GavinRuneblade

@ Nightsable: Cheers!

Well, so far I've seen almost nothing that is about survival out of the incarnate posts. shifting levels is a tad about survival, but more accuracy and damage really. Alpha Slot damage and recharge buffs? And from what I've seen surprisingly large buff numbers too.

My memory is worthless so I wont quote anything but I remember thinking "wow that looks broken, I hope the numbers get smaller before going live".

I would like SOME -regen resist. It really sucks to be all impressed with myself for sporting 150hp/sec regen then get flatlined to zero by two hits. I have accolades, +hp, +regen, IH and Dull pain contributing on my end, they only need two hits to take it all away completely?

/em Sadness

I know -recharge would be more helpful, but I'd still like something.

Resistance alone is ok. Resistance backed up with defense and regeneration is better. Emberly gave you some solid advice. You can also take Maneuvers and Tactics. In tactics you can slot either Gaussians 6-piece (not as useful for S/L defense but still something) or Rectified Reticle.

Combat Jumping is another one that is handy.

Weave is good not only for the defense, but you'll get tough on the way and that stacks very nicely with Electric and gives you a place for more reactive armor for more defense.

On the healthy dose question, defense gets better the more you have. So if you have zero, the enemy hits you 50% of the time (simple way to think of it is in 5% chunks, so they hit 10 out of 20). When you have 25% defense they hit you 5 out of 20 attacks, you cut your damage in half. Going to 30% defense knocks another tick off, they only hit 4 out of 20 times. That is a 20% reduction in damage from only a 5% increase in defense. Going up to 35% defense they only hit you 3 out of 20 times. So that 5% increase was worth a 25% reduction in damage. See how each one is worth more than the last? Going from 35% to 40% defense reduces incoming damage by 33%. And going from 40% to the softcap at 45% cuts incoming damage in half. That last 5% is worth as much as the first 40% combined.

Now, you will notice 20% defense on top of electric's resistances, it makes a bid difference. However you really want to push it to 30% if you can.

One other tip: There is that pain mastery buff that causes damage. That will interrupt AS.

Two or three lucks, one red, focus on dealing damage and not trying to contain him.

Hold or immob the drones. If only immob, then move out of los, and he won't summon more but they aren't shooting you.

Alternatively, there are a lot of mobs scattered around the room (assuming you're in the first fight with him in the submarine chamber) so build up domination fighting them and save it for when you face him.

Also, he won't chase you particularly far. If you run back into the tunnels, he'll go back up top on his ledge, you can rest and come back for him before he heals to full and wear him down over time.

My defender had to use that last strategy.

as stated the answer is "sometimes".

In general, slot for pure damage first. If you are over 80% damage and have a spare slot, then yes a proc is going to give you more bang than getting that last 15-20% damage.

If the aura in question is particulalrly low damage, then the proc will be better because a fixed 72 damage every now and then is probably higher than 100% increase on 4 damage =).

The bits the above posters didn't mention:

If you regularly team with a kinetics then damage enhancement is less useful and procs win out much sooner (this is why fire/kins don't bother with damage enhancements in hot feet, they self-buff to the ED cap so anything put into the power is wasted and only the procs provide any damage).

If you exemplar a lot, then the decision gets more complicated depending on your slotting. If you have slotted all level 50 IOs, dropping down to do a low-level strikeforce (or task force if you swapped over to paragon) your 100% damage enhancement might get gutted down to 26% or even lower. While the proc will drop in damage as well (they scale to your level), I have found that compared to what happens to level 50 IOs the procs hold their damage a little better. On the other hand, if you used lower than level 50 IOs, you might be able to keep the entirety of your enhancement down to level 21, but the proc will still drop since it is fixed to your level. So level 50 quads, 43 triples, and 24 duals will not be impacted by exemplaring down to level 21.

Also, the touch of death proc is vastly weaker than any other damage proc in the game. For absolutely no good reason it only has a 15% chance to fire, while all the rest have a 20% or 33% for the purples. Some have theorized that it is because negative energy is less resisted, but in my opinion the eradication and posi procs prove that wrong as both are 20%. So I dunno, but it is important to keep in mind. That is single target anyway so not relevant to your aura, but still worth mentioning.

Finally, in PvP, you want both. But the odds are you don't care about that =).

A couple things that the wiki and Red Tomax don't say are needed to know for sure which is better under what circumstances:

In an Aura, does a proc hit 20% of the targets every 10 seconds? Or does it make an accuracy check against each and only roll the 20% against each that are hit?

How often does the damage of each specific aura tick? Let's keep it simple, how often are the ticks for Blazing Aura from /FA ? I know it does 9 damage base per tick, but how often do those ticks come?