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Linea

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Posts posted by Linea

  1. 23 hours ago, drgantz said:

    I've read that Def is better for Scrappers while Res is better for Brutes and Tankers.  I've seen several posts saying that SR is great for Tankers.  Why is it so great, since it is Def?

    Resist Armors:

    • I do not recommend Resist sets on 75% resist cap ATs. 
      • 75% resist cap vs 90% resist cap is 2.5x incoming damage on the 75% resist cap AT.  This is fatal. 
      • The sets were IMO apparently designed with the 90% resist cap in mind, and 2.5x healing vs defense sets.  
      • At the extreme end of things, defense sets equate closer to 8% or 9% incoming damage in isolation assuming no resist.  Resist sets at the 90% resist cap, and 2.5x more healing roughly equal out.
      • Except that all those debuff and status effects thrown at resist only builds (almost) always hit while defense armor dodges the effects.
      • To counter the debuff issue, most resist armors have some level of status resists.  While this is helpful, it's still not as helpful as not being hit in the first place.
      • Meta-Game:  ***IF*** your team brings defense support, your already resist capped armor with additional healing can really make your build stand out above the crowd in otherwise difficult content.
      • I almost always pair these armors with defensive weapons like Katana with Divine Avalanche, while being aware that any defense added WILL be stripped in heavy debuff content like a 4-star ITF.

    Defense Armors:

    • These work on all ATs.  See all of the above.
    • Defense Cap in isolation is roughly just as effective as TANK 90% resist cap in isolation.  If you're a 75% resist cap AT, then this can often be a better starting point than resists.
    • It's better to never be hit than to resist that hit.
    • You can add moderate resists to a defense build.  Cake Meet Icing.

    Heal-Tank Armors:

    • These works best on Tanks due to HP Caps, but can work on all ATs as well.
    • I almost always pair these armors with defensive weapons like Katana with Divine Avalanche.
    • Then I push both resists and defense, with a preference to resists, while being aware that any defense added WILL be stripped in heavy debuff content like a 4-star ITF.
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  2. 22 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

    At least a couple Empathy builds have solo'd a +4/×8 ITF, including one by @Linea.  

    Edited 22 hours ago by Doomguide2005

    Likely many more.  

     

    I did it by turning the empath into an armored offensive force.  Assume you're a corruptor first, build like that, then build on the empath secondary to make the corruptor offense stronger and/or more durable, ... And do it all on the defender frame for the better multiplier numbers and easier build manipulation and flexibility.

     

    Voltak did it by leveraging the buffs and Lore on a support oriented build.  I mean you have your own army, might as well use it.  Then use standard offense in-between summons.

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  3. Context. ... I assumed this question was asked in isolation, to a lone tank, and as applied to random teams.    The recommendations for a lone tank is different than the recommendation for a tank that runs with a reliable coordinated team.  The recommendation for an experienced tank is also different than the recommendation for a new tank.  The overall if I can only ever recommend one tank would probably be Inv/ as a compromise.

     

    • SR - You'll likely be able to build to survive one spawn indefinitely, and should be able to handle one spawn and one EB while teamed indefinitely.  After that you're gonna need buffs.   SR is typically not built with much additional resistances, and you'll need those.  As soon as you get 1 EB too many 9% chance to be hit will skyrocket to 60% chance to be hit, and you're going to need those resistances really fast or you'll end up 1-shot before your scaling resists can kick in sufficiently.   This also translates to, if you ease into or pull, without support, you'll end up hovering indefinitely around 40% health as your resists/health goes up and down ... right up till something nasty hits you good and hard and finishes you off.  Rommy in particular will cut you in half if he hits, and his base chance to hit is really high, if you don't kill the EBs escorting him, you'll be toast.
    • SD - You'll maybe, assuming you actually build that way, be able to handle one spawn indefinitely, and probably manage it more easily than the SR.  But only one regular spawn, no EBs, definitely not 2 Ebs.  Worse yet, very few SDs are built this way.  SD can also give you the best overall most balanced base to build upon.   If you have no idea what kind of support you are going to get, if any, then any small support will go a long way on SD.  But you ARE going to need those supports.  AT least some maneuvers and Tactics.  Still I consdier this one of the best overall choices.   It's my personal pick, at least today.
    • Inv - This one is probably the easiest to drive of all the choices.  It's perfect for most first tanks.  However, you're going to need a good build, so you may need to get help in that area.   You'll also want to push resists hard on all fronts, including Negative, Cold, and Fire, not just SL.  You WILL need either some defense buffs, or at least one extra copy of ageless +DDR, and you'll likely need some HP/S support when tanking Rommy, and maybe the Twins.  You may also need some +Resist or -Damage support when facing the Twins as that is where you'll be facing Cold and Fire and potentially substantial -resist debuffs aimed at Cold and Fire.
    • Granite - Overall it will be a bit more durable than Inv, but also still faces all the same issues as Inv, has to deal with -slow and -recharge and -damage.  But if you want a relatively easy taunt bot and don't care about damage and can deal with a Combat Teleport build, then it may also be the perfect tank for completely random 4-star teams.  But that's also a mouthful of negatives to swallow.
    • RadA - You absolutely must have Defense Buffs.  ***IF*** you get defense support, then that massive self-capped resists and healing capabilities make this one of the best choices.  ... With our private teams, I've run this one the most.  But even with the private team, buffs have slipped a little here and there.  I compensated with my own incarnates, but had the slippage been any worse the whole team would have collapsed more than once, per run.  And that's with relatively high quality private teams.
    • RadA, FA, Bio, Other Resist Builds, and Proc Builds - Now you absolutely need massive defense buffs, and probably some minimal resist buffs too.  ***IF*** you get this fairly substantial amount of support, and get it 24/7, then, and ONLY THEN, .... you now have the perfect tank.   WITHOUT this support you'll squish like an overripe grape.  It's bloody unlikely this will happen on random teams.  Someone will slip, you'll die, then the whole team will die.  And it'll only take one person slipping for the whole team to cascade into death.  Our private teams are running with a substantial number off Offensive Tank builds, and it still gets dicey at times, and other times we end up with some of the best speed times.   But it's still iffy on any given day and any given team if the (Offensive Tank and buffs) will hold.

     

     

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  4. I'll repeat that.  "NO TANK is going to be able to handle 4-star without at least minimal support"

     

    SR, SD, Inv, Stone, would be my top armor recommendations.

    SS, DM, and RadM, would be my top attack set recommendations.

     

    You should probably look at the information in my solo hardmode itf post.  It is as much a hardmode itf guide as not.  There are tank specific things in there, particularly at the bottom of the first post.

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  5. That really looks pretty good.

     

    It'll be great till you run up against an EB or AV, or pull an extra group.   I would expect it to hold pretty close to indefinitely vs 1 standard spawn, NO Ebs.

     

    But Tactics Stacking and Adds are the problem for all tanks.  You pull a 4-star Leroy and you can be facing a defense soft-cap of 200 defense, at which point your 75 defense without team support is useless and everything then falls on your resistance and ability to heal.  75 defense vs 200 defense cap, multiplied by 4-star, translates to something like 250% chance to hit, capped at 95%.

     

    Add Darkest Night, it can be pretty helpful.

    Add Vengeance, then you only have to live longer than the first squishy ...

    Ageless Radial +DDR ... if you can get a second Ageless +DDR copy from the team you should be golden.  Then stack team Barriers, or team defense buffs on top of that.

    find a way to push resists more... *shrug* good luck with that.  You can, but it will cost you defense.  Double-edged sword.

     

    I personally went heavier on resists, lower defense, add Darkest Night and Vengeance.  But there is no 'right' answer here.  Every team is different, and at this level you have no choice but to have to rely on the team for at least some kind of minimal support.

     

  6. That's very good for a random team.  Random teams run average 3 hours 150 deaths, not counting the ones that just completely fail.  Private teams run about an hour or less average.

     

    The failures are not because it could not be done, but because people rage-quit when it's not done in 45minutes, or because their unkillable character died, and once too many quit, then it does become too difficult.  Standard Self-fulfilling prophecy. 

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  7. Hardmode mobs are extremely dangerous.  The EBs that are very numerous will 1-shot you from range.  The Bosses will 2-shot you if you are lucky.   Many have additional status protection.  It might, maybe, 'help' save you from a stray attacker, but that's about it.  If you close to melee range without support, you're dead.

     

    ***IF***  ....   Now, say you join a team of all natures and one tank, and you rotate barriers and everyone stays hardcapped to everything and all of you have Entangling Aura .... ***IF*** ...  Then yes, that kind of super-team would work for the most part.  You'd still have to deal with 'shout of command' and would likely want a dom or two to punch through that.  

     

    But outside of a context like that were you are effectively supported, it'll probably just get you killed.

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  8. Typically I pair RadA and other resist armors with defensive weapons.  However, a 4-star itf will strip that defense in a blink, unless it's either protected by stacking multiple ageless, or by stacking additional team buffs.  The same will happen even in lower stars.  This makes you personally bringing the defense a bit less useful than someone that can specialize in it.

     

    SS is primarily recommended for the +tohit.   KB gets stripped in 4-star, but is still useful in lower difficulties, for hardmode in general this will be useful, just not 4-star.

     

    DM is mostly useful for the +to-hit and the heal, but RadA alreadys has healing covered, not so much the -defense.  Any -defense will be cut in half, and at defense softcap magnitudes of 100 to 200 defense, a small debuff in isolation will be effectively meaningless. 

     

    I rather doubt minimal fear will make any difference in durability at the damage saturation levels you'll be seeing in hardmode.

     

    The only changes in any rankings would be that I'm happy that more teams are bringing heavier defense support, making resist armors more viable than straight out of the gate teams were.  This particular meta does shift things in favor of resists armors.  When defense is effectively perma-hardcapped, then the resist armor with it's resist cap and higher HP/S via absorbs, heals, regen, really pushes itself into the foreground.   There was a similar trend with the ASF.  ***IF*** you have the defense support, resist armors can really shine.

     

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  9. The difference is resist caps, hap caps, regeneration rates, the recent changes in Fire Farms Difficulty and XP, and likely many other variables

     

    If you want to farm with a squishy, you are really going to want to cap both fire defense (45) and fire resist (75).  Even then, depending on your ability to replace Lost HP, you may still need to set lower difficulty levels or rely on inspirations or temps.

     

  10. RadA already has huge amounts of HP/S from regen, absorb, and healing.

     

    Teams are slowly improving, but there are still a lot of people that want to run non-incarnate builds in 4-star, and that frequently does not work out well.

    On the upside, there are more teams that are learning, and working together more, and the end result is exponentially better.

     

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  11. 13 hours ago, GM Impervium said:

    Though I'm not sure why it would start doing this all of a sudden =/

    It could be WIndows updating the graphics driver.  Windows is particularly bad for that with some of the older AMD chipsets, but I wouldn't have thought a 7500G would be on that list yet.

  12. On 9/3/2022 at 10:21 AM, Infinitum said:

    It's good on Brute's but IMO better on Scrappers and Stalkers.  There again that all depends on the pairing with it.

    I'd say DB on scrapper. At least moderate recharge 130-ish for the second best chain, or high-recharge perma-hasten for the best chain.  I had good results with DB/Bio on moderate recharge and heavy armor.

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  13. It varies.  Usually Carnies.  Ageless +ddr, but sometimes barrier radial Resurrect x 2, if the team has +recovery to cover my crashes.  Probably Agility, but I have a few more crafted that I use as needed.  Degen usually, but I probably have reactive too.  Almost always Void -damage, but sometimes I'll have pyronic or ionic.   Almost always Hybrid Melee Core, but I so sometimes use Incandescent or others.

  14. 14 hours ago, Blackjoy said:

     I think at that point we were going on about 2 hours if not 3.

    The average 4-star random team run is about 3 hours and 150 deaths.   That will improve with time, but for now you should always assume at least 3 hours.

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  15. I would say +50 minimum over the standard soft-cap.  Most of the random runs I've joined have said "Use Barrier if your defense drops below 100".  That's probably good general advice for random teams.  It'll still get you killed if you over-pull, but if you want to keep instructions as simple as possible, that's probably the answer.

     

    Assuming 4-star

    Most groups have an EB backing them, or at least something like a 1/3.  It's not at all uncommon: Base 45 + ceiling(25,(10 *  floor(0,4 - 1)))) + ( Tactics Stacking 25 * 1)  = 95 Defense.

    Several times per mission it will not be unusual to face 2 EBs or the equivalent: Base 45 + ceiling(25,(10 *  floor(0,4 - 1)))) + ( Tactics Stacking 25 * 2)  = 120 defense

    Most of the AVs have a least a single version of tactics themselves, something in the range of: Base 64 + ceiling(25,(10 *  floor(0,4 - 1)))) + ( Tactics Stacking 25 * 1) = 139 Defense.

    And it will not be unusual to see AVs with a double powered tactics and one EB nearby:  Base 64 + ceiling(25,(10 *  floor(0,4 - 1)))) + ( Tactics Stacking 25 * (2+1))  = 189 Defense.

     

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  16. 4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

    It's not negligible when you're built for 53.75% defense to MRA.

    That would be an exception to the rule, where the last 5% cumulative is much more valuable than the first 5% in isolation, when applied to standard Incarnate Arcs, and would not be very helpful vs 4-Star Rommy and his 138.75 defense soft-cap. 

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  17. 4 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

    at 175 and eating a ton of incoming.

    The other side of this coin is, 'Don't Pull a Leroy Jenkins'.  No one said you have to Speed Run a 4-Star.   If you slow down and use a little strategy, you can keep the stacking tactics to 1 copy most of the time, with only the rare 2 stacks.  Then you can subtract 50 from all the above numbers, just by playing smart, then even the squishies can be defense capped vs even Rommy.

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  18. Most people are under the impression that Barrier is godmode for 2 minutes ... it's not.  It's about 20 seconds, maybe 30, then negligible.   But rotate it with some barrier teammates and .... then it IS godmode.

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