Unthing

My list in order of effectiveness is

Dull Pain
Invincibilty.
Unyielding, only for the mez protection the resistance is junk.
Temp Inv
Tough Hide, a very maligned power, why people rate the Resist Es instead of this I don't know.
Tough, I know it is in the fighting pool but it is a good power for an inv.
Weave, I know it is in the fighting pool but it is a good power for an inv.
Resist Physical Damage, If you don't get Tough , get this.
Unstoppable, people rate this high or not, personal choice.
Resist Energies, this was good in I4 and earlier, now it is poor.
Resist Elements, this was good in I4 and earlier, now it is poor.


The first 5 I would get and slot ASAP, Unyielding is the exception, slotting it is not urgent.

Any debuff over 45% is pointless because a 45% debuff will floor an enemy to hit. However as someone correctly pointed out earlier on in the thread the debuffed is reduced against higher level enemies. They are about 50% effective against +4s.

I think all the dark blasts debuff by around 9.3% for defenders against even levels, which is pretty respectable.

My reason for suggesting not slotting the single target attacks for debuff is that the only things that survive long enough to be neutralised by the debuff are AVs and bosses. Lts and Minions are usually wiped out by your teammates before the debuff gets up to a respectable level. Slotting Nightfall or TT for to hit debuff is different, as there you can hit the entire spawn. Slotting Fearsome stare is even better as it has double the effect.

So let's say we have unslotted ( for to hit debuff ) Nightfall, Fearsome Stare and TT, 3 slotted Darkest night. We have about 35% debuff from the 3 cones and a 29.25% debuff from Darkest Night. So we have a 65% to hit debuff applied in total to the spawn.
For the nasty enemy in the spawn, say a boss or AV you are also using Twilight Grasp ( 9.3% debuff? ), Dark Blast and Gloom ( 9.3% debuff each ) on him. That's a 93% debuff, which is enough to floor the to hit of even a reasonable high level AV ( +4 is about 50% effectiveness which puts it down to 46.5%, still cappped ) and I've only slotted one power for to hit buffs so far.

For any of these powers other than Fearsome stare a single to hit debuff adds 1.875 to the total, whereas slotting in Fearsome Stare adds 3.75.

So I'd only suggest slotting the AoEs for to hit debuffs. On my newly created D3 I'm only going to slot Darkest Night and Fearsome Stare for to hit debuffs, FS also gets recharges though. The other AoEs I'm going to put recharges in to make sure they are debuffing the whole spawn as well as damage. The single targets attacks I'm going to slot for damage ( debuffing hitpoints protects to team too ).

I think that Nightfall and TT are probably also worth slotting for damage, as any AoEs are good for team play. I would suggest that FS, Nightfall and TT probably should be 6 slotted anyway, whether you are going for damage, debuff or control. You are better off maximising the debuff to the whole group rather than just 1 or 2 enemies.
If you are going to ignore damage and go full on for debuff, you need a mix of acc, to hit debuff and recharge. IIRC the debuff duration on Nightfall is 10 seconds, TT is 8 seconds and Fearsome Stare is 20 seconds. I think this means that Fearsome Stare needs 3 recharges, Nightfall needs 1 and TT needs 2 to keep the debuff perma. The rest can be put in to hit debuffs and acc. with 1 ACC this gives you an 85% AoE debuff with the 3 cones and Darkest night.

Sorry for the long post.

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Three slotted health is....a downtime reducer, and not much else. Aid self, on the other hand, is a huge survivability boost, and I really wouldn't recommend missing it if you want to be able to take damage.

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On a tanker 3 slotted health really makes a moderate difference. I can't speak for Brutes. I imagine Aid self is far superior.

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i use three attacks and Hasten (shad punch, smite, shad maul)

[/ QUOTE ]Wait....no midnight grasp? o.0

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Midnight Grasp is the least awe inspiring tier 9 power I've ever had. The DoT makes it appear to be worse than Shadow Maul, even though it is about the same damage. Even fully slotted it isn't great. Even so I would say that skipping it is a mistake because DM is seriously lacking in attacks.

Gratz!

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so, youre telling me that ET, that costs no endurance.. isnt affected by gauntlet?

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If ET = Enrgy Transfer, I must say that it deffo costs some endurance, it looks like 10-12, a lot less than Total Focus, but still it has an endurance cost.

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aha, clearly a misunderstanding on my part. For some reason i believed ET only cost hit points instead of endurance. (I thought it was weird you could slot it with endredux when there was no end cost at all..)

on another note, i thought the level of gauntlet wasnt from the end cost, but from the actual damage as i recall Bridger saying something about it..

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I think it is from the power level of the attack, generally endurance and recharge are also based on the same thing. So an expensive attack has more taunt effect. Energy Transfer just moves the cost from endurance to hitpoints.

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Gauntlet definitely starts at L1.

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It seems to start around level 5. I was the blaster companion to Idris' Ice tank. Before level 5 there was spilt aggro everywhere. Of course at level 5 blasters are quite tough so it doesn't matter too much.

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I could easily put another recharge in Rage, this build is not at all slot greedy. My builder made it look very nearly perma with 1 recharge and Hasten, but it's been wrong before..

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If you have Hasten perma, Rage is Perma with one recharge. But because Hasten is only 2/3rd of the time and they are both 2 minute duration you get a downtime between 0 and 30 seconds with 1 recharge. With 2 recharges you get an overlap of between 0 and 20 seconds. I tend not to overlap rage unless i'm not paying attention as you lose 10 seconds of the second rage in the first one's crash. Also it means you crash for longer. Rage does take some getting used to.

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I think Medicine would be a much better survivability boost, actually, but without Boxing I'd definitely need Haymaker and I'd generally prefer a toggle to an interruptible heal, just because it's low maintenance.

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Tough the damage you take against S/L. That has to be a must have power. I've heard that some fire tanks take Aid Self in a respec build instead of Healing Flames.

Rage with Hasten is Perma with 2 recharge SOs, not one.

I wouldn't consider a Fire Tanker without the Fighting pool, it really is essential. With SOs my fire tank was still feeling a bit squishy.

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Hasn't all other sets got a 5% increase in accuracy though? But Sonic hasn't. I'm sure I heard somewhere that Sonic has less accuracy then other sets.

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Sonic is the inaccurate set because 2 powers in Sonic are inaccurate. Siren's Song and Shockwave. This is because they are AoE control powers. The others are all default except for Dreadful Wail which is very accurate.

For blasters the other sets are all default. The snipes tend to be more accurate, as do the nukes. Some AoEs are more accurate too, such as Short Circuit, Fire Breath and Frost Breath.

The only exceptions are Assualt Rifle who get an accuracy bonus to everthing and Archery who get a large accuracy bonus to everything.

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How long can you keep this topic running? lol

[/ QUOTE ]'till the end of time, or forums, whichever comes first

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I wish both this and the pure builds thread would go away.

I'm not helping am I?

Howling Twilight probably should be slotted for Recharge and maybe Disorient duration if you want to use it as a control power. The base duration on the disorient is around 15 seconds or so. This makes it comparable with controller AoE holds but it is auto-hit.

Fearsome stare has a number of possible slottings, but it is certainly worth 6 slots. The 2 extremes are something like
Maximum fear, 1 acc,3 fear and 2 recharge.
Maximum to hit debuff, 1 acc, 3 recharge, 2 to hit debuff.

I'm not sure whether slotting to hit debuff on the single target blasts is worthwhile. After all you are only going to get a decent debuff on tough enemies like AVs and Bosses. With Nightfall, Tenebrous Tentacles, Fearsome Stare ( 20% base? ) and Darkest Night ( 20% base? ) you probably have something like a 50%-80% to hit debuff anyway. Anything more than 45% does nothing.

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14) --> Super Speed==> Run(14) Run(46)----id end slot it incase u leave it on plus the amount of runspeeds in swift are stacking

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I don't really see the point in more than 1 run speed in Super Speed. After all it stacks with Sprint ( or Prestige Power Quick / Prestige Power Slide depending on preference ) for an extra speed boost.
1 slotted swift + 1 slotted Super Speed + 1 slotted Prestige Power Quick is VERY fast!

I would get Consume later. At that point you only have one attack, this allows you to get Tough at 26. I found on my Fire Tank than I didn't really need end reducers with stamina when I only had 2 attacks.

I am not sure how valuable Weave is. It will reduce damage by approximately 17%. So maybe it is worth a shot. Unfortunately there isn't much you can take from your primary to beef you up any more ( my major gripe with FA ).

It would be nice to know what the slotting levels are given that this isn't a level 50 respec.

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Personally I think you've gone over defensive here. I would suggest getting Knockout Blow in the 40s.

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That's the basic criticism I'm used to getting for the build. The counter-argument is that I haven't been doing any solo missions aside from the costume and store missions since I talked to Azuria. The character just isn't used that much outside big teams, where the need for single-target attacks from a tank isn't that big. I contribute "enough" to the damage-dealing process with just the Footstomp.


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Footstomp is indeed awesome, both for damage and control. However I still think KO Blow in the 40s is a good idea.

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You are also really squeezing out extra defence here. If i boost anything by a decimal place i dont bother

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I'm scraping for all the def(all) I can get my hands on, as there still is Psi damage out there that makes me go thump in the night. The difference is, as said, marginal, but I'd rather have it than not. I guess it's a psychological thing - like you don't bother, I feel safer knowing I've done all I can

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I did that with GG's 40s levelling build too. I took the joke power weave and slotted Combat Jumping for 3 defence.
However I didn't take any of the passives so I had 3 more attack powers. I think going for all the tiny bits of def is a reasonable strategy and is probably more valid in I7 than in I6 when I did it. However I didn't do it for Psi, I did it for F/C/E/N when surrounded. Then it makes a big difference.

I also really think you should move Weave earlier in the build too. I think I got mine at level 30 or so.

Personally I think you've gone over defensive here. I would suggest getting Knockout Blow in the 40s.

Resist Elements and Resist Energies really do very little, I would move them later in the build and get tough/Weave earlier. Possibly even drop them completely as defence is your main mitigation against this sort of damage. The difference between 16% resistance and 27% resistance is about a 13% drop in survivability.

Against S/L damage you have something like 89% resist and 22% defence against one enemy. I had 80% ( no RPD ) and 22% in I6 and the only thing I fought that needed more were the DE monster in PI. So I would suggest if you can taking RPD later in order to move Tough and Weave earlier. Looking at your build, this may not be possible.

2 damage resistances in Unstoppable is pointless. Base is 70%, 1 SO is 84%, 2 SOs is 98%. However as you have Resist Physical Damage and Resist E*, you have a base of 10.5% resistance, so you cap at 2. Any resistance over the 90% cap is pointless, even against resistance debuffs.

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Just that I have 3 acc/dam HOs in my spines/regen scrappers quills and even with the much higher brawl index the damage is negliable. I personally wouldnt suggest to anyone to slot icicles/quills with damage, I just feel the slots can be used to greater effect elsewhere.

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I have a spine regen scrapper too. I have also run Herostats on him too. Quills is far less effective as the top damaging powers go on my Spines scrapper than on my Ice tank. For me this is due to play style. My scrapper is in constant motion in order to get ideal cone positions so is normally only surrounded by enemies before a Spine Burst, also because he isn't normally the main focus of the spawn enemies aren't always very close to him. As a result Quills 3 slotted for damage is less than half as effective over time as Spine Burst for damage per second or Throw Spines are. Given the relatively small end cost ( compared to Spine Burst ) this is still reasonable, just nothing to write home about.

For my tank, the enemies are usually nicely packed around me, so I have many enemies within the 8 ft radius. So I end up hitting more enemies for a larger proprtion of the time than I do with my scrapper.

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I might take frozen aura instead of build up so I can mass sleep before hitting hibernate (might buy me some time to not lose aggro)

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I doubt that will work, after all if everyone stopping attacking you don't lose the aggro. The problem is when you hibernating and then someone drops an Aoe, they may attack the someone. On the other hand if Frozen aura is a long duration taunt it may work.

Now I've thought about it I would get Ice Blast at 44 instead of Freezing Touch. Ice Blast and Block of Ice act as single target gauntlets, so you can use them with taunt for kiting AVs, something that is very useful in the 40s. Or you can use Ice Blast as a way of getting a single enemy that is targetting a squishy to attack you.

That's the most defensive build I've ever seen.

The biggest problems I see with this build are:-

Glacial Armor is too late. Freaks, Council Galaxies and Vampyres, Croatoan Ghosts, Cabal are all enemies that will really hurt before you get it at 32, as they are ranged pure energy. I would delay Tough for it, so get it instead of Tough or Boxing.

Get Hibernate at level 32. It is awesome, it changed my tanking from fighting +2s and sometimes getting wiped to fighting +3s and +4s and sometimes getting wiped. This was in I5. With a Chilling Embrace slotted for taunt you usually have about 10 seconds of Hibernation before it becomes a problem, although I tend to try and taunt and use my biggest attack before Hibernating. It has saved the life of my tank many a time, almost as many as Hoarfrost. But then I'm not Ice secondary.

Stimulant, I would get it immediately before Aid Self, it is a throwaway power.

1 Question. Why have you got Build Up? You have 3 attacks? Isn't getting Ice Blast at a level when you can use it more important?

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Tar Patch - While very useful I left this power out myself until around the 40s. It does provide a nice -RES and SLOW on enemies, but with the amount of useful powers in the dark miasma set, along with the essential pool powers and 2 attacks I found it was the one I could wait for longest.


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This is a really great power and should be got asap, especially when combined with someone AoE heavy like a fire blaster or spiney scrapper the mobs dont last long even at low level

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Also Resistance Debuffs amplify damage debuffs. So the 40% resistance debuffs from Tar patch makes the 40% damage debuff from Darkest Night into a 56% debuff.

If I was making a Dark defender I would get Twilight Grasp ( single target debuff + AoE heal ), Darkest Night and Tar Patch ( not sure of the order ) and then probably Fearsome Stare.

Thinking about it there really only is one safely skippable power in the Dark Miasma set and that is Black Hole. The next most skippable are probably Shadow Fall and Howling Twilight, however both are awesome powers. Howling Twilight is good just for the control and debuff effects, the fact that it is also the best res in the game is good too.

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Combat Jump is Immobilise, AFAIK. Acrobatics is hold. I think some of the combat pool powers offer a boost against some control effects, though.

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Some other ones that give protection
Weave is immob protection.
Aid Self is stun protection.

Resistance powers, these reduce the duration of mez effects.
IIRC Assault gives Placate and Taunt resistance.
IIRC Tactics gives Confuse and Fear resistance.
Health gives Sleep resistance.

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Icicles damage is so small its not worth slotting for, if an attack causes 2 pts of damage and you 3 slot it for damage you will have spent 3 slots to get an additional 2 pts of damage (thats just an example, Im not on my builder to pull up any real figures but its NOT worth slotting damage in) Icicles also need as many end reds as possible, its very end heavy

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I have Icicles 6 slotted 3xDAM, 3xEND. It is my seconded highest damaging attack over any play session ( as measured by Herostats ), after Foot Stomp.
It is less end heavy than a normal attack, does more damage per endurance and about the same damage per second as a normal PbAoE.

Icicles is one of the 2 optional powers in the set. Unlike Permafrost it isn't garbage. Extra AoE damage is always good for a tank as you should be standing in the middle of a group of enemies so it will hit 5 or more each tick.

I suprised by the lack of heavily slotted Howl in the builds in this thread. I have it on my Sonic/Dark corruptor and it is a really good power as it allows you to damage and debuff an entire spawn. Spammed with 2 recharges it gives a perma res debuff.

The other cones, Shockwave and Siren's Song don't debuff resistance. Also Shockwave does knockback which means you might knock enemies off your tar patch.

My corruptor is pretty good against AVs etc, the combination of spammable -res, -dam, -regen and -acc make AVs go down fast and do far less dmaage. A defender would be even better at all these things.

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Having said all that, I do think a Tank should put some effort into their damage-dealing as well. It's neither efficient nor fun to have 1 or 2 attacks till your late 20s.


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Unfortunately for most tank builds there is only room for 2 attacks and taunt before level 22 if you want to get stamina at level 20. Even that is taking compromises on defence.

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I wonder whether 3 slotted Swift will help my flight speed more than 1 slotted Swift...

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Just tested Swift at various slottings with Hover.

It isn't worth slotting. It adds a base of around 3 ft per second to flight speed. With 3 flight speeds you get to 6 ft per second.

Hover is 4.2 ft per second and goes up to 24 ft per second 3 slotted.

It seems to have a similar minor effect to flight, however it is not realy noticeable as fly is so much faster.