Time to finish fixing Invulnerability

When I left I had three things on my list that would fix invulnerability.

1. -5% def debuff in unyielding - I wanted this halved because when GDN hit, this was the only defensive value in the game I know that wasn't halved as well. I wanted this set to 2.5%. It has since been completely removed.

2. Passives boosted to 32% when fully SO - this is the number that felt right, it added to resistance and gave what I'm calling time-to-live. With an increase in resistance, you have a slow down on the amount of incoming damage and that gives you time to hit a green, hit DP, or hit unstoppable if needed. That passives have been boosted and with IOs it is easy to hit this number on exotic damage.

3. Swap RPD and Tough Hide - this hasn't happened yet.

The RPD and Tough Hide swap at first doesn't seem to do anything. However, this makes the early tank game for invulnerability more survival. Invulnerability has always had a three pronged approach to tanking - defense + resistance + healing. In the early game however, you only get two of your prongs to survive. You get resistance and healing from levels 1 to 18. At 18 you get invincibility and there is +def. It is my belief that this is why INV tanks don't start feeling like tanks until level 18. And this swap not only helps INV tanks. It helps INV scrappers and brutes as well by getting all the components of INV in place so they can survive to.

Yes the swap would be nice, but also it would help new players choose between temp. invul and tough hide. Many players skip TI not knowing what it does due to the name alone, but TH would be better than just having RPD for early newb tanks. They'll encounter more experienced players that can tell them about defense and resistance instead of trying to explain why temporary invulnerability isn't temporary.

I was always of the mind that Invulnerability's protection should have been about 95% resistance with a little defense.

Keep Tough Hide and Dull Pain to help mitigate psi and toxic damage but change Dull Pain from a self heal to a click power that offers limited resistance to psi and toxic damage. Change up Invincibility so that the def buff is a resistance buff but keep the to hit debuffs. Keep Unstoppable for the panic button that it is when things go south.

Basically you have the ability to shrug off a lot of damage but you trade out any healing or meaningful defense. You would be very survivable up to a point where the incoming damage overcomes your resistance. Of course the game has changed to the point that something like this won't work anymore. Still it was always the way I saw Invulnerability working, you don't evade damage or heal it after the fact you simply take it on the chin and smile through the pain.


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Probably the biggest problem for Invuln is "health drain," from small amounts of damage slowly adding up. As it is, it has a good combination of defense, resists, and Dull Pain. I don't think it needs much, other than perhaps a small amount of regen. Oh, and the name change to Temp. Invulnerability is definitely a good idea as well.

In my opinion, Invulnerability is fine where it is. Sure, it lacks flavor - but the power boosts it received has made the set not simply competitive again, but excel. This is especially true with Invention Origins which have a distinctive relationship with Invulnerability due to its diversity. Where as Willpower overshadowed Invulnerability by far when it was released, Invulnerability's survivability and augmentative capabilities now arguably exceed Willpower by a significant margin at the expense of Willpower's endurance utility. Castle did good.

I think Invuln is fine now. The last set of fixes, especially when it came to the def debuff resistance made it fine.

Invulns gained survivability by playing to their strengths. In teams where those strengths couldn't be well sustained, they simply weren't as fun. The fixes pretty much helped compensate for that.

All I'm asking for is two powers to be swapped. I don't want any numbers changed, I don't want any buffs. Just swap RPD and TH. I promise it will help the low level game. You guys will just have to trust me when I say that 5% +DEF makes a ton of difference. I could see it back when UY had the -5% DEF, I wouldn't run UY most of the time and it was tons more survival that way (provided the mobs weren't status effect).

Since I'd wager that most of us were around and leveled Invul tanks before the change, we don't need to trust you to understand the affect the def debuff had on low-level tankers.

I can't speak for everyone else, but although I'm not against swapping RPD and TH, I just don't think it's as needed now as it would have been had the def defbuff remained. And you know, it feels a little ungrateful to push for another change to Invul when the past changes were so helpful and the set is performing so well now.

I do agree that TI needs to be renamed; we still get players new to the set coming in and saying that they took RPD since it sounded stronger than TI.

I'd also support swapping TI and RPD so brutes and scrappers don't have to RPD as their first power. But what I'd really like to see is getting rid of the silly rule that all players have to take the first power in their secondary. That extra flexibility would help all ATs, not just tanks.

I don't see a particularly pressing reason to fiddle with the order of RPD and Tough Hide for tankers. I could see it for brutes and scrappers (so that they aren't stuck with a tier 1 power that's not very useful at low levels).

If there's one thing I'd like to see changed for tankers, it's moving Invincibility to an earlier level (say, switching it with Resist Elements). No other tanker primary gets its aggro aura later than level 8, and if you actually want to tank for teams before level 18, you are very disadvantaged as an Invulnerability tanker. (Brutes and scrappers may also appreciate not having to wait until level 28.)

Noooo! Don't touch my Invuln because nothing's wrong with it!

RPD is now a great power thanks to 25% Def Debuff resistance. No reason to switch it with TI to allow Brutes and Scrappers to choose when RPD is now an obvious pick.

Also don't touch Invincibility's Defense. I don't want more Resistance. I want to keep the Defense. Not being hit = 100% Resistance = Invulnerability. See where I'm going? :P


P.S. I could agree on renaming Temp Invuln into something more fitting, and also switching Invincibility to a lower tier (especially from a Tanker PoW). Fiddling with the power effects, on the other hand, gets a no from me.

I would be happy to see Invulnerability get a viable non-toggle option selectable at level 1. Not sure that fronting Tough Hide would feed the weasel, though.

RPD gives a base resistance 10% to physical damage. If you three-slot it before level 12 you can get that to just under 12%.

TH gives base defense of 5%, general coverage except Psionics. Three slotted, you get under 6% at TO levels.

The only advantage you'd get from Tough Hide at level 1 is that the bit of defense it would give you would be valid against all but Psionics. Other than that, the two powers look about equally weak - especially given that non-physical damage is not all that common at those levels. Defense rather than resistance would mean that low level Invuln tankers would have health that yo-yos a lot more, which would be a problem given that Invuln was never intended to rely to a great extent on its slooow self heal for survivability.

If we want to make life easier for lowbie Invuln tankers, swapping Unyielding and Resist Energies would make a lot more sense.

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