Sovera

Simply put you don't have a build. Having a build doesn't mean you're helpless, but it means you're (most likely) slotting only SOs or generic IOs. With that, yeah, you'll be weak, that's how the original game played out. If you want try the (near) immortal build in my signature since it has very few requirements to start (two uniques and being level 13) and if you don't have the money for the two uniques send me a DM with your ingame @ and I'll mail it over (It is not a big sum for those who have played for a long while). Also I suggest reading the guide in my signature as well because there will be most likely good tips.

Heck, seems good to me. Respecs are cheap anyway so you'll end up tinkering with the build as you keep on playing and see what works for you and what does not.

Also, there's no point in unlocking the patron pools unless we actually need them.

I had to redo all my keybinds for unrelated reasons (I changed a keybind who then refused to be changed back no matter the number of times I did it, clicked 'apply', saved the keybind file, logged off, etc, so eventually had to hit the 'reset keybinds' which fixed it) and it was a pain, but that said it was a one time thing and after saving the keybinds they are now available for new alts or old characters I can hit 'load keybinds'.

If you can kill fast and not die then go for +4. If you're leveling then don't go over +1. If you can handle x8 then do so as it usually just adds more lieutenants and minions who die fast. You want AoE for those though. Depending on your build and if you buy amplifiers you should be able to go +1x8 from early on. My Tankers do that early and my latest Sentinel was soloing Yin at +1x8 by level 27. Which went fine because Storm Blast does a lot to keep a character alive. And then I got to Clamour who roflstomped me thanks to the debuffs and her (embarrassingly logical) insistence in not standing in my Category Five...

It can be useful. I haven't found it to be unless pulling two groups at once. Anything strong enough to rip agro is strong enough to survive it.

Change this to +3: Then check your accuracy over: Looking at the build now you have too much accuracy 😄 The Kismet can be safely removed and the slot placed where you'd like. Or keep the Kismet and turn off Focused Accuracy (it can be saved for mobs that debuff accuracy or mobs with extra defense) which allows you to recoup all the slots you've placed there. With some small changes you can even toggle off Tough and still have capped S/L. At 82.9% a second stack of the ATO (6.7%) would leave you at 89.6%. That means no point in taking Tough, or Punch, and you could tweak it further and do something like taking Fold Space or whatever you'd like with those extra powers. Tanker (Fiery Aura - Stone Melee) (Update).mbd

It looks nearly perfect. You have 45%+ to defense and 70% to all resistances. You can take the Unbreakable from Earth's Embrace since you're already hard capped without it. The only problem is accuracy. You went too deep into proc monstering and Ripper, for example, has zero accuracy added so it has 48% to hit a +3 enemy. Even with Focused Accuracy toggled on it only has 63%. Switching some slotting around and adding a Kismet allows to not toggle on Focused Accuracy or it would be a bit too heavy for your blue bar (it's there for emergencies only, either +def mobs or ToHit debuffing mobs). The -recharge proc in Ripper is of no use so I replaced it and it improved damage as well as finishing pushing it to the accuracy needs. Quills is a toggle and not a good place to place damage procs. With all those damage procs you've increased its damage from 11 damage to 22 damage. It's a place to put things for their set bonuses. Changing to a slotting with accuracy to actually hit, damage, and endurance, lowered the damage to 18. You have no travel power and took Grant Invisibility. Wouldn't it make more sense to take Infiltration instead for mobility? It also grants stealth, but remember to toggle Stealth back while in combat to get the bonus to defense. Remember that Granite toggles all your other toggles off. So no recovery from Crystal Armor, no recharge from Minerals, and no damage from Brimstone. Honestly, not a lot of reason to use it since even the DDR gain is minimal. Keep a few medium oranges on hand and you'll be at res cap anyway. Anyway, here are some more slotting ideas, just pick what seems to fit your playstyle. Tanker Modified (Stone Armor - Spines) Final build.mbd

Evasive Maneuvers is for the extra speed both in combat and out of combat, plus the debuff resistances that it has. Throw in your build with the powers you want and I can try to tetris the bonuses back in.

And you would be right. The game is for fun. If you need help adapting the framework let me know.

I have a Stone framework you can adapt to Spines. I looked at Spines but could not see the point when Fire Melee does same or better Aoe and also ST.

Tbh I was thinking on what to make (or re-make since I re-make favorites all the time as I like the leveling process) and realized nothing grabs me anymore. Fire Melee has pretty much taken the BiS spot for no other reason than having two PbAoE which when paired with Burn makes an insane three pbAoEs where we just sit there and dish out damage. My most recent was Energy and it got old super fast to realign for Power Crash and not even get good dividends out of it. But I guess Axe fills the same duty now. Pendulum is almost kinda like a PbAoE thanks to being inflated by the Tanker inherent. It then suffers from being slash damage which IMO lets Fire pull ahead again (plus Fire only needs three attacks where Axe wants four attacks and all slotted), but it does add a lot of mitigation from both Axe Cyclone and Pendulum doing AoE wide KD.

One Tinpex a day (half hour total) should give enough merits to buy one purple IO a day.

I don't cast slow Energy Transfers. Good lord, it's bad enough to deal with TF! 2.9 seconds, wheeze.... *Vietnam flashbacks, helicopters in the background, Radiation Melee theme song*

Lets see... First you need to turn off BU and then you will see only one attack has capped out accuracy to hit +3 even with the Kismet. Then you will find yourself with gaps in the attack chain though this might be something you don't mind. Stone Mallet recharges in 2.5 but Heavy Stone Mallet animates in 1.8. Seismic smash recharges in 7.2 seconds but Stone Mallet, Heavy Mallet, Stone Mallet is only 5.7 seconds. You might be able to work something out with Burn (leaving it at 7.9) but you will have that gap with the Mallet, worse when Hasten is off, or leveling, or exemplaring. My own solution was using Stone Fist since it is relatively easy on the recharge demands to make Stone Mallet, Stone Fist, Heavy Mallet, Stone Fist. Repeat and swap a Stone Fist for a Seismic Smash when it is up. Harmonic Mind is not bad but you are not slotting Dominate so you might as well go for Energy Mastery and take Physical Perfection which is kinda the same, and then Focused Accuracy that will help fix your accuracy problems though it won't do miracles just by itself.

Four years later....

Well, lets be fair in that it was the original devs who did it. The current ones have already added a lot that the original ones did not. I fear the palette thing may not be an easy thing to achieve.

Bruh. Read the guide in my signature for a lot of other tips like these, stuff you probably don't know you want to know. But Mids is the program that we use for builds thanks to the thankless job of the Mid devs (blessed be their name and may they reign for a thousand years). You'll find it over https://www.midsreborn.com/

In Mids (you're using Mids, right? Right? *stare*) the epic/patron pool is the very last one: Double XP is turned off at 50. That's when you should immediately start doing Tinpex (at least once a day) for the salvage/merits and a couple ITFs since it is a smorgasbord of XP.

There are not enough colours, period. And some of them we are forced into. Trying to design a Stone Armor character using Crystal skins? All colors are washed up, there are not bright colors (why??). The numbers of times I fight with the character creator trying to get just the right shade of blue but the next option already goes into purples. But there is also a disconnect between what we see in the character creation screen and the open world. I would like to have a toggle to see how my character would look in the open world instead of an idealized version that does not match.

Erf... Give me Energy Transfer instead 😄 Dim Mak animation coupled with 1,2 seconds and 750 damage without BU 😄

I return from leveling the Stone/Energy up to 39. Just as I remembered, planned not to do, and ended up doing, I leveled with Energy Punch and Bone Smasher and nothing else. This was a slog. I knew I should have picked Barrage as well and push something back but wasn't sure what I could do without (perhaps Rooted since we have Amplifiers serving for CC protection?). But it's still my recommendation for leveling: grab Energy Punch, Barrage, Bone smasher, Total Focus. When picking Energy Transfer then Barrage can be respec out. Without AoE until level 16 I did it 0x2 which was... ugh... The lack of Combustion was felt. At 16 I did get Whirling Hands and could crank it to 0x6 right away. It was still a bit slow and awkward without the extra attack since the origin power very quickly lost steam and any point in being used. I started Posi 2 at level 14, again knowing it was not a good idea since it would mean I would not get access to my level 20 power and would need it to beat Vhaz, but I tried anyway. As predicted just EP, BS, and the origin power was not enough to whittle it down. So I started the TF from scratch this time armed with Total Focus. For the cost it has I honestly don't think that there is a point in picking TF that early. It costs too much and while it hits hard it also has a tremendous recharge that early level slotting cannot keep up with. Makes me think if I was to level it again it would be TF that I would push back. In the low levels it is best to keep hitting, IMO, and not be flogged by big gaps waiting for things to have recharged. But armed with TF I got Vhaz down in a timely manner. Teamed for Synapse, nothing special to report. I was 28 when I soloed Yin. I had Power Crash but with no slots. Aaaand, I mean, it's an extra AoE, but... Cones suck, abysmally. They should at least have Frost's depth to be useful. Energy Transfer I proc bombed immediately as it does not need recharge nor endurance reduction and only minimal accuracy. Of course it hit hard as a truck. I was defeating Freak Tanks with BU + TF + ET with no chance of healing (unless TF missed, or ET missed.... I do love random changes of missing). Overall the ST damage was firmly superior to Fire Melee (at least how I have Fire Melee built). Clamor was obliterated and despite being exemplared down and half slotted the rotation with EP was working fine even at that level. She was turned to paste which is a rare feeling I get from playing Tankers where whittling enemies is the normal. Brimstone helped and its effect was palpable. The AoE is not great though. Power Crash hits a third of the mobs and we need to be constantly bouncing trying to line it up. Even when lined it is a cone and doesn't have enough depth to hit all the mobs. So it's a terrible level 28 AoE especially as if we hang on the edge of a spawn to hit with Power Crash then Whirling Hands is not hitting the other enemies. We need to be constantly shifting to make the most use of the cone even if trying to aim it down as a ghetto PbAoE. They should have been swapped and Whirling Hands be buffed a bit. As it is Whirling Hands is a level 16 power, animates slower and costs a bit more but does the same damage of Power Crash. Pretty much for that reason I ended having the same times running Yin averaging 54-56 minutes as Fire Melee despite two shotting bosses and preventing them from healing. The Council also rarely got their transformations off because they were dead from the burst or CC. The CC spam is simply brutal. My previous EM was with Fire Armor and used Burn as a filler so there was not as much spam of EM powers. But this time I could see everything I started hitting starting to stagger. I had Clamor drunkenly watch me as I pummelled her. Well, when her triangles were down. Still, that was a solid bit of mitigation, and as I said she melted which is a rare for me to say about my Tanker's damage. Verdict: An awkward build with a bit too many sacrifices to be what I'd consider easy or fun. Fly pushed super later, Combat Jumping the same which had me missing those extra 3% defense. 'Late' AoE makes early leveling annoying, and having to use a cone simply slows down everything despite the appreciatively higher ST damage. Total Focus is a dastardly thing to use with its 2.8 animation and it's not uncommon to waste time tabbing through mobs trying to find one that has enough HP that warrants using it, which, in the meanwhile, has had EP recharge anyway. The super high damage of TF and ET makes using anything else a waste of time to the point I catch myself not attacking a 3/4th HP lieutenant because I already realised EP + BS + EP will not kill it and I'll have to use TF, where if I wait those 3-4 seconds TF + ET will defeat it. Playing the build is usually a case of TF-ing one mob, finishing it with EP + BS, then find a fresh mob and use the still powered up ET to then finish it with EP + BS (usually a powered up ET kills a +1 minion anyway, and leaves a lieutenant with a sliver of HP). The endurance problems started going away despite not having slotting more recovered simply due to the fact of two shotting enemies meaning I am not spamming my attacks. That's nice. FM remains my choice for an easy beginner friendly build with the dual PbAoEs allowing to fight without having to bounce around which ends up making up for the time lost having to kill mobs who are healing or transforming. That said Tanker's damage is on the low side of things especially where it matters: ST. And this build puts the money where its mouth is at. That and the constant CC spam preventing them from using their skills is simply priceless makes it a viable alternative for someone who wants to focus more on the ST side of things. Which is a fair thing to do. Easy soft targets melt in the initial AoE when in a team and then its time to kill the harder mobs which are usually the most dangerous ones.

Currently leveling a Stone/EM Tanker and it was a slog to 16 when the first AoE opens. Here I go with only Mud Pots! So 0x2 until 16, slog. At 16 I got Whirling Hands, cranked it to 0x6 and three levels in one mission. Dats the way to go.

I once again return to ask for the same: Lil X, please. Once seen, or clicked, can we get rid of it?

I happen to have a Rad/MA that has both 45% to all positional defenses AND 90% resists to most (and no, this is not a normal thing to achieve 😄 )