Hyperstrike

However, none these considerations really affect the end goal of "Toughness". They are (mostly) ancillary issues that make being the toughest thing on map "painful".

I'm a Tank. To the question of "Tough Enough?", I say HERESY! Gold standard for survivability is still a Stone Tank in Granite. Invuln is down from that a bit, but for 99.9% of things you'll never notice. Posi & Numina, no real problems unless your team is VERY sloppy. Yes, I've tanked Recluse with the towers up. Care needs to be taken however. You can push En/Neg Resists into the 70's without serious compromise elsewhere. But, outside of Hover-tanking, you may need to use some Purple and Orange inspies. But, unlike some other builds, you can get away with the small ones. ITF? No problem. DA is a tough one. Because the RNG Gods, when they hate you, they REALLY hate you. Sometimes you're fine. Sometimes you're going, "HEY! Where'd my EVERYTHING go?" But if you can get in and saturate Invincibility fast enough, you're good. Tanking Hami on an Invuln with a decent support team isn't terribly harrowing. But if your support team is having problems, it gets ugly FAST. My current live build can farm just fine. A maximized rebuild would barely notice.

The game's 16 years old. And there's been VAST changes to the game since Issue 1. So it's normal that erroneous data "brain farts" like this happen from time to time. If you catch one, do your best to be civil in your correction. If it's you, just cop to it with an "I done goofed!" and carry on. Just remember though. *I* am ALWAYS right! So if I tell you the sky is puke brown, you BETTER take it as GOSPEL!

Nah. No biggie. The game's been going for 16 years. And it's changed a metric buttload since Issue 1. Small, virtually meaningless brain-farts like this are bound to happen. Like my screw-up with Invulnerable.

The blaster, at the time, was straight "MOAR DAMAGE PLS!" built. No defense, no mitigation. Your typical "Kill Fast, Go Splat". After spending a couple hours on the "Go Splat", I rebuilt for Blast-Tanking. Damage isn't nearly so impressive. But I'm the one standing atop the ash pile at the end.

You're using mutually exclusive terminology again...

Nicholas Cage? OKAY! I TAKE IT BACK! DIE! DIE DIE DIE!!!!

Not a good build. But a speedy Stoner!

Yeah it was. It's what I get for posting half-awake. What I say in correction is: With Invincible, with regards to DR, I've already extracted optimal enhancement for the slot allotment. Adding more slots wouldn't improve it more than adding CJ, Maneuvers, etc. And single-slotting them to squeeze every last erg out of Invincible would deprive the build of set bonuses. Just testing, slotting as he suggested results in a 0.2% S/L Defense gain, a 0.1% E/N Defense gain and a 0.0% Defense gain. C'est la vie. Exactly my point. Thanks for the correction on Invincible and addressing it in a civil manner.

1: Frankly, no. 2: I'm not pushing for 1.25% SLEN. I'm pushing for standard Defense soft-cap on all typed (save Psi) Defense while capping SL Resist and bumping the other types up as much as feasible. And if Defense is much beyond 45%, that's just a side-effect of the slotting. 3: Afterburner is basically an "Oh Shit!" button to help offset swarmed Defense debuffs. 4: Depends on how you come by the Hami-Os. 5: You call it "poor Defense slotting". Show me an alternative that is similarly durable, but with all your supposed "fat" cut out. 6: Yes. But going your way leaves you sub-soft-capped at range from your enemies. The way I've built, you basically walk around soft-capped with zero enemies in range of Invincibility. The way it's slotted gets most of the value from the IOs put in place, avoiding DR altogether. 7: To each his own. As to "shouldn't". This is your opinion. My preference for classes with actual armor sets is to make them as durable as I can. If you like the "wing and a prayer" thing, great for you. 8: Don't have access to the Artillery set as the current version of Mids is violently unstable and mostly prone to outputting corrupted builds. Otherwise I probably would have. 9: I don't normally throw builds out with boosters on. If someone wants to squeeze that little bit more out, that's up to them. As for "acting like a baller". I'm just going to laugh, because that's about the only response this idiotic and pointlessly hostile statement deserves.

The RNGods are the RNGods. Unknowable are their reasons. Unfathomable are their actions.

You've never played a blaster unless you've left tongue imprints on the floor.

Nah. I've been on teams full of decent tanks. But I was doing so much damage I was ripping aggro. I'd even wait a couple attacks to get full groups engaged, come in, drop the bomb and whatever didn't die immediately pivoted and would pot-shot me.

Sorry but no. Cascading Defense Failure actually refers to the way swarming debuffs make it more likely the next debuff will land, further swarming the effect. This has nothing to do with DDR. You can STILL have CDF, even with extensive quantities of DDR. It just becomes less LIKELY.

Honestly, I see this stuff all day, every day IRL. So I'm rather...irritated to see it infesting my passtime too. I am going to say the following, then STFU on any further commentary. If it offends you, I don't care. I believe that nobody of any race, creed, orientation, WHATEVER, "deserved" to die the way George Floyd did. I even agree with the basic BLM principle that we've got further to go in race relations. Unfortunately, once the riots, arson, looting, and murders started. And after the calls came to defund/abolish police forces, they lost me. Completely and utterly. Don't give a damn how mad you are. That stuff is never, EVER justified. PERIOD. As it stands which of these three are going to be most remembered in 6-12 months time? George Floyd was murdered by a bad cop, with other bad cops looking on? That there were peaceful demonstrations? Riots, arson, looting, violent assaults, murders and general, widespread thuggery? If one could HONESTLY answer #1 or even just #2? I'd be fine. But this is reality we're talking about. Okay, I think I've said my piece. I will not be answering in this thread or to any posts on this subject in the future (and will block people that try).

"Where are you guys?" "Look for the giant, throbbing spotlight on the sky..."

Yep. With everything running, it's ridiculously easy to lose your cursor over and over and over again.

Heh. No problems with that. My PM is open any time.

Honestly? The fact that we CAN find slots for LOTGs that easily argues for Hasten being MORE of a necessity. ESPECIALLY if there's some way to achieve Perma or near-perma due to the massive increase in damage output it represents. Ye olde toughness-vs-kill-speed balancing act.

That's the thing with Tanks though. Most of them are so damn tough that things like self-heals become "Oh Shit" buttons. Granted, on clicky-mez, you're still 115,000% right (plus or minus a percent or three). But on something like a well-built Inv/SS, you do NOT need to have Dull Pain up 24/7. So you can move over to something like Hasten.

Hashtag Standard Code Rant

*GROUSE*GROUSE*GROUSE* "What's wrong?" "My damn kid in college! He's bankrupting me!" *GROUSE*GROUSE*GROUSE*

Yeah, what I'm saying is that the changes required to proliferate the set would probably just be better put into a new set. Because what'd emerge from the rework would bear very little resemblance (if any) to SS as we know it. And I know "cottage rule" isn't REALLY "a thing" anymore. But making changes to sets THAT drastic are... Let's just say that huge of a switch is SEVERELY off-putting and leave it there.

I dislike "scranker". But I AM prone to Tank-Lock. This is probably how I'd have gone after Fire/Claws.

Also, don't go overboard slotting your Resists and Defenses up front. Make sure you have plenty of slots in your attacks. For TO/DO/SO and generic IO, I generally will build attacks to 5 slots and stop there. First slot: +Acc Second: +Damage Third slot: +Acc Fourth: +Damage Fifth: Either +EndRedux or +Recharge (totally preference) In most regular content at even-level, it pretty much assures you'll hit pretty much everything. For armors, again in the TO/DO/SO and generic IO phase, I look for three slots. First slot: +Resist/+Defense Second: +Resist/+Defense Third: +EndRedux Now, in a couple places you have hybrids where you can slot BOTH +Resist AND + Defense One of these can be 5 slotted First slot: +Resist Second: +Defense Third: +EndRedux Fourth: +Resist Fifth: +Defense If you get a hybrid Resist/Heal or Defense/Heal, you can slot them similarly. For +ToHit/+Damage/Hasten, etc. Your optimal investment is 2 slots. Diminishing Returns makes much beyond that a waste. Quick and dirty is just two +Recharges so they're up as often as possible. Now, once you get L40-50, come on back and start asking about an end-game build. Note: I really DO NOT recommend you attempt to level up using an end-game build as a template. Have had friends try to do that, and the slog was absolutely BRUTAL.