Do I Have Cooties?

Or is it just really hard to get a sustained team at level 50 or so? Maybe everyone is still depressed over ED, or just can't get over how their heroes have changed?

I don't know. After Statesman's apalling story, I just HAD to log on the invul/fire to make myself feel comforted that I have better tanking ability than him. So I put my LFT flag up and spent ages looking for a group.

A few days ago, I did Neuron, and I acted like a nice little tank and waited for the whole damn group to get ready, get their act together, get RA going (we had some serious lowbies sk'ed up, like one was lvl 17 or so, and constantly running out of end). When we got going, there was no problem, I would run in, churn out some serious AoEs, and capture all aggro that way.

There was a second tank in this group, also invul, but the heavy defence, passives + all, at the expense of his secondary. I think I made him jealous. Because he sent me a tell saying, "wow, u're doing more damage than me with ur aoes." Now because he seemed to be a perfectly nice guy, not arrogant or anything, I treated him civilly and returned the compliment by buttering him up a bit, telling him I built this tank that way, but my trade-off is that I cannot withstand as much, while he would be able to keep standing longer.

To be entirely honest though, I think he could perfectly see, as well as me, that with invincibility bugged as it is (and me shamelessly taking advantage of the fact for as long as possible - if I'm gonna be gimped, I'm gonna take whatever ya give me, bugs and all), that I could remain standing upright in an ordinary mob spawn as long as he could, for the short time necessary for the rest of the team + my prodigious damage to kill them.

While he was meanwhile self-gimped on the offense equation, but a little sturdier (just a little, thanks to passives being crap now).

Obviously, I can see where this makes the really defence/resist focused tanks, the ones who really liked to be a brick wall who just takes hits, really really cheesed off. I, alas, don't make the game, I just play in it - and I naturally tweak my build to something that is good and playable and functional for my playstyle, even if I don't care about having the statistical 'best' build.

As for the AV, well, Neuron did so much damage, both of us found and agreed that we had to go into unstoppable for these types of av tanking. (And then we become functionally similar again.) This is where it was handy to have two tanks, as we simply alternated unstoppable, and backed out to recover when it crashed.

Even though we had a successful mission, our entire team crumbled after that, a bunch had to go off and so on. I dunno. Maybe I'm just over-sensitive. I was wondering if it was the tanks. Were they reforming a team without us because they feel we're not needed? Or maybe I'm just paranoid. :P

Then today, same thing, av mission, Diabolique. I joined an av team who broadcast a request in PI because I was just stinking bored and needing desperately to prove my tankiness and assuage my ego because I just re-read Statesman's post and felt like shabby dirt. We had an emp def and a (oooh, so rare in Freedom's high levels) a RAD def. It was interesting to watch him at work, he ran choking cloud and actually spammed his radiant aura most of the time - I think he's found out that rad anchors simply die too quick to be useful at high levels, and come up with some alternate tactics.

I had another level 49 invul/ss tank along, and to my glee, it was also quite obviously a scranker build. Ah, a fellow compatriot who has adapted to post I5 and ED. He did have one more resist than me, RPD, but he very obviously wasn't the ALL DEFENCES NECESSARY taunt bot build - I don't know how I know, I just did, looking at his powerset. I know he chose the stuff he found necessary for survival, and then went smart and heavy on his hits. He would probably have been a perfectly functional tank if I wasn't around.

Me being around though, (+1 level to him), he was patient and civil enough to defer to me to do the lead in, but on the ball enough to be the second one into the spawn after me also. What a nice tank, he tanks like I do.

Since I was highest tank, I decided to crank up the pace a little, when I saw the rest could handle it. Let it not be said that we now have to wait for everyone to be ready before we go into groups and so on, and that the pace of combat is slowed down post I6 or whatever. And more importantly, I knew I could handle it.

I had some serious buffage going on, my dull pain was recharging quicker with AM and RA, and I found with whatever the team was doing, and my existing defences, I wasn't getting hurt badly enough to require dull pain firing constantly. So I left it alone as a 1461 hp backup heal (which is practically 2/3 my entire health bar.)

Easy peasy. Run into spawn, buildup, combust, fireswordcircle. This creates a little volcano of spectres with me at the center. The second tank is nearby doing his footstomp and scranking his little heart out along with me, and the rest was just gravy.

Ditto Diabolique. Now our rad def stepped up and threw his anchors down, and that seriously wussified her to the extent that I could stand there, without unstoppable, without dull pain fired, and just wail on her with my attacks and not have my health bar moving at all.

Only thing unfortunate is that she has an area attack. How do I know? Our scrapper next to us two scrank-tanks was getting whacked now and then and plunging to red health, before going back up from the defs at work. Then our very suicidal but perfectly capable emp def got a little too close... (our two defs were the balls to the wall kind, I kept finding them under my armpit, happy to take some damage as they worked their closeup magic. Not that this is BAD, just refreshing to see.) and got blown back like a rag doll (kinda fun in retrospect to see) and crumpled. He didn't complain, just awakened, and healed himself and got back to work.

Anyhow, Diabolique died quite nicely, and we had cleared the courtyard already, so when she ran around, she didn't drag us into anything ugly.

Finding the three spirits was a matter of cleanup.

Right after we exited, the SAME thing happened. Got to go, guys, came from three people. Hrm.

Well, at least one of them said that it was a great team, and that he had a blast, but he really needed to go. So at least one of them enjoyed himself enough to quantify his leaving.

I kept wondering if they felt unnecessary because our two scranker tank builds were perfectly capable of demolishing one spawn by ourselves, them being around just made it easier and more efficient to move on to next spawns, is all. But maybe I am JUST BEING PARANOID again. :P

Who knows. Or maybe I really do have cooties.