Quote:
Would be too overpowered.|
Originally Posted by Wavicle
I hope that someday they make Granite work with the other shields and nerf it so that having it on brings you to current granite numbers, or thereabouts, with all the other shields running.
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It's already pretty crazy since unalloyed psi damage is actually somewhat rare in the game. Closing the psi hole would probably cause them to "rebalance*COUGH*NERF*COUGH*" the set.
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Various random thoughts on the issues in this thread.
My most recent alt, planned and played to 50 over the last two months, is a Stone-Fire. I wanted my first, and so far only, tank to be completely self sufficient, freeing any and all team members to support each other first. I wanted it to be possible to stay totally out focused, always looking at the battlefield and on trying to manage/shape it, and to be able to spot and pull baddies off my team mates without ever having to concern myself with my bars. And I also wanted to be able to solo as much content as possible. Reading in this forum led me to select a Stony.
Having just completed a SR scrapper I knew that soft capped def was amazing, and having played that same SR I was painfully aware of cascade defense failure due to Defense Debuffs, so having soft capped or even higher than soft cap defense in no sin. The defense debuff resistance of a Granite is not that high, my guy having 43% DDR in Granite only, or 60.6% with the addition of Rooted.
Now that the tank is complete he does have overkill def in many situations, and that is the Price You Pay for complete security in all situations (barring Psi). He retains a Psi def hole as he had other weaknesses I wanted to address.
So specific points:
1) You WILL be 'out of Granite' for a minimum of 31 levels. Having planned to soft cap def from the start I found tough/weave darn nice to have while leveling.
1A) If you ever run your Granite to help a friend or to pick up something you missed via oro, and are doing any content below level 27 you will be 'out of Granite' so having usable Rock etc. will come in handy. I missed the Synapse TF for TFC and only completed it two days ago, lol.
1B) If you are Not going to do IO Sets then tough/weave will be really useful to you if you want max durability. I used no sets while leveling, just uniques.
1C) There will be loads of times when you can do just fine 'out of Granite' and contribute much more to the team, or speed your solo play, with unpenalized offense.
2) Tough has a base of 15% resistance vs Stoneskin with only a 10% base. If you are going to enhance something the higher the starting value the better. Both will get you to the 90% hard cap in Granite. At present, if you do skip Stoneskin to take Tough on your way to Weave, you will almost certainly want to slot it for endurance reduction and increased resist and make it youe Steadfast mule (probably 3-4 slots, I used 4). Having a low endurance Tough with around 20% resist all the time was great to have while leveling. Post I-19 taking BOTH as I plan to do will allow the mule slot for 3% Steadfast to go to Stoneskin, provide about 30% full time resist, and free a slot for some other power.
3) As I said above I accepted the lack of Psi defense in Granite to use set bonuses to address other issues. While you can soft cap using sets and no weave I think it is more efficient to have only a few sets dedicated to defense and to use your sets to help manage you endurance (ignore the blue bar unless drained,) erase your recharge penalty (my toon - no penalty 12.5% haste in Granite) and greatly boost the run speed while in Granite. I was also able to accomplich these goals while adding quite a bit of HP and regen. Frankly the only way I could figure out to do all this without using Purple sets was with a tough/weave build. This approach also gives a Ninja Run speed out of Granite in the 70 mph range (no travel power to maximize attacks). I find I just fight better using the same basic running and strafing moves I use with all my other toons. Not jumping is no biggie. Post I-19 I'll put teleport in to solve those few occasions where 23.6 mph run speed in Granite does not work.
4) When you must have Psi defense they say you will have to 'be out of Granite' for minerals, et al. Once again having 7.7% def from a well slotted Weave trumps any possible boost from Maneuvers with its starting value of only 2.275%. Weave also has a lower end cost. Weave and the Steadfast unique can give you 10%+ to everything, all the time, in or out. This approach also lets you save slots in Rock, Crystal, etc. and still have meaningful def. My Rock is two slotted for 35.4%, Crystal two slots at 37.3% and Minerals two slots at 43.4%. I will admit that so far I have never needed to drop Granite for a purely Psi attack, but I keep hearing it is possible so I prepared accordingly.
5) My level 49 power is - try not to laugh - Maneuvers (muling a 7.5% run speed unique). Belt AND Suspenders allows a softcapped minerals if I ever play the part of the game where I need it, or if I do hit broken levels or Defense Debuff it covers a little of the debuff.
The build I referenced is below. The in game is very slightly different as I took some powers in a diff order during the actual respec.
Code:
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What you're neglecting is the fact that the extra 10% may make the difference between taking that 100 points of damage and taking no damage whatsoever. A 100% damage reduction.
Doesn't mean they're not nice to have, or useful.
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