Linea

No, but it shouldn't really change much. I don't plan on ever repeating any of these 16+ hour solo runs. Never, Ever. I just do it As a measure of how difficult they are by how far I can get solo. That they can in fact be run successfully. If I can solo a 2-Star then in theory (almost) any random team of 8 (preferably Tier 4) Incarnates of dubious build should be able to do it as well.

SOLO 2-Star Hardmode ITF (Cryptic 220711) Angel Hornet EnM/EnA 801 Hardmode Scrapper Tldr: This is Hard-Mode Content. If you don't take it seriously, it WILL kill you. With the recent changes it's a little bit easier than when I ran it, and on sum balance a little bit harder to solo than the ASF. I also recently soloed 3-Star Rommy in test-mode by overloading inspirations, but given you would have to run the entire TF that way, taking 40+ hours, I'm going to say 3-star is effectively not solo-able. *** DO NOT LEROY JENKINS *** Pull only one, or at most two, groups at a time. Do not teleport into a room with 6+ spawns and start tossing around judgements. You’ve been warned. THESE ARE EFFECTIVELY PRAETORIAN INCARNATES WITH TACTICS. Even on 2-Star you can be facing 65 defense cap enemies, and if you pull more than one group that can skyrocket to over a 115+ defense cap. (Note: The maximum stacking may be tuned down a little.) ACCURACY MULTIPLIERS: Depending on the difficulty you pick you can be facing an average of a 1.9 accuracy multiplier vs 4-Star, just call it 2x for simplicity. That means if the soft-cap is 75, and you only have 60 defense, they mobs will have a (75 + 5 - 60) * 2 = 40% chance to hit you. 4-Star GMs will have a BASE soft cap of 95, and most have tactics as well, for something in the 110 or 115 defense range. If you have 70 defense all and strut up to a 4-Star Rommy, he's gonna bash you in the head with a 95% chance to hit. If you're running standard 45 soft-cap, heaven help you, even a 4-Star minion is going to have 50% chance to hit you, for 10x incoming damage, which is closer to 12x incoming damage spread across the entire spawn with the various rank multipliers. Beware the EBs, Avs, and GMs with Tactics. Tactics can Stack! There were times I had to push Full Armor++. That means Stacked Overload, Rune, Triple-Stacked Energy Drain, ShadowMeld, Dampeners. Which is 166+ defense with 75+ resists, my standard 115+ defense with 75+ resists wasn’t enough if those tactics stacked up. Letting resists slip any at all while facing any thing other than a single ‘generic’ hardmode spawn was instant death. Anything that was ‘Dangerous’ before on normal mode, is DEADLY now on Hardmode. More mobs have ranged attacks, and some mobs have additional damage types, and even minor amounts of un-resistible damage. This is no joke, You should be prepared to take at least some damage, if not significant damage as compared to a normal-mode run. Try to field a Balanced Full Tier 4 Incarnated Team with 1 or 2 tanks and at least 1 Controller/Dominator. USE YOUR INCARNATES. Even better if you coordinate incarnates. BUFF YOUR WHOLE TEAM. Buff Defense, Resist, Absorb, and HP/S. These guys are 98% deadly to Defense Cap Only Armor or Resist Cap Only Armor on 75% resist cap ATs. Even your Tank or Brute may need supplemental Defense, Resist and/or HP/S Buffs. I very strongly suggest you have a combat teleport bind, phase shift, or something similar. No Holds Barred Bring all your toys, ALL YOUR TOYS! TAUNT – You Really Really want Taunt and/or Immobilize. Some mobs will specifically target and take out your support if you do not Taunt and/or Control them first. Envenomed Daggers, and/or Rad, Traps, Etc. - These AVs and GMs are no joke. If you are Solo: Amps and Dampeners Temp/Accolade Immobilizes Full T4 Lore, as well as Full T4 on all your Incarnates. Hero Alignment Ranged Damage Signature Summons. Hero Aligned is Positron, hands down the best one you can get. Backup Radio Shivans (for the first/hardest Rommy) Warburg Nukes (for the first/hardest Rommy) Vanguard HVAS (for the first/hardest Rommy) And any and all other pets you can scrounge up Mission 1 1 Hour. Nothing of particular note other than what is already noted above. I cleared both rooms, the intersection, and platform. I think I accidentally got the ambush too. Mission 2 1.5 Hours. Anything that was ‘Dangerous’ before on normal mode, is DEADLY now on Hardmode. I ran half of it as clear. Then half as crystals at 5-10%, then popping them all at once. Mission 3 9 hours. Clear as much of the areas you need to work in as possible, or you’ll regret it later. Mission 4 9 hours. Clear as much of the areas you need to work in as possible, or you’ll regret it later. *** OH GOD ***. It’s probably just easiest to bow down, submit, and join your new Cimeroran Overlords. Additional Spoilers, Information, and Changes Tanks NO TANK is going to be able to solo a 4-Star ITF without at least very minimal support. Proc Built Tanks ...

To expand on that. EAfn is probably the choice. A Clarion+Special*PBU*FF can incarnate cap the entire team, you want that extra defense. Nature does a good job and can be more offensive oriented. EAfn offers better support. Both FF/ and Time/ can be extremely heavily armored. If the support is dead, it's not supporting anyone. But, ANY, defender and even any AT with Leadership, has plenty to offer for Hardmode runs. The assumption for [Insert Stars] Hardmode is that most of the team is built on IOs, built on [Insert Stars] Incarnates, and is running Leadership. You want your 'tank' to be nicely armored behind def/res ddr and rdr, with hp/s support and support in as many other areas as possible. If it's not an actual Tank AT, then you want to push both def and res to well beyond the incarnate caps. 4-star hardmode can push soft-caps of 75 to 95 (and maybe higher I'm not looking at the tables atm). You should assume -100 defense debuff, and -200 resist debuff (probably more on the -resist side). Then you probably need to assume 1-2k sustained dps with 5k dps spikes, and some rare much higher dps spikes. If you don't know how to handle 5k to the face, you probably don't want to run 4-star because sooner or later that 5k is going to land right upside your head. In the end, pretty much any supported tank can do this and not break a sweat. But if you neglect the support, don't be surprised if your tank crumples.

tldr: I can't 'challenge' confuse specialized Doms without completely obliterating Controllers. CoH Mobs in general are very weak to Confuse, KB/KD, and Fear. The Devs are fully aware of this and have many more tools to deal with it than AE does. In 801 only 1 in 16 mobs has any status protection at all, this is a purposeful choice to ensure that 801 is backwards compatible with controllers soloing. 801.6 and above have minimal counter-confuse, but that's likely not enough to effect a well built Confuse specialized Dom.

Yes, but at this point they are ancient and obsolete, pre-sentinel balance pass, don't include any of the i25 to i27 changes, and don't include proc builds, and if you're on a sentinel, you'd really want to consider all of that. And the entire thing ran on 12 year old tech that no longer compiles. That said, sentinels have the least variance of any AT, best primary vs worst primary. I don't think this will have changed. Just guessing I'd say the top end (these days) is pushing 400 dps (~double vs 2014), I had some numbers somewhere from i27 in-game testing, but I don't remember now. Considering scrappers can hit 600+ dps ... that probably puts sentinels in line with proc built offensive tanks, or if they are lucky between proc tanks and proc brutes, but no where close to proc scrappers. Balance was never based on procs, but more on non-incarnated SOs. But I wouldn't quote me on any of this, either, things have changed too much in the last 10 years.

IOed Sentinels can rate up to 6 or 7 on my durability scale, while that IOed blaster will typically struggle with 2. Outside of Hard-Mode, 801, or similar content that level of armor is overkill. A rating of 2 is the standard armor rating for 95% of the games content.

Finally burned out my first wedding band. It took 9 months of running multiple 801s daily, all most all of those 6 and above. An average of less than 10s per mission, to fill in gaps. Maybe less than half that.

All the incarnates are broken if you co-ordinate them. And you generally only need 2 copies of ageless. You don't even need the defender, just overlap 2 or 3 Ageless, 2 or 3 barriers, and 2 or 3 Clarions. Toss in 8x Judgements and just turn on [walk] so there's time to recharge between spawns. Add one /Rad for -regen. Player Co-ordination is really the biggest issue, if you can pull off the co-ordination even 801.F can't dent you. 7 Blasters, 1 Defender. Other Silliness.

We've used it rotating on teams, but I never actually checked the stacking or efficacy in the combat numbers details, just the small combat monitor to see if I needed to cast it yet, or call out for it. If it was low 'somebody hit ageless'. *shrug* Stacking is flagged as per caster, if it has other restrictions you'd have to check with a powers person, or just do a quick check in-game. I'll double check it sometime next week.

SD/ is the only tank where I used all three build slots. If you can only have one tank, that's probably my recommendation, and pair it with a heal in DM or RadM ... etc.

Proc Builds have been exploited and perfected since then. The non-proc high-recharge (heavy armor) version of Angel runs 400 dps, and that's on revamped EnM.

Here is an alpha first pass I did when the set first came out, and a couple of Voltaks Builds as well. EAfn Elec Defender - Alpha 1 - [i26].mxd EAfn Electric Defender - Voltak 3 - [i27].mxd EAfn Electric Defender - Voltak 2 - [i27].mxd

Primary Design: 801.6 uses a 4 div pattern since the primary spawn tech does groups of 4. loop(Random_Index, Linear(4)); This means that since they are grouped in 4, and 4 are always picked (+4x8), then you always get the same ratio of (debuff,damage,dangerous,filler) even if the random index starts in the middle of a give set of 4, it just picks the other two missing types out of the next set. [(1,4,5,6), (2,4,5,6), (3,4,5,6), (8,0)] Notes: There are an odd number of entries on purpose to force a shift in composition if the RNG goes wonky. That should actually never happen due to the Random_Index called every 4 mobs. There are over 16 entries because 16 is standard mob size. There are significanlty over 16 because that's what it took to cause sufficient statistical dilution that the spawns didn't double or triple too much and just jumble into oblivion. Note many of the other 801s use as many as 100 entries for the same purpose. But as these are 'supposed' to be difficult, they use a lower number, and the debuffs were adjusted in-game using the combat monitor and various tank builds and hours upon hours of in-game testing. 801.6 passed all the Linea Armors when facing only one spawn group at a time. Multiple spawn groups at once can still stack random jumbles of debuffs that can quickly overwhelm non-defense_armor non-Linea builds. TA was split in half into Archers and Hunters because it was entirely too powerful when left as a single entity. Spliting was required for debuff dilution. -ddr averages 80 long term sustained, but the stormers and TA can spike that to double for short periods of time from 10 seconds to 30 seconds, every 5? minutes. -resist averages -25 vs 75% resist cap, but can also double for short periods of time of 30+ seconds, and in a few very rare cases spiked to -75 vs 75% resist cap for a short burst, again due to Stormers and TA. If you are a non-armored AT, or you neglected your ddr or rdr, you will get hit hard in your weakest spot. Dangerous Debuffs: 1: Hunter and Archer are extremely dangerous Debuffs. 2: Javelin and Resonator are Dangerous Damage and Dangerous Debuff/Damage (-res is damage) 3: Storm Trooper and Shocker, are Dangerous Debuffs. I could have put Storm in 1, and Shocker in 2, but the pattern fills the (3,4,5,6) even if 3 is empty, so I pulled these down here for this sequence Dangerous Damage: 4: Disruptors are -res and damage, Mez Protected Snipers, Rangers are T9 Armored Snipers, Operatives are Snipers with Always on Armor. AoE Damage (and to a lesser extend filler and aggro mechanics) 5: Gunners are AoE Damage, Sergeants are filler, Corporals are aggro mechanics. Fillers 6: These are all light damage. Special 0: Interceptor is special. It's designed specifically to take out lightly armored fliers, but also functions as the primary always on -ddr. If you are not heavy armor, you do NOT want to mess with this guy. He'll drop you -100 armor and mag 10 immobilize and -fly you. *IF* the RNG is fair, he'd never show up more than once per spawn, but the RNG is notoriously prejudiced. Code: foreach ($bins[1],$bins[4],$bins[5],$bins[6],$bins[7], $bins[2],$bins[4],$bins[5],$bins[6],$bins[7], $bins[3],$bins[4],$bins[5],$bins[6],$bins[7], $bins[8],$bins[0]) { my $tmp = pop(@{$_}); if (defined $tmp) { $array[$#array+1]=$tmp;} } Data: Bin[0] := 0 "X-31 Interceptor", Bin[1] := 2 Engineer, "BA-45b Hunter", "BA-45a Archer", Bin[2] := 1 "BB-45j Javelin", "BB-45s Resonator", Bin[3] := 1 "BC-45i Storm Trooper", "BC-61e Shocker", Bin[4] := 6 Operative, "DA-53s Disruptor", "Scout Sniper", "DA-53s Disruptor", "DA-53s Disruptor", Ranger, Operative, Bin[5] := 6 Corporal, "Heavy Gunner", "Heavy Gunner", Sergeant, "Heavy Gunner", Corporal, Sergeant, Bin[6] := 6 Rifleman, Rifleman, Marksman, Rifleman, Marksman, Marksman, Rifleman, Bin[7] := -1 Bin[8] := -1 Bin[0] := -1 Bin[1] := -1 Bin[2] := -1 Bin[3] := -1 Bin[4] := -1 Bin[5] := -1 Bin[6] := -1 Bin[7] := -1 Bin[8] := -1 Array "BA-45a Archer", Operative, Sergeant, Rifleman, "BB-45s Resonator", Ranger, Corporal, Marksman, "BC-61e Shocker", "DA-53s Disruptor", "Heavy Gunner", Marksman, "X-31 Interceptor", "BA-45b Hunter", "DA-53s Disruptor", Sergeant, Rifleman, "BB-45j Javelin", "Scout Sniper", "Heavy Gunner", Marksman, "BC-45i Storm Trooper", "DA-53s Disruptor", "Heavy Gunner", Rifleman, Engineer, Operative, Corporal, Rifleman,

Scrapper: Kat/Bio - This is as close to my favorite original as anything. Long long ago in a galaxy far far away this was a Kat/Regen, later rebuilt as Kat/WP, and the latest version was rebuilt as Kat/Bio. EnM/EnA - This is my current monster. But Kat/Bio will always have a special place in my heart.

Oddly enough, for the ASF I found Resist Armors did as well as anything. I do not expect this to hold true in heavy ddr hardmode content. Resist armors start to fail at 7 and higher in 801. But the hardmode devs also acknowledge this, and don't plan on designing anything that I would rate above 7. So while Resist armor may take a pounding in heavy ddr content, it should in theory still balance out well. At the very least it should balance out well 'when teamed'. Ex: Put a few team buffs on a resist cap tank, and you have the equivalent of a perma-T9 juggernaut. My primary hardmode tank is SD/RadM, her ddr seldom drops below 95, and I manage resists as best I can. Her primary weakness is sappers, and secondary is sustained long term resistances, I can't keep them all capped all the time, just mostly. My secondary hardmode tank is Inv/RadM, not as durable as the SD, lower DDR, but so much easier to drive. She practically drives herself. Confuse has been the most annoying part of the hardmode I've done. For lower difficulty hardmode where inspirations are still available, the team breakfrees last 3 minutes. It's worth it to carry a couple just for the confuse. You could also swap clarion in for the confuse heavy missions, then swap back to the your normal whatever in the rest. I normally rune Ageless +DDR.

Yes, I will and do use boxing as a filler. But Primarily for the 5% SLFC defense. 40 defense vs 45 defense is double incoming damage, and it's a really good idea to have a ~5% defense buffer to cover for debuffs so you don't instantly defense cascade failure and die from one bad hit. You still cascade and die in 2-hits, but that's better than 1. The average play will most likely benefit more from an offensive proc based build, But I do silly things like Soloing TFs with all my builds, including the Emapths, So I tend to prefer Heavier Armor.

Myshkin - is probably a build of theirs I modified. It's an offensive build that still has reasonable support Strauss - is a mix of armor, offense, and support. The 0 build is the cheap starting point, the 6 build the expensive endpoint Burke - is about as traditional and conservative as any of my builds will get. The 0 build is the cheap starting point, the 6 build the expensive endpoint. Emp Energy - Strauss 5 - [i26].mxd Emp Energy - Strauss IO - [i26].mxd Emp Energy - Burke 6 - [i26].mxd Emp Energy - Burke IO - [i26].mxd Emp Energy - Sir Myshkin 3 - [i26].mxd

This is what happens when you mix roleplaying, character stories, and powergaming. "We might not approve of everything Sissy does, nor approve of all of her friends, but she is OUR Sissy damnit and they ARE her Fiends, uh Friends." - Angel Hornet One of Angel's sisters is a Carnie, so I use a lot of Carnie pets, just because. The other half of my characters frequently have IDF, just because. Just as I have more Katana and Dual Pistols than all other attack sets combined, I also have more Carnies and IDF than all others combined. Bots are probably third on that list, simply because they are 'well behaved'. 'Well Behaved' goes a long way when pets are frequently otherwise insta-squished. Yes, the Dark Ring Mistress is nice vs those T9 Armors and certain other hard targets. There probably are better choices, but I just really like the carnies. Yes, the Support does work, but you have to keep her close, and let her pre-cast the buffs before combat works best. Her recharges are terribly long, so it's probably just that. A Player with the same powers would have them recharged 3x or 4x more often. I also toggle her modes sometimes to make her twitch and be more useful. Toggle Attack Aggressive then toggle back to Defense Follow. We ran a spontaneous semi-random successful 801.F just a week or two ago. Half the team was from channel, the other half random LFG, but the team came together exceptionally well, so we got crazy and tried F, and pulled it off. F is hex for 15, Difficulty 15 of 15.

How to Drive an Angel Hornet – EnM/EnA Hardmode Scrapper I should note that you do not need to be nearly as durable as any of my builds for standard teams in standard content. I play almost exclusively in Hard Mode Content and 801. The average player on the average team will most likely benefit more from an offensive proc build, than a Heavy Armor build. I get asked about my builds somewhat frequently. Usually asking how I’m so durable, or sometimes asking why a mirror or similar build doesn’t perform as well. So I thought I would finally sit down and make a few notes on my builds and playstyle. The primary answer is that I’m not that durable, it’s just an illusion. I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you, and I only have to outrun you until the bear catches you. The better answer is my builds perform in waves, with peaks and valleys. I try to synchronize the peaks to when I need them most, while attempting to minimize exposure during the valleys. Rune/Hybrid/Rune/Demonic/Wedding Band/Kitchen Sink Once upon a time this was effectively perma. Now the gaps are a bit more prevalent, but can still be patched up fairly well with Demonic, Wedding Band, Phase Shift, Inspirations, and/or other temps. Note: Demonic is an accolade and is therefore available in Hard-Mode. Tier 9 Armor Synchronization. I try to synchronize Ageless Radial +DDR with Overload and Rune. Then follow with Hybrid. If you pre-sync Ageless, then you can align and mitigate the crashes as well. Then follow with Rune, Demonic, etc., during the crashes. Additional Armor This will mostly be a small orange for extra resist and rdr here and there to counter debuffs, or a Kinetic Dampener for E resists and SL defense to help counter defense debuffs or enemy buffs. But you also have Wedding_Band, Base Buffs, Amplifiers, Combat Shield, and many other Temps and Accolades to help with extreme situations. You can also Triple Stack Energy Drain and Shadow Meld as noted below, and put them on top of Full Tier 9 Synchronized Armors for pushing extremely high defense vs some of the more severe Hard Mode situations. Tier 9 Armor Crashes The best way to deal with crashes is to back off, use Energize, Recovery Serum, Ageless. Then ease back into the edges of the fight with Energy Drain and Shadow_Meld. If you’re facing a tad more pressure spin up Rune, Hybrid, Wedding Band, or Oranges. If it’s extreme, then maybe Dual Def/Res Inpsirations. If it’s completely bonkers, you add in more tools from below. Demonic – Demonic is an accolade, so it works even on master and hardmode 4 settings. This lets you bridge 2 x 3m full armor syncs together for 6.5 to 7.0m of pure offense. The duration varies due to crash timing. However, you can greatly stack crash timing in your favor by using Energize and Recovery Serum right before the crash. This doubles your odds of not having to toggle everything back up. Triple Stacked Energy_Drain and Shadow_Meld – If you’re heading into a crash and Demonic is down, you can (triple stack Energy_Drain for about 17 defense), and (Shadowmeld for another 30 defense with 50/50 uptime). If you’ve synced your Ageless DDR you can also use that for maximizing DDR. Now all you have to do is deal with resistance Either with Wedding_Band or Inspirations. Phase Shift – If you’re facing a severe crash and excessive pressure then you can Energize, Recovery Serum, Phase, Ageless, Toggle Back up and then pull up Demonic, Inspirations, Temps, or all of the above, to come back into the fight at full power. 30 to 60s later all your T9s should be up and ready to resync. Active Combat Numbers (Simulated to save time, in some cases the other various powers are recharged, but there are combat states where this isn't the case.) Standard Loadout, Getting Ready to Sync and Dive in. - If you presync ageless it refreshes with Hybrid and syncs with your crash. If you start with Rune, then Rune becomes your crash timer and you'll KNOW when the crash is coming +/- 1 second. Also, if you start with Rune, you have Rune/Hybrid/(Rune and Crash) so Rune is covering your crash if Demonic and/or Wedding band isn't. If you are using Rune as a timer, then you can also time Triple ED, and then right before the crash (Energize, Recovery Serum, ShadowMeld), such that the crash happens while ShadowMeld is animating, giving you maximum defense layered with tail end Rune resists to cover while you toggle back up, if toggling is needed. You can also Phase Shift instead for a simpler approach, but that also locks out offense that might be critical in some situations. Synced Rune Armor - This is my bread and butter, and the primary concept behind the build. *** Synced Hybrid Triple ED SM *** - This is (almost) the top of the Performance Peak. The only time you'd need this is Hard Mode or Other Enemies with Extreme Buffs. I've had to use this level of Armor, but it's very rare, and the extra animation time will dip into your offense. .... If you want to get really insane, you can stack in Demonic, Inspirations, Wedding Band, etc for even more craziness, and just hardcap everything. 🙄 Demonic Triple ED SM Transition Synced Rune Armor with some Leftover ED from the Transition. The latter will expire soon. Tail End Rune Triple ED SM Transition Triple ED SM Transition. - (Simulated to save time, yes in this actual case the T9s are recharged, but there's a transition when they are not.) Triple ED Transition after SM and everything else has failed. Unless I fumble a crash, this is typically the bottom of the performance valley. - (Simulated to save time, yes in this actual case the T9s are recharged, but there's a transition when they are not.)

Don't be afraid to set 'No Bosses' if you're a lower ST damage tank. +0x8 No Bosses may well be double xp/hour for your particular build or level.

Clarion Radial * PBU * FF: There's some diminishing returns these days, but it's till worth it. It was something like +75 defense total with all your powers stacking, now it's +65 or something defense. You have to time the bubbles perfectly, you can ONLY cast them when you can stack all two or three powers, or a lower value bubble over-writes the higher value bubble reducing defense. A Clarion*PBU*Vengeance is a beautiful thing too. Here's a very old FF/Beam build and a fairly low level laid back relaxed Bots/FF MM FF Beam Soul Sniper - Heavy Support 57-74 - Overwatch 1 - [i25].mxd Bots FF - Fire-n-Forget 2 - [i26].mxd And here's a non-PBU just regular, heavy armor FF/DP FF DP Scorpion Def - STF SLE 1c - [i25].mxd I still run the MM when I'm feeling lazy, and the Heavy Armor STF build if I feel like squishy tanking, but I don't think I currently have any of the Heavy Support builds on HC.

If an EAfn joins the team, I generally assume we can bump the the difficulty up a tier. ... I do the same for an FF, or particularly a PBU*FF, but that's another subject. Most other Support I count as about half a tier. Unless it's Voltak or Lummi, in which case I bump it back up to a full tier. @Voltak I can't believe you play without the combat monitor turned on. *shakes head* Credit to @Celtic Ripper. That's his RadA/RadM Tank, in a difficulty 15. I normally don't rate RadA/ higher than 7. I personally don't drive RadA/ nearly that well. Looks like we lost him to a connection issue about halfway into that room. He comes back later. I'm not sure which build Namon (the other tank) was. This is a good example of why I like to have two tanks, just in case something happens to one of them. Some nice enemy nukes landing in the middle of that furball.

Radiation Armor is a resist set, you'll want to resist cap first, THEN add defense. At that point you have to decide on MRA or SLEFC type of defense, in general SLEFC is easier to obtain. Then you have to decide if you want to full SLEFC and/or add NTP, or just so SL or SLE. SL is by far the easiest to obtain, and SL is by far the most incoming damage. E, particularly in incarnate content is the next highest incoming damage. If you go SL or SLE you can also supplement with temps like Kinetic Dampeners which are relatively cheap, and then shift some of the SL defense resources to EFC and/or NTP instead. If for whatever reason you still prefer MRA type defenses, then you'll have to decide if you are fighting primarily on the ground and in melee, or fighting either Hover-Tank or far to the rear at max range to avoid melee. Then you put resources into your playstyle preference. I really don't recommend this direction as it 'usually' (but not always) yields lower results.