Sailboat

Making a tribute to The Watcher?

Out of curiosity, are you a Master-level Mind Master, or do you have pet Masterminds?

Why is this a separate thread? Your title made me wonder if something had actually been announced, but it's just one more idea for the suggestions forum.

I see a lot of repetition that "Brutes are better with resistance buffs, because of their higher cap."

While that's undoubtedly true, do you guys find a lot of resistance buffs on the teams you play on? Sonic Resonance is the king of resistance buffs, but it seems pretty rare and not well-liked. Increase Density, from Kinetics, is often skipped, and even when it's not, it seems to be infrequently maintained due to the short duration. I would guess that the most common ones I see are the "clouds" -- Steamy Mist, Arctic Air, and Shadowfall, but those give fairly narrow types of resistance, and the buffer would have to keep close to the Brute during alpha strikes for it to be consistently useful.

Even on a speed run, you can drop what I call a "safety mine" at your own feet before you start attacking. Anything that peels off and heads for you gets a nasty surprise, and even if it lives, the knockback may buy you time to react. Aggro management tends to get sloppier on speed runs and you may see more guys slip past the Tankers and Controllers than you are used to.

Seems like a lot to pay for a Steadfast.

How slow is slow? This is somewhat subjective. I feel like even my slowest-leveling characters make steady progress if I play them. The only ones that seem to drag are the powerset combos, costumes, and concepts I don't really enjoy. Maybe you'd like another character more and it wouldn't seem so bad?

The materially weaker taunt aura cited by LSK is the most noticeable difference. As New Dawn implies, this can actually help WP survive on teams, if other drag aggro off the Tanker and give WP's regen time to work...but that's hardly the beau ideal of tanking.

One thing to get straight -- when people (like myself) rank Invulnerability slightly above Willpower, it's important to caveat that the difference is slight. It's much narrower than the difference between, say, Granite and other sets. It's also subjective -- we can all create a scenario in which the WP has a clear edge. It may come down to what kind of content one prefers to experience, but (if you do more than farm the enemies weakest against your own build) the game has so many variables it's pretty hard to be more than vague about exactly how much Psi a character will face over a career, for example. By ranking WP third, I' calling it a strong set, and I've seen it do amazing things.

If you were starting a new character, there's perhaps some practicality to dissecting the difference, but on an established level 50 you enjoy, I'd say whatever differences do exist hardly merit starting over from scratch. If it really bothers you that another set is slightly tougher, you might be better off making a Granite Tanker anyway. :P

That said, Nihilii is on-point about hit point regeneration being a reactive form of mitigation. Only those who live through the big hits in the first place get to regenerate, and that takes time, even at the incredible rate WP regenerates. If you're under extreme threat, getting heavy damage fast, a smart WP Tanker isn't going to sit on his regen and think "in ten seconds I'll be fine," he's going to hit some inspirations, use some control-type powers, or adjust tactics. But note that an Inv Tanker could also do any or all of those three things if faced with some sort of crisis (the infamous "psi hole," for example).

As Nihilii pointed out, "Deaths happen by cascading failure, by debuff stacking, by burst damage ; anything else and you have time to react."

Time to react allows a player to...well, react. In the most dangerous content, it's things going very wrong very fast that does in Tankers. "Very fast" works against WP's greatest strength (regen over time).

Let's imagine two Tankers facing, say, the infamous (I think it's Praetorian Bobcat?) AV with the 5,000-damage Lethal attack. Both Tankers have Tough and are soft-capped. What happens? Both the Inv and the WP will likely triumph.

However, if Bobcat gets lucky and lands that 5,000 damage attack three times in quick succession despite the soft cap:

• Inv, with 90% lethal resistance, will take 500+500+500=1500 against his 2400-3500 life. Hits Dull Pain or an inspiration and carries on.
  
• WP, with 70% lethal resistance, will take 1500+1500+1500=4500, against his somewhat-harder-to-cap hit points, minus a few hundred points of regenerated damage between the attacks, and fall down.

Of course, WP can hit a self-rez power. :P

Is this scenario more likely than the Psychic Clockwork King wasting an Inv with psi? I don't know what you like to do and can't say. I'm merely using that example to illustrate how resistance can be an edge over regen in some situations when things are happening very fast.

But WP is VERY tough and tougher in some situations. To some extent, this discussion is all angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Stone is a typed-defense build. You're using positional-defense sets like Touch of Death and Mako's Bite that give half value for typed defenses. Just for starters, yank all those and replace with sets picked for typed defense bonuses.

I just noticed this in the I-21 Patch Notes:

• Brawl now benefits from Containment When used by Controllers.

The final piece of the puzzle! We are SO going to rule!

Also, six-slotting both my Tier 1 and 2 attacks has many times enabled me to clear away the surviving enemies while being held or stunned. With Hasten up, you can come close to cycling the two like a mini attack chain.

That, combined with breakfrees, the controls you do have access to, and carefully-planned alpha will often, although not always, mitigate mezz.

If mezz really bothers you, it's a lot easier if you play on the "no bosses" mode while soloing, too (you can generally one-shot mezz LTs).

From the wiki:

You've got it right. Note that generally, building for typed will still get you some positional, and vice versa; because sets that give one give half of the bonus for the other. Don't work very hard to get rid of that .

I know I am alone in saying this every time the topic comes up, but Minerals is so good that it's easy for a Stone Tanker to be soft-capped against Psi (using Weave and either Maneuvers or a Steadfast 3% Def IO). The other armors can be made moderately tough with set bonuses.

Being soft-capped vs Psi, as long as the other defenses are at least decent, has its uses...Psi is a weakness for many Tanker sets. And when there's not enough Psi to warrant Minerals, you can toggle over into Awesome mode (Granite).

Since I pretty much always use Aim & Build-Up before the nuke, I just 4-slot damage/recharge to the ED cap. No point whatsoever in endurance reduction, either. :P

If I have the power, popping Conserve Power before the nuke sequence helps make my follow-up blue inspiration last longer.