kenlon

What's the proper way to use pet IO sets? Are the MM ATO sets worth using?

The reason that doesn't work is that once you're tough enough to stay alive through anything, then it doesn't matter how much tougher you get. And just about any tanker primary can be utterly invincible to God himself once slotted with IOs. (And since the inevitable comparisons between brutes and tankers come in when the brutes are IOed, this is relevant here.) Also SR is utterly amazeballs/holy-shit-this-would-be-nerfed-on-live on tankers. Seriously, plan out a build in Mid's and your eyes will fall out of your goddamn head.

Pretty sure the Homecoming devs, like the live devs, are not balancing around IOs. Your argument against giving tankers a higher damage cap is invalid.

This build is dirt cheap, relatively. My EM/Inv no-fighting-pool softcap build is loaded down with Winter enhancements to get what it needs. Now that's expensive. You could quite easily go with cheaper sets in your attacks, as long as you slot the LotG and Reactive sets in your defenses, and be super-safe as you level. (And, since you can just buy attuned enhancements right off the AH for the same price as non-attuned ones, you can be at the def cap from very early on, level-wise.)

Forget these patch notes, give us those already! 😄

After reading through the Flavor of the Month thread, over in General Discussion (https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/9495-flavour-of-the-month-level-50/), I was inspired to make characters using the least popular powersets for each AT. For Tanker, that turned out to be Super Reflexes/Claws, but I already have a Claws brute, so I made a SR/Katana instead. And dear sweet Jesus, SR is obscenely good for tankers. Dead easy to slot, requires so little slot investment that you have plenty to use on your attacks, and even with some intentionally less optimal power picks (for concept reasons), he is going to be a BEAST. Just about hits the incarnate defense cap in all categories, and has significant resists to boot, as well as excellent HP regen to keep him up through chip damage. Just standing there, no procs going, no scaling damage resists from low HP, he has the following: 59.6% Melee Def 53.4 Ranged Def 54.9% AoE Def 47.5% S/L Res 29% F/C Res 14% E/N Res 23.8% Toxic/Psi Res 332% regen, 114.3% max HP. Why on God's green and fuzzy earth is SR not more popular? Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.3 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! The Watcher's Eye: Level 50 Magic Tanker Primary Power Set: Super Reflexes Secondary Power Set: Katana Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Fighting Power Pool: Concealment Power Pool: Leaping Ancillary Pool: Energy Mastery Hero Profile: Level 1: Focused Fighting (A) Reactive Defenses - Defense (3) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance (3) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance/RechargeTime (23) Reactive Defenses - Scaling Resist Damage (23) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) Level 1: Sting of the Wasp (A) Hecatomb - Damage (45) Hecatomb - Damage/Recharge (46) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (46) Hecatomb - Accuracy/Recharge (46) Hecatomb - Damage/Endurance Level 2: Focused Senses (A) Reactive Defenses - Defense (5) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance (5) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 4: Agile (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (7) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (7) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 6: Practiced Brawler (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 8: Dodge (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (9) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (9) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 10: Flashing Steel (A) Obliteration - Damage (40) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge (42) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge (43) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (43) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge Level 12: Evasion (A) Reactive Defenses - Defense (13) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance (13) Reactive Defenses - Defense/Endurance/RechargeTime Level 14: Dragon's Roar (A) Mocking Beratement - Taunt (33) Mocking Beratement - Taunt/Recharge (34) Mocking Beratement - Taunt/Recharge/Range (34) Mocking Beratement - Accuracy/Recharge (34) Mocking Beratement - Taunt/Range (37) Mocking Beratement - Recharge Level 16: Gambler's Cut (A) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage (25) Crushing Impact - Damage/Endurance (27) Crushing Impact - Damage/Recharge (27) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (31) Crushing Impact - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (48) Crushing Impact - Damage/Endurance/Recharge Level 18: Lucky (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (19) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (19) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 20: Hasten (A) Recharge Reduction IO (21) Recharge Reduction IO (43) Recharge Reduction IO Level 22: Build Up (A) Recharge Reduction IO (25) Recharge Reduction IO Level 24: Super Speed (A) Run Speed IO Level 26: Quickness (A) Run Speed IO Level 28: The Lotus Drops (A) Armageddon - Damage (29) Armageddon - Damage/Recharge (29) Armageddon - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (31) Armageddon - Accuracy/Recharge (31) Armageddon - Damage/Endurance (33) Armageddon - Chance for Fire Damage Level 30: Kick (A) Accuracy IO Level 32: Tough (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) (33) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% Level 35: Soaring Dragon (A) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage (36) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Damage/RechargeTime (36) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage/RechargeTime (36) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (37) Superior Gauntleted Fist - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/RechargeTime (37) Superior Gauntleted Fist - RechargeTime/+Absorb Level 38: Golden Dragonfly (A) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage (39) Superior Might of the Tanker - Damage/Recharge (39) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (39) Superior Might of the Tanker - Damage/Endurance/Recharge (40) Superior Might of the Tanker - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge (40) Superior Might of the Tanker - Recharge/Chance for +Res(All) Level 41: Stealth (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (42) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (42) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 44: Combat Jumping (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Increased Global Recharge Speed (45) Luck of the Gambler - Defense (45) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance Level 47: Focused Accuracy (A) HamiO:Cytoskeleton Exposure (48) HamiO:Cytoskeleton Exposure (48) HamiO:Cytoskeleton Exposure Level 49: Physical Perfection (A) Healing IO (50) Healing IO (50) Endurance Modification IO (50) Endurance Modification IO Level 1: Brawl (A) Empty Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Prestige Power Dash

I knew you were hunting recharge, but I figure the core of a Tanker is to be able to take hits, and thus any build is going to have to balance hitting the defensive targets needed with taking procs to increase damage. If you decide that you need those recharge bonuses, it just takes you from 42 open enhancement slots down to 37, and you still are better set for tanking than you were before.

This is most intriguing, and has me considering revising my expensive planned Inv/EM build using your layout for the armor powers. (It's moderately ludicrous, and has way to many winter enhancements in it, so it's about 900M-1B, even with prices where they are now.) A couple things, though - one, you saved the build with Invincibility set to 10 enemies, which made me think you'd somehow managed to softcap def with only armor powers and sets, which nearly made my head explode, and two, you can put a pair of Cytoskeleton Exposures in Tactics to get the same end cost and slightly more to-hit without needed to use level boosters on the IOs. MORE EXTENSIVE EDIT: On another look, there's some weird choices in this build. The one that stuck out at me was Maneuvers. You've six slotted it, putting in five of Red Fortune, but all that gets you over putting in a three slot LotG is .09% defense (and, admittedly, .09 less end/s, but end really shouldn't be a problem for most secondaries, once slotted.) Taking those three slots and moving them to Tough Hide and Combat Jumping lets you get two more LotG three-sets. That's 20% regen, 3.4% more HP, and 1.28% defense - and that's with changing the +5 LotG Defense from Tough Hide into a +0, so you can use attuned IOs instead. There's also the aforementioned Tactics slotting thing, and I don't quite know why you put a fourth piece of Aegis in Temp Invuln. There should be plenty of incidental S/L resist floating around in any tanker build that would free up that slot - just putting in the two ATO sets will push you up over 90%, in fact. The only other change you might want to consider, if you're not wedded to getting the Preventative Medicine resist and recharge bonuses, is pulling two slots out of that and frankenslotting it with the Heal/Recharge from all the 50 healing sets (Panacea, Numina, Doctored Wounds and Preventative). This actually gives you a slightly faster recharge and nearly identical heal values, while saving you two more slots. So, here's my proposal for a revised Inv tanker shell- it gets you a bit more defense across the board, still gets you to S/L softcap with nothing but the Tanker ATOs, has higher regen and barely higher HP total, and has a little extra to-hit to boot. And you go from 39 free enhancement slots to 42. The only things you lose are 13.75% recharge (from losing the Preventative Medicine and Red Fortune sets, slightly higher end-drain (from .98 to 1.1/s), +2% damage and 3.8% global EndRdx. Personally, I've always had more trouble getting all the enhancement slots I want for attack powers on my Inv tankers, so every free enhancement slot is golden. Even if it's not being used for your proc monster build, I suspect this sort of template could be very handy for a lot of people, so thanks for putting it out there. Hasted Invuln Template:

This, followed by multiple paragraphs of complaining out how the sound must remain how you want it, or everything is RUINED FOREVER. The irony, she is palpable.

Personally, I think it's hilarious. The way that people stubbornly refuse to grasp the idea that in an eight member team, no single person will be vital is comedy gold to me.

Thanks to these charts, I have now rolled my next set of alts: The Loudest Ninja (Sonic/Ninjitsu Blaster) Doctor North (Battle Axe/Ice Brute) Arbiter's Shadow (Mind/Trick Arrow Controller) Just A Soldier (AR/Traps Corruptor) E9-NEM Support Drone (Sonic/Beam Rifle Defender, also not a nemesis plot, we promise!) Winter Spirit (Ice/Thorny Assault Dominator) Thunderberg (Ice/Elec Scrapper) The Scurrilous Imp (Fire/Fire Stalker) The Watcher's Eye (SR/Katana Tanker) Good times.

Astonishingly, all those points are addressed by what I actually said, which is apparently not what you read. The buffs from any Defender primary (including Empathy) are more important than pure heal-per-second. That doesn't change the fact that a facepalmingly large percentage of the Empathy defenders running around are basically healbots who put Healing Aura on auto and assume they are done. Empathy is a fine set. Empathy Defenders are excellent team additions. "Healers" are not.

You really shouldn't be - people are stupid and want "healers", and by that they mean Empathy. (Never mind that the buffs defenders bring are always more important than pure heal-per-second. . . )

Anyone else looking at the least used power combinations and planning out their next alts already? (Though I'm not doing both an AR/Traps corruptor and a Traps/AR defender. That's just too silly for me.)

Players with +22% to-hit will have the exact same behavior they had before the patch. Nothing changes for them. Nothing. Changes. Therefore, no one can be losing anything. Players who don't happen to have known that +22% to-hit is what gets you fast snipe. or who don't bother to math out builds, gain an attack that can be added into their in-combat attack chains, one that couldn't be used before. Or, they can continue to not use snipes in combat, in which case nothing changes for them. How, on God's green and fuzzy Earth, can anyone be losing anything from this, other than the ability to feel special because they get to use fast snipes and other people don't?

There's a bunch of changes that were made in i25 that were clearly there because of the tiny population of SCORE and (arguably) hurt the game now that there's more people playing it again. But you're literally complaining about the devs making it so that a category of powers that is shared across multiple archetypes is more usable generally without having specific build knowledge, without taking anything away from those who do have that knowledge. Think about that. This is pure "Well, back in myyyyyyyy~~ day" -ism going on here.

Yup, that's about right.

Blasters are more raw damage. Tankers don't need the buff support - a Corrupter/Brute combo is very good, though.

The best accompaniment for any Tanker is a blaster. We have no DPS. They have no survivability. It works perfectly.

True - I'm currently at around 20% fire def and I'm doing reasonably well at plowing through +3 at speed. (With my T3 alpha in, so it's only a +2 level gap.) Still, once I get enough cash to get all the winter enhancements I need to hit cap, I can set up macros/keybinds to combine all insps into reds and go to town. Rather looking forward to that.

Like I mentioned, this is just the initial build I'm aiming for to get basic competence at farming. I'm hoping to get some better builds out of people so I know what to aim for once I have actual cash to put into it. (Hence why I'm mostly using 50 common IOs rather than sets.)

That is way, way too much melee defense. Why are you aiming for so far over the soft cap?

I have a tanker build I want to make. It will cost me several billion, from some back of the envelope calculations. Therefore, I have made a fire armor brute, but since I'm allergic to doing things in the proper, meta way, I made a Claws/Fire. 😄 As he has now hit 50, I'm looking at getting him basically kitted out for farming +4/x8 fire farms - he can do +1 or +2/x8 with his ghetto leveling build, but now I need to kit him out relatively cheaply for his job. I came up with this build for now - the winter sets are the really expensive stuff in here, and I'll probably start with generic IOs in those powers to begin with, putting in the Winter ones as I raise the capital for them. I do have some of the IOs already - the defense uniques from Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor, the Performance Shifter and Panacea Procs, and the Shield Wall +5% res, so I'm not starting from a purely common IO build. I do have about 100M between my various characters that I can pool together to buy/craft IOs, also. Please tell me how terrible this is and why should I feel bad about it: Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.3 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Beeflet: Level 50 Magic Brute Primary Power Set: Claws Secondary Power Set: Fiery Aura Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Fighting Ancillary Pool: Pyre Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Strike (A) Accuracy IO (3) Accuracy IO (3) Damage Increase IO (5) Damage Increase IO (5) Endurance Reduction IO Level 1: Fire Shield (A) Aegis - Resistance (7) Aegis - Resistance/Endurance (7) Aegis - Resistance/Recharge Level 2: Slash (A) Accuracy IO (9) Accuracy IO (9) Damage Increase IO (11) Damage Increase IO (11) Endurance Reduction IO Level 4: Blazing Aura (A) Accuracy IO (15) Accuracy IO (17) Damage Increase IO (17) Damage Increase IO (19) Damage Increase IO (19) Endurance Reduction IO Level 6: Spin (A) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage (21) Superior Avalanche - Damage/Endurance (21) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (23) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (23) Superior Avalanche - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge (25) Superior Avalanche - Recharge/Chance for Knockdown Level 8: Healing Flames (A) Healing IO (25) Healing IO (27) Recharge Reduction IO (27) Recharge Reduction IO Level 10: Temperature Protection (A) Gladiator's Armor - TP Protection +3% Def (All) (29) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3% Level 12: Follow Up (A) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage (29) Superior Blistering Cold - Damage/Endurance (31) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (31) Superior Blistering Cold - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (31) Superior Blistering Cold - Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime (33) Superior Blistering Cold - Recharge/Chance for Hold Level 14: Combat Jumping (A) Shield Wall - +Res (Teleportation), +5% Res (All) (33) Kismet - Accuracy +6% Level 16: Plasma Shield (A) Aegis - Resistance (33) Aegis - Resistance/Endurance (34) Aegis - Resistance/Recharge Level 18: Focus (A) Superior Winter's Bite - Accuracy/Damage (34) Superior Winter's Bite - Damage/RechargeTime (34) Superior Winter's Bite - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (36) Superior Winter's Bite - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (36) Superior Winter's Bite - Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime (36) Superior Winter's Bite - Recharge/Chance for -Speed & -Recharge Level 20: Consume (A) Endurance Modification IO (37) Endurance Modification IO (37) Recharge Reduction IO (37) Recharge Reduction IO Level 22: Kick (A) Accuracy IO Level 24: Tough (A) Resist Damage IO Level 26: Eviscerate (A) Accuracy IO (39) Accuracy IO (39) Damage Increase IO (39) Damage Increase IO (40) Endurance Reduction IO (40) Recharge Reduction IO Level 28: Burn (A) Accuracy IO (40) Accuracy IO (42) Damage Increase IO (42) Damage Increase IO (42) Recharge Reduction IO (43) Recharge Reduction IO Level 30: Weave (A) Defense Buff IO Level 32: Shockwave (A) Accuracy IO (43) Accuracy IO (43) Damage Increase IO (45) Damage Increase IO (45) Endurance Reduction IO (45) Sudden Acceleration - Knockback to Knockdown Level 35: Fiery Embrace (A) Recharge Reduction IO (46) Recharge Reduction IO Level 38: Super Jump (A) Jumping IO Level 41: Char (A) Accuracy IO Level 44: Melt Armor (A) Accuracy IO (46) Recharge Reduction IO (46) Recharge Reduction IO Level 47: Fire Ball (A) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage (48) Superior Frozen Blast - Damage/Endurance (48) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance (48) Superior Frozen Blast - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge (50) Superior Frozen Blast - Damage/Endurance/Accuracy/RechargeTime (50) Superior Frozen Blast - Recharge/Chance for Immobilize Level 49: Rise of the Phoenix (A) Recharge Reduction IO Level 1: Brawl (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Dash (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Slide (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Quick (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Rush (A) Empty Level 1: Prestige Power Surge (A) Empty Level 1: Fury Level 1: Sprint

You haven't actually read the thread at all, have you? People already don't use them - not because not using them is more 'fun', but because TOs and DOs don't do enough to be worth bothering with. And thus your powers feel weak as hell until you can slot SOs (or SO equivalent IOs, of course.)

22 power choices and 67 enhancement slots. Lower level characters are inherently less powerful by virtue of having fewer choices and having fewer slots to enhance with, but there's no good reason why the few enhancement slots we do get are completely useless until level 12, and then they become almost completely useless until level 22. The idea that low level enhancements must be terrible comes from the same design philosophy that brought us "three minions are equal to a hero", and should be discarded just like that was. Let the powers we do have feel reasonably powerful, from the start.