Werner

On a defense-heavy end-game build, I ideally want to have sufficient defense that for that build’s defense debuff resistance, when being heavily debuffed, my defense doesn’t drop to where they can hit me more easily. On a Super Relexes with 95% DDR, I’d be happy with something like 63% melee, 61% ranged, 59% AoE defense. But Shield Defense has more like 67% DDR, so I’d ideally want somewhat higher defense than on SR, but it’s also much harder to get it than on a SR. That’s why I’m going with Martial Arts for the extra 10% positional defense. Another approach would be Broadsword/Shield, which can easily hit stratospheric melee defense and be almost immune to melee damage with defense debuffs, such as the Cimerorans on the Imperious Task Force, but more vulnerable to ranged and AoE with defense debuffs, such as the Bright Novas on the Imperious Task Force. Most regular enemies get their chance to hit you floored by 45% defense. In the end game, you may go up against a lot of incarnate enemies, requiring a little under 59% defense to floor them. Easily done on end game Super Reflexes. Harder but doable on Shield and Invulnerability. There are cases where enemy to hit can be higher, even 100% higher, and you’ll never floor their to hit, and will need a different survival strategy. Defense only gets you so far. It’s great when it works, though, and it usually works.

I think I’m giving up on the Invuln/Martial Arts I was testing. It seemed stupidly sturdy, and 5:40 on pylons (240 DPS) is enough to solo a level 54 AV if you have some patience. But the Shield/MA I’m testing seems only a hair less sturdy while doing 4:30 pylons (270 DPS). That won’t set any records, but is hopefully enough to get through the final AVs on a +4 ITF in less than an hour. Anyway, yes, for the sturdiest possible end game, I’m a fan of Invuln/MA, but I don’t do much exemplaring, so mine won’t be built for it.

It should be very good. Easy to build, easy to play, easy to level, without really giving up much when completely maxed out. Also Broadsword is smashy. We like smashy. And big crits.

Generally, no. With the massive damage buff I would normally have with Fury, Build Up can vary from not much help to, if I recall correctly, actually decreasing DPS since it takes time to activate, time you could have spent on an attack. Edit: Looks like I did the math here for my Katana/Dark, and concluded that Build Up was likely a wash for that build.

I’ve found Reactive Radial to be best in my own Tanker testing on level 54 AVs, but since it was all Martial Arts, and I generally only checked pylon times after determining which option was best for AVs, I didn’t want to draw any wider conclusions. Interesting to see a similar data point.

I don’t see anything that resembles timestamps in a demorecord. There has to be something there, though.

Yeah, I think 4-5 hours. But I’m not in a rush to complete things usually. I just like fighting.

SR scaling only kicks in when you're down to 60% hit points, then it's 1% resistance for every 1% more hit points lost. Reactive defenses scale linearly over the whole HP range though, 3% at 100% HP, 13% right before you die.

My Katana/Dark Armor Brute and Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker have each done a solo MoITF +4x8 with enemies buffed, no temps, no insps, no Lore, no P2W, no base empowerment buffs, no deaths. Both have the DPS and survivability to solo many level 54 AVs with the same restrictions. I think the Brute could also solo some giant monsters with the same restrictions, but that's speculation, as are any other task forces with either build. I don't think that Dark Armor is the best choice for this sort of soloing, even if it's a nice, solid armor set, and I made it work. I just have a sentimental fondness for Dark Armor from the before times, so I wanted to see how far I could push it. Now I'm fiddling with Shield Defense and Invulnerability builds to try to push even further.

I’m still trying to get Invuln/MA to work. I’m currently fiddling with Gloom and attack sequence, and I’m down to a leisurely 5:40 or so with two spawns of monkeys. I might be able to live with that personally. Still trying to get the rest of the build where I want it, though. And I also need to try Gloom on Shield, which of course will be faster, plus Shield Charge, so Invuln still has an uphill battle to win me over, even if it’s slightly sturdier.

Also you can aggro them then jump away, and they’ll often drop the quartz at their feet before charging after you, allowing you to fight them safely. Depends on how fast you’re getting shredded if you engage directly.

It might not be worth the slots, and you may have considered and rejected the idea, but many builds can easily add 65% recharge/slow resist by picking up a winter’s gift and splitting superior blistering cold across three useless attacks like your tier 1, boxing, and brawl. Add another winter set somewhere and you’ll have 80%, hopefully good enough to notice the slows, but not really be bothered by them.

If two tankers survive content equally in practice, and one has no self heal, while the other is healing themselves frequently, I wouldn't say that the second is failing as a tanker. i could be wrong but if Werner is like me - he wasn't talking about Gaussian here. I wasn't, but I also agree with the point that I think Sovera was making. The same techniques I could apply to improve my invuln's damage could be applied to improve my shield's damage, such as taking musculature instead of cardiac, or adding more damage procs at the cost of some set bonuses. Those will probably add similar DPS to both, so more to the invuln in percentage terms, but it's the same basic idea - most of the things you can do to improve the invuln's damage can be applied to other primaries that start out ahead, keeping them ahead. Gaussian's is a bit of an exception since I can't do the invincibility trick on my shield, but on the surface it didn't seem like anywhere near enough to close the gap, and comes at the cost of using it as part of an alpha strike, so it's a trade off. If you very rarely die in the content you actually play, and you hold aggro and help keep the squishies alive, then I think that you're tanking well, and that you have enough survivability that it's perfectly reasonable to then focus on damage. Survival is fairly binary, but building for survival isn't binary - it's a spectrum. If you and I fall further towards the survivability end than the damage output end, I don't think that's objectively better or worse, it's just what we think best suits how we actually play and the content we actually face. My builds aren't for everyone. They're for me and for the friends I regularly team with. And while I think I fall towards the survivability end of the spectrum, I'm definitely not all the way to one side. On the shield tanker I'm planning out, for instance, I'll probably take assault core rather than melee core, assault rather than one with the shield, and normally use an Achilles heel in crippling axe kick rather than adding 6% toxic/psi damage resistance. I have a minimum single target damage output I'm willing to accept, which is enough to defeat a basic level 54 AV in some sort of reasonable time frame without envenomed daggers or lore pets or that sort of thing, just what I'd consider my baseline performance, which won't necessarily match anyone else's definition of baseline. I think soloing level 54 AVs is kind of the opposite of tanking, but it's something I want to be able to do, so I build for it, not just for tanking.

Oops, I used 5 seconds. Also rounded before I should have.

Yeah. You could certainly build for more damage than I did, and maybe I could consider a dual build, but I think Shield is looking like a better platform to build what I want to play, even if it’s still on the slow side. But the truly suck levels of suck was me testing out a Super Reflexes/Staff build on beta - I couldn’t even scratch the pylon. Hahahahah NO.

Admittedly not statistically significant since so few pylons, but on the Invuln/MA I’ve been testing on beta: 547 seconds with 16 monkeys 538 seconds with 8 monkeys 588 seconds in Focus Chi instead 608 seconds in Focus Chi instead So putting it in Invincibility is probably better, but not exciting. Back to the Shield/MA I’ve been testing, then (327 and 304 with 8 monkeys).

8.77% per enemy every 10 seconds if I’m calculating right. A 35% damage buff (edit: 37%) with Invincibility saturated if the proc stacks, else 22% (edit: 25%, but it stacks), but big either way. More if the proc ignores the 10 target limit and you can squeeze more targets with 8 feet. Is it still 8 feet, or is it more now? Lower chance if more. I’m going to have to try this out. It sounds great.

LOL. Yeah, I can imagine. 😁 And thanks for adding 801.9!

I know, right? 😁 These days I’m spending most of my game time in Mids and on beta paying 801 missions and the first two ITF missions with enemies buffed. Oh, and pylons. I should probably play the actual game too sometime. Edit: Huh... lots more versions on live. The first 801.5 I just tried was dramatically easier than the one on beta. Edit: Nooooooo! None of the live ones so far are close to as crazy as beta. So on the live ones, there are a few enemies in red armor, who are the nasty enemies, scattered among the easier enemies. On beta, they're almost all in red armor. So unfortunately, copy to beta to see what I'm talking about. I have the sads now. 😭

Ah, sorry. I learn about a thing and assume I’m late to the party and everyone knows already. That’s the hardest of @Linea’s 801 series of Architect Entertainment missions, a series of increasingly difficult missions with custom enemies that sniff out and exploit your build’s weaknesses to destroy you. Also with timers so you can’t go full turtle and still beat them - you have to have damage output. They all have 801 in the title, so can be searched for that way. I think of “801” almost as an enemy group at this point. Assuming live is like beta, 801.5 is a nightmare of debuffers and drainers with incarnate level to-hit and waves of ambushes in caves similar to a farm. At +4x8 no inspirations, but with the P2W defense amplifier, the Invuln and Shield Tankers I’m testing right now typically make it about half a spawn at a time before dropping.

If 801.5 can kill it, it's not unkillable! 😉 But yes, it is nigh unkillable before Dull Pain. I'd shoot for enough recharge for it to be perma, but I'd only actually click it if I were down to about half health and worried I might lose the other half. I consider it an emergency power, not a continually-refreshed buff like Hasten or Rage.

People probably tend to want to be able to have perma Dull Pain. I'd have to evaluate attack chains to see what sort of recharge I'd want beyond that. I think regeneration is reasonable to prioritize if you don't take Rebirth Radial. I'm considering making an Invuln/MA, and I'd probably take Ageless Radial, so I'd want good regeneration. Dull Pain will usually let you hit the hit point cap without focusing too much on hit points, but I'd say that's your target, close to the cap with Dull Pain up, plus or minus a little. I'm not Infinitum, but my answer would be "yes". I'm currently testing on beta with Cardiac Core, Conserve Power, Physical Perfection, and Ageless Radial. That's overkill for 99% of the game, but if you're soloing 801.4 +4x8 without inspirations, for instance, endurance drains and debuffs are going to be one of your weaknesses that needs to be addressed. I don't want to have weaknesses. Also, I'm a huge fan of Focused Accuracy for the high to-hit debuff resistance.

When Meltdown is on cooldown, your resists aren't really that overcapped other than toxic, depending on how many stacks of the ATO you can get from Devestating Blow. You might do well to trade some toxic for some psionic using Impervium. And overcapping resists with Meltdown gives you a response to resistance debuffs. I don't know, but I suspect that's the approach I would take on Radiation Armor. I would likely take Focused Accuracy for the to-hit debuff protection, though I'm not sure what I'd trade to get there, and it's a pain on endurance, so I'd have to do a bunch of endurance calculations. I'd try to slot a Winter's Gift to hit 80% recharge/slow resistance. I'd probably be satified with that, but if you could scrounge up another slot, two Superior Blistering Cold in Boxing would get you to 95%. Probably better things to use a slot for, though. +5 the Recharges in Hasten and elsewhere. I doubt that Rebirth is the way to go on Destiny, since you have other forms of healing and absorb, but I'd have to know more about Radiation's weaknesses to be more certain. I'm guessing Barrier Core or Ageless Radial, but I'm not sure. I'm really not sure how defense works out on Radiation. It's low, so you'll get hit anyway, particularly in incarnate content, and you have no defense debuff protection, so what little you have is going to go deep into the red against some enemies. But with healing and capped resists, you'll still be reasonably hard to put down. I'm really not sure if it's worth investing in more defense or not. Apparently I'm going to comment despite saying I should leave it to others. 🙂

I keep being accused of being familiar with tanks! 😅 I played a single tank back on live, leveled to 50, and didn't play him anymore. I only finished leveling my first tank on Homecoming maybe a couple months ago. OK OK, I'm good in Mids, and I have a good understanding of several of the tank primaries and secondaries. And I do want to fiddle with Radiation Armor and Melee at some point, but I just haven't gotten to it yet. So I think I should leave this to others. 🙂

I’m finding myself doing a fair bit of +4x8 801.1 on beta, testing out builds. I’m shooting for something that can charge through, taking on full or multiple spawns where they stand, no waiting for cooldowns, no pulling, no retreating, no inspirations. Though after learning it isn’t considered a temp power by the game, I’ve decided I’m willing to run the P2W defense amplifier full time on live, so I’m testing with that now. I tend to be too lazy to spend more than about half an hour in the mission, or maybe I figure it only takes about half an hour to learn what I want to know. My Dark/MA from live made it maybe half an hour, but it was a miracle I didn’t drop. So close so many times, spamming Dark Regeneration. Not the best choice for the task. Now I’ve started fiddling with Shield/MA builds. So far I’ve dropped from being drained of endurance and from cascading defense failure through 65% defense and 67% DDR. Also trying to keep good damage output, so I went Assault rather than Melee. I suppose I could do the Melee, One With the Shield, Melee rotation, but it might just slow me down, and it wouldn’t have saved me from what killed me. Also fiddling with Invuln/MA in Mids, but fear the damage just won’t be there. Anyway, that wasn’t really what I came here to say. I just wanted to declare my love for 801. I think they’re my favorite enemy group(s) in the game right now. Thanks, @Linea! 😁