What Alpha ability for Inv/SS Tanker?

Currently piling up shards and stuff on my Inv/SS. He's mostly defense-built, and didn't take an ancillary/epic pool worth mentioning (2 slots in a hold for the set bonus).

Very happy with him generally. He can run low on endurance in stupendously long fights, but not enough to be a problem; a couple of times recently I've tanked AVs through four to six applications of Dull Pain, which is on a 2 minute and 25 second recharge, without running low on end,and if I do, I carry a few blues. 50% global recharge from set bonuses; no Hasten.

My instinct is, if no particular need screams out to be filled, use the damage Alpha ability (Musculature). Also, I often feel like enemies are still alive with a sliver of life after 2-3 hits. It seems like an uncommon or rare Musculature of some sort would help with that.

But I haven't given intense thought to Incarnate slotting and may be overlooking something obvious. So if you'd care to share what you decided and why, or make suggestions, please do. Thanks for reading!

I went to t3 Cardiac (whatever Endurance is), THEN did my analysis of which was the best route (when Mids was updated for Alphas). Now I'm heading in a different direction, forgot all the names, but the Accuracy/Def/Taunt t4 is what I'm going for now.

I shifted direction because I was quite disappointed with the net gain in resists. The endurance is VERY nice though. I run FA and the blue bar just does not move. The additional Def is small, but lowers the number of foes needed to soft-cap from 3 to 2 for 1 pair of damage types and from 2 to 1 for another pair (I forget which ones) and I thought that would be worthwhile.

I went with Spiritual on my main, FemFury.

The Recharge / Healing combo is nice for Dull Pain.

The Healing boosts are nice for Health and Physical Perfection, giving me a little more regen, which is where I can best boost survivability, since DEF and Resist are pretty much good enough.

Recharge gives me a little more Rage double-stack time. Also brings up big hit attacks like Footstomp and KO Blow more often.

And even the Stun is a nice little bonus for Jab if it goes off.

I'll put my vote in for Spiritual.

Dull Pain, Foot Stomp, KO Blow, Rage, are all powers that shine with high levels of recharge. Spiritual also lets you get away with not taking Hasten and reaching perma DP.

I just can't get over the difference that T3 Cardiac made for my Inv/SS. The resists in the set aren't really built to take advantage of Cardiac (hardcapped or so low that you don't get much more), but endurance was such a terrible bottleneck on my build that I can't imagine losing Cardiac slotting now. I can stack Rage and run Hasten without any worries about the effects of a crash and that helps everything else hit harder and more often. The additional 3.3% or so non-S/L resist is just gravy.

Spiritual would be the next best choice for me, after Cardiac. Recharge is always welcome: Invuln likes it for Dull Pain, SS likes it for pretty much everything. Dull Pain also benefits from the healing bump, so there is some nice synergy.

Musculature might be okay, but Tanker damage is kind of low to begin with. You get maybe another 20dmg from Footstomp and 50dmg from Knockout Blow, which might be enough to knock off those few remaining slivers. It has absolutely no other synergy for an Inv/SS.

Nerve is interesting and will get more interesting if enemy to-hit numbers rise above 50%. Accuracy will help hit opponents, though an Inv/SS probably doesn't worry about that with Rage stacked. Defense is great and more of it is better (again, especially if enemy to-hit numbers rise). I'd probably look to run Nerve Radial Paragon: another 33% accuracy is plenty with Rage stacked and you get a little bump to Taunt, too. If enemy defense numbers rise, then this would be even more useful.

Well, my Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker is currently sporting Spiritual. I guess it's not necessary that the Inv/SS be different....

Spiritual and Cardaic I personaly feel are the big 2 contenders for most tankers.

I went Cardiac. The endurance is great, but was kinda disappointed with the resists it adds. Ah well, better than nothing.

If you're having massive End problems, go Cardiac.
If you're relatively okay with End, go Spiritual.

My main's running the 33% spiritual and I'm finding that I probably do NOT want to swap in a 45% recharge Spiritual. In crazy full-out button-mashin' battle, he's running JUST on the safe side of his Endurance limits.

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Cardiac was an easy choice for me because I don't take the Fighting Pool (boring!), so it adds a decent amount of Smash/Lethal resistance (plus a few percent on the others).

Yeah, I went cardiac all the way. Not only did I need the endurance reduction, but the extra damage resistance is very nice.

In my opinion it is the only boost to use with Inv/SS tanks.

i'd go with nerve... you get a nice boost to def, which will up your survivability, and a solid boost to acc.

Musculature should only be an option if your def is softcapped and you have no end issues.

Thanks for the input, folks. Looks like there's no solid consensus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sprite Fire i'd go with nerve... you get a nice boost to def, which will up your survivability, and a solid boost to acc. Musculature should only be an option if your def is softcapped and you have no end issues.

Well, he is soft-capped (one foe in range) to s/l/e/n damage types. His end issues are minor -- during prolonged (multi-minute) fights, his end can drop down below 50%, but he hasn't bottomed out that I can recall (and Taunt is a useful endurance-free option to throw out if one needs to let a little recovery catch up during a long fight).

As far as acc goes, he has acceptable acc slotted in his powers, and a smallish global acc bonus...but he's Inv/SS, so he's got serious stacked to-hit bonuses on top of that, and Rage is ED-capped for to-hit enhancement. Although I haven't tried the Incarnate TFs, for example, and could be in for a surprise, I don't feel a strong need for another acc boost.

I've been trying to test out what the Incarnate abilities do for me in Mid's. But the two on the left side are bugged and crash Mid's (I reported the bug and they're fixing it) and when I've tentatively tested out the other two kinds, I didn't see any changes to defense/resistance numbers at all...but I was only trying it out hurriedly while a team was assembling, so I might have missed something.

I took cardiac because now I can definitely be somit of an energizer bunny worrying even less about rage crashes and end drain.