Syntax42
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Posts
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Your best bet is to search the forums for a build with Fiery Aura instead of trying to tackle the entire thing by yourself. Post it in this thread and we can help you modify it to fit your goals. Not many people will make a build from scratch for everyone who asks due to the time it takes to make a good build. There aren't as many Fiery Aura Tankers since the Burn nerf and Brutes, even though Burn is fine now. The chances of someone already having a FA/Axe build are pretty slim.
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Hamidon's attacks apply a healing debuff to the target. I couldn't find a reference for you, unfortunately. The only mitigation for Hamidon is pure regeneration and Essences of Earth inspirations.
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Could you post your build? Super Reflexes is about as tough as you can get for Scrappers. The only tougher sets are situational, like fighting S/L critters with Invulnerability.
Brutes and Scrappers have the same defense and resistance values for their armor sets. Their base damage is lower due to Fury, though. In most cases, I would suggest making a Scrapper instead of a Brute because Scrappers gain more damage from damage buffs.
Shield Defense is not really any more survivable than Super Reflexes. It costs more to soft-cap, but gains a nice damage buff from Against All Odds and an AoE knockdown attack with Shield Charge. -
Your travel powers are still taken way too late. If you exemplar for a task force, you should have a travel power available.
I think you're over-emphasizing S/L defense. A lot of damage at 50 is pure energy. I would drop the S/L defense to 32.5% and try to get 32.5% E/N defense. You wouldn't need as many attacks slotted with the very expensive Kinetic Combat sets if you went that route.
Power Sink is over-slotted while Stamina is under-slotted. The 6th set bonus for Performance Shifter adds AoE defense, which is doing you almost no good. Damage buffs from set bonuses are also not useful because they are hard to obtain a meaningful amount of them. Even Recovery set bonuses are only moderately useful and should be at a lower priority than slotting Stamina to the ED cap.
Gaussian's set is not good for typed defense. You spent 6 slots to get 1.25% S/L defense, which is a complete waste. You could get 1.875% from 2 slots of Rectified Reticle. Even if you had a useful amount of E/N defense, Gaussian's would only be contributing 2.5% total useful defense.
I prefer the Energy Mastery pool. Physical Perfection is a decent bit of endurance recovery. Energy Mastery can work if you don't have many slots to dedicate to attack powers in your epic pool. -
Single-origin enhancements should be more than affordable. If you can't afford them, I would give you the INF to get them just so you can do missions efficiently.
The first thing you will need to do is earn enough INF to put together an IO set build. If you have Going Rogue expansion, you can earn 1 alignment merit every 2 days. You can then turn 1 or 2 of those into an invention set enhancement. Pick the one that nets you the most profit per merit spent. Luck of the Gambler global recharges are a safe buy, but I'm sure there are other good ones. Do that a few times and you should have over 500 million INF to get you into a decent build. If you have multiple characters capable of soloing missions quickly, you can earn several alignment merits in two days. Even though they aren't transferrable, you can turn them into the invention then mail that or the INF from selling it to your primary character. A level 25 Luck of the Gambler global recharge sells for just as much as the 50, so you don't have to be using a level 50 to make INF.
Look around these forums for other Fiery Aura Tanker builds. If you find one that gets near 32.5% S/L and E/N defenses or melee + ranged + AoE, post it here and we can help you modify it to fit with Axe secondary. I'm assuming you want to use your Tanker for general content and not for farming. -
Your defense is overkill. You can read about defense mechanics here. Basically, anything past 45% defense won't help you most of the time outside of incarnate trials. In the trials, a small inspiration can get you close enough to the new soft cap, but there will likely be team buffs.
Fire and cold damage are extremely rare at 50. Circle of Thorns and Crey are the only enemy groups that use them liberally, but they are not the primary focus of any TFs. Also, the 4th Aegis bonus gives debt protection which is useless at 50. It would be better to slot Reactive Armor in your resistance toggles for the S/L and E/N defenses.
Gaussian's is not an efficient set for typed defense. It gives 2.5% to all three positions for a total of 7.5% positional defense. However, it only gives 1.25% to S/L and E/N for a total of 2.5% useful defense for typed defense builds. That is not very good for the 6 slots spent on it. Two Rectified Reticles would be better.
Stealth isn't that hard to overcome for aggro purposes. Once you attack a group, they are aware of you. Stealth does slow down your running speed, though. -
How much are you willing to spend on putting together a build? Before you answer that, you should know that alignment merits make it very easy to participate in the market and make enough INF in very little time per day. A Luck of the Gambler global recharge IO costs two alignment merits and sells for 100 to 150 million crafted, last time I checked. There could be better ones, but I wouldn't know. Running the tip missions shouldn't take more than 15-30 minutes per day if you skip straight to the objectives and abandon tips with annoying missions. Farming tips is fast in Terra Volta if you kill bosses quickly.
Expect to spend around 500 million for an entire build. It could easily be less if you already have some of the sets you need, and if you're willing to craft the inventions instead of buying them pre-crafted.
Some comments about your current build:
Titanium Coating is not a good set. Status effect resistance does not help melee characters because they already have status effect protection. The 2.5% melee defense at 6 slots is a lot of slots spent for a smaller bonus than most sets give. Use four Reactive Armor for S/L and E/N defense, or 3 or 5 Aegis for AoE defense, depending on which type of defense you are going for.
Luck of the Gambler is not an exceptional set to use in defensive toggles. Most builds have it for the global recharge enhancement. After slotting that, the set bonuses for up to four slots are decent for melee characters.
Ghost Widow's does not provide very useful bonuses. The max endurance is not as useful as you might think. Instead, Basilisk's Gaze is good for E/N defense and recharge, or Lockdown for positional defenses.
Thunderstrike is good for ranged OR energy defense, but you should have either 3 or 6 slots of it.
Travel powers like Super Jump are a good place to put a Blessing of the Zephyr knockback protection. -
Yes, I meant S/L and E/N defenses are the most important. I was tired when I posted above. A Fiery Aura character only needs fire defense if they are strictly farming fire-based missions.
Angelxman81, you can view your defense values in the game. On the powers window, click on combat attributes. You can then view different aspects of your character. Turn all of your toggles on that you usually use and find out the defense numbers.
I suggest you get Titan Sentinel and use it to extract your current build from the game. Post that here and we can help you form something much better, most likely. It sounds like you are just using a mix of various sets because others use them, which isn't likely to produce an optimal result due to the complexities of the invention system. -
All of the characters you mentioned are more focused towards single-target damage and are not optimal for extreme DPS. The highest DPS powersets have some sort of permanent damage buff. Shield Defense is popular for Against All Odds, but requires you to have enemies in melee range or your damage drops off. Claws has a decent damage buff but then it lacks enough base damage to compete with sets like Dark Melee.
So, some decent options for your primary set are Dark Melee, Claws, or Super Strength. Combine any of those with Fiery Aura and you will have a well-rounded character for DPS. Survivability can come from set bonuses and pool powers. Burn makes your AoE DPS useful. Fiery Embrace makes your damage go nuts on characters with near-permanent damage buffs. I would suggest Scrapper for Dark Melee or Claws. -
It is worth it if you are going for positional defenses, but not worth it if you are going for typed defenses. For positional defenses, you gain 2.5% to all three positions for a total of 7.5% defense. For typed defenses, only S/L and F/C really matter for most of the content, so you are only gaining 2.5% useful total defense (1.25% S/L and 1.25% E/N) for 6 slots. There are much more efficient set bonuses than 2.5% defense for 6 slots.
Post a build and you might get more help. -
Defense is fairly easy to get from inspirations, team buffs, IO set bonuses, and common pool powers. Resistance and regeneration can not be obtained in significant amounts outside of your primary or secondary power pools. I think Willpower is a better set for general content, but Super Reflexes outshines the others when facing heavy defense debuffs.
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Look at other builds then. Post your goals for a build and maybe we can help you. Post a build and we can help you modify it to reach your goals.
I have posted a Super Reflexes template recently if you can search for it. I have also posted a couple Super Reflexes builds. Honestly, Super Reflexes is one of the easier sets to build for because it gets you so close to the soft cap. -
1) Only a few enemy groups have to-hit buffs. Devouring Earth and Praetorian Resistance are all I can think of right now. If you think enemies have small to-hit buffs because they have up to a 10% chance to hit you in your combat log, it is really because of accuracy and level modifiers.
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Use the short forum export or just the data chunk please. The long forum export is annoying to scroll past the useless text it adds.
Instead of aiming for 45% defense, try 32.5% and use an inspiration when things get rough. Most of the time you won't need it, though. You could raise your E/N defenses or increase your recharge with the other set bonuses.
Also, try not to use sets that add more positional defense than typed when you are going for typed defense. Those tend to waste a lot of slots. Instead of Touch of Death, you could use Kinetic Combat or Smashing Haymaker. Instead of 4 Mocking Beratements, use 4 or 6 Perfect Zingers, or 6 Mocking Beratements if you need the recharge.
Armageddon is a waste of INF to slot it in Soul Drain. Put it in Burn and put the Obliteration set in Soul Drain.
Siphon Life should be enhanced for healing, too.
Having only 4 KB protection probably won't be enough. I have 8 on my FA Brute and I still get knocked back occasionally. Take Temperature Protection for the mule slot. I would drop Shadow Punch and Shadow Maul because they are low DPS attacks, unless you need one for the set bonus.
Dark Melee is great single-target damage if you can run the top attack chain. However, you lack the recharge because you went for too much defense on a resistance set. Midnight Grasp needs to recharge in 4.488 seconds to run MG -> Smite -> Siphon Life -> MG. -
Stamina is underslotted and you only have one KB protection IO. There is a lot of pure energy damage in incarnate content that your S/L defenses won't help against. I would suggest aiming for about 32.5% S/L and E/N defenses so you can be protected against the most common damage types with one small inspiration (or two for trials).
I had 32.5% positional defenses on my Spines/Fire before I made a SS/Fire Brute. Spines/Fire felt weak without a kinetics to buff my damage. SS/Fire Brutes don't really need outside buffs to get a more satisfying SMASH. They are also very strong at single-target damage, unlike Spines/Fire.
Here is the Spines/Fire build I was using:
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Small numbers make a big difference. Here's how:
Suppose you have 45% defense. Base to-hit is 50% and the minimum to-hit is 5%, so we aim for 45% defense. That makes it so an even-con minion will have a 5% chance to hit you. Higher level and higher ranked foes will have a higher chance to hit you but those are almost always accuracy modifiers and more defense won't help. So if you're fighting a large pack of minions and they would do an average of 1000 damage to a character with no defense in 10 seconds, you would take an average of 50 damage because of your 45% defense only allowing 5% of the hits to get through.
Now, lets suppose you only have 40% defense. Those same minions will now hit you 10% of the time and you take an average of 100 damage instead of 50. That is double the damage, but only a 5% difference in defense. At higher levels and against AV's, it is very important to have soft-capped defenses so that you aren't taking significantly more damage than you should be.
If you still don't understand why 45% defense is important, try reading Arcana's Guide to Defense. It explains defense, accuracy, and to-hit very thoroughly.
Quote:I'm not seeing how either of those suggestions make you forfeit recharge bonus as Touch of Death and Titanium Coating do not have recharge bonus. The "small" defense bonus gained is actually quite large as I pointed out above.Originally Posted by obscureent
--- Switching out "Touch of Death" for "Mako's Bite" and three-slotting "Aegis" in "Tough" doesn't seem to affect the buld much in terms of defense that I could tell in Mids, It does make me forfiet a bit of recharge though, which is one of the things I want high. Is there another way to reach the 45% cap you were suggesting?
The slotting suggestion was for you to increase your Defense Debuff Resistance. Have you fought critters that debuff defenses? Maybe you aren't paying attention to it, but Cimeroreans debuff a TON of defense and will hit you hard if you don't have your defense debuff resistance as high as you can get it. Double-stacking Active Defense with 3 Membranes in it is the easiest way to almost completely negate defense debuffs.Quote:--- I don't feel slotting active defense is necessary, as when I use it, I rarely, if ever get held, mezzed, confused, etc. And I do agree it could probably be picked sooner, It was a power I hadn't given much thought to until I began using it.
In Mids', right-click on the Phalanx Fighting power. Now, look at the Info tab on the left side. See that "Allies" slider? You have it set to 1, which means you expect 1 ally to be in range to increase your defenses. Set it to 0 so your defense will show what it really is when nobody is near you, like in a farming situation.Quote:--- I'm a bit confused with your attack on Phalanx Fighting, I don't have It slotted for anything. I just threw a defense IO in it to have something there. It's an auto power and I don't think all my defense depends on it, and even if it did, He's a team player, so it's not the end of the world. But putting a "luck of the gambler" would be a good idea, I must have missed it earlier. Could you clarify your position a bit?
Perma-Hasten usually allows you to run the top DPS attack chain, and ensures your powers always recharge at the same rate. Doing the best attack chain possible ensures things die as fast as possible. You want to be efficient at your job, right? Getting Hasten's down-time to less than 10 seconds is much better than having a 30+ second downtime that you appear to have.Quote:--- Hasten is almost perma- without being slotted, so I feel the slots could be better delagated elsewhere. But I'll play around with it for sure, see the numbers.
Fury gives you about 150% damage bonus, depending on how high you can get it. Powers can be enhanced for about 95% more damage bonus. This means a 100 damage attack will do 242.5 damage. Adding Assault's 10.5% damage bonus brings that up to 253 damage, which is really a 4.3% increase in overall damage, depending on Fury levels. For the endurance spent to run Assault, it usually isn't worth it. Tactics is also not necessary because you can obtain a capped hit chance of 95% without it.Quote:--- Assault was a power to take over Manuevers. 15-18% damage boost I thought was more effective than a 2% defense boost, thoughts on that decision?
Suggesting a change to a build without being able to see how it affects the numbers produced by Mids' is very difficult. It is not too difficult for builds involving only single-origin enhancements, but invention sets make it far too time-consuming to manually calculate a change in the sets. Short forum export shows enough that people can copy the build if they don't have Mids'.Quote:And the long-post is helpful for people at work who don't have access to Mids' and still want to help out. =) -
Why can't you use Mids'? Are you playing on a Mac? You don't have access to any PCs or laptops? There is a web-based character planner available at http://www.cohplanner.com/ but it isn't updated. I find it difficult to make builds without being able to see the numbers I am aiming for.
It is fairly easy to reach 45% defense on a Shield Defense Tanker. Slot your toggles, add Combat Jumping and Weave, and a Steadfast 3% defense IO. I prefer Luck of the Gambler sets, so I slot them with the global recharge enhancement, a def/end, a def/end/rech, and optionally a def if I need it to reach the soft cap.
I suggest you look at other Shield Defense builds on these forums to see how they built their characters. Without Mids', you may have to rely on the responses to determine if the builds are any good. -
In the future, please don't use the long forum export. It adds a lot of annoying text to scroll past that isn't useful because most people use Mids' to look at the build. Posting just the data chunk, or the short forum export with data chunk would be preferred.
It looks like you picked the Cardiac Radial Paragon which increases Fear, Sleep, and Intangibility duration at the cost of less endurance reduction enhancement. You don't have any Fears, Sleeps, or Intangibility powers, so use the Cardiac Core Paragon instead.
Why did you slot the knockback protection IO in Grounded? Grounded already provides knockback protection.
A travel power is nice to have while leveling up, instead of taking them at 47 and 49.
Power Surge would be a better power to take than an unslotted Ice Blast.
Smashing and Lethal damage may be the most common, but Energy isn't far behind. Incarnate content has a lot of pure energy damage from the Praetorian Clockwork. Consider dropping your S/L defenses to about 32.5% so you can have the same energy defense. A small inspiration would then be used to go from 32.5% to 45% when you need it, but most of the time you won't need inspirations. -
Running Tactics from the Leadership Pool will reduce the duration of fear effects. Mez protection inspirations also work. The Clarion Destiny can be used, too.
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Quote:It is actually -to-hit, which functions differently from accuracy.Originally Posted by Pampl
Don't forget that DM also stacks -acc and has touch of fear. I don't know if it competes with the swords, but it's got to be top 3.
I wouldn't depend on my primary for mitigation, except maybe on a BS or Katana build. I would consider knockdowns and other mitigation effects an extra bonus. Dark Melee's is the least reliable due to critters resisting the effect by being either higher level than you, or higher rank than minion. -
Spiritual Alpha only helps your DPS if you are either not at perma-Hasten, or can't run the a better attack chain without the Spiritual Alpha. Build planning is important. From what I understand, Invulnerability is not too difficult to soft-cap S/L and E/N, so the Nerve Alpha is only making up for a deficiency in the original build plan.
If you post your build (and budget), maybe we can help you gain more benefit from your Alpha slot. -
Quote:He may be referring to taunt auras increasing your fury.Originally Posted by Pampl
Is this something they added recently? I don't remember it and there's nothing on Paragon Wiki about it.
My vote is for Willpower. Invulnerability is mostly focused on S/L resistance and is basically a defense-based character when not facing S/L critters. Willpower's regeneration doesn't care what damage type you are taking. When considering end-game IO set builds, both have nearly equal potential for defense. Resistance, regeneration, and Invuln's psi hole should be the main considerations. -
The Shield Wall IO is probably going to cost up to 3 billion INF and is only worth having on a character that needs it to reach the resistance cap, in my opinion.
Attack chains are easy to calculate their DPS. Add up the damage and divide by the total animation times. Including things like critical strikes and recharging Power Siphon makes it more complex, so I use my intuition on those instead of spending hours longer calculating them.
Achieving perma-Hasten on a Super Reflexes character should be easy, especially with the Spiritual Alpha. I looked at the original build again and I don't see why you have so many purples and PvP sets unless you really want to spend a ton of INF on a character. -
Do a forum search for other Invulnerability builds. Melee sets are fairly easy to swap out and retain the set bonuses. Post a build and we can help you modify it to fit your goals.
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Dark Melee's lack of AoE isn't a huge problem. When Tankers attack something, up to four other enemies near your target are also taunted. This means you don't have to hit everything to hold aggro. Just punch a few things in the group or use your Taunt power on the hardest targets and the rest of your team should be fine.
When you get to 41, you can choose from unique pools of powers called Ancillary or Epic pools. Every pool has at least one AoE and some of them have more than one. I prefer the Villain Epic Pools for many of my characters. Unlocking them requires you to perform a mission arc while a Villain or Rogue alignment, but once unlocked you can switch to any alignment or respec and always have them available to you.