DSorrow

I renewed my interest in playing a bane spider after establishing some wealth redside because now I can finally afford some IOs. The thing is, I don't really have a clue as to what the general price level of IOs redside is. This is why I'm looking for some help here;

I'd like someone to give me a Bane Spider build or a rough frame for one that has soft capped Defenses and whatever conveniences you're able to get with it. Budget is 300mil, but I guess it could be stretched to 400mil.

Thanks in advance!

I have a dark/rad/dark defender which should play pretty much equally to your corruptor.

Before you wade into playing I should probably warn you about the two downsides of Rad/Dark. One: your single target damage won't be too great. Scourge will help you, though, I guess. Second: your blue bar will be strained.

With that done, let's get to set bonuses. First off you should find sets that increase your Recovery or Endurance bar. If you haven't got any End left to use your other bonuses won't be of much use. After that I'd concentrate on Recharge and Defense, I have 20-25% Defense to all positions on my Defender and she's pretty much untouchable what with the PBAoE Stun Aura, Darkest Night, Fluffy and Fearsome Stare.

It's definitely a fun combo, and I urge you to skip the cone attack in Rad Blast. While it does nice damage, I find myself in melee most of the time and don't want to hop out constantly to use another AoE. I also found the inreliable knockback annoying because only a part of a spawn would be thrown back.

Currently playing a duo with a friend, Elec/SD scrapper + Emp/Sonic defender. It's a blast.

You need to be more precise than that, to be honest.

What are you looking to do? Tank? Deal DPS? A bit of both?

You can make an invuln scrapper tough, but that isn't all. You'll probably also need quite a lot of AoE to properly tank bigger spawns. I can easily survive the aggro of a large spawn or a few AVs on my Kat/Inv, but that doesn't mean I can hold the aggro of a squishier scrapper with more damage output.

Tanking spread out spawns takes some effort as I need to jump around them trying to aggro everyone. With a tank it's a lot more simple because I just need to jump in and hit taunt to get everyone who isn't in melee range focused on me.

Then there is the questions; what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get your scrapper to tanker level of survivability? If you're willing to sacrifice damage output, why not just roll a tanker in the first place? You need less defense bonuses which allows for more recharge to get you to the "gimped" scrapper level damage. Just saying.

How tough do you think "tankerish" actually is? A lot depends on that. IO'd or basic SOs tanker? I made a compromise with my Kat/Inv to get something inbetween. I went for a lot of Defense and Regen, but also got a good chunk of recharge to help me with damage dealing.

Repeating myself here, but I just don't think it's worth to roll a scrapper just to build him like a tanker and totally ignore what a scrapper is supposed to do: damage.


If you want to, there are a few good guides out there for Invuln characters. Those include for example mine and Call_Me_Awesome's guides.

The proc applies with the first tick of the DoT. This means the damage of all the ticks after the initial tick would be increased by the -Res should it proc.

Generally though, it would be better to slot it in Sweeping Strike, or whatever the cone attack for Attack Vitals is.

You could go for DM/SR/Dark and grab the two cones from //Dark to supplement your AoE. DM/SR/Blaze would also be an option, but I have the feeling these would both turn out to be epicly tight builds.

Invuln: I'd take everything except Unstoppable.

DB: I guess best bet is to take Blinding Feint, everything needed for Attack Vitals and Taunt.

I usually do Posi with me on two accounts (the character that needs the badge + illu/therm with TP) and my friend who I'm usually pacted with. We can easily do this TF in 1h30-2h with not too good builds. We only have DOs usually and the characters are around level 15.

I have to admit, though, that having a character with the thermal shields, superior invis, confuse and recall friend helps loads!

Only thing I'd want to change in that build would be swapping Unstoppable for Conserve Power because you might have some endurance problems in extended fights and in most situations a couple of purple insps will cover you as well as Unstoppable would. Overall looks like a good build to play with.

One trick I always use for Posi (I usually do it once for each character for the merits and TF commander); in the FEMA mish I stealth to the hostages (SS + Stealth or then using my illusion controller on second account) then defeat the spawn around them. After that, I just pop four lucks in order to achieve soft capped Defense and just run through the whole mission with the hostage following me.

I can easily do the mission in 10-15 minutes like this.

The rule of fives doesn't apply to sets, it applies to bonuses. You can only ever have five of a certain bonus, such as 5% Recharge.

There are some exceptions to the rule such as LotG +7.5% Rech and +7.5% Rech bonuses. You can have 5 of both which would gain you 75% global recharge.

I still don't get what the problem here is.

EBs were never meant to be soloable, yet you cry about being unable to solo a (relatively) very powerful EB you made yourself with a weak soloer.

Beats me.

Flashing Steel definitely. You can easily manage an attack chain with Gambler's Cut, Divine Avalanche, Soaring Dragon and Golden Dragonfly. GC and DA both recharge so fast that you can fill in the pauses between SD and GD with them or fire off a Lotus Drops/Flashing Steel to hit multiple enemies when possible.

For your BS/inv I suggest having a look at my guide (it's Kat/Inv, but Katana and BS are basically equivalent sets) as well as Call_Me_Awesome's Invulnerability guides.

For Dark/Dark I'd say the best and most up-to-date guide will be Desmodos'.

Anything regarding Regen, ask Umbral or Werner.

Ok first of all I have to critique some of your IO slotting.

First thing that stung my eye: Mako's bite. And excellent set for a Shield character but for some reason you've left the 6 piece out and miss the best bonus Mako has to offer for you. Stick that Mako triple in your two attacks and that's 7.5% Ranged Def with two slots.

Second thing: full Scirocco sets? With this set, on the other hand, the 6th bonus doesn't do much for you. Psionic Def doesn't stack with Ranged def against Psy attacks and there really aren't that many situations where you meet purely Psionic attacks to warrant the wasted slots here.

True Grit: you could safely drop Rech/End or Rech from the DW set here. The 6th bonus is again pretty much useless.

Phalanx Fighting: the Defense of this power cannot be enhanced, so basically it's only good for a Kismet +Tohit or a LotG +Rech. Three wasted slots in this power. Which gets me to...

Build Up: stick those three slots from Phalanx Fighting here and finish your Gaussian's set to get 2.5% Def against all positions.

Where's your Steadfast 3% Def?! It is probably the single most useful IO for any Def based character that isn't already soft capped. Grab it and throw it in Tough, Deflection or True Grit.

After all that, I'll just note that I think Grant Cover is overslotted (LotG +Rech and maybe another piece of LotG for +regen is enough) and Health is way underslotted. I pretty much always 6 slot Health on any of my non squishy characters like this:
Numi: +Regen/+Recov, Numi: Heal/End, Numi: Heal,
Miracle: +Recov, Miracle: Heal
Regenerative Tissue: +Regen
That gives you some nice Regen to go with your Defense.

I feel like this should be said here:

EBs were never intended to be soloable. WAI.

EDIT: Also this has to be said: if the defenders (or some defender builds, rather) are the only AT this applies to, they appear to be the best balanced AT in the game.

I usually aim for 2.5-3end/sec after toggles. On my main (Kat/Inv) I have about 2.8 end/sec after toggles with PS proc averaged in and I can keep him going as long as I want, thanks to Conserve Power. Without it he runs out of endurance in a nonstop fight (like AVs) in two or three minutes.

Mind you this set was created before the Defense set bonus change. It used to give you "just" 3.13% F/C and 3.13% AoE.

EDIT: And yes, they do stack for a total of ~4.7% F/C/AoE

I'd see this as a nerf to be honest. It would also make the Defense from Tough Hide pretty much useless as there would be nothing else in the set to stack it with.

I play a Kat/Inv as my main. Katana and BS have basically identical choices so you might want to check out my build in my guide. Link in my sig.

I never use Shield Charge before I've fired off Soul Drain and am getting a medium to highly saturated AAO on my SD/DM. Pretty much nothing beats Soul Drain -> Charge + Fire Ball on a tanker.

Once you get to soft capped Defense you should no longer have to worry about gauging the alpha. Against 99% of the game content, you can just dive in and hit them in the face until they die and come out without a scratch (Siphon Life is there to top you off as well as being your second best ST attack). Against the 1% you'll probably die in an instant because of their enormous ToHit buffs.

Just verified that the Rech Resistance is in fact enhanced. Currently on my SD/DM tank I have GC slotted for LotG +Rech, LotG Def/End and LotG D/E/R. What's good about that is that the LotG triple boosts GC's Rech Res from 30% to 34%. Not much, but fully enhanced we're talking about 60% Rech Res.

I wouldn't bother enhancing RttC's -ToHit. I don't have Mid's at hand, but IIRC its -ToHit is 3.75% unslotted which translates to roughly 5.5% fully slotted. And that's against even level enemies. Against +2s or even higher the -ToHit doesn't do anything noticeable unless you're very close to the Defense soft cap (40%+ Def).