Surviving with unorthodox WP

In this game, as someone recently mentioned, there is no right way or wrong way to build a character or AT rather. First and foremost, a person must build what suits them and what is fun for them, which may not always suit how other people build and or play.

WP tank is one of the easiest and most jacks of all trade primaries for a tank out there. There is excellent resistance, regeneration, and extra HP and endurance recovery. A person can place just about any secondary with it and not have to worry about running out of end after every mob. It even comes with a little bit of defense and a good base if maxing out that section is for that person. Most posted builds here are builds that are IOed out, maxed out in defense and other areas. The issue is that people still have to go through 49 levels before they get to 50 and usually beyond 35 and or in mid 40s before things start to max out. And a person still must survive to that point first and foremost. Now here and there, when asking about how to survive and take on large mobs in upper levels, first replies usually have something to do with maxing out defense and such. But what I found and how I build my WPs, I usually forgo the defense and focus on other areas.

First, there is only so many slots that each character can earn and there isn’t enough slots to six slot everything so some choices have to be made. Again, there isn’t any right or wrong way and many ways to do this depending on the person style of play and what they find enjoyable and or what works for them. That is the biggest variable there. What works for one person may or often times not work for another. One thing that works for me which seems to go against many people conventions, some never even played a WP, is forgoing heighten senses, the defense power of the set, and about the only defense. Now some people by this time is wondering "how the hell is a WP supposed to survive without it?" Well I'ma get into that and tell a little bit of how I did it, and currently doing it with another up and coming WP. First, things have to be put into perspective. In the tanker's primary choices that are mostly resistance based there is Dark Armor, Fiery Aura, Invul., and electric armor. Stone, shields, may be argued into the aforementioned category, especially stone as its high resistance, usually maxed out in all resistance except psi, and some defense to most powers, except psi again. Shields, can’t remember been ages since I played it and the set up I had is fuzzy right now. Then with the high regeneration, there are some similarities with Regeneration that is found on brutes, scrappers, and stalkers.

While most tankers end up with 1874.1 hp baseline at 50, the WP ends up with a little over 2400 with high pain tolerance three slotted with the health SO. At level 44 on this one particular WP, I'm sitting at 2341.88hp base. With a few +hp IOs, that number probably can reach over 2600 at 44. At 44 the high pain tolerance adds about 534 extra hp that most other tanks will not get baseline unless they pop Dull Pain but theirs wears off, and the WP is permanent. Fair trade. Now looking at 534, it may not seem like a lot as some will and has said that this is only a few extra hits. Actually, this is a substantial number or about a 28% increase. Most IOs a piece only gets you about 1-2% more Hp. And the accolades only about 10% or around 180 and two 5% for a total of about 360. Add this on top of that and that is about 2234 for normal hped tanks and 2769 for WP. Now about those extra hits. Some people forget to take into account the regeneration when you are fighting and the resistance, making those 535 odd hp even more substantial.

The regeneration of WP can reach and surpass the levels of the Regeneration itself in battle due to the little power called Rise to the challenge which gives a regeneration bonus to every mob within the aura range. Now it's easy to get caught up in the percentage portion of the regeneration but in this case with this type of build when focusing on regeneration and adding it to a key point of survival is the actual amount of hp per second that is gained. At 44, I'm sitting at about 38.56 hp/sec regeneration with physical perfection that added 3.08hp.sec to it. And this is at rest. My regeneration brute on the other hand, which also had no problems at upper level and incarnate arc material, has a rate of 43.39hp/sec (2.65%) at rest and this is at level 50 with Num regen/recovery IO, also with physical perfection, and a huge regen bonus from an IO and a large regen bonus from an IO set and 1634hp with 5 small health increase from IO sets, and 1 large and one med also from IO set. But here is the kicker. In combat, where the regeneration actually matters, the brute with still have the same rate of regeneration unless the power of IH is popped with dull pain gives it a rate of 6.79% or 171.13 hp a sec and 2520 hp. The WP with one mob in the aura will get to 2.73% or 73.27hp/sec, more than baseline regeneration. With 6 mob in the aura the number jumps up to 3.75% or 100hp/sec. this is more than the standard regeneration rate but less than a regeneration that popped dull pain and Instant Healing(IH). Now with regeneration that means to kill the WP, the mob must do more than 100hp per second to move the health bar. With many mob on the case this isn’t much but this is where the resistance part comes in.

The good ole prior mentioned brute is sitting at about 34% smash/lethal resistance, 14% fire, cold, energy, negative energy, psi, and toxic. And no defense worth mentioning (MoG takes care of this for a measly 15 secs). And this is about where the compare to the WP ends. The WP on the other hand is sitting at 70% S/L; 11.76% to fire, cold, energy, neg energy and toxic; 43.11% psi. The regeneration brute has better numbers in all exotic damage sets besides psi. Normally this is where people pick up heightened senses to fill in the gap. On the other end in the resistance based tank realm, the electric armor tank for example walks around with 78.37% s/l, 54.97% for fire and cold, 50.11% for psi, 47.11% for negative energy, and a whopping 90% for energy. If going by pure resistance alone, the WP cannot touch the electric armor but in the regen side of the house the electric armor has a pretty basic 27.39hp/sec or 1.7 odd % and 2289 and this is with some hp/regen IOs and the 10% accolade and 5% accolade unlike the aforementioned level 44 WP tank. With the same amount of IOs, the level 50 WP tank that is also in stable have 3000hp. AT 44 the WP already have better regen and more hp, with not so far off s/l resistance and pale in compare exotic damage resistance. But remember, when in the fight, with only 6 mob, and in teams there will be more than 6 mobs, and even at times depending on the diff setting there will be more than 6 mob per group, the WP regen jumps up to 3.75% or 100hp/sec and that is without IOs.

Now the survival of the WP without defense is based on the workings of the regen, hp and resistance working together and with smash/lethal dealing mobs, the WP isn’t going anyways near death. With exotic damage, the regen and hp is paramount. Another thing to put into perspective is the enemy mobs of this game. While resistance to exotic damage is nice, it is not needed not even the defense for it as many builds get along just fine without exotic damage resistance and or defense, Regeneration for one, not to mention many range toons, and even Invul and stone manage to get by without smidge of either for psi. In game, toxic dealing enemy mobs are fairly rare to come across outside the early level Vaz. people and in upper levels, the toxic tarantula and the bane spiders and the widows. Now the bane spider while can be numerous in arachnos missions, the toxic is more of an afterthought the smash damage those things do is crazy if there is no resistance for it available. The widows that matter are usually minions and squishy to melee set so they won’t do much anyways same with the minion tarantulas. Out of all toxic damage of high levels that may give most trouble is toxic spiders but they do lot of lethal damage with toxic damage and they can take a pounding. If a person keeps attacking they will go down before much damage is done. Now there is even less builds out there with toxic protection but most can take down arachnos fairly well and judging by the amount of toons past 25 they survived the Vaz. people too. Fire damage, you have CoT demons, some of the minions, Elite paragon protector, Longbow flamethrowers, and a few others. The main one in fire that does much damage to begin with is the elite paragon protector fire type which is encountered here and there and LT to boss level CoT demons. The LT ones usually are not trouble unless they are in large amounts and even then liberal use of knockdown and or knockback will keep them off the back. The bosses are no harder than the Lts because usually they are one at a time but may have other fire demons with them. In this case I deal with the LTs first since they do not much less damage than the boss and there is usually more of them. Keep attacking the boss and they go down pretty swift. CoT are not known to be particularly super resistant to much besides fire for these fire demons and if a sap is using fire melee, I'm not sure how that works as I usually use electric melee or a smash/lethal damage type and they can’t withstand much of that. Elite Paragon protector can be a pain in the butt because they seem to do the most fire damage out there but luckily the rest of crey is nothing more than knats. Use the rest of the crey mob to boost the regen and take the paragon protector elite out first. Do not draw this battle out long if it can be helped. They do lots of damage and when they get low, they put on the old fashioned MoG, which last a couple of minutes not the one the players get that last for 15 seconds. Weather those minutes out, grab a few extra mob if possible, that's what I do, and ride those minutes out. When the PP elite crash, they are easy pickings.

Energy damage. In early levels, outside the little pricks of clockwork, not many mobs use energy damage. Mid-levels, some freakshow use energy damage but it's low level stuff that don’t do much, more likely to kill these first because a group of them can drain some end, especially the Super Stunners but they are not dangerous to the WP. And some other builds like the regeneration focus on trying to avoid what the freakshow is good at, smash/lethal damage. With 70%, they are non-issue. The other enemy that does energy damage that I didn’t even realize did energy damage is Prae clockwork. Usually these are not seen until late levels and incarnate stuff and prae zones if chosen. They also have -regen. But these buggers do such low damage and attack so infrequently that if you have a group of them bunched up, they will rarely and barely get the health bar below 10%. But the big builder clockworks can hit decently hard. I take these ones out as soon as they are spotted. While the minions don’t do much, the damage with a few lts and a boss or two and see the health bar start to dwindle if a person was to just sit there and go afk. A dwindling health bar is bad business for WP as there is no built in heal. Malta bots does some energy damage too but that is mostly at range. Close up they rather melee smash damage and debuff the regen. I take the bots out first, the LTs and Bosses not because of energy damage but because the debuffs. But that's my standard procedure on any melee character I have. Incarnate/Night ward/First ward mobs have mobs that do exotic damage but none that have given me trouble, not even the EBs. Yet, I wouldn’t recommend just sitting there and letting three of their EBs slices the character to bits. Although they go down pretty quick as long as I keep attacking until they fall. Incarnate mobs, especially the Banished Pantheon people, seem to do just about every damage except s/l besides the monsters but they are not hard to take down. I take down the energy and or cold bosses first, as the cold bosses have debuff for recharge and in these situations where it's best to keep attacking, it gets in the way a bit. Then the one that does psi, the LTs, and then the minions. I never forget to use the minions for the regen bonus. More regen there is the harder it is for them to run through the hp bar. Remember with enough mob, I can reach levels that a regen cannot unless they press IH and Dull pain every mob which on my regen, is not up every mob so it's usually running it base and no troubles there but same with WP, the key is to keep attacking. While Dull pain probably needs to be hit for the last bosses on the map, the WP already have that hp and beyond. And more resistance as most end bosses in the incarnate content usually have good smashing power mixed with some exotic power. IDF people, the bosses probably are most trouble here out of any energy dealing mob in the game even beyond the EB Longbow Ballista's (which have a tendency to punch twice (smash/energy) a weak range energy power and then Containment field)). Ironically, I switch between taking out the minions first and the boss or boss first then minions. Usually in this case I take out the minions first as they all like to do energy damage and the boss usually is busy range shooting until the crowd dwindles. By that time I can focus on taking the boss out.

Cold damage- cold damage dealing mobs are so weak in the game that it's not worth mentioning. I cannot think of any cold damage dealing mob that didn’t focus on more debuffing than actual damage. They are more of a nuisance than a threat.

Psi- The enemy mob psi damage in this game becomes more prevalent in the mid-levels to high levels. It seems after a while in the high levels, that every other enemy group does psi damage. Most of them do weak psi damage but the most famous psi group possibly that is, is the Carnies. Usually only the bosses deal psi damage. The ring mistress are no problems and biggest worry is actually that blasted end debuff. Master Illusionists, this is the one that make many Invul and Stoners cringe. They do psi damage and they summon three more lt rank mob that also does psi damage. Get too many of these together, and a person even melee can find themselves held. The WP also have higher than usual hold resistance (outside stoners in granite form) so it takes quite bit of MIs to hold. MIs and their summoned psi pets don’t do damage and on top of that, the damage they do inflict is given back to the character. Not so much of a worry of the psi damage than damaging them between phases. On arachnos the Fortunata mistress has psi that can pack a punch but they are squishy. Hit them, and they go down. When they get low health they will do this high damage AOE but the hp absorbs it and might see it flinch. There is also some Longbow Wardens that do psi but then again, it's weak. Pound on them and they will be no problem. And don’t forget the WP comes with 41% resistance to psi anyways.

So basically that is how I survive without the defense power of WP. Pretty standard strategy that people also overlook. They forget that while they are shooting at you are in their face taking their health. And they have a good set of regeneration to overcome and hp to get rid of. For example on the 44level WP that is sitting at

90% of the other mob in this game does smash and lethal damage, the most common damage a person will come across. 73.27/sec and 2341.88hp facing one mob. Usually the boss hits with an alpha strike the strongest one. Usually the damage on most energy mobs at this level is pretty week and barely gets over 10% per big hit. Fire might get a few hundred, and let’s say a fire toon hits for 320 first hit, which I haven’t seen yet but in theory, that would take 4 seconds to get those hp back about. In those 4 seconds, most of the time, their alpha isn’t recharged yet. But in the same token they are attacking with other powers usually, as in the case of CoT fire demon boss I tested on, probably will see you at range, fire blast, run up, fire ball, fire breath, fire sword, swipe, swipe, fire blast, swipe, fire sword at least that is what this particular one did and the one after (+3 level). (The +3) In the first volley which took about 2-3 seconds to get off and probably about two or three seconds between attacks. The swipes were good opportunity to regen easily. And the opening fire attacks was mid, took my health down by about 15% before it started to come back. But the mob tends to waste time between attacks, especially strong attacks, so remember every second is 73.27. 2 seconds between attacks is about 146 regained with that one in aura range. And most of the attacks didn’t do 146 besides a stray fire ball and blast which in melee range they don’t do too often. And that is just sitting there. When attacking it's even less when they are knocked down, it takes a couple of seconds before they get up and if using EM, as I can stun them for a few seconds leading to more hp. And when they get low health they take a few seconds for their heal power, by then they rarely have time to attack again before croaking.

Remember keep attacking and the exotic damage is non-issue. Now with the slots from the skipped heighten senses, that wet to more damage, a recharge and got tough earlier than usual if I would of picked HS. This is without having to skip some other power I wanted in order to get it.

Also although not mentioned, SoW (Strength of Will) can help with rough patches if the concept hasn’t been gotten down packed. But I rarely use it and some of them do not have that power either instead going for something else. Physical Perfection adds to the regen. And if IOed out, I'm sure the regen and hp will be even higher making it even easier.

But that is how I survive without the defense power and building WPs my way that fits me, that I have fun with, and the way I wanted to build it. These are the most important aspects when building anything in this game. These methods that I use and my way probably work for many or for that matter may not work for anyone else but me, but that is what works for me.

Now don’t get me wrong, Electric armor is powerful too and just as powerful, Regeneration especially on a brute kicks butt, so do Stone (I soloed to 50 mine not sure how it does on teams), Dark armor (so far, mine is about mid-level), and the oldie but goody and just as good Invul. These sets also all work for me. And there are sets not mentioned that may work for other people that may not work for me and that is ok because it would be one boring sad world if we all was the same, think the same, liked the same things, did things exactly the same way, looked the same, talked the same, walked the same, worked the same, and etc. Not a world that I want to live in. Can’t say that for everyone because I don’t know everyone thus can only speak for myself and vice versa. No one can tell another person what is fun for them. It is up to that individual to decide. Sometimes it coincides, and many times it doesn’t. Thus this is not to say that my way is better or not better. This is just a way that I found that works for me.

And I know there may be some spelling and grammatical errors. This is known now. No need to point it out. Need clarification on something about the actual post, just ask.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

So the +Per didn't interest you? Always interests me. I hate to be blinded.

It's always interesting to see people take a different approach to creating a build. My personal preference would still include Heightened Senses and Weave, as I like the added mitigation that the defenses get me. It will be interesting to see what changes your survivability will have with the addition of +res set bonuses in i24, should you choose to leverage them very far.

In the meantime, you don't sound like the character is under performing according to your expectations, and it also sounds like you're having fun. Keep having fun.

I'd like to ask what you were able to gain in exchange for the Heightened Senses power.

I would hate to not have Heightened Senses once you start fighting Knives or Arachnos Widows/Banes.

What level of difficulty can you consistently handle solo with these techniques?