zarzu

Stalkers get it too ;)

This would be amazing.

It's the same with any weapon, also with shield defense. Would be great to see a change.

Scrapper's Strike is not a proc so it should be in the Shield Charge, but i would also replace that -Res in Shield Charge with a damage proc. A random -res on some minion isn't going to do anything, a random damage proc will do more there.

HOs used to be able to boost the ddr on at least some of the shield powers, but they patched that out at some point.

Only way I am aware of is to get Radial Ageless Epiphany, will get you permanently to 92% which is nearly the hard cap.

Shield is pretty straight forward defense set with some additional +resist and +hp. Essentially what you want to do is softcap your positional defenses and get your resists and hp as high as possible while still accomplishing your goals for the primary (probably perma hasten). 1) Get the two +3% defense IOs and slot them in some resist power (steadfast and gladiators(?)), one with the shield and tough are good mules for these 2) Get tough, weave & maneuver to increase your defenses and resists 3) Add IO sets to get all your positional defenses (melee, ranged, aoe) to 45%+, good sets for this are Mako's Bite, Obliteration, Scirocco's Dervish, a bit more expensive but also more powerful are the ATOs 4) Slot the power that give resistance and max hp fully to not miss out on those bonuses, your main thing is defense, but the rest will help too 5) With a basic setup you should be getting to around 50% defense debuff resistance, you can push this up to 92% by double stacking active defenses (you get it to double stack with perma hasten + one or two recharge IOs, depending on alpha) and then getting the radial ageless destiny power

It does, also according to Pines. I don't think this was an i25 change, i think there's just wrong information about this in some wikis. Maybe I am wrong, but i remember going for ageless back in the days already for the exact same reason, also the latest mids (i23?) has it at 120 as well.

Remember that Active Defense gives you defense debuff resistance that stacks on multiple applications. Therefore you generally want it to be double stacked to reach around 70% defense debuff resistance. Together with the radial ageless destiny power you can even get permanent 92.5% defense debuff resistance which is a huge survivability boost on a defense based set.

When you add an alpha it shows up as a power at the bottom (below stamina etc) and it lets you toggle it there.

Thanks :) it's the agility alpha ;)

One more thing i just saw: you can move the Steadfast Protection 3% def to one with the shield, you will loose a tiny bit of the resists in tough, but it will open up another slot, of course one with the shield will be slotted worse, that might be a factor. Just to also post my current build, i haven't been able to let go of focused accuracy as i hate nothing more than not being able to hit enemies. Because of that i am also still staying with spring attack, which isn't overwhelming but i think it's the best option if i am set on body mastery. My build focuses a bit more on resists and hp, getting to 60% s/l and 37% e/n/f/c i also left out one with the shield because i really don't like powers that you can only activate every 5-10 minutes. My health slotting might be a bit controversial, but it's quite difficult to find a good way to get ranged defense without slotting mules like boxing otherwise, so i rather just aimed for at least somewhat useful slots. I see that there are a bunch of fans of the gaussian proc IO, but i am having a hard time letting go of those 6% s/l resists even though i probably should, how often do you get the proc with soul drain? Do you see a considerable difference in damage? | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1588;738;1476;HEX;| |78DA6593DB6E52511086D7864D11CAB1A5D0A358DA722E14F5C2438D89D69AD636A| |9524DBC30751796854828811ACBA5AFA017FA04C62B1FC4E3BDBE408DB135D1C698| |AADB61CD4F216107F2CDFED7CCAC35336BAFEE2EB85E5F7F7259689EAB15A3D1D8C| |817EA46AD26EBF67CA12CAB0529E8E96B1AB25291763247DAEB1BABB2226566C1A8| |3F64337CBCB2201FC86A4366F2A5B2AC14DBAFFEA56A49D6657527D3365C6BDBDB9| |5CC8A346AE5EA96B7FD5294F546A95C73AAF77C4DCAA25B998BE5ADD20E39FAAFD5| |CA85CC95ED627363D568ECC87A7398CE95A57FBD7540F5983611B5089173084B9CE| |94C305D4930D5A22E46F78813BA70BA294C43EC90A6D62C3EA61E000FAD8A277E31| |7D3F99FD14AB71AC555B64AD6F09BECBCC9337982EF2B5621FEB1E7CBF1063BAF07| |CE5F780CAEF10C143E630F609527D36EC63FBC1DAE83E337BC0CC8D311F91AF1DBD| |B0CF1374AB70821E70E01C3308C640379DD1C1FB08474AA833F829593F6B967EF4C| |787BE0CA04F53E4E3E63D85FB33F75723CD0BCD6BD2231E93E257AD3675FF117B8D| |FF614EFF05FF31A326D3436907558B4D31382994E6256D08A71CC289AC943BC49A1| |E6A1934D9E1D39800A637F99B194357758A19416523A8248D7CB3A870977CC6F8CC| |B6B1371C37FE0E793F22EF0766F43D33F19619A2D809EE8036F189EBC9A13B4D5A0| |B634AE1FBBAD24E19E02658604E1699D392E9A7FA23888D5CE27C53F37CBBA7CE83| |1798D18BCC84C0CDA5D819F46E06B56A4121E2C81747DF13984B12734A623E49CC2| |78B7CEB8414A69CC27C22545B86F7D032B84559F025ED3F87FDE796794EE3FAF1D7| |4BBFD64D59E9561CBCE39A8ECF94344D79853B5EE69A53F92AFB5E976D74D99B5DB| |6C3275A1528FB9BF3F82B16DA2C9F73BF5B8BB376D0D16CDA2D4D7DB9E99B5C433A| |8F7B731B5CE7F5DC1D7EFFDE89B5684FB9A2C07366EC1973AEA70FC91E25D7A39CE| |D51CEF4284734E11CEF6EBE18241B95A7031DFD6EA863BF8A74ECC52E9FFFC62501| |CF| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|

You can also move the celerity to sprint which frees up a slot without losing anything. And i'd get rid of confront before the other two mentioned ones but maybe you have a special liking for it. I would never get rid of grant cover, giving up the 92.5% defense debuff resistance will never be an option for me. Additionally you can get rid of one of your slots in hasten if you +5 the other two it's more than enough. On top of that you can move an LotG (from battle agility for example) to grant cover to free another slot, but I assume there's also a specific reason why you don't do that.

Okay I guess everything works out quite differently than, mystery solved :) i will try running some +2 and see how it compares

what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Your defense numbers are somewhere between normal soft cap and incarnate soft cap, you generally want to stay either close to one or another, going higher than around 47/48% doesn't do much good for normal content. With shield you can reach 92% defense debuff resist so a few percentage points over cap should be enough, and every set you can change away from defense will give you some other benefits like hit points, resistance etc. On the other hand if you're looking for incarnate soft cap at 59%, then that would be another thing, and there you can for sure improve more but of course it also means sacrificing some things. All depends on what you want to accomplish

So at what are you running your missions then? I have a purpled out DM/SD at 50+1 and running +4x8 with bosses there is no way in hell i could wipe a spawn before something like this becomes an issue. An SD > SC > Judgement (only available every 90s) > DC combo will only scratch bosses (maybe down to 60%? maybe further for carnies, bur illusionist might be invul for part of the combo) and even lieutenants might still be alive (spells have a max hit count, 95% hit chance is max, mobs are not grouped etc etc). A master illusionist (a spawn can have 2 or 3 of these) can take about 2s until she has a dark servant out, at that point your to hit is floored at maybe ~20% which means you're going to hit with about 10-20% chance, if you don't hit anything you can't get rid of the servant or illusionist and can't even heal yourself anymore. These are the situations i am wondering about and unless your aoe combo somehow does triple the damage of what i do, you should run into them as well, no? The perception debuff is a lesser issue here as one acc insp will do, but against arachnos you will get blinded a lot, so you will be chewing through these as well.

Going the Moonbeam & Meld route, how do you handle perception & to hit debuffs if you're fighting arachnos and carnies for example? Just popping accuracy insps like crazy and hope they do enough?

DB has a very good single target chain with BF > AS > SS, it will give you a double to triple stacked BF which means a constant 75% to 107.5% damage buff. The downside is you need an insane amount of recharge, with a recharge alpha you still need around 180-200% global recharge. As far as i remember the chain is still strong enough even if you are 0.2 seconds off or so (you need to get BF to a recharge of 2.7). The worse version of this is BF > Attack Vitals Combo, needs less recharge but also does less damage. AoE is not the strong side of DB, but SS attacks in a 90% cone, so there is some limited AoE potential in the top chain.

Not to be a party pooper but to me this just seems like an academic exercise. All the things you will have to remove from your build for this, all the bonuses you will lose just to have your SD up 1.5 seconds earlier are definitely not worth it.

Since it is 3 procs per minute your best case scenario is in something that you use more than 3 times per minute. Reason being that if you use it fewer than 3 times you won't be able to actually get the 3 procs per minute that you should be getting on average. Why more than 3 times? Because there's a cap for proc chance at 90%, you never have a 100% chance to proc, so in a power that is up every 20s you would have a 90% chance each while with a power that is up every 10s you would have a 50% chance each which is higher in total. Additionally the power you put it in should be one that you use immediately off cooldown, if you don't do that you're wasting potential proc chances.

For some reason female characters run differently when they hold a weapon. While they have a slight left-right swing without weapons they lose this with a weapon, making their animations look much less natural. This has been brought up in the official forums way back but there was never any reason given for it and i still don't know why this is the case. It would be amazing if the run animation with a weapon could be adjusted to the normal run animation.

This would be a huge quality of life improvement for every character with a non-toggle mezz protection.