mcdoogss

I'm leveling a D/D tank now, so far it's fun and powerful. It's definitely expensive as you pretty much have to slot the best IOs you can to reduce end costs, and enhance recharge/accuracy. On that note, don't fall into the defense trap with Dark/* (but especially with dark melee). The set craves global recharge and accuracy and while you can softcap all positionals doing so will absolutely force you to compromise both of those (and closing the energy resist hole). IMO defense is the tertiary mitigation layer for Dark/ after resistance and healz. I might even put soft control and damage (dead enemies cant hurt you afterall) as priorites above softcapping ranged/aoe defense as well

I thoroughly enjoyed leveling my Crab Spider. However they play differently than tankers or brutes. They do have available melee attacks, however they dont have a full melee attack chain (a single target attack w/ 4s cd, a melee cone 10s, pbaoe 20s). They don't have taunt so they can't really hold aggro. They can be easily built to have layered scrapper-level survivability though. Softcapped positionals with 50-70% resistances across the board is doable without sacrificing too much, plus a dull pain clone self heal and good status protection, not to mention toggles that buff the team (think leadership buffs with lower endurance costs and higher bonuses). In my opinion, the most effective two approaches with crabs are: 1) ranged AOE-focused tankmage. Basically a better version of a Sentinel, you have a seamless aoe rotation with venom, frag, suppression and at least one of the AOE attacks from mu or leviathan pools. ST is adequate on your own and supplemented for hard targets with the summoned arachnobots 2) crabbermind. You still have soft capped defenses, and more than decent resistances/status protection as well as your AE buff toggles but you also have 6 pets and loads of recharge to resummon them often. This kind of build can pump out obscene DPS on hard targets, but fair warning the pets die a lot in +4/x8 content solo. practically any approach you take with a VEAT will be a superb teammate This is a crabbermind build i have saved although it's a bit old and out of date now

Both Banes and Crabs lack DDR. It makes more sense for Crabs to have that 'hole' in their defenses given that they are, generally, a ranged-focus branch and have Serum and Fortification for healing and higher resistances. Banes on the other hand, are a melee focused defense-first branch. They lose the Crab self heal and their resistance armor is significantly worse than Fortification. A reasonable amount of built-in DDR (say ~20-30%) would go a long way to stiffening up pure Bane survivability without making them overpowered imo. As it is, Banes are a bit of a melee eggshell. Both 'pure' NIght Widow and Bane Spider branches should be considered candidates for a mechanism similar to Assassin's Focus. As it is, the opening critical (unless you waste a power slot on placate) is only a gimmick.

In this game? Poorly. Basically whacking a Rikti Pylon and estimating the DPS by how long it takes to break. It's the best method out there though, despite the myriad ways the results are not representative of real gameplay DPS.

Recommend reading through the "Brunker" guide from @Sovera on the front page here too if you are looking for Fire/ synergies. I certainly disdained Fire/ tankers until I read that thread and started up a Fire/Ice.

Welp the numbers don't lie: GIS is a turd. I'm experimenting dropping energy mastery for Soul, and using a procced out Gloom instead. We'll see how this goes, probably fine until it isn't (aka heavy -tohit debuff mobs)

the new trick arrow is so good, my TA/A defender is so much more fun than most defenders I’ve played

So I took my Fire/Ice through the Faultline arc, and by 21/22 was at +1/x6 with bosses which actually meant I outleveled the arc. Even at this difficulty versus Arachnos though I didn't have real problems, the aoe was just too strong. The only thing that was even annoying was the night widow blinds. However, there were definitely signs that this wouldn't be as smooth as any of my other tankers (since all my others have defense or hyrid sets like Inv and Stone). After finishing at 27 I went to croatoa and this time totally outleveled the Skipper part, so went straight from gordern brewer to kelly nemmers to buck salinger if you are familiar. The Cabal were annoying, the bosses have gobs of hp, -to hit (hurricane), and knockback. Red caps, tuatha, firbolg were absolute cake though, by this time S/L/F res is capped. I was at x8 by lvl 28-29. Then came the hard times. At 37 I tried to start the NIght watch story arc. Couldn't get past the first mission, the one with the extremely hard to see specters that just look like they reused the tornado animations. Anyways, pure energy damage, -to hit, end drain, probably other debuffs absolutely tore this partially built fire tanker apart. Ok, can't win them all so bounced over redside to do the Black Scorpion patron unlock arc. Crey were cake even if there were times I was surrounded by 5-6 Paragon Protectors with MOG active lol. Malta was another eye opener on the gap between resist sets vs defense sets in mitigation effectiveness. Sappers of course were the primary threat, and FT deletes them (if it hits) with a couple caveats. Having to close to melee means they always get a shot off (the end drain happens at the very start of their slow animation it felt like), low defense means it usually hits, and it's so potent that pre emptive Consume doesnt do enough, better to eat it, kill the sapper and then refill the whole bar. Also, on x8 very often there are multiple groups in close proximity which meant multiple sapper situations. The rest of Malta is no joke either with -recharge and -regeneration debuffs which, being a resist based toon hit very frequently. LOTS of LOS + ice patch shenanigans to clear those maps at +1/x8 (especially since Gunslingers have no melee attacks, so you have to get them to group together somehow). Anyways finished that with arc and on to the PI arcs. Here's the build I'm working on. I definitely build more defensively than maybe is the 'brunker spirit' but that's how I always build toons, call it a character flaw. With one stack ATO +res it has 90/90/90/74/73/73/58/73 S/L/F/C/E/N/T/P and 40% S/L, 42.5% Melee. I sacrifice a decent amount of slots to paper over the psi (and lesser extent toxic) hole, if I don't do that I can easily softcap S/L/M, so we'll see how it performs vs later psi heavy groups. I do take GIS, it sucks but not quite as much as frozen fists and with it i have to use FF less. I tried kick as a +recharge attack but it's got a horrible proc rate. Overall even with the three purple sets I can fit recharge is only ok. I might drop the one in burn to turn it into a proc-bomb, undecided there.

Spring attack procced out can do decent burst

Ok I'm not going to lie, I was super biased against /Ice, being such an old powerset that I remember as being, well, wimpy with lame animations. So I started a Fire/Stj which is ok, animations are nice and crisp and crunchy but I didn't love the combo into the mid 20s. So I rolled a Fire/Ice and I gotta say, BU + Frost + Burn is amazing. /Ice still has old, kinda lame animations and sound effect but I'm just chewing through mobs (halfway through the Faultline arc now, lvl 23 x6 w/ bosses)

I don’t like necessarily the long solo level experience anymore. So I use the 2x XP and do The Faultline arc (17-24is), croatoa arc (25-34ish), night ward (34-39ish), tina mcintyre(40-44), maria jenkins (45-49ish). then sprinkle in other arcs or TFs

For a different take here's my latest Bots/Traps that I've picked back up. I play this guy as a pure melee tankermind. Due to building towards tankerminding, I felt I needed Fighting, Jumping, Leadership and Presence which means no hasten. However, I have more than enough global recharge (it's an expensive build) from set bonuses and FF +recharge procs for a seamless melee attack chain and poison trap every group. Due to my softcapped defenses (S/L/Melee is softcapped before the protector bot bubbles, after all positionals are softcapped) I can almost always toe bomb with trip mine, although I don't bother often. CC comes from poison trap and bonfire primarily, the bots and mine knockdowns and caltrops secondarily. The fighting pool chain is actually decent (for a MM anyways) ST dps, which is useful against +3/4 bosses because minion bots just tickle them and bots struggle with ST damage in general. Also, procced out spring attack is a fun opener/movement power. I could see dropping trip mine for say a procced out photon grenade or fireball maybe if you wanted a more reliable aoe

Agreed, I definitely have to take the alpha with bodyguard mode. Usually I open with dropping freezing rain, hopefully the mezzes miss, and then tornado and then Gale to put them back on their backsides. Mystic Ward plus me taking the alpha is actually pretty helpful keeping the arsonist alive until the s$%^ really hits the fan. One thing I've noticed is tornado only proccs the lady grey when it gets initially dropped if its right on some mobs (same with the FF +recharge). The smashing proc from Explosive strike does proc throughout the duration but very very rarely, reminds me of damage procs in caltrops, rains, dmg auras so I figured I'd be better enhancing dmg/recharge/end and set bonsues. Also experimenting with Defense enhancements in the enforcers, trying to see how close I can get the henchmen to softcap before incarnates My current build Storm is just an endurance heavy set. Either I go Cardiac and give up more damage, or I go ageless and give up clarion/rebirth but something has to change if i'm going to play it past 50. I don't like having to chomp blues if I want to do anything useful in a fight after dropping my best individual contributions freezing rain, tornado and lightning storm

Right but in non-incarnate content the +1 level shift is pretty important I'd say

Be a pretty drastic indirect Mastermind nerf. Why can't lvl 54 mobs be buffed instead again, or new challenging endgame content created?

Or go the other way, and dual box with a second crabbermind. 12 DEF softcapped pets sounds pretty dope, even if you cant really control them

May I suggest a Soldier of Arachnos? Hunstman or ranged Crab Spider sounds up your alley. They are at least as survivable as sentinels, with more damage potential plus very good low maintenance team buffs. Added bonus, the AT flexible, so you only need to level one with multiple builds to switch, say, huntsman to pure bane to crabbermind My Huntsman Crabbermind If you like the idea of stalkers, why not give a Widow/fortunata a shot? Again excellent survivability and much better than sentinel level damage, with great team buffs. Here's my melee fortunata build (ie seemless melee attack chain for the highest possible ST dps, plus the best of Fortunata in the pbaoes of psychic wail and aura of confusion).

I use it quite a bit actually on my Thugs/Storm, it also has a base recharge marginally higher than Dual weild 7s vs 6s, so it procs just a little more often

I have a t4 Stone/EM (after the energy melee and teleport buffs) that is just delightful. The definition of unkillable, with pretty close to my fully built human-form PB's melee damage (at least ST) in Granite. Really, it was one of my favorite toons to level and finish building. I'm convinced most people who talk down Stone/ just havent played one recently

The canonical example is Force Field defender. The same reasons that make it boring to play makes it perfect for your use case

yeah I'm not at 50 yet on my thugs/Storm but it's definitely overall less powerful than my 50 Bots/Traps was while leveling. I think that's entirely down to Traps just being a better set overall (prior to incarnates anyways) than Storm. It's much more endurance friendly and FFG is a game changer due to the mez reisstance you just dont have in /Storm. It makes those late 30s through mid 40s levels much much smoother for /Traps. because /storm won't have powers slotted well enough to even run all the defensive toggles to try to avoid avoid mezzes (at least not without just standing around doing nothing lol) through soft capping S/L/E. Thugs is quite a bit more powerful overall than Bots.

How about Demons/TA? Is there any synergy there? i’m leveling a thugs/storm which is fun if not a bit late blooming, but I love the new TA set and have never tried it on a MM now have I ever built a demons MM

I just fired up ESO for the first time in at least 4 or 5 years, man I do not remember a thing about this game. I have 4 level 50s and I quit fairly soonafter the Champoin Point things was implemented (190CP, I think they are account-wide?) but I don't remember a damn thing. I might stick with it and level a necormancer or warden though, why not? EDIT: nvm, I can't commit to un-learning what I remember and re-learning the whole game, it's just too different (I quit well before they removed veteran ranks, its been that long)

Well then why not leave granite for the people who do want to chase even more survivability even at a cost

I agree, also suppression is great for applying soft control via either knockdown procs or the terrorize SoA proc (or both). And sure the DPA isn't great but it does hit a LOT of targets, recharges relatively quickly, and applies -DEF. After Venom (and maybe even arctic breath) suppression is still worth activating imo