Sovera

A few tips: Drop as many procs as you can into Burn and thank me later when you test the difference they make (don't just base yourself off what Mids says in this matter). Six proc slotting Irradiated Ground is the same. Try to slot your Might of the Tanker +res proc in an earlier attack so you can use it while leveling (if you still do that) or when exemplared lower than. Full Synapse's Shock in Consume has great bonuses for a fire tanker. Place the -20% slow resist in Super Speed for some extra. I have a thread with fire armor builds (one of them Fire Rad) in my signature if you want pick up some slotting ideas.

Originally the term was Scranker which was a mix of Scrapper and Tanker. I've since coined Brunker, Brute and Tanker (also bunker, yes). Do as much damage as possible without hindering survival. I'm going to ramble through the post since it explains things for new players who may find this. As for the second question, oh heck yeah 😄 Martial Arts is an okay set. Not too fancy, not too flamboyant. It does two things though. One is adding a flat 10% to all defenses (non stackable) when we use Storm Kick. The other is two reliable and early knockdowns. With a Force Feedback in each we can push recharge, and recharge boosts survival. Healing Flames comes up more often, Consume comes up more often, Build-Up, Fiery embrace. Most importantly a maximized damage Burn has no recharge so it drinks up all that extra recharge we toss in with the FF procs. So while it's not super fancy it's actually turbo charging the build. More Build-Ups, more Burns., it all equals more damage which is how it catches up to better damaging sets. Then those 10% defenses can be leveraged with some exotic slotting to reach 45% and then even psi attackers, or recharge debuffing enemies, need to get past that to hit in the first place. It's by no means an immortal build. Without defense debuff resistance those 45% defense can be stripped fast, and due to the fancy slotting there is just a token 35% recharge debuff resistance, but, the 90% resistances to the important damage is there, and the extra damage means killing stuff fast. But, and this is important to me, the build starts early. Running Positron part one and melting enemies that are usually my bane (Fire Armor has terrible toxic resistances and it is too low a TF to have enough recharge to spam my heal, both for the heal and for the toxic resistance it brings). Then at max level and still get just 30 seconds slower than -the- current ST beast that is Energy Melee with the pylon test -and- faster AoE than Claws (addendum: my Claws does not use Shockwave. If I did it would do the same turbo acceleration and also help survival with KD. But I don't have infinite slots).

Holy crap I found my new baby and it's Fire/Ma. But lets start from the beginning. I first tested a Shield/EM... I was spent after that slog, but today I made the Fire/MA since it tested so well at max level. But what about leveling? Well, it takes the crown as Brunker. Claws, step aside, you're past history. In summary Claws is dethroned and I'll change the OP to reflect this as well as adding a leveling build.

The thing is... no one played a Tanker other than for funsies or theme, or because they played one in another game and are a fresh arrival. Tankers were dead. Low damage, bad endurance costs, why would anyone play one when a Brute (or a Scrapper) could do the tanking of a TF, survive, AND do better damage? Now there is choice. And if some like Bill or myself will be very min maxed oriented and see all the advantages of a Tanker no one is going to be gimped if they pick a Brute because they like Fury or the theme of getting stronger the longer they fight, and Scrappers and Brutes will still tank 90% of the end game with the team backing them up or something as measly as eating 50 inf inspirations. Even if Brutes were completely dead and useless... so what? Tankers were dead for years and the game played on just fine. It would simply be the Brute's turn to take a break and sip their pina colada as the Tanker's moved in. I mean, yeah, if we choose the right sets, then min max with three quarters of billion build, then juggle the proc mechanics, then a Tanker can catch up with the rest of the damage dealers. But on the other hand if the other damage dealers also pick the right sets, and sink three quarters of a billion in a build, then juggle procs, then they blow a Tanker out of the water. Edit: Just the fact I bring my uber mind maxed Tanker characters out and the average joe goes 'omfg, I didn't know Tankers did that much damage' shows that the regular Tanker damage out there in the wilds is not the god like creature parading in the top 1% builds posted on forums.

I'm partial first to biggo damage, and survival second. I feel like he AoE will be most mediocre but... when I went to test the Fire/Ice Ice Patch in Yin that damn Clamor killed me 😛 Ok, it was her, her debuffs, plus two packs of Freaks, plus being a mid level TF without part of my toggles. But still.

Yeah. I was answering the person above who said trying to AFK with Rulaaru would puncture a Shield Tanker. I've only just begun leveling it but from what you've been saying and what I'm seeing in Mids it needs some auto hit recovery debuff or something in order to be stopped. I decided to try it because you've mentioned yours down a pylon in three and a half minutes, which I thought was okay considering no Burn, but someone else said their Rad/EM had two and a half which perplexed me since no Burn or FE. So I decided to level one myself and see how it played.

Not as a tank. I'm putzing with one who has 90% to S/L/E/N on top of 45% on top of DDR. I'm going full damage so went EM but DM would have a small heal to help recover what little damage goes in.

I can't say anything about that, but I noticed mobs flopping a good step away from the patch's circle as they tried to approach me. Could be a fluke, but...

I went to give it a try and respecced into Frost Patch at 30 (first real non essential opening in the build) and then soloed Yin to see if it helped. Not as an instrument for survival, but to see if stopped the Freaks from healing up which slows everything down. And the veredict is, yes, kinda? It does not completely stop their healing up since Frost Patch seems to have a diminishing effect. The very first seconds the flopping is intense and then it slowly does less and during a micro second the Freakshow will heal up. But this only means to wait until they are at half before using it and then use that intense first half to finish taking them down. For minions and lieutenants this is not required since they melt, but against the smashers it's good to have. While I didn't test against PPs in Manticore there is no reason that strategy of waiting until half HP not to work as well which will really speed that TF up. Also, the Frost Patch graphic does not match its actual buffed radius.

Brute do get a bit more ST damage so the showing will be better on one. But we are talking a 10% ish better showing. It won't really be something we can notice with the naked eye.

With a Scrapper burn will make enemies run off. I did the WM and Fire combo on a Tanker and it was unimpressive though.

A good point. Frost goes from 10 to 13.5 alone and FT from the hold lasting 13 to just shy of 16. It's not ground breaking but the damage boost of Musculature is not huge either (more of a 15% damage boost). I'll put in the change.

In practical terms it just does not do much. Once you're killing swathes of enemies what's left is not in high enough numbers to hurt. I need to make a GIF or something but even a pack of +4 melts. Once 10-12 enemies are reduced to 4-5 limping ones just waiting for a second Frost there is no point in even putting Ice Patch down. Perhaps to tank the ITF but that's what Barrier is for. In your case not even that since SR ignores most of all debuffs. Though Ice Patch does have niche uses. The big ambush on top of the hill in the first ITF mission (but Barrier usually handles it, even so it would help), preventing healing from Freaks as I've mentioned, but there's a good chance it might make even the Cyclops/Minotaurs flop (not sure if it does though, they are pretty CC immune but KD is a different brand of CC) and stop them from T9ing for a few crucial seconds to finish them off. Overall I just found that I'd rather have and give more damage to everyone via Assault, but since the build is endurance heavy I might just slot into it and see if I can give use. But, I was playing with a friend in the 25+ bracket and there is not even time to place Ice Patch down when things are burned and frozen at our feet. Poor gal barely had time to pew pew some.

And here is what I used, slightly modified from my experience leveling it. I purposefully did not slot recharge in Frost to get more out of the damage procs but this might not be the best approach if actually leveling at one's pace instead of rushing. It worked for me though since recharge was low enough and, lets face it, not much survived Frost + Burn. A change I made in the builds instead of how I leveled was not taking Assault at 32. It was pretty heavy in endurance while leveling and while not a huge problem with Consume and Recovery Serums it was still something that could be mitigated by excluding a toggle. Instead I placed Ice Patch there which was something I did not level with. To be perfectly honest I don't think it -really- helps much since Build-up + Frost + Burn will melt one pack and what survives won't be enough to do much, but, why not? As a plus it serves as CC for things like PPs in Manticore, or healing Freaks which definitely counts as a DPS increase if we can avoid either 😄 The most important thing is to slot Burn first since it will carry the build heavily. Burn without procs is a warm summer breeze, and with procs it's a pack killer. Though it only hits five mobs it is common to kill twice as many since the procs activate a second time. First application kills a few mobs, a second later the pseudo pet activates the procs as well if RNG wills it and a few more mobs die from it.

Tanker gets better defense numbers and bigger AoEs/wider cones (particularly good with Ice's Frost). Brutes get a small damage boost in terms of single target (so I hear anyway) but don't nearly have the high defenses/resists of Tankers. Scrappers beat both in AoE and ST but have the worst defenses of the three as well. On top of that Fire Armor on a Scrapper lacks an agro aura so the moment Burn is placed down the NPCs will hightail it.

To add to the previous thread I was testing the Fire/MA when @Monos Kingrandomly sent a whisper to try their PvP build. We struck off, he struck me (blasted my poor MA to bits with his Dark Melee/Rad Armor Scrapper :D) and then he mentioned he had a +4 AV mission he tested his characters and we went to take a look. - Positron was a no go. Between his Overload giving him immunity to damage and his incredible debuffs he wiped the floor with us. When Monos had him near death he would Overload and with me he'd eventually get lucky and hit past my defenses and debuff me to the bottom while also killing my recharge. - Marauder BaBs was a slow go. Could have take him but it was so... very... slow... that I gave up. Didn't hurt back. - Sunburst was slow as well and also did defense debuffs but went okay since I had the resistances to back me up, didn't really hurt but it was hard to tell since BaB was still agroed and I was tanking both, but not a problem. - Some Tsoo AV was torn to pieces. Poor guy. - Now the real piece de resistance: Fire Armor is weak against Psi, right? Well, Monos had both Praetorian Aurora and Lamashku from the Talos of Vengeance in his mission, both dealing psi... and they did not hurt. 45% to range and AoE was enough despite the lack of psi resistances (36% with one stack, 42% with two, 47% with Barrier, 53% with a third stack). They got whittled down. - Ghost Widow was a no go for the obvious reasons. Everything would be okay until she used her hold. - Miss Liberty was melting when Monos mentioned the AI was borked and she was not using her buff. I backed away and she remembered about it. Did some -heavy- damage when she buffed up even through 90% resists. Beating her was a bit on the luck side as she whiffed with me well into the yellow and my heal on CD. - Aeon and his army just immediately debuffed me and killed me. When we went in together we got it with me keeping his army busy and on their butts with Dragon Tail.

I have revisited Fire/Martial Arts. At the time I was a bit eh about it and it slid into obscurity, but re-looking at the previous build it was still the unprocced unrefined starter. The new build still boasts of 40% defenses (45% with Barrier) to Melee, Ranged and AoE, which is better defensively than just Smash/Lethal defenses since it protects against more sources of damage, incidentally debuff carrying attacks (the recovery debuff from Carnival mobs carries an AoE tag for example). It still has 90% resistances to most with two ATO stacks and Barrier's 5%. Dragon's Tail is mediocre in terms of damage but the baked in KD works very well with Force Feedback so the original purpose of the pairing remains: accelerate the churning out of Burns. On top of that the constant KD also helps with soft mitigation. So, how much does it help with soft mitigation? A lot. I tested against the first map of the Market Crash at +4x8 and my HP never diped from 95%. I felt it was not a great test so I picked a Comic Con to test. In the past I did a DM vs Claws AoE test and Claws had to use heals here and there since their HP kept steadily declining. MA stayed rock solid at 95% - 100%. This was done without Barrier so 40% and relying on the ATO proc to reach 90%. With all these defensive extras I would like to say Claws has the upper hand in damage... but that is not the case. Two quick tests against pylons left it just shy of three minutes which is the Claws average. In the AoE test Claws ended with seven minutes (no insps, no helper, only using Hybrid assault) while MA ended with... a bit over six. Not a huge difference and not conclusive (random level ups add damage to the test, mobs may decide to swarm or have to be chased, etc), but Dragon Tail's mediocre damage was well compensated by helping drop more mini nuke Burn bombs. So still a bit better while stronger on the defensive level as well. I hereby split the Brunker crown from Claws' and place the other half on Martial Arts. Two downsides only of MA: - It takes longer to bloom. Slash can have the -res proc at level 4. The third big hitter of Claws comes comes at 28 instead of 35. Follow-up is available at 20 instead of 28. That means under 35 (30 if exemplared) the ST suffers a bit. - Build-up at 28 slows low leveling more than it needs. Without it Positron and Synapse level range is drab soloing (not that soloing Synapse with MA is viable what with Dragon Tail kicking Clocks away from Burn *shudder*) But barring those three TFs from Yin up my rotation is Storm Kick, Dragon's Tail, Burn, Storm Kick, Crane Kick. Even at max level and in an AoE situation I still only use those skills. It takes being in ST to dust off Crippling Axe Kick, or lower than 35 (30 if exemplared) Thunder Kick.

The premise is not complicated: have as many enhancement tabs as we have slots. As it is if we wish to remove all IOs we need to respec twice since there is not enough room to take out all the IOs. - We have 98 slots (including Swift, Hurdle, Sprint, etc). - We have 70 slots in the Enhancement tab. - Three more Enhancement tabs would make it 100 slots. - The UI supports this (there is plenty of room after the 7th tab to add three more numbers). Is it important? No. Would it be a nice QoL? Yes.

This combination came out on a lark since I had pretty much tested all I wished to test, but decided to give it an hesitant try only to be very pleasantly surprised. In terms of pylons the behavior is not brilliant. The Annihilation -res in Frost helps a bit but using an AoE and a T2 for damage does not favor big pylon times. After several tests with different incarnates the best time was 3:17 and the average 3:30-ish. This might feel like ugh, such a normal Tanker time. Doesn't EM do it in 2.30 or less? Yes, but Ice plays very very smoothly, and it gets those times despite the odds stacked against it. In terms of actually playing the game Fire/Ice is as close to Fire/Claws as it gets. It starts early with annihilating AoE then progresses smoothly to FT and obtains a very heavy hitter in the mid levels, no need to wait until 38. In the meanwhile Burn helps being a heavy hitter until FT arrives as well as being a heavy hitter for AoE to support Frost. This is the level 50 build. If there is a desire for it I can post a leveling build: @DreadShinobipointed out the Intuition incarnate meshed well with Ice and I agree with him. I've changed out Musculature.

*goes to check* Well, blimey. You're right. It was changed in Issue 18. While it does more for fire attacks than non-fire I'm not actually sure of how much it translates to. Welp, while it should still influence things it's not as much a buff as I thought. Apologies for the misinformation spread on my side of the conversation.

What isn't?

I suppose that we will only know when one of the god devs chimes in. But I'm sticking with the 100% damage boost lasting 20 seconds with roughly 30 seconds downtime as the culprit. My Fire/Claws Tanker has it down to 53 seconds cooldown, this not considering the FF procs shortening it a bit further. Stalker and Scrapper have the bad Fire Armor, but Brute and Tanker do not.

Both solutions worked on my end o/

There is something weird going on. The Might of the Tanker +res proc is giving a lot of recharge by itself. Try changing for a different Might of the Tanker IO, check Hasten's time, then swap in the MotT +res and check Hasten's time again.

No stacks for the Tanker version: No effect with Blood Frenzy turned on (possibly due to not having a scale): Mids has also become real sluggish. I had already deleted and re-installed but I might need to hunt down all files this time for a complete scorched earth re-install. So far I've had small bugs like inherents not showing up (loading a Tanker EM build), some inherent power graphics not loading leaving me with just black boxes, and now even this as seen below: