Syntax42
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Posts
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Your build's defense set bonuses lack focus. Half of them are S/L focused and the other half are Melee. It is best to stick with one since they both cover the same attacks, for the most part.
That might be ok for farming, but for group tanking you should try to be protected against as many damage types as possible. You can do this by going for melee+ranged+AoE defense, or by going for S/L/E/N defense. As a character that gets no defense bonus from your primary or secondary set, it is more realistic to aim for 32.5% defense and depend on a small purple inspiration to soft cap when you need to survive in harder fights. Achieving that much defense may require the use of 4 pool powers, leaving you with no room for Hasten. If you want to tank well, you have to be prepared to give up some DPS. -
Granite Armor is the ultimate survivability power. If you are using it to solo, expect major recharge and damage penalties to cause you to kill slowly. Being the best at surviving has its disadvantages. Eventually, when you can afford IO sets, you may want to slot yourself with run speed bonuses and global recharge bonuses. That will help alleviate the penalties of fighting in Granite Armor.
I suggest that you make two builds. Talk to a trainer to learn how to use multiple builds. Your first build should be one that you take all of the armor powers, except maybe Granite. Use that build for leveling up, soloing, and exemplaring below Granite Armor. Use your second build to focus completely on Granite Armor. You can skip, or not fully slot your other armor powers. You may want to take a couple for use as Luck of the Gambler mules, but slotting them for regular use will make it harder to slot your entire build.
See one of my other posts in Stone Tanker threads if you need a basic Granite Armor build. There have been several requests for Stone Tanker help in the past week and I don't feel like re-posting the build. -
I got a Stone Tanker from 1 to 50, and I slotted him in a way that EverStryke wouldn't approve. I went for set bonuses in almost all of my powers!
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Quote:I agree with this assessment. Some builds don't need more recharge. Some builds benefit from healing. Some builds don't need endurance reduction. It all depends on your individual build. I was just pointing out that a mathematical analysis can help determine an objective value of the Alpha boosts.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
Exactly. I always evaluate a character and determine just which alpha boost will give the best return. For my Invuln/Stone tanker that answer is Cardiac; for my Stone/Fire on the other hand the Spiritual is most useful.
Conventional wisdom seems to say that an Ill/Rad controller is best served by Spiritual for more recharge, but on mine I found that with 217% global recharge my biggest want was for endurance.
Figure out what you most need in your build, figure what will give you the most return on investment and the decision is easy; and will probably change from one character to another. -
The damage Alpha is the one I think you will see the least benefit from, aside from the accuracy Alpha. I posted my logic for that statement in this thread.
The recharge alpha is worth 3.5 purple sets.
On a Stone Tanker, you can potentially cap all resistances except Psi easier with the Cardiac Alpha. -
Quote:Yes, I meant Nerve.Originally Posted by abnormal_joe
A shield tank with 3 generic IOs per defensive power and similarly slotted weave would have 36.7% def per mids. Unslotted he would base at 25% which is what the Alpha would calculate against. With the rare you could get by with 2 level 50 generics to ED cap and get an additional 3.35 or so to all vectors. Almost exactly 40%. You also managed to free up 3 slots.
The Steadfast unique puts you at 43%. A Glad Proc or a Set of Gaussians puts you over softcap.
It may, or may not, be the most effective way to maximize an alt. That decision varies greatly depending on your build focus and the content you want to face. It is difficult to argue against this as the most efficient way to reach softcap.
On a SR this is even more true since you would save a slot each on seven powers rather than three.
I'm pretty sure you meant Nerve not Cardiac.
You have to look at the alternative Alpha slotting and what they replace, too. As you pointed out, a tier 4 Nerve saves you 1 slot in each of your defensive powers, at best. It could save you one set bonus, instead. Accuracy is almost never an issue at 50 due to set bonuses and defense debuffs. If you use the Spiritual Alpha instead, you gain 35% recharge, which is equivalent to 3.5 purple sets. That's about 14 slots you don't have to use for recharge bonus, if you discount the base slot per power. So, if you use the Nerve to soft cap and want perma-Hasten, you may have to spend a couple billion on purple sets. If you use the Spiritual instead, you may have to spend a couple hundred million to reach the soft cap. It seems pretty obvious which one is more valuable. -
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...00#post3459200
This could be Issue 19.5, or they could just be turning off double XP. -
Quote:Let's say you have 40% defense from powers alone that are all enhanced to 57% post-ED. This is a close scenario to what a Shield Defense Tanker might experience. After adding the tier 4 Cardiac Alpha, you would have 43.66% defense. That is basically one set bonus in each category. The recharge Alpha boost would more than make up for three purple sets worth of recharge.Originally Posted by abnormal_joe
Note the part about SO slotting.
A rare alpha could help those two sets reach softcap while saving IOs for different goals.
I realize most folks have build for softcap but this would allow you to focus more on recharge, damage, regen, whatever without sacrificing that survivability. -
You can probably soft cap one category of defense, but they you would be vulnerable to a lot of other damage types or attacks. I suggest going for 32.5% melee/ranged/AoE, or S/L/E/N. Either one will put you in a good position for staying alive in most content. At 32.5% defense, you are one small purple away from the soft cap. You will find that you don't need to be soft capped for most content, but the ease of soft capping makes hard content a breeze.
You may have to give up Hasten and pick up Hover if you want to reach 32.5% melee/ranged/AoE. -
Quote:The damage Alpha boost won't add 30% to your overall damage. Here's why:Originally Posted by Dromio
I think that's where the damage one will come into play. Being able to add 30+% of non-ED capped damage with the Very Rare could make a really big difference I think.
Really, at the Very Rare level I think almost all of them could make a big difference because of that ED exemption.
Say you have a power that does 100 damage. You enhanced it to 95% post-ED. This makes it do 195 damage. The tier 4 damage Alpha boost would bring that up to 127.25% enhancement. Now, your attack does 227.25 damage. That is about 16.5% more damage.
Now let's say you have Rage from Super Strength. Before the Alpha boost, you would be doing 275 damage. After, you would be doing 307.25. That's a 11.7% increase.
How much use you will get out of the damage Alpha boost depends on your build. There is nothing stopping you from making more than one tier 4 and swapping them out until you figure out which ones you like the best. -
Does that chart include experience modifiers? It doesn't mention experience.
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What server are you on? Virtue has a raid schedule posted as a sticky in their server forum.
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I tried searching Paragonwiki for this and all I could find was to-hit and accuracy modifiers for level differences. I mostly want to know about damage penalties and experience bonuses for fighting higher level foes so I can compare for leveling efficiency.
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I suggest using one build for leveling to Granite, then switching to a second build for Granite tanking. Save that first build for times when you exemplar below Granite, like for lower level TFs.
I made a skeleton build to share with anyone who asks for help with Stone Armor. You can swap out for any secondary set and simply move the IO sets around to keep the set bonuses. It includes the bare minimums that a Stone tanker needs to perform well: >15mph run speed without rooted, soft capped defenses to all but psionic, 90% S/L resistance, 75% F/C/E/N resistance, and teleport. My build also includes enough psionic defense that you can use a small purple inspiration and not worry about psionic damage, thus eliminating the need to take and slot Minerals. It was made before Fitness was inherent, so you get three more power choices to fill in the build.
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Quote:Scrappers have no problems surviving +2x8 if that is your farming goal. It all depends on the build and power sets though.Originally Posted by Brenzo
well the key to this all is to be able to take massive damage. and not die. thats first priority. THEN, to have GOOD damage, to kill everything. even tho i don't think ill use it for farming, i might! but i have a feeling farmers are BEST at this. big mobs, with lt's and boss's, and killing them all.
anybody have a mid hero's build they could post?
I can't tell if you want to tank, or if you want to AoE farm just from reading your posts. -
Gladiator's is also a PvP set. That 3% defense will cost you at least 2 billion, unless you farm 20 Hero merits. Granite is underslotted for resistance bonus in that build. Tough and Stone Skin need their enhancements swapped. Tough gives more resistance and should be enhanced more if you have to choose.
If you are soloing, you will want to be soft capped against S/L and Energy. Those are the most common damage types in the game. If you are teaming, you will almost always be in Granite. I strongly discourage you from trying to make a build that functions both in and out of Granite. Slots are wasted on the powers that aren't active. Make a build for tanking without Granite, and another for tanking with it. You can have three builds now and I don't see any reason to have more than one PvP build if that is what you do. The trainer allows you to switch builds every 15 minutes, which is shorter than most TF missions. As long as you know which one you need beforehand, you can perform well with two separate builds.
See my build posted above for an example of a Granite-only build. Making a build for leveling and tanking without Granite is simple enough. Take all of your armor skills except Granite. Take Tough and Weave. Take Maneuvers if you need the extra defense and don't want to get that defense from sets instead. -
I would reccomend a Scrapper unless you are absolutely set on a Tanker. Scrappers have much higher base damage to kill faster with.
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I think you should aim for more global recharge and less defense and regeneration from sets. Also, that Gladiator's proc is not worth having in this type of build.
Try to get enough recharge so you can do Shadow Meld -> Moment of Glory -> Shadow Meld -> wait less than 10 secs, repeat. -
How much influence are you willing to spend? If it isn't over 1 billion, consider the following.
A Luck of the Gambler: Global Recharge IO sells for 200 million on the AH right now. You can get one of those by farming for 2 Hero Merits. Do that 5 times, or on 5 characters at the same time and you will have enough INF to spend on a decent build.
I put that 1 billion number out there because the game's economy has been inflated a lot lately. It may only cost you 300-500 million for a build. Using Hero Merits to buy the expensive IOs will also save you INF. -
I don't like being protected against only one category of damage. I went for 32.5% defense to all positions on my Spines/Fire Scrapper. Having only melee defense seems like it wouldn't work very well because every enemy has at least one ranged attack and many enemies don't use melee attacks. If you want minimal defense that covers the most incoming damage, go for 32.5% S/L and E/N. It isn't practical to try to reach the soft cap without inspirations on characters that don't have defense in their primary or secondary sets.
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Tough and Weave can be useful on any Tanker, no matter the primary. My Stone Armor build has both. I intentionally skipped the auto resist bonus power to fit another LOTG in.
It is just a matter of math. Weave is the best pool power for adding defense. All but Stone Armor fall short of the cap on S/L resistance.
If you want help improving an actual build, post it and I'm sure someone can help you. -
My definition of an attack chain is a sequence of attacks you press repeatedly with little or no delay between them. Lightning Rod's base recharge is 90 seconds. The lowest you can expect to get it is around 25 seconds, which is not low enough for an actual attack chain. It is good for one or two uses per spawn of critters, usually.
The problem with Tenebrous Tentacles is that it is a cone. You would have to herd them, then line yourself up to hit all of the enemies at once. That takes a lot of time that you could be using to do damage. Without herding them, they would be too scattered to hit all of them in one cone or other AoE. -
Grant Cover's radius is only 15. I wouldn't try to depend on it for soft capping teammates. Other melees would see the most benefit from it, so squishies are out of luck unless you always hang back by them.
Phalanx Fighting only affects yourself and enhancing it only enhances the defense you gain when more than one teammate is around. Usually, I would advise against enhancing Phalanx Fighting, but if you are always going to be next to a Tanker, it couldn't hurt to enhance it. -
I didn't read the whole thread. I think increasing invention salvage storage would help fix the market. Either make stacked invention salvage count as one inventory item, up to a number less than 100, or increase the overall storage size. The rest of the market is fine.
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Knockback protection is usually taken care of by putting a Blessing of the Zephyr global bonus in a travel power or Combat Jumping. There is a knockback protection IO in Steadfast Protection set for resistance powers, but I don't reccommend it because the set bonuses for Blessing of the Zephyr are more likely to benefit a Tanker. If you can afford it, you can slot either as early as level 7.