ninja surprise

Same, I teamed and task force'd to get an Invuln/Staff tank up into the 20's or 30's and then stripped and archived it when I couldn't defeat stuff while street sweeping.

Does Willpower do OK against a bunch of ranged enemies? Do you have to be surrounded for the stats to be good, or does it do OK when the critters are spread out?

If you really want the opposite of Stone/Stone, go Super Reflexes / Claws. You'll be super speedy, lots of AoE and still with single-target enough to take down tough targets. You can even skip one of the AoEs and with the two left do tons of AoE.

I can totally vouch for WM/Energy Aura being Strong & Pretty!

Wow, I'd never noticed because it seemed like my SRs never got slowed. No matter how many caltrops those Knives throw! I just verified it on my SR/Elec Tank though. And also surprised myself, I got a temp boost from logging out in Ourobos: That's a nice little buff to recharge and slow resist!

With Invuln you get the standard Taunt sound effects, you can completely turn off the visual effects, and can use any secondary. With Shield, if you make a female toon, the Taunt sfx change from the "Ha!" to more of a guttural scream. It can be annoying. Also Shield limits your secondaries to the one-handed attack sets.

That's just the buff to Tanker AoE and target caps that Homecoming did. I didn't think it affected temps like Sands though, but Shadow Maul has about 180 degree arc so you barely have to aim it anymore to hit max targets when you're surrounded. You can see the Gauntlet effect when you do a single target attack, you'll see little animations on the heads of all the critters around your target, like a bunch of exclamation marks or a sort of sunburst around their heads, that's the gauntlet-taunt. Any Tanker power that draws aggro should have the gauntlet effect as far as I know.

Isn't SR already at or close to max -rech resist? What was the base and what did you get it up to with set bonuses?

Right - Bio needs a lot of sets to be strong. I'll dig out my Bio/Dark Melee build and post it. You'll be able to cap resist to Smash/Lethal, but you'll have defense vs Energy/Neg/Fire/Cold and no debuff resistance. Your heals and absorb are what keep you alive. If you get slowed or a bunch of defense debuffs it's hard to stay alive. So a bunch of super expensive Winters and other sets plug your holes but it takes a long time to get there. I'd be kinda reluctant to do Bio and TW because momentum is kinda unpredictable. If you need a heal or to move when TW decides you need to build momentum you'll be stuck rooted for a seemingly long time. BUT if you enjoy it that's the key! You can be awesome and tank and do damage and have a lot of fun doing it.

This is why I've kinda slid into having a Bio/Dark Melee and Fire/Savage as my two main tanks. They aren't the toughest tanks in the game, but they can still survive if I pay attention and they do enough damage to keep my Scrapper-brain happy.

It's kinda hard to follow the stream of thought... were you on an Ice/Ice Scrapper with a Fire/Something Tank? If so, it's a given that the Tank will take Aggro from a Scrapper, regardless of the Scrapper's powersets. Tanks have the highest threat level and every Tank attack pops an AoE taunt which pulls all the aggro their way. If you were both on Tanks then it just boils down to whichever was attacking the most. Burn + Blazing Aura > Icicles + Chilling Embrace. However, Burn patches don't move, vs your Ice tank can run around and "tag" a bunch of mobs with the double auras to get aggro and pull spawns.

What's that mission called in Ouro?

I never noticed it bink. But since only one ambrosia can be active at a time it was good enough to have the insp tray right next to my attacks so I could click one when they lit up and became clickable.

It does good enough damage. Not so much burst though, but good AoE. I really like Savage Leap with the +Crit proc, then the next 2 - 3 attacks crit too. Word on the boards is that Hemorrhage is defective and doesn't crit properly. I plan to respec out of it and into the other ST attack + Blood Frenzy. But mostly I really like the sound effects and visual effects. It's easy on the ears but still sounds like you're solidly slapping things around, and the big red claw marks on the screen really dress it up. Heck, it's good enough to take down a Crystal Titan!

How's your build coming? You should be able to soft-cap smashing/lethal by now and should be really close to E/N cap with a build similar to this. Burst with three Eradications gets you to the E/N cap. Energy Absorption will cap you if you use it when entering a spawn. My standard flow is to enter a spawn, EA to cap defense. Fight 'till nearly everything's down and you're almost out of endurance. Run to the next spawn (the critters that are left will follow you) and pop EA on the fresh spawn to top up end and cap defense.

I've never been one to try to solo TFs, AVs, etc. It always seemed like one of those things that Uber builds and combos do and I've always been more of a casual player. This Savage/Bio scrapper is vet level 32 with T4 in the Lore (BP), Ion Judgement and Melee Hybrid, but the rest are T3. This toon has a bunch of Winters and Scrapper IOs and is probably my most expensive toon. I was looking at my Accolades thing and noticed I'm missing two of the Freedom Phalanx TFs. Looking at my list of uncompleted TFs was Moonfire. That one's pretty easy so I figured why not? I dropped my diff to +1x8 and hopped in. It went swimmingly, except when I tried to herd a room of Vamps and got held and died. Long story short, I came back, kicked butt, and was surprised when Arkhan was an AV instead of an EB, but I vanquished her and got a fat load of whatever those things are that make you feel good! So this afternoon, looking for a way to keep busy while "watching" a Palo Alto firewalls training webinar I figured might as well see if an Eden was forming up. I LFG'q'd over to Eden, found myself alone with only Woodsman to talk to. He seemed so friendly... all he wanted me to do was defeat 200 Devouring Earth. I can do that! In a classic case of scope creep, as soon as I finished that he wanted me to go save 4 lesser heroes in the big cave behind him. The webinar was still going so I jumped in. But first, I'm no idiot, so I opened /ah and bought a bunch of Essence of the Earths to hold me up against the Titan. I remembered something about that from doing this on Live. Jumped in, started flying around looking for the vertical tubes to get to the bottom of this place. Started fighting some DE's to get more drops... and they drop Ambrosia. I bought the wrong Insps! So I kept fighting and collected a half dozen or so Ambrosias and hoped for the best. First I had to fight that big fat wall.. that took a while. Savage Leap doesn't work vs walls and that's where my Critical Strikes proc was! So I just cycled through Vicious Slash, Savage Strike, and Hemmorage (ugh) and Moonbeam. I pulled out my DE vetpets and we scratched away until it finally fell. The funny thing was that two of the Giant Monsters came up and wanted to fight, but I just ignored them. They didn't hurt me that I could tell. I just stayed in Efficient so I wouldn't run out of endurance. This took a bit less than 10 minutes. Both pets expired and hadn't recharged by the time the wall fell. I did some more hunting on the way to the Mold wall with those two idiot rockheads following me all the way! Luckily there was some kind of slope separating the upper area from the Crystal Titan's realm so they couldn't follow me there. Against the Crystal Titan, I did pretty well until about 3 minutes in my Ambrosia expired right when it did a footstomp and I died. I was surprised to discover I still don't have a self-rez on this dude so I hit Hosp and hoped it was a chamber in the tunnel... but got sent back to the entrance to Eden 😔 I mission-TP'd back to the door, hopped on the AH to buy a bunch more Ambrosias, re-entered, and flew back through the whole entire friggin map to find the Titan again. This time I moved my Insp tray closer to my attack tray and moved the menu thing down so I could see if the insp blinked before it expires (it doesn't that I saw). This time I pulled the Titan down into the mire off its pedestal so that if I died I could use a wakie. My DE vetbuddies and I brought the pain, and I think I defeated it before the buff-pet expired. Nice! Looks like I used 7 Ambrosias, so maybe 7 minutes? I was surprised to see that the Titan explodes into about 5 smaller bosses.. and they explode into tiny minions. I wish Bertha did that! Then I went and freed the stupid heroes who didn't even help me free the other heroes so I tried to lure some DE over to defeat them, then flew off to farm some bosses and get a bunch of Ambrosias to sell and store. Trial finished in 57 minutes with one defeat! I know what I'm gonna do next: Get myself a self-rez!

Ice is like Energy Armor for Tanks - defense + utility. Easy to soft-cap to the big 4 S/L/E/N, and a bunch of utility powers to buff your hit points and endurance. I think it works best with Stone Melee. Stone has fast attacks so you can use your heal in a pinch, and Energy Absorption gets all your endurance back with a nice +def buff to boot. Stone's knockdowns help keep you on your feet. And you can make the Crystal rocks look kinda like ice. Or with Ice Melee, dropping Ice Patch prevents ITF dudes from hacking away your defense. The snooze in Ice Melee's foot stomp helps too. It works just fine for most stuff. Sure, Rularuu will poke you in the eye instead of vice versa, but Carnies and Sappers will usually miss you with their end drain and you can still tank just about everything. We don't know what build that guy in the ITF had, whether he was soft-capped or had resist bonuses. Ice is great for exemping the low-level TFs too. That said, I like it but usually wind up playing my other alts. Right now I'm on my Fire/Savage tank and having a blast. Fire Armor isn't the toughest either but still fun.

Does Melee AoE get classified as Melee or AoE or both? I agree that straight up single target ranged is pretty low... just a couple Crey or CoT standing off to the side throwing bolts. Melee would be anyone who can reach you trying to punch/stab/etc. But then there's all the AoE from melee and ranged, direct and splash damage, coming in from all over. ...What was the original discussion? 😆 And don't Tanks have a boost on top of that, to 180 degrees or something? On my DM tank I don't have to stress about picking a target in the center because the arc's so wide it'll hit everything regardless.

Good suggestion. An alternative is to keep your text in a text editor and paste it from there into AE.

Yep, that's what I do. I make it a very translucent color so it's barely visible. But it still does weird things to some animations like Beast Run, and makes female toons do a weird scream instead of the "Ha!" when taunting. It'd be cool if there were a scale slider on the shield to make it small.

It seems odd that Barrier Radial, with its +Def and +Res buff, also has Ally Rez powers. Rebirth is named Rebirth, which I assume means born again, and does Ally Heal, +Max HP on the Core side, and Ally Heal, +Regeneration on the Radial side. Why doesn't Rebirth do rezzing? Can it be added? That'd be sweet AND thematic.

It's too easy to get carried away here! I was thinking we should really have an electricity-based armor and started brainstorming how to cobble a set together... then remembered there already is Electric Armor 😆

Also, a No FX version of Shield Defense where you just don't have a shield and all the normal attack animations (and female taunt) happen. Conceptually the "shield" could be power armor, force field (aura), magical belt/bracers/necklace, or Monk-type diamond skin... anything besides that massive shield on the left arm.

Yep, you can build anything you want with every enhancement imaginable on test in less time than it takes to run a DFB. If you want to build and play alts that's the place to do it!

Or with set bonuses, since homeboy was worried about end consumption and Weave/Maneuvers is two more toggles to run. Plus you get to see your costume with SR.