KelvinKole

While I don't personally love the set, I have to think Radiation Melee would pair pretty well. You'll add a self heal and damage aura, filling both of those "holes" in shield, on top of very good Aoe damage from atom smasher and the contamination effect being boosted by AAO.

Accurate information about Savage Melee is hard to come by. I don't know the history of the set, but it honestly feels like a beta version that was pushed live. Let's start with the description: "Tear at your foes with deadly animalistic attacks that primarily inflict Lethal damage and cause additional damage over time. Savage Strike, Maiming Slash, Vicious Slash and Savage Leap all grant stacks of Blood Frenzy. Each stack of this buff grants a small damage buff and endurance cost discount. You may have up to 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy active at a time. Blood Frenzy can be maintained, or it can be consumed to empower Shred, Rending Flurry, Blood Thirst and Hemorrhage. Using one of these consumers while you have 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy offers an additional benefit to these powers, but will also leave you Exhausted for a short time. While Exhausted you cannot build Blood Frenzy." A couple things here are not true, or not working correctly. Shred does not consume Blood Frenzy, and neither does Blood Thirst. Shred grants 1 stack of Blood Frenzy and Blood Thirst grants 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy. It probably should read: Savage Strike, Maiming Slash, Shred, Vicious Slash and Savage Leap all grant stacks of Blood Frenzy..........Blood Frenzy can be maintained, or it can be consumed to empower Shred, Rending Flurry, Blood Thirst and Hemorrhage. Additionally, each stack of Blood Frenzy does not grant a small damage buff. Instead, it grants a +recharge buff and the endurance cost discount. You get 4% recharge per stack and 5.65% endurance discount per stack, no damage bonus: But the power details says it gives a 6% endurance discount. Damn rounding. What's the bug? You decide. There's also just a bunch of missing information. Like the damage for Rending Flurry and Savage Leap: And Blood Thirst only applies a +10% tohit +33% damage buff. Perhaps it was paired down from the typical +20% tohit and +80% damage of normal Build Up because of the +damage component of the 5 stacks of Blood Frenzy that it grants.....but we already mentioned how Blood Frenzy doesn't grant +damage....At least it lasts for 15 seconds instead of 10, though.

It might be. Can you party, karmu, Fiesta, forever? All night long.

It was probably my fault. I've been holding on to the name Lionel Richie since the server came on. I know that's the one you wanted; there's no one cooler.

In most situations, brutes are still the better raw damage dealer. If that's your thing, roll a brute. Of the sets you've listed, Super Strength and Psionic Melee have the least to gain from the new changes, and thus should do markedly better damage on a Brute. This is due to both sets having minimal AoE to leverage the changes, aside from very good tier 9s. Battle Axe and War Mace will be able to leverage the changes better, and so you may like the experience of hitting more targets better on a Tanker. Single target damage will still be lower than what a brute is capable of with fury.

Thanks for confirming. The auction house is actually where i noticed the double set bonuses, but I didn't have a way to test in game without doing a respec. I've also never been very efficient at the test server. To quantify things, for anyone who might care, the ATO's can provide the following if you six slot both: Superior Might of the Tanker: 6% Resistance to Smash/Lethal 6% Resistance to Toxic/Psi 12% Resistance to all damage (from double stacked procs) ((Three stacks is possible, so the range is 6-18%) Superior Gauntleted Fist: 6% Resistance to Energy/Negative 6% Resistance to Smashing/Lethal 6% Resistance to Fire/Cold Totals: 24% Resistance to Smashing/Lethal 18% Resistance to Toxic/Psi 18% Resistance to Energy/Negative 18% Resistance to Fire/Cold Those are substantial numbers that come along side all their other bonuses. My mind is starting to rush towards the many possibilities...

In game, gauntleted fists shows two set bonuses for six slotting it. 6% resistance to S/L AND 6% resistance to F/C. Can anymore confirm if it actually applies both? I can't recall another set that offers two bonuses for the same tier. I'm having a really hard time deciding where to put the chance for absorb proc, or if it's even worth using at all. If six slotting gets both bonuses, I'll bite the bullet and do it.

Each stack of blood frenzy consumed increases the damage. 5 stacks is max damage. IF you activate it at 5 stacks, it ALSO increases the radius a great deal. DPA values in mids are only calculated assuming 1 target hit, iirc, so the calculation for an Aoe attack may be open for debate.

I'll echo some comments here about the strength of dark armor; it is amazingly robust when fully tuned, in spite of itself. The main complaints are no inherent kb protection and that its two unique powers, CoF and OG, are rather useless in today's game. The problem is that you completely skip them and still perform at top tier, so making them useful runs the risk of making the set too strong. Id vote for some sort of utility that doesn't affect the user, like Grant cover, or a pure debuff. Thinking more about opressive gloom, I quite like the idea of a power being fueled by your hitpoints and the inherent risk helps keep it balanced. How about losing the stun and having it apply a slow and - dmg aura around the user, or +dmg aura for allies only. There are much higher priorities. It's just fun to fantasize.

He's been a joy to play and level. Dark armor is an old favorite of mine and a very underrated set. Obviously it's more durable out of the box on a tanker, but a full IO build can get you to the resistance cap on 6-7 out of 8 damage types. I think it's the best resistance based set, which also has a monster heal that only needs two targets to fully refill your hp (Tip: use the theft of essence proc to turn dark regen into a psuedo endurance booster too). Savage Melee pairs well due to Blood frenzy lowering your endurance cost and offseting the demands of dark armor. I picked Savage mostly for theme and am really glad I did. As I said, aoe damage is great and the primary single target attack chain is very fast. Just don't take hemorrage; it's lower dpa and does the majority of its damage as a slow dot. You're better off saving your blood frenzy stacks or spending them on rending flurry.

Savage Melee deserves a spot in this conversation too, I think. Having now hit 50 on my dark/savage, I can see the aoe potential is massive. Savage leap and rending flurry are huge dpa attacks, particularly if you use RF at 5 stacks of blood lust. Fire/Savage should get work done.

I leveled a bio/claws to 43 and shelved it. Claws is extremely click heavy and Bio is also a pretty active set with three clicks on its own and the stances. The aoe damage, particularly from spin, is as good as you would expect and follow up overrides the damage penalty of the defensive stance, but it was too busy for me to enjoy. Single target damage is still not great, even after the tanker buffs. May have just been my perception from clicking so many times, but it seemed to take forever to kill freakshow tanks, council wolves, or basically anything with lethal resistance. If I were to roll a bio tank again, I think I'd try to pair it with a less busy secondary. A few possible good pairs for me would be broad sword, axe, stone, ice, or super strength. BS has some defense stacking through parry, and will hit hard. Ice offers some soft and hard control to allow you to stay in offensive stance, and a less resisted damage type. Axe, stone, and SS can be packed with force feedback procs to keep your bio clickies available.

My Dark/Savage Tanker, Carlyle.

Alright. I give up. How do you capture the UI in a screenshot?

The above is pretty much spot on. If you have any interest in just afk farming, you're looking for two damage aurus and an ability you can put on auto. Fire, Dark, Elec, and Bio have damage auras in the primary, rad and spines have them in the secondary. You can play with those combinations and then set you're big Aoe attack to auto, or burn if you go with fire armor.

I played a Dark Armour brute a lot on live. I can't say that I remember the below text being part of the power details for Obsidian Shield. All of me hopes that this is an artifact of changes that were pending, as I'm certain the power never provided these debuff resistances: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8HvnALQGZjCMFYAr8 I looked at the power details page in the character creator for all other AT's that have this power and only the version on Tankers and Brutes contains the debuff resistance. It is not actually applied in game. I'm hopeful that instead of removing the text, we could have the debuff resistance actually be applied. It would be a nice little buff to an Issue 0 set that needs a little love.

3 month bump. Anyone ever notice that in game Obsidian Shield states that it provides debuff resistance to defense, tohit, and slow? Not in the description, but in the power details. If it actually offered this, Dark Armour would be fixed IMO.

Okay, you folks convinced me to try it. I'm leaning Warshade as I want to try something that's very unique and it sounds a bit more complicated than Peacebringer. I guess I'll see what I like best between human form and tri-form, but doesn't anyone have a list of skippable powers for WS? Are there any that are just low hanging fruit and never get taken or used?

I love sonic resonance and have always wanted to try a mastermind with it, but masterminds have always been the archetype I have a hard time staying with. If i were to really do it this time, what pets pair best with sonic resonance?

Imagine I know nothing about your species (I don't). What's the deal? Why would one play a PB or WS over other archetypes? What do you like about it? Why would one play a PB over a WS, or vice-versa?

Thermal armor. It's nondescript enough and thermal energy is invisible.

This is tough. I think the armor selection is slightly easier. You're really looking at Sr, ninjitsu, and possibly willpower. Neither are very elemental, but the elemental armors are resistance based not dodge (defense) based. All three of those options perform well, so pick what you like the best. I want to say Kinetic melee, styled the elemental colors, but it sounds like you're not going to like the animation times. So I'm going to agree with the above poster and say psi Melee. But... I also agree that it's better on a stalker.

I've decided to do bio armor with mine. Ive played it already on a spines/bio scrapper, and it's a great offensive set. I wasn't sure I wanted to make another character with it, but ultimately I was too curious how durable I could get it to be on a tank while still being in offensive adaptation.

Upshot from the tactical arrow set has a nice little bonus to recharge that I really like. That could work here. I wonder if there is a way to decrease animation times while under its effect. That could be super fun for martial arts.

They're just all hiding.