Call Me Awesome

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Oh, I forgot to mention that after getting some more of the sets filled out accuracy is much less of an issue. End however still gets chewed up pretty fast. So I was wondering about some of these enhancements like Miracle - chance for + Recovery and I believe the Numina set had a +regen +recovery IO as well. Even though I can't afford them yet, I'm wondering how these work exactly and where and how you would want to slot these...like dull pain or health? Or do they even make much of a difference in regards to recovering your end faster?

Well at least when I hit 47 I can take conserve power, and that should help out alot.

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The Numina & Miracle uniques are certainly very nice to have; I didn't mention them because they're just a bit out of your price range

I'd say that getting either of the recovery uniques will probably take care of your end problems, make sure you put them in Health so they'll always be active; if you put them in Dull Pain they'll only work for 2 minutes after you click the power.

The last prices I remember seeing were in the 50-70 million range each. Of course you can do MA and spend tickets on gold rolls; you'll have a chance of having one drop. Maybe I'm just lucky but in the first two weeks of issue 14 I had one Miracle and 4 Numina uniques drop from ticket rolls. I also had quite a few crap of the hunter and other vendor trash drop so as the saying goes "your mileage may vary". Several of my SG mates spent a couple of weeks running level 53 boss farms on our Fire/Rad 'trollers so we earned a BUNCH of tickets.

The character I most needed the uniques on was my Fire/Rad; I ran TF's with him on the way from 1-50 and saved merits to buy them... I bought the Miracle and got a lucky roll for the Numina.

Oh, and Conserve Power is a tier one epic power, it's available at 41.

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A couple tidbits about Shield def resistance:

*) Active Defense's def resistance can stack
*) Active Defense's def resistance is slottable. (Namely, Membranes.)

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Ah, I did not know that... my BS/Shield just dinged 43 so Hami-O's are out for the moment, according to the combat numbers I'm ~50% debuff resistance. Active defense is slotted for 3 recharge IO's at the moment and Grant Cover is slotted with an endred in the base slot.

The shields are ED capped in def slotting as well; I've about 40-some % resistance slotting in Deflection. I never knew that you could boost the debuff resistance of Shield. Learn something new every day

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Shield defense can easily get 90% debuff resistance as well.

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Are you sure? I know my BS/Shield scrapper is only around 50% debuff resistance with the entire set. I always thought it's only Super Reflexes that can get 95% debuff resistance.

Anyway, defense over 45% applies in two situations:

1 - When you get debuffed, and def debuffs are very common; most lethal attacks and rad attacks all debuff defense. It's possible to run into a cascade failure of your defense that way; one attack hits and debuffs your def making it easier for another to hit and debuff further.....

2 - When you're dealing with enemies with tohit buffs such as Nemesis with Vengeance active. Also with Devouring Earth Quartz emmanators but the tohit from those is so insane it's pointless to worry about (100% or more tohit buff there)

You may want to check out my Invuln guide, linked in my sig. Issue 13 was the biggest boon for Invuln tankers in years; built right it can nearly reach Granite levels of durability.

Here's what changed to the set itself:

Resist Physical Damage went from 7.5% S/L resistance to 10% S/L resistance AND got a 25% resistance to defense debuffs.
Resist Energies went from 7.5% E/N resistance to 10% E/N resistance AND got 25% resistance to endurance drains
Resist Elements went from 7.5% F/C resistance to 10% F/C resistance AND got 20% slow resistance
Unyielding finally lost the 5% defense debuff
Invincibility lost a little defense per mob to compensate.
Tough Hide gained 25% resistance to defense debuffs

The end result of all this is you have quite a bit more def than you used to for the first mob in melee, around the same for 6-7 mobs and slightly less def for 8-10 mobs. Considering the 8' radius of Invincibility; unless you're herding Rikti Monkeys you probably aren't going to get more than 5-6 mobs in your aura at once anyway so it ends up as a straight up buff.

Now let’s look at the changes to IO set defensive bonuses, probably the single biggest change. What does it mean to Invulnerability tankers? Well, it used to be very difficult to build defensive bonuses since IO sets only covered one type of damage. Prior to issue 13, an IO set might provide, for example, 2% smashing defense. Now that same set would provide 2% smashing AND lethal defense as well as 1% Melee defense. This is a very good thing for us since we can cover our defensive needs with only half the number of bonuses we used to need.

I'm glad you're enjoying your tank; if you're 6 slotting your attacks like I suggested with the 4 Kin Combat and two Pounding Slugfest (Acc/Dam and Dam/Rchg) your accuracy should be decent even with level 20 IO's; you should also be getting about one SO worth of endred. If you're having end issues you may want to replace the Pounding Slugfest Dam/Rchg with a Dam/End. I do remember on my Stone/EM tanker that EM was particularly end heavy; the best advise I can give you is to pace yourself with your attacks... that's something I had to learn way back when with my Inv/Stone.

Anyway, slotting level 20 Kin Combat (all but the proc) and Pounding Slugfest (acc/dam & dam/rchg) you should have: 32% acc/90% dam/29% endred/45% recharge. Changing the Pounding Slugfest Dam/Rchg to a Dam/End you reverse the endred and recharge effects giving 45% endred and 29% recharge. Obviously slotting level 25-30 will get you a bit more, but those base level 20 values should be adequate.

There's several good choices for a solo 'troller... I've played several combos and some are early bloomers & some late bloomers.

Mind solos VERY well in the early game but it tends to plateau early... it still solos adequately late game but it's quite a bit slower than others. It's best vs small groups with it's primarily single target focus. My 50 Mind/Kin is a really good team controller, solo it's ok.

Fire is slow in the early game and gradually picks up steam until level 32 when all hell breaks loose; I have never played a better damage character than my level 50 Fire/Rad; it chews up regular missions faster and safer than my 50 Spine/Regen scrapper.

Plant is really good from fairly early against larger groups of easy targets... it has a lot of AOE damage to deal with groups. The biggest drawback is the relative lack of single target damage... bosses are a pain to deal with. It offers a ton of control and works well with a team of good damage dealers. Mine is a 43 Plant/Storm... the two sets do work very nicely together and Roots allows you to get better use out of Tornado; lock 'em down with Roots and the Tornado won't blow the mobs all over the place. Just remember to keep reapplying Roots before the 12 second -kb wears off.

Illusion is one of the classic soloers, starting at level 18 with PA. The set offers a lot of damage output at the expense of control. The Ill/Rad combo is highly popular and works very well, my 38 Ill/Rad is becoming a really powerful character.

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I know that this thread is focused on survivability, but the one thing that annoys me about Willpower is either that set has a taunt aura that most WP tankers dont take, or its taunt aura is somehow weaker or pulses less often or something. With my Ice tanker running his taunt aura plus his damage aura, I can run through a couple of groups and reliably hold aggro. When I'm on teams as a squishy along with a WP tanker it's common for them to not grab aggro well unless they Taunt.

Can anyone chime in to say if this is a real phenomenon? Or am I imagining it?

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You're quite correct, every other tanker aura has at least a 12 second duration taunt at MAG-4... WP has a 1.25 second taunt at MAG-3. In order to hold aggro a WP tanker MUST rely on their secondary; the aura is basically worthless as an aggro device (although it is a nice survivability bonus with +regen for every foe in range).

That is my biggest problem with the WP set... it's aggro abilities are more than an order of magnitude (ie, less than 10% as effective) weaker than ANY other tanker primary. A good tanker with an AOE heavy secondary can compensate, but it requires a lot of work. WP makes a great Scrapper set, but the crippled aggro aura makes it undesirable as a tank. It's quite durable, but _without a lot of effort_ it's incapable of truly tanking for a team.

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Ahh, gotcha. Yeah that makes sense, but for some odd reason I think I'm going to miss energy punch heh, even though it was relatively weak. So in a build like this, where your defenses are soft capped and your resistances are really high...there really isn't a need for Unstoppable is there? Given the fact that its really going to add extra resistance to status effects and fire/ice/eng etc and an endurance boost? I'm thinking of skipping it completely on this build. Again, thanks for all the great help!

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I originally respec'd into a soft capped build shortly after issue 13... I'd always found Unstoppable to be a very useful tool in the issue 5-12 era so I hung onto it; I wasn't sure just how well the soft cap build would work. Well, after a full issue of never once even thinking about using Unstoppable I've dropped the power with my latest respec.

I think that any power that I hadn't needed in 4 STF's, more than a dozen ITF's and virtually everything else in the high end game was a wasted power slot. As I said, I was hesitant to dump it at first, but after an entire issue has come and gone without ever needing it I'm now a believer.

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...I am probably not representative of the majority, but this is really the thing that makes it superior to all of the others. The times when you most need the resistance are the times when you've been incapacitated by a status effect. During those times, the the other epic pools' toggles provide no benefit, when they would be the most valuable. I'd rather have a def/res toggle that was *only* on when I was under a status effect versus the other way around.

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You make very valid points. To me Body Armor seems inferior in the sense that the base resistance it provides for Smashing and Lethal damage is lower than the resistance toggles found in the other pool. Also, Electric Armor gives not only Smashing and Lethal resist, but Energy as well. Fire Armor (accurate name?) is the same but instead of Energy it gives Fire resist.

Being mezzed and having your toggles deactivated is a problem. To get around that I have Hover (it stays active during mezzes) to avoid getting pounded by melee and IO sets that give stacked range defense when still under fire.

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I can't improve the power's performance without sacking the range, and I like having one attack for which the laughable claim that "Range is a Blaster's defense" is mostly true when range-boosted -- the base range as slotted is 234 feet, 373 feet with Range Boost, but there are some mobs that can still hit me at that range limit.

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Well range is definately a good defense, that is IF you can stay at range and out of reach of a strong melee'ers attack. That must be why alot of us blasters love Hover And getting hit by ranged attacks is not as severe as getting hit in melee, especially when those attacks have stuns. (which leads to a very quick and painful faceplant).

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Speaking as someone who's just looked over the numbers, not actually used the power I have to think Body Armor is really too little to make any real difference in your survivability. It's a place to toss a set bonus and really nothing more... it isn't going to mitigate enough damage to have any visible effect. Without another source of resistance to stack it with it's just not enough to matter on it's own.

Personally I've found Temp Invuln for blasters to actually be marginal in the benefit it offers and it's more than twice as effective. More often than not I don't even bother with it.

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I just recently came back to Coh/Cov from a 1350 day leave, yeah that's a long time! Things have changed a lot... though I'm not sure if they are greatly for the better. Anyway I did a new account, then missed my old guys and reactivated my old account and I was wondering which you would recommend I keep. I only really like my main on my old account so if it's possible to switch a character between accounts I'd pick the new one. Just want to see what you guys think I should do. Thanks!

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Well, you can't move characters from one account to another. Do you have any characters of any significant level on the new account? By significant I'd say level 20 or more, since you can get that in a day of playing. If not I'd just use the old account; character slots are abundant and you can buy more at any time, up to 36 per server.

Offering the perspective of someone who's seen all the changes the game's gone thru since issue 3 I'd say that overall it's a better game now than it was then. I'll admit I was one of the many who were really p*** off about the GDN followed by ED; and I still think that the two of them together were overkill. That said the game has moved on from then and many things have improved. Actually, we've had more buffs than nerfs in the issues since i-6 and the game's probably more fun now. I'll admit to feeling some nostalgia about when I started playing and everything was shiny and new... and it WAS a heck of a lot of fun as an Invuln tank to herd 200+ freaks into a corner...

Since you've been gone for so long you'll find the game is very different than the one you remember; I guess you probably left sometime around issue 4? We had some MAJOR changes with issue 5, typically referred to as the Global Defense Nerf (GDN) where all defense/resist powers were severely lowered in effectiveness followed by issue 6 and Enhancement Diversification (ED) the upshot of which is that the bonus you get from slotting enhancements drops to almost nothing after 3 SO's in a power. That changed the old school slotting from 1 ACC/5 DAM to 1 ACC/3 DAM and endred/recharge to taste for the last two.

Issue 7 completely revamped how Defense worked in the game, the cliffs notes version is that defense became far more effective, and the maximum useful amount of defense (in most PvE situations) became 45%.

Issue 9 gave us the Invention system which added a huge amount of complexity to building and slotting your character; I imagine you're still pretty confused about that . Heck, I've been here all along since Issue 3 and I still find the Invention system to be very complicated. With good selection of IO sets it's now possible for some powersets to approach the effectiveness they had in issue 4. Some AT's benefit hugely from them, some benefit less.

Oh, and welcome back!

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Speed boost is GENERALLY the in the top tier of valuable things a Kinetic can do to their team, and this effect escalates as team size escalates.

Situationally, other priorities arise: Healing, Holding, Spot-debuffing, Killing specific targets, firing a particularly juicy Fulcrum shift, and should be addressed as they arise.

But a kinetic on a team isn't the ONLY one addressing threats. By speedboosting a defender, you increase the amount of buffs, debuffs, and damage they can provide. By speedboosting a controller, more enemies are held/stunned a greater percentage of the time. A well played tanker can and will use speedboost to increase the aggro they hold. A speedboosted blaster or scrapper can end the fight that much faster.

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I would definitely agree with this, and I've been on both sides of the SB equation. As a recipient I always appreciate the recharge (for most characters the recovery bonus is secondary) and when I'm playing a kin I always do my best to keep it on the entire team. If I get busy and forget about it then I actually want the team to let me know when it's dropped.

For the most part I don't have a problem keeping it up while still handling the rest of my job. I've found that to be the case on my 50 Mind/Kin troller, the 35 Kin/Rad defender and the mid-20's Kin/Elec defender. Whenever I get a free moment I go down the team list and refresh SB.

<Although I do think this probably isn't the correct forum for this thread.>

Well, compared to Invuln and Stone you'll find the Dark/Dark tank pretty squishy. I haven't played one myself, but I do have an SG mate who leveled one to 50. The results were... a bit of a roller coaster. The set lived and died by Dark Regeneration... one missed heal while tanking was usually enough to faceplant him. Facing anything with tohit debuffs was usually a death sentence for him unless the rest of the team could kill it really fast. Our team at the time didn't include any buffs, the rest of us were playing pure damage dealers.

I will say I didn't know his exact build, and he's primarily a controller player; it was his first tank. That said he really did seem to be very squishy... things an SO'd Invuln tanker would yawn thru were life or death for him, and I know his build wasn't THAT bad... it may have been his first tanker but he'd already leveled 'trollers, defenders & scrappers to 50 and was working on 3 years playing at the time.

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So what happends when you play your INV-Tanker and take him into situations against Rikti, COT-Spectral class mobs, and Carnie? What happends when you fight stuff that is heavy on Psy, Confuse, and Fear attacks? Do you just avoid that stuff? Do you have problems? Do you walk right through it? Do you handle it but it's troublesome and you die occasionally if you are not careful?


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Actually since issue 13 and my respec into a soft capped def build I have yet to come close to dying... and I've tanked pretty much everything in the game, including a couple of Psi AV's (inspirations or team support are the keys for Psi AV's). Carnies have never been an issue; their biggest danger is simply the end drain when they die. The Psi from the bosses is relatively minor and has never been an issue. The debuff from the Steel Strongmen is almost more of a nuisance than anything else.

Rikti are VERY easy to tank; the few Psi mobs don't hit very hard, and more importantly if you get into melee they pull out their sword instead of using the Psi attack. Monkeys are a complete joke; back in issue 4 with zero psi protection at all I used to herd up several HUNDRED of them at once for a blaster nuke... the badge for them required 10,000 kills at that time. Even with over 200 of them (yeah, I counted in a screenshot) all they managed to do was force me to hit dull pain.

The COT Spectrals are only dangerous in that they have a nasty debuff; they don't actually hurt more than any other mob. Sure, they're a pain to kill by yourself, but if you're the only one getting debuffed then your team won't have any problems with them... and the debuffs aren't going to actually get you killed.

Confuse is EXTREMELY rare in PvE... offhand I can only think of one mob, a Vahz boss in a 15-20 arc, who has a confuse power. Likewise Fear is very rare... Ghost Widow has it and I think I remember one or two other mobs over the 1-50 range who also use fear.

Whirling hands is your only AOE attack, therefore it's a valuable thing to have. The reasons to choose it have to do with tanking ability and a source of AOE damage... set bonuses in it are secondary. A soft capped Invuln is amazingly powerful, but it's an extremely tight build that requires some sacrifices. The choice between an AOE and another mediocre single target attack is a fairly easy one... AOE trumps a ST attack doing relatively equivalent damage... even ST attacks doing up to twice the damage since it does that damage to multiple foes at once. Boxing takes the place of Energy Punch in your build.

What I would do with the Reactive is place low bids, in the realm of 200k, on several recipe's from 25-33 or so and then go away. Come back to check on them the next day and you'll probably have bought a few of them. Just because there aren't any for sale NOW doesn't mean you can't get them; someone may well list a few over the next 24 hours. When I'm looking for that type of thing I'll place a bid on every level 23 - 33 and let them sit for 24 hours. The next day I pick up the ones I bought and cancel the other bids.

Oh, and low-20's IO's will work just fine for you; 4 level 20 Reactives may not quite get to the ED cap but they will get you to 42% enhancement... ED cap is ~55%. Just for comparison a tanker slotted up with level 20 Reactive armor is going to be ~86% S/L resistance and 27% E/N... slotted with 35's (reaching the ED cap) he will be ~90% S/L resistance and ~29% E/N. As you can see it isn't going to make a huge difference in your survivability. 4% improvement in S/L and 2% in exotic resist won't even be noticed.

I'm not sure this is doable on your budget, but I would probably shoot for something like this:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 31 Natural Tanker
Primary Power Set: Invulnerability
Secondary Power Set: Energy Melee
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Fighting

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Temp Invulnerability -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(3), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(3), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 1: Barrage -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(25), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(29), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 2: Dull Pain -- Dct'dW-Heal(A), Dct'dW-Rchg(5), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(5), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 4: Bone Smasher -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(11), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(11), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(13), Acc-I(13)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- Jump-I(A)
Level 8: Unyielding -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(9), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(9), RctvArm-ResDam(15)
Level 10: Taunt -- Mocking-Taunt(A), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg(17), Mocking-Taunt/Rchg/Rng(17)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 18: Invincibility -- GftotA-Def(A), GftotA-Def/EndRdx(19), DefBuff-I(19)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Whirling Hands -- Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Erad-Dmg(23), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(25)
Level 24: Resist Physical Damage -- ResDam-I(A)
Level 26: Tough Hide -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(27), DefBuff-I(27)
Level 28: Boxing -- Acc-I(A)
Level 30: Tough -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(31), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(31), RctvArm-ResDam(31)
Level 32: Weave -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 35: [Empty]
Level 38: [Empty]
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Gauntlet
------------
[u]Set Bonus Totals:[u]<ul type="square">[*]11.3% Defense(Smashing)[*]11.3% Defense(Lethal)[*]6.88% Defense(Energy)[*]6.88% Defense(Negative)[*]5.63% Defense(Melee)[*]3.44% Defense(Ranged)[*]3.6% Max End[*]5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)[*]4% Enhancement(Heal)[*]98.4 HP (5.25%) HitPoints[*]MezResist(Held) 2.75%[*]MezResist(Immobilize) 8.8%[*]MezResist(Terrorized) 2.2%[*]2% (0.03 End/sec) Recovery[*]1.26% Resistance(Fire)[*]1.26% Resistance(Cold)[/list]
With the recent increase in availability of the Kinetic Combat set I'm changing my recommendation to it from the Smashing Haymaker set. A couple of days ago I bought 3 sets of Kin Combat for roughly 300k per recipe... level 25-30 IO's. Some were a bit more, some were far less. Don't feel you MUST have the highest level sets... once you get the slots to 6 slot you'll be at ED cap anyway. I suggest finishing your attacks with Pounding Slugfest (Acc/Dam &amp; Dam/Rchg) for the 8% regen bonus... 4 level 30 Kin Combat (all but the proc) and 2 Pounding Slugfest ED caps your damage with adequate accuracy and recharge. Level 25's put you very close as well, and are usually cheap.

I doubt you'll be able to slot the Eradication set into Whirling Hands on your budget... it's still very expensive. A decent compromise would be Multi-Strike; in the 30-35 range it should be pretty cheap. You'll probably end up respec'ing it out later in your career but it'll serve for the moment.

Eventually you'll be slotting another set of Reactive Armor into RPD and probably Res Energies... I recommend the latter in the 40's. The Steadfast 3% def unique goes nicely into TI... you'll need to add a 5th slot for it, and you'll finish out the full set of Mocking Beratement in Taunt. I'm suggesting the MB set for Taunt because the better availability of the Kinetic Combat for your attacks means you need less boost to your def and the fact that it's considerably cheaper than the Zinger set. Right now you're a bit hamstrung by lack of available slots; the above build should give you good return on slot investment.

15 million probably won't buy everything I've listed here, so to maximize your benefits I would concentrate on the Kin Combat first, then the Reactive Armor then the Mocking Beratement followed by the rest. I typically slot a mix of SO's and set IO's in the 30's and gradually replace SO's as I get drops or the money to buy the IO's I'll want.

One final bit of advise, buy the lower level IO's... they're MUCH cheaper than the higher level ones. An example I ran into yesterday, a level 30 Kin Combat Acc/Dam recipe went for 200k while a level 35 (the cap for that set) was selling for 5 million. I also bought 4 Acc/Dam at level 25 for 50k each; and a level 25 set will do the job as well as the level 35.

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Dark is in no way shape or form squishy. you get minimum 50% resists to all, a heal that only needs acc and end slotting (since each target gives you 1/3 of your bar), OG is especially good on tankers with their lower damage mod, and if you take CoD you can get about 10% defense to all in addition to your amazing resists to *every* damage type (except Hamidon and Crystal Titan).

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I'm afraid Dark is squishy compared to other tankers... roughly on par with Fire. I haven't played one myself but I have played with other competent tankers playing Dark Armor... they completely live and die by Dark Regeneration. One missed heal typically sends them to the floor.

They actually seem squishier than Fire tankers, their health bar yo-yo's constantly from full to red to full to oops, heal missed to dead. They lack any form of HP buff, they lack any significant source of defense to back up the resistance and they're completely crippled by any tohit debuff or mob defense buffs. They're ok dealing with normal mobs up to maybe +2... anything beyond that, or things like Nemesis with Vengeance chew them up badly.

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O.k. I really didn't want the "Political" answers. Excuse me for being unclear. Let me put it this way, when you respond, what would you pick for your UBERMAN, comic book hero? So far, the 2 top dog answers I'm seeing for Survivabilty are WP and INV. These seem to be going back and forth. So, with out giving an answer predicated upon the fact that there are many variables to survivablity. Give your best educated assuption on what YOU think is the best, and what YOU would choose as an overall DEF set for your UBERMAN, for say, [insert brand] comics. Would you take INV, but be succeptible to weaknesses such as: fear, confuse, and psi damage? Or take WP and have those protections but not as much resistance and Def as INV? Choose your top 3 then give reasons for your pick. Please, no more politically correct answers.

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Political? I don't think that word means what you think it does.

In order of raw survivability, which seems to be what you're insisting on, it would go something like:

Top two:
Granite Stone
Invuln soft capped
..................
The rest:
WP as long as we aren't including aggro control since your secondary is going to have to do nearly all the work.
Ice soft capped
Invuln with standard SO build
*Shield soft capped (extrapolated from my Shield scrapper, I haven't played or teamed with a Shield tank)
Stone without Granite
Dark - it's a bit squishy and highly reliant on it's heal hitting.
Fire - about a tie with Dark, equally squishy but doesn't have to hit enemies to heal.

Player skill makes an IMMENSE difference in this ranking... I'd take a great tanker playing a Fire over an idiot playing a Granite any day. This is also figured in isolation since the secondary pairing is another huge issue in the ranking.

Personally I've played Stone and Invuln to 50 and Fire to around 35, and have teamed with good tankers of every other primary but Shield... that's what I'm basing my opinions on. Ask 50 experienced tankers their opinion and you're likely to get roughly the same survivability rankings from most of them. Nobody's going to question the number one slot of Granite (assuming the player has a clue and is built halfway decently) and few will question Dark &amp; Fire as the squishiest (but each has other advantages, notably in damage output).

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FYI--The price on Reactive Armor has spiked pretty significantly recently. And I blame you personally, CMA

Edit--for the OP though, I just bought a set in the last two days. It's still manageable if you're patient and you're not hung up on having level 40 of everything.

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Phosphorescency, I just sold several recipes of Reactive, level ranges from 31-34... the recipe's were averaging somewhere around 300k each on the "last 5 sold". That didn't include the Resist, but it did include the res/rchg, res/end &amp; res/end/rchg. It looks like if the prices did spike they've dropped back down again. I'd had several drop on a few characters who couldn't use them.

It's almost magical... tankers get snipe and pet sets drop while blasters get armor

So you don't need to blame me anymore

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A... billion? My Shield Tanker is at the cap and he hasn't spent even that 200 million figure you mentioned, sorry. Maybe it's the sets you're going for, as there are some cheap ones out there that can boost your defense still. Also, there isn't much rare salvage out there that is in the millions on the market... I think Empowered Sigils were at 400k last I looked (blueside).

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i'm sorry, where in my post above did i use the term 'tanker'?

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I guess since you're posting in the Tanker forum in a thread about Shield tanks it would be assumed you were talking about a tanker.

But that's neither here nor there; I have a 41 Broadsword/Shield scrapper WITHOUT Weave who's soft capped to all 3 positions with IO set bonuses... and it cost me less than 100 million; probably less than 90 million. Less than 10% of the figure you were quoting.

A Shield TANKER, which is after all what we're discussing in this thread, has the advantage of higher base defenses so he needs to find less set bonus defense... it should be doable for MUCH less than the 90 - 100 million my scrapper cost.

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Is there a reason for resist elements and resist energies so late or not at all? They both provide significant resists (10%, 15% enhanced) and protects against endurance drain and slows? I personally feel those two powers should be as important in the build as any other powers.

The original plan for the future was Rage at 35, Footstomb at 38. The remaining powers would be from secondaries or the epic pool.

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The reasoning is simply that Res Energies and Res Elements provide a lot less bang for the buck than many other powers available to you... particularly Res Elements. First, Fire/Cold damage is very rare in the PvE game; it's only slightly more common than Psi. I believe the figures I've seen showed that F/C and Psi together amounted to less than 10% of the attack types you'd face.

As an Invuln your protections have layers... first there's your defense; using just SO enhancements you'll have 27.5% defense to all damage types but Psi with Invincibility, Tough Hide and Weave all 3 slotted for defense. A mob attacking you has a base 50% chance to hit you, LT's and Bosses get an accuracy bonus from that. This means that a mob attacking would have a 50% - 27.5% defense = 22.5% chance to hit you... basically they would miss you more than 75% of the time. An attack that misses (doesn't get past your defense) does zero damage to you; so you don't get hit by 3 out of every 4 attacks.

The one out of 4 attacks (in the above example) that does get thru your defenses then has it's damage reduced by your resistance to that damage type. Let's take a smashing attack that does 100 points of damage... your resistance to smashing is 90%, therefore you take 10% damage or 10 points. The same applies to energy attacks, there your resistance is 30%, so you'd take 70% damage or 70 points.

Your third layer is your natural HP regeneration and Dull Pain, the more time we can buy between getting hit by attacks (in other words, the more attacks we can make miss by our defense) the more HP you will recover in combat. At base at level 50 with unslotted Health you regenerate 11 HP per second; 17.5 HP/second with Dull Pain up. Therefore, if you're getting hit by 100 points of damage every 10 seconds on average after your defenses and resistances you're functionally immortal... you're regenerating 110 HP in that same time. Your defense gives your regeneration more time between getting hit to recover HP.

There's nothing we can realistically do to increase your non-S/L resistances so we ignore them and focus on the portion of your armor we can improve, your defenses. After all, if we get the defense high enough that the mobs can't hit you then your resistance is kind of meaningless.

You've heard about the Defense "soft cap" right? That's the point at which you have reduced a mob's chance to hit you to the minimum the game allows, which is 5%. The amount of defense you need to accomplish this is 45% (50% base tohit from the mobs, 5% minimum chance to hit = 45% defense needed to get there). If a mob has only a 5% chance to hit you then 19 out of 20 attacks will miss altogether! This increases your survivability from getting hit 1 time out of 4 to getting hit 1 time out of 20; you'll survive 5 times as long.

Ok, now let's look at the damage types you'll be taking... nearly 75% of it will be Smash/Lethal. Of the remainder, a fair amount will do dual damage, for example an energy blast that does both smashing and energy damage. In those cases your S/L defense would apply... and if one part of an attack misses then the entire attack misses. Because of this we first want to get our S/L defense to 45%

You'll be taking quite a bit of E/N damage as well, I don't have the figures offhand but probably 15% of the remaining damage will be E/N so we want to get that defense as high as we can also. Again, as we build defense the closer to 45% we get the more each point of defense is worth in terms of mitigation. The relative scarcity of E/N damage is the reason that Res Energies gets put off; and the end drain resistance, while nice, isn't going to be valuable until you start facing Carnies in the 40's. Malta Sappers will drain you dry even thru the end drain resistance, so it isn't a big factor with them, and you'll only face them in the 40's as well.

Finally, we'll be taking a small amount of Fire/Cold damage... this is a very rare damage type so it isn't a priority for us. That's the reason Res Elements is skippable; it's a minor amount of resistance to a rare damage type. It's secondary effect, a minor slow resist, isn't really worthwhile. Slows exist of course, but when they hit you they generally hit you enough that the resist won't help... you'll be at or near the slow cap anyway. No, Res Elements is less valuable to you than many other powers so you probably won't have any room in your build for it. I frankly can't think of a single time since issue 5 when it would have made a meaningful difference in my tanker's survivability. While getting this defense type to 45% is desirable, it's not really necessary and should be low priority in your slotting.

I hope I've given you a small idea on how the game mechanics work and the reasoning behind the advice you've been getting.

I have to agree with the others here, you really need to respec. If the character was created before issue 14 hit then you've a freespec available (type /respec) and you say you did the respec trial. That being the case you have two available respecs; not to mention simply choosing a dual build.

I strongly recommend downloading Mid's Hero Designer and planning out your build. Here's a few guidelines for you:

Temp. Invuln at level 1
Dull Pain at level 2
Haymaker at level 4
Combat Jumping at 6
Unyielding at 8
Taunt at 10 *optional*
Hurdle at 12
Super Jump at 14
Health at 16
Invincibility at 18
Stamina at 20
Knock Out Blow at 22
Resist Phys. Dam at 24
Tough Hide at 26
*Boxing at 28
*Tough at 30
*Weave at 32
*Rage at 35
Footstomp at 38
Resist Energies somewhere in the 40's.

Resist Elements is skippable, as is Unstoppable if you're building for high defense.

That guideline should provide you with a solid, capable tanker. The IO's you need for the build I have in my sig shouldn't be anywhere near that expensive; and don't think you have to have the highest level IO's... level 25-30's will do almost as well.

Just put in bids and let them sit for a day or so; prices spiked a small amount a while ago but I've noticed that for the most part recipes are stabilizing to around or a bit less than their issue 13 values. In some cases they've come down a whole lot; the Kinetic Combat set was unobtainable when I wrote my guide so I recommended the Smashing Haymaker instead, now there's decent availability of Kinetic Crash at decent prices, and it's twice as good.

For the record, when I put together a second build for my Invuln about 2 months ago I spent less than 10 million for everything... and don't think you HAVE to get the whole build at once. The most bang for your buck is going to be slotting the Kinetic Combat sets in your attacks, that's worth 3.75% to your S/L defense for each set. Slotting Mocking Beratement in Taunt will give good returns for very little inf spent.

It's hard to offer much advise in a vacuum, but an Inv tanker can be second only to Stone for raw survivability if built right. With IO slotting you can easily get to the defense soft cap; that coupled with your resists will make you the next best thing to unkillable.

Even with just SO's you shouldn't be having much trouble in the 30's though, so there may be something amiss in your build. I've put together a guide (linked in my sig) on how to build a soft capped Inv tanker... with that build I've had no difficulties in tanking anything in the game.

On your resistances there's no way to boost your non-S/L resist by any appreciable amount, therefore you'll want to boost your defense instead. In order of priority you'll want to boost your S/L defense first since it applies to the vast majority of incoming attacks... even many other damage type attacks will have a S/L component; if your defense causes one part of an attack to miss the whole thing misses. Your second most important defense is your E/N defense, nearly all of the non-S/L you'll face will fall into the Energy/Negative category. Finally there's your F/C defense... and those damage types are actually quite rare.

My guide has a more detailed write up on the subject. Anyway, good luck with your tanker; a well built Invuln can handle anything in the game.

Kruunch, I have to disagree with you on Romy; there are several tanker primaries that can tank him unsupported. I've done it several times with a Stone/Fire and a team of 7 damage dealers... no buffs/debuffs at all. I've also done it with CMA, my Inv/Stone tanker, also without support... but I'll admit the latter case was after respec'ing into my soft capped def build. I did use about 5-6 inspirations with CMA over the course of killing Rommy 4 times but the Stone/Fire only used Earth's Embrace once and never popped any pills.

A non-soft capped Inv will have problems though... I'll grant you that my i12 build required some assistance. The Stone/Fire tanker was running a SO/HO build though, no IO bonuses at all.

Both of those tanks have also tanked Lord Recluse unsupported while the team takes the towers down... it just takes going into the encounter with an appropriate inspiration loadout. The Inv obviously needs more than the Stone... all I need for the Stone is a half dozen small/medium purples until the team kills the blue tower. I've actually done it once with the Stoner without any inspirations, just one well timed Earth's Embrace. That was a case of a lucky run with the random number generator.

These are of course edge cases, and Stone's durability really is up to anything. I wouldn't say no to support of course, but I can do the job without anything beyond the inherent toughness and the occasional inspiration.

If you're creating an Architect mission you have to include a mob that only exists at level 54, like one of the STF Patron AV's. I don't recommend Ghost Widow though. Personally when I want to level lock a MA arc I use Silver Mantis from the STF, she's not too powerful but she offers a challenge, and she's locked at level 52. That keeps things from getting too purple.

If you're just trying for max level in a normal mission, then an 8 man team on Invincible will give you level 53's.

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Actually, I wanted Deceive on my custom Boss originally, but I couldn't get it without getting all powers (and I didn't want Phantasm). I can get it now, but I have to set it to Standard, which means I lose the Terror, but don't get the Phant. Oh wells. &gt;_&lt;

Now confuse-using minions would be a concern, especially if multiple ones show up in the same spawn. o_O

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I have no problem with it being available to bosses at higher difficulty settings, but giving it to minions at standard is a bit much. Suddenly having a spawn of 4 minions all attack with deceive is pretty much an "I Win" button for them; the team is helpless to attack anyone but each other while the spawn wipes you out.

Ah well, I had to pull my Martial Arts mobs because their throwing stars were one-shotting squishies so now I'll pull those minions as well. Hmm, what set could I change the illusion minions to and keep some of the same feel...