Syntax42
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Posts
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Even though the resistance cap is 90% on Brutes, you will almost never hit that cap. The main reason is that Brute armor sets are equivalent to Scrapper values. The other reason is that hardly anyone plays a resistance-buffing powerset. In most cases, Tankers are better for soaking damage and Scrappers are better for dealing damage. Brutes are okay at both, but don't expect to be the best at both at the same time.
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It was only a modification of the build above it. I don't recommend Breath of Fire on a PBAOE-focused character, but it works fine to hold a recharge set. Any ideas of what else to put in the build and maintain or increase the recharge bonus?
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Look at other Shield Defense builds on these forums. It isn't hard to make a good Shield Defense Tanker build. Farming builds are not much different from normal builds except with certain powersets.
The first thing a Shield Defense Tanker needs is to soft-cap defenses, which means you reach 45% on all three positions. This is easy: slot your togges, add Phalanx Fighting (no extra slots), add Combat Jumping and Weave, slot a Steadfast Protection 3% defense somewhere, and slot a full Gaussian's set in a to-hit buff power. No other IO sets should be needed for defense, which leaves you with a lot of room for recharge bonuses. -
Pure energy damage is about as common as S/L damage at 50, especially with the incarnate trials. Getting only S/L resistance high isn't really enough anymore. I suggest aiming for 32.5% defenses instead so you can soft-cap with a small inspiration and fit more recharge in your build. More recharge means you can run a better attack chain by using your best attacks more often.
You will likely have more than enough endurance recovery with Quick Recovery and Stamina. Physical Perfection is not needed, even for the regeneration bonus. It is only adding 2.114 HP/s in your build. Gloom is one of the best DPS attacks a Brute can get. -
Instead of giving up on recharge bonuses and the potential to run the top attack chain, I suggest aiming for 32.5% defense instead. Most of the time, 32.5% defense is enough and 45% is overkill. When 32.5% isn't enough, you can use one small inspiration to reach 45%, or two inspirations for incarnate trials to get close to 59%. More recharge also means Power Siphon will be up more often, which can fix your bad hit chances and increase your damage even more. Recharge sets also tend to have global accuracy bonuses in them.
A Force Feedback proc is nice to have in Burst.
Strength of Will can serve as a mule for Steadfast Protection if you don't need the resistance enhanced as much.
Two Performance Shifter procs is nice to have. That would mean you drop the Efficacy Adapter set out of Quick Recovery and move a slot from Stamina to Quick Recovery. -
Hypervelocity, would you consider a Cold/Sonic Defender? I love mine and it brings things to teams that are either unique or extremely useful in an AV fight. Storm combinations may be better for soloing, but all of the new content so far has been designed for teams.
Cold Domination has defense buffs, which are extremely useful for keeping teammates alive. Heat Loss can be made permanent (or close to it) for nearly unlimited endurance, which allows your Alpha slot to be used on recharge and your Destiny slot on status protection or something else if you want it. Sleet can be exploited as an AoE rain power if you add Reactive Interface, unless they nerf it. Sleet isn't quite as good as Storm/Ice's triple-rain powers, but the rest of Cold/Sonic's powers make up for that. Also, you won't feel quite as bad if they do nerf Reactive. Finally, the bread-and-butter of Cold Domination is Benumb. It reduces the effectiveness of practically every power the AV activates by 75%. Damage is reduced. Healing is reduced. Buffs like Unstoppable are reduced. It literally makes the difference between Marauder's health bar coming to a dead stop when he uses Unstoppable, or him dying as if he never used it in the first place.
Sonic Assault gives any Defender at least 80% average resistance debuffing potential, assuming they have a good attack chain. Unless you're trying to solo everything in the game on a Defender, no other secondary is more valuable on a team. Your damage output doesn't really matter when everyone else is doing twice as much damage because of your debuffs. Not even Radiation primary can debuff as much resistance as Sonic Assault can.
The only reasons I can see someone using Ice Blast over Sonic Assault are for theme, solo damage, or if their sound volume is too high and the Sonic Assault attack sounds give them a headache. -
Quote:Musculature is not a "massive damage boost". It effectively adds to your damage bonus, just like enhancements and all other damage bonuses.Originally Posted by Prophetsrage
I may have to see now if its worth putting musculature in for the massive damage boos...
Let's say your attack does 100 base damage. You enhance it by 95%, so now it does 195 damage. With the Musculature tier 4, you gain approximately 35% more enhancement value from it due to Enhancement Diversification's diminishing returns. So, your attack would then do 230 damage. That is just under an 18% increase in damage. -
Range enhancements do not affect radius of AoE attacks, with the exception of cone attacks. You can't even slot range enhancements in PBAOE attacks, so the Alpha boost would not affect them.
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Against All Odds does not need taunt duration enhanced. It works better than most taunt auras without enhancing taunt. Most just slot one endurance reduction in it.
I would really try to get melee defense to 45%. AoE attacks are less common and it isn't too much of a problem if you don't reach 45% on it, but Melee is almost half the attacks you will defend against. However, I think I see a way to fix your defenses.
Stamina and Physical Perfection have more slots than you need in them.
True Grit needs healing enhancement to increase your maximum HPs. The Miracle and Numina uniques can go in Health.
The below build fixes your defenses and a few slotting issues. It isn't the best build ever, but it should stay within your budget and have the performance you are seeking.
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Defense debuffs are only heavy in ITF. There are a few critters per spawn that can debuff outside of ITF, but it isn't as much of a problem.
Set bonuses do not provide significant resistance and are not worth chasing. Defense is the only method of increasing survivability by any noticeable amount on all but Electric Armor and Stone Armor for Tankers only. Everyone else needs defense to survive longer.
Looking at the OP's build, Soul Drain should have two recharge IOs instead. It provides a significant damage bonus. Losing the Rectified Reticle set will not drop defense below 32.5%. -
Regeneration is not a very good set for those seeking to stay alive longer than everyone else. That said, I have only seen one method of obtaining reasonable defense while being able to use the best attack chain. It involves getting as much recharge as possible then cycling Shadow Meld and Moment of Glory. Builds attempting this method usually have pool power defense toggles to reach about 20% defenses.
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You should have 45% defense to all positions (melee, ranged and AoE). This requires some trial and error with build planning in Mids', but it is worth the effort.
You have several slotting improvements that could be made.
The 6th Positron's Blast and Scirocco's Dervish are not providing a useful bonus. The slots are effectively wasted.
Active Defense does not need to recharge faster than 58 seconds. It should be double-stacked, but you can drop a recharge or two out of it if you are not looking to get DDR enhanced by using Membranes.
Phalanx Fighting should not have more than one slot. The defense it provides for having no allies in range is not enhanceable. You should not have to rely on allies being close for you to be soft-capped, so enhancing the defense is pointless.
Stupefy is not a useful until you get to the 5th and 6th slots. The way you slotted Boxing is wasting a slot.
Steadfast Protection is not a good set for enhancing resistance powers like Tough. Use Aegis to boost your AoE defense after you get the 3% defense from Steadfast Protection.
Force Feedback proc won't work in Shield Charge because it is a pseudo-pet. Slot the 6th Obliteration for the defense bonus instead.
One With The Shield should be the lowest priority for enhancing it. I would put the Steadfast 3% defense in it and nothing else.
Physical Perfection and Stamina are over-slotted. They only benefit from endurance enhancement. The recharge and accuracy enhancements are wasted. The set bonus is not efficient and could be obtained from other sets in other powers. I usually slot those with a Physical Perfection proc and a maximum of three other enhancements.
Stealth gives half the defense when you are in combat. You have to set up Mids' to show the correct defense totals. It is an endurance-heavy toggle to run. Combat Jumping would be a much better choice than Stealth. Combat Jumping has almost no endurance cost. If you want to be invisible to PvE enemies, use a stealth proc in sprint or Super Speed and turn on Super Speed.
Laser Beam Eyes does not need defense debuff enhanced. An Achilles Heel proc is nice for debuffing resistance, but the power should be enhanced if you plan to use it.
You are missing the Gaussian's set. Aside from the 3% defense IOs, the Gaussian's set is the next most effiicent set for obtaining defense per slot used. -
For AE farming, some fire defense and tons of recharge is the best way to go. Fire defense ensures you can take more damage on fire-based maps. Recharge ensures your biggest attacks are up more often. In Mids', look at the set bonus finder to see which sets give the most recharge or fire defense.
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Going all the way to 45% defense has cost you all of your recharge bonus, basically. A 32.5% defense build could have a lot more recharge in it and not be as bad at DPS. Did you consider positional defenses instead? Try making one of each build to see which is better.
Gaussian's is not a good set to use for typed defense. It effectively gives 2.5% useful (S/L and E/N) defense for 6 slots.
Leaving Burn unslotted is a huge mistake. Burn is great for AoE DPS and single-target DPS, even without the Reactive Interface. You could have taken 3 cleaving blows out of any of the powers and added Eradication to Burn for more Energy defense.
It is definitely possible to reach 45% defense to both, but it results in a build that I wouldn't want to play. Here is what I came up with:
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I know invention sets can be hard to choose from if you have never made a build before. That is why I suggest looking at other builds of your armor set to get an idea of how they put things together.
Regeneration is one of the worst armor sets available to Scrappers because it relies completely on healing any damage taken. This means you will have a very low amount of DPS you can survive. Defense-based builds mitigate almost 90% of the damage they would otherwise take, and thus only need 10% of the regeneration that Regen has in order to stay alive indefinitely.
If you really want an armor set with a lot of self-healing, Willpower works better than Regeneration and requires a lot less clicking of powers to stay alive. It is also more friendly to new players and is much easier to feel tough in the early game. -
Any armor set has fine survivability with IOs. For damage, IOs don't really add enough to change the performance of any armor set's damage. Mezzes and buffs also do not play a role in the IO sets available to Brutes. Even the chance for build up procs are less useful due to the way damage bonuses are added to each other and Fury contributes a significant portion of Brute damage bonus.
I think you need to re-work your question. You should simply ask which armor set is best for the role you are seeking. If you want to be a damage-dealer, Fiery Aura wins hands-down. If you want to be a tough tank, Invulnerability, Willpower, or the defense sets can fill that role. -
The data link does not work for your build, Angelxman81. Post the data chunk so people can open it in Mids'.
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The Aegis IO is 20% status resistance, not protection. It will make the mezzes last slightly shorter, but the real problem is that you're getting hit with the mezzes in the first place. Defense is the best way to avoid status effects once you have mez protection.
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Basing your build around Brute or Scrapper builds may not work so well. Base defense and resistance values are much higher for Tankers, so they won't need as many set bonuses to achieve the same defense or resistance numbers as Brute builds may have.
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I prefer villain side for the Portal Jockey badge. On hero side, you have to kill 13 or so AVs that are not in the same story arc and if you don't write down each one you killed it can be a pain to figure out which you are missing. On villain side, you have to complete an easy "kill the runner" mission, trap 10 ghosts at night, explore 6 things, kill a GM that spawns often and everyone else is eager to kill, and endure 1 million damage. It sounds like a lot to do, but it takes a lot less time and frustration than killing 13 scattered AVs.
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I did a Lady Grey TF that killed everything in our way and I got ZERO shards until after the TF was over and we were killing the mobs in the final room. So, I got ONE for the entire event. There is no "best TF" from what we can tell. Sometimes you get lucky and get a lot of shards. I am glad they increased the drop rate on threads, compared to shards. It makes it more reliable and less streaky.
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You may get more help in the PvP forum. Most of the people who look at class forums know very little about PvP mechanics.
The long forum export adds a lot of unnecessary text to the page that is annoying to scroll past. The short forum export works fine. Also, post the data chunk because the link does not work for everyone. -
Why would you choose 40% over 32.5%? I think 32.5% defense is better, even though it is a lower number. Here's why:
The difference between 40% defense and 45% defense is getting hit twice as often. The difference between 32.5% defense and 40% defense is also getting hit about twice as often (slightly less, but just illustrating a point). The difference in the amount of slots it takes to increase defenses past 32.5% is significant and is usually done at the expense of recharge bonuses.
If you have 40% defense and use a small inspiration to reach the soft-cap and take half the hits, all of the defense sets you spent going from 32.5% to 40% are wasted. Anything beyond the soft-cap has no effect in most situations.
Team buffs from Force Field, Cold Domination, and Fortitude are at least equal to the value of one small inspiration if they are enhanced. A Controller's Fortitude gives 11.25% defense before enhancements. So again, buffs from commonly-found teammates have a good chance to make 40% defense less valuable than 32.5% defense.
The only situation I can see 32.5% defense being worse than 40% is when your team has no more than two people with Maneuvers, and has no other defense buffs. If you are in that situation, you likely don't have a balanced team composition or aren't in a full team.
A Scrapper's primary job is to deal damage. You sacrifice a lot of potential recharge and likely sacrifice a potentially-better attack chain by going to 40% defense instead of staying at 32.5%, while gaining almost nothing for survivability when inspirations and team buffs are taken into account. -
Aim for 32.5% defenses if you can. One small inspiration can then put you at the soft cap for the times you really need it. You might be surprised to find out how many situations having 45% defense is overkill.
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Congrats! Thank you for being impatient and taking 400 million INF out of the game's economy. Have fun playing CoH!