Shields: Scrapper or tank? Which is better?
I would love more resist IOs but that's a really slippery slope.
With soft capped defense you're still going to be hit fairly regularly when dealing with large packs and/or mobs above level and minion tier.
Add in capped (or near cap depending on what we're talking about) resists (even just S/L resists) and all of a sudden you have a virtually untouchable character. Also resists can't be bypassed (or rather there are very few resist debuffs in the PvE game) and work equally as well against even conned minions and +4 AVs (whereas Defense scales due to minimum chance to hit).
Tank-mages would come in the form of Blasters (and Trollers for that matter) with soft-capped defenses and capped (per AT) resists (remember Blasters and Trollers get fairly high value resist shields via their APPs). Scrappers would be merrily soloing full spawned TFs (including the AVs) .... Brutes could finally tank (zing!) .... cats and dogs living together ... mass hysteria!
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I've found the scrapper version at the soft cap is more than capable of handling anything in the game; a tanker should be comparable and due to it's higher base values cheaper and easier to get there.
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CMA, just don't go running into the shard without some suppoprt
I was talked into tanking a Dr. Q this weekend on my shield/ice tanker (loving it, btw) and had forgotten how wonderful those giant eyeballs are... and hadn't noticed how little psi resistance I had (try '0'). That hurt. Alot. Was all gravy against the wisps, brutes and flying things, and the Crey were a breeze... but that pure psi damage and 100% tohit buff the eyeballs have is, well... 'unfriendly'.
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Hmm, yes, the Shard isn't someplace I've spent much time. Thinking about it CMA is the only character who's actually done more than hunt Fake Nems in there.
I did run one of the Shard TF's a few months ago with CMA and I don't really remember having a lot of problems with the eyeballs or wisps, I did have to be a bit more alert than normal though.
I guess I'm like most of the playerbase; I tend to forget the Shard is there. I go there with characters who need the Fake badge but other than that I avoid the place.
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Yeah, My Invuln/WM doesn't have too many issues in the shard (none, really, with 30% psi def and 20% resists, and perma DP...), nor does my WP tank. I was speaking specifically for shield tanks, who's only defense to Psi is positional, things that completely bypass it, like Eyeballs, DE with the right (or wrong, depending on your perspective) eminator and Malaise, who's attacks don't have a positional flag (at least some of em don't) can be troublesome, especially the eyeballs, who do psi, the one damage type for which shields has 0 resists.
I completely forget about the shard as well, but like I said, was talked into a Dr. Q and went in not even considering the issues that would arise.
So, made a Shield/Mace tank. It has good IO expandability which might be enough. Mostly I am doing it for the Shield-slinging roleplay, but I always like to be playing something that can explore the whole game, PvE and PvP.
Quixotik
"I did not say this. I am not here." -Guild Navigator
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That just goes to show you the potency of def stacking. Sets lacking any form of +def really get cheated in the IO game. (The counter view being that def sets have it too good with IOs.)
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Thing that angers me is the lack of Resist set bonuses. They are too few and too fragmented, only Psi seems to be offered in large amounts.
I can see the devs saying its more dangerous to give a blaster resistance than defense, since the blaster gets no defense debuff resistance, after all but resist would make the blaster resist -resist but then again: blasters have a much lower resist cap than defense cap making the danger of resist capping much lesser than defense stacking for anyone but tanks and brutes. And these tanks and brutes (and scrappers and stalkers) that already have native defense also tend to resist defense debuffs making defense IOs insanely powerful for them....
...anyways babbling too much: Devs: Give us decent Resistance bonuses already!!!!