IO build example: Fire/Fire Tanker
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2007-04-24 11:58 in The Market and Inventions
There, I replied! 
Seriously, this is one heady bit of info to digest. Keep it comin'! All the various build threads help me to wrap my head around all the myriad possibilities of the system. Also keeps me from farkin' up.
@Remianen / @Remianen Too
Sig by RPVisions
It looks like your post got cut off in the "XI. Single Target +Health Build" section.
EDIT: Hee hee. Looks like you caught it. 
Paragon Wiki: http://www.paragonwiki.com
City Info Terminal: http://cit.cohtitan.com
Mids Hero Designer: http://www.cohplanner.com
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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XI. Single Target +Health Build
This build will pursue +Health bonuses via single target attacks.
[u]Slot allocation[u]
First let's see what kind of slot investment we'll need to get the most +Health bonuses.
We will definitely want to six-slot Health and Healing Flames, because Heal sets have two excellent +Health bonuses. That's 10 slots there. We also want to slot our resistance sets with 3 Titanium Coatings to get the +Health bonuses there, which takes 6 more slots. Finally, we'll want to slot our single target attacks with at least 3 Crushing Impacts for the +Health bonuses there. With 5 single target attacks, that's 10 more slots. Finally, we'll want three Unbounded Leaps in Super Jump. Total bare minimum cost for +Health bonuses: 28 slots.
That leaves plenty of room, so let's look again at how we can expand these investments for greater benefit.
Looking again at Crushing Impact, the deeper set bonuses seem worth taking: +tohit and -recharge. As we saw with the PBAoE build, even a few of those can make a big difference. Let's 6 slot each of our single target attacks with Crushing Impact. Five full Crushing Impact sets gives us 11% immob resistance (can I get a "Hell, yeah!"?), +5.65% max Health, +12.5% tohit, +25% recharge, and +12.5% Psi resistance. Not bad at all. The cost of six slotting five attacks is 25 slots. We have 42 more to play with.
Defenses will take 5 slots for Healing Flames and 2 each for Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, for a total of 11. That leaves another 31.
Support will occupy 1 slot for Build Up, 1 for Fiery Embrace, 1 for Stamina (we're employing the lessons in efficiency that the last build taught us), and 5 for Health. Furthermore, we're going to want 3 slots in Consume and at least 3 in Blazing Aura. Those 13 slots leave us with 17 for EPPs and discretionary slotting.
[u]Set allocation[u]
So let's start putting sets to powers.
A full set of Crushing Impact gives the following:
acc: +68.9%
dam: +143.1% (before ED scaling)
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
The single target attacks we'll be taking are Scorch, Fire Sword, Boxing, Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword. Every one of these attacks will benefit from a six-slotted Crushing Impact. If we need the slots, we can always pull the sixth slot out of some or all of the attacks, at the expense of Psi resistance.
Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.
Three Titanium Coating enhancements (res, end/res, end/rch) give
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep res: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
We'll be slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough this way.
In Healing Flames, we're going to try to maximize our +Health bonuses:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%
This gives us two identical 1.88% Health bonuses from a single power, and considerably better healing performance than in i8.
Support slotting will be a bit more expensive.
Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina each take one slot.
We'll put five slots into Health, but we'll slot it differently than we did for the PBAoE build:
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO
heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%
We've dropped 15% recovery to get another 1.5% health bonus out of Regenerative Tissue.
We'll be adding 3 slots to Consume:
Scirocco's Dervish: dmg/rch, acc/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +74.2%
end: +47.7%
rch: +47.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Slotting Consume this way isn't ideal, because the recharge is considerably below its i8 equivalent. But it gives us a powerful Regen bonus and a good tohit bonus, which I am anticipating stacking for profit down the line. If we can spare a slot later, we'll add a recharge IO back here to establish parity with the i8 baseline.
Blazing Aura gets another 3 slots:
Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dmg dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
We've saved some slots here: the i8 version had 6 slots, and less acc and equal damage. It had a taunt enhancement and somewhat better endurance efficiency, however, so we lose ground in those respects.
This leaves us with 17 discretionary slots.
We will take a similar approach to discretionary slots as we did with the PBAoE build: we will assign one slot to knockback protection in Plasma Shield and use the default Combat Jumping slot for another kb protection IO, 1 slot in Fire Shield for Steadfast Resistance's res/+3% def global, 2 slots into Weave for defense enhancement, and another into Weave and one into Combat Jumping for Luck of the Gambler recharge globals. That's another 6 slots, leaving us with 11 unallocated.
We're going to take a similar approach with the epics, as well. We want to add 3 Devastation slots to Char and Fire Blast to get the fantastic Regen, Health and Damage bonuses from Devastation. And we'll add 4 slots to Fire Ball to get Accuracy and Recovery from Positron's Blast.
We'd also like to put two slots into Super Jump for the +Health in Unbounded Leap, but we only have one slot available. We'll take a slot out of Scorch in order to do so, sacrificing some Psi resistance.
[u]The Build[u]
Here's the single target build.
[u]The Build[u]
+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: Hot Poker
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Scorch ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(9),Empty(34),Empty(46)
01 => Fire Shield ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(11),Empty(33)
02 => Fire Sword ==> Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(13),Empty(33),Empty(46),Empty(50)
04 => Healing Flames ==> Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(7),Empty(29),Empty(37),Empty(40)
06 => Combat Jumping ==> Empty(6),Empty(7)
08 => Blazing Aura ==> Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(15),Empty(34)
10 => Consume ==> Empty(10),Empty(11),Empty(17),Empty(34)
12 => Plasma Shield ==> Empty(12),Empty(13),Empty(19),Empty(33)
14 => Super Jump ==> Empty(14),Empty(15),Empty(21)
16 => Boxing ==> Empty(16),Empty(17),Empty(21),Empty(37),Empty(46),Empty(50)
18 => Tough ==> Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(23)
20 => Hurdle ==> Empty(20)
22 => Health ==> Empty(22),Empty(23),Empty(25),Empty(27),Empty(37),Empty(43)
24 => Stamina ==> Empty(24),Empty(25)
26 => Build Up ==> Empty(26),Empty(27)
28 => Fiery Embrace ==> Empty(28),Empty(29)
30 => Weave ==> Empty(30),Empty(31),Empty(31),Empty(31)
32 => Taunt ==> Empty(32)
35 => Incinerate ==> Empty(35),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(40),Empty(43)
38 => Greater Fire Sword ==> Empty(38),Empty(39),Empty(39),Empty(39),Empty(40),Empty(43)
41 => Char ==> Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42)
44 => Fire Blast ==> Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45)
47 => Fire Ball ==> Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(50)
49 => Fire Sword Circle ==> Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Sprint ==> Empty(1)
01 => Brawl ==> Empty(1)
02 => Rest ==> Empty(1)
I don't know of a planner that handles IOs, so lets look at the enhancements on a power-by-power basis.
Scorch: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +97.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
We've removed a dmg/rch from Scorch to put an extra slot into Super Jump for another +Health set bonus. I chose dam/rch because Crushing Impact was already well past the ED soft cap for damage (we lost only 4% damage enhancement after ED), and because I think our set bonuses will make up for the lost recharge. We could just as easily have taken out the acc/dmg instead, and that might even be a better option for PvE.
Notice that even with only 5 slots, Scorch is better in every way than its i8 counterpart.
Fire Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection res/def global
res: +60.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Def (all): +3%
Fire Sword: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
This is our standard Crushing Impact slotting, complete with Psi resistance. Notice that it's more accurate, more damaging, more efficient and considerably faster than the i8 version.
Healing Flames:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%
Again, we've focused on getting two Health bonuses from Healing Flames.
Combat Jumping: 1 Karma Knockback protection global, 1 Luck of the Gambler 5% recharge global
Set and global bonuses:
Kb protection: mag 4
Recharge: 5%
Blazing Aura: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dmg dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Consume: Scirocco's Dervish: dmg/rch, acc/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +74.2%
end: +47.7%
rch: +47.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
This isn't ideal recharge value, but perhaps our set bonuses will help make up for that.
Plasma Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection Kb protection
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Kb protection: mag 4
Super Jump: Unbounded Leap end, jump, stealth
jump: +42.4%
end: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Jump speed: 4%
Health: +1.5%
Boxing: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
Tough: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Hurdle: 1 IO jump
jump: +42.4%
Health:
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO
heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%
Stamina: 2 IO endrcv
endmod: +84.8%
Build Up: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%
Fiery Embrace: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%
Weave: Luck of the Gambler: def, def/end, def/rech, +5% rch global
def: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +5%
Taunt: 1 IO taunt
taunt: +42.4%
Incinerate: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
Greater Fire Sword: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
Char: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch, acc/dam/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +18.5%
rch: +66.2%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%
Fire Blast: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +47.7%
rch: +39.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%
Fire Ball: Positron's Blast: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, dam/rng, acc/dam/end
acc: +47.7%
dam: +99.0%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
rng: +15.9%
Set bonuses:
Recovery: +2.5%
Fire and Cold res: +1.58%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +6.25%
Fire Sword Circle: 1 dmg IO
dmg: +42.4%
An acc/dmg HO might seem like a better investment here on the surface, but let's wait for the set bonus totals before deciding.
[u]The Set Bonuses[u]
Let's see if this approach has paid off.
Health: +23.29%. This takes a level 50 Tanker with no accolades from 1874 health to 2311 hit points, a gain of 437 hit points.
Regen: +123%. Combined with our enhanced Health, and we have 201.76%. Not as good a buff as the best passive regen an i8 Regeneration scrapper has (+224.25%), but it is working on a higher hit point total, so the net effect will be higher.
tohit: +25.02%. This is a lot of extra accuracy. This is why I put only one dmg IO into Fire Sword Circle instead of an acc/dmg HO: with this kind of accuracy, we can focus on the highest possible damage enhancement.
Recharge: +41.25%. Wow. This isn't quite as good as Hasten, but it's better than a recharge SO in all of your powers, and it's almost as good as a level 50 recharge IO. This helps to make up for some of our powers that are suffering from weaker-than-i8 recharge. We'll reexamine them in a moment.
Def (all) +3%. This combined with Weave and Combat Jumping gives us +13.43% defense to all. This is not the best defense layer, but I'll gladly take it.
Psi resistance: +10%. While this seems unimpressive on the surface, combined with our increased hit points, we are effectively 33.29% more resistant to Psionics than in i8. Not bad, considering that we weren't shooting for Psi resistance.
Recovery: +15%. This isn't as good as our PBAoE build, but we gave up on Recovery to gain +Health. In fact, this approach is worth considering for that build, as well.
KB protection: mag 8. Again, this opportunity to be free from Acrobatics is what gets us Weave, which is over half of our Defense (all).
Damage: +6%.
Immob resistance: +11%.
Sleep resistance: +6.6%.
Negative Energy resistance: +6.26%.
Fire and Cold resistance: +1.58%.
Jump speed: +4%.
Run speed: +4%.
[u]i8 vs. i9[u]
With this build, it's not clear that much has been lost in the translation from i8 to i9. The PBAoE build lost some ST effectiveness because it 6-slotted a couple of PBAoEs that were less robustly slotted in i8. That's not the case here: all of our single target attacks are 6-slotted, just as they would be in i8.
What have we gained?
Much greater survivability. The +Health combined with the +Regen will make us very survivable. For example:
In i8, assuming no accolades and no Health, a level 50 tanker healed 468.5 health per minute. In i8 our tanker, with no accolades and 1-slotted Health, healed 718.3 hit points per minute. If Health had been 3-slotted, it would be 833.93 health per minute.
In i9, our tanker with no accolades heals 1743.4 hit points per minute. This isn't as much as our PBAoE tanker (1864.3 per minute), but it's competitive, and it blows the doors off our i8 heal rate.
What else?
We've added a small but significant defense layer: +13% defense to all. We've also added some minor Psi resist - not enough to plug that hole in our mitigation, but it makes the hole smaller.
We've gained more effectiveness from our ST attacks. They are all more accurate, more damaging, cheaper and faster.
We've gained considerable passive enhancement bonuses. Our passive tohit buff is +25%. Our passive recharge buff is +41%. Our passive damage buff is 6%. How does this affect our performance?
Fire Sword Circle, with only one slot, has this effective enhancement:
acc: +25%
dmg: +47.4%
rch: +41%
That's more than 3 SOs worth of enhancment. Not bad for only one slot.
Scorch, which lost some recharge enhancement when we took a slot out of it (dropping it to rech: +42.4%), has an effective recharge of 83.4%. Our other single target attacks have an effective recharge of 110% - after ED! Consume, which looked to be much less competitive with the i8 version because it has only 47.7% rch enhancement natively, now has 89%, bringing it to near parity with i8. Fire Blast, with 39.7% native rch, has an effective 81% rch. Fire Ball, with 26.5% native, has 67.5% effective.
In fact, it's worth looking at one of our fully-slotted single target attacks:
Without set bonuses:
Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
With set bonuses:
Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +93.9%
dam: +107.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +109.9%
Both damage and recharge have been enhanced past ED soft caps, which illustrates some of the best advantages of set bonuses. It's also worth noting that accuracy values like this (with a significant proportion of them the deadly tohit) are PvP-capable.
XII. Conclusions
There are a few lessons to be learned from this exercise.
[u]Stacking set bonuses can provide enormous benefit[u]
For very little loss in effectiveness, we have increased our character's effectiveness considerably. The passive benefits should not be underestimated - this character will regenerate considerable health even when mezzed. And having defenses and enhancement effects that cost no endurance is a non-trivial benefit.
[u]Conventional slotting wisdom should be re-examined[u]
We've slotted powers in ways that would seem ridiculous in i8. We gave Health more than 3 slots. Stamina, Build Up and Fiery Embrace only have 2 slots. We slotted Burn with accuracy. Consume is slotted for damage. In some cases, like Health, i9 has made six slotting a power that takes only a single enhancement type an efficient, and even very effective use of slots. In other cases, like Consume and Burn, the advantage of stacking set bonuses far outweighs the drawbacks of slightly sub-optimal slotting.
[u]Stacked set bonuses can replace enhancements[u]
By stacking set bonuses we have given all of our powers the equivalent of two extra slots. One benefit is that this makes our one-slotted Fire Sword Circle perform like it was three-slotted. Another is that it makes our six-slotted powers perform like eight-slotted powers - this kind of passive tohit and recharge bonus would be ideal for AOE holds, for example. When you factor in the impressive efficiency of multi-effect set IOs, we have single target attacks that act as if they are 11.4-slotted with SOs.
[u]Global IOs can replace or enhance power choices[u]
If you have a build with more slot flexibility than power choice flexibility, you can consider trading slots for powers. We did this with Acrobatics: at the cost of two slots, we were able to free up a power choice. The PBAoE build could probably do so with Stamina, as well. These globals can also enhance existing powers - we were able to enhance our Regeneration and our small defense considerably by employing global IOs strategically.
XIII. Summary
[u]PBAoE Regeneration build[u]
<ul type="square">[*]+249.44% total +Regen buff. +13.89% Health buff (before accolades). 2134 max health, recovering 1864.3 health per minute passively (vs. 718.3 in i8)[*]13% defense to all (vs. 2.5% in i8), 26% defense to Psi and 29% defense to AoEs[*]More effective AEs - effectively 9-slotted in SO terms[*]Less effective ST attacks - effectively 3.76-slotted in SO terms[*]Less reliance on Consume - 30% more Recovery than i8[/list]
[u]Single Target +Health build[u]
<ul type="square">[*]+23.29% max Health (before accolades). +201.76% total +Regen buff. 2311 max health, recovering 1743.4 health per minute passively (vs. 718.3 in i8)[*]13% defense to all (vs 2.5% in i8)[*]More effective ST attacks - effectively 11-slotted in SO terms[*]Passive set bonuses adding up to 2.1 slots of SOs[/list]
XIV. Closing Comments
So that's the guide. It took a lot longer to write than I had expected. I'd like to abstract the steps I took into a more explicit and formal "how to" guide, but I like having the concrete examples to illustrate just what can be done.
Please take a look and give me your corrections, criticisms, comments and whatever else you may feel like adding. I know that I've probably made some mistakes, and I may have passed over some obvious optimizations, so I hope folks will provide some input.
Thanks for reading!
Scrap
[ QUOTE ]
It looks like your post got cut off in the "XI. Single Target +Health Build" section.
[/ QUOTE ]
It sure did! And I thought the post preview had everything in it. What a pain in the wumpus.
Thanks for the heads up, Martavius!
Scrap
Wow-
Thats a ton of info. I certainly appreciate all your hard work pulling all that out and cleaning it up for us.....me in particular, because I have a Fire/Fire Tanker.
Great job, I'm curious to see how long its going to take to gain this build. The possibilities that IO's and set bonuses provide will actually allow us to have different types of Fire/Fire Tankers. The diversity of the Inventions feature is going to open up the customization of this game greatly and I for one am excited about it. So thanks for providing the future template of build guides.
I heart Scrapulous.
@Cannonfodder
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I'm curious about one thing, and this has been my primary concern over the inventions system and the idea of theoretically overhauling my builds.
At what point, level wise, would it be feasible to begin this process? Using your build as an example (even though I know you stated you already have this 50), if I were starting from level 1 when could I plan on starting the slotting?
Obviously the best IOs are going to be level 50s, right? The single effect 50 IOs are 40% enhancement if I'm not mistaken (which I may be, I'll admit) and the lower level ones reduce in effectiveness. So the ideal build would be the above slotting with all 50 IOs. But would you get the same global health and regen bonuses from, say, level 35 IOs?
And items like the unique and global IOs, can those be crafted at any level or are they set at a specific one? This question is a bit unrelated to your post, I know, but curious I am.
[ QUOTE ]
At what point, level wise, would it be feasible to begin this process? Using your build as an example (even though I know you stated you already have this 50), if I were starting from level 1 when could I plan on starting the slotting?
[/ QUOTE ]
This is an excellent question; I'm glad you asked. It's something I had planned to address in the guide, but obviously the outline in my mind lost a few things as it evolved.
I'd start working on this from your character's inception. Some of the global effect IOs are in low-level sets, so it pays to keep an eye out for them. What's more, it seems to be advantageous to have your globals be the lowest level possible, since exemplaring eliminates (or is supposed to eliminate - I haven't been keeping track of that mess) any globals that are higher than the level you're exemplared to.
When allocating slots, I tried to choose a path that allowed the most important bonuses (+Regen, +Health) to be unlocked as early as possible, assuming perfect availability of IOs. For the most part this allows for effective i8 slotting, too. So you can slot your powers with TOs/DOs/SOs as you would normally, replacing them opportunistically as common IOs and set IOs become available and desireable. This seemed to work better for the PBAoE build than for the ST build, in the sense that I think the ST build will play a bit more awkwardly until the mid-30s because of some of the slotting choices I made (putting 2 extra slots into Super Jump early in the build, for example), but if you can get the set IOs early in your career, then those choices will pay off as the set bonus stacking starts to unfold.
The main tension here is Acrobatics. Can you get two knockback protection IOs before 20? If not, you'll want to take Acrobatics and respec once you have the two IOs.
And really, availability of IOs won't be clear until i9 has been on Live for a while. Test is not a good sample. It might be best to build and play a standard i8 build until you have a sufficient critical mass of set bonuses and IOs to switch over.
[ QUOTE ]
Obviously the best IOs are going to be level 50s, right? The single effect 50 IOs are 40% enhancement if I'm not mistaken (which I may be, I'll admit) and the lower level ones reduce in effectiveness. So the ideal build would be the above slotting with all 50 IOs. But would you get the same global health and regen bonuses from, say, level 35 IOs?
[/ QUOTE ]
For everything but globals and procs, yes. For globals and procs you want them as low as you can conveniently get them.
Single aspect IOs at level 50 and above are 42.4% enhancement for schedule A. The build above assumes level 50 IOs, so if you're level 36 and have the above slotting, you'll be somewhat weaker than what you see above (in terms of power enhancement - the set bonuses will be exactly as strong as you see above, because they ignore character level), but you'll still be stronger than with SOs. IOs achieve approximate parity with SOs at level 30 and only get better beyond that point. Furthermore, multi-aspect IOs at level 30 are better than SOs because the total enhancement benefit is higher than for a same-level single-aspect IO.
[ QUOTE ]
And items like the unique and global IOs, can those be crafted at any level or are they set at a specific one? This question is a bit unrelated to your post, I know, but curious I am.
[/ QUOTE ]
Recipes have levels. The global will be created at the level of the recipe that was used to make it. As I understand it, any level character can craft any level recipe. Sets have level ranges within which they will drop. Any set IO recipe can drop at any level within that range, and globals are no exception.
I hope this helps. Please ask if you have more questions.
Scrap
(QR)
You can get both the Steadfast Protection and Karma KB protection IOs starting at level 10. Once they are slotted you can forget them since they give the same protection no matter what level. The sets can drop from levels 10 to 30. If you want the set bonuses from these 2, your best resists from the IOs are the level 30s. If you just want the KB protection, you would switch to one of the higher level sets.
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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That answers it perfectly, thank you.
Beautiful guide, Scrapulous. This is going into my file.
Very nicely done. I don't even play tanks, and I found this a pretty informative guide. Especially for showing the potential of stacking set bonuses. You're going to have everyone asking you to do one of these for their favourite builds.
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Excellent work. It was very handy and helpful to see the whole thought process that went into putting together both guides.
I do see one issue arising with crafting a build like this: If you need to exemp your Fire tank down you'll lose the set bonuses, meaning you'll crash down in power even faster than normal for exemping. Just something to consider .
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So yeah, I had a point I thought valid, but realized it wasn't when I reread your builds.
Damn well done, man! And I thought I was a build-[censored].
Don't quote me on this, but there's Kheldian IO thread stating you can get the first Knockback Protection IO at level 10. Long's it's not unique, you might actually be able to avoid Acrobatics.
(Nevermind, someone already listed em! Though the thing to note is the two Knockback IOs don't add much besides that. You'd lose a bit of resistance but gain a free power choice and some +recovery back.)
"I'm flying free with my beautiful butterfly wings!" ~ Randy Marsh
[ QUOTE ]
Wow-
Thats a ton of info. I certainly appreciate all your hard work pulling all that out and cleaning it up for us.....me in particular, because I have a Fire/Fire Tanker.
Great job, I'm curious to see how long its going to take to gain this build. The possibilities that IO's and set bonuses provide will actually allow us to have different types of Fire/Fire Tankers. The diversity of the Inventions feature is going to open up the customization of this game greatly and I for one am excited about it. So thanks for providing the future template of build guides.
[/ QUOTE ]
What [they] said
Shhhh...not so loud...you let my "secret" build out into the light of day
Nice work, now I can refer to something other than my chicken scratch in a notebook of partial ideas
Excellent write up! I particularly like that you did two builds and a comparison between them and the I8 'standard.'
first post after dev!!!
[ QUOTE ]
first post after dev!!!
[/ QUOTE ]I really, really wish this kind of fad would just go away.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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[ QUOTE ]
Excellent write up! I particularly like that you did two builds and a comparison between them and the I8 'standard.'
[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly, something a lot of players will have to consider is how spectacularly gimp this build would be if it exemplared underneath the level of its set bonuses.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
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Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
[ QUOTE ]
first post after dev!!!
[/ QUOTE ]
First person to report the first person after a dev!
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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Excellent write up! I particularly like that you did two builds and a comparison between them and the I8 'standard.'
[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly, something a lot of players will have to consider is how spectacularly gimp this build would be if it exemplared underneath the level of its set bonuses.
[/ QUOTE ]
Great guide but as pointed out by UberGuy, dont plan on exempting down if you are using level 50 IOs.
Golden Avatar - 50 Invul/Mace Tanker (Infinity)
Police Drone GA - 50 Fire/FF Controller (Infinity)
Holy crap--that's some hard work!
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
I. Introduction
II. References
III. The i8 Fire/Fire Tanker
IV. Planning for IOs
V. PBAoE Damage Sets
VI. Damage Mitigation Sets
VII. Melee Damage Sets
VIII. Other Sets
IX. Choosing Bonuses
X. PBAoE Regeneration Build
XI. Single Target +Health Build
XII. Conclusions
XIII. Summary
XIV. Closing Comments
I. Introduction
I'd like to follow up some of the discussions about slotting individual types of powers with a discussion of how to modify an existing build using set bonuses. IO sets add a couple of new dimensions to planning a build, so I think it's worthwhile to provide an example of how one might approach IO builds.
For this example I've chosen a Firey Aura/Fiery Melee Tanker. I've chosen this particular build for a few reasons. First, this build has been a very popular one in the past, and because of this the decisions and trade-offs involved are very well-understood by the community. Second, the build is very tight in terms of power choices, so this gives us an opportunity to see how we can use IOs and a comparative availability of slots to relieve some of the power tension. Third, it has a lot of powers that take the same set types, so it provides an excellent example of how to focus on sets.
II. References
IO slotting example: AoE Holds
IO slotting example: Health
IO slotting example: Melee Attacks
Fire/fire tank discussion
III. The I8 Fire/Fire Tanker
First I'd like to start off with the i8 build, so that we have a baseline for comparison. This build is the one I use on Freedom. I'll explain the choices I've made because an understanding of my reasons will be valuable when we discuss how to evolve the build using IOs.
These are the major choices that every fire/fire tank has to consider:
The build:
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Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
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Name: heat_death2
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Blazing Aura==> dmg(1) dmg(3) dmg(5) taunt(13) end(17) end(25)
01) --> Scorch==> acc(1) dmg(37) dmg(37) dmg(37) rch(40) end(43)
02) --> Fire Shield==> res(2) res(3) res(7) end(34)
04) --> Healing Flames==> heal(4) heal(5) heal(7) rch(9) rch(17) rch(25)
06) --> Combat Jumping==> def(6)
08) --> Consume==> acc(8) rch(9) rch(11) rch(21)
10) --> Combustion==> acc(10) dmg(11) dmg(15) dmg(21) rch(27) end(27)
12) --> Plasma Shield==> res(12) res(13) res(15) end(36)
14) --> Super Jump==> jump(14)
16) --> Boxing==> acc(16) dmg(46) dmg(50)
18) --> Burn==> dmg(18) dmg(19) dmg(19)
20) --> Acrobatics==> end(20)
22) --> Tough==> res(22) res(23) res(23) end(34)
24) --> Hurdle==> jump(24)
26) --> Health==> heal(26)
28) --> Stamina==> endmod(28) endmod(29) endmod(29)
30) --> Fire Sword Circle==> acc(30) dmg(31) dmg(31) dmg(31) rch(33) end(34)
32) --> Build Up==> rch(32) rch(33) rch(33)
35) --> Fiery Embrace==> rch(35) rch(36) rch(36)
38) --> Incinerate==> acc(38) dmg(39) dmg(39) dmg(39) rch(40) end(40)
41) --> Char==> acc(41) hold(42) hold(42) hold(42) rch(43) rch(43)
44) --> Fire Blast==> acc(44) dmg(45) dmg(45) dmg(45) rch(46) end(46)
47) --> Fire Ball==> acc(47) dmg(48) dmg(48) dmg(48) rch(50) end(50)
49) --> Taunt==> rch(49)
---------------------------------------------
01) --> Sprint==> Empty(1)
01) --> Brawl==> Empty(1)
01) --> Gauntlet==> Empty(1)
02) --> Rest==> Empty(2)
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I don't track specific slotting in hero planners, so the enhancement notations are my own shorthand.
You'll notice that well-slotted single target attacks start to appear in the build in the late 30s, so by the late game the build is more well-rounded and can do decent single-target damage.
IV. Planning for IOs
There are a few approaches to IOs. One is to see how you can improve your existing build by replacing SOs with IOs. That's a fun approach and it's not a small amount of work. The process is essentially looking at individual powers and seeing what sets you can slot in them. I've shown some ways to do this for individual powers in my IO slotting example series.
But I think there is another, potentially much more effective way to approach a build: by examining the set bonuses available to it and maximizing the most attractive ones.
[u]Examining the Powers[u]
Let's start by assessing the powers available to us and what sets they take.
Fiery Aura:
Blazing Aura: PBAoE Damage
Fire Shield: Resist Damage
Healing Flames: Resist Damage, Healing
Temperature Protection: Resist Damage
Consume: PBAoE Damage
Plasma Shield: Resist Damage
Burn: PBAoE Damage
Fiery Embrace: none
RotP: Stuns, Healing, Melee Damage
Fiery Melee:
Scorch: Melee Damage
Fire Sword: Melee Damage
Combustion: PBAoE Damage
Taunt: none
Breath of Fire: PBAoE Damage
Build Up: none
FSC: PBAoE Damage
Incinerate: Melee Damage
Greater Fire Sword: Melee Damage
Pools:
Combat Jumping: Defense
Super Jump: Travel
Acrobatics: none
Hurdle: Travel
Health: Healing
Stamina: none
Boxing: Melee Damage, Stun
Tough: Resist Damage
To total these, we have:
6 PBAoE Damage powers
5 Resist Damage powers
3 Healing powers
2 Stun powers
5 Melee Damage powers
2 Travel powers
1 Defense power
From this we can see that if we want to stack set bonuses, we'd be best off focusing on PBAoE Damage, Resist Damage, and Melee Damage sets. Let's take a look at those sets at the ParagonWiki IO Sets page to see what stands out. I typically log in to the game and verify the information and the set bonus amounts in the CH/BM by using the following filter settings: level Range 30-30 and "All" in the field that allows you to select whether you want selling, buying or all. The ParagonWiki page offers a good way to see all the bonuses of all sets in a type at once, and the CH/BM provides the numbers.
It is important to remember for the following section that you can only stack a set bonus of a particular strength and type five times. So if you have 8 set bonuses of +5% max health, you would only get +25% max health from them. But if you have 5 set bonuses of +5% max health and 5 set bonuses of +4% max health, you would get +45% max health from them.
V. PBAoE Damage sets
Looking across the set bonuses, I see a few interesting candidates. Cleaving Blow has +Recovery and +Damage. Multi Strike has +AoE Def and +Melee Def, both at 1.88%. And Scirocco's Dervish has +Regeneration, +tohit, +AoE Def and +Psionic Def.
+Recovery is an interesting option, because enough of it could conceivably eliminate our dependence on Stamina, which would free up three power choices and two slots. But looking at the CH/BM, I notice that the amount is only 1%. Even stacked 5 times, this won't be enough to change the build.
+Damage is very intriguing. A fire/fire tank is already offensively very effective - increasing that damage globally for zero endurance cost is a very attractive option. However, this bonus value is also only 1%, not enough to have a serious impact on the build even quin-stacked.
The +AoE Def bonuses from Multi-Strike and Scirocco's Dervish are interesting. AoE attacks aren't prevalent until the end game, but this bonus is worth considering because it provides a way of achieving layered defenses. It's well understood that the best damage mitigation is achieved by layering multiple types of defenses (regeneration/healing, defense and resistance) together. Since fire tanks have healing and resistance, this could be a compelling way to add defense to the mix. Multi-Strike's AoE Def bonus is only 1.88%, while Scirocco's is 3.13%, so Scirocco's clearly has the edge here.
+Melee Def is even more compelling than +AoE Def, because it's useful in every encounter, especially for Burn tankers. Multi-Strike's bonus is 1.88%, which yields 9.4% melee defense when stacked five times. It's not phenomenal, but it's better than SR's Melee Def passive slotted with 3 SOs.
+Regeneration is also interesting, because it increases the depth of one of Fiery Aura's layers of mitigation. It's also a rather high bonus, at 10%. Stacking five of these would give us +50% Regeneration, which is better than unslotted Health. Not bad at all.
+tohit (mis-labelled on ParagonWiki as +Accuracy) is also interesting. Enough of these bonuses could mean that we could forget about slotting attacks for accuracy. The bonus value is 3.13. Quin-stacked that makes +15.65% tohit, nearly half of an SO. If we can get more +tohit from other sets, this could be a very viable option.
+Psionic Def is interesting because it Psionic typed damage passes through a large hole in our i8 defenses. Our healing is the only mitigation we have against Psionic attacks, so adding defense here creates a layer of defense against such attacks. The bonus is 3.13%.
VI. Damage Mitigation Sets
This is a good opportunity to bring up Global effects. Resistance sets have a good number of them, and since they're always on in passives and on while the toggle is on in toggles, we should consider them in the same boat as set bonuses when planning what sets we want.
At this point we should also consider the relative expense of acquiring some of these bonuses. It is common and profitable to six-slot attacks, but six-slotting defenses typically results in waste. Because of this, it may prove impractical to achieve the fourth and fifth bonuses available in these resistance sets.
What's more, it could prove difficult to stack Resist Damage set bonuses five times. It's not impossible, but it would require taking and slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, Tough, Temperature Protection and Healing Flames. Because this would diminish Healing Flames' primary function and wouldn't be an efficient use of slots in the case of Temperature Protection, we should consider the possibilities with a grain of salt.
I see plenty of good things here. Aegis offers +AoE Def and +Toxic Res, as well as a global unique +Psionic Res and Mez Resistance enhancement. Impervious Skin has a +Mez Resist enhancement and +Health and -Recharge bonuses. Impervium Armor has a +Psionic Res global and +Recovery, +Psionic Def, +Endurance and +Psionic Res globals. Reactive Armor has +AoE Def, and +Toxic Res. Steadfast Protection has +Recovery and +Health bonuses, and Knockback protection and resistance and defence global IOs. Titanium Coating has +Health and +Melee Def bonuses.
We discussed +AoE Def in the PBAoE section, but it's worth noting that the PBAoE bonuses are of different values than the Resist Damage bonuses, so there is a lot of stacking potential here. The Aegis value is 3.13%, while Reactive Armor's is 1.25%.
+Toxic Res is interesting because our i8 toxic resistance comes entirely from Healing Flames, and it's a low value: 20%. Aegis' 3.13% toxic resistance bonus could nearly double that if five-stacked.
+Psionic Res is compelling for the same reasons +Psionic Def is: we have none now, and it's a significant weakness in our overall mitigation. Aegis' global and Impervium Armor's global both give 3% resistance. Impervium Armor's set bonus is 3.13%. If we had five powers with Impervium Armor's Psi Resist bonus, we would have a total Psi Resist of 30.65% (15.65% because of set bonuses, and 15% because of Psi Resist global enhancements).
+Mez Resistance is interesting principally because it increases the number of mezzes that are required to overcome our mez protection. This isn't a global that I would stetch to get, but if it's easily attainable it's worth considering.
+Health is very compelling for a tanker. A higher maximum health means a proportional increase in regeneration effectiveness. It also obviously means that we could take more damage before dying. This bonus capitalizes on the already very high base hit points of a tanker, and so is especially appealing. All of the max health bonuses in Resist Damage sets are +1.5%.
-Recharge is valuable in a way similar to +tohit: it is potentially a way to reduce the number of enhancements in a power. Looked at another way, it's potentially a way to increase the -recharge of a power beyond ED efficiency caps without the diminishing returns. Impervious Skin's -recharge time is 5%. 5-stacked, that makes for 25%, which isn't far off an even level SO's value.
+Recovery has already been discussed. The values here are considerably more interesting, however: Impervium Armor offers 2.5%. Steadfast Protection offers only 1.5%.
+Psionic Def comes from Impervium Armor at a value of 1.88%, which is stackable with the 3.13% bonus from Scirocco's Dervish. If they were both 5-stacked, that would be 25.05% defense to psi.
+Endurance increases maximum endurance. The value comes from Impervium Armor, at a value of 2.25%. Five-stacked that would be 11.25%, which would increase our endurance by 11 points and increase recovery by a proportionate amount.
Knockback protection is particularly compelling for us because we have to make a devil's bargain to get it normally: either 1 power choice and limited battlefield mobility, or 3 power choices and super jump as your travel power.
The +Defense/Resistance IO in Steadfast Protection bears some mention. It gives +3% defense to all, meaning that it stacks with any other type of defense. On its face it's not much better than Combat Jumping, but if we can get some other defense buffs, this makes them that much better. It's also a unique enhancement, meaning that we can't just slot 5 of them to get +15% defense to all.
+Melee Def was covered in the PBAoE set section, but we should note that Titanium Coating's value is different than Multi-Strike's, so we could conceivably get 21.9% Melee Def with five of each bonus.
VII. Melee Damage sets
There are ten melee damage sets with a total of 35 bonuses. I've already demonstrated in the earlier sections how to filter out the bonuses with very low values (i.e. damage bonuses of 1%), so I won't even bother mentioning such bonuses in this section.
It's not likely that we'll be able to stack Melee Damage sets, PBAoE Damage sets, and Resist Damage sets due to slot limitations, so I'll only be discussing stacking synergies with the Resistance sets except in cases where synergies exist between the first two bonuses from either attack category.
Crushing Impact offers +Health, +tohit, -recharge time and +Psionic Res. Mako's Bite has +Health, +Damage, and +Ranged Def. Pounding Slugfest offers +Regeneration and +Damage. Touch of Death has +Health, +Damage, and +Melee Def.
+Health is particularly interesting here because it's also available in the Resistance sets. However, most of the sets here have the same value as the Resistance sets do, limiting stacking options. Exceptions are Crushing Impact and Smashing Haymaker, with a 1.13% bonus, and Bonesnap and Bruising Blow, with .75% bonuses. Five Resist Damage sets and five Smashing Haymakers would produce a 13.15% bonus to max health (and regeneration).
+tohit was discussed in the PBAoE section. Crushing Impact's bonus value is 2.5%, which gives 12.5% when five-stacked.
-Recharge is another interesting possibility. Unfortunately, the bonus value in Crushing Impact is identical to the one in Impervious Skin, preventing us from getting a 10-stack benefit.
+Psionic Res is also interesting. The value in Crushing Impact is 2.5%. Five stacked, that's 12.5%. Stacked with five Impervium Armors, that's 43.15%, which is really quite excellent. This is also an expensive approach, however - it would require an expenditure of 60 slots, leaving only seven slots left over to put into other powers.
+Damage is potentially very effective. Mako's Bite increases damage by 3%, and Touch of Death by 2.5%. A free passive 15% boost to all damage with no cost in endurance is nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately, lack of synergy in our resistance sets limits us to 15%.
+Ranged Def is increased by 3.75% in Mako's Bite. Five stacked, that's 18.75. I'd prefer that value in Melee Defense, but ranged attacks are omnipresent, and especially so for tanks without Taunt.
+Regeneration is interesting here not because it stacks with anything in the Resistance sets, but because it's an early bonus in the Pounding Slugfest set and it might be good for stacking with the PBAoE sets. The value is 8%.
+Melee Def is valuable to a tanker in most any situation. The value in Touch of Death is 3.13%, which would provide a 15.65% melee defense if five-stacked. If combined with a five-stacked +Melee Def from Titanium Coating, that would be 28.15%. It would also require a 30 slot investment in defenses and no heal enhancement in Healing Flames.
VIII. Other sets
Scanning the other sets available to us, we see some bonuses that can stack with some of what we saw available in our three primary categories.
Our Healing powers give us access to the excellent global enhancements in Miracle, Numina's Convalescence and Regenerative Tissue, as well as some very nice +Regeneration and +Health bonuses. You can read more about this in my IO slotting example: Health discussion.
Our Stun powers offer some potential with early +Recovery and +Regeneration buffs.
Our Travel powers offer +Health. Unfortunately leaping doesn't offer the +Regeneration buffs that flying and teleport sets do.
Our Defense power gives opportunities for +Recovery, +Regeneration and +Health with minimal slotting.
IX. Choosing bonuses
There are a few set bonus candidates that stand out.
+Psionic Res is an interesting one. As we've seen, with an intense focus on Resistance sets and Melee Damage sets, we could achieve a 43.15% resistance to Psionic damage. This comes at a price, however: only 7 slots to spend on things like Health, Stamina, Build Up, Fiery Embrace, Consume and EPPs. It also means that Healing Flames is limited to its base healing value. That's expensive for a rather narrow benefit.
+Psionic Def is a more compelling option for psi mitigation, because while it requires 6 slot investments in PBAoEs, it only requires 3 slot investments in Resist Damage sets. If both were five-stacked, we'd have a value of 25.05% psi defense. We're still looking at a rather narrow benefit.
Positional defenses (+Melee, +Ranged, +AoE) are interesting. Melee defense is probably most important to a tanker, with Ranged second in importance and AoE last. These are less narrow than psi defense/resistance, but they require similar heavy investments into defenses.
+Regeneration is very tempting. It tends to be a rather shallow bonus, meaning that it can be had with minimal investment. It's a mitigation type that applies to all damage types and all positional attacks. Its bonus values are also well diversified, raising the possibility of stacking bonuses across PBAoEs and melee attacks. Unfortunately, +Regeneration bonuses don't exist in Resist Damage sets, which does limit the stacking available. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that +Regeneration is available in almost all of the ancillary set types available to us (Healing, Stun, Defense). The +Regeneration approach seems to favor PBAoEs because of the very powerful +Regeneration buff in Scirocco's Dervish. On the other hand, it's the first set bonus available so it's possible for single target builds to access the bonus with minimal investment in PBAoEs.
+Health is another very interesting option. It provides broad mitigation and boosts regeneration. Health bonuses are often paired with +Regeneration, but it's worth noting that there is an independent Health bonus in the very nice Crushing Impact Melee Damage set. It would seem that a focus on +Health favors the single target approach.
+tohit and -Recharge are both interesting. If we could stack either to SO levels, it could be a very compelling way to shave slots off all our attacks. Unfortunately the best we seem to be able to get to is DO levels, which isn't enough for me to focus on these set bonuses.
The two most outstanding candidates seem to be +Regeneration and +Health. Both of them increase the depth of one of our layers of mitigation. So let's examine two potential builds: one PBAoE build emphasising +Regeneration and one single target build emphasising +Health.
X. PBAoE Regeneration build
We're going to go with the original spirit of the build and focus on PBAoEs. This will also allow us to pursue the +Regeneration approach and find out just how good these bonuses will get.
[u]Slot allocation[u]
Let's start by looking at the bare minimum we'll need to maximize our +Regeneration bonuses. We will want to six-slot Health, which will require 5 slots. We're going to want to slot at least 5 powers with at least 2 Scirocco's Dervish IOs to get the +Regeneration buff from that set. We'd like to slot some single target powers with 2 Pounding Slugfest IOs for the +Regen buffs there. Luck of the Gambler has a +Regeneration bonus equivalent to Scirocco's Dervish if we decide to slot only four PBAoEs. And Rope-a-Dope has a small bonus if we have a spare slot to fit into Rise of the Phoenix. Finally, Healing Flames can give us some nice Regen set bonuses.
This clearly won't require a lot of slots, so we can consider also what secondary set bonus benefits we'll get. The most promising set bonus is Scirocco's Dervish - since we'll be investing at least a bit into it to get that great +Regeneration, and since the rest of its bonuses have such high values. If we 5 stack every bonus from Scirocco's Dervish, we'll get not only a good +Regeneration benefit, but 15.65% Negative Energy resistance (not fantastic, but it'll stack well with the ~47% from slotted Plasma Shield to make Shadow Cyst encounters less horrifying), a 15.65% tohit boost, which won't replace any acc slotting but will certainly help when fighting purples and AVs, a 15.65% AoE defense boost (not ideal, but certainly helpful), and a 15.65% psionic defense (very nice).
Focusing on 5 stacked Scirocco's Dervish sets means we'll be investing 25 slots into PBAoEs, which is not much of a sacrifice since we want to focus on that area anyway. It leaves 42 slots for defenses, support and EPPs. We can figure that support will take 11 slots (2 for Build Up, 2 for Fiery Embrace, 2 for Stamina, 5 for Health), leaving 31 for defenses. If we put 5 slots in Healing Flames and 2 each in Fiery Aura, Plasma Shield and Tough, that gives us 20 remaining for EPPs. In theory that means we can put 5 in each of 3 EPP powers... although we might want to poach some of those slots for extras in our defenses or some single target attack slotting.
By extras in our defenses, I mean things like knockback protection, psi resist globals, and the very nice globals from Kismet and Luck of the Gambler.
The drawback of this scheme is no slots for single target attacks, which can be a real pain when soloing bosses or when fighting AVs solo or teamed.
[u]Set allocation[u]
So let's start putting sets to powers.
A full set of Scirocco's Dervish gives the following:
acc: +74.2%
dam: +100.7% (before ED scaling)
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
regen: 10%
NE res 3.13%
acc: 3.13%
AE def 3.13%
psi def 3.13%
The PBAoE powers we have in the i8 build are Blazing Aura, Consume, Burn, Combustion and Fire Sword Circle.
Those enhancement bonuses are good for most of our PBAoE attacks. Blazing Aura will suffer a bit from a lack of Taunt and a bit less endurance reduction than it had in i8. Consume will have much less recharge than is ideal - it may be worth swapping the proc for a recharge IO and sacrificing the +Psi Def bonus in that instance. Burn, although it won't benefit from the accuracy, will definitely benefit from the endurance and recharge enhancement. And Combustion and Fire Sword Circle will only improve.
Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.
None of them offer us +Regeneration, but three offer +Health, which will indirectly increase regeneration and will also boost survivability. Of those three, Titanium Coating gives us the best bang for our buck resistance-wise, but Steadfast Protection has an interesting +Recovery bonus while the others have only the snoozeworthy (har!) Sleep resistance. My inclination is to go for Titanium Coating, because three slots in Steadfast Protection will only provide a 26.2% resistance boost if the enhancements are level 30. This is considerably lower than the ED efficiency cap of 50%.
So we put 3x Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech in Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, giving:
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
For Healing Flames, we want to get the maximum heal benefit and as much +Regen as possible:
4 Numina's Convalescence: end/rech, heal/rech, heal/end/rech, heal;
2 Triage: end/rech, heal/end/rech
heal: +96.1%
end: +86.9%
rch: +94.6%
Set bonuses:
regen +16%
health +1.88%
heal +6%
This gives us two +regen bonuses from one power. Healing Flames also performs better than in i8, with a considerable endurance discount.
OK, now it's time for support slotting:
Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina don't take sets, so these are a no-brainer: 2 slots apiece. Then again, we could certainly allocate only one slot apiece, giving BU and FE recharge bonuses of 84.8% instead of the 95% they have in i8 and the 99% they'd have with 3 IO recharges. For now let's assume they each get 2 slots, but remember that we can potentially free up to 3 slots here by taking some slight performance hits.
An aside: the difference between Stamina with 3 endrcv IOs and Stamina with 2 endrcv IOs is +49.75% recovery and +46.2% recovery. That difference is only 2 or 3 +recovery set bonuses. We can probably pick up the difference without even trying.
Health is another matter. Without going into detail, there's plenty of regeneration benefit to be had from six-slotting Health, so we're going to do it, and we're going to do it this way:
1 Miracle 15% recovery global IO,
1 Miracle heal IO;
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO
heal: 96.1%
Set and global bonuses:
regen: +57%
recovery: +27.5%
health: + 1.88%
The total regen buff here is +135.44%, which gives us a nice, large base to build the rest of our +regen set bonuses on.
So now we're left with 20 slots to spend on EPPs and discretionary slotting.
Before we get into EPPs, let's look at the discretionary slots we might like to add.
We have an opportunity to gain one power at the expense of two slots by giving up Acrobatics in exchange for slotting two knockback protection IOs. It's not clear yet whether this is a good trade. I can think of two things that might be worth taking in place of Acrobatics - Taunt and Weave (more on Weave in a moment). Let's remember this potential trade off and revisit when we have a better idea where our slots are going.
It would be good if we could give each of our single target attacks an extra slot, in order to 2 slot Pounding Slugfest into them. This would both give us more +Regeneration, and also partially mitigate the single target weakness of our current PBAoE focus. The i8 build has only 3 single target melee attacks: Boxing, Scorch and Incinerate, so this would take 1-3 slots.
Finally, there are some globals I'd like to be able to slot. These are: Aegis and Impervious Skin's Psi resistance (low priority), Steadfast Protection's +3% Def (medium priority), Kismet's +6% toHit global (low priority), and Luck of the Gambler's +5% recharge speed (high priority).
I want the defense from Steadfast Protection so that there will be three layers to our mitigation scheme. Even if the defense layer is shallow, any increase in the third layer of mitigation represents appreciable gains in overall survivability. The +3% defense added to slotted Weave and Combat Jumping would give ~13.3% defense to all, which is not bad on top of moderate resistance and moderate healing.
The tohit global is a nice-to-have: even stacked with our 5 Scirocco bonuses, it's still not enough to remove accuracy slots from powers: 21.65%. It would mean that we could perform better than one might expect with 2-slotted single target attacks, however.
The LotG +recharge would be nice for this reason: two of them would provie a 10% passive global recharge buff. This would nearly make up for the shift from 3 IO recharges to 2 IO recharges in Build Up and Fiery Embrace (84.8% becomes 94.8%, which is only .2% less than the current i8 build). Furthermore, it gives that 10% benefit to every other power we have. It costs nothing, because we have taken one slot each from Build Up and Fiery Embrace, and put one of those slots into Combat Jumping and the other into... well, what? We don't currently have another +def power, but we have just been discussing taking Weave. It seems like this represents a dovetailing of goals, here.
OK, now let's look at epic powers.
For Fire Blast I'd like to slot Devastation for its very high +Regeneration and +Health buffs that will stack with all the buffs we already have. This means slotting it 2 times minimally. It would be nice to put give slots into it for the +Psi Def, which would stack nicely with our 4 Scirocco's Psi Def bonuses. Let's consider 3 slots the minimum for now.
Char is an interesting case. The best set bonus available to us for holds is Ghost Widow's Embrace +1.88% Health. But Char can also take Ranged Damage sets, so we have the opportunity to slot Devastation again for a powerful +Regeneration, a better +Health, and a +Damage. Depending on whether you're willing to sacrifice hold utility, that's a compelling option. The old-school Controller player in me wants to slot for hold duration, but another option is 3-4 slotting Devastation and then throwing 1-2 hold IOs in. Let's call 3 the minimum slots for Char, with an ideal of 5.
Fire Ball is even less promising. Positron's Blast is nice on the surface: look at all those high powered bonuses. Unfortunately the +tohit doesn't help us, because it's the same strength as the 5 we're getting from Scirocco's Dervish. The -recharge is nice, and the +recovery is also nothing to sneeze at. But the bonuses are all nice to haves; there isn't much synergy to be seen here. Then again, another AoE is another AoE. Minimum slots is 0 (and if we put so few into it, we'll need to reconsider choosing it), ideally 5.
So this is what I'd like to do:
Put one slot into each of Boxing, Scorch and Incinerate. Total cost: 3 of 20 remaining slots.
Dedicate 2 slots to knockback protection. Ah, but we can use the default CJ slot for one of them, so the other goes into a resist toggle or Weave (depending on whether you get access to a Steadfast Protection or a second Karma first). Total cost: 1 of 17 remaining slots.
Shift one slot from Build Up into Combat Jumping and one from Fiery Embrace into Weave for LotG +5% recharge IOs. Total cost: 0 of 16 remaining slots.
Put one slot into Fire Shield for the Steadfast Protection defense global. Cost: 1 of 16 remaining slots.
Put two more slots for enhancing Weave's defense. Unfortunately we won't benefit from 2 of the excellent LotG set bonuses: the +Regeneration and +tohit are identical to the Scirocco's bonuses, so they won't stack. It's worth considering the much weaker Serendipity bonuses, because they will stack... although we won't get the +tohit from Serendipity because we'll be slotting 1 LotG and 3 Serendipity. I prefer to stay with LotG and get the decent +Health bonus from it. Cost: 2 of 15 remaining slots.
Remove one slot from Stamina. Gain: 1 slot.
Total to slot into EPPs: 14 slots.
If we put four slots into each of the three epic powers, we have two discretionary slots. I'd like to put those into Incinerate to enhance our weak ST attack chain somewhat.
[u]The Build[u]
So let's take a look at the build and then examine the set bonuses:
+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: Heat Death
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Scorch ==> Empty(1),Empty(3)
01 => Blazing Aura ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(9),Empty(31),Empty(37),Empty(43)
02 => Fire Shield ==> Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(13),Empty(17)
04 => Healing Flames ==> Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(7),Empty(23),Empty(34),Empty(40)
06 => Combat Jumping ==> Empty(6),Empty(7)
08 => Combustion ==> Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(11),Empty(27),Empty(34),Empty(40)
10 => Consume ==> Empty(10),Empty(11),Empty(15),Empty(33),Empty(39),Empty(43)
12 => Plasma Shield ==> Empty(12),Empty(13),Empty(15),Empty(23)
14 => Super Jump ==> Empty(14)
16 => Boxing ==> Empty(16),Empty(17)
18 => Burn ==> Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(19),Empty(37),Empty(39),Empty(46)
20 => Tough ==> Empty(20),Empty(21),Empty(21)
22 => Hurdle ==> Empty(22)
24 => Health ==> Empty(24),Empty(25),Empty(25),Empty(33),Empty(37),Empty(43)
26 => Stamina ==> Empty(26),Empty(27)
28 => Fire Sword Circle ==> Empty(28),Empty(29),Empty(29),Empty(31),Empty(34),Empty(40)
30 => Build Up ==> Empty(30),Empty(31)
32 => Fiery Embrace ==> Empty(32),Empty(33)
35 => Weave ==> Empty(35),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(36)
38 => Incinerate ==> Empty(38),Empty(39),Empty(50),Empty(50)
41 => Char ==> Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(46)
44 => Fire Blast ==> Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(46)
47 => Fire Ball ==> Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(50)
49 => Taunt ==> Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Sprint ==> Empty(1)
01 => Brawl ==> Empty(1)
02 => Rest ==> Empty(1)
Notice that Acrobatics is gone and we've picked up Weave. While levelling, if you haven't got at least one KB resist IO by level 20, it's probably worth taking Acrobatics until you do get one, then respeccing back out of it.
You'll notice that slots are tight throughout the build, even tighter than in the i8 build. I distributed the slots evenly across powers so that the early +Regen set bonuses would be available as early as possible. The later set bonuses won't come until the later levels, but they aren't crucial to the build.
I haven't tracked enhancements in this planner, so let's examine them now.
Scorch: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8%
dam: +43.6%
rch: +21.8%
Set bonus:
Regeneration: +8%
For a small slot investment, Scorch gives us a considerable return. Combined with our global tohit and recharge buffs, it will be a solid performer, and its set bonus is of course of high importance. It does suffer some performance degradation from i8.
Blazing Aura: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%
The first of our five Scirocco's Dervish sets. These represent the heart of this build. It is less end efficient than the i8 version, and has no Taunt enhancement. However, it's far more accurate and does some interesting lethal damage now and again.
Fire Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection res/def global
res: +60.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Def (all): +3%
Our first Titanium Coating power, which will give us +Health. We also see the nice +Def (all) from our global unique. Its resistance is superior to i8, but its end usage is slightly more.
Healing Flames:
4 Numina's Convalescence: end/rech, heal/rech, heal/end/rech, heal;
2 Triage: end/rech, heal/end/rech
heal: +96.1%
end: +86.9%
rch: +94.6%
Set bonuses:
Regen +12%
Regen +4%
Health +1.88%
Heal +6%
Healing Flames only gains from IOs. It has comparable heal and recharge values, but a very impressive endurance discount and some nice set bonuses.
Combat Jumping: 1 Karma Knockback protection global, 1 Luck of the Gambler 5% recharge global
Set and global bonuses:
Kb protection: mag 4
Recharge: 5%
Combustion: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%
Our second Scirocco's Dervish power. It is better in every way than its i8 predecessor: slightly more damage from the proc, far greater accuracy, a better end discount and faster recharge.
Consume: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end; 1 common rch IO
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +93.5%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Scirocco's Dervish set #3. This is also much better than its i8 predecessor, although it has two more slots to its name. It is far more accurate, far more damaging, cheaper and faster. It's a minor shame to spend so much damage enhancement on such a low-damage power. Note that the proc has been eliminated in favor of an IO recharge. This deprives us of one of our Psi Def bonuses, but for much better endurance recovery performance.
Plasma Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection Kb protection
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Kb protection: mag 4
Like Fire Shield, this performs slightly better resistance-wise, but is less end-efficient than its i8 predecessor.
Super Jump: 1 HO travel/end
speed: +33%
end: +33%
Before level 47, this can be slotted with any travel set IO or common IO according to taste.
Boxing: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8%
dam: +43.6%
rch: +21.8%
Set bonus:
Regeneration: +8%
Another decent-benefit-for-minimum-investment single target power.
Burn: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%
Scirocco's Dervish set #4. This version is much better than its i8 predecessor, although it also has three more slots. The accuracy is wasted, but the endurance and recharge are significant benefits, and although the procs may fire while enemies are out of the patch, you'll still get lucky from time to time.
Tough: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Like all of our resistance shields, Tough is slightly better at resistance but slightly less endurance efficient. The set bonus is what makes this situation better than i8.
Hurdle: 1 IO jump
jump: +42.4%
Health:
1 Miracle 15% recovery global IO,
1 Miracle heal IO, 38.6;
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO, 42.4
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO 26.5
heal: +96.1%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Regen: +12%
Recovery: +25%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: + 1.88%
Health with IOs is vastly superior to i8 Health. Without this massive Regen boost, I would be skeptical of the benefits of pursuing our Regen strategy, but this slotting not only makes our Regen prospects impressive, it also gives us considerable padding on the Recovery front. Not only should we not notice that our resistance toggles are less end efficient than in i8, we should see a noticeable improvement in our endurance recovery rate.
Stamina: 2 IO endrcv
endmod: +84.8%
Fire Sword Circle: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%
The final Scirocco's Dervish set. Like Combustion, FSC performs much better with IOs than it did in i8.
Build Up: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%
Firey Embrace: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%
Build Up and Fiery Embrace lose some recharge performance from its i8 version when considered alone, but we'll see later when assessing set bonuses that they actually have effective parity.
Weave: Luck of the Gambler: def, def/end, def/rech, +5% rch global
def: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +5%
Weave is a new addition to the build. As mentioned earlier, two of its three bonuses are unfortunately redundant.
Incinerate: Pounding Slugfest: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch; Crushing Impact: dmg/rch
acc: +21.8%
dam: +91.9%
end: +21.8%
rch: +48.3%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +8%
Energy & NE def: +0.63%
Incinerate gets two more slots than Boxing and Scorch, which makes it somewhat more powerful. The extra set bonus is negligible. I put a dmg/rch from Crushing Impact in there to make it a more frequent contributor to our attack chain and to increase its damage. Another approach would be to put the final Pounding Slugfest IO in, the disorient proc. It would give us a +2% Damage set bonus and a 15% chance to disorient with Incinerate. I'd rather have the proc in Boxing or Scorch, because they fire much faster, and I'd like our ST attack chain to be tighter, so I opted for more recharge and damage.
Char: 1 common hold IO; Devastation: acc/dam, dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch, acc/dam/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +18.5%
rch: +66.2%
hold: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%
Char slotted this way isn't ideal from a control perspective, but it's not bad, either. Compared to i8 (acc, holdx3, rchx2) it has twice the acc, the same rch, half the hold enhancement and a small endurance break. But we also get three excellent set bonuses. Another option is to take a slot from Fire Blast and put another IO hold in here.
Fire Blast: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, acc/dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +97.9%
end: +47.7%
rch: +66.2%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%
Hold res: 3.3%
Fire Blast builds on the very good Devastation bonuses we got from Char. Compared to its i8 equivalent (acc, damx3, end, rch), it is considerably more accurate, slightly more damaging, has a greater end discount and a much better recharge boost.
Fire Ball: Positron's Blast: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, dam/rng, acc/dam/end
acc: +47.7%
dam: +99.0%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
rng: +15.9%
Set bonuses:
Recovery: +2.5%
Fire and Cold res: +1.58%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +6.25%
Compared to i8 (acc, damx3, end, rch), Fire Ball is more accurate, slightly more damaging, cheaper and has better range, but is slightly slower torecharge. The slower recharge is almost entirely mitigated by the Recharge set bonus here, however, to say nothing of the other set and global bonuses we have.
Taunt: 1 common taunt IO
taunt: +42.4%
[u]The Set Bonuses[u]
Now let's take a look at our set bonuses all together.
Regen: +171%. Add the enhanced Health value, and it becomes +249.44% to regeneration rate. For the sake of comparison, a Regen scrapper who has Health and Fast Healing both 3-slotted with SOs has a passive regeneration boost of +224.25%. Considering that tankers benefit more from the same amount of Regeneration, this looks like considerable mitigation to all types of damage.
Health: +13.89%. This will take a level 50 un-accoladed Tanker's 1874 hit points and make them 2134. An extra 260 hit points is nothing to laugh at. Another way of looking at this is as if it is 13.89% resistance to all damage types.
Recharge: +16.25%. This isn't anything to plan a build around, but it's not bad at all. It makes up for the i8 to i9 loss in rch enhancement that we see in Fire Ball, Build Up, and Fiery Embrace, and it makes all of our other powers that much better.
tohit: +15.65%. Another nice bonus. This makes our single target attacks even more accurate than their much-better-slotted i8 equivalents, among other benefits.
Def (all) +3%. This combined with Weave and Combat Jumping gives us +13.43% defense to all, which becomes even more significant when paired with the next two set bonuses:
Psi Def: +12.52%. This isn't what I'd call filling the psi gap in our defenses, but it's considerably better than nothing, and combined with the Def (all) is a considerable boost to our survivability.
AoE Def: +15.65%. This is just a nice bonus.
Negative Energy resistance: +15.65%. Combined with our 47.58% from Plasma Shield, this gives us 63.23% resistance to Negative Energy.
Sleep resistance: +6.6%. Unless I have badly misunderstood how these set bonus resistance to individual mez types work, this is nearly useless.
Heal: 6%. A 6% boost to Healing Flames unrestricted by ED is a minor but appreciable benefit. Unfortunately this won't work for Healing Flames, since Healing Flames can be enhanced for resistance.
Knockback protection: mag 8. This frees us from the reliance on pool powers to keep from getting tossed around like a rag doll.
Recovery: +30%. Combined with our 2-slotted Stamina, this gives us a total Recovery buff of +76.2%, compared to an i8 value of 48.75. This might even be enough for some fire tanks to drop Stamina altogether and rely on set Recovery and Consume.
Energy and Negative Energy defense: +0.63%. A negligible benefit.
Damage: +6%. In practice this boost won't be very noticeable.
Hold resistance: +3.3%.
Fire and Cold resistance: +1.58%.
[u]i8 vs. i9[u]
So what have we lost in this transition from i8 to i9? Principally we have lost effectiveness against a single target. Let's illustrate by comparing i8 Scorch against i9 Scorch:
i8 Scorch: 1 acc, 3 dmg, 1 end, 1 rch
acc: +33.3%
dmg: +95.0%
end: +33.3%
rch: +33.3%
i9 Scorch: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8% +15.65% tohit set bonus = +37.4%
dam: +43.6% +6% set bonus = 49.6%
rch: +21.8% +16.25% set bonus = 38.1%
As you can see, the overall efficacy of the attack is lower in i9, even if some values are higher. The most important value, damage, is much lower.
What have we gained?
We've gained increased survivability. The passive regeneration alone is an impressive benefit, especially when paired with the max health bonuses. In i8, assuming no accolades and no Health, a level 50 tanker healed 468.5 hit points per minute. In i8 our tanker, with no accolades and 1-slotted Health, healed 718.3 hit points per minute.
In i9, our tanker with no accolades heals 1864.3 hit points per minute. Our i9 tanker heals more per minute than our i8 tanker even has.
So that's pretty good. What else have we gained?
+13% defense to all, and 26% def to Psi and 29% def to AoEs. This is a not insignificant addition to the breadth of our mitigation scheme: we now have good resistances, very good regeneration, good healing, and low-mid range defense. Layered together, that's nothing to sneeze at.
We've gained more effectiveness from our AoEs. They all do more damage from procs, denser enhancement, and set bonuses, most of them are more accurate (not Burn, of course), and they all cost less endurance and recharge faster. Our attack chains are smoother, cheaper and miss less. Even our temp and veteran powers are more accurate and faster to recharge.
XI. Single Target +Health Build
This build will pursue +Health bonuses via single target attacks.
[u]Slot allocation[u]
First let's see what kind of slot investment we'll need to get the most +Health bonuses.
We will definitely want to six-slot Health and Healing Flames, because Heal sets have two excellent +Health bonuses. That's 10 slots there. We also want to slot our resistance sets with 3 Titanium Coatings to get the +Health bonuses there, which takes 6 more slots. Finally, we'll want to slot our single target attacks with at least 3 Crushing Impacts for the +Health bonuses there. With 5 single target attacks, that's 10 more slots. Finally, we'll want three Unbounded Leaps in Super Jump. Total bare minimum cost for +Health bonuses: 28 slots.
That leaves plenty of room, so let's look again at how we can expand these investments for greater benefit.
Looking again at Crushing Impact, the deeper set bonuses seem worth taking: +tohit and -recharge. As we saw with the PBAoE build, even a few of those can make a big difference. Let's 6 slot each of our single target attacks with Crushing Impact. Five full Crushing Impact sets gives us 11% immob resistance (can I get a "Hell, yeah!"?), +5.65% max Health, +12.5% tohit, +25% recharge, and +12.5% Psi resistance. Not bad at all. The cost of six slotting five attacks is 25 slots. We have 42 more to play with.
Defenses will take 5 slots for Healing Flames and 2 each for Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, for a total of 11. That leaves another 31.
Support will occupy 1 slot for Build Up, 1 for Fiery Embrace, 1 for Stamina (we're employing the lessons in efficiency that the last build taught us), and 5 for Health. Furthermore, we're going to want 3 slots in Consume and at least 3 in Blazing Aura. Those 13 slots leave us with 17 for EPPs and discretionary slotting.
[u]Set allocation[u]
So let's start putting sets to powers.
A full set of Crushing Impact gives the following:
acc: +68.9%
dam: +143.1% (before ED scaling)
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%
The single target attacks we'll be taking are Scorch, Fire Sword, Boxing, Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword. Every one of these attacks will benefit from a six-slotted Crushing Impact. If we need the slots, we can always pull the sixth slot out of some or all of the attacks, at the expense of Psi resistance.
Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.
Three Titanium Coating enhancements (res, end/res, end/rch) give
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep res: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
We'll be slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough this way.
In Healing Flames, we're going to try to maximize our +Health bonuses:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%
This gives us two identical 1.88% Health bonuses from a single power, and considerably better healing performance than in i8.
Support slotting will be a bit more expensive.
Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina each take one slot.
We'll put five slots into Health, but we'll slot it differently than we did for the PBAoE build:
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO
heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%
We've dropped 15% recovery to get another 1.5% health bonus out of Regenerative Tissue.
We'll be adding