Werner

My new Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker finished 801.2 +4x8 no temps, no insps, no Lore, one death in 1:32. That's the second death ever on my Tanker, now level 68. Thanks, @Linea! 🤬😉 LOL. I didn't even see the cause of death. I was trying to reposition myself more centrally in a mob as the fight started, and was suddenly eating dirt. Taking on the same group after a quick trip to the hospital, I saw it was a combination of both defense and resistance debuffs. I just needed to be paying attention to the numbers, as I monitor my defense and resistance, and can hit Barrier to deal with it. Sloppy. General approach was to Taunt the edge of a group and corner pull, Barrier if defense or resistance debuffed, Dark Regeneration if merely taking damage. No surprises other than being surprised to be suddenly dead. My weaknesses were exactly what I expected - defense debuffs primarily, resistance debuffs to a lesser extent. Most other debuffs I'm fine with. 120% perception debuff resistance, 86.5% recovery and to-hit debuff resistance, 80% recharge time and slow resistance. Dark Regeneration lets me ignore regeneration debuffs. I never even had to hit Conserve Power, which is what I have just in case the endurance drains and debuffs overcome my resistance somehow. What did almost get me at one point was confusion. That also wasn't unexpected - most of my builds have Tactics, but I couldn't fit it in this time without sacrificing something I wanted more. It's tempting to drop Taunt for Tactics, but I'm actually tanking for my friends with this Tanker, and I have almost no Tanker experience, so I'm not comfortable going without.

You'll do well. Welcome to the forum.

I just did this on Olafur, my new Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker. I expected it to be slower but somewhat easier than on my Katana/Dark Armor Brute. But it actually seemed slightly harder. Katana is just a better choice when facing heavy melee/lethal defense debuffs. 55% melee defense isn't sufficient, and the majority of fights involved cascading defense failure. Sometimes I could get through it with just Dark Regeneration. Sometimes I needed Barrier. And I died on my first attempt. It was Olafur's first death at level 62. It was a death of overconfidence. I decided to charge through and just kill the Cysts. But eventually the aggro cap of mostly Cimerorans took me down. I could have run. I could have base teleported. But I'm a Tanker now, dammit! Tankers don't run! And I'd been lucky so many times before. Luck just wasn't with me this time. I sat there staring at my corpse, grinning, saying "And what lesson have we learned today?" Next attempt, the successful attempt, I played more cautiously. One group at a time. Barrier available. And I did run away a few times. To speed up the cyst mission while still being mostly cautious, I took out the cyst groups and took the cysts down to just a couple hits away from destruction. Since they're objects, they don't regenerate. Then I ran through and killed all the cysts rapid fire, barely touched by any of the ambushes. Nothing really exciting to report. A few close calls, but I pulled through. The final AV fight was just a slog. Ugh. I didn't check the clock, but probably two hours on that fight alone. 240 DPS is sufficient for the fight, but only if you have the patience of Job. Here's the build. Missing tier 4 Lore, but I wasn't using Lore. The Endoplasm in Oppressive Gloom wasn't +2 yet by mistake. Might have helped very slightly. Otherwise this is what I ran.

I'm leveling Dark/Martial Arts myself, enjoying the extra defense and stunning bosses. Katana works well on my Brute for lethal/melee soft cap, and being able to go way, way over the soft cap to handle lethal or melee defense debuffs. Dark Melee gives you endurance recovery and other tools. And I'll agree that if you want to do damage, Staff doesn't seem to be the way to go numerically. It feels like it's doing damage, though. Look at all those orange numbers! And it sounds like you're hammering together some IKEA furniture, which is a constant source of amusement.

It may just be where things "naturally" end up, because I saw a couple iterations of a DA/MA Tanker build by @EnjoyTheJourney with some differences in powers and slotting, but very similar numbers on the survival side. Capped energy resistance on Dark Armor is impressive. But yeah, I do understand cutting back for other things, particularly when you'll normally get there anyway. Even the scaling resistance IO makes a big difference when we're approaching the cap. I targeted 84% resistance to most on my Brute, figuring I'd either get the 6% from the scaling resists or from Barrier any time it actually mattered. I may do that on my Brute. I made some compromises to go from 305 to 360 DPS that left me unable to handle, say, the to-hit debuff of Carnies. Ageless Radial fixes that, so I could switch back and forth between Barrier and Ageless depending on what group I'm fighting and probably make do. Or I may just drop back to 305 DPS. I don't need to solo Giant Monsters or L54 AVs with 50% lethal damage resistance, and the survivability was a little better before. Or I may just play my Tanker all the time now. 😉 I plan to run Assault. When I had Melee on my Brute, I almost never touched it, so that's probably doubly true for a Tanker. It also gives me the DPS for L54 AVs, at least the ones without resists. Though if I instead went Ageless, and DPS was less my concern, I'd probably go Melee so I'd have an answer to resistance debuffs. Not a hugely powerful one, but something at least.

...except for those defense debuffs. Oh, the defense debuffs. Though particularly on a Tanker, the resistance and huge heal can carry you along even when deep in the red on defense. Probably less of a problem if you go Ageless Radial, which I suspect most people would on Dark Armor. But yeah, I was fighting Lord Recluse recently on my DM/SR Brute. Our Tanker lost aggro briefly while we were working on the towers, LR came and hit me, and poof, no endurance.

That sounds similar to the Dark/MA build I'm currently leveling towards. I did a fair bit of testing on beta first. Defense will be 55.1% melee, 47.3% SL, 45.7% FC, 44.4% ranged/AoE. Resistance with one proc 71% energy, 65% toxic, 90% other. I did have a version of the build with 82% energy resistance, but felt it had too many compromises to get there. I blaspheme by going Barrier Core instead of Ageless Radial - it addresses resistance debuffs where Ageless does not, and if needed fills in the energy and toxic "holes", such as they are. I didn't include 6% from Barrier (also took Cardiac Core) in those resistance numbers because I use it for emergencies, not for keeping my resists topped up. Then slotting and power picks for 86.5% end/recovery/to-hit debuff resistance, 120% perception radius debuff resistance, and 80% recharge/slow resistance. I'll be using Dark Regeneration, but I'm basing that on L54 Anti-Matter and +4x8 801.1 on beta. 240 DPS. Should be fine for endurance even facing severe drains and debuffs. Puts my Katana/Dark Brute to shame on everything but single-target DPS, but I guess that's what a Tanker gives you. Other than leveling, I consider endurance to be one of Dark Armor's strengths due to the very high debuff resistance. I mean yes, you have to plan for it, but it's easily done on an end-game build. And it's manageable while leveling, particularly if you throw enough influence and slots at the problem.

I really should try Rad, but I can't seem to pull myself away from Dark. My beautiful, beautiful Dark. I'd be solo leveling my DA/MA Tanker right now if the servers were up, waiting for my friends to sign on. But yeah, there's something so simple about SR, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Just... everything. No worries about defense debuffs. Easy to incarnate soft cap. Easy to play. Basically equal protection from all damage types, so you're not focusing on how to handle the holes in your defense or resistance. Easier to perma Hasten than many. Hard to hit you with other debuffs or exotic status effects. Leveling my SR Tanker, for a while I even kept forgetting to add slots for recharge in my status protection, because even though it was often down, it almost never made a difference due to soft capped defense. Hits it nice and early in the leveling process. It's a pleasure to level and play. And so I play it a lot, even if I know my Darks are tougher. SR is, well... Tough Enough.

Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker Eagles Claw -> Storm Kick -> Crippling Axe Kick -> Storm Kick T4 Assault Core T4 Reactive Radial T4 Cardiac Core no Ageless no Lore 5:15 5:54 5:38 5:44 5:34 5:31 5:51 5:41 2708 total seconds 338.5 average seconds 241 DPS

Dark Melee is primarily a single-target set. For farming, you'll go dramatically faster with a primary with a lot of AoE. You may also want to bring your fire defense up to 45% so that you can crank the difficulty and still not have to worry about healing, just focus on damage. There are many farming threads, but this was one I enjoyed, and it has a number of builds for you to reference.

Aut non!

That’s the spirit! I plan to give it a go on my SS/Fire Brute with a full loadout of reds. It’s just a farm, right? Right? 😵

50% for 1 75% for 2 87.5% for 3 93.75% for 4 Basically, stop at one or two in passives.

I’m guessing s SR Tanker could hit 60+% defense 90% resist to all but toxic and psionic once they’re down to about 40% hit points, which could still be a lot, and immune to defense debuffs. I’m not sure how Radiation would handle it. It seems like whatever defense you have would get wrecked by defense debuffs, and resistance debuffs would cause a sort of cascading resistance failure. But I hear Radiation is great, so it must not got down in practice the same as I imagine it in my head.

Your first thought was probably good too. Builds meant to survive solo need to have a response to every situation. So how do you handle every damage type? How do you handle defense debuffs? Resistance debuffs? Recharge debuffs? How do you handle endurance drains and recovery debuffs? How do you handle giant spikes of damage? How do you handle to hit debuffs and enemy defense buffs? And so on. Some of those answers may be playing to your strengths. Others will be figuring out ways to overcome your weaknesses. There’s no one right way. I mean, there are the basics of defense, resistance, and healing, but that ought to be the starting point, not the end of the journey for a survival-oriented build. At a certain level of the basics, straightforward damage of common types shouldn’t be what kills you. It’ll be the unusual that kills you. So focus on that. And I suspect that’s a main point of the 801s.

😳 Shame be upon thee! 😉

It should be a good combination. I have a DM/SR Brute, but a Tanker should get significantly more out of the scaling resists by having higher resistance overall. I think the secret to SR Tanker immortality would be hard capping your resists while still having as many hit points as possible, then having as much regeneration as possible to keep anyone from taking you lower than that. I think of Siphon Life more as regeneration than as healing, and regen is what you want. Big infrequent heals are not ideal, as they’ll drop your resists, so those extra hit points won’t last long. More theory than experience since my Brute hits that equilibrium with very few hit points left. I’m definitely thinking about making an SR Tanker. I’ve not decided on secondary. Dark Melee is good of course. Martial Arts is good so you spend even less effort hitting the incarnate soft cap and can devote more of the build to resists and regen. I don’t know the % resist Staff gets from Body/Sky, but if it’s a meaningful amount, that might be interesting to try. I need to go through the primaries again. I’m looking for defense, resists, and regen or frequent small heals. And yes, the endurance recovery is nice. My DM/SR Brute is more than sustainable without it, but I have it as my answer to endurance drains and recovery debuffs. I almost never touch it, though. I also took Focused Accuracy for the to hit debuff resistance, to hit, and accuracy, as you don’t want to be in a situation where you can’t use Siphon Life.

I’m not Linea, but the Tanker on our run was an Invuln. The secret for him was hitting the incarnate soft cap to SLFCEN with a single enemy in range, making it very hard for defense debuffs from non-incarnate crowds to cause cascading defense failure, and making it hard for resistance or other debuffs to land. That’s probably how he handled not being resist capped to energy.

Of the attacks, I skipped Sting of the Wasp and Flashing Steel on my current Katana/Dark Brute. You could skip Golden Dragonfly, of course, but it's your highest DPS attack and does knockdown for mitigation. It's a good attack to have.

It sounds like I should give Staff/Dark a try - fiddle with endgame builds on beta checking survivability and damage output. Maybe Alexei gets talked into the virtues of staff fighting, trains up, and switches weapons. Or a new character. I don't know. 🙂

That seems like a pretty good version. What extra does staff bring for mitigation? I see a disorient that could stack with Oppressive Gloom, and an AoE knockdown on a fast recharge, nice. Not sure what your DPS is, though smashing is probably less resisted than lethal regardless. Anyway, I don't know enough about Staff to comment on that part of the build. Definitely don't give up Kismet for the last 2.2% SL resistance, though, when losing a mere 22% of your hit points will get you there too. And I wouldn't personally give up Focused Accuracy or Tactics either. To be fair, in my current live build, I did give up Focused Accuracy, but I regret it, so I'm likely to respec yet again. Compared to the build previously posted, my planned new build has just a few tweaks, mostly to add about 30 DPS. It also shuffles the resists a little to even them out at between 84% and 85% other than energy and toxic. Barrier Core is boosted to 6% on the tail end by Cardiac Core, so anything above 84% is wasted while Barrier is up unless resistance debuffed. Also, due to Reactive Defenses, even without hitting Barrier I'm hard capping between 40% and 50% hit points, which I think is a reasonable target, with more resistance than that feeling a little wasteful. I want to reserve Barrier for emergencies, and merely dropping to 40% hit points isn't an emergency with Dark Regeneration on tap. Anyway, that was my thinking and why I have these specific resistance levels. More endurance is always nice, but shouldn't be a problem in the new build despite looking significantly worse than yours. It's still sustainable, and if being debuffed or drained, it's easy to drop Sprint, Focused Accuracy and Assault for an extra 0.74 EPS net recovery.

This is definitely not the same as soloing, but some friends and I did all three missions at +4x8 with a Tanker, two Brutes, and a Blaster. It went pretty smoothly. No deaths until the final room of the final mission, when the Tanker charged in and aggro'd three groups for... fun? Let's call it fun. Not quite a team wipe, but close.

The standard way to measure single target DPS is to find your average number of seconds required to kill a Rikti Pylon, then: DPS = 38344 / seconds + 128 That's not the "right" formula, but it's close enough. More information and other people's results in this thread: If you have sufficient AoE to have an AoE chain when mowing down mobs, like a farmer would, you can measure your AoE by the same method. My SS/Fire does 210 DPS single target and 140 DPS AoE measured like this. But measuring AoE like that isn't very comparable to others, since AoE can mean anything from a narrow cone to a wide radius. Another measurement of damage output is your clear time for all 5 missions of the "standard" fire farm, $Comic Con Fire Farm$, from zone in on mission 1 to clicking the glowie on mission 5, on +4x8. Farmers clear it in under 25 minutes (they will more typically report the average per mission, so under 5 minutes). Even staying alive can be a challenge on builds that aren't fire farmers, though. Both my mains can survive it, but it's pretty sketchy, and they'd be pathetically slow clearing it. My SS/Fire Brute has no problem surviving, and clears it quickly, even though it's not strictly-speaking a farming build. For that measurement, everything is on the table. Summon pets, chug inspirations, anything goes as long as it's just you.

I think it took me about 80 minutes? My current build does 350 DPS rather than I think 275 on the one I used for this, so could probably do it a lot faster. But I'm strongly considering dropping down to 300 DPS, as there are some compromises I made to get to 350 DPS that I'm regretting. It's nice being able to solo giant monsters and L54 AVs with 50% lethal resistance, but idono, probably not something I'll do much. I already have two for hard content - Alexei (Katana/Dark Brute) and Sergei (Dark/SR Brute). Werner was my Katana/Regen Scrapper, who was my main at the time I first started posting on the forums. A friend I often play with tends to play his uber Tanker, making my survivability superfluous. It would be logical for me to build a damage machine of some sort. I started a Sentinel, but have barely touched him. And even after the incoming nerfs, I'm guessing a Titan/Bio Scrapper will still be a damage machine, just not as much of one as it is today. I've been fiddling around with Mace/Shield Scrapper builds in Mids with a little testing on beta. Eh, and I guess I already have a damage machine, a Super Strength/Fire Brute, and he has good survivability for most things, particularly on a team, but I just don't play him much anymore.