ZemX

Heck, I team and I tend to avoid most level 54 anything but most especially papers/radios. Mid-level teams are where it's still real. 54 anything tends to just be a facerolling continuous supernova of particle effects and XP. Meh. I do them from time to time if I'm really bored but that's about it. If I'm leveling up, I'd rather be on a level appropriate team, preferrably running contact missions but Talos/FF radios aren't terrible either.

Battle Axe is hilarious fun with the new Axe Cyclone. Sets up Pendulum perfectly. MA ends up having decent AoE simply because it's one PBAoE is so fast. But yeah... I like a little variety too. To be totally clear on that, it's not without any value and Zect isn't the only one talking about "ablative" defense shields either. It's a thing. How good a thing and how much it is worth compared to whatever else you might build for is where we disagree. Another good thing to keep in mind about resistance building though is that 90% is the cap for resistance to damage but getting to 100% or more is still useful because that value is used to resist resistance debuffs. i.e. If your Smash Res is 100% or more then you literally can't be debuffed by any resistible resistance debuffs. For example, Longbow Nullifier grenades. There ARE a few unresistible res debuffs in the game, but there are only a few. So pushing key resistances to 100+ is very nice to have. Typically very easy for Smash/Lethal thanks to Tough. For Rad Armor will be there easily with Energy/Tox too probably. I think it's actually 95% because, unique to SR, it's enhanceable. I've got a baby SR/Staff tanker I run with the Tanker Tuesday crew on Reunion once a month (which is tomorrow actually). I should play it more or roll one aside from that. I've been curious about it ever since I started that project because these days, you can build so much res as a Staff tanker and SR has scaling resistance as it's damaged. You can add enough resistance such that you hit the res caps way before you get dangerously low in HP at which point you have lowsih HP but uncrackable soft-capped def and capped resistances. Only thing you'll fear is autohit attacks, I'd guess. I hear Shield/MA is a great combo for Martial Arts for getting Incarnate defense levels with very good DDR. Very Captain America too. 🤪

The really great thing Ston has done in that thread is post all the builds, so I would definitely download and compare his Ice Melee builds to whatever you're considering to see if it's even close to what you were thinking. Without leaning as heavily into procs as he has, I don't think you will see the same relationship between Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers as in his data. And side note to Ice Melee + Ice Armor... I know that Ice Melee is fantastic on Stalkers and I've heard Ice Armor is as well. No doubt you wouldn't see them measuring up on AoE to others but they will outclass any of the other melee ATs with Ice Melee for Single Target damage thanks to having Greater Ice Sword swapped for Assassin Strike.

Storm/Storm has enough wind powers to fit that theme, I'd say. Even throwing lightning and rain/sleet/ice in there it's still "air" element themed.

Much as I have enjoyed playing tanks in this game, I have always thought the whole idea of Taunt was some kind of hack that was only created after the person who first created the MMO tank belatedly realized that they'd invented something no one in their right mind would ever even bother attacking otherwise.

You are making this way more complicated than it needs to be. It is simple cost/benefit analysis. You assign a value to defense and then you weigh it against the cost. And this is where talking about Fortitude WITHOUT talking about cost falls apart. Fort can give you an idea of the value of fragile defense on your tanker. But for BUILDING defense instead of just getting hit with a free buff, you have to determine the cost by looking at your build and deciding where you will trade something away to get that defense. I mentioned I might lose resist or recharge and you countered saying "no no, you would lose procs". This isn't a counter-point. It IS the point. What is lost is up to the person doing the build. YOU choose to lose the procs. I might not. Stop getting bogged down in the detail of resist or recharge. It's not the point. The point is it's something and whatever that something is is the thing you are putting on the other end of the scale from this fragile defense you are gaining. Nice try, but no. I've never played an SR scrapper. The bulk of my experience in HC to date has been playing Rad Armor tankers, mostly in normal content, which is what the OP mentioned they were planning on playing. And I've watched 50+% melee defense get wiped by an angry mob of sword-wielding Cimerorans in seconds. This is in a fight that's going to last a whole hell of a lot longer than a few seconds. So no, I don't much care for the "ablative armor" argument either. I'd rather be stronger in the much LONGER phase of the fight that follows being defense stripped than take a bit less damage in the opening seconds. If you don't agree then we don't agree. That ain't the end of the world either.

I was gonna suggest a Ice Melee Stalker of some kind, but it's a bit of a downer they have to wait to 18 for Ice Patch. It's so useful against all those ambushes. Scrappers and Brutes get it at 8 though! Nice! Or should I say... N-Ice! I am tempted to try an Ice/Nin Scrapper. I've been meaning to try Scrapper Nin since I'm very familiar with it on Stalkers and everyone says it's better on Scrappers. Hmmmm......

Hmm... you know... I bet that would work pretty well. I'll take one!

This. Taunt isn't for taunting what's near you. It's a 70ft range, 15ft radius, 5 target, autohit, 41s Taunt w/-100% range debuff, and it has a base recharge of 10 seconds. Nothing else does all that. Sure, you can run around aura taunting or punch voking stuff, but it's a weaker taunt, it takes longer, and it doesn't debuff range, meaning you might have to keep running around to keep those enemies taunted. You could use a ranged AoE if you have one, but it's probably better off used against a nice packed spawn. Typically, I pick the best concentration of enemies to land amidst and taunt them close. The rest have to be collected either by running around or range taunting. Taunt makes that easier. Needed? Course not. Nothing ever is. But like any build choice, you weight it against what you will have in its place. The nice thing about Taunt is it doesn't need any extra slots. I put a +5 boosted recharge in it and that's that.

Well, these ARE the same people who "balanced" damage powersets without considering animation times. Oddly enough, toggles are actually less complicated than click attacks when it comes to procs because Global Recharge has no effect. Hence a 1PPM proc in a self-toggle goes off once per minute, as you'd expect. AoEs still add some complexity but it's just a divide factor to reduce the frequency the larger the AoE is. If all procs worked this way in all powers it would be as simple as PPM / (AoE Factor) = real procs per minute. But that would be seen as a nerf now because Global Recharge essentially makes procs go off WAY more often than they were ever supposed to in click powers.

This IS my argument and you're making it for me. Remember, I was responding to your idea that if nobody complains about being hit by Fort, why would they complain about building defense? This is why. Free defense is great! Of course nobody complains about being hit by Fort. But if it costs me something, then I gotta weigh that cost against the benefit. Whether that is resist, recharge, a bunch of procs, or even a few slots that were giving me nice enhancements in some attack power so I could move them into a defense power. It's something. And the benefit is something that is only really with me when I am not tanking defense debuffing enemies. If I am, it is quickly gone. Is that worth anything? Some people think so. I don't. I'd rather lean into the powerset's strengths and build stuff that will ALWAYS be helping me. And "self-sufficient" isn't weird if you don't pull it out of context. I was talking about the only case I DO value fragile defense in and that's when I've got teammates to buff me on top of that. Having a buffer well above the soft-cap can substitute for DDR in some ways. Except I do random PuGs most of the time and can't count on that anymore than I can count on build defense staying with me. If I can only count on what I've got in my own build, why is self-sufficiency "weird"? Seems pretty practical to me. And yeah, it ends up with a build that isn't all the way survival-focused either, so the procs do matter to me (though I wouldn't say I've heavily procced out either). I also don't factor in Incarnate powers. I spend too much time exemplared below 45.

The superior barrage proc is 4ppm. Hot feet is a 20ft radius PBAoE toggle. Toggles use 10 seconds as the "recharge time" for calculating proc chance. It should have about a 20% chance to fire every 10 seconds in Hot Feet. But that's 20% for every target hit. Since it only needs to hit one target (any more do not stack the effect) you are then looking at the odds that at least one target is hit. This is equal to 1 - (odds of hitting none). You have an 80% chance of missing each target with the proc. If you have 10 targets on Hot Feet (the target cap), that's 1 - 0.8^10 = ~90% chance of hitting at least one. For five targets it's more like 67% chance. To sum up... and assuming my math is correct... you should play a Tanker instead. 🤪

I just realized I forgot about Purple IO sets. Can't be slotted until 50. So if my build plan has any of those, I do have to wait to 50 to slot them. So that's in there at step..hmm... 2.5!

Except for a few odd outliers, most of the results are within a few percentage points of each other in clear times. Scrappers in this test are beating Tankers for about half of the powersets shown and that's with the built-in disadvantage of less aggro control, which hurts them in this solo test. In a team, they are easily outdamaging Tankers, especially in non-ideal cases where the spawns are not so easily bunched together. Frankly, in a team of toons built to this extreme you aren't going to notice ANY differences among them. And you don't really see a City of Tankers when you are in game either, so if Tanks are such hot commodities, few seem to realize it. At the highest end, it almost doesn't matter what you are playing. At the lower end of content and in low/mid levels, Tankers are by no means outdamaging the other melee ATs.

Well, I'm glad that's settled! Well, I'm glad that's settled!

Fair is fair. If people want global strength buffs like Arc and Radius factored into proc calculations then so should Global Recharge strength. Who's with me!? 😈

Pfft.. just paint it black and pretend it's Dark Blast!

It's not misinformation, but MoonSheep is definitely over-generalizing the results. Ston's thread gives all the conditions and context, so it's worth a read. Summary though: It's a solo Trapdoor mission test run at +4/x8 with a proc-heavy Incarnate build. Different melee offense powersets, but always Willpower for defense. In other words, it might not represent well how these same ATs operate with other armor powersets or while on teams. The scrapper for example, and Ston mentions this, loses some DPS efficiency for having the weakest aggro management of the three. Tankers have several advantages soloing, starting with the ability to just about ignore building additional survival. They're already there. And they manage the crowd easily with overlapping punch-voke taunts and a wider taunt aura than the other two. Their AoEs hit more targets and, very notably, do not get penalized for proc chance due to larger AoE size. If this test highlights anything at all it's how badly broken damage procs are.

Getting hit with Fort doesn't cost me recharge or slow resist. BUILDING for defense... does. If the defense from Fort gets wiped by a bunch of defense debuffs because I have no DDR, so what? I am no worse off than I was before. The same cannot be said of building for defense. Builds are a zero-sum game. If you prioritize defense in set and power selection, you are de-prioritizing something else perhaps more valuable to a Rad Armor tanker such as recharge or slow resist or toHit debuff resistance. Even with Storm Kick's 10% def(all) helping you still have to come up with 35% def to all positions starting with nothing. And then you have 45% def(all), the soft-cap.... until you run into pretty much anybody with a defense debuff. Getting hit 1 in 20 times sounds fantastic... until 20 guys (okay 16 maybe) are shooting at you all at once and every shot carries a def debuff. And if you're doing what a tanker is supposed to be doing, you ARE being shot at by that many enemies. I do call that a problem because it's exactly the reason I took my Rad Armor tanker and respeced out of defense and never looked back. If the only situation I need that defense in is the very situation where it gets stripped away from me then it isn't worth much to me. It would be worth it if you were in a regular team and knew you'd get more help with defense or DDR from teammates. Then having a base defense to build on is wonderful. But if you're looking to be self-sufficient and join any random team whenever you feel like it? I prefer to prioritize resist, recharge, slow resist... and to proc out my heal and Ground Zero. That leaves not a lot of room for defense. I have Weave usually, because it was one more step after Tough and it holds a LotG for more recharge. If I have Maneuvers, it's because I wanted Tactics for the Confuse debuff protection and I am still probably only putting a LotG in there too. I've got better uses for slots than building defense. If I end up with some anyway, great. All this though. Maybe my favorite thing about Rad Armor is the boundless energy. Even though I always take energy mastery for Focused Accuracy, I rarely take Physical Perfection. Or put extra slots in Stamina/Health. Gamma Boost and Stamina get Perf Shifter procs. Health gets Panacea. Everything else is handled by the Theft of Essense proc in Rad Therapy.

Is he maybe in one of the new vigilante/rogue arcs? I haven't run them yet myself.

The purely offensive tanker is probably as rare as the purely defensive one in the actual community. Most people build a balanced tanker with attacks and defenses. And any tanker can be an aggro magnet even without Taunt, provided they have attacks to use instead. Taunt just makes it easier and more convenient to drag in outlying aggro.

Drinking and complaining IS baseball isn't it? -Signed, A Cubs fan.

So I scrubbed through that pretty quick but mostly what I saw is what I was expecting... in MMO terms this looks more like "rezzing" than healing. You can RP this pretty easily with Resuscitate. The Medicine pool in general is a good "field medic" kind of package in the "I'm not doing this while someone is still shooting rockets at you" kind of way.