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I've been asked several times in the last few weeks, so I decided it was a good time to retest a few builds and repost a summary Patches and Updates Assuming Tanks, most armors balance well up to about 801.6, and official game content is never going above this difficulty level as far as the mechanics that 801 uses. Difficulties above that will be team oriented tasks like you see in the official 4-star TFs. This means really ANY Tank armor can work well in any official content in the game. Depending on the content some will be easier than others, and some will be easier to drive for some players. That's all variable from task to task and player to player. With changes to the game in the last 3+ years, I'd subtract either 1 point or 1 tier from most armor's ratings to compensate. Tanks > Brutes > Scrappers > Sents and Stalkers. Above 6 DDR pulls ahead. It's game mechanics. DDR defense armors get RDR for free while Resist armors do not get DDR. Brutes will be harder to build than tanks, but at max should be almost as durable, only a point or so lower. Scrappers, Stalkers, and Sents will favor defense based armors. The lower 75% resist cap mean they take 2.5x damage when relying on resistances vs Brutes and Tanks regardless of armor type when things turn pear shaped. Will score lower than brutes at peak due to resist cap differences. If you are a resist armor, you need to resist cap and push recharge for heals and shields If you are defense armor, you need to push DDR, Recharge, and Resists. You can't ignore any of these. If you are a heal-tank, push recharge, heals, defense, resist, everything. cheat. I do not have any recommendations or ratings for heal-tanks. Ratings Defense Armors 7 to 10 SR/ is the best, but also the hardest to drive. For me SR fails 95% of the time because *I* am not skilled enough to drive it. That one time it suceeds it's specatular. SD/ is my personal choice. I'm a decent driver, and it's decently durable. Stone/ also varies a great deal. I have a couple of builds that I haven't rated but that I tested in hard mode on test, and like SR it really worked well when I could tolerate it. You can push a pretty good semi-perm 80s? DDR. I may yet build them officially. I just dislike the -damage and -movement. Inv/ I'm too rusty to get this above 7, but It previously tested 9 or 10. The transitions/valleys are really hard. On the other hand, at lower difficulties it's one of the easiest to drive, it practically drives itself. Give me some team buffs and it will drive itself even in 801s. Brute Defense Armors, Typically around 7. Brutes are much harder to build and drive optimally than a tank. I failed 4 or 5 runs in a row till I got the hang of it again, then it did well in a 7. Tanks are much easier to drive. up to 6 Tank/Brute Resist Armors up to 6. Again, the brutes are harder to build and drive vs tanks. I personally like RadA/. Scrapper, Stalker, Sent, Defense Armors... I personally like /EnA. Hornet is a EnM/EnA Scrapper. up to 5 Scrapper, Stalker, Sent Resist Armor up to 3 Defense based with Resist and minimal ageless radial +ddr Squishies. I've pushed some rare squishy builds up to 5 but I think that will be harder to do now. Up to 2 If you're an armored class you should really be capable of this. This is the original test, designed to help me build my armors better by poking every possible armor hole, except psionics.

That depends. If you want full offense none of my builds are those builds. I build with an emphasis on armor and solo play with usually just barely enough offense to solo a +4x8 ITF once fully Tier 4 Incarnated. These particular builds are concept builds. Still heavily armored, but concept none the less. Which means I might at times do something completely silly with them, just because. The Crab was meant to herd teams. Grab some stun grenades to use with the Immob for a psuedo hold. Lock down wide areas, debuff and blast them, while herding and buffing the ducklings behind you. Offense is neither good nor bad, but the versatility and durability are pretty good, and it has moderate defense buffs, and double tactics for good to-hit buffs for team-mates running SOs vs deep purple. The Fort is armored and meant to hunt psionics. Also, the Fort builds were better before various proc adjustments. Once upon a time, the procs were effectively 95% guaranteed to lockdown entire spawns. You'd rotate through them for a huge amount of control. Still good, but I'd have to test them extensively and rebuild them for i28.

I have so many builds for each ... I'm currently running two MOMA huntsman builds to herd little ducklings. Crab - MOMAS 1f+ - Incarnate - [i28].mbd - Mostly just run this one, mostly running KW missions. Crab - MOMAS 1b - Leadership - [i28].mbd - Sometimes alt to this one for malfactoring Crab - MOMAS 1d - Medic -[i28].mbd - Not currently running this one. And two Mind Hunter builds for Forts Fortunata - Mind Hunter 1c+ - [i28].mbd - Ranged Control (Needs rebuilding for i28) Fortunata - Mind Hunter Melee 2a+ - [i28].mbd - Melee, more damage, minimal Control (Needs rebuilding for i28) And I have dozens more ... VEATS are so versatile.

😠*Glares* I use MPL too. Everyone always looks at ME funny when I do it. My standard personal ratings go avg(Pylon %, MPL %, MPL %). I want to be able to kill hard targets, but I also want to weight generalized murder spree.

I run an armored Water/Atomic myself. Water Atomic - Ciaraine 2c+ - [i28].mbd I also did Fire/Atomic, more dps, less durable.

I tested it today with Ciaraine. It is a Challenge, but not insurmountable. A team is definitely preferred. But I feel like that is the case for KW regardless of build. Even Hornet can get herself killed by Blackwing.

I do Water/Atomic fully armored, but that is the opposite of a full dps build. There are a frightening number of tanks that are more squishy than this build. I've soloed +4x8 801.2, +4x8 ITF, +4x8 Apex, ... etc. ST dps is low, AoE is average, and the Utility is nice. Fire/Atomic was more DPS, but I missed the utility and added survivability from Water/Atomic. Fire/Atomic was nice though. Walk into a big room, walk around aggroing everything, pop up in the air just out of reach, wait for the pile, then incinerate everything into atoms. Fun Stuff. There's definitely some appeal there. How I build it as I level varies, I just do that by feel once I have a plan and a goal. Often I'll have one completely different set of IOs for leveling, swapping them in and out as I level while the build itself stays the same, no respec needed. Sometimes I'll have two builds, one for Leveling/Malefactoring, and one for Endgame. Even more rarely will I have three builds, Leveling, Malefactor, and Endgame. Builds evolve over time. I don't start +4x8, that also evolves. Often things like hasten, travel powers, tactics, will start in the 30s range. I can live without until then on most, but not all builds. But I also loved playing a travel-power-less Huntsman on live before you had all the temp travel powers that are available now. I think this is probably the closest to the current build, and you'll have to adjust for leveling and taste, because yes, hasten, travel, and T9 are the last things added to the build. Water Atomic - Ciaraine 2c+ - [i28].mbd

I have a Water/Ena sentinel that solos 801.6. It's a conversion of Angel Hornet crossed with Ciaraine. The dps is meh, but the armor is solid. Psionics are a tricky weakspot, but she manages. I also did an AR/Nin that's rock solid in standard content and psionics. But I really just don't like AR. If I could put the Crab Gun instead of the AR on the front end I'd love it.

An SR Tank "can" rate up to 13 (801.D)* However, almost no one will ever build one that way, and even if you DO build one that way, it will be the hardest tank to drive, ever. I insta-failed the first 12-13 tests, and only succeeded on the 14th try at level 13. So Theoretically it "could" be the most durable tank, but is more likely to rate average to above average. Capped DDR with tank resist cap can be very powerful. On a scrapper, the same is effectively true, but it's even harder to build and even harder to drive to that level, even easier to insta-fail, and is more likely to rate average to below average. I don't think the scrapper version will ever rate 7, even Hornet struggles with 7. I suspect 2 "could" be easy, 5 difficult, and 6 on a scrapper you can call yourself a god call it good. * Solo Survive 801.D, It takes over an hour just to clear the door solo, so "survive" not beat, and I stopped the timer after 15 min. At that level escaping with your life is a win.

Harder. I really don't know how much harder. My original intent was to design a mission, or two, that would test each potential mechanic and/or potential hole in armors. I never really intended to do more than the two missions that were what is 801.2 now. But people asked for more. 801.0 would be roughly equivalent in layout, and overall mission mechanics, and short small maps like radios. I'd guess somewhere between 1x and 2x length, but I really didn't measure it that way so I'm not sure. Harder Mobs, it has 801 mobs instead of standard mobs. I'd guess they are probably similar to Blackwing, or Blackwing are similar to them. But I don't know. I tested the early Blackwing prototypes when they were still buggy and overpowered. Harder, Even with just 801.2, I stopped counting after slaughtering a few thousand tanks.

Wall to Wall overlapping FF bubbles. Please, for the love of $Deity Test (in test mode if needed) your AEs +4x8 to see how they spawn for a team. When I was reviewing AE arcs, the majority of them had not been tested x8. "Oh, I never tested it x8" I heard that so many times.

🍿🍺 I'm glad you're enjoying the missions. I've been chuckling almost non-stop for the last 2 hours. Voltak and Lumi both frequently brought empaths to these. If Either of them joined the team I'd automatically set it 1 tier higher. 😉 "801.0 I hope this isn't too easy peasy" - 801.0 is the easiest. It's intended for a very small team or solo "801.5-C ..." - You overlooked the team-size multipliers in the list. That effects lots of things within the tier itself, including mission length and difficulty. - 801.5 is intended as a full team test, as compared to the small team/solo test above. Each tier is roughly double the difficulty of the previous tier and you went from the bottom of tier 1 to the top of tier 2. I'd guess that means this mission is about 3-4x harder than the one you started with, as well as about twice as long. "801.6-Static ..." - Static tagged missions are "Very Short, Static, less comprehensive, lightweight tests" designed so you can quickly and easily test and compare tiers "Without the Randomness". "801.7-Tech-R" - I hope you brought your grown up pants. - This is just barely over the balance point where game mechanics start breaking. - Give me the smallest amount of team buffs and the mechanics balance back out. However, this is why I made the 6s and inserted them into the list. The 6s are just under the mechanics balance point. It was fun and interesting to really find how all the various mechanics work and when and where and how they break. - I ran a lot of 6's and 7's depending on the balance point of the team. "It's hard to figure out a time limit" - Teams vary too much, You'll never get one answer here. I've had teams complete Difficulty 15 in less than 30 minutes, and teams fail difficulty 2 after 2 hours. "We've Got this." "Wasn't too bad." "Oh !@#$ ... Oh ^%!@#, ... OH! @#$ %!@# &%@#!" "Got Smoked. Bro!" "They broke the Unbreakable Tank ... " "It's getting to the point that I have to start buffing the tanks ..." "We're dying like crazy ..." "Come to the PO AE and have BAG of Wakies ..." "Holy !@#$ this is !@#$%$# Insane ..." "What the !@#$ was that! Holy %@#% ..." "Does that Count? ... That was Brutal! ... The Doom of the Squad ..." - *Evil Chuckle* 🤣

That's Angel Hornet. She's designed for soloing hard-mode, and has only half the dps of a full offense build, with all the rest of the resources going into layer-able armor in sine waves.

Someone needs to name one "Carpnado". Then again, someone probably already has.

tldr: no one answer, what ever worked, likely several different ones at different times. The original copy of this character probably has well over most of the incarnates unlocked. I also use the test shards extensively to test different incarnates and builds. As a default rule: Hybrid: Melee Core T4, Assault Core T4, Assault Radial T4, and the Teleport one. Primarily Melee Core for a defensive posture, this is my default. Assault Core for pure offense. Assualt Radial for hybrid defense/offense (breaking your offense chains hurts you if you're using core). And the teleport for team utility. Lore: anything but seers. but I even use those sometimes if it's one of the very rare cases where the psi damage is helpful. Usually I pick something thematic. If you want something more performance oriented, the ravager, carnies, ... well behaved are usually bots even though they are lower performance they mind well, ... I like carnies a fair bit, love the buffer, ... there's a thread somewhere ... Destiny: Ageless Radial +DDR T4, Barrier Radial T4 (everyone else dies), Barrier Core T4(only if I have too because pugs refuse to play with me) Judgement: Void Radial T4 -DMG: Pseudo-Resist T9 for 30 seconds. It's a gap filler and awesome for hard alphas that you might not otherwise survive. This one really makes a difference on the def/res capped tank that wants to bypass the caps when facing difficulty 13 targets. Interface: Degen Radial T4 or Reactive Radial T4 Alpha: Any, it depends. Probably Agility Core T4 and Musculature Radial T4 as the two most common.