Glowworm

My challenge guy is only 14 (I had to log early the previous time we played on Indom). I'll log in early and get him up to 15 in case we want to do Synapse.

I have a Time/DP defender and he is fun to play. Lean on procs for damage but, yeah, you're not going to be a huge damage beast with DP regardless. DP and Time both like to be in the middle of melee (well, DP's nuke does anyway) and though I usually run with fire ammo for more damage the debuffs from cold or toxic ammo are significant on a defender and are worth using in some situations. Defender buff values combined with Time's -ACC aura make a melee Time/DP 'fender pretty durable.

So is the Challenge Set idea to make a Shield/* tanker and just run them on Tanker Tuesday, not leveling them separately?

I thought the same thing at first but it would have the more powerful melee attacks that most blaster secondaries get. So, like a defender with medium punches instead of weak blasts.

All-Tank Kahn? Load up on your daggers! It's fun, but that last fight takes...a while.

Whatever you roll, get the Might of the Tanker ATO +Res proc in a damage aura or an attack you use pretty often. It makes a big difference. It's got high enough PPM that even if it's in an attack that isn't ideal for procs it's still useful. I've got a bio/rad tank that's fun and easy (end management, proc potential, heals, some debuffs - lots of toys). SR also makes for a very tough tank but you don't have a damage aura. It's hard to really go wrong but I guess broad sword and kinetic melee are probably at the bottom of the list for offense.

9 PM East Coast

Re: "Backup Tank", be aware Ice/Spines is really good at stealing aggro. I assume it's the combo of 2 damage auras and an auto-hit debuff aura. Might very well steal aggro from whatever the main tank is.

The idea that tanks have "weak secondary attacks" is untrue. Tank's melee damage scalar is .95; for comparison Blaster and Stalkers are at 1.00. Tanks are capable of doing significant damage, especially when you take into account their large AoEs with high target caps. Tanks are ideal for taking out the trash and then keeping hard targets focused on them. More to the point, they can slot up their attacks well and still be tough enough to tank hard content. The idea that you have to gimp yourself in order to survive and hold aggro just isn't true. (And attacks are a significant way of generating and holding aggro anyway). Yes, eating the alpha has traditionally been a tank's role but lots of ATs can do that well enough. Tanks excel at it but any big -ACC debuffer or an AoE controller or dominator can blunt it enough to get the job done. So the idea of a tank who just eats alphas and doesn't otherwise contribute to damage output of the team is pretty underwhelming; I mean, I can see that being a thing at level 10 but if at level 29 that's still the only contribution, that's not what I would expect or want.

Put it this way, Hibernate got a workout last night.

Before I switched servers to last night's TT, I thought "I should get some SG boosts before switching because you never know what TT will serve up." I then, of course, forgot about it till after I switched and was SG-less. Man, I could have used some End Drain Resistance and Fear Resistance vs those 4 Horsemen. Famine, I guess, kept doing a massive end drain combined with Terrorize that would detoggle everything. Those were some challenging fights for Shiny Doom Ball (ice/spines). But the whole thing was fun and not many people can say they've done a tank-only LGTF. Next time, I'm respeccing to get more holds!

Werewolf World dumpster diving with the mission team was a lot of old school fun.

I played Kin/Dark and wasn't crazy about it for this reason. Kin really likes melee and /Dark really likes range, so you end up hopping around a lot. Too busy for me. I wonder if TA/Dark would be good though, since they both love range.

Corruptors of any set are going to shine when taking on big HP bags like AVs and Giant Monsters. On those targets, scourge can be meaningful. On regular minions, scourge is mostly irrelevant since if they are below half hit points (when scourge can trigger) then you are probably going to defeat them on the next hit regardless. But corruptors do have better damage scales and higher damage caps. For Dark/Dark specifically, I agree that the debuff values are so high and layered (especially -ACC), that it can be overkill on a defender so you may as well get the extra damage from a corruptor. However, defenders can be significantly tankier if they take an epic armor, tough, weave, and maneuvers, which is a reason to go defender instead of corruptor. Defenders gets max value from those armor-like powers just like other buffs. It just depends on your preference; I would probably go corruptor but both have their advantages.

Now you don't have to be a law-breaking, anarchistic, punk-pirate to play your favorite game. So, I guess I need to find some additional outlet for throwing off the shackles of The Man.

I realize this is an ancient thread but when my group did this task force, it was very fun up until the last battle. The air strikes were not bad, you just had to pay a little attention. But the BBG started teleporting constantly after we got him down to half-way or so. And it's a multilevel outside map so our melee guys were very frustrated. And it's not like he teleported once and healed a little, he started teleporting after just a few hits for the rest of the mission. After spending as much time fighting him as we did getting through the entirety of the rest of the TF we just quit because we couldn't get him to stand still (there were only 6 of us, so maybe a little under powered, but still.) Is that normal behavior? Is he supposed to pop around with everyone running after him?

Huh, I just logged him in and then out and the tokens had all refreshed. Weird. Or, if a GM saw this post and fixed it for me, thanks. 🙂

I have a tank move around for Tanker Tuesday but he's been stuck on Everlasting for over a month with a "no transfer tokens" message. He's the only character I transfer and I haven't touched him in weeks so my tokens should have refreshed several times over. Is there a hold or something going on?

Time, in addition to Earth and Storm mentioned above, is really good here. By 30 Time has a couple AoE slows including a persistent placed one and a slow aura. All those debuffs trigger aggro on the runners and stop them from running. A Rad tank, with all the AoE patches and auras is also good on this. Any damage and, I assume, most debuffs stop them from running; the Time patches definitely do.

I'm not sure if you were looking for what sets or just general theory but I get the recharge up first so I can put it on more teammates and then I start pumping up the defense after the recharge is 90%+. I don't think I've ever worried about increasing the to-hit buff. People generally build to be pretty decent at accuracy/to hit w/o buffs so the buff is just gravy and/or to counter debuffs.

My PC crashed (I think my graphic card is fried) so I pulled out my old (2010) Mac Air and tried to run Island Time on it. I had run it before probably 6 months ago or less. A message came up that said it wouldn't run on Sierra and I had to update to High Sierra to run it (which seems odd since it ran fine before and I didn't update Island Rum but whatever). I updated to High Sierra. Now Island Rum launches but it's just a window with "Island Rum" at the top and the rest of the window is black. Does anyone have any advice on how to address? I have not had much to do with Macs in decades so I'm pretty clueless.

So, is it Indomitable tonight i.e., the regular schedule?

Rad/Martial is loaded with PBAOEs and has the very fun ki punch-then-snipe (or Cosmic Burst) as the boss floats away. Also, Cosmic Burst (stun+damage) + Throw Sand (AoE stun) seems like it has potential but I only just leveled up to it (mid 30s) so I'm not sure how it will actually play out.

From what I remember ID has a short (1 min?) duration so it's more practical for breaking mezzes and hitting whoever is eating an alpha just before the alpha. The only time I would try to really keep it on the team was if we were low level and facing ruin mages - the AoE KD they do (earthquake?) can really screw up a low-level team w/o KB protection yet. But that's very niche; most of the time I'd treat it like clear mind and just throw if someone was mezzed. Note: the mezz protection only hits the individual you target whereas the S/E resist hits the whole team.

Secondary makes a difference here though. When I FR I'm actually casting FR+Ice Storm and often Blizzard on top of that so FR doesn't need to do all the slowing.