Jebe_the_Pirate

You can sign me up as an alternate, I can bring my Emp or DK defender.

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Jebe, when you say "soft cap," do you mean for Smashing/Lethal or some sort of positional build?

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Either. I socketed for typed and went with S/L defense but when I was actively checking bonuses, I noticed that you can get a nice amount of positional defense. Neither was expensive but that may have more to do with your server's WW activity.

Theft of Essence- Chance for Endurance is what you're looking for. Taking and slotting Tough should raise your S/L resistance to about 70% which is always nice.

If you decide to work on your defense, taking Weave is another option, combining it with Combat Jumping, and Cloak of Darkness if you like. Those 3 alone unslotted give you 12.5% defense which you can combine with IO set bonuses. I can easily hit the soft cap doing so.

Make sure you work on Atlas Medallion and Portal Jockey. If you have the cash, IO slotting for Max End bonuses will go great with the accolades and help against the end hog that is Dark Armor. Of course, you should also slot your attacks with end reduction.

I decided to skip global recharge slotting because I could gain so much more mitigation with my gains in defense, max end, and max life. I haven't taken WM but I'm sure there are plenty of powers which would benefit from +global recharge. It's up to what you plan on doing to weigh the benefits of +global recharge against what you would gain instead.

Exactly, you have several layers of mitigation. Expanding any one layer will help you survive. Expanding all will ridiculously increase your survival imo. Also don't try to fit in another Shadow Maul and you're down to 15% health to decide to cast Dark regen. You'll get yourself killed. Maybe this is what your SG mate was doing.

My dk/dk tank is still a work in progress. He's lvl 46 and I have yet to take cloak of fear or touch of fear, thinking I can put them off as my last two choices(thinking I'll take them earlir in 2nd build). As it stands, it has holes--some you can overcome, some you can patch, and some you'll just have to learn to live with.

Here are the holes:

End- Totally managable with end reduction, IO's, and toggle management. It really is a non-issue if you pay attention.
Defense- Toggles and IO's. After reading Call Me Awesome's guide, my dark tank is soft capped for s/l but I did have to take weave, combat jumping and cloak of darkness to get there. The problem here is...
Defense debuffs- Dark tanks have zero defense debuff resistance. Our attacks and CoF have -to-hit which helps mitigate against this.
Knockback protection- Acrobatics or IO's.
Slows- This is what I feel is our bigger hole but again IO's and haste(not on Auto) for recharge help here. I didn't take haste on this build but I don't feel this as much. However, I have yet to take on a mob/AV that does 90% slow. So I may add it in my 2nd build.
Energy Damage- This is a a flat out lie. Sure it's not at the amount of the rest of our resistances but so what?. Can an invuln correct me if I'm wrong but we have the same amount of energy resistance. How is this a hole for us and not for invuln. Besides, you will come across nrg/neg defense(in case you come across non-s/l energy damage) if you slot for IO's. It's almost impossible to avoid this set bonus.

Flatulence Armor/ Acid Water Balloons Tanker coming soon.

Dark blast and a dark assault, for blasters. That's more a proliferation issue if they remove siphon life and add a build up for dark blast.

Acid water balloons, for blasters. Make them toxic damage. Use a BIG RED BALL for the nova.

Grav for blasters.

Chains, for scrappers.

Bloodsucking vampire for scrapper. No, it's not the same as dark melee. You can incorporate the super speed melee here too.

I won't go into MM's. Demons, ghosts, rikti, clowns, pirates, etc... it's been covered.

Hmm, for tanks. Maybe metal armor? I don't know about a metal melee to compliment it. I have too many toons that look like geezer rock stars as it is. ;p

Sounds like we just earned 1mil prestige!

Woo hoo, now I can buy a teleporter AND a toilet!