marcussmythe

On a tank, your incarnate choices seem pretty straightforward. DEF or RES out of your Alpha (unless your really happy with those, and then probably Damage). Hybrid - again, probably Melee (Which flavor depends on build, but Im a fan of the Resistance Focused one - because of large bonuses that dont rely on foes in range) or Assault if you have breathing room to play around with pretending your a really chunky scrapper. But what about Destiny? Ageless seems to be a super-common choice - 10% recharge is nice. Whether we want the Recovery, or the Debuff resistance, depends on how much END we need - the raw END refill from Ageless is often enough by itself. Barrier gets some love - 5% DEF and 5% RES is not to be sneered at - and has a higher 'sale value' than 10% Recharge (though Barrier does not offer the debuff resistance or REC/END Support!) But what about Rebirth? Assuming one doesnt need the END support, and can live without debuff resistance (Im looking at -you-, SR and its DDR), the 'buy value' of 200% Regen is very, very high indeed - by 'Buy Value' here I mean 'how many uniques/set bonuses/etc do I need to do what this incarnate does?) Has anyone played around with it? Im considering Rebirth for a 2nd/3rd Incarnate on my Invuln tank - I can 'get happy' with everything else, and I've noticed that when I have melee running, the extra regen is a huge bonus - but Melee Hybrid isnt up all the time, and I can get the 200% Regen out of Rebirth 24/7 - and while Melee IS up, its pushing over 600% Regen - thus starting jokes about 'Regenvuln'. Just curious - I see Ageless everywhere, and Barrier soon after it - but set bonuses and other tools can get us to basically every cap we care about for resist and defense. What do we think of adding a large healing layer to the survival suite? I was thinking mostly with no-heal or low-heal sets, obviously - Dark/Rad/Bio/WP would care not for such things, but the SRs and Invulns would seem to get real value. More broadly, has anyone weighed the 'buy value' of various incarnates and powers, in terms of set bonuses? We often have a choice to do X with a power, and then do Y with set bonuses.. or instead to do X with set bonuses, and Y with a power - and weve all got a certain unconcious feel for what we can get from where and what can be patched with what (For example, the PSI damage hole is made pretty easy to patch up, and various forms of DEF and S/L Resist are common in powers, pool powers, and set bonuses - but Energy Resist is a frustrating thing to try to find in set bonuses, and by endgame, Energy Damage is basically the new Smashing/Lethal, often with a debuff rider...)

Radiation gets a lot of worship because it is tough ENOUGH for almost everything, while giving free candy in the form of Absorb Shields (good against specific encounters), not having real holes, a pair of pocket procnukes, heals, recharge... Radiation is a monster, and against certain specific fights, the absorb shields it a game changer - its almost as if the developers added content to wreck existing sets, and then added new sets to handle the devleopers latest pet monsters... That said, as someone who runs both INV and RAD (and Bio and SR and...) - my radiation has to watch its health in content where my invuln is at *yawn*. Rad is tough enough, but I perceive invuln as significantly tougher (outside the toxic/psi holes, with I think are unjustified). Even my real bete noir for Invuln, the Vanguard and PPD Awakened, are only a problem because I have chosen to pursue damage, rather than overcapping DEF and or capping energy resist - but thats a tradeoff I accept (and have another build I can swap to for that sort of traffic) Radiation definitely deserves a look, and is a fantastic set. As this thread has beaten (TO DEATH), its probably a dead heat with Bioarmor for best choice - because even though other sets are (IMHO) tougher against the vast majority of content, any tank is tough ENOUGH against the vast majority of content, and Rad and Bio have extra damage, utility, and specific abilities that seem intended to give them a fighting chance against the parts of the content that were custom designed to wreck all the old tank sets. If you saw more heavy res debuffing baddies, or more stacked CC baddies (Ive been held through my shields on Rad several times yesterday. I think its happened like.. twice... on my invuln... ever), or simply more 'hits like an utter truck' 3000+ raw DPS S/L Mobs, you would shift the meta away from the Bio/Rad crew and back towards the oldschool sets. But the current endgame was tuned AGAINST them, and the later P2W powersets were tuned to against that same content. Or so it appears to me. My 2c. YMMV. TLDR. SPQR. Rage Delenda Est

IOs give with one hand and take with the other. Ive seen an Stone/SS that uses high recharge from IOs to laugh at the minus regen, stacked rage to run a 3 minute pylon, and can thanks to runspeed buffs move faster than my sprint. Now, that was an odd build that ignored almost all of actual Stone Armor and almost all of Superstrength, but its a thing. RE Defense on Invuln - I can do softcap with one, 90% S/L/E (E is the hard part), or I can tank E Reist and Incarnate Softcap with one. One thing Invuln has in common with Stone and SR is you have alot of build headroom to do other things, as your ‘tough enough for most anything’ on SOs.

*points to the suggestions board* Either Bio/Rad need nerfing or Invuln needs buffing. Get to it. 🙂

I wonder if we have yet convinced the OP to just run Rad and Bio. 🙂

-points to suggestions board- Dont tell me, tell the developers. 🙂 Mind you, I dont think its as bad as all of that (my invuln holds up better under fire than my Rad - she just gives up a ton of utility for that tiny bit of survival) - but if people whoarent named me wanna lobby for buffs, I wont argue. I think a lot of it is IOs. Rad loves IOs up to a point (resist caps) but there is just no point, and little value, in chasing DEF (never have high numbers, no DDR). So when I building for -tough-, my Invuln ends up sofcapped casually, and some builds will incarnate softcap with 1 in range - without using barrier. On the other end, pure SOs, Rad is out in the cold. It -needs- Set bonuses in resist to shine. In between those domains is where Rad is awesome - layer on enough resist for caps, and stop there - thats ‘tough enough’ for basically anything - and then usethe headroom for utility and damage. Having a good T9 and two built in nukes is just candy. It also helps that the only real ‘holes’ Radiation has amounts to stuff that doesnt happen at endgame. A Meta where cold w/res debuffs was as common as energy/w debuffs is would change Rad’s feel pretty definitely. Rad just feels like it was built by someone who was cheating - looking at the end game and building a set for it. That all said - Inv/EM, Rad/SS, Bio/Titan - play them all, and Inv is the most comfortable for me. Go figure!

Hmm. Maybe port out the Sentinel changes. (Merge REle and RNrg, add sustain power). Stop there? What else? Patch Psi and Toxic up to REle levels? Those holes really aren’t needed, given than plenty of other sets dont have huge ‘wreck me’ holes. Fix Unstoppable? (Id just steal Meltdown, or add a toggle at half of meltdown’s values)? Amusingly, when I read that, it sounds like too much, but at the same time, I wouldnt stop using Bio or Rad for it. That said, Fubar - Ive got a KM/Invuln, and shes a bit tougher than most of my other scrappers and stalkers. Im not sure what we are doing differently.

Given the apparent consensus that Rad is ‘just better’, what would we change (if anything) about other sets in light of that fact?

Id believe that. I think some of it comes down to trading off extra (largely unnecessary) resilience to gain a lot in other areas.

Otoh - One minor edge to Invuln is the greater CC and Debuff resistance effect of being a mixed set. Though Rad has solid debuff resitances, the whole ‘never gets missed’ aspect of a non-defense set means my rad struggles more under debuffs than does my invuln, though Im working on using winter-os to cover the recharge debuffs and that will help. Similarly, though neither one gets badly mezzed, my Invuln has basically never been stunned/held through its toggles, even as I close on Vet 100. My rad does spend some time drunkwalking against stun-heavy foes - and suppressed survival toggles can make that dangerous. Also, shes often mezzed for a split second here or there - oh, look, beta decay is off. AGAIN. Finally, ofc, my Invuln is sturdier under S/L than is my Rad. Both have capped resists, but the invuln adds softcap (or incarnate softcap, depending on build) defense - which means things that feature super-heavy s/l damage (ITF, Bobcat, DE Monster Walls) are much easier on the Invuln. Thats not a huge swath of lvl 50 content, but its there.

Given SRs inherit recharge, and lack of END mechanics, choosing the higher recharge, lower END cost rotation makes perfect sense. Yes, you could support the more expensive cycle with an appropriate incarnate - but having it open to other purposes also has real value.

Plenty of other sets do have a hole to psionic damage. That does not make having such a hole reasonable - its a leftover from early design days when psi damage was quite rare. As the game aged, the developers first started handing out psi damage like it was candy, and then made later armor sets that had that hole covered in set, without resorting to pool powers and layered cooldowns for survival (if one is layering long cooldowns for survival, why not just play a blaster?) EA is still a great set (better on Stalkers than Scrappers, though other sets are better on scrappers than stalkers, so /shrug), but the psi damage hole is poor, outdated design. I think for ME, my thought on EA is that if I am going to build a defense set, and with numerous defense focused sets in the offering - Im more likely to end up with SR or Shield, because typed defense sets by definition have a hole at 'toxic' and almost always have a hole at psi, whereas positional sets.. dont (there are a very few non-positional attacks, so I am told, but Ive never noticed). SR further boasts scaling resist, and of course Shield has some resist, and also a good attack, and also a general damage buff. Things like EA are probably stronger in their areas of strength than the positional sets - but weaknesses hurt you more than having seriously over the top defenses against specific things - especially things that EVERYONE is very good against. (Its the Invuln problem. Yes, Invuln is better against S/L than anything short of Granite. Noone cares. S/L doest kill melee characters at endgame - exotics and debuffs do - so what matters is how well exotics and debuffs are covered, not how extra-unkillable you are against S/L... but those sets are still 'taxed' for being unnecessarily strong in some areas by having holes, or offering less utility/damage/sustain. Other old sets suffer a bit from this - Dark is very strong against both S/L and Psi, but in turn has a hole for Toxic and Energy. Toxic isnt common late, but Energy becomes VERY common indeed)

Invuln is still among the toughest, and can be made almost arbitrarily so if that is your focus. Invuln also matures WAY earlier - so will in particular be stronger at tanking low level TFs - perhaps the place a tank is most needed. Radiation armor is quite tough, and very much so late in the game when you have used IOs to cap almost every type of resistance and have large absorb layer on top. It takes longer to get there - mine felt muuuch squishier than my invuln until the late 40s - but it does get there. You also get two PBAOE Procnukes that double as healing powers, as well as a useable T9. As a later developed set, Rad does more damage, sustains better, and is basically better designed. That being said, if your main focus is on survival, especially early survival and against smashing and lethal damage, Invuln is an excellent choice.

I had not read your other thread, Omega. If you can find a place to put double-leadership, AOE, Single Target, Crowd Control, Pet Summoning, and utterly mind-melting DPS along with pocket nukes into a Sentinel... be my guest. (VEATS are brokenly good and I dont know why they arent everywhere. All they do is everything, well, all at once, while solo and better on teams. Must be the Arachnos coat of paint)

As a point of reference, VEATS get a huge amount of tools that the Sentinel does not. Further, given that Scrappers exist, and Scrappers with ranged attacks (pretty good ones!) exist.. and yet the world is not dominated by Blaster-Scrappers - I cant wrap my brain around how taking, say, a Claws Scrapper (one good ranged attack, one big cone) that can take more blasts out of EPPs... and then giving it a few more ranged attacks, while taking away criticals - is going to change the world.

I love my sentinels, and they are great fun to play at all levels. In a game that stopped at 40 and was limited to SOs, they would be in a lovely spot. But the game doesnt stop there, and we have potentially forever at 50 - and set bonuses can stretch a looong way down with exemplaring or hand me down money. Ultimately, IO sets, incarnates, etc. just throw everything for a loop, and some things are winners or losers by comparison - you can make a Blaster survive almost everything a Sentinel can, the reverse is not the case, and until there are IOs that gave set or individual modifiers to an ATs base damage scale, in the same fashion/degree they hand out survival, that wont change.

Oh, in absolute terms, I agree. Khelds were worse. But just like with release Khelds, with Sentinels I have this sense of ‘bad by design’.

Wont happen. The ship has long sailed. EPP Shields started it. Set Bonuses raised it. And the survival incarnates gave it its final form. Now, had we content that was actually tough (and not just 'All the debuff and exotic damage' tough, but honestly challenging), then the fact that Sentinels are actually -way- tougher than blasters might matter. But the blaster is tough enough for almost anything, and its not like PPD Kheldians and Rularru give any better drops than Council. So here we are. Sentinel Specific - the class really seems designed to fail by people who were afraid of making something good. It feels like a flashback to the original release Peacebringer and the Jack/Castle Era. Give the thing full range, full AOE caps, full Scrapper HP and Secondary Values and Damage Scalar. Grats, now you have a ranged scrapper. Replace crits with Opportunity and make Opportunity a switchable toggle for 100% uptime and the ability to instantly respond to the situation. If its too good there (it wont be) we can start winding it back. Oh, and give it good ATOs. Stalkers get a good ATO on a good AT. Start there.

Ive got an Invuln/EM, and I am quite fond of her. With that said, I am contempalating Bio/EM or Rad/EM - Ive never Radded at high level, and my last Bio was a Scrapper. Do you have any recommendations as between the two, on that combination?

I can attest to the strength of the combo to which Ballista attests - but that strength lies mainly in Rad Armor (which is ludicrously good). Rad’s AOE and self heal patch holes in EM, and having recharge and damage buffs in set are good for EM.

The breakpoint on recharge is fitting two WS or to FU in a single momentum cycle (the short one from an attack), if I recall correctly - I havent been serious about TW since last summer so I may have forgotten something - but my recollection is that once you can do those twice in a momentum, thats when the set -really- starts to shine, so thats what I recall going for. I was using it on Bioarmor - the +rchg in Rad may make it easier.

For the record, I agree with Werner’s choices. While defense is -nice-, the only sets Ive met that can rely on defense at endgame provide so much DDR as to give nigh immunity to defense debuffs. Anything less and many villain groups will make DEF a joke. (And some don’t even need debuffs. -stares in Rularuu-) Also, the hole to Energy Damage is a huge problem, as by endgame, Energy (along with Psi and Toxic to lesser degrees) become hilariously common. (Amusingly, Radiation Armor is carefully tuned to address those problems - ahh, powercreep) As such, Barrier is probably the best choice for Dark, and DEF is a topping, not the meal. Also, MArts is a star, here - Tank Marts is ludicrously good for defense.

Beware of using Mids - in this case, it is overreporting the damage EM Deals by a -lot-. Seriously. I think its counting the self-damage if Energy Transfer as outgoing base damage. For AOE, EM is (I believe) the worst. For single target, its near the bottom. Before all hope is abandoned: 1.) Build Tuning can take an underperforming set into ‘better than the vaaast majority even on the good sets’. Given budget and time and planning. I have an Invuln/EM Tank that hunts GMs, +4 AVs, and the like - though the build sacrifices are heavy and I dont use that build for general play, it can be done. Ive a different build that has okay AOE off of EPP powers and decent single target burst for bosses - I use it for my 4/8 missions. And this is invuln, no offense bonuses. 2.) The dev team has been wanting to look at Energy Melee since last summer. I recall reading that it was lined up for the next update. We dont know when that will be or what it will be, but its something. So, yes, Energy Melee is objectively terrible - but player and build tuning matter more than the core bad numbers, and we may see better days at some point. Do what you find fun - but if your Dark/EM, youll be unique, and that has value to some of us.

SR is crazy on a tank. The trip to caps is so easy that there is build room for nearly anything. Its in danger of being my new fave set. (Bio, Rad, Dark, Invul are still beloved, though)

Amusingly, the only place I've really felt GDN badly was on Invuln. It went from having a Psionic Damage hole to having a 'all damage not smash/lethal' hole. Nowadays you can patch that up pretty decently if you IO for it and Incarnate for it and and and and and... Oddly, my DEF characters didnt notice much, probably because DEF is so powerful.