Sailboat

I agree with BrokenPrey that using a set Tankers can't get maximizes your exposure to new stuff.

If you didn't like those choices, Dark Melee, although a Tanker set, is frequently used in technology concepts, as "nanobots" or "molecular energy" or whatnot, and it synergizes well with SR.

There are going to be some things you can't beat down by yourself.

Joined a mid-30s PUG the other night as a Scrapper. Our leader was fighting Devouring Earth at +4.

Okay, well. Thought about that for a second. I'll be SSKed to him...they'll be +5 to me. All right, DE at +5, it's worth a laugh. At least the leader (the only one who'll be fighting at +4) is a Granite Tank.

In we go. Buff up, team gets ready, tank runs in...two guys die....third guy...then me. Then everyone dies.

Okay, fine. We recover and regroup. Mindful that when the DE dropped their Cairns, I was doing 9 points of damage with some of my Scrapper attacks, I explained the importance of attacking the Cairns (for the benefit of the uninitiated, Devouring Earth Cairns buff the DE with massive damage resistance, making them super tough).

We go back in. Again, everybody dies. Again, I see people valiantly spraying their SO-slotted Tier 2 attacks at +5 DE bosses protected by Cairns. Again, I explain that it's not optional -- we simply must clear the Cairns off in order to do enough damage. No one is going to win dealing out 9 damage and taking 264, 264, 500 before dealing another 9 damage.

This time I get a reply; one of the other players agrees we need to take out Cairns.

Back in again. I don't know why everyone pulled aggro off the Granite Tanker, but it kept happening. Maybe he did lots less damage; maybe he didn't have Mud Pots turned on. Everyone goes down again...except this time the Granite Tanker is standing. And fighting.

Okay. He has Recall Friend (he's a Granite Tanker, after all); he can rumble to a safe spot and then recall us one at a time so we can rebuild.

I wait.

He keeps fighting.

"Uh, you might want to go recall the team?" I suggest.

"Trying to clear these guys."

Say what? Um, did I mention he was a Granite/ICE Tanker?

Here's a Granite/Ice trying to beat down a bunch of +4 Lesser Devoured bosses without clearing the Cairns...he still had Cairns up.

The whole team of Blasters and Scrappers had bounced off these guys already, and the Tanker is going to do them in with an Ice sword and Granite's penalties and he's going to do it the hardest possible way?

I don't really have a point to this rant; just amused to see someone struggle up that steep a hill (and assume everyone else would wait indefinitely for it).

I'm bemused by the idea that building to the soft cap could be described as "nerfing" yourself. I know you mean it'll cost you other set bonuses that you had on top of having the soft cap that you had on top of having Shields' overpowered offense, and that it will come out of your unlimited budget.

I just think that's still a pretty good place to be, nerf or not. :P

You know who else never Blessed a Zephyr in his entire life?

Adolf Hitler.

Also, you've got 4 heals in Health (3 is the ED cap) and you're slotting to-hit debuffs in Rise to the Challenge, which are of dubious value. At least get 3 heals in it ASAP.

Also, you may find 3 jumps in Super Leap to be more than enough. Although they're not "useless," I usually leave it at the default slot unless I'm slotting sets.

Strength of Will probably does not need an endurance discount, since it's a click on a long recharge. Combat Jumping costs so little (.06 end/sec) that I wouldn't bother with end reduction in it, period.

Otherwise solid-looking build.

That's just a bayonet on a pistol. :P

I dunno, I've seen some real companies write almost unintelligible gibberish.

Without meaning to portray defense and resistance sets as equals in the age of IO set bonuses, I submit that Werner's formula (90% mitigation cap for defense vs 75% mitigation cap for resistance = resist sets take 2.5 times more damage) is not the entire story.

Namely, the heals.

Most of the resistance sets have a heal of some kind which can go quite a way toward redressing that imbalance in incoming damage.

I too decided to try and build a resistance-based toon with negligible defense. I used my Spines/Dark Scrapper. Dark has a terrific heal; all you really need your resistances to do is buy time for Dark Regen to recharge.

So ultimately I IO-ed him out for endurance, +recovery, and some +damage and +recharge.

End result is very hard to kill IF and I must repeat IF I am alert with the heal button and good at estimating rates of incoming damage. If I'm lazy or scrapperlocked or ecnoutering lots of weird custom stuff in Architect, it's still pretty easy to take damage faster than the heal fixes, and faceplant.

As long as I'm on my game, he's a strong Scrapper.

Note that Karma and Steadfast -Knb IOs can be obtained with (relatively cheap) Bronze ticket rolls from AE missions. I've gotten quite a few that way; it's a good option if you find them pricey or hard to find on the market

More discussion of it here.

I haven't analyzed the set bonuses, but generally speaking, Weave looks underslotted -- you'll want end reduction, and probably a bit more defense; is a second def buff in Combat Jumping really better than a third def buff in Weave?

And True Grit is not slotted for healing/hit points at all?

Man, I don't know a thing about PVP.

However, I was once ambushed in Warburg by a Mastermind. I think he had made himself and his bots invisible, or else team-teleported them onto me; they just sort of appeared all around me. My Ice/Storm Controller was stunned (and back then that turned off all your toggles!)

I hit a break free, a large green, and Glacier (heh, fortunately everything was clumped tightly around me, and I held most of his bots). Then I began firing up Hurricane, Arctic Air, Lightning Storm, Tornado, and Snowstorm, and Freezing Rain.

Then I took to the sky. As I rose up, the player snarled something in local about my playing unfairly, and fled.

Your guess is as good as mine as to whether he was a good, experienced PVPer who got more than he could handle, or a really bad one anybody could have sent packing. But that's my one experience with Ice/Storm in PVP -- the guy who got the drop on me ran away swearing.

It's worth pointing out that many secondary effects are equally, or even less, effective. Sonic's -res is the Cadillac of secondary effect debuffs, much better than the others, generally speaking. -def isn't so bad if you compare it to, well, anything other than Sonic.

So it's not really that -def is undesirable or sub-par, so much as it's "wow, Sonic's -res debuff is, um, really strong."