Sovera

Well, thank God we have you to teach us the correct way of doing things. I, for one, welcome out Nightmare Shaman overlord, may he rein over these forums for a thousand years.

Woosh. The answer Linea gave was in context. I said any tank will tank the game and even Scrappers can tank. Linea answered the way we currently are an Empath can do it. Someone asked about the Empath. Linea posted the build.

Claws and MA still neck to neck. One more offense oriented, the other more all rounder.

This isn't WoW. People won't refuse entry because you're not X. We are at a point where even a Scrapper can tank most things so you'll do fine if you pick something you enjoy. Personally, yes, dead things don't hurt back so I'm all for Fire Armor.

I do feel some of the deficiency in the damage might be allayed with /Sonic's -res stacking, including increasing Enflame's damage. Is Singy better damage now it does Impact as well? I don't remember if I had made my Grav before or after this bug fix.

I was just level 21 when I stopped on the MM. I'm so leery on the Controller that I haven't started other than creating it with backstory and costume (most important parts we might agree 😄 ). I'm planning on just slotting Enflame with a full Artillery Bombardment..

I've already done a Grav/Kin in the past, and like most things Controller I did one TF at 50 and my struggling interest waned. Grav has no AoE and despite being the most 'blaster-ish' set it's still Controller damage so whittling things down one by one even on triple damage procs and no slotted recharge. I did a mock-up with an old build and ended with 45% defense to S/L/E, but also 0.15% positive EPS 😄 Way too many toggles... Not gonna lie though, Grav/Sonic looked really pretty in the whole energy theme critter (ignoring the name of the secondary and just looking at the visual effects), but I dunno if I can stomach whittling mobs again. I did want to try Singy's changes though, and Enflame, Spirit Ward, plus Sonic Disruption, plus shield only once in a while, does leave my hands free. Grav is the one set that has no need for Arcane Bolt. It already has two 'blasts' and they can take FF procs. There's also Storm. I've never actually played a Stormie. I'm tempted by Defender to get all the good powers early because otherwise whoop, 35 and 38. I could do a Plant but it's like playing with cheat codes; fun at first but then dull. Whee, lets confuse a whole spawn before it even is agroed, then keep them confused until they die. And it recharges so fast it can be repeated at every spawn. What is 240 seconds recharge? Also started a Ninja/Elec since Elec seems nice to keep ninjas alive, and they kick butt. MMs always worked well in the whole 'let pets run rampant doing 'passive' damage while we focus on buffs and debuffs', and that seemed like I remember through Posi 1 and 2. Demon/Elec might be smarter. Tested Enflame and Spirit Ward. A toggle that needs reapplying seems like the worst of both worlds. It's neither a once-every-two-minutes cast/cost nor a -toggle-and-forget-about-it. Enflame is just basically another damage aura on the tank but that's fine.

Color me interested. Could you post the build? I need to test the MM changes.

I duo with a friend. Sometimes we duo TFs, sometimes we duo arcs, most of the time we just play in teams. While she is a bit more eclectic than I am I've nudged her to try Tankers and we usually go around duoing both with the AT. Fire Armor ensures we don't know what people talk about low Tanker damage. But since I'm getting a bit bored with it all I look at what other things I could play with the duo. Of course that the simplest thing is playing something that does damage like a Blaster. But it's done to death. Second thing would be boost survival and damage, so anything Kin, but again, done and done. Which is how I was looking at Grav/Sonic but pondering if there really is a point in trying it instead of just continuing to burn things down as we are. Namely we have been in a binge of doing Praetorean arcs which can be quite hard with us flashback locked at level 15 and all those debuffs flying around. Once in a while we die from all the -defense being thrown around and us at level 15, though 90% of the time we burn the content. I pondered a Grav/Sonic. - By level 20 I could spackle over the low resistances she has due to the extreme exemplaring with all three Sonic shields. Defense would be better than resist though, but I'm not appealed by Cold or FF. - I could help with damage with two -res sources. The toggle on her would do -22% and Sonic Siphon another -22%. This is a very early combo and more potent -because- low level since even level mobs suffer from the debuffing. - Early Sorcery would let me Spirit Ward her, -and- Enflame. I'm not sure how good this would be in practice because the changes are new. - Not a click intensive combo other than Sonic Siphon so more time to actually do damage. This is nice. The downsides is that I wouldn't bring any AoE other than Enflame, and I'm sure Enflame is more of a DoT aura than an actual AoE attack. We are currently duoing at 0x8 since we are chockful of AoEs even at flashback level 15. I don't think I'd really make as much of a contribution compared to Build-up, Frost, Burn. Thematically (ignoring the name of the set) Sonic visually pairs well with Grav with the energy like shields and effects. Electric Affinity could be interesting as well. Very early speed boost like with Energizing Circuit (although just ofr 5 seconds), a heal with Rejuvenating, and a low level damage buff with Empowering Circuit. Just 30% so a bit less than both -res from /Sonic, but one of those -res would be ST while the damage buff means her AoEs would hit everyone. Pretty click intensive though, and visually not as good.

Why are these procs cluttering your chat? I thought they were relegated to the Combat tab while chat goes into the chat tab.

I'm going to be honest with you. You don't need it. I personally don't stop what I'm doing to go hug the person asking to come hug them for RA and this is a call that is repeated every two minutes. It would be smarter to just try your best and catch as many people in it as you can.

I've had some truly exemplary demonstrations of this with Synapse TFs and one missing mob... Poor little dude was trying to escape the inevitable by hiding in the rafters in the big warehouse rooms. This has happened more than once.

Claws is good for AoE, but SR lacks an agro aura which is why mobs run away from you. Consider a switch to Energy Aura. You'll get an agro aura, good defenses, a heal, and an endurance clicky.

There is a thread about this over the Guide section. I say this because they have all the numbers and the math and actual timed runs. That's where you'll find your answer. Personally I'd go with something like Fire/Claws Tanker even if it's not the most min maxed. It's what I use to PL my alts to level 20. SS is great because of double rage but that advantage is diminished when soloing x8 mobs who will drop a ton of inspirations that can be macro combined into reds. And no 10 seconds of being unable to play.

I'm going to go out on a limb and take a guess based on my own bias, but the reason stalkers are not more popular is that no one, no one, likes runners. Someone over the Stalker forums was mentioning their first baby stalker and how if it was normal for fights to take so long (ok, they had the difficulty at +3 thinking it would be better that way) since mobs would run all over the place making him chase them. That's my experience as well and why I don't play Stalkers. I could be wrong and speaking just out of my own perceived annoyances with the AT, buuuuut...

You do have a bit too much resistances slotted. It's not a huge deal, but if you can lower them by 10% you could reassign those slots somewhere else. As Rad Armor you sweat endurance so Cardiac is not needed. I'd say Musculature. Though it does not add much none of the other alphas really help much in your particular case (resistance based tanker, so don't need help with resists; very endurance positive so don't need endurance reduction; aiming for proc bombs so recharge will hinder those). Slotting for AoE defense gives you little. I'd say keep on aiming towards S/L until you softcap. While it will get whittled fast under defense debuffs it will help against any other factions who do not do that. Slotting for psi/toxic makes sense since they are a weak point of the set, but, you have a shield that doubles as a small heal, plus a second heal, plus Ice Patch. And there aren't many mobs that actually do either. A bit of LoS breaking and Ice Patching should keep them flopping as you kill those troublesome ones (IMO). I've butchered your pretty build all neatly put together for a truly generic one. You get the usual 40% to S/L I aim for, knowing that Barrier will softcap you. You have 79-80% resistances with one stack of the Tanker ATO, 85% with two, and either a third stack or Barrier will finish capping it. Again, the other Destiny Incarnates are not of big use since you don't need heals, or recharge, or endurance. Your single target rotation will have to use Frost - which is a better option than Frozen Fists regardless - so you get both Tanker ATO procs in use be it ST or AoE. Frozen Touch -> Ice Sword -> Frost -> Ice Sword. Small gap. Start over. When Hasten is down (though you do have Beta Decay to whittle the 16 seconds it is down) you can add Frozen Fists. I've skimmed all the slots for endurance since with Particle Shielding (use it on CD both for the recovery and the shield) and Radiation Therapy with a Theft of Essence you should never know what endurance problems are. Keep in mind your original build is solid and you'll do all content with it the way you have it built to your tastes.

I think everyone has said what needed to be said, but just to reiterate: - +3 is a bad setting for early leveling. You won't have the accuracy and they will resist a lot of the damage because of the level difference. I would never go more than +2 myself, and I can honestly say my difficulty settings stay firmly at +1 until level 50 where it jumps to +4. - Soloing with a Stalker does not encourage large spawns though, but (until the patch in the PTS hits) KM is actually singularly well suited for the job thanks to Burst doing 100% crit. In my experience BU + Gaussian + Burst will one shot minions. This tappers off by level 30-ish. - There is a bit of a nuance in making use of the re-hide proc. Because of the time spent traveling between spawns it gives enough time for the proc's internal CD to reset, so I found the best way to use it in an AoE situation was: Build-up, Burst, use normal attacks. When Burst is nearly recharged then use AS. Logic says to use AS immediately after Burst, but then what do we use the Hide proc? It's better to always use AS before our second hardest hitting skill. This may require some muscle training to steep in but it's just the smartest way to do it. With Energy Melee, for example, I'd recommend Total Focus, AS (fish for Hide procs), Energy Transfer (buffed by Total Focus and buffed by the possible Hide proc). With KM it is the same. Outside of starting a fight already in Hide in an AoE situation AS before Burst. In a ST situation AS before KM's T3. This is the wrong forum to say this (:D) but consider something like Fire/Claws Tanker to do early soloing. Mobs no longer run away and you have two extremely potent AoEs before level 20 that make Stalkers green with envy (in return they will annihilate bosses in a way Tankers can only gawk at). I personally find more fun to wade into +1x8 straight at level 15-ish and face a ton of mobs (also more XP and more drops though neither is particularly important with double XP and millions made from merits) than I do killing 1-2 mobs, but this is personal preference.

Hyperbole. On to more pleasant topics. I've tried KM on all ATs and actually leveled them to max. Just like Savage Melee the set has beautiful animations and just like Savage Melee it is hurt by the higher level powers being so bad that the general advice is in not taking them. This is obviously just something that needs a tuning pass but the small team and the LARGE number of issues the current dev team is tackling makes progress necessarily glacial. Hemorrhage was only taken with Stalkers, and the fix to the bug now has the advice in the Stalker forums not to take it. It means the set relies on the T1, T2, and T4 to do ST damage. I shouldn't need to say that such low tier attacks do not good damage make nor should sets have their stronger attacks not taken. I'm half surprised Devastating Blow does not have the same advice given since I feel the same about it. Too much of a wind-up (plus really dumb looking animation), and outside of Scrappers/Stalkers it does not feel rewarding to push that button. The same applies to KM. T1, T2, and T3 are the powers advised to use. This requires only a pass to make the T9 numbers more appealing, but frankly, I don't think that numbers would be enough. The set is just like Claws in the way that its gimmick is super fast beautiful animations (with KM they even visually chain into each other which has an important, non number related, appeal). Imagine Claws being Claws but the last attack is a near three second wind-up? With all the downsides of huge winding up animations, such as the -bad- feeling it invokes when we whiff. The way I found to make KM do decent damage was using quadruple damage procs for each attack and even then it was not spectacular damage due to the fast animation and native fast recharges involved, but as others mentioned above everyone loved and straight out mentioned KM as a fun set thanks to the 100% crit out of hide. Removing this is fine. Normalizing and all, but it does imply the set needs a complete rework.

Enflame has two uses. Drop it on a mob and it is hurt by Enflame while dropping fire patches like Irradiated Ground from Radiation Melee. Drop Enflame on a friendly and it does the same minus hurting the friendly, which basically acts like a damage aura. It's not biggo damage but it is still another damage aura. On a Tanker with an agro aura of their own Enflame shouldn't even make mobs run away. Unfortunately we cannot Enflame ourselves though enflaming an enemy is still an option, but less interesting since the mob dies quickly and we need to re-apply next spawn.

I've only done part of the gold side and, yeah, it's hard, it's slow, and we are forced to stay low level for way too long without access to more powers to help things out. As for the rest you're like me, in a tamer version 😄 I have something like 60+ alts most leveled to 50, but abandoned for the next shiny thing. I rarely return to them though I've re-leveled some of my favorites. Not all factions are problematic. Funny enough Rikti are this huge lore problem but are one of the easiest factions with bland energy damage and practically no debuffs. Then you go and fight romans with their spears and swords and it's touch and go for most tankers to stay up 😄 As for the Fighting pool, yeah, that large S/L resistance boost would mean that with the Tanker ATO you would be capped at least to that, but about Tactics, no. Focused Accuracy gives a large 75% or something resistance to debuffing ToHit which is the real strength of the power. We can sit inside a Hurricane-ing Tsoo sorcerer and our accuracy will barely budge. Tactics does not have this so it's extra accuracy will simply be swiped off. That said it's a semi-niche thing depending on what content you do. Banished Pantheon, Circle of Thorns, Tsoo in Dark Astoria, I think some of the robots do it too. Regarding Ice Patch it's not going to be super important most of the time. In my experience once you're out of Vhaz range (Posi 1 and 2) you then barge through everything until the ITF without being slowed, and thus without a need for Ice Patch. I want to like Ice Patch but after actually using it I find its contribution to my survivability is negligible. Which is very weird since mobs are constantly flopping? But that's what my experience with it amounts to: HP is dipping, I use it, HP continues dipping. I had high hopes it would help against defense debuffing mobs but it did not seem to influence things much. But the difference with the most recent patch is that we can apply it in 1.57 seconds now, not nearly 4 seconds, so it's easy to incorporate it in the attack chain and it lasts long enough where before I would actually weight whether to use it or not. It also has a nice CC component versus annoying mobs like healing Freaks or T9 popping PPs where if they are flopping they are not activating those powers. As for Hover and readjusting you're going to readjust for Frost to hit most mobs anyway, and instead of being body blocked as a ground dweller Hover allows to easily move around. But it's a personal taste and the new Sorcery pool does look pretty attractive. If I could Enflame and Spirit Ward myself I'd definitely pick it up, but as it is I've no pressing desire to use it on someone else.

From what I recall (but it's been so long...) Hibernate shed agro completely so it was a dick move for a Tanker to use it since suddenly boom, wild hungry mobs attacking the herd of squishies. That said if the tank died the result would have been the same, which was what prompted the use of Hibernate in the first place? I was looking at it since I've been messing with Ice Armor builds... and I'm actually impressed. Eve underslotted it's up in less than one minute? Did I read that correctly? How can Ice Armor even be killed if they get nor just a full heal, but the ability to sit invulnerable while debuffs expire 😄

You're most welcome. I was helped at the start so I'm giving back now. Later you'll help others too 😄 Things I would do myself but I'm a workhorse following the same routine, would be working in Focused Accuracy to avoid being miserable against -ToHit debuffing mobs. It wouldn't need to be on all the time but when needed it would be there (yellows are not enough to protect against -toHit, I know, i've tried, even gobbling 2 mediums I was still floored). I don't have the actual numbers for Arcane Bolt since Mids would need to be updated, but with Ice Melee in particular the set lacks a third hitter. Using Frost is because of commodity. Though using Frost works great in the thick of it since it is wide and hits hard enough, when in a pure ST scenario it falls a bit behind due to the long animation time. So, I think yes (but not backed by math). There are many combos like Energy Melee, Dark Melee, and, yes, Ice Melee, where I would look at the build and go hmmmmmmmm, if only I could slot in a Force Feedback SOMEWHERE, but Kick is too weak to use as an attack, Cross Punch is better but requires two powers so I can usually only fit it at level 30-ish which defeats the purpose. Arcane Bolt on the other hand can be fit in as early as level 4 and is now respectable (kinda amazed really, I've ranted in the past how the devs make the pools carefully nerfed so the population rarely uses them and they turned Sorcery into a very respectable source of buffs and attacks). Heck, I've seriously considered asking a friend of mine to do a duo with me where we both take Sorcery..... since we could Spirit Ward and Enflame each other 😆 Despite having said this I have a hard time fitting in Sorcery in my builds. I'm just so used to Fly. Sorcery would nullify two LotG mules straight away which is a turn off and Mystic Flight is not Hover for ease of moving between enemies... though I suppose that role could be taken by Athletic Run and abandon the 3D aspect of Hover.

There isn't much to be done about the holes. That's just how the set is made. But you're protected from S/L and E/N which are the important bits. I didn't want to mess too much with your power picks so I'm not sure I've really improved much on anything. Things to consider: - Splitting Gauntled Fist for double 6% to E/N. - Scrounging slots and using the recently buffed Arcane Bolt (Mids wasn't updated to reflect the buffs yet, which include faster animation times) as an actual attack. Mostly because it has a place for a Force Feedback which would help accelerating all your cooldowns. If this is done it could replace Frost (Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Ice Sword is the rotation I use myself), or allow to proc bomb Freezing Touch (which adds another 130 damage, but then there is a 1 second gap with the previous chain. Instead it could be something like Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Frost, Arcane Bolt. Or maybe use 5 Hectactombs in Freezing Touch and go Freezing Touch, Ice Sword, Arcane Bolt, Ice Sword. You will have to decide what you'd like, but steer off Greater Ice Sword IMO. - There are two floating slots you can use where you'd like.

Well, something got chopped off alright.

It got fixed. So now it's useless on all ATs 🙂