R jobbus

Does keeping the stacks up and not using them increase damage or something? I tried shield/rad quite a while ago, but the main problem I ran into with it, is it simply just does not do enough damage, especially single target. It's animations are considerably slow for how low damage it is. That is, on a tanker, and when slotted defensively like the builds in this thread. I found that shield/rad when slotted like all the other builds here could hardly do consistent enough damage on stage 3 rommy, let alone the 4 AV fight. It's heals are great of course, and if you aren't spamming atom smasher constantly, ageless core takes care of end pretty ok, it's the damage that I found was the issue, without any real slots to sacrifice for procs or anything else. I could try slotting gloom or something to help it maybe

A mundane update, but one nonetheless, testing shield/SS and shield/Street Justice yielded the same evidence to back up what was found in this thread: SS's rage crash really makes it incompatible with this challenge since it's a self def debuff, and SJ's base recharge is not kind to the SMoT proc. predictable, but I wanted to test it anyway. I really am just so dumbfounded about getting shield/MA to work for this man .. Slotting crippling axe kick with SMoT with the exact same recharge, same everything as builds that work, has times of taking far more noticeable, FAR more consistent damage than slotting swoop (battle axe) or GFS (fire melee) the exact same way. (Swoop and GFS are both a base recharge of 12s, crippling axe kick is 11s.) I'm guessing it's around 11 or 10 seconds of the cut off where you just have more times of less(or no) stacks of SMoT procs or something. Cause it's just so comically noticeable and consistent. There's either some very specific math going on or there's some secret deep system unmeasurable stuff that just happens that I have no idea about. SD/BA and SD/FM stay consistently at like 80% maybe 70% health pretty easily in the fight while SD/MA does ok but will drop to 50% randomly, fairly consistently after some time passing. I'm out of ideas besides slotting sd/ma's pbaoe (base recharge 14s) with SMoT but it's not really worth it for endurance purposes and low damage vs single target AVs. The one build for sd/ma i have that works was I just threw some extra negative resist into gloom and it helped a little but that shouldn't make *that* big of a difference. My other questions were, why do people hate hemorrhage? it seems like it does more damage for single targets than just spamming the pbaoe that uses the stacks (savage melee)? Is not having the aoe cone that big of a loss? And also, is there a reason to use broadsword for anything (besides style/theme) if battle axe exists?

The great Werner! For the record, all of my testing with shield/anything is because of Werner's great sd/ma build that was the first one I used. Infact, i probably would be just using that build for everything but I cannot get the aggro limit to work in a way that it used to (either from my lack of skill, or from it changing) so I have resolved to just make sure all of my shield/ builds can do the +4/x8 4 AV fight enemies buffed solo all at the same time, instead of aggro limit tanking them separately. I genuinely wish I could use the aggro limit for the AV fight just as an option but I have not gotten it to work. A better player than me probably could manage it, maybe. My testing has failed to do so. And adding to that, I have had multiple times of flying to the very end of the zone, the temple on the right side, and just pulling rommy (without aggroing anything else, pulling him behind the temple on the right side)... and he'll separate from his nictus, as long as nothing in the entire zone is killed at that point. Which seems abusable..... and I'm afraid to make that a standard for my builds, because what if it changes. Literally everytime I do a 4 AV fight for testing I have to kill the minotaur and his minions on the right side just to stop rommy from separating. I have no idea if this separation is intentional, and for that reason I'm afraid of basing my builds around it. It's just for these reasons I've been reluctant to make builds around using the aggro limit for my runs... I'm a bit afraid to. but figuring out the 4 AV fight all at the same time at +4/x8 enemies buffed has been fun all the same. The latest update for me was that shield/savage actually works brilliantly if you slot it in the same way as the original sd/wm build, then put the SMoT into hemorrhage. Yea you are spamming low bloodstacks hemorrhage but it actually pairs nicely with alternating between boost and savage leap if you make sure to alternate them in your cycles, so you dont lose much dps and gain quite a bit of resist procs. My next thought for getting sd/ma to work a bit better for this is dropping S avalanche and slotting SMoT into dragon's tail, which is (thankfully) the longest base recharge move of MA for tanker (not eagles claw, apparently). dt is 14, claw is 13. So that opens up gloom to have 5 apocalypse again and axe kick to have 5 hecatomb.. So theoretically, that much recharge for active defenses, SMoT proc in a 14 second move, and storm kicks defenses to make up for losing avalanche *should* be pretty sick. but I've yet to test it, so we'll see. Cheers and thanks to all who contributed to this topic

indeed. Do you think it'd be worth triple slotting active defenses, I suppose you are barely getting any extra recharge at that point. While I still do not think it's 100% DDR's fault, it's very clear that below 66% DDR is a big issue and that's what was causing the immediate failures for some of these builds (for my purposes, etc, the stacking is important). The last thing I'm probably going to try at some point is a sd/ma build with 2 force feedback procs somewhere and just give up blistering cold since storm kick gives a decent amount of defense anyway. I don't know if it'll work out but I might as well try it before I consider this pretty much conclusive

@Warboss @Maelwys edit: further testing involving monitoring DDR, active defenses, recharge etc: Frankly at this point, I just think an AV of this level at +4/x8, doing it solo, and having the fight drag on for soooo long, there's just going to be times when you are going to get a little debuffed and take a little damage, without heavily respecing the build/incarnates to only tank this one fight and also in the process probably not do enough damage to it to beat it in a timely manner. For general purpose solo shield builds like this, I kinda doubt it'll get way better than this. conclusion edit: Really after some more testing, I am beginning to think what happened with the original sd/FM build that didn't work was, the recharge hit probably made it to where my defense debuff resistance was at 44% from active defenses not having enough time to stack properly, and that caused it to just take more damage alot easier. But still from this testing, there are times when at 88% DDR you still will just take some damage, but 44% is still too low and likely caused the difference. the SMoT proc really does matter alot though but since one sd/fm build worked and another didnt, Im assuming the ddr was the culprit. 66% seems to be ok, since sd/wm and further testing felt alright for limited time periods at 66% but 44% is too low. But, if the SMoT proc is in the highest base recharge move and DDR is mostly 88% with shorter periods of 66%, that's about as good as these builds will get for this. I had played with the idea of triple slotting active defenses or using force feedback in sd/MA but I genuinely have had times when at 88% DDR you still just take some hits and some considerable damage as well. So it's not all DDR... I think the SMoT proc timer is just gonna be better on the longer recharge moves like in war mace or battle axe, etc. So to sum it up, too low of recharge and 44% DDR is not enough, you want 88% most of the time and some periods of 66%. But it's not only DDR, the SMoT proc is the other half of it, and that's just gonna vary from secondary to secondary. that's what it's looking like anyway. Thanks for the call out on active defenses

does DoT on anything mess with procs from moves aside from the one that causes DoT? incinerate is slotted with S gauntleted fist, and the resist proc is in GFS but I didnt know if DoT could affect other moves like that

You know, this is fascinating stuff and I'll tell you why.... So against AVs in the fight, I do not use any AOE powers at all for these builds, as they tend to be lower single target damage and higher animation times. However, for War mace, the single target chain is pulverize (I think, the starter ability), clobber, then shatter.... Shatter is an aoe cone. So is that triggering this streak breaker thing potentially over and over again? Maybe increasing the chance of stuff hitting vs all single target moves being used in a chain? The Fire melee chain is GSF, incinerate, fire sword. I don't use FSC in AV fights, since it's a long animation with similar single target damage to gsf, I only do it maybe if ageless is 10 seconds away and the cooldowns are at their lowest. Honestly in a high-end extreme fight like this where a build is being pushed to it's limit, I could see something weird like this happening. The problem though is of course that the 2nd and third builds, both of which are fire melee, have the same single target chain and frankly the difference in their performance is noticable rather quickly.. But I do need to respec and check the third (more successful) FM build and just be ultra sure that it's not just FM's fault in general for this. but I highly doubt it, since I remember doing this before, and I also remember doing it with builds that have a similar/shorter recharge chains than GSF.. meaning their SMoT proc would have the same or less results. This is wild though, I never knew about this, though something tells me I could kinda 'sense' something weird going on..

Yea I just am not convinced it's just rng favoring the builds. The 2nd is noticably worse than the third build and it doesn't take very long to replicate it either, over and over. and as the fight goes on it just keeps happening. I'm starting to wonder if it's the active defense thing.. or something. One thing that I have noticed though is that it likely is directly related to negative resist.. Because once the autonictus dies (I always kill it first), then stuff is alot more doable for any of these builds. Maybe the 3% and GSF being slightly slower is enough negative resist to matter, i don't know. But if it was related to active defense, the only thing that is defense debuffing is rommy in the AV fight, correct? In regular groups of enemies, the 2nd build absolutely destroys them, noticably easier than the other builds at times.... so maybe it isn't defense debuffs. If it was defense debuffs, the build would be cascading really badly in groups of normal enemies. Part of the goal of having mega high defense builds like this was to be able to throw myself into 3-4 enemies buffed +4/x8 cimeroran spawns and just tank all 30~ people or whatever. The 2nd build does this. The 1st and 3rd ones do also, but I was just trying to get a bit more defense. But if it was defense debuffs.. all of that would be a problem, especially for the 2nd one, if that was the culprit for the AV fight. I really dont know. i'm just gonna test more. thank you for putting in the effort and giving me the numbers and all that, very cool stuff. but I'm not gonna know for sure until I do another round of testing. At least this will help me slot SD/MA and SD/Savage with a bit more insight, putting the SMoT proc into the longest base recharge move, probably axe kick for MA and i dont know what for savage. Whatever is next aside from the leap since it's recharge is too long.

fascinating stuff, thanks. but I'm not sure what to take from this. It's not all *that* different right. Especially since the third build I listed was fm and slotted closer to the original wm build, and it did better than the 2nd build of fm, which didn't perform well at all. But the proc rate of the 2nd and third builds, both of which are fm, their proc chances are the same, no? That's what confuses me. The only difference is 3% negative resistance (and a ton of defense on the 2nd one, which clearly didn't help it). So I don't know. I had not thought of this and that might definitely be a thing, I'll pay attention to it and see on the next round of testing. Surely the 2nd build's active defenses timer would be taking quite a bit longer. So maybe it's getting debuffed and eating damage. Thanks for pointing this out!

The AVs and cimerorans, most things in the ITF have knockdown protection, it rarely ever procs off of anything except vs minotaurs and cyclops that rage crash, or on isolated, non-grouped cimerorans, or on the council enemies. I mean it does work on regular cimeroran enemies but they almost always use their war cry/phalanx fighting thing, whatever it is that grants them protection, once they use that it hardly works much. In the AV fight it's a non factor essentially

Lol nice. yea that stun is nasty.. I've completed it on sd/war mace a few times but it's the inconsistency between builds that is strange to me. And doing it without abusing the aggro limit is also kind of the goal since the aggro limit seems super inconsistent, and subject to change. Like it feels like it has changed from before. Also I've experienced stuff like, I'll jetpack over to rommy, not hit literally anything, then pull rommy and his nictus will not follow him.. From behind the little chapel looking building on the right side. Just on that corner. So that's obviously super abusable but i'm hesitant to make it a standard in any build I play since i fear all that stuff is gonna be changed if it is exploited. Like I've tried the "old" method of using the aggro limit, where you run into a massive group in the middle and get everything, then attack a nictus without aoe damage and supposedly rommy and the other nictus will not harm you during this, letting you kill it while being at the aggro limit... but that does not/has never happened for me, this year. All that happens is that it instant aggros all of the AVs, and ive tested this multiple times on multiple builds... But again, what's the deal with being able to just fly over to rommy without killing anything in the stage, pulling him from behind the little building in the center, and he separates from the nictus? Everytime I fight the AV fight for testing I have to kill a minotaur on the left and whoever follows me so that his nictus will end up following him when I pull him from behind the chapel. I use darkest night to pull him too. I just don't get it. It's this kind of stuff where I am really hesitant to use the aggro limit cause it seems to be all over the place sometimes

Yeah. I mean it's not alot to add on, for sure. But again, I kind of *am* testing it since even with assault being equipped but not toggled (when on cooldown) the autohit nictus (and third nictus left alive after auto hit and the other dies) take hardly any damage at all, give or take. But it's good information. i'm not opposed to trying it, or really anything at this point. I'm just hesitant to make the AV fight start pushing 50 minutes or so, it already is around 40ish minutes solo under these conditions. Maybe less if I summon longbow radial for rommy when he's the last alive.

musculature core, I could take a look at others but basically what's going on is, the damage is already so tight on the solo AV fight under these conditions, I don't think I can sacrifice any damage at all. Already, when I don't have assault up the auto hit nictus takes very very slow damage. And when more than one AV is still alive, if a longbow lore is out they will randomly just insta-kill it. (The auto hit nictus especially) And longbow radial isn't anywhere near enough healing to actually keep it alive. I think it's like, 3 autohit nictus hits if not 2 that just deletes it under these conditions

Thanks for the response. Yea I might try out scorch. And yes, it's been extremely consistent - probably 4 fights per build, and the builds that I've tested for this are SD/War mace, SD/Fire melee, SD/ Martial arts, SD/battle axe, and sd/savage. Ageless is a must for this build, as nice as barrier would be. But again, that's the give and take of this. Shield probably demands ageless, cause while endurance isn't tight necessarily it does need it. But that's the exchange for being able to do challenges like this, since it's my belief that shield is probably the only tanker primary that is going to be able to solo enemies buffed ITFs at +4/x8, without abusing the aggro limit. SR is just simply not going to cut it against this kind of stuff, solo-wise, imo and in my experience. Next time I test things I'll do that just to get at look at it. Yea it's looking like the proc rate is the culprit.. but there was an sd/fm build, the third one that managed pretty well, so I just don't have any idea. The only difference between the third build and the 2nd ones is 3% energy/negative resist. so maybe in a very high level solo multiple AV fight, that much matters. Thank yall for the responses. What I'm going to do in my next run of testing is just respec and put the stacking resist proc from the AT origin set in the highest base recharge move possible on every secondary powerset, while trying to keep any resist numbers similar to the sd/wm build that worked. Edit: i may try throwing the stacking resist proc into firesword circle or something, since the recharge is alot higher. Just to see

Also just to add onto this discussion, I built a similar sd/martial arts build following the same build (the sd/fm build that didnt work), and even landing storm kick repeatedly (which supposedly gives quite a bit of defense, like 10% to a whole bunch of things) and it had the exact same result as sd/fm. It just got hit more often and took considerable damage. Which makes no sense. The sd/ma build should've had just absolutely insane defense at that point, so maybe stacking resist proc was in something too fast? but that shouldnt' affect the rate of being hit so I dont know.