Sovera

I do have a Fire/Fire I can drop but I think your build looks solid. I'd just remember that MotT with two stacks accounts for nearly 13%. If you wish you can play with that and lower your resistances which will free slots to place elsewhere. Mids as is right now accounts for no MotT stacks so your 90% will immediatly be overcapped once it goes off even once. You don't particularly need to account for Barrier but if you decide to then it's another 5%. That said you can decide you DON'T want to faff around with MotT stacks. Combustion takes particularly well to procs to the point it can actually overshadow Fire Sword Circle despite being a level four PbAoE, and even with the changes to Burn it was a minimum of two if not more. When it comes to arresting regular mooks Tankers are pretty good but once it comes to single tough enemies its when things slow down. To counter this you can place a -res in Burn and another in Fire Sword (or greater fire sword). I'll drop the one I used, but it's one that makes use of both MotT stacks + Barrier to be at 90%. It can pretty much sustain this 95% of the time once combat has started since Barrier can be used on CD, but I rarely bother using Barrier until I actually need it. Because of this you can shuffle some slots if you'd like those 5% to be online all the time instead of relying on Barrier. I keep S/L at 33% so a single small inspiration puts it at 45%. It's just another layer. I would prefer having it at 40% so Barrier would also put it at 45% but I don't want to make more sacrifices and find the remaining 7% as it doesn't really matter much. 33%, on the other, didn't cost me much other than the slots in Punch. Tanker (Fire Fire).mbd

Why would you let it depress you? Don't copy those builds, is all.

Doesn't that mean it will check against what is highest? I'm not sure exactly which is which since the devs were explicit they wanted to curb the S/L cheesing but not simply castrate it, and thus only some of the attacks from some mobs in each faction would no longer be cheesed.

The guide in my signature has tips for new players. Use and abuse the /LFG channel for teaming purposes. In the forums front page you also see which servers have more persons. Take a look when you play to see if the majority of the server is online when you are. For example if I only had time when I am posting this a look at the servers tells me I should be in Excelsior. But if roleplay interests you then Everlasting is a good choice too as its where the majority of that community is.

Hellos. I already had the guide in my signature linked to but to add Recovery Serums from the START vendor cost 10k per charge which is a pittance. You can buy a max stack of that and use when ever it is off cooldown while the build has not fixed it's endurance problems.

Ice Melee. You're a pocket controller once you toss down Ice Patch.

Tsoo Troo?

Welcome to the fold, my super brethren! Don't worry about asking questions as we all went through it. Most of us just have been around longer, but we all started without a clue. Now, most of those questions have answers in the newbie guide that is in my signature. And probably more you're not yet aware of, so take a gander at it. The two uniques are the Steadfast Protection 3% defense and the Gladiator's Armor 3%. The SOs are the enhancements sold by any vendor. There was a time where you'd have to chase different vendors to get the ones right for you but these days any base vendor will have them. If you don't have a Supergroup base yet then consider making a basic one to plop these NPCs down, like a quartermaster, a midnighter trainer, a nurse, perhaps a tailor too. Then you can teleport to your base and train and purchase the enhancements you need. It's a one time thing you can share with all your alts so worth the few minutes it takes to set it up. If you have more questions or doubts even after reading the newbie guide then ask and we'll help. The community's great and quite helpful.

I logged in to give it a try and it worked fine with /bind downarrow "+backward$$powexecauto hasten"

That's why I have not found Dark Melee to actually be better survival than something like Fire Melee. Because it takes longer to defeat a group of enemies they have longer to stack up debuffs or keep chipping away at health. Just like I had big plans for a Stone/Martial Arts that would be grossly over the cap without any IOs. But then I played it and realized I was chiping at the enemies as they chipped at me, but there are more of them than there are of me. Between Dark Melee and Radiation Melee perhaps the second will serve you as well for a small heal, but it's endurance heavy and Stone is not well equipped to handle that.

T3 Alpha is all that's really needed for the biggest boost. T4 is just a cherry on top. T4 Barrier afterwards for the perma 5% to all and otherwise panic button. T3 Degenerative. Go back to finish the alpha. Last would always be Lore since it was so niche and Judgement would barely edge before since a nuke is fine and all, but only every 2 minutes did not make it super interesting, though alternating Barrier and Judgement did allow to push past problematic factions/challenges.

Even back when I teamed I didn't care if the person had a clue or not. Don't know where to go? I'll inform them. Don't have a good build or are properly slotted? It's a full team so we're obliterating so I wouldn't even notice unless they said something about dying so much or being so slow compared to others. AFK to take care of the baby or for a smoke? Go for it. AFK each time we enter a mission? Don't care (happened, but was very rare and I teamed a LOT).

Energy Melee and Axe were good too. EM's AoE is just mediocre and Axe is very endurance hungry which Stone has no tools to compensate other than the recovery boost in Crystal Armor. Fire Melee is just the best middle ground, IMO. Dark Melee helps a fair bit as well with an endurance tool and a small heal, but, again, mediocre AoE in my experience. Only a problem if soloing a lot.

As others have said do mention that you're new at the start. The community is, as a rule, pretty prestable. But they cannot guess you're not someone who has run it dozens of time.

Resistance does get shafted on anything that stacks debuffs. I have TALES of trying to fight Vampyr and whiffing endlessly if I didn't finish the fight early. Now, that said, you were pushing the envelope and the envelope pushed back. If you said you had these problems when pulling one group I'd say your build might need a tweak. But trying to pull multiple groups? Out of a problematic faction like Carnies? Council they ain't. That works if you're in a team and everyone is pitching in with buffs, debuffs, and raw damage to finish things quickly. Now if you want to try changing some things you can add S/L defense. Despite building S/L defense being poopooed by some because 'defense debuff will strip those defenses immediately' (which is correct) there are a heap ton of factions with problematic debuffs that do NOT defense debuff, and whose attacks have S/L components which makes the defense able to deflect them. Anecdote, but I remember doing Croatoa and being confused on why my Fire Armor was being knocked around so much since it seldom happened even while leveling on other Fire Armor characters. Then I realized that even while leveling I was usually always building up S/L alongside the rest, but with that character who was doing a challenge of not using my stored IOs it only relied on the -KB IO. That solitary -KB was enough on other characters, but, wasn't cutting it all by itself. Now all of this said if you're still pulling multiple groups of problematic factions then things will get hairy. Even my Stone Armor has died to Praetorean bots because I pulled multiples. Times like those it's best to retreat, regroup, and consider using an inspiration before starting.

My own preference towards the best middle ground has been Fire Melee for the fast animations and two PbAoEs. I found DM's AoE too slow for soloing, but if you like Dark Melee then stick to it as the small heal and endurance clickie kinda patch Stone's weaknesses. The build has 45% defense, 63% resistances (70% with one ATO stack, 76% with two), near capped HP, and 60 HPS regen. If you're not a flier you can replace Evasive Maneuvers for Weave (no need to add more slots to it) and be at 50% for those defense debuffing factions. This is not a leveling build but I can cook something up if desired. Tanker (Stone Armor - Dark Melee) Final build.mbd

My own Stone Armor builds have, without incarnates, capped HP, 50% defense and 70% resistances with one stack of the ATO. It's sturdy, but it's not THE sturdiest thing since it has no heal and relies on regen. I have, in fact, died to pulling two +3 groups of those nasty robots that both strip defense and strip regen. Granted, if I had pulled a single group it would have been perfectly fine since it was the only time I actually was in danger. With incarnates (or inspirations) this wouldn't have been an issue. Barrier would have made me invulnerable and even at it's lowest I would have been at 55% defense and 81% resistances. It would be pretty hard to die to anything with those numbers. Even a 50 inf small purple and no incarnates would put the build at 62% defense, or a small orange at the res hardcap. The downside is still the lack of hard heals. Sure, regenning 60 HP a second is nice, but when having 3.5k HP it will take a while to trickle back up. But, that's what insps are fot and tbh it's so very rare to get to that point. I'll take it since it can be near immortal by level 12.

I'd rather have it said by Bob Ross.

With that lore info then, yeah, it's natural.

An happy accident.

Not an in lore expert, but applying common sense unless all humans have psychic powers (which would then be natural) if it takes an accident of birth to be born with psychic powers then they are mutants.

Would those even work? Is there is no LoS for a damaging power would it not block Fold Space as well?

I've added your doubts to the guide in my signature since it seemed like it had a place there. There is more info there you might find of use.

The damage of STJ is backloaded into Crushing Uppercut. The powers otherwise animate fast, recharge fast, no problems with waiting for buttons to press.... but the powers themselves hit like a cooked noddle. It all boils to CU and three combos. But then CU has an awkward recharge that means we spend a lot of time spamming the weak attacks, with several times over capped combo points waiting for CU to come back online. A second heavy hitter is needed, so, yeah, Burn could fit easily and it avoids having to take the StJ's cone.

The consensus was keeping the stacks up and never use them by just spamming the first three ST attacks. Consider Radiation Melee as well. Bit heavy but the constantly flow of heals would do you good with Shield's lack of. You might not even notice the ATO proc going off or not if your HP is constantly topped off. I'd skip Devastating Blow and just go for Radiation Siphon, Contaminated Strike, and Radioactive Smash. But Rad's a bit endurance heavy and Shield has a lack of recovery tools.