Syntax42

I don't feel like doing the math for you, but I will explain it.

First, set Mids' to show Arcanatime animation times by going into the settings. The animation time shown by default does not account for the way the game server processes information. You can look up Arcanatime on the wiki if you want to understand it better.

Next, figure out your DPS for your attack chain that uses Midnight Grasp. Add up the total damage dealt by all attacks in your chain then divide that by the total animation times. That number is your DPS. I'm guessing it will be around 200.

Finally, figure out your DPS of the Placate -> AS combo. Do the same as above with the damage and animation times. Include the time it takes to use Placate.

If your Placate combo is more DPS than your chain, then you should use it. Otherwise, it is reducing your overall DPS.

I haven't gathered numbers with HeroStats, but my guess is energy damage is about equal to S/L damage in the the I20 trials. The only tanks with significant permanent energy resistance are Stone and Electric. Both can hard cap S/L and energy resistance with careful slotting and the Cardiac Alpha boost. Obtaining soft-capped defense on the Electric Armor tanker would be more difficult than the Stone Tanker.

To me, Willpower is one of the Tankers that can do everything moderately well, as long as there aren't any regen debuffs.

Dark Melee's heal with Siphon Life is the most useful secondary power. The rest don't have significant secondary effects that can be used to full effect on AVs.

You don't have to use the Cardiac Alpha boost to solve your endurance problems. You can use the Spiritual boost if you desire it. You would only have to wait until you unlock the Destiny slot and make an Ageless boost. At tier 4, it lasts as long as the recharge and boost your recovery by 100% for the last 60 seconds while the first 60 seconds will seem like unlimited endurance.

As others have said, a Theft of Essence proc in Dark Consumption will help immensely. It has a chance to proc for each target hit, so you can easily regain the endurance cost of using Dark Consumption. Often, you will gain more endurance than you used. It won't show up in your set bonus list, so the only one who will know you have it slotted is you.

The pinnacle of tanking right now is the AV fight. Most AV's have high status effect protections or resistances. That means War Mace's only tool to use on AVs is damage. The only melee set that has something that works to its full effect on AVs is Dark Melee, because of Siphon Life's heal. It can add a lot to a Tanker's survivability when you heal 350+ HPs every 5-10 seconds. I'm not saying the other sets are bad. They just don't get to use their unique tools on AVs. Play what you have fun with.

Due to an unfortunate character retirement, I will be selling a level 10 Gladiator's Armor 3% defense invention. It is already crafted. Asking price is 3 billion INF.

PM me on these forums, or contact @Lyych in game. This post will be edited when the sale is complete.

Edit: Sold. Forums are slow today

I assume you are referring to your personal endurance recovery rate, and the rate you are consuming endurance. A build would help, but I can make some general suggestions.

Look at your attacks for your primary attack chain. Add their endurance costs and Aracanatime activation times. Divide the end cost by activation time to come up with end/s cost for your attacks and add that to your toggle cost shown in Mids'. That will give you an idea of if you will generate end faster than you use it or not.

Stamina is over-slotted. Taking only 4 slots of Red Fortune is bad. Get that 5th slot for the global recharge bonus. Maneuvers is under-slotted.

I posted my opinions about aiming for the new soft cap in the other recent SR thread, so I won't repeat them here.

You can figure out your best attack chain by looking at activation times and recharge times. A power does not start recharging until it finishes animating. So, add up activation times for the other attacks and if those come out to being greater than the recharge for the power in question, you are ok to run that chain.

Follow Up needs to recharge in 2.904 seconds in order to run the Follow Up -> Focus -> Slash attack chain. That requires a lot of global recharge, in addition to slotting it for ED capped recharge.

The "new soft cap" for incarnate trials is 59%. At 45%, a small inspiration puts you at 57.5%. So, if you just happen to reach 46.5%, you would be at the "new soft cap" with one inspiration. However, it is very unlikely that your entire league would be without some sort of defense aura.

I don't think it is worth reaching for the "new soft cap" until they put in more single-team content. I think it is also bad to give up so much offense in exchange for defense. Your team expects you to deal damage as best as you can. I know a dead Scrapper deals no damage, but going overkill on defense when it isn't needed has resulted in an attack chain that is inferior to an otherwise-attainable attack chain.

You could take out another enhancement and have a second proc in the powers mentioned previously. I would take out the damage enhancement because the powers are at the ED cap. Without looking at it, I think it results in more overall damage due to the procs.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/pat...patch_not.html

That second build looks much better. I prefer positional defenses over typed as well. You just had too much of a mix in your first build.

Endurance will be an issue because Tough, Maneuvers, and Tactics are underslotted. You don't need Tactics. You have plenty of to-hit from Rage. Drop Weave down to 3 slots and use LOTG def/endrdx in the other two slots. That should free up some slots for Tough and Maneuvers. Pull the recharge IO from Summon Widow to help Maneuvers.

The Gladiator's 3% defense is going to cost you 2-3 billion INF. You might as well drop it and use Gaussian's set in Rage. I know I said that wasn't the best set, but you are short on slots and you probably can't fit Gaussian's in Tactics while still having enough recharge bonus in Rage.

Consume's new slotting is questionable. You get 5% recharge for 6 slots. There are much better bonuses for 6 slots, or 5% recharge for fewer slots.

Endurance issues can be fixed with the use of the +recovery Destiny buff.

Edit: I noticed your slotting in your resistance toggles. I would use Aegis for the 3-slot bonus.

In Mids', go to Window then Powerset Comparison. On the left side, select "Damage / Anim" to view DPS values for attacks.

Kick is worse DPS than just about every attack available in your primary and ancillary pools.

Forming a seamless attack chain is important. Gloom should be in the chain if you want absolute maximum DPS because it does more DPS than almost every other attack available to Brutes.

The only content that requires an Incarnate boost is the Apex and Tin Mage TFs. Those people were probably jerks and you should be glad you didn't team with them.

I stronly urge people to consider taking something other than Reactive, or at least taking a second Judgement for teaming. Almost everyone will have Judgement, which means critters will be at their debuff cap for that power, but not have any of the other great debuffs available to us.

The new build looks much better. There are a few things I would change, but they won't affect the build much if you choose not to.


It looks like you chose to use Hover in combat. Slot Swift and Quickness with flight speed enhancements.

You don't need the psionic defense bonus from 6 Scirocco's. You could use the slot elsewhere, put another proc in Burst, or enhance Burst better with something from another set.

The 5% resistance to toxic from 6 Hecatomb's isn't very useful. Again, you could do something else with the 6th slot.

AoE knockbacks tend to move critters out of AoE patches your teammates have already placed. They also tend to scatter enemies so that nobody else can effectively use AoEs. I don't know if I would even take Repulsing Torrent. It can be useful if your team is having a hard time with a spawn, or it can be spammed if a spawn is up against a wall or corner. If you want to keep it as a set mule, consider removing the proc. Alternatively, you could take Energy Torrent from Energy Mastery. That one is a knockdown instead of a knockback and does almost as much damage as Repulsing Torrent.

General Build Advice:
The Shield Wall 3% resistance IO is a 3-billion INF paperweight. It doesn't do anything useful for most builds. I would only use it on a build that needs it to reach 90% resistance to S/L or energy.

You slotted a lot of sets that give mostly typed defense (smashing, lethal, etc.) and a lot of sets that give mostly vector defense (melee, ranged, AoE). Pick one or the other because the game only looks at your highest defense category.

The breaking points for defense are 45%, 32.5%, and 20% for non-Incarnate content. That is because a small purple inspiration is 12.5% defense, and two smalls or one medium is 25% defense. Try to hit one of those marks for optimal defense levels with inspirations.

You sacrificed a lot of global recharge for defense and the Cardicac Alpha. I'm not saying it is wrong, but it isn't the path I would take with one of the best damage-dealing Brute combos in the game. It is up to you if you want high DPS and the best attack chain, or high levels of defense for tanking for groups.


Individual Power Slotting:
Weave is your best defensive toggle, but you enhanced Maneuvers better. This is definitely a mistake if you are trying to build for defense.

Enzymes are probably more expensive than Luck of the Gambler global recharges. I would use a LOTG in Combat Jumping instead. Try and fit as many LOTGs in your build as you can.

You should try to put Numina's unique in Health instead of Healing Flames. In Healing Flames, Numina's won't give you the bonus until you use the power.

You only have one knockback protection IO. That probably isn't enough.

Gaussian's set is a bad choice when building for typed defense. It is the best choice when building for vectored defenses, but only if you are going for AoE defense as well. Gaussian's set lacks recharge enhancement, so it isn't the best choice to put it in Rage if you are trying to double-stack Rage.

Mocking Beratement should not be in Consume. You need accuracy, recharge, and possibly endurance enhancement in Consume.

Only Jab is worse than Hurl for DPS. I wouldn't take Hurl at all. Flying enemies are not a major issue currently, and your knockdowns can bring them out of the air.

You didn't take Blazing Aura. This is a huge mistake. Blazing Aura is excellent for taunting if you want to tank on teams. It also adds a good amount of AoE DPS.

Force Feedback proc is nice to have in Foot Stomp.

Gloom is horribly slotted. It is your second-best attack for DPS.

You don't need more than 45% defense. In Incarnate content, you can rely on small inspirations to get very close to 59% defense, but you won't need it most of the time. There is usually someone with a defense aura running.

Kinetic Combat is an expensive and bad choice for positional defense. Use Touch of Death if you need Melee Defense from a set bonus.

Dodge, Lucky, and Evasion are over-slotted. The powers only give a small amount of defense, so don't waste more than 1-2 additional slots on them. I recommend slotting those with 2 generic defense IOs.

Tough should be slotted better. Things will hit you through your defense and Tough will help reduce the most common damage types.

Hover can be used as a defense toggle. It wasn't on when I imported your build, but Maneuvers was.

Quickness is a must-have for Super Reflexes. It counts as two purple sets' worth of global recharge and doesn't need any slots.

Look for other Kinetic Melee threads to find out what the best attack chain is. You may need more recharge bonus to perform it.



Here is a build template that should help you get to the soft cap more efficiently. The levels you take the powers isn't as important as the set bonuses and toggles. In your case, take Hover instead of Combat Jumping. They both give about the same defense.

You should post a data chunk at the very least so people can import it into Mids'.

I highly doubt they will make any changes to it. At this point in the game, powerset balance has been looked at plenty of times and very few adjustments will be made. They are focusing on new content, mostly.