondary. Due to that difference in roles I find build up to be skippable in a tanker. In a primary damage dealer of course you want it, in a tanker I skip it. I'm not there to dish out an alpha strike, I'm there to take it so the rest of the team can dish it out.

I've run both sets in the past so I didn't really see how it could go wrong, part of my problem now is I've too many ideas and alts at the moment and it's the busy season at work ;). I took Spines to 50 on three scrappers paired with Regen, Elec and Invuln and one Ice/Fire tanker. Back on Live I had every AT but Mastermind at 50, most of them multiple times. Now I'm having problems focusing on just one long enough to get there although my Fire/EM blaster is getting close at 42 and nearly soft capped to ranged damage.

From what I've seen you need to refresh.