mcdoogss

I took all Bio powers, and in BA only skip Beheader and Taunt. I'd never recommend skipping parasitic, it's one of the better tier 9s, up every other mob, and in x8 spawns makes you borderline unkillable with massive regen. If you only want to solo AV/GMs then I guess its not as great, but why Tanker in that case? Some folks skip Gash but I don't know how you'd have a decent ST attack chain without it (and exemping would be pretty rough). You'd really be relying on FF recharge procs, plus Gash is a good attack in its own right. BIO/Axe is an awesome combo with great synergy imo but it's a tight build due to so many good powers. Tanker (Bio Armor - Battle Axe).mbd

I just came back to homecoming after a couple of years, and I just got my first Bio Armor character to 50. I didn't have quite the same experience in the 40-50 range but my secondary is BA. I love fire melee but I think BA has a stronger synergy with Bio. So much KD means both soft control (more regen ticks without incoming damage) and FF +recharge can be up a ridiculous amount. 40-50 running +2/x8 the only times I ran into big issues like you experienced is those Mother Mayhem praetorian missions with tons of psionic damage + debuffs. I think /BA really helps Bio shine.

Could you be bothered to just, like, link to some sort of details/patch notes/etc? It might help manufacturing with your outrage

I haven't played Rad Armor, but it has a reputation as a smooth leveling tanker primary as well as being probably the toughest resistance set (along with DA, but DA is not imo a smooth leveling primary). Fire/ is squishier than all other armors but once you get Burn you pretty much can start cranking the team size when solo, which means more XP per mission. SR/ is another very smooth leveler, being soft capped at an early level makes leveling a breeze. A bit of an eggshell at times though Shield/Invuln are both fantastic hybrid armor sets, both level well and are just about equally top-tier toughness at the end game. Shield is a bit more active and has more tools to boost damage, invuln is marginally tougher (dont @ me i know thats a controversial opinion). /Ice is a very good set overall. Frost on a tanker is easily the best melee cone (it can even take range enhancements weirdly), ice patch is great soft mitigation especially when leveling, frozen aura is a decent pbaoe. It's only a little light on ST damage because greater ice sword kinda sucks. /DM is a solid all around set with good utility with siphon life and dark consumption and -toHit on every attack. Kind of the flip side of /Ice in that the AOE is only adequate but the ST is very good. the new ToF loves dmg procs /Energy after revamp is probably the best ST set for tankers overall, with decent AE.

Is there an ETA or typical timeline from when power changes from a patch like Page 3 go live and then get rolled out to Mids?

In addition for people pairing Dark Armor with Dark Melee, if you have room for it siphon life procs theft of essence pretty regularly too. Very useful given siphon life is a very end-heavy ST attack (same end cost as midnight grasp and more than shadow maul or touch of fear). If you have no recharge in the power at all, the +end proc makes it darn near end neutral.

Dark/Dark is dope, and it does synergize well (also Dark melee is just a pretty solid melee set on it's own). D/D though doesnt really utilize OG very well, CoF is the CC aura that synergizes best with dark melee (ToF will stack fear on the target to keep bosses shivering plus more -toHit). CoF is an end hog though in a end heavy armor set. So, you may want to try out a melee set that compliments Oppressive Gloom's disorient. I'm thinking Dark Armor/Energy Melee would keep not just all minions punch drunk, but should stack and take LTs out of the fight with power crash and then the ST damage is obviously stellar and every ST attack has disorient so bosses will be staggering around too.

In my experience, the FF proc isn't terribly reliable in cross punch. YMMV but so far I've found on my Fire/Ice that burn + frost + frozen aura pretty much has most groups on the ground besides the bosses. Cross punch is probably a better power than Greater Ice Sword though all things considered.

Fire/Ice is dope. Frost is probably the best melee cone in the game right now, and it comes in at lvl 4.

OP seemed pretty clear he's looking for the most survivability.

Gotta be Granite, is crazy no one has a build up for it now. I paired it with the frankly overtuned energy melee and it's a beast (this is an older build though, so there could be some tuning done). Granite is so good that it allows a lot of slotting leeway to proc out attack powers. When you wake up from your nap and decide to start punching stuff, you'll like what you see. Also has a heal, but you'll never need it even versus heavy Psi

The last two tankers I tried to take through the main FW/NW arcs were Fire/ and Dark/. They were both a slog, lots of Energy damage (both sets have a hole there) and debuffs that really hurt partially built heroes (-toHit, -recharge, end drain, etc).

The crowd funding thing is sketchy in general, but especially for things like video games and movies. There are no real consequences for taking crowd funded money and producing nothing, and if you actually pull off the unlikely and create a viable, marketable product the public 'angel investors' get nothing. Basically, it's socialized risk for privatized reward, and that's shady territory full of grifters with good sales pitches.

interesting. They have raised like $350M or more to date now, so it feels like if its not vaporware its at least a scam to not have a fully production game by now.

more so than Star Citizen?

I think if/when I do Dark/ again, I'm going to lean into disorient stacking and run Dark/Energy. OG plus almost every EM attack does disorient, should keep err'body stumbling around drunk. OG on D/D just wasn't useful enough, minions die within seconds and the mag is too low to effect even Lts.

Yep I agree, like I said most of the vulnerabilities we talk about for the top tanker sets (so like invul, shield, dark, rad, etc) are only real issues while leveling/exempting or underbuilt

The danger of debuffs does change depending on the armor set. Dark/ for example suffers under heavy -tohit and -recharge debuffs as it has no native resistance to either (as both make dark regen less effective). But I agree, almost every tanker armor set has potential to make the tanker unkillable in all non-AE situations at the 'endgame' when fully IO'd. Mainly I feel like the discussion/contention between armor sets revolves around 'holes' or vulnerabilities that only effectively exist whilst leveling.

If we are talking layered defense sets, let's not leave out Granite. Ok ok, it's crazy overkill sure, there is nothing in the game that requires this much survivability. But it' still fun to never be in danger. I also think that relatively few people have built stone/ tankers recently and are biased against it because of the reputation of the drawbacks of Granite. I'd urge you to pair it with an admittedly overtuned set like Energy Melee, and the revamped Teleportation pool.

Agreed, Defense on a resist-based set is especially useful for blunting the alpha from large groups of mobs, probably more to limit debuff stacking than damage spikes.

No one else mentioned Ice so I will, Frost is a great cone/targeted aoe that comes at level 4, Frozen aura is a decent pbaoe, and Ice patch helps immensiely while leveling with papering over the survivabilty gaps in Fire/ with soft control.

Hope you dont mind a late entry. Here's the D/D tank I'm working on now. I tried to love Cloak of Fear but the end cost is too high, and Oppressive Gloom isn't super effective with Dark Melee because of the low magnitude. Basically soul drain -> shadow maul -> touch of fear has the minions on the floor. I'd imagine offensive sets that have baked in disorient as a secondary effect (energy melee/ss) would synergize better with Oppressive Gloom I don't chase defense, but I have Melee soft capped and S/L at 40 (so factor in the 5% base of Barrier and they are soft capped too). Defense is a nice to have for a Dark tanker imo, but the main and secondary mitigation comes from resistance and healing. With two +res ATO procs I'm capped to S/L/F/C/N/P, 82% to Energy and ~59% toxic. Focused accuracy and Physical Perfection give -toHit resistance (86.5, which is huge given how floored toHit means we cant heal or kill) and some end relief with another slot for the +end proc. Not bad for one slot wonders. Also has 11 knockback protection and 75% -recharge resitance

Whoa the beta videos of ship of heroes look pretty rough.

Just an endurance reduction unless you have spare slots and want a particular set bonus (adjusted targeting has a 3 slot energy res bonus iirc). On it’s own it gives something like 86% toHit debuff resistance, so it’s very useful to toggle on for those fights you know are -toHit heavy

I think you are a bit over indexed on resistance. You are capped with only one +res proc in S/L/F/C/N/P which is a bit overkill. I also think you are chasing defense a little too much and so spreading it too thinly instead of focusing on S/L/M defense. Defense is great, but for Dark/ it's a tertiary layer of mitigation behind resistance and healing. Also only having 4 knockback protection will cause a problem. As you mention, the biggest dangers come from debuffs that make healing difficuly/impossible. So -toHit means dark regen can't hit anyone (and obv your damage plummets), -recharge means dark regen isn't available when you need it (and also neither are your attack), and end drain, while you do have resistance Dark is so end hungry that even 15% of the usual end drain can be a burden. To that end, the only way to get -toHit resistance is Focused Acurracy. We can move some slots around to get ~65% -recharge resistance. Are you dead set on Gloom/Soul Tentacles? Because if not, you could switch to Energy mastery and pick up two one slot wonders in Focused Accuracy (to negate -toHit) and Physical Perfection (another place to slot perf enh +end proc) Savage Leap is underslotted i think, this power really likes procs from what I remember. I moved some stuff around here