Zect

Define "stronger". That said, tankers currently have a more optimal balance of defense and offense than scrappers do. They lose some offense, but gain a vast amount of defense, compared to scrappers. That in turn allows them to solo things that are impossible or at least very difficult for scrappers to do so.

This is the correct explanation. When you use power boost, both farsight and defense toggles are boosted. However, defense toggles in this game are not a constant effect. The toggle applies a defense buff with a duration of 0.75s every 0.50s, constantly refreshing itself to reflect buffs and debuffs on your person. This is unlike farsight, which is a singular copy of an effect that snapshots the conditions when it was cast and lasts 120s after. (See FF dispersion bubble/shields for another example.) When building in mids, toggle off defense toggles first. Note the difference in farsight's def with and without power boost. Subtract this difference from your defense build goal to know how much defense you need to build for. Otherwise, you'll quickly find out that you are not in fact softcapped after 15s.

That's technically correct; however, you're also missing the point. The real power of team insps (and other super pack goodies) lies not in having them in the tray, but in character items which allows you to claim an unlimited stream of them even mid-combat. It's how solo STF runs are done. Agreed that this game is easy mode, though, including "hard mode".

Brutes outdamage tankers in general; this is still the case. The issue with brute/tanker balance is more that tanker damage has been buffed excessively, to the point that tankers now have a more optimal ratio of survivability to damage. This is especially true on res sets since res is very tough to build for and tankers have an advantage in capping EN res (the hardest res to build for) with their ATIO. The tanker melee damage scalar is 0.95 (buffed from 0.80). You just need to ask yourself whether an armored, mez protected AT with tanker scalar HP and tanker scalar defenses should be doing 95% of blaster base melee dps, and you'll see why brutes should not be tuned up; tankers need to be tuned down.

Re: fighting pool, the forumites telling you to skip it are wrong. As a cold fender, you are going to be less-protected than the members of your team who benefit from your shields. Right now, you can protect your team, but your team cannot effectively protect you in return. Poor defenses also reduces the effectiveness of your team support powers, because you must wait for armored AT's to engage before deploying debuffs, so your -res powers are only deployed after all the strongest attacks have gone out. A well-built fender can initiate before other AT's, ensuring that their debuffs amplify the entire alpha strike, resulting in superior team support capacity. Tough and weave are highly beneficial on a team-oriented build, so your scrapper instincts are correct. You're going to change your mind once you use heatloss for the first time at level 26. (Yes, I said 26. See the most recent patch notes.) It provides so much end that all else is unecessary. Rather than fiddling with slots in power sink, you are better served attaining perma-heatloss and perma-hasten (they both require approximately the same amount of rech) to further increase your team support powers. Remember that power sink does not affect teammates, but heat loss does. Lol. Remember that hasten shortens its own recharge. The recharge time displayed in mids is accurate only if hasten is active for the entire duration. If it is not, then its recharge time will be much longer than displayed, which has a multiplicative effect on your downtime of heatloss and other critical powers. However, there is an easy fix for this. I see there is no alpha slot in your build. Agility alpha and boosting both IO's in hasten to +5 would shorten its rech to 123s. That's still not permanent, but it will be a significant improvement from what you have now. It will also boost the rech of your sleet which is currently very lacking (sleet should have a recharge as close to 15s as possible to doublestack it). The def bonus from agility will also allow you to trim some slots from your defense powers and reassign them to gaining rech set bonuses. You do not need more -def from infrigidate, since you should already be doublestacking sleet which provides a large amount of -def. However, there is a use for this power. Right now, you don't have a complete ST attack chain. Proccing out infrigidate with 5x damage procs 1x achilles heel will provide a respectable attack that does -def and -res as a bonus. That would be exactly the kind of support your team needs when a hostless nictus pops up on a HM ITF. Speaking as someone who does actually have this power, and has attempted to use it, this power is not practical. The buff itself could be fine (though the recovery is redundant with your heatloss). However, it has a very short range of only 10ft. Even aid other has a 25ft range. It is annoying to use this power on allies, especially since player characters move unpredictably even when out of combat, unlike NPC's. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "I'm a team support defender. I need to take every power that provides a benefit to the team." That's the same mistake that, say, tankers make when they think "I'm a tanker, I tank. I need to sacrifice everything to turtle up as hard as possible!" Or "I'm a blaster, I blast. I should abandon all defense and get as much damage as possible!" Or "I'm an empath. I heal! I need all the heals! (takes field medic)" You should take a more holistic view and recognize that in CoH, 80% of 2 things is far more powerful than 100% of one and 0% of the other. Increasing your recharge, damage, and defenses will indirectly make you a better defender than one that blindly goes all-out on the support aspect. You're better off dropping this for fighting, or taking a movement power in its place that will allow you to easily keep pace with the team and maintain a high team support capacity. I know mids' forum output doesn't display inherent powers. However, there is a datachunk provided. I'm sure you could have at least taken the effort to load the build and see for yourself.

They have agility alpha, so it's fine. An agility cold def with 1-slotted shields running arctic and maneuvers still hands out ~34% def. ED-capping shields boosts that to ~39%. That's not bad, but it's also not essential, and it does not hit a critical breakpoint like 45% on naked toons. This is very optional, but I recommend a switcheroo as follows: Ice shield: lotg Glacial shield: lotg Hover: lotg, shieldwall unique Maneuvers: lotg, 2x red fortune Weave: lotg, 2x red fortune Arctic: 6x reactive defenses This costs the same number of slots, leaves you at nearly 45% def (just +5 a lotg if you absolutely must see nice 45's in mids) and 74% SL res, while gaining 8.5% !! rech. Your hasten will now be nearly nearly permanent. Why red fortunes? Because 2x red fortune gives the same bonus as the 2x reactive defenses you're using. So as an uncommon set, it can potentially be cheaper (but check the AH first). Don't pay the marketeers any more than you need to. - Sincerely, a trillionaire marketeer. True, but generally not an advantage for corrs and fenders, especially with a strong blast set such as fire. This is only useful if it saves you from taking an extra attack elsewhere, e.g. on controllers who do not natively get enough attacks for a full ST chain. For them an additional ST blast will have to come from sorcery (losing a power pool) or the epic (long wait, high level). You don't have mids to see this, but they do have a KD proc in sleet (though sleet has its own 5% chance to KD - it will become KB if they both proc). I recommend another switcheroo as follows: 6x def bastion in fireball 3x vigilant assault (incl proc) in blaze 3x vigilant assault in flares (Flares can afford to be underslotted slightly as it has the lowest damage scale). This way, you heal yourself & team every time you cast fireball in a big mob, and you frequently get an absorb when using blaze on hard ST targets. Blaze is a better proccer than flares. Speaking of procs: as someone who is a fan of procs, and does actually have 2x -res procs in sleet on a lot of my colds, they are not going to make a big difference in killspeed. They are ultimately very trivial luxuries. Procs have a low procrate in large aoe powers. Sleet I personally consider it worth it because you will use sleet on absolutely everything, from trash to single targets like AV's; however if you are looking for slots, think about cutting some of the annihilation -res from your aoe powers. This I would agree with. Here is a way to get more of the same bonus and better enhancement values, using the same number of slots: move the 3x vigilant assaults from one of your ST blasts to sleet (yes, it does go in sleet - try it out), replacing the artilleries. Then slot 3x thunderstrikes in the ST blast instead. 3x artillery is only 1.8% EN def. 3x thunderstrikes is 2.5% EN def. So this is a net gain. This also enables you to get more rech in sleet because vigilant assault is an extremely rech-heavy set. For a final note, you can also consider putting the vigilant assault proc in sleet. The proc notably has half a dual's worth of rech enhancement, as with many ATIO procs. The most important things in soul drain are rech, with a 2ndary consideration of acc (you don't want it to miss when using it on a single target, e.g. AV, though this build can compensate by using aim beforehand). Armageddon is not a bad choice, but there are other possibilities as well. For a typed defense build like this I would recommend considering 3x eradication (+5 if necessary, as a lv30 set it has weak enhancement values) and 1 slot of frankenslotting to cap the rech. The 3.13% EN def from erads can replace one or more of your 3x artilleries. This then opens up the potential for ragnaroks or frozen blasts in the artilleries. For a positional defense build I would recommend considering 6x oblits. If you have 2 sets to slot pbaoes in, double 6x oblits gives 2.5% more melee def than 5x armageddon and 5x avalanche. It's not a bad deal for only 2 slots - just try finding 2.5% melee def for 2 added slots! I also urge considering this. Here are more benefits you can expect, in addition to the better damage from scourge and the cheating by using fender pseudopets to get the same debuff values as fenders. The corr will be able to skip infrigidate, while the fender cannot. (For your first 4 powers on corr, choose flares, ice shield, fire ball, and fly/hover.) With the additional power choice freed up, you will be able to dark mastery instead of soul, and the soul drain from dark has twice the uptime. Finally, the dark consumption you are forced to take as the 1st dark mastery power choice is also a useful set mule. 2x oblits and 3x erads offer highly slot-efficient res and def respectively. The big, big downside of corr is lower def due to a weaker defense buff scalar. Corrs can expect around 5% less def across the board, which is not a trivial amount to lose. However, as a corr there is an easy solution to this: take barrier core as your destiny, which is a very strong destiny in the current meta anyway. The weakest level of barrier core gives +5% def and res to all. So does a defense amp. So you can take barrier in HM TF's, and defense amp + clarion in easy content when you want to be lazy and not deal with mezzes. Finally... If you can afford only one damage proc in blaze, it should be the apoc proc (more damage, higher PPM). This is extremely optional. I'll mention it only because you say this is your main character. A 53 D-sync provocation and a +5 rech common offer nearly the same rech for 2 slots, saving a slot. (You do lose 13% acc enhancement though.) If you've wondered why provocations are 700m apiece, now you know. Overall, however, I must say this is a very well-done build. I'm seeing ambitious build goals, confidently met. You generally have a good grasp of the functions of your powersets and a strong familiarity with the IO system. You avoid many common pitfalls of building such as poor slot-efficiency, and the changes I can suggest to you are primarily minor optimizations. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I come into a thread expecting to explain how terrible your build is to you, only to find something that is by and large competently made. I don't think you should be coming to the forums for advice; you're probably more qualified to provide it.

The build has poor defense and offense. Even SL res, the easiest res to cap, is nowhere near 90%; the complete lack of EN def and res is a death sentence in many situations, too. Ultimately, the quality of a build depends on how well it fulfills its stated goals. If the goal of this build is to provide comedy while being a dark armor brute that cannot even cap negative resist, it's a rousing success. If the goal of this build is to be a powerful, effective coh toon with formidable defenses and powerful offense, it is an abject failure.

Corruption can have positive connotations when used in an ironic way, especially when you look at the kinds of people in society who go on about morality, purity, righteousness and so on. I would eagerly step up to be a corrupter of society's sexual mores; but a blaster or scrapper who is blasting hospitals or scrapping schools in a poorly justified invasion of my neighboring country, not so much. Ultimately, none of these names have ever been very accurate - or the corrupter would've been called the Best. Accept no substitutes. Nor are they very true to comic-book terminology - or the tanker would've been called the Brick (both in terms of powers and average intelligence).

Yes. However, the recharge is too long and the procs it accepts too few to make it a decent attack even maximally procced. You can fit 4 procs in it, for about 300 damage at level 50. And it has a rech that is over twice that of conventional nukes (300s vs 145s). You are better off taking advantage of its ability to slot basilisk and other hold sets with desirable bonuses.

Go all-out. Fire/storm. It's one of the few trollers that does actually good damage. /nature is okay but I don't think it provides all that different a play experience than kin. It's more defensive with less +dmg. Rad is neat and great for superteams, but it's also among the sets that cannot doublestack its -res power. If you want something significantly different - go storm and accept no substitutes.

Sounds great. Why not? However, we don't necessarily need more of the exact same robots palette-swapped. Think more ambitiously and introduce all-new crey units whose background is simply that they incorporate Praetorian tech.

This dates you as someone who never played CoH on live (or probably did so rather late, say circa 2012), lmao. Incarnates were a titanic grind to finish when they first released. i-xp was the least of your worries. You'd need to run khan, ITF, STF/LRSF, and LGTF just for components to make the starting alpha slot power because i-shards were rarer than empaths with a working brain slotted, and you were expected to run the entire gamut of i-trials every day to collect all the empyreans they dropped because getting actual drops from the reward table was like hoping for an SSSR character in a shitty, money-grubbing Korean gacha game. I have nothing in principle against long, epic grinds. However, making a grind that's fun is a skill neither Cryptic nor Paragon studios ever learned. This is a very well-studied topic in game design so I'll spare you the details, but briefly, 1) the game does not dispense dopamine in a frequent and reliable enough way, 2) there's not enough variety to make the grind engaging, and 3) there is no real sense of progression (kill enemies > get loot > kill bigger enemies > get more loot etc.). Till this day, the incarnate grind meta is to baf till you barf. So any revamp of the incarnate system needs to address these three failures in mind and answer the question of how to make a fun grind before deciding to make a long one. It's a pity you're getting so much backlash, because I do in fact agree with plenty of the gripes you and others have with incarnates (if not your proposed solutions). What's not to hate about this terrible system? The horrible UI, the atrocious balance, the awful power creep it brought that destroyed the "old" endgame, the scummy P2W elements (the only reason the Alpha slot has a universal level shift is to sell expacs), etc etc. Not to mention that they went with the LFR/alliance raid approach of "dozens and dozens of players" when coh plays horribly with that many people on the field. Or the whole thorny issue of tacking vertical progression onto an MMO that had been solidly rooted in horizontal progression for over 6 years by then. This last swerve in direction came so far out of left field that till this day, I suspect the idea did not originate from within Paragon Studios itself, but was forced upon them by Nexon's NCsoft's executive meddling. Should the incarnate system be burned to the ground? Absolutely! It's an objectively bad system, and I think the only thing stopping people from saying yes is munchkinism. Can't lose my +1 level shift and my degenerative procs. However, building something to replace it that's not only a legitimate improvement, but would be politically acceptable to the homecoming playerbase at this point, is impossible. Frankly, I'd rather look forward to a new, superior endgame in HM trials and abandon incarnates to the dust of the ages. Edit: NCSoft, not nexon. I got my shady coporate overlords mixed up.

Well, the quick form is what people usually compare. However, it does seem you have a point, because the 2.904s I remembered is the slow (out of combat) cast time. Cod claims that quick snipe is only 1.716s. Which, while still slower than many of the best snipes (compare zapp at 1.33 for eg) is not bad in absolute terms. https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=blaster_ranged.assault_rifle.sniper_rifle&at=blaster So I stand corrected.

They run (it’s afraid, not terrorized). If you are on a team, the armored AT’s will be able to keep enemies in place nonetheless. This is the intended usage for support AT’s such as corrs and fenders. (Teamwork! The heresy!) You can then have an attack chain of burst > ignite > burst > snipe. Most blasters also have the option of replacing one of the bursts with their T1 immob from the 2ndary, in which case they can do it alone. The T1 immob does damage, and done correctly this is only a slight dps loss. (Creative use of multiple powers in combination! Impossible!) Though now I want to try the idea that popped into my head when I last demolished an “AR is terrible” thread: using the frozen blast immob proc in Ignite to see if I can get it to stick enemies in its own burn patch. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets.

First of all: I commend you for actually attempting to elucidate the problem your proposed change will solve. We must correctly identify the issue at hand, then only are we able to proceed towards finding a solution. However, I don't think discounts on super packs will help in the way you think it will - even though I have no objection against the idea. If they are discounted, the supply of the things in them goes up and the value of the things in them correspondingly goes down. Ultimately buying super packs will be little more profitable than it is right now, at least as far as helping less-grindy players goes. I think that you really need to look at the root of the problem, which is that 99% of the fucking game is not rewarding enough. For an illustration of what I mean, just look at the rates for merit rewards. Per i25 patch notes, merit rewards for all content are standardized at a rate of 20 merits/hour. This is what SCoRE, and hence by extension Homecoming team, thinks is fair for you to earn. FYI, that's a pitiful 4 million inf/hour at current market prices. This is why people have always turned to things like farming and marketing, because nobody wants to earn currency in the game at this rate. The game does not dispense dopamine frequently or reliably enough. For starters, I propose increasing the merit reward rate tenfold, to 200 merits/hour, with a floor of 50 merits for any TF's that award less than that. Yes, you read that right, 200. That's roughly the rate that a decent tinpex team can manage (tinpex gives empyreans and i-salvage too, but we can leave that alone since they are not leveling TF's), so there really should be no problem extending this to the rest of the game. This way, you can log in, do whatever for an hour and and come out of it with the majority of a rare set. You can hop on a TF, any TF, and come out with at least enough merits to buy a single rare. That sounds very fair to me. Rewards in this game have always been the most puzzling aspect of it to me. What's the point of making me login all three of my fire farming brutes so I can triplebox afk farm or get 3x merits from soloing a TF? It seems like a weird half-measure - as though the developers don't really like multiboxing but cannot afford to offend the multiboxers too much. What does me creating 3 accounts and logging them all in really add to the game experience? Why not just triple the droprate and ban multiboxing?

The only truly slow non-nuke powers are the snipe (2.904) and flamethrower (2.508), and the latter is compensated for with ridiculously fast cast times on buckshot. If anyone thinks AR is slow, try playing BR. People claim that AR has poor damage typing and no T3 blast. However, AR has always had a T3 blast, and one with the best damtype (fire) at that: ignite. If it catches even 1 extra mob in the patch, it gainss a massive dps advantage. It is left up to the player how to leverage Ignite so that it is an effective T3 blast, making AR a skill-dependent set that offers a different playstyle (a good thing!) This is why I say people do not have a good understanding of how to play AR if they think it's bad. Before asking for buffs, it's critical to first gain a correct understanding of how a set functions, and learn how to play it effectively. The one valid gripe with Full Auto is that it does not fit neatly into the current, oppressive dps meta. And that's not as much a problem with AR as it is with other sets. Essentially, a lot of formerly crashing nukes now sit at an optimal breakpoint where they recharge almost within every-spawn usage range, with 145s base rech. AR, as a set without aim and without such a nuke, does not wipe screenfuls of mobs with a click, leading to misconceptions that it is bad. What I would like to see is these formerly crashing nukes have their rech scale tweaked so that they are pushed sufficiently far out of this range and the damage scale either increased or decreased to match. They should either be available no more than 1/3 spawns on permahasten builds, or have comparable rech and damage to full auto.

Mu Mastery. Also, it doesn't matter for easy content such as farms, but in general don't go Agility on a blaster unless you are taking a def epic shield (in which case you are more likely to gain enough slot-efficiency for the tradeoff to be worth it). Agility core paragon on a non-def-epic blaster is roughly +1.4% def, and the rech is easily found elsewhere. That's rarely worth an alpha slot.

I've speedrun 4* HM ITF on a team of 8 corruptors. Try that with blasters. Don't get me wrong: blasters are still an extremely good AT. They have come a long, long way from the days when fire/MM/mace was the only viable endgame blaster. Arguably, they are probably overpowered now due to how nicely they mesh with the oppressive high-dps meta. They have an unbelievable amount of build flexibility compared to every other AT, and while they generally only do 1 thing well, it just happens to be the most valuable thing in the current meta, i.e. damage. It's just that in CoX the most powerful thing anyone can have is a support powerset.

Identically slotted, corrs and solo fenders are intended to do equal damage. Fender ranged damage scale: 0.65 Corr ranged damage scale: 0.75 Vigilance solo is +30% damage. Fender enhanced damage: 100% base + 95% enhancements + 30% vigilance = 225% Corr enhanced damage: 100% base + 95% enhancements = 195% Fender final damage: 0.65 * 2.25 = 1.4625 Corr final damage: 0.75 * 1.95 = 1.4625 Odd coincidence. Almost as though someone designed it to be that way. (The fender has stronger buff/debuffs, but the corr has scourge.) In practice, for those sets where I have the same combination of powersets on corr and def, the corr has always outdamaged the def solo. I chalk this up to 1. certain corr sets still being bugged and using the fender scale pseudopet for debuffs, 2. killspeed being bottlenecked by the highest-HP target, and scourge shines against high HP targets. The real difference between corrs and fenders is that fender dps is more proc-dependent. For optimal fender builds, agility alpha is often a dps loss. They need to use their superior base stats to meet rech build goals without relying on 5x and 6x set bonuses and agility.

Here are some ways to stay tactful. Criticize the issue or action, not the person. Briefly provide sound reasoning for your comments; the goal is instruction, not compliance. If people do not listen, shrug and move on. I suspect that #3 is where a lot of people struggle with, and it is the key difference between a tip and an order. If someone does not listen to what I have to say, I am not going to harp on the issue. As far as I am concerned, it's their loss and I am not going to throw pearls after swine. Being tactful does not mean you need to sugarcoat everything. Tact does not preclude us from being passionate about a subject or confident in the strength of our reasoning and experience. There is no need to wrap everything in a plastic shell of saccharine, insincere pleases, maybes, could yous, and so on. It makes you sound passive-aggressive and condescending (you treat them as though they cannot handle the facts). I'm personally the opposite of you - I deliberately try to be somewhat blunt and forceful when dispensing free advice to people. One of three things will ensue. 1. They will get defensive. These are people whom knowledge is wasted on. 2. They will be appreciative. These are people who deserve to gain advantage. 3. They will counter with reasoned arguments that point out genuine flaws in my reasoning or expose my own lack of knowledge. This is the best outcome because I came, hoping to give; but instead I received. I find my approach a great time saver because it swiftly gets people to self-sort into the above three categories. Then I can easily decide if I want to engage further with them.

Solo leveling is still a very broad term. Do you want to solo to 50 as efficiently as possible or is your goal to experience a wide variety of arcs on the way there? How okay are you with deliberately avoiding particular enemy groups or racing past problematic level bands? What's the desired difficulty setting (bosses on/off in particular)? etc. That said, saying you want to stay at range narrows it down a little because the only 2ndary that loses literally nothing from staying at range is /TA. It's one of the most flexible and easy to build for, too, so that's likely a good place to start. As for the primary, you can probably pick whichever you like. Given crashless nukes and quick snipes, the blaster primaries are far closer to each other in ST and aoe output than they ever were on live. Even the damage type is not an issue as long as you can avoid groups with resistant enemies. People used to rag on psi all the time because of that spreadsheet that said it was the most resisted damtype, but I recently took a psi blaster 1-50 and absolutely shredded all the clockworks, ghosts, freakshow, DE etc on the way there. It only gets tricky in the 40-50 range where many big enemy groups have psi resistant bosses.

I've said it elsewhere, but elecaff is not a good sapping set. Look at the amount of -end in its powers. It has a lot of -recov, but does not floor blue bars quickly. If you are looking for a good sapper, especially one that is also useful outside of sapping, you should try... wait for it... A blaster. Elec/energy and elec/elec are both perfectly capable drainers. The former has only 60s base rech on power boost (half of corr/fender power boost) allowing you to engage every spawn with power boost. The latter has power sink. They both get this without an epic, meaning they mature far earlier and drain far more reliably. The best thing is that, unlike fenders messing around with transference and whatnot, or elec trollers patiently twiddling thumbs waiting for something, anything to happen, sapping on blasters feels more like something that happens naturally in the course of massacring stuff rather than a distraction from other, better things you could be doing with your time.

Your attitude is extremely admirable. I need to emphasize there is zero shame in admitting one is not particularly skilled at build design or play. On the contrary, one who knows one's limitations shows wisdom which is a far rarer and more precious trait than mere skill or knowledge. With that said... If you want to stretch your toes a little, try rad armor. It is currently extremely strong in the 4* HM ITF meta (which, FYI, is a tank, a kin, 3 or so colds, and half a dozen barrier cores). It has lower defense than Inv, which matters less in such a def-abundant environment, but more sustain with particle shield. High-end rad armor tanks easily cap all resists except cold/psi, particle shield every 30ish seconds for gigantic amounts of absorb, and have 90-100% slow resistance. They easily shrug off the colossi's -recovery/rom's -recharge. Building and playing rad armor also teaches valuable lessons in how to construct res/rech builds as a contrast to turtle builds. An option for those who want something different. A rad armor with a parry 2ndary that stacks double -res procs on AV's and can i-cap its own def in melee is simply the chef's kiss.

Excellent! Some people, when challenged, chose to respond by getting defensive or making irrelevant nitpicks that evade the issues being discussed. On the other hand, you have shown an openness towards new information that can only benefit you. Even if you don't build the way I do, you now have another option in your arsenal of tricks. Open, flexible minds will always have the advantage regardless of circumstances. I want to emphasize how severe the dropoff in slot-efficiency can be with an example. Say you're going for a high-rech permahasten build. The first 32.5% or so rech is basically a freebie, from 5x Lotg. In fact, you probably don't have to spend a single slot on this, since the lotg global fits nicely in the default slot of all your +def powers and mules. The next 50% rech? Not too bad. ATIO's and purples provide high slot-efficiency with strong enhancement values, powerful damage procs and desirable set bonuses. Note, however, that 10% rech is usually a 4-6 piece bonus. Getting this 50% is going to cost us ~20-25 added slots out of 67 total. It's still a good deal, but no longer free money. At this point, with Hasten, you are at 152.5% recharge. You're still 25% or so off permahasten. But this last 25% is going to be expensive indeed. The major recharge bonuses (5%, 6.25%, 7.5%) are typically also 4-6 piece bonuses. Depending on what set muling options you have available, this last 25% could end up costing nearly as many slots as the previous 50%. Our slot efficiency has dropped by up to half, and we've already spent a third or so of our slots - and we still need to build for def and res. The same thing applies to defense, or resists, or anything else. With defense, especially positional defense, the dropoff is even more severe. The first 6% costs only 2 slots. The last 6% could be two 6-piece bonuses. The moral of the story: the more you try to squeeze one particular thing from your budget of IO sets, the lower your slot-efficiency gets. A colloary is that it is far cheaper to get 80% of two things, than it is to get 100% of one and 0% of the other. Remember that freebie 32.5% rech from 5x lotg? Well, it turns out that the defense powers you took to get it provide a fair bit of defense, too. Did you spend 5 slots on Oblits to get 5% rech? For the low, low price of only one more slot, you can have 3.75% melee def! etc. Relating this to the topic at hand, i.e. being how to build for dark, there are some armor sets that can get away with turtling it up, WP and Invuln being classic examples (another reason why they're beginner-friendly, non-skill-dependent sets). Other sets, such as rad, fire and dark, should always ask if a hybrid approach delivers potentially more performance instead. P.S. I found my dark/dark build, and it has similar stats, being about 7.5% undercapped to E/F/C by design. The big difference is only 160% rech instead of 170%, due to slots spent on a procced-out ToF. Superior defensive and offensive power, people.

I'm going to say what I always say in these types of threads: Define "best". You've vaguely outlined "best" as a "turtle build" (i.e. mitigation only, discounting the value of offense and support), which is a start. However, a 4* HM TF and an incarnate trial are very different environments. The interaction with support sets and dependence on player skill also needs to be considered. With that said: inv is always going to be a high contender in most environments as far as turtle power goes, not because it provides the highest theoretical performance, but because it is so hard to screw up. It's not a recharge dependent or click heavy set, it does not have difficult to patch holes (energy) or imbalanced mitigation profiles (such as depending on res against some damtypes and def against others). Its near-cap HP, wide spread of debuff resistances and high mitigations provide a strong foundation on which to layer more defenses and amplify the value of sustains. And its weaknesses, being comparatively low sustain and a very mild psi hole, offer many options to patch them up. Inv is not a skill dependent set to build or play, which is its own very underrated strength. Of far more value than a measly 25% DDR is inv's capped resistance to the Player Stupidity debuff.