Infinitum

Bio /Spines would be pretty good. Great theme too. Bio Armor is a very good primary especially once you practice with it's functions and toolsets. I will put something together for you. My Bio build has come along pretty well - just played it last night on Apex Tin Mage and it performed great.

Edits - updated Quantum Infinitum and Volente - notes on OP. Also - There have been some recently that have taken issue with me selecting 10 saturation on Invincibility - and multiples on AAO etc. I just wanted to clarify here that it is never my intent to deceive or play mids games, but lets face it - we are tankers - if we aren't up to our elbows in the enemy - we aren't doing it right in the first place. So most of my builds take into account that fact - and honestly how a tanker and any Melee AT should be played - but especially a tanker. Plus I want to know what the build will do worst case scenario - because we aren't always going to have multiple team mates casting Barrier or team buffs that will sustain us. Eventually the chips will be down and we all will come across a situation where the team will wipe or is in danger of wiping and its just us or its just us and a few others. That's when you know what you are made of as a melee and more importantly a tanker - that's when you don't have the luxury of failing or being weak because your build is designed around receiving team buffs more than being self sufficient when it comes to mitigation. Lastly none of these builds are optimized for Hard Mode - if you want that - I can provide that, but hard mode should take into account casts of barrier, and other team buffs to optimize for Hard Mode. Hard Mode builds can actually be weaker in normal gameplay if they end up on an island - because they don't have to chase the extreme when multiple ongoing casts of barrier will put them there by default. These builds are designed for the most optimal synergy of mitigation and damage output for normal game play up to +4/8 and are disaster proof - while still retaining a unique look and feel that deviates from the meta of everyone AOE everything as quick as you can. To me that gets boring - and individual identity is lost in the meta at that point. So none of these are going to chase the meta strictly - but will still be more than capable of clearing a map and retaining the fun aspect. If anyone would like an in game demonstration of any of these builds I would be more than happy to oblige to show they do exactly what I say they will do. So keep the requests coming - I am more than happy to help out any way I can. ;-)

Try this - it gives you 90% Res to everything except Toxic - 56 and -NRG 78.9 - those numbers are with only one instance of Might of the Tanker - you will easily have two with it being in Lightning Field. I also built 45.6 Melee defense for initial alpha mitigation - yeah this doesn't have DDR but it at least allows you to mitigate a lot more of the alpha than you otherwise would be subjected to. I went with Rebirth as a Destiny - I like the theme of it - but there may be better options so feel free to change that to your liking. I also left one slot open - its a freebie for whatever you would like - I would probably go for Assault in Leadership - but again I left it open for you to inject your theme into this build. Let me know if you need anything else and hope this helps! Tanker (Electric Armor - Radiation Melee).mbd

Gotcha covered give me a bit and I will cook something up for ya!

Kinda funny - I knew exactly what you would say and what I would see. Even if AAO was set to 10 it's not that unrealistic for a tanker to be saturated by 10 at any given time. It's more the rule than the exception. I wouldn't do this - mainly because as I said before the rule is to be saturated and not the exception. If you aren't saturated you won't need end management anyway because you are unkillable if you made it to that point. If you are saturated - there are trash mobs that can suddenly drain you where this could come in handy if ageless is on cool down. If you knew anything about shield you would already know it's fine without a heal - but like I said in my reply take this or not but in a lot of occasions the quicker animating hits surpass siphon life's overall dps and allows you to not overkill some enemies or be rooted longer than you might need to be. Plus if you are being buffed by teammates the quicker animating attacks will then far surpass siphon life in an attack change and the flow of battle. Incarnate levels of to hit is 14 so you are automatically in the hole if you are at 45.the higher you get the better but I usually try to get above or close to 60%defense to the positionals - the ranged won't really hurt too badly where I had it. You can't always count on barrier being there either - you aren't trading enough off to harm the build to get the positionals over 60%

Hi, let me say first - that your build is actually pretty good - and if it suits your playstyle - stick with it and ignore what I am about to say lol I took your build and moved a few powers around - changed the slotting on some and swapped out one power for another that I will detail the reasons below - but none of it is the gospel truth that you should absolutely do it that way, but it is based loosely on a build I have ran that works well and is largely unkillable. Detailed Changes 1. I moved combat jumping sooner because of the utility and movement it adds for early game - it really is useful in that regard. 2. I moved Super Speed later in your chain because with the combination of athletic run and spring +combat jumping - you really don't need SS early game - however if you prefer that you can move it back and it wont hurt a thing. 3. I swapped Siphon life out for Shadow punch - with shield you really don't need a heal, but more to the point I have found that there is more utility to having two quick animating attacks which will do the same damage siphon life does in the same amount of time because SL animates in 1.93 - both of the other two punch animates in less than 1 second and recharges in 1 second and 2 seconds so you can literally have a fast one two combo ready at any point that by either combo or each one alone will equal or exceed the DPS of Siphon Life because they are faster. 4. Number 3 leads into the set swaps for your tanker ATOs - you will get more instances of Might of the tanker if it is in smite or shadow punch than if it was in Shadow Maul - plus you will get more damage out of Shadow maul by having a set that contains a proc. Again here - there is nothing wrong with Siphon Life and if you like it you can put it back in easily just switch the slotting from Shadow Punch back to Siphon Life. I would highly suggest keeping Might of the Tanker in Smite for the Res Proc ability firing more often. 5. I added One with the shield for 2 reasons - it is a decent Tier 9 that you can reliably lean on for both extra recovery if needed but also increased durability. It also works great as a mule for the defense uniques and imp armor +Psi. 6. I lowered the positional defense slightly to balance resistances higher across the board aside from Fire/Cold which I dropped a few points to put it in line with the rest - around 50-60% is the sweet spot for Shield for resistances including Psi and Toxic - that is with one instance of Might of the Tanker - which by slotting it in Smite you will get two instances easily - and possibly three at times which would increase your res by another 12 points. 7. Smashing lethal res I put to 88 - would have liked to gotten to 90 but again with two instances of Might of the Tanker it will be there. 8. All of this includes Cardio Core for your Alpha Incarnate - this adds resistance and also endurance management - which should take care of any of shields needs. I would also recommend either side of the ageless tree for recharge and either DDR or Endurance management, but either one should work. I might have missed something - but hope this helps! Build attached below. mischievous rune - Tanker (Shield Defense - Dark Melee)Edit.mbd

Do you have any preferences or goals you want to achieve with your build - also travel preferences?

Same here, thanks for saying that. Honestly I wish more people thought like this, acted like this - and advised others to be like this. Seriously this is worth using my alloted HC storage space for.

It could be my own ignorance, but is there a way to actually implement a delay before the tooltip pops up. It's really annoying when trying to respec to follow when you are reslotting enh to have that pop up every time you move the mouse. It literally has given me a headache with all of the popping and flashing. Normally I would expect it to delay - hover mouse 3 2 1 tool tip pops up. I have tried both ends of the slider and it still instantly pops up. I like having the tooltips but not during a respec. Just posting this makes me feel like an old gripe. Get awf mah lawn.

Probably not if I were to ask you, luckily that metric doesn't fall to you. 😉 You aren't looking at any of this objectively because you are remembering how god tier Brutes used to be - in your own words to me. Until you can let go of that - everything said here aside from giving your toys back to you will be a perceived slight.

Or a scenario where it worked out to place Brutes where they should have been and needed to be. Where they are now minus a few needed tweaks.

Is herding even a thing anymore? Serious question. Not intending to belittle your point.

I am sure you think that. Moving on now.

This is the hurdle that will be hardest to overcome with this discussion. Especially when people who ran that way in the past refuse to admit it was a thing - when everyone else knows it was a thing.

They were nerfed. There were valid reasons. You can go digging back through 2019 if you want to - but that's one of the reasons brutes lost their god tier. It wasn't just for the heck of it.

Well ask yourself the question - what originated the nerf for Brutes? - wasn't because they were average. Some dataset provided illustrated what an outlier they were - and just like TW was brought in line, brutes were also- was it too much? That among other things is why we need to test a variety of data points against similar tanker builds in a controlled mission set like the Brutal Mission Simulator. But I wouldn't expect the edge case they used to be to ever come back. If anything it's more likely to have tankers nerfed slightly to help Brutes fit better and bring the tanker edge cases down. I would genuinely like to see the Brute ATO changed to fit the AT better and Fury made to be 100% of capacity.

Plenty is a stretch - it's mainly edge cases loaded with procs. Its not as bad as it's being portrayed, but it is an issue.

It was proven that certain brute combos were out damaging scrappers and blasters even with none of the risks those two faced. That's why Brutes were nerfed.

That would probably be the most fair, but I wish there were a way to do that while making the Brute more Brute and less like a tanker knockoff - maybe make the Brute ATO give increased aoe dmg and target caps on a proc type basis similar to how the tanker ATO gives resistance values.

It's OK to duplicate En Vogue. Saw them in concert a few years ago on the mixtape tour with New Kids. It was an awesome show.

You aren't even on topic anymore. None of this is. Secondly - I didn't heckle or ask for proof because I already know I'm right. I really don't care if your merry band believes me or not 😉

I'm not, Sai has just forgotten history too easily and it's not worth my time to dig up old discord posts to prove anything that plenty of people saw me do. Keep in mind we haven't always been able to record and post videos. I first did it in closed beta then shortly after in open beta, then live. Then I moved on. Also not worth derailing this further for a point that has nothing to do with Brutes/Tankers ultimately.

Keep pretending Sai. 😉

And again - already knew that - I have both - but you already knew that. Either way stalker rarely misses - usually because of human error on my part. There's no reason why it wouldn't. The only other factor at that point is how you leverage the ATO to increase the amount of Double focuses you get - not to mention regularly having triple build up because of the other stalker ATO proc.

That was just proof that it's good on a scrapper. We already knew that. I have 2 EM stalkers that could pull similar times - one slightly under 60 seconds. AS TF FET EP/BS AS EP/BS FET EP/BS AS Repeat - it's entirely possible to drop the EP/BS occasionally for the FET to enter the rotation faster and more often - depends on how much recharge you are pulling.