Oysterhead

War Mace's two cones aren't enhanceable, but they are already friggin huge for Tanker. Crowd Control is 180 degrees, that isn't a cone its a semicircle! Shatter is supposed to be one of those 'barely a cone, might hit somethings on top of each other' attacks, but for tankers is now a 45 degree which is bigger than some non-tankers normal cones. The leviathan ones are a much narrower though, all 30 degree arcs so won't line up directly with your war mace attacks, but massively larger range at 50' and 60'. Another thing to keep in mind on all cone attacks, they actually hit a bit more than the arc would suggest. The hit calculation works out to hit anyone with a hitbox that overlaps the cone, even if their center is outside of it. It's universal for cones, so they are a a tiny bit better than expected, but that 180 degree one for example can literally hit stuff standing to your side, as the cone will slightly overlap their hitbox and register. With enough recharge though, War Mace handles area attacks very well on its own, so even if you did grab a bunch of those Levithan ranged cones, you might have difficulty fitting them all into an attack chain as you'll be able to near exclusively cycle through the three WM ones instead.

I think (only about 80% confident though) that arc increase is specific to the tanker changes that increases them. Range enhancements don't increase arc, nothing does except that tanker bonus. Things with arc excluded here do not benefit from that bonus, those with it listed, do. Also worth noting, not all tanker cones are melee cones, so some do benefit from range increases! Frost in Ice Melee is a "close cone" and takes Ranged AoE enhancement sets, and its range will increase (but not arc). Breath of Fire too in Fire Melee. (Looks like the Kinetic Melee Repulsing Torrent is Ranged Cone and does as well) Then obvious ones like Throw Spines are straight up range AoE so accept range increases, though Shockwave in claws is considered a melee cone despite having a base 30' range, but still accepts range enhancements. So yea its not very consistent and City of Data is going to be your best bet!

I'd recommend rad for end game. My rad armor tanker is still to date the most enjoyable, having unlimited endurance on top of maxxed resists and a hefty nuke is great. EA is good but won't ever be as sturdy and requires a lot more work to hit the unlimited endurance. Rad Armor lets you keep your travel power, every toggle you can find and focused accuracy all going and still just ignore your blue bar all together.

Willpower has very little (if any?) DDR (Defense Debuff Resist) so it'll cascade fail very fast. Invincibility has considerably more. SR has by far the most. Ageless Radial will help with that though if its important to you! ITF is specifically the place that'll hit you with def debuffs the most.

10 is the same or larger radius than Frozen Aura has for melee (8 for stalkers, 10 for scrapper/brute/tanker), but is less than what Foot Stomp gets (15 for Brute/Tanker). 10 is also what Rad Melee (Atom Smasher) and Psi Melee (Mass Levitate) get for their capstone PBAoEs. Foot Stomp does get a radius increase relative to the others, probably because SS is entirely Single Target for damage besides that.

You are massively overslotted on everything. In that, you are putting things in that are doing nothing: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification More than 2 level 50 IOs of any single type are essentially wasted space. You have no accuracy, so must be missing a ton. Do you want to use IO sets or just regular IOs? If regular IOs: 1 Acc, 2 damage 1 recharge 1 end redux, maybe a 3rd damage if using these 50s or a second recharge, in attacks In your toggles, 1 end redux 2 resists, maybe a second. Put stuff in your inherent! Stamina needs an end mod IO at minimum, that'll be a help. I could work on a set IO build for you, do you have a specific budget to work within? (Also, I am assuming you are Phasio in game? I think I sent you the mids link in game and told you to post here 😉 This is almost that hah)

It made more sense back when Stalkers were first out. I kind of recall Ninjitsu was even considered the premier Stalker set at the time? Stalkers also weren't very impressive back then 😃 It was very much assassinate, placate, assassinate, poke at things a bit and wait for placate to come back up. Ninjitsu gave you an additional placate and caltrops could let you snare things, run away, drop into hide and come back to assassinate. Before Assassin Focus stacks were introduced, Stalkers played very weird. It was an entirely legit strategy to just stand in place for 8 seconds and wait to go back into hide... and lots of stalkers did it. It was probably better to just scrap still, but that was the only way to get the big numbers!

Yea, the Stalker Ninjitsu is underwhelming for certain. The changes from Scrapper: Shinobi-Iri gone to make room for Hide. Makes sense, Shinobi-Iri is the 'almost-hide' power, but it has 3,38% M/R/A defense, where Hide has 1.88% to all defense. So Stalker is down a bit of Defense. Seishinteki Kyoyo (the +end click) is dropped for Caltrops. That +end click is one of the more attractive items in Ninjitsu in my mind on scrapper, so that's a big loss. Caltrops does add some area damage for stalkers, though its slow. Bo Ryaku dropped for Smoke Flash. Not only is this the KB protection, but 7.5% resist to all. So Stalker is down more survivability. An extra placate / escape was more attractive in the old style of stalker play, perhaps some of the stalker Ninjas still find this useful, but with chance to hide ATO, this is pretty meh in my mind. Scrapper Ninjitsu lets you be an almost-stalker, getting from Hide crits and some heal and end recovery that isn't reliant on enemies being nearby. Stalker Ninjitsu is very thematic but numerically inferior at just keeping you alive and on your feet.

I'd say the biggest thing to know about Spines these days is that: It still has redraw, and lacks any no redraw option. And the redraw is pretty lengthy (not staff bad, but noticeable) So for optimal performance, you want to reduce that as much as possible. Electric armor isn't bad, mostly all toggles and auto powers, so only Energize, Power Sink and Power Surge (if you take it) will force you to redraw again. Spines makes a good case for Willpower because then you never have your secondary in the way. I think Spines is still a strong, fun set. You have lots of attack utility, more than normal in a melee sets. You get a range, range cone, melee cone, PBAoE, and Damage Aura (double with elec armor!) and the two base ST attacks are quick. Spines should work just fine on either brute or scrapper. I think the armor sets are a larger deciding point than the primary sets between the two, and Electric Armor is far better on Brute if that is what you are looking at (scrapper elec armor has no taunt aura and its 75% resist cap makes an all resist set far less attractive) , though if you throw tanker into the mix, Spine on tanker is good too, and the area attacks get A LOT better. Tanker has higher target caps, increased area sizes (Ripper and Throw Spines both go from a 90 degree arcs to a 180 degree!) though lower damage numbers. Spine's strength is hitting lots of stuff at once, and Tanker does that better.

Despite its name, it was never a toggle or buff or debuff, it's just an attack. Frozen Aura is also the final power for Ice Melee for Stalker/Tanker/Scrapper/Brute, as Nemu said, its pretty much footstomp with a sleep secondary effect rather than knockup. Its PBAOE, so if you are in melee, I imagine its very worth taking.

The difference between the two is whether stuff wants to stick around, and specifically to you. Damage, or even just walking past, gets you on enemies' aggro list, however, taunt effects specifically make them focus on you over all others. Something that is taunted won't run away, which is the classic argument for a brute over scrapper, as chasing down runners is annoying. Very apparent in group play too when no one has an taunt aura of any sort, I see it a lot in SBBs, the bosses run all over the place even if you have one of these damage auras going. If you had a taunt aura, they'd stick in place. Or even today I was running a TF as the only melee, as a Rad/Ice scrapper, they all expected me to tank, and I had the defense to do so, but I couldn't keep anything focused on me, I'd stand in the middle of a pack of enemies and they'd keep turning to smack the ranged folks.

I'd recommend proc-bombing out Ground Zero but still using Radiation Therapy for Heal/End Mod. Ground Zero heals others but not you, and is primarily a -def debuff to enemies with some damage. If you slot GZ for healing, which is relatively small for its very long recast, you'll maybe be able to save someone once in a blue moon. You could slot for -def debuff, but its base -15% with 10 second duration, which your enhancing won't do much for. Each proc % though is more than a 100% increase in damage, and fully slotted with procs it becomes nearly a nuke/second judgement power. Even if you enhance its recharge some, it'll be at max proc chance. Then have Rad Therapy as your 'click when you need health/end' power!

The tanker sets across the board, at least as of i27 page 1 that is in Mids, have a Mag 4, 13.6 second taunt in all auras. So some sets get multiple (Ice has 2 for example), but Invuln and Shield kept their 17 second in mids. In game though, they all look to scale from 0.8s at level 1 to 14.96s at level 50 (checked shield, fire, WP and Rad tanks to confirm) Edit to add: Looking at the way the taunt auras for tankers are now, I think WP actually has the strongest single one. WP was coded as a flat mag 3 taunt, no duration, which I think means when the aura is no longer on something the taunt is gone. But when it got normalized, a mag 4 duration taunt was added on top, so things in range would have mag 7 taunt on them? If above mag 4 even matters. Not as good as Ice's 2 mag 4s, or Rad/Bio pumping out additional taunts built into all their area PBAOEs.

That's interesting, I hadn't realized how much a variation in how the taunt auras worked existed. All of them have a Mag 3 taunt, but they last drastically different amounts of time. A list, mostly for my own benefit: Bio: Evolving Armor: 13.6s Dark: No Taunt Aura Electric: No Taunt Aura Energy: Entropic Aura: 2.3s Fire: No Taunt Aura Ice: No Taunt Aura Invulnerability: Invincibility: 17s Ninjitsu: No Taunt Aura Radiation: Beta Decay: 13.6s Regeneration: No Taunt Aura Shield: Against All Odds: 17s Super Reflexes: No Taunt Aura Willpower: Rise to the Challenge: 1.25s Invulnerability and Shield have the best by a lot. Even if you are moving around, things you touched with the aura will funnel towards you for a while. Rad and Bio pretty close to those, with Energy Aura and Willpower functioning essentially only as long as you are standing next to something. Move, or something gets knocked back and it'll forget about you.

Cold could be an option too? Though it has no -ToHit either (it does have the shields though which work out only slight less in value but more consistent) Its more late blooming, Benumb, Sleet and Heat Loss are its final three powers that do a lot of the heavy lifting and overlap with what rad could do. Benumb is single target -500% regen, so your AV hitter. Sleet is a big target AOE, -30% resists and -22.5% def, and can be made permanent / up every pack, heat loss is another target AOE, and as a debuff is up less often but does -30% resists. Single target Infrigidate is another -30% defense. You'll also max out -recharge without even trying, its on esssentially everything cold does. Against a single AV it'll be close to Rad, but no -1000% regen from EM Pulse. It also won't have -regen for multiple stacked AVs like Rad can do. Also getting Benumb perma takes a lot of recharge, so if fights last longer than 30 seconds there could be a period where the -regen is off. Rad is tough to beat from a numbers perspective, the others trade off for easier use.

What Warboss said, small amount of grey bar on your health, and you should also see +### in white/grey text pop above your head when it procs, though that can be crowded out in busy times as well.

Not having Ice Patch on Ice Melee seems heretical to me, but beyond that this looks pretty good. I'm building up an Ice/Bio stalker myself right now, more of a standard build than the psuedo-defender style setup you have with building towards stacking -res, which seems like a fun playstyle potentially. But all the more reason given the lower defense outside of Unleash Potential to look at Ice Patch? Ice Patch is massive. It'll do more for survivability than any IO set of defense or resists., and only requires the single starter slot to be fully effective (with haste and global recharge you can have 2 ice patches out with only 1 recharge IO slotted) One Ice patch can keep a whole pack of things on its back. Drop it at a choke point and run things through and you can thin out a big pack. It's one of those things you won't need to use often, but when you can make use of it. I am not certainly exactly what in your build I'd drop to make room for it without losing the original concept. Maybe Unleash?

Pulled together a 'budget' build that shows how powerful Bio is. This uses no superiors, no purples, no winter sets at all. You have to remember that Bio is a true layered set, resistances are not the be all-end all for this. Bio features mid to high defense, mid to high resists and huge regen, plus an absorb shield. You won't get hit too often, and when you do it won't be too much, and it has to break through an absorb, and then regenerates you back up very fast. Also keep in mind the Tanker ATO gives a chance for +resist all, and in combat for a bit you'll typically be at ~+11% higher than these numbers show. Also this has the scaling resists IO, so if something does start to break through your shield and health, your resists scale up more. It was honestly hard for me not to push S/L way, way, way over cap. This could have hit 110% on those without much trouble. Also Genetic Contamination is doing -10.5% damage to everything in range. This is with tough toggled off, as turning it on just goes way over cap, and with 10 mobs in range of Enviromental Modification and Ablative Carapace on. That regen is very good all on its own and you'll have roughly a 60% absorb shield on you. Ablative recharges in under 30 seconds. Here is if you hit 10 targets with DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura (which are 36 second and 90 second refreshes in this build) Numbers didn't change except your regen is now 1150%. You're also capped on recovery. Parasitic Aura has just done another -14% damage to those 10 targets, so they are now hitting for 76% of their normal. Here's the build, this isn't probably fully optimized, I was making some arbitrary / not normal choices just to juice the resists a bit higher on E/N and F/C. Were I doing this for myself I'd sacrifice more of that, proc bomb DNA Siphon and Parasitic Aura and rely on the regen. If you have the cash for purples, superiors, winter sets, everything gets considerably better. But this makes a good starting point! Also has no incarnates selected. I also didn't take taunt, you should probably take taunt. I'd drop Manuvers and shift Build Up to 49, the whole fighting pool and leaping pools and take taunt around 14 otherwise. Budget Tanker - Bio Armor - Electrical Melee.mxd

Mind: Mass Confusion, level 32, Targeted AOE (range 80), 240s base recharge, 37.25s base duration Electric: Synaptic Overload, level 26, Ranged Chain AOE (range 80), 60s base recharge, 27.94s base duration Ice: Arctic Air, level 6, Toggle PBAoE, No recharge, 3.7s base duration Plant: (I assume you meant plant when you said Wind? There's no Wind Control) Seeds of Confusion, level 8, Cone AE (Range 50, 60 degree arc), 60s base recharge, 37.25s base duration Mind comes latest in the sets but is very good, you'll need a lot of recharge to have it up every single pack, but doable eventually. You'll spend a good bit of your leveling with just the single target confuse though, and when exemplaring to older content won't have this. Plant, the confuse essentially defines the set. You'll have it almost immediately, and with just a few enhancements in the power itself it'll be useable every single fight. As Psyonico implied, the range of Plant means you'll be getting to where you are in aggro range, not a huge deal as you'll confuse most of them soon after, but you it is riskier to use. Misses mean things could well turn and attack you. Electric is between those two, comes sooner, same range as Mind, refreshes such that you can have it up every fight. The chain mechanic makes it slightly less predictable in what it'll hit, but not a huge deal? Ice is very different from the other three. It's a self based toggle, so it'll confuse stuff you've already engaged in and its duration is short enough that if you move, they stop being confused. Good if you plan to be in the thick of things, but where Electric and Mind can confuse from a distance, and Plant skirts the edge of the encounter, Ice has to jump right into the middle to make use of it. From what you've described as enjoying, I'd probably rank Ice as the least impressive of these. If confusing things is your primary motivation while leveling, Plant definitely. If you don't mind waiting, and want to sit back and watch chaos, Mind or Electric. If your play style has you in the heat of things, and you like Knockdowns as much as Confuses, Ice!

Managed to gather up enough cash (using the character you helped me plan a build out for!) to do this as you laid it out, with all the IO sets along the way. Hot damn this is a fun combo. Just solo'd Synapse at x6 without a problem (well, until the king, needed to go buy some envenomed daggers to finish that off) at level 30. Very much enjoying this, thanks for the detailed write up!

I run a Rad/Ice tank as my primary character and love it. Ice Melee is very good, it never has huge individual hits but Frozen Touch and Frost both are very fast dots that do great damage, and Frozen Aura is all that Foot Stomp greatness but with ice. Ice Patch is such an amazing survival tool and goes well with it all. Rad is very strong, and Ice Patch does a lot for cover the tiny holes to psi and ice when needed. Should be ever bit as good on a brute, though Frost will be slightly less impressive.

120 degree cones are so nice, so I'd struggle to not take Power Crash. It's really fun when you hit stuff essentially standing to your side when attacking something in front of you (because of the way hit boxes overlap with the cones).

Much appreciated to you both! I did a respec this morning, sticky pretty close to Sovena's path, moving a few things around (I like to keep taunt early for exemplar stuff) but the IO set changes look good, gets that much better mix I was hoping for. I've managed to purchase about 50% of the sets, 100M doesn't go as far as I remembered ha. Keeping yours saved Warpact incase I find I need a bigger boost to survival.

Just came back to CoH from 2019, had a level 50 RA/IM that was in a decent starting point that I've been enjoying playing, and want to sink some actual influence into. I've been reading through lots of threads here and looking at slotting advice for both sets, though never the two together. I've come up with the below build, and would appreciate other's expertise! I've combined a lot of Sovera's advice from other threads here 😃 I'm hitting these numbers without the +resistance from Might of the Tanker (though actually running tough, and with incarnates on), so a bit of overkill. Defense isn't as high as I'd like and this is with Maneuvers and Weave on, I figure in teams Defense buffs are very common, and my regen + absorb are great. I have Ground Zero proc bombed, which I'm sure I won't be able to afford for some time, and two procs in Frozen Aura (I could get 6% more psi resist not doing that...?) and I'm just shy perma-hasten with 1 enemy in range (As shown), but over when Beta Decay has on average 6. Anything people would advise to change/tweak? Thanks!

Same for me. I got level 22 in a TF, tried to level, it sort of worked, but then it kicked me out of the level up screen. I waited until the TF ended, logged out, back in, and I leveled up... 21->23->22->24->25->26.