Sovera

The leveling is fast if you stick to teams and use the double XP (if you're really new then browse the guide in my signature) and IOs being transferable means you can try different characters without spending a penny re-buying everything. My usual advice when this question pops up is Fire Armor/Ice Melee since it works well and the squishyness of Fire Armor is mitigated by Ice Melee's Ice Patch. In the meanwhile the lesser Tanker damage is helped by Fire Armor's Burn and Fiery Embrace. With inspirations and teams providing buffs pretty much any thing that you choose will work so it's a matter of choosing what you'd like to try. Just keep in mind it's not a waste. Money earned or IOs bought can be transferred to the next character.

The build seems fine. It is built as a Tanker with attention to defenses and less so to damage. You won't go wrong using it but it is really overkill for 95% of the content and the other 5% will require having buffers in the team anyway. So its looking mighty solid. If your intent is to focus on tanking then you got this 👍 Some small changes would be swapping the slotting of Physical Perfection and Stamina since Stamina gets more out of it. You can also consider Barrier for those Oshi-... moments which adds another 5% to your defense and resistance values. That could let you move some things around such as adding more slots to Build-up, etc. If you're not playing incarnate content then turn Weave off. This is a different take. Focusing on damage and then pump defenses to reach the minimums (add 5% from Barrier. If the content is not hard enough to require barrier then the extra 5% aren't needed anyway). Maybe some slotting ideas will be of use:

I pretty much only play tankers/brutes since they come with agro auras. That said either for them starts (solo) at around 0x4 at their first AoE whichever that is (level 4 for Ice Melee) and by level 10 they go to +0x6. Level 15-ish they move to +1x8 and stay that way. But this comes from having inf and IO transfers. Playing a character who slots IOs the second they can makes a tremendous difference. I am now leveling a second character with no IO and no inf and I could not replicate this. If playing in a team it is fine to run with whatever and be 0x8 from level 1 onwards and then rely on inspirations. But for soloing my non inf transfer character using only generic IOs had a bigger survival problem (well, survival, damage, endurance, everything) so I went at 0x4 for most of the way until mid thirty-ish when I finally bumped things to +0x8. This was when I finally had enough money to start buying IOs and upping my resistances and defenses.

I'll toss in my own. As usual with my builds they try to rely on all the gimmicks in the book: - 78.2% resistances with one stack of the tanker ATO since a second one and the 5% from Barrier will cap things (or close enough, 78.2% + 6.7% = 84.9% + 5% from Barrier = 89.9%). Any thing that does not require Barrier does not require 90% resistances either. - 40% Slash/Lethal defenses for Barrier's 5% to finish capping. - 134 second Hasten which is okay-ish. Having Cremate with its new FF proc would be better, but... - Decent 80% resistance to -recharge. - That solitary Heal IO in Consume adds 150ish HP to the build, or another 3 point something HP per second. It's a flex slot. Still possible but I did not like how the build ended with 87.9% for the resistances so swapped it out for neatness. This is fully to blame on the tortuous slotting to avoid toggling Tough on. - Tough is just a mule and not toggled on. Addendum: - This is a level 50 respec build, not a leveling build. While all the powers are in the order I would take them the slotting and IOs used will differ. I can cook a leveling build for those who need it. - Using Scorch is bad for the damage. Using T1s and T2 ought to be avoided if uber min max ST damage is the goal. But, leveling/exemplaring lower than 23 would make the build have one single attack until Incinerate came online and though Prestige attacks can take the slack (since at those low levels we fight +0 or +1 tops) it gives me the icks. So I took Scorch and leveled with it allowing for a Scorch - Fire Sword - Scorch - Burn/Prestige/Origin attack, and later it becomes Greater Fire Sword - Scorch - Fire Sword - Scorch, repeat. Anyone not caring about this just replace Scorch for Incinerate. - The uptime on AoEs is great but not gapless. There will be a near two second gap in Combustion - Fire Sword Circle - Burn. This is not a terrible thing since it can be a moment to slip in Fire Sword to proc the ATO. - Greater Fire Sword is a better place to have the ATO since it hits much much harder than the regular Fire Sword (188 VS 390 with the same animation time) but that means no ATO proc until level 25. This may or may not be a deal breaker and it may or may not matter overall but for those who spend longer at max level consider mix and matching the slotting of Scorch and Fire Sword so that GFS has the slotting of Fire Sword with the ATO (preferably with the purple damage proc in GFS instead of Fire Sword). - Burn is no longer a great ST attack but it is still ok in a pinch. Once everything is fluid there is no need to use it for ST but while leveling and whenever there are at least two enemies in range then swap a Scorch for it when it is up.

Try Fire/Fire. I'm sporadically leveling one now that I've milked WoW's newest expansion and it can achieve a rotation of only AoEs. Which feels really satisfying when in an AoE situation since who wants to hit ST attacks when surrounded by mobs?

TFs will always spawn AVs. If you are super geared it will be fine, but if packing generic IOs then take some Envenomed Daggers from the P2W vendor or you might find you can't outpace the AV's regen.

Dass me.

I believe something like 'when one proc procs all procs go into an internal CD of X seconds'. X seconds can be 1.5 seconds and all it means is one proc per power. Seems okay by me and kills proc bombing as along as passive procs like Performance Shifter and Panaceia are given exemptions.

In the mountains.

FF procs can't trigger indefinitely. Others have tested (not myself) and reported the FF procs will extend the duration but at some point stop before an enforced pause happens. Regardless PPM would say keeping FF procs happening back to back to eternity is not going to be a thing. Of course the IO slotting is not mirrored. This does not even make sense. It's different secondaries, one is resist, one is defense. The reason some people like SR so much is so little that they have to invest to reach their goals leaving the rest of their slotting to do as they please. Stone is less offense based than Fire but has easier means to reach defense goals so they slot more offensively. Not taking hover/Fly/Evasive? Sure? Not sure what you want me to say here. Not to use my favorite travel power to... do better at a test? Same with Focused Accuracy. I (try) not to stick to the threadmill of Council/ITF which puts me against exotic enemies who like to debuff ToHiy. FA makes me immune to those. When I post builds I make mention of this and that if it is not something people do that they ought to change for Gloom. Stone does no need more recharge. It has no clickies other than Earth's Embrace which is casually perma, unlike Fire with Consume and Healing Flames. So what is the point of adding more recharge once the ST rotation is gapless? You're missing the point here. I'm not aiming for best times (which is the majority of your advice about) not am I competing against others to see who wins. I was pitting a build against another build. Fire still came out decently ahead once I realized the criminal mistake I made.

... Why yes, I could be lying about it. Indeed, that's an option too. 👍

Not from the forums. It is discord talk from/between the devs.

Seen from the prism of 'bosses are what survive longer in a group' then Vulnerability its ass in a new spawn (does not trigger agro), Aim, nuke, unleash all AoEs. Boss which usually is what survives longer took 15% more damage, and its available at every spawn.

That's your problem right there. By level 30 you have access to 90% of the IOs your level 50 build will be using with the exception of purples. Accept the advice given and start splurging on the recovery uniques and slotting the cheaper stuff. The term you're looking for is attuned and that's what 90% of your IOs will be even in your level 50 maxed out build. Bare minimum check the P2W vendor and buy the Recovery Serums which are cheap as heck and coupled with Hasten will fix a lot of your endurance problems. If you happen to not know how to sell merits check the guide in my signature. Do post your current build and someone will help so that you can have more fun. As you've pointed out playing with bare bones makes for a very miserable experience robbing the fun of logging on. I'm rootin' for ya.

Dis?

Let me flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

It's also funny that it kind of implies that there are no lethal injuries. Bullet through the brain? Np bro. Head chopped off? We can staple it. But we also play a game where people fly and can toss tanks around while shooting lasers from their eyes. In those we have people with terrific healing abilities. What we lack is in-depth lore of the limits of what they can achieve. When we have power descriptions how it turns back time to heal wounds then yeah, a bullet through the brain ought to be fixable since they are not healing the person but deleting the injury. If you're RPing you have all the power in your hands. Maybe all the meta medics are busy handling a big disaster and none were available to heal you. Maybe its the reverse and you were tagged as on the line of duty and a meta healer patched you up so you could get back to it. I am not a super fan of RPing with randoms during missions since they tend to just make a bit of mockery about it. Get downed? "Ow, that stung" while laying 'dead' on the floor is the most common thing. No hurties, no debilitation, no worries. My own rules with friends (not pugs of course) is that when 'dead' we can only be brought back when combat ends, and if we wipe then we failed, no rspawn at hospital and resume fighting. And failure is good! It's RP! It's actually, in my opinion, MORE RP than victory since we deal with the aftermath of failure, of wanting to become better, or trying to find a way to salvage whatever failed to happen.

I'm not a dev and I have no influence on devs (other than threatening Cobalt to make elemental axes appear) so take this as someone not involved in the creative process of powermaking/tweaking. Devs spend a couple months tweaking and sometimes inventing things from scratch before whatever appears in the beta server and people can respond to their request for feedback. Players then, instead of providing feedback on the topic proceed to re-invent the wheel and provide a full list on how to re-do everything from scratch. Sometimes just numbers, sometimes full blown new mechanics. Players get annoyed at their advice being ignored. Now lets imagine the advice was -not- ignored. Devs pull the whatever (FF rework for example) from the beta testing and get back to tweaking and inventing. Couple months later the new FF is out to be tested again. Player that offered the idea is happy. A different player now chimes with their own idea. Player B gets annoyed at their advice being ignored. This can be repeat to eternity and back. No one is going to be happy every time all the time. There will always be someone discontent and feeling their idea is better. How is this addressed? A popularity contest? The suggestion that has more Likes and Thumbs-up is the one that goes ahead? Aren't those that did not vote going to be annoyed? Is the already small % of the population of the game who goes to the forums, which is then further reduced by those who care enough to check the Beta forums, who is then further reduced by those who actually log into the beta server and actually test things, a representative of the population? Because out of average-ish 2k players we may get 20 that log into the test server. And this does not even account for those who don't even log into the server to test the changes but just read the patch notes and start re-inventing the wheel from a cold start.

Doesn't even need to download an app. My Discord is a tab on Firefox and I get the toast window and the warning when beeped same as regular app Discord. Where are my elemental axes, Cobalt?!

Eesh. I am goi g to screenshot this and post it on the next righteously angry thread asking the devs why they nerfed farming.

Tankers do more damage if you load on procs and play specific sets. Unfortunately a tanker build to tank and not playing those sets and not loading on procs is behind a Brute by a noticeable margin. Either abandon building like a tank because Tanker baseline is sturdier than anything else and will survive 90% of the game, or play a Brute. It really depends on what you intend to do with the character. If you're going to tank for teams you should build a certain way, if you're going to solo you should build another way, if you're going to team the new hardmodes you definitely ought to build yet another way. If you're going to play with a static group and do the Hardmodes you can go back to 'normal' builds since it relies more on cycling incarnates. My infamous fire armor builds could and did tank most 'normal' content (normal ITFs, Lord Recluse, etc) and even some 801 content but I would not trust them on a Hardmode, but they are great to solo and team for normal content since they avoid that slow whittling of enemies pitfall you mention since I purposefully build as sturdy as I can and then dedicate everything else to do damage. That said they have been completely outclassed by the 'new' builds that load on procs and clear tests in half the time my best Tankers took to do it. By the way, your endurance problems should not be as dire as you put it. It sounds a lot like you're playing with generic IOs and not slotting appropriately. This is a build problem and not so much a character problem but fortunately not a difficult thing to fix. Try posting them on the appropriate forums, and while at it check Infinitum's thread on the Tanker forums for SS and Invuln builds. Heck, you mention Martial Arts and one of my best builds is still a Fire/MA Tanker with 45% defense to melee/ranged/AoE while also having 90% resists to most.

It's a discord bot who uses an algorithm based on social media usage, forum posts, predictive behavior based on toilet paper used per year and a few other conditions. I am not privy on the details but it runs on CoH's spaghetti code so you can imagine the decisions made are not always... hinged.

The simplest way to see why drama occurs is that everyone is the protagonist. Some people will make an effort at -not- being the protagonist, but it's safe to say that the majority acts as being the star of the show, the hero, the main man. I don't say this as a put down, it's just how it is. As someone who reads a lot it's easy to notice how a book has a hierarchy and a cast of supporting characters. I usually take the series Malazan as an example. Each character is usually pretty hyped up. Paraphrasing since it's been a while I read it, but omg, super assassin who took out an entire assassin guild! Watch him being cool, watch him fight and beat unsurmountable odds! Then he goes against a demi god and can't scratch her. Later on that demi god fights against one of the big characters of the book and is trounced. Later on that big character fights against super good swordsmen and gives up by the time he fights the third best. In roleplay it would not be uncommon to see the first example of the cool assassin still want to go toe to toe with the big character or even the third best swordsman and then refuse to back down or throw a hissy fit if not allowed to have a 'fair' chance. This is just an example of competitive RP (the worst kind tbh, RP ought to be like writing a book which is to spin a good story, not to exert a winner) but the desire to be noticed, to be interacted with, is at the center. I know it, I want to be noticed, I want to be interacted with, so I understand it.

I'm not part of an inner circle. I don't 'know' Faultline since we have the most bare briefest interaction at the most surface level. But since I'm on that Gold Discord and devs talk a lot more there (so many complaints about code and servers going up in flame when something is tweaked in code) Faultline mentioned the extensive incoming AFK (I don't even know the reason for it). When the forum people noticed and started asking a couple of us did mention to Faultline he ought to say something before rampant rumors spread but he just said he was going to change his signature. That's when I mentioned it on the forums. But it's not secret information. It's just something that came up in banter.

The thing is, obviously you will not be jumping into +4x8 intensive farming with a 200 mill build, but if you check the thread I mentioned they have baby farmer builds to begin with (+1x8) and the money earned goes into making it better. Farming is a self feeding activity. Once all geared up it's all profit from there on.