Rylas

I'd like to see a build for that, please. I have a EA/Dark brute that has soft-cap to all but Psi (with no Psi defense worth noting) and it took quite a bit of work to make sure that build remained functional as a brute. Considering the slots necessary to build what I have, and what it takes for most Psi Defense bonuses (6 slots) and what sets those bonuses come from, I can't imagine a brute powerful enough to make it worth the sacrifice. You could prove me wrong with a build, but I'm skeptical its one many people would want to play, let alone one that would tear through content.

Well, it's hard to say something is far more popular when there's not enough supply to test the opposite. Of course you see more def bonuses in builds, because it's a FAR MORE COMMON bonus. Resist bonuses are too difficult to come by to make them worth getting.

BWAH?! There's no way you're going to get a most tanks hard-capped across the board (or even most of the board). Dark, Fire and Electric have the best chances to do so, and doing so at the moment makes them very undesirable to play with. Ice, Shields, WP, and Stone (outside of Granite) would be impossible to do.

I'm working on slotting up a Shield/Stone in Mids right now to see if I can max out S/L resists and cap the defense. It' not happening. Even if you doubled all the values and gave it the defense bonus treatment, you're looking at mid-60's. I'm still working on the build, but I'm not seeing any possibility to get across the board numbers on res that would be substantial. (note: I'll be posting this build when finished)

Actually, defense debuff and to hit bonuses will still have an affect of more incoming damage. This damage is resisted, yes, but there's still more coming in. If you're hit by twice the amount of attacks, then you're taking twice as much damage. Then there's the fact that said tanks would not have room for slotting considerable defense bonuses, therefore they would have more likelihood of succumbing to other debuffs such as -rech, -regen, -end, and -to hit. All of which can negate the usefulness of said tank.

Perhaps you missed Smersh's post with the Elec/Elec tank with "capped smashing, energy and psi, lethal and cold up around 80%, fire to 75%, and negative around 50%." Have you looked at the build? It's effectively been Granite Neutered. Also, it would be insanely expensive to build, if not greatly time consuming. Still, Elec being capped to so many resists isn't an issue, because you're still not able to ALSO slot that much defense on top of it. It's the reason they needed to add a heal into the set. Resist alone is not enough mitigation.

You bring up a great point. I assume you mean a Stone tank in Granite form. You see, Granite comes at a cost to have that much defense and resist. So it remains balanced. Additionally, if someone wanted to achieve those kinds of numbers through bonuses (even with the suggested doubling of resist bonus values), it would be impossible to achieve due to slot limitations. But let's just say they could. Even if they did, they would have a build much like the one Smersh posted. With little to offer in offense. Therefore making them just as balanced as Granite is now.

At this point, I'm not even sure what you're trying to argue. You've only made rhetoric, and haven't bothered backing up your points with any kind of build logic. You seem to ignore that focusing so much on a resist build would greatly inhibit the ability to gain sufficient bonuses in other areas. Then you offer up a suggestion which suggests nothing. Don't bother telling us improving the numbers won't work, when you won't bother to prove it.

You say defense is still the way to go, but that's a cop out. Yeah its the way to go, because it's the only one offered enough, and with enough bonus values to make it worth it. But on a set that has inherently good defense values, maybe I'd like to add resist to it. Maybe I don't want a one trick pony. Adding defense to a Res set does a lot better than just adding resist on top of it. Defense based sets should be able to at least get resist bonuses that aren't laughable. It's just as balanced as a Blaster with capped range defense, or a Dominator with perma-dom.

That makes two of us.

No, but it can have a heal, an even bigger HP boost, some -end res, some -rech res, some DDR and a fair amount of +To Hit. Is that enough trade off for those two things?

A very good example of how much has to be sacrificed to do anything with resist bonuses as they are now.

Looks like a nice little project to do, considering I love tinkering in Mids. There's certainly no way to hard-cap all resists for the Shield tank, so which type would you consider with capping. Just S/L?

Ice/Fire seems to get a lot of the resist bonuses. Helpful for Ice tanks, but the better bonus values come from Purples. Which is odd, because it takes three from a Purple set to get 2.52%, but you get basically the same resist values with three Gift of the Ancients. So GotA needs to come down, or (and I would prefer) Purple sets need to be adjusted upward on their fire resist bonus.

First off, it's only a few sets that can even achieve a def cap to a) positional or b) typed defense. And the latter usually doesn't include psi. Some squishy ATs can make the soft cap for one position or type, but not across the board without making extremely gimped builds. Only melee toons can achieve real significant across the board numbers, and only in a few sets.

Those sets would be Shields, Super Reflexes, Stone (in Granite) and Energy Aura. Those last two have no Psi protection. The first two have no heals.

Ice Armor will only be capped to S/L/E/N. A good amount of coverage, but hardly as impressive as the rest.

Second, I don't think anyone here is asking that they be able to cap res across the board on all their armor sets. Mainly because, unlike many defense sets, resist numbers vary quite a bit within resist sets. Electric, Dark and Fire only have very high resist in one damage type, and low to moderate numbers in the rest. Dark doesn't even self-cap in ANY type. So even if the devs made resist bonuses more available in moderate numbers, it would be difficult or impossible to see a tank sitting at the cap on all resists.

As it stands now, a defensive tank with across the board soft-cap numbers is still not as durable as high-number resist set with moderate defense bonuses. Nor is it overpowered for resist sets to have those defense bonuses, because it does require making sacrifices in most cases. Defense Debuff and +to hit in NPCs is numerous enough to overcome those bonuses. Where does this leave a soft-cap melee toon with no (or low) resists?

Granted, DDR is nice, but it's not the end-all, be-all for defense based sets. There's still plenty of +to hit in the end game content to overcome any of that. Run a few Nemesis missions and see how good that DDR is then. Especially since the best DDR sets don't come with heals.

My Elec/Stone Tank on the other hand, with his generous resist numbers, 30% S/L/~Melee IO defense and 900+ HP bonuses, runs through a lot of content on solo 8-man missions and sees hardly any movement in his green bar. I'd like to know why it's ok for resist sets to layer so much mitigation, but not defense sets.

Aett's suggestion of placing them inside the same type sets as defense bonuses are found in seems like a solid idea to me. This way, if some Tankers/Brutes/Scrappers/Stalkers go for extreme survival bonuses, they're going to have to sacrifice other important aspects of their build to do so. If my choice is 4 slotting KC's for S/L defense or 4-slotting some new melee set for a S/L res bonus, then I'm not going to be able max out both. Considering res sets usually hover in the 50% range in dmg types they don't specialize in, it's still going to be hard (or impossible) to cap dam res in all areas.

I'm not suggesting there be as many sets made with res bonuses as there are for def bonuses, but what's available for the two has too big a disparity.

Defense Bonuses for Smashing

Resist Bonuses for Smashing

7 sets. Total. And if you want to take into account that one is a pet set of 5, that makes 6. Oh, and 2 sets are from PVP IOs, so that's going to be expensive, if not greatly time consuming. Oh, and the other sets are difficult for most melee toons to work in. So yeah, the game could tolerate some more useful res bonuses in sets that would make them worthwhile.

So put some adequate resist bonuses in competing sets melee toons would use. It won't be game breaking.

Sheesh, shoulda clarified with softcap.

This.

The show became a real life "Weekend at Bernie's." You can only dress up a dead show and make it dance for so long before it becomes poor taste.

Just a nit pick here, but EVERYONE has the same defense cap.

More on topic to what you're asking: Yes, Brutes CAN reach Tanker numbers in Res, but you would be relying on your teammates more to achieve those numbers. And in situations where the whole team is working hard to make things happen, a Tank is less of a burden on others (if tanking is what you're aiming for) if he can survive better on his own.

The amount if endurance that you get from those attacks (which IIRC, is only a chance to do so) is too small to bother enhancing. In fact that you could SAVE more endurance by slotting with ACC, DMG and END RED since you would need to use your attacks less to kill a foe.

I liked the cover song. Considering Radiohead doesn't care for their own version so much, they probably like the cover, too.

I haven't seen the finale since it aired. This song brought back a lot of the feelings the ending had for me. Thanks for the link and the info, BBM. I'll be purchasing this.

Gonna have to play this when I get home. I'm looking forward to it!

Nah, his death was epic. I mean, come on, he was brand-freakin'-new to the show. He'd had maybe 20 minutes of screen time. And BAM! Big death scene! Huge! I'd say he got more recognition BECAUSE of his death.

Now, take Ilana, who dies the same way. Not a ton of screen time, but more. Has history tied in with Jacob. Is suppose to be the guardian for the candidates. Probably knows a lot about Jacob and the Island. Then she just gets ripped out of the story line in the blink of an eye. Potentially a cheap shot in my opinion.

You couldn't consolidate this with your other thread?

Try making one and letting us critique, instead of lazily not bothering to do a search and expecting others to do it for you.

kthxbye

Noob forumite is noob.

But in all seriousness.... what the hell kind of tank are you running?