Zect

There were already 5 thumbs down by the time I came round to add mine. Great work, everyone! For the OP, I suggest exploring build design principles a little. Once you're more familiar with the constraints that builds operate under, you'll appreciate a lot more why this change would be significantly imbalancing.

Staff is defensively very powerful. It's a parry set that can also get a resistance buff. The problem is that coh has become more and more about dps exclusively, so a defensive melee set is a hard sell - compare the whines about storm blast not doing enough dps on blasters. Then there's also the issue that defensive sets are inherently stronger on defensive AT's because of how def and res work in this game, where every point of def and res is more valuable than the last. Staff is much better on a tanker where the much higher mitigation numbers let you throw everything into procs and still be indestructible in nearly all babymode content. On a scrapper, a 75% res cap AT getting 10% from sky splitter, the numbers are just not good enough to be worth much.

Flares: 53.55 DPA Fire blast: 58.35 DPA Fireball: 62.81 DPA Endgame high-rech builds usually skip flares, and use fireball as a 2nd filler attack instead. However, this is difficult for a leveling build as the rech and endurance requirements are heavy. The fact that you state you play 1-50 more, and that you assume in your OP that you need two of flares/fireblast/arcane bolt, suggests that you frequently lack enough filler attacks for a gapless attack chain while leveling. In that case, you can take both fire blast and flares - a 2nd attack usable while mezzed may also be more useful to something that's not an endgame uberbuild. Arcane bolt has a lower DPA than any of these attacks, if you ignore arcane power. It also doesn't give defiance (the damage buff that all blaster native attacks give), and a long-animating attack has other disadvantages like overkill and corpse blasting. I don't have data on arcane bolt procrates, however I suspect it's unlikely to be better.

In principle, I agree. Always communicate with other players, and set and respect expectations. In practice... let's just say that if you "accidentally" toggle on enemies buffed players debuffed, and some idiot runs off to play the Rambo (because some people still pretend that soloing on a TF is impressive in 2023), dies, and ragequits in a huff, I will applaud loudly. Heroes getting humiliated never gets old!

The @Hyperstrike build is very low quality. And I'm not saying this because I have something against them; they're not important enough for that. I'm saying it because the build has mistakes and shows a lack of understanding of the powersets/AT in question. A post-mortem will increase your power levels, while educating you on build design basics. First, a number of obvious errors: No double-stacked active defense No shield charge 10% regen bonus violates rule of 5 Assault core hybrid All shields should strongly consider double-stacking active defense (recharge <= 60s, though in practice it's not a big deal to be a couple off). The -def resistance it gives stacks with itself. 1 stack of active defense: 52.8% -def resistance. 2 stacks: just over 70%. 2 stacks and ageless radial T4: perma-95% -def resist - basically an SR. Always double-stack AD - it doesn't need a lot of rech. There's also no shield charge and no gaussian chance for BU proc in Build Up. You may not know that shield charge does extra damage to enemies within 5ft of the impact point. Axe/shield can use axe cyclone to vacuum up mobs, then shield charge into the group, hitting all of them with the extra damage. Combined with BU that has a very high chance of proccing the gaussian proc, this helps quickly wipe all non-bosses and decrease incoming dps and debuffs. Secondly, looking at the choice of attacks: My suggestion is to drop cleave because unlike most melee T9's, it has abnormally low DPA (lower than all but Chop) and is only worth it unless every use cleaves at least 2 targets. This will then give us a power choice and slots to invest in shield charge. We can still achieve a gapless or near-gapless attack chain by investing in rech, which will help with 2x AD as well. Next, when you open up the build in mids this is what you see: Note the uneven defense spread of 62.3/47.0/42.3 M/R/Aoe. This means that you are either severely undercapped to R/Aoe, or overcapped to melee (representing excess set bonuses that are wasted and should be diverted elsewhere for more benefit). When defense is your primary line of mitigation, you should pick an even breakpoint, as opposed to randomly picking up defense bonuses. Note also that aoe is undercapped even to normal enemies. While aoes are less frequent, a lot of the hardest-hitting attacks in the game are aoes (it's very common for AV's to have blaster nukes, for example). I sure hope you weren't expecting phalanx fighting to pick up the slack. I personally recommend defense in the 46% to 50% range across the board, no more, to softcap and give a small buffer against debuffs. I don't recommend softcapping vs incarnate enemies on shield (requires 59.5%) , because the benefits are not significant enough to matter. Now that we've established our build goals, we can look at the slotting. Remember what I said about Gaussian's proc up there? If we decide to add that to this power, then a mere 3 extra slots gives us 7.5% def (+2.5% to each position), a massive slot-efficiency gain. This should clue us in to the fact that we can trim defense bonuses from elsewhere to invest in a 6x gaussians. This is 5 added slots spent for 3.19% ranged def and very little else. Pass! When slotting 2 different sets in the same power like this, your slot-efficiency takes a hit. You spent 5 slots, but you only get 4 set bonuses. There are many valid applications for split slotting, but it should always be done carefully, and you should always ask if the same bonus can be obtained elsewhere. 6x eradication would give valuable aoe def that may enable cutting less-efficient slots elsewhere. Defense enhancement in phalanx fighting only increases the bonus you get when friendly toons are close to you. It does not enhance the always-on portion. The build is overcapped on 10% regen bonuses anyway, so we can trim a slot of lotg here. I'm always curious what forumites see in Underwhelming Farce, a mainstay of lackluster builds everywhere. The proc itself is good, the full set is only competitive under very niche circumstances. Assault is weak on brutes because of the low brute damage scalar (0.75). On the hardest hitting power, swoop, assault only adds 10 damage. For the same reason, assault core hybrid should not be taken on brutes; you are better off with radial instead, since radial uses melee_tempdamage which is 1.0 on all AT's. I love how you stop short of the 6th piece bonus for 4.5% SL res. Forumites and passing up extremely powerful set bonuses, name a more matching pair. This set is not bad if you take all 6 pieces (it would then give a respectable 1.35% Resistance Per Added Slot), taking advantage of the SL res to trim slots from Deflection. 5 pieces puts you in the same circle of sinners as people who slot 3x armageddon. Finally: something that is not strictly a mistake, but should really be made clear when giving builds to other people - the hyperstrike build needs ageless to work. Without ageless, net eps is only +1.08. * * * And now, my fixes: Now that is a respectable amount of rech, and I didn't even need to toggle on any incarnate powers to inflate the stats! For 30% less regen, this build sports superior dps, rech and resistances, and has a more balanced defense spread backed up by solid -def resistance. It is designed to use the same incarnate loadout as the hyperstrike build: with ageless core T4, you will have nearly permahaste (~121s rech) as long as you always remember to click them both together as well as nearly-doublestacked AD. It can do a chain of chop > gash > swoop > (small gap after the first minute of ageless). Note that the eradications must be boosted +5. As a lv30 set, it has poor enhancement value. I want to point out some subtle optimizations here, notably, the SL res in aegis. Often, investing in res set bonuses over enhancing the actual res toggles is a bad idea. However, shields always suffer some build tension in Deflection since they want the SL res but also need to fit a lot of defense sets. Using the SL res from Aegis allows us to spend fewer slots enhancing res in deflection. The loss of EN res by not slotting an unbreakable guard is made up by slotting 5x basilisk's. In turn, the aoe def and rech from both these sets dovetail nicely with our build goals above. Spotting synergistic interactions like this can be very helpful to achieving multiple build goals simultaneously. Would I play this build myself? Nope! My own axe/shields are built around a different alpha/incarnate loadout. I recommend you trim back some EN res; there's not much difference between 61% and 51% EN res, or for that matter 44% and 34%, the numbers you'll get without owts on (which only has unenhanceable 33% uptime). With those slots, you could invest in a prevmed proc, a kismet, get some health enhancement in true grit, more regen etc. which will lead to overall more survivability. Doing so is left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: consider a travel power-less build (since you don't need slow res as much on a defense toon) and/or experiment with a different epic.

Modern ice/storm attack chains are generally T1>BIB>T1>FR or T2>BIB>FR (which is better depends on procs and rech). Taking both the T1 and T2 blast hurts ST damage by occupying more of the attack chain's animation time with lower-DPA attacks and by increasing slot expenditure. Attacks are very slot-intensive. Taking more attacks than you need means fewer slots devoted to set-muling, utility powers, or even slotting the attacks properly. On the other hand, if one wants more attacks for reasons of concept or subjective playfeel then by all means do so. I completely respect, and strongly encourage, sacrificing character power for subjective enjoyment.

What you encountered is very nice when it happens, though not reliably replicable through any means I found. It was fairly common in early-mid 2008 for teams who could not outdps the healing nictus and/or tank Rom and the mire nictus to attempt to pull just one of the AV's away using ranged attacks, with results that are charitably described as mixed. I used the oldschool way of Longbow lore pets, one of the better pets that deal -regen. Plant Lore Longbow pets (command to stay, otherwise the Cataphract tries to melee) some distance from Rom and immobilize him within their range with epic immobs. However, in the ITF this is still a very torturous process since every 25% of Rom's health the ambush spawns, and they inevitably kill the lore pets, so I would then retreat and wait for them to recharge. You further need to attract aggro from the mire nictus before the longbow cataphract can damage it with its aoe grenade and then kite it around while shooting rom. If the cataphract grenades aggro it, it will kill the lore pets in a single hit. I used a 2nd build specifically for it, because sentinel epic immobs are extremely costly. There are very likely more efficient strategies out there; however, I've long since lost interest in no insps no temps soloing of anything.

The most serious issues have been dealt with already, so I will just emphasize a few salient points: 1. Make sure you slot KB2KD in your attacks, especially aoe attacks such as trip mine and nova. Energy is only a mid-tier dps set, because it is a top-tier soft control and mitigation set. If you don't abuse this mitigation, you are not properly exploiting the set's unique advantages. You should consult the Nemu build above, because it does include these procs. 2. You should take and use aim even though you already have targeting drone. Aim, when slotted with the gaussian's chance for build up proc, has a very high change of proccing it on demand (can be capped at 90%, depending on how much rech you have in aim). Aim-BU combined with your nuke and other powers such as tripmine delivers a powerful broadside that instantly wipes all non-bosses reducing incoming damage and mezzes, and Aim can be popped while moving in to engage ensuring minimal exposure to return fire. Aim-BU is a key reason why blasters are overpowered in the current meta; abuse ruthlessly, and make devs cry. 3. While energy is indeed one of the primaries that doesn't need haste for its ST attack chain, haste is nevertheless very useful for it and for all blaster primaries that have a 145s or longer base cooldown nuke. The reason is that at permahasten levels of rech, the nuke's recharge shortens to ~40s or less which is close to the amount of time it takes most teams to kill a spawn and move to the next, allowing you to use it almost every engagement. If you go from nuking every other spawn to nuking every spawn, that is twice the number of nukes used (a +100% increase). This demonstrates the power of hitting a performance breakpoint. 4. In your original build, you are not 8s away from permahasten, nor will a single FF proc perma it. Mids naively assumes that all rech buffs are permanent, even when they are not. When hasten is not permanent, only part of its duration is buffed by its own +rech and therefore its actual recharge is longer than what Mids displays. A lot of people have no idea how to deal with rech buffs that are only active for part of the power's duration and can only hope that things will work out in practice. The math, and its derivation, is discussed in detail here, however I will just inform you that given the following: Your global rech that is permanent: 83.8% Rech enhancement in hasten: 95.9% Hasten base cooldown time: 450s Hasten's buff: 70.0% for 120s ...Hasten, in your original build, will recharge in 130.85s. If you get a single FF proc during that time, this shortens to 129.07s, assuming that the proc runs for its full duration (not cut off by Hasten completing its recharge). Simple algebra will show that the number of procs required to make hasten permanent with this amount of global rech is 7, assuming they all run for their full duration (6 procs gives a recharge of 120.13s). In general, if you are already familiar with the more well-known recharge formula of Recharge = Cooldown / Real time elapsed, a single FF proc is mathematically equivalent to shaving 5s off the power's base (not remaining) cooldown. Hence, for hasten, recharge required for permahasten = 450 / 120 = 3.75, or 375% (but the power natively has 100%, so you need another +275% from enhancements and global rech, including Hasten's own +70%). If we expect to get a single FF proc during those 120s, the rech required decreases to 445 / 120 = 370.08%, or +270.08% from enhancements and global rech.

There are posts stating that pain is more offensive and emp is more defensive. Pain and emp differ in the mitigation and offensive buffs they provide, e.g. +res from pain vs +def from emp, and there are situations where one is more effective than the other. However, viewed as a whole they both have high defensive and offensive capacity. The real differences are: Emp is more small-group-focussed, while pain is much less so. Emp has two powerful buffs that are single-target (fort and AM, both of which comprise much of its defensive power), pain has only one (Painbringer, and it's slightly weaker than AM for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this discussion). Like Ant-Man, Emp gets proportionally stronger as the team size shrinks, up to a limit; on 4- and 5- mans, a good emp can powerboost-fort every single player except themselves easily. Emp potentially has significantly more endurance management capacity. Even though recovery aura can't be made permanent, it can have very good uptime on permahasten+ builds, and Pain does not have anything comparable so you cannot as easily counter drain-heavy environments. Emp has a considerably higher skill floor (minimum skill level needed to achieve acceptable performance) than emp, and it is possibly the most skill-demanding support set - which doesn't say much for a game that's overall very easy to play at all levels, but still. This is especially true since emp's critical buffs have multiple uses, both offensive and defensive, and myriad interactions with other players and powers. Optimal play of emp involves not only high battlefield awareness, but also efficient decision-making skills backed up by extensive game knowledge. For example, identifying when a critical teammate is suffering from slow and diverting the next AM to them to prevent a wipe (because you know that it gives slow resist), all in the middle of upkeeping fort on most of the party, spot healing, blasting, and keeping an eye on the recharges of multiple critical powers (fort, auras, powerboost). For Pain you mostly just need to upkeep your area buffs and decide who is getting painbringer.

I came to explain why the OP's idea is terrible, and found that numerous people have already done so. Excellent display of civic-mindedness. Increasing target caps is an indirect (but extremely powerful) buff to aoe powers, which are already very strong in coh, so this idea is awful, too. Knowing how not to engage above the tank's target cap if necessary is just something players need to learn.

Despite being an orange circle set, DB's combos are not impactful. They are toys to play with but high end optimization ignores them. DB is a followup set (like claws), with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails. Like most lethal sets, it can fit double -res procs. This is why it tends to shine in pylon tests, although in "real world" situations it's not bad, either. The 3 strongest attacks are ablative strike, blinding feint (followup), and sweeping strike. In addition to these nearly all toons will take the PBAoE. 1k cuts is a matter of taste. Some people swear by it, others pass. I personally prefer epic aoes which are much stronger. Historically, the best attack chain was BF AS SS AS. With current technology it is possible at extreme levels of rech to do BF AS SS which is a slight gain (significant gain if SS hits > 1 target). I remain unconvinced the required build compromises are worth it.

This build is not bad for a tanking tanker, or as I like to call them, turtle-tanks. In general, you've hit upon the right idea by attempting to hardcap most/all resistances and building for high recharge. Nevertheless, there are mistakes and inefficiencies in your build. First of all, you do not, in fact, have permahasten. You may have mistaken this to be the case because the FF proc in kick is toggled on. you have 137.5% global rech. Assuming a standard slotting of 2x +5 level 50 common rech IO's in hasten, permahasten is ~156% with agility core T4, though in practice it's okay to be a few seconds off. I'll discuss some ways to boost rech below. The Impervium armor +psi resist can be swapped for a 6th armageddon. This gives the same psi res, but 6% more tox res. Furthermore, instead of slotting the aegis proc and impervium proc, you can slot 2x impervium procs in different powers. It's not a big deal but the mez resist on aegis is not significant for an armored AT. The preventive med proc can be removed and the slotting of energize changed to 6x prevmed. This gives slightly less rech enhancement, but slightly more FC and SL res and rech set bonuses. The way you went about getting melee def in general can be improved. Melee def is an okay build goal for such builds because the sets required are generally ones you slot anyway in the course of pursuing res bonuses. However, 6x gaussian's is inefficient (the aoe and ranged def won't make a big difference) and so is 4x kinetic combat (typed defense, not positional). Here is an example of an improvement: Slot tough: 4x unbreakable guard (incl proc - move it here from charged armor which is the stronger power) Slot fusion: 3x adj targeting My above suggestion re: prevmed should provide enough res that you are now res capped without the 4x multistrike in spring attack. Remove all slots from spring attack. Redistribute the defense uniques in your other armor toggles. Unslot kinetic combats. You gained 5.25% EN res and 5 free slots at the cost of only 0.625 melee def (still softcapped). The higher enhancement value in Tough provides enough SL res that you can drop a piece of Might of the Tanker or Gauntleted fist (recommended to drop dam/rech) because you are still SL res hardcapped and do not need the SL res 6th slot bonus. Radioactive smash can be slotted with some other set you like, e.g. 6x hecatomb for F/C/psi/tox resistances, rech and acc., A different possibility is to slot 6x oblits in spring attack (if you actually desire to use the power) and remove gaussian's and kincombat. You only have 55% -rech res. -rech res is important for most resist sets because you do not dodge debuffs, and slows are annoyingly prevalent - even the council, everyone's favorite whipping boys, have marksmen and galaxies. You can fairly easily fix this by putting a winter's gift +20% slow res in SJ and with a spare slot, mule 2x blistering cold in boxing. This gives 90% -rech resistance, a respectable amount. That said, superior blistering colds are like 25 million apiece so I understand if you demur. An alternative is 3x synapse's shock in power sink for 5% less slow resistance, if you can spare a slot. If you can spare an extra 2 slots, you can slot weave as 4x shieldwall incl proc, 1x reactive defenses proc, 1x lotg 7.5. This gives 4.5% EN res, 2.25% HP and the same amount of regen. This, combined with my recommendations above, completely closes the negative res hole. This is important because nictus are a major endgame villain group.

If you read the post you're quoting, you'll see it says 3x might of the tanker proc. That's the secret sauce. (Which - and yes, I know the posted image is just for fun - I don't recommend, because it's a 6PPM, 10s duration proc. Developer intent is clearly that you can maintain 1 stack on average, no more. Don't get too used to it, then feel bad when it's inevitably fixed.)

This post was so passive-aggressive and veiled in insinuations. If you think I'm being elitist or denigrating, just say it. "Zect, calling normal mode 'babymode' insults the people who play it," and explain why. And I'll have you know that like the overwhelming majority of players, I play babymode content and do so frequently, enthusiastically and joyfully.

I was a skeptic myself, but having tried it out, I changed my mind. There are ways to deal with the crash, it is nowhere as hard as you're making it out to be. However, it's not for players used to a very passive playstyle where you expect to not have to pay attention to clickies and buffs (such players should go with the set bonus route instead).

Counters/Weaknesses of resistance: Debuffs. Def sets double-dip since missed attacks do not debuff and def sets are primarily concerned with -def resistance. Resist sets eat much more debuffs and careful attention needs to be paid to patching up key debuff resistances (e.g. -rech). I often see poor build design where high-rech resistance armors fail to build for >80% slow resist resulting in complete loss of offensive and sustain capacity against something as lowly as the moonfire TF mish full of council galaxies. Low slot-efficiency. A Huge def bonus is 3.75% def; a Huge resistance bonus is only 4.5% res. An Ultimate def bonus is 5% def; an Ultimate res bonus is only 6% res. Hence, against enemies with standard tohit, Resistance bonuses of the same tier provide less mitigation than defense. Build tension with offensive power. Generally, the most slot-efficient resistance bonuses come from attack sets (ATIO's, purples and winter sets). This is unlike def where considerably more of the most slot-efficient options come from non-attack sets. Strengths of resistance: Enemy tohit agnostic: You are much less affected by enemies with bonus tohit, incarnate mobs, or hard mode mobs. This makes it substantially easier to determine breakpoints for general-purpose builds that are meant to go anywhere and do anything. This also makes resist stronger in a high tohit environment because the slot-efficiency required for defense sets to softcap vs incarnate/HM mobs tends to be costly if not prohibitive. Spike damage resistant: You have much more time to react to incoming damage. High def low res armors tend to face spiky incoming damage profiles which demand faster reaction times. The order of resistance set bonuses, from most abundant to least abundant, goes approximately: Psi/F/C (psi is higher than tox, due to the presence of impervium armor) Tox EN SL (however, SL is usually covered by toughness, so you usually need less of it) Since resist set bonuses always have lower slot-efficiency, it's important not just to look at a list of set bonuses in the mids set bonus finder, but also be aware of situations where you can double-dip and get good resistances to two or more damtypes, or also get a large recharge or other bonus, for maximum slot-efficiency. For example, I often see awfully made builds that slot only 3x purples for the FC res. In some cases I see terrible slottings such as 3x armageddon 3x avalanche for a total of 12% FC res. A better slotting such as 6x armageddon provides 6% FC 6% psitox res (12% total) - the same amount of res, but packing massive acc and rech bonuses as well. You can then trade-out psi res for FC res elsewhere in the build to meet your FC res build goal (or just do the same thing again with a different purple set). An important tip is to look beyond typical brute power choices and be aware of where else you can slot sets that achieve the above. Ranged, mez and taoe powers in particular open up many slot-efficient choices not usually available in brute primary attacks. For example, 6x bombardment is a rare set that offers 5% rech, 2.2% SL and 4.5% EN res. Even though its slot-efficiency on any single of those bonuses is kind of mediocre, the complete package is actually a worthwhile consideration. Another of my favorite examples is the prestige sprint SL trick - you can take all 4 prestige sprints and slot 2x Celerity in each of them, getting 2.25% SL res every time. Consider also the ability of some powersets to use unusual IO sets - for example 3x FF can be considered in KO blow or Crushing uppercut (a decent proc and 3% EN res, or in other words 1.5% RPAS, on par with shield wall - plus the KB enhancement is actually a good thing since both these powers do KU). And remember that brutes can often live with underslotting damage enhancement, because most of brutes' +dmg% comes from fury. A rule of thumb is that there is approximately 35% ~ 40% of reasonably achievable resistance set bonuses in the invention system available for brutes (though this figure includes ATIO's and the res uniques), and slot-efficiency starts to fall off a cliff after that. This means a regen brute will get to around 50-55% res to all, maybe close to 60% if you're willing to cut back slightly on some other build goals, on set bonuses alone. This can be boosted with other defensive powers for when you really need lots of mitigation. My favorite regen brute uses the Defense Chain concept to cycle multiple powerful defensive clickies one aftter another, achieving superlative mitigation with high uptime. I have a gimmick build that has hardcapped (yes, hardcapped) resistance to all with > 90% uptime, and for the rest there's IH. It's a gimmick because it sacrifices a lot of offensive power (no procs, notably), but this shows what is possible with the state of the art.

Softcapped defense mitigates more than hardcapped res does (95% vs 90% of incoming damage), but the most dangerous critters in the game have always been either very debuff heavy, e.g. Vanguard Sword, have tohit bonuses, e.g. hardmode critters, or both e.g. Rularuu. In practice this means that def tends to fail in the situations where you desire tanker survivability the most. Add to the fact that ally def buffs tend to be abundant in-game (e.g. maneuvers) and def inspirations are pound for pound stronger than res ones, and that tends to push max survivability builds towards prioritizing res over def, while maintaining sufficient capacity to softcap def in an emergency or when really needed. However in babymode difficulty (ITF, farms, radios etc) max def and middling resists, with remaining build capacity dedicated to offense is definitely very strong and generally more useful than a turtle-tank. Musc is not bad, though tanker damage scalar (0.95) is still low enough that you can nearly always produce more dps by using the alpha for slot-efficiency and slotting damage procs in your attacks instead. Every tank ST attack can fit at least 4 non-unique damage procs. Of course, if you manage to take both that's even better. In general however you have correctly identified some elements of good build design: designing while keeping the target content in mind, and a proper respect for the value of DPS.

Re: the thread title, yes. Bigotry should be stamped out wherever it pops up. However, remember that homecoming is essentially f2p so it's not too hard for one or a few very persistent trolls to continually make new accounts behind a VPN and come to stir trouble. It's not as though you have to make a purchase, or have played for X period of time to get chat privileges. I consider this more likely than genuine widespread acceptance of hate-based ideologies.

Conventional wisdom for bio is: softcapped def or close to it (some don't softcap all types), permahasten (gives close to 50% uptime on parasitic aura), don't be in the negatives for exotic res when you have offensive adaptation on, and as much SL res as you can fit. However, you are an SS/ which complicates the picture because of the huge defense loss from the rage crash. My recommendation for an incarnate SS/Bio is: 1. Perma doublestacked rage - takes about 172% global rech with spiritual core paragon. This has many synergistic benefits due to the huge tohit bonus (+40% unslotted) overpowering enemy debuffs and allowing you to skimp or eliminate acc slotting in many attacks and heals. Being able to slot less/zero acc due to insane rage bonuses is one of the big privileges of grossly overpowered SS toons. Don't waste it. 2. Barrier* destiny - the strongest overall destiny and the perfect solution to your rage crash. With doublestacked rage, it will crash every minute. On odd minutes, you use barrier destiny. On even minutes, you use parasitic aura. This way, you have a burst of mitigation or sustain every time your defenses drop. Your build is very bad with many inefficient choices, hasten over 30s away from perma at the best (the essence of bio is always: recharge recharge recharge), positional defense sets on a typed defense armor, and all sorts of amateur build design mistakes. You slot the weaker resist unique but not the stronger (where's the shield wall?), I don't know what TotH and ToE are supposed to do for your build (better options: 5x doctwounds +optional 1 common acc or 6x prevmed provide rech, resists and a useful proc; 2-3x 53 D-sync reconstruction saves slots while providing good enhancement value) You also manage to skip all the best powers from your epic and pools, though I can't tell if this is a deliberate concept choice; if it is, I completely respect giving up character power for concept. Carry on. If it's not, then you really want arctic breath over school of sharks, the -res and knockdown make it the star of mako's epic. * I know a lot of people will try to tell you to go ageless for the debuff resist. This is questionable since the -def resist is ineffective unless you have native -def resist to stack it with. For every 2 minute cycle, ageless radial T4 provides: 85.50% res to all debuffs for the first 30s 63.75% for the next 30s 21.25% for the last 60s Bio has zero native -def res. Zero. This means that half of the time, a Romulus Centurion will hit you and you lose 8% def instead of 10% and start to defense cascade anyway. It's objectively, mathematically worthless. The debuff res from Ageless radial is good on sets that already have middling amounts of debuff resist to stack with it, such as invuln (but then invuln is not usually a set that demands high rech, so you have to think carefully about whether you're getting your destiny's worth there, too.)

Invuln has a relatively hard time hardcapping resists through set bonuses alone because it has below-average exotic resists, in exchange for above-average SL resists and substantial+def. Its unenhanced exotic resists from passives and toggles combined are 20% on tankers (Psi: 15%). Most tanker toggles give 30% to damtypes they are not intended to be weak against, with elec being higher across the board. Res enhancement enters red ED at around +50% enhancement value, and there is approximately 50%* of easily achievable resistance set bonuses in the IO system. That means that an invuln tanker can reasonably get to ~80% exotic resists. However, slot-efficiency sinks deeper than the wreckage of the Titanic trying to get that last 10%. Your options are, and you may need more than one of them: Barrier core T4 (can be considered perma-5% def & res to all). This means passing on rebirth or ageless. Take a resistance alpha, usually cardiac (resilient does not provide enough slot-efficiency given invuln's low base exotic resists). Note that this means passing on agility which in turn means a harder time getting perma-DP and softcapping def, and costs offensive power. Take a 2ndary with a res bonus - this is the route you choose. Use Unstoppable. This is technically not "passive" since it is not permanent, but it deserves a mention as the route that best preserves offensive power (procs). Suck it up and get the set bonuses. This tends to cost all your damage and recharge potential and generally relegates you to the status of a turtle-tank. Further, the slot-efficient resistance bonuses tend to come from attack IO sets, so some powersets struggle harder than others depending on how many attacks they want to take, and what kinds of powers they have access too; it may limit your choice of epic and pool powers too since invuln is already costly on power choices. * Includes the res uniques, 1 stack of Might of the tanker proc, and non-stupid build design Pick your poison. Your build above relies on rune of protection which only has 1/3 uptime, which is okay if you are taking advantage of the lower resistance needed to build in offensive power. But you don't do that, and relying on rune is also not what I would usually consider "passive 90%". You choose some very inefficient sets such as aegis (the SL res is wasted) and harmonized healing (harmonized healing??). The @Xandyr build has a severe psi/tox hole due to failure to leverage purple sets for FC and psitox resists; 6x armageddon for example is effectively 12% resist, or 2.4% RPAS, on top of formidable acc and rech bonuses. Both of you make critical mistakes, such as failing to split up gauntleted fist into two sets of 3x for EN res, and non-perma dull pain; accoladed invulns should always shoot for perma-max HP because of its powerful synergistic effect with your high mitigations.

Up to this point, you are correct. Everything else in your post is wrong. The correct change is to nerf tankers. Brutes are just fine and fun to play as long as you don't have to wonder why you aren't playing the AT with both superior defenses and superior DPS.

This idea is just dumb, before even getting into tech debt and version control and so on. If a powerset is nerfed to preserve balance and players are allowed to still play the legacy un-nerfed version, then what's the point of balance changes in the first place? This is just a way for munchkins to try and dodge the well-deserved nerfs headed your way. Finally, pushback against the FF revamp has nothing to do with "veterans" not liking the new changes. It is because I and numerous others realize that 1) the continued proliferation of -res is harmful to the game - there are now only three (out of 16) buffdebuff sets with no -res, and one of them is kin; that 2) adding the most powerful offensive debuff to the most defensively powerful set makes it grossly overpowered; and 3) in general this is reflective of a failure to make a pure defensive set worth playing (basically, dps is too valuable in the current iteration of the game).

Medicine has never been a meta pick (which is what people usually mean when they ask if something is "worth it"). If all you care about is the meta, you can stop reading here. Arguments against aid self: 1. It costs animation time to use, and hence, causes dps loss on a dps AT. 2. It can be interrupted, unlike most healing powers. 3. It competes with the meta power pool layout which is flight/leaping, haste, fighting, leadership (you can make an argument for no leadership on some toons though). You often do need hasten for top tier attack chains unless you are taking a recharge alpha (which, again, translates to dps loss on a dps AT from not taking musc). 4. There are many more sources of healing in the modern game, such as claiming super greens from email or various temp powers and procs. Note though that passive procs such as panacea are weaker on stalkers and other low EHP toons because you have less luxury to wait to see if they kick in. Tankers with high EHP buffers can afford to risk engaging even if they hit a proc drought. Arguments in favor of aid self: 1. Like all healing and regeneration, it works against all damtypes, all vectors, irresistible damage, and autohit damage. 2. According to the Tanker Equation: survivability = mitigation x healing x DPS. On a toon with high mit and high DPS such as your SR stalker, small amounts of sustain can significantly extend survival times especially in a no insp no temps scenario. Medicine sees some use in niche applications, mainly no insp no temps soloing of AVs and other hard targets on high-mit, low-sustain sets. If that's your playstyle, you may want to consider it. Otherwise, avoid unless you know what you're doing.

Power boost can be used as an alpha absorber. It boosts your +def toggles for its duration, and on a rech build has close to 50% uptime. Think of it as a slightly weaker small purple you can activate on a cooldown.

No to unnecessary difficulty settings that further fragment the playerbase. Yes to proper balancing and beefing-up of existing enemy groups in all content to fix power creep over the years, diversify and refresh the meta, counter imbalanced builds/playstyles, and provide a fun gameplay environment for all players.