Warshades

Not trying to change your mind, but putting Sudden Acceleration KB to KD proc and Force Feedback +rech proc turns Hand Clap into a knockdown power that provides soft control as well as almost always procing the +rech proc. Builds can vary a lot in how much they cost to actually build depending on what IO enhancements you build with. A few things about regeneration specifically worth mentioning: You do want to partially have high recharge in your build so that you can access your heals like Reconstruction and Second Wind more often when needed, as well as access your T9 power (Moment of Glory) that temporarily makes you nearly invincible for 15 seconds. Regeneration (not the power set itself) as a form of damage mitigation is typically considered the weakest, mainly because it takes time to regenerate health which you may not always have if you take high amounts of burst damage quickly. Fighting pool will be useful to get another resist power in Tough. Regeneration has been reworked recently and can be built to be durable, but it does take a little more knowledge to build and pilot than a typical resist and/or defense focused armor set. Regeneration I would say is a little bit of a late bloomer in terms of becoming tanky. Reactive Regeneration will certainly help a lot when you get to lvl 18 and can pick it up, but it's also a set that becomes more durable when you can build in resist set bonuses from IOs so that you take less damage and can give regen the time it needs to work and regenerate HP.

Only those that are "global" unique IOs. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Set_Enhancements_with_Special_Effects

Welcome back! There have been quite a few changes related to tanks in general with the most recent update, but one specific one for Radiation Armor is that Radiation Therapy works on adaptive recharge (short recharge if 1 foe is hit, long recharge if you hit 10 foes). This is a new mechanic which essentially aims to lower the viability of procing out powers, also makes some powers more useful that used to have long recharges and may recharge faster when fighting a single enemy. The target cap limit on Ground Zero was also significantly lowered, though it's still an excellent power and procs well. A few general points: Combustion is a great power to slot damage procs in if you can afford to since it has a high proc rate. You do not need to slot the Preventive Medicine unique into a passive power like Health that's always active. Preventive Medicine unique will work in active powers even when they're not used. It's a good idea to fully 6 slot the set if you have a good heal/absorb power (like Particle Shielding) for the set bonuses as well. Power Transfer run speed unique is a wasted slot in Physical Perfection, Radiation Armor doesn't really have endurance issues nor do you really need a small amount of run speed unless you're going for concept, and then an armor set with a passive that boosts run speed would be a more optimal choice (like SR and 5x slotting gift of the ancients run speed uniques). I would suggest reconsidering how much value you want to place on the melee defense soft cap. Radiation Armor has no DDR and any mobs that lower defense, like Cimeroran Traitors for example, will still quickly and easily drop your melee defense into the negative values in very short order. 6 slotting BU with Gaussian is a lot of slots for a very small return. Enhancing recharge of BU will additionally lead to lower activation rate on Gaussian's proc. I'd just 1 slot it with Gaussian proc (maybe add 1 regular recharge IO slot at most) and use the rest elsewhere. I'd suggest putting the SMoT proc into a power that you'll spam more often than Radiation Therapy. With the recent adaptive recharge change, Radiation Therapy proc chances were significantly reduced. It would also still have a very long recharge if you use it when surrounded by a mob, so not a great place to put the SMoT proc which can stack with itself. Try to keep your recharge debuff resist high on any resist based armor sets, particularly when they also rely on clickable powers like Particle Shielding as part of their sustainability. Recharge debuffs are very common and you'll encounter a lot of them. Being a resist based armor set, you're also often getting hit with many debuffs as well. Radiation has a few resist holes, most notably cold. But I wouldn't really recommend chasing for f/c resist bonuses since cold damage isn't very common and you borderline almost never get hit by cold damage outside of Winter event or specific AVs. I've adjusted the build a bit, though it does drop you to 33.6% melee defense (still within 1 small purple inspiration of hitting soft cap). This build relies a bit heavily on Focused Accuracy for the tohit buff to get the accuracy of your attacks to 95%+ against +3 enemies (ideally I'd suggest checking the accuracy of your attacks without any BU/BU procs or other temporary sources of tohit buffs active when looking). This hits 95% just barely with FA active, but it does mean that it won't exemplar as well below lvl 36 when you won't have FA available (if you're still fighting +3 mobs at lower exemplar level). I've kept most of the slotting (like Touch of Death and Unbreakable Guard sets) similar to still maintain a high-ish melee defense, but I think you'd get better value by allowing it to be a bit lower and getting more offense via recharge bonuses/procs/etc. I'd suggest musculature alpha to further boost damage output, fire is among one of the best melee sets for damage output on tanks. There are 4 extra slots left over that you can place towards whatever you want for set bonuses/uniques, etc. Tanker (Radiation Armor - Fiery Melee)2.mbd

As the title says, sharing a build that I've recently tried and had a lot of fun with in case it is of interest for anyone else. The original idea (at least from where I found it) came about from @Thraxen who posted in the brute topic about getting a high recharge ss/elec brute to make use of the new, crashless Power Surge T9. After looking over some of the powers and the amount of regen they can provide, I decided to make it a dual concept of high recharge/regen Elec Armor build on a tank (higher base max HP certainly helps the hp/sec regen rate here). Posting the current version of the build as I have it down below, it's been extremely fun to use and has been very sturdy in general. A few notes regarding the build: It's a concept focused on maximizing recharge and regen. There are certainly better ways to slot the attacks to help mitigate rage crash by using damage procs (and not using a recharge boosting alpha incarnate to maximize proc chances). Personally the few seconds of no damage from rage don't bother me that much and 5 slotting attacks with purple sets was needed to max out the 10% recharge bonuses (along with picking Spiritual alpha to go past ED cap on recharge and healing buffs). Power Sink is pretty insane. With the high recharge, it can be stacked up to 3 times. When fully saturated, it's providing almost 400% regen rate buff (a little over 30hp/sec) with each stack. This does come with some cons. It's not easy to keep 3 stacks saturated fully in actual gameplay, mob size is usually diminished when Power Sink is back up. However, it's easy to maintain 2 stacks fully saturated by using it as an opener when going from mob to mob. The effectiveness of Power Sink is greatly reduced when you're fighting a single AV/GM foe since it's providing regen per enemy hit. Outside of using Power Surge and Unleash Potential, your regen rate will be low while tanking someone like LR or the patron AVs during MLTF. I didn't prioritize closing resist gaps on negative/psionic/toxic damage with set bonuses since the point of the concept was to max out recharge and regen. Power Surge (since it will be up often with the high recharge) closes the negative/toxic resist gap by a solid amount along with the SMoT resist proc. This build is very much for end game as the attack chain doesn't really finalize until you get Gloom at 35. The high recharge nature of the build allows me to essentially spam Punch -> Gloom -> Punch and then sprinkle in KO Blow and Weaken Resolve against single targets. Can also still use Foot Stomp for any minor gaps in recharge. Overall, it works well exemplared as early as 25 since you'll still have access to Foot Stomp then, but anything lower isn't as fun to play and you'll be relying a lot more on Sands of Mu, Black Wand, Nemesis Staff, etc to fill out your attacks. It doesn't quite reach 100% recharge debuff resist without relying on a combination of Ageless Radial and the Ouro/Time Lord day job passive (not hard to get). This can be altered to 2 slot boxing/brawl with Superior Blistering Cold for the slow resist if you want to take a different Destiny incarnate slot. Regarding Force of Will pool powers, this isn't really needed or mandatory, but does contribute to the high regen theme of the build. It also offers a spot to mule LotG +rech and Weaken Resolve is a nice 1 slot for Achilles proc. Mighty Leap also gives access to Take Off, which aside from boosting your jump speed can also act as an AoE kd power for some soft control. I've rather enjoyed having it on this build. With Energize providing endurance discount and Power Sink being spammed, I don't even bother to detoggle Mighty Leap, endurance is not an issue. With the patron pool choice, this is flexible. You could stick with Mu Mastery for the electricity theme if you prefer. My primary reason for going Soul is that Gloom offers better proc chances and higher single target DPA since it has a longer base recharge than Mu Lightning. Since it is slotted with 5 pieces of Apocalypse + Spiritual alpha to boost recharge/regen, it's unavoidable that proc chances will be lowered and this is worse on Mu Lightning. Ideally it's best to have short activation time powers in your epic/patron pick which both Soul and Mu offer. To maximize both recharge and regen, Spiritual alpha was a given choice for incarnates. Ageless radial, aside from providing some debuff resist, also boosts recharge. The rest are rather flexible. I went with Melee Radial hybrid to further lean in on regen, can go Melee Core if you want another power that closes the resist gaps on negative/toxic/psi besides Power Surge or Assault hybrid to further boost damage. Ion judgement would fit electric theme best here and is an awesome power in general for the slot. Went with Reactive Radial as I find it most useful when soloing, but if you do team a lot, it's a common pick and you could go Preemptive Radial to lean into endurance drain/recovery debuff a bit more. Mid's doesn't have accurate recharge numbers on Power Surge even when ignoring the fact that the tanker version is still listing it at a base of 1000 seconds. From in game values, counting the minimum 10% recharge boost from Ageless radial, Power Surge shows a 77 second recharge time after use. In practice, this is usually a few seconds faster with Force Feedback procs being applied from Foot Stomp/Hand Clap. To sort of cap off, I've had moments where this thing puts Regen and Willpower tanks to shame with my regen rate sitting at 2500% cap and getting ~246ish hp/sec while Power Surge and/or Unleash Potential is up and Power Sink is triple stacked and highly saturated (again, doesn't happen often and requires ideal situations). This thing is easily able to keep up 110-150hp/sec regen teaming through regular content at 50 just through Power Sink and Energize alone. This build is very click heavy with Power Sink, Energize, Rage, and Hasten along with some slightly longer recharging powers like Power Surge and Unleash Potential, but very fun combination to play overall. It's also rather expensive as I did +5 boost the Panacea pieces, any damage and dam/end purple set pieces, and the 3 Impervious Skin resit/end, resist/rech, and resit/end/rech pieces. It's an effective build, but is centered around maxing recharge/regen concept as opposed to maximizing damage/proc rates and closing and resist gaps. Values displayed are with Ageless Radial > 60 seconds elapsed time, Melee Radial set to 0 (only counting the base small regen buff), and just Energize and 1 fully saturated Power Sink active. Edited for grammar and to include screenshot of build. Tanker (Electric Armor - Super Strength)4.mbd

Personal preference, but as far as shielding sets go, I always prefer Cold Domination. It is among one of the best debuffing sets with Heat Loss, Sleet, and Benumb. I normally skip Frostwork and Snow Storm, though Snow Storm can be a useful power for pulling groups around corners and into Sleet if you plan to solo a lot more. It's fairly light on required slots for the secondary so you can focus a lot more of your slotting on the primary and pool/epic powers.

Adding one additional image, this is with just triple stacked Power Sink and Energize regen buffs, no Power Surge or Unleash Potential. 189hp/sec is pretty impressive imo. Again though, this does depend on getting fully saturated Power Sink stacks which isn't practically achievable outside of farming and ideal circumstances. Power Sink regen scales evenly per enemy hit up to 10 enemies, so while it provides about 38% regen per hit (1140% regen with 3 stacks and 10 enemies hit per stack), it would provide barely anything against a single target like an AV/GM, only giving a max of ~114% with 1 target per hit.

This image is triple stacked Power Sink, Power Surge, and Energize regen buffs active (very close to regen rate cap). Once again, apologies for posting tanker example in brute forum, but I really just wanted to see how far the hp/sec regen could potentially go and tanks do get higher base max HP values. This is same as above with addition of Unleash Power which temporarily caps regen rate while both Power Surge and Unleash Power are active. Looking over it, Unleash Power doesn't really add much that Elec Armor can't already achieve on it's own if Power Sink is continuously stacked and saturated. Could be worthwhile to have and cycle interchangeably with Power Surge as opposed to using both at the same time.

Just tested it on beta server, multiple applications of Power Sink stack with themselves. At one point, my regen was capped at 2500% (regen monitoring value turned blue) which was giving me 272hp/sec, this was with 3 stacks of Power Sink, Energize, Power Surge, and Unleash Potential all active at the same time. One use of Power Sink (fully saturated) was giving me ~30hp/sec regen, with 3 stacks up (all fully saturated when surrounded on a fire farm map) it was giving 90hp/sec for brief moments just from spamming Power Sink (again, tested on tanker values). It was honestly very fun to use, love the concept and going to try building it on live when I get the time and influence to make it (kinda expensive build). Additionally, could also use Take Off from going Force of Will and Mighty Leap as an additional knockdown power for soft mitigation (doesn't hurt that it makes you jump really fast to for traveling purposes). For reference, this is the build I used for the tank version on beta. Mostly transferable to a brute build with the exception of the ATO set pieces. Tanker (Electric Armor - Super Strength)4.mbd

Want to do the same. Going to try the tank first, based on values from mid's, it was showing about 200hp/sec regen while Power Surge was active, around 100hp/sec without Power Surge (does also assume saturated Power Sink with 10 foes). Do you know if the regen from Power Sink stacks? With the high recharge you could easily have 2x stacks going, at times 3. Also, not sure if you considered it, but Force of Will would be an interesting concept to double down on the regen aspect of the build. Mid's is showing ~237hp/sec regen for a tank with Power Surge and Unleash Potential both up and 10 foe saturated Power Sink. If the regen from Power Sink stacks with itself, it could easily hit 267hp/sec at times, which while not permanent is still pretty crazy. Can use Weaken Resolve with just the base slot to put an achilles proc in, should have no issue hitting with double stacked rage and would provide a useful resist debuff for AV fights. Unleash Potential can also mule a LotG +rech as well. Gets to 133 second recharge on a 60 second duration with 325% haste in the build using minimal values on ageless. Realistically, it will end up being a bit faster after counting Time Lord recharge boost from day job and the FF+rech procs hitting during fights.

Personal slotting and styles can vary, for me I usually drop 4x Shield Wall sets (def, def/end, def/rech, def/end/rech) into the 3 SR toggles, this is to get the eng/neg resistance bonuses (the max HP is also very beneficial for SR). For the 3 passives, I'll 3 slot them with 1 LotG +rech and then will do 2 Red Fortune (def, def/rech or def/end) to get the s/l resist. In one of the passives, I'll replace the 2 Red Fortunes with Reactive Defenses (def and scaling resist) which also provides s/l resist bonus. Usually I'll take fighting pool for SR as you want Tough to increase your s/l resist and be able to slot the resist uniques like Steadfast, Gladiator's Armor, and Unbreakable Guard. Weave also provides great defense value and I'll usually 4 slot it with Shield Wall as well and place the resist unique here (def, def/end, def/end/rech, and resist unique). Generally speaking, SR requires very few slots to slot up so you'll usually have plenty for any attacks and some remaining leftover slots. Depending on what other powers you take that can mule LotG +rech like Combat Jumping, you can also add slots to the toggles to slot the LotG +rech until you have 5 total on your build. Also worth slotting is the Power Transfer chance for self heal procs in Stamina (and either Harmonic Mind or Physical Perfection if you go with psi or energy epic respectively). On SR specifically, I do like to build as much resists as I can, this helps so that you end up hitting 90% resist cap with a higher HP left remaining from the passive scaling resist effects. You can usually sit around 30-40% HP and have capped resists to everything but psionic with SR if you build for high resists.

Now I'm kinda interested in trying this on a tank. I'm not sure on how accurate mid's is right now with the recharge values, I didn't manually double check but tried adding in Adrenal Booster and didn't see any changes in recharge (not to mention that toggling and detoggling Adrenal Booster would change recharge times to different values, so something is definitely off there). Still, electric armor has a surprisingly high amount of regen with Energize, Power Sink, and Power Surge running at the same time, will be even higher with tanker HP. I'll experiment more with this concept when I have more time. Build below adds more global recharge and Adrenal Booster. Brute (Super Strength - Electric Armor)RechBuild2.mbd

You need to make sure to get your recharge debuff resist to 100%, otherwise that can significantly impact your recharge rates on a resist armor set that will take any and all debuffs, especially during rage crash. Here's a quick sample aiming for maximizing recharge. Without any procs turned on and minimum recharge value set for Ageless, it gets Power Surge down to 70 seconds. Will likely be a bit quiicker with FF +rech procs going off every now and then. Brute (Super Strength - Electric Armor)RechBuild.mbd

I like a lot of the ideas you suggested in general, but I do have a slight issue with this one. Doing such a change once again bottlenecks players into a specific playstyle, constant shapeshifting to make the WS most effective or avoiding doing so with the PB to maximize their damage. The most fun that I've had playing a WS was as a mostly human build that would only shapeshift into Dwarf to double up on Mire while being built for perma Eclipse and taking advantage of Inky Aspect and Gravitic Emanation to stun lock mobs, including bosses. It's a very control centric build but is very effective at handling large mobs as long as they don't have some form of mez protection. I think having diversity on if you want to shapeshift or not as a kheldian while still remaining highly effective would be better. I am all for incentivizing using the forms, just not at the expanse of not doing so resulting in significantly subpar performance. There should be legitimate tradeoffs, using Nova form should provide higher damage output than staying fully human or using Dwarf, just not to the point that deciding to stay in one form all the time or fully human results in them playing and performing as they currently are because they can't obtain the buffs without shifting. Rather than trying to layer more damage buffs in one way or another, I'd rather have an overhaul on the base damage scale numbers. Kheldians (particularly human form) suffer from having low ranged and melee damage scale numbers along with having low damage buff caps. Meanwhile, VEATs are sitting nice and comfy with their scale modifier at 1 for both ranged and melee attacks. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Damage#Damage_Scale One of the biggest issues I have with the forms themselves are the lack of powers that you can use while in them. While I do get that this is done in order for the AT to embrace shapeshifting and changing forms, this should really be expanded and allow more powers from the primary/secondary to be usable while shapeshifted. One thing that could be done to add some more sustainability and make it more fun to play is allowing additional powers to be usable from human forms. Allow Warshades to use Gravity Well, Stygian Circle, and Unchain Essence while in Dwarf form, maybe even Dark Extraction also. This will provide some much needed AoE damage, better ST attack chain, and some additional layer of heals/end recovery. Imo, Orbiting Death/Inky Asapect should also be usable in Dwarf form, there's no reason not to have a PBAoE aura if the point of Dwarf mode is to be a pseudo tank. PB Dwarf could gain access to Essence Boost, Incandescent Strike or Radiant Strike, Inner Light, and perhaps Photon Seekers. As you pointed out, the game vastly is different from when Kheldians were released to what it is now. There's no need to put something as important as mez protection to be tied down to teaming, especially if someone wants to solo play through story arcs and such. It really should not be that difficult to add a mez protection toggle/passive, or else add a mez protection function to one of the existing powers besides Dwarf form. One of the core features of any "armor" set AT (and I use armor set loosely here) is that they gain a toggle that provides mez protection. Kheldians do as well, but it unfortunately is tied to a transformation form shift power which may not work for those wanting to play a human only kheldian build (not to mention that staying in Dwarf form is very limiting in terms of what powers they currently have access to and how much they can contribute while in Dwarf). Maybe change the inherent from providing mez protection to boosting mez duration of powers (WS would benefit more from this than PB). Ideally, swap the additional resist buffs from certain ATs to instead give defense buffs. Kheldians are already a resist based armor sets, adding on more to it is a wasted buff whereas they'd actually benefit some from having higher defense even if it only reduces the initial alpha strike damage that they take because defense debuffs will lower it afterwards. There's a rather easy work around. Just increase the damage buff provided by Mire so that it effectively works like using Mire twice. Perhaps a bit lower damage buff total since you'd only need to use 1 power. I'd probably prefer the human version with the longer buff duration/cooldown so that it doesn't have to refreshed often when it relies on mob sizes that may not be there anymore after initial burst hits kill off minions and lts. The one issue with this is that WS Dwarf form does make use of Mire not only as a buff but as an AoE attack spam. Consolidating them into 1 power, especially if using the longer buff duration/recharge of the human form, will hinder the AoE damage they have access to if the goal is to make the forms more useful to stay shapeshifted into. Yes, this needs to happen. Along those lines, the animation time of Extract Essence/Unchain Essence could use a reduction, both take a really long time.

Stone armor is very fun! Not sure if it would fit your concept reasons, but it's a legitimately tough stalker armor set that also provides excellent offensive buffs through Brimstone and Minerals giving extra damage and recharge. Also gets good mez protection with Rooted, not the best DDR but going with ageless radial can help there. I don't have a StJ build that I've played on a stalker, but will post my EM/stone that I use along with a quick StJ/stone that I made while trying to avoid tough/weave. It's a bit more offense focused with procs. I do like taking Adrenal Booster on stalkers to further boost the damage, but giving up on experimentation pool would give you more power picks for CJ and/or maneuvers to more easily soft cap e/n defense without going tough/weave route, which is a bit below 45% in my EM/stone build. Without tough/weave it's a bit harder to soft cap s/l/e/n (still doable if you slot some Winter Sets that gives s/l/e/n 5% typed defense). Just an offer for another contender secondary if you want to try StJ/stone. Stalker (Energy Melee - Stone Armor)6.mbd Stalker (Street Justice - Stone Armor).mbd

Broad Sword attacks are slow. Personal preferences may vary, but I also like the animations of NB a lot more, they're more smooth. You can also look at the damage per animation, NB is higher on most attacks because the animation times are shorter. Kind of depends. The only positional damage types you won't soft cap with EA is psionic and toxic, and the former has very few attacks that are actually melee so I'd say that Divine Avalanche/Parry aren't really necessary since soft capping melee won't add much durability if you're already soft capping s/l/e/n/f/c. It does provide an easy place to put something like a LotG mule and still builds Assassin's Focus stacks so it's not a terrible pick either to include as part of an attack chain. While I don't have a BS or NB stalker, I would probably avoid taking Divine Avalanche or Parry if my secondary was EA for a final, lvl 50 build. Like @Lockpick pointed out, it would be a lot more useful while leveling. Edit: regarding more end drain, that is the last thing you'll need to worry about with EA since you'll have access to Energize which reduces end use and Energy Drain which will fill your endurance easily.

Updating mid's will at least update the toxic res from Static Shield. Duration on Power Surge also looks accurate, not sure on the resist values and it still displays the crash effects which aren't there anymore. Did a quick build to see if I could cap toxic resist and it's certainly doable on elec armor with the recent changes, don't even need barrier, just 1 stack of SMoT proc and resilient alpha slot (assuming mid's values are accurate).

This is a quick alteration based on the slotting I use for invuln with some sets and powers moved around. It does use resilient core alpha instead of agility to reach higher resists. A single SMoT proc puts you at 80%+ resist to everything, stacking it twice will get you to resist caps for everything but psionic. Laser Beam Eyes would be a better fit as a usable attack instead of Hurl if it wouldn't break your theme. Captain Citadel v3.mbd

I'll link a sample build, be sure to set invincibility to 0 foes and then back to 1 in mid's to get accurate defense numbers since mid's still doesn't load in invuln builds with proper defense values when invincibility is toggled on. The values in the screenshot are with 1 foe in range of invincibility and 1 stack of SMoT proc. Add in T4 barrier which at minimum always applies 5% def/res and you're hitting 50%+ def to everything but psi/tox and 90% resist to all but psi on a permanent basis with just 1 SMoT stack still. A second stack of SMoT would then cap off psi resist. Alternatively, you can move a slot into a resist power (either a power transfer +heal or performance shifter +end procs) to put in another Impervium Armor +psi resist unique and you'd cap psi resist with just 1 stack of SMoT and T4 barrier as well. Invuln can be built to have no resist holes, a lot of other pure resist based armor sets can similarly be built to reach 90% to everything or nearly everything as well with careful planning. In theory, it may be possible. Hover and Fly can be directly swapped with CJ and Super Jump as I have them in my build (though your fly speed using Hover might be low with no other buffs to it). Bigger issue is finding a diverse secondary attack set that can take appropriate IO sets to soft cap typed defenses. You could technically still take Hurl and slot it just for the set bonuses, but theme tends to conflict with trying to reach certain defensive/resist benchmarks as you're limiting what powers you can pick and indirectly limiting what IO set types can be slotted as a result. Super Strength in particular is more limiting since outside of 1 AoE attack in Foot Stomp and 1 ranged attack in Hurl (which you can't use with flight), everything else is single target attacks. That places some limits on what sets and bonuses you can get. Hurl can be slotted with Superior Winter's Bite (same defensive bonuses as Superior Entomb, I went for the entomb set because of the absorb proc in it), but you'd be unable to slot a 3 piece eradication set to get the e/n defense. If you do so in Foot Stomp, you miss out on the psi/tox resist from Armageddon. A quick solution would be taking Cross Punch to have an additional cone that can take PBAoE sets. Tanker (Invulnerability - Dark Melee)7.mbd

That's just flat out untrue. Several other sets are capable of capping all resists at 90%. Personally I wouldn't put radiation in top 3 for survivability and it's likely outside the top 3 for offense as well after the recent Radiation Therapy nerf (at minimum, I currently have bio, shield, and fiery as providing higher offensive buffs than radiation). Defensive sets, especially those that are able to supplement that defense with high resists, are much better for survivability. While there are niche situations that having an absorb shield is useful, several armor sets are sturdier for survivability than radiation. Invuln can hit 90% resists to all dmg types while also reaching 45% soft cap def to all typed dmg other than psi/tox, that also with with some decent DDR and 1 foe in range of invincibility. The def will scale higher with saturated invincibility. Stone is able to easily soft cap/hard cap everything but psi with Granite, and even then, stacking psi resist bonuses and unique IOs from aegis/impervius would allow it to hard cap psi resist. Like invuln, stone gets good DDR as well. Shield is also extremely tough with easy positional soft cap, provides team support, and offensive buffs. With a focus on resist bonus, you can easily hit 90% s/l and ~70% to the other damage types. Combined with high DDR, shield is significantly more durable than radiation even with the lack of a heal. SR, due to the scaling resist buffs it gets from its passives, can hit 90% resist across everything but psi. With a focus on resist bonuses, it can do so at ~40% HP left at which point your health bar will practically not move with the capped 95% DDR and huge positional defense soft cap buffer. Energy, while being typed defense with a psi/toxic hole, does get higher starting resist from the passive buffs, a reliable heal/regen, and higher max HP than SR. It's an excellent set for survivability when IO'd out, but definitely a late bloomer. Bio provides more offensive buffs compared to radiation and also gets higher absorb shield values. This is more of a mixed set relying on absorbs, regen, resists, and defense. While I do like radiation armor, I don't believe it's in the top 3 of the available armor sets. Others have much higher advantages, either for survivability, damage, or in some cases both. Having said all that, any rating/opinion will have bias and you're certainly able to continue enjoying rad armor. All armor sets can work for all the content in the game, some just have higher ceilings that they can reach. My personal rating would be something like this in general (including incarnate content): Invuln Stone or Shield (relatively equal, depends on preference and secondary pairing). Energy or SR (relatively equal...) Bio Dark or Psi (relatively equal...) Regen Ice Radiation Fiery Electric Willpower This is mostly a survival rating, although offense also factors in (ex. fiery being higher than electric because of the superior offensive buffs it provides for my list). For specific situations, these can change. As an example, for 4 star content where a team cycles T4 barriers, resist/defense becomes irrelevant and heals/absorbs/offensive buffs would get much higher value.

I went the same way originally on my regen/ss (for the same reason as you with my regen tank being close to capped HP without SW) but after testing and playing the combo for a while, I have to agree with @Spaghetti Betty that having a second heal in Second Wind is useful to have as it isn't just a max HP boosting power. I ended up skipping Fast Healing since the base regen rate on it is pretty low, but I think having both Reconstruction and Second Wind is to useful to pass up. I also feel that Second Wind would actually be a bit less useful with just SOs due to the highish base recharge (not to mention being more susceptible to recharge debuff effects as you'd be missing the recharge debuff resist bonuses without IOs). With IO sets and a focus on recharge bonuses, it increases its availability/reliability as a heal power.

Don't think I ever ran through this one. Generally speaking, tanks have the easiest time surviving against heavy hitting mobs and also do excellent AoE damage to help reduce the mob size (though it would likely take longer to clear through the bosses/EBs). With regards to Warshade/Nictus spawns, reaching 100% recharge debuff resist should fix any annoyances here since their powers primarily debuff recharge and not accuracy iirc. The bigger issue would be Cimeroran Traitors as most of their attacks cause defense debuffs and once your defense is floored, you'll end up taking some heavy damage (this issue is worse for scrappers who max out at 75% damage resist caps compared to tanks/brutes being able to reach 90%). Generally speaking, I would run a tank if I wanted to do this at +4/8x with minimal risk of dying. Invuln in particular stands out since they can easily hit 90% s/l resist and can hit high defense values with invincibility when surrounded by mobs. I would also try to pair it with a heavy damage dealing and damage mitigating secondary attack set, most likely Battle Axe. The one downside to invuln is it doesn't directly provide any damage buffs via attacks or buffs from the armor set, so it would take longer to kill mobs. Shield should also be capable when built for heavy s/l resist and would be much better on damage output, but it does have lower max HP while lacking a heal, so you may end up wanting something like rebirth radial destiny slot. Stone armor should also be capable with a stronger focus on s/l resist buffs, I would certainly still run it outside of Granite. Energy aura, when fully built out, should also be able to handle this arc at +4/8x, but it does have a bit of a weakness to negative damage. SR in theory should manage just fine if you focus on resist bonuses. With it's 95% DDR, you literally have 0% chance of your defense failing and falling below 45% and in theory, you should be able to cap your s/l resist at 90% at around 40% HP left (from the passive scaling resist effects), but at that point it's kinda down to RNG. You could easily slot power transfer chance for +heal in stamina/harmonic mind and some other uniques like panacea and preventive medicine in health for sustainability, but you may still want rebirth radial in case you hit a particularly bad string of luck and get hit more often than 5% of the time. If you want something other than a melee char, MMs with marine affinity should be able to manage just fine even with additional EBs in mobs as long as you're just fighting 1 mob at a time. Demon/marine, merc/marine, and necro/marine would all work well. If you want to take a slower approach, Phantom Army on a controller is an option. Illusion is unfortunately dreadful for clearing mobs so I wouldn't recommend it, but they are a safe option that will eventually kill everything once you hit perma PA. Lastly, anything that can stay at range by hovering and building for high range defense would in theory be able to manage just fine. Fortunata Widows have solo'd ITF at +4/8x and outside of some extra EBs, it should manage just fine for this also. Cimerorans in particular are extremely weak to psi damage.

For me, the set bonuses vary widely depending on what power sets/AT I'm playing and what my goals for the char are. Global recharge is always useful, but I don't particularly care about getting perma hasten unless the power set/AT is heavily dependent on maxed recharge, in which case I'll end up achieving perma hasten anyway simply because I'll focus heavily on global recharge set bonuses. Recharge debuff resist is something I tend to chase more of partly because I often play melee chars or play in melee range. This goes a long way for characters that aren't defense focused and/or rely on clickable powers for their sustainability. Regarding defense/resist bonuses, that more so depends on the char and/or armor set that I'm using. Generally speaking, defense focused sets like SR, Shield, Stone, and Energy can easily hit soft cap value, particularly on a tank, with very little need to invest in defensive set bonuses. For those cases, I'll prioritize resist bonuses. On other ATs like scrappers, stalkers, brutes, and sentinels who get lower defensive values from toggles/passives, I may have to shore up some of the defense values to reach soft cap. On resist focused armor sets, I stick to resist bonuses and make sure that recharge debuff resist is at 100%. I think Invuln is the only armor set where I'll end up heavily chasing both defense and resist set bonuses. For some set bonuses like max HP, I only ever occasionally try to get them on tanks that can't easily cap their HP through the armor set + passive accolades powers. Accuracy is something that depends on if I'm procing out the attacks on the char or not. In some cases I don't bother with accuracy bonuses since powers are fully slotted with sets instead of procs. KB protection is an interesting one and may depend on who you ask. Personally, I often don't bother to try and build it very high unless the armor set completely lacks any KB protection (like dark armor used to before the Cloak of Fear change) or I have extra slots and nothing else worthwhile to invest them into (which doesn't happen often either). Those are pretty much the main set bonuses that I'll ever really focus on when building. For others, I don't really consider them very relevant or worth chasing. Endurance can be easily solved with ageless, temp powers, or even setting up macros that convert/pop insps to blues if you're exemplaring below incarnate level content.

I'd suggest pairing it with a good damage mitigating secondary, usually in the form of knockdowns. You can also dip into sorcery pool for RoP and melee core embodiment hybrid. Cycling between these 2 allows you to stay at 60%+ resist to everything (70%+ when counting the minimum 5% resist from T4 barrier core), closer to 90% on s/l resist. I'd focus set bonuses towards resist buffs since regen doesn't have enough DDR to make defense bonus chasing worthwhile IMO. I've linked my current regen/ss build if you wanted some ideas on slotting. I do highly recommend making sure you hit 100% recharge debuff resist as regen is a set that does rely on click heals and emergency powers like MoG at times and you don't want those stuck on cooldown because of recharge debuffs. High resists with regen allow you to take less damage and indirectly gives you more time to regen HP (as well as needing to regen less with higher resists because you took less damage). Tanker (Regeneration - Super Strength)5.mbd

Good shout. I usually look more at the HP/sec regen rather than the % values since the amount of regen is also heavily affected by the max HP and also still remembering the old regen set before the buff having very middling regen % values outside of instant healing being activate. You are right that regen can definitely hit 1000% range even with 1 foe in range of Reactive Regeneration. My regen tank very nearly does so (and would have if I went a healing alpha incarnate slot instead of musculature).

I don't think you'll reach 90% cap to everything like you can on Tanks, but you should still be able to reach high values. S/l resist should still be easy to cap. There are a few things working against invuln Brutes reaching 90% resist to all. No SMoT proc which contributes a significant amount and can be easily double stacked, lower base resist values, and no way to double stack a 6% e/n resist bonus like tanks can from splitting Superior Gauntleted Fist into 2 sets of 3. You'd be looking at closer to 90% s/l resist and ~70% on other types, but I can play around with Brute invuln to see where I can get it to when I have time. Edit: mid to upper 60s% range is where I was able to get resits other than s/l on a brute for invuln, this is with resilient core alpha slot on but without factoring the 5% def/resist from barrier T4. Counting barrier, you can hit 70% or very close to it for the other resists.