Sovera

I'm not reading 17 pages, but, has anyone actually ever needed or appreciated having Group Fly used on them? By level 5-10 we all have our travel powers. Visiting the Gull to flag the Group Fly off makes no sense. It should be off by default and then those who want it flag it for themselves. For me this bothers little since I have no non-flyers.

It can be done, if you're sturdy, AND if in the first minute of the encounter before she disappears for the first time. Then the blue circles are weak and can be withstood but you gotta be sturdy. But after she re-appears the blue circles become magnitudes more damaging and at best you can just get a couple of licks before having to vamoose even as a Tanker. A trick I usually do, but that is hindered by others in the team being also Brutes or Tankers with agro grabbing, is using the tram behind her to break LoS. Keep fighting until the blue circle appears under you, wait until the last second, hide behind the tram, the LoS break makes her follow you instead of using her crossbow. If you wait until the very last second (or even soak a tick or two of the blue) we can repeat this as the previous circle will have disappeared by the time the next one lands. This allows meleers to continue hitting her instead of solely relying on ranged. Unfortunately we have Brutes grabbing agro and who do not break LoS and thus she stands on the blue plinking with that harmless lil crossbow. Iv'e tried spamming Taunt but she refused to change targets so I ditched it.

No no, that Barrier use (repeated if someone has it) and purples for the squishies. No herding, no hitting anything that isn't the pylon.

The toxic damage from the pylons is auto-hit if I recall correctly, and it stacks (again if I remember correctly). Bottom line is having Barrier and using it on the whole team right at the first pylon (while waiting for the animation of the sewer iris door to open) before going ham. Forget being a marine, if a man falls they get left behind. On my Fire Armor Tankers I would use a medium/big orange but it's more about greens tbh. Each pylon should be less than 10 seconds.

Brute (Rad Fire).mbd I'm not too happy with the consumption VS the recovery but Rad has always been hefty. I'm fairly sure Consume will not be able to keep endurance up so keep Recovery Serums on the character or swap Musculature for Cardiac. Barrier finishes capping S/L and adds a bit to E/N. 33% defense so a small purple puts melee defense at 45% for a little bit extra resilience. I don't like Devastating Blow for the slow animation but drop Proton Sweep if you want it and put the slotting of Proton Sweep in Radiation Siphon and the slotting that was in it in Devastating Blow. As mentioned above Stone Armor is a strong contender and a breeze to level with. Granite Armor is no longer used so there's no need to worry about its downsides.

Stone Armor. There are others, but Stone Armor rocks a lot of bells and whistles.

Can't actually get more outside of your armor and incarnates so y'gotta pick an armor that has it. How much is needed depends on your intents. I've soloed the ITF which is defense debuff heavy by killing things before they killed me and dropping Barrier for a large influx of defense to overcome the debuffing. It worked so it works. Sometimes all you need is to carry medium purples and eat a couple without overthinking it too much. If you can provide DDR then by all means do so but even just your bubbles are already making DDR-less characters a lot tankier and even characters with defense but low DDR (ninjutsu, etc) will have such a large buffer of defense between their native defense plus your bubbles that it will take a lot of hits to reach cascading failure levels. Cascading failure is what it is all about. Defense debuffing in itself is not a big problem. Grab a normal ITF spawn and we have 10-12 mobs all doing defense debuffs, which is dangerous as all those hits will whittle defense and once under the softcaps it will make the next hit easier, which in turn adds more debuffs, which in turn makes the next hit easier. It's a vicious circle and what's we call cascading failures. But if a character has low DDR but a large defense buffer (most will build for 45%) and then we add your own shield (just considering the defense and not the DDR you're providing) then it's another, what? About 40% or more? That's at least 80%. Mobs will still need to go through that defense, manage to hit with their piddly 5% chance to hit, then whittle the defense, but the extra defense is covering it so they are still effectively softcapped making the enemies still have only 5% chance to hit. It will take many hits to get it down under 45% where each hit makes the next hit easier. But taking the example above of the 10-12 mobs doing defense debuffs if a character hops in, uses Build-up, then vaporizes half the group in a volley of AoEs now it's not 10-12 enemies all whittling defense down. If it's just 4-5 enemies then the debuffing is a lot less severe and dangerous. Another dangerous group that does defense debuffing are the praetorian robots that are common in the end game. Those guys refuse to go into melee and each hit that lands will debuff defenses. It's easy to die to them. Or is it? Kinda. Do a corner pull and when they are all bunched up the same basic tactic of Build-up + AoEs will kill most f not all minions and it's again just 4-5 enemies. Most times these enemies are something I pull a small purple (12% defense) if solo since I'm already at 45% at least and now they need to get me down from 57% while I'm doing those BU backed AoEs.

The set is built around Rage. It's not like other sets where we get 80% for 10 seconds every 30 seconds. Rage is meant to be up 100% of the time, so all the damage is balanced around Rage. You CAN play without it and the world will not end and mobs will be defeated, but you might as well consider something like Fire Melee and have two PBAoEs instead of just one (and have it at level 6 instead of 30).

No Rooted? Dang, it's your protection against knockback, sleep, disorient, hold, immobilize, endurance drain, and gives defense debuffs resistance and regeneration. Do you happen to play with amplifiers? EE's heal is miniscule on a Tanker's HP but on a Stalker I can see it replaces a chunk so valid. Not knocking on it since the proof's in the pudding and if it works then it works. I looked at the build, you meant Geode 😄 My only problem with the Snipe is that it only fits in every second rotation since at best it's up every 6.7 (or about 8.5 secs in your build) and AS + FT + IS is only 4.5 so it can't replace IS which is the weak link. Even with more recharge so it's at 6.7 and a second IS it's still with a 0.7 delay, which, I mean, acceptable. Looking at it the gap would vanish adding more IS since its recharge is fast enough. Something like AS + IS + Snipe + IS + FT + IS but by then FT and AS are up anyway and using IS is a waste compared to those moves, plus the procs would have to be carefully placed to not go for IS. It replaces one IS every two rotations which is valid, plus Shadow Meld which is always a nice extra for the start of a fight.

Lemme know how it goes. Is the Ice-Patch-at-50%-HP helping with runners?

This was something I was building as a Scrapper and then I looked at it and decided if it had no agro aura then why not make it a Stalker instead and enjoy AS (even if it comes at the cost of Mud Pots). The premise: everyone hates runners but we are stuck with the cottage cheese. Ice Patch, in theory, should minimize this. Apply, or re-apply, at around 50% HP and mobs will be flopping at the time they should be running away (will not work on AVs). Stalkers are a bit squish as they level but a corner pull and an Ice Patch allows to solo 99% of the content. Stalkers are, IMO, a much better experience than Scrappers be it leveling or end-game. While leveling Scrappers have RNG crits that may happen, or not, but a Stalker always ensures an initial crit when starting a fight from stealth. Then they also get Build-up resets on top of stealth resets on TOP of their RNG crits similar to Scrappers (which are further boosted if playing in a team unlike Scrappers'). So a good driver can initiate combat in stealth, use Build-up, use Frost. Keep brawling (Stalkers no longer are ambush backstab rogues, they brawl) and at getting the stealth reset use it with Frost Aura. If BU reset in the meanwhile then use it with Frost Aura too. I 'solved' (airquotes) the problem I had with Ice Melee that was not having a good ST chain since Greater Ice Sword did not merit picking and slotting as Frost almost did the same damage, but Frost is an AoE so it does sucky ST damage (tells ya all ya need to know about Greater Ice Sword). So it starts as Assassin's Strike, Ice Sword, Freezing Touch, Ice Sword. Repeat. This has some small gaps, such as Ice Sword recharging in 1.7 seconds and Freezing touch being a 1.2 animation so there is a 0.5 second delay, and Freezing Touch taking 5,3 seconds and Ice Sword x2 + Assassin's Strike only taking 5 seconds. I use airquote because placing both ATO procs in Ice Sword has its own downsides such as having it hit like a wet noddle, but placing the stealth reset in AS would give the crit to Ice Sword (so, wet noddle crits). Same as putting it in Freezing Touch. But having it in Ice Sword has a chance of making the stealth reset happen to AS which will trigger the slow AS (if I've kept up with Stalker mechanics (it's been a while)) which is a nono too. Perhaps a veteran Stalker player can chime in. There are some choices to be made as for example whether it is worth to keep Earth's Embrace over Geode. Even removing all HP accolades and the 100 HP unique in Unbreakable Guard EE will still only give 700 HP. Once having accolades and the unique this comes down to a measly 300 HP. Worth it? The player can decide but Geode doubles as an HP AND an endurance clickie and I think that trumps EE since Stalker's low HP pool means they only regen 36 HPS (30 HPS without EE). I left EE in anyway but consider the pros and cons. While leveling there will be huge gaps in the rotation to fill up with Frost. In the end the build boasts of softcaps and about 50% resistances across the board but I'd still take Barrier since it's not enough to fend off defense debuffing on its own. I have Brimstone turned off because it has a bug where it is adding much more damage than it should and I didn't want to lead people on, but the goddevs of Mids are aware of it and its been fixed just not released yet. Hasten at 128 is not the fastest thing around but its okay, I guess. At 2.55 EPS (and if taking Geode) that extra endurance mod in Crystal Armor could become another damage proc in Frost Aura too. As always I build tanky and hate being accuracy debuffed so I went with Targetting Drone instead of a snipe and Shadowmeld etc, so this is not the highest damage possible. Stalker (Ice Melee - Stone Armor).mbd

Only the lack of an agro aura holds me back from delving into Stone Armor with Scrappers.

At the risk of sounding weird Stone is a better WP than WP like WP is a better Regen than Regen. WP's weakness is the lack of defense debuff protection (only 17%) coupled with no resistances since it is meant to rely on those said defences. Generic IOs only: Defences: 4% to S/L, 15% to F/C/E/N, 12% to psi. Resistances: 22% to S/L, 20% to psi, 5% to F/C/E/N/T. IOs, Tough, and Weave will add to this. So anything that debuffs defences will mulch WP. Then it only has regeneration to regain health. Like Bio it handles generic enemies pretty well (anything strictly S/L, or E/N enemies that don't debuff defence) and hates anything that debuffs. Bio has no resistances to E/N and relies on E/N defences while having no protection against debuffs. Enter Stone Armor. Like WP it is hands off being mostly passive other that one buff in Earth's Embrace. It too also has an extra recovery passive (Crystal Armor), but has other perks (recharge in Mineral Armor, damage proc in Brimstone, damage aura in Mud Pots) on top of reaching high defence to all (WP only has native defence to F/C/E/N), having still mediocre defence debuff protection that's nonetheless a bit better than WP (41%), and to top it a decent chunk of resistances that we can bolster with IOs since the defences are mostly handled natively. Generic IOs only: Defence: 25% S/L/E/N. 29% Psi Resistances: 12% to S/L/E/N, 47% to F/C and 50% to Toxic. Ah, and both rely on regeneration as their means to recover. WP regens much more on paper (even with just one enemy in range but it goes up the more enemies there are) but in practice the difference is not that high since EE (easily) caps Stone Armor's HP. Scrappers have a low HP pol so the amount regenerated is not large anyway. With one enemy in range WP regenerates 39 HPS (with accolates and still on generic IOs) where Stone regenerates... 33 HPs. Willpower wins the regen race as IOs will make it close on the HP cap. With only generics and accolades it reaches 2k HP where Stone Armor with just EE reaches 2500 (but is capped at 2400 anyway) especially with more enemies around them.... but Stone Armor gets Geode which doubles as heal AND recovery tool and can be up once a minute. The one thing WP has is a taunt aura where Stone Armor does not for Scrappers (boo, remove the fear code already!). Well, that and an easier concept both in name (willpower) and how little FX it covers the character in. Any Captain America/Punisher/Daredevil/non super superhero can use WP but good luck doing that with Stone Armor. Summing it up, Stone Armor makes for a good WP with better tools and equally mostly passive without caring about having to juggle defensive clickies. WP is outdated but then so was Stone Armor before the devs gave it a pass so once they get around to WP it will get that buff and polish it needs.

I'd like more 'bad' teams. Everyone is so tanky there is barely a point in playing a Tanker until very late end game.

Despite the sonorous 45% in Musculature it's actually about 15% which is still nice, so going from 45% to 33% is not a huge loss, and yes I always put end mod in Crystal Armor as I have it in the (near) immortal build in my signature and other stone armor builds in that thread. Honestly I'd keep selling merits or using them to make money since another 60 million for a complete set of normal ATOs should not take too long. I'm assuming you know how to sell or use merits but just in case check the newbie guide in the signature if not.

With the tanker ATO (Mids is borked and does not show SMoT but it's 6.7% and two stacks are easy to keep up so it's what I account for) and Barrier you account for 18.4%. So S/L is already overcapped with all of this. On the same vein F/C has 5% too much. And E/N is at the weakest spot but splitting Superior Gauntled Fist allots 12% which, with the above, puts it at 79.6%. With some changes S/L is at 69.8%. 69.8% + the 18.4% mentioned above ends at 88.2%. E/N ends at 87.9%. And F/C ends at 87.5%. If you get a third stack of the ATO (unreliable but not impossible either) they are all capped at 90% as well. I changed the order of the powers a bit. You don't need an early Earth's Embrace since it is a minimal heal and the HP buff is neutered by the low level raw stats, and you don't need an early Fighting pool since you reach 45% without Weave. Weave will probably be turned off most of the time and just toggled on for enemies that debuff defence. Once that happens you rely on Weave and Barrier for an extra 10% making your defense be 55% without outside aid. I've also changed Cardiac for Musculature. It's at 2 endurance positive and turning Focused Accuracy should make endurance infinite. You can only turn it when facing enemies that debuff accuracy when solo (slightly tweak the IO choices for more accuracy to be at 95% when facing +3 if wanting to keep FA off). When in a team it does not matter as there is always someone throwing Ageless around since it's a pretty popular choice. If not, well, carry a few Recovery Serums. Or move back to Cardiac since Cardiac Radial will finish capping your resistances without a third ATO stack. I simply prefer the small boost in damage (about 10% from Musculature 33%). I wouldn't bother too much about a FF proc in Radioactive Smash since there are no particular CDs in the build, but swapping the slotting between Radiation Siphon and Radioactive Smash would allow for it. Tanker (Stone Armor - Radiation Melee).mbd

Someone was asking advice about a Ice/Stone Scrapper and though I mentioned the runners and how Stone is so sturdy it does not make much synergy with Ice, I do consider an Ice Patch at around a group's half HP point would help with runners. For those of us with all HP bars shown all the time gang 😜

On the upside KM will shine once the dev team gets to it. Their updates to lagging sets have a good track record.

Looks good. The way I build is just A way to build, not THE way. Plus respecs are cheap so you can add more damage later when you feel like twiddling a bit more. At a glance there are just three slots I'd consider superfluous: the extra LotG in Combat Jumping (10% regen is one more HP per second (from 36 HPS to 37 HPS. The slotting gives 0.7% extra defence too)) and the two slots in Fly (the -fly debuff resistance is already taken care of by Evasive Maneuvers). You can also place the slot from Karma in CJ to Tough and add a KB protection from Steadfast Protection to get the same KB protection but add a fraction more recovery (won't ever be noticed, but, why not?). You can place two slots in Consume and get more E/N resistances than you were getting as well as a substantial 7.5% recharge by swapping to Synapse. Or place two slots in Focused Accuracy with Adjusted Targetting and improve its stats a bit while also recouping your E/N resistances. Or place all three in Brawl and slot four Kinetic Combat which can replace the slotting in Burn or Total Focus, or ET, while still preserving your defenses (though I feel you have too much as it is). Plenty of choices, one of which is also let things stay as you have them as the build's pretty solid as is.

Defence on a resistance armor is just a little bit extra. Resistances are doing the heavy work. But I find I usually have enough latitude to bring some defense in while still having capped resistances and decent (around 135 second Hasten) recharge. With that said I aim for 45% (with Barrier) to S/L which often ends being Melee too. Usually I don't bother using Barrier for that. Barrier's my panic button. If my HP dips too fast even after Healing Flames then I use Barrier and I'm assured the huge defense boost will keep me alive until Healing Flames has finished recharge. As a bonus it caps my defenses and resistances since it turned out to be a situation where those 5% might be useful to have. Aiming for more is generally not advised because anything that does defence debuffing will eat those defences anyway since Fire Armor has no resistance to it, and what doesn't do defence debuffing is generally not hard to begin with. But, IMO, 45% is a nice buffer since even resistance based armors suffer from defence debuffing. It's best to have those 45%, then eat a small purple and be at 57% (if it's REALLY being hard), and now those defence debuffers need to work hard to peel all that defence down. In the meanwhile Healing Flames is recharged, Barrier is recharging, and they can be used again. It's how I soloed the ITF on enemies buffed, no inspirations, etc, despite Fire Armor being 'squishy'. During that time you're smacking things. Especially with an Energy Melee where between those tweaks to increase the damage and the immense crowd control Energy Melee brings you can get rid of a most of a spawn in the initial 10 seconds.

What Barrier does is give a large amount of defense and resistance during the first 10 seconds, then it slowly decreases. At the one minute mark the decrease halts at 5%. It will continue being 5% for the last minute. It lasts two minutes total if you pick the side that says 120 seconds, and recharges in two minutes which means it is permanent for content that is 45+.

My signature has plenty of examples but this is the last one I posted.

If you want to pump up your damage there are some tweaks to be done. Burn, for example as you have it, is at about 304 where it could be at 460. And Energy Transfer, your huge big hitter, could be at 770 instead of 638. We can even ditch having Tough toggled on and still be capped. Another few things to consider is that with a second stack of the ATO you will have an extra 6,7% that Mids is not showing you. So rather than having Might of the Tanker six slotted and be at 99% to S/L you should move your slots around and aim to be at around 83% like your E/N currently is. Or you can toggle Tough off and replace the slots in Healing flame for Preventive Medicine to be around 83% with Tough on. My own approach is to always account for Barrier and it's permanent 5% defense and resistance so that even with Tough toggled off they are still at 90%. Anything too easy to not need Barrier does not need the extra 5% anyway. So accounting for two stacks of the ATO (6.7% x2) and Barrier (5%) has my builds looking to put their resistances at roughly 77/78%. Any more than that and it is useless once all those things are activated. Like, currently you have S/L at 99. But once the second ATO stack procs you'll have it a 105%, then if you use Barrier because you're in trouble it goes to 110%. But 90% is the cap anyway. Your E/N resistances are at the sweet spot for the second ATO stack to put them at 90%, but if you use Barrier they will go to 95%.

My opinion on the three would be: Rad/Staff: pretty sturdy, weak AoE propped by Rad Armor if you proc bomb Rad Therapy and Ground Zero, weak ST. If you like the theme it works just fine though but temper your expectations of whittling bosses at a fast clip because it won't happen. The FF procs Staff can slot will help Rad's recharge to have thos mini proc bombs come back sooner. Dark/Dark: sturdy as well from a combination of Dark Regeneration, high resistances, and layering -toHit. Usually I wouldn't praise the -tohit but it will be supported by at least one aura (no more than one IMO) and the defense from the stealth. The AoE will be weak and the ST mediocre, with Soul Drain being a nuisance since we need to decide whether to use it and help finish killing half a spawn when it runs its course or save it to use it on a full spawn. Fire/Claws: Effective, brutal, simple. Still Tanker ST damage but helped by Fiery Embrace, but strong AoE between Spin (who is above average), Burn, and Shockwave if deciding to take it. I prefer nt to to since it is easier to just sit in the middle of a group and spam PbaoEs while focusing on the boss(es) but Shockwave does prop up Fire Armor with soft mitigation as one of the less sturdy armor and it IS an extra AoE. As a bonus both Focus and Shockwave take Forcefeedback procs that accelerate Fire Armor's clickies like the heal and the endurance, as well as the second Build-up effect.

As someone who has messed around with Fire Armor somewhat extensively I say your build is good as is for whatever content you'd like to play. That said there are numerous tweaks you can do but they depend if you care about increasing your damage. If no, because playing a Tanker and intending to team and the team is the one who is doing the damage, then leave it be as is. If yes then it's going to be a matter of changing slots around. Some small tweaks you can do even without chasing damage would be: - Putting the ATO that you have in Blazing Aura somewhere else. Perhaps Barrage. This is because it's a stacking buff (6.7% per stack and goes up to three stacks). In Blazing Aura it only ticks once every 10 seconds even if surrounded by enemies so you'll only have one stack at most. Putting it in a single target attack will allow you two spam it more and in return get the proc happening more times. For example your Energy/Negative resistances are currently at 82.2% (Mids accounts for one stack of the ATO but not more). Having it go off a second time would neatly place your E/N resistances at 88.9%. - Taking Energy Punch instead of Barrage gives you two benefits. One benefit is that it's a super fast attack which is a great filler while you wait for Total Focus to return. You can fo TF, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher, Energy Punch, Energy Transfer, Energy Punch, Bone Smasher. Repeat. The second benefit is that Barrage 'steals' Energy Focus which is what turns Energy Trasnfer from a 2.9 seconds animation into a 1.2 animation. If ET misses (as it is possible to do thanks to the 5% minimum miss rate) and Barrage eats Energy Focus then you only get it back next time TF is up. You may think about the -regen as important, but, mathematically speaking, it is not. The -regen debuff is good against big HP meat bags and these are exclusively AVs and GMS. Elite Bosses don't have enough HP for the -regen, and especially such a small value as 100% (the normal regen debuffs are 500%) to have an impact on how fast they are downed. Even those big bags of HP have protection against debuffs, and the higher the level difference the more that resistance to debuffs is diminishing the effects. That said if you like Barrage and want to lay that -100% regen debuff then continue because you're not breaking the build by doing so. - The ATO is Total Focus should go into Blazing Aura. The proc is a small absorb shield and it does not stack so it's fine if it only has a chance to go off every 10 seconds. Total Focus is one of your two big damage dealers and depending on your intentions you can either throw five Hecatombs and a Touch of Death proc or what you'd like. - Tactics is not needed. Even without it you're already at 91% chance to hit +3 enemies. The Hecatomb has 15% accuracy which will finish putting it at 95% (which is the softcap since there is alwas a 5% chance of missing). Check the accuracy of your attacks by changing the relative enemy level in Mids and then go over the accuracy of each attack. - Agility Core incarnate is not particularly helpful to this build. It gives some defense, but Fire Armor is not a defense based build. It gives some recharge, but recharge is not particularly needed either. You could either go Musculature 33% for a bit more damage (around 10% if I recall correctly) and a bit more endurance, or Resilient for more resistances. - Speaking of endurance I don't know how you've been handling your blue bar with Consume not being slotted. If it has worked out then it's fine and carry, but I wouldn't leave home without six Synapse Shock in there because A) Synapse Shock is chockfull of good bonuses, and B) a slotted Consume can ignore most sapping effects, the very thing that makes 90% of the other characters tremble in fear. Fire Armor may not be the sturdiest thing around but sapping problems ain't one. I won't add to this novel before you decide on what direction you'd like to go.