Unleashed Nerfage

[Xev]

I keep rerolling my new guy and in the process I'm remembering how much less my Unleashed died once I rerolled him and bumped up his dodge/avoidance Specializations and tossed in some dodge/avoidance gear. And getting a heal every time I dodge is ... very helpful too.

I hope this synergy isn't going to go poof with the defense nerf. I can roll any guy I want now but my Unleashed is still my fave and the one that got me into the game. Oh yeah, and he has my best toys too.

If he was a FF, I'd just swap a few things around so he was less dependent on Defense.

If I remember right, before I swapped out my Specs & gear for defense/avoidance I couldn't even tank Alerts with Lee.

[General Idiot]

It should perhaps be noted that you're not supposed to be able to tank alerts or anything else with anything that isn't a tank. That's the whole point of the upcoming changes, to stop people tanking outside of the actual tank role.

[Xev]

I can't tank them with Lee like a tank can.

I can tank them well enough to not die, usually, if I hit all my buttons at the right time and with all my Silver Champ/Purple gear. And I may even have to pop an Eruption, Supernatural, or Nimbus or all 3 and toss in an Amazing Grace and a Major Heal bot if things are just being stupid.

It took me 40 levels, gear tweaking, Spec tweaking, and device gathering, and a lot of play time to be able to do what I do with my Unleashed. Maybe I'm just slow but there it is.

As a Tank...

I already know from experience that I can tank Alerts starting at --- Level 11. With Any Trash Gear. And it was easier than tanking with my Unleashed is right now. I never felt like I was going to lose a star, put it that way. Get agro, Regen, get agro, block, get agro, heal, get agro, dps, get agro, take bite from sandwich, get agro. Optional: listen to healer pout with nothing to do. Why can they never be happy...

>>

Something else, Tanks can steal Lee's agro. Even AT ones. Just ask Todogut.

There is a clear line between melee and tanks already is the point I'm trying to make I guess. As-is, Lee tanks just well enough to make me want to make a tank. And due to he usually steals agro, I'm glad he can live through it most times now!

Don't even get me started on Gravitar.

[General Idiot]

Gravitar is kind of badly designed, I don't think you'll ever get much argument to that.

[okami]

Something else, Tanks can steal Lee's agro. Even AT ones. Just ask Todogut.

From what I understand of the taunt system, crippling/challenging advantages force the affected mobs to attack the character for 4 seconds and places a 10 second taunt immunity on the mob at the same time. If someone gets their taunt up before do it's theirs for at least 4 seconds.

I've got access to FFs but when I'm feeling lazy or want to get a feel for a power framework before borking it up on my own I use ATs. In a lot of the guides for ATs they have you taking crippling strike for the block breaking and challenging on your AoEs for the damage debuff, even on ATs that shouldn't tank. Crippling is also common to PvP builds.

CO also, imo, seems to over value debuffs for threat generation. A "new" telepath, even with all the aggression stealth they get and only doing minor DoT damage will wind up with all the aggro quite quickly. Even good freeform tanks have trouble keeping things off my Scourge AT with its damage aura, healing debuffs, and poison debuffs, with the damage aura forcing it into block-lock if resurgence isn't up.

And however my Disciple does it, they are quite good at locking down aggro, even against tank roles. Surprisingly good at surviving it too. Can they pull an entire Recruitment Drive and live? No. But they can tank 1 or 2 groups fairly well unless the crit gods decide I've lived long enough. That brawler role AT has kinda become my go to high damage tank, especially against Invuln enemies which neuters my dual pistols tank/blaster.

[Xev]

Speaking of debuffs, (my) Unleashed's main ST attack (where extreme dps matters most) goes through block & ignores some damage Resist if I understand/remember it correctly. Maybe that's why I never spent the points on Crippling/Challenging with him whereas the tank version of him I have going atm wouldn't pass them up due to the taunt.

I feel like if I copped out and picked a Defensive Passive then I should at least ~offer~ to Tank.

As a dps I think I would rarely/never pick the Protector Tree either but it seems almost must have as a tank due to the taunt buff.

[Xev]

Speaking of debuffs, (my) Unleashed's main ST attack (where extreme dps matters most) goes through block & ignores some damage Resist if I understand/remember it correctly. Maybe that's why I never spent the points on Crippling/Challenging with him

Sometimes I'm totally dyslexic when it comes to debuffing damage resist and debuffing damage. That's where this brain fart came from.

I've had so many numbers and if-this-then's running through my head the past few weeks with rolling up a new toon that that part of my brain is starting to go numb.

I'm about to re-roll myself out of the Protector tree. I took it for Bulwark so I could taunt in Hybrid but I'm starting to wonder if just putting out more dps would be a better taunt as well as being more entertaining & useful. Things change at level 40, too, so that's something that I keep in mind and one reason I've stuck with it.

Seems like, in teams that can out-taunt me, they generally don't need me tanking anyway. Bad thing is, in these teams, so many times no one seems to know how to herd. That's another major component of tanking - not just being able to survive. You gotta round mobs up for aoe and keep the train rollin' on to the next mob of mobs. Running around blasting everything works too. Just not as elegant.

Any aoe taunt recommendations? I tried ego sprites due to it was supposed to have that uber stacking aoe agro as I wail away with my Challenging Strikes cone but I didn't notice any difference at all.

I think I read somewhere that taunt scales with level. I dunno how much good Presence really does but I could probably swap my Con points for it if it was really worth it.

Other than that, I'm leaning back towards dps again with my new guy hehe.

[General Idiot]

I could be wrong, but I don't think presence has any effect on threat anymore. It used to, way back when, but as far as I'm aware that's been moved to super stats.

[Xev]

Works for me.

I leaned far enough back towards dps that I re-rolled my SS's into offense/defense/crit-monkey mode last night. Let my eyes glaze over with all the pretty numbers and then I re-roiled right back into Protector & etc.

30 Gs just to look at the numbers... I guess it was worth it  : )

I dunno how anyone with a FF can be jealous of an Unleashed. Unleashed are great but with time you can build something great on your own or just make your own Unleashed and add 2 powers. It's not a magic build or anything. Just a good one. Hopefully it'll stay that way.