Werner

Mine’s a Shield/MA I fear. Shield/Energy sounds delightful, but I’ve not tried it.

We all have Brawl, and often Boxing and/or a poor first attack that we're forced to take on a Tanker. Split Superior Blistering Cold across them and add a Winter's Gift somewhere to hit 65% with only a few slots. You might instead want the full set since the set bonuses are very good for many builds, and I prefer avoiding set mules where possible, but it's an option. I like to have very high slow resists.

A lot. Absolutely. It’s a lot harder to debuff you when all the minions are wandering around in a daze. But it certainly does happen, and frequently. Even with the defense boost from Katana or Martial Arts, I have to monitor defense carefully and be ready to react at a moment’s notice with Barrier or by running. I’m sure it’s easier without setting enemies buffed. And harder with a secondary that doesn’t boost relevant defense.

I found the same. A solo +4x8 enemies buffed ITF no temps no insps no deaths is doable on both my Katana/Dark Brute and Dark/MA Tanker. But it is dramatically easier to do it on my Shield/MA Tanker. My friend’s Invuln/SS Tanker also finds surviving that solo to be trivial, he’s just not built to do L54 AV DPS so can’t finish it solo. Dark Armor is tough enough for almost anything, and I’ve always been a fan of it. I just think that there are tougher primaries, that Dark Armor doesn’t make for The Strongest Tank.

10% boost, but definitely. I'm starting to think about how to hit the 75% soft cap on different builds. I don't have good answers yet, but Invuln/MA seems to be able to get there. Other defense-boosting secondaries would be useful too. Maybe SR/MA would work. I'm sure you don't need Martial Arts to 75% soft cap Super Reflexes, but I figure it would maintain build flexibility so as to keep the resists high. Another nice thing about Invuln for the new difficulties is the big to-hit boost from Invincibility, which will be helpful when trying to hit enemies with +30% defense. I think I need to add Tactics or Focused Accuracy to make the build viable in that regard, though. But that sacrifices defense. Being able to hit is also a limitation on the defense-boosting secondaries. If you don't hit, your defense drops, and you get wrecked. And even if you're at 75% defense, if you don't have SR levels of DDR, lots of enemies will peel your defenses open and wreck you. Hmmm. I need to fiddle. Also fiddle with Stone. I've never done Stone. Stone/MA maybe? I feel like all of a sudden I don't much know what would make The Strongest Tank. Maybe even give up on defense and go with one of the resist primaries. Maybe resistance will scale better to the new difficulties than defense will, unless you can get yourself 75% plus with good DDR.

Invuln/MA with saturated Invincibility. I suspect we'll see more 75% softcap Tankers show up soon for the new difficulty settings. Build:

I’m answering a rhetorical question, and it’s only my opinion, but yes, my opinion is that it’s still x8, that it still counts to win using tactics rather than win with pure brute force. I feel like the game has become so easy that we’ve somehow accepted that if you can’t faceroll a challenge, or can’t AFK in a spawn, it doesn’t count. There are limits to going the other direction, I suppose, as I think stealthing to Anna to win is going way too far. But are we here to evaluate builds in isolation, see how well builds do when played almost intentionally poorly? Or do we want to know how they do when played actively with some basic MMO tactics? I’m not suggesting we adopt this attitude here, to these sorts of challenges, but I DO like the simple purity of “anything goes” often seen in PvP and speedrun communities, that if the game allows it, it’s allowed. I have serious respect for that, and for those communities, even if they aren’t my interests. Anyway, just my opinion. I also very much like “you do you”, where we all have our own personal rules for what we allow and don’t allow ourselves, and we’re just up front about those personal rules. A no pulling, no splitting the spawn rule is perfectly valid as either a personal rule, or a challenge-specific rule. The Rikti War Zone Challenge explicitly disallowed splitting the spawn, for instance. The point was to show you could fight them all at the same time. Certainly we can add rules to this challenge to make it harder, like no splitting the spawn or no hoverdancing on heads. Whatever we want. I’m totally rambling and my opinions are clearly all over the map. I’m shutting up now! 😄

My memory is hazy, but maybe I didn't fight him at 54, as I was only trying to figure out the task force at the time. I'm pretty sure the final mission AVs were 54, which would make sense as I'd have wanted to know if I could handle them at 54, since I'd assumed only the final mission was going to be a stumbling block. Even that mission I think I ran +4x1 instead of +4x8. Anyway, I wasn't expecting a challenge earlier, so Dr. Aeon killed me. But then I paid close attention and got him on I think the second try. Maybe third? I don't remember what I did differently other than paying attention. I'm almost certain I didn't pull out the inspirations on Dr. Aeon, only when it was inspirations or quit on Lord Recluse, and only after trying repeatedly without.

I suspect the problem with SR and Lord Recluse specifically is his very high to-hit. I think he’ll be tough. But then, I haven’t fought him much and I’m not sure what it takes. Stone, apparently. He was wrecking my Shield/MA when I was trying to solo the task force. I eventually decided it was better to at least see if inspirations would work than to just quit after coming so far. And they did, but I couldn’t seem to keep the repairmen from fixing the tower as fast as I did damage. Insufficient AoE or reaction time trying to kill them, maybe. LR was level 54, though, as I recall. Can you spawn him lower? Are we talking about lower or level 54? I’ve only done that task force a few times ever and know very little. Can’t hovertank him solo, I don’t think? Can on a team, and I guess on a full team you don’t have to survive him to-hit buffed for long.

Oh! OK, +1x8 no temps no insps no amps no deaths done on my DM/SR and Katana/Dark Brutes. Thank you. 🙂

I don’t actually have an SR Tanker, just a DM/SR Brute. SR is much tougher on Tankers though. Incarnate content shouldn’t be much different from normal content since it’s so easy to incarnate soft cap your defense. I’d say SR/Staff since staff can add resistance, and high resistance to stack with the scaling resistance is your secret sauce. You want to hard cap resists with as many hit points left as possible. SR/DM would also be good for the extra healing. I tested SR/Staff on beta. It seemed to be as tough as my Shield/MA, so very tough, but the single target DPS sucked, so I abandoned the idea since I mostly solo. SR was a recommendation for AFK since it can be very tough with no clicking. But I have it on good authority ( @Linea) that it can be made ridiculously tough with lots of clicking by juggling lots of +resist powers. Hard to drive, I hear, but silly good when driven well.

If you literally want to AFK Tank, I’d say Super Reflexes built for high resistance with your mez protection on auto. Otherwise my personal pick for non-incarnate content would be Invulnerability/Dark Melee. You’re already there, so maybe just a different build? For incarnate content maybe Invuln/Martial Arts, trading some healing for higher defense. But yeah, Stone should be right up there too, possibly on top, I just haven’t played Stone. Shield/Martial Arts is what I play, and it’s very durable, but I do think it’s taking a step down on the survivability scale for more damage output. Also has too much defense outside of incarnate content. But I’m not sure I’m answering this right. If solo, you need some damage output. And on a team, you have lots of support, and it may be that some other Tanker would be more survivable in that context. I’m used to evaluating what sets can do with no support. And with no inspirations for that matter. But I suppose that even making a team Tanker, I’d build for as tough as possible without support since you can’t be certain what a team will have.

My Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker with amps and Oppressive Gloom is a far different beast. Capped resistance makes a huge difference, plus I can run at almost full speed out of the tar patches with 80% run speed debuff resistance, so I'm only at low resistance for a brief moment. I didn't use Dark Regeneration on my first pass, taking out everything but Anna's group at +1x8 with no deaths. Bumped it to +2x8 and didn't seem to be having trouble on the first group, so I bumped it to +3x8. Difficult but doable. They chased me completely out of the mission a few times, and all the way to the door a few other times, but I finished, +3x8 no temps no insps no deaths kill all. I doubt I'll try for +4, and if so, maybe some other time. I'm getting tired of these guys.

Switched to my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Brute, +1x8 no temps no insps no amps. Better but not good. Died twice taking out two groups. Gave up.

They absolutely wrecked my Katana/Dark Brute at +1x8 no temps no insps no amps. Two deaths and I'd barely dented the first group. I managed to pull and kill a couple minions, managed to get away with a few hit points when everyone joined, but due to the to hit debuffs, I couldn't hit a thing with Dark Regeneration when they arrived, or land Divine Avalanche for defense, and down I went. Second try they all came at once, I was OK for a few moments, killed a minion, got my next target, my defense and resistance were negative, hit points plunging, I reached for Dark Regeneration and died before I could hit it. Since I did kill a few minions for my two deaths, and I'm sure I could get the hang of Dark Regeneration again (it's been a long time), maybe I could slowly and painfully make some progress, but it doesn't seem worth it. Maybe if I'd taken Cloak of Fear early enough to have it, it would have helped, but instead I took Oppressive Gloom at 38. I guess I'll try my Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker. That'll at least let me know if Oppressive Gloom (and being a Tanker) helps.

Ooh, probably! Not sure which attacks come in when, but it has a good mix of single target and AoE, even a ranged knockdown cone, right? I’m not at my computer. That sounds perfect to me, even though I’ve not played claws.

I feel so old school pulling enemies and splitting spawns.

I didn't pay close attention, but a 40% unresisted resistace debuff for each tar patch would account for what I was seeing on my runs.

Without. Solo MoITF +4x8 no temps no insps no amps no lore no Rommy bug enemies buffed on a Katana/Dark Armor Brute. Same on a Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker. Same plus player debuffed on a Shield/Martial Arts Tanker. All have a taunt aura to prevent Rommy from running. All those runs were before the recent defense fix, though I've done it a few times since the defense fix on my Shield/MA, kill most, but with amps and without player debuffed. The misses would be too annoying for fun, and I run it for fun.

And being cautious and tactical about your approach and knowing when to retreat. Of primaries I have experience with, I think Invuln would be good at this too. Good resistance and defense and defense debuff resistance, Dull Pain healing you and giving you high hit points when you're taking hits escaping from the tar patch while defense debuffed. Then a secondary with good damage output at the mid levels, not sure which. Not just single target, but also AoE to wipe out the minions faster to help avoid cascading defense failure, before switching to single target DPS since you don't want to kill the Soothsayers until the end.

Eh, it wasn't as bad as I expected. Just slow due to Tanker-level damage, some enemies +5 to me, and a whole lot of pulling and running in addition to the previously-mentioned tactics. No deaths, and I didn't get quite as close to death as I had at +3x8, probably because by now I'm more aware of what to expect and how to fight them, plus was splitting groups and being more patient. A picture proves nothing since the mission can be stealthed, but hey, Anna! Edit: I targeted minions first at this level. They weren’t going down quickly enough from AoE, and it seemed best to thin the herd to avoid cascading defense failure.

I just completed it +4x8 no temps no insps no deaths enemies buffed player debuffed... by stealthing to Anna. 😄 OK, OK, I'll try to do a regular +4x8 no temps no insps kill all. This is going to get ugly.

I grabbed my Shield/Martial Arts Tanker and dove in at +1x8 no temps no insps, though with boosters like usual since I had four hours left on them and it's just how I play. Didn't notice much happening. Restarted and bumped it to +2x8. Better, they got me down to 50% at one point, but nah. Restarted and bumped it to +3x8. There we go! The second group almost killed me when they surrounded me and I was unable to move out of the tar patch. Fortunately they didn't also get cascading defense failure on me while I was stuck. I eventually got out. It went pretty well, but not well enough that I think I could do it at +4x8 no deaths. But I guess +3x8 is like a level 50 incarnate +4x8. Basic tactics were to target Prophets and Doomsayers, use AoE to take out the minions as I did, move if they tar patched me, run if they cascading defense failured me, and kill the Soothsayers last, and if lucky kill them all at the same time with an AoE. I was slowed down by a lack of attacks and lack of Hasten at that level, but my survivability was solid and with the slowed attacking I didn't run out of endurance, which was a concern for exemplaring. I don't think I've exemplared him before, but my build progression was based on the assumption that if I ever did exemplar, it would be to main tank for friends. I didn't quite kill all. I bypassed one group. I meant to take them down after taking down Anna, not realizing that everything went blue and friendly after doing so. For my build, I'd say about similar difficulty to 801.2.

I suspect the T3 Alpha +0x8 experience is identical or nearly identical to what it was before. It's running +4x8 where we're sometimes seeing significantly reduced chances to hit. But either way, I agree - it's really fun! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

More seriously, for Super Reflexes, I'm guessing that most still see it as a one trick pony, and not as the hybrid set that it behaves more like, especially on endgame Tankers. Also, I'd bet that one trick is pretty good for leveling. Claws, no idea, but strangely, I don't think I've ever played it. No good reason, I just don't have much altitis. I find a character I love and mostly play that character, maybe for a year or two on average before something else gets my attention, so there's a whole lot I haven't played.