Onlyasandwich

Great builds, @Bopper! The Proc-heavy Fortunata is very in line with my own build, though tougher for sure. My build foregoes any sort of extra resistance (tough or RoP) in favor of teleport pool. This compromise is really just based on theme (he's a teleporting ninja type guy). I think RoP overall a stronger choice, and I'm sure your Fortunata is much tougher for the investment. Being able to rotate aura of confusion and total domination as needed, and have both of them lock down bosses with the procs is a very strong proactive measure against spawns that you know may test your defenses, or to shut down crazy situations. I have found it to be very effective in practice!

I quite enjoy Traps/ myself, but I think one element at play, especially on Defenders, is theme. Other sets feel more "pure" in their operation, as the power is coming from you conceptually, although creative minds could interpret this however they like. Traps is quite powerful, but none of the powers really make me feel like a superhero. That's actually totally fine for the character I made (Traps/BR), but I can see where it would not be a go-to concept for a broad variety of backgrounds.

Oddly enough, it was the Sentinel thread in General. The character's name is Dead Horse. 😄

Here is the Sandwich list thus far: 50's: Bio/SS Rad/WM Stone/Ice Fire/EM Shield/Savage I have a SR/MA at 40 right now as well. Now that I look at it, I'm not so impressed! I need to up my tanker game. : ) I do have a handful of Brutes, but we all know that doesn't count!

I totally understand the criticisms here! You might well be totally spent on force fields, but I have put together a pretty snappy build for a FF/Energy Defender that overcomes a lot of these troubles. He's procced out, so Dispersion bomb and the blasts themselves are very beefy. All the Knockdown also makes it feel very crunchy as well. I also a lot of Force Feedback +recharge in here, so you can use your best blasts constantly, and the nuke has high uptime. I seldom have end issues with this build. S/L resists are capped out alongside your high defenses. Power build-up is especially nice here, as it does a few things: Gives you more burst damage. Buffs your team shields. Brings you personally to incarnate softcapped defense for the duration One note on Dispersion bubble - you can change the power effect to look more diffused, which may help with the visual issues. Here's the build:

So I've played this fellow up to 40 now, and it's truly a pleasure! As before, /MA is just so fluid to play. SR/ is almost boringly good, to be honest. Nothing gets in its way, and I don't have to push any buttons to make it work - I just sort of do whatever with my attacks and that's it. Now that I have my full end support slotted, I can go about 90% ham and be fine. If I'm spamming everything against tough mobs, I have to watch it just a little bit, but it's very sustainable overall. All it takes is the smallest of outside buffs to enable full spam. Overall, this is a great tanker to play when I want a more meditative experience.

That would be pretty neat, and in line with some other flippy longer animations like Eviscerate. Best case scenario for Eagle Claw is that it doesn't really hurt your attack chain much if you use it in a perfectly optimal manner. Redlynne mathed it out in their thread a bit, and it does save some endurance overall if you play the damage buff mechanic correctly. I like the animation, but the idea is a bit too fiddly for me to mess with.

Thank you for pointing them out! I did research many old threads, including this one. Their choices informed the foundations of my current build. So far this guy is 32 and surprisingly smooth! MA just has a very fluid feel to it, and SR already feels pretty much invincible on +4x8 S/L maps. End consumption is fine, but I have to pay attention. I haven't slotted all of my end support quite yet.

I like Taunt! I usually take it, but it's skippable enough. Here's why I like it: Great way to grab peripheral aggro at lower levels when you don't have extra aoes. Quickly ping group number 2 nearby for lazily sucking in more adds as you like. Really solid set bonuses for taunt sets, even with only a few IOs invested. Lazy way to pull in those stubborn ranged mobs, though not 100% effective.

I do quite enjoy EMP myself! That's just a functional spot I would look if I were really dead set on a travel power. @beradical actually convinced me to go all-in on chocking cloud, and I found that it was really effective! I'd love to hear how you are liking it. It's nice that I can just keep it running without recasting, and it does a surprisingly great job of locking things down. Shout is a bit of a long cast for sure. To me, it really came down to wanting oooone more consistently available big punch power outside the proccy hold. Shout is basically it! One upside is that the long animation does help with proc chances. You could also choose to shift the purple damage proc to screech instead, which turns out okay when procced, and has a faster animation. Personally, I found Shout to fit in better with my typical attack cycle.

I'm glad you are enjoying the build! With AM running perma, I don't find it too much of an end sucker, but I can see where you might go dry with all toggles running and full spam in a longer fight. Don't be afraid to be more selective about what toggles you run depending on the situation. You're probably going to need them all solo, but can cut down fighting pool toggles pretty often on a team if you have other safety nets. World of Confusion especially is really only there for set bonuses - in practice it is just a silly toy. If I were to identify a power to drop for travel, it would be either RI Or maybe even EM pulse. You could take the EM pulse slots and slot some Zephyr to make up the ranged defense bonus, and put the other slots elsewhere as you please. Ultimately, I don't mind going without travel these days, though still take them on characters that demand it for theme, or where muling travel powers is especially helpful. To answer your questions: 1 - The -res from all sonic attacks stack, even with themselves. You can Shriek >Shriek>Shriek and even each successive Shriek will stack with the last. 2 - Howl is a little disappointing as an attack, it's true. If you compare it to other aoe -resist powers though, it's much more favorable. Think of it as an aoe -resist that happens to do some damage. It isn't ignorable damage, but you won't be melting crowds with it alone. It sets up your nuke for even more power, and helps the team chew through spawns more quickly.

Do you have any insight as to why this might be so hungry? From what I see, SR actually has slightly lower end consumption numbers than other primaries. The armors are the same cost and there are no more of them to run, and it has no damage aura toggle with higher end to pull it down further. Edit: Oh haha, you were referencing Dark/MA. I am loopy. The character is going to be SR/MA. : )

I was inspired by a rant thread in general and am ready to make a new tank! I've been eyeing SR/ for a while, and /MA fits the theme. SR/ is one of the few primaries I have not yet touched on a Tanker. It sort of builds itself, and offers a lot of flexibility, but I'd love to both share the build, and invite any criticism you may think of. My goals here: Reach incarnate softcaps for all positions (or close enough), but allow myself to lean on Storm kick for that extra push. Procs procs procs! I'm certain you can go a little more all out than I have here, but I value the set bonuses ATOs bring to the table here for some baseline resist and other benefits. As much +recharge as I can squeeze in while doing this. Use Fold Space! I've been looking for an excuse to use it, and it seems sensible to put it on a Tanker. Areas of my build I question: Darkest Night vs Taunt? Taunt would give me a little more S/L resist from potential set bonuses, and I like Taunt as a power, but DN is thematic for this character and provides blanket aggro as well as a further layer of protection when needed. Healing? Is it worth sacrificing a slot for the Power Transfer heal? I could do without Kismet. This is probably pretty marginal either way. I'm not pursuing the medicine pool - I guess I could go Rebirth if needed. Scaling damage resist. Do I have a strong enough baseline to give this a window to kick in properly? It seems in line with other builds I have reviewed, but I don't have first-hand SR experience to know for sure. End usage. It actually seems pretty okay to me. Do you find SR/ an especially thirsty set? If you have any special tricks you like to do with any of these powers, I'd welcome the input. Edit: I have updated the build. Current iteration switches Darkest Night back for Taunt, and uses those slots to fill out some little bonuses across the board (extra end slotting, power transfer heal proc, some little set bonuses). I could just as easily keep DN as well and use it as a one slot wonder with an HO. Still not 100% on that level 49 pick.

Pretty much, I think! Obviously ATs with better survivability will do this better, but it is true that anyone can tank with Provoke if they can survive well enough to use it. They won't tank as well as someone with built-in taunt effects, but it works.

Ooh, that's a great idea! Dark/MA is the ticket, I think, though I've been wanting to go SR on a tanker lately. Maybe I can stand sacrificing theme a bit. : )

Inspiration - let's have a battle of dead horses! Or is this just going to be a new alt? I'm not even kidding - Dead Horse was available on Everlasting! Done and done. I'm thinking my first Street Justice stalker. Do you think horses are more stalky or scrappy? I don't see them as Tankers, being a prey animal. On the other hand, being dead and all, they could take quite a beating. Hmm...

I love you folks, but this topic is run through at least once a week in the Sentinel forums, and is about the deadest horse that can be beaten in HC-era CoH. I don't think anyone here is trying to start anything, but all of these threads end up in more or less the same place. There have been some creative suggestions in the past - perhaps a thread in the suggestions forum might be in order to consolidate useful ideas!

Support radial is okay, but doesn't have a lot to offer a D3, who is already pretty unhittable due to debuffs and baseline defense. Control Radial could be more interesting. The extra mag to fear bosses would be pretty neat. The mez resist is sort of marginal, but useful. The Psi damage proc isn't a lot, but useful as well. I would actually recommend Assault Radial over all of these. The proc damage return on this will be better return than Core on a Corruptor, and the best-case usage is even better, as this allows you to reach beyond the damage cap, whereas core just brings you closer to it.

Ice is an excellent blast set, and I believe it still stands as one of the blast sets that especially shines on Defenders. A few reasons why: Procability - the slow smashing proc for every power adds a bit of extra oomph, and this is a better % improvement on a Defender than a blaster or even corruptor, who would benefit more proportionally more from base damage enhancement. Secondary effects - The slow itself is more powerful on a Defender, and is somewhat meaningful in practice. Unique Nuke - Blizzard is very flexible in placement compared to other nukes - being able to nuke from around a corner is quite nice. As for the powers, they all have their place, but here is a brief review: Ice bolt - One of the better T1 blasts, and you're forced to take it. Drop some basic enhancement with a couple procs on top and it's not too shabby. Ice Blast - I skip this, much like most Defender T2 blasts. Useful for early level attack chains. Frost Breath - A very solid aoe, and highly procable. I like a little baseline acc/dam and add procs to fill it out. Works well enough traditionally slotted if you need the set bonuses. Aim - It's Aim. I usually take it, but you can skip it if you want. Freeze Ray - Set-defining power. Super strong proccy hold with higher base damage than other holds and very fast activation. Similar to Frost breath slotting for me - some Acc/Dam or Acc/dam/end baseline, with procs to fill, including two purple procs! Ice Storm - A great aoe, though obviously with the drawbacks of any rain power. A good place for those big sets like Artillery, as rains are less desirable for proc damage. Bitter Freeze Ray - Doesn't have much to sell itself beyond what Freeze Ray already does. I don't see a good argument to take this. Some people really like double-stacking holds, which is fine, but even then an epic hold would be better. It's usable if you really want to stack holds and stay in theme. Blizzard - Beautiful nuke. Can handle whole spawns with ease, and keeps them knocked down as well. Pop it on a mob and carry on with your day. Another great place for full IO sets.

No bind is really applicable for Poison Trap, as it just casts at your feet. Fortunately, it also casts super fast. Use the powexeclocation command set to Target for Whirlpool. Example: bind e "powexeclocation Target Whirlpool" A few notes for the final build: I would heavily advise accuracy in Weaken. It is not auto hit, and does not have strong base accuracy. For this reason, it is much better suited to accurate tohit debuff sets than regular tohit debuff like Dark Watcher. There is no good reason to slot panacea and miracle in an dehydrate instead of health. Health will guarantee they tick even when not firing a power. Dehydrate is a good attack, and it is a shame to see it neglected as such. You have hit aoe softcap defense, but no others. Aoe is probably the least important vector to softcap. If you are focusing on an aspect of defense, melee and ranged are much more important, or Smash/Lethal/Energy if your powers are better suited for slotting in that direction. Poison Trap is not really a great power if you are underslotting it and just using it as a hold. I still think its better than NTB in that case, but its true power comes from filling it with procs. I see that you dropped Water jet, and Spirit Shark Jaws is only slotted as a hold (no damage procs). Water jet is your bread and butter single target in /Water. Even with it, the set suffers without a good punch in a proccy hold. Without it, you will take an eternity to kill harder targets. There is no reason to use the deflated ego recovery debuff in any build, but especially not this build. You could potentially make an edge argument for it in a sapper build with /electric, but you don't have any sapping ability, so this will do literally nothing. You still have a lot of odd choices that I would not make in the build, but do what you enjoy! You have seen my previous input and I'm sure accounted for your own preference.

I don't worry about softcap on any of my dark miasma characters, but can appreciate why someone would. It's nice to have a solid baseline to fall back on if you are targeted by adds, or mobs otherwise outside your debuffs. For me, fearsome stare is the most consistently used -tohit, as I am applying it every spawn both solo and on teams. Darkest night is there for solo work or blowup situations, but you have to anticipate the blowup a bit to account for the long animation. Dark fluffy is great, but not always in position to apply his debuffs optimally.

I think you'll find it very strong! It's definitely not bad to enhance the heal, but those accurate tohit debuff set bonuses are hard to deny.

I put together a build that represents broadly where I would go if I kept the spirit of your build. There is 100% further optimization to be done here, but hopefully some of the choices shown will be helpful to you. Note that this build leverages procs heavily. Both aoe and ST damage as a result are much higher overall. I don't prefer the Bastion ATO set in whirlpool, but it is a practical compromise in this combo. If this were purely my own character, I would remove School of Sharks entirely and cannibalize those slots to round out bonuses elsewhere. I know I said that coralax was overslotted, but I did keep it at 6 just for the sake of some set bonuses. Again, this is by no means a final version - I suspect we could eke out softcap ranged and maybe some other bonuses with some extra iteration. The philosophy here is to focus on ranged defense as much as possible without sacrificing much damage. You can typically allow your debuffs between VG and Weaken to make up the difference. You don't have great melee defense, but there again you will be hitting poison trap to mitigate melee, and VG will be within range to debuff melee at all times. There are a few powers that were taken basically just to mule a single IO (Alkaloid and Elixir) and save precious slots. If you dropped school of sharks, you could mule the absorb proc into Hibernate instead, and actually have a useful power instead of Alkaloid. Meanwhile, Elixir does get occasional use. This build is begging for Musculature Radial, and most likely Clarion in incarnate land.

May I ask what priorities you are focused on in your IO slotting? I see some various investments in different types of defense, but it's a bit all over the place. From a power choice perspective: If you are grabbing a hold, Spirit Shark Jaws is a much better hold than Paralytic Poison. It is more proc-friendly, and has a faster cast time. /water lacks in single target punch, so it is really worth proccing out a hold for damage. Poison Trap isn't a game-breaking power, but I think it's a mistake to skip it on Poison. It is more powerful than NTB, and can be a very effective proc bomb, as it takes a bajillion of them and has desirable recharge stats for it. It also provides a more consistent aoe control effect, though neither are amazing at this. Healing your Coralax is a losing battle. Alkaloid is a weak heal, and will take more animation time than it is worth. I would only consider alkaloid as perhaps a mule for the absorb proc. Steam Spray is one of /water's all-star powers. It has excellent damage, a wide cone, and provides extra proc opportunities for more damage - especially useful on a defender. I would consider picking this up. Easy drops would be Alkaloid, antidote, or even NTB. I think NTB looks fun (vomit, woo!), and works sort of okay, but the cone is too narrow. I would pick it up if I had powers to spare, but it's very second tier in my book. There is much more that I would personally change in a full rehaul, but here are some observations on current slotting: The deflated ego recovery debuff proc is not useful at all. Same goes for the chance for recharge slow, both in Venemous Gas. The achilles is okay here if you have nowhere else for it, but you already have it slotted in more effective powers like dehydrate, and steam spray would be good for an aoe option. VG is strong as a one slot wonder with a tohit debuff/end enhancement of some type. I like using an HO myself. You have over-invested in Coralax. It's a perfectly fine pet, but APP pets are not very durable, and investing the extra pet aura IOs isn't going to make a lot of difference. The absolute amazement in geyser is a waste. The proc especially is going to wear off before the stun does anyhow. The extra bits of psi resistance thrown in with IOs aren't adding up to anything useful. These slots would be better served in something like filling out Steam Spray if you grab it. Shark Skin is underslotted for resist, even though you have five slots in the power. You could leverage the Defender ATOs better. You are one shy of six slot easy recharge bonus in aqua bolt, and the achilles has very bad proc chances here. You are also not using the other ATOs at all, which provide a great split 3 slot recharge bonus, and the other ATO proc provides an excellent extra layer of absorb in your attack chain. Overall, this build will probably get along on the strengths of defender modifiers for poison's strong baseline power, but I would advise choosing some specific goals and focusing on them for IO investment. Power choice is always going to be personal to a degree.

I have always had bad experiences with Razer products. I used a copperhead myself back in the day before it broke far before its time. I also had a headset that got all loose and droopy in short order. To their credit they did refund me the rather expensive purchase price. After the copperhead I grabbed a classic logitech g9 mouse and still use it to this day. The damn thing has survived 15 years of heavy gaming in perfect working order. It's too bad they don't make this sexy beast any longer, but they still have some good mice.