Invulnerability Question

Hey guys, just a quick question, on an invulnerable tank you got Tough Hide and Invincibility which are Defence buffs that allow your body to naturally deflect incoming attacks.

What with the defence cap, if you're about to ding 50, and you happen to have a respec handy, how many slots do Tough Hide and Invincibility need to function to their full effect?

Cos at the moment, I got both six slotted, which I've been told is a waste of slots, and apparently, 4 at most in each for defence enhancements would suffice.

If you're using SOs or common IOs, 3 is the most you should be slotting of any given enhancement type. Things change slightly if you're using IO sets, but the best way to tell in that case is to use Mids'.

Tough Hide probably only needs 2 because the base value is pretty small so that 3rd slot isn't giving you much of a return (0.5% Defence with Lv50 common IOs) and could probably be more effectively used elsewhere. Invincibility is a bit trickier because although the base is lower than Tough Hide, it stacks based on the number of mobs around you, but even then you're only looking at ~1% extra defence from that extra slot with 10 mobs.

Yup, you're not running into the Defense Cap, which Invincibility and Tough Hide won't get you to alone, you're running into the Enhancement Diversification (ED) caps. Basically, like Spad said, more than three SOs worth of enhancement is wasted on a power, and you get very minimal returns for anything more than that.

Auto powers (ones that are always on and use no endurance) should be slotted with 3 SOs only. Any more than that have very minimal benefits. However, people will often use more than three Invention Origin enhancements to get set bonuses.

Toggle powers can take some Endurance Reduction, too. In most shield-type powers, you can slot 4 IOs from a set to get capped Defense or Resistance and enough Endurance Reduction.

Take a look at the guide written by a friend of mine, Call Me Awesome. It tells you how to make your build softcapped for a fairly inexpensive price.

Remember that Invincibility also takes to-hit buffs as well so, using SOs or plain IOs, 4-slotting with 2 defense and 2 to-hit buffs would make sense (i.e. stacks with more enemies, up to 10). Of course you'd probably want an endurance reduction in Invincibility too resulting in 5 slots. Although I use IO sets to effectively reduce the number of slots I use, the SO or plain IO equivalent would be: (end red)/(def)/(to-hit)/(def)/(to-hit). I see noticeable improvement slotting to-hit; i.e. w/o accuracy and to-hit tank attacks tend to miss more, which is a big deal. Since they deal only “moderate” damage it’s important that every hit counts. So, in my experience, this is a way to use Invincibility to its "full effect."

On my invuln/ss tank, for example, smashing and lethal resistance get easily capped. I don't see defense getting near a cap. When I added the Fighting Pool (Boxing/Tough/Weave), there are definitely noticeable results from doing an SO or plain IO equivalent of 3-slotting weave (end/def/def). Weave gives defense on the order of Tough Hide. So (Tough Hide) + (Weave) = about 7.6% + 7.6% = 15.2% defense or so. (Weave covers more kinds of defense than Tough Hide, so check “Combat Attributes”.)

Invincibility does stack with the number of surrounding enemies. Say you increase, from slotting, defense from 1.0% to 1.4% (or so) in Invincibility. With 10 enemies surrounding you this could be 10x(1.4%) = 14% extra defense. Invincibility is dynamic though, so it’ll be hard to evaluate even if you have the “Combat Attributes” window open. That thing jumps around a lot during play making it extremely hard to read, in my opinion. So (and these are ROUGH numbers) in a mob of 10 foes you could have 15.2% + 14% = 29.2% defense. That, combined with your resistance, makes survivability quite good for an Invulnerability tank.

Good luck!

That's a very good guide, I read it all the way down.

Essentially, my invulnerable tank is maxed out on all the Invulnerable powers. Except Dull Pain, I stopped at 3 as I noticed 3 common IO's for healing filled the health bar up virtually from empty.

When I began reading around and saw about soft caps and hard caps, ice caps, baseball caps, polar caps... etc... lol I began to wonder if I had built right. Looks like I haven't.

Having said that though, the amount of abuse he can absorb is utterly phenomenal, but, learning more, I feel like I have wasted slots in places where I didn't have to.

I really feel a respec coming on.

how high is the hp for the invulnerability and is it good for running s/l farms?

One other thing I want to point out though is I have put a few set IO's here and there, mainly for stamina recovery and regeneration. Any damage he takes he heals rather fast its not really too big an issue, and if the excrement really heads to the fan, I just hit unstoppable and pound away without mercy.

Unstoppable recharges quick as that is what 3 of its 6 slots are for. When it crashes, I just hit Dull Pain, pop a few blue insps, hit on rage and my toggles and away I go.

It depends what you want to slot in the powers (i.e. IO sets) and what you can afford to slot. For example, in Tough Hide, I would put two slots UNLESS I wanted set bonuses. For sets, I'd probably have 4 slots - there are a lot of sets where I would want either 4 pieces or 2 pieces each from 2 sets.

For Invincibility, 'ideally', I'd have 3 slots each with a Hami O (I forget the name of it) that gives defense buff / to hit buff / end reduction. That HO is *GOLD* for that power (and great for Fortitude also).

I agree with the general consensus if slotting for SO in Invince and Tough Hide. If you use sets, that could vary wildly, though. I use 3 of the Luck of the Gambler in Invince, and 4 in Tough Hide myself, but in both cases the global recharge bonus from that set is one of them (shock, I know).

For Dull Pain, I'd strongly recommend slotting it more aggressively for recharge than for heal, but both of you can swing it. If you use IOs you can quite easily get away with 5 slots only in in.

And I'd agree with poster who suggested earlier that 6 slots in Unstoppable if probably too many, even for SOs. The base resistance values of that power should cap your resistances or all but cap them to everything (except of course psi and toxic). If you're using SOs only, and skipped Resist Energies and Resist Elements, then maybe you'll want a single Res Enhance in Unstoppable, but otherwise....