DarkRevelation

I love a good Star Trek reference. @Tiresias That is some great advice Inf gave there. Now when you see things like 4x8 on the forums or in the game you will know that they mean; +4 level mobs/difficulty (levels always come first in this before team size) and a team size of eight. When I farm on my characters I have tricked out I use 4x8. When I run some mission I have ran 1212617 times and I just want to finish this line and be done with it because I need it for XYZ accolade/badge/etc., I may go as low as 0x0/0x1. The Patron Pool quest line is an example I just want to finish when soloed. You can swap as much as you like without penalty. Let us know where y'all end up. Lower levels are tougher, by far, to go higher up in levels/difficulty. I'd start with adding team size first personally. Good luck!

Everything Sovera and PLVRIZR told you is accurate. You don't have to take granite. I have one Stone/Rad that I use two builds on; one has granite and one doesn't. The non-granite build does fine, plays faster and does get the benefit from using Minerals, Crystal Armor and Brimstone Armor. I can all but AFK that build in most situations. It is very solid and fun to play. It needs some work, but that is on me and my build, not Stone Armor without granite. The granite build though blows it away IMO for durability, especially in extreme situations. You hear/read people saying 'well this build is almost unkillable' and for the most part they are right from what I have seen, albeit somewhat limited in my semi-recent return. If you REALLY want to be unkillable without the tricks that these other builds use, look at granite. When I say tricks I mean 'well if I use this power on cool-down and this click is ready and I have 10 mobs around me and my incarnate is up and I rotate these things and ..... etc.'. Let me show you a build I did and you make your own judgement. It is not a cheap build. It will cost you, but it is effective. I utilized what Zect said here: 110% agree with him. This is a proc build for one reason only; procs do not get punished by granite's damage penalty. It is similar to when you have Super Strength and your damage drops during the rage dump penalty, you use a proc'ed power and it hits for proc damage and it isn't mitigated/punished, hitting for the 'correct' amount. Similar is using 'Sands of Mu' (don't laugh, I do it sometimes on my Invuln/SS tank during the drop) because it isn't penalized/mitigated either. Before I jump into it, I used Rad Melee and I don't know how RM will translate to Electrical. The lack of a second damage aura is tough to overcome I believe, simply for the procs. You may be able to make up for it with using proc'ed out Lightning Rod and Lightning Clap (which will be more difficult to get multiple damage procs in, but should be able to get at least two in there, plus FF) and using Force Feedback for recharge reduction. Here it is: That is a straight up, plain, out of the box, stock base build, with a lot of very expensive enhancements to be fair. No clicks required, no incarnates running, no waiting on a cooldown, no mob count necessary, and no powers rotating. What you see there is what you get. Period. It doesn't have to worry about getting the recharge zapped with 95% Recharge Debuff resistance, so Earth's Embrace is perma'ed with or without Hasten. The build can get very close to perma-hasten, if not obtain it, depending on the number of mobs that Energy Torrent hits. I don't have that checked in the build so there is no false sense of recharge time. To speed things up Energy Torrent procs the Force Feedback. A lot of damage is from the dual damage auras proc'ing. Atom Smasher procs as well. Use Energy Torrent on cooldown and aim for the highest amount of mobs available. You want ET to proc FF, and use Atom Smasher on cooldown as well. The more mobs you hit, the more proc chances you have. It you have one mob or no mobs Hasten is around/under one minute down, which isn't bad for where you start with Granite. Everything is here, including the MIDS file. I drone on and on about the build, address the psi hole, as well as a lot more. Spaghetti Betty also drops a build there, and if you haven't seen their stuff you most definitely should look. They are an incredible builder, and have some awesome ideas IMO. If nothing else hopefully you find something interesting in one of the two builds and can utilize it in the future. Granite isn't for everyone, and totally has issues, i.e. you will learn the granite hop if you use it, as well as teleport, but it can be incredible. Groups in most content currently blow things away so fast that it doesn't really shine until things get hard, like really hard. You will be a teleporting fool on easy stuff. You will TP into a group and they are all down before you get your 2nd Atom Smasher off. It isn't worth it to use on a lot of content because realistically it just isn't difficult enough and the mobs melt so fast. This is the main reason to NOT use Granite IMO, and what the others were telling you as well. I started off with 'Everything Sovera and PLVRIZR told you is accurate.' and they are right. Well built Granite is awesome, but probably too awesome for most content. I am hopeful for a day in the future when some insane extreme content comes out that squashes most tanks, because I am waiting on that day. This build will be ready. Well built Granite is what other builds use tricks to try to get to. I can't match that granite build for durability on any other armors set I use. It doesn't mean the other armors aren't good enough or can't do a great/incredible job. My first love is Invuln/Fire tanks and I have multiples of them right now. If you asked me to grab one tank and one tank only to go do some content, I am grabbing my Rad/Fire tank because it is awesome to play. It just means that granite is still impressive after all of these years, old armor or not, and especially in extreme circumstances. Unfortunately those are few and very far between right now. Good luck to you.

One of the reasons I asked this question is not because of a tank related reason, but it falls into the defense based builds across ATs. I have a widow that I love to play. I didn't follow any build with her, and played it by ear. It ended up being a decent first build, with Mind Link up all of the time she is sitting at roughly 90% defense to melee, one proc'ed out attack, multiple set bonuses and sacrificing recharge/sapped defense debuff resistance to get there. It is a leveling build that I never respec'ed out of, honestly because it is just fun. I mean seriously, running around stealthed with a stealth IO in sprint as well, buffing the hell out of a team's defense/accuracy, dropping crits from stealth, and being able to pop back into stealth and crit again all while at 90% defense to melee? It is pretty fun. It is awesome, until it isn't. What I mean by that is there isn't much that character can't do until the debuffs finally hit, and when they do, look out. No heals in that situation = not fun, but it is now time to run. I assume the answer is 'well, you have a team in those situations' but that isn't always the case. My other tanks have mitigation methods for when the debuffs hit, like resistance AND a heal/absorb+heal. How do Shield tanks mitigate major debuffs when solo?

I know nothing about Shield, so this is a perfect opportunity to learn. What does shield do for debuff resistance? I downloaded your build and looked. How do you deal with getting sapped/recharge debuffed?

They must have been lower level. I'll take a look at that character again, as it was starting to get interesting. You have given me a terrible idea for TT though, lol. 6 slotted KB enhancements for all available powers and listen to the screams of Tankers chasing mobs! We could also play Tanker Tennis if you like. Again, it is interesting to see how different people look at things differently. I primarily use Atom Smasher with Energy Torrent, and will mix in whittling down a boss/EB with single target if they are not dead by that point. It is an important thing IMO to have it, so yes, I feel your pain. Thankfully we have the test server with the ability to import enhancements straight from MIDS, which is invaluable I have found. It makes that process of testing much faster. The "Freebies" mod certainly helps tremendously as well.

That is awesome! Thank you for posting that build. I love checking these out to see how people look at hitting goals/objectives and the different ways to get there. I tried to slot a FF in Radioactive Smash, and spent a good bit of time with it on auto-fire testing. It had some dismal results, and I attributed them to the small recharge time. It is why I had to go outside of the RM set to find better results, like I have seen you do with Cross Punch (which btw that sounds is fun to hear... I don't know why, but it makes me laugh each time I hear it). Energy Torrent is not terrible, hits multiple mobs (the key), and procs FF a lot. If you have to run down that Epic path ever give it a shot. I am trying to work up a Spines/Regen brute for old times sake, and running into the same thing with Spines; no FF procs outside of Ripper. I really like how you used the chance for res/absorbs in your always on powers, like Mud Pots, Rooted and IG. I utilize that as well, as things happen, chains get messed up, and I don't want to rely on using a click for an absorb or resistance. I have also learned from your builds, and getting back into the game, how important the recharge debuff resistance is. You are on of the only ones who builds specifically for that, at least where it is noticeable to me, and I think you are on the mark. I really like perma-hasten/perma-dull pain/perma-Earth's Embrace, which is why I am having issues with my Invuln tanks, as I want 'Mo Durable' defense/resists plus perma-hasten and a high regen. I hate to compromise certain things on a build, so I am spinning my wheels. I'll figure it out eventually. I guess the days of needing to have Dull Pain up 100% as a Spines/Regen scrapper have left an impression still felt 20 years later. I'll take your build to the test server and give it a spin this weekend. Thank you again.

Yes, that character is around vet level 360, so a little late, lol. I glad you brought up Axe, as I have a question. How do you deal with the constant knockback as a melee character? I was leveling a Rad/Axe tank and around the IP level range I started knocking them back, like way back. I looked like a cat chasing a laser pointer running mobs down. Outside of using a "Sudden Acceleration" KB to KD, or the Overwhelming Force enhancement, which both can mess up slotting, I guess you just live with it? It is a shame, as Axe has a lot of potential. I just hate running after mobs over and over and over.

Invuln tanks will always be my favorite, and I looked at your 'Mo Durable' build(s) when I first came back. They are obviously well thought out and I think would do a great job on most things in the game. What I like about this particular stone build is that 'what you see is what you get'. There are no power cool-downs involved, no incarnate powers on a 2 min timer necessary to hit those numbers, and no need to use jab to keep 6% of the resistance going. It doesn't need any of that. It just is that, without other help needed. Hasten is as close to perma as possible without sacrificing other things. Add in perma-Earth's Embrace and regen in the mid 90s without any assistance, and a lot left in reserve if you do need it. No matter what happens, that is your baseline. I have been playing around with @Linea's 801 maps, which are a beast all unto themselves. They are unlike anything seen in game, and I appreciate the difficulty. It would be interesting to see how the builds stack up against something REALLY difficult. Adding the debuff resistance for information.

and what it looks like when you need that 'oh shit' regen from Rebirth Radial Epiphany

I wasn't able to upload a pic earlier. Here is what it looks like.

I haven't been back long, and this is the first build I am sharing since starting playing at Homecoming. I played after launch, and then came back years later in 2011 and played again. My username comes from the fact that it was a 'dark revelation' that my Spines/Regen scrapper was a better tank than my Inv/SS tank (pre-nerf). It stuck, and I have used it in games since. I have always loved Inv/Fire tanks, and came around to feel the same about Stone a ways back. Rad fascinates me, and @Spaghetti Betty's Air Fryer build is the most fun I have had playing a tank in a long time. I have enjoyed learning from each of all of y'alls posted builds over the past few months. Y'all have a lot of really nice ideas. Without those it would have been very tough to 'catch up'. Thank you all for contributing and helping folk by posting your builds. With that said, I wanted to take a look at Stone and what could I do with it. I seem to champion lost causes (I am trying to recreate my poor, poor Spines/Regen scrapper as a brute, uggh) and wanted to look at Granite again. People dismiss it, and I understand why, but I wanted to take a deeper dive into it to see what all I could squeak out of it. When this started I wanted to see if I could make a very cheap granite build with just IOs, and you will see that I totally went off of the tracks with this, and ended up with an expensive build. This ended up being something where I wanted to see if I could build something that could survive most things solo. I wanted to go beyond the 'this will survive 99% of content'. I had hoped to post a screenshot of the build, but it didn't work out. I'll go over some of what I did and why. -Roughly 50% def to S/L, 47% to F/C/E/N, 17% to Tox/Psi - Capped on Resistance to everything but Psi, which is at 5%. I'll explain later how I worked around the Psi hole. Toxic is at 84% w/o Earth's Embrace, but I have EE perma'ed, so we will count it at way over 90%. -Capped HP, and actually over by a decent amount. It is something I wanted to look at eventually to see if I could take those bonuses and move the elsewhere, but I haven't got around to it yet. -Regen at 94-96 HP/s (there is a difference with MIDS vs the game), with more available if needed. I'll expound on that in a bit. -95% Debuff resistance to Recharge, which is crucial to this build. I am a perma-hasten builder usually, and not having it drives me nuts. So why take granite you ask? Well, this is part of the 'squeak out' thing I was talking about earlier. I wanted to take the things people hate about granite and see what I could do with them. So I tried to work around them, and finally am happy with the results. Y'all have this nice 'proc' thing now which we didn't have back then, and it is very interesting for builds. I did the following: -Proc'ed damage isn't affected by granite's damage penalty, or other damage penalties. It is the same for when you get a SS rage dump and can still hit for damage. I proc'ed Mud Pots, IG and Atom Smasher. I'm not a blaster but the damage is ok, especially for granite. The issue I had was with endurance when I didn't slot my Ageless Core Epiphany (more on that later), so I had to use some IOs on some powers for accuracy and endurance discount. I couldn't find a HO with that combination. There is one for Acc/End Modification, but that didn't help me. I need discount, not modification. Please let me know if I am wrong and there is some kind of HO that would work for this. - I put a FF proc in Energy Torrent to get as close to perma-hasten as I can. I can keep hasten close to perma, if not perma'ed, if I have a lot of mobs, if not and I am fighting a solo mob, it will be just under a minute to get hasten back at the worst case scenario. Energy Torrent isn't Foot Stomp, but it isn't terrible either for the proc. I am very thankful for the test server, as it is invaluable to building. As for testing this, I am still learning the new content so I am limited by what I know. I tried to come up with ugly scenarios and drop myself into them. I didn't find much that could do a lot of damage to me, with a few exceptions that are interesting. I did the 54 Cimerorans without issue, letting them stand there and floor my defense. The res/healing is too much for them, even in large packs of 20+. I have done the fire-S/L farms, no issues at all there. I dipped into the 801 AE missions, which are very interesting. I only went through 801.0-801.3, but the only time I ran into trouble was grabbing three spawns/packs. I was a bit embarrassed to have to eat a green, and wasn't sure why at the time that I got hit so much all of a sudden. It wasn't until I took this one to 'The Hive' that I figured out what was happening. 1-8 of the Giant Monsters is nothing, they don't budge the health bar really. An occasional tick, but nothing bad. Any damage is mitigated by res/healing. To test it further I dropped into the large 'gathering' of DE Giant Monsters. One of them is listed for badges as "The Sound of Thunder". It is what you use to kill giant monsters to get Hami to spawn. I believe I counted 16 Giant Monsters, and 6 smaller helpers, plus the various Swarms. I was doing fine when all of a sudden I am watching my health bar tick down in visibly noticeable ticks. I keep a monitor of my defense/resistance/healing rate open at all times, and I didn't see anything that was reduced. I popped some greens and TP'ed away. I ended up doing this multiple times and long story short, figured out what was causing it by having every category of log for combat available in a different tab. I could see in the logs 'Thorn had a 95% chance to hit...' ,which was puzzling, as I knew my defense was not dropped, at all. All of those mobs were hitting their streakbuster in order, and roughly at the same time. Getting hit by 16+ GMs at once is rough. Same thing went for three packs of insane 801 mobs, streakbuster is a PITA. There is a way to deal with this though. 99+% of the time in, let's call it non-ultra content, I will use the Ageless Core Epiphany in my Destiny slot, even with this build. For that ultra-content I slot the Rebirth Radial Epiphany, which I included on the build I posted. That will push you way over the regen cap, for a nice 'oh shit' button. If anyone ever asks why we don't have regen for a tank, you can point to this as an example of why. It will get you past almost anything for 10 seconds, and then reduces again at 30, 60 and finally ends after 120 seconds where it is ready to go again. I use the Spiritual Core Paragon for the Alpha, which gives 45% recharge, 33% to healing, plus 33% to stuns. That is necessary to try to try to get as close to perma-hasten as possible. I use the Assault Radial Embodiment for double-hit, as that works on procs. I have tried the Melee, and use them on other characters, but I couldn't get enough out of them for the Psi hole, so I abandoned that and went in another direction. Edit - I use the untouchable Banished Pantheon Radial Superior Ally, as it helps with recharge and they can't hit it. I didn't put that in the build file. The Psi hole; each set has a hole and this is no exception. There are two ways to deal with it that I have found. The first is just to suck it up and if you know you are getting into something with Psi mobs, slot the Rebirth Radial Epiphany. I tested with Arachnos packs and didn't need to use it, even though it sounded like I was being taunted a few times a second at points. The regular regen covered those large packs. Second, and this is 'different', but you can drop out of granite and keep 'Minerals' up. With this build you have more than 45% defense to Psi with granite down and Minerals running. I tested this on a 4x8 Maria Jenkins mission with almost all Psi, the "Malaise" mission, as well as the one with Penelope Yin and Mother Mayhem. I had no issues on either. The regen was more than enough to catch whatever got through. I have not tested it in the Shadow Shard, as I hated that place way back when and if I never go back I will be fine with it. Mostly joking.....mostly. I will try to test it though out there eventually. The jet packs you can get now will correct some of the misery from the past with trying to get around that place with Super Jump as your travel power. I rambled on a bit too long, but builds are fun. Take a look at the build and let me know what you think. Tanker - Stony Simona - granite v5 - Tanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee) - Copy.mbd

It was nice to meet y'all on Tuesday. I wish I had the time to run something with y'all, but at least wanted to say hello. I've been lurking here since I came back in January, and have really enjoyed learning about the things that have changed since I was away from your builds. I appreciate the posted builds and advice that y'all have posted over the past few years. It made coming back a lot easier having points of reference from people who have been playing. I am still getting my feet under me, but I am sharing a build in the near future. It is a very different build, but it should at least make for some good conversation.

That did it. I was able to get on my character in PI, as well as get into my SG base. Thank you very much @Lunar Ronin

Odd, I am using the Homecoming Launcher but it didn't show up as needing an update until I forced it to. Thank you very much. Hopefully this will work.

I did, yes. It went to 27.7.6043