Linea

Here's a really old one of mine. DB Bio Scrapper - Alpha 2 ITF - [i25].mxd probably needs upgrading and translating for i28.

I'll second the "Defense Armors". Really, any of the defense armors will do. The toughest, at least for now: Angel Hornet EnM/EnA The stalker version is fun too: Street Justice/Ena If you want fun and durable enough, I'd say /Bio: Kate Wolf Katana/Bio EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - Angel Hornet 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J Psi+ - [i25].mbd Kat Bio Scrapper - Alpha 3 ITF - [i28].mbd

I'm considering trying Stone again. I've always had a hard time getting into it. I've had something similar on Test. I think this one might stick. Any suggestions or thoughts would be welcome. Stone Dark Tank - HyperLinea HM 801 M - [i28].mbd

One of these days you need to drag me along on one of these. I think you might have mixed an 801.2 (Tier 1, Team-size 8, Long), with an 801.3 (Tier 2, Team-size 4, short). 801.6 only has one size, it was the last design wedged in to bridge the gap from 5 to 7. I think 6 used a medium design, but don't recall. If you want to balance by number of spawns on a map 801.1, 801.4, 801.6. If you want to try to balance time on map, then I'd look at 801.2 ((Most spawns with Softest targets), 801.4 (Medium spawns with Medium targets), 801.6(Less spawns Hard targets). If you want fastest (and easiest), that would be 801.0, 801.3, 801.6; the shortest fastest for each tier. I would avoid 801.7 and higher for anything that is trying to evaluate game balance, even 6 with it's boss mechanics will be a little problematic with controllers and doms, but it doesn't break anything else, and that was the intent behind wedging it in after all the others (maintain as much game balance as possible while pushing difficulty up to the edge of 7, where 7 is when balance starts breaking). "That's just wrong" "What the !@#$ was that!" "Pretty !@#$%^& nasty" 🤣

I'll split the difference with you. PvPs in Dispersion is a tiny gain, but at a cost. I still want the resist unique earlier in the build.

Suggestions and Improvement are welcome. There's always room to improve and be better. This is a concept build, so it may be a bit strange in ways. It is also simultaneously a standard high armor Linea build. Overall it's pretty durable despite the apparent lack of armor compared to some of my builds. I've been soloing and teaming KW missions +4x8. Not fast, but fairly durable. The purpose of the build was a build that was cheap and easy to build at first, even with just SOs, then advance and improve over time. Primarily focusing on Ranged Fire Support and ease of use. Cheap options and Easy to build options, even on SOs. (although I'd probably look back toward the first builds, and alt that build for SOs) Armor and Durability, both for the player and the pets. Minimal Status Protection. Ranged Fire Support Emphasis. Incarnate Defenses. +20 defense from the Bot Bubbles for 60 FCA defense min on myself. DDR: (Ageless +DDR, Dampening +DDR) with (PBU * Bubbles for 70's defenses on the bots.) Clarion*PBU*Bubbles option. Rune as Breakfree and optional on-demand Armor. Demonic combined with Rune for on-demand Armor. This however is considerably less on-demand armor than I normally load. -Regen Blasts, Envenomed, Degenerative -Regen over -Resist. This was a hard choice, but until I have more firepower, at least T4 Incarnate, the -regen wins and gives me personal firepower. Teamed and/or T4 it may be beneficial to swap into the -res in Repulsion Bolt. This latter would also be more in the style of "Fire n' Forget" Degen to stack with -Regen Envenomed to stack with -Regen ... This should all really stack up nicely. Stun Grenades to use with Bomb and Photon. Typically Bomb, Stun, Photon ... or Stun, Bomb, Photon. But I'm pretty durable so Bomb, Stun, Photon is probably the most effective. Alpha - I'm currently doing Vigor, also Tried Nerve I think it was. Judgement - Ranged. Probably Fire for "Air Strike". Interface - Degen to stack with -regen Lore - I don't know. Bots Maybe. They are ranged and well behaved. I'd like something maintaining theme while also optimizing damage. Likely on the core damage branch. I'm not really expecting to need or be likely to benefit greatly from the support branch. But I could change my mind. Destiny - Ageless +DDR and Clarion +Special Hybrid - I haven't chosen. This is the kind of build where I might get more than one. Armor - As ranged fire support I don't expect I'll really need this. Support Core +Pet - This is most likely. Damage - Sure this might be a nice burst damage for say 90 seconds, but that's it, and then you have to re-summon and start all over. Ick. Control - huh? Bots FF - Fire-n-Forget 6 - [i28].mbd

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.

Try opening it with "File -> Open" instead of Double-Click. Here's a resaved .mbd version. Note there have been a lot of game changes in the 2 years since the build was last updated. EnM Ena ShadowMeld Scrapper - Angel Hornet 801 - Recharge-T9 ver 2J Psi+ - [i25].mbd

That's it in a nutshell. If you want the overall strongest armor against anything that will ever get thrown at you ever. That doesn't mean the resulting armor will be strongest in every situation, it absolutely will not. On the other hand, learning your weaknesses, knowing them well, and knowing how to mitigate them, is extremely useful. If you can solo 801.2, then you can handle almost anything the regular game throws at you. If you can solo survive 801.5, then you are probably safe to main-tank 4-Star or solo 1-star. If you want to solo 2-star or 3-star, then you may need to be able to survive 801.6 or 801.7. The devs will NEVER go beyond 801.7 difficulty, and it's probably more fair to say official dev content will top out at a max of 801.6. 801.7 is just past the breaking point in game math terms. 801.6 is just under the breaking point in game math. The devs will not push past that point, instead you should expect other mechanics like the targeting circles, and mini-games, and things like that. The game math, base baked in from the past century, literally starts breaking at that point between 801.6 and 801.7. That said, the math could be un-broken, by creating an RDR stat and distributing that to armors in the same way DDR is distributed. However, that would also be a MAJOR and GAME BREAKING change to all the squishies and armors that are so used to effectively getting RDR for free. So don't expect that to ever happen. It probably should have happened 20 years ago, but that cat is well out of the bag and isn't going back in.

You can use the Aether costumes to hide the crab legs, but you do have to be happy with the limited resulting costumes. This lets you have a larger pool of powers to build from and still not have to deal with the fugly legs.

I took a multi-billion influence build into a +4x8 ITF for comparison testing. It's the hardest to drive. It requires the most strategy and tactics. It requires the most attention to detail. ... etc and so on. But it CAN be done. It's been done multiple times by multiple builds and characters. HOWEVER, willpower can do it with 2/3 the effort and 2/3 the investment, and Bio can do it with 1/3 the effort and 1/3 the investment. (Approximately) As an additional note, it's my opinion that regen should at least be 95% immune to regen debuffs, ... and probably partially immune to recharge debuffs but that part is less thematic and more mechanic.s