Werner

Haha, yeah. But there's no right answer, just a bunch of good answers. A number have been presented, and there are some pros and cons in there as well. Nothing wrong with the Shield/Rad you were starting, so if you want to keep things simple, you could just stick with it.

Well, it's certainly more FUN with that ocean of seafood!

You can avoid triggering the space lobster ambush. Just stay away from the whole front section of the area, where front is where the stairs are. I fly straight up from the cave, and I try to not advance farther than the oracle, but I'm not sure exactly where the triggering area is. Other tricks I've used when going for speed instead of a kill most: Just rescue the Sybils, don't take down the big spawns. Probably an obvious one. Just destroy the Shadow Cysts and ignore everything else. Probably not doable on Fire, as it wasn't on my Dark, just too many debuffs to handle. In that case, kill everything around the cysts and leave the cysts with just a few hit points. Then destroy all the cysts on a second pass ignoring the ambushes. They'll have a hard time catching up to you. I'm not sure if turning off burning aura and doing this would go easier or faster for Fire, but rather than killing them, you can run through the crowd in front of Romulus to hit the aggro cap, then drag them to him. Then you can generally deal with the AVs one at a time. Less worry about survivability, plus on Shield at least, a big damage boost. When you're down to just Romulus, drag him over to the door to the right of the platform where the spawns spawn. They won't spawn, so won't interrupt your damage or have even a chance to heal him. I'd love it if anyone has other suggestions for solo ITF speed, and I apologize for being off topic. Also, while I started a kill most ITF yesterday, it's been a while and I haven't finished and it was a kill most, so if there have been any changes that might affect these strategies, I wouldn't know. It did seem like their defense was higher that I remembered.

And I think Super Reflexes might be the king of going AFK, so that's convenient.

Good point. Also no temps, no insps. Though the Fire/Ice run I'm aware of was done in 2:25:51, and Shield/MA has done the same in 1:24:06. That said, the difference in those times is almost certainly survivability rather than raw damage output. Get rid of "enemies buffed", and I have to believe the Fire/Ice would be significantly faster, as it probably would be in most other situations. How about Super Strength for Rage? I'm told the crash is generally no big deal, and double Ragers kill really fast. And foot stomp is fun. I wonder how Shield/SS would work with all that damage boosting, plus Foot Stomp, Shield Charge, and throw in Mighty Judgment? That's a whole lotta powerful feeling attacks, at the very least, and probably for real powerful.

Solo, nobody is going to kill your target while you're powering up your big attack, so it may be less bothersome. Shield/Radiation sounds like a winner to me.

Agreed, but it won't be great for AoE. Not that Martial Arts is either. I believe it's allowed. But yeah, I'm not a fan of the Spines look. (Edit: Not allowed. Thread reading comprehension for the win!)

I think Shield/Spines is a legal combo (edit: it isn't), but I don't think it would have the DPS. I'd say Irradiated Ground in Radiation Melee. I haven't played it, but I think I've heard it's good? I can't remember.

It's a common idea that DA is useless??? It has a sometimes painful weakness to defense debuffs, but many sets do, and even that can be partially dealt with using Ageless or Barrier. I'm not sure it has other commonly-exploited weaknesses in the end game. Leveling I'd say endurance management is a weakness. But it's definitely not useless.

I'll second Shield. My Shield/Martial Arts has decent AoE, decent DPS, and excellent survivability. And the survivability is mostly passive with no heal or need for inspirations, so that you can easily AFK the moment your wife wants your attention. Some sets are a little tougher, some do better damage, but I think Shield is in the sweet spot, at least for my preferences, plus that AFKability. I mostly solo. I suggest Martial Arts if you want to be soft capped to all positions in incarnate content (+10% defense from Storm Kick). I suggest something with better AoE if that's not a priority, just get some feedback from people playing it to make sure it does enough DPS to handle level 54 AVs if that's included in "top tier stuff". Martial Arts can, but I think it might lock you into Soul Mastery for Gloom. That's how I approached L54 AV DPS, in any case.

For endgame, a big advantage of the Tanker over a Brute is how many more hit points they can have when they hit 90% resistance to all types when you build for resistance. Let's see, the resists on the Kinetic/SR Brute I designed for a friend range from 22% to 42% with 1890 hit points, so it'll hit 90% resists between 380 and 20 hit points. Assuming a double stack of the tanker ATO but ignoring the resists from Staff for a more reasonable comparison, the Staff/SR I was testing has resists between 51% and 59% and 2320 hit points, so it'll hit 90% resists between 810 and 650 hit points. That's a meaningful difference when it comes to preventing death from damage spikes, even if they will play similarly, and be weak to the same things. That advantage is even more stark over other ATs due to the 90% vs. 75% resistance cap, plus an even larger hit point difference. For leveling, a big Tanker advantage is how early and easily they can hit the magic 45%, as others have noted.

Soloing nightmare ITF is my happy place - it's how I relax! 😉 It sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Though I admittedly don't do player debuffed (-.5x accuracy, -50% damage), because that's too annoyingly slow. I'm used to my normal pace. Still slow since I'm a Tanker, of course, but not terrible. I poked at the Brutal Mission Simulator too. Definitely less swearing, but I wasn't timing myself either so I was more forgiving of my mistakes. Just taking a look. I definitely like the idea of a mission clear test, even if I dislike the Trapdoor mission. I started doing Trapdoor with my SS/Fire Brute, figuring he'd have much faster clear times. Almost died, then questioned why I was even bothering, and stopped bothering. Back to my happy place. Well, back to 801.2, then back to my happy place.

I've done Dark Melee with Super Reflexes a couple times, though not as a Tanker. The idea there is to put a heal in your attack chain since SR doesn't have a heal. But the last time I dusted off my DM/SR Brute, I was very disappointed in his kill speed compared to my SD/MA Tanker. I thought maybe a SR/Staff Tanker might work well since Staff can add to your resistance. Testing on beta showed that yes, it could be very survivable, but the damage output, at least with my survival-oriented build, was pretty pathetic. Maybe not an issue for a team tank, but I mostly solo. I loved leveling my Street Justice/SR Brute, but was underwhelmed after finishing the build, and eventually stripped her for parts. So I guess I can't really recommend anything that I've personally tried, though of course others may have had difference experiences with those combinations.

6:38 average on a Shield/MartialArts/Soul Tanker using standard rules (6:19 6:56 6:49 6:38 6:28 6:36) 6:54 single hardcore run (+4x8 bosses, no temps, no insps, no Lore, enemies buffed, player debuffed) I use all three amplifiers on this character in normal play, and this test was no exception. They're technically not temporary powers as they don't suppress when you turn off temporary powers, but most disapprove of their use on challenges, so it's worth noting. Nothing else extra to note, I think, other than that I hate this map. I hate tunnels. I hate trying to jump down the holes and missing over and over. I hate taking breaks because the tunnels made me motion sick. I hate getting stuck in a crowd where I can't maneuver. I hate Shield Charging enemies into walls and ceilings. There was much swearing at my mistakes. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I do these things to myself in the name of fun! 😄

I'm glad you were intrigued rather than discouraged. Relying on not being hit would be a bad thing if that was all an SR Tanker relied on, but it isn't. The argument would probably be that given equal levels of on-paper damage mitigation (45% defense 0% resistance vs. 90% resistance 0% defense, say), the defense-based character is more vulnerable to random damage spikes and so will die more often. There's some truth to that, but more so in theory than in practice, particularly on a Tanker. A well-built SR Tanker is going to have lots of hit points, decent resists even before the scaling resistance kicks in, and impressive resists after it kicks in. It's not easy for the RNG to damage spike them to death, even if they're arguably more vulnerable to it. In practice, they can be solid enough that it isn't generally a concern.

Yes, 60% resistance the moment before your death. It kicks in at 60% hit points, then it's 1 for 1 the rest of the way down. 40% hit points = 20% resistance, for instance. I'd do the same - for max survivability, get just above the incarnate soft cap for defense, then build for resistance, HP, and regen. To the OP, SR is great, particularly while leveling, but also with top end builds. I don't think the set needs adjustments.

I believe it. @Bill Z Bubba's SR and my Shield have both gone AFK for 30 minutes at the aggro cap of +4x8 "enemies are buffed" Cimerorans, where you get hit 1.5x as often for 1.5x as much damage. Based on your comments on your build, I'm sure your SR could do that too. That test is a little unfair to most Tankers since it involves massive defense debuffs, which is where SR and Shield shine. I'd guess a defense-heavy Invuln or Granite could do it too? I've played Invuln, but never Granite. (Edit: Just in case someone reads too much into this, this isn't intended as a survivability challenge or proof of uber builds or anything like that. It's just a random example of going AFK in something nasty. You could surround yourself with surgeons, and you technically just did what I said. Gratz! I personally grabbed one group's aggro, moved to the next group, and whoever decided to keep attacking me kept attacking me. I didn't pay attention to how many bosses or what not. I was just curious.)

Stealth suppresses in combat, so I suspect that this effect also suppresses the moment you try to taunt or hit, and thus wouldn't affect it. I could be wrong, though, and have no stealth Tankers to test with. Hopefully someone who knows for sure can chime in.

This is exactly what my Shield Defense/Martial Arts Tanker does. My only healing is my regeneration of 42 HP/sec and the healing/absorb IOs. Ageless rather than Rebirth. Assault rather than Melee. Solo, I'd rather die than take an inspiration. But I don't die, because it's very, very hard to outdamage even that pitiful amount of healing. He's significantly harder to kill than my Dark Armor/Martial Arts Tanker, despite the lack of healing. You probably don't need to worry, just understand the differences, which is what you're asking about. It'll be different from what you're used to, but it won't be any less tough, and it shouldn't be starving for endurance, as long as it's built well. To be fair, I'm using Ageless to manage my endurance when things get dicey, but there are a lot of other tools available if you take Rebirth, which is my recommendation for Shield unless you know exactly what you're doing and why. Cardiac is a good choice, for instance. But if you want incarnates off the table, and find yourself wheezing with the normal tools at your disposal, consider Energy Mastery for Conserve Power and Physical Perfection. Tankers are tougher. I'm 3300 hit points, 60+% "undebuffable" defense to all positions, and while resistance varies, SL is usually hard capped at 90%, FCEN isn't far behind, and only toxic and psionic are "low". All that said, I mostly don't exemplar my finished builds, I just grab a lower-level character, so I can't speak to how well it would handle that. If I were to exemplar, I'd relax my no-temps no-insps rules for myself, grabbing the Recovery Serum for endurance, and hitting inspirations as needed to make up for any other shortfalls. It sounds like that's mostly off the table, so I don't have much in the way of advice or experience.

Let's see what I have in the Invuln/MA I had planned. Yep, Unbreakable Guards all over the place here, too. Tanker sets, cold sets, Eradication, Hecatomb. Impervium psionic protection all over the place. A great many of the uniques. I sacrificed some resistance for more defense, which I considered a better balance for incarnate content, but perhaps mostly because Storm Kick could get me there. I might not do the same with Mace, might be more traditional.

I find Invuln to be slightly tougher, while Shield gives me the delightful Shield Charge and a little better DPS. I play Shield for that reason, but if my only concern was being as durable as possible without the drawbacks of playing Stone, I'd play Invuln. If you pick Invuln, put a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control: Chance for Build Up in Invincibility. Very worth the slot to suck less at damage.

#1, the leftmost one in your picture. The suggested target is 95%+ there for every attack after you've entered 48 here: I believe #2 is the global accuracy enhancement bonus from set bonuses and powers, and #3 is the accuracy enhancement from just the enhancement values in that particular power. But #1 is the actual chance to hit most enemies who are effectively +3 to your level, as we'd expect when we have our incarnate powers slotted up and we're fighting normal content set to +4, subject to the limitation that your final chance to hit in game is capped at 95%, so over 95% in that leftmost number will only affect the game in unusual situations. I like to be able to handle unusual situations smoothly, but that's where you're reaching diminishing returns for the necessary tradeoffs to accomplish it, particularly if you're willing to just chug a yellow inspiration (but I'm not when solo). Welcome to the forum!

I also recommend 95% against +3. But you asked what I do, and that's not what I do. I take accuracy very seriously. Like everyone, I hate to miss. But I also almost always play characters that have to hit to keep their survivability maxed, as with Katana or Martial Arts, or any Tanker these days with the Tanker ATOs. And I want to still hit with full accuracy even in exceptional circumstances. On my builds I prefer 95%+ to hit +4 (options -> configuration -> exemping & base values -> base tohit = 39), and I'm more comfortable with over 100%. I also try to have tohit debuff resistance in the build in some way, generally either Focused Accuracy or Ageless Radial. In future builds, I may do a little math and figure out what I need for 95% to hit +3 with a task force set to player debuffed, and maybe that will be my target. Too lazy to do the research and math right now, but I know it's an even higher number, and ridiculous overkill for most situations.

Thank you!

With Martial Arts, I went Cardiac Core for the Alpha because Storm Kick was taking care of my defense, and I needed more resistance and endurance. For Judgment, whatever you enjoy. I think Mighty Radial is fun because it's kinda like a supercharged Shield Charge without the teleport. For Interface, Reactive Radial gave me the highest DPS in testing on my specific build. For Hybrid, I feel like Shield is tough enough, so I went Assault Core for more damage. For Lore, whatever seems fun, I don't use it much. For Destiny, Rebirth Radial is an obvious choice, since what Shield is missing is a heal. But I found that when the enemy was dangerous enough that I had to hit Rebirth, it was usually because I was so badly debuffed that even Rebirth had a tough time keeping me standing, and that Ageless Radial actually did a better job keeping me alive due to the debuff resistance. Though in practice, most of the time I'm running around on Ageless Core because my survivability is already stupid good (outside of psionics), and I don't like having to be careful with my endurance when I'm spamming AoEs.