Invincible?

I don't know how many of you read my melee thread in the General Discussion, but as a result of that it inspired me to revisit a concept that I've had going for a while.

I want to make something that's as damned near possible indestructible. I'm not worried about damage or much else but I do want a toon that can take almost all that's thrown at me an come through with positive hitpoints.

Here are the qualifiers:

I don't want a stone tank. I don't like the look of stone and given that my char is female I want her to remain looking like a human female not some "poor man's Thing" - so anything that perverts the look (I've a great outfit for her) is a no-no. (Dark Armour is probably out for this reason too but I don't honestly expect anyone to tell me to go for that)


I don't want Super Reflexes. That's simply because I've got a brute at 50 with /SR and although it's good I'm not keen to play the same toon in a differnt variant. I would reconsider this if there was a significant consensus that suggested SR was the best set to choose

What I'm aiming to achieve is maximum survivability under normal gameplay conditions - I'm not asking for uberuberuber but my primary should be focussed towards giving me that survivable thing.

As I've pointed out... I'm a novice with tanks but this is interesting to me so I'd welcome any feedback.

Cheers

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Build budget potentially makes a big difference here so what are your constraints?

Based on your criteria, Invulnerability or Willpower would be your best choices. Both Invulnerability and Willpower will allow you to see your character's costume easily. Regen is a possible 3rd option, but I have zero experience with it.

I'll defer critiquing Willpower's overall survivability too much, as I do not possess a WP Tank, but do have a WP Scrapper. With WP, Endurance will not be a problem, as you have a better than Stamina power availible in it. You have powers that work off of Regen, which is better on a Tank since Tanks have higher HPs. I've teamed with WP tanks and see their only true weakness is that they don't have a big HP boosting power to help them shrug off big Alpha Strikes.

I've had an Invulnerabilty Tank since I1. I'd say that if you properly IO it, an INV Tank can be nearly as tough as a Stone Tank. Dull Pain makes you very tough. You can use IOs to get Invincibilty to cap your defense to Melee damage with one person in it's range. You have awesome Smashing and Lethal resistance and some resistance to everything except Psi damage. If you decide to get Unstoppable, you can cap Res to everything, except Psi, for 3 minutes. You WILL essentially be Unstoppable until it crashes.

Call_Me_Awesome had a very good guide showing how that can be done.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=126983

If you have a large budget. Elec/* would be the best choice.

It can be built to have 90% s/l/e resists and 32.5% defense to all 3 vectors. Pop a small luck to softcap your defense. Getting that 90% s/l resist is expensive, but you can drop that and still be able to get 82-85% resist with Cardiac or ~76% without it.

Pair it with /Ma and you can maintain over 42.5% defense to all 3 vectors.

Toss on Rebirth Radial to alternate with Energize for heals and you've got yourself an awesome tank.

I have an Elec/Ma tank that's going this route. Level 47 and she's running with ~30% defense with SK up and she laughs at most things already.

Remember that whatever primary you take, Martial Arts will give you an extra 10% defence during combat via Storm Kick, which can up your survivability considerably.
I've found this and Kinetic Combats to work very well on my Electric/MA tank - let the powerset provide resistance and get Defence from elsewhere. (Although on the downside I have no +HP boost)

Depends if Martial Arts fits your concept, of course, but the set can be made fairly non-kicky these days via alternate animations.

Honestly, I'm going to have to say Ice armor/Kinetic Melee.

You can color the Ice armor powers to not hinder your costume too much, and you can softcapped to basically everything with SOs.

Then you have kinetic melee providing -damage, chilling embrace stacking even more -damage, and hoarfrost and hibernate covering any holes in your build.

Its a fun ride to level 50 too, especially once you get EA and burst.

You can go V side for darkest night (and stack even more -damage) if you want, and even pick the -damage, -def interface, plus the void -damage route on your judgement, and any attacks that do manage to break your defense will be doing MUCH less then they normally would.

Too not obscure the characters look too much, invuln, shield or wp. Ibble obble black bobble ibble obble out - run twice WP wins.

Willpower is fantastic for making a durable Tanker. However, you aren't invulnerable. Invulnerability makes a durable Tanker too, and it has an effective taunt-aura.

Willpower is a lot like Regen on cruise-control - toggle up and forget it. Invulnerability is also a toggle and forget it set, but it also has a clickable heal.

Both are strongly improved by the Fighting set.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I know Dark Armor was taken out of the running in the original post, but if set to light colors and specifically if Shadow Cloak is set to no fade/pulse, DA really doesn't hide your costume all that much and can be roleplayed to be any number of things other than darkness (sand and snow work particularly well, in my opinion).

It takes a bit more investment than some other secondaries such as Invuln, but my DA tank certainly fits the criterion of being indestructible. With a defense-based IO build going for either positional defense or S/L/E/N typed defense (the former being a bit more difficult and expensive, but also more effective), combined with good resistance numbers including healthy resistance to psy and some good endurance drain resistance, and add to that the more powerful self-heal in the game, and you've got a monster that is extremely difficult to kill, with a self-rez that stuns everything in the vicinity and allows you to regain aggro again with any stacked debuffs or effects now gone off of you (meaning really, you have to kill the character twice to make him/her lose aggro).

Just my little argument for DA, take it or leave it.

Survivability of highend tankers is so high I believe many people tend to look at a powerset they like in a vacuum rather than make an actual comparison.

Rather than claim to be better than that I'll make the suggestion that, if you have free time, you might want to take a look on the Test server right now. Seeing as you can get level bumps, and infinite empy merits that you can convert to recipes, this can be a great opportunity to test and see various combos at level 50 ; if nothing else, to get the feel of it all.

To summarize; RES or Regen-Based sets are always going to be better than DEF-based sets if you have a decent budget because Defence is so easy to come by in this game via pool powers and IO sets.

WP with capped s/l defense.

I had a WP/SS Tank that was basically indestructable without capped s/l defenses.

Re-rolled into a SS/WP Brute for the damage to get the complete offense and defense powerhouse feel.

Worked my way to capped s/l defense to compensate for not being a Tank. The survivability is ridiculous.

Pick one:
Inv/DM
WP/DM
WP/MA
DA/DM
DA/MA

I have an INV/SS Tanker on which I've tried pretty much every IO loadout conceivable. For awhile, I had soft-capped Psi DEF along with soft-capped S/L/E/N. That build was basically indestructible*, even before Rebirth.

More recently I adjusted that build for less Psi DEF (~32%, one luck from the soft cap), so that I could take a supplemental AoE attack. After the compromise, I'm still basically indestructible*, even before Rebirth, and I kill large groups significantly faster.

I put an asterix after "indestructible" because, in my experience, there's a point after which you're effectively unkillable in any content that plays by the rules, but there's almost nothing you can do, build-wise, to give yourself a fighting chance against the various rule-breaking gimmicks that proliferate in the end game. Reichsman's stun, for instance, will kill you unless you have teammates keeping you upright, whether you've spent 0 influence or 10 billion on your survivability.

And we all know about the gimmicks in the iTrials.

All of that (mildly self-indulgent) rambling out of the way, the most survivable combo is probably an IOed INV/DM. I think that combo will reach the practical peak faster than most others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build