Syntax42
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Posts
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Was there any reason you took Soul Tentacles? Unlocking the Villain epic pools is quite a bit of work for an AoE immobilize that Controllers can do better. You would be missing out on the regen and recovery from Physical Perfection.
You slotted Rock Armor like you plan to use it, but didn't slot your other armor powers. As a bare minimum, you need S/L and E/N defenses soft capped when out of Granite. It is difficult to slot a build for tanking well in Granite and tanking well out of Granite, which is why I suggest making two builds instead.
Pancea is a PvP set and may be very expensive. Check the price before you decide to use PvP sets.
Team Teleport does NOT work like Assemble the Team. It works like Team Fly. Only the people standing next to you will be teleported, and it only teleports them a short distance like you are using Teleport Self. Just be aware that it is a power you can drop if you want something else.
Getting perma Earth's Embrace is very expensive and probably not worth it. In Granite, you should have enough mitigation that nothing will hit you hard enough to make you want those extra HPs all the time. Earth's Embrace does make a nice big heal for the occasional emergency, like when fighting Bobcat in the Tin Mage TF if she happens to debuff your defenses a lot. -
Go perma-Granite for tanking on teams. Use a second build for tanking without Granite, or for leveling up. You get three builds now, so I don't see how having two builds for PvE could be a bad thing.
Here is a perma-Granite skeleton build I give out to anyone who needs guidance on Stone Armor. It has enough run speed without Rooted on. It has soft capped defenses to all but psionic. It has enough psionic defense that you can use a small or medium purple and not have to worry about psionic damage. This build is flexible enough to change for any secondary powerset, and is unfinished enough to customize for the bonuses you like the most. It was designed in I18, so you even get to pick 3 more powers to make it the way you want it.
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Quote:The defense is a small purple away from being soft capped. The HP difference isn't an issue with very high mitigation. DDR does give Stone Armor a slight advantage. The resistance was something I pointed out in my post. It is very close to S/L cap at 88.77%. I was hoping someone might be able to post on how to get it capped.Originally Posted by Auroxis
Sorry, you won't be more survivable than a well built Stone Armor. You have less defense, less resistance, less HP, and no DDR.
I'm debating the idea that Stone Armor is the most durable in the game. The facts I pointed out in my first post led me to think Electric Armor could be a contender with the Tier 4 Cardiac Alpha and the right build. I did the survivability analysis and Electric Armor came out slightly ahead with capped S/L resistance. I think the numbers were something like 11,000 for Electric and 10,000 for Stone Armor's maximum sustainable DPS. I will have to post the math again tomorrow.Quote:Stone Armor is the most survivable. If Elec Armor was more survivable than Stone Armor while also having a recharge bonus(as opposed to a penalty), the best endurance management, and a damage aura... Then it would be overpowered(or Stone would need a buff).
The reason I love Electric Armor, is that it gives me more than enough survivability after IO's, while also giving me great offense enhancing tools. Not because it's the most survivable. -
Ice Armor is probably the worst set in the game for PvE right now. It only gives S/L and E/N defenses, and only caps Cold resistance. It provides a very small amount of Fire and Toxic resistance. The self-healing is not reliable due to the long recharge. The defense debuff resistance is around 50%, which is not high enough to ignore heavy defense debuffs without consuming purple inspirations. It does have debuffs to reduce incoming damage, but the mitigation from them does not make up for the weaknesses of the set.
If you want to play it, go ahead. Any Tanker set can perform the role required of a Tanker. Teammates' buffs, your playstyle, and strategy can help overcome numerical disadvantages of any set. -
I was trying to make the absolute best tanker in the game for soaking damage. It was between Electric and Stone.
Granite Armor lacks psionic resistance, but can get some defense through pool powers and set bonuses. It will need inspirations to soft cap psionic defense, and capping psionic resistance will take a lot of inspirations. With the tier 4 cardiac alpha, capping all resistances except for toxic is fairly easy.
Electric Armor lacks Toxic resistance in the armor toggles. By soft capping positional defenses, it can be fairly well-protected against toxic attacks. It can easily cap toxic resistance when the tier 9 power is active. With the tier 4 cardiac alpha, capping S/L seems possible. Energy would be capped before the alpha. All other resists except for toxic would be around 50-60%, which is reasonable to cap with inspirations. However, the majority of end-game damage is S/L or E.
It seems like Electric Armor could be the toughest tanker in the game, with the potential to cap all resistances except for toxic easier than the other non-Stone Tankers. It also covers the weakness of Stone Armor. It has the potential to be triple-protected (resistance + defense + heals) against every attack, except for the few without a positional vector.
If you think your Electric/Dark build, or any tanker is more maxxed out, please post the survivability analysis numbers for S/L and E damage.
Here's my build. I couldn't figure out how to get S/L perfectly capped. It would be at 88.77% with the tier 4 cardiac alpha boost. The 3% resist IO would have helped, but I would have to lose something important to pick it up. Be sure to turn on combat suppression for Stealth to see the 32.5% defense properly.
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.91
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 50 Magic Tanker
Primary Power Set: Electric Armor
Secondary Power Set: Dark Melee
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Concealment
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery
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Super Strength's main feature is Rage. That isn't hard to get perma'd with just regular IOs and no global recharge. I have heard a lot about combining Super Strength with Fiery Embrace for some very high damage. It seems like nobody knows the exact numbers for Fiery Embrace, though.
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Figure out an attack chain that does the highest DPS for War Mace. This will generally involve 3 or 4 attacks in your main chain, depending on how high you can get your global recharge. If your goal of the attack chain is not DPS, then include attacks that do AoE knockdowns and other effects.
Mids' can be set up to show you damage per activation time, and Arcanatime activation times. Those are the main tools used in formulating an attack chain.
Without seeing your possible build, it is hard to give more advice. -
That build looks good, but it could use a few changes if you wanted to make it better.
Don't plan your entire build around the Alpha boost. You may decide you want a different one later or find that you need a certain one for a certain situation. Alpha boosts also have an amount of enhancement that bypasses ED, so you will always gain some benefit from them and should not underslot a bonus just because you plan to use a certain boost.
Aid Self would be nice to have. If you dropped Laser Beam Eyes and one other attack, you could get it. Did you work out an attack chain for maximum DPS?
You have extra defense that you don't really need. You could drop one slot from Combat Jumping and Weave. A third recharge in Hasten would bring it closer to perma. True Grit and Tough can also lose one slot each with minimal loss of resistance.
Active Defense needs Membranes to reach 95% defense debuff resistance. You are currently at 87.83%. Refusing to use Membranes based on it being bugged seems silly to me. When they do fix it (which will probably be never) you can go back to using regular IOs. -
Quote:Hasten's crash is hurting your endurance bar because you lack endurance reduction in your toggles. It is only 15 endurance after 2 minutes, which is .125 end/s.Originally Posted by abnormal_joe
Couple things.
I *hate* hasten. Its ugly and the crash does dirty things to my blue bar. With IOs being what they are I opt not to ever take it now. I have trouble imagining a situation where one "needs" more rech than I have in the build as it is.
I will grant that taking and slotting up all resist powers will make you tougher, but again it begs the question why. Very little in the game will get past softcap, tanker hp, aidself.
The few places you might encounter an actual threat you will almost certainly have team mates to assist you.
There was an early build, now lost, where I had softcap, 70ish rech, and a heal....without the use of purples. It was effective. It was much cheaper. But I found that this was far and away my favorite alt out of 38 50s and 5 1/2 years of play. With the amount of time I spent on him I figured why the hell not?
The difference between 120% ish global recharge on your build and 180% for perma-Hasten is noticeable. It would result in a 23s recharge instead of a 28s recharge on Shield Charge and Lightning Rod.
By picking up Hasten and making your build more efficient, you can also spare more slots to enhance resistance. Even at the soft cap for defense, you WILL get hit. Streakbreaker gives critters an automatic hit that isn't very far into the fight. It generally happens all at once, so you have to be prepared to take a lot of damage at once. Enhancing resistance and True Grit's HP bonus ensures that the impact to your health bar will be minimal.
If you can tank Lord Recluse without dying while he is buffed by the towers, then I would say your build is fine. I have seen a Shield Tanker do it without assistance from the team or a dedicated healer, so I know it is possible. -
The build posted above has some issues. They should have taken Hasten because that is a large chunk of your global recharge bonus. It is missing endurance reduction in the toggles. It is also missing True Grit. Enhancing True Grit, Deflection, and Tough's resistance bonus will help you survive longer.
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Shield is very easy to soft cap on a Tanker. Get your defenses slotted, including Weave and Combat Jumping. Slot a to-hit buff with Gaussian's and add a Steadfast Protection 3% defense IO. That should put you at the cap if you slotted your defense toggles with enough defense bonus and picked up Phalanx Fighting for the free 5% defense.
Add in Grant Cover and enough global recharge to get Active Defense on a 60-second recharge so you can keep it double-stacked. With just two Membranes in Active Defense, you will be at 95% defense debuff resistance.
The rest of your slotting can go to HP bonuses or more global recharge. Don't expect to get Shield Charge and Lightning Strike very far under 30 seconds or so. -
Quote:That is exactly why people tend to skip Maneuvers.Originally Posted by Traegus
is it not worth it compared to the end usage?
It all depends on your build, though. In Granite Armor, the easiest way to soft-cap is to take Weave and Maneuvers. Combat Jumping and Hover won't work in Granite form, and Stealth is not desirable on a Tanker.
The alternative to Weave and Maneuvers is to use set bonuses. However, you end up with less of another important set bonus like global recharge.
Post in the AT-specific forums for advice or builds. Generally, defense-based Tankers won't need Maneuvers to reach 45% defense, but a Scrapper or Brute may find it useful. -
Quote:Tier-9's with a crash should be ignored when accounting for general survivability, mostly because they can get you killed if the fight isn't over by the time you crash. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take them or use them. It just means they should be reserved for special situations and not tanking every mob.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Actually it's more durable. You can soft-cap ALL defense types save psi, and your resistances are higher EXCEPT when you're using your Tier-9 godmode.
That said, the difference between 33% resistance and 20% resistance is almost negligible when comparing for survivability. You could take 66 damage per hit, or 80 damage per hit. That is about a 20% difference, which may be hard to notice. Comparing capped resistance to 33% produces a 560% difference in damage taken.Quote:Wrong. Resistances hover in roughly the 30-33% range. Shield hovers in the low 20's.
Shield Tankers can get enough defense debuff resistance to practically ignore defense debuffs, but Invulnerability can not. In addition, postional (melee/ranged/AoE) defenses are generally better than typed (S/L etc.) because they cover almost all attacks. You don't need psionic defense on a Shield Tanker because almost all psionic attacks have a vector (aka positional) flag, and all non-psionics do have a vector except for hamidon's untyped attacks.
When you consider the non-physical resistances being almost equal, the ability to ignore defense debuffs, and positional defense, Shield Tankers are equal with Invulnerability for tanking non-S/L damage and possibly better than Invuln in situations with heavy defense debuffs like ITF.
I am referring to Dechs Kaison's method for analyzing survivability as found in this thread. High resistance and defense will work for a while, but your HP will go down without heals or regeneration. The higher you get all three, the more damage you can take. Consider the following scenarios:Quote:Not QUITE sure what you're talking about. Inv, done right, doesn't REQUIRE massive healing capabilities (fast-charging DP is more than sufficient).
Your Invuln build posted above has capped S/L defense and S/L resistance, so you take 1% of the unmitigated DPS, on average. Dull Pain heals you for 750 every 120s, or 6.25 HP/s. You regenerate 25.66 HP/s. So, on average, you can take 3191 pre-mitigated S/L DPS without losing health. Anything beyond that and your health will be depleted as you fight.
My Dark Armor Tanker has 75% resistance to S/L and capped defense, so he takes 2.5% of the original damage. Note that it is much more than your build. The thing that makes him more durable is the healing. I can heal roughly 2000 HPs every 20s using Dark Regeneration. That is 100 HP/s. I can tank 4000 pre-mitigated DPS, and I didn't even account for natural regeneration.
You have to count healing as part of the mitigation of a set, unless you always team with a personal empath just to heal you, thus reducing your team's potential DPS.
I'm comparing overall survivability as described in the thread I linked above. It is quite possible to reach soft-capped defense on Electric and Dark. Practically-speaking, 32.5% positional defense, or going for S/L/E/N only works best. At 32.5% defense, you are one small purple away from the soft cap. It isn't hard to get small purple inspirations.Quote:And yeah, DA or EA are real nice for resistances. So what? Resistance without enough defense to cover you and keep the enemy at their base 5% to-hit means you wind up taking more damage over time.
I don't mean to demean EA or DA. But you're comparing sets that survive for VERY different reasons than Inv does.
In addition to the healing, Electric Armor sports capped energy resistance, which is the most common damage type after S/L damage. When tier 4 Alpha boosts come, it will be very easy to cap S/L resistance, too. All of its other resistances are around 50%. Combining soft capped defense with its built-in healing and great resistances make Electric the most durable tank, after Stone Armor. -
Invulnerability is no longer as tough as Stone Armor. Against S/L damage, it does fine. Against anything else, it is about as durable as a Shield Defense Tanker.
What makes Stone Armor so durable is the combination of soft-capped defenses, very high resistances (over 75%) to all but psionic, and decent healing through regeneration. Invulnerability only has one heal, which isn't very good for HP/s. Invulnerability also lacks resistance to non S/L damage.
If you want Stone Armor durability without the penalties of Granite, I would suggest going Dark or Electric Armor. Both of those have much better resistances than Invulnerability and have better healing. Set bonuses and pool powers can get their defenses up to the soft cap, or one small inspiration away, depending on how you build it. Electric has better overall resistances and can potentially reach the S/L resistance cap when the tier 4 Alpha boost is released. Dark has the best heal in the game but takes slightly more skill and planning to use. -
Quote:If you only have 90% resistance and no defense, you take 10% of the original damage. If you have 90% resistance and 45% defense, you take 1%, on average. Taking ten times the damage is a lot. I don't think I would sacrifice that defense, considering how common Energy damage is.Originally Posted by Auroxis
That build is very lacking in recharge and accuracy. Also, going for E/N defense isn't really needed, because your Energy resistance is capped and NE damage isn't that common.
The OP's build could use improvement. If you wanted more recharge, go for 32.5% defense instead and rely on teammates or a small purple so soft cap you when you need it. You won't need it in every fight. -
Quote:While this may be true, it is much more efficient to add Tough and Weave to a build than it is to add in ~7.5% defense to all, using sets instead. Tough adds a lot of survivability to any build that isn't capped to S/L already.Originally Posted by Finduilas
*This* I completely disagree with. Tough and Weave are always useful, and I do recommend them in most cases, but you can build a tank that's plenty sturdy enough for most content without them.
The Fighting Pool isn't even essential for defense sets like Shields and Ice. In those sets you can reach the soft-cap without Weave by slotting for defense set bonuses if you're willing to spend the influence to do so. -
Read up on Enhancement Diversification. With the invention system, it is rarely necessary to 6-slot any power just to get a good amount of defense out of it. With 3-4 slots, you can usually get full defense and endurance reduction bonuses. The only thing to consider after that is what set bonuses you want, which depends more on your overall build than the power you are slotting.
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Why focus on stunning? Scrappers are great at DPS and amazing at it when you focus on DPS. Its not like you can stun an AV, most of the time. Let the Controllers take care of the stunning with their AoE holds and stuns.
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Positional defense like that is good for being able to tank anything in the game. If you are absolutely sure you will only be farming fire-based critters and never tank on teams, you can go for just for F/C and S/L defenses. Getting those to 32.5% should leave you with room to add more global recharge and possibly Hasten.
I don't think you need Hasten. My Spines/Fire Scrapper does fine without it and has about the same global recharge that you do. -
Quote:Those sets with Quick Recovery are recommended because regeneration tends to work well before defense and resistance-based sets can get enough to matter.Originally Posted by Sailboat
Are the Quick Recovery powers really that big an advantage now that everyone gets Stamina at level 2? All the powersets without Quick Recovery seem to be thriving now that5 they have early Stamina. I thought the original reason for recommending the sets with it was so that you had some kind of early end recovery...but now everybody does.
I would recommend a set that puts you in a good position for tanking at level 50, not level 10. Incarnate content is supposed to be the end-game and from what we've seen so far, it is designed to push characters to their limits. Bobcat does about as much damage as Lord Recluse when he is buffed. The mines require careful strategy or better survivability than your average Blaster for the entire team. Hydra do tons of toxic damage which very few Tankers can stand up to. While any Tanker set can be acceptable for those TFs, the weaker sets and builds have to rely on their teams more. Sometimes a Scrapper ends up tanking if the Tanker dies. Sometimes the entire team wipes and has to retry the encounters with a different strategy. Play the set you want to play and make an awesome build, or play an awesome set and you can get by with a mediocre build. -
As an Invuln, there is no reason to not be at 90% S/L resistance. Your 85% resistance means you take 15% of all S/L damage done to you instead of 10%. That's 50% more, which is a huge margin when fighting AVs. It could make the difference between getting hit for 2000 or 3000 when fighting Bobcat in Tin Mage's TF. I'm not sure if she actually hits that hard, but she does cut through tanks like butter if they don't have the defense and resistance to stand up to her.
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Unless Mids' and City of Data are both wrong, Darkest Night only appears to debuff for .75 seconds. That's not enought to consider for survivability.
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Quote:That's an impressive, but expensive build. If we wait for the tier 4 Alpha boost, I calculated that Granite slotted with 3 resist IOs would give 86.404% resistance with a Cardiac boost. That would make it much easier and less expensive to reach the caps on resistances.Originally Posted by Smersh
You *could* do both on a stone, if you wanted...
I don't claim it's a great build, but that's the framework of something that caps out resistances and defenses to everything but psi.Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1538;721;1442;HEX;| |78DAA594494F136118C7DFE962ED4617642B50A4B283B50D98B81C0C11508426151| |A16B7A6D4918E9499329D18AB07F1A05E3CEAD1E53BA807E347718B7A52E3F20DEA| |B3BC54708E4EDAFFAFFDF7D9E69999666E4E0584D83E2594C0E972A15ACDE70AFA8| |66AFA726AB1A41B6563BD263C428818DBF929F59AAA57D5E4A265E86A7ED2DC34CC| |4EF953462DAB6A724ED3554B2BE6272DAB50DC88CCEA25D554752BB9F3C197358C7| |272B1A2AA5783F471465B2F599ABE1EA56F392852314CAB6069861E216B56BFA155| |B535ADAC59B5E874452B26A70BA655CA670A554B356BED30DD5178BFF50A79D49DE| |29C5388B470CD10F69D619C255C8F34E2E005877807990A3B2E6542C120478A9126| |B8C609BE3640B7284301A72CE0A4021FA0809B1D87DB1418BBBFC2D8227C84008FC| |2019E392AD63A4F68CF1036A0A6570EEFCD0212C2779ED0B4C05824BC8720BFECE4| |E742012E14E0429B502828870BD2703A382199127A41E3845F325E113E41CD88EC1| |D99A31D45797F51DE5F2BEFCF80A06659A8F9A903AD03CF18CF0909B8515A64EF16| |EAAD80D32653DA6A7CC2B7087DB7099FA17787ECDDC14D63DC34C64DE37CD12AD0B| |B93E3DC9DBCDA2E5E6D17EF3BFED581D726FE8DD0FB9DE084F6DDBC76D14D037D81| |7E3DECB87BE29479702FC608BD7BB015C1DD7356E20EA05D1CDA66DC65DC13D8AFE| |F3EE301C184AC7E99D53F401B1A18640C31860983238C51820B661EE2099D433E5A| |D27013C3CFA01379046B1995C5479728736C99B1C258251CBEC0B848780C5949999| |55CA6BBF9C80A639541C5D3BB7410E649C98B9A22A7CBF5EF03346F73B2AEC62325| |1472863186CFEBBF8ED7819D5EDE051F680E258BB2847209E532CA159402CA1A4A1| |1A5FEA6911D3A86031D4739817212A5250CF210233DF894F951022841942694104A| |18A5192586F204A5EE0D37FE17EA3FA086A2EC3EFF9F36E797CDF96D7352B6CD8ED| |89CB4CD99B039E336E7EF46FF00FF005A34| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
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Alpha boosts are NOT locked in and do not require a respec to change them. They take relatively little time to create a 2nd tier boost. Do two or three task forces and you should be able to craft any one you want. Instead of asking us what would help you, try them out for yourself and decide. You seem to know what you want out of the Alpha slot, but you also seem to be overestimating what they will do. Until we see the 4th tier boosts in Issue 20, the Alpha slot will be adding only a small bonus to ED-capped powers.
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Assault is a 10.5% damage bonus, but it doesn't add 10.5% damage. Instead, it adds that to your total damage bonus. A power normally does 100% of its damage. Most attacks are enhanced to about 90% bonus damage. Your 100 damage attack now does 190 damage. Now, you turn on Assault. Your 190 damage attack now does 200.5 damage, which is only about 5.5% more damage. Throw in a build up or Soul Drain, and Against All Odds, and Assault will barely make a dent in your total damage output. If you regularly team with a Kinetics who is good at using Fulcrum Shift, Assault will become worthless because you will likely be at the damage cap.
If you can fit it in your build and run it, great. Just be aware that there are far better options for increasing your damage.