ninja surprise

Even if they just re-skinned some of the bare hand fighting sets so that the shield is on the arm doing the punching, it would *look* like Shield Melee and be way cool.

Sure, or frankenslot some Def/End IOs to max both stats.

If you want an absolutely easy-mode fun toon, go Super Reflexes / Dark Melee. With SR you take all the toggles and 3-slot them with Defense Buff. Take the passives and 2-slot them with Defense. Combat Jumping gets 2 Def Buffs. Your defense is just a fraction under soft-cap and nearly every attack will miss you, easy as pie. 2-slot Practiced Brawler with Recharge and set it to Auto. At 28 you get Soul Drain and 6-slot it with Gaussian's Sync'd Fire Control and you're at 46.79% Defense to all positions and ready to take on the world. (or take Maneuvers and 3-slot it with Defense). Now you get to take every power in Dark Melee and slot them up for acc/dam/rech or with your favorite sets and spend all your time punching everything you see. It'll be great solo, easy and cheap to build, and will do just fine while leveling up. With all the other combos being suggested you have to take a bunch of pool powers and buy tons of expensive sets. Lots of Superior versions you can't even slot until 50. All the resist sets are super expensive to make durable, and the Hybrid sets with half defense / half resist are tricky to build. SR/DM is easy peasy lemon squeezy, fun and easy, and later you can rebuild it as expensive as you want in order to get more recharge, resists, etc. But with either just one set (Gaussians) or one pool power (Maneuvers) you're at max defense and ready to fight. This Hero build was built using Mids Reborn 3.0.5.6 https://github.com/Reborn-Team/MidsReborn Level 50 Magic Tanker Primary Power Set: Super Reflexes Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Flight Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery Hero Profile: ------------ Level 1: Focused Fighting DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(3), DefBuff-I(3) Level 1: Shadow Punch Empty(A), Empty(9), Empty(11), Empty(15), Empty(15), Empty(17) Level 2: Focused Senses DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(5), DefBuff-I(5) Level 4: Agile DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(7) Level 6: Practiced Brawler RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(7) Level 8: Dodge DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(9) Level 10: Combat Jumping DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(11) Level 12: Evasion DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(13), DefBuff-I(13) Level 14: Fly Empty(A) Level 16: Shadow Maul Empty(A), Empty(17), Empty(19), Empty(33), Empty(34), Empty(34) Level 18: Lucky DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(19) Level 20: Smite Empty(A), Empty(21), Empty(21), Empty(31), Empty(33), Empty(33) Level 22: Siphon Life Empty(A), Empty(23), Empty(23), Empty(29), Empty(31), Empty(31) Level 24: Touch of Fear Empty(A), Empty(25), Empty(25), Empty(27), Empty(27), Empty(29) Level 26: Quickness Empty(A) Level 28: Soul Drain GssSynFr--ToHit(A), GssSynFr--Build%(36), GssSynFr--ToHit/Rchg(36), GssSynFr--ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(36), GssSynFr--Rchg/EndRdx(37), GssSynFr--ToHit/EndRdx(37) Level 30: Taunt Empty(A) Level 32: Hover Empty(A) Level 35: Dark Consumption Empty(A), Empty(39), Empty(39), Empty(39), Empty(40), Empty(40) Level 38: Midnight Grasp Empty(A), Empty(40), Empty(43), Empty(45), Empty(45), Empty(45) Level 41: Gloom Empty(A), Empty(42), Empty(42), Empty(42), Empty(43), Empty(43) Level 44: Darkest Night Empty(A) Level 47: Dark Obliteration Empty(A), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(48), Empty(50), Empty(50) Level 49: Evasive Maneuvers Empty(A) Level 1: Brawl Empty(A) Level 1: Gauntlet Level 1: Sprint Empty(A) Level 2: Rest Empty(A) Level 1: Swift Empty(A), Empty(37) Level 1: Health Prv-Absorb%(A), Pnc-Heal/+End(46), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(46), Mrc-Rcvry+(46) Level 1: Hurdle Empty(A) Level 1: Stamina PrfShf-End%(A), PwrTrns-+Heal(34), EndMod-I(50) Level 14: Afterburner ------------

Went digging through my toons and found: Tank: Dark/Dark, level 30 Brute Dark/Dark, level 31 Rad/Rad, level 50 - This was when I swore off Rad Melee and Brutes. Tankers and Scrappers for me, baby! Scrapper Dark/Dark 31 Fire/Fire 9 Also have some matching Doms: Earth/Earth @ 37, Fire/Fire @ 25. Also Fire/Fire Blasters and Sentinel. I realized I just don't like Dark/Dark as much as I enjoy my Bio/Dark. I already have a ton of Ice Armor and Fiery Aura toons... is an Elec/Elec in my future? End my lifelong boycott of Stone Armor? Or maybe my next Scrapper will be Nrg/Nrg since that's possible now? THE POSSIBILITIES

And the occasional glowie-click in a room full of very angry mobs just whiffing away while that glowie's progress bar decays.

That's one I'm somewhat tempted to try, but worry about the lack of endurance recovery.

That Never Have I Ever thread got me thinking - I've never really played a toon with matching primary and secondary very high. I've gotten a Dark/Dark of some sort around level 30. Saw some good builds here recently, I'm going to give those a go if my toon's is a Tank. Abandoned a Fire/Fire Scrapper in the 20's. Never done the other combos. Is there an elemental combo you love playing? The two I'm most likely to go with are Fire/Fire and Electric/Electric. Dark Armor / Dark Melee Electric Armor / Electrical Melee Fiery Aura / Fiery Melee Ice Armor / Ice Melee Radiation Armor / Radiation Melee Stone Armor / Stone Melee

Gonna have to try this. With Willpower there's no armor clickies or pansy self-heals, so it's all Titan all the Time.

It's sad but Fiery Melee on Scrappers just sucks. It's one of the lower damage sets with low burst damage and lots of DoT. Rad armor is eventually good but it's expensive to make it tough. On a Scrapper you have to defeat everything before they defeat you. With Fiery Melee they get a lot of time to whale on you while your damage ticks away at their HP. A Tank is plenty tough enough to sit there getting walloped while the enemies burn. I tried out a bunch of different Scrapper combos, always giving up in disgust, before settling on my Tank version. Rad, Shield, and Bio go great with Fiery on Tanks. Edit: @Galaxy Brain's thing shows it 2nd to last.

I tried a few Rad/* pairings and stuck with Rad/Fire for theme and matching vfx. It's a fun combo and Rad is tough enough to survive while Fire brings the pain.

I don't think Sleeps would be very effective during an AV battle. Not enough time for them to fall asleep before they get attacked again. Do various AVs have resist to immob aside from the PToD? The AV I've had to chase the most is Mary MacComber, but it's hard to remember if/when there were toons with immobilizes, including Blasters. Rommie often runs for the stairs during the computer phase of ITF. Is there a web grenade type temp power? I'll buy that for my tanks and scrappers.

Never have I ever rolled a Stone Tank or Brute. Never have I ever played a Peacebringer. Never led a Incarnate trial or anything else that requires a League. (except the occasional GM defeat where more than 7 people showed up) Never have I ever passed up the opportunity to do Crimson and Indigo's arc and serve sweet justice to every Malta agent I met. Those anti-MHI guys gotta go down!

I like inventing my own builds to suit my goals. But also, I'll see someone in game and think "That looks like fun!" But I've never done an AR/Storm Corrupter before. Is it crap? What powers are good and which are useless? Is it worth six-slotting Hurricane for ToHit Debuff and KB? That's when I'll look for a build and if I don't find one I'll ask about the build and slotting suggestions. It's nice to get pro tips from someone who's been there before.

Some of them ignore the Tank's taunts completely and just run all over with everyone chasing them. If the purple triangles are up then controls are ineffective and the AV battle becomes a virtual re-enactment of A Fly Went By.

There's no need to save salvage except for convenience. On Homecoming the /ah is seeded with millions of every type of salvage, so the economy and crafting aren't dependent on players getting drops and selling them. You can sell everything to a store and then buy it on the /ah for the same price. As far as enhancement values, with ED, there's not a huge difference between slotting a level 25 IO at level 22 or level 35 IOs, or on up to 50. It's a few percentage points of total value and a few percent of enhanced value (with exceptions of course but this is simplified). Not worth stressing over until you're completely min-maxing (for instance with 2 level 50+5 Recharge IOs in Hasten instead of 3 level 50's). A fairly inexpensive way to go is to sell everything. Do TFs and trade the reward merits for Enhancement Boosters or Converters to sell on the Auction House. Then buy Attuned IOs that you can slot at the minimum level they become available and keep them through 50. And then when you respec into a final build you keep them in your base storage to use on your next alt. Eventually you'll build a large library of IOs and enhancements like @Bill Z Bubba and can kit out a new toon without any expense and all new stuff you earn goes into the library. Personally, I have one Salvage thing full of Converters I got from drops and Enhancement Boosters. Three Salvage racks with Rare/orange salvage so I can freely craft recipes from drops, then I sell the crafted IO on the /ah. I have 4 tubs of attuned IOs grouped by AoE/PBAoe, Melee, Purple/PvP, and then all the Health/Resist/Defense IOs. When I'm unhappy with an alt I'll do a /respec, take out all the IOs and put them in the tubs to use on the next alt.

That's only 6 combos, try them all! Then you'll notice differences between the combos, how rugged each feels, how much aggro each gets, and whether you think it's fun. For example, I prefer Scrappers out of those three. Stalkers can do a good burst, but minimal AoE and no taunt effect means chasing down every single foe to punch it. With the Stalker ATOs though you can reliably do fantastic damage. Brutes are aggro magnets but always have to ramp up damage. So every time you enter a spawn and punch the boss it turns around like "who tapped me on the shoulder?" Scrappers, especially with the Scrapper ATOs increasing Crit frequency, can often crit on demand, are always at max damage, and are tough enough to take on x8 spawns.

By definition, if you can't do something, isn't it impossible?

Sure, you and I know TA is awesome sweet but it doesn't fit OP's definition of healing-maximized defender.

What's up for debate is the opinion of what a person considers a challenge or an annoyance. Or if something is just plain impossible it's not really a challenge because it can't be overcome. Nemesis or his Fakes in their bubble, Paragon Protectors in their MOG state, Council Ascendant guys behind their shield, a crowd of Tsoo Sorcerers with Hurricane on, etc, are in the same category: impossible or difficult to hit while in their buffed state. IMHO it doesn't make the game more difficult when there's nothing I can to do make them hittable. It's just a time-sink waiting for the effect to wear off so I can hit them in the face with a stone mallet again. On my All Shield ITF there were times where we had all the aggro in a room. Every attack produced dozens of "Deflected!" messages instead of damage numbers. We couldn't hit them and they couldn't hit us. That's a stalemate, not a challenge. Sure the challenge could be that there's just certain things in game that are impossible for certain ATs or powersets to do. Like my Super Reflexes guy can't take on a horde of Rularuu no matter what he does. They just chew him up. In that case the challenge is to run away fast enough to survive.

This is only true if the tanker isn't using any IO sets and the tank took one of the weaker armors that requires you to take all the primary powers. It is not true at all if the person knows how to build a good tank, skips the useless powers, and gets the set bonuses from IO sets in the attacks that add survivability. It's annoying when I get a "heals only" Defender on the team. This is just sad, laboring under the old mistaken notion that "defender" means "healer". It would be so sad to roll a Dark Miasma or Kinetics that does nothing but sit there and fire off the one heal all day. A Stormie who just runs around throing O2 Boost like there's no tomorrow. Or a Sonic, Force Field, or Trick Arrow who just cries in the corner because they can't heal. Cold is one of the strongest Defender sets and it doesn't really heal, just adds some HP occasionally on top of the ice shields. Buffs/debuffs are better than heals and it's much better to build a fighting Defender than a millstone who follows the team hoping someone gets hurt. Heck, extending this paradigm to make a Scrapper put everything into the Attacks and ignores their armor would make a gimped toon indeed.

Is there any point in adding /8 if you're already on a 8 person team? I finally got around to organizing an all SD ITF and we ran it at +4 defeat all since we were all aggro-magnets. We really did defeat-all, including the Cyst map rooms that only had Romans and no cysts. Team was: Tank Stone Melee <- my toon called Ground Combat Energy Melee Brute Dark Melee War Mace Psionic Melee Electrical Melee Scrapper Electrical Melee Electrical Melee One of the Scrappers DC'd as we exited the first mission so it was the 7 of us from then on. As far as I can recall only the Scrappers ever died and the one who stayed with us was 46 at start and I don't think he had any set bonuses yet. He had a super cool name though: Ohm Depot for his Elec/Shield with a costume that looked like a certain home improvement store employee. We had a blast and it was amazing with all the Shield Charges going on. Defense was always high and but the Romans had high def too, so there were lots of times where we had the whole room herded and "Deflected" scrolled up more than any orange numbers. I had Focused Acc running and still missed quite a bit. Only one person had Leadership. I wish someone had Radiation Melee.

We don't discriminate based on Body, AT, base defense, max resist, or DPS.

I think we should form an all-Shield ITF and give them a taste of their own medicine.

Right it doesn't have end-drain resist, but the Sappers will hardly ever hit you. Neither will Carnies, when they die and do that PBAoE endurance drain. Everyone fears carnies, but you'll be all "eh, lets punch their stupid face masks". BUT if you're worried, just take Elude. Single-slot panic button. If you get drained you do a double-backflip and suddenly it's like you got a Speed Boost, Accelerate Metabolism, Force Fields, and a couple other buffs - you'll be back at the soft-cap, recovering endurance, and running twice as fast as normal, so you're instantly back in the fight and recovering endurance while not running ANY toggles. Or just save a blue insp for emergencies. The other amazing thing about SR and Shield is that since hardly any attacks land on you, you won't get hit with as many mez effects. Like, after playing SR and Shield for years I finally started trying Fire Armor, Bio, and Radiation and couldn't believe how many times I'd get held by the Vampires on Moonfire, feared, or some other funky mez effect because every single mez was landing and could stack enough to hold through the mez protection. BUT the trade-off is that Rularuu and those toxic monsters in the Apex TF get cheap shots right at your HP. If you didn't know, you can go on the Test server, roll your toon, use the chat menu to boost it to 50, give it a crapton of IOs, and then run some missions to see how you like it. That's quicker and less expensive than doing a powerlevel to just try out a powerset. Another super fun combo is Bio/Dark Melee but you need a good/expensive build to soft-cap the defense, maximize resists and slow resist.

There's a few good builds in recent threads. You just have to change the primary to Radiation.