Syntax42
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Posts
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All the info on what the alpha slot does is here:
Alpha Slot
It may not mention rare and very rare enhancements won't be available until I20, but you can still plan for I19 just by looking at that page. -
Build C looks the best.
I use the same formula for numerically expressing a tank's survivability as Dechs posted in the link. He just put it in a handy spreadsheet so you can compute it faster.
If you want to make your build more survivable, try to boost S/L resistance more. As you approach the cap, survivable DPS goes up significantly for the smallest increases in resistance. One more slot in Unyielding would get you to 89.7% with a standard IO.
How did you plan to slot Stamina/Health? I usually slot Stamina with 3 Performance Shifters, one being the proc. I only put Miracle and Numina uniques in Health. That would leave you with an extra slot after enhancing Unyielding. You could boost your regen more with a Regenerative Tissue unique in Health.
I know that seems like a build review, but I'm just making suggestions for how to squeeze a bit more survivability from it. Dechs gave you the spreadsheet link so you can see the effects of possible changes. -
The build looks decent, but it could be better.
You only need enough recharge to do a decent attack chain. Figure out what you want your attack chain to be instead of blindly stacking recharge. Also, remember you get get more recharge from the Alpha Slot when it comes out.
Your defense could be more optimized. In my opinion, the breaking points for defense are 32.5% or 45%. Anything between isn't giving much benefit. As a resistance-based set, obtaining 45% is really only viable in one set of damage types. You won't hit 45% in all of the damage types. As an alternative, you can aim for 32.5% defense in all damage types or positionals (I prefer positionals) then use a small purple inspiration when you really need to be soft capped. Going past 32.5% doesn't provide much benefit when you have a small purple, which you will probably pop anyways for tougher fights if you aren't at the soft cap. -
Quote:You make it sound like Brutes have higher defense and resistance than Scrappers. This is not true at all. They are both on the same scale for their secondary sets. Brutes have a few more HPs than Scrappers, but in the long run in PvE, it won't make a huge difference.Originally Posted by Exxar
A brute will be a bit tougher, but /SD scrappers can easily get tough enough with IOs so that difference doesn't matter much. -
Could you post the builds? Just the data chunks would be fine. I can run the math manually, but only if I can see the builds because the regeneration healing rates are affected by HPs from set bonuses.
My guess is that the regeneration won't make a significant difference, but being closer to the soft cap on more damage types will. -
I can't tell what your goal is with the build. Do you want to just have a very inexpensive build? If that is true, then Kinetic Combats are out of your budget, most likely. Are you trying to make a high survivability + aggro magnet Fire tanker? It could be done a lot better by stacking defense from sets and pool powers.
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You placed Health and Stamina in the build in a way that isn't possible in the game. You have to take Swift or Hurdle before those two. If you are waiting on issue 19, don't put Health and Stamina in your build. Just put a slot in sprint and two in rest (in your Mids build, not in game) to represent health and stamina.
PvP sets are VERY expensive. The Gladiator 3% defense will cost you at least 2 billion inf alone. High Pain Tolerance needs at least two heal IOs to boost your HPs by a decent amount more.
Turn off Strength of Will when slotting your build. It isn't up all of the time and should not be considered as part of your normal play resistances. Also, it does not need all of the slots you gave it. You will still need the Steadfast Protection 3% defense, but I usually place that in a power that gives the lowest resistance bonus.
Slotting for Defense will add much more to your survivability than HPs or regeneration. If you can get 45% smashing and lethal defense, that will take care of around 90% of attacks. Getting 45% defense for the other damage types would be nice, but don't stress too much about it. Pool powers like Weave, Combat Jumping, Hover and, Maneuvers are good to take on a tanker when trying to soft cap defenses.
If you are still having endurance issues with a build like this, slot Numina's and Miracle uniques in Health. Health is your lowest source of regeneration, so not slotting it with heal is ok. A Willpower character should not have endurance issues, even without Stamina. Also, you need endurance reductions in your toggles and attacks. You can't depend on recovery alone to keep you at full endurance.
If you plan on tanking for a team, you will probably need Taunt. Willpower's taunt aura is the weakest in the game. Gauntlet definitely will not be enough to keep an enemy on you if there is a Shield scraper on your team.
Tough, Weave, Physical Perfection, Stamina, and Chain Induction could all be slotted much better. You really should look at other Willpower builds to see how others slotted, even if they aren't Electric Melee. -
Quote:Either your math is off, or Mids' is not showing you the right numbers. With a 120s duration and a 60s recharge, it is double-stacked 99% of the time, with the gaps only occurring due to activation times. Getting Hasten closer to permanent only ensures you keep AD double-stacked more.Originally Posted by Finduilas
So, it only goes over the defense debuff resistance cap when double-stacked? Which is, what, about half the time?
Putting the third slot in Hasten may be your idea of "build optimization", but it's not everyone's. Some might feel having their DDR total closer to the cap all the time is worth the slot.
I wouldn't do it, but then, I wouldn't use the third slot in Hasten, either. -
This bug is not unique to Kinetic Melee. I have had this happen on my characters as well.
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Quote:It isn't a playstyle preference. It is build optimization. Both builds posted go over the defense debuff resistance cap. Dropping it down to one Membrane still keeps you at the cap and frees up a valuable slot.Originally Posted by Finduilas
Unless Mid's is wrong, (which I know has happened) making that change would trade 8% defense debuff resistance for Hasten recharging 6 seconds faster. IMO it's a matter of playstyle preference which is the better choice.
By the way, you have to manually add the amount of DDR to see what the total will be when Active Defense is double-stacked. -
The build posted above looks better, except for the Hasten and Active Defense slotting. Drop two of the three membranes and put in one recharge IO in Active Defense. Use the extra slot to get Hasten's recharge down more. This will help you keep Hasten almost permanent without the Alpha enhancement. You will still have Active Defense permanently double-stacked, and you will be at the DDR cap.
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Phalanx Fighting has a very small radius. It is best to avoid depending on teammates when attempting to soft cap a defense-based tanker. You want to be self-sustaining as much as possible.
You can drop Active Defense down to one Membrane and one recharge IO. That saves you a slot for whatever, and still keeps you at the DDR cap (95%) with Active Defense on a low enough recharge to be double stacked 100% of the time.
I prefer to enhance resistance on a Shield Defense build. Deflection and True Grit provide a significant resistance bonus. Every bit of resistance you can get adds a lot to your survivability. Try to find a way to stay soft-capped while enhancing True Grit and Deflection. You may have to drop Assault and pick up Combat Jumping instead. -
Quote:He can't be proven wrong, so there is no point in investigating this further. His "superior experience" at the game makes him infallible. Even if you manage to use logic to "prove" him wrong, he will always be right. I "proved" him wrong several times on his own guild forums and his "superior experience" won every time. He posted the most bizarre and unorthodox (ineffective) builds and commented about builds in ways that made me wonder how he stayed leader of the guild for so long. My best guess is the people were just looking for a place to belong and didn't care who was leading the show.Originally Posted by seebs
It would be interesting to me to see how he reacted if he were proven wrong
This is not the appropriate place to share those posts. PM me and I might be able to share them. -
If you are getting mezzed and your status protection powers are on, the first thing you can do is use inspirations.
Obviously the best thing to do would be to stack defense. You don't need a lot to be effective. Just get enough that popping purple inspirations gets you close to the soft cap. Why are you against stacking defense? -
Here is an incomplete build for you:
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Quote:I know exactly who you are talking about. He has his own way of playing the game and anyone in his SG who disagrees with him gets the boot. I got kicked out for proving that going over the resistance cap by slotting Unstoppable (by ~20%, not some insignificant number) was wasting slots in his builds he was providing to SG members. There is no point in arguing with him or attempting to prove him wrong. He will just ignore your logic and claim his superior experience makes him right. Besides, most of the other SG's know who he is and just avoid him.Originally Posted by seebs
It's against forum policy to name people, but if you ever play on Virtue, and get a tell "Can I interest you in an SG?" from a hero you don't know, that's probably the guys. They train everyone in their SG to play this way.
My very rough experimental data is that it seems to be a lot slower, but I wanted to do a more controlled experiment. At least one of the runs, the group had two tanks present, a defender, at least one troller, and no one was getting seriously injured unless it was the tank during the initial pull (when the troller and defender weren't nearby to provide, say, manuevers, FFG, heals...).
Most experienced players know that herding as you describe it is safer but slower. When groups can handle faster speeds, people start jumping into packs of mobs before the previous one is dead. I'm usually that person jumping into packs on my scrapper. -
Quote:You don't need more than 45% defense if you build your character well. Shield Defense on a Tanker is easy to obtain 95% defense debuff resistance. First, get Active Defense down to a 60s recharge. That power stacks with itself and provides a good chunk of your DDR. You may also want to get enough recharge to make hasten permanent at the same time. Looking at your current build, you have 44.6% DDR without Active Defenses on. Double-stacking AD would put you at 44.6% + (21.63% x 2) = 87.86%, which is good enough to drop those 5% defense debuffs down to 0.5%. However, if you want to maximize your survivability, you should put at least one Membrane (Enzyme works too, but doesn't give +recharge) in Active Defense. One Membrane would boost your total DDR to 96.95% with AD double-stacked, which is over the DDR cap of 95%.Originally Posted by Cainus
Oh, I know all about the soft cap and why people dont normally build more defence than that. However, 90% of my TFs are ITF, and I've watched that same guy's melee defence drop from 35% (which is about where its at, at the moment) to -40 while battling a single group, so I built in a bit of overkill into it. Shield Defense, more than any other primary, benefits from being in the center of the fighting, so he has to be able to shrug off a lucky hit or two and still keep his defences high enough to hopefully avoid a catastrophic cascade failure.
As for LotG, I can definitely see putting one in Grant Cover, but I certainly wouldnt put it into every power. Good call about the Steadfast unique, though. I can easily give up the last slot in Toughness for it.
There's already a pretty hefty AoE attack chain without requiring giving up Physical Perfection and Conserve Power for Blaze Mastery, especially as endurance can be an issue.
Thanks to both of you for your input, though.
This entire build could be done a lot more efficiently. With IO sets, the only powers that need to be 6-slotted are the ones that give a set bonus you absolutely need. Some sets provide more defense per slot expended than others, and should be given top priority for slotting. Some examples are Razzle Dazzle (Stun), Shield Breaker (Defense Debuff), and Gaussian's Fire-Control (To-Hit Buff).
I also noticed you did not leave slots for stamina. -
The defense soft cap is 45%. Anything beyond that is arguably of no benefit. I don't feel like explaining everything about why you shouldn't bother going past 45% again. Look at other shield builds, or my other posts related to defense.
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There are too many variables to consider.
Your team could not have a clue what they are doing. In that case, herding and pulling to prevent aggro from extra spawns would be faster because there would be less dying.
Your team could be super-awesome. If people don't die like squishy blasters, then rushing in and killing things fast with AoE will be much faster than waiting for enemies to herd around a tanker after pulling.
Having a second tanker or someone who can hold aggro on 16 more enemies immediately makes your group better at rushing spawns rather than pulling.
It isn't quite as cut and dry as that person told you. A good tanker should know when to pull and when their team can handle just rushing in. By the way, who told you that herding was always faster? -
Look into attack chains so you can maximize your DPS. That gives you a target amount of recharge to get.
My favorite way to slot Dark Regeneration grants 38.60% accuracy, 79.90% endurance cost, 42.4% healing, and 79.90% recharge. Here are the enhancements I use:
Theft of Essence: chance for +end (This is a must-have. It has a chance to proc for each target hit and potentially fills your end bar when used in large spawns.)
Theft of Essence: Acc/End/Rchg
Touch of the Nictus: Acc/End/Rchg
Numina's: Heal/End/Rchg
Doctored Wounds: Heal/End/Rchg
My logic was that if you can't heal yourself to full on one target, you can go easy on the heal enhancement. Healing yourself for 80% of your life on two targets is enough because you won't be letting yourself drop below 20% anyways. This was for my Tanker. Maybe you will slot differently for a Scrapper. -
I will just post my spines / fire build and let you adapt it to work for Dual Blades. My build attempts to get 32.5% vector (melee, ranged, and AoE) defenses so you can pop a small purple and be at the soft cap. It feels invincible to have soft capped defenses on a resistance-based set and have a big heal. Most of the time, you don't even need to use a purple.
This build does not include hasten. Instead it depends on the Alpha Slot's 45% recharge bonus and other global recharge bonuses from sets. The slots in sprint and rest are for health and stamina. Standarad slotting for health is Numina and Miracle uniques. Slotting for Stamina would be three Performance Shifters, one being the proc.
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Quote:I think Shield Defense would be better due to AAO, True Grit's HP bonus, and Shield Charge.Originally Posted by Boomie
For giggles I made a possible AV build, it's expensive but I believe I could afford it. I found it kinda hard to work everything in but how does this look..........
Did you save slots for Stamina and Health? I don't have the I19 modification for Mids, so I usually put slots in sprint and rest as a placeholder.
Did you figure out your highest DPS attack chain, and aim for the necessary recharge? Also, don't worry about falling slightly short on recharge. The Alpha Slot can take care of some. They finally released that information. -
Quote:First of all, Accuracy is so prevalent in sets that you shouldn't need it from the Alpha Slot. I can understand the allure of defense buffs for a defense-based character, though.Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
Can you whip out the math for an Ice Tanker that uses their Alpha slot with Nerve, which grants alot of Accuracy and a 20% defense buff.
If you are already soft capped, this enhancement won't do you much good. If your build focuses on damage, recharge, and non-defensive bonuses, you may gain some benefit, but it will be marginally useful.
The very rare Alpha enhancements ignore 2/3 of enhancement diversification. So, 2/3 of 20% = 13.33%, leaving 6.67% being affected by diminishing returns. Assuming your defensive powers are already at 55% enhancement bonus, you will gain 4.67% from the ED-affected portion of the Alpha Slot bonus. That makes the total 73% enhancement to defense in your defensive powers.
If you don't understand that math, it may be best to wait for Mids' to release an update that includes the Incarnate system.
Quote:Originally Posted by InUse
will this allow us to go over the 400% damage cap then?Nothing has been released that suggests they are raising any caps. The Alpha Slot enhancements enhance POWERS, not statistics. You don't gain 20% resistance or defense. Your powers that grant enhanceable resistance will now grant more resistance if you choose to use certain Alpha Slot enhancements.Quote:Originally Posted by Sailboat
Apparently I completely misunderstood the math. I saw "+20% global resistance" and "x above the cap" and concluded, "Hell, the resistance cap is 90%. My Fire Tanker is already at 70.2% s/l resistance...this will take her to 90%!!!"
But that's wrong, I take it, from what I'm seeing here? -
I agree that these mobs seem out of balance. Their targeting drone buff gives them around a 50% chance to hit players who have soft-capped defenses. Taking over 1000% more damage because of one bad game mechanic and poor balancing design is frustrating. On top of that, their stealth functions unlike any other stealth power in the game, allowing them to become completely invisible while in combat. Developers need to play their own game to see what frustration enemy groups like this can cause.
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You can pop a purple inspiration for situations like that, unless you are building the character around soloing AVs/pylons. You just have to ask yourself how many enemies you plan on fighting at once, and what your goals are for the character.