Call Me Awesome

Long duration buffs have the opposite effect than the "buff bot" playstyle... with a 60-90 second buff you'll be CONSTANTLY tossing out buffs while with a longer duration you'll be able to actually attack/control/otherwise contribute to the team beyond simply going down the team list with a buff every 45 seconds. I HATE that when I'm playing a Kinetic, it's bad enough with SB's 2 minute duration now that it's an AOE buff, back when it was ST like ID still is I really hated playing the set; I only ran one for the team's benefit. Now on my Kinetic characters I almost never use ID because it's so damn tedious. If it was a 4 minute or better AOE buff then I'd make a point of using it, as it is I've better things to do than spend 15 seconds or so every 45 seconds just keeping the buff up. I've noticed that nearly every buff character tends to be the same with the Mez buff, keeping it up is more trouble than it's worth. Playing a Kinetic I can devote 1/3 of my time to nothing but keeping the mez shield up on the team or I can spend the time blasting, siphoning, transferring, fulcrum and tossing SB out every 90 seconds or so... which is quite enough of a nuisance as it is. The fact that SB is AOE and it's just so damn good of a team buff means I'll put up with it's short duration. I'm gonna forget about ID unless there's a severe need for it and focus on the rest of my abilities. Yes, I usually do get it eventually but it's very low priority on my power selection, frequently a level 49 power choice.

It makes no difference to me actually, outside of the passive HP/End accolades I never bother with them and still wouldn't with a 10 minute timer instead of the 25 minute it is now. If they were low level passive buffs then depending on the character I might pick them up depending on the buff value and the nuisance factor in getting the accolade.

For sheer aggro management there's nothing in the game that beats an Ice tanker. It won't mature to be as durable as some of the other sets but with a good build you can be tough enough to handle whatever the game throws at you. I've played Ice/Fire on Live and currently have a mid-30's Ice/Spine here, that's a fantastic combination for getting and holding attention. This is a good point on durability. As a defense based tanker you're going to be a bit squishy in the lower levels, that's just the nature of all defense sets. The more defense you get the better it gets... each % of defense is more valuable than the last. 0% - 5% is no great effect but 40% to 45% is HUGE.

In general those accolades are not worth the effort to acquire them. I'd prefer them to function like the +HP/End accolades and offer a minor passive buff instead of a once in a blue moon moderate one. That would make them worth acquiring. The Crey pistol however is nearly worthless, a tier 1 blaster level immobilize on that kind of timer? Only badge hunters worry about it and they only do so because of the badge. Let's stick with accolades being a minor passive buff like the Atlas Medallion.

I agree that Clear Mind, Increase Density and the like are WAY too short duration, it forces the buff player to micromanage buffs instead of playing the game. On my Kinetics characters I find I'm busy enough managing Speed Boost, Siphon Speed, Siphon Power, Transfusion, Transference & Fulcrum that Increase Density doesn't see much use outside of a few edge cases and as a reactionary power. It's enough work just keeping SB on the team. I'm not sure if increasing the duration of buffs to that extent is the way to go but I'd certainly agree with boosting them into the 4-5 minute range. Anyone who plays a Kinetic can tell you about the, er, joy in being a buff bot with the short duration of Speed Boost to say nothing of ID. With buffs that short duration it seems like all you do is fire them off. 4-5 minutes shouldn't be an issue, most if not all of the other defense/resistance shields have that duration.

Click Mez can be a problem because then you'll have to manually fire off Hasten but I always set the Mez shield to auto so I don't have to worry about it, it'll fire off on it's own when it recharges. That way you don't have to remember it and potentially end up face down from forgetting it.

Well, I've played a LOT of tanks over the years and I think about 7 or 8 of them made it to 50. My favorite is still my very first level 50 character and namesake, Call Me Awesome. He's an Invuln/Stone Melee tanker with fantastic durability and great aggro management abilities. Is he the most damaging tanker I've played? No, that probably is a tossup between my Fire/Fire and Shield/Fire tankers. The most durable? No, he's edged out by my Stone/Fire tanker, but he has none of the drawbacks of a Stone tank. What he is is a mobile, nigh-unkillable character with great aggro control thanks to a good aura and two AOE attacks, Fault & Tremor. Toss in a couple of procs and Fault becomes a nice damage power as well. Invuln/Stone is a pretty rare combination; there's not much more than 20 of them around at level 50. It works very well however and it's my all time favorite tank.

I'm not sure if it's still this way but you used to be able to get double buffs if you zoned. For example, the Kinetic hits everyone with speed boost outside, the team enters the mission and the Kin hits you with SB again... everyone has it double stacked. Force Fields, Ice Shields and the like had the same behavior; the game lost track of where the buff came from on zoning so allowed the same caster to stack it.

The Scrapper/Brute question isn't a big deal. Scrappers go from 0 to 100 instantly with no problem with stopping for a second or ramping up their damage. Brutes take several spawns to reach their peak damage and if they stop then they have to start all over again. A Brute is going to be tougher than a Scrapper thanks to higher HP and Res caps as a tradeoff for the slow ramp up of their damage. A Brute who's worked his Fury up to it's maximum sustainable level will do roughly comparable damage to a Scrapper, but the Scrapper will do that level of damage from the first attack all the way to the end of the mission. The Brute can't do that, his damage buff of Fury takes time to build and drops off with inactivity... and his base damage is far below that of the Scrapper. I'd say that playstyle greatly distinguishes the Brute from the Scrapper. Truthfully the Stalker and the Scrapper are more comparable, after playing both to 50 multiple times I find a Stalker plays very much like a Scrapper with Stealth, I get to choose my first strike but after that I'm a Scrapper in the way the AT plays.

I remember this power being fairly unpopular in the old days because it was so situational and only useful in very limited cases. As with many nerfs the root cause was the Dev's desire to graft PvP into a previously exclusively PvE game and finding many powers don't work well for that. I'm not sure the original Devs ever really accepted that PvP wasn't something the vast majority of players had any interest in.

That's the nature of click mez protection in some sets like Shield & Super Reflexes. If you don't like it then you can play a set with toggle mez protection... most of the sets have a toggle protection instead of a click. There's pros and cons to each of them and the sets with click mez protection are in the minority, most have a toggle power with that. Most of us playing a click mez set simply set the power to auto fire and forget about it. (I assume you know this, but you Control+Click the power and a ring will appear around it... it'll fire off as it recharges automatically) Pick a set with toggle mez protection, it seems that Shield, Super Reflexes and one or two others aren't for you. Roll an Invuln, a Willpower, a Dark, an Electric, an Energy... the list of sets with toggle mez is much larger than those with click mez.

Exactly. While we disagree on occasion on how to get to the end goal and even what the ultimate goal may be I don't think either of us would end up with a really sub optimal build.

As it stands now Unstoppable will kill you more often than it will save you; I'd ALWAYS find something better for the slot. Here's the thing, if you have a good build you'll never need it... if you do hit it here's what's going to happen: You'll finish up your current fight, unless it's an AV, with no problem... if it IS an AV then you'd better pray the AV falls in under 3 minutes. Then you have two choices, either on to the next spawn or stand and wait for the thing to drop and you to recover, retoggle everything and continue on. If you move on and you're in combat when it drops then you're EXTREMELY likely to faceplant instantly leaving all the mobs to suddenly turn on the Blaster and eat his face off. In ALL situations you're better off with an inspiration or two instead of hitting Unstoppable. I look at it as a 3 minute death sentence, that 100% endurance crash will drop all your toggles and the 90% HP crash will leave you naked, helpless and nearly dead in the middle of a group of enemies who you have sole aggro on, instantly leading to checking the floor for lint. I haven't studied your build but Hyper's builds always tend to be highly survivable and effective. There's some areas where we disagree on slotting or power choices but his builds won't let you down.

I fondly remember when CMA was a new level 50 back in issue 3. I smacked a level 1 hellion and watched him fly, then I found some money burning a hole in my pocket and 6 slotted Heavy Mallet with KB SO's just to see if I could tee off by City Hall and hit the war walls. The answer was... not quite. This was before ED so all SO's had full effect. They do fly nice if you hit them with the sweet spot of the club. Unfortunately there's no way to hook or fade them but a buddy with a Battle Axe tanker managed a wicked slice 😁

Ah, that would end up giving you a perma-build up wouldn't it? I hadn't considered the recharge of the power. Hmm, I do think the surprise of suddenly appearing in the mob's face should lead to some benefit; maybe a -res? Nowhere near the added damage of Build Up but enough to make the power worthwhile... the exact numbers would need a fair amount of consideration and testing. As it sits just the TP to target and taunt likely isn't enough for most to pick it up so it needs something more, but you're right my original thought is too much. I do like the concept.

Congrats on the ding! First, I assume you're familiar with IO's and set bonuses? if not then check out the various IO guides for examples. Next, Defense & Resistance caps. While Defense has a Hard cap of around 300% if I recall the functional cap, or "Soft" cap is 45% for normal content, 59% for Incarnate content. Let me explain this. All normal mobs have a 50% chance to hit, with an accuracy modifier on that number for LT's or higher. Your defense directly reduces the mobs To Hit up to the "Floor" or minimum possible of 5%. Once the enemy tohit is adjusted by your defense the accuracy modifier is applied, and if you're at the soft cap then the mobs are applying that accuracy percentage bonus to 5% instead of 50%. It doesn't matter how high your defense is, you can never reduce the mob's chance to hit you lower than 5% + their accuracy modifier. Incarnate mobs work just the same except that their to hit chance is 64% (if I remember right) instead of 50%. Because of that you need 59% to floor their chance to hit you, so if you're running Incarnate content you'll need more defense to get the same results. Most builds have difficulty reaching this cap so you may have to rely on your 45% normal soft cap and supplement with purple inspirations as needed. Defense comes in two "flavors", Typed and Positional. Typed defense works against attacks of their type, Smashing/Lethal/Energy/Negative/Fire/Cold/Psi (By the way, there is NO Toxic defense, only Resistance). Positional defense works on attacks of their position, Melee/Ranged/AOE. If an attack comes at you the game will use the highest defense you have to that attack... for example a punch would be Smashing and Melee while a gunshot would be Lethal and Ranged. I believe a Fireball is Fire, Smashing and AOE. Now Resistance. Resistance subtracts a percentage of the damage that hits you, if you have 50% resistance to a damage type (Smash/Lethal/Energy/Negative/Fire/Cold/Psi/Toxic) then you take 50% damage from the attack. If you have 75% resistance (the hard cap for everyone but Keldians, Brutes & Tankers) then you take 25% damage. Remember, Resistance only applies to specific damage types; Smashing resistance doesn't do anything for a Negative Energy attack. In your specific case Willpower is a hybrid set with a little of everything and it has Typed defense. Typed and Positional defenses do NOT stack, the game uses the highest that applies. As a FYI the most common kind of damage in the game is Smash/Lethal so that's where you'll want to focus your efforts in IO bonuses. Ask in the Scrapper forum for specific advice but I would build for 45% S/L defense first and then think about resistance and regeneration. I'm not really familiar with either of your sets since I've only played Willpower once way back around 2006 or so before IO's came about and never played KM.

Have it incorporate a 5 second build up maybe? You just appeared in Joe Council's face so surprise should give you a damage bonus. Or maybe just a 100% chance for a critical?

More than enough of a tradeoff actually. Yes, it's the most durable set in the game, once it gets it's tier 9. Before that the set is one of the weakest and that's what should be addressed. From level 32 on your Stone Armor tanker uses Stone Skin, Mud Pots, Rooted (as needed), Earth's Embrace and Granite Armor. The other 4 powers are completely unused 98% of the time. If it were me I'd consider allowing the armors to stack and lowering Granite's defense to compensate for the other armors. Have Granite be the capstone power, not a complete replacement. Additionally allow a "no FX" option for ALL armors, not everyone want's to look like a DE monster or run around with a loaded diaper stuck to them. Ideally running all your armors including Granite will end up with the same or nearly the same values you have currently with just Granite alone. While you're at it get rid of the movement penalties entirely or at a minimum greatly reduce them and maybe just keep a small recharge penalty. You're a hunk of rock, you shouldn't LOOSE damage in that form.

Maybe, but then they'd appear in Kill All missions. It's enough of a PITA to find that last mob without also having that last mob or group invisible. If you have a mob invisible I can almost guarantee that it'll spawn in an out of the way location and get missed, then you go up the elevator and the ambush chase gets broken. Or it doesn't aggro on you in the first place. Of course the solution is to eliminate all Kill All missions from the game, with extreme prejudice. Particularly in blue caves. On the whole power creep problem we could have mobs start getting a small buff as we go up in level, maybe they stay as is until 30 then get slightly stronger each level up to 54? A straight damage increase of 1% per level from 31-54? Increasing their to hit penalizes defense builds more than others but possibly a simple accuracy increase so that at 54 each mob's accuracy bonus is one rank higher? A simple HP increase just increases the tedium of pounding on a bag of HP but a proportional, minor increase per level will keep pace with player improvement. I'm not sure how doable this may be with our current game however.

You know, I hadn't though of this, but it makes sense. While I don't have much if any experience in other MMO's I have heard of this kind of thing, a "wild charge" at a mob to instantly get into melee range. It would still be a limited use power unless it was changed to incorporate damage... and then the questions of "ST vs AOE" and "How much should it do" come into play. The devil is in the details but this idea has merit IMO.

Yeah, the Mass Effect series was great, but there's not much similarity to Fallout other than they're both single player RPG's. I do wish they'd make a sequel to ME3, disregarding the truly terrible ending. Andromeda was interesting, but a pretty big step down from the earlier games.

I had a friend try to mostly solo one of those back in issue 3... he was too stubborn to abandon it for something that could deal damage. I think he managed to get to about 20 mostly using the ST hold & Brawl before he finally threw in the towel. This was pre-containment, pre-controller buffs... and also pre-AOE nerfs. Why solo you ask? I have no clue, likely because he wasn't on when our other friends were and didn't want to start over with a more solo friendly character, and never formed or joined PuGs. I've no idea how many hours he had in it but when he rolled a Scrapper next I do know he got to 20 in a couple days. For those who weren't around back then it was common to take 250+ hours to reach 50 on a fast leveling character; level 20 usually took more than 15 hours.

Assault/Tactics goes on almost all of my damage dealing characters as well as all of my support characters. Tankers are the only exception because I'm working with generally extremely tight builds and may not have room. That may get some revision with the latest changes to Tankers now that they get Controller numbers out of the pool.

I've played several Scrappers to 50 over the years, BS/Regen, BS/Shield, Spine/Regen, Spine/Elec, Street Justice/Invuln. In general I think Scrappers are in a pretty good place right now with a few powersets needing attention. The AT itself I think is fine with a good balance between Scrapper/Stalker/Brute. What comes immediately to mind is the current state of Regeneration; while it's far from unplayable it is one of the poorest performing sets and it really only shines with a primary able to give it a boost like BS with Parry, or with fairly drastic IO defense bonuses. I've found that my BS/Regen from way back in issue 3-4 was still competitive in the later game mainly due to Parry's help with Melee defense while my Spine/Regen became very squishy and was mostly retired after the issue 5-6 nerfs. Here on Homecoming I have a Fire/Regen Stalker I built for soft capped S/L defenses and it works quite well; I'd assume that a similarly built Scrapper would be much the same. Still, it needs considerable help to be competitive, either from a Primary or from a fairly defense focused IO build. The big question is how to accomplish this without overbuffing it. One thought is to go back to toggle Instant Healing; with ED caps now in place the set won't have the runaway unkillable status it had back in the old days but it'll still be competitive with top sets like Shield.

It all depends on the build. Assault/Tactics are IMO a given, if you have no other source of defense then Maneuvers may be optional with it's 3.5% 2.6% base. Assault gives you an 18.5% 15% damage increase; something that's universally useful. Another 3.5% 2.6% defense (5.4% 4.1% slotted) may or may not be useful depending on your other choices and teammates. Personally unless I'm building for over 20% defense already in a build I don't bother, much lower than that and another 5% 4% doesn't make a lot of difference. Going from 0 defense to 4% defense is fairly pointless. Going from 20% to 24% is more so, and going from 41% to 45% is huge. Edit Oops, I gave Defender numbers. Well, with Controller numbers it makes the point even stronger.