ninja surprise

Exactly. You, as the Tank, are not there to defeat every last critter. And just about any player character should be able to defeat a single mob so you don't have to stay and help. Your aggro cap is 17 and no single spawn will be larger than that. So jump in, pop a PBAoE or two. The critters will fire an attack then start to crowd you. This takes them 2 - 3 seconds, so you have to get to the spawn about 3 seconds before the rest of the team to have them clustered on you. While the team's arresting critters, keep an eye on how many are left. Minions melt first so when it's down to the last 3 or 4 bosses and lieutenants (and they'll be lowish on health already), take off running down the map to the next spawn. You'll typically arrive 3 or 4 seconds before everyone else and the spawn will be nicely clumped and taunted and the team can lay waste. Just watch the team window to make sure everyone's still alive and has some endurance and fly through them maps. If two spawns are close to each other, taunt the second spawn when the first is half gone. Per your points: the Tank doesn't have to know every map or villain. CoH is pretty simple: Maps start at the door and the boss/glowie is at the end. Elevators at the beginning and end of each floor. Some wide open "outdoors" maps or super long cave maps. Boss or glowie or captive at the end. Some critters are more troublesome and should be defeated first, like Sappers, Ruin Mages, or the Devouring Earth that drop those defense-killing poops. It drives me nuts when the Tank thinks they personally must defeat every critter in every spawn and their knockout blow is still winding up while the 7 other teammates already landed attacks on the last critter and it's on the way to the floor.

I have a DM/Ice Brute and although it's untouchable, I kinda wish I'd went Scrapper for the crits.

Yeah, I think I'll go ahead and roll up the Ice/TW toon I'd been thinking about. See ya'll soon!

This is a simple build that gets you soft-capped to the first four positions at level 35 and is easy to customize depending on your playstyle. With the Kinetic Combats, I like to put the Chance for Knockdown into Shadow Punch, Smite, and Siphon Life, and badguys get knocked down fairly regularly, which is always fun. You can even swap out Air Superiority, Dark Consumption, and Permafrost for Boxing, Tough, and Crosspunch for a little more AoE. http://www.cohplanner.com/mids/download.php?uc=1149&c=508&a=1016&f=HEX&dc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

Maybe /Rad for theme? Or whatever your favorite secondary is. Play one on test to see how you like it at 50 before posting it all the way up on live.

Yep Ice Armor is really good, with a self heal, end recovery, soft-capped defense... The only thing to fear is critters with +tohit or -Def powers, like the Crey radiation dudes or Devouring Earth poo piles. But make a targeting bind that finds those and punch them first, problem solved.

By "used to be" do you really mean "lots of grinding" or "heavily populated?" If you're looking for population are you on the busiest server? You'll still never see as many people as Freedom had during the heydays, but there's a decent number of players online sometimes.

I'd love this for Psi and all the Elemental attacks too. Stone Melee never pulls a random dirt sword out of nowhere, it's all stone fists and stomps. I'd love it if on the Ice and Fire melee it could be all fists or all swords/clubs/etc.

How about a sweet new Shield skin for costumes that require something... less obtrusive: The "no shield". Just nothing, for power armor concepts. The force field - a bubble that can be color-tinted. Or an Aura, like the cyborg visor thing that pops down in combat. Bracers of Defense, for recovering D&D people. You know who you are. Or an Amulet of Protection. Or that cool pop-out-rotating Vanguard shield, but it stays tiny. No actual changes to Shield Defense, just some sort of "no FX" version of the power.

It's the same in the Yin TF, rescuing the city council members, you can taunt and defeat all the Freakshow without rescuing anyone until you stand right next to them.

In the "Free Amy from the Red Caps" mission, part of the Katie Hannon TF, please may Amy targetable. Grant her 100% TP resist if a long escort is critical to the storyline. It's just a royal pain trying to keep track of an escort that you can't target and can barely see in tunnels.

What's your secondary and what level are you?

If your keybinds are still mostly default, try this: <tab> then <f> Tab targets, then F follows. You'll wind up right in face-punching distance. Unless they start walking, then you'll follow a few feet behind them, running veeeery slowly like you're mocking their gait.

Because sometimes Energy blasters or /Stormies blow your target away and running takes End.

Pretty sure you'll be fine, and how you enjoy your concept is the most important. You can try making one on test and boosting it to 50 to see how you like it there.

The Croatoa mission arcs have you do quite a few hunts and lots of the critters are in no-mans-land between the neighborhood. And a lot of the neighborhood boundaries are really close to the forests. How about making the Misty Wood a little bigger, gerrymander that sucker so that more of the critters are inside its boundaries?

Did the event twice today: In Croatoa the entire league was at one banner destroying the critters, the bar moved slowly but not enough to trigger the banners. Right after we went to Steel Canyon, spread out to the banners to fight the critters, and we moved the progress bar pretty quickly and got them vulnerable. Then we defeated the banners one at a time and spawned the GM. In Croatoa they kept saying to keep the critters in the circle but there were so many people the critters spawned outside. In Steel we didn't care where the critters spawned and defeated them outside the circle. YMMV?

You're right, Quills crits so frequently I thought they both were, but Icicles never crits 😞 edit: but on the other hand Icicles does 40% more damage than Quills, so unless there's a long streak of crits Icicles still does more damage? Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Fire. You land a critical hit with your Quills for an extra 19.07 points of lethal damage! Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Equinox Parasite. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Galaxy. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Sonic. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Fire. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Force. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Force. You land a critical hit with your Quills for an extra 19.07 points of lethal damage! Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Equinox Parasite. Quills deals 19.07 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Adjutant. You land a critical hit with your Quills for an extra 19.07 points of lethal damage! Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Fire. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Galaxy. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Sonic. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Fire. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Force. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Force. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Equinox Parasite. Icicles deals 27.34 points of lethal damage to Vortex Cor Leonis Adjutant. Icicles missed!

What's wonderful is that there are so many great secondaries so you can pick one that fits your personal taste and playstyle.. and roll up all the others as alts!

It does; my spines/ice scrapper crits with both auras.

I like this - goes with the concept that Regen recovers from any debuff super quick.

I like it!

Yeesh, this games' power sets have a lot of baked-in Bad Decisions™.

Edit: sounded snootier than I meant it. We don't know why there's different quantities for different powers. Regardless, it's possible to change that now!

I think it would be great if the travel pools were available at level 1. Tons of characters I don't care about the 1st power in the Secondary set and I'd much rather grab the travel power at that point.